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Letters: A Love Story
A Note to the Reader
When I began writing Letters - A Love Story (published in hardcover as Epistole, which derives from Latin via Greek meaning letter), I found myself scattered and strewn like intercontinental clouds that go back and forth between East and West without claiming either pole as inception or destination. I had to deconstruct and reconstruct my mindset as I changed identities with each personal letter. Writing in the first person singular, the natural style of letter writing, I became aware that my soul was inhabited by so many other souls and that, like Alfred Lord Tennyson says in Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.”
Hence, my advice to you, the reader, “Please take time for contemplation and don’t race through it as you would a thriller. Rather, read it as a series of letters that, among other matters, tell a love story. To be invited to peer into the secret souls of these two tormented lovers—a Western man and an Eastern woman—is a rare privilege that one seldom experiences in real life.”
Poetry plays a powerful role in character development and is metaphorically splashed all over the canvas like flowers on a landscape. Strategically placed, and there is hardly a letter without its poetic quotations, it plays a redeeming role by evoking colorful vistas out of the reverent spiritual scenery that suffuses the work.
Finally, this is not a mystery novel where you must reach the end before you can find out what really happened. Au contraire, this is a soul-searching, spiritual, historical, philosophical, multi-dimensional work that wrestles with a wide range of Eastern vs. Western cultural and historical differences, which beset our modern world.
Written apropos, in the formal, elegant language of the past, Letters is to be leisurely sipped rather than hurriedly gulped.
Bon appétit.
Prologue
I have taken it upon myself to publish these letters of a love story between two people who are most dear to me. These letters were never intended for publication because they are too personal to be shared. Nevertheless, my insistence on putting them into print is altruistic. I want the readers, who normally feed on fiction, to be able to peer into the unedited human souls of these tormented lovers and see what it feels like to be unable to un-love. I want to reveal truths about the fierce forces of love and faith as never hitherto revealed. Indeed, most writers write so that they may be published and widely read, which renders their writing cautious. John once
Only children speak freely.
As adults
If we were to call things as we see them
We would offend others
And invite persecution.
Hence, in order to survive
We have learned to pretend
And the larger our audience
The greater is our pretense.
This love story began at the American University of Beirut between two college sweethearts—Fatima, 18 and John, 22. Although they both grew up and went to school in Tripoli, Lebanon, they never met until 1968 when Fatima came to the AUB as a freshman and began volunteering at the coffee shop of the American University Hospital. John was a medical student at that time, and one day Fatima spilled a hot cup of Turkish coffee into his lap. That was how it all began…
They were separated in 1970 because John migrated to America and Fatima remained in Beirut. Apart, they each married and had children, but throughout a span of thirty years, years marred by personal and political turmoil that shook the East and West by their roots, they remained in contact. These lovers were not trying to write their story for posterity. They were merely trying to un-love one another by staying apart, but the harder they tried, the worse they failed, and the more of their souls they revealed in their letters.
Tariq Raci
(Beirut - Wednesday, April 5, 2006)
When I began writing Letters - A Love Story (published in hardcover as Epistole, which derives from Latin via Greek meaning letter), I found myself scattered and strewn like intercontinental clouds that go back and forth between East and West without claiming either pole as inception or destination. I had to deconstruct and reconstruct my mindset as I changed identities with each personal letter. Writing in the first person singular, the natural style of letter writing, I became aware that my soul was inhabited by so many other souls and that, like Alfred Lord Tennyson says in Ulysses, “I am a part of all that I have met.”
Hence, my advice to you, the reader, “Please take time for contemplation and don’t race through it as you would a thriller. Rather, read it as a series of letters that, among other matters, tell a love story. To be invited to peer into the secret souls of these two tormented lovers—a Western man and an Eastern woman—is a rare privilege that one seldom experiences in real life.”
Poetry plays a powerful role in character development and is metaphorically splashed all over the canvas like flowers on a landscape. Strategically placed, and there is hardly a letter without its poetic quotations, it plays a redeeming role by evoking colorful vistas out of the reverent spiritual scenery that suffuses the work.
Finally, this is not a mystery novel where you must reach the end before you can find out what really happened. Au contraire, this is a soul-searching, spiritual, historical, philosophical, multi-dimensional work that wrestles with a wide range of Eastern vs. Western cultural and historical differences, which beset our modern world.
Written apropos, in the formal, elegant language of the past, Letters is to be leisurely sipped rather than hurriedly gulped.
Bon appétit.
Prologue
I have taken it upon myself to publish these letters of a love story between two people who are most dear to me. These letters were never intended for publication because they are too personal to be shared. Nevertheless, my insistence on putting them into print is altruistic. I want the readers, who normally feed on fiction, to be able to peer into the unedited human souls of these tormented lovers and see what it feels like to be unable to un-love. I want to reveal truths about the fierce forces of love and faith as never hitherto revealed. Indeed, most writers write so that they may be published and widely read, which renders their writing cautious. John once
Only children speak freely.
As adults
If we were to call things as we see them
We would offend others
And invite persecution.
Hence, in order to survive
We have learned to pretend
And the larger our audience
The greater is our pretense.
This love story began at the American University of Beirut between two college sweethearts—Fatima, 18 and John, 22. Although they both grew up and went to school in Tripoli, Lebanon, they never met until 1968 when Fatima came to the AUB as a freshman and began volunteering at the coffee shop of the American University Hospital. John was a medical student at that time, and one day Fatima spilled a hot cup of Turkish coffee into his lap. That was how it all began…
They were separated in 1970 because John migrated to America and Fatima remained in Beirut. Apart, they each married and had children, but throughout a span of thirty years, years marred by personal and political turmoil that shook the East and West by their roots, they remained in contact. These lovers were not trying to write their story for posterity. They were merely trying to un-love one another by staying apart, but the harder they tried, the worse they failed, and the more of their souls they revealed in their letters.
Tariq Raci
(Beirut - Wednesday, April 5, 2006)
330 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 23, 2016
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