Some photos taken with a NOKIA E-71 during incursions into the BO18 and the MusicHall... Reminded one of Moscow nights, maybe the blend of "East" and "West", but from distinct approach angles. Moscovites are Westerners influenced by the (Central Asian)East, Beyrouthins are (Middle)Easterners influenced by the West.
Bekaah Reds instead of Beirute Blues...
The Unbearable Hardness of the Peace Process...
When one compares ones's written notes ( a Journal, rather) with the notes taken at the same epoch by a Middle East Correspondent about the very same portentous issues, some curious vibes are detected.
Having recognized the credibility of his views regarding my own times on that conflict theatre I have to trust him about the period I was no longer there. Like in Fundamental Science, one's objectivity in 'peaceprocessology' is crucial but very hard indeed to keep. You don't have to agree with Fisk's viewpoint at every step of the way but you can recognize an honest atempt at objectivity when you see one. A clearly commendable book.
Classical diplomatic stuff, courtesy Duff Coopper, Esq.
Ramallah Diaries in all sorts and shapes...
"Out of Place - A Memoir" by Edward Said. If one has to read one non-fiction book about Arab-British P-2-P (people to people) interaction in pre-1948 Palestine, this is the one. The Proustian-like recalling of school days is a very powerful sub-genre of quasi-biographycal literature. If done with honesty and frankness it's like a psychoanalitical key to the author's positions and ideology. Not that what we are or what we defend is a crude result of our chidhood troubles as seen through the spectacles of Professor Freud . But it helps to explain (to ourselves and to third parties) some of the emphasis we choose to put in our discourse. The emotional underscoring, so to speak, of one's political bettings.
I read Said's auto-bio back to back with another book (" Sharon And My Mother-in-Law - Ramallah Diaries") by another American-educated Palestinian, this time centered on Ramallah during the the Second Intifada. Ms Suad Amiry is an eloquent example of the smiling gentle hard-nut toughness of women who have to deal with politics. This blogger of yours is a social machista by geographical birth but a born-again political feminist after experiencing how crucial the contribution of women can be in changing things and societies for the better..
That takes me to a third book, "I Saw Ramallah" by Mourid Barghhouti, about which I've blogtexted about last year. http://praiagrande.blogspot.com/2005/05/mourid-barghouti.html
A nice Tercet of Palestinian Chamber Literary-Music...
1956 is a date this blogger of yours most cherishes for obvious reasons. There were plenty of very eventful developments on that year, although I allways felt a bit let down because not one single Port wine House declared a Vintage in 56. The two obvious political iconic dates are Budapest and Suez. History will confirm their particular relevance .
The Suez Crisis has been a favorite of the British media for ages. The masochistic trait in Britishness is evident in all that salt being rubbed in the wound of the vanishing Empire. A détour here, please.. During my London times I witnessed Black Wednesday when the Pound was flushed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism by the tsunami of the currency markets (only Soros could surf those waves...). Why am I telling this? Well, at the time of the débacle of the Pound a precedent was invoked for this drama of seeing Her Majesty's Government surrendering to the Markets. Suez, you guessed right. It was the catastrophic fall of the British Pound that ultimately convinced Anthony Eden that the game was over.. One should return to Suez from time to time...
Of all that I've read about Suez at 50 I particularly like what Samia Serageldin ("The Cairo House") wrote the other day in her blog http://www.thecairohouse.com/blog/ : "The fiftieth anniversary of the Suez crisis was marked by the media worldwide, with some essays more thoughtful than others. My father had just turned thirty years old in October 1956, when Egypt was attacked by Israeli, French and British forces. Nasser's 1952 coup d'etat had stripped him and his class of landowners of their property, and his oldest brother, a politician and party leader, had been tried and condemned to death (later freed) as ancien regime enemy of the people. It might have been reasonable to assume that a man in my father's position would have welcomed, or at least stayed neutral about, the foreign invasion that promised to topple Nasser's regime and return the status quo ante. He did nothing of the sort: he took his family to the safety of the countryside, and returned to Cairo to volunteer for the civil defense. That's human nature: when your country is invaded, you close ranks. That is one of the lessons of Suez, perhaps, that it would have been well to remember three years ago. Along with this: Suez made Nasser a hero, not to my father, but to the vast majority of Arabs."
One of the books I indulged while laying by the colonnaded pool at the Rhoul Palace, in a peaceful Nirvana-like hot afternoon in Marrakesh, was Mahfouz' "La Belle du Caire". In this respect I have to confess to the Right Honourable Reader that this blogger of yours has in department of Literature-in-Fancy-Places been moving slowly from Western Imperialist to Orientalist and more recently to Anti-colonialist. I will explain myself in a second.
Take enormously exotic places with palm trees, decadent enough and with huge romantic appeal: what names present themselves to one's memory? Tangiers? Right. Casablanca? Fair enough. Cairo? For sure. Damascus? You bet. Alexandria? Right, fair enough, for sure and you bet. But from whom do we take our literary clues about those places? Paul Bowles and William Boroughs gave us beat-generation gay Tangiers. Murray Burnett, the play-writer of "Everybody comes to Rick's" , later re-named "Casablanca", served us spy & refugees Casablanca on a plate. Ondatje gave us the British war partying Cairo. T.H. Lawrence, "of Arabia", took us, with the help of David Lean, to a peterotoolish version of Damascus. Forster and Durrell moulded our Alexandria.
What have all those novels and fictional cities in common? Almost no aborigines. Mr Bowles might have had a Tangerine male lover and promoted the works of his friend but almost all the relevant characters on his novels are "European" ( a category that in the Imperial white world-view includes the Americans). Boroughs did just the same. "Casablanca" has not one Moroccan main role (although we have secondary characters of almost every European origin). Forster was in love when in Alexandria but could not persuade himself to write about it (in that case we would have had an Egyptian fellow immortalized). Durrell had at least the Hosnani family, you might remark. But they were Copts, and oh! so Europeanized.
My point is that we, novel-lovers, have come to acquire a biased view of those places. Cosmopolitan but strangely without almost any trace of representatives of the autochthonous population. Now, is this some kind of near-Marxist comment on the absence of the local proletariat? No, Sir! It's only that when one reads Maphouz (the Alexandria depicted in "Miramar", or the Cairo described in "La Belle du Caire") the city sounds so much more alive and authentic. All very nice but where are the Europeans in there? - the Right Honourable Reader might ask yourself with an ironical smirk. Point taken, but my plea is less fundamentalistic than you think. I propose that for each Anglo-Saxon Alexandria one should read an Egyptian Al-Yksandria. For each Foster a Malouf, for each Durrell a Edward al-Kahrrat, for each Lawrence a Souef or a Samia Serageldin.
Slowly the great Lit Cities will become four-dimensional, moving holograms of people of all complexions in landscapes with terracota walls, dusty alleys and reclined palm trees.
Freedom to enjoy cartoons...
