All posts by lwills

Mediating Narratives in the Somali Diaspora

Interview

On a busy Wednesday morning, I found myself in an unoccupied office in the Wellesley College History department.  While the room was somewhat bare of furniture, it was filled with the energy of the woman sitting across from me. Ubah Cristina Ali Farah is a Somali-Italian writer whose work explores the experiences of Somalis living in the diaspora.  She was born in Italy and grew up in the Somali capital Moghadishu before returning to Italy after the outbreak of civil war in Somalia.  Since her return to Europe, Ali Farah has published two novels and a number of short stories and poems.  I talked to her about her work, why she writes the stories she does and some of the challenges she encountered.

Dual identity is at the center of Ali Farah’s work.  Her Italian mother and Somali father met while he was studying in Italy.  Ali Farah grew up in Somalia but was educated in Italian and later moved back to Italy.  Somalia essentially functioned as an Italian colony from the end of the nineteenth century up until the early sixties.  Every facet of her books, written primarily in Italian, emphasizes the complex relationship between colonizer and colonized. She explains that while she learned about the history and literature of Italy while in school in Moghadishu, she learned little about Somalia.  Somalia was also absent from the Italian history books.  She tells me that “Italy has a big problem with the colonial memory, people don’t usually know what happened in Somalia, that Somalia is connected with Italy.”  As a result, she hopes that her work will help pioneer an expansion of post-colonial literature in Italy. She tells me that because she does not have an accent when speaking Italian, people often forget that she is Somali, that she “has another story.”   By writing in Italian, she is able to integrate the stories of Somalis living in the diaspora and of Somali-Italians like herself into Italian post-colonial discourse.

While she feels that she has a responsibility to tell these stories, Ali Farah explains that it is not always easy, both because of the personal nature of the narratives and difficulty of their content. I asked her why she chooses to write fiction rather than memoir because her stories, especially her first novel Madre Piccola (Little Mother), are so close to her own experience.  She explains that “fiction is a better mediation of the violence because you can distance yourself” and that “if you write a memoir, I think that people can feel that is just something that has to do with you, you represent yourself more as a victim or as a testimony.” Because she writes fiction, Ali Farah is able to incorporate experiences other than her own.    When writing both of her novels, she did many interviews with Somalis and, in the case of her second novel, Africans of the diaspora living in Italy.  She tells me that some people thought she had collected too many stories to really incorporate into a novel.  She tells me that the purpose these interviews was not just to help her write her book, that it was a way of creating space for people to tell their stories.  In fact, “it was a way of healing themselves and also to try to reconnect themselves, to make a sense of what had happened before, of our collective stories.”  In this way her writing both amplifies the experiences of others and helps them to move through those experiences.

Ali Farah’s first novel, Madre Piccola follows the stories of three Somalis who escape to Rome after the outbreak of the civil war.  The ongoing Somali civil war began in 1991 when armed rebel groups toppled the existing government.  The violence that ensued resulted in the displacement of over one million people within Somalia and caused almost as many to flee the country.  In Madre Piccola, Ali Farah explores the experience of those who chose to leave Somalia.  She tries to answer the question of “how you can redefine yourself, how you can feel out your identity, how can you feel comfortable in a new place when you have lost all your points of reference, your family, your friends, and so on.  And for me the answer was through relationships.  And so you try to root down yourself in a new country in a new place, telling your story to others, trying to make other people understand what is your point of view what is your story.”  However, as she found in her own experience, getting others to understand your experience is not always straight forward.  She tells me that when talking to others who are not Somali (including myself), “I need to mediate my story, to make a compromise to make it understandable to you.” To achieve this, Ali Farah uses not only content, but also structure.  According to her, Madre Piccola uses “interlocking voices” to show “how the diaspora works, how memory works, and how it’s not always in a chronological order, in a coherent way.”   In her second novel, Il comandante del fiume (Commander of the River), she explores how the diaspora is experienced by second generation Somali-Italians. She says that with this book “the question I was asking myself was about what we translate to the second generation about the trauma we lived.”  With this latest story, she is thinking about the experience that her children are living, growing up in the diaspora.  This book is another example of how Ali Farah is able to mediate both her own experience and the experiences of others so that they can be understood by a wider audience.

It is clear to me after our conversation that Ali Farah’s work serves a dual purpose. It both helps those with a shared experience to process their trauma and helps others to better understand these experiences.  After thanking her and parting ways, I reflected on our discussion.  Having outlined the challenges of telling one’s story to people of different backgrounds, it was clear to me from our conversation that Ali Farah was a master at exactly this.

Dangerous Discourse

Op-Ed

“We’re gonna win bigly, believe me!”

One of the characteristics that sets President Trump apart from his predecessors is his style of speech.  His speech lacks the professionalism and thoughtfulness that we have come to expect from a president, and it is easy to criticize him for what some might consider poor grammar.  To do so, however, is to overlook the real problem, which is how Donald Trump chooses his words.  As a prominent figure in the media, he and the rest of the Trump administration have a significant impact on not only what issues are talked about, but how.  The media, as well as other politicians, should not replicate the discourses that he legitimizes and creates through his speech, because they are harmful even when not supported by action.  When contrasted with the last administration, it is clear that Trump’s words are causing a shift in different discourses. These shifts, which are further propagated by the media, range from subtle differences in word choice to outright differences in opinion.

An example of a more subtle shift is in the way Trump talks about stereotypes of different groups.  Throughout his tenure, President Obama’s refused to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” This refusal stems not from his doubt in the motivations of certain groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda, but from the recognition of his influence on the discourse surrounding terrorism.  In an effort to avoid reinforcing stereotypes of Muslims, he refrained from using the term.  On the other hand, President Trump uses the term freely, likely with the opposite intentions of his predecessor.  Because they are in such public positions, both Obama and Trump influence the ways in which the general public talks about this topic.   Trump’s rhetoric influences how people understand the relationship between terrorism and Islam.  By conflating Muslims with terrorists, Trump legitimizes harmful actions against Muslims.  This was reflected in the spike in Islamophobic crime in the US after his election. Trump’s harmful language extends far beyond this particular example.  His categorization of Mexican immigrants as rapists or references to black neighborhoods as hotspots for crime and violence only reinforce harmful stereotypes.  In this case, media outlets, politicians, and other prominent figures should take a leaf out of Obama’s book and do their best to call out Trump for these comments and mitigate this kind of language in their own work.  Otherwise, they are simply contributing to harmful discourses which in turn can put people in danger.

Another, perhaps more obvious, difference between Trump and his predecessors is the way he talks about news and the media.  Throughout his campaign he regularly denounced the press as an “enemy of the people.”  In a press conference in February, the president used the term “fake news” to refer to both news outlets and the content they were reporting.  Rather than denying the claims of reporters or addressing their concerns, Trump has chosen to attack the institution of the press itself in an unprecedented way.  This new discourse surrounding the media that Donald Trump has created is dangerous because it removes a barrier to unchecked power.  Although many who do not support Trump’s presidency will ignore his attacks on the press, his comments give supporters the go-ahead to ignore criticisms from reputable sources.   While it seems there is little the press can do without being banned from the White House press room, there are others who can speak out against Trump on this matter.  Republicans in Congress, other local politicians, and conservative media outlets who have sway with Trump’s voter base (but don’t depend on him for their jobs) should speak out against Trump’s attacks on the press.  While they may support his actions now, passively accepting Trump’s views on the press will limit their power should they have any reason to criticize him.  They, too, could be lumped in with reporters of “fake news.”  By adding new, non-liberal voices to the discussion, they can shift the discourse on the media away from Trump’s flippant dismissal.

Prominent voices, be they reporters, politicians, or celebrities, need to be thoughtful when discussing and broadcasting Trump’s words and ideas. When analyzing the President’s speech, it is important to pay attention to the ways in which he is changing the discourse on certain topics, not just the ideas themselves.  The biggest problem with Trump’s language is not “bigly” or “yuge,” but how he uses his words to exert influence in a way which is manipulative and dangerous.

In Response to “Syria Explained”

Letter to the editor

In the wake of chemical attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the resulting missile attacks by the United States, articles and videos attempting to explain the complex Syrian Civil War have surfaced on social media.  Most of these sources identify the beginning of the crisis in Syria as the popular protests in Deraa. They then work their way through the emergence of ISIS, the overt military intervention of Russia, and conclude with the most recent chemical attacks.  In the process, many reduce the war to a religious conflict or to its three main players (ISIS, Assad, and the rebels).  Though these articles can be helpful in gleaning a basic understanding of the war and its origins, the vast majority fail to include a significant factor in the initial uprisings: climate change. The year 2006 marked the beginning of a severe drought in Syria (a result of climate change) which led to increased levels of poverty and internal displacement.  As people from the country moved into increasingly crowded cities, water shortages became common.  More than two million Syrians plunged into extreme poverty as a result of the drought and many were quick to criticize a regime which did little to alleviate the situation.  When the Arab Spring swept over the region in 2011, the country was already primed for protest.  In addition to the political, social, and religious aspects of the conflict, we must also acknowledge the environmental problems which are embedded in the ongoing humanitarian crisis and its cause. While establishing political stability is crucial to the short-term easing of violence, long-term solutions must address the problems stemming from a lack of natural resources such as water and arable land.

Seeking Sanctuary

Film Review: "Women without Men" (2009)

The 2009 magical realism film Women Without Men, directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, follows the lives of four Iranian women during the 1950s.  Set in Tehran, the events of the film take place against the background of the coup which toppled the democratically elected regime.  Through the stories of these women, the film shows the many challenges associated with being an Iranian woman and the difficulties in escaping them.  Women Without Men presents four women imprisoned in their circumstances, depicting their attempts to free themselves and ultimately their failure to do so.

The first woman, Munis, lives with her controlling brother who hopes to marry her off soon.  Munis, however, is engaged in the political happenings of the time and resentful of her brother’s desires. She describes herself as a prisoner in her brother’s house.  We are next introduced to Faezeh, a friend of Munis who appears to be in love with Munis’s brother.  Faezeh looks forward to marrying and disapproves of her friend’s political inclinations. In contrast to Munis and Faezeh’s domestic setting, the third woman, Zarin, lives and works at a brothel.  While she does not speak, the defeated look and expression of discomfort on her face suggests that she too is trapped in her circumstances.  After a surreal sequence in which one of Zarin’s customers appears faceless to her, she flees the brothel.  The scene shifts and we are introduced to Fakhri, an older, well-off woman.  Although she is married, she becomes entranced by an old friend recently returned to Iran from the United States.  Later, in their home, Fakhri tells her husband that she wants out of their marriage and calls for a divorce.

At this point in the film, all four women and the prisons they are trapped in have been introduced.  Munis is stuck in a future dictated by her brother, Zarin is haunted by men, and Fakhri is stuck in an unhappy marriage.  Faezeh’s prison is less obvious.  Her self-imposed goal of marrying Munis’s brother limits the way she sees herself and her self-worth. We watch as these women attempt to escape their prisons

Fakhri escapes Tehran in the literal sense, purchasing a large, walled orchard and house outside of the city. After leaving the brothel, Zarin finds herself well outside of Tehran.  She follows a small stream, eventually reaching Fakhri’s orchard. Fakhri later discovers Zarin, motionless, floating in the water outside of the house. The caretaker of the orchard carries her inside.  Eventually Zarin awakens and begins to recover.

Munis takes the most extreme action to escape her circumstances, jumping from a rooftop. Faezeh finds her in the street, apparently dead.   Her brother buries her in the yard. Sometime later at the wedding of Munis’s brother, Faezeh is in the yard and hears Munis’s voice coming from the ground.  She digs at the dirt and finds Munis, still alive.  Rather than reveal her resurrection to her brother, Munis immediately makes her way to a nearby café to sit and hear the latest political news, never to return to her brother’s house.  Faezeh hesitantly follows her.  In the café, Munis meets a young man who is a member of the communist party.  For Munis, this moment marks the beginning of her emancipation from her brother’s control.  For the rest of the film she is an active member of the party, fighting against the American-backed coup.

For Faezeh, however, visiting the café marks the peak of her struggle.  While Munis goes inside, Faezeh hangs around outside the café.  After noticing two men watching her, she rushes away, only to be followed by them.  Later, Munis finds her crying on a doorstep; it is apparent that she has been raped. Faezeh is engulfed by shame and faced with the reality that she will have a difficult time finding a husband because she is no longer a virgin.   Munis and Faezeh leave the city and find themselves at Fakhri’s orchard. It is not clear why Munis knows of this place or why she brings her friend there. It is here Faezeh is left to free herself from her shame and accept herself.

Despite political upheaval in Tehran, Faezeh, Fakhri, and Zarin are free to do as they wish in the sanctuary of the orchard.  For a time, it seems that all of the women have escaped their prisons to the safety of the lush green gardens.  However, as the film ends it becomes clear that this is not the case.  Zarin, upon recognizing the caretaker as the faceless customer, falls ill, eventually dying.  Faezeh and Fakhri are unable to save her. Fakhri’s oasis is further invaded when soldiers arrive, apparently looking for enemies of the Shah.  The soldiers are only appeased when they learn that Fakhri is the wife of an important general, once again reducing her to the role she was attempting to escape.  Faezeh is surprised when Munis’s brother arrives at the party and proposes.  Although she had once hoped to marry him, she refuses his advances, knowing that as a second wife she would not truly have the marriage she wanted.   She too is unable to escape the attention of men even though it was once desirable to her.

Munis’s fate is no better than that of the other three women.  After the successful coup d’état, Munis and the other communist party members are hunted by the police. Having lost her means for political expression, her escape too has failed.  In the final scene, we see Munis once again standing on a rooftop.  Her voice narrates, explaining that “[she] thought, the only freedom from pain is to be free from the world.”  She then jumps to her death.

The mystery of the orchard- its isolated location, how any of the women knew of its existence, and its ambiguous size- only serves to highlight its importance as a space for women.  While we know very little about its background, we do know that the orchard serves as a sanctuary for the three women.  In this way, the filmmakers create a literal safe space for women which they then ultimately break down by introducing men to the setting.  This deliberate destruction of a female space emphasizes the inescapability of the prisons built for women in a patriarchal society. Munis, in contrast to the other three, does not seek asylum in the orchard.  Her narrative instead shows that breaking into a men’s space (the realm of politics) also does not guarantee freedom from a woman’s prison.  Through the lens of these women’s lives, the film successfully speaks to the unavoidability of oppression in many forms for women in Iran.

This pessimistic message does not suggest that women can never be free of their oppressors but that they cannot do so within today’s society.  It is not enough for women to defy their oppressors: for the status of women to change, the patriarchy must be fully dismantled.  Otherwise, Fakhri, Munis, Faezeh, and Zarin will always be a wife, a sister, a tainted woman, and an object of sexual pleasure. In this way, the filmmakers successfully underscore the need for societal change.  While the film is set in Iran, Women Without Men can appeal to an international audience because its message is relevant in any patriarchal society.

While the its message is evident, the filmmakers fail to clarify many of the film’s details.  The elements of magical realism in the film, like Zarin’s faceless customer and Munis’s resurrection, go unexplained. It is unclear to the viewer how these aspects relate to the film’s overarching themes.  This ambiguity leaves the viewer confused, as though they missed something important, making the film less enjoyable to watch.  While Women Without Men succeeds in telling the poignant stories of four Iranian women, it leaves the viewer a bit lost at times.

Form and Meaning

Feature article
"It is Happening There," By Khaled Al-Saai
Khaled’s painting “It is Happening There”
Source: http://www.kunstverein-grafschaft-bentheim.de/195.html?&L=1

The painting projected on the screen in front of me is overwhelming and chaotic.  I try to pick out the Arabic letters and words. They are all tangled together, written in different sizes and rotated to every angle making it impossible to read most of the words. The piece, called “It is Happening There,” is Khaled Al-Saai’s most recent painting.   He explains that it represented his response to the evolving conflict in his home country, Syria.  I sit there feeling somewhat defeated, assuming most of the meaning of the piece was lost on me.

This was the first day of the Arabic calligraphy class I took with Khaled at Wellesley last spring. This lecture, given by Khaled himself, was my introduction to both the artist himself and his work. He insisted we call him by his first name, a request that reflected his modesty in spite of being a world-famous artist. Although I had never taken an art class in college, at that point I had been studying Arabic for almost three years, so I figured I was reasonably prepared for what was in store for me.  However, the complexity and precision of Khaled’s piece was immediately intimidating and swept away any confidence I had had when I walked in.  Khaled presented his work, then had us spend the remainder of the four-hour class drawing the most basic letter, alif, over and over again.  When written, an alif is a simple vertical line, not unlike a lowercase L. I had always thought of calligraphy as a more complicated and highly-stylized kind of writing, so I had hoped that my frequently-complimented Arabic handwriting skills would reduce the learning curve I faced in the class. However, from day one Khaled made it clear to us that “calligraphy is not the same as writing.”  I struggled to understand what he meant by this.  Even though I had written a thousand alifs in my Arabic homework, my exercises looked like a child’s drawing when compared to Khaled’s work. Calligraphy seemed insurmountably difficult to understand, let alone create.

In Islam, the depiction of living beings is prohibited.  As a result, calligraphy has become the dominant art form in the Islamic tradition. Calligraphy varies in style by region and context: for example, the Taj Mahal in Agra is decorated with verses from the Quran written in Thuluth script, while the walls of al-Azhar mosque in Cairo are lined with Kufic.  More contemporary Arabic calligraphy like Khaled’s combines these traditional styles with a more modern use of color and shape. In our class, Khaled teaches the basics of several types of script, with a focus on the Sunbuli style (Sunbuli takes its name from the Arabic word for a kernel of wheat, sunbul.) Khaled explains that the basic leaf-like shape of the style echoes that of the wheat, a shape incorporated into every other letter in the alphabet. Considering that Arabic calligraphy is composed entirely of letters and that I had such trouble mastering the most basic one, I had little hope for my artistic prospects.

A few weeks into the semester, Khaled gave a public lecture about his work.  The audience in the library conference room was a mixture of his students and community members from the town of Wellesley.  The lecture was not unlike the presentation we had received on the first day of class.  He gave a brief overview of the history and different styles of Arabic Calligraphy before showing a sample of his own work, ending with “It is Happening There”.  At the end, there was time for questions.  One woman introduced herself as a resident of the town and commented, “I can’t read any Arabic; to me this is just shapes.  It’s beautiful but is there some kind of meaning that I am missing?” Khaled paused for a moment and responded, “In some ways I think that you have an advantage.  My students get caught up in trying to read the words and they forget to see the bigger picture.”  He continued, “In this piece I wanted to convey the chaos and the confusion of war and of trying to understand it from afar.  Do you see that?” The woman said she did and the audience echoed her response with nods of agreement.  Khaled explained that, yes, the words did have meaning but understanding them only added nuance to the bigger ideas.  In the case of “It is Happening There,“ many of the words are the names of towns and cities in Syria, under siege or overrun by violence. However, it is by no means necessary to grasp this detail in order to see the big picture of the piece.

It became clear to me that Khaled’s painting transcended the meanings of the words with which it was created.  Arabic calligraphy is not so much writing as it is painting.  Khaled’s work especially depends less on the literal meaning of the words and more on the overall movement and color of the piece to convey meaning.  This style makes his art accessible to people with little knowledge of its background.

That lecture took place a year ago. Today, in the context of increases in Islamophobia and misconceptions about the Middle East, sharing this kind of art is even more important.  Exposing the American public to Middle Eastern culture in a context other than the news helps to break down existing assumptions and stereotypes. Although there is more depth to be explored by reading into the meaning of the letters and words, grasping the emotion of Khaled’s calligraphy requires no more than an open mind.

The Sound of Silence

Blog Post

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.  I say shukran to my teacher and make my way out of the old International Studies building at the University of Jordan.  As I cross the parking lot, the call to prayer,  Athan, begins.  Allahu Akhbar.  God is Greatest.  I walk past chatting students, up the street, and through the north gate of the university.   Allahu Akhbar.  As more mosques take up the call to prayer and the cacophony of Athan grows, the noise of people and cars begins to decay.  Ash-hadu an-la ilaha illa allah.  I acknowledge that there is no god but Allah. I cross the street and the words fade into the background when the glass door of my go-to café closes behind me.  Lubna is sitting in the far corner, cigarette in hand, wearing a pink hijab in contrast to her long navy jilbaab.

Amman is a monochromatic city, the skyline blending together with the sky in tones of gray and dust.  The unremarkable square buildings stack on top of each other like building blocks that don’t fit together quite right, creating a rough but homogeneous texture.  For a city with so much uniformity, there never seems to be any method to the madness.  The roads wind up and around steep hills with no apparent logic.

I order an espresso and walk over to the couch where Lubna is sitting.  I wait patiently as she finishes whatever animated conversation she is in the middle of before getting up to hug me.  Lubna and I are both twenty years old and in our third year of college.  She studies Russian Literature at the University of Jordan.  She greets me with “What’s up, idiot?” before we launch into our standard afternoon backgammon marathon.  She is cheerful, animated, and strong-willed.  As we play, Lubna is always doing two things: smoking and talking.  We don’t discuss our personal lives much, although Lubna tells anyone who will listen about her hot Spanish girlfriend. Sometimes our conversation is about American politics or about the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Whatever the topic, I rarely have strong opinions but Lubna always does.  She regularly catches me off guard, somehow managing to be both in touch and out of touch in the same moment.  One instant she is calling out a Jordanian classmate for using the n-word and in the next she dismisses the United States’ Supreme Court decisions as a hoax.  Lubna juxtaposes a level of socio-cultural awareness many of my American peers lack with a fundamental misunderstanding of governmental legitimacy in the United States.

Amman is a new city in an old place.  The land it sits on has been intermittently settled since 7250 BC.  However, the sprawling city there today is nascent in comparison.  Since the 1930’s, Amman’s population has exploded from 10,000 to 4 million.  The ruins of an ancient citadel sit high on one of Amman’s many hills, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city which has sprung up around it; a testament to the city’s long history and recent growth.

By our fifth game, my espresso is long gone and there are four cigarette butts in the ashtray at Lubna’s elbow.  We reluctantly agree that it is time to go and make our way across the street and through the north gate, following our footsteps from yesterday.  Our conversation continues, this time Lubna offering her thoughts on the United States: “It sucks.” Her opinion stems mainly from disapproval of US support of Israel. Not two sentences later she tells me that she wants to move to America after graduation because it is the best place ever.  Although I am confused, I don’t question Lubna.  Her strong conviction on both matters tells me that she sees no need to reconcile these judgments.

Amman is monotonous and unpredictable, ancient and contemporary.  At first glance, the city itself seems to be a nexus of contradiction. From my point of view, Lubna is no different. Somehow, she manages to occupy both ends of every extreme at once, no matter the topic.  When I first met her I was confounded by how she might reconcile her opinions and ideas.  The longer I knew her, the better I came to understand that these convictions were not contradictions but coexisting pieces of the whole.

We walk through the University as the sun sets.  Allahu Akhbar. The call to prayer rings out.  Allahu Akhbar. We finally fall silent as we listen to the sound of hundreds of mosques, the calls overlapping, out of sync.  Ash-hadu an-la ilaha illa allah. The noise of the street dies down, and it strikes me that this is a sound that brings silence. Lubna and I reach the main gate, say a quiet goodbye, and part ways.