“We lived our childhood in the gardens of our hospitable homes; on the Rue Jeanne D’Arc and the renowned Hamra Street, which was still at the time an orchard of radish, lettuce and parsley enclosed within a hedge of prickly pears. Hamra Street was a desolate land with a few heaps of sand surrounded by green orchards.”

Baroudi recounts her life story right down to the last detail, underlining both its bright and gloomy aspects. “Our life was what we call Ras Beirutian Protestant … In those times, the Protestants used to dine early and call it a night,” she writes.

From the Elementary School of Miss Amina, “the Protestant from head to toe”, Baroudi moved to the Ahliyyah School for Girls in Wadi Bou Jmeel where she had the opportunity to meddle with a rich and diversified mosaic of different sectarian, political and family affiliations in a secular atmosphere far from extremism and to encounter the upper crust of the literary intelligentsia such as May Ziadeh and Toufic Awad to name but two.

Baroudi dedicates a chapter of her book to expressing regrets over the adverse outcomes of stark religious disparities, recounting the wedding story of her Protestant cousin Alice who was prohibited from marrying Jerji Khoury in a Catholic church before undergoing a Catholic baptism on the grounds that Protestant baptism was branded by Catholic clerics as useless to Christianity. In another chapter, the author depicts the marriage of her aunt Wadad to the esteemed industrialist Emile Qortass who belonged to the Quaker religious movement reporting that the two took it upon themselves to announce their intention to be united by sacred matrimony in front of a small audience without the need for an ecclesiastical authority.

She then recalls the period of the declaration of the Second World War when she enrolled as a freshman student at the Junior College of the Protestant mission and befriended girls from different regions across Lebanon. She later graduated in a ceremony that was kept on a small-scale due to the precarious security situation that prevailed in Lebanon on account of the Rashid Ali Kilani Revolution unfolding in Iraq, then joined the American University of Beirut in 1941 to pursue her higher education in economy.

“University days were truly the best in terms of knowledge, vigor and energy,” says author Baroudi with a touch of sentimentality and bitter-sweet nostalgia for the good old days of the AUB gardens and the ever-buzzing Faisal coffee shop, which has given way to a MacDonald’s restaurant.

A room is assigned in her memoir to remembering Ali Al-Wardi, an older Iraqi school colleague who used to express himself in a lousy English that could hardly serve the meaning he intended to impart but grew later into an outspoken social critic and an author of several books.

To satisfy her curiosity about Jerusalem’s landmarks and to explore the city with the naked eye, Baroudi embarked with her colleague Nada Maqdissi on a trip to Jerusalem – travel at the time was seemingly far safer and less arduous than it is today – then to Homs, invited by a female friend there, before returning to Beirut in 1943 as a secretary, initially to the News Division Director at the US Office of War Information. Later in 1944, she became Secretary to the Junior College, today the Lebanese American University, before transitioning to teach economy to sophomore students.

Baroudi pours out her love story on paper, recounting the days she spent in Iraq from the times of King Faisal to the US invasion of the country and stops at the difficulties she faced on her quest to build a family and settle down in a region that has for years fallen victim to wars and conflicts from Iraq to Lebanon to Palestine and many other Arab countries.

Throughout her memoir, which flows as smoothly as a lovely leisurely walk free of regrets and lamentation, Baroudi takes us back to the good old days down to the very last bit and detail with a kind and loving heart, reconciled with itself and open to others, and a soul fully surrendered to the judgment of Allah and embracing all of life’s ups and downs.