Reading the Middle East

Over the last year I have tried to find books that provided me with insights into that part of the world which stretches from the eastern Mediterranean to the Himalayas.

The first I came across was “Bliss”, which has now been made into a movie.   The movie opens next week here in Los Angeles and will play for one week only.  The book is so remarkable that I may not go see it.

“Bliss” begins in a small isolated village in southeastern Turkey, not far from the Iraq border.   While the novel is set in the present, the village seems to be centuries older in some ways.  A young woman is disgraced and expected by her family to destroy herself.   Another fate awaits her as she and a male family member, who promises to kill her, travel from the village to the western part of the country.  It is a fascinating story that highlights the enormous differences between village life and urban life in contemporary Istanbul.  The author, Ömer Zülfü Livane, is one of Turkey’s best.  There were, however, two translators involved, which may explain a certain awkwardness in the early pages of the book.

“Kara Kush”, a ripping good novel by Idries Shah, about Afghanis during the Russian occupation, complements the documentary vision presented in The Photographer.  The Afghans are presented as bold, brave and enormously varied as this tale of resistance fighters–both men and women–ranges across the country from north to south.

After reading “Kara Kush”  I searched for a book about the Russian experience in Afghanistan and came up empty.  Then I stumbled across “One Soldier’s War”, a memoir of a Russian soldier, Arkady Babchenko, in the two Chechen wars.  He was drafted for the first one; voluntarily rejoined the army for the second one.  Is is a fascinating depiction of Russian military life, as seen from the bottom up.  Treatment of the soldiers seems not to have changed much from the time of the Czars.  After his second tour in the army, Babchenko became a journalist and the book is well written.

Last night about 10 p.m. I put down the “The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday” by New York Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar.  The subtitle is “Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East”.   It is incredibly informative and utterly depressing.   I didn’t finish it and this book goes back to the Pasadena Public Library today. 

More hopeful than “The Media Department…” are the conversations I’ve had with the Afghani grocer in our local farmers’ market.  He told me he does not understand why there are wars.  “Everyone”, he said, “wants the same thing: a peaceful life with work and family.”    I would argue with his choice of the word “everyone”.  “Most people” would be more accurate.  There are always those who crave power and will seek it through war.