Dispatches From The Field: Joe Talks About "Day of Honey"

A luminous portrait of life in the Middle East, Day of Honey weaves history, cuisine, and firsthand reporting into a fearless, intimate exploration of everyday survival.

In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Baghdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. Day of Honey is her memoir of the hunger for food and friendship—a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war.

Reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband's hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But just as the young couple settles into a new home, the bloodshed they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and the rituals of eating to illuminate a vibrant Middle East that most Americans never see. We get to know people like Roaa, a determined young Kurdish woman who dreams of exploring the world, only to see her life under occupation become confined to the kitchen; Abu Rifaat, a Baghdad book lover who spends his days eavesdropping in the ancient city's legendary cafÉs; Salama al-Khafaji, a soft-spoken dentist who eludes assassins to become Iraq's most popular female politician; and Umm Hassane, Ciezadlo's sardonic Lebanese mother-in-law, who teaches her to cook rare family recipes—which are included in a mouthwatering appendix of Middle Eastern comfort food. As bombs destroy her new family's ancestral home and militias invade her Beirut neighborhood, Ciezadlo illuminates the human cost of war with an extraordinary ability to anchor the rhythms of daily life in a larger political and historical context. From forbidden Baghdad book clubs to the oldest recipes in the world, Ciezadlo takes us inside the Middle East at a historic moment when hope and fear collide. Day of Honey is a brave and compassionate portrait of civilian life during wartime—a moving testament to the power of love and generosity to transcend the misery of war.

Joe says:

"It seems that there are a lot of memoirs out there, and many of them are about food. It is an important thing we share: the life-giving need for food. Since it something we share, it seems a nearly universal topic about which to write. But because there are so many memoirs about it, at times a new book on the subject risks getting buried. Hopefully, this book will not be lost. Day of Honey reminds us that yes, food is ubiquitous. We need it to survive. But to lead the rich lives that humanity is capable of doing, we need meals. A place to call home. A place to cook and provide for those we love, our families and our friends. And this is something we take for granted. We have been at war for over eight years, and yet for most of us, we have not had to make sacrifices. We have not faced food shortages, electricity cut-offs, car bombs at the market, missiles flying into our homes. Annia Ciezaldo is a journalist who has covered the wars in Iraq and then in Beirut, Lebanon. She called both places home: had an apartment with her husband, had friends, favorite cafes and markets, a routine. In Day of Honey, Ciezadlo shares what it is like for civilians caught in the grip of war, when the struggle is not only to survive, but to live somehow resembling the one before the war. This book is a fascinating, humane look at what life in the war zone is like for those who live there. It is not preachy, does not take sides. Ciezadlo could: her husband is a Shiite from Lebanon, and things get quite scary for them during sectarian fighting in the capital. He longs for the peace of New York, while she seems drawn to the tenuous life in the war zone. This book contains a lot of information about food, the etymology of food, and how it reflects changes throughout history of religion, politics and society in general. Part sociology, part food memoir (and the recipes in the back are great, too) and part contemporary history, this book has something for many different readers. Most of all, though, this wonderful book is about one of the most fundamental desires of humans: what it means to have a home."