Books

I started reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence on my flight to Kuwait. This autobiography by the infamous Lawrence of Arabia was an excellent introduction to the world I was entering. He perfectly captures the dusty dry scenery, the vastness of the land. I was impressed with his insights to the politics of the region (rebellion against Turkey and independence for Arab peoples) and his support for their cause. While he was a British soldier, and his support of independence had ulterior motives (Turkey was a German ally during WWI) ,he also clearly cared about the locals on a personal level. He was not too proud to write about his weakness during initial camel rides, which were often days long with little food or water. On his first major trip, he described explicitly his suffering of dysentery. His appreciation for the culture as a whole and his deep love of his Arab bretheren are clear on every page.

That said. This book is very long. There is a lot of military and political minutia that caused my eyes to glaze over and my brain to turn off as I gave up keeping track of who or what or where the story was taking us. I finished, but only because I had so much free time in Kuwait that I could buckle down and put in the long hours required for this book. I'll have to rent the movie.

Next up was the New York Times war corespondent Dexter Filkin's The Forever War. Filkins book begins with an prologue that takes place during the battle of Falluja, when he was embedded with a marine company. Running across the street amid flying bullets, watching marines die in front of him, you are immediately caugt up. The first chapter of the book takes place on a soccer field in Afghanistan in the 90's. The author and a crowd of locals are watching an exhibition of Sharia law. The Taliban chop the hands off thieves and finally they execute a convicted murderer. The story never really slows down, it takes you through 15 years of middle east correspondance from Afghanistan to Iraq. His writing is excellent- exciting and thought provoking and at times heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Depressing though. When a member of the Taliban laments that they just want to be taken seriously and treated as equals by the world leaders, you realize that we are truly living in different worlds.

Finally, The Great War For Civilisation, by Robert Fisk. While Filkins has been a war reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan for over a decade, Fisk has been living in and reporting from the Middle East for over 30 years, and this book shows it. He covers the first and second Afghan wars, the two Iraq wars, the Algerian civil war, the Iran-Iraq conflict, the Armenian genocide, and of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He carefully details the history of each conflict not shying away from politically unpopular views or his own errors of judgement. This author met Osama bin Laden no less than three times.

While Lawrence's book was interesting from an historical perspective, the writing is rather dated, and the picayune details of political squabbling were at times sleep inducing. Fisk's writing is detailed enough to be educational but exciting enough to be a quick read. Not an easy read- unless you think reading about the horror of war first hand is easy- but a quick one. Fisk is the book I should have read first. It has everything I wanted when I came here, looking for a historical yet contemperary perspective on the conflicts of the middle east. Unfortunately, because I left it for last, I burnt out before I was halfway through. I've set it aside for now and am knee deep in The Wilderness Warrior- a wonderful book about my favorite president (T.R) and his campaign to save America's wilderness.