Laila Lalami

A few weeks ago, the editors of 3 Quarks Daily, the magazine of eclectic online writing, asked me to judge their Arts & Literature Prize. (The prize is in its second year and was judged last year by Robert Pinsky. Prizes have also been offered in the areas of Science, Philosophy, and Politics.)

Nominations for the 2011 Arts & Literature Prize were opened in mid-February, submitted to a vote, and winnowed down to nine finalists earlier this month.

I enjoyed reading the nine entries very much and appreciated especially the wide variety of subjects and genres: book reviews, personal essays, critical essays, an open letter, and a poem. There was a lot of very strong writing but, in the end, I had to choose just three for the prize. You can find out who they are here.

I had the great fortune of visiting Japan with my husband in August 2001, and still have very fond memories of the time we spent there. The people we encountered during our three-week stay were unfailingly kind, hard-working, and endowed with a sense of personal responsibility I have seen nowhere else. We got lost on our way to Ginkakuji Temple and, though we could not speak a word of Japanese, found so many people willing to help. I remember, too, that when we tried to tip the bellboy at the hotel, he returned our money. “No tips in Japan, Madam.” Still, we continued to try. At a restaurant in Kyoto, we left the tip on the table and walked out, only to be pursued for half a block by the waiter, who proceeded to return our money. At the Tokyo National Museum, I was struck by the fact that the locals far outnumbered tourists in the galleries and by how much interest they showed in their art, culture, and history (as opposed to, I don’t know, the country I’m from, for example.)

I’ve been thinking about these experiences since last week, when news of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan first broke. Watching the television footage from my hotel room in Dubai, where I was attending a literary festival, I was struck both by how powerful the quake seemed to be and by the general calm of the people. But then the tsunami warning was issued, the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station shut down, and everything felt different, somehow. The scale of the devastation, and its long-term consequences, still seem hard to fathom. I am in awe of the unnamed 50 workers who stayed behind at the power station to try to prevent further leakage. But, aside from donating relief money, reading up on nuclear power, or worrying about its effect, I don’t know what to do. In this context, the idiocy of people like Glenn Beck—who says that the earthquake was a “message” from God—almost comes as a sign that life goes on; that, along with heroic workers, polemicist fools remain with us, even in the middle of catastrophes.

(Photo credit: EPA)

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been writing guest posts for The Notion, which is The Nation magazine’s group blog. I’ve written on the recent Frankfurt shootings, Arab uprisings and American intervention, the blame game that Arab dictators have been playing, and I’ve followed up my posts on the February 20 movement with a short piece on the self-immolation of Fadoua Laroui. In short, it was a busy fortnight! But now I am back to my regular pace, working on my novel, teaching at UC—and yes, of course, pondering what else to write about.

In a new piece for Foregin Policy, I write about why the February 20 movement’s demands in Morocco have so far been restricted to constitutional reforms. Here is an excerpt:

When I was living in Morocco in 2007, I often noticed that foreign journalists were completely confounded by the country. And understandably so, because, depending on whom they talked to, the country was either on the verge of full democratization or about to have a Russian-style revolution. Elections were going to bring about an Islamist tsunami or the leftist coalition would surprise everyone by its strong showing. The recent family law reforms had brought in real change for women or it did not matter because the judges were not applying the new law anyway. The Equity and Reconciliation commission was proof that the infamous Years of Lead — a period during the 1960s to 1980s characterized by widespread extralegal detentions and torture — were being reckoned with or that the victims of abuse had been unwittingly co-opted by a wily government. The francophone elite was fleecing the country or it was the country’s only chance of moving forward in an era of globalization. The king’s right-hand man had quit his post and run for a parliamentary seat because he had fallen out of favor in the palace or he had quit because he was going to be appointed prime minister.

The truth was, nobody knew.

You can read the rest here.

(Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

In a follow-up post for The Nation, I write about the protests that have taken place throughout Morocco on February 20.

In spite of the Moroccan government’s campaign—through its official media, its ministers and its allies—to discredit the February 20 movement, peaceful protests took place today throughout the country. Thousands of protesters gathered simultaneously in Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier, Tetuan, Beni Mellal, Kenitra, Agadir, Marrakech, Essaouira and in other, smaller cities such as Bouarfa, Sefrou, Bejaad and Jerada.

As I explained in an earlier post, the campaign against the movement included accusations that it was led by agents of the Polisario Front; by atheists and other assorted non-Muslims; by republican revolutionaries; by Moroccans living comfortably abroad; or by people who are disorganized, unclear about their demands and leaderless. But even before the democracy protests got underway today, it was clear that the tide was turning and that the virulent government campaign had only served to bring about support from a wide cross-section of Moroccan society.

You can read the rest here.

(Photo credit: AP)

In a new post for The Nation, I write about the protests that are planned for February 20 in Morocco.

With the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, the Arab world has erupted in popular protests in favor of democracy and dignity. Morocco, long considered one of the most stable Arab countries, is not immune to this regional trend. Inspired by the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, a group of young activists are using social media to spread the word about a protest in Casablanca on February 20. A video they have made to promote the protests has already gone viral. It features thirteen young Moroccan men and women, speaking in their native Arabic or Berber. “I am Moroccan and I will take part in the protest on February 20,” they all say, and then go on to explain their reasons for marching: freedom, equality, better living standards, education, labor rights, minority rights, and so on. (You can view the video, with English subtitles, here.)

The February 20 movement was started by a group calling itself Democracy and Freedom Now. Their demands include constitutional reforms, the dissolution of the present parliament, the creation of a temporary transitional government, an independent judiciary, accountability for elected officials, language rights for Berber speakers, and the release of all political prisoners. Democracy and Freedom Now was soon joined by a loose coalition of cyber-activists, traditional lefties, Islamists, and 20 human rights organizations, including the Moroccan Association of Human Rights and Amnesty Morocco.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

For the next two weeks, I will be writing guest posts for the Notion, the Nation magazine‘s blog. My first post is about the recently reported attack on the reporter Lara Logan:

A woman has been sexually assaulted—what should the reaction to such a heinous crime be? Blaming its victim? Disparaging the country she’s in? Looking for a scapegoat?

Stunningly enough, all of these reactions have been voiced since yesterday, when it was revealed that Lara Logan, the Chief Foreign Correspondent for CBS, had survived sexual assault in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The network has released few details about the attack, except to say that, when Hosni Mubarak’s resignation was announced and crowds filled the square, a mob surrounded Logan and her crew. She was separated from them in the ensuing frenzy and suffered “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.” Logan flew back to the United States the following day and is now recovering in a hospital.

Read the rest here.

Last Friday, about fifteen minutes after it was announced that Mubarak had resigned, a close friend called me from Morocco, cheering for the Egyptian people. And then another friend called, emails arrived—all expressing the same joy at the fall of the tyrant. Over at the Daily Beast, I have an opinion piece about the effect of the ongoing revolutions on how people think about Arab world.

It was nearly 20 years ago that Samuel Huntington put forth the idea that major sources of world conflict in the aftermath of the Cold War would be cultural. Certain civilizations could coexist peacefully with one another, he argued, but others were bound to come into conflict because their inherent values and belief systems were polar opposites. The contrast between “the West” and “Islam” provided the clearest illustration of his argument and, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it gained an even wider following. Huntington’s theory has so pervaded public discourse that when people speak of his “Clash of Civilizations,” they usually mean the inevitable clash between the West and Islam.

People in Western countries were told by their elected leaders that the Arabs were fundamentally incapable of governing themselves in a democratic way, that they needed strongmen to keep them in line or else they might lash back in another major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, citizens of Arab countries were told by their local dictators that, well, this was the best they could do. Their nations were stable, they had a functioning government, and there was some sort of law and order on the streets. That was enough. And it was either that or the local Islamist party, which, if it were ever allowed to come to power or have a say in government, would endeavor to take away whatever rights the Arabs were lucky enough to have.

And you can read the piece in full here.

(Photo credit: AP)