I’m thrilled and honored to have my story, “The Levantines,” forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal's Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, featuring writers currently living in this region, writers from the region currently living abroad, and writers of Middle Eastern and North African heritage. That last category is where I come in—my paternal grandparents immigrated to the US after they married in 1921. My grandfather, Muneer Alwan was born in Damascus in 1889, and my grandmother, Fausya Zemberekci Alwan, was born in then-Constantinople in 1906. As third generation and culturally mixed, I see the stories of my grandparents’ generation, the second generation of my parents, and my own, as a kind of larger story of what it feels like to carry that past history, even as it’s still informing identity. “The Levantines,” is the title story of my in-progress story collection. Nimrod’s special issue appears this spring.
Zemberekci family photographed in then-Constantinople, about 1919. My grandmother, at age 13, is pictured standing third from left.