Facebook is probably the number one reason why I don't blog here so often any more. If blogging is akin to flipping through the last edition of The Economist, facebook is the web 2.0 equivalent of slouching in front of the television while drinking a coke. It's not that I think facebook will bring an end to civilisation as we know it, nor do I deny the fact that I enjoy catching up with old friends. It's not even the advertising revenues I mind: everybody knows that they never really follow an individual, but just trends averaged over and between networks as a whole.
What is driving me mad this morning, however, is that the administrators of facebook have taken it upon themselves to decide that Palestine is not a country. In the past, facebookers could use their profile to display or conceal any information they felt was important--hometown, educational info, etc. So, naturally for a Palestine, I typed into a text box that my hometown was "Abu Dis, Palestine".
This state of affairs kept everybody happy for some time--until, that is, some time earlier this month, when facebook changed the functionality of the site so that the hometown line of the profile had to be selected from a pre-determined list, instead of just filling in a text box. Bizarrely, given that there is a Palestine network, they have decided to dis-include Palestine from the list of available countries from which one can select a hometown.
If anybody knows how to contact the facebook site administrators, it'd be useful knowledge. I remain, for now, a Palestinian with a Palestinian hometown.
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Friday, February 29, 2008
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Naji El Ali: 20 Years On
Today, 22 July 2007 marks two decades since Palestinian caricaturist Naji El Ali was shot--and eventually killed--by mysterious gunmen in London. El Ali had been forced into exile in the UK after the PLO leadership pressured Kuwait (that would be the Kuwait I live in now) to discontinue their protection of the artist, who had gained Pan Arab fame through his cartoons which appeared in Kuwait's quality Al Qabas (which I notice did not run a front-page story on this one today...).
El Ali's assassination was another of Palestine's multi-layered tragedies: Some are convinced that Arafat himself ordered the shooting (the reasons given vary from the somewhat plausible political motivations to the simply silly). Regardless, Yasser Arafat does of course carry some of the blame for El Ali's killing with him in the grave for having insisted that Kuwait (where he would have been reasonably safe) force the man out. In London, city of international espionage, nobody could be safe with a situation where the government tolerated a modest level of terrorism in order to better keep an eye on all the spooks.
I was reminded of this event, and the debate surrounding who to blame, in a discussion I had on Facebook and thought that it might be a good idea to bring it up on the blog...Despite all the different groups who try to claim him, Naji El Ali was most importantly an artist, whose work can not be commandeered for one cause or the other. So I'm going to remain quiet about what I think and instead post a site in honour of Handala, El Ali's emblematic character who became the poster boy for Palestinian refugees: http://www.handala.org
El Ali's assassination was another of Palestine's multi-layered tragedies: Some are convinced that Arafat himself ordered the shooting (the reasons given vary from the somewhat plausible political motivations to the simply silly). Regardless, Yasser Arafat does of course carry some of the blame for El Ali's killing with him in the grave for having insisted that Kuwait (where he would have been reasonably safe) force the man out. In London, city of international espionage, nobody could be safe with a situation where the government tolerated a modest level of terrorism in order to better keep an eye on all the spooks.
I was reminded of this event, and the debate surrounding who to blame, in a discussion I had on Facebook and thought that it might be a good idea to bring it up on the blog...Despite all the different groups who try to claim him, Naji El Ali was most importantly an artist, whose work can not be commandeered for one cause or the other. So I'm going to remain quiet about what I think and instead post a site in honour of Handala, El Ali's emblematic character who became the poster boy for Palestinian refugees: http://www.handala.org
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Two Eagles Saved: Spun Gold for the Apologists of Israel
With a strategic victory downright impossible for either side, it is now a cliche that the war over television audiences' perception of the Palestine conflict is as important as any short-term military gains. At the beginning of the intifada, spokesmen of the Israeli state did not shirk from appearing, speaking Arabic, on Arab television screens to present their "case" (that Al Jazeera bent over backwards and made this possible, through a brave show of professionalism, is a long-overlooked fact in the Western media). Palestinians meanwhile learned a few tricks in the early days of battle: Michael Tarazi and Diana Buttu--a face it was hard to argue with--were brought out to Anglophone television viewers, instead of the regular bald, moustached party apparatchiks who were previously tasked with these missions (the re-appearance of this stereotype, in the person of Sufyan Abu Zaida, on Al Jazeera International recently, is a sad reminder of those Bad Old Days of the Palestinian image). So when an Israeli park ranger finds out that 2 endangered Golden Eagles were being "held" in Hebron, in what he later described as "cramped conditions", the mis-named Israel Defense Forces jumped at the opportunity for a media coup.
Surely, it must be a source of some consternation, not to say confusion, for the family of Gilad Shalit: If the Israeli military was willing to search the homes of innocent Palestinians in Hebron for the sake of two feathered friends, why not go look for Shalit in Gaza? Of course, the so-called Defense Forces might have taken the time to investigate what their settlers are doing to the defense-less people of Hebron (warning: You really need to prepare youself before watching this video), but about this I have not received any advice. Could it be, and in a way I hate to suggest this, that the Israeli authorities are actually more interested in scoring media points than might be healthy for a state? Or perhaps, that Israel is in need of proving, to itself for a start, what makes Israel, Israel?
The recent release of Alan Johnston paved the way for what will become EU acceptance of the Palestinian government (I have discussed this before)--the earlier one...or the emergency one... the Hamas cabinet, you know what I mean--and this left Israel badly in need of proving something to the world, at least to the Western world, and maybe the best step was to show, once again, just how "Western" Israel is in relation to the surrounding barbarians, i.e. me, my family and my mates. Now, with an ever-changing, dynamic Palestinian society, this is becoming difficult. Palestinian feminists would claim that the situation for women in Palestine is not quite equitous but, as our elections process, and the very existence of feminists suggest, we are not Saudi Arabia. Even the Alan Johnston debacle brought out the very best of Palestine: it displayed our "civil society" of trades unions and associations and school boards, where it became clear just how "modern" Palestinian society could be.
On the other hand, few issues show the differing world views of East and West as much as the treatment of animals, or animal "rights" as some would have it. In my new-old home on the Arabian Peninsula, there is much adoration for the beasts of Bedouin lore: the horse, the bird of prey and, garden space permitting, the Seluki hound, but even these here are now a novelty in the homes of the rich or trophies, with little appreciation of our relation, as humans, to these creatures. To be sure, these eagles, had they reached market, would have been the cherished living room ornaments of a harmless, pot-bellied "Lt Colonel" in the Palestinian armed services, who would have called himself "Abu Nisrain" (or "Father of the Two Eagles" in Modern Arabic--the word Nisr is actually "vulture" in Medieaval Arabic, but I digress), because our Lt Colonel friend is embarrassingly childless as of this writing, and wanted to use the eagles them to remind himself, and bemused guests working for European aid agencies, of his once-famous masculinity, which reached its peak back in the pay-as-you-go days of the Beirut Corniche.
For the now-dejected Abu Nisrain, his eagles have left his man-fantasy and gone to live in a theme-park world of Israeli nature enthusiasts, for whom nature, feathered, four-legged and scaly-skinned (and I'm not just talking about Netanyahu) fits into their Western model of nationalism. For us this is not so.
I was recently a guest--prisoner?--at the Kuwait Imax cinema where I saw the Siegfried and Roy flick. It struck me that it could have passed for a Nazi propaganda film paid for by the Las Vegas tourist board. Then I was taken back to an even more disturbing thought that has recurred to me over the years: If the European nationalists can weave a love of their surrounding "nature" into the story of their nationalism, why not us? We have no alps to worship, but there are some amazing pine forests in Greater Syria and Oman is blessed with mountain ranges, waterfalls, sand dunes, beaches... (OK, just get out of these parentheses and go to Oman). We do have our own instance of nature and natural beauty, and perhaps our lack of nationalistic pride in who we are and where we come from--literally--has resulted in a complete absence of any environmentalist movement to speak of within the Arab Homeland (I hate the phrase "Arab World" I mean, when did that one come about?). Going back in time, we can see there must have been some sense of pride in the surrounding Old Country. Everybody, or at least everybody who can still read Arabic, knows of the Taghreebit Bani Hilal and the love the refugees who were scattered to Palestine and Morocco had for the old country of Najd. Many air-conditioned shopping malls and American fast food restaurants later, the attachments with the old country are under threat, and the vast piles of rubbish left in the desert by picnicers never elicit a word of serious protest. We have hastily decided that the desert is a place of itchy sand and kept only the paternalistic politics of Bedouin life, abandoning the environment to fend for itself.
So all in all this episode has been for me, as so many others have, a multi-layered disaster. While our in-house rifts prevent us from capitalising on the safe release of Johnston, the Israelis take two golden eagles all the way to the bank. A further two of my own countrymen, however dim and misguided for trying to sell two eagles, are now to be detained in conditions which will probably make an eagle's cage seem luxurious. Lt Colonel Abu Nisrain will now be staring ever more vacuously into his child-less existence, and will probably beat his wife, who will accept her fate as a desperate soul in an increasingly lawless realm run by men with guns. Ergo, we are now less modern, and this sucks.
Surely, it must be a source of some consternation, not to say confusion, for the family of Gilad Shalit: If the Israeli military was willing to search the homes of innocent Palestinians in Hebron for the sake of two feathered friends, why not go look for Shalit in Gaza? Of course, the so-called Defense Forces might have taken the time to investigate what their settlers are doing to the defense-less people of Hebron (warning: You really need to prepare youself before watching this video), but about this I have not received any advice. Could it be, and in a way I hate to suggest this, that the Israeli authorities are actually more interested in scoring media points than might be healthy for a state? Or perhaps, that Israel is in need of proving, to itself for a start, what makes Israel, Israel?
The recent release of Alan Johnston paved the way for what will become EU acceptance of the Palestinian government (I have discussed this before)--the earlier one...or the emergency one... the Hamas cabinet, you know what I mean--and this left Israel badly in need of proving something to the world, at least to the Western world, and maybe the best step was to show, once again, just how "Western" Israel is in relation to the surrounding barbarians, i.e. me, my family and my mates. Now, with an ever-changing, dynamic Palestinian society, this is becoming difficult. Palestinian feminists would claim that the situation for women in Palestine is not quite equitous but, as our elections process, and the very existence of feminists suggest, we are not Saudi Arabia. Even the Alan Johnston debacle brought out the very best of Palestine: it displayed our "civil society" of trades unions and associations and school boards, where it became clear just how "modern" Palestinian society could be.
On the other hand, few issues show the differing world views of East and West as much as the treatment of animals, or animal "rights" as some would have it. In my new-old home on the Arabian Peninsula, there is much adoration for the beasts of Bedouin lore: the horse, the bird of prey and, garden space permitting, the Seluki hound, but even these here are now a novelty in the homes of the rich or trophies, with little appreciation of our relation, as humans, to these creatures. To be sure, these eagles, had they reached market, would have been the cherished living room ornaments of a harmless, pot-bellied "Lt Colonel" in the Palestinian armed services, who would have called himself "Abu Nisrain" (or "Father of the Two Eagles" in Modern Arabic--the word Nisr is actually "vulture" in Medieaval Arabic, but I digress), because our Lt Colonel friend is embarrassingly childless as of this writing, and wanted to use the eagles them to remind himself, and bemused guests working for European aid agencies, of his once-famous masculinity, which reached its peak back in the pay-as-you-go days of the Beirut Corniche.
For the now-dejected Abu Nisrain, his eagles have left his man-fantasy and gone to live in a theme-park world of Israeli nature enthusiasts, for whom nature, feathered, four-legged and scaly-skinned (and I'm not just talking about Netanyahu) fits into their Western model of nationalism. For us this is not so.
I was recently a guest--prisoner?--at the Kuwait Imax cinema where I saw the Siegfried and Roy flick. It struck me that it could have passed for a Nazi propaganda film paid for by the Las Vegas tourist board. Then I was taken back to an even more disturbing thought that has recurred to me over the years: If the European nationalists can weave a love of their surrounding "nature" into the story of their nationalism, why not us? We have no alps to worship, but there are some amazing pine forests in Greater Syria and Oman is blessed with mountain ranges, waterfalls, sand dunes, beaches... (OK, just get out of these parentheses and go to Oman). We do have our own instance of nature and natural beauty, and perhaps our lack of nationalistic pride in who we are and where we come from--literally--has resulted in a complete absence of any environmentalist movement to speak of within the Arab Homeland (I hate the phrase "Arab World" I mean, when did that one come about?). Going back in time, we can see there must have been some sense of pride in the surrounding Old Country. Everybody, or at least everybody who can still read Arabic, knows of the Taghreebit Bani Hilal and the love the refugees who were scattered to Palestine and Morocco had for the old country of Najd. Many air-conditioned shopping malls and American fast food restaurants later, the attachments with the old country are under threat, and the vast piles of rubbish left in the desert by picnicers never elicit a word of serious protest. We have hastily decided that the desert is a place of itchy sand and kept only the paternalistic politics of Bedouin life, abandoning the environment to fend for itself.
So all in all this episode has been for me, as so many others have, a multi-layered disaster. While our in-house rifts prevent us from capitalising on the safe release of Johnston, the Israelis take two golden eagles all the way to the bank. A further two of my own countrymen, however dim and misguided for trying to sell two eagles, are now to be detained in conditions which will probably make an eagle's cage seem luxurious. Lt Colonel Abu Nisrain will now be staring ever more vacuously into his child-less existence, and will probably beat his wife, who will accept her fate as a desperate soul in an increasingly lawless realm run by men with guns. Ergo, we are now less modern, and this sucks.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
If you can't find a way express your thoughts, ask a poet
It's been a while since I've posted anything. I must admit that the attention I get from people emailing demanding "post, post!" is flattering, but the main reason I haven't written anything is sheer dumbfoundedness at how my countrymen have found increasingly inventive ways of killing each other. It's quite maddening.
So, a few days when a friend of mine, a staunch Fathawi sent me the following poem by Mahmoud Darwish, printed in the Palestine daily Al Ayyam, I thought it would be cathartic to trnalsate it. Those of you on Facebook can read the note; this slightly more polished version has taken on some of the suggestions of the meticulous Najeeb--our very own--and for this he gets much thanks.
I also noticed that a quite similar translation was posted on http://conflictblotter.com by C Levinson on the same day as my Facebook note; I want to point out that any similarities are probably due to the very direct style Darwish uses here. In short, this poem translates reasonably well but is just not a good poem.
(Apologies, of course, for the messiness of the formatting.)
أنت منذ الآن غيرك!
"يوميـات"
محمود درويش
You are, from now, Different
Mahmoud Darwish
هل كان علينا أن نسقط من عُلُوّ شاهق، ونرى دمنا على أيدينا... لنُدْرك أننا لسنا ملائكة.. كما كنا نظن؟
Did we have to fall from our great heights, to see our own blood on our own hands, to learn that we are not the angels we thought we were?
وهل كان علينا أيضاً أن نكشف عن عوراتنا أمام الملأ، كي لا تبقى حقيقتنا عذراء؟
Did we have to expose ourselves shamelessly, so that our own reality would lose its innocence?
كم كَذَبنا حين قلنا: نحن استثناء!
How deceitful it was for us to exclaim: "We are an exception!"
أن تصدِّق نفسك أسوأُ من أن تكذب على غيرك!
To believe your own lies is worse than to lie to others!
أن نكون ودودين مع مَنْ يكرهوننا، وقساةً مع مَنْ يحبّونَنا - تلك هي دُونيّة المُتعالي، وغطرسة الوضيع!
To be gentle with those who hate us, and vicious with those who love us[1]—that is the proud man's secret vice, and the gall of the weak.
أيها الماضي! لا تغيِّرنا... كلما ابتعدنا عنك!
To the Past I say, do not change us just because we move away from you.
أيها المستقبل: لا تسألنا: مَنْ أنتم؟
وماذا تريدون مني؟ فنحن أيضاً لا نعرف.
The future I beg: Do not ask us: "Who are you? What do you want of me?"
We also do not know.
أَيها الحاضر! تحمَّلنا قليلاً، فلسنا سوى عابري سبيلٍ ثقلاءِ الظل!
Of the Present, I request: Bear with us a little, we are but uncouth vagabonds!
الهوية هي: ما نُورث لا ما نَرِث. ما نخترع لا ما نتذكر. الهوية هي فَسادُ المرآة التي يجب أن نكسرها كُلَّما أعجبتنا الصورة!
Identity is: What we pass on. Not what was passed on to us. It is something we invent, not something for us to recollect. Identity is the mirror to be broken every time we like what we see.
تَقَنَّع وتَشَجَّع، وقتل أمَّه.. لأنها هي ما تيسَّر له من الطرائد.. ولأنَّ جنديَّةً أوقفته وكشفتْ له عن نهديها قائلة: هل لأمِّك، مثلهما؟
He donned a mask and borrowed courage, and killed his own mother; because that is who he could kill…and because a woman-soldier stopped him at a checkpoint, revealed her breasts to him and asked: "Does your mother too, not have these?"
لولا الحياء والظلام، لزرتُ غزة، دون أن أعرف الطريق إلى بيت أبي سفيان الجديد، ولا اسم النبي الجديد!
Were it not for the shame, I would have visited Gaza, without knowing the way to the house of the new Abu Suffyan, nor of the new Prophet.
ولولا أن محمداً هو خاتم الأنبياء، لصار لكل عصابةٍ نبيّ، ولكل صحابيّ ميليشيا!
Were it not that Mohammed was the Final Prophet, each gang would have as its leader a Prophet, and for each of his Apostles, a militia.
أعجبنا حزيران في ذكراه الأربعين: إن لم نجد مَنْ يهزمنا ثانيةً هزمنا أنفسنا بأيدينا لئلا ننسى!
This June brought with it a surprise with its fortieth remembrance: There was nobody to defeat us a second time, and so we defeated ourselves.
مهما نظرتَ في عينيّ.. فلن تجد نظرتي هناك. خَطَفَتْها فضيحة!
No matter how much you look into my eyes, my gaze will not be there. It was kidnapped by this scandal.
قلبي ليس لي... ولا لأحد. لقد استقلَّ عني، دون أن يصبح حجراً.
My heart is no longer mine, nor does it belong to another. It has broken free of me, without turning into stone.
هل يعرفُ مَنْ يهتفُ على جثة ضحيّته - أخيه: >الله أكبر< أنه كافر إذ يرى الله على صورته هو: أصغرَ من كائنٍ بشريٍّ سويِّ التكوين؟
Does the one who chants "God is Great!" over the body of his brother-victim that he is an apostate in the eyes of God: For God sees that he has taken a perfect human life?
أخفى السجينُ، الطامحُ إلى وراثة السجن، ابتسامةَ النصر عن الكاميرا. لكنه لم يفلح في كبح السعادة السائلة من عينيه.
رُبَّما لأن النصّ المتعجِّل كان أَقوى من المُمثِّل.
The prisoner, so desperate to inherit his jail, hid the smile of victory from the cameras but he could not hide the joy in his eyes.
Maybe the script written for him was better than his acting skills.
ما حاجتنا للنرجس، ما دمنا فلسطينيين.
What need have we for Narcissus[2], since we are Palestinian?
وما دمنا لا نعرف الفرق بين الجامع والجامعة، لأنهما من جذر لغوي واحد، فما حاجتنا للدولة... ما دامت هي والأيام إلى مصير واحد؟.
Since we can not tell the difference between a Mosque and a University, what need have we of a state…so long as its fate is sealed?
لافتة كبيرة على باب نادٍ ليليٍّ: نرحب بالفلسطينيين العائدين من المعركة. الدخول مجاناً! وخمرتنا... لا تُسْكِر!.
A sign on the entrance to a nightclub: "We welcome the Palestinians returning from battle. Entrance is free. Our wine…does not inebriate![3]"
لا أستطيع الدفاع عن حقي في العمل، ماسحَ أحذيةٍ على الأرصفة.
لأن من حقّ زبائني أن يعتبروني لصَّ أحذية ـ هكذا قال لي أستاذ جامعة!.
"I can not defend my right to work," said a shiner of shoes on the pavement.
"My customers, they have the right to look at me as a thief of shoes—this is what a Professor told me!"
>أنا والغريب على ابن عمِّي. وأنا وابن عمِّي على أَخي. وأَنا وشيخي عليَّ<. هذا هو الدرس الأول في التربية الوطنية الجديدة، في أقبية الظلام.
"I take the side of the foreigner against my cousin, and the side of my cousin against my brother. I take the side of my Sheikh against myself"
Day One in Civics class, under the new Domes of Darkness.
من يدخل الجنة أولاً؟ مَنْ مات برصاص العدو، أم مَنْ مات برصاص الأخ؟
بعض الفقهاء يقول: رُبَّ عَدُوٍّ لك ولدته أمّك!.
Who shall enter Heaven: The one killed at the hands of the enemy, or the one killed by his brother?
Some of the Scholars will say: "Your worst enemy was born of your mother!"
لا يغيظني الأصوليون، فهم مؤمنون على طريقتهم الخاصة. ولكن، يغيظني أنصارهم العلمانيون، وأَنصارهم الملحدون الذين لا يؤمنون إلاّ بدين وحيد: صورهم في التلفزيون!.
سألني: هل يدافع حارس جائع عن دارٍ سافر صاحبها، لقضاء إجازته الصيفية في الريفيرا الفرنسية أو الايطالية.. لا فرق؟
قُلْتُ: لا يدافع!.
I am not enraged by the Fundamentalists, they are believers in their own way; their secular defenders, their atheist proponents, they anger me. They have but one sacred wish: To see their faces on television screens.
I was asked: Would the hungry security guard work for the absentee lord of the house, who is abroad on the Riveria, in France or Italy?
I replied: He will not defend!
وسألني: هل أنا + أنا = اثنين؟
قلت: أنت وأنت أقلُّ من واحد!.
..and he asked me: Do me and myself make two of us?
I said: You and yourself are less than one!
لا أَخجل من هويتي، فهي ما زالت قيد التأليف. ولكني أخجل من بعض ما جاء في مقدمة ابن خلدون.
I am not ashamed of my identity; its story is still being written[4], but I am ashamed of some things recorded in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddama.
أنت، منذ الآن، غيرك!.
You are, from now, different.
[1] You will notice the allusion to a famous saying by Omar Ibn Al Khattab, although it is not verbatim in the Arabic
[2] Also the name of a flower in Arabic, نرجس If people know of something similar in English, please point it out.
[3] As in, the Muslim description of Heaven, hint hint. There is a tradition of this going back to Abu Ala Maari in case you're wondering…
[4] You will notice that the Arabic word هوية can mean both "identity" and "identity documents"
So, a few days when a friend of mine, a staunch Fathawi sent me the following poem by Mahmoud Darwish, printed in the Palestine daily Al Ayyam, I thought it would be cathartic to trnalsate it. Those of you on Facebook can read the note; this slightly more polished version has taken on some of the suggestions of the meticulous Najeeb--our very own--and for this he gets much thanks.
I also noticed that a quite similar translation was posted on http://conflictblotter.com by C Levinson on the same day as my Facebook note; I want to point out that any similarities are probably due to the very direct style Darwish uses here. In short, this poem translates reasonably well but is just not a good poem.
(Apologies, of course, for the messiness of the formatting.)
أنت منذ الآن غيرك!
"يوميـات"
محمود درويش
You are, from now, Different
Mahmoud Darwish
هل كان علينا أن نسقط من عُلُوّ شاهق، ونرى دمنا على أيدينا... لنُدْرك أننا لسنا ملائكة.. كما كنا نظن؟
Did we have to fall from our great heights, to see our own blood on our own hands, to learn that we are not the angels we thought we were?
وهل كان علينا أيضاً أن نكشف عن عوراتنا أمام الملأ، كي لا تبقى حقيقتنا عذراء؟
Did we have to expose ourselves shamelessly, so that our own reality would lose its innocence?
كم كَذَبنا حين قلنا: نحن استثناء!
How deceitful it was for us to exclaim: "We are an exception!"
أن تصدِّق نفسك أسوأُ من أن تكذب على غيرك!
To believe your own lies is worse than to lie to others!
أن نكون ودودين مع مَنْ يكرهوننا، وقساةً مع مَنْ يحبّونَنا - تلك هي دُونيّة المُتعالي، وغطرسة الوضيع!
To be gentle with those who hate us, and vicious with those who love us[1]—that is the proud man's secret vice, and the gall of the weak.
أيها الماضي! لا تغيِّرنا... كلما ابتعدنا عنك!
To the Past I say, do not change us just because we move away from you.
أيها المستقبل: لا تسألنا: مَنْ أنتم؟
وماذا تريدون مني؟ فنحن أيضاً لا نعرف.
The future I beg: Do not ask us: "Who are you? What do you want of me?"
We also do not know.
أَيها الحاضر! تحمَّلنا قليلاً، فلسنا سوى عابري سبيلٍ ثقلاءِ الظل!
Of the Present, I request: Bear with us a little, we are but uncouth vagabonds!
الهوية هي: ما نُورث لا ما نَرِث. ما نخترع لا ما نتذكر. الهوية هي فَسادُ المرآة التي يجب أن نكسرها كُلَّما أعجبتنا الصورة!
Identity is: What we pass on. Not what was passed on to us. It is something we invent, not something for us to recollect. Identity is the mirror to be broken every time we like what we see.
تَقَنَّع وتَشَجَّع، وقتل أمَّه.. لأنها هي ما تيسَّر له من الطرائد.. ولأنَّ جنديَّةً أوقفته وكشفتْ له عن نهديها قائلة: هل لأمِّك، مثلهما؟
He donned a mask and borrowed courage, and killed his own mother; because that is who he could kill…and because a woman-soldier stopped him at a checkpoint, revealed her breasts to him and asked: "Does your mother too, not have these?"
لولا الحياء والظلام، لزرتُ غزة، دون أن أعرف الطريق إلى بيت أبي سفيان الجديد، ولا اسم النبي الجديد!
Were it not for the shame, I would have visited Gaza, without knowing the way to the house of the new Abu Suffyan, nor of the new Prophet.
ولولا أن محمداً هو خاتم الأنبياء، لصار لكل عصابةٍ نبيّ، ولكل صحابيّ ميليشيا!
Were it not that Mohammed was the Final Prophet, each gang would have as its leader a Prophet, and for each of his Apostles, a militia.
أعجبنا حزيران في ذكراه الأربعين: إن لم نجد مَنْ يهزمنا ثانيةً هزمنا أنفسنا بأيدينا لئلا ننسى!
This June brought with it a surprise with its fortieth remembrance: There was nobody to defeat us a second time, and so we defeated ourselves.
مهما نظرتَ في عينيّ.. فلن تجد نظرتي هناك. خَطَفَتْها فضيحة!
No matter how much you look into my eyes, my gaze will not be there. It was kidnapped by this scandal.
قلبي ليس لي... ولا لأحد. لقد استقلَّ عني، دون أن يصبح حجراً.
My heart is no longer mine, nor does it belong to another. It has broken free of me, without turning into stone.
هل يعرفُ مَنْ يهتفُ على جثة ضحيّته - أخيه: >الله أكبر< أنه كافر إذ يرى الله على صورته هو: أصغرَ من كائنٍ بشريٍّ سويِّ التكوين؟
Does the one who chants "God is Great!" over the body of his brother-victim that he is an apostate in the eyes of God: For God sees that he has taken a perfect human life?
أخفى السجينُ، الطامحُ إلى وراثة السجن، ابتسامةَ النصر عن الكاميرا. لكنه لم يفلح في كبح السعادة السائلة من عينيه.
رُبَّما لأن النصّ المتعجِّل كان أَقوى من المُمثِّل.
The prisoner, so desperate to inherit his jail, hid the smile of victory from the cameras but he could not hide the joy in his eyes.
Maybe the script written for him was better than his acting skills.
ما حاجتنا للنرجس، ما دمنا فلسطينيين.
What need have we for Narcissus[2], since we are Palestinian?
وما دمنا لا نعرف الفرق بين الجامع والجامعة، لأنهما من جذر لغوي واحد، فما حاجتنا للدولة... ما دامت هي والأيام إلى مصير واحد؟.
Since we can not tell the difference between a Mosque and a University, what need have we of a state…so long as its fate is sealed?
لافتة كبيرة على باب نادٍ ليليٍّ: نرحب بالفلسطينيين العائدين من المعركة. الدخول مجاناً! وخمرتنا... لا تُسْكِر!.
A sign on the entrance to a nightclub: "We welcome the Palestinians returning from battle. Entrance is free. Our wine…does not inebriate![3]"
لا أستطيع الدفاع عن حقي في العمل، ماسحَ أحذيةٍ على الأرصفة.
لأن من حقّ زبائني أن يعتبروني لصَّ أحذية ـ هكذا قال لي أستاذ جامعة!.
"I can not defend my right to work," said a shiner of shoes on the pavement.
"My customers, they have the right to look at me as a thief of shoes—this is what a Professor told me!"
>أنا والغريب على ابن عمِّي. وأنا وابن عمِّي على أَخي. وأَنا وشيخي عليَّ<. هذا هو الدرس الأول في التربية الوطنية الجديدة، في أقبية الظلام.
"I take the side of the foreigner against my cousin, and the side of my cousin against my brother. I take the side of my Sheikh against myself"
Day One in Civics class, under the new Domes of Darkness.
من يدخل الجنة أولاً؟ مَنْ مات برصاص العدو، أم مَنْ مات برصاص الأخ؟
بعض الفقهاء يقول: رُبَّ عَدُوٍّ لك ولدته أمّك!.
Who shall enter Heaven: The one killed at the hands of the enemy, or the one killed by his brother?
Some of the Scholars will say: "Your worst enemy was born of your mother!"
لا يغيظني الأصوليون، فهم مؤمنون على طريقتهم الخاصة. ولكن، يغيظني أنصارهم العلمانيون، وأَنصارهم الملحدون الذين لا يؤمنون إلاّ بدين وحيد: صورهم في التلفزيون!.
سألني: هل يدافع حارس جائع عن دارٍ سافر صاحبها، لقضاء إجازته الصيفية في الريفيرا الفرنسية أو الايطالية.. لا فرق؟
قُلْتُ: لا يدافع!.
I am not enraged by the Fundamentalists, they are believers in their own way; their secular defenders, their atheist proponents, they anger me. They have but one sacred wish: To see their faces on television screens.
I was asked: Would the hungry security guard work for the absentee lord of the house, who is abroad on the Riveria, in France or Italy?
I replied: He will not defend!
وسألني: هل أنا + أنا = اثنين؟
قلت: أنت وأنت أقلُّ من واحد!.
..and he asked me: Do me and myself make two of us?
I said: You and yourself are less than one!
لا أَخجل من هويتي، فهي ما زالت قيد التأليف. ولكني أخجل من بعض ما جاء في مقدمة ابن خلدون.
I am not ashamed of my identity; its story is still being written[4], but I am ashamed of some things recorded in Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddama.
أنت، منذ الآن، غيرك!.
You are, from now, different.
[1] You will notice the allusion to a famous saying by Omar Ibn Al Khattab, although it is not verbatim in the Arabic
[2] Also the name of a flower in Arabic, نرجس If people know of something similar in English, please point it out.
[3] As in, the Muslim description of Heaven, hint hint. There is a tradition of this going back to Abu Ala Maari in case you're wondering…
[4] You will notice that the Arabic word هوية can mean both "identity" and "identity documents"
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Finkelstein
Dear all,
Otto has pointed out that I have yet to post anything on Finkelstein... Since the man is, in my opinion, very much worthy of defense, I will put up links to the websties I know of where people can find ways to show their support:
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/
Mark Elf, an old friend of mine
www.normanfinkelstein.com
The man himself: If you don't know him, read it, find out.
Finkelstein, the child of bona-fide holocaust survivors--ie, his parents were camp inmates-- is the author of The Holocaust Industry, Israel and Palestine, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, The Rise and Fall of Palestine and other great books. I specifically recommend Image and Reality for anybody who wants a deep, historical understanding of the Palestinian conflict and also The Holocaust Industry if you really want to read how Zionist lunatics have completely distorted public debate in the English-speaking world.
Any suggestions of how we can help take this forward are welcome.
Thanks Otto (jpohl.blogspot.com) for reminding me.
Otto has pointed out that I have yet to post anything on Finkelstein... Since the man is, in my opinion, very much worthy of defense, I will put up links to the websties I know of where people can find ways to show their support:
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/
Mark Elf, an old friend of mine
www.normanfinkelstein.com
The man himself: If you don't know him, read it, find out.
Finkelstein, the child of bona-fide holocaust survivors--ie, his parents were camp inmates-- is the author of The Holocaust Industry, Israel and Palestine, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, The Rise and Fall of Palestine and other great books. I specifically recommend Image and Reality for anybody who wants a deep, historical understanding of the Palestinian conflict and also The Holocaust Industry if you really want to read how Zionist lunatics have completely distorted public debate in the English-speaking world.
Any suggestions of how we can help take this forward are welcome.
Thanks Otto (jpohl.blogspot.com) for reminding me.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, November 13, 2006
To Ayatollah (and anybody interested in Farlish)
So, you think I might have made some mistakes in my English, do you? Let's read through your compatriot's blog...
http://yaserb.blogspot.com
I have to say though, this guy is rather nice... you can find it by Googling "microbiology" and "Palestinian"; which also seems to suggest that he knows how to optimise his blog for search engines, something I guess I'm quite pathetic at.
By the by, if anybody knows anything about the academic papers published by the just-named Palestinian premier, Mohammed Shabir (a microbiologist), please do tell me. I am trying to locate some.
http://yaserb.blogspot.com
I have to say though, this guy is rather nice... you can find it by Googling "microbiology" and "Palestinian"; which also seems to suggest that he knows how to optimise his blog for search engines, something I guess I'm quite pathetic at.
By the by, if anybody knows anything about the academic papers published by the just-named Palestinian premier, Mohammed Shabir (a microbiologist), please do tell me. I am trying to locate some.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
82nd Veto
Well, the United States has used its right to veto on the United Nations Security Council to prevent international censure of Israel for the eighty-second time yesterday. John Bolton insisted that Israel not be singled out for punishment by the UN after the Beit Hanoun massacre because, after all, to do so would be "one-sided", as if there really were two sides to this conflict.
The series of events at the UN headquarters in New York should dispel the myth that some on the Left seem to cling on to--that the US is constantly in defence of Israel in protection of its oil interests in the region. As it happens, the US' allies/world's oil suppliers, as represented by Qatar--the sole Arab representative on the Security Council--tried to drive home to the Americans the need to show some condemnation of the crime. Qatar, you all know, is what some people love to call a "moderate" Arab state: They have made great strides towards democratisation; they host a US military base; they sponsor world trade talks; they cooperated in the war against the Taleban and so on. Nevertheless, the US chooses to act in the best interests of its domestic Israeli lobby, which seems to control US policy in the region, against its own interests.
Syriana might be a good film, but it's not the whole story.
On the positive side, I note that US Rep. Hyde, who earned his fame by leading the campaign to have Clinton impeached, tarred and feathered, has made a seismic discovery: There are Christians in Palestine!! Perhaps this is the only political tool left in the hands of pro-Palestine activists in the United States. The use of this tool was actually hinted at, ironically enough, in Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv's journo-trash publication, Friends in Deed. Worth reading despite the authors' best efforts.
So long.
The series of events at the UN headquarters in New York should dispel the myth that some on the Left seem to cling on to--that the US is constantly in defence of Israel in protection of its oil interests in the region. As it happens, the US' allies/world's oil suppliers, as represented by Qatar--the sole Arab representative on the Security Council--tried to drive home to the Americans the need to show some condemnation of the crime. Qatar, you all know, is what some people love to call a "moderate" Arab state: They have made great strides towards democratisation; they host a US military base; they sponsor world trade talks; they cooperated in the war against the Taleban and so on. Nevertheless, the US chooses to act in the best interests of its domestic Israeli lobby, which seems to control US policy in the region, against its own interests.
Syriana might be a good film, but it's not the whole story.
On the positive side, I note that US Rep. Hyde, who earned his fame by leading the campaign to have Clinton impeached, tarred and feathered, has made a seismic discovery: There are Christians in Palestine!! Perhaps this is the only political tool left in the hands of pro-Palestine activists in the United States. The use of this tool was actually hinted at, ironically enough, in Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv's journo-trash publication, Friends in Deed. Worth reading despite the authors' best efforts.
So long.
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