Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia

Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Horwitz is one of my favorite nonfiction writers, so Im not sure what took me so long to read Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia. My mistaken impression was that Baghdad Without a Map was about the Persian Gulf War. Actually, it's a delightful travelog of his journeys through the Middle East. Many of the stories are amusing, others are sad and some are downright disturbing. But always, Horwitz is interesting and entertaining.Horwitz's wife, Geraldine Brooks, became a foreign correspondent stationed in Cairo, and Horwitz (an unemployed writer) decided to join her and write freelance stories as he traveled through 15 countries and emirates throughout the Middle East. The author likes to look for the offbeat, and he went to camel races in the UAE, ate qat in Yemen, watched belly dancers in Cairo who weren't allowed to show their bellies, and tried to get around Baghdad without a map (Hussein's paranoia kept maps and weather reports from being published). He also touched on more serious topics as he dodged mines in the Persian Gulf, traveled to the Ayatollah's funeral in Iran, navigated the Jordan River between Israel and Jordan, priced weapons in Yemen and witnessed horrible conditions in the Sudan. But what Horwitz does best is talk to people, and he found a surprising number of Arabs who were willing to share their stories (not necessarily an easy job for a Jewish writer). This is how Horwitz was able to discover the true complexities of the Middle East. For instance,when in Tehran, he found "that there were two completely separate cities, one poor and devout, the other bourgeois and disenchanted. North Tehranis were frozen in time, like White Russians or French monarchists, left on the sidelines by the revolution."Baghdad Without a Map is just about the perfect book, but one thing would have made it even better--and that is the inclusion of photographs. In fact, this is a criticism I have of almost all of Horwitz's books. But other than that, Baghdad Without a Map is an excellent book and will give the reader a better understanding of the many issues still plaguing the Middle East. The edition I purchased even had a new epilogue written after the Persian Gulf War. And after reading this work, I can understand why Horwitz's wife told him "Once the Middle East's in your blood, you've got it for life. Like Malaria."

It was with delight that I turned to another book by Tony Horwitz. I had thoroughly enjoyed his CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC and BLUE LATITUDES. I was not to be disappointed by this earlier book, BAGHDAD WITHOUT A MAP. It is, however, not quite as insightful as his later works, which were generated by a particular desire to explore history while traveling the places of history as they are today. This book is the result of family- and job-related circumstances: his spouse being assigned to the Middle East, and his need to be gainfully employed while accompanying her. In search of a story he can sell as a freelance journalist, he travels throughout the Middle East; the book is an account of his visits to various countries. (Iraq, contrary to what one might expect from the title, is but one of several countries that he writes about.)His narrative is engaging and entertaining. One discovers along with Horwitz the quirkiness, strangeness, abject poverty, and incompetent bureaucracies of many of the places he visits. As an almost casual visitor, and as a Westerner, Horwitz doesn't give us much by way of great insight into why things are the way they are. Nonetheless, his descriptions of what he finds makes for compelling reading: the debilitating hold that the narcotic qat has over the Yemenis, the now almost forgotten hell of life under Saddam, the butchery of the Iran-Iraq war, the bizarre world of Muammar Qaddafi, the odd, dual lives of progressive Iranians, and the dangers of traversing by boat the Persian Gulf to Iran and the Mediterranean to Beirut. Some of Horwitz's more interesting observations come about due to his being Jewish in a Muslim world--and, in the case of visiting Israel, being welcomed there with little scrutiny. What strikes him is that Israeli and Arab cultures have so much in common, including being mutually blind to those commonalities.Reading this book makes one despair of the West's ever coming to terms with the Middle East. Indeed, in the context of a war with Iraq almost twenty years after the events of this book, one sees many echoes of the West's past failings. For instance, Charles George Gordon, commander of a British force in the Sudan, writes in 1884, "It is a useless place and we could not govern it.... [How to] get out of it in honor and in the cheapest way . . . it is simply a question of getting out of it with decency" (p. 176).If Horwitz doesn't always illuminate the reasons for the apparent strangeness of Arab cultures, he is a keen and witty observer. His writing is lively, and he will keep your attention.

Another wonderful read by the journalist who brought us "Confederates in the Attic"! This book, which chronicles his stint as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and other publications from 1990 to 1991, captures the ludicrous essence of his experiences in the Middle East.He's very much the central character as he chews an intoxicant called "Qat" with Yemenis, plays soccer with Dinka refugees in southern Sudan and travels with a pack of reporters to view corpses from the Iran-Iraq war. Through it all, he keeps a sense of humor and wry observation and, at the same time, gives insightful historical details of the countries his visits. The people he meets are memorable, his experiences are high adventure, and his viewpoint is something I can relate to.I enjoyed this book tremendously. Mr. Horwitz is an excellent writer and I love reading about his journalistic exploits. I learned a bit about Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Libya, Sudan and Lebanon. Of course it was just a taste. There's just so much you can pack into a small 280-page book. However, sometimes this is the best way to learn -- in small doses and including his personal experiences that are not likely to appear in any news story. It left me yearning to know more. And that is what it basically set out to do.The last chapter of the book was finished just before the Gulf War, but the author added an additional chapter in 1992 including his experience in Baghdad when the war started.Highly entertaining and very informative.Highly recommended.

good book.

The Middle East is rarely, if ever, out of the News. And it is rarely well reported either. The Western Press sway drunkenly between pro-Arab anti-Israeli liberal tendencies learned at college, and anti-Arab pro-Western biases promoted by their governments during the many times of Western-dominated Middle East wars. These equally poor and common sides of weak modern journalism fade when compared to this strong journalistic account of many years of travel across the region.Everywhere is treated to the strangeness and familiarity test. Global humanity shines through, blackened by local enculturisation. To those bred up on the petty newsiness of the BBC, Huffington Post and Fox News, this book comes like a spicy meal after a dull ham sandwich.The contrasts and contradictions of Middle East are presented wonderfully well. And the Israelis don't get away either, presented as alien life forms in a region struggling to escape - or not - from a backwards velocity towards the 7th century of Mohammad. Racisms and hatred that read like a European history book. Religion intolerance and pretence are familiar to Westerners also.Overall there is a feeling of impossibility. Surely this cannot go on forever? And in the few decades since the book was written we have watched in gobsmacked horror as Baghdad got worse, Iran didn't get better, Gaza fell apart, Egypt rocked, Syria crumbled, Libya disappeared and Lebanon withered.If you want to understand beyond the terse and repetitive headlines of the daily news, read this book. Get into the life of Arabia and beyond. If it only makes you doubt the Western news media and stop making your own impertinent commentaries on the Middle East, Mr Horwitz will have done us all a service.

I like Tony Horwitz's style and think he has chosen his adventures wisely. This is not as amusing and interesting as "Into the Blue" but still a good read.

Fascinating background to history.