Steve Jobs on his Syrian Heritage and the Arab Spring

I’m in the middle of reading Steve Job’s biography and I just read this paragraph:

Jobs [didn’t] seem to care about his Syrian heritage. When the Middle East would come up in conversation, the topic did not engage him or evoke his typical strong opinions, even after Syria was swept up in the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. “I don’t think anybody really knows what we should be doing over there,” he said when I asked whether the Obama administration should be intervening more in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. “You’re fucked if you do and you’re fucked if you don’t”

Turns out he understood the Middle East after all. The passage gives the whole frenzy in this part of the world about his Syrian roots some much-needed perspective.

His sister Mona though is a different story. Also from the book:

[Mona] tracked down various members of the Jandali family, in Homs and in America, and in 2011 was writing a novel about her Syrian roots. The Syrian ambassador in Washington threw a dinner for her that included a cousin and his wife who then lived in Florida and had flown up for the occasion.

Good to know..