Looking for the Three of Diamonds

A few years ago, I began work on a crime novel set in Iraq. I borrowed the name of a real-life person, Muhsin Khadr al-Khafaji, as a writing prompt. Taking this man’s name seemed like nothing since my character was entirely fictitious and all resemblances purely coincidental.

As I revised the manuscript, I felt I owed it to myself to find out who the real man was. Al-Khafaji was number 48 on the list of “Most Wanted Baathists,” the Three of Diamonds in the US military’s deck of cards. 

I had only the grim outlines of the real al-Khafaji’s story. He was sought for his participation in the bloody suppression of the 1991 popular uprisings against Saddam’s regime, and captured on February 7, 2004.

The events of 1991 may be largely forgotten in the United States, but not in Iraq. Encouraged by the fiery rhetoric of President George H. W. Bush, Shi‘a and Kurds rose up against the Baathist state. They might have succeeded were it not for the brutality of loyalists like al-Khafaji. By the time the rebellion was over, one hundred thousand civilians had been killed.

With a bad taste in my mouth, I set out to find what happened to al-Khafaji after his arrest. (More here)

"بحثاً عن "الثلاثة ديناري

قبل أعوام قليلة، بدأت بالعمل على رواية تدور أحداثها في العراق. ولتحفيز نفسي على الكتابة، استعرت اسم شخصية حقيقية، محسن خضر الخفاجي. للوهلة الأولى، لم يبدُ لي الخيار ذا معنى، إذ أن الأحداث مختلقة وأي تشابه ممكن سيكون بالصدفة المحضة. 

لكن وفيما كنت أراجع المسودة الأولى، شعرت أنه ينبغي عليّ كشف هوية هذا الرجل. لقد كان الخفاجي المطلوب رقم ثمانية وأربعين من بين المسؤولين البعثيين، ومُنح  في "ورق اللعب" الخاص بالمطلوبين العراقيين ورقة "الثلاثة ديناري". كنت أعرف بعض ملامح قصته. تم القبض عليه في السابع من فبراير/شباط عام 2004، وكان مطلوباً لدوره في القمع الدموي لانتفاضة عام 1991 ضد نظام صدام حسين. 

قد تكون أحداث عام 1991 قد أصبحت في طي النسيان، لكن ليس في العراق. فلقد شعت خُطَب الرئيس جورج بوش الأب النارية الشيعة والأكراد على الانتفاض ضد الدولة البعثية. وكادوا أن ينجحوا لولا وحشية أولئم الذين يعملون مع النظام مثل الخفاجي. وعندما أسدلت الستارة على هذه الانتفاضة، كان عدد القتلى قد تجاوز مئة ألف مدني.

(المزيد)

Revolution on Ice

Following the protests and coup of last summer, many of Egypt’s leading literary figures defected to the ranks of the army. As soldiers raised their guns against protesters in the streets, Leftist and liberal intellectuals cheered them on from the sidelines, explaining why the new massacres of street protesters were so different from earlier ones and why this particular bloodshed was so necessary. Consider one public statement, signed by more than 150 prominent authors and publishers, issued on 5 August 2013:

We, the signers of this statement, assert that the richness of Egypt as a country is in its diversity and tolerance of difference. We declare that the Muslim Brotherhood is an unpatriotic organization. Since its dubious founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has sought to sow division in the ranks of the nation. Back then, it opposed Egyptian nationalists in their struggle against the British Occupation and the Palace and, as in 1946, stood side by side with the British against the nationalists. Until the present day, the leadership of the Muslim Brothers has yet to issue an apology for the assassinations its members committed during and after the 1940s. Since the protests of 30 June that have returned the 25 January Revolution to its proper course, we have followed the Muslim Brotherhood’s blatant calls for aggression against the Egyptian state, national institutions and innocent citizens. In recent days, this incitement has led to illegal acts of violence and killings. We, the undersigned make an urgent plea for the Muslim Brotherhood to be designated a terrorist organization because those who incite violence and murder deserve prosecution for their crimes. 

Among the signers were prominent literary figures of different generations, all known for their active support of the 25 January Revolution, including: Bahaa Taher, Sonallah Ibrahim, Miral al-Tahawi, Hamdy El Gazzar, Mohamed Hashem, and Yasser Abel Latif. In the context of lead-up to the Rabaa massacres, it is difficult to read the document as anything but a permission slip to commit atrocities against Islamists. (Read More)

Negm Mat

On 3 December, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm died in Cairo at the age of 84. With his passing, the world lost a literary giant whose words have inspired poets, activists and intellectuals in Egypt and the Arab world since 1967. His colloquial verse was alchemy—turning the melody of everyday speech into protest songs that could be wielded, like weapons, against the rich and powerful, the corrupt and tyrannical. It was not without reason that he was imprisoned by Nasser and then again by Sadat. It was not without reason that Algerian and Palestinian activists recite his verse just as Egyptian students and workers do. (Read More)

Revolution Bookshelf: Blacklist

Again, revolutions are not stories. At the same time, societies process and frame events like revolutions by way of narrative. Stories are how we remember past events and how we understand our present moment. They inform how we act, how we strategize, how we get by. Which is to say, to grapple with the Egyptian Revolution means that at some point, we are grappling with stories about revolution. In Egypt, this has been happening since 25 January 2011. Egyptian writers and artists did not wait to begin producing works that take on present history in various ways, and there are now more than a few “revolution novels” on the market, some of which are quite compelling. Among the most notable is a 2012 novel, Sayyid al-Ahl’s Blacklist, by Ahmed Sabry Abul-Futuh, best known for his prize-winning Saraswa quintet.

At the outset, the premise of Blacklist is powerful and blunt. The plot follows an unlucky young man, Rifaa, who finds himself locked up and tortured in the basement jail of a Cairo police station. During his ordeal, he draws up a blacklist of all the people who have wronged him and imagines the revenge he will take. When the Mubarak security regime begins to retreat, he gets his chance. Rifaa is released along with his cellmates on the condition that they help the Central Security Forces put down the rebellion in the street. This, in other words, is the story of the January 25 Uprising as told by baltagiyya (thugs). (Read more)

Revolution Bookshelf: Revolution is My Name

For thinking about how the collective memory of revolution is being created right now, even as the revolution regains its steam, there is no better place to start than with Mona Prince’s remarkable memoir of the 25 January Uprising. Self-published (and largely self-distributed) by the author in 2012, Revolution is My Name (Ismi Thawra) tells the story of revolution as it unfolds over eighteen days. It is a literary memoir in the best sense of the word. By this, I mean that it expresses and reflects on, rather than documents a set of lived experiences. Moreover, it is not merely a story about the unfolding of a revolution as told by a participant who was there. Arguably, the more important story is about the character of the narrator developing as an evolving, complicated revolutionary.

“Evolving” and “complicated” are keywords insofar as they signal a basic tenet of modern humanism, namely that incompleteness and ambiguity are core to the experience of being human. This version of humanism is a source of strength in Prince’s account of revolutionary times. Her character and the characters around her struggle not just against an oppressive state, but also with the fact that they have no sacred texts to guide them. Lacking the confidence of righteousness or assured victory, Prince understands that humility and humor are even better. Hers is an improvised revolution, with nothing but a loose set of pragmatic, humanist precepts to follow: treat fellow Egyptians with respect; appeal to reason, not force; be generous when possible; understand that laughter bends swords. This brand of pragmatic humanism has been one of the core strengths of the Egyptian revolution all along. When ascendant, the revolution moves forward, inclusive, utopic, realist. When eclipsed, chaos ensues.

Though a strength in the Midan, this kind of humanism is also a vulnerability as Prince has come to experience in her own life. In recent weeks, a series of spurious charges have been made against her by Islamists at the campus where she teaches, Suez Canal University. Though the case is serious—and involves threats to Prince’s life—the charges themselves are ludicrous, the product of a wider effort on the part of empowered Islamists to clamp down on the kind of humanist discourse we see in her memoir. [4]. But odds are that Prince will endure and triumph. Already before the publication of Revolution is My Name, Prince was an dynamic author, translator and literary critic. With this memoir, Prince’s presence on the Egyptian scene is now firmly established. (Read More)

The Levant

On the way back from Kafr Qasim, we turned off the highway in Ran’ana where, we were told we’d find the best Moroccan food in the country. We went into the first gas station we saw when we came into the town, and the Iraqi attendant there told us where our restaurant was. It’d been weeks since we’d had anything but local food, and as delicious as that could be, we were getting sick of the humous and tomatoes and thyme and parsley and eggplant and rice and flat bread. What we craved was bitter lemons, dried fruits, hot red pepper paste and couscous—anything that diverged from the seasonal norms of the Eastern Mediterranean. We crossed our fingers and went into the place people had recommended so much. We noticed that in the window they’d posted two reviews they’d received back in the 90s. The accompanying faded photos made it seem like another century.

We laughed when we walked inside because it had the same kitsch appeal that its counterparts everywhere did. Someone asked whether there was a single Moorish design team, dispatched from Paris or LA, every time someone somewhere in the world wanted to open a restaurant called “Casablanca” or “Fez.” This one was called, “Le Levant.” We thought the name was clever, though Khalil remarked the place should have been called "Le Ponant." (Read More)

The Keys to Birweh

We went to visit Shatila camp where our friend Lula was teaching English. We knew the camp was important. We knew that it was a center of the struggle for many reasons. We knew that this was the place where hundreds of women, children and men were massacred over a few days in September 1982. We knew who the murderers were. We knew who trained them. We knew who supplied the weapons. We knew who promised to provide security for the camp when the PLO evacuated. We knew that the camp was leveled in 1985 to punish the people for allowing the men to come back. We knew all this because we’d read these facts in books, we’d seen the pictures, and we’d listened to eye-witnesses. And now we were going to see the place for ourselves.

We got to the English class early, and Lula introduced us to the students, who were all women.

We said “Hello. Nice to meet you. How are you?”

And they said, “Hello. Welcome to Shatila. I am fine. How are you?”

We asked them, “What is your name? Where are you from?”

They laughed at our apparent ignorance and told us, “Palestine, where else?” (Read More)

Walls

We went to visit our friend who was participating in the summer program for foreigners at Aida camp in Bethlehem. We were surprised that it took only ten minutes from the center of Jerusalem to get to the checkpoint at Rachel’s Tomb. There we started to take pictures. We walked through the spotless new terminal and thought of our tax dollars. On the Bethlehem side, we took pictures of a huge sign that the Israeli Board of Tourism had put up on the wall.

It said “Go in Peace” in Hebrew, English and Arabic. The taxi drivers wanted to give us tours of the Church of Nativity and Shepherds’ Field, and would not take no for an answer. Finally they relented and told us how to get to Aida camp on foot. They told us to follow the wall around as best we could, and they were right. It was not far at all, though the blazing summer heat wilted us as we walked.

We reached the camp and soon found our friend who was at the community center. The director invited us in. In his cool, airy office, we drank coffee and talked about the center for a while. When we’d finally shrugged off the heat of our walk, Raji offered to give us a tour and show us how the wall has affected their community. The camp had been opened around 1950, the third in the Bethlehem area that took in refugees, both those who had fled in 1948 and those who had subsequently been expelled. When his family fled their village in the western part of the Hebron district, they had followed the rest of the family to Bethlehem. When they heard about the UN Camps opening up around Bethlehem, they went first to Daheisha, but all the tents there were taken. Then they went to al-‘Azza camp, but again were turned away. For months, they rented a cave in Beit Suhour, walking miles each morning to fetch water. The men worked in the fields nearby; the women sold vegetables in the market. (Read More)