The Out of Towner
On-the-ground updates from guest bloggers throughout the Middle East with accounts from intrepid eye-witnesses to events that shape the region.
CAIRO - During an informal interview with the editor of a Jerusalem newspaper some years ago, I was asked—half-jokingly—whether or not I was a terrorist.
The editor, who was curious as to why I’d traveled to so many Arab countries before arriving in Israel, was betraying a common prejudice which some westerners often hold against the Arabs.
Confronted by a daily media diet of death and destruction from the sand-covered wastelands of the Islamic world, it is all too easy for niggl...
Read more »
on :
Wednesday, 30 Mar, 2011
DAMASCUS - I was rudely awoken Tuesday morning by the reverberations of helicopter blades circling above my roofless Damascene house. Then came the chants of thousands. The streets were heaving with Bashar Al-Assad’s supporters while army choppers surveyed the scene from above.
The international media will begrudgingly broadcast these images, insisting that this show of public support is orchestrated whilst local news agencies continue to replay the footage long after the crowds have di...
Read more »
on :
Wednesday, 2 Mar, 2011
CAIRO - It reads like a roll-call of Marxist guerrilla groups.
The Egyptian Rebels; The Coalition of Egyptian Revolutionaries; The Council of the Trustees of the Revolution....
Read more »
on :
Monday, 21 Feb, 2011
DAMASCUS - I love Fridays in Damascus. The usual bedlam winds down to a gentle murmur. It’s the weekend in this part of the world, the Muslim day of rest; shop fronts are shu...
Read more »
on :
Friday, 18 Feb, 2011
The soldiers of Egypt’s army should make the most of being treated like rock stars by their people—it surely won’t last for long.
Walking down Qasr El-Aini Street toda...
Read more »
CAIRO - The shroud of smog blanketing the Nile’s west bank as I drove across it today told its own tale—a semblance of normality is returning to Cairo.
A journey from Do...
Read more »
on :
Thursday, 3 Feb, 2011
CAIRO - In the early hours of this morning, the road running alongside the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, central Cairo, felt more like Downtown Beirut circa 1978 than 21 Ce...
Read more »
on :
Wednesday, 2 Feb, 2011
CAIRO - As tourist guide Ekramy Mohammad yelled his condemnation of the anti-government protesters camped out in downtown Cairo, one of his friends listened intently with a lar...
Read more »
Follow Us!