Review
"...if someone publishes and sends me a copy, it is rare for me to read it from cover to cover and even rarer for me to do that in a single day. Crossing Borders left me wanting more when I got to the end and found she did not go on to tell what it was like when they all came back to England. I am assured there is a sequel ... but when, I ask her, when? The writing style is informative and almost chatty and drew me in to the whole scenario. It was hard to believe this was non fiction at some point, so descriptive and so flowing. That's it, you want to know more, ask Brenda. For me it was an amazing read and left me full of admiration for her courage and her great, great love." --Dorothy Davies - Editor, and author of "Captain of The Wight"
"Brenda Abou El Ola's book is a perceptive account of one woman s experience of crossing borders Britain s and Lebanon's. Two ordinary people both divorced, both with children come face-to-face with red tape, misconceptions and each other as they struggle with language, customs and their own personalities. The author shows particular insight into her own character." --Jay Mandal - Author of "The Dandelion Clock", "A Different Kind of Love" and others at BeWrite Books.
"Brenda Abou El Ola's book is a perceptive account of one woman s experience of crossing borders Britain s and Lebanon's. Two ordinary people both divorced, both with children come face-to-face with red tape, misconceptions and each other as they struggle with language, customs and their own personalities. The author shows particular insight into her own character." --Jay Mandal - Author of "The Dandelion Clock", "A Different Kind of Love" and others at BeWrite Books.
Product Description
I was a middle aged British teacher with grown up children. He was a Palestinian living in a notorious refugee camp in Lebanon, a member of Fatah the major Palestinian political party and largest organisation in the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) with teenaged boys. He had experienced numerous small wars and political unrest over the years while I had been involved in various family, health and work problems - neither of us were actively seeking new family relationships. However, we fell in love. I went to Lebanon; we met and married. I returned to UK to work while we worked out how we could be together as a family - here or there. I then returned to Lebanon and lived with my new family in Ein El Helwa camp, in Saida, (despite advice against this) "Crossing Borders" records the journey that we undertook to become a family and the problems that we seemed to hit at every turn. It tells of the gradual understanding through my experiences of the little that most of us know (or care) about other cultures and societies and how pre-conceived ideas, from the media or other, have a major impact on our impressions and comprehensions of the world, the people in it and the way we live. It is also an understanding of the barriers we humans put between ourselves, culturally, socially and emotionally, and the extent of the borders we are willing to cross
Excerpted from Crossing Borders by Brenda Abou El Ola. Copyright © 2008. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Start
Tell people that you intend visiting Lebanon and you get a range of reactions in response. These range from the slightly bemused "That's different"" through a seemingly hostile "Are you crazy? What do you want to go there for?" to blank faced ignorance of "Whereabouts is that then?"
The people I am speaking with are also wide ranging in their spectrum of social, intellectual and political status and therefore this must also be an overview of society's views and knowledge in general. To many people in the UK Lebanon was, is and always will be, a war zone - a place where you are more likely to be taken hostage than welcomed, a place of half bombed buildings, not a thriving international business centre, a place of fear and danger for any westerner stupid enough to travel there.
I had already been insensed earlier in the year by the comments of the chief constable of South Yorkshire. Hooligan behaviour in South Yorkshire communities had become so bad that it was ruining the police force's image apparently. The chief constable stated that anti-social conduct was making many people feel like they "live in Beirut". Many improvements had been made in the areas, but people simply did not recognise them. "If it feels like they are living in Beirut, they won't care one bit that we are stamping out gun crime" he announced on the front page of the local paper.
I screamed at the moronic headlines - then screamed less loudly at the chief constable, asking him primarily if he had ever been to Beirut or had any knowledge of life there. I wasn't surprised when I didn't receive a reply.
So thoughts of attitudes and misconceptions were at the forefront of my mind as I prepared to leave the "comforts" of my home in the UK to travel to this God forsaken place. Maybe I was the one who was deceiving myself about the situation. Perhaps I would be taken hostage before even getting out of the airport in Beirut. Perhaps I wouldn't even reach Beirut, and be shuffled off somewhere whilst getting my connecting flight in Amsterdam. My family and friends joked half heartedly about my likely disappearance and the reporting of it in the media. It was almost becoming imperative that something did happen to me - just so people could say "we told you so" and feel happier that they were right all along.
The ill-informed beliefs about Lebanon and my safety as a lone British woman travelling to the Middle East in the current political climate were, however, not the sole reason for concerns. Added to this was the fact that I was travelling to Lebanon to meet a man who I had met on the internet, fallen in love with and had discussed with, on many occasions, the possibility of marriage. Marriage because we loved each other and wanted to be together - and for no other reason. This in itself was a difficult concept, understandably, for family and friends to come to terms with. I had met someone on the internet and was now going to meet them (alone) in a foreign country? Forget the Middle East situation then - what about the situation of internet chat rooms, and all the other concerns about the internet so prevalent over the past months and years? I was obviously crazy and no amount of reasoned persuasion that I should forget the whole idea was going to make me see sense. Some people began to smile condescendingly at me as we discussed my intentions - as with the ageing parent we love but who irritates us with banal statements and irksome actions. And then of course there's the question of nationality (or lack of it) of the man I was going to meet. Palestinian - a terrorist then.
What is his job?
Job? He is Palestinian - what can his job be? He is in fact a Major in Yasser Arafat's Fatah party - previously, and more commonly known, as the PLO. They all rest their cases, with visions of me blindfolded and kneeling on the floor at the feet of the man I love, while he points a gun at my head and sends his sons to Britain with explosives attached to their belts.
Tell people that you intend visiting Lebanon and you get a range of reactions in response. These range from the slightly bemused "That's different"" through a seemingly hostile "Are you crazy? What do you want to go there for?" to blank faced ignorance of "Whereabouts is that then?"
The people I am speaking with are also wide ranging in their spectrum of social, intellectual and political status and therefore this must also be an overview of society's views and knowledge in general. To many people in the UK Lebanon was, is and always will be, a war zone - a place where you are more likely to be taken hostage than welcomed, a place of half bombed buildings, not a thriving international business centre, a place of fear and danger for any westerner stupid enough to travel there.
I had already been insensed earlier in the year by the comments of the chief constable of South Yorkshire. Hooligan behaviour in South Yorkshire communities had become so bad that it was ruining the police force's image apparently. The chief constable stated that anti-social conduct was making many people feel like they "live in Beirut". Many improvements had been made in the areas, but people simply did not recognise them. "If it feels like they are living in Beirut, they won't care one bit that we are stamping out gun crime" he announced on the front page of the local paper.
I screamed at the moronic headlines - then screamed less loudly at the chief constable, asking him primarily if he had ever been to Beirut or had any knowledge of life there. I wasn't surprised when I didn't receive a reply.
So thoughts of attitudes and misconceptions were at the forefront of my mind as I prepared to leave the "comforts" of my home in the UK to travel to this God forsaken place. Maybe I was the one who was deceiving myself about the situation. Perhaps I would be taken hostage before even getting out of the airport in Beirut. Perhaps I wouldn't even reach Beirut, and be shuffled off somewhere whilst getting my connecting flight in Amsterdam. My family and friends joked half heartedly about my likely disappearance and the reporting of it in the media. It was almost becoming imperative that something did happen to me - just so people could say "we told you so" and feel happier that they were right all along.
The ill-informed beliefs about Lebanon and my safety as a lone British woman travelling to the Middle East in the current political climate were, however, not the sole reason for concerns. Added to this was the fact that I was travelling to Lebanon to meet a man who I had met on the internet, fallen in love with and had discussed with, on many occasions, the possibility of marriage. Marriage because we loved each other and wanted to be together - and for no other reason. This in itself was a difficult concept, understandably, for family and friends to come to terms with. I had met someone on the internet and was now going to meet them (alone) in a foreign country? Forget the Middle East situation then - what about the situation of internet chat rooms, and all the other concerns about the internet so prevalent over the past months and years? I was obviously crazy and no amount of reasoned persuasion that I should forget the whole idea was going to make me see sense. Some people began to smile condescendingly at me as we discussed my intentions - as with the ageing parent we love but who irritates us with banal statements and irksome actions. And then of course there's the question of nationality (or lack of it) of the man I was going to meet. Palestinian - a terrorist then.
What is his job?
Job? He is Palestinian - what can his job be? He is in fact a Major in Yasser Arafat's Fatah party - previously, and more commonly known, as the PLO. They all rest their cases, with visions of me blindfolded and kneeling on the floor at the feet of the man I love, while he points a gun at my head and sends his sons to Britain with explosives attached to their belts.
