Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years as a journalist in Lebanon and Israel taught Thomas L. Friedman two important lessons. "First, when it comes to discussing the Middle East, people go temporarily insane, so if you are planning to talk to an audience of more than two, you'd better have mastered the subject. Second, a Jew who wants to make a career working in or studying about the Middle East will always be a lonely man: he will never be fully accepted or trusted by the Arabs, and he will never be fully accepted or trusted by the Jews...
That last clause will raise some eyebrows and hackles, but Friedman, who has mastered his subject, fully documents its accuracy. During most of the 1980s he covered the Middle East for the New York Times, initially as bureau chief in Beirut and then in the same post in Jerusalem. In Lebanon, Friedman was "the only full-time American Jewish reporter." In Israel he was not. Solitude had its comforts, he found. "People assumed that if you were in Beirut you couldn't possibly be Jewish," he writes. "After all, what Jew in his right mind would come to Beirut...
Among its many virtues, From Beirut to Jerusalem shows why messengers from the Middle East who try to remain impartial will find many factions eager to throttle them. The place lives and dies on faith and mythology; a mere fact is useless, possibly dangerous, until it has been modified to fit within a dogma. Most of the region's bloodiest episodes during the '80s, the author argues, arose from failures to recognize complex realities...
Both my assumptions proved correct--Pennypacker is just east of the Union, which is most definitely hell in my book. And following my visit to the fishbowl I ending up worshipping its close relative--the toilet bowl. The bathroom between Holworthy 5 and 6 was the first of many dear friends I would make that year...
...elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. Both these claims should be taken with a grain of salt. First, Mr. Bhutto refused to recognize the outcome of the Pakistan General Elections held in 1970. He persuaded the then General of Pakistan not to transfer power to the Awami League Party of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which had clearly won the elections. This led to a genocide in which three million innocent East Pakistanis were massacred and the nation of Bangladesh was born. (In fact, some of Ms. Bhutto's close friends, for example, the Galbraiths, recall that she was, during her Radcliffe...