Title: Brownies and Kalashnikovs : a Saudi woman's memoir of American Arabia and wartime Beirut /
Authors: Basrawi, Fadia.
Publisher: South Street Press,
Year: 2009
Subjects: Basrawi, Fadia.; Women Saudi Arabia Biography.; Saudi Arabia Social life and customs; Lebanon History; Lebanon Social life and customs
Abstract: "Fadia, a Saudi Arab, grew up in the strictly circumscribed and tailor-made 'desert Disneyland' of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company). This slice of modern, suburban, middle America is located in Dhahran, Aramco's administrative headquarters in Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Muslim kingdom run according to strict Wahabbi Shari'a law. Eventually, after only brief holidays abroad visiting relatives in colourful Arab cities like Medina, Damascus and Alexandria, Fadia moved to Beirut, the glitzy 'Paris of the Middle East', to attend high school and university. In Beirut she fell in love with a passionate and idealistic Lebanese journalist with whom she eloped against her parents' wishes, subsequently getting caught up in Lebanon's fifteen-year civil war while raising a family of five children. Providing a fascinating account of a Saudi woman's painful journey from naïve Aramcon girl to life as a resident of a war-torn capital city, this book provides new insight into two very different Middle Eastern worlds about which so little is known by those living outside the region."--Page 4 of cover.
Contents: pt. I. Aramcoland. Desert suburbia--desert kingdom -- Brave new world : growing up 'Aramcon' -- Disneyland within, desertland without -- Hidden America -- Yankee Doodle comes to town -- Forbidden knowledge -- pt. II. Heartland. Lebanon : my past, my future -- Hello ... I love you -- Go up to Lebanon and cry--Jeremiah 22:20 -- Tides of war -- Life will go on -- Dignity or death -- War and dreams -- Lessons in love -- What goes around comes around -- The road not taken.