War and Me
A Memoir
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War and Me
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Narrated by:
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Christine Tawfik
About this listen
An intimate memoir about coming of age in a tight-knit working-class family during Iraq’s seemingly endless series of wars.
Faleeha Hassan became intimately acquainted with loss and fear while growing up in Najaf, Iraq. Now, in a deeply personal account of her life, she remembers those she has loved and lost.
As a young woman, Faleeha hated seeing her father and brother go off to fight, and when she needed to reach them, she broke all the rules by traveling alone to the war’s front lines—just one of many shocking and moving examples of her resilient spirit. Later, after building a life in the US, she realizes that she will coexist with war for most of the years of her life and chooses to focus on education for herself and her children. In a world on fire, she finds courage, compassion, and a voice.
A testament to endurance and a window into unique aspects of life in the Middle East, Faleeha’s memoir offers an intimate perspective on something wars can’t touch—the loving bonds of family.
©2022 Faleeha Hassan. (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Translation © 2022 by William Hutchins.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Highly recommended…and impressively enhanced in presentation by the narrative skills of Christine Tawfik…an extraordinary listening event and one which will have special appeal and interest to listeners with an interest in women's biographies and memoirs.” (Midwest Book Review)
“Hassan renders her harrowing experiences in an authentic, heartfelt manner, offering important testimony of personal and national courage. A beautifully wrought memoir from a pioneering Iraqi author.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
“Iraqi poet Faleeha Hassan (A Butterfly’s Voice) revisits a lifetime defined by war in this devastating and gorgeous work…While a sobering narrative, Hassan’s intelligence and resilience combine to yield an incredibly powerful look at the ripple effects of warfare. Her poignant tale of survival is one that readers won’t soon forget.” (Publishers Weekly)
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By: Manal al-Sharif
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Mao's Last Dancer
- Young Readers' Edition
- By: Li Cunxin
- Narrated by: Paul English
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
One day, not so very many years ago, a small peasant boy was chosen to study ballet at the Beijing Dance Academy. His mother urged him to take this chance of a lifetime. But Li was only eleven years old and he was scared and lonely, pushed away from all that he had ever known and loved. He hated the strict training routines and the strange place he had been brought to. All he wanted to do was go home - to his mother, father, and six brothers, to his own small village. But soon Li realised that his mother was right. He had the chance to do something special with his life - and he never turned back.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Happiness rising from the injustise
- By Natasha on 10-29-13
By: Li Cunxin
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Life in a Jar
- By: Jack Mayer
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 428
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 380
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Story5 out of 5 stars 375
During World War II, Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, organized a rescue network of fellow social workers to save 2,500 Jewish children from certain death in the Warsaw ghetto. Incredibly, after the war her heroism, like that of many others, was suppressed by communist Poland and remained virtually unknown for 60 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love of neighbor
- By minime on 03-26-16
By: Jack Mayer
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Death Is Hard Work
- A Novel
- By: Khaled Khalifa, Leri Price - translator
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is - after all - only a two-hour drive from Damascus. There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The bleakness of living in a war-torn country!
- By Susan on 03-20-19
By: Khaled Khalifa, and others
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The Upstairs Wife
- An Intimate History of Pakistan
- By: Rafia Zakaria
- Narrated by: Rafia Zakaria
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4 out of 5 stars 74
For a brief moment on December 27, 2007, life came to a standstill in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the country's former prime minister and the first woman ever to lead a Muslim country, had been assassinated at a political rally just outside Islamabad. Back in Karachi--Bhutto's birthplace and Pakistan's other great metropolis--Rafia Zakaria's family was suffering through a crisis of its own: her uncle Sohail, the man who had brought shame upon the family, was near death.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mixed feelings
- By Darcy on 10-06-17
By: Rafia Zakaria
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Out of the Depths
- The Story of a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last
- By: Rabbi Israel Meir Lau
- Narrated by: Steve Blane
- Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
Israel Meir Lau, one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, was just eight years old when the camp was liberated in 1945. Descended from a 1,000-year unbroken chain of rabbis, he grew up to become Chief Rabbi of Israel--and like many of the great rabbis, Lau is a master storyteller. Out of the Depths is his harrowing, miraculous, and inspiring account of life in one of the Nazis' deadliest concentration camps, and how he managed to survive against all possible odds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing Book, Amazing Man
- By Shari on 01-14-13
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A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 343
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 302
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 302
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
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1 out of 5 stars
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His life was interesting, but not his memoir
- By DR Harle on 01-27-19
By: Amos Oz
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Fire Road
- The Napalm Girl's Journey Through the Horrors of War to Faith, Forgiveness, and Peace
- By: Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Ashley Wiersma
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 155
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story5 out of 5 stars 146
Get out! Run! We must leave this place! They are going to destroy this whole place! Go, children, run first! Go now! These were the final shouts nine-year-old Kim Phuc heard before her world dissolved into flames - before napalm bombs fell from the sky, burning away her clothing and searing deep into her skin. It's a moment forever captured, an iconic image that has come to define the horror and violence of the Vietnam War. Kim was left for dead in a morgue; no one expected her to survive the attack. Napalm meant fire, and fire meant death.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The subtitle should warn what the book is
- By Rex Michael Dillon on 01-27-19
By: Kim Phuc Phan Thi, and others
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City of Spies
- By: Sorayya Khan
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Eleven-year-old Aliya Shah lives a double life in Islamabad, Pakistan - at home with her Pakistani father and Dutch mother, and at the American School, where Aliya tries to downplay that she is a "half-and-half." But when a hit-and-run driver kills the son of the family's servant, Sadiq, who is also Aliya's dear friend, her world is turned upside down. After she discovers the truth behind the tragedy - a terrible secret that burdens her heart - her conflicted loyalties are tested as never before.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautifully written and narrated
- By Wayne on 11-05-17
By: Sorayya Khan
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Sapphire Skies
- By: Belinda Alexandra
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 449
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 413
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 409
2000: The wreckage of a downed WWII fighter plane is discovered in the forests near Russia's Ukrainian border.The aircraft belonged to Natalya Azarova, ace pilot and pin-up girl for Soviet propaganda, but the question of her fate remains unanswered. Was she a German spy who faked her own death, as the Kremlin claims? Her lover, Valentin Orlov, now a highly-decorated general, refuses to believe it. Lily, a young Australian woman, has moved to Moscow to escape from tragedy.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A Disturbing Disappointment
- By Sara on 08-07-14
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 998
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 888
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 889
When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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The Blue Between Sky and Water
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
It is 1947, and Beit Daras, a quiet village in Palestine surrounded by olive groves, is home to the Baraka family. Eldest daughter Nazmiyeh looks after her widowed mother, prone to wandering and strange outbursts, while her brother, Mamdouh, tends to the village bees. Their younger sister, Mariam, with her striking mismatched eyes, spends her days talking to imaginary friends and writing.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Horrible pronunciation
- By Debra Sabah Press on 11-08-18
By: Susan Abulhawa
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Infidel
- By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Narrated by: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,662
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,764
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Story5 out of 5 stars 2,769
This New York Times best-seller is the astonishing life story of award-winning humanitarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A deeply respected advocate for free speech and women's rights, Hirsi Ali also lives under armed protection because of her outspoken criticism of the Islamic faith in which she was raised.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Tough, Candid Assessment
- By Paul Mullen on 02-18-08
By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By: Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
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Golden Earrings
- By: Belinda Alexandra
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 533
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 487
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 483
Catalina, grand-daughter of Spanish refugees, is a disciplined student with the School of the Paris Opera Ballet. Little gets inthe way of her career until the visit of an otherworldly being, who leaves her a mysterious pair of golden earrings. Given a quest, Catalina realises she must explore her own Spanish heritage and makes the connection between the visitor and ‘La Rusa’, a young Andalusian flamenco star. La Rusa died in exile in Paris in 1952, her death ruled as suicide. But as Catalina begins to discover, there were those in the community, who had good reason for wanting La Rusa dead.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fabulous story
- By Paddington on 10-19-12
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The Vagrants
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Jackie Chung
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lovely prose, good story, deadly narration
- By Athene on 05-10-13
By: Yiyun Li
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Growing Up bin Laden
- Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World
- By: Jean Sasson, Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 113
A true story that few ever believed would come to light, Growing Up bin Laden uncovers startling revelations and hidden secrets carefully guarded by the most wanted terrorist of our lifetime, Osama bin Laden.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating. I could not stop listening.
- By Curatina on 04-14-10
By: Jean Sasson, and others