Nahlah Ayed's "A Thousand Farewells"

I know that Spring Training started today, and the Blue Jays won 4-3, *high five.* But this post isn't about baseball. This is a blog post that I'm required to do for school about a very good book I just read.

Nahlah Ayed's A Thousand Farewells, is a book detailing her journey through childhood, and her career in journalist. She was born in Winnipeg, and moved back to the Middle East when she was a child. She returned to Canada, became a journalist, then went back to the Middle East to cover the conflicts that were happening.

In the book, Ayed covers a wide array of topics including the historical significance of the conflicts that plague the Middle East, her personal experiences there both as a child, and a journalist, the experiences of others, and other significant events such as the rise and fall of dictators, harrowing explosions, war, poverty, and much more.

What works in this book?

Ayed does a very good job of breaking down, and explaining very complicated issues. 

Ayed's book gives a very detailed and real history into the major conflicts that have taken hold in the Middle East over the past few decades. It's structured very densely, and full of historical facts. The book helped me gain an understanding of the issues. It's complicated, but that complication mirrors the problems that she's describing. 

She also provides us with her personal story, and how closely linked she is with the issues described in the book. From western living in Winnipeg, to living with her abusive uncle when she moves back to the Middle East, she lets the reader in on her own personal experience, giving her descriptions of the problems merit. 

She also does a good job mixing in the stories of her interview subjects later in the book when she returns to the Middle East as a journalist, covering the conflicts for the CBC. 

She not only tells these stories, but she tells them in a very realistic way. She doesn't get bogged down in flowery language, or telling us how tragic it is, but she shows us how tragic, and complicated it is instead. 

What doesn't work in this book?

Although I do enjoy the way she tells the history, her experience, and the experience of others, it does seem cluttered at times. It's a complicated issue to break down, but it seems like she's jamming three books into one. A historical information book, with a memoir, and a journalism piece. 

Separately, all three of those portions are very well written, they're attention grabbing, and interesting. However, the book gets cluttered with tangents that don't seem necessary to the reader. 

The first example that comes to mind is when she's telling us about Reem, and her house. The book briefly describes the heartbreak Reem feels when she finds her house has been taken away from her, but it goes off into other directions, and loses the reader's attention. 

I enjoy the story, but it seems to stray away from the story describing her and Reem's friendship, which goes on for about a page. She goes on to talk about a famous Arab singer, and musics significance in Arab culture before it actually gets back to the actual story about Reem. I think those three stories would have been better served separate from one another. I found that the book lacks organization in some parts, which makes it harder to follow. 

What's missing from this book?

The only thing I can honestly say is that I would have liked to see a map. There are a lot of countries in that region, and knowing where they were in proximity to each other would have been helpful in following where she's telling the different stories from, even if it's a page at the front of the book that the reader can refer back to. It is usually described at the beginning of each chapter, but it's easy to forget where after getting 10, or 11 pages into it, so a map would have been helpful in letting the reader identify where the story is taking place, making it more memorable for them. 

What can journalists learn from this book?

Ayed does a good job writing herself into the stories without making the stories about herself, (aside from the memoir stories.) Journalists can learn by the way she describes her actions during different situations, such as the way she finds interviews, digging deeper into stories and asking people questions that are personal, and get to the meat of the story. 

Journalists can also learn that it's okay for them to show emotions like fear, or sadness when they are reporting on something. Considering the circumstance she was reporting in, there's really no other way you can feel. However, she also shows us that you need to be brave in those situations. If you see a story you should pursue it. 

What comes to mind here which can be used as an example for both of the thoughts described above is when Ayed is at the mass gravesites. She tells one man's story about how he lost two of his brothers, how he was carrying a skull in a plastic bag, because he thought it could be one of his brother's. In that same scene, there is a woman standing at the top of a hill, talking to herself. In the book, Ayed admits that she couldn't bring herself to approach that woman and ask for an interview. 

As a human being, this part of the book was unsettling, but as a future journalist, this part of the book was reassuring. Knowing that it's alright to feel emotions when reporting on a story because it's human nature to do so. But it's also important to know that to find a good story, sometimes you have to find it in yourself to dig deep and find as many facts as you can. 

Comparison

As I was reading this book, I couldn't help but think of Dispatches by Michael Herr. A New Journalism piece, in which he documents the time he spend with the American Military in Vietnam. 

I made this connection because the way they are written mirror the state that the areas of the world they were reporting in. 

In Dispatches, the writing is very erratic, and he tends to go off on tangents that sometimes end abruptly. By the way he describes his experience, Vietman was very much like that. It was unpredictable, and nothing was ever consistent. Every day would bring something different.  

In A Thousand Farewells the writing is very dense, and complicated. Most of the time it requires the reader to double back, and read passages for a second time to fully understand what's going on. This is reflective of the state that the Middle East was in when Ayed was reporting there. The conflicts ran deep within the citizens of the countries that it affected. 

How did reading this book affect me? 

It helped me to better understand a problem that is very complicated. I was fairly young when a lot of these conflicts were taking place, for some of them I wasn't even born. I would watch the news as a young teenager, and follow the conflicts that were going on in the Middle East, especially after the September 11 attacks. I formed opinions based on what I saw in the media, but until I read this book, I never truly understood the magnitude of the conflict from any other standpoint then a Western point of view.