Memoir Middle East

In 2002, Carol Off and a CBC TV crew encountered an Afghan man with a story to tell. Asad Aryubwal became a key figure in their documentary on the terrible power of thuggish warlords who were working arm in arm with Americans and NATO troops. When Asad publicly exposed the deeds of one of the warlords, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it set off a chain of events from which there was no turning back. Asad, his wife, Mobina, and their five children had to flee their home.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, the larger-than-life Egyptian president who ruled for eighteen years from the coup d'etat he led in 1952, is best known for wresting the Suez Canal from the British and French empires and befriending such iconic revolutionaries as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Yet there is a darker side to Nasser's regime. He was a brutal authoritarian, whose legacy lies at the heart of the violent and repressive order that still prevails throughout the Arab world today. In We Are Your Soldiers, Alex Rowell focuses on seven countries to reassess Nasser's impact in the Arab sphere.

Nothing about the romance between Nancy Hatch Dupree and Louis Dupree was what you'd call typical. For starters, there were the lovers themselves. Louis was a foul-mouthed paratrooper turned swashbuckling archaeologist. Nancy was a witty travel writer and the wife of a CIA station chief on the ragged frontier of the Cold War. Then there was the place and time: Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1960s, a heady and short-lived milieu of conniving spies, future mujahideen, and cocktail-swilling cosmopolitans.

Guinness is an irresistible lead character - smart and steadfast but also soulful and delightfully snarky. While the narrative offers adventure and some tragedy throughout, it also delivers humor and great tenderness. The scenes in Afghanistan, where Guinness is eventually deployed, are portrayed with a visceral grittiness. Readers can practically taste the ever present dust permeating the barren landscape. This is Jones’ first volume in her K-9 Heroes series, and it is a lovely tribute to the brave canine officers in the military.

The story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is here told by its musical director, from its inception to its eventual end. The NYOI came through the most difficult and dangerous of times to produce fine music not only in Iraq but also in Britain, Germany and France. A beacon of hope and achievement, the young musicians and their tutors made bridges across their own ethnic divisions. They made great music in the most trying and tragic of circumstances and became their country's best ambassadors in 5,000 years.

After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, First Sergeant Daniel Hendrex was dispatched along with his unit, Dragon Company, to Husaybah, a small town bordering Syria in the Sunni-dominated Al Anbar province of Iraq. It was at this checkpoint, amidst relentless attacks, that Daniel and his men found the most effective ally of the war effort in the most unlikely of sources.

This book tells the stories of the Muslims, Christians, Jews and others who made a courageous stand against the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915, the first modern genocide. Foreigners and Ottomans alike ran considerable risks to bear witness and rescue victims, sometimes sacrificing their lives. Diplomats, humanitarians, missionaries, lawyers and other visitors to the Empire stood up, including Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra; Raphael Lemkin, the jurist who first established genocide as an international crime; and the polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen.

Il Cairo, autunno 1914: l'archeologo Thomas Edward Lawrence entra a lavorare nei servizi d'intelligence britannici. In breve, i comandi militari di stanza in Egitto si accorgono delle sue eccezionali capacità. È l'inizio di una saga che nel giro di qualche anno trasformerà il giovane e sconosciuto sottotenente gallese nell'epica figura di Lawrence d'Arabia.

Here's a remarkable, true story of love and war, of journalist Micah Garenheld hostage in Iraq, and the determined young woman, Marie-Helene Carleton, who fought and won his release.

The veteran political journalist and New York Times best-selling author goes behind the scenes at the White House to recount the dramatic tale of a pivotal period in the Obama presidency, from the game-changing 2010 midterm elections to the beginning of the critical 2012 campaign season - a tumultuous time that tested the president as never before and set the stage for a titanic clash over the future of the nation.

It doesn’t seem like Enver Pasha was a good man. His war crimes caused the deaths of millions of innocent citizens. Sure, during a war and a collapsing empire, you try to do what you can to stop losing, but I doubt anyone in their right mind can justify his actions, which included the slaughter of minorities in the Ottoman Empire during World War One, and even the Armenian Genocide. And to this day, the Turkish government is still somewhat reluctant to acknowledge the severity of that historical atrocity.

From 2018 to 2021, writer and researcher Theodore Ell accompanied his wife on her diplomatic posting to Lebanon and unexpectedly found himself a witness to a country on the brink of collapse. In 2019, facing economic meltdown, the people of Lebanon rose up, united in a revolution of hope. With the country on the precipice of war, COVID-19 then swept in and the eerie quiet of lockdowns descended—a silence tragically shattered in August 2020, when Ell narrowly survived the largest ever non-nuclear peacetime explosion, which destroyed half of Beirut.

En 16-årig Parisoula Lampsos förälskar sig i den nästan dubbelt så gamla Saddam Hussein, mannen som skulle komma att bli Iraks fruktade och hatade diktator. I 33 år behöll han sin makt över henne, för varför skulle en man som inte drog sig för att mörda sin egen familj skona henne? Lena Katarina Swanberg har intervjuat Lampsos under lång tid och skrivit den gripande berättelsen om livet i skuggan av en fruktad diktator. Lena Katarina Swanberg föddes i Stockholm den 8 februari 1947.

Dubai is feted internationally as a beacon of modernity: glittering skyscrapers, a cultural melting pot, even a new player in the space race. The city's ruled by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, an all-powerful multi-billionaire who counts the Queen and Donald Trump as friends. His kingdom's progressive propaganda defies a medieval underbelly. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the Sheikh's own palace, where numerous women have now risked their lives by sounding the alarm about what's really going on in the United Arab Emirates.

Tiny Dancer is the amazing true story of Zubaida Hasan, a nine-year-old girl from the remote deserts of Afghanistan who, in the summer of 2001, accidentally fell into a kerosene fire while heating water for a bath. Though she was horribly mutilated, her father refused to give up and exhaustively sought help to save his child.

In November 1922, a new door to the ancient past was opened. The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun would be the most astonishing of the young century. Howard Carter was the lead archaeologist, but the years of excavations were funded and engineered by the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, George Herbert, whose country house Highclere Castle is today known as the set of Downton Abbey. In dramatic detail, calling on Highclere Castle’s archives to throw new light on the lustrous settings and striking characters, this book reveals the true story behind the thrilling discoveries made in Egypt.

Lucky in Cyprus is a coming-of-age story set in the Middle East during the height of the Cold War. An American teenager - son of a CIA operative - is inspired by grand events and a Greek Cypriot teacher to learn about survival and his art. He witnesses earthquakes and riots and terrorist attacks, but in the end it is his teacher's gentle lessons that keep him whole.

Ehud Diskin's mother wanted him to play it safe when he was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces. Instead, he volunteered for one of the IDF's most dangerous assignments in a move that altered the course of his life. In Yes, It's Possible, a compelling new translation of his Hebrew memoir, Diskin recounts his fascinating and tumultuous life story growing up and maturing alongside the State of Israel.

Attilâ, Peyami Safa'nın yegâne tarihî romanıdır. Peyami Safa bu romanıyla, Attilâ gibi büyük bir Türk cihangirinin devrine ve kişiliğine ilk defa bir Türk gözüyle bakmış, Batı dünyasının “geçtiği yerde ot bitmez” diye karaladığı bir devlet adamı ve kumandanını Türk gözüyle tasvir etmiştir. Peyami Safa, Attilâ'yı yazarken yabancı kaynaklardan ve özellikle Bizans tarihçilerinin verdiği bilgilerden oldukça istifade etmiştir. Çelik iradeli, demir disiplinli bu Türk hakanının yalnızca bir devlet adamı ve kumandan olarak değil, şahsî ilişkilerde yumuşak huylu.

The events of the Arab Spring have come to be overshadowed by the civil war in the Arabic-speaking nation of Syria, which has been ruled throughout the 21st century by Bashar al-Assad. Though he had not planned on ruling Syria, several events conspired to make Bashar the successor of his father, Hafez. Though the West frequently looked for signs that Bashar might be a reformer, due in part to his formerly popular Western wife, Assad remained part of a critical alliance with Iran and the sub-state groups Hamas and Hezbollah.