Dreaming Of Baghdad

“With passion and commitment,” an exiled Iraqi woman recounts her time organizing resistance to Saddam Hussein and imprisonment in Abu Ghraib (Nawal El Saadawi, author of Zeina). In 1970s Iraq, the Ba’ath Party was at the height of its influence in the Middle East and popularity throughout the West. But a group of activists recognized the disastrous potential of the regime as its charismatic leader, Saddam Hussein, came to power. Haifa Zangana was among those who resisted Saddam’s rule, a small group of whom were captured and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. Now, from a distance of time and place, Zangana writes about her incarceration, the agonizing loss of comrades to torture and death in prison, her safe yet haunted life so far away from friends, family, and her beloved country, and the ways memory conspires to make us forget. In this poetic, emotionally-tinged memoir, the author of Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London “drags politics down from the realm of the abstract into the mud, fear, and loneliness of personal experience and psychological ruin that is life under dictatorship” (Christian Parenti, author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq).

In memoirs, Arab writers have invoked solitude in moments of deep public involvement. Focusing on Taha Hussein, Sonallah Ibrahim, Assia Djebar, Latifa al-Zayyat, Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Edward Said, Haifa Zangana, and Radwa Ashour, this book reads a range of autobiographical forms, sources, and affinities with other literatures.Taking a comparative approach, Nasser shows the local sources of contemporary Arab autobiography, adaptations of a global genre, and cultural exchange. She also examines different aspects of the contemporary autobiography as it has evolved in the Arab world during the past half-century, focusing on the particularity of the genre written in different languages but pertaining to one overarching Arab culture. Drawing on memoirs, testimonies, autobiographical novels, poetic autobiography, journals, and diaries, she examines solitude and national struggles in contemporary Arab autobiography.

Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives situates feminist translation as political activism. Chapters highlight the multiple agendas and visions of feminist translation and the different political voices and cultural heritages through which it speaks across times and places, addressing the question of how both literary and nonliterary discourses migrate and contribute to local and transnational processes of feminist knowledge building and political activism. This collection does not pursue a narrow, fixed definition of feminism that is based solely on (Eurocentric or West-centric) gender politics—rather, Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives seeks to expand our understanding of feminist action not only to include feminist translation as resistance against multiple forms of domination, but also to rethink feminist translation through feminist theories and practices developed in different geohistorical and disciplinary contexts. In so doing, the collection expands the geopolitical, sociocultural and historical scope of the field from different disciplinary perspectives, pointing towards a more transnational, interdisciplinary and overtly political conceptualization of translation studies.

Explores discourses on gender and representations of women in modern Iraqi fiction. By exploring discourses on gender in both propaganda and high art fictional writings by Iraqis, this book offers an alternative narrative of the literary and cultural history of Iraq.

Dreams of a Refugee is the extraordinary story of Mostafa Salameh, born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees. After a childhood in the camps and a series of low-paid jobs, Mostafa was given a rare opportunity to travel to London, working in hospitality at the Jordanian Embassy. From there he moved to Edinburgh, where he took up a life of parties and nightclubbing. Religion played no part in his thinking. All this was to change. One night, Mostafa awoke having dreamt that he was standing at the top of the world reciting the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. He took this as a sign that he needed to accomplish something previously unimaginable for a person in his position – to climb Everest. Despite having no prior mountaineering experience, Mostafa sought help from friends and sponsors and, having failed twice, finally summited Everest on Jordanian Independence Day, May 25th 2008. He went on to become the first Jordanian to climb all 'Seven Summits' and reach the North Pole. In early 2016 he skied to the South Pole, via a new route, completing the elite 'Explorer's Grand Slam' and joining a club of only thirteen adventurers ever to have achieved this feat. Yet exploring is only part of the story. Now a devout Muslim, Mostafa is committed to spreading the message of tolerant Islam, working with refugees and young people to help them further their goals. Through climbing he has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity. His future projects include leading an all-female attempt on Everest, as well as numerous charitable climbs and leadership programmes. Mostafa is also a regular public speaker both in the UK, Middle East and further afield. This new paperback edition of Dreams of a Refugee includes a foreword by His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan, as well as photographs of Mostafa's climbs and his charitable work. Entertaining, inspiring, and often surprising, Mostafa is honest about both the positive aspects of his life and its past excesses, and discusses his discovery of Muslim faith. His message ultimately is a simple one: 'Each of us has an Everest inside us, which we each can summit, if only we dare to dream'.

Rowdy, ecstatic, and sometimes stern, these teaching stories and fables reveal new and very human properties in Rumi's vision. Included here are the notorious “Latin parts” that Reynold Nicholson felt were too unseemly to appear in English in his 1920s translation. For Rumi, anything that human beings do—however compulsive—affords a glimpse into the inner life. Here are more than 40 fables or teaching stories that deal with love, laughter, death, betrayal, and the soul. The stories are exuberant, earthy, and bursting with vitality—much like a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The characters are guilty, lecherous, tricky, ribald, and finally possessors of opened souls. Barks writes: "These teaching stories are a kind of scrimshaw—intricately carved, busy figures, confused and threatening, and weirdly funny. This is an entertaining collection from one of the greatest spiritual poets of all time, rendered by his most popular translator. “The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”--Rumi

A moving account of life as a political prisoner in post-revolutionary Iran from the acclaimed Iranian author of Women Without Men. Shahrnush Parsipur was a successful writer and television producer in her native Iran until the Revolution of 1979. Soon after seizing control, the Islamist government began detaining its citizens—and Parsipur found herself incarcerated without charges. Kissing the Sword captures the surreal experience of serving time as a political prisoner and witnessing the systematic elimination of opposition to fundamentalist power. It is a harrowing narrative filled with both horror and humor: nights blasted by machine gun fire as detainees are summarily executed, days spent debating prison officials on whether the Quran demands that women be covered. Parsipur, one of modern Iran’s great literary voices, mines her painful life experiences to deliver an urgent call for the most basic of human rights: the freedom of expression. “Parsipur makes a stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature.” —Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis “Stands as a powerful testament to not only the devastations of an era, but to the integrity and courage of an extraordinary woman.” —Kirkus Reviews “Parsipur’s memoir is a powerful tale of a writer’s struggle to survive the worst cases of atrocities and injustice with grace and compassion. A terribly dark but truly illuminating narrative; Parsipur forces the reader to question human nature and resilience.” —Shirin Neshat, artist

This is a book about pilgrimage, peace building, and being here in the future. Sacred journeys are by far the most peaceful mass rituals that humankind has yet devised for itself. Can these journeys contribute to ending the poverty, racial inequality, and intractable conflict so common on the world stage today? In a radical rethinking of the nature and definition of pilgrimage, anthropologist Ian McIntosh describes this ancient practice as a handy tool in the peace-builder’s toolkit. In a range of case studies, he shows how pilgrimage provides geographically and historically separated peoples with a strong sense of their membership in a global community facing global challenges. The text includes autobiographical accounts of the author’s experience of pilgrimage in Aboriginal Australia, Communist China, multi-faith Sri Lanka, and the embattled Gaza Strip. There are also academic papers that advance the proposed link between pilgrimage and peace building from Canada, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Russia and elsewhere. The common thread in all these sacred journeys is a vision of peace, justice and sustainability. We are all in this together. For humankind to survive on this planet, pilgrimage, in all its rich diversity, will undoubtedly play a critical role.