Baghdad Without a Map: And Other Misadventures in Arabia

by Tony Horwitz

Release Date: January, 1992

Edition: Paperback

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Jounalistic Adventures in the Middle East

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.

Interesting and relevant for today

This is a very useful book to understand the societies and politics of that complex region called the Middle East. Far from academic tones, but well informed and with background information, the book tells the travels of journalist Tony Horwitz, a Jewish-American who travels in Yemen, Egypt, Irak, Iran, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Lybia. Horwitz not just interviews politicians and professors, but mainly the ordinary man in the street. This is good because it gives the reports a local, personal and real flavor. Horwitz is sympathetic to its common subjects and very acid about the big shots, something welcome by the reader, at least this one.

I think it is very unfair to portrait this book as "funny", juts as the cover of my copy does. It is not funny at all nor does it pretend to be, notwithstanding the author's sense of humor. Most of the things he narrates -even with the aforementioned sense of humor- are pretty horrible and spooky. Far from a comic book, Horwitz has delivered a serious -not solemn- portrait of the horrors of living in those areas of the world, ruled by lunatic and murderous dictators, by sanguinary clowns, as well as by fear, misery, poverty and violence. Just as in every corner of the world, there are good and bad people, but somehow what we are witnesses to is the failure of a culture, a failure to produce minimally decent, free and happy societies.

Yemen is a God-forsaken place of chaos and stoned people; the Persian Gulf is a cosmopolitan smuggling area -a very beautiful chapter-; Cairo is poverty, disorder and mutltitudes; Baghdad is simply the worst place on Earth -a specially relevant chapter for what is going on today and a reminder of the suffering and sheer misery imposed by a crazy killer-; Isreal doesn't sound too good; Libya is boring; Sudan is hell; Beirut not better to get close to, at least in those days; and Tehran is contradictory.

Inevitably, the portrait of these places is negative, even as Horwitz, as said above, is a sympathetic and unprejudiced man. It is simply the truth that these countries ahve been unable to be livable, as the urge of so many to flee them attests.

This is a good moment to read or reread this book: it shows light on the region.