In 2011, the International Day of Friendship was declared by the UN General Assembly, to be celebrated on July 30, as part of its Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace: “Recognizing the relevance and importance of friendship as a noble and valuable sentiment in the lives of human beings around the world.”

Naomi Shihab Nye (1952 –  ), born in St. Louis, Missouri. Daughter of a father who came to America as a Palestinian refugee, and a born-in-America mother. “I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music – Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering ‘The Lost Chord’ on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.” During her teens, Shihab Nye has lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and…