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Emigration is the act of leaving one’s native country to live in another country. Immigration is the act of entering a new country to settle there permanently. When people emigrate, they become immigrants, but if the process is slow – and usually it is – they are put into a position where they have to sit and wait. At that point they are emigrants waiting to become immigrants.Let’s call this position a symbolic threshold. Compelled waiting on the threshold can last forever, but that is not what interests me. I am more concerned about those who voluntarily wait there, finding a comfortable place for themselves between emigration and immigration. They are emigrants, but their goal is not necessarily to become immigrants. In fact, they are neither one nor the other. They sit on the threshold, and that’s it. I left Beirut to study in Amsterdam in 2002. My status as a student and my attitude at that time made me a good example of someone who is between emigration and immigration. I felt okay, sitting on the edge of the threshold with the tip of my butt. And slowly my position changed. I sat more comfortably and put my full weight on this surprising place. Did this have to do with the fact that I was in Amsterdam? Could I have done the same if I had been studying in Paris? New York, Mexico or Egypt? Do we have to leave our country in order to be able to live on a threshold? A threshold is defined in the dictionary as follows:1- a piece of stone or hardwood that forms the bottom of a doorway. 2- a doorway or entrance.3- the point where a new era or experience begins.4- the level at which a psychological or physiological effect or state starts.Whether physically or psychologically speaking, a threshold is a place where we are supposed to stand for a short while before passing through to the other side. Since it can be a piece of stone or hardwood – or any other material for that matter – why not stay there, make it our final destination? This little ‘in-between place’ is what we’re seeking, for example on our journey from Beirut to Amsterdam. A wooden threshold at the bottom of a doorway that separates Beirut from Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, everyone speaks English. But it isn’t proper English. A Professor at the University of Amsterdam once called it ‘Dunglish’. This strange Dutch English plays an essential role in my decision to stay on the threshold. We don’t speak Arabic here, and we don’t have to speak Dutch. We speak Dunglish.But what if I had already been living on a threshold in Beirut, without having left the country? In that case, the threshold would be a hardwood one at the bottom of a doorway between Beirut and Beirut. Or rather, it would be a watery threshold between Beirut and Beirut. In this city, there are groups of men who live on a threshold without ever leaving, emigrants forever waiting to become immigrants. And they are not marginal, for such people exist on the fringes of a group or movement. These men live in the heart of Beirut.Let me introduce you to few of them: Abou Wahid (my father), Abou Sakhra, Abou Ghassan, Abou Mazen, Abou Youssef, Mounir, Abou khodre, and Ali Kazma.These men go daily to the Corniche, the main seaside promenade in Beirut, and clamber down the rocks to swim in the sea. They swim at the American University Beach (AUB), or at Dalieh, an area around our famous Pigeon’s Rock that we call ‘Raouché’. Some of them spend the whole day there. Others cut their working day short in order to find an hour to spend at the beach. They form an improvised community on the public beach every single day, no matter what the circumstances: rain, wind, war…. They come from different backgrounds and are of different ages. Their common daily goal is subtly to turn their backs on Beirut, hiding in the rocks, making the sea their eternal threshold between emigration and immigration. And that’s why the threshold they stand on is made of water. Very salty water.Living on a threshold forever requires a comfortable platform. If your rear end hurts, you have to stand up, change places. But in this case it doesn’t hurt, because the threshold is of water. Everything has to flow, and saltwater helps keep things flowing better than sweet water.I am now making a video about these men. I call it The beach is a stereo, a stereo in reference to how Mounir, who is a bass guitar player, can evoke the sounds of the beach. I filmed them while they were swimming and I also filmed them in a studio, away from the public beach. I asked them questions such as:Why do they call you that? Do you work? Where do you live? When and where did you learn how to swim? What kind of swimming do you do? What is the colour of the sea? Who is the best swimmer amongst you? What is your favourite kind of fish? Where were you when the lighthouse got bombed? Etc. …Even during wartime, the protagonists in my story are concerned with matters that no other citizen in Beirut would think about: sea temperature, wind direction…. In the film you slowly discover the relationships between them. For example, Abou Wahid, Abou Ghassan and Abou Mazen are close friends, but on the other hand Abou Wahid has a closer relationship with Abou Sakhra. Abou Sakhra takes time to show me the places on his body where he was injured during the war. He fought with the Lebanese Army in the eighties. Is that true?You could say that the geography and history of Beirut form an ideal platform for living on the threshold. However, you could also say the same about Amsterdam! Aren’t they both cities in which many people thought they would stay for a week and ended up living for a decade? Maybe the same can be said of New York, Mexico, Egypt or Vietnam. The Lebanese historian Samir Kassir said that Beirut is on a wide peninsula in the wide sea surrounded by a wall of mountains on all sides. The author Abdelkader Benali once wrote: ‘The men of Amsterdam have turned their river the Amstel into a labyrinth. A treasure box of optimism, common sense and knowledge and suspicion of salt.’ Not to compare Beirut to Amsterdam, but I hope that I can finish editing my video soon so that viewers can see more of this saltwater threshold. Maybe we will end up saying that there isn’t any threshold separating Beirut from Beirut, or Beirut from Amsterdam, or Amsterdam from Amsterdam. In the end, is it important to know exactly where the threshold lies? Can ‘being in between’ always be the case everywhere and anywhere? If so, do we become trapped in a global chain of ‘in between states’? A kind of McDonald’s threshold? And why not? The above text is an adapted version of a lecture that Mounira Al Solh gave on May 31 in TENT, Rotterdam as part of the exhibition Contemporary Passages.