It’s always been a rather complicated relationship, the US and Arab elites. There’s nothing unusual about that between empire and those it proposes to sponsor

In the early 1980s, Georgetown University’s Foreign Service School, where I was an undergraduate student, held an international conference in Amman, Jordan. The theme was

Khalil Haddad was the salt of the earth. His hometown in Lebanon was tiny Baskinta, way up north. His accent, which decades in America failed

The time between World War I and World War II! Those jaded photos and silent reels of faces and places, of grand political drama and

People are talking in biblical terms these days in Lebanon. Damnation, retribution, reckonings, deliverance, and the lot.

We’ve always felt accursed, mind you. Special,

“Stand before a picture as before a prince…Waiting to see whether it will speak and what it will say.” 

Schopenhauer

Every once in a while, a lone