All Strangers Are Kin: Adventures in Arabic and the Arab World

Travel writer O’Neill’s full-length debut delves into the complex world of Arabic dialects and cultural differences in a tour through Egypt, the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, and Morocco. Returning to Cairo, where she studied Arabic in graduate school, she chats with her former professor on the differences between Fusha (“the language of the books”) and Ammiya (“the language of the street”). In Abu Dhabi she traces the history of the Qur’an as bedrock of the Arabic language and contemplates Jahiliya poetry, a sixth-century C.E. folkloric tradition of nomadic tribes, from which the book’s title is taken. More immersive lessons come from the trash talk of Beirut’s aggressive taxi drivers and the fast friendship of a young woman O’Neill meets on a train in Morocco, who provides cultural insight with grace and humor. The tour is not without tension—Egypt is in post-revolutionary tumult and a hiking trip in Lebanon is marred by intersectarian violence—but O’Neill is careful not to sensationalize events. For non-Arabic speakers, some of the digressions on linguistic details such as root systems, vowel marks, and the endless variations on thanking God may prove inscrutable, but these forays into the technical are few. O’Neill doesn’t teach readers to be fluent in Arabic, but she imparts a more valuable lesson on how (and how not) to learn a language, and the journey is more fascinating than the result. Agent: Gillian MacKenzie, Gillian MacKenzie Agency. (June)