Photograph dating from 1920 showing four prominent members of the Pen League (from left to right): Nasib Arida, Gibran Khalil Gibran, Abd al-Masih Haddad, and Mikha'il Naimy. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons, free of rights/taken from The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran by Robin Waterfield)
In the hills of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn lie composer Leonard Bernstein, artist Samuel Morse, and novelist Paul Auster. Among the roughly 570,000 deceased resting there, one lesser-known grave marks a beginning: that of Antonio Bishallany.Born in 1827 in Salima, Mount Lebanon, he arrived to the United States via Boston in the fall of 1854 and died of tuberculosis two years later, at just 29. Legend has cast him as the first immigrant from the Middle East to the United States, even the first "Arab American."In reality, most available information about him comes from a thin evangelical biography published after his death: an edifying story of a young man who grew up in a modest Maronite family, questioned Catholic Church teachings early on, drew closer to Protestant missionaries, and was cast out from his home after this...
In the hills of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn lie composer Leonard Bernstein, artist Samuel Morse, and novelist Paul Auster. Among the roughly 570,000 deceased resting there, one lesser-known grave marks a beginning: that of Antonio Bishallany.Born in 1827 in Salima, Mount Lebanon, he arrived to the United States via Boston in the fall of 1854 and died of tuberculosis two years later, at just 29. Legend has cast him as the first immigrant from the Middle East to the United States, even the first "Arab American."In reality, most available information about him comes from a thin evangelical biography published after his death: an edifying story of a young man who grew up in a modest Maronite family, questioned Catholic Church teachings early on, drew closer to Protestant missionaries, and was cast out from his home after this...
Hacking Lebanese Politics #36: Lebanon and the abolition of the death penalty
