While in Amman last week, I sat on the porch of a friend’s on Friday for brunch. The first day of the weekend, unusually nice

People without a sense of irony are a wretched lot. They have no humor, no fun, are lousy conversationalists and even worse debaters, have no

No!

Everything that needs to be said about the Beirut Port explosion on August 4 has been said. The suspicious circumstances that put the Ammonium Nitrate

A flowless Mediterranean this morning, azure and marble like. A swim, I am sure I will replay in my mind for months to come. The

I am away from Beirut, again. A month of solitude and repose, summer friends and reads, early morning writing and walks, afternoon research when the

I visited Lebanon four times during its 15-year civil war. The longest I stayed was a month in 1980, the shortest a week in 1984.