Laila Lalami

At a dinner with friends the other day, all any of us wanted to talk about was the uprising against Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. I think we all know that we’re witnessing something unique here, something that will have far-reaching effects for the region. My latest piece for The Nation magazine is a commentary about this winter of discontent in the Arab world. Here is how it opens:

For those of us who have grown up in a dictatorship, the protests that have ignited throughout the Arab world feel like the fulfillment of a great promise. This promise was made to our parents and grandparents, to all those who fought for independence: that we would have the right to decide our future. Instead, our leaders delivered us into a world of silence and fear and told us that we must watch what we say and watch what we do. Our institutions were undermined or dismantled, our political parties were stifled or co-opted, their members disappeared or neutralized. And whenever we looked to the West for help, its presidents and prime ministers spoke with forked tongues, one moment lecturing us on democracy and another offering support to our dictators.

You can read the piece in full here.

(Photo Credit: Reuters)

Yesterday, in between writing and grading, I kept thinking about this line from Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians: “All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.” Over the last few weeks, people throughout the Arab world have been reconnecting with this memory and demanding change. The people of Egypt have taken to the streets today to pursue this goal; the Mubarak regime’s response has been, as always, violent repression.

The Guardian asked a group of writers, including me, what we make of the protests that are now rocking the region. Here is my contribution:

In Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, published in 1966, an unnamed university graduate returns to his home country, Sudan, full of hope about the new era of independence in his country. But an old man from his ancestral village warns him: “Mark these words of mine, my son. Has not the country become independent? Have we not become free men in our own country? Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do.”

As Salih predicted, the regimes that have followed European occupation of the Arab world have consolidated power in the hands of a small elite, which was often beholden to foreign countries and bent on repressing the civil and human rights of its people. Over the last two generations, the majority of young Arabs have known only two or three heads of state, each brought to office thanks to heredity, coup d’état, or sham elections. This is why, reading about the events in Tunisia earlier this month, it seemed to me I was witnessing the first national uprising in the Arab world since independence.

You can read it all here.

(Photo credit: AP/NYT)

Over the last few weeks, I have been following the unraveling of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, my emotions changing from surprise, to awe, and then to elation. As you probably know by now, the protests began on December 17 when Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable vendor who had suffered from police harassment for some time, had his unlicensed cart confiscated. He set himself on fire in the main square in the town of Sidi Bouzid, an act of desperation that inspired the country’s thousands of unemployed graduates to take to the streets in protest. It was perhaps understandable for some observers to initially dismiss the protests as another one of the region’s “bread riots.” But this was Tunisia, a country so tightly controlled that the protests themselves were highly unusual.

The police did what police do in dictatorships: they used tear gas, beat up protestors with clubs, and fired live ammunition, killing dozens of people. But the protests continued. Two weeks into the unrest, Ben Ali gave a television address, where he tried to show sympathy for the unemployed, while also blaming the country’s troubles on foreign hands and agent provocateurs. His speech was interrupted by a ringing cell phone, which turned a solemn affair into a comic one, as a flustered Ben Ali leaned forward and back in his chair without answering it. His patina of stern dictator seemed to crack. For the first time, his portraits were ripped from street corners. Trade union members and professionals joined students in the protests, which reached a fever pitch on January 4th, when it was reported that Bouazizi had died of his wounds.

Ben Ali dismissed a few members of his cabinet, but the protests grew even more popular, spreading from Sidi Bouzid to Kasserine, Sfax, Hammamet, and the capital. Then, on January 13th, he delivered a long litany of promises: he would create jobs, he would allow more personal freedoms, he would appoint an investigative commission, and, most significantly, he would leave office in 2014. Here was the dictator on television again, a man of seventy-four years with unnaturally dark hair and a chubby face, but the expression behind his eyeglasses was one of astonishment and fear. I had seen that expression before, a long, long time ago—on the face of Ceauşescu.

In the February 7 issue of The Nation magazine, I comment on the Tunisian events, and offer some context for them. Here is the opening paragraph:

In conventional thinking about the Middle East, perhaps the most persistent cliché is “moderate Arab country.” The label seems to apply indiscriminately to monarchies and republics, ancient dictatorships and newly installed ones, from the Atlantic Coast to the Persian Gulf, so long as the country in question is of some use to the United States. And, almost always, it crops up in articles and policy papers vaunting the need for America to support these countries, bulwarks against growing Islamic extremism in the Arab world.

A perfect example is Tunisia. Just three summers ago, Christopher Hitchens delivered a 2,000-word ode to the North African nation in Vanity Fair, describing it as an “enclave of development” menaced by “the harsh extremists of a desert religion.” This is a country with good economic growth, a country where polygamy was outlawed in 1956, a country with high levels of education, a country with perfect sandy beaches. And, Hitchens wrote, it “makes delicious wine and even exports it to France.

You can read the piece in its entirety here. And you can subscribe to the magazine here.

(Photo Credit: AP)

I feel I have yet to fully apprehend the devastation in Pakistan. The papers say there are 1,600 dead, 2 million homeless, and as many as 14 million affected by the floods. But the numbers, as always, don’t tell the whole story. The monsoon season is not over yet, it’s exceedingly difficult to get help to all those who need it, and the country has received little foreign relief. (The British charity Oxfam, for instance, says that donations to flood relief represent about $3 a person, compared to $495 per person after the Haiti earthquake.)

If you have not already done so, please donate to the relief effort in Pakistan. Here is a list of charities that work there.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

I want to know: what would the GOP do if it didn’t have Muslims to gripe about ahead of the November elections?

In the last three weeks, Glenn Beck mounted a campaign against “Muslim Family Day” at a Three Flags theme park in New Jersey, because that day fell on September 12th, which, of course, can only mean that Muslim evil-doers are plotting to offend the American people. (Never mind that Muslim Family Day started in 2000, that its chief organizer died in the World Trade Center attacks, and that the only reason it fell on September 12 this year is because it is the date of Eid.) In Temecula, California, a group of Tea Partiers called for a rally against a planned mosque and suggested to its participants that they bring dogs, because dogs are considered by some Orthodox Muslims to be unclean. And in Florida, a pastor wants to set up an International Burn a Quran Day on September 11, because he believes, and I quote, that “Islam is of the devil.”

This weekend, the New York Times ran an article that recaps the recent spate of anti-Muslim demonstrations and focuses more specifically on the opposition to the Park51 project, which, in case you have been hiding under a rock, is otherwise (and incorrectly) known as the “Ground Zero mosque.” The article quotes both proponents and opponents of the project, which gives the reader the appearance of balance. But in fact it silences the vast majority of Muslims. Here is an excerpt (emphasis mine):

Feeding the resistance is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America.

But they have not gone unanswered. In each community, interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members of other faiths have defended the mosques. Often, they have been slower to organize than the mosque opponents, but their numbers have usually been larger.

Notice that, in setting up the two groups of proponents and opponents of Park51, the Muslims who get mentioned are “former Muslims”, while the people who bravely stand up for religious freedom include ministers of every faith, except Islam. Are we to believe that no Muslims, whether ministers or not, are taking part in these interfaith groups, even though the matter at hand is an Islamic community center?

I see this kind of silencing everywhere in our media. Politicians constantly talk about the need for “moderate Muslims” to step up, and when they do, as Imam Feisal Abdel Rauf did when he tried to set up this community center, it is the extremists among Muslims—both the religious and the secular—who are given ample room to voice their opinions. Enough.

Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters/New York Times

As you may have heard, the historian and activist Howard Zinn passed away last night in Santa Monica. You can read the AP obituary on the NPR website, which of course mentions his A People’s History of the United States.

Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, A People’s History was — fittingly — a people’s best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including Voices of a People’s History, a volume for young people and a graphic novel

At a time when few politicians dared even call themselves liberal, A People’s History told an openly left-wing story. Zinn charged Christopher Columbus and other explorers with genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.

I believe his last published piece is this contribution to a Nation forum on Obama’s first year. He did not sound optimistic in the least.

Recently when I read about the rioting by African immigrants in the southern Italian town of Rosarno, I assumed it had something to do with their precarious situation under the law. But in an opinion piece Roberto Saviano (the author of Gomorrah) says he thinks the riots were a revolt against the rule of the Calabrian mafia, which controls all sorts of economic activity.

An immigrant who lands in France or Britain knows he’ll have to abide by the law, but he also knows he’ll have real and tangible rights. That’s not how it is in Italy, where bureaucracy and corruption make it seem as if the only guarantees are prohibitions and mafia rule, under which rights are nonexistent. The mafias let the African immigrants live and work in their territories because they make a profit off them. The mafias exploit them, but also grant them living space in abandoned areas outside of town, and they keep the police from running too many checks or repatriating them.

The immigrants are temporarily willing to accept peanut wages, slave hours and poor living conditions. They’ve already handed over all they owned, risked all they had, just to get to Italy. But they came to make a better life for themselves — and they’re not about to let anyone take the possibility of that life away.

The last line of the piece, especially, is very moving.

Photo: Marco di Lauro/NYT

I am well aware of the fact that I am the kind of voter no elected politician wants to hear from, particularly not after an election. I’m in favor of bank regulation, gun control, and the public option; I’m against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the continuing occupation of Palestinian lands, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the use of torture; I support the right to marriage for all and I also don’t want anybody telling women what to wear or what to do with their bodies. In this country, such views are liable to get you labeled a godless socialist. But I will still say what I think.

I was excited about Barack Obama’s election and I really wanted him to succeed. I still do. But after one year in office, I don’t think he has delivered any significant change on the major issues facing the United States. He allowed major banks to receive taxpayer money, but did not demand accountability in return. His work on the public option was so anemic from the start that it was no surprise at all when the option wasn’t included in the Senate version of the health care bill. He expanded the war in Afghanistan, which he’d pledged he would do, but he hasn’t imposed a definite timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, despite his promise. It is now possible that some of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners will stay in detention forever, without trial. He hasn’t categorically outlawed torture. He has completely ignored the rights of gay citizens and he hasn’t stood up for women’s reproductive rights during the health care debate.

Many people still think that Americans are better off with Obama. Usually this means “better off than with George W. Bush, or John McCain, or Sarah Palin.” This is true, of course, but are we supposed to be happy that the country is not run by an idiot, a megalomaniac, and another idiot? They point out that Obama banned water-boarding, or that America’s image abroad has improved, or that he helped nullify Ledbetter v. Goodyear. Those are all good things, but they don’t weigh enough in the balance after one year. And this voter, at least, feels she has the right to expect more.

I’ve been busy over the last week with all manner of academic work (preparing for classes, committee meetings, applications to our graduate program, etc.) and haven’t had a chance to update the blog, but I did want to pop in here after I heard the news about the horrific earthquake in Haiti. I am sure many of you want to donate money, so I wanted to post a link to this very interesting article on how to choose a charity.

What do you need to know? First and foremost, is your favorite charity already working in Haiti? Have they had personnel there for years, with contacts in affected areas? Do the really know the country and the local leaders who will help deliver aid quickly and equitably to those who need it most?

If an organization isn’t already set up and ready to go in Haiti, your donations are going to go to help them build an infrastructure, set up offices, and hire staff. It makes more sense to donate to an organization that already has these elements in place. This might seem obvious, but in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the tsunami of 2004, organizations who had never worked on the ground in affected areas raised hundreds of millions of dollars, much of which never reached its intended recipients and succeeded only in bolstering the stature of the organizations.

As for me, I donated to Doctors without Borders, who seem to have a decent record in Haiti. Please give, if you can.

A propos of Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the always incisive Mr. Fish had this cartoon.

Cartoon Credit: Mr. Fish at Truthdig