Anca Cheaito, the woman from Iași living in Beirut who brought the Romanian language into the heart of the Levant: “Romania left with me”
For approximately ten years, the Diaspora Days in Iași have been bringing before the local community stories of Romanians who have built their lives abroad and who maintain, in different forms and to different degrees, ties with Romania. Among these stories is that of Anca Cheaito, a woman from Iasi who has been living in Beirut for more than three decades, whose cultural projects have brought the Romanian language and culture to the heart of the Levant.
For more than three decades, Anca Cheaito has lived in Beirut, but Iași, her hometown, has never ceased to be an emotional landmark for her. She arrived in Lebanon through marriage, at a time when the country was emerging from the shadow of a devastating civil war, and since then she has patiently and devotedly built cultural bridges between Romania and the Levant: she taught Romanian for eight years at a high school in Beirut, is the president of the “Romania-Levant” Association, and the founder of the “Orient Românesc” magazine. Her story is, equally, the story of a small but united Romanian community, and the testimony of a person who has learned to call two places “home” at the same time.
Leaving Romania and the first encounter with Beirut
Anca Cheaito left Romania during the communist period, through marriage. Her husband, a Lebanese man, was a graduate of the “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iasi, where he had also done his residency, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. “My departure, then, wasn’t the result of a plan to leave Romania, but rather of a life choice that carried me, almost naturally, into another world, very different from the one I had grown up in,” she recounts.
She left with the natural emotion of someone leaving behind the place that shaped them, but also with the feeling that a new, unknown chapter was beginning. For her, Iasi never stopped being an emotional touchstone. “There are places we leave, and places that never leave us. Iasi belongs, for me, to that second category,” says Anca Cheaito.
Interestingly, before she saw Lebanon with her own eyes, she had come to know it through books. Always passionate about history, the names Baalbek, Byblos, Sidon, or Tyre were familiar to her long before she arrived there. Through her reading, she had built an almost mythical image of this country, fascinated by the idea of a space where civilizations had succeeded and met one another across millennia.
Reality was, of course, far more complex than any history book. She arrived in Lebanon in 1988, in a country that had only recently emerged from a devastating civil war, which had begun in 1975 and ended only in 1990. The Beirut she encountered still bore the marks of the conflict — a wounded city, but one with an extraordinary capacity to be reborn. “Perhaps it was precisely this meeting of fragility and vitality that struck me most,” she confesses.
Beyond the hardships of those years, she discovered warm, generous, welcoming people, open to the world, and a society in which East and West don’t exclude one another but coexist in an almost organic way. “Lebanon is, in many respects, a gateway from the West to the East,” says Anca Cheaito. Lebanese society is deeply cosmopolitan, with a strong French and European influence visible in education, culture, art, architecture, gastronomy, and lifestyle. French, alongside Arabic and English, is naturally woven into the social and cultural fabric.
Her first encounter with Lebanon was, therefore, an encounter with a fascinating contradiction: a country carrying the memory of very ancient civilizations, and, at the same time, a surprisingly modern and cosmopolitan society. “I discovered that there was a distance between the Lebanon of the books and the real Lebanon, but not one that disappointed. Quite the opposite. Reality was infinitely more alive,” she says.
After more than three decades, Anca Cheaito remains deeply attached to Lebanon. She arrived there through a personal story, through love and family, but she stayed also because of a cultural encounter that, over time, became part of her own identity. “I learned to love two worlds without feeling I had to choose between them,” she says. And her bond with Iasi has remained, throughout all this time, unaltered — geographic distance has never managed to create a distance of the soul.
How she came to teach Romanian in Beirut
Anca Cheaito came to teach Romanian in Beirut in a context that, she says, meant far more than a simple teaching activity. In 2010, the “Romania-Levant” Association was officially founded, and among its main objectives, from the very beginning, were courses in the Romanian language, culture, and civilization.
The Romanian community in Lebanon is relatively small, but it was precisely that small scale that made the association’s members understand how important it is to keep the ties between generations alive. “For our children, the Romanian language wasn’t meant to remain just the language they heard at home, but to become a space of identity, memory, and belonging,” explains Anca Cheaito. The lessons weren’t only about grammar, vocabulary, or literature, but encounters with an entire world: with the stories of childhood, with the great Romanian writers, with traditions, with holidays, with music.
The gatherings took place twice a week, and alongside the Romanian language courses, folk dance classes were also organized, attended by both children and parents. What had begun as a cultural activity gradually turned into a form of communion. “There were evenings when the hall filled with voices, laughter, and Romanian music,” she recalls. For the children, it was the joy of discovering something new; for the parents, it was, perhaps, a symbolic return home.
For Anca Cheaito, this is one of the most important missions of a diaspora community: not only to preserve a language, but to keep alive the memory of a culture. The “Romania-Levant” Association was, she says, precisely this meeting place, a space where the distance between Beirut and Romania became, for a few hours, almost imperceptible.
Her experience of teaching Romanian in Beirut wasn’t limited to the association’s activities. There was also a particularly important teaching experience, carried out at the Amlieh High School in Beirut, where she taught. The school had an extensive cultural and educational program called “Le Monde,” through which students had the opportunity to discover different languages, cultures, and civilizations. Anca Cheaito had the chance to propose introducing the Romanian language into the school curriculum, a project carried out in collaboration with the Romanian Embassy in Beirut and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest.
For eight years, she taught Romanian once a week in six classes at the school. The high school was the only educational institution in the Middle East to introduce the Romanian language into its curriculum, a project coordinated by the Romanian Cultural Institute in Bucharest. “It wasn’t just a professional achievement, but also the feeling that, in a place so far from Romania, I had managed to open a small window onto Romanian culture,” she says.
One of the most beautiful moments of this project was the trip to Romania alongside six of her best students. For a week, the children had the chance to get to know Romania not from textbooks, but firsthand — they visited the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese Embassy in Bucharest, Romanian Television, tourist sites, and the Romanian coast. “For me, it was moving to see them arrive in Romania after I had spent years telling them about this country from a classroom thousands of kilometers away,” she confesses.
One detail gave the project a special resonance: TVR 1 came to Beirut and produced a report about the Romanian language classes. “It felt to me, at the time, that our story had gone beyond the walls of the school. A small initiative born of the wish to make the Romanian language known had become a cultural bridge between Romania and Lebanon,” says Anca Cheaito.
The eight years of teaching meant, for her, more than a teaching experience. “I left Iasi with the Romanian language and culture in my soul, and, years later, I ended up carrying them to Beirut,” she says, adding that the fact that the Romanian language found a place in a school in the Middle East was, for her, not only a great professional achievement, but also a small victory for Romanian culture.
What it means to teach Lebanese people the Romanian language
For Anca Cheaito, teaching Romanian to people in Lebanon always meant far more than transmitting a language. It meant opening a door to a culture and placing Romania on the emotional map of people who, perhaps, had never had direct contact with it before. “A language is never just a system of words and grammatical rules. Behind it lies the memory of a people, its history, its literature, its sensibility, the way people look at the world,” she explains.
Teaching in such a different cultural space — Lebanon being a country at the meeting point of East and West, a deeply cosmopolitan society — turned the Romanian language into a new bridge for dialogue. “Often, a Romanian word was just the beginning of a conversation about Romania. From a word I could get to a writer, from a writer to an era, from an era to our history,” she recounts. The language lesson would thus turn into a cultural journey.
Anca Cheaito always felt that when a Lebanese person learns a few Romanian words, Romania becomes a little closer to them. And reciprocity was, she says, one of the most beautiful aspects of the experience: “I gave them Romania, but, at the same time, they helped me rediscover Romania through their eyes.”
After so many years spent in Lebanon, she came to understand that identity isn’t lost when you cross a border — on the contrary, it sometimes becomes more conscious. “Far from your country, your mother tongue takes on an almost sacred value, because it becomes one of the strongest ties to the place you left,” she says. Teaching Romanian in Beirut was, for her, also a form of loyalty to Romania — “I kept a light from home burning.”
The “Romania-Levant” Association: the story of a family beyond the border
Anca Cheaito is the president of the “Romania-Levant” Association, an organization born, she says, out of the wish of a group of people not to let distance turn into forgetting. “We were a warm-hearted group of women, if you’ll allow me that phrase — we’re mixed families here in Lebanon — who felt we needed a place of our own,” she recounts.
The idea took shape gradually, out of conversations and gatherings, with the support and encouragement of the Romanian Embassy in Beirut from the very start — support that Anca Cheaito considers essential. In 2010, the “Romania-Levant” Association was officially founded, with the aim of bringing the Romanian community in Lebanon closer together, of maintaining ties to the homeland, and of creating cultural connections between Romania and Lebanon.
At the heart of the association’s activity were the Romanian language, culture, and civilization: Romanian language courses for children, cultural activities, gatherings, events dedicated to Romanian holidays and traditions, as well as events through which the values and beauty of Romanian culture were made known to their Lebanese friends.
“For us, the association was, and has remained, a form of family,” says Anca Cheaito. In a small community, every person matters, every gathering has a special value. From its founding until today, the association has benefited from the support of the Romanian Embassy in Beirut — support for which Anca Cheaito says they are deeply grateful, always finding there people who are dedicated, generous, and close to the Romanian community.
Looking back, she believes “Romania-Levant” wasn’t built through spectacular gestures, but through many small gestures, made with persistence and heart: “A Romanian language lesson, a celebration, a song, a folk dance, a holiday gathering, a conversation about Romania — all of these became, over time, threads that wove together a community.” If she had to sum up, in a few words, why she founded this association, she would simply say: “so that Romania would remain close.”
Language courses, folk dances, and bridges to Lebanese society
Over the years, the main projects of the “Romania-Levant” Association were built around the idea of keeping the tie to Romania alive and, at the same time, making it known to friends in Lebanon. The Romanian language courses for children were, Anca Cheaito says, one of the association’s most cherished projects — “every child who kept speaking Romanian was a small victory against distance and time.”
The Romanian folk dance courses were another important project, attended together by children and parents. “Folk dance wasn’t just a recreational activity; it was a form of memory,” she says. Special importance was also placed on celebrating Romanian cultural and traditional events — National Day, the winter holidays, Mărțișor, Easter — moments when nostalgia turned into shared joy.
An important dimension of the association’s activity was stepping outside the community and building bridges to Lebanese society, through collaborations with cultural and educational institutions in Lebanon, with schools and universities, with the Lebanese Ministry of Culture and, in particular, with the French Institute in Lebanon. “Romania wasn’t presented as an isolated culture, but as part of the European space, in a natural and fruitful encounter with the other cultures present in Lebanon,” explains Anca Cheaito.
For her, the value of these projects can’t be measured only by the number of activities or participants, but is visible in the relationships that were created, in the children who learned Romanian, in the Lebanese friends who discovered Romania, and in the institutions that became partners. Over the years, the “Romania-Levant” Association has tried to be exactly such a bridge between two worlds — “a discreet bridge, built with patience but sturdy, across which passed the Romanian language, our traditions, music, art, and, above all, people.”
A small community, reduced by the crises in Lebanon
The Romanian community in Lebanon has always been a small one, says Anca Cheaito, but it was precisely this modest size that brought people closer to one another. During periods of stability, the community numbered around 1,500 Romanians. Participation in the association’s activities varies depending on the project, the period, and, above all, the situation in the country.
Unfortunately, the current situation in Lebanon is extremely difficult, and recent years have placed enormous pressure on the entire society. Instability, conflicts, and insecurity have deeply affected everyday life, and many Romanians have been forced to leave — some returning to Romania, others choosing different countries. “Our community has thus shrunk considerably,” says Anca Cheaito.
For those who remain, every gathering carries a different weight today. “If in the past we used to meet because we enjoyed being together, today we also meet because we need one another,” she explains. In a small community, every person is important, every presence matters, and absences are felt deeply.
Even though there are fewer of them today, Romanians in Lebanon try to preserve what unites them: the Romanian language, traditions, holidays, memories, and the feeling that they belong to a history and a culture they want to pass on. “When times become uncertain, roots don’t disappear. On the contrary, they grow stronger,” says Anca Cheaito.
“Orient Românesc” — the magazine born out of longing
In 2017, Anca Cheaito founded the magazine “Orient Românesc.” The idea was born, she says, out of a deep inner need: to keep a place where Romania and Romanians in the Levant could talk about themselves, about what they were living through, and about their bond — sometimes fragile and powerful at the same time — with their country of origin.
After years in which the “Romania-Levant” Association’s activity had grown through numerous cultural and educational projects, Anca Cheaito felt the need for a space of memory, a place where the beautiful things they had done wouldn’t remain only in the memory of those who took part in them, but could be set down on paper and preserved. That is how “Orient Românesc” was born.
The magazine’s name wasn’t chosen by chance. “We live in a space where East and West have met for centuries, and we, the Romanians in Lebanon, find ourselves, in a way, at the confluence of these worlds,” she says. The magazine was meant to reflect exactly this encounter: Romania seen from the Levant, and the Levant discovered through Romanian sensibility.
Anca Cheaito wanted “Orient Românesc” to be more than a community magazine — to be a cultural bridge, one that would speak about Romania, but also about Lebanon, about history and current affairs, about people, culture, art, literature, and traditions. “For me, every issue of the magazine was like a letter sent home. A letter in which we tried to say: ‘We are here. We haven’t forgotten you. And Romania hasn’t disappeared from our lives either.'”
The magazine was born, she believes, out of longing too — “longing isn’t always sadness. Sometimes, longing turns into work, into creation, into responsibility.” If she couldn’t shrink the distance between Beirut and Romania, she could at least build a bridge over it. “Sometimes, a country can fit into a page. Into a word. Into a photograph. Into a memory,” says Anca Cheaito.
A bridge between Romania and the Orient
Anca Cheaito wanted “Orient Românesc” to be, above all, a bridge between Romania and the Levantine space, between Romanians living far from their country and the local people, between the memory of a culture and the present of a world in constant change. The magazine wasn’t born only for the Romanian community in Lebanon — it addresses all Romanians in the diaspora, wherever they may be.
At the same time, the magazine kept the imprint of the place where it was born. “‘Orient Românesc’ is a Romanian publication born in the Levant, and, precisely because of that, it inevitably carries Eastern accents. I didn’t want to hide this identity, but to turn it into a value,” she says. She wanted readers to be able to encounter, on the same pages, Romania and the Orient, understanding that these two worlds aren’t opposed, but can engage in dialogue and enrich one another.
For Romanians in the diaspora, the magazine was conceived as a place of reunion — “for a few moments, the distance disappears.” For readers who aren’t Romanian, the magazine wanted to offer an image of Romania that goes beyond stereotypes: “the Romania of culture, of its people, of its literature, of its heritage and its values. A living, European Romania, but one that knows its roots.”
Perhaps this is also the deepest meaning of the title “Orient Românesc”: not two identities placed side by side, but a space where they meet. “I wanted every reader to find, in its pages, something close to them: for the Romanian in the diaspora — a memory, for the Lebanese reader — a discovery, and for everyone else — a bridge to a culture and a fascinating space,” says Anca Cheaito.
The role of a publication in preserving Romanian identity
For Anca Cheaito, the role of a publication like “Orient Românesc” in the diaspora is, above all, to keep memory alive. “When you live far from the country where you were born, there’s a risk that, as the years pass, certain things drift away: words, traditions, family stories, people’s faces,” she says. A magazine can stop, if only for a moment, this passage of time.
“Orient Românesc” is, in her view, a place of Romanian memory in the diaspora — a true spiritual home, built out of words, memories, and values. Cultural press in the diaspora has, she believes, a special responsibility: that of creating continuity between generations, helping children raised in other societies to understand and love both Romanian culture and the culture of the place where they were born.
“For me, preserving identity doesn’t mean closing yourself off, but continuity and dialogue,” says Anca Cheaito. The magazine, born in Lebanon, in the heart of the Levant, naturally carries an Eastern imprint, but keeps its Romanian identity — “the expression of an identity that didn’t choose between Romania and the Levant, but learned to build a bridge between them.”
Over the years, she believes, the true value of such a publication won’t be measured by the number of pages or issues, but by the memories it leaves behind: “In a child who read a Romanian poem there for the first time. In a Romanian who, opening the magazine, felt for a few moments that they were home again. In a Lebanese reader who discovered a culture they didn’t know.”
What Romanian and Lebanese culture have in common
Anca Cheaito has worked hard on bringing Romanian and Lebanese culture closer together, and, she says, this closeness lies above all in people. Beyond differences of language, religion, history, or geography, there is a shared sensibility: the value placed on family, respect for hospitality, attachment to one’s native place, and the deep need to keep a connection to one’s own roots.
“Romanians and Lebanese people each have, in their own way, a strong bond with ‘home,'” she says. Even if for one, home means a village in Moldavia or an old house in Iasi, and for the other a village in the mountains of Lebanon or a family home on the Mediterranean coast, the feeling is similar.
Hospitality is another element that brings the two cultures closer — the table becomes a ritual of closeness, and food is a form of generosity and respect. There is also a particular sensitivity toward family and community, and both peoples carry, in their culture, the marks of complicated histories, turning suffering into artistic expression.
Anca Cheaito has also discovered an emotional closeness in the way both peoples experience longing: “For the Romanian who has left the country, longing for Romania is a discreet but persistent presence. For the Lebanese person who has gone out into the world, longing for Lebanon has the same intensity.” The diaspora is an important reality for both peoples. “Perhaps this is where one of the strongest similarities between us lies: we don’t easily forget where we come from,” she says.
What the Lebanese like most about Romania
Asked what the Lebanese like most about Romania, Anca Cheaito answers that it is, above all, the ease with which they can relate to it. For many Lebanese people, Romania isn’t a distant, abstract country, but a space they’ve had a personal encounter with — through studies, friendships, business, culture, or family ties. There is a significant community of Lebanese people who have chosen to study, work, or invest in Romania, with many Lebanese business people having built solid ties with our country over time.
The Lebanese appreciate Romanians’ hospitality, the natural ease of relationships, and their openness toward others. Cultural relations hold a special place — Anca Cheaito mentions the connection with the Naji Naaman Publishing House, an important presence in the Lebanese cultural space, which has developed relationships with cultural figures and writers from Romania over time and which, through the awards it grants, contributes year after year to bringing the two cultural spaces closer together. “A Romanian writer can be read, appreciated, and honored in the heart of the Levant,” she says, calling this a form of cultural diplomacy.
Beyond all these reasons, Anca Cheaito believes, there is a feeling harder to define: “Romania feels familiar to them.” She has often met people in Lebanon who, upon hearing she’s from Romania, immediately begin telling stories — about Bucharest, about Romanian universities, about a professor, a business venture, a friendship, or years spent in the country. “The connection between the two countries isn’t only a diplomatic or economic one. It’s woven out of thousands of personal stories,” she says.
What she discovered in Lebanese culture
Anca Cheaito has come to love a great many things about Lebanese culture, perhaps also because, she says, she has lived in Lebanon longer than she lived in Romania. At first she looked at the country through the eyes of an outsider, but over time the things she viewed from the outside became part of her own life. “I stopped saying ‘their culture’ and began, almost without realizing it, to say ‘our culture,'” she confesses.
She loved, first of all, the people — their generosity, their almost instinctive hospitality, the cult of family and human relationships, which she felt was very close to Romanian sensibility. She also came to love the way the Lebanese live their culture — a deep culture, shaped at the meeting point of civilizations, where East and West have coexisted for centuries.
She loved the mountains and the sea, the mountain villages, the orchards, the cedars, the light of the Mediterranean, and Beirut — “a city that has known war and destruction, but which has always had an extraordinary power to reinvent itself.” She loved the music, the poetry, the literature, Lebanese cuisine, and the natural way in which culture is lived in everyday life.
She also discovered a society in which people are deeply attached to their places of origin, recognizing in the Lebanese person who speaks about their parents’ village something of the Romanian who speaks about their grandparents’ village. And she learned from Lebanon about resilience — about the inner strength of people who have gone through extremely difficult historical periods and yet have continued to live, to work, to create, and to hope.
“Perhaps the most important thing I discovered is that you can come to belong to a place without ceasing to belong to the place you left,” says Anca Cheaito. “I never felt that, in order to love Lebanon, I had to love Romania less. Quite the opposite. The better I came to know Lebanon, the better I also understood what I carried with me from Romania.”
“I left Romania, but Romania never left me”
After more than thirty years in the diaspora, Anca Cheaito says she can no longer simply claim she left Romania. “I left a place, but Romania left with me,” she says. She left behind Iasi, her home, the people, the familiar streets, the language she heard everywhere — but none of it stayed behind in the true sense of the word. She carried it all with her, sometimes consciously, sometimes without even realizing it.
Romania remained in the way she speaks, in her childhood memories, in the tastes she seeks out, in the songs she recognizes from the first notes, in the books she has read, and in the way she sees the world. “Over the years, I understood that one’s homeland isn’t just a territory. It’s part of our inner structure,” she says.
For Anca Cheaito, Romania hasn’t remained just a memory. She has tried to carry it forward through everything she has done in Lebanon: through the Romanian language classes, through the children she taught to read and to discover Romanian culture, through the dances and traditions she has preserved, through the work of the “Romania-Levant” Association, through the magazine “Orient Românesc,” and through all the cultural projects through which she has tried to build ties between the two countries. “Perhaps this was my way of never truly parting from my country,” she says.
Paradoxically, distance has made her feel Romania more intensely. “When you’re at home, many things seem natural to you. Far away, they take on a different value. A Romanian song, a book, a photograph of Iasi, a conversation in your mother tongue can, after decades, stir emotions that time hasn’t diminished,” says Anca Cheaito.
She has lived longer in Lebanon than she lived in Romania, and Lebanon has become home to her, giving her people, experiences, friendships, a profession, and an important part of her identity. But she has never felt that, in order to love this country, she had to give up Romania. “The two countries have come to exist together within me,” she says.
Asked where Romania is for her today, Anca Cheaito can’t point to a single place. “It’s in Iasi, of course. It’s in my family, in the Romanian language, in my books, in memories. But it’s also in Beirut, in everything I’ve tried to build so that this bond wouldn’t break,” she says.
“Perhaps this is the fate of those who leave: to always live between two geographies and to discover, over time, that their true homeland is also an inner one,” Anca Cheaito confesses. “I don’t think I truly left Romania. I think I left Romania, but Romania never left me. And perhaps, after a life lived between two worlds, this is one of the most beautiful gifts fate has given me: to be able to call two places ‘home’ without feeling I have to choose between them.”
Translation from the video:
Dear Romanians everywhere,
We are scattered across every corner of the world, yet we are connected by the same language, the same memories, and the same Romania that we carry with us wherever we go.
Let us stay united, respect one another, and support each other, because no matter how far life may take us, home will always remain unique.
Warm thoughts to everyone. May our longing be easier to bear, and may our hearts always remain close to Romania.
With love, from Lebanon, for all of you,
Anca Cheaito.
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