Places

Beirut, Lebanon

Contributors: Iman Humaydan
Beirut, Lebanon

« The war has destroyed places of our childhood, the reference places of our memory. It is fearful to face all that emptiness. At such moments there is not much one can do to retrieve those places except through art and literature. »  —Iman Humaydan, Writing my Fragmented Self, Writing its Memory(ies)

In 2008, I came to Paris from Lebanon to attend the annual Salon du livre, for a book launch and signing of my second novel,Wild Mulberries, which had at that time just been translated into French (published by...

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It is not easy to write about writing. As Marguerite Duras once said, one must be stronger than her writing in order to be able to write. When it comes to talking about writing, I think it is more than that: one must...

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Old Building
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Lifeguard Tower
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Excerpt from the novel Other Lives

When will you be back home?
He asked me on our way to the Mombassa airport. I didn’t say that I was coming back nor did I say that I was leaving. I only said that I...

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In my place I came from, people believe in reincarnation.
I do not believe, or better put it, I did not think about it yet in order to decide if I believe or not. But I inherited from my grandmother and women in...

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We weren’t used to having big feasts in our house when I was young. It was long after I’d reached adulthood before I found out what it meant for food to be festive. My mother’s kitchen was a place to produce food for...

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As he does every year, my father begins with insuring the white mulberry fields in the villages surrounding ours. The square-shaped, three-story haaras transform into a huge workshop for two whole months....

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“We are all migrants… Writers are migrants.” This is how the Scottish writerAlison Louise Kennedyended her opening remarks at the seventh annual European Literature Days Festival in Spitz, Austria. These words were...

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Beirut Skyline
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