In 2008, Nathan Deuel and his wife packed up their things and moved to Saudi Arabia. That country, famous for being largely closed to westerners, was newly open to handful of journalists. The couple moved to Riyadh. A year later, in 2009, their daughter was born.
Then came the Arab Spring. In the midst of political convulsions, and with an infant, the family decided to stay in the Middle East, even when Deuel's wife, foreign correspondent Kelly McEvers, became NPR's Baghdad Bureau chief. As the region erupted in revolution, Deuel moved with their young daughter to Istanbul, then to Beirut.
Nathan Deuel's memoir of his time in the Middle East is titled Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years In The Middle East. He spoke with the host of Weekend All Things Considered, Arun Rath.