Robert Bowker
Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots
2022
After 50 years as an Australian diplomat, UN official, intelligence analyst, academic and company director working in and on the Middle East, Bob Bowker enjoys unique insights into the challenges, professional and personal, of representing Australia in the Arab world. In this occasionally light-hearted professional memoir, revealing something of the person behind the diplomat, he sets out his views and reflections on major Middle East issues and into what makes diplomacy in the Arab world effective. He also captures the complexity, the drama, the ambiguity and sometimes the absurdity of certain situations he faced as an Australian ambassador in the Arab world.
A sacked local staff member in Syria was found to be an informer for the secret police.
Overnight, a shipload of Australian sheep became Bulgarian
A judge in Sudan successfully prosecuted his own case in a murder trial.
As demonstrators hurled stones and bottles toward his office, women in his microenterprise program in Gaza sold soft drinks to the crowd.
Shortlisted for ACT Book of the Year 2023
“Broad exposes the folly of the human vs machine dichotomy – the systems we create reflect our faults as well as our strengths. Understanding AI, she argues, is really about understanding human thought and behaviour.
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About the Author
Bob Bowker retired from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2008 after a 37-year career working mostly on the Middle East. He was posted to Saudi Arabia from 1974 to 1976, and Syria from 1979 to 1981. He was Australian ambassador to Jordan (1989-1992). He was Director of External Relations and Public Information, and later Senior Adviser, Policy Research of UNRWA in 1997-1998, based in Gaza and Jerusalem. He was the Australian ambassador to Egypt (2005-2008) and non-resident Australian ambassador to Syria, Libya, Tunisia and Sudan.
He was DFAT scholar in residence at the Australian National University in 1994, working on questions relating to Middle East regional security; Visiting Reader at the Australian National University in 2004, teaching graduate courses on the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Persian Gulf security; Adjunct Professor from 2008 to 2016, teaching a graduate course on the politics of change in Egypt and the Arab Middle East, and an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies from 2017 to 2019. He is a frequent commentator in the media on the Middle East.
