July 31, 2006

Yehoshua Interview

Deborah Solomon interviews Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua for the New York Times:

Let’s talk about your latest novel, “A Woman in Jerusalem,” which comes out in this country in a few weeks.
This is the most important thing! Meaning, I would like to speak not about the Hezbollah but my novel.

Isn’t politics more important than your own career?
Of course, but about my novel I can speak something more accurate, more intimate and more true than I can about Hezbollah.

(via.)

Massacre at Qana

In the spring of 1996, the Israeli army bombed the Lebanese village of Qana, southeast of Tyre, killing more than 150 civilians and injuring 4 UN soldiers. Now, only ten years later, the brutalized people of Qana have had to pay again for crimes they didn't commit: On Sunday, the IDF bombed a three-story building in Qana in which refugees had taken shelter, killing sixty people, among them 37 young children.

Some pictures have been posted on Flickr, and I urge you to take a look. Please do not close your eyes to this massacre.

Predictably, Prime Minister Olmert expressed "deep sorrow" for the deaths, but said his government would continue with the bombing. There are accusations that the civilians were put there because Hizbollah was using them as 'human shields' and that, therefore, the fault lies with Hizbollah, not Israel. Furthermore, the Israeli government has sought to deflect blame by saying that the village had been leafleted and that civilians had been warned to flee.

Setting aside Olmert's crocodile tears, what exactly does he hope to accomplish by killing innocent Lebanese civilians? Does he seriously expect that the terrorized families of the dead will suddenly say, "You are right, we are wrong, and we will disavow Hizbollah and force it to disarm"?? The exact opposite will happen (in fact, has started to happen.) Olmert would do well to remember that Hizbollah did not spring into being out of thin air. It was created after the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Children who were six years old in 1982 are now 30, and it's a safe bet that some of them are part of Hizbollah.

I do not know what will come out of the third invasion of 2006, but I do know it will not be a pacifist movement. It will only be more terror, and more war.

As for the claim that Hizbollah was using civilians as human shields, I would urge you all to read this article by Mitch Prothero in Salon that debunks the theory. He writes: "Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been." In addition, if you look at this map of Israeli bombing, you will see that the entire country has been hit. Most cities and villages, not to mention roads connecting them, have been bombed.

Lastly, the idea that if you leaflet people then you are absolved of responsibility is as callous as it is immoral. How were people supposed to leave when the roads linking their village to others were bombed? (This argument reminded me of those who blamed the victims of Hurricane Katrina for not leaving.)

The justification for the bombing was that Israel was responding to shelling from that site. This account has been disputed by eyewitnesses, and if you look at the Flickr pictures, you can see that all the victims were found barefoot, in their pyjamas. They were killed while they slept. How could they have slept if there had been shelling from their end just prior to the Israeli bombing?

Despite appearances, I do not believe that this is a war between Jews and Muslims. The events unfolding at the moment really aren't about whether you believe that it was Ismael or Isaac who was sacrificed on the altar by Abraham; it isn't about whether you believe you should fast for one day of atonement or for thirty days of reflection; it isn't about whether you should pray at Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa or at the Western Wall. It's about much more prosaic things, like land and water, like guns and money. And yet, the identities color everything. The privilege of criticizing is doled out by those who see identity politics everywhere. If you're Muslim and you decry the Israeli bombing, then it means you're supporting Hizbollah. If you're Jewish and you decry the Israeli bombing, then it means you're not patriotic, and you don't understand that the Muslims will always hate you, blah, blah, blah. I am sick of it all.

Alison Bechdel's Fun Home

My review of Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, appeared in the Boston Globe this past weekend. Here is an excerpt:

Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" is a brilliant and bittersweet graphic memoir that chronicles the author's relationship with her formidably troubled father, Bruce. The book takes its title from the funeral home that Bruce inherited and ran. In his spare time, he restored the family's 1867 Gothic Revival house. Giving a semblance of life to dead bodies and returning its lost splendor to an old home -- Bruce was obviously obsessed with appearances. "He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not," Bechdel writes. The deceit lasts for many years; only when Bechdel is in college does she find out that her father is gay.

You can read the rest here.

Ajami's Gift

As you may recall, Professor Fouad Ajami found time from his visits to the White House to write another book about the Middle East. It's called The Foreigner's Gift, and it's been reviewed in the NYT by Noah Feldman, who himself was involved with the ill-fated Iraqi adventure. He was hired by the Provisional Authority as a consultant to help draft the new Iraqi Constitution--you know, the piece of paper that says that no law in Iraq can contradict principles of Sharia? Anyway, here is Feldman on Ajami:

Few other Americans have Ajami’s distinctive qualifications for reflecting on the Iraq war. Born to a Shiite family in Lebanon, he has written several important books about Middle Eastern political culture, including a recognized classic on the Lebanese Shiites, “The Vanished Imam.” He supported the removal of Saddam Hussein, and his extraordinary level of access in Washington is reflected in “The Foreigner’s Gift,” which recounts many conversations he had in Iraq while shadowing American officials or traveling with close American allies like Chalabi. Respected by politicians who disdain most academics, and excoriated by antiwar academics who detest the present government, Ajami richly deserves the attention of both camps.

More than just "supporting the removal of Saddam Hussein," Ajami was one of those scholars (Bernard Lewis, Kanan Makiya, et al.) who predicted (in fact, told the administration) that the Americans would be greeted with "sweets and flowers." One hundred thousand deaths and a civil war later, why would anyone lend credence to his analysis of Iraq?? But, hey, what do I know--I'm just a poor Arab immigrant. And a woman, at that. I think I'm supposed to be silent or submissive or something.

Feldman is on more solid ground in his criticism of Peter Galbraith's The End of Iraq, in which the question of the Kurds (and an independent Kurdistan) is discussed. Here, Feldman raises some serious and pragmatic questions to the proposal:

The chief problem with the “break Iraq in two” option is that creating an independent Kurdistan does absolutely nothing to address the present violence in the country. It might be nice for the Kurds, especially if the United States gave them the Kirkuk oil field and then permanently stationed large numbers of troops in Kurdistan to protect it. But Kurdistan is mostly peaceful, and at present Kurds are not fighting Arabs in Iraq, except to some small degree around disputed Kirkuk itself. The violence in Iraq is predominantly Sunni-Shiite; and the United States desperately needs the stabilizing third force of the Kurds in the national leadership and the armed forces to have any hope at all of damping it down. To the contrary, breaking off Kurdistan would create a new violent front, because a Sunni ministate could never survive without a share of Kirkuk’s oil, and so Sunni insurgents would have to turn their attentions to the Kurds. This is to say nothing of the continuing concerns of Turkey about an independent Kurdistan, or the possibility of Turkish encroachment having to be confronted by American forces.

To this list one might also add the domino effect an independent Kurdistan could have for other Kurdish minorities in Syria and Iran. Oy. Is your head spinning yet?

Department of WTF

Feminist scholar Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) has jumped into the row over the film adaptation of Monica Ali's Brick Lane. As you may recall, the novel stirred some strong feelings within the Bangladeshi community back in 2003, and now that a production company has started work on a film adaptation, some people want the filming to be taken elsewhere. (There are, it should be said, other people from the community who think filming on location would be great for business and should be encouraged. Not that this makes for great newspaper copy. But, moving on.)

Greer's stance, or however much of it I can decode, seems to be that a) Monica Ali is not really Bengali, because she has "allowed herself to forget" her mother tongue; b) she is British, and has a British point of view ; c) she is not ostracized because she went to Oxford and lives in a nice neighborhood; therefore d) she doesn't really have what it takes to write about poor Bengalis from Brick Lane; and, as a corollary, e) Bangladeshi Britons are better off not reading the book or seeing the movie.

This Ali-bashing is getting really tiresome. Yes, she made a poor stylistic choice with Hasina's voice, and no, Brick Lane is not without fault. But to claim to know what Monica Ali's intentions are when she wrote the novel is just plain ridiculous. Is Greer a mind reader? And to condemn Ali because she dared--dared!--to go to Oxford is even more stupid. Since when has education been an impediment to writing? Does Greer think she is God? What gives her the right to decide whether Monica Ali is Bangladeshi enough? And what gives her the right to tell Bangladeshi Britons whether they should see the movie or not?

In other developments, Salman Rushdie fired off a response to the editors, in which he took issue with Greer's characterization of Ali, and added

At the height of the assault against my novel The Satanic Verses, Germaine Greer stated: "I refuse to sign petitions for that book of his, which was about his own troubles." She went on to describe me as "a megalomaniac, an Englishman with dark skin". Now it's Monica Ali's turn to be deracinated: "She writes in English and her point of view is, whether she allows herself to impersonate a village Bangladeshi woman or not, British." There is a kind of double racism in this argument. To suit Greer, the British-Bangladeshi Ali is denied her heritage and belittled for her Britishness, while her British-Bangladeshi critics are denied that same Britishness, which most of them would certainly insist was theirs by right. "Writers are treacherous," Greer says, and she should know.

Touché.

'Who Do You Write For?'

There is an excellent opinion piece by Orhan Pamuk in the IHT, addressing a question that comes up, again and again, at readings: 'Who do you write for?'*

For the last 30 years - since I first became a writer - this is the question I've heard most often from both readers and journalists. Their motives depend on the time and the place, as do the things they wish to know. But they all use the same suspicious, supercilious tone of voice.

In the mid-'70s, when I first decided to become a novelist, the question reflected the widely held philistine view that art and literature were luxuries in a poor non-Western country troubled by premodern problems.

There was also the suggestion that someone "as educated and cultivated as yourself" might serve the nation more usefully as a doctor fighting epidemics or an engineer building bridges.

Pamuk also addresses the perennial suggestion that writing for certain audiences automatically makes you 'authentic' or 'inauthentic.' Some great stuff. Read it.

*Relax, I know it should be 'whom.'

No Shelter

In late 2004, the Rev. Joseph Dantica, a Haitian refugee who had sought asylum in the States, died while in immigration services custody. His niece, the novelist Edwidge Danticat, has been trying to uncover the circumstances of his death ever since. Now, at last, there are some details about what happened to the pastor, in an AP story by Pauline Arrigalla.

War's Toll At Home

A Muslim man who suffers from bipolar disorder has killed a member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, for no other reason than that the woman was Jewish. Some moron fired shots at a mosque in Houston, and Muslim institutions have been vandalized throughout the country. I am so sick of the hate. And it doesn't stop. It won't stop.

Whenever the situation in the Middle East deteriorates--which is to say, very often--you hear people saying things like, "I don't hate Arabs, but..." or "I don't hate Jews, but..." I'm always amused and also mystified by these reactions because, while they may deny hate, they never affirm love. Call me deluded, but I prefer love.

Arabs and Jews. Can you even tell them apart? They're hairy (and I don't mean just the men); they're loud (try overselling them something; go ahead, I dare you); they dote on their children ('Is that all you're eating?' is the universal lament of the Middle-Eastern table); they sit together and smoke and want to remake the world ('Ah, back in '67, if Nasser had...;' or 'Ah, back in '67, Dayan should have...')

Jews and Arabs. I am convinced that, when they die, they come back reincarnated as one another. And they still don't get it. They still want to make the other one believe in their right to survival. Maybe that's why they love to tell stories so much. Storytelling is how they survive. And their stories are so similar: Persecuted and driven out of their homes. Looked upon with suspicion. Hated for their customs.

At such times, my reflex is to go back to books. I find myself reaching for Hanan Al-Shaykh and A.B Yehoshua, for Mahmoud Darwish and Anton Shammas. I turn to literature. There, at least, I don't have to come across borders, mental or otherwise. I don't have to figure out who's right or who's wrong. I can just live other people's lives for the length of a book.

July 28, 2006

Alentejo Review

Nell Freudenberger reviews Monica Ali's Alentejo Blue for The Nation:

If Brick Lane belonged stylistically to the nineteenth century, the new book jumps forward in time. Modernist in form (the epigraph is from T.S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday"), it explores the decidedly twenty-first-century obsession with what is foreign and what is local, and how the mysterious category of the "global" might break down that distinction.

Alentejo Blue takes place almost entirely in Mamarrosa, a village in Portugal's south-central Alentejo region, known for its cork and olive trees. The village is either impossibly backward or heartbreakingly picturesque, depending on which character is observing it. The nine narrators include three natives of Mamarrosa, three expatriates and three tourists. All of the chapters are written in the third person (except for two); each character has his or her own chapter (except for one young couple, who share).

Freudenberger finds that reading the novel is a "little like hitchhiking through unfamiliar countryside: You become so involved in the driver's story that you're surprised each time one of the characters stops to let you off."

Meanwhile, the filming of Ali's first novel, Brick Lane, had to be moved outside the neighborhood itself, due to protests from goons who revendicate "the freedom to burn books." Some freedom.

Et De Deux

Last month, Rory Stewart's The Places In Between was hailed as "a masterpiece" by Tom Bissell in the New York Times. But it looks like Stewart has another book out at the same time: The Prince of the Marshes, about his stint as governor of two provinces in Iraq, and it, too, gets a rave review from the paper of record. Busy guy.

A Plea

Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's pleas to Secretary Rice to stop Israel's bombing of Lebanon:

Is the value of human rights in Lebanon less than that of citizens elsewhere?" he asked. "Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"

Compare with Shylock's speech, in The Merchant of Venice:

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Unfortunately, no one's paying attention to that last line.

Democracy on the March

Why is it that the government of Egypt allows demos against stupid Danish cartoons but bans demos against the horrendous war on Lebanon? And then when people finally manage to get a demo, they are harassed by thugs working for the Egyptian police. Your tax dollars at work, people. (At the tune of about $2 Billion a year.)

(via.)

July 27, 2006

Giveaway: Breaking Ranks

My last giveaway for today is Ronit Chacham's Breaking Ranks: Refusing to Serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a collection of interviews with members of the Israeli Defense Force about why they refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. These refuseniks' account is more topical today than ever, when Israel is bombing Lebanon and Gaza, and when more than 600 civilians have already paid the price of this folly.

As usual, the first reader to email me with a request gets the book. Please use the subject line: "Chacham." Please include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Donna S., from San Antonio, Texas.

Portland Rally For Peace

I have just been told that there will be a rally in Portland for peace in the Middle East. Here are the details:

Rally for Peace
Sunday, July 30th
1 pm
Pioneer Courthouse Square
Portland

Be there!

Giveaway: Instant Love, Autographed

I'm doing another giveaway today: Jami Attenberg's Instant Love, which the author kindly signed when she came through Portland last month. Told through the alternating points of view of several women, the novel focuses on the difficulty of making connections and forming relationships. Some of you may already know Attenberg through her blog, whatever-whenever.net, or through her many published writings, including, most recently, this great piece for Nextbook.

So. The first reader to email me with a request gets the book. Please use the subject line: "Attenberg." Please include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Shabana S. from New York, New York. There will be another book given away later today. Good luck.

Giveaway: Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow

This week, I am doing several giveaways, scattered throughout the day. The first is a copy of Faïza Guène's Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, a debut novel by a young French-Algerian author. It's a coming-of-age story set in one of Paris's infamous cités, and it has been praised by Sandra Cisneros ("a tale for anyone who has ever lived outside looking in"), and, uh, me ("moving and irreverent"). It's also received quite a bit of attention, from the NYT to the SF Chronicle to Salon.

You know the drill: The first reader to email me with a request gets the book. Please use the subject line: "Kiffe Kiffe." Please include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.

Update: The winner is Beau G. from Chicago, Illinois. There will be another book given away later this morning. Good luck.

Ngugi's Wizard

This has been linked to on several blogs already: John Updike reviews Ngugi wa Thiong'o's much-anticipated novel Wizard of the Crow. I haven't yet read the book (it just arrived in the mail yesterday) and it may well be that it's not any good, but I did want to excerpt from Updike's usual nuggets of wisdom:

The novel’s frequent recourse to magic realism, in the course of what its own text admits may seem “too incredible a narrative of magic and greed,” would seem appropriate to a culture so susceptible to the claims of the supernatural.

Isn't he priceless?

The Toll So Far, II

On the Israeli side: 51 people have been killed, including 28 civilians and 23 IDF soldiers. Residents of northern towns in Israel are confined to bomb shelters, and about half have evacuated.

On the Palestinian side: 140 people have been killed, including about 70 civilians and 70 fighters from Hamas or Jihad. Crossings into Gaza remain shut, and "food shortages are chronic."

On the Lebanese side: 423 people have been killed including: 376 civilians, 20 Lebanese soldiers, and 27 Hizbullah members. About a third of the civilians were young children. More than 750,000 Lebanese have been displaced (one out of every 5 citizens). An estimated 50,000 homes have been destroyed, not counting the roads, bridges, airport, seaports and other civilian infrastructure.

All this in addition to four unarmed UN peacekeepers (from China, Austria, Finland and Canada), killed by an Israeli "precision-guided aerial bomb."

Acito on PoBo

Marc Acito (How I Paid For College) explains the virtues of Portland Bohemianism, or PoBo, for short:

Unlike traditional bohemians, PoBos don't necessarily live in self-induced poverty. Instead, PoBos opt for simplicity. Even downsizing empty-nesters paying too much in the Pearl are bohemian in their rejection of the sprawling, fuel-inefficient suburbanism of places such as Phoenix, a city that expands 1.2 acres an hour.

In the city that works, our artists and intellectuals do just that, free from the cutthroat competition of New York, the mendacious maneuvering of Los Angeles or the smug self-congratulation of San Francisco. We're a humble bunch, content to create in our affordable houses and ride our bikes to the farmers market in our sensible footwear.

Read it all here.

Another Opinion

Yesterday I ran a short piece by a Jewish friend of mine about the war in Israel, the Lebanon, and Gaza, and invited people to chime in with their opinions as well. Book critic John Freeman wrote in with this short note about the place of the United Nations, in all this madness:

The U.N. has taken a bit of a beating in books recently, from Eric Shawn's The U.N. Exposed, to Paul Kennedy's recent book, The Parliament of Man, which maintains the thinnest shred of optimism about the organization's future.

Somehow all these criticisms seem pointless during war time, when it would seem the U.N. has become a target. A day after Jan Egeland, the U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, suggested the offensive in Lebanon was in clear violation of international law, Israelis fired on a U.N. observer post 21 times, ultimately killing four unarmed peacekeepers. When their colleagues came to dig out their bodies -- they were fired on, too.

What's appalling is the U.N. made repeated calls to the Israeli Defense Force to protest the shelling. The IDF's impunity surely has something to do with how often the U.S. vetoes resolutions critical of Israel on the Security Council. (Including one just two weeks ago). Not to mention the fact that Israel has ignored countless U.N. resolutions against its behavior.

So the bullying -- is that even the word when people are dead? -- continues. And what hasn't been mentioned in U.S. papers is that this happened before -- and on a much larger scale. In 1996, Israel shelled U.N. headquarters in Beirut, killing 102 civilians who had taken refuge there. NBCC finalist Robert Fisk was there and reported it, and his dispatch is still available online and is notable for how easily it could describe what's happening today.

I don't have much to add to this, except to say that the top three violators of U.N. security council resolutions are, in order: Israel (30 resolutions on Palestine and the Occupied Territories), Turkey (20 resolutions on Cyprus), and Morocco (15 resolutions on Western Sahara). And all three are allies of the U.S. and in no danger of being asked to abide by these resolutions. Which is why it's so comical to hear Condi Rice asking, nay, demanding, that the Lebanese apply resolution 1559.

July 26, 2006

Morocco's Female Imams

Earlier this year, and with great fanfare, the Moroccan government announced that it had just completed the training of the first class of 'murchidates,' women religious leaders, at Dar Al-Hadith Al-Hassania, a seminary normally reserved for males. The women of the class of 2006 will be assigned to mosques. Their tasks will be to answer religious questions, help with literacy programs, provide legal guidance on the recently-reformed family law, the Moudawwana, and so on. They will not, however, be able to lead prayer (this is why they are not called 'imamat,' but 'murchidates', i.e. 'guides.') As has been pointed out in a million and one press releases, the appearance of official, state-sanctioned murchidates is a first in the Arab world.

This is a good step forward. I support the training of these women, and hope, someday very soon, that they, too, will be allowed to lead prayers. (Let the hate mail begin.) There are, however, a number of questions that arise from this move, including: Why the government decided to do this, why do it now, how do the religious parties view this move, what the women hope to achieve, how their male classmates react, etc.

Some of these questions were addressed in a Wide Angle documentary that aired on PBS last night. The film, "Class of 2006," was produced by Charlotte Mangin and directed by Gini Reticker, and it was shot during four brief weeks in May, in time for its July 2006 airdate. Visually, I found it slightly uninspired. For example, I didn't recognize my hometown of Rabat, where Dar Al-Hadith is located. There were far too many shots of the stereotypical Morocco: turbaned men, crowded souks, tall minarets, old monuments, the medina, the tannery in Fez, the desert at sunset, even dromedaries (the first time I saw a dromedary was on the back of a Camel pack of cigarettes; the second was at the zoo. But somehow, every movie about Morocco features them.)

But beyond all the tourist clichés, there were some very interesting segments and some stunning contrasts between the women featured in this film. The main character was Samira Marzouk, a twenty-nine year old woman who had always been interested in religion and, when she was told by her father about the program, jumped on the opportunity to enroll. She had just gotten married the year before, and her husband looked on very proudly during the interviews and the graduation ceremony. Marzouk seemed full of energy and eager to start her tenure at the mosque she had been assigned to, but she was gently chastised by a Moroccan TV journalist for being 'naive,' for not understanding that the government was using her. I think, though, that Marzouk does realize the PR aspect of this, but somehow prefers to stay focused on what she can achieve through her own work of counseling at mosques.

Dr. Rajaa Naji El Mekkaoui, a tenured professor of law at Université Mohamed-V, was one of the most articulate and thoughtful of the people interviewed. Dr. El Mekkaoui is the first woman to deliver a religious lecture before the king as part of the Ramadan lecture series broadcast on TV. She is also one of the women who was brought in to train the imams and murchidates, and encountered some resistance from the male students. She had to convince them, through her own work and scholarship, that there is a basis for the training of their female classmates.

Fouzia Assouli, a feminist activist who has been involved with women's rights for quite some time, was also a great interview subject. She currently serves as secretary general of the Ligue des Droits de la Femme, and has spearheaded literacy and legal rights training programs. Assouli has seen the work of organizations such as hers become more difficult as Wahhabi ideology gained ground in Morocco. Because she was one of the few women interviewed who had no direct connection with the program (either as a student or as a teacher), she provided a more dispassionate perspective on things. One point she made was that when she and her colleagues pushed for reforms they were often rebuffed and told they were trying to import imperialist deas.

Nadia Yassine, the spokesperson for the islamist group Justice and Charity, made precisely this point, unintentionally of course. For example, she derided the literacy programs that the government and NGOs have been conducting with older women, saying (I am paraphrasing here): "They teach them to read A, B, C. What is that? That's just enough to know how to read 'Coca-Cola' and go buy it. This is an imperialist move." She then went on to say that, in her view, women in their 40s and 50s and 60s should be sacrificed, and the focus should be on the younger generation. There can be no argument, of course, with the idea that Morocco needs a wide, grass-roots campaign for literacy. But deriding those programs that target older people was really quite troubling. I wonder if the women who are benefiting from such programs (some of whom were interviewed as well) share Yassine's view that they should be "sacrificed." I should also point out that one of Morocco's greatest writers, Mohamed Choukri, was illiterate until the age of 20, and by the end of his life had written several novels and become the chair of the Arabic department at his college in Tangier. Such a man would have been "sacrificed" under Yassine's plans.

I have more to say, but I really have to cut this short. I just wanted to give those people who had missed the documentary an idea about what it was like. I think it will be available for streaming on the program's page very soon. You can also read an online conversation at the Washington Post with the producer and director of 'Class of 2006'

New LRB

The latest issue of the London Review of Books is now available. There's a piece by Elias Khoury, translated by Peter Clark, about the invasion of Lebanon, an essay by Amit Chaudhuri on Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, and a review by Adam Shatz of Michel Warschawski's memoir, On The Border. (This last one is only available to subscribers, unfortunately.)

And Now, For A Different Opinion

Last Friday, I linked to a piece by David Morley in the Washington Post, in which he compared coverage of the war in Arab, European, and American media. My friend Jonathan Edelstein, who describes himself as "pro-Israel, pro-Lebanon, anti-indiscriminate slaughter" sent me this note in response, which I'm posting with his permission:

The link about the difference in media coverage between the US, Europe and the Arab world was interesting, but I think the bottom-line difference involves attitudes rather than geography. The difference is between three propositions: (1) Israel is fighting justly in a just cause; (2) Israel has a just cause but is fighting unjustly; and (3) Israel is unjust in both its cause and its tactics.

The American media, with exceptions, tends to support proposition (1). I don't think its support of this proposition has much to do with Israel, though; it's more because American thinking tends to conflate the concepts of just cause and just tactics. The default American opinion is that if someone starts a fight, the other party has the right to finish it by any means necessary, which means that to many Americans, the only significant fact is that Hizbullah struck the first blow.

Most of the European media seems to favor proposition (2) - e.g., the recent Guardian editorial suggesting that Israel's tactics are unacceptable but that its war aims vis-a-vis HA are reasonable. This is my opinion as well, which may be why I often find myself agreeing with the western European war coverage.

The Arab media - again with exceptions - centers around proposition (3), arguing that HA's actions were justified by Sheba'a Farms or support for the Palestinians, or that Israel is an aggressor nation by definition. There has, however, been some criticism of HA's irresponsibility even within this framework.

For what it's worth, I'm hearing that Israel made three major mistakes. The first, which may not be entirely Israel's fault, is that it got a lot of bad target intel regarding Hizbullah, resulting in many places being bombed in the mistaken belief that they were HA-related. The second, which is Israel's fault, is that the IDF has been trigger-happy in attacking targets that might be Hizbullah - e.g., attacking truck convoys on their way to and from HA-controlled towns. The third is that the IDF was seduced by the air-power doctrine, which may be the biggest tactical mistake of all - not only isn't it possible to win a war from the air, but it also isn't possible to strike surgically from the air. The IDF essentially committed itself to a tactical doctrine that was guaranteed to lead to major civilian casualties, and has begun switching tactics only in the past few days.

To this, I'd add at least one other mistake and one inescapable fact. The mistake is that Israel didn't have a well-thought-out diplomatic plan to accompany, or better to pre-empt, the use of military force. The inescapable fact is that nobody has yet developed a good way to fight against a non-state militia, if "good" is defined as minimizing death and destruction to civilians.

All this is by way of saying why I'm not cheering either side in this war. I'd like to see Hizbullah lose, and I'd like to see some mechanism put in place to prevent it from committing further acts of aggression, but that doesn't mean I want the IDF to win. I'd prefer some kind of multilateral diplomatic solution in which both the UN and Israel support the Lebanese government and in which Israel helps in the rebuilding.

My real concern is for the civilians on both sides of the border, and for the Lebanese nation. I'm concerned for Israelis as individuals but I'm not really worried about Israel's future: Israel is a strong country and will come out of this with the state intact. I'm far from sure that this is true of Lebanon, where the state is much more fragile. A failed state in Lebanon would be a disaster for both the Lebanese and the entire region, and preventing this must come before anything else.

I don't agree with the way in which Jonathan's argument is framed, i.e. whether or not Israel is right. There are, after all, at least three parties here, and confining the discussion to the righteousness of only one party doesn't seem to me to cover the issue. I am also not convinced that Israel's bombings of certain Lebanese 'targets' were simply 'mistakes' due to 'bad intel.' Some of the targets included a milk factory (a milk factory, for crying out loud), red-cross ambulances, and far, far too much general infrastructure for it to have been due to bad intelligence. To the Lebanese, the bombings look like the systematic destruction of their nation by a neighbor.

I do agree with Jonathan that there isn't a very thought-out strategy at work here. I am mystified as to what Olmert thinks he can achieve. Destroying Hizbullah? The destruction of Lebanon and the deaths of so many civilians have virtually guaranteed that Hizbullah will have plenty of recruits at this point. This war is a disaster for Lebanon and politically also for Israel, and the only 'winning' party that I can see here would be Hizbullah, since it will likely gain in strength. I also agree that there is no serious threat to Israel here; it will survive this war as it has others before it. The biggest loser this time around is likely to be Lebanon, a country that has already suffered two brutal occupations and a civil war, and was just barely getting back on track. And I share Jonathan's concern for civilians, although since the U.S. and Britain are stubbornly refusing to back a ceasefire, I do not hold out much hope for them.

Do you agree? Disagree? If you'd like to share your opinion, send me a note at llalami AT yahoo DOT com.

'The Other Paris'

Melissa Meltzer reviews Faïza Guène's debut novel Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, finding it "remarkable."

Yeah, Blame It On Gays

An Israeli rabbi has blamed the latest war in the Middle-East on gay people:

"Why does this war break out this week, all of sudden with little warning? Because this is the exact week the Jewish people are trying to decide whether the gay pride parade should take place in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv," Pinchas Winston, a noted author, rabbi and lecturer based in Jerusalem told WND.

Dear God: Why do people hate in Your name?

(via.)

Jaggi on The Caine

In The Guardian, Maya Jaggi writes about her experience judging the Caine Prize this year.

July 25, 2006

BR 31:4

The July/August issue of the Boston Review is now available, with a great short story by Jennie Berner, an appreciation of R.K. Narayan's Malgudi Days by Jhumpa Lahiri, and a review of Kathryn Davis's The Thin Place by poet G.C. Waldrep. Check it out. (Oh, and a tip: Avoid the public-opinion feature. It will depress you.)

On The Novelist's Empathy

Over at the Guardian blog Natasha Walter examines the work of several recent novelists who have attempted to get into the mind of terrorists: Salman Rushdie with Shalimar the Clown, Martin Amis with "The Last Days of Muhammad Atta," and John Updike with the very imaginatively titled Terrorist:

But John Updike, like Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, is attempting to give you what is in a putative terrorist's mind as he looks into the eyes of potential victims. I can't even imagine how difficult that must be artistically, and I can see that it is also difficult politically. Whether a writer chooses to show a terrorist as motivated by a hatred of American foreign policy, or by nothing but religious fervour, or by purely worldly disappointments, or by nihilistic love of death, he or she has entered an ongoing political debate.

If that makes things hard for the writer, it also makes things hard, in a different way, for the reader. On the one hand we are used to this being political territory, but on the other we want something very different from a novel than what we get from the newspapers: we want imaginative understanding, not political positions; we want to get close to a fictional individual rather than stand in judgment over a real group; we want the challenge of speculation rather than the reassurance of certainty. We want art, not news, at a time when news seems to be drowning out art.

Walter says she was disappointed by all three works, because "research has replaced empathy." I find myself largely in agreement with her, with one exception: I think that out of the three (Amis, Updike, Rushdie) the only one who has pulled it off is Rushdie--and coincidentally, he's the only one who has actually had any brush with real terrorists.

Defending the Indefensible

With Lebanese civilian deaths now well over 300, Alan Dershowitz proposes a "continuum of civilianity." :

Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.

Some civilians, therefore, are less innocent than others. I told you we were trapped in a George Orwell novel, didn't I?

July 24, 2006

Temptations Reviews

Ben MacIntyre reviews Pankaj Mishra's new book, Temptations of the West for the New York Times Book Review:

Mishra reports on a world in which the cultural definitions are constantly evolving, eliding and colliding. His travels are also interwoven with pungent commentary on modern politics in South Asia. Few politicians escape unburned; some are roasted. Indira Gandhi is held up as a triumph of mediocrity: “a not particularly sensitive or intelligent woman . . . exalted by accident of birth and a callow political culture into the chieftancy of a continent-size nation.”

While there is fury in Mishra’s account of his homeland and its neighbors, there is also a fierce love. He is particularly moved by the sight of ordinary Indians trudging off to vote for politicians who often do not deserve it.

It's a very positive write-up, but I was surprised at the frequency of certain labels: "angry book," "fury in Mishra's account," "book will enrage many Indian readers," "not a gentle book," and so on. Compare and contrast with this review by Charles Foran in the Globe and Mail, which uses words like "vivid," "intrepid," "daring," and where the adjective "angry" is nowhere to be seen:

Were Temptations of the West simply a collection of travel essays that ponders how places like India and Nepal negotiate a globalized planet, it would still be a fine book. But the intensity of Mishra's prose suggests that he wants the disruption, and the upheaval, to be felt viscerally. Daring reportage, and an obvious empathy for ordinary people, goes some way toward this ambition.

As important, though, is the use of his own narrative as evidence of the "bewildering complexity" faced by individuals swept along by those negotiations. If, as he claims, the movement for one traveller at least was from "ignorance and prejudice to a measure of self-awareness and knowledge," then it might prove the same for certain readers. Great books, and great books only, can have that rare effect.

Intrigued, yet?

Saunders on England

The inimitable George Saunders, whose The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil is out in the UK, describes his first visit in England, a place he finds somewhat confusing:

"One finds oneself longing for the simplicity of America, where, for example, everyone understands that New York City is a city, that Cleveland is a state in either Ohio or Indiana, and that the Mississippi River, I'm pretty sure, does not run in any state other than Mississippi. Or city. I can't remember if Mississippi is a city or a ... Anyway, the point is, the American visitor to Britain can avoid all confusion by simply referring to his hosts and hostesses as "you guys."

More here.

Kif Dima, Talfin...

There is a nice review of Faïza Guène's Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow in the Sunday NYTBR. It might help if they'd spelled her name correctly. (It's Guène, not Guèn.)

Shafak Interview

Turkish writer Elif Shafak, who has been charged with "insulting Turkishness" via the same law that had earlier been used againt Orhan Pamuk, is interviewed by Scott Simon over at NPR.

A Lesson in Semantics

It's one of those really bizarre coincidences that you'd never get away with in a work of fiction: This week, as bombs continue to fall on Beirut, Israel marked the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem. (If you don't know about this attack, here is some background.) Back then, the attacks were described as the work of Jewish terrorists; now they are known as the work of Jewish freedom fighters, desperately trying to establish a homeland.

In Ha'aretz, Tom Segev reports on the work of an academic conference that was held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center on the question of who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter:

It was quite a week to clarify such a question. They can be distinguished by organizational affiliation, goals, targets, means of combat and mode of operation. They all assume that a freedom fighter is a good person and a terrorist is a bad one. Nearly every terrorist defines himself as a freedom fighter, and vice versa: freedom fighters are usually defined as terrorists. So was Begin. He invested a lot of effort to convince history that he was not a terrorist. Among other things, he emphasized that his organization did not harm civilians. There's a thesis that could serve as an historic lesson from a moral standpoint: not harming civilians. (...) Netanyahu spoke at the conference. The difference between a terrorist operation and a legitimate military action is expressed, he said, in the fact that the terrorists intend to harm civilians whereas legitimate combatants try to avoid that. According to that theory, the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian organization is a legitimate military operation, and the bombing of Dresden, Hanoi, Haifa or Beirut is a war crime. Of course this is not what Netanyahu meant. He learned only this from the bombing of the hotel: that the Arabs are bad and we are good. Arab actions starting in 1920 and through the Iranian nuclear plan reflect, in his words, "a terrorist mentality." Israel, on the other hand, only harms civilians by accident or when there is no alternative. For example, when terrorists hide among civilians.

The historic truth is different: In the 60 years since the attack at the King David Hotel, Israel has hurt some two million civilians, including 750,000 who lost their homes in 1948, another quarter million Palestinians who were forced to leave the West Bank in the Six-Day War and hundreds of thousands of Egyptian civilians who were expelled from the cities along the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition. And now tens of thousands of Lebanese villagers are being forced to abandon their homes, and air force pilots are once again bombing Beirut and other cities. Hundreds of civilians have been killed. Regrettably. It's all in the spirit of the King David Hotel. One can always say there was a mishap.

You can read the entire piece here.

Thanks to Suzanne for the link.

Alarcón: The Writing Life

Daniel Alarcón contributes a piece to the Washington Post's occasional "Writing Life" series. I was particularly interested in this passage, which describes the fear many immigrant or expat or exiled writers experience when their books come out in their countries of birth:

In a few months, my first book of stories, War by Candlelight -- published last year in the United States -- will be published in Peru. I've been looking forward to the Spanish version anxiously. It's not just a matter of worrying about how the translation will sound; it's deeper than that. My incomplete knowledge of the place will be on display before critics who are least likely to be forgiving. To be panned by an American reviewer would probably have more of an impact on my career, but similar treatment at the hands of Peruvian critics might do more spiritual damage. I've taken what I know about a place, written it in English, and now those people depicted in the stories will have their say. Exoticism will not color their understanding of the work, and the stories will be read on their own merits. These readers will not be seduced by a pretty sentence or a well-observed detail: They will know instantly if the book is true or not, whether I have added something of substance to the discussion of Peru's national trauma or have simply plagiarized our suffering.

You can read the entire essay here. Authenticity (and not emotional truth) continues to be the question of the moment for writers of color. See, for instance, reactions to the film adaptation of Monica Ali's Brick Lane.

July 23, 2006

The World Is Not Fooled

They can scream terrorism all they want while they themselves terrorize civilians. The rest of the world does not believe them. This weekend, from places like Athens and Bern, Brazilia and Caracas, Los Angeles and Cairo, Lahore and London, Islamabad and Sydney, Seoul and Zurich, ordinary citizens came out to say, "No" to the Israeli war on Lebanese and Palestinians. Citizens the world over have had enough of Olmert, enough of Hizbollah, enough of Bush, enough, enough, enough.

From Sydney, Australia. Photo: AP/Mark Baker:

From Athens, Greece. Photo: Reuters/ John Kolesidis:

From Caracas, Venezuela. Photo: Reuters/Francesco Spotorno:

From Brazilia, Brazil. Photo: AP/Eraldo Peres:

From Cairo, Egypt. Photo: AFP/Khalid Desouki:

From Islamabad, Pakistan. Photo: Reuters/Mian Khursheed:

From Lahore, Pakistan. Photo: Reuters/Mohsin Reza:

From London, UK. Photo: Reuters/Toby Melville:

From Los Angeles, California. Photo: AP/Mark Terrill:

From Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Reuters/Jamal Saidi:

From Seoul, South Korea. Photo: AP/Lee Jin-Man:

From Sydney, Australia. Photo: AP/Mark Baker:

From Zurich, Switzerland. Photo: Reuters/Sebastian Derungs:

From Bern, Switzerland. Photo: AP/Allesandro della Valle:

July 21, 2006

Attenberg Connects With Her Roots

Jami Attenberg, whose debut collection, Instant Love, came out last month, contributes a piece to Nextbook about discovering her Jewish roots, sometimes in the least expected places. Here's a tidbit:

So off I went to college in Baltimore, where there were plenty of Jews—and I successfully ignored them. In fact, in all the cities I lived in over the years—from DC to Tampa to Seattle—I managed to ignore them, the other Jews, only stopping to think about my own Jewishness when someone else bothered to mention it. At one point I attended a Catholic wedding in San Diego, a wedding so white I was the token minority. Someone actually said to me, "I heard you were Jewish. Say something Jewish!"

Read it all here. And keep checking this site. I have a signed copy of Instant Love that I will be giving away at some point.