Laila Lalami

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)

Not long ago, I received a kind email from a reader in Pakistan, telling me how much he enjoyed reading my first book, which he had read in its Urdu translation. An “excellent work,” he called it, and he wanted to know whether I was working on something new. This is very flattering, of course, and I was touched by the compliment, but I confess my first thought was: what Urdu translation? My collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in a bunch of different foreign languages, but I was pretty sure Urdu wasn’t one of them. I asked this gentle reader if he wouldn’t mind sending me a copy. He said yes, and about four weeks later, I received a book wrapped only in a white band (which I imagine made it easier for customs officials to check the package). So here it is, a pirated translation of my book.

Now, I don’t speak Urdu, but, as it happens, this language uses an Arabic-like script, so I’m at least able to decipher a few words. I could read my name, and I could decipher a title, and I could even make out the name of the translator. It seemed vaguely familiar. Hmm, where had I heard it before? A quick search through my email showed that this gentleman had gotten in touch with me in the fall of 2006, to ask how he could spell my name in Arabic. I gave him the information, but when I asked why he needed it, I didn’t hear from him until early 2007, when he wrote to inform me that he had translated Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits into Urdu. And, he added, he was doing this sort of work for the greater good and he hoped I could find it in my heart to do the same.

After I got over my shock, I forwarded the message to my publisher, who wrote him directly to say that he needed to secure copyright permission if he wanted to publish his translation. “I was thinking of publishing the translation eventually,” the translator replied, although “no publisher commissioned me for [it].” And, well, why don’t I just quote the rest of the email:

As I wrote to Ms. Lalami, literature doesn’t sell well with Urdu readership. What does sell is mostly travel writing, women’s digests, bittersweet romances, and religious books. No mainstream publisher would even touch novels, etc. in the hope of making money Those who print this kind of literature are people like me, I mean people whose main source of income is a profession other than publishing or writing. I was not exaggerating when I said that the ordinary print run for novels is only a few hundred copies. Of these, twenty copies will come to me, if I’m fortunate enough to find a publisher, about 40 to 50 will go as complimentary copies to other writer friends, and the remaining copies will take a few years to sell. There is no question of a reprint. (I might also add here that the price of a book of about 200 pages would be between 2 to 3 US dollars.)

Pretty bleak picture, wouldn’t you say? But that is the fact. What some of us wrongheaded people do makes no sense in this country. But we do it anyway, wrongheaded or not. After all, one of our poets says to his beloved: “Come one day … if only not to come.” Paradox?! Whatever. But we instinctively know what all it means.

No, I didn’t clear the copyright issue with you. But this is just as good a time as any. I’d be personally grateful if you would consider granting it. Of course, I can’t pay for it. In recognition of the favor, and as a gesture of thankfulness, I’d be happy to share some of my copies, assuming we will get to that stage, with you and Ms. Lalami. And, of course, I’ll make sure that your permission is acknowledged on the translation, in a wording of your choice. If this isn’t what you were expecting, I’m very sorry.

The person in charge of copyright clearance at Algonquin Books replied that permissions were normally granted to publishing houses, not to freelance translators, and that he should have his publisher contact us directly. We never heard back, and I thought that was it. Until a few weeks ago, when this gentle Pakistani reader wrote to tell me about the translation he had bought in a Karachi bookstore.

Part of me feels like, hey, how cool is it that my work is pirated? How edgy. And the other part of me is outraged that someone, a professor at a major American university no less, would simply translate and publish a work of literature abroad without proper copyright permission. I’m not into writing for the money, God knows, but these translations are illegal, there is no guarantee that they are faithful to the original, and they punish other publishing houses and translators, those who do sign the proper agreements. And that’s neither cool nor edgy. That’s destructive. How do you translate that in Urdu?

I just got back from two weeks in Cuba—not the easiest place in the world to get to from the United States, especially in these times of heightened scrutiny. (The recent relaxation of rules by the Obama administration made the trip possible for family reasons.) My first impression upon leaving Aeropuerto Internacional José Martí-La Habana was of the ubiquity of street placards with revolutionary slogans. “Comandante en Jefe, tus ideas son invencibles,” said one, under a picture of a younger-looking Fidel Castro. Another warned, “La vigilancia revolucionaria: tarea de todos.” Perhaps my favorite sign was the one that boasted, “250 milliones de niños en el mundo duermen hoy en las calles. Ninguno es cubano.”

For all the revolutionary slogans, Cuba has inched further and further toward a free market economy, of sorts. There are now many private businesses: paladars and guest houses, for instance, which are frequented almost exclusively by tourists. The introduction of convertible pesos has created a system in which a few Cubans have access to this valuable currency, while the majority does not. As a result, people are always trying to get their hands on the convertible pesos and now you see street hustlers in a country that used to be mercifully free of them. The revolutionary ideals have become little more than a selling point, a way to attract foreign tourists.

There was so much to see and so little time to do it, given family obligations. We took a walking tour of Habana Vieja, with its stunning architecture; visited the Museo de la Revolución, where you can see the American yacht Granma, used by Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and 79 others to launch the Cuban revolution; saw a performance by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in an old church; waited for the cannon shot at the Fortaleza de San Carlos; took a tour of the Partagas Cigar Factory, which was smelly, loud, and frankly a bit Dickensian; and browsed many, many bookstores. By far the oddest sight for me were the Afghan students in Cienfuegos, amid scantily clad tourists and locals. They were apparently there to train as doctors, as part of the country’s own efforts to win hearts and minds. (I’m going to take a wild guess and say that training doctors might work better than dropping bombs.)

So this wraps up this very quiet and productive year for me. Thank you all for continuing to read my blog and to write to me with your thoughts. I wish you all a happy and healthy new year, filled with joy and prosperity.

At about this time last year, I decided that I wouldn’t send out any stories or essays and that I would turn down requests for contributions to magazines or anthologies. A vow of public silence, you could call it. I wanted to spend all of 2010 doing two things only: reading and writing. So, whenever I wasn’t teaching or traveling, that’s precisely what I did. I read and I wrote. It wasn’t always easy, especially at the beginning.  It was difficult to resist the temptation to write a review of a book I particularly enjoyed or an opinion piece about the latest political outrage.  (Oh, sure, I had short pieces coming out here or there, but these were written before my resolution.)  And now it’s been a year, and I realize this was one of the best things I could have done for myself. I feel as if I’m still under the spell of that working silence, so that I hesitate even to tell you about the novel I’ve written or the essays I’ve completed. But all in good time.

This review I wrote for The Nation is the first one I’ve written in a year. (It occurs to me that my last piece was also for them, from last November.)  It’s about the Moroccan writer and critic Abdelfattah Kilito, who has recently released a collection of short fiction with New Directions, in a translation by Robyn Creswell. Here is how it opens: 

On Idriss al-Azhar Street in downtown Rabat, not far from the Muhammad V Mausoleum, there is an unassuming but wonderful little coffee shop, the Café Jacaranda, where book readings are held and young artists’ paintings exhibited. There, on a warm spring afternoon three years ago, I went to hear two of Morocco’s foremost intellectuals discuss the feminine and masculine in classical Arabic literature. One was Fatema Mernissi, the world-renowned feminist, sociologist, and memoirist, the author of some twenty books on feminism and Islam, and co-winner, along with Susan Sontag, of the Prince of Asturias Award. Her arrival at the café was met with murmurs of awe. A throng of admirers immediately surrounded her, so that the only part of her that remained visible from the other end of the lobby was her fiery red hair.

The arrival of the other panelist, Abdelfattah Kilito, went unnoticed until it was time for the event to start. Where Mernissi was gregarious and funny, Kilito was reserved and bookish. Once the panel discussion started, however, the audience got to hear Kilito speak knowledgeably about Maqamat al-Hariri, the classical work of rhymed prose that until the end of the nineteenth century was one of the most widely read books of Arabic literature. Kilito spoke about the use of the sun and the moon as symbols for the masculine and feminine, the popularity of the Maqamat, the miniatures that the artist al-Wasiti created to illustrate the manuscript, the reasons why these miniatures are nowadays more widely disseminated than the text itself—and much else besides.

Among Moroccan writers, Kilito has always cut an unusual figure. He is equally at home in French and Arabic, in a country where language lines are drawn early and barriers are rarely crossed. He is not particularly known for his politics, in a society that routinely expects—and occasionally even demands—of its writers that they be politically engaged. His is not the name you will see mixed up in the kind of controversy that attracts the international press. But one would be hard-pressed to find a Moroccan writer who is more respected by his peers and more appreciated by his readers than Abdelfattah Kilito.

The full piece is available to subscribers only. (You can subscribe to the magazine here, for as little as $18.)

(Image credit: Wickednox)

In late 2008, when I was preparing for the publication of my second book, Secret Son, I received from my publisher what seemed like a longer-than-usual author questionnaire. (For those of you who don’t know: the author questionnaire is a form that invites you to list magazine editors, book reviewers, booksellers, and pretty much anyone you think will have the slightest interest in your book.) Dutifully, I began to fill it out. Then I noticed a section on social media, which hadn’t been part of the questionnaire when I published my first book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits.

I had never had any interest in Facebook, but in the face of questionnaires I am nothing if not thorough. I joined the damn site. Within days, I realized that everyone I knew—family, friends, writers, acquaintances, neighbors—were on it. It really felt as if I were the last person in North America to give in to it. I was delighted to find so many familiar names, and happily accepted any and all friend requests. Before long, however, my friend list ballooned to several thousand. And I loved it. I loved seeing my family’s baby announcements or travel pictures; I loved reconnecting with people I had gone to college with; I loved finding out what my friends were reading and recommending; I loved reading articles my colleagues posted.

But the way Facebook works, everyone on your list has the same claim on your attention. So if I made a joke that had a ten-year-history in my family, someone whom I had never met, and who could arguably be the friend of an old acquaintance of a neighbor of a cousin, made a comment about not getting it. It became necessary to explain the joke, which took away some of its humor. Or if I posted a link to an article, along with a line that I thought was clearly sarcastic, someone took it literally. I had to temper the sarcasm, which took away its bite. If I was busy and did not get a chance to respond to an incendiary comment, someone was bound to take it as an endorsement. When someone sent me fifteen invitations to one event in the space of a week, I was forced to politely decline fifteen times. And when someone sent me a marriage proposal, I said, “Enough.”

I decided to remove anyone from my page whom I didn’t personally know. Sounds pretty sensible, right? Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that if you massively remove people from your list, these people don’t necessarily like it. And that you acquire a reputation as an anti-social person. (Which, okay, fair enough, maybe I am. That’s why I took such a perverse interest in David Fincher’s film. It was amusing to see a socially inept person create a site like that.) The truth is, I like people. But, call me crazy, I just want to know them, too. So now I have two personalities on Facebook: Private-me and Public-me. Public-me will tell you about her upcoming book, or about this cool article she just read, or even about this post, while Private-me sits in the corner, watching quietly, the way she always does.

Photo: Columbia Tristar Marketing

This is what my windshield looked like when I left yoga class yesterday morning. We’ve had a very cool summer in Santa Monica—temperatures rarely rose above 70 degrees—and now it looks like winter is here in earnest. I don’t mind the cold weather, though. It provides fewer distractions from my book. Exactly what I need at the moment. The title of this post is from one of La Fontaine’s fables, which I, like every other child in the Francophone world, had to memorize: “La Cigale et la Fourmi” or “The Cricket and the Ant.” (In Aesop’s version, it’s called “The Ant and the Cricket.) For a few weeks now, I’ve been worrying that perhaps I had misspent my summer, that I hadn’t written enough. But I’m happy to say that I was wrong, that I needn’t have worried. I turned out to be the Ant, not the Cricket.

I realized the other day that it had been nine years since I started blogging.  At the time, I was working for a software company in Los Angeles and spent lots of time experimenting with shiny new things online.  Although I had been reading blogs for a few months by then, I didn’t really take the plunge until after the terrorist attacks of September 11.  Starting a blog seemed like a necessary outlet for all the rage I felt.  I often commented on politics, culture, and literature, and eventually started to post several times a day.  I met a lot of people online, some great, some not so great.  I received many sweet notes of encouragement and the occasional hate mail.  I discovered a lot of books and writers I would not have otherwise heard about—and that is something for which I remain grateful.

After a while, the literary debates online seemed to me somewhat cyclical.  There were always stories about how independent bookstores were closing, how few newspapers still ran reviews, how Amazon was manipulating the market, which book was shortlisted for this or that prize, which book was picked to be on Oprah, which writers were feuding, which writer had dissed another one in a review, how few books by women were reviewed in major newspapers, how differently books by writers of color were marketed to the reading public, and so on.  In 2001, when I had started blogging, Jonathan Franzen, having just published The Corrections, said he was uncomfortable about having an Oprah sticker on his book because it might drive away male readers.  Now it is 2010, and Jonathan Franzen has a new novel out, Freedom, and again it has an Oprah sticker on it, but this time he is fine with it.  You might see this is a sign of change, but it looks to me more like a sign of continuity.

After enduring eight years of Bush, it seemed like the era of Obama was going to finally usher in some change.  But nine years after the attacks, American troops are still stationed in Afghanistan, with no end in sight; Guantanamo Bay is still open; and the country is still on high alert for terrorists.  In 2001, the country was awash in anti-Muslim comments.  Remember Franklin Graham’s comments that Islam is a “very wicked and evil religion”? Well, it’s 2010, and the anti-Muslim comments are at an all-time high. Marty Peretz says that “Muslim life is cheap” and that “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse” and there isn’t really any serious fallout for him or his magazine.  I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.  Maybe because I want to explain to you why I haven’t been blogging as much. Having to face the same inane “controversies” has made me weary.

I am back from a short holiday in beautiful New Mexico. The skies, the vistas, the pueblos, the museums in Santa Fe–everything was just perfect. My husband loved it so much he started to make plans to retire there, even though he still has a good twenty-five years to go before he can consider such a thing. I did some reading before and while on travel, some of it academic (a history book that is somewhat relevant to my novel in progress), some of it genre (Stieg Larsson), and some of it literary (Mongo Beti.) It was good to be away from the computer and the phone for a while. Now I am back at my desk, catching up on mountains of email and other correspondence, and finally, finally, having my special cup of Cuban coffee.

Just in time for the World Cup, Les Editions Jean-Claude Lattès have released a new anthology called Enfants de la Balle. Edited by Abdourahman Waberi, the volume features short stories on football by writers from across Africa, including Anouar Benmalek, Alain Mabanckou, Wilfried N’Sonde, Jamal Mahjoub, Ananda Devi—and me. You can read some early reviews in L’Express, Slate, and France Culture.

If the World Cup isn’t really your thing, perhaps you might be interested in The Secret Miracle, a handbook of tips and guidelines edited by Daniel Alarcón. I suspect that Daniel got the title for the book from the famed short story by Jorge-Luis Borges, but I’m not sure. I do remember, though, that when he asked me to contribute something, he explained that he didn’t want to do a “how-to” book. Instead, this anthology collects various answers given by a diverse group of writers about their writing habits. Here’s a review in the SF Chronicle.

The letter came in the mail a few weeks ago, though I completely forgot to mention it on the blog: I am now officially tenured at the University of California.

The amount of paperwork that was required for this was greater than what was asked of me by the INS, and, trust me, that’s saying something. So the overwhelming emotion I felt when I heard the news was relief. I was starting to feel like a character in a campus novel.

Photo credit: Screen capture from the film adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys.