Over the past two months I have been reading a book for journalism called A Thousand Farewells. It's a book about CBC foreign correspondent, Nahlah Ayed and her life reporting from war areas in the Middle East. Nahlah was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba but moved to a refugee camp in Amman, Jordan when she was six years old.
This book is very informative and intense at times. Nahlah is faced with challenges of reporting in various cities where war and conflict take over. She finds herself being questioned multiple times, almost beaten by a mob, and fighting for her life. There is a lot you can say about her book, but I think you need to give it a read.
There were parts I did enjoy. The vivid descriptions she provided. It made me feel like I was the one with the camera standing just behind where she was reporting from. I could almost see the fear, the chaos, and the debris all around. Even though they were sometimes negative descriptions, you could still paint a picture.
"The sun shone as if nothing had happened, bright and all-knowing, hastening the decomposition of bodies and filling the air with the sickly odour of death."
She described some nicer images, which sometimes could be lost in all the madness.
"It's harder to remember the happier images, but they, too, linger. I cannot forget the soothing sight of Mount Lebanon stream, the brilliant green of the Golan Heights, the sun setting over the Mediterranean." Quotes like this made me enjoy the book because even though there were so many terrible things going on, she still had time to see the beauty of Lebanon.
One thing that didn't really work for me was the hundreds of names. She talked about A LOT of people and even though I wrote them all down, I still had to go back and try and remember who they were, where and when she met them, etc. I feel like there were a lot of names that could have been taken out and the story still would have had the same vibe but better flow. It was also hard when she would jump back and forth from place to place. I would finally get into the book, realize where she was, then boom. She's gone. It frustrated me because I felt like I couldn't enjoy the book to its fullest potential. I did not think it was boring, I just think there was an overload of information.
This book reminded me a lot of a series of books called Dear Canada that I read when I was in elementary and junior high school. It reminded me of the hardships people have to face and how life isn't always peachy. Even though we live in Canada, we often forget how other parts of the world are suffering on a day-to-day basis. The books were based on a fictional character but in the times of significant history events in Canada. I honestly don't really read non-fiction books so this is the closest I can relate to A Thousand Farewells.
The quote from the back cover of the book is really powerful. "People are not quotes or clips, used to illustrate stories about war and conflict. People are the story, always." Nahlah could have written this story without interviewing or getting points of view from any person affected by the conflicts. That would have made for a very long, probably very boring book. People make the story because you feel empathy and even if you can't directly relate, you get a sense of what people have to deal with.
Sometimes it can be hard to get interviews from people, especially in a time of crisis. We learn quickly, especially when doing streeters, that some people love to talk and others want nothing to do with you.
"...sometimes we had to beg people for interviews. We had to cajole, negotiate, and persuade, giving compelling reasons for people to 'waste' their time with us and 'tell the world' their story. On many other occasions, people really wanted to be interviewed. They begged us, and sometimes we were the ones who would say no."
As an aspiring broadcast journalist, I feel like I have a very long way to go after reading this book. Nahlah is very inspiring because of all the hardships she had to endure while still making sure she got a story for the news. It made me realize that being a foreign correspondent has its perks like getting to travel, but also has its downsides like being stuck in the middle of a war conflict trying to produce a story or stories. Even though I want to go in the direction of sports/entertainment, I still think reading this book has helped give a glimpse of what journalism is like. She experienced a lot of stress that began to affect her health which made me realize that that's the reality of being a journalist. It's very admiring to see someone risk their life for a job that they truly love. It goes to show you that passion really can go a long way.
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