Q: The Arab Audience likes to associate artists with a political party or ideology that has to be known. Do you find that a problem and do you feel that a writer has to be aligned with a specific party.

EA: Poets are like any other thinking people. They are entitled to their ideologies if they want to be Marxist or not, that is really legitimate, of course it depends on the kind of poetry they are writing, or what they are involved in, if their ideology comes into their writing or not. Personally, I believe in, I wish that Arab Societies would be open societies, we should not be afraid of openness, why are we? Our governments are always afraid of thinking, its disastrous we should have open societies where people like you and me sit and discuss things and that would renew our society and make it healthier and more interesting. You can not have a creative society without the clash of opinions as long as they don't fight with guns. It is healthy and good to disagree and discuss.

Q: In your novel Sitt Marie Rose you portrayed the idea that women were able to deal with the Palestinian and Lebanese crisis better than men, if not like them. Does gender politics take a part in your discourse?

EA: Up to now, because women were not sucked into active political life they remained more outside the political system, and maybe in and of itself that is not good, but that gave them a freedom of vision, of sight. See men are expected, in our societies and practically all over the world, society expects certain roles for men and women. From men society expects that they be courageous and during times of war to fight, and some men don't like to fight, but they will be called cowards. That isn't fair, but that’s the situation, so men have pressures to behave in a certain way and women have other pressures, but they don't have the pressure to join war and to agree with war which makes them sensitive to the bad side of war. See men think war is a game they are obliged to it, they are pushed to they are drafted. They have to they have no choice they have to think war is okay. How can you go to war and put your live on the line if you think you are wrong Women don't have to do that traditionally, some women do, but they are not obliged to, so they are more sensitive to the disasters of war. We see in Greek Tragedy the women of Troy were the ones who cried although men suffer from war, when they come home injured, but he is not supposed to complain, because society has that image of him. And this is hard on men, whereas women have more distance with that situation and they can see on a larger scale what happens when war destroys the home or the cities.

Q: To go back to the role of women yesterday in your reading you were talking about when Fawaz Tarabulsi was asking you to write a paper about feminism in the Arab world and you were making fun about that point in terms of how broad that topic is. In your book the main voice of the author is not that of a woman or a man, but "we," "you" in general. Are you trying to reach out and not accept your role as an author as a woman whereas in your book you are speaking as a Man or a Woman?

EA: You are right. I am aware of that, because you see when you think you do not say, "I am a man writing and thinking." You just think and write and it is the same thing for a woman. Also I didn’t want the book to be a biography, because I am interested in an abstract problems.