A Westerner's view of the Arab world

You may think it quaint, but some people still receive Hallmark greeting cards wishing them well on their birthdays. Neil MacFarquhar did.

MacFarquhar, now the United Nations bureau chief at the New York Times, had spent 25 years in the Middle East, a region he knows well, whose language he speaks fluently and whose people he is avowedly fond of. He has now published a book, a distillation of his experiences in that part of the world, called The Media Relations Department of Hezbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday.

Don't be put off by the title. His approach may be lighthearted, but his book is not a lightweight. Rather, it's an astute, albeit empathetic, analysis of the malaise that afflicts Arab culture, politics and society. He knows his material well - material culled from his many encounters with everyday folk and jaded reformers, alienated intellectuals and unrepentant dissidents, human rights activists and government officials - and handles it with the requisite precision and subtlety.

The canvas that MacFarquhar paints is broad, for he writes about the daily lives of Arabs, the songs they sing, the periodicals they read, the TV shows they watch, the food they cook, the faith they embrace - and the injustices they endure. In that regard, he brings into focus the relationship in the Arab countries between ruler and ruled, the encapsulation of political power in the hands of an elite few (often not answerable to the many), the sad state of the journalistic enterprise (in most states reduced by censorship to a jargon of stifled obscurity), the suppressed voice of an intelligentsia whose intellectual effusions now lack a grammar of literate meaning - and the rest of it. All of which, he asserts not so implausibly, accounts for why Arabs have failed all these years to meet the challenges of modernity.

But make no mistake about it, throughout his narrative, MacFarquhar maintains an abundant, unmistakable affection for the region, its people and its popular culture.

Clearly, this book, a uniquely personalised journey through Arab lands by a veteran American reporter, is written for American readers, but it is no less relevant to Arab readers - of a reformist and liberal bent - who have sought but despaired all these decades at bringing word and world in their society into accord. And who, pray tell, will argue against the notion that our image of the world, our ability to conduct the business of the mind, as it were, derives from the free, communicative grasp of the word? Muffle it, you muffle progress.

MacFarquhar does not have the patience here, given the type of book he set out to write, to engage his readers in obtuse debate about the Arab world's failure, since independence well over half a century ago, to deal, say, with its problems of poverty and discrimination, press censorship and social injustice, political repression and women's disenfranchisement. He relies instead, in the manner of a deft story-teller, on his many encounters with Arabs from different walks of life, all the way from Syria to Morocco, Lebanon to Egypt, for his revealing, and at times moving, narrative.

Unlike other, less empathetic writers, he highlights the Arab people's generosity and humanity, eschewing Western stereotypes of them as violent and absolutist. Thus he looks for them - their soul, their cultural ethos - for example, in the timeless lyrics of Fayrouz, or, on a more pedestrian level, in the shared banter between the Kuwaiti TV talk show host, Fawziya Dorai, and her female viewers, to whom she dispenses advice on marriage, sex, matrimonial discord and existential ennui.

Improbable? Not in the least. It all fits in well with MacFarquhar's pithy and jovial style. Still, though pithy and jovial, the book in the end makes for a depressing read about Arabs in modern times, a people who, as he writes, were just unfortunate to find themselves "on the wrong side of history the past 100 years". For surely how could an Arab, especially an Arab who had been in the vanguard of the reform movement since his teens, not feel depressed at the thought that after all these years of activism, to this day, in his part of the world, political reform remains stymied, social justice impeded, free discourse restricted, women's rights denied, and language made to perform tasks of ever increasing tawdriness in a society where citizens are prevented from openly speaking their minds, or commentators who have, through some momentary failure of caution, taken an 'incorrect' position are incarcerated.

Yes, MacFarquhar asserts repeatedly in this wonderfully nuanced and highly readable book (a one afternoon slog at 387 pages), Arabs are not, as the Western stereotype of them has it, megalomaniacal, ignorant and backward. But, wait, he also asserts that they don't happen to be media-savvy either. The title of his book is taken from a birthday card sent to him by the determined, but not so sophisticated, Hezbollah movement when he was filing from Beirut.

It began: "Dear Neil, on your birthday, I wish all the joy your heart can hold, all the smiles a day can bring, all the blessings life will unfold... Happy birthday, from Haidar Dikmak, Media Relations".

Well, it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.