An Immigrant's Dilemma

My Homeland!
A word that sends chills down my spine
Emotions that confound me
And questions that persist
Is my homeland the place where I was born
Or the place that I live in
Is my homeland the land that pushed me away
Or the land that welcomed me
Is my homeland just a collection of old memories
Or is it the memories in the making
And the list gets longer, and the questions multiply
But there are no answers
In the end, one question lingers
One burning more than all others combined
Do I really have a homeland?

The above poem, in Arabic, appeared on the blog Migrant Bird. The words resonated with my own experience and I took the liberty, with George's permission, to translate it into English.

Alas, it is the inescapable fate of all first generation immigrants to never feel fully at home anywhere. I have, long ago, become reconciled with that fact. The facet of my immigrant psyche that remains problematic, however, is my sometimes ambivalent relationship with the land of my birth. My family did not emigrate by choice; it was not a voluntary, planned or orderly process, but a harried, furtive, and frightful departure. Our life, like that of many other compatriots, was suddenly upended, and we were sentenced to a nomadic and fragmented existence away from home and extended family. A hopeless optimist, I always told myself that the unique experience of our family's disrupted life would make me stronger. But it is impossible to make it through such chaotic formative years without some psychic scars. However well camouflaged, these scars do, from time to time, resurface, raw and painful as if the wounds were inflicted yesterday.

So I sometimes wonder, why should I care about the country of my birth? Have I not earned the right to turn my back and walk away? Somehow, though, I cannot walk away. My home might be here, but my roots, as forlorn and dessicated as they might, are still there.

Into the Wild

Until a few weeks ago, I had never been camping. So when a friend, an experienced outdoors man, offered to take me on a camping trip, it was hard to say no. Not even a forecast predicting an overnight temperature of two degrees (Celsius) for the weekend of our trip, dimmed my enthusiasm; on the contrary, the extra challenge strengthened my resolve.

The plan was to hike 23Km of the Finger Lakes Trail in upstate New York over two days. The trail runs hundreds of miles East to West, perpendicular to the Southern tips of a dozen or so elongated lakes carved into the landscape by ancient glaciers. The trail runs through forested hills, farmland and along streams and glens. An added bonus at this time of the year, is the foliage ablaze in fall colors. But October, in this part of the world, can also be very wet and very cold.

Predictably, it was dark, cold and raining the morning we drove South. After parking one car at the destination of our hike, we drove to our planned starting point. As we drove deeper into the countryside and paved roads turned into unto desolate dirt roads, images from the 70s movie classic Deliverance crossed my mind. What, I wondered, would a bunch of rednecks do if they found an Ayrab lost in the woods. Other than the isolation, however, there was nothing threatening about the quiet, bucolic countryside that surrounded us. Several miles from our destination we came across a sign planted in the front yard of a house announcing: "Arab Mare for Sale". The sign was sitting under the street sign: Templar road. We had to chuckle at this odd juxtaposition. Not even deep in the backwoods of the New World can you get away from ghosts of the Old World.

We parked the car, dressed in layers to keep warm and dry, donned our backpacks and set out onto the trail. It was mid morning but felt more like dawn. A grey mist hung heavy across the valleys and a constant drizzle saturated the air. The cold, damp air scented with the distinctive smell of fall, was invigorating. The trail was carpeted with fiery red, rust-colored and golden leaves glistening from the rain. Other than the sounds of our steps, the woods were silent without even the distant din of traffic, a reassuring sound for the urban dweller, a sign that civilization is still within reach.

We walked mostly in silence, enveloped by the vegetation around us and exhilarated by the solitude. This was no leisurely stroll in the woods, however, we walked at a determined, purposeful pace. We had to make it to our campsite before dark. Every couple of hours, we would drop our backpacks and collapse unto the wet ground for a quick break. We shed or added layers of cloths according to the ambient temperature and we refueled with water, nuts and dried fruits. Over the next seven hours we walked through woods, along creeks, across streams, past small waterfalls, emerging occasionally from the woods to walk around farms, unto hilltops with distant views of the surrounding hills and lakes. Our most striking encounter in the woods, however, had nothing to do with nature. It was the abandoned cemetery of an old, long gone settlement, an eerie vision in the middle of the woods. Most of the tombstones were toppled or cracked by the encroaching trees and the chiseled names worn down by age and the unrelenting dampness of the undergrowth.

In the late afternoon, as we approached our destination for the night, we saw the only other hiker we came across on the trail. He was an older, white bearded man, making his way into the woods with a full backpack and walking sticks. We exchanged greetings but he was rather taciturn. He seemed determined to get away from it all and longed for the solitude of the wild; our small talk just got in the way. We reached our campsite at around five in the evening, time enough to make a fire, eat and prepare for the night. A lean to, a small wooden platform, closed on three sides, was going to be our shelter for the night. The night was jet black except for the dying embers of our fire. To keep the wildlife at bay, we hung all of our food in a bag high on a tree branch some fifty meters from our shelter. The night was uneventful with no unexpected visits from any of the wildlife - foxes, coyotes and occasional black bears- that live in the area. Early next morning, energized by the crisp cold air and a cup of instant coffee, we set our onto the trail for the final eight kilometers ending at the Watkins Glen state park. We must have been a strange sight to the tourists strolling in the opposite direction into the park, two scruffy, muddy, unshaven middle aged men with backpacks walking with a brisk confident pace. It was the confidence borne from a sense of achievement at having hiked 23Km in a day and a half and except for a couple of blisters, we were none worse for wear.

My first venture into the wild was exhilarating. OK, we did not cross the Amazon or survive a week in the arctic, but there were neverless real dangers had we been foolish or unprepared. Get wet when the ambient temperature is two degrees and you rapidly become hypothermic. There is a certain primordial pleasure in regaining some of the lost skills of our ancient ancestors and sense of achievement when you reach your goal. To get there, you have to shed all concerns of your daily life and fixate on a very primal need, survival: staying warm, dry, and safe. I can't wait to get back out there again though I will likely wait out the frigid subzero winter months; I am no Survivoman ... at least not yet.

My Eureka! Moment

It was a eureka moment eighteen years in the making. Two years ago, a wealthy man made me a proposal I could not refuse. A family member with an inherited neurological condition was my patient. She suffered from a disease that I had been researching for a number of years. He wanted to help move the research forward and asked me to give him a far-reaching, long-term research plan and he would fund it. I came up with a seven year plan to create a "center without walls" with the aim of bringing together researchers with complementary expertise to work collaboratively on this project. He agreed to the plan and committed several million dollars to the project. It was an unusual proposal. Most scientists would have opted for a project that would keep all of the money at their institution. That was never a consideration for me as I thought that the quickest and most efficient way to move the science forward was to tap into already existing expertise elsewhere rather that try to recreate it locally.

Scientific research is a cutthroat business full of back-stabbing, petty jealousies and over-inflated egos. It is these attributes that often get in the way of scientific advancement and make successful collaborative research a rarity. The medical sciences are no exception. Therefore I had to choose my partners carefully. In addition to being good scientists, they must be willing to leave their egos at the door. I partnered with a Dutch scientist whom I had known for some time. He not only had the scientific talent, but he also had the temperament that I was looking for in a collaborator. A year into the project, we extended the collaboration to include a scientist in Seattle.

Last week, we gathered to go over the data generated in the first two years of the project. I knew this would be a good meeting. When careful scientists not usually given to hyperbole and exaggeration tell you that they are "very, very, excited...", you cannot help but get giddy. When all the data was presented, the members of the scientific advisory board overseeing the project were stunned. Several independent lines of evidence all pointed to one mechanism for this disease. For eighteen years since the initial discovery of the genetic defect, there were several competing theories about what was happening at the cellular level to cause this disease. With the data presented last week, all but one remains, and that last one is now backed by solid evidence.

Of course it is not the end of the road. It will be years before we have an effective treatment, but we finally have a target to go after and the technology to eventually reverse the effects of this sometimes devastating neurologic condition. For me, as a clinician, I can now for the first time offer my patients hope and truthfully tell them that we understand their disease and that we are working on a treatment.

My next eureka moment will come when I can look my patients in the eye and tell them that we finally have a treatment.

Blogging Against Fossilized Thinking التدوين ضد التفكير المتحجر

Fossilized thinking inflicts people who rigidly adhere to an ideology, be it religious, political or philosophical. Lest anyone misrepresent my post, let me say up front that when it comes to religious fossilized thinking, no religion is immune to fossilized thinking. Fossilized religious thinkers:

• Consider everyone who does not think like they do an enemy and legitimate target for conquest or elimination.
• Deform the faith they seek to defend because they are more concerned with process and ritual than with the true content of their faith.
• Take the spirit out of spirituality.
• Are happiest when everyone looks dresses and acts exactly like they do; like identical preprogrammed, unthinking automatons.
• Stifle creativity, ingenuity and critical thought.
• Foster intolerance and conflict.
• Will create an intolerably boring world, should they gain the upper hand
  

Several years ago I told a wise friend that I was considering sending my daughter to the local mosque for weekly religious lessons but was concerned that she will taught by and old shaikh with fossilized ideas. On the contrary, he said, the older shaikhs tend to be more moderate and reasonable, it is the young ones who think they have all the answers that I should be concerned about. And therein lies the problem; it is the large number of young people who seem to be going from green to fossilized that is a source of concern for the future.

Along the Karakoram Highway

Pakistan today occupies the front and center the global media's attention. Pakistan is also on my mind. You see, for the past several months, my younger brother has been in Islamabad working for an international organization. I worry about him, but not excessively; we've lived through more dangerous times in Beirut of the early eighties. In one of those ironic twists of fate, twenty years ago, it was my father who was posted in Islamabad and worked in the same office complex where my brother now works.

During my father's tenure there, I visited several times and came know and like this complicated and troubled country. During one visit, I went on road trip in the company of an Argentinian photographer and Mustafa, an Argentine Sufi convert. We drove West to Peshawar, then teeming with Afghan refugees as well as plotters and schemers of all stripes. We continued to the North West Frontier province and the lovely Swat valley, now ground zero for the Taliban insurgency. It is in the Northern reaches of the Swat valley that you realize how complex this country is. All you have to do is look at the people passing you by to realize the multiplicity of distinctive features and distinctive clothes that mark the various ethnicities, tribes and sects that share this land at the crossroads of China, the Indian subcontinent, and central Asia.

But perhaps the most memorable journey was flying up North to Gilgit, at foothills of the Himalayan chain at the juncture of the Hindu Kush mountains and the Karakoram chain, and then driving the incredible Karokaram highway all the way to the border of China. Recently married , the trip was a gift from my parents to me and my wife.

The first inkling that this was no ordinary place was the view from the window of the PIA turboprop flying us from Islamabad to Gilgit. At cruising altitude, we were flying below the peaks of the mountains that surrounded us from all sides. After a night in Gilgit, the birthplace of polo, we set out on the Karkoram highway. The highway itself was an engineering feat that took fifteen year to complete and the combined efforts of Pakistani and Chinese engineers. It runs 848 Km to the border of China at the Khunjerab pass, the world's highest paved mountain pass at 4703 m. We head North in a jeep with open sides, on narrow roads often hugging deep precipices, across raging rivers on hanging bridges and with baited breath across rock slide zones. The Karokaram highway is notorious for rock slides. Upon emerging unscathed from a rock slide zone, a sign exclaims "Alhamdulilah". All fears, however, are quickly forgotten as the most stunning scenery unfolds in front of our eyes. The sheer scale of the place is breathtaking and the views otherworldly. You are surrounded, in all directions by peaks that are six and seven thousand meters high. The landscape goes from stark moonscapes to , within minutes around a bend in the road, lush green valleys with terraced gardens and orchards pregnant with apples, peaches and apricots spread amid humble villages; it is as if you'd died and gone to heaven.

The Hunza valley is one such place. We stopped for the night in the town Karimabad nestled on a rocky ridge across the valley from the mighty Rakaposhi mountain with its peak, at 7788 m, showing just above the clouds. We are the only customers at the Karimabad resthouse that evening. The family that runs it goes into a frenzy of activity when they learn that we haven't eaten and within an hour two huge platters of rice pilaf with chicken and meat materialize, enough to feed a family of ten.

The people of Hunza valley are predominantly Ismailis and are known for their peaceful demeanor. The also benefit from the generosity of the Agha Khan Foundation. Each humble village has a decent looking school and a medical clinic courtesy of the Foundation. We continued along the Karakoram highway for the next day encountering equally majestic scenes, past the Batura glacier and shortly before arriving to the Khunjerab pass, to the east, we glimpsed the mighty K2 at a distance, the worlds second highest peak at 8611 m, straddling the border of China in Pakistan. At the Khunjerab pass car and buses stopped and passengers descended inhaling the thin air and taking measure of the place. The pass, after all, sits astride of the old silk trade route travelled by Marco Polo in the 13th century but before him by the Chinese Monk, Fa Hien in the 4th century and the Iranian historian and scientist, Al Biruni in the 11th century.

Twenty years on, no other place we have visited measures up to what we saw along the Karakoram highway. And on the evening news, when Pakistan is reduced to a one-dimensional cutout about terrorism and extremism, I remember a very different Pakistan.

Photos by AK:

1. View from flight to Gilgit

2. Rakaposhi peak and Hunza valley

3. Karimabad

4. Chatting with the elders of Karimabad (I am in the blue T shirt)

5. Mountains around Gilgit

6. K2 top left of photograph

Don't Touch This!

I had been working on a post expressing my disappointment with the content of much of the Syrian blogosphere when I saw this today: A campaign to combat masturbation! Need I say more? I almost fell off my chair!! Is this for real? I guess I was not aware of the masturbation "epidemic" that has hit Syria’s youth.

I am still trying to understand what the impetus was for this campaign. Are there no other more pressing righteous causes? How about poverty, gender discrimination, honor killings, the absence of civil liberties and the absence of freedom of expression among a long list of societal ills. Don’t these deserve more immediate attention than a practice that is the realm of the personal and affects no one else?

(Prophylactic T Shirt: works best with MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" playing in the background)

Lebanon: Painful Reminders

"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war". - Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

In several earlier posts (here and here), I lamented the tendency of many Lebanese, including many politicians, the bury their heads in the sand when it comes facing the country's tragic history of the last thirty years. Two recent stories give me hope that things may be changing. There is perhaps a growing recongnition that you really cannot move forward, not in any meaningful way, without facing the past. The NYT published a story on the new Beirut Art Center showing and exhibition titled “The Road to Peace: Paintings in Times of War, 1975-1991”. Across town, in Haret Hreik, another, more humble cultural center, The Hangar, is screening a film series entitled "What is to be done: Lebanon's War Loaded Memory".

For those Lebanese too young to remember these days, it will be an eduction that they missed in school -official history books omit any mention of the war years. For those who remember, it is a necessary, if agonizing, recall of a not so distant past, and a reminder that many of the problems that led to the civil war have yet to be resolved.

The Sword of Damocles Still Hanging Over Syria's Women

President Assad scraps article 548 of the penal code. The new amendment however, represents only a small step forward in combating the scourge of honor killings. As clearly explained here (in Arabic) the new amendment sets the minimum sentence at two years and removes the statute from article 548 that essentially justified honor crimes even when adultery is suspected. Does this really represent progress? Yes, if you believe that a slap on the wrist as opposed to a pat on the back is adequate punishment for the horrific act that is honor killing.

How could it be acceptable, in 2009 -or in any other year, for that matter- that half of Syria's population is still held hostage to such an inane law? and why was the president's amendment so timid? What constituency within Syria is holding him back? With 98% (or was it 99%) of the votes in the last election, one would think that he has a mandate to push through real change if he so desired.

This is no trivial matter; there are over 200 victims of this crime in Syria every year. And yet there is a certain reluctance to talk about the issue. For some, and here I include myself, it is out of shame and embarrassment that such crimes are associated with our country. Others, may feel that it is a crime of the poor and uneducated and therefore of no concern to them. Even among those who condone it, many, I suspect, know deep down that these crimes are wrong but somehow feel compelled by societal or distorted religious beliefs to think that these are justifiable acts.

There is no room for partial or stepwise solutions to this problem. It is wrong, it is unconscionable, it is morally reprehensible. It is murder pure and simple and it should be punished as such.

(Photo: Grave of Zahra el-Azzo; victim of honor killing; NYT)

Gad El Maleh and the Beiteddine Festival

Gad El Maleh is a manic, wickedly funny French comedian born and raised in Morocco to a Moroccan Jewish family. I first learned of him from my younger brother when I visited him in Morocco. After seeing a couple of his one-man acts on DVD, I was hooked. We went the Rabat mdina (old town) to buy pirated El Maleh DVDs to take home with me. It is clear from his skits that he considers himself culturally Moroccan who happens to be Jewish. He speaks Arabic and his website has the French and Morocaan flags and is in three languages: French, English and Arabic.

I was therefore taken aback by the recent row over his scheduled appearance at this year's Beiteddine festival. Apparently, Al Manar TV aired a peice that suggested that El Maleh served in the Israeli Army and he was a stauch supported of Israel. The story rsulted in threatening calls to the Festival's organizers and ultimately El Maleh decided to cancel his three sold out shows at Beitiddine. The response, as everything else in Lebanon, was as polarized and politicized as it was predictable. The organizers said that there was no basis for the accusations and that Hizbullah was mounting a smear campaign and that the campaign amounted to "cultural terrorism". Wanting to go past the usual histrionics of Lebanese politics, I went on an internet search to see if I could find anything incriminating enough about El Maleh that would disqualify him from appearing at the festival. The bottom line is, I did not.

Al Maleh went on tour in Israel and was recieved by enthusiatic audiences. In interviews during the tour, he said that he was glad that he came (he is Jewish after all) and praised the Israeli people. There was nothing remotely political about his statements. Now, some would argue that no statement involving Israel could really be apolitical. Perhaps, but one must consider the context. Gad El Maleh is a talented comedian, he was not invited to Lebanon for his political views but to entertain.

Tehran vs Gaza in the American Media

It is not news that the quality of American journalism had sunk to new lows during the Bush years. The fall to the bottom continues especially in TV and cable news with the obsession to be the first, the penchant to sensationalize even bits of unsubstantiated news and to over analyze everything. Witness the week-old feeding frenzy on Iran where, blurred pixilated cellphone videos are over interpreted by "experts" for the naive viewers and recycled endlessly as real news. These uninterpretable videos were accompanied by emotive language that was, most of time, not justified by the facts or the images shown thus exposing the broadcasters intrinsic biases.

To be clear, I never liked Ahmadinejad and fully sympathize with the demonstrators in Tehran. What bothers me is the stark difference between the media’s coverage of the Tehran demonstrations and the way the massacre in Gaza earlier this year was covered. As heart wrenching as the story and images of Neda Agha Soltan are, there were hundreds of Nedas in Gaza. These stories went largely unnoticed by the American media despite the presence of easily checked facts and very crisp videos documenting the unfolding horror. Just as the Iranina government did in Tehran, Israel limited journalists' access to the war zone. But whereas in Tehran the media shunned suspect government generated information in favor of citizen journalists, in Gaza information coming from Palestinians was treated as suspect and they relied on the drivel generated by the Israeli army as hard facts.

For the Arab observer, the disconnect does not stop there. In the absence of reliable news coming from Iran, the airwaves were jammed with -often ignorant- talking heads pontificating about the situation in Iran. Most outrageous was an interview with Netanyahu who exclaimed, without a hint of irony, that he is in favor of freedom for the people of Iran!!! Needless to say, the double standard extends to the politicians. Whereas Congress swiftly condemned the Iranian government's crackdown, during the war on Gaza they passed a resolution in support of Israel. Obama, wisely, kept quiet. Today, however, with mounting political pressure, he declared himself "appalled and horrified" at the loss of innocent lives in Tehran; but neither he nor his predecessor were moved by the hundreds of innocent men, women and children murdered in cold blood in Gaza.

The Oriental Music Ensemble

The story of the Oriental Music Ensemble is the story of every Palestinian:
NYT, June 21, 2009: Wisps of mournful tunes from a cane flute mingled with the plucking, jangling arabesques of the zitherlike qanun, the oud and gentle drums. The sounds arose from a quartet of Arab musicians who call themselves the Oriental Music Ensemble as they shared a precious moment of togetherness in the Miller Theater at Columbia University in March (more here)

Tahir Shah's Arabian Nights

Tahir Shah is a writer and filmmaker of mixed Afghani-British descent. In Arabian Nights, Shah, having recently moved to Casablanca from the UK, sets out to explore and understand the essence of Morocco through its storytellers. Shah believes in the power of the well told story, the folktale, the Sufi parable, not as mere entertainment but as mechanisms of transmitting wisdom and deeper meaning through the generations. He believes that whereas the West has forgotten this oral tradition, it is alive and well in the Middle East from the stories of the hapless Jeha to those of Mullah Nasruddin, his Afghani equivalent.


Shah sets out to find the storytellers and the stories of Morocco. On his often spontaneous journeys through Morocco he asks everyone he meets to tell him a story. From the small town policeman who takes him in for the night to the Casablanca cobbler who repairs his expensive shoes, they all, happily, oblige. The result is a masterful interweaving of the stories he was told with the events his daily life in Morocco and reminiscences of his childhood travels in Morocco with his revered father, Idris Shah. In his search for the oral traditions of Morocco, Tahir also begins to understand the value of the stories his father passed on to him.

Idris Shah figures prominently in the book with references to him on almost every page of the book. It is he who instilled in a young Tahir the love of the story and belief in their hidden powers. Idris Shah was a prominent, if sometimes controversial, figure in the West. He is credited with making Sufi philosophy understandable to Westerners. He was also fond of stories and wrote a number of books on the subject.

The book is both an informative travelogue of Morocco and a soulful reflection on larger existential questions brought out by the stories Moroccans tell him and those told to him by his father when he was a child. The book is peppered with asides where he explains "Oriental" habits and customs to the Western reader. I thought most were unnecessary and sometimes annoying but what puzzled me most is that these asides were often prefaced by "we, in the West...". Sure he was born in the UK of mixed parentage but his books, his intellectual pursuits have always pointed Eastward. Surely, his move from London to Casablanca with his Indian wife and young children is more than some Orientalist fantasy?

These asides do not, however, detract from the fact that Tahir Shah is a talented and captivating travel writer and I thouroughly enjoyed In Arabian Nights.

Tianamen and Palestine

Tianamen Square 20th Anniversary

Palestinian Nakba 60th Anniversary

Israeli Right Wing Group Calls Obama Anti-Semitic

A right wing Israeli group wants to hang this poster all over Isreal.

In the words of a good friend of mine "How a nation that would not exist if it wasn't for America, that depends on American tax dollars, weapons, technology, satellite information, and constant vetoes and protection from the slightest criticism at the U.N., can bite, kick, and spit on the hand that feeds it and gets away with it is a historic anomaly."

What's the Yiddish word this .... Ah yes! Chutzpah.

Bible Thumping Donald Rumsfeld

For those who think Bin Laden calling Bush a crusader is just jihadi hyperbole, think again. Rumsfeld regularly used verses from the Bible in his intelligence reports to Bush. Above is an image of one example. GQ magazine has a slide show of several such reports here: http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret. This is what the leader of the only superpower, where the separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution, was reading every morning.

Against All Odds

"I only did this for my daughter!", Caroline's lips mouthed the words as her husband, now adept at lip reading, interpreted her silent utterances. She glanced across the kitchen door into the living room where a large portrait of her daughter, now fourteen, featured prominently on the wall. I first met Caroline ten years ago when she was referred to me because of stiffness in her legs. She was a beautiful thirty year old with alabaster skin, blond hair and high cheekbones, a gift inherited from native American ancestors. But it was her disarming smile, warm, radiant, kind and yet also playfully mischievous that charmed everyone who met her. I quickly realized that her ailment was untreatable, but it took another year before her condition clearly declared itself. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, a devastating, untreatable disease that causes progressive muscle weakness eventually leaving those afflicted unable to move, speak swallow or breathe . My heart ached when I broke the devastating news to her and her husband: the average survival is three to five years.

Ten years on, accompanied by our clinic nurse, we were making a house call. Caroline had beaten the odds, but at what cost. She is almost completely paralyzed with barely enough strength to manipulate the joystick of her electric wheelchair. She has a tube in her stomach to help with her nutrition and a tracheostomy to help her breathe. At night, she is attached to a ventilator. And yet, despite ten years of battling this crippling disease, her face is as beautiful and her smile just as radiant as it was when I first saw her. Caroline lost her mother when she was only thirteen and she was determined to see her own daughter into adulthood. And so, at every fork in the road along the rugged path of her illness, her choice was always made with her daughter in mind. Long after many patients with ALS just give up, she chose to keep going despite the discomfort and the pain.

As we chit chatted and examined Caroline, the mood was not somber around that kitchen table. Caroline was not withdrawn into a dark corner of her mind passively waiting to die; she was fully engaged, fully alive. She was, as always, neatly dressed and her home did not give off the stifling, stale feeling one often gets in the homes of the chronically ill. This was not the home of someone who's life was put on hold. She asked me about my children and I asked about her daughter. She had her husband bring out a bracelet that she had designed as a present for the nurse. She talked about taking an online course in comparative religions. We asked her about her painful spasms. They were still troublesome she said but did not care for more medication; she can deal with the pain and would rather be alert than in a drug-induced daze. A pleasant hour and half passed by effortlessly and we had to get back to the medical center. Before we said our goodbyes, she had her husband take a picture of us standing by her.

Caring for terminally ill patients can be emotionally taxing. But as I drove back to the medical center that day, I carried with me no emotional burdens. On the contrary, I felt a certain lightness, a sense of serenity as I marvelled at Caroline's fortitude, her grace and her dignity in the face of unspeakable suffering, in the face of death. It is a life lesson that I have learned repeatedly from my ALS patients, when against all odds, they reach deep down and show me the strength of the human spirit. I hope that in a year's time there will be another visit and that Caroline will again dazzle us with her her smile and her indomitable spirit.

Launch of UN's World Digital Library

UNESCO launched the World Digital Library last Tuesday. It promises to have primary source documents (manuscripts, books, illustrations, photographs, etc) from countries and cultures around the world. It is being develop in conjunction with a number of institutions and libraries from around the world and is available in six languages, including Arabic. Currently, it has only about 1200 documents online, an embarrassingly small number for World library but, I guess, it is just starting. It is of interest that they will not only deal with institutions but will consider publishing documents from private collections and archives as well.

If it achieves its goal, it will be a very important resource. As with any such endeavor though, I fear that countries with resources and digital savvy will have flood the library with their documents and the resources of the "world" digital library will not really be representative. As is stands, the number of documents seem fairly well balanced from different regions of the world. Of course, this may be just to be politically correctness coinciding with the launch of the library. It will be interesting to see how it evolves.

In Pictures: To Lattakia and Back

Starting at the beginning, there I am on the balcony of my grandfather's house. If my older brother in the background, it is because he was. Until my arrival, he was it! The next picture is of the same house now unfortunately probably beyond repair.



The rest of the photographs retrace our trips to Ugarit, up to a cold and fogged-in Slunfeh and a quick visit to the family's old summer house, then back down to Haffeh and the spectacular Salaheddine castle. The last day, we made our way to Tartous and Arwad. Click on the image or here.

Limiting Free Speech

English teacher: So Kareem, what is the topic of your English research assignment?

Kareem (age 14): It is about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

English teacher: That's a very interesting topic...But what side are you taking?

Kareem: The Palestinian side.

English teacher, looking worried: Oh!! Hmm...That might get touchy; you have to be careful what you say.

Reflections of a Son and a Father

I was invited to a medical conference in Cyprus in late March and so I took advantage of my proximity to Beirut to hop over and see my parents. I saw them last in December but of all my brothers I live the furthest from them and see then the least and at 76 and 81 years of age, my parents are getting frailer and slower. “Provided I am still alive by then” was my father’s usual response for as long as I can remember whenever we planned future reunions. That statement twenty years ago used to annoy my mother to no end. These days, however, she lets it pass.

Unencumbered by wife, kids or obligations to in-laws this time, my parents had me all to themselves for the three short days I spent in Beirut. We reconnected, reminisced, talked about their health as they worried unnecessarily about mine. Just sharing a common space with them, chatting over coffee and a few meals sufficed. It was just what I needed and it was all they wanted as well.

Retreating to the living room one afternoon as they rested, I sat on the sofa across from a bookcase jam packed with family photographs and memorabilia. They were the memories of a rich, if complicated, life, lived across many continents and requiring frequent fragmentation of the family. I had seen them all before, but whenever I visited, I felt the need to examine them again. Here on several bookshelves, was essentially the chronology of our life. This time, one particular photograph caught my attention. It was a photograph of me sitting on the floor my back against the bathtub, on each arm, a child wrapped in a towel. My two children, mere infants at the time, wet and smiling from ear to ear, looked happy, content … beautiful.

Then it happened, with a sudden rush of thoughts and emotions, one of life’s intense, confusing and contradictory moments. I felt simultaneously a sense of happiness, longing, loss, sadness and contentment. Here I was, visiting my aging parents in the twilight of their life, and feeling in their presence, even in my middle age, the same sense of comfort and security I felt as a child. At the same time the photograph of my children filled me with joy and realizing that more than a dozen years have passed since I gave them their baths, I longed to see them. I wanted to stay and yet I felt a sudden unrealistic urge to go. Time was passing fast, after all, and I only had a few more years to shepherd my children into adulthood.

I was torn between the privilege of being a son and the responsibilities of being a father. I may lose my privileged status as a son in a few years but I will always be a father. My only hope is that when I let my children fly on their own in a few short years, they will soar, but will not forget the privilege of being a son and a daughter. I want them to remember that there will always be a place of respite for them from life’s hard knocks and unpredictable turns, in the warm reassuring embrace of their father and mother.