Baghdad Sketches (Marlboro travel) [Paperback]

Freya Stark (Author), Barbara Kreiger (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: Marlboro travel | Publication Date: December 4, 1996

Freya Stark first journeyed to Iraq in 1927. Seven years after the establishment of the British Mandate, the modern state was in its infancy and worlds apart from the country it has since become. During her many years in Iraq, Stark was witness to the rise and fall of the British involvement in the country as well as the early years of independence. Typically—and controversially—she chose to live outside the close-knit western expatriate scene and immersed herself in the way of life of ordinary Iraqis—living in the “native” quarter of the city and spending time with its tribal sheikhs and leaders. Venturing out of Baghdad, she traveled to Mosul, Nineveh, Tikrit and Najaf, where she perceptively describes the millennia-old tensions between Sunni and Shi'a. In the 1940s she returned again, this time traveling south, to the Marsh Arabs, whose way of life has now all but disappeared; north into Kurdistan and later, Kuwait, in the days before the oil boom.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Readers of Stark’s reissued works...will find a writer who endows everyone in her field of vision with the heightened interest that she felt herself.” -- The New Yorker

 

"She was a vivid describer of scenes and landscapes. More, she was a connoisseur of people: she knew how to draw them out and listened closely when they spoke" -- Claudia Roth Pierpont, The New Yorker

 

"It’s impossible not to enjoy a book by Freya Stark…[they] are immediately satisfying. They put you at ease and then transport you to worlds now gone and yet familiar. Thanks to Stark’s literary output, and these fine new editions by Tauris Parke, her world is far from forgotten. Go and buy this book and read it was soon as you are able." -- Eamonn Gearon, Geographical

 

 

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

6 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 177 pages
• Publisher: Marlboro Press; 1 edition (December 4, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810160234
• ISBN-13: 978-0810160231
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,441,766 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Travel > Middle East > Iraq

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History repeats itself, June 26, 2005

By 

J. Adams "History buff" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Baghdad Sketches (Marlboro travel) (Paperback)

This is a short little book, of Stark's travels through modern-day Iraq, but interesting now because many of the places she traveled to freely in the 30's are in the news today. Stark was one of the many "Arabists" who traveled the Middle East freely and actually lived in a Baghdad slum for many months just to get closer to the natives. It is more of a travelogue than a political treatise, but her observations and conversations with the old order of the Bedouins and others are interesting. She notes the graveyards of English soldiers who were killed during the days when the newly formed Iraq was a British protectorate after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after WWI and concludes that these were lives wasted on a very backward country, without understanding the reason this country was important was not for its medievel culture but its oil. Her observations would be considered substantially "politically incorrect" today, but her access to some of the tribal leaders resulted in very interesting conversations, not the least of which was her meeting with Shaikh 'Abdu'l-Husain and his warnings about the developing events in Palestine, before the creation of Israel, but after the Balfour declaration.
Her description of the intensity of the hatred between the Shiia and the Sunni, the beheading of Ali 1250 years before her visit to Kerbela and Najaf where it is remembered as if it occurred the day before is most insightful. Her declaration of these towns living on their memory of hate where time stopped, is really very good writing. Her observations of the slaves in Kuwait as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, which it wasn't considering the slavery was not officially abolished in Saudi Arabia until the 1960's is also very good history in itself.
Of course such a book could not be written today for many reasons, but if you want to get a better flavor for today's issues in the Middle East, you could do worse than invest a couple hours in this book, since nothing has really changed, only the reporting has become remote and detached and politically correct, which gives those of us living today a very unbalanced picture of the forces still at work in Iraq 70 years after she wrote about them.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating stuff!, June 25, 2001

By 

Ildrinn - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baghdad Sketches (Marlboro travel) (Paperback)

A very worthwhile glimpse into mid-20th Century Baghdad - this series of essays paints intriguing pictures of the streets, the culture and the decline of Colonialism in a country that used to be our Middle-Eastern ally. Much better than her later books.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A portrayal of Baghdad in the 1930s, August 24, 2005

By 

Mandana Hendessi (Oxfordshire, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Baghdad Sketches (Marlboro travel) (Paperback)

The book offers a unique protrayal of Baghdad in the 1930s through the eyes of a young British woman who lived amongst its slum dwellers on less than £1 a day. Freya Stark's day-to-day encounters with people in the slums juxtaposed with Iraqi intelligentsia and the detached British elite who ruled Iraq through the mandate, offers a valuable insight into how short-sighted and flawed was the British imperial outlook on nation-building in Mesopotamia.