Where the Political Is Personal
A Little Too Close to God
The Thrills and Panic of a Life in Israel.
By David Horovitz.
311 pp. New York:
Alfred A Knopf. $26.
When I first picked up David Horovitz's "A Little Too Close to God," my first thought was, "Dayenu" (loose translation for those reading the English-only Haggadah: "Enough already"). It is a well-known fact that the People of the Book are in reality the People of the Book Proposal, and so the world has been overly blessed by books that make the following two observations: (1) Israel is filled with Jews! And (2) They're all nuts!
But despite the title, Horovitz gives us an entertaining (if occasionally exasperating and disorganized) memoir of his life as an English immigrant in Israel. What makes "A Little Too Close to God" particularly interesting, however, is the jeremiad embedded in the narrative.
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Inside Jihad U.: The Education of a Holy Warrior
About two hours east of the Khyber Pass, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, alongside the Grand Trunk Road, sits a school called the Haqqania madrasa. A madrasa is a Muslim religious seminary, and Haqqania is one of the bigger madrasas in Pakistan: its mosques and classrooms and dormitories are spread over eight weed-covered acres, and the school currently enrolls more than 2,800 students. Tuition, room and board are free; the students are, in the main, drawn from the dire poor, and the madrasa raises its funds from wealthy Pakistanis, as well as from devout, and politically minded, Muslims in the countries of the Persian Gulf.
The students range in age from 8 and 9 to 30, sometimes to 35. The youngest boys spend much of their days seated cross-legged on the floors of airless classrooms, memorizing the Koran. This is a process that takes between six months and three years, and it is made even more difficult than it sounds by the fact that the Koran they study is in the original Arabic. These boys tend to know only Pashto, the language of the Pathan ethnic group that dominates this region of Pakistan, as well as much of nearby Afghanistan. In a typical class, the teachers sit on the floor with the boys, reading to them in Arabic, and the boys repeat what the teachers say. This can go on between four and eight hours each day.
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Lagos Diarist: Fixed
Midway through bellview Airlines Flight 204 from Abuja to Lagos, Nigeria--shortly after a delightful in-flight lunch of warm fish-paste sandwiches--our pilot made the following announcement: "Now is speaking Captain Popovich. Weather outside plane is nice. Weather in Lagos also nice. Soon we land Murtala Muhammed Airport." Captain Popovich was a Serb, and a Serb of few words. He was also, I would soon see, a Serb with bloodshot eyes, a three-day growth of beard, and a shirt held together by an inch of thread and a gallon of sweat. But neither his appearance nor his taciturnity could dampen my excitement as we approached what is possibly the worst airport in the world.
Millions of Americans who have never left the United States are familiar with Murtala Muhammed: until recently, the FAA required U.S. airports to post notices at all security checkpoints warning travelers that the airport was extremely unsafe. And, for a long time, it was: corruption was said to be universal--everyone from customs officers to desk agents was looking for shakedowns, and passengers risked being robbed outside, or even inside, the terminal.
Popovich brought us in low--disconcertingly low--over Lagos and wrestled his DC-9 to the ground. This was a moment of great joy, because our plane was by all appearances the oldest DC-9 in the world and, paradoxically, a virgin to mechanical inspection.
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Epidemic Proportions
Q: Several pharmaceutical companies have recently decided to slash the price of antiretroviral drugs for developing countries, most notably Africa. But even with the price cut, a year's supply of drugs still would cost about $1,000--more money than most Africans earn in a year. So is there less to this than meets the eye?
It is true that most Africans with H.I.V. won't have access to the drugs. But not everybody is living below the poverty line. People working in the private sector often have insurance. This is going to benefit tens of thousands of people.
But for the vast majority of Africans, this is only symbolic gesture.
Look, we aren't naive. Ninety to 95 percent of Africans who carry the virus don't even know they are infected. So we've got to work on a lot of very basic issues. This is just one step, but it's important because it's the first time the big pharmaceutical companies accept the principle of equity pricing, that the same product can be sold in a poor market for less than it's sold in a rich market.
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Prisoners
