xii, 322, [2] pages. DJ torn at bottom corner. Includes Map, Acknowledgments

xii, 322, [2] pages. DJ torn at bottom corner. Includes Map, Acknowledgments and Introduction and sections on Africa, The Red Sea, and Arabia, and A Qat Glossary and Consumer's Guide, Bibliography, and Index. Also contains 8 full page black and white photographs, all taken by the author. After the author finished University (Newcastle) in 1982 he bought a one-way ticket to Cairo and set off traveling. Never having been abroad before he was understandably shocked on arrival in Cairo. Walking out the airport at 2 a.m. looking for a bus (no money for a taxi) I saw a line of people sleeping under their white sheets and joined them. He ended up traveling through Egypt, Sudan, Central African Republic, Uganda and Kenya. Several months later he was back in Sudan as an English teacher, first in Darfur, later in the south. The latter was a particularly intense experience. Yambio, the small town in Western Equatoria, was cut off by the civil war for much of the time and he was alone, the only foreigner most of the time. He did vast bicycle rides, journeying deep into Zaire, visiting only remote areas as he had no paperwork or visa. There was no electricity, no running water, no post, no telephone. Eventually the isolation was too much. I went to Kenya, then back to England to study education for a year (and in Madrid for some months), then to Yemen and Malaysia. It was in Kuala Lumpur that he started writing professionally, working for newspapers and magazines all across the Far East and South East Asia. Eventually. Since then he has written books and articles, done some television, rather more radio. This book combines classic travel writing with an explanation of the rich and varied culture surrounding the drug qat. Legal in the U.K. but banned in the U.S., experts variously claim it to be as mild as tea or as addictive as cocaine. In Yemen, it is central to the life of the country, and, as he goes, Kevin Rushby explores our attitudes towards substance abuse and addiction. Derived from a Kirkus review: A superior travel narrative of the qat trail, its history and quirks, and strange characters. Qat is a brilliant green leaf that can be seen "flashing like a broken traffic light" in mouths from northeast Africa to the Arabian Peninsula (and many points beyond). Its effects are highly individualized, and its reputation is not agreed upon: "legal in Britain, banned in the USA, celebrated in Yemen, vilified in Saudi Arabia." But there is no disputing its pivotal role in the poetry, music, architecture, and family relations of Ethiopia and Yemen, not to mention in television schedules, road-building, and economic status. Rushby engrossingly outlines all of these effects. He had been familiar with the drug for a number of years before he decided to follow the qat route from Harrar overland to Djibouti, across the Red Sea to the coffee port of Mokha, then into the hills of the two Yemens, before anchoring in San'a. It was far from a comfortable journey, but Rushby makes light humor of its tribulations and brings an enormous verve to his subject. His travels are not just in pursuit of the history and culture of qat, for he quickly learns that the pleasure of the plant is in the companionship of using it. He's a humble pilgrim and a shrewd witness, open to the tales and legends told by cabbies and goldsmiths, fakirs and foreign legionnaires and fellow travelers. There is a polish to his descriptions of landscape, thoroughness to his political geographies and social observations, and savvy to his handling of dicey situations with authorities. Like its subject, Rushby's book can loosen one's mooring to the everyday world, conveying the reader to darkened rooms high above ancient, exotic cities.