Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Gone to look for America

I'm back in America, in the U.S.A.

I left on September 9, 2010 and came back to JFK airport on June 22nd, 2011, with eleven new countries and infinite new thoughts and life under the soles of my feet.
Everything I've done and seen and learned and everywhere I've been - unforgettable.  
But it's time for me to get back to knowing my own country.  If I'm not a patriot, and not a nationalist, I am still and forever an American, and I want to know what that means.  I want to see this country mile by mile from the ground, not 30,000 feet up in the air.  
I just got back from an amazing and probably life-changing weekend at the Socialism Conference in Chicago, and after a 20 hours bus trip with some badass socialists, reading Kerouac and feminist socialist theory, I'm in Texas.  I'll be here for a week, then back to Philadelphia/DC, and as many more adventures as I can fit in to the slipping summer months.


Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies
And walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've gone to look for America

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said, "The man in the gabardine suit is a spy"
I said,"Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy, I'm lost" I said, though I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all gone to look for America
All gone to look for America
All gone to look for America

I spun around till I was dizzy; I thought I'd fall down as in a dream, clear off the precipice.  Oh where is the girl I love? I thought and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little world below. And before was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across gloomy, crazy New york was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam.  There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk.  Not courting talk - real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.
- Kerouac, On the Road



Alexi Murdoch - Song for You

So today I wrote this song for you
'Cause a day can get so long
And I know its hard to make it through
When you say there's something wrong

So I'm trying to put it right
'Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tight
And I don't know even where to start

Maybe that's a start

'Cause you know its a simple game
That you play filling up your head with rain
And you know you've been hiding from your pain
In the way, in the way you say your name

And I see you
Hiding your face in your hands
Flying so you won't land
You think no one understands
No one understands

So you hunch your shoulders and you shake your head
And your throat is aching but you swear
No one hurts you, nothing could be sad
Anyway you're not here enough to care

And you're so tired you dont sleep at night
As your heart is trying to mend
You keep it quiet but you think you might
Disappear before the end

And it's strange that you cannot find
Any strength to even try
To find a voice to speak your mind
When you do, all you wanna do is cry

Well maybe you should cry

And I see you hiding your face in your hands
Talking 'bout far-away lands
You think no one understands
Listen to my hands

And all of this life
Moves around you
For all that you claim
You're standing still
You are moving too
You are moving too
You are moving too
I will move you
---
"The Industrial Workers of the World union has been accused of putting women in the front lines of protests.  The truth is, the IWW simply does not keep them in the back, and they go to the front!"
- Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

"Israel is not a nationalist dream; it is an imperialist nightmare."
-Sherry Wolf
"America and Western Europe are feeling rightly penitent for the Holocaust - but it is the Palestinians who are paying this penance."
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
---

I think my favorite thing about being home is the hour between 5 and 6, when the late afternoon turns into early evening and the sun is hot and slanting and slipping and seeping.  I only feel that warm, baking easy summer in America.

Coffee is cheaper here too, or at least my kind of coffee.

The driveway to my mother's house is flanked by bamboo and mimosa.

Wake up, stumble off the bus, dazed, needing and knowing no sensation but bloodflow in my legs, stare around, lean on a stucco wall, half listening to people talk, back to the bus.  The gas station sign says just in big white capitals on a red field, GAS.  
Where are we? Drive for a moment, peer at roadsigns.  In a barren shrub grass park, a sign wickedly proclaims, "Welcome to Miami."  More helpfully, the turnpike toll says Oklahoma and I know I'm in a part of the country I've never been before. What do the stars look like here? Lean back, look up and through the bus window's glare.  
I can see them all, hear them all singing in their spheres.  I'm going to visit them all, I think.  I'm going to get up there and see every star. And just for a moment, a long moment, I think that if I could rid myself of every human bond, every attachment, dependency, love, desire, fear, and be free from everything, I could get to every star.  And then I begin writing in the dark.

---

Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall



P.S.  60th post!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Assault
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

I am waylaid by beauty.  Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass
that am a timid woman, on her way
from one house to another!



Monday, June 13, 2011

Last Day


I'm leaving the Middle East tomorrow.

I can barely even begin to describe how I feel about that.  I'm so looking forward to the rest of my travels - Riga, Berlin, Reykjavik - and I'm so looking forward to seeing my family all over the US again and to seeing my friends and my old cat. It'll be nice to be back home, enjoying my house, wearing little summer dresses, going out for drinks with my sister, eating good Thai food and Mexican food, checking what's changed in my favorite museums, and what's changed in me.
But there is so much that I will miss.  If I start thinking about it now, I'll never leave.  And like it or not, my plane sails out of Amman in 36 hours, and I'd better be on it.
My year abroad lasts for one more week.
I'm going to eat as much hommos, mtabbal, mashawi, kouse, wara einab, fresh juice and arabic ice cream as I can possibly hold.
I'm listening to nothing but Arab music, speaking as much Arabic as I can, and just trying to get the most out of my last hours in this fantastic, addictive part of the world.

And I'm already working on ways to come back next summer.
Petra, Jordan
Western Desert, Egypt


Athens, Greece

Rome, Italy - St. Peter's Basilica

Rome, Italy

Venice, Italy

Giza, Egypt

Chouf Mountains, Lebanon



Beirut, Lebanon

Byblos, Lebanon

Istanbul, Turkey - Hagia Sophia

Abu Simbel, Egypt - the whole IFSA group

Beirut, Lebanon

Byblos,
Lebanon



Saturday, June 11, 2011

Link-a-palooza

Check out these links from some badass feminists in Lebanon who just happen to be my friends -

The Daily Star - Website crusades against harassment in Lebanon

Qaweme (Resist) Harassment Blog


Adventures of Salwa anti-harassment video:



And now go join the Nasawiya (feminist) facebook page and get more updates from them!

Words and Stone

Orignnally written for publication in the Kenyon College Middle East Students Association Journal, May 2011.  


This is the night, what it does to you.
I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
-       Jack Kerouac, “On the Road”
Wadi Qadisha, North Lebanon

Lately, I haven’t been thinking my own thoughts.  The words of other people, known and unknown, living and dead, have been leaping into my mind and out of my mouth.

Yesterday, on a bus on a long drive from Beirut into the mountains of North Lebanon, I realized I was running away – running from deadlines, from readings, from sidewalks, from sidelong looks, from Beirut, from Palestine and from Israel, and from names altogether.  I had to get to the mountains.  It was just where I went – north, north, north, following that eternal flawless arrow up and up to where I could see the snow and the yellow hamaida flowers bursting out of it.

Give me a moment before summer begins, just one breath before the heat of the year.

It was there in the mountains that I could think, could breathe.  A year of living by the sea has robbed me of all bounds, made me limitless, swept my certainties over the edge of the horizon, again and again.  I needed the dirt, the sky, and two walls of holy mountains around me so that I could think, away from the clutter of empires, from the debris of the age – the humans and cities that are the debris of the world. 

Up here, you could know things.
 
Every year, the world finds its way to spring.  The snow melts.  Green things grow. The cedars are as ageless and evergreen as always, enduring and renewing.  Surely my winter – your winter – will not last forever. 


In Egypt, one hour isn't like any other…
each moment is a memory renewed by a bird 
of the Nile.”
-       Mahmoud Darwish, “In Egypt”

Kom Ombo Temple, Southern Egypt

 I was in Egypt for three and half months, countless hours, and so many moments both forgotten and unforgettable.  The Egypt I lived in is gone now anyway, so what I could tell you that you could use?  I could tell you about smoking lemon-mint sheesha outside on the shores of the Mediterranean in December, or about how the Egyptian government banned sheesha in Alexandria during election week in November to keep Muslim Brotherhood members from congregating and debating in public.  Or about camping in the White Desert outside Cairo, watching the moonrise and staring at the Milky Way, listening to Bedouin music.  Or about my Arabic teacher, a beautiful, 40 year old Ph.D., director of a research institute, who still lived at home and had a curfew because it’s so hard for women to support themselves and because its culturally stigmatized for a woman to live alone.  All of these things were part of my Egypt, but after February 11 when Hosni Mubarak stepped down – or really after January 25, when the Egyptian people stood up – that Egypt is gone, changed forever, and the future is completely in flux.
Here in Lebanon, things seemed completely different.  Clean streets, beautiful people, ethnic restaurants – all the comforts of home, plus the Mediterranean sea and the chance to speak Arabic and French and English, sometimes all in the same sentence!  How delightful, I thought!  But I’ve been here for a few months now, and I’ve learned some things about the reality of modern Lebanon.  Religious sectarianism runs through this country like a plague, killing any chance of establishing a real, just government.  The country is split by religion and region – the first question any Lebanese asks another is, “Where are you from?” because it will tell them what religion you are – Baalbek?  You must be a Shia, and you’re probably with Hezbollah.   Saida?  Or Saida suburbs – it makes all the difference. East Beirut?  Definitely Orthodox Christian.  Class is not important; French or English educated doesn’t matter; even political party takes second place to religion.  As a religious studies major, this is all fascinating to me.    But as a human being, one with Lebanese friends who worry about their state without a government, the sectarian prejudices of Lebanon are a serious problem, an impediment to real government, and no one I’ve talked to has any solution in sight.


"Doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence...If you sit in your house, live your life and go to your job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence."
-       Naomi Jaffe, activist, Weather Underground co-founder

Children in the Saida (Sidon) Palestinian refugee compound, Lebanon


“Can I take your picture?” I ask in Arabic of the four young girls sitting on the shabby blanket on the floor.  They’ve all been watching me since I walked into their mother’s house – their house – in the Palestinian refugee compound in Sidon, with my big camera, my short hair and otherness.  I’m here with a student group from the American University of Beirut, with other international students but mostly with other Lebanese students.  I speak the weakest Arabic of anyone in my group, but I don’t really need much to communicate with these four shy, smiling sisters.  There should be five of them, I think to myself, remembering the story their mother told us when we came in, about her middle child who was bitten by a mouse last year and got sick and died because she couldn’t afford the medicine her daughter needed.  The UNRWA wouldn’t pay for it because this woman and her family – including her now deceased husband – fled from Palestine in 1967, and UNRWA doesn’t give legal refugee status or any aid to 1967 refugees.  I met another woman, another mother of four, old before her time and sick with epilepsy, unable to afford her own medication, and unable to walk up or down the stairs to her own house more than once every few days because of her illness.  Her name was Amal, and last year, the roof of her house had caved in right above where her four daughters slept.  The youngest one had had her arm broken by a piece of debris.  Because Amal and her children live in the part of the compound that’s built right into the historic old city of Saida, the Lebanese government didn’t allow them to rebuild their own roof, and didn’t send approve construction teams until 4 months later.  The government cared more about the architectural integrity of any given building in the old city than about the lives of the women who lived in it.  Amal herself had been born in the Saida compound after her father left Palestine in 1948 and all of her daughters were born there as well.  Whether or not they want to claim any Lebanese identity is not even up to them – because Amal’s father was a refugee, all his descendants in Lebanon will be classified as Palestinian refugees and subject to all the discrimination, racism, and legal limitation of the generations before them.    
            After talking to Palestinian refugees, even the impenetrable sectarian problems of the Lebanese seem unimportant, and worse, compared to the situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon and all over the Middle East, they seem solvable


The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of
great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
-       John F. Kennedy
                      
Photo: E. Tess Wolterstorff, April 2011, View of Palestine from south Lebanon

At Kenyon, I was co-founder of our chapter of the student organization J Street U, an organization that promotes a “pro-Palestine, pro-Israel, pro-peace” stance on the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict, and I definitely tried to a take a moderate, fair-minded point of view on the whole issue, keen to see both sides and remain informed and impartial.  But I am a different person now than I was when I left Kenyon, and it would be foolish for me to think that my opinions and feelings on this issue could remain still amid the storm.  What I saw in the compound was three generations of refugees all living in one dark room – a humanitarian crisis that has lasted for 63 years.  In the face of my real experience, I am struggling with my neutrality.  I am struggling with whether neutrality is really the best position here, or if moral conviction must lead me to choose a side. I felt sick inside as I wandered around the compound, thinking about all the different nations and leaders and citizens responsible for this suffering.  The Palestinians in Lebanon have been dehumanized, forced to go through exhaustive military checkpoints every day to get from their homes to school.  Israel and Lebanon are certainly the most culpable parties in the situation, but there is a heavy mantle that gets put on your shoulders as an American citizen, and it would be naïve to say that America plays no role in the position of Palestinians in Lebanon and worldwide.  Our support, both tacit and explicit, for this treatment of Palestinians, going all the way back to 1948 when we imagined that Palestine was a land without a people which we could give to a people without a land, has led to a racist vendetta that is turning into a genocide in which we, as well as Israel and most Arab governments are culpable.  I struggled against paralyzing rage and despair just to write this article, trying to find a way to say what I believe without seeming to point fingers, but that is in fact exactly what I want to do.  Little girls should not die of mouse bites in 2011, and it makes me sick at heart and sick to my stomach that I pay taxes to the government that helped put her and her mother in the untenable, inhumane and unjust position they live in now.
            It is unacceptable that in 2011 – an age of the United Nations, of the Millennium Goals, of unprecedented wealth in the United States and Western Europe, of real information easily accessible through the internet – that we should have such a political and human crisis, and that it should be taken with such an air of resigned disappointment, of disinterested benevolence, by most Americans.  No one is an island, especially the educated and economically advantaged citizens of a free and democratic country – we are part of this situation and culpable in it, and I know now that I can no longer live with that as long as things stay the way they are in Palestine and Israel.  There must be change, and soon.


 “For,” the outsider will say, “in fact, as a woman, I have no country.
As a woman I want no country.
As a woman my country is the whole world.”
-       Virginia Woolf, “Three Guineas”
The author at Petra, Jordan

I began this year thinking that my American passport was like a golden ticket to the world – lines were fast, visas were cheap, customs was always easy.  I know now that I am lucky just to have a country.  Knowing that I have a home to return to makes any alienation or hardship abroad temporary.  But I don’t see my passport as a free pass anymore; quite the opposite, it feels like it has become something of a weight around my neck.  In my archaeology class, we talk about the destruction of sites like ancient temple site of Eridu in modern Iraq and after learning of its great significance in human history, we see pictures of its occupation and devastation by US military forces.  The magnificent city of Babylon was turned into “Camp Alpha” by the Marines who carelessly caused substantial and irreparable damage to the site, which is one of the most important ancient sites anywhere in the world.  If I fall into the trap of caring more about the spaces than the people, as the Lebanese government has, there is always someone there to remind me.  One night, walking with a friend along the seaside corniche in Beirut, a man stopped and started to chat with us.  When he asked where we were from, and we answered, America, he said, “America?  I am Iraqi!  You kill us.”  Horrified, my friend and I desperately wanted to say no, not us personally, no.  But what did that mean, what could we really say?  Yes.  We do. 
I feel guilt, but I choose instead to accept the feeling of responsibility, to accept that I got lucky in my birthplace, and that I have to use the advantages I did nothing to earn in the service of people who weren’t so randomly lucky.  Guilt is a paralyzing emotion, but responsibility is galvanizing, and so I try to make the conscious choice towards action and passion and outrage, rejecting fear and stasis and despair.
I didn’t write this article to preach to you, to tell you ultimate truth or make you angry – I wrote it to make you passionate, to make you curious and brave enough to take your skills and your compassion beyond the sphere of your comfort zone.  Platitudes, I know.  But you’d be amazed at how many things blaze into clarity when you step into the home of the other, of a refugee, and you’d be amazed at how complicated everything becomes when you stand with one foot on both sides of a divide, an alien to both, and yet culpable in at all.  Uncertainty and flux can be powerful creative energy as the Egyptian people – and the Libyans, the Syrians, the Bahrainis, and so many more – are finding out even now.  If you want to find out what your passport means to you, try and get into the West Bank.  If you want to find out what your home means to you, imagine it falling down around you as you sleep.  If you want to know what your health means to you, imagine being so sick that you can’t walk down stairs.  When you’re done imagining, go and find out and read and take pictures and think.  Maybe you’ll discover, as I have, that certainty is not the greatest thing of which your mind is capable, and that the sea and the wind and lives of others have swept you clean and left you to rebuild something stronger from the ruins of yourself.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Last plane tickets


Just finished buying the last plane tickets of my year abroad - 
My schedule for the next month:
June 7 - Leave Beirut (sadly, and soon to return inshallah)

Arrive Amman, bus/etc. to Ramallah

June 14 - Leave Ramallah, return to Amman

June 15 - Amman to Riga, Latvia for an 8 hour layover!

Riga to Berlin, arriving mid-afternoon!

June 21 - Leave Berlin
12:00 AM, June 22 - Arrive Reyjavik, Iceland!

1:00 PM, June 22 - Leave Reykjavik
7:00 PM, June 22 - Arrive New York City, United States of America.

ASAP - back to Philly!!!

May 27, 2011!!!

Happy Birthday to my beautiful beautiful wonderful NEPHEW!!!
BEST DAY EVER.  I've been listening to every single song on my itunes with the word "baby" in it.
I can't wait to get home and actually see him and schoogle him and celebrate the newest tiniest member of my amazing family!!!

Billie Holiday, "Summertime"

Cat Stevens, "Morning Has Broken"

Thursday, May 19, 2011

May 19 2012

Exactly one year from today, I'll be graduating from Kenyon College.  Inshallah!
إن شاء الله
How can it be so soon?
In one year, I'll be free and loosed in the wide world.
Exactly one year from today.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Nakba - النكبة

May 14, 1948 - The British Mandate in Palestine, a colonial venture that betrayed European promises to the Arab leaders of the Hijaz made during World War I, officially ends.  Israel is declared a state.

May 15, 1948 - A provisional Israeli government is handed power at the moment British formally end the mandate.
...the rest is history.

Israelis call May 15 Independence Day.  Palestinians and Arabs call it al-Nakba, The Catastrophe.
It's all about perspective right?

But here's how the Israeli government celebrated their Independence Day, May 15, 2011 -

Daily Star - Israeli massacre at Lebanon border

Thousands of peaceful protesters came from Lebanon and marched to the Israeli border, with flags saying "We will return" and an adapted Palestinian version of the cry that's been used in all the revolutions of the Arab Spring - "al-shab yureed...al-'aooda ila filistine" "The People want...to return to Palestine!" They wore kuffiyehs and waved Palestinian flags.  Some tried to climb a barbed wire fence, some through rocks from a distance.

The IDF responded by opening fire on the crowd with their automatic weapons.
They killed 10 people, including a fourteen year old boy, and wounded over a hundred.
Happy Birthday, Israel.

Reading the above article from the Daily Star, I'm struck by how prejudiced, hypocritical, enraged and hateful nearly every party quoted sounds.  "The march aimed at reminding the new generation that out parents and grandparents were displaced from their land which was taken over by Jews," says one of the demonstrators.  Saad Hariri, the recently resigned prime minister of Lebanon, is quoted talking about his "Palestinian brothers" and their right to a homeland, when his policies and his father's policies have helped keep those displaced Palestinians in Lebanon living in abject poverty in refugee camps for over 60 years.  And the Israelis speak only with their bullets.  You don't need a voice in the discussion when you have guns.

Here's The Economist's take on how the "Arab Spring" is effecting the Palestinian situation -
Here comes your non-violent resistance.

J Street and J Street U, which are usually so good at sending emails about all Israeli news, haven't been in touch yet.  J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami posted a statement on the website, saying "J Street is deeply alarmed by the serious outbreaks of violence in and around Israel" and calling on "Palestinian leader and the Israeli government to work to minimize further violence and casualties and to prevent further escalation" and calling on "President Obama to step forward this week with a concrete set of ideas and parameters for breaking the present diplomatic impasse." Read the full statement here -  J Street reacts to violence in and around Israel.

It seems to me that the best way to "minimize further violence" is to demand in strong and condemning terms that the Israeli army stop killing peaceful protesters.

Egypt is opening its Gaza borders; Netanyahu is traveling to the US to gather support and make new deals;  the Israeli government is doing what all the Western governments did in the beginning and putting the blame for these protests on Assad and Ahmadinejad, rather than allowing that maybe Palestinians, especially the youth, can think for themselves and have identified Israel as their enemy;   Obama is feeling pressure to take a new stance on Israel-Palestine in light of the changes sweeping the Arab world and the world as a whole, and meanwhile the Palestinians are trying to ride the tide of the Arab revolutions, demanding that justice be served and fighting for their right to a homeland, a citizenship and their human rights - and apparently, their lives.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

All kinds of culture here

My new favorite website -
http://www.sawtalniswa.com/

Sawt al-Niswa, "Women's Voice," is the blog site for Nasawiyya, a new, exciting and active women's right group in Lebanon.  They website is subtitled "a feminist webspace," and just from that beginning they had me.  This organization put together a really inspirational Take Back the Night march on International Women's Day in March and they got great turnout, even in the pouring spring rain.  They've also co-sponsored events with migrant worker's rights groups, Palestinian rights groups, and all kinds of good causes.  The humanitarian youth in Lebanon are a multidisciplinary crowd.   
The website is updated pretty regularly, and mostly in English, so check it out!

And here's a great article one of my friends sent to me about the sexuality of female domestic migrant workers in Lebanon -

http://twenty-four-7.org/the-public-and-hidden-sexualities-of-filipina-women-in-lebanon/
It focuses on the Filipina community, but you'll see that it draws a pretty comprehensive picture of this often-overlooked aspect of migrant workers' lives in Lebanon.  I cannot recommend this article highly enough.  The website, twenty-four-7.org, is also a great one to keep up with, documenting and highlighting issues, setbacks and triumphs in the campaign for migrant workers' human rights.

Saw the amazing film "Maid for Sale" about domestic workers in Lebanon on Tuesday at a screening organized by the Migrant Worker Task Force -
Al-jazeera's summary - check out the comments for some interesting feedback.  http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2007/04/200852517271337758.html

Directed by Lebanese filmmaker Dima al-Joundi, who was in attendance at the screening, it tells the story of a Sri Lankan woman as she returns home after seven years of work in Beirut, and another one just as she is leaving her home, husband, and young son, to get work in Beirut.  A heartbreaking and unflinching look at the desperation that begins this cycle, the profiteering that perpetuates it, the injustice that aggravates it, and the few people of vision and kindness who struggle against it.
Here's an interview with Dima that really gives you an idea of what her process was like:
http://simbarusseau.com/she-cried-with-them-and-told-their-story/

And this site might be the best -

http://qawemeharassment.wordpress.com/

A friend of a friend here has started a blog for women - and all people really - to post incidents of public sexual harassment.  What happened, when and where it happened, how it made them feel.  Sometimes it's women being able to laugh at the absurdity of their harassers, sometimes it's women using the blog as a place to vent their rage, sometimes as a place to show support, and sometimes to lament.  In every case, it's a revelation about the widespread sexism and mistreatment of women in Lebanon, and a chance for all women in Beirut to feel a sense of community, to feel like it's not just you, not just me, this is a serious and shared problem.  And the outrage is shared too.

And next week, the AUB Choir and Choral Society and the Ensemble Polyphonica will be having our spring concert!  Sweeeeeet poster below:

If you can't fly over to Beirut for the concert, find the music online, it's all excellent, especially the Romancero Gitano and piece by A.R. Rahman, "Zikr", and pretend you're here!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Death - celebration and mourning


Osama bin Laden is dead.

I saw all the news coverage of the American reaction and I was just suddenly so afraid that I was too far out of pace with my own country - that I'd been away so long, changed so much, and become to different to agree with anyone.  I didn't even understand when I first saw the footage - why were they cheering?  Why chanting USA?  What was with all the FDNY tee shirts?  Some news anchor explained that it was "closure" and "justice" and I wanted to be sick.  What about all the thousands and thousands of Afghani lives taken by a war that was supposed to bring "justice" and "closure" to the victims.  And what about the thousands of Americans who've died fighting that war - when do their families get closure - when George Bush gets assassinated?  The childish simplicity, the schoolyard "he poked me, I poke him" mentality of these people!  USA USA USA - this is Osama's greatest victory, that we chant our country's name to celebrate government sanctioned assassinations. 
 
Part of me thought, well, at least Obama pulled this out of his hat right around re-election time, which should really shut conservatives (maybe for a second...)  There's a joke picture of Obama going around the internet that says, Sorry it took me so long to get you my birth certificate.  I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden.  Liberals - or at least my liberal friends who posted this - think this is hilarious.  I want to know what happened to the anti-war liberals who saw complexity in the US situation in the Middle East and the War on Terror.  Friends here in Beirut have been posting this like, posting facebook statuses like "America! Fuck Yeah!" and "Talk abbotabad place to hide" like this is all a big party, a big joke, a total victory for the US over the Dark Side.  

The only thing this could do in terms of a victory would be to win Obama points with conservatives and make his commitment to homeland security demonstratively a moot point, at least as far as the sound byte pundits are concerned.  But I've had a chilling thought - I remember thinking in the run up to the 2004 election that, wouldn't it be funny if George Bush had actually had Osama captive for months, and was just keeping him hidden away somewhere, waiting to reveal right before election day to sweep the election.  How manipulative, how risky, how very Bush! I thought at the time.  But now I wake up and find that it's actually Obama, my president, the man I voted for, who made that call, took that risk.  It's most probable that this really was the best time for the capture/kill mission, that intelligence was only a certain thing after all this time, and not that he postponed or anything for political expediency.  But I imagine that he thought it might help with the campaign.  Any chance he'll use this political momentum to push through controversial domestic legislation, or close Gitmo?  Not a chance in hell.  In fact, the words announcing Osama's death were barely out of his mouth before he was spouting more of the fear rhetoric I've gotten so used to hearing from politicians the world over - "There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us.  We must –- and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad."  Constant vigilance!  Never give up, never surrender!  He's right that Osama's death does not dismantle al-Qaeda, but I'm so sick of being told to be afraid.  Why can't we have a president who tells us to be BRAVE?!?!  What about FDR, telling us that the only thing to be afraid is fear?  How far have we come, that now it seems as if American politics would cease to function if we ever all stopped being so damn afraid.  Here I am in Lebanon, defying a travel advisory high-alert that's been in place for decades, officially withdrawn from my university so that they don't have to risk liability, and I couldn't be safer or happier.  To me, the name Beirut means an apartment with a sea view, an ancient city at the crossroads of histories, the best bars and cafes I've ever seen, the plastic surgery capital of the world, a world-class university, delicious mezze and coffee, a rapidly growing feminist movement, growing humanitarian consciousness of migrant workers rights, a tri-lingual slam poetry scene, and a walkable Mediterranean city with a beautiful laid-back vibe.  To most Americans, watching the news and reading the papers and listening to the officials, it means war, anti-Semitism, and just that nebulous feeling of fear and danger that makes people say "Wow.  Why?" when they find out I'm studying here.   I am sick of fear politics - I've pulled away the curtain, and I see the man behind it - the shriveled, lying, angry, hateful little thing that has created a nation of people who cheer for death.  

They say they're going to release pictures of his corpse - they've claimed the body, it's all ours, thrown off a ship into the sea.  They've kept his DNA, they'll be doing samples.  They'll release the results, release the post-mortem pictures.  I'm reminded of the hanging of Saddam Hussein, broadcast on national and international tv, millions of viewers.  What is wrong with us.  

In 2002, just before the war started, there was an international march of over 10 million people worldwide.  My parents took me and my sister into the streets to shout and protest and be with other activists, and I'll never forget it.  I remember getting dressed and ready to go to my first protest, remember my mom grabbing the United Nations flag that she had ordered earlier that month.  12 years old and ignorant but well-intentioned, I vehemently said, "I wish I had an Iraqi flag to wave!"  My mom shuddered and kind of laughed, and clarified that just because she was against the war did not mean that she was pro-Saddam Hussein.  I know now that it's exactly that complexity, the understanding that not every important battle is between two sides, and the ability to stand apart from overly simplistic dualities with integrity, passion and morality is the most important duty of an American citizen.  At least the United States of America that I want to live in.  I also wonder - what flag can I reach for now?  What standard can I bear?  Does anyone speak for me, with me?   

Let me be clear - I'm not mourning for Osama bin Laden.  The man was a monster, a sick terrorist, responsible for the needless and brutal deaths of thousands of Americans and even more Arabs.  But he was a terrorist that we created.  Literally.  We - the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan governments, the American people - put the first automatic weapon into his hands, funded his Afghani mujahideen and Reagan called him a freedom fighter and commended his valor.  We paid the exorbitant oil prices that made his family rich and produced the fortune that still funds al-Qaeda.  We are not clean.  Killing him does not wipe blood of our hands, and it does not even some balance hanging in the sky between "us" and "them."  It is just more killing.  I'm not mourning him.  I'm mourning for the reaction in the States, mourning the absence of the reaction I would have wanted.  Or perhaps that reaction is there, but the mainstream news keeps feeding us this fucked up cocktail of victory and fear, and I'm mourning for what could have been.  

The season of Passover has just ended, and there is a line in the Exodus story that has been resounding in my head since yesterday.  After God frees the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt and brings them safely across the Red Sea, he drops the sea on the pursuing Egyptians, drowning them all. 

"When the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the Heavenly Hosts broke out in songs of jubilation. God silenced them and said, "My creatures are perishing, and you sing praises?"  Though we descend from those redeemed from brutal Egypt, and have ourselves rejoiced to see oppressors overcome, yet our triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe."

God said, "My creatures are perishing and you sing praises?" and allowed no jubilation at the destruction of human life.  The Heavenly Hosts and the Hebrews were allowed and encouraged to sing songs of freedom, to celebrate their liberation, to thank and love their God and be grateful for their safety and their freedom - but not to celebrate death.  I think the celebration of death is what makes us monsters - terrorists, Nazis, dictators, serial killers, all these sociopathic entities enjoyed killing for its own sake, for pleasure and personal triumph.  We are not them.  Or we should not be.  Even to this day, the Jews who celebrate Passover spill drops of wine from their glasses onto their plates in sadness for the suffering of the Egyptians, lessening the cup of joy because others of God's creation, even those creations who are our enemies, are suffering.  That compassion, that humanity, that was entirely absent from the crowds celebrating in New York and D.C. 

Humanity and compassion and understanding and strength are what we so desperately need.  What other weapons do we have against fear, terror, destruction, ignorance and hatred?  
But what makes me saddest is seeing my government and my people pick up the weapons of the enemy, kill him with it, and then sing songs of jubilation.  Osama bin Laden is dead, and I am glad that he will never kill an innocent person or spread his ignorant, oppressive agenda of fear and cruelty again.  But when I look at my own country, my cup of joy is lessened.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Holidays

In Khalil Gibran's garden, in Becharre, the Qadisha Valley, in North Lebanon.
I went for a weekend with friends, to clear our heads and enjoy our vacation.  
The area was very Christian, and we were there on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.  And Earth Day! 
We hiked from the top of the valley to the bottom, then back up.  We must have a seen a dozen waterfalls.   We drank hot chocolate under the covers in our cozy hostel.  We wandered in an olive tree orchard and overlooking the trees for a hommos break.  We saw an ancient monastery at the bottom of the valley where the Maronite Christian order was founded.  Fresh air, fresh thoughts.  A lovely holiday.

And today is my birthday!  Twenty one today!   I'm wearing red lipstick, met my friend for a breakfast bloody mary and a delicious omelette at my favorite restaurant, and I'm watching the rain pour into the Mediterranean from inside the library (where I'll be all day working on homework and a paper).  I'm older than Elizabeth Bennet.  This weekend, you'll find me at the beach with my best girls, and kicking around Beirut in my new shoes.

What a good life.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Egyptian women being awesome

Egyptian Women's Organizations Coalition

""The revolution called upon the equality and the social justice for all portions of the society," said Fatima Khafagy, women's rights activist participating in the coalition.

Among the demands of the coalition was the true representation of Egyptian women who participated in the revolution side by side with men.  And that media should focus on women's activities and let be part of the democratic transition process."
                - Article from Bikya Masr