House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East [ハードカバー]

...literally means "house" in Arabic. Due to the "root" structure of words in Arabic, there are additional connotations, and in this case, one of them is literally "roots": a sense of the community that nourished you. Anthony Shadid is an American of Lebanese origin; he is also a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Like Alex Haley a generation earlier, whose book and TV mini-series is literally entitled (Roots), Shadid went back to his ancestral home in the village of Marjayoun, which, in Arabic, means "Field of Springs." My pre-release Vine copy does not contain a map of the region, a deficiency that will hopefully be remedied in the final version. Nonetheless, I checked a map, because the village's location explains so much: it is only 10 km from Israel, and only 10 km from Syria, with views of often snow-covered Mt. Hermon. The Litani River is nearby, and after Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Marjayoun was in the Israeli-occupied zone until the year 2000. Major Saad Haddad, of the South Lebanon Army, and an active Israeli collaborator, lived for a number of years in Shadid's ancestral home.

One of the narrative threads of the book, always printed in italics, is the history of the Marjayoun area, dating back roughly a century and a half. It is enough to make you nostalgic for the Ottoman Empire! The sharp political demarcations of today: Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan and Iraq did not exist. Marjayoun served as several cross-roads, and trading with the Bedouin (as well as the occasional raids) was frequent. The author works in the tentative link, seemingly of all the Arabs throughout the Middle East, that their family's northern migration dates back to the breaking of the Marib Dam in Yemen, as mentioned in the Koran, in the 6th Century. Shadid paints a picture of a much more tolerant Levant, where the ethnic and tribal groups largely co-existed. For sure though, grudges, vendettas, and open armed-conflict did occur. One of Shadid's better lines, perhaps apocryphal, is in conversation with one old man about the injury a person of another clan had done to his family, forty years before. Revenge? "No, it is still too early." Shadid could have tempered his nostalgia a bit more if he had specifically recalled the Turkish genocide against the Armenians, as one of the Empire's dying notes. Somewhat ironically, it is when the area fell under French and British "Protectorate" status, after World War I, that the lawlessness and out and out starvation forced so many of both sides of his family to emigrate: to Brazil, West Africa and the United States. In the States, they largely settled in Oklahoma and Kansas, and, in general, prospered. His grandmother, in particular, seemed to develop those Depression-era values of never wasting which led to their financial success.

The other strong narrative thread is Shadid's successful attempt, which commenced in August, 2007, and lasted a year, to restore the stone house of his great grandparents, Isber and Bahija. Dealing with contractors, and undertaking numerous financial arrangements, of a non-routine nature, can provide immense insights into the current state of the village, and of Lebanon as a whole. I recalled parallels with Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. For sure, Mayle had it easy by comparison, and the "ghosts" of his ancestors were not present. The characters on Shadid's project are rich and variegated, starting with the "foreman," with the mixed named that is symbolic of so much of Lebanon, "Abu Jean"; and anyone who has ever worked with contractors knows that "insh'allah" and "bukra" ("if Allah wills it," and "tomorrow") are universal constants that transcend cultural specifics. One of the greater anomalies in Shadid's project is that he did NOT (and perhaps still does not) own the house that he restored; rather he owned (owns) a fractional amount, along with all too many cousins, scattered across three continents. Surely the concept of "moral eminent domain" should be operative somewhere.

Other Marjayoun residents that Shadid portrays is one of the "last gentlemen of the Ottoman Empire, Cecil Hourani, who was born in England, and Dr. Khairalla, who ran the local hospital, and was tried for treason by Lebanon after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. He mentions, but does not elaborate on another famous man whose family's roots are in Marjayoun, Dr. Michael DeBakey. Underscoring the 6 degrees of connectivity theory, DeBakey, and his team, operated the heart program at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the early `80's. Shadid's book resonated in numerous other ways, one of which is the aphorism: "Coffee without cardamom is like a bride without her gown" (p. 23). Another is the quintessential: Any American living, working, and who is actually INTERESTED in the Middle East has to be in the CIA!

A warm, lovely, insightful book, written by a man who has already been quite lucky on the battlefield. Go carefully. 5-stars.

The author, an American of Lebanese ethnic descent, and Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times and Washington Post, after being wounded by an Israeli sniper and a painful divorce, decided to seek his roots and restore his grandfather Isber Samara's stone house in an elite section of Jedeidet Marjayoun, Lebanon. This home, in Lebanese known as a "bayt" encompasses home, roots, center and essence of the family. Being over a century old, it was hit by mortar fire during the first Israeli-Lebanese war and almost destroyed except for much of the extensive stone and tile construction.

Lebanon, as well as several other middle eastern countries, was once part of the Ottoman Empire until it collapsed after WWI. The French originally established Lebanon as a country, which the Israelis challenged by going to war to recover some territory. Thereafter Lebanon was torn apart again during fifteen years of civil war.

These wars affected the people of that country in many ways, creating a Lebanese persona that only another Lebanese can understand. Isber Samara, although originally having been poor, through his own labors became a wealthy man and built this elaborate stone house for his family. Because of these ongoing wars and fearful for his family's lives, he sent his wife and six children to the United States where they settled in Oklahoma, along with other relatives.

With great dexterity the author weaves the past history and culture of these people with the present through the use of flashbacks. Through narrating the lives of his grandparents while under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and the simple beautiful, stability existing, which also included religious tolerance, and diverse cultures, and then interjecting sequences describing the many difficulties he faced with the workmen while reconstructing his bayt, and his personal inter-relationships with his different friends, he gives a very clear picture of the joys, loves, anger, vendettas, slyness, and strength of these people.

If you are deeply interested in the culture and traditions of the Middle East, both past and present, this is an excellent book to read, recognizing that the author is not just someone looking from the outside in, but is someone inside revealing it to the outside.

I was just amazed by this book. So much to love here, but it was the prose that really grabbed me. Not just the poetry of it, but the candor and authenticity, and the way he looks right inside his characters.

I rarely blurb books, and this was only the third one I ever did, which indicates how much I loved it. Here's what I wrote for the back cover:

"I was captivated, instantly, by Anthony Shadid's lushly evocative prose. Crumbling Ottoman outposts, doomed pashas, and roving bandits feel immediate, familiar, and relevant. Lose yourself in these pages, where empires linger, grandparents wander, and a battered Lebanon beckons us home. Savor it all. If Gabriel Márquez had explored nonfiction, Macondo would feel as real as Marjayoun." -- Dave Cullen, author of Columbine

Reading it sometimes made me feel inadequate as a writer. I wish I could do some of the amazing things he does. Or maybe I wish I could do them so relentlessly. I tend to underline phrases I love, and the pages are covered in ink. Every other sentence leaps out at me. Hard to believe anyone can be that consistent. Faulkner, Nabokov, Denis Johnson and William Lychak are the only ones who have matched Anthony's underline rate for me.