Review of Zaatar days, Henna nights: adventures, dreams, and destinations across the Middle East, by Maliha Masood, (Seal Press 2007)

Zaatar Days, Henna Nights Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East, by Maliha Masood, (Seal Press 2007) Travel can be transformative. Change was certainly on Maliha Masood’s mind when she set out on a 10-month journey through the crescent of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. Perhaps the souqs, mosques and nightclubs would hold a key to her conflicted existence as a Muslim American Gen-Xer. At the start of her reflective tale Maliha is two distinct and dissatisfied people: a Pakistani-born 28 year old coming unmoored from her Eastern roots and faith, and a depressed dot-commer bored of living in her parents’ suburban Seattle basement. By the end she’s bruised from love and battered by cultural missteps but also a blossoming writer, a proponent of the Middle East, and a woman newly confident in both Islamic faith and feminist philosophies. The most intriguing thread of Zaatar Days is the essential conflict of Masood’s identity. It causes trouble everywhere she goes – for her, and for people unable to categorize Maliha or grasp her idiosyncrasies as a Westernized Easterner.