São Paulo – The Lebanese immigration in Brazil will welcome in February a new narrative. At the end of the next month, the professor of Contemporary History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Murilo Sebe Bon Meihy, will make the official launch of “Os Libaneses” (The Lebanese, in a literal translation), a book in which he attempts to portray the Lebanese culture through the memories of the family’s stories, besides the tastes, habits and curiosities of the Arab country.
Meihy said to ANBA that he wrote the book after receiving an invitation by publishing company Editora Contexto for the collection “Povos e Civilizações” (Peoples and Civilizations, in a literal translation), which includes, among others, the titles “Os Chineses” (The Chinese), “Os Argentinos” (The Argentinians), “Os Iranianos” (The Iranians) and “Os Espanhóis” (The Spanish).
“There are a lot of researches, books about the Lebanese immigration to Brazil. There are papers about the topic. My idea was to show history through a less academic and more emotional viewpoint”, he said. “Three of the chapters focus on the historical context, and the others to culture, political formation and memories”, he added.
Of Lebanese descent, Meihy was born in Taubaté, a town 138 km from São Paulo, and was raised in Guaratinguetá, a nearby town at Vale do Paraíba. In the book’s first chapter, “Brimos, batrícios and habibs: quem são os lebaneses?”, the author recalls his family’s fabrics store and the one from their main competitors in the town: a Syrian family. The tastes of the typical dishes, words in Arabic and the habits of his parents portray, in fact, the Lebanese culture.
These traditions, according to Meihy, made it to present day, influenced the Brazilian culture and today are the topic of intense curiosity in society. “Some phenomena make up the interest in the Middle East. One of them is the geopolitics and the turbulent regional environment, which attracts the curiosity, especially students. Another one is the way that the Lebanese culture was absorbed in the 20th century. Not only through its influence in the Portuguese language, cuisine, but also in the way of doing business and managing a business”, he says.
Besides this part of Lebanese culture, other minutiae and habits of the day-to-day of the Arab country appear in the pages of the book. “Lebanon is the heaven of plastic surgery”, “Want to meet a Lebanese? Ask his car’s brand” and “In Lebanon, everything is politics” (all literal translations) are some of the excerpts that take the reader to the details of this culture. The official launching is scheduled to February 25th at Livraria da Travessa, Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro.
Os Libaneses (The Lebanese)
Murilo Sebe Bon Meihy
192 pages, BRL 45 (USD 10.98)
ISBN: 978857244932-8
Information: http://editoracontexto.com.br/lancamentos/os-libaneses.html
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
