Laila Lalami

Perhaps you may have heard about the escalating crisis between Spain and Morocco? Two stable countries like that, these are just friendly skirmishes, right? Hmmm.. Maybe not. If you’re just catching up on the soap-operatic happenings between the two countries, here is what’s happened in previous episodes.

Spain You gotta do something about those illegal immigrants.
Morocco: Look, those are your borders. Why should I be responsible for controlling them?
Spain: The EU is giving me a hard time about this, so I have to give you a hard time about it too.
Morocco: I’m doing what I can–it’s very costly. I’ve dismantled smuggling networks. But those networks operate in Spain also. You have to control those.
Spain: It’s all your fault. Your people all want out. Europe is a castle and I’ve got to protect the moat.
Morocco: They’re not just my people. They also come from the African ex-colonies?
Spain: By the way, I need another 4,000 people to come pick my oranges and tomatoes this summer. Can I have some?
Morocco: Your embassy is doling out the visas. Don’t come and complain if they want to stay, though.
Spain: What about fishing rights? It takes lots of shrimp and fish to make a good paella.
Morocco: You’ve been overfishing for years. I’m sick and tired of catching your fishermen illegally on my waters.
Spain: You have to give us a good deal. This is ridiculous.
Morocco: I don’t have to give you anything. Ever heard of supply and demand? Japan wants to fish here too.
Spain: I see. Well, let me see here. Ah, we’ve got the Western Sahara.
Morocco: Don’t you dare.
Spain: Watch me. (Turns to the EU: The Saharan people must decide whether they want to be independent or join with Morocco. Morocco is delaying the referendum.)
Morocco: I’m recalling my ambassador.
Spain: This is an illegal occupation that must end.
Morocco: You’ve got some nerve. Weren’t you here illegally for 40 years? Aren’t you still here illegally in Ceuta and Melilla?
Spain: Those are Spanish enclaves.
Morocco: Someone please explain how two cities on Moroccan land can belong to another country.
Spain: They’ve been Spanish since the late 1600s.
Morocco: They’ve been occupied since the late 1600s. They’re the oldest colonies in the world. That makes you the oldest colonizer in the world.
Spain: Like I’ve been saying for years, you can have them if I get back Gibraltar from the UK.
Morocco: That will never happen.
Spain: It could. We are working out our differences.
Morocco: Like hell you are. The people will vote to stay with the UK and you know it.
Spain: I don’t know that. You don’t know that.
Morocco: In that case, I’m sending 6 soldiers over to the island of Leila, off the village of Benyounech.
Spain: You mean Perejil.
Morocco: Leila.
Spain: Perejil.
Morocco: Leila, Leila, Leila. You’ve given it up when you got out of Morocco 40 years ago. It’s a rock. Don’t get all worked up.
Spain: You can’t put me in front of a “fait accompli” and expect me to do nothing. We’ve got to work this out diplomatically.
Morocco: We will work it out diplomatically. It’s a handful of soldiers for crying out loud. It’s not like we sent an army.
Spain: We will work this out diplomatically. (Meanwhile, sends a commando during the night, plants its flag, takes the Moroccans in custody.)
Morocco: This is an act of war.
Spain: No resistance was offered. Not a single shot was fired.
Morocco: The Arab League is on my side.
Spain: The EU is on my side.

How will it end? When will it end? I’ve no idea. But if these two can’t get along, despite a shared history that spans more than a milllennium, goodness only knows about the rest of the world.

Addendum: My parents have been joking that I’m the center of the dispute. Apparently, these guys agree. Thanks to adnan for the link.

NPR posted the list of 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900 from the March/April issue of Book magazine (which really should be titled the 80 or so Best Characters in Fiction written in English, but anyway). Usually, with lists like these the fun starts with picking out what they left out. Let’s see. How about Frodo in The Lord of the Rings? Old Major in Animal Farm? Asya in In the Eye of the Sun? Stephen Kumalo and Absalom in Cry the Beloved Country? How about Tintin?

“Some Arab poets are more popular than Adonis– Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet, for instance — but none are more admired. A pioneer of the prose poem, he has played a role in Arab modernism comparable to T. S. Eliot’s in English-language poetry. The literary and cultural critic Edward Said calls him “today’s most daring and provocative Arab poet.” The poet Samuel Hazo, who translated Adonis’s collection “The Pages of Day and Night,” said, “There is Arabic poetry before Adonis, and there is Arabic poetry after Adonis.”
Experimental in style and prophetic in tone, Adonis’s poetry combines the formal innovations of modernism with the mystical imagery of classical Arabic poetry. He has evoked the anguish of exile, the spiritual desolation of the Arab world, the intoxicating experiences of madness and erotic bliss, the existential dance of self and the other. But what defines his work, above all, is the force of creative destruction, which burns through everything he writes. “We will die if we do not create gods/We will die if we do not kill them,” he once wrote, echoing his favorite poet, Nietzsche.”

I remember how everyone in our Arabic class used to light up whenever we got to read an Adonis poem.  But since this is a <i>New York Times</i> piece, there is of course discussion of repression, fixed elections, fundamentalism (all of which are themes the newspaper is incapable of not bringing up when talking about the Arab world, regardless of the topic) and an insistence that Adonis’s secular views are “unpopular,” which seems to contradict everything else they say about him.
An Arab poet who dares to differ. (Site requires registration.)

Smile. The postman is watching you.

“The Justice Department is not saying much about the Terrorism Information and Prevention System — otherwise known as Operation TIPS — which is due to begin as a pilot program later this summer. Apparently the only public information about the program, in fact, is on a government Web site, which describes it as “a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity.” Operation TIPS will, in the pilot stage, involve a million workers, who, “in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to serve as extra eyes and ears for law enforcement.” It will offer them “training . . . in how to look out for suspicious and potentially terrorist-related activity.” It will also provide “a formal way to report” that activity “through a single and coordinated toll-free number.” This description, which is essentially all we know about the program, poses more questions than it answers.”

What is Operation TIPS? from the Washington Post site.

Basically, 1 in 24 Americans could be used as “citizen-informants.” McCarthy would be proud.

Don’t mess with Nigerian women.
“The unarmed women holding 700 ChevronTexaco workers in a southeast Nigeria oil terminal agreed Monday to end their siege after the company offered to hire at least 25 villagers and to build schools and electrical and water systems. The women, some with babies tied to their backs, broke out into singing and dancing on the docks at the Escravos facility on learning of the agreement . But they said they would wait until the verbal agreement was put in writing and signed before leaving the Escravos facility.”
It’s strange to read about these oil companies’ involvement in places like Nigeria, where they have essentially replaced governments as colonial powers. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Amanda Ngozi Adichie of Nigeria, Florent Couoa-Zotti of Benin, Allan Kolski Horwitz of South Africa, Rory Kilalea of Zimbabwe, and Binyanvanga Wainaina of Kenya are finalists for the Caine Prize. I mention this prize because the chair of the jury is Ahdaf Soueif, whom I’m absolutely obsessed with, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, but that perhaps have to do with the fact that she wrote In the Eye of the Sun.

Anyway, here is the BBC article, via Moby Lives.

Update on July 16: Binyanvanga Wainaina won the Caine Prize. Congratulations to him.

In a potent sign of the proportions of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the South African version of Sesame Street will introduce an HIV-positive muppet next fall:
“”Takalani Sesame” in South Africa is one of several locally produced versions of the children’s program. Egypt, Russia, Germany, Mexico and Spain, among other countries, all have shows modeled after the American “Sesame Street” that premiered in 1969. The South African show uses Muppets similar to the American characters of Big Bird, Elmo and the Cookie Monster. The South African Cookie Monster, for example, is called Zikwe. Sesame Workshop hasn’t revealed the new, HIV-positive character’s name, but it will be a girl Muppet who is an orphan, said Robert Knezevic, head of the company’s international division. In one script being developed, the character is sad because she misses her mother, he said. In another, the character is shunned by children who don’t want to play with her because she is HIV-positive, but the other Muppets rally around her.”
HIV-Positive Muppet on Sesame Street

Handy dandy list of civil liberties that have been lost since 9/11, from the Utne Reader.

Israeli Arabs turn to rap music:
“MWR’s hit “Because I’m an Arab” includes the words: “A policeman sees me, immediately arrests me, asks me some racist questions, and why? Because I’m an Arab. Let me live. I’m just trying to live.” The song topped the charts for two weeks on a Haifa radio station. A rap festival in Nazareth last year drew thousands of people. Even some Jews are listening. MWR performed last month in Tel Aviv, where about 1,000 people, almost all of them Jews, bobbed their heads to the beat and cheered. “It was powerful to sing Arabic in front of them,” said Charley Shaby, 25, the group’s DJ. “They listened. I don’t care if they understand it or not … they understand the message.”"
Arabs Voice Protest in Rap Music

The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, or M6 as he is affectionately called by Moroccans, is getting married today in the capital of Rabat to a computer engineer. In a break with tradition, the bride is not from the Moroccan aristocracy. She was educated in Morocco (in contrast with much of the elite, which still prefers to do post-grad work abroad.) Lastly, the wedding is a public event, a marked difference from other Moroccan royal weddings, which were kept private. Here are some pictures of the wedding preps.