Fun Runs and Guns - Trips and Trails Through Yemen and Saudi Arabia - Andrew Musgrave

What would you do if someone shoots at you? This is the dilemma faced by the author, not once, but several times while working in the Middle East. Andrew Musgrave focuses on the impact that a gun culture has on the feelings of a peace-loving teacher living in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

As well as peering into daily life in Sana'a and Jeddah, we are taken on a succession of adventures through impoverished villages and incredible landscapes into the sparse and threatening mountainous heart of Queen of Sheba's realm.

Encounters with gunmen, bad-tempered eagles, and homeless cats, his passion for running, the challenges of escorting vulnerable school kids across a taxing terrain, while evading kidnappings, floods, earthquakes, sandstorms and fires - all furnish a yarn full of surprises, sometimes funny sometimes frightening.

More seriously, he reflects on how issues of women's rights, censorship, religious and social customs impinge on an expatriate's life.

General Petraeus, the former US Military Commander, has warned this region is becoming an Al Qaeda breeding ground of political unrest, yet the author reveals that despite its reputation for guns he found it a life-enhancing and richly rewarding place to dwell.