BOOKPATHS

Lebanon

Gary Nabhan finds “an experiment to protect nature that may well be a model for the world” while visiting family in Lebanon.

"While my brothers and I had stayed in contact with cousins through phone calls and e-mails, we were only vaguely aware that a remarkable revival of an ancient and indigenous conservation custom had occurred in their own backyard. The designation of land and water commons as traditional hima refuges had been practiced in the Arab world for more than 1,400 years; in fact, the Prophet Mohammed himself had declared that protection of critical lands and waters for the common good took precedence over any individual or clan profiting from control of these resources at the expense of others." – from “Washing Away War,” by Gary Nabhan, Audubon Magazine

Today's Bookpath

LEBANON

The Boy from the Tower of the Moon, by Anwar F. Accawi (Boston : Beacon Press, 1999 – Out of print, but available)

Anwar Accawi describes growing up in the tiny village of Magdaluna, Lebanon beginning in the late 1940s. His memories inform readers of a “simpler” time, before war, before even ice first arrived in the village, or telephones or cars. We enter a village where time moved slowly, where all who lived there moved within the cycles of their lives and within the year’s seasons. Accawi writes about the people and events that he remembers, that helped shape him in some way – his family, particularly his grandmother; neighbors; and visitors, such as the Gypsies who arrived each summer, or the “Turk…with his huge Russian bear.” Accawi offers a village portrait that allows readers to imagine its homes, shops, farmland -- all destroyed by the Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975. Even before war arrived; however, Accawi describes how each modern convenience – radio, telephone, cars – changed the village forever, gradually depleting its population. Even his own family leaves, “among the last,” moving to Sidon so his father can work in the oilfields.

The Boy from the Tower of the Moon ends with the chapter “Returning.” After following a scholarship to the United States, Accawi returns to Lebanon in 1969 with his wife, Gwen, “to teach English at Gerard Institute” in Sidon. They stay in Lebanon until the dangers of war force them to leave on October 28, 1975. The Boy from the Tower of the Moon is a gift to readers, a chance to enter Lebanon during a peaceful time and, because of this, to understand more fully the tragedy of war, “the death of a way of life.”

The Tower of the Moon, my first home, stood like a watchtower upon a hill overlooking the Abulyabis River in the west and the mountains of Joun in the east. It was a very small village, the home of about a hundred people, and as far as the inhabitants of the village were concerned, there was nothing beyond the river in the west or the mountains in the east. If there was anything out there, it was too far to matter. The village had everything it could possible need: a midwife, a farrier, a carpenter, a teacher, a shoemaker, a weaver, a vineyard keeper, and a barber who pulled our bad teeth, set our broken bones, healed us with his leeches, and bled us with his straight razor to cure our diseases.

The villagers lived off the terraced land that they had carved out of the steep hillsides. Some of them had cows, some had goats or sheep or chickens, but all of them, like my family, tended their long, narrow fields and tilled the land. And the land was kind….” -- from The Boy from the Tower of the Moon, by Anwar F. Accawi

Lebanon and Israel

In the Guardian, Richard Lea talks to authors from Israel and Lebanon “to discover the impact of the conflict and its aftermath on their work.”

“For the moment, a ceasefire holds in the Middle East, but for the region's writers, as for so many others, chaos and disruption continue.” – from “The Battle in the Books,” by Richard Lea, The Guardian

Lebanon

Listen to Jackie Northam, on NPR’s Day to Day, describe Lebanon’s “fight to save…rare manuscripts” from airstrikes.

Beirut, Lebanon

Anthony Shadid writes about Beirut’s Fadlallah Library, a “book-lined refuge [that] bridges east and west,” for The Washington Post.

“Nearby are the autobiographies of Bill Clinton and Malcolm X. There are tomes on Che Guevara, Muhammad Ali and the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Behind Jaloul is a memoir of Richard Nixon; alongside that is "My Life," the autobiography of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president. The memoir of the late King Hussein of Jordan sits on another shelf. "It's Not Easy to Be a King," the title reads.” – from “Book-Lined Refuge Bridges East and West,” by Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post