In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

In

the :J{ame

of

IDENTITY Viofence and the Neecf'to Be�

AMIN MAALOUF Transfa.tecCfrom tfie French. 6y Bar6ara Bray

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORl, England Penguin Books Australia ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia Penguin Books Canada ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Onrario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi -110 017, India Penguin Books (N.Z.) ltd, Cnr Ro,sedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty ) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Srrand, London WC2R ORl, England

First published in the United States of America by Arcade Publishing, Inc.

2000

Reprinted by arrangement with Arcade Publishing, Inc. Published in Penguin Books

3 Copyright

5

7

9

10

8

6

2003 4

2

© Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1996 © Barbara Bray, 2000

English translation

All rights reserved THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Maalouf, Amin. [Identites meurtrieres. English] In the name of identity: violence and the need to belong / Amin Maalouf; translated from the French by Barbara Bray. p.

tst North American ed.

cm.

ISBN. 1-55970-593-0 (hc.) 0 14 20.0257 7 (pbk.) 1. Group identity. I. Tide. HM753 .M3313 2001 2001 (}24929 302.4 dc21 ISBN

Printed in the United States of America Designed by API Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

for Andree for Ruchdi JorTarek

for Ziad

In

the !ft/.ame

of

IDENTITY

Introduction

ow H

MANY

TiMES,

since

I

left Lebanon in 1976 to live in

France, have p eople asked me, with the best intentions

in the

�or1d,

whether I felt "more French" or "more

Lebanese"? And I always g iv e the same answer: "Both!" I say

that not in the interests of fairness or balance, but because any other answer would be a lie. What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries , two o r three languages and several cultural tradi­

tions. It is precisely this that defines my identity Would I exist .

more authentically if I cut off a part of myself? To those who ask the question,

I

patiently explain that I

was b orn in Lebanon and lived there until I was 27; that Ara­

bic is my mother tongue; that it was in Arabic translation that

I

first read Dumas and Di ck ens and Gulliver� Travels; and that

it was in my native village, the village of my ancestors, that I

experienced th e pleasures of chil dhood and heard some of the stories that were later to insp ire my novels. How could

I

I N T H E N A M E O F IDE N T I TY

fo rget all that? How could I cast it aside? On the other hand, I have lived for 22 years on the soil of France; I drink her water and wine; every day my hands touch her ancient stones; I write my books in her language; neve r again will she be a foreign country to me. So am I half French and half Lebanese? Of course not. Identity can't be compartmentalised. You can't divide it up into halves or thirds or any �ther separate segments. I haven't got seve ral identities: I've got j ust one, made up of many components in a mixture that is unique to me, j ust as other people's identity is unique to them as individuals. Sometimes, after I've been giving a detailed account of exactly why I lay claim to all my affiliations, someone comes and pats me on the shoulder and says "Of course, of course but what do you really feel, deep down inside?" For a long time I found this oft-repeated question amus­ ing, but it no longer makes me smile. It seems to reflect a view of humanity which, though it is widespread, is also in my opinion dangerous. It presupposes that " deep down inside" everyone there is j ust one affiliation that really mat­ ters, a kind of "fundamental truth" about each individual, an " essence" determined once and for all at birth, never to change thereafter. As if the rest; all the rest a person's whole journey through time as a free agent; the beliefs he acquires in the course