After years of working on One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature with Sahar Muradi, we released the book in Sharjah, UAE at the Sharjah International Book Fair first! Sharjah or Shariqa, is a warm friendly city where the glossy new intermingles with its sunbaked history and families dominate the streets and parks. It was my first trip abroad since my childhood migration to the U.S. And the beauty of this coincidence is that I had left the Gulf with my family and I returned to family (friends who quickly melded into becoming family) back in the Gulf to share this important collection of voices.
Here is a lovely song that encapsulates the city of Sharjah (Shariqa)
Sahar Muradi and I tweeted much of our adventures under the respective twitter handles @mooseecha and @mstalibonita but here are a few highlights in images and links. It is hard for me to articulate all of the wonderful things we saw and the beautiful people we met. I was sad to leave and perhaps a few more days of percolating will make me more conversational and less visual about the 5 days spent at the fair #shjibf and seeing the countryside, the mountains, and the desert outside of the city. And what a city Sharjah was! It was breathtaking to experience a city that seemed like the freshness seal of the skyscrapers were just recently peeled off, exposing shiny sleek buildings – especially coming from Brooklyn, a city with so many old brick buildings and Victorian houses.
View from our hotel: Cornich Buhaira (formerly Millenium) Hotel
Ad for #SHJIBF on Streets. This one by Museum of Islamic Civilization. Photo by Sharif Saed
BOOK LAUNCH: 10.31.10
Photo by Lisa Dempster
Photo by Mohannad Adnan (L-R Moi, Sahar Muradi, and Lisa Dempster)
We were quite fortunate to have our new friend, Lisa Dempster launch our book at Sharjah. It was appropriate since Lisa is the director of the Emerging Writers Series in Melbourne, now Sydney, Australia. Thank you Lisa for guiding us through this process!
Book Signing. Photo Courtesy of poet Mujheeb Jaihoon (www.jaihoon.com)
Book Signing. Courtesy of Jaihoon.com signing the wonderful poet, Mujheeb Jaihoon's book.
We had a wonderful time in Sharjah & Dubai. We were covered in the Gulf News (albeit a bit misspelled a bit misquoted): Afghan American Authors Raise Awareness
And we were invited to speak on Dubai Eye Radio, on the Dubai Today show with Jessica Swan and Samineh Shaheem, psychologist: Click Here for the podcast.
Next year, Inshallah, Sharjah International Book Fair 2011
Etislalat Eye of the Emirates, Al Qasba, Sharjah. Photo by Sharif Saed.
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