Agents of Innocence

By David Ignatius. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1987. 444 pp. $19.95 (cloth).

Reviewed by Lynn Teo Simarski

Numerous studies in recent years have exposed the stereotyping of Arabs in the American press, television, and film. Lately, to scrutinize racist characterizations in the world of popular fiction, although no study has yet examined the recently published Middle East espionage novel, Agents of Innocence, by the Washington Post's "Outlook" section editor, David Ignatius.

Well-written, realistic fiction in English about the Middle East is so meager that readers hungry for novels set in the region must make do with such disappointments as John Le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl, with its generally unattractive Palestinians, spineless English heroine, and god-like Israeli hero. Ignatius, who served as the Wall Street Journal's diplomatic correspondent in the Middle East from 1981 to 1983, has spun a more balanced yarn.

US-PLO Politics in a Spy Novel

The book scores as a spy novel, while also furnishing a glimpse into US-PLO politics of the 1970s, and serving up an indictment of recent US policy in Lebanon. In a spare and generally successful style, Ignatius sketches the relationship between Fatah intelligence officer Jamal Ramlawi, an Arafat protege, and CIA agent Tom Rogers. The plot moves at a rapid pace from Beirut in the 1970s to Syria, Kuwait, and Washington, DC, drawing readers who have lived in the Middle East into the game of identifying thinly disguised hotels, suqs, and beaches. Memory will serve to set the scene for some readers, where the narrative fails others unfamiliar with the locale. Richer, evocative detail, however, could have lent context and authenticity to events.

Realistic Fiction

Realistic fiction in real places calls for sensitive placement of the thin line between justified literary liberties and detail that rings false. A disclaimer in the book states that the action takes place in the "Lebanon of the mind," but it is a dubious violation of reality when a Mossad agent visits Aleppo—presumably also located in a "Syria of the mind"—and muses, "There wasn't another Jew in 100 miles," blithely ignoring the city's 1,000-strong Jewish community. Other details ostensibly added for authenticity's sake,such as the Arabic proverbs repeatedly dished up by Rogers, seem at times too self-consciously affixed.

The book's real casualty is characterization. Because the hero, Rogers, was never very compelling, his death in the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut does not add much of a fictional wrench to the actual tragedy.

A number of other characters are stereotypes cut from racist and sexist cloth, such as Ramlawi, the flamboyant PLO official—the classic sex-crazed Arab, lusting after Western blondes. Minor characters also tend to be types rather than individuals, such as the requisitely insufferable ambassador's wife.

Lovers or Wives at Best

Rogers' wife displays a dated 1950s naivete, never suspicious of her husband, never questioning him about his work, and ultimately so unconvincing even to Ignatius that he drops her after her usefulness as a prop to establish her husband's fidelity has ended. Too, the wife of Lebanon's intelligence chief fits the seductive Arab princess mold, with her mountain redoubt's library "made over into a kind of harem chamber" strewn with pillows. Women in the book are lovers or wives at best, and strippers and other sex objects at worst.

Still, stereotypes aside (and what very rare spy novel lacks them?) the book does convey a convincing message about the American floundering in Lebanon. At the close, a Palestinian informant, Fuad, composes a kind of swan song to the old CIA operative who recruited him years before.

Acting Like Missionaries

"You come into a place like Lebanon as if you were missionaries," Fuad says. "You convince people to put aside their old customs and allegiances and to break the bonds that hold the country together. With your money and your schools and your cigarettes and music, you convince us that we can be like you. But we can't. And when the real trouble begins, you are gone. And you leave your friends, the ones who trusted you most, to die."

This is a lesson Agents of Innocence might have imparted even more eloquently, had the characters been more fully formed.

Lynn Teo Simarski is a Washington, DC-based free-lance writer on Middle East affairs.