Laila Lalami

Over on his blog, poet and novelist Alain Mabanckou (Mémoires de porc-épic) announces that he has joined the faculty of the French department at UCLA as a tenured professor, starting in the fall. He also mentions that he will spend this summer translating Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation into French.

The latest New York Review of Books includes a thoughtful review by Pankaj Mishra of Martha Nussbaum’s new book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future. Here’s a snippet:

Describing the BJP’s quest for a culturally homogeneous Hindu nation-state, Nussbaum wishes to introduce her Western readers to “a complex and chilling case of religious violence that does not fit some common stereotypes about the sources of religious violence in today’s world.” Nussbaum claims that “most Americans are still inclined to believe that religious extremism in the developing world is entirely a Muslim matter.” She hints that at least part of this myopia must be blamed on Samuel Huntington’s hugely influential “clash of civilizations” argument, which led many to believe that the world is “currently polarized between a Muslim monolith, bent on violence, and the democratic cultures of Europe and North America.”

Nussbaum points out that India, a democracy with the third-largest Muslim population in the world, doesn’t fit Huntington’s theory of a clash between civilizations. The real clash exists

within virtually all modern nations —between people who are prepared to live with others who are different, on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the… domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition.

She describes how Indian voters angered by the BJP’s pro-rich economic policies and anti-Muslim violence voted it out of power in general elections in 2004. Detailing the general Indian revulsion against the violence in Gujarat [during which Hindu mobs lynched 2,000 Muslims] and the search for justice by its victims, she highlights the “ability of well-informed citizens to turn against religious nationalism and to rally behind the values of pluralism and equality.”

I’m going to have to get a copy of Nussbaum’s book when I return to the U.S. in the summer. You can read Mishra’s review in full here.

Katha Pollitt has a great column in the latest issue of The Nation about the Supreme Court’s recent decision to limit to 180 days the time in which a worker may legally file suit against his or her employer for pay discrimination. Pollitt comments on possible consequences of the ruling:

If we can’t rely on the courts(…) there’s always the law of unintended consequences. A lot more women and minorities may bring suit first, rather than try to work things out politely with their employer, as right-wing antifeminists are always advising women to do if they feel, no doubt mistakenly, that they have a grievance. For those who believe the feminist movement marginalized itself by taking its eye off the dollar, this is the perfect opportunity to get back to economic issues that have cross-class appeal. Economic populists take note: You might want to add eliminating sexist and racist pay discrimination to your definition of the common good. And those who think feminism is no longer necessary might want to consider the connection between Ledbetter and the Court’s upholding of the so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. Putting women back in their box, anyone?

More here.

Great, great news: Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the 2007 Orange Prize for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. She is the first African to take home the British award, established twelve years ago to honor the best writing by women. The Guardian has an audio interview of Chimamanda, as well as a reading from her novel. The news has made my day.

Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

I am reading Zakya Daoud’s new book, Les Années Lamalif. 1958-1988. Trente ans de journalisme au Maroc. Daoud is a fascinating person, and one hopes that a proper biography will someday be devoted to her. Born Jacqueline David in a small town in Normandy, she went to journalism school in Paris. There, she met Mohammed Loghlam, whom she married and followed to Casablanca in 1958, after the completion of their degrees. Loghlam applied formally for Moroccan citizenship (he was born in Casablanca to a Moroccan mother and an Algerian father), for himself and for their son, but when the citizenship papers came through, they included Jacqueline’s as well, even though she never asked for them. This clerical error resulted in her becoming one of very few naturalized Moroccans. Later on, the editor of Jeune Afrique suggested that she take on a pseudonym when she started writing for him, and that was how Jacqueline David became Zakya Daoud. Years later, her detractors still used her foreign birth to criticize her and to deny her the right to speak out on any number of political issues in Morocco. The wound of being called “nesranya” is very raw still, as her many references to it in the book attest.

Les Années Lamalif is a chronicle of Daoud’s work as a journalist at various organizations in Morocco, including the Radio Télévision Marocaine, and all the difficulties that such work entailed, including several vicious altercations with Moulay Ahmed Alaoui, the imprisonment of many friends or acquaintances, the constant threat of censorship. In 1966, using all their savings, Daoud and Loghlam founded Lamalif , which would later become a reference for many in the opposition movement. Daoud published the work of Abdallah Laroui, Mohammed Tozy, Paul Pascon, and many others. It’s very clear that this was a period not just of political upheaval, but also of great cultural and literary activity. There are a few gossipy tidbits (e.g. How the Souffles group became upset when a Lamalif article by a young Salim Jay ridiculed a reading by some of their poets.) There are also disturbing anecdotes (e.g. Daoud being required to go to the local commissariat regularly to be questioned about matters of public knowledge.) Most of all, Les Années Lamalif is a rigorous account of all the work that went into contesting the established power structure, into saying No to the Makhzen’s domination.

Although the book is exceedingly interesting, it suffers occasionally from a tendency to list series of events rather than placing them in a narrative, whether personal or historical. This may be due to the fact that Daoud’s journals were stolen from her by Moroccan security on a flight to Paris in 1988, so she had no access to her personal notes from those years, and had to rely instead on memory, documentation, and research. Still, this is an important book, a reference for the younger generation. May they read it and draw the necessary parallels.

I just heard that the Brazilian edition of my book has been released by Editora Rocco in Rio de Janeiro, under the title A Esperança È Uma Travessia. Here is the cover art:

Just in time for Reading the World, Critical Mass has begun a series of posts in which writers recommend books from around the world. Hisham Matar (In The Country of Men) puts in a few words about one of my favorite novels of all time: Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. See what Hisham had to say about it here.

It was 40 years ago that Israel bombed Egyptian airplanes on the ground, launching the Six-Day war. Over at Salon, Sandy Tolan revisits some of the era’s myths, which have contributed to the creation of competing narratives about what happened then:

At a little after 7 on the morning of June 5, 1967, as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s commanders were finishing their breakfasts and driving to work, French-built Israeli fighter jets roared out of their bases and flew low, below radar, into Egyptian airspace. Within three hours, 500 Israeli sorties had destroyed Nasser’s entire air force. Just after midday, the air forces of Jordan and Syria also lay in smoking ruins, and Israel had essentially won the Six-Day War — in six hours.

Israeli and U.S. historians and commentators describe the surprise attack as necessary, and the war as inevitable, the result of Nasser’s fearsome war machine that had closed the Strait of Tiran, evicted United Nations peacekeeping troops, taunted the traumatized Israeli public, and churned toward the Jewish state’s border with 100,000 troops. “The morning of 5 June 1967,” wrote Israel’s warrior-turned-historian, Chaim Herzog, “found Israel’s armed forces facing the massed Arab armies around her frontiers.” Attack or be annihilated: The choice was clear.

Or was it?

You can read it all here.

The fighting between Lebanese forces and Fath El Islam terrorists appears to be spreading from Nahr el Bared to Ain El Hilweh. The Lebanese army has been killing Palestinian refugees seemingly indiscriminately–more than 100 civilians since May 20–not that you’d notice it from newspaper coverage.

Having completed a new draft of my novel, I am finally re-emerging from my apartment and going out on the town a bit. Last Saturday, for instance, I saw Hoba Hoba Spirit in a small concert in Casablanca. If you’re unfamiliar with this band, you can check out some of their music here, or, better yet, visit their website. They mix traditional instruments like the bendir or the qraqeb with electric guitar and bass, and the music they play fuses gnawa with rock, or ska with chaabi. One of the highlights of the evening was their cover of Nass El Ghiwane’s “Fin Ghadi Biyya Khoya,” which they managed to modernize without losing anything of its spirit. Mostly, though, Hoba Hoba played original music, and what strikes me about those songs is that they have that rare quality of capturing a particular moment in Moroccan history, with lyrics that speak of life as we know it, of a country in the middle of great changes.

Photo credit: Hoba Hoba Spirit