A Thousand Farewells written by Nahlah Ayed has nothing to do with fashion, or the latest trends, in-fact the only thing about it that relates to this blog is inspiration. Throughout the book that is the one theme that continued to amaze me.
Nahlah Ayed's journey was fuelled by her inspiration and love for story telling. As a reader of fairy tales, happy endings, and fiction novels, this novel would not be my first choice to read.
If someone where to ask me what my favorite part of the book was, I would say the personal stories of Ayed, and the people that she meets. Particularly when Ayed meets Ahmad, the driver. When Ahamd finally opens up about his feelings and his story and says "Yes Nahlah. We want the war to come." this really hit me.
Ahmad was strong for telling Ayed his story, it inspired Ayed and myself. Reading about someone who was affected by such a confusing conflict, and yet they have such a clear vision of what they want is amazing to me.
What really took me out of the story was the history and the facts. I understand that a non-fiction needs to have evidence. But I feel that the facts took me out of the story. For example, after Ayed tells the reader about her experience in a Maronite church service, and the people that she met, she skips to the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 war. This threw me off as a reader. I was so invested in the story she was telling, then all of a sudden I was taken out of it.
The one thing that I think is missing from A Thousand Farewells is stories from her family. It would have been interesting to read a first person chapter from her parents on why they moved their children to a refugee camp, and how they felt about the change. It would have added another layer of emotion to the novel.
I think the main thing journalists can learn from this book is to be fearless and follow your heart. If Ayed would have listened to her brain she wouldn't have quit her job and moved. Being fearless and following her heart allowed her to met so many amazing people that changed her life and her career.
While I was reading A Thousand Farewells and the protests came up, I thought of Tiananmen Square. I recently watched a clip from BBC News in 1989 that was live from the protest. The reporter was a women, during the clip she was explaining what she was seeing and the students emotion during the protest. This made me think about the protests in the book, and how Ayed would have covered them, and how her connection to the place or people would come across, if at all. It also made me think if that reporter traveled to different places around the world, and saw what Ayed saw.
This book effected me in a different way than what I would have thought. I didn't know what to expect when I first started. When Ayed was explaining her life in Winnipeg I was thinking to myself, 'Oh yeah, I've been there before.' Then suddenly her life changed so dramatically. It was jolting reading something that was so familiar to suddenly having no idea what she was talking about or feeling. It's hard for me to think that someone that grew up like I did had such a change in their way of life.
This book really opened my eyes to the world. I didn't know much about the war in Iraq, or the protest in the Middle East, but reading this book has made me curious to know more.
No comments:
Post a Comment