Arab in America, Os/bama in Houston

By Jim | June 12th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Just finished the graphic novel cum coming-of-age memoir by Toufic El Rassi, “Arab in America.” Man, is it good. El Rassi gives us a sense of the social and political binds faced by Arabs living in America, giving special attention to the era post 9/11, but making clear that there was plenty wrong leading up to that event, within government policy and within society. The story covers his life–focusing on issues of identity politics, social prejudices, and so forth) until adulthood, ending with a departure to Lebanon, the country of his birth. I especially appreciated El Rassi’s colorful, insightful digressions into topics like the representation of Arabs in Hollywood history. I am already thinking of ways to get it into the college writing classroom this fall or next spring. I did a short review of the book on amazon.com that should be up soon.

El Rassi’s treatment of race and social attitudes in this book presents a society where racism operates systemically, often unchecked and unquestioned, against Arabs and Muslims. This racism manifests itself differently among people on the left and right politically, but it’s there at every level. Which makes me wonder about Barack Obama. His middle name and African/Muslim heritage will surely come up over and over again in the course of the next five months. A few days ago, passing through a newstand in the Houston Airport, I was struck by something creepy that I overheard. (sidenote–since when did George H.W. Bush get to have an airport named after him? Last I heard the guy was still jumping out of airplanes…). “Overheard” might not quite be getting the spirit of the scene. A very loud woman was stomping about the newstand talking to a girl, perhaps her teenaged daughter. She must have come across a picture of the democratic presidential candidate on a magazine cover. Poor the rest of us after that. “I hate that Osama. Or Obama. Or whatever the heck he’s called.”

Okay, so it’s Texas, the home state of the sitting Republican president, albeit a rather tarnished one. Still, it has me wondering how much race will matter and how it will matter this November. And how much the same tired old invisible assumptions about fear that rises from the Arab/Muslim East will subtly inform the vote people make…

Good Muslims, Bad Muslims…

By Jim | May 30th, 2008 | No Comments »

On the flight back to Tucson from Washington, D.C. last week, I was seated next to a pleasant older couple on their way back from a cruise that dropped them off in several port cities of the eastern Mediterranean. Curious because of my own experiences living in Istanbul, I asked them about that city and about traveling in Turkey. Like most travelers taking in this royal and mad city for the first time, they loved it and wished they had more time there. The people, they said, were very nice. Good people. Not the type of…gulp…”Muslims” we hear about elsewhere. “Good Muslims,” they called them. What went unsaid–the presumptive association of Muslims with mayhem, unkindness, terror, etc–that almost always leaves lump in my throat.

President Bush famously took his turn borrowing the expression “Good Muslims, Bad Muslims,” in a clumsy effort to distinguish between those who do and do not support violence in the name of Islam. This in turn inspired the scholar Mahmood Mamdani to deploy it as the title of his book aboutthe cultural politics of Islam in a post 9/11 landscape. As Mamdani explains, this leaves Muslims in an awkward position of choosing within some abstract construction of good and evil not even of their own making. Mamdani writes, “All Muslims were now under obligation to prove their credentials by joining in a war against ‘bad Muslims.’” Needless to say, this politics of division has been a failure in our times.

So, I, too, did a double-take, but chose not to press the issue with the couple–tired, marooned next to each other on a plane, not to mention that their impressions of the place were generally positive–the scene didn’t feel appropriate for having words over the folly of Bush’s reductive language nor even the harm he has done in the Middle East since I returned to the US from Turkey in July 2001. But here’s what I would have hoped for: a way out of this ridiculous cultural politics that posits a hostile “other.” Former US Ambassador to Oman David Dunford has it right. Maybe travel is the answer, lots of continued contact between people of the US and Middle Eastern countries, with travel serving as just one possible means of critical response to the status quo. So, the Muslims of Turkey are good Muslims. Next country?

About Encounters With the Middle East

By Nesreen | May 21st, 2008 | No Comments »

From a region always in the news but rarely known through the medium of storytelling comes an eclectic, insightful collection of contemporary first-person travel narratives from across the Middle East. Encounters with the Middle East collects thirty rich, engaging travel stories that capture uplifting scenes from everyday life and deliver sensitive, bittersweet renderings of people and landscapes often shaken by conflict. It also provides intimate portrayals of people and traditions too often absent from books on the region, while also situating the Western traveler in many tourist destinations, from the famous to the obscure. This timely collection is geared toward a broad spectrum of readers ranging from the armchair traveler to the DC policy wonk; the stories in Encounters present intimate, disarming scenes of the people behind the headlines and policy reports. These narratives demonstrate how Western travelers can find grounds for identification with people who are so often misrepresented in today’s media.

Rolf Potts

By Nesreen | May 21st, 2008 | No Comments »

Encounters is much more than a travel writing book, and was always intended to be. That’s one reason why the collection has such an eclectic mix of writers who come from backgrounds outside of the normal travel writing circuit.

Travel writers are of course, well represented too. Rolf Potts is one of them. His Encounters story “Dancing at the Blood Festival,” recounts his journey to understand Islam in a Post 9-11 world.

Rolf has been a travel writer for nearly a decade now, something I did not realize until I learned that Solas House/Travelers’ Tales this fall will be publishing Marco Polo Didn’t Go There: Stories and Lessons from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer. Rolf strikes me as someone who revels in strange, edgy, and seamy places. He always takes us there with him, but what I love about his writing is he takes us into his own edgy and witty mind, where he processes the madness that sometimes happens around him. I’m sure Marco Polo will not disappoint in that regard.

“Dancing at the Blood Festival” is much in that spirit. In it, he uses Eid al Adha, a Muslim holiday to observe the Old Testament story of Abraham’s near murder of his son Ishmael, done to prove his devotion to God, as his point of inquiry. Rolf goes from the chaotic streets of Cairo to the laconic ones in coastal Aqaba in Jordan to discover that when Muslims holiday, they do so in much of the same way we do. Before that conclusion though, readers are treated to a hilarious romp through Rolf’s awkward journey through Cairo on the morning of the Eid, when sacrificial goat blood is splattered all over the city, causing little girls to wretch and hapless animals to meet a premature fate falling from rooftops before their sacrifice.

When he reaches Aqaba, the awkwardness of two teenage boys curious about an American traveler is what becomes funny, as does Rolf’s boredom as he hangs out with these kids as they dance to a tune played on an old cassette player. It ends well, I promise, but I won’t give it away.

Congratulations to Rolf on his new book!

The Hakawati

By Nesreen | May 18th, 2008 | No Comments »

In Arabic, “hakawati” means storyteller. The picture to your left shows a hakawati in Damascus entertaining a cafe audience.

Little of this tradition in the Arab world is known by the West although the famed “A Thousand and One Nights” is known widely, thanks in large part to early Orientalist translators, and of course Disney.

Now, Lebanese novelist Rabih Almeddine resurrects the frame story model made famous by “One Thousand and One Nights,” and other Eastern texts with his modern-day novel set between Los Angeles and Beirut, also called, appropriately, The Hakawati. Almeddine’s novel weaves the blend of sex, intrigue, and guile that is a feature of many of the stories that have been transmitted by hakawatis over the years.

Released only a month ago, The Hakawati has already been widely praised. It promises to be another constructive and engaging way for Western audiences to learn something of value about Middle Eastern culture and society.

Appease or Talk?

By Nesreen | May 18th, 2008 | No Comments »

Much has been made this week about Bush’s speech at the Israeli Knesset aimed indirectly at Presidential hopeful Barack Obama. In his speech, Bush criticized unknown others who choose to appease those he deemed terrorists by engaging in discussions with them. In a show of demagoguery, Bush likened the will of some in the U.S. to talk to the likes of Hamas/Hizbollah/Iran/Syria and other players to the decision to appease Hitler in the lead up to WWII.

Following Bush’s comments, the talk show pundits with their usual zeal tore up or propped up the comments, depending on their orientation. It was another week where the din obscured the sensible, the thoughtful, the relevant.

I want to cite this episode of Hardball, seen here on YouTube, as an egregious example of what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, much of the public discourse in our country inspires fear by using several catch phrases or key words, but does little to inform us.
We need to do better as a nation in steering our discourse into more factual-based, measured directions. It’s up to us to challenge the nonsense that’s out there.

Encounters with the Middle East editors Nesreen Khashan and Jim Bowman with contributor Joel Carillet in the DC area!

By Nesreen | May 13th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Join us May 17 at Busboys and Poets in Arlington, VA, near the nation’s capital, for a community gathering featuring Encounters with the Middle East editors Nesreen Khashan and Jim Bowman. Joining them is Encounters contributor Joel Carillet, author of “Half Truths and Olive Trees,” a story of Palestinians and Jews working together in Jerusalem to rebuild a structure that had repeatedly been bulldozed by Israeli authorities.

Mothers and the Middle East

By Jim | May 12th, 2008 | No Comments »

I got to thinking yesterday about mothers and the Middle East. Katie Belliel’s story “Instant Mother, Just Add Tea,” a tale from Turkey about maternal affection and too much tea, explains the strength of the bonds that can be formed between mothers and their children, even those they informally “adopt” from faraway countries. For people who have lived some time in Turkey, Belliel’s story rings true and familiar in many ways. Motherhood is a role associated with hospitality, caregiving, nurturance. And maybe “associated with” doesn’t quite cut it descriptively. Mothers can be full-on venerated in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The flip side of the coin, of course, puts women and mothers in Turkey, and elsewhere, in something of a double-bind: while the domestic sphere continues to be dominated by women, more and more young women throughout the country excel in Turkey’s schools, attend university, and develop the expectation of successful professional careers outside the home. For most of these talented young women–especially in more traditional Anatolian cities and smaller towns–marriage and motherhood remain on the horizon as life aspirations, but in a state of deferral until women finish school, establish careers, and, I suppose, find the right person. When the time is right for them to begin their own families, here’s hoping that some of the aforementioned and celebrated responsibilities traditionally associated with motherhood can be shared by others, so that women can continue to mother children with the love and energy necessary.

Ever wonder why?

By Nesreen | May 7th, 2008 | No Comments »

Why do we need this book, Encounters, beyond the plain joy it provides in reading its delightful, entertaining stories? Is not the joy of reading enough? Well, as someone who has sought refuge in books for much of my life, I would like to thing so. But we were thinking that we would serve another purpose when we came up with the idea of Encounters. We though there was a need to counterpoint all the material out there that reinforced myths about Arabs and Muslims. Try this one: As recently as 2004, according to this relatively dated article from the UK Guardian newspaper, the U.S. military was using The Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai, as a training book for the Middle East.

Now, like any decently raised kid, I was taught not to speak ill of the dead, but Patai’s book, in the words of one scholar interviewed for the article, “best use is as a doorstop” is not too harsh in my view (Patai passed on in 1996).

Its language is simplified racism, yet despite being published in 1976, it was considered worthy enough to be used as a training text in some quarters of the U.S. government. Appalling. I’m not going to claim that Encounters is a work of scholarship. Its not. It’s pure narrative, subjective, problematic, and maybe even a bit awkward from the viewpoint of some of our writers. I will say that at least from our book what you get is an honest, earnest effort to rectify the misunderstandings of the past and present, rather than a perpetuation of them, and for that I am quite proud of the stories we have collected.

Peter Wortsman and the Middle East

By Nesreen | May 4th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

1001 Middle Easts:

Introductory remarks to my Reading from Encounters with the Middle East at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, April 26, 2008

By Peter Wortsman, author of Encounters story, “Holy Land Blues.” Peter’s piece was also selected for The Best Travel Writing 2008: True Stories From Around the World (Travelers’ Tales)

“What is your first memory?” I asked my mother in our last conversation, several days before she died.

“War,” she said, shaking her head.

“Why do you shake your head?” I asked.

“Stupid world,” she said.

She had her wits about her and knew that the madness was raging again.

My very first thought upon hearing reports of the American invasion of Basra in Iraq was: That’s Sinbad’s city! And suddenly Iraq had a face and a voice and a soul, the soul of a great seafaring man, my all-time hero, whispering from the grave: “I rendered thanks to Allah for rescuing me from my ordeal, and soon my past sufferings were no more than half-forgotten dreams.”

My take on the Middle East is sandwiched in between the covers of Shahrazad’s intricately woven tapestry of life-preserving tales. What more powerful incantation than a narrative! Stories may not protect against guided missiles, cluster or suicide bombs, but they do protect against the defilement of the soul and remind that the human heart beats at the same rate on both sides of the border.

I am honored and delighted to have had my words included in this fine book. Almost every page of Encounters resonates with an extremely specific personality of place. It’s a cliché buster, in the best sense, a book that portrays people and places with no halos and all the rough edges, but also, and above all, with those sparks that, when warped, ignite wars, and when cherished, cause bushes to sputter with wisdom and conflicting sanctities to reveal a common source.

As a Jew, I have always felt like a nomad at heart, a Bedouin in blue jeans. And though my immediate forbears lived in and were later forced to flee Central Europe, I have always felt in the pit of my gut like a misplaced Mediterranean—my hair and nose and my need to be on the move are a dead giveaway. I felt it in Israel back in the Seventies. I felt it again in the souks of Morocco, immediately mastering the art of the deal.

But my link to the region transcends nostalgia.

In my family, we will always remember, especially at the Passover Seder which we celebrated again last week, that it was an Egyptian Moslem, my Uncle Hussein, the husband of my Aunt Risa, who helped bring my mother’s family out of bondage and save them from Hitler’s death machine.

“Holy Land Blues” is an account of a visit I took to Israel back in the Seventies, rife with premonitions of things to come. It was just before Sadat made his historic landing on the tarmac on Israeli soil. I was also due to visit Egypt, where my aunt still lived at the time, but relatives in Israel warned that war was imminent. As it turned out, the rumblings did not escalate into war, and though I never made it to Egypt, I did meet Sanah Hassan, an Egyptian journalist, on a kibbutz in Israel, whose visit predated that of her late president.

Not long thereafter, Sadat landed. And just when the prospect of peace appeared within reach, the assassinations of Sadat and Rabin followed.

I am no diplomat or politician, but I do believe in the power of narrative to traverse borders of distrust. In the words of the wise Shahrazad: “Then I will tell you a tale, which, if Allah wills, shall be the means of our deliverance.”