Maalouf, A (2000) On Identity, trans. B Bray, The Harvill Press, London

"What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, tow or three languages and several culutral traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if i cut off a part of myself" (Malouf 2000)

"So am I half French and half Lebanese? Of course not. Identity can't be compartmentalised. You can"t divide it up into halves or thirds or any other separate segments. I haven't got several identities: I've got just one, made up of many components combined together in a mixtute that is unique to every individual." (Malouf 2000)

"Every one of my allegiances links tme to a large number of people. But the more ties I have the rarer and more particular my own identity becomes." (Malouf 2000)

"I scour my memory to find as many ingredients of my identity as I can. I then assemble and arrange them. I don't deny any of them."

+ I too shouldn't deny the other multifaceted parts of my identity: British parents, Mother with Polish grandparents who spoke Yiddish, father with Iranian parents from Mashad and Tehran, an artist/filmmaker, a non-practiciing irreligious Jew, etc.

+ I think this etc. or ... is an interesting linguistic device. It suggests becoming, evolving, that something is never quite finished.

"For it is often the way we look at other people that imprisons them within their own narrowest allegiances. And it is also the way we look at them that may set them free." (Malouf 2000)

+ I'm as much interested in a research trip to Iran as I am in simply finding Iran/Jews/Polish in my vicinity. Making a sort of kalidescopic impression of this multifaceted lineage. What if I were to express the extremes and banalities of all my identifiers in a chaotic flow? In a way that Arthur Jafa created Love is the Message The Message is Death to condense the broad range of black experience in the USA.

"The apprenticeship starts very soon, in early childhood. Deliberately or otherwise, those around him mould him, shape him, instil into him family beliefs, rituals, attitudes and conventions, together of course with his native lanaguage and also certain fears, aspirations, prejudices and grudges, not forgetting various feelings of affiliation and non-affiliation, belonging and not belonging."

"the key word is reciprocity. If I try to belong to my country of adoption, if i now regard it as my own country and consider it part of me and myself part of it, and if I act accordingly, then I have the right to criticise every aspect of it."