Sprouting geysers in Iceland, where the venting ground is a dormant giant whale when not a volcano.

Travel offers an appreciation of nature’s marvels.

***

The ancient city engraved in pink stone— Petra, symbols and tombs the size of mountains— the Pyramids, a lover’s eulogy— Taj Mahal, an art collection’s most reveled sanctuary– Hermitage, and a once despised entrance arch—Le Tour Eiffel.

Travel gives an appreciation of Man’s marvels.

Travel is pilgrimage to holy places, Jerusalem, Lourdes, Mecca, Varanasi, catering to the mystical, the spiritual; magnificent temples immersed in gardens on precipices, often combining both nature’s and man’s marvels with a revered historical reference.

Travel enriches.

Travel is adventure, a suspension of reality, an escape to an unknown place, sharing an intimate moment with a complete stranger that feels familiar, under a clear night sky on a Greek Island, skinny dipping, fearless and daring.

Travel reminds us that we are born free.

Travel with someone reveals truths, exposes other sides, tests relationships.

Travel adds to a life’s experience.

Auschwitz, Hiroshima.

Travel reminds us of the horror and madness that man is capable of inducing.

But that is not the travel I wish to talk about today.

***

Working for a multinational consulting company in San Francisco some years ago, I was assigned a two week project in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestinian Occupied Territories.

Landing in Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv, I proceeded to immigration and security, feeling secure with my Canadian passport.

“First time in Israel?” the young girl behind the counter said. She must have been in her early twenties.

“Yes.”

“You were born in Jordan?” She leafed through my passport.

“Yes.”

After a few customary questions about the length and purpose of my visit, and after checking documents by my employer validating my assignment, she asked,

“Where are your parents from?”

“Here.”

Her eyebrows flinched.

“Where exactly?”

“My father is from Ramleh [not Ramallah] and my mother is from Jafa.”

“Please go to the office over there.”

She kept my passport and uttered something in Hebrew into her transceiver. I had arranged with my colleagues to meet at the airport, their flights having arrived before mine, and was anxious not to miss our connection. I had no experience navigating this terrain and my cell phone did not function.

After an hour’s wait with other Arabs, I finally got my turn.

“Are these your bags?” an officer said.

“Yes.”

He proceeded to ask me more questions, went through every boring detail in my bag, then took in his hands a book with music scores and flipped through its pages.

“So you play music huh?” he said with belittling amusement. I was reminded of the story of the Palestinian violinist, who was forced to play his violin before the guards at one of the check points in the West Bank. Luckily, piano is not a portable instrument.

Having found nothing suspicious, the officer ushered me to another check point where my bags and I passed through two X-ray machines. After being cleared by the machines, he had the chutzpah to ask,

“Do you have any bombs on you?”

I wasn’t sure of the purpose of the question.

***

Graffiti in Palestine. Photo: iStock

Up until then, I’d only met Palestinians in Diaspora. My first encounter with Palestinians in their homeland was in Ramallah, a run-down place that, compared to Gaza, I was told, is considered the San Francisco of the Occupied Territories. I felt a sense of belonging with the people and the land. It was a strange feeling that I could only approximate to what I imagined to be the feeling of an orphan meeting his biological parents for the first time. After completing my work assignment, I spent a couple of days traveling around Palestine-Israel. I made sure to get a taxi with a license plate that allows it to travel in and out of Israel.

We headed to Ramleh, which became part of Israel proper – not the occupied territories – in 1948. We asked people to point us to City Hall. That was easy to find.

An unmistakable edifice, looking more like an overgrown house, sat in a vast plot of green against the backdrop of olive trees. The taxi stopped and I stepped out. Green grass, well kempt, covered the spacious porch before the entrance.

The façade had pink undertones and was beautified by arches and columns wrapping around a large balcony. As I drew closer, the immense edifice towered over me, making me feel very little. Perhaps it wasn’t really that immense but it did make me feel little. There was no one else but the structure and I.

Security cameras plastered high on the walls gave me the sense that I was being watched, made me feel like a trespasser. I must have looked suspicious for I really had no business being there, walking around this municipal government building.

Except that this house and this land, covering an area of 29.34 dunams (7.25 acres,) belongs to Shukri Rizk, my late grandfather. He had built it in 1947 and had no time or chance to enjoy it or bequeath it to my father.

1948. Forced expulsion. Compensation: nil.

I was defeated by a combination of pain and helplessness. I quickly extricated myself and walked away, re-entered the taxi and took off, never looking back.

My father still preserves the property’s proof of ownership. Many other Palestinians still hold on to such documents, for what they’re worth, for mine is a world governed by the rule of power not the rule of law, and what is history but a fable agreed upon, as Napoleon once said. Except, it is not agreed upon.

Travel nostalgia— you ask?

Exile— I say.

Travel enriches and travel impoverishes the heart as well.

(Today, there are over four and a half million Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N.)

Originally published in JO.

IN 2008, Zeina Daccache made headlines by doing the impossible: she got access to one of Lebanon’s toughest men’s prisons and staged a play there, starring the inmates. After months of work, she brought the great and good of Beirut society, from the Prosecutor General to the Minister of Interior, to sit in a makeshift theater and watch a group of convicted murderers, rapists and drug dealers act out a parable about the failure of criminal justice.

The play was Daccache and the inmates’ own adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, by Reginald Rose. The original is an American classic in which a jury debates the fate of a young man accused of murder. Eleven men agree on a guilty verdict, but one dissents; by analyzing the evidence he slowly wins the others over. Adapted to a Lebanese environment, the drama cuts back and forth between the arguments of the fictional jury and real-life stories told by the prison inmates.

One prisoner, the diminutive Youssef Chankar, plays a narrator, whose comments help bridge the different sections of the play. In his opening monologue he points out that, although called 12 Angry Lebanese, the cast also includes a Bangladeshi, a Palestinian, a Nigerian and a Syrian.

“We all came to Lebanon to be angry,” he says.

The production generated a huge amount of attention, and was followed up in 2009 with the release of a documentary film, “12 Angry Lebanese.” The movie tells the story behind the production, and examines the effects of this “drama therapy” on the 45 inmates involved, and the enclosed world of prison society itself. At the 2009 Dubai International Film Festival it won both the People’s Choice award and the Muhr award for best Arab documentary. It screened in Amman at the end of January.

So how exactly did Daccache manage to walk into a prison and get nearly 50 mostly violent offenders to do something requiring so much dedication and cooperation?

In one surprising scene in the film, viewers get to see Daccache taking her actors to task quite harshly.

“All I ever hear is ‘I want,’ or ‘I need,’” she says. “This is the language of children.” Shockingly, there’s no riot. The inmates bow their heads?one even agrees. What the audience may not quite appreciate is that such minor miracles represent years of work.

Daccache has lived in Paris, Italy and the United States, as well as Lebanon. She speaks four languages, and stars as the clownish character Iso in the popular Lebanese political satire show “Bassmat Watan.” In 2000 she studied clowning with Phillippe Gaulier, a French physical theater guru in London. Shortly thereafter she assisted in a drama therapy project in an Italian prison. The following six years were spent working in rehab centers, until 2007, when she studied drama therapy at Kansas State University; she’s also earned an MA in Clinical Psychology.

Of course none of this would have been much use without a sense of humor.

“You need to be confident, a gentleman,” she says at another point in the film, gesturing in an exaggerated fashion as she teaches Bangladeshi inmate Hussein Al Mawla how to walk without slouching. “Haven’t you seen those people who are like: ‘How are you darling, so good to see you,’” she continues, prancing around the room and playfully shaking the hands of the inmates. “Trust me, these people are everywhere in Beirut.”

It’s one of the more light-hearted scenes, but perhaps also one of the more telling. What exactly made Daccache abandon a world of coffee-shop boulevards for Roumieh prison, or the Beirut in-set for society’s outcasts?

“I don’t believe in art for art’s sake,” says the sprightly young director, dismissing the question as a distraction. “Why do you write, or why does a singer sing? I work with people like this because it’s right for me and because I think it’s important.”

It’s only when pressed that Daccache reveals the insight that seems to drive the work behind the 12 Angry Lebanese project, and Catharsis, the drama-therapy company she runs.

“People like this are naked,” she explains. “We know their sin, we know what they have done, and they can’t hide?they’ve been caught. But [for us] on the outside, our wrongs are hidden and we can fake so many things.”

Neither the play nor the documentary is arguing the rapists and murderers in Roumieh are innocent, or that they should not be held to account. What these works question is the presumed innocence of those outside the prison walls, and their readiness to sit in judgment on those within.

The more explicit aim of the documentary, however, was to chart and champion the effects of drama therapy on the inmates involved. Perhaps the most convincing case for a therapeutic effect is Majdi Sirjani, a murderer sentenced to death in a country where the death penalty, although not implemented, remains on the statute books. Sirjani describes his “psychological crisis,” and his overwhelming and constant preoccupation with death, but by the end of the film his features seem somehow lighter, his eyes less hollow. Another inmate, called simply “Haweelo,” who was convicted of drug dealing, learned to read and write for the play with the help of his cellmates.

The residents of Roumieh aren’t much given to artifice (or else they’re very good at it) but their reflections on prison life and the drama project don’t seem scripted.

12 Angry Lebanese shows that in some ways prison life is a microcosm of the world outside.

“Inside I’m a servant, and outside I’m a servant,” says Al Mawla, the Bangladeshi inmate.

“You’ll find exactly the same prejudices inside a prison as outside,” explains Daccache—mentioning how at first, some of the inmates at first didn’t like taking direction from a woman. “They call me Abu Ali,” she recounts. In the documentary itself, she quips that she “can never procreate with such a nickname.”

Then there’s Chankar, the play’s narrator, who was given a life sentence for murder. In Lebanon a life sentence means just what its name implies—it’s of indeterminate length. With nothing to look forward to, Chankar can only look back. He counts up the 18 years he’s spent in prison in days, hours, minutes and seconds.

Rateb Al Jibawi, imprisoned for rape, will be released one day—but he regards the prospect of freedom with ambivalence. “Another prison awaits me,” he tells audience, “a prison without walls.” He fears the censure of the society, the life of a pariah in the crowd.

Technically, “12 Angry Lebanese” is neither filmed, edited or scripted particularly well. Footage of the play is incorporated rather awkwardly into scenes from the rehearsals, and interviews with the prisoners’ in which they describe the process. More background—for example, on how Daccache found herself at Roumieh, or the struggle to launch the project in the first place—might have helped the narrative along.

But such criticisms are very minor. In fact, it’s in large part by avoiding the structure of a “journey story,” and instead focusing on what the inmates have to say for themselves, that makes the documentary at once so compelling and so different.

John Lillywhite is an Oxford History graduate with a law diploma he’s determined to never use, a Walmart laptop that remains the bane of his life, and a tongue so irreverent its best kept closed.

He has experience in Film, Talent, New Media and Book Publishing, and currently works as Art’s Editor for JO. John is a ‘culture vulture’ who’s loves creative things and creative people.

You can contact John by sending him an E-mail at john[at]jo[dot]jo. You can also add him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.

At Queen Alia International Airport, I tucked away my laptop and lunged to the security check point before the gate. On my way I double-checked the flight departure monitor. It flashed: “RJ178 Gate 3 Last Call.”

Right before the X-ray machine stood an airport security guard that checked passports and boarding passes. Upon seeing my pass he said: “Montreal not yet open. Please wait in the other lounge.”

“But they just made the announcement,” I said in Arabic. He simply smiled and gave me a blank look, then pointed to the lounge. There were a few people behind me. Most of the Arabs, having overheard my conversation with the officer, stepped out of the line and headed back to the outside lounge. A few Canadians continued to proceed to the gate. They were really confused when the officer again pointed them to the lounge. This was not the first time that this had happened. I suppose this is a system or a process issue. Just poor communication and coordination between airport personnel.

In any case, I was happy that I had managed to book a window seat. It is a long flight to Montreal and this would help me try to get some sleep. Boarding the plane, I walked towards my seat. The configuration of the seats were 2-4-2—aisle next to a window seat.

I spotted my seat, 31A and yes, it was vacant! What a delight. So many times in the past on Royal Jordanian someone would be in my seat, usually playing dumb and asking me to switch with his seat, which invariably would be a middle seat. So many times I had to fight for what was rightfully mine. Luckily, not this time.

A girl in a veil sat on the aisle seat, 31B.

“Excuse me, I am sitting there,” I said to her with a courteous smile, pointing to the vacant window seat next to her.

Her face turned a bit red, she stood up but did not step to the side to let me in. Panic seemed to engulf her and she looked like she was fast cooking something in her head. She then looked at the man and woman sitting one row ahead and said:

“Excuse me. Are you ka-bel (couple)?”

The man and woman, who were non-Arab, looked at each other, as if amused at the suggestiveness of the question, gave a brief smile, then said to the girl in veil “No.”

The girl in veil looked at the woman anxiously and said: “Do you mind sitting next to me. It’s a long flight you know.”

It all happened so fast that I only realized what was going on after the other lady had stood up, went to sit in my seat and gave me hers—which was an aisle seat.

Then, a lady, walking from the front of the plane to the middle section, stopped a couple of rows ahead and asked a seated passenger to do a seat swap so that she can sit next to her friend.

Indeed, it was a very sociable plane, people would spot others they knew and pay them visits at their seats. The mother of the girl behind me came to check on her daughter, arching over me, resting her arm on the back of my seat and breathing down my neck. “Excuse me,” I said, but my words didn’t stir the determined.

I had to move my head a bit lest it gets bumped. Every three to four rows, there was one such visitor. The plane was still at the gate.

The flight attendant announced: “Everyone please take your seats and fasten your seat belts. We will not take off until everyone is seated with their seat belts fastened.”

Then another flight attendant, realizing that a speaker announcement was not enough, passed through the aisles, ushered lingerers to their seats and reminded them to fasten. An unshaved man a couple of rows ahead would not fasten his seat belt.

“Fasten your seat belt please. Just for fifteen minutes then we’ll be up in the air and you can unfasten.”

“Why don’t you fasten it for me,” he said with a smile that she quickly returned with a smirk.

The flight’s final destination was Detroit with a stop in Montreal. Roughly half of the plane was filled with Montrealers, the other, Detroit passengers.

Seconds after the plane touched ground in Montreal, the beast was still bumping on the ground, air brakes still laboring at full throttle to bring the plane back to steady motion, but people stood up and started opening the overhead compartments. A couple that were being jerked around, looked like drunkards desperately trying to regain their balance.

“Please sit down and remain seated with your seat belts fastened until the plane has come to a complete stop and the seat belt sign has been turned off!” The voice of the flight attendant sounded fiercer than usual.

People reluctantly went back to their seats. Then as soon as the plane stopped, and before the seat belt sign went off, people sprang up and claimed their carry-ons and filled up the aisles, ready to exit the plane.

“Passengers headed to Detroit are to remain on-board. You cannot leave the plane,” came the announcement with some other information.

There were some visits here and there, some seat swapping by the Detroit passengers, and it seemed that the flow of people out of the plane was impeded. Apparently, some Detroit passengers were standing in the way because soon, another announcement followed.

“Detroit passengers, please take your seats, let the Montreal passengers exit the plane.”

Finally, there was movement again.

“Would you stop pushing. Where are you going to go. Look! You going to jump over all these passengers?” One man scolded another behind him.

Just when I was about to disembark from the plane, a flight attendant, standing by the gate, asked me if my final destination was Montreal and I confirmed. Apparently, some Detroit people had stepped out of the plane and had to be escorted back so a flight attendant had to act as gatekeeper.

***

On another long RJ flight, I was seated in the middle seat section, with three empty seats next to me. As soon as we were airborne and the fasten seat belt sign was extinguished, a lady in her late forties popped up and asked me if she could sit on the other end of the empty seats. Had I acted like the other passengers, I would have claimed the territory at the earliest chance, extending my legs or placing objects and securing my sleeping space, but I did not want to be desperately opportunistic.

I said okay. I was sympathetic. She was an older lady. After dinner and when the lights went off, she made herself cozy, curled sideways and extended her legs, claiming all three seats—her toes almost touching my side while I sat squeezed in my one sorry seat.

Feeling a burning sense of injustice, I finally spoke out.

“Can we at least share?”

She withdrew her limbs from the third to the second seat and I extended mine to that second seat, so we sat from the outside seats with knees ridged upwards, each claiming two seats and facing each other. Every once in a while she would doze off and her legs would seamlessly slide into my territory and I would have to push back, so over the course of the flight, far from getting any sleep, we were throwing contemptuous glances and playing a hostile game of footsie to fend off intrusion into this tough turf, part of which almost became a no man’s land.

***

I’d been consulting for over ten years on international assignments, travelling on average once every three weeks across the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. The travel experience with my fellow Jordanian and Palestinian brothers and sisters is truly unique.

In some cases, adults act like children. Their behavior ranges from lack of common courtesy and consideration for others to outright self absorption and selfishness— me first in line, me the all-deserving of better service, of a better seat.

“Madam, you are requesting a first-class service, but you’re paying economy,” a flight attendant told a passenger once. I thought that summed up best this aspect of my culture—over expectation, under contribution.

The irony is that one would expect this selfish individualism to take place in a culture known for that, not in a culture famous for being anti-individualistic. We are a self-conscious people, obsessed with what society thinks, with reputation, image, and with something we call ‘honor.’ We are also very sociable people, flocking to weddings, funerals, newborn baby parties. And as such, Arabic culture probably ranks one of the highest in hospitality.

When we have guests, we show off with our generosity. We are very supportive of our kids. It is unheard of to kick a son or daughter out of the house after reaching eighteen, even forty, regardless of economic hardships, while this may not be so unusual in the U.S. for example. We respect our parents and our elders. We are very supportive of family members, extended family, members of the clan or tribe, our friends. Abandoning a friend or relative in need is considered a taboo.

Inherent in all this is compromise and sacrifice. If anything, it is more selfless than selfish. We are willing to give more to our loved ones than are others in the U.S. and Europe, perhaps.

Yet, once we step out of the circle of friends and family, another personality takes over.

My explanation for this is that there is no sense of the collective, a sense of a common identity, of a common people working together. There is no belief in a fair and equal system that we belong to, adhere to, that represents us equally. There is no participation.

The common man is someone that gets trampled on. The common man in our culture does not get much respect, while the common man in a first world country is as good as any. In the absence of democracy and a system that works for the one and the many, we end up with dog eats dog. To each their own. That helps us remain divided. The perception is that the gain and success of one is at the expense of the other. Though conceptually this is not unique to us, or to people of the third world as a whole (i.e. rich at the expense of the poor,) the extent and degree are more severe for us.

Rather than the sense of: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, we get: Do unto others as others have done unto you. And ‘others’ have treated you unfairly and gotten away with it, so the exploited becomes the exploiter in a never ending cycle.

The other exhibited behavior, that of restlessness, might be symptomatic of people’s frustrations and sense of powerlessness—those whose lives are not within their control. So to compensate, they make up for it by taking it out on others. All this is consistent with the way people drive in Amman.

Little common courtesy is given to the ‘common’ man in shared, common spaces such as airplanes and streets.

Amman is famous for its villas and mansions, burgeoning out of most beautiful gardens. Unlike any city in Europe or the US, though, there are no beautiful common areas, just disconnected islands of beauty fenced behind walls. Similar to what Robert Fisk observed about Lebanon, people don’t feel a sense of ownership of their streets and neighborhoods and cities. They have no problem littering outside the fence while their gardens and houses are kept immaculate. There is no sense of ownership of that which is shared.

Though the aforementioned generosity, hospitality and selflessness may not always be genuine—often done in response to social pressure or for a desire to show off— they are still something to be proud of. A less turbulent journey, and a more cohesive society would emerge if we changed our mentality and realized that we are in this together. If I don’t fasten my seat belt before takeoff because I am too busy chatting with a friend, I won’t just be delaying others, but also myself.

Every time I think of 9/11

I see burning flesh

Dripping off the bones

Of Iraqi children in Fallujah

Now Gaza

I tend to memorialize the forgotten

The collateral damage

Eclipsing our unpunished crimes

Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy?

Kanazi speaks and performs with an urgency that commands your attention; his voice is forceful, lawyer-like in the way he pleads for justice. His conviction of opinion may offend the faint-hearted. Needless to say, Kanazi is never at a loss for words.

“I write a lot of angry pieces,” he confesses. “All you gotta do is turn on CNN to write a poem. Thanks to our government and media, I’m never devoid of creativity.”

While Kanazi uses his past growing up as the “the brownest thing going in a small western Massachusetts white Catholic town,” for inspiration, he wasn’t always so comfortable talking about his Palestinian heritage.

“Look, Arab Americans usually go two routes,” he says. “It’s either I am Arab hear me roar, or I want nothing to do with you people.” Remi was the latter. “I wanted McDonald’s, I wanted Coke, I was the fat kid who didn’t care and I rejected my Palestinian ancestry.”

Remi began singing another tune when he connected with Arabs in college. “When I talked to some of these people, there was an enormous feeling of embarrassment, of not knowing where I came from, and that pushed me to find out.”

After a brief stint as a business major at the University of Massachusetts, Remi moved to New York. He didn’t begin writing until about four months before 9/11. Following 9/11, his creative output only intensified:

“The backlash against Arabs, the mischaracterizations, the vitriol, it made me want to write,” he says.

Kanazi, who grew up politically conservative, began independently reading and researching, delving in progressive politics, Edward Said and “anything I could get my hand son.” He saw Def Jam poetry on Broadway and was drawn to Suheir Hammad and Carlos Andres Gomez. “It blew my mind how spoken word was so progressive and interlinked with socially conscious hip hop; it moved me in a way I wanted to emulate,” he says.

Activism drives his work. “I used to write op-eds, but I felt the youth was yearning for voices, for artists to say ‘this is me, and I’ not afraid.’”

In 2005 Remi started his poetry website PoeticInjustice.net and began booking shows.

“The first show I ever did was at a Palestinian Relief Fundraiser at St. Georges church in New Jersey. Natalie Hundall and Maysoon Zayid were reading that night.” The event organizer-Remi’s brother’s friend’s mom- read some of his poems off PoeticInjustice and asked him to perform.

“They said I would perform for ten min, and I was so mad at myself for agreeing, thinking I was gonna make an ass of myself. I was shaking like crazy but then I did it and it was the best feeling ever.”

Six months later, the idea for Poets for Palestine started. An anthology of poems edited by Kanazi, it unites poets, spoken word artists, and hip-hop artists calling for humanity. Remi relied on open-call submissions and help from within the Arab American artistic community, eventually personally asking writers to submit their work. Networking within the Arab American community was key.

“There was and continues to be an immense amount of support from the Arab artistic community, which I know sounds funny because Arabs are so well known for their dividedness.” He laughs. “Everyone gave their time for free or did it for dirt cheap. If it wasn’t for the Arab American community I don’t think I’d still be a poet.”

Remi’s maternal grandparents are from Yafeh, his paternal relatives are from Haifa. They all fled to Lebanon in 1948, during Al- Nakba, the creation of Israel.

In 2007, Remi went back to Palestine for the first time, visiting the land his ancestors dreamed of returning to. “You can read as much as you want but nothing can replace the experience of being in Palestine, feeling it, and connecting with people on the ground.” When he says that, you get the sense his mind is wandering back to a specific encounter and image.

Remi’s grandmother passed away in the summer. He credits her for influencing him as an adult, and for the love and pride she instilled in him. “She was always talking abut Yafeh and wanting to return,” he says. “When I look back [at my younger self], I constantly feel, like, what the hell was wrong with me? The more you reject your roots when you’re younger, the more you actually come back to them when you’re older.”

Remi finished his fall U.S. tour last month. During performances, he talks about how PoetsforPalestine came together, but focuses more on his own poetry, performing ten to twelve poems per show.

“I tackle double standards, war and politics, but my main focus is Palestine, so I talk about what coexistence means, what justice means,” he says.

In the spring, Remi will head back to Palestine to teach a course as part of the Palestine Writing Workshop and will be participating in Palfest, a yearly literature festival in Palestine.

“I’m a little afraid because Israel has been jailing Palestinians-especially non violent outspoken ones,” he says with a nervous chuckle. “But I’m looking forward to it.”

I ask Remi if, like many Palestinians, he prays to God for freedom from oppression. His answer is, not surprisingly, political:

“In a post 9-11 world people want to say, ‘Oh it’s fundamentalist or religious zealousm, but when you look at Palestine, it’s occupier vs occupied, colonzier vs colonized. The problem is disposition, apartheid.”

I’ve touched a nerve.

“It’s ridiculous when people say Jews and Arabs can’t live together because of Hamas,” he says. “Israel didn’t reject Hamas because it was religious- before Hamas there was Fatah, the PLO, secularism, the problem clearly isn’t religion.”

Remi’s poem “Coexist” is a tribute to Palestinian resistance, as the only thing that keeps the people from becoming extinct.

I don’t want to coexist
Not like good guys and bad guys in True Lies and propaganda
Put on blackface as cab drivers or deli owners in racist comedies
Not bomb Dunkin Donuts with my Kuffiyeh
Fist pound Fox News
Or let you steal my food and call it Israeli salad
I won’t Mess with the Zohan
Or let him turn the rocks of Palestinian children into balloon animals
While Israeli soldiers snipe our children’s heads, shoulders, knees, and stomachs
Hollywood snipes ears of young ones with lovable tales of blue and white heroes
I am not looking for your approval

The last lines read:

I don’t want to coexist!
I want to exist as a human being
And justice will take care of the rest!

Abu Dhabi is a cosmopolitan metropolis. With its burgeoning economy that has made it a popular destination for expats, as well as its cultural initiatives, it is no surprise that it recently played host to the first international nadwa (workshop) for Arab fiction.

The initiative was launched by The International Prize For Arabic Fiction (equivalent to the Man Booker Prize for the Arab world). The IPAF aims to champion excellence in contemporary Arabic literature and works in association with the Booker Prize Foundation.

The nadwa is modelled on other international writing workshops. One must wonder as to why it has taken such a long time to recognise one is needed on the international literary landscape. However, it is also fair to acknowledge the efforts being made to redress the gulf between the Arab world’s efforts and such institutions as the ‘Caine Prize’ writing workshop for African Writers, as well as the numerous writing workshops in the UK and US. These workshops, including the likes of the ‘Asian American Writers’ Workshop,’ help emerging writers develop their skills and give them a visible platform to be seen, heard and get better.

Peter Clark is an IPAF trustee and the nadwa’s coordinator. He explains, “The workshop brings together promising writers, from different Arab countries to discuss their work and creativity with experienced writers and the ultimate aim is to encourage good writing and bring it to the attention of the rest of the world.”

The eight writers picked for this inaugural workshop are described by the judges who chose them as ‘some of the most gifted and promising writers of the emerging generation.’ Five of them have also been selected to be part of Beirut 39, an elite group of Arab writers under the age of 40.

The workshop, which took place over a nine day period, was conducted in Arabic and the writers wrote in Arabic. However, there are plans for the final work of each writer to be part of an anthology, which will be translated and published in both Arabic and English. The opportunity also gave writers access to established authors who served as mentors and worked closely with them in one-to-one sessions.

Mansoura Ezz Eldin, who has been shortlisted for the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and Mohammed Hassan Alwan, were two of the nine participants. They admit this is the first time they have participated in a workshop of this sort and agree that these kinds of gatherings are not common in the Arab world. Alwan said:

“A lot of money has been spent to fund art and literature events in the Arab World. However, most of this money goes to prizes and festivals. If you agree with me, both types of events have a public relations element that encourages funders to buy some good publicity which writers’ retreats, apparently, don’t generate enough of it. Find a funder who recognizes the real essence of non-for-profit projects and you’ll see more workshops as this one in the Arab world.”

While Eldin says the trend is changing with the inception of writing workshops like the nadwa and others in Lebanon and Cairo, but that this “Workshop is totally different, because the participants are well known young writers, not beginners.”

Mansoura Ezz Eldin. Photo: IPAF

Alwan has published two novels and a collection of short stories, while Eldin has a novel and a collection of short stories under her belt. Eldin runs the review section of the renowned Egyptian literary magazine, Akhbar al-Adab (Literature News.) Both say the workshop has helped them, though in different ways.

Alwan said, “Joining eight accomplished writers in a quest for refining our in-progress short stories and novels was as valuable as taking eight consecutive classes of creative writing.” Eldin admits to doing something she is not familiar by treading in new territory with her work. “It was a fruitful experience, it was also an adventure because as a writer, I was not used to letting anyone read my work while writing but this workshop helped to change that habit,” she says. Hence, she says the most important gain from the workshop was being able to “See her work through the eyes of other writers and to be more flexible.”

So, what does a writing workshop of this nature do for a body of work or literature from a different part of the world? Surely the aim is to open the minds of people to the fact that Arab writing is alive and flourishing and that the literary world and readers alike need to embrace it and stay open minded, in spite of the grim picture often painted of the region. Clark says he hopes “It gives recognition to emerging talented writers, encourages readers and instils awareness that the future of Arab literary creativity looks good.”

For the writers involved, Alwan says he would like to believe that the workshop will help Arab fiction and writers “Overcome the shortcomings of their writings that the after-publishing critique often fails to do since it is either usually too late or too harsh.” He adds that this triggers a level of defensiveness from the writer and prevents him or her from understanding why his or her work is being criticised by the critics. So, “providing such critique while the text is in development is much more acceptable and is received as an opportunity to improve the text rather than undermine it,” he adds.

Mohammed Hassan Alwan. Photo: IPAF

Both authors are adamant about the biggest challenge faced by Arab writers which they say is the issue of translation. The lack of translation has meant some of best works from Arab writers, fiction and non-fiction, are yet to cross over into the mainstream literary scene despite the fact that Arab writing keeps evolving. Eldin believes that translating the work which comes out of the workshop into English would be one of the most important and positive results of it all. Alwan says he would like to see a change in the number of works translated across the Arab literary landscape. “There is still not enough funding for massive translation projects. Only a little fraction of what’s being produced in the Arab world gets translated to other languages,” he says. This could be an opportunity for Western publishers, if they are bold enough to take a chance.

Clark points out there are plans to develop the workshop further, while Eldin and Alwan express their hope of it becoming a more frequent event with broader scope and more diverse participants. They also would not mind being involved in future workshops. Eldin says she actually fancies the opportunity of being a mentor, while Alwan is quick to point out the fact that having mentors for this year’s workshop was a blessing. It is important to keep that aspect of the project because “At the end, Arab mentors can be more effective in communicating with the participants. It’s not only because of the shared spoken language but also the cultural backgrounds that play significant roles in shaping the ideas behind the stories and novels being developed.”

On the subject of censorship within the Arab world, both writers have different points of view. Alwan said,

“Since the participants are from different countries in the Arab world and experience different levels and types of censorship; they share the condemnation of it but not the extents of which they can challenge it, the experiences they had with it, nor the techniques they use to minimize its negative effect on their writings. Hence by mixing them together, they inspire each other and share their experiences in regards to dealing with censorship.”

However, Eldin said, “Any workshop cannot help writers to express themselves freely. The writer should express himself freely whatever the price is. Freedom is the most important thing for a writer.”

Jordan and Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, they maintain diplomatic relations, and even before the peace treaties, relations between the governments of Jordan and Israel were friendly. As far as Iraq is concerned, it is true that historically, Saddam’s Iraq had been in conflict with Israel. Iraq also supported the Palestinian resistance movements financially and politically. But since that time, and especially after 2003, Iraq has been too occupied with its own problems to have an actual conflict with Israel.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE don’t enjoy formal diplomatic relations with Israel, but neither have they engaged in actual conflict. The practical life of the average citizen in any of those countries is not in the slightest impacted by Israel (or vice versa). The only other countries in the Middle East that have a palpable problem with Israel today are Lebanon and Syria. On any average day, the life of a Lebanese or a Syrian is nowhere impacted by Israel, though. Existentially, it is the Palestinian’s day-to-day life, particularly in the West Bank and Gaza, that is made unnecessarily so much more difficult, if not unbearable, by the Jewish State.

Referring to this situation as the “Middle East Conflict” exaggerates the scope of the conflict, making it appear that twelve countries are at war with Israel, though only three are involved, and at best partially. The term works to draw sympathy towards the Jewish State, a lone country surrounded by hostile Arabs, where in reality Israel wields so much power that it can choose to bomb sites in other sovereign countries like it did in Iraq in 1982, and Syria in 2008, actions that amount to acts of war, without seemingly worrying about reprisals.

Naming it the “Middle East Conflict” has the added effect of diluting the Palestinians’ stake in the discord, the specificity of their suffering, and the uniqueness of their plight to protect their precarious identity.

The term “Arab Israeli Conflict” is also misleading. Again, it serves the purpose of exaggerating the discord, insinuating that all of the Arabs are out to get Israel. There are 350 million people defined as Arab. While most of them, just like many other citizens in the world, may oppose Israel because of its human rights abuses and violations of International Law, not a mere 2% of them are “officially” in conflict with Israel.

To the surprise of many in the U.S., many Jews are Arab themselves, including Egyptian, Iraqi, Yamani, Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian and Tunisian. These Arab Jews, known as Mizrahi, mostly live in Israel today, while some also live in the U.S., some still in Syria, and many in Morocco. These Arabs are definitely not in conflict with Israel. In Israel, they have full rights, unlike the non-Jewish, Palestinian citizens of Israel.

According to Ella Habiba Shohat, an Iraqi Jew and Professor of Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies at New York University, the story of Israel and Jews only takes the European narrative into consideration, most notably the Holocaust, and assumes it for the collective memory and experience of all Jews. This story excludes the experience of Arab Jews.

Mizrahis spoke more Arabic than Yiddish, ate and looked more like Middle Easterners than Europeans, and were immersed in some of the Arab traditions. They had more in common with Muslim and Christian Arabs than with Polish or German Jews. Mizrahis largely lived in harmony (though there were times of tension) with the non-Jewish Arab communities, contrary to what some Israelis would have us believe.

According to Shohat,

“In Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia, Jews became members of legislatures, of municipal councils, of the judiciary, and even occupied high economic positions. (The finance minister of Iraq in the ’40s was Ishak Sasson, and in Egypt, Jamas Sanua–higher positions, ironically, than those our community had generally achieved within the Jewish state until the 1990s!)”

The different communities that once co-existed were not so consumed by their religious affiliations.

Terming the Palestinian-Israeli conflict an “Arab Israeli conflict” unnecessarily invites more people to join, politicizes and segregates people further, and emphasizes our differences instead of our similarities. It pushes us to identify ourselves in terms of binarism, us versus them, good versus evil (how good and evil are determined is another story), instead of acknowledging that we are the same people and that we all demand to be treated with respect and dignity.

What if Christian Arabs formed a state and called it “X,” brought European Christians to live in it and suppressed the indigenous non-Christian population in that state? Would they call the ensuing conflict the Arab-X conflict?

Again, this naming serves to obfuscate the idea of a Palestinian identity. The main distinguishing factor is whether a citizen in Israel is Jewish or not, not if he or she is Arab or not, just as in the example of the Iraqi, Yemeni and Egyptian Jew living in Israel. The whole burden of this racist design falls crushingly on the shoulder of the Palestinian. The “Arab-Israeli” is none other than a Palestinian, hence he or she should be called a Palestinian-Israeli. Similar to the Palestinian living in Israel proper, the one in Gaza and the West Bank happens to be a Muslim or a Christian, not a Jew. Hence, the Palestinian feels the wrath of the Israeli suppression machine.

At the core of it, this conflict is about a universal fight for human rights and social justice, an oppressed-versus-oppressor conflict. This is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

They’re wrinkles
On the face of history.
History is a tired woman.
History stands by the side of the road,
Her cheap necklaces toll for you.

These old scars,
Rock against people,
Time against more time,
Cannot be kissed away.

After my body
Has stopped complaining
At the end of the rope,
After your feet enter the slippers
Brought to you by another woman,
The rock will still be telling
The same story to itself.
The ending never changes.

Implacable but steady,
The city never stops blushing,
As if it has an amusing secret.

I think it’s adding footsteps
To its scrapbook of desecrations.

No one righteous,
And no one to blame.
We have forgotten its loves
And big and little deaths,
And it “forgets” to bless us on our way.

The key messages of the report are as follows. Education is at the crossroads for the future of MENA. It plays crucial role in promoting poverty alleviation and economic growth, both at national and household levels. Various stakeholders in the region regard education as their most important development challenge, and education reform is on top of the reform agenda of many regional governments.

Having succeeded in expanding the education systems to include most eligible children, boys and girls, the MENA region is now ready to travel a new road. While the exact configuration of this new road will not be the same for each country, all countries, irrespective of their initial conditions, will require a shift from “engineering inputs” to “engineering for results”, along with a combination of incentives and public accountability measures, as well as measures to improve labor market outcomes.

Finally, labor market reforms will need to be implemented hand in hand with those for the education system proper. In the case of MENA, the relevant labor market extends much farther than the confines of any country or even the region because of important migration trends and opportunities.

The report is 399-page long and is starting to stimulate quite a bit of discussions, in particular in the countries members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Public authorities are reviewing the details and assessing which analyses and recommendations are relevant to their own country.

Probably the best feature of this report on education is precisely that it is not (uniquely) about education, its own internal debates and inward-looking theories.

Granted, GCC countries have achieved a tremendous growth over the past thirty years. And their transformations do not seem to slow down. It is actually hard to think of a field in which nothing has been attempted: science, media, transport, education, art, sport, infrastructure, trade, e-government, the world is hearing from projects popping out from the western side of the Persian Gulf – a palm-shaped man-made island, a one-kilometer high tower, the Louvre, a couple of Formula One Grand Prix, English Premier League teams, television networks challenging CNN, local branches of top-tier universities and research centers. We cannot wait for the Football World Cup, the Olympic Games (at least the summer Olympic Games to start with), a landing on the moon…

This accumulation has been made possible by two fundamental God-sent gifts. The first one is obviously fossil fuel reserves. Albeit at various levels, the GCC countries have had access to cheap and abundant oil and gas. The second aspect is the peace and stability that the GCC countries have enjoyed.

Now, at the risk of spoiling the fun, two issues would need highlighting.

First, the rapid stockpiling of material assets biases the focus of life away from culture and heritage. While religion plays a central role in the societies of the Gulf and in spite of the many public initiatives such as festivals, competitions and museums, people do not seem to be genuinely interested in high culture or art.

Think about fine arts in everyday life in the main capitals of the Gulf – sculpture, painting, literature, theatre, music, dance, photography, filmmaking – and it is fair to say that they are not often the main topics of interest. The occasional buzz occurs (Paris Hilton in Dubai) but even the most educated people do not seem to have a deep interest in art. If it can be used as anecdotal evidence, compare the Friday edition of the local newspapers to the Sunday issue of any European newspaper. Locally, art attracts almost no attention.

This is not to say that endless passionate debates on the latest modern art exhibition, a new novel or an art-house film are the only signs of development, but simply that exposure to culture is a source of positive inspiration. It gives a meaning to societies and personal lives.

The second missing element in the GCC landscape is a collective memory of entrepreneurship, innovation and business initiative. The history of the Gulf is filled with great traders but the current development phase has principally been about the management of an immense rent and its distribution to populations who wanted to import A/C, cars, televisions, etc.

Compared with Europe in the 19th century and many other countries around the world in the first half of the 20th century, the Gulf has not yet accumulated any significant long term industrial experience. Harvard professor and development specialist Alice Amsden argues that:

“On the eve of decolonization, manufacturing experience was greatest in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey. […] While not every country with prewar manufacturing experience succeeded, no country without it could create a diversity of advanced industries in the half-century after World War II.”

Only time and continuous effort can create the required experienced elite class with large cohorts of entrepreneurs, managers, engineers, lawyers and accountants.

While experience is indeed needed, there is one prerequisite: education is the absolute requirement for society to develop peacefully. There is probably no need to reiterate the importance of knowledge acquisition – awareness is actually quite high in this area – but it seems that the public attention regarding education is crystallized on a flawed debate.

Most of what we hear or read is about the inadequacy of rote-learning and other old-fashioned methodologies. It is as if children where going to learn mathematics through a series of modern, cool student-centered learning by doing. The time has perhaps come to go over this debate, which in any case will never be closed, and reorient the education strategy towards what is missing in the region. Not enough is done to inculcate the love of art and culture and not much is even attempted to foster a culture of innovation, research and entrepreneurship.

If that is what the GCC lacks, it is more than urgent that significant resources, efforts and commitments are aligned with the real challenges of the region. The Road Not Traveled? Indeed. And the journey is going to be long…

Olivier Renard is an advisor at the Secretariat General of the Research Council of the Sultanate of Oman.

Then I washed my hair,
Made myself prettier than even Fadi can,
Lay across our bed with my feet pointing east,
Hands across the body
Where everything began.

We made them up inside our heads,
Inside this bed.

Now you’re walking down the road,
Your top buttons unbuttoned,
Your tie and face askew.

Now you can’t enter.
Now.

Forgive me my cowardice,
My poppy mouth,
That bent down
Searching out a kiss.
I’ve been rewarded richly for this.
I have the freedom
Only loneliness can affix
Like a medal to breasts run dry.

Tablecloth violated
By sweet little drops
And spills.

Until the moment
Of no more,
No more.

A simmering,
Singing tongue
Resting behind the teeth.

Then it goes,
And the lights
Are dimmed in the restaurant.

The waitress
Slides out out of her pump
And inspects her tired toes.

The cook rubs his forehead
Where the hairnet
Hugged him too tightly.

The sleeping dumpster
Quietly digests
The remains of the night.

The way back is long,
Through puddles and cobblestone.
The way back is so long.