by Emile Habiby

Emile Habiby (also spelled Imil Habibi) belonged to a Christian Arab family that traces its origins to the town of Shafa Amr in northern Palestine. Habiby himself was born August 29, 1921, in Haifa, a central coastal city in Palestine. He attended elementary school in Haifa and secondary school in Acre, a city across the bay. Habiby’s early maturity was scarred by tragedy; the young woman whom he hoped to marry was among the 91 British, Arab, and Jewish victims killed in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, when the extremist Zionist group Irgun Tsevai Leumi bombed the King David Hotel, part of which was being used as British governmental and military offices. Habiby himself was in the hotel lobby at the time, waiting for his sweetheart to take a lunch break from her secretarial duties...