February 28, 2008

Protest @ The Moroccan Embassy

Regular readers of this blog will likely remember the name of Fouad Mourtada, the young engineer who was arrested and allegedly tortured by the Moroccan government because he created a fake profile of the crown prince. The charges are not under question; what is under question, however, is the legal process by which this young man was arrested, tried, and sentenced for a youthful prank. If you live in D.C., here is a chance to make your voice heard. A protest will be taking place in front of the Embassy of Morocco this coming Saturday, March 1st:

Location: Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco
Time: Saturday, March 1st. 2:00pm - 5:00pm
Address : 1601 21st Street, NW, Washington DC 20009
Directions: Yahoo Maps

There is also a Facebook link. (I bet the irony will go unnoticed by Mourtada's jailers.)

Dutton's To Close, Beyond Baroque To Follow?

As has been widely reported, one of the best independent bookstores in Los Angeles is closing. Dutton's had been at its Brentwood location for 23 years. I remember going there to hear Monica Ali, Michael Chabon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many, many others. I was thrilled to read there when my own book came out in hardcover--a bit of a dream come true. But now, another Los Angeles bookstore is in danger: Beyond Baroque. An email currently making the rounds states that "[the] lease is now in question, and ends Saturday, March 1st. It has not been extended." The bookstore will be renting the space month to month from now on.

The reasons for both these developments are essentially the same: expensive retail space, competition from chains and online booksellers. I find it depressing that, with such a disproportionate number of wealthy people here, no one is coming forward to help independent literary culture survive. Quite the contrary, the millionaire who owns the building in which Dutton's is located has said that he would be willing to pay the bookstore's debts, and forgive the rent, so long as the bookstore closes at the end of April.

February 27, 2008

New LRB

The latest issue of the London Review of Books has a Diary piece (don't you love those? I do.) by Israeli journalist Yonathan Mendel, in which he describes his work covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A particularly interesting tidbit:

In most of the articles on the conflict two sides battle it out: the Israel Defence Forces, on the one hand, and the Palestinians, on the other. When a violent incident is reported, the IDF confirms or the army says but the Palestinians claim: ‘The Palestinians claimed that a baby was severely injured in IDF shootings.’ Is this a fib? ‘The Palestinians claim that Israeli settlers threatened them’: but who are the Palestinians? Did the entire Palestinian people, citizens of Israel, inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, people living in refugee camps in neighbouring Arab states and those living in the diaspora make the claim? Why is it that a serious article is reporting a claim made by the Palestinians? Why is there so rarely a name, a desk, an organisation or a source of this information? Could it be because that would make it seem more reliable?

All italics are Mendel's. He also looks at verbs like 'initiate,' or 'launch' versus 'respond.' Interesting stuff, particularly for those of us who are obsessed with language or politics (or both.)

February 26, 2008

Quotable: Salman Rushdie

Recently, I had my students read a couple of essays from Salman Rushdie's collection Imaginary Homelands. I particularly like these lines from "Is Nothing Sacred?":

What is more, the writer is there, in his work, in the reader's hands, utterly exposed, utterly defenseless, entirely without the benefit of an alter ego to hide behind. What is forged, in the secret act of reading, is a different kind of identity, as the reader and writer merge, through the medium of the text, to become a collective being that both writes as it reads and reads as it writes, and creates, jointly, that unique work, 'their' novel. This 'secret identity' of writer and reader is the novel form's greatest and most subversive gift.

This was originally published in Granta in 1990. If you're looking for something more recent by Rushdie, try "The Shelter of the World," which appeared in the New Yorker last week (or was it two weeks ago?), and is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel.

(Photo credit: Eamonn McCabe)

February 25, 2008

Aboubakr Jamaï @ UCR

As a reminder: Tomorrow, I will be hosting Moroccan journalist Boubker Jamaï at the University of California, Riverside (HMNSS 1500, 11:00 am) for a talk on democratization. The talk is free and open to the public, so if you're in the Southern California area, please come.

February 22, 2008

'The Fake Prince of Facebook'

I have an opinion piece up at The Nation website about the imprisonment of Fouad Mourtada in Casablanca two weeks ago. Here is how it begins:

On the morning of February 5, plainclothes officers in Morocco picked up Fouad Mourtada in Casablanca, blindfolded him, and took him to the police station, where they reportedly tortured him until he lost consciousness. His crime: He had created a Facebook profile of Crown Prince Moulay Rachid, the King's brother.

Mourtada is 26. He did what millions of other people his age do every day--create profiles, real or fake, on social networking websites. There are fake profiles on Facebook for everyone from Brad Pitt to Mother Teresa, from King Abdullah to Osama bin Laden. There are 500 profiles for George W. Bush. Mourtada did not appear to think he was committing any crime. Indeed, despite being a computer engineer, with a degree from the prestigious École Mohammedia des Ingénieurs, he did not use a proxy server to protect his identity. Nor did he derive any profit, monetary or otherwise, from the Facebook profile. It may have been a youthful prank or a twenty-first-century homage, but either way it landed him in jail.

You can read the entire piece over at The Nation. The court is due to reconvene today, and I can only hope that cooler heads will prevail.

Updated to say that Fouad Mourtada has been sentenced to three years in prison.

February 21, 2008

Border Books

The L.A. Times Book Review includes a thoughtful piece by Josh Kun on two recent books about the U.S.-Mexico border: Hyper-Border by Fernando Romero and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border by Juan Felipe Herrera.

The U.S.-Mexico border is a 2,000-mile geopolitical line that runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, slicing through 10 states, two deserts, at least four different regional accents and at least three different philosophies on how to cook meat, all while changing shape from rivers to rocks to ranch fences to wooden posts to menacing metal walls rigged with electronic sensors.

Yet the border has never been just a line on a map. CNN's Lou Dobbs knows this as well as a Tijuana local who wakes up to the smell of U.S. Border Patrol tear gas. It is a machine and a metaphor, a tool and a scapegoat, an entire cosmology and, especially these days, a political quagmire as laden with quicksand as the mention of a Palestinian state at a Passover table. There's no way to talk about it without getting lost in circuitous, maddening debate.

Romero's book redefines the idea of a clear border by providing a complex image of the region, with its interdependencies, while Herrera's book is a collection of his poetry, essays and reflections over 30 years of activism on behalf of border peoples, border generations, border languages.

February 20, 2008

Aboubakr Jamaï @ Riverside

Next Tuesday, I will be hosting Moroccan journalist Boubker Jamaï at the University of California, Riverside, for a talk on democratization. Here are the details:

The talk is free and open to the public, so if you're in the Southern California area, please join us for a lively discussion. Those of you who are unfamiliar with Jamai can read this (poorly titled) article by Jane Kramer in the New Yorker.

February 19, 2008

Free Mourtada

Two weeks ago, a computer engineer by the name of Fouad Mourtada was arrested by Moroccan police in Casablanca for creating a fake Facebook profile of Prince Moulay Rachid, the king's brother. Mourtada's family found out about his arrest through the news, and had to wait a week to be allowed to see him. Mourtada says he was tortured when he was taken into custody. There are thousands of fake profiles for politicians, royals, and celebrities, but Mourtada has been charged with identity theft and risks up to five years in prison. Several Moroccan bloggers, including this one, are maintaining radio silence today. You can visit the Mourtada family website here.

February 18, 2008

New Bidoun

The Winter 2008 issue of the magazine Bidoun includes a lovely article by Issandr El Amrani on Anfas (Souffles), the legendary Moroccan literary and cultural magazine. Here is a brief snippet

In 1966, a small group of Moroccan poets, artists, and intellectuals launched Souffles, a quarterly review that would over time become at once a vehicle for cultural renewal and an instigator of efforts to promote social justice in the Maghreb. From its very first issue, Souffles was a unique experiment, a Moroccan and Maghrebi effort to liberate the country's intellectual framework from fetid provincialism and lingering colonial complexes. It was a cri de coeur, a rebellion against the artistic status quo, a manifesto for a new aesthetics, even a new worldview. Its trademark cover, emblazoned with an intense black sun, radiated rebellion.

The full article is available online here, so please take a look.

Banks's Latest

Luc Sante reviews Russell Banks's new novel, The Reserve, for the NYT Book Review, and he doesn't seem to like it very much:

It is 1936, and we are in the Adirondacks, at a party at a luxurious camp on a vast private reserve. (“Camp” is a local upper-caste understatement, comparable to the use of “cottage” in Newport, R.I.) As the sun begins to dip behind the mountain range that dominates the horizon, a beautiful young woman detaches herself from her elders and walks barefoot to the shore of the lake. Suddenly a seaplane appears in the air and all look on, stunned, as it lands on the surface of the water. Such a thing has never before occurred, and furthermore is taboo under the largely unspoken laws of the reserve. A dashing aviator — we will discover that he is a famous artist, a radical, a free spirit — steps out of the plane and locks eyes with the glamorous yet troubled young woman.

You can picture this on the movie screen, can’t you: all golden light and exquisite set design and dazzling wardrobe and starring, perhaps, Keira Knightley. Russell Banks’s new novel begins this way, and the scene exemplifies both its strengths and its weaknesses — it is not necessarily evident which is which.

I'm a bit disappointed, because Banks's Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter are among my favorite novels, and I always hope to find the magic again.

February 15, 2008

Friday Fun

I can't quite decide if this is good political propaganda or some new form of child abuse:

'Kids Support Obama, Part 2'.

Quotable: J.M. Coetzee

I'm about half way through final edits for my new novel, The Outsider, and I am so tired these days I can barely keep my eyes open past eight p.m. While reading Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year the other day, I had to smile at this exchange between Señor C., an aging novelist, and Anya, the attractive neighbor he has hired to be his secretary:

A novel? No. I don't have the endurance any more. To write a novel you have to be like Atlas, holding up a whole world on your shoulders and supporting it there for months and years while its affairs work themselves out. It is too much for me as I am today.

Still, I said, we have all got opinions, especially about politics. If you tell a story at least people will shut up and listen to you. A story or a joke.

Stories tell themselves, they don't get told, he said. That much I know after a lifetime of working with stories. Never try to impose yourself. Wait for the story to speak for itself. Wait and hope that it isn't born deaf and dumb and blind. I could do that when I was younger. I could wait patiently for months on end. Nowadays I get tired. My attention wanders.

I love the comparison with Atlas. How apt.

February 13, 2008

Reading: Rancho Mirage

I will be giving a reading with my colleague Reza Aslan (No god but God) tomorrow in Rancho Mirage. Here are the details:

February 14, 2008
Reza Aslan and Laila Lalami
1:30 - 3:30 PM
Reading & Discussion
Writing from the Desert Series
Rancho Mirage Public Library
Rancho Mirage, California

If you live in the desert, come on by and say hello.

Arab Regimes Finally Agree On Something!

...and they want more censorship.

At a meeting in Cairo called by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, a charter was adopted allowing authorities to withdraw permits from offending channels. The only country to refuse to endorse the charter was Qatar, the home of leading satellite station al-Jazeera.

Correspondents say the satellite channels have thrived on controversy. The often privately financed stations give airtime to government critics and viewers, and discuss issues which state channels would never dare approach, says the BBC's Heba Saleh in Cairo.

Qatar's reservations, according to the BBC reporter, were more 'legal' than 'political' in nature.

February 12, 2008

Levantine Center Pledge Drive

The Levantine Center is a Los Angeles-based organization that brings the arts, literatures, and films of the Middle East and North Africa to American audiences. It regularly puts together wonderful events (some of which I've written about in this space) and now they are in need of your support. This month, a generous donor has offered to match every pledge up to $10,000, so every penny you give the Levantine Center will be doubled. Please: Reach out for that checkbook or credit card and go here.

February 11, 2008

Cyber 'Crime'

A Moroccan man by the name of Fouad Mourtada has been arrested and put in jail because he created a fake Facebook profile for the king's brother, crown prince Moulay Rachid. The official Moroccan news agency MAP did not even bother with the presumption of innocence:

Les services de sécurité marocains ont procédé à l'arrestation, mercredi à Casablanca, pour pratiques crapuleuses d'un individu qui a usurpé l'identité de Son Altesse Royale le Prince Moulay Rachid sur le site Internet www.facebook.com, a-t-on appris de source policière.

The accused is referred to as having "villainous practices." The release has since been taken down from the site, but you can read its Google cache. It's unclear how the police found the man, and whether Facebook released his IP address.

Just the other day, a New York Times reporter called to ask me about blogging in Morocco, and the relationship between new media and traditional media. The Moroccan government has so far--and wisely--left bloggers alone, but if someone can get put in jail for something as silly as a fake Facebook profile, then bloggers should be worried.

For your amusement: Facebook profiles for George W. Bush, Tony Blair, King Juan Carlos, and King Abdullah.

(Via Larbi.)

February 08, 2008

Quotable: James Baldwin

A few weeks ago in my non-fiction class, we discussed James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son. Here is how the essay "Stranger in the Village" concludes:

One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. The world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

Published originally in Harper's Magazine in 1953.

(Photo credit: Mottke Weissman)

February 07, 2008

Goldman Profile

There's a great profile of Francisco Goldman in last weekend's Guardian Review. His latest book, The Art of Political Murder, is just now coming out in the U.K.

February 05, 2008

Super Tuesday

Don't forget to vote!

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

In Kenya

My knowledge of Kenya probably begins and ends with the novels of Ngugi, which is why I haven't written about the growing conflict in the country at all. It's been heartbreaking watching the violence spread while Mwai Kibaki persists on saying he won the (rigged) elections and Raila Odinga claims he's the rightful winner. More than a thousand Kenyans have died (as many as during the invasion of Lebanon in 2006) and both Kibaki and Odinga are tacitly condoning the violence by doing nothing to stop it.

In Ofeibea Quist-Arcton's report for NPR, the novelist Binyavanga Wainaina echoes this sentiment. Kibaki and Odinga, he says, "are dancing on a stage with matches and gasoline" despite the vast, public pleas for them to stop the violence, despite their own agreement on Friday to a preliminary plan, despite the intervention of foreign mediators.

Morocco's Shame

A recent World Bank reports finds that the Arab World is falling behind other regions in terms of education. And the worst performers? Read this:

The region had not seen the increasing literacy and school enrollment witnessed in Asia and Latin America, they said.

Djibouti, Yemen, Iraq and Morocco were ranked the worst educational reformers.

Iraq had to contend with a U.S. military invasion. What, exactly, is Morocco's excuse?

February 04, 2008

Why I'm Voting For Obama

The primary reason for my choice is that Obama opposed the Iraq war back in 2002. I remember that year as a time when the majority of our politicians and our talking heads were falling over themselves trying to sound "tough on Iraq." They led the country into a disastrous war that will affect the region and the rest of the world for generations. Obama didn't have to say he was against the war, but he did. And that shows judgment.

In addition, Obama has said he would be willing to talk to the leaders of Iran without preconditions, while Hillary Clinton was agitating to have the Revolutionary Guard declared a terrorist organization. We know very well what happens when leaders use pre-conditions for talks (Ireland, Israel, etc.) and it's time for a different approach with Iran.

In terms of domestic policy, Hillary Clinton's proposals on health care are more precise, but I am under no illusions about her ability to turn them into actual legislation. The future president will have to work with Congress on health care reform, and I think Obama is much more likely to get the bipartisan support he needs to get legislation passed. The same holds true for the economy, and pretty much every other issue.

Lastly, this nation needs a fundamental change. When was the last time you saw so many voters overcome by emotion at a rally? Obama has that rare capacity to inspire. So: If you're undecided, please consider voting for Barack Obama tomorrow.

(Photo by: Annie Leibovitz)

Si, Se puede!

Even little kids support Obama:

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