Young Lebanese-Greek publishes poetry book inspired by "Zaatar"

Now in bookstores, the book titled "Zaatar" revolves around a militant father who hopes to one day see a free and secular Lebanon, an aunt who disappeared at the age of eighteen without realizing her dream of one day seeing the sea, and a grandmother who sows zaatar, wild thyme, to ward off war.  

When she left her country to study in France, Sofía Karámpali Farhat chose to entrust her life to poetry, mainly influenced by the wild blossoming shrub amid the rubble. 

During an interview with the "Maghreb-Orient Express" show on TV5MONDE, Farhat described the zaatar as authentic and simple.  

"For me today, in a fragmented Lebanon, in a political system which is completely corrupted by a system which fragments the Lebanese, the Lebanese who are abroad, who leave, we are everywhere, we are bursting, and zaatar is what unites us," she stated.  

The young poet's work, "Zaatar," is also a tribute to the political activist Lokman Slim. According to her, Slim represents freedom of expression, system change, and the battle for a secular system.  

Born in 1994, she is from Jarjouaa in South Lebanon. Sofía Karámpali Farhat lived her first eighteen years in Lebanon before moving to Paris. She writes about war, exile, and resistance in French, with a significant part given to eroticism.   

Her poetry is inseparable from her activism in France, in the Arab world in general, and in Lebanon in particular.   

The Greek-Lebanese artist is also a geopolitical researcher in the Arab world. She is co-author of the book "Le Lobby Saoudien en France" and contributor to "l'Atlas Géopolitique du Monde Contemporain."