Book news of note...

Random House has pulled a forthcoming novel about a famous bride of the prophet Mohammad. Crazy. Foreshadowed Muslim reaction is a force, huh? I wonder if someone else will pick it up.

And this new book on fiction by James Wood, who I am a big fan of. If anyone wants to buy me a present, this is it!

Not a book, but wanted to end with a laugh from Denver, courtesy of Fox News:

A Whole New World

Unfortunately the other day when my parents came to visit me in Richmond and we went out and about I forgot to put my battery in my camera, but here are a few photos I took on a long walk I went on last Friday, just as the sun was sinking...

This first one is of my house, or more the tree in front of my house. The house itself is incredible, with high ceilings, wood floors, two sets of stairs, very cool roommates, and a small community park and garden out back:


Many monuments dot this city, many of them having to do with the Civil War. There is a famous one of Arthur Ashe. Here is one that goes a little farther back:


Here is an artsy one. Me on one of those highway overpass things, with all the cars going past below, it sounded like the ocean:

One more, some houses with a Baptist church bus and some chairs set up for a gathering:


Yeah, so strange days, new world...

This is the kind of stuff that is contributing to my culture shock...

I am ashamedly sitting in the Starbucks (I swear, I swear, it will be the only time!) that is just left of the entrance to the main library at my new school, Virginia Commonwealth University. And just now four tanned, perfect-looking under-aged girls sat down at the table next to me. The one who took the head seat of the rectangle table is evidently interviewing the other three in regards to rushing her sorority. Topics of their discussion include desperation to see the Spice Girls reunion tour, hanging out at frat houses, whether or not it's ok to shop at a thrift shop just for eighties night, and faraway boyfriends.

From Cholula to Richmond

Last week, I was in taking this photo, overlooking Cholula, a lovely city in Mexico. We were outside a church that, in 1594, was built by the conquering Spanish on top of an ancient Aztec pyramid, which just so happens to be the "largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world." Crazy. Seriously. We also spent time in Cuernavaca and in Mexico City. The former reminded me of Lebanon and the latter of Cairo. But of course it was all completely different, too.

And now, I am in Richmond, Virginia. I haven't taken any pictures yet. It is certainly a pretty place but nothing like Mexico, or Lebanon, or Cairo. I have just moved into a room in an incredible big, old house, in a quiet, pretty neighborhood a five-minute bike ride to school. Yesterday I went to a pretty neat flea market in another neighborhood with a few galleries and cafes and warehouses and a paint ball range and a gentlemen's club and other things, I'm sure. Everyone at the market was exceedingly nice, and I bought some produce and useful junk for ridiculously cheap. Then I found a natural foods market that isn't as amazing as Rainbow but reasonably cool. Classes start next week for me, and right now I'm dealing with administrative and orientation-type stuff. Wish I was in Mexico but I'm also happy to be in Richmond since it's what is happening now.

Good Bye

Mahmoud Darwish, brilliant artist of verse, memory, and forgetting passed away Saturday in Houston. He wasn't from there, just went there because his European doctor recommended the hospital for his specific condition. Something about an enlarged artery in his heart. Darwish was a poet, well-known, perhaps, for the fact he was a Palestinian poet. He will be buried in Ramallah today or Wednesday. A one-time member of the PLO and, eventually, part of the party's executive committee, he wrote words Yasser Arafat declaring Palestinian statehood in 1988. And, famously, he penned this verse:

Identity Card

Record !
I am an Arab
And my identity card is number fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is coming after a summer
Will you be angry?

Record !
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks…
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself
at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?

Record !
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew...

But, to quote Ursula Lindsey from her awesome blog, The Arabist Review, he was not a "propogandist." Or maybe he was not merely a propagandist. Or maybe he simply got to the heart/truth/meaning of things. Because every man and woman is tied to the place they were born and the place they live and the place they have lived most. And many tie their work to those places, but maybe Darwish was the kind of artist who transcends place to reach those in all places. He also wrote lines like this, from his 1982 book, Memory for Forgetfulness:

"The dawn made of lead is still advancing from the direction of the sea, riding on sounds I haven’t heard before. The sea has been entirely packed into stray shells. It is changing its marine nature and turning into metal. Does death have all these names? We said we’d leave. Why then does this red-black-gray rain keep pouring over those leaving or staying, be they people, trees, or stones?"

Reading that really makes me want to find it in Arabic. Hmmm. Ending here for now. A post on the trip I just got back from to come...

Ya Mamma, Inshallah Yirbah Obama

So my sister got my mother this shirt from Urban Outfitters. She wasn't sure my mom would be into it, but figured it was worth a try. Buying presents for my mom is tough. She's not the sort of lady that has many things or many desires, and most often she'll open a present and kindly say thanks, but you know she would be just as happy without, perhaps even more happy since she deplores the accumulation of stuff. Occasionally, however, one strikes gold and fills the sweet lady with glee, just as my father did a few years ago with a Japanese knife set (my suggestion--ahem!) and just as my sister did with this shirt. I'm not sure what it really means. Maybe that Obama would be the best presidential choice for the likes of someone's mother? I know, I'm not always down with the slang, but I'm really at a loss. My mother wore this shirt to an Arab American Institute's BBQ that we attended at a park here in Northern Virginia last weekend, and one Arab-speaker we spoke to said she liked that it reminded her of the phrase "Ya Mama," which literally means "Oh, mother," and is also used as a common exclamation, such as "Bajeezus" or "Oh, meatballs" or whatever.

Speaking of Arabs and Obama, I was intrigued to hear a story on NPR the other day discussing Arab opinion of the senator. Some were interviewed about their certainty that even if Obama is elected, nothing will change in terms of American coddling of "fortress Israel" and then some were interviewed who were delighted that a "Muslim brother" may be elected president and how dramatic a change this would be for the world. Obviously then, ignorance is universal, though of course the sort of misconception that results in blind love is far better than that which yields irrational hate. And then I keep flashing in my mind to a woman I must have seen on television during my vacation saying (regretfully) she voted for Bush because he seemed like the kind of guy she could drink a Budweiser with. Where does this leave Obama? I see him sipping cocktails on a bright, manicured lawn somewhere. I wonder if he likes Lebanese food because I'm on the falafel hunt tonight.

TERRORIST

I was excited to find, on an end table in my parents' home safe in the suburbs of northern Virginia, a novel called "Terrorist" by John Updike. Now, I don't know Mr. Updike well, but I am aware that he is a preeminent man of letters, who sits stolidly--after a career I'm sure that was difficult at first, as the story often goes--with dozens of published books, in the upper echelons of American literary life. I know he's written many novels that people enjoy, a few of them have something to do with rabbits, or at least their titles do. And also I am sure that I have read essays by him in various book reviews and highbrow magazines like the New Yorker or Harper's. And I know these essays concerned the state of the written word in this day and age, and I'm sure Mr. Updike's words edified my vague but at the same time fundamental feeling that books and stories are still important, that writers still have purpose. And then to find that this man, this prophet, had written a novel about a topic that interests me greatly--9/11 and its effects on the psyches of the varied members of our nation--and that I didn't have to go to the store or the internet to get it but had this book in my hands just before a long bus ride, I was, as I said before, excited.

From the first pages, I could tell that Updike did indeed possess literary genius. His opening is in the third person but captures the voice of his main character, an 18 year-old devout Muslim named Ahmad, the son of an absent Egyptian father and an Irish mother, who was raised in a economically downtrodden town in New Jersey. He begins by observing the sin and idolatry around him in the public high school hallways, where he is finishing out his senior year. And the hate the disgust, is palpable and therefore understandable. Hell, I hated high school too--with its self-importance and its bare skin and breasts (Updike describes them again and again, once, strangely, as "blisters") that I could never compete with. Then we meet a girl who Ahmad is undeniably attracted to but concurrently repulsed by because, as we are reminded again and again, she is a sharmouta. And then Ahmad's mom who is likable and liberal, as shown by her many failed love affairs--again, sharmouta--and her painterly pursuits, but mysteriously unconcerned with her son's whereabouts. And then Ahmad's imam, his religious teacher, since he was 11 who holds office in a tiny former ballet studio above a check-cashing strip, berating Ahmad when he does not remember parts of the Koran they have discussed, concerning with correcting and perfecting Ahmad's accent in Arabic, which is irrevocably tinged by his native language. And then Ahmad's sad, sallow guidance counselor who suddenly takes an interest in the boy a month before graduating, insisting he is destined for more than the job of a truck driver as his imam has insisted he become.

Whoa--truck driver. Can you see it coming? Well, it takes forever, but a truck Ahmad eventually gets into has the potential to cause quite a ruckus, hence the book's title. My telling you this isn't much of a spoiler because the book is already spoiled. It's not the potboiler Updike perhaps intended. Moreso, it is an exercise in character development that he infuriatingly fails at. It's clear that Updike studied the Koran carefully, as he includes many verses and suras (sections) from it, often transcribed in English. It's clear he took pains with the culture as well, but I swear he was foolish about it. When Ahmad speaks English, his grammar is stilted and formal like someone schooled only recently in the language. A sample: When being approached for sex, he tells the woman, "That is a kind wish on your part, but without marriage it would go against my beliefs" (184). And, particularly as the book wears on, its characters tend to do something Lizzy and I like to call "monologuing" (as inspired by "Grey's Anatomy") where in the midst of conversation, they break out into a long diatribe about something massive, like the downfall of American society, or the rewards of undying religious faith, or the play between the pleasure and guilt of adultery. These types of speeches are okay every once in a while, especially when they are explicating something that has occurred in the plot, but one on top of the other, the speeches grow tiring, and then less credible when the story is moved along by ridiculously unbelievable coincidences. And the broken English he attempts to reproduce sounds nothing like the broken English of any Arabs I've ever spoken English with. Ugh. Sad. And then an ending that builds up to a twist that is more like a quiet belch. I can tell Updike's a good writer. He managed to describe certain things particularly well, but the overall workings of his story and the horrifyingly important and mistreated subject he very deliberately took on were way off. I think one can tell that by his preoccupation with describing each character each time s/he is reintroduced by the color of their skin, their religion, how fat or thin they are, and what they are wearing--the same descriptors again and again. I dunno. New York Times bestseller and glowing review-bits from all of our preeminent periodicals were splashed across it. I know better. And so do you. We just have to remind ourselves every once in a while.