Some people think that the next best thingto being there is reading a travel book by someone who was there. Soif you cannot go to Yemen, or you want to remember what it was like,why not surf to amazon.com and search for the recent travel accountson Yemen? You will find several offerings. In fact, I will save youthe trouble of looking them up and tell you up front the four 90stravelogues on Yemen that I wish to review in this article. Here theyare, starting with the most recent:

• Kevin Rushby, Eating the Flowers of Paradise: One Man's Journey through Ethiopia and Yemen. N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1999 ISBN 0-312-21794-3

• Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land. London: John Murray, 1997. ISBN 0-7195-5622-8

• Tony Horwitz, Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia. New York: Plume, 1992. ISBN 0-452-26745-5

• Eric Hansen, Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991. ISBN 0-395-48347-6

I suspect, after reading all of these books,that sometimes there is no next best thing to being there. Of all thebooks listed above, I would give one an unqualified and enthusiasticendorsement; this the well informed and enjoyably readable traveltour de force of Tim Mackintosh Smith, who (I might add) hasspent more time in Yemen than all the other authors combined. By allmeans read Tim's book; buy one for your library as it is essentialreading for any Yemenophile. Go to amazon.com or wherever andorder it before you finish this review. Rushby's book is also wellworth reading, but my advice would be to keep Horwitz and Hansen atbay -- preferably at the bottom of a deep bay, but (as well shall seebelow) not off the Red Sea coast of Yemen

In what follows I will guide you through myimpressions on all these books, pointing out the positive pointswhere warranted and leaving no holds barred for the careless,journalistically naive and at times grievously erroneous statementsof some of the travelers. I write not as a professional reviewer oftravel books, nor as a Yemeni, but as an outsider with wideexperience in and on Yemen. Having been there, I offer my comments onothers who wish to make a buck by convincing you as a reader it wasworthwhile for them to be there too. Ultimately, you are the judge,so here is my brief.

Each book deserves to be weighed first interms of its context, given the author's level of experience in Yemenand assumed audience. I shall do this first, starting with the book Ihave nothing but praise for, and then working my way through the restof the litter. I would be remiss not to draw my comments together atthe end in some guidelines for anyone contemplating writing a travelbook on Yemen. I do hope that more will be written, especially bypeople who have the knowledge to do so, so that the passion we oftenbury in obscure professional journals or unpublished lectures canleak out to a wider audience. Those of us who know Yemen know that itdeserves better than it has received thus far.

Let's be direct. Tim Mackintosh-Smith'saccount of over fifteen years residence in Yemen may be the bestinformed and most readable Arabian travelogue of this century. In abook that "treads the thin line between seriousness and frivolity"(p. xi), you can learn more about everyday life in the "real" Yemenand the imagination of generations of Yemeni scholars than any singleethnography or history in print. This is a wonderful book. Buy it.Read it several times. Buy extra copies to give as gifts. I certainlywill do so.

One of the best things this book has goingfor it is the author, whose combination of wit and verve grabs you onthe first page and continues unabated until the last paragraph. Thisis an autobiographical account that will resonate with anyone who haslearned Arabic from scratch, resided in the Middle East, or workedmethodically, lexicon in hand, with medieval texts. Musing on how hebegan his Arabic study with Cowan's Modern Literary Arabic,Mackintosh-Smith describes the textbook example he encountered forthe dual: "The two beautiful queens are ignorant." Retorts theauthor, "The odds against ever uttering the sentence were high:grammars, like theatre, call for a suspension of belief" (p. 1). Thedetails, seemingly disparate in isolation, are woven masterfully intoa fascinating story of an original life experience: how he found hisold prep-school blazer on a boy on the street in Sanaa (p. 12),watching American all-star wrestling on Saudi TV in a Yemenidiwan (p. 117), sharing his bed in Hadramawt with a babyscorpion (p. 188), sleeping near a wadi bed with baboons on the prowl(p. 59). A 20th century postmodern Doughty emerges through thisnarrative. It is the kind of narrative those of us who have beenthere secretly wish we could write.

Mackintosh-Smith is a brilliant wordsmith;puns and neologisms punctuate almost every page. Texas oilmen areclassified under the specious Homo petrolensis; former PDRYpolitics is where "shove all too often turned to "putsch" (p. 164).Consider this description of an "oriental dancer" in a seedy port ofAden bar: "She had buck teeth and was wearing an Alcanfoil bikini.Slowly, she cranked herself into action. The performance was not somuch a dance as a series of little spasms, like the dying stages ofan epileptic fit. I could have made a more erotic job of it" (p.137). The irony here, not readily apparent from the author, is thatthis type of imported go-go dancing is as far removed from actualYemeni dancing as anyone can imagine.

The dry sense of humor is sprinkledthroughout the text, especially in the enticing bits of dialogue. Myfavorite is the encounter with an Egyptian school teacher in Kusmah(pp. 123-124):

"As I sipped my tea, the other major annoyance of Kusmah stalked past in his striped pajamas, stately in a pained sort of way. I quickly stared into my beans. After my previous escape from the umdah [village leader] I was passing the school when this man, graduate of a university in the Nile Delta and Kusmah's principal pedagogue, had shot -- if that's the right word for a fat, middle-aged Egyptian -- out of his religious instruction class and dragged me in. I was a choice and appropriate piece of what the theorists of teaching call realia, educational objets trouvés.

Fifty pairs of eyes were on me.

'What is your name, sir?' the Egyptian asked in English.

'Tim.'

'No! "My name is Tim."'

'Oh, yes. Sorry. My name is Tim.'

'And where are you from, Professor Tim?' He rolled his r's like a big car purring.

The interrogation continued in English. The children, of course, understood nothing. Nor were they supposed to: they were a primary class, and English instruction is only given in middle and secondary schools. After establishing my basic credentials of nationality, marital status, religion and so on, he changed into Arabic.

'Come here, Ali.'

A small boy in the front row now jumped up. Teacher's pet, I thought. The Egyptian put one arm around each of us -- with some difficulty because of the vast difference in height -- and stood beaming. The room was in suspense.

'Now. How many eyes has Professor Tim got?'

'Two!' they shouted.

'And how many eyes has Professor Ali got?'

'Two!"

'And how many ears has Professor Tim got?'

'Two!'

'And Professor Ali?'

'TWO!'

'How many ... noses has Professor Tim got?'

'One!' There were a few 'twos' from the back of the class.

The questioning went on until we had covered all mentionable parts of the body. Our respective religions were then re-established. 'So, although Professor Tim is a Christian and Professor Ali is a Muslim, God has created them the same in all respects.'

'But he's taller!'

'Silence! This', said the Egyptian, finally releasing us, 'is proof of the oneness of His creation.'

A bell rang and the pupils charged out. I admired the teacher's exposition of so elemental a truth, and told him so. 'Naturally', he said, 'we must use such simple methods here. The people are so very ... simple.'

I said that, to me, the pupils seemed very bright, that school education to them was something new and that, moreover, it was appreciated far more than in the West. And in Egypt, I nearly added. I could have done - he wasn't listening anyway. But then I didn't pay attention to his tirade against life in Kusmah compared with the pleasures of Tantah. For an Arab returning to the cradle of his race - and getting paid vast sums of money relative to his potential earnings at home - it all seemed ungrateful."

The author is well-versed in almost allaspects of Yemeni culture, geography, history, politics, religion,literature, and everyday jokes. We learn much about famous andnot-so-famous imams, the Portuguese in Socotra, the British era inAden, the revolutions, recent politics, tribal farmers, hyraxhunters, boat captains, and the fine art of Yemeni qatchewing. The author is well-versed in original Arabic texts(which he is capable of translating well) and scores of earliertravelogues and studies on Yemen. Ibn al-Mujawir, a like-mindedtraveler from the 13th century, is quoted on Yemeni women as sayingthey were "pretty of face, fond of chattering, and loose oftrouser-band" (p. 203). The 20th century history al-Wasi'i weighs inon the effect of cigarette smoking, which "causes a worm to grow inthe brain" (p. 96). Yemeni pundits named a model of Landcruiser afterLayla Alawi, the "curvaceous Egyptian actress," whose reaction wasnot one of decorum. Did you know that "civet," as in the much abusedcivet cat, is derived from the Arabic zabad, related to thesense of butter?

This is a book to be appreciated by anyone,but Tim is careful to provide a very useful glossary (256-263) and awell-honed bibliography including essential Arabic texts. Considerhis discussion of the term baghlah as "A large ocean-goingsailing vessel of the Arabian Gulf. Literally 'a she-mule', the wordprobably derives from the Latin vascellum viaSpanish-Portuguese bajel. It entered English as 'buggalow.'"The index is superb and well worth a gambit just to see the range ofitems mentioned in the text. Tim even finds a way to quotephilosopher George Santayana (on the British empire) and CardinalNewman (on the Arabian Nights). Even the maps are exquisite.

By all accounts, at least those reviewedhere, Tim is "the" person to meet and describe for those who writetravel books about Yemen. He is, as author Eric Hansen notes on thejacket, a "true original." Hansen, though, gave him the pseudonym"Martin Plimsole" in his account, but Tim thanks Eric for encouraginghim to write his own book. Kevin Rushby practically makes Tim thestar of the second part of his book; Kevin is also thanked by Tim forcommenting on his book. Tony Horwitz could desperately have used thehelp of someone like Tim to see at least a few millimeters beyond hisbuilt-in monologue-driven bias. But let the last word go to theauthor, who at this very moment continues where he left off: "Andwhen I'm done exploring I close the dictionary, switch off thelights, and look out the window. All around, marked by panels ofcoloured glass, late chewers sit in other belvederes, high above thenoise of the street, hard by heaven like the lords of Ghumdan" (pp.254-5).

For an excerpt byMackintosh-Smith, click here.

A salta restaurant in San‘a. Only served at lunchtime, the frothing, green delight is a San‘a specialty requiring an alchemist rather than a chef. Photo by Kevin Rushby

Lured by idyllic memories of ancient cities, spectacular mountains and, most of all, dreamy afternoons spent chewing the psychoactive leaves of the qat tree, Kevin Rushby set out to travel the old "Qat Road" from the highlands of Ethiopia to Yemen. It was to prove a fascinating and dangerous journey, peopled with an extraordinary array of characters -- criminals, Islamic scholars, an exorcist and the mysterious Cedric, the travelling companion from hell.

If this blurb on the flyleaf fails tocapture your interest, then check out the accolades on the backcover: "rollicking tale of high adventure" (Independent on Sunday- London), "Rushby is a fearless and sociable traveller" (TheTablet -- United Kingdom), "Pure joy from beginning to end"(Wanderlust - United Kingdom). All this is calculated toconvince you to buy the book; at least someone in a magazinesomewhere seemed to like it. I often find that the level of mundanehyperbole on the book cover is often inversely related to the qualityof the book. At times a publisher may think that by simply assertingwhat a good book it is, people will take a chance and buy it. While Icannot really fathom the extent of the literal praise spewed outabove, I can say that this is a travelogue worth reading -- not as anentirely convincing account but simply because it is fun to read andreasonably accurate on Yemeni culture.

I will start, and later I will end, with theauthor. Kevin Rushby, who has recently graduated to "becoming afull-time author and photographer" (which sounds to me more like anin-between position than a viable career), is no stranger to Yemen.He spent a couple of years in the 80s teaching English in Yemen. Notsurprisingly this brought him into contact with Tim Mackintosh-Smith,who figures prominently in the text as a travelling companion. Timchecked over the manuscript; advice was also received from NigelHepper for the botanical samples. This is clearly an informedtravelogue, not of the one-night, can't-stand-the-place varietyexemplified by Tony Horwitz.

The obvious theme of the book, articulatedby the title and followed through faithfully in the narrative, istraveling as a qat chewer. There is much to be learned inRushby's prose about the history and present use of qat; much of thisis taken from Shelagh Weir's Qat in Yemen (1985) and Kennedy'sThe Flower of Paradise (1987). Travel docent that he is,Rushby has a good grasp of many of the earlier travelers along hisroute. Burton (who is said to have "lived much of his life under afigleaf of suspicion", p. 57) and Thesiger haunt his trek on the westside of the Red Sea, while the Yemeni fore-travelers mentioned in thetext include G. Wyman Bury, Sir Henry Middleton, The Niebuhrexpedition, poets Amin Rihani and Rimbaud, and Paul Emil Botta, who"valued qat more highly than opium" (p. 173). Even Alexander theGreat, the fabled Dhu al-Qarnayn, is remembered, though no onesuggests he ever chewed qat.

One can hardly agree more with Rushby'sassessment of the introduction of qat into Yemen: "Quite whenthis strange leaf started on its long journey from innocuous andunnoticed tree to cultural mainstay is a mystery but it seems likelythat religious men first discovered its properties, using it to wardoff sleep during long, night-time meditations, and carrying thisuseful spiritual helpmate with them on missionary journeys" (p. 11).I was pleased to note a reference to the absence of qat in thebasic Rasulid agricultural texts (especially the crop register ofal-Afdal from A.D. 1271 -- which I translated in JESHO); thisargues against widespread cultivtion of the plant before the 14thcentury. However, Rushby is too quick to accept the alleged Yemeniorigin of the Rasulid sultans (p. 165), a medieval political ploy ifever there was one. He records an interesting local spin on theorigin of the town name al-'Udayn (sometimes claimed to be the placewhere both coffee and qat were first grown): "A shopkeeper told methat ... the origin was two mountains, both called Jabal 'Ud, oneither side of the town" (p. 260).

The anecdotal perusal of qat -- "theleaf that neither dulls nor befuddles" (p. 253) is replete inRushby's narrative. On knowing your variety: "But some qat can bepleasant to open-minded first-timers: the thickened tips of stemsyield and snap in your fingers like young carrots or asparagus, thengive the same tactile pleasure as crunching through an iceburglettuce. Others can be pretty astringent, requiring a developedpalate or large accompanying doses of sweet drinks, some have thefizz of a rocket salad or a lingering nuttiness, many varieties willmake water taste sublime and tobacco, too. But the scent nevervaries: when I first detect that delicate, almost herb-likefragrance, then I am in San'a as surely as the smell of a newly cutlawn takes me to an English summer evening. And what is certain isthat to the qat regular, nothing tastes better" (p. 24). On whichcheek to turn: "Most Yemenis store the qat in the left cheek: somesay because that is where your right hand naturally places it, othersthat only women chew on the right" (p. 126).

What do Yemeni chewers do in Saudi Arabia?"In Saudi we take it once a week. It's illegal there, you know. Butpeople still want it -- probably more, they make plenty money withchat there. The police and soldiers are all selling it. For oneafternoon you can spend eighty dollars" (p. 23). As Rushby'sinformants explained, it is better not to get caught with qatin Saudi: "He smuggles qat from Yemen. When he walked across, yousee, he found out some special paths that smugglers use and got toknow some of them. They carry about sixty kilos in a sack on theirbacks and that brings a very good price in Najran. The border is verydangerous though: there are spies everywhere because there is areward for information on qat smugglers. Sometimes they get shot atbut usually that's just the guards trying to get them to drop the qatand run away -- then they can take it and sell it, you see.' 'But thepenalty if he's caught -- it must be tough?' 'Fifteen years and fortylashes'" (p. 25).

One of the likeable parts of Rushby's bookis his empathetic understanding of why qat is so important inYemeni culture. Although admittedly not an anthropologist, herecognizes the importance of the social when he "began to understandthat the pleasure of a qat session was not really about the qat atall, but about the companionship of the sessions in cave-like roomsfloating high above the ancient city" (p. 13). Or consider thisreflection: "There is a point in any session when the world standsback. The outside is forgotten, scarcely seems to exist. At thatmoment there is a feeling of cameraderie and shared experience thatis rarely disrupted by any doubts: they come later, the pettysuspicions and paranoias that creep out of the shadows as the qatrecedes from the mind" (p. 216)

Rushby is very much the postmodern traveller-- cruising through exotic worlds which no longer are isolated fromthe global effluvium of a well mediated world economy. Being in AddisAbaba could be being anywhere -- whether being "consulted by a man ina smart windcheater as to whether he should go on a weightliftingcourse to Morocco" (p. 18) or being offered a girlfriend: "'Veryclean. All girlfriends are university students but we must hurry orthey will go to church,' (p. 18)" In Yafa, at the apartment of aRussian doctor, he notices "a picture of George Bush with his facescratched out, the caption was in Hindi" (p. 203). At times theday-to-day musings seem little different from the dreams inspired byqat: "Eventually I fell into a half-wakeful dream where I wasin a beautiful stone house that was a bizarre amalgum of my mother'shouse in Nottingham and a Yemeni tower house, and a Chinese girl wasfeeding me grass stalks on which tiny hieroglyphs were inscribed" (p.29).

There are times when Rushby's colorful proseborders on the poetic. A good example is his description of the Taizsuq: "Silky irridescent greens and mustard, swirling patterns ofcinnabar and mauve, purple pom-poms with snazzy belts -- the youngmen wear their futas with at least as much panache as any catwalkqueen could ever do. The country girls likewise are gorgeous: shiny,pinch-waisted, puff-sleeved, ball gowns over bright baggy harem pantsgripped at the ankle by hand-made hoops of embroidery. Their scarvesare piled in vast turbans of yellow and white, with orange blossom ormarigolds ticked inside to hang low beside one amber-smooth cheek.Their faces are handsome rather than pretty and the old ladies can bea striking as their grand-daughters; and all this beauty sellingonion tops or mooli radishes in the street market" (p. 163).

The dialogue at times rivals the best MontyPython skits. My favorite is the encounter with the receptionist inthe Continental Hotel in Dire Dowa:

"There was a delapidated lobby where a few idle gents were sitting on a sort of chrome tubing and red leatherette. Then there was a cake display without cake and a Gaggia coffee machine without coffee. On the far side was a doorway and beside that a botched attempt at a reception desk where a thin girl sat motionless, like a lizard waiting for flies. I dumped my bag on the floor. The room had gone silent. I wanted someone to whistle the theme to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, then we could all laugh and the normal hum of conversation begin again. But no one did.

The receptionist waited.

'Hello. Do you speak English?'

She nodded.

'Do you have a room?'

She smiled. 'Hello. How-are-you?'

'Yes, I'm fine, thanks. I was wondering if you had a room?'

'I-am-fine-and-you?'

'Yes, I'm fine. Thank you. I want a room -- room.'

'What-is-your-name?'

'Kevin -- what's yours?'

'What-is-your-name-pee-pee.'

'No -- Kevin. My name is Kevin.'

'No-pee-pee? I want your pee-pee.'

Her hand was held out expectantly but not, as I correctly guessed, for a urine sample. I took my passport out and she began laboriously to copy ny name into a vast ledger. I tried again. 'Er ... can I have a room. Room.' Hand signal of a square, then mime sleep.

She took a key from a drawer and I followed her through the doorway into an open courtyard around which all the rooms were arranged. In the centre was the ruin of a thatched hut and some dishevelled banana and papaya trees. Thirty years before it must have been a pleasant place to stay'" (pp. 81-82).

Humor is a steady companion in thenarrative. Barefoot shoeshine boys offer to polish his canvassneakers (p. 17). Some of the funniest parts are a reflection of aYemeni sense of the frivolous, noting that the Landcruisers of thelate 1980s were called Layla Alawi after the curvaceous Egyptianactress and CD players called 'The one whose bottom you touch,'meaning the owner is so rich you have to kiss his arse" (p. 227). Orthe proverbial wit: "But don't you know they say, 'If your heart isat peace, even a donkey's arsehole can be a mafraj'" (p. 309).

There is a fair amount of practicalinformation on how to comport yourself in Yemen. Take, for example,how to chew qat while wearing a futa, the traditionalskirt worn by men: "This length of cloth is called a futa in Arabicand there is some art to sitting correctly in them. The right knee isdrawn up while the left, also flexed, goes flat to the floor, theright elbow then rests naturally on the right knee, leaving the righthand, the clean hand in Arab custom, ready to rub the dust from theqat leaves. The left hand holds the stems and rests on the bolster.The only problem is that the futa can ride up at the front, flashingone's underwear to all present. To avoid embarrassment then, the rearhem is kept tight behind the knees as you sit, ensuring a politetight veil of decency. The excess cloth at the front is then foldedinto you lap" (p. 22). It is too bad Rushby's book was not availablefor a former British ambassador in Yemen. One day the ambassador,along with the Rector of Sanaa University and several other prominentindividuals came to visit the valley where I lived and we ended up ina big tribal chew for the occasion. Out of politeness, the recentlyarrived ambassador from the land upon which the sun used to not setwas given a white futa to wear. Had he known the etiquette Rushbydescribes, the tribesmen sitting around me might never have noticedhe was wearing pink polka-dot underwear.

Similarly, there is practical advice in thebook on meal etiquette: "Lunch was fatut, a large bowl of breadsoaked in sour milk and oil, a dish of boiled potatoes, a dish ofsohawig, a type of sour relish, and sour milk flavoured with herbs.The men ate together with great lipsmacking pleasure and when thefirst of them sat back replete, I followed suit. This proved to be amistake as Saeed became convinced I disliked their food and, despitemy protestations, threw some money at a boy with instructions tofetch biscuits: 'Foreigners eat biscuits, don't they?' The biscuitsduly arrived and I reluctantly ate the entire packet in front of myaudience. Any attempt to stop was forcefully and loudly discouraged"(p. 176-177). I have tasted those biscuits, in desperation I assureyou, and can only imagine how awful it would be to have to down apacket of this sugar-dusted sawdust.

And there are plenty of delightful details.For example, the essential items in an isolated shop in Jabal Bura':"The shop's stock was meagre but obviously chosen to fit local needs.There was soap powder, Brylcreem, bullets (British or Egyptian),biscuits, cooking oil, straw hats, matches, cigarettes, small plasticbags of cold water (most could not afford the bottled mineral water),Coca-Cola, Chinese batteries, flouncy frocks for small girls andCzech machine guns" (pp. 277-278).

As a returnee to Yemen, Rushby also lamentsthe inevitable changes. Reflecting on the past glory of Mocha: "Atfirst glance Mocha is not encouraging. The name that lends itself insome form or other to millions of chocolates and cups of coffee is anappelation contrôlé of sweets and beverages, a Champagneor Havana -- a guarantee of excellence. It is perhaps better that fewof those contented consumers ever see the unappetising reality of theplace behind the name. Scabbed and patched, bristling with rustedreinforcing rods on which every passing plastic qat-wrapper can catchand flap in the never-ending wind, the modern buildings mustrepresent the nadir in the the sorry tale of concrete. Nothingredeems this pitiful mess, even the mangy dogs hide their eyes intheir arses, curled up in piles of refuse. This ground is litteredwith tin cans, bricks, syringes and millions of plastic bags -- thattwentieth-century tumbleweed, flying past the hungry goats. And youtell yourself that this was once, in its day, what Dallas is to oil"(p. 158).

Rushby had fond memories of theextraordinary beauty of Sanaa's old city, where several projects helppreserve the historical integrity of Yemen's architectural heritage.On his return to the haphazardly developed "modern" parts of Sanaa,Rushby laments: "We coasted down and along Zubayri Street, past newhigh-rise buildings that I did not recognize or remember: ugly blocksof concrete, housing airline offices and new banks, vast twelve-storymonsters with every window topped off with the semicircular traceryof coloured glass, hundreds of them lined up floor by floor,identical red, blue and yellow panes rising like a plague of jellyfish in a polluted sea. There was plenty of time to survey thearchitectural decline of San'a, the traffic was worse than London:streets choked with fumes and giant gleaming Landcruisers among theusual battered taxis, all their drivers leaning out of their windowsbellowing insults and sitting on their horns because the lights werered and they were stationary" (p. 298).

And let us not forget Aden, where "Thebrewery kept on brewing, women worked unveiled, the night clubsrocked. It was cosmopolitan, it was increasingly decrepit and, whenunification came in 1990, it was an anachronism. For four years itsurvived. You could drive from a firmly Islamic capital where fewwomen go unveiled, and that same night be drinking local Sira beerover a plate of chips while watching belly dancers have money crammedin their sparkly brassieres by men in sharp suits. Next morning youcould go to the supermarket, along with everyone else, stock up onbooze and drive north, only to be stopped at a checkpoint if you wereunlucky and have the whole lot smashed on the road by zealous troops"(pp. 189-190).

The author is also a photographer andsixteen black-and-white photos are included with the text.Interestingly enough, at least for this reviewer, is the absence ofthe author in any of these shots; nor does the flyleaf have a mugshot. This brings me to the only real quandary I have about what isclearly a well-written and enjoyable narrative: did the traveler haveany reason to take the journey other than as pretext to write a bookabout it? As I follow the author dodging revolutionary harm inEritrea, befriending an apparent wheeler-dealer smuggler,dhow-hopping the Red Sea and trekking off the beaten path tobaboon-bedazzled Jabal Bura' and later to outer Yafa I fail to findout from him why exactly he was making this trip. To chew -- yes, ofcourse, that is the overt intent that is faithfully displayed fromstart to finish. But I think the author is less addicted to qat thanhe is to the nostalgic idea of a journey for the sake of a journal.Why did Kevin Rushby cross the frontier and take the less traveledroad? To get to the other side and have a story to tell (and no doubtto sell)? If so, does this belittle the worth of the book? No, it iswell worth buying and having on a shelf for a re-read. But it leavesme as an interested reader without a climax, without a sense of whypeople travel and love the process when all that is sane would seemto argue otherwise. Sad to say, I cannot tell from the end in a Sanaachew if Rushby would ever want to return to Yemen or if he seeshimself as still there in some sense. A single phrase in the lastsentence of Rushby's text -- torn tortuously here out of context --keeps ringing in my ears: "the journey had to be done..." (p. 310). Iwish the author would tell me why.

For an excerpt from Rushy,click here.

Tony Horwitz is an ersazt journalist whowishes his readers to know as soon as possible that he is funny,Jewish and a feckless, what-the-hell-bent adventurer in the stillwild and excitedly exotic Middle East. Baghdad Without a Map andother Misadventures in Arabia, a jacket-acclaimed "nationalbestseller" is a book born of luck. The luck that it was writtenright after the Gulf War, when Saddam and other desert-skinned localswere easy targets, and then the good fortune alluded to by a fellowcorrespondent over a pint of Stella -- that "Your average [readAmerican] reader, even your average editor, can't tell if youknow what you're writing about or not" (p. 3). Imagine Woody Allenpretending he can swashbuckle like Richard Burton and swoon theveiled cuties like Valentino. Then picture a guy without a clue, letalone a map, unleashing his predictable monologue on the perpetuallyuninformed American reader. Stop imagining; it's not another AustinPowers movie, you're reading Horwitz.

Before getting to the book itself, thepublisher has chosen to soften up the browser with accolades coveringthree full pages as well as dangling quotes on the front and backcover. I estimate from the sources indicated that a pre-publicationcopy must have been sent to most of the newspapers in the country.Comments, mercifully brief, are attributed to: Boston Globe,Boston Herald, Buffalo News, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune,Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, Kansas City Star, KirkusReviews, Library Journal, Los Angeles Times Book Review, theNew York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, San FranciscoChronicle, Time, USA Today, Village Voice -- not to mention acouple of authors and Playboy. It is somewhat cowardly, in mymind, that the names of the hapless reviewers are generally omitted.Somehow, I feel that reviewers should be held accountable forinordinately loquacious hyperbole heaped on what is one of the mostvapid and uninformative travel briefs I have ever come across.

There are a number of these terse commentsthat I whole-heartedly agree with, though probably not in the spiritintended. "HORWITZ CHAPTERS ON IRAQ ARE NOTHING SHORT OFFRIGHTENING." No argument from me on that one. "HORWITZ HAS ADISCERNING EYE AND A LIGHT TOUCH..." Discerning only to the extentthat blind-as-a-bat can still "discern" shadows moving. Light is anunderstatement. "Mr. Horwitz is to be congratulated for surviving hisadventures..." Fitting; I can think of little else to congratulatehim for. 'Tony Horwitz proves to be ... perceptive and witty in themidst of absurdities." But the absurdities I see here areself-inflicted. "A VERY FUNNY AND FREQUENTLY INSIGHTFUL LOOK AT THEWORLD'S MOST COMBUSTIBLE REGION." I am surprised that this NewYork Times Book Review misspelled "inciteful." "Horwitz presentsthe turbulent Middle East from the vantage point of the 'man in thestreet.'" The street in question is alongside either a Sheraton orHilton, never far from the comforts of home.

The back cover sets the stage. In my mind itis an apt review of the text -- the kind of truth in advertising thatmakes me wonder why any sensible person would want to waste time onthis stock schlock and sick schtick. See what you think:

"With razor-sharp wit and insight, intrepid journalist Tony Horwitz gets beyond solemn newspaper headlines and romantic myths of Arabia to offer startling close-ups of a volatile region few Westerners understand. His quest for hot stories takes him from the tribal wilds of Yemen to the shell-pocked shores of Lebanon; from the malarial sands of the Sudan to the eerie souks of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a land so secretive that even street maps and weather reports are banned. At an oasis in the Empty quarter, a veiled woman offers tea and a mysterious declaration of love. In Cairo, "politeness police" patrol seedy nightclubs to ensure that belly dancers don't show any belly. And at the Ayatollah's funeral in Tehran a mourner chants, "Death to America," then confesses to the author his secret dream -- to visit Disneyland. Careening through thirteen Muslim countries and Israel, Horwitz travels light, packing a keen eye, a wicked sense of humor and chutzpah in almost suicidal measure. This wild and comic tale of Middle East misadventure reveals a fascinating world in which the ancient and the modern collide."

Indeed, this book is on a collision course,but not with any semblance of reality.

At the start of his narrative Horwitzconfesses what drove him to ply his journalistic trade to the MiddleEast. He followed his wife, Geraldine Brooks, a reporter who had beenposted to Cairo. Before that it was "frostbitten Cleveland" andAustralia, so why not string along on his first exposure to themysterious "Third World." The first chapter -- as uninformative as agrade schooler's postcard -- ends with the revelation "that Cairo wasa city I could never come to love" (p. 12). This must be an exampleof the refreshing honesty the rave reviewers see in the book. Inaddition to Cairo, the intrepid still-a-nobody manages to visitYemen, Baghdad, the Emirates, Jordan, Libya, Sudan, Beirut andTehran. Staying in Sheratons and haggling with the locals no doubthoned his incredible "insight." He even memorized improbabledialogues with lots of colorful foils. This is the context for hisone-liners and cheap jokes; a travel tale minus even an inkling ofthe reality he so blithely avoided. Nor does it appear he succombedto malaria or even the bubonic plague.

My main concern is with the two chaptersHorwitz contributes on Yemen. I find it interesting that the bookfrontispiece quotes Carsten Niebuhr, a decidedly more discerningvisitor to Yemen over two centuries ago. Niebuhr advised: "Young menwho like their comforts, and a dainty table, or who wish to passtheir time pleasantly in the company of women, must not go toArabia." Horwitz seems to take this as a dare, especially given theflippant prologue, where a veiled Arab woman offers him tea and saysin hesitant English, "I love you." "Perhaps the women dreamed ofstrangers in the night [I believe this is Sinatra's line] --though probably not blond men in khakis and sneakers, sputtering badArabic" (p. 2), muses the travel writer. Then just one page over isthe taxi driver in Tehran that grabs his knee and shouts: "America!Donkey! Torch!" James Bond is on his way to the deserts of Araby; heshould have heeded Niebuhr's advice. Although, I see little evidencethat he read or understood much of the Danish expedition'saccount.

Of Horwitz's 285 pages of travel fantasy,only about 35 deal directly [to the extent any of Horwitz's proseis directed towards anything but his own fancy] with Yemen. Thefirst chapter is subtitled "Confessions of a Qat-Eater," but from thedescription given I think that whatever drug the author partook of,it was certainly not Catha edulis. For what is apparently thefirst or second chew, Horwitz recounts: "Then the qat shudderedthrough me again: whistling up my spine, ruffling the hair on theback of my neck and whooshing out both ears" (p. 14). Later, hecomplains that it felt like someone "had emptied an ashtray down mythroat" (p. 29). Perhaps he did actually eat the qat -- anentire shrub he avers. He is right to note that "Qat explained a lotabout Yemen" (p. 14), but his farcical and totally uninformativecutisms explain a lot about how little he knew about Yemen.

The author that the Chicago Tribuneclaims has an "incisive insider's description" complains up frontthat "Nothing about the place made sense" (p. 14). Such a conclusionis clear from his feeble story telling, but somehow it is the placethat gets blamed for the blind fool incapable of seeing it. Horwitz,by his own vain admission, snuck into Yemen under the hem of hiswife's legitimate journalist's invitation to cover the opening of theoil pipeline. I happened to be in Sanaa at the time and received acall from the Cultural Attache of the US Embassy to see if JeffMeissner, Resident Director of AIYS, and I could meet with therecently arrived Geraldine and Tony. We did -- over dinner at theSheraton. My memory of the meeting is wondering how such an idiotcould have been let into the country. There were two things thatHorwitz wanted to see in the worst way -- a tribal suq whereyou could buy bazookas or tanks and a Yemenite Jewish village. Couldwe take him? Not too likely...

The praise heaped on Baghdad without aMap would seem to imply that the text contains a rich tapestry ofcolor and detail on the region. Let us consider, for example, howHorwitz characterizes the Yemenis he meets. They flash a"green-toothed grin" (p. 13), one looked "like an old squirrel" (p.13), another was "an elfish man in an overcoat and pajamas" (p. 16)and these "dagger-toting tribesmen" from the waist up "resembledBowery bums, clad in cast-off shirts and cheap Western style sportsjackets" (p. 16). What an ethnographer's eye for authentic culture!Or consider how he describes the typical jambiyya: "A gaudy curvedscabbard stretched from the belly button to the middle thigh of eachman, with a dagger handle poking out the top" (p.16). I am not surewhat a gaudy scabbard would look like.

Have I mentioned the author's wit yet?Several of the newspaper raves refer to his work as "witty"[apparently leaving the "nit" off for the sake of space]. Howabout identifying the northern town of Sa'da as Dodge City "a lawlessplace where tribal spats sent lead singing through the streets" (p.38)? Or his qat-eater's half a hemistich: "The fog crept in onlittle qat feet..." (p. 14)? Horwitz is a virtual pun machine,especially for the chapter titles: Cairo Nights is dubbed DancingSheik to Sheik [not a belly laugh, but still not bad]; ThePersian Gulf flows into the Strait of Hoummos [Okay, so he atesome of the local food.]; Southern Sudan is Six Dinka Deep. Attimes the wit is fresh, but most of the time the witticisms are thesole purpose for the narrative. Clever words are supposed to make upfor really having nothing of substance to say. Perhaps Tony sawRoad to Morocco a few too many times.

What can you learn about Yemen from thisnarrative? That slavery endured until the 1960s (p. 19); illiteracyis at 90 percent (p. 19); the locals are "either too proud or toostoned to even look a visiting Westerner in the eye" (p. 21); thievesget their hands lopped off in Sanaa's central square (p. 24); Yemenisthink Shakespeare (the old Shaykh Zubayr joke) came from Yemen (p.26); one shaykh commands a private army of 30,000 while the entirearmed forces of Yemen only total 37,000 (p. 30); the author found theonly rental car in Yemen (p. 31); he could buy a grenade for only $20(p. 37); Yemen "is home to thirty-four types of stomach parasite" (p.40); and more. You may be surprised to learn that Yemen held behindseveral thousand Jews in the 1950s "as a bargaining chip with thefledging Jewish state" (p. 35). What, pray God, would the Imam havebeen bargaining for? Ben Gurien's autograph?

Tony Horwitz found his Yemenite Jews,although it was clearly disappointing that "these dark-skinned,Arabic-speaking, qat-chewing cobblers in grubby shifts and sandalswere indistinguishable from their Muslim neighbors" (p. 34). He wasexpecting a folk dance troupe, perhaps? Considerable effort was madeto convince the locals that he was Jewish as well -- the proof lyingin his ability to read Hebrew. Of course, one of his mainjournalistic inquiries was if they wanted to go to Israel. But, ofcourse, he knew intuitively that "The government forbade it" (p. 35).The idea that any Yemenite would willingly choose to stay and beYemeni never crossed his mind. What did, however, was bargaining downa Jewish silversmith to buy a jambiyya and a few silverthalers. And, concludes the author as he marched out of the market,"I thought it likely that I was the first armed Jew to parade throughthe streets of Saada" (p. 48). Is Mel Brooks still around to directthis journalist-in-the-Third-World "High Noon"?

In his hot pursuit of any kind of story thatwould advance his stringer status, Horwitz admits: "But so little hadbeen written about Yemen that I figured it was worth gambling fivehundred dollars or so to see what I could come up with. As I lookedagain at the qat-eater in the café, eyes glazed, dagger slungin his lap, the outline of a feature article suggested itself. Weedand weapons, mellowness and menace, the yin and yang of Yemenisociety. A Traveller's Guide to Arms and Qat. Why not?" (p. 19). No,Tony, the question is "why?" Had I known when I met you that you hadonly invested $500 in your venture, I would have taken up acollection then and there to send you back to Cairo or the overseasSheraton of your choice. And for God's sake, next time invest in amap or at least read National Geographic before you go.

Eric Hansen is a writer who seems to havehad better luck on foot than in a sailboat. A trek across Borneoresulted in an acclaimed first travel book on Borneo. Along the way,or perhaps to find his way, in the decade of the 70s Hansen pursued aform of vagaband journalism -- working for Mother Theresa inCalcutta, smuggling Chinese erasers from Tibet to North India,watching an Italian sailor stabbed to death with a broken beer bottlein Tahiti, and living with the sultan's drummer in the Maldives wherea "pretty village girl" taught him the local language by day andreturned after dark. These being the highlights, you can imagine thetonnage of notes that bulged out of his notebooks.

Ah, the notebooks. Herein lies a tale, andin an indirect way, the incentive for a popular travel book on Yemen.On the night of February 2, 1978 (just about a month before I firstarrived in Yemen to do my ethnographic fieldwork) the sailboat Hansenand his bag of notebooks was sailing on from the Maldives to Athenssank in the Red Sea and five people were washed ashore on a desertedisland about twenty miles off the coast of Yemen. Before beingrescued, after two weeks no less, Hansen had the foresight to buryhis "travel journals from years of wandering" (p. xi). It was notuntil a decade later and, as the author never fails to stress, muchfrustration and personal distress that Gilligan returns to thedeserted island to lay claim to the trove of travel notes. For thosewho are interested, as the author seems to think we all should be,the notebooks survive. In 1990, at the time of writing the book, theywere wrapped in a faded purple Dacron bag on a bookshelf in aManhatten apartment overlooking Central Park. "The pages are brittleand the writing faded," sighs Hansen. But thanks to his intrepidreturn to retrieve them, we are apparently all the richer -- thoughthe notebooks contain nothing Yemeni save for a few grains ofsand.

Hansen's introductory words in the firstchapter summarize his appreciation for Yemen quite explicitly, so Iwill let you judge for yourself: "I had never considered visitingNorth Yemen. I arrived quite by accident while sailing with fourothers from the Maldives to Athens by way of the Red Sea. The littleI had heard about Yemen convinced me that it was a place I didn'twant to visit, although the rumors were tempting enough. There werestories that the entire male population was hopelessly addicted to anarcotic leaf called qat, that the men wore skirts, and that duringpublic circumcisions the foreskin was thrown in the crowd, wherepeople rolled on it as a sign of joy. If this was how friends andfamily members fared, I wondered, what would happen to people theYemenis didn't like? Intertribal warfare had been going on for 1500years, and child brides were sold for twenty times the average yearlyincome. Alcohol was prohibited, and before having intercoursehusbands were known to mutter 'Bismillah' (In the name of God). Itdidn't sound like my kind of place" (p. 1). You know what, Eric,you're right. It's not your kind of place and it's not likely thatanything you write about it will convince anyone otherwise. Go backto the Maldives and wait for the sun to set and brush up on the locallanguage.

After a night of bad storms aboard a slowlysinking ship, Hansen caught his first glimpse of Yemen: "No humanfigures were visible, no vegetation, only flat, featureless land" (p.12). Three chapters are required to set up what he refers to as "legrand piquenique" and the rescue from two weeks of maroon blues (theauthor notes he was the only single person among two couples) by anEritrean dhow. Having arrived at a military outpost on KamaranIsland, another ten days were spent in "captivity" during which he"chewed leaves [of qat], ate goat, and drank whiskey. Allthings considered, it was a very civilized arrangement" (p. 48).After leaving the island for the mainland, Hansen finds much tocomplain about. Hodeidah was too hot; an American Peace Corpsvolunteer who befriended him lived "in a state of squalor that anEritrean goat smuggler would have found intolerable" (p. 50); Yemenimen in restaurants squatted on tables -- with their shoes on (p. 53);and to top it all off, there was no welcome committee at the U.S.embassy. It was, as the author notes, quite nice that the manager ofYemenia basically gave him a free ticket to Cairo, expecting nothingin return except a similar act of random kindness in the future.Indeed, the allure of Sanaa had seduced him without a struggle (p.56): great idea for a mass-market book.

Hansen returned to Yemen ten years later --a man with a very personal mission. The buried treasure of his oldnotebooks had to be found. The fact that these notebooks -- uselessto anyone except Hansen -- were in a military zone seemed a rathertrivial detail to the returnee. Hansen would have us believe thatmost of the Yemenis involved in his escapade were a bunch of crooks,happy to loot the goods from the shipwreck but unsympathetic to theimportance of his quest. Hansen's own attempts to return to theisland of his dreams failed. Much of his text is a venting offrustration that he could not do what he wanted to do. When hereturned to the states, apparently in failure, he went to anexhibition on Yemeni architecture. There he met, by accident, theYemeni ambassador, Mohsen Alaini, who set up the contacts for Hansento successfully return and dig up his long-sought notebooks. Yet thisdenouement gets short schrift at the end of the narrative, so thatthe reader comes away thinking "Oh, he eventually did get those damnnotebooks" but by the grace of God.

A good travel story -- judged by why peoplelike to read it rather than how accurate it attempts to be -- needs acertain amount of mystery. Itineraries are intrinsically boringwithout unexpected events and obstacles to overcome. The travelerneeds to come off as either hero or anti-hero, even if the trip wasunhappily uneventful. Hansen wastes no chance in stressing theexoticism and mystery of Yemen. When trying to figure out how the manwho had helped him leave Yemen also knew he was returning (andprovided a companion to take him around), he muses: "There is no suchthing as knowing 'the real story' in Yemen. There are far too manyversions from which to choose. Motivations vary; mystery remains aconstant" (p. 63). Which basically means since the author could notfigure out what was happening, the problem had to be with Yemen. Whatwas clearly enjoyable was "relishing the bizarre sights" (p. 64),eating roasted locusts, or commenting on soldiers withrocket-propelled grenade launchers (p. 72).

An underlying theme in Hansen's narrative ishis exasperation at why he couldn't just go back to the island anddig up his dacron bag of notebooks. He certainly did not think heneeded a tasrih to travel around Yemen, although Yemenisoldiers in the Tihama felt otherwise (p. 72). Why would the Yemenisthink he might be a spy just because he had been shipwrecked in ahighly sensitive military zone? And his lament at not being able tosample the historical wonders of Zabid due to the need to help hisdriver get a sheep in the car is disengenuous to a fault (p. 75). Whyall this conspiracy just to keep him from such a reasonable reunionwith the fragmented memories of two barely accounted for decades?

Hansen's account is peopled or at leastsomewhat spirited with a number of expats, which are at timesprovided with pseudonyms but are not hard to decipher for old Yemenhands. Mr. Martin Plimsole is none other than Tim Mackintosh-Smith,yet another incestuous literary link in the travelogues beingreviewed here. As is the case with Rushby, Tim becomes a maincharacter, clearly the kind of character one would have to invent ifhe did not already so conveniently exist. It appears that even KevinRushby makes an appearance in Hansen's narrative -- on the ubiquitous(at least for a travel writer on Yemen) hike down a rugged mountaintrail.

Like other superficial travel writers withless than a glancing knowledge of accounts by individuals whoactually knew something about Yemen, Hansen often shows hisignorance. Perhaps an apartment in Manhatten is not the ideal placeto pen an authoritative chronicle on a country he had not originallyintended to visit. The pandanus palm is pronounced kadhi inArabic; no one would say khadi (p. 74). To assert that "In Yemen itis the custom for a man to buy his wife" (p. 79) may peak the averagedull reader's interest, but it is a cheap shot. And the story (p. 83)of a man who worked fifteen years in Saudi to afford the love of hislife is more fitting for the biblical story of Jacob and Laban thanthe reality of immigrant agendas in Yemen. Of all the stories onecould relate about Yemeni families, this alleged case of a madman whoriddled his inlaws with bullets and then shot his own wife deadbefore fleeing back to Saudi is absurd. Equally silly is Hansen'sconclusion that in the typical Yemeni village setting such a tragedyseemed inevitable (p. 86). Visit a few villages before you write suchpuff, Eric.

While Hansen does work in relevantinformation on Yemen he has gleaned from other sources, there islittle evidence of his own keen eye apart from the standard thingsany tourist could see from a car seat. One would think that thesubject of qat would deserve at least a whole notebook. YetHansen's (p. 83) prose goes little beyond: "Before long the qat beganto take effect, and we settled in for the long drive back to San'a"(p. 83) and he "felt a sense of well-being radiating from[his] chest" (p. 94). His touristic venture in buying whatturned out to be "truck driver's qat" (p. 93) sets up his derivativedescription of a qat chew in Sanaa. But this is more an excusefor telling a bawdy story than a portrayal of the pre-eminent Yemenisocial event for the uninformed reader.

Ultimately the persona Hansen creates forhimself as the intrepid traveler is that of a guy you meet drinkingbeers in a pub and telling his standard stock of funny stories. Thefirst time around they can be funny. Sexual inuendo, which is nothard to come by just about anywhere you might be allowed to travel,is rife in the text. We learn that "sinanyenee" is not just "littletooth" but is used as "a child's term for penis" (p. 94) and thatSaudis think of Yemeni honey as an aphrodisiac (p. 134). Then thereis the expat consultant (watching the traffic flow in and out ofpublic toilets for UNESCO and USAID) named Nick. When asked who hewas, the honest retort of "Nick" brought guffaws or counter curses,since "neek" means "fuck" in Arabic (p. 108). I knew someone in Yemenwith a similar problem, only his name was Paul; since there is no "p"in Arabic, this became "baul", which is "piss." What's in a name? Youneed not ask.

Of special interest to me as reviewer isHansen's devastating denigration of the hostel run by AIYS and itsresident director at the time. Having visited here about the sametime as Hansen, and knowing the resident director as a friend andcolleague for a very long time, it is obvious how Hansen exaggeratesand at times makes up out of whole cloth his scenario. Having leftthe beer-drinking oil workers playing tug-of-war with the ladies atthe American Embassy July 4 celebration, he arrives at AIYS and isimmediately struck (in a figurative sense, of course) by "plasticbags of human shit splattered against the metal front gate of theinstitute" (p. 122). How Hansen discovered the species responsiblefor depositing the shit in the first place is not recorded, butassuming it was not the work of a terrorist group was a sound guesson his part.

The director, who does not even warrant apseudonym in Hansen's text, is disliked by Hansen from the start.Somehow it is the director's fault that Hansen's letter had notarrived earlier. Further, Hansen is amused that he is asked if he isan AIYS member or not (members receive discounts). Realizing withinminutes that he had "made a mistake," but not wanting to waste theafternoon looking for a more suitable place, Hansen precedes to sayjust about everything negative he can muster. He is offended by theposted notices, even while sitting on the toilet. Some of these, as Iremember well, were left over (on purpose as a joke) from a previousresident director's wife who was fastidious to a fault. But most wererather practical -- toilets do overflow if too much paper is flusheddown and most guests were not cognizant of this simple but unpleasantfact. Hansen felt he had a divine right to rent the institute'svehicles (which had been virtually ruined on several occasions andwere not -- as Hansen asserts -- purchased for anyone to rent). Whyanyone might object to his using them to try and go illegally to amilitary zone is beside the point, it seems. The kitchen "smelled ofcockroaches, dust, and stale popcorn" (p. 125), a facet of lifeobviously not encountered in his Central Park overlook apartment. Iam not sure what cockroaches smell like, whether in Yemen orelsewhere. In my experience, the cleanliness of the AIYS kitchen --shared space by the occupants at the time -- varied according to thegood manners of those staying. No, Eric, AIYS did not have roomservice and a maid.

The director in question is Jeff Meissner,whose main crime it would seem is that he was not eager to helpHansen get to a restricted island in a sensitive military zone.Hansen's quip that Jeff "lived in mortal fear of being misquoted byvisiting journalists or writers" is a bit stretched. How manyjournalists and writers does Hansen think cruised through? Indeed,Jeff had been misquoted on more than one occasion and Hansen'sultimate book suggests that such an alleged fear would not have beenunfounded. Like many in-and-out-and-not-to-return journalists lookingfor sensational stories, Hansen does not appreciate the fact thatthose of us who live in Yemen or come back often have little desireto sacrifice our work climate and reputation to the ethical murkinessof journalists bashing Yemen.

What is particularly disturbing to me isHansen's fictionalized character assassination of Jeff as a "motherhen, checking to make sure no one was using his laundry soap orstealing Lipton tea bags from his cupboard" (p. 125) and unwilling tohelp anyone. Any of the myriad researchers and tourists who camethrough Sanaa during Jeff's term would be rather surprised to hearsuch trumped up and silly claims. We are even told that "On twooccasions I [Hansen] witnessed European researchers leavingthe grounds -- one in tears, the other in a rage -- because they hadbeen turned away from the library, which was supposed to be open tothe public." (p. 125). Hansen seems to have confused AIYS with hislocal public library. The AIYS library was indeed open forresearchers at regular, but limited, hours. At the time there was nolibrarian and no way to leave the library open without the constantdisappearance of books and articles (even from those staying there!).At any rate, it is not clear Hansen read that much about Yemen, eventhough his Manhatten apartment was close to the magnificentcollection in the NYC Research library at 42nd street.

Hansen is a good writer -- a professionalwriter. His prose is not laborious and he often has a good feel forthe story in an encounter. The people he meets come across asinteresting and entertaining, but always somewhat caricatured. Thefaults and oddities frame them, not the mundane reality most peoplelive on a daily basis. But I feel at times that Hansen is morecomfortable detailing the lives of fellow expats than trying tointeract on equal terms with the people in the country he isvisiting. Whether American oilmen, French priests, or English schoolteachers, it is the superficiality of the foreigner surviving anexotic and illogical Yemen that surfaces -- no doubt a perfect foilfor a book predicated on a search to retrieve lost notebooks from adeserted island. In the end I just wish he had traveled on a betterboat and never had the obvious misfortune of being in Yemen.

As an anthropologist, I often cringe at theill-informed and ego-inflated journalistic travel books thatperennially digest the Middle East. These are usually books that donot get reviewed in professional journals, yet routinely outsell theones that do. They periodically get picked up in mass-marketbookstores or purchased, innocently, for public libraries. But I amnot sure whether the fault lies more with the fools who get thesetravesties published or with those of us who tend to write suchacademic texts that the average person -- even the averageintelligent reader -- will never find them; some might despair tryingto plow through the footnotes and stilted jargon our narrowdisciplines baggage us with.

A key issue here is what does it mean to bethere. Most of us would pay little attention to a derivative traveladventure by someone piecing together other people's experiences intoan absentee personal experience. So we are prone to trust those whocan claim to have been there, perhaps far more than we should. And weare often easy dupes for the idea that if a book gets published itmust have something of value. While simply being there is never goingto be a guarantee of properly understanding where you have been, acertain level of exposure is needed to allow credibility. Horwitz'blitzkrieg journalism does little to inspire confidence in what hesays. The fact that he is up front about being a misadventurist doesnot excuse the misinformative text. Okay, so it is written as a joke;does this mean that most readers will really receive it only as ajoke? Stereotypes are as easily perpetuated through humor as by therhetoric of self-righteous dogma.

My discipline of anthropology has beenracked for over two decades with a reflexivist critique ofethnographic writing. Just "being there," some of my colleagues havesaid, does not give one ethnographic authority; indeed "being there"is at times politicized into "not having a right to be there." But itis important to remember that the idea of ethnographic fieldwork inanthropology is meant as a corrective to armchair generalization. Ithappens that there are bad ethnographers as there are badjournalists; there are some people who just are not there even whenthey are there. I find that reading travel accounts by those who arepassing through "there" offers a healthy context in which to viewwhat we do as anthropologists trying to massage a plethora ofexperience into some kind of documentation. In a sense my having beenthere in Yemen for a good length of time makes me appreciate howdifficult it is to accurately reflect what is going on. I can no moreimagine a traveler cutting to the core on a brief jaunt through a"there" than I can someone mastering a foreign language in a week ortwo of unguided effort.

I am not of the opinion that there are toomany travel books on Yemen, because after all we are dealing withindividual perceptions. Travel experience has an enduring appeal ifthe account is halfway decent. The batch reviewed here compels me tooffer a few suggestions for those who might give it a try; I amreferring to those of us who have been there long enough to actuallygive it a serious try. This is not a how-to but rather a how-not-to.Let's learn from the bad travel books so as to encourage betterwriting of all kinds on Yemen.

First, have a reason to write other than getting a book published. The best travel accounts spill out of people who really have something worth sharing. This is very clear in Tim Mackintosh-Smith's account, hopefully only the first of several from this witty and knowledgable "original." Contrast this to Horwitz hapless and mapless comedy monologue.

Second, be there long enough to be reasonably accurate. When you don't know the language, or operate at a pre-K level with the kind of locals who love to be around foreigners, or get the bulk of your information from the hotel clerks, there's a problem. Deal with it; don't deal it at your reader. Some extended exposure is needed; a serious assessment of the inevitable culture shock is very useful. Otherwise the same old banalities and hackneyed caricatures clutter the text. It may fool someone who doesn't know anything about Yemen, but it is unsatisfying to those who do. I must really question the motive of any author who fails to convince the people who are best able to judge what is being written. These are Yemenis themselves, not just the best-intentioned outsiders like me.

Third, don't let your own ego be the whole point of your narrative. To a certain extent all travel accounts are exaggerated and not to be trusted. It's hard to avoid hyped up hubris that presents the writer in the most favorable light. At least be honest and say this is really a book about me and I just happened to be there for local color. Eric Hansen is very much in the driver's seat as he motors over Mohammed. The whole purpose of his travel account is to highlight his heroic quest and he spends an inordinate amount of wordage, usually quite well crafted, trying to convince us why something so mundane and idiosyncratic is worth a book.

Fourth, plan to go back to Yemen and face the music of jeers or cheers from the people you write about. This goes to the core of the reflexivist debate in anthropology. Is what "you" say about "them" part of a dialogue or one-sided not expecting or wanting a response? Writing about people who have little chance of correcting what you say creates an ethical problem. Can you be patronizing and argue that this is how they would see it, were they able to write the way you do or had your education and training? Can you throw all responsible caution to the wind and assume it does not matter what you say as long as it sells? Is freedom of speech only for you?

For some time I have been toying with theidea of writing some kind of travel-like book on Yemen, perhaps evena novel to remove all pretense that I as author am an objectiveknow-it-all. At first I was motivated by the paucity of recent,decent travel books. After reading Tim's book and Kevin's book, I amnow more motivated by the potential of how unique experiences can beshared in a way that someone else may enjoy reading. And I even lookforward, should I take that non-academic plunge, to comments andcriticism, especially from the very people I would be writing about.But these books are beginnings, not ends. Read the two I recommend,by all means, and avoid the other two. But don't stop there. Why notgo and be there. Experiencing Yemen is better than any narrative, nomatter how well written, can provide. Be there, by all means, but bethere yourself.

 

Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land.

pp. 91-92

Wadi Dahr is one of the world's surprises. Ifirst saw it at 9:47 a.m. on a Thursday late in 1982. We slewed offthe road by a petrol station and laboured up a slope ofdisintegrating red rock. The bonnet of the car flapped open and shut,as if gulping for air. I had no idea where we were heading. Then myhost hit the brakes and we slid to a stop in a cloud of red dust. Thedust, settling, revealed a view: picture several square miles ofintensive cultivation, shockingly green, transposed to a setting oftawny rock, then dropped far below the surface of theearth.

Over a thousand years ago, a visitor lookeddown on Wadi Dahr and exclaimed, 'I have travelled the length ofEgypt, Iraq and Syria, but never have I seen the like of this.'Earlier this century, the son of Imam Yahya had a small cave herefitted with glazed doors so they could chew qat surveying the scene.Today, people do the same, but in parked cars on the cliff edge.Yemenis are connoisseurs of landscape and colour (a San'ani friendonce dismissed the Royal County of Berkshire -- 'There's too muchgreen'); here, the distance to the valley floor enables the eye totake in everything at once, as in a diorama. The prospect is neitherof this world nor the next, but of another Eden.

Down in the valley we were magicked into asecret world. Labyrinthine paths twisted between walled vineyards,qat plantations and orchards of pomegranate, peach and apricotglimpsed through gates made of twigs. Some of the entrances were sosmall that I expected to see a bottle of pills labelled, likeAlice's, 'Eat Me'. Parts of this enormous hortus conclusus remaininvisible behind high walls and handleless doors, like that in HolmanHunt's Light of the World.

In this weird sunken landscape, it came asno surprise to catch a complete palace in the act of a verticaltake-off. Dar al-Hajar, the Palace of the Rock, stands on top of ahuge pillar of stone that has popped up out of the valley floor likea jack-in-the-box. The building itself is not a folly but a standard,if rather grand, San'ani mansion constructed in the 1920s by ImamYahya, the abode of a comfort-loving stylite. The folly is allnature's for putting the rock pillar there in the firstplace.

Strange happening might be expected in sucha place as Wadi Dahr, and one in particular is still remembered byits older inhabitants. About fifty years ago, a man bought a housenear the little suq to the west of Dar al-Hajar. He moved in butfound the place haunted by a poltergeist which would bang about thehouse and upset the pots. Having tried all the usual means, the manappealed to his neighbour Imam Yahya, who wrote to the spiritcommanding it to be gone. Even this attempt failed. In desperation,the man proposed to the poltergeist thet he would no longer try toexorcise it provided they could live together in peace. Thecohabitation was successful, and for some years the spirit would runerrands, finding lost possessions and going to market. In recentyears it has been less active. A neighbour commented that 'Even thejinn grow old.'

The Yemeni poltergeist, idar al-dar, appearsin one account as 'a beast of Yemen which copulates with humans. Itssemen consists of maggots.' An old house I once lived in wasinhabited by an idar, but it did nothing more disturbing than smokinga water pipe outside my bedroom door every night, at around one inthe morning. Others are known to take snuff.

 

Kevin Rushby

Eating the Flowers of Paradise: One Man's Journey through Ethiopia and Yemen

pp. 1-2

My first ever contact with the drug had beenin 1982, a brief and unsatisfying experience significant only in thelight of later events. I was in Juba, the main settlement of southernSudan and a place where I hoped to hitch a ride to Uganda. Going outto the market, I came across a United Nations lorry with a Somalidriver who smiled dreamily at me from the cab and revealed in thecorner of his mouth, flashing like a broken traffic light, a quid ofbrilliant green leaves.

'We call it chat,' he said, using the Somaliname. 'And with it I can drive right across Uganda withoutstopping.'

That seemed like a very good idea, as Ugandawas at war with itself. 'But we cannot take passengers -- UN rules.'A few shiny green leaves were passed down to me with that same dreamysmile. And so it was that my introduction to the drug came as a giftfrom the United Nations, but on this occasion they were no more thanunwanted salad which I found bitter and spat out as soon aspoliteness allowed. Like most first-timers I felt nothing and assumedthat it did nothing, that qat was a quack medicine for the gullible.And if my head was full of romantic notions about travel andadventure, it did not include taking leaves from lorrydrivers.

Five years later, seated on cushions, qatleaves in my lap, watching the shadows of Arabian night fill thedusty alleyways below the window of a stone tower house, I had learntdifferently and become as much a qat-lover as the Somali driver.Yemen held me as Lotos-land held Ulysses' crew. I passed the hourslistening to the gentle lubalub of the hookah and whisperedconversations about dead poets and fine deeds. In San'a, qat governs.Each day at three, climbing the steps to a smoky room with a bundleunder the arm; then closing the door to the outside world, choosingthe leaves, gently crushing them with the teeth and waiting for thedrug to take effect. No rush, just a silky transition, scarcelynoticed, and then the room casts loose its moorings. 'Capturingmoments of eternity', someone once called the subtle tinkering withtime that qat effects.

After two years I no longer knew if life wasgood because of Yemen or because of qat. I left for Malaysia and wentinto mourning for the life I had lost, but the question remainedunanswered. I remember taking a holiday on Tioman Island offMalaysia's east coast, as idyllic a paradise as any travel agent evercame up with, and I spent my days trying to telephone someone inYemen who thought he had a job for me.

There had been an expatriate in Yemen whoalways brought up his time in Pakistan, 'When we were in Islamabad...', 'It's funny you should say that because when we were in ...','Did I ever tell you about the North-West Frontier ...' Thosewonderful pearl strings of memory that no one else cared to see, lostbehind a stony wall of other people's indiffference, for two decadesin his case. Some unkind soul even said to him: 'If it was so good,why did you leave?', and he added, quietly, 'Or why not goback?'

I watched him suffer without sympathy until,in a Kuala Lampur staffroom, I found myself saying, again and again,like a reformed drinker whose conversation is bottles and booze:'When I was in Yemen ...' But almost as often it was, 'There's thisleaf they have in Yemen it's called qat ...' And I knew all along,despite the passing years and even one false dawn when my return wasabruptly cut short by Yemen's civil war, I knew that I would have toreturn and see if those pearl strings were anything more than pilesof dusty discarded leaves and memories polished by time -- theLotos-land would have to be revisited, the paradiseregained.