Syrian poet Samir Tahhan collected folktales from old men sitting outside their houses in Aleppo, drinking tea. Afraid these stories would disappear with the passing of this generation, Tahhan also went to halls and events to hear professional storytellers and record their performances. Anthropologist Andrea Rugh helped translate the resulting two volumes of stories from the original Arabic and wrote the informative introduction to this one-volume collection.

Some of the tales appeared in rhyming verse in Arabic and some were based on events that are said to have actually taken place in Aleppo. Rugh explains the concepts of the most popular types of Syrian story structures: the gissa, the hikaya, and the hudutha. With two of the poems, the Arabic and the English are shown side by side in order to demonstrate the internal poetic structures of the original rhymes.

With their emphasis on morality and social values, the tales will be familiar to Western audiences. Another value for the reader is finding the accepted social values and behaviors that Arab adults try to inculcate in their younger generation, often through complex characterizations. Teasing out these meanings gives the reader an appreciation for the act of translation and hints of the power of the Arabic language in prose and poetry.

Professional illustrator Douglas Rugh has provided the book's black-and-white prints based on the stories and his experiences as a child growing up in the Middle East.

Daughter of Damascus presents a personal account of a Syrian woman's youth in the Suq Saruja ("old city") quarter of Damascus in the 1940s. Siham Tergeman wrote this book to preserve the details of a "genuine Arab past" for Syrian young people. In it, she relates the customs pertaining to marriage, birth, circumcision, and death. She writes of Ramadan festivities, family picnics to the orchards of the Ghuta, weekly trips to the public bath, her school experiences, Damascene cooking, peddlers' calls, and proverbs. She includes the well-known dramatic skits, songs, and tales of the Syrian Hakawati storytellers. And, through the words of her father, she describes the difficult period when Syrians were involved in the Balkans War and World War I. All this wealth of ethnographic detail is set in real-life vignettes that make the book lively and entertaining reading.

Little has been published about modern Syrian social life. In this English translation of an Arabic memoir originally published in Syria in 1978, Tergeman appeals to a wide audience. General readers will find a charming story, while scholars can find source material for university courses in anthropology, sociology, family and women's studies, and Middle Eastern area studies. The introduction by anthropologist Andrea Rugh portrays Syrian social life for Western readers and points out some of the nuances that might escape the attention of those unacquainted with Arab culture.

When American anthropologist Andrea Rugh rented a room in a small Syrian village, hoping to find the time to finish a book she was writing, she never expected to be drawn so deeply into the lives of her neighbours. But she developed close friendships with two households - those of her landlady and her landlady's sister. For eight months Rugh observed the lives of these two families and their ten children. The result is an intimate account of family life and child rearing in a traditional society in the midst of modernization. "Within the Circle" is a vividly crafted portrait of families in a changing world, chronicling the day-to-day textures of life among family members, between parents and children, and between families and the larger world of the village, noting the close-knit family relationships and rigid patterns of authority and responsibility. Rugh contrasts her experiences as an American mother raising three independent boys with the experiences of the village parents striving to form a clost-knit family unit. A fascinating glimpse of village life in the contemporary Middle East, "Within the Circle" offers a powerful basis for comparing the significant differences in famil

Between 1948 and 1957, a period that witnessed two wars between Egypt and Israel, 60,000 members of Egypt's 75,000-strong Jewish population left the country, compelled by growing hostility to them because of their presumed links to Zionism, economic insecurity, and after 1956, overt expulsion. Decades later, during the 1980s and 1990s, the personal reminiscences of eight Egyptian Jewish women, presently residents of New York who had left Egypt, were meticulously collected by Nayra Atiya. While Atiya's sample of eight narrators represents only a tiny percentage of the Jews who left Egypt, their accounts tell us much about the middle- and upper-class Jews who migrated to the Americas and Europe, giving us a vivid sense of their lives in Egypt before their departure and the dynamic role they played in Egyptian society. They were the children or grandchildren of generations of Jews who migrated to Egypt from around or near the Mediterranean to escape economic hardship and persecution or, in one case, a family conflict. With one exception, Atiya's interlocutors resided in relatively upscale neighborhoods in Egypt near other Jewish families. They lived in elegant apartments, with servants, fine foods, memberships in elite clubs, and summers spent near Alexandria or in Europe. In Zikrayat, Atiya movingly captures the essence of these women's characters and experiences, the fabric of their day-to-day lives, and the complex, many-layered mood of those times in Egypt. In doing so she brings to life the ties that bind all Egyptians, offering a glimpse into a now vanished world-and the heartbreak of exile and migration.

Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Nayra Atiya gathered the oral histories of five Egyptian men: a fisherman, an attorney, a scholar, a businessman, and a production manager. Through personal interviews over the course of several years, Atiya intimately captured the everyday triumphs and struggles of these young men in a rapidly changing Egyptian society. These tender stories of childhood experiences in the rural countryside, of the rigors of schooling, and of the many challenges in navigating adulthood shed light on both the rich diversity of Egyptian society and the values and traditions that are shared by all Egyptians. The concept of shahaama-a code of honor that demands loyalty, generosity, and a readiness to help others-is threaded throughout the narratives, reflecting its deeply rooted presence in Egyptian culture. Moving beyond leaden stereotypes of the oppressive Middle Eastern male, these candid selfportraits reveal the complexity of male identity in contemporary Egyptian society, highlighting the men-s desires for economically viable lives, the same desires that fuel the many Egyptians today working toward revolutionary change.

Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, Nayra Atiya gathered the oral histories of five Egyptian men: a fisherman, an attorney, a scholar, a businessman, and a production manager. Through personal interviews over the course of several years, Atiya intimately captured the everyday triumphs and struggles of these young men in a rapidly changing Egyptian society. These tender stories of childhood experiences in the rural countryside, of the rigors of schooling, and of the many challenges in navigating adulthood shed light on both the rich diversity of Egyptian society and the values and traditions that are shared by all Egyptians. The concept of shahaama-a code of honor that demands loyalty, generosity, and a readiness to help others-is threaded throughout the narratives, reflecting its deeply rooted presence in Egyptian culture. Moving beyond leaden stereotypes of the oppressive Middle Eastern male, these candid self-portraits reveal the complexity of male identity in contemporary Egyptian society, highlighting the men's desires for economically viable lives, the same desires that fuel the many Egyptians today working toward revolutionary change.