Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Torture, Abuse, and the Judicial Abyss: The Treatment of Terrorist Suspects in the U.S.

     A post on the blog TruthDig, written by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and war correspondent Christ Hedges, expresses outrage over the reality whereby Muslim terrorist suspects "caught up in Article III Courts are denied the opportunity to confront their accusers and to have their religious and political associations protected, and they rarely find a judge courageous enough to protect their rights." Per Hedges, "These violations of fundamental civil liberties will not, in the end, be reserved exclusively for Muslims once the corporate state feels under siege. What is happening to them will happen to the rest of us."
     Hedges goes on to criticize the abhorrent treatment of Muslims in U.S. Federal prisons, which he likens to torture. He quotes Jeanne Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, who asserts, quite unambiguously, "torture is legal in the United States in the form of years of solitary confinement and the use of special administrative measures."
     Hedges also quotes Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz who has studied the effects of solitary confinement, who asserts that prolonged isolation eventually includes  "appetite and sleep disturbances, anxiety, panic, rage, loss of control, paranoia, hallucinations and self-mutilations" as well as "cognitive dysfunction ... hopelessness, a sense of emotional breakdown ... and suicidal ideation and behavior." Haney found that "many of the negative effects of solitary confinement are analogous to the acute reactions suffered by torture and trauma victims."     
     As per the title of his post, Hedges takes care to highlight the slippery slope that will soon blur the lines between the treatment of terrorism suspects and suspects more generally, but also points out the depressingly well-known fact (to those who pay attention) that the 25,000 prisoners in Federal prisons "are disproportionately Muslims and people of color."
         The more things change, as the saying goes, the more they stay the same.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Autonomy and the Hijab

     If I keep making posts of this nature - defending the idea that the wearing of the hijab or burqa can be a function of choice and independence - it's only because I continue to encounter arguments to the contrary, most commonly from within the feminist community.
     Lending credence to my stance, Judith Sunderland, writing for Women's E-News, both defends the right to the veil, and points out how attempts to force Muslim women to "uncover" are in effect the same as the legal mandates in some Muslim countries that the hijab or burqa be worn at all times.   
     My favorite quote:

     "Pro-ban arguments relating to women's rights have the greatest resonance. Yet denying women the right to cover themselves is as wrong as forcing them to do so. Muslim women, like all women, should have the right to dress as they choose and to make decisions about their lives and how to express their faith, identity and moral values. And they should not be forced to choose between their beliefs and their chosen profession.
     "Generalizations about women's oppression do a disservice to one of the basic tenets of gender equality: the right to self-determination and autonomy, the right a woman has to make decisions about her life and her body without interference from the state or others."

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Some useful perspectives on the current unrest

     Amidst the chaos of misunderstanding surrounding the riots in the Middle East, I feel compelled to sieze on every refreshing kernel I come across.
     Fareed Zakaria, an author for CNN's Global Public Squares blog, urges readers not to allow the inevitably exacting imagery of the riots to distort their sense of scale. ". . . .keep in mind that these crowds number in the hundreds - perhaps thousands - in countries with tens of millions of people," he says. "They make for vivid images, but they do not tell the whole story."
     He goes on to make an interesting argument on a related point: "In many of these countries - particularly those that have toppled dictatorships - the most important reality is not of bad government but of weak government. In Libya, Yemen and even Egypt, the state has lost its ability to control its public. In a sense this might be progress. Egypt didn't see protests like this before because Hosni Mubarak's regime would arrest or even shoot protesters. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy is an elected politician, and he is trying to pander, appease, direct and guide people. I wish he were bolder and fought the extremist elements in his society head-on. But let's face it, he's behaving like an elected politician."
     Elsewhere, in an Op-Ed for the New York Times, author Doug Saunders addresses Islamophobia in the U.S., and in particular the assertion that Muslims can't be trusted and pose a threat to national security. He compares this prejudice with a belief popularly held against Catholics in the early half of the 20th Century, one so ingrained that "as late as 1950, 240,000 Americans bought copies of 'American Freedom and Catholic Power,' a New York Times best seller. Its author, Paul Blanshard, a former diplomat and editor at The Nation, made the case that Catholicism was an ideology of conquest, and that its traditions constituted a form of 'medieval authoritarianism that has no rightful place in the democratic American environment.'"
      Seeking to contextualize this prejudice:
   
      "Then, as now, there seemed to be evidence supporting the charge. Majority-Catholic countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal and Austria, had fallen into fascism or extremism. Crime and educational failure were rife among the children of Catholic immigrants. In the years after World War I, Catholic radicals carried out a deadly wave of terrorist attacks in the United States.

       These days, the same dark accusations are being leveled at American Muslims, many of whom are recent immigrants. And many otherwise reasonable Americans have greeted Muslims with fear and suspicion — in part because they came at a bad time. Their emigration to the United States, like that of many Catholics before them, has coincided with turmoil in their native countries and violence from a few extremists in their midst."     

      While Catholics can hardly be argued to be safe from prejudice in all corners of America, a nationally distributed hatred and mistrust of the community seems utterly bizarre, and the fact that it strikes us as such bodes well, I believe, for the future. It implies that future generations might respond with equal surprise to sweeping indictments against the Muslim community, at home and abroad.       

Friday, September 14, 2012

In solidarity with the Muslims of the world

     I'm emerging from my blogging sabbatical to express my unwavering solidarity with Muslims across the world - an overwhelming preponderance of Muslims - who have condemned the violent protests unfolding in the Middle East.
     Nothing really fancy to add.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Retiring my fandom of Mona Eltahawy

    Parting ways with your heroes is never an easy task, but after the publication of Mona Eltahawy's article "Why Do They Hate Us?" in the May/June 2012 issue of Foreign Policy, such a parting feels regrettably in order.
    Anyone who's read my blog history is well aware of my former fanboy-like admiration for the renowned journalist and speaker, and I will continue to harbor the utmost respect for her ability to carry forward in spite of atrocities perpetrated on her in Egypt last year. However, both my feminism and my staunch opposition to Islamophobia are now at odds with several assertions that her article places on the record. 
    First, the article claims, immediately following its title, that, "The real war on women is in the Middle East." While Mona later acknowledges (grudgingly) that women in Western countries also suffer from oppression, the use of "real" in connection with Middle Eastern misogyny by its very nature deprives of legitimacy the struggles of women everywhere else in the world. Given the massive legislative assault, in the U.S. alone, on birth control, abortion access, and the legal recourse available to sexual assault survivors, the statement is grossly insensitive. 
    Second, while the article appears to attack not Islam but the Middle East's political, cultural, and socioeconomic structures, the distinction is not nearly clear enough for the article to avoid reinforcing Islamophobic beliefs. 
     In the second paragraph, for instance, she refers to "a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. [Emphasis added.]" Later, when speaking of child marriage, she discusses the disputed claim that the Prophet Muhammed married his second wife, Aisha, when she was a child. Neither statement is countered in any capacity in the balance of the article, which creates the impression that Islam itself partly to blame for the situation. Considering that Mona identified emphatically as a Muslim at the 2011 presentation that introduced me to her, and considering that Islam, as a first order of business at the time of its inception, banned female infanticide, granted women the right to divorce, and made measures to protect women and girls from sexual harassment and assault, this is both lamentable and ironic.        
    Third, her emphatic reinforcement of the Muslim world as the misogyny-capital of the planet are all too reminiscent of the cries to liberate Muslim women that were used to legitimize the invasions of of Afghanistan and Iraq. While it was likely not her intention to do so, Mona appears to leave just such a door open when, at the conclusion of the article, she calls for her readers to, "amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye."
    Finally, the series of photographs depicting a plainly naked woman in a veil scattered throughout the article seem an odd aesthetic choice given the subject matter. Their purpose is (I'm guessing) to create an atmosphere of feminine vulnerability and exploitation, and yet they themselves are exploitive, as is any attempt by the media to capitalize on the female form for purposes of grabbing attention. How much creative control did Mona actually have over this? I can't be certain, but it's a testament to my shaken trust that I don't feel comfortable giving her the benefit of the doubt. 
    The statistics presented in the article are indeed compelling, and Mona is right to attest that any feminist should be horrified by the status of women in the Middle East. Statements such as these very much need to be made. However, the article's Islamophobic nature, its ironic objectification of women, and its trivialization of the victims of the (Unreal?) war on women deprive its author of at least one fan.
    There were far, far better ways to approach this. 

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Working with an editor!

     Big news! I've taken the plunge and submitted my book to a professional editor, who as we speak is engaged in the long-overdue task of tearing the text into a hundred pieces, such that something Phoenix-like might emerge from the ashes.
     For as long as authors have put pen to paper, the human ego has made a fine dance of the feedback process. I, for one, have always prided myself on my receptivity to constructive criticism, but when it comes to entire scenes and chapters being slashed, I start having difficulty keeping my pulse down.
     Tough.
     Anyone who writes without readers in mind, but still expects his or her work to be read, is engaging in one of the world's most meaningless exercises, and chances are, the passages that authors find most emotionally resonant in their own work are those with which they have a personal relationship - a relationship in which the reader plays no part. As such, the slashing pen of an editor is a crucial investment, and well though I might mourn that which ends up on the cutting room floor, what remains, and what I write thereafter, will have have total devotion and fidelity to the reader. A trade-up, to be sure.
     On a closely-related note, I have, of my own volition, thrown out the first chapter of the book and written something new. It poses a much more plausible context for the protagonists to meet, one that doesn't require Abida, the female lead, to place herself in any perilous situations, and that allows for some of the novel's central themes to arise through situation, rather than forced dialogue. Chapters 1-6, clickable to the right, now reflect this change.
     Faulkner, a major inspiration for my writing of the novel, famously remarked, "In writing, you must kill your darlings."
     Or, as a fellow blogger said, adopting an approach that is less murderer, more drill-sergeant, "Perhaps ‘just mess your darlings up a bit until they fall into line and serve the story properly."
     I'll keep everyone posted as my darlings either bite the dust or learn to behave!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 24

      Near the conclusion of the novel:


        He wrestled, at the last, for a moment of quiet.
Remembering the Windsor Ruins.  The pillars in the woods, standing tall, rain-soaked.  The droplets pattering on the leaves and the needles and the limbs.  The wet grass soaking with unapologetic deliberation through the knees of his blue jeans.
  He knew she’d never ask him what he prayed for.  It was his prayer, his prostration, his private communion with whatever God had taken shape for him.  To intrude on such matters was not in her nature, nor was it his nature to volunteer details without first being asked.
That left him alone with it all, unable to share with anyone the worldless, shapeless character of his supplication. 
       How he’d prayed for peace without knowing what it meant for him.  How in the end he asked only for the quiet of the ruins to penetrate some later state of chaos, and exist for a moment in perfect supremacy, numbing out the noise and the endless anarchy of everything he felt and loved and loathed.
If she’d asked him, he’d have fumbled without success for a means of description, both of the subject of his prayer and the way in which it seemed a lost cause even as it unfolded, and maybe, just maybe, she’d have been able to shed light on the affair – what it was about his mindset that made even the intervention of God seem insufficient to prevent his death. 
       But Abida wouldn’t ask, so Dig couldn’t fumble, and he remained alone with the certainty of doubt.  
       The memory of something sacrosanct and futile.  
       The mud on his knees as proof of his appeal.  

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Diwaniyya's "The Hidden World of Girls"

     Diwaniyya, a podcast for the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, identifies as its chief goal the provision of "thought-provoking conversations on Middle East culture, history and politics."
      Its topic for March centers on the experiences of Middle Eastern women and girls, whom it discusses via The Hidden World of Girlsa series of radio documentaries produced by National Public Radio and its award-winning documentary team The Kitchen Sisters.
     Of the six stories they offer, two in particular stood out for me.
     The first offers a multi-media look at the stories of nine young women who chose to stop wearing the hijab, or headscarf. The presentation contrasts photos that depict the women before and after the shift, and are accompanied by short audio testimonies of what persuaded them to make the decision they made. Of the testimonies I viewed, the majority of women discussed the manner in which wearing the hijab forced them to act as representatives of the Muslim community, a role they grew tired of fulfilling. In no case was it a function of any attenuation of their faith.
     While I greatly appreciated the story, I had a certain reservation over the manner in which its introductory video seemed to glorify the act of the headscarf's removal. I worry that it might reinforce the Western predisposition to view veil removal as liberation, but perhaps I'm reading too much into it, loyal, as I am, to the protagonist of my novel, who chooses to continue wearing the hijab and feels highly empowered in doing so.
     The second outstanding story focuses on Amira Al-Sharif, a young photojournalist from Yemen working in New York with the stated intention of "documenting the lives of American women my age and to compare and contrast them with the lives of Yemeni young women." Sheeren Marisol Meraji, the author of the story, rightly observes, "I liked the idea of a Middle Eastern journalist flipping the script. It seems like it's always the other way around: Western journalists documenting Arab women." The article features eight of Al-Sharif's photos, which are, indeed, compelling. Also compelling is her pride in her homeland, of which she hopes to spread awareness.
 

Friday, March 16, 2012

Feminism in Tunisia

     A panel discussion held at Unisa University in Pretoria on International Women's Day, aimed at discussing women's involvement in the Arab Spring, offered some intriguing facts on the history of feminism in Tunisia.
     Two in particular stood out for me, both date-related.
     First, in 1962, women in Tunisia were allowed access to birth control.
     Second, and more significant, in 1965, abortion was legalized - eight years before Roe v. Wade.
     Though Tunisia's path to gender equality has been as rocky and back-slide prone as any - for which the dictatorship of Ben Ali did no favors - it pays to be mindful of the places where light shone through, especially in regions so often construed as lightless.
     It's worth noting, also, that the abolition of monogamy and the establishment of a minimum age for marriage were among Tunisia's first legislative maneuvers upon independence from France in 1956.
     Now, as before, the struggle continues.    

Monday, March 12, 2012

Dr. Hayat Sindi, yet another participant in my "Remarkable Muslim Women" series

     Daily Beast and Newsweek magazines have selected for their list of the world's most distinguished 150 women Dr. Hayat Sindi, a Saudi national.
     Dr. Sindi is a Cambridge graduate, earning a PhD in biotechnology in 2001. Chief among her many accomplishments is her pioneered technique of using inexpensive slips of paper and drops of blood or saliva to diagnose liver disease, a practice that allows low-income individuals to bypass cost-prohibiting lab tests, or to offer medical service to those who live in areas where clinics might be nonexistent. During a stint as a visiting professor at Harvard, and concurrent with the development of this technique, she co-founded Diagnostics for All, with the aim of facilitating broader access to health care. She will launch on October 21st, in Maine, the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity, which will help scientists draft business plans and locate investors for their ideas.
     Sindi's successes are astonishing not only in their own right, but also in light of the largely oppressive culture in which she was raised.
    At the same time, Sindi - who dresses traditionally, complete with headscarf - declares in no uncertain terms, "I’m very proud of where I came from. . . . Sometimes people think they need to completely discard their culture. But you have to hold on to your identity."
    She acknowledges the resistance her father initially put up to her engagement in a lifestyle at odds with traditional Saudi notions of feminine behavior, but then closes on a moving note: "When he died, I found newspaper clippings about me under his pillow."  

Sunday, March 11, 2012

My love and support to the people of Kandahar Province

      As one who opposed this war from the outset, and still remembers vividly the sense of total moral collapse I felt on the day of our invasion, I can't stress enough my outrage over the killing spree today by a U.S. Army Sergeant that left dead 16 residents of Kandahar Province.
     To the survivors of the massacre, and the families of its victims, my love and support goes out to you. Though U.S. officials will seek to portray this as an isolated incident, far too many of us are in some way complicit in the occupation and butchery of your nation, of which today's atrocity is just one other face.
     One day soon, this war will end.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 22

     He engaged the clutch and the stockade walls swung outward and they moved through the rain, out of Jackson, out past Clinton, southwest to the Natchez Trace Parkway and down toward the ocean, Cassie plunging forward through the green and gushing woods, through trees swollen with rain-coaxed fertility, bent in submission . . . southwest down a highway transformed by storm into the likeness of a culvert, green-domed roof and watery base, everything flowing in perfect uniformity downhill to the river, to the Mexican Gulf . . . 
     A sign said Bayou Pierce Presbyterian Church, 1807.
     They turned off the road and wound up the hill to the shack. They parked outside and they stepped through the door, into a totality of veteran wood . . . smells of dirt, impressions of consummate weathering . . . the place just big enough for ten people, maybe twelve . . . all of it abandoned and empty, consigned to history, but not to sterility.  
     Still spirit in the wood.  In the dust.  In the rain on the roof.
     They sat on a bench in the corner and listened to the drips overhead.  
   He put his hand on the bench, wondering – inevitably – how many people had sat there before him; what isolated precession of the faithful had braved the storms of centuries past to stand in prayer on this muddy little leaf-strewn knoll.
    “I can feel it,” said Abida, and the objects of her feeling – the spirit, and the belief that chased it – were left comfortably unspoken. 

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

A heartbreaking look at New Orleans, from the ground up

     Last week I wrote about a video on the CNN homepage that put a human face to the crisis in Syria.
     This week, I'll recommend to readers an incredibly moving article from CNN that looks at New Orleans through competing lights: popular associations of drunken revelry, color, music, and perpetual festivity juxtaposed with the debilitating intersection of poverty and hopelessness that conspire to make the Big Easy the murder capital of the United States.
      Anyone who has read my manuscript - or spoken with me, for that matter - knows the degree to which New Orleans swept me away. The gas lights, the brightly colored walls and balconies of the French Quarter, the immediate proximity of the Mississippi River, the myriad genres of music that seemed to ooze out of every crevice . . . I can barely dwell on the city without feeling myself on the verge of tears. As such, I come dangerously close to falling into the same starry-eyed trap that grips the article's target audience - one that ignores what could rightly be called a domestic humanitarian emergency.
     It's a lengthy read but one well worth pursuing, providing a heart-breaking chronicling not only of the victims and survivors but also the tireless efforts of those who seek to bring the epidemic to an end. We meet Curissa "Cee Cee" Davis, who at the time of her 18th birthday had lost 20 friends to homicide, including Katie, her best friend since 14, killed by a shotgun blast to the back by an abusive boyfriend.     Later accounts detail an 11 year old killed by a stray bullet in a street-fight and a 2-year old who died when a man sprayed with an assault rifle the courtyard in which she played.
    The article then focuses also on the efforts of Darryl Durham, who heads Arts for Kids, providing youth with a means to express their frustrations constructively, and Father Bill Terry of St. Anna's Episcopal Church, who set up a "murder wall" in 2007, and has since recorded the names of every murder victim as a means of bringing awareness.
     Critically, the article provides insight into the factors that make the violence so pervasive. Chief among them, unsurprisingly, is race. In addition to the usual discrimination in hiring and housing, which demoralizes blacks and places them in situations of economic distress, New Orleans' residents of color are also confronted by what until recently was a wildly racist and corrupt police force, not to mention Katrina herself, which wreaked her greatest damage on traditionally black neighborhoods. Indeed, it was only after Katrina that the city first claimed the infamous murder capital designation.
    Race frames the way the violence is perceived, also. The article details three men who were murdered in the act of protecting others. Two were black, one was white. The media all but canonized the third, and a colossal reward was offered for the arrest of his murderers, while the deaths of the first two men went largely unnoticed.
     I say I was "dangerously close" to falling into the trap of sugar-coating the Crescent City, but I made certain that my second visit to New Orleans included a self-guided tour of neighborhoods like Tremé, that in 2010 still seemed a warzone in the aftermath of the storm. Such ventures only strengthened my love of the city, as its perseverance, its spirit of survival in spite of overwhelming hardship, was as beautiful to me as any of the French Quarter's alluring attractions. In celebrating the individuals who fight to rescue the city from crisis, and the successes they've already brought about, the article pays tribute to this very character.
    A slideshow lends one more dimension to the piece, detailing the residents of the city and the surroundings in which they lead their lives.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 17

       A stream-of-consciousness passage where Dig meditates on the work of Delta Blues musician Son House:  

       Opening track “Death Letter,” the steel-bodied national busting in with its soul-soaked twang, the chords so filled with Mississippi mud it seemed a wonder the deck could keep running.
I got a letter this morning . . . said your love is dead . . . 
Half-waltz, half-roll.  The skin of a dead monarchal gator animated with riverboat grease dancing on the surface of an ocean of sweat and blood and runoff and atop it the man and his slide guitar, the high notes tear inducing and saliva coaxing in the same amorous breath.  High chords on Track 2 “Pearline” like a loving slap from the vengeful, interspersed with melody.  Blastchord-tune-blastchord-tune-blastchord-deltadawn wetness flooding runoff swamp dust cotton choke cotton choke.  The old blackman and his semi-blindness coaxed from retirement in 1963 to palliate the resurgent thirst of a generation hungry for the purported purity of all things traditional.  A studio and a river inside it.  Oh, Pearline.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Bearing witness to Syria

    In allowing my blog to fall into increasing bouts of radio silence, I've done a disservice to my continued support for the Arab Spring, a term I refuse to retire, even in light of the bloody, soul-crushing mess unfolding in Syria.
    Whatever happens going forward, irrespective of what now seems a likely outbreak of widespread civil war, it remains vitally important to recognize the incredible duration of time over which the protests were peaceful in nature, and even more important to celebrate those factions of the uprising that continue to plead for passive resistance to this day.
     As a testament both to the non-violent protests and to those individuals who've felt themselves driven to take up arms, I strongly recommend to anyone with with the requisite emotional fortitude this stunning footage from the CNN homepage. It was compiled in Homs over the course of the last three weeks, since the start of the siege, by an as-yet anonymous French journalist. In addition to capturing with singular immediacy the atrocities that transpire as we speak, it's an incredible testament to a man's commitment to reportage. He charges into firefights, machine guns blasting within arm's reach of his lens . . . crosses an open street through sniper fire to interview people who've gathered in a makeshift hospital . . .  interviews children who've been slammed with shellfire.
    To anyone who watches the video - 10 minutes in length, but a 10 minutes that left me with the impression that I'd watched a feature-length documentary - I can only hope it will excite the commitment I feel, at least in the barest sense, of keeping the troubled nation in mind.
     In supporting Syria, and by extension the global community, I'll be one more voice calling on Assad to get the hell out of Dodge.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 15

     On the road through Alabama, Dig reflects on the New York left behind:

     He remembered lying in a cellar in Bushwick, in Brooklyn, down where the aroma of rotten planks and crossbeams bred a paradoxical atmosphere of fertility.  He had a wrench in his hand and pliers in his belt.  A wad of intersecting pipe hovered nine inches above his face.
     He’d been down there an hour, fiddling around with everything that budged.  Every once in a while the voice of someone in the building – most often a child – rose to a level sufficient to penetrate the floorboards above him.  Otherwise, the place bore a stillness so inclusive that even the pipes above him were silent, bereft both of trickle and hum. 
    He’d been in Rio two weeks earlier.  
    There’d been a gunfight in a playground, just six meager blocks from the home of the MeetUp family that hosted him.  
   A nanny died in the cross-fire, blown down at the feet of an unsuspecting child.  
He’d read about it in one of the Anglophone papers hoisted from the sidewalk, the words coming at him bloodless, an impotent chant, the conjured-up sorrow of a substance far inferior to the devastation he felt the day he came back to New York.
    Woman robbed at knife-point in Bed-Stuy.
    Page 6 of the Village Voice.
    Not even injured.  Just robbed.
    And knowing no cause for his heightened revulsion other than the fact that it was Brooklyn this time.  New York this time.  Just another texture to the bloodbath of Home.  
    And there in the cellar of the nameless complex, with Bed-Stuy and the place of the mugging twelve blocks east, and closer still the warehouses and alleys of Bushwick, surrounding the cellar, and yet muted by the cellar, and shut out by the cellar, he found himself spontaneously struck by the feeling that he could stay there forever.  Put down the wrench and close his eyes and enter a silence so deep that even the shouting of the child wouldn’t rouse him.
     Instead he finished the job, hopped the train to Manhattan, and walked through Central Park.  The crickets were already starting to sing, and the Latinos walked by in their sweat-stained A-shirts and their hacked-off shorts, followed by the women from 73rd St with their strollers and their heat-marred makeup, and the sweat of the city clung to the pavement, and the sound of the traffic and the metropolitan chaos purred through the trees, four octaves south of the crickets, and as always he could smell the baseball field long before he saw it – the kicked-up dust and the mass of leather gloves and palmed out bats – and he sat on the bleachers and watched them play, and every crack of the bat seemed to break open the air and leave in its wake a space to be filled, and the coach yelled and echoed in yelling, and within an hour of watching the fireflies had started to appear, and the contrast in heat between cellar and park had stoned him silly and played with his pores, and he remembered from afar, the park and the baseball, and he missed New York for the first time since leaving.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 14


Yes, my friends, I can rap in your streets
I can pierce my ears with the grit of your ghettos


Born to the wars of the tongue-tied tenants
Tigris Euphrates inheritance of breath
by blood the nation my cradle and foes
watching it now from a far-flung shore
watching now your discount war


fought by word, of a part
in my name
send tanks for the honor of tearing my veil


not here in this city a field less worthy
nor here in the city a soil less rich
Birmingham City I’d take you to the trenches
not for the sheiks to tell me my rights
nor Bush to remind me
the knowledge misplaced 


Here in the city I plant down my feet
you can write no map on the flesh of my body
nor flags on my skin
hadith on my womb


like home like breath my Birmingham child
let no man cite
for Crusade, my name


for God Almighty
knows the length of my hair

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 13


      The road ran straight as a latitude line.  The trailers clustered on either side, each partitioned from the other by its own stand of trees.  Its own curtain of vines.  Its own little heap of aging Works in Progress.
     “Are you sure it’s not just because you know you’re in Alabama?” he said.
     She looked out the window, waited a moment, and then pointed.
    “Look,” she said.  “That house right there.  That’s plantation-era, right?”
    “Yeah.  I think so, anyway.”
     She watched as it slid past them on their right.
     She told him it felt like how Rome must feel, or Egypt, or Angkor Watt in Cambodia, all the sad and mighty antebellum monoliths hearkening back to a culture that was regal, almost imperial, and yet juxtaposed in the unscrupulous light of day with trailers and shacks and houses,  “And that’s not all,” she said.  “These mansions . . . they kind of contrast with themselves.”
     She gestured toward a looming, multi-colored, partially marble structure on the edge of a pasture.  The windows were broken and the painted portions of the surface had peeled, and for all appearances the place was abandoned, save for a pair of black kids playing jacks on the steps.  A woman kept watch from a trailer nearby.
    “There!” she said.  “That’s what’s different about Alabama.”
    Dig smiled.
    “Abida,” he said, “are you turning into Faulkner on me?”
     “I don’t know,” she said.  “I’m still reading Twain.”

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 5

     A small town in central Virginia:


     . . . .they left the restaurant and took off down Main Street in the direction opposite the place where they’d parked the truck.  Dig allowed himself to fall a pace-and-a-half behind her, watching her move, her clothes so dark against the concrete that with the help of a slug or two of Jack Daniels he might have confused her with her shadow.  
    She walked slower than he’d ever seen her walk before.  
    A step.  Three-quarters of a breath.  A step.  
    Making eye contact with every person they passed, even the people who struggled to avoid it.  
    Greeting the ones who smiled at her.  Smiling at the ones who didn’t.
    Five blocks from the restaurant a gray-haired lady stepped out of a pastry shop and asked them to come inside.  The air in the shop was odorless, and Dig blamed the AC; its ferocious campaign to keep all the chocolate from melting.
    The gray-haired lady handed Abida a chocolate cherry chunky.  She held it in both hands, as if dropping the pastry would incur something awful.  Abida took it from her, and also used both hands.  She chewed and swallowed, and she told the lady thank you, and they walked out to the street again, Abida smiling even wider than she had before, her hands rolled into fists, and they walked down to the end of Main Street, where an interpretive sign directed their attention to a building on the opposite corner, a landmark of the Civil War, its walls still riddled with the pockmarks of bullets.  

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A royal decree in Saudi Arabia grant women the right to work in lingerie shops

     'Tis the nature of regimes that thrive on a lack of imagination to create situations that are patently senseless.
     Until very recently, just such a situation prevailed in Saudi Arabia, wherein women, otherwise institutionally partitioned from men in every respect, were forced to interact with their male compatriots in a surprisingly intimate context - when purchasing lingerie.
     For this less than optimal arrangement, Saudi women could thank their society's prohibition on men and women working together, a reality that disproportionately affected employment in the retail sector. This ironic consequence was a culture of male-run stores catering to a female clientele, involving transactions that flatly undermined the codified status of women's modesty.
     A royal decree by King Abdullah has put paid to this folly - the country’s cosmetics and lingerie shops now have until June to replace their male employees with women.
     An informative article in The New York Times helps to keep the move in perspective: "King Abdullah generally supported an expansion of opportunities for women, but steps in this direction can’t be traced to any burst of enlightenment within the royal family. They are happening because the kingdom’s women need and want jobs and are learning how to make themselves heard — and because, in an increasingly expensive country, their husbands often want them to work."
    Nonetheless, the move is a victory for women's self-determination and dignity, one that cannot be overstated.
    It is worth pointing out, also, that women helped make the victory possible.
    At the forefront was Reem Asaad, a financial adviser, writer, and women's rights advocate, who used social media to organize a boycott of the male-run shops, and helped women get trained for retail work.
    In a June 2011 interview with PRI's The World, Asaad echoes my opening sentiments.
    Quite simply, "We no longer accept things that are not logical."

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 12

     A bizarre and profoundly "off-the-map" local campground in southern Virginia:

     In the morning there were pancakes on the open fire, at 10AM, when the daylight hours had come and bloomed and flushed out the details that night made obscure.
     Here a fallen tree that bridged the creek, a cluster of tea bags hanging from its branches.
     Here a string of deer vertebrae, tied together with bailing twine at the end of a grass rope, suspended from a limb, bending in the wind.
     Here a plywood checkerboard with the squares sketched out in charcoal, and pebbles from the creek-bed in lieu of pieces, the two armies distinguished by a single shade of gray. 
    “Checkers,” said Dig.  “I was never any good.”
    He proved it over breakfast: a five-game series, one of which he won.
    He washed the dishes in penance. 
    Knelt by the creek to scrub off the grease.  
    Put his hands in the water and startled up a crawfish from underneath a rock.
    The crawfish watched him for a moment or two, the sunlight glinting off the pinkness of its body, its miniature antennae bending in the current, and then it flicked into motion again, wriggling forward to the safety of Dig’s shadow.  

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 5


     . . . a small knot of teens hung out in the back of a flatbed pickup listening to Beyonce. Dig watched as the solitary woman in the bunch tapped one of her comrades on the shoulder and pointed.  The conversation cut off instantly.  The shoulder-tapped comrade grabbed the brim of his baseball cap and switched it from backwards to forwards, and tipped the brim down low so that his eyes were in the shade.  He raised the bottle of Pepsi to his lips and sipped it with a slowness that could almost be felt.
     Dig crossed the lot and waved at the gang as he passed.  The girl in the truck waved back nervously but the kid with the Coke just kept on looking at Abida, and didn’t acknowledge Dig’s presence.
     One of the young boys with the rope said, “Hey mister,” in a tone Dig couldn’t decipher.  Dig waved again.  The boy waved back.
     A thin concrete median at the end of the lot shielded the grass from errant tire tracks.  Abida stood just shy of the grass line, her eyes on the engine, its wheels resting on a pair of tracks that ran thirty-odd feet on either side, as if to tempt the train into one last delusion of mobility.
     “Typical New Yorker,” said Abida.  “I get to Virginia and the first thing I gawk at is a train.”

Monday, January 16, 2012

Renowned feminist author Nawal al-Saadawi speaks on women and the Egyptian Revolution

     The Egyptian online publication Bikyamasr.com featured an interview with  Nawal al-Saadawi, renowned feminist and author, on the subject of women in contemporary Egypt. Jailed under the Sadat regime, and then banished under Mubarek, Saadawi is not - perhaps unsurprisingly - nostalgic for the old guard, nor is she overly enthusiastic about the prevailing Islamist political parties, which she considers hostile to democracy.
     She argues instead that the political landscape be completely rewritten, and that the integration of women in the democratic process be the overarching priority:
   
     "Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women . . . The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women. The revolution is not only political. The social dimension must be there. The social problems, the culture problems, the legal problems must be changed just as the political law are changed."

      Interestingly, she contends that Egypt, at a cultural level, the level of the people, would have no qualms about backing a female presidential candidate, and that in fact the government, the military, and the Islamist parties and pressure groups are the ones responsible for institutionalizing misogyny. When asked whether or not Egyptians would turn out in mass to vote for a female president, she responded:


    "Of course. Men and women in Egypt are very tolerant toward women. I was a medical doctor in the village and I was examining men and women. You know Egypt has a history of tolerance toward women and Christianity and all religions. We are civilized, not the government . . . It is the government and colonialism. External colonialism. But if you go among people, it is different. My village supported me when I presented my name. And the men before the women. When I was a doctor there they were ready for me to examine them, so it depends about the women, her character, her program, her seriousness . . . "


      While I'm not certain my admittedly limited research on the subject predisposes me to agree, it's nonetheless a moving construct, and one that I'm sure speaks truth about to larger swaths of Egyptian society than is commonly believed.
       On a related note, The Egyptian Gazette ran an article a week before Saadawi's interview revisiting the atrocity of "virginity tests" and the brutal treatment of female protestors by security forces. In a tone I couldn't help reading as rhetorical, the article began, "What is this society, with its laws, institutions and taboos, doing to ensure that women have the right to demonstrate without being humiliated?"
      The answer - far too little. But people are at least being heard.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 10

    On a winding road in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Dig parks the truck so Abida can pray:


     At the edge of the woods, a slender doe broke from the group and stood in place, watching Abida.
     Abida moved.  The doe raised her ears.  Dig felt something shift in his chest, something that bore all the markings of sharpness.
     Abida shifted into a crouch, left leg beneath her, right leg back.  Her eyes were closed but her face was radiant, her smile blissful, her expression colored not just with rapture but also with awareness, as if she could sense the gaze of the animal her closed eyelids had thus far prevented her from seeing.
     Then she prostrated again, and sat again, and she opened her eyes and at last saw the doe.  The doe reacted to her gaze by raising her ears just a few degrees higher, but she didn’t move back.
     Abida’s smile deepened.  She rose to her feet and without a word stepped from the rug and moved toward the doe.
     Dig watched.  Kept quiet.  Enjoyed his exclusion.  Abida with her back to him. Moving toward the woods.
    Twelve feet from the deer, Abida stopped and reached out her hands.  The deer, recognizing a gesture that an endless influx of tourists had rendered all too familiar, took three steps forward and stopped again, and went on watching Abida.  The two of them held that posture for all of the time it took for the sun to be gone – the glow to vanish from the trees – and then the doe dropped her head and entered the woods.
    Dig got back in the truck and started the engine.  Abida got in and fastened her seatbelt.  She was breathing heavily.  She smelled like earth.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Excerpt from Companions of the Garden, Chapter 3


     “One of these days I’m going to find myself in Mecca,” she said, “standing in front of the ka’bala, and I want to do it sooner instead of later, when I’m still fresh enough to know what Hajj is about, but the thing is, I’m one of those screw-ball Muslims who feels like it’s not just a matter of walking up to the stone; it’s a matter of what you bring with you.  Where you come from.  What you are.  And as far as those last two are concerned, the only identity I can claim is ‘Muslim from Astoria.’  Call me crazy, but that’s not enough for me.  I’m also an American, from America.  And it occurred to me after speaking with you yesterday that I –”  
     She stopped again for breath.  
    God, thought Dig.  She’s really talking fast.  
     “ – it occurred to me that I have no idea what that means.  And I want to know, Dig!  I’ve been living in this country for twenty-one years and this right here is the farthest I’ve been from New York.  I want to know America!  Whether I love it or hate it I want to know what it is!  In Saudi Arabia when they come at me with their cheap-shot America bashing, I want to be able to bash them back; something informed and knowledgeable that will blow all their preconceived notions out the window.  And what better place to kick off my education than the American South, traveling with a man I can trust, who respects my right to prayer, and knows enough about my faith to not start harassing me about why I don’t believe in Jesus?!”
She raised her head and caught his gaze.
     “You know we believe in him, right?” she said.
     “Yes,” said Dig.  He tried to steal the moment, to interject something that exceeded a syllable in length, but before he could do so she was off and running again.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Three women representing the Abrahamic faiths weigh in on modesty

     Women's eNews recently ran a fascinating article covering a panel in which a Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic woman discussed the subject of modesty. All three women have made the choice to cover their hair, choices each one of them identify as being very much their own.
     They describe modesty as a personal construct, rather than a societal one.
     "What is inner, that is what is dignified," Bronya Schaffer, a member of Chabad.org, a Jewish group, told Women's eNews. "It is a sense of self-respect, self-dignity and that's what gets projected. It has nothing to do with inhibition. A woman can do anything, be anything but within the context of Jewish law."
     Hajer Naili, the author of the article, who also chooses to cover her hair, echoes this sentiment of intense personal choice: ". . . as a Muslim woman I simply want to follow Islamic guidance. People often assume my family imposed the scarf on me or that it means I am married. I explain that a Muslim woman who wears a veil often does so by choice and there is no link between the veil and marriage in Islam."
     Naili closes by dwelling on another striking aspect of the panel - the degree to which it emphasized the commonality between the world's three major monotheisms: "As I listened to Sister Hill, Sayeed and Schaffer discuss their relation to this piece of cloth I found them sending a beautiful message of peace and co-existence among Christians, Muslims and Jews."