Walaa Hawari & Shiekha Al-Dosary | Arab News
RIYADH: Charms, tokens, enigmatic drawings and other items seized by the vice cops were displayed prominently in one of the largest booths at this year’s Riyadh International Book Fair. Instead of books, a television displayed how the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice reverses magical spells.
“What was in the commission’s booth showed clearly what they thought of the book fair and what they think of books,” one Saudi writer and intellectual told Arab News yesterday.
The book fair, which ends on Friday, has been marked with controversy once again — with liberal and literary minded people complaining of harassment by the commission. For their part, religious authorities have complained, not just about the mingling of men and women at the fair or how women are dressed, but also about how they claim their voices are being quelled by the visitors. Like last year, it was also often difficult to differentiate between official members of the commission and men who simply dress like them.
At one event featuring Saudi writer Abdu Khal, a man dressed in conservative Saudi attire (but with no identifying badge or other indication of legitimate authority) demanded that he be given the microphone.
“After 10 minutes of argument, we gave him the microphone whereupon he started an angry speech in which he accused the fair’s organizing committee of not giving equal opportunity to all,” said Abdu Khal.
An event dedicated to the literary work of Sudan’s Tayeb Salih descended into a debate over morals, interactions between men and women, and the relationship between Islam and literature in general.
The man asked Khal — a vocal critic of the commission — why prominent Saudi poets and literary people attacked conservative society by doing un-Islamic things: “Why can’t they be Muslim and literary at same time?” he asked the audience.
Many of those attending the event who had come to discuss literature and poetry confirmed the incident. Many expressed disapproval and narrated unpleasant incidents that took place at the fair.
“What happened will destroy the image of tolerance we have tried to maintain,” said Saudi writer and journalist Ruqaiyah Yaqub. “The fair respects all viewpoints and Islamic schools. However, some extremists took advantage of that and they took revenge as well.”
Yaqub, who wears a full veil, said that conservatives at the fair (it was impossible to tell if they were actual commission members or just conservatives) attacked her verbally for her tight-fitting abaya, demanding that she “thickly cover everything and wear decent clothes,” she added.
“It’s so ridiculous,” she scoffed. “I’m covering everything with my plain black Abaya and — I don’t know what they consider ‘decent’ — but I believe their main issue is the presence of women at the fair.”
Najet Mield, a representative of a French publishing house, said she was verbally harassed, too, for speaking to men who came to her booth to discuss the books her company sells.
“They questioned my respect for my religion by doing so, which is something they should be punished for doing,” she said angrily. “Women have sold products to men and vice versa since the time of the Prophet (pbuh). If these people knew history, they would know that.”
Mield said she’s a Dai’aa in France, which means she works to spread Islam. “I came a long the way to show my work and I came with an invitation from the Ministry (of Culture and Information),” she said.
After complaining to ministry officials at the fair, the government assigned Mield a minder by the name of Hassan Al-Ansary to accompany her to avoid future harassment.
In one of the more highly publicized incidents at the fair, Saudi writer Halemah Mozaffar was verbally accosted by men who identified themselves as commission members and accused her of immorality for not having her face covered and for signing books given to her by men — she had signed the books as the men had asked her to do so out of admiration for her work.
Halemah published the first academic book about Saudi theater this year. As the tradition of signing a book by the author was not unknown at previous book fairs in Riyadh, she arrived as arranged by the organizing committee. When she was preparing for her signing session, commission members and others were advising her to cover her face “even though it’s an issue where Islamic scholars have difference of opinion.”
“Still,” she added, “I thanked them for the advice and went on about my business, setting up the place where I would sign books.”
When men and women started to approach the stand, Halemah was stunned by the commission members sending away men and forming a human wall to prevent her from signing books for men or even talking to them.
“It was my surprise to find them waiting for me with a pre-intention to stop me from signing my book and even from talking to the crowd, among whom were my fellow writers and theater-specialist colleagues,” she said.
Even the women who wished to have a signed book, according to Halemah, were frightened away by the scene, as there were two commission members, five security guards and six soldiers present.
“The scene was humiliating, especially when some male writers who came to buy the book tried to get my signature on their copies, and were rudely pushed away.”
Halemah then signed the books she already had and tried to give them to some of her colleagues, but the commission members stood between them and ordered her to pass the book to the security guard, who would pass it on.
“His behavior with me was even more rude when I asked: ‘Isn’t the guard a man? Why is it acceptable for me to hand the book to a guard but not to the man who bought the book?’”
The worst happened, according to Halemah, when another prominent writer ‘thanked her after she signed his copy. “The commission member took him aside, scolding him for thanking me considering it an offense to address a woman even with a simple phrase such as ‘thank you,’” she added.
The two hours of continuous annoyance did not go unnoticed by the Ministry of Information and Culture, explained Halemah, “as they compensated me with another signing day according to my schedule,” a day that went smoothly regardless of the presence of commission members who demanded that men and women stand in separate lines. The commission members, she said, “were hovering around me, just waiting for me to commit what they considered a sin.”
Arab News tried to obtain comments from the commission members; they said they would not speak to women who didn’t wear full-face veils.
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literature. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, December 1, 2008
Egypt: Dissident poet is allowed to speak, but Egypt's leaders aren't listening
Reporting from Cairo — Iman Bakry has a fortuneteller's voice, husky and cracked. It coaxes you into her colloquial poems, which once were about romance, but have since shifted to a cutting critique of President Hosni Mubarak's government and an Egypt plagued by self-doubt, repression, corruption and a dangerous divide between rich and poor.
Iman Bakry has risen to national prominence with her politically barbed verse about repression, corruption and poverty, appealing to the intellectual as well as the illiterate.
"I see a storm coming," begins a stanza in one of her poems.
Bakry is a media-savvy wordsmith who has risen to national prominence through television appearances and public readings. Her politically barbed verse articulates the frustrations and false dreams that have embittered a cynical public and laced the air with hints of rebellion. Opposition forces are often silenced and intimidated by the authoritarian government, but Bakry senses the anger welling.
"The explosion is already happening," she said in an interview in her Cairo apartment. "There's demonstrations, political activism, labor strikes, protests over clean water and bread shortages. All this signals the collapse of the whole society. We are walking to hell, toward a very dark future."
A former Arabic language teacher, Bakry has a curious relationship with the government she pillories. Until recently she headed the publishing department of the Egyptian Cultural Ministry. She resigned after complaining that her superiors resisted new writers and new ideas. She also sensed that some within the ruling National Democratic Party were fed up with her criticism of Mubarak's 27-year rule.
But Bakry has not been censored. She publishes and speaks when she wishes; she gets invited onto state-owned TV. And that, she said, illustrates the irritating, beguiling power of a police state that creates the veneer of democracy by tolerating a degree of freedom of expression.
Some dissident bloggers and political opponents are jailed. However, there is no reliable pattern of whom the government targets. The state allows certain artists such as Bakry, regarded by officials as passionate but harmless to national security, to write about whatever they choose, even if it causes a few politicians to wince. She skewers the state but does not directly call for unrest or overthrowing the government.
"Yes we can say it. The only problem is the regime doesn't listen to what we say," said Bakry. "The people listen to me instead of telling political jokes. My poetry allows them to vent, but as far as the government is concerned, neither I nor any other poet has much of an impact."
Nonetheless, her jabs are thrown with wily force. One of her poems, "Hello, Our Masters," attacks the ruling party's 2005 rewriting of the constitution to make it easier for Mubarak's son, Gamal, a 45-year-old businessman with no government experience, to succeed him. In the poem, Mubarak is a manipulating patriarch grooming the way for his child:
They are going to promote kindergarten students.
Heredity (succession) will become fashionable.
Call on the men and follow me to the coffee shop so we can weep and cry.
He intends to do it, he is making tactics even before he bids us farewell.
If you agree just say okay.
If you agree just say okay.
Either way, there is no way.
Shaaban Youssef, a literary critic, said he believes Bakry is the first Egyptian woman to master conversational-style political verse. "She has succeeded in widening the popularity of this type of poetry," he said. "Her poems appeal to highly sophisticated intellectuals . . . as well as to those who don't even read."
The other night, Bakry strolled into her living room, a jumble of design styles that include a stuffed fox, porcelain ballerinas, French baroque tables, a treadmill, horse statues and ruffled curtains that look as if they were on loan from an opera house. She sat, dressed in black, makeup carefully done, a headband slightly aglitter. In her deep voice, each syllable is granted distinctive weight.
She began writing love songs, she recalled, when she was a student at Cairo University under the tutelage of one of Egypt's most respected poets, Ahmed Rami. Her first collection was published in 1987, when, she said, the nation's poets stayed safe from arrest by scribbling verse heavy in symbolism. Her poems grew increasingly political throughout the 1990s, and her writing today is that of a street sage summoning satire and defiance to shake a mood of resignation.
"I became more aware of people's struggles," she said. "I didn't think about repercussions. I wasn't calling for war or killing. I just called people to hold to their dreams, their dignity."
Bakry does credit Mubarak for keeping the country out of war and improving infrastructure. The economy is growing and foreign investment is up in a painful push toward privatization. But these gains, she added, don't inspire a nation's soul when so much else is wrong: unemployment, inflation, religious extremism, and the embarrassing reality that nearly half of Egypt's population lives on $2 a day or less.
"We are living as if in a theatrical play," Bakry said. "All the actors have their makeup expertly on, but no one believes them. They don't speak the truth."
In her poem about fraudulent democracy, she writes:
Democracy is our ruse.
The big guys in the alley fabricated it, just to improve our image,
and to believe that we live an easy life.
Out her window, beyond the chic CityStars mall, the pyramids rise in the desert, testaments to a great, ancient civilization that has for centuries lost its way. And Bakry worries what the future will bring.
"The most uplifting trait of Egyptians is a sense of belonging," she said. "Throughout history we have felt attached to the land, the Nile, the country. But you can't keep this alive through force. It has to be felt naturally, a belief. And that is what's disappearing, our sense of belonging is diminishing."
By Jeffrey Fleishman, LA Times
Iman Bakry has risen to national prominence with her politically barbed verse about repression, corruption and poverty, appealing to the intellectual as well as the illiterate.
"I see a storm coming," begins a stanza in one of her poems.
Bakry is a media-savvy wordsmith who has risen to national prominence through television appearances and public readings. Her politically barbed verse articulates the frustrations and false dreams that have embittered a cynical public and laced the air with hints of rebellion. Opposition forces are often silenced and intimidated by the authoritarian government, but Bakry senses the anger welling.
"The explosion is already happening," she said in an interview in her Cairo apartment. "There's demonstrations, political activism, labor strikes, protests over clean water and bread shortages. All this signals the collapse of the whole society. We are walking to hell, toward a very dark future."
A former Arabic language teacher, Bakry has a curious relationship with the government she pillories. Until recently she headed the publishing department of the Egyptian Cultural Ministry. She resigned after complaining that her superiors resisted new writers and new ideas. She also sensed that some within the ruling National Democratic Party were fed up with her criticism of Mubarak's 27-year rule.
But Bakry has not been censored. She publishes and speaks when she wishes; she gets invited onto state-owned TV. And that, she said, illustrates the irritating, beguiling power of a police state that creates the veneer of democracy by tolerating a degree of freedom of expression.
Some dissident bloggers and political opponents are jailed. However, there is no reliable pattern of whom the government targets. The state allows certain artists such as Bakry, regarded by officials as passionate but harmless to national security, to write about whatever they choose, even if it causes a few politicians to wince. She skewers the state but does not directly call for unrest or overthrowing the government.
"Yes we can say it. The only problem is the regime doesn't listen to what we say," said Bakry. "The people listen to me instead of telling political jokes. My poetry allows them to vent, but as far as the government is concerned, neither I nor any other poet has much of an impact."
Nonetheless, her jabs are thrown with wily force. One of her poems, "Hello, Our Masters," attacks the ruling party's 2005 rewriting of the constitution to make it easier for Mubarak's son, Gamal, a 45-year-old businessman with no government experience, to succeed him. In the poem, Mubarak is a manipulating patriarch grooming the way for his child:
They are going to promote kindergarten students.
Heredity (succession) will become fashionable.
Call on the men and follow me to the coffee shop so we can weep and cry.
He intends to do it, he is making tactics even before he bids us farewell.
If you agree just say okay.
If you agree just say okay.
Either way, there is no way.
Shaaban Youssef, a literary critic, said he believes Bakry is the first Egyptian woman to master conversational-style political verse. "She has succeeded in widening the popularity of this type of poetry," he said. "Her poems appeal to highly sophisticated intellectuals . . . as well as to those who don't even read."
The other night, Bakry strolled into her living room, a jumble of design styles that include a stuffed fox, porcelain ballerinas, French baroque tables, a treadmill, horse statues and ruffled curtains that look as if they were on loan from an opera house. She sat, dressed in black, makeup carefully done, a headband slightly aglitter. In her deep voice, each syllable is granted distinctive weight.
She began writing love songs, she recalled, when she was a student at Cairo University under the tutelage of one of Egypt's most respected poets, Ahmed Rami. Her first collection was published in 1987, when, she said, the nation's poets stayed safe from arrest by scribbling verse heavy in symbolism. Her poems grew increasingly political throughout the 1990s, and her writing today is that of a street sage summoning satire and defiance to shake a mood of resignation.
"I became more aware of people's struggles," she said. "I didn't think about repercussions. I wasn't calling for war or killing. I just called people to hold to their dreams, their dignity."
Bakry does credit Mubarak for keeping the country out of war and improving infrastructure. The economy is growing and foreign investment is up in a painful push toward privatization. But these gains, she added, don't inspire a nation's soul when so much else is wrong: unemployment, inflation, religious extremism, and the embarrassing reality that nearly half of Egypt's population lives on $2 a day or less.
"We are living as if in a theatrical play," Bakry said. "All the actors have their makeup expertly on, but no one believes them. They don't speak the truth."
In her poem about fraudulent democracy, she writes:
Democracy is our ruse.
The big guys in the alley fabricated it, just to improve our image,
and to believe that we live an easy life.
Out her window, beyond the chic CityStars mall, the pyramids rise in the desert, testaments to a great, ancient civilization that has for centuries lost its way. And Bakry worries what the future will bring.
"The most uplifting trait of Egyptians is a sense of belonging," she said. "Throughout history we have felt attached to the land, the Nile, the country. But you can't keep this alive through force. It has to be felt naturally, a belief. And that is what's disappearing, our sense of belonging is diminishing."
By Jeffrey Fleishman, LA Times
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