“There were a hundred booksellers in the old round city founded by the eighth-century caliph al-Mansur. The café and wine-drinking culture of Baghdad has been famous for centuries; there was a whole school of Iraqi poets who wrote poems about the wine bars of medieval Baghdad - the khamriyaat, or wine songs, that I quote in the book.” Has BeensBookWholeSchoolSongCultureCitiesCenturyPoetHundredWineDrinkingRoundsBarsAlsMedievalBaghdadDrinking WineCaliphsBooksellers Author:Annia Ciezadlo
“Pedro Teixeira, the great Portuguese merchant-adventurer, wrote a beautiful description of a coffeehouse with windows overlooking the Tigris and the ruins of old Baghdad. That was in 1604, and he's visiting the same street that I write about in the book, named after Abu Nuwas, though it wasn't called that back then.” WritingBookBeautifulStreetsWindowRuinsDescriptionVisitingMerchantsAdventurerBaghdadPortugueseOverlooking Author:Annia Ciezadlo
“For my generation - the "Children of Nixon," as I call us in the book - the Lebanese civil war was an iconic event. Downtown Beirut became a metaphor for so many things: man's inhumanity to man, what Charles Bukowski called "the impossibility of being human." It shaped our perceptions of war and human nature, just as Vietnam did for our parents. We used it to understand how the world works.” MenWorldHumansChildrenBookWarUsedParentGenerationsEventsHuman NaturePerceptionMetaphorCivil WarVietnamBeing HumanImpossibilityMy GenerationIconicDowntownInhumanityBeirutLebaneseInhumanity To Man Author:Annia Ciezadlo
