Interesting and sometimes entertaining.

> The colonel, apparently, just happened to be passing the El-Kabir and thought he'd pop in for a quiet cup of coffee. Only to find two hundred reporters who had been waiting frantically for thirty-two hours for something to justify their plane bill, their hotel bill, their planned layovers in Rome on the return trip. Qaddafi, for all his madness, knew how to get the media's attention.

> Even Egyptians regarded their southern neighbor with distaste. Sudan was filthy and poor, they observed without irony, and the Sudanese were lazy. This from a country where a government survey once concluded that the average Egyptian worked twenty-six minutes a day

> In Muglad a hole was measured in man-lengths—a well, say, was “six men deep”—and the scale came with an ethnic proviso. Arab or Dinka? If Dinka, each man-length was at least six inches greater. ( )

This was excellent. Most 90s travelogues don't stand the test of time, but this one is a sweeping shoes-on-the ground compilation of stories with representation of most Middle Eastern Countries. It gives a good flavor for Middle East culture and politics up until just prior to the Iraq invasion by Western forces. ( )

Baghdad in the mid 1980s was such a volatile place to be. For Tony Horwitz to be bombing around (pun totally intended) Arabia was insane. There he was, in a land where even local weather reports and maps were banned. Think about it. As a left handed, Jewish stringer, he was not the most popular person to be wandering about those parts of the middle east. He met many people who exclaimed, "Death to America!" before gushing about Disneyland or Hollywood. Despite the dangers and hatreds, his narrative is more than slightly tongue-in-cheek and a lot more than a little funny. He scoffs at roadblocks manned by a 7' cardboard soldier (while the real military gets stoned on qat). He makes light of millions of crushing fanatics at Khomeini's funeral. He jokes about not being able to find his wife cloaked in a chador. At the same time as being funny, he is keenly observant. One of my favorites notes - while middle eastern air travel is not the safest; the oxygen masks made be missing, but at least passengers know which direction they should bow their heads in prayer thanks to a "Mecca indicator" on the ceiling of their aircraft. ( )

This book was dated, but still interesting to see what he experienced and how he viewed his experience. Since I'd read Asne Seirstad's and Geraldine Brooks works on the same areas, both of which tended to focus more on the plight of women in the area, it's niice to get a male point of view. ( )