Etel Says it Well

Kathleen Weaver : You also write that the truest love is to love the Stranger in opposition to your own brother.

Etel Adnan : That's it. There is a big misunderstanding in the 20th century. You have so many liberation movements that don't understand each other. Each one loves his own kind, and they don't work together. Because the whole of politics is really a dialectical relation between what you call you and the other. You see, to love your own kind is a very natural thing. It's even dangerous because it can get tribal. Because liking your own kind can give you real strength, and that make syou even more capable of aggressivity against whoever you consider the other. In this case, Lebanese Christians against the Palestinians. It could be the Americans loving themselves or the Jews or the Arabs. But it is when the one loves the other which is the difficult thing. This is the marriage. It is to get out of your boundaries. The tension is a good thing because it makes for the possibility of what I call marriage, like the coming to terms with the impossible...

*From: The Non-Worldly World: A Conversation with Etel Adnan by Kathleen Weaver. Poetry Flash, May 1986 (no. 158).