A Thousand Farewells

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 A Thousand Farewells, written by Nahlah Ayed, a correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is a book about her experiences reporting on the Middle East, leading up the Arab Spring.

Let me begin by saying that this was a difficult and challenging read for me mainly because I am not familiar with the past events that occurred in the Middle East. Nahlah does attempt to educate the reader by giving a brief history of the events that had happened before she continues with her story relating to them. She uses terms that are unconceivable to the average person (me), so I could not understand the explanation. Thus, a copious amount of research was had.

 

Nahlah uses incredible imagery to describe the places where she reported, which gave me a helpful visual to follow her story.

“The farther south we got towards the city of Tyre and the surrounding area, the more visible the destruction. The main roads had been cut off by bombardment, forcing us to detour onto a dusty track through a banana grove… We veered around cavernous holes made by falling bombs, into which cars had fallen along with their passengers. On the way, we could occasionally see bombed-out bridges dangling their metal innards, chunks of concrete scattered on the highways below.”  pg. 225

There were many people, places and organizations named in the story, which became confusing to me.  One thing I would change in this book to help the readers, would be to include and index (similar to the one in the back) of the people, places and organizations in the back of the book, with a small description.

Nahlah describes her struggle with the English spelling of Arab names in the book.

“I spelled names as they would sound in Arabic, in others I spelled them the way the individuals themselves preferred. That makes for many unavoidable inconsistencies.” pg. 342

In my opinion, when people hear the words “Middle East”, “Afghanistan”, “Pakistan”, they default to the word “war” or “terrorist”. Nahlah does a beautiful job of making aware of the citizens who are affected by the overall war.

“Mahmad was lying in the yellowed sheets of bed number 12, staring at the stained ceiling. For our benefit, he cleared his throat and recounted the moment that annihilated the family he’d been nurturing for half his life. A bomb had crashed into his home in Kandahar, killing his five sons and only daughter… ‘I lost everything’ he said, putting the blame squarely on the Americans.”

Nahlah is an exceptional journalist and a prime example of who to look up to as a student of the Creative Communication program. With many assignments and a choice of majoring in journalism, Nahlah demonstrates to future reporters how important it is to get into the story. To experience exactly what they’re reporting and to get those descriptive details.

My respects, Nahlah.