The following is an excerpt from First to Leave the Party: My Life with Ordinary People…Who Happen to be Famous by Salah Bachir, available now in hardcover and ebook format from Signal Books.“What can I get you?” my mother asked Marlon Brando.
She wasn’t exactly clear on who he was, other than being some kind of actor and a new friend I had brought over for a backyard barbecue.What could she get him?
She would have asked the same of anyone. In our family and in our Lebanese culture, one of the ways we show love is with food.
A lot of it. Lots of love, lots of food. It wouldn’t have mattered if my mother had known who Marlon was, because she treated everyone with the same courtesy and hospitality—and anyway, to my mom, her kids were the stars.