Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran [Paperback]

Christopher Dickey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 1994

Award-winning Newsweek reporter Christopher Dickey offers an interesting look at the Arab world as seen through the eyes of some the western expatriates--lost colonels and aging explorers, oilmen, sea captains, even retired spies--lingering in the Middle East.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Veteran journalist Dickey ( With the Contras, LJ 3/1/86) traversed the Arab Middle East as Newsweek' s bureau chief in Cairo in the last half of the Eighties, covering stories such as the American bombing of Libya, the disintegration of Lebanon, and more. Here, he draws on his experiences for a series of vignettes of individuals he met. From an 80-year old legendary British explorer to oilmen and tanker captains, Soviet diplomats, and the Egyptian Nobel laureate for Literature (1988), Naguib Mahfouz, Dickey paints entertaining and insightful portraits. He writes with sympathy and telling detail about these individuals, depicting the human dimension of international crises and cultural change in the Arab East. Dickey leaves most of the political analysis to others like Thomas Friedman (From Beirut to Jerusalem, LJ 7/89). Readers will share Dickey's sentiments in his concluding confession, "the new world created by the juxtapositions of Arabia and America. . . had won me over . " A book for the general reader, this belongs on the shelves of all public libraries. For another American's view of Arabia, see Peter Theroux's Sandstorms: Days and Nights in Arabia, reviewed below.
- James Rhodes, Luther Coll., Decorah, Ia.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (February 9, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871134632
• ISBN-13: 978-0871134639
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,134,647 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

What ties all of Christopher Dickey's books together?

His most recent is "Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force -- The NYPD," chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the notable books of 2009. But before that came "a first-rate thriller," "The Sleeper," which followed his critically acclaimed memoir, "Summer of Deliverance," about his father, the poet and novelist James Dickey. "Innocent Blood," Chris's first novel, predicted in 1997 the waves of terror that would come at the United States, and got inside the heads of those who would bring them. "Expats," is a book of essays about traveling among the people of the Middle East -- particularly the displaced and misplaced Westerners who lived there in times of war. And Chris's first book, "With The Contras," in 1986, was not only an up-close account of combat in Nicaragua but a first-hand history of Central America at a time of ferocious revolutions and repression.

So, you'll say that what's common about Chris's books is combat, terror and emotional trauma. And that's partly true. But there is also another deeply felt theme: that of family as the ultimate source of human drama and also the social force that far too often is misunderstood, or ignored, in our efforts to grasp what's going on in the world around us. For more on this theme see pages 228-229 in the paperback edition of "Summer of Deliverance" or Location 3949 on the Kindle edition.


Chris's career as an editor, reporter and foreign correspondent spans 35 years. He is currently the Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Regional Editor for Newsweek Magazine and The Daily Beast. Previously he worked for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief and Central America Bureau Chief. Chris's columns about counter-terrorism, espionage and the Middle East appear regularly now on TheDailyBeast.com. For links to recent columns and articles, visit www.ChristopherDickey.com.

Chris has written for Foreign Affairs, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Wired, Rolling Stone, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic, among other publications. He is a frequent commentator on the BBC World Service, BBC television, CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio and France24 as well as other television and radio networks.

Among his many honors are awards from the Overseas Press Club, the Inter-American Press Association and Georgetown University. Chris is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where he was formerly an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow, and of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris. In the fall of 2009 he was a visiting professor at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

And Chris's next book? He's deep into a true, untold story of espionage and international intrigue -- and, yes, combat, terror, trauma and families -- on the eve of the War Between the States.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine insights and sensitivity to expatriate atmospherics, September 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran (Paperback)

Greetings to all.

Mr. Dickey's book is equally insightful and even more useful now in 1998 than when first published about the cultural atmospherics and (diversified) adjustments of expatriates in major countries of the Middle East.

Based on his travels in the region, Mr. Dickey developed many discerning insights from his meeting and interviewing a widely-representative range of expatriates (singletons and families).

I had read his book before I served at American embassies in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council during and after the last Gulf War. His book's treatment of the resident expatriates (the shakiest and flakiest had left Saudi Arabia and adjacent countries) was very helpful and accurate.

A bonus of this book is the inclusion of the views and opinions of Arab employers and other contacts who discuss - with remarkable poignancy - the expatriates and how the various societies perceive and adjust (as they can) to one another.

Highly recommended as an easy-to-read book for sensitizing oneself on many of the cultural, emotional and practical matters of the region.

Good preparation about what to know, who is where and doing what, where to look, and how to think about living and thriving there (and also why some expats do not thrive or survive).

Excellent companion to Gordon Robison's paperback entitled "Arab Gulf States" (2d Edition, 1996), published by Lonely Planet Press and also available at Amazon.com.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensitive look at who's in Arabia besides Arabs, June 17, 2000

By 

Renee Thorpe (Karangasem, Bali) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran (Paperback)

This is a series of essays, some previously published in magazines like Vanity Fair, by Newsweek journalist Dickey.

The author gracefully paints both romance and reality; certainly the west's long-running orientalist fantasies still exist in the heart of anyone who has wanted to visit that part of the world. Dickey simply acknowledges these and strives to give insightful reports of the volatile politics and diverse societies (mostly those of foreigners) in the vast region covered. There is a guileless sense of truth on these pages that stays with the reader.

There are very good chapters about Arabs themselves: a censured writer in Cairo, e.g., Dickey's record of stunned Iranians voicing their dismay in reaction to a particularly heinous American military blunder.

Dickey offers occasional history lessons (the chapter on Oman's leadership), humor (the witty chapter about British expats in Dubai), and poignant human interest (many chapters touch upon the innocent lives scarred or ended by various military acts).

I picked this up thinking I was getting a light book about western expats, but that is a very small part of Dickey's focus. He writes of Filipino tanker crews facing mortal danger with a smile and a shrug, a Russian businessmen in a bad suit and the UN's splendidly stylish Turkish PR man, a self-important French Canadian aid worker. Dickey's contacts are many and vivid.

The book is resolutely but subtly anti-war. It will be impossible for a reader to generalize about Arabs after reading Dickey's book.

A great book to give to anyone going to an Arab country, either as expat or visitor.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Journalistic vignettes of the Middle East from the late `80's..., October 15, 2010

By 

John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Expats: Travels in Arabia, from Tripoli to Teheran (Paperback)

Twenty years ago Christopher Dickey wrote some charming and interesting vignettes of life in the Middle East during the heady days of the oil boom, and long before the invention of the concept of a "Global War on Terror." Dickey's title is most indicative of the type of stories he writes; as opposed to many practitioners of "parachute journalism" who seem to be blissfully unaware of their inability to understand the country after a few days of meeting with officials well-versed in telling the journalist what he wants to hear. Dickey says the following: "But in fact, in countries where barriers of language and culture already exist and political and secret-police barriers are imposed, journalist and diplomats wind up talking mainly to each other." Given this key limitation, Dickey has produced some insightful stories of the expatriates ("expats"), mainly Western, who inhabit the region, from Libya to Iran, and who are either running from the law in their home countries, as legend has it, or have simply taken a quirky "career path."

One key aspect of this book is the author's meetings with the quintessential explorer / "native" of the region, Wilfred Thesiger. He meets him in England and later follows-up on his visit to the UAE in the early `90's. He pushes Thesiger to the bounds of politeness of the issue of the total lack of women in his life, and in his reporting, and specifically asks him about Bin Kabina and Bin Ghabaisha, his two youthful companions who helped him cross the Empty Quarter in 1947, and of whom he took some evocative pictures. Yes, Thesiger proclaims, he did love them, but the love was not physical. Thesiger's account of this crossing is depicted in Arabian Sands (Penguin Classics)). Concerning T.E. Lawrence however, Dickey quotes Thesiger: "I think Lawrence was undoubtedly a homosexual. I mean, it emerges. But I think that in a sense one of his troubles was that he was a frustrated homosexual. Even with Daud or whoever it was I suspect that the relationship was never consummated and that Lawrence had a craving for a homosexual relationship, and the sore of thwarting of that may have contributed to his...uh... to his oddity." Dickey as a journalist does not draw any conclusions, but the reader is left to ponder how the "oddity" of both these men, and the widespread readership of their books, may have seriously distorted Western understanding of the region.

For sure, there is much else. Dickey commences his book covering American expatriates who manage to live in Libya, serving the oil industry, despite American laws strictly forbidding it. He visits Dame Violet Dickson, when she was 91 years old. A British expatriate who had moved, with her husband, to Kuwait, in 1929, and has lived there successfully in a mud house ever since. This period was marked by the slaughter of the now increasingly forgotten Iran-Iraq war, and Dickey does a solid job on another forgotten incident of the war, when the USS Vincennes shot down the civilian airliner, Iran Air 655. Quoting one of his friends in the tower, who says: "Thank God, it was those bloody Iranians and not a real airplane with real people, it could have been British Air, or Pan Am or Singapore Airlines." That about says it all.

There are at least several other incisive observations. Consider: "Arrival at the end of the earth is, of course, a subjective notion... The thing about the ends of the earth is that someone somewhere-usually in Langley, Virginia- will imagine they have strategic value." Concerning the alliance between Saudis and Texas oilmen, he quotes a Syrian woman who speaks three languages, noting the odd relationship, and the willingness of the Saudis to take up with people from "je ne sais quoi", Alabama. And concerning the expats themselves, who want to "get away from it all," but immediately re-create all the familiar trappings of "home" in their new surroundings, he quotes a "Daily Telegraph: correspondent who calls them "the cretinous flotsam of British society."

Overall, a solid compendium of journalistic articles on the Middle East of 20 years ago, which are hampered only by the genre itself, and are therefore only impressionistic vignettes. 4-stars.