To my mother and father in memoriam.
My mother, Jannette, only went to a religious school, that's why she could still manage to teach me Arabic alphabet when I was only four. My dad, Al Houssein, was a small building contractor who built houses for only half of the money he deserved. I miss them so much. The following elegy, even if it is far from being what one might call a masterpiece, is not, to my mind, what one would readily call a technical loss (which means I didn't offer them anything I could lay my hands on).