middle east

A retracing of some of the journeys (Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Southern Arabia, the Kuria Muria Islands,Turkey and the Crimea)of the fourteenth century traveller, Ibn Battuta.
The author is a British born and educated Yemen resident, fluent in classical and colloquial Arabic and deeply learned in history and music. The book contains quotations in French, German, Russian (in the Cyrillic alphabet), Turkish and Greek. I thought I'd caught him misquoting Pliny, but then realized he was making a Latin joke. Some of his polyglot puns are outrageous. In The Umayyad mosque in Damascus he found Ismailis and Shiites at prayer, but that the orthodox were keeping the Sunni side up.
The long digressions on obscure Arab writers and religious teachers and the intrusive parade of erudition might put some people off. It's a bit like reading Umberto Ecco where some readers, such as myself, get entranced by the writer's flattering assumption that we are as clever as he is.
He travelled rough and travelled alone. He explains at one point that he cannot marry because he is an "ah, orientalist." He shows much interest in, and sympathy with, the Moslem religion but I got the impression that. like his fellow orientalist, TE Lawrence, he likes Arabs best if they are poor and rural, a faintly patronizing attitude.

I was drawn to this book after realizing that, having done my share of low budget travel in Asia, I would comprehend more from a travel narrative about Arabia then the hyperbolie in the Press and the flood of books proclaiming insights into Islam. I was not disappointed, and in fact was pleasantly surprised at how well Mackintosh-Smith tells his story. His premise, to retrace the route of the famous 14th century Morroccan traveler Ibn Battutah, allows the book to easily offer up comparisons of life in the hey day of Islamic civilization versus our own modern day time of war. This is one of its strengths and delights. You can readily see that people in many ways have not changed much.

I found it refreshing to read of MacKintosh-Smith's many encounters with everyday devote Muslims as they visited the tombs of saints and in true hospitality took him under their care. I was also delighted to learn so much about the southern coast of Oman, a place that looks totally deserted on maps of the Arabian Peninsula, but which turns out to be home to (mostly) very friendly people. It reminded me in some ways of travelogues from rural towns and the midwestern United States where life is slower and people pay more attention to travelers. And like the midwest, instead of raving fundamentalist Muslim fanatics, time after time MacKintosh-Smith encounters educated, polite people who try to help him in his quest even if it seems a bit bookish and impractical to them. (Several people try to tell him, " That was 700 years ago, things are different today!")

The book is not perfect of course - it does have it's slow moments. These seem to come chiefly when MacKintosh-Smith gets caught up in describing his own state of mind rather than keeping to his formidable powers of describing the scene around him. There is a certain awkwardness when he tries to reveal some of his own more private encounters but then at the last minute drops it and leaves you hanging. And things can get slow when due to the ravages of time he can find no connection between where he is and what was there in Battutah's day. Lastly, the book does not cover all of Battutah's travels, just the first third. Oh well - small price to pay for what is overall a very pleasurable and informative read. Through MacKintosh-Smiths's eyes I have gained a sense of how an ordinary Muslim citizen in the Middle East lives. I look foward to reading more should MacKintosh-Smith continue the journey and publish another volume.

Those lucky enough to have read Tim Mackintosh-Smith (or "Ahmad Kandash," according to some of his native Arab neighbors) on his adopted land of Yemen (I wish the American press had kept the British subtitle "Travels in Dictionary Land") will find the same strengths in this account. Outside of, say, an Omani snack of dried shark and Scotch or a jeep bounce, the report from the hinterlands is driven more by insight than ignition. In the manner of many such travellers' tales from more leisurely pens and patient eyes, not much happens in the way of thrills; a subtler, refined retelling of IB's adventure through his own retracing gives a filtered, reflective sheen to the book.

I sense throughout an unease with his "masahi," or Christian status--with many he meets understandably amazed at his command of Arabic, Tim's constantly finding himself almost apologetic for his "infidel" status. I wonder if ensuing books (long life to the author so he can tell his journey's sequel--even if he's the same age as me--not that old!) will unfold not only the geographic and personal encounters he tells so well, but his own spiritual struggles. Foreshadowed perhaps in the transcendent dervish dance he witnesses.

Anyone who can gracefully cite the apropos Edward Lear allusion, the culinary reference (some of which escaped me due to my parochial palate), or learned medieval reference and still keep a travelogue dynamic and unassumingly witty while avoiding cliche or pandering is an accomplished scholar and a skilled word-smith. His range of knowledge enters at the right moment, and then recedes; he largely does not show off what he knows. Instead, he sprinkles it into the text to flavor the immediate image or conversation he's narrating to us. Not an easy feat.

But the world he enters can never be entirely plumbed by a Westerner; skilled as he may be, this author knows the power of the unresolved detail. I have no idea how he makes a living, what he does exactly in Yemen, the depth of his Christianity, or his sexual preferences! (Despite his Crimean guide Nina.) This rendering, skillfully, shifts the focus on and off the first-person narrator. Conjuring up the aura of differance, as the French critics opine, endures and makes his encounters memorable. For instance, I wonder if Habibah's "tambul promoting, er, cohabitation" [p. 238] worked? His "research assistant" never seems to have reported back, or else Tim proves once again how mystery trumps the mundane.