The story behind Oriente History — the field work, the languages, the obsessions, and the intellectual journey that built this project from Beirut to the page.
We are producing Middle East specialists who have never read a line in Arabic. This is not a minor critique — it is a structural one. A field epistemology manifesto.
It was July 2006. I was on the 13th floor of a building in Beirut when a warhead flew past my bedroom window. Not in a movie. Not in a TV series. In real life — my real life. This is the experience that created Oriente History, and why I have dedicated my life to studying the Middle East.
