Leila Abu-Saba knows Max Rodenbeck and describes him as an Arabist. Rodenbeck is the writer for the Economist whom the Times assigned on Sunday to machicolate Ken Pollack (the sage to whom the Times had formerly turned to, in 2002-2003, to urge the path of war in Iraq). She reports:
and is the son of the man who brought Naguib Mahfouz's books into
English (professor and former American University in Cairo Press
publisher). I knew Rodenbeck in Cairo 25 years ago and still hear tell
of him through mutual friends. No other journalist in English has his
contacts and his depth of experience in Egypt and the larger Middle
East….Max's book on Cairo
is probably no longer in print but is essential reading for anyone
wishing to understand that city, its history and its present. You also
get a good whiff of Max's personality, that sheesha-smoking,
dart-throwing cynic in love with Egypt in spite of himself.
Abu-Saba points me to Rodenbeck's pedigree: he is the son of John and Elizabeth "Buffy" Rodenbeck, expatriate Americans living in Egypt and profiled by Al-Ahram here. Father John , an academic, reminds me a little of Simon Malley, Rob Malley's father, the literary Fanon-influenced Egyptian-born Jewish editor.
Al-Ahram of Egypt reported 6 years ago of John Rodenbeck:
He has sent off two Parthian shots, [I guess this means letters] one to The Cairo Times and one to The Guardian,
both on the Israeli-Palestinian question. "Everyone seems to have lost
sight of what's obviously the easiest and simplest and most available
solution to the Middle East problem, and that's for the Israelis to
pack up and go to the US." This is simple, preamble-free, Rodenbeck
logic.
(That's funny. Chomsky once said that the Israelis should by all logic get New Jersey before Palestine. Dennis Drew jokes, "one of my brothers says we should give the Palestinians the burned out areas of the Bronx — as former Jewish land.")
It's interesting that Malley got unfairly disqualified from service to Obama partly because of his dad's work. Rodenbeck is getting in under the concertina wire to the Times. Progress.
