Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad

I discovered this book 'by accident' and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading it. It's a book of emails between a North London BBC journalist/mother (the BBC journalist Justin Rowlatt's wife) and an English literature professor in Baghdad set in 2005-2008. I was completely gripped all the way through. It was a fascinating window into the lives of two women from worlds thousands of miles apart and how their lives affected each other even though they were so very different.

I learnt a great idea for home school from the book which I've set the children- to learn a poem off by heart by Christmas,

When I was at school I had a wonderful English teacher. One day she set us a task: we all had to learn a poem off by heart, to recite in front of the class. It could be any poem but a minimum of 14 lines. The reason, she said, was in case any of us went to prison. We all laughed but I remember her reasoning: a poem can sustain you. I've never been to prison but I can still remember my poem.

(Bee R)

I liked this verse (Shakespeare?) quoted about friends:

She that is thy friend indeed,

She will help thee in thy need:

If thou sorrow, she will weep;

If thou wake she cannot sleep...

And now for an old Iraqi saying:

Traditions start like cobwebs then turn into thick chains. 

So true.

May describes in graffic detail the chaos and destruction brought to Baghdad after the 2003 invasion. This is her comment:

Dictatorship with security and safety is much better for civilians than the bloodthristy democracy they have brought us.

May and her husband ended up in Damascus for a while in 2007. The description of life in that city in contrast to the terror of living in Baghdad is chilling when you read her words knowing that not many years afterwards, Syria descended into its own civil war:

The country is nice [Syria] and the weather is good. The people are very noisy here...and people fill the streets all the time...They're very friendly and not depressed like Iraqis. Over the last decade in Iraq it has become very rare to see people being friendly to strangers. There's always an element of distrust enveloping all human contact. Here, at last, we can taste the beauty of peace and walk in the streets without fear of robbers, killers and all the other hazards that I've told you of.