apjp petitions venice biennale over israeli exhibition

A week before the opening of the 10th International Architecture Biennale in Venice, the international pressure group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) has sent a petition to the organizers asking them to consider withdrawing the Israeli contribution.

In its petition sent on September 2, APJP says it is “dismayed and concerned” that the Biennale, which opens on September 10 and runs until November 19, has agreed to host the Israeli contribution entitled “Life Saver: Typology of Commemoration in Israel.”

APJP says the exhibition in the Israeli pavilion, funded by the Israeli government, “totally excludes the Palestinians who are the target and real victims of the seemingly unending series of wars being memorialized. In this exhibition, Israel has the sole position of victim and victor.”

It requests the Biennale Committee to consider withdrawing the Israeli entry as being “provocative and counterproductive to the aims of the Biennale, and particularly distasteful in the context of the aftermath of an ugly and unnecessary war in neighboring Lebanon, and a continuing one-side war in Gaza.”

The 21 signatories to the petition include Palestinian, Israeli and British/Jewish architects. Among them are the eminent British architect Ted Cullinan, and the distinguished architectural critic and writer Charles Jencks.

The Israeli contribution comprises exhibits of 15 memorials built between 1949 and 2006 to commemorate Israeli military war dead or the Holocaust. The Israeli Defense Ministry provided substantial support for the exhibition.

Israel is one of 50 countries participating in the Biennale, which is regarded one of the world’s most prestigious architectural events. The only Arab country taking part is Egypt.

APJP says that whatever the committee may decide to do about the Israeli participation, it would like the organizers “to consider asking for a Palestinian contribution, highlighting the historic and ongoing displacement of the Palestinian people.”

The petition says that the “eminent Israeli architects” represented in the Israeli entry are “being used as tools of Israeli propaganda, and consequently would be deemed to be complicit in the agenda of excluding the Palestinian narrative. Significantly, the Israeli organization ‘Zochrot’, which deals with remembering the Nakba, has been omitted from this exhibition.”

APJP notes there are no memorials in Israel to the Nakba, the Palestinian tragedy of displacement and dispossession, in which “the intention of transfer and exclusion led to the destruction and elimination of 580 Palestinian villages, towns and cities.”

It adds: “Even today, this dispossession and humiliation goes on in Gaza and the West Bank, with the destruction of their heritage in the historic cities of Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem and Jericho. This is particularly ironic when the subject of the Biennale is the celebration of cities.” (The title of the Biennale is ‘Cities, Architecture and Society.’)

The military memorials exhibited in the Israeli pavilion include the Ammunition Hill Memorial for the Six Day War, the Negev Brigade Memorial, the Nitzanim Memorial building, the Palmach History Museum, Bet Yad Labanim, the memorial for soldiers from Tel Aviv University, and the National Memorial in Honor of the Fallen of Israel’s Intelligence Community.

Among the Holocaust-related memorials are the Holocaust Museum and the Hall of Remembrance of Yad Vashem, Yad LaYeled Children’s Museum, and the Ghetto Fighters’ House.

The curator of the Israeli exhibition, Tula Amir, writes in the exhibition catalogue: “The justification of Israel’s wars legitimates the loss of life in the past and its possible loss in the future; the continuation of unconditional cooperation between the country’s military and defense establishment and its individual citizens; and an unequivocal understanding that this struggle is the only means for Israel’s survival.”

But commenting on Amir’s statement, APJP says: “It has been evident that the wars and tragedies engulfing Palestine/Israel since 1948 have been due to Israel’s intransigence and refusal to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict.”

Amir does briefly mention the omission of the Palestinian narrative when she writes: "It is important to note, at this point, that this exhibition focuses upon this phenomenon as it is expressed in Israel's Jewish sector, which comprises approximately eighty per cent of the country's population. The approach to remembrance and commemoration within Israel's Arab-Palestinian minority represents a completely different narrative, which is given almost no architectural expression in Israel."

Amir fails to point out that while there are over a thousand memorials in Israel, no such expression is permitted to the Palestinians. Zochrot is the only Israeli organization that attempts this, by erecting signs of destroyed Palestinian villages, which are immediately taken down by the authorities.

APJP was founded in February 2006 as an independent international pressure group of design professionals who seek international support for an ethical and just practice for their professions in Palestine and the Occupied Territories.

Its website states: "We hold all design and construction professionals involved in projects that appropriate land and natural resources from Palestinian territory to be complicit in social, political and economic oppression, and to be in violation of their professional ethics."

APJP seeks to raise awareness within the planning, design and construction industries of how these professionals "are central to the occupation of Palestinian land and to the erosion of human rights." It acts as a channel to disseminate news and information relating to the built and natural environment in Israel/Palestine, "in particular highlighting ways in which planning, architecture and other construction disciplines are being used to promote an apartheid system of environmental control."

The group forges links with Israeli and Palestinian professionals and other solidarity groups "committed to non-violent resistance to the Occupation and to the establishment of a just and lasting peace."

APJP calls on Israeli and international architects, planners and those in the construction industry to express their concern in each and every instance of unjust action in annexing Palestinian land, and the projects to be built on them. "The future security and justice, in both Israel and Palestine, are at stake."

Susannah Tarbush

arab weekend at v and a

Colourful displays of traditional Saudi costumes modelled by young Saudis were on show in the Italianate central courtyard, known as the John Madejski Garden, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, central London, last Saturday and Sunday.

The parades of costumes were part of the “Souq, Scripts and Soundbites” Arab Weekend held at the museum to celebrate the opening in July of the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art. The opening of this magnificent gallery is the culmination of a three-year renovation and redesign project made possible by a donation from the Jameel family of Jeddah.

In all, three weekends have been organised to mark the opening of the gallery. On August 5-6 there was a Turkish weekend, “Tulips, Tiles and Coffee Culture”, and on September 9-10 there will be an Iranian weekend, “Poetry, Picnics and Persian Pastimes.” As a prelude to the Arab Weekend, the late night opening of the V&A on Friday was devoted to Arab culture under the title “Arabise Me.”

The displays of Saudi nomadic tribal outfits were organised by the Mansoojat Foundation, a UK-registered charity set up by a group of Saudi women with “a passionate interest in the traditional ethnic textiles and costumes of Arabia.” The parades were complemented by a video on tribal costumes shown inside the museum.

The John Madejski Garden was transformed into an Arab souq, café and entertainment area for the weekend. In the eating area, the air was filled with the aroma of water pipes.

There was a multiplicity of events, including calligraphy workshops from the Amman-born calligrapher Nassar Mansour, screenings of the film “Le Grand Voyage”, tellings of Arabian stories by Joshua Gaillemin, and, on Sunday, readings and discussion from the Egyptian novelist and writer Ahdaf Soueif.

On Saturday there were performances by the Iraqi oud player Ehsan Emam, and by the Palestinian singer Reem Kelani and her three supporting musicians. The performances were due to have taken place in the John Madejski Garden, which would have provided an ideal venue, but for some reason the location was switched at the last minute to the Raphael Room. The echoey acoustics were far from ideal for music performances, but the outstanding talent of the performers shone through.

The timetabling of the weekend left something to be desired. The distinguished Lebanese-Syrian food writer Anissa Helou was scheduled to give a talk on Middle Eastern Street Food in the lecture theatre on Saturday at 12.30, but the time was abruptly altered to 11.30am. Not surprisingly, those planning to attend at 12.30 did not know about the change and the talk in the lecture theatre was therefore not as well attended as it should have been. Helou made her displeasure over the sudden rearrangement known by deciding not to give the talk scheduled for Sunday.

Susannah Tarbush, Saudi Gazette August 29 2006

'in the country of men' on guardian shortlist; arabic version in december

There is further good news about Libyan writer Hisham Matar's novel In the Country of Men, following its longlisting for the £50,000 Man Booker Prize (it is the only debut novel on this year's longlist of 19 novels). The London-based Guardian newspaper has announced that In the Country of Men is among the ten books longlisted for the £10,000 Guardian First Book Award. In addition, there will be an Arabic version by the end of the year, published by Dar al-Muna of Sweden.

The Guardian prize is open to all genres of writing, fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The other fiction works on the longlist are by women: they are Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany Australia), Harbor by Lorraine Adams (USA), Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li (China). The shortlist will be announced in November, and the winner in December. Wikipedia calls the Guardian First Book Award "the oldest and best-established of the awards sponsored by a newspaper."

As for the Man Booker Prize, the shortlist will be announced in mid-September and the winner at a dinner on October 10.

Meanwhile, a publishing deal has been reached under which Dar al-Muna, the Stockholm-based publishing house, will publish the Arabic translation of In the Country of Men. Publication is set for December. Before the Arabic rights were sold, rights had arleady been sold in 13 other languages. The novel is being translated into Arabic by the Lebanese writer Sukaina Ibraheem.

Mona Henning, who was born Zureikat in Amman, Jordan, established Dar al-Muna after moving to Sweden (she is a pharmacy graduate of the American University of Beirut).

Henning says Dar Al-Muna was keen to publish the Arabic edition of In the Country of Men "because of its artistic value and the sincere and honest human touch in it. The child is trying all the time to remember the innocence part of his childhood in spite of all the sad experiences. The author describes incidents, places, so vividly that you feel as if you are around all the time." She adds: "It is the child in In the Country of Men who makes you enter his own world of hopes, suspicion, longing, love and hate. Children are genuine in nature and this makes the story so near to the reader from the very first page."

Dar Al-Muna has specialised in translating world-famous works by Scandinavian authors into Arabic. The authors who have been translated include Astrid Lindgren (who wrote Pippi Longstocking), Jostein Gaarder whose translated works are Sofie's World (Alam Sofie), the Orange Maid (Fatat Al Burtuqal) and a few days ago The Kabal Mystery (Sir Al Sabr).

Mona Henning points out that Gaarder has recently been much mentioned in the Arabic press because of his article critical of Israel published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

Dar Al-Muna has published many children's books, and in 1999 Henning was awarded by Swedish Authors' Union prize for her efforts to spread reading among children. This year she was among the nominees for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

"For the moment we are doing it the other way round, and translating Mahmoud Darwish into Swedish," Henning says. Dar Al-Muna is producing three of his works simultaneously in Swedish translation - Halat Hisar, Sarir Al Ghariebah and Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?

Susannah Tarbush

banipal live young arab writers' tour

The fallout from the war in the Middle East has inevitably had some effect on the Banipal Live 2006 Young Arab Writers’ tour held from 14 to 20 August. Four writers from the Arab world were scheduled to travel to Britain for the tour, which was organised by Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature, the British Council and The Reading Agency.

One of the writers, the Lebanese journalist, poet and translator Joumana Haddad, was trapped in Lebanon by the war. But she sent a recorded message which was played at the tour’s welcome reception held at Mary Ward House in Bloomsbury, the traditional heart of literary London. In the message Haddad read her exuberantly passionate poem “The Panther Hidden at the Base of her Shoulders”, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker.

The work of Palestinian writer Ala Hlehel (above right), who lives in Acre, Israel, was given new urgency and relevance by the conflict. At the reception he read from his prescient short story “War”, translated by Anthony Calderbank. In this characteristically sharp, satirical story Hlehel tells of attacks on Haifa seen through the eyes of a Palestinian.

The Syrian poet Abed Ismael (above left) read his self-translated poem “A School Hobby”, and “A Mere Ghost” translated by Issa J Boullata. Mansoura Ez-Eldin of Egypt read from her short story “Conspiracy of Shadows” translated by Paul Starkey. Starkey has described Ez-Eldin's first novel as "remarkable, not only for its freshness of vision but also for its prevision of language - a truly original creation."

To accompany the tour Banipal Books published “Unbuttoning the Violin”, a 122-page anthology of poems and short stories by the four authors. The four have also posted contributions to a tour blog on the British Council website.

The tour included London, Chesterfield, Derby, Manchester and South Shields. The finale took place on Sunday, at the Edinburgh Book Festival in Scotland. The tour producer, Banipal editor and publisher Margaret Obank, pointed out that alongside the tour “we are doing a pilot project with public libraries to encourage people to read Arab authors in translation.”

The tour attracted considerable interest, partly because of recent events in the Middle East, and in last Sunday's edition of BBC Radio Four's Open Book, the popular presenter Mariella Frostrup interviewed Hlehel and Ismael. Ismael, who teaches American literature at Damascus University, is a translator as well as a poet and said in his experience as a tranlslator into Arabic, Latin American writers are still more popular than their European counterparts.

Asked by Frostrup which authors they would recommend to those wishing to explore Arab literature further, Hlehel said: "Let's start with Samuel Shimon, he's a great writer. He wrote An Iraqi in Paris; I think it's moving and a very courageous book. Writers like Raouf Masad should be read, I think he's a great writer." Ismael recommended Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef. "His poetry is characterised by simplicity, he puts a lot of passion in it, let alone the fact that he doesn't have a problem in transcending all taboos."

Sarah Ewans, British Council regional director for the Near East and North Africa said in her address at the welcome reception that the tragedy happening in the Middle East was “really bad news for relationships between people and countries…from our point of view it makes projects like this even more important, to link writers and artists from the region to the UK.”

Ewans said that British Council experience and research in the Near East and North Africa has found that young people in the region “really want the opportunity to convey their ideas and experience to their counterparts here in the UK, and it is very important this is on their own terms, and not on anyone else’s.”

Susannah Tarbush (shorter version published in Saudi Gazette, 22 August 2006)

----------------------------------------

A SCHOOL HOBBY

The boy – who killed his father –
is still running

As he runs
fields, clouds and nights run with him

shadows run with him
and the house he left behind

The river is running,
as is his note-book
and his exam.

The boy is running
and memory runs with him
The midnight mirror,
the birds flying in his sleep
things and names also run.

in his fancy a blade shines
the cry itself shines
the sun emerges from the cry
and blood is running…

At his footsteps shines a blade
in his fingers which grasp the wind
a blade is running…

a blade endlessly running in his blood.

Abed Ismael
(translated by the author from his collection Sa’at Ramil. Translation first published in Banipal No 23, Summer 2005)

hisham matar and naeem murr on man booker longlist

This year's longlist for the Man Booker prize includes two novels by authors of Arab origin - Hisham Matar of Libya, and Naeem Murr (left) whose late father was Lebanese. Matar is longlisted for his debut novel In the Country of Men published in the UK by the Penguin Books imprint Viking, and Murr for his third novel The Perfect Man whose UK publisher is William Heinemann, part of Random House.

Coincidentally, both novels will be published in the US in early 2007 by Random House (Matar's by the Dial division).

The Man Booker, worth £50,000, is Britain's most prestigious literary prize. It is tempting to see the inclusion of two Arab authors on the 19-novel longlist as a major breakthrough for Arab diaspora novelists writing in English. But while Matar's novel is set in Libya, Murr, who comes from a famous extended family in Lebanon, has not directly drawn on Arab settings in his work, although he explores themes of migration, deracination and belonging. In the Country of Men and A Perfect Man have both received highly positive reviews in the Times Literary Supplement and other UK publications.

Murr and Matar are up against stiff competition from a longlist that includes David Mitchell's Black Swan Green (the bookies' favourite to win), two-times Booker winner Peter Carey's Theft: A Love Story, Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, Jewish author Howard Jacobson's comic novel Kalooki Nights, and South African Nobel prizewinner Nadine Gordimer's Get A Life.

The best known Arab contender for the Booker to date has been the Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif (a longtime resident of London) who was shortlisted for her epic historical novel set in Egypt, The Map of Love, in 1999. The Australian novelist David Malouf, who like Murr is of Lebanese extraction, was shortlisted in 1993 for Remembering Babylon.

Murr's paternal family come from the town of B'tighreen in the Metn region north east of Beirut. Murr's father Samir met his Irish mother Eileen McGuinness while he was studying engineering in London, and Naeem was born in London in 1965. The following year his father died in a car crash in the desert in Libya where he was working as an engineer. Murr has lived in the USA since his early 20s and currently resides in Chicago. Murr's mother maintained the links with the Murr family in Lebanon, and when he was growing up Murr visited Lebanon for vacations and family weddings, and he spent several months living with his uncle in Beirut at the age of 10.

Hisham Matar was born in New York City in 1970 to Libyan parents. He grew up in Tripoli until 1979 (the year in which his first-person narrator novel is set), when the family had to flee to Cairo. He has been based in London since 1988. Matar has contributed essays and reviews to the Arab daily newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, and has had poetry published. In 2002 his poetry made him a finalist in East Anglia's Best New Talent Awards. His varied CV includes acting on stage and working as an architect, stonemason and university lecturer.

Murr’s first novel, The Boy, published in 1998, was New York Times Notable Book, won a Lambda Literary Award, and was translated into six languages. The Genius of the Sea followed in 2003. The Perfect Man was published in Britain in April.

Murr has received numerous awards and scholarships for his writing. He published a number of prize-winning stories, novellas and non-fiction pieces in literary journals. He was a Stanford University Creative Writing Fellow, and was recently awarded a Lannan Residency Fellowship. Murr has been a writer-in-residence at numerous universities, including the University of Missouri, Western Michigan University, and Northwestern University.

The chairman of this year's Man Booker judges, the Oxford Professor of English Literature Hermione Lee, said of the longlist: ""We have many regrets about some of the novels we've left off, and we could easily have had a long-list of about 30 books, but we're delighted with the variety, the originality, the drama and craft, the human interest and the strong voices in this longlist. "

She added: "It's a list in which famous novelists rub shoulders with little-known newcomers. We hope that people will leap at it for their late summer reading and make up their own short-list."

The 19 longlisted books were chosen from a list of 112, of which 95 were submitted by publishers. A further 17 were not submitted but were called in by the judges. The other judges are poet Simon Armitage, novelist and reviewer Candia McWilliam, actress Fiona Shaw and writer and reviewer Anthony Quinn.


Susannah Tarbush

yasmina khadra's novel 'the attack'

There are some well-known examples of women writing under male pseudonyms. The 19th century English novelist Mary Anne (Marion) Evans wrote under the name George Eliot, so as to be taken seriously as a novelist. Some women fiction writers today prefer to use their initials rather than their full first name to try to avoid possible discrimination against women writers.

For a male writer to use a female pseudonym is rarer. The case of the Algerian writer who writes under the name Yasmina Khadra is particularly unusual. Khadra wrote police thrillers in Algeria, and has also written a string of political novels. Eventually the author was revealed to be a former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul (pictured above left), writing under the name of his wife.

Moulessehoul writes in French, and five of his novels have been translated into English. He moved to live in France in 2001 and it was then that he “came out” and disclosed Khadra’s real identity. For some, his background casts a permanent shadow over his writing and his agenda. There have been accusations that in his novels chronicling the war of the radicals within Algeria, he documents the atrocities perpetrated by radicals while ignoring those allegedly carried out by the Algerian army.

In 2002 the International Parliament of Writers withdrew the protection it had accorded Moulessehoul and his family, after he defended Algeria’s army against accusations that it massacred civilians.

Khadra’s novels have done well, particularly “The Swallows of Kabul”, written from the point of view of an Afghan woman suffering under the Taleban. The novel was shortlisted for the IMPAC prize.

Khadra’s latest book, “The Attack”, won the Prix des Libraires in France, and was shortlisted for the Goncourt, Femina and Renaudot prizes. In Britain, where it was published recently by William Heinemann in English translation, it has been widely, and on the whole favourably, reviewed.

In “The Attack”, Khadra continues to explore the relationship between politics, violence and religion. The first-person narrator Amin Jaafari is an Arab surgeon practising in a Jewish hospital in Israel. Despite his Bedouin origins, he has succeeded in entering “the brotherhood of the highly educated elite”.

Jaafari has been married for 10 years to Sihem, in what he considers a happy union. He is devastated when she dies in a suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv restaurant which kills 19 people including 11 schoolchildren. His grief turns to disbelief when he finds she was the suicide bomber.

Jaafari sets out to discover why Sihem did what she did, and to uncover the lies she had told him. She had told him she was going to stay at her grandmother’s farm near Nazareth, but she was actually driven to Bethlehem before returning to Tel Aviv to carry out the bombing.
Although Khadra’s writing has power and clarity, Sihem remains an obscure figure and her motivation is not wholly convincing. Her husband’s investigations take him into perilous confrontations with certain family members and radicals in Bethlehem and Jenin. At the same time he is forced to review his position as an Arab who has done well within the Israeli medial establishment. One of the men he meets in the West Bank describes him as the “serviceable Arab par excellence” Driven to the edge of madness, Jaafari finds he is suspected by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette August 8 2006

zoe rahman shortlisted for the mercury

In the seven years since she was awarded the title ‘Perrier Young Musician of the Year’, the Bangladeshi-British jazz pianist Zoe Rahman has emerged as a leading figure on the British jazz scene. Now her profile has taken a further leap upwards, with the shortlisting of her second album, “Melting Pot” for the £20,000 Nationwide Mercury Prize. The winner of the prize will be announced at the awards ceremony on September 5.

To be shortlisted for the Nationwide Mercury is a major achievement for Rahman, who was born in Chichester, near the English south coast, and received her musical education at Oxford University and Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA.

“Melting Pot” is the only jazz CD on the shortlist of 12, which also includes the Arctic Monkeys with “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”, Thom Yorke with “The Eraser”, Guillemots with “Through the Windowpane” and Editors with “The Back Room.”

The Mercury Prize was established 14 years ago in memory of Freddie Mercury, the late singer of rock band Queen. The Arctic Monkeys are currently favourite to win. Even if Rahman doesn’t win the prize, the shortlisting of “Melting Pot” has already led to an upsurge of media and public interest in her work, and is bound to lead to substantially increased sales of the album.

The Nationwide Mercury shortlist is the latest accolade for Rahman. Her debut album “The Cynic” was shortlisted for the BBC Radio 3 Jazz Album of the Year. In May this year, “Melting Pot” won the Album of the Year award from the All-Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group.

Rahman is from a musically gifted family. Her brother Idriss plays woodwind (including the clarinet on “Melting Pot”), and her sister Sophie is a classical pianist of note.

In addition to her own trio, Rahman regularly performs with other ensembles including Clark Tracey’s New Quintet, and her brother Idris’s group Soothsayers. She is one of the musicians on Palestinian singer Reem Kelani’s debut album “Sprinting Gazelle” which was released earlier this year.

Rahman has been preparing for a trip to Bangladesh to explore the country’s musical roots and to meet family members, and has been learning some Bengali from a “Teach Yourself” book. The one track on “Melting Pot” not written by her is the Bengali song “Muchhe Jaoa Dinguli” written by singer and composer Hemant Mukherjee. Rahman has added her reworkings of several other Mukherjee songs to her repertoire.

Rahman is undoubtedly a jazz performer with a great future ahead of her. Her many fans will be keeping their fingers crossed on the night of September 5 when the winner of the Nationwide Mercury is announced.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, August 8 2006

London demonstration on Lebanon and Palestine

London demonstration 5 August 2006

libyan novel: 'in the country of men'

In the Country of Men
by
Hisham Matar
Viking, London, 2006

This first novel by the Libyan writer Hisham Matar, who has lived in London for many years, has generated much excitement in publishing circles. The Bookseller hailed it as “the most highly prized literary debut of the autumn.”

Within a week of Matar’s literary agent submitting the novel to publishers, it was the subject of a highly competitive auction in the UK. The auction was won by the Penguin imprint Viking, which gave Matar a two-book deal. There were also auctions abroad, and the rights to the book were sold in 14 countries prior to publication.

The novel does not yet have an Arab publisher, but Matar regards the Arabic translation as “without a doubt the most important one for me out of all the translations.” The novel is currently being translated by the London-based Iraqi short story writer and literary critic Luay Abulilah.

Matar says: “I think he’s done a very good job; he’s managed to get under the skin of the language. The language is deceptively simple, but it’s got tones and colours and there’s something sensuous about it.”

Viking’s editorial director Mary Mount, editor of the novel, rates it as “a very rare find…the sort of book that makes publishing worthwhile.” Matar is “a very serious writer who puts an enormous amount into his writing” and editing with him was a “wonderful experience.” In her view he has “a huge future as a writer”.

Some novels fail to live up to their pre-publication publicity, but In the Country of Men fully deserves the accolades it received before publication from novelists of the calibre of JM Coetzee, Nadeem Aslam and Anne Michaels.

Matar has produced an accomplished and moving novel, at once accessible and mysterious. It is a literary novel, yet intensely readable. He has written poetry for much of his life, particularly focusing on it since the mid-1990s, and his gift for language is much in evidence in his prose.

In the involving, many-layered narrative, the first-person narrator Suleiman looks back to his nine-year-old self trying to make sense of the confusing family and political events that whirled around him in Tripoli in summer 1979, “that last summer before I was sent away”.

The novel is expertly paced, and the tension builds to an almost unbearable pitch as the net closes around Suleiman’s father and his associates, who are linked to a student democracy movement.

In the book’s concluding section Suleiman, now 24 years old, tells of the fifteen years that have elapsed since his parents sent him into exile in Cairo. Although he integrated quickly into Egyptian society, “I suffer an absence, an ever-present absence, like an orphan not entirely certain of what he has missed or gained through his unchosen loss.”

Matar was born in New York in 1970 to a diplomat father, and lived in Tripoli between the ages of three and nine. In 1979 the family was forced to leave Libya and moved to exile in Egypt after his father was threatened with interrogation and arrest during a crackdown by the regime.

Much worse was to come. In March 1990, while Matar was at school in England, his father Jaballah disappeared from the family home in Cairo. It is assumed that, like several other Libyan dissidents, he was abducted and handed over to the Libyan regime. To this day, despite representations to the Libyan leadership and the taking up of the case by human rights groups including Amnesty International, Matar and his family do not know whether his father is alive or dead.

Matar stresses that his novel is not autobiographical, although it is permeated by a sense of loss, exile and ambiguity. Nor does he see himself as a political writer. Rather, he is concerned with “how people change over time, how circumstances alter the human heart.”

Matar set the novel in Libya because of his interest in “certain themes that are very much to do with Libya. And I also feel that as far as the literary voice of Libya is concerned, it’s not a very vocal voice. It’s a silent country – at least that’s the impression the world has, I think with good reason.”

He adds: “The kind of literature that stands the test of time is the kind of literature that comes out of urgency, that comes out of a sense that it has to be written. In a way the book writes the author, and that kind of book doesn’t come by choice.”

The novel is intricately structured, but Matar did not start out with a plot outline. For him writing is exploration, and “what determined the structure was the voice. The voice really intrigued me, and it is what kept me interested and committed. It kept nagging at me.”

Matar spent the first phase of work on the novel trying to meet the technical challenges of writing in the voice of a nine-year-old. “What does it mean to be nine years old? How do you perceive the world? There is something quite unique about children, the present seems eternal and there isn’t really any experience of time passing. In many ways it’s quite a positive thing because a lot of them live in the moment and their living experience tends to be extremely intense.”

One theme running through the book is Suleiman’s anxiety over questions of masculinity and what it is to be a man. Suleiman is an only child, and when his father is away on business trips he is forced to become the man of the house and to look after his mother. She drinks the “medicine” (illicit grappa) that she covertly obtains from the local baker, and when she is drunk, or “ill” as Suleiman interprets it, she uses her son as the sounding board for her dissatisfactions. She recalls that “black day” when she was forced by her brothers to get married to a stranger at the age of only 14 after she was seen in a café drinking coffee with a boy.

Matar charts the boy’s ambivalence towards his mother. “I remembered the words she had told me the night before, ‘We are two halves of the same soul, two open pages of the same book,’ words that felt like a gift I didn’t want.”

In the novel’s opening scene Suleiman has been told that his father is away on business, but during a shopping trip with his mother he glimpses him in Martyr’s Square followed by his office clerk Nasser carrying a typewriter. His father enters a building, and Suleiman sees him at a top floor window hanging a small red towel on the clothesline.

The father is a rather distant figure; Suleiman wishes his father could be more like Ustath Rashid, his father’s best friend, or Moosa`, the Egyptian judge’s son who provides Suleiman with friendship and affection.

On their way home, mother and son are followed by a car carrying four men in dark safari suits. “I remembered so suddenly I felt my heart jump. They were the same Revolutionary Committee men who had come a week before and taken Ustath Rashid.”

Suleiman witnesses Ustath Rashid’s televised “confession”, summary trial and hanging in a sports stadium in front of a hysterical cheering mob. The televised execution of Ustath Rashid “… would leave another, more lasting impression on me, one that has survived well into my manhood, a kind of quiet panic, as if at any moment the rug could be pulled from beneath my feet.”

The novel depicts a society of informers and mukhabarat, where leaflets criticising the Revolutionary Committees circulate overnight, and where telephones are crudely tapped.

The world of boys and their games runs parallel to the adult world. Matar’s best friend Kareem is Ustath Rashid’s son and the arrest of Ustath Rashid affects the dynamic between the boys. Suleiman is caught up in betrayals and complicities and experiences the fleeting pleasures of the misuse of power.

The mother and Moosa burn the father’s books in order to protect him, but Suleiman hides one of the books. After the father is seized, the mother makes a humiliating appeal for his life to a neighbour who is a senior member of the mukhabarat. When Suleiman’s father returns home from his brutal ordeal, he and the mother draw closer and find a new mutual need and passion which tends to shut out their son.

After Suleiman is sent alone to live in Cairo, a series of decrees in Libya ruin his parents financially and his father goes to work in a pasta factory. Suleiman finds the Libyan embassy has a file on him as an “evader” because he has not returned for military service. When he is fourteen a decree is issued warning that all “Stray Dogs” who refuse to return will be hunted down. His parents are refused a visa to leave the country, “holding them hostage, as it were, until the evading Stray Dog returned.”

Suleiman asks: “Why does our country long for us so savagely? What could we possibly give her that hasn’t already been taken?”

In the Country of Men has a transcendent quality that lifts it above its often harrowing subject matter. As an adult, Suleiman learns what became of the people he knew as a child in Tripoli, and how they have adapted to their situation. The novel ends on a note of gentle and hopeful resolution.

Susannah Tarbush

Unedited version of review published in Banipal magazine No 26, Summer 2006

three women of herat

In republishing Veronica Doubleday’s book “Three Women of Herat: A Memoir of Life, Love and Friendship in Afghanistan” 18 years after its first publication, the London publisher Tauris Parke Paperbacks has brought to a new readership a classic on Afghan society and culture.

Doubleday writes: “It is my hope that the republication of this book will help to offset the misapprehensions and prejudices about Afghanistan that abound in the popular Western imagination. It is important for people to know about life there during times of normality, before the traumas and upheavals of invasion and war.”

Doubleday got to know the “three women” – Miriam, Mother of Nebi and Shirin – while she was living in the western Afghan city of Herat in the mid-1970s with her ethnomusicologist husband John Baily, who was researching Afghan music. At the beginning of each chapter of her book is one of her charming drawings of Herati people.

The book was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1988, and in a postscript Doubleday describes how in March 1994 she was able to return to Herat for the first time since the 1970s on board a UN plane. She and her husband made a further visit in spring 2004.

In the 1970s Doubleday and her husband spent two separate years in Afghanistan, with a shorter period in between. At the beginning of their second year, 1976, Doubleday decided to withdraw from public life and the world of men, in which she had been accepted an “honorary male visitor”, and to explore the world of women.

By then she could speak their Persian language, and by sharing and performing the women’s music she entered further into their sphere. She adopted the veil, and although she had mixed feelings about this she found it quite liberating in bringing a “welcome privacy”.

Doubleday gives a fascinating, detailed account of domestic life, family structures, relationships, marriage rituals, celebrations and traditional medicine. She builds up memorable portraits of the three women she got to know best.

Miriam was the daughter of a hereditary musician who was the authority on classical music in Herat. Mother of Nebi was a more isolated, troubled character. An accomplished performer of rural songs, she was intelligent and creative and had a reputation as a diviner. But Doubleday found her “chained and smothered by an ignorant, bigoted husband.”

Shirin, the most famous Herati female singer, had an all-woman band, and Doubleday first encountered her performing at a wedding. “She had a rippling, clear, light voice with a sweet sound that suited her own name, which itself means ‘sweet’.” Doubleday took music lessons from Shirin and became a member of her band, adopting the name Farahnaz. Some people were scandalised that Doubleday had joined the band.

To this day Doubleday continues to perform traditional Afghan music with her husband at concerts in Britain and beyond. Through her writing, performances and deep commitment she has made an essential contribution to the knowledge of Afghan culture.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 25 July 2006

furore over brick lane film

A storm of controversy has erupted in Brick Lane, the heart of London’s Bangladeshi community, over plans to film Monica Ali’s 2003 novel “Brick Lane” there. Filming is due to start in a few weeks in the famous street of curry houses, textile shops and other Bangladeshi businesses in London’s East End.

The row over the filming of “Brick Lane” is the latest example of a conflict between the freedom of expression and the sensibilities of a minority. Around 30 activists opposed to the film held a meeting last week and some have warned of possible violence.

“Brick Lane” tell of how a young woman, Nazneen, comes to England from Bangladesh to marry an older man living in the Brick Lane area, and eventually becomes involved with a young Muslim activist in the post 9/11 period.

Abdus Salique, the chairman of the Brick Lane Traders’ Association told BBC TV that he doesn’t think anyone like Nazneem exists in the community. He said Ali “has imagined that character”. Fellow businessman Mahmoud Raud, complained about the “negative portrayal of our community.”

Ali’s critics point out that she does not come from the Brick Lane community she portrays. Most Bangladeshis in Britain come from Sylhet, but Ali’s father was from Dhaka and her mother is English. Ali grew up in the north of England and went to Oxford University. Her critically acclaimed novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

The film’s production company Ruby Films said: “Throughout the production process we’ve maintained constant contact with the community. When there’s a finished product to watch, we’ll be happy to open dialogue with anyone with any concerns.”

By no means all Bangladeshis are against the film. Asians in Media magazine quoted a local resident, Abdul Goffur, as saying the protest was “blown out of proportion. It’s a minority who are trying to make themselves known. But I live in Brick Lane and we’ve got a thousand guys in support of this. This film will be helpful in opening up our community and helping us progress as a community as a whole.”

International PEN, the worldwide association of writers, is so concerned about possible trouble that the deputy president of English PEN and five prominent PEN members wrote to the Guardian newspaper. They called on the police, with the full backing of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to “stand squarely behind the film, its author and the right to free imaginative expression.”

One hopes that any protests will be peaceful. If the film is a success, it could help put Brick Lane further on the map and make it a tourist attraction, just as happened in West London after the release of the film “Notting Hill”.

Susannah Tarbush Saudi Gazette 25 July 2006

freemuse report on ME music censorship

Music censorship has become a topic of increasing interest in recent years, thanks partly to the efforts of the Danish charity Freemuse. Founded in 1998, Freemuse is the only global organisation that advocates freedom of expression for musicians and composers.

Freemuse's latest report, "All that is Banned is Desired", highlights some of the main issues of music censorship in the Middle East. The issues range from religious opinions on musical performance to curbs on heavy metal music in certain Arab countries, and the debate over Lebanese music videos featuring scantily clad women. Not all censorship is imposed by censors; self-censorship is widespread.

The report, prepared by British writer and journalist Trevor Mostyn, is based on the two-day conference that Copenhagen-based Freemuse held in Beirut last October in collaboration with the Heinrich Boll Foundation and the Irab-Arabic Association for Music.

In her opening speech to the conference, Freemuse's executive director Marie Korpe explained that the event was a result of, and a continuation of, the 2nd World Conference on Music and Censorship held in Copenhagen in September 2002. At that conference the famous Lebanese musician and composer Marcel Khalife had proposed that Freemuse arrange a similar conference in Lebanon.

Participants in the conference came from 14 countries, and there were testimonies from musicians, concert organisers and media professionals who had been censored in Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain and Morocco.

The conference offered much scope for lively anecdotes and cross-cultural comparisons. For example, the musician and associate professor Mark LeVine said that the young Iraqi firebrand preacher Muqtada al-Sadr fulfils many of the same functions - positive and negative - for his followers as young American rappers like NWA (Niggaz With Attitude) and Public Enemy fulfilled for their fans when they started out.

Mai Ghoussoub, the Lebanese founder of Saqi Books in London pointed out in her keynote speech that although censorship persists, it is becoming "almost impossible in the age of the internet, mass tourism and cheap flights to really suppress a book, a song or an image."

Bahraini singer Khalid Al-Shaikh, who has had some of his songs banned in Bahrain, said the best music is often produced in times of oppression. He noted the irony that although most of the singers and investors in entertainment in the Gulf are Saudi, Saudi Arabia has the strictest censorship.

Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat described the ways in which since the 1979 Iranian revolution jurists have limited the freedom of music. Women in Iran can play musical instruments, but they may not sing to audiences that include men.

Several films were screened during the conference, including the documentary "The Rock Star and the Mullahs" featuring Pakistani guitarist Salman Ahmad of the Pakistani band Junoon. There was also the Middle East premiere of Syrian filmmaker Mohamad Malas’s film “Passion”, in which a woman is terribly punished for her innocent love of song.

Susannah Tarbush

losing arab hearts and minds

Lieutenant Commander Steve Tatham was the British Royal Navy spokesman during the invasion of Iraq. In his book “Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion” he brings his experiences to bear on the question of how the Coalition handled the Arab media during the Iraq war. The book, published recently in London by Hurst & Company, has just been published in the US by Front Street Press.

Tatham is both a serving officer in the Royal Navy, and a corporate communications specialist. He was awarded an Iraq Campaign Medal in October 2004, but admits he has become “more and more opposed to the events of March and April 2003”.

His book is a lively, thorough and fair-minded account which ranges widely over its central themes. Among those he has interviewed are senior staff of Arab and Western TV channels, scholars, media practitioners and diplomats.

The Arab media were accused of bias (“the new four letter word”) during the Iraq war. But Tatham points out that the US media, particularly the ardently pro-war Fox Television, were hardly unbiased in their reporting.

Tatham asks: “How did the world’s most powerful country, which after the horror of 9/11 had the sympathy of the world, and its small coalition of military partners so convincingly lose the battle for Arab hearts and minds?” He notes that many observers believe that America had lost the battle for Arab hearts long before the Iraq conflict, especially over its policies towards Israel.

However, it was thought before the invasion that the battle for Arab minds might be worth fighting, given that “Saddam was generally seen by the Arab intelligentsia as a despotic and evil dictator. While his removal by force was unpopular, US ideals of democratic change for the region enjoyed some critical support”.

In contrast to the 1991 Gulf war, the Arab world had by 2003 a range of satellite TV channels, notably the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV and Al-Arabiya. The US and Britain saw information campaigns and media coverage of their operations as vital in gaining support. But the Coalition’s Arab media campaign failed.

Rather than launch an imaginative and targeted media campaign, the Coalition was mainly concerned with its own domestic market, especially the “hugely patriotic” US market. The few Arab media that did embed with US troops left after a few days, complaining they had been cut out of the briefing process and put in danger.

“Not only were the Arab media hugely under-represented in comparison with their Western colleagues but it is clear that there existed a predisposition to be hostile towards them in general and Al-Jazeera in particular,” Tatham writes. This hostility “seems to have been based on perceived reputation rather than on personal experience.”

James Wilkinson, who was responsible for the overall US media strategy at the Coalition Press Information Centre in CENTCOM’s Qatar headquarters, admitted that the US had “no idea” how to communicate with the Arab world. He declared that Al-Jazeera was “absolutely biased” and broke contact with it after it showed images of dead and captured US troops.

Tatham points to the paradox that while the US at the outset led the effort to engage the Arab media, it appeared to give up as the conflict began and as the war continued. Britain, on the other hand, engaged poorly with the Arab media at the beginning, but as the war went on “many corners of the British government seemed to recognise that Al-Jazeera and other pan-Arab channels needed to be listened to.”

The relationship between the Coalition and the Arab media is as fragile as ever, Tatham says. The BBC and CNN have lost appeal and credibility in the Arab region as a result of the Iraq war. Al-Jazeera is now launching an English service, but Tatham predicts it will face a struggle in getting distribution across the US.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 27 June 2006

summer's lease

Summer’s Lease

An area of darkness
In his mind
An area of grief
In High Summer. When the leaves are
Dappled with sunlight
& the Chestnut Trees
Loose their Moorings
(Vast galleons of light)
Their candles make men
Mad.

An area of darkness
In his mind
Sitting in the wood
Where no one goes
(Timeless silence
The sun has reached its
Zenith.)

Lazy fish sidle in the Stream
No doubt in time
He will improve
Summer’s ecstasy
Will cure him.
He will lie amongst
The towering grasses
Hidden in a nest
Happy.

Christopher Baily
Saturday 26 January 2002

african women writers dominate caine shortlist

Mary Watson

African women writers are surging ahead of their male counterparts, to judge by this year’s shortlist for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Four of the five shortlisted writers are female. The solitary man is South African Darrel Bristow-Bovey, whose shortlisted entry “A Joburg story” was published in “African Compass – New Writing from Southern Africa 2005”.

The Caine Prize, worth $15,000, is awarded annually for the best story by an African writer of between 3,000 and 15,000 words. The story must already have been published in English. The prize will be awarded at a dinner in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library on July 10.

The Caine Prize has a value far beyond its relatively modest monetary value. It offers the shortlisted authors the opportunity to come to London to take part in readings of their work and to meet literary agents, publishers and members of the media. The prize has boosted the careers of previous winners.

This year there were 110 qualifying entries from 21 African countries, the highest figure in the prize’s history. The chair of the panel of judges Dr Nana Wilson of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University, says: “The overall quality of submissions was high this year. We had an exciting blend of themes and styles, a marked focus on family relationships and a rich mapping of the varied physical and social landscapes of Africa.”

There is one North African writer on this year’s shortlist, Moroccan Laila Lalami who currently lives in Portland, Oregon. She is shortlisted for “The Fanatic”, part of her novel “Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits” published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Last year’s prize was won by Nigerian Segun Afolabi, whose first short story collection “A Life Elsewhere” was recently published by Jonathan Cape. This year’s shortlist includes Nigerian Sefi Atta for “The Last Trip” published in “Chimurenga 8”.

Mary Watson of South Africa is shortlisted for “Jungfrau” from her short story collection “Moss” published by Kwela Books. Kenyan Muthoni Garland is shortlisted for “Tracking the Scent of My Mother” which originally appeared in “Seventh Street Alchemy: A Selection of Writings from the Caine Prize for African Writing.”

The Caine Prize was set up in 2000 in memory of Sir Michael Caine, the former Chairman of Booker plc and chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for almost 25 years.

An indication of the growing profile of the Caine Prize is that this year for the first time the shortlisted writers will read from their work at an event organised by the South Bank Centre, hosted on July 11 by the Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow. This is in addition to the regular annual events at the Royal Over-Seas League on July 6, and at the Institute for English Studies, University of London on July 12.
















Sefi Atta

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, June 6 2006

dutch launch of hisham matar's novel

author photo: copyright Diana Matar


The Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, a long-time resident of London, has been in the Netherlands this past week for the launch of the Dutch edition of his debut novel “In the Country of Men.” In the Netherlands the novel is published by Meulenhoff, under the title “Niemandsland.” Matar was the guest at evenings in Amsterdam and The Hague.

This is the first publication anywhere of a work which has been described by The Bookseller as “the most highly prized literary debut of the autumn.” Readers in the Britain must wait until next month for the UK launch of the novel, which is bound to attract much interest.

There has been keen competition between publishers for the rights to the novel. Within a week of the novel’s submission to publishers in the UK a bidding war broke out which was won by Viking, an imprint of Penguin, which agreed a two-book deal with Matar. So far the novel has been sold in 14 countries. In the US it is due to be published in January by The Dial Press, a division of Random House.

I first heard of the novel and its author at an evening hosted in London in March by Banipal magazine as part of the Westwords Live literature festival. As soon as Matar started reading from the novel’s first pages it was clear that this was a remarkable work by a fresh new talent.

The novel’s first-person narrator is a young Libyan man living in exile in Cairo looking back at summer 1979, the last summer before he was sent away from Tripoli. That summer was a time of political upheavals with Suleiman’s father involved in an underground movement working for democracy. The regime takes ruthless action against the activists, and Suleiman sees the televised interrogation and hanging of his father’s best friend, a university art historian.

One strand of the novel is Suleiman’s complicated relationships with his parents. He tries to unravel the secrets surrounding his father. Why has he been told his father was away on business, when he has glimpsed him in Tripoli’s Martyr’s Square?

The boy is close to his disturbed mother, who in her husband’s absence drinks “medicine” she obtains secretly from the local baker. The “medicine” makes her “ill”, and when in this state she tells her son of her unhappiness with her marriage.

One reason for the keenness of publishers to publish the novel is because it is set in Libya, a controversial country which is frequently in the news but which is barely present in literature written in English. The novel is being compared to “The Kite Runner”, the runaway success by Afghan Khaled Hosseini. It looks set to fulfil the considerable expectations attached to it.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette June 6 2006

saudi artists at british museum

The work of the two Saudi artists participating in the “Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East” exhibition at the British Museum gives visitors some idea of the exciting creative work being produced by artists from Saudi Arabia.

Faisal Samra, born in Bahrain in 1956 to Saudi parents, is a world-renowned artist who has taken part in many international exhibitions.

Ahmed Mater al-Ziad is a relatively new artist, who was born in Tabuk in 1979 and combines his artistic pursuits with a career as a doctor. He studied medicine and surgery in Abha, and joined the Al-Miftaha Artists’ Village at the King Fahad Cultural Center in 1998. He founded Al-Miftaha cultural magazine in 2001 and has spearheaded various artistic initiatives.

Samra’s work in the exhibition, “Text-body”, is an 80-centimetre high sculptural shape of clay over wire mesh, on which oil, pigments, henna and gold leaf have been applied to produce letters on a weathered background.

The curator of the exhibition Venetia Porter says: “This wonderful piece by Faisal Samra is a very remarkable work. He’s covered it with individual letters and of course what’s interesting here is that this goes back to the magical tradition. In early magical texts and amulets you find individual letters written because they were much more powerful.”

In the exhibition catalogue Samra states: “In 1989 I burned the border between painting and sculpture by freeing the treated canvas from the frame and then I cut it to an organic shape and hang it from one side on the wall or in a space. This act enabled me to open a dialogue between the artwork and its context.”

In Ahmed Mater al-Ziad’s striking painting “X-ray”, the x-rayed human form is rendered in turquoise, while the dark border around it is marked with inscriptions and formulae.

In the catalogue Mater explains that the work “explores the confusion in the identity of mankind in the contemporary world. The x-ray, sitting on top of a deep, layered background of medical text and expressive paint, represents an objective view of the individual, chosen to provoke a familiar response.” He adds: “My approach as a practising doctor has been evidence-based and influenced by a direct experience of the world.”

Stephen Stapleton, founder of the Offscreen Education Programme and project coordinator for the British Museum’s artist-in-schools programme, says: “Ahmed Mater’s voice is unique and complex. His work in the exhibition features expressive layers of paint reminiscent of the abstract expressionists, as well as medical text and x-ray images from the hospital where he works as a doctor.”

Stapleton describes Mater as “an important new artist from the Arabian Peninsula, his work presenting both an objective and highly subjective view of the individual.”

An exhibition of Mater’s work opened at the Saudi Cultural Centre in London last week. During his trip to London he is also participating in collaborative workshops at the Royal Geographical Society and in schools.


Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, May 30 2006

word into art exhibition at british museum

left: 'Homage to Baghdad' by Dia al-Azzawi

The exhibition ‘Word Into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East’, which opened at the British Museum last week, provides a wonderful opportunity to view the work of around 80 of the region’s most accomplished contemporary artists.

The exhibition, which runs until September 2, has been organised in partnership with Dubai Holding. This is the first time the British Museum has put on show the impressive collection of modern art from the Middle East it has built up over a quarter of a century.

The museum’s director Neil MacGregor says: “We wanted to show that the Middle East is in London, and not just as a temporary phenomenon. Many of the artists in this exhibition are partly resident in London, which has become over the past 30 or 40 years one of the cultural capitals of the Middle East. That is something we should take notice of and celebrate and put on display.”

MacGregor points out that the exhibition is to be made available in a “virtual form” so that it can be seen and studied in the Middle East by those who may be prevented (by for example by the all-too-prevalent visa problems) from viewing it in London.

The exhibition’s curator Venetia Porter describes it as “a tribute to the artists and to the extraordinary creativity that there is in the Middle East that people just don’t know about here. We’re hoping that by showing this work we’re going to be able to introduce people to what is a very vibrant tradition of modern art happening all over the region.”

She adds: “We would like people to come away from this exhibition realising that there is much more to the Middle East than what you read in newspapers or see on television screens.”

The strikingly-designed exhibition is arranged in four sections. The first, ‘Sacred Script’, illustrates the relationship between the Arabic script and Islam and the enduring vitality of the Islamic calligraphic tradition. The works in the second section, ‘Literature and Art’, include Iraqi artist Hassan Massoudy’s “Calligraphy” illustrating the poetry of al-Aqil.

The third section, ‘Deconstructing the Word’, looks at the use of script in abstract art. One example is “Untitled” by Mahmoud Hammad, a pioneer of the Syrian artistic movement from the 1960s and the first Syrian artist to include Arabic letters in abstract composition (on right).

The final section, ‘Identity, History and Politics’, investigates the political, historic and social dimensions of the relationship between art and word. The bloody conflicts of the Middle East including Palestine, the Iran-Iraq war, Lebanon and the present war in Iraq are forcefully present in some of the works.

In her brightly coloured two-part work “Children of war, children of peace”, Palestinian artist Laila Shawa uses repeated images of a young boy from a refugee camp in Gaza to highlight the plight of Palestinian children. The Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi pays tribute in his lithograph “Homage to Baghdad” to his native city, placing Arabic letters over abstract shapes that echo ancient Iraqi sculptures. Egyptian artist Chant Avedissian’s work “Umm Kulthum’s Greatest Hits” presents various images of the diva with the titles of some of her most famous songs.

The exhibition, to which entry is free, is accompanied by a rich programme of events in a ‘Middle East Now’ season. The season includes conferences, workshops, films, literature, food, history and the performing arts.

Susannah Tarbush, Saudi Gazette 23 May 2006

'Children of war, children of peace' by Leila Shawa

book on jordanian food

In contrast to the cuisines of some other Middle Eastern countries - notably Lebanon, Morocco, Iran and Turkey - the food of Jordan remains little known internationally. According to Cecil Hourani, author of the fascinating book “Jordan: The Land and the Table” published recently in London by Elliott & Thompson, even Jordanians themselves are not always fully aware of their country’s distinctive cuisine. There is no ‘Jordanian Restaurant’ in Amman, and no ‘Jordanian Cookbook’.

Hourani’s book shows just what a varied cuisine is to be found in Jordan. Drawing on his travels, research and personal culinary encounters he explains the organic relationship between food and Jordan’s people, geography, history and seasons.

He aims to demonstrate that “there is indeed a Jordanian cuisine which mirrors a society composed of several ethnic and cultural communities which form a distinct national entity.”

There are two main components of the Jordanian kitchen. The first is the traditional Jordanian Arab cuisine based on the relationship between ‘the desert and the sown’. The second was introduced by migrants from the Caucasus and Anatolia from the second half of the 19th century onwards.

Hourani writes that his book is “not a cook book which instructs the reader how to cook, but rather a book about food, with some recipes to illustrate the text”. The recipe section is actually quite substantial, made up of intriguing recipes collected from friends and family, and from people encountered on his travels around Jordan.

The book highlights the ingredients and flavours that give Jordanian food its character. One key ingredient is jameed, dried buttermilk. Another is freeki, the ears of wheat or barley picked while green and smoked on wood. There are also more exotic items, such as the desert truffle.

Hourani looks in detail at characteristic sweet and sour ingredients, and at various combinations of spice and herb flavours. No fewer than 45 wild plants are used as food. The terms in the glossary include zerb, a lamb or kid roasted in a pit or sunken barrel. He gives an evocative account of a zerb feast in an orchard near Madaba.

The recipe section begins with national dishes, including the Jordanian Mansaf. From Palestine there is a national chicken dish Masakhen. The Circassian national dish Shipswabasta combines burghul, garlic, walnuts and hot paprika. The national dish of the Chechens is Galnish, and from the Armenians there is Manti, or Shishbarak, known in various versions from China to Turkey, which comprises dumplings filled with minced lamb and boiled in a broth.

“Jordan: The Land & the Table” appears at a time when in the West there is a turning away from mass-produced food towards healthier, more authentic products. Perhaps Hourani’s book will inspire the setting up of one or more restaurants specialising in Jordanian food.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 16 May 2006

bradford riots film

The success of the far-right British National Party (BNP) in the recent local elections in England, in which it more than doubled its council seats, was an ominous sign of a rise in public anti-Muslim sentiment. The BNP has made a campaign against Muslims part of its platform.

The new TV film-length drama “Bradford Riots” reminds us of the potential for violence when such far-right groups target cities with large Muslim populations. The drama has been released on DVD, and has been screened on Channel 4 and repeated twice on its sister channel More4.

The film is based on the 12-hour riots by Asians in the northern English city of Bradford in July 2001, which were the worst rioting on mainland Britain for two decades. The trigger to the riots was a planned march by the National Front (NF). Although Bradford council banned the march, many NF supporters turned up.

In the aftermath of the riots, courts handed down severe sentences, with 191 people receiving prison terms totalling 510 years. The film’s writer and director Neil Biswas has no doubt that the harshness of the sentences resulted from a hardening of attitudes towards Muslims after the September 11 attacks in the USA.

The film centres around university student Karim (played by Sacha Dhawan) who is back home in Bradford for the summer vacation. Through his eyes we see the problems of deprivation and unemployment faced by his peers who remain in the city. One friend, Aki (Syed Ahmed), has become a drug dealer.

Karim’s older brother Faisal (Ace Bhatti) runs the family textile business and is resentful of their father Azad (Victor Banerjee) paying large amounts for Karim’s university education, while Faisal has a wife and young son to support.

The film shows the gap between the generations, with the older generation opposed to the rioters. Karim gets caught up in events and joins in throwing stones at the police, partly because he is incensed that they declined to intervene when a friend of his was badly beaten up by NF supporters. When Faisal comes out to find Karim he too is enveloped in the riot and hits a policeman in self-defence.

Although Karim at first denies to his father that he was present at the riots, his face is among those published by the police who want rioters identified. Azad insists that his son give himself up to the police.

Karim’s lawyer advises him to plead guilty, confident that with his clean record and exemplary references from his university he will be treated leniently. But the judge sentences him to five years. Karim is placed in a cell with a racist white cellmate who taunts him about his Muslim faith. His final collapse comes when he learns that Faisal has been seized by the police in a nighttime raid on his home.

Sacha Dhawan says he was keen to give Karim a strong identity and individuality because “at the end of the day, I feel that what the young Muslim community lack is identity, in that people just categorise them by their religion.” In court, “you want the judge to look at him, to look at his case personally, and realise this is a kid who shouldn’t go to prison.”

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 16 May 2006

HOPING auction for Palestinian kids

(L) Tilda Swinton




At first sight there might seem to be little connection between supermodel Kate Moss and the Palestinian cause. But a kiss from Kate Moss is just one of the ‘promises’ up for auction at a benefit dinner in support of Palestinian refugee children, to be held at Annabel’s club in central London on Monday May 15. Tickets for the dinner and auction are £200 each.

The event is organised by the HOPING Foundation (HOPING is the acronym of ‘Hope and Optimism for Palestinians in the Next Generation’). By far the majority of the funds the foundation raises go directly to community projects for children in refugee camps. The foundation’s most recent grant paid for a specially-equipped bus to transport of disabled children located in refugee camps and villages in the Nablus area.

HOPING’s trustees are fashion designer Bella Freud, Palestinian academic and activist Karma Nabulsi, and writer and film maker Harriet Vyner. Another key figure in HOPING is Jemima Khan, the ex-wife of the Pakistani politician and former cricketer Imran Khan. Jemima is a member of HOPING’s committee, along with 12 other prominent women.

Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s auction house will present the benefit auction, and the ‘promises’ will presented by actor Rupert Everett. The ‘promises’ include the reading of a story to a child by actress Tilda Swinton, a star of the film “Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Another ‘promise’ is a cricket lesson with Imran Khan. Also being auctioned is the ‘promise’ of a game of golf with Jemima Khan’s boyfriend, film star Hugh Grant, with Jemima acting as caddy.

The other ‘promises’ are a walk around the Tate Modern gallery with artist brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman plus Paul Simonon of punk group The Clash; a pair of boots or shoes designed by artist Sam Taylor-Wood and shoe designer Christian Louboutin; tea and a tour of Lambeth Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Wiliams; a portrait by top fashion photographer Terry Richardson, and dinner for eight cooked by chef Giorgio Locatelli, or a day in his restaurant kitchen.

The HOPING Foundation has already shown its ability to organise high-profile events in which celebrities show their committed support for Palestinian children. In October 2004 the foundation held a sell-out benefit concert for 5000 at the Brixton Academy featuring Primal Scream, Spiritualised, Nick Cave and Steve Mason (of the Beta Band). The concert was released on DVD.

Before the concert, Primal Scream lead singer Bobby Gillespie wrote in the Guardian newspaper: “The Palestinians are a prisoner nation, refugees and exiles treated like ghosts. Now we want them to feel our solidarity.” He said the members of his band were “upset and appalled with what is going on there.” Doubtless this is a sentiment echoed by those who will be guests and participants at the forthcoming benefit auction.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 9 May 2006

al-hayat article on reem kelani

The debut CD of Palestinian singer Reem Kelani - "Sprinting Gazelle: Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora" - is a major new contribution from this remarkable singer, musical researcher and broadcaster towards reviving and spreading Palestinian culture through music.

In the weeks since "Sprinting Gazelle" was released in the UK it has been acclaimed by critics and journalists and has received excellent reviews in nearly every serious British newspaper, as well as in music magazines and other publications. Many critics have praised highly the quality, range and emotional depth of Kelani's voice.

Kelani told Al-Hayat in an interview that she is "overwhelmed" by the avalanche of positive media coverage the CD has enjoyed.

The London magazine Time Out not only gave the CD a very favourable review, but also put it at the top of its list of the top six new albums. The CD has been featured on radio stations in countries including Britain, Germany, Australia and the US.

The widespread praise of the CD from critics is all the more remarkable given the fact that Kelani made it independently, with the small Fuse label as a "cover label". She lacks the strong production, marketing and promotion muscle of a major recording company. But through remaining independent she has been free of pressures to make musical and cultural compromises.

The preparation and recording of the CD took Kelani and her husband Chris Somes-Charlton two years of intensive work. They put most of their savings into the project and received further financing from family, friends and supporters. They have not even organised a concert to launch the CD "because we could not afford the logistics, the time or the money." Now they are busy marketing the CD through Kelani's website and in record stores through the distribution company Proper Music.

The CD's ten songs take the listener on a 74-minute odyssey through the Palestinian experience, from the nineteenth century until today. The CD comes with a highly informative and attractive 32-page booklet which contains the Arabic words to the songs, and translations into English poetry.

Some of the songs are Reem's arrangements of traditional songs. Others are Kelani's compositions for poems by such important Palestinian poets as Mahmoud Darwish, Rashid Husain, Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Mahmoud Salim al-Hout.

A number of the songs are sombre in mood, including Kelani's music for the Mahmoud Darwish poem "Mawwal: Variations on Loss". Kelani wrote the music for this song in 1992 for a BBC TV documentary on the tenth anniversary of the massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.
She dedicates "Yearning" by Rashid Husain to the late French singer Barbara "whose music taught me to turn anger into inner peace."

Other songs are more upbeat, such as the spirited traditional song "Habl el-Ghiwa", which is performed with a very jazzy, danceable feel.

The CD has spiritual depth and rewards repeated listening. Asked about the narrative thread running through the CD, Kelani says that after choosing the songs "I realised that they are all either by poets that are pre-48 Palestine or areas that are pre-48 Palestine." She describes the narrative as "totally non-compromising," as shown by a song like "Qasidah of Return", with words by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, which has a mood of "total defiance".

The final song "Il-Hamdillah" is a medley of two songs, "Il-Hamdillah and "Intu Banatu, Ihna Banana". These two songs show the "somoud" of the Palestinians and celebrate their collective identity, "something that the last 58 years couldn't impoverish, quite the contrary, they enriched it."

Kelani says that from women in refugee camps she got the message "that I now use in my life as a Diaspora Palestinian - personally, collectively and artistically - that we are not victims. You are not a victim even when you are in pain, even if someone has done you wrong. You get on with life, you acknowledge your pain and you're strong and you celebrate and you sing and dance. She adds: "This is resistance in its purest form."

Reem's core group of musicians consists of the award-winning jazz pianist Zoe Rahman; Zoe's brother Idris Rahman on tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet; Oli Hayhurst on double bass; Patrick Illingworth on drums; the Egyptian violinist Samy Bishai, and the Iranian percussionist Fariborz Kiani.

The first song "As Nazarene Women Crossed the Meadow" is a dramatic start to the CD, featuring Kelani singing to no accompaniment but that of a vocal drone. According to local Nazarene folklore, women sang this song when they said goodbye to their men who were leaving to serve in the Ottoman Army. The arrangement of the song " "was principally inspired by a visit I paid to St Gabriel Geek Orthodox Church in Nazareth during one of my childhood summers there. I was mesmerised by the Eastern Christian chanting that I heard which had such striking similarities with Muslim religious chanting. My rendition pays tribute to the historically ecumenical tradition of Nazareth and is an attempt to keep this tradition going in increasingly difficult times."
The song is followed by another furaaqiyaat (song of parting), "The Cameleer Tormented my Heart."

Kelani sees no contradiction in being a jazz singer who is a Palestinian. "Both disciplines are based on improvisation, both disciplines come from suffering and from emancipation."

The CD works on two levels. Kelani's voice with its extraordinary range and timbre makes a direct emotional impact. Even for those listeners who do not understand the Arabic of the words there is no mistaking the emotions that are being expressed - range, tenderness, joy, sorrow, defiance. But beyond this, the accompanying booklet helps non-Arab listeners to get further inside the experience of the songs through reading the lyrics in English and through Reem's detailed information on each song. The booklet also contains a glossary of Arabic musical and cultural terms.

Kelani carried out the translations of the songs into English with her husband, and with Salma Khadra Jayyusi as the literary consultant. The poetry consultant to the project, well-known British poet Alan Brownjohn, made suggestions.

The cover illustration of the CD and of the booklet portrays a gazelle on a background of canvas which represents the Palestinian costume for embroidery, and at the same time the earth and sense of belonging.
The delicate plant with yellow flowers that adorns the cover and inside pages of the booklet is feijan - a herb found in the area of Nazareth from where Kelani's mother's family comes.

The value of the booklet providing the translated lyrics and the background to the songs was illustrated recently when a BBC Radio 3 programme featured "Sprinting Gazelle" and played several songs from it.
Thepresenter explained that the words of the song "Yafa!" were written by the Palestinian poet, mythologist and translator Mahmoud Salim al-Hout (1917-88) after he lost all his manuscripts while fleeing Jaffa.
In this evocative song of loss and pain Kelani is accompanied only by pianist Zoe Rahman playing ominous deep rumbles overlain with agitation. The effect is that of a soulful meditation.

Kelani was born in Manchester, northern England, to doctor Yusuf Kelani, from the village of Ya'bad near Jenin, and Yusra Sharif Ali Zu'bi from Nazareth. Reem dedicates the CD to her mother, who died in Amman in 2004, and "to all the 'Big Mamas' who taught me to sing and to belong." In her concerts Kelani often pays tribute to the "Big Mamas", most particularly the old ladies in Palestinian refugee camps from whom she has collected songs.

Kelani grew up in Kuwait where she was surrounded by many different kinds of music. The songs her father sang kindled the devotion to jazz that has been with Kelani ever since. At the age of 13 she fell in love with Palestinian music when she went to a family wedding in the village of Nein near Galilee and saw women singing and dancing.

A marine biologist by university education, she first came to London in 1989 on a British Council scholarship to do an MSc in aquatic resource management at King's College. But before long she decided to pursue her ambition of a musical career.

Kelani has attracted a large and growing following of fans who appreciate her unique blend of Palestinian music and jazz, her superb voice, her charismatic and warm stage presence and her ability to strike up a rapport with widely differing audiences. She has performed at concerts in the UK, US, Canada, Middle East and Europe, often at events to raise funds for Palestinian charities.

Her broadcasting work has included presenting two series of BBC Radio Four's 'Distant Chords' in which she interviewed musicians in exile in Britain from countries including Yemen, Afghanistan, Armenia and Portugal. Kelani has also been involved in educational work, starting with music workshops at the British Museum. Last autumn she was the music consultant for the play "Iman: Walled In, Walled Out" performed by children at the Miskin Theatre in Dartford.

Kelani has found it difficult to find suitable musicians in London, and it took a long time to assemble her band. None of the musicians on her CD is Palestinian. She says: "Playing with people of different nationalities was very challenging because they didn't know anything about the music."

Another challenge was finding a recording label. The political folk singer and song writer Leon Rosselson offered his own Fuse Records label as the "cover label" of the CD.

Kelani says that many musicians based in the Middle East assume that musicians based in the UK or America are lucky. "They don't realise that the 'world music' circles here actively ignore the local talent around them." A foreign musician like her based in the UK tends to be neglected in favour of more "exotic" musicians brought from abroad. "Even if I were based in Paris I would have been more exotic." She considers that "in a way, being in the UK has hindered the launching of my career."

It was radio stations in other countries - America, Australia and Germany -that started playing the CD long before the BBC did, despite the fact that Reem regularly works for the BBC.

The release of the CD comes at a particularly difficult time for the Palestinian people, a time when culture has a more important role to play than ever in helping to convey the Palestinian identity and experience. As Kelani says: "unless people listen to, and acknowledge, the Palestinian narrative in its own right, no peace treaty, peace accord or peace settlement will work. The Palestinian narrative has always been robbed of its independence and authenticity."


Susannah Tarbush
Original of article published in Arabic translation in Al-Hayat newspaper, May 2 2006

palestinian art show in london

Tayseer Barakat: Untitled

The exhibition “Occupied Space: Art for Palestine” promises to be one of the most exciting art shows to be held in London this spring. It is heartening to see the array of leading British artists who have aligned themselves with their Palestinian counterparts for the show, to be held at Gallery 27 in Cork Street from May 15 to 20.

In all, 54 artists are participating in the exhibition, which is organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) with support from the A M Qattan Foundation. Some are London-based Palestinian artists who have already made a big impact on the international art scene, such as Gaza-born Laila Shawa and Beirut-born Mona Hatoum. A number of other Arab artists based in London are also taking part, such as the Egyptian Ahmed Mustapha, and Iraqi Maysaloun Faraj.

The exhibition website says the show aims “to show that despite difficulties experienced over many years, Palestinian artists of all generations are producing significant, exciting work in all media.”

The show is an encouragement for artists working within Palestine, including such well-known figures as Vera Tamari, Suleiman Mansour and Tayseer Barakat. Also represented are up-and-coming young artists who are “producing work of astonishing quality under the challenging conditions in the Occupied Territories.”

Some of the biggest names in British painting are featured in the show, among them Maggi Hambling, Dinos Chapman and David Gentleman. A work by John Keane, who was a war artist in the 1991 Gulf war, entitled “Security/Impunity/Geometry & Terror” and reproduced on the exhibition invitation card portrays the Israeli “security wall”.

The participation of so many British artists in the exhibition is proof that, despite the increasingly beleaguered existence of the Palestinians, there is much sympathy for the Palestinian cause in British cultural circles.

All works in the exhibition are for sale, and those artists from outside the Occupied Territories have donated their work. Proceeds from the sale will go to the artists from Palestine taking part in the exhibition, and towards PSC projects in the UK. And Leila Shawa has made available for sale a limited edition of 100 prints (at £75 each) of her painting “Jerusalem” which was displayed as a poster at Piccadilly Circus underground station in 2002 as part of London Underground’s Platform for Art Programme.

Susannah Tarbush Saudi Gazette May 2 2006

John Keane: Security/Impunity/Geometry & Terror (2)