the muslim card in britain

British politicians and the 'Muslim card”'

It is a tradition of British politics that to accuse a politician of “playing the race card is to make one of the most unpleasant allegations possible against a political figure. Such an allegation implies that the politician is stirring up fears about race and immigration for political ends. For example in the May 2005 general election campaign of May 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the Conservative Party leader Michael Howard of playing the race card when Howard announced a new hardline policy on immigration.

But since the four suicide bombings in London on July 7 2005, in which the young British Muslim bombers killed themselves and 52 other people, the discourse of leading government and opposition politicians have become less inhibited about speaking out on matters relating to race and immigration. Thus the Home Secretary John Reid told the Labour Party conference in late September that mass migration is causing a feeling of “anxiety” and “unfairness” among the British, and that he favours “tighter immigration controls, and identity cards.”

While issues around race, immigration, asylum and community relations are being discussed with increasing frankness by politicians on all sides, the “race card” is increasingly being replaced by the more specific “Muslim card”. It is clear that the “Muslim card” will be a significant factor in the forthcoming contest to succeed Blair as leader of the Labour Party, and in the next general election.

The government’s relations with the Muslim community of between 1.6 and 2 million people have become strained since the 9/11 2001 terror attacks in the US. The tensions have been increased by Britain’s close alliance with the US in the “war on terror”, its military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and more recently Blair’s policy on Lebanon.

The effort to try to detect and combat extremism among some parts of the British Muslim community has become a priority for the government since the terror attacks of 9/11 and July 7 2005.

Since the London suicide bombings, the police claim to have uncovered several other suicide plots. On August 10 Home Secretary John Reid announced that a plot had been disrupted in which suicide bombers were to have blown up several aircraft flying from the UK to the US.

Anxiety about extremism has led the government to abandon the concept of “multiculturalism” on which race relations policies were based for the past 30 years. The emphasis is now on increasing the integration of communities, so that they do not live separated, parallel lives. Such racial segregation was blamed for the serious riots in summer 2001 in Bradford and other northern English cities with large Muslim populations. The government has created a new Commission on Integration and Cohesion, which was launched by Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly in late August.

On October 11 Kelly announced that only Muslim groups which prove they are trying to outlaw extremism and to “defend values that the vast majority of us share” will in future receive financial aid and engagement from the government. She strongly criticised those Muslims organisations (meaning primarily the Muslim Council of Britain, although she did not name it) for their refusal to attend the annual Holocaust Memorial Day. The Muslim Council of Britain angrily responded by saying it has had dialogue with the government about this in the past, and has called for it to be named as a genocide memorial day rather than one naming only the Holocaust.

The government has urged the Muslim community to do more to tackle extremism. It was annoyed when in August Muslim politicians and leaders wrote an open letter to Blair warning that British policy is putting civilians at increased risk in the UK and abroad. The letter called for “urgent” changes in UK foreign policy.
Home Secretary John Reid furiously denounced the letter as a “terrible misjudgement” and said no competent government would remain in power if its policies were “dictated by terrorists.”

Since late September several members of the cabinet and other government officials, as well as the Conservative Party leader David Cameron, have made challenging statements about the Muslim community.

The most controversial remarks came from the leader of the House of Commons, and former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw who said he would like Muslim women in Britain to stop wearing the “full veil” or niqab.

Straw’s remarks triggered an intense debate in Britain and abroad. He claimed he had spoken out for the sake of community relations, because the “full veil” hinders proper communication between people. But some commentators believed his remarks were really aimed at increasing his chances of becoming deputy leader of the Labour Party.

Tony Blair said it was “perfectly sensible” of Straw to raise the issue. Blair said: “How do we make sure people integrate more, how do we make sure people aren’t wanting to separate themselves out from the mainstream of society?”

The Higher Education minister Bill Rammell in an interview with the Evening Standard published on October 11, backed universities that ban Muslim students and staff from wearing the niqab. Imperial College, part of London University, recently banned the face veil, and Rammell said “I think this is arguably the best decision.”

The Home Secretary John Reid is increasingly being thought of as a possible rival of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown for the Labour Party leadership after Blair departs.

Reid’s tough stance on terrorism and security has enhanced his public image. In his speech to the Labour Party conference, Reid accused the Conservative Party of being “too soft on terror”.

He said there can be no compromise or appeasement with terrorism. “If we are going to ask the decent, silent majority of Muslim men – and women – to have the courage to face down the extremist bullies, then we need to have the courage and character to stand shoulder to shoulder with them in doing it.”

Reid added: “When the terrorists or their loud-mouthed sympathisers tell me that we won’t be allowed to raise our arguments in this or that part of the community, my answer is simple. Yes we will. This is Britain.”

The Home Secretary warned: “There are, and there will be, no ‘no-go’ areas in our country for any of our people, whatever our background, colour or creed. We will go where we please, we will discuss what we like and we will never be browbeaten by bullies. That’s what it means to be British.”

Reid’s reference to there being “no no-go” areas referred to an incident that happened during his first speech to Muslims, on September 20, in the Leytonstone area of East London.

During Reid’s speech a well-known extremist Jamaican convert to Islam, Abu Izzadeen, interrupted him loudly shouting “how dare you come to a Muslim area when over 1000 Muslims have been arrested? You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims, you are a tyrant.” Izzadeen was removed from the meeting by police.

In his speech to Muslims, Reid demanded that Muslim parents keep an eye on their children for signs of radicalisation by extremists. Reid warned: “These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings.” But some Muslim leaders accused Reid of asking Muslim parents to “spy” on their children.

In his speech to the Conservative Party conference, the party leader David Cameron also brought up Muslim issues. Newspaper reports were headlined: “Cameron says ‘Ban Muslim Ghettos in British Cities’.”

Cameron called for more contact between communities, and a sharing of common values. He particularly focused on faith schools, and said the new generation of Muslim schools must be “part of our society and not separate from it.” He called on Muslim schools to follow Church of England schools and admit a quarter of their pupils from other faiths.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who until recently seemed certain to follow Blair as leader of the Labour Party, has been emphasising the need for increased “Britishness” and shared values. In a speech to Chatham House on October 10 he said “The debate Jack Straw has encouraged about the veil will continue.”

Brown said anti-terror policies will be a priority in his review of government spending. He announced plans for pre-emptive action to seize the assets of suspected terrorists, on the basis of covert rather than open intelligence material. He will also target “dubious charities”.

The security of a nation and its people has to be the priority of a government. But some of the recent statements by politicians risk raising the temperature and creating an anti-Muslim backlash. There are already signs of this. There has been near-hysteria in the tabloid press, with the publication of sensational stories about Muslims. Some Muslim women have been attacked in public and had their niqabs or hijabs removed since Straw spoke out against the niqab.

Politicians must be very careful how they play the “Muslim card”. A significant rise in anti-Muslim feeling directed not only at the dangerous extremist fringe but at the community as a whole could increase that very extremism that the politicians say they wish to combat.

Susannah Tarbush
Al-Hayat, October 14 2006

'hasta siempre' film on cuba

Cuban music promoter Rodolfo Rensoli

The incapacitation through illness of 80-year-old Cuban president Fidel Castro over the past two months has put Cuba in the media spotlight, with developments in Cuba having major regional and international implications. And yet, in Britain at least, there is little in-depth coverage of the country. A double-bill of documentaries on Cuba at Riverside Studios in West London last week was therefore much to be welcomed.

The first film to be shown was the absorbing “Balseros”, directed by Carlos Bosch and Josep M Domenech, which follows a number of Cubans and their relatives in 1994 before they attempt hazardous sea crossings to the US. The film catches up with them seven years later to find out what became of them.

The second film on the bill was “Hasta Siempre” directed and filmed by Ishmahil Blagrove Jr. The subtitle of the film - “Will the Revolution Survive Tomorrow?” - is increased relevance now. After the film Blagrove fielded questions from the audience together with Sean Mendez, who produced the film with his brother Yannis Mendez.

“Hasta Siempre” was made by London-based riceNpeas Films. This independent film production company aims to make films that accurately represent the live and stories of the people it records, without bias or prejudice.

Blagrove noted that when the film was shown in June at Canning House in London the Cuban press attaché said it was the most balanced documentary made about Cuba. “Some right wing friends that we have also said it was balanced.”

Historian Tomas Fernandez says that the freedom to talk openly about problems has increased, in a way that would have been inconceivable 15 years ago. One problem is racism. Blagrove is black, and he experienced racism first hand when he was stopped and questioned by Cuban police in a way his white colleagues were not.

The 57-minute film, which is full of the color, spirit and music of Cuba, takes us right into the life of the country through its interviewees. They include a psychologist, a Marxist intellectual, a poet, a music promoter, housewives, taxi drivers, rappers, hip-hop artists and a young man desperate to leave Cuba.

After the collapse of Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Cuba opened up to tourism as a means of economic survival. Tourism has brought changes including consumerism, and has exacerbated problems such as racism, prostitution and disparities between those who do and do not have access to tourist dollars.

The interviewees generally express appreciation for the free education and health care brought by the 1959 revolution. Film director Belkis Vega says that her middle class family was hit economically, but in terms of thought, development and human values, “those of us who stayed here benefited from the revolution.”

An elderly former revolutionary is the most critical voice in the film. He describes Cuba as a “socialist dictatorship or, rather, communist,” and bemoans the lack of opposition parties and free elections.

The film shows the attachment of many Cubans to the non-materialistic aspects of Cuban life. Vega says: “If the revolution doesn’t survive Castro, it would be very sad. To have sacrificed so many years for ideals that didn’t survive the human being who initiated them. But he’s not the only fighter. Many Cubans are still willing to defend those ideals.” The poet Jesus con Causse asserts: “If there’s an American invasion of Cuba even the ants will defend the Revolution.”

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, October 6 2006

'lebanon, lebanon' at new players theatre

Mecca2Medina

The launch of the anthology “Lebanon, Lebanon” at the New Players Theatre in central London last Thursday evening was an opportunity for performers and members of the audience alike to express solidarity with Lebanon following the dreadful war there. The event was organized by Saqi Books, publisher of “Lebanon, Lebanon”, in conjunction with Pen, Index on Censorship and Open Democracy.

The evening saw poetry, prose, music and dance performed by Lebanese, British and other artists. A large screen behind the performers showed an ever-changing succession of images from Lebanon.

Some of the readers, including novelists Doris Lessing, Maggie Gee and Hanan Al-Shaykh, South African writer Beverley Naidoo, poets George Szirtes, Moris Farhi and Hugo Williams, read from their contributions to the anthology.

Novelist Margaret Drabble read from the novel “Dear Mr Kawabata” by her friend the Lebanese novelist Rachid El-Daif. The engaging curly-mopped Lebanese actor Karim Saleh read excerpts from Zena El-Khalil’s perceptive Beirut blog. Saqi founder Mai Ghoussoub, together with Ana Belen Serrano, Tania Khoury and Itzel Mayoral, performed “Texterminators” written and directed by Ghoussoub.

The event was presented by the British musician and record producer Brian Eno, who recalled how his interest in Arab culture in the 1970s had come first from music.
He had particularly loved the song “Ya Tair” (“Oh Bird”) by Lebanese singer Fayrouz.

“It was a huge shock when a few weeks ago I started seeing part of that world of which I am particularly fond, Lebanon, being destroyed. And I started to think why on earth aren’t we stopping this, why aren’t we doing something about this, don’t we realize what a jewel this place is?”

Eno was moved to write a letter to the Lebanese people, which was translated into Arabic and published in two newspapers in Lebanon. In the letter he said he thought millions of people in Britain shared his sense of shame “that my government looked the other way while your country was smashed up”.

The evening included several musical performances. The dancer and graphic designer Anna Ogden Smith performed to an Arab-influenced soundtrack produced by Eno. The Muslim rapper duo Mecca2Medina strode the stage as they declaimed lyrics with a message of tolerance.

Lebanese singer and composer Nadine Khoury accompanied herself on guitar as she sang adaptations of poems by Adonis (“The City”) and Mahmud Darwish (“The Girl/The Scream”).

The Persian writer, singer and songwriter Shusha Guppy sang and played the guitar. The accomplished Syrian qanun player Abdullah Chhadeh gave a spirited rendering of one of his innovative compositions.

Brian Eno hopes “we might find ways between us to work around these monolithic structures that stand between us, called governments.” The “Lebanon, Lebanon” evening was a valuable example of direct people-to-people artistic communication.

Susannah Tarbush

Saudi Gazette, October 3 2006

new issue of banipal

The latest issue of Banipal, the London-based magazine of modern Arab literature, focuses particularly on work by Egyptian and Iraqi authors, with features presenting work by writers from those two countries. But the issue also includes plenty of material by, or about, writers from other Arab countries.

The issue begins with the short story “In the Long Shadows”, written in English by the Sudanese-British writer Jamal Mahjoub. This mysterious and powerful story mixes memory and myth with a dystopian vision of the decaying outskirts of a town and a strange abandoned tower. A traumatized photographer brings back images from a distant western region of “burned villages, barren hills, blackened grass, graveyards.”

There is an extract from Tunisian writer Hassan Nasr’s novel “Return to Dar Al-Basha”, of which the English edition is to be published by Syracuse University Press later this year. Another Tunisian writer, Ali Mosbah, won the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Writing in 2004 for his volume “Mudun wa Wujooh”. The magazine includes his chapter on Istanbul.

The magazine’s Literary Influence section was penned by the late Jordanian writer Ghalib Halasa. Halasa died in 1989, but his essay, full of perception and humor, is of lasting interest.

The Iraqi feature comprises excerpts from novels by Saadi Youssef, Mohammad Khudayyir, Lutfiyya Dulaimi, Fadhil al-Azzawi, Kadhim al-Hallaq and Inaam Kachachi. The feature on New Writing in Egypt continues a feature that began in the previous issue. The writers included are Yasser Abdel Latif, Mustafa Zikri, Hamdy el-Gazzar, Youssef Rakha and poet Girgis Shukry,

Syracuse University Press has emerged in recent years as a major publisher of novels translated from Arabic to English. Banipal has an enlightening interview, conducted by the magazine’s editor Margaret Obank, with Michael Beard and Adnan Haydar, editors of the press’s successful Middle East Literature in Translation series.

Syracuse University Press was recently chosen as the new publisher for the winning translation of the Arabic Translation Award, sponsored by the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas.

The books reviewed in the latest Banipal include Saudi writer Mohammad Hassan Alwan’s Arabic second novel“Sophia”, Libyan writer Hisham Matar’s novel “In the Country of Men” (now shortlisted for the Man Booker prize), the bilingual Arabic and English book of stories “Burning in the Past Tense” by Syria-born Suhail Shadoud, and the critical study “Le roman arabe (1834-2004)” written in French by Iraqi-born scholar and poet Kadhim Jihad Hassan who lives in Paris.

October 9 will be a red-letter day for Banipal, as its marks the first occasion on which the newly-instituted Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation will be awarded. The award will be made at a ceremony at the University of East Anglia, at the British Center for Literary Translation’s annual Sebald Lecture on literature in translation.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 26 Sept 2006

sufi poetry and music evening in london

Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Center in London was the venue last Tuesday for readings of classical poetry in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Punjabi, followed by a recital of Afghan music.

The Human Rights Action Center, which opened last year, is the headquarters of Amnesty’s UK Section and also provides space for human rights activists. Its auditorium was packed out for Tuesday’s double bill, which was organized jointly by Amnesty and Poet in the City, a project of the Poetry Society.

The Center is located in the East London area of Shoreditch, not far from the City of London. The holding of the evening there reflects the value that Amnesty places on the arts. In its foyer last week was a retrospective exhibition by the Brighton-based artist Paula Cox. The exhibition was both a retrospective of Cox’s work for as an artist for Amnesty, and a showcase for her most recent project “Celebrating the Life of Palestinian Women”.

The theme of the event was Sufi poetry, and it was presented by the British scholar, linguist and Middle East traveler Bruce Wannell. The multinational audience listened with attentiveness and appreciation to the poetry read in the four Oriental languages by native speakers (Wannell himself read some of the Persian poems), and to the English translations.

The second half of the program was a music recital led by tabla player Yusuf Mahmoud, who since coming to London has established himself as a leading Afghan and world musician. His skills on the tabla are extraordinary, and the audience was enthralled by his high-velocity solos.

Mahmoud performed with Professor John Baily of Goldsmiths College on rubab and dotar, Veronica Doubleday on frame drum and vocals, and Timor Shaiedaie, a new arrival on the Afghan music scene in Britain. Shaiedaie played harmonium and sang in a beautifully melodious, tender voice. The recital ended with a standing ovation.

Amnesty International, Poet in the City and Bruce Wannell are to be congratulated for organizing an event that helped Londoners to see that some of the most war-torn areas on earth have produced some of the world’s most wonderful poetry and music.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette, 26 September 2006

john reid's speech to muslims

John Reid

The address by Home Secretary John Reid to Muslims in East London last Wednesday was always bound to be controversial, with his call for Muslim parents to be vigilant over signs that their children are being “brainwashed” by extremists.

But after Reid was heckled loudly and at length by a well-known extremist, Abu Izzedeen, there were accusations from some quarters that Reid’s team had “engineered” the interruption so as to enable the Home Secretary to say it showed how dangerous the views of extremists are.
In his address Reid said: “There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for one thing: to kill themselves in order to murder others.” He told Muslim parents to “look for the tell-tale signs now and talk to them before their hatred grows and you risk losing them for ever.”

Izzedeen, a Jamaican convert whose original name was Trevor Brooks, interrupted to ask how Reid dared “come to a Muslim area when over 1000 Muslims have been arrested. You are an enemy of Islam and Muslims, you are a tyrant. Shame on all of us for sitting down and listening to him.” Izzedeen was escorted out of the meeting by police, whereupon his associate Anjem Choudary stood up and said: “Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day.”

There was anger among some Muslims at the amount of coverage the media subsequently gave Izzedeen and Choudary, both of whom are marginal, fringe figures, while moderate mainstream Muslims struggle to get their voices heard.

The Respect MP George Galloway wrote in a letter to Reid that Abu Izzedeen is “a well-known and violent extremist from an organization your own government has proscribed. Yet he was allowed within punching distance or the British Home Secretary. How? Why?”

The organization to which Galloway referred is the Al-Ghurabaa group of which Abu Izzedeen was a spokesman and which has been banned under anti-terror legislation. Galloway said Abu Izzedeen is the same man who led “a group of fanatic thugs in the brief ‘hostage-taking’ of myself and my daughter and several innocent members of the public during a general election meeting last year. This is well known to the Special Branch and senior police officers in East London – the very people in charge of your security today.”

Galloway noted that Abu Izzedeen praised the terror attacks of 9/11 and those in London July 7 last year. The MP claimed there were only two conceivable explanations as to how he had been allowed to “hijack” the meeting. Either the police and security services are fantastically incompetent, or “someone somewhere wanted to engineer precisely this confrontation to show you in a certain light and to portray the Muslims of Britain in the most aggressive violent and extreme way possible, as a justification for the utterly counter-productive policies you are following.”

Reid’s call for Muslim parents to monitor their children upset many in the Muslim community. Ahmed. Versi, editor of the Muslim News newspaper, claimed in a press release that Reid was calling for parent to “spy on the behavior of their sons as suspected terrorists” and “trying to divide Muslim families”.

There was widespread outrage when Abu Izzedeen was invited onto the BBC Radio Four Today program on Friday to be interviewed by presenter John Humphrys. He was given a 12-minute interview in the 8.10 am interview slot, which is normally reserved for a cabinet member or other top politician. The decision of the BBC to give Izzedeen such a prime slot to expound his extreme views was condemned by many newspapers and commentators.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 26 September 2006

man booker shortlist

When the judges of this year’s £50,000 Man Booker Prize announced last week their shortlist of six novels, only two of which are by well-known writers, one might have expected them to be praised for choosing the finalists solely on the quality of their writing rather than on the basis of their pre-existing reputations.

Instead, literary critics and the media expressed astonishment and some chagrin at a shortlist that excluded the bookies’ top favorite “Black Swan Down” by David Mitchell.

They seemed to forget that some reviews of the novel, though admiring Mitchell's writing, had expressed disappointment that his canvas in this "boy comes of age in an English village" novel had shrunk in comparison with his earlier books, particularly "Cloud Atlas" shortlisted for the Man Booker in 1994.

Nor had some of the other excluded books received unanimously positive reviews on publication. Whereas for example "In the Country of Men" by Libyan Hisham Matar, which is on the shortlist, received widespread critical praise (an exception being a bafflingly ungracious review by Palestinian writer Samir El-Youssef in the New Statesman).

When the bookies give their odds, they perhaps attach too much importance to the bigness of the authors' names, and too little to the merits of their novels. Other favorites from the longlist of 19 books who failed to make the shortlist were Australian Peter Carey (already two times winner of the Booker) for “Theft: A Love Story” and Scottish Andrew O’Hagan for “Be Near Me”. Nor did South African Nobel laureate and previous Booker winner Nadine Gordimer or Jewish comic writer Howard Jacobson appear on the list.

Professor John Sutherland, the chairman of last year’s Man Booker judges, said he was “gobsmacked” by the shortlist, adding that the “bizarre” list may show “we are seeing a turning of the tide, the older generation giving way to the new.” Many of the press reports of the shortlist announcement, referring to the upset over bookies' odds, resorted to racing metaphors. Nearly all the favourites had "fallen at the penultimate fence" wrote Lousie Jury in the Independent.

The only longlisted favorite to appear on the shortlist is “The Night Watch” by Sarah Waters (above), set in London during the Second World War. Waters is now favorite to win, with odds of 2/1 from bookmakers William Hill. "Apart from Sarah Waters, it's a field of dark horses, any one of which has a chance of winning", according to Robert McCrum, literary editor of the Observer,

The other widely-known finalist is the Australian Kate Grenville, shortlisted for “The Secret River”, about a criminal transported to Australia in Victorian times. The novel has already won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. Fellow Australian woman novelist, M J Hyland, is a finalist with “Carry Me Down”, about a 12-year-old boy growing up in Dublin.

Hisham Matar's novel “In the Country of Men” is set in Libya in 1979. Matar was the only debut novelist on the longlist, and to be included on the shortlist against most expectations is an extraordinary achievement. The Indian Kiran Desai is on the list with her second novel “The Inheritance of Loss”. She will be hoping for better luck than her mother Anita Desai, who has been shortlisted three times for the Booker but has never won it. Edward St Aubyn is a finalist with “Mother’s Milk”, whose protagonist Patrick Melrose is trying to cope with middle age haunted by a wretched childhood.

The chairman of the judges Hermione Lee, professor of English literature at of Oxford University, said: "Each of these novels has what we as judges were most looking for: a distinctive, original voice and audacious imagination that takes readers to undiscovered countries of the mind, a strong power of storytelling and a historical truthfulness."

The winner will be announced at a prizegiving dinner on October 10. Lee’s fellow judges are poet Simon Armitage, novelist and reviewer Candia McWilliam, actress Fiona Shaw and writer and reviewer Anthony Quinn.

For those who still take notice of bookies' odds, or delight in seeing how poorly predictive they sometimes are, the odds cited in last Sunday's Observer were 2/1 for "The Night Watch", 3/1 for "Mother's Milk", 4/1 for "The Secret River", 5/1 for "Carry Me Down", 6/1 for "In the Country of Men", and 7/1 for "The Inheritance of Loss".

Susannah Tarbush

palestinian women writers launch 'qissat' in London

( L to R: Adania Shibli, Liana Badr, Huzama Habayeb and Jacqueline Rose)

The publication of ‘Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women’ was celebrated on Thursday night at an event in the Purcell Room, part of London's South Bank Centre, featuring four of the writers included in the anthology. The evening was spirited, thought-provoking and often humorous, thanks to the stories and lively contributions from the four Palestinian writers and the empathetic yet gently provocative chairing by Jacqueline Rose. Rose, a Jewish scholar and writer, is professor of English at Queen Mary's College, London University. Her books include the 1995 work The Question of Zionism, a reply to Edward Said's The Question of Palestine.

The anthology of 16 short stories translated into, or originally written in, English is edited by journalist and radio producer Jo Glanville and published by London-based Telegram Books. The writers are from a wide range of backgrounds, ages and locations. But for all of them Palestine and the Palestinian experience are an ever-present concern and inspiration.

Some of the writers in 'Qissat' are from the younger generation, including Samah al-Shaykh who was born in Saudi Arabia in 1980 and now lives in Gaza and Basima Takrouri who was born in Jerusalem in 1982. Two are deceased: Samira Azzam died in 1967 and Nuha Samara in 1992.

The four writers on the platform of the Purcell Room had travelled from far-flung parts of the world. Liana Badr had come from Ramallah, Huzama Habayeb from Abu Dhabi, Randa Jarrar from Detroit and Adania Shibli from Berlin. The writers read from their own work in English or Arabic, and English translations were vibrantly rendered by the renowned British actress Diana Quick.

Randa Jarrar's story Barefoot Bridge centres around a trip made by a family to Jordan and then the West Bank for the burial of the grandfather. In a text shot through with wit the child first-person narrator observes the tense process of crossing the border. ("First my land, now my Guccis! God damn it" exclaims a trendily-dressed young Palestinian women after an Israeli soldier 'mislays' her shoes which have been removed for security reasons). Later, the child sits with her grandmother Sitto and imbibes her magical tales and recollections.

Adania Shibli's story May God Keep Love in a Cool and Dry Place brilliantly dissects the disintegrating relationship of a woman in love for the first time and living with her lover. Her "tolerance of his mistreatment of her has run out." The pair had first met at the fiftieth anniversary of the Palestinian Nakbbah, the Catastrophe. The details of preparing and eating a meal evoke wider resonances, and the viewpoint shifts between the man and the woman.

In Other Cities, Liana Badr takes the reader on a hazardous journey by service taxis from old Hebron to Ramallah, through Israeli-occupied territory littered with military checkpoints. The journey is made by Umm Hasan whose children have implored her to take them to Ramallah. "Little by little, the idea had begun to take hold in her mind. To actually go to Ramallah. To thumb her nose at Israel, and go - whether her husband, Abu Hasan, liked it or not. " The journey takes on epic proportions, and is a journey of self-discovery for Umm Hasan herself. At one point the narrative shifts to the thoughts of an Israeli captain, when Umm Hasan has the guts to march up to him to tell him that her baby is sick and that he should let the cars through. "For an electrifying moment he felt that he was only punishing himself, out here in this hostile wilderness."

Huzama Habayeb's story A Thread Snaps has earned a certain notoriety in Jordan for the frank way in which it handles a girl's growing awareness of her bodily desires. The story is set in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, as the girl does the family washing by hand, and Habayeb told the audience in the Purcell Room that it shows the economic, social and sexual suppression experienced by men as well as women in this environment. There is a sense of blockage: "even the water is blocked." The issue of Al-Katiba magazine in which the story was first published was banned in Jordan, as was the collection of her stories in which the story subsequently appeared.

In her introduction to 'Qissat' Jo Glanville says that when she began looking for stories for the anthology, she wanted to find work by young, emerging writers to add to stories by some of the most distinguished and established Palestinian women writers. She also felt it important to look for writers not only in Palestine but also in the disaspora.

The four writers invited to London for the launch represent a cross-section of the roster of contributors to the collection. Liana Badr, who is married to Palestinian politician Yasser Abd Rabbuh, is the writer with the most direct involvement in Palestinian national politics. She lived in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, and her early published works reflect the Palestinian predicament during that conflict. She is a filmmaker as well as a fiction writer, and was from 1995 to 2003 General Director of Arts at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture in Ramallah.

Randa Jarrar was born in Chicago to a Palestinian father and Egyptian mother, grew up in Egypt and Kuwait, and is now a single mother living in Austin, Texas. She has received the Million Writers Award for best short story, and her first novel will be published in 2007. Adania Shibli, born in Palestine in 1974, has twice won the Young Writer's Award from the A M Qattan Foundation. Huzama Habayeb was born in Kuwait and has never set foot in Palestine. She won the short story prize at Al Quds Festival for Creativity in 1993 and the Mahmoud Seif El Din Al Irani prize in 1994.

Glanville notes that in the past few years there has been in increasing appetite for Palestinian memoir. While such memoirs are powerful testimonies, "there is also a danger that so long as the world outside limits its interest to factual accounts, then Palestinians will only ever be viewed in terms of the conflict, while culture, the wider society, remains unseen." Her collection certainly succeeds in fulfilling the aim of offering "the chance to engage with a broader perspective - through the literary imagination."

Susannah Tarbush

(L to R: Randa Jarrar, Adania Shibli, Liana Badr and Huzama Habayeb)

british muslims five years after 9/11

British Muslims, five years on from 9/11

In the five years since the terror attacks in the US on 9 September 2001 – and particularly following the suicide bombings in London on 7 July last year – British Muslims have been under coming under increasing pressure and, sometimes, suspicion. At the same time, they have become more assertive and organised, and are exploring questions concerning their place in British and European society.

The British Muslim community is estimated at between 1.6 million and 2 million people, and is very diverse. The majority are from Pakistan and the rest of the Indian sub-continent, but there are substantial numbers from Arab and other Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere.

In the attacks on the London transport system on 7 July last year, four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 other people. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, these attacks were carried out by Muslims who were born in the country they were attacking. A shocked Britain asked itself: how is it that young British-born Muslims have become so radicalised that they are prepared to kill themselves and large numbers of their fellow citizens?

Two weeks after the 7/7 attacks there were failed attempts to carry out four more suicide bombings in London. Government officials and the police frequently warn that further terror attacks in Britain are inevitable.

The US magazine The New Republic even claimed recently that Britain now presents a greater security threat to the US than do Iraq or Iran because its Muslim communities are a breeding ground for violent extremism. The magazine said that after the latest security alerts and arrests it can be argued “that the biggest threat to US security emanates not from Iran, or Iraq or Afghanistan, but from Great Britain, our closest ally.”

The government has introduced increasingly stringent anti-terror legislation since 9/11, aimed mainly at Islamic radicals. Ordinary Muslims feel the new laws and powers are disproportionately used against them, and human rights activists, the legal profession and many politicians are alarmed at the curbs on individual freedoms in the name of security. There have been some cases of wrongful arrests of Muslims, including two brothers suspected of being suicide bombers who were arrested by 200 officers in Forest Gate, East London, in June. One brother was shot in the shoulder during the arrest, but no evidence was found against the two.

Almost every day brings news of security alerts, plots or arrests. On August 10 the Home Secretary John Reid announced that a plot to blow up a number of aircraft travelling from the UK to the US had been disrupted. By September 7, 17 Muslims had been charged in relation to the alleged planned attacks. They included recent British converts to Islam.

In a separate case, police arrested 14 people on September 1 in raids on a Chinese restaurant in London and other addresses. They searched an Islamic school in the county of East Sussex, which they suspected might have been used for the training of Islamic militants.

Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terror branch, says that police are currently monitoring “thousands” of British Muslims on suspicion that they are involved in terrorism. Some British Muslims have gone to fight in Iraq, where a few are known to have become suicide bombers. The intelligence services and police worry about the security threat those radicals who return from Iraq may pose in the future.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and members of his cabinet repeatedly insist that the terror attacks and the threat from Islamic extremists has nothing to do with foreign policy, including the war on Iraq. Instead, they blame a historic struggle within Islam, and a battle with Western “values”.

These denials of a link between foreign policy issues and security threats have little credibility. British foreign policy in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon, and Blair’s close adherence to the policies of US president George Bush, is fuelling Muslim anger.

In a most unwelcome development for the government, on August 12 three Muslim Labour MPs, three Muslim members of the House of Lords, and 38 Muslim groups signed an open letter to Blair calling for “urgent” changes in UK foreign policy to show that the UK values the lives of civilians.

The signatories of the letter warned that British policy is putting civilians at increased risk in the UK and abroad. It pointed to the “debacle” of Iraq, and the UK’s stance over the Middle East crisis. Sadiq Khan, a Labour MP who signed the letter, said British foreign policy is seen by many British Muslims as unfair and unjust. “Whether we like it or not, such a sense of injustice plays into the hands of extremists.”

Home Secretary John Reid was furious about the letter, describing it as a “terrible misjudgement”. He insisted that no competent government would remain in power if policies were “dictated by terrorists.”

The terror attacks in London and the perceived threats from Islamic extremism have thrown into doubt the concept of multiculturalism, which was for decades the basis of British government policies towards ethnic communities.

An opinion poll conducted by the Pew organisation found Muslims in Britain to be the most anti-Western in Europe. It is increasingly argued that multiculturalism has encouraged a dangerous separateness of communities, and there is a new emphasis on the need for a shared sense of “Britishness”.

Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, has called for a “new, honest debate” about rooting out extremism, and said it is “not racist” to discuss immigration and political asylum.

There are deep divisions within the British “talking classes” over Islamic radicalism. Melanie Phillips, a pro- Israeli author, newspaper columnist and broadcaster, has written a book entitled: “Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within”. Phillips claims that “under the noses of the British government, parliament, intelligence services and police, Britain has become the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamist terror and extremism.”

Phillips’ views are echoed by some other influential figures in the British media and political establishment. Such people used the term “Islamofascism” years before US President George W Bush uttered the word in a speech.

There has been a campaign in some quarters against the Muslim Council of Britain, the umbrella organisation of 400 Muslim mosques and organisations founded in 1997. One reason is its refusal to attend the annual Holocaust Memorial Day, which was introduced by Tony Blair’s government. The Council explains this is not to dismiss the Holocaust, but because it believes all genocides, and not only the Holocaust, should be commemorated by such a day.

The political editor of the liberal weekly magazine New Statesman Martin Bright has written and broadcast criticisms of the MCB, saying it has links with the Muslim Brotherhood. He presented a Channel 4 TV programme in July on the alleged “love affair” between the British government and radical Islam.

Martin Bright and others have also targeted Egyptian cleric Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. Qaradawi has been encouraged by the British government, which regards him as a moderate. His critics claim some of his opinions, including his support for Palestinian suicide bombers, mean he is not moderate.

There has been some criticism of the alliance between the British left, particularly the Socialist Workers party, and Muslim groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain, in for example setting up the Stop the War Coalition which organises demonstrations and other activities against the Iraq war. In addition the Respect Party founded by MP George Galloway, after he was kicked out of the Labour party for comments he made about the Iraq war, has a strong Muslim component.

After the attacks of July 7, the government made some efforts to publicly engage the Muslim community, by inviting is leaders to Downing Street for talks and setting up a task force. This Muslim task force made 64 recommendations, but the government has in practice adopted very few of them.

There have been efforts recently to encourage new bodies as a so-called “moderate” counter to the Muslim Council of Britain. One of these bodies is the Sufi Muslim Council, which was launched in mid-July at a reception in the House of Commons, attended by Ruth Kelly. Leaders of this group claim to represent a “silent majority” frustrated with slow progress since the 7/7 bombings.

The group has formed a partnership with the British Muslim Forum, which represents 300 mosques in central and northern England. The British Muslim Forum helped set up the Mosques & Imams National Advisory Board launched this year to improve standards at British mosques.

Susannah Tarbush
published in Arabic translation in Al-Hayat newspaper 12 September 2006

saqi publishes 'lebanon, lebanon'

In a remarkably quick turnaround time for the preparation and publication of a new book, Saqi Books of London will shortly publish “Lebanon, Lebanon”, a 229-page book responding to the war in Lebanon.

The proceeds of the book will go to children’s charities in Lebanon, as will the proceeds from an evening of readings, music and performance to be held on 27th September, at New Player’s Theatre in central London. The evening is being organized by Saqi together with Pen, Open Democracy, and Index on Censorship.

The book, edited by Anna Wilson, has texts from 50 writers, ranging from poetry and stories to memoir and reportage. There are pictures from 25 artists, and from displaced Lebanese children.

Among the Lebanese writers featured are Hanan al-Shaykh, Hoda Barakat, Abbas Beydoun, Hassan Daoud, Zena El-Khalil, Nada Awar Jarrar, Mai Ghoussoub and Alexandre Najjar. From the Australian-born publisher Carmen Callil there is the memoir “Lebanese Washing Stories”.

Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish is represented by the elegiac sequence “Diaries”. Jean Said Makdisi writes poignantly in “The Little Girl with Gold Earrings” of a dead child who reminds her of her own granddaughters.

British novelist Margaret Drabble writes of her long-standing friendship with the Lebanese writer Rachid El-Daif and of her dream of visiting his hometown of Zgharta. Owen Sheers recalls a meal he had with his girlfriend in a Lebanese restaurant in an Irish village, after three weeks spent watching the Lebanon war on TV. Argentinian-born Jewish writer Alberto Manguel depicts the Beirut he now sees and the city he remembers. The Jewish cookery writer Claudia Roden relives “Mezze in the Bekaa Valley”.

Judith Kazantzis’ “found poem” entitled “The Refugee” is taken verbatim from the English translation of a UN witness statement. In “Too Black, Too Strong”, Malu Halasa recalls coming of age in America and the Middle East as someone of part Jordanian, part Filipino heritage.
There are stories from Pakistan-born writers Aamer Hussein and Kamila Shamsie, and contributions from Doris Lessing, V S Naipaul, Moris Farhi, Toby Litt, Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter, Adrian Mitchell, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk and Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jalloun. Among the journalists represented are Britons Robert Fisk of the Independent and Brian Whitaker of the Guardian, and the American Charles Glass.

Susannah Tarbush

gaddafi: a living myth

The show “Gaddafi: A Living Myth”, which burst last week onto the stage of the Coliseum Theatre in central London, has left critics perplexed.

Is the show a questionable glorification of a dictator with much blood on his hands? Or is it a commendable experiment in political theatre, mixing the music of the electro-rap band Asian Dub Foundation, Middle Eastern musicians and the ENO orchestra with rap and dance in order to elucidate the contradictory aspects of a leader who has survived for 37 years through a series of extraordinary volte-faces?

Critics have also tied themselves in knots trying to decide whether the piece, directed by the Australian opera director David Freeman, is an opera, a musical, a hybrid of both or a new form. The text of the libretto by Shan Khan is mostly shouted over the music rather than sung like opera.

The show was initiated by Asian Dub Foundation member Steve Chandra Savale who has long been fascinated by the Libyan leader. It had a three-year gestation period and is receiving only six performances. The show is certainly a spectacle, with its its rousing, churning sound track and its gyrating female bodyguards in camouflage uniform performing robotic and kick-boxing dance routines.

Actor Ramon Tikaram struts the stage as an intense, energetic Gaddafi (even if somewhat lacking in the height department). Film, photographs and graphics projected onto a screen behind the actors depict major political events.

The opening night last Thursday received generally poor reviews. The Guardian gave it only one star out of five and said it was “never more than a hodgepodge of musical and cultural influences”. The Evening Standard gave it two stars, describing it as a “bizarre theatrical experiment”. Bloomberg critic Warwick Thompson was angered and depressed by the piece and its “tiresomely predictable” anti-Americanism.

When I went to see the show on Saturday night I found it an interesting theatrical and musical event, despite its flaws. The auditorium was packed, partly because some tickets (which normally cost £32 to £49) had been made available at the bargain price of only £10 through special offers such as those from the Guardian, and the London Middle East Institute. The audience seemed to enjoy the show and its humor, and applauded it enthusiastically.

Shan Khan’s spoken libretto has been criticized for the quality of its rhymes and its lack of subtlety. But it suits the sloganeering talk of Gaddafi (as in his Green Book) and of his opponents, including President Ronald Reagan who described him as the “mad dog of the Middle East.” And it is debatable how much fine detail is possible in an evening of two hours that covers Libyan history from the brutal Italian occupation to Gaddafi’s abandonment of his weapons of mass destruction programs in 2004, and his meeting in Tripoli with British PM Tony Blair.

The production depicts the different phases in Gaddafi’s political career, and his frequent changes of image and costume. He is shown variously as a Bedouin, a revolutionary, a dictator, an instigator of world terrorism, and an unstable depressive who retreats to the desert for long periods. During Blair’s visit he declares: “If I wasn’t here you’d need an actor to play me”, and there are cries of “Gadaffi Superstar”. At the end, his face projected on stage is left blank.

Opponents of Gaddafi in Britain are unhappy about the production. Outside the Coliseum a polite Libyan man handed out leaflets headlined “The Truth of the Living Myth”, which said: “Gaddafi is a tyrannical dictator who destroyed a country and its people. He has robbed Libya of its assets and its dignity.” It was signed by the Libyan National Committee in the UK.

Susannah Tarbush

naeem murr's 'the perfect man'

When it was announced that Naeem Murr’s novel “The Perfect Man” was on the longlist of 19 books for the £50,000 Man Booker prize, some commentators assumed he was Indian-American (“the Desi-American author” as some US-based websites described him).

This supposition arose from Murr’s name, and from the fact that the central character in his novel is a half-Indian boy, Rajiv Travers. In fact Murr is half Lebanese. He has lived in the US for many years, and his novel is set in Pisgah, a small town in Missouri.

Rajiv is the son of an Indian mother who has been abandoned in India by his English father. The novel begins in 1947 when Rajiv’s father brings him from India to London to be looked after by his uncle and his wife. By 1954 Rajiv’s uncle’s wife can no longer tolerate uncontrollable, witty Rajiv who is a brilliant mimic. Her husband takes Rajiv to America to spend the summer with another of the boy’s uncles, Olly. But shortly before they arrive Olly commits suicide and Rajiv is left with his girlfriend Ruth.

Ruth makes her living writing romantic novels. As Olly said in a letter: “We have a great time choosing people in this small town for her to transform into the heroes and heroines of these tawdry worlds.”

Rajiv remains in Pisgah with Ruth, and becomes close friends with four other children. The novel tracks them as they grow into adolescence and beyond. As in his previous two novels “The Boy” and “The Genius of the Sea”, Murr is interested in exploring the impact of an outsider on others.

The dense, complex novel is lit up by Murr’s striking use of language and gift for drawing memorable characters, and is a most pleasurable read. Successive chapters move backwards and forwards in time. A key event took place in 1952, when the autistic brother of one of Rajiv’s friends, the troubled Lew, died in mysterious circumstances. The secrecy around the death is set to detonate years later.

Murr may not be Indian, but another longlisted writer is. She is Kiran Desai, longlisted for her second novel “The Inheritance of Loss”. Kiran is the daughter of Anita Desai, whose novel “Fasting, Feasting” was shortlisted for the Booker in 1999.

The Man Booker shortlist of five books will be announced on September 14 and the winner on October 10. There is a good chance that India will feature on the shortlist, through an author, or a character in a novel, or both.

Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette September 5 2006

campaign against israeli exhibit in venice

There is a growing international and Palestinian campaign for the organizers of the 10th International Architecture Biennale in Venice to cancel the exhibition in the Israeli pavilion. The Israeli exhibition is entitled “Life Saver: Typology of Commemoration in Israel.”

Fifty countries are participating in the Biennale, which runs from September 10 to November 19 and is one of the most important events on the international architectural calendar. Egypt is the only Arab country taking part in the Biennale, the title of which is “Cities, architecture and society”.

The exhibits in the Israeli pavilion comprise plans, models and full architectural details of 15 memorials built between 1947 and 2006, some commemorating dead soldiers or intelligence officers, others the Holocaust. The Israeli Defense Ministry is at the top of the list of the organizations that gave “generous support” for the exhibition.

The international pressure group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) has sent a petition to the organizers of the Biennale saying it is “dismayed and concerned” that the Biennale agreed to host the Israeli contribution.

APJP 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.”

At the same time four Palestinian organizations have sent a joint letter to the organizers asking for the Israeli exhibition to be cancelled. The Palestinian organizations are the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI); the Palestinian Engineers Association – Jerusalem Center; the Society of Palestinian Architects; and RIWAQ – the Centre for Architectural Conservation.

The four Palestinian organizations say: “It is inconceivable how the Venice Biennale, an international celebration of art and architecture, of civilization and the progress of humanity, can provide a venue for such a blatant justification for and commemoration of genocide, war and bloodshed.”

APJP says 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 memorialised, and awards Israeli the sole position of victim and victor.”

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

The 21 signatories of the APJP petition include Palestinian, Israeli and British/Jewish architects and also the eminent British architect Ted Cullinan, and the distinguished architectural critic and writer Charles Jencks.

Their APJP petition quotes Dan Daor who writes in the exhibition catalogue that the message of memorial structures is that “there are no heroes – all there is, is the eternity of Israel, all of the country is the front, and all of us are victims.”

The letter from the four Palestinian organizations says the Israeli exhibition should be cancelled because it is supported by a state that continues against all international laws and UN resolutions to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, to deny the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and to wage a daily war against the Palestinian children, men and women their homes and livelihoods.

The letter says that the Israeli state is still engaged in a war with Lebanon, “that has resulted in the killing of over 1,000 Lebanese, the destruction of infrastructure, roads, buildings, bridges, electricity power plants, and thousands of homes, and the denial of the right of education of thousands of Lebanese children who cannot attend a new school year because their schools have been destroyed.”

The Palestinian organizations note that the exhibition contains models of memorials commemorating both the victims of the Holocaust, and those killed in Israel’s wars since 1948. “The history of the Holocaust and its Jewish victims is thus confused with that of Israel’s colonial history and the death of soldiers killed while invading, occupying and annexing Arab lands.”

Both the APJP petition, and the letter from the four Palestinian organizations, strongly condemn the role of Israeli architects. The Palestinian organizations say: “Israeli architects, engineers and planners are fully engaged in the planning and implementation of a system of oppression and control that began with the appropriation and confiscation of lands since 1948, and continues today in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the form of illegal settlements building, bypass roads and the construction of the Apartheid Wall.”

The APJP says that the “eminent Israeli architects” represented in the exhibition “are being used as tools of Israeli propaganda, and consequently would be deemed to be complicit in the agenda of excluding the Palestinian narrative.”

The APJP petition and the letter from the Palestinian organizations both quote the statement by the curator of the exhibition, Tula Amir, in her introduction to the exhibition. Amir writes: “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.”

The Palestinian organizations say that while this paragraph can be read as a critique of this type of architecture, “the fact that it is being displayed at this level little over a month after Israel has just gone through another of its cycles of destruction is a celebration of it. The attempt to dissect it and analyse it in an abstract manner from an architectural point of view is not convincing.”

They add that “nowhere in the quotations from the curator is the exhibition presented as a way to examine Israel’s past or to try to learn from all its bloody history. The entire exhibition accentuates Israel as “a victim state constantly under attack and in danger.”

While the title of the Biennale is “Cities, architecture and society,” the theme is Cities of the Future, with the aim, the organizers say, of “presenting a manifesto for the cities of the 21st century.

The Biennale has several sections. In the 300-metre long “Corderie dell’Arsenale” space, there are videos, photography, film and thee dimensional graphics presenting the urban experiences of 16 world cities in four continents, including Cairo, Istanbul, Barcelona, Caracas, Los Angeles and Mumbai.

In addition, each of the 50 participating countries has its own pavilion. The content of the Israeli pavilion is in marked contrast to the pavilions of other countries, which look forward to cities of the future.

To take just a few examples of how other countries exhibitions are approaching the theme of the exhibition, the exhibition in the US pavilion is entitled “After the Flood; Building on Higher Ground”, the UK exhibition explores the issues facing Britain’s regional cities, the exhibition, the republic of Slovenia’s pavilion has the title “Formula New Ljubljana”, and the Romanian exhibition is dubbed “Remix! Urban drama for nine cubes and many players.”

Susannah Tarbush
Al Hayat September 7 2006

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