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A woman wrongfully imprisoned in Lebanon for eight months during 2013-2014 steals a pen and paper to chronicle her hellish time in prison. Years later, using the power of perspective, Hope revisits her diary to make sense of it all.
A student teacher in Lebanon, Hope awakens to a camera in her face and surrounded by cops with guns. A drug-trafficking charge trumped up by an ex-boyfriend to save his neck lands her in a Lebanese prison. With aching details, she vividly describes ants, lice, and cockroaches crawling on the bare floor she lies on, the screams of tortured women piercing the ceiling above her overcrowded cell, the heart-rending lost causes of fellow inmates, and her eventual nervous breakdown. The worst atrocities, though, are the lack of resources to prove her innocence and frustration with the negation of basic liberties. The reader feels her despair and sorrow when anger seizes her pen, and the pages throb with rage, especially after her mother says, “I hope you learned your lesson.”
The soul-crushing ordeal doesn’t end upon release on bail. Her spirit feels caged, and her words leak bitterly out in her writing as she realizes she must reject her country, although she loves the people (just not the government). Ironically, her Lebanese family’s wealth prolonged her court case so the legal profession could squeeze maximum graft from her blood kin.
Hope paints a highly personal portrait of a demoralized woman, an American citizen who once had the world by the tail. Her emotions skip, roll, and roil on the pages, while the syntax and sequence reflect her outer dishevelment and inner turmoil. This is a gritty, vivid account of a frame-up and subsequent prison term in a corrupt system that provokes empathy and vicarious fear. Life can turn on a dirty dime, but this narrative shows that it’s possible to move on.