Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Salbi, Zainab; Becklund, Laurie

Published by Gotham Books / Penguin Group (USA) Inc., New York, 2005

About this Item

As new condition maroon boards/white spine/maroon spine lettering contained in an as new condition non price-clipped color photographic dust jacket. Includes Author Dedication; Afterword; and Collaborator's Note. "When I was growing up in Iraq, people used to refer to me as the "pilot's daughter." I hated that term. I still do. It stole from me my very identity, everything I wanted to be. It defined me in terms of my father, and defined him, in turn, by his passenger: a despot millions of Iraqis feared.Because of a chain of events Saddam Hussein set in motion, I found myself stranded in America because of the Gulf War. For very good reasons, I had come to trust no one, not even my mother. I had just turned twenty-one, and I found myself all alone for the first time as fresh new fears were heaped on all the old ones. I did what I needed to survive, though it was not nearly as simple as I make it sound: I erased the pilot's daughter and started over. I creased my life down the middle like the spine of a book when you bend the pages back very hard. You could read the first half of the book of my life, then read the second half, and not know they were lived by the same person. I wanted it that way. I needed it that way." - from the rear outer jacket cover "Zainab Salbi was eleven years old when her father was chosen to be Saddam Hussein's personal pilot and her family's life was grafted onto his. Her mother, the beautiful Alia, taught her daughter the skills she needed to survive. A plastic smile. Saying yes. Burying in boxes in her mind the horrors she glimpsed around her. "Learn to erase your memories," she instructed. "He can read eyes." In this richly visual, highly anticipated memoir, a global leader in the fight on behalf of women victims of war reveals ties to a dictator that fear had kept sealed up inside her for years. She describes tyranny as she saw it - through the eyes of a privileged child, a rebellious teenager, a violated wife, and ultimately a public figure fighting to overcome the skill that once kept her alive: silence. Zainab was just twenty when her mother talked her into an arranged marriage in America. She found herself wed to an abusive stranger and fled. Stranded by the Gulf War, unaware that her mother had sent her away to save her from Saddam's growing affection, she started over. Only when Alia was dying did Salbi realize that she had gone to war zones around the world asking other women for answers that her mother had all along. Between Two Worlds is a riveting quest for truth that deepens our understanding for the universal themes of power, fear, sexual subjugation, and the question one generation asks the one before it: How could you have let this happen to us? Why, the child in Salbi needed to know, didn't her father just fly her away?" - from the inner front jacket flap. Seller Inventory # 002359

Bibliographic Details

Title: Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny: ...

Publisher: Gotham Books / Penguin Group (USA) Inc., New York

Publication Date: 2005

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: As New

Edition: 1st Edition