Book Reviews 

America in an Arab Mirror: Images of 
America in Arabic Travel Literature-

An Anthology, 1895-1995 

107 

Kamal Abdel-Malek (editor), New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000, 152 pp. 

How do Arab travelers view the US? Much has been written about how western 
travelers and scholars have seen and described the Orient, thereby not only 
creating an image but also transforming the reality of it. Looking at this antholo­
gy one is reminded of Said's book Orienta/ism and inspired to ask whether a 
similar process takes place in reverse. Not in terms of change but certainly in 
creating an image of the unfamiliar as the other simultaneously admired and 
rejected. 

Kamal Abdel-Malek has collected and edited texts of twenty-seven Arab visitors 
to the United States. Some came as students, others as accomplished scholars or 
curious visitors. Each text is an excerpt of a longer text, usually a book, and all 
books were originally published in Arabic and have not been translated into 
English before. Also, as Abdel-Malek points out in his preface, the collection 
represents most of the travel literature he was able to locate in Arabic and is 
completed by a list of all Arabic sources. Thus, this collection allows the reader 
access to a genre of Arabic literature otherwise not available. 

The travel accounts are organized in five sections and chronologically by year of 
publication within each section. 

The ftrst section is titled America in the Eyes of a Nineteenth-Century Amb and 
contains one account of an Arab traveler to the US published in I 895. The author 
presents the reader with a comparison of what Arabs and Americans find 
important and how these preferences are diametrically opposed in most cases. 

In the second section Abdel-Malek has gathered a variety of accounts under the 
title The Making of an Image: America as the Unchanged Other, Ame1ica as the 
Seductive Female. The most interesting piece of this section is probably that of 
Sayyid Qutb, who studied in the US between 1948 and 1950 and published his 
account under the title The America I have seen. Much of what he noted about the 
US ln the first half of the 20th century, in my opinion, still holds true today. Qutb 
concludes: "All that requires mind power and muscle are where American genius 
shines, and all that requires spirit and emotion are where American naivete and 
primitiveness become apparent .... All this does not mean that Americans are a 
nation devoid of virtue, or else, what would have enabled them to live? Rather, it 
means that America's virtues are the virtues of production and organization, and 
not those of human and social morals." (p. 26f.) 



108 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 18.1 

T h e  other accounts of this second section reflect on the temptation posed to the 
male traveler by American women, their seductiveness and loose morals, as 
perceived by these Arab men. In some of the pieces adventures are offered to the 
men, but answered with better moral virtue and ultimately rejected. It seem as if 
nothing has changed between 195 1 ,  when sayyid Qutb wrote about this aspect of 
American lie, and 1991, when the latest of these accounts was published. 

T h e  third section, under the title America: The Dnm and the R d i &  The 
h e r i m  as an f i m p l e  to h u l a t e ,  gathers writers who between 1924 and 1988 
wrote about their journey to the us, some of whom stayed longer to study and 
work. Here one finds diary-type essays, reflections on the glorious sides of 
America, such as technological progress and development, a sense of order 
and system in everything and individual freedom. As the title of the section 
suggests, these accounts alternate between praise and rejection, fascination and 
disappointment. It is at times painful to read about the self-hatred of some of the 
authors, or the rejection of their own culture, based on their admiration 
for American civilization. 

The fourth section, America in the Eyes o f h b  Women Tmvelen, offers a unique 
insight into the experiences of Arab women traveling to the us. Their accounts 
are special because they reflect upon the observation of details of American life 
from a different perspective. Interestingly enough, unlike the men, women seem 
not to be subjected to the temptation experience. Their accounts are at times 
really witty and do not show a similar seli-rejection, but rather a healthy pride in 
being Arab. 

The fifth and last section offers Satkical Uews of America. These pieces reflect 
at best the ability of Arab writers to express criticism in a more indirect and 
humorous way. The last of these texts was in fact written by the editor of the 
anthology himself. 

Each text is prefaced by information about the author, his national and 
professional background, and introduces the book the piece is taken from. In 
acknowledgement of the importance of visual impression, this introduction also 
contains a description of the book’s cover. It would be interesting to study this 
creation of visual images of America in Arab literature further. 

An American reader of the book may find many things offending, others very 
entertaining. In any case it will help him realize how it must feel to non-western- 
ers to be studied and described in such ways, as western social science has done for 
the longest time. The reviewer (herself European) could not help but admit the 
amusement she felt while reading these accounts, sometimes because the 
observations are so similar to her own ones as a visitor to the us, at other times 
because as a traveler to the Middle East she could see these travel accounts framed 
by aspects of Middle Eastern or Arab-Islamic civilization. 

, 



Book Reviews 109 

h, a whole the anthology is an insightful collection of Arabic texts of this genre 
and provides a fascinating insight into Arab-American relations from the Arab 
perspective. It is striking to note that twenty-one of the twenty-seven texts are 
written by Egyptian travelers. It is not clear if Egyptians travel more than other 
Arabs, or write more about traveling, or if these texts were just more readily 
available to the editor. Also, it should be noted that a number of the writers are 
familiar, as they are well-known men of letters or scholars. Names such as Sayyid 
Qutb, Yusuf Idris, M M u d  Taymur, Philip K.Hitti and Hisham Sharabi are 
examples. 

Some of the translations (done by Abdel-Malek and a group of his students) are 
better to read than others. Sometimes one wonders why the editor decided to 
present very short pieces while others are lengthy excerpts from the original books. 
The introductions to the texts list other topics covered by the particular book and 
thus create curiosity, but also the feeling of being left with just an aspect of the 
picture. This might be a good s t a r t  to make more of these books accessible to 
English-speaking readers. 

The index is a helpful tool if one is looking for reflections on a particular topic 
regarding the American image in the Arab mirrors presented here. 

The reviewer would have suggested providing an longer introduction, 
discussing some of the issues touched upon in the collection of travel accounts. 
Abdel-Malek could have offered more insight into his motifs for compiling such 
an anthology and his own views on the question he poses in his preface: 
"...whether Arab writing on America could be regarded as a case of Occidentalism, 
a counter-Orientalism of sorts." (p. ix) He leaves it to the reader to decide after 
reading this anthology. 

The book can be recommended to scholars interested in questions of mutual 
images of Orient and Occident, Arabic contemporary literature and 
Arab-American encounters. For others it is an entertaining outlook on how 
others see America. It can help Americans to temporarily look at themselves from 
an outsider's perspective. Those who are from outside of the US will find many of 
their own observations and experiences in this book. 

Juliane Hammer 
University of Humboldt 

Berlin, Germany