To Mai Ghoussoub

What has she achieved in her voluntary exile, and what would have become of her if she had stayed?
Would she have learnt to forgive, like Umm Ali, or harboured revenge, like Leila's grandmother?
And who was Said? A gentle grocery boy or a blood-thirsty torturer who terrorised entire neighbourhoods?
[...]
Mai Ghoussoub reminds us that Beirut is everywhere.

Lebanese writer, publisher and artist Mai Ghoussoub died in London on Sunday. Born and brought up in Beirut, Ghoussoub studied French literature at the Lebanese University and at the American University of Beirut. She moved to Paris during the Lebanese civil war and finally settled in London in 1979 where she later studied sculpture at Morley College.

In London she established the Saqi Books publishing house, which has released some of the most interesting and brilliant books about contemporary Lebanon. Most of these works cover unconventional topics such as social change and urban transformation (Transit: Beirut: New Writings and Images, edited by Malu Halasa and Roseanne Khalaf), culture and society, politics (Hizbullah. The Story from Within, written by Na'im Qassem, the deputy secretary-general of Hezbollah), sexuality and gender issues.

Ghoussoub herself was the author of Leaving Beirut: Women and the Wars Within and the co-editor (with Emma Sinclair-Webb) of Imagined Masculinities. Male Identity and Culture in the Modern Middle East. This excellent book explores how the notion of maleness is constructed and communicated in Middle Eastern societies and how males are "acting, reacting and adapting" to a changing pattern of images and symbols of virility and masculine responsibility. The part on Islamic sexual politics and that on male aggressivity and attitudes to weaponry is a must-read.