You can't search inside as the little photo indicates, but here is a birthday book that Compa has just given me, Once in a Promised Land, by Laila Halaby. It looks really good — a haunting cover of a swimmer and an airplane.
The inside jacket blurb reads:
kan
ya ma kan
fee qadeem az-aamaan
They say there was or there wasn't in older times a story as old as life, as young as this moment, a story that is yours and is mine.
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Once in a Promised Land is the story of Jassim and Salwa, who left the deserts of their native Jordan for those of Arizona, each chasing mirages of opportunity and freedomm. Although the couple life far from Ground Zero, they cannot escape the dust cloud of paranoia settling over the nation.
A hydrologist, Jassim believes passionately in his mission to make water accessible to all people, but his work is threatened by an FBI witch hunt for domestic terrorists. A Palestinian now twice displaced, Salwa embraces the American dream. She grapples to put down roots in an unwelcoming climate, becoming pregnant against her husband's wishes.
When Jassim kills a teenage boy in a terrible accident and Salwa becomes hopelessly entangled with a shadowy young American, their tenuous lives in exile and their fragile marriage begin to unravel. Once in a Promised Land is a dramatic and achingly honest look at what it means to straddle cultures, to be viewed with suspicion, and to struggle to find safe haven.
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The book looks good. I will start it as soon as I finish Riverbend's Baghdad Burning II: Girl Blog from Iraq. I will do so tonight.
Compa and I celebrated my 50th tonight because she has to fly out tomorrow to a meeting in Chicago and I will go to my parents' until Friday. It has been a quiet and gentle evening, just perfect.
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