Now Samir Khalaf really feels like an intellectual. He managed to use the word "postmodernism" in a sentence. His family and friends are all proud of him: "They can’t stop talking about all the belly buttons, about all these highly eroticized bodies. You see it everywhere here, this combination of consumerism and postmodernism and female competition.”" (Of course. Other countries in the Middle East don't have belly buttons and bodies. That is unique to Lebanon). Khalaf then offers his analysis of gender relations in Lebanon (notice that he is able here to display his full intellectual powers): "When men my sons’ age come back to Lebanon, they can’t keep the girls from leaping at them.”"