Like many expats here, Rasha Mkachar has spent most of her life in Qatar. Her family moved to Doha in 1979 to escape political instability in Lebanon, and has been here ever since.

Except lately, Mkachar’s dad keeps saying that he is ready to head “home.”

“I want to live like my grandfather. I want to have my farm and be surrounded by the world I know,” Mkachar’s father said in a video she shot for the Maisha Documentary Film Lab via the Doha Film Institute in 2012, and recently made publicly available on YouTube.

To Mkachar, this revelation hit like a bombshell.

“Had I known dad planned to go back to his grandfather’s life, I would’ve shared his dream,” she explained in the video, titled What my father never told me.

Tough choices

Mkachar now has some difficult choices to make. Staying in Qatar would require retaining family or employment sponsorship, since the path to citizenship here is restrictive at best.

Moving would mean starting over somewhere that she has never known.

Speaking to Doha News, Mkachar said she hasn’t made any decisions yet. She added that she chose to focus on this subject because it is a “classic expat dilemma.”

“I was writing about a topic that pained me and was growing heavy on my heart. I just wanted to convey a story that many shared but no one spoke about out loud.”

Are you or someone you know in the same boat? Thoughts?