Encore - Interview with Encounters editors and contributors

By Nesreen | March 22nd, 2008 | No Comments

If you missed Thursday’s live interview on blogtalk radio, you can still listen anytime to the recorded podcast available on the program’s website. All you have to do is go to:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtualauthortourslive
and select the Encounters interview.

The program features co-editors Nesreen Khashan and Jim Bowman as well as contributors Wally Al’Shamma, Erika Trafton and Michael Mcgee.

Erika, Michael and Jim had already met at the Book Passage event held March 1 in the Bay Area so this was a reunion of sorts for them. Wally just got back from Syria and repatriated to the Chicago area and I did my first event with any of the contributors.

Wally had been living in Syria for a while. He moved there to connect with his father’s native country. Wally remembers trips he took there as a child so returning as an adult had a special significance for him. His story, “A Damascus Cab Ride,” details his time in Syria’s capital city, and what it meant to be there as an adult, yet in some ways seeing it through a child’s eyes.

Erika and Michael did a good job of discussing some of the anxieties and misconceptions that some first-time travelers of the Middle East have. They explain these feelings in the context of their stories, both of which are wonderful. Michael’s story “The Promised Coffee,” has generated a lot of comments because of its power to help people rethink notions of arranged marriages.

Erika’s story “The Way of Suffering,” shows Trafton’s own journey through Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem’s Old City. Via Dolorosa, “the way of suffering” in Latin, is the path Jesus took on his way to crucifixion. This story is a fitting one to ponder this Easter weekend. In it, Erika talks about the intensity that belongs to Jerusalem. She expresses both a grief and wonderment for this holy city, but most importantly, a respect for the way that the peoples there manage their seemingly barely held together coexistence. Erika said in the interview that she loved Jerusalem but would never want to live there. I echoed that sentiment. Each time I’m on a plane back to the States, I am overwhelmed by gratitude. Like anyone who is Palestinian, Jewish, or Israeli, I too have strong feelings about Jerusalem and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in general. But at the end of the day, I get to go home, back to the United States, where my environment doesn’t have to be a constant, stinging reminder of the tragedy of this conflict.

Happy Holy Days.

Nesreen