In the Name of Identity

Anyone could stop reading Amin Maalouf's book after his first paragraph. Anyone who was able to understand what the writer means by living on the edge (lisière) of two countries, two or three languages and different cultural traditions.

Does he feel more French or more Lebanese? He feels French and Lebanese. That is what makes him who he is and not another person.

With this it would be enough.

But if anybody needs a better explanation about these things, he continues. Let's continue with it.

To the one who asks him —still— if he feels more French or more Lebanese, he replies that his mother language is Arabic, which discovered the French and British writers in translations into this language; that in the village of his ancestors, in the mountains, he experienced his joys as a child and that he heard some stories that he used most in his writings.

But he lives in France, for more than forty years, drinking its water and wine and every day he caresses the old stones where he walks for.

Then, they ask him again: so, half French and half Lebanese, do you? And he rises up quickly. Absolutely not! The identity doesn´t brek in half or third parts. I only have one identity, nevertheless, it´s made by many parts moulded according to "a particular dose that is never the same from one person to another".

I already warned you, why keep reading?

From my Borstal

LDR

Les Identités meurtrières. Amin Maalouf. Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1998. Edition 13-mai 2009 Paris