Dove's Eye View

The Dove at Peace

Leila Abu-Saba, 1962-2009

 
The Dove, Leila Abu-Saba, passed away on October 8, 2008 after a five-year battle with breast cancer. She leaves behind her husband David, her young sons Joseph and Jacob, and a body of writing that challenges and inspires.
 
A memorial blog for family, friends, and colleagues of Leila Abu-Saba has been set up at:
 
http://leilaabusaba.wordpress.com
 
All are welcome to contribute remembrances.
 
Upon returning from her family home in Lebanon a year ago while living with metastatic breast cancer, Leila wrote:
 
“So please, friend, bless what you have and let go of fear for the future. Today is the only day you have got. You are breathing. Enjoy your breath. You are alive. Enjoy your life. You have a daughter and parents. Love them. Bless everybody who comes across your path. And the work? Whatever. Bless your work, too. Bless your town, your bills, your possessions. You are lucky to be here for all of it. If some of it gets taken away, well fine, something else will take its place. You are an amazing confluence of billions of variables and nobody else is having your life right this minute.
 
Enjoy! And don't worry about hope. Just breathe and appreciate your breath. Everything arises from that.”
 
Peace, dear sister Leila.

SF Chron Reviews 'The Invisible Mountain'

You've been hearing me talk about this book for years. I encountered it, and its author, my first semester in graduate school, back in 2005. Now Carolina De Robertis is winning the praises of the wider world, not only of her partisan (but critically acute!) friends.

From the SF Chronicle Sunday Book Review:

'The Invisible Mountain'.

Writing is energy, someone once reminded me. And by comparison with much writing that mumbles along, polite and bloodless, Carolina De Robertis' debut novel fairly bellows into life. A galloping saga of three generations - particularly their women - a partial chronicle of the countries of Uruguay and Argentina, and a celebration of art and language, it's a hugely ambitious work: De Robertis (who was reared abroad by Uruguayan parents, has relatives in both countries, and now lives in Oakland) has flung herself into it with no sacrifice of detail. In fact lavish, almost pointillistic detail seems to power her project. While grounded in actual history, the story commences with a squirt of magical realism, folding in generous amounts, thereafter, of Dickensian coincidence. But such is its full-tilt exuberance that a reader finds herself caught up and swept away.

Adventures of Citizen Diplomats in Syria

Three years of grass roots diplomacy: travels, encounters, research. Photos, diaries and more.

AMLN Virtual Scrapbook - Adventures of Citizen Diplomats in Syria.

Thanks to Josh Landis of Syria Comment for this link.

Lizzy Ratner seeks her history in Poland

Lizzy Ratner returned to Poland to visit the land of her ancestors. Three out of four American Jews have at least one ancestor from pre-Nazi Poland. My own children have one such ancestor, through my husband, whose mother is descended from Russian and Polish Jews.

Ratner writes of a moment in her trip:

Again and again, as I stared at the remnants of ghetto walls, I wondered, baffled, how a people that was forced to live – and die – behind walls could force another people to live – and die – behind walls?

Thank you, Lizzy Ratner. This is the heart of the matter.

And thank you to Phil Weiss and the blog Mondoweiss for hosting great writing and reporting on this painful topic.

Hillary Clinton erupts in laughter

Entirely appropriate, derisive laughter at the mention of a right wing demagogue:

Think Progress » Hillary Clinton erupts in laughter at the mention of ‘John Bolton.’.

(Secretary of State Clinton says) "It is a recognition that certain countries that I think are kind of beyond the pale the rule of law hold people and subject them to long prison terms that are absolutely unfair and unwarranted."

I agree that North Korea is beyond the rule of law. But when I point a finger I have to notice that the other four fingers point back at me. Who else holds people for long prison terms without trial? Who else acts beyond the rule of law , bombing civilians without mercy and detaining people for prison terms that are absolutely unfair and unwarranted?

Yes it's true I've been posting pretty pictures and summer updates of late. You may suspect that advanced cancer has made me retreat into a cocoon where I hum positive affirmations and prattle about The Light. Sometimes I fear that my blog stance has become that of the Good Arab: docile, conciliatory, anxious to avoid commenting on atrocity, and eager to share recipes. Never mind the murder, have some hummus!

The love light of God heals all errors and mistakes. I do affirm that. And when I see hypocrisy I still call it out.

I erupt in laughter at the mention of John Bolton too, and unfortunately I also erupt in laughter at the idea that Hilary Clinton applies the rule of law fairly to Arabs. May God heal this situation because I cannot.

Birthday 2009

Leila in madcap reds
Originally uploaded by bedouina

I hosted a Mad Hatter's tea in our garden today: colorful food, mismatched dishes, table linens and clothes. Instead of a hat I wore my wig! Idyllic weather, good times with family and friends.

I am very glad to see 47, and I am glad I'm so much better off than I was a year ago.

Click through to Flickr to see the rest of the photos, including shots of my husband, mother, brother and my children.

The menu was mostly inspired by Mark Bittman's instantly famous list of 101 simple salads.

Summer Vacation

We're having a good time hanging around Northern California, within two hours' drive of our home. River road along the levees to Sacramento, day trip to Point Reyes National Seashore, poking around Benicia State Recreation Area beach.

Point Reyes National Seashore

We also drove along the Sacramento River levee system to visit the city of Sacramento, staying on the waterfront for a night.

Keep on enjoying your summer, everybody, and stay cool and serene!

What I'm Doing This Summer

I've been silent for a while on this blog. At VONA writing workshop earlier in the summer*, I decided to focus on my novel completely, and let go of non-fiction, including the blog, for the time being.

Writer and teacher ZZ Packer encouraged me to keep this novel big. Add back all the generations and wars I'd trimmed away this spring. Because of her encouragement, and with the enthusiastic assent of Carolina De Robertis, I gathered the folders above: several years' worth of work. This picture taken three weeks ago.

Pulling through it all, sorting it out into chronological order, deleting duplications, I came up with this  folder:

And now this week I've mapped out all the places where I need to fill in narrative holes. 314 pages at the moment, with at least another 75 to write. Then the work of rewriting again.

I'm also reading: Garcia Marquez' memoir; his novel Of Love and Other Demons; Madame Bovary; Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer; Invisible Mountain by Carolina De Robertis; Burn by Black Artemis (met her at VONA, she's so cool, smart and funny. A genre fiction writer and political activist) and many more.

Less time on the internet means more time to think, read, listen and write.

Thank you to my darling cousins George (Abu-Adib) and Nabila, who call to check up on me, making sure I'm still working on the book. I certainly am! George, I'm even going to give one of the characters some Alexandre Dumas to read.

*Hey look at the VONA link! That's me in the red turban, face partially obscured! I'm sitting between two of my buddies from the first week. Tony Khalife, the Lebanese-American musician, is on my left.

Ain el Helweh Lives

New York journalist Philip Weiss  had his eyes opened about Israel's occupation of Palestine a few years ago, and now blogs events from a Jewish anti-Zionist perspective. He even went to Gaza earlier this summer to witness for himself.

Today he reports on his reaction to Sacha Baron Cohen's latest movie, and he remembers what I wrote about Ain el Helweh:

Mondoweiss: inside 'Bruno,' a glimpse of the Nakba.

Thank you, Phil, for remembering Ain el Helweh's traumas, rather than laughing along with a useless comic. Some of us never forget what Israel has done to our neighbors. As Mahmoud Darwish said, and As'ad Abu-Khalil repeats daily, "All that you have done to our people is written in notebooks."

I am honored that my digital notebook page has entered the memory of those who have never set foot in Ain el Helweh.

If you are new to this blog, please note that I own a bit of property in Ain el Helweh, inherited from my grandfather. The Lebanese government asked my family to host Palestinian refugees there during the Nakba of 1948, "for two weeks." We began receiving 12 Lebanese lira a year rent at that time, which is now less than a dollar. The land is worth a great deal more than that. The saga of our suit for compensation would make a latter-day Dickens tale of lawyers, wars, and bureaucracy.

Since I grew up visiting Ain el Helweh and even attended school on its doorstep, I have always felt that the suffering of its residents was my personal business. These people are my neighbors, however unwilling their tenancy. They deserve to be remembered. They deserve justice.

They do not deserve the derision of clueless Westerners.

Qifa Nabki Suggests: Iran coverage

Elmaz Abinader just said to me tonight that with this Iran crisis, she doesn't know who to read and who to trust. I suggested Juan Cole, but agreed with her that I am not sure of my sources here.

Qifa Nabki, international relations PhD at Harvard, Lebanon native, recommends Brian Ulrich, Arabic Media Shack, and Andrew Sullivan. Via one of those links I also found Iran in the Gulf.

Did you know that while there are 22,000 people studying Arabic at college level in the USA, there are only 300 studying Farsi (the chief language of Iran)? We are weak on Arab world experts in this country, but we are just stupid when it comes to Iran. Sigh.

Folks, if this is your first internet political uprising, remember: don't believe everything you read. Read widely from different sources. Mistrust anonymous sources. Don't let people you don't know take over your Twitter or Facebook or other social networks just to join a quiz/color your picture green/do some other thing that looks like solidarity. Maybe it's innocent; maybe it's a hacker/virus/trick; maybe it's some sort of obnoxious spying person trying to check up on you.

Also, take a deep breath and step away from the computer. You will learn all you need to know in fifteen minutes. More time than that is probably not useful. I know, easier said than done.