Recollecting?

“Imagine an infant removed immediately from its place of birth and set down in a different environment. Then compare the various “identities” the child might acquire in its new context, the battles it would now have to fight and those it would be spared. Needless to say, the child would have no recollection of his original religion, or of his country or language. And might he not one day find himself fighting to the death against those who ought to have been his nearest and dearest?”

A. Maalouf (2001: 24-25) In the name of identity: violence and the need to belong