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Currently reading 'Nile' by Laurie Devine. Looking to buy 'Married to a Bedouin' by Marguerite van Geldermalsen. I'm waiting 3 books on order from Amazon which are biographies on women's lifes in Egypt and Saudi.
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I am reading a book called Living in Hell which is written by a woman named Ghazal Omid. It's an autobiography about her life in Iran.
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quote:Originally posted by young at heart: Currently reading 'Nile' by Laurie Devine. Looking to buy 'Married to a Bedouin' by Marguerite van Geldermalsen. I'm waiting 3 books on order from Amazon which are biographies on women's lifes in Egypt and Saudi.
Oh, Married to a Bedouin - I was holding that in my hands at Virgin in City Stars just the other night. But I didn't get it. It looks interesting. The woman married a guy in Jordan and moved into a cave with him. It has lots of pictures. I might get it next time I go back there if it's still there. There was only one copy.
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I'm reading the latest Alaa El Aswani: Friendly Fire. Short stories, not impressed yet... For therest, there are 6 books with sports-regulations waiting, that's even worse...lol
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*Bearded Collie* by L. Baumgart (in German)
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The Serpent Bride - by Sarah Douglas
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Living the Egyptian Dream - A middle Aged Womans Gap Year by Margaret Rowswell (signed copy )
and
Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy
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The difference is that its all about a man´s experience side.A Western man experience view. Highly recomend it.Guarantee you wont get bored. Posts: 3833 | From: here,there,everywhere | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by young at heart: Currently reading 'Nile' by Laurie Devine. Looking to buy 'Married to a Bedouin' by Marguerite van Geldermalsen. I'm waiting 3 books on order from Amazon which are biographies on women's lifes in Egypt and Saudi.
Heyy,YAH,i got that Married to a Beduin on my Amazon wish list,too.Im waiting to finish the bunch at my bedside first
See that we like to read very similar books,YAH. Keep me informed.
Read this one and loved every minute of it,too. You could like it.
quote:Originally posted by young at heart: Currently reading 'Nile' by Laurie Devine. Looking to buy 'Married to a Bedouin' by Marguerite van Geldermalsen. I'm waiting 3 books on order from Amazon which are biographies on women's lifes in Egypt and Saudi.
On the same line of the subjects you like to read,did you read this one?If not,get it,you will enjoy it.
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I've read the book from Marguerite van Geldermalsen, she is Dutch. It's a nice book, a lot of appreciation for the culture, but partly it is once again the usual story; written down without the emotional part. Her story differs to the usual stories because her marriage seems to be succesful ( she is not completely clear about that) and isn't ending as a drama.
-------------------- “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” Posts: 7202 | From: EU | Registered: Nov 2006
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A Good Husband Sometimes Beats his Wife Published July 24, 2008 Non-fiction 8 Comments Tags: Egypt, Joris Luyendijk, Middle East
Don’t worry, this is not my opinion, but that of a female university student from Egypt. It is also the title of a book by Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk about the year he spent in Egypt as a student in the mid-nineties. The original Dutch title is Een goede man slaat soms zijn vrouw. It has been translated into German, but I don’t think the book has been translated into English.
Een goede man was first published in 1998, so before 9/11 and the changing attitudes towards Islam and Muslim people in the West. However, I think that this is not a dated book, and I think it would actually still be an eye-opener for quite a few people. Een goede man is an interesting and at times absurd book about a Westerner’s experiences trying to integrate into a Muslim-society and about the lives and ideas of Egyptian university-students, written several years before the integration of Muslims became a hot topic in Holland and other Western countries. Luyendijk talked with his Egyptian friends and other young people about Islam, the Western world, love, sex, gays, Jews, women’s rights, fundamentalism etc. There are times when he wonders: “Do I want to be friends with people who think gays should be killed and that it is okay to cut off the hand of a thief or for a husband to beat his wife?” Then he considers that his Egyptian friends probably think something similar about him: “Do we want to be friends with a guy who is okay with his wife working outside the house, who doesn’t believe in any god, and who doesn’t mind if his sister walks around in shorts or has sex before she marries?”
In the book Luyendijk focuses mostly on the differences between him and his Egyptian friends. Eventually he concludes that at that time (before 9/11) people and media in the West portrayed people elsewhere (not just in the Middle-East) as “being on the road to becoming the same as us / the West”. They are just different, and their road of development is just a bit slower than that of people in the West, but eventually they’ll get to “the same level”.
During his year in Egypt, however, he finds out that the people he meets do not want to become like the people in the West, on the contrary, they don’t see the West as superior or as a model society. In the afterword he wrote in 2007 to the edition I have (printed in 2007), Luyendijk makes a very fitting comparison. He was raised to view history as a long train, the first carriage of which was the West and the first coupe in this carriage was Holland. His Egyptian friends on the other hand were raised with a similar, but at the same time very different, view on history. For them human history was also a train, but for them the first carriage was reserved for Islam, the front part of that carriage for the Arab world and on the very first bench up front the Egyptian people were sitting. At the time this discovery was a huge shift in his worldview for Luyendijk, but I think that after 9/11 it has probably become clearer to many people that maybe, just maybe, being like people in the West is not the ideal for many or most Muslims. Though I suppose there are still plenty of people who don’t recognize this and for whom reading Een goede man could still be very ‘beneficial’.
I enjoyed reading Een goede man slaat soms zijn vrouw, though towards the end it became a bit repetitive with the same themes popping up over and over again. It is well-written and fast-paced, at times funny (though unintentionally so) when the two worldviews bump into each other (on purpose I am not using the word ‘clash’ here) and it gives plenty of food for thought about how ‘we Westerners’ (sorry for the huge generalization here as well as in most of this post) perceive Muslim cultures and the other way around, how they see us. The book gives some insight into how people from a non-Western, Muslim culture view Western society and where these ideas originate from.
On a personal level I could relate to this book as well, though my situation of moving to Armenia was definitely less extreme than Luyendijk’s time in Egypt. First of all, Armenia is a Christian country. The problem is, that people in Armenia receive most of their information about “the West” from tv, in other words from Hollywood movies and videoclips. Go figure what a distorted image that is! A lot of people are obviously reasonable and smart enough (or they have been abroad or have friends or relatives there) to understand that at least part of that image is incorrect. But still, enough of the distorted image (especially when it comes to relationships, sex and things like that) remains.
Een goede man was Luyendijk’s first book as a result of which he was asked to work as correspondent in the Middle-East for some major Dutch media-outlets. Another of Luyendijk’s books, Het zijn net mensen (appr. They’re Just Like Humans), became a bestseller in Holland two years ago and a somewhat controversial book at that. Luyendijk wrote in Het zijn net mensen about the limitations journalists have and especially journalists working for Western media in the Middle-East: they have to deal with many limitations on the information they can gather and how they can convey this information to their audience. As a result, people in the West get a very simplified picture of a complicated region. Luyendijk claims that journalists should be much more aware of and much opener about all these limitations, about what they don’t know or cannot know and about what part of the news they are unable to tell because of lack of time, space or lack of background knowledge of their audience. I am obviously giving Luyendijk’s point in a very abbreviated form. This stance caused an uproar among some of Luyendijk’s colleagues. I read this book last summer (I think), just before I started blogging and I found it a very interesting and though-provoking book about journalism. Het zijn net mensen has been translated in several languages (among others French, German and Italian), but not in English. You can read two articles in English about this book here and here.
People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East By Joris Luyendijk Translated by Michele Hutchison Soft Skull Press $14.95, 240 pages FT Bookshop price: Ł10.39
Joris Luyendijk covered the Middle East for Dutch newspapers and Dutch state television from 1998 to 2003. Then he went home to the Netherlands and tried to write the usual correspondent’s book: an attempt to explain the Middle East. He found that he couldn’t, however, because he himself didn’t understand the Middle East. “I didn’t want to write a book explaining how the Arab world could become democratic, how tolerant or intolerant Islam is, or who is right or wrong in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.” Instead, he wrote a book that explained, in the casual style of a man chatting to a friend in a bar, that it was impossible for TV in particular or indeed for any journalist to explain what was happening in the Middle East.
A book that takes perhaps three hours to read changed the way readers thought about the Middle East and the media. The Dutch edition of People Like Us, published in 2006, sold 250,000 copies. Now this important book has broken beyond the Netherlands. That’s a feat in itself: a Dutch Moscow correspondent once complained that if the Messiah returned to earth and he reported the event in Dutch, the world would never find out.
In 1998, Luyendijk began work as a 26-year-old newspaper correspondent in Cairo, where he had studied at university. He dutifully covered summits and presidential speeches, and interviewed “talking heads”. He gradually realised this did not convey Egyptian reality, however. Hardly anyone in Egypt who was allowed to speak in public could be believed. The “talking heads” – academics or human rights activists, for instance – were paid by the government or by western NGOs, or were terrified of the secret police. Whenever Luyendijk did manage to interview the “common man”, he heard weird things. One man answered a question about an Egyptian “referendum” by telling him that Hitler had been subsidised by Jews who charged 38 per cent interest, we learn here. Was this common man typical? In a country without polls or fair elections or freedom of speech, it was impossible to know.
As he recounts, Luyendijk came to understand that covering an Arab country while saying little about ordinary life under dictatorship was like covering the Netherlands in 1943 while saying little about the Nazi occupation. Dictatorship was the story. The western media depicted the Arab world as a chessboard, but it was more like a poorhouse run by corrupt thugs. Luyendijk didn’t manage to convey this to his Dutch newspaper readers, because in a dictatorship it’s hard to get anyone to describe what life in a dictatorship is like.
Moreover, he points out, few western correspondents in Arab countries speak good Arabic or mix much with Arabs. Luyendijk himself speaks decent Arabic, or at least the Cairo variant, but he too struggled to socialise with locals. And so, hardly anyone in the west knows much about Arab reality. This became painfully obvious after the attacks of 9/11. How many Arabs supported Osama bin Laden? Impossible to know, says Luyendijk. How many supported the purportedly non-violent Muslim fundamentalists – and were these people truly non-violent? Impossible to know, too.
People Like Us helps explain the geopolitical tragicomedy of the past eight years. When western governments began trying to change the Arab world after 2001, they went in blindfolded, Luyendijk demonstrates. The western leaders and secret services with the most information made elementary misjudgments. They were stunned by 9/11. They were stunned when the Palestinians, finally allowed to vote, voted for Hamas. Many were stunned when Iraqis did not welcome American soldiers with flowers. They were stunned when Saddam turned out not to have weapons of mass destruction. Luyendijk blames the farce around WMD on how clueless the west is about the logic of dictatorship: “Saddam had allowed the impression that he had those kinds of weapons to persist, right to the bitter end: it was to prevent an insurrection among his own subjects”.
All these misjudgments were in part failures of the media, says Luyendijk. Years later, western coverage of the Middle East has not improved. The most reported event in the region in recent months was probably Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, itself an event made for TV.
After Cairo, Luyendijk moved to Lebanon and then to East Jerusalem to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Dutch TV. Here he came across new distortions. The conflict was produced for TV, he argues. The stone-throwing, the suicide bombs, the 24 hours that Israel waits before responding to a Palestinian attack so that the world can reflect on Israel’s pain – all this exists chiefly so that TV news can cover it.
“The common idea about correspondents is that they ‘have the story’,” Luyendijk writes, “but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we’ve baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we’ve done is put it in its wrapping.” He also reminds us that TV reporters are slaves to their images; they can tell only the story shown by the images, because images speak so much louder than words. TV can convey the horror of a suicide bomb but it is less effective at conveying the humiliation of daily life under occupation. In any case, the Palestinians are no good at producing those images for TV.
Israel excels at baking the bread. It knows just how to package a soundbite or image for TV, whereas Palestinian spokesmen drone on in incomprehensible language. In fact, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat deliberately kept articulate Palestinians off air for fear that they would acquire their own power bases.
Luyendijk acknowledges that a few serious publications, such as the New York Review of Books and a handful of others, carry accurate reporting on the Middle East. Unfortunately, hardly anyone reads them. TV, the dominant medium, distorts the picture and rarely explains how it gets “the story”.
Much of Luyendijk’s argument is familiar from the field of media studies. However, what sets People Like Us apart is that it is theory written by a practising journalist about a fantastically misunderstood region. The book applies beyond the Middle East: in Russia, where journalists trot around Kremlin press conferences as if that was the way to find out what was happening; and in South Africa, where journalists living in white Johannesburg suburbs were stunned by popular support for Jacob Zuma. Luyendijk’s next project is to try to propose a new way of doing journalism. Judging by certain recent misreadings of the world, it might help.
Simon Kuper is co-author of ‘Why England Lose’ (HarperSport) Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
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quote:Originally posted by Questionmarks: I've read the book from Marguerite van Geldermalsen, she is Dutch. It's a nice book, a lot of appreciation for the culture, but partly it is once again the usual story; written down without the emotional part. Her story differs to the usual stories because her marriage seems to be succesful ( she is not completely clear about that) and isn't ending as a drama.
Jeanne Eck´s view is totally about the emotional part.I rarely care anymore about the tourist views,and with this i mean the sights,the places,the monuments....etc.One can get plenty of that by reading a good tourist guidebook,but travel narrative is a world apart from that.
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Some really interesting books mentioned here. More to add to my wishlist I should not have ordered more books until I read the pile I have! Books really are a failing of mine . Yes Sash I think we have similar tastes. I have read Jeanne Eck. Found it very interesting. I plan to reread it as the first time I read it I had not been to Cairo so I think I will get more out of it the second time round. Anymore recommendations gratefully received Posts: 4476 | From: Scotland | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Shanta Qadeama: Fiction:
Just finished Pillars of The Earth and about to start A Thousand Splendid Suns
I just bought A Thousand Splendid Suns. I loved the Kite Runner until the very end. I'm told the second book is better.
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And these are just some of my favorites from my collection. I've read most of these already. I told you I shipped 610 pounds worth of books from the US. Posts: 1626 | From: whatever, wherever | Registered: Jul 2008
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quote:Originally posted by young at heart: Thanks for all the recommendations! On order I have: In the Land of the Invisible Women.. Quanta Ahmed
Nine parts of Desire (The Hidden world of Islamic Women).. Geraldine Brooks
The View from the Garden..Carolyn Baugh (fiction)
Have read all of those already,YAH. Nine Parts of Desire is several years old now,but extremely interesting.
In The Land of Invisible Women,the only part that i found tooo long and tiresome to read,at least for me,is the very long chapter on the Haj. Other than that,its very good,too.
The View From the Garden is sad and poignant,but worth every reading.
Clear and QSY and Young at Heart,seems as if we had consulted each other on the books before ordering. Posts: 3833 | From: here,there,everywhere | Registered: Nov 2007
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-------------------- If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them. Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by *Dalia*: I tend to read several books at the same time and pick them according to my mood. At the moment I'm reading the following:
quote:Originally posted by young at heart: Thanks for all the recommendations! On order I have: In the Land of the Invisible Women.. Quanta Ahmed
Nine parts of Desire (The Hidden world of Islamic Women).. Geraldine Brooks
The View from the Garden..Carolyn Baugh (fiction)
Have read all of those already,YAH. Nine Parts of Desire is several years old now,but extremely interesting.
In The Land of Invisible Women,the only part that i found tooo long and tiresome to read,at least for me,is the very long chapter on the Haj. Other than that,its very good,too.
The View From the Garden is sad and poignant,but worth every reading.
Clear and QSY and Young at Heart,seems as if we had consulted each other on the books before ordering.
Thanks Sash for your input. It's nice to get other points of view and ideas for future buys. I do tend to be on catch up most of the time Posts: 4476 | From: Scotland | Registered: Mar 2006
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Ohhh,Young at Heart,and ive not even started listing them since there are many i buy originally written in Spanish,by Spain numerous book publishing press that dont have an English tranlation version,yet. Posts: 3833 | From: here,there,everywhere | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Ayisha: just finished both the ones I was reading
Tell us about it,how you liked it and such.....and get some more.
The Egyptian one I enjoyed as I can relate to much of it with living here. It started as a diary she was writing so as not to forget even the trivial joys and and frustrations of daily life and getting to fit in and know a different culture. she sent this to her family and friends in pieces and they encouraged her to put it into a book. It is an excellent account of daily getting by here for 7 months.
The Maeve Binchy I also enjoyed, set on a Greek Island 4 people from different lives and with different problems meet and sort out their lives.
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Next i'm going to read THE CODEX ALERA by Jim Butcher 6 books up to now in the series i can't wait Posts: 3945 | From: ' Res Contr ' Amor non es guirens, lai on sos poders s'atura | Registered: Dec 2007
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next book, Second Time Around by Marcia Willett, I LOVE Marcia Willet books if anyone sees any in second hand shops before they come to Luxor It will be my 3rd time reading this one
-------------------- If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them. Posts: 15090 | From: http://www.egyptalk.com/forum/ | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Questionmarks: I've read the book from Marguerite van Geldermalsen, she is Dutch. It's a nice book, a lot of appreciation for the culture, but partly it is once again the usual story; written down without the emotional part. Her story differs to the usual stories because her marriage seems to be succesful ( she is not completely clear about that) and isn't ending as a drama.
Jeanne Eck´s view is totally about the emotional part.I rarely care anymore about the tourist views,and with this i mean the sights,the places,the monuments....etc.One can get plenty of that by reading a good tourist guidebook,but travel narrative is a world apart from that.
I mean with "without the emotional part" that it's more a chronologic base of what happened without mentioning feelings. I guess she must have had them otherwise she wouldn't marry there, but feelings are left unwritten. If I remember well, there is a part when she discovers that her husband has had identical attempts to get in a relationship with foreigners before she came in, but that was kind of vague. They lived in a Western country for a while, but ( again, if I remember well) it wasn't a succes. I've learned to appreciate books like Joris Luyendijk more, because they are about a bigger part of life, not only relationships. But of course it is, because this fits more into my own interest. Still I think it's a fascinating culture. The more you know, the more questions...
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If i remember well,Jeanne wasnt married anymore when she lived in Cairo,and didnt marry again,either.
Are we talking about the same book,QM? Im Happier to Know You,by Jeanne Eck? Posts: 3833 | From: here,there,everywhere | Registered: Nov 2007
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I have this one too (it's in the pile of books I plan to sell at Bookspot next week). I considered putting it on the list as well, but it's more of a fiction type book like the "Princess" series by Jean Sasson. Even though it says based on actual events it reads more like a novel. Very good though. I think I read it in 2 days because it was hard to put down.
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I have this one too (it's in the pile of books I plan to sell at Bookspot next week). I considered putting it on the list as well, but it's more of a fiction type book like the "Princess" series by Jean Sasson. Even though it says based on actual events it reads more like a novel. Very good though. I think I read it in 2 days because it was hard to put down.
I do believe the Sultana series is based in actual events that really happened, but i guess the author,Jean Sasson uses this type of novel like narrative on purpose to make the reading flow,and maybe even entice others to get interested in the story she wants to get across.
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I'm not that much into harem stories, although I'll definitely read this one at some point. I really like Fatima Mernissi. But for now I'm more interested in theological issues.
quote:Originally posted by young at heart: I enjoyed the novel: In the eye of the sun by Ahdaf Soueif.
Me too.
For some reason I couldn't get into "The Map of Love" though. I hardly ever put a book aside once I started it, but couldn't really finish that one. It's on my big stack of books for sale or giving away now ...
And speaking of Egyptian authors -- I really liked The Open Door by Latifa Al-Zayyat.
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Ah I love books, they are my big passion in life.
We have a really cool secondhand bookshop in Dubai called house of prose which always has a great mix of new and old books and even better they give you half your money back if you return the books after reading!
I have a few on the go at the moment as always
I just finished Daughters of Shame by Jasvinder Sangera...it's an biographical book and tells the stories of British women who are being made to enter forced marriages by their parents as well as honour killings when the girls try to rebel. I bought this with my groceries on Saturday afternoon and I literally couldn't put it down, I finished it the same day.
I strongly recommend this one. It is the sequel to the authors autobiography telling about her own forced marriage when she was a teenager..I have not read that one so I will have to try and get hold of it.
I'm still on with Chigaco by Alaa Aswany...I really enjoyed Yacoubian Building so I bought this on the strength of that
I just bought Martina Cole's new one called Hard Girls...have only just started it. I recommend her books though, I have read them all and she is now one of bestselling UK authors.
I am also reading what to expect when you're expecting Posts: 500 | From: United Arab Emirates | Registered: Jul 2008
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That reminds me - I saw "Inside Egypt" in the Egyptian American Bookshop in Carrefour (Alex Desert Rd) during the summer - I thought we weren't supposed to be able get it here?
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I bought the Daughters of Shame when I was shopping for groceries too DG! Enjoyed it. Your last book is that something you want to tell Posts: 4476 | From: Scotland | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by young at heart: I bought the Daughters of Shame when I was shopping for groceries too DG! Enjoyed it. Your last book is that something you want to tell
Whats the author of that one,YAH?quick!!!
I also read this one some years ago and liked it much.
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I searched that ofDaughters of Shame by Jasvinder Sangera..,and didnt find any with that author,Dubai Girl- Posts: 3833 | From: here,there,everywhere | Registered: Nov 2007
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. Yes Sash I think we have similar tastes. I have read Jeanne Eck. Found it very interesting. I plan to reread it as the first time I read it I had not been to Cairo so I think I will get more out of it the second time round. Anymore recommendations gratefully received ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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It will be my 3rd time reading this one ![[Confused]](confused.gif)
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