Chapters 11-12: Khairalla's Oud, Citadels Summary and Analysis

December arrives in Marjayoun. Rumors of more civil war abound, and the Lebanese government delays picking a president for the seventh time. A General Francois al Hajj is assassinated. Shadid describes how "To the culprits, shrouded in anonymity, killing was part of the country's political calculus, the cheapest way to reach the audience" (Page 143).

Shadid moves his ancestral narrative to the other side of his paternal grandparents during a similar time of unrest, recounting how his widowed great-grandmother, Shawaqa Shadid, sent three of her children to America in 1911 in order to avoid being drafted: Miqbal, Abdullah (Shadid's grandfather), and their sister Adeeba. They traveled on the ship "Latso" to Boston. At the end of WWI, when the Bedouins raid Marjayoun, Shawaqa and the rest of her children (Najiba, Nabeeha, and Hana) went to...