Laila Lalami

The earthquake that hit Pakistan earlier this month has claimed the lives of 80,000 people. It continues to make victims–people dying from disease and lack of care. With winter coming, many more could die. UNICEF reports that it has had significant trouble raising money for the victims.

Despite dire warnings of a looming calamity, the United Nations has had difficulty raising money for the quake victims. As of Friday, it had received just 20 percent of the $550 million it needs for the next six months. Officials have warned that the shortfall could force U.N. helicopters to stop flying as early as this week.

UNICEF controls $62 million of the aid pledge, but has so far received just $13.5 million.

Veneman, a former secretary of agriculture in the Bush administration, joined a chorus of voices calling on the world to act.

“Without urgent action, large numbers of children could die needlessly,” she said, adding that she believed that aid has been slower to arrive because of the many natural calamities over the past year, including last December’s tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

Please donate whatever you can, even if it’s just $5. Here is the American site for UNICEF, where you can make a contribution.

Nelson Mandela has launched a series of comic books about his life. The publications are part of a wider literacy campaign in South Africa.

In related news, anti-Apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, who was also jailed on Robben Island along with Mandela, has recently released his memoirs.

The Corruption Perceptions Index, compiled by Transparency International, finds that corruption is still rampant around the world. Morocco tied with China, Sri Lanka, Senegal and Suriname for #78.

The countries with the least corruption were Iceland, Finland, and New Zealand.

The United States was ranked #17.

Michele Ross reviews Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits in The Plain Dealer. (No login required.)

Bat Segundo #11 is now online. In this show, Ed Champion, Scott Esposito, Beth Wadell, Tito Perez, and I discuss Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, poverty in fiction, the immigration situation in Morocco, and other literary pursuits.

Last week marked the 40th anniversary of the kidnapping in Paris of Moroccan dissident Mehdi Ben Barka. A new movie by Serge LePeron retraces the major events of that day.

An excerpt from a speech given by Orhan Pamuk in Frankfurt last week when he accepted the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is available in Saturday’s Guardian. The central question that Pamuk addresses is the role of the novel in society–how it lets readers experience the lives of other individuals with whom they may or may not have much in common.

I am using this story as a way into the subject that I am coming to understand more clearly with each new day, and which is, in my view, central to the art of the novel: the question of the “other”, the “stranger”, the “enemy” that resides inside each of our heads, or rather, the question of how to transform it. What drew me to the streets of Frankfurt and Kars was the chance to write of others’ lives as if they were my own. It is by doing this sort of research that novelists can begin to test the lines that mark off that “other” and in so doing alter the boundaries of our own identities. Others become “us” and we become “others”. Certainly a novel can achieve both feats simultaneously. Even as it relates our own lives as if they were the lives of others, it offers us the chance to describe other people’s lives as if they were our own.

Pamuk ties this to reactions to the novel (pride, shame, anger, etc.) and then to general feelings about the culture, and to the question of what happens when cultures come in contact (specifically, Turkey’s bid to enter the European Union.) A very worthwhile and engrossing read.

Related posts:
Pamuk vs. Turkish Government
Pamuk vs. Turkish Government, #2
Pamuk Update

Claire Dederer profiles me in the Sunday edition of Newsday. (No login required.)

• The October 24 issue of The New Yorker included three pieces by Syrian poet Adonis. The poems were translated by none other than Khaled Mattawa.

• Richard Nash, Soft Skull Press publisher and frequent blog commentator, has entered the blogosphere. I think we can expect at least a few posts about the various Google Print lawsuits.
• Issue #3 of Land-Grant College Review is now available.
• Sam Lipsyte and Gary Shteyngart talk craft over at the Loggernaut website.
• Micheline Aharonian Marcom and Ursula K. LeGuin are among the recipients of the PEN literary awards, which will be handed out at a ceremony in Los Angeles on November 9th.
• Poet Suheir Hammad will be reading from her new collection, ZaatarDiva, at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle on November 5th. Details here.

Earlier this month, MoorishGirl turned four years old. In blog years, I suppose that makes me a dinosaur. But, oh, it feels good!

Since it appeared in 2001, MG went from a few dozen readers to nearly 10,000 unique visitors per day. MG readers come from the U.S., Morocco, France, the U.K., Egypt, Spain, Italy, Holland, Israel, Hong Kong, and many other countries around the world. Most readers check the site while at work or at school. A few work in the publishing industry, others in the media, and a handful for government. Marhaba, everyone.

Here is what I have planned for the next few weeks: Guest reviews of several novels, including Yom Sang-Seop’s Three Generations, Naguib Mahfouz’s The Dreams, Dan Olivas’s Devil Talk, and Donna Seaman’s Writers on the Air; book recommendations from Hayan Charara and Rigoberto Gonzalez; giveaways of Wendy Lesser’s A Pagoda in The Garden, Leila Aboulela’s Minaret, the new anthology Waking Up American, and the Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada; in addition, of course, to literary commentary, rants about various news, and updates from my book tour.

I no longer have a comments box for each post because I grew tired of deleting spam, but I welcome your suggestions. If you want to communicate with me, feel free to email me.