Kurdistan Calling: the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict

BLOOD AND BELIEF:

The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence

By ALIZA MARCUS

New York University, $35.00 cloth, ISBN 978-0-8147-5711 6

2006

[originally published in The Bloomsbury Review]

For Americans, the Kurds may be simply one more “faraway people about whom we know little” and couldn’t care less. It is quite likely though that the “world’s largest stateless people,” as the author calls them, will, as the years go by, become a lot better known to us through the Iraq War. Whether we like it or not, we are involved in the destinies of this mysterious group whose calamity of being stateless no one can explain quickly and whose claim for statehood no one besides the Kurds seems to support with any vigor. For these reasons, reliable information about the no-longer-obscure Kurds and their problems should be a valuable commodity, especially to those who care about the implications of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Hence the value now of Alisa Marcus’ Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence.

Submerged as the Kurds are in the politics of four different countries (Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran) and with Iraq undergoing violent transformation, Kurdish claims to our attention are indirect, depending on how they affect other issues that are more mainstream. The most notorious incident involving Kurds, of course, was Saddam Hussein’s massacre of thousands of Kurdish villagers by poison gas at Halabja in 1988. This event loomed large for Americans only when it was used to stir up support for the second Iraq War.

Still, many wonder: Is an independent Kurdish state (“Kurdistan”) desirable or possible? And will the Kurdish ministate in Iraq with its proclaimed capital city Kirkuk turn into such an entity? The problem with Marcus’ book is that if this is the only book you read about the Kurdish situation, you still will not have answers to these important questions. Nor does she provide much historical or cultural background of the Kurds before the outbreak of the events she describes. (Indeed this omission may be because this topic is as complex as present-day Kurdish politics.) Many readers would no doubt like to have, in an introduction to the subject, more than the storyline of one political party. The author’s self-imposed limitation to the PKK (or Kurdistan Workers’ Party), could make her vulnerable to the charge of bias.

Except in the most formal sense, however, this suspicion of bias is not justified. The picture of the PKK that emerges from @2Blood and Belief@1, though not particularly attractive, is that of a dedicated guerrilla group, which despite its blemishes has forged a kind of legitimacy in the face of official Turkish resistance to what are widely seen as justified Kurdish grievances—and as the only Kurdish group to pose an effective counterforce to the Turkish state. The PKK has also has a nonmilitary wing in the form of a series of legal political parties with representatives in parliament, but these have been subjected to repression and censorship at all stages.

In this account, the Turkish government is seen as not in control of the Turkish military, which calls the shots in its position as the guardian of the “secular state” and is deeply hostile to any non-Turkish configuration. The Turkish political establishment as a whole seems strangely blind to the most basic Kurdish demands for cultural autonomy (such as speaking and teaching the Kurdish language) and recognition of Kurdish identity. Its simplistic view is that “all people living in Turkey are Turks.”

According to Marcus, the problem is that Turkey, although it has made many gestures toward reform and recognition of Kurdish demands (Kurdish language broadcasts, for example) has in fact permitted very little real progress, and that mainly to appease European critics who could block Turkey’s entrance into the EU.

The story goes something like this: The PKK, starting in the early 1970s as a Marxist revolutionary party, grew enormously for about a decade nourished by real grievances, popular support in the Turkish southeast, and the government’s military blunders. Then in the mid 1990s, a new right-wing government in Ankara counterattacked the guerrillas effectively, and in a massive violation of human rights, evacuated some 2,000 villages in the Kurdish southeast along with an estimated 1 million Kurdish inhabitants. The PKK declined for the next decade, and, according to the author, never recovered its original strength--but wasn’t eliminated either. Marcus also details the bizarre career of the PKK’s personality-cult-afflicted leader Abdullah Ocalan who led the PKK from a base in Syria until expelled and captured by Turkish agents in 1999. Though he renounced his PKK ideals, and was imprisoned for life, he has maintained a tight and, yes, Svengali-like control of the group.

The main shock one gets from this book is the dubious nature of Turkey’s supposedly democratic political process in hock to a powerful military, which in the end has a lot more blood on its hands than do those of its tenacious opponents. One wonders how the Kemalist doctrines of a modern secular republic ever became so narrow in scope and so atavistically monocultural. One also feels gloomy about Turkey’s prospects for entry into the EU.

Marcus’ dispassionate recounting of events is impressive in its factual, documented style and avoidance of partisan shrillness. While never condoning any of the PKK’s excesses, she points out its one achievement: to have “put the Kurdish problem on the agenda in Turkey and in front of the world.”

Now with the success of the Kurds in northern Iraq as the focus of Kurdish ambitions, you would think there would be more options for Turkish Kurds and the PKK, which is still their chief political representative. But of course, the usual double-edged sword is in place: The U.S. intervention that benefits the Iraqi Kurds hinders the cause of their brethren just across the border (or close to it).

To the extent that the U.S. espouses self-determination and multiculturalism, it should do more to support these peoples. Yet the U.S. to appease Turkey is obliged to regard the PKK as a “terrorist” group, as is the EU. So Turkey’s Kurds may have to envy the lot of their Iraqi brothers a while longer.

Americans, whether opponents of the Iraq War or neo-isolationists, need to consider that one of the war’s outstanding successes is the creation of the Kurdish ministate.

I doubt, however, we’ll hear much in the coming months from our presidential candidates on this issue.

REVIEWER: James H. Dalglish

UAEU Drama Unit Produces Topical Play on Syria

OBEY II: The Ides of March: A Production by the Fundamentals of Drama & Stagecraft Class written and directed by Dr. James Mirrione. 13 June, 2012, Crescent Building Auditorium,  UAEU 

The Drama Unit rolled out its latest production OBEY II: The Ideas of March on an unpropitious night of pre-finals angst and pre-summer hints of increased thermonuclear activity to come that discouraged any effort, let alone the epic energies unleashed by this multi-media Arab-English hybrid of a play. At the end of the brief theatrical work (only 45 minutes) portraying Syria’s current miseries both cast and audience emerged moved and invigorated.

As we entered the theater venue, we were handed a small, empty (and puzzling) envelope whose purpose would be shatteringly clear at the end. The warm up tunes from a powerful sound system included Buffalo Springfield’s 60’s anthem Field Day for the Heat. A good choice I thought.

Obey II threw at the audience an expertly combined flurry of events and impressions accompanied by a heavy rock beat and effective lighting that bathed scenes of Syrian anguish in appropriately garish tints; on double side screens, newsreels from Syria (demonstrators and atrocities from the country in question) unrolled while stage center featured a series of skits depicting the tragedy of one Syrian boy who is arrested for sedition, tortured and killed (based on an actual character Hamzan Ali Alkhateeb).

Rather than trying crudely to mime this tragedy, Mirrione & students took a symbolic approach. Hamzan’s crime is drawing a picture of a Pegasus (a winged horse), which is condemned by the angry tyrant (Basil Muir) as a thought crime. The back projected image (drawn by the actor Fatima Kindi who played Hamzan) becomes a symbol of human freedom. To make sure we get the connection, documentary photos of the boy are seen on the sides.

In one of the best vignettes (modeled on the Greek chorus of chant and reply), we witness the Syrians ”waking up” to the necessity of contesting their freedom as each emerges from the crowd and recounts her personal tragedy usually of family loss by dictatorial violence. A spectator Mona Al Hamed later told me she had been moved by this scene and cried. A satirical touch occurs in an “eye test” ordered by the tyrant in which, from the scrambled test letters, the subjects all read “O...B....E....Y!”

The last scene however tops all by a simple yet powerful device. The Narrator (played by Norah Tamimi) tells us she is going to read out the names of all the children killed in the conflict and asks the audience to pull out the envelope given at the door. She then reads the list of all of the names of children killed in the conflict. By means of this well-planned strategem, everyone in the audience is drawn into the public act of condemnation the play has worked so hard to achieve. We spectators were as impressed by the humanity of the gesture as its ingenuity.

(The name on mine was Mahmud Swaid and I still feel badly for not reading it out – maybe this will expunge my guilt!)

Last year’s pioneering OBEY was based on the 14 days that it took to dislodge a former Egyptian president from office; the strong plot line was that of the (now legendary) Tunisian vegetable vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose suicide gave the story instant recognition and impacted powerfully all who saw it. The Syrian conflict on the other hand offers daily atrocities but no such legends. Mirrione and students as if aware of this, chose a mixture of indirect, symbolic and chorale forms of expression.

The nervous rhythm of the production came out of the deep theater culture of James Mirrione whose work is rooted in Greek drama, Brecht and a dash of 60’s street theater. And not to forget Shakespeare. The decision to add (readings from) Julius Caesar to the mix, was probably his as well, and is the only dubious part of the play, which in my opinion distracted from the central point. He defended his choice by pointing out that the young boy subject of the play had been killed on March 15, the “Ides of March” of the subtitle. A strictly aesthetic critique of the play however would miss the point. This was a community effort with a social message.

This was revealed most clearly in a brief chat with the cast after the play. Their faces glowing from praise by their director, who congratulated them as “the true authors of the play” and for their outstanding work, not only on that evenings work but in “planting the seeds for the future of the arts” at the university, they all expressed satisfaction in participating in something truly significant.

“I learned what it’s really like for people in another country who we see only in the news...” said one (Nouf). Fatima al Kindi who played The Boy described her research into his actual life and death. Norah al Tamimi (the Narrator) said that for her the message of the play was “to show people who are living in a safe country how other people are suffering to have their own rights.”

The production was also amazing in terms of uniting cross-campus-energies -- first of course those of the enthusiastic, hardworking cast of 20, but one also needs to add (and congratulate) the strong poster design (Jake Gilson) and campaign, the professional sound and lights technical team, part-time actors from English Basil Muir & Graeme Tennent and, finally, major input by the “Organizers” an official university group dedicated to making things happen on campus. As we know, the permissions required to get people and events on and off campus are truly awesome. -JD

BENGHAZI attack: all you can do is Scream

-->
On the Benghazi attack in September. This nasty episode didn't die away quickly and ultimately affected Susan Rice's career. It was a damn confusing event -- as is much that happens in this region -- but the desire for a neutral investigation that might have illuminated this disaster got obscured in political acrimony. The most disturbing ripple from the murderous riot is that weapons handed out by the US thru Qatar might have been used by the Islamist terrorists involved. Still puzzling--what was the connection between the "Muslim's Innocence" riots and this obviously 9/11 themed & planned attack?

The spectacle of enraged Muslims demonstrating? Protesting? Rioting? about another supposed offence against Islam, this time in response to a shoddy video produced in the US (but not in any way representative of any official point of view) in dozens of nations in this region, punctures the theory that Islamist extremism is a response to exploitative or misguided American foreign policy. The movie has nothing to do with the US government (even less so in the case of Germany!) yet the riots go on; it was not released by a major studio nor even seen by anyone publicly for heavens's sakes. The murder of a respected American diplomat Christopher Stevens--who supported the overthrow of Gaddafi--is particularly inexplicable and reprehensible in this perspective. Nor should Hillary have pandered to the rioters by claiming to have been “disgusted” by the video --but stated simply & firmly that street violence in Tunis, Cairo etc can never determine individual freedoms in the US. The fact is we have separation of church and state in the US – and this is a point no American official made. The only logical conclusion to draw from the behavior of irate Muslims in full cry is that we (Westerners and other free spirits) must submit to the totalitarian (extremist) Islamic demand--in short become Muslims. This group in effect rejects a pluralistic world, and it is that world that Hillary & Barack should defend publicly. Neither Hillary nor Barach nor Jay Carney made the slightest effort to explain the nature of the relations of a constitutional government with a democratic society. By failing to do this forthrightly and clearly, they appeared weak ideologically & opened themselves up to a Romney attack, but the latter’s blast was nothing but hasty opportunism. Rather than waste time trying to calm the irrational hysteria of these so easily provoked (and manipulated) mobs, we might do better to rescue one of the few truely secular Arab states in the region, Syria (the Syrians’ modernity is seen in their unconditional rejection of Basher). What we see here once again is the pathological displacement in much anti-US hysteria – that is, the use of the US as a handy whipping boy—that we see in many authoritarian societies (such as most of these are) where people cannot really dissent or protest unless they displace their anger onto the convenient US target. Anyone who has lived more than a few months in the region quickly catches on to the maneuver. Finally, why did no responsible person in one of these nominally democratic societies try at least via the media to speak reason to the rioters and educate them to the norms of the open democratic society they (hopefully) desire -- in which the claims of one religion cannot preempt civil law and civility.

Last Debate on Syria Betw. JB and Jalglish

Last Debate between JB and Jalglish (I’m done). Facebook’s format is not suitable for the kind of verbal jousting and polemic that has cropped up between JB and me. So I decided to use my blog –while reformatting for a dialogic style. –Keuka lake, NY, September 6, 12

Jamil: "bla, pontificating my left foot .... & basically, we just simply disagree ...

Jalglish: Yes, disagree but not so simply…I am essentially anti-totalitarian whereas you appear to be a cultural relativist but a strange cynical one with no positive beliefs. I do have such beliefs such as that tyranny is wrong, and it is my business to oppose it since as somebody said (I misquote) “wherever there are men living in slavery I am not free.”

i think that all systems & governments are basically set up to oppress & exploit their respective subjects & democracy is as much a joke as communism, since most people are ignorant & like Nietzsche warned, don't get trapped into being part of the herd, but be careful about appearing different than the herd ....

Here’s where you start  out with a half baked but half way coherent thought – all governments stink – a sort of anarchist, Bahkuninist sentiment – then seguing into elitist disdain for the unwashed… total incoherence.

as to your Chinese expertise, forgive any slight on that, but you do seem to somewhat express what sounds like old cold war us vs. them rhetoric...

in what? And you cite no examples? If I’m concerned about Chinese aggression in the PR this makes me cold war era? Or is that China has never emerged from the cold war???And if this is the case why is that politically correct ideologues such as yourself never criticize the Middle Kingdom?

my position is that all governments are corrupt, its only a matter of degree difference..

this again is a boring truism. it's better to be an old fashioned liberal like myself. At least you have something to fight for.

 & China has never known anything but totalitarian state system in the past 4000 years

While blithly pontificating, Jamil, this bit on China shows how ignorant you actually are – there was a Chinese Republic under Sun Yat Sen who was a democrat! Hey where’s you history? I studied China in depth while I lived there and for many years after. I’m not so easily brushed aside.

... so whatever they do is their business, not that or the US or UK, etc ..

sure, what they do is their business of course no one would dream of interfering with what is truly domestic matters – but if China is in fact the “interferer” then what? We may have some responsibilities, especially if old allies and friends ask us for help. The US is already involved in the Pacific and has responsibilities which so far it has handled carefully & well.

Jamil: I'm not a pacifist, but do not support military adventurism & Syria is nobody's business but their own & their neighbors ... sorry, but i don't live in that neighborhood ... so it's none of my business, nor of any Americans

JD Sorry but I submit on the other hand that wherever a civilian population is oppressed and deprived of other rights by an unwanted unelected government then it may be my business to support the rebellion – other wise I’m in contradiction with my principles that all people want and deserve freedom. (JJ Rousseau, Le Contrat Social).

...compost happens & the people get the government they deserve, so if Obama loses this election, the the American people have just screwed themselves ... ciao ...

This propagandistic onslaught is almost incomprehensible –an impasto of clichés & slogans standing in for thought, lacking clarity or originality, again verging on total incoherence, almost impossible to disentangle and probably not worth the effort … you contradict yourself by implying that Obama would be the better choice – so at the heart of your cynicism is just another disappointed liberal. Instead of honestly supporting Obama which you can’t due to your doctrinaire assumption– you pose as the world weary cynic --while other people unpretentiously work for Obama knowing that he won’t work miracles but that his adminstn will deliver a thicker slice of that basic bread we all need – remember Orwell’s wise saw about “a half loaf is better than no bread at all.”

let's take literature next time & forget politics, its your idealistic interventionism on behalf of some abstract human rights to which i respond, as in the case of Syria, its just a mess & getting messier & bloodier & will keep going in that direction even well after Baseer is gone ... & can't no outside power do anything to make things better as its gone too far ... all losers, no winners ... that's civil war, whatever the country"

This last bit is typical of Jamil’s lack of concern for real people – to him human rights are an abstraction; also remarkable is his forced, almost hysterical pessimism behind which you sense his fear that his predictions won’t come true.

The greatest proof of his disenfranchisement from street reality and casual suffering is his amazing failure to mention the immediate historical context of the Syria revolution – The Arab Spring. This is the basic denial/blind spot behind all JBs comments on Syria – for some bizarre perverse reason he wants to deny Syria a positive outcome modeled on the revolutions in sister countries. This kind soul seems to be very afraid they might break free of Basher.

I wonder why this no doubt brilliant, creative and imaginative mind doesn’t occupy itself with something else? Why does he bother to attack me I wonder? How have I lucked out? Literature? fine with me, because I don’t find Jamil’s political ideas very interesting – they are mainly an assemblage of slogans and commonplaces with a big blank space for the changed and changing political reality in the Middle East. There is also a surprising amount of disdain for the “common” people in his musings– an almost Ayn Randian hauteur. Sadly, our discussions don’t and won’t progress – so I’m hoping he’ll call it quits, declare a truce and I can get back to real life.

Salient Sallies in NYT Syria Blog Aug 29, 2012

 

Some comments from NYT discussion of "Syrian Rebels Get Arms..." Aug 29th

I like BR's comment with its terse ironic summary of the situation which in a way made mine unnecessary -- but you know how it is in the heat of battle, people fire off simultaneous shots. Similarly the email of Dan Stackhouse on Syria could come directly from my mind! I feel so grateful I always want to contact him directly. Now I regret penning under "Ex Expat " ---! No more friends & others. I'm ceasing being incognito.

And hey my comment was honored by a "PICK"!  First time!
yr struggling far flung correspondent
Ex - Ex Expat (James)

• ttBR
• Times Square

Flag

I don't understand these comments.

Have some of you heard of the Arab Spring? Tunisia? Libya? Egypt? Yemen?

This is not the hand of Israel. This is not the hand of Turkey, Russia, China, the USA, the West, etc.

This is the hand of the Syrian people. Who no longer want to live under an authoritarian regime.

Stand with the Syrian people. Or get lost in paranoid delusional thinking about the world you live in.

• Aug. 29, 2012 at 1:00 a.m.

It's funny. In the ME for nearly two years, political revolutions have been taking place; the Arab man in the street dared to speak out, to say no to a series of dictators - Ben Ali, Mubarek, Qadaffi and the Yemeni guy -- now a similar logic is working itself out in Syria whose tyrant has decided to to resist - many NY Times readers seem to be perversely ignorant of this context which creates the overwhelming assumption that the Syrian despot will have to go too. The other thing that puzzles me about so many of these correspondents is their thoughtless parroting of the Basher line -- the use of the Basher's label "terrorists" hints at the source of this point of view. Anyone who condemns “terrorists” without condemning the state terror of Basher’s army and secret police is mindless or worse. Any rational person would be suspicious of a man who blocks the press, doesn't allow free reporting or free speech but is nevertheless clearly seen to be a blood thirsty tyrant. Those decrying "fascism" in the rebels also have it clearly wrong; the fascist is the absolute tyrant Big Brother Basher. Let's help the courageous worthy rebels ovethrow him and make this a better world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-get-arms-from-a-diverse-network-of-sources.html?comments#comments

Happy 300th Jean-Jacques Rousseau!

Note: This biographical essay is based on a recent rereading of The Confessions (English and French editions read together). I’ve used it in several reading/writing skills classes to give the students a break from the abstruse textbook. Unfortunately however they still found this too too difficult again. Originally I’d planned to discuss Rousseau’s political theories and relate them to the Arab Spring, but another big (disastrous move) has engulfed my time and depleted my energies.

The life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the famous French Enlightenment philosopher, is actually a fascinating & contemporary topic. Rousseau led a turbulent and multifaceted life during a dramatic period in French and European history– the 18 Century Enlightenment.

Rousseau was an important thinker and participant in that lively century, producing important works of philosophy, literature and autobiography that had a strong influence on his contemporaries and are still regarded as relevant and interesting by scholars and readers today. In this essay I will summarize the main periods of Rousseau’s life, his childhood & youth, education, early career and mature career.

Rousseau’s childhood & youth were interesting but not remarkable. The basic facts: Rousseau was born in Geneva, in the country we know today as Switzerland, June 28, 1712; Rousseau always said that he came from Geneva, & that he was a Genevan. The fact that he lived most of his life in France means that he is also considered French; in any case he was a French speaker as were his parents, Isaac Rousseau and Suzanne Bernard.

What sort of people were his parents? His father was a watchmaker–that is to say, a craftsman–in other words someone who had to work for a living. In any case he was not a rich man but was still respectable. Rousseau’s mother came from a “good family” in Geneva, but Rousseau never knew her because she died shortly after his birth. One may imagine that having to grow up without a mother might have been difficult for the young Jean-Jacques; he did in fact have a pretty confused childhood but yet never actually suffered greatly because the various relatives he lived with seemed to be decent people and treated him well. His father taught him to read at an early age by reading adventure stories to him late at night.

This brings us to the topic of Rousseau’s education. He did not have much formal education but did attend a primary and middle school taught by a kindly aunt where he seems to have done well. When he was old enough, his father put him in an apprenticeship with an engraver, but disagreements with the master eventually caused the 15-year-old Rousseau to flee his job and Geneva and run off one night to a nearby town in France. Here various people known to Rousseau’s family – and some religious people–tried to help him find a situation. Rousseau was eventually taken in by a Catholic woman Mme. De Warens, a well-off, aristocratic do-gooder. She and Rousseau got along well from the start; they maintained a close relationship during their whole lives together. She also gave Rousseau most of his formal education, arranging for tutors in various subjects including music. She also gave the young Jean-Jacques some essential informal education (here a merry wink to anyone who can understand). Rousseau was, however, mainly an autodidact, self-taught.

Now for the question of Rousseau’s long early career and how his mature one as thinker & writer got started. It would be delightful to discover that Rousseau came to Paris as a young, ambitious man, astounded everyone with his brilliance and became a celebrity overnight. In fact nothing is further from the truth. When he made his first trip to Paris in 1842, Rousseau was already 30 years old, and his main interest was music not literature or writing. He spent nearly eight years in Paris working as musician, composer and music teacher, while having children out of wedlock; he also did a great deal of social climbing that resulted in getting to know the famous philosophes such as Denis Diderot and wangling diplomatic work as assistant to the French ambassador to Venice.

His writing career began in 1750 when, encouraged by Diderot, he entered a competition in essay writing on the subject of “progress in the arts and sciences,” a topic then of great interest to Enlightenment minded France. Rousseau won first prize; his essay was published, sold very well and made Rousseau famous. He’d finally found his true vocation and never stopped writing after that.

Rousseau’s career as thinker and writer was marked by the production of a huge number of important works in a variety of fields. He participated in and was an important member of the renowned group of philosophers and writers who created the Enlightenment, one of the greatest cultural movements of all time, and which deeply influenced not only the people of that time but ours as well--politically and culturally.

Rousseau was a unique member of this group of philosophers, because although he subscribed to its main ideals (such as reason, equality, and liberty), he also argued in favor of the role of emotion and sentiment in human life – and wrote several works that could be considered highly romantic. He was also religious in a mystical sentimental way that shocked Voltaire.

Let’s take a brief glance at Rousseau’s major achievements. First in literature, Rousseau contributed several key masterpieces to the world canon. Perhaps most famous in his time was a sentimental love novel called Julie: The New Heloise, which was the story of his life long love with Madame de Warens (and one other noble woman). Perhaps his greatest literary achievement however is his autobiography The Confessions, in which Rousseau retold his life with an amazing honesty that (posthumously) shocked readers of his day and makes for lively reading even today. Rousseau was also interested in education and in his fictional treatise entitled Emile, he described a complete system of education based on sensitivity and developmental psychology. Perhaps Rousseau’s most important works however were in the field of political philosophy. His treatise The Social Contract was the first formal theory of democracy intended to empower the lower and middle classes and overthrow the upper class. This powerful work is generally considered to bear some responsibility for two revolutions–the American Revolution of 1775–83 and the French Revolution of 1789–1799. As you can imagine, such a controversial work got Rousseau into considerable trouble.

Speaking of trouble, Rousseau was no stranger to that experience. First, although Rousseau published and sold many works, he rarely earned much money from his efforts, due to lack of copyright protection at that time. Anybody’s works could be copied and printed by anybody else without paying a penny to the original author. A more severe problem was the political persecution his works caused when governments and churches, offended by Rousseau’s radical and liberal ideas, censored his work as well as threatened the author with imprisonment. As a result Rousseau had to constantly fight poverty and could only survive by relying on the help of high-ranking patrons who were usually rich aristocrats. Finally a very special problem in the case of Rousseau was his psychological disorders; Rousseau had to struggle all his life against neuroses that turned him into a near paranoid and disrupted his relations with friends and colleagues. In spite of these difficulties, however, Rousseau still managed to produce a lot of valuable work.

Finally we can say that Jean-Jacques Rousseau born 300 years ago this year was not only a highly significant thinker producing works in several fields that are still of interest to us today--he was also an utterly unique individual who was aware of his differences from the “norm” but made these differences a part of his identity. In this, and in accepting the complexities of his own human nature, Rousseau is perhaps the first modern man. Happy 300^th Jean-Jacques!

Appendix from The Confessions (placed in an exam copy for the male students—for their titillated "enlightenment," but alas, none seemed to have noticed it!).

(recalling an incident from his teenage years when he was afraid of young women...)

 Such was my naïveté that, although this young lady was not unattractive, not only was I not tempted to press my attentions on her, but this idea never even entered my head the whole of the journey, and even if it had, I was too stupid to know how to act on it. I could not imagine how a girl and a boy ever reached the point of sleeping together; I thought that centuries were needed to prepare for so terrifying an arrangement.

From book 4 of The Confessions, p. 140-41

Short trip (mostly medical) to New Delhi

A few impressions from New Delhi India where I recently traveled for 10 days or so partly to check out India's medical resources and partly to use up a bonus break given by the university (but not in the usual dolce far niente style of the carefree tourist). I’ve wanted to visit India, yes, for quite some time but to be honest with you this was no travel adventure due to the medical issues I mentioned. I still count it as a semi successful trip though since I was able to satisfy some of my cultural and geographical curiosity about this vast country.

But first, some impressions of the famous, fabulous, mysterious, and supposedly frightening place. During my first week in “Delhi,” as everyone calls, it I saw not one skyscraper, saw many pleasant treelined boulevards, noticed little blue sky but no lurid, abject poverty either. Moreover, the amount and intensity of the street touts, hawkers and unwanted sales corps was much less than I’d expected. Overall, I found ordinary Indians pleasant, polite and helpful – and more than competent at English.

On the medical side, I was able quickly to locate the neurosurgeon recommended by my Indian doctor in Al Ain who took a look at an old MRI then told me pretty much what I already knew; damage in the lower back, for which I would have to keep doing physiotherapy and not contemplate anything more drastic until all other recourses were exhausted. My local doctor is a urologist whom I've known for many years as a patient. He'd had neck surgery with this surgeon and had high praise for him. Although the hospital (Sir Ganga Ram) was the busiest one I'd ever seen, it was very decent and clean--probably a very good hospital for India. However, the pain relief prescribed me was mild to the point of unnoticeable.

I also took advantage of this hospital to do a couple of physiotherapy sessions and also saw another doctor for a new ailment in my right knee, alas. It may be some kind of arthritic or rheumatoid attack, but whatever it is it hindered me more than the old back problem; once again the pain relief prescribed wasn't very effective. Since coming back to the UAE, I've gone back to good old-fashioned volteran and swimming which does help fortunately.

My overall impression of Indian medicine is positive; all of the medical personnel I met were kind, competent, and spoke English fantastically well. The facilities of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital were incredibly crowded, granted, but still clean, decent and well maintained. As for the cost, well, for a 40 minute consultation with a well-known neurosurgeon, I was billed for a total of 700 rupees. At 50 to the dollar, I paid a mere $14. Shockingly cheap in fact; so much so that I should have felt guilty (but didn't of course). The medicine prescribed in fact was almost as much.

This is the first time I’ve ever gone to a foreign country purely for medical reasons, in other words, for medical tourism. And of course my first time to India. In other words a very odd kind of trip. In view of how little I did or saw in India, the reader may be surprised to know that the trip was still worth it. As for trusting myself to the strangeness of a new country, I felt that I had actually been in India many times before. No I don’t mean in previous reincarnations (as I’m sure you think I’m going to describe) but right here in AL where hundreds of thousands of citizens from India live and work. Actually most of the Indian immigrants in this town are from Kerala, a southern province with a popular tropical coastline that I’ve heard described and praised dozens of times by colleagues on holiday there.

At any rate, I’ve long appreciated the hard work, friendly attitude, intelligence and nearly inexhaustible serviceability of Indians I’ve known working on many levels here, from taxi drivers, store clerks, and restaurants to travel agents, doctors and nurses; not to mention the high achievements of people I know at the University, teachers and professors.

So you can see that after all this friendly and mostly intelligent interaction with Indian immigrants in AL, I had few qualms about going to a strange country that wasn’t all that unknown. I can also say that my positive preconceptions about India weren’t disappointed. Also more surprisingly perhaps, my negative pre-conceptions about the country went unfulfilled.

Though I tried on several occasions to break out of the New Delhi syndrome (spending two afternoons in Old Delhi) and the pseudo London pretense of the place, I failed to find any truly ghastly lurid poverty on the scale described by countless visitors to India.

There’s not a whole lot of literature available on American-Indian relations (as there is for the Brits of course), so this gives Paul Theroux’s stories in Elephanta Suite a certain rarity value. As the stories demonstrate, despite this lack, there is a definite shape to American and Indian narration in the new successful India. These generally well received novellas are definitely worth reading for the India traveler although they paint a fairly dire portrait of the place; a pair of rich Yanks die in a mob riot (in unexplained circumstances), and the book’s most appealing heroine, a young American college graduate named Alice is raped by a fat repulsive Indian whom she later arranges to have trampled to death by a male elephant in heat. In the most believable tale, an American businessman and an ambitious young Indian go-getter exchange places and values; the Indian heads off to Boston to move up in the academic-business elite while the American adopts his one time employee's Jainist puritanical belief system.

Another recent Theroux title Ghost Train to the Eastern Star dealt with India at about the same time in a reprise of the routes he made famous in The Great Railway Bazaar (he said he was doing it before someone else got the idea!); I tried to get my hands on a copy of the book (whh I'd read and liked a couple of years ago) before I left – but no go, & no ecopies. I remember the Indian section as fairly mellow and even affectionate toward the country. All I had in hand to read was Naipaul’s ancient Million Mutinies Now of Bombay/Mumbai. Still worth reading (20 years old) and not totally out of date.

As Theroux’s stories show, Americans and Indians seem to have a sentimental sympathy for and friendly impulses toward each other based perhaps on ex-colonial solidarity (?), a penchant for mysticism and idealism…? Or an intuitive understanding and acceptance of each other’s sentimental form of religiosity? Americans (as in these stories) seem to be "shopping" for religion, particularly some personal kind, as opposed to the abstract God of Protestantism, that can be practiced concretely; and Indians as is obvious have quite a few of these on offer. Indians also give touchy Americans the “space” they need on sidewalks and in public. Whatever it is the common language (at least among the educated city-dwelling English speakers) allows them to explore their curiosity about each other – and feel attraction if it’s warranted as well as the greed and lust that motivate the characters in Elephanta Suite. The kinds of dubious sexual involvements Theroux’s characters get into with negative outcomes are entirely believable.

For post-Asian veterans, India is less of a problem, less shock, less fear, less irritation and annoyance (travelers come in two types: pre-Asia and post Asia. The dividing line). Hardly any more difficult to deal with than a country I usually think of as tourist friendly – Turkey. A distinct improvement on Sri Lanka whose street hawkers struck me as a tad aggressive, (ready to take umbrage at the slightest impatience on the part of the hawkee).

I’ll spare you my story of the ultimate tourist cliché the Taj Mahal (it was still interesting to me as an example of Islamic architecture). The Gandhi Museum in New Delhi, however, was very worthwhile; I felt a renewed interest in his life and ideas.

What about the dreaded “Delhi belly” rumored to be latent in the most innocent ice cube? I didn’t get it anyway – took only the usual precautions such as drinking bottled water and avoiding street food and drinks.

Maybe a more serious concern -- certainly in this area of northern India – is the climate’s narrow visiting window. I arrived at the end of the high season – late March – when most tourists had left (hence the empty hotels). Despite traveling from residence in one of the hottest climates in the world – the Arabian Gulf – the Delhi heat with humidity was serious business – and I more or less fled the Taj Mahal site (on the one day I managed to tour) due to furnace like temperatures. Fortunately I found a restaurant with A/C nearby where I parried imminent collapse with cold beer and a hot curry.

No cease fire, no pull back, no compliance

Many excuses as always to everyone for more rants but living in the Middle east what can you do but scream? (the place has become obsessively interesting since last "spring" but exasperating as well) The scream is as always on Syria since we live close by in the ME and can't ignore what's going on there-- please excuse us for obsessing on this point -- but when you live in a place, u can't avoid observing, knowing and feeling responsible for what's going on. Even though I'm not.

Nevertheless a year of bloodshed and continued cries for help from the Syrian population cause me once again to get on the blog site and say: that although we have heard much of the Kofi Annan "cease-fire" peace plan in fact we have seen not one iota of change from the stance and behavior of the Basher government. yes, "a measurable decrease in violence" but how hopeful is this when Basher hasn't allowed one measurable iota of change on Syrian streets. Shelling in Homs for example, reported today. Does that sound familiar? Basher's batallions still occupying the main squares and intimidating the population. Killing demonstrators (but on a reportably smaller scale). Does that sound familiar? Kofi Annan's plan is really impressive so far -- no compliance,not one concession by the main malefactor. Not one significant change on behavior since all the Kofi Annan intervention began., Of course a miracle could occur any minute and Basher and fellow criminals could turn themselves in at the local crimes against humanity police station, but this is doubtful. Basher's almost perfect integrity as a tyrant -- he doesn't deal with anyone -- is at this moment almost perfectly preserved.

I think the best comparison would be with Hitler in the 1930 & 40s. A population has been screaming for help for over a year. Don't they have the right to defend themselves? Think of rebels against Basher as Jews revolting from Hitler. Wouldn't we automatically fly to their rescue? if Hitler managed a plan whereby he only killed one hundred Jews per day, would we say, well, that's too small a number to concern us? Or would we rather float off to a place called "Desolation Row" where nobody has to think too much? (Dylan, 1968).

PS My dearest hope sis that Kofi succeeds; but the deep misguidedness of his mission-as others have pointed out is that it strengthens Basher. If his plan succeeds nevertheless and he is seen to have saved lives, I will say hurray and (give him the) Nobel peace prize! Unfortunately though at this point, it seems his idealistic UN guided intervention will have to be revised.
PPS The point I didn't make is the lack of any clear way to verify what's going on in Syria; Kofi should have insisted on an unrestricted press at least, so as to remove the "we don't really know what's gong on there anyway" cop out I hear on the part of many.
For a keen witted comment on the situation by a local source, see J. Kechichian "Syria Deserves Better than Kofi Annan plan". Gulf News Op ed page 19 April. (Dubai).

Cheers etc.
James

More Useless thoughts on Syria year 2 daily massacres

[Why anyone thought that negotiation with basher would do any good is beyond me, I may be terribly wrong and totally naive but it seemed obvious from the beginning that Basher & associates would listen only to the language they speak. He continues to discredit himself with every move and I'm looking forward to the day when Syrians’ demands for such things as freedom, dignity democracy & human rights will be taken seriously. If we let the slaughter continue, we’re saying in effect Syrians and Arabs don’t deserve the same basic rights that we take for granted in the West. Not only Syrians but the world too would be a lot better off without the Basher daily death quota –cannily limiting his murders to a fixed quota every day just short of the "massacre" limit, say around 100 per day, but all the more intolerable for a normal conscience. Of course without any professional press permitted inside Syria, no one can prove any of it is happening, so maybe that should be Annans's non negotiable first condition: to let in the press to verify any agreement. I write out of anger at Basher and concern for the gutsy Syrian people of whatever sect who have braved the onslaught for over a year and deserve admiration but even more help. If liberals don't start making more noise about the basic rights being demanded by Syrians today, it may be the McCains who eventually get the credit for saving this population... We know a monster like basher can't last forever with most of his population and the world against him so to whom will the Syrians be grateful in the end?]

[[I bracket these thoughts to emphasize their uselessness and the fact that we live here in a less drastic but analogous way.]]

Yours truly,
Harry James

Two Opposing Views of Homelessness

The Pale of Settlement. Stories by Margot Singer. University of Georgia. 213 pages. 2008. $24.95.
A Map of Home. By Randa Jarrar. 292 pages. Other Press, 2008. $24.95
 
Reviewed by James Dalglish
 
Two works of fiction, one Jewish in origin by Margo Singer, the other Palestinian by Randa Jarrar, clash violently in tone – just as their nations do in reality – yet bear a common theme: the drift of homelessness.
 
The collection of stories The Pale of Settlement by Margo Singer is tied together by the character of one young woman Susan, an American Jew with relatives in Israel whose peregrinations back and forth between Israel and the US connect most of the stories and themes. She seems to be a sexually sought woman of uncertain commitment whether in her love affairs, place of residence or profession.
 
The collection is full of insights on its principal theme--the process of self-dissociation through displacement. Singer’s characters are Jewish Americans and Israelis for the most part, so Jewish problems and migration patterns of course concern her the most. She is an expert at describing the various shades of change and loss that afflict them but which apply to the typical expatriate as well.
 
The author also tries to situate her characters within a historical context so that their decisions and desires are seen in relation to real events. In “Hazor” she tries to connect the theme of the difficulty of digging out other people’s secrets to the archeology of Israel whose layers of rock reveal differing interpretations depending on you’re Arab or Jew. This is perhaps the most profound story.
 
Another impressive tale, “Expatriate,” features a Jewish family who originate in Israel but move to New York City (violating the stereotype) and lose their Israeliness while not becoming fully Jewish-American either. The family’s first-born, conceived in Israel, may have had an Arab father, but we never find out for sure. The most interesting thing about them though is not this suggested scandal but all the shades of time-and-space alienation the author discerns in their situation.
 
Singer writes well and often with lapidary polish but sometimes her metaphors go awry:
She [an infant] gazed at Leah as if there was a certain knowledge sealed inside her, like a crystal hidden in a geode sharp and bright... She lost that look with time of course, .... As self-consciousness came trawling like a fisherman’s long net across her mind.
 
With the first image you cheer, with the second (“fisherman’s long net”?) you wish she’d had a tougher editor.
 
In The Pale of Settlement, the Jewish characters are always off to someplace, most often to Israel, but also to Berlin or simply touring--in Nepal for example. Unlike in Saul Bellow’s or Philip Roth’s fiction there are few important non-Jewish characters in these stories; Jews and Israelis circulate, immigrate and become tourists largely among themselves.
 
The greatest crisis of conscience toward the Palestinian issue is experienced by Susan, working as a journalist in the story “Body Count” which refers to a real incident in the West Bank during the Second Intifada when the Israeli Army was accused of a massacre in the city of Jenin. Susan’s greatest worry is that she may have been suckered by the Palestinians into exaggerating the body count in the Jenin incident (the actual one was bad enough).
 
It might seem cruel and perverse to include in the same review a novel by an Israeli and a Palestinian, representatives of two warring tribes since time immemorial, but strangely enough the two works bear many resemblances. A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar is similarly obsessed with roots and the lack of them as its very ironic title suggests. You almost wish the two authors would sit down together to share notes, so identical are the themes that preoccupy both.
 
But in all probability they wouldn’t find much in common.
 
Whereas Singer writes a cool disciplined prose inherited from Flaubert, Randa Jarrar’s aggressive temperament expresses itself in hyperbole, slang and a good deal of unabashed obscenity. (This was shocking to me until I passed the book to a compatriot of the lead character I knew who said she liked precisely that about it.)
 
Yet Jarrar’s Palestinian family ranks as high on the scale of displaced sensibility as does Susan’s. The architect father Waheed is automatically an exile by virtue of being a Palestinian; her mother is half-Egyptian, half-Greek so Nabila, their daughter and heroine of the story, is sufficiently mixed in her origins to boast about it. They have lost their secure middle class status (like many Palestinians) but appealingly still have pretentions to artistic and intellectual accomplishment.
 
Narrated by the sharp tongued heroine Nabila, her family (previously expelled from Palestine) is forced out of Kuwait by Saddam’s invasion in 1990, escape to Egypt through Iraq (the most exciting episode), survive for a while in Alexandria, and finally move to America, landing in rural Texas no less, where the narrator succeeds in losing her virginity and getting into a ‘good school on the East coast.’
 
They are hardened travelers but not tourists. “On the plane to Egypt,” Jarrar writes, “I watched the tourists that surrounded us and thought how nice it would be to travel just for the sake of traveling, how nice it would be to leave one country for another willingly... for fun!”
 
You can hear the tone of the eternal aggrieved adolescent in almost every sarcastic line of Nabila’s account of her family’s woes. When she isn’t writing her eccentric, competitive essays, her typical interests are unsurprisingly sex, boys and pop music. We believe in her brilliance—though there are perhaps too many demonstrations of her wit.
 
The most touching theme in A Map of Home is the family’s search for precisely that--a home. Father Waheed often draws maps of the lost Palestine the ‘map’ of the title, so his daughter will remember a place where she never lived. A short episode takes the family back to Palestine for the funeral of a grandfather where Nabila sees how the original loss took place. Baba explains: “I lost my home ...and gained an education... which later became my home. That can also happen for you.”
 
The close and sometimes violent father-daughter relationship is at the heart of the book. In anarchic America, however the father’s tyranny collapses, which he takes well, in a series of comic pratfalls. With the support of her mother, Nabila emerges from the Oedipal conflict without too many scars.
 
Both works offer a paradoxical mix of internationalized but still essentially tribal fiction. The title that has the better chance of escaping its tribal origins and addressing a wider audience is no doubt the boisterous, uninhibited A Map of Home.
 
Review originally published in Bloomsbury Review March-April 2009: page 17.
 
(In fact, Jarrar’s novel won some prizes, and the author gained a fair amount of fame – and was seen recently at the Dubai Lit Festival. I hope her second act is as good or better.)

Confessions of a Paper Addict

Confessions of a Paper Addict

After listening to many wise comments in support of an initiative to replace paper textbooks with electronic equivalents in hundreds of courses at a local university during a high level departmental meeting, I didn’t think the discussion’d exhausted the topic so sat down and wrote some reflections on a topic I feel strongly about: the future of readable print.

First, I agree that paper is one of the heaviest substances on earth – and yes, carrying around a whole set of behemoth hardbacks or just one specimen, say, of the mighty Norton Anthologies series of British or American literature can be a nearly back-breaking task.

Before we rush into that paperless utopia, however, please consider these points. First, have you ever tried reading an ebook? Did you enjoy the experience? During break I found myself forced to read ebooks due to lack of proper illumination in my ecotouristically remote hotel room (and a boring print choice, Desert by JMG Le Clezio in French). I read grudgingly on my laptop till late at night (I can’t sleep unless I read a bit beforehand) a collection of Chekhov short stories downloaded from Gutenburg. It wasn’t a great deal of fun for some reason (maybe because Chekhov is a poor fit for the tropics & I’d already read most of the stories), so I tried to buy and download a bestseller as well, one of those “Girl who Kicked the Hornet Nest” series that I imagined would be more fun to read in a Nippon hut. Even after shelling out, however, it failed to jive with several e-readers I’d acquired. The Adobe reader showed only one page at a time – horrors!

I wondered if my negative experience was due to using a poor e-reader program, and so the next step was to download a better reading program. Which I did pronto and indeed found that “BookReader” was an improvement, showing two pages for example, and emitting a papery “whoosh!” when page clicking--but of course not allowing mimetic finger swipes (as on ipad). I haven’t used an Ipad for any extended time, so can’t pronounce on that device. I suspect that I would prefer it to other ereading gadgets but would probably ultimately give it up for the reasons I mentioned.

I’m still trying to get thru an ecopy edition of Huxley’s Brave New World and don’t know if it’s the turgid late chapters of that novel or the annoyance of having to constantly “click” the page that turned me off. At this moment I can’t say I have ever finished reading an ebook.

Even if you don’t mind the clumsy electronic apparatus, however, this kind of reading is superficial because you can’t jot marginalia – nor compile notes inside the back-cover. I know, I know, I’ve seen the clever ipad marginalia system, and it might work for the younger generation, but for me this is actually inefficient compared to what I can do more quickly with primitive tools such as a pencil and paper. Besides, I like the tactile impressions those two objects make on each other.

If I were using a book for research or reviewing it professionally, I would never use an ebook; it would be impossible to read the text thoroughly enough by flipping through screens; the fact is a paper book (I mean a book made of paper) gives more random access than the fastest computer. Besides, the small screens block scanning and skimming tactics that readers sometimes need to “cheat” or review at whim. I think it’s possible those small screens block a lot of the peripheral text I like to play with while reading in depth. E-readers, no matter how well intentioned, make reading more linear.

The esthetic aspects of reading are also important to my mind. To take a book seriously, I need a physical object in my hands – the heft of pages of a certain brightness and the resistance of the binding. Paper and actual print –such as Goudy Old Style or Garamond and not hideously ugly efonts. The publisher’s imprint tells me a lot too about the physical quality of the book. I also like to note my progress thru the book as the divide between read and unread pages gradually moves from left to right and the ratio of read to unread diminishes to zero. In the case of a difficult book, what an accomplishment; in the case of a fascinating page turner, a happy melancholy.

My more serious arguments against e-book media are these. First of all ownership of content. I don’t know if you read the recent news about Amazon customers who had content—ebooks—removed from their devices that they had purchased from Amazon. This struck me as a poor way to treat double customers having bought both “Nook” and an ebook file. But the incident is highly significant about the medium in question. You may “buy” a “book” from Amazon but the content is still under the company’s control. For someone who grew up with an extensive personal library, this is a chilling prospect. Apple’s itunes has one of the same limitations—Apple can and does control all the content you download from the itunes store. I can’t even make another copy of music I buy to play on another device. At least with books, you have a clear right of ownership – and the company can’t reclaim it.

(I'd like to see a representative from Random House have my house surrounded, knock on my door at midnight and "repo" my copy of "Ulysses.")

The other objection I have against e-books is based on the well-known tendency of computer companies and media merchants who adopt electronic media to enforce upgrade cycles on their customers. For ebook buyers, the idea of one’s library going out of date due to some hardware or software upgrade, unless they pay up, is certainly a possibility, no better an inevitability given the nature of the electronics business. Whereas for old-fashioned paper addicts like myself hooked on Gutenburg’s, system, no system 2.0 can come along to make it unreadable.

There is a place for ebooks in my opinion – reference works that you can’t carry around & only use for a few minutes, but I’ve seen few on the market I would use.

My last argument is semi mystical: to me a book is a living thing (almost). One develops a deep relationship with a book through its physical manifestation – yes – but the spirit deep inside it can’t be released unless its pages are turned by living fingers and oxygenated in the actual air. Only paper and ink can preserve the living spirit deep inside books. Finally, electronic media will never allow the mystic-physical interpenetration between book and reader that is essential to the life of the mind.

My final conviction: the life of the mind depends upon books, not ebooks, real books printed on paper in recognizable typography that you can carry around with you, show to others, discuss & build up a culture. If you get rid of real books and those quaint institutions we used to call bookstores but the French rightly call libraries then farewell life of the mind. A recent news story indicating the mental benefits to those who read long and complex works of fiction should give pause for thought.

A paper addict and Gutenburg throwback to the bitter end!
James Dalglish (poor sap!) has reviewed hundreds of books in Japan, Hong Kong, London, the USA and Middle East (including for the Review).