Both Banks of Life: Forty Short Stories

by Hanna A. Saadah, Judith Lynne Saadah (Design), MacKenzie Elizabeth Ford (Photographs)

This work reveals my passion for short stories—stories that are more autobiographical than fictional. I have plucked these stories out of my memory because they pecked at me like a flock of caged birds, wanting release. I have camouflaged them to protect certain characters, embellished them to make them interesting, and set them free into the world where they will have to fend for themselves in order to survive.They span about sixty years of my life and tell tales about epochs that made indelible imprints on my inner being, and helped reshape my character. They have occurred on both banks of my life’s river, the Eastern Bank, representing Lebanon, and the Western Bank, representing the United States. Life forward flows, but the banks remain. That is why I called this book, Both Bank Of Life.Being bicultural is tantamount to having two souls in one body. My Eastern and my Western souls have finally learned to cohabitate peacefully, but achieving that amicable balance took many soul-searching years. In some stories, one can smell the East, in others, the West, but in most of them, both East and West vie by wafting their earthen aromas.Telling all forty of stories gave me great peace, the unique peace that arises from catharsis of the soul at having finished its life’s work and liberated its imprisoned messengers of good will.Because I wrote them intermittently, not chronologically, over a ten-year span between 2006 and 2016, reappearances of certain quotations and descriptions, though unavoidable, should not diminish the value of the imbedded messages.I hope you can enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed penning them.

428 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2016