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“Every day of indulgence for war is one day too many for the survival of all,” wrote Dominique Eddé on September 26, 2024, in a column titled “Benyamin Netanyahu has taken time hostage.” From Beirut, where she lives, the Lebanese novelist and essayist has continued, notably through columns in Le Monde, to throw bottles of alarm into a sea of indifference to the tragic fate of Gaza, while Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine was about to extend to war crimes against civilians in Lebanon. “Why is it so dark?” » It was therefore under the banner of this title of one of his novels, published by Seuil in 1999, that the appointment was made for this second issue of "L'échappée" with this singular voice, as free as it is unruly, attached to the quest for a universal that is not the annihilation of differences, nuances and pluralities. It was a question of evoking Palestine as well as Lebanon, the Arab world as well as the world in general. Between despair and, despite everything, hope... Because, a week before the date of December 15 set for the recording in the walls of the Arab World Institute in Paris, when a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon reopened the airspace and allowed flights to France, the happy Syrian surprise intervened, this fall of one of the worst regimes in the region, the Assad dictatorship, to which Lebanon was also prey. At the end of the interview, Dominique Eddé describes the joy, upon hearing this news, of the Syrian refugees she supports in a Beirut weaving workshop. But she herself remains cautious, haunted for so many years by "the cohabitation of beauty and horror". "The joy of understanding keeps you alive. It is more powerful than the joy of being right": throughout this interview, Dominique Eddé illustrates this conviction that has always driven her, both in her constant commitments to the emancipation of the populations of the Arab world and in her literary work, which alternates between novels and essays. It is a question, she says again, of always seeking to "build bridges over powers". "Europe has behaved very badly", she also confides, soberly emphasizing how much "Palestine has been abandoned by everyone". At the end of her novel Kamal Jann (Albin Michel, 2012), whose Syrian dictatorship is the theater in a metaphor for the monstrosities that our species can engender, Dominique Eddé recalls that our word "masquerade" comes from Arabic. And it is then that she has one of her characters say: "The West, is it not the masquerade minus the conscience that it is one?" Find all the issues of "L'échappée" on Mediapart: https://www.mediapart.fr/studio/video... 🎁 Offer Mediapart to your loved ones. Discover our gift subscription offers: 3 months, 6 months and 1 year without automatic renewal ➡️ https://abo.mediapart.fr/cadeau?utm_s... 🏆 Mediapart Awards 2024: they are back, and this year they are getting closer to the Oscars. Abuse, lies, undue privileges: some of our elected officials and our leaders have outdone themselves in their actions and their communication to find themselves at the top of the bill. Reward them by voting until January 10 ➡️ https://l.mediapart.fr/awards Mediapart has only one financial resource: the money from its subscriptions. No billionaire shareholder, no ads, no state subsidies, no money paid by Google, Amazon, Facebook… ➡️ To help us enrich our video production, support us by subscribing from 1 euro: https://abo.mediapart.fr/abonnement/d... ➡️ If you are already a subscriber or would like to support us in another way, you have another way to act, the donation: https://donorbox.org/mediapart?defaul... ➡️ Subscribe to our newsletters! https://info.mediapart.fr/renderers/p...