At the publishing house I directed for 24 years in Lebanon our chief translator and editor had unusual editorial skills. As a translator he never wrote a word until he was sure he understood the intention of the English author, and in the end the work seemed to have originated in Arabic. The classical […]
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On the day I intended to post this blog I named it “Happy Hiroshima Day.” It was August 6, the birthday of my eldest daughter and the 70th anniversary of the day America, sweet land of liberty, dropped an atom bomb. But on that day I could neither finish nor post the blog because a […]
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Her name was Sonya Aharonian. Many people knew her in Beirut as one of the finest piano teachers available, and, by some streak of luck, we who were new in the country had engaged her to teach our nine-year-old son. All we knew was that we dropped him at her house in West Beirut, ran […]
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Invited to be present as a small book club met to discuss “In Borrowed Houses,” I answered some question by explaining that in Lebanon all the big political leaders had their own militias. The group could easily see that this created a ready-made civil war situation, and this caused a few people to feel immediately […]
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