As Jonathan Raban’s Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth starts off, the author, while living in London, begins noticing immigrants in his neighborhood. Increasingly he sees more and more Arabs, particularly from the Gulf states of the Arabian Peninsula on the streets, opening up stores and restaurants, and moving into homes nearby. Not only are they more visible because of the traditional clothing they wear, but their insularity also sets them apart, speaking Arabic and little English. They also have seemingly endless amounts of cash. The Londoners are not happy about their presence, but are often too reserved to openly express their contempt so the Arabian people go about their business never knowing how derisive the English people are towards them. Jonathan Raban wanted to know more about these people so at the end of the 1970s, he goes on a prolonged sojourn around the outer edges of Arabia to learn whatever he can.
The travelogue does not get off to a strong start. Raban begins on the tiny island nation of Bahrain, a place like the other Gulf states where foreigners outnumber the native inhabitants. He barely has any contact with Bahraini people and spends most of his time socializing with expats, mostly contract workers and businessmen, who are there for the sake of making money, not out of appreciation for the culture. This is the least exciting chapter until he gets to Egypt.
Things pick up when Raban visits Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He speaks with more of the local Arabic population, but mostly limits the discourses to government officials, bureaucrats, and businessmen. Other people he speaks with are nationals from the poorer Middle Eastern countries and the Indian subcontinent, all who are there because they are ambitions and tired of living in impoverished countries where their professional skills are going to waste. He also meets a group of Qatari artists employed by the Ministry of Fine Arts to help recreate an imaginary traditional past through the medium of fake folk art. One playwright suffers from severe writer’s block because everything he puts down on paper gets rejected by the ministry cesnors, saying his works are potentially offensive to government officials. It is a good example of how authoritarianism kills creativity.
While skirting around the eastern edge of Arabia, the influence of the oil boom and the expanding economy is transforming the region. Skyscrapers are being built and foreigners are flooding these small emerging nations. The lifestyles, the technology, and the banking systems are changing. Saudis are everywhere with their oversize wads of cash and their indulgence in vices that are forbidden in their home country. Anomie and social dislocation are rampant as menial workers, local citizens, and Bedu tribes-people sink deeper into the pits of poverty while money gets funneled by the ton into the hands of the well-connected. Raban captures the atmosphere and scenery of desert kingdoms with rapidly expanding economies effectively. He arrives and writes at the right time to capture a transitional moment in the Middle East when traditions are fading away and hyper-modernity is rushing in.
And then we get a completely different picture of the Arabian Peninsula when he flies to Sana’a, Yemen, then travels on to Egypt and Jordan. The chapter on Yemen was the best in the book, partly because it is the only country I did not visit when traveling in the Gulf states, but also because he gets so up close and personal with the local people in ways he doesn’t in the previous three countries. While the oil industry is fast-tracking the center and eastern countries of Arabia into the modern age, Yemen is mired in poverty. Yemen is, however, experiencing an economic boom of its own since so many Yemenis go to the richer Gulf states as guest workers and send remittences back home to their families, something that is raising the standards of living for the poorest of all the Middle Eastern countries while not being sufficient to take the country to the next level. Sana’a is described as dirty, noisy, disorienting, and often surreal. The kyat-chewing locals are hospitable and rude in equal measures. Raban experiences some of the best times with impoverished but ambitious young men who go out of their way to explain their isolated country to him. Then he comes close to witnessing a public execution with a carnivalesque atmosphere, feeling confused as whole families eat snacks and take photos, cheering and singing as if they are at a circus while political revolutionaries are blown to pieces by machine gun fire in a public market. For interesting travel stories, this is one that can’t be beat, even if Raba does leave the scene befor the real action begins.
Raban’s visit to Egypt is a real letdown. He treats the city of Cairo as if it is little more than a big red light district full of clueless, airheaded western tourists. Spending almost no time with ordinary Egyptians, he prefers to frequent casinos, go-go bars, and brothels which are almost exclusively packed with men from Saudi Arabia. From what he sees, Raban concludes that Saudis aren’t much fun, even when they are spending all their money on poker, prostitutes, and liquor. It is an interesting insight, but considering how much Egypt has to offer for travelers, this passage falls far short of expectations. If I were Egyptian, I would not be happy with this representation of the country.
Jordan is a different matter as Raban is surprised to see how comfortably the people live despite their miniscule GDP. He hooks up with members at all socio-economic levels of society, encounters its semi-thriving but kitschy art scene, and is shocked when he visits a Palestinian refugee camp to see how comfortably the people are living there.
Jonathan Raban never visits Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or any other Arabic country in the Middle East, nor does he visit South Yemen which is dominated by a communist government at the time of writing.
While there are a lot of interesting passages in this book, and some great descriptions as well, alongside some often sarcastic and snarky humor, there are some parts of the book that just don’t work. He sometimes lapses into confused abstractions that make him sound like a drunk muttering to himself in a bar. The chapter on Bahrain was nearly pointless in terms of what Raban set out to accomplish. I will admit though that his impression of Manama was no different than my own in the dozen or so times I visited that country. I even visited the same British social club he writes about. It is still there on the outskirts of Manama to this day. The chapter on Egypt is embarrassing. It is hard to believe he thought it was fit to be included. The other chapters were well-done though and really capture a moment in history that is now past. I really do wish he had visited Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Arabia is an interesting, if erratic and uneven, portrait of the social atmosphere of the Gulf states while the oil boom is beginning to transform the whole region and the whole world along with it. Raban wrote this at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, before Iraq invaded Iran and Kuwait, before the Burj al-Arab and the Burj Khalifa were built in Dubai, before 9/11, before the Arab Spring, and before glitzy high-end shopping malls began competing with the mosques as centers of Arabian culture. It portrays a world that is no longer with us, but is not too distant as to be incomprehensible. As for the conversations Jonathan Raban had with the people he met, I can tell you after having lived in Saudi Arabia myself that if he were to revisit his journey at this current time, he would find that nothing much has changed in terms of what people would say to him. My biggest complaint about this book is that Jonathan Raban provides a superficial understanding of the Arabian Peninsula; if he had spent more time there, getting to know people on a more intimate level, his perceptions would be different, in some ways more positive and in other ways not so much.
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