credits birth_date gender article_title occupation
'' sand café '' -lrb- novel -rrb- ; '' the media the relations department of hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday '' new -lrb- journal -rrb- york times '' ; '' the c. 1960 male neil macfarquhar
 journalist , novelist
neil macfarquhar

neil graham macfarquhar is an american writer who is currently writing for `` the new york times '' in moscow .
from june 2008 to the summer of 2013 , macfarquhar was the `` times '' 's united nations bureau chief .
from november 2006 to may 2008 , he was a national correspondent for the paper , based in san francisco .
he was the middle east correspondent , based in cairo , from 2001 until 2006 .
macfarquhar 's second book , `` the media relations department of hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday : unexpected encounters in the changing middle east , '' is a journal of macfarquhar 's experiences in the region , starting with his childhood in col. gaddafi 's libya , and an assessment of the prospects for political and social change .
the book combines aspects of everyday life with the stories of individual men and women working for a freer middle east .
he is also author of `` the sand cafe '' , a satirical novel about foreign correspondents mired in a saudi hotel awaiting the start of the gulf war and trying to either undermine or seduce each other as the war refuses to get underway .
it was partly written during his recuperation from an accident where a runaway bus knocked macfarquhar off his bicycle on fifth avenue in new york city .
macfarquhar went to elementary school in libya and is a fluent arabic speaker .
he graduated from deerfield academy and then stanford university in 1982 .
