by Emil Rem | Apr 9, 2024 | Analects
My most memorable ending of a book is from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje: While recuperating in Italy, on the aftermath of World War II, a couple meet and fall in love. The man returns to his native India, the woman to Canada. At the end of the book, Kirpal...
by Emil Rem | Apr 9, 2024 | Analects
On a sunny afternoon in early October 1973, my BOAC plane landed gently on to the tarmac of Beirut Airport. I had just turned 18, finished grammar school and was about to spend the next three months travelling through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Having only pocket...
by Emil Rem | Apr 9, 2024 | Analects
The Galeries Lafayette in Paris is one of the most beautiful women’s fashion houses in the city. A seven-storey building, it’s a layer cake of open galleries, one placed upon the other, topped with a stained-glass dome. It was completed in 1912 in the Art Nouveau...
by Emil Rem | Apr 9, 2024 | Analects
It was past 11 p.m. and I was attempting to meet an accounting deadline for the following morning. Christopher, my student son came storming into the room, “Pops, get to bed. You never stay up past 10 p.m. At your age you’ll have a heart attack.” For once, I listened...
by Emil Rem | Apr 9, 2024 | Analects
My parents named me Emil Kassamali Salehmohamed Remtulla. In our small Muslim town, my middle names were that of my father and that of my grandfather, so everyone within my community knew which family I came from. Emil was given to me to remember a German who had...
