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The Media Relations Department Of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters In The Changing Middle East (2009)

by Neil MacFarquhar(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1586486357 (ISBN13: 9781586486358)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Public Affairs

review 1: Neil MacFarquhar was a New York Times bureau chief in the Middle East from 2001-2005, and this book contains everything he wanted to write about the region when his editors only wanted violence and terrorism – so its stories about a runaway-hit Lebanese cooking show (“Chef Ramzi”), the occasional hilarity of dial-a-fatwa services where sheikhs offer their services to people who call in asking for advice on all aspects of Islamic practice, and all the regular people in the Middle East who aren’t blowing anything up and are just trying to live normal lives. MacFarquhar spent his childhood in Libya (his father – to whom the book is dedicated - was an Esso engineer) and its clear that he loves the region from a personal, warm place. And yet, despite being explicitly... more a book NOT about the grim headlines one usually sees about the Middle East, its still pretty depressing. First, its such a sad portrait of the state of many of these countries – from the lives of quiet desperation endured by Saudi women, to the humiliation and frustration of Egyptians living in a great nation that has stagnated under a leader who is less than they deserve. It was written in 2009, so pre-Arab Spring, but its clear there was an over-abundance of tinder -- hopelessness, mass unemployment among young men, anger about official corruption, a sense of being trapped in a system that you know isn’t working for you and is in fact rigged against you. Its eye-opening to read for someone who works on Asia, which is a region with plenty of problems with governance, but still predominantly a place where forward movement, opportunity, and a belief that your children’s lives will be better than your own are very much the norm. He teases out the differences between countries in a way that is great for the Middle East novice – he loves Syria and describes its lively, sophisticated society, great cuisine, and history-drenched landscape in a way that made me want to go there badly (alas…), whereas Saudi Arabia comes across as almost a dead society – a place that focuses all its attention on stifling basic human nature, and has become distorted by a combination of huge oil wealth and an education system that teaches Islam and not much else (he reports going to a protest march about unemployment, where the Saudi marchers are followed by a contingent of South Asians picking up their trash – menial labor that the Saudi protesters would never deign to take). The book is also profoundly depressing about all the many ways the US gets it wrong in the Middle East. MacFarquhar’s purpose isn’t polemical, but he details the widespread loathing of the US, and how totally discredited we are. Its almost hard to wrap your mind around what a huge cockup the Iraq war was for what we wanted to achieve in the region, and painful to read about local reformers who decide that maybe their stunted, repressive political systems aren’t so bad if the alternative is chaos and sectarian slaughter. Even people who should be inclined to be pro-American hold enormous cynicism about the US because of the gap between our words and deeds – talking about democracy while supporting dictators, most notably – and the fact that the secular West doesn’t understand how to approach societies where religion is woven through culture and life in a way that is just very different from our reality. Though he offers some constructive suggestions about how the US can do better, I finished the book feeling pessimistic - particularly as he writes (with amazing prescience it seems) that for the US, things will likely have to get worse before they get better - that greater openness and political freedom in the region would (now: will) bring Islamist groups to the forefront in a way that (at least he feels) is not ultimately harmful to US interests but which the US will find discomfiting and therefore try to resist, reinforcing negative popular sentiment about our intentions and principles in the Arab world.
review 2: Written before the "Arab Spring", I found this book to be remarkably prescient about the role of the youth and social media in any successful government protest in Egypt. I learned a great deal about regional differences in politics and culture throughout the Middle East. Some of his chapter overviews were uneven, as the author clearly knows some countries better than others, and it was a bit long but on the whole, a very enlightening read. less

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