Issue No. 49 - Al Jadid Magazine

ALJADID
A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts
A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts
COPYRIGHT 2004 AL JADID
VOL. 10 Nos. 49 FALL 2004 $6.95
Mohammad Ali Atassi Writes on
Life Inside Syria’s Prisons and the
Effect on the Families Outside
Elie Chalala on Critics
of Lebanon’s
Independence Uprising
Brigitte Caland
Remembers the Many
Facets of Maxime Rodinson
Iskandar Mansour
Reflects on Charles Malik’s
Intellectual Legacy
Pamela Nice Speaks with
Leila Abouzeid on Beyond
Morocco’s Literary Divide
Yassin Adnan on
Fatima Mernissi’s Journey
From Harem to Civil Society
Sara Hahn Examines
Search for Identity in
Foreign Lands
AL JADID FALL 2004
www.ALJADID.com
1
Editor’s Notebook
Critics of Lebanon’s ‘Independence Uprising’
Offer a New Spin on Syrian Occupation
BY ELIE CHALALA
The assassination of former Hariri’s policies, particularly regarding the those who understand basic economics.
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri huge debt the nation has amassed ($35 The alternative would have been a waris both a personal and political tragedy, billion) or the reconstruction taking place ravaged Lebanon, dependant upon
a loss for his family and for Lebanon.
at the expense of the city’s archaeological subsidies and loans from foreign
countries and institutions; this
For Lebanon, the loss is
option would not have sufficed
immeasurable. Rafik al-Hariri
to rebuild the city even if those
was no ordinary prime minister.
resources materialized. Hariri’s
While he was not a charismatic
approach rested on a harmony of
personality nor a great orator like
his own interests and those of his
former prime minister Rashid
country. Certainly this is positive
Karame (who was also
when compared to those who
assassinated), Hariri was a
wanted to maximize their interests
visionary
leader.
His
by perpetuating the war,
accomplishments stand out
promoting death over life.
among Lebanese public figures
Further, at a time when
past and present. Unlike many
Lebanon was engulfed by war and
Lebanese politicians, he was
destruction, with most of its
neither a militia commander nor
institutions, including those of
an active participant in the 15higher education, paralyzed or
year-old civil war. On the
crippled, Hariri responded by
contrary, he is most remembered
forming a foundation that carried
for his key role in ending the war.
his name. The Hariri Foundation
Among Hariri’s many legacies is
assumed the responsibility for
the Taif Accord, the new
offering scholarships to tens of
constitution which many
thousands of Lebanese students
viewed as the solution that
for
study
abroad,
an
ended the war and to which most
unprecedented philanthropic
Lebanese pledge support.
project. This commitment to
Moreover, Hariri distinguished
education pre-dated Hariri’s
himself from the entire Lebanese
ascendancy as prime minister in
parasitical class by breaking
the post-Taif period.
away from traditional politics
Though he was a billionaire
From the Series “Greetings from Beirut I” by Salah Saouli,
when he refused to surround
1997 (mixed media on plexiglas and paper, 100X70X5 cm).
construction magnate, and despite
himself, whether in government
his newly-discovered power, I
or in business, with his kin or
co-religionists. He adopted a modern heritage, are valid; we have published our wonder if Hariri was nostalgic for that
period, a period in which the
merit system that replaced old Lebanese share of criticism about the latter issue.
patronage politics.
On several occasions, I have socialization of an entire generation of
Hariri can be remembered for three expressed concern about linking the Lebanese brought tolerance along with
major contributions. First, Hariri leaves financial well-being of a country to one freedom of artistic and cultural
his stamp on rebuilding the city of man or one company, despite all good expression. Many of Al Mustaqbal’s TV
Beirut and helping it to emerge from the intentions. Criticisms aside, Hariri proved programs are reminiscent of the spirit that
ruins of the civil war. Yes, there are many to be the only one with large enough prevailed in the pre-civil war period. His
voices who claim that Beirut has been a financial and political capital to bet upon daily, Al Mustaqbal, has distinguished
business venture for companies the future of Lebanon. That he made or itself as a major Lebanese publication
associated with the late prime minister; was about to make a profit from his and, though owned by Hariri, his
and indeed it is. Some complaints about investments should not be surprising for
Continued on page 52
2
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AL JADID FALL 2004
CONTEN
TS
ENT
essays &
featur
es
ures
2. On Critics of Lebanon’s
Independence Uprising
by Elie Chalala
4. The Other Prison
by Mohammad Ali Atassi
12. Disoriented Lebanon
by Carole Corm
17. Marxist, Rationalist,
Orientalist: Remembering
the Many Facets of
Maxime Rodinson
by Brigitte Caland
20. Charles Malik:
Intellectual Legacy
Marred by Parochial
Lebanese Politics
by Iskandar Mansour
24.From Harem to Civil
Society: The Journey of
Fatima Mernissi
by Yassin Adnan
26.Devastation of History:
Looting Threatens Iraq’s
Ancient Sites
by Judith Gabriel
29.The Knight who Came
Home to be Slain
by Pierre Abisaab
interviews
9. Words Behind Bars
Syrian Poet Faraj
Bairqadar Speaks after
14 Years of Detention
by Mohammad Ali Atassi
13. Riadh al-Turk: In and
Out of Syrian Prison
by Mohammad Ali Atassi
28. Beyond Morocco’s
Literary Divide:
Interview with Leila
Abouzeid
by Pamela Nice
46.Saad Chraibi:
L’amourreur du cinema
by Pamela Nice
AL JADID FALL 2004
f ilms
books
30. Lebanese United by
Voice of Fairuz
by Brigitte Caland
34. A Search for Identity in
Foreign Lands
by Sara Hahn
31. ‘Return to Kandahar,’ a
Personal Journey of
Memory
by Sara Hahn
36. Sharp Analysis,
Unanswered Questions
by Paul Sullivan
32. New Documentaries
Examine Consequences
of ‘War on Terror’
by Lynne Rogers
music
48. Iraqi Traditional Music
Revisited in a War Era
Al Jadid Staff Writers
49. New Um Kulthoum
Biography Searches
Behind the Legend
by Beige Luciano-Adams
37. A Vision of ArabAmerican Underworld in
‘Souls’
by Shakir Mustafa
38. New Arab American
Anthology: Antidote to
Cultural Ignorance
by Judith Gabriel
40. The Paradox of
Religious Democracy
by Faisal Tbeileh
Al Jadid, A Review of Arab Culture and Arts
EDITOR: ELIE CHALALA
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: MAUREEN D. TINGLEY
ASSISTANT EDITOR: RONI OSBERN
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: JUDITH GABRIEL, PAMELA NICE,
PAULINE HOMSI VINSON
WEBSITE & COMPUTER: LAHIRU COLLURE
ART: ZAREH, OSCAR GALILEA JR.
PRODUCTION: INTERNATIONAL DESKTOP PUBLISHING
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: MARY GAO
Al Jadid (ISSN 1523 - 746X) is published quarterly by Al Jadid
Magazine Company, P.O. Box 241342, Los Angeles, CA 900241342,Telephone:(310) 470-6984, E-Mail: [email protected]
Web site www.aljadid.com Subscriptions $18.00 (individual);
$40.00 (institutional). Add $8 for postage in Canada and $16 in
other foreign countries. Reproduction without permission for
any use of translations, editorial or pictorial content is prohibited.
Translations to English of artistic and cultural titles are those of
Al Jadid’s editors and not officially adopted or approved by their
own Arab or Mideast authors. Trademark registered. Articles
signed represent the opinions of their authors and do not
necessarily represent the policy of Al Jadid. Use of any person’s
name or description in fiction or humorous features is purely
coincidental and not the responsibility of Al Jadid. We encourage
the submission of articles in the areas of Arab culture and arts,
mainly about books, films, music, fine arts, theater, and science.
Al Jadid assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials.
Manuscripts or artwork not accompanied by stamped, selfaddressed envelopes will not be returned. Printed in Los Angeles.
Cover Artist: “Gloria” by Salah Saouli, 2003, (Silkscreen on
PCV, 16 Motives, 230x120 cm. Mr. Saouli is a Lebanese artist
based in Germany. Please see “Cover Artsist” on page 50.
Cover Design by Lahiru Collure
www.ALJADID.com
42. Etel Adnan’s New
Language: Poems that
Rewrite Masculine
Discourse by Rim and
Razzan Zahra
43. When the Personal and
Political Come Together
by Greta Anderson
43. Tears in the Holy Land:
Voices from Israel and
Palestine
by Lynne Rogers
44. A Moroccan Cinema of
Proximity
by Pamela Nice
poems
8.
The Illusion of Place
by Moayed Al-Rawi
Cover Ar
t ist
Art
50.
Salah Saouli
contributors
Pierre Abisaab (“The Knight
who Came Home to be Slain,”
p. 29) is a Lebanese art critic
and editor of the Beirut-based
Zawayya Magazine.
Beige Luciano-Adams (“New
Um Kulthoum Biography
Searches Behind The Legend,”
p.49) is a Los Angeles-based
journalist and performing
artist.
Yassin Adnan (“From Harem to
Civil Society: The Journey of
Fatima Mernissi,” p. 24) is a
poet, critic, and regular
contributor to Al Hayat
newspaper from Morocco.
Mohammad Ali Atassi (“The
Other Prison,” p. 4; “Words
Continued on page 32
3
Essays & Features
“Freedom” by Yasser Ganem, 2004(Indian ink and water-color,29cm/44cm)
The Other Prison
B Y MOHAMMAD ALI A
TASSI
AT
Can one understand the experience of being a prisoner
without ever being in a prison cell? This question might seem
strange at first, but those who have met and talked with the
family members of political prisoners in Syria will definitely
know the answer. In a recent article, my friend and a colleague,
Yassin al-Hajj Salih (in An Anahar Literary Supplement, June
27, 2004), accurately describes life inside prison, calling for
bringing the prison experience into the light, in all its different
aspects, until nothing remains unknown or overburdened with
suppressed memory. In this essay, I will attempt to explore the
other face of the Syrian political prison – the face viewed and
lived from the outside by the family members of the prisoners,
in order to shed light on the prisoner experience in all its
manifestations.
The reader may wonder about the necessity of telling the
story of political imprisonment in Syria lest memory fade. Is it a
desire to learn from historical experiences? Is it related to our
current situation – so that we may save those who are forgotten
in the dungeons of Syria’s notorious prisons? Is this a warning
for the future, so that the prison experiment may not happen
4
again? Is it for condemnation, exposure, accountability? Are we
trying to make peace with ourselves, or the other? To open new
wounds, or to heal them?
Some would ask, what is the purpose of airing our “dirty
linen” and disclosing the catastrophes of the past at a time when
Syria is trying to end years of oppression. Some would ask
whether our purpose is to eat grapes, i.e., put an end to political
oppression and the abusive police powers, or simply to get even
with the vineyard watch-guard. Shouldn’t we push for the release
of the remaining prisoners of conscience and forget about what
happened to previous prisoners and their families, as long as in
the end everyone will be out of prison? Isn’t it our objective to
get them out and “free”?
We will not dwell on this entire complex menu of questions,
but we will say that oppression, silence, and stress are enough to
kill a human being. There is virtue in speaking out as we are
doing here, since this is the right process to liberate both victims
and oppressors from fear and suppression and mute dishonor.
We have seen over the past few years a series of testimonies by
former prisoners of conscience in Syria, starting with Reda
Haddad, Riyad al-Turk, Faraj Bairqadar, and more recently
including Maher Arar and Marwan Habach. The Syrian
authorities did not only ignore these testimonies, but rejected
them and continued their policy of oppression and arrest. Today,
they justify these actions on the grounds that they are acting
with less violence and more care for human dignity.
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
The authorities point out that oppression does bring
political stability. They proudly point to their release of prisoners
belonging to the Islamist groups, demonstrating that these
individuals have learned their lessons and are now silent. The
authorities ignore the fact that these former prisoners were
subjected to extreme conditions of oppression and long prison
terms. We do not believe that differences should be resolved
through these means; the individuals who are silent today as a
result of oppression have not truly healed; this is a bad omen for
the country. This suspended suppression of sentiments could
explode at any moment in dangerous and unknown ways.
What follows is a narration of the experiences of prison
from beyond its bars, a narration that relies on bits and pieces of
individual experiences, most of which took place in Syria in the
1970s and 1980s. These testimonies, narrated by others, have
been held in my personal memory,
which
thus
bears
total
responsibility.
Absence
Those sent to jail for political
reasons in Syria leave their loved
ones suddenly, without prior
notice, and go into a world of
darkness. They no longer belong
to humanity, but are forcefully
thrown into the dungeon, where
time does not matter. Their destiny,
their future, and the date of release
are all unknowns; they are subject
to the whims of the authorities and
their absurd decisions and
intelligence reports. Moreover,
those sent to jail leave a heavy void
in the hearts and minds of their
community, a void that no one can
fill. Time cannot fill it either, as
only its owner can reclaim it. It is a
void as it is related to Space, and
we call it absence as it is related to
Time.
From the perspective of their
families, the absence of political “Research” by Yasser Ganem,
prisoners is unlike the absence of water-color, 30cm/21cm)
the dead or the traveler. It is
forcible absence, and you know when it starts but do not know
when it will end. It is a sordid absence, neither temporary nor
permanent. It is a suspended absence, where time moves very
slowly and heavily, as the family patiently awaits the return of
the loved one. Therefore it is an absence marked by a sense of
presence, the powerful presence of the imprisoned individual in
the minds of those he leaves behind. It is a killing absence that
has the taste of bitter despair, a despair that creeps like cancer
into the lost hopes of family members, between the possible and
AL JADID FALL 2004
the impossible. It is an absence that cannot be adapted to,
accepted, or internalized by the family. It is an immediate
absence, temporary, deceiving, and could last a generation.
The visitor to a given prisoner’s home will encounter deep
sadness in the tears of women, the gloominess of men, and the
fear in children. The visit will remind you of funeral homes, but
the dead leave us forever and then normal life resumes, with the
departed’s legacy finding its place in the collective memory. In
contrast, the absence of the prisoner is tantamount to a suspended
state of mourning, with personal effects uncollected, the
inheritance frozen, the memory hesitant and paralyzed, unable
to perform the role it would have if the cycle of life has stopped
but continually moving from presence to absence.
The Angel of Death visits momentarily, reaps the soul of a
person, and leaves a dead corpse. This corpse finds its way to the
graveyard after specific rites. However, the Angel of Prisons
arrives under the wing of darkness,
making a lot of noise with weapons and
equipment, getting every member of the
family out of bed, terrorizing them, and
snatches away its victim, both body and
soul, leaving behind only absence and
some photos hanging on the wall awaiting
an uncertain return.
Waiting Season
The prisoner’s family does its best to
become accustomed to their new bread,
“waiting.” At times they dip it in the
bitterness of despair, and at others the salt
of hope. The mother or wife attempts in
vain to stop the wheel of time as she awaits
the return of the prisoner. She keeps his
belongings in the wardrobe, leaving the
room unarranged, the books resting on
the shelves of time. The wife applies
makeup each morning, trying to preserve
her femininity, which is about to fade
under the pressure of waiting. Children
grow up and become adolescents; their
new clothes purchased for special
occasions don’t fit any more. They keep
repeating, “God willing, our father will
2004 (Indian ink and
be with us at the next feast.”
One year goes by, two years, a decade,
two decades. Conditions of the household change, belongings
and furniture get turned over, the family even moves to another
place. The wife becomes old and lonely, or maybe seeks a
divorce. Children get married and have wedding ceremonies, or
go without them. The parents of the prisoner pass away without
a funeral.
Many Syrian political prisoners who were released in the
1990s after an imprisonment of 20 years had not been permitted
any visits, news, or letters from loved ones. They returned to
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Essays & Features
their neighborhood and home to find out that their home was no
longer there; sometimes the entire neighborhood had given way
to modern development. Some found out, long after the fact,
that their parents were no longer among the living, or that their
wives had married someone else after losing hope that their
husbands were still alive. Many prisoners started their jail term
young and energetic and left a remnant of a person. When some
found their homes the key would not work in the door. When the
released prisoner eventually found his family, he discovered
that they had been waiting for him for 20 years: they did not live
their lives – no marriage, no divorce, no celebration. Yet, they
could not easily recognize his face.
will take place in a confined environment; they would have no
access to his day-to-day conditions, how he lives, what he eats,
what time he is allowed to get out of his cell to breathe fresh air,
what the toilet looks like in a prison. They do not see this void
of knowledge as a blessing, but wish to know the world on the
other side, to have a picture of their loved one no matter how
ugly and painful.
Some children grow up watching the picture of their fathers
or elder brothers hanging on the wall. A little girl lost her father
to prison when she was a few months old. Two years later, her
mother told her that the picture hanging on the wall is a picture
of “Daddy.” But when she accompanied her mother to visit him
From the perspective of their families, the absence of political prisoners is unlike
the absence of the dead or the traveler. ...It is a sordid absence, neither temporary
nor permanent...it is an absence marked by a sense of presence, the powerful
presence of the imprisoned individual in the minds of those he leaves behind.
in prison, she could not relate the man standing before her to the
picture on the wall.
The Time of Photographs
Pictures capture the essence of time in a frozen frame; the
images they produce before and after the jail terms are proof of
the horrors of long years of prison. At the same time, pictures can
be a lifesaver for family members in the absence of the real
person. Family members hug the pictures as if they are hugging
their own children, forgetting that a photo freezes time in a way
that is both deceptive and different. Pictures are treacherous in
their nature, because they expose the world of prisons in a way
that produces tense and emotional moments for the family,
bringing tears to their eyes. Time hits suddenly and mercilessly,
as the family thinks of the absent person in the photograph
reappearing; but after 20 years he is completely unlike the image
in the picture. After all, did Nelson Mandela look like his youthful
picture when he was released after 26 years in prison?
Many Syrian political prisoners returned home and received
well-wishers in their living rooms, with their grand portraits
hanging on the wall and revealing their youthful faces before
the years and toll of imprisonment. The picture may have an old
decaying frame, a dusty glass, and fading colors, and from within
that old frame, the picture can tell more than the individual
about what happened and what was lost during a 20-year
imprisonment.
On the other hand, pictures can visit prisoners in their
dungeons to keep them in touch with the outside world – pictures
of a newborn in the family, or new furniture or a new home.
These pictures provide a good medium of communication
between the prisoner and his previous life. However, the family
has no means of knowing what the loved ones look like in
imprisonment; they have no photo of their husband or son in his
cell. Even if a family visits its imprisoned loved one, the visit
6
The Visit
The visit is a temporary period of time taking place in a
compartmentalized space, confined by the prison walls. Both
the family and the prisoner come from totally different worlds
to meet in this common ground that is watched and shaped by a
guard. The visit might be a maximum of one hour, but sometimes
it might only be a few minutes. The time between visits could
be as short as two weeks, but more often it is six months or even
a year. Some visits require lengthy procedures of approval and
sanction, and complex interventions; visits in these
circumstances take place once every few years. For the Islamists,
visits by loved ones are forbidden.
In the 1980s, a family visit to prisoners in Syria was a great
privilege, but it was also a passing joy accompanied by an
indescribable loss of dignity. It was a privilege because not
everyone was entitled to make such a visit. It is a passing joy
since time is short, problems are plentiful, and intimacy is lost
under the watchful eyes of guards. The family loses dignity as
its members, women and children included, are exposed to
insulting body searches from head to toe. The authorities may
even verbally abuse them. Some families do not make the effort
to visit loved ones so that they will not be exposed to such
abusive behavior.
Intimacy is lost in many ways. A double-wired wall separates
the visitors from the prisoner, so there is no bodily contact. The
presence of the guard imposes an artificial sense of
communication between the prisoner and his family. The guard
writes reports on the conversations, which can implicate the
prisoner or his family if any comments are not to the liking of
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
the authorities. Many family members discuss details of their year-old that his or her father is not a criminal when the child
private lives that should not be shared with anyone, yet such sees him behind bars? What can they tell their friends at school
details end up in written reports.
to explain that their father is not a crook? For many years, families
Families prepare homemade meals and purchase things were warned by the authorities not to say in public that their
permitted by the authorities in preparation for the day of the loved one was a political prisoner, so they had no good response.
visit. Wives and mothers spend nights cooking favorite dishes If they told the truth, they could be accused of conspiring against
and knitting sweaters, and then travel hundreds of kilometers to the state and spreading illegal rumors, which is punishable by
reach Damascus and visit their imprisoned husband or son. Poor law.
families suffer economically as they sacrifice a good portion of
The family plays an essential role in protecting the
their tiny income to secure the essential needs of their imprisoned reputation of the prisoner outside the jail, just as he tries to
loved one.
preserve his dignity behind bars. They are also crucial in giving
Although the visit is only a small hour of their life, for the hope that freedom is not far off. This role may be taken for
prisoner it is the only window beyond the dull prison cell. When granted, but those who know Syria in the 1980s and 1990s
family members leave the prison they instinctively try to forget know how difficult it was to keep up one’s face in society.
about this miserable experience. The few hours following the Families spent much time knocking on the doors of those in
visit are very difficult. However, daily
power to get information on their
life and chores help fill the hours and
disappeared loved ones. Some
people quickly abandon the
ended up paying large sums of
nightmare of the visit. The prisoner
money to gain such information,
goes back to his cell, but he savors
or for permission for a visit. Worse
the details of the visit and remembers
still is the case of families who lost
every little detail. This memory stays
several sons and never saw them
clear and fresh in his mind for many
again.
months.
When things go bad, they do
In one story, a family was allowed
go bad all the way. Some families
to visit its loved one for the first time
became very poor but were unable
in many years. The older daughter
to sell their property because it was
could not make it because she had just
registered in the name of the
gotten married and had moved abroad
imprisoned son or father, or the
with her husband. When the
ownership was shared, with a share
imprisoned father saw his family across
registered in the name of the one
the wire, he immediately asked why
in prison.
the older daughter was missing. His
wife told the prisoner the good news
Ghosts of Prison
and provided details about the
daughter’s husband. Three years later,
Prisoners spend hours knitting
when the family was allowed another
together their worry beads made of
visit, the older daughter showed up
date pits, or painting on a peach
pregnant. The father was emotionally
“Conversations Between Two Bodies” by Yasser
pit, or making a necklace or a
moved and had teary eyes when he
Ganem, 2004 (Indian ink and water-color, 22cm/31cm)
bracelet out of colored glass
saw his pregnant daughter. He started
pieces, creating small but pretty
to ask about her husband, but the
artifacts to give as presents to their
mother quickly explained that the daughter had divorced that families. These things leave the prison and enter the outside
man, returned to Syria, and married another man by whom she world, but everywhere they go they remain items from prison
became pregnant.
and retain the feel and touch of the prison. They are like
Familiarity of the Prison
You cannot have different definitions of a prison cell, no
matter its specific condition; in the end it has a single purpose:
to capture the essence of a person’s freedom against his will.
Political prisoners suffer greatly compared to common criminals.
Not only is their treatment more severe, but their sense of injustice
is overwhelming since they lost their freedom merely because
of the opinions they expressed. How can you convince a 10AL JADID FALL 2004
Aladdin’s magic lamp, caressed by family members in memory
of their imprisoned son.
The guard is a heavy man in a khaki suit, with a stiff face
and big flat hands. This may sound like a comic image, but it is
closer to reality than to fiction. Visitors will see a lot of those
guards at the iron gate, or they may accompany you and sit in on
the visit, watching and listening to every whisper. Visit after
visit, year after year, you get accustomed to the sight of these
guards and you may think they are a fixture in the prison.
However, during a festival one day you walk out and visit a
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7
Essays & Features
crowded souk in Damascus. There, at the far end of the street,
you will see a big man holding the hand of a child. He is not
wearing the military uniform, but he is the same tough prison
guard. Your feelings are mixed and you give a strange shiver.
You wonder how to interpret the scene, and you blame yourself
for mixing the ugliness of the guard’s face with the innocence of
the child. You ask God how it can be that this guard is also a
human being and not some evil spirit.
Once in the women’s prison, a woman in her ninth month of
pregnancy was brought in. She delivered the baby in jail and
raised him between four walls. A year or two later, as the mother
was bringing out the garbage with the child in her arms, a donkey
brayed. It was the first time that the child had seen a donkey, and
when they returned to the cell, the child spent hours repeating
the sounds made by the donkey and mimicking its behavior.
Another woman tells the story of her prison experience in quiet
murmurs: details about torture sessions, her bloody and violated
body lying on the floor, buckets of cold water thrown on her,
followed by electric shocks that reverberated like thunder
because of the water. Insults, beatings, yelling, her soul swinging
between life and death. She reached a point where it did not
matter anymore whether the beating and the electric charge were
occurring or not. Her pain surpassed human capacity to endure.
One day in the torture chamber, the telephone rang. One of the
torturers answered. He turns to the master punisher and says,
“Sir, they want you at home.” The master punisher takes the
handset and his voice transforms into one of loving whispers:
“How are you son? I won’t be late. What do you want me to
bring home, my darling son?”
The bloodied woman on the floor wakes up to the gentle
whispers of the master punisher, and she thinks to herself, “Oh
my God, he is human like us!”
Last words
In his testimony about prison and torture, Reda Haddad, a
Syrian journalist, wrote on his deathbed some words that
summarize the agony he and others have experienced in Syria’s
prisons, as well as the hope that still flickers in the hearts of the
victims. He said, “I am discovering 40 days after my release from
jail that I have leukemia and blood discoloration. I left prison,
but it did not leave me. Its traces went into my blood, but my
spirit is still yearning towards freedom, dignity, and justice.”
Haddad died six months after his release, but his words
continue to punish us and challenge our silence, and his spirit
is still floating over Syria, a Syria that is yearning for liberty,
dignity, and justice through the voices of prisoners and those
outside the walls who wait for the return of loved ones. To all
of you: be an echo of Haddad’s words, and bear witness –
words are freedom. AJ
B Y MO
AYED AL-RA
WI
MOA
AL-RAWI
The home we used to live in had become a cave
smells like garlic
covered with lime and dirt
The wind that enters our home is humid
sticks to the body
and the water is putrid, stinks, full of poisonous
bubbles.
That’s what you said to me
But my home is not the place
Where the grouse can take refuge
there not only she dies but the soul too.
Thus we were expelled from our homes,
from the house that glowed with life,
dominated by mothers’ love
We were driven by the rivers
to their deep streams
We return to where we started, to the rock
when the river lost control of its course
to be crucified next to the spring.
We see the wind choked inside the well
unable to find the shadow of a tree at noon
seeking protection from heat
We had become pawns, manipulated by Satan
driving us to suffering,
filling our hands with burning sands in hot summer.
We are the angels
deprived of light
repressed,
damned.
Our faces have wounds,
injuries of old time
showing the painful tattoos of many places
we were forced to leave
once and for ever.
Translated from the Arabic by Noel Abdulahad
Contemporary Art - Paintings by Zareh
Translated from the Arabic by Kamal Dib
The Arabic version of this essay appeared in An Nahar Cultural
Supplement (July 11, 2004). This English translation, with permission
of the author, is published exclusively in Al Jadid.
8
THE ILL
USION
ILLUSION
OF PLACE
http://www.artistzareh.com
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Interviews
WORDS BEHIND BARS
Syrian Poet Faraj Bairqadar Speaks
after 14 Years of Detention
‘The freedom within us is larger than the
jails we are in’
B Y MOHAMMAD ALI A
TASSI
AT
It is hard to keep calm in the face of the events that Faraj
Bairqadar describes in this interview. Born in 1951 in the city
of Homs, he is only the second Syrian political prisoner to speak
publicly about his experience, though it is an experience shared
by numerous other prisoners. He was detained in 1987 on
charges of conducting political activities and being a member
of the League of Communist Action. He spent 14 subsequent
years of his life in jail. Bairqadar had published three books
prior to his arrest, and his friends published a fourth for him
while he was in prison.
Did you fear that prison would change your poetic style –
perhaps make it lose some of its aesthetic and literary value as
a result of the plain language that constitutes political
incitement?
Poetry is democratic and egalitarian to both writer and reader; it
never seized my feelings but on the contrary, it provided me an
ample space to exercise my freedom. Poetry allowed me to
control my prison, rather than be controlled by it. I think what
protected me is that I didn’t write about big struggles or issues
while in jail. I tended to write about my memories and subtle
human concerns that stem from the emotions of the prisoner.
Writing about the struggle, revolution, and other similar issues
became subordinate to the personal – my longing for my
daughter, for my mother, for the village I grew up in, and for my
friends. These are issues imprisonment evokes. They are far from
being direct, but they never lose their certainty. There are two
words, though, that I never feared to use: captivity and freedom.
They hold within them a tension that persists for the poet as well
as for the reader. I wrote not only about my pains, but also about
the pain of the people around me in prison. The tragedy of
incarceration isn’t limited to prison walls, but also touches the
life outside the prison. You see families destroyed, divorces,
poverty, and misery.
What allowed you to resist your imprisonment? Was it your
ideological convictions or was there also a human or personal
force?
AL JADID FALL 2004
Faraj Bairqadar
I think I owe that to a variety of concepts. Love is one of them.
Love is one of the ingredients of resistance. Poetry. Despair also,
but not in a suicidal or capitulatory sense. There is also an ethical
dimension. I was raised to be unbreakable, and I had no choice
but to resist. Suppose that I was not a Communist, and they
arrested me and wanted to break me. I feel that I am a man who
cannot be defeated. At times I would wonder, “What if I gave
in?” A lot of others collaborated so that they could rest. But for
me it is clear: I do not surrender. I’m not presenting this as
something to be proud of, but rather as a matter of principle.
Luckily, I got out of jail without compromising.
Can you tell us about the stages of your arrest and the places
you were held captive?
I was arrested in Damascus in 1987, and held in the “Palestine
Branch” for interrogation. They kept me in solitary confinement
for four months, during which they tortured me all the time. We
were then moved to another branch pending our sentences, and
by that time new arrests had been made, and they confiscated
documents which revealed that we were hiding information from
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9
Interviews
them. Later we were returned to the Palestine Branch, where we
were kept under investigation for an additional seven months.
They interrogated us every two days. After that, in February
1988, 16 prisoners, including myself, were moved to the Tadmur
Prison, where we spent four years. Finally they moved us to the
Saydnaya jail, where I spent the remainder of my time.
Did you reach a state of physical and psychological weakness
during interrogation? And can you tell us which method of
torture was the most painful for you?
I’m not exaggerating when I say
that I was not in a state of
weakness. What mattered was to
bear the pain until I lost
consciousness. What comforted
me was that I didn’t tell them
anything, because it is impossible
to extract information from an
unconscious man. But they
carefully studied what the limit
was, the edge between life and
death, and they’d stop just slightly
before they reached that point.
For me, what they call the
“German chair,” and what I call
the “Nazi chair,” was the most
painful, especially its later
consequences, like severe back
pain and a temporary loss of
movement in the arms that lasted
for months. I was once subjected
to it for two whole hours. (The
“German chair” is made of metal.
The prisoner is tied to it and then
the chair is folded backwards, so
that it pressures the back of the
prisoner, arched to its maximum.)
When the prisoner is put on that
chair and his back is pinched, the
world – life and death – becomes
half an exhalation and half an
inhalation. Any full breath can
kill him, and he has to calibrate
his breathing on the edge of pain
between two half-breaths. His life
is placed on that line.
composing small paragraphs that I could remember – for
instance, a song for my mother or the like. That method was very
comforting, especially since the times I spent in my cell away
from investigations were long and boring. Once they had to
carry me back to my cell on a blanket, and on the way I had this
vision of Malek bin Arrayb when it was his time to die. I felt the
similarities between him and me. I didn’t fear death, I was only
sad, so I composed this verse: “I wasn’t alive/ and I wasn’t dead
so I made way for him/ oh how the tightness of this place shames
me.” I spent a week in my cell, physically and psychologically
exhausted to a point that wouldn’t
permit me to finish the poem. After
that I was able to walk a bit so I was
moved to the infirmary because of
fractures in my chest. There the
torture stopped and there were a few
quiet days, so I continued the poem.
How did you write it – did you
memorize it or write it on paper? And
how long did it last in your memory?
I wrote in my mind, of course, because
my memory began to function again
– even if memory doesn’t allow for
long poems to be written. In Tadmur
there weren’t any pens or paper, but I
trained my memory even more and I
counted on a few comrades to
preserve certain passages. But I was
still worried and tried to memorize
everything myself. The first time I
wrote “Vision” was in Tadmur, when
they gave me a pen to write down the
names of medicines we used, so I took
my chance and wrote it on cigarette
papers, but then I quickly destroyed
it because we were thoroughly
searched. Later we had more
experience and less fear, so we
invented an ink from tea and onion
leaves, and we used a wood splinter
we found in the yard as a pen. But
writing remained at the margin. I
would write sections because I was
afraid I would forget, but the first time
I started writing with paper and
regular pens was in 1992 when we
“Dream of Freedom” by Yasser Ganem, 2003
were moved to the Saydnaya prison.
How did you return to poetry
(Indian ink and water-color, 15cm/32cm)
I can say that “Vision” remained
during your imprisonment after
stored in my memory for five years,
a hiatus that lasted for years?
until the end of my term in Tadmur. The poems I wrote in that
Two weeks after my imprisonment began, poetry came by itself, period are few compared with those I wrote in Saydnaya prison.
as a defense mechanism. I thought of ways to write without a I often avoided making changes in the poems in order not to
pen and a paper; so I said to myself I’ll try to pass the time by cause mental confusion and thus weaken my memory.
10
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Interviews
Did you hate your torturers? Haven’t you ever wondered about
their humanity?
What are the painful moments that you remember most from
the times of investigation?
During times of torture I used to sympathize with some of the
torturers; it was obvious to me that they were doing a job forced
on them. As soon as the superior officer would leave the room,
they would whisper something in my ear, or go easy on the
beating. I used to distinguish the torturers by their voices or by
the degree of intensity with which they used the torture device.
There are some torturers who perform more than what is asked of
them, and I would hate these during moments of torture. But
when I returned to my solitude and had the chance to reflect and
contemplate, I felt sorry for them because they had become sick;
their humanity had been destroyed. When it comes down to it,
they are part of my people and they are destroying my people.
They destroy the prisoner, they destroy the executioner, and
even the citizen outside the prison is destroyed, too. Today after
my release, I do not hate any torturers who were simple soldiers.
I might not be able to remember all the details, but hearing a
woman screaming from torture creates a kind of feeling that no
one can imagine. Seeing two people exhausted from the torture,
their feet swollen and unable to walk, but the one who is only
slightly better off than the other attempts to carry his friend
though he can barely move himself; also memorable was seeing
someone volunteer to take punishment meant for someone else,
in order to protect a friend that he knows cannot take it anymore.
Were there moments when you cried?
I had a very traditional upbringing – meaning that men do not
cry. I stayed that way a long time, but when the investigation
was over and my conscience was clear, I wasn’t afraid anymore
that my tears would be considered a sign of weakness. Those
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was not in a state of weakness. What
mattered was to bear the pain until I lost consciousness. What comforted me was
that I didn’t tell them anything, because it is impossible to extract information from
an unconscious man. But they carefully studied what the limit was, the edge between
life and death, and they’d stop just slightly before they reached that point.
But I despise some of the officers, and I’m not willing to ever
deal with them.
How did you relate to your body during the torture period?
At times I felt that the entity that was most sympathetic with me,
the most intimate, the entity that most defended me was my
body. Luckily, my body didn’t let me down. Sometimes I would
treat it with tenderness and apologize to it, and in a way I felt
responsible for its sufferings. My love for my body was great,
especially in the early torture periods. It was my best friend, and
even if it would sometimes complain, the complaints were not
to weaken me, but to draw my attention, like Antar’s horse.
who dealt with me as a poet were able to understand this
peculiarity, and made it possible for me to let go. A lot of scenes
touched me and made me cry, though they were not necessarily
related to me. Five brothers were put in jail. A prisoner was
allowed a visit after 18 years of incarceration, and when he met
his brother and father he didn’t recognize them. Another prisoner
got his first visit after 10 years, and when he saw his parents
crying from behind the bars, he started talking to his crying
mother, “Yammah leish a’mm tibki yammah?” (Mom, why are
you crying, Mom?), but the woman cried even harder, and after
that she told him “I am your sister, your mother is dead.” In the
face of this, I cannot but cry.
Did you cry from the torture?
What about your relation to your cell?
Contrary to the images we have of cells – of alienation, pressure,
and darkness, I sometimes felt safe in my solitary cell. The danger
was in the investigation room. When I’d go down to solitary, I’d
feel like I was returning to my mother’s womb; I would feel safe
when its door was shut. At times I felt it was tender and loving,
but when my body didn’t ache, I would grow weary of its
tightness – my head bowed because the ceiling was low, and my
feet couldn’t stretch because the walls were too close.
AL JADID FALL 2004
No, in front of the executioner I couldn’t cry, no matter how
strong my pain was. If I was in the “wheel,” or the German chair,
it was possible to control myself for a while. With electricity, the
shouting is involuntary and starts from the first shock, and then
the pain stops as soon as the current is off. But with the other
methods the pain would persist afterwards, as well as the scars.
With electricity I used to ask myself later, how did these sounds
come out of me? They are more like howling; animalistic sounds.
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11
Interviews
Did you cry when you saw your family?
When I saw my parents I couldn’t cry. I wanted to show them
that I was in control. I only cried in front of my baby brother who
was incarcerated in Saydnaya for the same charge as I. As soon
as I arrived there from Tadmur I asked to see him. I thought that
seeing him was like seeing my whole family, as if I recommunicated with the outside world from which I was cut off.
They agreed that I could see him in another room for five minutes.
He came and I went to see him. We hugged for a long time. I
asked myself, “Should I let go of my emotions?” Then I heard
my friends behind me crying so I collapsed. The second time I
cried before him [my brother] was when I received the news of
the death of my friend, Jamil Hatmel. I couldn’t control myself.
I came out of the visiting room unafraid to be heard crying.
Can you describe your feelings when you were released? And
how was the meeting with your family and your daughter?
I went out with heartache, because my dream was for all of us to
leave the prison without looking back – but that didn’t happen.
We left the prison and some of our comrades are still there. This
is why, when I got out, I didn’t go to see my parents; I went and
visited the families of those who were left in jail. At first we went
to Damascus, and I didn’t recognize any of its streets, tunnels,
bridges – features that were completely new to me. I spent a day
in Damascus, then I went to Homs where my parents were waiting
to see me. When I got off the bus I was greeted by my daughter’s
face, and I was very weak and felt maybe I wouldn’t make it to
hold her. But I did, and I leaned on her and hugged her for a long
time and I cried. After that I didn’t see anyone; hugging and
kissing and I was among my own.
Did you find your country again?
No, I haven’t found it yet. I went into jail and for me Syria was a
mass grave. Is it still like that today? I don’t know! I have hopes,
but I can’t be sure.
You introduced your collection of poetry with these words:
“The freedom within us is larger than the prisons that we’re
in.” Where is our freedom now and where are our prisons?
The freedom within me is still stronger, and stronger now with
the freedom given to me by others. I owe them all a great deal.
Even if some features of repression still persist, I have great
confidence that they will not last, and I can see some positive
movement in that direction, but it is not quite enough. Martial
law, for instance, is still implemented, and they can simply put
us back in jail. AJ
This is a group translation in collaboration with the author.
The Arabic version of this interview appeared in the Lebanesebased An Nahar Cultural Supplement (January 22, 2001). The
English version appears exclusively in Al Jadid by a permission
of the author.
12
A Letter from Beirut/Carole Corm
Disoriented Lebanon
Almost 100 days after the assassination of former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Lebanon has gone through a time
warp back into the future, if you will. “If you don’t look at a
newspaper’s date, you might think you are reading the news
from 20 years ago,’’ exclaimed a friend of mine not long ago.
With the death of Hariri, a political void is felt in Lebanon, and
with no new generation able to reach the acme of power, the
country is left with the same people who were busy fighting
each other during the war. Except this time round, they seem to
be allying themselves, much to the dismay of the families who
lost a son, brother or husband defending these factions from one
another during the war. Was it all for nothing then? Or, is Lebanon
– and this is definitely worth looking into – finally coming to
grips with its own devils?
Signs of a national recognition were seen for the first time
during the “week for unity” marking the 30th anniversary of the
beginning of the war in April through a series of political and
cultural events. In this sense, talk shows and debates on all the
Lebanese TV channels and radio stations have been instrumental.
A good example is how hundreds of families spoke out for the
first time about relatives kidnapped during the war and now
rotting in Syrian jails. The Lebanese Broadcasting Co. (LBC)
invited some mothers and wives of Lebanese individuals reported
to be missing to speak about their predicament in the face of
governments who until recently refused to recognize the
existence of these people.
Yet the “oceanic feeling,” to use a term coined by Sigmund
Freud in “Civilization and its Discontent,” which characterized
the massive street protests that followed the assassination of
Hariri, has lost momentum. The supra-confessional economicoriented vision which the slain former Prime Minister had
managed to create, despite many obstacles, seems to have
disappeared at least for now, and the country is left with its old
clan reflexes. Headlines these days focus on General Michel
Aoun’s return to the country, the possible liberation from jail of
Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces, the surrealist
political alliances of Walid Jumblatt. The Syrians have left, but
the day of their withdrawal did not seem to carry much
significance for the Lebanese, perhaps because no one could
quite believe it actually happened. The Syrians had been present
in Lebanon for 29, almost 30, years. In comparison, the French
mandate lasted 22 years. Few seemed to have fully realized the
historical moment this was; least of all, the political dialogue
which failed to seize on this incredible opportunity, instead
playing its usual petty, self interested games, just as when the
occupiers were here.
In the coming legislative elections, which start at the end of
May and end in late June, the Lebanese will be voting according
www.ALJADID.com
Continued on page 16
AL JADID FALL 2004
Interviews
legitimacy of authority is embodied in its ability to absorb
criticism and learn from it.
The doyen of Syrian intellectuals, Antun Maqdisi,
considered Riyadh al-Turk a man of state in his statments and
positions. When a man of state calls for reconciliation, he should
not be thrown into prison. Instead, he should be drawn into
dialogue and discussion for the benefit of the nation and its
people. Riyadh al-Turk is free again. Syria still waits for its
freedom. The following is an interview I conducted with him
where he reflects on his time spent in prison.
Do you feel that your release is a serious step toward democratic
openness?
Democratic openness doesn’t come about through the release of
a single prisoner. You are returning to this prisoner the freedom
and rights that were taken away. Real openness comes from a
plan to solve the country’s chronic problems and to overcome
previous political mistakes. Opposition forces and intellectuals
have articulated basic political demands. The authorities have
not yet taken any serious steps in that direction.
What were your thoughts during the two days that you spent
alone in the interrogation department of political security in
Damascus, and then during your first solitary confinement in
Adra Central Prison? Did you try to analyze the reasons for
your detention and how long it might last?
Riyadh al-Turk
Riyadh al-Turk:
In and Out of
Syrian Prison
I didn’t think about anything. When I enter prison, I stop
thinking, analyzing, and waiting for the day when I’ll be released.
That would only increase my suffering and do nothing for me.
Enough! I’m in prison. There’s no room for thinking until you
get out. In prison, I’m confined. The most important thing is for
me to be steadfast, maintain my political position, not set a bad
example, not give up the secrets of my party, and not back down
from my previous words and statements. That’s what I did.
Noted Former Syrian Prisoner Riyadh al-Turk
Speaks Out on Life Inside Prison
But general political conditions have changed since your first
imprisonment, providing hope for your release from the very
beginning. Did this hope affect you during your latest
imprisonment?
‘I stop thinking in prison’
B Y MOHAMMAD ALI A
TASSI
AT
As a person, prisoner, and leader, Riyadh al-Turk has few
parallels in politics. He is a professional politician in the noblest
sense of the word. Politics for al-Turk is a means of attaining the
greatest degree of justice, human nobility, and freedom. He has
dedicated the bulk of his time and effort to politics, only to be
repaid with a lengthy prison sentence.
While reading this interview, some may feel that Riyadh alTurk has not learned from his most recent imprisonment. Here
he is, back to his old habits of challenging and battling the
authorities. Instead, hopefully everyone will learn a more
important and far-reaching lesson – that the true power and
AL JADID FALL 2004
No, never. I’m a realist. I don’t count on hope. The only thing I
care about is that I stay strong in prison. What do I gain from
living in the hope that I’ll be released after a month or a year, if
that time comes and I don’t get out? Disappointment can crush
a political prisoner. That’s why I avoid it.
Even after I was sentenced to two and a half years, my view was
that I could be there longer in the event of a new, extrajudicial
order. I don’t trust this system, which is dominated by
extrajudicial rulings and where there is no rechtstaat [rule of
law]. Nevertheless, I was convinced from the beginning that I
might possibly be released, perhaps even before the end of my
www.ALJADID.com
13
Interviews
sentence. My imprisonment and release have less to do with
judicial rulings than with a political decision made in new
political circumstances.
One of our basic points of difference in the film “Cousin” comes
when you talk about your ability to forget the outside world
during your first protracted period of imprisonment. Weren’t
prison conditions slightly improved during your second
imprisonment, resulting in more contact with the outside world
through regular family visits, meetings with lawyers, and court
appearances?
That’s true, especially when I was accompanied by some of my
10 fellow detainees. But these thoughts don’t help in terms of
my resistance to prison while I’m inside. I have a method that
has proven its usefulness for the prisoner, no matter how much
the conditions of imprisonment change or how long or short the
sentence is. The most important point for a prisoner in the
“underworld” is to avoid thinking about the outside world. I’m
world is a comfort to the prisoner, but it never means that he has
less emotion for his family.
So this short prison sentence was almost more difficult than the
previous one in terms of your relations with the outside world
and contact with your family?
In the sense that you mentioned, yes, it was more difficult from
a moral and emotional perspective because the visits were almost
constant. The treatment, material conditions, and my health at
Adra Prison can’t be compared with my previous imprisonment.
Even so, political prison is still prison. It unjustly curtails a
person’s freedom. That’s the main point.
In a phenomenon that Syrian cities have not witnessed for a
long time, your supporters were a constant presence in front of
the State Security Court, clapping each time you emerged from
a hearing under guard. They even dared to display democratic
slogans in the street, calling for the release of political prisoners
and the abolition of the state of emergency. When you saw
During the first, solitary period in Adra prison, I found a dirty, discarded newspaper
on the ground on my way to the recreation yard. I picked it up and cleaned it off.
Imagine my surprise when I found two full pages about the attacks on New York and
Washington. That was the first time I’d heard about the events of September 11.
like a bird that’s been captured and put in a cage. There’s nothing
to be gained from thinking.
them from the door of the court, was this another unwanted
reminder of the outside world?
But the caged bird still dreams of flying.
No. There’s no emotional side or family dimension to this. It’s a
part of the struggle that raises my spirits. It’s proof that the
movement for democracy hasn’t stopped, that there are still
people prepared to sacrifice. I was heartened to see the courage
of young people pioneering new forms of protest. It was more
than I could imagine. It’s proof that the state of hiding and
silence has begun to fall apart, which is an important sign for the
future of the democratic movement in Syria.
I also want to leave prison. But thinking about getting out and
the outside world does nothing but increase my suffering.
Are you saying that visits from your wife, Dr. Asma, your
daughters, and your grandchildren didn’t lead you to think
about the outside world?
Believe me, believe me, “cousin,” I didn’t want them to come
visit me so they wouldn’t affect my emotions. On the day of the
visit I’m like someone who’s been paralyzed. I don’t know how
to act. The outside world takes control of me. I need several days
to regain my balance as a prisoner and blow the “smoke” of the
visit out of my head. You need only ask Dr. Asma how many
times I asked them to come – every two months or even just
once a season. I don’t want the outside world to intrude on my
“underworld” and increase my suffering. Forgetting the outside
14
So you think that certain events in the outside world can lift a
prisoner’s spirits?
Naturally. But things are all set for me. I would have stood strong
even if no one had come to express their solidarity with me at
the courthouse. How can you know whether supporters will come
to protest as they did?
What did you miss most when you found yourself in prison
again?
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Interviews
It’s really strange. You keep pushing me toward certain topics,
but I pull you in the opposite direction. In prison, I don’t miss
anything and I don’t want anything. I’m satisfied with whatever
comes my way. I didn’t ask for anything from anyone, and I took
care of my affairs by myself. Why should I torment myself when
there’s a chance my request could be denied? Even these
cardboard boxes and nylon
bags full of things that you
see here now: I didn’t ask for
them from anyone. I gathered
them from what the rest of
the prisoners threw away, on
my way to the recreation
yard. You’ll find among
these things hundreds of
empty packs of cigarettes
that I collected; later I used
the paper to write down
some observations.
During the first, solitary
period in Adra prison, I found
a dirty, discarded newspaper
on the ground on my way to
the recreation yard. I picked
it up and cleaned it off.
Imagine my surprise when I
found two full pages about
the attacks on New York and
Washington. That was the
first time I’d heard about the
events of September 11.
How did your previous
experience help you this
time? Did you create
arabesques from the black
beans in the lentil soup to
kill time?
How do you feel about the
movement of solidarity with you
that was so evident outside of
Syria? How do you feel about
those who said: “The appeal from
European governments to the
Syrian authorities to release you
and the resolution from the
European Parliament that bore
your name applied political
pressure to weaken the Syrian
position”?
“Lost in Space” by Yasser Ganem, 2003 (Indian ink and watercolor, 22 cm/31 cm)
The main benefit was in maintaining good relations with the
prison guards and in making the time pass as easily as possible.
The lentil soup in this prison was good enough that it contained
virtually no black beans. The time passed in conversation with
other prisoners when we were together in the sleeping quarters,
in the kitchen making food, or reading after they opened the
prison library for us.
Some viewers of the film “Cousin” saw a superhuman feat in
your strength during your first imprisonment. What is your
response?
Whoever says that probably hasn’t suffered what our people
have under dictatorship. During my first imprisonment I was
consciously strong. I faced the barbaric conditions ready to die
AL JADID FALL 2004
as though I were in battle. Why is a person strong if not to
defend his humanity? No one in history has stayed strong in
conditions like that for the sake of something inhuman. I didn’t
see myself as a victim and I didn’t look for anyone’s sympathy.
In prison I paid the price for sticking to my positions, even if
that price was harsh and unjust.
I am extremely thankful and
grateful to everyone who
supported me or other political
prisoners in Syria, both within the
country and abroad. This proves
that the issue of human rights and
dignity expresses human values
shared by all peoples on earth
despite their differences. Naturally,
we must look to the West, although
there are two Wests, not one. There
are many cultural and political
centers of power in the West that
still carry the values of
enlightenment and rationalism. We
need to come together with them
in the future on the basis of
democracy and people’s right to
freedom and a decent life.
Certain Lebanese figures and media outlets played a prominent
role in supporting you. What can you say to them and to the
Lebanese people?
Today we stand together against those who say “Together, by
God.” Let me state clearly: we want things to return to normal
between our two peoples. It’s true that we were one country in
the past. But conditions changed and we became two states. We
Syrians must now respect the sovereignty and independence of
Lebanon. I think that the Syrian domination of Lebanon is one
of the worst aspects of our political life. It prevents the return of
a real democratic life to this country. If Syrian interference in
Lebanese internal affairs ended, I’m sure that the Lebanese people
would respect this and not allow narrow-minded factionalists to
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15
Interviews
create a rift between the two peoples because of their temporary
inability to distinguish the people from the regime in Syria. But
the key element is that we behave correctly, which means not
interfering in their internal affairs.
Today, the basic common element between the two peoples
is the struggle for democracy. There is a common foe in both
countries. Any progress that democracy makes in either of the
two countries is progress in the same direction for the other
country. This is the source of our common interest and our tie to
the democratic movement in Lebanon.
Do you feel that there is a democratic movement in Lebanon
today with which you can develop a common program to the
benefit of both peoples?
There is certainly a democratic movement that I identify with. I
want them to take a stand above the factionalist fray in the
interests of Lebanon, primarily a stance on Israel. I’m ready to
stand together with them on the need for the Syrian Army to
leave Lebanon. If the Lebanese want this and if there’s a need for
it, an accord could provide for helping Lebanon against Israel. I
think that the Syrian democratic movement, if it can break from
some of its one-sided and opportunistic tendencies, will join
forces with its counterpart [in Lebanon]. Also, I don’t support
the idea that Hezbollah should monopolize the defense of the
south. This responsibility should fall to the general government.
Unfortunately, Syrian policy has encouraged factional divisions,
although the Lebanese national movement in the beginning
played an important, basic role in resisting the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon.
Do you think it’s possible that you will see Syria become a
democratic country in your lifetime? You don’t think that your
sacrifices have been in vain?
Individual efforts can sometimes awaken people’s conscience
and help to break down the wall of fear and silence. Nonetheless,
I entertain no illusions of heroic victories. I’m a brick in the
edifice I see as the future of a democratic Syria. Others will have
to lay other bricks, as they have done and are doing. This is the
basis of the hope that inspires me to sacrifice despite the present
difficulties. Many people have sacrificed in our history. They
faced limited prospects but they served as an example to those
who came later. Despite this, I’m optimistic about the overall
political situation even though the opposition is weak. It has
become very difficult for the hotheads to move the country
backward and make history repeat itself. AJ
Disoriented Lebanon
Continued from page 12
to a law drawn up by the Syrians in 2000. This law structures
Lebanese political forces into obedient clans and marginalizes
minorities, thus embittering part of the population. Despite some
calls to rectify the law, international pressure to secure the
elections as soon as possible, in addition to the passiveaggressive actions of many politicians who have a personal
interest in keeping the law as it is, has led to an unhealthy
situation. Many feel as if the Cedar Revolution has been diverted
from its objective. Sure, we have gained independence from
Syria, but why is justice still so tightly tied to politics? Why
aren’t the Lebanese represented properly in the coming
elections?
To secure seats, politicians have made the most incredible
and extreme alliances, showing the cracks in the political
opposition that emerged in the aftermath of Hariri’s death. The
main unity did not last long. And with no alternative being
offered, young voters who never lived through the war
reluctantly support the clanic warlords. Other youths among
those who had actively taken part in the protests simply want to
get rid of the whole political spectrum, “throw them all into the
sea,” in the words of a disappointed young woman who had kept
a vigil in Martyr’s Square. There are also those who have decided
not to vote, and this includes young people as well as some
entire villages.
A glimmer of hope exists, though, in the person of Saad
Hariri, who seems intent on following in his father’s footsteps,
promising to change the electoral law of 2000 once he gets into
Parliament. He also plans to get rid of the “political mentality”
at the government level, which he believes to be partly
responsible for the death of his father. The other political figure
who appears to establish a bit of sense in the country, such as
making Lebanon a secular state, is returning from exile: General
Michel Aoun. The challenge for both these men, though, is to
manage to speak a language that people from other religious
denominations can relate to. This will ultimately prove to be
crucial, and will reflect a great deal on whether the Lebanese
have evolved since the war years. Will Saad Hariri or Michel
Aoun offer a vision that surpasses religious divides? Will they
be capable enough to propose a real political, social and economic
program for the future that speaks to the Sunnis, Shiites, and
Christians alike? With the date of these Byzantine legislative
elections approaching, it seems Hariri will be more likely to carry
out such a task, as Aoun is still uncertain of his chances of victory
in an election that follows the Syrian-drawn law of 2000. AJ
– Beirut, May 22, 2005
This is a group translation in collaboration with the author.
The English version of this interview appears exclusively in Al
Jadid with permission of the author. The Arabic version of this
interview appeared in the London based Al Quds al-Arabi
(December 23, 2002).
16
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Essays and Features
Marxist, Rationalist, Orientalist:
Remembering the Many Facets of Maxime Rodinson
BY BRIGITTE CALAND
Marxist prevented him from reaching a diplomatic position and
soon he returned to France and dropped his Ph.D. thesis on
Maxime Rodinson used to say: “I am a son of immigrants.” Medieval Islam. He suffered all his life from this decision, feeling
Born in 1915 to a Jewish family from Lithuania and Poland, a that his Ph.D. would have allowed him to be accepted as a scholar
family that was first anarchist, then Communist, Maxime by others who only acknowledge their peers.
Maxime Rodinson was in Beirut when his parents died in
Rodinson grew up in Paris with both Russian and French
Auschwitz.
Unlike many Jews who had lost parents and family
citizenship. When he turned 21 in 1927, his father decided that
members during World War
they should keep the French
II, Rodinson did not join the
one. No ties remained with
Zionist movement. The
his Jewish cousins in Russia.
ideology contradicted what
As a child, Rodinson
his parents had taught him.
was taken out of school and
Ever since his childhood, he
worked as a delivery boy,
had been a free thinker.
realizing very quickly that
During a discussion as a
this job would not fulfill his
young boy, he was asked to
life. He prepared by himself
which party he belonged and
for the entrance exam for
he answered, “I don’t belong
Langues Orientales, where
to any party because I have
he specialized in Amharic
not studied the question
(the official language of
sufficiently.” His curiosity
Ethiopia), studying many
led him to question what the
other Semitic languages
“other” was about, a
including
Arabic,
continual quest which
Phoenician, and Hebrew.
disturbed many people
One of his teachers told him,
around him.
“Monsieur Rodinson, if
He left Palestine for the
there were any Semitic
last
time
in 1947, hoping that
languages on the moon, you
the
Palestinian
Communist
would go there to study
Party’s
idea
of
a
bi-national
them.” He studied dead
state
would
prevail.
He was
languages such as ancient
against
the
ideology
of the
Ethiopian and Gueze, as
kibbutzim,
and
felt
that
well as ancient Egyptian
considering
it
as
the
model
(hieroglyphs) at Ecole
of a future society was
Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
Maxime Rodinson by Zareh for Al Jadid
absurd. He recalls that he
There he met Marcel Cohen,
could already sense the
a major French linguist, who
tensions
in
Palestine.
At
that
time,
he met other important
was his teacher, and took Cohen’s position after he retired.
scholars
such
as
Gilbert
Boris,
who
specialized
in the Arabic
Rodinson married, joined the Communist Party, and started
dialect
of
Nafzawa,
a
region
south
of
Tunisia,
as
well as the
working for the CNRS (the French Center of Scientific Research)
noted
Orientalist
Louis
Massignon,
and
Paul
Krauss,
an
in 1937. A couple of years later, he traveled to the Middle East
Assyriologist
who
had
seriously
researched
letters
from
the
epoch
as a soldier but soon started teaching in Sidon (or Saida in Arabic),
a major city in south Lebanon. He spent seven years between of Hamurabi.
Back in France, Rodinson worked as a librarian at the
Syria and Lebanon, visiting Palestine and Egypt and meeting
Bibliothèque
Nationale in the Oriental Manuscript Department
with Arab Communists. Later, he worked with the French
and
continued
reading voraciously. At the Bibliothèque
archaeologist Maurice Dunand, helping him decipher
Nationale,
he
recorded
printed books in Arabic, Persian, Turkish
Phoenician texts, and with the archaeologist Daniel Schlumberger
and
Hebrew,
among
others.
After the death of Stalin in 1953, the
on Palmyra’s inscriptions. He was only 25 years old. Being a
AL JADID FALL 2004
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17
Essays & Features
gap between the complexity of his thought and developments (1981), “Islam: Politics and Belief” (1993), and “Arab Medieval
in the Communist system became more and more important, Cookery” (2001) published in London – cooking was one of his
though he was an active Communist beginning in 1955. His other passions. With Jacques Berque, he founded the Groupe de
articles and his free spirit annoyed the party, and he started Recherches et d’Actions pour le Règlement du Problème
criticizing the party, which soon led to his expulsion in 1958. Palestinien (Group of Study and Research for a Palestinian
During this period of his life and even with his Marxist Solution) in 1968.
After WW II, he had started publishing articles on
background, as historian Gérard Khoury notes, (in the
introduction to his book of interviews with Rodinson titled philosophical and linguistic topics, questioning religions and
ideologies, among which
“Entre Islam et Occident,”)
Islam found an important
Rodinson remained objective and
place. One of his passions
scientific in his analysis.
was approaching the 30
In 1955, he left the
languages he had access to
Bibliothèque Nationale and started
and taking a “voyage
teaching Gueze, an Ethiopian
through the words,” as he
Semitic language spoken up to the
used to call it. He could
10th century, at the Ecole Pratique
spend hours in dictionaries
des Hautes Etudes. He continued
– mostly bought in the
there until 1998. Gueze’s writing
USSR where they were very
originated from Nabatean and Syriac
inexpensive – searching
and is very close to Arabic. It
details to confirm his
remained a liturgical language.
intuition
about
the
Maxime Rodinson thought that in
etymology of some words in
order to understand the world of
cooking recipes such as
men, it was essential to acquire
baklava or romania found
ethnographic, anthropological, and
in medieval texts. It took
historical knowledge. Linguistics
him six months to learn
was not sufficient.
more about kebd (liver in
In 1961 he published a
Arabic and in Hebrew, in
biography of the Prophet, and
which it also means serious
considered it to be one of his favorite
and heavy). He found it
books. After two summers of
very exciting to consult all
research, it took him four months to
of his dictionaries, and to
write “Muhammad.” When he was
follow a word in Uzbek,
asked how he felt about this book
Turkmen, Uygur, and all
years later, he said that the only
Turkish dialects, in addition
nuance that dissatisfied him was the
to the Semitic and Indoconclusion, because it was too
European languages he
influenced by his Communist
knew.
background, and that he would also
His research lead him to
correct certain points such as the
medieval texts including
numbers of the companions of the
the story of “The Knight
Prophet in Medina, who were not
from Burgundy and the
seven but 15. He claims that the
Maxime Rodinson at the shores of Sidon
Saracen Salve,” about a
Prophet had no previous plan to
bedouin hunting lions on
create a community the way it was
organized in the 11th year of the Hijra, and that he had to adapt the Nile’s banks during the time when Charles VII was ruling
and Joan of Arc still alive. The story was published in the
according to the events at the time.
Rodinson published more than 1,000 articles, both second edition of his book, “The Fascination of Islam.” He
journalistic and scientific, and a number of books including discovered that it was the true story of a lord at the beginning of
“Islam and Capitalism” (1966), which covers economic the 15th century, sentenced to accomplish a mini-crusade in
structures and production in Islamic societies. Some of his other Syria and Egypt after committing the major sin of entering the
books include “Israel as a Colonial-Settler State” (1963), “Israel church on a horse and with weapons. It enabled Rodinson to
et le refus arabe” (The Arab Rejection of Israel) (1968), “Marxism discover different European opinions about the Muslim world.
During conversations with Gérard Khoury regarding the
and the Muslim World” (1968), “The Arabs” (1979), “The
Fascination of Islam” (1980), “Jewish People or Jewish Problem?” stagnation of Arab contemporary society and its attitudes,
18
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
Rodinson mentioned that today’s lack of critical thought was
the result of political and economic forces, but that things may
change, and mentioned that he remained Marxist when it came
to that matter. Some societies were more advanced than others,
not for racial but historical reasons, because the various elements
of an industrial revolution had all happened at the same time.
He never gave a primary place to attitudes or the state of mind,
but to their origins. Rodinson felt that when the contradictions
were too strong, ideas and attitudes “break.” He gives the
example of Voltaire’s text “Atheism” in “Questions about the
Encyclopedia” and quotes: “Most of the important people of
the world live as if they were atheists. Whoever lived and saw,
knows that the knowledge of a god, his presence, his justice,
have no influence whatsoever on the wars, the treaties, the
purpose of ambition, the interest, and the pleasures of all their
moments.”
As for himself, he always applied the concept of atheism as
a negative and skeptical attitude towards ideology, both religious
and secular. The most important for him was universalism. He
thought that there was no war of ideas but wars of groups that
long the work would take. Writing about medieval Islam, he
reminds the reader that the rationality of the theology of Islam is
remarkable and throughout all of the medieval period it was
governed by reason.
He was always very skeptical about the Arab League and
thought that Arab unity was not necessarily a desirable solution,
not unlike his opinions on Zionism. Rodinson is cited to have
said that nowhere is it written, on Earth or in heaven, that there
should be a Jewish state in Palestine or one united Arab nation.
He was interested in the role of Jews in history and antiquity and
thought that the question of Israel was as desperate as ever. He
wished that the majority of Jews would support an option that
would be more universalistic, but realized that the unity was
happening in a nationalistic way covered by theological aspects.
He was always vocal about his opinion on the situation of
Palestine and the state of Israel, and thought that there was
nothing that could be changed in this fatal evolution. He
remembered what his friend, Moise Twersky, used to tell him
when he was a child. Twersky’s theory was that the Jews, who
were lucky to escape from the nationalism of other countries,
He was always very skeptical about the Arab League and thought that Arab
unity was not necessarily a desirable solution, not unlike his opinions on Zionism.
Nowhere is it written, on Earth or in heaven, that there should be a Jewish state in
Palestine or one united Arab nation.
carry ideas as flags. For example, if monotheism exists as a value,
it is used in absurd ways. Moreover, the concept that the Jewish
religion created monotheism was wrong; Rodinson reminds us
that Jehovah shared his position of supreme god of the Jews
with another deity, Anat-Yaho, “the goddess of the sky.” For
him, since monotheism is only a small part of the history of
spirituality, he did not find it important to summarize the entire
history of religions around the victory of this concept that has
so little representation through history.
For Rodinson, communities lead the world, not ideas. Each
one has its own flag and dogma and these should not be touched.
For historical reasons the Muslim communities did not develop
self-criticism, but conditions change, as Christians did during
the medieval age. Commenting on the absence of emerging
military, political or economic power among Arab and Muslim
societies, he thought that there was not one explanation but
different factors that converged, stopping these communities
from going forward. One factor was the ancestral culture of
groups. The resistance of the ulama does not come only and
entirely from the Muslim doctrine. He used to read many articles
published in the British and American press and thought these
articles should all be connected and studied in order to
understand the multiplicity of the causes that stopped these
contemporary societies from advancing, but he realized how
were starting the same process. However, his many articles on
Zionism irritated those who only wanted to see a polemic against
the Israeli and Zionist propaganda. He claims that what was
written about him and this matter displayed hatred and
incomprehension.
Theology was one of his passions. The evolution of
occidental society worried him, and he was concerned about the
conflicts created by nationalism and what this generation would
leave for the next. When asked how he categorized himself, he
would always be tempted to answer “a philosopher” but he did
not have the required education, since he had studied mainly
sociology and anthropology. He had enough knowledge to be
called a historian. He knew that people looked at him as an
amateur, because he did not follow the traditional conventions
that lead to specialization, and he wanted to keep as much
freedom as he could, a trait some see as an aristocratic casualness.
Teaching was a way to support himself and to learn, in the
tradition of many 17th century French philosophers such as the
Marquis de Condorcet, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Claude Adrien
Helvetius, and others. When asked once by a young interviewer
why he preferred erudition to science, he avoided the question.
He thought about it later and came to the conclusion that during
his youth, when he tried to form a personal philosophy for himself
Continued on page 25
AL JADID FALL 2004
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Essays & Features
Charles Malik:
Intellectual Legacy Marred by Parochial Lebanese Politics
BY ISKANDAR MANSOUR
Time” (a philosophical scientific research), “God and
Mathematics,” and “God in Life,” a series of articles on the
Charles Habib Malik was born in 1906 in Btirram, a small relationship between philosophy, theology, science, and
village in Northern Lebanon. No one could have anticipated at mathematics. Mathematics was not Malik’s ultimate objective.
His ultimate goal was to search
his birth that he would go on
for the truth that neither logic
to study mathematics and
nor mathematics can define or
physics at the American
understand.
University of Beirut and work
While he was in Egypt,
at Al Hilal magazine in Egypt.
Malik wrote a letter to
Much less would one have
Whitehead, expressing his
expected him to study
desire to study under him.
philosophy under Alfred North
Whitehead’s affirmative
Whitehead at Harvard
answer
brought
great
University and under Martin
happiness
to
Malik.
Heidegger at Freiburg
Whitehead,
a
noted
University, return to Lebanon
mathematician, philosopher,
to head the Lebanese
and logician, tried to convince
diplomatic mission at the
Malik to pursue the discipline
United Nations, and finally
of logic, but Malik had
become one of the main
already decided that neither
architects of the Universal
logic nor mathematics could
Declaration of Human Rights.
account for human phenomena
Charles Malik attributed his
such as love, hate, anger,
long career of achievement to
anxiety, jealousy, courage,
the divine will which holds the
friendship, tears and smiles,
destiny of each individual
faith, death, and the
human being.
understanding of God. He
In order to enter Malik’s
believed that the truth human
world, one must not only be
experience could understand,
acquainted with the work of
encompass, and embody is
Edmund Husserl, Heidegger,
much deeper and more real
and Whitehead, under whom
than that which mathematics
Malik studied logic and
and logic can understand.
philosophy, but also with the
Following his existential and
Old and New Testaments;
Charles Malik by Zareh for Al Jadid
phenomenological interests,
these are necessary to
Malik, under the supervision
understand Malik’s philosophy
of Whitehead, wrote “The
and world view. Christianity,
and Jesus Christ, are the eyes through which Malik saw the Metaphysics of Time in the Philosophies of A.N. Whitehead
world, encountered phenomena, questioned the past and hoped and Martin Heidegger.” This Ph.D. thesis was never published.
While studying philosophy at Harvard under Whitehead,
for the future. No book influenced him more than the Bible.
After finishing high school in Tripoli in northern Lebanon, Malik went to Germany on a scholarship to study under
Malik went to the American University of Beirut where he earned Germany’s influential philosopher Martin Heidegger. In “A
a degree in mathematics. He began to teach this subject as well Christian Reflection on Martin Heidegger,” an article published
as physics at the same institution. After his graduation from the in the Thomist, Malik engaged in a dialogue with Heidegger
A.U.B., Malik went to Egypt in 1929. During his time there he from a Christian point of view. Nonetheless, his admiration for
published in Al Muqtataf “The Nature of the Divine,” “Space- Heidegger shone in every word he wrote. “I want to seize this
20
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
happy opportunity [Heidegger‘s 85th birthday] to express my
humble gratitude to Martin Heidegger himself, my honored
teacher, for all that he has meant to me personally,” Malik
expressed.
By the end of 1937, Malik returned to Beirut to teach at the
American University of Beirut, shaping the newly established
philosophy department along the lines of his thought and
philosophy. The first phase of his academic career was interrupted
when the incoming president of Lebanon asked him to head the
Lebanese delegation to Washington and to perform the duties
of ambassador to the newly created international organization,
the United Nations.
While he was the Lebanese Ambassador to the UN, Malik
unsuccessfully led the Arab diplomacy to prevent the
establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine. Reflecting on
this period, Malik published several letters which he had sent to
the Lebanese president, the prime minister, and the foreign
minister. These letters are documents of historical and
intellectual importance, wherein Malik reflected on the question
of Palestine, Zionism, U.S. foreign policy, the future of the state
of Israel, the role of the Jewish lobby in the United States, and
the state of weakness and incompetence in the Arab world. The
Plan of Palestine, his words and thoughts refute such a thesis.
In one of the passages from 1948, Malik warned “that a secret
agreement between Israel and some of the shortsighted
Lebanese might lead to a pro-Israel coup d’etat,” which, in
turn, would lead to both a Syrian and Israeli intervention in
Lebanon.
Israel, for Malik, was neither politically nor intellectually
an entity with which the Lebanese Christians could build an
alliance. He belonged to a circle of Lebanese Christian
intellectuals such as Michel Chiha and Kamal al-Hajj, whose
worldview encompassed skepticism on the part of the Lebanese
Christian bourgeoisie with respect to pan-Arabism and panSyrianism. They felt the outcome of these projects would be
the disappearance of Lebanon as an independent state and
consequently the marginalization of the role of the Christians
of Lebanon in a larger political entity dominated by a Muslim
majority. In 1958, during the popular uprising against the
presidency of Camile Chamoun, whose policy was to join the
“Baghdad Alliance” against the then-popular and charismatic
Arab leader Jamal Abd al-Nasser and his pan-Arabist policy,
Abba Eban, the Israeli representative at the United Nations during the same
period Malik was serving at the UN, describes Malik in his memoirs: a “devout
Christian, and an authentic scholar who, whatever his national pieties might require,
seemed intellectually moved by Israel’s birth.”
published documents revealed the vision of an outstanding
thinker and display a prophetic reading of the events that took
place in 1948 with the establishment of the state of Israel as well
as its impact during the years to come.
Abba Eban, the Israeli representative at the United Nations
during the same period Malik was serving at the UN, describes
Malik in his memoirs: a “devout Christian, and an authentic
scholar who, whatever his national pieties might require, seemed
intellectually moved by Israel’s birth.” Abba Eban went on to
reveal that he and Malik had exchanged congratulations on the
occasion of the birth of Malik’s son. Malik replied, “Dear
Ambassador Eban, it was most kind of you to have sent us your
personal congratulatory note, for which we sincerely thank you.
We, too, wish you and Mrs. Eban the true and abiding happiness
that can in truth come only from God.”
Did Malik see the birth of Israel as a manifestation of a
divine will because of his Christian beliefs? Or was he seeing
Israel as a future ally to the Christians of Lebanon, a view held
by some Christian politicians who were affiliated with the
Lebanese Front during the civil war? Although Malik was a
strong voice for the Lebanese Front on the international scene,
and in 1947 was advising the Arab states to accept the Partition
AL JADID FALL 2004
Malik was the minister of foreign affairs who “invited” the U.S.
to intervene militarily in Lebanon.
Malik, like Chiha and al-Hajj, was also mindful of Israel
and its regional role and impact on the future economic and
intellectual role of Lebanon in general, and its Christians in
particular, in the Arab world. Finally, with others in the group,
Malik affirmed on many occasions his opposition to the
abrogation of the Lebanese confessional system – a system
that is beyond question responsible for the Lebanese civil war.
Like many sectarian thinkers, Malik saw Lebanon as an entity
composed of two wings: the Christian one and the Muslim
one. And in order to keep stability, peace, and unity, the
confessional system must be maintained, wherein the
relationship of the individual to the state goes through the sect
to which each individual belongs.
Malik asked: Is a Christian Arab possible? Is a Christian
Arab culture possible? His question is more relevant today
than at any other time. Arab nationalism has already suggested
that Arabism is an inclusive worldview, with the Arab Christian
culture one of the pillars of Arabism. Today Arabism is on the
retreat and political Islam has become the hegemonic culture.
The question of whether a Christian Arab culture is possible is
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21
Essays & Features
still undecided in modern Arab history, until secular democratic
societies are in place.
For the last 30 years, Arab and Muslim intellectuals, though
from different points of view, have been studying and reflecting
on their own intellectual heritage, or al-turath. The works of
Husayn Murruwah, Adonis, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Hassan
Hanafi, Muhammad Abd al-Jabiri, have dealt extensively with
such topics. Malik engaged briefly in this debate. In his “Al
Muqaddamah,” he argues, “A fundamental existential
intellectual political social revolution is needed; a revolution
which organically enters us into the authentic living human
tradition (turath),” which for Malik is none other than the
Western tradition.
For Malik, the purpose of life is to enter into a dialogue
with “the leaders of thought” and spirit. He described that in
order to be able to enter into such dialogue, one must be a part
of “the continuous living tradition.” The artificial and superficial
dichotomy between “us and them” is clearly an obstacle to such
condition of existence does not exist” in our societies. Malik
was not only asking Arab intellectuals to liberate themselves
from the notion of dichotomy between us and them, an approach
which has been shared and advocated by many modern Arab
critical thinkers, but he was asking Arab intellectuals to give up
their own history, culture, and values for a higher tradition, the
“Graeco-Roman-Judaeo-Christian tradition,” which is “the
greatest and deepest and truest living historical fact in existence,”
and every other tradition, be it the Chinese or the Indian or the
Muslim, lies outside the true tradition. It would not be unfair to
say that Arab-Islamic philosophical and logical tradition was
outside the philosophical curiosity and interest of Malik.
Immediately after he became the Lebanese ambassador to
the United Nations, and after witnessing the failure of Arab
diplomacy at the UN, Malik, the bright young diplomat, shifted
his focus from the question of Palestine to the notion of human
rights. His efforts materialized in an historic document, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His participation in the
Israel, for Malik, was neither politically nor intellectually an entity with which
the Lebanese Christians could build an alliance....They [Malik, Chiha and al-Hajj]
felt the outcome of these projects would be the disappearance of Lebanon as an
independent state and consequently the marginalization of the role of the Christians
of Lebanon in a larger political entity dominated by a Muslim majority.
dialogue, particularly when the “leaders of thought” belong to
“them.” Ultimately in the eyes of phenomenologist Malik, as
well as on the deepest existential level, “We are them and they
are us.” In order to meet the challenge, answer the questions,
enter the living tradition, and reach the same existential cultural
level – in all its dimensions, be they political, economic, and
spiritual– intellectual courage is required, according to Malik.
Western achievement, for Malik, represents the ultimate
achievement of human beings. In his “A Christian Critique of
University,” Malik wrote that “Western civilization is defined
by total fearlessness of and openness to the truth. To the extent
this civilization begins to harbor reservations about this
fearlessness and this openness, it ceases to be itself, i.e., Western;
and to the extent a society, any society, has developed
fearlessness of and openness to the truth, it has become
Westernized.” Malik’s admiration of Western civilization was
the dominant theme in most of his philosophical, political, and
religious speeches.
To equate modernization with Westernization does not
exactly convey Malik’s beliefs; where for him existence means
being Western and, consequently, a part of history. For Malik, I
exist as long as I am in a dialogue with the “leaders of thought,”
a part of the “continuous living tradition, and as long as truth is
my ultimate goal.” Taken to its extreme, he argued that “the
22
debate not only highlighted the philosophical dimension of the
subject, but prepared Malik to chair the Commission on Human
Rights in 1951, upon the retirement of Eleanor Roosevelt. In
one of Malik’s speeches, he reflected on this period stating:
“Where do they [human rights] come from? What is their
metaphysical status? Are they conferred upon me by some
external visible agency, such as my state or parliament or the
United Nations, so that visible power can conceivably one day
withdraw them from me at will, without violating a higher law.
Or do they belong to my essence?” Sharing John Locke’s
approach, Malik agrees that what belongs to one’s essence can’t
be taken away by any governmental institutions, for one is born
with certain inalienable rights.
Malik shared the Lockeian point of view regarding the
existence of natural law, and as a result the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights lies in a broader philosophical approach. This
approach gives precedence to the existence of natural rights
which constitute a part of our essence, and are neither given to
us by any government, parliament, or even the United Nations,
nor are subject to be taken from us by any governmental agency.
“Whoever values man and his individual freedom above
everything else cannot fail to find in the present declaration a
potent ideological weapon. If wielded in complete good will,
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
sincerity and truth, this weapon can prove most significant in
the history of the spirit,” Malik wrote.
The Charles Malik Foundation published a book edited by
Rafiq Maalouf, Habib Malik, and George Sabra, based on Malik’s
unpublished diaries, which summarized the debate in the United
Nations among various diplomats whose intellectual
backgrounds and worldviews were different. While the Soviet
ambassador to the United Nations was trying, based on his Marxist
approach, to include social rights in the declaration, Malik
strongly opposed these ideas, arguing that the rights of the
individual were at stake. He argued that throughout history the
state has defended itself at the expense of individual freedom,
but who is going to defend the rights of the individual human
being? Even the person closest to Malik, Rene Cassin, the French
representative to the United Nations, attempted to find a middle
ground between Malik and the Soviet delegate to the United
Nations. Rene Cassin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1968 as recognition for his contributions in drafting the
declaration. But Malik, the rapporteur of the UN Commission
on Human Rights, the president of the UN Economic and Social
Council, the author of the preamble – a philosophical
introduction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights –
and participant in shaping many of the articles in the declaration,
never received such recognition.
Malik’s theoretical and practical contribution to the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and his commitment to
freedom do not reflect his political agenda in Lebanon and
AL JADID FALL 2004
elsewhere. In the parliamentary election in Lebanon in 1957,
during the presidency of Camille Chamoun, Malik was elected
as a deputy from the al-Koura district after the government forced
the main opposition candidate to withdraw his candidacy. Malik
was not only silent but actually supportive of the government
action by cracking down on the opposition.
Most of Malik’s writings were speeches, lectures, and
reflections on either philosophical/theological issues or world
affairs. He was a devout voice of the Christian right – revealing
a clear anti-Communist tone – in the United States even before
the term entered the political discourse during the presidency of
Ronald Reagan.
Twenty years after the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights negotiations he reflected, “A quarter of century ago I was
closer to the idealist approach, and today I am closer to practical
reality… I was extremely naive, and I became more
sophisticated… I used to attribute the outcome of events to
political factors as well as international balance of power, and I
have become more aware that the social and economic issues
are no less important than political factors…. An important
special development in my thinking with regard to Marxism
had taken place… [in which] I started recognizing the
importance of Marx regarding the social economic awakening,
not only in the Marxist states but also in the world.”
www.ALJADID.com
Continued on page 27
23
Essays & Features
From Harem to Civil
Society: The Journey
of Fatima Mernissi
BY Y
ASSIN ADNAN
YASSIN
For some years, Fatima Mernissi has remained absent from
the limelight. While she has written books that have shaken
both Arab and Western opinion for two decades, she now devotes
most of her time to working in faraway places, on the margins
that have always formed the basis of her research. Has the
Moroccan writer and world figure changed? Or has she tired of
honor ceremonies and the role of the feminist activist at seminars
and conferences? Regardless of the reasons, the key point is that
she has resumed her field research, which forms the basis of her
views and justifies her endeavors.
In her relatively recent book, “Scheherazade Goes West,”
(reviewed in Al Jadid, Vol. 8, no. 41. ) whose Arabic translation
bears the title “The European Harem,” Fatima Mernissi reveals
to the West its own special brand of the harem, one that does not
differ much in essence from its Eastern counterpart. Muslim
males, for instance, assert their dominion by isolating women
within closed environments, forbidding them to enter into the
public domain. Western males, on the other hand, brandish time
as a weapon in the faces of women, placing them under the
sword-blade of eternal youth. Either they retain the freshness of
youth, and so retain their important role as centerpieces, or they
allow the wrinkles of middle age to overtake their features and
are cruelly relegated to the darkest recesses of forgotten shelves.
In this book, Mernissi has once again taken up her
courageous endeavors. She catches her Western readers off guard
and comes at them from a direction they don’t expect. She has
already won their applause for her book, “The Political Harem,”
a work in which she severely anatomizes masculine constructs
in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
However, unlike her heroine Scheherazade, Mernissi does
not head out to crisscross the West. In a statement published on
the Internet a few years ago, she announced that she would not
go to the West at all through the year 2002. She apologized up
front for her inability to accept any invitations to seminars or
conferences. They would force her to spend most of her time
traveling in airplanes and such heights, she declared, were not
suitable for a woman whose true profession is to observe the
developments in her society up close. This year, Mernissi has
been even clearer, publishing on her web site:
One reason I do not answer last minute invitations is that most
of the letters from those who contact me reveal that they have
no idea about my current research focus: the impact of the
satellite TV on the Arab world. The other reason is that I practice
24
Fatima Mernissi
tadbir (long-term self-governance planning), a discipline I was
taught in my Koranic school in Fez, developed by Ibn Baja,
known in the West as Avempace (a 12th century Andalusian
scholar who was born in the Spanish city of Zaragosa and died
in Fez in 1138 A.D.). And tadbir implies that you never embark
on last minute opportunistic adventures. Tadbir means that
you stick to working with the few selected local and international
partners who are focused on the same issues, read your
publications and help you advance by providing criticism and
logistic support.
In the Arab East, Mernissi’s readers have wondered about
the reason for her sudden absence and uncustomary silence.
Perhaps they were unaware that this Moroccan social scientist,
famous since the early 1980s for her courageous preoccupation
with the position of women, has somewhat changed her emphasis
and shifted away from an exclusive concern with women’s issues.
She has chosen, instead, to look toward the South in search
of a civil society that is still in the process of formation. As
Mernissi explains, “I am not a militant feminist who can be
preoccupied with women only.” Rather, she adds, “I have
embarked upon studying the dynamism of civil society because
it is a space that does not place women in opposition to men, but
instead allows them to work together in order to undertake
remarkable endeavors. If politics cuts down and marginalizes
women, civil work redeems their worth through involving them
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
in its dynamism.
Civil society is my
new horizon. For
this
reason,
whenever anyone
contacts me to talk
with me as an official
spokesperson for
Moroccan or Arab women, I tell them to seek others. We have
excellent activists who work for women’s causes, but our news
media only seek the stars. As for me, I do not wish to play that
role.”
No doubt there are more serious roles awaiting Fatima
Mernissi. For years, she has supervised writing workshops that
have benefited many students, professors, women, and ordinary
folk. The workshops have resulted in daring collections,
including books on rape and sexual molestation. In these
volumes, the victims have been able to speak out directly for
themselves without the need for intermediaries. Several political
prisoners have joined Mernissi’s workshops immediately after
their release. Some of the amazing testimonies and stories they
have written include “The Story of Darkness” by Fatima alBiyeh, “We Have Stolen Laughter” by Aziz al-Wadia, “Never
Without My Son” by Nour al-Din al-Saoudi, and “The Delicacy
of Rock” by Abd al-Latif Zraikem. In addition, many students,
teachers, and activists who work to promote tourism have
gathered around Mernissi in the small desert city of Zagora,
located more than 700 kilometers from Rabat, where Mernissi
organized a workshop for collecting works to form a book aimed
at ordinary readers that would serve as a cultural tour guide of
the area.
Areas that are far removed from the center are not an
accidental or occasional element in the intellectual path of
Mernissi, for all the subjects she has approached in her research
belong to the margin. In the early 1970s, she examined the
relationship between the sexes in Islamic society, culminating
in her doctoral dissertation on the sociology of the family in
1973. She researched the changes that the Moroccan family was
undergoing, particularly regarding mothers, widows, and
divorcees. These studies were followed by “Sexual Behavior in
an Arab-Islamic Environment” (1983) and “Western Women: A
Sociology Study of the Women of Western Morocco” (1985).
Her book, “Sex as Social Engineering” (1987), shed light in an
unprecedented manner on the subject of the most marginalized
of women such as maids, weavers, day workers, and villagers.
Mernissi has devoted herself to research, convinced that
new cultural modes are required before women can effectively
participate in national economics. Thus, in 1984, she helped to
spearhead the first collection of research regarding the position
of women and the family in Morocco. In addition, she launched
and personally guided a series called “Muqarabat”
(“Approaches”). Mernissi followed with another series called
“al-Mara’a wa al-mu’assassat” (“Woman and Institutions”),
overseen by her colleague and translator Fatima al-Zahra’ Zriwel.
Mernissi explains, “I am
not a militant feminist who
can be preoccupied with
women only....
AL JADID FALL 2004
As she delved into an examination of intellectual heritage,
Mernissi was careful to tie the liberation of women to ArabIslamic tradition. Thus she revisited the history of Muslim
women in the book “Sultanate Massiyate” (2001), which was
translated as “Forgotten Queens of Islam.” This book is regarded
as a serious attempt at reconsidering the hitherto-neglected
heritage of Arab women.
Perhaps the stories of the harem remain dearest to Fatima
Mernissi, even though today she considers the harem merely a
legend that the West clings to more than the Arab East.
Nonetheless, she did seem most excited when the hotel manager
who welcomed us in Zagora told her that he felt unlucky not to
live in the time of the harem. As she told the German television
crew from Z.D.F. that had accompanied her in her travels through
the south: “There’s a young man who longs for the time of the
harem. You should tape him. This is a chance that cannot be
overlooked!” AJ
Translated from the Arabic by Pauline Homsi Vinson
The Arabic version of the article appeared originally in the
Beirut-based Zawayya magazine.The English version of this
interview appears exclusively in Al Jadid with permission of
the author and the editor of Zawayya.
Maxime Rodinson
Continued from page 19
without following one thought in particular, he distinguished
lines of thought that could be called descriptive science and
theoretical science. Very early he developed a passion for the
first category. While writing his memoirs and trying to find a
meaning for his life, a title such as “I Wanted To Be” occurred to
him, because in his childhood he was jealous of the world of
culture and the bourgeoisie that he did not belong to. He fought
all his life to be among the intellectual elite of French society
rather than one of the masses, but he was always very careful
about honesty and did not take shortcuts. He felt that although
he accumulated lots of unnecessary knowledge, he wanted others
to be aware of the fact that he was not careless. Laughing about
himself, he admits that he wanted his name to be mentioned in
dictionaries. And indeed that has happened.
Rodinson felt he always was attracted by two contradictions:
activism and rationality. Activism was about improving the world
and fighting injustice. But he also knew that being a full time
activist would not allow him to continue serious studies or spend
time researching the etymology of “anemon,” for instance.
Looking backward on his life, he sensed that he had escaped
real dangers, and sought glory for a long period, without ever
being attracted to lies or even appearing to go in that direction.
He usually preferred the company of women, finding
communication easier especially when it came to feelings.
Ultimately, Maxime Rodinson considered himself a pacifist,
even though he had shown so much fanaticism while he belonged
to the Communist Party. AJ
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25
Essays & Features
Devastation of History
Looting Threatens Iraq’s Ancient Sites
By JUDITH GABRIEL
The widespread
looting of Iraq’s
archaeological sites,
particularly
the
Sumerian and Old
Babylonian,
is
threatening
to
destroy the rich
remains of the “cradle
of civilization” that
is Mesopotamia.
Crater-filled
landscapes are dotted
with
shattered
pottery and broken
bricks, and ancient
ziggurats are being
destroyed in the
Joanne Far Farchakh Bajjaly (Photo by Judith search for marketable
Gabriel)
artifacts.
“The scale of
looting doesn’t exist everywhere else in the world,” according
to an archaeologist and journalist who has been covering the
situation in Iraq. Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly, who holds a
bachelor’s degree in art and archaeology and a master’s in
journalism from the Lebanese University in Beirut, is the Middle
East correspondent for the French magazine Archaeologia, her
reports have appeared in Archaeology Magazine and in
publications in Beirut and Paris. She recently completed a
speaking tour in the U.S., organized by American Academic
Research Institute in Iraq, and giving talks at UC Berkeley,
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and the
University of Chicago.
Speaking in February at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles,
under the auspices of the Getty Conservation Institute, she noted
how the world had turned its attention to the looting of Iraqi
museums in 2003. But another “cultural tragedy” has been
taking place without much notice. Persistent looting and
destruction have occurred at Iraq’s archaeological sites in what
Bajjaly terms “the massacre of Mesopotamia.”
Her investigative reporting has documented how entire
ancient cities that lay buried in the Iraqi countryside have been
systematically plundered of their marketable artifacts, such as
inscribed tablets, small sculptures and pottery. More than 100
Sumerian cities have been destroyed by the looters since the
beginning of the war, she noted, saying the sites were so pock
marked with holes and trenches dug by looters that they looked
like “moonscapes.”
The region of Mesopotamia lay between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers. Often termed the “cradle of civilization,” the
area was home to the storied civilizations of Assyria, Babylon,
Sumer and Ur. “With over 10,000 archaeological sites still buried,
humanity may just be witnessing the destruction of the cradle –
the massacre of Mesopotamia,” said Bajjaly. The north is
threatened also, with ancient reliefs taken from the walls of ruins
Babylon
26
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(Photo by Judith Gabriel)
AL JADID FALL 2004
Essays & Features
Reconstructed Babylon
(Photo by Judith Gabriel)
in the city of Nineveh.
Looting has become a scourge from the north to the south,
she said. “Looters, mainly farmers or jobless Iraqis of all ages,
have destroyed the monuments of their own ancestors, erasing
their own history in their tireless search for artifacts,” she said.
With no other means of earning a living, the Iraqi peasant lives
on subsistence agriculture, with no electricity, no nearby water.
There is no development, she said, and no jobs. “It’s illegal to be
a looter, but it will support you. It’s their only income. They
have become people with no job, no future. Since the war, no
one, no authority has thought of going there to provide people
with the basic, which is water. Looting seems like the only
alternative for these peasants,” Bajjaly said. “They leave their
homes and villages seeking financial rewards. Poverty, ignorance
and greed force them to become looters and tomb raiders. The
artifacts they find – a cylinder seal, a sculpture or a cuneiform
tablet – can bring in desperately sought hard cash. They work
all day long hoping to find an artifact that they can sell to the
dealer for a mere few dollars. It is tough, dangerous work for bad
pay.”
But the looters themselves are not the main culprits. “If the
looters are just simple peasants, the dealers in stolen antiquities
are far more sophisticated. Professional smugglers, they are
connected to the shadowy ring that is the international
antiquities mafia and black market collectors. There’s never a
shortage of funds since demand for Mesopotamian artifacts is
constantly high. Private collectors all around the world adore
Sumerian artifacts because they go back to the beginning of
civilization and in order to possess such items they are ready to
pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of which intensifies
the looting. To cover their backs, local dealers buy the protection
of the big clans.”
Some of these dealers are now threatening the life of every
archaeologist in Iraq, Bajjaly said. Already several have been
killed, and their families threatened. “We are in danger every
time we go on a tour to an archaeological site. A couple of weeks
ago, while on site, six vehicles surrounded our cars and we were
shot at. After that, we were assured that the next time, we would
be killed.”
Nothing seems to stop the plunder, although Bajjaly said
AL JADID FALL 2004
there had been a temporary drop in the looting when senior
Shiite cleric Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa against looting,
prompting some Iraqis to turn in stolen goods to mosques. She
said there is hope that the issue will be one of Sistani’s priorities
as the party he supports moves into power. “The State Board of
Antiquities is functioning,” she said, “ But they need protection”
She pointed to an earlier era, when cultural heritage and
archaeology in Iraq were very well protected. “In the 80s, the
State Board of Antiquities of Iraq was among the best, if not the
best, in the Arab world,” she said.
She noted that the Getty Conservation Institute is working
to help protect endangered cultural and archaeological sites,
working with Iraq’s Ministry of Culture and State Board of
Antiquities and Heritage. The Conservation Initiative includes
training Iraqi students and professionals to use information
technology to map the country’s thousands of threatened and
damaged sites.
The coalition forces are not doing anything to stop the
looting and the illicit trade. “No one can stop them. Although the
Coalition forces are well aware of what is going on, no real effort
is being made to stop the looting. The Italian Carabinieri (soldiers)
are the only force that worked on this issue for a few months.”
In fact, the very presence of the coalition forces has brought
irreparable damage to archaeological treasure. Bajjaly pointed
to a recent report on the destruction in Babylon issued by John
Curtis, head of the Department of the Ancient Near East at the
British Museum, citing damage to the Ishtar Gate, which was
originally built in the 6th century BC by Nebuchadnezzar II. The
historical city of Babylon, which was heavily rebuilt under
Saddam Hussein, was transformed into a military base within
days of the coalition invasion. Archaeological grounds in parts
of the site were leveled to build a landing zone for helicopters.
Military trench-digging and bulldozing have demolished
ancient villages.
Although there are laws that prevent the sale or purchase of
historic artifacts, the problem is complex, with porous borders
and unscrupulous dealers and buyers. Under the UNESCO
Convention, other countries will return artifacts, but only if can
be proved where they came from. “Nothing will go back to Iraq
again from south,” she said.“Every artifact now on display in
the museum or the galleries now has blood on it in one way or
another. And Iraq is just one example,” she said, adding that the
loss is a universal one. “This is not Iraq’s heritage. This is
mankind’s heritage they’re talking about.” AJ
Charles Malik
Continued from page 23
By the early 1970s, a shift in his thinking was taking place;
he was in a process of rethinking some of his intellectual
positions. Unfortunately, the civil war came as a sad chapter in
Lebanese history, and Malik’s response was grounded in his
sectarian instinct. He was neither a voice of reconciliation, nor
on the side of those who believed that a secular, democratic
Arab Lebanon was the only viable direction for overcoming the
seeds of civil war. AJ
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27
Interviews
Beyond Morocco’s Literary Divide:
Interview with Leila Abouzeid
BY P
AMELA NICE
PAMELA
I spoke with Leila Abouzeid in her apartment in Agdal, a
beautiful section of Rabat. She is a diminutive woman, perhaps
not even 5 feet tall, but was colorfully dressed and expressed
herself with intensity. She is now working on a collection of
short stories, based on a collection published already in Beirut
in Arabic, to be published in English by the University of Texas
Press under the editing of Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. Abouzeid
studied under Fernea at the University of Texas in Austin for two
years, and they have continued a close personal and professional
relationship since then.
We first spoke about the issue of language among Moroccan
writers. According to Abouzeid, those who choose to write in
French (the Francophone writers) and those who write in Arabic
are split into sharply divided camps, as are the intellectuals and
literary critics who support each group. “They don’t even try to
interact,” she said. “They don’t read each other’s books.”
Abouzeid herself doesn’t understand why Moroccan writers
would still choose to write in French. “Under colonialism, writers
had no choice – they were taught in French, schooled in French.
But still they tried to express their Moroccan culture – their way
of thinking and being was Moroccan. French was and still is a
foreign language.
“When I use French or English, it is to communicate with
other cultures, as I am doing with you now. I must express myself
in the language I learned from my mother – that is why it is
called the ‘mother tongue.’ French is not my mother tongue – I
learned it in books, in school. Imagine Hemingway or Steinbeck
or Faulkner writing in German or French!”
There is considerable discussion in some Moroccan literary
circles about this issue. The Moroccan vernacular, or Darija, is
only used in Moroccan plays, films, and some television shows.
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the lingua franca of the Arabic
world, the written form of the language used in the media and
official discourse, which enables those in one Arab country to
be understood in another. In every Arab country, the literature of
the 20th century has been written primarily in MSA.
There are movements in some countries, however, such as
Egypt and Morocco, to use the colloquial form in fiction and
poetry. In Morocco, a written form of Moroccan Arabic is being
developed, Middle Moroccan Arabic, which would fuse some
aspects of MSA and the vernacular. This process has been
controversial since it is breaking with notions of appropriate
discourse for Arabic literature. I asked Abouzeid if she wrote her
books in MSA or in the colloquial Moroccan dialect. Abouzeid
explained that she writes primarily in MSA. “I can’t express
myself in the vernacular,” she said. “I never give talks in
vernacular. If we wrote in the vernacular, neither Moroccans nor
28
Leila Abouzeid
other Arabs would be able to read it. It’s not a written language,
so the reader wouldn’t be used to vernacular in print.
“Poets might recite in the vernacular because it’s a spoken
language; but there was a Moroccan poet who published a book
of poems in the vernacular, and no one would buy it. So I write
in Modern Standard Arabic except when I cannot translate an
expression into it. Then I keep it in the vernacular – but only in
dialogue. And then I must make a footnote for Arab readers who
are not Moroccan. I try to avoid the vernacular, except for maybe
one or two percent of my writing.”
Moroccan writers face the challenge of a miniscule reading
public. “If the literacy rate of Morocco is 50 per cent, then with
a population of 30 million, you would think there might be a
potential readership of 15 million,” said Abouzeid. “However,
when a book is published in Morocco, the first – and usually
last – printing is only 1,000 copies.”
Why is the readership so small? Abouzeid dismissed the
economic argument – that most Moroccans cannot afford to
buy books. “‘Year of the Elephant’ only costs 30 dirhams (about
$3.75 in U.S. dollars). Everyone smokes at least a pack of
cigarettes a day. If they can afford this habit, they could buy
books instead. Most of the people who could read books are
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Interviews
sitting in cafes talking nonsense. We have a saying here: ‘Between
one cafe and the next, there is another cafe.’ We have an oral
culture, an oral tradition, and we see it here. People do not read.
They sit and drink
coffee or tea and talk.
Also, many of those
who are now literate
grew up in homes
where neither parent
was literate, so there
wasn’t the habit of
reading, or books in
the home.”
In spite of this,
Abouzeid has found a
reading public for her
books. “I have been
lucky to have four
editions of ‘Year of the
Elephant,’ with 2000 copies printed each time.” A further problem
is that Moroccan publishers do not export their books to other
Arab countries. They say they can’t compete with the Egyptian
and Lebanese publishers, and high customs and transportation
costs. Additionally, publishers in other countries, such as Egypt,
want foreign writers to pay them for publishing their works.
Thus Abouzeid has found it difficult to expand her audience to
other Arab countries, though she has recently found a Lebanese
publisher who will make this possible.
Abouzeid, like every Arab writer, wants to reach a wide
Arab readership while expressing her own culture and mining
that culture for her stories. What is it that makes the Moroccan
culture distinctive to her? “Islam and the Arab and Berber
cultures,” she said succinctly, “and our traditions.” She writes
eloquently of what Leila Ahmed has termed “women’s Islam” –
the Islam of the heart that is taught by mothers in the home and
is part of the simplest actions of everyday life. This type of Islam
figures prominently in “Year of the Elephant,” whose title refers
to a miraculous event in the Quran.
“Elephant” tells the story of a woman who experiences a
traumatic divorce from her nationalist husband after
independence, a situation that Abouzeid said was very common
in Morocco at that time. Men who had worked for the nationalist
cause were often socialists; their wives were more religious, and
because of that, more traditional. When the nationalists gained
power, they often dropped their first wives in favor of more
modern women – who spoke French, smoked cigarettes, and
didn’t eat with their fingers. It is the spiritual journey of this
divorced woman that interests Abouzeid. The scenes with the
local sheikh show how the protagonist comes to terms with her
catastrophe through a spiritual understanding.
“For me, personally, faith is very important,” she said. “In
life, there must be a balance between the body and the spirit.
The Prophet Mohammed said, ‘You should work in this life as
though you will live forever, and work for the afterlife as though
you were to die tomorrow.’” AJ
Moroccan writers face
the challenge of a
miniscule reading
public. “...when a book
is published in Morocco,
it has only 1,000 copies
in its first printing,
which is usually its
last.”
AL JADID FALL 2004
Samir Kassir
The Knight who
Came Home to be Slain
BY PIERRE ABISAAB
Samir Kassir, 45, outspoken journalist, opponent of the Syrian
presence in Lebanon, academic and noted author was killed on
June 2, by a bomb planted in his car on a Beirut street. In this essay,
Pierre Abisaab pays tribute to a colleague and friend.
Like Ulysses sailing back to Ithaca, Samir Kassir returned
to Lebanon after a long Parisian exile. Little did he know his life
would be taken in one fell swoop; that, like the ancient Greek
heroes, he was approaching a tragic end.
How could an intellectual like you leave your ivory tower
in Paris, Samir? How did you manage to live in Beirut, a city in
search of its soul, extricating itself from an exhausting war which
had destroyed its structures, blurred its memory and trapped its
elite in a maze of illusions and concessions? At the time, you
were smiling as if you knew there was a role you wanted to play
there, a position for your ambitions and, I confess, you deserved
such a role more than anyone else of your generation, stuck
between two epochs.
Upon your return, you fought the old political structures
dominated by different forces, like Don Quixote with his
windmills. Those same political structures would soon catch up
with you in Beirut. And so you died in the beloved city as had
Maroun Baghdadi, Ralph Rizk-Allah and so many others, yet
your death was particular: you died like a Samurai.
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Continued on page 51
29
Films
Fairuz
Lebanese United
by Voice of Fairuz
We Loved Each Other So Much
Directed by Jack Janssen
First Run/Icarus Films, 80 minutes, 2003
BY BRIGITTE CALAND
“We Loved Each Other So Much,” a documentary directed
by Jack Janssen and produced by Pieter Van Huystee, features
the unconditional love of the Lebanese population for Fairuz,
one of the most popular singers of the Middle East and a
Lebanese emblem. They all love Fairuz, both for her unique
voice and the words she sings. Her melodies stir up deep
emotions. Better than anyone else, she knows how to touch
hearts. There is no frontier to love, despair, or freedom. She
crosses the borders from one community to another by drawing
on these common themes. On stage, she is still, almost immobile,
and her pure voice leads the audience directly to heaven.
30
Fairuz is the favorite singer of many generations. Pretty
women, fishermen, older men drinking coffee and smoking water
pipes on the Corniche, the owner of a small music store, a
commentator for the Lebanese Radio Company: they all admire
her, listen to her, and in a way, live with her. She accompanies
them through their days, evenings, and special moments of their
lives. They all remember stories with her, can sing her songs,
follow her life, and share her feeling of belonging to Lebanon.
Fairuz sings “your name, my love, will remain, while mine
will fade away” over images of Beirut. Most of her songs are
love songs – love for her country. She thus became the symbol
of resistance for everyone, of love for a man, and commitment to
certain values.
The documentary is a visit to different communities and
different atmospheres. Men who fought during the Lebanese
civil war talk about the different reasons they enrolled in various
militias, but all of them listened to Fairuz and feel she represents
values that they relate to. They all agree on how much nicer and
easier life was before the war started. People were more attentive
to others, a smile was genuine and not for a commercial purpose.
A taxi-driver brings up the challenging economic situation: the
high prices and low wages, the difficulty of raising children,
sending them to school, how hard it is to make a living even
when working 20 hours a day. Women who did not fight but
faced major traumas tell the stories of relatives wounded and
dying in front of them. The images show Beirut today, mostly
reconstructed, but also some of the buildings that still show the
impact of bullets, the city crowded and noisy. Fairuz is the link
between the past and the present, between different peoples and
different religions – she is the unifier.
Hala, an elegant lady, says everyone identifies with Fairuz’s
songs: “She makes you believe that it is really happening in
your life.” She listens to Fairuz’s songs even while working out.
“We love Fairuz more than her husband loves her,” admits a man
playing backgammon and smoking a water pipe in a café
downtown. On this film tour inside Lebanese diversity, only a
Palestinian doctor, who did not carry weapons during the war
and who decided to help his community after it ended, did not
talk about Fairuz. After listening to his father talking about
exile and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, he mentions today’s
situation and asks at the end of the interview, “And now, do you
want me to talk about Fairuz?”
An Armenian photographer with a heavy accent shares his
love of Fairuz, how he always listens to her, and recalls a particular
night in Baalbek during the Summer Festival years ago. Heavy
clouds covered the city and its Roman ruins. Fairuz was getting
ready for a performance and sang with her magical voice to the
moon, “Show up, moon.” Suddenly, the sky opened up and a
bright moon appeared and shined on Baalbek “She talks to the
moon,” the photographer says. “She talks to God.”
A woman tells about her meeting with Fairuz during the
festival as a young girl. She and three other girls were selected
to dance for her and they asked her to sing “Reproaches,” a hit
then. She did. We hear the song over the rebuilt section of
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Films
downtown Beirut. Another symbol: there it stands, in spite of it
all, beautifully reconstructed and organized.
“There is God…and after God, Fairuz,” the woman says. A
young Muslim man says, “We listened to her everywhere. We
considered her a nationalist. She was above all religions, never
talked about them. She was close
to us as leftists and did not leave
Lebanon during the war. She
sang about the war, the
destruction, and predicted that
the people of Lebanon will
remain. I believed it and fought
for the cause.” And in the Syrian
jail of Mezze, a young medical
student asked to listen to Fairuz
after being tortured, as soon as
he was freed from the torture
room.
As a child, I remember Fairuz
visiting our house in Kaslik, and
singing for my grandfather a few
months before his death. She was
a young woman, maybe just a
teenager, but she had the grace,
the shyness, and the elegance that remained with her throughout
her career. She became the symbol of an entire country, a nation
which identifies with her songs whether she interprets love, exile,
despair, happiness, or melancholy. At the first note of any of her
melodies, all of us listen, silent and respectful, to a voice full of
emotions that communicates better than anything else of
belonging to a culture and to values that will hopefully survive.
“We Loved Each Other So Much” offers many wonderful
moments, both light and intense. Fairuz’s songs seem to make
the difficult situation of the Middle East easier for everyone. In
this documentary, they provide great pleasure for almost two
hours. The editing, the sound track, and a mobile camera bring
to us the images of noisy, crowded, beloved Beirut, and fly us to
an old city with its magic and hospitality. AJ
Her melodies
stir up deep
emotions. Better
than anyone else,
she knows how to
touch hearts.
There is no
frontier to love,
despair, or
freedom.
‘Return to Kandahar,’ a Personal
Journey of Memory
Return to Kandahar
By Nelofer Pazira
Bullfrog Films, 2003, 65 min.
BY SARA HAHN
Filmmaker Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan-Canadian journalist
and filmmaker, returns to her home country of Afghanistan in
“Return to Kandahar,” a documentary-style short film and a
follow-up to her fictional work “Kandahar.”
“Return to Kandahar” is a personal journey for Pazira, who
comes to Afghanistan to find a lost friend but also to “find what
AL JADID FALL 2004
From “The Return to Kandahar” (Courtesy of Bullfrog Films)
happened to my past and the country I left behind.” Thirteen
years after Pazira left the country, she returns in the summer of
2002 to re-visit old memories. Throughout the film, Pazira relates
her contempt for what her country has become, ruled by former
mujahadin. She laments the disintegration of Kabul (“it looks
so rotten,” she says of her home). “Oh my God” is a popular
refrain as Pazira witnesses contemporary Afghanistan.
Pazira is most adept when she directs the film’s attention
from the war-induced destruction of Afghanistan to her search
for her friend, Dyana. In Mazar-e-Sharif, home to hundreds of
thousands of refugees from Kabul, Pazira meets with warlords in
an attempt to locate Dyana and conducts poignant interviews
with burqa-clad women who relate their suffering at the hands
of the mujahadin.
“Return to Kandahar” enables a Western audience to access
the streets of Afghanistan, thanks to Pazira’s savvy and dexterity
within her country. Pazira is a lens for the viewer, but in “Return
to Kandahar,” it is evident that the camera is a contentious issue,
becoming a foreign gaze upon Afghans. In the film’s most unique
and telling scene, Pazira is confronted by males at a university
after interviewing a number of female students. The men ask
Pazira if she has any shame, filming women: “Filming Afghan
girls for foreign TV is against our culture. You don’t take this
into consideration!” As one student tries to cover the camera
lens with his hand and then a book, Pazira defends her actions,
shouting back that the matter is the women’s decision and not
the men’s.
The message of “Return to Kandahar” is mixed: On one
hand it relates the atrocities committed by the Taliban, but it
does not address how the American-led invasion of Afghanistan
after September 11 has impacted the country. Instead, Pazira
directs her camera’s gaze towards the lingering presence of the
mujahadin. Weaving the reality she sees on the ground, the
accounts from women on the street, and the fate of Dyana in the
hands of the Taliban, Pazira’s vision of Afghanistan exposes her
own doubts for her country’s future. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
31
Films
New Documentaries Examine
Consequences of ‘War on Terror’
“While ‘Breaking the Silence’ presents a hard edged exposé of the war in Afghanistan
and Iraq, ‘Daily Baghdad’ humanizes the Iraqi people from the other Ground Zero.”
Breaking the Silence, Truth and Lies in the War on
Terror, a Special Report by John Pilger
Directed by Steve Connelly and John Pilger.
Bullfrog Films, 51minutes, 2003
Daily Baghdad
By Romaine Goupil. (2004)
First Run/Icarus Films, 100 minutes, 2004
B Y LLYNNE
YNNE R
OGERS
ROGERS
Two recent foreign documentaries place America’s war on
terror in the context of American foreign policy and record the
repercussions of that war on an Iraqi family. Australian filmmaker
John Pilger, whose films have covered Vietnam, Cambodia,
Burma as well as the Middle East, winning numerous awards,
turns his penetrating lens onto the war in Afghanistan and Iraq
in his latest effort, “Breaking the Silence, Truth and Lies on the
War on Terror.” In a politically unapologetic and relentless style,
the film begins with graphic photos of wounded Iraqi civilians
and the rubble of Afghanistan juxtaposed to the self-righteous
Bush and Blair rhetoric on the “noble war against evil.”
Switching between New York City and Afghanistan, the
filmmaker begins to address his questions. “What are the real
aims of this war?” and “Who are the real terrorists?” In response,
the viewer meets Orifa, a young Afghan woman whose “modest”
home was hit by a 500 pound American bomb, killing her six
children, her husband and another family member. Tearfully
sharing family photos, she describes collecting the body parts
of her loved ones as a result of “Operation Enduring Freedom.”
Back in New York, Pilger speaks with Rita Laser, whose
brother died in 9/11 while attempting to save his wheelchair
bound friend. Still grieving, Rita expresses anger over the
political use of her brother’s death to justify aggression as she
travels to Kabul to meet with Orifa. Piercing the verbosity over
the economic development aid and the liberation of women in
Afghanistan, Pilger’s camera records the devastation of living
conditions and the continued violence against women. Delving
into America’s “secret history” of 72 violent political foreign
interventions since 1945, Pilger interviews a series of American
politicians, military personnel, human rights activists and a
former CIA analyst. Despite the stammering and sputtering of
Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense, and Condoleezza
32
Courtesy of First/RunIcarus Films
Rice’s mechanically poised discrepancies, the sincere and
humble Rita proposes the “God on our side” similarities between
Al Qaeda and Bush policy. In conclusion, Pilger draws an epic
struggle between the Washington regime and public opinion,
warning that silence “assures the victory of Washington.”
The second documentary, “Daily Baghdad” by French
filmmaker, actor and political activist, Romain Goupil, provides
a gentler look at the war on terrorism. Divided into four parts,
the film records the everyday life of an extended Baghdad family
as each day focuses on one family member. The film begins on a
February morning at 6:30 a.m. as Abbas, the father, prepares for
work as a delivery man; the viewer can almost feel the
uncomfortable lack of heat. In a subtle irony, Abbas delivers
modern electrical appliances as his own city and family cope
with the absence of electricity. The film captures the morning
faces of Iraqi men as they joke with one another on the street and
lament the lack of employment opportunities. The presence of
the camera provides an opening for their self-depreciating humor,
and the film’s structure of following a delivery man allows the
excursions into the varied residential and commercial sections
of Baghdad. Driving through the poverty-stricken South, Abbas,
a member of Saddam’s military for 25 years, points out the legacy
of Saddam’s persecution of the Iraqi Shiites. Fighting his
fatalistic despair at his inability to envision a solution, Abbas
concludes, “It’s just lies and lies. It’s a country built on lies.”
Woven throughout the shots of bombed out cars and bullet
ridden apartment buildings, the domestic scenes of reviewing
the children’s report cards and the wife’s nagging concerns over
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Films
finances, the film quietly
underscores the similar
hopes of Iraqi families with
their Western counterparts.
The second day of
filming features the daily
routine of Yassmine, Abbas’
wife, as she readies the
children for school, washes
the family clothes by hand
in the sink, goes to the
market and cooks the timeconsuming meals. She
breaks from her financial
woes with a visit to her
sister, whose husband was
executed by Saddam. The
From “Breaking the Silence” (Courtesy
younger sister, Nahla of Bullfrog Films)
arrives with her husband
Hilmi, a dapper and engaging journalist for An Nahdah
(Renaissance), an independent paper financed by a politician.
The third part of the film chronicles the routine of this
optimistic two-income family as they shop for Western clothes
and go for ice cream. Unlike Abbas, Hilmi refuses to lose hope,
a sentiment later echoed by his wife over a few beers.
Nevertheless, American military patrols and Iraqi secret police
serve as a reminder of the tenuous political situation. In one
striking moment while Romaine and Hilmi are driving, they
chance by a Shiite parade, prompting Hilmi to recount his own
younger participation in the village. His fond remembrance
reconstructs the often demonized image of young men observing
a religious communal ritual.
The fourth day brings the camera into the grandfather’s
home as the family gathers for their niece’s wedding. Wearing
his traditional Arab garb, the grandfather proudly exclaims
“America saved us.” The wedding shows the family enjoying
themselves dancing as the opulent bride frets about her entrance
and complains about the uninvited children. The marital
celebration contrasts with the stark finality as the film runs full
circle closing with another morning in the family’s cramped
apartment. When Abbas announces that he’s quitting his job,
Yassmine seems unfazed as she faces another routine day without
electricity.
Both of these films would be appropriate for a Western
classroom to deepen the student’s understanding of Iraq and the
complicated realities of the war on terror. While “Breaking the
Silence” presents a hard edged exposé of the war in Afghanistan
and Iraq, “Daily Baghdad” humanizes the Iraqi people from the
other Ground Zero. AJ
Artists
YASSER GANEM (his works appear on pp. 4, 5, 7, 10, 15).
Born in Syria, Yasser Ganem is a painter and physician who
live in Paris since 2001. His art has been shown in both
individual and group exhibitions in Syria and France.
AL JADID FALL 2004
contributors
Continued from page 2
Behind Bars,” p. 9; “Riadh al-Turk: In and Out of Syrian Prison,”
p.13) is a Syrian author and critic. His articles and reviews appear
regularly in An Nahar Literary Supplement.
Greta Anderson (“When the Personal and the Political Meet, p.
43) works with the Arab Community Center for Economic and
Social Services (ACCESS) in Dearborn, MI. Anderson received
her Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Social History from Wayne
State University.
Carole Corm (“Disoriented Lebanon,” p.12) is a former researcher
for the New York Times Paris bureau who writes occasionaly for
publications on the Middle East.
Brigitte Caland (“Marxist, Rationalist, Orientalist: Remembering
the Many Facets of Maxime Rodinson,” p.17; “Lebanese United
by Voice of Fairuz,” p.30) is a Los Angeles and Paris-based
writer, translator and a contributor of this magazine. She translated
Edward Said’s “Out of Place” into French (“A Contre-Voie,”
published by Le Serpent a plumes (2002). Caland is currently
studying Hebrew and Semitic languages at UCLA.
Sara Hahn (“’Return to Kandahar,’ a Personal Journey of Memory,”
p.31; “A Search for Identity in Foreign Lands,” p.34) is a recent
graduate of the University of California, San Diego, where she
studied World Literature and Middle East Studies. She most
recently interned for the Middle East Institute in Washington,
DC, contributing to the Middle East Journal. Sara will move to
Mumbai, India this fall to work for Point of View, a women’s
advocacy organization.
Iskandar Mansour (“Charles Malik: Intellectual Legacy Marred
by Parochial Lebanese Politics,” p. 20), a Ph.D., teaches history,
Islamic studies at California State University, Pomona, and
U.C.L.A. Extension. His research interest includes modern Arab
thought and philosophy.
Shakir Mustafa (“A Vision of Arab-American Underworld in
‘Souls’,” p.37) is an assistant professor of Arabic literature at Boston
University.
Moayed al-Rawi (“The Illusion of Place,” a poem, p. 8), is a
prominent Iraqi author, essayist, poet who lives in Germany.
Lynne Rogers (“New Documentaries Examine Consequences of
‘War on Terror’,” p.32; “Tears in the Holy Land: Voices from Israel
and Palestine,” p.43) is a professor and author of many articles
on the Palestine question in professional journals and books.
Paul Sullivan (“Sharp Analysis, Unanswered Questions,” p.36)
www.ALJADID.com
Continued on page 46
33
Books
A Search for Identity in Foreign Lands
TRANSIT BEIRUT: NEW WRITING AND IMAGES
Malu Halasa and Roseanne Saad Khalaf, Editors
London: Saqi Books, 2004
PROJECT MISPLACED: THE RISE AND FALL OF SIMON
ORDOUBADI
Houman Mortazavi
Printup Graphics, 2004
BEYOND EAST AND WEST: SEVEN TRANSNATIONAL
ARTISTS
David O’Brien and David Prochaska
Krannert Art Museum
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004
BY SARA HAHN
In communities that are deconstructed by fluid identities in
transient lands, three books are searching for that one missing
ingredient of identity. We find a fictitious Iranian American
running for governor; seven artists re-imagining the East vs.
West binary; and a desecrated Beirut salvaging its losses. What
glue holds these worlds together? “Project Misplaced,” “Transit
Beirut,” and “Beyond East and West” share the quest to creatively
rebuild the self.
“Transit Beirut” is a multimedia mish-mash of short stories,
photographs, memoirs, even comic strips. It is also a unique
contribution to English-language publications on the Lebanese
civil war experience, which is too often reduced to bloody
accounts and political rants. Editors Malu Halasa and Roseanne
Saad Khalaf have compiled an occasionally flashy, always
subjective book that makes the Beiruti search for reconstruction
accessible, through art and translated words, to the Anglophone
reader. The “suspended betweenness” of the Lebanese
experience, whether lived in Beirut or abroad, is at the root of
this unique project.
The Lebanese civil war, irrevocably stitched into modern
Lebanon’s fabric, manifests itself in different forms in “Transit
Beirut.” A particularly innovative selection, “Drawing the War,”
features the stills of animator Lena Merhej as she attempts to
“morph” the memories of al ahdeth, the past. In “Red Walls,” a
man who has lost his wife and son in the war breaks apart his
past by destroying his household, then drowning himself.
“Living Between Two Worlds” describes the author’s, and her
students’, attempts to creatively express their complicated pasts
through a new creative writing department at the American
University in Beirut.
“Transit Beirut” is at its best when it strays off the topic of
the civil war and offers perceptive and often humorous insights
into Lebanon today. In “My Lebanese Sandwich,” the author
34
Cover of “Beyond East And West”
walks the reader through the streets of Beirut’s cuisine, from the
local kaak vendor to the McArabia sandwich. “Beirut’s Athletes
Celebrate the Defeat of Cholesterol with Flowers and Chocolate”
introduces the reader to the early morning exercise routines
along Beirut’s Corniche. “The Long View” presents a series of
panoramic bird’s-eye views of Beirut in the 1990s, while “Up
and Down My Nose” discusses the growing trend of plastic
surgery in Lebanon. Perhaps the most insightful contribution is
the biting “Sluggish Countdown to War,” in which modern
Lebanon grapples with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Taking displacement to another level is “Project Misplaced:
The Rise and Fall of Simon Ordoubadi,” a quirky exposé that is
a simultaneous mockery of and homage to the Iranian-American
community in Los Angeles. Project creator Houman Mortazavi,
himself an immigrant from Iran, has created an offbeat ode to
Iranian LA, or “Tehrangeles” as he calls it, in the figure of fictional
Iranian immigrant Simon Ordoubadi and Simon’s endless quest
to make it big.
In a deliberately unsophisticated art project, Mortazavi
posted cheap photocopied advertisements and flyers around
Westwood under the name of a fictional character, Iranian
immigrant Simon Ordoubadi, who takes on various incarnations
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Books
From “Transit Beirut” (Photo by Dalia Khamissy)
Cover of “Transit Beirut”
Cover of “Project Misplaced”
‘Transit Beirut,’ ‘Project Misplaced,’ and ‘Beyond East and West’ look ahead to a
better vision of their worlds....Beirut grapples with its (in)ability to move forward...
advertising himself as a politician, a Sufi instructor, a
gubernatorial candidate, even a babysitter. Ordoubadi’s
“accented business” is meant to reflect the most mundane aspects
of the Iranian-American community.
In cheap photocopies featuring poor English and sloppy
Farsi, Ordoubadi appeals to Iranians (“One man … One Iran”),
adds splashes of patriotism with images of Abraham Lincoln
and the American bald eagle peppering his flyers, and mixes
and-matches traditional advertising slogans (“inventor of
especial blend of spirituality, business and politics”). Several of
his flyers propose building a separation wall around the Iranian
neighborhoods in Westwood in a nod to both perceived Persian
exclusivity and the security fence in Israel. Ordoubadi is at his
best when running for California governor, proposing such
incentives as “Lifting importation fees … on imported Iranian
carpets, pistachios and handicraft” and “Renaming Westwood
to Satar Khan.” Ordoubadi is a reflection of the entrepreneurial
pursuits of his community. He has, as Mortazavi puts it, “landed
in someone else’s paradise” and is in constant pursuit of the
American dream. As final proof of his resilience, when his
gubernatorial campaign fails, Ordoubadi starts advertising his
skills at babysitting.
It is hard to tell if “Project Misplaced” is humor, reflection,
or just self-indulgence. It is, however, not unfamiliar to the Iranian
community of Los Angeles. According to Mortazavi, he received
only two emails in response to his flyers; he suspects most people
did not care, as the ads blended in with the numerous others in
“Tehrangeles.” Some defaced the ads, some collected them, but
the vast majority of passersby did not register them at all.
“Beyond East and West: Seven Transnational Artists” is an
accompaniment to the exhibit of the same name at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Curators David O’Brien and
David Prochaska have compiled the art of seven “transnational”
artists whose geographic origins spread from Egypt to Pakistan.
All have spent considerable time in the Europe or United States
AL JADID FALL 2004
and are thus “located both outside and inside the framework of
the Euro-American contemporary art scene.”
The book gives careful attention to detail, filling in holes
where audiences may require explanation. Artist Shahzia
Sikander, from Pakistan, works with miniature paintings, and in
“The Resurgence of Islam” a woman in a burqa holds a sign
asking, “Who’s veiled anyway?” while a veiled Statue of Liberty
plays tug of war over a dollar bill. Quotes from Nawal el Saadawi,
the Ayatollah Khomeini, and Malcolm X decorate the frame. A
picture of Benazir Bhutto is accompanied by a banner which
asks, “Daughter of the East?” The editors helpfully step in to
explain Bhutto’s role as the first female president of Pakistan,
and that she is the author of an autobiography titled “Daughter
of the East.”
The artists presented in “Beyond East and West” are not
necessarily overtly political, but often confront political issues
in engaging, abstract ways. Walid Raad is one such example.
Born in Lebanon, now living in the U.S., his work is a part of the
Atlas Group, a project intended to document the history of
contemporary Lebanon – through images both real and imagined.
Likewise, Israeli artist Michal Rovner presents an obscured
history: her images of people in masses, huddled close and
walking or running “could be anybody. They could be Israeli,
they could be Palestinian, they could be American, they could
be Iraqi. They are just people.” Where are they going – why are
they moving? The audience is left to superimpose their own
memories on the subject.
“Transit Beirut,” “Project Misplaced,” and “Beyond East
and West” look ahead to a better vision of their worlds. Beirut
grapples with its (in)ability to move forward; seven artists revisualize the East-West dichotomy; Simon Ordoubadi seeks a
babysitting job. There is probably, as the three books suggest,
no cohesive element that can hold these evolving identities
together, save the desire to re-make oneself and to create
something new. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
35
Books
Sharp Analysis,
Unanswered Questions
Warlords and Merchants: The Lebanese
Business and Political Establishment
By Kamal Dib
Ithaca Press, 2004
BY P
A UL SULLIV
AN
PA
SULLIVAN
Kamal Dib’s new book could be welcomed by those
interested in the history, politics, economics, culture, and society
of Lebanon. It could also be helpful specifically to those who
wish to understand how Lebanon imploded so rapidly and
devastatingly during its horrific civil war. This is a critical book
by an author who saw the
country of his youth
destroyed by what he
describes as the petty,
ethnically-based, greeddriven,
myopic
selfishness of its warlords,
merchants, and others.
Dib’s history of Lebanon
presents a potentially
great country that
shattered itself on its own
myths
and
selfdestructive tendencies.
Unlike many others,
Dib does not put most of
the blame for the
destruction of Lebanon
on outsiders such as the
Israelis, the Palestinians,
the Americans, and others.
He does not pull any punches while laying part of the blame on
these groups, but he also places a share of the blame squarely on
the shoulders of the Lebanese, both expatriates and those still
living inside the country. In a way, he makes a refreshing
argument for the culpability of the country itself. This may help
lead the country out of its current problems. If a group can take
responsibility for its actions, understand the consequences of
those actions, and then move on, then that group has some hope
for a better future.
The book contains some fascinating chapters pointing to
the historical trends in inter-ethnic and other inter- and intragroup relations in the country that led to the implosion of
Lebanon. However, his historical, cultural, social and economic
arguments are weakened as Dib shifts from one decade (or even
century, sometimes) to another in the middle of his arguments.
36
This book would
have been much improved
if it were reorganized to
produce a more cogent
argument. The book could
have been half its length
if it were better organized.
S e v e r a l
organizational
and
scholarly problems stand
out. The discussion of the
problem of the collapsing
exchange rate in the
1980s could have been
better done in one separate
chapter, rather than spread over three chapters. Dib’s argument
of the faults of the weak Lebanese government and the laissezfaire behavior of the powerful would have been better if were it
all in one location. Dib makes some good arguments that the
problems with monetary policy in Lebanon were partly derived
from banking regulation and the power of the merchants and
warlords, but these arguments are almost hidden in unnecessary
descriptions of persons and events that seem to distract from the
cogency of his main points.
Dib’s overall thesis would also have been a lot stronger if
he had footnoted and sourced it more strongly. Some of the most
important data and events have no sources attached to them.
Scholars and others who might want to follow up on Dib’s points
are led to an intellectual dead end. Additionally, he relies far too
much on secondary sources when there are many excellent
primary sources available on Lebanon and the Lebanese
economy. His bibliography is weakened because he has not
used such excellent sources as documents provided by the IMF
and the World Bank. He also presents statistics from reports
from authorities on Lebanon, yet on many occasions does not
give any citation for those reports. Dib seems to rely heavily on
local newspapers and books that may have done the initial
primary research for him, but the reader cannot tell that without
reading those books and checking their footnotes.
This book is packed with fascinating anecdotes, but has
few solutions. The book has little to say about the postwar
period. All through the book, a reader can hope for answers to
the problems, yet the book ends with: “But if we are talking
about nation-building, then Lebanon should abandon being an
antique shop of social tradition and move to embrace modern
social governance.” How is this to be done? Who will do it?
How long will it take? How much will it cost? What alternatives
does Lebanon have? There are so many questions that beg to be
answered.
It seems clear from the volume that Kamal Dib could help
answer these questions, and be a serious contributor to the future
of Lebanon – if only he could help turn his hard-won thoughts
into effective and organized policies and actions. This Lebanon
needs as it strives to rebuild and renew itself toward a more
peaceful, more prosperous, and more stable future. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
Unlike many others,
Dib does not put most
of the blame for the
destruction of
Lebanon on outsiders
such as the Israelis,
the Palestinians, the
Americans, and
others.
AL JADID FALL 2004
Books
A Vision of Arab-American
Underworld in ‘Souls’
A Pair of Misguided Souls (in Arabic)
By Mahmoud Saeed
Beirut, Dar Al Adab, 2003
B Y SHAKIR MUST
AF
A
MUSTAF
AFA
In his post 9-11 novel, Mahmoud Saeed presents an
unmistakable Arab-American underworld of outright scoundrels:
drug dealers, thieves, counterfeiters, smugglers, pimps.
Interestingly, Saeed does not suggest that his characters have
been pushed into criminal behavior as a consequence of
collective victimization after that atrocity. Instead, the
crackdown after 9-11
exposes the existence
of such human types.
In this novel,
Omar lives in a tent in
a Chicago park corner
that has become less
traveled due to nearby
road construction. He
was fired from his job
at KBG Security
immediately after 9-11,
and, like many in the
community, remains
unemployed. Unlike
them, however, he
chooses not to traffic in
drugs, and wants to
devote himself to
writing. When he
shelters Cathy, a
prostitute and a drug addict, he comes face to face with the
darker aspects of the Arab-American community in Chicago.
His characters also remain divided between two worlds: one
they cannot return to, and one they do not seem to belong to. A
common denominator in the discourse of this community is
shameless hypocrisy: the deeper it slides into corruption, the
more eloquent its members’nostalgia for the values of their lives
in the old country.
Implicitly, 9/11 has been a factor in the community’s
degeneration. When Omar complains to the police after an
unidentified person assaults him, their immediate reaction is
that it must be a drug related business. “Tell the truth,” a police
officer shouts at him, “You’re involved in drugs, aren’t you?
You’re an Arab, right? Don’t you know Muhsin Araawna? Bassam
Addahash?” The Palestinian translator at the police station
consoles Omar:
AL JADID FALL 2004
“You shouldn’t be upset.
They’re right. They
have arrested dozens of
Arabs after 9/11 who are
involved in drugs,
including some big heads.
Many of them are
Palestinians, my own
people from Jerusalem,
Gaza, Bethlehem, Jenin,
Bayt Sahour. A gang of
Iraqis, your own people,
was involved in selling
fake truck driving
licenses. Two days ago,
an Arab lady, one of us,
mind you, told the police
that three Arabs raped
her. Another Arab woman
complained that one of
us molested her son. He’s
only five years old,
Omar. Our people have
shit slung all over our
faces.”
Horrendous as they
might be, drug
trafficking, rape, and
molestation do not
justify wholesale
demonization of
communities, and the
assault incident itself
shows that. Omar was
a victim, not a
perpetrator, but he
finds himself in the
defensive position of
proving he is not one
of the bad Arabs.
The confessional
tone in this speech is
remarkable.
The
translator has no
business telling Omar about the two Arab women, unless his
understanding of translation is rather radical. The moral of his
story is stated bluntly at the end of his litany, and the narrator’s
refrain from commenting on it seems an endorsement of it. The
translator is rather emphatic in his use of “us,” even though at
one point he seems to distinguish between Palestinians and
Iraqis, and his little sermon ends up complimenting the officer’s
charges.
What I find intriguing in this instance is not only the selfinternalization of an aggressive stereotyping of Arabs after 911, but the urge in both character and author to make amends of
sorts for the guilt of that horrible day through bearing testimony
to egregious stereotyping. Horrendous as they might be, drug
trafficking, rape, and molestation do not justify wholesale
demonization of communities, and the assault incident itself
shows that. Omar was a victim, not a perpetrator, but he finds
himself in the defensive position of proving he is not one of the
bad Arabs. In this double process of victimization, it escapes the
notice of character and writer that misrepresentation of certain
communities exists regardless of the actions of members in these
communities.
When I expressed my concerns to the author that such
representations of Arab Americans might consolidate racial
stereotypes, he claimed his right as a writer to portray what he
sees and experiences. There is little argument against that. My
experience of the community, however, brings me to an opposing
conclusion. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
37
Books
New Arab American Anthology:
Antidote to Cultural Ignorance
Dinarzad’s Children: An Anthology of Contemporary
Arab American Fiction
Edited by Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa
University of Arkansas Press, 2004.
BY JUDITH GABRIEL
If there were one book I could give to people who don’t
really know any Arabs, it certainly would not be “The Thousand
and One Nights.” While of certain literary beauty in its
labyrinthian form, it has all too blithely fed the currents of
Orientalism, its exotic images too often co-opted in the service
of negative stereotyping.
No, the one book I would give to Americans who don’t
know any Arabs (including those who bash or slur or dismiss
Arabs) would be a new
collection
of
stories,
“Dinarzad’s Children: An
Anthology of Contemporary
Arab American Fiction,”
published by the University of
Arkansas Press.
In “The Thousand and One
Nights,” Dinarzad is the name
of Shahrazad’s younger sister,
who in the primary narrative
asks each night to hear another
of Shahrazad’s cliff-hanger
episodes.
(In English translations,
the sister’s name is given as
Dunyazad, but the editors of
this collection turned, appropriately enough, straight to the
Arabic manuscripts of the ancient serial, where her name is more
precisely “Dinarzad.”) In any event, as the framework story ends,
the stories have soothed the murderous king’s rage, and
Shahrazad can go on with her life.
But Dinarzad slips into silence, a fate similar to that of Arab
Americans, according to the book’s editors. As far as literature
goes, in fact, most Westerners can only think of the Thousand
Nights. “Though Arabic-speaking immigrants have been coming
to the United States since the late 19th century, it is only recently
that their fellow Americans have become aware of them,” the
introduction notes. But it’s not just the fault of the “mainstream.”
Theirs is a complex muting, born as much of internal restraints
as of the thorny field their words might fall upon in a world
poised to demonize, rather than embrace, anything Arab.
Whether the “silence” surrounding Arab Americans comes
from the earlier immigrants becoming over-assimilated, or from
38
an understandable trepidation over exposing family and personal
(i.e. sexual) secrets and thus violating societal taboos, the post9/11 climate has made it more
urgent for Arab Americans to
emerge from their literary
shadows and engage the
world straight on, partly to
express themselves, partly to
shed light on the complex
humanity that Arab American
represents, with all its
complex gradations and
generational, sectarian,
regional and individual
combinations.
Hence, the arrival of
“Dinarzad’s Children,” smack
in the beginning of the 21st
century, filling a void, and perhaps staving off some of the
irrational, misdirected rage that is directed at Arabs, elsewhere
painted with such an overly broad and un-nuanced brush.
The book is a collection of 24 pieces, some previously
published and some new, by 19 established or newly emerging
Arab American authors with varying degrees of connection to
Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Libya. They write stories
set in Mickaweaquah, Iowa; in Yonkers, New York, in Athens,
Tennessee, and their characters are diverse, nuanced and moving.
Edited by Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa, who each
have a story published in the anthology, the collection also
includes new work by Susan Muaddi Darraj, Randa Jarrar, Joseph
Geha, Rawi Hage, D. H. Melhem, Mohja Kahf, Samia Serageldin,
Sahar Kayyal, and Nabeel Abraham. Previously published pieces
are by Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Evelyn Shakir, Laila Halaby,
Yussef El Guindi, May Mansoor Munn, David Williams, Frances
Khirallah Noble, and Diana Abu-Jaber.
Frequently infused with feminism or sexuality, the stories
touch on subjects that would be taboo in the more traditional
Arab-American family: Dating, rebelling, fitting in, searching
for identity. A young Muslim student is torn between going to a
neighbor’s loud party and finishing his prayers. A teenager girl
rues about looking too foreign; an abused wife comes up with
an ironic solution to her domestic travails. The stories quickly
draw in the reader; endings bring transformative epiphanies that
only poetry and good story-telling can deliver. It is a feast, and
the characters and voices emerge to create an expanded and
intensified visit into the homes and secret longings of
individuals who, as Arab Americans, make up the diverse
category that has suffered from such marginalizing prejudice,
particularly in the wake of September 11.
With this collection solidifying the emergence of the Arab
American contribution to the country’s literature, one might
imagine old Shahrayar, his murderous heart softened by a new
awareness and interest in the complex humanity of his former
targets. “Dinarzad’s Children” might well be an antidote to
induce the same kind of transformation. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
...the post-9/11
climate has made it
more urgent for
Arab Americans to
emerge from their
literary shadows
and engage the
world straight on..,
AL JADID FALL 2004
Books
AL JADID FALL 2004
www.ALJADID.com
39
Books
The Paradox of
Religious Democracy
Being Israeli: the Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship
Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2002
By FFAIS
AIS
AL TBEILEH
AISAL
Azmi Bishara, the Israeli-Palestinian political philosopher,
wrote recently that states create nations; nations don’t create
states. Nations are created in the imagination of their builders.
The overwhelming majority of nation states were created by
well-organized elites who
conquered a territory and its
population, peacefully or
otherwise. Nation states are
always based on the arbitrary
creation of exclusionary
boundaries. These boundaries
can be geographical, religious,
ethnic, or linguistic. Nation
states are created within
territories that are populated
with disparate groups of people.
Here is where the elites play a
vital role in determining who is
considered a legitimate member
or citizen of this state. Inclusion
can be based on one or a combination of characteristics;
religious, ethnic, historical and linguistic.
The history of the state of Israel represents a continuation
of the European model of colonial settler state building, with
relatively minor variation. A group of settlers dominated a
territory under the sponsorship of a powerful European state.
Religion was used as a mobilizing ideology to recruit members
to the emergent settlements. Eventually their numbers and
organization reached a critical mass that enabled them to fight a
war of independence against their original sponsors. Although
Zionism is not unique in utilizing religion as a justification for
European domination of foreign land and its population, Israel
is unique in utilizing religion as the basis of ethnic identity, and
consequently as the primary basis of citizenship.
How can you claim the establishment of a modern liberal
democracy where citizenship is solely based on religious
affiliation? How can the West, that has always fought for
secularizing political citizenship (particularly in the United
States) scarcely ever refrain from enthusiastic support for a state
where religion is considered the sole basis of full citizenship?
Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled have produced a major work
that analyzes how Israel attempted to solve its citizenship
dilemma, building a secular state based on a religious claim.
40
They show how since the beginning, Israel had to maneuver two
contradictory goals, first, establishing legitimacy among a
disparate group of settlers who belonged to a variety of ethnic,
social, and linguistic backgrounds (in addition to their religious
divisions). Secondly, Israel has grappled with how to gain
legitimacy and the political, economic and military support
vital to the success of their project from international sponsors,
whose politics and rules of citizenship are secular.
They propose that over time Israel has been applying three
models of citizenship: republican, liberal, and ethno-religious.
These models are generally used alternately or simultaneously
depending on circumstance or which branch of the ruling elite
Photo by Satoshi Yamaji
happens to be in control of the state apparatus. In their view,
because the history of Israel is dominated by the pursuit of three
contradictory goals – Jewishness, democracy, and colonization,
the elites have to constantly shift their emphasis from one model
of citizenship to another.
The republican model of citizenship was dominant during
the period of the pre-state settlement as a mobilizing and
legitimizing force to unify the variety of European settlers in
their attempt to settle the land and dominate its population.
Decisions were made by highly motivated and centralized elites
who controlled resources and used material rewards to guarantee
allegiance. Thus, the lack of openness in the decision making
process and the authoritarian practices of the officials of the
Jewish Agency (which was authorized to manage the settlement
project) were justified as serving the goal of the community’s
physical survival against threats of the resistance by the
indigenous population. It was very useful in the colonization
process after the creation of the state in 1948, which required
the massive confiscation of Palestinian land, and it maintained
the political and economic dominance of Western Jews
(represented by the Histadrut and the Labor Coalition) which
ruled the country until the late 1970s. The book provides a
detailed description of how the application of the republican
model of citizenship made it easy for the Israeli government to
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2004
Books
justify its denial of the political, human, and economic rights of
Israeli Palestinians and Middle Eastern Jews.
Liberal citizenship, which emphasized individual rights
and secularism, was necessary to maintain the legitimacy among
European Jews who tended to be more educated and culturally
raised in liberal democracy. Here the authors neglect to mention
that it was also very useful in
gaining international support,
particularly in the United
States, where the Jewish
community was actively
advocating liberal causes. The
public relations benefit of the
continuous praise of Israel as
the only democracy in the
Middle East is incalculable in
influencing the West,
particularly in the United
States, to accept Israel’s
aggressive practices in the
region.
Ethno-religious
citizenship was critical in
recruiting a vast number of
Middle Eastern Jews, more
accurately identified as Arab
Jews, to immigrate to the
newly established state.
Zionists needed them because
they had not attracted enough
Western Jews, partly due to the
decimation of European Jewry
during the Holocaust. It made
Arab Jews feel a step above
Muslim and Christian
Palestinians, due to the fact
that the greatest portion of the
material rewards of Israeli
citizenship were and still are
based on religious identification.
Since the 1967 War, which resulted in Israel’s occupation of
the rest of historical Palestine, it has become increasingly
difficult for the ruling elite to successfully juggle these three
models of citizenship. The republican model has become
increasingly inoperative due to the reluctance of secular members
of society to colonizing the West Bank and Gaza. The dominance
of Orthodox Jewish groups among settlers has created a great
deal of political turmoil, eventually leading to the defeat of
Labor for the first time since 1948, dimming its prospects of
ever regaining its dominant position in Israeli politics.
The authors diligently describe Israel’s ruling elites’ present
dilemma. How can it maintain domestic and international
legitimacy in a state where religion is used as the dominant form
of identity, while denying a large percentage of the population
How can you
claim the
establishment of a
modern liberal
democracy where
citizenship is solely
based on religious
affiliation?
...Gershon Shafir
and Yoav Peled
have produced a
major work that
analyzes how Israel
attempted to solve
its citizenship
dilemma, building a
secular state based
on a religious
claim.
AL JADID FALL 2004
Photo by Satoshi Yamaji
the right of full citizenship? How can it sustain domestic
legitimacy without establishing an Israeli version of the postCivil War American South, or the South African apartheid state?
Israel’s previous Prime Minister Barak stated, “I do not want a
state that belongs to all its citizens.” That this incredibly
audacious declaration has been supported by the majority of
the political establishment in this country, regardless of political
persuasion, does not bode well for the future. But as the authors
have clearly concluded, Israel cannot permanently avoid the
inevitable. It has to decide whether or not its main priority is the
establishment of a modern liberal state where all inhabitants
enjoy equal political, social, and economic benefits of the state,
regardless of religion. Or would they rather see the followers of
one religion maintain their dominance, as long as the fiction of
democracy is upheld before its Western financial and military
backers (mainly the United States), regardless of the long-term
consequences?
This book is very valuable in offering a well-thought
solution to Israel’s citizenship problem. It is scholarly and well
researched, and an interesting and useful reading for both
specialists and the public. Its extensive bibliography provides
a comprehensive listing of both theoretical and empirical
literature, which makes it highly recommended. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
41
Books
Etel Adnan’s New Language:
Poems that Rewrite
Masculine Discourse
In/Somnia
by Etel Adnan
The Post Apollo Press, 2003
BY RIM ZAHRA AND RAZZAN ZAHRA
Etel Adnan’s “In/Somnia” is a provocative collection of 27
short poems that resist conformity to any given set of rules or
structutres that belong to masculine discourses by resisting
conformity to any given set of rules or structures. In this
collection, Adnan does not offer a direct critique of Lebanon’s
civil war, as she does in her well-known novel “Sitt Marie Rose”
and other poetry collections like “The Arab Apocalypse.”
Rather, Adnan deconstructs the syntax and semantics of
conventional narrative structures
in order to convey the destructive
consequences of that war on the
individual and society at large.
The reader quickly notices
that Adnan refrains from following
the traditional subject, verb,
object sentence patterns and
invents semantic and lexical items
throughout her book. Sometimes,
Adnan creates an auditory effect
by adding vowels to words like
“feever” and “stoooory.” Other
times, her words are separated by
slashes, hyphens, brackets,
asterisks, and question marks or
are followed by arrows and colons rather than dashes. For
instance, she includes words like “break:up,” “***move/ing,”
“Af(ter)ghanistan” and “(wet) weapons.” Adnan’s use of such
symbols conveys the illogic of war’s logic without ever
mentioning the word “war.” At the same time, she challenges the
linear order of masculine discourses and the social and personal
turmoil they create.
Rather than merely condemning the “crooked str-strategies”
of patriarchal thought, Adnan re-inscribes hierarchal discourses
of opposition that govern masculine ideologies. She refrains
from constructing categories of superiority/inferiority to describe
“comet coming” and “plane/planets/drifting” and demonstrates
that it is only by giving up conventional forms of writing that
poetry can transform into a tool that challenges patriarchy. Adnan,
in fact, announces her intention to give up the use of metaphors
or as she puts it, “meta-phoros”:
42
Bye & Bye gentle metayour !
phoros. Go to
grave. Pillars. stand/ing
metelas/s/s……no!
no!
For Adnan, one must abandon traditional thought in order
to realize that there is no one poetic form just as there is no one
war experience. Therefore, to perceive poetry as merely a
language of metaphors would be to interpret it through the lens
of the binary male/female
and passive/active qualities.
The feminine connotations
of the word “gentle” and the
masculine
attributes
associated with the word
“pillars” urge poets and
readers alike to consider a
poetic form that lies outside
dual hierarchal discourses.
Her use of spaces, slashes,
and symbols, therefore,
model some of the ways that
language can be used to
rewrite existing ideological
frameworks
within
patriarchal structures. In other words, her poetry works to disrupt
any manipulation of discourse that leaves the patriarchal
framework intact and, thereby, opens the possibility of a different
poetic form for expressing the breakdown of the self and of
society.
Adnan suggests that it is often the state of waiting for the
inevitable bombing to occur that leads one to inhabit a state of
insanity:
Her use of spaces,
slashes and symbols,
... model some of the
ways that language
can be used to rewrite
existing ideological
frameworks within
patriarchal
structures.
“insane in/sane the right
to wait wait! waited for
for wait a minute for/the/
dark/light of morning
By using alliterations and breaking up the word “insane”
into “in/sane,” Adnan suggests that individuals need to occupy
a space of in-betweeness so as to reclaim their sense of worth. It
is only by occupying such a space that new discourses and
forms of expression emerge. Adnan concludes her poems by
envisioning “mobile sleep,” a state in which one exists on the
boundaries of consciousness and unconsciousness, yet never
fully occupying either space. Adnan finds that it is only in this
space of in-betweeness, this state of “in/somnia” that freedom of
hierarchal binaries and discourses becomes possible. It is only
in that state that one can begin to envision new ways of being,
existing, and expressing.
We highly recommend this book to anyone interested in
exploring a language that can operate beyond the socio-cultural
and socio-political discourses that shape how we use language
to express our understanding of the world. AJ
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2004
Books
When the Personal and the
Political Meet in Algeria of
1990s
Chaos of the Senses
By Ahlam Mosteghanemi
Translated by Baria Ahmar
Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004
B Y GRET
A ANDERSON
GRETA
“Chaos of the Senses,” written by Ahlam Mosteghanemi
and translated from the Arabic into English by Baria Ahmar, is a
story of turmoil and love set against the heightened conditions
of political disorder in Algeria
in the 1990s. It is narrated
through the eyes of a nameless
woman married to a highranking military officer. It
begins as the narrator, a writer,
creates an imaginary lover
whom she then seeks out in
reality. Embarking on a
passionate love affair with an
illusive man, she writes herself
into her own story. By
exploiting the boundaries
between the imaginary world
of the novel and the real world
in which she has her affair, the
narrator
creates
a
psychological realism that
ultimately bears on our
understanding of post-colonial Algeria.
“Chaos of the Senses” is arranged in a series of chapters
told through the first person, which punctuate various
experiences of the narrator and her lover, husband, and family.
Mosteghanemi’s documentation of specific events in
Algeria’s post-colonial experience adds an historical dimension
that many readers will appreciate. The recent political history of
Algeria – including the events leading up to the resignation of
President al-Shazli ben Jedid and subsequent assassination of
Mohammad Boudiaf – sets the context for the novel, which
raises questions about reality, chaos, happiness, and loss.
References to Gamal Abdel Nasser and other heroes of the
Arab world also occur throughout the novel, and contribute to
broader themes of pan-Arabism, nationalism, and identity. The
narrator herself is the daughter of a liberation fighter who was
killed during the struggle for Algerian independence. Her brother,
who was named after Nasser, is exiled for his questionable
political activities during the course of the story. And the
AL JADID FALL 2004
narrator’s husband, who is completely removed from her
emotional life, enjoys a level of respect that is rooted in her
vision of national identity. She says of him, “…I realized that
his fatherliness meant the most to me, and that the prestige of his
military rank and political position only mattered to me insofar
as it kept alive the memory of struggle I had grown up with, and
the pride of an Algeria I dreamed of.”
While the novel focuses primarily on the narrator’s illicit
love affair, Mosteghanemi’s treatment of the narrator is heroic
and consistently political in tone. The heroine’s love life and
search for emotional fulfillment is carefully and purposefully
intertwined with Algerian public life, as she remarks here, “...why
was politics becoming a third party in all my relationships?
What was it doing sleeping in the beds of lovers? Why was it
sharing our breakfast and all other meals, and going with us to
visit our relatives, both living and dead? It beat us to the city of
dreams and prevented us from entering.” While our heroine
admittedly used writing as a refuge from her real life, she is
unable to escape from the everyday realities that affect every
one of her relationships, in actuality and in fantasy. And it is
ultimately her broad and chaotic range of emotions and reactions
that ties the story together.
Baria Ahmar’s translation of this novel is unaffected and
idiomatic, and eloquently balances the narrator’s private
romanticism with her life as a writer, a military wife, a daughter,
a sister, and ultimately, a national of Algeria.
“Chaos of the Senses” is an engaging and powerful
reflection of contemporary novels emerging from the Arab world
today involving women’s personal and political perspectives.
We look forward to further translation of this author’s work in
the future. AJ
Tears in the Holy Land: Voices from
Israel and Palestine
Tears in the Holy Land: Voices from Israel and Palestine
By Michael Emery, Deanna Armbruster, eds.
Arnica Publishing, 2004, 262 pp.
B Y LLYNNE
YNNE R
OGERS
ROGERS
Dedicated to one of its two editors, Michael Emery, who
passed away in 1995, “Tears in the Holy Land” records the
steadfast human hope for peace that one can find throughout
Israel and Palestine despite the prevalence of racism, injustice,
death, and destruction. Emery’s co-editor Deanna Armbruster
describes “Tears in the Holy Land,” a collection of 40 oral
histories of both Palestinians and Israelis, as an “emotional work
that does not attempt to analyze the political situation or theorize
chances for peace.”
www.ALJADID.com
Continued on page 47
43
Books
A Moroccan Cinema
of Proximity
Beyond Casablanca: M.A. Tazi and the Adventure of
Moroccan Cinema
By Kevin Dwyer
Indiana University Press, 2004, 433 pp.
BY P
AMELA NICE
PAMELA
Anyone interested in third world cinema, Moroccan film or
M.A. Tazi’s career will find anthropologists Kevin Dwyer’s new
book not only engaging but highly informative. Dwyer’s
extended interview with renowned Moroccan filmmaker
Muhammad Abderrahman Tazi
is put in the context of
Morocco’s recent cultural
history. Four of Tazi’s feature
films are analyzed for their
themes and narrative structures,
illustrated with stills from the
productions. The book
skillfully weaves together this
analysis with Tazi’s experience
producing the films; and
through this process, we are
given a personalized history of
the economic and institutional
development of Moroccan
national cinema.
Dwyer chose Tazi as the focus of his study because Tazi’s
film, “Looking for My Wife’s Husband,” was the most popular
film of the mid-1990s, a time when the Moroccan public’s interest
in national films reached a turning point. Since that time, the
audience for Moroccan films has increased to the extent that, in
2002, the annual theatre attendance at Moroccan films was 7.6
percent, even though Moroccan films constituted only 2 percent
of total films shown.
Tazi also serves as a paradigmatic model of the Moroccan
filmmaker, since his career so closely follows the development
of Moroccan cinema since independence in 1956. Though he
has made only five feature films over 25 years, this makes him
highly prolific among his peers. Like many of his and the younger
generation of Moroccan filmmakers, he trained outside of
Morocco, in Europe and the U.S., developing his skills on foreign
films produced in Morocco; has experimented with European
co-production; and believes that Moroccan film should be one
of “proximity” – using stories from Moroccan culture, with a
narrative style and humor particular to that culture. In addition,
Tazi’s films have won several international awards, and he has
risen to a position of prominence in Morocco, including a stint
as director of film production for 2M, the second Moroccan
television station.
44
The chapters on the films raise particularly interesting issues,
especially from Dwyer’s anthropological perspective. In the film
“Badis,” filmed in the actual town of Badis in Morocco, Tazi
tells the story of two women oppressed by village life who rebel
against their treatment, and in the end of the film are punished
by the villagers with a fatal stoning. As in many Moroccan films,
townspeople played the
roles of extras, and Tazi
made concerted attempts to
involve them in the
filmmaking process, which
included inviting them to
a private screening before
the opening.
Not
surprisingly, when some of
the townspeople viewed
the film, they were upset,
because they felt their
community’s privacy had
been violated. Dwyer
discusses with Tazi why he
chose to keep the real name
of the town in his film,
which would inevitably
raise the “anthropological
problem of how to
‘represent’ living human
communities.”
Dwyer
also
concentrates on Tazi’s
depiction of women’s
issues in his films, his
recurring
theme
of
clandestine emigration, a
growing problem in economically-challenged Morocco, his
attitude toward censorship and cultural standards of decency,
and Tazi’s views on the self-Orientalizing of his culture.
It becomes evident early on that Tazi’s metaphor of the
Moroccan filmmaker as bumblebee seems particularly apt:
“...according to the laws of aeronautics, it’s impossible for that
insect to fly. But bumblebees fly just the same! That’s the way
it is for our cinema . . .we can’t make films but, just the same, we
make films!” A Moroccan film typically takes 3-4 years to make.
Though the state funds films through the Aid Fund, Dwyer points
out that “of the approximately 120 feature film proposals
submitted to the Aid Fund between 1998 and 1999, about 50
were accepted . . . . The sums offered were between one million
and three and a half million dirhams, usually amounting to less
than half the film’s budget.” The director is largely responsible
for acquiring the additional funds necessary, so he spends much
time on this non-artistic activity. Filming often takes place on
location, in communities naive to the filmmaking process, which
can increase inefficiency.
There are additional challenges faced by Moroccan
filmmakers within the global context: “exhibition and
www.ALJADID.com
...he [Tazi] also sees
the downside of the
increasing presence of
American filmmaking
in Morocco: not only
do these productions
leech away technical
expertise needed on
indigenous films, but
they encourage locals
to charge Moroccan
productions the same
fees for location
shooting that the
Americans pay.
AL JADID FALL 2004
Books
distribution . . . are in private hands, . . .
[D]istributors prefer, on purely economic
grounds, to promote cheaper imports rather
than national films costing more to rent, and
. . . consequently, national films are rarely
profitable and funds for production must
therefore come from other than commercial
capital investment.” Globalization and free
trade agreements have conspired to keep
national cinemas of the third world, in
particular, in a precarious situation, since
both favor large-scale metropolitan
producers.
And though Tazi clearly has benefited
from working on foreign productions in
Morocco, gaining technical expertise and
refining his cinematographic skill, he also
sees the down side of the increasing presence
of American filmmaking in Morocco: not
only do these productions leech away
technical expertise needed on indigenous
films, but they encourage locals to charge
Moroccan productions the same fees for
location shooting that the Americans pay.
In spite of these challenges, Dwyer has
a positive perspective on the creativity and
perseverance of Morocco’s filmmakers. In
his final chapter, he also offers suggestions
for ongoing development of Morocco’s film
sector: continued co-production with
television stations; a clear policy on
distribution and exhibition of Moroccan
films in the national theatres; the
development of the producer’s role;
attention to copyright issues for filmmakers;
and increased funding by the Aid Fund. A
desirable goal would be the production of
10 films per year in the near future.
Dwyer’s book has a very helpful notes
section, offering political, social and
historical context for Moroccan cinema; a
detailed table of contents, that allows readers
to pick their topics of interest; and a
comparative chronology, tying together
Tazi’s life and career with developments in
Moroccan cinema and culture and with
political developments in the Maghreb.
This clearly written book, which so skillfully
sets a Moroccan filmmaker’s career in the
context of his culture and his art, could serve
as a text for film and/or anthropology
courses, in addition to entertaining the
general reading public. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2004
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
Screams
By Joyce Mansour
1995
80 pages
$10.00
ISBN 0-942996-25-9
“Joyce Mansour, one of the most important
poets of twentieth-century France, has until
now received no first-rate, full-length
translation. The risk taken is great, for
there are no translations to build upon,
argue against, except one’s own. This risk,
in this case, proves fully worth undertaking.
Gavronsky, one of the most knowledgeable
writers on contemporary French poetry and
poetics, has devoted himself to this project,
as he does to all his projects, with energy,
acumen, enthusiasm – and success.”
– Mary Ann Caws, Cuny
New Release
Vampires: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead
in Film
By Jalal Toufic
2003, 400 pp $15.00
ISBN 0-942996-50-x
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
45
Interviews
Saad Chraibi:
L’amoureur du cinema
BY P
AMELA NICE
PAMELA
WITH TRANSLA
TION B
Y KABIR KAHLA
OUY
TRANSLATION
BY
KAHLAOUY
Saad Chraibi has been working in Moroccan cinema as a
director, scenarist and producer since 1978. He is highly
respected in Morocco for his courage in addressing social and
political issues in his films, such as “Femmes.. et femmes” (1998),
dealing with domestic abuse, and “Jawhara (fille de prison)”
(2004), on political prisoners in Morocco. His films have been
shown internationally at film fesitvals, and Jawhara is to be
seen in New York this coming fall.
Why film in Mohammedia, a mid-sized city between Rabat
and Casablanca? Partly because of that location, which is
convenient to film crews and actors from both major cities. It is
less expensive than filming in Casablanca, and it has a variety
of sites: an old medina, European-style boulevards, ocean
beaches and easily accessible countryside.
I was invited to a film shoot of the television movie, “Le
monde d’emploi” (The World of Work) with translator Kabir
Kahlaouy in early February. When we arrived at the location,
Cafe Tiznit, in the center of Mohammedia, we found lead actor
Zakariah Lahlou standing patiently in costume, watching the
upteenth take of a short scene, in which several extras followed
two major characters running through the cafe. Many scenes
had gone through several takes because one of the extras
couldn’t resist looking directly into the camera – or even worse,
making a face at it during the scene!
As the camera rolled on another short scene, in which three
men rode through a medina bab (an arched entrance) on a
motorbike, locals watching yelled out to them that they couldn’t
do that – three on a bike was illegal. They did a retake of the
scene after explaining filmmaking to the assembled crowd. This
time when the motorbike zoomed through the bab, the police
stopped them. And so it went.
In between takes, Kabir and I were lucky to catch renowned
film director Sa’ad Chraibi to talk about his career and the
process of Moroccan filmmaking. The following are some the
excerpts from our discussion.
What kind of cinema projects do you most like to work on?
I always work on social themes, for example, the condition of
women in Morocco; it has always been my principle
preoccupation. At first my specialty was political subjects. The
film I last made was on the “dark years” of Morocco, when we
had lots of incarceration. . . .And now the third subject that
principally interests me is history – the history of Morocco. . . . In
46
Chraibi (front) directs his cameraman on location in Mohammedia
order to make a step forward, we need to go backwards into our
history.
How can film help to build the future in Morocco?
An example, in 1998 I made a film called “Femmes . . .et femmes.”
The subject of the film was the battered woman. Before 1998, this
subject was taboo. No one talked about this subject. Once the
film was out, it became a national subject. Everyone talked about
it, all the media talked about it, to the point that the Minister of
Women and the Family organized a national campaign on violence
against women and used this film, “Femmes . . .et femmes,” to
support the national campaign. Surely art can in this way
contribute to changing society.
The film I’m shooting right now is one with a social theme,
entitled “Le monde d’emploi.” It’s about a guy looking for a job
– its subject is unemployment. About 150,000 Moroccans with
diplomas are without jobs.
How do you find funding for your films?
When it comes to money, it’s the government who finances films
– 40-50% of the total budget. And the rest – in my case, sometimes
I take risks for love of my art. The last film I made – a historical
drama – had a lot of expenses for the decor, costumes, etc., which
I had to fund partly. I owed a lot of money to the bank and had to
offer my own house as collateral.
Do you ever have any foreign investment in your films?
Very little. I prefer not to use foreign investment because I want
to guard my freedom. If I take their money, they will make
impositions on the making of the film.
Would they make you change the script?
Yes, that’s possible.
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AL JADID FALL 2004
Interviews
Tears in the Holy Land
And you feel free when you work with government funding
because the government doesn’t impose any limitations?
It doesn’t impose anything.
How do you see Moroccan film as having changed since you
began working in it?
There has been a great difference since the 1980s, when I started
working, in the mastering of technical aspects, artistry, direction
of the actor, in diversity of subjects and themes. Really, each
cineaste has his own way of working, his own choice of subject,
and this is good for the improvement of Moroccan cinema.
Do you think Moroccan films are dealing with Moroccan subjects
more?
It gives much attention to local concerns, but it always has a
leaning toward the universal. I apologize for giving you just
examples from my films, but “Femmes . . . et femmes” had a good
reception outside Morocco. Which means it doesn’t only tackle
local issues, but international ones.
The films have a local context, but a universal meaning. So how
did you train to be a cinema auteur? By just working in films?
First, I’m a social observer. I try to observe how society is
evolving, developing. Each time a social issue is dominant in
society, I start thinking about that deeply, and then I start writing
about it. The period of research can last from one to two years, it
generally takes a year to write the script, and another year of
preparation for shooting and editing. In general, I make a film
every three to four years.
Did you go to a film school?
I found myself through the theory of cinematography. At first, I
was a moderator for a cinema club. There was a kind of national
movement which existed in Morocco in the 1970s, the Federation
Nationale de Cine Club du Maroc. Then I became a critic of films.
I wrote texts about film. If I am a film director now, it is not because
of academic studies, but because of theory and also reflection
upon cinema. In Morocco, they call me “l’amoureur du cinema”
– the lover of movies. AJ
contributors
Continued from page 32
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.
Continued from page 43
The unadorned interviews reveal the individual stories
behind the political upheavals. Their stories reach back to
memories of the withdrawal of British forces and the
establishment of Israel, and range all the way to veteran reporter
and professor of journalism Michael Emery’s moving epilogue
“Chasing the Intifada.” The collection assembles the small,
everyday dramas of a wide variety of speakers, leaving the reader
with an admiration for those who refuse to succumb to hatred
and vengeance.
In his forward, Brice Harris writes that “The hope of the
compilers of this book is that the presentation of different
perspectives of common
feelings and aspirations and
of the terrible cost for all
involved will result in a better
understanding
among
peoples and therefore in a
triumph of joy over tears in
the Holy Land.” Harris then
gives a conservative overview
of the recent history of the
region for the novice reader.
The 40 interviewees are
introduced only by their name
and a phrase that briefly
identifies them as a Red Cross
worker or former member of
the Israeli underground or a
Palestinian activist and writer.
Without any narrative
interference or description, the speakers recount their naked
stories as monologues. One minor drawback to this approach is
that the reader must trust the speaker without any clues to their
trustworthiness other than the accountability of their name. How
they remember is given precedence over historical accuracy.
The first two monologues focus on the events of 1948, setting
the structure of the collection as one interview seems to comment
on the previous one. Albert Hazboun describes the events
preceding his family’s exile first to Egypt, then back to Ramallah,
and finally to America. Like many Arabs in America, he reflects
the ambivalence between America as a place of refuge and
economic freedom – and America as the complicit superpower.
With profound simplicity that resonates throughout the
collection, Hazboun speculates that, “There will never be peace
until the big powers, especially America, understand that the
Palestinian people and their parents were born in Palestine. It is
our homeland. We owned property and fled to save our lives. We
were abused and massacred, and now we can’t go back. It’s
terrible. Palestine was a beautiful country.”
Samuel Schorr, a retired physician, born in Poland and
brought to Palestine at the age of nine, remembers Arabs fighting
Continued on page 48
AL JADID FALL 2004
Continued on next page
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47
Music
Iraqi Traditional Music
Revisited in War Era
As Iraq makes daily news coverage
for the rapidly progressing political
events many are concerned about the
preservation of traditional Iraqi arts.
Among them is the uniquely Iraqi music
genre called Maqam Baghdadi, a style
of singing distinguished from the rest
of the Arab World in the performance,
composition, and instrumentation. In an
effort to highlight this art Inaya Jaber,
an art critic and a columnist in the As
Safir Lebanese newspaper, recently
wrote two pieces on the subject featuring
female Iraqi singers of this genre, the
late Salima Murad and Maida Nazhat.
Inaya Jaber beautifully described the
accomplishments of Salima Murad and
elaborated on the details of three of her
songs: “Hatha Mu Insaf Minnak” (Not
Fair of You), “Alhajr Mu’ Ada
Ghariba” (Abandonment is not Strange
Behavior), and “Qalbak Sakhr Jalmud”
(Your Heart is Rock Hard).
While eloquently describing how
the lyrics reflect the society and life style
of the historical capital city and how
exclusively Baghdadi are the lyrics,
composition and the common rhythmic
pattern known as jurjina, Jaber made the
innocent mistake of referring to these
songs as coming from the traditional
folk music reservoir without identifying
the composers (sadly, a common practice
for authors to attribute songs to old
folklore instead of explicitly stating
“composer unknown” if they do not
know the composer). This prompted a
strongly worded counter article from
Tears in the Holy Land
to his superior officer, “I’m not going to
shoot high-school students.”
Individuals on both sides challenge
the popular rhetoric through their
personal anguish. Educators, artists, and
grieving parents thoughtfully reflect on
the psychological effects of racism on the
next generation of Palestinians, while
Israelis express their understanding of the
Palestinian crisis. Yet, the general
weariness toward violence and the belief
in the possibility of peace remains
steadfast throughout the collection.
The unanimously repeated desire for
peace leaves the reader wondering once
again why peace continually evades the
region. However, Emery’s epilogue
responds to the reader’s confusion with
additional questions: “Why were so many
Palestinians shot above the waist,
particularly in the neck and head? Why
were a number of those fatally injured shot
in the back of the head?” “Tears in the
Holy Land,” as a collective voice, insists
that it is a problem to accept the myths of
history without asking the uncomfortable
critical questions which dismantle the
status quo. As oral history, “Tears in the
Continued from previous page
Arabs. The local Arabs watched over his
family while he studied medicine in
America. Hanna Amoni, a former member
of the Israeli underground who lost two
husbands in the fighting, confides, “You
can’t imagine the danger we faced. True,
Arab countries did not have the most
modern equipment, but what they had was
a hundred times better than what we had.
They invaded us from all sides. Egypt from
the south, Syria from the north, and Jordan
from the east, and they almost succeeded.”
As the interviews move closer to the
present reality, the dreams and values are
moderated and the collection catches the
small individual moments of courage.
Viveca Hazboun-Ninos, a psychiatrist and
Palestinian returnee, defines the real
martyr as “the one who stays alive and
hangs onto life despite everything else.”
An Israeli veteran of the Golan Heights
stands up for justice in the army and goes
to jail for refusing duty in Nablus, stating
48
www.ALJADID.com
Salima Murad
Hussain al-Sakkaf, who criticized
Jaber’s research. Sakkaf asserts that
these songs were composed by Saleh alKuwaiti who along with brother Daoud,
Holy Land” bears witness to the prolonged
pain and hopes of Palestinians and Israelis
for each other as well as students of the
Arab world and veteran historians. AJ
contributors
Continued from page 47
Faisal Tbeileh (“The Paradox of Religious
Democracy,” p.40), a Ph.D, is an adjunct
professor of political science.
Rim Zahra and Razzan Zahra (“Etel
Adnan’s New Language: Poems that
Rewrite Masculine Discourse,” p.42) hold
masters in English literature and are
working toward doctorate degrees in
education at the University of California,
Davis. AJ
translators
Noel Abdulahad (Translated “Illusion of
Place” by Moayad al-Rawi, p.8) is a
translator and author.
Kamal Dib (Translated Mohammad Ali
Atassi’s “The Other Prison,” p. 4) is a
AJ
Canadian economist, author and essayist.AJ
AL JADID FALL 2004
Music
Yousef Zarur, Salim Zabli as well as
Salima Murad herself were Iraqi Jews
who produced significant works in the
period from 1930-1950. The names of
the composers of Murad’s songs were
coincidentally confirmed by an article
in Al Hayat Newspaper (25 February
2005 ) by Ali Ajjam, without reference
to their religion.
This debate was not particularly
interesting until a sudden twist was
introduced by Sakkaf’s claim that in
1973, the then Iraqi vice president
Saddam Hussein formed a committee to
study the Iraqi musical tradition and
appointed the late world famous oud
player and composer Munir Bashir as
its head. Committee membership also
included the then director of the Iraqi
Radio and Television, Muhammad Said
al-Sahhaf, later famous for being the
Information Minister appearing in the
nightly news to deny the American
invasion of Iraq. This committee
declared its charter as producing an
inventory of legitimate Iraqi songs:
“keep the good ones and destroy the bad
ones.” These were apparently code
words for erasing any reference to
works by Iraqi Jews. Salima Murad was
spared the purge because she had
converted to Islam when she married the
singer Nazem al-Ghazali, who is
credited for preserving the Maqam
Baghdadi after the all-time leader and
teacher, Muhammad al-Qubanchi. AlGhazali had further popularized the
repertoire by moving closer in
performance style to the popular music
of the Middle East. Today, Kazem alSaher and Ilham Madfaii have taken
inspiration from this reservoir to write
their own popular material.
Nobody will know if the committee
had a hidden agenda since getting a
surviving member to admit it is unlikely.
Except for diehard conspiracy theorists,
this may be less relevant as long as the
credit is historically restored to the
composers. They probably would have
wanted to share their art and stay above
the politics. AJ
– Al Jadid Staff Writers
AL JADID FALL 2004
New Um
Kulthoum
Biography
Searches Behind
the Legend
BY BEIGE LUCIANO-ADAMS
Mention of the “Star of the East” or
the “Diva of Arab Song” can only bring
to mind the beloved Um Kulthoum. She
is gilded in Arab memory as the voice
of the 20th century, yet remains timeless,
continuing to strike emotional chords in
the hearts of the millions who adore her,
even 30 years after her death. Her image,
voice, and symbolism are inscribed in
the collective consciousness of the Arab
world and passionately fused with
nationalist and Arab cultural identities.
When she died in 1975, public attendance
at her funeral was second only to that of
President Gamal Abd al-Nasser in 1970
– the largest in Egyptian history.
A goddess to her admirers, it is rare
that she or her legend is ever treated with
anything other than a quasi-religious
reverence. Her biographies, both literary
and in television or film, have not
generally allotted space for criticism but
rather offered a rose-colored perspective
of her life. A recent example is the
Egyptian television series which,
although aired to popular and critical
acclaim, tended to focus exclusively on
the positive aspects of her biography,
while ignoring others that would perhaps
enrich the public’s understanding of who
she was. Arab readers and cable audiences
have grown unaccustomed to criticism,
and the discourse has operated within
these limits. Indeed, there continues to
be a trend among historians, journalists
and authors who elevate Um Kulthoum
from the level of an artist – a human
being, with strengths and faults – to that
www.ALJADID.com
Um Kulthoum
of a divine presence, beyond reproach,
and symbolic to the point of being static.
Ratiba el-Hifni is breaking with this
trend, and her new book, “Um
Kulthoum” has been raising eyebrows.
In late February 2005, the author – who
is also a music historian and scholar,
magazine editor, popular television host
and opera singer – participated in a
symposium in conjunction with the book
in Alexandria, Egypt. The event, which
focused on seldom-visited aspects of the
legendary singer’s life, has attracted a
fair amount of media attention.
Known to be a credible academic,
Hifni is not appreciated by some for her
well-researched criticisms of Egypt’s
most treasured singer. Though Hifni has
no contentions with Um Kulthoum’s
legend, her exposition of certain
biographical details is making some
people uncomfortable. These details are
hardly so salacious (or unfounded) as to
warrant such reaction, though. In fact,
and somewhat ironically, the most
controversial contentions that came out
of the symposium – Hifni’s indictment
of widespread corruption in the Egyptian
Continued on next page
49
Music
television and radio industries, namely
that certain officials received kickbacks
for broadcasting low quality music –
have gone largely unnoticed, eclipsed by
concern with the news about Um
Kulthoum.
An assured distaste for Hifni’s work
may have more to do with intolerance
of Um Kulthoum’s critics than with the
quality of Hifni’s scholarship, and signals
the persistence of a popular, semimythical, and sometimes myopic view
of the star.
According to a report in Al Hayat,
written by Abd al-Ghani Tlias, Hifni
tackled Um Kulthoum’s personal life,
focusing largely on her relationship with
the composer Muhammed al-Qasabji.
Historians maintain that Um Kulthoum
abandoned Qasabji as her composer in
an effort to develop and renew her
orchestra. Citing correspondence
between Qasabji and the late musician
Mahmoud Kamel, Hifni maintains that
Um Kulthoum’s demotion of Qasabji
from Maestro to oud player led to a
deterioration of his health, causing him
to suffer “a deep state of depression.”
Al-Qasabji, who is famous as both oud
player in the front row of Um
Kulthoum’s concerts, and for his own
body of work, recovered from his
depression and the two maintained a
strong friendship, perhaps in part because
she kept him as a primary musician in
her orchestra. Though Qasabji (who was
married four times) was never
romantically involved with Um
Kulthoum, Hifni suggested that he
“wanted to possess her.” The Qasabji
“scoop” is probably the most important
to come out of the new book.
However, tabloid devotees will
delight in Hifni’s coverage of Um
Kulthoum’s love life, including her
secret marriage to noted Egyptian
journalist, Mustafa Amin. According to
Hifni, Um Kulthoum married him in
secret because “she wanted to remain a
possession of everyone.” Amin, who
founded the influential daily, Akhbar Al
Youm, was known to be among the
singer’s inner circle, and as a journalist
with an obvious inside advantage,
50
An assured distaste for
Hifni’s work may have more
to do with intolerance of
Um Kulthoum’s critics than
with the quality of Hifni’s
scholarship, and signals the
persistence of a ...myopic
view of the star.
covered her life in the news. The
clandestine union lasted 11 years. Also
included among the singer’s admirers
was the late poet Ahmad Rami, who
Hifni claimed was in “real” love with
her, writing songs for her that reflected
the “emotional condition he was living.”
As for Um Kulthoum’s professional
life, Hifni maintained that she was
known to interfere in the work of the
musicians who composed for her.
According to Hifni’s research, the late
musician Muhammad al-Mouji admitted
as much, adding that the only musician
who wouldn’t write for her was Farid
al-Atrash, who wouldn’t tolerate
intervention in his music. This account
fills out the generally accepted story that
it is Um Kulthoum who refused to sing
for al-Atrash.
It could be argued that as a scholar,
Hifni is attempting to research and
construct a “clear” picture of the singer’s
life, in contrast to the imaginary account
that many rely upon. That even serious
attempts at understanding Um
Kulthoum’s biography are viewed as
irreverent suggest that room could be
made in the discourse for dissenting or
at least innovative voices.
Hifni’s word is certainly not the last
on the life of Um Kulthoum. Hopefully,
future scholarship will fill in any gaps
in her research and contribute to an
already rich biographical sketch.
Meanwhile, Hifni deserves the courtesy
of listening. This means considering the
reality that Um Kulthoum was indeed a
human being – a detail that might make
her voice more powerful yet.AJ
www.ALJADID.com
About Gloria
Salah Saouli is a prominent
Lebanese artist who experienced war
personally. His works appear on the cover,
pp. 2, 53, and 55. The following is a
statement by the artist on what the
“Gloria” artwork series represents.
In its glorification of victory the
monument provides a visual symbol of war
inside the civil society. In the euphoria of
triumphal processions, the border between
victory and war becomes blurred and the
icon of victory turns into a symbol of war.
Until seven years ago, there stood in the
former centre of the Lebanese capital
Beirut the famous “Martyrs’ Monument.”It
was created in 1950 by the Italian artist
Masacurati and brought to Lebanon in
1960 during the rule of President Fouad
Chehab. The Monument stood at the
“Canon Square,” today named “Martyrs’
Square” – at the exact site where, in 1916,
14 Lebanese were hanged by the Ottoman
authorities. For the Ottomans they were
traitors, for the Nationalists, martyrs.
The monument portrays four figures,
in two basic positions. The main figure
(female) stands triumphantly, but does not
really appear to be “in command of the
situation.” In her right hand she carries not
the wreath of honour, but the torch of
glory. Her left hand does not hold the iron
cross but embraces the male figure next to
her. The shawl wrapped around her
shoulders in place of wings flutters above
the figure. The second position is
delineated by the two prostrate men. Their
faces bear an almost clichéd expression of
utmost fear and helplessness. Here,
heroism is celebrated as an act of selfsacrifice, and the desire to identify with
heroic figures such as these is awakened.
The myth of power needs
protagonists, needs heroes. It feeds on
escapism and propaganda, which
necessitate one another – and together
serve to make the support or conduct of
war appear harmless. These victory
symbols, even when they bear no direct
relation to actual war themselves, help to
create a kind of war aesthetics. In the
modern civil society, which is rapidly
becoming a virtual society – and where the
destructive potential of power has become
true reality – the pressing question is:
How much ecstasy of Victory und Glory is
yet to be had, before we cease to lose
ourselves in this condition of
disorientation? AJ
AL JADID FALL 2004
Continuations
The Knight Who Came Home to be Slain
Continued from page 29
You came back in the hope of making your dreams a reality, brandishing your pen
in defiance of the situation. You came to struggle and fight, to live a strange and
incredible love affair, and at the end, to die. Like Professor Ashenbach in Thomas
Mann’s “Death in Venice,” you came to witness the end of a period and the beginning
of a new one in a time of sickness and decay. Yet Beirut under the Second Republic is
no Venice, and the new era has not come, or at least, you have not seen it, nor shall we
in our lives. The political and religious parties – whether national or regional –
continue to divide and define the appearance of our country. Only the contractors,
traders and mercenaries of war and peace will fashion the future: without you, without
us, Samir.
Reality could not support an intellectual with such political passion and
radicalism; in the end you were burnt in the flames of your illusions.
As a young writer commenting on “Arab misery” or embracing the history of
Beirut, you were an example of the Arab intellectual, driven with passion, heir to the
nahda (renaissance) of earlier generations. You persisted until your last breath,
defending your values with intensity and courage, fighting for the nation against the
domination of our “brothers.” And this you did as an independent intellectual fighting
for an Arab nahda, without affinities for a party or a narrow group, but rather with an
eye for the Palestinians and with your hand reaching to friend and foe alike from
Damascus. Some of your friends warned you that you weren’t being reasonable in
your choice of allies, but no one could deny you were defending the independence of
institutions and the sovereignty of the rule of law.
Samir Kassir lived most of his life in a short period of time: decisive years in
Lebanese modern history. His life in politics was distinctive, unique and relentless,
while his work was rich in ideas and creations. His life was full of battles and
confrontations, political dreams, and personal aspirations. An exceptional course
crowned with a sudden death. The end of an intellectual who, during his years at the
French Lycée in Beirut, was mad for socialism. This is where his interest in Brecht’s
theater, the films of the Italian neo-realists and the French New Wave developed. What
did you take from Brecht, Rosselini and Godard into politics, Samir?
After the Taif Accords, the intellectual and writer returned from Paris, publishing
his writing and analysis in French and Arabic magazines, heading An Nahar’s publishing
house and founding the famous magazine – unique in the history of the Lebanese
press – “Orient-Express,” which did a great deal toward “arabicizing francophonia”
and opening it to new horizons. He also presented the short-lived political TV show
“Without Reserve,” which was banned for what it dared to say. Kassir also invited antiZionist Jewish intellectuals, some of them Arabs, to a heated debate in Beirut’s Al
Medina Theater. At that time, he was busy writing “Amateur of National Confessions,”
and when his critique of the successive governments increased in the daily An Nahar,
the kid from Achrafieh was told he was not Lebanese but Palestinian and the
government seized his passport, after which he was followed endlessly by the secret
services.
In the final months of his life there was no doubt in Samir Kassir’s mind that he
was living a period of happiness, considering – in haste, unfortunately – that the
“Arab spring” had finally arrived and with it, the victory of the ideas he had always
fought for. Had our intellectual dreamer turned away from a reality too hard to fathom?
Were you convinced, Samir, that Lebanon – with or without occupation – is changing?
This is the knight returning to be slain, with the ruthless merchants ready to sell his
blood. This is Samir Kassir, who never belonged to a community, a political party or a
political faction, whether regional or national. He was the lost Arab who lived and
died in Achrafieh. Or, as writer Elias Khoury called him in one of his famous stories, he
was the “small mountain!” AJ
Translated from the Arabic by Carole Corm
The Arabic version of this essay appeared in Al Hayat. The translation with permission
of the author is exclusively published in Al Jadid
AL JADID FALL 2004
www.ALJADID.com
51
Essays & Features
Lebanon’s Popular Uprising
Continued from page 2
influence upon its pages was not overwhelming to the extent of
excluding others. (Regrettably, this applied only to when Hariri
was alive, not since his death.)
The cultural pages of Al Mustaqbal, which are of great
interest to me, have been very rich in reviews, essays, interviews,
and lively debates about various aspects of Arab culture and
arts. When we compare Al Mustaqbal with Al Manar, the
Hezbollah TV station, a strikingly different picture emerges;
the latter is a monolithic presence that does not represent the
whole of Lebanon, glossing over the religious, cultural, and
political diversity that the world witnessed during the onemillion-strong demonstration in mid-March. Hariri’s vision for
the American occupation of Iraq, as do I, but not the Syrian
occupation of Lebanon. Unless they believe in good and bad
occupation, their position makes little sense. Occupation is
occupation, and had the Lebanese been the occupiers of Syria,
they too would have behaved as do all occupiers, Syrians or
otherwise. At the risk of repeating a cliché, “power corrupts” – it
does, and not selectively.
Consider what happened at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. The
abuse revealed to the outside world should have belonged to
the dark world of Saddam Hussein rather than Iraq under American
occupation. The torture and humiliation reveal that despite stark
differences with Baathist Iraq and professed U.S. goals of ridding
Iraq of Saddam’s torture machines, the very fact of being an
occupying regime may result in some segments of its forces
resorting to methods generally reserved for dictatorial regimes.
For those such as myself, who left the country before the civil war, Hariri’s
project is reminiscent of bygone days when Lebanon, regardless of its flawed
political institutions, was a cacophony of voices, left, right and center, arguing
amongst themselves but doing so in a tradition of civility and tolerance.
Lebanon was in tune with those who took to the streets to both
bid him farewell and to denounce his killers.
Hariri appointed Mohammed Kishli, once an Arab
nationalist and later a communist, as an advisor on labor issues.
Kishli confided in Hariri regarding topics that were on his mind
to write about, but explained he was hesitant because of his
official association with the late prime minister. Hariri’s answer,
according to a recent column by Kishli in the Lebanese daily An
Nahar: “Mohammad, have I prevented you from writing
anything?” Of course, the late prime minister had not. This
anecdote further demonstrates Hariri’s vision of an open and
tolerant Lebanon, a vision that did not sit well with certain
groups inside and outside of Lebanon.
Much of the analyses of the recently unfolding events in
Lebanon is troubling and disorienting, whether one reads critics
from both the liberal and “leftist” camps in the electronic and
print media, or looks to bloggers on the Middle East. Aside from
downplaying the uprising of independence by not dignifying it
with appropriate coverage, when the press was forced to write
about it under the pressure imposed by intensive mainstream
media attention, they questioned the legitimacy of this
exceptional event. A number of critics, here and in some media
circles in the Arab world, question the popular sentiment directed
toward the Syrian occupation and even go so far as to blame the
Lebanese for their whole predicament.
While it is commonplace for the media to criticize doublestandard policies on one issue or another, I cannot refrain from
leveling the same charge against the critics of Lebanese
opposition to Syrian occupation. Many of these critics oppose
52
It is naive to suggest that Syria’s treatment of the Lebanese
is different simply because most of Lebanon was once part of
Syria and the two peoples share common culture, language, and
religion – all components which make up a national community.
Moreover, this attitude ignores the Lebanese yearning for selfdetermination as well as Syria’s concretely un- “sisterly” policies
toward Lebanon.
Perhaps much of what the Lebanese suffered had not been
publicized because many of protesters who flooded the streets
in mid-March had previously repressed their pain due to the
“sisterly” commonalities between Lebanon and Syria. Their
silence had left only anti-Syrian Rightist Lebanese Christian
groups at the forefront of the opposition to Syria.
Much of the reasoning behind the spin on Syria’s occupation
is linked to the war in Iraq and the faulty and disastrous rationale
of the Bush administration for waging it. If Bush repeatedly
calls on Syria to leave Lebanon, his reason must be suspect in
the context of the war against Iraq. Even if we put aside Syria’s
own interests, which were served by the intervention, the Asad
regime can be indicted on several grounds: it acted as occupier
and laid down an authoritarian political and security
infrastructure, that would either keep the country under direct
control or continue indirect influence even if the Syrians left.
Al nizam al-amni translates to security system or, more
precisely, the dominance of the military over civilian authorities.
The system was initiated in 1990, at the end of the war and after
Syria had legitimized its domination by both ensuring the
election of sympathetic civilian and security leadership and
appointing them to top governmental and security posts. These
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2004
Editor’s Notebook
strategic positions ranged from the presidency down to security volumes about the presence of an occupying force and cast
chiefs in the army, police, and intelligence services. This security serious doubt on arguments minimizing the harm suffered by
apparatus has run the state since 1990, breaking with the pre- the Lebanese.
1975 system in which military security services played a minimal
Syria’s strategy of alliances was based on anything but
role in civilian political life, meddling in domestic politics only “sisterly” relations, instead pointing to an overriding goal of
when ordered by civilian government officials. Intelligence consolidating Syrian control. Syrian behavior demonstrates
chiefs, who became king-makers under Syrian hegemony, had a exploiting Lebanon’s vulnerability, fear, and weakness – the
different role in pre-occupation times – they were mere tools in communal structure – rather than helping, healing, and
the hands of civilian leadership.
counseling “sister” Lebanon.
Critics argue the valid point that Lebanon officially asked
Syria’s journey of troubling alliances began when the
Syria to intervene in 1976; the initial intervention was not anti- Christians battled against the Muslims, Leftists, and Palestinians
Christian, but rather its goal was to defend the Christians from as the Syrian army often stood idly by. When their alliance with
an uncertain future should
the Christians soured, Syria
their Palestinian and Muslim
turned to the other side: the
“enemies” be allowed to
Muslims, Palestinians, and
advance toward their
whatever was left of the
positions. Furthermore,
Lebanese National Movement.
Lebanese politics lack of a
Syria’s changing alliances
sense of community with the
sparked a round of strife
sectarian divisions making
between the Syrians and the
loyalty
to
outsiders
Christians as well as with Syria’s
sometimes stronger than
latest allies, Hezbollah.
loyalty to the Lebanese
Hezbollah’s emergence
nation-state. Few would
posed a challenge to Syria ‘s
quarrel with the accuracy of
steady ally, the Shiite
the first two claims.
organization Amal. Fearing this
Even the third claim is
Iranian-supported organization,
partially true, for if the
Syria strengthened its alliance
Lebanese were unified and From the Series “Greetings from Beirut I” by Salah Saouli, 1997
with Amal, and supported it in
integrated as a national (oil on Canvas, 60X90x5 cm)
what was known in the 1980s
community, they would have
as a “proxy war” between Amal
been able to close ranks, mend their differences, and deny any and Hezbollah. In the late 1980s, Syria found itself in an informal
external power justification for intervening and depriving them alliance with the U.S. against Lebanon’s Christian leader at the
of their independence and sovereignty. However, what the critics time and Asad’s nemesis, General Michel Aoun. Aoun’s pro-Iraq
leave out of their analyses is how the Syrians dealt with these policy provided the Syrians the ideal opportunity to force him
realities during the post-intervention period which stretched into exile – with U.S. blessing – and install a pro-Syrian regime.
until their withdrawal at the end of April of 2005.
In the meantime the Syrians succeeded in splitting another
As a student of international politics, I have always believed Christian force, the Lebanese Forces by allying themselves with
that circumstances create unforeseen opportunities for political the faction headed by Elie Hobeika. Hobeika was killed in a
players. Thus, I disagree with the premise that Syria had bomb explosion on January 24, 2002, under mysterious
deliberately planned the intervention and subsequent annexation conditions.
of Lebanon. The vacuum created in Lebanon and the dangers
None of Syria’s alliances had anything to do with ideology,
that followed are the responsibility of the Lebanese themselves. whether Baathist or other official Syrian policies such as antiThis puts me, of course, at odds with those who subscribe to the Zionism, support for the Palestinian cause, or anti-Americanism.
external explanation of the Lebanese civil war, i.e., that the The only logic one can discern is a pure Syrian state interest in
Lebanese civil war was the product of devious plans or plots policies that insured continuing control of Lebanon, and an
conceived by either Israel or Syria.
application of the old colonialist mantra “divide and rule” in
Blaming Syria for intervening in Lebanon is a weak order to expedite progress toward this goal.
argument at best. Blaming the Syrians for their conduct after the
The powerful bomb that blasted Hariri’s motorcade on
intervention makes more sense; upon examination of the February 14, 2005, killing 18 people along with the prime
situation one understands why the language describing the minister, revives a part of Lebanon’s bloody past that most
Syrian role in Lebanon has changed – even in this essay – from Lebanese want to put behind them; thus the one-million-plus
“intervention” to that of “occupation.” The alliances Syria multi-confessional demonstration, where almost one-third of
formed in Lebanon, its treatment of Lebanese dissenters, and the population arose to protest the crime.The debate continues
the authoritarian infrastructure of a new political system speak
AL JADID FALL 2004
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53
Editor’s Notebook
over who killed Hariri and former Minister Basil Flayhan, as
well as who is responsible for the failed assassination attempt
that severely wounded Marwan Hamade, a former minister in
Hariri’s last cabinet and an ally of Walid Jumblatt. However,
there is little
c o nv i n c i n g
evidence that the
Valentine’s Day
killing is any
different from past
assassinations. The
list of dissenters who
have vanished – and
whom
many
Lebanese allege
were killed by
Syrian forces – is
long indeed. Of
course, nothing has
been proven, even
concerning
the
vicious crime that
claimed Hariri.
Walid Jumblatt
spoke to a small
group of faculty and
graduate students at
UCLA during one of his many visits to the United States in the
early 1980s, while I was a graduate student. I asked him about
This law, referred to as the 2000 electoral law, is believed to
have been written by Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, General Rustom
Ghazaleh, and Maj. Gen. Jamil al-Sayyed. Kanaan is the exhead of the Syrian intelligence in Lebanon (1982-2001),
considered at the
time to be the
king-maker or
paramount power
broker
in
L e b a n o n .
G h a z a l e h
replaced Kanaan
as the head of the
S y r i a n
Intelligence
Forces
in
Lebanon (2001April 2005), and
al-Sayyed is the
most powerful
Lebanese security
chief, believed to
have reported
directly
to
Kanaan, often
bypassing his
Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square on March 14th of 2005
civilian superiors.
In the wake of the Hariri assassination, al-Sayyed was dismissed
from his job.
None of Syria’s alliances [in Lebanon] had anything to do with ideology, whether
Baathist or other official Syrian policies such as anti-Zionism, support for the
Palestinian cause, or anti-Americanism.
who may have killed his father, Kamal Jumblatt, a leader who
had enjoyed great respect among Lebanese progressives who
longed for a different Lebanon, different from both the old feudalsectarian state and from the state dominated by the security
appartuses that was produced by Syrian hegemony.
Jumblatt, aware of what was on the mind of this graduate
student, provided a vague and unsatisfying answer. He waited
until the assassination of Hariri to openly and unequivocally
answer the question of who had killed his father. Jumblatt was
reported to have accused the Syrians of killing him, a revelation
that lends credibility to widespread speculation that Kamal
Jumblatt’s strained relations with the Syrian regime had sealed
his fate.
Perhaps the gravest danger caused by Syrian occupation,
aside from the transformation from a system with the semblance
of a democratic process into an authoritarian, repressive one, is
the introduction of a new electoral law reportedly designed and
written by Syrian and Lebanese pro-Syrian security chiefs.
54
Lebanon’s new electoral law has produced the current,
predominantly pro-Syrian parliament. This parliament made it
possible to amend the constitution to extend the mandate of
President Emile Lahoud by three years. Through this law, Syria
hoped to produce a pro-Syrian majority in the 2005 new
parliament, with or without the withdrawal of its forces.
The 2000 law adopts a system of proportional
representation, with elections taking place within large provinces
instead of Lebanon ‘s old division based on small districts. The
drawing of the electoral districts has proven, so far, to be a classic
case in “gerrymandering” – deliberately rearranging the
boundaries of the legislative districts to influence the outcome
of elections.
The Taif Accord had already produced a constitution that
redistributed the parliamentary seats evenly between the two
major religions, trimming the Christian ratio from 60 to 50
percent of parliamentary seats. The new law creates large districts
with Muslim majorities so that only Christian candidates
www.ALJADID.com
AL JADID FALL 2004
Editor’s Notebook
accepted by the Muslim majority could win. While the Taif and issues rather than campaigns clustering around feudalAccord rightly corrects the sectarian imbalance, the pro-Syrian traditional and sectarian leaders who command loyalty to their
Shiite leadership wants to go as far as to deny the other sect the own persons on the basis of mere tribal and sectarian affiliations.
right of even electing its representatives under a fair and balanced Regrettably, since sectarianism remains the defining factor of
law.
loyalty in Lebanon, the electoral choice is bound to reflect this
A first and superficial reading leads you to believe that reality.
proportionality is more representative, or more democratic,
No wonder then that Syria’s ardent supporters, the two major
fostering ties between different communities which otherwise Shiite organizations Amal and Hezbollah, are the only outspoken
would be confined to their small districts, districts that tend to supporters of the 2000 electoral law. Ironically, Hezbollah, which
be
more
is
hardly
nonhomogenous
sectarian, is numbered
compared to the
among the groups
more “desirable”
who are accusing the
heterogeneous
Christians
of
p r o p o r t i o n a l i t y.
sectarianism
by
This arrangement
adopting the small
seemed to fit well
district law.
within
the
The
2000
ideological
electoral law is a
framework of the
Syrian legacy with a
apologists of Syrian
dual purpose: to
occupation.
consolidate control
Abolishing
over the political
sectarianism is a
process should Syria
noble goal indeed.
find itself able to
But the apologists
maintain
the
seem to have
occupation, and if
forgotten
the
Syria were forced to
fallout from 15
leave, it would leave
years of death,
the country divided
From the “Gloria/Pedro”series, 2003 (Silkscreen on PVC, 230X120cm)
dislocation, and
and unstable. Now
depopulation that
that the occupation
heightened the fears of the different sects rather than assuaging has ended, the goal sought through the security apparatus has
them. The war created deep scars which the 2000 law can only crumbled, while the remaining one, the political influence
inflame, rather than heal. The Christians perceived themselves manifest in the 2000 electoral law, has been discredited though
to have lost and the Muslims to have won as a result of the Taif not changed. Though it will survive the 2005 coming election
Accord. The 2000 electoral law aims to impose upon the round, it may not live long enough to guide the following
Christians a sort of “Treaty of Versailles,” handing them a election. Nevertheless, the 2000 law’s harmful effect on the
humiliating law that would deny them the right to select their democratic process has been evident already because scores of
own representatives through a fair method.
credible candidates have declined to run, and more than 60
Dividing the country into large provinces with deputies have won before the election has even started, due to
predominantly Muslim majorities will allow two-thirds of the either the lack of any challengers or challengers who pose a
Christian deputies to be chosen by Muslim voters. A single or serious contest.
smaller district system, used from 1960 and until this latest law,
One would hope that the Lebanese have matured enough to
does also allow some distorted representation: in certain districts not return to the bloody and dark days of the civil war – the
Christians would be choosing the representatives of the Muslims, independence uprising is certainly an encouraging sign. One
while in others the Muslims would choose representatives of can hope the division created by 2000 electoral law, as well as
the Christians. But these faults are nothing compared to the the intensified sectarian discourse which reached its height on
results of the 2000 law.
the eve of the 2005 elections, will be corrected.
Few overlook the experience of countries that adopt either
In short, much of the criticism of the Lebanese opposition
full proportionality (Israel) or partial (post-WWII Germany and is based on simplistic ideological notions, disguising itself under
Russia since 1993). What distinguishes these countries from the rhetoric of grand abstract ideas that ignore the facts of
Lebanon is that their citizens have greater loyalty to the nation occupation. We should not forget that these facts made
state than to their sects and clans, and that they have a modern occupation unacceptable to most Lebanese, never mind what
party system that runs campaigns based on alternative programs President George Bush says. AJ
AL JADID FALL 2004
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