It's Sunday, October 20th. A few days ago a friend back in the States wrote to me saying,

hey, you really need to get in touch with my friend, Dr. Edward Alam.

He's Lebanese American, a professor of philosophy and theology at Notre Dame University

in the hills above Beirut. So I wrote to Dr. Alam and he said, sure, come by my house and

we'll talk. I went over and it turns out, amazing coincidence, we both grew up in Salt Lake City, but he's lived

in Lebanon for nearly three decades.

Dr. Alam's wife, Chinan, an excellent cook, prepared a traditional Lebanese dinner.

Afterwards, we sat down in their living room for this interview.

You know, people I've been talking to one thing that's almost common across the board is that everybody wants to leave they all want to

get out of here but it seems like you don't is that right you

You don't want to get out of here. No, no, no, no. I'm Lebanese descent and my grandfather left Lebanon in 1920 and my wife is

Lebanese and I left America in 19 with my family in 1996 and I consider this now my home.

Why do you prefer here over the United States?

I feel there's I feel that there's a culture here that I can identify and identify with.

So I mean that I can identify a specific culture that I can't really identify in the

United States because well as you, the United States is just a collection of so many different

cultures. And I'm not quite sure if the American experiment is working in terms of, you know, cultivating a culture

that everyone can sort of identify with. In fact, I think it's moving in the opposite direction now because there's so much division.

You're talking about the United States, but I would say that Lebanon, from what I've heard, has that same problem, only worse.

Yeah, well, there is division here, but I think the division is political and I think it's, well, let me put it this way. If you take the long view of Lebanon, not just the short view.

The short view is really from 1975 when the war started started the Civil War.

That's where you really get these deep divisions

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