If I were to pray in Arabic, I'd pray to Allah. If I were to pray in English, I'd pray to God.
From Rabih Alameddine
I get upset about what is taken as great literature and what is cute and exotic.
I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught.
In school in Lebanon, we were not allowed to speak Arabic during breaks - it had to be French or English.
There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4 million people. How do we solve that? I have no idea. What's going on, I really don't know.
In Lebanon, there are completely different opinions and values in one country in terms of religion, modernity, tradition, East and West - which allows for a kind of intellectual development not available anywhere else.
I can easily hold two opposing beliefs at the same time without any problem, which I find - well, mind-expanding, really.
'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit.
We seem, particularly over here in the West and in America in particular, to have forgotten that we are, in large measures, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.
I jokingly say if there was one great thing about, you know, the Lebanese Civil War was that it forced me to read.
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