Abstract:
On reading Rachid EI-Daif's semiautobiographical novel 'Azizi al-Sayyid Kawahata (Dear Mr. Kawabata, 1995), I was struck by an unusual reference to the narrator's grandmother who, owing to extreme poverty, had to leave her husband and children in order to earn a living in America. She spent ten years there before finally returning to Lebanon with enough money that would allow her daughter to have a decent marriage.
