Mika (Credit: Sacha Cohen)
Interview by Stéphanie Khouri for the podcast "L'Orient-La Nuit," recorded in Paris.You left Beirut with you parents in 1983 when you were a year and a half. What remains for you of Lebanon?I have always held on to the life my parents were forced to abandon. I can't tell you how much my parents talk about Lebanon, all their lives. They speak of their departure with an extremely deep and ever-present sadness. But also about their childhood in Beirut, their studies at AUB, their teenage years, their journeys through Syria, that cultural richness. They talk about it all the time.Me, I retain nothing from that departure. We were evacuated on a U.S. Navy ship to Cyprus, and that's where everything changed. We were supposed to go to New York, but my mother refused: if it's not Lebanon, we stay in Europe. She wanted...
Interview by Stéphanie Khouri for the podcast "L'Orient-La Nuit," recorded in Paris.You left Beirut with you parents in 1983 when you were a year and a half. What remains for you of Lebanon?I have always held on to the life my parents were forced to abandon. I can't tell you how much my parents talk about Lebanon, all their lives. They speak of their departure with an extremely deep and ever-present sadness. But also about their childhood in Beirut, their studies at AUB, their teenage years, their journeys through Syria, that cultural richness. They talk about it all the time.Me, I retain nothing from that departure. We were evacuated on a U.S. Navy ship to Cyprus, and that's where everything changed. We were supposed to go to New York, but my mother refused: if it's not Lebanon, we stay in Europe. She wanted...
