Alexandre Najjar: Memories of a Lebanese Childhood

 

Are you wondering what a Lebanese childhood may look like? How does it feel to grow up in Lebanon?

The memories one grew up in, the political and social shockwaves, first shaking the adult relatives, and the everyday environment, do outline the further development of the adult in the making. Writer and lawyer Alexandre Najjar short memoir is inspired by his father, the tenor: Le silence du ténor. 

Le ténor is his father, a Catholic lawyer in love with classical music and singing, an admirer of de Gaulle, the patriarch of a family caught in the ups and downs of a a country at the mercy of fate. There is no pathetic discourse, patriotic outrage or hateful revolt. Some people do not have any other choice but to adapt their life and get the best of it, despite all odds. 

I like books between good memories of children about their parents. Being the daughter or the son of your mother or father is not always easy, and we don´t have a choice, but there is not always, or rarely, the trauma of a Freudian/Oedipian conflict. Some young boys may be fond of their fathers in the same way a young girl growing up may admire her mother.

A testimony and a trace against time, the everyday life stories of Najjar surrounding his father, but sharing at the same time signs of life of the Lebanese life as it was, and not as some would imagine it was: in this case, too, the author is completely at peace with his home country. But at a certain point, there may be some fine comparison lines between the two destinies: his father´s - left without a voice following a heart attack -, his country - left in shreds by...by so many wrong reasons anyway.

Should I also mention that the reader can expect to encounter highly educated, ´Westernized´ middle class people which were as normal there as they were in Paris or Vienna? The Memories of a Lebanese Childhood are the memories of civilization against any kind of barbary. An emotional story of parental love and life.

Rating: 4 stars