Road to Fatima Gate

The Road to Fatima Gate is a first-person narrative account of revolution, terrorism, and war during historys violent return to Lebanon after fifteen years of quiet. Michael J. Tottens version of events in one of the most volatile countries in the worlds most volatile region is one part war correspondence, one part memoir, and one part road movie.He sets up camp in a tent city built in downtown Beirut by anti-Syrian dissidents, is bullied and menaced by Hezbollahs supposedly friendly media relations department, crouches under fire on the Lebanese-Israeli border during the six-week war in 2006, witnesses an Israeli ground invasion from behind a line of Merkava tanks, sneaks into Hezbollahs postwar rubblescape without authorization, and is attacked in Beirut by militiamen who enforce obedience to the resistance at the point of a gun.From the Cedar Revolution that ousted the occupying Syrian military regime in 2005 to the devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 to Hezbollahs slow-motion but violent assault on Lebanons elected government and capital, Tottens account is both personal and comprehensive. He simplifies the bewildering complexity of the Middle East; gains access to major regional players as well as to the man on the street; and personally witnesses most of the events he describes. The Road to Fatima Gate should be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the Middle East, Irans expansionist foreign policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism in the aftermath of September 11.