I Was Told to Come Alone

Starred review from April 24, 2017
Washington Post correspondent Mekhennet (The Eternal Nazi) offers a spellbinding fusion of history, memoir, and reportage in this enthralling account of her personal experience as a journalist and a Muslim on assignment in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The author’s unique perspective is informed by both her professional life as a reporter working for major publications and by her personal background—she was raised in Germany by a Turkish mother and Moroccan father and is fluent in Arabic. This combination of personal background and vocation provides her as if with insider access in her work to uncover and untangle the roots of Islamic radicalism. Journalistic coups abound here—for example when she recounts the uncovering of Jihadi John’s identity—and moments of historical importance to which Mekhennet was a witness are described in thrilling detail. Historic religious, internal political, and global conflicts are lucidly delineated. While Mekhennet’s modus vivendi as a reporter opened doors for her to rulers and important religious and political figures, here her focus is sharply on individual people, including on the family members of purported terrorists, who themselves experience profound loss. The value of this work lies in Mekhennet’s commitment to “not taking any side, but speaking to all sides and challenging them.”

April 15, 2017
An unsettling firsthand report on the motivations of jihadis.A Muslim raised in Germany, Washington Post national security correspondent Mekhennet (co-author: The Eternal Nazi: From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim, 2014, etc.) was inspired by the movie All the President's Men to become an investigative journalist: "I could see that journalists didn't simply write what happened; what they wrote could change lives." Her first contribution to the American press came in September 2002, in a piece for the Post on "Hamburg's Cauldron of Terror." At the trial of the first man accused of being an accessory to the 9/11 attacks, she met the widow of a New York firefighter who blamed the American government and news media for keeping citizens ignorant of hatred against the West. Based on copious interviews with members of jihadi groups, torture victims, families of men drawn into terrorism, refugees, and desperate citizens, Mekhennet helps to remedy that ignorance by exposing the sources of rage. In addition to on-site research in the Middle East and Europe, where she traveled on assignment for major news outlets, she spent a year as a Nieman Fellow researching long-term strategies of terrorist organizations. She is as frustrated with the West's insistence that all Muslins are terrorists as she is with the horrific image of the West held by indoctrinated jihadi militants, who watch videos of atrocities carried out by Western-backed regimes as part of the recruitment process. Some militants feel alienated from cultures that treat them like outsiders; others join a struggle of Shia against Sunni. Mekhennet is also frustrated by the Western media's glossing over reality: she wonders, for example, why the uprisings known as the Arab Spring were not shown to be "turning formerly stable countries into security threats" roiled by sectarian rift. The author sees "a clash between those who want to build bridges and those who would rather see the world in polarities" and to spread hatred. Little in this distressing, revealing book portends hope for bridge building, but Mekhennet provides an eye-opening picture.

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Starred review from April 15, 2017

In her latest book, Washington Post national security correspondent Mekhennet chronicles her life and career. With a strong analytical voice, the author describes growing up as a first-generation German experiencing xenophobia and as a Muslim confronting the world's fear of radical Islam. She faced many hurdles pursuing her profession, but she persisted because she believes that journalists have the power to change lives. The ground she has covered, both literally as a reporter visiting terrorist camps in the Middle East and figuratively through her work, provides a near-complete look at modern terrorism starting before 9/11 and culminating with her discovering the identity of and meeting with the infamous Jihadi John. The heartbreaking topics of her news stories occasionally touched her personal life: a relative of a friend, radicalized, had to be brought back from Syria for a family intervention; a cousin's son fell victim to a mass shooting in Europe. The thrilling narrative brings up critical, persuasive insights while trying to answer the questions of where terrorism comes from and why it's so difficult to eradicate. VERDICT For readers who are interested in modern politics, the Middle East, journalism, or strong female voices. [See Prepub Alert, 12/19/16.]--Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2017
A riveting memoir and a literary bombshell that effectively eviscerates every preconception, misconception, and prejudice readers have about the Arab world, I Was Told to Come Alone reinforces the singular significance of journalism, especially foreign journalism, at a time when it is facing its greatest challenges. Over the course of her career, Mekhennet has written for such outlets as the New York Times and Der Spiegel and is currently a national security correspondent for the Washington Post. Born a German Muslim of Moroccan and Turkish descent, she has faced a litany of personal and professional challenges while covering conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, but she has let nothing, from gun-toting jihadists in lawless locales to arrest by brutal Egyptian authorities, keep her from running down a story. In fearless prose that reveals bracing truths, Mekhennet demands that readers travel with her into the heart of old battles and new wars as she pushes past what we want to hear to reveal the complicated realities at the heart of how organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS continue to thrive. Compelling, insightful, and shockingly relevant, Mekhennet's chronicle is a must-read and nothing less than a revelation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 30, 2017
Actor Potter stands in for but doesn’t adequately capture the voice of the author in reading the audio edition of Mekhennet’s memoir. As a journalist, Mekhennet first shot to fame in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, when her talent, drive, and Muslim identity granted her unprecedented access to terrorist cells and war zones throughout the world. Raised in Germany by immigrant parents from Morocco and Turkey, Mekhennet’s unusually cosmopolitan background helped her to see multiple sides of the stories she has covered for Western outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Potter doesn’t quite have those cosmopolitan chops, however. As a narrator she is competent, but she sounds thoroughly American here, and is therefore not quite believable as a globe-trotting German reporter. If the listener can get past that miscasting, though, other advantages of Potter’s narration, like her emotional sensitivity, become evident. She also captures Mekhennet’s unexpected moments of humor in an otherwise serious book, like when she recovers her confiscated Kindle after being interrogated in Egypt and discovers that her captors apparently read to the end of a self-help book for single women. Still, the difference between the author’s background and the narrator’s is apparent throughout. A Holt hardcover.