In her memoir Salma Abdelnour
tells how she left a secure place in
New York to return to her childhood
home in Beirut. The year that she
spent living in Lebanon would prove
to be filled with turmoil as well as
self-discovery. This is an extract
from Jasmine and Fire.
I’m sitting on my suitcase, trying to force
it shut so I can zip it; I leave for Beirut later today,
and right now I’m grateful for these distracting lastminute tasks. If I keep dwelling on my decision too
much, I’m afraid I’ll chicken out and call off the car
I could do the vast majority of assignments
service to the airport. But as drastic as the big move
from Beirut just as easily as from New York. And at
feels to me right now, in my last hours in New York,
least I don’t have to worry about finding a place to
I’m reminding myself that it’s not such a crazy idea,
live, since my parents have held on to our Beirut
at least from a logistical standpoint. It shouldn’t
apartment all these years, even as they’ve continued
really affect my work too much: I’ve been a
living most of the year in Houston...
freelance writer and editor for a couple of years
In the cab to the airport, I’m trying to stay as
now, having decided to quit corporate magazine life
stoic as possible as I watch Manhattan’s postcard
after nearly a decade and a half in the industry, to
skyline, only half visible on this foggy morning,
make time for well-paying freelance projects I’d
disappear behind me and Brooklyn’s tenements and
been offered, and to be able to travel for long
rows of ethnic grocers and delis flick by on the
stretches without giving up a paycheck.
Williamsburg Bridge. These workaday scenes, so