‘The National’ Twits Naipaul

I love The National, the new Abu Dhabi paper. It's so sophisticated. Maybe the Arab world is full of dictatorships, and women have no freedom, but the National is breaking paradigms. Today they have a memoir of Mahmoud Darwish by Elias Khoury, a close friend, and also a review of two books on the Asian-Brit experience titled "The Enigma of Arrival." Brilliant. This is a sly reference to V.S. Naipaul's (wonderful) memoir of going from Trinidad to England in the 50s. Naipaul has always taken a dim view of the Muslim world. There's something Brahmin in his disdain. Well the National is putting the knife in, and saying the difficulties of immigration for intelligent men are universal ones.