Ameen Albert Rihani

This book is an existential drama; it is an intellectual dramatization of certain events, which brilliantly depict the struggle of man and his existence in a triangular relationship with Time and Place. The book addresses the interrelation among three formidable entities that physically and rhetorically share this endless universe or at least the known part of it that we may comprehend. It is a brilliant dramatization of the hitherto mysterious yet inevitably interconnected relationship among the trio of Time, Place, and Man. They obviously cannot exist independently even though each one is unique in his identity, qualities, and characteristics, and ultimately, they fulfill each other. In A Train and No Station we are in the presence of a difficult text where every word is replete with infinite meanings and loaded with colorful symbolism. We are in the company of a challenging trialogue composed by an experienced navigator, a persistent author who is obsessed with the meaning of time. He is saturated with the anxiety of existence, inundated with existential tension, and is preoccupied with the mystery of man and with the question of human pain and the eternal search for the ultimate truth as he strives to find acceptable answers to these impossible questions. This book is also about a brave author who dared to challenge himself, to ask the difficult questions, and probe the unyielding responses to eternal riddles that have preoccupied man since time immemorial. These are questions that were only posed by those unusual thinkers who bumped their heads against the rock of eternity in their attempt to extract from the heart of the universe answers regarding the validity of time, the importance of place, and about man's place in the universe. They dared to probe the divinity of man and to explore the reality of history and the comfort of belonging. They asked about life and death and about traveling in time and in place. They pondered existence, the continuity of life, the origin of life, and man's relationship to others, to place and to time. They mused about the homeland and people's history and dreamt about the giant and the dwarf embedded in each of us and about physical, rhythmical, and spiritual places and times. And they contemplated man's ultimate destiny and his ability to choose, and whether man was entitled to free will or not, and whether the joy was in the journey and not in the destination, and in the trip itself instead of being in the outcome or in the final moment of arrival. In this unfolding epic, our author addresses this topic without forgetting to present us with a dose of historical reality that sheds light on the unfortunate present of his own beleaguered country. He offers a sober recommendation regarding the healing of his wounded land and how it can be redeemed, its history saved, and its politics mended and retold. Ameen Albert Rihani also shows us how to reconcile those irreconcilable differences by reversing Sartre's existential dilemma, which stated that "hell is other people." Instead, he teaches us that "the other" is not the enemy. Ameen invites us to come down off our high horse and embrace the other, to accept him, and to share with him, and to learn from him as well because diversity and humility are the spice of life and the absolute ingredient that greases the wheels of human civilization.