If proverbs are a sign of wisdom, writes Fuad Rayess, then the Arabs are wise indeed. For centuries they have been extracting from life the knowledge and experience that for peoples everywhere and in all ages is the cream of wisdom.

As water freezing in small crevices can crack a boulder, so the isolation of Arabia was broken by a series of small expansions: the geologists with their generators and air conditioning, the drillers with their machinery. And—on the eve of the crucial moment in the long search—the wives, with the habits of another world.

One would never think the Middle East would ever have to preserve its deserts. But that is exactly what Jordan—thanks to an alert king and some wildlife experts—is doing in hope of saving and restoring the country's once-rich wildlife.

In the modern world is there any such thing as "Arab Medicine"? No, says Leslie Farmer, but once there was nothing else, and the tradition that was established can be traced all the way from Avicenna to DeBakey.

Called white in one place, blue in another, but actually a deep muddy brown, the majestic Nile in its trip from Central Africa to the Mediterranean passes by some of the loveliest scenery in the world, much of it hard by the mighty banks that enclose it.