Nahlah Ayed is a foreign correspondent working for the CBC. She was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up in St. Boniface. As chronicled in her memoir A Thousand Farewells, she moves to a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan at age six, then back to Canada at thirteen. From there she gets a journalism degree, works the Canadian Press, and eventually moves on to CBC.
I have followed Israeli politics very closely, and when I realized this was a book by a Palestinian in Jordan, writing about her various coverage of various conflicts, big events, and "the myriad of ways in which ordinary Arabs have coped with oppression and loss," I knew right where I was going.
Operation Cast Lead. Israel versus Hezbollah.
Yes, I am a cheater. When I am reading a biography and I know of significant moments, I tend to skip right to them, and this case was no different. I lasted maybe three chapters until I decided to move on to that part, which came in chapter ten. Whatever, I'm the reader, and this is the most interesting aspect to me; sue me.
But this isn't a post about politics, this is about Ayed's prose, and I found her views on the conflict incredibly interesting. The small glimpses into the mind's of these Lebanese people, who were literally stuck in a warzone (as Israel had bombed the airport and major highways out of the country), were fascinating. The fourteen year old girl huddled in a parking lot with her family, talking about how her daughter (yes, the fourteen year old girl's daughter) will eventually be regaled with stories of Hezbollah's assured victory. And how no one would say anything negative about Hezbollah.
This focus on ordinary people is a major part of all the stories Ayed tells, and this is no different. It's a much more beneficial method for the reader to be shown the desperation of these people by showing a woman whose presumed-dead husband finally calls on her cell phone, causing her to erupt in "sobs of painful relief," then it is to take a grander approach. So Ayed's story ends up really being told by all the small personal stories of people that sometimes last just one paragraph, but can sometimes stretch on for pages.
I found her journalistic insight into Lebanon's supposed freedom of the press very interesting as well. She admits the country boasts more newspapers and TV networks than any other Middle Eastern country, but on closer examination, you can see how "virtually every paper or network is loyal to one side."
Christopher Hitchens wrote Hitch-22, his memoir, and though both of these authors are journalists, Hitch-22 has a completely different voice. I felt Ayed's book read a lot like a news story, or a documentary that you might see on PBS or the BBC. Hitch-22 gives off the feeling that you are sitting in a pub listening to Hitchens tell you a variety of stories about his life. It's funny, the more I think about it, the more the structure of the two books is actually quite similar. Both take a journalistic approach to various dangerous warzones in there lives, and we go along for the ride around the globe meeting people entrenched in conflict.
A difference though, would be that after finishing A Thousand Farewells, you get the (I assume quite accurate) feeling that all the stories she has told completely shaped how she views the world, and views her job as a journalist. Whereas with Hitchens, some stories seem like they could be passed over, but the happen to just have some interesting angle here or there, (oh yes, I was beaten up by IRA terrorists and nearly murdered, but now hear this...) or they involve a person that is dear to his heart. Hitchens book is amazing, and I don't mean this next part negatively, but I feel like you could have read most of his other work, or listened to his debates, and you would "know" him just as well as if you had read Hitch-22. I don't think you can say the same thing for A Thousand Farewells.
I think journalists can learn how important Ayed's impartiality is to her storytelling. Hitchens is a very opinionated writer, but Ayed's book works so well because it shows it's story through people that Ayed has no bias towards or against. As she says "people are not quotes or clips, used to illustrate stories about war and conflict. People are the story, always." Through these people, she can illuminate much bigger stories, like the 2006 Lebanon War, without pushing the reader in any one direction. This unbiased approach is a great lesson.
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