Chiefly a collection of previously published essays first published in El Pais and then translated and published in the Times.

Sarajevo notebook. The crack marksman ; The mousetrap ; Hospitals, cemeteries, Oslobodenje ; The record of horror ; Memoricide ; One way to earn a living ; An orthodox arc for the Islamic serpent ; Europe's shame ; Good-bye Sarajevo -- Algeria. A bitter awakening ; Islam & politics ; The causes of the Islamic salvation front ; From Boudiaf's martydom to the second battle of Algiers ; Terror ; Of sermons and satellite disks ; Musical chairs -- Neither peace nor war: the West Bank and Gaza. The Gaza powder keg ; Arafat in the lobster pot ; Between Hamas and Rabin ; Dividends of peace? ; Separated and enmeshed ; Dream and nightmare -- Chechnya. Sufi brotherhoods ; "Good-bye to you, foul land of the Russian" ; Tolstoy and war in the Caucasus: Hadji Murad ; Tzar Boris ; Urbicide, massacres, and mass graves ; Shifting frontiers ; To the mountains -- Approaches to Islam.