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Just a few days after the Asian tsunami, Amitav Ghosh went to the Andaman and Nicobar islands. In a New Yorker essay titled “The Town By The Sea,” he wrote of the environmental devastation, the physical destruction, and the unendurable tragedy that were visited on the people of the islands. Ghosh describes a middle-aged scientist, a man referred to merely as “the Director,” who was traveling to the town of Malacca to look for his wife and daughter among the few survivors that had been found. This was not the first time the Director had undertaken this trip, and sadly there was no trace of his family.

As he walked among the ruins, however, the Director came across a set of slides from his epidemiological research, and he picked them up, carefully selecting which ones he would keep. A little later, he spotted a yellow paint box that his daughter had owned. He chose to leave it where it lay. Ghosh writes:

I had expected he would stoop to pick up the box, but instead he turned away and walked on, gripping his bag of slides. “Wait!” I cried. “Don’t you want to take the box?”

“No,” he said vehemently, shaking his head. “What good will it do? What will it give back?” He stopped to look at me over the rim of his glasses. “Do you know what happened the last time I was here? Someone had found my daughter’s schoolbag and saved it for me. It was handed to me, like a card. It was the worst thing I could have seen. It was unbearable.”

He started to walk off again. Unable to restrain myself, I called out after him: “Are you sure you don’t want it – the paintbox?”

Without looking around he said: “Yes, I am sure.”

I stood amazed as he walked off towards the blazing fire, with his slides still folded in his grip: how was it possible that the only memento he had chosen to retrieve were those magnified images? As a husband, a father, a human being, it was impossible not to wonder: what would I have done? what would I have felt? what would I have chosen to keep of the past? The truth is nobody can know, except in the extremity of that moment, and then the choice is not a choice at all, but an expression of the innermost sovereignty of the self, which decides because nothing now remains to cloud its vision. In the manner of his choosing there was not a particle of hesitation, not the faintest glimmer of a doubt. Was it perhaps, that in this moment of utter desolation there was some comfort in the knowledge of an impersonal effort? Could it be that he was seeking refuge in the one aspect of his existence that could not be erased by an act of nature? Or was there some consolation in the very lack of immediacy – did the value of those slides lie precisely in their exclusion from the unendurable pain of his loss? Whatever the reason, it was plain his mind had fixed upon a set of objects that derived their meaning from the part of his life that was lived in thought and contemplation.

There are times when words seem futile, and to no one more so than a writer. At these moments it seems that nothing is of value other than to act and to intervene in the course of events: to think, to reflect, to write seem trivial and wasteful. But the life of the mind takes many forms, and some time after the day had passed I understood that in the manner of his choosing, the Director had mounted the most singular, the most powerful defence of it that I would ever witness.

You can read the essay in full here.

During his tour of the Middle East last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that the main obstacle to peace in the region was Iran. He sounded like a hapless traveler who’d started a huge fire in a forest and couldn’t control it; and instead of trying to put it out, he wanted to go out into the next forest and start an even bigger fire. Then he could claim that all these fires were making the forests safer.

Writing in the Guardian, Nasrin Alavi debunks many of Blair’s claims by pointing out the terrible role that the government of Saudi Arabia (i.e. Blair’s ally) has played and continues to play in escalating the war. She also points to Iran’s experiences with democracy and liberalism, and how today’s Iranian youths are fighting the regime.

(Alavi is the author of We Are Iran, a portrait of contemporary Iran through its blog culture. Last year, she contributed a column to this blog.)

The Arabic-language weekly magazine Nichane was banned yesterday by the Moroccan authorities, by order of the Prime Minister’s office. Nichane‘s issue #91, dated December 9th to the 15th, had a cover story on “Jokes: How Moroccans Make Fun of Religion, Sex, and Politics.” It included a long article, written by Sanaa Al Aji, describing the cathartic role of jokes, and sharing a few juicy ones with readers. The jokes that were deemed particularly offensive were the ones dealing with religion. There were seven in total, ranging from the subversively funny to the unfunny or downright offensive, but these are jokes that readers could just as easily have heard at work, at school, at home or at the café, and therefore they’re nothing new.

But their publication in Nichane was enough to prompt the Guardians of Morality ™, specifically members of the religious right, the Party of Justice and Development and others of similar sensibilities, to start a campaign against the magazine, and against the journalists, who have already been accused of being “apostates.” What makes this campaign against the free press particularly troubling is that its fomentors include journalists, people who should at the very least know something about freedom of the press and show some solidarity for their fellow writers, editors, and reporters.

For instance, conservative journalist Mohammed Lachyab posted a long tirade on his blog, not just against the article, but against the magazine, and against its sister publication, the Francophone Tel Quel, accusing them of persistently insulting the “religious and national” feelings of Moroccans through their “editorial line.” Lachyab also attacked Nichane‘s use of Moroccan Arabic, saying that “the secret goal” behind such a move is “the destruction of the Arabic language, after the failure of the Francophone magazine in that role.” (Journalist and conspiracy theorist, all in one!) Lachyab followed this post with a long list of contacts and asked his readers to make their opinions heard. The list included not only the email address of the magazine’s director, Driss Ksikes, but also those of the Prime Minister’s office, the Minister of Waqf and Islamic Affairs, and even the theology school.

This veritable witch hunt resulted in the ban of Nichane. A lawsuit has been filed against Driss Ksikes, the magazine’s director, and Sanaa Al Aji, the writer, for “insult to the Islamic religion” and “publication and distribution of writings that are contrary to the morals and mores” of the country. The trial is set for 8 January 2007, and they risk prison terms of 3 to 5 years. It should also be pointed out that, while the ban looks like (and will be interpreted) as a win for the PJD and its ilk, the magazine has not endeared itself to the government with its articles on corruption, the economy, party financing, etc.

As of this morning, the Nichane website appears to be down, so you cannot access the article in question. Ironically, the only place I can find the “incendiary” material is ….on the website of the very people who claim to be offended. They have scanned the jokes and you can see them there.

Related:
Reporters Sans Frontières condemns the ban. Popular blogger Larbi offers his support to the magazine, as does Mohammed Said Hjiouij.

A couple of weeks ago, Orhan Pamuk delivered his Nobel lecture at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Titled “Babamin bavulu,” which translates as “My Father’s Suitcase,” it’s about Pamuk’s relationship with his father, a man who loved to read, had hoped to be a writer, but in the end preferred to enjoy life rather than devote himself fully to the craft. Pamuk, of course, chose a different path, and his meditation on his and his father’s choices, their fates, and their relationship to one another moved me to tears. The lecture also includes many lovely comments about the art of literature, and its place in the world. Here’s just one taste:

I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who–wherever they are in the world, East or West–cut themselves off from society and shut themselves up in their rooms with their books; this is the starting point of true literature.

But once we have shut ourselves away we soon discover that we are not as alone as we thought. We are in the company of the words of those who came before us, of other people’s stories, other people’s books–the thing we call tradition. I believe literature to be the most valuable tool that humanity has found in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors–and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signs that dark and improvident times are upon us. But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for that is what literature is.

You can find Orhan Pamuk’s lecture in the original Turkish, and in various other translations, at the Nobel site. The English-language version is also reprinted in this week’s New Yorker magazine.)

One of the more unfortunate legacies of colonialism in Morocco is a certain obsession with, and mimicry of, all things French. If you walk into a fine store in the Racine neighborhood (I mean, look at the neighborhood’s name, for God’s sake) the clerk is likely to address you in French, even though you are not French, and neither is she. “Bonjour madame, est-ce que je peux vous aider?” she’ll ask. In the beginning, I would answer, somewhat irritatedly, in Moroccan Arabic (Darija) just to make a point. But then a strangely condescending look would appear on the salesperson’s face, intimating that perhaps I couldn’t afford to shop at the store, and the service would mysteriously drop to lower standards. So now I don’t even bother anymore, I just go with the flow.

There is still, fifty years after independence, a persistent association of anything French with “better.” People are driving themselves into the poorhouse trying to send their kids to French lycées. A few department stores and private schools here in Casa also throw Christmas celebrations, complete with trees, trimmings, and multicolored lights. It’s bizarre.

This morning, while I was reading the paper (a French-language one, I know, I know), I stumbled on this advertisement for LG Electronics. It shows an old man with a white beard, wearing a jellaba and a tarbouche, merrily riding a sheep-drawn carriage full of refrigerators, microwaves, and other assorted kitchen appliances. The message above says, “Aïd Moubarak Saïd.”

I suppose someone at the ad agency thought that the mix of the Eid El-Kebir, the Muslim commemoration of Abraham’s sacrifice, with Santa Claus, a folkoric addition to the Christian holidays, might somehow be conducive to shopping sprees. Maybe it just means that consumerism is finally winning the battle of Muslim holidays–via Christian ones. Let’s shop, fellow Moroccans, just like the French do!