Mr. Q, I love you : Oriental studies meets the Middle East -- It's a fine line : journalism on the road from Damascus -- The plot in the conspiracy : spies in the Syria-Lebanon-Palestine triangle -- Hunting for scapegoats : foreign interference and misrule in Lebanon -- A pilgrimage to Jerusalem : the Israeli-Palestinian entanglement -- The drunken lover : revolutionary Iran's struggle with its poetic soul -- Subversion in the harem : women on the rise, from Cairo to Istanbul -- War, war to victory : Iran's school of martyrdom and love -- Holy Manhattan : destroying old Mecca in the name of Islam -- Life and death with al-Qaeda : a Saudi missionary and the 'wonderful boys' of Sept. 11 -- Tea with the brigadier : failing the famished of south Sudan -- The central bank governor has no socks : Taliban warlords, Pakistani feudals and the nation state -- Regal republics, democratic kings : Syria, Jordan and the dimensions of dictatorship -- Saddamized : inside Iraq's psychotic stress machine -- Jousting with the juggernaut : how not to stop a U.S. invasion -- Stop firing! this is a military situation : one step behind the war with the Iraqi Kurds -- The Yezidi heresy : an alternative approach to military liberation -- The general and the professor : America collides with history in Iraq.