Brownies and Kalashnikovs : a Saudi woman's memoir of American Arabia and wartime Beirut / Fadia Basrawi

By:

Basrawi, Fadia

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: Reading, Berkshire : South Street Press, c2009Edition: 1st edDescription: ix, 285 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 23 cmISBN:

9781902932255 (pbk.)
1902932250 (pbk.)

Subject(s):

Contents:

Desert suburbia - desert kingdom -- Brave new world: growing up 'Aramcon' -- Disneyland within, desertland without -- Hidden America -- Yankee Doodle comes to town -- Forbidden knowledge -- Lebanon: my past, my future -- Hello...I love you -- Go up to Lebanon and cry - Jeremiah 22:20 -- Tides of war -- Life will go on -- Dignity or death War and dreams -- Lessons in love -- What goes around comes around -- The road not taken

Summary: "Fadia, a Saudi Arab, grew up in the strictly circumscribed and tailor-made 'desert Disneyland' of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company). This slice of modern, suburban, middle America was located in Dhahran, Aramco's administrative headquarters in Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Muslim kingdom run according to strict Wahabbi Shari'a law. Eventually, after only brief holidays abroad visiting relatives in colourful Arab cities like Medina, Damascus and Alexandria, Fadia moved to Beirut, the glitzy 'Paris of the Middle East', to attend high school. In Beirut she fell in love with a passionate and idealistic Lebanese journalist with whom she eloped against her parents' wishes, subsequently getting caught up in Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war while raising a family of five children. Providing a fascinating account of a Saudi woman's painful journey from naive Aramcon girl to life as a resident of a war-torn capital city, this book provides new insight into two very different Middle Eastern worlds about which so little is known by those living outside the region." -- Book cover

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Holdings ( 1 )
Title notes ( 3 )

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Open Shelf	UMPLIB PEKAN	HQ1730.Z75 B37 2009 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		0000060732

Includes bibliographical references (p. 285)

"Fadia, a Saudi Arab, grew up in the strictly circumscribed and tailor-made 'desert Disneyland' of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company). This slice of modern, suburban, middle America was located in Dhahran, Aramco's administrative headquarters in Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Muslim kingdom run according to strict Wahabbi Shari'a law. Eventually, after only brief holidays abroad visiting relatives in colourful Arab cities like Medina, Damascus and Alexandria, Fadia moved to Beirut, the glitzy 'Paris of the Middle East', to attend high school. In Beirut she fell in love with a passionate and idealistic Lebanese journalist with whom she eloped against her parents' wishes, subsequently getting caught up in Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war while raising a family of five children. Providing a fascinating account of a Saudi woman's painful journey from naive Aramcon girl to life as a resident of a war-torn capital city, this book provides new insight into two very different Middle Eastern worlds about which so little is known by those living outside the region." -- Book cover