Fadwa Tuqan - Al Jadid Magazine

ALJADID
A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts
COPYRIGHT 2003 AL JADID
VOL. 9 No. 45 FALL 2003 $6.95
T
wo Literary
Liter
ar
yLegacies
Le
gacies
Literar
ary
Leg
Two
Remember
ed:
emembered:
Remembered:
Abd al-Rahman Munif
Abd F
al-Rahman
Munif
and
ad
wa Tuqan
Fad
adw
and Fadwa Tuqan
David Cole Speaks on
Thr
ea
ts to Ci
vil
hrea
eats
Civil
Liber
ties
Liberties
BOOKS
UNVEILING THE WEST THROUGH
ARTISTS, HISTORIANS, CRITICS
By Doris Bittar
ART
THE ART OF EMNA ZGHAL
By Najwa Adra
FILM REVIEWS
‘IRAN: VEILED APPEARANCES’
By Afshin Matin-asgari
‘THE TREE THAT REMEMBERS’
By J. Rae Niles
‘THE KITE’
By Elissar Haikal
Lebanon in Three Books: Elise Salem’s Century of Lebanese Literature ♦ Samir
Khalaf’s ‘Civil and Uncivil Violence’♦ Patricia Ward on Psychological Wounds of War
1
www.ALJADID.com
♦ Poetry: Charbel Dagher’s ‘Thresholds’
Music:
Toufic Faroukh’s Saxophone
AL JADID
FALL 2003
Abd al-Rahman Munif, one of the greatest and most controversial Arab novelists, died of a heart attack January 24 ,
2004, in Syria. We salute this special novelist who devoted most of his works to defending the freedom and dignity of
the Arab individual, regardless of his/her geographic location. In celebrating his literary legacy, this issue features
“Bidding Farewell to Munif: Novelist’s Narrative Bears Witness to Repression, Corruption, Reverence for Common
Folk” by Judith Gabriel (p. 4) and “Unpublished Munif Interview: Crisis in the Arab World – Oil, Political Islam, and
Dictatorship” by Iskandar Habash (p. 10). In remembering Munif, Simone Fattal put together three collages that
appear on pages 2, 5, and 11.
2
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2003
CONTEN
TS
ENT
essays &
feat ur
es
ures
4. Arab World Bids
Farewell to Munif
by Judith Gabriel
6. Fadwa Tuqan: A
Romantic Feminist
and Reluctant Political
Witness
by Emaleah Shackleton
7.
Fadwa Tuqan:
An Arab Electra
by Abbas Beydoun
44. War, Peace and
Garbage
by Hanan Chebib
f ilms
34. Tehran Anxiety
by Afshin Matin-asgari
36. Life After the Torture
Chamber
by J. Rae Niles
37. A Twinge, a Smile and
a Kite
by Elissar W. Haikal
art
45. Arab Art: Beyond
Dichotomies
by Sarah Rogers
46. Hybrid Vigor: The
Art of Emna Zghal
by Najwa Adra
poetry
19. Crossroads
by Elissar W. Haikal
21. Thresholds
by Charbel Dagher
24. The Weeping Echo
by Fadwa Tuqan
AL JADID FALL 2003
inter
v iews
interv
books
10. Unpublished Munif Interview: Crisis in
the Arab World – Oil, Political Islam and
Dictatorship
by Iskandar Habash
15. Secular ‘Forgiveness’
in Syrian Novel
by Carole Corm
13. Toufic Faroukh on Jazz, Saxophone and Memory
by Mai Munasa
19. Our Greatest Weapon:
The Rule of Law
by Pamela Nice
15. Definitions and Dialects of the Novel: Interview
with Myriam Antaki
by Carole Corm
22. A Century of Lebanese
Literature
by Samir Mattar
18. Evaluating Threats at Home and Abroad
by Pamela Nice
25. Lebanon: A Focal
Point for Unsolved
Tensions
by Paul Sullivan
Al Jadid, A Review of Arab Culture and Arts
EDITOR: ELIE CHALALA
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: MAUREEN D. TINGLEY
ASSISTANT EDITORS: JUDIITH GABRIEL,
EMALEAH SHACKLETON
EDITORIAL INTERN: SAWSAN MANSOUR
ART, WEBSITE & COMPUTER: LAHIRU COLLURE
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: PAMELA NICE,
PAULINE HOMSI VINSON
PRODUCTION: INTERNATIONAL DESKTOP PUBLISHING
Al Jadid (ISSN 1523 - 746X) is published quarterly by Al Jadid
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ON THE COVER
COVER:: “The Chair” by Monkith Saaid (height 15.m,
iron, voice, wind movement). It was completed in Ehden,
Lebanon, 2003. Saaid is an Iraqi sculptor whose passion for
art began when he was growing up in Baghdad. In 1978, Saaid
left Iraq and arrived in Syria, beginning years of lengthy
wandering from one country to the next. He currently lives
and works between Syria, Lebanon, and the U.S. He received
his M.A. in sculpture in 1993 from the Academy of Arts in
Utrecht (the Netherlands) and his advanced studies in
sculpture in 1995 from the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.
Saaid designed figures out of clay, and won several prizes.
www.ALJADID.com
27. Coming of Age, Exile
and War
by Pauline Homsi
Vinson
28. A Critical Celebration
of Novelist Etel Adnan
by Susan Muaddi Darraj
29. Confessions of Culture
Clash
by Elham Gheytanchi
30. A Literary Text of
Palestinian Embroidery
by Lynne Rogers
31. A Thousand
and One Recipes
by Wail S. Hassan
32. Unveiling the West
Through the Eyes of
Artists, Historians and
Critics
by Doris Bittar
33. Cartoons Tackle Taboos
by Doris Bittar
memoir
40. Let Them Eat Bread
by Fred M. Saidy
contributors
17. This issue’s contributors
3
ESSAYS AND FE
AT URE
S
FEA
URES
Bidding Farewell to Munif:
Novelist Bears Witness to Repression,
Corruption, Reverence for Common Folk
BY JUDITH GABRIEL
A
rab intellectuals mourned the
loss of Abd al-Rahman
Munif,
Jordanian-born
novelist and economist who became one
of the greatest and most controversial Arab
novelists. Munif died January 24 in Syria
of a heart attack after suffering a long
illness. He was 71. A large funeral was held
in Damascus for him, attended by some
officials, such as the Minister of Culture,
and with fans coming from Jordan,
Lebanon and Iraq to see him off for the
last time. A funeral procession moved from
the western villa area in Mezze, a suburb
of Damascus where he had spent his last
days, then to Al Shefaa Hospital, and
finally, prayers for him were said in AlThanaa Mosque.
“We have lost one of the most
courageous and noble writers in the Arab
world in more than 30 years,” Jordanian
novelist Ibrahim Nasr Allah told
Aljazeera.net. “He challenged the
political taboos and wrote bravely about
the stripping off of human liberty and
dignity in the Arab world.”
Among the many tributes published
in the Arab press in the wake of Munif’s
death was this one by Lebanese journalist
and author Ibrahim Salemeh, writing in
As Safir: “After 100 years, if the Arabs
continue to write and document, they will
discover that Abd al-Rahman Munif, the
Benghali-Saudi-Lebanese-Iraqi-Syrian,
was the most important and greatest of
those who wrote the Arab novel in the
second half of the 20th century.”
Munif ’s narratives depict the
catastrophic changes in the Arab
homeland, and he became known for his
scathing parodies of Middle Eastern elites,
especially those of Saudi Arabia, a country
which banned many of his books;
nonetheless, after his death, Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah offered to provide an
4
airplane to transport Munif’s body to be
buried in Saudi Arabia, and to give Saudi
citizenship to Munif’s children (not his
wife, since she holds Syrian citizenship).
Munif himself had been stripped of his
Saudi nationality in 1963 for his open
identification with Marxist thought and
for criticizing the regime. But there were
gestures of goodwill extended before he
died: a high-ranking Saudi personality
expressed interest in covering Munif’s
medical expenses, whether inside Saudi
Arabia or abroad, according to Elaph, an
Arabic electronic site. Preferring to receive
his medical care closer to his family,
Munif sent a letter thanking the Saudi
personality for the gesture which
purportedly ended the rupture between
himself and Saudi Arabia.
Munif’s name had been noticeably
absent from the Saudi Arab Literature
Encyclopedia. Asked about the exclusion
by the London-based daily Asharq alAwsat, the editor of the encyclopedia,
Mansour al-Hazemi, a professor of
literature at the King Saud University who
was personally in charge of the novel
section, answered: “Yes, it is correct that
Abd al-Rahman Munif was a Saudi author,
but he was born and grew up outside the
kingdom, in Syria, Iraq, Jordan; he
produced and wrote in a different
environment.” Munif, for the Saudis, is
like Gebran for the Lebanese, al-Hazemi
explained – an immigrant literary figure.
Munif ’s novels are loaded with
politics and message, and his work is often
long, partly because of its documentary
and historical nature. His writing moves
at a slower pace, perhaps echoing the
rhythm of the desert, gradually building
to a sudden burst of activity at the end.
He was one of the most prominent Arab
novelists to have used modernist narrative
techniques, and promoted a new genre of
www.ALJADID.com
Abd al-Rahman Munif
fiction that reflected the social, political
and economic realities of modern Arab
society.
While his works were never
particularly successful in the West, they
were both critically acclaimed and
extremely popular throughout the Middle
East. The author of 15 novels, his
masterwork is the “Cities of Salt” quintet
that follows the evolution of the Arabian
peninsula from a land of Bedouin nomads
to a rich and powerful oil kingdom. Munif
explored the theme that in the Arab oil
countries, “Arabs have been the victims
of their rulers and the foreigners.” In the
most celebrated of his 15 novels, “East Of
The Mediterranean” (1975), he
graphically condemns prisons, Arab
dictatorships and repression. The book
was banned by many Arab countries.
It was oil that Munif knew so much
about that it was to permeate his writing.
He used his knowledge of the petroleum
industry to criticize the business concerns
which ran it and the politicians they
served, and how that substance has
propelled the region into chaos. Munif
once told Paul Schemm of Middle East
Times, “I think that oil is a neutral resource
– it depends on the way its used. Until
now, however, they [the Gulf] have only
made use of it in a partial fashion. Most of
the profits from oil have not been used in
a wise manner and this has to change. It’s
AL JADID FALL 2003
been used, generally speaking, in a way
that has turned the societies into
consumerist ones. There is no real thought
about employment or future generations.
There is no development of an economic
plan for the future – tomorrow it could be
over and then the Gulf would be poor
again.”
Born in Amman, Jordan, in 1933,
Munif’s mother was Iraqi, and his father
was a caravan merchant from Najd, Saudi
Arabia, who plied his wares between Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Iraq,
with many wives in different
countries, according to Al Taher alTawil in Al Quds al-Arabi. Munif’s
father died three years after Munif
was born.
Munif completed his secondary
education in Amman. In 1952,
while Iraq was in the throes of a
turbulent period, he enrolled at the
Faculty of Law in Baghdad, and
became involved in left-wing
political activity, including
opposing the pro-Western Baghdad
Pact. His politics led to his being
deported from Iraq in 1955. He
resumed his education in Cairo
during the union period (19581961), then headed off to Yugoslavia
to earn a doctorate in petroleum
economics at the University of
Belgrade.
After Yugoslovia, he started
identifying with the Marxist ideas
which formed the basis of his first
novel, “Al Ashjar wa-ightiyal
Marzuq” (The Trees and the
Assasination of Marzouk) in 1973.
Palestinian critic Faysal Darraj, writing in
the Qatar-based Al Watan newspaper,
wrote that the novel “opened fire at the
repression which was practiced by regimes
against their peoples, through the struggle
of Marzouk with the security forces in his
country and their constant attempt to crush
him.”
He became an expert in the oil
industry and later returned to Iraq to work
in the oil ministry, becoming a member of
the Baathist Pan Arab Leadership. His
Baathist experience was quite bitter,
although short. Munif was against the
historical leadership of the Baath Party,
that of Michel Aflaq, and later joined the
Leftist Baath, between 1963 and 1965.
Munif parted with the leftist Baath and
AL JADID FALL 2003
joined the revolutionary forces after the
1967 June defeat. He became an Arab
Marxist, according to Mohammed Jamal
Barout in an article in the Lebanese daily
As Safir. When Barout asked Munif to
write about his experience in the Baath
Party during the 1960s, he replied, “ More
than one friend asked me to write about
my experience with the party, but I am
not enthusiastic about that at all.” Barout
wrote in Al Hayat, “I remember his
expression, literally and truthfully: ‘a dirty
history.’ ”
society, starting with the establishment of
the Middle Eastern sultanate of Mooran,
the thinly veiled Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia. Here he recounts the destruction
of the bedouins’ centuries-old way of life
following the discovery of oil on the
Arabian Peninsula. The late Edward Said
described it as “the only serious work of
fiction that tries to show the effect of oil,
Americans and the local oligarchy on a
Gulf country.”
Munif left behind the subject of oil
in his three-part narrative, “Ard alSawad,” which can be translated
either as the dark or the fertile
land, and which is the name the
Arabs gave to Iraq when they
conquered the country in 651
A.D. The novel looks at Iraq in
the early 19th century during the
Ottoman period. It is, as Munif
described it, his “love-song to
Iraq, and although it deals with
Mamelukes, walis and other
historic figures representing
power, it is dedicated to the
ordinary Iraqi people.” The book
was written in an Iraqi dialect, of
which he was very fond, as he was
of the people.
In a 2000 interview with
Moussa Barhouma for the
London-based Al Wasat
magazine, Munif said, “There is
no doubt that the present
sufferings of the Iraqi people
could move a heart of stone, and
that such suffering has created
Collage by Simone Fattal
deep resentment. It is a suffering
that, besides its cruelty and
Before long, Munif left his job with injustice, gives an indication of the dark
the oil ministry, quit party politics, and ages through which we are living, in
moved to Damascus, where he became which one blind superpower attempts to
director of planning for the Syrian Oil impose its hegemony over the rest of the
Company, but then relocated in Beirut, world. This merits opposition all the world
where he worked on the Lebanese over. However, the real aim of the novel,
newspaper Al Balagh. Munif was to though it also involves something of this,
continue moving around in the next few is not only to expose such suffering. I also
years. He returned to Baghdad, where he wanted ‘Ard al-Sawad’ to investigate a
edited Al-Naft wal-Tanmiya (Oil and brighter side in the events that move
Development) magazine. In 1981 he people to express their will, dreams and
moved to France, attempting to make a desires. Thus the novel deals with all that
living at writing, but four years later he hinders people from venturing towards
returned to Damascus, where he stayed for new horizons and all that forces them to
the next 18 years, until the end of his life. accept the unacceptable. In this sense the
His most famous work is the quintet novel is as much a contemplation of
“Cities of Salt” (Mudun al-Milh), which
Continued on page 9
gives a portrait of traditional Bedouin
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5
Fadwa Tuqan: A Romantic Feminist Poet and
Reluctant Political Witness
By EMALEAH SHACKLETON
Fadwa Tuqan
F
adwa Hafez Tuqan is perhaps
the most famous and wellloved woman poet in Palestine.
Fadwa would have loved to have kept
writing poetry about personal and social
subjects, but the political earthquakes of
1948 and 1967 turned her away from this
course toward politics. Mahmoud
Darwish, Palestine’s most eminent poet,
considers the “1967 earthquake” to have
made her stray away from her poetic
bounds.
In his eulogy, “Fadwa,” published in
the latest issue of Al Karmel journal,
Darwish masterfully captures her
predicament of not being fully content
with this change: “What does the poet do
at the time of catastrophe? Suddenly the
poet has to get out of himself to the outside,
and poetry is the witness.” He adds, “She
visited us in Haifa...a hostage seeking
hostages, and read us her first poem about
the new ordeal: ‘I will not cry.’ But she
was crying like a dove. Love songs ceased
to be the answer to hate and inhumanity –
6
to the condition that prevents words from
continuing their previous escape from
their trap, to preventing the continuing
search for ‘pure poetry,’ and to preventing
the character from revealing his
personality.”
Darwish also eulogized her as “our
great sister,” writing that “She said farewell
to her colleagues from the window of her
home in Nablus just as she had said goodbye to dozens of loved ones and martyrs.
Were it not for love, that love which is the
condition of her life, she would have been
Al-Khansa of the Arab-Palestinians in a
country where death became the master
of writing.” Yassir Arafat considered Fadwa
Tuqan “Palestine’s great poetess” as he
sent his condolences to her family
following her recent death in midDecember.
Tuqan is more than a mere national
Palestinian symbol. Many scholars and
observers find her life much richer,
particularly citing her three-fold rebellion
against her conservative upbringing,
repressive society, and traditional genre
in Arabic poetry and autobiography. She
wrote and spoke candidly of her own life
experiences, was a strong feminist voice
in a male-dominated society, and added a
humanist dimension to the Palestinian
national struggle. Although there are other
noteworthy Palestinian women poets,
Tuqan was the first to dedicate her life to
writing poetry.
At a time when only men wrote and
read poetry, Fadwa was not just a woman
poet but a woman who dared to challenge
patriarchal and male dominated society;
and at a time when the art of
autobiography (or “confessions,” as it
translates in Arabic) was non-existent,
Fadwa was unique not only in telling the
world about herself and her family, but
also in doing so as a woman. Modern
Arabic literature lacked the daring honesty
of her work, which tackled topics such as
love and rebellion in a society that
demanded obedience, writes Sakr Abou
www.ALJADID.com
Fakhr in the Lebanese daily As Safir. Abou
Fakhr, whose article was titled “The
Mother of Palestinian Poetry,” goes on to
say that her autobiography is one of the
most beautiful books of confession,
autobiography and revelation to have
appeared in the last two decades of the
20th century; it is only rivaled by
Muhammad Chokri’s “The Bare Bread”
and Edward Said’s “Out of Place.”
Fadwa’s early childhood was a
combination of bitterness and tragedy.
She was born into an influential
Palestinian family in the conservative city
of Nablus around 1917, although the
exact date of her birth remains unknown.
Her autobiography, press reports and
interviews reveal that her mother not only
did not remember her birth date but did
not want her in the first place, and even
attempted to abort her. Her mother had
very little to do with Fadwa during her
early years; the young girl looked forward
to colds and the flu because they were the
only times her mother would dote on her.
Otherwise, Fadwa came to know the
“beautiful things” which were considered
taboo in her own home through her aunt.
“If I became attached to my aunt more than
my mother, I became also more attached
to my uncle, Al-Haj Hafez, more than my
father,” according to her last interview with
the London-based Arabic daily, Al Quds
al-Arabi. She describes her uncle’s death
in 1927 as “the first tragedy of loss I had
known.” She went on to describe her
uncle’s treatment of the family to be open
and simple, saying that “he joked and
participated in our childish games.” On
the other hand, her father was strikingly
different: “My father was cold and did
not allow us an opportunity to get close
to him.” Her father’s dual personality was
perplexing to the young Fadwa, as he was
quite open and warm toward her cousins
but not to his own children. “He used to
refer to me in the formal absent tense even
if I was in the room,” she said, “He would
say to my mother ‘tell the daughter to do
AL JADID FALL 2003
Fadwa Tuqan: An Arab Electra
BY ABBAS BEYDOUN
Fadwa Tuqan has passed away in
her late 80s, but even so we cannot
imagine her very old or retired. For
many years, Fadwa Tuqan withdrew
herself from the literary scene, her
absence accentuated by Palestine’s
remoteness after 1967. She clung to her
home by becoming more Palestinian, as
if she returned to Palestine and
disappeared beyond the bridge which
separates the West Bank from Jordan.
But that world beyond the bridge
differed sharply from the world on the
other side; it was a world of siege, tanks
and military operations, constant
destruction, death, and every day was
unconventional, epic, and tragic. Based
in that world, Fadwa Tukan was one of
three poets, all scattered in different
places, who embraced the modern
poem: Nazik al-Mala’ika, aging and bedridden for some time; Fadwa Tuqan
who passed away yesterday; and Salma
al-Khadra al-Jayyusi, who has managed
to produce an encyclopedic work of
poetry while living in London. Since
these three, women’s share of poetry
has declined and men have become
overwhelmingly dominant.
Fadwa was an original poet in her
own right, writing from her own
experiences and for her late brothers,
Ibrahim Tuqan, the most famous
Palestinian poet of the time; and for her
second brother, who died in a tragic
accident. Fadwa stood up as an Electra
in mourning between two dead brothers,
shouldering the pain of the family, which
this and that.’ ”
Fadwa’s childhood outside home was
painful as well. She attended school until
the age of 13, but when a boy followed
her to class and presented her with a flower,
her strict father forbade her to return to
school and thus Fadwa was cloistered in
her home for the next period of her life.
She remained functionally illiterate until
her brother, the famous poet Ibrahim
Tuqan, returned after he completed his
studies at the American University in
AL JADID FALL 2003
we can easily call Palestine. Poetry came
to her in the image of the Palestinian fate;
ultimately her choice to write poetry was
not as important as her real mission,
which fell somewhere between that of
Joan of Arc and Al-Khansa.*
Despite her mission, Fadwa’s voice
was not a fighting one but bereaved,
deprived, gentle, and insistent and
visceral at times; it was a voice searching
for love only to find fate, searching for a
song and a flower to find instead the
grave and the tank. Fadwa wrote about
that orphaned rose, that orphaned love
which she encountered in a world filled
with mourning and violence. She was a
mother before giving birth, and found
herself fighting before loving in spite of
herself. Her poetry, which by the end of
her life had become remote, is the small
song of loss, a small elegy for a dead
family, a small love for a fallen city. Her
poetry struggles to become a song, yet
becomes a torrent of tears. Love
struggles in order not to shout. The
young woman– we do not know how she
grew and aged– struggles to remain the
youth of Arab poetry, the orphan of
Arab poetry, the Electra of Arab
AJ
poetry.AJ
*Al-Khansa is a pre-Islamic poetess who
wrote eulogies to her brothers.
The Arabic version of this essay appeared
in As Safir newspaper.
Translated from the Arabic
by Elie Chalala
Beirut to take a teaching job in Palestine.
One of his immediate tasks was to teach
his sister at home.
Her brother’s return in 1929 filled the
emotional vacuum left by the death of her
uncle. The first gift Fadwa had ever
received was from him, and when he
settled in Nablus, a new life began for her.
Ibrahim, according to his sister, was aware
of Fadwa’s intuitive interest in poetry and
thus took it upon himself to guide her,
giving her lessons in poetry and literature.
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She described her brother’s instruction in
the Al Quds interview as being like “a
return to a lost heaven.” This relationship
between Fadwa and Ibrahim prepared her
to write the first and the only book on
him, according to As Safir daily.
As Fadwa’s own poetic voice
developed, she began to express her
confinement. She addressed the position
of women in Palestine in the 1920s and
’30s as well as their lack of educational
and cultural opportunities. Her early work
often combines elements of captivity and
longing with elements from the natural
world. She was initially influenced by the
Mahjar poets – predominantly Lebanese
ex-patriots living in America – and began
writing in a romantic style that was
personal, and at times, pastoral. In “The
Seagull and the Negation of the
Negation,” the Seagull arrives at the poet’s
window.
It knocked at my dark window, and in the
gasping silence quivered
“Bird, is it good news you bring?”
It divulged its secret, yet breathed not a word
And the seagull disappeared
Yet later in the poem, despite the
darkness within her world and the
suffocating, stifling atmosphere, the
seagull does bring good news.
…I know now
That during hard times, standing in the tunnel
of silence,
All things change.
The seed sprouts even in the heart of the dead,
Morning burst forth from darkness.
…the horizon parted, and the house greeted
the light of day.
The optimism in these lines can be
read as describing the poet’s liberation
from her restricted life. After her father’s
death in 1948, which coincided with the
Palestinian Nakba, Fadwa wrote, “When
the roof fell on Palestine, the veil fell from
the face of the Nablus women.”
(Incidentally, Fadwa’s mother was the first
woman in Nablus to lift the veil.) All at
once, “young and educated women could
mix freely with their male counterparts,”
wrote Lawrence Joffe in The Guardian.
Yet despite her newfound liberty,
Fadwa Tuqan did not feel at once entirely
free. She described herself as “armless”;
facing people outside her home was
7
difficult as she did not feel herself to be
experienced and resourceful, according to an Al
Quds interview. “Books are not sufficient to know
life and human relationships with all their
complexities.”
Fadwa’s multiple difficulties and the struggle
to overcome them was noted by Mahmoud
Darwish, who writes that “Fadwa did not live as
she desired,” adding that she did not want
“everything explicit.” In “ambiguity,” Darwish
writes, “there is interpretation. Whenever we met,
she said to me: ‘How much I wish to discover my
road to certain ambiguity in poetry.’ She sought
ambiguity so she could say more than she said, or
perhaps express what what was repressed in her
heart, for she believed that there is freedom in
ambiguity and a poetic license that cannot be
Fadwa Tuqan
seduced by naming the obvious.”
In 1957 Tuqan wrote “I Found It,” a poem
that is largely about internal self-discovery: “My soul found/
My soul.” The poem, which is imbued with a clear vision of her
destiny, was written when Tuqan was in England, where she
would study English literature at Oxford. She traveled
extensively in Europe and the Middle East and her poetry came
to be more visceral, “borrow[ing] motifs from her life in exile
and mingling them with daring expressions of untrammeled
sensuality,” wrote Joffe in The Guardian.
Not only was Fadwa Tuqan’s poetry becoming more
experiential, it was also becoming more politicized. Despite the
fact that she did not belong to any political party and was initially
averse to writing political poems, her writing changed after 1967.
Previously her father had tried to persuade her to write political
poetry like the rousing call-to-arms style poems of her brother,
but in her autobiography, “Mountainous Journey,” Fadwa recalls
the resentment and indignation with which she met this
encouragement. Having been forcibly left out of political
discussion by her parents and thus brought up little acquainted
with politics, she felt unable to express the experiences of her
land and people. However, by the events of 1967 she was
liberated and felt compelled to write about their consequences,
Tuqan began a political life. She became a master of free verse,
and of interweaving the individual voice with the national
identity of Palestine. In “I Found It,” this analogy is implicit;
being Palestinian is more than geographical, there is the sense
that one carries the land in one’s soul.
In “My Sad City” Nablus is personified, holding its breath,
choking on the day of Zionist occupation. Yet Fadwa Tuqan
does what her late poet brother could not, palpably expressing a
maternal sadness for the state of her nation and of humanity at
large. In “Eytan in the Steel Trap,” Tuqan speaks of the loss of
innocence of a young Israeli child on a kibbutz.
Eytan my child,
You are the victim, drowning in lies,
And like you, Eytan, the harbor is sunk in a sea of lies
With the head of a dragon
And a thousand arms
Alas, alas!
If only you could remain the child, the human being!
8
...Darwish remains unrivaled in capturing
the essence of Fadwa’s poetry: “She was a
contemporary of the Nakba poets and was
not part of them; she was a contemporary
of the Arab modernist poets and was not
part of them; and she was a contemporary
of the resistance poets and was not part of
them. She kept up her own poetic identity.”
Sadly, the child is born into the “steel trap,” the man-made
edifice of thought that will reshape and mutate his innocent
human life. Tuqan expands upon this idea in “Song of
Becoming,” where young, innocent children play at fighting
and sadly grow into their weapons.
They’re only boys
Who used to frolic and play
Launching rainbowed kites
Whistling, leaping,
Trading easy laughter and jokes
Dueling with branches pretending, to be great heroes in history.
Now suddenly they’ve grown,
grown more than the years of a normal life…
They’ve grown to become trees
Plunging deep roots into the earth,
Stretching high towards the sun…
These children eventually “face sullen tanks with streams
of stones” becoming “the worshiped and the worshipers” and
eventually “their torn limbs merge with the stuff of our earth.”
While celebrating sacrifice, the poem also laments the loss of
innocence explored in “Eytan” from another perspective. By
establishing (here with beautiful arboreal metaphors) links in
the common humanity of both peoples, and through associations
with living and dead Palestinian poets, we know Fadwa was a
champion of peaceful co-existence of the two peoples and was
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AL JADID FALL 2003
certainly admired by members of both. “Young Arab Americans
read her work to rediscover their roots; Israeli and Jewish
feminists divined a sympathetic resonance from their sister across
the ‘green line,’” wrote Joffe in The Guardian.
In remembering Fadwa, Mahmoud Darwish, who knew and
visited with her, offers a very perceptive analysis of her poetry,
especially dealing with her link between the individual/romantic
and the political: “It is true that Fadwa wrote poetry about the
Palestinian tragedy, and why would she not! But her subdued
voice was different: it was the voice in love, in pain, the
contemplative, and the lonely, which does not resemble another
voice; she was simultaneously in and out of the group.”
Fadwa’s poetry cannot be reduced to politics and agitation,
although her poet brother certainly occupied that role. Again,
Darwish remains unrivaled in capturing the essence of Fadwa’s
poetry: “She was a contemporary of the Nakba poets and was
not part of them; she was a contemporary of the Arab modernist
poets and was not part of them; and she was a contemporary of
the resistance poets and was not part of them. She kept up her
own poetic identity. And she also maintained what resembles
the ‘constant’ in poetry – that is the romantic tendency. And she
also guarded what resembles the ‘constant’ in romanticism –
love.”
Fadwa Tuqan published eight collections of poems: “My
Brother Ibrahim” (1946), “Alone with the Days” (1952), “I Found
It” (1958), “Danos Love” (1960), “Before the Closed Door”
(1967), “The Night and the Riders” (1969), “Alone on the
Summit of the World” (1973), “July and the Other Anthem”
(1989) and “The Last Toronda” (2000). She also wrote two
books, “Mountainous Journey: A Poet’s Autobiography” (1990)
and “The More Difficult Journey” (1993).
Fadwa Tuqan received the International Poetry Prize in
Palermo, Italy, as well as awards in Greece and Jordan, the
Jerusalem Award for Culture and Arts from the Palestinian
Liberation Organization in 1990, the United Arab Emirates
Award, and the Honorary Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1996. Her
AJ
work has been translated into English and Farsi.AJ
Arab world bids farewell to Munif
Continued from page 5
history, and of man and the unequal relations that stand between
men, as it is a contribution to the creation of a more progressive
consciousness to counteract all that stands in the way of
humanity.”
In further comments about “Ard al-Sawad” in a letter to
the Egyptian literary critic Farouk Ab al-Kader, Munif wrote, “I
want to say what this great country means to me, Iraq. I was not
concerned with Saddam or the likes of him among the rulers.
This country, land and people, is more important to me than any
ruler, and what moves me is when they are offended and
subjected to harm.” The previously unpublished letter appeared
in the Lebanese daily Al Mustaqbal on Jan. 27.
Nonetheless, Munif was a fierce critic of Saddam Hussein
and his regime, but he was also opposed to the American invasion
of Iraq and spent the last two years of his life working on nonfiction projects to oppose what he saw as renewed imperialism.
In the wake of the bomb attack on U.S. soldiers in Dhahran in
1996, Munif wrote that “The United States, obsessed with oil
AL JADID FALL 2003
fever and the need to control it, has gone much too far in
protecting regimes and individuals unworthy of its protection.
The Iraqi regime committed one mistake by invading Kuwait,
but the U.S. followed this by committing an even graver mistake.
Instead of fighting the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, it sought to
subdue the region and make it compliant – bringing shame on
every person in it. Those who paid the price of the war weren’t
the rulers but the ordinary people.”
Munif was not a very public man; he was a man of shadow,
shunning the limelight, writing in dimmed rooms, and speaking
in the language of ordinary people. “Munif died and his personal
archive includes no photograph with Arab rulers, although he
has many photos marching in demonstrations, strikes, and his
first signature on every protest petition,” wrote Talal Salman,
editor-in-chief of the Lebanese daily As Safir.
During his lifetime, Munif received a number of awards, the
most prestigious of which was the Cairo Award for Creative
Narration in 1998. He also received the prestigious Sultan alOweiss Cultural Prize for the Novel in 1989, and was rumored
to have been on the short list for the Nobel prize the year that
Naguib Mahfouz won.
“ . . . the most important and greatest of
those who wrote the Arab novel in the second
half of the 20th century,”according to
Ibrahim Salameh
“Although a pan-Arabist, Baathist of sorts, leftist, these
factors undoubtedly had influenced his novelist works. But his
works transcended narrow parochialism to address Arab man
wherever he is; he opened up to the Arab map, Mashreq and
Maghreb,” wrote Abdu Wazen, a poet and novelist, in Al Hayat.
“Politics and ideological commitments did not dominate his
narrative work nor his novels.”
Nonetheless, the only completely non-political novel he
wrote is “Kisat Hub Majussiya” (A Maginian Love Story) in
1973. Among his other works is a book of criticism, “Author and
Exile.” In Iraq Munif had formed a close friendship with the
Palestinian litterateur Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, who encouraged
Munif in his writing projects, and in 1982 they published “Alam
bi-la khara’ it” (World Without Maps). Munif also wrote several
other political works, including “The Nationalization of Arab
Petroleum” (1976) and “Democracy First...and Democracy
Always” (1991). His “Sibak al-Masafaat al-Tawila” (The Race
of Long Distances) is an investigation into the interests of Western
powers in exploiting Iranian oil after the defeat of Musadeq
revolution in the early 1950s in Iran.
“The novel for Abd al-Rahman Munif restores respect to
the simple people who are the real makers of culture,” observed
Hassan Toufic in the Qatar-based Al Raya newspaper. The role
of the novel in raising peoples’ awareness was especially
important to Munif because he believed that the region was in
crisis, writing that “The people are in one world and their leaders
are in another... As a result of such factors as the absence of
freedom, prisons and censorship, people are forced to be silent.
But if there is no justice in dealing with all these issues, a big
explosion is going to happen.” AJ
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9
IN
T ER
VIEW
S
INT
ERVIEW
VIEWS
Unpublished Munif Interview:
Crisis in the Arab World – Oil,
Political Islam, and Dictatorship
BY ISKANDAR HABASH
This interview was conducted by the
author with Abd al-Rahman Munif for the
French magazine, L’Orient Express, in
1999. Due to its length, a shortened text
appeared in the French magazine.
Following the death of Abd al-Rahman
Munif in late January 2004, the Lebanese
daily As Safir republished the full Arabic
text of the interview for the first time. The
English version (translated by Elie
Chalala) appears exclusively in Al Jadid.
Habash: Those who are familiar with your
life note that you started studying
economics, and that you received a
doctorate in the economics of oil before
you moved to literature. How did you
come to the novel from “oil”?
Munif: My great gamble was in politics,
but after I experimented with political
activism, it became apparent that the
available political methods were
insufficient and unsatisfactory. As a result,
I started the search for a formula to connect
with others and to express their concerns
and the concerns of the historical period
and the generation. Given my hobby of
reading, especially the novel, I thought
that my reading and command of
expression would enable me to substitute
one tool with another. Instead of the
political party or direct political action,
it was possible for the novel to be a means
of expression. This is why I came to the
novel. As for economics, especially that
of oil, it was useful background for reading
societies, mainly the powerful ones, at this
current stage. Thus, economics and other
sciences could assist the novelist in
reading and understanding the factors that
shape society. This places the novelist in
a better position as far as his narrative tools
are concerned.
10
Habash: Why did you find the political
means non-democratic? Are you not also
concerned that the novel would develop
into a political more than a literary
discourse?
Munif: Concerning the first question, we
as a generation can possibly be called a
“...the intellectual can
neither be a substitute for the
political party nor its
mouthpiece. Henceforth, he
must have a critical position,
a different one, but this
requires a democratic
principle and a plurality of
viewpoints and opinions.”
transitional generation; we were burdened
with an immense load of dreams and
desires for change and at the same time a
group of political parties presented
themselves as a vehicle to bring about
change. But, in fact, our dreams were
greater than our resources. The political
parties which existed, and whose remnants
still exist to date, were too weak and not
able to instigate the process of change.
They were primitive in their ideas and
means. They were not connected with the
movement within society, and
subsequently what they presented were
mere slogans rather than political
programs. When these parties faced the
real test, their weaknesses and failures
became apparent, and this explains their
decline, as well as that of the individual.
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This individual had a sort of dream to
become a part of the movement of history,
only to discover that these parties are not
the appropriate medium for this mission.
As far as the second question, it is
natural that instead of the novelist being
disappointed outside the political party,
he will move toward society through a
political vision. But with the passage of
time and increased experiments, he
discovers society to be richer and more
diverse than the political discourse. Thus
the novel evolves into reading society and
giving expression to its concerns and
dreams, and becomes more than mere
political discourse. As you indicated in
the previous question, other sciences like
history, economics, and sociology
facilitate the reading of the movement of
society and its conflicts, both collectively
and individually, and this is what the
novel attempts to express constantly
through general and diverse writing.
Habash: Whoever reads your novels no
doubt will discover something constant–
that is the image of the tormented
intellectual. Why? What do you suggest
the role of the intellectual in the Third
World is today?
Munif: In the beginning of the 20th
century and before political parties were
formed, there was a presupposed role of
the intellectual, whether intellectuals
acted on their own or had the role
delegated to them by society. Thus the
Arab renaissance at the end of the 19th
century and the onset of the 20th can be
considered as a movement of intellectuals
in the first degree. We can cite in this
context a large number of intellectuals
who express this phenomenon.
At a relatively later time, political
movements represented by parties and
social forces appeared and found it
necessary to have their intellectual voices
expressing their concern, just as had been
the case for the tribe and its poet. In
another period, when these parties became
ideological, if we can use that expression,
they started to demand that their
intellectuals become political advocates
involved in political mobilization and
incitement. When these political parties
AL JADID FALL 2003
retreated, they rationalized their failure
by the failure of the intellectuals and their
inability to perform the necessary and
enlightening role. At the same time, the
intellectuals assumed that it was possible
that they could become a substitute for
the political party; thus, there was, from a
very early period, confusion about the
position of the intellectuals and their role
and relationship with the political party.
In my first novels, I attempted to portray
the breakdown and defeat of the
intellectual. In a subsequent
period, I discovered that the
intellectual is not everything in the
novel and life. Life is richer and
broader than this category, for even
if the role of the intellectual
retreated before other sectors in
society, such a role resembles a
multi-dimensional mirror; even if
one or two sides go dark, the
intellectual is still able to see the
concerns of the period and its
possibilities
through
the
remaining parts.
As for the present role of the
intellectual in the Third World,
undoubtedly this is an important
question that needs to be discussed
carefully. I am convinced that the
intellectual is a fundamental
partner in the process of change
and enlightenment, and while he
must have a critical position, he
should abandon the position of
incitement or propaganda, and
instead should engage in a broad
dialogue – whether with himself
and his ideas or with the ideas of others –
in order to define the proper strategies. In
other words, the intellectual can neither
be a substitute for the political party nor
its mouthpiece. Henceforth, he must have
a critical position, a different one, but this
requires a democratic principle and a
plurality of viewpoints and opinions.
Habash: You mention in the dedication
to your novel “When We Left the Bridge,”
“The memory of many failures past and
others that are on the way.” That was in
the beginning of 1976. Today, after more
than 20 years, do you still have this
position? What has changed?
Munif: I said that the “seven drought
years” were still going on and would
AL JADID FALL 2003
continue until the end of the century
[20th] or even afterwards. It is possible
that there will be major shocks, especially
in stagnant societies, such as Saudi Arabia
or the like. Civil wars are likely to be a
feature of this next era. Poverty will
increase and there could be starvation
revolts, as happened in the 1970s and
1980s. Political conflict will continue,
although in my estimation, the
fundamentalist trend has already reached
you think you will re-examine this issue
in a new novel?
Munif: When I wrote “The Eastern
Mediterranean” I hadn’t published any
other novel, thus I was my own censor, a
role that prevented me from saying
everything in the first novel and
subsequently led me to write the second
one “Now Here…” in order to settle my
scores with the political prison. “Cities
of Salt,” for example, covers a
period of history of the region, a
phase extending to the changes
in oil prices, which ushered in a
new phase that someone else
could cover. But on the whole,
there are many issues, whether
political, social, or human, which
form important material for novel
writing. Now I am in the midst of
another novel, but I do not rule
out that in the future; if
necessary, I could go back to the
“Cities of Salt,” although I
empathize with the people whose
time limitations prevent them
from reading new parts of the
same novel. Though the author
can follow a different approach
by focusing on the essence and
the tensions caused by the
dominance of oil, it remains
difficult to return to “Cities of
Salt” one more time.
Collage by Simone Fattal
its peak and is bound to retreat. The major
problem is that there are no alternatives,
no forces or programs that could
comprehend today’s situation and
rationalize it and give it a positive
dimension. This means we will continue
to see confusion and search for the form
of relationships in society which could
pave the way for the establishment of civil
society and the beginning of pluralist
democracy.
Habash: You wrote “The Eastern
Mediterranean” in the 70s, wherein you
dealt with a wide range of issues to which
you returned in the early 90s in the novel,
“Now Here, or the Eastern Mediterranean
One More Time.” Why this return? Do
Habash: Do you still think that
our real problem lies in oil?
Munif: Our crisis is a trilogy: oil, political
Islam, and dictatorship. This trilogy is the
factor that led to the collapse, confusion,
and consequently to the suffering lived
by Arab societies in their search for the
road to modernity. Oil joined and
embraced political Islam, providing it
with the much needed power, and what
we witnessed in Afghanistan offers the
most important example. At the same time,
oil enabled dictatorial regimes to
continue practicing the cruelest forms of
repression. The increase in oil and wealth
coincided with an increase in reaction
and dictatorship which spread
throughout the region, mainly due to the
Continued on next page
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11
inability of other political forces to stand
up to the challenges.
Habash: Place is nowhere to be found in
your novels, and to be exact, it remains
ambiguous. What explains this
ambiguity?
Munif: As far as the exact definition of
the place, this doesn’t mean much to me
for one major reason – the difference
between one place and another is relative,
marginal, and insignificant. If, for
another, but the Bedouin oil blessing,
which at one time was confined to the
desert, had moved to all Arab cities and it
had become the force defining not only
politics but culture, ways of life, and the
human concerns in this region.
Habash: In your book about Amman, you
seem predisposed toward writing the
“autobiography of a city,” but this story
is discussed within a particular history,
from the 1940s until the Palestinian
and so the level of desires and dreams. I
believe, however, autobiography can be
a basic obstacle in novel writing. As far as
other writings are concerned, and
precisely “Sirat Madina” (The
Autobiography of a City), “Urwat alZamman al-Bahi” (The Bond of the
Beautiful Time), and to a lesser extent,
“Rahlat al-Fan wa al-Hayat” (The
Journey of Art and Life) on Marwan Qassab
Bashi, were documentation of a certain
period, precisely defined through places
“Oil joined and embraced political Islam, providing it with the much needed power, and what we
witnessed in Afghanistan offers the most important example. At the same time, oil enabled
dictatorial regimes to continue practicing the cruelest forms of repression.”
example, we discuss the political prison
in a confined place such as Iraq or Saudi
Arabia, it seems as if I am exonerating
other places or as if the political prison
does not exist in these places, especially
when we know the political prison exists
from the Atlantic to the Gulf to be exact,
whether in terms of its environment,
means, or concerns. Thus, I consider the
generalization of this subject is the
ultimate specificity because everyone is
responsible and everyone suffers from the
same problem. This is a special reading of
society influenced by the nature of my
life and movements, an experience that
had given me a clear idea about the nature
of these societies, the common
denominator which unites them, and
which in turn led me to discover no
essential difference between one place
and another, especially in the negative
aspect of it.
Habash: What about Beirut: does it not
constitute a difference from this dominant
society?
Munif: Perhaps reading the civil war,
which lasted from 1975 to the early 1990s,
offers the true meaning of the level of
modernization this society reached and
its relationship with time. In other words,
excluding the external shell layer,
Lebanon also remained a hotbed of
backwardness and divisions which are
related to old and primitive societies.
Perhaps there is a difference in form and
appearance between one place and
12
migration. Why this autobiography? Why
did you frame the discussion within this
history? Do you find Palestinian
migration to Amman a reason for its
economic and architectural birth?
Habash: It is a multi-dimensional
question. First, I do not find much writing
about cities in our modern literature, and
much of the life features associated with
these cities would start to disappear unless
documented through means which could
keep them alive in memory. My writing
the autobiography of the city aims at
urging many authors to write about two
important things: cities and childhoods.
Habash: To what extent does
autobiography play a role in your novels?
Munif: It is possible to distinguish
between two things: the novel and other
writings. In the novel, there is a role or
impact, albeit a small one. But as far as
the subject of the novel, its characters, and
life story, I am convinced that every author
has some of himself in what he writes, and
this is distributed in varying degrees and
forms among the characters. The character
of the intellectual in some of the novels,
for example, does not necessarily mean
the life story of the writer. Just the opposite
– there are certain characters where the
author aims at criticizing them. Certain
uneducated characters, according to
common definitions, could represent in
part some of the author’s life story. The
level of fiction in the novel is abounding
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and names which point at issues of
relationship to the journey of the author
and his human relations and political
direction. I said once that if an author
decided to rely on autobiography in his
writing, it is possible to write only one
novel, but it can be an important and
exciting one, given the intimacy that
characterizes autobiography.
Habash: What about your writing on
Marwan Qassab Bashi [a Syrian artist]?
Munif: There is more than one reason:
First, I like fine art and thus it is natural to
share this appreciation with the public.
Second, there are precedents of authors
and poets who “read” and wrote about the
works of artists. Third, there is a rupture
between the arts, especially in the Arab
world, where each art grows separately
from the others, a condition that weakens
art in general. However, at a time when
the novel is becoming capable of
building bridges between these arts,
offering insight into each other, the
novelist is establishing relationships with
the novel as well as with theater and film.
AJ
This interview is adapted from a slightly
longer Arabic version, which appeared
in the Cultural Section of the Lebanese
daily As Safir. The translation is by
permission.
Translated from the Arabic
by Elie Chalala.
Translation Copyright © by Al Jadid (2003)
AL JADID FALL 2003
Toufic Faroukh on Jazz, Saxophone and Memory
BY MAI MUNASA
Music is the language composers
know how to speak. Their world is
synonyms, senses, and specifications from
the heart of the tune and the core of the
instrument in which they are immersed.
Thus, I felt many times, while I was
awaiting an answer to a question from
Toufic Faroukh, that I was intruding upon
this mysterious world which often cannot
be expressed in words. The saxophone is
the gamble this young man took,
immersing himself in the music of the land
to which he belongs, and letting the music
of the Other world infiltrate the natural
tradition. Faroukh’s voice is neither
defined by geography nor language: “I
do not find it necessary to define my music
and give it an identity; it is the music of
this time that takes from this world certain
influences and returns them to it through
the composer’s comprehensive and vast
interpretation. My music carries no title
except that of being contemporary.”
Munasa: You were born in a country that
sings to the rhythm of the flute, the oud,
and the drum. How did you reach for the
saxophone to connect you with what you
are today?
Faroukh: My brother was a saxophone
player and he’s the one who guided me to
this instrument and taught me its ABCs.
He was an amateur who instilled in me
the love of professionalism. We had
discovered the saxophone in the Boy
Scouts. The instrument was strange to our
environment, so unconventional, and used
only for certain occasions.
Munasa: But this instrument seems to
have entrapped you.
Faroukh: Yes, but it took a long time, since
the end of the 1970s. A good friend, Issam
Hage Ali, and I did pretty good work on
this instrument and through it, the bond
of our friendship strengthened and we
became more like brothers. Music was our
solace during the bloody events. It was a
real flight from the horrors of the time.
AL JADID FALL 2003
Toufic Faroukh
Munasa: When did you leave Beirut?
Faroukh: I got ready to leave in 1984 but
before that, I spent 10 years searching for
my musical identity. It was then that I was
hit by the saxophone “virus.” By great
coincidence, I met Ziad Rahbani as well
as the late great artist Joseph Sakr, who
greatly influenced me. I had an early first
experience with Ziad as a player in the
play “Binisba Lebookra Shoo” (What is
about Tomorrow). I then participated in
recording an album “Abu Ali” and joined
as an actor in two of Ziad’s plays, “Film
Ameriki Tawil” (Long American Film) and
“Shi Fashel” (Something Failed). In these
two works, I explored my theatrical
abilities and became interested in this
world until one day I realized that music
alone could help build my life.
to accompany her artistically in her 1982
American tour during which the
saxophone was my constant partner.
Munasa: At what level of the musical
scale is your instrument?
Faroukh: Yesterday I was in love with the
alto saxophone, playing melodies. I
always found at this level what I seriously
search for in modern music. In my
compositions and in every project, some
type of saxophone is required. But what I
prefer and have become comfortable with
is the soprano saxophone, which I find
soft and delicate and quite close to my
voice. I also like it the same way I like
Miles Davis, the trumpet player. Davis’
voice through his instrument comes back
to me while I play the soprano saxophone.
Munasa: How did working with Ziad
Rahbani influence you?
Munasa: What do you mean by modern
music? What are its characteristics? Is it
the modern classical music?
Faroukh: Ziad offered me the opportunity
of expression and Fairuz made it possible
Faroukh: When I moved to Paris, where I
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13
later, in 1998, I
produced my second
album,
“Asrar
Saghirat” (Small
Secrets). It’s a
musical, redolent with
a taste of the East and
its colors/types; and
then another one
called “Drabzine”
(Banisters). In it, there
is a mixture of
traditional music.
Detail from Faroukh’s CD, “Small Secrets”
studied music in the conservatory and in
the Advanced College of Music,
saxophone was my first goal. My
familiarity with it emerged through
modern music, particularly the alto
saxophone. As for the modern classical
music, except Ravel and the French
composer Claude Debussy, who
introduced the saxophone in some of their
rare works, this instrument was not used
by classical musical orchestras. When we
say modern music, I presuppose the music
that was written in the 20th century for a
saxophone and orchestra or saxophone
and piano. After the 1950s, writing for the
saxophone increased significantly.
Munasa: When you say the saxophone,
jazz comes to mind.
Faroukh: In fact, I did not study jazz and
its roots at all, nor played jazz on the
saxophone. Despite what I learned from
the musical institutions in Paris, I am still
a self-made musician, who learned and
composes by himself. I went searching
with this instrument and found that the
love I have for it brings out dormant
obsessions in me. None of the other
musicians were able to help me express
them as I wished. Since then, I started
writing my music.
Munasa: What did you learn from these
experiments?
Faroukh: My first album was “Ali on
Broadway.” It was received positively by
the specialized musical press. Four years
14
Munasa: It appears
that your pre-1990s
musical experiments
left no effect upon
you.
Faroukh: Rather, they inspired my talent
to write. My experience with Ziad and
Fairuz, especially working with them, and
recording in the studio, led me to the peak
of my pleasure and to a great sense of
difficult responsibilities. This experiment
taught me and helped refine my abilities,
particularly through the work Ziad
assigned to his father, Asi, where my
instrument accompanied every rhythm.
Munasa: Then there was your second
period in Paris.
Faroukh: Radwan Hatit, a musician
friend living in Paris, encouraged me
financially and morally to record what I
was writing in that period. He is the one
who produced my three works. My
meeting with him was a miracle, for it
relieved me of my financial burden.
Munasa: Did you introduce different
types of instruments right from the
beginning?
Faroukh: In all of my projects, there are
20 to 24 players, and I was often forced to
divide the recording into a group playing
in the West and another playing in
Lebanon. After that I used to construct
the exact mixture. I believe the oud of
Charbel Rouhana is unparalleled, as well
as the percussions of Ali al-Khatib’s flute
and qanun.
memories?
Faroukh: No. I am not a nostalgic man,
but I do have a long-range memory. At
times my topics come from sitting on the
street. The road has an echo of freedom
regardless of how crowded it is. On it, I
feel loneliness. The road is not my
inspiration, but the freedom given to me
by the road is my path to the idea–the
idea loaded with transitory images,
transitory scents.
Munasa: How do you embody the
fragrance of your music?
The saxophone is the
gamble this young man
took, immersing himself in
the music of the land to
which he belongs, and
letting the music of the
Other world infiltrate the
natural tradition.
Faroukh’s voice is defined
by neither geography nor
language.
Faroukh: Oh, what a wonderful idea! It
enters the senses in an individual
chemistry and from there transforms into
a rhythm. Though I avoid sinking into
poetics, I feel at the same time that I
assume the responsibility of my poetic
senses without being caught up in it. It is
from the archives of my memory, which I
cannot run away from or deny. AJ
Translated from the Arabic
by Elie Chalala
The Arabic version of this interview
appeared in the Beirut-based An Nahar.
The author granted Al Jadid the exclusive
right to translate and publish.
Munasa: Where do you find your
inspiration to compose? Is it from your
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2003
Definitions and Dialects of the Novel
Interview with Myriam Antaki
BY CAROLE CORM
In “Verses of Forgiveness” reconciliation is made possible because I took the side of each
symbolic character, the Jew, the Christian, the Muslim; I reached to the very end of their
fears, their hate, their desperation...
Corm: Why in French?
mother tongue and the learnt language
imposes itself. To be an Arab citizen loyal
to her own culture or use a language of
elsewhere? Why did I choose to talk of
the millenary Orient in someone else’s
language? Here, I must express my deep
attachment to my country, to my roots and
to this true anchorage which pushed me
to render the civilization of the Orient in
a more international language that would
open the doors to the West. I chose French
without ever wanting to desacralize
Arabic, whose richness, subtlety and
power of expression I recognize. For me,
there is no problem of identity in this
choice but rather a reconciliation between
two cultures, the story and the emotion of
one, and the nurturing language of the
other, at the end, a universal message.
Antaki: When writing becomes an
urgency, then the choice between the
Corm: According to you, what is the place
of the novel in the Arab world?
Corm: How did you start writing novels?
Antaki: I don’t really know what is a
novel. What counts in writing is the
liberty attached to it. One should not
belong to past generations. In the story
of a life, to suddenly start writing a novel
is a difficult but unavoidable passage. It’s
a decision made to render the fabulous,
the marvellous, the dreamed, the true, the
felt, what exists around us. There is a call
which we believe to come from the
outside but which comes from within us.
At the beginning, at the end, it is a solitude
which we keep, which we take with us,
which we express for it not to become
banal.
Antaki: The Arab world suffers from a
lack of creativity. The novel is born
through a dream yet it has the color of
streets, images, memories; of faces
destroyed by empty looks or enchanted
smiles of innocent children: the Arab
novel exists. It can grow and blossom from
the world that surrounds it. Literary
creation, the blood of reflection never
loses itself. The novel could be a social
or a political satire, an evolution,
revolution, utopia. To create is the cosmos
of the future.
Corm: Your novel “Verses of Forgiveness”
stirred strong reactions in the Middle East.
Do you think an American audience will
understand it?
Continued on next page
Secular ‘Forgiveness’ in Syrian Novel
BY CAROLE CORM
Verses of Forgiveness
By Myriam Antaki
New York, Other Press LLC, 2003.
F
irst published in French in 1999,
Myriam Antaki’s novel “Verses
of Forgiveness” was translated
into English in December 2002. Antaki,
an acclaimed francophone Syrian novelist
living in Aleppo, managed a tour de force
in this relatively short novel. The author
presents the reader with the actors who
shaped the recent history of what is today
Israel, from the death camps of World War
AL JADID FALL 2003
II in Europe and the influx of Jews in
Palestine, to the last days of British
colonial presence, to the ensuing battles
between Jews and Palestinians for the
same piece of land.
Through three symbolic characters,
each representing one of the monotheistic
religions, Antaki describes the destiny of
the people regrouped by the vastness of
history into one land. Each story, with its
own point of view, carves its path in a
poetical style. Antaki’s success lies in the
Continued on next page
www.ALJADID.com
15
‘Forgiveness’ in
Syrian Novel
Continued from previous page
ability to make the reader accept the
contradictions of each narrative without
taking an immediate stance for or against
the characters and the political ideas they
represent.
The novel opens in a brothel in
Baalbeck. Ahmed, a Palestinian terrorist,
meets his mother, Marie, a Palestinian
Christian, for the first time. After a life of
e x i l e ,
separated
from those
she loves,
M a r i e
presents her
son with
two written
narratives.
First, a diary,
that
of
A h m e d ’s
fa t h e r,
David, a Jew
from France
w
h
o
managed to
escape the
death camps, reach Palestine and
ultimately join the terrorist group of the
Irgun. The other memorabilia is a long
letter written by Marie during her exile in
Lebanon to her lost love David. As Antaki
writes, “the uprooted do not like to go
through life in silence”; in this instance,
they have left written testimonies.
Through David’s diary, the reader is
led to better understand what it might
have been like to have survived the
Holocaust in Europe, reach Palestine
clandestinely, end up in a British
detention center there and ultimately join
the Irgun, a secret terrorist organization.
Through Marie’s letter, the reader feels the
bitterness and helplessness of the
Palestinians who are constrained to an
exile they never imagined. Forced to flee,
they give up their sweet lives in Jaffa or
Jerusalem, for the misery of refugee camps
in neighboring countries. As the generous
character Sheik al-Tahi explains to David
while in the British prison of Athlit:
“David, my son, we will pay. For the
injustice of the West toward you, we will
...one comes to
wonder whether
personal accounts
and oral histories
are not the only
possible way to
see through the
history of this
tormented land in
the last century.
16
pay with our land, with our dead youth,
with our disemboweled women and our
blinded children. We shall suffer until the
dream has been forgotten.”
Through these two personal
narratives, Ahmed, the son abandoned at
birth on the steps of a mosque near a
refugee camp in North Lebanon, is put face
to face with his identity, his roots. Yet
these are far from simple. Ahmed, who has
turned into a terrorist for the Palestinian
cause as a way to define himself, discovers
his parents’ past.
Antaki has tread on explosive ground
yet because she wisely chose to write her
epic through the fictional voices of a Jew,
a Christian and a Muslim, she avoids any
parti pris or untactful opinions. The story
of the Holocaust is told through the eyes
of a Jew; the story of the Palestinian
exodus is told through a Christian
Palestinian obliged to leave everything
after the horror of Deir Yassin; and finally,
the story of a Palestinian terrorist is seen
through the eyes of Ahmed, a disposed
orphan of history, who can only claim
what he is by what he is not. As he explains,
and this could also go for his father, David,
the Jewish Irgun terrorist: “I am a terrorist,
a dreamer. I have removed my mask of
bliss for that of fear and sweat. I have lost.
Some call me a hero, others curse me, but
I have chosen my own image, my own
identity, for I was soft wax that had to
harden inexorably.”
The end of the novel leaves us with a
sum of incommensurable suffering. Yet
Ahmed has grown; he has penetrated the
minds and thoughts of his “enemies” to
ultimately understand and ideally forgive.
As Antaki explains in an article published
in La Pensee du Midi, she has tried to go
beyond the suffering by working on the
notion of forgiveness in a secular way,
“…mourning tragedies is a slow process,
years are needed for one to forget and for
history to be buried. Forgiveness – which
should not be confused with
renouncement – is a decision, a voluntary
action which enables us to act on the
present in order to face the future.” There
is much to be forgiven, and this will not
be easy, yet the many references in the
novel to inter-religious understanding and
friendship from one individual to another
proves that there is room for verses of a
different kind than war and hatred.
www.ALJADID.com
Antaki’s novel is not to be
underestimated. She has chosen what
seems to be the only formal style possible
when writing a novel about Palestine/
Israel. With the growing number of
personal histories being published,
especially from Palestinians now in exile,
and the increasing reliance of historians
on such testimonies, one comes to wonder
whether personal accounts and oral
histories are not the only possible way to
see through the history of this tormented
land in the last century. Myriam Antaki,
as a true artist, has led the way, giving us
a lyrical and poetic approach to the
process of memory, understanding and
ultimately forgiveness. AJ
Dialects of the Novel
Continued from previous page
Antaki: The American public is very
diverse, of multiple origins, a true mixture
of ancient cultures with a mentality
extracted from a new world. I did not write
this novel thinking of a specific
nationality, a particular ethnic group, or a
unique religious group. I wrote this book
for Man, for it is the human who is
concerned in emotion and wounds. In
“Verses of Forgiveness” reconciliation is
made possible because I took the side of
each symbolic character, the Jew, the
Christian, the Muslim; I reached to the
very end of their fears, their hate, their
desperation, their abyssal descent from
which finally emerges love and
forgiveness. I hope the American public
will be sensitive to this call, this common
burden, for words of hope exist in every
language of the world.
Corm: Can you speak a little bit about
your latest novel “Souviens-toi de
Palmyre” (Remember Palmyra), which
revolves around the character of Zenobia?
Antaki: Zenobia is a Syrian queen of the
third century who rebelled against the
Roman Empire to stretch her empire from
the sources of the Nile to the Bosporus. I
chose this historical character for a single
reason: to carry to the Arab woman, who
hesitates or despairs of tearing her veil, a
message of liberty. A liberty which does
not come from elsewhere but emerges
deep within the Orient, from the desert’s
sap, from a noble melting pot of cultures,
from a positive identity. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
contributors
Najwa Adra (“Hybrid Vigor: The Art of
Emna Zghal,” p. 46) is a New York-based
cultural anthropologist with a
specialization in the arts of the Middle
East. Her latest project has been a pilot of
a literacy program for women in Yemen in
which they learn reading and writing skills
by using their own oral poetry as text.
Abbas Beydoun (“Fadwa Tuqan: An Arab
Electra,” p. 7) is a poet, novelist, critic and
the editor of the cultural supplement of
the Beirut daily As Safir.
Doris Bittar (“Unveiling the West
Through the Eyes of Artists, Historians
and Critics,” p. 32 and “Cartoons Tackle
Taboos,” p. 33) is a San Diego artist,
academic and critic.
Hanan Chebib (“War, Peace and
Garbage,” p. 44) is an Arab-Canadian fine
arts photographer of five years with a strong
emphasis on cultural subjects. Her work
of photography about Western media
portrayal of the Middle East and
Lebanon has been exhibited at the Little
AL JADID FALL 2003
Gallery, University of Calgary, and the
PhotoSpace Gallery in Calgary, Alberta.
Carole Corm (“Definitions and Dialects
of the Novel: Interview with Myriam Antaki,”
p. 15 and “Secular ‘Foregiveness’ in Syrian
Novel,” p. 15) is a Paris-based author, critic
and journalist.
Charbel Dagher (“Thresholds,” p. 21) is
professor at the Balamand University in
Lebanon. He is a poet, critic, and author of
many books on Islamic arts.
Susan Muaddi Darraj (“A Critical
Celebration of Novelist Etel Adnan,” p. 28)
is an author and editor, whose essays, book
reviews, and fiction have appeared in The
Monthly Review, Baltimore Magazine, Al
Jadid, and others.
Simone Fattal (“Collage,” pp. 2, 4, 11) is
an artist, translator and author. Fattal is the
owner of the Post-Apollo Press. Her latest
release was “Vampires” by Jalal Toufic and
“”In/somnia” by Etel Adnan.
Elham Gheytanchi (“Confessions of
Culture Clash,” p. 29) is a sociologist and
www.ALJADID.com
freelance journalist. She teaches at Santa
Monica College and Loyola Marymount
University. Her scholarly and journalistic
articles on Iranian-Americans, feminist
activism, and Persian literature have been
published in various scholarly journals
and newspapers as well as in Persianlanguage publications.
Iskandar Habash (“Unpublished Munif
Interview: Crisis in the Arab World - Oil
Political Islam and Dictatorship,” p. 10)
is a Lebanese poet, critic and a cultural
editor at the Lebanese daily As Safir.
Elissar Haikal (“Crossroads,” a poem, p.
19, “A Twinge, a Smile and a Kite,” p. 37,
and translated Fadwa Tuqan’s poem “The
Weeping Echo,” p. 24) is a Beirut-based
poet and critic.
Wail S. Hassan (“Abu-Jaber’s Second
Novel: A Thousand and One Recipes,”
p. 31) is an assistant professor of English
at Illinois State University and the Sawyer
fellow in World English at the University
of Virginia (2003-04). He is the author of
Continued on page 42
17
Evaluating
Threats at Home
and Abroad
A Conversation
with David Cole
BY P
AMELA NICE
PAMELA
Pamela Nice interviewed David Cole
in Washington, D.C. in November about
his book, “Enemy Aliens,” and his views
on the situation for Arabs and Muslims
caught in the war on terrorism. They
began by discussing Cole’s evaluation of
U.S. national security today.
Cole: On September 12, we had the
world’s sympathy. Today, two years later,
I think there appears to be a higher degree
of anti-Americanism around the world
than ever before in the history of this
country, and for me, that’s the greatest
national security threat that we face. You
ask, well, what created that level of antiAmericanism since September 12? I think
two things contributed: the unilateral way
in which we pursue our foreign policy –
insisting that we don’t have to play by
the rules – and then the flip side of that,
having double standards at home. I think
we have made ourselves less safe in large
part because of these double standards.
Nice: In the book “Enemy Aliens” you
talk a lot about preventive measures [in
the fight against terrorism]. Don’t you
think that’s also tied to our foreign policy?
I think that’s creating enemies – this preemptive policy.
Cole: Right. I wrote a piece for The
American Prospect that compared
Ashcroft’s paradigm of prevention on the
domestic side of the war on terror to the
national security strategy on foreign wars.
Both of them share a whole range of
common attributes, including the lines on
secrecy, short-circuiting of processes, and
broad-based assertions of power.
18
David Cole
“Many Arabs and Muslims are first generation here and
less likely to be integrated into the networks; but it’s
important to realize that there are networks out there
that are speaking out in defense of the rights of Arabs
and Muslims today.”
Ultimately, both the pre-emptive national
security strategy and the preventive
domestic strategy challenge the rule of
law. And we sort of feel like we can get
away with challenging the rule of law
because we’re the most powerful country
in the world. But in fact we can’t, because
you gain a lot of legitimacy by adhering
to and reinforcing the rule of law; and
that legitimacy is a much more powerful
means of protecting us than our weapons
are.
Nice: Why aren’t Americans more upset
by this? Why isn’t the press more critical?
Cole: It depends on what press you’re
talking about; certainly the print press
has been, I think, quite critical,
particularly if you compare this to almost
any prior crisis. There’s a lot of criticism
on editorial pages – the New York Times
has been very strong. . . . But I think it’s
hard for the press to tell stories because
so much of what goes on is secret, and
www.ALJADID.com
people are afraid to come forward. It’s a
hard story to tell. My sense, going around
the country, is that people are concerned,
but they’re mostly concerned about those
measures that might actually affect them.
In some respects, I’ve had very different
experiences speaking to white audiences
and to Arab and Muslim audiences. To
white audiences, the message of my book
is that you shouldn’t believe the promises
that the government makes that your rights
aren’t going to be infringed on by these
[immigration] measures…your interest is
at stake here; this will eventually affect
you, so you should care about it.
Whereas to the Arab and Muslim
community – it’s already affecting them,
and the message that it will be extended
to citizens in some sense ought to be
reassuring. Because when it gets extended
to citizens, history suggests that the
citizens will at some point say we don’t
want this – it’s wrong – and it will be cut
back.
AL JADID FALL 2003
I also think in the last year there has
been tremendous movement in the
consciousness about civil liberties in the
war on terror. I cited in the book an NPR
poll that showed seven percent of
Americans one year after the attacks
didn’t think they lost any significant civil
liberties in the war on terror. But CBS did
a poll in September of this year – one year
after the NPR poll –asking a very similar
question, and found that 52 percent of
Americans are concerned that this
administration is violating civil liberties.
From seven percent to 52 percent – I think
that’s reflective of a broader shift. It’s also
reflected in things like the fact that every
Democratic presidential candidate attacks
Ashcroft and the Patriot Act. When the
Patriot Act was enacted, only one senator
voted against it. Today, it’s a dirty word
to a wide segment of society: Al Gore has
called for its repeal; Newt Gingrich has
called for its amendment; [former House
Majority Leader] Dick Armey, Howard
Dean and Wesley Clark are all criticizing
it.
Nice: What should Arabs and Muslims
who live in the U.S. do now?
descent. But citizens should support
groups such as ADC, CAIR, the Arab
American Institute, and MPAC. These
groups are speaking out on behalf of Arab
and Muslim populations. Supporting
these groups will not target you because
the government doesn’t consider them
subversive. They are working within the
American democratic process.
Nice: These groups are encouraging Arabs
and Muslims to participate more in our
democratic process.
Cole: And I think it’s important to get
involved not only with Arab- or Muslimidentified groups, but with the broader
civil rights groups – the ACLU, the Center
for Constitutional Rights, the Bill of
Rights Defense Committee, Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch.
Many Arabs and Muslims are first
generation here and less likely to be
integrated into the networks; but it’s
important to realize that there are
networks out there that are speaking out
in defense of the rights of Arabs and
Muslims today. It’s important for Arab and
Muslim communities to work with those
organizations, not only on their own
Cole: I think it’s complicated if you’re a
foreign national of Arab or Muslim
Crossroads
BY ELISSAR HAIKAL
Crossroads are not legible
like red on a painter’s mind.
Far is earth from here
Blood, sand, horizons
Sleeping in the heat of our
trenches
Or the cold of ideology
Moralistic or wholesale.
Sandpipers lost the way back.
Name address travel documents to
trick fate
To trust their right to choose
Between exile and exile.
This way the frontier.
Where a dead rose survives
In a Gilgamesh prophecy
In a poem by al-Mutannabi burnt
On the gates of the Orient.
In a living roll. A camera
Lost in the confusion of streets
With no signboards.
Only smoke and memoirs
Live like vagabonds.
Continued on page 20
Our Greatest Weapon:
The Rule of Law
BY P
AMELA NICE
PAMELA
Enemy Aliens: Double Standards
and Constitutional Freedoms
in the War on Terrorism
By David Cole
The New Press, 2003. 315 pp.
Why should those of us who are
American citizens, and not of Arab or
Muslim identity, be concerned by the
Bush administration’s policies toward
non-citizens after 9/11? This is the
question Georgetown University law
professor David Cole addresses in “Enemy
Aliens.” The result is a cautionary tale
about our nation in times of crisis: for
almost a century, we have responded to
national security threats with domestic
policies that show a double standard
toward citizens and non-citizens.
AL JADID FALL 2003
To Cole, that response has not only
been counterproductive for national
security, but morally and constitutionally
wrong. “The rights of all of us are in the
balance when the government selectively
sacrifices foreign nationals’ liberties.”
And if the ethical argument is
unpersuasive, history has another lesson.
Previous experience has shown that
citizens are eventually targeted by the
same measures originally applied only to
non-citizens.
This book is an exceptionally clear
and compelling read. It’s free of legal
jargon, full of instructive examples from
U.S. history, and pulls from a wide variety
of sources – Congressional records,
judicial proceedings, the U.S.
www.ALJADID.com
Constitution, and newspapers, as well as
from Cole’s own legal experience
representing Arab and Muslim defendants,
such as the LA 8. Cole’s primary point is
that in the struggle for security against an
Continued on next page
19
elusive enemy, the legitimacy we
establish through the rule of law is our
greatest weapon.
The book is divided into four parts.
The first recounts the administrative
policies, judicial rulings and
Congressional legislation, such as the
Patriot Act, that followed the terrorist
attacks on September 11. Cole exposes
the underlying racism against Arabs and
Muslims in the policies of mass
preventive detention and selective antiimmigration enforcement. The second
explores instances in U.S. history since
1798 when non-citizens have been
targeted and why. He also shows how
measures directed against non-citizens
can eventually threaten citizens,
demonstrated in cases of guilt by
association applied to support for political
organizations.
The third part examines more
specifically the issue of U.S. security in
the war on terror. In Cole’s critique of
current administration strategies, Attorney
General John Ashcroft’s policy of mass
preventive detention comes in for
particular criticism. “Ashcroft’s dragnet
approach has targeted tens of thousands
of Arabs and Muslims for registration,
interviews, mass arrests, deportation, and
automatic detention, effectively treating
an entire, overwhelmingly law-abiding
community as suspect.”
Cole faults preventive detention as
short-circuiting the fact-finding phase of
criminal investigation: if you arrest
someone prematurely – without even
probable cause – you are less likely to
discover if there are in fact probable
causes. In addition, of the more than 5,000
people Cole estimates have so far been
detained under Ashcroft’s dragnet, only a
handful have actually been charged with
a terrorist-related crime, and even fewer
convicted. In several cases, the charges
were dropped. So what is the point of this
tactic in terms of national security – or
the national expense for such a mass
detention?
Ethnic profiling of Arab and Muslim
communities also alienates the
communities that law enforcement should
be working with, while deflecting
attention from behaviors of the nonprofiled which might indeed be dangerous
to national security. Cole gives the telling
example of the Washington D.C. snipers
20
of fall 2002 who escaped detection for so
long because law enforcement had
assumed the perpetrator was a lone white
male.
Cole offers many suggestions for
more effective tactics to prevent terrorist
attacks within our borders. To begin with,
improve our intelligence gathering.
Streamline the FBI bureaucracy; create
better information sharing among the
national security intelligence entities such
as the FBI, CIA, the National Security
Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
and the State Department’s Bureau of
Intelligence and Research. Those
agencies should hire more Arabic speakers
and improve relations with the Arab and
Muslim communities. Much of what we
have learned since 9/11 points to faulty
intelligence as the greatest weakness in
our defense.
The U.S. might also take measures to
limit access to the information about
weapons of mass destruction that is now
publicly available, and to protect sites
most vulnerable to attack, such as water
and electricity plants and communication
networks. We should also examine how
our foreign policy might contribute to the
root causes of terrorism worldwide,
especially in relation to Israel’s
occupation of Palestine, U.S. troops in
Arab countries, globalization policies that
increase the gulf between the haves and
have-nots of the world, and “American
www.ALJADID.com
exceptionalism,” with which we seek to
avoid adherence to international treaties.
In the fourth part, Cole examines the
U.S. Constitution as a human rights
document and makes the moral argument
for giving non-citizens the basic rights of
privacy, freedom of speech and of political
association, and due process in our court
system. He also points out the fact that
the Constitution explicitly says little
about the rights of non-citizens – only
that they don’t have the right to vote or
run for federal elective office.
This is a book that not only speaks to
a broad American audience; it would also
make a strong text for courses on human
rights, U.S. history, politics, constitutional
law, or sociology. It would be an excellent
resource, as well, for foreign nationals
seeking to understand the civil liberties
that are a fundamental, defining
framework of U.S. democracy. AJ
A Conversation
With David Cole
Continued from page 19
issues, but on broader issues – to develop
ties, to work together. The broader point
is, it’s not the courts, the Congress or the
executive that have protected Arabs and
Muslims in the U.S. It’s the people
supporting these civil society
organizations that have really been quite
effective in shifting American attitudes.
So I think there is a positive story here. . .
AJ
Progress can be made.AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
PO
ET
RY
POET
ETR
Thresholds
BY CHARBEL DAGHER
Are these borders
and my double fences ghosts
at home in the interstices of the walls?
Are these doubles
and my breath
wrestles stagnant wind
above the still beds?
Are these steps
calling or repulsing
attracting me or weighing me down?
These steps are a crowd
and I, like a traveler
in front of a policeman wait for my turn,
wait for another to let me in my house.
Who will name me
my papers or my beard?
Who will admit me
the officer’s stamp
or my neighbor’s gaze?
This is my neighbor at her window
weighing with her eyes
what falls between each step
and her needle is quick to attach
every thread of news.
How can I be naked in my house
without her catching cold
how can I shake like a djinn
without her denouncing me to the
lament of the candles?
Here is my patron-saint
over the altar
and in the roadside shrine
and in the holy water over the curtains
and the souls
year after year
chasing my obsessions
How can I not be that thief
stealing a forbidden glance
to the forbidden place of my birth?
AL JADID FALL 2003
The steps wait for me
a reader reciting the secrets
behind the trespassers and the anguish
of the waiting.
These steps have cracks
as numerous as volumes
how can I not catch
the rush of words within me?
Oblivious,
someone else carries me to where I am
expecting myself
I am incensed by the tap on my shoulder
and when someone interrupts me
An adolescent in the form of an old man
staring at me with his eyes shut
reading the tales of our ancestors
told by eyewitnesses
about the other side of the sky.
On my steps are dry flowers
and grandfather’s moustache
hanging on a cane,
and my mother’s rosary
where I found the thorns she wanted
hidden from me.
and her dresses dissolved under my
hands.
On my steps I unleash my anger in a bolt
I forbid the angels from flying
I sit in the vessel of expectation.
I free myself from the glances glued
to my coat
from the rumors which reached me
in the alley
I forget the color of the curtain
I ignore the knocking of the rain on the
window
I make sure that my tongue is my ink
and my hands the pages of a book.
These steps narrate my letters to the wind
places the obsession between my fingers
It avoided me, did not invite me to wipe the
www.ALJADID.com
stains on the pictures
and from the chairs tranquil in my
memory.
The trees grow leaves
the balconies cannot hold
Are you going to mark my body
it will dissolve
at first contact
As long as we are writing with the same
letters
joined, dispersed,
a compendium, our breath cannot
contain.
The waiting has crumbled the paper
it glows like a
book just off the press
Thus love elevates us
precedes us
we aspire toward it
He is within our reach like an open
letter deciphered before its author.
We chatter to disperse the ghosts
roaming above our chairs
laying down words
like bread or a cushion
we will share
under this solitary
roof.
Translated from the Arabic by
Simone Fattal with the gentle help
of Stacy Doris and Sarah Rigg
From Charbel Dagher’s “Ghayri Bisifat
Kawni” (Cairo: Dar Shaqiyyat, 2003)
21
BOO
K REVIEW
S
BOOK
REVIEWS
A Century of Lebanese Literature:
A Culture Viewed Through its Narratives
BY S
AMIR MA
TT
AR
SAMIR
MATT
TTAR
Constructing Lebanon: A Century of
Literary Narratives
By Elise Salem
The University Press of Florida , 2003
Every society needs an authentic
sense of its history, its mythologies, its
complex reality, and its cultural
identity to survive and function
effectively. Images of the past rule us
– icons that are often as highly
structured and selective as myths;
impressions that also serve as symbolic
constructs imprinted on our awareness
almost in the manner of genetic
information. These images integrate a
people’s ethos: their feeling of
identity, their portrait of reality; their
world view, their comprehensive sense
of order. They quintessentially capture
the tenor, nuances, and quality of the
society’s life with its moral and
aesthetic style and mood. In every age,
each society tests its sense of identity
against history, the mythologies of its
past, trying to determine the reach, the
logic, and the authority of its voice
through the echoes of gone by eras.
The mechanisms are complex and
rooted in the diffuse but real and vital
need for survival, continuity, and
community.
In Lebanese culture, our
experience of the present has, more often
than not, been negative. Our feelings of
disarray; our regress into violence and
moral obtuseness; our ready impression
of a central failure of our selves, our
values, our personal and social mores; our
fears of a new “dark age” in which our
cultures and identities may disappear, are
ominous. These fears, so explicitly and
widely advertised as to be a dominant
cliché of the contemporary mood among
Lebanese, derive their force from
political, cultural, and confessional
developments in Lebanon’s turbulent
22
recent history. Elise Salem in her book
“Constructing Lebanon: A Century of
Literary Narratives” presents us with a
provocative, scholarly, and thoroughly
well-researched case for the range, the
reach, the value, and the merit of a century
Her aim, throughout, is to inform while
delighting. Horace would have been very
proud of her efforts. She combines vitality
with order as she enlightens. Her purpose
in writing the book is “to extend and to
enrich thinking on Lebanon...” I cannot
think of a better medium for exploring
the Lebanese identity than to delve
into its literary past and, there, to
survey its achievements and
possibilities – both real and
fictional. Clearly, she has a solid
grasp of her subject – or rather many
subjects. Words come to her easily,
gracefully… convincingly molding
the familiar with the new – such
neologisms as “dialogic” and
“binaric” notwithstanding.
The current Lebanese reality
offers writers a surfeit of reasons to
be rebellious and discontented, to
reveal facts, expose fictions, divulge
dreams, uncover testimonies, clarify
visions of reality, and express the
need for change. Salem contends
that, in the Lebanese context, “The
role of literature in inventing – and
constructing – a nation stems from
the necessity to dream our world.
Literature is useful to society when
it contributes to human improvement
while preventing spiritual atrophy,
By Monkith Saaid (2003)
complacency, stagnation, and
intellectual or moral decline. Its
of Lebanese literature aimed at those who mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm,
are constructing Lebanon today. She to keep people in a constant state of
attempts not to “present definitive answers discontent with themselves. Its function
on the relationship between nation and is to stimulate – without respite – a craving
culture, but rather suggestive theories on for change and improvement. It is
how a nation is interpreted through its essential, therefore, that we understand,
narratives.” It is a veritable tour de force, once and for all, that the more critical the
a truly perceptive, inspired, and brave writings of an author against his or her
book. It is an axis of many connections, country, the more intense will be the
weaving a web of appealing and erudite passions that bind.
insights.
For me, the principal features of the
Early in the book, Salem engages her Lebanese cultural landscape are
reader in a dialogue; her voice is unmistakable: a promising literacy; a
confident, and her metaphors ring true. flawed yet emerging rule of law; an
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2003
imperfect application of representative
forms of government; a reluctant
recognition of the civilizing role of the
arts, the sciences, and technology; a
dynamic but regulated interplay between
social mobility and stable forces of
tradition. Lebanon offers cautionary
examples of a society where injustices,
inequalities, ignorance, poverty, and
moral alienation exist. One could go on
and on. The point is that Lebanon harbors
fertile – and controlling – symbolic
structures that press unrelentingly on our
current conditions and feelings.
Depending on our milieu and our
experience, we Lebanese carry with us
different bits and pieces of this complex
whole that is Lebanon. Each one of us,
whether born and bred in Lebanon – or
anywhere in the worldwide Lebanese
diaspora – can summon up an appropriate
vignette, or a special feeling, or a
responsive echo of this nation – or more
affectionately, “the old country.”
Reviewing “Constructing Lebanon”
brought to mind Horace’s metaphor “of
an ox plowing the field, back and forth,
from one direction to the other.” I read
many passages and sections
more than once – at first with
pleasure; then for instruction,
as one consults a work of
reference; and invariably also
for the sheer delight of
revisiting cherished niches.
Salem demonstrates clearly
connections in which
literature is a source of national identity
that serves as an ongoing commentary on
unsettling national events.
Her book meets all the tests of a major
critical work: it is provocative, intriguing,
complex, and rewarding. It provokes the
reader to delve more deeply and carefully.
It presents an interesting and unique
contribution to critical theory – a
comprehensive survey of the literary
output of a nation. It is a pioneering
attempt to propel the study of Lebanese
nationalism beyond the confines of
ideology and political parties. It offers a
novel understanding and interpretation of
many writers and their writings. It sharpens
our understanding of Lebanon, from its
early inception and development through
its destruction and then to its current
reconstruction. Salem heralds a fertile
field of study for future researchers,
providing a formidable benchmark
against which to measure the success of
similar future ventures, answering many
questions yet opening up many more
avenues for further exploration. She has
indeed started a tradition.
Salem’s penchant for Gramsci is
catching: truly “each individual is … a
précis of the past.” We cannot escape our
history; nor can we hide from the time in
which we live. We must not hide from what
has happened and is happening to us.
When it comes to Lebanon’s history, there
appears to be little agreement among its
historians and writers. Whether treating
its cultural identity or its recent history,
their perspectives have not always been
helpful: their emphases have often been
misplaced on false or even sterile issues.
Many authors have despaired of this
nation’s experience. Others have doubted
the importance of its past or present reality,
while many are betting on its future. My
starting point with Lebanon is very
simple. For me, what is real does not need
to be justified – since it “is”; while what
only exists in the mind may require proof
and arguments, and may even be wishful
simplicity of the Lebanese idea surprises
us that Lebanese nationalism emanated
from a “reality”: the organic status of
Mount Lebanon in the 19th century as
guaranteed by the European powers.
France’s proclamation of Greater Lebanon
on September 1, 1920, provided Lebanon
with an international status and an ample
geographical framework. The “reality”
existed and it was working – despite the
shadow cast by increasing emigration
from Lebanon. The proclamation also gave
Lebanon juridical depth, extended the
geographical scope of Mount Lebanon,
granting it an indispensable agricultural
base, maritime harbors, and complete
independence – Greater Lebanon. Charles
Malik would later affirm that, for him,
Lebanon was “a real entity, established,
defined, stable, independent, selfperpetuating and wanting to be so, and
recognized by the world as having the
right to exist and to persevere.”
I have always found it useful to
ground my ideas in Lebanon’s distinctive
geological history – a simple yet powerful
image. Wandering in the subterranean
corridors of the Geology
Department in the
American University of
Beirut some 30 years
ago, I remember, in a
dusty showcase, a faint
geological map entitled
“Lebanon – A Country
Controlled by Faults of
Every Scale,”
a
reference, no doubt, to the surfeit of black
lines on the map. But, what an apt précis
of this country’s history and development!
Lebanon’s high mountains and
inaccessible valleys have long made it an
excellent refuge for minorities, leading to
isolationism, reinforcing clan systems,
and making a centralized state difficult.
Lebanon is truly a nation of associated
communities. To grasp the meaning of
Lebanon’s experiences, we have to
rediscover its contours, trace its heritage,
illuminate its history, and identify its
protagonists.
The “un”civil war in Lebanon has
had horrid effects, but we are beginning
to see a silver lining in the dark clouds
that still loom over Lebanon: the sectarian
stronghold is loosening its noose, and the
prospects for the arts – the novel, the
theater, language, painting, sculpture,
The point is that Lebanon harbors fertile –
and controlling – symbolic structures that press
unrelentingly on our current conditions and
feelings..
AL JADID FALL 2003
thinking. Very simply, then, for me,
Lebanon is; it exists, it is real, it is steeped
in history. Quoting Michel Chiha, “...forty
centuries of Phoenicia attest to it,
nineteen centuries since the coming of
Christ confirm it, and some thirteen
centuries since Islam... the character of
Lebanon is such that all past history has
recorded it. It has recorded it since the
inception of writing and language...”
Lebanon has survived many upheavals. It
will continue to thrive in one form or
another, hopefully, long into the future.
Is the present form of the Lebanese
state due to historical junctures – whether
in 1861 or 1920 – rather than to an
unavoidable historical necessity? When
we examine the many ideologies –
political literature all – formulated at the
turn of the 20th century in the Arab
provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the
www.ALJADID.com
23
music, are continuing to flower. The war
may have shattered much of the fabric of
Lebanese society, but the cauldron of the
war destroyed hindrances such as
confessional hierarchies, prejudices, idols,
and ossified traditions.
The challenges facing Lebanon
continue to be the evolution – albeit
slowly – of a strong, united, and enduring
Lebanese state, and solutions to the
peoples’ political, security, social, and
cultural concerns. Sectarian affiliations
still dominate the daily life of the
Lebanese: citizens live and die according
to sectarian stipulations in a country that
has no civil code for personal matters.
Each religion has its own set of “personal
status” laws and regulations that
encompass such matters as engagements,
marriages, dowries, annulments of
marriage, divorces, adoptions, and
inheritance. These laws, binding on
individuals whether practicing members
of a religion or not, strengthen the role of
communal religious leaders, promote
sectarianism – and impede the evolution
of an integrated Lebanese nation.
Success for Lebanon involves reform
and national reconciliation. It requires a
slow-but-sure silencing of our bigoted
confessional obsessions. It involves
getting used to seeing the boundaries of
our separate communities not as fences
but as openings; not as places to settle
but as thoroughfares; not as prisons but
as calls to freedom. Will the hideous
memories of the civil war play themselves
out as a crucible for a better Lebanon?
Can we exorcise the ghosts of war that
haunt us still – by listening to each other,
becoming more open, more tolerant and
more luminous to the various
communities that make Lebanon unique?
Can we learn to live, transcending not
only our diversities, but uniting our
several harmonies at once?
The Lebanese have to learn the
lessons of their history or else they will
validate Hegel’s assertion that the first
lesson of history is that “peoples have
never learned the lessons of their history.”
What are the prospects for Lebanon, 130
years after the autonomy of Mount
Lebanon, 80 years after the establishment
of Greater Lebanon, and half a century
after independence? My bet for Lebanon
is that the social contract between its many
different communities, implicit in its
24
nationhood, will be renewed and will
transcend the obsolete confessional
structures stifling the state and its citizens.
My wager is that this will be done in spite
of the existence of very real difficulties
and, hopefully, without renouncing
freedoms that are being undermined; and
to do so even amid the rise in
fundamentalisms in much of the world.
Salem’s contribution to the history of
Lebanon’s literary development over the
past century attests – in the words of the
Lebanese themselves – a valid and
valuable effort in the process of
“constructing Lebanon.”
There are many different approaches
to the study and understanding of
literature. Each method is valid for the
Continued on page 39
The Weeping Echo
BY FFADW
ADW
A TUQAN
ADWA
My poet, be not harsh in your blame, wrong not my loyalty
Enough the harshness of life, the hardship of destiny
O if only you knew of my pains, tragedy of my youth
Your heart would weep and shudder for my gloom and agony
I never forgot a passion that gushed my melodies and poetry
I never forgot a passion that in it fluttered the days of my being
I forget? How? No, dream of my heart, redeemer of me,
No, vowing to He who unified our souls in love, its purity.
Solicit the conscience of night, did you in it confide the secrets of my love
Did you sing the praises of your poetry in the loneliness of my heart?
This night enfolds the utter mysteries of my life
The temple of my dreams it is, refuge of my memories
Your reproving poetry, how it gushed my tears, how it grieved me
And the distilled profound entreaty, how it trembled my humanity
If you watch me, how love howls in my captive soul
And I chant your verses in the vastness of the night
You, a spirit airborne … singing on every branch
Are quenched by love’s wine, and the fountain of charms
And I, a spirit imprisoned, life slashed my wings
My tunes expose me, the abyss of my wounds!
Mercy, my poet, behold the echoes of my soul
They are in my weeping poetry the pleas of the slain
They are, my poet, the groans of a fugitive, abused
They are the chokes of one strangled by iron chains
Whenever the night’s embrace holds you in stillness and grief
And your heart, overcome, asks about me …
Be wary, you’ll find my soul stricken, humbled in ache:
Pray, wrong not my loyalty!
– Translated from the Arabic by Elissar Haikal
“The Weeping Echo” is from “Complete Poetic Works: Fadwa Tuqan” (in Arabic),
Beirut, Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 1993, pp. 62-64.
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AL JADID FALL 2003
Lebanon: A Focal Point for Unsolved Tensions
BY P
AUL SULLIV
AN
PA
SULLIVAN
Lebanon still has a chance to be a functioning democracy made up of many religious
and ethnic groups, but it also has a chance of heading back into calamity.
Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon:
A History of the Internationalization of
Communal Conflict
By Samir Khalaf
Columbia University Press, 2002
This book could be of great use to
Lebanese intellectuals and to
scholars of the history of
violence and war. Diplomats and
military strategists would find it
insightful, as well as anyone
interested in trying to figure out
why civil and uncivil violence
begins, what fuels it, and what
may stop it. Samir Khalaf ’s
“Civil and Uncivil Violence in
Lebanon” will enlighten those
who think that it is possible to
easily piece a country back
together again after it has
experienced extreme violence,
severe ethnic tensions, and
horrific communal violence.
One can readily call to mind
other such sorry countries when
reading through this book. But,
as the author states so often,
Lebanon is different. It is almost
sui generis because it is a multiethnic state that, for much of its
history, has survived with many
disparate communities getting
along in a somewhat peaceful
and civil manner. It is also, as the
author astutely points out,
somewhat of an ideological
Samir
threat to Lebanon’s neighboring
states that are mostly of one
religion and are far from democratic. It
has also been a country that has been a
proxy battlefield for powers great and
small for hundreds of years. Moreover,
Lebanon has been a focal point for its
region’s chronically unsolved conflicts
and tensions, leading to some
AL JADID FALL 2003
pathological psychologies. Lebanon also
distinguishes itself with historical and
religious weights that few small countries
have.
Lebanon still has a chance to be a
functioning democracy made up of many
religious and ethnic groups, but it also
Khalaf (Courtesy of Columbia University Press)
has a chance of heading back into
calamity.
During the civil war of 1975-1991,
possibly more than 170,000 people were
killed, 340,000 injured, and about twothirds of the population was displaced in
some way. Billions of dollars of assets
www.ALJADID.com
were lost, which Khalaf cites as an
example of uncivil violence.
Many might argue that all violence
is uncivil. Khalaf tries to present the
differences between uncivil and civil
violence in a logical, academic, yet
practical way. Essentially, he sees a
continuum that stretches from
strikes, walkouts, and controlled
violence rooted in economics
and politics (such as income
inequalities, wealth inequalities,
and some social conflicts) to
atavistic, primitive, illogical
“ultra” violence which is based,
somewhat paradoxically, on
factors such as religion and
communal
loyalties
or
“mythologies” derived from
those.
He gives examples of times
when perpetrators would make
sure people were not in the
buildings to be bombed, or when
they would make sure to not
disrupt the daily schedules of
their villages and towns too
much. These may be seen as,
ironically, the “good old days”
of violence in Lebanon. He also
gives examples of the
nightmarish civil war during
which irrational, misdirected,
animalistic violence became
normal, even a part of the
everyday routines of Lebanese.
He also describes some of the
short
and
long
term
psychological, economic, social,
and political effects of such a
“normalization” of primitive uncivil
violence.
He points out that certain types of
violence take on a life of their own; the
original reasons for it are often lost, the
original targets are sometimes forgotten,
25
and new and
easier targets are
chosen to vent
frustrated
violence. It is
very difficult to
stop
such
violence once it
gets
started.
Revenge and
counter-revenge
can lead to
unstoppable cycles of violence and loss:
“an eye for an eye” made Lebanon blind.
Khalaf has embedded a brilliant,
encyclopedic history of Lebanon in this
fascinating book. “Civil and Uncivil
Violence in Lebanon” can be seen as a
study of behavioral history with some
predictions and hopes for the future, but
this book is much more. Khalaf sounds
out many factors that explain changes in
group behaviors of Lebanese over time.
He focuses on internal factors, such as
the Lebanese economy, commodity
prices, labor issues, government structure
and power, culture clashes, and main
events – like the “Sarajevos” of Lebanon
that include assassinations of famous
journalists and politicians. He also
focuses on external factors, especially the
use of Lebanon for proxy wars during the
19th and 20th centuries by the “Great
Powers” and others for their own national
interests. His interpretations of the Marine
incursions of 1958 and in the early 1980s
are riveting reading. Khalaf is
convincing in his interpretation that the
incursion in 1958 made more sense and
was done in a better manner than the sad
disaster of the 1980s. He also looks
deeply into the effects Israel has had on
Lebanon from its inception in 1948.
Lebanon is a tough teacher, and a very
complex country.
Lebanon could be seen as a
canonical example of how foreign
policies of certain nations should be
developed with a very deep
understanding of the countries that are
affected.
Without
that
deep
understanding, the unintended,
unexpected, and the unknowns could
multiply.
Khalaf does an excellent job of
explaining many of the events that have
shaped Lebanon without becoming
sensational.
26
Interestingly, Khalaf has very little
positive to say about the Palestinians’
effects on Lebanon. He blames the
Palestinians for much of the violence
heading toward and escalating the civil
war. He sees “Black September” in Jordan,
after which the PLO was tossed out and
fled in large numbers to Lebanon, to be a
major turning point. He makes a negative
assessment of the “Cairo Accords,” which
gave the Palestinian camps almost
complete autonomy. He gives many
examples of what he calls Palestinian
lawlessness and violence, examples that
he believes tipped the already unsteady
scales of inter-communal violence toward
the uncivil, brutal civil war.
Lebanon’s history with the
Palestinians fits with Khalaf’s theoretical
stream of ideas related to the importance
of the reactions and interactions of the
internal-external dialectics. It may seem
stunningly obvious that Lebanon,
because of its geographically strategic
location, its history, and the connections
its people have with the outside world
through trade, commerce, intellectual life
and more, that it would be used as a proxy
for battles of the bigger players.
Importantly, Khalaf does not absolve
the Lebanese from their own guilt. Indeed,
external powers and interests have
interfered violently and disturbingly in
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Lebanon, but certain Lebanese have also
added to this country’s troubles. He does
not pull his punches when he points out
who these people have been.
The last section of the book looks
into the future and has a cautiously
optimistic view of what might happen in
Lebanon. Khalaf summarizes certain
lessons learned throughout the book, and
gives us some recommendations for how
to stop such uncivil violence in the future.
This is a clearly written book. It is
structured in a very logical way, both
historically and intellectually. The
chapters end with a section on
“inferences,” helping the reader better
understand what was written in the chapter.
It is also a book full of nuances and
subtleties. It is obvious that the author
put massive efforts into this study over a
long period of time. There are many
sentences in this book that carry the
sometimes profoundly useful thoughts of
the author in his very carefully crafted
phrasing.
It is very clear that Khalaf cares
deeply for his country, and that he has
agonized over its bloody past and worries
about its future. It is also very clear that
Khalaf’s understanding of Lebanon is
shared by few, whether inside or outside
AJ
the country.AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
Coming of Age, Exile and War
BY P
AULINE HOMSI VINSON
PA
The Bullet Collection
Patricia Sarrafian Ward
St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2003.
“The Bullet Collection” is an
excellent first novel by Patricia Sarrafian
Ward. With its focus on coming of age,
war, and exile, it captures the devastating
psychological impact of war on personal
lives.The author weaves together
autobiographical elements, historical
events, and fictional narrative while
exploring the role of narration in
recovering the past.
The story is narrated by Marianna,
who, like Patricia Sarrafian Ward, left
Lebanon for the United States at age 18
with her family because of the war. Also
like Ward, Marianna has an American
father and an Armenian mother. These and
other autobiographical elements in the
novel are interwoven with historical
events and fictional narrative. The result
is a moving expression of loss occasioned
by war and exile – loss of childhood, home
and of homeland, people and places.
The story concentrates on two sisters:
the narrator, Marianna, and her older sister,
Alaine. In Lebanon, Alaine experiences a
psychological breakdown that mirrors the
external, socio-political breakdown
caused by the war. Brooding, suicidal, and
self-destructive, she collects bullets,
pieces of shrapnel, and other war debris,
which in turn become hidden tokens of
her internal disintegration.
Alaine’s dominating and destructive
personality is countered by her younger
sister’s willed cheerfulness. Always trying
AL JADID FALL 2003
to measure up to her older sister, the
younger Marianna first takes on a
protective, almost maternal tone toward
her sister and parents, only eventually to
succumb to the same “war sickness” as
her sister when she too begins to skip
classes at school and becomes obsessed
with visiting an injured French soldier of
Lebanese origin as he recovers in the
hospital.
Though she feels that her blonde
complexion makes her look like a
foreigner in Lebanon, when she arrives in
the U.S., her father’s birth country,
sounds that come through windows that
had to be left open in order to prevent the
glass from shattering from the pressure of
explosions. The feel of a run-down
American apartment, with its wooden
structure and private backyard, stands in
stark contrast to Marianna’s experience in
Lebanon. Even Lebanese home-cooked
food in the U.S. cannot capture the same
taste it had in Lebanon. This, the novel,
suggests, is the taste of exile, a foreignness
that pervades every aspect of one’s life.
Repeatedly, the book suggests that
the past matters, yet none of the adult
Patricia Sarrafian Ward (courtesy of Graywolf Press)
Marianna feels more alienated than her
older sister, whose dark looks Marianna
had associated with Lebanon. In a reversal
of their previous roles, the older sister
begins to make a home for herself in the
U.S., fixing up their run-down rental house,
painting the walls, and planting flowers
in her efforts at renewal and recovery. In
contrast, Marianna is unable to adjust to
her new life in America, and sinks deeper
into despair, succumbing to despondency
and suicidal tendencies.
In great detail, the novel evokes
Marianna’s alienation by contrasting the
physical aspects of home in Lebanon and
America. Life in Lebanon is expressed
through the narrator’s recollections of the
feel of the tiled floors and concrete walls,
the smell of mosquito repellent and the
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characters in the novel want to remember
it. The memory of the Armenian genocide
hovers around the characters from the
mother’s side. The American father –
ironically a historian whose own brother
died in the Korean War – feels
disconnected from his own personal
history. His American childhood is
glimpsed only through his love of peanut
butter. When he finally leaves the “land
he loves” to return to his native country,
he finds himself a stranger. Forced to start
over, he gives up his university position
and accepts a job as a clerk in the local
grocery store.
Significantly, much of what is going
on around the two young sisters in
Lebanon is left unsaid. In the latter half of
the novel the older Marianna alludes to
27
Continued from previous page
historical events and political groups. She
mentions the Palestinians, the Israelis, the
Americans, the various Lebanese factions,
kidnappings, deaths, and devastation –
only as background to the turbulence in
the girls’ lives, for whom “normalcy” had
become the tension and anxiety created
by war. What it means to grow up in a war
is sharply contrasted by the narrator’s
nostalgia for what she imagines must have
been her mother’s more peaceful
childhood in Lebanon, a childhood that
she would have liked to have had, and
feels she should have had, but could not
because of the war.
The silence regarding political events
during the war seems emblematic of
several related issues: young children’s
incomprehension of what is going on in
the world around them; the parents’
ignorance of what is going on their
children’s lives; the tendency in Lebanese
society not to confront the real problems
that exacerbate the war. In their efforts to
counteract this willful amnesia, both
sisters, at various times, insist on wearing
jackets that once belonged to men who
were killed in the war, insisting that we
somehow carry with us the remnants of
our collective and individual past.
Ward masterfully recreates the
difficulty of delving into the past in
narrative form. The novel begins with a
recollection of an idyllic childhood that
was only possible before the war “was
real.” It quickly shifts to the present time
of narration, the American home to which
the narrator cannot adjust, and then shifts
back to recreate in episodic and cryptic
moments the confusion and loss of
innocence that the war in Lebanon forced
upon the two girls, prematurely robbing
them of their childhood. In recreating the
difficulty of retrieving the past through
narrative, the novel also suggests that such
narrative recollection may nonetheless be
the only possibility for healing and
recovery.
Patricia Sarrafian Ward has done a
superb job of illustrating the destructive
reverberations of the war in Lebanon. At
the same time, she suggests the
possibilities for renewal for her characters,
as symbolized by fresh snow as well as
Marianna’s image of a winged horse,
elevating her spirits and redeeming her
memory of a dead horse she once saw
lying in the streets of Beirut. AJ
28
A Critical Celebration
of Novelist Etel Adnan
BY SUSAN MUADDI DARRAJ
Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the
Arab-American Writer and Artist
Edited by Lisa Suhair Majaj and Amal
Amireh.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company,
2002.
Literature that has left its mark upon
our way of viewing the world is usually
scrutinized. Scholars explore its genius
and examine it under the microscope of
various critical theories, from postcolonial
to feminist to new critical theories, to
understand what it reveals about our
world. When the author is a woman,
writing work that is revolutionary, new, and
different, critical study becomes even more
vital. In recent decades, endless volumes
of criticism have been published about
women writers, from Anne Sexton to Zora
Neale Hurston – and now, an ArabAmerican woman writer has also received
long overdue critical attention.
Etel Adnan, novelist, poet, and
painter, has been a creative force in
America for decades and represents one
of the founding forces of the newly
emerging genre of Arab-American
literature. In the preface to “Etel Adnan:
Critical Essays on the Arab-American
Writer and Artist,” editors Lisa Suhair
Majaj and Amal Amireh note that, in
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addition to her prolific writing career,
“Adnan has helped to link Arab and ArabAmerican artists and writers, and has
brought Arab cultural production into the
space of American and European literature,
philosophy and art.” However, like most
Arab writers in the United States, her voice
has rarely been embraced or considered
worthy of study by America’s literary
mainstream.
For that reason, the publication of
“Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the ArabAmerican Writer and Artist” represents a
milestone – the volume is one of the first
comprehensive and critical studies of any
Arab-American writer. The collection is
divided into two parts: Section I examines
Adnan’s writing and artwork, and Section
II offers essays that explore her major
work, the novel “Sitt Marie Rose.” The
editors assert the “necessity of granting
Arab women’s texts the same level of
literary nuance attributed to the work of
Western authors”; indeed, the 12 essays
in this volume range from post-colonial to
feminist to pedagogical approaches to
Adnan’s body of work.
An introductory essay by Majaj and
Amireh offers the reader unfamiliar with
Adnan a brief but insightful biographical
sketch of the Lebanese writer who came
to the United States in the mid-50s. “The
daughter of a Christian Greek mother and
a Muslim Syrian father (an Ottoman
officer),” they emphasize, “she grew up
positioned between cultural, religious and
linguistic worlds.” Educated in convent
schools, she learned French, not Arabic,
as her primary language; as an Arab
woman, she was alienated from her native
tongue and wrote in French and English.
These aspects of her history, the editors
suggest, pushed her to the margins of
French, English, and Arab cultures while
simultaneously enhancing her broad,
encompassing vision of the Arab world
and the political and religious feuds that
threatened to tear it apart.
One of the essays that explores
AL JADID FALL 2003
Adnan’s conflict with language is Caroline
Seymour-Jorn’s “The Arab Apocalypse as
a Critique of Colonialism and Imperialism.”
“The Arab Apocalypse” is a series of 59
poems “that both critiques neo-colonial
violence on a global scale and provides a
warning of the tragic future that awaits
humankind if it continues on its present
course.” Regarding the frequent use of
symbols and artwork to replace words in
Adnan’s poetry, Seymour-Jorn argues that
“language, even poetic language, is
inadequate to describe the human
experience of occupation and war.”
Wen-Chin Ouyang’s essay, “From
Beirut to Beirut: Exile, Wandering and
Homecoming in the Narratives of Etel
Adnan,” also considers Adnan’s unusual
choice of language, but this time from the
perspective of her post-colonial hybridity:
writing in French was to write in the
language of the colonizer. However,
Ouyang states, “For Adnan, to be unable
to write in Arabic is to be denied her role in
the decolonization process. … Her
decision to stop writing in French, and to
write instead in English, did not help bring
her from the periphery to the center”
because English, also a Western language,
is considered the language of the British,
a former colonizer, and the United States,
a neo-colonizer.
The feminist aspect of Adnan’s writing
is explored in several essays, including
“Transgressive Subjects: Gender, War, and
Colonialism in Etel Adnan’s ‘Sitt Marie
Rose,’” by Sami Ofeish and Sabah
Ghandour. Ofeish and Ghandour provide
an enlightening discussion of the
patriarchy in Adnan’s most famous novel;
they comment on how the patriarchal
system in Lebanon during the civil war was
strengthened by the colonial and
nationalist projects. French colonialism
over Lebanon, they write, “fortified the
patriarchal social structure. By allying with
the indigenous male elite and recruiting
men, exclusively, as civil servants, the
French primarily asserted men’s
authority.”
Pauline Homsi Vinson further explains
why Sitt Marie Rose represented a threat
to her pro-Western murderers in her essay,
“Voice, Narrative, and Political Critique:
Etel Adnan’s ‘Sitt Marie Rose’ and Nawal
El Saadawi’s ‘Woman at Point Zero,’”
which is a useful comparison of the two
novels. Vinson describes Sitt Marie Rose’s
AL JADID FALL 2003
Confessions of Culture Clash
BY ELHAM GHEY TANCHI
A Love Story
By Ghazi A. Algosaibi,
Translated by Robin Bray
Saqi Books, London, 2002.
G
hazi Algosaibi is a Saudi
writer who has served as his
country’s ambassador to the
United Kingdom in recent years. In
addition to his work as a politician,
Algosaibi is a poet and novelist. “A Love
Story,” a short novel of 110 pages, is
written in streams of flashbacks, each
carrying the reader into the past and back
to the present tense skillfully.
“A Love Story” is, on the surface, an
account of an old man’s last days in a
hospital bed in London, remembering his
love affair with a married woman. The
underlying message, however, stresses the
spirit of love that can draw people to each
other despite a clash of societal norms,
unique feminism and how it contradicts the
patriarchal system: “She is at once
maternal, sexual, and independent, as is
evidenced by … her refusal to be bound
to oppressive social and political codes.”
The main character’s “politicization
coincides with – indeed seems an integral
part of – a personal, feminist, and sexual
awakening” that endangers the nationalist
project because it requires the silencing
of women for its success.
This intriguing collection features
many other excellent essays, including a
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age difference or mere social differences.
It is the theme that weaves through the
fiction, which consists mainly of
memories of a playful youth and depicts
the daily activities of a young Saudi man.
The author candidly reveals the
emotions of a well-educated and
otherwise reserved Saudi in his love affair
with honesty and affection, in a kind of
tribute to the power of love. The unveiling
of emotions in a forbidden love affair, from
the point of view of an old man in a
confessional manner, with its
condemnation or praise, its risk and
pleasure, is the true source of the book’s
appeal. Pure love and passion are made
into a virtue, a message the author
successfully conveys because the main
character does not regret his past. Rather,
Iryan prides himself on his ability to love
despite the mores of his culture.
Algosaibi’s main theme, as alluded
to in the title of the book, is the love story
that remains a mystery as Iryan reflects on
his life. Iryan delves into his memories of
his love affair with a married woman,
Rawda, who we find out is a reserved
woman. Iryan suspects that he has a
daughter with Rawda, or maybe he was
sure at one point but does not remember
it now.
Recalling one’s memories in the very
last days of one’s life could be a very
colorful, movie-like and rich experience.
However, the author’s monotonous tone
does not allow us to see the whole picture.
Continued on page 38
reflection on the pedagogical problems of
teaching Adnan to Western students (John
Champagne’s “Among Good Christian
Peoples: Teaching Etel Adnan’s ‘Sitt Marie
Rose’”), as well as an enlightening and
informative evaluation of Adnan’s varied
artistic work (Simone Fattal’s “On
Perception: Etel Adnan’s Visual Art”). It
can only be hoped that “Etel Adnan” is
just the first of many critical works to further
examine the literature of Adnan and other
worthy Arab-American writers. AJ
29
A Literary Text of Palestinian Embroidery
BY LLYNNE
YNNE R
OGERS
ROGERS
West Of The Jordan
By Laila Halaby
Boston: Beacon Press, 2003
“West of the Jordan,” a novel by Laila
Halaby, reads like the subtle and gentle
shimmering of olive tree leaves. Centered
on the interior monologues of four young
women, the novel’s wide expanse of
stories covers topics such as immigration
to the United States, portraying the joys
and tragedies of three generations of an
extended Palestinian family from Nawara.
Part of the growing body of ArabAmerican writing, Halaby’s work
entertains the reader with her sympathetic
characters and captivating story, while
deftly avoiding the pitfall of clichés and
prevalent stereotypes. Instead she gives
the reader a realistic array of stories from
a variety of perspectives: a contemporary
“Thousand and One Nights.” These four
Scheherazades are so vibrant that the
reader is both relieved and disappointed
when the novel does not close with the
traditional marital happily-ever-after
ending.
The young cousins, Hala, Mawal,
Soraya, and Khadija, represent four familiar
types of contemporary Arab and ArabAmerican women. Yet, through their inner
30
monologues, Halaby presents a human
dimension which makes all four characters
unique individuals. The novel opens with
Hala’s return to Palestine to see her dying
grandmother. Most Arab Americans will
immediately recognize the humorous
tensions she experiences on the plane,
caught between the solidarity of feeling
aligned with other Arabs and their cultural
baggage and the embarrassment of
wanting to be disassociated from them.
The novel takes a refreshing twist
when the reader discovers that after Hala’s
mother’s death from cancer, her stormy
relationship with her father veered from
the traditional patriarchal idolatry. As Hala
revisits her childhood with her now
American consciousness, she shares her
hopes, loves, and animosities with the
reader.
Unlike some Arab-American fiction,
Halaby does not use her novel as a
political platform. The refreshing voices
of these four women never deteriorate into
the middle class feminist rant so popular
with Western audiences. In its realistic
appreciation of the four women, the
narrative avoids the worn-out suicide
bomber and the dramatic heroics on
horseback. While the Israeli presence
hovers like a menacing cloud at the
checkpoints, the oppressive political
tensions are subordinated into the
background story. Instead, the characters,
like most average Palestinians, try to cope
with the enforced travel restrictions and
land occupation and somehow still manage
to go about daily life, earn a living, and
find love. Nevertheless, the novel does
document the rippling effects of the
physical and economic violence of Israeli
occupation on the family unit.
Mawal is the only one of the four
granddaughters who remains in Palestine.
Ostensibly this plump, quiet girl leads the
quietest existence, yet she has adopted her
mother’s and grandmother’s habit of
silence, which allows others to tell her their
stories without judgmental interference.
Subsequently Mawal, who resists the lure
of America to take care of her dying mother,
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assumes the role of village historian and
peaceably accepts “God’s will.” Mawal’s
monologues appeal to the reader’s senses
as she describes the smells and sights
unique to the Palestinian village.
Khadija, whose father imposes a
conservative lifestyle on her that elicits
the pity of her American relatives, finds a
mature and understanding sympathy to his
hypocritical tyranny. Despite her domestic
drudgery and brow beatings, Khadija
manages to maintain a humanity and sense
of domestic salvation in their adopted
homeland. The reader gently moves from
sorrow for the underestimated Khadija to
admiration for her steadfast commitment
to her family.
Unlike Khadija, the provocative
Soraya ostentatiously attempts to dance
her pain and anger away in a public display
of her sexuality. Bringing the feminine
tradition of holding secrets to America,
Soraya, despite her outwardly cavalier
attitude, also shows a mature
understanding of the plight of her
American neighbors and her family, which
she generously shares with the reader. As
she copes with the failure of old world
values and American racism, Soraya, like
her cousins, grapples with her own coming
of age.
All four young women precariously
straddle two cultures without idealizing
either. The novel’s dual settings provide
an accurate historical context of modern
Palestine and the painful complications
and opportunities of exile. Beyond the
genre of immigrant fiction, the novel also
speaks to young American girls baffled by
the deluge of choices they face at the brink
of adulthood.
With the current flood of fiction set in
the Middle East using the multi-narrative
voice, this work is set apart. Halaby’s
device of the extended family unifies the
structure of the novel and captures both
the tragedy and the often hidden joy of
contemporary Palestinian life. The craft and
authenticity of “West of the Jordan”
Continued on page 39
AL JADID FALL 2003
Abu-Jaber’s Second Novel:
A Thousand and One Recipes
BY WAIL S. HASSAN
publication by one-and-a-half years; in
hindsight, the novel seems as though it
were written post-9/11. By another
extraordinary twist of fate, “Crescent,”
which opens with a scene depicting the
shelling of Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq
war, was finally released almost
simultaneously with the start of the U.S.-
Crescent
By Diana Abu-Jaber
New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. 349 pp.
In the sphere of Arab-American
literature, Diana Abu-Jaber has explored
the vicissitudes of Arab ethnicity more
profoundly than any other novelist. Her
two novels, “Arabian Jazz” (1993) and
“Crescent” (2003) depict secondgeneration, ethnically mixed (Arab and
white American) women who struggle to
chart a space for themselves at the interface
of a multi-ethnic American society in
which anti-Arab prejudice is the norm, and
a community of immigrants that strives
to maintain its ties to their culture of
origin. Yet while “Arabian Jazz” prioritizes
the struggle of immigrants’ children to
integrate in American society (the titular
metaphor establishes a clear parallel
between Arab Americans and other
hyphenated groups, particularly AfricanAmericans), Abu-Jaber’s new novel stages,
among other things, the second
generation’s effort to rediscover the
culture of their parents’ homeland.
“Crescent” frames this issue within a
broader consideration of the U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East, the recent
history of Iraq, and the tragic predicament
of the Iraqi people. In fact, the novel’s
publication has had a curious history.
Completed before the terrorist attacks of
9/11/2001, the novel seems to have
anticipated them, so much so that both
author and publisher saw fit to delay
AL JADID FALL 2003
Diana Abu-Jaber
led invasion of Iraq in spring 2003 –
unusual circumstances that redouble the
urgency of the novel’s political message.
It may be difficult to imagine how a novel
could treat such thorny issues without
getting bogged down with polemics, but
nothing is farther from the truth. This is a
novel about, of all things, food and
storytelling – metaphors for humane
community and the richness of Arab
culture.
“Crescent” consists of two narratives
that subtly mirror one another. The main
narrative centers on Sirine, a 39-year-old
Iraqi-American who lives with her uncle
and works as a chef in a Lebanese
restaurant in the Iranian quarter of Los
Angeles. A gifted and celebrated cook with
the soul of a poet, Sirine rediscovers her
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Arab roots through the culinary arts. She
falls in love with an Iraqi refugee called
Hanif who, like her uncle, teaches Arabic
literature at UCLA. The uncle likes to
play Scheherazade: each chapter opens
with him recounting an improvised
episode of an endless story that is cleverly
modeled in form and substance on the
tales of “The Thousand and One Nights”
– fantastic stories about a Hanif-like
character called Abdelrahman Salahadin
and his mother, the ever-resourceful Aunt
Camille, who knows how to handle jinn,
mermaids, the Mother of All Fish, and
Orientalist scholar and adventurer
Richard Burton, famous for his bawdy
translation of the “Thousand and One
Nights.”
These comedic and romantic
storylines are clouded by reports of
Saddam Hussein’s torture and execution
of political prisoners, rumors of spies,
clumsy CIA agents, and a shadowy
photographer with a mysterious past and
suspicious behavior. In this way, the novel
is structured around embedded, selfreflexive narratives that stage and
problematize the act of storytelling,
mixing history, fantasy, mythology,
romance, spy fiction, and medieval Arabic
cook books. The novel itself is like a
complicated sauce or a recipe in which
flavors do not go in the same direction;
instead, they pull apart – make it bigger.
This is also an educational novel that
not only teaches the Western reader about
Arab culture, history, and politics, but also
stages pedagogic scenes in the classroom
(where Hanif discourses on the modern
Arabic novel) and the lecture hall (where
speakers explain the horrific effects of
U.S. sanctions on the Iraqi people and
warn that someday, something terrible is
going to happen to us). As such, the novel
points to the miseducation of America on
the subject of Middle Eastern peoples,
Continued on page 38
31
Unveiling the West Through
the Eyes of Artists, Historians and Critics
BY DORIS BITT
AR
BITTAR
Middle Eastern cultures. Thus, an
acknowledgment of diversity equals a
rejection of the implicit or explicit
Western view of a monolithic Islamic or
Middle Eastern culture.
between the colonial bureaucracy and the
Arab elite. We see colonial administrators
such as Egypt’s Lord Cromer bent on
“liberating” the Arab man by lifting the
veil off of his woman. At the same time,
Veil: Veiling, Representation and
Contemporary Art
Edited by David A. Bailey and Gilane
Tawadros
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003, 192 pp.
Photo Illustrated
Let us suppose that the Middle
Eastern world was hyper-obsessed with the
seemingly ubiquitous Western practice of
preparing one’s daughter for a sexual life
beginning at the age of 13 or 14. Suppose
that this was all that Middle Easterners
discussed among themselves and
Westerners. Whether the conversation
begins with world politics, the price of
oil, the Euro, or tennis, the Middle
Easterner would predictably drift the
discussion back to the question of how
Western girls, at tender ages, are equipped
with the latest birth control technologies
and offered out to the world as sexual
beings. The rallying cry to the world
would be that “These girls will inevitably
be ruined if not saved by the values of
Middle Eastern modesty.” A Westerner
may laugh at this and want to change the
subject, not out of shame but out of a
sense of irrelevance and silliness.
For Westerners, the veil has become a
monolithic symbol for all that is wrong
with the East. The Orient, as seen through
Occidental eyes, is usually defined as a
singular and monolithic threat to
“Western values.” This ignores not only
the variety and diversity of veiling
practices but the entire spectrum of
32
‘Rapture’ by Shirin Neshat, 1999. Film still, 13 mins. Collections of Eileen and
Peter Norton, Santa Monica.
“Veil: Veiling, Representation and
Contemporary Art” is based on an
exhibition of artists from throughout
Europe, the United States, and the Middle
East. The essays are collaborative efforts
between artists, theorists, and critics. They
range from providing historical facts and
describing artistic practices to asking how
images, art, and resistance strategies
challenge and/or reinforce Western
stereotypes of the “other.” The strands that
most engagingly tie these at times
disparate and heterogeneous articles
together are their tenacious and steady
engagements with the West’s motivations
and role in the region. The authors never
address the issues surrounding the veil and
its diverse uses in a vacuum. Their
discussions are anchored in the regional
and local socio-political contexts.
Leila Ahmed in “Discourse of the
Veil” traces the patterns of intersection
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Lord Cromer presses for cuts in the
education of Arab women and works
against the suffragette movement back
home in England. One cannot miss the
clear link between colonial history and
the contemporary Anglo-American
pundits who cry for women’s rights in the
Arab world as justification for occupation
of Iraq, but support cuts in social services
to women and children and erosion of
reproductive rights back home.
As one of the chapters points out,
there is no single word for “veil” in the
Arabic language. There are many words
for various headwear that both men and
women use, just as in Western society there
are words such as bowler, pillbox hat,
bandana, baseball cap, etc. We find that
various Middle Eastern headwear are
linked to tradition, function, job,
ethnicity, religion, fashion, class, and
context.
AL JADID FALL 2003
Cartoons Tackle Taboos
It Became Necessary to Destroy the
Planet in Order to Save It!
By Khalil Bendib
Elon House Publishing, 2003,160 pages
BY DORIS BITT
AR
BITTAR
‘Untitled’ by Jananne Al-Ani, 1996. Black and white photographs, 180 x 120 cm, courtesy of
Essor Gallery.
Ironically, the veil becomes an issue
for the Middle Easterner only when he/
she perceives that the culture is under
attack. If the West uses its opposition to
the veil to weaken Middle Eastern
societies, then Middle Eastern resistance
movements equally use the veil to
undermine Western designs. Patterns of
transgressions, whether by lifting the veil
to symbolically advance the suffragette
movement in Egypt in the 1920s or using
its anonymity to subvert and confuse the
occupiers in Algeria in the 1960s, are
given equal importance. Frantz Fanon’s
timeless article, “Algeria Unveiled” (first
published in 1959) jarringly explicates
the tortured perceptions of the veil and
its use as a tool for resistance to confuse
and defy the colonialists in Algeria.
The veil is also a restriction, a
symbolic imposition. The bourka
endangers women by restricting their
sight and thus their safety. Conversely, the
veil may be a restriction that produces
unexpected creative and expanded career
opportunities. For example, in postrevolutionary Iran the modesty codes
ironically brought more women not only
into the government, but also into the arts.
Hamid Naficy dispassionately points out
that there is a sort of women’s cinema in
Iran that is getting international attention.
In fact, pre-revolutionary Iran hardly had
any women directors.
Veils are also subject to fashion, as
Alison Donnell points out. In the near
past most women wore scarves or hijab
and one could not necessarily tell the
AL JADID FALL 2003
difference between a Christian, Muslim,
or Jewish woman going to get water from
the public well.
Aside from historical articles, another
central focus of “Veil” is to question
disconnects between the art world’s
avant-garde rhetoric and results with real
life field observations. We are drawn into
artistic processes as well. A book steeped
in art world rhetoric and conceptual
contortions may inconspicuously omit
the significance of the religious uses of
the veil; this book thinly covers it.
However, artist Zineb Sedira, in
“Mapping the Illusive,” acknowledges
the need for a discussion from a religious
perspective disinterested in art or politics
to explore the “sacred meaning of the
veils.”
Some of the images – especially those
not discussed in the text – give “Veil” the
feeling of a coffee table book. This may
be a marketing strategy, but could
inadvertently divert attention from the
seriousness of the book’s central lessons.
Those who are purely tantalized by its
cover will be disappointed to find that
these articles do not reveal any mysterious
secrets of the harem.
We can deduce from the essays
collected that the history of the so-called
veil is really the history of Western
imperial perceptions, attitudes, and
designs on the region of the Middle East.
The editors, artists, and critics leave
hardly a stone unturned in their thoughtful
Contniued on page 42
www.ALJADID.com
“It Became Necessary to Destroy the
Planet in Order to Save It!” is a collection
of political cartoons by Khalil Bendib.
Bendib
skillfully
caricatures
personalities in circumstances that range
from George Bush and Condoleeza Rice
lying to Bashar Assad’s dynastic doublespeak, to Ariel Sharon’s vengeance.
Bendib’s empathy clearly lies with the
oppressed common peoples of the Middle
East as well as Middle Eastern Americans
who are besieged by their American,
European and regional tormentors.
Too often Bendib overstates the
obvious and unfortunately detracts from
the central point of his cartoons. In one
series showing the various ways that
Muslims may camouflage themselves in
the post 9-11 Western culture, a man dyes
his beard green in order to pass as a punk
rocker. His T-shirt says, “Get down! 5
Times a Day.” This is funny enough
except for the thought bubble that states,
“Green, the color of Islam.” This joke
then begins to implode on itself from
overkill.
The most refreshing thing about
Khalil Bendib’s slightly over-burdened
cartoons is his irreverent and
unapologetic play with taboo subjects
and icons that are rarely tackled in
Western culture. He just needs a ruthless
editor to pare down each vision in order
AJ
to save it.AJ
33
FIL
M REVIEW
S
FILM
REVIEWS
TEHRAN ANXIETY
BY AFSHIN MA
TINASG
ARI
ASGARI
MATINTIN-ASG
Iran: Veiled Appearances
Written and Directed by Thierry Michel
58 Minutes, 2002
Icarus Films
Despite its cliché title and confused
narration, “Iran: Veiled Appearances” is
an interesting and noteworthy
documentary. Essentially, the film is a
series of vignettes from contemporary life
in Tehran, each no more than a few
minutes long and strung together without
apparent rhyme or reason: Appearances
by political and cultural figures,
dissidents, university students, and
Islamic militia members are juxtaposed
with glimpses of religious ceremonies and
popular pastimes. In terms of social space
and class, we remain mostly in the affluent
sections of northern Tehran. Still, a good
deal of the visuals and some of the
dialogue convey the immediacy and
vividness of the daily life of at least some
of the capital’s population.
Thierry Michel, the film’s Belgian
writer and director, also provides a voiceover narration describing his goal as
visiting Iran on “a voyage of discovery.”
Unfortunately, he has embarked on a
challenging journey without doing his
homework. A few academic experts are
named as consultants in the film’s credits.
But Michel’s commentary is oblivious to
scholarship. He even mispronounces
basic terms like “Iran,” “Shi’i” and
“imam.” His introductory sequence gives
a shallow and stereotypical analysis of
the Iranian revolution. We see some
familiar archival scenes of 1978-79 street
protests, while Michel simply asserts that
“sustained by their own faith, the people
took to the streets,” overthrew the shah,
who was “a corrupt despot,” and then
installed Ayatollah Khomeini.
The film opens with footage of a
Tehran memorial service for Mohammad
Mokhtari, a leftist writer assassinated
34
during the 1999 “serial killings” of
dissidents by terror squads secretly tied
to the government. Here we see Hushang
Golshiri, a leading intellectual and writer,
But these men presumably will die on the
orders of Iran’s supreme religious leader,
a goal diametrically opposed to Golshiri’s.
Then we see militia boys and chador-clad
From ‘Iran: Veiled Appearances’ (Courtesy of Icarus Films)
challenge the death squads by declaring
his own readiness to die. This recording
of the secularist Golshiri’s commitment to
“martyrdom” sets the tone for the film’s
underlying dramatic tension: the conflict
between the “modern” and “Shi’i”
components of contemporary Iran’s
“hybrid” culture. Tracing this dubious
dichotomy, the film inadvertently raises
questions like whether the “hybrid”
culture it depicts might be largely a
pretense in conformity to the “Shi’i”
norms imposed by the regime.
For example, Michel takes us to a
special school where young militia
members are being trained in karate and
other martial arts. We are informed by the
school’s guru-like teacher that he and his
students are also preparing for martyrdom.
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women with machine-guns march to the
beat of drums. Are these drills and
preparations for “martyrdom” related to
“Shi’ism” or to the specifics of Iranian
politics? This is the type of question that
Michel’s narrative does not ask.
Meanwhile we can observe another
fascinating drill, this one in a coed class
at Tehran University’s drama school:
young men and women are wriggling
together in exercise moves that look like
a cross between sufi dance, ecstatic yoga,
and 1980s-style American aerobics. A
professor, acting more like a circus ring
master, keeps yelling at the students to
“let go” and “release” their inner energies
and power. Later, three of the young
women speak to the camera, complaining
of their deep frustration with the
limitations and cynicism of the culture at
AL JADID FALL 2003
Tracing this dubious dichotomy, the film inadvertently raises questions like whether the
“hybrid” culture it depicts might be largely a pretense in conformity to the “Shi’i” norms
imposed by the regime.
large. One also criticizes her parents’
generation for making a revolution that
created the current insurmountable
“cultural chasm” between repressive
religious dictates and total decadence.
In the next scene, the country’s
supposedly reformist President
Mohammad Khatami is speaking to an
extremely enthusiastic audience of
Tehran University students. In very
general terms, he condemns “despotism”
and extols “democracy” and “the rule of
law.” As if responding to a movie star, the
audience applauds constantly and chants
“Khatami, we love you.” This is followed
by footage from the massive June 1999
student uprising and its brutal
suppression by the police, Islamic
militias, and armed vigilantes. We are
then inside a university dormitory
listening to a student activist tell the story
of his arrest and imprisonment.
Another university-related ceremony
is the “collective wedding” of needy
students organized by the ministry of the
interior. A cleric presides over the event,
with neon lights flashing and a military
band playing European army march
music. The young couples applaud
whenever the prophet’s name is
mentioned in the mullah’s joyous sermon.
An even more glaring instance of cultural
“hybridity” can be seen in a pop music
concert, sponsored by and under the close
supervision of the ministry of the interior.
Such events charge high admission fees
and have a select audience. Those seen
here are dressed and groomed in the
unmistakable style of Tehran’s upper
middle classes. Seated together, men and
women swing back and forth in wave-like
motion to the tune of electronic guitars
and synthesizers. The musicians are
young men in somewhat “hip” clothing.
(Recent pop concerts have allowed young
women musicians to play as well.) A
bearded man in more conservative attire
sings a popular pre-revolutionary song,
with a few words changed strategically to
turn it into a hymn in praise of Ali, the
greatest of all Shi’i religious figures.
Nuances such as those mentioned
above will regularly be lost to the film’s
AL JADID FALL 2003
non-Iranian viewers, since they are missed by Said Hajjarian, the politician-journalist
by Michel’s voice-over narrative. who can barely talk after partial recovery
However, in a revealing comment, the from an attempt on his life by hard-liner
singer explains how music can bring us terror squads. Meanwhile, satirist and excloser to God. Youths, he says, hunger for political prisoner Ebrahim Nabavi
“spiritual nourishment.” Obviously, their registers the country’s mood of dark
hunger increases when “poisoned food” humor by repeating a popular aphorism:
is banned. In such conditions, proper “Surely freedom of expression exists in
music can provide both “healthy Iran; the only problem is that you will not
nourishment” and “release from anxiety.” be free after expressing yourself.”
“Veiled Appearances” ends on the
This is the line of the regime’s more
high elevations north of Tehran, where an
“enlightened” faction,
concerned particularly with
the young generation’s
pent-up frustration and the
need for its proper release.
In
fact,
“Veiled
Appearances”
keeps
showing us recurrent
patterns of youths being
subjected to various types
of disciplines, learning to
both contain and release
“anxiety” under the strict
supervision of clerics,
politicians, and teachers. An From ‘Iran: Veiled Appearances’ (Courtesy of Icarus Films)
outstanding example is the
segment on the cultural “war
of attrition” waged every Friday between all female team practices hang-gliding.
the clerics and their militias on the one The young women, obviously from upper
side and thousands of young men and and middle class backgrounds, describe
women hiking on the foothills of northern the joyous “lightness” of freely floating
Tehran. Passing through checkpoints in the air above the city. Then we hear the
manned by armed militias, long rows of disciplinary spin voiced by their trainer:
hikers snake their way uphill, as if being “Being air-born feels like getting ever
drawn toward the snow-clad peak of closer to God.” Meanwhile a faint
Mount Damavand, an age-old symbol of recitation of the Quran can be heard from
inaccessibility and defiance. The higher a distant mosque. The film’s credits then
one gets, the farther from the reach of roll down as modern pop music returns
mullahs and militias, who, as one young with a young singing voice lamenting
hiker puts it proudly, “don’t have the much that is forbidden and taboo.
Michel’s documentary is potentially
breath to climb this high.” On these
“semi-liberated” elevations, genders can useful for educational purposes and
mingle more freely, head-scarves may be generally good for deconstructing
dropped, and young boys and girls dance mainstream media representations of Iran
together to live music: another partial and other “Islamic” societies. The film is
“postmodern” in its disregard for
release, at least for some.
The last segments of Michel’s film contextual grounding and narrative
feature more appearances by former coherence. Yet, it offers a colorful
political prisoners, including pro- assortment of often powerful images, from
Khatami figures. Sadly and predictably, which viewers more familiar with Iran will
commitment to martyrdom is reiterated glean a lot more than those limited by the
film’s own haphazard approach. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
35
Life After the Torture Chamber
BY J. RAE NILES
Raof uses the common language of imagery, photos, sketches, paintings, and historical
footage, enabling the viewer to absorb experiences of the survivors and the political
climate of the times.
The Tree That Remembers
Directed by Masoud Raouf
Distributed by Bullfrog Films
50 minutes, 2002
In his film “The Tree That
Remembers,” director
Masoud Raouf delivers a
painful and courageous
portrayal encompassing the
trials and triumphs of the
human heart. Bringing a
voice to the hundreds of
thousands by way of a few,
this film offers truths
revealed from a world
legacy
of
political
prisoners, once adrift in
silence, now told by the
voices
of
survivors
themselves.
Moving across the
screen, colors of an artist’s
view swirl in flashing
movements, accompanied
by
a
voice-over
introduction; hands turn the pages of
political struggle in search of freedom.
Inspired by the suicide of Habib, a
former Iranian political prisoner and
student who was found hanging from a
tree in Canada, Raouf attempts to portray
through his animation the visions of
terror and suffering permanently
entangled in Habib’s memory. It is a death
without words; meaning is left to linger
on the edge of imagination, while only
art and suicide itself can offer Habib’s
pain a voice, raising it from the depths of
silence and the secrets of a bare tree.
The film brings to light the atrocities
perpetrated by the Iranian regime of
Ayatollah Khomeini upon its own people.
Utilizing imagery and the accounts of
other victims, Raouf paints a portrait of
the human will to survive, and the causes
36
and conditions that brought Habib to end
his intolerable suffering. Raouf breathes
insight into the inescapable trauma
burdening the soul, when the spirit has
been almost extinguished by darkness.
Raouf uses the common language of
imagery, photos, sketches, paintings, and
eye; it observes and absorbs the emotion
and terror. Even the melodic, musical
underscore gets swallowed, not by
volume, but by the imagined visual that
lies hidden from our view.
Considered “the opposition” (a name
given by dictatorial regimes against
historical footage, enabling the viewer to
absorb experiences of the survivors and
the political climate of the times. The film
traces their suffering from torture and
imprisonment, through exile into Canada,
and their journey of immense internal
challenge, adjusting to freedom and a new
society.
The testimony given by the survivors
is filmed in different settings as they go
about their new lives in Canada. Recalling
the brutality they endured as political
prisoners, the triumph of the human spirit
is woven throughout. Raouf invites the
viewer to listen and observe through the
eyes of survivors the ways they found
survival possible.
Crossing between various interviews,
the camera becomes more than a seeing
seekers of justice), these mothers, fathers,
sons, daughters, academics and students
were thrown into prisons by the
government they once hoped would bring
the liberation of Iran from
authoritarianism. From their struggle
against the shah, they had hoped their new
leaders would bring forward freedom and
democracy, but the reality was drastically
different from the dream; a devil was
replaced by a greater devil.
Speaking of her tortures, Shirin, a
young woman, recalls her eight years in
an Iranian prison. Her voice is that of the
many; it is the voice of those who dared
to dream of freedom and a democratic
system for their country. She tells of
desperately seeking a sense of the living,
something beyond her dark torture
chambers. Looking for evidence of life,
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AL JADID FALL 2003
she watches insects to help her recall
nature. Reaching for signs of life, she
aches to recall its meaning, its face, its
very essence – aches to know something
beyond 5 by 9 cells and 92 women to a
cell, something beyond the coffin she was
locked in for four days, something beyond
the inhumane insanity she and many
others were forced to endure. Her voice
echoes mental, spiritual and emotional
bankruptcy, but it also echoes courage.
When delivery from the depths of
inhumanity was realized in 1990, the
border was salvation. Leaving behind the
immense darkness meant leaving behind
everything but body and soul, as she and
others fled. Altering appearances became
a common practice to maintain anonymity
and safety. Arriving at the Canadian
airport meant freedom, but freedom is
relative when the mind and soul remained
chained to a past that strangles the senses.
Distance and miles become an illusive concept
when fleeing from that from which there is
no true flight.
Firouzeh and her little boy sit at her
kitchen table as he paints a picture. Recalling
time in the jails and the murders of innocence
she witnessed, she struggles to make sense
of the senseless.
Reza Ghaffari, a professor of economics
who fought against the shah’s regime, finds
himself again in the opposition when betrayed
by the new regime. Arrested by Hezbollah in
1981 while in Tehran, he was subjected to
tortures. It was in the prison after being hung
on a wall that he suffers a heart attack; viewing
it as coming near death gives him life.
Recalling Iranian history, he brought back the
Mossadegh years of the early 50s, thus
pointing out the support the Mossadegh
cultivated among the Iranian people.”
An older woman recalls her beautiful
green-eyed son. Returning from his education
in the U.S., excited about working for equality
between men and women in Iran, at 22 he
was imprisoned and executed on charges of
joining the opposition.
Thousands have died in Iran’s hell
chambers. Mass genocide of 60,000 people
was perpetrated by the Iranian government.
Voices of those who suffered have been long
silenced, and are finally beginning to rise.
Their voices are like notes struggling to catch
air from a flute – first soft, timid, then stronger
and louder until they hang in the air like a
mist undeniably present. This thing we call
freedom has become a word, an ideal; as this
film reminds us, freedom is life itself. Its plight
must not be ignored, its cost cannot be
measured. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
A Twinge, a Smile, and a Kite
BY ELISSAR W. HAIKAL
The Kite
By Randa Chahal-Sabbagh
International Distribution: Soread 2M
Production: Ognon Picture, Ulysse
Productions, Lebanon 2003
Life-affirming is the spiritual freedom
found in art. It gives us a kite whereby the
remains of our apprehensions, doubts, and
fears take flight, sedately drifting on the
From ‘The Kite’ by Randa Chahal-Sabbagh
wind. Randa Chahal-Sabbagh has so
gifted us, and the experience is farreaching.
A Tripoli-born director and
scriptwriter residing in Paris, her film
bespeaks both the intensity and beauty
of its Lebanese material.“Le Cerf-volant”
(The Kite) saw light after a series of former
cinematic ventures of hers, like “Souha
Bechara, Portrait d = une Résistante,”
“Civilisées,” “Les Infidèles,” “Nos
Guerres Imprudentes” and “Ecrans de
Sable,” none of which acquired deserved
recognition except for “Civilisées,” seen
as controversial due to its acute and frank
confrontation of the Lebanese civil war.
“The Kite” is the result of FrancoLebanese collaboration, co-produced by
Humbert Balsan, whose portfolio include
Elia Suleiman’s “Divine Intervention” and
Youssef Chahine’s “Destiny,” “Silence,”
and “We=re Rolling,” to name a few. It won
the Jury Grand Prix Silver Lion at the 60th
Venice Film Festival in August, 2003. In
October of the same year, after its premiere
at UNESCO Palace in Beirut, the
Lebanese government awarded Chahal the
www.ALJADID.com
Order of the Cedar, the government’s most
esteemed tribute.
The film’s idea was inspired by the
brutal separation of villages in the Golan
Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.
Shot in two Lebanese West-Bekaa
villages, Biré and Ain Arab, it is a pioneer
in communicating the calamity
experienced by the region’s Druze
community. Lamia (Flavia Bechara) will
marry her cousin Sami
whom she has never met. To
join her husband, she will
pass, walking in her
wedding gown, Israeli
control towers to reach his
village. She relinquishes her
past thinking that in her
passage
lies
her
emancipation from a
patriarchal and imperiled
prison. As events unfold and
she resolves to return, we see
her developing feelings for
an Israeli Druze soldier,
Youssef (Maher Bsaibes),
who had already fallen for her after having
drawn her features in his mind’s eye when
her marriage was being settled amidst
danger zones and loudspeakers.
Chahal’s choice of filmmaking
elements, like cast and music, is
unbeaten; Liliane Nemry (who could miss
her in Ziad Doueiri’s “West Beirut”?)
fulfills her role fiercely. The cherry on top
is “l’enfant terrible,” the great Ziad
Rahbani. What a comeback! This witty,
infiltrating, avant-garde artist is timeproof. He plays the role of Youssef’s
commander-in-chief who’s in love with
Jamileh (Julia Kassar), the woman
awaiting Israel’s retreat and his return
tirelessly.
The film ends on a particularly
meaningful note; its concluding scene
raises questions, defeats prejudices, and
converses with identity and loyalty
dynamics head-on. It imparts the
devastation of the Druze coerced to serve
as soldiers for their occupier, exposing
that occupier’s brutality and nonchalant
Continued on next page
37
A Twinge, a Smile,
and a Kite
Continued from previous page
demeanor, utterly conscious of human
destinies that will forever be wronged.
Chahal’s choice of music is also one
of the film’s manifest strengths. Ziad
Rahbani’s tunes accompany proceedings
confidently; Najat’s “I Adore the Sea” still
reverberates in my ears; and Souad Massi,
that beautiful Algerian voice, lingers in
The film ends on a
particularly meaningful
note; its concluding scene
raises questions, defeats
prejudices, and converses
with identity and loyalty
dynamics head-on.
harmony, awarding the visual ambiance a
poignantly tender countenance.
Chahal has an intimate perceptivity
into her subject matter and feeds it keen
degrees of cultural and human meaning.
Unlike similar films that favor the political
over the personal, “The Kite” draws on
personal experience in construing varied
sociological and political concerns of the
time. To some, the film may seem a bend
of “truth.” Yet to the deeply conscious of
the multifaceted relationship between
reality and art, the film is a testimony of
ethics and aesthetics in concert. Both
compete and transpose for Chahal.
Barbed wire detains, demeans, and
undoes human ties. Loudspeakers replace
embraces and the flicker of eyes. Land
mines paralyze freedom. Life proceeds,
but not without the nagging disquietude
of memories and suspended dreams. The
film opens with a flying kite and ends in a
like manner. But we know not what
compels a kite to fly; is it the wind? The
string? The bittersweet delight it catches
in our eyes? Or perhaps our hearts? Who
knows, when in each throbbing heart
silently dwells a story. AJ
Culture Clash
Continued from page 29
How had Iryan suffered or enjoyed the
love affair? What was the cost to Rawda,
even if viewed from Iryan’s point of view?
In fact, the reader cannot quite
comprehend the cultural implication of
such a forbidden love story between two
people in an Arab society.
The story opens with Iryan’s
conversations with Helen, his nurse in a
remote hospital in the outskirts of
London. Iryan’s conversations do not feel
real, but rather resemble a monologue that
the author sustains throughout the book.
All of Iryan’s “conversations” prove his
intelligence, his wit and the wisdom that
he has gained in his life. The protagonist,
Iryan, in the very first pages assures that
he is no regular man; he has written three
books, has gone to the best university in
the West and has challenged an English
expert on literary subjects. The problem,
from a literary point of view, is that these
statements are merely assertions
throughout the book and they are
irrelevant to the theme. At one point, the
reader is exposed to Iryan’s views on the
Islamic world. One wonders what these
quick exposures are supposed to signify,
because they certainly do not add to the
joy of reading. The question remains: Is it
necessary to depict Iryan as an
extraordinary man in order to make him
worthy of love? AJ
A Thousand and
One Recipes
Continued from page 31
cultures, and politics.
“Crescent” is marvelously complex,
humorous, sad, uplifting, disturbing,
irreverent, solemn, and entertaining,
although the happy ending of Sirine’s
story is less satisfying than the savvy
conclusion to the uncle’s tale, with its
explicit parody of happy endings. The
novel illustrates the human dimension –
and the human toll – of political events,
while subverting some of the appalling
representations of Arabs in the media. It
also explains some of the reasons for the
anger at U.S. foreign policy felt in many
parts of the world, especially in Arab
countries, even as many Arabs embrace
American culture and values. So far, no
other work of fiction has accomplished
this. AJ
AL JADID ON LINE Frequently updated.
On the Web at www.aljadid.com
38
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2003
A Century of Lebanese Literature
Continued from page 24
one who finds that it answers an intellectual and emotional
need; each is meaningful if it deepens the understanding of
the works under scrutiny and broadens the horizons of the
scholar, the critic, or the reader. Whatever the approach, it
should act as a catalyst, stimulating and exciting those
involved in the pursuit of knowledge and encouraging them
to develop their own potential. Salem’s constructive criticism
has become a creative act. It turns what is an intellectual
exercise that works within the confines of the mind, into
praxis, thereby broadening the experience of cultural life in
Lebanon over the past century.
Elise Salem has documented Lebanon’s tensions
exceptionally well and offers us a vehicle for understanding
its cultural and political evolution as a nation over the last
century – all through her examination of Lebanese literary
narratives and musical theater. She helps us to understand,
with Bruner, our culture and the nature of the world in which
we exist where “one cannot reflect upon self...without an
accompanying reflection on the nature of the world in which
one exists.” The Lebanese writers are clearly not afraid of
innovation; they have grasped sharply and clearly that our
age, the age of globalization, of the global village within
the traditional city, and of the intense and tumultuous life,
is in need of new forms of art, philosophy, behavior, and
language. They have always played their part in promoting
the national interest, informing our native conscience, and
taming barbaric instincts. With her treatise, we can begin to
develop, critically, a canon of Lebanese literature.
Salem’s eloquent “Afterword” reiterates and frames her
arguments, and adds a rich commentary, concluding with this
possibility: “[These] provocative narratives suggest a new
language, vocabulary, style, approach, and thematics that
expand the possibilities for Lebanon. They are, after all, the
nation’s stories and, though fictions, the most telling.”
Literature was indeed central to Lebanon’s origin. Salem’s hope,
and mine, is that it will be equally important in helping it face
its present crises. With Kamal Salibi, we note that “disgraced
and abandoned by the world, it is possible that the Lebanese
are finally beginning to discover themselves. There is a
noticeable consensus among all but the more committed
extremists today that all are Lebanese, sharing the same national
identity, regardless of other, secondary, group affiliations and
loyalties.” We can also affirm with Amin Maalouf that “my
identity is made of many elements…and I have to acknowledge
each one.” AJ
Palestinian Embroidery
Continued from page 30
solidifies the novel’s place as an important contribution to
contemporary American writing. Mawal tells the reader that her
village is known for its beautiful embroidery “with both Palestinian
and Western stitches and patterns [which] captures the spirit of
Nawara.” Now the village can also be known for its thoughtful and
colorful narrative embroidery. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
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39
MEM
OIR O
F AR
AB
C AN LIFE IN T HE 119
930s
MEMO
OF
ARAB
AB--AMERI
AMERIC
Let Them Eat Bread
BY FRED M. SAIDY
This story was written in the 1930s
and was made possible by the courtesy of
Anthony Saidy – The Editors
them. I know it is magic because I have
seen hardened gourmets, upon first
sampling the stuff, burst into little twitters
of delight. Magic also, because the
method by which Mrs. Nazrallah piles
I have just returned in weary triumph
from Mrs. Nazrallah’s candy
and pastry shop on Hollywood
Boulevard, where by dint of
careful diplomacy I succeeded
in buying five pounds of
baklava. Baklava is not what
it sounds like, the name of a
central European village where
a war broke out at one time or
another, but a Syrian pastry,
which – if it could be
distributed to the armies of the
world – would probably end
war all together. Unfortunately,
the total annual output is
hardly enough to sustain a
troop of healthy Boy Scouts,
let alone an army, and a
contributing factor to this
perennial scarcity is the
Oriental psychology of
merchandising. The quality
involved, of which Mrs
Nazrallah is a prime exponent,
may be described as a
determined selling-resistance
on the part of the vendor.
Mrs. Nazrallah is a rolypoly, middle-aged woman with
glittering black eyes and shiny
“Eye Glasses for Cats” (2003) by Zareh
black hair parted in a zigzag
and pulled tightly back over
the ears into a chignon. Dominating her twenty layers of flaky crust into a slab half
face is a Levantine nose of which the an inch thick is just as obscure, to me, as
convex curve resembles the beak of a the workings of a zipper.
parrot. You probably infer, between the
I am no fledgling aficionado myself –
lines, that she is not beautiful, but the I’ve eaten one piece, I’ve eaten two – and
point is not important. Beauty is a dime a when Mrs. Nazrallah greeted me warmly
barrel in Hollywood, but who owns the behind her showcase of homemade
talent to confect butter, dough, sugar- sweetmeats, I quickly returned the greeting
syrup, and pistachio nuts into the and asked for five pounds of baklava, to
apocryphal reality which is Baklava? be put up in two boxes. I hoped to take her
Only Mrs. Nazrallah and a few solitary by surprise, before we became involved in
geniuses like her, and when they vanish a long discussion of my family’s health,
from the earth, their magic goes with and be out of the place in ten minutes,
40
www.ALJADID.com
which is the equivalent to shooting a
birdie. But the brusqueness of my
approach stunned her. Rallying her
forces, she launched into negotiations.
“Five pounds?” she repeated. “You want
that much, you sure?”
I wasn’t sure – the amount
was a stab in the dark and
could as well have been seven
pounds or six – but in the
moment of my hesitation, my
doom was sealed. “Well,” I
temporized, “I just wanted to
give a couple of presents to
some friends.”
She was listening eagerly,
her eyebrows lifted in
concentration. “Big families?”
she said. “Children?”
“No,” I replied, “no
children – but these people are
crazy about your pastries. I
guess they could actually use
about 50 pounds.” I smiled
weakly to indicate a witticism.
“I see,” she said
thoughtfully. “Well, you know
I bake it fresh everyday, my
baklava – you don’t just have
to take just as much as you
want.”
I thought I knew what she
meant, but to press for an
explanation might result in
getting one; I didn’t feel,
conscientiously, that I could
spare the time. “Any amount
you think is O.K.,” I said. “Just put it up in
two boxes.”
Her forehead was still wrinkled in
puzzlement. Then quickly the wrinkles
cleared away; she had come to a decision
of some sort. “Wait,” she said. “I show you
a tray – I just baked it this morning.”
She scurried through a doorway into
the small kitchen, and shortly bustled
back with an aluminum baking-pan full
of the pastry neatly criss-crossed into
diamond-shaped pieces, “This run four
and a half, five pound,” she said. “It look
AL JADID FALL 2003
good?”
“It looks beautiful,” I told her. “Just
divide it in two.”
“Maybe you like it not brown so
much?” she continued.
“I like it any way at all, Mrs.
Nazrallah,” I assured her.
She glowed with satisfaction. “Fine. I
give you some to eat.”
Before I could stop her she had
dished a portion and set it on the counter.
I dutifully munched on it and announced
it delicious. This was, more or less, a
mistake.
“Maybe you like to try it my candy,”
she pursued eagerly, “All home made, I
make it right here, pure butter.”
It was no use pointing out that I had
sampled her candy and her generosity on
numerous occasions; she took my
demurrer for Oriental bashfulness. Nimbly
she reached into the case and removed
some fudge, a couple of caramels, and a
slice of Brazilian-nut roll, which she
heaped on the dish before me. “Really,” I
pleaded, “I don’t think I can eat another
thing – I had a heavy breakfast just
before.”
She dismissed the protestation with a
motherly wave of the hand. “Healthy
young man like you? You could eat all
day, I bet you!” She winked archly,
making it clear she had penetrated my
transparent excuse. With an effort I
nibbled off the corner of a caramel,
prudently suppressing a comment for fear
Mrs. Nazrallah might yet maneuver
herself into a net loss on the transaction.
Any attempt to compensate for the
refreshments, I knew, would be constructed
as an insult, pure and simple.
After I had turned down her offer of
hot coffee, just made fresh, Mrs. Nazrallah
lapsed into momentary silence as she laid
out two boxes, lined them with wax paper,
and prepared to transfer the pastries from
the pan. We were making real progress,
finally. She was about to insert a knife
around the edges, when she caught herself
short. “I forgot to show you other kind!”
she announced, with an air of selfreproach. “Some people like not so
brown.” She started for the kitchen.
I knew it was useless to say anything
more. If my friends had to have Baklava –
I, personally, would settle for plain
vanilla-topped coffee cake without raisins
– this was the only way to get it in greater
AL JADID FALL 2003
Los Angeles.
She was back now, bearing another
panful, the glossy crust a shade more
blondish than the first. “You like it
better?” she asked eagerly.
I like them both,” I said. “What’s the
difference?”
“Well, not really much,” she replied.
“This one” – pointing to the second –
“maybe little bit sweeter. You like to
taste?”
“No, thank you!” I assured her. “Give
me whatever you like.”
The wheels of activity again came to
a standstill. She could not consummate
the deal on this imprecise basis. Her hand,
the knife in it, fell to her side and her
brows went up again. “It is not what I
like,” she said, like a patient schoolteacher
www.ALJADID.com
addressing a backward child. “Is what you
like.”
“All right,” I decided with brisk
finality, “I’ll take the first pan – just pack
it in two boxes.”
As I had only a little cash with me, I
would have to give Mrs. Nazrallah a
check – and I dreaded the prospect. She
would, of course, be completely gracious
about accepting it, and this in fact was the
whole trouble. I feared another delay of
five minutes while she convinced me it
was quite all right, during which time she
probably would ply me with homemade
fondant and pralines, “Did I ask you for
money?”
Continued on next page
41
Let Them
Eat Bread
contributors
Continued from previous page
“Tayeb Salih: Ideology and the Craft of
Fiction” (Syracuse University Press, 2003)
and is currently writing a book on
Anglophone Arab and Arab-American
fiction.
She was still shaking her head when
she tied the last blue ribbon around each
box. Packing the pastries in boxes was
something of an irregularity, as I usually
took the whole pan with me and returned
it empty later, but I was sure Mrs.
Nazrallah had been pleased with the extra
trouble.
“This is the right amount – $3.75?” I
asked, handing over the check. She paid
no attention to the check and even
ignored the question. “There isn’t sales
tax, is there?” I continued, reaching into
my pocket for some coins.
“That’s all right,” said Mrs. Nazrallah,
with a quick blinking of the eyes and a
confidential nod, as though she were a
bootlegger delivering a case of contraband
gin. I didn’t know exactly what was all
right; to make an issue of sales tax might
continue our little tete-a-tete well into
the night. The boxes were under my arm
by now and I was poised for a quick
getaway.
“You didn’t have to give me a
check,” was Mrs. Nazrallah’s parting
word. “You could pay me when you bring
the pan back.”
She was, of course, well aware of the
fact that I wasn’t taking any pan with me
this time. She was also aware that I was
aware, but it would have been gauche and
unreasonable on my part to point out the
obvious flaw in her Oriental logic. Our
eyes met, for a moment, in wordless
acknowledgment of the situation; then
with a curt, Occidental “Thank you,” I
turned and left. AJ
Unveiling the West
Continued from page 33
scrutiny and broad understandings of
historical patterns, societal contexts, and
examination of artistic strategies. Each
chapter swells and leaves a wake that
builds to establish a cumulative and
creative discourse. “Veil: Veiling,
Representation and Contemporary Art” is
a welcome addition to my library, a rich
reference book that I will visit periodically
and recommend to others. AJ
42
Continued from page 17
Afshin Matin-asgari (“Tehran-Anxiety,”
p. 34) is assistant professor of religion and
Middle East history at California State
University, Los Angeles. He has published
“Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah”
(Costa Mesa, CA.: 2002) and a number of
articles on 20th century Iranian political,
religious and intellectual history. His
current research topics are Iran’s political
prisoners as well as the idea of the “West”
in contemporary Iran’s Islamist and secular
intellectual discourses.
Samir Mattar (“A Century of Lebanese
Literature: A Culture Viewed Through its
Narratives,” p. 22) is a former editor of the
academic publication Issues, and has
written over 40 papers in technical and
management journals.
Mai Munasa (“Toufic Faroukh on Jazz,
Saxophone and Memory,” p. 13) is a
Lebanese novelist, music critic, and
journalist in the Lebanese daily An Nahar.
J. Rae Niles (“Life After the Torture
Chamber,” p. 36) is a singer, songwriter and
recording artist. She is also a student of
philosophy.
Lynne Rogers (“A Literary Text of
Palestinian Embroidery,” p. 30) is a
professor and author of many articles on
the Palestine question in professional
journals and books.
Sarah Rogers (“Arab Art: Beyond
Dichotomies,” p. 45) is currently a Ph.D
student in the history, theory and criticism
section of the Department of Architecture
at MIT. She writes regularly on Arab arts.
Fred M. Saidy (“Let Them Eat Bread,” p.
40). Fred Milhem Saidy (1907-82) was born
in Los Angeles of Lebanese immigrant
parents. He made his childhood debut as
a baseball writer in Manitou Springs,
Continued on page 43
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2003
contributors
Continued from page 42
Colorado. After a stretch as a Hollywood
screenwriter, he found his niche as a
playwright of Broadway musical comedies.
The best-known of these is “Finian’s
Rainbow”(1947), which pioneered the
issue of race in America. In 1969 it became
a Coppola movie starring Fred Astaire as
an Irish immigrant, in the title role. Saidy,
an expert mimic, joke-creator and
raconteur literate in Arabic, liked to keep
roomfuls of folks rollicking in laughter with
his stories about the Syrian-Lebanese
immigrants of New York.
Paul Sullivan (“Lebanon: A Focal Point for
Unsolved Tensions,” p. 25) has been a
professor of economics at the National
Defense University since July 1999. He
taught and researched at the American
University in Cairo. The opinions expressed
in this review are the reviewer’s.
correction
Due to production error, the identification
of Nadine Saliba in Al Jadid no. 44 was
left out. Saliba, who translated “Moroccan
Asilah – an Arab Capital of Art and Culture” and “Iraqi Music: Pulse, Sorrow,
Wisdom,” is a graduate student in political theory and international relations at
the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst.
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AL JADID FALL 2003
A Beggar at Damascus Gate
By Yasmine Zahran
1995,155 pages $12.95
ISBN:0-942996-24-0
“Cold and alone in an ancient Palestinian
village, a traveling archeologist finds the
threads of a narrative that will direct his life
for the coming decade. Its characters are a
Palestinian woman and an English man, each
deeply committed to the conflicting demands
of love and national loyalties. As the
narrator slowly pieces together the fate of
the two unfortunate lovers, he also uncovers
a tale of treachery, duplicity and passion that
highlights the contemporary plight of the
enormous number of displaced Palestinians:
the final resolution surprises them both and
reveals a depth to their commitments that
neither had previously realized.”
–Cole Swensen
Sitt Marie Rose
By Etel Adnan
1978, 1989 $11.00
ISBN: 0942996-27-5
“It has become clear that maps of the Middle
East and their accompanying tests have failed
to account for the religious, economic, and
political divisions that rage within these
borders, defined in history by people who did
not live there. ‘Sitt Marie Rose’ visualizes the
struggle in Lebanon in terms of ethical
borders that the West never sees, presented as
we are with pictures of the ‘Arab morass.’
Adnan gives sterling credence to a moral and
political literature, a literature that sets about
to inform.”
–New Women’s Times
Rumi & Sufism
By Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch
Translated from the French by Simone Fattal
Illustrated with 45 photographs, charts, and
maps; index and bibliography
1989 2nd edition,167 pages $12.95
ISBN: 0-942996-08-9
“In this fine volume all of the arts come
together in a splendid unfolding of all that is
Rumi Sufism. The photographs and paintings
play against vibrant prose, open all of the
locked doors leading to the universality of
Rumi and his teachings. The great care taken
in the translation is a marvel unto itself.”
– The New England Review of Books
Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz)
By Etel Adnan
1993, 85 pages $11.00
ISBN:0-942996-21-6
“But where ‘Paris, When it’s Naked’ delves
into the accumulated layers of the self, ‘Of
Cities & Women’ is more concerned with the
nature of race itself, its definition and
redefinition, through philosophical
speculation, observations on the relations
between artists and their ostensible subjects,
between women and cities, between women
and men.
– Ammiel Alcalay, The Nation
There
By Etel Adnan
1997, 70 pages
$13.00
ISBN 0-942996-28-3
“‘There’ is a poem of hidden seams, fissures
that we cross unsuspecting. A smooth surface
conceals a universe of sudden shifts and
transitions from one level to another – a
philosophical level which pursues the
mysteries of consciousness and place, a second
level which asks the same questions in a
committed social and political vision, a
passionate and engaged post-modernism.”
– Michael Beard, Univ. of North Dakota
New Release
Vampires: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead
in Film
By Jalal Toufic
2003, 400 pp $15.00
ISBN 0-942996-50-x
Relentlessly uncompromising, Toufic’s radical
and visionnary poetics gird the reader to forge
ahead into uncharted territory.. One could not
find in current film theory anything as
suggestive or useful as Toufic’s writing on the
relationship of medieval Islamic philosophy to
certain contemporary Central Asian or Middle
Eastern cinematography...In his insistence
upon treating the dead as a great part of the
potential force of this world, Toufic plumbs
the poetics of disaster and recuperation in
ways that remain both suggestive and
relentlessly radical.
– The Village Voice
Screams
By Joyce Mansour
1995
80 pages
$10.00
ISBN 0-942996-25-9
The Post-Apollo Press
35 Marie Street, Sausalito, CA 94965
Tel: (415) 332-1458, Fax: (415) 332-8045
Email: [email protected] – Web: www.postapollopress.com
www.ALJADID.com
43
REFLECTIONS
War, Peace and Garbage
BY HANAN CHEBIB
Downtown Beirut (Photos by Hanan Chebib)
“Garbage, for me, became an indicator of how Lebanon changed after the destructive
effects of a thing called war.”
When traveling, the world is a classroom.
At times, the intended lesson does not come
at the time of study. My time of study began in
1992, at the age of 19, shortly after Lebanon’s
civil war ended. My parents had sent the three
of us, my sister, my brother and me, to our
grandparents for a month. We saw such
devastation that we wondered if our parents
had made a mistake; had they known what the
living conditions were they certainly would not
have sent us. Ten years after my 1992 visit, the
lesson came home after I witnessed a change
made possible even in the most hopeless of
environments.
Garbage, for me, became an indicator
of how Lebanon changed after the destructive
effects of war. In war, garbage collection stops.
The entire infrastructure of waste collection
breaks down. During the war, the Lebanese
suddenly had to decide how to get rid of the
waste they created. Most decided not to decide
at all. They just tried to survive. So it sat. In
piles, on hills, in courtyards and it sat there
forever. Garbage does not decompose, not
as it seems to do when it is collected and
magically disappears to the landfill and one is
allowed to forget its existence.
In fact, garbage left to lay creates a mass
of smells, pests such as rats and cockroaches,
and other health hazards. I remembered the
first time I had to kick a rat off my shoe as I
walked down a darkened hallway to my
44
Uncle’s apartment. Or how I only slept three
hours the night I realized I had shared my
pillow with a cockroach. So some decided to
Barbar Aga Castle in northern Lebanon
(Photo by Hanan Chebib)
burn the garbage. It seemed the immediate
solution, but they had to live with the thick,
black smoke, the ground beneath now unable
to grow anything. In 1996, my second visit, I
learned that I did not like burning garbage
any more than I liked piles of garbage.
As time went on and the memory of war
became more distant, the issue of garbage
www.ALJADID.com
changed. In 2000, people’s energy moved
more away from basic survival to improving
the quality of life. A company named Sukleen
emerged and they regularly come around,
even to the most remote of places. They are
known by the color of their trucks and
collection bins, a lovely mint green. Every day,
my Teta would walk to the curb to dispose of
the day’s waste in those bins. Piles of garbage,
the pests and other health hazards had
disappeared. In 2002, I noticed on a popsicle
wrapper I had just bought the universal
symbol of a nondescript human throwing
away garbage in the proper bin. Underneath
the symbol were the words “for Lebanon.”
The decision of where my wrapper goes was
no longer left up to me, but to the Sukleen
company.
My final lesson came during my last visit,
when I realized that garbage had become a
symbol for change. During a short 10 years I
was able to witness changes a country went
through. And even when an outsider like
myself felt hopeless about Lebanon’s ability
to grow, it did. The remarkable Lebanese
people are resilient and war’s devastation on
them was temporary, not permanent. In fact,
I predict they will continue to change. And
bylaws will be in place, if not already, to fine
people for an action they had done without
thinking for 20 years– littering. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
Exhibitions
Arab Art: Beyond Dichotomies
BY SARAH ROGERS
Art historians have only begun to
acknowledge contemporary Arab visual
culture, and current art criticism continues
to frame contemporary Arab art within the
stifling tradition-modernity binary.
Nonetheless, the burgeoning, throughout
the United States, of art exhibitions
devoted to contemporary Arab arts vividly
illustrates the rich vitality of Arab culture
and attests to the continuing
contributions of Arab artists to the
international art scene.
The exhibition, “Diversity in
Harmony: A National Exhibit by Artists
of Arab and Middle Eastern Heritage,” at
the University of Michigan in Dearborn,
succeeds at challenging the conventional
framework. Conceived of and curated by
the artist and art historian, Hashim alTawil, “Diversity in Harmony” brings
together the work of 17 artists: Hashim
al-Tawail, Adnan Charara, Maysaloun
Faraj, Mohamed Fradi, Mumtaz Hussain,
Lila Kadaj, Sari Khoury, Leila Kubba,
Illham Mahfouz, Joseph Namy, Salam
Norie, Mahmoud Obaidi, Kathleen
Rashid, Mamoun Sakkal, Wafer Shayota,
Kegam Tazian, and Sabah Yousif. The
collection displays the various thematic
and stylistic trends at work among
contemporary Arab-American artists and
thus disrupts the conceptual assumption
that Arab art is traditional and modern art
is Western that haunts art history
discourse.
Held at the Alfred Berkowitz Art
Gallery, “Diversity in Harmony” ran
September 8 - October 10, 2003, and was
the inaugural exhibit sponsored by the
Center for Arab American Studies at the
University of Michigan’s Dearborn
campus. (Dearborn is home to one of the
largest Arab American communities.)
With the founding of the center in 2001,
Hashim al-Tawil conceived of the exhibit
as a first step in a larger project. After
showing his work in the United States for
the past 15 years, al-Tawil felt frustrated
by the lack of professional settings
AL JADID FALL 2003
gives these works their power. Forced to
question the dichotomy set up by
traditional art history, the viewer begins
to understand that Arab visual culture is
already a model of diversity. Art
institutions in the Arab world, formed
during the colonial period, most often
taught conventional European painting
styles, yet this did not become an isolated
trend; neither did pre-modern artistic
forms. The work of these artists disrupts
available for contemporary Arab artists in
the United States. Attributing this to a
perceived absence of market value for
contemporary Arab art, al-Tawil saw the
academic
setting
of
University of Michigan as an
ideal venue for an exhibit of
contemporary
ArabAmerican
art
which
highlights its aesthetic value.
Choosing the theme of
diversity, al-Tawil moved
away from the pigeon hole
in which contemporary ArabAmerican art is often placed.
Moreover,
the
accompanying catalogue
marks al-Tawil’s intense
desire to establish a critical
artistic discourse for
contemporary Arab art.
Anyone who studies modern
and contemporary Arab art
understands the critical
necessity of documenting
the exhibit, both visually and
textually. The brief catalogue
includes an introduction to
the exhibit, an image from “Salat,” ceramic, unglazed earth stone, two pieces
each artist, and the artists’ 17.5”x8.5” each by Maysaloun Faraj
statements on their own
work.
the established binary between Arab and
The visual diversity among the
American, Islamic and Western, and thus
artwork is readily apparent. The organic
stands testimony to the fact that artistic
stone sculptures of Maysaloun Faraj
worlds have inhabited one another long
enliven an interesting contrast with Lila
before art history began to discuss cultural
Kadaj’s realistic landscape paintings done
hybridity.
in oil. Next to the calligraphic prints of
Despite the visual symphony of
Mamoun Sakkal, al-Tawil placed Sari
media, subject matter, and formal
Ibrahim Khoury’s abstract acrylics,
elements, “Diversity in Harmony” offers
infused with symbols influenced by
a few highlights. The work of Hashim alArabic writing, Islamic design, Byzantine
Tawil is one such example. Reminiscent
icons and the work of European artists
of Byzantine icons, al-Tawil uses oil and
such as Klee and Gorky.
mixed materials on board to create layered
Yet it is not simply that works such as
textures with rich colors of gold, blue, and
Khoury’s exhibit influences from both
aquamarine. Arab-Islamic iconography
European and Arab art, but moreover the
matched with modern artistic techniques
fluid visual movement between the two
seemingly different sources of inspiration
Continued on page 46
www.ALJADID.com
45
Arab Art: Beyond Dichotomies
Continued from page 45
and abstracted faces challenge the break often established
between “modern” and “traditional” art. Instead, various formal
languages draw upon each other in creatively innovative ways.
The work of Adnan Charara offers a distinct contrast to alTawil works, yet
constitutes another
powerful statement
within the show.
Charara exhibited
three works of mixed
media on paper. A
conglomeration of
figures, animals, and
landscape depicted in
Cubist-inspired visual
language, Charara’s
works might be
characterized as a
modern-day Bosch. A
visual and intellectual
delight, Charara’s
works envelop the
viewer
in
a
Greatest,” oil, acrylic and silver foil
microcosmic world of “The
on canvas, 30” x 40” by Mumtaz Hussain
satire and metaphoric
symbolism.
Al-Tawil, who put forth an open call to artists, clearly chose
works which challenge a hegemonic approach to contemporary
Arab art. Even those which might be labeled as Arab-Islamic
because they focus on Arabic calligraphy, such as that of
Mamoun Sakkal and Mumtaz Hussain, instead execute their
subject matter with contemporary media. For example, Sakkal
plays with calligraphy through computer-generated images.
Artists such as Charara challenge the notion that contemporary
Arab artists privilege political concerns over aesthetics.
This is not to claim, however, that “Diversity in Harmony”
merely speaks to an artistic agenda. The importance of exposing
the public to Arabs as cultural producers cannot be
overemphasized. Although scholars such as Edward Said opened
the scholarly world to the discourse of Orientalism, scholarship
has yet to open its eyes to Arabs as producers of culture.
“Diversity in Harmony” succeeds at dismantling the media’s
stereotypical representation of Arabs as terrorists and “stuck in
the past.” In contrast, the artists included in the show demonstrate
that artistic languages are being manipulated and invented
among contemporary Arab artists in innovative ways; art
criticism does itself a great disservice by ignoring these artists.
Al-Tawil hopes that the next step will be a show revolving
around a few select artists who explore similar themes. We can
only hope that his goal comes to fruition. AJ
Contemporary Art - Paintings by Zareh
http://www.artistzareh.com
46
Hybrid Vigor:
The Art Of Emna Zghal
BY NAJWA ADRA
E
mna Zghal’s paintings are powerful: they dare to be
beautifully crafted in a world tilted towards facile
conceptual work, and they hang by themselves
without gratuitous Oriental icons screaming their ethnicity. In
fact they don’t scream at all. They are as quiet as the traditional
Arab mediator negotiating between warring factions, and as
subtle as the work of Adonis, another Arab artist also influenced
by Western training.
Emna received her B.A. from the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in
Tunis, and the M.F.A. from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts in Philadelphia. She has held several prestigious residencies,
What Zghal wants most is that her art be
seen “as contemporary Arab.” Yet she is,
at the same time, a global artist, not
trapped in an ethnic gallery.
including one year at the Cité Internationale Des Arts in 199495 and a MacDowell Fellowship in 2002. In 1995, her work
received First Prize of the City of Tunis. Her solo exhibitions
include two in New York City. The first, at Scene Gallery in
2002, was reviewed by Roberta Smith in The New York Times.
The second, “The Prophet of Black Folk,” was held at the New
York based ALWAN for the Arts in November 2003.
Like other successful artists, Zghal rebels against much of
her training. At a time when the relevance of painting is being
questioned, she insists that she is primarily a painter. Of her
interest in beauty and craft, she writes, “I … use those qualities
to question today’s trends about the alarming absence of beauty,
craft and color beyond a superficial appropriation of imagery
and empty reference to some distant practice or culture. I like for
my images to be appreciated first and foremost for the emotions
they convey. I like them be read as poems not as statements.”
When Zghal’s teachers in Tunisia discouraged the idea of
infinite pattern in art but encouraged her to keep her content
“Oriental,” she pushed against artificial constraints to explore
the potentials of the medium. When they advocated Westernstyle composition, she did not necessarily agree with the
relationship they recommended between foreground and
background. She finally found a satisfying model in Art Wolf’s
aerial photo of elk in the snow in Wyoming. As Zghal tells it,
“This photograph defied Western principles of composition:
the animals were all over; there was no focal point.” Here was a
way to incorporate the concept of infinity in interesting ways.
She decided to explore organic pattern and its spread in her
painting. Beginning with woodcut prints on paper followed by
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2003
Hybrid Vigor
“rubbing, drawing, collage and painting,” she “meanders
through knots and brush strokes” playing with the grain of wood,
paint drippings and canvas. This results in abstract paintings
which, like old Persian carpets, are full of unpredictable detail.
Emna’s most recent work is “The Prophet of Black Folk,” a
series of 12 paintings acquired by the New York-based
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. These are
highly crafted improvisations on the “Revolt of the Zanj,” a
collection of poems by Adonis. Poetry and drawings celebrate
the 9th century revolt of slaves brought from East Africa to clear
salt from the marshes in southern Iraq. Under the leadership of
the Arab poet, Ali Ibn Muhammad, the slaves revolted from their
Abbasid owners, built their own capital, minted their own
currency and controlled Basra for 10 years. The entire revolt
lasted 14 years. It ended when the Caliph al-Muwaffaq ordered
that Ali be killed and his severed head brought to him as proof.
Adonis chooses to call Ali, nabiyu l zanj (prophet of the blacks),
a title his contemporaries had tried to confer on him and which
he rejected. He is known in history books as qa’id al zanj (leader
of the blacks).
This collection brings together two important formative
influences in the artist’s life. Zghal found the story of this revolt
empowering when she first heard it as a secondary school student.
She sees in it an alternative to “being stuck in a place of
victimization.” The work is also a homage to a personal hero. In
a recent interview, Zghal recounted her introduction to Adonis
and his poetry: “As a teenager, all of the radical and modern
readings I was exposed to were in French. So Adonis’ work that
I discovered at age 20-21 was a revelation. I saw him on French
television. I then found his books at a book fair in Tunis, and
heard him read his poetry in person when he visited Tunisia.”
The artist was pulled towards the poet’s comparison of sufism
with surrealism and connected this with her artwork. “Adonis
was reading Arabic without defensiveness or insecurity,” she
continues. He was a source of inspiration.
The paintings combine etching, lithograph, monotype, and
paint on wood and paper to create very emotive and highly
textured work. Colors are muted, in contrast to Zghal’s other
work. A verse from Adonis’ poetry is written in Arabic somewhere
on each painting. It is inscribed simply, not in calligraphic style.
Near each work is an English translation of the poetry. Not all of
these translations are successful; however, they are not intrinsic
to the work and are included only to aid audiences unfamiliar
with written Arabic.
As Zghal describes it, this is the first time she has felt that
she is creating work with Arabic content, and this contrasts with
many Arab artists who “focus on confronting mainstream
misunderstandings of Arab identity, but with little effort to dig
into that identity and understand it. They are not focusing on
the empowering aspects of Arab identity.” What Zghal wants
most is that her art be seen “as contemporary Arab.” Yet she is, at
the same time, a global artist, not trapped in an ethnic gallery.
Her work demonstrates that it is possible, without overt
confrontation, to create beautiful emotive art and still be highly
innovative, setting new artistic standards. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2003
“Prophet 1” woodcut & etching. He/ is getting ready to reform the sky.
“Prophet 9” monotype. History is a marriage/between the
image/ and the meaning.
“Prophet 12” monotype. Rekindle the flamme of memory.
“Prophet 3” etching–whitness cannot/ be unless it is/fertilized by/
Black luster.
www.ALJADID.com
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