For my journalism class, I'm required to blog about the book—A Thousand Farewells. I'm sorry, I know it's not Seinfeld, but it's still very cool! I hope I leave you wanting to pick up a copy!
Author, Nahlah Ayed, was born in Winnipeg but she lived in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan for much of her childhood. After moving back to Canada with her family, Ayed eventually pursued a career in journalism. She became a reporter for the CBC. In 2002, her job brought her back to the war-torn region her family left behind.
A Thousand Farewells is Ayed's story about war reporting in the Middle East. During her time there, she met myriad of people deeply affected by war and oppressive regimes. She takes readers through major conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya, giving local perspectives and personal stories.
The sequence of events in this book are effectively ordered for clarity. Although Ayed was often moving around between countries, she makes it easy for readers to understand where she was and what was going on. Between 2003 and 2009, Ayed spends a lot of time in Iraq and Lebanon; however, she describes Iraq first. She starts from when she entered Iraq for the first time in 2003 to her final days there in 2007. Following the Iraq chapters, she jumps back to 2004 and begins to describe her time in Lebanon, stretching until 2009.
If Ayed were to describe her experiences in true chronological order, the events and people she met in Iraq could easily be confused with the events and people she met in Lebanon, because she would have to jump back and forth several times. By telling her entire Iraq story first, and then going back in time to begin her Lebanon story, it's much easier to keep track of the elements in each story.
The order of her stories make it easier to comprehend all the people, places and events in this book, but there are A LOT of people, places and events. If there's one thing working against Ayed, it's all the little details. There are so many names! I believe these details are important, but I would've found a visual aid very helpful. A timeline at the back of the book showing where she went and who she met would have added clarity. As well, a family tree showing the many family members she describes at the beginning of the book would've been helpful.
A significant part of A Thousand Farewells deals with the struggles and triumphs of being a journalist in a war-torn region. I think that journalists can learn a lot from Ayed. A few times throughout the book, she describes the personal toll her job has taken on her. Being in constant danger, combined with being exposed to people who have been through intense hardship, can become very stressful she says.
I think Ayed is an inspiration for journalists. She's passionate about what she does, and she doesn't let anything hold her back, not even being beaten after a bombing in Iraq. The way she describes the feelings she has during protests in Cairo shows she's proud of the people. She cares deeply about them, and to see them rising up against their oppressive governments gives her hope for the region.
A Thousand Farewells isn't like any non-fiction work I've read or watched before. The book focuses on Ayed's journey as a reporter, telling personal stories of refugees and protestors; she also has an interesting personal story of her own that relates to those of her interviewees, which is what makes her book different.
These personal stories are what make A Thousand Farewells more than a book with just numbers and facts; the stories add emotion. Ayed's father worked at a convenience store when her family moved back to Canada. Reading about these people made me wonder about the backstory of newcomers to Canada that I see every day. What if the man I just saw walking down the sidewalk is a refugee? If so, he must have an interesting story—coming from a country with oppressive rulers, torture, and fighting, to a country where people are free to believe what they want, wear what they want, be who they want. But they may also be leaving the only place they've ever known to come to a country where they know nobody.
A Thousand Farewells brought me past the facts. The Middle East is a region full of conflict; this is something I've always known. However, there are parts to these conflicts that I never thought about until I read this book. I never thought about the feeling of leaving the country I grew up in, the country I'm proud to say is a part of me. After reading about the people who refuse to leave their country, even after decades of instability, war and fear, I've given more thought to what that might feel like—even though I've never come close to knowing that feeling.
The conflicts Ayed reports on are all fairly recent. Some of them I knew about, but others I didn't. After reading about them, I was surprised at myself for knowing so little about what was going on in the world. It made me want to learn more about the Middle East, and other parts of the world as well.
I found it interesting to hear stories from both sides in some of the conflicts Ayed covered. She gave us a different outlook on Hezbollah, a group often referred to as terrorists by Western media. This made me raise questions about the media coverage we receive on other conflicts around the world.
I'm getting off-topic now, but this idea of one-sided media reminded me of a similar case with the Vietnam War. From what I've heard and learned in school, South Vietnam were the good guys. They wanted to be free from the evils of communism, and the United States were the heroes that would help them get there. North Vietnam were the bad guys. They were crazy guerrilla fighters. They were evil. Last year I travelled to Vietnam, and I learned a different perspective—the Americans were evil. They stuck their nose where it didn't belong. They killed innocent Vietnamese people.
Either way you look at it, both sides committed atrocities. In North America, we were given the South Vietnam/American side of the story, because that's where our loyalty lied. I don't know as much about the Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict, but I believe the way it was portrayed in Western media may have been similar to the Vietnam example, at least to a certain degree.
Anyways—after that long digression—I thought it was very interesting when Ayed showed perspectives from both sides of the conflict. I learned a lot from A Thousand Farewells. There were a few pages I dogeared along the way with quotes that stuck with me. I'll leave you with three of them:
"...with every journey came the inevitable game of hotel roulette, a game you didn't want to lose."
Page 139—Ayed speaking about her journey in Iraq, and trying to find a safe place to stay
"The cheapest thing here was human life."
Page 130—Ali Raad, Iraqi prisoner
"People also regularly killed in the name of religion, and that too was a state of mind I could never comprehend."
Page 163—Ayed on Middle Eastern conflict
