I’m not going to try to be an academic or historian, but if you look at the Arab world over the centuries, cities themselves have been much better at negotiating conflict, negotiating community, and forging a broader sense of identity that can embrace diversity. I see that hyperlocal identity becoming more prominent and more powerful in a lot of different places. I see it in northern Iraq, I see it on the Turkish-Syrian border, I see it in some ways in Lebanon. In these places you don’t have to become Sunni or Shia or Christian or Muslim or Lebanese or Syrian or Turkish. These smaller identities go on and on until it’s mind-numbing. Your other identities are embraced within this larger notion of the urban sense of self. I see that returning and I think that’s very hopeful, even for a place like Marjayoun. There’s the possibility that you can be Marjayouni instead of Lebanese or Greek Orthodox. I think it’s a century-long process, but when it comes to identity, it’s a source of hope that I see.
bint battuta: Anthony Shadid, in Reclaiming What Was Lost: A Conversation with Anthony Shadid
Notes
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