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)

laila lalami's novel

The Moroccan writer Laila Lalami wears more than one hat. She is known to internet users worldwide for her stylishly-presented and incisive literary blog “Moorish Girl”. And she is also a novelist writing in English, with her first novel “Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits” published in the US by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Born in Rabat, and educated in Britain and the US, Lalami lives in Portland, Oregon. She brings to her novel the same qualities of clarity, liveliness and insight that characterise “Moorish Girl.”

In the novel’s introduction, seen through the eyes of graduate Murad, we are introduced to a group of characters crossing illegally to Spain at night in a flimsy boat. “Fourteen kilometres. Murad has pondered that number hundreds of times in the last year trying to decide whether the risk was worth it.”

The characters include a young women Faten who wears a hijab, Aziz who is on a second attempt to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, and abused wife Halima running away with her children. As the boat nears the Spanish coast, the migrants are ordered to swim to land, although not all can swim.

The next section of the book, “Before”, explores the reasons for the characters’ decision to take this risky voyage. The final section “After” looks at what becomes of the characters..

Lalami does not take the obvious path in approaching her characters. We first see Faten from the point of view of a father working at the Ministry of Education worried about the influence of this religious girl on his daughter. He uses his position in the educational bureaucracy to exact a revenge that will blight Faten’s future.

Lalami writes an uncluttered prose with grace and fluency. Her novel is relatively brief at 195 pages, but every word counts. Her deft and subtle characterisation has much humanity, and also irony and playfulness as in her depiction of Murad and his efforts to be a guide in Tangier, an over-crowded field. His opening line to tourists is: “Interested in Paul Bowles?”

Are those who do manage to make it to Spain really better off than those who are turned back and returned to Morocco? The migrants’ dreams are inevitably tempered by reality. Aziz and his wife pay a high price for their years of separation, and on his first visit home his memories of the women he consoled himself with while away somehow sully his relations with his wife.

Faten attains an independence in Spain, but only through selling her body. The Orientalist attitudes of some European men are alluded to in her odd relationship with young Spanish client Martin. As for Murad, he may find his way not by leaving Morocco, but through following his gift for storytelling.

Lalami’s novel is a major contribution to the literature on migration and on the ambiguous relationship between the two sides of the Mediterranean, and thus between two cultures. These contemporary themes will become all the more pressing in the future.

Susannah Tarbush, Saudi Gazette April 25 2006

booklet on bethlehem

Widad Kamel Kawar is famed for the extensive collection of Palestinian and Jordanian traditional costumes, weavings, jewellery, amulets and everyday tools she has built up over 45 years. As well as being a means of salvaging and preserving Palestinian culture, the collection is a vital resource for researchers and museums.

Now Mrs Kawar, who lives in Amman, has written a booklet entitled "Bethlehem: From Golden Threads to Cement Blocks." The Golden Threads are the threads used in the exceptionally rich embroidery of Palestinian dresses in Bethlehem, which were traditionally imported from Syria. The Cement Blocks are the hideous grey ramparts of the apartheid wall that is making daily life in Bethlehem so difficult. Mayor Dr Victor Batarseh describes the town as an "open air prison".

Mrs Kawar writes that her booklet contrasts Bethlehem's glorious art form of textiles and embroidery "which reflects an innovative and refined society, with the current Israeli actions and policies to isolate, impoverish and dispossess its people."

The wall isolates Bethlehem from Jerusalem, less than six kilometres away. Economic life is declining, and Bethlehem has deteriorated from a flourishing centre for pilgrimages and tourism into an isolated enclave.

The attractively-designed booklet juxtaposes black and white historical photographs of Bethlehem and its people with examples of colourful embroidery and costumes. It also highlights the architecture of the town including the castles (qasoor), built by prominent families, some of which now lie outside the apartheid wall.

The pinnacle of the costume industry is the malak (royal) dress, so called because of its richness. In addition to the brightly striped and embroidered dress, the malak ensemble includes a short-sleeved embroidered jacket known as the takseereh, a high fez-like shtaweh headdress adorned with the gold coins of the dowry, and a silk shawl. The headdress is fastened under the neck with the silver Chain of Seven Souls. The costumes reflected the wealth of the town.

The booklet, designed by Salua Qidan of the Jordanian design and digital solutions company SYNTAX, is a most valuable and informative publication, and it is to be hoped it will be widely distributed. In depicting the fate of Bethlehem and its culture, it powerfully portrays the conditions that the Palestinians have had to endure more widely.

The Kawar collection is at www.arabheritage.org

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette April 18 2006

sotheby's sells archive of makkah and medina photos

An archive of photographs of Makkah and Medina dating from the early 20^th century has been on display at Sotheby’s auction house in London in preparation for the Natural History, Travel, Atlases and Maps sale on May 9. The sale of the archive is expected to realise £40,000 to £60,000.

The photographs were taken by Muhammad ‘Ali Effendi Sa’oudi (1865-1955) who accompanied General Ibrahim Rif’at Pasha on two pilgrimages from Egypt to Makkah and Medina in 1904 and 1908. The general was responsible for protecting the mahmal procession which carried to Makkah the elaborate embroidered draperies known as the kiswa for the covering of the Ka’ba.

Sa’oudi worked for the Ministry of Justice in Cairo where he specialised in identifying forged documents. His Dresden Stereo Palmos camera, on of the most advances cameras of its day, is included in the sale along with a wooden stereoscope for viewing its slides. The stereoscopic slides appear as 3D images when viewed through the stereoscope.

There are 114 original photographs, 88 stereoscopic glass slides and a modern album containing a complete set of prints of the slides. There are also 80 stereoscopic photographs mounted on card.

There are images of Al Haram Mosque in Makkah, including internal shots with the Ka’ba and Zam Zam, and of the Prophet’s Mosqueon Medina. Other images show archaeological sites and intimate photographs of groups and individuals.

Although Sa’oudi’s photographs are of great interest, they are not the earliest photographs of the two holy cities. Muhammad Sadiq Bey, an Egyptian colonel and engineer photographed Medina in 1861 and Makkah in 1880. Sotheby’s sold his original photographs of Makkah in 1998 for a world record of £1.25 million.

General Rif’at Pasha wrote a lavishly-illustrated book, “Mir’at Al Haramayn Aw Al Rihlat Al Hijaziyya”, published in Cairo in 1925, on his four journeys to Makkah and Medina between 1901 and 1908. Many of the 557 photographs in the book were taken by Sa’oudi. The sale includes Sa’oudi’s copy of the first edition of the book.

Sa’oudi’s contribution to the book, as well as his literary skill and literary output, have not previously been fully recognised. Sotheby’s says that through the archive he “emerges from the shadows as a man who brought the natural and architectural splendour of the future Saudi Arabia to a wider audience just as the Kingdom was reaching pre-eminence.”

The sale includes two manuscripts written in Arabic in Sa’oudi’s hand. “A Synopsis of the Pilgrimage” was written after his first pilgrimage, and “The Construction of the Ka’ba” was written after 1905.

There is also Sa’oudi’s “Voyages au Hedjaz et en Arabie” (1919) with printed text in Arabic and French and manuscript annotations by the author, together with a modern English translation. And there is an unpublished translation into Arabic of the chapters on Makkah and Medina from J L Burckhardt’s “Travels in Arabia” published in 1829.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette April 18 2006