A Thousand Farewells
A Reporter's Journey From Refugee Camp To The Arab Spring
A Thousand Farewells is the heartfelt and personal chronicle of a journalist who has devoted her career to covering one of the world’s most volatile regions.
In 1976, Nahlah Ayed’s family gave up a comfortable life in Winnipeg for the squalor of a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. The transition was jarring but it was during this unsettling period that Ayed first closely observed the people whose heritage she shared. She had to become accustomed to rudimentary housing and crowded streets, unfamiliar social customs, and the prevailing mood of loss and mourning. But it was hearing the family’s stories of exile and displacement that profoundly affected her.
The family returned to Canada when Ayed was thirteen, and the Middle East and…