Dear Mr. Takache,

at last I can find a few moments of silence and peace to sit down and write you these few lines.

First of all, Eid Mubarak...even if it is over. And many many greetings to you, your family and your wonderful Academy.
After coming back to Italy, we met more than once in order to re-think and elaborate our Lebanese experience.

Our day with you has been a "special" day, profoundly touching and emotional. Your Academy is  a positive peak of higher learning, which offers education and professional training to life, forging a young generation to know its own culture and its own cultural roots on the one hand, and to understand diverse peoples through open debate and critical thinking, on the other. As a Scholar and a Teacher myself, I have been deeply impressed by the academic standard, full of admiration for the remarkable activities that you and your wife are carrying out, for your personal integrity, civic responsibility, and leadership. Lebanon deserves such dedicated people! We enjoyed our lunch together, learned more and felt...as being part of your "family".

Then, I wish to thank you also for the two visits you have organised for us. You and your special Guide (please, convey him our warmest regards and thanks) have enriched our knowledge through a new "window", stressing a new, critical approach to the stern reality of an endless conflict, which goes far beyond all information that media can / or cannot / or don't want to offer. We could "touch" grief and solidarity, we have been able to sense the deep love of your people for a beloved land, the society that has supported you and in which this love is founded..

To my students, You have taught to open new doors, to appreciate differences in culture, the diverse peoples of Lebanon, aims, objectives and values. You have taught to analyze - and critically evaluate - individual situations in all their multifaceted realities: this has resulted in a great strength, from which they are  drawing new cultural vigor.

I wanted to write you as soon as we came back...but academic commitments have been diverting my mind and energies. To day, after a constructive meeting with our Publisher, we have finalised a publication on this Lebanese experience, which should be ready for March-April 2011. If you have some words to add, I would personally be very grateful.

In the meantime, my warmest personal gratitude, special greetings and kindest regards

Sincerely Yours
Valeria Piacentini Fiorani

Prof. Dr. Valeria Fiorani Piacentini
Chair of History and Institutions of the  Muslim World
Faculty of Political Science
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan - Italy
Director of the Athaeneum Centre of Research on the Southern System and the Wider Mediterranean