Almost a million people fled Lebanon during the 1980s, around a quarter of the country’s population. The love of Lebanon, including a profound desire to see it restored to the sophisticated, beautiful, fertile, and pluralist country they remember, runs through the veins of every Lebanese I know. In Ghassan Zeinedine’s debut collection of tales, that love stars— on steroids. 

Zeineddine’s writing is imbued with love. Even the most ostensibly unappealing characters are described with humour and fondness. Shot through with a vivid sense of place, these tales offer a variety of textures and themes, from storytelling within the tales, to the nostalgia of the expatriate, to visions of the horror of war. There are also culture clashes, images of a powerful matriarchy, and reflections on the quaintness of speed limits on American highways.

If the characters evoke familiar stereotypes, they also feel like very real people. “Money Chickens” features Baba, the universal immigrant father figure, so untrusting of the systems in his adopted homeland that he stuffs his savings into the cavities of chickens—which he then freezes them in a bid to avoid the IRS. Baba only speaks Arabic, calls Lebanon often, smokes hookahs with friends in his garage, and treasures a blueprint for the house he will build when he finally saves enough to return home. But “Money Chickens” is no glassy-eyed panegyric. Zeineddine skewers with honesty the paradigm of third-culture kids. Baba’s daughter moves to Portland “to get the fuck out of the dai’aa,” the village, and his son states bluntly that he is an American.

In Dearborn, a Muslim-majority town, the fear of being mistaken for a terrorist exists alongside worries about the decimations of the car industry and the 2008 recession. Both the place and the concerns of its people are starkly drawn, manifesting in hare-brained get-rich-quick scams as well as a furious flying of the Stars-and-Stripes. Yet despite the descriptions of Lebanon’s ravaging war, politics are mainly absent from the stories, and they are the richer for it. 

Dearborn is a fast-paced ride. Into a canvas of memories of the older generation, Zeineddine stitches the colour of Hiyam, a divorced, real estate-dealing woman who’s supporting her disappointed son; religious hip-hop artists; feminists in hijab; a character named Yasser who dresses as Yusra; another, Uncle Ramzy, who on a visit from the old country tells tales “like Scheherazade,” in carefully titrated chunks. Zeineddine’s is an all-star cast, at once loud and vibrant, thoughtful and passionate, angry and regretful. 

“Rabbit Stew” is one of the most evocative tales of old and new lands I have ever read. Visiting Dearborn from Lebanon, Uncle Ramzy talks of the war, of the life he once had and how his plans had panned out. He encourages Amer, his nephew, to smoke, drink vodka, lust after women, and think about how it would feel to carry a gun. Amer, in return, introduces Ramzy to Twinkies, cautions him against racism, buys him flashy clothes and takes him for cheeseburgers. Their relationship unfolds in great arcs of sentimentality, machismo and an ever-present debate on the relative merits of America and Lebanon. Ramzy minds very much that his nephew feels more American and accuses his sister of deserting her homeland.

‘Is Beirut all destroyed?’ Mama asked Uncle Ramzy.

‘Downtown is a wasteland,’ he said. ‘It’ll take time for the city to rebuild itself […] It was once a beautiful city. But I never gave up on it […] too many people abandoned the city.’

The relationship Uncle Ramzy builds with his American nephew is credibly spun, and all the more poignant for the shock of its ending.

The entire collection is masterfully done—and for a debut, even more so. Altogether the collection reads like a Lebanese party: glittering matriarchs, smoking naughty men, great food, arguments, love affairs, loud voices—and, above all, a love of Lebanon. The stories of families left behind and of halcyon lost days of an older generation’s childhood sink deep into the imagination. Zeineddine is a writer to watch.

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Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, DC, and raised in the Middle East. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Ohio.

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Educated in the West Indies, Saudi Arabia, Scotland and Belgium, Elizabeth Smith studied modern languages at Durham University in England. She reads anything she can, especially pre-war books by obscure women and modern European writers. She lives in an old house on a small island where she often pretends it is 1936.