Mai Ghoussoub on language and its directions

When you read in opposite directions you’re not impermeable to other readings… It was in my Lycee Francais de Beirut that the Crusaders were either saints or cruel colonisers, depending on whether the textbooks were in French, from left to right, or in Arabic, from right to left. These opposite but coexistent readings warned me that truth can be perceived differently according to one’s location in terms of history, geography and, most importantly, aspiration.

From ‘Beirut: a visible city on the road’, in Mai Ghoussoub: selected writings, Saqi 2008.