Conclusion
This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The evocative texts explored in this volume—which remain a drop in the vast ocean of modern Levantine cultural production—reveal charming facets of the Eastern Mediterranean in its natural settings and its spiritual and intellectual dimensions; a Levant at once extolled and condemned by both its offspring and its gods; a Levant brimming with histories and rituals and civilizations that are at the same time exhilarating and exasperating, somber and cheerful, grim and hopeful. It is hoped that this volume has offered a glimpse into another Middle East, largely suppressed but still bustling with life under the ashes of orthodoxy and the remains of shattered nations, pining to be rediscovered, restituted.