Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Fixing what wasn't broke, and not keeping in mind the long-term implications of any decision. That's how Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City - Inside Iraq's Green Zone may be summed up. It's an indictment of America's bungling in Iraq and details the events in Baghdad between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the handing over of power by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the Iraqi interim government in 2004. To be specific, it's the story of what went on in the Green Zone, a sealed area bang in the middle of Baghdad around what used to be Saddam's seat of power, the Republican Palace.

The surge is currently on in Iraq, and while there are mixed opinions as to how it will all turn out, it sure looks like the country will see a redrawing of boundaries or 'partition' sometime in the future. In an excellent piece in theatlantic.com, Jeffrey Goldberg explores that and other possible futures of the middle-east. I'm personally not so sure if partitioning Iraq is a good idea. Haven't we all lived through the horrors of the consequences of partition, most of us vicariously? You may want to check out Christopher Hitchens' 2003 piece on the legacy of the British policy of partition and their intended and unintended consequences in Europe and Asia as well.

Here's a review that will tell you why Imperial Life... is such a cracking read. Still not convinced? Listen to the Guardian Unlimited podcast which had Chandrasekaran talking on, among other things, why he chose the title he chose.

My favourite Polish export (not the Pope)

Reader's block. You're just not able to settle into a book. You try one, discard it, pick up another, only to toss into that pile you call 'for later'. You begin to feel you'll never finish a book again. You blame yourself and become so irritable that one day your partner tells you to quit belly-aching, roll over and go to sleep. And then one day you bump into a book that brings back the magic of reading, and all is well again. As you may have guessed by now, it was so with me until I came by Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski.

I first came across Kapuscinski in The Soccer War, as the 4 1/2 readers of this blog already know. So I won't bother with a long introduction, to Kapuscinski, the writer and journalist. Suffice to say, Travels with Herodotus was his last book before he died earlier this year, a part-memoir and part-meditation.

Kapuscinksi begins by saying he was presented with a copy of Herodotus' The Histories just as he was headed for his first overseas assignment - to India. In fact, Herodotus remains a reassuring presence as the young Polish journalist embarks on his journeys with eagerness, naivete and the air of one who is blithely unworried about where his next meal will come from.

Reading through the book, one doesn't quite know who's the better teacher - Kapuscinski or Herodotus. But there's no need to compare. Both of them have valuable lessons for the journalist. Kapuscinksi, then in his 30s, writes of Herodotus,

I was quite consciously trying to learn the art of reportage and Herodotus struck me as a valuable teacher.

And he goes onto to tell you why the ancient Greek writer was a good reporter.

But to the extent that it is possible to do so - and, given the epoch, this speaks to a tremendous expenditure of effort and to great personal determination - he tries to check everything, to get to the sources, to establish the fact.

That should tell you not to google.

A little later in the book, Kapuscinski speaks of a moment of epiphany while in Algiers. A coup has taken place, but on the streets there's nothing to show for it,

...it was here in Algiers, several years after I had begun working as a reporter, that it slowly began to dawn on me that I had set myself on an erroneous path back then. Until that awakening I had been searching for spectacular imagery...it was the fallacy that one can interpret the world only by means of what it chooses to show us in the hours of its convulsions, when it is rocked by shots and explosion, engulfed in flames...

Lessons for journalists, lessons on writing, Travels with Herodotus also underlines some of the faultlines of the world we live in today, the struggle between militant Islam and the rest of the world for one. It is certainly a book to be read again & again. Let me quote Kapuscinski one final time,

One must read Herodotus's book - and every great book - repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

There are at least a couple of more books of his I'd like to read, Shah of Shahs and Imperium, among them. Who woulda thunk RK would one day replace Joseph Conrad as my favourite Polish writer?

Kapuscinski: a window to the world

It's probably happened to you before. You hear of someone famous for the very first time, and suddenly you begin to see his name cropping up in the oddest places - conversations, newspapers and TV - in the next few days.

I first came across this strange sounding fella Ryszard Kapuscinski, in The Granta Book of Reportage. The very first piece in the book, The Soccer War is by this Polish journalist. This short war between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969, reportedly sparked off by a football match defeat during the 1970 World Cup qualifiers, is described vividly and concisely by Kapuscinski. I was hooked at once.

A few days later I ran into him in A Mighty Heart (the brave life and death of my husband Daniel Pearl). In it, Daniel Pearl gifts Shah of Shahs by Kapuscinski to Mariane Pearl while he's courting her.

Now I see that Travels with Herodotus, his memoir is available in bookstores. The premise of the book is tantalizing - Kapuscinski's wanderings from an early age across the world as a journalist, segueing into thoughts on Herodotus, one of his heroes.

Thanks to a self-induced embargo on buying any more books till October-end, I won't be able to lay my hands on it. Any rich uncles out there?

P.S. Kapuscinski, the internet tells me, was a favourite for the Nobel prize for Literature a few times, but never received it. He died early this year and has a devoted following around the world. He wrote in Polish, but his crisp writing shines through even in translations.