“Never been there, the Middle East," Qatar said vaguely.”
“The lake is always east. East is always the lake. Anywhere else he's ever been he never knows where he is.”
“Marriage is like the Middle East, isn't it? There's no solution.”
“I was just stock in the middle, vague and undefined.”
“Some families ran their own little version of the Middle East.”
“The Middle East was not a wilderness, and the people there were not savages: if anything they were over civilized. Too many American newcomers to the East saw it in frontier terms.”