Dove's Eye View

New Novel: The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

Mohja Kahf's debut novel is out: The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.

From the RAWI website:

Mohja Kahf has just published the novel John Updike should have read before writing Terrorist. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf is now available from Carroll and Graf. Featuring exuberant characters, with narrative nods to Sandra Cisneros, Willa Cather, Alex Haley, Allegra Goodman, and other influences, this novel gives you Muslim Americans as you've never seen them before (the kind you sure won't find in Updike's latest)-three-dimensional, likeable, infuriating, funny, real. It's a novel about friendships, racism, prayer, and life in hopelessly flat Indiana, which anyone would need faith to survive. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race finale.

Buy it! Read it!

Improving My Arabic

I've been idly wishing I could improve my command of written as well as spoken Arabic for some time now. Idly because I'm not doing much about it. I'm in grad school for creative writing (in English), there's not room in the program for me to take Arabic, and to study it on my own while doing everything else and raising two children seems like too much.

Last year I bought this book on impulse. It's pretty dry stuff. I would look at it, get cross-eyed over the grammar, and put it down.

(Arabic esoterica begins) The page I linked to, about the hamza and the chairs for hamza, makes almost no sense to me. And yet when I read the examples I know that I understand these rules. I can read off the words as written, eliding properly (when the little marks are indicated - and I don't remember the names of the marks, either, without consulting the manual). Well how do I know if I'm doing it properly -there's that! But I am not flummoxed by the actual Arabic rendition of this confusing rule about the hamza.

I think the only rule in the book that I understand has to do with Sun and Moon letters. But there are many more that I sort of "get" intuitively. Okay, end of Arabic esoterica.

So to continue the story. I bought this book last year, didn't do much with it. Then my father died suddenly, leaving thousands of poems behind, many of them in Arabic - hand written or typed on his computer. I can barely read any of them.

I'm writing a novel about a young American-Lebanese woman returning to Lebanon after the end of the civil war. I'm reading the work of Arab writers in translation. I keep up with the news from Lebanon and the Levant. My life is more immersed in the Arab world than at any time since I lived in Egypt in the early 80s.

Poisoning Our Future

The Dove cannot bear to post more happy talk in the face of this: Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon.

From the Independent (UK), Robert Fisk reporting:

We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.

But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.

How about this report from ABC newson possible uranium bombs used against Palestinians?

The Dove doesn't make categorical statements like "I will never..."

But she certainly understands why Lebanese say they will never, ever forgive Israel for the war of 2006.

Forgiveness of such devastation can only come after the wounds have healed, and how long will it take to heal the sea, the soil, the air, when they have been befouled by petroleum and radioactive metals?

We need justice, truth, dialogue and reconciliation now.

Israel: Can you really believe that in this tiny planet, you can pollute and destroy the waters and soil of your neighbors without harming yourselves?

Poisoning your neighbors will never bring you peace or security. You are poisoning the future of your own children as well as ours.

Rabih Alameddine, Where Are You?

Dear Mr. Alameddine:

I met you two years ago in San Francisco at Lynn Freed's reading for her book "Curse of the Appropriate Man." I was delighted to run into you, but little did I know how elusive you are!

The Radius of Arab Writers, Inc. (RAWI) is putting together a poster featuring Arab-American writers. They really, really want to put you on it! They are reduced to asking me, a very small fish, for your contact info. I don't have it.

If you post here in comments, your email address won't be revealed, but I will get your message to my email. Or you could google Khaled Mattawa and email him at the University of Michigan - he is very anxious to hear from you.

Any Lebanese bloggers reading this who know Mr. Alameddine, please help us out!

Everybody else: Read I, the Divine! It is made of all first chapters. It's gorgeous and mesmerizing and structurally unusual, but not inaccessible. Really worth your time.

Mills College Three for Three

Daniel Alarcon, visiting scholar and teacher at Mills College, has a short story in the New Yorker this week.

Add that to the Whiting awards given to Yiyun Lee and Micheline Aharonian Marcom, and my writing program just scored three for three. Daniel Alarcon shouldn't be feeling left out of the awards department, since he got a Whiting Award two years ago...

For my Lebanese readers - you really ought to read all three of these authors. Miss Marcom's second novel, Daydreaming Boy, is set in Beirut from the 1920s to the 1980s, and follows the life of an Armenian orphan boy who grows up to be a very troubled man. Her prose is lyrical and moving. Mr. Alarcon, author of War by Candlelight, writes with passion of city life in Peru - you'll love his energy. Miss Lee's characters in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers move between modern day China and America, negotiating the strange passages of the immigrant and those left behind in a rapidly evolving world. All of these books will resonate for Lebanese and other Arab world readers.

Personal note: Miss Lee is my adviser this year. Mr. Alarcon has kindly agreed to read my thesis, which will be under the direction of Miss Marcom. I am one lucky graduate student...

Whiting Writers’ Awards Announced

Two of my teachers won: Whiting Writers’ Awards Announced - New York Times.

Yiyun Li, a native of China whose collection of short stories, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” was published by Random House last year; Micheline Aharonian Marcom, who was born in Saudi Arabia and now teaches at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and whose most recent novel is “The Daydreaming Boy,” published by Riverhead;

They are both inspiring teachers as well as fabulous writers. I'm really lucky to have dropped into Mills while they're here.

The San Francisco Chronicle did a lovely write-up, with much more detail and pictures, as well as information on the third Bay Area writer who won.

Congratulations to Yiyun and Micheline.

Resolution for a Just Peace in the Middle East

New Yorkers, here is a petition to Hilary Clinton on resolving the impasse in Israel/Palestine: Resolution for a Just Peace in the Middle East Petition.

My friends in the Arab-Jewish dialogue group of the East Bay (California) originally developed this letter by consensus and presented it to Senator Dianne Feinstein. A group of six, including a Holocaust survivor and several displaced Palestinians, went to Senator Feinstein's San Francisco office to meet with her aide and discuss the letter at length.

Inspired by this example, more likeminded people in New York decided to do the same, this time addressing Senator Hilary Clinton. They have also set up an online petition so as to gather more signatures. Read the letter below, with a call to action after the jump.

Dear Senator Clinton,

We are citizens of New York who are joined by our concerns about the ongoing violence in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, and the window of opportunity for establishing grounds for a lasting peace. For your consideration, we present a plea for peace in the Middle East.

The signers of this letter include men and women of diverse backgrounds: Jews, Muslims, Christians, grandparents and parents, writers, teachers, healers and a wide range of professions. Some have been uprooted. All shed tears with those who live in fear and poverty and grieve at the death of loved ones.

Both Arabs and Jews have experienced the horrors of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and massive social deprivation. We feel strongly that this is the time to assert our common humanity.

The recent violence in Lebanon and Israel, and the ongoing violence in Gaza, makes it clearer than ever that there is no military solution to the conflict and that all parties must enter into dialogue. As a Senator who has earned the respect of the Senate, you are well-placed to endorse our plea for peace.

Homelands: The Dove in Print

Look for Homelands: a Seal Press Anthology coming in December 2006. The Dove has an essay in it, alongside Etel Adnan, Lisa Suhair Majaj, and many other terrific women writers.

Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time, edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera and featuring a Foreword by Edwidge Danticat, will be published by Seal Press in late December 2006.

In this lyrical collection of poignant essays, women writers explore the complexities of immigration, war, exile, and diaspora as they seek to redefine and reclaim the meaning of homeland. Whether home is an actual geographic place, a self-defined community, a cultural heritage, or a wavering memory, Homelands reveals a truth that is known by all who have wandered from their roots: “Homeland” is far more than just a physical space. In giving voice to these different experiences of home, the women in this collection conjure up nostalgia and illuminate the triumph of the human spirit.

Table of Contents here.

We'll be doing readings all over so watch this space for more news.

Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus

The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Muhammad Yunus, an economist from Bangladesh: Peace Prize to Pioneer of Loans to Poor No Bank Would Touch. From the NY Times.

A Bangladeshi economist, Muhammad Yunus, and the bank he founded 30 years ago won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for pioneering work in giving tiny loans to millions of poor people no commercial bank would touch — destitute widows and abandoned wives, landless laborers and rickshaw drivers, sweepers and beggars.

The Nobel Committee praised Mr. Yunus, 66, and the Grameen Bank for making microcredit, as the loans are called, a practical solution to combating rural poverty in Bangladesh and inspiring similar schemes across the developing world.

“Microcredit has proved to be an important liberating force in societies where women in particular have to struggle against repressive social and economic conditions,” the committee said in announcing the prize.

Reader Alison tipped me off to Professor Yunus and the Grameen Bank way back in 2004, sparking this post.

I'm glad for a bit of good news...

Don't Move to Canada

Because Bill Scher has written a book: Wait! Don't Move to Canada: 10 Steps to a Liberal America.

I am going to buy this book, since it's exactly what this website is all about. I want action items. I want to work on the solution, not kibitz about the problems. I want to read visions for what we want, not endless exposes of the endless crimes of the clowns in power. (Don't get me wrong, I think it's important to expose their crimes with as much carefully documented proof as possible - I want to see them in the dock at the Hague. But I want a positive vision to act upon).

You may want to read the blog Bill Scher runs, Liberal Oasis. They have been so kind as to link to me over the years.

Also, Faithful Progressive blog, which reviewed the book, looks really interesting.