Zada opens his memoir with a terrifying scene: Yanked off a bus at a military roadblock on the way to Mardin, Turkey, in 2015, the seasoned journalist wondered if the men with semiautomatic weapons would ever let him go. The author then flashes back to his very first trip to \u201cthe East\u201d at age 24, when he and his fellow Canadian travel companion found themselves in a Tangier drug den. As Zada continues to meander his way through stories of his life and career\u2014from absurd anecdotes of his Egyptian landlady, \u201ca diminutive Coptic grandmother with a Napoleon complex,\u201d to his work as a TV producer in Dubai\u2014he slowly threads together themes of identity and acceptance in the context of a rapidly changing world. The idea of storytelling itself also plays an important role within the memoir, acting as a type of cultural touchstone the world over\u2014especially in the stories told by the author\u2019s mentor and family friend, a \u201cforce-of-nature raconteur\u201d Egyptian named Kamal Bey who memorably compares the increasing \u201ctribalism\u201d of the United States\u2019 political parties to \u201cthe fanatics of the Middle East.\u201d Zada\u2019s own Egyptian ancestry, combined with his Westernized Arab upbringing and lifelong wanderlust, gives him a unique perspective\u2014one that he eloquently expresses with a clear and vivid narrative voice that uses the desert as a metaphor for identity and nationality: \u201cThe desert constantly shifts and changes as we move through it\u2026 It is one desert, yet it is made up of endless permutations, all slightly different from each other but sharing a common, underlying reality.\u201d This is a compelling travel memoir that doubles as a thoughtful reflection on the unnecessary (and self-imposed) national and cultural boundaries that exist only to distract us from our shared humanity.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zada opens his memoir with a terrifying scene: Yanked off a bus at a military roadblock on the way to Mardin, Turkey, in 2015, the seasoned journalist wondered if the men with semiautomatic weapons would ever let him go. The author then flashes back to his very first trip to \u201cthe East\u201d at age 24, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}