December 19, 2004

I live in a Druze community—2nd Draft

One of my Druze friends who’s reading my blog thinks that some of the posts are childish (hmmm. . . never been called that before) and many are just straight up offensive.

The sheikh is someone worthy of respect and authority, who regulates conflicts having to do with families and matters of state, not dealing with silly things like the shebab. I’m belittling the community and the religion.

And why am I dissing the Christian guy who wrote it? He's not a bad or ignorant person. In fact, why am I talking like I'm in the academy? That posturing where you always have to diss other people's work, because that's what academics do. Why do I think the sarcasm about studying strange people groups is so funny. I'm just trying to pretend that I belong in the academic crowd, but of course, it's just criticism without substance.

And Lebanon has some of the best hospitals and doctors. You don’t go to the hospital in Lebanon if you want to die. I did do my eye surgery here. And even tested the doctor. When he told me he studied in Houston, I asked him where the best Lebanese food is. “Sami’s.” Check, that’s near where my sister lives, at Hillcroft and Westheimer. Obviously he hadn’t made it out west enough towards Katy to try Phoenicia’s. (That’s so funny. Now I kind of understand the Phoenicia thing. A lot of Christians here refuse to call themselves Arab. Though they speak Arabic, they don’t want to be ethnically linked to Muslims. So they call themselves Phoenician.)

In my attempt to be witty and to make it interesting for you, my readers, I’m mocking and ridiculing Lebanon—a place which I’ve fallen in love with.

I don’t like my pictures of Aley, either. I show so many sheikhs and sheikhas. I don’t show how everyone else is dressed, which is mostly like people in the U.S. and Latin America.

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