Amazon.com Review
During the 1980s, Judith Caesar taught literature in SaudiArabia and Egypt. Her aptly titled book offers one woman's view ofseveral political powder kegs that didn't make front page news and ofthe clash between Western and Middle Eastern customs. An open-mindednature and curiosity about the place of women in cultures that seemwildly restrictive to many Westerners helps Caesar deconstructstereotypes on both sides of the border. The American television showDallas, she notes, now in perpetual rerun in many countries,has become a gold mine of misinformation on Western women. Likewise,our squeamishness about arranged marriage belies some of the insidestory shared by her students. One plans to land "a good temperman" by asking a suitor's sister to reveal his truetemperament. And if he doesn't have a sister? "Then don't marryhim," comes the swift reply. "He has never learned aboutwomen." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Crossing Two Borders
Throughout the twenty century, books about the Arab world have been widely written in the English academia, with a sense of respect and criticism. One must not forget that T.E. Lawrence introduced the Arab world to the West with his magnum opus The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1935). In 1980's, the works of Nawal El Saadawi was commonly known to the English audience with one of her famous titles, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World (1980). Some of more serious authors have also brought their study about the Arab world into public consciousness: Maxime Rodinson with his work The Arabs (1980), Albert Hourani with his magnificent work History of the Arab Peoples (1992), Halim Barakat with his book The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State (1993) or Philip K. Hitti with his short introduction of Arab world entitled The Arabs: A Short History (1996).
After September 11, books about the Arab world have flourished with a strong tendency toward criticism of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is perhaps the only country which, after the United States and Israel-Palestine, has gained much critical attention both from Arab and Western authors.
What makes Judith Caesar astonishing compared to those authors is her ability to tackle the issue of criticisms of Arab people by using primary resources and her self-criticism of Western society toward the Arab world. Her book traces her journey to the othernized world. On this journey, she carried the prejudices that have been constructed in her own society, but she came to realized that her picture and view of the Arab peoples are not completely true. As a result, she is finally capable of transforming herself to accept the differences between Arab and Western society. One must also not forget that Caesar published her book in 1997, four years before her husband Mamoun Fandy published Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (2001), a book about internal Saudi dissent.The period of 1980-1997 is the time when misunderstandings toward the Arab world were so wild. The work of Judith Caesar, although it is not the only book dealing with this issue, is significant in addressing the ignorance of American society toward the Arab world, and is obviously an important piece for those who will never visit the Arab countries.
Caesar began her book with her story of visiting the Arab world between 1980 and 1983. As a new visitor to Saudi Arabia, she came to the country with the common stereotypes produced in the West; that Arabs hated women; that they were narrow minded and irrationally violent. Before she came to Saudi, Caesar was told by several Americans who had been teaching in Saudi that Saudi women were not allowed to drive, and that a Saudi woman could be arrested for simply being in a car with a man not her husband. She was told that foreign women rumored to be having a love affair could be thrown out of the country by the morality police (muttawwa) with their passport stamped "prostitute." All this information made her fearful that she was about to begin a new life full of horror. For Caesar at this time, Saudi Arabia was the incarnation of everything horrible.
However, her stereotypes and prejudices did not block her from honest interactions with the people she met in Saudi. Caesar has a good personality and was willing to know others without erecting unnecessary boundaries. This is exactly the personal quality that made her closer to her new world.
I myself personally have my own prejudices toward both Arabs. I have bad images of Arab men, unless I know them personally, because the Arab men that I met were those who like to drink and go to a place where they could find a prostitute easily. They also took advantage of the language they speak and claimed that they were true Muslims. In the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia is the center in terms of Islamic faith, because Saudi Arabia is the country where the holiest places of Muslims are located. The pious Muslims, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, would work hard to gain money, so that they can go to Saudi Arabia, once time in their life, as Islam taught them. This religious fact, to an extent, has put the Arabs in country like Indonesia or Malaysia in an extraordinary class, as the `good' Muslims because they are Arabs and because the fact that the Prophet Muhammad and His early companions were Arabs. Unfortunately, some Arabs that I have met behave in contrast to what Islam taught us as Muslims. It is just natural, then, if I have such negative prejudice toward Arab men. I know that part of my ignorance is my conviction about the fact that all the Arab men I met were Muslims. Some Arabs, more or less, then, were responsible in building the negative images and my prejudices toward them.
This problem is far more complex, however, because the misunderstanding exists in every society. It seems that in every society there are institutions that reproduce hatred and prejudice towards others. Realizing this, Caesar discussed the role of political institutions in the Arab world. Although she seemed not really interested in political matters, she came up with some important information that has not been exposed by Western media. One of the unexposed peaces of information was the situation in Egypt after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in which thousands people ended up in jail.
Another topic that is very interesting in this book is the story of foreign workers in Saudi who came from Third World countries. According to Caesar, the Saudi government took advantage of these foreign workers because they can easily control the workers, and, at the same time they also can control their citizens. As we know, Arab Saudi, with the "blessed" oil, has become a rich country since the oil boom of 1970s. The foreign workers from the Third World came to Saudi to take the jobs that many Saudi people, even the lower class, would not be interested in. All job opportunities available in Saudi were good jobs for foreign workers who came from poor Third World countries. Saudi Arabia, besides its position as the center of religious sites for Muslim communities, was also the center of economics; millions of Third World people have built their lives from the salaries of their family or relatives who work in Saudi. However, the real situation of the foreign workers in Saudi was not as good as their family back home thought. The lack of laws to protect the rights of the workers made the violation of human rights become common in Saudi society. Caesar, as someone who used to live in a society where the issue of human rights considered a first degree of sensitive issue, was annoyed at this problem. Her sensibility became sharper whenever she encountered American expatriates who lived in Saudi and who treated their maid or servant as badly as the Saudi people did. The denial of days-off, refusal to pay a salary on time, and rejection of pay for additional work were some of the common violations of human rights that were unexposed by the media in Saudi.
The real condition of the foreign workers in Saudi haunted me because thousands of the workers were my country fellows, and most of them were women. Every time I heard that a maid was executed in Saudi, the only sense that came to my mind was the shared-feeling that the lady was the victim of the cruel system in Saudi. Perhaps the maid just needed to defend herself from someone who tried to assault her physically or sexually, or perhaps she just needed her basic right to take a rest and stop working for a day, or she needed her salary to be paid on time because her families back home were waiting. However, the worst thing in Saudi was very clear; foreign workers did not have right to defend their case once the judge decided the punishment.
In my view, this book is exciting because it contains two sides of the cultures of the Arabs, especially Saudi society. The first is the lives of the Arabs that is misunderstood by Western people: the wisdom of the people, the voice of the dissident within Saudi, and the positive values of some Saudi people. The second is about the unjust conditions in Saudi, the death of human rights for foreign workers, and the silence of Western governments, especially the U.S. government, to these facts in order to keep their oil contracts in Saudi. This last theme is a topic that is openly discussed, particularly after the September 11 tragedy, when many Americans became more aware to the fact that the U.S. government has a double standard; threaten and attack Iran and Iraq as the devils of democracy, but at the same time, hug Saudi Arabia and Israel and the best allies in the region, regardless of the fact that these countries treated people in their region unjustly.
Caesar clearly stands in two positions: between respecting the difference in values between Western and Arab society, and regretting the unjust conditions in Saudi Arabia. Caesar and her husband Mamoun Fandy have brought the alternative voice of Saudi society to the public: the issue that many journalists hesitate to deal with because of the risk of being put in jail, or betraying American foreign policy. It is no doubt that politics, once again, has become the barrier to bridging the two traditions, between the Arab world and the Western world.

More than just another travel essay
I just finished this book and I loved it.It was in with travel essay/travel narrative books, and as I liked to read about the Middle East I picked it up.I was pleasantly suprised that there was a bit more to it than just the usual I went here, did this, saw that, and aren't they odd. Caesar's book makes you think.There is an increased interest here in the US lately, (since 9/11.books are popping up all over) in how people in the Middle East live.Still despite this still most of the people I talk to unfortunately still have the sterotypical impressions from news media, of violent people with guns or of cowering oppressed women in black, etc, and everyone in the Middle East is the same.There is sooo much more too it than that and Caesar helps to show Saudis and Egyptians as real people, with real lives, personalities, intelligence, etc, caring about their families, their futures, the world around them and going about their daily lives.Its a great book.It also inspired me to read some of the books she mentions, such as Passage to India.

I do wish she had written a bit more about her Egyptian husband. She very much glosses over that part.They met, talked about books, and you next you know they are getting married.There is nothing about how it all worked out.Did his family have a problem with it? Did they live together somewhere, or did she live on the women's campus and him elswhere? It doesn't say.It kind of implies they were happy but thats about it.
I'd still give it 5 stars though.

Insightful, not the whole story
The author has wonderful insights not only into the lives of a handful of Mid-Easterners she got to know, but also into human nature and our problems in understading other cultures. She points out that the women behind those veils are not just submissive faceless people but just like us -- some highly educated and intelligent, some highly maternal, etc. I highly recommend the book. However, her insights into the Muslim world are based on getting to know a few people; it doesn't truly contain a deep grasp of the political and social issues, and I don't think she makes any claims that it does.This is just one book out of many that can help us understand Middle Eastern cultures.

I did find it disappointing that she shared so little into her relationship with the Middle Eastern man she married; if she wanted to help others understand crossing over cultural borders, that facet of her life, alone, may have been more invaluable than talking about the other people that she got to know on a much more superficial level.

Misleading
Dr. Caesar, an English major and American literature professor, purports to share her personal experiences in the Middle East. The problem is that throughout the book she continually makes sweeping statements with no factual back up. For example, she sticks in the statement "I wonder if there was something of this in America's antagonism toward the Middle East" in the middle of a story about touring Dendara. Apparently the author wants to be a political scientist without taking the time to do the research or study necessary for the conclusions she reaches. At the same time though she does share some personal experiences we virtually do not share at all in her courting and marriage to an Egyptian man. A very disappointing book that I would not bother reading.

Insightful, well written
Fascinating account of a woman's teaching stint in the Middle East - combining a travel memoir with some fascinating insights into American literary works.This is an outgrowth of her Middle Eastern students' provocative and fresh reactions to the literature that she was teaching them.Judith Caesar's deep empathy for the Middle East and its people (she is happily married to an Egyptian professor), as well as candid observations about her own cross-cultural forays, make this an outstanding and unusual book. ... Read more