Baghdad Sketches

In the fall of 1928, Freya Stark, a thirty-five-year-old Englishwoman, set out on her first journey to the Middle East. Bolstered by a command of Arabic, a fair knowledge of Farsi, and an irrepressible drive that would characterize her more than five decades as a traveler and explorer, Stark spent most of the next four years in Iraq and Persia. Stark traveled alone throughout some of the wilder areas of the Middle East at a time when this area was gaining new worldwide importance. For Stark, risk-taking was the essence of a life worth living: while never hunting out danger for its own sake, she nevertheless viewed her travels as a way of expressing her freedom. Such views make her essays as fresh and startling today as when they were written.