And the So, So we're starting on Indian time.

We're 30 minutes.

Now go on.

So we're starting on Indian time. We are 30 minutes late, but we are back with our esteemed

guest Usama Mathesi, who is a professor of history at Rice University.

And he's the first holder of the Arab American Educational

Foundation chair of Arab Studies at the same university. He's the publisher of multiple books.

We'll be talking a little bit about his most recent book, The Age of Coexistence,

the economical frame and the making of the modern Arab world, which was published in 2019.

He's also the author of Faith Misplaced,

which was published in 2010.

Artillery of Heaven. placed, which is published in 2010.

Artillery of Heaven, published in 2008.

And he's also the co-editor, or the author of the culture

of sectarianism, which is published in 2000, as well as the co-editor of

Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa, which is published in 2006.

So we're very excited to have you on today Osama.

Before we had a conversation, this would be the third time we've had this conversation.

But you were telling us about how you left Lebanon on a ship that was named the USS Fort Snowing.

Yeah, well it was great to be with you guys again and yes it is it's in 1984 my younger brother and my mother and I

were evacuated from Beirut during the Civil War on a ship and at the time I was a teenager. I didn't know very much

about this, you know, the significance of the name of the ship, but it was called the

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