Water on fire: A memoir of war, by Tarek El-Ariss

 

This is a deeply moving memoir by Dartmouth University professor of Middle Eastern studies Tarek El-Ariss. Growing up in war-torn Lebanon during its fifteen-year-long civil war (1975-1990), El-Ariss and his family suffered through constant bombardment and other dangers while trying to survive on a daily basis. In spite of the war, he and his family went to the beach, attended school, and took vacations in England, with the war a constant presence around them. He spent some time in the Côte d’Ivoire to avoid being conscripted, returned to Beirut to attend college at the American University of Beirut, and ultimately moved to the United States to complete his graduate education. Occasionally El-Ariss digresses to provide brief history lessons on Lebanon and Syria, helping provide context for the events in his own life. El-Ariss tells his story in a roughly chronological fashion, but intersperses it with episodes from his adult life, and the entire memoir is framed around his recognition as an adult that he needed therapy to address the trauma of growing up surrounded by violence. VERDICT This important memoir documents the impact for a child growing up during the Lebanese Civil War.

This review was previously published in Library Journal here.