My father’s eldest sister has always served in my mind as a potential family encyclopedia.

“Potential” because I never had the opportunity to spend much time with her. She had come and visited us in Beirut once in the mid 1970s – I vaguely remember.

My grandmother, with whom I spent much of my childhood, would often mention Auntie M. under a nostalgic haze, perhaps regret, that her first-born was so far away.