family matters!

Monday, March 22 in Marseille.  Hello, hello, my dear grandparents and my dear aunt and uncle Mona and Dick!
Boy o boy, it’s been such a long time since we exchanged messages.  I know this has been pretty much a total blackout, but I’ll write you soon a long letter, directly from me to you, (without […]

Hello my darling Dad,
I have read your email ‘how I consider our homecoming,” and let me first say how beautiful it seems to me to be named AMINA AKA LAURE.  In fact, all my Arab family calls me Amina, because Karim chose this first name, pointing out, after having thought a lot about the question, […]

Sooner or later, we shall have to congregate (why not here?) to praise the existence and being of Laure Collins Zukani.  I’ve spent almost two years now pleading with people to get over their scruples and their hurt feelings and come out of the privacy of their cupboards and share.  The results are now in: […]

Dear Yasmina,
Here are a few quotes from your mother.  In one very angry email, she infuriates over my describing her as passionately mad about God.  She writes back: I’m not mad; I’m perfectly normal.  The only thing I want is a happy family life with a husband and children I love.  There’s nothing mad about […]

Thomas Friedman wrote an editorial in the New York Times yesterday, 28 November.  I have retained much of it in this letter I have sent to my daughter and grand-daughter, in these grave times.
What’s the verdict on Major Nidal Malik Hasan?  Was he insane?  Or already a member of a terrorist cell inside the US?  […]

“Delia chantait avec tout son corps, comme elle avait appris à Philadelphie, de générations de mères ayant fréquenté l’église en Caroline.  Quand elle se laissant aller, sa poitrine se gonflait comme le soufflet d’un harmonium tout empli de splendeur.  Un sourd eût pu poser les mains sur ses épaules et sentir la résonance de chaque […]

“George Orwell reamined confident in the ability of ordinary people to change anything … It is the boy’s smile that we return to, direct and radiant,roceeding out of an unhesitating faith that the world, at the end of the day, is good, and that human decency, like parental love, can always be taken for granted […]

La première ressemblance, décrite il y a quelques jours, c’est un commun pouvoir de ‘flasher’ sur la beauté. Je n’ai pas de détails en ce qui concerne Laure, à part le souvenir de son studio, constellé de mannequins (en français toujours masculin — pardon pour les fautes dans le premier poste en français)  ‘Flasher.’  Quand […]

En principe, ce site aurait du être, depuis le début, bilingue.  Je me suis laissé emporter dans le plaisir, parfois la joie, de communiquer dans ma langue maternelle, profondément, difficilement, avec parfois des éclairs de génie et souvent comme une merde.  Voilà.  Il n’est pas question de revenir sur ces moments glorieux et ces moments […]

For awhile, Dean hesitated between wanting to become a vetenarian, and a doctor — perhaps a psychiatrist, or child psychologist, like his father.  Last word out (at least for me) is that he considers people more important than animals, and so is less hesitant in his choice.
Yas is 9 now, and wants to be an […]