Book Launch & Meet the Author: "No Way but Forward"

NOTE the NEW LOCATION: Now being held at BFM Meetinghouse on Sidwell Friends lower school campus. See location and map. 

From BFM's Frank Greve: I found Brian Barber's  chronicle of three Palestinian families' lives in Gaza over 30 years so illuminating that I told him it deserved a book talk. 

There'll be one featuring Brian on Oct. 22 from 6:30- 8pm.    The LOCATION is the Bethesda Friends Meetinghouse.

I hope you'll come. 'No Way But Forward' may speak to you, too.

• In my case, Gaza news had left me feeling numb and dumb for years. Numb because the number of dead was always too high to feel. Dumb because I knew nothing of the gifts, graces, agonies and aspirations of Palestinians living in Gaza. 'No Way But Forward' helped immensely. So did the trust and shared wisdom of Palestinian friends Brian made in the 1990s who are now in their 50s.   
• There’s no policy talk, no speculation, in his book.  Rather, Brian narrates in each chapter an event that a friend counts among the most powerful moments in his life.  Some chapters are joyous as a wedding. Some are grave and loving as the father coaching a son facing his first Israeli interrogation in the morning. Others are as jolting as this 5 a.m. command from an Israeli Defense Force officer: “Leave your home and close the doors behind you. Your house is scheduled to be bombed in ten minutes.”  
• Generally speaking, Brian's book serves up values, pride and aspirations, too. It's a worthy character-based companion piece to the Oscar-winning movie 'No Other Land,' which makes the screen throb with malevolence, terror and injustice.   
• Brian was stateside when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Thereafter, communication depended on brutally terse WhatsApp messages like this one: “Omar went jogging. A missile hit him.” 'No Way But Forward' contains a year’s post-Oct.7 exchanges, many as tragic as they are blunt..  
• Prominent experts on Gaza endorse Brian Barber’s book heartily, calling it “a work of immense beauty and humanity…absolutely essential” and “heart-rending and powerful.” There’s more of that praise, but the most prescient  is likely that of renowned Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi. He calls Barber’s book “a priceless record of a Gazan era obliterated since Oct. 7 and a worthy memorial to it.”