When I was a child, every year, for Christmas, I would wish for wings, pixie dust, a flying carpet… anything that would make me fly. I will never forget the first time I did: my grandfather and mother took me with them on a trip to Brussels when I was about four. That blue, those clouds, that lightness… I have never stopped chasing them since.
I wrote...
No Land to Light On: A Novel
By
Yara Zgheib
What is my book about?
Hadi and Sama are a young Syrian couple flying high on a whirlwind love, dreaming up a life in the country that brought them together. She had come to Boston years before, chasing dreams of a bigger life; he’d landed there as a sponsored refugee from a bloody civil war. Now, they are giddily awaiting the birth of their son, a boy whose native language would be freedom and belonging. When Sama is five months pregnant, Hadi’s father dies suddenly abroad. Hadi must fly back for the funeral. He leaves America, promising his wife that he’ll only be gone for a few days. On the day of his return, Sama is waiting for him at Boston airport.
His plane lands, but Hadi never walks out of the Arrivals gate. He has been stopped, detained, and deported from the United States. Separated by the travel ban, trapped in a timeless, nightmarish limbo on either side of the world, Sama and Hadi must fight for a way back to each other, and to the life they’d dreamed of together. But does that life exist anymore, or was it only an illusion?
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The Books I Picked & Why
Wind, Sand and Stars
By
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Why this book?
This is the book for those who dream of big open skies, adventure, danger. This book made me want to become a pilot, see the world, fly over Africa. The first time I read it, I was so young, I remember that incredible, overwhelming feeling of “big,” of vastness it gave me. But this book is also about fear and courage, about that tiny pang in the chest before leaving; that part took some living, traveling, and growing up for me to get.
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Jonathan Livingston Seagull
By
Richard Bach
Why this book?
The brave little seagull who dreams of flying higher and faster than any seagull has before… then does! Defying his genetics, family, the world, failing and failing and failing until he soars, and then, (spoiler) actually coming home to teach others how to do it. This is not a children’s book. This is a manifesto for those who believe that only they decide who they want to be.
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Around the World in Eighty Days
By
Jules Verne
Why this book?
A classic. A roadmap for anyone who wants to pack up and take on the world. It has everything: planes and ships and elephants, a hot air balloon, an eccentric Englishman with a valet and top hat! Also, it made me laugh, and gave me courage on my own adventures; if Phileas Fogg can escape enraged priests, storms, robbers, Sioux Indians...nothing that happens to me can be as bad as all that.
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The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere
By
Pico Iyer
Why this book?
Really, any book or essay (or scrap of paper!) by Pico Iyer, the master of flight and finding that quiet, blue place above any clouds. The first three books in this list were to make you want to take flight. This is the how-to manual. Start it on the plane, as the engine roars to life, the wheels begin to turn… and go.
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A Moveable Feast
By
Ernest Hemingway
Why this book?
Because no matter how brave and ambitious and in love with the sky you are, you need a place to land. A home you can carry, that reminds you of who you are and where you belong. A Moveable Feast is that home, for me. I take it wherever I fly. It is about Paris, but not just; about love and life and art and savouring every moment, bite of bread, and a sip of wine, wherever you are.
