House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East

America celebrates immigration. Over the past few centuries, almost everyone who has moved here has found it welcoming, has had little trouble integrating, and - over a fairly short period of time - has found it inviting to call the country home. But not for the late New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid.Born and raised in Oklahoma to second-generation Lebanese-American parents, Shadid was attracted to a different world, one that is not only thousands of miles away, but one hundred years back. In his House of Stone, Shadid described a "project" that he had undertaken. He moved back to his ancestral homeland in Marjayoun, south of Lebanon, and started renovating the long-vacant house of Isber Samara, his great grandfather."My family wasn't here," he wrote. "They had shown little interest in my project." Shadid said that on those occasions when he spoke to his daughter, Leila, she asked him what he was doing so far away, to which he answered: "Rebuilding our home." Shadid dreamt "of the day [he] would bring her... to a house she could call hers."But why was Shadid exactly looking for a "house/home." What was wrong with Oklahoma where he grew up, or Maryland, where Leila lived with her mother, his ex-wife?Shadid was not the first Arab-American to search for a place to call home. Before him, the late Edward Said, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of Columbia, published his memoirs in a book called "Out of Place."And like Said, Sahdid mainly blamed the West for his lost home. Both men used their remarkably beautiful prose, ironically not in their native Arabic but in English, to describe the presumably harmonious Arab world that once existed before World War I, and before the colonials - first Britain and France and later the United States - wiped it out."Artificial and forced, instruments themselves of repression, the borders were their obstacle, having wiped away what was best about the Arab world," Shadid wrote. "They hewed to no certain logic; a glimpse at any map suggests as much. The lines are too straight, too precise to embrace the ambiguities of geography and history. They are frontiers without frontiers, ignorant of trajectories shaped by centuries, even millennia."However, unlike Said who wrote about his displacement from the luxury of his Manhattan Apartment in New York, Shadid decided to do something about it. He immigrated back to Lebanon and was set to restore his ancestor's House of Stone to its past glory. "[I]magine I can bring back something that was lost," he argued.That something was "Isber's world, which, while simpler, was no less tumultuous than my own." This begs the question: If Isber's world was disorderly, why blame the colonial borders for wiping "away what was best about the Arab world." And if Isber's world was already chaotic, why bring it back and insist on calling it home?House of Stone is the story of Shadid's renovation project in southern Lebanon, interjected with his reconstruction of the history of his family in Marjayoun, and their emigration to the United States.Along the way, Shadid narrated, mainly to a Western audience, the daily routine of his project, which included recruiting masons, haggling with suppliers and talking to friends. His narration, however, has a number of mistakes that gives away Shadid being a non-native. Despite his best effort to learn the Arabic language and culture during college days, Shadid still fell short of grasping all of the intricacies of Arab life.For instance, when describing a fruit street vendor, Shadid wrote: "Bateekh, bateekh, bateekh, ala al sikeen ya bateekh," and translated it into: "Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon... a watermelon ready for the knife." While the translation might pass, Shadid missed the cultural nuance. When a Lebanese customer goes to buy a watermelon, he usually asks for assurances from the vendor about its "redness" and "sweetness." The vendor usually replies confidently that his watermelons are the best and takes out a knife offering to cut a small piece as a tasting sample to prove his claim. When vendors push their carts down the streets of Lebanon and shout "al sikeen ya batteekh," they don't mean "ready for the knife," like Shadid thought. Their "knife" call is an invitation to customers to challenge their claim.In another paragraph, Shadid wrote: "In the Middle East, the tiles came to be known as sajjadeh, one of the Arabic words for carpet." In Arabic, at least in Lebanon, tiles mean blat. It is customary - especially in old houses - for tiles to be arranged in patterns to display nice geometric shapes, in which case they would be called "sajjadeh," or carpet.Shadid died a few months ago because of his allergy to horses while being smuggled out of Syria where he had finished covering the ongoing revolution there. His book had not been published yet.The book, his understanding of the heritage of his ancestors and their culture, summarizes his attempt to recreate what he thought was their better world, and live in it. That world, which perhaps never existed, he wanted to call home.Shadid was cremated and his ashes thrown over the House of Stone and over the world that never existed, the world that he never barely got a chance to live in.

"House of Stone" is a primer on Lebanon. Anthony Shadid beautifully illuminates the larger themes of the Middle East - language, ancient and modern history, and war, while intimately weaving in the personal and intimate details that manifest both Shadid's attentiveness to individual personalities and thorough understanding of his milieu. The unique identities of his subjects come alive in his descriptions of their superstitions, minor gestures, and customs. Lebanese culture comes to life in his description of the proper way to serve coffee: guests first, then family, and finally hosts. The beauty and dignity of Marjayoun and south Lebanon serve as the backdrop to plum thieves, gossip, conspiracies, and vendettas that reveal the quirks of a small town.On multiple occasions, Shadid made me laugh out loud and at other times made my eyes well up with tears as he describes the hilarious and emotional moments of his contemporary experiences in Marjayoun and the difficult journey his ancestors made from the town to Oklahoma. His descriptions of the big personalities and the refined are precise and prescient. His relationships with Shibil, Assaad, Hikmat, Cecil, and Dr. Khairallah change Shadid's perspective and offer readers a glimpse into issues of identity and memory and that which is uniquely Marjayoun, "The accent of the place... words that belonged specifically to the town" (56). Shadid wrestles with the loneliness, pettiness, and at times depression of village life all of which is undergirded by a much more profound sense of history, of loss, and of existential anxiety about the future.The tension of war and politics are constantly in the background while the tension, rivalries, and skilled labor of the warshe (the building site of Isber Samara's house which Shadid is re-inventing) play out in frustration and hilarity. Shadid introduces readers to the Arabic terminology used to describe the ancient objects and concepts he loves. His descriptions of cuisine, tiles, stone arches, fruit trees, the cherries of Shebaa, and flowers are enough to lift anyone's heart and send them on a vacation to south Lebanon in the spring to appreciate these treasures first hand.Throughout, Shadid is reflective on his own behavior. He presents his own biases at face value, while allowing his subjects to speak for themselves. Like the author's personality, "House of Stone" is beautiful. Through his writing Shadid demonstrates that prior to his untimely death he had risen to the example of Dr. Khairallah, whom Shadid described as "the kind of man I wanted to be" (190).As someone who lived through the wars and political events Shadid describes and knows a number of the characters who people his pages, I can attest that Shadid flawlessly and beautifully describes that which is uniquely Lebanese and Marjayoun. I highly recommend this book.

Against the backdrop of restoring the long abandoned family home in (now) Lebanon, history contrasted with the present—of the French war against the Middle East countries, and of a time when Israel and Syria were at peace. Present (2010?) peace in Egypt vs century-long grudges and family feuds. Personal quirks and achievements, family stories, emigration to the US, but above all a love story to “bayt“— home! Where one belongs, heart and soul.

In this book, a journalist describes how he took a year off to restore his family's house in an area near Beirut. I found this book on overdrive and thought the title was interesting so decided to read it. I'm not sure what I expected from the title but the book was exceptional. A really interesting book that not only detailed the restoration of the house, but also talked about Lebanese history and issues throughout the Middle East. I can highly recommend this book.

Beautifully written and poignant account.

Great read!