Randa Abdel-Fattah

I used to think it was my re-memory.

You know, some things you forget, other things you never do.

But it's not.

Places, places are still there.

If a house burns down, it's gone.

But the place, the picture of it stays.

And not just in my re-memory.

but out there in the world.

What I remember is a picture floating around out there, outside my head.

I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did or knew or saw is still out there.

Toni Morrison, 11.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was four years old when his family escaped from the Vietnam War, boatlifted out of Vietnam, then airlifted to a new life in the United States.

The war fundamentally defined his life, even though his memories of it are hazy.

He has to trust it, even though what his brother says contradicts Fiat's own memories.

And that tension has animated his writing.

Viet also calls himself a scholar of memory, someone who studies how we remember events of the past, both as people and as nations, and how those memories affect how we face the future.

And no narratives are more contested than those of war.

Today, the world is watching as the U.S.

and Iran attempt to broker a peace deal after tensions erupted into a U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

A preliminary assessment by the Pentagon has determined the U.S.