“Chasing the Echoes of Home: A Journey Through Memory and Migration”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali
Beirut, Lebanon
1983
No matter how much pressure I applied, Maman and Daddy maintained that Beirut was too dangerous for sleepovers.
“Shelling always starts after sunset,” Maman said. “That’s when foreigners get kidnapped. Look at David Dodge.”
A shiver began in my stomach and scurried up my chest. I stuffed the Canadian stamps I’d been sorting for my collection into a tattered envelope. The president of the American University of Beirut had been kidnapped at gunpoint in mid-July while walking home on the AUB campus—the same campus my fourteen-year-old brother Etienne and I walked across twice a day. He was still being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison, despite the American government’s attempts to negotiate his release.
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