Last week, I invited some friends over for dinner, and I thought I’d make them the fish with saffron that my dear friend Nadia Benabid taught me. So I took the subway to Citarella on B’way and 75th to buy some fresh red snapper. On the way back, I got out a book that I had just borrowed from the library earlier that day. The book was a thick one—actually three Arabic books bound together. They were all by a Saudi historian called al-Jaser حمد الجاسر, and dealt with the history of Najd in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula.…
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