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Though he grew up in Libya, Neil MacFarquhar played softball and football, went sailing, and had an American elementary school education.

"I had an American childhood that happened to be in Libya," MacFarquhar, now the United Nations bureau chief of the New York Times, told The Jewish State.

MacFarquhar went back to the region as a wire service reporter, and has just published "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday," a book about his travels throughout the Middle East and some of the unexpected characters he came across.

"I think my curiosity about what I had missed [as a child] made me a better reporter and also made me sort of dig harder in terms of what the people were like, what the culture was like, and those kinds of issues," MacFarquhar said.

After working for the Associated Press, MacFarquhar began reporting on the region for the Times. He said he thought he'd have more of a chance to explore the hidden corners and wander off the beaten path, but reality intervened.

"Then 9/11 happened, and there was this immediate upsurge of violence, and the violence kind of became the fence that I had to fight to get past," he said. "And so I had to write an awful lot about violence, and so whenever the opportunity came along to sort of focus on something else I would try and do that. And that's how I would find characters like the sex therapist, or the chef" or some of the people in the region working for political and social change.

One of those characters is a female Kuwaiti sex columnist. MacFarquhar writes in the book that Muslim societies are more comfortable with things like that than outsiders would expect, as long as they're kept private. MacFarquhar discussed the possible ramifications of that attention to self-image in the age of the Internet and social media.

He recalled a case in Egypt a few years ago when Egyptian police abused a bus driver with a broomstick, and took pictures with the man's camera phone and sent it to his friends to embarrass him. His friends were outraged, however, and sent the photo to the authorities and the policemen ended up in jail.

"At a minimum, it does make people more accountable, when those kinds of things get out," MacFarquhar said. "I think it'll still take time to change attitudes, but it does help change them."

MacFarquhar also gets inside the head of his Arab hosts and friends, and provides the reader with a close look at the psychology of Muslim societies. For example, he relates a story when, during the early days of the liberation of Iraq by American-led coalition forces, his Saudi friends were rooting for the Iraqis. The men hated Saddam Hussein, but they didn't want their fellow Arabs to look weak.

There is a cultural pride, MacFarquhar found, and that pride leads to another thorny issue: Arabs not wanting to take orders from the West, even if they agree with the directive.

"Anybody seen as receiving instructions, or even excessive inspiration, from the United States is looked at with suspicion," MacFarquhar said. "It doesn't mean that the United States shouldn't try, because I think there are people that need support, but I think it's that you support people on general principles -- you support the idea of a civil society, free speech, the right to assembly, independent judiciary -- and you try and make those reflect the local culture and you don't endorse people or policies directly, because that does have the effect of undermining them."

MacFarquhar also spent some time in Jordan, which has a majority-Palestinian population. He said the Palestinians have been banned from civil service and the military since the Black September crackdown in 1970, but the difficulties have highlighted some surprising similarities between Palestinians and Jews.

"One of the sort of ironic aspects of this whole conflict is that the Palestinians and the Jews -- in terms of the way they're spread out over the world and the values they adopted because of the way they're spread out over the world -- are very similar in that they value education, they value their family, and they put a big emphasis on that because they kind of feel rootless," MacFarquhar said.

In fact, he said, you find in places like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that the technocrats and city planners are usually Palestinians with urban planning degrees from American universities. That's their only insurance policy for stability, he said.

He said his time spent doing the research for his book buoyed his spirits about the region. He said it will take patience instead of the desire for instant gratification, but change can and probably will come to the Arab Middle East due to the efforts of the type of people he met there.

"I think that what gets lost in the violence is your basic Arab is not that different from anybody else in the world," MacFarquhar said. "They want a better life for their children, they want a good home, they want security. They just have a tougher time getting it, because they live under these venal systems."

MacFarquhar said the basic humanity, generosity, hospitality, and sense of humor of the Arabs gets overshadowed by the violence.

Yet, there are debates going on within these communities about modernization and the improvement of social services, human rights, and improvements to the political process -- all things the West wants and expects of these countries.

"And, ultimately, those debates are the most important, because they are going to decide the outcome," he said. "No matter how much pressure the United States or outside forces put on issues like curriculum, or women's rights, or things like that, it has to develop inside those countries or it's just not going to stick."

"The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday" is available from Borders, Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, and all major booksellers.