Married to a Bedouin by Marguerite van Geldermalsen

“‘Where are you staying?’ the Bedouin asked. ‘Why you not stay with me tonight—in my cave?’ He seemed enthusiastic—and we were looking for adventure.”

This introduction to the story (which is also written on the back cover) of a New Zealand-born nurse’s marriage to Mohammed Abdullah Othman will sell many books, as will the mystery and romance of the words ‘Bedouin’ and ‘Petra’. Curiosity and the thirst for adventure will draw many toward this book and the cave dwelling where there is no mortgage, no water and electricity bills, no fridge, no television or calendar on the wall.

This book comes with many Arabic expressions (all explained in a helpful glossary), colourful photographs and local customs including Bedouin celebrations with references to bride prices, henna painting, women ululating, people dancing, babies being born and males being circumcised. However, rather than focusing on the extraordinary, Married to a Bedouin is like a daily journal with entries that describe the ordinary life of collecting wood, lighting the fire, baking bread, washing and toileting.

The story raises the issue of whether even in the simplest form of existence one still feels the need to accumulate things, to renovate the cave, to lust for a bigger cave and spend one’s shekels on interior decoration and modern conveniences.

This book is enchanting because it is a love story about a tourist who attends a Bedouin wedding and falls in love with one of the guests. The author recalls, “It was as Mohammed guided us singing through rocky oleander-crowded canyons, that I fell in love with him….but I didn’t know it was love.” (p29)

For people contemplating or negotiating inter-cultural marriage Married to a Bedouin offers a useful mirror for their own reflections. The book records the many cultural and legal objections and myths that friends and family members might raise: e.g. “If your husband dies, you will have to marry his brother.” And how did Marguerite’s parents back in Nelson, New Zealand feel about their daughter’s marriage and her cave life in sunny Petra? And how did her in-laws feel about their son and his new bride as they looked on from further down the ledge outside the next cave?

Marguerite holds together well the balance between adventure and foolhardiness as she explores like any person the many ‘what if’ questions about her marriage to Mohammed. With insight she conveys the mental see-sawing that is common to most people contemplating a new partnership: “Although I didn’t want to consider divorce, I needed to know it was there, like checking out the emergency exits on the aeroplane, hoping you will never need them.” (p33)

Many times Marguerite is asked by tourists and reporters, “What is your reason for living here?” While her unusual address prompts the high frequency of these enquiries, the question and her answer are valuable in urging readers to reflect on their own situation: “Where is your home? Why do you live where you do? Did you marry just because you liked your prospective partner? How much did the house and the context shape your decision? Are you married to a person or are you tied to the entire tribe and to life in a particular community?”

A highlight of the story occurs in 1984 when Queen Elizabeth II is about to make her first visit to Jordan. The organizers of her tour ask to see whether Her Majesty, accompanied by the Queen of Jordan, might visit Marguerite and Mohammed’s home. The reasons explained were that Marguerite was a British subject and her home, location and lifestyle were most unusual. Marguerite’s initial response to the royal visitors is one of reluctance but she eventually complies. This episode captures one of the issues of the book as readers can feel somewhat voyeuristic and eager to see the quirkiness of her existence as the author opens up (like reality television?) her life to the world.

Van Geldermalsen does not write in a sensational style and many aspects of her life remain discretely behind the veil. What will rile many readers is the sunny tone of the book that depicts Marguerite’s life in a Bedouin community as predominantly one of ease. The author appears to ignore the problems and gloss over her frustrations. Consequently her account often does not seem honest and real, leaving readers feeling diddled. In the epilogue the author acknowledges her style saying, “I have mostly remembered the good times, but that is how I like to look at life.” (p271) This is a weakness of the book as it projects a lopsided view of her experience. Furthermore, there are many topics (e.g. her shifting relationship with Islam and the maintenance of her cultural identity) and painful events about which the author chooses to be highly reticent.

One wonders whether Marguerite became truly reconciled to the Bedouin lifestyle and the extent to which she adapted to her special community. Yet the book surveys her movement of belonging as she learns about her new culture and language. It also portrays the growing acceptance of her extended family. This belonging and affirmation, not only by her partner but by the whole community is beautifully expressed in Marguerite’s reflection after attending a wedding: “I felt surrounded by the blissful feeling of being a part of it all.” (p236).

Marguerite van Geldermalsen, Married to a Bedouin (London: Virago, 2006).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 75.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Married to a Bedouin.

Bookshops and Reading Thriving in the UAE

A Gulf News article today says that bookshops are thriving in the UAE:

“Despite the advent of the internet, high-tech video and computers, which were thought to have dealt a blow to the public's enthusiasm for books, bookstore operators claim that they have been able to recover lost ground, thanks to the region's retail boom.

After all, the Arab world is home to more than 300 million potential readers according to recent statistics, while the UAE publishing industry itself has been growing at 15-20 per cent annually, and is estimated to be worth Dh8 to Dh10 billion.

Magrudy's, a locally-owned Dubai-based bookstore, recently accentuated the robust growth forecast of the industry when it opened its largest branch in Dubai Festival City.”

Read the entire article: Irish Eden Belleza, ‘Bookshops Thrive on Retail Boom’, Gulf News, 5 April 2008.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: A photograph of the interior of the recently opened Magrudys Book Store at Festival City.

A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernières

This is a timely book to have read in a week when The Times (28 March 2008) has published the recent figures revealing the high rate of marriage breakdown in the UK. The article begins with these sobering words: “Are you going to a wedding this weekend? Nearly half the happy couples you see walking down the aisle will divorce before they reach their tenth wedding anniversary.”

Louis de Bernières launches his new novel with an equally eye-catching opener: “I am not the sort of man who goes to prostitutes.” But…

A Partisan’s Daughter is a reflection on relationships. Chris, a middle-aged English suburbanite who works as a traveling salesman to pay his mortgage and drives ‘a shit-brown Allegro’ resigns himself to the way that the fire has gone out of his marriage: “But isn’t this what invariably happen? The trouble is that sooner or later, at best, your wife turns into your sister.” He refers to his wife throughout the book as ‘The Great White Loaf’ because “she reminded me of a great loaf of white bread, plumped down on the sofa in its cellophane wrapping.”

Chris follows the typical male tack of blaming the plumping up and plumping down of partners, not only upon his Missus but upon the entire gender she represents: “I don’t think that most women understand the nature of a man’s sexual drive.”

This novel could very usefully be offered as part of a Pre-Marriage Preparation course for it presents vividly the dilemma of almost half the (British) married population who could echo the bewilderment of Chris when he says, “When we married I had no idea that she would turn out to have all the passion and fire of a codfish. How many of us get clamped into that claustrophobic dreary celibacy that stifles ‘the great fire inside them’.”

He continues his lament about relationships when he views religion as being like a highly-secure chastity belt:

“I sometimes wonder whether the reason that puritanical religious types are so keen on marriage is their certain knowledge that it’s the one way to make sure that people get the least possible amount of sex.”

So what’s wrong with going to see someone you think is a ‘bad girl’ when you’re not getting enough from ‘The Great White Loaf’? The woman Chris begins to visit is an ex-prostitute—an exotic Serbian from Belgrade who is now living in England. In contrast to ‘The Great White Loaf’, Roza has pizzazz. She is provocative and shocking. Her stories about life and love Chris finds exciting and irresistible—“It was like being friends with a cobra or a cougar.”

The storytelling and focus on a relationship are such major parts of this book that the action takes place almost entirely in one room.

The book focuses the reader’s attention on the elements that make for a good relationship. What is the ‘kindling’ that ignites a vibrant relationship and what are the ‘logs’ that keep the fire burning? The novel raises questions about whether one can satisfactorily distinguish sexual obsession from love or as de Bernières asks through Chris, “If you had no sexual impulses, let us say, or if you had no hormones, would it be possible to fall in love? Can you fall in love if you’ve been castrated?”

The title hints that the book is about Serbian politics but it is also about lifestyle, living adventurously and it contains some wonderful theological reflections like this description of Chris’ relationship with God:

“God and I have an agreement to leave each other alone. I don’t bother Him and He doesn’t bother me. If we meet in the street we raise our hats and smile and give each other a wide berth.”

So does our relationship with God mirror our human partnership? Can it nurture our human love or is religion just a clamp and a maker of Great White and Brown Loaves?

Most aspects of de Bernières’ literary style in this book work. One creative technique is where a chapter is written through the eyes of Chris to be followed by the next chapter that describes the same event in the words and feelings of Roza. However, there are some parts of the plot (these are best not given away in a review!) that seem forced and farfetched.

Louis de Bernières tells this story with pace, suspense and with a twinkle in his eye. Most importantly, it is a story that is evocative, as it subtly challenges partners to be honest about their expectations and to discover the difference between having a fuck and forging a fulfilling friendship.

This book should be enjoyed by people in a union of love, especially if they want to pass the ten year mark with passion, zest and genuine respect.

Louis de Bernières, A Partisan’s Daughter (London: Harvill Secker, 2008).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dhs 98.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of A Partisan’s Daughter.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

What a delight to read a novella and to savour The Uncommon Reader in one sitting and in the time it takes to imbibe two glasses of sherry (as is the custom of Queen Elizabeth II who follows religiously this medical advice from her regal namesake).

Speaking of Her Majesty, she is for once a subject, or the subject of this novella by the prolific and versatile writer, Alan Bennett, perhaps best known for his award-winning The History Boys.

It was the novelist, Upton Sinclair who declared, “On what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances.” In this novella, the slender thread of accident happens when one of the Queen’s corgis wanders from Buckingham Palace into a mobile library. The pursuit by Her Majesty leads to a browse, a borrowing of a book and by chapters, a journey into serious reading.

This book opens up the themes of discovering the joy of reading, even late in life and in the midst of a full life. With the Queen previously being a doer than a reader and with a family and an entourage that is negative about her worming into books, Bennett has ample opportunity in this slim volume to express the views of many toward reading and to counter these objections one by one with royal authority.

This novella reveals the dramatic ways that serious and wide reading shapes the Queen of England, leaving readers to marvel and historians to wonder, at the significant influence on the history of the world of one stray corgi.

From the punny title to the last line Bennett writes with wit, suspense and surprise. The Uncommon Reader should be on Her Majesty’s reading list when she next accompanies her Pembroke corgi to the mobile library. She will be amused.

[The length of this reviewella is in keeping with a novella.]

Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 60.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Uncommon Reader.

The Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea

The title of this book is taken from the famous Saudi singer, Abdul Majeed Abdullah’s song, ‘Girls of Riyadh, O girls of Riyadh’. The book is translated from the Arabic after the author, Rajaa Alsanea and her publishers realized that its content may have appeal to readers beyond the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The book takes the form of one email per chapter whereby after Friday prayers in Saudi Arabia the author sends the letter to her subscribers who form a growing and active online community. Over the course of a year the author writes these instalments that tell the story of four young women from Riyadh’s ‘velvet’ (upper class) community. The missives reveal a life of flirting, falling in and out of love and actions that fly in the face of the “prim and prying Saudi society.” (p199)

Initially the email and online community tactic appears to be a skilful idea because it creates the opportunity for the book to include readership response. The author begins each chapter with some readership responses that indicate how explosive the letters have been. Unfortunately this weekly roundup becomes repetitive and tedious as does the body of the book especially when the author engages in blowing her own trumpet.

According to the author the ‘Sex in the City’ style of the book is not intended to represent all girls in Riyadh but it is designed to draw back the veil and “reveal another side of Saudi life to the western world.” (pvii)

The lifestyle described may be explosive for the Saudi readership but it is a tame presentation for readers used to watching western television programmes and movies. The books main contribution largely consists in depicting features of Saudi life which may reflect in various degrees the life of young Islamic adults in other countries of the Middle East. These notable glimpses include:

* The process whereby boy/girl relationships are started and nurtured in a restrictive society, by the use of Bluetooth technology, SMS, telephones, email and online networks.

* The pain that is created in relationships when young men and women are prevented from meeting alone and are unable to nurture a friendship and develop their social skills before they are married.

* The pursuit of Saudi men in finding a woman who will advance their prospects by “giving them some standing, to help them with her family name, her looks, her genealogy, her social position, her wealth” and to have a woman “to blame for their own poor decisions.” (p196)

* Inter-family discussions (usually just by men) about the potential marriage of a daughter without consulting the person who has the biggest stake in the marriage.

* Saudi or Islamic wedding customs from the ‘shoufa’ (lawful viewing of a potential marriage partner) to the official engagement with the signing of the marriage contract signaling the ‘milkah period’ that concludes with the wedding ceremony.

* The role of weddings in providing a sphere for older women to scrutinize the young women who may be possible partners for their sons.

* The energetic but restrained way that young women deport themselves at weddings as they show their wares before prospective mother-in-laws.

* The macho society whereby males view women for their own satisfaction, and often act like “bulls and steeds unpenned”, feeling it as their prerogative to be the master of the bedroom.

* The ease and frequency of divorce by men when women assert their own desires or no longer appear attractive to their husbands.

* The perception of divorced women as “damaged goods”, regardless of the causes of the breakup. (p195)

* The tendency to blame infertility on the woman and use this excuse to trade her in for a new and younger wife.

* The reframing of traditional religious practices for personal convenience and consulting astrological signs, Ouija boards and the reading of tea and coffee cups, in the making of life decisions.

* The fixation with outward appearances (in a society of veils and burqas), including popularity of ‘reconstructive surgery’ which is not to be called ‘cosmetic surgery’, as this is against the laws of Islam. (p161)

* The prevailing view that a man showing signs of homosexuality is regarded as “an utter calamity, an illness, worse than a cancer.” (p132) Those displaying homosexual tendencies are usually ‘treated’ by medical intervention which may include a combination of “surgical operations, hormone treatment and psychological counseling.” (p133)

* The importance of education to enable women to break out from the rigid, social, religious and intellectual strictures.

This book provides some windows on four indulged women in a “uni-cultural, uni-ethnic and uni-religious” society who are seeking to forge their own way by revising their traditions while embracing an eclectic mix of international influences.

While this ‘scandal-sheet series’ is exciting as it breaches traditional practices and exposes corruption and hypocrisy in Saudi society, the relationships of the girls of Riyadh are fragile, fractured and filled with the deep pain of rejection, loss and grief.

Rajaa Alsanea, The Girls of Riyadh (London: Fig Tree, Penguin, 2007). This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 84.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Girls of Riyadh.

Daughter of the East by Benazir Bhutto

Daughter of the East: An Autobiography is an uneven book—370 pages which tell of Benazir Bhutto’s life up to 1988 and then another 60 pages, added to make the 2007 edition and race over the last two decades. As a consequence, many basic details about Benazir’s life are not included in this volume.

This is a dense book, written largely as therapy to while away the time when Bhutto was under house arrest. The daily journal entries, along with snippets from other key players, provide valuable information for students of the Bhutto dynasty and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) but the average reader is likely to find the book a hard read and could easily drown in the detail. Nevertheless, one appreciates the detail of the reflections when Benazir Bhutto describes some significant moments. These include the period leading to the hanging of her father, the moment when she was first inaugurated as Prime Minister of Pakistan and the sudden death of General Zia.

While the book is comprehensive it sometimes has a poetic touch as evidenced by this journal entry in March 1980:

“Time, dripping grain by grain through a bottomless hourglass at Al-Murtaza [prison]. I feel as if I am a living grave, cut off from all human experience.”

“My mother passes many of the endless hours of detention playing Patience. But after five months of being locked up at Al-Mutaza, I am more restless than ever. I have no idea when and if we’ll be released. It all depends on Zia.” (p112)

While entitled ‘Daughter of the East’, this book could just as fittingly been called, ‘Daughter of my Father’. It is a book about Benazir’s adoring father—former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto—and his adoring daughter who was living out the dreams and destiny of her father. The author often acknowledges the influence of her father’s example and stories. She says, “My father’s imprint on me, however, keeps me going. Endurance. Honour. Principle.” (p114) The book also captures the significant contribution of Benazir’s mother who continued to fight with courage and endurance after her husband was assassinated.

‘Daughter of the East’ highlights the values of upholding the dignity of the family and retaining personal honor in the face of injustice. These values proved to be a source of strength, for writing during one of her many periods of detention, Bhutto said:
“‘These days will pass’, my father had told me in prison. ‘What is important is that we pass them with honour.’” (p199)

The book is a record of the ‘judicial murder’ of her father, a defense of his life, work and innocence and a revelation of the lies involved in his trumped up murder case. The author almost admits that the title of the book is a misnomer and not a true autobiography when she admits that it is “the record of the brutal Martial law regime of General Zia ul-Haq.” (p374)

This is a deeply sad book that is mostly written from behind prison bars and one which is a catalogue of death threats, detentions, violence and injustice. It describes the relentless momentum towards her father’s death, the death of Benazir’s brothers and the loss of countless supporters. It is all the more painful when one reads the book following the assassination of the author.

This book is about Pakistan and the fight for a sustained democracy. In the period of time in which Bhutto writes, peace and democracy appear so fleeting and fragile. Yet the securing of democracy is the major motivation for Benazir Bhutto. Writing soon after the unexpected death of General Zia she says:

“You can’t be fuelled by bitterness. It can eat you up but it cannot drive you. The task—and my motivation, remained the same: to return Pakistan to a democracy through fair and impartial elections.” (p380)

This book gives a powerful insight into a person living out their destiny. The author reveals that the pain and loss of the Bhutto family has been seen by many, through the lens of Islam, as ‘the Karbala of our generation’—a reenactment of the tragedy that befell the family of the Prophet Mohammed, after his death in 640 A.D.

Benazir Bhutto’s personal sense of destiny comes to her mind when she takes the oath of office in 1988, at the age of 35, as the first woman Prime Minister elected in the Muslim world:

“I had not asked for this role, I had not asked for this mantle. But the forces of destiny and the forces of history had thrust me forward, and I felt privileged and awed.” (p392)

Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East: An Autobiography (London: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 80.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Daughter of the East.

The Emirates through the Eyes of an Artist by Trevor Waugh

British artist Trevor Waugh always takes a journal or sketchbook with him when he travels and this book is a collection of the paintings and sketches from his visit to the United Arab Emirates.

In the introduction Waugh says that his journals are “a visual journey, they can be fact or fiction or both. Emotional and objective.” The paintings in this collection have captions that are reproduced in his handwriting, emphasizing the way this book is a ‘visual diary’. These journal jottings are pithy yet poetic, personal, full of feeling and often humorous. One caption reads this way: “To capture the moment, every so often, when the light illumines the scene and renders it timeless. I felt it here!”

Trevor Waugh is enchanted by the light of the United Arab Emirates and admits that “there is something about the landscape and the light here, it speaks to me—ageless and inspirational.” In a skilful way Waugh captures the light in his paintings from the reflections from glassy skyscrapers to the glow of a dishdasha, the Emirates Palace Hotel lit up at night, the sparkling sun on the Dubai spice souk, the pink colors of a camel caravan at sunset and the creamy fusion of sands, fortresses and paving stones.

This British painter believes that photographs don’t do most scenes justice and Waugh’s colors are what make his water colored paintings spectacular. Painting the Emirates gives artists a thorough going workout for in one painting alone Waugh has used Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna and Alizann Crimson.

If you can’t visit the Emirates and experience its essence first-hand then savoring the pictures and the text of this book is the next best thing. Waugh has painted a range of scenes from most of the seven Emirates. Without it becoming a cheap souvenir book, ‘The Emirates through the Eyes of an Artist’ captures so many of the scenes that one will want to keep and cherish. These include paintings of Emiratis on a beach, bougainvilleas and old pots, Afghani carpet traders at the souk, the bumpy formation of stripy-blanketed camels, the majestic Hajars, women with their distinctive Bedouin burqas, abras (boats) on the Dubai Creek, Muslim men walking to prayers and also in their favorite position—sitting, dhows on the briny and the iconic Burj al Arab but in this scene, set beyond the bathers on the Jumeirah Beach. There is a good balance between scenes of the modern burgeoning Emirati cities and the views of fishing boats, fortresses and watchtowers which recall a bygone age.

The eye of the painter is no more evident than in one scene of a stately mosque with mangroves in the foreground and Waugh’s delightful caption, “Mosques and mangroves. Sometimes all that is required of a painting is a sense of peace.”

Trevor Waugh, The Emirates through the Eyes of an Artist (Dubai: Motivate Publishing, 2006). This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 145.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Emirates through the Eyes of an Artist.

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

Written by Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands describes the journeys this explorer and writer made between 1945-1950 in and around the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula.

Desert Dwellers
This book was written about the post-World War II era when airplanes, helicopters and motor vehicles were becoming commonplace and it was increasingly obvious that the faster modes of transport would soon put an end to the travel and traditional transportation by camels and their drivers. Thesiger was aware of the discovery and production of oil throughout this region and this book becomes a lament concerning the way that such industries would dismantle the Bedouin way of life that had existed for centuries.

From the vantage point of the twenty-first century readers will discover the immense value of this book that describes in great detail a way of life that no longer exists in this unique environment .

As Wilfred Thesiger criss-crosses the desert he is accompanied by ‘Bedu’ from different tribes. The daily life of these hardy travelers is recorded from rousing in the morning with the call to prayer, cooking, casting lots for food, coffee rituals, carrying supplies and reading tracks. The everyday tasks in a harsh environment are challenging but these are accentuated by the regular episodes of fending off raiders, pleading for permission to cross regions and coping with malaria and scorpion bites.

For Thesiger (‘Umbarak’ as he is called), these five years in the university of the desert teach him much about the Bedu. He finds them to be welcoming, generous, good-humored, garrulous, blind to natural beauty, appreciative of poetry, lovers of money and people with great dignity. But despite these descriptors Thesiger concludes:

“Probably no other people, either as a race or as individuals, combine so many conflicting qualities in such an extreme degree.” (p.149)

The author has a frank and matter-of fact way of writing about the Bedu and their attitudes towards sensitive matters as sex and homosexuality.

Desert
Arabian Sands is about the desert and specifically the Arabian Desert. While Thesiger grew up in Ethiopia and later in the Sudan he wrote, “None of these places has moved me as did the deserts of Arabia.” (p.14)

Thesiger writes of villages and wadis that are passed on the way and UAE readers will be interested to read his descriptions of Abu Dhabi, ‘Dibai’ and ‘Sharja’ in the late 1940s. There is an extensive treatment of the features of the desert of which he says, “There is no rhythm of the season, no rise and fall of sap, but empty wastes where only the changing temperature marks the passage of the year.” (p.17)

‘Empty wastes’ is not the best description of the inaccurately named ‘Empty Quarter’ for this travel journal records a fullness of flora and fauna that are encountered along the way and observed clearly from the height of a camel’s hump.

In a wonderful poetic style Thesiger writes about the way this ‘bitter and desiccated land’ has shaped its inhabitants down through the years:

“Men live there because it is the world into which they were born, the life they lead is the life their forefathers led before them; they accept hardships and privations; they know no other way…. No man can live this life and emerge unchanged… For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match.” (p.17)

Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003)
The spirit of the land makes a lasting impact upon the author, so much so that when at last it is time to leave, he feels an exile and he departs with an ache and a homesickness from which he never recovers.

Thesiger’s journey was on the surface the undertaking of a survey and study of locusts. He did not go to study geology, archaeology, birds, plants, animals or Arabs. He admits that this travel was partially ego-driven—to satisfy an urge to go where others had not been and to do something which might offer him the chance to win distinction as a traveler and explorer. But at the outset he said he was also searching for “the peace that comes with solitude, and among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world.” (p.20)

In his introductory chapter this English author records details of his birth in Addis Ababa, his schooling and university at Eton and Oxford and his expeditions in Abyssinia and Somalia but all this he understands to be the ‘prelude’ to the period covered in this book—what he calls, “the five happiest years of my life.” (p.15)

In a confessional style Thesiger testifies that he went to the Empty Quarter with feelings of condescension toward the desert dwellers but he quickly changed his mind when he saw their skill. His comrades saw him as the inferior one and his accolades, his education and his experience of the world were irrelevant in the ‘Sands’.

He reflects on that way that the desert cut him down to size and made him feel insignificant but it also gave to him a wonderful sense of freedom.

Arabian Sands has a host of interesting anecdotes and touches of humor abound, especially when the author describes the sex life of camels, the money washing rituals by Arab shopkeepers who are taking money from ‘infidels’ and the popular (I almost wrote ploppular!) game of desert draughts in which the Bedu use camel droppings for counters.

Thesiger was not only a good writer but a skilful photographer and this book is furnished with wonderful black and white portraits and landscape shots of the Arabian Desert. Sketch maps are used to follow the expeditions. Some helpful back pages list the travel companions and include a comprehensive index.

William Thesiger and his companions cross the Empty Quarter on two occasions despite being close at times to exhaustion and running out of supplies. Unlike the experience of many explorers who see standing on the pinnacle or reaching the finishing line as being the ultimate feat, Thesiger has a different view and motivation:

“No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worthwhile the journey.” (p.243)

Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands (First published London: Longmans, Green and Co Ltd., 1959. This edition published Dubai: Motivate Publishing, 1994, 2006)

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 42.75.

A superb web gallery of photographs taken by Wilfred Thesiger can be found at:
Thesiger Galleries

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Arabian Sands; Wilfred Thesiger in the Empty Quarter, 1948.

‘The Fall of Troy’ by Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd’s novel concerns the marriage of German archaeologist, Heinrich Obermann, to Greek bride, Sophia Chrysanthis, whose knowledge of the works of Homer is an attractive asset in the quest to excavate the city of Hissarlik, which he thinks is Ancient Troy.

Their union makes for a robust relationship. She is young and beautiful. He is initially endearing as he waxes eloquently about his passion for the art (‘not the science’) of archaeology. His performance on the wedding reception floor leaves his new bride thinking, “How can I love a man who dances so badly?” (p14)

Analyzing the glue that binds a couple together is one of the themes of this novel. Sophia reconciles herself to him on her wedding day by thinking, “At least I shall not be bored with you.” (p12). She comes to understand him as one who is mysterious, restless, impatient, emphatic, overbearing and aggressive. Despite this, their relationship is nurtured through their common love of Homer and forged in the excavation trenches. As Sophia later sifts through the layers of their relationship, she discovers he has flaws, skeletons that he has been burying and ethical issues concerning what this celebrated archaeologist does with the treasures. She concludes that she does not love her husband but she admires him.

“Welcome to Troy,” was the form of Heinrich’s greeting to his bride when they arrived together in Hissarlik, and so begins their manner of thinking as if they are immortals, living not in the nineteenth century but the Bronze Age of Troy.

Ackroyd provides a compelling and suspense-filled storyline. Through the course of their digging with scores of local excavators, they call up the dead and invoke Zeus and a lineup of Greek deities who appear to respond with thunderclaps and weird happenings. Herr Obermann and Sophia are joined by different characters such as a Harvard professor of antiquities and a British paleographer, all of whom are enchanted with Sophia but they find her husband, rich in conviction but questionable in his historic conclusions.

With his visitors Obermann likes to parade his knowledge and hypotheses, recalling what Odysseus did in the same situation, pointing out the actual spot where the Wooden Horse was placed and even staging a running race on the same circuit that Hector and Achilles competed against one other.

In classical Greek style the visitors join the drama and contribute to the representation of contrasting and at times clashing values. The book focuses on the relationship between art and science, reason and revelation, hunch and history and the love of person versus the passion forged through work.

In contrast to some of his visitors who carefully draw their conclusions from the evidence, Obermann is inventive, given to flights of fantasy and full of wishful thinking. He does not let the truth get in the way of a good story and he goes to all lengths to let his theories stand.

This book is a comedy with amusing insights and cameos. Obermann’s colour and bravado is amusingly displayed when he exorcises a house by chanting with great solemnity a poem by Virgil. But this book is ultimately a sad and tragic story, as implied in Ackroyd’s title.

Peter Ackroyd, The Fall of Troy (London: Vintage Books, 2007). This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 56.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Fall of Troy.

The Sea by John Banville

This is a book of many stories that ebb and flow like the sea. It has no clear chronology so memories drift from one era to another with neither introduction nor explanation.

Max is an art historian and writer who has recently experienced the death of his wife Anna and is now trying to make sense of her departure, their live together and what his life will now be. He returns to The Cedars, a house by the sea where fifty years earlier he came as a boy for his annual August holidays. As Max and Anna had spent most of their “twelve months of her slow dying” secluded beside the sea, Max returns to “live amidst the rubble of the past” and to “ask questions of the house.” Living in rented facilities seems expressive of the temporary nature of his life but it also dredges up some painful boyhood memories, when his father deserted him and his mother.

The Sea is a study in memory—the way one recollection washes over another like the waves, yet how memories usually are projected in still slides rather than in moving pictures. Like many people Max’s memories are triggered by smell or “the various effluvia” but Max contends that he suffers from “an overly acute awareness of the mingled aromas that emanate from the human concourse.” This book, therefore, wafts from lupin blossoms that remind Max of nightsoil to the “feral reek of Anna,” the “milk-and-vinegar smell” of Mrs. Grace, the flattish biscuity smell of Chloe to his own cheesy smell in the tangle of his bed sheets. As the sharing of memories and aromas are startlingly evocative, readers of The Sea will be led to ponder the questions as to why some memories lodge and others fade and why some personalities like Mrs. Grace appear as “a moving figure in the waxworks of memory” while other characters like Chloe waver in the memory “always just beyond focus.”

John Banville plumbs the depths of childhood perceptions and expectations of waiting in his “unfashioned world” and watching for what is to come. The forward focus of childhood is counter-balanced by the bereaved narrator’s preoccupation with the past and such painful and angry brooding helps him to realize that throughout his life he has been one who has craved coziness and ‘womby warmth’. The Sea offers readers a mirror to ponder their own lives and the different dimensions of human existence.

Amid the seriousness of these themes there is wonderful humour as Max confesses his boyhood fixation with big-breasted Mrs. Grace and his fantasies about how couples go about their ‘nocturnal love-making’ with “the groping and clasping, the panting endearments and the crying out for pleasure as if in pain.”

This book is a study in loss—primarily Anna’s loss of life, Max’s loss of a partner—but also many other losses which are illustrated in the book’s amusing lineup of characters. As Max ponders Anna’s loss he asks himself deep questions about what he had hoped Anna would help him to become, who he is now, whether he could have lived life differently, what he missed in life and what might he have been. He ponders his final departure and what will remain of him in the memories and fading photos.

Banville’s prose is beautifully poetic with description that captures the eye. It is detailed without being cluttered or tiresome.

The author is continually searching for the right word, the apt phrase or the telling image and he is overwhelmingly successful. He writes of the “dragging and disconsolate plod,” the “after-gulps and gurglings” of a newly-flushed lavatory and a woman who “had a hat shaped like a brioche.” There is an engaging inventiveness as Banville comes up with words like “landladyese” and phrases to describe a man who was “landlubbered at last.”

Like his central character Banville is “a master of observing and being observed.” These keen powers of noticing everyday things and people are evident as Banville describes “the squeaking of a receptionist’s sensible shoes,” the “studied hesitancy” of a consultant breaking bad news and “the tight-lipped awkwardness and embarrassment” of a couple staring death in the face.

Always in this novel there is the sea—sometimes silent, sometimes eloquent in its whispers, always immense and mysterious, present and distant.

Like its subject, The Sea has an inexhaustible quality and it meets readers at various depths. This is a book to reread and to savor.

John Banville, The Sea (London: Picador, 2005).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 49.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Sea; John Banville.

Setting Up in Dubai by Essam Al Tamimi

Introduction
For people pondering a move to the UAE, this book by Essam Al Tamimi gives plenty of helpful information but to people thinking of establishing a business in the Emirates, Setting Up in Dubai is compulsory reading, especially if one is eager to avoid the pitfalls and expedite the process smoothly.

General Information
Admittedly this book has a Dubai focus but the general information and many of the issues addressed have application to the entire UAE and much of the Middle East. Setting Up in Sharjah is also becoming available and other books in this series are anticipated.

Subjects in the introductory survey examine the history of Dubai, the statistical growth of non-oil commodities, the UAE and Dubai political systems (with names of the major current office holders) and information about climate, population, postal services, telecommunications, the media, currency, major holidays, trade fairs, exhibitions and conferences and religion.

Legalities
Author Essam Al Tamimi is well equipped to write such a book having practiced in commercial law and litigation in the UAE and the GCC countries since 1985, he has gone on to accumulate a wide range of local and international legal expertise and is the Founder and Senior Partner of the Al Tamimi legal firm (reputed to be ‘the largest law firm in the Middle East’).

While having a broad focus, this handbook concentrates on the legal issues of establishing a business. General information is given on the legal profession in the UAE and Dubai, charts are supplied to explain how federal laws are formulated and transacted, insights are conveyed as to how federal law, local law and Sharia (Islamic) law relate and what courts deal with which legal problem or procedure. The author gives practical details on how one files court action, the current cost of court fees and the different processes one pursues for disputes to do with labor, tenancy and civil matters.

Immigration and Customs
This major section describes in detail the matters to do with immigration, employment and visa issues for workers, partners and children.

The different processes from initial application to changing visa status while within the country are clearly illustrated in charts that show the sequence of steps. Helpful information is provided on registering a new born baby, securing domestic help and transferring employment sponsorship from one person to another.

Customs regulations and procedures are covered in depth as they relate to people, goods, business equipment and vehicles.

Business in Dubai
This chapter acquaints readers with procedures and requirements for establishing a business in Dubai.

The function and responsibilities of organizations that oversee businesses are outlined with information on the Chamber of Commerce, the Dubai Department of Economic Development, the Dubai Municipality, the UAE Ministries of Economy & Planning and Finance & Industry, the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, the UAE Central Bank, the Dubai Lands Department and the Dubai international Financial Centre.

The legal structures, laws and business entities are explained and those deemed to be of special value to foreign investors are highlighted. These address the full spectrum of issues from establishment, to continuing a business, through to terminating an operation. Different types of company procedures are described and how things differ in various parts of Dubai including the Free Zones and Business Parks.

The procedures for obtaining business licenses are given with the costs of setting up a business in the different zones plus specific guidelines for industrial projects, insurance companies, engineering consultancies, auditing firms, hotels and other accommodation, medical establishments and investment companies.

This book is interested in readers getting the detail, assisting them to see clearly each step in a process and notifying them as to which activities require special approval or authorization.

Employment Issues
Essam Al Tamimi gives an overview of the UAE Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs before highlighting the distinctive features of employment in Dubai to do with such vital matters as working hours, salaries and packaging, common salary scales (according to business and ethic origins of employees), taxation issues and labor cards.

Unique aspects of Emirati labor laws are described including the practical matters of termination, repatriation responsibilities, end of service benefits and accident compensation.

Housing and Accommodation
A narrative furnished with colorful illustrations gives readers an idea of the different types of accommodation that exist in Dubai. This chapter covers procedures to do with property ownership and offers a selection of housing estates that can be purchased in this emirate. The FAQ about renting are explained.

Health and Education
The well-advanced health care in Dubai and the UAE is described with practical information on such things as how one obtains a medical card.

Education options for one’s family and workers are summarized from nursery through to tertiary education plus specialized courses in such things as Arabic language.

Transport
Information is provided on how one obtains a driving license and another useful chart outlines 100 different driving offences and the anticipated monetary fine and ‘black’ or demerit point likely to be incurred. As this regularly changes, readers are pointed to the appropriate web site for up-to-date information and the method for discovering whether or not drivers have been booked.

Information is given on purchasing, registering and insuring a vehicle with tips provided on renting transport and using the different forms of public transport.

Leisure
Following the dictum, “All work and no play…”, this book contains information on leisure and cultural pursuits, commencing with shopping(!), and including water sports and land sports such as golf and the distinctive Emirati pursuits of wadi bashing and camel riding. There is information on the nightlife of Dubai, eating out and a thumbnail sketch of places to see.

Local Customs and Traditions
A chapter presents an overview of religious customs and dos and don’ts, issues related to Ramadan, meeting and greeting, tea and coffee, alcohol purchase and consumption, what to wear when, important tips about what not to photograph, business etiquette and conversation subjects to avoid.

Some basic Arabic words are given to help readers say ‘Hullo’, to count to ten or to instruct the taxi driver to slow down.

The various sections of this book indicate the complexity of life and doing business in another country. Setting Up in Dubai is comprehensive and the inclusion of a CD containing all the application forms one will need for setting up in Dubai is an indication of the book’s very practical use.

Essam Al Tamimi, Setting Up in Dubai Edition 4: Business Investor’s Guide (Dubai: Cross Border Legal Publishing, 2006).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 79.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Images: Front cover of Setting Up in Dubai; author, Essam Al Tamimi.

Middle East and North Africa Media Guide 2008 ed. Ben Smalley

Why this Book?
The number of media outlets in the Middle East and North Africa is growing in leaps and bounds. Governments are gradually deregulating the media market and allowing independent and privately operated television and radio stations to operate.

Bad News
The introduction notes the rapid expansion but it realistically presents the dark side of the media in this region when editor Ben Smalley writes: “More than 200 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003….2006 is the worst year yet for the freedom of the press in the Arab world.”

One glimmer of hope that is recognized is the September 2007 announcement by the UAE Vice President and PM and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum in which he said that journalists in the UAE would not be imprisoned for their work.

Middle East and North Africa Media Guide
This volume is comprehensive with nearly 500 pages of detailed information. It is a reference and guide book to be dipped into rather than read from cover to cover.

Newspapers
When so many newspapers are going bust around the world it is intriguing to see the large list (with statistics) of papers and magazines that have been launched in 2007.

Newspapers from the region are listed from Algeria to the UAE and in addition are listed according to frequency of publication, language and publisher with all the vital details about websites, contact addresses and circulation figures.

Magazines
There are now well over 1,000 magazines published in the Middle East and North Africa including more than 60 new titles which were launched in 2007.

The various categories indicate something of the strength of current interest and the expansion of these sectors.

The consumer section includes magazines on news and politics, lifestyle and language, entertainment, celebrity and society, men’s topics, finance, teenage and children, students, literature, art and culture, religion, sports, motoring, boats and yachting, homes and properties, computers and electronics, jobs, careers and education, travel, airport magazines, in-flight magazines and business and trade. Each of these magazines comes with details and a thumbnail description.

The business and trade category has received a boost of 23 new launches in 2007 which reflects the booming construction industry in the region and the thriving exhibition industry. These magazines are grouped according to business and trade and Chamber of Commerce and include magazines on banking and finance, insurance, industry, oil and gas, electricity and water, advertising and marketing, print media and broadcasting, meetings and exhibitions, retailing, telecommunications, IT, architecture and interior design, property and real estate, building and construction, transport, aviation and logistics, military security and defence, medical and health, science, tourism, catering and hospitality, agriculture and farming, the environment and law.

Television
If you flip through the channels on your television you will discover that there is a bewildering array of channels, in fact, over 370 free-to-air satellite channels in the Arab world.

Of this number the privately owned news stations currently represent the biggest sector with 56 channels, followed by 54 music channels (music is a big part of Arab culture) and 38 government owned channels.

The UAE has the highest number of channels in the region.

This Media Guide lists the television channels according to country, language and then their focus—business, property, entertainment, music, sports and motoring, maritime, interactive games and chat, children’s channel, religion, education, shopping and pay-TV networks.

Radio
Radio is listed in a similar way to television, however, the introduction highlights the trends in radio stations, technology and audience.

News and Photo Agencies
Contact details for news services (government and independent, international and regional) are given along with television news agencies, photo agencies and stock photo libraries.

Production Companies
The guide has a national listing of companies which create multimedia, television and radio commercials, films, documentaries, music videos, special effects as well as companies that hire related equipment when you are producing your own movie.

New Media
This new chapter addresses the new and fast growing media mainly broadcasting via the Internet and including online advertising.

Internet usage figures are listed and these show that the UAE has the highest rank for the region. The UAE experienced Internet usage growth of 79.7% from 2000-2007 and it currently has a population penetration of 33%.

This section lists IT agencies and websites relating to news, business, consumer, trade and the media.

World Media
While the title of the book has a regional focus, this guide contains useful information that relates to a sampling of major international media outlets across the main categories.

And there is More
A further section of this book lists agencies to do with advertising, public relations, direct marketing, advertising representatives, exhibition organizers and media resources.

If you have missed a category or a listing there is a substantial index and people discovering omissions or creating something new are encouraged to write and ask for a listing in the next edition.

Media Encyclopedia
This book is the regional compendium on all aspects to do with the media and marketing. It is comprehensive with 400 new media listings from across the eighteen countries of the region. It is detailed information rather than a book of essays and articles that present views, opinions and forecasts.

Ben Smalley (ed), Middle East and North Africa Media Guide 2008 (Dubai: MediaSource, 2008).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 125.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Middle East and North Africa Media Guide 2008.

Agamemnon’s Daughter by Ismail Kadare

It is not everyday that one reads a book whose theme is so politically sensitive that it had to be smuggled out of the country in batches but Agamemnon’s Daughter: A Novella and Stories has endured this fate. Penned in Albania in the 1980s by Ismail Kadare, names and locations were dressed in German camouflage and after being couriered to France were then changed back to the original before being translated.

The volume contains three stories by Kadare each set in different periods and times yet linked by many of the same characters and themes.

The novella, Agamemnon’s Daughter, commences with a scene of energetic sensuality. The narrator is practically engaged to somebody else but he is having an affair with Suzanna, the daughter of a man who is a high ranking official in the Albanian political leadership. Surprisingly, the narrator, who is an outspoken journalist, has received an invitation to attend a state rally and as he waits for his lover to meet him it seems that their relationship is in jeopardy.

Although this book has been translated and retranslated it has a poetic flow and is laced with images that are wonderfully descriptive. In illustrating the playfulness of his lover but the potential danger of their relationship the writer says, “She ruffled the hair on the nape of my neck with cold fingers that felt as jagged as broken test tubes.” (p7)

Suzanna had talked to her partner, about ‘sacrificing’ their relationship so as not to do anything that would torpedo her father’s ascendancy. Kadare provides resonance by referring to Robert Grave’s book, The Greek Myths, which includes the tragic story of Agamemnon, the Greek leader, who was prepared to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, to model to the army his submission and loyalty to the state. This deeper layer and interpretive key gives Kadare the substance on which to plumb the mysterious motives of political leadership that would lead to the sacrifice of one’s nearest and dearest, yet there are further questions about who is actually making the sacrifice.

Akin to Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach or Graham Swift’s Tomorrow, the scope of this novella deals with less than one day or one march to the parade. Told in the first person this helps the author to share his innermost thoughts and describe in detail the fears, the suspicion, the threats, the glances, the betrayals and the constantly shifting craziness of living within the suffocating stranglehold of the single party, communist regime. As the author walks to the parade with questions, doubts and total confusion, the reader is thrust into the frustrating fog, the sense of the void and the exhausting questions that are central to Kafka’s novels and to most totalitarian regimes. One does not know what is happening and why it is happening and this lack of logic and clarity is the ploy of powerful leadership and part of the punishment that is dealt out to dissidents.

On the walk through endless checkpoints to the parade the writer meets people who had an “inextinguishable hankering for the higher slopes” but whose lack of loyalty or the indiscretion of a relative led them overnight to “fall all the way down to the netherworld.” (p37) This ‘snakes and ladders syndrome’ reveals that ascendancy is only achieved by the sacrifice of others. Like a raptor’s need for raw meat to fuel its flight, power is achieved but only tenuously maintained when flesh is given.

The description of the leaders seated in Grandstand A, viewed so close to the power from Grandstand C gives Kadare the chance to contemplate the big question: “By what means did they get that far up?” He inspects them all, one of whom “was smiling at someone else, with a face as worn and as lined as an old fig.” (p64). He analyses their furtive glances and notes their smug veneer—“Everything was smothered in collective joviality as if a generous helping of sauce had been poured over it all so as to even out the taste.” (p61). Why had he been given a seat in Grandstand C and had this access and ascendancy, even if so temporary, been achieved at the sacrifice of Suzanna?

Seated in the grandstand the writer unsuccessfully ponders the reasons for Suzanna’s change of heart and such reflection moves to the Greek Myth, the sacrifice that Stalin made of his son and to the questions pertaining to all leaders who dehumanize and whose decisions lead to the shriveling of life and love.

Agamemnon’s Daughter was a costly book to write and it is an emotionally demanding volume to read. It is a deserving winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2005.

Ismail Kadare, Agamemnon’s Daughter: A Novella and Stories (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 56.00.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Agamemnon’s Daughter; Ismail Kadare.

The Unpublished Spike Milligan edited by Norma Farnes

Remember how at this time of the year people often say to you, “What do you really want for Christmas? You never give us any hints!” This new book containing the unpublished stories and clippings of Spike Milligan might just well be your answer. Give them a wink and send them this link. (That’s starting to rhyme like the poems you will find in this Milligan cornucopia).

The Unpublished Spike Milligan is hardly a conventional book, which is one of the reasons why it is subtitled, ‘Box 18’—the box for Spike’s scribbles and seeds, many of which, in the fullness of time became the stuff of vintage Spike.

Norma Farnes, Spike’s manager, biographer, life long friend and the one who he said had “the Power of Attorney over everything in my life except the Execution Squad”, is well placed to offer this smorgasbord of things Spike and provide illustrations of the off stage habits of the great man. For instance, Farnes explains that while Milligan’s public persona was that of the manic, disorganized bloke, in his office (what he called his ‘womb’), he was focused, methodical and a meticulous filer of clippings and stories—hence the subtitle, ‘Box 18’.

Many of the draft stories and soliloquies are provided in Spike’s handwriting with a typewritten translation to offer sense out of the squiggles and doodling. Copies of Spike’s handwritten diary give some interesting insights into the moods of the man. Journal entries such as ‘I’m so lonely’ or ‘F*ck the system’ reveal Spike’s innermost feelings. Spike had written on the page for the 28 September 1980 that one of his tasks was to ‘Die’. The editor adds the caption below, ‘He didn’t’.

The unpublished scripts are about sperm donors, religion, elephant substitutes, ‘Ostralians’, cat coffins and Egyptian mummies.

‘Box 18’ contains some unpublished poems, photographs (from the Goons or Spike blowing his bugle), children’s stories (including some about Bad Jelly the Witch), letters which illustrate his environmental concerns and simply some scattered statements. In one fragment, penned in 1980, Spike says, “My mind is overflowing but it’s nowhere to go.” (p140) At another time he writes, “Waiting—we are all waiting, waiting, for the waiting to stop.” (p143)

While you go adding this book to your ‘All I Want for Christmas’ list, don’t expect that you will find in ‘Box 18’ a laugh a minute. Sensational speeches heard live so often appear dead when they are laid out in type on papyrus. Spike’s speeches and sayings are no exception. But if you can hear the lilt in his voice, if you know the deft timing, if you can see the smile creep over his face, then this Milligan Miscellany will rekindle your memories and transport you back to the stage and the wireless.

Spike concluded most of his jottings, whether to Prince Charles, George Harrison or Michael Parkinson, with this hopeful benediction, ‘Love, Light and Peace’.

The Unpublished Spike Milligan: Box 18 ed. Norma Farnes (London: Fourth Estate, 2007).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 91.00.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Unpublished Spike Milligan.

The Colours of Fujairah by Christopher Hurndall and Blanka Rössler (photographs)

At first glance this book appears as just another coffee table edition but a sustained reading reveals that this volume has substance as well as colour.

When information in English on Fujairah is scarce and largely promotional, this book offers a good survey of the history of the region as it was visited by Mesopotamian seafarers, Babylonian armies (modern day Iraq), the messengers of Islam, the Portuguese invaders in the sixteenth century and the British occupants of these ‘Trucial States’. Furthermore the author tells of the discovery of Greek and Roman coins, the importance of the trade route that intersects the Wadi Dam (controlled by the fort at Bithna) and connects Dubai and Sharjah with Fujairah and the East Coast.

Residents will find new details about familiar city locations and monuments and they will learn information about archaeological sites and the fauna and flora of Fujairah that visitors rarely see. The cultural attractions of the area are recorded (racing dhow, bull butting and football) and the book focuses pleasingly on the smaller villages and suburbs of the emirate including Dibba, Al Aqqah, Masafi, Ghurfah, Sharm, Bidiya and Bithna.

This comprehensive, yet uncluttered book is largely attributed to the knowledge of the author, Christopher Hurndall, who visited the UAE first as an airline pilot (he has seen the colours of Fujairah from the best vantage points) and then as a resident where he has lived in Fujairah during his retirement and witnessed the east coast and its sensational waters from his classic schooner, the ‘Charlotte Anne’.

This book is one of a series (The Colours of Dubai etc.) so the title alerts readers to beauty and colour as its governing themes. To the casual visitor, Fujairah sometimes appears as a dusty little city and colour is not always the most lasting memory that people take with them. Like the contributor to the UAE chapters of the popular Lonely Planet Guide to the Arabian Peninsula, who while noting the beauty of the eastern region, said: “Fujairah itself is a rather characterless small city without much tourism infrastructure…. Our recommendation is to bypass Fujairah, as its beaches are polluted and unattractive and the Port of Fujairah just north of the city is a major blot on the landscape. You’re much better off going north.” (p348)

In contrast, the resident author of The Colours of Fujairah finds beauty in the streets, the markets, the beaches, the wadis, the ‘picturesque villages’, the streams, the colourful flora and even in the port! This book has a lot of information on the distinctive and rare animals of the region, including Blandford’s fox, the Bonelli’s eagle, the Arabian gazelles, the Arabian leopard, donkeys, goats, dolphins and the Caracal lynx. The colour of the region is also apparent in the sky (over 300 different species have been recorded in this key bird watching area) and in the colourful shells on the beaches.

Blanka Rössler, who hails from Prague and more recently has been living and exhibiting in Germany, has conveyed the beauty and the colour of the region through her photographs in this book. With her artist’s eye, Rössler has captured the glow of dawn over the Arabian Sea, the colours of the Hajars from the air, the reflections of the sea waters, the bright night lights of the roundabouts and even in the multi-coloured containers at the port.

The Colours of Fujairah was published in 2002 and while it contains some wonderful photographs of Fujairah from out of the archive, some of the pictures depicting modern day Fujairah looked dated. This is only natural when one considers the rate of change that this emirate and country has experienced even since this book was launched. Rössler supplies some technical information about the pictures (especially satellite photographs) to do with exposure and resolution but many of the colours are so vivid and scenes are presented with such clarity and definition, they look too good to be true! Have camera filters enhanced the Fujairah scenes beyond recognition, or is there more dust and sea fog in the air today that makes Fujairah appear pale and veiled?

Readers will stumble across some purple patches in this book whose production has been financed by many sponsors (see the last page) but The Colours of Fujairah rightly possess a positive feel and sound a note of hope about the future of this eastern region. This book is an important acquisition for anyone interested in Fujairah, past, present and future.

Christopher Hurndall with photographs by Blanka Rössler, The Colours of Fujairah (Lake City, Florida: Zodiac Publishing, 2002).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 135.00.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of The Colours of Fujairah.

My Forbidden Face by Latifa

My Forbidden Face Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s Story is the eye witness account of a young woman who was born and raised under the Soviet occupation but who, as a teenager, witnesses the takeover by terror of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

‘Latifa’ is not the author’s birth name but her assumed name now that she and her family live as exiles in France as a result of having a fatwa slapped upon them and receiving death threats.

This book is a revealing account of the political overthrow by the Taliban, the rapid revolution of terror and chaos and its endless creativity for inventing illogical laws to maintain control and suffocate its citizens.

As a Muslim, the author argues how the Taliban, though operating within the veil of rigorous religion, has departed from the essence of Islam. Like all fundamentalist groups, the Taliban is described more by what it is against than for what it stands for: No videos (tapes are stripped from cassettes and draped around trees), no TV, no photographs (no memories), no alcohol, no dancing (even at weddings), no whistling kettles, no dogs, no birds, no nail polish, no cultural treasures (the Taliban vandals destroy the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan) and no more kites in Kabul (‘the Taliban have outlawed the skies’).

Latifa tells of the marginalization of women under the Taliban, since it has decreed that women will no longer work, no longer be able to go to school and no longer have any health treatment. The account depicts the confinement of women, their thirst in an intellectual desert, their punishment by rape and the cruel tradition in which Afghani women who are violated are obliged to marry their rapist or be condemned to exile or death.

The author relays the psychological and physical impact due to the restrictions on her as a budding journalist, the profound depression ‘that is swallowing up’ her medico mother, the heavy weight that presses down on her father and brothers whose business and livelihoods suffer.

Despite the bleak mood of the book, there are touches of humor as Latifa tells of how she and her friends grew up nicknaming women who wore burqas as ‘bottles’, ‘upside-down cauliflowers, ‘storage sacks’ and collectively as ‘a regiment of parachutists’!

Any mirth quickly evaporates as Latifa and her fashionable friends are forced to wear the heavy burqas with the distinctive latticework, whose mesh is reduced even further by the short-sighted, stick-wielding Taliban police.

For a young journo and writer (the book was published when the author was only 22), whose first language is translated into French and then into English, this book is superbly written and contains a wealth of colorful images. Latifa describes her cloistered experience as feeling like ‘a canary in a cage’. She likens her wearing of the burqa to existing in ‘a moving prison’.

Latifa tells of the shutting down of the media in Afghanistan and its replacement with a diet of mindless propaganda. She rages against the international amnesia that has afflicted world governments and foreign journalists. This feeling of being forgotten by the BBC and the Voice of America is summed up by Latifa’s brother who says of Afghanis, “We’re like rats in some dark hole that is inaccessible to the rest of the world.” (p153)

Although set in the minor key, this book presents promising glimpses of the courage of its author and her family, who represent the many unnamed heroes whose stories are never told, in the running of a clandestine health clinic out of their home, the establishment of a secret school for children and the operation of an underground newspaper to satisfy the appetite for local and international news.

Written in exile, this book is a promise of hope, a literary treat to a nation starved of storytelling, a tribute to women who have kept their dignity and, as the author hopes, a key to other women, “whose speech has been padlocked and who have buried their testimony in their hearts and in their memories.” (pv)

Latifa with Chékéha Hacheim, trans. Lisa Appignanesi, My Forbidden Face Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman’s Story (London: Virago, 2002).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 49.00.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of My Forbidden Face.

Other books that are reviewed on Afghanistan that convey similar themes but offer their unique perspective are the following, with their links:

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen (Pakistan and Afghanistan)

Other books reviewed that highlight the oppression of women include:

Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi

My Name is Salma by Fadia Faqir

State of Terror by Karen women

Spoken Arabic Step-By-Step by John Kirkbright

Spoken Arabic is not one book but two books—Books 1 and 2 (82 and 100 pages respectively) and three CDs that accompany the twenty lessons.

These resources were first published in 1993 but such has been their popularity that the books have gone through ten printings and the 2006 and 2007 model is the edition that comes with the DVDs.

The author, John Kirkbright has lived in the Arab world for more than forty years of which the last thirty have been in the Arabian Gulf. These resources come out of Kirkbright’s experience in creating self-study books for companies and banks and then they have been honed through his leadership of many staff courses in Gulf Arabic for companies such as the Al Futtaim Group, Shell and Emirates Bank.

The distinctive things that distinguish this resource include the following:
* It is for beginners but getting to grips with the twenty lessons will enable students to hold basic conversations with Gulf State Arabic speakers.
* It is about spoken Arabic. Students don’t through these resources get to grips with learning the alphabet and writing the script.
* The vocabulary is intentionally limited as are many of the grammatical intricacies. This is designed so as not to complicate and bog down the beginner. Lists of words do come in the Appendix and they are grouped according to themes.
* It is ‘step-by-step’ and the guide chooses the first few steps carefully and slowly, so as to encourage learners and not to leave them daunted and giving up.
* The course is written for people with no formal language training in language and grammatical terms. As Kirkbright says in the preface, this resource is for “The man [and woman] in the street.”
* Alternatives are given to show how words in Gulf Arabic differ from standard Arabic and to highlight variants throughout the Gulf and Saudi Arabia.
* There is a goodly amount of revision and summaries so as to consolidate and avoid overload
* The CDs are a valuable addition. Each lesson starts with some rousing Arabic music to get you in the mood and on task. There is a predictable four step rhythm in the approach to learning. Kirkbright gives the cue in English. The student is then given time and space to say the word or phrase in Arabic. The model answer is given by a person from the Arabian Peninsula and then it is your turn to say it again after the speaker.
* There are different speakers on the audio—men and women and speakers from different parts of the Gulf. This is a great advantage.

Kirkbright says, “It may seem strange that a non-Arab should write a course in spoken Arabic. On reflection, however, the pitfalls and difficulties of a language are not always apparent to native speakers of that language.” (Bk I p4-5)

This is a popular and useful resource because it is written by an effective Arabic speaker who knows how to assist beginners in taking those first, tentative steps. The sub-title, ‘step-by-step’ is the essential key to this book. But this is also the Arab approach to good education and to all of life. As they say in these parts, "Grapes are eaten one by one", which is a colourful way of saying ‘step-by-step’, ‘one step at a time’ or in the original:

أَكْل العِنَب حَبَّة حَبَّة Transliterated: Akl il-3inab Habba Habba

(Proverb taken from, Primrose Arander & Ashkhain Skipwith, Apricots Tomorrow , London: Stacey International, 1997.

John Kirkbright, Spoken Arabic Step-by-Step (Dubai: Motivate Publishing, 1993, 2007).

This resource book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 185.00.

Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Spoken Arabic Step-by-Step.

A related article entitled ‘Learning Arabic in the UAE and the Gulf’ has been posted on Experiencing the Emirates.

Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi

With Iran at the focus of much international attention, this memoir by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, gives a fascinating background to the country that has gone through a series of revolutions, awakenings and regressions in only a few decades.

Iran Awakening is a frightening account of the overthrow of the Shah and the establishment of a fundamentalist religious regime in which critics of the government are imprisoned and murdered.

Ebadi highlights how certain events, such as the burning of a crowded cinema in 1978 and the death of 400 people, prompted people to protest and overthrow the Shah. The author also exposes the negative aspects of crowd movements for their hailing of Ayatollah Khomeini quickly turned to howls. Her analysis of these national movements points up the importance of the media and the legal profession when their representatives are doing their job well. For anyone thinking through the issue of the separation of religion and the state, this book gives ample comment and illustration.

Shirin Ebadi recounts her early life experiences, her training and service as a judge, and how she reacted when her influential job was taken from her and she became sidelined. Some instances of injustice and cruelty towards members of her extended family galvanized her commitment to work for battered children, women who were hostage in abusive marriages and political prisoners. Taking up the legal cases that others wouldn’t touch, Ebadi puts her own life at risk and for her courage in staying in Iran and being a champion of the rights of the vulnerable she is harassed, threatened and imprisoned.

It is illuminating to read the thoughts of a Muslim woman who has a deep faith, asks the hard questions and is eager to encourage the fulfillment of women. Ebadi baulks at the way under the strict Islamic code a man’s life is worth twice that of a woman and how this understanding translates in such things as a limited access to education by women, fewer professional opportunities and a much higher unemployment rate.

Iran Awakening is an important book for Muslims to read as Ebadi, a devout Muslim, is able to spell out the forbidding side of the theocracy that sparked the Islamic Revolution in Iran. She describes how the government espoused an ideology that made the family the centerpiece of its action but in reality, it used theology to introduce news laws that were oppressive toward women and children. These memoirs assist readers in reflecting upon the levels of flexibility one has in applying seventh century texts and conventions to contemporary situations.

In her epilogue Ebadi says, “I wanted to write a book that would help correct Western stereotypes of Islam, especially the image of Muslim women as docile, forlorn creatures.” (p210) This book reveals one striking representative of those Iranian women who have stood up for the rights of women but the book reinforces the stereotypes that the author wanted to shatter. Ebadi’s candid remarks about her husband’s expectations that she does the cooking, the housework and the bulk of the caring for the children (even though he supported her activism), illustrate graphically the practical limits of gender equality.

Despite her frankness about many aspects of Iranian life, the author indicates that her voice has been muted: “The censorship that prevails in the Islamic Republic has made it impossible to publish an honest account of my life here.” Perhaps Ebadi’s book has escaped the full impact of the censor’s pen only because of her international standing as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

Shirin Ebadi with Azadeh Moaveni, Iran Awakening (London: Rider, 2006). This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 56.00.

A picture of Shirin Ebadi and one of her stories is posted at:
Stories for Speakers and Writers.

Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Iran Awakening.

Birds of the Middle East by David Cottridge et al

The writer, P D James, describes in her autobiographical fragment, Time to Be in Earnest, a day with her friends exploring the natural world:

“One of the delights of being with [friends] Tom and Mary [Norman] is their knowledge of natural history. There isn’t a bird, butterfly, flower or tree which they can’t name.”

If you’ve also admired in others and longed for that skill of being able to name birds that you see in the Middle East, the revised and republished, Birds of the Middle East, may assist you to be well on your way with this aspiration.

Trivial Pursuit players confronted by questions about birds in the Middle East will be well prepared by a study of this volume. For example, Can you name five birds that are mentioned in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures? Or what about this trivial pursuit question: Birds are mentioned five times in the Koran. What specific bird is mentioned in the Islamic scriptures? [Answers below]

This reference book has a focus on birds in the United Arab Emirates with Simon Aspinall giving an introduction to birds and bird watchers in this country. This small book will be useful for keeping in your pocket or the glove box of the car if you are a resident in the UAE or one of the increasing number of tourists to this burgeoning country, many of whom come primarily for bird watching.

More information about birds and bird watchers in the UAE is posted on the Experiencing the Emirates site.

The book has a series of color tabs according to the bird group (larks, swallows etc) so you can find the page and photograph quickly when you are out and about with your binoculars and camera.

Each of the 252 species described has a colour photograph (supplied by David Cottridge), the taxonomical name and commonly used names (I hope the next edition supplies the Arabic and Hebrew names). Readers aren’t deluged with too much information. This small book comes with a glossary, an index, suggestions for further reading and addresses and web links for those wanting to take their study further.

They say that when we reach forty years of age we should be learning one new skill or taking up one new hobby each year to prepare for a full and rich retirement. Perhaps bird watching or birding (note the difference between these two pursuits and how they also differ from ornithology) might be one of those interests. Reading Birds of the Middle East might give you the impetus to get this feathery hobby up in flight. Don’t wait until you are forty to buy this book. It is a gift that a young girl or boy might easily read and treasure.

David Cottridge (not listed as author but photographer), A Photographic Guide to Birds of the Middle East (London: New Holland Publishers, 2001 & 2006).

This book is available from Magrudy’s Bookshops in the UAE at a cost of Dh 56.00.

Geoff Pound

Image: Front cover of Birds of the Middle East; David Cottridge.

Answers: The birds that are mentioned in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures include the eagle, sparrow, dove (turtle dove), raven, stork, ostrich and hen.

The Koran mentions the hoopoe (related to the hornbill). Birds of the Middle East has photos and information on all of these birds but the references in the ancient texts illustrate how birds have for centuries been a big part of the Middle Eastern environment.