'I've fallen in love, but it's doomed from the start. He's too handsome, too straight'

From my birth until I was six, I grew up in Beirut to the sounds of bombs, machine guns and adult conversations in underground shelters. At that time, this is what Lebanon meant: a country you have to leave, whether you want to (my father wants to) or not (my mother doesn't). From six to eight, we lived in Zahle, a sort of waiting room sheltered behind multiple checkpoints, with Syria as our only escape route. When I turned eight, my parents gathered up their things and their son and headed to Quebec.What an adventure! Quebec is big, magical, a great place to live. That's what my aunt, who was already there, told me in the tapes she would record and send to Lebanon so I could hear her voice, despite the distance between us. But when we arrived, nothing was as magical as I’d imagined. The highways, the concrete, the urban...