A Committed Life

I’ve been reading A Thousand Farewells by Nalah Ayed. Well, reading is the wrong word. I’ve been immersed in it. This memoir of her years as a Tele-journalist for the CBC in the Middle East is both riveting and devouring. Ms. Ayed was 32 when she is dropped into Iraq, just before “Bush’s War” (the Iraqi term for it) begins. She is new, untested, and incredibly courageous. She learns her craft amid falling shells and social chaos. The writing is so intense that one becomes tied in knots following her through the horrific scenes that make up life in Iraq and Lebanon.

Nalah Ayed was born in Winnipeg of Palestinian parents, raised in St. Boniface until the age of seven. At that point, her family returned to a refugee camp in Jordan, where all their family lived. This place was “home” for displaced Palestinians. There she lived until the age of thirteen, when her family returned to Winnipeg, where she completed her education and joined the CBC. Being an Arab-speaker was one of the gifts Ms. Ayed brings to investigation and reporting. The story of her almost-decade long life among the victims of a Western war is illuminating and heart-rending.

I came away from this experience with two overwhelming feelings. The first relates to Nalah herself. How traumatized is she from the last years of her relatively young life? How long will it take her to recover from that experience? The parent in me wants to surround her with a safe place and lots of care, so she can heal.

The second feeling that floods me is the awareness that we – that I – know nothing about hardship and disruption, no matter how difficult my – your – life is, it couldn’t possibly match the day-to-day struggle of the Middle Eastern person overwhelmed with war and chaos.

Lifting my eyes from Ayed’s writing, I find myself looking around me a normal North American life, and think: “This is heaven compared with how the Middle Eastern world lives. And we – the western world – are major contributors to their corporate life of misery.”

At this point, I have no idea how to respond to this book, apart from feeling awe at this woman’s courage and ability, and at the cost she has paid to keep us informed of what is happening in Iraq, in Lebanon, and Egypt. She has been there in the midst of war, and revolution, and utter desolation, making it possible – making it necessary – for us to become aware of that world, in which our nation is involved.

Ms. Ayed has given her youth to sharing this chaotic world with the West, and is only now beginning to live her life in our world, trying to re-enter a life she stepped away from to become a set of eyes on chaos.

It is at once heartening and sobering to realize that there are young professionals eager and willing to risk their lives to share fact and truth with a world increasingly confused by “spin.” I celebrate this woman’s career, and wish peace and happiness in the rest of her life.