“My parents and sisters are from Lebanon. I was the only one in my family born here because of the war. So, I was raised in DC, and I went to French school—that’s why my accent’s all messed up. It was important to my mom that we knew our identity, our roots, and to not be completely transformed [by living in the US]. That’s why we went to a French school, because French is spoken in Lebanon. Everyone says DC is so political, but I never felt it. And when it came to growing up there, my parents told me to never depend on anyone, and to have a profession in case a war happened, so I could pick it back up wherever I needed to move to. Literally, that’s what happened to my dad. He came here with just his diploma, and that’s how we survived.
Dr. Shereene Idriss, Dermatologist
