In this groundbreaking book, Tarik Sabry is seeking out the terrain for best understanding the experience of being modern in transitional societies. He adopts a dynamic, ethnographically based approach to the meanings of 'modernness' in the Arab context and, within a relational framework, focuses on structures of thought, everydayness and self-referentiality to explore the process of building a bridge that rejoins the 'modern' in Arab thought with the 'modern' in Arab lived experience. In bringing together modernity as a philosophical category with the bridging spaces of Arab everyday life, Sabry is offering fresh methods of comprehending the question of what it means to be modern in the Arab world today. "Tarik Sabry is the perfect 'modern Sinbad' navigating back and forth between different countries, cultures and languages, enriching them and himself. In the 1001 Nights there are two Sinbads: a sedentary one (al-bari) who is rather boring and not so successful. The other is a sea-navigator (al-bahri) who has an exciting life precisely because he masters the art of communicating with the Other. Tarik's book reflects this art." - Fatema Mernissi