Rabih Alameddine Quotes
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No one needs to be reminded of racism in soccer: the xenophobia, the nativism and, yes, nationalism.
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A phoenix, Beirut seems to always pull itself out its ashes, reinvents itself, has been conquered numerous times in its 7,000-year history, yet it survives by both becoming whatever its conquerors wished it to be and retaining its idiosyncratic persona.
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There are over 1 million refugees in Lebanon, a country of 4 million people. How do we solve that? I have no idea. What's going on, I really don't know.
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Nobody ever calls me a soccer-playing writer, even though I play soccer and it's part of who I am.
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Close friends consider me a literary snob.
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In Lebanon, there are completely different opinions and values in one country in terms of religion, modernity, tradition, East and West - which allows for a kind of intellectual development not available anywhere else.
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A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance - this peak of ecstasy.
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I can make up stories with the best of them. I've been telling stories since I was a little kid.
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If I were to pray in Arabic, I'd pray to Allah. If I were to pray in English, I'd pray to God.
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The relationship between France and its 'foreign' players - blacks and North African Arabs - has always been troubled, particularly with Algerians.
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For me, soccer was a dance.
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I loved problems on paper, and I was good at math, but I was a mechanical engineer, and I never understood - or cared to - how a car worked.
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Sex, like art, can unsettle a soul, can grind a heart in a mortar. Sex, like literature, can sneak the other within one's wall, even if only for a moment, a moment before one immures oneself again.
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If you want to know whether soccer is big in America, pick a weekend, go to any park in the land, and pay attention. We're there. We've always been.
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In 1982, Algeria made their first appearance at the World Cup. I believe it was the first Arab country to do so.
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I think I'm being conservative when I say there are more people playing soccer in the United States than in 90% of the world's other countries, probably 95%.
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I allegedly am an outsider writer, so I write from the perspective of somebody who doesn't completely fit in. But at the same time, I can state the fact that I don't know of any good writer who is not an outsider writer.
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As teenagers, a lot of us just did not want much to do with Arabic culture - we looked to the West.
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The reasons why a player is better on one club than on another are many. I certainly am not an expert and can't explain.
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English has always had a special fondness for other European languages, a neighborly soft spot - perhaps because Britain has been invaded by speakers of those languages from the onset of its recorded history.
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'Harat' is actually - it's a Lebanese dialect word. It comes from 'the mapmaker,' somebody who makes a map. And it basically means somebody who tells fibs or exaggerate tales a little bit.
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I know many sports fans that don't enjoy soccer. The argument is that there's no action, not enough of it.
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My father and I rarely saw eye to eye when I was growing up. We saw the world differently. It was only when we were both adults that we were able to share spectacles. However, football, and particularly the World Cup, was when we, enemy combatants, could traverse trenches and be together.
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In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn't fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke.