Country of Words

by Atwan, Abdel Bari

• ISBN13: 9780863566219
• ISBN10: 0863566219
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Al Saqi

Summary

"Few lives reflect their times as much as the life of Abdel Bari Atwan. Born in a refugee camp in Gaza in 1950, he left aged seventeen and has since become one of the world's foremost commentators on the Middle East." "In this memoir, Atwan recounts with humour and honesty his extraordinary journey. He depicts both the horror of camp massacres and the unexpected consequences of Britain's involvement in the region - such as when a British paratrooper fell from the sky with his sizeable parachute and everyone in his mother's village got new silk trousers." "Alongside the trials and tribulations of displacement, Atwan relates the culture shock of moving to 1970s London and shows London's famous Edgware Road in an entirely new light." "Atwan shares his many extraordinary encounters, including tea with Margaret Thatcher, a weekend with Osama bin Laden, intimate meetings with Yasser Arafat, and the row between Colonel Gaddafi and the Shah of Iran that earned him his first journalistic break." "But his is also a touching, personal story, never more so than when he describes taking his British-born children to meet his family, who still live in a camp surrounded by barbed wire."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. 10
Preface	p. 12
Thorns in our Feet	p. 15
Sleeping on the Roof	p. 51
A Cairene Education	p. 80
Career Moves	p. 107
The Arab Independent	p. 130
Culture Shock	p. 161
Beirut-on-Thames	p. 194
Osama bin Laden	p. 214
Yasser Arafat and the PLO	p. 230
Right to Return	p. 259
Appendix	p. 283
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