Laila Lalami

The May/June issue of the Boston Review is available online, with articles by Akbar Ganji, Hans Blix, Catherine Tumber, and others. The issue also includes the winning short story from the annual fiction contest, which was judged this year by the excellent George Saunders: “Transitory Cities,” by Padma Viswanathan. Here’s an excerpt:

(How did he come to bear others’ homes on his back?)

That question can only be answered by the one holding the strings ascending from Hram’s pivotal points, as from the joints of every bearer.

It’s not that Hram didn’t like bearing a building; he did. He received no acknowledgment—at least not from the tenants. He wouldn’t have wanted the residents of the building he bore to know that he chose where they would be when they walked out the front door of their apartment building in the morning, briefcase or tool kit or purse or newspaper in one hand, brown paper lunch bag in the other, ready to participate in maintaining the universe, their first task that of finding their way to the office or factory, which could be anywhere within their city.

Read this refreshingly imaginative story here.

Thanks to all those who spread the word and signed the petition. YouTube is now available again on Maroc Telecom.

The headline is, of course, irresistible: Great Satan sits down with Axis of Evil.

But even as these encouraging talks are taking place, the Iranian government cannot seem to let go of the fantasy: It has formally charged Haleh Esfandiari with “spying, acting against Iran’s national security and conducting propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” In addition, Kian Tajbaksh, a social scientist who also holds dual Iranian and American citizenships has been jailed and charged with spying, as has Parnaz Azima, a journalist.

This weekend, Haleh Esfandiari’s husband, Shaul Bakhash, also an academic, wrote an impassioned piece in the Los Angeles Times asking for her release.

Should you wake up one day to find your wife or child or parent in the hands of the secret police in a country that routinely violates the rule of law, you will likely choose quiet probing over publicity. You have no recourse to law or courts. You fear publicity may make things worse. You believe, almost always wrongly, that if you work quietly, use the contacts you have and wait reasonably, the nightmare will be over.

When Haleh was initially prevented from leaving Iran and the interrogations began, it was principally at my insistence that we did not “go public.” Repeatedly I was told by those who supposedly understand the inner workings of Iran: “Don’t worry; it’s only an interrogation; once they have finished with their questions, they will let her go.”

Once Haleh was arrested, however, silence was no longer an option.

I am very upset–this woman is my mother’s age, she is a grandmother, and she is someone who advocated for dialogue, not war. And now she’s in Evin Prison, on this ridiculous charge. Please sign the petition for Haleh’s release, as well as Kian’s release.

It looks like the U.S. has decided to go forward with sanctions on Sudan over Darfur. Predictably, however, the Chinese government–which enables the killing by selling arms to Sudan and buying its oil–is not too pleased. The sanctions, one of their representatives said, “are not conducive to solving the problem.”

My good friend Maaza Mengiste is featured in New York magazine as one of a handful of “future writing stars” from the city. An excerpt of her first novel is included with the profile. Check it out.

Pink-haired Carolyn Kellogg reviews Mary Otis’s debut collection, Yes, Yes, Cherries, finding that, despite the title, the stories “eddy around forlorn characters and their thwarted desires.”

The big news over the weekend was that video-sharing site YouTube is no longer accessible through Maroc Telecom in Morocco. There has been no official statement, which means that no reason has been given, and no explanation provided. But since about Friday, Maroc Telecom users (of which I am one) cannot access the site, while customers who use rivals Wana or Meditel supposedly can.

I should point out that the vast majority of Internet users here go through Maroc Telecom, and that the bandwidth of the two rival ISPs is smaller. So in effect YouTube has been censored. It’s worth pointing out that Maroc Telecom is a subsidiary of Vivendi, so if there is censorship at the behest of the government, it is carried out by a multinational company.

The ban, of course, is completely useless. Bloggers have already begun sharing addresses of proxy servers, or suggesting the use of Dailymotion, which has many of the same material on Morocco as YouTube. And because the ban makes people curious, the offending material–whatever it is–will undoubtedly pop up on another web site.

Update: Please sign the petition asking Vivendi and Maroc Telecom to stop censoring YouTube.

Another update: YouTube is back on. Yay! Thanks to all those who spread the word out about this.

Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center released the results of a nationwide poll of U.S. Muslims, called “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream.” (Full report available here. Warning: PDF format.) Having looked at the survey results, I was bewildered by the way in which they were covered in the media. Newsweek’s Lorraine Ali ponders this as well:

According to a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this week, Muslim-Americans are “largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.” The poll showed the majority surveyed have close non-Muslim friends, believe in a strong American work ethic and feel there is little conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society. Overall, an encouraging picture, right?

Not according to a cavalcade of major media outlets. On Tuesday and Wednesday, coverage of the poll was downright foreboding. “Supporting Terror?” read the CNN crawl at the bottom of the screen as John Roberts interviewed a group of young moderate Muslims about the poll. On CBS News online, the headline incorrectly stated that 26% OF YOUNG U.S. MUSLIMS OK BOMBS. And in USA Today, more misinformation and scare tactics: POLL: 1 IN 4 YOUNGER U.S. MUSLIMS SUPPORT SUICIDE BOMBINGS.

Ali interviews a few people and tries to find out why the coverage went that way. Read it all here.

For those who care and/or read French: There is an interview with me about Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits in the current issue of Jeune Afrique magazine.

The United Nations has closed its HCR office in Rabat, due to what it claimed were violent protests by refugees.

The UNHCR says there are some 600 registered refugees in Morocco, along with some 10,000 illegal migrants. Some 30 people who are camped outside the UNHCR office denied using violence during Saturday’s demonstration.

They also want the right to work and say that those from Arab countries receive favourable treatment. UNHCR said they closed the building because they could not work under the threat of violence which was intolerable.

It also said it does not provide refugees with financial assistance anywhere in the world.

Paulin Kuanzambi, an Angolan refugee who is the president of the Collectif des Réfugiés in Morocco, pointed out in an open letter that this is not the first time UNHCR closes its doors in Rabat. He called on the Moroccan government to uphold the rights of refugees under the Geneva convention. Let’s just say there’s a long, long road to go before that becomes a reality.

Not content with jailing Haleh Esfandiari, a scholar whose sole crime seems to be to believe in a dialogue between Iran and the United States, the Iranian government, through its cinema organization Farabi Cinema Foundation has protested Marjane Satrapi’s adaptation of her book Persepolis into an animated film. The movie presents an “unrealistic face of the achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution in some of its parts,” the protest letter said.

The always quotable Satrapi responds:

“The worst reaction in the movie comes from myself, it doesn’t come from the guardians of the revolution,” she said. “The film’s about being true to yourself, it’s about humanism. I really believe that humanism is a word that has lost its power and its meaning and it’s exactly at this time in the history of human beings that we need it more than any other time. We should stop considerations such as manhood and womanhood, of coming from east and west, or this and that religion, and just try to do the best with the imperfections of human beings.”

More here.