Zaatar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East (Paperback)

by Maliha Masood (Author) "It was by no means an ordinary drive to the airport..." (more)
Key Phrases: fairy chimney, head scarf, Middle East, Zaatar Days, Abu Salah (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Disillusioned with her daily routine-phone tag, email, multitasking-Masood leaves her job and her family in Seattle and sets off for the Middle East from whence she came. This travelogue follows Masood, strapped into an REI backpack and sporting a well-thumbed Lonely Planet guidebook, as she travels from Egypt and Jordan to Syria and Turkey over the course of 10 months, hoping "to come to terms with a truer me, a more essential self that couldn't entirely be placed amid the bullet points of my resume." A Pakistan-born Muslim American in her late 20s, Masood finds herself blending into her environment-visiting mosques regularly, making friends easily-without entirely fitting in, a dichotomy ethnic Americans often grapple with while abroad and the ambitious, fascinating topic Masood excels in exploring. Unfortunately, Masood is less interested in describing sights and sounds-the dusty air of Egypt, the bustle of Turkey-and in so doing may fail to hook readers more interested in exotic locales than self-discovery. Though there's much here that's stimulating and relatable, fans of travel writing may feel they've been invited on the trip, but denied the pleasure of losing themselves in it.
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Product Description

When twenty-eight-year-old Maliha Masood, a burned-out dot-commer from Seattle, bought a one-way ticket to adventure and rejuvenation, she found it in the most unlikely of places: the Middle East.
With an infectious love of adventure, a zany sense of humor, and serious questions about her Islamic faith, Pakistani-born Masood begins an unforgettable journey. She camps in the Sahara with a Bedouin "desert fox," is mistaken for a spy in Turkey, takes a lesson in beauty from a Kurdish family, and falls in love with a poet. She experiences souks and mosques, open-air lingerie bazaars and nightclubs grooving to hip-hop. In a region associated with terrorist havens, Masood meets ordinary Muslim men and women navigating the politics of culture, religion, and identity.
Zaatar Days, Henna Nights offers a street-savvy take on the contemporary Arab world that's seldom seen on the evening news. This is a story of discovery and faith, of making bonds and breaking stereotypes, and of finding oneself where one least expects to.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (December 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580051928
• ISBN-13: 978-1580051927
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #433,531 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Night and Their Eyes, February 12, 2007

By	Umm Lila "Umm Lila" (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews

I picked up Za'atar Days and Henna Nights with interest, because I'm always on the lookout for travel books about the Middle East, where I have traveled, lived, worked (and indeed found a spouse) myself. Maliha Masood tried to delve a bit deeper than most travelers to the region do, and her book has many anecdotes about her interactions with the people she met, all of whom she approached with an openness and willingness to understand, despite language barriers. For this and the locale, I appreciated the book.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help but cringe when I noticed that most of the people she encountered were those that I would normally avoid - they were often guys who make a habit or living off of hanging around in touristed areas, either offering guide services or looking to pick up girls. In the Arab countries particularly, casual, short-term, nonsexual friendships between men and women are uncommon, though she tried to build them, leaving a trail of liquid brown/ green / dark eyes full of unspoken messages behind her. Going camping with one man, lying out in the grass looking at the sky and just being in the one on one situations she cultivated seem wildly inappropriate to me, given prevailing cultural mores.

Her prose was somewhat overblown, between the eyes and the search for self amid the alienation of travel, oneness of the universe, hyperawareness of people around her and the dark dome of stars. All things considered, I'll take Freya Stark.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars World expanding., March 2, 2007

By	Robert Mullarky (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is a lot about this story that is alien to me. I'm not Muslim, I'm not particularly spiritual, I'd never travel off into areas unknown with no concrete plan, goal, or even a crude itinerary, and I would never be so trusting of strangers or open to spontaneous suggestions by dodgy characters.

Perhaps that is why this story was so eye-opening to me. I thought Maliha Masood did a good job of bringing to life a reality and an adventure entirely outside of my experience. As a result, I feel like I know more not only about the culture and countries she explored, but also about a type and level of spirituality I'm unfamiliar with. I don't feel any urge to drop everything and go aimlessly wander a foreign region, but I do feel like I have had my horizons widened and my understanding of the world increased.

I found it interesting to compare Ms. Masood's descriptions of the people and customs with what I know, and think about the ways they are different and similar to what I know. In America we get so little exposure to Arabic culture outside of television images of violence or non-christian religious behavior, it can seem a little surprising to discover how much generosity and friendliness is a part of Arabic culture. Or how steeped in western culture they are. I can't speak to the wisdom or appropriateness of the author's behavior, but I can appreciate the guided tour through unfamiliar territory, both literal and existential.

Definately worth the read.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Is Masood the most ignorant traveler ever, or just the most melodramatic?, June 9, 2007

By	Avid Reader (Villa Park, IL) - See all my reviews

Having spent significant time in the middle east myself and being one who enjoys travel writing, I was curious to check out this book once I saw it in the bookstore. However, I was sorely, sorely disappointed. Leaving aside the overblown and ridiculously exaggerated prose, Masood's characterization of the middle east is far from revealing. Don't believe the publisher's description or the reviews of this book: Masood's characterization of the middle east is not an eye-opening look at a culture to which Americans have limited exposure. It's a cliched look at a self-absorbed, desperately lost woman who continually falls for every imaginable tourist trap while flaunting her ignorance of and disregard for middle eastern culture and using her Islamic heritage to claim immunity from her ignorance. In her attempts to live for the moment, Masood and her traveling companion time and again get themselves into irresponsible situations that show that they know next to nothing about the culture in which they are living. They continually prey upon the hospitality of the citizens of their host countries, take the veil not out of religious sentiment but instead to be trendy, and find themselves alone -time and again - and in compromising and inappropriate situations with men who are trying to take advantage of them and using her spirit of adventure to justify the flouting of middle eastern social norms. Even worse, the book is completely unreliable. Her knowledge of Arabic, sprinkled throughout the book, is more often inaccurate than accurate.

Finally, I do have to mention the writing. Masood manages to turn every day occurrences into lengthy metaphors for life and extended, melodramatic pontifications on her situation. Know what you're getting into; do not think that this book will amuse you. I found the writing to be so over the top as to distract from what could have been an otherwise entertaining tale if only she didn't take herself so seriously.