Oil Paintings on Sand, and Other Stories from These Parts

Preamble: Please see the latest comments for my putting both Najeeb and the Ayatollah in their respective places.


The minute I heard about this idea while playing a game of chess with an old friend, I knew it was a bad idea; when my friend, who I haven't seen in years, showed his enthusiasm, I could feel I was going to win the match soon, which I did, in 7 moves (not that this has anything to do with it, of course).

"They're doing a great thing in Abu Dhabi..." (or something to that effect) said Omar. "They're bringing some culture to their country, they're going to build a Louvre in their Emirate." They what? Of course, the BBC story here explains why the French, predictably, are angered. Let me make an effort to explain why Arabs are, or, at least, should be, a little peeved. The short answer: This is an insult to our cultural heritage. If you spend $700 Million to buy a few pretty pictures from Europe, the obvious implication is that your own heritage contains nothing worthy of investing in. This is all the more strange coming from Abu Dhabi, which previously kept a reputation for being an authentic, true-to-itself beacon of Arabness sitting next to the Whore-magnet on the Creek (read: Dubai). The romantic figures cut by the Emirate's former leaders carrying falcons while holding on to the back of a camel's hump are one of the few genuinely positive images of the Arab world which they West received for a long time (see Wilfred Thesiger). Looking to the future, what's to be expected of Abu Dhabi's fledgling art community? Is the Louvre now going to be something for them to live up to? It was never to that Muslims disapproved of "craven images", at least not during more enlightened times, but now I can feel myself actually welcoming a fatwa preventing this from coming about.

On another note, I see that democratic pressure has done the unthinkable and forced the Hamas government to take a more sensible, civilised approach to the protection of Palestinian heritage. Good. I feel quietly vindicated about my strong faith in us, the Palestinians, as a people to, you know, move on with things.

The same could not be said of some cocky shit, dressed in a turban, who thinks he can sit in a cave in Afghanistan (I have nothing against troglodytes--I point out that some Palestinians in the village of Yatta spend part of the year in caves) and tell Hamas what to do. Of course, we never asked this bugger and his crew to go at the USSR like rabid dogs, in fact we actually liked those Commie fellows, and they liked us...but then nobody asked our opinion at the time.