The Syro-Lebanese from ‘Syriban’: Nostalgia, Partition, and Coexistence in Eveline Bustros’ Imagined Homeland

Abstract

This article offers new insights into nostalgia and nationalism in the Syrian/Lebanese diaspora through the literary, artistic, and philanthropic work of Eveline Bustros (1878–1971). It relies on her underexplored published works as well as a rare collection of Bustros’ personal correspondence, journals, photographs, and speeches compiled by her family. After World War I, the French partitioned Bilad al-Sham into multiple polities and inaugurated a new citizenship regime dividing erstwhile Ottoman Syrians into categories of “Syrian” and “Lebanese.” In the midst of these geopolitical changes, Bustros and her family lived in Paris, where she began her celebrated literary career. Although she was a committed Lebanese nationalist, Bustros articulated hybrid notions of identity that elided distinctions between “Syrians” and “Lebanese.” Confronted with reports of sectarian violence during the Syrian Revolt (1925–1927), Bustros used her writings to grapple with the feasibility of peaceful coexistence in the Levant. Upon returning to Lebanon, she became a leading member in Lebanon’s early feminist movement while maintaining deep, affective connections to the Syrian interior. Bustros’ life and work complicate understandings of diasporic nationalism and nostalgia by highlighting fluid identities shaped by multidirectional bourgeois mobility, inviting scholars to consider nationalisms beyond the confines of the nation-state.