cover image Zaatar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East

Zaatar Days, Henna Nights: Adventures, Dreams, and Destinations Across the Middle East

Maliha Masood. Seal Press (CA), $15.95 (320pp) ISBN 978-1-58005-192-7

Disillusioned with her daily routine-phone tag, email, multitasking-Masood leaves her job and her family in Seattle and sets off for the Middle East from whence she came. This travelogue follows Masood, strapped into an REI backpack and sporting a well-thumbed Lonely Planet guidebook, as she travels from Egypt and Jordan to Syria and Turkey over the course of 10 months, hoping ""to come to terms with a truer me, a more essential self that couldn't entirely be placed amid the bullet points of my resume."" A Pakistan-born Muslim American in her late 20s, Masood finds herself blending into her environment-visiting mosques regularly, making friends easily-without entirely fitting in, a dichotomy ethnic Americans often grapple with while abroad and the ambitious, fascinating topic Masood excels in exploring. Unfortunately, Masood is less interested in describing sights and sounds-the dusty air of Egypt, the bustle of Turkey-and in so doing may fail to hook readers more interested in exotic locales than self-discovery. Though there's much here that's stimulating and relatable, fans of travel writing may feel they've been invited on the trip, but denied the pleasure of losing themselves in it.