Book Review: Arab author shares his anecdotes living in the United Kingdom
Arab Author and newspaper editor Faisal J. Abbas shares his experience of life in Great Britain, a nation that has had so much influence over the modern evolution of the Arab World, in his new book Anecdotes of an Arab Anglophile
By Ray Hanania
I never knew how complex life in England could be until I read the fascinating travels that Faisal J. Abbas documents of his 20 year love affair with the island nation and world empire, in his new book “Anecdotes of an Arab Anglophile.”
Abbas, Editor-in-Chief of the Arabian Gulf’s leading English language newspaper Arab News, has opened the looking glass in what he describes as an Alice in Wonderland experience.
“Anecdotes of an Arab Anglophile” is both entertaining and educational ,not just for Arabs but also for this American, the red-headed step-child of Britannia’s most failed empire expansion (America).
As an American looking back at our long-ago violent divorce from the United Kingdom in 1776, I’ve picked up on a few words, sights and sounds. “Brilliant” is one of the most common British words. Blimey, a British word of excitement or annoyance, depending on the circumstances. And, of course, the hilarious exploits of the late British slapstick comedian Benny Hill.
Abbas has opened a new insight for me by sharing the anecdotes of life’s experience in the United Kingdom that takes the reader far deeper and with some wry humor.
The most impressionable aspect of the book is the observation in which Abbas dedicates his book to several who helped, and, “to anyone who’s had to constantly live with a redline under their name on Microsoft Word.”
Wow. Did that sentence hit home.
Until then, my two most famous memorized sayings were from Louis Pasteur’s famous observation, “Chance favors the prepared mind,” which has been the foundation of my life. And the more personal “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living” by Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Abbas is up there in my mind with some really important people today.
The book explores his two-decade long transformation from a major but respectful “Anglophobe” to an erudite “Anglophile,” born in the 1980s from a culture “mesmerized by Western civilizations.”
No nation better symbolizes the Westernization processes of the world than Great Britain, which, as Abbas points out, has many different names, cultures, languages and societal demeanors.
It comes in many names. The United Kingdom. Britain. Great Britain. Britannia. And, England. Through his life in London, the “City of Fog” (Madinat al-Dhabbab) as the Arab World often refers to it, Abbas explains that living there helped explain the differences between all of those names that refer to this little Island with the big story to tell.
Great Britain represents England, Scotland and Wales, while Little Britain is the old name for Ireland. Great Britain is also the “common name” for another name, The United Kingdom, which includes Northern Ireland, and has nothing to do with arrogance, that one might deduce.
It gets even more intricate and as Abbas concedes, “It’s complicated.”
The British have an obsession with privacy, and yet they have CCTV cameras everywhere. And, they have an obsession with what Americans would term as gambling, or betting.
Abbas offers some insight into British Democracy, a nation that gave birth to the 13th century Magna Carta, a royal charter which declared to the world that the King (or queen) and his (her) government were subject to laws.
The Brits don’t suppress facts in their Democracy. They simply have made a decision not to publish them.
England’s haze has a historical context evolving through the nation’s industrialization, a creation of the extensive use of coal released into the air through chimneys — which brings back memories of British life in the movie Mary Poppins. That smoke blends with London’s natural fog and creates “smog.”
While politics and international foreign relations can be controversial, explaining the British obsession to avoid confrontation, many Brits focus instead on the more “safe” discussion of “the weather.” It’s a national obsession, Abbas observes.
When I think of England, I think of the Bogs, the English wetlands and accumulation of peat (deposits of dead plant materials), a word I learned from watching the British-set horror film, “An American Werewolf in London.” “Stay away from the bogs” a pub owner in the country warns the two American characters who travel the countryside.
These are just a few on the anecdotes that Abbas documents in his 189-page book, written in the spirit of the 5th Century Greek historian Herodotus, or maybe more like a modern-day Ibn Khaldun, the Arab World sociologist of the Middle Ages.
Either way, the book escorts you through a compelling blueprint of the fundamentals of being British. I know you will enjoy all of the anecdotes he shares in this compelling read.
Anecdotes of an Arab Anglophile
Faisal J. Abbas
189 Pages
Nomad Publishing
June 2024
English
ISBN 978-1-917045-03-2
Available from many bookstores and online from Amazon.com
Amazon description:
Acclaimed journalist, Faisal J. Abbas, shares a witty and urbane insight into what it is like being an Arab in London – with entertaining anecdotes covering sex, politics, and even religion. In this ode to the nation’s capital, Abbas tells the story of a personal journey from Anglophobe to Anglophile.
Throughout a skillfully written voyage of discovery, we learn of the “Great Expectations” of a new immigrant. We understand the importance of avoiding “Les Misérables”, of coexisting with the “God Delusion’… and how the British went from the romance of “Romeo and Juliet” to becoming the villains of choice for Hollywood casting directors.
It is a book that will leave you equally amused – and better informed – about both British and Arab cultures.
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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