Redirecting our focus

Temptation is seductive, and nothing is as tempting as postulating simplifications in a complicated and confusing world. In the midst of two major wars that are becoming increasingly difficult to justify, it is enticing to define just two known enemies: Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Thankfully, as intellectuals, politicians and journalists, our understanding of war and global politics has become a bit more nuanced than an us versus them strategy.That is why the U.S. is not just fighting with missiles, but also trying to “win heart and minds” of those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why the White House is working with moderate Taliban to fight radicals in the region.

The world is complicated.So why, when it comes to religion, is our discussion so simple? The argument that the Muslim fanatics who carried out the 9/11 attacks and who make up Al Qaeda and Taliban members do not represent Islam has been beaten to the ground. It is a dead horse. And yet I wonder if it has to be reiterated because the solutions our intellectuals pose do not recognize the basic core of this argument: Islam is not a single, solid entity. In his New York Times column last week, Thomas Friedman argued that what Islam needs is a civil war, similar to what the U.S. underwent and one that eventually led to the emancipation of slaves. He was concerned with jihadists marketing their message and recruiting new members via online mediums (Facebook and Youtube). In order to combat these “bad forces,” Friedman argued, moderate Muslims need to “look inward,” verbally and ideologically rise against these jihadists and once again reclaim a peaceful Islam.

Bravo. Except that Friedman has forgotten that Islam has been undergoing a literal and ideological civil war since Prophet Muhammad’s time. In the beginning, the main source of conflict was leadership after the Prophet’s death, from which the Sunni and Shia sects were created, each forming their own practices, belief systems and ways to fuse religion and politics. Later, sects formed under these main ones, and as the world’s understanding of citizen, state, and religion transformed, tensions arose among moderates, liberals, conservatives and orthodox, as they did in every religion.

The reason I need to provide a history lesson here is to iterate the repercussions of all these differences. They have evolved according to cultural, geographical and political settings. That is why, although Muslims may feel spiritually tied to fellow Muslims around the world, their political activism is defined by the socio-political context in which they live. That is why countless leaders have failed to unite Muslim states – or even Arab ones – and why the argument of “the Shia crescent” in the greater Middle East is filled with holes. That is also why, although they are loud, Muslim extremists will not “win” and define what Islam is. This religion, like Christianity and Judaism, is personal and forever transforming.

Friedman is correct, however, in asserting that Muslims need to become more active, but they need to be so within their countries and societies. For our sake, our society would do well to acknowledge those moderate voices that have been fighting against an extremist reading of their religion.

A clinical professor of psychiatry has been circulating an e-mail claiming that the Muslim fanatics are ruling and the supposed “peace-loving Muslims are irrelevant” in society’s discussion of war. It is comical, in one sense, but frightening to realize our dialogue has been ignoring these moderate Muslim fighters, as if by default, Muslims are remaining silent.

But they are not. They have been speaking out, from mosques to Muslim Student Associations, from newspapers to blogs. I have seen journalists in Egypt question the political conservatism in their country. I have read articles by young writers lamenting the loss of their nation to extremist forces, but believing that there is still a chance to fight back. I know of friends – women - who are pursuing studies in Islamic law to transform what they believe to be an oppressive system.

As peaceful as Islam claims to be, it is not without a constant struggle. Perhaps what our intellectuals should really be arguing is how to improve journalism, allow Internet access and increase literacy levels in countries in order for this debate to grow louder.

I had thought the biggest backlash against Muslims would last during those first few months after 9/11 took place. But eight years later, it is Islam itself that is getting the brunt of this backlash. Let us not fall into the temptation of simplification. Eight years and two wars later, let us say our society has grown wiser.

Unasked questions, missed answers

In his New York Times column earlier this year, Frank Rich commented on how the balloon boy incident sums up what type of society we have become:

"'They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,' the local sheriff, Jim Alderden, said last weekend, when he alleged that 'balloon boy' was a hoax. His words could stand as the epitaph for an era."

Rich seemed to state best the destructive passivity our society has been leaning towards. And perhaps no one bears the weight of this guilt as much as journalists do. In the months before the Iraq War, journalists failed to question the Bush administration's decisions to go to war, silence that cost two countries.

Thankfully, Jane Mayer has compiled a list of questions about the details of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the New Yorker that remain unanswered.

Now that we have the questions, I hope someone is asking them.

In a world of mad men

“And who are you supposed to be?” a neighbor asks Don and Betty Draper after he hands their children Halloween candy. The question is seemingly innocent, but damning as well, because this one question finally voices Don Draper’s struggle over the past three seasons.

One is left to admire once again the genius of Mad Men’s team, because after the question is asked, almost accusingly, the camera shifts to not just Don Draper, but to a very uncomfortable Betty Draper as well.

I, like most avid Mad Men watchers, have been expecting the inevitable: when Betty finally discovers Don’s secret and accuses him, and we see the king dethroned (I must admit, my heart went out to the broken Don when his usually suave fingers betray him as he pulls out a cigarette). But I didn’t expect to feel sorry for Betty during this entire incident – feel sorry for her not because she is a trapped housewife, but because she, like Don, is looking at her life from the outside in.

Let’s face it: both male and female viewers get drawn into the machismo of the world of misogynist money-loving alcoholics. It is difficult not to love the moments when Don boldly brushes off anyone who talks to him. And I’m not entirely sure if it’s because of his troubled past, or because of the fact that his affairs occur as often as he pulls out a cigarette, but I always forgive Don’s extra-marital affairs. Thus I am ashamed to admit that when Betty clumsily slept with a stranger in the back room of a bar during the Drapers’ brief separation, I was disgusted with her and her disregard for her husband and children who spent the night in a hotel room awaiting the impending doom of nuclear war.

So I was surprised by my own realization while I watched this last episode of Mad Men: Betty makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know her anymore. I want her to be either a submissive and naïve housewife, or a carefree girl breaking lines of acceptability of the 1960s. But she’s teetering.

Although I knew Betty Draper was as “damaged” as the rest of them from the first season when her psychiatrist visits foreshadowed some instability, she remained boring: her suffocated life predictably led her to frequently yell at her kids, and frankly, she had nothing interesting to say to keep Don’s sole attention. After all, wasn’t it she who once explained her flawless housekeeping with, “My mother always said, ‘You’re painting a masterpiece, make sure to hide brush strokes”?

Betty Draper has always been in the margin of the world of Mad Men, and predictably so. But the beauty of this show is that her transformation from a perfect Stepford wife to a frustrated and lost woman has occurred in the margins as well, slowly and surprisingly. Anyone who closely watches this show realizes from her fledgling affair and her unexplainable episode after the Drapers come back home from Rome, that Don’s now unveiled secret affects Betty as much as it affects him, maybe even more so.

And she realizes it, too. I had to admire her sass when Don defends himself by pointing out that many people change their names:

Don: “You changed your name too.”
Betty: “Yes. I took your name.”

What Betty is afraid of is her identity being based on a man who doesn’t even know who he is, who claims to be someone else all together. And in that simple retort, she accuses Don: changing her name was never her choice, and now she doesn’t know who her name even belongs to.

Betty Draper is no longer going to be the perfect housewife blind to her husband’s vices, nor is she going to break all boundaries and define the new woman of the era. Instead, she teeters on that point of non-clarity and doubt that is not unlike those experienced by women now. While Joan and Peggy represent the struggle of choosing between career and family, and advancing in the workplace as a female, it is Betty that begins to scratch at the fundamental question that is no longer reserved for just men: who am I?

While the neighbor smiles expectantly at the Drapers as he holds his bowl of candy, we come to realize that both Don and Betty struggle to answer this question. We trust that Don will be able to arrive at some answer, because he has the confidence to be a good liar. But Betty, well, I don’t know her. But I’m expecting this woman on the margins to continue surprising me.

What class?

Six months of the health care debate have left Americans tired of the constant bickering. The debate has been difficult to follow, as both Republicans and Democrats spew out facts and figures that are hardly trustworthy. From accusations of government-funded death panels to exaggerations of how much a public option will save in the next ten years, the health care debate has proved to be frustrating enough to find an end to the verbal war between the two parties, regardless of the outcome. Sadly enough, most Americans recognize that some reform in the health care system is necessary.

So where is the outraged public that is quick to call out its congressmen? Perhaps more importantly, where is this public that has often pointed out injustices in the country? Ultimately, the health care debate boils down to class lines, an obvious fact that has been layered on with other issues such as efficiency, access to care, Medicare fraud, insurance companies and holding hospitals accountable. But class is an issue that transcends partisan lines, and class is also a topic that Americans find difficult to broach within their own society. Perhaps at times not effectively, but American society has dealt with, and at least spoken about, race, immigration, and gay rights in this country. Yet, speaking about class differences is uncomfortable, and often coated with discussions of race. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example, the recognition of blatant class differences in the south fused with conversations about racism alive in the country.

Part of the reason for this lack of dialogue is precisely due to the fact that race and poverty are often companions, and racism is one of the most complex topics of the day. Yet, without separating the glaring issues in our society (that is, separating racism from class differences), neither dialogue will be effective. Class is a taboo topic - in public schools kids often try to hide these differences through clothes and accessories. In my college, the dialogue was effectively missing from the school's otherwise politically-aware chatter. Essentially, what results are students and practitioners invested in social, political and economic justice in developing countries, who are just not interested in the social injustice that plagues this country.

Perhaps if class differences became a discussion worth having, at least an issue that is recognized as a leading problem in this country, the health care debate wouldn't be much of a debate at all.

Bedknobs and broomsticks: when the world is upside down

When it hits close to home, ignore it. It's so much easier to fight oppression if you are not called out on similar injustices. As practical as the Iran regime has been in the past, its strong and supported leadership is wavering. It is resolving to hypocricies that led to a hatred of the Shah three decades before, which ultimately happens when a government realizes its in trouble.

In keeping with the spirit of the Islamic Republic's resolve to protect Muslims against injustice, Iran is holding a pro-Palestinian rally. But there's a small caveat: opposition supporters are not allowed to use the rally to protest against the government:

"Mr. Khamenei also pointed to the upcoming annual Pro-Palestinian rally on the last Friday of the Islamic month of Ramadan and warned the opposition not to use the opportunity to protest. Protestors had said they would take part in the rally, wearing green, the trademark color of Mr. Moussavi’s supporters, to show that the opposition movement was still alive. Mr. Karroubi vowed that he would participate as well." (NYT, 11 September 2009)

As far as fighting injustice goes, it works according to what seems like 2nd grade rules: I can tattle on you but you can't tattle on me. The current Iranian government has already closed down the offices of opposition leaders Karroubi and Moussavi, suggesting that the opposition is still strong and the government is quite afraid. Amidst the arrests, tortures and censorship, I hope someone at the Palestine rally will ask "what makes you any different?"

--------------------------

Speaking of hypocricies, a little more laughable is Glenn Beck's recently received honor of being a key-holder of Mount Vernon, Washington as granted by the mayor. According to Beck, his childhood days in Mount Vernon represented the true spirit of America. The whole town filled sandbags when the nearby river threatened to flood.

“We were small enough to care about each other,” Mr. Beck said. “We were all in it together. It wasn’t about whose responsibility it was, whose fault it was, who you’d end up owing a favor to. You did it because it was the right thing. In Mount Vernon, you grew up knowing that you always had to do the right thing.” (NYT, 10 September 2009).

Hm, this sounds oddly similar to what President Obama said in reference to the need for a health care reform:

"It, too, is part of the American character -- our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise." (Obama's health care speech, 09 September, 2009).

Apparently when a Republican says it, the helping hand is considered part of the American spirit. But when a Democrat says it, it's considered another tactic to spread socialism in the country. Or is it just because Obama is saying it?

Krugman Op-Ed on Health Care Reform

Thanks to Paul Krugman for a reasonable argument for health care reform:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31krugman.html?emc=eta1

...And good news from PK

Pakistan's Supreme Court orders transvestites get equal benefits as other citizens in the country:

‘They are citizens of Pakistan and enjoy the same protection guaranteed under Article four (rights of individuals to be dealt with in accordance of law) and Article nine (security of person) of the Constitution,’ ruled a three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Muhammad Sair Ali and Justice Jawwad S Khawaja on Tuesday.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/14-sc-orders-equal-benefits-for-transvestites-zj-02

The truth about martyrdom

Dispatches, a documentary show in Britain, released clips of Ajmal Kasab's initial confession in the hospital immediately after he was captured after the Mumbai bombings. On the hospital bed, Kasab explains that his father forced him to join Lashkar-e-Toiba in order to provide money for his family (how many times has this been the explanation of alot of terrorist attackers? أين الدولة؟?)...and of course there is the argument for martyrdom that the shooters talk about amongst themselves in the video. It's haunting, but do see it.

And of course I repeat Faulkner here, but he seems to sum it up quite well:

"'Suffer little child to come unto Me': and what did He mean by that? how, if He meant that little children should need to be suffered to approach Him, what sort of earth had He created; that if they had to suffer in order to approach Him, what sort of Heaven did He have?"

What you will

The Corner of 81st and Central Park West – Draft 1

Scene I

The time is late – or early – as you would have it: it’s approaching 4am. The location is outside the west side of Central Park, at the corner of 81st street and Central Park West, where the granite wall closing off the park opens up to a path leading to The Delacorte Theatre. Directly outside that opening, pasted to the wall down Central Park West, is a line of bundles of faded floral blankets, sleeping bags of all colors, cardboard boxes, and lawn chairs. They are people. At first glance they look like hobos, hiding beneath the layers of blankets they have acquired somewhere against the gentle breeze that is – even for a July summer night – too cold. At second glance, one realizes they are people with homes to sleep in, jobs to go to everyday, families to return to at night.

Two girls stand uncertainly at the corner of 81st and Central Park West. They walk down CPW uncertainly, passing 82nd, then 83rd, then 84th,, nervously and amazedly searching for the end of the line. They reach the end. It’s almost half way between 85th and 86th street, that much farther from the beloved entrance.

Girl 1 sits tentatively on the bench, next to a bundle of blankets that belongs to the teenage daughter and mother who are huddled at the other end of the bench.

GIRL 1: At least we’re not sitting on the ground.

She’s eyeing the queue already forming behind them. There are three men behind them, two of whom resign themselves to the cracked ground underneath.

A teenage girl cheerfully greets them as her mother smiles with an amused expression.

GIRL 2: I can’t sleep. I’m not tired enough. Why aren’t we in the park?

The old man next to her looks at her with laughing eyes. He speaks, it’s to no one in particular.

MAN: I wonder if we have a chance, all the way back here.

[The curly haired younger man on the other side of him answers as he pulls out a deck of unopened cards and proceeds to cut through the wrapping.]

MAN 2: I’ve been here before, and it looks like we have a good chance. It’s bad if we’re behind 500 people. We’re about five blocks from the entrance; I gather there are about 40 people per block…

The two girls, the old man and the younger man silently calculate, but none come to a definitive answer. It is, after all, 4am. But they all know it’s not near 500 people.

GIRL2: We’re fine!

The mother looks over to Girl 1 now as she tightens the blanket around her daughter and herself.

MOTHER: This is our third time trying. I think we’re going to make it this time. I definitely think we are.

GIRL 1: What time did you get here?

MOTHER: 3.50.

[She gets up suddenly.]

MOTHER: I’m going to check what time the first people in line got here. Keep an eye on my daughter for me, will you?

The daughter still huddles underneath her blanket. The two girls open their box of strawberries, only to find them spoiled. The old man is silent and pensive. The younger man is busily marking off suits on his new deck of cards with a permanent marker. They laugh with pity as they spot a man clad in a business suit running down the street with a lawn-chair in hand, desperately searching for the end of the line.

The mother returns minutes later as the rest watch the flickering lights in one of the rooms in the building across the street.

MOTHER: 9.30…pm…

There is a collective noise of surprise and groan as the group marvels at the dedication and madness of those first ones, and at the potential futility of this entire endeavor.


Scene II:

A mass exodus is in full swing. The line that had been previously huddled on Central Park West is now making its way into the park as it has just opened, with as much order as can be forced on one’s self while fighting the desire to break and make a run for the theater. They move swiftly, quickly, dragging their lawn chairs behind their backs, clutching onto their blankets. Far away across the bend, where the line still continues forward, a man holding a full size air mattress over his head can be seen.

The people move with agile walks, spring in their steps, and a ferocious knowledge of their destination. They are surrounded by luscious green hills and towering green trees, as birds chirp and the first of the dogs start barking. It is an entirely different world in the park – no mind that it’s coincidental timing that dawn broke out moments before the people entered the park. Nonetheless, the truth stands: the world outside was dark and cold; the world inside is bright and promising.

Scene III:

The two girls are lying on a bright orange blanket that is laid out carefully on the mulch. They are at the edge of the path, beginning the end of the long line where it has broken off from the beginning. The teenage daughter and mother are at the end of the first line that is only a few feet away across a cement path that cuts through the park. They have befriended a young woman next to them who could very well be a model.

Girl 1 zips up her red sleeping bag over herself; it is too small for her. It’s a child’s sleeping bag, one she borrowed from her roommate whose friend left it at their apartment. Not many in the city own sleeping bags. It’s noticeable since many have lined the ground with yoga mats. She looks around her over the people lined up at the edge of the path.

GIRL 1: This is the urban use for a sleeping bag.

The man who has managed to successfully keep order since the early hours of the morning approaches and stands resolutely in front of their section of the line. He is from the Theater, clad in khaki pants and a yellow T-shirt clearly labeled (so there would be no mistake): STAFF. He is not old and muscular, nor does he have the build of a bouncer that you would expect for someone at this job. He has a boyish face and golden hair that peeks out from underneath his baseball cap. His voice has enough volume to garner authority and enough humor to win people’s likeness. He has to keep this precarious balance for six more hours, until the clock strikes 1pm.

STAFF: You guys will be fine. Don’t worry, there is still hope.

A light cheer erupts from those who are awake. He moves on down the line, towards the section at the end that is hidden behind the trees around the bend. The girls faintly hear him. It’s bad news. There is a ripple of groans and some get up, dragging their bedding with slumped heads. They are not everyone in the section though. Others stubbornly stay put.

STAFF [as he walks away from the section back towards the front of the line]: I promise you have better things to do with your time!

The mother is napping in a sleeping bag on the pavement. The daughter, sitting on the bench beside her, plays with her iPhone. She has had her breakfast – delivery from Andy’s Deli. It’s become famous, and somewhat of a savior, for those in the line who need food and can’t leave. She looks up now as an African-American man rides his bike around, shouting. Locked to the back of his bike are folded lawn chairs. In the front are big Starbucks cups.

BICYCLIST: Rent lawn chairs! Buy Starbucks coffee! Rent Internet time!

Girl 2 is lying down, one elbow propping up her shoulder. She eyes the group of four young girls ten feet away who she suspects of being high school girls. Their voices echo across the expanse of the park, or so it seems, blocking out any possibility of sleep for Girl 2. She just looks around now and slumps back down on the ground, pulling an old airplane blanket over her.

Staff returns, his faded shouting warning his eventual presence.

STAFF: There are two rules you must follow to stay in this line. One, you can’t leave the line. You can leave only to go to the bathroom, but you can’t have someone hold your place for you if you leave to go somewhere else. Two, no one can join you in this line. Believe me, people around you will know.


Scene IV:

It’s near 10am now. Perhaps. It’s hard to tell the time. A few feet away three friends read the morning’s edition of New York Times as they sip on Snapple. The mother and daughter talk to the model as if they have been good friends for quite some time.

Girl 2 has been reading, resigning herself to the fact that there will be no sleep this morning. The mulch she is sitting on is cruelly located near the dog park of Central Park. The path has been strewn all morning with curious onlookers, smirking joggers, dog walkers who have resolutely decided to keep their dogs unleashed but insist on walking them along the path on which the masses sit and wait, and the dogs, big and small, ugly and cute, lazy and spunky, sniff the food, the blankets and the people.

An elderly woman pulling a curly hair child passes by, looks curiously at the girls, smiles and walks on. She re-appears later, hesitantly stopping near them.

WOMAN: How long have you been here?

GIRL 2 [in a bored voice]: Since 4am.

The girls have lost track of how many people have come to ask them this same question, and have gotten the same surprised look that this woman gives them now.

GIRL 2: But the first people arrived at 9.30 pm!

Is it defense? It sounds almost defensive, as if trying to explain that if she were crazy, at least she were a little less crazier than those firsts.

The mulch has been good, despite the proximity of the sniffing dogs and the cameras clicking at them. The ground is soft, and it is shaded by the high trees that now allows some sun to warm them.

Staff returns once again, an empty plastic cup in hand. He looks disheveled and tired, but his voice does not appear so. He walks towards the end of the line, out of sight, but where the girls can still hear him.

STAFF: There is no hope. Go home.

He doesn’t wait to see the people’s angry faces. He returns to the section near the girls.

STAFF: You’re still ok!

Another cheer. This time a bit more energetic.

STAFF: Ya, be happy. I’ve already crushed 1200 people’s dreams today.

A pretty woman in a white dress and designer sunglasses walks along the cement path next to a curly-haired man. They both pause to take in the sight. The woman looks down on the girls and speaks in a British accent.

WOMAN: What are you all doing here?

GIRL 2: We’re waiting for tickets to “Twelfth Night.” It’s Shakespeare in the Park.

WOMAN: How long have you been here?

GIRL 2: Since 4am.

WOMAN [in astonishment]: Why?

The girls look at each other and smile sheepishly.

GIRL 1: I don’t know…

WOMAN: Well, are you a big fan of this play?

GIRL 2: Not particularly…

WOMAN: [dubiously] Well, good luck then…

[She leaves].

Girl 1 returns her head to the pillow speckled in leaves from the tree above and closes her eyes with a smile, quite comfortable in the abode they have made themselves. It’s only a temporary mask – sleeping and living in the park – but liberating all the same. Tomorrow the man in the suit will return to his job; the model across the path will struggle to find gigs; the man in line behind the girls will come home to a tense marriage. But for now, in the 10 hours of sitting in the park’s grounds, they are quite content. They must look like fools. But they are happy fools.

Rooftop Poem from Iran

Great poem by an Iranian woman from a rooftop while Allahu-Akbar sound in the distance. Quite haunting.

Sonia Sotomayor and the Hearing Committee

The Capitol Hill hearing room these days looks a lot like a scene from the beginning Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix in which Harry Potter is on trial at the Ministry of Magic for using magic outside of school. But instead of Harry Potter, sitting under the spotlight of scrutinizing eyes is Judge Sonia Sotomayor (and of course we must remember that she isn’t on stand at a criminal trial but at a hearing confirmation).

But it is difficult to ignore the large forces playing out in Capitol Hill that at times evoke an image of stubborn bureaucrats blocking Potter’s noble mission to overcome a growing evil threat. What’s at play is a tradition of a club that had long belonged to a group of “wise old” white men who interpreted the Constitutions according to their experiences, observations and prejudices against the experience, observations and biases of a “wise old Latina woman” who will potentially uphold the highest law of the land.

For the past three days, some of the Senators at the hearing have been beating the dead horse of what exactly Sotomayor meant with her “wise Latina woman” comment; almost as much as Rowling’s Ministry characters whose only argument to Harry using magic outside of school was: but it’s illegal. One has to wonder, then, if these bureaucrats are not attacking the person under scrutiny as much as they are defending themselves against an inevitable truth: perhaps they are wrong.

Although there is no one Republican stance against Sotomayor, the bipartisan politics in the hearing have been difficult to hide. And it is plain to see that the Republicans are concerned that a Latina woman who gained “empathy” from the President of the United States will not judge based on objectivity, but from personal sympathies, and that deep down inside, she really does believe and practice by affirmative action. They are afraid that her poor background as a child, her color, her race, her name will inevitably tar her rulings.

And yet, these Senators must at least think, or it must have crossed their mind, that the white, male, privileged backgrounds that belonged to most Supreme Court justices has also shaped how they have ruled in the past. The Constitution is not interpreted objectively, nor was it written objectively. It is only with diversity in opinions in a courtroom can a group of justices strive to an unbiased ruling, because sometimes even a wise white man will not come to the same conclusion as another wise white man. But these Republicans have not acknowledged this. As CNN (wow!) has been reporting, it is no secret that Republicans are afraid of liberal politics reaching the Supreme Court.

Perhaps because they realize they don’t have a case against the judge that these men have interrogated Sotomayor on abortion, harped on the 2nd amendment, and ultimately returned to her wise Latina comment. (“But I was being attacked by dementors!”cries Harry. “It doesn’t matter! Using magic outside of school is illegal!”)

Watching Senator Sessions grill Sotomayor over and over, the fantasy fanatic in me eagerly waits and wants Sotomayor to stop, look at him straight in the face, and admit, “Yes, I’m Obama’s woman through and through.” (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince reference if you didn’t catch it). It’s the triumph of good over evil! Hoorah!

At the end of his trial, charges against Harry Potter are dropped because they live in dangerous times and the law should have exceptions to allow one to defend one’s self. In reality, it is terrifying to think that the law can become flexible and molded to one’s preferences. We have seen the dangers to this when the Bush administration used fear to justify counter-terrorism efforts that challenged American civil rights and universal human rights.

That is why I was happy that Republican-turned-Democrat Senator Specter and Senator Al Franken challenged Sotomayor on judicial activism, on separation of powers, and the lack of judiciary accountability (which it perhaps needed given the 2000 elections). No, this is not a fantasy, and we live in a world where we don’t know who the good and bad forces are. The most we can do is tend to the weaknesses in our system. It’s not a bad idea to start in the place that upholds the law of the land.

Woman as Citizen

About two weeks ago, President Nicolas Sarkozy banned the burqa from French society, which - let's face it - was a long time coming. France has always struggled to grant rights for ethnic minorities without compromising France's sense of civil society and equality, and for Sarkozy, the burqa challenges these values: "The burqa is not a religious sign, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women."

As a woman and Muslim who doesn't agree with the burqa (read: burqa, different from niqab or hijab), I agree with Sarkozy's assessment of the problem. But in this case, his solution limits the freedom of a citizen under the very state system that is supposed to protect her rights.

Mona Eltahawy's take on Sarkozy's position was surprising - she agreed with him. "The best way to support Muslim women would be to say we oppose both racist Islamophobes and the burqa. We’ve been silent on too many things out of fear we’ll arm the right wing," she writes in an op-ed. She continues to say that the burqa is not Islamic, cleverly pointing out that it causes veiled women to get caught up in a perverted logic through which they perceive themselves as "candy."

Yet as much as I want to agree with Eltahawy, I am hesitant to agree that the best solution is to allow a democratic state to force its citizens to dress in a certain way. How would France, then, compare to Egypt that does not allow covered women to serve in the government or on national TV?

Another country that tried to impose dress rules upon its citizens was Pakistan, when Jinnah pronounced the national dress on the country's citizens. That was 70 years ago. Turn to any newspaper these days and notice how identity crisis remains one of Pakistan's worst problems.

When it comes to covering, we've been beating a dead horse with two arguments: ban the burqa and be considered intolerant and Islamophobes; or keep the burqa and struggle with the limitations a man subjugates on a Muslim woman by keeping her covered. This discussion has been almost parallel to the debate of Muslims' rights in western societies after 9/11. But hardly has the conversation really turned towards a woman's relation to the state.

This is exactly the discussion that Sarkozy's ban poses and the one we're not having. As a citizen, a Muslim woman should have the same rights as any other citizen living in that country - that is, after all, what the equality of law allows them. Which means that like other citizens, she should be able to dress as she pleases. But in this debate, either Islam in the name of man imposes rules on a woman, or the state does.

Perhaps it comes down to the fact that I'm old-fashioned but I still think there is something to be said of old-school development tactics - that is, empowering women through education and free thought so ultimately they decide what rights to fight for. This should be a woman's movement after all, and it will succeed, even if it's in the coming generations that we bear witness to this success.

Elie Wiesel's speech

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel delivered this speech on Friday, June 5, at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He spoke with no notes.

As I came here today it was actually a way of coming and visit my father's grave -- but he had no grave. His grave is somewhere in the sky. This has become in those years the largest cemetery of the Jewish people.

The day he died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there.

And I thought one day I will come back and speak to him, and tell him of the world that has become mine. I speak to him of times in which memory has become a sacred duty of all people of good will -- in America, where I live, or in Europe or in Germany, where you, Chancellor Merkel, are a leader with great courage and moral aspirations.

What can I tell him that the world has learned? I am not so sure. Mr. President, we have such high hopes for you because you, with your moral vision of history, will be able and compelled to change this world into a better place, where people will stop waging war -- every war is absurd and meaningless; where people will stop hating one another; where people will hate the otherness of the other rather than respect it.

But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned -- that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless.

I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart.

Thoughts on Obama's speech in Cairo

Obama's speech to the "Muslim world" in Cairo this past week was nothing less than exhilarating, at least for those in the U.S. who have been waiting restlessly for more honest dialogue about main concerns that Muslim countries have with the U.S. Obviously criticisms have been raised in the media that Obama was (predictably) a bit too vague, a bit too ideological, a bit too contradictory. Perhaps, but Obama also spoke more directly about Israel-Palestine, misconceptions from both the U.S. and Muslim countries, and threat of U.S. imperialism than any other government leader.

Still, I am a bit curious about the decision to make a speech in Cairo. Does where a speech is given matter as much as what is said? It does in diplomatic circles - it presents a certain context, it sets a particular but unspoken background. And at times not so unspoken. Today, Obama spoke at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, to make a particular statement. Obama spoke in Turkey earlier this year for precisely a particular reason as well - as he said, because Turkey precariously teeters between Europe and the Middle East. And now, Egypt, which has been a center for Islamic progress for centuries.

And yet curiously enough, Obama has chosen to speak to the Muslim world in countries that are essentially in the periphery of the region the government, and I suspect the larger U.S., considers to be threatening and unstable. I bring this up because Obama not only dealt with issues concerning Islam, religion and humanity. He spoke of problems concerning political development, democracy, women's rights, and Israel-Palestine. Thus he was not speaking to the Muslim world, but to an unstable region.

To distinguish a Middle East identity - geographically or ideologically - is simplistic and exclusive. And yet, to state that Egypt and Turkey are in the periphery of this amalgmation of a region requires some sort of explanation of what this core is - for which I admit I have none (we might as well mix Afghanistan and Pakistan into the mix, further blurring geographic boundaries). But it is no secret that Turkey has actively tried to remove itself from a largely Middle Eastern identity; and Egypt is shunned by many states in the region precisely because of its close ties to the U.S. and Israel.

So what precisely has been the impact of Obama's speech in the Muslim world? What would the impact have been if he had delivered the speech in Palestine, or Pakistan, or Iraq? What are we dealing with here - states or religion? I'm afraid the solution is getting as murky as the problem.

Pearls Before Breakfast

This article is two years old but still incredible and fascinating. Thanks to Stobo for sending it. (Take time to watch the videos).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Bilo

Bilo plodded back into the living room, his hacking cough announcing his arrival. One arm was carefully wrapped around a folder of dress sketches, dating from the 1960s to 2000. Just a handful remained now of the thousands of sketches he had burned before returning to Egypt.

After landing in Cairo in 1997, Nabil Jamal, lovingly known as Bilo, went straight to a small hotel in Zamelek and never left. The hotel was owned by a good friend, and living there at no cost, Bilo had no desire to look for his own house. Without any savings, Bilo resigned himself to spending his retirement in Cairo after decades in Paris and New York. His few sketches and pictures remained the only material evidence of his past lives, for even Egypt had changed under years of post-revolution.

“It was like I had walked out of a beautiful house and came back and found it all beaten up and tattered. The streets have gone dirty. Look at the traffic. We didn’t have 1/10 of the cars we have now,” Bilo said.

The Cairo that Bilo remembered was of dressing the Queen and actresses. Nightly parties, ballets, and the English theater company were regular rituals, and at the Opera House, he would stand alongside his friends when the national anthem played to honor King Farouk’s entrance.
Bilo pulled out a carefully preserved black and white photograph, as if presenting evidence. A young group of seven smiled back in the midst of a party, and in front sat an Arab James Dean, fully aware of his good looks. The face across from me had now turned wrinkled and spotted, hoisting up thick glasses.

The hostess’s husband, Bilo told me nonchalantly, had disappeared suddenly. Ahmed Kamal had been politically active, and had spoken against Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser. He left his house in Al-Maadi one day in 1956 and never returned.

But Bilo had grown impatient with the conversation. After all, the topic at hand was the Cairo of his youth, filled with theater, parties, and…

“Finola O’Shannon!” he said the name with excitement and careful enunciation as he discovered a photograph.

He spent every night in the club with the actress while she was visiting Cairo. The last time he saw her was when he had surprised her in London after leaving Egypt in 1963. She died from cancer a few years later.

Finola was one of Bilo’s two loves. Both brief, and both lost. “The one girl I wanted to marry was so much in love with me that she said ‘I’ll marry you when your father gets your money back.’ That’s what her love was like.” His bitter tone lingered in the silence as he glanced away from me.

Bilo’s father had come to Egypt in 1923 from Palestine, where he had met Bilo’s Lebanese mother. Although living in Egypt, he had refused to sell the land in Palestine that he owned with his two brothers. When Israel was formed in 1948, the Jamal brothers lost all their properties.
It was the only time that Bilo’s father’s history intertwined with his own. Otherwise, he never questioned his father about Palestine, and his father never spoke of it.

War had shaped Bilo’s entire life: wars that were personal and never spoken of, wars that raged outside his front door, and wars that were seemingly far, but that still left damage in their wake.

During World War II, Bilo’s father closed down his travel agency since his only client was a German company. “And the Germans that came in came without a visa,” Bilo said with a laugh. “They came in with their guns and their tanks and their airplanes. They came into Alexandria, because there were a lot of Egyptians who were very Nazi and they had pictures of Hitler in their apartments. In fact, even the King was pro-Hitler.”

But it would not be long before the King himself was ousted from power. King Farouk’s downfall, the revolution and subsequent Nasserism, while changing Egypt, had changed the course of Bilo’s life as well. There was no more royalty to dress. “All the millionaires were trying to sell their stuff to live on, especially the royal family. [Nasser] was giving them pennies to live on.”

Unemployment took Bilo to London where his friends found him work, then to a chance job as a fashion designer in Paris for 17 years, and finally to New York City for 16 years until he no longer had a job or money. He returned to Cairo after having spent his savings over the years on cashmere sweaters, Parisian theater and travels with friends. And when he came back, he found Cairo worse than it had been after the revolution. There was no money left, no jobs for the youth, and no way to get out.

From the hotel in Zamelek now, Bilo hears the call to prayer five times a day. “I think they’ve come to a point where they are desperate,” he said quietly. “They think by praying, they are going to go straight upstairs. They pray and pray and pray…”

Was he not religious, having grown up in a devout Christian household and living in a country where every hour was a reminder of God? “I don’t go to church, but I have to pray every single night,” Bilo said. “I pray for the souls of my parents, and mostly for the friends that passed away, and some of them passed away pretty young.”

His remaining friends visit him at the hotel as they pass through Egypt, bringing him beer that inevitably offend the Muslim receptionist, or shirts that he refuses to wear for lack of good fashion sense. His weeks are booked with dinners with relatives of once good friends - prominent families in Zamelek, younger generations of the Sadat family and former royalty who now reside in Alexandria. But he returns, always, to his room at the hotel to watch the world affairs that once bored him. Egypt. Lebanon. Gaza.

As he stood up, he looked down at his swollen feet peeking from his black sweat pants. “This is the only thing I inherited from my father,” he said with a quiet laugh. “I refused to take insulin until 6 years ago. Now I can hardly walk. Look at me. I walk like a penguin.” He waited for no answer as he plodded down the hallway to his room.

Imprisonment and Freedom

In stead of bending and unbending in prayers for a God dwelling cozily in the seventh heaven I learned to be an insignificant meek person who for the entire world would not take a whit worth of dirty money. I learned that I am the creator and the created. I learned that the salvation is not achieved by wandering through the primrose path of sticking to the dogmas and the preordained codes. But it is in having faith in the dignity, nobility and liberty of the human beings. I learned that humans are not a bunch of weak slaves or debilitated beings, but they are commanding and free agents who can create whatever they wish. I learned that I have to learn in order to set myself free. I learned to unlearn whatever I had learned earlier in my life and found my thoughts on a firm and correct base from the scratch. I learned I had been moving on the wrong track for 20 years. I learned I could be born again in any way I'd want to.

-- Written by blogger Omidresa Mirsayafi in 2006, about the 20 days he spent in Evin Prison in Iran in 2000. He was arrested again last year and passed away March 21, 2009 while in imprisonment.

The Gitmo guard who converted to Islam

http://www.newsweek.com/id/190357/page/1

The Guard Who Found Islam

Terry Holdbrooks stood watch over prisoners at Gitmo. What he saw made him adopt their faith.

Dan Ephron

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Mar 30, 2009

Army specialist Terry Holdbrooks had been a guard at Guantánamo for about six months the night he had his life-altering conversation with detainee 590, a Moroccan also known as "the General." This was early 2004, about halfway through Holdbrooks's stint at Guantánamo with the 463rd Military Police Company. Until then, he'd spent most of his day shifts just doing his duty. He'd escort prisoners to interrogations or walk up and down the cellblock making sure they weren't passing notes. But the midnight shifts were slow. "The only thing you really had to do was mop the center floor," he says. So Holdbrooks began spending part of the night sitting cross-legged on the ground, talking to detainees through the metal mesh of their cell doors.

He developed a strong relationship with the General, whose real name is Ahmed Errachidi. Their late-night conversations led Holdbrooks to be more skeptical about the prison, he says, and made him think harder about his own life. Soon, Holdbrooks was ordering books on Arabic and Islam. During an evening talk with Errachidi in early 2004, the conversation turned to the shahada, the one-line statement of faith that marks the single requirement for converting to Islam ("There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet"). Holdbrooks pushed a pen and an index card through the mesh, and asked Errachidi to write out the shahada in English and transliterated Arabic. He then uttered the words aloud and, there on the floor of Guantánamo's Camp Delta, became a Muslim.

When historians look back on Guantánamo, the harsh treatment of detainees and the trampling of due process will likely dominate the narrative. Holdbrooks, who left the military in 2005, saw his share. In interviews over recent weeks, he and another former guard told NEWSWEEK about degrading and sometimes sadistic acts against prisoners committed by soldiers, medics and interrogators who wanted revenge for the 9/11 attacks on America. But as the fog of secrecy slowly lifts from Guantánamo, other scenes are starting to emerge as well, including surprising interactions between guards and detainees on subjects like politics, religion and even music. The exchanges reveal curiosity on both sides—sometimes even empathy. "The detainees used to have conversations with the guards who showed some common respect toward them," says Errachidi, who spent five years in Guantánamo and was released in 2007. "We talked about everything, normal things, and things [we had] in common," he wrote to NEWSWEEK in an e-mail from his home in Morocco.

Holdbrooks's level of identification with the other side was exceptional. No other guard has volunteered that he embraced Islam at the prison (though Errachidi says others expressed interest). His experience runs counter to academic studies, which show that guards and inmates at ordinary prisons tend to develop mutual hostility. But then, Holdbrooks is a contrarian by nature. He can also be conspiratorial. When his company visited the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York, Holdbrooks remembers thinking there had to be a broader explanation, and that the Bush administration must have colluded somehow in the plot.

But his misgivings about Guantánamo—including doubts that the detainees were the "worst of the worst"—were shared by other guards as early as 2002. A few such guards are coming forward for the first time. Specialist Brandon Neely, who was at Guantánamo when the first detainees arrived that year, says his enthusiasm for the mission soured quickly. "There were a couple of us guards who asked ourselves why these guys are being treated so badly and if they're actually terrorists at all," he told NEWSWEEK. Neely remembers having long conversations with detainee Ruhal Ahmed, who loved Eminem and James Bond and would often rap or sing to the other prisoners. Another former guard, Christopher Arendt, went on a speaking tour with former detainees in Europe earlier this year to talk critically about the prison.

Holdbrooks says growing up hard in Phoenix—his parents were junkies and he himself was a heavy drinker before joining the military in 2002—helps explain what he calls his "anti-everything views." He has holes the size of quarters in both earlobes, stretched-out piercings that he plugs with wooden discs. At his Phoenix apartment, bedecked with horror-film memorabilia, he rolls up both sleeves to reveal wrist-to-shoulder tattoos. He describes the ink work as a narrative of his mistakes and addictions. They include religious symbols and Nazi SS bolts, track marks and, in large letters, the words BY DEMONS BE DRIVEN. He says the line, from a heavy-metal song, reminds him to be a better person.

Holdbrooks—TJ to his friends—says he joined the military to avoid winding up like his parents. He was an impulsive young man searching for stability. On his first home leave, he got engaged to a woman he'd known for just eight days and married her three months later. With little prior exposure to religion, Holdbrooks was struck at Gitmo by the devotion detainees showed to their faith. "A lot of Americans have abandoned God, but even in this place, [the detainees] were determined to pray," he says.

Holdbrooks was also taken by the prisoners' resourcefulness. He says detainees would pluck individual threads from their jumpsuits or prayer mats and spin them into long stretches of twine, which they would use to pass notes from cell to cell. He noticed that one detainee with a bad skin rash would smear peanut butter on his windowsill until the oil separated from the paste, then would use the oil on his rash.

Errachidi's detention seemed particularly suspect to Holdbrooks. The Moroccan detainee had worked as a chef in Britain for almost 18 years and spoke fluent English. He told Holdbrooks he had traveled to Pakistan on a business venture in late September 2001 to help pay for his son's surgery. When he crossed into Afghanistan, he said, he was picked up by the Northern Alliance and sold to American troops for $5,000. At Guantánamo, Errachidi was accused of attending a Qaeda training camp. But a 2007 investigation by the London Times newspaper appears to have corroborated his story; it eventually helped lead to his release.

In prison, Errachidi was an agitator. "Because I spoke English, I was always in the face of the soldiers," he wrote NEWSWEEK in an e-mail. Errachidi said an American colonel at Guantánamo gave him his nickname, and warned him that generals "get hurt" if they don't cooperate. He said his defiance cost him 23 days of abuse, including sleep deprivation, exposure to very cold temperatures and being shackled in stress positions. "I always believed the soldiers were doing illegal stuff and I was not ready to keep quiet." (Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said in response: "Detainees have often made claims of abuse that are simply not supported by the facts.") The Moroccan spent four of his five years at Gitmo in the punishment block, where detainees were denied "comfort items" like paper and prayer beads along with access to the recreation yard and the library.

Errachidi says he does not remember details of the night Holdbrooks converted. Over the years, he says, he discussed a range of religious topics with guards: "I spoke to them about subjects like Father Christmas and Ishac and Ibrahim [Isaac and Abraham] and the sacrifice. About Jesus." Holdbrooks recalls that when he announced he wanted to embrace Islam, Errachidi warned him that converting would be a serious undertaking and, at Guantánamo, a messy affair. "He wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting myself into." Holdbrooks later told his two roommates about the conversion, and no one else.

But other guards noticed changes in him. They heard detainees calling him Mustapha, and saw that Holdbrooks was studying Arabic openly. (At his Phoenix apartment, he displays the books he had amassed. They include a leather-bound, six-volume set of Muslim sacred texts and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam.") One night his squad leader took him to a yard behind his living quarters, where five guards were waiting to stage a kind of intervention. "They started yelling at me," he recalls, "asking if I was a traitor, if I was switching sides." At one point a squad leader pulled back his fist and the two men traded blows, Holdbrooks says.

Holdbrooks spent the rest of his time at Guantánamo mainly keeping to himself, and nobody bothered him further. Another Muslim who served there around the same time had a different experience. Capt. James Yee, a Gitmo chaplain for much of 2003, was arrested in September of that year on suspicion of aiding the enemy and other crimes—charges that were eventually dropped. Yee had become a Muslim years earlier. He says the Muslims on staff at Gitmo—mainly translators—often felt beleaguered. "There was an overall atmosphere by the command to vilify Islam." (Commander Gordon's response: "We strongly disagree with the assertions made by Chaplain Yee").

At Holdbrooks's next station, in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., he says things began to unravel. The only place to kill time within miles of the base was a Wal-Mart and two strip clubs—Big Daddy's and Big Louie's. "I've never been a fan of strip clubs, so I hung out at Wal-Mart," he says. Within months, Holdbrooks was released from the military—two years before the end of his commitment. The Army gave him an honorable discharge with no explanation, but the events at Gitmo seemed to loom over the decision. The Army said it would not comment on the matter.

Back in Phoenix, Holdbrooks returned to drinking, in part to suppress what he describes as the anger that consumed him. (Neely, the other ex-guard who spoke to NEWSWEEK, said Guantánamo had made him so depressed he spent up to $60 a day on alcohol during a monthlong leave from the detention center in 2002.) Holdbrooks divorced his wife and spiraled further. Eventually his addictions landed him in the hospital. He suffered a series of seizures, as well as a fall that resulted in a bad skull fracture and the insertion of a titanium plate in his head.

Recently, Holdbrooks has been back in touch with Errachidi, who has suffered his own ordeal since leaving the detention center. Errachidi told NEWSWEEK he had trouble adjusting to his freedom, "trying to learn how to walk without shackles and trying to sleep at night with the lights off." He signed each of the dozen e-mails he sent to NEWSWEEK with the impersonal ID that his captors had given him: Ahmed 590.

Holdbrooks, now 25, says he quit drinking three months ago and began attending regular prayers at the Tempe Islamic Center, a mosque near the University of Phoenix, where he works as an enrollment counselor. The long scar on his head is now mostly hidden under the lace of his Muslim kufi cap. When the imam at Tempe introduced Holdbrooks to the congregation and explained he'd converted at Guantánamo, a few dozen worshipers rushed over to shake his hand. "I would have thought they had the most savage soldiers serving there," says the imam, Amr Elsamny, an Egyptian. "I never thought it would be someone like TJ."

Read the press: Cairo turns conservative?

Talk about sensational media. A recent BBC feature article focuses on a local reminiscing about how cosmopolitan and liberal Cairo used to be in the 1940s. According to the article, the "Arab renaissance" that the city was once undergoing has shifted towards a more conservative and religious trend. Egyptian society, at least in Cairo, has become more "conservative" in the past decade in the sense that head scarves and abayas have become more popular among women, and Hosni Mubarak's government has been quick to thwart any type of popular opposition against him or those that promote human rights. A young NGO worker told me today how the government refused funding approval for an organization she previously worked for that was promoting human rights through photography and art, but it's not possible to repress all political movements. "The government doesn't realize that thinking is political," she said.

Cairo may not be as "cosmopolitan" as it was in the past, but it is not suffering from a "Talibanized" society. I have not been in Cairo for long, and granted my initial findings (especially confined in a posh community such as Zamelek) may be skewed, but there were several points on which I disagreed with BBC on after having spoken watching and listening to this city:

* "Bars and cabaret clubs have fallen into despair and disrepute, as the Egyptians grow more observant of conservative Islam."
- In fact, I have passed by few bars and restaurants serving alcohol in Zamelek. In addition, as an elder Cairo resident told me, the Muslims pray and pray and pray....and go drink, of course.
- And I was surprised to find that while women may be completely covered (note: also in tight clothes that cover their skin), anything, or rather, nothing, goes in clubs (which there are quite a few of in Cairo).

* "Max Rodenbeck, journalist and author of Cairo, the City Victorious, says belly-dancing has faded out in the last 10 years." She attributes this to a conservative trend.
True, foreign belly dancers were banned from performing. But it's quite easy for many, including locals, to attribute all ills to a conservative society. In fact, a couple Egyptian friends had not heard about the ban. Instead, I was told that trying to find Egyptian music and dancing would be difficult since American music has become more popular.

I agree, it is at times sad to hear how different Cairo is now than it was before. Alcohol has been outlawed and women cannot freely wear what they like. But while these may be "social concerns", attributing them to a growing trend of Islam in the country would be a falsity. Egypt has also seen its share of presidents whose domestic and economic policies have repressed human rights and exacerbated the economic equality gap. Poverty is one of the most pressing issues in the country, not conservatism. I just hope BBC will remember to place growing "conservatism" in any Muslim country in the political and economic context of the country. And besides, how to mourn the death of a "Arab Renaissance" that was heavily influenced by the French and British anyways? How is a social trend more "legitimate" or "better" than another?

One hand can't clap

We whizzed down the freeway from Cairo Airport to Zamelek. Whizzing was possible only because it was 3 in the morning. Otherwise, getting from one part of the city to another would have required long conversations in stand-still traffic, which we experienced as well tonight. F. drove us past the posh neighborhood lined with Cairo's large library and black-windowed buildings, and Mubarak's house which was heavily guarded by a large lit-up gate. Then it was the October 6 bridge...do you see that mosque? yes, the one with the green "Allah"?...and look at that mosque...and did you notice the Nile?

In fact, I had NOT noticed it. Whether the dark or whether the water was surrounded by tall buildings which invariably took me back to Times Square, I was taken by surprise that the body of water we were driving over was THE Nile River. It looked like a concrete-made bank I usually drove besides through central valley California, except that it was wider. I would be lying if I didn't say I was a bit disappointed - the lights, and the buildings, and the boats polluting the Nile. It was naivetet on my par, and perhaps mixed with a bit of exotification, too. The river was fully situated in Cairo, home to 10 million people. Of course it made sense to keep the river, I mean to use it and abuse it, and to make it part of the city.

One hand can't clap alone, today an elder woman from one of the neighborhoods in Cairo told us. Which made me think: enough with the comparisons. It's not New York or San Francisco, it's not Beirut or London. It's Cairo, my dear. Give a hand back.

Khan El-Khalili market is buzzing as ever. The bombing last month hasn't dissuaded people from coming, and store owners opened their markets just a day after the incident. There's nothing to show what had been destroyed, which is just as well. Otherwise, I would have been distracted from watching some friends bargain heatedly with store-owners on my behalf. After two hours of walking about a quarter mile square of the market, it was back in the car, without any whizzing until we got to Zamelek. Slowly, slowly we make our way back to our street, passing by the Argentinian embassy laden with protest signs. Otherwise the street was dark, quiet, and showing no sign that the rest of Cairo was still up and buzzing.

something different

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08love.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=style

In a Charmed Life, a Road Less Traveled

By LAYNG MARTINE Jr.

MY wife and I were in a motel in Roanoke, Va., on our way home from three months at the Hershey Medical Center in Pennsylvania, where she had been convalescing after being crippled in a car accident. It was our first night away from the skill and comfort of the nurses we had come to depend on, and so far, so good.

Then we woke up and smelled something. It smelled like a bowel movement. I lifted up the sheets. It was a bowel movement, and it was in our bed.

We knew we had a lot to learn, but we had no idea how much.

Hearing the word paraplegic had made us focus on the big thing, the fact that Linda could no longer walk. Less anticipated were the smaller humiliations and inconveniences, like bowel movements in bed or on the way to a party, sores that came out of nowhere and took months or years to heal, and inaccessible restroom stalls that caused Linda to have to catheterize herself in the public area where people were washing their hands and talking.

And on it went, the list of indignities. She couldn’t watch “Good Morning America” if the remote fell off the bed when she reached for her glasses. She wet the seat on airplanes and in friends’ cars. She could no longer feel sexual intercourse (and the powerful muscle spasms in her legs threatened to crush anyone who tried).

But we’ve learned, and adapted. Now we know the places with good handicapped-access bathrooms (Starbucks), which airline makes things easiest (Southwest), which cities have smooth curb cuts (San Francisco), and which movie theaters don’t make us sit four feet from the screen.

Anyone who is in love is living a charmed life, especially if you’ve been in love for many years, through good times and bad. I have been crazy about Linda since the first time I saw her. We always felt we could handle any challenge because we were facing it together. This time we knew we had the will, but the demands were so exhausting, the changes so pervasive, that sometimes we wondered how we would cope.

This incredibly capable woman who loved to hike mountains, ride waves, and run marathons, who had cleared our sizable backyard of eight-foot-high brambles and helped me move all our furniture into three houses, suddenly couldn’t do any of those things, ever again.

Not long after getting home from the hospital, when we were having dinner by candlelight at our kitchen table, she burst into tears. “I don’t know if I can do this for the rest of my life,” she said.

All I could say was, “We’ll do it together.”

We began to think of what we could do to replace playing tennis, walking on the beach, working in the garden. Since Linda loves the ocean, a friend found a specially designed beach chair made of PVC tubing with wide inflated tires that allow it to be pushed across the sand. It’s yellow and white with a big red umbrella.

The first time I saw Linda sitting atop those tubes and under the red umbrella, I told her she looked like Ronald McDonald’s homecoming queen.

She laughed like crazy, then repeated it to everyone she knew.

A few summers later, one of our three sons suggested that he and I get on either side of the chair, slide Linda off, carry her into the ocean and drop her just beyond the waves so she could float calmly behind the crashing breakers.

At first we put her in a life preserver, but she tipped over and couldn’t right herself. So we took it off, and to our surprise she bobbed peacefully, looking once again like every other person lolling in the sea on a summer day.

You know those great old stores on Newbury Street in Boston with five or six steps up to each one? At first we could get up only about three of those a day. Now we can do every single store, one right after the other, all day long. My arms and my back are stronger — so are Linda’s — and there’s a rhythm to our teamwork that’s become second nature to us.

We take many more drives now, preferably in our convertible, looking for pretty roads and funky hamburger places, especially ’50s-style drive-ins where they bring the food to our car. Before the car even moves an inch, though, Linda has to put on her seat belt, because even a semi-sudden stop at low speed will whap her face against the dashboard as if she’s a spring-loaded bobblehead. She has no stomach muscles. Her body works only from the chest up.

I remember the day we had to tell her that. She was in the I.C.U., tubes all over, machines and screens whirring and blinking, traces of dried blood in her gnarled hair. The doctor and I stood on either side of her bed.

“Linda,” he said, “this accident you were in was a rough one.”

“I can tell,” she said, her words warped by the breathing tube.

“At the moment your legs do not move.”

She looked at him. “Will they?”

“I doubt it.”

Her eyes shifted over to me. I squeezed her hand gently.

After the doctor left, tears filled her eyes. “It was all too perfect,” she said, “wasn’t it?”

And it did seem that way. It always had.

My first glimpse of her was through the screen door of her house; I’d gone there to see her brother. She was 21, and I was 22. She looked adorable in her orange dress, and I thought, “If that girl will have anything to do with me, that’s it.”

We married soon after.

We settled in Nashville, where I was an aspiring songwriter. A decade later we were able to buy a summer house on a harbor in Rhode Island. That’s where we were going when the accident happened. We had been traveling in two cars when something went wrong with mine and we stopped in Knoxville at a repair shop. Linda was wearing a blue and white seersucker dress as she and our youngest son, Mac, who was 15, walked to her car. It was the last time I would ever see her walk. As they pulled away, she called out, “See you in a few hours!” and blew a kiss.

I blew one back.

We planned to meet up later at a motel in Allentown.

Have you ever come upon a traffic jam on the Interstate and looked for an exit to try your luck on the back roads? That’s what I did the night of Linda’s accident. I drove right by my family without even knowing it. I bet I wasn’t more than 100 feet away.

It was late. I was impatient. Traffic was stopped in both directions. Finally I managed to move to the shoulder and scoot along to an exit, where I found an empty frontage road running parallel to the highway.

Barely onto it, I saw a cluster of blinking blue lights in the distance. Wow, what happened? I wondered if Linda and Mac were already at the motel, or if they were also stuck in this jam. Then I thought: Could they be in that accident? But wait — of course not. They were way ahead.

A while later I stopped at a diner, where I found a pay phone and dialed the motel. When I asked for the Martine room, the desk clerk said, “There’s someone on the other line calling for Martine, too.”

“Who?”

“Someone from the hospital in Hershey.”

“Can you connect me?”

“No, but they gave me their number.”

I hung up and redialed, my face hot. The woman who answered identified herself as the hospital chaplain. She said my family had been in an accident.

“Are they all right?”

She put the doctor on, who told me that my son was O.K. My wife, however, was a different story.

I listened as he described her condition, then asked, “Can she think?”

“Yes. Her brain is fine.”

And that’s when I knew we could do it, long before I had any idea what “it” was.

Now, 15 years later, we do know.

We know that most people — strangers, anywhere — will knock themselves out to help us if we explain what we need. We know to say “Yes” to nearly everything because there is probably a way to do it. We know there is happiness available every day, most of it requiring more effort than money. And effort seems like a small price to pay for a day at the beach, a trip to New York or for dinner up eight steps to a friend’s home.

A few months after the accident, Linda started driving again. Her car has hand controls. She thinks nothing of driving to visit her father two hours away by herself. She has rolled three marathons — yes, a full 26-plus miles in a racing wheelchair.

And now, so long since that fateful night, looking across the dinner table at my wife, or seeing her across the room at a party, the hopeless crush I have on her is as wonderfully out of control as when I first saw her more than four decades ago through the screen door. I still get excited after work when I pull in the driveway and know that I’ll soon get to see the sexy, beautiful, very funny person I live with. And, later on, snuggle up to her in bed.

We’ve rolled up and down the hills of Tuscany, squeezed into pubs in Ireland, explored narrow streets in Paris and Rome, gone to Red Sox games, had coffee in the sunshine in San Francisco, Portland, Chicago and Miami. And we’ve learned that alongside great loss we can still have a great life. We want it so badly, and we love it so much.

At sunset, as we sit on the deck of our house in Rhode Island in our side-by-side chairs — mine Adirondack-style, hers on wheels — we look across the water at Fishers Island and think we are as lucky as two people can be.

We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or who will live how long. But we were young together. We struggled to make a life. We raised three great sons. We’ve each been the caregiver and the cared-for, and I suspect that we each have a little more of both in our future.

We are two, but we are one. And I love those numbers.

Layng Martine Jr. is a songwriter in Nashville.

Pakistan's multiple personalities

This slide show on Pakistan is beautiful and worth a look. Thanks to N. for sending it:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/scenes_from_pakistan.html

The slide show is timely, given that Pk's future rests on a very fragile balance between domestic politics, forceful militant groups and external pressures. Unfortunately, the country happens to also be one of the least understood countries in the American education system. Where are the academics and scholars on Pakistan?

release the beasts!

I know it's important to get the word across about what ailments are affecting under-developed countries, but Bill Gates' tactic was a bit unnecessary. Releasing mosquitoes on a packed room will definitely get people's attention, but were they more concerned about saving themselves from bites or about the malaria hitting underdeveloped countries? Although I have to admit, the image of big-name companies being attacked by hundreds of mosquitoes is a bit comical. I wonder if Gates made a difference and got people to donate to his cause? Too bad the article didn't mention audience reaction...or how many people walked out with red bumps.

A look back to look ahead

If you haven't checked out the NYT Sunday Magazine for Jan. 18, 2009, I definitely recommend it. Fantastic edition - both writing and photographs. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/

The actual comparison

As a response for those who have compared Israel's "necessary" offensive on Gaza to a potential attack on the US from Canada or Mexico:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/14/when-israel-expelled-palestinians/

question, revisited

I remember in the two or three years after 2001, one of the biggest debates policy makers and academics were trying to answer was "why do they hate us?" At the time, theories ranged from hatred of US's freedom to US's questionable and secretive involvement in Middle East affairs. It is a question that needs to be approached once again, but with revised answers and lessons learned.

In the absence of action from the US or UN on Israel's offensive on Gaza, the rhetoric of war is threatening to change, from a political question of Israel and Palestine to a religious issue of Muslims' victimization. Osama bin Laden's recently released tape calling for a jihad against Gaza aggression will not be taken seriously in terms of action. Indeed, Gordon Johndroe, Whitehouse spokesperson, called the tape a part of an Al-Qaeda "propaganda campaign". However, if not for the jihad, bin Laden's message about moral responsibility does and probably will resonate across the Muslim world.

The problem with this should be clear: questioning morality blurs political complexities of a highly-emotional conflict such as this. Already, the vacuum created in the lack of action against Israel is becoming filled by others - namely Iran, also, ironically, the biggest threat Israel and US deem as the reason for this offensive. And surprise, surprise, rather than a cease-fire and peace negotiations, Iran's tactics have tended more towards encouraging Hamas to stand the fight. Meanwhile, Hezbollah is leading the offensive against Israel with rocket fires that will probably worsen the situation than alleviate it. The last thing the US needs, or can afford, is to justify the existence of Hamas and Hezbollah. But right now, they are the only groups who are actively opposing the killing of more than a thousand Palestinians. And, I imagine, promoting another cycle of political activism in the ME led by groups of questionable Islamic interpretations, and consequently blurring the real problems in many ME states. If not for humanitarian reasons, then the US should act against Israel's current offensive for its own future security. It is at a time like this when the US should be concerned with understanding where it has gone wrong and why "they" hate us.

read all about it, but not in our papers

So far, have not read or heard anything about this in US media. Please let me know if I've missed it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5480440.ece

100 percent

One of the major discussions for the past couple of days on a south asian journalists list serv, whose name I will not mention here, was a sentence in the preliminary coverage of Sanjay Gupta's possible appointment as Surgeon General:

"The Michigan-born son of Indian and Pakistani parents, Gupta has always been drawn to health policy." - WP

It seems that many members on the list serv were concerned with Gupta's origins. One member spoke to Gupta's mother and received confirmation that he is "100 percent Indian, no Pakistani." Thank God! Imagine if this "common but unfortunate error", as one member put it, were actually true!

Ethnic, religious and national origins matter in this country. And the immigrant success story relies on not being tied to origins that are questionable. 100 percent Indian indeed!

in the haze

Hours after his resignation last September, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehuld Olmert gave an interview to a leading newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, parts of which were re-published in the December 2008 edition of the New York Review. "In a few years, my grandchildren will ask what their grandfather did, what kind of country we have bequeathed them."

Well, Mr. Olmert, you at least had some idea when you said that peace can only take place in the absence of war. So what kind of peace is Israel trying to create when inevitably, a few more rockets that kill Palestinian civilians will give birth to another generation of suicide bombers? Israel's threat is real: a militant government such as Hamas and suicide bombers certainly have and do threaten Israeli citizens and the existence of the Israeli state.

But let us differentiate between waging a war to defend citizens and a war to defend a state. The Bush Administration has laid the blame on Hamas, saying that its hostile attacks on Israel have necessitated heavy attacks on Gaza. So in effect, the lives of 7 Israeli solider is worth equal to, if not more than, 600 Palestinians, mostly civilians. The cost of the Israeli state has been to disregard Palestinians' human and civil rights. This is not only a fault of Israel's but also of surrounding states that house large Palestinian populations. Hamas and Palestinian suicide bombers are a danger to Israel, and for U.S. leaders, Israel is justified in its quest to protect its state. It is, plainly, a response to continuous threats to its existence. But thus far, no US media coverage to my knowledge has acknowledged that the Palestinian response to Israel has been reactionary as well; it has been an attempt to defend civilian rights that been continuously suffocated.

The US media has been become obsessed with providing both sides of the Gaza situation. But math isn't so difficult that we cannot look at the straight facts:
- Israel: seven soldiers killed
- Palestine: 683 dead; 3,085 injured.

I am not going to comment, nor can I, on the tragedy and hurt both sides experience. The war is an outcome of 60 years of deep emotions. But I do not agree that the level of loss on both sides is the same. The loss of human lives, of infrastructure, homes, food, and safety is clearly weighing heavily on one side over another. So while Washington Post and New York Times strain to provide both sides of the equation, they miss the real news: policy-makers are silent about a humanitarian crisis.

If no action is going to be taken, why is the Gaza situation getting more coverage than the Christmas Day massacre in Congo, or the current humanitarian crisis in Sudan? I can take a stab: sensationalism. The word 'terrorism' isn't just lingering in commentary on Gaza, it's plain to see. "The terrorist organization, Hamas", " the real terrorist threat, Iran". The inaccuracy is appalling. The US, after determing that elections in Iraq and Afghanistan were evidence of US victory, should recognize that Hamas is a legitimate government that won an election. Hostile, yes, but it is not a terrorist organization. To label Hamas as terrorists cannot and should not be taken as a fact in the media; it is the opinion of the US, Israel, Egypt and other countries who deem it as terrorist for various reasons. For Palestinians, Israel is not defending its state, it is waging war against them and their government. By this definition, the attacks on Gaza have not been on militants, but on civil servants. Let's say Israel does succeed in overthrowing, weeding out and killing Hamas. What next? It is not difficult to imagine that Palestinians will elect another hostile government that will defend them against Israel who has obviously shown no qualms in targetting schools, hospitals and homes. Isn't it obvious? It's all reactionary.

Media stories have also been focused upon "the Middle East view" of Gaza. Projecting the ME response as united against Israel misses the entire complexity of the region. Egypt is considered the "reject" among certain ME states not because it supports Israel but because the leadership gains great political and financial security from doing so. Second, if the ME is united against Israel, where are ME leaders? How have they responded to the Palestinians?

Finally, ultimately the problem most leaders have been pointing to is Iran. If we are really concerned that Iran's leadership has and will threaten the existence of Israel and will continue to support terrorism, then maybe we should take more precarious steps towards solving the Gaza conflict rather than giving Iranians another reason to vote in a president who will rally people in foreign policy against Israel. Presidential elections are in June - what type of message will the US and the rest of the world send to Iranians before then?

As of today, Israel has agreed to principles of a cease fire. I am amazed, though, that it took as long as it did. The moral authority the world has granted Israel is incredible; it is something that neither Palestinians nor Israelis should hold. But unfortunately, Israel does. Serious action by the US wasn't taken until a UN school was bombed yesterday. It was then that the US decided that Israel was being destructive. Before then, it was justified. By what standards are Palestinian lives measured, I wonder? International norms have been vague. Not only norms of human rights, where Israel has not allowed food and medical aid to pass through to Gaza, but also norms of war. Israel took 11 days to open Gaza to media coverage.

So besides another cycle of war to defend the state and a war to defend citizens, what has this Israeli offensive on Gaza gained? Perhaps it is time to condemn humanitarian atrocities and clear violations of international norms in both Israel and Palestine if another Israeli and Palestinian leader can answer his grandchildren what type of country has he bequeathed them.