Some funny Muslims especially for Evitta!

Madny 2

After Noumeri - the ex president of Sudan - was dismissed from power in 1983, I went back to Sudan to do a story for Radio Arabic Netherlands about what was called THE UPRISING: the "uprising of the people who sit in the sun", el shamassah
In the beginning I did not get the meaning, but then I realised it is an expression used in Sudan to identify the freelance workers - so to speak - who just sit in the sun waiting for somebody to hire them for a day's work; most of them carry their tools with them so they can begin work the moment they arrive at their destination with their 'boss'. Now you can find them in what is called the new cites around Cairo such as the Sixth of October.
After I had stayed a while in Khartoum I decided to take the train and visit Madny which is about six hours trip, although the distance is only 200 miles. When I arrived I was shocked to see how she, Madny, had deteriorated since the last time I saw her in 1965 after I was released from prison one year earlier.
I went looking for a hotel to spend the one night I decided to stay; the only hotel I could find had no place for me except on the roof where they showed me many beds lined up beside each other. It was already night and I felt depressed and tired, so I accepted. I spent a restless night with the sounds, feeling crowded. Early morning I put some tea in my stomach and went for a walk, trying to reactivate my memory about the old places. I found myself walking in the direction of the Nile: the blue Nile which comes from Ethiopia running north to meet the white Nile coming from Uganda in a place in Khartoum called "el Moqran" (the union,) and when I arrived I found so many changes to the "Corniche"; the worst thing of course was that I lost my way until I found a woman who sells tea and coffee sitting under a big tree. I went towards her, sat on a small stone used as a chair and asked her to give me Jabana (coffee) without sugar. She asked me astonished: not even one spoon? I said no thanks. She could not accept that so I tried lying and told her that I am diabetic and the doctor forbade me to drink anything and coffee especially without sugar. She expressed her sympathy and offered me a good Jabana with herbs which I enjoyed and asked for again, and we talked and she asked me about myself and so on...
When I wanted to pay her she refused to take money saying: but I just gave you coffee without sugar and also you are sick.
After a lot of insisting from my side (I felt guilty about the doctor story) she took the money. After that I felt much better thinking about the dignity of this poor woman sitting under the tree selling tea and coffee!

Due to pupular demand... well for Persephone then

Madny is tired and needs art, colour and people!

Girl in Yellow Shorts

boys bikes blue

From my collection: 'A strange November in Siwa Oasis, Egypt'

Post inspired by the colours and life in My Marrakesh

Re-riding the nouvelle vague

Contrary to the belief of my landlady (who thinks the idealism of the 60s is dead in this generation), it is perfectly normal for me to go to the local Blockbusters and hire Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film, Weekend. I'm not being pretentious; I just want to know what else I'm supposed to reasonably watch at le weekend?

It also seems to me quite rational that Godard intersperse his scenes with huge pink and red flashing text against a black background.

And it hardly seems extraordinary that the anti-hero protagonists of his film - a scheming bourgeois couple Sunday driving (Godard hated nothing more than Sunday drivers) pass through a landscape of upturned burning cars, with the bloodied bodies of the car's erstwhile passengers scattered liberally across the road. That the scowling fake blonde soon-to-be heiress and her dour scoundrel of a husband-fag stuck to his lip, should manoeuvre their convertible sports car through this Sunday afternoon carnage without scarcely raising an eyebrow, is to be expected. They are bourgeois and they are in a hurry, after all.

I'm totally prepared to go along with the premise that the most cinematographically effective way of treating the class struggle is to shoot a comically absurd scene in a provincial town in which a neatly dressed, bloodied and hysterical girl screams at the yokel who has crashed his tractor into her sports car, killing her Armani-clad boyfriend; she shouts at him threateningly demanding to know how he - an unsightly and insignificant anonymous member of the masses could dare to take the life of one of the St Tropez elite - her beautiful rich boyfriend, whose artfully arranged and sculpted bloodied body still manages a superior sneer from the other side of life.

What, other than good common sense, could have motivated Godard to have Algerian and Congolese rubbish collectors refuse the now car-less and starving bourgeois refugees-in-their-own country, a morsel of baguette with the retort that this is how France has dealt with its former colonies - offering them bread and snatching it away with a kick up the arse. What donkeys we are. The two men, their eyes full of hatred for their colonisers, go on to recite - each on behalf of the brooding other - long passages of revolutionary text.

Godard insists that one can only smash the complacency of the middle classes by exposing them to the brutality that underlies their precious civilisation, so the disembowelment of the ruthless bourgeois husband by a band of bandanna-wearing hippy anarchist cannibals living wild in the woods, is the only logical conclusion for the film.

Whatever happened to such sensible filmmaking?

This is how 'moderate' Abbas is

Abbas is not so much moderate as moderated by his newly close allies: Ehud Olmert, Hosni Mubarak and Condalezza Rice. This is one gang I would never want to join. Amongst other disturbing news I read in The Guardian yesterday, this stood out like a nasty red pimple: "Mr Abbas cancelled the licences of all non-governmental organisations."

Unfortunately this is one unsightly pimple I can't squeeze and it is ruining my day. Outlawing and shutting down NGOs is the favourite past-time of many repressive regimes, including the Saudi Kingdom - another unattractive member of Condi's gang.

Dalia Nammari
Associated Press
Sunday, June 24, 2007
"Abbas on Friday ordered all non-governmental groups, including those allied with Hamas, to get new operating licenses, and they now have a week to comply. It was one of his most far-reaching moves against Hamas yet, since the militants took control of Gaza more than a week ago.
[The adjective far-reaching makes this emergency law-style decree sound merely decisive and thorough - a form of tough love]

However, heads of those groups warned that Abbas' decree may be difficult to enforce since Hamas' social network provides vital services in an increasingly impoverished society, often stepping in where the cash-strapped government fails to deliver."

My sister gave birth to a beautiful girl - with her father's ears, mother's porcelain skin and much fluffy fair hair. Thank God and Goddesses

Waiting for baby

Waiting is a peculiar agony; my younger sister could not stand the implicit pressure of a family in waiting for her baby, so much so that she ceased to answer the phone and holed up with her husband - also a younger child.

Two younger children on the defensive against a family that almost crushed them; my sister, on escaping the nest, discovered that her tyrannical older sisters were not her life-blood, or her guardian angels, but fragile creatures sucking the air out of her sturdier body. Now we think of this 30 year old baby sister and her unjust suffering; the uselessness and unwantedness of our greater years and faux-wisdom is slightly shameful.

I misplaced my phone that rings with regularity: it's my older sister - the already a mother of Safiya; my mother; my father - "Any news", "No", "Any news?", "No".

Why do I think of tragedy and grief? What a cowardly catholic at heart I am, that I believe in original sin and punishment and hardly dare give nature its due.

Come on baby. When you're ready

الكتابة على الحائط

حينما ظهرت قصائد المعتقلين في جوانتانامولم يدهشني هذا .. فمن تجربة معاملة المعتقلين والمسجونين السياسيين في السجون والمعتقلات العربية التي تتشابه في بعض النواحي مع المعتقلين في جوانتانامو، يعرف الواحد ان الفن هو وسيلة من الوسائل الهامة للحفاظ على معنويات المحبوس من الأنهيار .
وفي الزنازين المصرية سوف يجد السجين ان هناك من سبقه وسجل انطباعاته شعرا ام شعارا.

.. من اشهر من كتب شعرا في السجن وردده بعد ان حفظه هو المصري فؤاد حداد .. وحينما كانت الظروف تتاح كان يتم تهريب الكتابات الى الخارج مكتوبة على اوراق لف السجائر.
اول رواية نوبية كتبها محمد خليل قاس كتبها في معتقل الواحانت وتم تهريبها بنفس الطريقة.
السجين والمعتقل السياسي العربي يواجه معاملة لا انسانية .. تتركز في حرمانه من ادوات الكتابة ومن الكتب عدا القرآن او الأناجيل . من كافة انواع الترفيه . يرغم على العمل اليدوي مثل العمل في الجبل وتكسير الاحجار كما حدث ايام عبد الناصر. يواجه الضرب اليومي المنظم والإهانات الذي يصال الى الموت كما حدث مع شهدي عطية الشافعي . يعيش مكدسا في زنزانة صغيرة مع افراد آخرين يصل عددهم إلى عشرة .. في زنزانة لا يفتح بابها الآ ساعات قليلة كل يوم . تؤخذ منه حاجياته الشخصية حتى صور عائلته.

هكذا بعد كل تلك السنوات استطاع سجناء جوانتانامو المتهمون بانهم قتلة وأرهابيين ، ان يصلوا الى العالم الخارجي عبر الفن والقصائد التي تظرهم بانهم بشر مثل غيرهم .. يعانون من فراق الأحبة ويحنون الى الحياة بدون سجان
رؤوف مسعد

There are only lovers and the enemies of love

On finishing watching Jules et Jim. Encore

There is too much to say now, and so I will try write only part of two conversations I remember:

"Albert was wounded in the trenches...
l'm OK now but when l woke up and found a surgeon digging in my skull, l thought of Oscar Wilde: God, spare me physical pain! l can cope with moral suffering!
The disgusting part of war is it deprives a man of his own individual battle."
----------------
"Are you in pain?
Not me, not anymore.
Because we mustn't suffer not at the same time. Once you stop suffering, l'll suffer"

Ahlan, ahlan bikum to Malak's Gateaux Soiree

Art and cakes and love and smiles in Cairo

My impossibly beautiful and talented friend, Malak, has opened her latest art installation at the Cube Gallery in Cairo.

I could not be there, but if you click on the link below you can watch a slideshow of Malak arranging her petits gateaux in glass cases, and gracefully welcoming people to her opening night.

I think Malak believes she is not photogenic, but not only is this not true, she has such an engaging smile and open manner, that everyone at once falls in love with her and, and admires her, and wants to take her home and feed her...


http://www.slide.com/r/dhULD5-m1T9rxVifauFIFeOQIpR3Q3ec?view=large

Crocodile Tears over Gaza

From Uri Avnery's Column,
Gush Shalom
16/06/07

WHAT HAPPENS when one and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families?

Some months ago, I described this situation as a sociological experiment set up by Israel, the United States and the European Union. The population of the Gaza Strip as guinea pigs.

This week, the experiment showed results. They proved that human beings react exactly like other animals: when too many of them are crowded into a small area in miserable conditions, they become aggressive, and even murderous. The organizers of the experiment in Jerusalem, Washington, Berlin, Oslo, Ottawa and other capitals could rub their hands in satisfaction. The subjects of the experiment reacted as foreseen. Many of them even died in the interests of science.

But the experiment is not yet over. The scientists want to know what happens if the blockade is tightened still further.

WHAT HAS caused the present explosion in the Gaza Strip?

The timing of Hamas' decision to take over the Strip by force was not accidental. Hamas had many good reasons to avoid it. The organization is unable to feed the population. It has no interest in provoking the Egyptian regime, which is busy fighting the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother-organization of Hamas. Also, the organization has no interest in providing Israel with a pretext for tightening the blockade.

But the Hamas leaders decided that they had no alternative but to destroy the armed organizations that are tied to Fatah and take their orders from President Mahmoud Abbas. The US has ordered Israel to supply these organizations with large quantities of weapons, in order to enable them to fight Hamas. The Israeli army chiefs did not like the idea, fearing that the arms might end up in the hands of Hamas (as is actually happening now). But our government obeyed American orders, as usual.

The American aim is clear. President Bush has chosen a local leader for every Muslim country, who will rule it under American protection and follow American orders. In Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan, and also in Palestine.

Hamas believes that the man marked for this job in Gaza is Mohammed Dahlan. For years it has looked as if he was being groomed for this position. The American and Israeli media have been singing his praises, describing him as a strong, determined leader, "moderate" (i.e. obedient to American orders) and "pragmatic" (i.e. obedient to Israeli orders). And the more the Americans and Israelis lauded Dahlan, the more they undermined his standing among the Palestinians. Especially as Dahlan was away in Cairo, as if waiting for his men to receive the promised arms.

In the eyes of Hamas, the attack on the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip is a preventive war. The organizations of Abbas and Dahlan melted like snow in the Palestinian sun. Hamas has easily taken over the whole Gaza Strip.

How could the American and Israeli generals miscalculate so badly? They are able to think only in strictly military terms: so-and-so many soldiers, so-and-so many machine guns. But in interior struggles in particular, quantitative calculations are secondary. The morale of the fighters and public sentiment are far more important. The members of the Fatah organizations do not know what they are fighting for. The Gaza population supports Hamas, because they believe that it is fighting the Israeli occupier. Their opponents look like collaborators of the occupation. The American statements about their intention of arming them with Israeli weapons have finally condemned them.

That is not a matter of Islamic fundamentalism. In this respect all nations are the same: they hate collaborators of a foreign occupier, whether they are Norwegian (Quisling), French (Petain) or Palestinian.

IN WASHINGTON and Jerusalem, politicians are bemoaning the "weakness of Mahmoud Abbas".

They see now that the only person who could prevent anarchy in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was Yasser Arafat. He had a natural authority. The masses adored him. Even his adversaries, like Hamas, respected him. He created several security apparatuses that competed with each other, in order to prevent any single apparatus from carrying out a coup-d'etat. Arafat was able to negotiate, sign a peace agreement and get his people to accept it.

But Arafat was pilloried by Israel as a monster, imprisoned in the Mukata'ah and, in the end, murdered. The Palestinian public elected Mahmoud Abbas as his successor, hoping that he would get from the Americans and the Israelis what they had refused to give to Arafat.

If the leaders in Washington and Jerusalem had indeed been interested in peace, they would have hastened to sign a peace agreement with Abbas, who had declared that he was ready to accept the same far-reaching compromise as Arafat. The Americans and the Israelis heaped on him all conceivable praise and rebuffed him on every concrete issue.

They did not allow Abbas even the slightest and most miserable achievement. Ariel Sharon plucked his feathers and then sneered at him as "a featherless chicken". After the Palestinian public had patiently waited in vain for Bush to move, it voted for Hamas, in the desperate hope of achieving by violence what Abbas has been unable to achieve by diplomacy.

The Israeli leaders, both military and political, were overjoyed. They were interested in undermining Abbas, because he enjoyed Bush's confidence and because his stated position made it harder to justify their refusal to enter substantive negotiations. They did everything to demolish Fatah. To ensure this, they arrested Marwan Barghouti, the only person capable of keeping Fatah together.

The victory of Hamas suited their aims completely. With Hamas one does not have to talk, to offer withdrawal from the occupied territories and the dismantling of settlements. Hamas is that contemporary monster, a "terrorist" organization, and with terrorists there is nothing to discuss.

SO WHY were people in Jerusalem not satisfied this week? And why did they decide "not to interfere"?

True, the media and the politicians, who have helped for years to incite the Palestinian organizations against each other, showed their satisfaction and boasted "we told you so". Look how the Arabs kill each other. Ehud Barak was right, when he said years ago that our country is "a villa in the jungle".

But behind the scenes, voices of embarrassment, even anxiety, could be heard.

The turning of the Gaza Strip into Hamastan has created a situation for which our leaders were not ready. What to do now? To cut off Gaza altogether and let the people there starve to death? To establish contacts with Hamas? To occupy Gaza again, now that it has become one big tank trap? To ask the UN to station international troops there - and if so, how many countries would be crazy enough to risk their soldiers in this hell?

Our government has worked for years to destroy Fatah, in order to avoid the need to negotiate an agreement that would inevitably lead to the withdrawal from the occupied territories and the settlements there. Now, when it seems that this aim has been achieved, they have no idea what to do about the Hamas victory.

They comfort themselves with the thought that it cannot happen in the West Bank. There, Fatah reigns. There Hamas has no foothold. There our army has already arrested most of Hamas' political leaders. There Abbas is still in power.

Thus speak the generals, with the generals' logic. But in the West Bank, too, Hamas did win a majority in the last elections. There, too, it is only a matter of time before the population loses its patience. They see the expansion of the settlements, the Wall, the incursions of our army, the targeted assassinations, the nightly arrests. They will explode.

Successive Israeli governments have destroyed Fatah systematically, cut off the feet of Abbas and prepared the way for Hamas. They can't pretend to be surprised.

WHAT TO DO? To go on boycotting Abbas or to provide him with arms, to enable him to fight for us against Hamas? To go on depriving him of any political achievement or to throw him some crumbs at long last? And anyway, isn't it too late?

(And on the Syrian front: to go on paying lip service to peace while sabotaging all the efforts of Bashar Assad to start negotiations? To negotiate secretly, despite American objections? Or continue doing nothing at all?)

At present, there is no policy, and no government which could determine a policy.

So who will save us? Ehud Barak?

Barak's victory in this week's Labor Party leadership run-off has turned him almost automatically into the next Minister of Defense. His strong personality and his experience as Chief of Staff and Prime Minister assure him of a dominant position in the restructured government. Olmert will deal with the area in which he is an unmatched master - party machinations. But Barak will have a decisive influence on policy.

In the government of the two Ehuds, Ehud Barak will decide on matters of war and peace.

Until now, practically all his actions have had negative results. He came very close to an agreement with Assad the father and escaped at the last moment. He withdrew the Israeli army from South Lebanon, but without speaking with Hizbullah, which took over. He compelled Arafat to come to Camp David, insulted him there and declared that we have no partner for peace. This dealt a death blow to the chances of peace, a blow which still paralyzes the Israeli public. He has boasted that his real intention was to "unmask" Arafat. He was more of a failed Napoleon than an Israeli de Gaulle.

Will the Ethiopian change his skin, the leopard his spots? Hard to believe.

IN THE dramas of William Shakespeare, there is frequently a comic interlude at tense moments. And not only there.

Shimon Peres, the person who in 55 years of political activity had never won an election, did the impossible this week: he got elected President of Israel.

Many years ago, I entitled an article about him "Mr. Sisyphus", because again and again he had almost reached the threshold of success, and success had evaded him. Now he might feel like thumbing his nose at the gods after reaching the summit, but - alas - without the boulder. The office of the president is devoid of content and jurisdiction. A hollow politician in a hollow position.

Now everybody expects a flurry of activity at the president's palace. There will certainly be peace conferences, meetings of personalities, high-sounding declarations and illustrious plans. In short - much ado about nothing.

The practical result is that Olmert's position has been strengthened. He has succeeded in installing Peres in the President's office and Barak in the Ministry of Defense. In the short term, Olmert's position is assured.

And in the meantime, the experiment in Gaza continues, Hamas is taking over and the trio - Ehud 1, Ehud 2 and Shimon Peres are shedding crocodile tears.

Read also, 1967: A Personal Testimony

demos

Every time I read or see something about what is happening now in Palestine I feel depressed.
First we don't know exactly what is happening besides 'the news' we receive from BBC and CNN and Al Jazeera. I also read some Arabic news papers: Al Hayat, Al Sharq al Awsat and An Nahar. The first two are Saudi-owned and the third is Maronite! I have to be suspicious of what I see and read.
I learnt to hate Hamas when I was in Beirut (1978-1982) where the PLO was around the corner and Hamas was not there; I was told that it is Israel who created Hamas to oppose the PLO. Now I have my doubts when I see how Israel and the West and the Egyptians and the Saudis are praising Abbas! They all opposed Hamas when they won the elections. I think the common Palestinian there - in Gaza and the West bank - feels as confused as myself.
Abbas put his cards with the Western Camp, but he will go home with nothing as the loser in "The weakest Link" takes less than thirty pieces of silver. The Gaza camp facing both Israel and Egypt and soon will be starving.
The Western Camp of Abbas have food to offer, but nothing more for sure.
I do not go now to any demonstrations as I used to before. Abbas is NO GOOD and Hamas ALSO no good.
I still have my heart with the people in Gaza and the West bank... only my heart with the people in these two camps!

On suppressive writings, Part 2

To the innocents who believe that writers are ALWAYS progressives!

During the Cold War, there was Vietnam war (if you still remember) when the American Army was burning Vietnamese villages with villagers trapped inside. There was a breathtaking photo of a young Vietnamese girl running naked, her body in flames.
At that time a great and well known American writer, John Steinbeck, went to Vietnam and wrote a book. In 1964, Steinbeck was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom by President Johnson.
In 1967, at the behest of News day magazine, Steinbeck went to Vietnam to report on the war there. Thinking that the Vietnam War was a heroic venture, he was considered a Hawk for his position on that war. Both his sons served in Vietnam prior to his death.

Steinbeck wrote about the beauty of the American aeroplanes in the Vietnamese sky and "all the Americans Boys" who were fighting the Communist dragon.
I still like to read him but I cannot forget that or forgive him!
In reading Brothers Karamazov without having in mind that the book is one of the greatest pieces of classical Russian prose, then one will discover the deep and clear 'morals' of Dostoevsky who sent the innocent officer into exile with his lover, and had the stingy father killed off by his 'problematic' son as a punishment for his sleeping around.
I will mention a real story that happened about two months ago in Egypt when some poets informed the authorities about a colleague of theirs whose poem had been published in a magazine; the magazine was been taken off the market and the poet is threatened with jail!
We all now what the 'Union of Writers' in the eastern block did to certain writers who did not reflect official opinion, and how some writers work as informers against other writers.
There are a lot of studies on the complicated relationship between the writer and authority, especially in the third world.
So, writers are creatures that alternate between being gods and devils. .. gods in the way they want to punish and be rewarded, telling people a lot of things NOT TO DO, and devils in the way they 'show' people forbidden fruits.
I prefer to be a devil!

Raouf

Inmates' words: The poems of Guantanamo

From The Independent
21 June 2007
Leonard Doyle reports

The publication of an anthology of works, composed on paper cups by detainees, provides a harrowing insight into the torments and fading hopes of prisoners.

[...] The thoughts of the inmates are considered so potentially dangerous by the US military that they are not even trusted with pen and paper. The only exception is an occasional 10-minute period when they are allowed to write to their families via the International Red Cross. Even then the words they write are heavily censored.

The 380 or so inmates of Guantanamo include some avowed Islamic militants and al-Qa'ida fighters. But the majority are there because they were swept up by the police and intelligence services of other countries working on behalf of the US. In their despair many of these detainees have turned to verse to express their innermost feelings.

Others have attempted or committed suicide. One of the poets is a Bahraini man who has been held in solitary confinement since the end of 2003. He has tried to kill himself 12 times while in the prison. On one occasion, he was found by his lawyer, hanging by his neck and bleeding from a gash to his arm.

There are other tragic tales behind the verses. The "cup poems" of Guantanamo speak of the strange absence of flowers in spring, the bangles worn by young women and handcuffs on the militants.

Fragments survived in the memory of the poet Shaikh Abdurraheem Muslim Dost after his eventual release, but thousands of lines of poetry he wrote in prison have disappeared.

Dost, a respected religious scholar, poet, and journalist - and author of nearly 20 books - until his arrest in 2001, spent nearly three years in Guantanamo with his brother. Sent home two years ago, the brothers were picked up by Pakistani intelligence and they too disappeared. Nothing has been heard of them since.

Aami al Haj, a Sudanese national, was a journalist covering the war in Afghanistan for al-Jazeera television, when, in 2001, he was arrested stripped of his passport and press card and handed over to US forces. He was tortured at both Bagram air base and Kandahar before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay. The US military says he was a financial courier for Chechen rebels and that he assisted al-Qa'ida but has offered no evidence to support the claims.

"When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees, Hot tears covered my face," he wrote from his prison cell. "They have monuments to liberty And freedom of opinion, which is well and good. But I explained to them, that Architecture is not justice."

THE POEMS

Humiliated In The Shackles

By Sami al Hajj

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,

Hot tears covered my face.

When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed

A message for my son.

Mohammad, I am afflicted.

In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.

The oppressors are playing with me,

As they move freely around the world.

They ask me to spy on my countrymen,

Claiming it would be a good deed.

They offer me money and land,

And freedom to go where I please.

Their temptations seize

My attention like lightning in the sky.

But their gift is an empty snake,

Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,

They have monuments to liberty

And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.

But I explained to them that

Architecture is not justice.

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,

And terrorize them daily.

Bush, beware.

The world recognizes an arrogant liar.

To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.

I am homesick and oppressed.

Mohammad, do not forget me.

Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.

I was humiliated in the shackles.

How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?

After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,

How can I write poetry?

My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,

Violent with passion.

I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'.

I am overwhelmed with apprehension.

Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.

Lord, grant success to the righteous.

An Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al Hajj, a Sudanese, was visiting his brother in Damascus after the 11 September attacks when he got a call asking him to go to Pakistan to cover the impending war in Afghanistan. Instead, he ended up in Guantanamo where he claims he has been severely and regularly beaten, scarring his face.

Death Poem

By Jumah al Dossari

Take my blood.

Take my death shroud and

The remnants of my body.

Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,

To the judges and

To the people of conscience,

Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,

Of this innocent soul.

Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,

Of this wasted, sinless soul,

Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors of peace".

Arrested in Pakistan and held in solitary confinement since 2003, Jumah al Dossari's mental wellbeing is worrying his lawyers. The 33-year old Bahraini national has tried to kill himself 12 times since his incarceration in Guantanamo. On one visit, his lawyer found him hanging in a bedsheet noose, with a deep gash in one wrist. In a letter Mr Dossari wrote in 2005, he said: "The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people and I have been destroyed."

Is It True?

By Osama Abu Kadir

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?

Is it true that birds will migrate home again?

Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?

It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.

But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?

Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?

I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.

To be with my children, each one part of me;

To be with my wife and the ones that I love;

To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.

I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.

But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?

We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.

Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still

Justice and compassion remain in this world!

Shortly after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir travelled to Pakistan to perform charity work in Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for jihad in Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near Jalalabad in November 2001. In his native Jordan, he was known as a dedicated family man who worked as a truck driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number 651.

"You kick us out of Jaffa then wonder how come we're born elsewhere."

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries
By Suad Amiry
Granta Books

Suad Amiry is almost certainly slightly mad, and for this I love her; she is stubborn, reckless, emotional and confrontational. For the Israelis she poses a problem: she's an Arab woman, sure, but what kind of kick-ass, pain in the ass damn Arab woman is this - she does not seem to be oppressed by her husband, she has no hoards of children, she's highly educated and she takes the piss, making their unholy job even more tiresome.
This is Suad in a bad mood at Tel Aviv airport, summer 1995:

"The security man handed me and my passport over to a security woman sitting in a room behind a desk, then disappeared, leaving me alone with her.
She flipped through my passport, and asked assertively, 'And what were you doing in London?'
'I went dancing,' I answered, looking her straight in the eye, with an expressionless, tired face, and a voice even more assertive than hers.
'Do you think you're being funny?' she said, her voice louder and more serious.
'No. And do YOU have any problem with dancing?' My voice now much lower and more sarcastic.
'What was the purpose of your visit to London?'
'Dancing,' I insisted.
As we went back and forth, she started to lose her temper and I started to lose my sleepiness."

A large male security officer is summoned:

"What were you doing in London?' asked the male officer, extremely aggressively, while looking at me straight in the eye.
'Dancing,' I insisted.
'You know that failing to cooperate with us on security matters will result in your arrest?'
'Fine', I replied, quickly resigned to this ridiculous verdict, 'but I need to go out and inform poor Ibrahim, who has been waiting outside the airport for hours to pick me up.'
'No, you are not permitted to go; and who is Ibrahim? Is he a relative?'
I was not in the mood and I did not want to tell the two security officers that Ibrahim was not exactly a relative, as none of my relatives, and neither my husband from Ramallah, are allowed to come pick me up from the airport.
[...] 'You cannot prevent me from going out to tell Ibrahim to leave. It is not fair to make him wait any more [...]
'No, you cannot leave!', screamed the male officer, losing his temper.
'Watch me do it', I said, as I turned around and started walking out of the interrogation room [...]
'Ibrahim these are security officers. It is along story. In short, I am under arrest and I just came to let you know that you should not wait for me any longer [...]
'Arrested?' enquired Ibrahim, shocked.
'Don't worry Ibrahim. It is not a big deal' I reassured him. 'I have been arrested because I told them I went dancing in London,' I added.
'Dancing? Did you say dancing? Ibrahim was now in total shock.
Oh God, that was all I needed. It seemed that Ibrahim was even more troubled by my dancing in London than the Israeli security officers. What can I say? I have always believed that the occupation ruined the spirit of both Israelis and Palestinians."

"There is no such thing as Shari'a."

I had always been an admirer of Marieme Hélie-Lucas, since coming across her brilliantly and sharply written article: What is your tribe? Women's struggles and the construction of Muslimness. Now I return to her writing, via work, and am again persuaded that she is one of the boldest feminist thinkers of her age. Here is an excerpt from one of her articles in response to Marian Boyd's misguided call in 2006 for Muslim communities in Canada to be allowed to arbitrate cases in a Shari'a court; you can read it in full on the WLUML web site.

Women from migrant descent vs Muslim fundamentalists in Europe and North America: struggles and unexpected new obstacles
13/03/2006
Canada has just been the battle field for Muslim fundamentalists trying to impose religious arbitration in family matters. This did not happen in a vacuum: European countries too have witnessed similar initiatives recently, with a similar focus on women. This is also the way they proceeded in our countries. For they do know that patriarchy is universal and that western governments , like our own governments, will be happy and relieved to trade women's' rights for keeping social unrest at bay. Indeed the Canadian government decided to outlaw religious arbitration, indeed women won a battle, an important one. But they have not won the war. There are two lessons that we can learn from this encounter:

On the one hand, despite the large mobilization of Canadian women, the voices of those who supported Muslim religious arbitration - in the name of equity between all religions, regardless of the probable content of such an arbitration, regardless of which forces were pushing for it - were well heard and well received by the political authorities.
[...] why is it that women from the Muslim community sometimes find it so difficult to take a clear cut position regarding fundamentalists demands vs women human rights? We cannot ignore here the double bind in which they are caught. Religiously minded or not, they see, just as we all do, the growing racism, discrimination, exclusion, marginalisation that so-called Muslims face, and more so after 9-11. As members of this community, they too face these difficulties, as well as being sensitive to what their male folks face. They face all this both for themselves and for their community. When they stand up in defence of their women human rights, they are immediately labelled traitors. Traitors to their community, to their family, to their culture, to their religion, - but also, and not less excruciating, traitors to the oppressed of the world, to the revolution, etc... For those of us who are atheists and come from social movements, condemnation comes additionally from a larger and larger section of the Left and of human rights organizations in which we still recognize ourselves that gives precedence to the defense of communities over the defence of women.

For those of us who are religious, condemnation comes additionally from authorities of a faith that is dear to their heart. This is why we should collectively praise women from 'Muslim' descent who have allied in Canada, from the faith based Canadian Council of Muslim Women to the secular 'No sharia campaign', in a fruitful coalition. This is a very difficult situation indeed, but no different from that of battered women or incest survivors who stand up against their aggressors and denounce a husband, a father or a brother... they too are often seen as betraying their folks, and it is definitely equally hard on them. But those who take this courageous position should indeed be supported by other women in a careful and respectful way: I do not include as respectful support the totalizing and homogeneizing condemnation of "Islam" and of "Muslims" (rather than of fundamentalists) by ethnocentric westerners who are convinced that they are ahead of civilization and a model for all. Support as well as criticism should clearly be politicized, on the basis of shared values rather than communities.

The growing ambiguity of main stream international human rights organizations, of a large section of the Left and even of a vocal current within feminists viz fundamentalists should be a matter of concern to many of us.

Some months ago when a group of us, from Muslim countries and communities, visited Montreal and Ottawa in support of the coalition against religious arbitration in Canada, i was struck with the way women from CCMW spoke up against the proposed legalization of arbitration, while some of the women who were obviously not from 'Muslim' descent worded their concerns carefully and somehow sheepishly. As if "Muslims" were under attack, rather than fundamentalists. Marion Boyd herself was considered a feminist till such time her report proved that she too was prepared to trade women's rights for the rights of minorities to oppress their women. This sends me back into memories of the time, in the seventies, when some feminists in Europe defended publicly female genital mutilation in the name of cultural rights of minorities... It took, in France for instance, the courage of women 'traitors' from communities where FGM is practiced to send perpetrators to jail ( unfortunately they were women, of course, - which added to the above listed reasons to condemn these fighters of girls and women's rights not to be sexually mutilated) to stop FGM to take place on French soil.

Similarly, human rights organizations have repeatedly taken wrong positions on question of rights of women. We raised issues around their exclusive focus on state responsibility for the past twenty years at least, pointing at the fact that non state actors ( among which fundamentalists) are increasingly important in inciting or fomenting wars and armed conflicts, imposing non chosen identities, curtailing of basic freedoms and women's rights; we claim that it is time to demand direct accountability from non state actors. Human rights stance is that the State should use due diligence to enforce human rights and control non state actors. But as soon as states attempt to do so, human rights organizations call upon them for infringing upon minority rights, cultural rights, religious rights, etc... There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this will happen again in Canada when Muslim fundamentalists will challenge in court (national and/or international ones) the government decision to refuse religious arbitration in family matters. Human rights organizations now have to be taken to task by feminists and to be confronted with their own contradictions.

Finally, we need to point at the alliances that are built between Muslim fundamentalists and various political forces of the Right and the extreme Right. One of course expects religious fundamentalists to support each other beyond religious difference. And of course that is the case: after the attack on French secularism on the question of veiling girls in state schools, known Jewish and Christian fundamentalist organizations took position in support of demands from 'Muslims', ignoring the outcry from the progressive scholars of Islam and many women from Muslim descent who went public in the media to defend French secularism. Feminists had their first taste of these unholy alliance during the Cairo World Conference on Population, where the Vatican and El Azhar University ( considered the highest religious authority) colluded in actions against freedom of contraception and abortion.

You can read another of her articles, Veil-s, here.

First came the 'End 40 years of Israeli Occupation protest' then came the drinks & the walking tipsily thro Soho with placard: FREEDOM FOR PALESTINE

Ruba, Sultana, the Palestinian flag and My Big Nose (courtesy of Matt Sheldon - post protest photographer extraordinaire)

On suppressive writings

In answer to Elly's question...
A writer can be as suppressive as his or her society.

See Retrospect and Prospect, published in Al-Ahram Weekly here

Sir Salman

Suddenly Salman Rushdie became a "SIR". Why? Because some arsehole advised Queen Elizabeth the second to knight him.

The poor silly British commissioner in Pakistan was mumbling yesterday on the BBC something about how we all respect Islam and the knighthood is for his achievement in Literature.

Bullshit. Salman is a mediocre writer and if you have any doubts read John le Carre's article on Salman Rushdie in the Guardian.

The real Reason is that the queen - as silly as she is - has entered the heated battle against Iran and Islam. Just to tell Muslims around the world again and again "fuck you... we are still the masters of this world."

On writing

When I studied theatre in Warsaw in the 70s, the teacher of theatre directing would chose the most awful plays in the city and ask us to see them and write about them. Later we would discuss the weak points of the play, then he would tell us: now you know how to put a bad play on the stage!

When I was writing Ithaca, my latest book based on the Queen Boat scandal of homosexuals in Egypt (see Human Rights Watch In a Time of Torture), I had to stop writing and undergo an operation for the prostate. After a week in hospital I needed about three months to return slowly to my writing and to my book. I tried to put into it all my experience on writing a complicated text that contains many levels. The motto of my Polish teacher was always before me. Now I'm answering a long interview by mail on my writings in general, and my ideas about why I wrote Ithaca - a book which provoked a lot of hostility on the Internet. The interview in Madny with al Ansari on what he called the culture of hate in Arab-Muslim countries gave me a deep insight which I have always had, but had never expressed as accurately and completely as he.

Al Ansari also emphasised the principal of denial, which is a major characteristic of Arab-Muslim behaviour; that we are great and good people but the West and Israel are after us and they are the ones who are plotting the mass killing in Iraq and the clashes between Egyptian Muslims and Copts!

What has this to do with writing? A lot because BAD WRITING is a reflection on the depth of a writer - the corruption and fantasy; and a writer is the mirror of his or her society, but also a harsh critic of this society.

The French Arabist Richard Jacquemond wrote his PhD on Egyptian writers and their writings in the sixties, and he also confirms my ideas on the writer which is a SUPERUSER.
Raouf
[what the hell is a superuser Raouf? I didn't know, but I linked it to a subversive-looking paper anyway Elly]

Girls in a Field

Girls in a Field. Photo by Vanley Burke

From the Channel 4 web site:
"In 1960 a 10-year-old boy from Saint Thomas, Jamaica received a package from his family, far away in Handsworth, Birmingham where they had migrated to start a family business. Inside he found a Kodak Brownie 127 camera that was to transform his world. His name was Vanley Burke."

What or who has stolen my sleep? Part 3

A personal reason

I am thinking about it. My tired is too head...

What or who has stolen my sleep? Part 2

A more personal reason:
I woke up from my shallow sleep of murderous imagery with a realisation that someone I know not too well has multiple traumas - that I and others around here have to cease using inadequate terminology for her, such as 'depression, paranoia'. I now see that her life stretching back 45 years is one of resentment, fear, disappointment, suspicion and cultural disorientation; left isolated, this experience has been no less than traumatic.
She is a cowardly, neurotic mother who abandoned a daughter with special needs in a shopping mall, fleeing the scene before the police arrived.
She is a woman of 45 years of age who was once beautiful and highly desirable and still attractive looks at my younger, slim body with more than avowed envy - with vague distress.
She is pretty Syrian girl brought up in Kuwait, largely confined to the house by a paranoid father.
She is a resentful daughter forced to witness the constant arguments of her parents whose contempt for each other grows each year.
She is the eldest of 5 daughters; where is the son that was supposed to arrive if not instead of her, after her?
She is suddenly 32 and unmarried.
Now she is pregnant from the handsome rich husband who is leaving her.
Now she has the child and refuses to admit that her own daughter has 'special needs'; she is not the child the woman was expecting, is partly a stranger to her, who as she grows up partly rejected, partly neglected, partly clung to, becomes hellishly annoying - talking incessantly, repeating the same questions over and over.
Now she moves to England with another handsome man.
Now the man leaves her and returns to Kuwait.
She becomes slightly mad alone in Liverpool with her daughter and the police and social services grow sick of her and her inability to be the responsible, integrated immigrant.
She fails to fully comprehend the seriousness of her actions, whilst the authorities fail to give her any respite from her daughter.
She resents other Arab and black immigrants for giving her, a blond Alawi Syrian a bad name.
She resents and blames everyone around her. She has forgiven nothing.
She goes shopping with her daughter and the girl refuses to come into the supermarket, so she waits outside. Soon the girl is telling passers-by that her mother hits her. They surround her and call the police. Her mother emerges from the chilly supermarket to see a foreign crowd with distrust, perhaps loathing, in their eyes, protecting her daughter from herself. She tries to take the girl home, but the crowd stop her and tell her to wait for the police.
The woman flees the shopping mall and takes refuge in a friend's house

What or who has stolen my sleep?

I dream of men blown apart; I can't sleep any more and perhaps that is is out of guilt and a shame that should not be mine, and that only serves to crush my mind and soul, not liberate it. I'm not sure; I only know I will always be ignorant, but that is not an excuse to do or say nothing.
Two of the less personal reasons why I don't sleep:

1/ Blair's treachery
Cameron Duodu
AFP
A la veille de quitter ses fonctions à la tête du gouvernement britannique, Tony Blair s'est rendu en Afrique pour une tournée d'adieu (du 26 mai au 1er juin dernier). L'occasion pour le quotidien sud-africain City Press de Johanesburg de tirer un bilan, très sévère, de l'action de Blair envers le continent noir.
Tony Blair, Pretoria, 1er juin 2007

I AM SURE the question above was asked by many as they watched British Prime Minister Tony Blair strutting about last week. He was basking in the hospitality of South Africa and grinning from ear to ear, exuding insincerity from every pore.
It’s a pity he now has to be mocked. Next to the late Harold Macmillan – whose visit to Africa in 1960 affected the future direction of the continent, with his “winds of change” speech to the apartheid Parliament in Cape Town – Tony Blair should have been the British prime minister best remembered by Africans.
I can still recall seeing a boyish Blair in shirt sleeves, strutting about on a cocoa farm barely 16km from my birthplace in Ghana in February 2002.
He found a truth and uttered it, to my heart’s delight – Ghana should be selling chocolates, not cocoa beans.
I also remember wondering in March 2005 whether the report of Blair’s Commission for Africa would make Britain do anything concrete about the problems of the continent it had milked for centuries instead of conveniently passing the ball to that loose entity, the G8. On both occasions I – like the rest of the world – was deceived by razzmatazz.
Good soundbites from Blair were made particularly striking because the unshuttable mouth of Bob Geldof could be discerned in one instance: “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world.”
But has there been any delivery? Very little. Only Britain’s action in helping to halt the slaughter in Sierra Leone stands as an unqualified success. The noises made on behalf of Africa at the G8 have not turned into reality. Ghanaian cocoa farmers are still wondering why Blair floated the idea of a chocolate industry in Ghana and forgot that their country would need an outlay of capital well beyond its means to create this industry.
Cocoa and coffee farmers are still being buffeted by the fluctuations in price that result from the activities of the commodity merchants and speculators in the “City” of London, whom Blair presumably admires. Even worse, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, who serves with Blair on his Commission for Africa, is contributing to the murderous chaos in Somalia. He invaded the country at the instigation of Blair’s principal paramour, George Bush. Blair could not summon enough humanity to warn two of his allies – Bush and Zenawi – that invading a failed state like Somalia would only lengthen that ugly “scar on the face of Africa”.
And, surprise, surprise – apparently Olusegun Obasanjo, who has just presided over the most fraudulent election in Nigeria, will be invited to place integrity at the service of the Blair commission. What sort of service has Blair done to the struggle against corruption in Africa with his inept halting of the British Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribes allegedly paid to a Saudi prince by British armaments firm BAE Systems? Add all that to the blow Blair has dealt to international lawby supporting the US’s illegal invasion of Iraq and you’ll see that the man’s place in history could be quite villainous.
International law is extremely important to Africans because we have fragile defence systems. So much so that the Mark Thatchers of this world can plot to capture for themselves the entire oil reserves of an African country.
The UN is Africa’s only shield against such machinations. Yet, in his collusion with Bush over the invasion of Iraq, Blair set an abominable precedent that tears up all the guarantees of safety the UN provides to weak countries.
Not since Suez in 1956 has Britain’s name been attached to such infamy. At Suez, US President Dwight Eisenhower held back Britain’s Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, and his French counterpart, Guy Mollet, and prevented them from turning Egypt into an Israeli province. Instead of returning the favour and restraining Bush, Blair held his hand and dipped it into the blood of countless Iraqis.
Africa mustn’t forget this act of treachery for, as John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire unto himself.”

Duodu si the former editor of the Ghana edition of Drum magazine. He is a playwright and commentator based in London

2/ The people of Palestine must finally be allowed to determine their own fate
Karma Nabulsi
Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian

The drivers of violence in Gaza are clearly external. When all Palestinians can vote for sovereign rule, peace will be within reach
There is nothing uglier and more brutal to the human spirit, nothing more lethal to that universal hope for freedom, than to see a people struggling for liberty for such a long time begin to kill each other. How and why did we get here? Above all: how do we get out of here? These are the questions everyone watching events unfold in Gaza and the West Bank are asking themselves. But before answering them, it is essential to understand just what we are witnessing.

This is not at its heart a civil war, nor is it an example of the upsurge of regional Islamism. It is not reducible to an atavistic clan or fratricidal blood-letting, nor to a power struggle between warring factions. This violence cannot be characterised as a battle between secular moderates who seek a negotiated settlement and religious terrorist groups. And this is not, above all, a miserable situation that has simply slipped unnoticed into disaster.

The many complex steps that led us here today were largely the outcome of the deliberate policies of a belligerent occupying power backed by the US. As the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Alvaro de Soto, remarked in his confidential report leaked last week in this paper: "The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much 'I like this violence', referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured."

How did we get here? The institutions created in occupied Palestine in the 1990s were shaped to bring us to this very point of collapse. The Palestinian Authority, created through negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993, was not meant to last more than five years - just until the institutions of an independent state were built. Instead, its capacities were frozen and it was co-opted into performing the role of a security agency for the Israelis, who were still occupying Palestine by military force, and serving as a disbursement agency for the US and EU's funding of that occupation. The PA had not attained a single one of the freedoms it was meant to provide, including the most important one, the political liberty of a self-determining sovereign body.

Why did we get here? Once the exact nature of its purpose emerged, the Palestinians began to resist this form of external control. Israel then invaded the West Bank cities again and put President Yasser Arafat's compound under a two-year siege, which ended with his death. Under those conditions of siege the international "reform" process created a new institution of a prime minister's office and attempted to unify the security apparatus under it, rather than that of the president, whom they could no longer control. Mahmoud Abbas was the first prime minister, and the Israeli- and US-backed Fatah strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, was appointed head of security. After the death of Arafat, Abbas was nominated to the leadership of the PLO, and directly elected as the president of the PA.

Arafat had followed the strategy of all successful liberation movements: a combination of resistance and negotiation until the conclusion of a comprehensive peace treaty. Abbas's strategy was of an entirely different order: no resistance in any form and a complete reliance on the good faith of the Israelis. After a year of achieving nothing - indeed Ariel Sharon refused to negotiate with him and Israeli colonisation was intensified - the Palestinian people's support for this humiliating policy of submission wore thin. Hamas, polling about 20% in previous years, suddenly won 43% of the vote in 2006.

This popular reaction was a response to the failure of Abbas's strategy as much as the failure of Fatah to present any plausible national programme whatsoever. The Palestinians thus sought representation that would at least reflect their condition of occupation and dispossession. Although the elections were recognised as free and fair, the US and Britain immediately took the lead in applying sanctions against the Hamas government, denying aid - which was only needed in the first place because the occupation had destroyed the economy - and refusing to deal with it until it accepted what had become, under these new circumstances, impossible "conditions".

The US administration continued to treat Fatah as if it had won the election rather than lost it - funding, arming, and directly encouraging agents within it to reverse the outcome of that democratic election by force. The Palestinian president brought pressure to bear on Hamas to change its position on recognition of Israel. Palestinians refused to participate in this externally driven coup - indeed, the vast majority of Fatah cadres rejected outright an enterprise so clearly directed at destroying the Palestinian body politic. Both the prisoners' document and the Mecca agreement signed in Saudi Arabia creating a national unity government took place because Palestinian society insisted on a national framework. Yet a small group has brought us to this point. The outcome is what we have before us today, similar to what the Americans were seeking to create in Iraq: the total exclusion of democratic practices and principles, the attempt to impose an oligarchy on a fragmented political society, a weakened and terrorised people, a foreign rule through warlords and strongmen.

How do we get out of here? For the west, the path is both obvious and simple. It needs to allow the Palestinians their own representation. It can look to the terms of the Mecca agreement to see the shape that would take, and to the 2006 prisoners' document for the political platform the Palestinians hold. It needs to urgently convene a real international peace conference, which no one has attempted since 1991, as recommended in the Baker commission's report on the Iraq war, de Soto's end of mission report, and as championed by President Jimmy Carter. And it needs only to look to the Beirut Arab peace initiative to find everything it has been seeking, if indeed it is seeking peace.

For the Palestinians, the path is also clear: we have come to the end of the challenging experiment of self-rule under military occupation. We now need to dissolve the PA, mobilise to convene direct elections to our only national parliament, the Palestine National Council, in order to enfranchise the entire political spectrum of Palestinians, and thereby recapture the PLO, transforming it into the popular and democratic institution it once had a chance of becoming. This is already a popular demand of all Palestinians. Palestinians in exile must take their turn again in lifting the siege inside Palestine, as the inside did for the outside after the almost total destruction of the PLO in 1982 in Lebanon and the siege of the refugee camps there in 1986: we are one people. The Palestinians have a long history of struggle in which each generation has had to break out of the coercive prison imposed by British colonial, Arab, Israeli, and now American rule, and we will do it again.

Karma Nabulsi is fellow in politics and international relations at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University.

Why is Tariq Ramadan so sexy?

This mp3 of a lecture in Rotterdam, Sense of Humour, is from Tariq's web site: www.tariqramadan.com

Ta'reeban & Alienation

There is a crazy Egyptian expression "Ta'reeban" which means: apparently or nearly or something like that. You ask somebody "do you know how to drive an aeroplane?" and he answers "ta'reeban". That drives me nuts. Every time I return to Egypt on my yearly trip in winter for the last 15 years or so I feel more alienated than ever.

Not because I become less patient with everything but also because I do not have a place in the mainstream of the society or in any stream...

That is also true about my situation in Holland - though in Egypt I am supposed to share a language and collective memory and skin colour, things which I do not share with people in Holland. It seems that Edward Said wrote about the same experience in his book Out of Place (pity I only read a review of it in NYROB), and Elly told me that she is feeling the same in England.

So, why is that? Why can we not "fit" in any place?

The Japanese anthropologist made up an word, "uprooted" to fit the unfitted.
What we need are: 1/ a good and well-lit airy room for work and sleep; 2/ a limited company of select human beings; 3/ enough money to move around and buy some books and see some films and to eat modestly healthy food and some alcohol from time to time; 4/ a loving relationship without ties; 5/ less or no responsibilities... Then we can manage!

A Crouch Hill Diary

"I had to leave my home. No one is my enemy I hope."

Elly, 32, is a woman who lives on a steep hill in North London with her vague, suspicious housemates, no husband and no children. She has a degree in this, then that.

Thursday
Woke up to the sound of my alarm. Pushed the snooze button. 10 minutes later woke up to the sound of the alarm, and so on, until looking at alarm, leapt up in alarm.

Strode energetically to the bus stop (I’m told I walk too fast) and waited for overloaded bus. Portuguese woman and I exchanged meaningful remarks about how the bus is always full to bursting, but kind Somali bus driver let us stand in the front next to his bullet proof window. We immediately hit traffic and stopped completely. Pretty black teenage school girls started pressing the emergency exit button above back door. Driver pressed his own button somewhere to counter their button. School girls started shouting ‘Let us off the fucking bus, driver.” I exchanged more meaningful glances with Portuguese women that meant ‘aren’t children horrible these days’; I vaguely remembered swearing at my own mother, but thought how nicely brought up I am now I’m 32. Bus broke down. Ran down the road so as not to encounter extreme wrath of my elder sister. Found her in pajamas holding a grinning Safiya in her arms. Hugged and hugged my beloved niece, and set about staining my top with porridge, and saying, “where’s the cat, where’s the cat”; she knows that she has a cat and so turns her head around looking for Perdita (have previously discussed with my sister how Safiya might grow up thinking she has a cat called ‘Predator’), and so counter-productively away from the spoon holding her breakfast. Must rethink distraction strategy.

Morning continues with my sister shouting, threatening, humiliating and punishing man on the other end of phone for the failure of her broadband connection. She displays much anger and despair and Safiya and I cower in the kitchen. I worry about the man on the other end of the phone in Bangalore. Sister finds out she does have broadband connection. I make lunch dragging Safiya around the kitchen as she is clinging to my trouser legs. We throw potato at each other and laugh. Then we escape to Starbucks which I am boycotting but it has big comfortable chairs. We meet up with Carl who is terrified of babies. Safiya points at him fondly, and grins at all the men around her. I ask Carl about Gaza; he tells me, then we talk about nothing much which is nice and I relax. Safiya leans her head on my shoulder occasionally. I love her, I love her, I love her.

I run for no. 210 bus to look at a room. The room is nice, the flat is grim, my potential flatmate keeps showing me bits of the flat, and immediately sitting and crossing his legs as if standing might be too formal. I can see he is gay, and suspect he dresses as woman which is confirmed by photos in his room. He is bookish, but a panicky reader – has to read the entire canon, he says. For goodness sake, I want to say. I drink tea and advise him not to do an MA in International Studies as what is he trying to prove – that he’s serious to people that believe they have a monopoly on seriousness? It is only after I leave the flat that I realize it had no sitting room. Next house, I nearly lick the floor – it is so magnificent: contemporary, yet classic, big yet bigger, fluffy cat yet too…

I forget I don’t know this woman who is showing me around and looks 40 and sounds Australian and turns out to be 28 from Hertfordshire. My room is Ikea and that is depressing but it overlooks the garden. Second flatmate, Simon, comes back, and he has hard-grind artist yellow teeth and gregarious manner. I think I’ll find him a bully, of the easy-going sort. There are only two rooms and we are four flat searchers around a table competing to be interesting. I feel tired and my mobile keeps ringing giving the false impression that I am probably annoying and popular in a debased way. I'm tired and keep yawning. I want the room and say I will take the room and know I have no money. Simon goes round the table asking what people do. These are the answers: Magazine designer; student in international studies; music label something or another; volunteer at Women Living under Muslim Laws. I wonder whether I won’t fit in. They will let us know. Stagger home exhausted and poor. Decide to sleep in other people's deserted beds for the rest of my life.

Friday
Wake up as I have done for a month now – feeling like if I haven’t slept at all or been drugged with a date rape horse tranquilizer, such are my nightmares. I begin packing in a strategic way, trying to discard and dispose of as much as possible – in the hope I can walk out of here with a little knapsack on my back like the piggy that went to town. Wander down Stroud Green road where I know I can find low-quality containers for shitty prices. I bargain with a man for a plastic box and save 49p. Then I go down the road seeking a phone unlocker, each time sent further down that road. A man does battle with my new-old mobile, and I perch obediently on a chair. Three girls come in wearing identical blue and white stripped shirts and I watch them, in awe of their imagined lives; two are black and one is Indian. I find the logo on their short shirt-sleeves and work out they have jobs at the bookies, William Hill. I think, ‘how grim, how nothing, how why.’ The fatter black girl asks to send a money gram of an indistinct number of thousands; and I guess, ‘how much, who too, how can she’. Her nails are long and wide and squared, and the extended cuticle is painted with yellow and pink stripes. How tough her nails must be and how different her life that she knows she has time in this world to get her nails painted by someone else - probably a friend now- in a salon, and I won’t admit I do.

Back up the road I go, passing through a chilled Tesco's Metro; Tesco not metropolitan: Local, No hope, No glamour, like a car wash at a local petrol station. I continue, now with readymade, nutritionally balanced meals in my plastic box. I see the woman in front of me and then see the beard in her face, and I see the man-woman pass me on her bicycle in a short black flared skirt so practical for cycling. Later further up the road, close to home, she passes me on her cycle and turns round and says ‘hello’ to me, and I know I must have stared earlier, and was sorry I did. Across the road a black man stared and then I noticed his tracksuit bottoms were pulled so high up on his body and that his face was not blissful so much as unaware. In this North London I occasionally remember to feel okay being indeterminately not so okay.

I went to my therapist and my problems – my family’s barely suppressed aggression, guilt and shame - were middle-class and catholic and protestant and Victorian, and it’s no surprise I suppose, so I am not particularly special. I said how tired I was, and she didn’t wonder why too much. Then I bought a lipstick and felt guilty, looked at shoes in a window and felt ashamed, travelled on the train home without a ticket and kept looking out for the ticket inspector along with the Polish guy next to me.

On the Silverlink Metro, a young girl is shouting to her brother a few seats in front, disturbing everyone who says nothing. I consider telling her off, and settle for putting my fingers to my lips, with a faux-smile to shush her kindly- this is so unnatural I blush. She stares at me. Her brother is by now next to her and she keeps calling to him as if he were still several seats in front. I sit up a little and see she is sitting next to her quiet mother. The brother wanders from seat to seat eating his piece of baguette and the girl doubles over into her seat and begins to cry – a sort of wail.

A Gaza Diary

'We couldn't leave our home. You don't know who is your enemy'
Saturday June 16, 2007
The Guardian

Mowaffaq Alami, 35, lives in an apartment in Gaza City with his wife Suha, his son Ismail, two, and his 16-month-old daughter Maya. He has a degree in sociology and psychology from Bethlehem University and runs the Gaza office of One Voice, an initiative that works to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sunday
We spent the night at my mother-in-law's eating dinner. We left around midnight and it was already clear on the street that something was going to happen. Militants were moving all around our area, which is called al-Nasser. My mother-in-law lives in an apartment about 100 metres away in a compound of 10 high-rise buildings. There are about 30 families living here, as well as a Fatah spokesman called Maher Miqdad. He's been wanted by Hamas since they won elections last year and there's always trouble there.

Monday
By morning no one was allowed to move on the streets. It was very dangerous. We could hear Kalashnikovs, rockets, bombs, all kinds of weapons. When we spoke to my mother-in-law, we could hear the fighting. Maher Miqdad's people were in his apartment, and Hamas men were on the roof of two buildings nearby shooting at him. Their weapons are made locally and they're not very accurate. Often they miss and other people get hurt or their houses get damaged. We call them stupid weapons.
We couldn't leave our home. Everything was closed, you don't know who is your enemy in the street.

Fortunately it was near the beginning of the month so everyone had just received their salary and had stocked up on food. Our electricity was down from the first night. I was only in contact with people on my cellphone and the batteries soon ran out. But at least it wasn't too hot, maybe God is still standing with our people because the weather, at least, was acceptable.

I have a transistor radio and we followed the radio stations: there are two that are close to Fatah and one close to Hamas. In some ways the propaganda war is more dangerous; it's something that attacks you psychologically. At home the family told me not to listen to the Hamas station. But I want to listen to both sides.

Tuesday
I received many calls from my mother-in-law's compound. The Hamas militants didn't allow ambulances to enter to take the injured away. We couldn't do anything, except to stay in contact with them. The next day the Hamas militants started to search all the homes in that compound, looking for weapons. It was a chance for some of the families to leave, so my mother-in-law, her two daughters and two other families who have elderly parents came to our place.

It was my first chance to go outside. I had enough for me, my wife and the kids, but now we were 13 people and I needed more food and pillows and blankets. Most shops were closed but I knew one man who lives next door to a factory selling pillows and I asked him to open just for me. Then I found a supermarket that was open and I bought the food. I borrowed a friend's car. I was stopped six or seven times at checkpoints. They looked in the car, opened the doors and I said: "Peace be with you. Do whatever you want" and they let me go.

Wednesday
My friends gave us a picture from the street. It was Hamas in control. They were promised by their leaders: this is the day to change your life, become an official, have an office. They had something religious to fight for that they believed in. While on the other side, what were they defending? Who were they fighting for?

I was jailed once in 1990 during the first intifada because of my activity in the Fatah movement, but then I changed by way of resisting to non-violence. I believe that's all we have. Weapons don't help end the conflict, they destroy our hope of having a state. These militias are mainly against the ordinary people, not against the occupation.

Thursday
We could hear the fighting at the intelligence headquarters near the beach. They were on the roof shooting and no one could stop them. We heard that Maher Miqdad, the Fatah spokesman, left his home on Wednesday night undercover. But we don't know what happened to him. Later, I passed by his home. The building was completely burned and all the windows and doors nearby were smashed.

Later that night, after the main compound of the Palestinian security forces fell to Hamas, I went out. I needed some bread and more water. I went to the security forces compound to have a look and there were militants there and young people looking around. It was quieter on the streets.

Friday
Things were quiet again, as if everything was over. Regular life returned, with just one question: what next? People are afraid, they want a clear message.

If Hamas wants an Islamic state, OK. But give me an answer about every-thing: political life, social life, civil society? They talk about victory; we talk about war crimes. And it's not just Hamas, but Fatah too. What's happened here is not so different to what is happening in Lebanon and Iraq. It is a tragedy, but because we love Gaza, we stay. I will never think about leaving.

Is this Dr Al-Ansari a rather suspect character or not?

From the odious MEMRI
Qatari Reformist: The Root Cause of Terrorism is The Culture of Hate

Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the shari'a and law faculty at Qatar University, has recently published several articles in Gulf papers about terrorism and its root cause. According to Al-Ansari, terrorism is the outcome of a culture of hatred in the Arab countries, and in order to eliminate it, the culture of hate must be eliminated.

The following are excerpts from the articles:

Baseless Excuses for Terrorism

In an article titled "How the Arabs Explain the Terror Phenomenon" in the Qatari daily Al-Raya, Al-Ansari criticized the ways in which the Arab world denies and ignores the phenomenon of terrorism, and refuted the political and socio-economic arguments justifying it:

"...I don't understand the personality split in some people; they depict the terrorist in Iraq as a martyr and a resistance fighter…How can we term someone a martyr when he blows up schools and hospitals, does not respect the sanctity of religious sites, and, worse, blows himself up in restaurants and bus stations full of workers?!...

"Why has the terrorist violence increased? And why has it reached a level of such madness and barbarism? Why aren't we managing to deal with it and handle it? Why is there a rise in terror operations targeting innocents?!

"In my view, the [answer] lies in our inability to explain the phenomenon of terrorism, and to break it down into its structural internal causes and into the environmental elements that support its existence. [This inability] emanates from the following three main causes that are common in the Arab arena as explanations for terrorism:

"The first is the discourse of denial... that is, exonerating Muslims from [any] accusation of [perpetrating] terror operations, and [instead] accusing their enemies - usually the Mossad and U.S. intelligence. An extensive sector of prominent clerics, intellectual elites, and the masses are still convinced that 9/11 was a Mossad or U.S. intelligence operation... Likewise, many deny that Al-Zarqawi [ever] existed, and blame Israel and the U.S. for what is going on in Iraq.

"The second cause is the discourse of defensiveness, as manifested in repeated statements that terrorism has no religion, homeland or nationality, but is a transient virus that is alien [to the Arab world] - or that Islam is innocent [of terrorism].

"The third cause is the discourse of justification, which is extremely common in the religious and media outlets. This discourse tries to link terrorism with political factors, international conflicts or internal socio-economic factors - saying that terrorism is the outcome of political repression by some regimes that strangle freedoms and are hostile to democracy or that terrorism is a response to American and Western injustices, to the policy of discrimination [against Muslims], to the blind pro-Israel bias, and to the global conspiracy against the Muslims…

"There are also those who excuse terrorism because of unemployment and poverty, or use as an excuse the spread of corruption, permissiveness, women's adorning themselves in public, [and women's] attaining political rights and being appointed to senior positions, which is considered perverse in the eyes of those [who excuse terrorism].

"All these excuses are baseless. First, we are not the only nation that suffers from injustice - after all, nations and peoples in Africa, America, and Asia suffer from graver injustice than we.

"Second, throughout Muslim history - from the days of the Righteous Caliphs to our own time - injustice on the part of Muslims against other Muslims is greater than the injustices on the part of the enemies [of the Muslims] against them.

"Third, throughout history it has not been proven that any terrorist operation has [ever] restored what was plundered or achieved any political goal. With regard to [the claim that] the lack of democracy and freedoms causes terrorism, [the fact is that] nothing in any of Al-Qaeda's publications includes any demands for democracy - and furthermore, Al-Qaeda hates democracy and sees it as heresy.

"With regard to the [excuse of] unemployment, this claim is contradicted by the good [financial] situation of Al-Qaeda's leaders and members, as well as of [other terrorists] who possess funds, ammunition, weapons, and equipment.

"Likewise, many peoples, past and present, have suffered from difficult situations - yet they have not pushed their sons to blow themselves up among innocents as we do. I am certain that if the American occupation were to disappear tomorrow, terrorism in Iraq would not stop - indeed, it would become even more violent and barbaric.

"With regard to the Palestinian problem, none of the plans and publications of the terrorist groups include any demand connected in any way to Palestine. And as to women's leaving their homes and adorning themselves in public - how can this possibly explain why terrorism has invaded Saudi Arabia?...

"As long as we do not adopt a self[-critical] approach, the malady [of terrorism] will remain, and will even get worse..." [1]

Terrorism - The Outcome of a Culture of Hatred

In an article titled "How to Make Our Young People Love Life" in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Dr. Al-Ansari stated that it is the culture of hatred and extremism in the Arab countries that causes terrorism:

"Terrorism is the fruit of hatred - hatred of life, hatred of civilization and the [modern] era, hatred of society and state, hatred of living people. The young people who have become tools of murder and human bombs are the sons of the culture of hatred, and the outcome of a fanatical culture and extremist ideology that sees life, its pleasures, and its beauty as unimportant. Ultimately the political, economic, social, and religious motives that push [the young people] to blow themselves up lie in a single main cause - and that is the culture of hatred.

"These young people, at the age of flowering, have become the enemies of their society, avenging, hating, and exploding. They are our terrorist sons, raised in our bosoms, suckled by our culture, taught in our schools, and taught religious law from our religious pulpits and by the fatwas of our clerics.

"What, then, has made them prefer death to life? I have no answer except the fact that we have not managed to make them love life. We have taught them to die for the sake of Allah, but we have not taught them to love, to build, to create, and to help society for the sake of Allah. We have taught them that nationalism [means] attacking America and opposing imperialism, but we have not taught them that nationalism is love, loyalty, and belonging to the homeland...

"How can this miserable creature called the Arab and Muslim individual not turn to extremism, when he is surrounded by an overall atmosphere of extremism, bound by the shackles of repression and prohibitions, and girded by the ideas of intimidation and terrorization, and of almost endless torment? These accompany this creature from birth to death, beginning with dire warnings about the torments of the grave and enemy plots lying in wait for Islam and the Muslims, [as well as] the long list of prohibitions that has made blessed life - the gift of the Creator - into a prison of pain, from which the individual seeks to escape to Paradise and to the lovely maidens in it.

"As if all this were not enough, we even employ religious police to follow the people, to restrict their freedoms, to spy on them, and to interfere in their personal affairs. So how can there not be widespread phenomena of tension and worry in the souls [of the people]?...

"Go to hear a Friday sermon, and you will find a preacher who is enraged at the world, angry at civilization, spreading the poison of hatred and enmity. Then you will leave [the mosque] tense and angry!...

"The world's young people engage in music, art, and enjoyment of the pleasures of life. They create, discover, and participate in building the strength and the culture of their society - while we engage our young people in religious law disputes on the veil, the beard, how long garments should be, and how to greet Christians - or we engage our young people in adults' political and ideological disputes, or push them to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to commit suicide!

"Hatred is a culture of prohibitions, and the result of our viewing the world as an enemy lying in wait [for us.] Many factors have played a part [in shaping this world view], including the religious messages anchored in fears of plots [against us], the educational messages that have produced in young people alienation from the [modern] era, and a great number of publications by the Muslim Brotherhood and by the nationalists, which have, for the past 50 years, spread hatred of the other and conspiracy theories [against the Muslims].

"We need a culture that will restore the importance of life and the value of the individual, and will make young people love the arts and the humanities..." [2]

The Values of Tolerance Should Be Implemented

In an article titled "Our Sons and the Culture of Tolerance" in the UAE daily Al-Ittihad, Al-Ansari called for Arab societies to abandon the culture of fanaticism and to adopt the principle of tolerance in order to destroy extremism and terrorism:

"...What is it that has turned some of our sons into prey?... What is it that has made them love perdition and death?... It is the heritage of fanaticism that comes to us from the dawn of history, that was founded and consolidated, and spread and based itself, in the social infrastructure, throughout Muslim history, in the shadow of the tyrannical regimes that suppressed, discriminated, and marginalized [both] Muslims and non-Muslims.

"Unfortunately, inhuman religious commentaries have supported them... The fanatical and discriminatory tradition - which contradicts Muslim principles - is the one from which some of our sons have drunk...

"In this current era in which we live, we do not need everything that is in the books of our forefathers. Rather, we [need] religious laws that will embrace the individual as an individual, and will bring our young people to love life, culture, and the advanced arts.

"Second, we must stop praising and priding ourselves on 'tolerance,' when we continue to live without tolerance. If we are truthful, and if we are faithful to our principles, we must translate [the principles of tolerance] into actual behavior...

"In my opinion, education is the key and the true beginning for reinforcing the values of tolerance: [education] at home, [education] in the family, by parents' tolerance towards each other and towards their neighbors, by family [members'] mutual tolerance, and by their tolerance towards the servants in the home - tolerance that spreads to the educational institutions and to the rest of the institutions of civil society and of the government, in all its political, cultural, and religious aspects.

"In this way, the religious and cultural elite will implement the culture of tolerance, and will uproot the accusations of treason, of heresy, and of espionage [that Muslims level at one other]. Thus, society will be ruled by a system of laws that are just towards ethnic groups, and there will be a political regime that will ensure equal rights and freedoms for all." [3]


[1] Al-Raya (Qatar), April 23, 2007.

[2] Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), May 15, 2007.

[3] Al-Ittihad (UAE), May 18, 2007.