>>Good morning an welcome to Global Perspectives.

I'm David Dumke.

Today we are joined by author Nisreen Alghawi who has written a book, Edge of Heaven, about growing up in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War.

Welcome to the show Nisreen.

>>Thank you David.

>>So tell me, why did you writ this book after so many years?

You left Lebanon in 1990, which is about the end of the civil war.

You came to the U.S. and then years later, this is this is a product of your your memories.

>>Sure.

First, I would like to thank you and the Global Perspectives and international initiatives for really highlighting stories from smaller cultures and different countries.

I truly appreciate you for that.

You know, this, book was a healing process for me.

I never, I never aim to publish it or let it out.

I think this happened with, as I came, you know, to the realization that, I have a confidence enough to share my vulnerability from from those days.

I always say that people have different ways to heal, to express.

And my way came with writing, and I always had this thing fo writing to express my feelings.

And that's how it came along.

I just, started as self-reflection thoughts.

And then, I tried to write a story for a war, and then it's all merged together with memories, with emotions, with facts from the war.

And it didn't happen all of a sudden, it was like a process of many years.

So it kind of became like a melange of all these things.

And, you know, like I come from a region where things are always happening.

It's not like the war was over and we were in the healing process.

There's always something that is targeting all those hidden emotions that come out and trigger something inside of us.

So it's stemmed from there.

It's a product of so many things that came out into this book, which I believe it stands for the human experience of those people who lived a war of those people who walked out from war, and within them they carry the scars and the stories of those people who did not make it far.

>>Your story is set i Choueifat, your native village.

Tell us a little about that.

>>So, Choueifat was, a suburbian city 13, 13 miles west of Beirut.

I remember growing up, my mom always saying that Choueifat was 50% Christians, 50% Jews whereas we never saw a decrease.

There were just like very few Christian families that everybody do.

But we were all like, we would see like houses.

We would know, like only the names, like, this person lived here, but we never knew who that person was.

So I always, lik I grew up with this thought of how did those people who once belonged here, how did they only become like, a name to those people that came after?

So, and, unfortunately, growing up, it was, a segregated.

And the Christians moved to the other side, which is, I would say two miles down the road.

And sadly enough, migrated in 1990, and I was able to travel across the Atlanti without being over to cross over two miles across the border or the green line of what was called to visit the Christian town.

So that was how how drastic it was.

And that was, you know, all these thoughts, they were like internalized.

And I'm like, how come?

Like how come?

And I remembe when the Taif agreement happened and I in 1990 and, my family told me that now the borders are ope and we can go to the Kfarshima which was the opposing town where all the cross-fire was happening.

And I was like, oh, lucky you.

I just wonder how you do as a child.

You would think lik those people on the other side.

They might look different, they might live differently.

And it was shocking enoug when I came back and I'm like, and I saw the martyrs pictures, their site of, of, you know, martyrs.

And I'm like, like those people.

They lived the same misery that we lived, you know, they weren't like the monsters that we felt they were.

And all of these thoughts, all of these experiences, you know, with maturity, with time, with experience, they kind of like formed.

>>Is it still hard to understand?

So so those who don't understand Lebanon, the history of Lebanon, civil war, you had different sect fighting each other eventually.

So it wasn't just Druze and Christians.

You had Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, others had Palestinians.

You had outside countries involved too.

So was very chaoti from the outside to understand.

But you grew up in this.

Did it become normal for you ever you heard these stories, for example, from your your mother and you refer t several of them in your stories about times before the Civil Wa when things weren't like that.

But you grew up in a different reality.

What is reality, I guess?

>>At that time, I think when we lived it, it felt normal.

And you notice how abnormal it was and unhealthy was when you get out of it.

So now when I look back at how we were living like one of the games we used to play when we were kids, we would be in the shelter which was basically a bathroom.

We would be just like, you know, hunkering down, listening to a transistor radio, and we would listen to the number of casualties.

If the number of casualties in our side is less than the other side, we won.

And this is how a game that we played when we were kids.

And I would think about, yo know, how traumatic, how surreal it was for kids to experience this kind of reality.

But as we were living it because we didn't know any other reality, we didn't know what was going We remember that what happened late 70s, early 80s.

So we didn't know anything outside, outside that life.

And you would only get to examine it when you're out of it.

And when you become a mother, and when you see your kids and you would compare them to how you grew up, and this is how you know, you start self-reflecting you start going deep into that life, into how awful, how ugly it was.

>>So this is not a history.

This i this is not also a full memoir, but it's it's based on a lot of historic, events that you witnessed and were involved in.

How did you decide on telling this story, really, of friendship and family through through the characters you chose?

>>Yeah.

So that is it' based on historical facts, but did do not intended to be a historical reference because, you know, in a in a place where people were writing history based on what they saw you cannot really have accurate and accurate understanding or accuracy.

I just wrote about my experience and my memories and the experience of the people that were around me, and at the same time, I tried to put myself in the other side's perspective, because I also wanted for the reader to have a general assessment to understand people's anger and fears from the - my point was not for the reader to decide who to blame, who was more responsible than others in that war.

My aim was to make the reader understand the feelings and experiences of those people who lived through the war.

>>You're mentionin writing was part of a healing, and you also mentioned, yo know, leaving Lebanon, kind of realizing how abnormal the situation truly was.

So my question on your identity itself, when this you talk about a little in the beginning of the book, the prolog, even about who you are kind of your, your background, did you have a sense of Lebanese identity or did you have a sense of, you know, an idea of identity of a sect?

And did it become a more pronounced Lebanese identity after you left Lebanon?

>>That's a good question.

I like that.

I think identity keeps on evolving and where I stand now, I'm very proud of what I have accomplished, from being able to shed off the sectarian identity and to embrace a bigger collective identity as I was.

I was telling you, like the games that we were playing when we were kids, you know, listening to the number of casualties and seeing who's who's side is winning based on other people's suffering.

So it was completely sectarian religious identity when we were growing up, because remember, we didn't had any sense of secular education.

We lived in a segregated town where Christians, Jews and Muslims were segregate like the Muslims were in Beirut.

We were able to exist at West Beirut but we weren't living together.

It was.

It was.

Everybody was from the same sect.

But I think as I grew, as I evolved, as I matured, I was able to rewrite this identity.

I started embracing other forms of identity, like when I came to this country in 1990, I became very grateful to this country, and I embraced the American identity.

I didn't assimilate in the sense of, you know, I became more American than Lebanese or more than.

But I embraced a side of being an American.

Eight years ago, I became vegan, you know, an animal.

And this was, you know, another side of my identity that I became.

Also, I embrace.

So this ability to always evolve with your identity, not to keep it like fixed in a mold.

You know, it's something that I'm really happy with.

And I think this ability to self-reflect, you know, when you're right, you are kind of like within yourself.

And I think with fiction you give yourself this very comfortable space to go outside what society wants to hear from you.

And I think this helped me to be able to shed whatever I inherited.

I'm not saying that I don't carry, you know, things that I treasure from my culture and values, but I can also say that I rewrote i in a way that fits me in my life now, in a more practical way that I cherish.

You do refer, of course throughout the book to different historic events that happened in in the Lebanese Civil War at the time, the assassination of President Kamal.

>>Yes.

>>For example, the bombing of the of the marine barracks and other things like that.

The events, of course, themselves have been written a lot about in history, but writing about it on a personal level.

>>Yeah.

>>What do you remember about those events?

>>So what I remembe when I was a child and President Kamal was assassinated, although back at that, I don't like to use these terms, but I'm going to use them because he was supposed to be the leader of a militia rather than a president.

You know, to us on the other side of the green light, you know, so between coats he was supposed to be the enemy.

But I remember that when he was assassinated, the women and they were crying.

And, you know, as a child, I was confused.

I was like, aren't we supposed to be happy?

Although, like, there were people rejoicing, like, you know, firing, you know, joyous shots, celebratory, but I feel I saw women cryin because he was very charismatic.

He had this leadership traits.

He was just like very influential and, you know, as a child, these are all unanswered questions because, like, as much as he was the enemy, I believe that people saw in him the leader, the president that might take Lebanon to a different.

But they weren't being able to maybe express it because of the situation back then, because of this political sectarian mindset that they were put in.

So they were crying because they could not understand what was going on inside.

>>Was it fear that you even you know, that the age that this happened, that you knew it was a big moment, even though no one quite knew the implications of what would happen.

That or the start of the Civil War, 1975.

You also know that, for example, these were big moments in the Civil War.

But on a human level, could you feel just that this is a marke of when things started turning?

Not the event itself is one thing, but it's what it represents.

>>Yeah, I think I was very, small.

I was like 8 or 9 when this happened.

But just the fact that I have very vivid recollection of certain days, you know, from now, when I look back at it, I feel like somehow I knew that thes were turning points in history and just the fact that I still carry all these memories, like the day, Ismail died.

I have vivid, vivid memories of that day, of ho I knew of how people were firing shots, of how people were crying and how people were, you know, analyzing who could have killed him.

And and most of the conversations that happened in the book, it's based on what happened in real life, because even, you know, agreeing of who killed mean.

And that doesn't mean peopl sometimes from the same family, they could not agree on, on one thing.

>>Sure.

>>Like, you know, and this is how complex-- >>People see the same event through completely different proofs.

Completely.

>>Absolutely.

And I tried to put the same events because I had, one of m readers asking me, why did you, talk about the same event from different perspective?

I told them, because every perspective have like a whole different view of what happened that day.

And I don't want to be biased.

I want the reader to reall grasp that true understanding.

>>But was that hard for you to go from a different perspective than your own?

>>It wasn't hard, because I just like, that's what fiction makes it.

Why fiction makes it easy.

Because there's no right or wrong.

I can just, like, thin from other person's perspective and try to be in the head of those people and write.

And this is why I love, like, you know, the fact that I wrote a historical fiction because with fiction there isn't true around, like, you know, the character is not real.

I cannot be hold credible, not credible for making a character feel a certain way or think a certain way.

>>Sure.

>>So this is why I feel lik fiction gave me this elasticity.

>>Give you the liberty to kind of-- >>To move around with comfort without feeling, judged or criticized, you know, for especially, you know, I come from a certain sect and I wanted to be able to also represent the other sects without making them feel that you know, I was harsh or bias-- >>Or judging.

Yeah.

Judge.

Not judge.

>>Yeah.

>>So we're talk we talk several questions about war and kind of events happening and time.

But there's also a lot of memories that just are very human about food.

You ate about tiles in a house, about things like that.

So what are those?

Just kind of and everyone has those kinds of memories that aren't some major event that happened, but something that just sticks in your mind.

What are some of the things that do stick in your mind that you include in the book?

>>So I'm very sentimental, like, you know, and that's obvious because many things that I wrote, I wrote, which is like from the heart, from emotions and, you know, old houses.

I just like, you know, cherish the legacy.

And I just think about all the generations that live in this houses that came before.

And I try to portray this in the book.

You know, it started with the girl counting the triangles of a house that they inherited from a great grandfather.

And I tried to projec that this is more than a house.

This is a legacy.

And somehow she had to be displaced.

This, you know, all of a sudden, becaus she belonged to a certain sect.

But the dearest things to my heart is my grandmother, you know, things that I shared from the culture.

And, I feel with time, all these things are disappearing.

And I try to capture those moments with my grandmother and things she used to say and things she used to do and things she used to believe in and document it because I didn't want it to disappear.

I wanted to, you know, for because I knew from my kids when they when they read this, they went Mama, did your grandmother you really used to think that?

And I'm like, yeah.

Like, for instance, my grandmother used to tell us that, women who put earrings.

I don't know if you got to that part in Judgment Day.

God is going to put, like, heavy, hot metal because this is against our religion.

Because God created us, complete.

And we shouldn't really going against his judgment.

If you wanted us to have earrings and holes you know, he could have decided.

It's not up to us to decide.

But what was funny enough?

Because, you know, my grandmother was also a product of a patriarchal society.

So we were her daughter's skirts.

So my mom, she respected her mom's wishes and she did not pierce our our ears and mind you, like my grandmother shared like similar belief with all women her age, but her, son's wife, she pierced her daughter's ears and she would always tell us that this woman, you know, the the wife of of the son, she is the one who's going to get the, the hot metal balls because, you know, the girls are miners.

It's not like.

And I would think, why not my uncle?

Why the woman like, you know.

But for her, for my mom, it's always the woman that has to carry the sins of of the family.

So these are.

You know what I cherish?

What I shared, you know, things that she used to say.

Or do you know about he veil and, and I cherish those.

>>So you mentioned your children reading these stories.

What did they ask you?

What was their reaction to to this book?

>>Firs they asked about the characters they wanted to know, like, you know, my daughters were like, is like, are the girls us?

And I felt, you know, I like that because although, like the characters were fictional, they had the traits and personalities of people I grew up with.

Of some common traits that all Lebanese people sometimes share, and just the fact that they, being from a different generation, were able to connect to these characters and feel like some of the traits are with them, I felt like I was able to reach out to this younger group of people.

They also liked the part about their grandmother and they would ask me, is this true?

They would ask me about things that because there was like, for instance, much reference to a Christian woman like like they would say did people like really used to say this, like literally.

And you know, I would say yes.

Like, you know, of course not everybody, but there was like, you know, some certain, you know, sect of people that used to think like that.

So, so, yes.

>>You have some funny stories in there too.

>>Yeah.

>>Obviously.

>>Yeah.

>>Those based on truth or those your own vivid, writing abilities?

>>Not all of them, were things that happened to me.

But, for instance, I like the mustache.

This story, it happened to us in school with one of.

>>Explai that that the reference.

>>So.

So we were standing and then we were like in a group, guys and girls.

And, you know, one of, you know, my girlfriends had like, you know, she was hairy.

She had like a thick upper lip.

And in the Lebanese culture, it's no like masculinity with the mustache.

I'm sure you probably know this from Egypt.

I don't know if it's the same culture when a ma put their hand on the mustache and, like I swear with my mustache, it's, you know, they cannot be lyin on that like it's their manhood.

So we were standin and there was this guy who got, like, a high grade in biology.

I forgot what was it?

And everybody's like, you cheated.

He's like, no, I didn't cheat.

I studied like, no you did the study, you cheated.

It was at school.

And he looked at the girl and he went there.

He he grabbed her up, you know, her mustache.

And he's like I swear with Renner's mustache that I studies.

And it was like, you know, a very embarrassing moment.

And what I remember that the girl came next day you know, all, you know, shaved.

I'm sure it was, you know very dramatic and funny enough.

You know, this girl grew up to have, like, a spa, you know, that does like, laser work-- >>There you go.

>>I don't know, I never, like, discuss this with her, but I don't know if this, like, left anything in her that made her choose her future career, but.

>>Yeah, well, to take a more serious note, of course, obviously what's happened in Lebanon in the last few weeks is obviously very disturbing.

And you're seeing war happen again.

History repeat itself.

How do you feel when you you see these images?

>>At times I feel angry.

At other times I feel helpless.

At other times I feel numb.

But I think feeling helpless is how I explain it the most.

It's just what can we do?

And it's at this point it' also a challenge to our humanity because we see Lebanese people being displaced and you cannot even help in finding them homes because there are certain people that are targeted and people are not knowin who's the target and who's not.

So they're not allowing people to come to areas where there are like, you know citizens living in a building.

So it's just like a very confusing moment.

But I thin when all those emotions get in a in the turbulence, you feel very numb.

And, you know, for us I think Lebanese women are more, able to get vulnerable because, you know, men has, like, more pressure on them to be, like, firm.

And so we get more vulnerable with each other and we kind of vent to each other and one thing that we share in common to soothe us, to calm is that we say at least our kid do not have to see what we saw.

And your reality kind of shatters when this doesn't happen accordingly.

Like my son, today is his birthday.

His 29th birthday, and he's, doing the evacuation in Beirut for the past three weeks.

And it has been very tough on the whole family.

You know, I know that, you know, he's safe.

And I don't want to be selfish, you know, and say, like my son matters more than other people.

You know, we're all humans.

But it's tough for me to say after three decades, after five decades, I'm almost 50.

Just seeing, you know, this trag you know, each time worse than before.

So helplessness and defeat, I think, is what we feel now.

>>I mean, you're seeing this in Lebanon is this also something you see when you see wars per se?

I mean, people hear about wars, but they don't they haven't been through something like you've bee through the human side of this.

>>Yeah.

>>So I gues the one final question we have, we just have have a minut left is what are a couple things you would tell someone who's having to endure a situation like this, whether it's in Lebanon or Ukrain or somewhere else in the world, having to go through such a hard times.

When does normalcy return?

>>I don't know, one doesn't know that this is a just like a very open ended question.

But I always focus on the human experience.

And I tell people we are all in this journey together as being humans, and we have to dig deep into the human feelings and emotions and use our human power to help each other in this journey.

But what I'm seeing, just like people use their power just to make it harder.

On the other, if we can just like go deep and seeing the human before behind like the the situation, I think the world would be in a much better place.

>>Nisreen Alghawi thank you so much for joining us today.

And thank you for writing this, this wonderful book.

Hopefully some of our viewers-- >>I appreciate you giving me the time and platform to really talk about my book.

Thank you.

>>And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again next week on another episode of Global Perspectives.