Go read A Diamond in the Rough, a front-page LA Times story by my friend Ashraf Khalil, who is taking a break from Iraq in Cairo before he goes back in two weeks. It’s a wonderful little gem.
This is the kind of story is what foreign editors love these days, especially if it comes from the Middle East. As one of my own editors once told me, with so much bad news and full pages dedicated to covering the bloodshed in Iraq, a little levity is a good thing. This also often extends to outside the war zones, so that in the rest of the Middle East, stories on “serious” issues like political reform or economic crisis will be less popular than ones of belly dancers or archeological trivia. With so much sad news coming out from this part of the world, foreign pages of newspapers need something to lighten up.