There hasn't been a lot written about it in the Western media. But in the Arab world, and Western Asia as a whole, Baghdad was always known as a famously bookish, intellectual city. There's an old saying that Cairo writes,… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
There were a hundred booksellers in the old round city founded by the eighth-century caliph al-Mansur. The café and wine-drinking culture of Baghdad has been famous for centuries; there was a whole school of Iraqi poets who wrote poems about… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
In the Middle East, bread is so essential to everyday life that word for it in Egyptian Arabic is aish, which means life. It's… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
There's a long history in the Middle East of "bread intifadas," starting with 1977 in Egypt, when Anwar Sadat tried to lift bread subsidies.… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
But how can you understand a war without any knowledge of the society where it happens? It's like trying to understand birth without knowing… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
I chose to write about food: food is inherently political, but it's also an essential part of people's real lives. It's where the public… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
The Middle East is the only region in the world outside of sub-Saharan Africa where rates of malnutrition actually rose over the past decade… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
For my generation - the "Children of Nixon," as I call us in the book - the Lebanese civil war was an iconic event.… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
The problem is that so many of them are not getting told. This is a massive problem, not just in the Middle East but… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
There hasn't been a lot written about it in the Western media. But in the Arab world, and Western Asia as a whole, Baghdad… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
As a journalist, or an anthropologist, the convention is that people are there for you to study, and they are your objects. — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
But being an American woman married to an Arab guy - and a Muslim to boot! - put me in a different category. People… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
There were a hundred booksellers in the old round city founded by the eighth-century caliph al-Mansur. The café and wine-drinking culture of Baghdad has… — Annia Ciezadlo Copy Share Image
![“Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting around the dinner table with me and my friends, hearing what average people really say and really think, [where] the dinner table is the…” quote by Annia Ciezadlo](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/732/annia-ciezadlo-21699_average_americans-are-curious-about-the-texture_51011.jpg)
