A Beirut Heart: One Woman's War

by Cathy Sultan

This disturbing and yet beautiful memoir, written by a courageous housewife, places us inside something we seldom think about - domestic survival during civil war. A Beirut Heart imposes upon the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976520117
• ISBN13: 9780976520115
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Mighty Media Press
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

I couldn't put it down

If you want to feel what it feels like to be a family in the Middle East as war creeps in around you, this is the book. Intimately detailed, we live with the Sultan family as they escape their apartment in Beurut to sleep in the hallways during a bombing raid. We zoom through the streets with the author as she races across town to pick her children up from school with bombs chasing their car like lightening bolts zapping at the bumper. Throughout, we get a real-life point-of-view on how one mother tries to maintain a sense of normalcy when senselessness blasts out the windows...again.

One woman's story

A Beirut Heart is a poignant memoir adeptly intertwining the political climate of Lebanon with the delicate and often mine-filled relationships that cross-cultural families experience. Cathy Sultan relates her experiences with vivid honesty. In 1964 Cathy is drawn to the exotic culture of her soon to be husband, a Lebanese medical student. After their marriage and his residency, ignoring her family's apprehension and paying little attention to world politics, she and her husband move to Beirut with their two young children. In 1975, after six delight-filled years war erupts, neighbors and life-long friends turn on each other, her neighborhood becomes a war zone and Cathy's life is irreversibly changed. As she attempts to provide a secure home environment for her family, the dichotomy of trying to maintain a normal routine and a secure home environment for her family--while adjusting to newly acquired survival skills--doesn't escape her! But, this is much more than a story of survival through war, it's about a family who discovers they are more alike than different, it's about their finding freedom to express themselves in their politics, their profession and their religion in the country they least wanted to identify with. Armchair Interviews says: Very interesting perspective on cultural issues.

Life in an Arab civil war, here in Lebanon, now in Iraq

This book by an American who married a Lebanese doctor and lived in Beirut as the Lebanese civil war began and raged, describes in detail how people survived. The war was not constant; it flared violently for days and weeks and then lulled for days and weeks. Throughout her story, you are struck by the tragic and surreal aspects of it. Sultan also describes the political machinations of Lebanon, and how each of the groups protected its own and came to hate the other groups. You also read stories that are very similar to what is now happening in Iraq. One group kills members of another group and then the other group retaliates. People are brutally tortured to death for nothing other than being in another sect or religion. Sultan is hard on most of the groups who were politically involved in Lebanon. She strongly criticizes the Palestinians, Syrians, and Israelis and speaks about how simple the American thinking was. Lebanon was then and remains now a proxy battlefield where stronger nations pursue their interests. The most disturbing part of the book is when she meets a French mercenary. Full of manners, he discloses that he has been hired as a sniper to randomly shoot people. His comment that it is nothing more than "a well-paying job" is unnerving. He has no political motives at all; his goal is to kill unknown innocents in order to satisfy the blood lust of his employer. The fact that the people he is currently talking to could be in his gun sights tomorrow seem to be inconsequential. I could not help thinking that as long as there are people with his attitude, war will never disappear. The civil war in Lebanon was a tragedy, but it was also a precursor to what is now happening in Iraq. Large numbers of people are being killed as a consequence of the people splitting into factions, and right now there appears to be no end in sight. Read this book and learn how people try to cope with daily bombings and shootings and the occasional senseless death of a friend.

Good book, misleading title

Cathy Sultan offers a personal account that looks more like a biography. Since Sultan had spent most of her life in Beirut and remains nostalgic to that Middle Eastern city, the book is misleadingly called Beirut's Heart. Sultan, an American who married a Lebanese studying in the US at young age and went to Beirut where she lived with him and his family, records her experience from days of her adolescence. Sultan was as rebellious as all young people her age at the time. When she married Sultan, she accompanied him on a new adventure as she went and lived in Beirut. Shortly after she arrived, the Lebanese civil war started in 1975 and soon the country was divided into East Beirut and West Beirut. Cathy was living in the Eastern side. Even though the book is a memoir, Cathy's style enriches it and makes of it a beautiful novel especially with her meticulous description of Lebanese items, food, lifestyle and other issues. The book is entertaining yet it could have been much better had Cathy paid attention more to the political details and made sure to put each one of the horrible experiences that she told that she lived during the civil war in its political and historic context.