Innocent in Guantanamo

19 year old Murat Kurnaz was heading home to Germany from a trip to Pakistan when he was arrested by the Pakistani police and sold, for $3000, to Americans in Afghanistan as a "spy." Held and tortured for five years in Kandahar and Guantanamo, in August of 2006 he was finally released.

According to Wikipedia, Three American officers who reviewed his case asserted that they had classified evidence that established his guilt, but never disclosed this evidence to Kurnaz, his attorneys, or to the public. Both German investigators, and United States Army investigators failed to find any evidence of a tie between Kurnaz and Al-Qaeda or any involvement in any terrorist activities. The CBS news program 60 Minutes investigated the story. The US Army has refused to admit the "mistake."

Kurnaz story is told in his book Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo. Vanessa Redgrave says of his story,

I thank God that Murat kept his sanity in the hell of injustice and torture of nearly 5 years in Guantanamo so he could tell his story. May it be studied in every school and college in Europe and the USA. May it help to close down all the illegal and secret prisons and camps, as well as Guantanamo, and restore the prisoners to their families. I am sure Murat's book will educate a whole generation about justice and the defense of human rights.

To many people around the world, the prison camp at Guantanamo has become a symbol of American violation of international law. During his election campaign, Barak Obama promised he would close Guantanamo within a year; however, the US Congress refused to provide funds to close the camp. Approximately 250 prisoners -- never tried, never found guilty -- are still held there.

Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir is an award winning animated documentary film made in Israel in 2008. The film is made with a unique style described by Wikipedia as

a combination of Adobe Flash cutouts and classic animation. Each drawing was sliced into hundreds of pieces which were moved in relation to one another, thus creating the illusion of movement... From there 2,300 original illustrations were drawn based on the storyboard, which together formed the actual film scenes using Flash animation, classic animation, and 3D technologies.

The film explores the troubled memory of an Israeli soldier who was a witness to the famous 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. According to Wikipedia, the Israeli Army was surrounding these refugee camps in poor neighborhoods in West Beirut and specifically allowed the Lebanese Christian Militia to enter the camps and kill civilians. The number of casualties is disputed, some say as low as 350, others ten times higher, 3500. An investigation by the Israeli government found Ariel Sharon personally responsible and he resigned as head of the defense ministry. An independent commission found that Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 violated international law. The invasion was condemned at the time by the UN Security Council. At the time the United States told Israel not to occupy the area of Lebanon where these camps were located and promised the Muslims of West Beirut, including Palestinian refugees in the camps, that they would be safe.

At the time, and still today, there were many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as a result of the 1948 war that established the state of Israel and other conflicts. Another group in Lebanon is the Maronite Christians, sometimes closely tied to Israel. Days before the massacre their leader, Bachir Gemayel, was assassinated by an agent of the government of Syria -- not connected to the Palestinians who were in the camps, although Syria supported the Palestinians.

The Maronite soldiers were brought to the camps by the Israelis, sent into the camps, and provided with support at night from flares shot over the camps by the Israeli army. (A focus in the film.) "According to a Dutch nurse, the camp was as bright as 'a sports stadium during a football game.'" The Israeli army guarded the exits from the camps and allowed no one to leave while the massacre was taking place.

In 1982 the United Nations General Assembly voted to identify the massacre as a "genocide."

The "New Orientalism"

Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran is a thoughtful and refreshing response to the growing corpus of books popular in America and Europe about the oppression of Muslim women. Fatemeh Keshavarz writes,

The emerging Orientalist narrative has many similarities to and a few differences from this earlier incarnation. It equally simplifies its subject. For example, it explains almost all undesireable Middle Eastern incidents in terms of Muslim men's submission to God and Muslim women's submission to men... The emerging narrative... might have a native -- or seminative -- insider tone... Yet it replicates the earlier narrative's strong under current of superiority and of impatience with the locals, who are often portrayed as uncomplicated.

The collection of essays in Jasmine and Stars explores some of that complexity in the case of Iran, introducing a diversity of characters who violate or complicate Western stereotypes from the liberated feminist poet Forough Farrokhzad to classes of 9th grade girls as well as an elder unlettered farmers who memorizes her work.

Keshavarz particularly addresses Reading Lolita in Tehran and she mentions The Kite Runner as examples of this new Orientalism. As innovative as the Persepolis books and film are, these, too, perhaps in part because of the class position of the author and her removal from Iran at a relatively young age, replicate some of the same cliches.

Year of the Elephant & Anti-colonial Struggle

The Year of the Elephant is an interesting short novel that treats both the Moroccan independence struggle from French colonial domination (1956) and the aftermath. Since the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon in 1798 the French made repeated efforts to colonize and control North Africa. Morocco was one of the last regions to fall under their authority in the late 19th and early 20th century.

The novel show the main character, Zahra, a young woman revolutionary participating in a variety of revolutionary activities including burning the shops of French sympathizers, smuggling guns and resistance fighters, and supporting prisoners. After the war is over, and the French retreat, we see that many of those who fought for a free Morocco decide to enrich themselves, taking over the homes that the French lived in, becoming corrupt, and losing sympathy with the common people -- a common event after colonialism as described by Frantz Fanon's famous essay, "The Pitfalls of National Consciousness."

The novel also tells an important feminist story about the divorce of Zahra by her husband in favor of a younger wife, and Zahra's struggle to become independent.

The classic expression of anti-French resistance in North Africa is the film, Battle of Algiers (1966), chronicaling the bitter Algerian revolution that lasted from 1954-1962 with likely over a million dead. The film may have something to say about the American presence in Iraq.

Entire film at Dailymotion.

Bastard of Istanbul

The novel The Bastard of Istanbul was originally written in English by Elif Shafak, a Turkish author with several novels already to her credit. A feminist novel that shuttles between America and Turkey it addresses several controversial topics including the Islam and women, the hybridization of contemporary Turkish culture, and the Armenian genocide.

The use of English and Turkish is controversial in Shafak's writing,

Shafak's use of English also reads, in Turkey, as a refusal of the "Turkification" of the Turkish language—the purging of borrowed words and expressions from Arabic, Persian and other languages. Turkification has been going on since the time of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (who came to power in 1923); the nationalist position is that the borrowed language came in as an imperialist result of the polyglot Ottoman empire. Shafak's use of Ottoman Turkish in her other novels has already brought her criticism, to which she responds: "I find linguistic cleansing as dangerous as ethnic cleansing." She also finds old words beautiful. The Turkish translation of The Bastard of Istanbul will make generous use of them. Publisher's Weekly

The novel offers a jumping off point for Americans to learn about the Armenian genocide, which took place in what is now Turkey under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

A number of things about the ending of the novel left me confused. Why can the relationship between Armanoush's grandmother and Asya's family not be revealed? Is the only "solution" to the birth of Asya the death of her father?

Israeli vs Palestinian Film

The Palestinian film Paradise Now (2007) and the Israeli film Time of Favor (2000) make for an interesting comparison. Paradise Now gives us images of life in the West Bank and how that world contrasts with Israel -- images rarely seen by Americans. According to Wikipedia,

The filmmakers faced great difficulties making the film on location. A land mine exploded 300 meters away from the set. While filming in Nablus, Israeli helicopter gunships launched a missile attack on a car near the film's set one day, prompting six crew members to abandon the production indefinitely. Paradise Now's location manager was kidnapped by a Palestinian faction during the shoot and was not released until Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's office intervened. In an interview with the Telegraph, Hany Abu-Assad said, "If I could go back in time, I wouldn't do it again. It's not worth endangering your life for a movie."

In Paradise Now the suicide bombing is motivated by the desperate economic and political conditions of Palestinians, channeled and perhaps used by religious extremists; in Time of Favor the suicide bombing is tied to Jewish religious extremism and a love rejection. While the topic is still suicide bombing, clearly in its origin more a Palestinian than Israeli action, there is no glimmer in this Israeli film that would connect suicide bombing to real life conditions. In the same sense, Michal, the extremist Rabbi's daughter, makes points about the difficulty of living in a settlement from an Israeli point of view, but the idea that the settlement might cause difficulty for Palestinians or encroach on territory doesn't seem to come to mind. In this sense, while on closely related themes, the films don't really talk to each other, yet they offer important insights into both of their respective societies. -- A film that is about dialogue is Encounter Point.

Gold Dust

Ibrahim al-Koni is a Libyan novelist who grew up as a Taureg (Bedouin) and writes especially about these nomadic people of the western Sahara and the Maghreb. Al-Koni often addresses the natural landscape, animals and their relations with humans and combines an Islamic mysticism (Sufism) with an interest in traditional taureg religion and animism. His novels often have a "magical realist" dimension.

The novel Gold Dust focuses on a close relationship between a Beduin prince and his "piebald" (rare spotted) camel.

In the back ground is the Italian colonization of Libya.

War in the Land of Egypt

War in the Land of Egypt by Yusuf Al Qa'Id is a fascinating novel told from the perspectives of six different characters examining social inequality in rural Egypt. Published in 1973, it was banned in Egypt until 1985 — before being made into a film El-Mawatan Masri starring Omar Al-Sharif. The name of the main character (the only character who has a name, in fact) is "Masri," a name that means "Egyptian." ("Feddan Masri" is a unit of land measurement about equal to one acre.) "Fellahin" is the name for Egyptian farmers,

Comprising 60% of the Egyptian population, the fellahin lead humble lives and continue to live in mud-brick houses like their ancient ancestors. Their percentage was much higher in the early 20th century, before the large influx of Egyptian fellahin into urban towns and cities.

Rural poverty is an important fact of contemporary life in Egypt,

Although the incidence of poverty is decreasing overall in Egypt, the number of poor people continues to increase as the population grows. Egypt has about 10.7 million poor people, and 70 per cent of them live in rural areas. Most of the country's rural poor people live in the north, in Upper Egypt, where there are higher rates of illiteracy and infant mortality, poorer access to safe water and sanitation, and larger numbers of underweight children.

Tenant, small-scale and landless farmers are often not able to grow enough food to feed themselves, especially in the north of Egypt where plots are smaller. (Contrast with the self-supporting village described in Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery.)

Rural labor is exploitative as rich landlords owning vast tracts of land profit at the expense of the poor. "Whereas the shaykh al-balad was the traditional leader in village society, serving as the representative of the villagers against the state, the 'umda was responsible for village control under the direct supervision
of the state." (Kato)

Peasants pay landowners high rents for the right to work the fields. The gains made by landless peasants in the aftermath of the sweeping land reforms that followed the July 1952 Revolution were eroded when the late President Anwar El-Sadat first curtailed and then abolished the land reforms initiated by the late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and which were in favour of landless peasants. Before the revolution rents averaged 75 per cent of the income of landowners. Today, the situation is approximating pre-revolution conditions in this respect. The cumulative effect of the population explosion and the indebtedness of landless peasants accentuates the quandary of child labourers in rural backwaters.

The novel traces this reversal of land reforms enacted under Nasser and carried out by Sadat. In America foreign policy, of course, Nasser, who led land reform, was considered "an enemy" and Sadat, who ended it, a "friend." I wonder why?

Palestine / Israel Today

In Postcolonial Literature we are reading literature from Palestine and we have looked at a time line of events that stretch back to the Balfour Declaration, WWI, WWII, 1967, 1973, and so on. I want to bring this troubling history into the present by addressing both:

The War on Gaza, 2009

These powerful and disturbing pictures are of a Palestinian girl, Halima, before and after the Israeli attack on Gaza this year. These pictures were circulated around the world, but not in the American mass media. According to Wikipedia,

Between 1,166 and 1,417 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. More than 400,000 Gazans were left without running water, while 4,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless; 80 government buildings were hit.

Attack on Lebanon, 2006

Again, according to Wikipedia,

The conflict killed over a thousand people, mostly Lebanese civilians,severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis, although most were able to return to their homes. After the ceasefire, some parts of southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to Israeli unexploded cluster bomblets.

And a BBC Report.

You were alive during these events this year and in 2006. I ask, what did you hear about them in the American media? How did this contrast with what the rest of the world heard? Why? What role did America play in these events? Are you curious to understand more?

Blood and Oil

In George Herbert's science fiction novel, Dune, a character declares, "He who controls the spice controls the universe." Is that a summary of the role of oil in the world today?

Oil, and oil products, are of enormous importance. They not only fuel cars, trucks, airplanes, boats, and trains, but are used in agriculture, all forms of manufacturing, and almost every product we consume. Natural gas and coal, related to oil, heat and cool our homes, provide light and run our appliances. They pump the water I drink out of the ground. The primary component of the computer I am typing on is plastic, an oil product, and oil products generate the electricity that power the internet and let you read this.

Access to oil has been critical to almost every modern war. 1/3 of the entire American oil supply was spent in World War II, and Hitler and the Allies raced to control oil resources. It has been calculated that one gallon of gasoline is roughly equivalent to 500 hours of human work. Control over this awesome resource is extremely unequal. Some citizens of the world have far more access than others to oil and at cheaper prices. Empires are driven by their source of energy, the Roman empire by the need for slaves, the American empire by the need for oil.

We have been given many justifications for the War in Iraq. Revenge for 9-11 (But Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11; in fact he was the enemy of Osama Bin Laden!); Weapons of Mass Destruction (But Scott Ritter, Republican head of the UN inspection teams in Iraq made it clear before the invasion there were no such weapons there!); Free Iraq from Saddam's Despotism (But there are other despots in the world, why this one?); Create a democracy (At the point of a gun? By an invasion?) The documentary "Blood and Oil" explains what common sense already tells us: the invasion of Iraq was about the control of oil supplies.

Best estimates put the Iraqi death toll at 1.3 million. Millions more Iraqis are internal refugees, millions of the most educated middle class have fled the country. American soldiers, too, are killed, maimed, and traumatized. Is this the way our country should conduct its business?

Pride of Baghdad

Pride of Baghdad is a powerful graphic novel based on a true story about a family of lions that escaped the Baghdad zoo during the American invasion. The drawings and the narrative are gripping and disturbing -- this is not a comic book for little kids. There are scenes of sexual and blood-thirsty violence, and the lions do NOT relate to each other like a happy human family such as you might find in Disney's The Lion King.

When the lions want to find out what is going on, what is causing the war that destroyed the zoo and seems to be tearing the world apart, an ancient turtle tells them,

There's black stuff under the earth, boy. Poison. When the walkers fight they send it spewing into the sky, and spilling into the... the sea.

This is a book about casualties of war, and makes one wonder about the human victims of the Iraq War as well, though it doesn't tell their story. Commenting on Amazon Tom Knapp says,

This book isn't intended for children's eyes, but anyone old enough to drive, vote, drink or carry a gun should read it.

"9 Parts of Desire" WMU Performance

Last night I attended WMU's performance of Heather Raffo's play "9 Parts of Desire." Raffo is an American whose father is Iraqi and the play is based on her conversations with with Iraqi women. From the script these women have shared with her many intimate details of their lives, lives powerfully impacted by events in that country, including the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the first Gulf War, international sanctions against the country, and the second Gulf War, still on going. The play is principally a series of dramatic monologues by women of differing backgrounds, experiences, and social classes.

I thought the WMU actresses did a remarkable job. Obviously they had made a careful study of the situation of women in Iraq, worked hard on their accents and characterizations, and I found their performances compelling.

This play really brought home to me both the agonies and the courage of the people of Iraq. If war is hell, these people have and are certainly going through hell. While we hear about American soldiers and rightly have concern for their safety both physically and mentally, it is rare to have an opportunity to hear the perspectives of Iraqi women.

Many moments in the performance were powerful; one that stands out in my mind are the phone conversations between an actress portraying an Iraqi American in New York and her uncle and cousins in Baghdad. Desperately concerned about her after 9-11, they call her to see if she is OK and share their concern. Of course Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, so the next phone call, the one from the American girl to her family after the bombing of Baghdad is especially powerful and tragic.

There will be performances next week as well. After each performance there is an opportunity to talk with the actors. Buy your tickets soon -- the York Theater is small; when I arrived just before the show was starting on Friday night there was only one seat left!

"Reel Bad Arabs"

The film "Reel Bad Arabs" is based on Jack Shaheen's extensive book and website with the same title -- the second edition of the book is over 600 pages long -- documenting the representation of Arabs in Hollywood film.

Many Americans who view this film are struck by the new perspective it brings to them on movies they have seen many times, including Disney's Aladdin, raising profound questions about the way the movie represents Arabic people.

My daughter was in junior high school at the time of the 9-11 attacks. Her teacher, in an effort to create greater sympathy and understanding of the Arabic world in light of the attacks and aware of no other resources, showed the students "Aladdin." To me that is a powerful statement that teachers be able to find about better materials to help their students learn about the Middle East. Thus the focus of my teaching and work this semester.

In the film Shaheen makes clear that the racist and violent depictions of Arabs are tied to American foreign policy and military actions. In this sense his work on film can be seen as a continuation of Edward Said's 1978 study, Orientalism. Said, literature professor and former president of the Modern Language Association, writes:

Too often literature and culture are presumed to be politically, even historically innocent; it has regularly seemed otherwise to me (and I hope will convince my literary colleagues) that society and literary culture can only be understood and studied together.

What can we learn, and what do we need to unlearn, from contemporary literature and film from the Middle East?

Welcome to Middle East Interpretations

Middle East Interpretations will serve as organizational center for two groups of academic blogs from Literary Interpretations and Postcolonial Literature in the English Department at Western Michigan University.

Our research and writing will be focused around modern literature from and about the Middle East as we collaborate to create on-line resources and a book for teachers from middle school through college.

Eight years after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, our country remains engaged in protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and extensively involved politically, economically, and culturally in the region. Growing minority populations in English-speaking countries have cultural roots in the Middle East.

Most Americans know little about the area, its diversity of people and life patterns, the impact of migration, war, cultural, economic and environmental change, the influence of American involvement, or even people of Middle Eastern origin in their own communities. At the same time there is a renaissance of literature in and about the Middle East published in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Hebrew, French, and English -- increasingly available in translation.