The Brotherhood included all strata of society, and by the middle of the war, it had tens of thousands of members. The work involved Stark travelling all over Egypt and often speaking for up to 10 hours a day. These wartime experiences were described in her "Letters from Syria" (1942) and "East is West" (1945). Following a visit to Iraq during which she was besieged in the British Embassy during an attempted coup d'état in April 1941 Stark was asked by British Ambassador Sir Kinahan Cornwallis to set up a branch of the "Ikhwan al Hurriya" in that country. Stark agreed and spent the next two years in Iraq dispensing British propaganda.