Nearly all her quotes come from the regime's officials. She is oblivious to the repressive nature of the state, and overestimates her poetic skills. She's boring and filled with cliches. And manages to say nothing when she thinks she's dispensing wisdom.
She writes about Ben Ali in exclusively, and I am not exaggerating, fawning portrays. Here's a glimpse: "Ben Ali was tall, husky, straight, more somber, with eyes as deep as wells. A handsome, somewhat austere man with a steady gaze and a seemingly deep and unruffled composure..." [104] At times, it is almost a love letter: "His eyes lit up when he discussed his computers..." [106] This is how she then dismisses his authoritarian rule and the staged interview: "they had asked for written questions, and at first I demurred. .... But for some reason, the first time I interviewed the president, I agreed to put forward written questions. The result was overwhelmingly positive." "He is not as authoritarian as many of the Arab leaders, but on the other hand, once he has heard everyone out and made a decision, it is made." [105] And this is how she dismisses human rights critics of the dethroned president : "Other writes who have seriously analysed him, as opposed to those with special political interests, have come out with a similar impression to mine." [105]
She praises Tunisia's "democratic evolution": "In the end, Ben Ali won 99 percent of the votes...This was exactly the kind of evolution that the governing forces had wanted. [In the very next paragraph she adds] It should also be noted that Ben Ali did not have to call for elections at all...His supporters say that the government's popularity was such that he would have won anyway." [161-162] But she justifies the absence of human rights by citing the racist social theory of a conservative writer and herself writes "none of these putative 'rights' could or would ever be actually applied [because] no depth in most of these societies for their people to even know of them." [166]
And this is her road passage: "Behind us, the road had a smart white line right down the middle, but ahead of us there stretched only the straight, spartan black highway, its day clearly coming. Our group was silent for a while, for we realized that we had seen something so simple and so clear that it was, in its way and in today's world, remarkable. ... pre-emptying destiny and readying themselves and their nation for a unique future that, even ten years before, no-one could have imagined." [15] All this about a road. But she holds this White Man Studying the Natives Mindset throughout and behaves toward Tunisians as if they were children. I could do on, the book is unrelenting trash, but one more passage recently made salient:
This took the cake in her last pages:
"They didn't need any revolutions, nor even any rebellions; and unless every indicator was wrong, Tunisians were still willing to give their leaders a long political leash [...] I looked, but I did not see any revolutionaries marching down the streets...who would either be crushed by the tanks of the righteous when the revolution came or be destroyed by their own grandiosity. I saw no-one who looked even a bit afraid and no-one who looked remotely persecuted." [189-190]
That's the quality of her analysis, but of course she thinks "Fareed Zakaria, the brilliant young Pakistani [sic] thinker on foreign affairs" [176]
Geyer is not much of a journalist (but in America she wins awards), she's a Washington socialite and an adventure reporter. She does not have a focus but just travels from one place to the next (she's written a book on Fidel Castro, at least articles on Guatemala, ect...) and without language skills and only presents the most shallow views."
