On March 31 New America Foundation in coordination with the Middle East Task Force and Foreign Policy Magazine welcomed Hugh Pope who has recently released his new book, Dining with al-Qaeda, a memoir of over three decades living and working in the Middle East.
Pope, born in England and a correspondent first for United Press International and finishing with the Wall Street Journal in 2005 and now based out of Istanbul with the International Crisis Group brings to us a memoir of what it was like to be a war correspondent who at the same time was anti-war and a journalist who sought to convey impossible realities to American readers about events in the Middle East.
An open and light-hearted conversation was had between Pope and Susan Glasser, Executive Editor of Foreign Policy Magazine over the experiences Pope has collected since first traveling to Syria in the 1980’s to study abroad. When he received his first big break with UPI and eventually Reuters, he moved to Beirut and covered everything from the Lebanese Civil War to the Iran/Iraq War. But Pope goes beyond the wars he covered to show a very frank, journalistic conversation which has outgrown the conventions of print journalism and goes beyond the perspective we as Americans have become so comfortable with by deciphering its subtleties to audiences across the world.
Hugh describes his book by offering the following:
Above all this is a book of stories. From unexpected hiccups with my Egyptian girlfriend to reeling from explosions in the Iran-Iraq War to enduring 10 weeks trapped in a forgotten, besieged and famine-struck Sudanese town. Rather than trying to fit every idea in any single political or economic scheme, the artificial virtual framework the traditional news reporting uses to explain events, I have allowed myself to go with the flow of the truer and more interesting confusion of everywhere life.
Following some commentary about the ongoing issues affecting this region of the world, the room was opened up to questions and remarks over the book followed by a book signing.
