Continuum £14.99 pp145

“The level of noise about the Arabs,” Mark Allen tells us at the start of his intriguing book, “has been steadily rising.” As the crisis in Lebanon deepens and the turmoil in Iraq is no closer to a solution, one can only agree. It is for this reason that laymen turn to the expert for guidance. Allen is much better qualified than most to supply it: most of his 30-odd years in what he euphemistically describes as the “Foreign Service” were spent in the Arab Middle East: Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf states. He is also the author of a book on Arab falconry.

His aim is not to criticise (he implies that he could have written a “slamming” book if he had wanted) but to understand. He wishes to capture what ornithologists call the “jizz” of a bird, ie its “overall and essential impression”. Yet at the same time, he is careful to differentiate: it is striking that his essay is entitled Arabs, not a faux-authoritative The Arabs, and he speaks throughout of “some Arabs”.

At the heart of this book is a series of paradoxes. On the one hand, Arabs stress the importance of “blood”, that is of patrilinear descent; on the other, they celebrate the universality of the religious community of Islam. Many Arabs shut themselves off in houses that resemble mini-fortresses, yet Allen stresses that they are fundamentally hospitable and gregarious. Indeed, he is “unable to recall finding an Arab all alone”. Perhaps that is why they have so little time to read books: the author tells us that the first printing press in the Arab world was opened in Cairo in 1828, and although this is beginning to change, relatively few new books are published and read in the Middle East outside the democracies. All this is communicated in a highly distinctive style, elliptical, anecdotal, compassionate, subtle and sometimes fey, which makes for compelling reading.

Allen works his way relentlessly to the core of the problem: politics and the question of power. Here he notes bleakly that of the 20-odd members of the Arab League, eight are ruled by dynasties and eight by revolutionary or military governments of one sort or another; only three, Iraq, Palestine and the Lebanon, can be described as democracies. The remainder includes the Comoros Islands, Somalia, Eritrea and Mauritania, the classification of which he wisely does not attempt. In this context, he recounts a telling moment in 1989, when news of the fall of Ceausescu reached a session of the “Euro-Arab dialogue”. After the Europeans had finished celebrating, they noticed that Arab countenances were “a picture of confusion and apprehension”. If we want to know why the fall of Saddam Hussein was received so conflictedly in the Arab world, we need look no further than the fact that the vast majority of Arabs live under some form of political dictatorship. This, of course, is the greatest paradox of all. As Allen tells us, Arabs have an acute sense of their own personality, individuality and dignity. To note this is one thing, to change it, quite another. Allen rather pulls his punches here, observing simply with understatement that the question of whether western democracy “is actually well suited to the region” is still open.

This is a short book on a vast subject. No doubt more could have been said about Christian Arabs and other minorities. Some might wish for greater detail on the urbanised public sphere that is now crystallising around al-Jazeera and other media. One also wonders whether the importance of the warrior cult would have repaid greater investigation. To the amateur psychologist, it sometimes seems that the repeated military defeats, some of them sustained long before Israel had American backing, drive an Arab conspiracy culture that seeks to blame the outsider instead of domestic failings. The recent rhetorical flourishes of Hezbollah’s Sheikh Nasrallah may be a case in point. If the Arabs had a Churchill, he would tell them that wars are not won by evacuations. But perhaps, as Allen would say, that is simply to make one point and miss another.

Insofar as the author sees a ray of hope, it lies in Arab women. Their lot is by all accounts a hard one: religiously ordained inferiority, public invisibility and sometimes state-tolerated “honour-killings” are part of life in many areas. On the other hand, he points out, women are more skilful at adapting to modernity. When Allen’s wife asked some women if heaven held out any equivalent for the virgins promised to the men, she received an unforgettable answer. “My dear,” came the response, “in my heaven, there will be no men at all.”

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