Dunia

Nearing the End of a Long American Film

2008-01-16T14:52:00.000-08:00

The American president began his last year in office with a visit to a region left more unstable by his administrations short-sighted policies. Unfortunately his sabre-rattling wasn’t limited to the Alartha sword dance he tried his hand at in Bahrain.

While the White House has billed the trip as an effort to reassure his Arab allies in the Gulf that the US will protect them from Iran, it seems the GCC, while it does have concerns about growing Iranian power, prefers constructive dialogue to an exchange of bellicose rhetoric and grandstanding - as in the battle of the videos over the incident in the Strait of Hormuz. As the Saudi foreign minister said at a press conference “I am talking about Saudi Arabia’s point of view. This is not the time for any provocation in the region”.

"Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous" was Bush’s mantra throughout the trip, and he seemed unfazed by the fact that IAEA chief Muhammad el-Baradei was in Tehran to negotiate on outstanding nuclear issues, or by his own intelligence agencies recent report that said Iran no longer had a nuclear weapons program.

As the Saudi Gazette put it, “If this is the Bush definition of diplomacy, he needs to pick up a dictionary”. Editorials in leading newspapers also lambasted Bush’s much vaunted peace plan, which consigns UN resolutions to the dustbin of history, denying refugees their right of return, and declaring Israel’s West Bank settlements, illegal under international law, “facts on the ground” which must be accommodated by the occupied Palestinians . The “viable state” turns out to be a network of Bantustans with no territorial integrity, with the Palestinians deprived of their best land and water resources.

The other ‘carrot’ to the people of the region was a revival of the short-lived ‘freedom agenda’ in his keynote speech in Abu Dhabi. The speech was in part a repeat of the 2003 state of the union address in the build up to the war on Iraq, substituting Iran as state sponsor of terror on the path to acquiring nukes.

Reeling off a list of democratic elections in the region, he mentioned the Iraqi and Lebanese elections, but skipped the Palestinian election of a Hamas government in favour of the earlier election of Abu Mazen. To Arabs watching the speech live, the glaring omissions was proof, if any were needed, that this wasn’t about universal ideals, but about a Bush principle: with us or against us? Again, the idea that you negotiate not with your allies, but with people who disagree with you, seems an alien concept.

But as this administration is on its way out, perhaps some appreciation is in order. Will the next one provide as much material to satirist?

‘Bush bashing’ has become a spectator sport in some quarters, and the urge to lampoon has even reached Arab video clips, whose Arab spin-offs have reached levels of inanity undreamt of in MTV’s philosophy – as exemplified by the craze for cheesy children’s songs by pop-singers.

You’d think nothing could be more apolitical, but one of Nancy Ajram’s contributions to the genre, “Shater, Shater” (Good Boy, Good Boy) proved to have hidden potential. When the US Secretary of State visited to the region, on a tour as empty of substance on key grievances as Bush’s, the song was adapted to suit the occasion.

Some creative editing replaced the pop-star playing teacher with a digitized version of Ms. Rice. And her pupils? The heads of various Arab states depicted as uniformed pint sized schoolboys. Not very subtle, and the lyrics weren’t either:

Teacher: What do we call the boy who listens to his parents?
Chorus: Good boy, good boy
Teacher: What about the boy who does well at school and doesn’t annoy his teachers?
Chorus: We will love him and always call him a good boy

It’s obviously a simplification of US-Arab relations, but one that struck a cord, as the resulting remix spread like wildfire on the internet.

Bush himself appears in “Ahlan, Ezayak” or ‘Hi, how are you?’ in which a Tunisian-Kuwaiti singer, Shams, reworks an Egyptian song about the breakup of a relationship (with lines like “I’m not your relative, or your darling, I’m someone whose sick and tired of your deeds…buy your safety by getting away from me”). Her version stars the American President as the rejected suitor.

The video features an elderly Rambo spraying bullets everywhere, US soldiers being chased through the desert by an incensed woman wielding a slipper, oil fields and cowboy hats, and the words Guantanamo, Democracy and Liberty appearing as props at various stages.

Having berated Bush for his behavior in front of the international media and squared off with Condi in the boxing ring, the singer climbs up steps in the shape of a graph in the middle of oil rigs, pushes Bush off his perch at the top, and then visits a fortune teller to find out who her destined partner will be. Gazing into the crystal ball, she sees herself in a frothy Western wedding dress walking off into the sunset with Handhala, a cartoon charater who was the signature figure of assasinated Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali.

As Mamoun Asfour said, he encapsulated his creator’s philosophy, the figure of a ten-year old boy with his back to the viewer, whom the Palestinian cartoonist described as “neither beautiful, spoilt, nor even well-fed. He is barefoot like many children in refugee camps...However, those who came to know… [him] adopted him because he is affectionate, honest, outspoken…his hands behind his back are a symbol of rejection of all the present negative tides in our region."

The marriage of pop singer Shams and Handhalah at the end of the video clip is thus a concise and powerful way to indicate a rejection of Americas foreign policy.

“Ahlan, Ezayak” generated a lot of controversy, one contention being that it was empty of any real content, a dumbed-down commercialised version of ‘resistance art’. And it is – a one-off ‘political’ video-clip whose success was down to a desire to vent at being made to live through “a long American film” as Ziad Rabani’s musical puts its.

As Bush’s trip competed for air-time with the frenzied coverage of the early stages of the US elections, one can only hope that the next American film will be less bloody.

Bush in Dubai

2008-01-16T12:50:00.000-08:00

Goat brains on the buffet in Dubai
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
by Mark Silva

They served goat brains on the buffet in the hold for pool reporters here today, but I cannot directly report what it tastes like -- read on for a review.

.....As we were led in we saw Bush arriving from an interior door to the courtyard, where he was greeted by six young girls - they must have been under nine, because at nine they must go under cover and these girls were not covered but rather wearing bright gowns - half of them in fuchsia and half of them in turquoise.

..."Hi girls," said Bush, arriving to their greeting, as they burst into song. Their hands were henna'd with designs and Bush remarked on their "beautiful hands." After the song, two stepped forward with baskets of flowers and said "Welcome to Dubai."

The girls who greeted Bush and the ruler of Dubai are younger than nine, for at nine they must cover their heads.

They walked to the front bench in the center facing the rugs and now 12 girls, all dressed in the hot blue and pink gowns - fuchsia and turquoise, Dana Perino assures me - started dancing on the carpet before them.

....They circled and swayed and made great flourishes to music, and the president smiled broadly, nodded his head to the rhythm and tapped his right black-shoed foot in decent timing. The dance lasted a while and Bush was beaming throughout.

"Shukran," Bush told the girls. Thank you.

The drizzle had ended by the dance's end, and then four robed men came out with hunting falcons on their arms - fabulous big birds of light brown tones with dark markings, and they approached Bush, who briefly took a bird on his arm and handed it back. "Beautiful birds," Bush said.

With this, we were led out and motorcaded to the cultural center past the famous Dubai creek, which was not active on this national holiday - declared so for the Bush visit.

Your pooler dubbed it Freedom Day.

They circled and swayed and made great flourishes to music, and the president smiled broadly, nodded his head to the rhythm and tapped his right black-shoed foot in decent timing. The dance lasted a while and Bush was beaming throughout.

Shukran," Bush told the girls. Thank you.

Covering Countries in Crisis

2008-01-11T17:19:00.000-08:00

The international news has recently been dominated by countries in crisis, first Pakistan’s pre-election rioting following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and the by Kenya’s post-election violence following a disputed presidential poll.

Kenyans and Pakistanis face an uncertain year ahead, but the way these two stories are being reported has raised serious issues. Kenya reports often boiled down to machetes, tribal warriors and rage; and on TV this mantra was accompanied by appropriate images of angry young men confronting each other, the police, and their neighbors. This was strikingly similar to the Pakistan coverage, when video packages of violent mobs shaking their fists, burning tires, and smashing cars were used over and over again.

Without providing adequate background and explanation, a lot of reporting simply perpetuates the idea of black and brown people as inherently savage and barbaric, their modern politics tribalism and feudalism by another name. Kenyan journalist Peter Kimani paints a very different picture by detailing the alliances and rivalries among the countries politicians in the last few decades and how they lead to the current tragic outcome, without ignoring or minimizing the role tribal allegiances play.

Kenyan Pundit (one of the bloggers who have come to the fore during this crisis as sources of information) felt that the way the international media reported the current crisis “only served to reinforce what I have always felt about news that emanates from Africa, we need to really work on news for us by us, we can no longer rely on the international stations and media”, and hoped that A24, a pan-African 24 hour news channel to start broadcasting this year, would change things when it launches. After all China has International CCTV, Germany has DW-TV, there’s Russia Today and France-24 and Jazeera English so it’s high time that Africa gets its own station to with an African perspective.

In the mean time, the Kenyan blogosphere had some praise for the quality of Aljazeera English’s coverage, which can in part be ascribed to the fact that AE’s reporters (Haru Mutasa, Mohammad Adow and Andrew Sullivan) were not network stars parachuted in for the disaster.

Anchors and reporter without detailed knowledge of the country they’re reporting about tend to extrapolate, and in the case of African nation experiencing a horrific mixture of ethnic, political and criminal gang violence, this means “the specter of Rwanda” is invoked. CNN, the Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel for example used the comparison repeatedly.

In the case of Pakistan, meltdown took on a whole different dimension, with the notion of Alqaeda somehow getting hold of the bomb once the country had descended into lawlessness being bandied about frequently, especially in the American media. You’d think the Pakistanis kept the nukes in a shed.

But the real interest in the Pakistan story was of course Bhutto herself, the assassinated leader. She was “pale-skinned” (the phrase was used by The New York Times and the AP news agency, others slipped in references to her “fair complexion” as clarification for her nickname Pinkie), spoke English as her mother tongue, and had been educated in convent schools and then attended Harvard and Oxford. She was good looking, she was a Muslim woman and she said what the west wanted to hear.

How powerful her image had become is made clear by the fact that one of the Republican candidates for president, Rudy Guliani, launched a new advert to try and boost his dismal ratings, and featured Benazir Bhutto. The same man had reprimanded his fellow republican candidates for attempting to make political profit out of a tragic event. The video features a lot of scary brown people while a voice over warns of “a people perverted” “madmen” and “a nuclear power in chaos”. Then archive footage of a younger, prettier Benazir Bhutto as the voice talks of “democracy attacked”.

In a way this posthumous ‘tribute’ is appropriate, Bhutto personifying an embattled democracy in the East, exactly the image she had spent a lot of time and money creating, and consistently repeated in interviews, TV appearances, op-ed pieces. She knew that she needed the US on her side if she was ever to return to power, and like any shrewd political operator, crafted a message to achieve her goal.

But according to Richard Engels the Richard Engel, Middle East bureau chief of the American network MSNBC, “Pakistan’s Ms. Liberty” perfidiously performed a “dance of the seven veils” and should not be trusted. The phrase also turned up in a biography by the NYT company which was printed in other newspapers, though it seems that the original New York Times was induced to change the wording of its online edition after reader’s indignant comments. Benazir Bhutto was a politician not a saint, but her political wheeling and dealing can be described without resorting to a phrase that combines misogyny and orientalism.

The negotiations between her and Musharraf for a power sharing agreement were brokered by Washington and London, which are also involved in negotiations between Kibaki and Odinga, and perhaps that is the most overlooked point in the coverage of both crises: foreign intervention.

Both Kenya and Pakistan were divided and ruled by the British, both became US allies against the Soviets, which meant periods of American backed dictatorship, and both are involved in the current ‘war on terror’, which has proved a divisive issue in both countries. The Pakistani army is pitted against its own people in an unpopular war in the Northern provinces, while Kenyan opposition leader Odinga is being characterized as the ‘Shariah candidate’ by his opponents, and described as a closet Muslim.

While there is no case for blaming the current unrest on the West, it does seem strange that most talking heads and op-ed writers prefer horrified glee over the natives displaying the atavistic urges to analysis of the 20th century history of the countries in question.

Makkah in the Media

2008-01-10T00:42:00.000-08:00

Over two and a half million pilgrims made the hajj this year, but millions more were able to "live the haj", to adopt the LBC channel’s slogan for its special coverage of one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, by following it on the radio, TV and Internet.

The fact that LBC, a Lebanese entertainment channel, devoted a considerable share of its daily broadcast to covering the most significant event in the Muslim calendar shows to what extent Makkah becomes a media mecca, in the English sense of the word, during the hajj season.

One of the oldest and most successful programs began with radio and expanded into television: a live broadcast coordinated between Arab radio stations on the day of Arafa, the most important rite of the hajj. By the time the reporters from all twenty-two radio stations have had their say its sunset in Makkah, signalling the approach of Eid ul Adha next day. Tuning in has become part of the celebrations for many, and even the dedicated channels covering every aspect of the pilgrimage live have not displaced it.

There is the occasional reporter woefully inadequate to the task - it’s not difficult to introduce some quality control, the Libyans for example always do a great job, as they are always from the Quran Radio station. The format - short segments on the same topic strung together - mean repetition is inevitable, and the phrase “and now I pass the mike to my colleague from the…station” only has so many variations.

For Alarabiya, the Dubai based Saudi funded alternative to Aljazeera, finding new topics seems to have become an obsession, with a piece on camels decorated, or a report on the changing fortunes of Polaroid photographers who used to do a brisk trade before camera phones became the rule rather than the exception.

Aljazeera itself, the first pan-Arab 24 hour news channel, has been banned from covering the hajj for the last five years, but was allowed to return this year. It’s reporting focused on ‘giving a podium to those without one/voice’- and quite literally too, for example giving a group of pilgrims who could not afford to do their hajj officially, a chance to voice their complaints, instead of simply demonising them for taking an illegal route that exacerbates the Saudi governments logistical challenge, as has become routine on other channels.

Aljazeera Talk, the group site run by young bloggers and supported by the channel, also had special coverage under the slogan “Aljazeera talk goes on Hajj this year” with its citizen-journalists becoming pilgrim-journalists, writing about everything from hajj guides to fashions in headgear among pilgrims. Riz Khan, who began the fashion for western media coverage of the hajj almost a decade ago on CNN, was one of the first journalists to join Aljazeera English, which like the rest of the networks, was unable to send reporters to Makkah last year. However this, its second hajj, was covered by two reporters, Hashem Ahelbarra and Sami Zeidan, and in ihram no less.

Of course this year most western media have been preoccupied with the Iranian president, CNN anchors for example kept bombarding the reporter with questions as to Ahmadinajad’s whereabouts, so she had to preface everything she said with “we haven’t actually caught a glimpse of him”.

The attitude to hajj in much western reporting is encapsulated in the headline of a much reprinted AFP piece, “Hajj Intimidating for Secular Reporter”, and what actually gets covered is summed up with admirable brevity in this line from the Sky News online article “more than two million pilgrims have braved flies and scorching heat in the Hajj this week”.

The article actually dealt with an interesting subject though, the latest addition to the Islam Online island in Second Life, a virtual world which a ‘population’ of over 10 million. IOL has recreated Alharam AlMakki, Mina, and Arafa in 3D graphics, allowing Second Lifers’ to go on a virtual Hajj, which the IOL team sees as a “powerful educational tool for people embarking on the soul-searching journey in the real world”, as well as an experience open to non-Muslims curious about what the Hajj involves.

published in the Tripoli Post

Shakespeare in Arabia

2007-12-27T16:29:00.000-08:00

Although Arabs generally see the theatre as a recent import from Europe, different forms of performing arts, such as shadow plays, Sufi and Shia miracle plays, and the oral performances of poetry reciters and storytellers, have a long history in the region. Acting troupes also entertained aristocrats in their palaces, travelling merchants in khans, and competed with other street performers for the attention of shoppers and passers-by in the maidan.

While such traditions seem comparable to the earlier forms of European dramatic art from which the theatre evolved, a few play scripts have recently been discovered, suggesting an Arab theatrical tradition comparable to the Chinese or Indian for example.

However, as with music, Arabs made no real attempt to preserve a fixed record. In the case of music this was because improvisation was seen as essential, which might also be the case for drama. But, while both music and performance arts survive in the folkloric tradition, the native theatrical heritage does not have an equivalent to the ‘high’ status form of classical Arab music. Historical records provide the life story of the legendary Zeriab, who brought the music of Baghdad and Damascus to the Andalusian court; but no mention is made of playwrights, which indicates that dramatic performance were seen as mere amusement.

The Arab world only began to consider drama as ‘art’ after the introduction of works by European playwrights, of whom Shakespeare was the foremost, the ‘canon of canons’, as Khalid Amine puts it.

Amine goes on to argue that the “making of the Shakespeare myth” in the Arab world was not spontaneous, but “was induced through the implantation of a whole apparatus of translation and theatrical reproduction” following an unequal colonial encounter.

After independence, Amine says, “Shakespeare becomes a paradigmatic icon of the 'Western Other' or the Other's dramatic medium”, so that artistic engagement with his work by the postcolonial dramatist “amounts to a dialogue with the West and the Western dramatic tradition”.

The Nigerian Wole Soyinka has another take on the relationship of the Arab cultural establishment to Shakespeare. In his essay “Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist” he surveys Arab appropriations which seek to “claim him as one of their own”, and disparages Arab “translations and adaptations” of his work. However he ends by concluding that this still leads back to the immortal source, “to the gratification of celebrating dramatic poetry anew”, which reverses the earlier power dynamic that presents the English genius as the object of inept manipulation, and seems a positive spin on the process Khalid Amine describes.

Margo Hendrix argues that Soyinka’s essay anticipates two related points later raised by postcolonial theorists: recognising that importing the Shakespearian canon requires the absorption of culturally alien elements; but also the fact that the plays contain so much foreign material (settings, characters, topics, or just the odd reference –like Lady Macbeth’s “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”). The plays themselves are in a sense internationalised in their own right, as texts and not just in terms of appreciation.

Shakespeare’s fascination with the unknown and unfamiliar was a feature of the theatre during the Western ‘age of exploration’ (or exploitation for those on the receiving end); but what sets him apart is his complex treatment of ‘the other’.

Shakespeare’s play Othello, in it's exploration of paradoxes and inconsistencies, is frequently cited to as the most striking example of this complex treatment . The title character being a North African commanding Christian European forces against an invasion by the expanding (European Muslim) Ottoman Empire, and the hatred, or at best ambivalence, with which he is regarded by the Italians whom he ‘defends’, have been linked to similar paradoxes and inconsistencies in Shakespeare’s Britain.

Although ‘Turk’ and ‘Moor’ were words that inspired fear and loathing, Queen Elizabeth I had alliances with both the Ottoman Sultan and North African states against her Catholic rivals. Mark Hutchings discusses the fearful fascination with the ‘Turkish Threat’ in English plays of the time, arguing that by drawing on memories of the fall of Constantinople and “perhaps an older 'crusader' narrative”, plays provided a safe thrill for an English audience who, as opposed to most of Europe, were not in reality threatened. The Turks were essentially the Godzillas and King Kongs of Elizabethan cinema. Nabil Matar’s book Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery details extensive commercial relations and cultural exchange, including the fact that it was much more likely, and profitable, for an English adventurer to move to North Africa than North America.

Khalid Amine, in “Moroccan Shakespeare: From Moors to Moroccans”, charts the development of a range of responses to Othello specifically and the Shakespearian canon more generally, from “celebrations of Moroccan presence in the English Consciousness”, to more radical rewritings of Shakespeare’s plays.

Such subversive strategies are present in the titles of Abdelkrim Berrchid’s two plays. Otheil Wa Alkhail Wa Al Barudu re-arabises the Othellos name, and to anyone familiar with Arab poetry echoes a line by Almutanabi, while Imri’u Alqais Fi Paris replaces Hamlet with the pre-Islamic poet who faces a similar “to be or not to be” predicament in a destructively futile revenge tragedy.

Set in the present, the play is a re-visioning of Hamlet’s “tragedy of delay and procrastination…[as] a collective tragedy rather than an individual tragedy” as Khalid Amine puts it, quoting Berrchid who says the “The new Imruù al-quays cannot be but the spirit of this new age, that is the age of homesickness, murders, and military coup d'état, and the migration of intellectuals and laborers in search for bread and dignity”

In this new age Shakespeare has not lost his potent spell, but there are conflicting ways of putting it to use. Some Arab playwrights strip Shakespeare of what Amine calls the “aura of authority” created by European dominance in order to rewrite his work in terms of their own concerns.

Sulayman Al-Bassam, the British-Kuwaiti writer and director of ‘the Hamlet Summit’ and ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’, presents his project of adapting Shakespeare’s plays to the politics of the modern Arab world in exactly the opposite way.

He insists on the “aura of authority”, or what he calls “the global accreditation”, with which Shakespeare is invested; seeing it in positive terms as giving the Arab dramatist “not merely a mask but a bullet-proof face” with which to face the censors.

More problematic is Al-Bassam’s assertion that “A fundamental pre-modernity is at the core of both the Shakespearian world and today’s Arab world”, which sounds like something straight out of The Collected Orientalist Stereotypes. His adaptations engage with the original context in a much more complicated and productive way.

But this point is made in even broader terms by reviews of his plays, which inanely and repetitively begin by saying that Arab world’s woes cry out for Shakespearian treatment, and back it up by noting one thousand and one parallels with England emerging from the Middle Ages.

Perhaps the best commentary on such reductive simplification of a postmodern and postcolonial situation to stereotypes of towel-heads in the dark ages is the fact that ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’, part of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival, was on at the same time as another Richard III adaptation - set in modern Britain.

The director of this Richard III, Michael Boyd, sees both his and Al-Bassam’s plays as dealing with "the tendency, very difficult to resist, of pulling more power where power was in the first place, of increasing the centralization of power”, and draws his own parallels, the totalitarian behaviour of democratic governments in the context of the war on terror, citing the manipulation of information to create and use “fear as a political weapon, fear as a means of censorship, a means of mobilization, a means of justifying arrest”.

This is the same ‘war on terror’ which in ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’ is used as a pretext for tyranny and occupation, setting up an equivalence between the invading American general and the Arab Dictator. The French adviser to the Emir boasts that he “can make a mockery of the judiciary; thread an axis of evil through the eye of the press; I can turn a democracy into a tyranny and keep it all as clean and transparent as a Security Council resolution".

What the two Arab re-makers of Shakespeare, the Morrocan Berrchid and the Kuwaiti Al-Bassam, have in common is their mixing of Arab and Western forms of performance in their theatrical art.

In Berrchid’s case, as in that of many Arab dramatists, this includes a conscious decision to incorporate native dramatic traditions, such as the Albsat tradition of improvised comedy with a political message. Al-Bassam’s Arabian-Shakespearian tragedy contains recitals from the Holy Quran and folkloric dance and music, as well as email messages, phone conversations, Aljazeera newscasts and a religious TV show.

They both create a mixed form which mirrors their content, a hybridized product of Arabia and Europe, East and West.

published in the Tripoli Post

A Royal Swedish Christmas

2007-12-27T02:30:00.000-08:00

Osban making in the palace

Eid, Meat and Gideed

2007-12-27T02:08:00.000-08:00

The highlight of the four hectic days of Eid ul Adha, or the Big Feast as it’s unofficially known, is a barbeque. On the morning of the first day which mark the end of the hajj an udhia is sacrificed, and a portion of the meat given to poor neighbours or to the mosque to distribute. Then there is the marathon job of cutting up the meat, and a grill-up that can be brunch, dinner or everything in between; the latter is what it usually ends up being as friends and family drop by for eid greetings and stay to sample the food.

Supper is a casserole or stew, served with a potato and herb omelette, which is eaten wrapped up in ftat, delicious egg less pancakes. Each family has a particular ‘Eid stew’ and charges of violating sibir are invoked if anyone suggests a little variation.

So the first day, unlike many celebrations, doesn’t revolve around an elaborately prepared banquet, but osban sausages, served on couscous or rice and accompanied by msayar pickles, is the dinner for the second day. Making sausages is a time consuming, labour intensive process; and with all the chopping needed for the osban stuffing of rice, meat, liver, spring onions, parsley, coriander, dill, basil, chillis, and garlic, its lucky that Libyan women know how to turn it into festive activity with gossip, jokes and even impromptu poetry battles; an experienced Haja directing operations from behind the ed’ala paraphernalia, while supplying everyone with cups of tea at a rate which keeps the younger girls busy scurrying back and forth with trays.

But the real distinctive food of Eid ul Adha is not eaten during the Eid at all; instead it provides decorations to rival Cairos’s lights and lanterns announcing Ramadan. But unlike our half-hearted adoption of the Egyptian custom, almost every Libyan garden and balcony is festooned for days after Eid with pylon rope on which meat is hanging out to dry.

Gideed might not bear comparison with Ramadan displays in aesthetic terms, but it does have an illustrious history which rivals the Fatimid era origins of fawanees Ramadan: dried meat has been found buried with Pharaohs to sustain the mummies on their journey to the afterlife, it formed an essential part of the diet of Phoenician sailors, and the nomadic tribes inhabiting the sea of sand that is the Libyan desert also depended on this portable and virtually unspoilable protein and calorie rich food.

Every family sets aside a portion of their udhiaa sheep to make into gideed, marinating well salted strips of meat in olive oil, turmeric and red pepper. Once sundried the meat is chopped into bite-size pieces, then fried and stored in containers sealed with samn and olive oil. It’s more economical than fresh or frozen meat as the intense flavour means a little goes a long way, and it saves time too as it’s precooked, qualities that make it an essential store cupboard standby in Libyan households.

Gideed, tomato paste and water cooked for a few minutes is all that is needed for a versatile base for one pot meals: spicy soups, stews with all knds of vegetables from beans to pumpkin, and the wintertime favourite haja jarya of pasta, rice, cracked wheat or mgata noodles cooked in a rich sauce. The addition of spices, herbs, and pulses like lentils, fenugreek seeds, and chickpeas makes endless variations possible.

Eid Mubarak

2007-12-20T08:14:00.000-08:00

كل عام وأنتم بخير وعيد سعيد على الجميع ان شاء الله

Nabil Moussa: Artist? Craftsman?

2007-12-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

hibo has discovered Ali Baba's cave...on the bbc site: a photo journal on a Libyan brass engraver, who bases his designs on Christie's antique price guide and hopes to expand through the internet.

Reminds me of the Art or Craft argument over Dale Chihuly's glass sculptures.

All That Glitters

2007-12-13T20:10:00.000-08:00

A Libyan lama: women occupying the guest’s sitting room in a friend's house, dressed up in their best and decked out in jewelry, the talkfest only interrupted by relays of trays. It couldn’t be more different from a busy stock exchange floor.

But at a lama, every topic is discussed with gusto and plenty of gesticulation, and one thing that’s sure to come up is the price of gold, down to the last decimal point; with predictions of future fluctuations taking into account everything, from the birth pangs of the new Middle East to rising demand in China, the weakening dollar and warnings of a global recession. It’s like listening to a room full of Farah Albaraqawis, only all the economic news is seen through gold-tinted glasses.

A girl is initiated into this dazzling world before she’s a month old. The most common gift for a newborn girl is jewelry, especially pendents. These are quite distinctive, there are engravings of Quranic verses, quirky ones like teapots, and charms based on pre-Islamic ‘magical’ symbols like the fish, hand, eye and the horn (which also survived in henna patterns and weaving - like carpets and silks); believed to ward off the evil eye. Within weeks, or sometimes days, of birth a girl will also have her ears pierced, and there are even miniature bracelets, so all that’s missing is a ring.

When all the relatives and friends have given their congratulations, she’ll have quite a collection with which to start a gold hoard, which steadily accumulates through presents for Eid, birthdays and good exam results. Of course some pieces will get broken, and not everyone wants to keep baby pendants for sentimental value, so there are plenty of opportunities to learn the basic rules to managing your gold fund: obviously to buy when the price falls, if you have things you want to get rid of hold onto them if possible till its back up again, or at least only sell when you’ve decided on exactly what you want instead.

More important are the endlessly drummed perquisites to a good buy - as few jewels as possible (as they’re weighed as gold when you buy but removed if you sell), to only buy 18 carat or above, and to avoid designer pieces like the plague, as they date quickly and a big percentage of the price is not in the recoverable net weight.

So all in all, shopping for jewellery is defiantly not for magpies attracted to shiny things, it calls for a disciplined investor’s eye.The goal is a stash that can be worn, loaned to friends and relatives, and updated with minimal extra outlay, and which can also be turned to cash when needed. If any pieces are not used regularly 2.5 % the value is given in Zakah each year, as they are regarded as savings in Islamic law, and a percentage is owed to charity.

Wearable wealth goes back a long time, and the older designs, with coins or even gold nuggets on a chain, make their function very clear. The craftsmen who make the jewelry worn with the traditional costume still use coins for decorative purposes, but they have to ‘mint’ their own since the Ottoman lira is a collectors’s piece now - forgery in 24 carat gold.

A complete set of Libyan jewelry includes the necklace, the most important piece, which can be anything from one row to five, and comes in many designs (with names like ‘the company’ and ‘the crescents’), matching earrings, and a multitude of rings and bangles – not to mention ‘extras’ like anklets, tiaras, and gold belts.

The jewellery has become more elaborate and expensive over the past few decades, so affordable versions are produced which are beaten very thin, making them fragile, and much less attractive than the cheaper and more durable gold plated silver sets which are now becoming more acceptable, even for a dowry. A ‘fake’ set means the bride can still wear the traditional suit, but receives more modern jewellery. Although such sets can’t be exchanged as real gold can, they’re not worn more than a few times a year; and there are even jewelry rental shops opening up to cater to those who still want to keep up with the latest designs.

All of this seems to be the death knell of traditional jewelry making, buying and wearing. But actually heavy silver jewellery and lighter gold pieces were what earlier generations wore, so perhaps modern conditions are turning women back to more reasonable, if less picturesque, jewellery.

published in the Tripoli Post

Omaima Khalil

2007-12-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

She has an amazing voice...

Libyans, Literature….and the Internet

2007-12-04T16:26:00.000-08:00

A decade ago everyone was buying satellite dishes, which seemed almost revolutionary, transforming the audience into channel hoppers, with the full spectrum of Arab (and sometimes European and American) perspectives available at the press of a remote control button.

Now, as internet access becomes easier and more affordable, younger Libyans are increasingly switching off the TV and logging in to the internet – ideally this would be a positive development from a passive TV viewer to an Internet surfer, with an infinitely expanding world wide web a mouse click away. But walk into a net café in any Libyan city and there are knots of teenagers crowding together around one monitor to egg on their friend ‘chatting’ to the keyboard, making the supposedly boundless possibility of the virtual world seem pure fantasy.

Of course as the cliché has it chat, like the rest of the internet or the TV for that matter, is just a tool, its how you decide to use it; like forums and social networking sites, it’s a great way to keep in touch with family and friends, and to exchange ideas with people from around the world.

Perhaps another, more creative way to the same end are blogs, websites published chronologically, regularly updated with fresh posts, usually allowing readers to add their response.

The Libyan blogosphere has grown considerably in the last few years, although a late developer compared to the Egyptian or Jordanian for example, and it’s a Libyan blog that has won the Best of the Blogs award this year.

As blogging has become a wider phenomenon, interest by traditional media has grown proportionally. DW, Germany’s answer to BBC World, has since 2004 organised an international competition, somewhat redundantly called the Best of the Blogs; with a jury award (decided by a committee of “independent journalists, media experts and blog experts”) and a user prize (for the blog with the most online votes) in each of the 15 categories.

The competition includes blogs in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish; and they can be text based blogs, videoblogs or podcasts (multimedia broadcasts which can include pictures, video and audio); and range from the personal diary to political podium, from celebrity scandal to the art appreciation.

Imtidad (imtidad.blogspot.com), a blog and podcast by Libyan writer, Ghazi Gheblawi, won the BOBs user award for Best Arabic Weblog after receiving the most votes; despite stiff competition by blogs on everything from pop culture to business, from technology to politics.

Imtidad received 15 % of the votes, compared with 13% for the blog selected for the jury prize in the same category, Aljazeera Talk, a very impressive group blog with over 70 writers – or citizen journalists as they prefer to call themselves.

Al Jazeera, whose dominance of the Arab satellite era is undisputed, seems to want to make sure that the next generation also grow up in an ‘Aljazeera decade’; not only do they have one of the most visited Arab websites, but they’re financing Aljazeera Talk and making sure its one of the most talked about blogs by frequently inviting its contributors for interviews and debates.

By contrast Imtidad is a personal blog without such support, and with a ‘niche’ focus on culture and literature, which if we accept the stereotype of the representative Arab internet user as chat addict would not find an audience.

Imtidad is both a regular text based web journal and a podcast; both are mainly in Arabic but there are also blog posts and podcast episodes in English, as part of Gheblawi’s aim is to “bridge th[e] gap between Libyan creative writing, in its original Arabic language, and world literature, in the form of English language”; which does not mean that he focuses exclusively on Libyan or even Arab culture - his podcast recently featured a Ghanian poet, a South African novelist, an Iraqi artist and a Mexican director.

The bilingual podcast (English and Arabic versions) received 16% of the votes for best podcast, coming in third behind the Brazilian Nerdcast and the French Oh la! Radio, and beating a German blog on “Literature, trash and bad moods”.It was the latter, Die Gefühlskonserve, that received the jury prize for best podcast, which was an interesting contrast because the user prize in German went to a humorous blog by an undertaker.

This was reversed when it came to the Best Arab Blog award, with the jury consistently opting for more political Arab blogs, as fitting in a ‘middle-eastern’ context, while the voters picked Imtidad this year, and the Lebanese literary blog The Nostalgic Storyteller last year.

So Imidad is, as it presents itself, part of a wider trend; and Ghazi Gheblawi’s recent work (his second short story collection contains a story written collaboratively with Adel Aziz on an Arab literary website, and he shared the first chapter of his novel-in-progress on the blog with his readers) shows him to be part of a “new generation of Arab intellectuals, who are active online, enriching the Arab online cultural scene” and revitalising offline literary life as well, with new energy, new readers, and new means for creative cooperation between writers.

published in the Tripoli Post

The Best Of the Blogs

2007-11-23T00:33:00.000-08:00

Deutsche Welle's International Weblog Awards have been anounced!...and I just found out that Imtidad, a blog and podcast by Lybian writer, Ghazi Gheblawi, was voted Best Blog in the Arabic Category!! And it came in 3rd for Best Podcast!!

DW's Jury Award for Best Arabic Weblog went to Aljazeera Talk, and Alive in Baghdad was their choice for Best Video Blog.

Last year there was some controversy over the Jordanian blog Khobbeizeh, which apparently disappeared from the voting lists because of the blogger's political opininons?!

But as the blog was put back up again with fewer votes, maybe they just discovered some voting irregularities, as happened this year.

Anyway Khobbeizeh is a great blog, so I'm adding it to my favourites...which will have grown exponentially by the time I've gone through the BOBs nominee list.

Shahrazad Goes Live

2007-11-18T23:28:00.000-08:00

I don't always agree with Fatima Mernissi, but she does have the most fantastically bizarre and yet wondefully commensensical ideas.

In 'The Satellite, The Prince and Sheherazade', she explores "the empowerment dynamics of satellite broadcasting" and "Arab audiences' fascination with strong female hosts and war reporters". These women, who have become household names across the Arab world, fit the "Sheherazade profile, the brainy, self-confident storyteller":

Promoting strong female stars has proven to be a fantastic asset for the Saudis' most threatening TV rival. Al Jazeera is winning crowds every night through the eloquence of its news anchors, Jumana Nammour and Kaduja Bin Guna, and economics expert Farah al-Baraqaui. While state televisions and oil-funded channels traditionally limited their staff by censoring them and denying them the right to decide freely about their program content and what guests to invite, Al Jazeera'ssuccess is due precisely to the freedom its programmers and speakers enjoy, which allows them to become credible communicators. "

Channels that want to be viable are required to rely much more heavily on high-impact 'brands' and product lines. Al Jazeera demonstrated the worth of such assets when it developed a range of programs whose titles and presenters have become household names inside and outside the Arab world," explains Naomi Sakhr, the author of Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East.

The most famous reporters in the Middle East today are probably the Palestine-based Al Jazeera reporters, Shirin Abu 'Aqla and Jivara al-Badri, who are admired for their courage and professionalism. "History will remember that day when there was no one to speak up in the entire Arab nation, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, but women such as Shirin Abu 'Aqla and Jivara al Badri and Leila Aouda," comments Ali Aziz, the columnist of the avant-garde Egyptian magazine 'Critiques' (An-Nuqqad), "while male leaders and gallon-wearing generals have disappeared from our sight and hearing."

Fairuz's ya sharazade

Katia Nasser discussing her experience as a war correspondent during the 33 day war:

'Free Sami' Button

2007-11-18T23:01:00.000-08:00

Tasnim from epiphanies has created a new button, linking to the Reporters Without Borders petition, to support Aljazeera cameraman Sami Alhaj.

Baring the Burden

2007-11-15T16:51:00.000-08:00

Whatever might be said of his fiction, Rudyard Kipling is not the best of poets. His poem "The White Man's Burden" for example, is a hackneyed hymn to the colonialist and his civilising mission.

The motivation was to encourage America’s takeover of the Philippines, which many see as the beginning of a long list of colonial interventions by the former colony, ostensibly founded on opposition to the injustice of the old world.

Kipling’s aim leads him to depict the colonial enterprise as a philanthropic challenge; this notion is of course the usual justification, but that’s precisely the point. The poem is an articulation of the imperial imagination, and the title encapsulates this most basic of its tenets in a phrase that has been appropriated by postcolonial critics of empire (and neo-colonial ones for that matter), for uses other than the ones the poet intended.

On the face of it, the contemporary discourse depicting Africa as a “scar on the conscience of the West” might seem the opposite of Kipling’s “White man's burden”; but while it implies an acknowledgement of guilt (which is a key component driving Western aid to the continent) it is significant that the phrase is in figurative terms a variation of the white man’s burden. The colonised other is a burden which the West must lift, while Africa is a scar the West bears – both passive objects of the West’s desired self-image.

The recent attempted abduction of 103 children in Chad is an example of the manipulation required to maintain this self-image. The European ‘aid workers’ in the case lied to the locals, claiming that they would be setting up a home in the capital N’djamena, offering their children a better life and (crucially) education. According to the group anything was justified in their effort to save the children from death and abuse, but even this Machiavellian rationalization does not hold water, as they had to manufacture their Darfur orphans using bandages and iodine to fake the 'war-wounded' look, as footage shot by a journalist accompanying the ‘rescue mission’ shows.

This journalist did not go to the authorities, and only released his video after the group was arrested; his justification being that he didn’t see the children being abused! Such reasoning is revealing: he would not have considered filming a kidnapping in his hometown without interfering. His excuse is in fact a testament to the power of the simplified and distorted image of Africa projected by global and particularly Western media: there’s a definite sense that, all things considered, the children would be much better off with European foster parents, away from the Africa and its endless troubles. Their anguished relatives’, interviewed on Aljazeera, see things differently.

‘The King Kong’ syndrome is Rey Chow’s name for a form of first world consumption in which the 3rd world is mined for thrilling scenes and stories of human misery. Tragic events supply melodramatic entertainment which is more attention-grabbing and invested with more ‘significance’, because they are ‘real’. Africa, the heart of darkness, is particularly vulnerable and is almost always portrayed as the site of misery.

The news media uses this ‘raw material’ in much the same way as the entertainment industry, to provide viewers with shocking spectacle. A BBC World advert promoting the channels website uses part of a news report; it is filmed from a low-flying plane which is dropping boxes (of aid presumably) over a crowd of people in what looks like a flooded area; the people dodge the falling packages and run after the plane while a reporter perched inside informs us that they are “desperate”. This segment of a report, playing on a laptop screen, is followed by the slogan “news on demand”.

It’s a marketing ploy which, had it been intentional, would have been a witty satire on news channels and their viewers, who together transform suffering into a sought-after commodity.

Virtually all the stories coming out of Africa are of conflict, disease and disaster, with Africans infantilised by being represented as perpetually pleading for nurture and nutrition. Reductive and sensationalist news coverage, coupled by the missionary language of those bent on ‘saving Africa’, combine to figure Western dominance as maternal solicitude.

This message is often taken quite literally, as exemplified by the celebrities adopting the continent as a ‘cause’, or going a step further and adopting a representative child.

‘Eye of the Child’, the organisation that (unsuccessfully) challenged the legality of Madonna’s speeded-up adoption of a Malawian boy, urged the star to consider supporting “community based approaches to care for orphans” as an alternative to efforts that “create and develop a dependency syndrome”. This phrase also perfectly describes the wider charity case approach to Africa.

In the case of the Chad orphans-that-weren’t, Dubai Cares seems to be offering to fund the sort of response ‘Eye of the Child’ advocates, by funding efforts to "trace the children's families, reunite them with their families and get them back to school" as a spokesman said. Highly commendable, but then the spokesman goes on to claim that they “don’t want to get involved in politics”, which seems disingenuous.

China is also going on something of a humanitarian spending spree to raise its profile, and to counteract negative coverage. As a global player it is deploying aid as part of its strategic jostling for superpower status, and Africa is the perfect place to do so.

So it’s no longer just a Western phenomenon, in many countries Africa and Africans are conceived as a burden to enable policies that duplicate the underlying assumptions, and some of the ambitions of the colonial project.

After all even the scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century was regarded by many Europeans as a laudable charitable endeavour – which should make the current scramble more suspect. In the late 19th and early 20th century, colonial states produced propaganda material to celebrate the occupation and exploitation of their respective colonies, in which a matronly figure represents the European nation bringing the comfort and culture of civilisation to the natives. The feminine ‘soft power’ of development aid is not a modern alternative to the masculine colonial officer lifting the white mans burden, but an attendant concept.

There are certainly differences in the ways Africa is approached, and it is undeniably true that the continent needs and deserves assistance in order to overcome the barriers to its progress; but the Chad case is a particularly extreme example that highlights the problematic aspect of calls to save the continent that history forgot.

The present enthusiasm, being based on a generalised vision of a chaotic mass of humanity in the grip of apocalyptic horrors, has obscured the many positive developments on the African continent: the growing economies, rising living standards, expanding educational opportunities and most importantly the moves toward closer coordination between its states.

This is not to suggest that Africa’s troubles are over, or are on their way to being resolved; but the unrelenting negative portrayals are both inaccurate and unconstructive. Such portrayals are a product of the one-dimensional way in which the continent and its people are perceived, and they reinforce the same stereotypes.

The consequences are clear. The charity concert Live 8 overlooked African artists in its line-up of global celebrities; and while African countries receive aid and debt relief from more developed nations, they find it impossible to get a fair trade deal.

Africans are confined to the role of recipient, rather than active participants who are changing their current reality and deciding their future.

published in the Tripoli Post

Chad case

2007-11-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'm getting a lot sick at the Europeans-in-captivity coverage of the Chad case, the focus is completely on that and I heard very little about the children until Jazeera finally gave the parents and relatives a chance to tell their story - in an interview which the English channel copied and pasted as per usual.

Economic Refugee

2007-11-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

An Unending War, an article I stumbled across in the Tripoli Post, begins:

What ran through your mind? I mean when you read the title to this article. I'm sure you must have thought about physical gun battles

It's by 'Joseph Success', a pseudonym adopted by the writer who is "a refugee living in Libya".

His point is that the idea of third world 'economic migrants', implying a voluntary choice, is nonsensensical in view of the conditions they are escaping, that living in poverty is not like living in a war zone but worse, because there is no end in sight.

The risks taken and dangers, especially those faced by Africans, hoping to reach Europe should certainly dispel any myths of freeloaders looking for an easy ride. And its not like those Africans who actually reach -never mind breach- the fortress impenetrable are guaranteed a dignified life.

Given his self-description I'm assuming the writer is himself waiting to leave the continent, in which case he is an example of the brain drain from which the continent suffers. Africa is wasting the potential of its best hope for the future, those it has used precious resources to educate, by failing to provide them with adequate opportunities.

David McFarlane, covering the recent conference held in Tripoli on the issue, provides some startling statistics on the high percentage of African University graduates (especially doctors) living abroad.

Some, like Kenya Airways Executive Titus Naikuni, think that Africa can utilise the brain drain to its own advantage, by turning what has been termed its subsidy of the first world ( providing a cheap educated workforce) into an export industry. Sami Zaptia of the TP however argues that their own countries need such highly qualified professionals to develop, and talks about the problems facing Libyans wanting to return.

The Poet And The Journalist

2007-10-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

I missed the beginning of Tamim Barghouti's poetry reading - performance actually- in Ramallah on Aljazeera Live, but I could see that almost half the people in the audience were pointing their phones/cameras at him, so I wasn't too worried.

Sure enough someone had uploaded the entire 'concert' on youtube - and I found out that he had been introduced by Jivara AlBudeiri! I thought I recognised her voice, but I wasn't entirely sure until I read this account of the evening from the Al'ayam newspaper.

Perfect right? The next Mahmoud Darwish introduced by the most passionate and committed journalist on Aljazeera. If only words really were more powerful than bullets.

Eid Mubarak!

2007-10-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

Freej

2007-10-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

I just read (at an unlikely place) this old news: Emarati animation Freej’s winning the country award at the Hamburg Animation Awards.

It’s not like there were any competitors of similar caliber in the region so I doubt it came as a huge surprise.

The viewing figures for this ramadan are a real achievement though, and it’s also credited with “creating a dialogue”, within a society which as one of the design team says “no longer gathers together, not even during Ramadan” except to watch Freej.

It’s a less extravagant claim than Ajaaj the sandman’s proposed role as national identity and native pride booster.

M7alabiya bil Yamish

2007-10-04T01:59:00.000-07:00

Another variation of Ramadan’s repetitively recurring recipe at the Turkish Cookbook: Binnur suggests a layer of fruit compote topped by m7alabiya.

But the only fruit in the house was guava and mango – or so I thought, until I remembered the Yamish.

It being the end of the month, stocks were running low, so I used dried plums as there were more of those than anything else.

Though I’m sure fresh fruit –cherries! -would taste a billion times better, it was a great way to use up the leftovers before Eid. There’s not much you can do with them, unless you have enough left over for a fruitcake.

Ramadan Drinks

2007-10-03T18:12:00.000-07:00

There’s the sweet
Kasab-el-sukar: sugar cane juice, too cloying for my taste
Kharoub: also used to make sugar, so again it’s a bit like gulping down a glass of thin honey

The thick
Orzata: milk and almond syrup, the perfect combination
Qamar-el-deen: sold as a gooey paste made from dried apricots, which is dissolved in boiling water and then chilled. I like it hot though, and not as a drink: if it tastes like a sauce, and looks like a sauce, then it’s a sauce – in my recipe book anyway

And the thirst-quenching
3er’2 sous: I’m not a big fan of licorice, but I would recommend the drink – if I was a dentist. As a highly effective non-synthetic mouthwash.
Karkadeh: hibiscus flower infusion, very refreshing, but not my cup of tea
Tamer hindi: tamarind juice, literally Indian date, a bit misleading as it’s really sour – which is why I’m addicted.

My friend loves to mix it with kharoub, a sweet & sour cocktail, but on it’s own it’s the perfect thing to switch from musalsal watching to study mode.

Tart, sharp and palate-cleansing, just what I need after pigging out on syrupy pastries while watching Bab el 7ara.

Speaking of which, Duraid La7am’s scriptwriter joke comes to mind “Sidi 3indi ilak musulal 15 7al2a, lau bidak, a3melhalak [stretching gesture] 30”.

But stretching is a plus in this musalsal, as it’s not a case of watching for the plot, but for the nostalgioramic details: the clothes, the houses, the feasts, the celebrations, the women at their housework, the men in their shops, the hakawati’s tales, the songs…and the inventive cursing.

Oh and most importantly, the food & drink.

Unfortunately the plot breaks in at the most awkward moments: after building up a great deal of suspense about something called 7ara2 b2asab3u, the patriarch comes home, has a tiff with his wife, and pronounces the dreaded “inti 6ali2”.

I mean they’re obviously going to get back together, but how are we supposed to find out what this exotically named dish is when Suad Khanum and her girls are too busy weeping and wailing to finish cooking?

A Coptic Christian gives his views on what non-Muslims really think of Ramadan

2007-10-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

By Marwa Helal in Egypt Today

Ah, Ramadan for most of us it means warm, glowing fawanees (lanterns),hurried meals before dawn, faith-testing traffic, late nights of prayer, feasting and family bonding. But what does it mean for the other 10 percent or so of the population — the Coptic Christians and people of other religions who endure the month with us? Looking for an honest answer, I met with a good Coptic friend at a local café, who agreed to share his thoughts but only on condition of anonymity.

“The printable answer is, ‘Yes’,” he pauses. Then, “I enjoy sharing the festive feelingof Ramadan with my fellow Egyptians, the majority of whom are Muslim,” he says. “But truthfully, everything — from the increase in car accidents to the incredible amount of noise during the day combined with the general lack of productivity — makes me say, ‘No, I’m definitely not looking forward to it.’
… “Ramadan has definitely changed over the years, I feel it most when I exchange greetings with my Muslim friends. I remember with my parents’ generation, their friends would come over for our holidays and we would do the same and you would really feel that there was something in the ‘kol sana wentu tayibeen.’ Now, we simply exchange these words of greeting, but the feeling just isn’t there and I don’t know why that is.
“I think Egyptians have become more and more stressed over the years — I don’t think it has anything do with the fasting, though, it’s just the general stress of dealing with more traffic and the increase in population. But I don’t recall ever seeing them so tense. And I think to myself, ‘They’re supposed to be more tolerant during Ramadan, that’s the whole point, but here they are, behaving in the complete opposite way.’

I just don’t get the paradoxical mindset of people who seem to think Ramadan is the perfect excuse for road-rage, rudeness and generally obnoxious behaviour.

It’s a month of spiritual discipline to make you into a better person, and it’s not just food and drink that break your fast! And as to laziness, if you’re going to sleep through the day, then why bother fasting?

It’s not all negative though:

“My Muslim friends never leave me out either. It’s nice when I get invited along to iftar because then we really are sharing in the spirit of Ramadan. Not to mention the wonderful quality and quantity of food — it’s amazing. My favorite foods that we don’t get any other time of the year are khoushaf [dried fruits soaked in water] and qamar el-din [apricot nectar].

Which is wonderful and heartwarming and all…but isn’t it blasphemy and sacrilege to describe khoushaf as “dried fruits soaked in water”?

Cardamom Cream with Pistachio and Almonds

2007-10-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

An Afghan version of Mhalabiya - the same creamy texture but the flavours are deliciously different. Perfect for Ramadhan when m7alabiya is a staple on every Su7ur table, and the dessert and snack of choice as well:

Cream (cheat's option: use a ready m7alabiya mix and add extra cornflour)
1/2 a cup cornflour
3 cups milk
1/4 cup water
3/4 cups sugar
a pinch of salt
Make a smooth paste with the cornflour+ 1/2 a cup of milk + the waterPut the rest of the milk in a heavy bottomed pan, add sugar and salt and place over low heatWhen the sugar is dissolved and the milk is wam add the cornflour paste, and whisk

Crunch
1/2 a cup chopped almonds
1/2 a cup chopped pistachio nuts
Add the nuts and continue stirring with the whisk until you have a thick custard like consistency

Spice
1 tsp ground cardamum
pinch of saffron powder (this really is gourmet m7alabiya)
Add the spices and simmer gently for another 5 minutes, stirring occaisonally

Present
Pour into individual m7alabiya bowls, even out the surface with a spatula and decorate with lightly roasted chopped nuts and some ground cardamum

“Bushra is Madeline...because she’s blonde!”

2007-09-29T18:23:00.000-07:00

was how Alarabiya headlined a report on the hullaballo over the cropped, blown up out of all proportion photo of the ‘Moroccan Maddie’.

The channel interviewed the Ben3isas, who said the first journalist didn’t even bother telling them anything. They were just asked to pose with their daughter because they looked like ‘such a nice local family’.

Then the media circus descended on their village, and now that they know what all the fuss is about the parents are worried about their daughter’s safety.

This is obviously an understandable reaction to what they’ve been exposed to. Although Alarabiya seemed to participate in the media hysteria when they suggested the Moroccan government should do something to ‘protect Bushra’.

Anyway Alarabiya’s headline sort of sums up underlying assumptions that lead to so many Madeline ‘sightings’ in North Africa. As the Daily Mail has it, the Berbers, “unusual among African people for having a strong blonde gene”, are responsible.

It’s sort of weird how it works. Because it’s not just about colouring. It’s about props. The parents and siblings were on Alarabiya, and there just isn’t the startling contrast of skin colour inevitably mentioned as the reason for suspicion. The (in?)famous photo by the Spanish tourist would not have made the Ben3isa‘s seem like a gang of malicious Muslim Gypsies if they were dressed differently. As Bushra’s mother told Alarabiya, they were walking to the bus stop…what could be more common-ordinary?

But the headscarves, as one sharp-eyed blogger points out, marked them off as ‘Muslim Moroccan slave-traders’. The post goes on to identify the wisp of hair and fraction of a face in the photo as Madeline...supernatural powers? Exactly: “ I have long had an uncanny knack for identifying people beneath even Hollywood makeup or from afar” Wonder if his skills are being utilised properly in the ‘war on terror’?

Back in May The Times had a piece on the contemporary version of fairy changelings and Gypsy child-snatchers surfacing in coverage of Madeline’s disappearance: the idea that there are “organised bands of evil, swarthy foreigners grabbing our babies to flog in their vile markets”.

It’s amazing how in tune with capitalism urban mythology is, everything is about supply and demand:

In Southern Europe tourist tots are kidnapped and sold to rich childless local couples who’ll pay extra for blue-eyed blondes.

And as for North Africans…someone at yahoo answers has it from “a reliable source that in such places (arab type countries) that blonde hair/blue eyes/ white kids generally are seen as very beautiful and men go nuts for western women! but of course western women arent generally muslim or respect the ways of muslims so a western child would be sought after as it can be made muslim - so in that - there is high demand for such kids! ie there is a market for it!”

The Making of a Saint

2007-08-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

With my parents coming from opposite ends of the country I spend a fair amount of the summer with the Libyan landscape whizzing by the car windows. The one constant feature, from east to west, and even the desert in between, is the Maqams.

Domed white buildings, built over the tomb of Wali, and all marked as such by a profusion of green banners, are just everywhere. Perched half-way up a hill in the J'bal Alakhdar, surrounded by a rippling sea of wheat, golden in the sun light; in the middle of an almond orchard, where goats prefer it's cool shade to the trees' more patchy shadow; or on the right hand side of a much used desert highway alongside petrol stations, truckers restaurants, and the occasional sheepherders' village.

Which was why I wasn’t surprised when, driving back from a cousin's wedding, we drove by a Saints tomb right next to the main road into Tubruk. It was larger than usual though, with quite a few cars parked nearby and people milling about.

I thought they were just using it as a place to rest, as travelers often do, for which reason Maqams, like roadside mosques, are never locked, and sometimes don't even have a door.
But no, this was the tomb of the Mujahid Yunis Hashim, a Maqam so famous I was told, that even now, with such superstitious practices on the decline, there were visitors from all over the Eastern provinces.

My uncle filled us in on its story: apparently the grave belonged to a Shaheed from the Jihad against the fascist occupation, who volunteered to hold off the Italians soldiers after a skirmish, giving the others time to escape.When his body was recovered and buried, some people, hearing his story, and the fact that he had been a member of one of the more mystically prone Sufi tariqas, began visiting his grave to seek blessings from one they considered closer to God.

(To those who think Sufis are a quiescent bunch, too busy chanting and spinning in circles to know, or care, if the Ka’ba was nuked: a ‘Sufi Jihadi’ is not an oxymoron)

So Yunis Hashim became a Wali of sorts, one to whom people would turn for guidance and example, and sometimes mentioned as an intercessor in a du’a, which is as always addressed to God, but prefaced by a formulaic reference ("By the high worth in which you hold Si ...") to a Wali.

With time the tomb was built, then a Maqam was added over it, and gradually gifts of tomb covers and wall hangings, without which no Maqam is complete, were embroidered by women fulfilling a vow or in gratitude for a granted prayer.

But there was still another stage in the evolution of this Maqam, which was responsible for its remarkable - I would say anachronistic-popularity.Sometime shortly before the sanctions regime ended a family, on their way to Egypt to treat their crippled daughter, stopped at this Maqam for a rest, as I had imagined the present crowd was doing. The girl was left inside the Maqam with her brother, as she was really suffering from the long journey, while the others went to get supplies from a nearby village.

When they returned they found the children asleep, and her father bent over her to wake her up, and as soon as he said her name -so the story goes- she stood up as naturally as any healthy child.The overjoyed father donated the money he was planning to spend on her treatment to extend the Maqam, whose fame has spread so widely that it now draws pilgrims by the score each week.

published in the Tripoli Post

Leonardo's mother: an Arab slave?

2007-08-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

The Arabist has this from Discovery:

Da Vinci Fingerprint Reveals Arab Heritage?

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Oct. 28, 2006 — Leonardo da Vinci may have had an Arab heritage, according to Italian researchers who have isolated and reconstructed the Renaissance master's fingerprint.

The fingerprint represents the only biological trace of the Florentine genius, said Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist at Chieti University...Fingerprints are unique and don't change over a lifetime. Analysis of the skin's arches, loops and whorls — a science known as dermatoglyphics — has shown that there is a link between fingerprints and populations.

In the case of Leonardo's fingertip, patterns and ridges pointed to the Middle East, the researchers concluded. "The fingerprint features patterns such as the central whorl that are dominant in the Middle East. About 60 percent of the Middle Eastern population display the same dermatoglyphic structure found in the fingerprint," Capasso said.

The discovery would support Vezzosi's claim that Leonardo's mother was not a local peasant girl as previously thought, but a Middle Eastern slave. According to Vezzosi, records unearthed in Vinci offer substantial evidence that Leonardo's father, a craftsman called Ser Piero Da Vinci, owned a Middle-Eastern female slave named Caterina.

"It was common in 15th century Tuscany to own slaves from the Middle East," said Vezzosi. Indeed, in 1452, the same year of Leonardo's birth, a law was passed in Florence that gave slave owners greater rights over their slaves. Shortly after the law was passed, Ser Piero married Caterina off to one of his workers. The woman had just given birth to a boy called Leonardo.

Stupid Americans - Uncle Sam inspires 3ami 3arabi

2007-08-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

افتراء

شعب أمريكا غبي

كف عن هذا الهُراء

لا تدع للحقد

أن يبلغ حد الفتراء

قل بهذا الشعب ما شئت

ولكن لا تقل عنه غبي

اأيقولون غبيا

ًللغباء؟

احمد مطر -

Whether it is calumny, as the title of Ahmad Matar's poem claims (only to be contradicted by the text), to call American's stupid seems a moot point; the world having decided that the its sole Superpower is characterised by this trait above all others.

And the American as voter is particularly afflicted with a lack of brain power, eating up such patent whoppers as in Steve Brodner's cartoon.

You have to wonder though, with a media driven by the bottom line parroting the same message, if it isn't what they want to hear. And if the leaders the rest of the world find so ridiculous might be elected because their policies, and even the annoying mannerism, are what appeals.

The nation of shopkeepers appreciates a Tom Brownian PM who quotes his school motto in his inaugural speech, and the Americans prefer a straight-talking cowboy. To each his own.

And as to foreign policy, those who celebrate the fall from grace of neo-cons as the awakening of the gullible and naive seem to ignore the fact that their detractors feel the need to compete.

With Iraq burning, and the rest of the region apparently gearing up for a similar inferno, we have more than our share of certified experts in the global phenomena of Yankee bashing, most of whom have a sub-speciality in attention-deficiency, short-term fixation and sheer stupidity studies.

From the perspective of a local groundling, watching the US of A's military and diplomatic [sic] machine wreak havoc across it's current stomping ground, America appears as a lobotomised blindfolded colossus on the rampage.

Seeing such a monster - and the destruction it leaves in it's wake - up close and personal gives an intensity to the anti-US rants, and enough emotion to inspire poetry on their stupidity- as in the Iraqi Ahmad Matar's poem above, and the Lebanese Khaled El-habir's below:

ابانا الذي في السما

ابانا الذي في السما انت عراسي انما عندي كلام
في كم سؤال بها لعمر اجتمعوا براسي من القهر والانهزام
ما هيدا مبارح كان ولد كيف تبلع كل البلد... اول سؤال
مبارح اخونا كان فقير وهلق تيابو من حرير... تاني سؤال
ليش العرب بعد النفط صارت حضارتهن زفت... تالت سؤال
كيف العدالة بنعدم والحرية بتنحرم... رابع سؤال
كيف بيخلق واحد زعيم والتاني ما عندو ملّيم... خامس سؤال
كيف اليهودي مضطهد، ما هوّي سارقلي بلد... هوني السؤال
كيف العراقي بينقتل ما قالوا حرية وعدل... سابع سؤال
ليش الضمير بيحتضر عنا وبيضلو مستتر... تامن سؤال
كيف الامركاني حكم، هيدا الغبي بين الامم... تاسع سؤال
ليش الفتك فينا حلال، فكرلي بهذا السؤال... عاشر سؤال
هيدي وصايا يا ابي... ارشف وصفها بمكتبي كي لا تزال

ابانا الذي في السما انتا عراسي انما عندي كلام
ابانا الذي في السما انت الهي انما هذا حرام
اخيراً ليس آخراً ما يطلع حكيي نافراً... ولا تعتبرني كافراً
اطلع فيي يا ابي... ساعدني خطيّ يا ابي ...عليك السلام

خالد الهبر -

Not since their Southern neighbours gave vent to their furious anti-gringo rage amid uncivil proxy wars, a sting of coups, and a plethora of military dictators have Americans been reviled in verse so frequently.

Ahmad Matar and Khaled El-habir are not among the more passionate practitioners of this art form though.

افتراء (Calumny) is one of Matar's shortest, and in comparison with the rest of his poetry is positively mild...which is probably why it's also one of his worst, since his genius is for Swiftian humour. He reserves his venom for certain Arab rulers, and is perhaps even harsher with their people, who seem to have resigned themselves to endure oppression as their inevitable lot.

I must say his Lafitat is a bit extreme, and although I can understand the frustration that prompts it, blanket statements regarding ALL Arab rulers and the Arab people as a whole don't seem to leave the all important chink of possibility open.

Khaled El-habir's ابانا الذي في السما (Our Father which art in heaven) has a confused speaker questioning injustice, and specifically asking ten questions (for which no answers are provided, although something like Naji Al3ali's cartoon is implied) out of which only three (Palestine, Iraq and "how the stupid American rules the world") acknowledges the American elephant in the Arab living room.

The rest deal mostly with issues of reform and good governance, as talked up but not practised by various Western leaders.

For example:"how is it that he has swallowed the country, only yesterday he was a boy", which just conjures up that memorable Saad Hariri Jack Straw moment (to my mind anyway).

Neither Matar nor El-habir ignore America's role, but they realise that العيب فينا the main problem is not with America, but with us.

In the words of Abu Al-qasim Al-shabi, as taught to every schoolchild:

إذا الشعب يوماً اراد الحياة فلابد ان يستجيب القدر

Muslimas' Glam Mags Galore

2007-08-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

A Magazine For And By Today's Modern Muslimah
By Muna Shikaki

Azizah ($8.50) is very much a glossy women’s magazine. It has articles on fashion, food, travel, books and relationships. Its 112 pages contain articles, photographs, and illustrations, and a quarter of its pages are devoted to ads. The magazine’s “Well-Being” section covers topics like massage and aromatherapy; its “Destinations” section mentions places to pray throughout the world (including one on mosques in the U.S. Virgin Islands).

Fashion sections have models wearing modest clothes, some with backdrops of the beach. A long garment that covers most of the body from the neck down, the djilbab, is modeled with a college backdrop (“This denim-look djilbab is perfect for the campus.”) A “wrap and snap” black djilbab looks as if it could be put on in a second.

Yet the magazine also delves into serious topics such as AIDS in the Muslim community, birth control in Islam and polygyny. It includes headlines like “America’s First Muslimah Judge” and “How Inclusive is the Muslim Community of the Disabled?”

...Though the magazine doesn’t posit itself as a controversial magazine, it is not complacent. Sometimes, the simple act of covering a topic can be seen as taking a stand.

But some of the most important articles are not necessarily the most provocative ones. “How Inclusive Is the Muslim Community of the Disabled?” questions the absence of ramps for wheelchairs in mosques. In the same issue, a disabled woman writes a heart-wrenching story about making the pilgrimage to Mecca in her wheelchair.

The article, and the magazine in general, reflects a “multiple critique,” a term championed by Miriam Cooke, professor of modern Arabic literature and culture at Duke University, for the way in which Islamic feminists critique Western culture and Islamic patriarchy without abandoning their religious identities. “The ability [of Muslim women] to say, ‘I don’t like what the Saudis do’ doesn’t mean I can’t also say ‘I don’t like what Bush or a Muslim cleric is doing,’” Cooke said. “I can talk about all these various communities to which I belong.”

Muna Shikaki, who wrote the above in the New York Review of Magazines, is one of Alarabiya's corespondents in North America.

Her colleague Nadia Bilbasey had a report on a teen-Azizah magazine: Muslim Girl, which both the non-hijabi (wearing an 'Allah' pendant) and the muhajaba girls she interviewed enthused over.

The Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Ausma Khan, was interviewed by Alsarq Al-awsat

What do you hope to achieve?
So many things! We want to make a difference in the lives of American Muslim girls by giving them a forum where they can express themselves and see their stories told in a positive and celebratory spirit. We want to give Muslim girls the tools for empowerment, education and enlightenment. It can be really difficult and isolating for Muslim youth when the only images they see of themselves are negative or frightening ones.

We are seeking to provide a counter-point and we hope to bring out all those wonderful stories about Muslims that are rarely told. For example, one Muslim girl helped others in Malawi through the Peace Corps, another American Muslim girl worked with tsunami victims in Indonesia. We also feature an amazingly accomplished Muslim woman who is a BBC news anchor, a lawyer and journalist (Mishal Hussain). There are wonderful things that Muslim girls and women are doing every day to make a difference to their families, schools and communities. We think that telling stories like these will give Muslim girls confidence and will re-affirm their pride in their own heritage and values.

At the same time, we are showing how much a part of American life Muslim girls are and how much they have in common with other teens. When you clear up misunderstandings and provide information to people who genuinely desire to know more about Muslims, that’s bound to make a positive difference in this world – individual to individual, community to community, and nation to nation.

What is the process of choosing the cover girl and is it a requirement that she wears Hijab?
We’ve asked girls to write in to us via the website if they would like to be on our cover. We are looking for girls who are proud to be American Muslims, who find their values empowering and who want to reach out to other girls. As long as a girl subscribes to Islamic values and dresses modestly and with self-respect, she does not have to wear the hijab to appear on our cover. We are looking for a girl who has a great story. Our first cover girl, Wardah Chaudhary, was really excited about the concept of the magazine and really keen to reach out to other Muslim girls and share her own experiences. She is a bright, articulate, wonderful young girl whom we think other teens will look up to and identify with. Again, we celebrate diversity and we seek to be as representative and inclusive as possible.

Du3a' Al-istikhara

2007-08-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

اللهم إني أستخيرك بعلمك و أستقدرك بقدرتك و اسألك من فضلك العضيم فإنك تقدر و لا أقدر وتعلم و لا أعلم و أنت علام الغيوب
اللهم إنْ كنت تعلم أن هذا الأمر خيرٌ لي في ديني ومعاشي و عاقبة أمري فاقدره لي و يسره لي ثم بارك لي فيه
إنْ كنت تعلم أن هذا الأمر شرٌ لي في ديني ومعاشي و عاقبة أمري فاصرفني عنه واقدر لي الخير حيث كان ثم أرضني به

Sandcomics - Arab cartoons and national identity

2007-08-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

This advert has been running on all UAE channels for a while, and what with the repetition and the cool graphics, I felt compelled to go check out the website it advertised.

Turns out there is a new bilingual Emarati comic that will be distributed both in printed form, at an as yet unspecified price, and an online edition will provide a downloadable page every day.

The idea, in the words of Ahmad Almansuri, is that it should "promote national identity and show the traditions of this Gulf state to visitors "

I find the whole concept of 'native pride' a bit iffy, and as for Sandman as the incarnation of the spirit of the past ...as Asia said "DAMMIT! muslims PLEASE be original ".

Some of the artwork is very good, but not up to the standards of the TV trailer. And the super hero Ajaaj doesn't seem to have been fully developed - what can you say to this for example:

Then there's the name.

3asifa Ramliya (Sandstorm) not being a very catchy, they came up with Ajaaj. Which has a sort of nice ring to it…only instead of conjuring up some primeval force bearing the ‘values of the desert’ into a futuristic city, it is - to me at least- synonymous with those ‘ayam 3ajaj‘ when you’re cooped up at home, with nothing to do but think about whether to dust or not to dust.

So overall it was a bit disappointing. I was expecting something like the Khaleeji cartoons last Ramadan, the Saudi and Emarati ones were pretty awesome.

Almost every national Arab channel has a short let's-make-fun-of-ourselves cartoon during the fasting month, usually aired around if6ar time, for a local audience.

Highlander has blogged about our own 7aj 7mad, the great dissector of Libyan mores, who desperatly needs a make-over as her photo makes clear.

Last year the Saudi's aired يوميات مناحي on their pan-Arab mbc - it dealt with topics from youth unemployment to Iraq. Sort of like 6ash ma 6ash but more understandable :P, so it was the content rather than the technical presentation that mattered.

It was the Emarati الفريج however, broadcast on Dubai, that broke the usual format of a well-meaning male fool as the central figure and representative of the 'national character'.

Instead there were four older Emarati women of varying ethnic and social backgrounds, personalities, and I.Q levels. It was visually visionary too, being the first Arab 3-D animation.

Country Jumping Chanel

2007-07-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

British TV Rules Affect Swedish Channels

Two Swedish television channels will probably have to change their advertising practices, because of new rules in Britain. For years TV3 and Kanal 5 have broadcast from London, to get around tougher Swedish legislation, which bans advertising aimed at children. But now the British authorities are introducing rules that in some ways go farther than the Swedish, banning commercials for junk food, for example, in programs for viewers up to 16 years old. TV3 is now considering whether it should move to yet another country.

Resurecting the past, or retrieving forgotten knowledge?

2007-07-29T02:14:00.000-07:00

Reorganising my dad’s books I came across this arresting title, Alfiya mukarrara fi al-amrath al-nafsiya almu3tabara( ‘the thousand’ Alfiya repeated on important psychological disorders) a book-length poem which combines the many talents of Dr. Salim 3amar:

the first professor of Psychiatry in the newly independent Tunisia’s national university, he has published over 300 research papers and won a prize for his book on schizophrenia; but his interests are not limited to the strictly scientific - he is a prominent member of the International Society for the History of Medicine, has written extensively on Arab and Islamic Medicine, and has a passion for poetry.

As the introduction, by a former Tunisian culture minister states, ” is there anything stranger than the case of this ‘Alfiya’ which appears even in it’s name to be a rare example of an attachment to heritage and a desire to revitalise it with the spirit that created it in the past”?
Indeed a modern Arab book with a rhyming title in the medieval fashion is a novelty in itself, but this one is also more specifically placing itself in relation to Ibn Sina’s Alarjuza Fi Al-6ib ( alarjuza - from rajz, one of the seas of poetry- on medicine; often called the Alfiya because it has 1000 odd lines). In fact Dr. Salim 3amar proclaims his poem an Alfiya Mukarrara, as it has 3500 lines.

Writing a poem, even if not great in the aesthetic sense and regardless of the topic, of such length is an achievement; and as this one conveys detailed information on psychiatry for a lay audience in an uncomplicated way it is is a doubly impressive one…but I wonder if it is worth the effort?

However there seems to be no reason why a book on psychiatry printed in 1992 should be a poem, and the limitation of the rhythm must have adversely affected Dr. Salim Amar’s treatment of his material, and is offset by no positive practical benefit.

The book seems to ‘degenerate’ into a mere curio, even in the fulsome praise of the minister of culture who ends by declaring “this Alfiya is thus given a unique character, and becomes a wondrous treasure [tuhfa 3ajiba]…so the reader should enjoy it’s manner as well as it’s matter, as every person of taste enjoys everything that is rare and precious”.

Printed on glossy paper with patterned borders, the two column layout of traditional arabic poetry reinforces the ‘gimmicky’ effect of the rhymed chapter and subtitles, the cover illustration from a medival manuscript, and the title which echoes the descriptive rhyme of the inumerable Alfiyat across the centuries on everything from grammar to theology.

In short, Dr. Salim 3amar’s Alfiya mukarrara fi al-amrath al-nafsiya almu3tabara ends up being just the sort of book people only buy as gifts, ending up looking good and gathering dust on a shelf.

A different approach is taken Dr. Sami Mahmoud, who supervised a recent edition of Tadhkirat Uli Al-albab wa Al-jame3 li Al-3ajab Al-3ujab (The memorandum for the intelligent, and the compendium of the wondrously strange) by Dawud ibn 3amr Alan6aki, and says he found his original intention to publish a full or even abridged version impractical.

Instead of seeking to slavishly duplicate what was produced to fulfil the needs of a different era, Dr. Mahmoud used the Tadhkira as a basis for a book he calls Tadhkirat Dawud Lil-3ilaj Bil A3shab wa Al-wasa2il Al-6abe3ia (Dawud’s memorandum on on herbal and natural treatments), the title says it all really- no rhyme, and he uses the phraseology natural to him as the writer of an earlier best-selling book on herbal medicine. Unlike Dr. Salim 3amar he sees no need to twist his expertise into an unatural form to revive the past, instead he goes back to it to take what is useful in a contemporary context.

The original Tadhkira is a massive three volume book - the first volume gives the properties of over 3000 medicinal plants and herbs arranged in alphabetical order, the other two deal with the diagnosis and treatment of alphabetically arranged illnesses and diseases; but it also contains detailed sections on topics such as veterinary science, farming and geography. The language is difficult, and at times obscure, and as the publisher says in his introduction, some of the elements required for the compounds are almost impossible to obtain, and others are unkown even to an expert.

This edition edits content and language, and after each entry on a plant or illness from the Tadhkirah adds the explanation in terms of modern science. As an active researcher in the field of herbal medicine, Dr Mahmoud provides additional uses for plants and treatments for diseases from other medieval texts, and from folk remedies.

Such an approach is actually much more in line with that of doctors and 3ulama like Ibn Sina and Dawud ibn 3amr, the latter says in a quote which serves as an epigraph to Dr. Sami Mahmoud’s book:

"We have chosen medicines that are easily available and inexpensive, to comply with the needs of the seeker, who if he agrees accepts, and if so his acceptance is an honour, and if not let him cover what faults he sees with the tail of forgiveness, for it is the ever-blessed (God) who is free from all deficiency and mistakes…and let my prize for this [work] be a prayer from him; God is the one who guides us to the right, and to him is the return and in his hands my fate, there is no power but God the high and great, he is the one I depend on, the most perfect sustainer"

Cool recipes...and not so cool couscous

2007-07-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

After three days cooking elaborate meals for visiting relatives, and preparing relays of trays in between, winding up with a huge barbecue in the (tiny) garden, what could be more irresistible than this title: 101 10-minute recipes?

I really enjoyed having my favourite aunt over, but sweltering heat just doesn't go well with the oven and the hob, you end up looking like a sweaty tomato with a terrible rash...or as the article puts it "the pleasures of cooking are sometimes obscured by summer haze".

Anyway so there are lots of nifty ideas, but one just seems a desecration of couscous:

Soak couscous in boiling water to cover until tender; top with sardines, tomatoes,
parsley, olive oil and black pepper.

Is it just me or does that just scream YUK?

My favourite Libyan cool summer recipe is Sala6a 3arabiya, really simple. What you do is:

Roughly chop a lot of really ripe tomatoes, finely chop a bunch of parsely and add thinly sliced chillis, diced cucumber and tiny black olives.
Combine oil from the olive jar if you have some home-made stuff, or just regular olive oil, with lime or lemon juice and salt. Mix the dressing with the salad and chill in the fridge for a half-hour or so.
To make it more substantial it's common to add bite size pieces of khubzit she3eir, khubzit tannour, or those ubiquitous french baguettes. The essence of the thing is to use your hands to squeeze and knead and generally mess up your salad, so the bread really soaks up the juices.

Folktales without borders

2007-07-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

Re-reading Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blond her analysis of a German folktale, the Juniper Tree, reminded me of a half-remembered Palestinian one I'd heard as a child, The Green Bird, and when I checked it in Muhawi and Kanaana's collection it turns out to be a more than striking similarity.

There are quite a few differences in details of course, the one I found intriguing was the father's reluctance to remarry in the Palestinian version, fearing how a step-mother would treat his children, which made him more of a 'sympathetic character' than the father in the Juniper Tree - who nevertheless escapes death, despite similarly unconsious canibalism.

The avoidance of patricide and purging of all evils through the surrogate mother figure might be part of the Grimm brothers' reworking of their materials for the sensibilities of contemporary child

I don't mind bowdlerisation though; some experts seem to imply 'authentic' tales, crude and earthy and true, told by peasant hags in some hut and being disfigured by the Perraults seeking to satisfy a literate elite, but tales passed on orally are also changed at each telling with regard to the audience.

The Green Bird as I remember it told years ago, started of with the stepmother making kib'e and greedily gobbling it all up herself, and as we were old enough to enjoy being scared, we were told in gory detail how she made her step-son into a replacement meal, but there was greater stress on the father's constant worry about his missing son, who he is told ran away. The woman who told it might have heard it in this version, or she might have made her own changes...or maybe she first encountered it reading Muhawi and Kanaana's 's popular anthology.

The relationship between written and oral folktales should not privilege either, and actually with the tradition of elites gathering these narratives and recreating them in forms to suit their literary taste and social, or even political, purpose going back so many centuries, it seems senseless to imagine a folklore purely oral, even if oral narrative was to be seen as the more pure, essential form of these stories. They have always been a collaborative, collective effort, always something made, not just existing, constantly being consciously remade, not spontaneously mutating.

And not necessarily a cosy process around the home fires . The resemblance between Mameluk sagas like Sayf bin dhi Yazin, or Alf layla wa layla, and Russian folklore is usually explained with reference to the the Central Asian hordes marauding across, and then settling in, both areas. Battles and blood baths, are probably also the reason for this instance of cross-culturation between the fertile crescent and central Europe. In fact Warner's book makes a couple of references, in the context of legends based on Biblical figures, to Crusaders bringing back the Muslim folktales about Solomon and Bilqais the Queen of Saba2/Sheba for example, and adding them to the local mix.

So anyway, war and empire building/dashing seems to be an ideal time to swap fairy tales...will something positive come out of the creative chaos the region is currently experiencing after all?

The Green Bird
The Juniper-Tree

"Far more than a bookworm's nostalgia trip"

2007-07-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

says the Economist of Francis Spufford memoir The Child that Books Built, and (although how anyone can use a derogatory "only" about such a nostalgia trip is beyond me), it is a lot of things besides that...like a confidence-in-my-mastery-of-the-english-language-booster.

I always thought my private (and if I'm not careful embarrassingly public) idiosyncratic pronunciations were because English was my third language, but a native asserts, and I quote, that "everybody" has "words... learned exclusively from books [whose]...pronunciation is our own, deduced from the page and not corrected by hearing the word aloud until it was too late"...so that was reassuring :)

[As a six year old] I couldn't read a lot of the words in The Hobbit. I had accelerated into reading faster than my understanding had grown. If I press my memory for the sensation of reading the second half of the book, when I was flying through the story,I remember, simultaneous with the new liquid smoothness, a constant flicker of incomprehensibility. There were holes in the text corresponding to the parts I couldn't understand. Words like prophesying, rekindled and adornment had never been spoken in my hearing...I could enjoy them. They were obviously the special vocabulary that was apt for the slaying of dragons and the fighting of armies: words that conjured the sound of trumpets. But for all the meaning I obtained from them, they might as well never have been printed. When i speeded up, and my reading became fluent, it was partly because I had learned how to ignore such words efficiently. I methodically left out chunks...
Now that I hardly spell out I do not know, and the things that puzzle me in books do not lie in individual words but in the author's assumption of shared knowledge about the human heart (never my strong point), I still have, like everybody, words in my vocabulary that are relics of that time. The words we learned exclusively from books are the ones we pronounce differently from everyone else. Or, if we force ourselves to say them the public way, secretly we believe the proper pronunciation is our own, deduced from the page and not corrected by hearing the word aloud until it from the page and not corrected by hearing the word aloud until it was too late to alter the sound of the word. The classic is 'misled', said not as mis-led but as myzled-the past tens of a verb, 'to misle', which somehow never comes p in the present tense. In fact, misled never misled me. One of mine is 'grimace'. You probably think it's pronounced grimuss, but I know different. It's grim-ace to rhyme with face. I'm sorry, but on this point, the entire English-speaking human race except me is wrong.

grimace = grim-ace is one of mine too, but at least that's a fairly uncommon word, I wonder how I missed hearing such mundane words as pigeon (= pig-on ) or plait (= plat)...

Anyway its a pretty unique book - a combination of autobiography, child psychology and literary criticism/classification of children's' literature.... he has a real knack for putting the experience of reading as a child into words.

Another element is the tragic story of his sister, suffering from a rare disease, which is central to his need for the escapism only books can provide. He tells it with some sense of guilt for seeking isolation, but without an ounce of sentimentality as befits her character-in her final illness she declares herself "tired of living at the frontiers of medical knowledge". Here too the comforting power of reading is present - she lingers “ long enough for my father to read her the whole of The Lord of the Rings aloud”.

Om kriget i TV'n

2007-07-12T19:18:00.000-07:00

I was about 7 or 8 when I first came across this poem in the fattest book in our library. The books satisfyingly wide spine was the reason it was often the one I chose to flip through whenever I wanted to act truly ‘growed up’; but as it was a collection of over a 1000 Swedish poems, some pieces were short and simple enough for me to actually read.

‘Om kriget i Vietnam’ was not the sort of thing I would usually attempt, but I was hooked from the first line. Of course I knew nothing of Vietnam, but a few days earlier, despite my parent’s best efforts, I had seen a news segment from the then ongoing 2nd (or 91) Gulf War. They thought we were all safely asleep and were watching the evening news, but for some reason I woke up and came into the living room; from the doorway I watched the whole report, complete with the Iraqi corpses and POW’s (paraded across the globe sans condemnation for barbarity) and it wasn’t until the anchor moved unto some local item that my mother noticed me. I remember I slept with her that night.

Those images, perhaps more inexplicable than shocking, were what made me read and re-read the poem. Obviously it was way over my head, I couldn’t even understand some of the words, but I was fascinated by the disjunction between placid Scandinavia and the horrors on TV - it seemed so distant, so unreal, like it was something going on literally inside that black box.

Om kriget i Vietnam

Bakom TV'n ändrades ljuset
utanför fönstren. Mörkret bytes
mot grått och träden framträdde
svarta i det klara grå ljuset
från ny snön. På morgonen
var allt igen snöat. Jag går nu
ut och sopar efter stormen.
Jag hör i radio att USA
gett ut en vitbok
om kriget i VIETNAM
i vilken Nordvietnam anklagas
för aggression. I går kväll
på TV såg vi en filmspelning från
Viet Congs sida, fick höra
helikoptermaskinernas
dova fladdrande,
från marken, från de beskjutnas
sida. I en annan film
för ett par veckor sedan
intervjudnas de amerikanska
helikopternforärna av CBS. En av dem
beskrev sin utlösning
när han äntligen fick skott på
en “VC”: han slungades
tre meter fram
av raketerna. Det blir säkert mer snö idag
säger min granne, svartklädd
på vag till sitt arbete. Han
balsamerar döda och är nåttvardare på
mentalsjukhus. Trackten jag bor i —Lund
med omnejd — blir en allt vitare
bok, solen kommer och lyser
brännande kall over de vidsträkta sidorna.
De döda är siffror, som vilar, vivlar
som kristaller, i vinden over fälten. Hittils
beräknas 2 millioner ha dött i VIETNAM.
Här dör knappast någon
av annat än personliga skäl. Den svenska
ekonomin dödar numera
inte många, i varje fall
inte här i landet. Ingen för
krig i vårt land for att skydda
sina egna intressen. Ingen
bränner oss med napalm
fär en feudal frihets skull.
På 14- och 1500-tålen fanns ingen napalm.
Solen stiger här mot middag.
Det är snart mars 1965.
För var dag.
dödas allt fler i USA’s vidriga krig.
Snöflingorna på fotot av
president Johnson
vid tiden för det sista bombingarna
i Nordvietnam — han steg
ur eller in i en bil — faller
allt tätare over de vita sidorna.
Fler döda, fler rätt fårdiganden,
tills allt snöar igen
i den natt som slutgiltigt
ändrar sitt ljus utanfär fönstren.

-Göran Sonnevi

The Fifty-first Wife-A Retelling of a Libyan Folktale

2007-07-12T02:35:00.000-07:00

Storyteller: Salitu le3shi wala la2?
(have you prayed the evening prayer?)

Audience: Kulna msalyeen
(we have all prayed)

Storyteller: Nkharefkum Khurafa fil bhar jarafa
(I’ll tell you a tale that drags up the sea)
eIli khawaf yatla3 bara
(whoever is a scaredy-cat get out)
Wili yibi yarbah ysali 3alnibi
(and whoever wants to prosper bless the Prophet)

Audience: Alahuma sali wa salim 3aleh
(God's blessings and peace be upon him)

Storyteller: Imala asm3u zein
(right then, listen up!)

Far away there is a vast and rich kingdom you've never heard of and will never see, and it had been ruled by the same family for a thousand years. In the time of our story Zamzar was king; he was very proud of being the descendent of men as wise as they were brave, as merciful as they were just, and ruled according to the pattern they had set.

Now in that country a King had fifty wives, but not one of Zamazar's wives had given him a child. He was desperate to have an heir: not because the state was in danger, for he had many brothers; and not because he distrusted his brothers, for they were all very able and honest men, and a great help in administering a vast territory. He just didn't want to be the one to disrupt an unbroken line of succession from father to son.

Aside from this worry the King Zamzar lived fairly happily, as did his wives and his subjects, and his realm prospered - until one day he went out hunting with his nobles, and they chased a gazelle that would bring about his destruction and suffering to many others: listen and I will tell you how this came about.

This gazelle was no ordinary animal, its dappled coat was the colour of the midday sun that shone above the hunting party, its hooves were gold and gave off sparks like minature lightning as it lead them up hills, down valleys and across streams. The chase continued for many hours, and more and more of the hunting party were left behind or dropped out, but Zamzar insisted on catching this magical creature, which always remained tantalizingly within sight.

As the sun set only he and his royal guard were left to see the marvellous transformation as the gazelle became as fiery red as the disk slipping behind the mountains in front of them, and then reflected the soft purples of the sky approaching twilight. When the full moon rose in the sky they had reached the edges of the desert, and the chameleon-like gazelle was a luminous shape that lit their way. The horses, exhausted from the unrelenting pace, floundered in the sand, and one by one royal guards the fell back.

Accompanied only by Sawad, his stallion, who seemed as caught up in the chase as his royal master, Zamzar continued to follow the gazelle. He was too intent on his prey to notice that he was being led to the ruins of an ancient fortress; it was at this very place, exactly a thousand years ago, that his ancestor had won the kingdom.

The other nobles had invited this ancestor to lead a revolt against a brutal ruler, who was finally besieged with his remaining forces in this well-fortified castle. The story goes that it was the princess who had revealed secret entrances to the army outside, which was led by a man to whom she had been engaged.

However once the battle was over, the triumphant new King had made it clear that he was not ready to jeopardise the position he had won by a marriage that would antagonise his subjects. According to legend the girl had appeared as he prepared to return to the capital with his troops, and before their astonished eyes turned into a marble statue whose lips moved to pronounce three words before becoming forever still: "I wait here".

Although he achieved his ambitions the founder of the dynasty was said never to have known rest, and the priests of that country declared the fortress a cursed place to be avoided by all.

However the centuries had stripped this warning of its significance, and given it the status of a tale to tell around a kanoun (clay brazier) on winter nights; so when Zamzar saw the gazelle actually enter through the crumbling gateway, he hesitated for a few minutes, but followed it in.

Once inside the ruins he could not see the gazelle, but picking his way through the maze of broken pillars and half collapsed walls he reached the central courtyard, crossing it he heard a sound behind him and whirling round with his spear raised in expectation of the gazelle he found himself facing a woman instead. Her hair was golden as the sun at high noon, her lips were red as a the sky at sunset, her eyes were the colour of the horizon at twilight and her face shone like the full moon that now hung low in the sky.

Zamzar lowered his spear, the woman walked up to his horse wordlessly and he helped her up behind him then rode back to his palace.

When he returned a royal wedding was celebrated, and life went on as before for a few months; but then one day his new wife came to complain: one of her co-wives was insulting her, mocking the woman come out of the desert with no people and no name. The King ordered his guards to take that woman to the dungeons beneath his palace and build a wall to bury her in alive within four walls, then he told everyone that she had suddenly fallen ill and died.

Some weeks later she came with another story, how another of the wives was plotting to poison him, and again Zamzar sent the accused to the same dungeon, the wall was partly broken, she was shoved in and then it was rebuilt behind her.

And this was the way things continued, sometimes every few days and sometimes at intervals of weeks or even months a queen would be declared dead, there would be a funeral and that would be the last anyone heard of her. Of course people were suspicious, but not even the most powerful families dared accuse the King without proof, and there was none except the King, his new queen and the guards who knew their fate.

In fact they only thought they knew, because not even the guards knew that the first woman was, by God's will, still alive when they brought the last, the fiftieth wife, to meet the same end.

Together the King's wives suffered the pain of starvation, if not its effects. In fact in their prison they all became round as watermelons, because they all became pregnant.

When the first woman gave birth, and found she had twins she told the others that they should eat one of her children and she should keep the other, as long as the agreed to do the same for her. The women agreed and as each of them gave birth to twins the same rule applied, so each woman would keep one child and sacrifice the other. However the fiftieth wife, and the last to find herself pregnant, never ate her share; but she was afraid, because as God says those who do evil want those around them to slide into sin too. So she would pretend to eat and hide the meat in the folds of her r'da, until she was sure they were all safely asleep, and then she’d bury it near the wall.

So this was how things went until this woman too gave birth, and she did not have twins. The other women said "we have all lost a child, and you received your share so, twin or no twin, we are going to eat your son". But she went to her hiding place and, giving each mother her piece, she said "here are your children, leave me mine". At this all the women began crying and lamenting their own cruelty.

However only a few days went by before they agreed to start devouring the rest of their children; being older they lasted longer than their infant siblings had done, in fact each was as filling as a newborn lamb. But soon there were no more children to eat.

The mother of the baby who was now a toddler was afraid they would eat him while she was asleep. One morning she woke up and didn't find him next to her, and straightaway she stared accusing the others, who of course all denied having touched him. While they were arguing the little boy crawled in through a hole in the corner of the wall which had been rebuilt 50 times, and after him he dragged a basketful of bread.

The women all ate their fill before thinking to ask where he had got it, but when they questioned him he simply said that he had gone out and walked till he found himself in a busy street, where the smell of freshly baked bread lead him to a bakery, and he got the basket just by telling the man he was hungry. From that day onward the boy was sent to the shops to buy food with the women's jewelry, and you may be sure they all praised his mother and wished they had done as she did, and had their children around them.

After seeing the same strange little boy come in alone every morning, the baker decided to satisfy his curiosity by asking some questions - and this time his love of gossip would have a useful purpose.

"Who is your father little boy, who never comes in here with you, not even to buy you k3ak and zlabya on feast days?"
"Zamzar the King is my father" said the Prince Hadiar "and I have never seen him"
"And where do you live then, in the palace?" said the man, laughing
"Oh no! I live in a room with my father's fifty wives, and every morning I crawl out of a hole in the wall."

Now the baker thought this a funny story, and he repeated it as a joke to his many customers; so the Judge who sent his clerk for a snack got to hear it as he munched lugmit kadhi, the servants carrying an order of pies and pastries to the merchants' meeting house brought it to their masters' ears, and the Wazir's wife was told by a maidservant who had gone for some katayef dough - "my own hand's making" she'd tell the neighbours at the lama (women's gathering) as she handed it round.

That same night all the important families in the city held a secret meeting and determined to find out if the boy was telling the truth, if their daughters were really alive. The next morning a trusted servant waited for him in front of the bakery, and when he appeared asked him to show him his home.

When he reported back to the assembled notables they gathered their men and marched to the dungeons, calling on the people to join them. The palace was stormed, and the king and his golden-haired consort were killed, then the women were set free from the dungeons. They were reunited with their families, and were told how the mysterious woman who instigated their suffering had not become a corpse when stabbed, but crumbled into marble fragments.

Prince Hadiar became King at a very young age, so his father's fear of breaking a horizontal line of descent were not realised. With the advice of his uncles and his mother he soon restored the country to its former glory, regaining lost territories and, more importantly, his subjects trust. The dynasty survived for another ten centuries, but his reign was the most brilliant in the whole two thousand years of the families rule; the one the poets celebrated in their poems, the one storytellers set their tales of chivalry, heroism and magic in - and that is the highest praise of all as the Khalifa Harun al-Rashid would tell you.

Storyteller: Uw hadha hadha warham jadha
(that's the end of this tale and mercy on it's grandfather)

Old and New

2007-07-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

Two articles by TP's Zainab Al-Arabi on balancing the traditional and the modern:

Traditions, Customs, and Dangerous Old Ladies

Every nation has its traditions and customs; some of which should be utilized as mechanisms for positive social change and advancement. Regretfully, some of these same traditions and customs have the opposite result when enforced by certain type of old women...My father wanted to name me ‘Zenobia’, after the historic queen who reigned over a great empire in ancient Palmyra (now Tadmur, a part of modern Syria), and fought the Romans. A great historical female figure, with a strong character and a grand name.He had hopes that perhaps with the name would come the strength of character of Zenobia. Except that on that day my grandmother -his mother- happened to be there, and she was horrified at the strange and un-Libyan name
....(more)

and on the other hand A Flimsy View of Progress

I was surprised to see a report in the Arabic Al-Jazeera news channel about a private Libyan company’s approach to ‘modernisation’. This company was promoting its business by holding a fashion show that – according to the company owner - proved Libya was progressing and opening up to the West. I hope that that’s only his opinion, and not of all Libyan businessmen. At a time when the state is encouraging businesses to participate in local investment and social development, there are probably a thousand ways to show the world that we are progressing other than a fashion show. Although enough to send shockwaves through most of Libyan society, I didn’t think that this was going to become a ‘norm’ just yet. But still, I couldn’t help cringing in embarrassment as I watched the models flouncing on the catwalk. Not because of the clothes they wore; not because some of the models were Libyan girls, and not because the audience included males –all very ‘un-Libyan’ goings-on....(more)

Badla 3arbiya

2007-07-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

Literally Badla 3arbiya means 'Arab Suit', which seems a curious term, but like the similar 'raqs sharqi' or eastern dancing it's strange self-referentiality (as opposed to the descriptively inaccurate belly-dancing) is probably most significant in recording the fact that the 'native' was no longer the default.

In the Libyan dialect it refers to the traditional woman's costume: a tunic (gmaja), a sort of vest called a kurdiya, trousers and a huge length of cloth elaborately arranged over the whole. It is the latter that is the most distinctive piece, and the material, colour and wrap of it defines the ensemble, identifying the region and occasion.

A 6rabilsi (Tripoli) style gmaja and kurdiya with the matching r'da in the background. Nowadays women don't necessarily wear their region's design, and there are crazes for this or that style every wedding season.

Variations of this costume are worn in the Maghreb (North-Africa with the exception of most of Egypt), but even within Libya there is a wide range of styles. The major difference here is between the Eastern and the Western style: the gmaja is different, but it is mostly to do with the wrap of the r'da which in the East is usually worn higher up, a few centimeters below the knees, while in the west it almost reaches the ankles. To match this the Sirwal (what the occident likes to call harem-pants) is calf-length in the east and ankle length in the west, as in both cases it has to show from beneath the r'da.

A Libyan bride is given two such costumes by the groom, and as they are woven of silk and silver threads (although the latter are sometimes tinted gold), together with the jewellery she has quite a wearable fortune as this painting (from Flying Birds) of a Libyan 3arusa in full regalia shows.

The buttons are gold too! Like the jewellery one set of these is used with any number of 'badlat'- they're sewn unto the one you happen to be wearing.

A crescent moon, a five-pointed star and a hand - all are seen as 'Islamic' symbols although the hand in particular, which superstition regards as warding off the evil eye, is not.

There is usually a repeating pattern, which together with the colour combination creates the variable elements to each design. There are fashions and designers, and customers can also order their own unique creations direct from the specialised factories.

The same factories also buy the badlat, and burn them (!) to extract the silver from which to make new thread and weave new rdawat. Some are just about falling to bits and desperately need a reincarnation; but quite often the badla is sold because the owner wants to 'cash it in', whether because she needs the money, never wore it since her wedding or has worn it so often that she's sick of it and wants something more up-to-date. A less combustive form of recycling seems possible as I've heard people are now buying what is in good condition to use as fabrics for interior decoration.

Darfur

2007-06-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

The documentary Al-Arabia couldn't show:

Part 1
Part2

Arabian Manga(stan) - Arab cartoons and Islamic 'culture'

2007-06-26T03:44:00.000-07:00

Nathaniel Naddaf-Hafrey wonders: Can Comics Change the Arab World?

“I went back to my Arab heritage to draw from its design calligraphy, myths and legends, I tried to incorporate them all into the character. Manga usually features Japanese culture, and I wanted to introduce some Arabian mysticism to the market.”

Asia Alfasi has taken part in (and won) local and international competitions, landed a contract with Harry Potter's publishers, and is being celebrated as a "cool muslim" icon.

Apparently she was the the first female finalist on Hi8us competition, which I thought was interesting. Jazeera had a Japan season quite a while back, and one of Fadi Salama's reports was about the predominance of female manga artists, despite the 'machismo' of much of what they produced...

Anyway, Asia's achievements are just WONDERFUL, especially in light of her being a Libyan!

BUT (being nitpicking me) I've got... issues with cartoons based on Islamic 'culture'

This petty-peeve is actually about a completely different person, a Kuwaiti guy who created the 99 and recently featured on Witness. First off he did the whole revolutionary "first comic based on Islamic culture" thing, which is simply untrue.

My experience would confirm the Fulla-hype for example, in that none of my girl-cousins whine for a Barbie doll/bag/skipping rope - in fact I haven't heard anyone mention Barbie at all since the alternative hit the shelves...and the satellite channels.

But the 99 is more of an addition. It competes with Western imports like Majalit Mickey, and with 3ala'idin and Samir and the gazillion other Arabic comics I grew up reading in the 90s.

So basically the documentary gave me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that this Naif Al-Mutawa person was self importance on steroids personified.

Also obnoxious was the way he kept re-repeating the "comic based on Islamic culture which is NOTHING to do with religion" line, like he was afraid of being shoved into some CIA dungeon unless he transformed his dark materials into something as palatable as Tan's sugar-sister-hooded Chinatown.

About the characters:"there's nothing fundamentally Islamic or non-Islamic about them"

Asked about a muhajaba he says "well is that Islamic, or is that just part of being human?" (yep, he actually used those words) "nuns dress like that, and some orthodox Jews cover their hair or wear wigs "

Which is true, but doesn't alter the fact that the character is a muslim girl wearing a hijab. And that shouldn't be too bitter a pill to swallow unless sugar coated.

Except if your from the Planet of the Chimps, whose comments on Mangastanis include:

Invocations to the Spartan 300:

There is nothing like the spectacle of defenders of Western Civilization slaughtering tyrannical Persian invaders...

And various ever-so-original suggestions for FUNdamental characters, followed by the observation that it was "Sad how these kids are brought up as if terrorist were heroes"

More puzzling was this complaint:

Once again, proof positive that Muslims are completely incapable of original
thought or idea. They copy EVERYTHING from the culture that they so despise,
sprinkle large helpings of Islam all over it...

Bush's endless WWII and Cold War analogies had left me with the distinct impression that we were supposed to copy-cat...

Somebody had a somewhat similar reaction:

I actually like this idea. Assuming these Superheroes are really "Good" guys and fairly Western, and aren't like roaming the globe, forcing conversions to Islam, beating women, and cutting off infidel's heads, killing Jews, then I think it would be good role models for muslim youth. It would give them something to look up to, and perhaps keep them out of the madrasas... maybe.. well, one can hope...

Despite the long string of ifs and buts, and the implications of "really 'Good' guys and fairly Western", in it's context I suppose the above exemplifies tolerance, multiculturalism and all that zift.

AT A LATER DATE: closer inspection reveals the ABC article they're commenting on (which managed to get the "intricate backstory" wrong) mentions a FATWA!!! Make way for Sir Naif Al-Mutawa...

Chamomile Cleanser

2007-06-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

About:
Gentle enough for eye-area + reduces panda-effect
Will keep for a few days in the fridge

What to do:
1 cup milk + handful dried chamomile in something small and heat resistant, like a coffepot
Put small pot/pan in a larger pan full of water on medium heat
Keep checking that the milk is only simmering gently and doesn't boil
After 30 minutes turn off and leave to steep for a couple of hours, then strain

How to use:
like regular cleanser, apply with cotton and blot with tissue

Abrak: stuffed vine leaves

2007-06-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

FILLING (enough for around 30 Abrak pieces- lots of time consuming chopping)
3/4 cup uncooked short grain rice
2 cups finely chopped parsley
1 cup finely chopped spring onion (green stuff too)
1 tomato, diced
1 chili pepper, diced
1 headed tablespoon tomato puree
1 teaspoon turmeric
1tsp salt
1 tsp red/chili pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/2 a cup of oil (or 2 spoons of ghee, for more authentic taste but less healthiness)
250g finely diced mutton should have some fat- like minced meat (which can be used as a hassle-free alternative)

Make rice nice & glossy with the oil or ghee first, add the other stuff and mix.

STUFFING
if you're using pickled vine leaves just rinse.Fresh (must be young) vine leaves need to be dipped in boiling water for a few secs.Remove any big stalks & trim into roughly square shapes...and you're ready to roll: place about a tsp of filling at the edge of the leaf, roll it up neatly and fold in the edges to make a tight parcel - this should be about finger width.

COOKING
Cover the bottom of a non-stick pan with potato slices.Pack the Abrak into the pan.Pour 1/2 a cup of hot water (+ 1 tbsp oil + 1/2 tsp salt + 1/2 tsp mixed spice) on the Abrak.Cover with a plate and press so it keeps them tightly packed.Cover the pan and put on medium heat till most of the water has evaporated, then on very low.Total cooking time can be 45mins-1hr, so keep tasting!!

VARYING
Mahshi Krumb:
The blanching in hot water goes for cabbage leaves too, only you have to add cumin to the filling.
Mahshi:
Stuff the Abrak filling into pretty much any veggies you want (potatoes, onions, baby aubergines, tomatoes, courgettes, chili & bell peppers..).
Cook like Abrak, or use the oven. In the latter case cover with foil till cooked, then grill for a bit of colour.

Sufra dayma

Sabe’a Sabaya - Libyan Folktale Retold

2007-06-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

There were (oh the things there were!) in a time long past…two brothers who married two sisters.

The elder brother Zaid’s wife Nafisa was a wise and clever woman, who looked like most women do. His younger brother Zeyad married Jamila, who was what her name meant (a beauty). She was tall and slender as a palm tree; she had skin as delicate as jasmine, hair as dark and glossy as roub (date syrup) and the eyes of a gazelle. Her husband was as handsome as she was beautiful, and they were suited in character too, for one was as stupid and greedy as the other.

When the brothers’ father died and his debts were paid only two small farms were left. The brothers and their wives worked hard, but though they were never very poor they were never very rich.

One day Zaid decided to go to the ghawals’ palace and bring home some of their food and treasure. He told his wife of his plan, knowing that she would know how to help him.

“Elsabah rabah” (profit is in the morning) she said, "I’ll tell you what to do tomorrow.

"Next morning Nafisa was awake long before dawn. First she took a gas’a to the storeroom and filled it with wheat.

Then she picked the juiciest cucumbers from the farm and the biggest eggs from the henhouse. In the kitchen she ground some of the wheat into flour, and then she started making sfinz. Sfinz, as we all know, is better than wedding drums at waking up lazy lie abeds. And true enough when the aroma of his favourite breakfast reached him Zaid jumped out of bed and - without even washing his face - he rushed to the kitchen.

“Good morning” he said cheerfully.

“A morning of carnation and jasmine” Nafisa replied, “you had better hurry if you don’t want to miss dawn prayer at the mosque”

But, remembering that this wasn’t a day like any other, Zaid looked at his smiling wife in consternation; how could she sing at her tahouna and make sfinz when he was going on a quest as dangerous as any feat ‘Antar ibn Shadad had performed?”

“You’ve forgotten what I told you yesterday…” he protested indignantly, but before he could really begin to grumble he was interrupted by the first Adhan and had to hurry away.

Nafisa finished frying the sfinz and wrapped them in a cloth to keep warm while she prayed. Then she made date paste balls stuffed with almonds, cooked them in olive oil and put them into a leather pouch. Half the sfinz she sprinkled with salt and wrapped into a parcel, and this she packed into a gufa with hard-boiled eggs and cucumbers.

She was filling a second gufa with wheat kernels when a slightly shamefaced Zaid came back, but Nafisa was too prudent a woman to warm up cooling arguments, and they sat down to breakfast.

While they were eating sfinz with honey and sipping sage tea Nafisa gave her husband the advice he had asked for, and this is what she said:

“I’ll give you a gufa of wheat to mark your trail, because the ghawals’ magic will mislead you, and a pouch of date balls to eat on the journey, so you’re not hungry when you reach the palace. There’s a giant fig tree in their garden, you must climb up as soon as you arrive, and stay there all day and all night. The ghawal will shake it on their way in and out but if you do as I say God will keep you safe. At dawn the ghawal will set out on their hunt: eat the food in the gufa I will give you and then climb down and enter the palace from the back door. You will pass through six rooms, but you must not touch anything in them. Each room will have a table laid as if for a Sultan’s banquet, but you must not taste the food. Each room will be full of jewels and fine clothes, but you must not try them on. Each room will contain a mirror, but you must not see your reflection in it. From the seventh room you may take what you want, but remember the ghawal will come back at sunset.”

He promised to follow her instructions, and she gave him a water skin and the two gfaf, making a hole in the one full of wheat. So before the sun had had time to warm the world, Zaid set off towards the ghawals’ palace. Although he could see it far off their spells confused him and he found he was walking in circles, but he never took the same path twice because the wheat marked where he had been.

He reached the palace some time after noon and climbed into the fig tree, taking with him his two gfaf and his waterskin. He stayed in the tree all day, munching the rest of his dates. At sunset the ghawal came home, singing:

Sabe’a sabaya fi gesbaya

Sa’ad elghulah takelhen

(Seven girls, in a bowl

Happy the ghulah that eats them)

Before they went into their palace, each ghulah took hold of the tree and shook it, but Zaid was ready for them: he held on and did not fall.

Next morning, the ghawal got up early, and came out of the palace at first light. Again, each ghulah shook the tree, but Zaid held on and did not fall.

When they had gone, Zaid ate some sfinz with the eggs and cucumber his wife had packed in the gufa; then he climbed down, walked around to the back and entered the palace.

He walked quickly through the first six rooms despite the tantalizing smells and glittering sights, and when he reached the seventh he put down his two empty gfaf, and with his knife made an opening in the waterskin.

First he filled the water skin with rubies and emeralds and sapphires; with amethysts and turquoise and coral and strings of pearls…. and when it was full he tied it securely and strapped it on.

Next he put gold into a gufa: dinars and bracelets and rings; armbands and necklaces and anklets and earrings …and when it was as heavy as he could manage he covered it with the most magnificent r’da he could find: a cream and pale blue silk, shot with threads of white gold, it had taken two hundred women two hundred nights and two hundred days to weave in Samarkand.

And then he filled the last one with food. There were saffron strands and ginger roots and nutmegs; crystallized Aleppo pistachio and coconut and pine nuts; guava and mangoes and honeydew melons…When this last gufa was packed it was a little before noon.

Zaid put on a suriya of the finest linen and a jard woven from the hair of white camels, and then he picked up his gfaf and waterskin and set off home, following the wheat trail.

Nafisa had been waiting as if on hot coals for her husbands return and welcomed him home with zaghareed. That night they dined better than the Sultan in Turkey, whose cook was in a bad mood.

A few days later Jamila visited her sister. She noticed her wearing six heavy gold bangles and went home with her head full of nothing else. When her husband heard he too wondered how his brother could afford to buy jewelry, especially when he had told him that he was planning to buy more stock for his farm. So Zeyad went to his brother and asked him where this sudden wealth came from.

Now Zaid loved his brother but he knew his faults well, so he did not want him to go to the ghawals’ palace. At first he only told him that he had been lucky, and would share his good fortune with his brother. Zeyad however insisted that he should be told were the money came from, and this was how their argument went:

Zaid said: "I'll give you a quarter."

But Zeyad refused

Zaid said: "I'll give you half."

But Zeyad refused

Zaid said: "I'll give you all"

But Zeyad still refused

“You must tell me where you got all this” he said "so I can get more than you."

So Zaid told him exactly what he had done, and before they parted repeated his instructions to make sure he remembered:

"make a trail, take food with you, stay in the fig tree for a night and a day, hold tight to the tree when the ghawal come, enter the palace from the back, don’t touch anything in the first six rooms, don't look into the ghawals’ mirror, and don't eat their food when you are in the palace."

Zeyd took a bucket, bored holes in it and filled it with chalk. He did not take any food with him, thinking that his brother was just maliciously complicating his task.

"There is food where I am going," he thought, "why take any with me?" So early next morning he set off, but of course the chalk was difficult to see and he had a hard time reaching the palace as he kept going round in circles. When he finally reached it he went in straight away because it was getting dark and he was hungry.

Ravenous, he saw a feast fit for an Emir ready spread in the first room he entered, so he sat down to eat. The first sip of pomegranate sherbet, the first bite of roast lamb was in his mouth, and he was made mute. Then the fool dressed in rich clothes - the first glance in the mirror to see what he looked like in his new outfit, and he was struck blind. The first word of the ghawals’ song in the distance heard while he was still in the palace, and he was deaf.

Terrified he hurried out, found the fig tree and clambered up just as the ghawal came home, singing:

Sabe’a sabaya fi gesbaya

Sa’ad elghulah takelhen

(Seven girls, in a bowl

Happy the ghulah that eats them)

As they passed under the tree, they shook it. Blind, scared, and weighed down with the food he had eaten, Zeyad fell quickly. So the ghawal ate him, except for his head, which they kept.

Next day, worried, his older brother decided to go after him. Nafisa thought for a while, and then sat down and sewed her husband a brightly coloured costume with bells everywhere. When he wore it he looked like the ghoulish jester Bu Sa’adiya, and when he moved he made enough noise to wake the dead. Again, she gave him food for the journey and a gufa of wheat kernels. Early next day, he set off, singing:

Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud rub’aa gutli la

Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud nusa gutli la

Kulma gutlak ya'ebn umi khud kulla gutli la

(Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take quarter- you said no

Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take half - you said no

Whenever I told you o son of my mother, take all - you said no)

So he sang, until he reached the palace. The ghawal heard his song and his bells, and as ghawal like Bu Sa’adiya, they welcomed him joyfully. He came closer and saw that they were playing with his brother's head, throwing it from one to the other.

He approached a ghulah and asked her “honoured sister, whose head are you playing with, and how did you get it?”

She replied, “When we came back from our hunt yesterday the first mirror told us of a fool who broke into our palace, drank and ate at our table, and wore our clothes.”

“Indeed to act so he must have been as you call him (a fool).”

“So he was, it took us less time to gobble him up than it would take you to think up a new song.”

Then all the ghawal invited him to sing and dance for them. In return he asked that they allow him to join their game and, when he had finished his songs, to take the head away with him. They agreed, saying they had no more use for a fool’s head. So Zaid sang for the ghawa,l and they were so pleased with his songs that they sent him off with many precious gifts. When he returned to the village he went to Jamila and gave her his brother's head, and the gifts that came with it.

And that was the end of greed!

published in the Tripoli Post

Mixed Middle East Metaphors

2007-06-24T03:56:00.000-07:00

was blog-grazing when I stumbled across the above at the this blog....

Last summer Rice's be-laboured metaphor generated lot's of ME midwife jokes, and made regular apperances in Hizb'Allah's Divine Victory Ad-campign (no really) ...anyway so they're all being renovated in light of recent events in Gaza, which actually is not a major mess, courtesy Dayton's gang of Dahlan thugs, but the birth of a new dawn, the rise of a new statelet, and the deification of another moderate....and the prelude to another another hug-and-kiss to death fest

(In)conclusion: 07 suffering a sever case of 06 repetitiosis, what with the second shrine bombing and all

Popaganda

2007-06-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Can pop music make the Arab world love us?

American book publishers can tell you that American men between 18 and 30 don't read a lot of books. The Arab street reads even fewer—just one book, mostly: the Quran.

The United States should have followed the lead of Arab governments, which know that music is the region's most powerful form of expression. That's why they use it for propaganda—and also why they ban so much of it.

What the State Department ought to have done to reach those underemployed young men, then, is call Miles Copeland [who] became interested in Arab culture while... growing up in the Middle East, where [his] father worked for the CIA.

(how appropriate...)

Maybe Copeland can start turning out Arab-American fusion hits for another federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees... Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language news and entertainment station with frequencies throughout the Middle East.

Genuine Query: on what basis fusing Britney/Haifa imagined to have an effect different from alternating Britney/Haifa?

Arab Muslims still mostly experience the Quran that way and listen to it all day long, in taxis, coffee shops, stores. Quranic reciters are something like pop stars.
Long before the Quran, classical poetry in Arabic issued from an oral tradition; it wasn't written down until well after the text of the Quran was established.

6aha Husain says the Hanged Poems....were mp3 files festooning the ka3ba

The Arabic language itself, its rich vocabulary, argues for the overwhelming pleasure of sound in a culture that was not very visually interesting...

Such monochrome dreariness backed up by eskimo textbook example linguistic evidence:

There are, I believe, nine different words for "desert" in classical Arabic—which reminds you that 1,500 years ago most Arabs were looking at desert most of the time.

and a native guide who is said to have said:

so we stay at home and listen to the music of singers like Umm Kulthoum, marveling at her perfect diction, piecing out the phrasing, the repetitions, the variations.

Cairenes = streetlife. He must have taken the joke kul yuom el masri yif6ar foul, wi yitghada kora, wi yit3asha Um Kulthum too seriously

Landet som icke är

2007-06-23T05:08:00.000-07:00

Jag längtar till landet som icke är,
Ty allting som är, är jag trött att begära.
Månen berättar mig i silverne runorom ländet som icke är.

Landet, där all vår önskan blir underbart uppfylld,
landet, där alla våra kedjor falla, landet,
där vi svalka vår sargrade pannaI månens dagg.
Mitt liv var en het villa.
Men ett har jag funnit och ett har jag verkligen vunnit—
Vägen till landet som icke är.

Edith Södergran

Mathalu Nurihi

2007-06-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth, The likeness of his Light is as a niche wherein is a lamp: The lamp in a glass, the glass as it were a brilliant star, Kindled from a blessed tree, An olive that is neither of the east, nor of the west, Whose oil would almost glow forth, though no fire touched it.

Light upon light, God guides whom He wills to His Light

Surah An-Nur (Q 24:35)

Literary Journalism - an oxymoron?

2007-06-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

"In the region's cultural history, journalism evolved from the French tradition of partisan journalism married to the Levantine fondness for belles lettres "adab" literature rather than the alternative Arab literary tradition of "hadith"…sacred reporting, with its seemingly obsessive stress on reliable sourcing and research to ensure objective accounts of what the Prophet Muhammed really said and did." Arab Talk Shows and TV Journalism, a TBS article by S. Abdallah Schleifer

What a delightfully Fatima Mernissi-esque idea!! It’s a fascinating way of classifying the unclassifiable Arab media scene:

On the one hand, Levantine Adabies + Frenchies = partisan journalism where rhetorical considerations take precedence over fact.

And on Schleifer's other hand Khaleeji Hadithites + Anglo-Saxonites = Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia: Now supplanting Egypt and the Levant, the traditional providers of news gossip for old men in Qahwas to squabble about while playing tawla and sipping thick black coffee.

...like i said, it's interesting, whether you agree with it or not. But why the dichotomy between objective journalism and adabi style?

For example, Yousri Fouda in Siri lil ghaya uses Riwaya language in what are essentially investigative reports about subjects such as Israel and Hizbullah's prisoner swap, the effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq, Sufi brotherhoods in North Africa...

In Siri lil ghaya the Riwa’i narrative hasn't affected the journalism, it just added another dimension to it. As a conter-orientalising comment: Arab culture since the Jahiliya has always placed a high value on poetic style.

Another Egyptian who I think has a similar ‘hybridizing’ style is As3d Taha. His documentary series Yu7ka ana is definitely my favorite. Literally it means something like "it is related/told" but the phrase is actually used in the sense of "Once upon a time".

It has a definite folkloric quality as Taha draws on the repetitive, rhyming language of traditional fables to tell the story of the war in Kosovo, Venzeula's original inhabitants, religious oppression in Central Asia, the orange revolution in Ukraine and of Fort Makuna - where Morrocan political prisoners where held in secret for decades.

A lot of Arab TV journalists write in such a deadly booooooring way.... perhaps they fall into the western factual/literary divide ....or maybe it's just that they're working in a visual medium?

And (although irrelevant to the above) I couldn't resist the opening - this on the "arbiters of global opinion":

Looks are deceiving. Right now the mood among Western journalists taking a fleeting look at the new Arab public affairs talk shows that have become the hottest popular format throughout the region in all their variations is upbeat, amazingly positive. A new world of free speech is dawning in the region and according to the columns appearing in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and other arbiters of global opinion, most of the credit goes to Al-Jazeera channel. Well, there are a number of ironies right there

....multiplied to the power of ten in a post-9/11, post-Kabul, post-Baghdad, post-al-Hurrah world

Bilingual Terrors

2007-06-02T06:18:00.000-07:00

This post is really just an excuse to put up this cartoon by 3bd el-3al in Al-Arabi magazine, which for some reason I really really really like. As they don't say (or do they?) : simplicity is the mother of perfection.

Anyway so it's illustrating an article by Dr. Hamid Tahir, a Professor of Islamic Philosophy, intoning the usual doomsday litany: the degeneration of the language, the desperate need for regeneration, the danger of non-identification…etc, etc, etc

But this was interesting:

“One of the most important effects of the absence [of a living link with fus7a]…is the disconnection of young people from the balanced religious concepts which should prevail in society…”

hee ho humming & hummus

Naive Propagandist?

2007-05-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

"a naïf collector of customs would be a paradoxical monster" said someone or other about Chaucer... and a naïf propagandist would be a paradoxical monster... but how else to explain such paradoxical monstrosity?

This from Isi Leibler's Response to Aljazeera :

The "People of the Book" seem to have forsaken the ability to harness the power of the word. However, it is the increasing impact of the electronic media dispensing with objective truth and selectively concentrating on graphic images of "innocent" civilian casualties that has been the primary factor contributing to our demonization....

WHAT CAN WE DO? The answer is obvious. The creation of a global TV channel promoting a Jewish viewpoint must now assume the highest priority....In these trying times for the Jewish people a shortage of funds must not represent an insurmountable barrier to such a vital project. There are now more Jewish billionaires and greater Jewish wealth than at any other time in our history...

and it goes on

We spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on numerous Jewish agencies and bodies whose primary objective is to protect Jewish rights, promote the case for Israel, and combat anti-Semitism. Yet many of these organizations are ineffective, overlap and compete with one another rather than pooling their resources to overcome the common threat.

and on

In addition to American organizations like the Anti Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, which have huge budgets, there are smaller, parallel bodies in the UK and Europe. There are also the powerful American synagogue roof bodies with the capability of raising enormous funds simply by adding a modest surcharge on synagogue seats or membership that would in no way detract from their core activities.

and on

It is time for an international summit of major bodies engaged in pro-Israel and anti-defamation activities to review this crucial enterprise. They should explore the possibility of forming a board comprised of representatives of organizations willing to divert funds from their existing budgets in order to seed and maintain a genuine global Jewish TV channel. Of course, other Jewish resources and contributions from wealthy individual donors and foundations would also be tapped.

And then this from his truly impressively elaborate sweeping under the carpet of Christian Zionism's rapturous Final Solution:

As genuine Christian Zionists whose faith is based on the Bible they believe that God gave Eretz Israel to the Jewish people. They pray for our welfare and most of them unconditionally love Jews as God's chosen people. I often wish that some of our more aloof Diaspora kinsmen could display similar passion and commitment for our cause...

However that should not be seen as suggesting that 100 million Evangelicals throughout the world are all philo-semites. They are in fact no more monolithic than Jews. Yes, many of them believe that the return of their Messiah will be hastened by the Jewish ingathering of the exiles. But this surely should not be of concern to us. Some undoubtedly may be obsessed with the wish to convert Jews and others may even be anti-Semitic. But the overwhelming majority are unquestionably decent men and women seeking to promote Christian ethical values - many of which mirror the Judeo-Christian heritage....

Of course we unquestionably differ from Evangelicals on many other issues. But today, it is unbecoming to insult our friends and painful to witness ignorant Jews biting the hand that feeds us - especially at a time when we so desperately seek allies. As an observant Jew I am comfortable, enthusiastic and grateful for the support we receive from Christian Evangelicals.

Dale Chihuly: Artist, Craftsman?

2007-05-21T03:32:00.000-07:00

Art, or Craft:

Palazzo di Loredana Balboni Chandelier

Persian Chandelier

‘Seducing America: Selling the Middle Eastern Mystique’

2007-05-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

BY JUDITH GABRIEL

Orientalist imagery has long been appropriated for use in American film posters, cigarette packs, pulp fiction and popular music: scantily clad harem girls, tyrannical despots and turbaned mystics have personified an imagined Middle East in the popular culture, creating an American fantasy that represents the exotic and the erotic.

Hundreds of objects reflecting that imagined realm has just wrapped up its first run at the University of California at Los Angeles. “Seducing America: Selling the Middle Eastern Mystique,” an exhibit of Middle Eastern-inspired ephemera, is about to be launched as an extensive on-line data base complete with music samples, selected film clips and a comprehensive assortment of “Middle Eastern Americana” artifacts such as sheet music, souvenirs, book jackets and consumer goods, many bearing Middle Eastern insignias, and the accompanying advertisements which range from the crass to the cartoonish.

Appropriately housed in the tiled, arch-encircled rotunda of UCLA’s Powell Library, select items from the collection of Jonathan Friedlander, assistant director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, comprised the display. Objects included comic books from the 1930s, pulp fiction book covers with titles such as “Desert Madness” and “Spicy Adventures,” video games such as “The Prince of Persia,” vintage sheet music for songs including “The Sheik of Araby” and “Rebecca Came Back from Mecca,” photos of topless women on the covers of CDs, fierce warriors on the covers of DVDs, “Turkish” tobacco products, Egyptomania films, and various and sundry consumer items such as Palmolive beauty products, Ben Hur flour, Sheik condoms – and a couple of Shriner fezzes.

The graphics and objects reflected the many images – some lurid, some diabolically savage, and others strikingly beautiful – that the mysterious East has provided for the imaginations of advertising artists and commercial and packagers, all to hawk the wares of popular culture. Many of the images are crassly commercial, some risqué enough to be deemed borderline lewd, while others are grotesquely distorted or lampoonish. At the same time, some reflect the skill of graphic designers who turned out cover art with distinctive beauty, incorporating the graceful lines of the region’s architecture and the exotic images favored by the Art Nouveau artists of an earlier century.

But they are all manifestations of the Orientalist image of the “mysterious East” that runs through American popular culture, notes Friedlander, with the distortions and negative stereotyping that continue to manifest their dangerous ramifications in American political posture today. The emphasis is on American, and Friedlander terms it all “Middle Eastern Americana.”

“What is the appeal of this iconography in the United States? The answer is complex,” Friedlander told Al Jadid. “Back in the 1920s, the mysterious Middle East represented freedom from the rigid morality of the preceding era, and so it was a popular icon on sheet music for fox trots and waltzes.” Sheet music was a popular medium at the time. Americans bought new songs up with the same enthusiasm that today’s music fans snap up CDs. “The graphic appeal of the front cover design, racy lyrics and catchy dance melodies made sheet music a popular medium at a time when many Americans were taught to read music and play a musical instrument. And with the advent of mass media, color printing and consumerism, and the dance craze of the 1920s, the four-to six-page pamphlet, often strikingly illustrated, had wide appeal,” Friedlander said.

“American Orientalism is undoubtedly our own creation and as such it deserves critical study leading to self reflection,” Friedlander said. With the co-option of the images of the East into so many areas of the popular culture, the impact has never been more chilling. “While academia has debunked Orientalism it is still a profoundly influential force, affecting consumer culture and American foreign policy alike.”

Copyright (c) 2005 by Al Jadid

La Tahzan Ya6eir

2007-05-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

Ahmad Saqaf's poetry shows a naivety and simplicity reflected in Al-Arabi's illustrated version.