Review: The Double-Edged Sword by F Michele Ramsey

 

Genre: Romance/Historical/Politics

Description:

A young ‘halfie’ (half Egyptian and half French) girl from a wealthy Cairene family is living the good life. Her gorgeous boyfriend has proposed, her family likes him. She can afford to follow her dream of becoming an actress while working as a hostess in the executive lounge of a local airline. But as soon as Farah’s perfect life has been laid before us, it is thoroughly disassembled. At first she can make no headway against the winds of fate, but gradually over the ensuing decade she grows into a person of worth.

Author:

The author’s background is much like Farah’s, as she is of Irish and Egyptian descent. She was living in the region during the period covered by the book and knows whereof she writes.

She earned a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the American University in Cairo before pursuing a Master’s Degree in Education at George Mason University in the U.S.

Following the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, she went on to obtain an Executive Master’s at the Lebanese University in Beirut, focusing on Psychosocial Animation in War-torn Societies.

Her career spanned over a decade with the United Nations, leading her to reside in various locations. During the First Gulf War in 1991, while Iraq occupied Kuwait, she was situated in Jordan. Then, between 1995 and 1999, Ramsey resided in Gaza and the West Bank. Some of the incidents she witnessed while living there are detailed in this book. 

Appraisal:

This is a fascinating book.

The plot is slight, on the face of it. Spoiler alert: Farah loves three men through the ten year span of the book and they all betray her in one way or another. I think you’ll be glad of the spoiler, however, as I kept on waiting (for most of this book’s 400 or so pages) for The Big Reveal. And there never is one. There are a few vague hints dropped as to what may be going on. I clung to them. The author treats the quotidian in very much the same way as she treats the above-mentioned betrayals, and descriptions of squalor and violence. So one is never sure what is important, or what is going to be important. But despite this, a large portion of the book is very important indeed.

The reason is because it deals with the Middle East. You may already have your opinions on the Middle East, you may prefer to ignore it and hope it goes away. (Another spoiler alert: unlikely.) But if you ever wanted to know what drives the conflict between Muslim and Jew in that arena of eye for an eye violence, this is the book which will tell you what you need to know – and all wrapped up in a reasonably easy read which is, on the surface, simply the story of a shallow young woman growing up.

There are problems: there is a huge cast of characters, who move around the Middle East in general, Jordan (Amman) and Israel (Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories) in particular; also Cyprus, Paris and Washington DC (fortunately it is simple to look up who is who and where they currently are to remind yourself on a Kindle). I confess I never understood how the title applied to the book.

Furthermore, the book is set in the decade 1985-1995. So it can feel a bit remote from the present day. However, rather little in the Middle East has changed in the ensuing 30 years, and anything that has changed has not changed for the better. The still intractable problems are laid out here for the reader by an author who really understands what they are. By the time reports reach us in the UK and US they have usually been spun so that the reportage takes a side. That is not the case here. All sides (and there are certainly more than two) have a voice. Of course, much that underpins the ongoing disastrous relationship between Israelis and Palestinians isn’t reported outside the country at all. In this book we see much of that. Farah is a camera. Some of what she sees may shock you.

In her Afterword Ramsey explains that she abandoned this project some twenty years ago and was persuaded by friends to revive it. I’m glad she did – it was a project well worth her time and I hope it gets the wide readership it deserves.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

Rather a lot of missed typos which are real words but unhelpful in context, and thus may mislead the reader.

Rating: *** Three Stars

Reviewed by: Judi Moore

Approximate word count: 105-110,000 words