What Pico Iyer Meant

"A writer has to be accountable to the truth, and catching the truth of any situation is his first mandate. But the truth is not the same as facts...I think the writer has to be true to the mystery as well as clarity of life. To some extent we live in shadow with everything around us...Writing for Time magazine, I came to see that you could make every word of an article true...and still not come close to the truth at all."
-Pico Iyer

Broadly, Iyer meant by his quote that it is impossible to truely be objective when speaking about a subject. We all have our prior knowledge, experiences and motives that influence the way we are towards a subject. Being objective is relative, because no one can define what the ultimate standpoint of being objective is. The same rhetoric that makes an author's writing unique is the same rhetoric that makes it subjective. When writing, you "select and arrange" what you want to say. In this way, an author can make a situation, event or person seem different to different people.
In his short story, Khareef, Iyer conveys his truth of Aden how he sees and remember his experience. As an author, he selects which facts to put into his story, which may alter what we see as true. The people in Khareef are seen simply as people. He tells about "happy shirtless boys" and a "homesick man" who we are able to relate to, and is the truth of the people who live in Aden. It took an event such as two planes flying into the World Trade Centers to pull "Aden, Oman...out of our subconscious, and back into the forefront of our minds." Because the fact is Aden is near where Osama bin Laden was born, and "was to be taken to be the center of all evil," what we believe to be the truth changes. We may now view this place, and its inhabitants as evil although the truth remains they are still "happy shirtless boys" or a "homesick man."