Andrew Mueller - I Wouldnt Start from Here: The 21st Century and Where It All Went Wrong

Contents

I WOULDNT START FROM HERE

Among various misadventures in more than 70 countries, Andrew Mueller has reported on the Talibans takeover of Afghanistan, the lifting of the siege of Bihac, the handover of Hong Kong, the invasion of Iraq, the wartime rocknroll scene of Sarajevo, an Elvis Presley festival in Tupelo and Ukraines efforts to launch Chernobyl as a tourist destination. He has ridden the Cresta Run, driven the proverbial Road to Damascus, been given a guided tour of Lebanon by Hizbollah, patrolled Basra with the Welsh Guards, Kabul with the Royal Anglian Regiment, and played the country songwriters open-mic night at the Bluebird Caf in Nashville. Born in Australia, he has been based in London for the last twenty years.

I am regularly lost. I ask people all the time for directions. They send me to places I never could have imagined... a pizza place in Pisa, a club in a cellar in So Paulo... the City Lights book shop in San Franciscos tenderloin, Morans on the weir in the west of Ireland for oysters, brown bread and Guinness... Osaka to see and feel Tadao Andos Church of Light... often places of conflict. The east/west crossroads that is Sarajevo... Haile Selassie stables in Addis Ababa... watching the surfers in El Salvador. I usually want to enter these places when everyone else is queuing up to leave, oftentimes theres just one person in front of me, oftentimes its Andrew Mueller... at the desk in the airport, or in the customs hall at the same counter as me, filling out a similar form. His face has the same expression every time... its a very familiar expression: comic disbelief. He cant believe its happened to him again... he thinks its the poor directions, the road maps or the unkind stranger who pointed him here. And where is here? Nowhere... its not that he likes to be lost, its just that he likes the company of the lost. Be very careful reading this book. Bono

Andrew Mueller is a splendid man and a wonderful writer. But, for his own good, we must make him stop talking common sense. The human brain is not programmed to receive common sense. This may be a Darwinian adaptation. What man would undergo the trials of marriage and family if common sense prevailed? What woman would endure the agonies of childbirth? Muellers book sales would be greater if he talked drivel. And his life would be longer, because Mueller travels to places where locals are not just deaf to common sense, they revile it. One of these days the natives will twig to what Andrew Mueller is saying. Theyll kill him. And well lose the best foreign correspondent of this generation. P.J. ORourke

A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid... the reports collected in I Wouldnt Start From Here are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology.

Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard

An utterly sui generis report from the worlds plague-spots... Delightfully laconic. Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman

I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller.

Rory MacLean, Books of the Year, The Guardian

Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity.

George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly

An addition to the genre founded by P.J. ORourkes Holidays In Hell, but it is one that pushes the boundaries. The Australian

Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud. Australian Book Review

Muellers travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything hes ever written about music. TNT

A joy. Financial Times

Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, theres some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant. Glasgow Herald

His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy... we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever. Wanderlust

Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator.

Chris Ayres, The Times

Touching, often blackly comic reportage. GQ

In the grand tradition of Mark Twain, though in a world considerably more hostile. The Daily Truth

Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable.

The List

Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious. The Age

Indelibly humorous and heartfelt. Sydney Sunday Telegraph

An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones.

Time Out

Muellers book is an excellent example of why todays brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion. South China Morning Post

Copyright Andrew Mueller 2007. The moral right of the author has been asserted.

First published in Australia in 2007 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mueller, Andrew.

I wouldnt start from here : the 21st century and where it all went wrong / Andrew Mueller.

p. cm.

ISBN 10: 1-59376-218-6

ISBN 13: 978-1-59376-218-6

First published in Australia in 2007 by Pan Macmillan AustraliaT.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. History, Modern21st century. 2. World politics21st century.

3. Social history21st century. 4. Mueller, AndrewTravel.

5. Ethnic conflict. 6. Social conflict. 7. War and society. I. Title.

D862.M845 2007

909.831dc22

2008044091

Cover design by Goodloe Byron

Interior design Midland Typesetters, Australia

Soft Skull Press

1140 Broadway, Suite 704

New York, NY 10001

www.softskull.com

www.counterpointpress.com

For Nana and Jungie

As scary as the world is, and it is... its just a ride.

Bill Hicks

CONTENTS

I am pleased to introduce Andrew Muellers book to probably the most disinterested and confused audience one could pick: America. The United States has always been a bastion of isolationism and xenophobia, and an audience more prone to buying books on losing weight than packing on intellectual muscle. Even though at press time we are currently up to our ample waists in Afghanistan and Iraq, you wont find Americans sporting an Afghan pakool at a jaunty angle or humming the latest Iraqi pop hit. To be blunt, we dont like foreign stuff. And we dont trust unshaven scribes who talk or dress funny. We dont like danger here and we prefer to fill our quiet hours with torrid TV tales of knickerless celebutantes and waterskiing squirrels. Oh, and did I mention we dont like to read? We think bookstores are places to buy coffee or pick up smart chicks.

So why do I so enthusiastically endorse a book about places that no one wants to go to, to a nation of which a quarter is proud to admit they dont read books and even fewer have passports? Well because Andrews I Wouldnt Start From Here is that perfect blend of investigation, humor, drama, and above all, insight into the global human condition. Andrew has succeeded in making the worlds bent places seem understandable and entertaining. He may have achieved that perfect mix of insight and information that will make America want to read a book to understand why the world has so many seemingly unfathomable backwaters. By tackling a tough and often dull subject with a fresh, engaging approach, Andrew may do what Sesame Street did for the alphabet, what Cops did for criminals... or perhaps even what Borat did for Kazakhstan. Bravo Andrew now just make sure you keep the countries you slagged off in this book off of your future travel list.