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BOOK REV I EWS terior of Qasim’s mind: the obsession with order prompted by a maniacal fear of uncertainties, the ability to sniff out an opponent’s weaknesses, as well as, perhaps surprisingly, the existential hollowness that lurks in the corners of his mind: “My God, I feel like such an invalid even though I am in the best of health. Someone inside me is screaming, but I can’t locate the source of the scream.” Unlikely words for a torturer one might think, but this is part of the joke. Like The Last of the Angels and Cell Block Five, The Traveler and The Innkeeper has a dark comedic undertone that accumulates to the point where it hovers on a cloud of farce before descending into utter defeat – but this, of course, is the allegorical point: Qasim’s defeat is also al-Azzawi’s, and Iraq’s, and ours. André Naffis-Sahely reviews Disordered World by Amin Maalouf Translated from the French by George Miller Bloomsbury, September 2011 288pp, £18.99, ISBN: 9781408815984 Urgent Emissary Amin Maalouf’s latest book, Disordered World, has been a long time coming: twenty-six years in fact, its earliest seeds having been sown in the concluding pages of his now canonical The Crusades through Arab Eyes (1983). In that factual – but beautifully lyrical – narrative of the European invasions of Levant in the 11th and 12th centuries, Maalouf had managed the task of allowing Occidental and Oriental readers alike to visualise how that aggression had since determined nearly all exchanges between the two worlds – and how it was “deeply felt by Arabs, even today, as an act of rape”.Yet as he neared the end of his epilogue, Maalouf was evidently aware he would probably be returning to this subject before too long. However, I personally doubt that Maalouf – or anyone else for that matter – would have imagined that by the time the FrancoLebanese author returned to pick up this thread, the Middle East would have once again been subjected to what in numerous quarters 202 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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BOOK REV I EWS has been described as yet another crusade, one that has claimed an ever increasing number of lives ever since.What is perhaps more distressing is that the questions Maalouf raises, as well as the “scarcely altered terms” which he defines, are still far removed from anything approaching a satisfactory answer, which explains why Maalouf begins his preface of Disordered World with “We have embarked on a new century without a compass”. Amin Maalouf This confusion is made evident by the number of topics Maalouf attempts to tackle in what is essentially too short a book. Over the course of three, vaguely titled chapters – “Hollow Victories”, “Lost Legitimacy” and “Imaginary Certainties” – the reader is brought to bear with no less than: the end of the ColdWar, the rise of violent political Islamism, the failure of the Left, “the reduction of the West’s share of the global economy”, the interventionist militarism of the past twenty years, the identity crisis of immigrant communities in Europe, the organizational differences between the Catholic Church and the Muslim clergy, global warming and a host of other ancillary subjects. It is not that this kind of breadth is undesirable – quite the contrary – but that Disordered World attempts the unlikely fusion of narrative, reflection (and innumerable sidebars) without the overarching structure that such themes inevitably require, and which was one of the greatest strengths of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. And though DisorderedWorld, like every other book Maalouf has written, is eminently readable and fluent, the “compass” that Maalouf diagnoses as missing, is still nowhere to be seen by the end of it. After all, one can’t help but be disappointed by the cursory glances BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 203

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BOOK REV I EWS

terior of Qasim’s mind: the obsession with order prompted by a maniacal fear of uncertainties, the ability to sniff out an opponent’s weaknesses, as well as, perhaps surprisingly, the existential hollowness that lurks in the corners of his mind: “My God, I feel like such an invalid even though I am in the best of health. Someone inside me is screaming, but I can’t locate the source of the scream.” Unlikely words for a torturer one might think, but this is part of the joke. Like The Last of the Angels and Cell Block Five, The Traveler and The Innkeeper has a dark comedic undertone that accumulates to the point where it hovers on a cloud of farce before descending into utter defeat – but this, of course, is the allegorical point: Qasim’s defeat is also al-Azzawi’s, and Iraq’s, and ours.

André Naffis-Sahely reviews Disordered World by Amin Maalouf Translated from the French by George Miller Bloomsbury, September 2011 288pp, £18.99, ISBN: 9781408815984

Urgent Emissary

Amin Maalouf’s latest book, Disordered World, has been a long time coming: twenty-six years in fact, its earliest seeds having been sown in the concluding pages of his now canonical The Crusades through Arab Eyes (1983). In that factual – but beautifully lyrical – narrative of the European invasions of Levant in the 11th and 12th centuries, Maalouf had managed the task of allowing Occidental and Oriental readers alike to visualise how that aggression had since determined nearly all exchanges between the two worlds – and how it was “deeply felt by Arabs, even today, as an act of rape”.Yet as he neared the end of his epilogue, Maalouf was evidently aware he would probably be returning to this subject before too long. However, I personally doubt that Maalouf – or anyone else for that matter – would have imagined that by the time the FrancoLebanese author returned to pick up this thread, the Middle East would have once again been subjected to what in numerous quarters

202 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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