Events move so fast these days that, until recently, I thought my book THE GULF, “Reaping the Whirlwind, published just ten years ago, had become history. It is a collection of character studies of typical Western expatriates, the flotsam and jetsam of modern living, washed up in the Arabian/ Persian Gulf for whatever reason.

But the background to those stories is the Arab/Israeli situation that, with recurring financial crises, the rise of China to a world power, and the resurgence of Russia under Putin, had been swept from the headlines. Now, with the horrific events unfolding in Gaza my book is relevant again.

Anybody who has ever worked in The Gulf will have been confronted with the atavistic Arab/Israeli conflict. Sometimes, if you are lucky, it will be a well-educated, well-travelled Arab, who will concede that it is a domestic dispute over land between cousins, but will insist that the Israeli Zionists will never be satisfied until they own all of the Holy Lands.  If you are unlucky, it will be an Islamic religious zealot who will reference his beliefs and his claims to The Holy Lands back 4,000 years to the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), and his first-born son Ishmael.

To Western sensibilities this seems ridiculous, but as Uncle Tom (one of the insightful characters is my book) says,

 “The West understand the problems, they don’t understand the people.”

Or, as Ray (a more down-to-earth character in my book) says,

            “They read backwards, they write backwards, and they think backwards.”

            If you are interested in the back-story to the present horrific events in Gaza, first read John Keays insightful book, “Sowing the Wind”, that explains the policy errors or the past that have led to the present day tragedy in Gaza. Then read my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, which can be downloaded from AMAZON’s Kindle app, or it can be reviewed and bought as a paperback from my UK publisher:

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P.S. In spite of the serious tone of this blog, my book is not a polemic. It is a series of stories about ordinary people surviving in an extraordinary landscape – a world as it is, and not as we wish it was -, and it is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit finding humour and hope, despite the slings and arrows of their outrageous lives.