![]() ![]() 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 these accounts of her own transformation she brought a growing body of readers not only into exotic locales but also to the brink of metaphysical questions about the meaning of life. 'In the fall of 1928, Freya Stark, a thirty-five-year-old Englishwoman, set out on her first journey to the Middle East. The writings that resulted from her constant travels began as wonder-filled accounts of ancient storybook kingdoms of the Middle East and moved impressively toward a reflective consideration of the differences between a nomadic way of life and the stable urbanity that might have been her lot if she had decided to fit the mold of those around her. During her many years in Iraq, Stark was witness to the rise and fall of the British involvement in the country as well as the early years of. Seven years after the establishment of the British Mandate, the modern state was in its infancy and worlds apart from the country it has since become. ![]() "Personally I would rather feel wrong with everybody else than right all by myself," she wrote in Baghdad Sketches ( enlarged edition, 193 7) "I like people different, and agree with the man who said that the worst of the human race is the number of duplicates." Such a motto defines not only her approach to the world but also the character of the woman herself. Freya Stark first journeyed to Iraq in 1927. Freya Madeline Stark lived for a century, and into that one hundred years she packed a life of extraordinary daring and ingenuity. ![]()
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