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Volume 37, Number 3 May/June 1986

In This Issue

May/June 1986
The Dead Sea Crystals
Written by Anne Counsell
Photographed by Bill Lyons

In the Dead Sea, nature shapes ions and isotopes into strange and often lovely shapes, turns an airy froth into textures of silk and spits up asphalt from hidden depths.

 
Khalifa at the Bat
Written and photographed by Brian Clark

Sami Khalifa, "the Cairo kid," played baseball in Missouri, Libya, and Arizona and in 1985, brought up to play shortstop for Pittsburgh Pirates, became the first Arab known to make the major leagues.

 
Manhattan in the Hadramaut
Written and photographed by Jean-François Breton

In South Yemen UNESCO is again trying to save a unique treasure: hundreds of five- and six-story mud-brick "skyscrapers" built long ago but now crumbling from age and neglect.

 
Never the Twain...
Written by Daniel Pawley
Illustrated by Norman MacDonald

In the 1800's Herman Melville and Mark Twain - two of the giants of American literature - both traveled through the Middle East, one already in decline, the other on the verge of a forthcoming fame.

 
New Fuel for Rwanda
Written by Arthur Clark
Photographed by Michael Jones

Scribes in ancient Egypt and Rome couldn't do without papyrus - and neither could Nile boat-builders. Now, in Africa, Irish specialists think papyrus may become a valuable - and renewable-fuel.