In the five years that Judith Caesar taught literature in Saudi Arabia and Egypt during the 1980s, key events took place that changed the face of Middle Eastern politics. Seen through the eyes of many Westerners, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the Intifada were incidents reflective of a seemingly volatile and aggressive culture. But Caesar saw these events from another perspective. Part memoir and part travelogue, Crossing Borders conveys simply and eloquently the voices of the people and the cultures Caesar came to know during her time in the Arab world. Some of her writings in this book have first appeared in publications such as the Christian Science Monitor.
In the tradition of the best writings on foreign places, Caesar's narrative is both an inward as well as an outward journey of discovery. In addition to the political reverberations taking place around her, she writes of the misconceptions generated by both the Saudi and the American press. In "All the News That's Fit to Print", Caesar notes wildly disparate interpretations of news stories when they are translated from one language to another. Caesar also demonstrates an openness in discovering the meaning inherent in the simplest daily tasks. She focuses on what is politically significant in what people do every day, such as drinking tea, shopping, and teaching.
Crossing Borders will appeal to people interested in a non-dogmatic description of the Middle East, and to those who love good travel writing.
Industry Reviews
A fiction writer who taught in Saudi Arabia and Egypt for five years in the 1980s recounts her experiences with balance, if not literary excitement. While Caesar notes relevant international events (e.g., the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the American bombing of Libya) and her romance with and marriage to an Egyptian colleague, she devotes her chapters to delineating characteristics of the cultures in which she lived. Topics range from intricacies of women's dress to Egyptian tribal beliefs about marriage to faulty Western press coverage of the Middle East to the accepted mistreatment of foreign-born housemaids. Throughout, Caesar successfully interweaves her students' comments on the Western books she teaches to shed light on both the Middle East and Western assumptions. Most effective are her account of the teaching of a Passage to India, which leads to class discussions of the moral blind spots fostered by political power ("shame societies and shameless societies," a student says), and Caesar's later ruminations on the US victory in Iraq and the World Trade Center bombing trial. In nearly every chapter Caesar observes, raises questions, and recedes as a character. This combination, plus the many incompletely developed supporting characters, results in a low-key, occasionally uninvolving tale, lacking the self-scrutiny of fine memoirs, But her persistence in examining and questioning Western and Middle Eastern cultures, and her believable embrace of some of the latter's elements and people, are what remain in mind when the book is done. She takes readers to what she calls "a different world" and helps them better understand and appreciate it - to see Cairo, for example, as she does, "evolving naturally out of itself for thousands of years, influenced by other cultures without becoming an artificial imitation of them." Parts of this volume have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere. A warm, modest work that makes compassion seem simple. (Kirkus Reviews)
