The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #14

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the 14th in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #14

Basra 12/18/1961

My Dear Brother, Abdel Karim (al-Na’im),

I see you blaming me for the disruption of correspondence between us. However, I was the last one to send you a letter right before my departure for Italy………….. [paragraph omitted]…..

The Arabic Literature Conference in Rome was extremely successful. We have succeeded in making the West understand that the Arab writer today stands among the first rate writers of the world. Some voices were raised in an attempt to undermine the value of Islam and the Arabic literary heritage. However, we silenced these voices. Moreover, all the Orientalists, who have been more zealous about our cause than the protégés of Arabic literature, have supported Arabism and Arabic literature. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #14 →

Norma’s Take on Carthage: Part Two

Orientalism, Photography, Travel, Tunisia


The Café in the Place Halfaouine.

In an earlier post I provided the Orientalist musings of Ms. Norma Octavia Lorimer, whose By the Waters of Carthage (1925) is classic put-down travel mongrelism. If you thought the first part was bad, read on below…

“OH, MY DEAR!

Come and take me to the desert; it lies over there, in the great Beyond, like Death — waiting — waiting — waiting.

I have seen camels in their proper atmosphere, lading their common everyday life of indifference, though so far, I must admit, I have not seen them trying to get through the eye of a needle. These strange supercilious leavings of the prehistoric past are almost as scornful of mankind as new-born babies. A Horse looks as foolishly modern besides a camel as an Englishman in his blue serge suit looks beside a burnoused and biblical Moslem…

I have been in the souks (bazaars), and it is true that there above all places you can hear the East ‘a-calling’; it is there that you forget that Tunis is under French protection and it has fine boulevards and theatres and a Petit Lourve, for all that is on the other side of the horseshoe gate (the porte de France, as it is called), and my hotel is within in. It is in the bazaars before midday that you get a glimpse of how the people live, for the pulse of the city is there, if an Arab city has a pulse. Continue reading Norma’s Take on Carthage: Part Two →

Primary Hellfire and Born Again Brimstone

Iraq War, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican, Osama Bin Laden

In yesterday’s Super Tuesday slapdown, John McCain appears to have bailed out in his Republican quest with a majority of the party’s caucus-oid delegates. But not without friendly, which is actually unfriendly, fire from his right. At the last minute the conservative evangelical bornagainagogue James Dobson delivered his protestant version of papal bull: “I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are … I cannot, and will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.” It is though Dobson in his daily bible reading, found a new translation of Matthew 16:15: “And I tell you, John McCain, on this rock I will not tell my church to vote and the gates of hell will prevail is he is elected.” Or to tell the Gospel truth, Mr. Dobson cannot see the mote in his candidate’s eye for the large walk-the-plank in his own.

Adding to the smoking cigar of Rush puffed endlessly in Big Mac’ weathered face, Super Tuesday turned into the GOP version of American Gladiators. Move over, Chuck and Arnie, here comes Hulk Hogan onstage to officiate, only without the scantily clad and pumped-up Amazon models. Here is last night’s apocalypse now. The great Latter Day Conservative from Utahssachusetts lies bloodied and hanging on to the Washington-is-broken ropes, waiting for a Good Samaritan to come along and say Mormonism is not a cult. Meanwhile, down in the holler hides the Huckabilly, who is able to have his Southern cruisin’ grits and eat them too; but likely this will be his Last Supper of the primaries and not for want of Ron Paul’s fundraising ability. On the other side, Hillary and Obama both took the Jesus-like approach of saying you should love your enemy. This time around, in not-so-swift Kerry-like fashion, the Republicans seem hellbent on electoral suicide that will holocaust the party a victory in November. Think of it this way, which pile of shit would you rather avoid: that of a donkey or an elephant?

Politics astride, you would have to be severely politically anemic not to see the irony of the moral majoritarian Dobson damning Big Mac to an undisclosed level of hell and at the same time playing up the spectre of Radical Islam’s Threat to the Western World. Continue reading Primary Hellfire and Born Again Brimstone →

The Sheik Comes to NPR

Film and Video, Gender and Sexuality, Orientalism


Italian-born actor Rudolph Valentino poses in costume in The Sheik.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images

NPR, Morning Edition, February 4, 2008

In 1921, a silent film transported American audiences to a mysterious, faraway place — and introduced an exotic, erotic character to millions of fans.

The Sheik starred a smoldering Italian immigrant named Rudolph Valentino and featured a title character who bore little resemblance to the venerated Arab leaders commonly known as sheiks. Instead, the character was drawn from the pages of a best-selling romance novel by the wife of a British farmer.

Written in 1919, Edith Maude Hull’s fictional The Sheik inspired a whole subgenre of desert romance, in which hot, swarthy Arabs kidnap reckless white women.

Valentino’s playful treatment of the character captivated female audiences and established him as Hollywood’s first male sex symbol. Mary Brewer Barkley, who was 13 years old when the film was released, recalls newspaper reports that young women were running off to the Middle East in the hope of being abducted by handsome Arabs. Continue reading The Sheik Comes to NPR →

To Hell with McCain?

Immigration Issues, Luke R. E. Publican, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue

As Election Super Bowl Tuesday looms, slogans are flooding the airwaves and talking heads jerking off over digital networks. With the side attraction candidates now on the newsunworthy sidelines, it is mano a mano time: Bill-supported Hillary vs. JFK-scent Obama and Admiral Big Mac vs. the Olympics-sized CEO Romney. Tomorrow will show the world just how American democracy works, the electoral college-bound Rube Goldberg contraption that allows pockets of regionally-minded voters, jerry-rigged delegate rules and a last-minute, last-ditch advertizing blitz to masquerade as political choice. Now that the warm-up Iowa Caucus and town meetings of New Hampshire have been proudly displayed as proof we are a nation of concerned voters, the two parties can break out the cigars and place the oil-profit crown on the great hope that promises to deliver the spoils to the White House in November. Politics is the media orgy of our time; we all get drunk with promises and laid on with promises. Not until after we pull the lever will we know that we can’t help puking and ending up with a hangover that lasts about four years. Most of us, so the polls tell us, are still reeling from the last time around.

There are plenty of issues to campaign about. The economy is in the recession-bound Red Zone and most economists think the stimulus packages being thrown up hail-Mary into the air will be dropped in the end. After all we have troops locked into a war that even a troop surge cannot rescue from political stalemate. Take your pick of the non-Pauline candidates, the score will be the same: less money in your wallet and more national debt for being the world’s superpower policeman. Would that we had a silly and totally irrelevant reason to pick candidates, like their stand on gay marriage. That worked like a piece of cake last time. But then that election had two white guys mud wrestling, one a war vet from the wrong color state and the other a family (Bush family that is) man who thought Jesus was the greatest philosopher of all time. Now in the semi-finals we have the kind of diversity that makes you dress for your grandmother’s funeral. The Democrats have a woman (so the opposition can’t be too sexist) and an African American (so the race card has to be hidden under the table); the Republicans have a Mormon (who is a latter day conservative saint) and a suspect conservative maverick (who is as old as Methuselah). Continue reading To Hell with McCain? →

The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #13

Iraq, Literature, Poetry


The Iraqi Poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

[Note: This is the 13th in a series of translations of selected letters of the noted Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. For more information on the poet, click here.]

Letter #13

Basra 7/13/1961

My Dear Brother Abdel Karim (al-Na’im),

I send you an Arab greeting.

It was good of you to write to me again especially after I lost, along with a number of papers and poems, your previous letter in which you mentioned your new address.

Regarding the campaign of “al-Adaab” against me, let me explain. About two years ago, Suheil Idris requested my approval to let Dar al-Adaab publish my poetry collection. I promised they could, and he was waiting for me to send him the drafts. However, I had no drafts except the poems that had been previously published in the journals “al-Adaab” and “Shi’r,” etc. Then the “Shi’r” journal volunteered to search for my poems and collect them. In the meantime, my collection, “Hymn of the Rain,” was published. All of this together with my decision to cease publishing in al-Adaab and limit my publishing only to “Shi’r” angered Suheil Idris. Furthermore, it is clear that Mr. (Elie Hawi) wanted – in his criticism – to prove that his brother, Khalil Hawi, was a better poet than I. Continue reading The Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: #13 →

Norma’s Take on Carthage

Orientalism, Travel, Tunisia

Thousands of English and American travelers have written about their experiences in the Arab World. Quite a few are worth reading, but the majority deserve obscurity. In a recent book sale at my university library, a pitiful travel account of the roaring 20s was remaindered. It bodes well for my institution that it was never checked out, although I wonder how it entered the stacks in the first place. The book in question is By the Waters of Carthage, by Norma Octavia Lorimer, following on her By the Rivers of Sicily and By the Rivers of Egypt. Why she never set sail down the Tigris by the reggae-beloved rivers of Babylon is anyone’s guess. This baneful little volume about a fickle English lady set loose in Tunis represents just about everything wrong with Orientalist inferiorizing of cultures in the Middle East. The only redeeming features are the colorful frontispiece (shown above) and black-and-white photographs of life in Tunisia around 1920.

Sometimes it is useful to read bad text in order to appreciate good travel writing all the more. There is probably no bias that does not surface in Lorimer’s diary-prone prose, all the more chauvanized by her style of filling her chapters with letters to her dear husband. Consider the following tidbits… Continue reading Norma’s Take on Carthage →

A Rose for the Last Days

Lebanon, Poetry

by Rana al-Tonsi [Translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon]

On one foot
like a humiliated beggar I limp
past all the swinging doors
and the flags that are taken down from their masts . . .
The sidewalk was never my friend
but it embraced me those times
when the crying was tough and bitter

In my country
soldiers go to a war
where they never fight
In every coffeehouse or square
under the feet of the sick, the sad and insane
you can glimpse the trace of a rose
thrown into the arms of nurses
in lonely rooms inhabited by wailing,
a rose drawn in blood. Continue reading A Rose for the Last Days →