Children of Allah: Between the Sea and Sahara

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This is the story of a compassionate, intelligent American woman and of how she was drawn to the people of Libya, the citizens of a rugged new Arab state ravaged by war, caught between sea and Sahara and struggling to catch up with the modern world.
For nine years Agnes Newton Keith lived in Libya where her forester husband, Harry Keith, was chief of the FAO Mission of the United Nations. It was his responsibility to find young Libyans who could be trained to replant forests, revitalize oases and extend irrigation. Children of Alla is alive with the people of Libya--the secluded Moslem women of whom only the more cosmopolitan have discarded the veil, the arrogant Libyan men, brusque yet gentle, kind, unscrupulous and bull-headed; and the endearing children, underprivileged and too often underfed. Because of her sympathy and understanding, Mrs. Keith was admitted to homes and to confidences which a foreigner rarely enjoys.
She also accompanied her husband on his field trips into the Sahara and she writes of the Roman ruins there which are still being bared by destructive winds, the ancient rock pictures and mirages, and the driving sandstorms. Here she came to know the nomad Tuareg, descendants of great warriors, who disdain work and now live in tattered black tents, their eyes dimmed by trachoma. Here she saw oil fields and speculates on what the new wealth will mean to Libya.
This, then, is the story of a land where every drought, disaster and good fortune is accepted as the will of Allah. Out of her experiences and out of her friendships come Mrs. Keith's vivid personal account of an ancient people struggling for a new unity and self-possession under a wise old king.