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Baghdad Without A Map and other misadventures in Arabia

by Tony Horwitz

c. 1991

Every American should read and then re-read this book just to get ahold of the cultural and mindset differences between here and there. It’s my firm belief that most of the problem between the left and right in this country over the wars in the Middle East is due to the fact that we don’t understand the culture and mindset of the Middle East. This book will help.

Tony Horwitz followed his wife to Cairo where she had a job and he was free-lancing as a journalist. He takes us along on his journeys into nine countries. Keep in mind that he was a young American Jew traveling as either a male journalist or as a male journalist companion to his female journalist wife. The adventures he has can only be described as scary enough from your armchair when you know he lived.

Tony goes into Libya right after the bombing ordered by President Reagan to visit an “asprin factory.” He got to see a few buildings from the outside, to sit in a hotel lobby with hundreds of other journalists, to see Quadaffi briefly, and to take a long bus ride into the desert but he never saw either an asprin factory or a bombed building. Tony goes to Sudan and spends two weeks in the most disfuntional country on the planet. Tony goes to Iraq during the height of Sadam Hussein’s power when his picture hangs from every street corner and is on the wrist of every government official. And then he went back during the first gulf war. Tony went to the Ayatollah Khomeni’s funeral and would have gotten a better story staying at the hotel.

The adventures Tony has are so unbelieveable that you to think that he made them up. The only thing is–no one could make up stories this unbelieveable unless they had actually happened. This book is one of the best insights into the Middle East I have ever read and that’s saying something.

Well written and organized. Each page turns itself.