“A candid depiction of death, June Rain is one of the most powerful novels on Lebanon. It is rich, complex, beautifully written and more importantly, beautifully translated by Paula Haydar. This work is outstanding and will continue to remain relevant.”

Prison is prolonged in life. I was released in 1994 and yet last night I woke up and thought I was still in prison.

“With a grimy towel, another troll is making a show of wiping your windscreen so you’d have to hand over some coins while the traffic stalls. You blow your horn preemptively to tell him you’re not interested. And, as he spits on the tyre, shuffling menacingly before he moves on, you suddenly see how little ‘revolution’ has affected the ugliness that while not necessarily brought about, was definitely uncovered by Sadat.

You see it in the pollution and the garbage, the pointless and hopeless rush, the hawk- and leech-like behaviour of peddlers, the impossibly inconsiderate attitude of drivers to one another, the chaos, the deafening microphones playing bad shaabi and Quran, the ultimate paralysis of motion.

It’s ugliness that Mubarak – busy managing terrorists, then hogging the yield of slow privatisation à la crony capitalism – made no effort to control. But had he done, would it have made much difference?”

Beyond the thrill of the play and Noor Theater’s wonderful production, I was equally impressed by how several quality institutions had come together to offer the public this reading and the illuminating discussion that followed. The Martin Segal Theater Center, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, hosted the event, under the able leadership of executive director Frank Hentschker. The English translation of the play and its first production in Beirut a few months ago largely reflected the work of two professors at the American University of Beirut – Robert Myers and Sahara Assad – along with Nada Saab at the Lebanese American University.