Non-Fiction Titles for Your Enjoyment

With all of the turmoil raging in the Middle East and around the globe, I thought that the following selections would offer some glimmer of hope. They each feature stories of hope and survival despite the evils that persist in this world.

 The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu (and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts) is a book by Joshua Hammer. The lands in and around the Sahara Desert have long been in a state of turmoil. Dictators and despots abound. A young adventurer and collector for the government library in Mali, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara and along the Niger River in the 1980s searching for and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts he found crumbling in the trunks of desert farmers. His lofty goal was to preserve these precious pieces of ancestry for future generations. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda showed up and things began to look very grim. Haidara emerged from his role as a mild-mannered archivist and historian to become one of the world’s most brazen smugglers by saving these rare texts from certain destruction. More than 350,000 volumes were smuggled out of Timbuktu and spirited away to southern Mali. It was this group of ordinary citizens who answered a higher calling and allowed themselves to be forever changed by the experience.   

City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp is by Ben Rawlence. Situated in a grueling desert in northern Kenya where thorn bushes are the only things that grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks, and plastic; its entire economy is suspect; and its half million residents survive on rations and a whole lot of luck. Rawlence, who has witnessed this strange and desperate place firsthand, tells the stories of some of the people who have come here seeking sanctuary. Guled is a former child soldier who lives for football (soccer). Nisho manages to scrape out an existence pushing a wheelbarrow while dreaming of riches. There is also Tawane, an unassailable youth leader, and Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education at the school. The author also tries to explain the wider political forces that are keeping these refugees trapped in Dadaab.

A Different Kind of Daughter: the Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight is a memoir by Maria Toorpakai with Katharine Holstein. From a very young age, Maria Toorpakai knew that she wanted to play squash. Unfortunately, she hails from Pakistan’s violently oppressive northwest tribal region. The idea of women playing sports is forbidden and girls rarely leave their homes. She first tried dressing and living as a boy, but she eventually became Pakistan’s number one female squash player. For Maria it was both salvation and a death sentence. Her achievements put her and her family in the national spotlight and directly in the crosshairs of the Taliban. She soon realized that her only chance for survival would be to flee the country. Jonathon Power, the first North American to earn the title of top squash player in the world, was the only person to answer Maria’s plea for help. Jonathon recognized her tenacity and talent and invited her to train and compete internationally in Canada. Even though she had spent years living on the run from the Taliban, Maria was sad to pack up and leave the only place she had ever known and move halfway across the world to pursue her dream. Now, Maria is well on her way to becoming a world champion as well as becoming a voice for oppressed women all over the world.

The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet is by Rod Norland. Growing up on adjacent potato farms in the remote mountain area of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Zakia and Ali became close friends. The two were separated according to the laws and customs of the area when they reached puberty. Zakia, a beautiful and strongly opinionated young woman, and Ali, a soft-spoken, handsome young man still managed to fall in love and court one another, remotely at first, then, in Zakia's garden. In order to be with Ali, Zakia defied her family and Islamic law by leaving home to be with him, but she ended up in a women's shelter pursued by her father and other family members who were set to kill her to preserve the family "honor." The shelter saved her life, but she was unable to see Ali there, so the couple eloped and went into hiding. When Norland wrote about the couple for an article in the New York Times, he unwittingly exposed them and thus felt obligated to help them get to safety. With help from Norland as well as foreign donations, the couple made a disastrous attempt to flee to Tajikistan, however, they were forced to return to Kabul where they were closely tracked by Zakia's family. Ali and Zakia's story is used to illustrate the common cultural practices such as stoning, child marriage, and legalized rape that serve to strip women like Zakia of their basic human rights.