In bookstores: Encounters With the Middle East

Travelers Tales recently released a great new anthology, Encounters With the Middle East, which is based on a simple (yet very worthy) premise: To humanize the people behind the news headlines in a turbulent and misunderstood part of the world. "A dizzying amount of media coverage bombards us from the Middle East," editors Jim Bowman and Nesreen Khashan write in the introduction, "yet little filters through about the experiences of ordinary people. Encounters with the Middle East tells their stories through interactions with 30 writers who go beyond the usual reporting to reveal the simple and poignant ways that life goes on."

My Jordan-based essay "Dancing at the Blood Festival" is featured in the collection, which also includes essays from all corners of the Middle East from writers such as Jeff Greenwald, Murad Kalam, and Michel Moushabeck. In the opening pages, Bowman and Khashan point out the importance of engaged travel reportage in that part of the world:

When we don’t connect people to the greater global scheme that includes us, we consign ourselves to the images presented on television. In that way, we become myopic and abandon all the moments that represent the complexity of lives in the Middle East. While those experiences remain hidden from our view, we remain deficient by failing to see them. When we are unaware of other possibilities, how then can we imagine solutions to the global challenges that face us?

More information about the book can be found here.