Two Thousand and One Syrian Nights
Samir Twair
Pat McDonnell Twair
2018, 978-172-907957-7, $20.90 pb.
Pat McDonnell was a journalist, archeologist, activist and native of California who, not long after arriving in Syria in 1977 for doctoral research, fractured her ankle at an archeological site. The mishap led her to her future husband, Samir Twair, and she went on to live in Syria through 1983 and publish some 1,800 stories—quite possibly as the only self-employed American in the entire country. She passed away in January 2018, and this is a posthumous collection of her writings from those years—from falling in love and getting to know her husband’s family to the epochal history of Syria, modern social life, relationships, women, artists and politics. It is a story of two people from two cultures meeting where East and West have met for centuries, a story that, in her case, has a happy ending.
You may also be interested in...
Untold Stories of British Muslim Women as Agents of Change
Sociologist Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor and historian Jamie Gilham present 100 years of Muslim women who have contributed to the dynamism of Islam in Britain.
Archeologist Breathes New Life Into Recently Abandoned 5,000-Year-Old City
Archeologist Rubina Raja pieces together Palmyra’s life story, from its Bronze Age beginnings to its place as a trading hub for the Roman Empire.
Omani Author Zahran Alqasmi's Story About Life, Land and Honey
In his third novel, about a beekeeper living in Oman’s mountainous interior, local author Zahran Alqasmi grapples with a changing landscape around him.