A Thousand Farewells by Nahla Ayed

A Thousand Farewells by Nahla Ayed is an eye-opening read that can't help but get your emotions going.  It's the true story of Ayed, a Canadian-born journalist who currently works for the CBC.  In it, she revisits her childhood - both in Canada and the Middle East - and then the trials and tribulations she faces covering wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan to uprisings and revolutions in Syria and Egypt.

The first four chapters were my favourite because Ayed paints a good picture of what her life was like growing up in Winnipeg.  It was especially neat to read because Ayed, just as I did, grew up in St. Boniface as a child.  It took me back to my days as a kid living in that area and the similarities are striking.  She refers to a park that she played in on Archibald Street.  I played in the exact same park.  I couldn't help but find myself smiling as I read those first four chapters.

After that, the story shifts gears significantly when we learn that at the age of 7, Ayed's parents decide to uproot the family and move back to the Middle East.  They were worried that their children would lose their roots, forgetting their culture and where the family came from.  They spent the next eight years in the Middle East.

The remainder of the book follows Ayed through tumultuous times, after she becomes a journalist and returns to the Middle East. 

Overall, this book works because it's as real as it gets.  Ayed tells us about the harsh living conditions she endured living in the Middle East, like having no running water, sleeping with cockroaches, and having little to eat.  Similarly, we learn about the dangerous conditions she faced as a journalist, like getting beat up, hearing and Feeling bombs going off not far away, and witnessing countless deaths and injuries to the people around her.  This is the reality for so many living there and other places around the world so it's a reality check for those accustomed to Western standards of living.  You forget about your mundane first-world problems pretty quickly.

What doesn't work is minor stuff like not knowing who she is referring to.  There are a lot of names, many with Arabic origins that are not familiar and so it does get confusing at times.  There were also a few times when I was confused about where she was and when.  She jumps around quite a bit and so you have to pay close attention if you want to know exactly what's going on.

Journalists can learn a lot from this book such as knowing when and when not to look for an interview.  For example, Ayed encounters a woman who is kneeling, facing a mass-grave that was discovered shortly after Saddam Hussein was removed from power.  She chooses not to look for an interview and instead finds a man who is willing to tell his story.  Another important aspect of Ayed work, and a point she makes throughout the book, is that at the end of the day, your stories are about people.  Sure, there are often geo-political, historical, and contextual elements that you need to get across in certain stories but you shouldn't let those elements cloud the foundation of what stories are supposed to be about: people.

This book is quite similar to another non-fiction book I've read recently, The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Wolf.  It's Wolf's follow up to the hugely-popular No Logo.  Although Wolf's work is much more political and controversial but they are similar in their analysis of the Iraq war and it's raison d'etre.