Old city of Sanaa from the Bakiriya Mosque, from a photograph taken in 1962; courtesy of Dr. Muhammad Gerhoum
Category Archives: Countries
Brotherhood, Brotherly Hate, Brotherly Love
Egyptian drink seller near al-Azhar in 1983; photography by Daniel Martin Varisco
Egypt faces an ethical dilemma, one that affects anyone who has ever visited or carried out research in the country. My first experience in Egypt was in early 1981 when I conducted research in Asyut on rural sanitation for a USAID project, my first development assignment. This was still Sadat’s Egypt, open to American aid and seeking to end the bitter taste of unwinnable war with Israel. I felt safe no matter where I traveled. The only time I winced was when I visited the Pharaonic ruins in Luxor and stayed in one of the lesser hotels. Striking up a conversation with the young man at the hotel desk, he asked me if I could tell the nationality of another guest’s passport. The passport was in Hebrew and the guest was the Israeli consul. I calmly explained this to the clerk, who took it in stride – another paying customer. In 1983 I was able to spend a year in Cairo studying Islamic manuscripts at Dar al-Kutub, the Egyptian National Library. I could walk from my apartment in Zamalek on Ahmet Hishmet Street across the kubri to the library with my only fear being how to dodge the insane traffic crossing the corniche. I literally walked everywhere, enjoying the kebab, falafel and Groppi sweets. And everywhere I was welcomed with a hospitality and humor that anyone who has lived in Egypt can attest. This is the Egypt I have fond memories of, but this is now the Egypt that is exploding from within.
Egypt’s problems have always been forced upon the people by conquest after conquest from the Hyksos to the Greeks to the Arabs to the French to the British. The Arab Spring that seemed to bring the modern era of pseudo-Mamluk dictators to a close was heralded as a new beginning. The election, despite doubts of its validity, of Ibrahim Morsy as president with the obvious blessing at the time of the military was seen by many pundits as a hopeful sign. Would the Muslim Brotherhood, long in opposition but with a wide following, manage to meld their Islamic fervor with a stable and tolerant democracy? Whether this experiment might eventually have worked is now a moot point. The military coup that deposed Morsy last summer has now declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Continue reading Brotherhood, Brotherly Hate, Brotherly Love
Let it Snow, dear Sphinx
Snow at the Sphinx
As the above photograph shows, even the treasured sands of Egypt are not immune to Mother Nature’s cold warnings. Snow is rare in Egypt and when it falls there is certain to be much interest in what such a climatic omen portends, especially given the mystery that surrounds the Sphinx. After Napoleon’s invasion, unsuccessful as it was from a military standpoint, Egyptomania raged in Europe. There are many poems, as well as paintings, that draw an Orientalist view of the region. Even Mark Twain set down Tom Sawyer over the pyramids. On this Christmas Eve, when the birth of Christ is celebrated throughout the world, including Egypt, it is well to remember that mystery is in the air. Given that General Sisi has admitted that his climb to power was foreordained in a dream, the mysteries coming out of Egypt are as alive as ever.
Oscar Wilde is probably not a name anyone would associate with the night before Christmas. But he did write a semi-humorous and rather long poem in 1894 entitled “the Sphinx.” The whole version can be found here, but I excerpt a few lines to assist in the holiday spirit:
A thousand weary centuries
Are thine, while I have hardly seen
Some twenty summers cast their green
For Autumn’s gaudy liveries.But you can read the Hieroglyphs
On the great sandstone obelisks,
And you have talked with Basilisks
And you have looked on Hippogriffs. Continue reading Let it Snow, dear Sphinx
Trouble in Hadramawt
The famous Hadrami town of Shibam
News reports over the past week have indicated growing tensions in the Yemeni Hadramawt, following the shooting of a major tribal leader at a military checkpoint. Military outposts have been attacked and several soldiers killed in the upheaval. According to the Yemen Times, President Hadi has accepted the demands of several tribal leaders who asked for the closing of military camps and for investigation of those responsible for killing the shaykh. To appease the local inhabitants, Hadi also promised that the oil companies in the area would hire more Hadramis.
The Hadramawt has a fascinating history as a region often sheltered from the events happening elsewhere in Yemen. There is probably no region that has seen more out-migration over the centuries with Hadramis establishing a major foothold in India, Indonesia and the East Africa coast. For a delightful video on the scenes and history of the Hadramawt in Arabic, click here.
Breaking with tradition
by Amal Al-Yarisi, Yemen Times, November 26, 2013
The institution of marriage has gone through radical transformations since our ancestors gave up their nomadic wanderings and adopted an agricultural-based lifestyle. What has historically been an economic arrangement and a way to merge properties and tribes in Yemen is increasingly becoming a love arrangement.
Though arranged marriages remain the norm, Yemeni women are proving how far they are willing to go to be with the ones they love, including turning the tradition of a dowry on its head. As more women marry the men they love, they are contributing to wedding costs, a phenomenon unheard of in Yemen until recently.
A year ago, Sabah Al-Khalidi and her then fiancé, Saeed Ali, began furnishing a three-room apartment in the Al-Safia district of Sana’a. The burden was solely Ali’s, but Al-Khalidi, a private school teacher, ended up contributing the majority of their home furnishings.
In Yemen, marriage costs, including the wedding ceremony, the couple’s future home and new clothes and gifts for the bride, are traditionally paid for by the groom and his family.
According to Ahmed Al-Ghazan, a social researcher at the Sana’a Social Studies Center, dowries in Yemen generally range from YR200,000 ($930) to YR2 million ($9,300), barring the extremely poor, extremely wealthy Yemenis paying higher dowry prices for women who hold citizenship from Western countries. Continue reading Breaking with tradition
The Banality of ‘Jihadism’
This photograph taken on May 2, 2013 shows Pakistan man, Abdul Razzaq holding the national identity card of his brother Amanatullah Ali, who has been detained for the last nine years in Bagram jail in Afghanistan, in Faisalabad. Guillaume Lavallee/AFP/Getty Images
Abu Zubaydah and the banality of ‘jihadism’
by Terry McDermott, al-Jazeera,December 19, 2013
The world is full of dangerous goofballs, but we can’t treat them all as threats to civilization
The Abu Zubaydah diaries recently made available to the public by Al Jazeera America might seem interesting only to security officials or 9/11 obsessives. To regard them as such would be a mistake, for they contain the most detailed portrait of the interior life of a dedicated jihadi that we have ever seen, and that we might ever see. They also help substantiate what should by now be clear: The U.S. has made significant, basic errors in its response to 9/11 and the threat of radical Islam.
Zubaydah, born in Palestine and raised in middle-class comfort in Saudi Arabia, rose through the 1990s — by what abilities it is not clear — to a position of some stature within radical Islam. He recorded his rise in hundreds of diary entries addressed to his future self. Written over two decades, the diaries track him from an early adulthood spent studying computer programming at a technical college in India through early 2002. Further diaries, written while he has been in U.S. custody, including at Guantánamo, have yet to be revealed.
Zubaydah was captured in the spring of 2002, the first significant Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist to be caught after 9/11. It turned out the link to Al-Qaeda was more tenuous than the U.S. government had imagined. For years, the U.S. government had viewed him as a major figure within the group, at one point even elevating him to the No. 3 position on what turned out to be a fanciful Al-Qaeda organizational chart. Continue reading The Banality of ‘Jihadism’
Tabsir Redux: Libyan Camels
The photographs here were taken of camels and people in Libya around 1957 by Dr. Virgil Clift.
[Tabsir Redux is a reposting of earlier posts on the blog, since memories are fickle and some things deserve a second viewing. This post was originally made on April 27, 2013]
Goodbye, Lawrence, Goodbye Mr Chips
The extraordinary British actor Peter O’Toole died yesterday at the age of 81. His most famous movie, without question, was Lawrence of Arabia. But he made many other performances, including Becket (1964) with Richard Burton, a remake of Goodbye Mr Chips in 1969 and the hilarious spoof, The Ruling Class (1972). I had the privilege of meeting O’Toole at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 1997, when he gave a stirring reading of his latest autobiography. You will find numerous obituaries, but here is the one in The Guardian.