I never understood why my father made the choices he made, but learning about the earliest phases of his life, on the streets of Beirut, as a child from a poor Shiite Muslim family from southern Lebanon, provided some answers. He spent his whole life running toward something and away from something else, whether it was the family he was born to or the one he spawned and continuously spurned. Poverty, war, and the quest to make something of himself molded him, and at the same time, pulled him far from his loved ones. He was always gone, but this time, gone for good.

XREF: Connects to the reader's interest in how formative environments determine adult behavior patterns.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 526