Avuncular American

Valentino's Ghost: Hollywood & TV Imagine Arabs

You have to be dedicated, or perhaps suffering jet lag, to get up to watch Michael Singh's excellent documentary at 08:00 on a Sunday morning.  The time was a function of the setting: this was the annual conference of MESA, the Middle East Studies Association, and Valentino's Ghost was making a debut showing.

It's all good fun, at least at the outset.  Rudolf Valentino dashing off to conquer some blond.  Rudy was good for several sequels, that stallion-mounted Sheik of Hollywood imagination.

Singh proceeds from silent film to talkies, so we then have lots of Beau Geste French Foreign Legion desert shots, this time of Bad Arabs being mown down by heroic white Legionnaires, usually in defense of those same damsels that Valentino made swoon a decade or so before.  But it's all oldies, and good fun.

Then we have the more complex portrayal of Arabs in David Lean's classic Lawrence of Arabia.  Hard to fault this almost perfect film, though the focus of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks is mostly on T.E. Lawrence, the great white hope of the hopelessly "little people, silly people" as the British officer calls the disputatious Arabs.

It was still possible in the 1962 film to portray Arabs as noble (think Omar Sharif).  A decade later, after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, and the images in film and on video are almost entirely negative.  And it's this image which still informs - if one can use such a term - most coverage, both fictional and news, of the Arab world.  From Bullfrog Films, the distributor:

Valentino's Ghost takes viewers on a chronological journey through more than a century of images of Muslims, Arabs and Islam in the U.S. media, from the early 20th-century fantasies of romantic sheiks to today's damaging stereotypes as evil fanatics. Through interviews with Robert Fisk, Niall Ferguson, and John Mearsheimer amongst others, the film shows the way in which the changing image of Arabs and Muslims has mirrored America's political agenda in the Middle East.

But chronology would be boring, and so Singh gives us themes.  "The Arab as Indian" (as in Cowboys & Indians), the Arab as devious cheater, etc.  All the stuff of what any other ethnic or religious group would have long ago succeeded in banning from Hollywood.

Michael Singh has apparently made his film with PBS in mind.  Such an important subject does deserve an audience beyond specialist Middle East studies showings.  He feels that it is urgent:

Even our educated American colleagues appreciate orientation on the subject, partly because our subject has never been shown on television: PBS has broadcast films examining media images of Blacks, Jews and Asians, but not Arabs or Muslims. We contend that this lack of knowledge has contributed to widespread ignorance, stereotyping, fear and hatred of those of Middle Eastern heritage or the Muslim faith, including American citizens, and has also bolstered public support for a long line of fictions about the Middle East.

Last year, in India Abroad, Singh voiced doubts that PBS would go through with his film:

One PBS executive has told me personally that he will do everything he can to prevent the film's broadcast.  He has not even seen the film, but realizes that the politics as discussed in the film, especially about our relationship with Israel, is like nitroglycerin.  I think PBS is afraid of angering audiences who, unlike network audiences, directly donate money that is critical for PBS's survival.

If that is the case, then maybe you too will have to wait until some classroom near you shows it... at 8:00 in the morning.  Not-ready-for-prime-time, the US-Israel relationship and the skewing it does to American views of Arabs?

Gerald Loftus

Sheep Tales

The Knife Sharpener of Tangier

This being the eve of the Aïd, the culmination of the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca, knives are being sharpened all over the Muslim world, in preparation for the sacrifice of millions of sheep.  BBC has a nice explanation of the feast.  We wish our Muslim friends

عيـــد مبــــارك سعيــــــد

And now, we indulge in some of the sights and sounds of Tangier...

- - - - - - - - - -

Knives everywhere.  Not just the usual pocket ones, which you can pick up off a blanket from a sidewalk salesman.  But big ones, including meat cleavers.  Drawn by the sound of the whirling stone, which sends its sparks flying, my wife takes advantage of the guy who's set up shop on our corner and now our kitchen knives are sharper than ever before.

Sheep, and the bleating of sheep, everywhere.  Sheep on roofs.  Sheep tethered on the medina streets.  Hay for sheep.  Sheep dung.  Soon, the day of the Silencing of the Sheep.  Those knives...

A friend, living in the suburbs, wants to have materials delivered for a home improvement project.  Sorry, all the three-wheeled mini-vans have been commandeered for sheep transport.

Beware of hydatid disease, where humans can contract tapeworms from eating the offal of infected sheep.

With our NGO partner FTAM (la Fondation Tanger al-Medina), we distribute Aïd trash bags to the women of TALIM's medina literacy program, courtesy of Amendis, the water company.  The message: throw the huge quantities of sheep waste from the do-it-yourself slaughterhouses into the bags, and not into the storm drains.

However, those nice yellow plastic bags are also great for storing things...

Neighbor Mark comes back from the massive outdoor sheep market, having just bought a goat for a deserving family.

Same outdoor market frequented by Mohammed, who finds that the laws of supply and demand, plus the onset of heavy rains, have brought the price of sheep back up.  Rains mean fresh grass, so sheep farmers can afford to keep those sheep for another season rather their lower their prices.

People who bought their sheep two days ago, before the rains, got great deals.  This is important, when the price of some sheep is the equivalent of a month's pay.  For those who cannot afford the price of a sheep, the response can sometimes be tragic.

I once witnessed the sacrifice of a goat, and partook of the meat hours later.  The meat was a mite too fresh for my palate.

Is there a vegetarian option?  Consult VegetarianMuslim.org.

What can you do with leftovers?  Suggestions from Bangladesh.

For Americans who complain about the cost of a turkey, be happy that you only have to eat turkey sandwiches for a few days, and that the bird does not set you back a month's salary.  I haven't heard of anyone getting into debt to pay for Thanksgiving, but some Moroccan observers are asking, "Must you get a loan to buy a sheep?"

Food for thought.  In the meantime, wishing everyone the best for the Aïd.

وكـل عـام وأنتـم بخيــر

Gerald Loftus

La mosquée - Daoud Aoulad-Syad

We've seen films-within-films before, usually films about making films.  La mosquée, a little gem featured at the 2011 Moroccan National Film Festival, is different.  It's a sort of "post-production" film: what happens after the film crew leaves a small Moroccan village?

From the director, Daoud Aoulad-Syad, at last November's Damascus International Film Festival:

For the filming of my last movie "Waiting for Pasolini", sets were built on land leased from local villagers.  Among the sets, a mosque was built on the land of Moha, a villager who also appears in the movie.  At the end of filming, the filming team leaves the village.  Villagers demolish all the sets, except the mosque. This mosque became a real place of prayer for the whole village.  For Moha this is a real disaster.

Poor Moha, salt of the earth farmer.  He just wants his land back, and it seems that he's the only one around who realizes that the "mosque" is just a prop, literally propped up from behind like any cardboard Western might create an instant church, saloon, or hotel.

Even the "imam" is fake, but he sees opportunity everywhere: Moha should just get with the plan.  This film has everything: local official who has the power to make Moha's life hell; sleazy political candidate who's not above buying your vote with a goat; authentic imam in jeans, who says "the djellabah does not make the imam."

Physics professor at Rabat University, the director looks a bit like a Moroccan Bob Marley, and plays himself at the outset.  This is a "comedy," but the laughs are all subdued, and not without a melancholy tinge.  I will eagerly await Prof. Aoulad-Syad's next offering.

Aoulad-Syad, interviewed on Radio Médi1, said that the Moroccan National Film Festival's selection of 19 shorts and 19 feature films is out of an annual Moroccan production of some 100 films.  A very respectable Moroccan showing indeed.

The organizers, the CCM - Centre Cinématographique Marocain - couldn't have chosen a better venue.  Tangier's Cinémathèque, a popular cultural attraction in its own right, in the historic Cinéma Rif, has a year-round repertoire of current, classic, and documentary films.  The National Film Festival, in its 12th year, keeps coming back to Tangier.

The turnout, on this rainy, cold Sunday afternoon in January, is testimony to the CCM's - and the Cinémathèque's - quality offerings.  It also helped that entry was absolutely free!

This first appeared on TALIMblog.

La mosquée at Tangier's Moroccan National Film Festival

We've seen films-within-films before, usually films about making films.  La mosquée, a little gem featured at the 2011 Moroccan National Film Festival, is different.  It's a sort of "post-production" film: what happens after the film crew leaves a small Moroccan village?

From the director, Daoud Aoulad-Syad, at last November's Damascus International Film Festival:

For the filming of my last movie "Waiting for Pasolini", sets were built on land leased from local villagers.  Among the sets, a mosque was built on the land of Moha, a villager who also appears in the movie.  At the end of filming, the filming team leaves the village.  Villagers demolish all the sets, except the mosque. This mosque became a real place of prayer for the whole village.  For Moha this is a real disaster.

Poor Moha, salt of the earth farmer.  He just wants his land back, and it seems that he's the only one around who realizes that the "mosque" is just a prop, literally propped up from behind like any cardboard Western might create an instant church, saloon, or hotel.

Even the new village "imam" is fake, seeing opportunity everywhere: Moha should just get with the plan.  This film has everything: local official who has the power to make Moha's life hell; sleazy political candidate who's not above buying your vote with a goat; and an authentic imam in jeans, who says "the djellabah does not make the imam."

Physics professor at Rabat University, the director looks a bit like a Moroccan Bob Marley, and plays himself at the outset.  This is a "comedy," but the laughs are all subdued, and not without a melancholy tinge.  I will eagerly await Prof. Aoulad-Syad's next offering.

Aoulad-Syad, interviewed on Radio Médi1, said that the Moroccan National Film Festival's selection of 19 shorts and 19 feature films is out of an annual Moroccan production of some 100 films.  A very respectable Moroccan showing indeed.

The organizers, the CCM - Centre Cinématographique Marocain - couldn't have chosen a better venue.  Tangier's Cinémathèque, a popular cultural attraction in its own right, in the historic Cinéma Rif, has a year-round repertoire of current, classic, and documentary films.  The National Film Festival, in its 12th year, keeps coming back to Tangier.

The turnout, on this rainy, cold Sunday afternoon in January, is testimony to the CCM's - and the Cinémathèque's - quality offerings.  It also helped that entry was absolutely free!

Gerald Loftus

Tu Bishvat in Tangier

From Wikipedia:

Tu Bishvat (Hebrew: ט״ו בשבט‎) is a minor Jewish holiday, usually occurring in late January or early February, that marks the "New Year of the Trees." Tu Bishvat is one of four "New Years" mentioned in the Mishnah. Customs include planting trees and eating dried fruits and nuts. In Israel, the flowering of the almond tree, which grows wild around the country, coincides with Tu Bishvat.

Reminds me a little of the Egyptian spring holiday Sham ennissim ("Sniff the breeze"), which comes a bit later in spring.  Does this mean that Tu Bishvat is the holiday of optimists, ushering in spring in mid-January?

Thanks to American Sephardic scholar (Brandeis University) and musician Vanessa Paloma (check out her blog for videos of performances), we were invited last night to a celebration of Tu Bishvat at the home of a member of Tangier's Jewish community.  Though the food and company were much appreciated, it was Vanessa's solo performance, voice and medieval harp, which was the real treat.

These songs from the diaspora, harking back to the days of Andalusian Spain, before Jews and Muslims (as well as converts to Christianity), were summarily expelled, are a pleasure even for those who don't speak Spanish, Ladino, or its northern Moroccan version called Haketia.  They can be highly evocative of longing and loss, but yesterday's selection was roundly joyous, mostly songs of love and marriage.  Appropriate to the Tu Bishvat theme of spring, of renewal.

To people who cherish the sight of Jews, Muslims, and Christians sitting around and having a good time, last night was an even greater treat.  Perhaps reminisicent of the best days of Andalusia, renowned for its tolerance and cultural flowering.

Tangier is a place where this kind of easygoing mingling is still possible.  So to all those who celebrate "the New Year of the Trees," happy Tu Bishvat!

Gerald Loftus

Of Gods and Men and Algeria

Des Hommes et des Dieux

Though this film portrays terrorism and its victims, this is not another "post 9/11 film."  In fact, the events it portrays transpired between 1993 and 1996, and had nothing to do with America, George W. Bush, or Iraq.  The victims were French, and the perpetrators Algerian.  But which Algerians?  One of the film's characters even gets to utter the question raised by countless Algerians and outside observers, "Qui tue qui?" (Who is killing who?).

Image: Why Not Productions

For the monks of Tibhirine, that question may never really be answered with certainty.  What is certain, however, is that Xavier Beauvois has given us a unique film - the Cannes 2010 Jury Grand Prize winner.  A film that is very difficult to categorize, neither a "thriller" nor just a film about monks or terrorists. That said, it has plenty of suspense, even if pretty much everyone knows of the eventual fate of the monks.

Our time spent with the monks gives us a sense of their world, before Algeria's decade-plus of bloodshed intervened to change their pastoral idyll forever.  It is the portrayal of the monks' lives, and their anguish over the violence taking over their adopted country, which is so powerfully rendered in Des Hommes et des Dieux.  The spectator is transported to Algeria in the mid-Nineties, and the sigh that a monk utters over the sheer beauty of the landscape of the high steppes and forested hills is something that one can almost feel.  And the sense of impending loss.

Beauvois has given us a beautiful film, and the casting is perfect.  Lambert Wilson as Brother Christian, the Prior of the monastery, has an ascetic intellectual steel behind wire-rimmed glasses beloved of French priests.  He resents the intrusion of the warring factions on the monks' work, though his decision to stick it out in the isolated mountains causes him constant anguish.  Olivier Rabourdin as Christophe is riven with doubt, and closeups of his eyes replace any need for extraneous dialogue.  Brother Luc, played by an avuncular Michel Lonsdale, has seen it all - literally.  During Algeria's war of liberation in the Fifties, Luc was taken prisoner by the FLN, only to be released when they realized that Dr. Luc Dochier was treating Algerians - both FLN fighters and civilians.

Despite the difficulty of treating such a subject, Olivier Beauvois gives us a very subtle film, one that hints at the ambiguities of the record.  The monks recoil at the violence perpetrated by both sides, and their stubborn insistence at staying with the villagers who depend on them for employment, for medical treatment, and for intelligent conversation becomes an annoyance to the combatants.

A hovering helicopter gives a premonition of the fate that may have befallen the monks, the loud, whirling blades audible as they pray in their chapel.  Is it Army protection, or something else?  In 2009, former French military attaché in Algiers General François Buchwalter testified that the monks were in fact killed in a botched attack on what the Army took to be an Islamist group.

Of Gods and Men is an ode to a group of incredibly brave men, beautifully acted and filmed.  A fitting memorial to the monks buried on a hillside in their beloved Algeria.

Saints Preserve Us From "Doctor" Terry Jones

Tangier, Morocco, September 11, 2010

Yesterday, September 10, was the Aid al-Fitr, or the feast day after the Muslim month of fasting and prayer, Ramadan.  The RFI correspondent in Tangier gave a nice image of the place on this festive day, which, according to one interviewee, consisted of "eating all day." Sounds like American Thanksgiving day.

Cut to September 11 in the US, where apparently all the world's media have camped out in front of a 50-person church in Florida, waiting to see if the Bible Koran burner will carry out his act, or not, as he has said of late.  Keep us in suspense, Terry, while you've already done your damage.

You see, there's been enough coverage worldwide - especially in the Muslim world, on its special feast day - to have done more damage to the American image.  The country founded on religious freedom, unable to come to grips with the establishment of a Muslim center in downtown New York.  Tolerance for the Terry Joneses, who already burned his bridges in Germany before he thought about burning holy books, but not for the "Imans" (as he calls imams).  Maybe he was going to see Iman.

So here's the point of this post.  Should the "Reverend" Jones renege on his latest promise and in fact carry out his act, I want to put it in print that I will resent being immolated in return by a mob looking for an easy American target.  It's no secret: the American Legation in Tangier is in the middle of the medina, a labyrinth of alleys that the police rarely frequent.  We are on our own.

And I thought our days of fear-inducing September 11 memorials were over.  Where for years, it would be a chance to ramp the "fear up" campaign to further war plans.  This time, the fear is not emanating from the White House or from Cheney's bunker, but from a small church in Florida.

So Terry, stay away from those matches.  Go back to running your business-cum-"church," in the time honored tradition of American hucksters.  And let the press cover something important, like how it is that the country that has room for the Dove World Outreach Center cannot accomodate the Cordoba Faith Initiative, named after a Spanish city whose reputation under centuries of Muslim rule was as a light of religious tolerance.

As my mother used to say, a souvenir from her old Ireland, "Saints preserve us."  From this man of "religion."

Image: Morocco Board News Service

Ramadan Karim, Ramadan Karcher

Usually, I content myself with wishing everyone a happy month of Ramadan and proceeding to other matters.  This time, living in the medina of Tangier and observing the month of Ramadan as respectfully as a non-Muslim can, I want to carry it a step further.  Which is why we carried out a Big Clean of the street that runs through the American Legation, home of TALIM.

That high-pressure hose that Abdallah is wielding on the left is a Karcher®, the wonderful French gadget that President Sarkozy managed to turn into a household word.  Abdallah's brother Ahmed has scrubbed away something unmentionable, hence the brand new rubber boots versus the usual sandals.  Ramadan or not, street people still view the pedestrian walkway as a convenient open-air toilet.

None of this would do for our traditional distribution of tickets for a Ramadan food hamper, done in association with two Moroccan charities, FTAM (Fondation Tanger Al-Medina) and Fès-Saiss, a group of philanthropists with roots in the ancient city of Fez.

Thanks to the organizational skills of FTAM President Adil Alaoui (photo, with Ramadan food hamper tickets), TALIM was host to today's Ramadan distribution.  From earlier, unhappier experiences of mass confusion when the actual food parcels were distributed from our streetside door, the presentation of a card to each family has been deemed to be the winning formula.  Families are chosen for their degree of need (number of children, whether there is a father, are the parents employed? etc.), and they are notified in advance.

This longstanding tradition is well worth continuing, and is yet another manifestation of TALIM's links with its surrounding neighborhood.  One of the primary helpers in organizing today's little event was Fatima Gharbaoui, mentioned in these pages before for her prodigious artistic talents.  Fatima was a Women's Literacy program participant, and honed her "naive" artistic skills as part of the battery of courses on offer.

With neighbors like these women, we at TALIM feel that we're part of an effort - with FTAM and Fès-Saiss - to develop people, and not just to distribute charitable donations.  Just like "motor-voter" registration in some US states, this "handout" comes with a price: you might just have to sign up to learn how to read and write, at TALIM.

Ramadan Karim!

Gerald Loftus

Journey to Mecca: In the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta

Karma, I believe, doesn't appear in Islam, so maybe it was just fate that I'd be stopped in my tracks by the poster outside one of Washington DC's Smithsonian museums.

It was Ibn Battuta who immediately caught my eye.  I had just completed hours of meetings inside that same museum, discussing future cultural and educational programs to be conducted in Ibn Battuta's birthplace - Tangier, Morocco - and here he was! U-turn back inside, where I got myself not only an IMAX ticket, but also a couple of related books to lug back in my suitcase.

Enough of my patter.  Here's the thing: Journey to Mecca (official website) is an experience I hope more will share, for it is not only a worthy effort, but breathtakingly beautiful and historically accurate.  How in the world do we know that?  After all, "IB" (as author Tim Mackintosh-Smith called him) lived more than 7 centuries ago.

Because he wrote it down. In the Rihla, or Book of Travels, one of the first of that beloved genre.  Writer/director Bruce Neibaur, fellow screenwriters Tahir Shah and Carl Knutson, and the Cosmic/SK producers have expended prodigious efforts - desert location shooting, thousands of extras (people and camels), multilingual cast - to recreate Ibn Battuta's 14th century world.  The result is a unique look at not only Ibn Battuta's initial, epic 5,000 mile journey across the Sahara and into Arabia, but a pilgrim's-eye look at the Haj as it is performed today.

All on the giant IMAX screen, so that you fly over the desert to the Kaaba, as Ibn Battuta dreamed he would as a young man in Tangier.  The casting of the young Moroccan actor Chems Eddine Zinoun, of whom more later, is inspired, as is the murky figure of his bandit protector, played by Hassam Ghancy.  Ben Kingsley narrates, though the voice-over is mostly excerpted from Ibn Battuta's Rihla.  For Muslims and non-Muslims concerned about authenticity, rest assured that the film makers relied on an illustrious collection of consultants and advisers, scholars from the Muslim world to western universities.

We know how it ends, since we have Ibn Battuta's famous Book of Travels resuming his life of exploration.  But when he sets out from Tangier, he has no illusions about the dangers of solo travel in the wilds of North Africa.  Ibn Battuta confides to family and friends that if he dies, at least it will have been on the road to Mecca.  He is soon put to the test, one of the most dramatic moments in the film.  Though brave, Ibn Battuta knows when to use his wits instead of his sword.  It was a winning strategy, and it served him well to Mecca and beyond: over the next three decades, his travels took him as far as China and India.

If Ibn Battuta lived into old age, sadly the same cannot be said of the young actor who portrays him.  Chems Eddine Zinoun passed away in a tragic car accident in Casablanca just as the film was to be released.  The film is dedicated to his memory.

Journey to Mecca is a moving experience, and even the non-religious cannot fail to share some of the emotion that the pilgrims feel when they succeed in what for many is the dream of a lifetime.  That this pillar of Islam - the Haj to Mecca - has been made accessible to world audiences through an historical docudrama is a tribute to its backers.

Now, can we get it shown in Tangier, Ibn Battuta's birthplace?

Little Church In the Wilderness

God is silent, now if only we can get Man to shut up.

Woody Allen*

- - - - - - - - - -

No doubt the Pope is wishing his household priest had quoted Woody Allen in his homily instead of the anonymous Jewish friend whose mention of antisemitism has caused such a firestorm within a conflagration.  But then humor is kind of hard to insert into an Easter service at a time of deep humiliation and hurt in the Catholic church.

At least we still have Maureen Dowd writing about "unholy week," keeping up the drumbeat despite the Vatican 's attempt to exorcise her.

The "little church" I'm thinking about is not, obviously, the Vatican, which, despite its loss of the Papal States centuries ago, despite the anachronism of a religion endowed with a Secretary of State and a legion of nuncios (priestly diplomats) and other trappings of temporal power, still invokes the Pope's "head of state" status.  Usually this is good for protocol purposes, though it's unlikely that, as the head of a church of a billion or so people, the Pope would ever get anything less than regal treatment when visiting foreign leaders.  Now, though, the head of state moniker will serve to avoid having to be discomfited by lawsuits.

No, the "little church in the wilderness" is figurative, my way of commiserating with the millions of Catholics out there who would feel rather uncomfortable amidst the gilt, the crimson, the ever-so-worldly ostentation of Vatican City.  I've pictured above, for literal purposes, a church we once found while hiking in the Dolomites, but my "little church" is everywhere and anywhere, with normal people whose good priests and nuns tend to their parishes.

Beyond the current furor over the pedophilia, and whether or not you think that the priestly condition of celibacy has ceased to be viable, there is the general direction of the Vatican under this Pope.  Consider what an eminent Egyptian Jesuit has to say:

The great progress made over the last half century is on hold at this time. Facing this almost devastating situation, the church's leadership... minimize[s] the seriousness of the situation and console[s] themselves by focusing on a resurgence of the most traditionalist factions...

Father Henri Boulad wrote the above in July 2007.  If the situation was already "devastating" then, what would he say now?

The progress he's referring to was the great liberal reform of Vatican II, over which Pope Benedict has the same reaction as right wing cultural warriors in the US over the Sixties.  Just like conservatives in the US would like to erase the Kennedy-Johnson era and start history with Ronald Reagan, so too would Pope Benedict XVI overturn the work of Pope John XXIII (Vatican postage stamp, right).  As Father Boulad wrote, in the early Sixties Pope John XXIII "tried to reverse four centuries of stagnation, but there is an impression that the church is gradually closing the doors that it opened at that time."

When Father Boulad refers to "traditionalist factions" encouraged by Pope Benedict, he's referring to such reactionary organizations as Opus Dei, whose heroes include Spanish fascist leader Francisco Franco; the St. Pius  X Society and its Holocaust deniers; and the Legionaries of Christ, recently caught up in its own sex scandal and whose list of American apologists, according to Tim Rutten's recent article in the Los Angeles Times

reads like a who's who of the conservative Catholic intellectuals who, in recent years, have insisted that Catholicism and membership in the Democratic Party are all but incompatible.

This is the world of "traditionalist factions" beloved of Pope Benedict.  Beyond concerns over tone-deafness on pedophilia, Catholics in "little churches" around the world must be sick in the stomach over where the Pontiff is leading them.  Back to pre-Vatican II?  That's much too recent.  How about back to the Middle Ages?

* Woody Allen in the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations