The proverbs of my mother

Throughout its long history, Lebanon has experienced successive wars that scattered generations of youth across the world. The Lebanese people take in their luggage their social and family habits, their political convictions and religious beliefs, their culinary traditions and metaphorical expressions. In their quest for a new life and a successful insertion, their descendants end up forgetting all this heritage for the host country in which they chose to live and where they leave first their mother tongue to adopt that of the host country.

Translating the Lebanese proverbs and recalling their history allow to compensate for this gap among the Lebanese people of the diaspora. Proverbs, which are the evidence of a several centuries old culture and the guardians of the ancestors' wisdom, represent the collective memory of the people and the cultural reference of each one of them. They should not be shelved. This book intends to pass this knowledge on to the new generation who, hopefully, will realize how rich its ancestral heritage is and appreciate its true worth.

The human culture, which is acquisition, accumulation and transmission of collective knowledge and mother of popular wisdom, allows everyone to become the possessor of this precious treasure and its faithful transmitter.