Where do you live?
I live in Latsia with my two cats, Shadow and Ghost, amid photos and memories of my late husband, a Greek Cypriot professor of engineering whom I met in Beirut as a college student.

What did you have for breakfast?
Two boiled eggs, with olive oil pressed from olives I picked myself from my own tree, and zaatar from Palestine. I also had a cup of nettle tea with turmeric (I’m on a naturopathic protocol) followed by a cup of strong black coffee (not on the protocol).

Describe your perfect day
Wake up early, without an alarm, birds singing outside my window. Go to the kitchen and make a hot drink; take it outside to sip under my lemon tree as I contemplate the leaves and the sky. Write in my journal, do some yoga stretches. After breakfast, pack a snack, a book, a notebook and pen and drive to the beach for a long walk, a swim and some reading and writing. In the afternoon return home and potter in the garden. Call my kids. Meet a friend for dinner. Pet my cats. Remember I’m alive.

Best book ever read?
Impossible to choose just one. I return repeatedly to Traveling Mercies (poetry) by David Williams: the humanism, communal connection, nature, memory, and belonging in these poems offer a quiet reminder of how to live. Susan Abulhawa’s novel Mornings in Jenin provides a superb example of historical fiction, as well as a primer on Palestinian history.

Best childhood memory?
Climbing the cherry tree in the back yard of our small stone house in Amman where I grew up, with a book, my pink stuffed bunny with the ripped paws, and a snack, and settling in the nook of branches to read.

What is always in your fridge?
Eggs and vegetables, especially greens. I get very anxious if I don’t have anything green in the house. In the spring I am more relaxed because I know that if necessary I can find something green growing randomly in the garden.

What music are you listening to in the car at the moment?
A CD of an a capella Armenian-American trio called Zulal, who puts together traditional Armenian folk melodies in hauntingly lyrical arrangements.

What’s your spirit animal?
My American aunt, who lived in the southwest US where the presence of the indigenous native peoples is not so completely eradicated, once gave me a necklace of a spirit bear, telling me it symbolised courage and strength. I claimed it as my spirit guardian.

What are you most proud of?
That I’ve survived life on the planet this long without becoming overwhelmed by bitterness, either by events in my personal life or by the ongoing atrocities perpetrated on other human beings, especially in places I am personally connected to, like Palestine, where I still have family, and Lebanon, where I studied.

What movie scene has really stayed with you?
In the Palestinian film The Present, a west bank Palestinian wants to buy a refrigerator for his wife as an anniversary present. To do this he has to pass through one of the checkpoints that control the most basic movements of Palestinians. He is interrogated and humiliated in front of his daughter. On his return Israeli soldiers block him from taking the fridge through on a vehicle, so he is forced to transport it on foot while his daughter watches. It’s a perfect encapsulation of Palestinian existence.

If you could pick anyone at all (alive or dead) to go out for the evening with, who would it be?
It would have to be my late husband. Since he’s already dead, time and space won’t matter, so we’d go to the North End in Boston for authentic Italian pasta, then walk by the Charles River in Cambridge where we used to live.

If you could time travel when/where would you go?
Back to the Pleistocene epoch in Cyprus, when miniature hippopotamuses and elephants roamed the land. I need some first-hand data for my next project!

What is your greatest fear?
That I’ll die before I write everything I want to write, say everything I need to say, or get around to exploring genres I haven’t yet been brave enough to try (like full length fiction). Also, that I’ll die before I see more of the world, and before I learn how to paint.

What would you say to your 18-year-old self?
Don’t be so scared of everything. Trust yourself more. Stop apologising so much, but don’t stop apologising when it’s important. Remember to enjoy life, travel as much as you possibly can.

Name the one thing that would stop you dating someone.
The inability to express empathy.

Lisa Suhair Majaj produces poetry, essays, academic articles, children’s stories, and opinion pieces. Follow her on social media on Facebook: Lisa Suhair Majaj and lisasuhairmajaj on Instagram