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Live From Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East
Live From Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey Through the Middle East
by Benjamin Orbach
Americans don't travel enough. I'm always amazed that Americans can hold such strong opinions of people elsewhere in the world even though they've never been there and don't know anyone who has. Americans believe the French are lazy and rude, that German women don't shave their armpits and that Canadians wait in long lines to see a doctor. Anyone who's ever been in these countries for any length of time knows that's just not true. Now here's Benjamin Orbach busting the myth that Muslims all want to cut our heads off.
Benjamin Orbach, a nice Jewish boy from Pittsburgh, studied Arabic in the Middle East after 9/11 and during the invasion of Iraq and lived to tell about it. And it's a wonderful tale -- not of danger and intrigue, but of good friends and interesting, hospitable people.
Yes, there is resentment against America in the Muslim world, but the overwhelming majority of it is directed at our foreign policy and not at us personally -- and certainly not at our freedoms. Having lived and traveled throughout Muslim Southeast Asia for several years, I can corroborate Orbach's story. I lost count of the number of the anti-Bush rants I endured from Malaysian taxi drivers, but I never once felt threatened personally. Even the guys who hung out at the mosque across the street from my house were really good guys, always waving hello, joking around and making a fuss over my young son. If I had a nickel for every time someone came up and patted him on the head or cheek...
But that's me and Southeast Asia and the subject at hand is Orbach's book, which is a very well-written travel diary in the form of letters to friends and family and op-eds in his local Pittsburgh paper. Given the format, you might think the narrative would be disjointed but the story flows quite well and is full of incredibly interesting people like Salah al Fuli the Falafel cook and Hanna the neighborhood "don" who runs the local supermarket.
Had Orbach merely recounted the places he lived and visited in the Middle East and the people he met, the book would be pretty ordinary. What makes this book really stand out is the author's insight into the personalities, cultures and politics of the region. Orbach was learning Arabic for a State Department job and his story is told through the filter of a future State Department Middle East expert.
And this is where things get interesting. In trying to become and expert on Middle Eastern culture, Orbach talks to everyone and tries just about everything to really immerse himself in the daily life of the region which leads to some really funny moments as well as some really insightful episodes -- the poor guy gets rolled in a Turkish brothel, questioned by Syrian secret police, and turns Cairo upside down looking for brown shoelaces. It's all great fun. To read about.
I planted a little forest of those colored tabs in this book intending to mention all the interesting things Orbach wrote about, but there's no way I'm going to get around to them all. One thing that struck me as interesting, though, was the way he initially tried to pass himself off as a Canadian. I had that urge myself while traveling, but found that saying I was from California worked just as well. Even the America haters love LA. Go figure. No, that's too glib. It's actually a measure of America's cultural influence -- our soft power -- that everybody loves Hollywood and you can get KFC in Indonesia (turns out it's halal).
Orbach ruminates on America's soft power much better than I ever could and he even offers a "big duh" tip for healing the breach between America and the Arab East: Go there and visit. But if that's not possible for you, then read "Live from Jordan". It's the next best thing.