A House in the Sky, Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett (4)
This story was painful to read, but brought up many
questions as most good books should. It is the true story of Ms. Lindhout’s
life. She describes her beginnings in a small, remote town north of Calgary,
Canada. She dreamed of visiting the locations seen in the National Geographic
magazines she used to escape from the realities in her home. When she became
old enough she moved to the big city (Calgary), got a job waitressing and saved
enough each summer, to travel the world each winter. She didn’t pick the
obvious, glamorous locations: Paris, Rome, and Amsterdam. She picked the
grittier locales from her magazines: Latin America, Laos, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
and Afghanistan. She often went alone and stayed in 1 star hotels to make her
money stretch farther. Eventually she goes to Somalia with an old boyfriend and
gets kidnapped for ransom. The final half of the book is the horrible retelling
of that experience. Throughout this book I vacillated between two questions:
what does it take in one’s upbringing and personality to have the courage to
travel to these places? And how could she be so selfish to put herself is such
obvious danger just to say she had been there? I realized something about
myself – I am far too cautious (upbringing and personality) and good with
numbers. A combination that says: if the risk is greater than 30% that
something bad may happen, I will not take that risk. In addition to bringing up
good questions for all of us, this book delves into the complication of being a
Western woman kidnapped by young Muslim men and boys. I often thought ‘how
would I have handled that?’ and was impressed by her strength, intelligence and
overall ability to forgive.
No comments:
Post a Comment