A Quote by Maysoon Zayid

I spent my summers in a war zone because my parents were afraid that if we didn't go back to Palestine every single summer, we'd grow up to be Madonna. — © Maysoon Zayid
I spent my summers in a war zone because my parents were afraid that if we didn't go back to Palestine every single summer, we'd grow up to be Madonna.
Summer was here again. Summer, summer, summer. I loved and hated summers. Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
My parents were divorced when I was three, and both my father and mother moved back into the homes of their parents. I spent the school year with my mother, and the summers with my dad.
I grew up with parents who were English professors at Wichita State University, and we were more liberal-minded as a family than most of the people I hung out with in Wichita. During summers, we went off to Telluride, Colorado, where I've returned every summer since I was born.
I feel like the luckiest child in the world because I got to grow up in Ireland. In summer is when you really grow up. During the year, I would go back to the States, and all year long really couldn't wait to get back to Ardmore.
Growing up, I spent summers with my grandparents in a small seaside town in Croatia. It's the most beautiful place on the planet. I still go back every year. It reminds me of what's important in life.
Out there, in the world, all the walls were covered with graffiti: "Yids, go back to Palestine," so we came back to Palestine, and now the worldatlarge shouts at us: "Yids, get out of Palestine."
Summers are the best. And I figured summer was my best time for meeting someone, too, because in the summer people are looking for someone to snuggle up with for the winter. And because in the summer I could take off my shirt.
I think the simplest way to break the ice is probably to try playing on the same level, to discuss everything in normal life. So, for example, with Katie Holmes, we just spent one hour talking about her daughter. Or with Madonna, when we were working on the event in New York, we spent hours deciding every single aspect together, from the dishes to the flowers to the cards.
I almost missed the chance to join Barcelona because I was on holiday in Mali visiting my parents' family for the first time. We spent all summer there and every day Barcelona were calling my mother's phone and getting no reply because she had left it in Barcelona.
Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it's worth: If you don't want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.
In the summer of 1982, like most summers, I spent most every day at the Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland, swimming and practicing diving.
Some parents were awful back then and are awful still. The process of raising you didn't turn them into grown-ups. Parents who were clearly imperfect can be helpful to you. As you were trying to grow up despite their fumbling efforts, you had to develop skills and tolerances other kids missed out on. Some of the strongest people I know grew up taking care of inept, invalid, or psychotic parents--but they know the parents weren't normal, healthy, or whole.
I have spent the past ten years in just about every war zone there was.
Remember with your heart. Go back, go back and go back. The skies of this world were always meant to have dragons. When they are not here, humans miss them. Some never think of them, of course. But some children, from the time they are small, they look up at the blue summer sky and watch for something that never comes. Because they know. Something that was supposed to be there faded and vanished. Something that we must bring back, you and I.
The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture.
My parents were divorced and I didn't grow up with my father, but I spent a lot of time around him, and his influence on me has been profound.
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