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Stories of Muslim Migrants on the Journey West
Delacorte
December 2005
368 pages
ISBN: 055380393X
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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 doโas 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 fearsโand 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 travelersโฆPurya, who fled Iran only to fall into the clutches of human smugglers and survive beatings and torture in Bulgariaโฆand Shahroukh Khan, an Afghan teenager whose world at home was shattered twiceโonce by the Taliban and again by American bombsโbut 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 reachโ and away from a world to which they cannot return. It is an unforgettable tale of heartbreak and prejudice, courage, heroism, and hope.
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