AWARDS:
American Writing Award for Best Biography 2022
The Canadian Book Club Awards Winner for Best Memoir 2022
American Writing Award finalist for Best Debut Non-Fiction 2022
Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Notable Indie 2022
Literary Titan Gold Award 2022
Firebird Book Awards Winner 2022
Chanticleer Journey Book Award Semi-Finalist 2022
An award-winning true story that poignantly captures the essence of living in the moment.
Travel with Ashe to Lebanon to help organize a 50 Cent concert at the invitation of his best friend. There, he falls in love with a beautiful billionaire and the country itself. But when war breaks out, his idyllic romance is interrupted and Ashe is forced to flee for his life. Through this tumultuous experience, he discovers the depths of his own strength and resilience and emerges from the flames of war a transformed and awakened soul. Lost in Beirut is a captivating epic journey of risk, enlightenment, and the power of the human spirit. Ashe’s unforgettable story will stay with you long after you have turned the last page, inspiring you to live a life of meaning, purpose, and connection to the divine.
AWARDS:
American Writing Award for Best Biography 2022
The Canadian Book Club Awards Winner for Best Memoir 2022
American Writing Award finalist for Best Debut Non-Fiction 2022
Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Notable Indie 2022
Literary Titan Gold Award 2022
Firebird Book Awards Winner 2022
Chanticleer Journey Book Award Semi-Finalist 2022
An award-winning true story that poignantly captures the essence of living in the moment.
Travel with Ashe to Lebanon to help organize a 50 Cent concert at the invitation of his best friend. There, he falls in love with a beautiful billionaire and the country itself. But when war breaks out, his idyllic romance is interrupted and Ashe is forced to flee for his life. Through this tumultuous experience, he discovers the depths of his own strength and resilience and emerges from the flames of war a transformed and awakened soul. Lost in Beirut is a captivating epic journey of risk, enlightenment, and the power of the human spirit. Ashe’s unforgettable story will stay with you long after you have turned the last page, inspiring you to live a life of meaning, purpose, and connection to the divine.
DESERT WHISPERS
“Life teaches me that anything not growing is dead.”
August 9th, 2006, Amman Civil Airport, Jordan.
The sun is as hot as I thought it would be in the desert. I often thought about how Jesus wandered in the Jordanian desert for 40 days and 40 nights, and he survived. Now I know. The Bedouin taught me not to travel during the day. They set up camp and sleep in the day and walk the desert in the cool air of starry nights. There is something about the wind in the desert. It carries memories. Surrounded by people shouting in Arabic gives me the sensation of hearing people talk in English. Maybe it’s just my loved ones coming back to me in the whispers of the desert. I am sitting here beaten, hungry, lost. The new hole in my belt is evidence of the weight I have lost in the past few weeks. If I could scream, I would, but they have reprimanded me for speaking, out of the fear of drawing attention to myself. In this land, being an American can get you kidnapped, ransomed or possibly beheaded online for the world to see.
This desert heat has caused such severe dehydration that I can scarcely think straight. My brain must not be getting enough oxygen because I have trouble discerning reality from hallucination. I see her everywhere, but she is nowhere. Catching a glimpse of her, I reach out to touch her, but she fades into the heat-simmering light.
I don’t know if I will see her one last time, or am I just waiting for death to pick me up here? Death is busy in this land; thousands have lost their lives. Only we, the refugees, stranded for days at this airport, are the witnesses to the political lies of when this will stop. I miss the comfort, the security, the feeling of freedom and safety I took for granted as an American. Not sure if it’s a sign, but somehow through the nauseating stench of the airport, I can almost smell the desert pine trees in the courtyard of the California Institute of the Arts. If I just close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can escape and imagine myself, almost a decade ago, running through the tiled green halls, late for mask class with the great Rodger Henderson.
'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" were the words of L.P. Hartley, a quote strikingly applicable to the Middle East experiences of Ashe Stevens during 2006, while working in the Lebanese capital city of Beirut.
Jointly written with Magdalena, Ashe Stevens' memoir Lost in Beirut starts as two business partners trying to orchestrate a concert for the rapper 50 Cent. A first time traveller to the region, Ashe is thrown headfirst into a strikingly different culture to his American roots. A place where economies halt five times a day for prayers and family reputation is everything. Ashe quickly discovers the latter for himself when he starts dating Aleyna, a woman who hails from a high-profile family in the Hezbollah district of Beirut.
Unknown to the city's bustling residents, while the stage is being prepared for a career-defining concert, a bigger threat is brewing across the boarder in nearby Israel. In the days that follow, society is flipped from prosperity and glamour into a landscape where money means nothing and an American accent is enough to have you killed on sight. With the airport bombed and all roads out the country destroyed, Ashe must fight a new battle of his own and find an escape from within the rubble of Beirut.
Lost in Beirut is a highly likeable book, packed with beautiful imagery of a thriving city both before and after the months of bombing attacks. Written in first person present, it does take a few chapters to adapt to the tone of voice and tense (memoirs generally being written in past tense which makes for a more reflective style, whereas this feels more reactive). Once you get past this though the story yanks you in by the collar and refuses to let go, really coming into its own in the final third of the book where you get a sense of society falling apart. The world-building is more apocalyptic in this section, you can feel the raw panic of the mega rich on discovering their money is worthless, their expansive villas levelled flat in minutes. You would believe it to be a work of pure fiction, if it were not for the sadness that these events are true and actually happened. People died in this conflict.
A touching and, at points, quite graphic memoir, I come back to Hartley's quote. With well over a decade having transpired between the 2006 Lebanese war and now, can we still claim the past to be a wholly foreign country? Or maybe we have to move on, embracing acceptance with the scars that are left.
AEB Reviews