All posts by ljames3

Out in the Field: A Chat with Garmalia Mentor William

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“He-hello? Can you hear me?”

“Uh…yes. Are you there? Yes.”

After many hellos over the crackle of a poor connection, I come face-to-pixelated-face with Garmalia Mentor. The smiling Mentor sits in a parked car in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, as that is where her internet connection is the best.

A medical doctor graduated from the Escuela LatinoAmericana de Medicina in Cuba, with a Master’s degree in Public Administration in Emergency and Disaster Management from the Metropolitan College of New York, Garmalia has many years of schooling under her belt.

Her path has not been a linear one, and it has largely been driven by her overwhelming compassion for her community. Born and raised in Haiti, Mentor earned a scholarship to study medicine in Cuba. After six years of studying to become a doctor in a foreign language, she returned to Haiti and began working with the Ministry of Health. She remained in that post until 2010, a year when the lives of many Haitians were indelibly changed.

The earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010, causing an estimated death toll of over 200,000, was devastating. It awakened in Garmalia, a desire to change the scope of her impact. She no longer wanted to work one-on-one with individual patients, but to reach entire communities.

She now works primarily on disaster preparedness, making communities aware of seismic risk, tsunami risk, and other hazards. She places a heavy emphasis on training representatives of the civil society, from women’s organizations, to social and economic organizations, to representatives of the media. Her approach is participative and inclusive, prioritizing institutional memory and inter-generational education. She acknowledges that public health, her original field, is still poorly served in Haiti. Her calling, however, is undoubtedly in the area of disaster preparedness and community training.

Garmalia is currently serving as a representative of GeoHazards International, a nongovernmental organization that aims to be “on the ground before disasters, helping communities prepare.” They strive to reach the most vulnerable communities, and prepare them for those disasters whose damage cannot be avoided, but whose impact can be mitigated through education, preparation, and awareness.

Through her work with GeoHazards International, Garmalia has thoughtfully tailored her outreach to the communities with which she works.

“Usually, projects are not conceived or designed in Haiti. This is the only concern I have. It’s nice, thinking about [developing] countries, and helping people, but it’s hard to know the real needs of a population without knowing them, without visiting the country. But, unfortunately, this is how projects, usually, are designed. People [elsewhere] read about the needs in Haiti and they just make a proposal. Once you’re working for [this kind of] organization you’re supposed to implement this project the way it is.” Garmalia adds that the difference with GeoHazards International is that the organization allows and encourages her to work in a more effective manner. This particular NGO has given her the opportunity and resources to tailor her outreach to the communities she knows well.

Garmalia believes in adaptability and in tailoring projects as thoughtfully as possible. She thinks that this is the best approach for communities in Haiti, and she raised this concern with her supervisors. “I’m the only one based in Haiti, and I’m the only one who knows the situation…so I tried to create some flexibility before implementing the project.” [Edit to add (23-sept-2019): Since our interview, Garmalia has been joined by other staff members in Haiti.] 

There are other organizations like GeoHazards International whose work involves similar disaster preparedness instruction. Garmalia’s approach is customized for each classroom, each church, each workplace that she enters. She teaches children to go home and teach family members who would not otherwise be reached. She believes in spending the time getting to know the community in order to foster long-term growth.

Garmalia’s passion is palpable. She has pushed herself beyond her comfort zone, fueled by a desire to reach as many people as possible. She has spoken on the radio, beginning to realize her dream of reaching whole communities and creating positive change. This mission of hers is also personal. As our video-call is dropped and I ring her once more to say goodbye, I recall what Garmalia said to me about her connection to Haitian communities compared to that of her colleagues who do outreach in other countries: “I’m based here. I’m just as vulnerable as the population. I’m vulnerable too.” Sometimes, advocating for a community means immersing yourself, being in the thick of it, and creating new and sustainable ways to overcome adversity. Garmalia Mentor is a magnificent example of what you can do to leave a community better off than you found it.

I am neither African nor American

Op-Ed

I often wonder why some people find the term “African American” so comforting. Does the repeated vowel sound have alliterative appeal? Has history made people afraid to say ‘the B-word’? Is it too harsh? Jarring? Abrupt? I have encountered an alarming number of instances in which people like me have been tossed into the African American box as though we B-words were some sort of monolithic group whose members could all be referred to by the same name. People like me aren’t a uniform group. Just ask the 1 in 10 people who are too-often identified as African American when they are foreign-born. This Jamaican woman is tired of being called African American. Here’s why.

Calling someone African American is reductionist. The complex reality of the personal significance of space and place is reduced to a label that is casually thrown around by persons who do not take the time to examine the words they are using.

Please tell me, dear white journalist/survey writer/commenter/friend, what is so scary about the B-word. Historically, yes, the B-word was considered offensive in the United States. So was interracial marriage. There are people alive today who were around when “negro” surpassed “colored” as the accepted term. “Negro” was socially acceptable for a very long time—in fact, until the Black Power Movement of the 1960s. The point is that this is a complex discussion that history cannot explain away. Historical context is no excuse for a lack of precision in the language we use. If the B-word is taboo, it shouldn’t be. No one should hesitate to say it, as though it’s something unkind or forbidden. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way that we talk about the members of the incredible melting pot that is the United States of America.

Tell me why, when I fill in a demographic survey, there are still places in which the B-word is associated with that “African American” modifier. Tell me why my white friend from South Africa is less African American than I am. Consider for a moment the conflation of race, culture, historical context, and geographical location that has resulted in the absurd fact that the term “African American” is associated with skin color and not country of origin. I am sensing a double standard here.

Yes, I know, it could be argued that this is a simple question of usage or verbal habit that has nothing to do with semantics. Why does it matter what we’re called if the intent isn’t racist, bigoted, or ill-meaning? Answer: it matters because “African American” is not who I am. Even if I did have an American passport—which I don’t—what gives you the right to label me as African? What about all the uniquely Caribbean aspects of my culture that are distinct from those of my African-identifying counterparts? If your point is that my ancient ancestors came from Africa, then I have news for you: if you go far enough into the past, yours did too.

The fact of my African ancestry should not determine the term by which I am to be permanently identified. Don’t call me a negro. Don’t call me colored. Hell, you don’t even have to call me a person of color. Please, don’t call me African American. For crying out loud, just call me black.

Wo[men]: Shirin Neshat’s Foray into Film is Allegorical Genius

Movie Review: "Women Without Men"

In her first feature-length film, Women Without Men, the visual artist Shirin Neshat paints a complex picture of Iranian life in the 1950s. Based on stories by Shahrnush Parsipur, the movie follows the lives of four women who, for various reasons, are living their lives outside the status quo. Munis is almost thirty years old and refuses to get married, contrary to her controlling older brother’s wishes. Her friend Faezeh is a modest young woman who wants to marry Munis’s brother; he, however, is betrothed to someone else. Zarin is a prostitute who cannot bear to spend one more day in the brothel where she works. And Fakhri is so fed up with her marriage and emotionally neglected by her husband that she divorces him and moves out of the house. Munis, the film’s narrator, spends much of her time in the city, while the other three women meet in a safe house owned by Fakhri, where each finds her own form of refuge.

The women’s disjointed–yet somehow connected–stories are told against the backdrop of 1953 Iran. The power of Women Without Men, which began as a series of audio/video installations, does not lie in its narrative. It is a story told in moments, with the signature techniques of an installation artist visible throughout. The intensity and individuality of each scene can be appreciated as a piece of art; narrative is not prioritized. Were the scenes to be shuffled around and rearranged, not much of the story would be lost; it would almost be akin to walking the opposite way around a gallery. Like many other films in the genre of magical realism, Neshat’s creation weaves together the familiar, the uncanny, and the aesthetic, and the result is a work of art that is deeply moving. All four of the women transcend their environments and together they become an allegorical representation of the ways in which the male gaze oppresses women. And reciprocally, through each woman, we bear witness to the ways in which women fight back.

Neshat tackles the concepts of death as freedom, society’s definition of purity, the reduction of woman to her body, and the intellectual freedom of the independent woman. She invites viewers on a journey to investigate each theme through Munis, Faezeh, Zarin, and Fakhri. Remarkably, Neshat does this without succumbing to the temptation of an over-the-top, heavy-handed visual allegory.

Munis uses her death as power. Her brother cannot control her from beyond the grave, and the audience sees her resurrected with the power to participate politically and enter spaces in which she was not formerly welcome. Munis is our narrator, and through that role we see her freed from even the confines of the film, being the only character able to break the fourth wall. Munis establishes her agency when she closes the film speaking directly to the audience: “Death isn’t so hard. You only think it is… All that we wanted was to find a new form, a new way. Release.” Munis’s message–and Neshat’s–is that the concept of women’s freedom must be reframed. Munis’s independence lies not only in listening to the radio and going into male-dominated spaces; it is the power and the agency that she acquires when she takes her life, death, and resurrection into her own hands.

At the beginning of the film, Faezeh is adamant that her destiny lies in being a devout wife; her image of purity is tied closely to her virginity. When she is raped by two men from the town, she is plagued by painful memories and the knowledge that she has been irreversibly changed. It is through reclaiming her body in Fakhri’s sanctuary that she is able to transcend this suffering. Faezeh must remove herself from her everyday life in order to begin fully embracing herself, reiterating the independence and autonomy required to experience this kind of shift. Fakhri’s sanctuary gives Faezeh the space to explore herself without society pervading that exploration. Having been led there by Munis, with whom she has a profound connection, Faezeh is also an example to viewers of the power of two women working together for the betterment of their womanhood.

Zarin is the literal embodiment of the male gaze reducing woman to her body. This is especially true given the exclusively visual nature of her character: she does not speak throughout the film. Zarin’s fight takes a different form than those of the other women. In contrast to Faezeh’s life of religious modesty in which her body is constantly hidden, Zarin’s days are spent acting as an object of pleasure for paying customers. Her message is one of healing, in which she takes a journey away from the pain inflicted upon her by society, and replaces it with a kind of acceptance that she had not previously known. Zarin also represents the unity in adversity fostered by the women in the film, primarily Faezeh and Fakhri. For them, the silent Zarin provides spiritual and emotional healing. While, by the end, Zarin does not find bodily healing, we have already learned from Munis that bodily healing is not necessarily that which brings the most peace.

Fakhri makes the difficult decision to divorce her husband, who is a high ranking official in the Shah’s army. During such a politically turbulent time, Fakhri’s decision is seen as even bolder than it might have been without the surrounding social and political context. Her mystical orchard home is a safe haven for the women, and provides the physical space of escape in the film. The home is a liminal space, not connected with the politics or the societal turmoil until the very end. This space allows Fakhri to grow just as much as her counterparts. The last image we see of Fakhri is that of a woman who has finally carved out her space in a world dominated by men.

Shirin Neshat’s stark images and intense scenes largely ignore the chronological, placing much heavier emphasis on the allegorical. She powerfully highlights concepts of death, purity, physicality, and oppression in Women Without Men, inviting viewers into the art gallery that is this film. Not only does she show us the power of each woman by herself–she shows us the meaningful connections and small community that form within the confines of an oppressive society. Through each scene, Neshat paints a picture of the visceral feelings associated with witnessing the radical agency of women who do not operate according to the rules of men.

Our Own Worst Enemy

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor,

It’s not often that you laugh reading an Op-Ed on Russia, but that’s precisely what I did when I read Marc Bennetts’s Don’t Blame Journalists for Bad News Coverage on Russia, (Op-Ed July 3). Bennetts pokes fun at western media, its consumers, and its critics, while showing how the image we have of other countries gets negatively skewed with stories of natural disasters, humans rights violations, and political concerns.

Not all of the blame falls on the heads of journalists. It’s hard to produce positive stories that grip us in the same way that more grave ones do. As Bennetts puts it, there are “only so many articles that can be written on the transformation of Gorky Park.” He suggests that for a more palatable view of Russia, we turn to travel guides, but I disagree. We should be able to get this type of coverage from the media, and we can—if the public demands it. In a media environment where clicks determine revenue, responsibility for balanced coverage falls equally if not principally on viewers. Ask and you shall receive. If we really wanted to read about art exhibits in Kazan, such articles would be on the front page of the Washington Post. Yet the front page remains mostly devoted to politics.

Coverage dominated by hurricanes, war, and famine is more a reflection on our society than it is on the media. Instead of revealing a media industry that lies to us, coverage paints a picture of a society that is somehow both globalist and isolationist. The attention we pay to longer-term issues in other parts of the world lasts about as long as a news cycle. It’s we who maintain and foster the monolithic image of other cultures that is so prevalent. If we want more nuanced coverage, we have to demand it and consume it where it is available.

While there is no simple solution to this matter, the information is out there. There are publications that don’t foster the mentality that “if it bleeds it leads”, and that offer nuance and depth to their coverage of other cultures. Find them. Support them. Share them. The sustentation or destruction of the monolith is in your very capable hands.

Etching in the new Seasons of Migration

Feature Report

Sudan’s most influential printmaker, Mohammed Omar Khalil, collaborates with the Beirut-based experimental publishing house ‘Dongola’ to bring a classic postcolonial Afro-Arab novel to life.

Mohammed Omar Khalil in his Long Island studio. (PC: M. AlSayyad)

Set in a “small village at the bend of the Nile” and filled with tales of sexual conquest, passionate murders and challenges to coloniality, Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North quickly grabbed worldwide attention. It was translated into English only three years after its publication, but in Sudan, Salih’s home country, it did not make it past the censors. Despite critical acclaim, the novel was banned for thirty years due to its explicit sexual imagery. This, however, did not hinder the Arab Literary Academy from recognizing it in 2001 as “the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.”

Fifty years after its publication, in a small town south of Tangier, Morocco,  Season of Migration to the North was to become the topic of discussion between two people who would give it new life.  

“I met Sarah in Asilah and explained to her that I want to publish a book on Tayeb Salih’s novel.” recounts Mohammed Omar Khalil, the master Sudanese printmaker currently living in New York. “She responded by saying ‘No. We’ll publish it,’ and told me about her new publishing house in Lebanon. It was called Dongola.” He smiles. “I liked this name, Dongola, because it’s the name of an ancient village in Sudan. So I said yes. And here we are.”

Dongola Limited Editions is an independent experimental publishing house founded by Sarah Chalabi. It specializes in limited edition artists’ books and focuses on creating collaborations across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. These books are not about art, rather they are art.  

Season of Migration to the North flips the post-colonial narrative of the time on its head. Instead of the white European man going south to ‘liberate’ the Africans from themselves, the African man was now writing his own narrative, and he was doing so while headed north. Equipped with certain remnants of colonialism—an elite education and fluency in the occupier’s language—the main character, Mostafa Said, engages the minds of London academics and conquers the hearts and bodies of the white women who fall prey to his charm. He plays the part that is expected of him with malicious accuracy, turning his room into a “harem,” dim with incense and burnt sandalwood; a trap for the orientalist woman-victim of the week. The book has been widely regarded as a reversal, the antithesis even, of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Mostafa Said is a product of the post-colonial crisis of identity. He is powerful and yet powerless, a victim and a perpetrator—“he loved a woman that treated him like dirt.” And eventually, he lost his grasp on life. “He never left England,” Mohammed Omar Khalil explains. “He carried it with him on his back, even when he went back to Sudan.”

Khalil was born in 1936 in Bourri near Khartoum, Sudan. He immigrated to the United States in the 60s and made a home for himself in New York City. He is regarded as one of the most important contemporary Middle Eastern painters, and as a pioneer printmaker. He has influenced more than two generations of artists as a teach and mentor. His work has been featured in the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, the British Museum and the Jordanian National Museum, among others.

I visited Khalil in his Long Island studio, a vast warehouse-like space where the only place to walk is amongst piles of dusty books, CDs and large canvas paintings leaning against each other in seemingly endless rows. The ceiling is high and large windows covered in white curtains let in the sunshine, which illuminates every corner of the studio. He makes us a pot of cardamom coffee before settling into his favorite chair. His workstation is cluttered with books, etching knives, snippets of magazines and ink rollers, organized in a manner only clear to the artist himself.

Switching between English and Arabic, he recounts his own tales of migration and art. He tells me the story of the first time he took an art class in Italy, where the nude model was, in fact, naked; after the semester, she told him that he had scared her initially, “because you come from Africa.” Shifting in his chair, he explains how he wrote his letter of resignation to the faculty of Arts at the University of Khartoum after becoming fed up with administrative corruption. When he told his colleagues, they laughed. The next day, he left the country, not to return for another 27 years. Mohammed Omar Khalil distances himself from Mostafa Said, the novel’s main character, a womanizer who murders his sadistic wife with a knife during a passionate sexual encounter. “I’m not like that. […] He was horrible with women.” Khalil grimaces. But despite everything, he adds, “We all have a little bit of Mostafa Said in us…” As he chronicles his own journeys from Sudan to the US and Europe, I picture Khalil as the unnamed narrator of the novel, a voice of reason and balance, both disgusted by Mostafa Said and in admiration of him.

. . .

Season of Migration to the North is Dongola’s most recent project and will be published in a limited edition of 30 copies. Each will include an original Dongola publication of the Arabic novel designed by the acclaimed Iranian graphic designer Reza Abedini and a used English copy acquired from online retailers. Finally, each artists’ book will include a series of ten original etchings, printed, signed and numbered by Khalil himself. The project has already caught the attention of l’Institut du monde arabe, which will host a live book signing in Paris in March of this year.

Tayeb Salih’s novel was published ten years after Sudan’s independence from British rule and is widely recognized as one of the most powerful works of post-colonial Afro-Arab literature. Censored in Sudan, it was finally serialized in the Lebanese journal Hiwar in 1966. Now, more than fifty years later, it has found its way back to a publishing house in Beirut, at a time when its themes seem ever more relevant to the world we live in. Today, Beirut is going through its own identity crisis and Lebanon has witnessed season upon season of emigration and immigration. And the book? Well, the book has been touched by the magic of Mohammed Omar Khalil, joining the ranks of artists’ books that reinterpret the very notion of what it means to read a book.

Uluru

Blog Post

A rickety bus crammed full of sweaty backpackers rolls through the hot red landscape. The desert extends out flat as far as the eye can see. We ride along, each of us trying to catch the first glimpse of the spectacle we flew out here to see. A gasp escapes from a woman in the back of the bus. We all turn. A red shape emerges from the distance. Driving closer and closer along this lonely road, we look in awe as the formation pierces the flat landscape, the shape growing at each turn the bus takes. Cameras snap, but the bright blue sky against the red landscape is impossible to capture. We pull up and look out the window, it’s so much bigger than we could have ever imagined. A location dripping with history and tradition. An icon of Aboriginal culture. We step out of the bus and marvel at the gorgeous natural wonder of Uluru.

Uluru, or as it is known by its colonial name, Ayers Rock, is the largest single rock in the world. It rises 1,142 feet out of the ground, with the bulk hidden like an iceberg underground. The awe-inspiring grandeur of the natural formation is nothing compared to the magnificence of the history and culture surrounding the place. The Aboriginal people, one of the longest-continuing cultures on earth, and the traditional owners of the land we now call Australia, have used this rock for communal ceremonies and food and water collection for tens of thousands of years. Before we even begin walking around the rock we sit down and our tour guide tells us about the sacred nature of the place. She tells us about how we are embarking on a journey around this location laced with culture. But, she says, we are not allowed to learn all of its stories.

Unlike their counterparts in many Western cultures, the Aboriginal people pass on knowledge through oral tradition. To ensure that the wrong stories are not passed on to future generations, the lessons of the land are kept only by respected elders of the communities. The Aboriginal community limited our tour guide, a white woman, to the knowledge that a child in the community would be given – enough to survive and appreciate the culture – but nothing more. The community allows her to pass on only certain stories to our group, leaving us mystified and eager to learn what we could.

As we begin walking around Uluru, we are struck, not only by the beauty of the striking red rock before us, but by every additional morsel of knowledge our guide can offer us. She tells us about traditional ceremonies, stories of creation, and weaves tales of the gods and spirits of the land into our journey. Though we are denied deeper knowledge, we quickly come to understand the significance of this place. She asks us not to take photographs at certain religious sites and to be silent at pools of water. We respect the culture of the traditional owners of the land enough to do so. We continue our walk, listening and learning with reverence.

As we conclude our journey, we are appalled to see a blatant act of disrespect for Aboriginal culture before our eyes: people hiking up the side of Uluru. When the British colonists discovered this sacred space hundreds of years ago, they decided this it must be climbed and conquered, and not long after that they began to promote massive tourism to the outback by advertising Ayers Rock climbs. In the 1960s a handrail was added, which made the ascent more accessible but only increased the level of disregard towards the traditional owners of the land. Today, despite the efforts of the Aboriginal people and the giant signs at the base detailing the reasons not to hike on this sacred space, many tourists still climb the rock. Our group looks on, horrified at the contempt people show for this long standing culture. Although it may seem like only a rock, this site is a sacred one and deserves to be treated with respect by all visitors. One surely does not need to know much about the Aboriginal people to realize it is not acceptable to walk past the huge signs urging visitors to refrain from climbing the rock – we certainly didn’t.

When we pile back into our bus, the mood has shifted. No longer are we looking out the dusty windows at a grand rock seemingly dropped in the middle of a boundless desert. We see a different place. We see a sacred space, entwined with stories and secrets and the lifeblood of a people. But we also see a scar. A scar left by years of footprints eroding away the face of the rock, and by decades of profaning the space through these continued colonialistic actions. As the bus drives further and further away, the cameras still snap – an attempt to somehow capture one last look at the rock in all its might. But this time what they have trouble capturing isn’t the red land or the blue sky. It’s this feeling, a mix of awe at the magnificence and sadness at the defacement – an understanding of a place we can never truly understand.