ESSAY 3 REG 1320

In the :J{ame of
IDENTITY
Viofence and the Neecf’to Be�

AMIN MAAL OUF
Transfa.tecC from tfie French. 6y Bar6ara Bray

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORl, England

Penguin Books Australia ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Onrario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi -110 017, India
Penguin Books (N.Z.) ltd, Cnr Ro,sedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty ) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Srrand, London WC2R ORl, England

First published in the United States of America by Arcade Publishing, Inc. 2000
Reprinted by arrangement with Arcade Publishing, Inc.

Published in Penguin Books 2003

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1996
English translation © Barbara Bray, 2000

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED
THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Maalouf, Amin.
[Identites meurtrieres. English]

In the name of identity: violence and the need to belong / Amin Maalouf;
translated from the French by Barbara Bray. tst North American ed.

p. cm.
ISBN. 1-55970-593-0 (hc.)

ISBN 0 14 20.0257 7 (pbk.)
1. Group identity. I. Tide.

HM753 .M3313 2001
302.4 dc21 200 1 (}24929

Printed in the United States of America
Designed by API

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other

than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

for Andree
for Ruchdi
Jor Tarek
for Ziad

In the !ft/.ame of
IDENTITY

Introduction

How MANY TiMES, since I left Lebanon in 1976 to live in France, have p eople asked me, with the best intentions
in the �or1d, whether I felt “more French” or “more
Lebanese”? And I always give the same answer: “B oth!” I say
that not in the interests of fairness or balance, but b e cause any
other answer would be a lie. What makes me myself rathe r
than anyone else i s t h e very fact that I a m p o ised b e tween two
countries , two o r three languages and several cultural tradi­
tions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist
more authentically if I cut off a p art of myself?

To those who ask the question, I patiently explain that I
was b or n in Lebanon and lived there until I was 27; that Ara­
bic is my mother tongue; that it was in Arabic translation that
I first read Dumas and Dickens and Gulliver� Travels; and that
it was in my native village, the village of my ancestors, that I
experienced the pleasures of childhood and heard some of
the stories that were later to insp ire my novels. How c o uld I

I N T H E N A M E O F I D E N T I T Y

fo rget all that? How could I cast it aside ? On the o ther hand,
I have li ved fo r 2 2 years o n the soil of France; I drink her
wate r and wine; every day my hands touch her ancient
stones ; I write my b ooks in her language ; neve r again will she
be a foreign country to me.

So am I half French and half Leba nese? Of course not.
Identity can’t b e compartmentalis ed. You can’t divide it up
into halves or thirds or any �ther separate segme nts . I haven ‘t
go t seve ral identities: I ‘ve got j ust one, made up of many
c o mponents in a mixture that is unique to me, j ust as other
people ‘s identity is unique to them as individuals .

Someti mes , after I ‘ve been gi ving a detailed account of
exactly why I lay claim to all my affiliations, someone comes
and pats me on the sho ulder and says “Of course, of
course but what do you really feel, deep down inside?”

For a long time I found this oft-repeated questi on amus­
ing, but it no longer makes me smile. It seems to reflect a
view of humanity which, though it is widespread, is also in
my opinion dange rous. It presupposes that ” deep down
inside ” everyone there is j ust one affiliation that really mat­
ters, a kind of “fundame ntal tru th ” about each individual , an
” essence ” determined once and for all at birth, never to
change thereafter. As if the rest; all the rest a p erson’s
whole j o urney through time as a free agent; the beliefs he
acquires in the c ourse