Dove's Eye View

My Father the Arab Feminist

Just now on the radio (Fresh Air with Terry Gross) I heard a snippet of an American woman's story about her custody battle with her Arab ex-husband.

I'm certain that there is more to Deborah Kanafani's memoir than "I unveil the terrible way Arab men treat women" but boy, that's sure what I heard driving down the road. Maybe it's all true - for her.

But I wonder if my own story, about my feminist Arab father, would ever get a book deal or air time on NPR. It's not about scary Arab men oppressing their women and children, you see. There's no conflict, no villain, and it doesn't fit the story that sells books in America.

My father was a feminist before he came to America. He was strongly influenced by the new ideas roiling the Arab world in the nineteen-fifties: nationalism, yes, and socialism, and democracy, and the rights of women. He was determined to modernize his country, his people, and he believed that making women equal members of society was part of that. In his personal life, he tried to get his parents to keep his youngest sister in school. Later, he paid for his orphaned niece to go to a very good private school, giving her English skills which helped her support her family during the upheavals of the civil war.

When he went to America for graduate school and met my American mother, Dad found that some of his ideas were too forward for the USA in 1959. He didn't think women had to get married before having sex, for instance. My mother disagreed. Since he respected her - and all women - he didn't force his ideas upon her.

When they married, he encouraged her to start graduate school right away. She did, but decided she really wanted to have babies. So she had me, and very soon after began teaching part time. Fine with Dad. Mom always taught and did other work throughout my childhood. Then after my younger brother and I began school, she went back to grad school for her masters degree and then Ph.D.

This was the 1960s. Some of my readers don't know what America was like in the 1960s. It wasn't all hippies and Gloria Steinem. The college professors in my parents' circle (all men, with wives who mostly stayed at home and didn't work) were rather traditional fellows. My dad ruffled a lot of feathers among his colleagues, because he insisted on doing laundry, caring for us kids, and cooking meals. One of his friends got very offended when my dad bragged too much about washing his socks, and how he (Dad) washed his socks by hand and made them last a really long time. (My dad was eccentric about being thrifty) The friend told my dad that he was causing problems in the friend's marriage, because HIS wife was wondering why she had to do all the laundry?

When my mother got her Ph.D. my dad completely supported her in her career goals. We were always clear in our house that my parents made all decisions together, that they each earned money and contributed to the family finances, and that they were autonomous people who worked together in partnership as well.

Much later, in the 1990s, my mother got a teaching position at the American University of Beirut, and my dad retired from his job earlier than he had planned. He went to Beirut with her and basically kept house so she could do a very demanding job. He cooked and dealt with the daily details of life. His egalitarianism persisted - they were living in an apartment hotel, with daily maid service, but my father insisted on doing the dishes himself, before the maids could come in. He didn't want the maids cleaning after him.

As a young girl growing up, I was told that I should study and go to college and have a good career. In fact, when I did badly in algebra in 8th grade, my father got upset, because he said girls in Lebanon didn't have the same chances I did. He helped me with my homework, natch, but he also let me know that it was really important to him that I do well. He tried to be supportive of me, even when I careened about being a slacker American bohemian. Later in life, when I settled down and began putting together a more normal, grown-up career, my father encouraged me. He was so happy when I went to grad school (at age 42). He believed everybody deserves a second chance - and a third chance too.

Oh yes, and when my cousin N, a girl, wanted to come to America to study, even though she wasn't married or even engaged, my father welcomed her. N's father, my beloved, departed uncle Adib, was also enlightened, and sent N to us to get her college education. Most other fathers in our village would not do the same. The war in Lebanon had made it too dangerous for her to commute to Beirut to university, so he took the risk of sending her across the world. N became a successful computer engineer, and later married a great guy. Now her daughter is a recent college graduate with a terrific job in corporate America, climbing the ladder. This is normal now, but thirty years ago it was new, for Americans as well as Lebanese. We have to give credit to men like my Dad, who adapted with the times, and encouraged their wives and daughters to succeed.

There are more stories I could tell, but they're all positive, about what a mensch Dad was, how much women loved him, how he loved women, how he was a big hit in the lesbian community in North Carolina where they lived for years, how he loved and respected my mother. Oh yes, and how he told all the Lebanese male immigrants why they ought to help their wives with the housework, and support them in developing their own careers. It got through, to some of them, more or less.

That's it. That was my dad, the Arab feminist. The picture shows him on my 44th birthday, just after he received the diagnosis of the lung cancer which killed him two months later; he stands behind the tabbouli he insisted on making to celebrate my day.

Do you think Terry Gross will put me on Fresh Air with a story like that? Probably not. There's no story there, the editors would say. Just some guy doing the right thing by his women, a little ahead of his time. Plus he's an Arab. Who wants to know about feminist Arab men? Doesn't sell papers.

Maybe

There once was a farmer in the mountains of Lebanon, long long ago, who had a small family, a plot of land, and the usual domestic animals. One night the farmer's only horse got out of its corral and ran away, making it impossible for the farmer to plow.

"Oh no, what a catastrophe," said the neighbors.

"Maybe," said the farmer.

After a week the horse returned, bringing with him five wild horses he had befriended in the mountains. All of a sudden the farmer had not one, but half a dozen horses. "Mabruk," the neighbors said, "you are rich now."

"Maybe," said the farmer.

The farmer's only son, a handsome, clever boy, tried to tame the prettiest of the wild horses. She threw him and he broke his leg. The whole village came to commiserate. "Ya haram, your son broke his leg, what a disaster."

"Maybe," said the farmer.

Then the Turks came through the village, looking for conscripts for their army. (This was a very long time ago.) They took all the strongest, most clever shebab of the village, but when they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg, they let him stay home. The other boys went marching off to the Caliph's army, never to be seen again. While the villagers wept and wailed, the farmer's wife said to him:

"What good luck for us, we have our son."

And still, the farmer's only answer was, "Maybe."

My health. Lebanon's problems. Oil prices. Drought. Natural disasters. Problems? Maybe.

Meanwhile, although I said I wouldn't read the news on the internet, I still read these blogs for Lebanese information:

Rami Zurayk at Land and People - reporting on the ground in Beirut, from a humane observer who rejects sectarian prejudice.
Syria Comment - Professor Joshua Landis and friends, including an active community of commenters from around the Levant.
Colonel Patrick Lang - US military intelligence officer, retired.
Juan Cole - historian, Arabist and professor.
Siestke in Beirut - another reporter and resident on the ground.
Lebanese Chess. New to me; I like his analysis; Lebanese based in Australia.

Prayers, not Blogs

I keep saying that following politics on the internet is bad for my liver. I keep saying I'm going to swear off the internet, blog less, and focus on healing.

The events of the last two days in Lebanon convince me that now is the time for the Dove to shut up. I am going to pray, for myself, my relatives, my father's compatriots, my own compatriots, the salmon run in California, the people of Palestine, Iraq and Egypt, Myanmar and Darfur. I pray for the rainforest and the oceans, the polar ice caps and the polar bears, the honey bees, the mountain snows, the wheat crop, CO2 levels and the restoration of harmony on the planet.

I have nothing more to say for the moment on the subject of Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, America, Iraq, Iran or anywhere else. May God help us all.

Today was a good day in chemotherapy. I laughed and talked with another young woman who has metastatic breast cancer, as I do. Her son is three, my two are six and eight. We have everything to live for and we intend to survive. Afterward I ate at my favorite Middle East deli, King of Falafil on Divisadero Street; the proprietress is from Ramallah and gave me some green almonds to taste; I promised her I'd get her fresh grape leaves from my secret Oakland source. Then I came home and saw the news.

Only God can heal me of what I have got, and only God or Ultimate Life Force or Universal Intelligence can heal the people of the eastern Mediterranean; only God could knock some sense into George Bush/Dick Cheney/Condi Rice. So I'm signing off and giving it all up to God. (The Great Mystery/Ultimate Unknown/The Tao/Your Favorite Big Prime Mover Term here)

Pray for me. Pray for all of us.

And don't forget to plant a food garden, use your bicycle, turn off the lights and conserve water.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I remember when New York City began mandatory recycling of paper and cans. Nobody thought New Yorkers would ever cooperate, but within a few months everybody was bagging or tying up newspapers and setting them at the curb. Those of us who used to set out redeemable cans for the homeless to collect now put them in recycling bins. It seemed miraculous that citizens could change their behavior so quickly.

San Francisco diverts 70% of its trash from the landfill, but wants to do even better: A City Committed to Recycling Is Ready for More - New York Times.

Jared Blumenfeld, the director of the city’s environmental programs, addressed one of the main reasons the city keeps up the pressure to recycle. “The No. 1 export for the West Coast of the United States is scrap paper,” Mr. Blumenfeld said, explaining that the paper is sent to China and returns as packaging that holds the sneakers, electronics and toys sold in big-box stores.

It's sad that a once-great industrial power now exports mostly scrap and raw materials. To save the planet we all need to reduce what we consume so that we reduce what we trash (and reduce our carbon emissions). But I admire Gavin Newsom for fighting this good fight.

Here in Oakland we recycle paper, glass, plastic and kitchen scraps. The county subsidizes expensive back-yard compost bins for those of us who want to make our own mulch; we also have green bins for yard wastes, kitchen scraps and paper contaminated with food (i.e. pizza boxes and cardboard egg cartons).

In my father's hometown, Sidon, Lebanon, the municipal garbage dump keeps falling into the Mediterranean; it's a long-running, slow-motion environmental crisis. Naples has a similar, horrific garbage problem, and the press is full of reports of massive electronic waste dumps in Africa and South Asia. Being rich is a sickness that causes ill-health to the sea, the soil, the climate, and ultimately to ourselves. Fish, insects and birds are part of an interconnected web of life that supports our own life; we cannot survive long in a monoculture. We need all manner of bugs and life forms we don't even know. Garbage pollutes the world that is supposed to sustain us.

Mundane and stinky, garbage is still important. We can't just "throw it away" and forget about it. We have to confront our garbage if we want to survive as a species.

In Syrian Villages, the Language of Jesus Lives

My dad often spoke of this: In Syrian Villages, the Language of Jesus Lives - New York Times.

When he was growing up in Lebanon, my father's church still used Aramaic in the liturgy, so he knew some psalms and prayers in that language. He was very proud of his connection to that ancient world and spoke often of those villages in Syria where they still used Aramaic.

The article strikes certain sour Orientalist notes - "a vestige of an older and more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of Islam" - excuse me, the Middle East has continued to be diverse throughout 1300 years of Islam, so get over yourself. And the little explanation about a man named John Francis "western names are common in Syria and Lebanon." Oh please. Where do you think the names John and Francis come from anyway? Read your Bible, mister. The guy who gave you his name probably goes by Hanna Francis but he said John, the English form of Hanna, for your benefit.

Lebanon News from The New York Times

The most interesting thing about the linked page to follow is that it features that Blogrunner feed I mentioned last week. Whenever I post something with a Lebanon tag, it shows up here: Lebanon News - Breaking World Lebanon News - The New York Times.

At the moment it's showing my grandmother's bulghur and tomatoes recipe. ???

Frankly, the page is quite static except for the blog feed, so I don't see the point in checking it regularly. But I'm just showing off. The NY Times Lebanon page features Dove's Eye View! Wow, all I had to do to get published regularly in the New York Times was blog for four years.

And by the way, I did indeed write this post in my pajamas and bathrobe. But I set it to publish after my bedtime, so it looks like a fresh item for April 22, when Beirut is just waking up. Good morning, Beirut!

Sitteh's Recipe: Bulghur with Tomatoes

My cousin N visited me for a long weekend, and busied herself in my kitchen making lentil soup, fresh yogurt, and bulghur with tomatoes. Strangely, nobody ever made the bulghur dish for me during my many long visits to Lebanon, and my father didn't cook it. N says it was a favorite of our grandmother and I should call it Sitteh's Bulghur with Tomatoes.

My husband is trying to low-carb his diet again but he can't resist this dish. He was eating the leftovers this morning...

1 cup medium grind bulghur wheat, rinsed in cold water to remove dust/chaff
1 28 oz. can tomatoes, whole or cut, in juice or puree - your choice
1 onion, chopped
olive oil
1/2 cup water
salt and pepper

Saute chopped onion in a couple of tablespoons olive oil until translucent and softened. Add bulghur wheat, tomatoes, and water. Cover the pot, turn down the heat to simmer, and cook for fifteen to twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. If it gets too dry and might burn, add water, a little at a time. When bulghur is tender, salt and pepper to taste, then serve.

This may be eaten hot, warm or cold. Lebanese like fresh green pepper, green onion, and cucumber as accompaniments. During the summer you would of course use fresh, peeled and chopped tomatoes.

Variations: Green pepper might do nicely sauteed with the onion; add various herbs of your choice near the end of the cooking time; add a handful or more of chickpeas to make a substantial dish featuring complete proteins. This is essentially a bulghur pilaf with lots of tomato, so be creative and experiment.

Update: This restaurant in NY features bulghur with tomatoes as a side dish. Look at the bottom right side of page 2.

Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor

There it is: Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor - Yahoo! News.

Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to "live as a neighbor next door in peace."

But Carter warned that there would not be peace if Israel and the U.S. continue to shut out Hamas and its main backer, Syria.

The Democratic former president relayed the message in a speech in Jerusalem after meeting last week with top Hamas leaders in Syria. It capped a nine-day visit to the Mideast aimed at breaking the deadlock between Israel and Hamas militants who rule the Gaza Strip.

"They (Hamas) said that they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, if approved by Palestinians and that they would accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace," Carter said.

The buzz on the internet and from my cousins with Lebanese army connections: war, war, war.

Carter's visit shows that peace is always possible. No war could solve any real problem this summer. We need sane leaders to pull the bloodthirsty back from the brink.

Update: The New York Times elaborates.

Also, regarding war, war and more war, see Joshua Landis at Syria Comment. He reprints a long analysis of the prospects for war, but Josh himself states at the outset that he thinks it won't come to that. Too costly, too little benefit to anybody. My hopeful self believes that cooler heads will prevail.

From Siestke: Old Pictures of Lebanon

Go to Sietske's blog to see Old Pictures of Lebanon; be sure and click through the links to Kheireddine's photo blog thread, and browse as much of the thread as possible. There are incredible treasures in there, including photos from the 50s, 60s and 70s. I particularly like the picture of the Beirut tram.

Sietske also posted photos and a story about Lebanese motorcyclists driving Harley Davidsons through Sinai. My husband, cousin and I agree that the guy in the topmost photo looks incredibly like my brother, if my brother rode a motorcycle. (He's an avid mountain biker instead).

Yes, her Sinai motorcycle post, featuring an encounter with some Israeli motorcyclists, seems to have been inspired by my story about the Israeli locksmith in my driveway. Such is the world of the blogosphere - people read each other, think of things to say in response, and link back and forth.

Sietske is a Dutch journalist married to a Lebanese who has lived in Lebanon since the end of the civil war (i.e. nearly two decades). Browse her blog - she's got plenty of interesting stories, and her photos and written snapshots of daily life in Beirut are distinctive, concise and full of telling detail.

Forgiveness: Cluster Bombs and Cancer

Chemotherapy is not my only approach to healing from metastatic breast cancer. My doctor, a top research oncologist (her first name is Hope - always stick with an oncologist named Hope), says her drugs cannot cure what I have got, only treat it; yet I know that in the ultimate reality, nothing is incurable and all things are possible. Even Dr. Hope says that sometimes tumors just disappear and she doesn't know why. So I use many alternative approaches as a complement to the Western medicines I receive.

Practicing forgiveness is one technique that gives me physical and emotional comfort. Just last week I was meditating on forgiving Charles Krauthammer. Go look him up if you want to know why he needs forgiveness. I imagined him as a crippled man who believes that he is hated, and suffers from physical and emotional pain. I focused on his face in my mind, and sent love and compassion to him as if I were thinking with love of my own brother or cousin; in a moment my liver relaxed. The congestion and hardness in my abdomen eased. I have no idea if this meditation will help Charles Krauthammer, but it sure helped me.

I also work with a professor of holistic medicine who is expert in biofeedback, physiology, and visualization techniques. Cancer patients who visualize their own healing have better outcomes - there is good data to show this, and major cancer hospitals in the USA and Europe now offer visualizing and guided meditation classes to their patients. The classic example is: imagine your white blood cells are sharks devouring the helpless, weakened cancer cells. That sort of thing.

Last week a kind of poem or rant came to me as I was meditating:

Cluster bombs
innumerable tiny lesions upon the flesh of my Mother
waiting to explode, maim, destroy
inextricably seeded into the structure of the earth.
Hail falls and cluster bombs explode.
The soil is sprinkled with death.

The earth is my Mother
her body is mine
her streams my bloodstream.
My liver is seeded with innumerable tiny microlesions
cluster bombs of cancer
too many to clear
waiting to explode.

The million cluster bombs Israel dropped upon the soil of South Lebanon in August 2006 continue to detonate, killing Lebanese shepherds, farmers and children. I find it difficult to forgive this. I can let go of the horrors of July-August 2006. The destruction of the war is done, and Lebanese are rebuilding. But the continuing destruction of cluster bombs, the toxicity of so many dropped upon the earth, and the ecological disaster to the land of Lebanon, seem like an unforgivable wound.

The connection between the cluster bomb infestation of Lebanese land and the diffuse metastasis in my liver felt right to me - symbolically right; emotionally right. Exactly one year after my father's death from cancer in September 2006, I was diagnosed with this diffuse metastasis, and I have long believed that the personal loss and the larger anguish and rage of the '06 war contributed to the illness.

If I imagine that my liver is seeded with cluster bombs, that perhaps this honeycomb of lesions might have an emotional connection to my fear, despair and rage at the bombs riddling the land of Lebanon, then what do I do now? I talked with the visualization doctor about it.

You could imagine the UN peacekeeping forces clearing the sites, he said. They have ways of locating the bombs and raking them up.

I need to forgive, I said. I can do that visualization, but I really need to forgive the people who did it, and that is so very hard.

You can think about the good side of these persons, he said. Very few people in the world are totally nasty characters. There are some. But most people have some good in them, somewhere. The evil they commit is situational, part of a larger system that is evil. Think about the good in those people.

Well okay. I knew I could probably do that. I have met Israelis and count a few as friends. I got up from the consultation chair, went out the door where my dear cousin N was waiting for me, and went home.

When we pulled into our driveway and parked, a young man with an Israeli accent called to me. "Could you move the car, because we can't get into the other one." My husband had summoned an emergency locksmith while I was away to replace the ignition on our second car; he had chosen a company at random out of the phone book. I moved the car, got out, and saw this young, handsome guy with dark eyes, pale long face and long nose, brown hair pulled into a ponytail, carrying an electric drill. Next to him was a friend, this one with a smaller face and head and short nose, dark olive skin, cute. The friend looked like an Arab, but the guy with the drill looked like a central casting Jesus, an Orthodox icon of the sixth century, a hippie Jewish guy who might be an Oberlin College student.

"Listen to that lovely accent," I said to cousin N, loud enough so they could hear. "I think we have some cousins visiting us."

"Cousins, are you Jewish?" Long haired locksmith asked. I felt utterly light and happy.

"We are cousins and neighbors but we are not Jewish," I answered, merrily. He ducked into our car and started messing with the ignition. We talked about the ignition, and I teased his friend for wearing body armor. It was this black plastic vest with a long spine like vertebrae down the back, worn over his shirt and under his jacket; the frontispiece actually said "Body Armor."

"Oakland isn't THAT dangerous," I told him. The friend got very earnest and explained he wore it to ride his motorcycle, and that it was only bulletproof in the back.

"She's making a joke," locksmith said to his buddy, who looked at me with concern. These young men and their gear, I thought. Both guys wore earpiece cel phones.

I quit kibbitzing and went inside, but I felt such affection for these two fellows fixing my car. They were shebab, young energetic men running around Oakland practicing their trade. Usually we only refer to Arab young men as shebab, but these Israeli guys were clearly shebab. I told my husband and cousin N that I am just predisposed to like Middle Eastern shebab. They make me happy. I don't know why. I have no idea if they understood that despite my teasing I actually felt affection for them. I felt a similar rush of affection and pleasure last year upon meeting a group of California cousins from my village - they were so energetic and handsome and full of life that I said "you guys make me proud to be Lebanese." But the Israeli locksmiths are no tribesmen of mine, so my good feeling about them is not clan solidarity. I laughed at myself.

My husband said if I could admire shebab in the driveway, he could admire "shebabas", and I informed him that the correct term was sabayah. If he wants to admire sabayah from afar that's fine with me. We all had a big laugh about it.

That night I realized that the Great Mystery had sent me some Israelis to forgive, to like, to appreciate. No cluster bombs came between us. What a coincidence that they appeared an hour after my doctor suggested I think of the good side of the Israelis I resent. Whatever their histories, their tribal affiliation, I got to experience human goodwill for these two guys. None of our history mattered in the California sunshine. They were fixing my ignition, and I was appreciating them for being clever, alive young men. The good in them was absolutely apparent.

I can't stop the horrors in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq. I can't make my president see reason, nor can I change the minds of the many people in the world who suffer from hatred and bigotry. But to save my own life, to relieve the torment in my own liver, I can forgive, I can feel good will, exactly where I am, with whomever shows up.

May the peace I feel ripple out like the circles around a stone dropped into a pond, may it affect somebody else, somewhere.

PS last week when my nurse checked my abdomen, her eyes got wide. "Where is your liver? What have you been doing?" The liver is measurably smaller (by three centimeters) and much softer - just in two weeks' time. I told her I'd begun acupuncture; but I didn't mention all this new meditation and visualizing I've been up to. "Whatever you're doing, keep it up," she said.