Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Book review: Baghdad Without a Map

Why should a book written over 20 years ago be of interest to us today? Because, in Baghdad Without a Map, freelance journalist Tony Horwitz describes scenes and events he witnessed in the Middle East, which are being replayed today. Reading this book helps us understand why the Arabs are revolting. [Nice use of ambiguity there! Ed.]

Mr. Horwitz, an American Jew, travelled the countries of Araby in the late 1980s, reporting from all the places in the news today -- Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Libya -- and more. He presents witty and insightful vignettes of the history and culture of a volatile territory understood by few Westerners, even after a decade fighting and dying in the sands and scrub.

Reading his accounts of Hussein's Iraq, Mubarak's Egypt and Gadhaffi's Libya, as he found those states 20 years ago, is like watching "Groundhog Day". We know it all happened again and again and again. Intrigue and absurdity abound. People are still caught in the cross-fire of conflict. The desert sands are still being watered with blood every day.

Yet nothing changes. And, one suspects, nothing will change. The Middle East remains, in Horwitz's words "a malodorous mix of arms, zeal and anarchy", a place where "progress [is] measured in grains of sand".

To read Baghdad Without a Map (Dutton, 1991) is to wonder yet again why on earth Western treasure is being squandered and Western blood being spilt there. Highly recommended by Walt.

No comments:

Post a Comment