Bourne without identity: Syrian activist finds prestige without passport

“In all my 50 years, I have never held a passport. Other than visiting Lebanon, I’d never left Syria when, in the fall of 2004, I was barred from leaving the country. I tried many times afterward to get a passport, but to no avail.”
The words are by Syrian public intellectual, prolific writer/author and political activist Yassin al-Haj Saleh. They appeared in an essay translated from Arabic for The New York Times and published on April 11, 2011.

In my last blog post I focused on aspects of being in Los Angeles that particularly irked me. Little did I know, it gets worse. Two items of note...

I debated on whether to share this very candid and raw experience that I had earlier this week on Tuesday. Yet, so many thousands of you have been with me on my journey with battling cancer and still coping with my grief over Abdullah’s death, that it just seems fair and fitting. But be prepared. I’m going to expose innermost emotions and fears. I am doing this in the hopes that it will make me stronger.

In the early 60′s, during the cold war and the apex of Pan Arabism, a group of students and researchers enters the race to space and create the Lebanese Rocket Society. Sometimes, and specially nowadays, dreams can overtake a tormented history…See video (upper left)