Publish Date: Apr 26, 2013

On today's program we have, long time friends of the Arabic Hour, human rights activist Dr. Nancy Murray interviewing British author Victoria Brittain on her new book Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women in the War on Terror and Jeff Klein interviewing co-authors of the book The Gaza Kitchen, Maggie Schmitt and Laila El-Haddad. Victoria Brittain is a leading British journalist who has closely covered Guantanamo for years. She also worked as associate foreign editor at the Guardian newspaper for 20 years. Victoria co-wrote a memoir by former Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg called Enemy Combatant and co-authored the play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom. Her new book, just out, is called Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women in the War on Terror. The book discusses the unseen side of the "9/11", its impact on the wives and families of men incarcerated at Guantanamo. Victoria Brittain shows how these families have been made socially invisible and a scapegoat for the state in order to exercise arbitrary powers under the cover of the "War on Terror". The Gaza Kitchen is a new book celebrating besieged Gaza's vibrant (and spicy) cuisine. Authors Maggie Schmitt and Laila El-Haddad discuss their book and how it challenges the pervasive image of Gaza as destitute, war-torn and bereft of any possibility of a vibrant culture. El-Haddad, a journalist from Gaza living in the US, and Schmitt, a US anthropologist living in Spain discuss local Gazan culture through its cuisine.