I grew up in northern New Jersey, in a first-generation Lebanese-American home. In 1975, at the beginning of a civil war that lasted 15 years, my parents left Beirut. They traveled first to Athens, Greece, where I was born, then immigrated to the U.S. We arrived in New Jersey in 1979. I was three.

I spend a lot of time now thinking about our early years in America—wondering if I can trust my memory or not. Ultimately, I side with Joan Didion: "Not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters.” As a fiction writer, my job is to invent narratives. Often, I like to begin with “what merely might have happened.”

Some of my short stories have nothing to do with being Lebanese. Some take place in the Middle East, and others occur in some vague East Coast city. My novel-in-progress is about a Lebanese-American photographer whose parents have repatriated to Lebanon. It’s set in Boston, New Jersey, and Beirut.