In 1988, photojournalist and photo editor Aline Manoukian captured an image of a Palestinian militiaman holding a white kitten in Lebanon’s Burj Al Barajneh refugee camp. That photo would go on to circulate for decades, recently appearing across social media platforms in doctored forms, including as a colorized poster.
When I went on a research trip to Lebanon in 2017 for my new novel, The Burning Heart of the World, I met Manoukian for the first time. We both come from Armenian families, and mutual Armenian friends put us in touch; that’s the way things often work in our community of diasporic artists, writers, and academics.