Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia [Paperback]

Tony Horwitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1992

This wild and comic tale of Middle East misadventure is "a very funny and frequently insightful look at the world's most combustible region. Fearlessness is a valuable quality in a travel writer, and Mr. Horwitz . . . seems as intrepid as they come".--The New York Times Book Review.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Horwitz has the touch, the ability to astutely capture the ludicrous essence of an experience while filling in all the pertinent socio-historic details. He chews qat with the Yemenis, plays soccer with the Sudanese Dinka refugees and listens to an endless refrain of "You are the perfume of Iraq, oh Saddam" in Baghdad. Horwitz' eye and wit are equally sharp, and his book is an exceptionally good read. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Horwitz ( One for the Road , Random, 1988), now a Wall Street Journal reporter, covered the Middle East in the late 1980s and returned to Baghdad in August 1990 following the invasion of Kuwait. With a sense of humor and eye for detail, he presents the turbulent Middle East from the vantage point of the "man in the street," whom we meet in traditional Yemeni villages, sophisticated Cairo, regimented Libya, disintegrating Sudan, a luxury hotel in the United Arab Emirates, and a seedy Baghdad nightclub. Among other adventures, the author attends the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran. A Jewish American, he shows empathy for Arabs in the Middle East. The Kuwait crisis will focus attention on the two chapters on Iraq. In comparison with Christopher Dickey's Ex pats ( LJ 6/15/90) and Charles Glass's Tribes with Flags ( LJ 4/1/90), Horwitz's book better captures the point of view of the average person and covers more territory, omitting only Syria from his itinerary. A valuable and timely acquisition for public libraries.
- James Rhodes, Luther Coll . , Decorah, Ia.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Plume (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452267455
• ISBN-13: 978-0452267459
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #99,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #48 in Books > Travel > Middle East
  • #87 in Books > Travel > Reference & Tips > Reference

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars funny/frightening, December 5, 2001

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia (Paperback)

Some men follow their dreams, some their instincts, some the beat of a private drummer. I had a habit of following my wife.
-Tony Horwitz, Baghdad Without a Map

Tony Horwitz has a pretty good shtick going; he follows his journalist wife (Geraldine Brooks) from assignment to assignment, across
the globe, and then wangles freelance assignments in the new locale. In the meantime, he's produced three excellent books set in these
widely varied ports of call : One for the Road relates his adventures hitchhiking through the Australian Outback; Confederates in the
Attic is a very amusing account of Civil War reenactors in the American South; and Baghdad Without a Map takes him through the
Middle East in the year or so just prior to the 1991 Gulf War.

At a time when all of us are scurrying around trying to figure out what makes the Arab world so much different than the West, Horwitz
is an excellent guide. Whether listening to Egyptians denigrate Gulf Arabs ("The Gulfies had oil but they didn't have a civilization to
rival that of Egyptians, who were tossing up pyramids five thousand years before the Gulfies moved out of goat-hair tents"); getting
whacked on qat, the narcotic leaf that is the national passion of Yemen; or describing the oppressive atmosphere of Iraq--he compares
entering Iraq to "walking through the gate of a maximum-security prison"--Horwitz always manages to both make us laugh and scare the
bejeezus out of us. His portrait of the region is one of unrelenting paranoia on the part of the Islamic world. The title of the book refers
to the fact that no maps are available in Iraq, because Saddam is afraid to share such basic geographic information with potential
enemies (which, of course, includes everyone), and, if that's not enough, even the weather there is classified information.

All of this though is mere prelude to the fascinating, but frightening, closing section of the book, in which Mr. Horwitz and his wife
travel to Iran to attend the funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeni, along with what may well, as he suggests, have been the largest crowd of
people ever assembled in human history. This event turned deadly, with literally millions of crazed mourners crushing each other, then
devolved into bizarre spectacle, with the faithful tearing apart the dead imam's corpse. But even here, with religious frenzy at its worst,
Mr. Horwitz offers this nearly surreal exchange :

One of the demonstrators peeled off to rest by the curb, and I edged over to ask him what the mourners were shouting.

'Death to America,' he said.

'Oh.' I reached for my notebook as self-protection and scribbled the Farsi transliteration : Margbar Omrika.

'You are American?' he asked.

'Yes. A journalist.' I braced myself for a diatribe against the West and its arrogant trumpets.

'I must ask you something,' the man said. 'Have you ever been to Disneyland?'

'As a kid, yes.'

The man nodded, thoughtfully stroking his beard. 'My brother lives in California and has written me about Disneyland,' he
continued. 'It has always been my dream to go there and take my children on the tea-cup ride.'

With that, he rejoined the marchers, raised his fist and yelled 'Death to America!' again.

This kind of great good humor and a genuine affection for the people he meets characterize Mr. Horwitz's writing throughout. But, the
overwhelming sense that he leaves the reader with is that Islam and its adherents face a wrenching restructuring of their closed, corrupt,
and sectarian societies, as they confront a modern world (whose defining features are freedom, pluralism, and openness) for which they
are utterly unprepared.

GRADE : A

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and Insightful, September 17, 2000

By 

Wayne A. Smith (Newark, DE) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia (Paperback)

Horwitz has delivered another very witty book that also enlightens. I have read his "Confederates in the Attic," an often hilarious writing that delves into the shadow of the Civil War in the current South.

Like "Confederates...," "Baghdad Without a Map" is breezy, funny and illuminating. The author spent three years in the Middle East in the period before the Gulf War. Stationed in Cairo, this free lance writer visited Israel (during the Infatada) Lebanon (during active warfare), Iraq (during its war with Iran), Iran (during Khomeni's funeral), Yemen, the Sudan and The U.A.Emerites and Libya. In each country, he gets off of the beaten track to meet with ordinary people and delve into their daily existence.

What emerges is a picture of life under Islam that as a whole is very much different from that experienced in the West, but one that also varies tremendiously among the individual countries. Each is shaped in a unique way by georgraphy, the relative lunacy of its political autocrats and history. The book serves to highlight some of the difficult problems facing many of the people in the region as well as the basic humanity and hope that can thrive even under trying circumstances.

Horwitz does not laugh at the people he meets, in fact he is quite sympathetic to many of them he becomes acquainted with. However, many of the situations in which they are placed as well as Horwitz's response while diving into very different cultures from his own are often witty and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny in the hands of this skilled observer and writer. This is one of those books that will cause you to chuckle and guffaw even in places of public quiet like the commuter train on which I ride.

His book is fast, very enjoyable and leaves the reader with something of substance after it's finished. A good book.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delightful travelogue, January 9, 2000

By 

saskatoonguy (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia (Paperback)

This was a tough book to put down. 'Baghdad Without Maps' works on many different levels: The author shares with us something of his personal life and the development of his career, in a humorously self-deprecating tone. We learn something of the pack-mentality of war zone journalists, and we learn something of the countries he visits, with the occasional crash-course on a nation's history or political system. All too often with this type of book, I find myself skipping over the boring historical stuff, but here, his writing style is so entertaining, I didn't want to miss a single sentence.

Where Horwitz really shines is his man-on-the-street interviews. He has a knack for recording some real gems of dialogue, such as the Iranian who was chanting 'Death to America,' and then stopped to ask Horwitz for advice on visiting Disneyland. Some might see his approach to the Middle East as negative, but after all, he's a journalist who chases war, so the negative tone isn't very surprising. In most of the countries he visits, Horwitz introduces us to local people that are almost always portrayed in the most sympathetic of tones. The country that comes across worst in this book is Israel, notwithstanding that Horwitz himself is Jewish.

Chapters cover Yemen, the UAE, Egypt, Iraq (he was there during the war with Iran as well the Gulf War), Iran (for Khomeini's funeral), Jordan, Israel, Sudan, and Lebanon. But the most memorable chapter of all is his brief visit to Libya. The only thing missing from this book is maps--only one for the entire book, which is not enough.