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Iran - Neither East Nor West: Interview with author Christiane Bird
In 2003, one year before the Iraq war began, acclaimed journalist and author Christiane Bird spent six months traveling through Kurdistan, an isolated, largely mountainous, but highly strategic land spread across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria that does not appear on modern maps. Kurdistan is home to the Kurds, who are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East (numbering between 25 and 30 million) and yet remain, despite the war, a people all but unknown to most Americans.
On "Women Speak Out," Bird describes her grass-roots journey staying with families, traveling by local transport through the land of the Kurds, which is also the subject of her book, A THOUSAND SIGHS, A THOUSAND REVOLTS: Journeys in Kurdistan. And, as she bears witness to the destroyed Kurdish countryside in southeast Turkey, attends a Kurdish wedding in Iran, dines with a powerful exiled agha in Syria, and visits the sites of Saddam Hussein's horrific chemical attacks in Iraq, she sheds light on this increasingly influential part of the world. She paints a moving and unforgettable portrait of a people who have suffered horrific crimes, but endured, in part to create--in the case of Iraq--one of the few functioning democracies in the Middle East.
For more information about Christiane Bird, who is also the author of Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran, visit her Web site, www.christianebird.com. Her books can be ordered through amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powells.com, and other Internet book sites, as well as through major bookstores
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