History through stories

William Dalrymple is a master travel writer. His narration delves on putting historical facts that sound like a story. His book "from the holy mountain" tells the fate of Christianity in its eastern homeland. To achive this narration, he takes the help of a previous travel through eastern holyland and the commentary of those experience. He.retraced the old route and builds the present picture with a short history. Pretty same theme like his first book where he retraced the silk route.
This book however is based on eastern Christianity, starts from Greece, goes to turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and winds up in Egypt....
I pretty much thought that Islamic fundamentalism would be the main reason for the decline of Christianity in middle east..but except in Egypt, this is not true. Also learnt what Syrian Christianity is all about. Knew that some Syriacs are in Kerala but never knew a thing beyond that.
Learnt how Syrian xtians are on the edge and why might happen of Asad goes.
Learnt how Lebanon was born and how the maronite xtians pressed self destruct button.
Got to know that Arab does not mean Muslim by default.
Could sense the pain of Palestinian xtians in Israel feeling the same brunt as the Muslims under the Jewish state
Felt how the Egyptian copts would go through as Egypt is under an Islamic resurgence and future is uncertain.
Also noticed one more thing.... Egypt under Mubarak though did not persecute minority, it wasn't openly appeasing as well. Minority is discriminated.. whereas , in India there's no explicit discrimination and yet the govt is extremely appeasing to the level of granting sub quotas... Hmmmm Overall a very poignant picture about the story of Christianity in its homeland that ends with a question about its expiry date... Though written on the 1990s its still very relevant