We can never truly understand places culturally foreign to us. We can try, of course, but no book, no university course, no immersion scheme, can substitute for the mosaic of accumulated knowledge, behavioral, societal and cultural, which comprises nationality. But this truth should not dissuade us from the exploration of other cultures. After all, other than physical exposure, the attempt to understand something, or someone, is the most direct way of fostering tolerance and open-mindedness to new people and new ideas. And in a world suffering from a lack of tolerance, a lack of respect for other people and their beliefs, what is more valuable than an open mind? This attempt to understand empowers Mr. Braude's investigation into Morocco and its challenging streets. It's what motivates him to care about a mystery that doesn't concern him, fates that don't involve him. It is what drives him to risk alliances and friendships in a part of the world where it is dangerous to be devoid of such.It is what elevates The Honored Dead from a self-indulgent memoir into a tale of universal self-discovery.
As a consequence of recent, liberalizing reforms in Morocco, Mr. Braude, an American journalist, is allowed to experience something few Westerners have ever seen. Attached to the Casablanca police department as an observer, he is not only taken on ride-alongs, he is furnished with unprecedented access to police files and practices which, in most Arab countries, are firmly walled off from outsiders. Despite such privileges, Mr. Braude threatens both his tenuous partnership with the CPD and the friendships he's made with its officers when a simple investigation into a senseless murder of a man in a Jewish-owned warehouse provokes him to press for a truth the police refuse to acknowledge. Guided in his investigation by a man who considered the murdered man his best friend, Mr. Braude and his companion travel Morocco, delve into family history and journey into the world of Islamic magic all in the hopes of uncovering the inconvenient truth behind the killing of a man widely considered to be an innocent.
Part memoir and part mystery, Mr. Braude ably entwins his own history with his Moroccan investigation to create The Honored Dead, an exploration of Arab culture, its conflict with Judaism, its struggles towards modernization, and its inability to serve its people with a full measure of justice. Though the murder investigation is interesting enough -- many Islamic sensibilities are both revealed and offended by its execution --, Mr. Braude himself is his tale's most interesting enigma. The descendant of a Jewish community that once called Baghdad home, he is staunchly American, more than eager to aid his country's authorities in the rubbing out of terrorist activity. At the same time, he's clearly conflicted over the role he played in the dissolution of a treasured friendship with an Iraqi-American he met while at university. Consequently, he imbues the pursuit of this particular Moroccan truth with a reckless zeal that may well solve the case, but it will not repair the damage that has been done, nor restore the lost closeness he now laments. This broken friendship not only drives Mr. Braude onward in a mad pursuit of truth, it is a quietly potent metaphor for the gulf of ignorance that separates East from West, authoritarianism from democracy. And so, even though Mr. Braude is sometimes too central to his story, he's delivered, in the expose of his desires and mistakes, the portrait of a man and a world both straining for understanding, for truth and for freedom. Quality work and gripping despite its narrow scope. (3/5 Stars)
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