Embracing the Infidel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An eye-opening personal account of an epic human drama, Embracing the Infidel takes us on an astounding journey along a modern-day underground railroad that stretches from Istanbul to Paris. In this groundbreaking book, Iranian-American Behzad Yaghmaian has done what no other writer has managed to do–as he enters the world of Muslim migrants and tells their extraordinary stories of hope for a new life in the West.
In a tent city in Greece, they huddle together. Men and women from Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iran, and other countries. Most have survived war and brutal imprisonment, political and social persecution. Some have faced each other in battle, and all share a powerful desire for freedom. Behzad Yaghmaian lived among them, listened to their hopes, dreams, and fears–and now he weaves together dozens of their stories of yearning, persecution, and unwavering faith. We meet Uncle Suleiman, an Iraqi veteran of the Iran-Iraq war; once imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, he is now a respected elder of a ramshackle tent city in Athens, offering comfort and community to his fellow travelers…Purya, who fled Iran only to fall into the clutches of human smugglers and survive beatings and torture in Bulgaria…and Shahroukh Khan, an Afghan teenager whose world at home was shattered twice–once by the Taliban and again by American bombs–but whose story turns on a single moment of awakening and love in the courtyard of a Turkish mosque.
A chronicle of husbands separated from wives, children from parents, Embracing the Infidel is a portrait of men and women moving toward a promised land they may never reach–and away from a world to which they cannot return. It is an unforgettable tale of heartbreak and prejudice, courage, heroism, and hope.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yaghmaian's second book is an eye-opening account of Muslim immigrants traveling from Africa or the Middle East to the West, where they hope to find opportunities not available in their homelands. Yaghmaian is a native Iranian, now a U.S. national, who lived among Muslim migrants in Istanbul, Sofia, Athens, Patras, Paris, Calais, London and New York while collecting these accounts of leaving home, traveling illegally from country to country, suffering harsh punishments and imprisonments, and feeling the wrath of poverty. "We stand like beggars in the food line... but we came here with dreams," says one Afghan stuck in Patras, the gateway between Greece and Italy. Perhaps the most intense story is that of Tufan, a closeted Iranian homosexual who wants to be a writer and provide for his wife from an arranged marriage. It's clear Yaghmaian's subjects trust him, but why they do so is less obvious; Yaghmaian sticks to the facts of his travels and conversation, avoiding speculation about his subjects' motives, in effect becoming a conduit for the refugees' storytelling. It's a refreshing approach to an emotionally loaded and timely topic. Photos.
