Nearly a century ago, when my ancestors landed in the United States as a family of Syrian refugees, my great-grandmother Nabiha’s name was changed to a more Americanized “Mona.” The story was always relayed in my family with matter-of-fact pragmatism, though no one caught the irony that the new name has its own roots in Arabic, Muna, which translates into “unfulfilled wishes.”
Origin Myths
The Middle Eastern heritage of opera
