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Two Voices Behind the Iron Doors
(In the past weeks I was brought to focus again on the situation of two writers in prison, one in China, the other in Turkey, both countries that have consistently challenged and imprisoned writers. In China the hope for expanded freedom of expression that came with the Olympics and China’s engagement with global institutions has not materialized, and Chinese writers remain in prison with long sentences. The situation in Turkey for a while was improving, but in the past year arrests have again escalated.)
Voice in China
I had dinner recently with three colleagues of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel laureate and writer currently serving an 11-year sentence in a Chinese jail. Two of his friends, Shen Tong and the other friend arrived in the U.S. around the time of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, but the younger best-selling writer and democracy activist Yu Jie didn’t leave China until January, 2012 after being detained and tortured and put under house arrest. He now lives in Virginia.
Yu Jie consulted with Liu Xiaobo during the writing of Charter 08, the manifesto calling for democracy in China which resulted in the imprisonment of Dr. Liu. He and Liu Xiaobo also co founded the Independent Chinese PEN Center, and Yu Jie has written a biography of Liu Xiaobo.
At a round wooden table in a bustling Washington restaurant the friends outlined their campaign. Among their strategies, they are working to gather a million signatures worldwide calling for the release of Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia, who has been under house arrest since Liu’s imprisonment. So far they have gathered about half a million signatures in 130 countries, including from 135 Nobel Laureates. The Friends of Liu Xiaobo are also campaigning for the release of other prisoners of conscience in China. They and the Nobel Laureates are mobilizing support around the world and have been told the Chinese government has started to take notice and to worry about the scope of the campaign. Dr. Liu is the only Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in prison.
Here is the link to sign the petition.
* Friends of Liu Xiaobo Twitter: http://twitter.com/lxbfree,
* Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Free.Liu?fref=ts
Poem by Liu Xiaobo:
A Small Rat in Prison
a small rat passes through the iron bars
paces back and forth on the window ledge
the peeling walls are watching him
the blood-filled mosquitoes are watching him
he even draws the moon from the sky, silver
shadow casts down
beauty, as if in flight
a very gentryman the rat tonight
doesn’t eat nor drink nor grind his teeth
as he stares with his sly bright eyes
strolling in the moonlight
5. 26. 1999
Translated by Jeffrey Yang
Voice in Turkey
I reached into the drawer of my post box in Washington this week and pulled out a card addressed to Doame Leexa-Acker (the name no doubt a reflection of my poor penmanship on the receiving end.) The envelope was from Turkey, and the postcard inside had a picture of Diyarbakir, the ancient city in southeastern Turkey that is the capital of the Kurdish region and the hub of fighting for decades between the Army and the PKK.
In a neatly printed hand the card read:
21 March Newroz Kurdish religiots [sic[ celebrate.
1200 day not free. I’m healt [sic] bad.
I’m free about concerned. I need you children.
I at the house must be. I’ not killer!
I’m writer, lawyer, peacemaker.
I’ hope back you can be. Please.
Grand peace in the door.
Thank you for post cards 🙂
Best wishes,
Muharrem Erbey
Even with the challenge of English, the appeal resonated. I looked up his case and reminded myself of his situation: Muharrem Erbey is a writer and a human rights lawyer, Vice President of the Human Rights Association. He was imprisoned under the Anti-terror Law in 2009. According to PEN International, he has compiled reports on disappearances and extra-judicial killings in the Kurdish region and has represented individuals in the provincial, national and international courts, including the European Court of Human Rights. He was one of dozens of writers and journalists tried under the auspices of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) trials which targeted pro-Kurdish writers, publishers, academics and translators, tried together as KCK’s “Press Wing.” He has published articles and co-edited a collection of Turkish and Kurdish language stories. His own short story collection, My Father, Aharon Usta was delayed for publication after his arrest.
Last fall Erbey wrote to those at PEN who had advocated on his behalf: “I send you my heart’s warmth from behind the iron doors and bars and damp, cold, wet walls of prison….My speeches and comments never contained words of violence.”
Circulating a writers’ work and giving voice to those silenced is part of what writers can do for each other. Below is a section of a translated letter from Erbey describing the seasons in prison with a link to the full letter:
I want to tell you how I have experienced the four seasons from behind bars.
Autumn. In the morning, as I reach over the barbed wire crowning this wall six or seven metres in height, the sun as it passes briefly through our ventilation system and away again, the sound of the sparrows that perch on the wire and fly off with the crumbs of bread we toss, the squawking of doves overhead, this sky stained a cold and faded blue, the wind that howls and carries dry fragments of grass through the ventilation – all work the ache of loneliness finely and deeply into me, as the captivity of my shivering body grows a storey higher. I am listening to the sound of the wind. The chattering of clothespegs hanging from the line, the clatter of water bottles roaming the area, flying newspaper scraps and silently wandering dreams, hopes that grow from a whisper to a roar – they strike the wall and go no further.
Winter. There is a weak sun that does not warm you. The air is cold. This place is alien to life, with its endless concrete and iron, these wire fences. The walls’ peeling grey paint, their damp, drains you of energy. Your dreams are caked in dust and soot. At 6 am, as we four men in each room wake to the metallic clank of iron doors, we wish that this were all a dream, but it is not; everything is real. As it happens, prison is the one place one would never want to be when waking. We have this privilege. The prison walls allow everything to pass, except time. I am freezing, my throat dries up, my eyes are burning, there is the weight of tonnes on top of me; it is as if I am tied in steel cord. I cough and I sneeze. In winter prison becomes a prison, and the cold season seems to go on forever. At night we go to the toilet dozens of times.
Spring. Taking root in a crack of broken concrete, seeds brought over the walls and wire by the wind display nature’s irresistible force with the unfurling of their leaves. At first glance you think that the seedling has broken its way out through the concrete. But nature stubbornly allows life to take hold, splitting concrete despite every restriction. An unimaginable aroma of oleaster surrounds us. You know that spring is here from the sound of birds and the smell of flowers. And from the flocks of birds in the sky, and its glittering blue.
Summer. The sun lays waste to it all, as walls and floor turn to a raging fire. I grow drowsy and still. As I shake my head before the spinning ventilator it rises above the walls and the wire fences and I fight to breathe, just as a fish in a tank rises to the surface and, looking desperately at the blue skies, gasps. At night the sound of a soldier whistling intermittently on the watchtower blends with an owl’s hooting. There is a wedding in the neighbouring village. The banging of drums, the women’s ululations and the barking of excited dogs plant a smile on my face just as soon as they steal in through an open window. How sweet to hear life even if we cannot see it!
If only prison did not teach one how beautiful life is. My sons Robin (10) and Robert (5) ask “Daddy, when will you be done here? How long until you come home?” I reply “Not long, not long.” In reality, I do not know when I will be done….
[Follow the links to send appeals on behalf of Liu Xiaobo and Muharrem Erbey.]
Rising Voices in Pakistan
I miss the sunrise in Islamabad. I have jet lag and sleep through it, but I am up by noon. A colleague, a respected researcher in the region, takes me to lunch in one of the remaining villages in the middle of the city, a city that was made from villages when it was constructed in the 1960’s. Islamabad is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Pakistan, according to the guidebooks. We lunch in the hills under an awning on sofas looking out on other hills and restaurants attracting locals and tourists. We drink fresh squeezed orange juice—I drink the sweet, delicious orange juice at almost every meal—and eat a local chicken dish with nann piled high. In the evening I also dine outside by a fire with a journalist friend of a friend at an Italian restaurant in a residential neighborhood.
I am here for a conference of Pakistani and American journalists hosted by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) on whose board I serve. But this first day is my own and the only day I will not be inside the security corridor of the hotel or on a bus with an armed guard. Pakistan is reputed to be one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists and one in which Americans are urged to be cautious.
Pakistan stands at a pivotal point in its history right now with elections coming up in the next month for a democratic turnover of power. The expectation is that the civilian government will hand over to another civilian government peacefully for the first time in Pakistan’s history. Everyone I meet no matter their political affiliation is hopeful this election will occur.
“Even if imperfect, it is an important step in evolving democracy in the country,” says a leading human rights lawyer.
Central to the democracy the citizens aspire to is a free press. According to journalists at the conference:
–“What we do now in the media will make a difference 50 to 100 years from now.”
— “People are saying to the media: it is your job to protect us.”
–“Good journalists feel responsible and accountable to tell the story.”
The International Center for Journalists has sponsored and continues to sponsor over 150 Pakistani journalists to work in U.S. newsrooms around the country from California to Arizona to Texas to Minnesota to Rhode Island to Pennsylvania to Florida. It also sponsors 30 U.S. journalists to visit the Pakistani newsrooms. For most of the participants the visit is the first to each other’s country. The exchange has opened up perceptions and extended skill sets on all sides.
“Unless you touch the grass in each other’s yards, you won’t know each other,” said a journalist from Karachi who spent time working in Tucson.
In the U.S. the journalists work side by side on stories, including elections, schools, crime, the judiciary, local government, all the while learning about America and about techniques in American journalism. Americans also learn about Pakistan as the Pakistani journalists speak to Rotary clubs and schools and give interviews to the media.
Examples include:
–The journalist from Waziristan in the tribal territories in the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan who worked in Austin, TX blogging and is still blogging. “I loved Texas. The people cared for their families; they are like us.”
–The TV reporter based in Chicago who covered the US elections for his channel. As he stood in front of President Obama, he said he thought: “Here is a king of the world and yet he has a modest personality and is easily approachable.” The American experience was also good for him, he said, because he quit smoking. “After going to America, which has a no smoking culture, I cut my cigarettes down to 15 a day then to 5 a day then to none, and I now have quit.”
–The journalists in Pittsburg and in Charleston who hadn’t used social media except for family learned to use twitter and to tag and to send back notes on stories through smart phones.
–The Karachi journalist in Bakersfield, California who said he learned how American journalists fact checked content and shared information via facebook. He said he got tickets to see Conan O’Brien and Universal Studios for free and started a blog about his experiences and is still blogging.
–The journalist from Quetta who worked in Tallahassee, Florida and met the Mayor and Governor and Education Minister for the state. “I came back and did a story on education and mistakes in results in Punjab.”
–A journalist who was also a faculty member worked in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for a local TV channel and saw firsthand how important freedom was and saw the diversity of the culture, including the Amish country. “To understand the American ideal of freedom is so important for Pakistan. The journalist who picked me up every day told me democracy didn’t come easy; he said they had to struggle for it. It’s our way now. This is what I learned. American didn’t get it easy.”
–A journalist in Austin, TX had access to wander around with a camera. “I had a view of people and of the U.S. and that completely changed. They don’t hate Muslims or Pakistanis.”
–Another journalist was educated in school not to think well about America. “When I talk to different people and see the strong system and story of civilization and met Americans, I’m not against American people now.”
–One Pakistani journalist went with a Minneapolis journalist to interview the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress and was surprised how liberal he was in his views, especially towards gay marriage.
There were also journalists at the conference who’d been accepted to the program but were still awaiting visas, including a journalist from Waziristan and a woman television journalist in Lahore, who explained that in her city she couldn’t leave the house without covering her head; she longed to come to the US and study international relations.
Many of the American journalists went to Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, but were not able to spend the same amount of time in the Pakistani newsrooms because of security concerns. They said they were surprised how much the Pakistanis wanted to engage with them. They too remarked on how alike they all were as they pursued their careers and families.
An editor in Florida told the story of a father of one of the women reporters working at his paper and living in his home. The father called him from Pakistan concerned about his daughter. The American editor shared his own experience as a father of a daughter, and the two families became friends.
Pakistan is acknowledged as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. The danger to a free press isn’t the arrest and imprisonment of writers as it is in many countries. “The danger to the journalist used to be that he or she would be beaten up,” said one reporter. “In the old days you would get a good thrashing. Now they kill you!” Some cities like Karachi are more dangerous than others.
One leading journalist said there was no criticism of the Taliban in the press because it was too dangerous and because the Taliban are the biggest advertisers in certain media. “No story is worth dying for,” he said though others disagreed.
“To cover Pakistan is like looking through a fog,” said one American journalist based there who noted that people still remember the beheading of Daniel Pearl. “American journalists should be able to cover and go many places, but we can’t. Thirty-five journalists were assassinated in the past few years. If the media can’t work in certain areas, then how is it free?”
The constriction on the working U.S. and Pakistani media is balanced by the welcoming attitude of Pakistani civil society, noted one editor active in the Rotary Club back home where the visiting Pakistani journalists spoke. When he got off the plane in Islamabad, the President of the Rotary met him and took him around, and rotary members greeted him everywhere.
“When journalists on a major story are threatened and still run the story—that is courage,” he said. “Fight for a free press. The whole world is with you!”
Sunrise in Islamabad
As I leave Washington, DC, the sun is sinking as a gauzy pink globe just beyond the runway. I imagine it about to rise over my destination: Islamabad.
This will be my first trip to Pakistan, a country where I have friends and colleagues, but we always meet outside of Pakistan. For me the country is still a place in imagination. The picture is drawn with many strokes, beginning with media images of bustling streets in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, of barren rocky mountain sides in the tribal territories, images of markets and cafes and dark streets in the novels of Pakistani writers, stories of friends’ childhoods, particularly stories of women who at great odds rose to become voices and leaders in the country, and by the headlines of terrorist attacks.
When I mention where I am going even in Washington, or particularly in Washington, the first response is: “Be Careful.” That may also be the first words to Pakistanis who travel to the U.S. for the first time.
I will be attending a conference of American and Pakistani journalists, part of an exchange program for each, organized by the International Center for Journalists, a program in which over 170 journalists have had the opportunity to work in each other’s newsrooms. (See blog post Diplomacy on a Summer Evening, August, 2012.)
The misperceptions on both sides have inevitably altered as the journalists have gotten to know each other’s countries. Many of the Pakistani journalists imagined Americans would be rude and found instead they were friendly and helpful, though some were quite ignorant about Pakistan. Some Americans expected to be operating in a country of terrorists and found the citizens welcoming and struggling with many of the same issues as Americans.
My journey will allow only a quick snapshot of one city and selected citizens, but education begins and expands with snapshots. When asked if I’d ever been to Pakistan and said no, then was invited to come, I said yes. I look forward to my first sunrise in Islamabad.
A Visit to the End of the World
I visited the end of the world this week, at least the spot on the earth where the ancient Romans believed the sun left the earth and the known world ended. The AC 552 highway takes you there in four lanes with possible detours through charming fishing villages along the coast of Galicia. If you stand on the granite cliffs of Finisterre, Spain looking west, you see the billowing Atlantic and can understand the Roman’s perspective for nothing lays beyond, at least nothing one could see or travel to in the ships of their day.
The Romans called the spot the Cape of Death since the sun died there. It was also a place of numerous ship wrecks on the jagged rocks reaching out in a finger hook into the sea before a light house was built centuries later. The Greeks had denominated another spot on the earth, Mount Hacho in Spanish Morocco, as the place where the world ended because that was as far as their eyes could see.
Located on Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death, Finisterre is the ultimate destination for thousands of pilgrims each year who make the journey first to Santiago de Compostela, and then the hardiest continue and walk the additional 90 km. Tradition calls for the pilgrims to burn their clothes and/or boots as a symbol of starting anew. The wisdom is that the most difficult part of the journey is yet ahead of them, the return journey home to a new life.
Since the ninth century when a hermit allegedly found the grave of the Apostle James who had preached in Spain, been beheaded in Jerusalem and then returned by his disciples to Spain, Santiago de Compostela has been the destination of millions of pilgrims worldwide. These days some of the pilgrims appear to be both on a spiritual quest and an athletic adventure, with many combining the two. The caminos (roads) of the pilgrimage vary from 70 km to 1300 km and are traveled mostly on foot, though some pilgrims travel by car.
A journey of the mind can begin by a journey of the feet as thought opens and contemplates vistas not obvious to the eye and beyond perceived earthbound realities.
Finisterre in fact was not the end of the world. Centuries later, leaving from Spain’s southern ports, three and four-masted ships chased the sun as it moved towards the horizon. Christopher Columbus stood at the prow, sailing with his own misconceptions about what lay beyond, but with a knowledge of trade winds that allowed him to arrive and return four times to the New World out there.
It is easier to look back than to glimpse what lies ahead, but on the wind carved summit of Finisterre high above the Atlantic coast, the visitor can almost see the curve of the earth and imagine new worlds without and within.
North Korean Writers in a Land of the Rising Sun
I’m flying home from the 78th PEN International Congress in Gyeongju (Kyongju), South Korea, peering out the airplane window under the shade at the floor of clouds. The sun is just beginning to emerge above the horizon, turning the white billowing floor red as if fire were simmering beneath. On the horizon the orange-yellow line of sunlight glows then diffuses into the blue sky. The sun itself suddenly appears, a solid bold globe of fire, and the fire beneath the clouds grows dark.
However many sunrises I watch in however many circumstances—on air planes, on a beach, in a city building, I take pause in wonder, breathe in and watch the larger movement of life.
Returning at 30,000 feet from a conference of writers from 85 PEN Centers around the world, I remember the first time I was in Korea 24 years ago—over 8700 sunrises ago. At PEN’s Congress in Seoul in 1988, a week before the Olympic Games security was high with bomb sniffing dogs and extensive car checks. The political environment was tense. Writers and publishers were in prison in South Korea, and PEN was divided on how to conduct its business in a country where freedom of expression was challenged. A contingent visited the writers in prison; I visited with the family of one of the writer/publishers. We lobbied inside and outside the official Congress for the freedom of these writers. After the Congress a number were released, including the one whose family I had visited.
Now 24 years later there are no writers or publishers in prison in South Korea. The PEN gathering in the mountainous city of Gyeongju, the ancient capitol of the Shilla Dynasty where the rays of the rising sun first touch the land, focused instead on writers from North Korea, where there is no freedom.
“People in North Korea are deprived of their human rights. It is a living hell,” said one North Korean writer who escaped. “I ask help of writers around the world.”
Myourng-hak Do, a North Korean poet was imprisoned for writing two satiric poems, ‘The Country of Hunchbacks’ and ‘Pass the One-eyed,’ which told the real story of a one-eyed man being conscripted into the Army when North Korea was experiencing severe depopulation. The Army said he could shoot with the remaining eye. These poems were private, never published nor submitted for publication, but were shared with a friend who turned out to be a spy
“The security department instructed the prison guards to treat me especially cruelly. Prisoners in the camp were forced to wake up at 5am and sit motionless until 11pm. The pain was beyond imagination,” he said.
Before his arrest, Myourng-hak Do had been a member of the Joseon Writers Alliance and was supposed “to compose dozens of poems that inspired loyalty to the regime.”
Young-soon Kim, a North Korean dancer turned writer, grew up in a favored position because her brother had been a young army general who had been killed in battle. She had a close friend Seong Hye-rim, who was the second wife of Kim Jong-il and the mother of Kim’s oldest son. “One day she dropped by my house and told me that she would go to ‘house No. 5’ (the residence of Kim Jong-il) I doubtingly asked her about her [real] husband….She didn’t reply…It was the last time I saw her. After she went into the house, she got completely disconnected from the outside world. And I had no idea that a horrible fate would soon befall me because of my relation with my friend.”
Young-soon Kim was imprisoned without knowing the reason or the term. Eight of her family members were also detained. “My aged parents starved to death…To simply express how I spent nine years in the camp, I ate everything that flied or crawled, and I ate every grass on earth…..Prisoners in the camp are treated worse than animals until their death.”
Young-soon Kim managed to escape after nine years and made her way to the South. “I realized anyone among a population of 50 million can freely publish books and that people read and actively talked about books by foreign writers. The saying ‘people make books, and books make people’ is one that deeply touches my heart.
“I came to South Korea in the later years of my life, but I have no regrets. Life has a beginning and an end. And the glow from a sunset is as beautiful as a sunrise. I will write to let the world know about what I have been through.”
Young-soon Kim and Myoung-ha Do are two of the founding members of the new North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center which was voted in as the 145th center of PEN International on the closing day of its 78th Assembly.
Diplomacy on a Summer Evening
It is a sultry evening at the end of summer in Washington, a backyard party on a patio with picnic tables on the deck, red Christmas lights strung across the porch and the night filled with animated conversation among ten Pakistani journalists and their American friends and hosts.
The journalists are soon returning to Lahore, Karachi, Balochistan, Islamabad and other cities and provinces in Pakistan. For the last month they have been working in newsrooms across America. Most are here for the first time, witnessing and learning about American culture and sharing their own culture and experience. They have worked from Tallahassee to Tucson to Los Angeles, from Washington, DC and Baltimore to Providence and Pittsburg; one journalist reported from Minnesota. They have covered American elections, crime, state politics, the judiciary, education and economics.
The Pakistani journalists have also met with the communities, including addressing hundreds of members of the Rotary Club in Tallahassee and having a one on one discussion with a Catholic bishop about abortion.
In their month they all agreed their misperceptions of America were changed.
–I thought Americans would be rude, said one and others agreed that that was their preconception. Instead they were friendly and helpful everywhere.
–They were very friendly, said another, but in Minnesota, they had little knowledge of Pakistan and held some myths.
–When people think of Pakistan here, they think only of terrorism. That was the general misperception.
–I saw how hard Americans worked. I always thought Pakistani journalists were energetic, but an American newsroom—that is energetic!
–I lived with the executive editor, and we were in the newsroom by 7am.
–I was impressed by the huge facilities in American newsrooms. The journalists are very professional. But I come away very proud of my fellow Pakistani journalists who work in much worse conditions.
–I was surprised that 50% of the staff was women. I even had a woman driving me.
The International Center for Journalists will bring 160 Pakistani journalists to work and live in the United States, and has sponsored American journalists into Pakistani newsrooms.
As we shared chicken tandori and lamb sausages and curries and rice in the fading summer light, the guests all agreed that this type of professional exchange opened and advanced relations between people in a way that politicians can’t or don’t.
–I covered the Governor and State legislature, said one reporter. The Governor was lobbying for his bills, especially to get his bill passed on gambling. It was just like Pakistan!
Pilgrims and the Olympics
On July 31, 1620 the Pilgrims departed from England to America.
A small community of English Protestants, unhappy with the Church of England, had earlier settled in Leiden, Holland hoping to find religious freedom. They found the freedom there, but also found they were kept out of the guilds and given menial jobs. Many of their children became attracted to the secular, more cosmopolitan life so they returned to London, where they got funding through a wealthy merchant and permission from the Virginia Company to establish a “plantation” across the Atlantic between the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the Hudson River. The “Separatists,” who called themselves “Saints,” joined up with a larger group they called the “Strangers.” These 102 Saints and Strangers, later known as the Pilgrims, set sail in the middle of summer on two ships headed for the New World.
However, one of the ships began to leak so both ships returned to port. All the passengers and their belongings crammed onto the remaining ship–the Mayflower–and set out again. By then it was the middle of September, the height of storm season on the Atlantic.
After two treacherous months, the Mayflower dropped anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, well north of the goal and a month later sailed across the Massachusetts Bay. By then it was the onset of a brutal New England winter, most of which the Pilgrims spent in harbor on the ship trying to survive. When spring finally arrived, only half of the passengers and half of the crew remained.
Technically, the Pilgrims had no legal right to occupy the land onto which they disembarked, a settlement they named “Plymouth” after the port from which they’d sailed. But they drafted and signed a document they called the Mayflower Compact. They promised to create a “civil Body politick” which would be governed by officials they would elect and ruled by “just and equal laws.” They promised allegiance to the king of England.
On this land they met the native population, one of whom actually spoke English, having been captured by an English sea captain and sold into slavery before he escaped to London. He and others shared supplies and taught the settlers how to survive in their harsh new land. For at least 50 years harmony and friendship existed between the Pilgrims and native Indians. This sharing and friendship is the origin of the American Thanksgiving, which is still celebrated in November each year even if subsequent history proved less admirable.
Today across the Atlantic in England the world is gathering and competing for the next two weeks in friendship in the XXX Olympic Games. Recalling a bit of history mid summer is perhaps appropriate.
facebook or not?
I recently engaged with facebook (no, I didn’t buy stock), but I gave in. I concluded that I needed at least to understand (is that possible?) and experience the social media phenomena and at most learn from and enjoy the connection to friends and colleagues, most of whom I know, but some of whom I just read and some of whom read me.
For the last three months I’ve checked my “wall” every few days and scroll through hundreds of shared observations, photos, and comments. The process is surprisingly quick. I engage more like a magazine editor with an unexamined metric for judgment, pausing to “like” certain contributions, commenting on a few and sharing even fewer on my own personal and authors’ facebook pages.
For the present at least I’ve limited my fb world and page largely to literature and human rights in order to put some boundary on the possibilities and on that evaporating commodity of privacy–not a 21st century value and an oxymoron in a discussion of facebook. That is not to say I don’t enjoy the news and photos and commentary on a range of issues from all the friends, but in my fb space, this is my focus for now.
I enjoy Roxana Robinson’s regular lyric observations of nature and Richard Bausch’s paragraphs of wisdom about the writing process, Melissa Pritchard’s postings on the writing of women in Afghanistan and book reviews by Alan Cheuse, Ron Charles and Marjorie Kehe’s book pages in The Christian Science Monitor, one of the remaining newspapers that actually covers books. I follow stories in Poets and Writers magazine and the news from PEN International and its many centers and the compelling cases of writers who are in prison for their work.
The recent troubling, and oddly comic, posting from Salman Rushdie alerted me to the news that the Islamic Association of Students has developed “The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and Implementation of His Verdict” video game to “introduce Iranian culture, value and Islamic identity.” How does one even comment on that? !!!!!!! was the best I could do. To add context, earlier this month the Iranian government handed down prison sentences to translator and women’s rights activist Manijeh Najm Eraghi (aka Araghi) and economist and writer Fariborz Rais Dana, who were detained for their membership in the Iranian Writers Association and for transmission of statements and interviews that criticized the government.
At least a quarter of the postings from friends I can’t read because they are in Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Turkish, Kurdish, Nepalese, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Chinese, French, and Spanish (the latter two languages I can skim). These postings remind me of the effort these friends go through when we meet, and they speak English to me.
I have yet to develop (and may not) my own fb voice. Once a month for the past years I’ve posted this blog, a bit of an anachronism in the fast moving, clipped social media world, but so far that is my offering to the internet. I hope friends old and new will enjoy the musings. Most of my writing goes into books and thus far printed work. For now I remain an editor of my own fb page, poised on the sidelines with a quick-blink selection process that appreciates all but shares only a few.
To follow up last month’s blog post on the Olympics, I’m linking to one of the more interesting projects I discovered through facebook. The Poetry Parnassus will be part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad held at the same time as the Olympics in London. On the map linked above you can find poetry from all the countries competing in the Olympics and read poems ranging from Ireland’s Seamus Heaney to Kazakhstan’s Akerke Mussabekova to Tanzania’s Haj Gora Haji to Colombia’s Raul Henao to Canada’s Karen Solie to Fiji’s Sudesh Mishra. One hundred and forty-five of the poets will appear at the Southbank Center in the Festival of the World, the largest poetry festival ever hosted in the UK. I’m sure I would have heard about the festival eventually, but I got the news first on a facebook share from a friend in England.
History, Hope and Politics: London Before the Olympics
I’m back at Sticky Fingers restaurant in London on a gray, drizzling Sunday afternoon, visiting this site of our family’s youth, sitting in a red leather booth with a dark wood table, wooden blinds over the windows, rock and roll rhythms from the sound system, and Rolling Stones memorabilia covering every inch of wall space. This spot is down the road from where we lived in London in the 1990’s and where I used to sit writing most afternoons before my children joined me on their way home from school. I return here almost every time I visit London.
Today the booths are filled with other parents and children chattering and eating hamburgers and fries and salads on this bank holiday weekend. The management has changed; they no longer know me, but they are still accommodating, letting me sit in a booth with good light, working as long as I like.
Outside Sticky Fingers, London is preparing for this summer’s Olympic Games with new construction dotting the landscape. One of my other favorite restaurants I went to visit has been demolished and is now a construction site for a new hotel, with men working frantically in the hope of opening by July. In the City of London itself a hotly contested election has just concluded for the Mayor who will preside over the Olympic Games with the incumbent conservative winning, barely.
Across the Channel today, the French are voting on who will govern France, though the Olympics have no influence there. After all France lost the Olympic bid as any Brit will remind you. The political tuning fork of Europe is vibrating this spring between the conservative and socialist paths of governance. (By Sunday evening it was clear the Socialists and anti-austerity electorate had won in France and in Greece though it wasn’t clear how the economic realities would square with the political will or how the European monetary Union might calibrate.)
In the theaters of London which tourists come to see, a third of the dramas focus on World War I or World War II as the historic reference point when the nations of Europe broke into conflict.
However, in the present, London is concentrating on the summer games as it anticipates the world’s nations and athletes gathering, independent of political and economic differences. For two weeks in late July and August London will showcase competition in its most elegant, accomplished and constructive form in the XXX Olympic Games. What happens after that…well, that will be another story.
(At Sticky Fingers I finally yield my double booth and move to a quieter section in the rear where my table no longer vibrates to the music and the children, but I remain at home in my little corner of London, grateful that for now it abides.)
Africa of the Mind: Friends Real and Imagined
(This blog post originally appeared on www.africa.com, a website that features arts, culture, news, travel and commentary about Africa.)
Africa for me began in imagination. I was writing a novel The Dark Path to the River, which had an unnamed African country as the back story for a drama at the United Nations. The African characters started talking in my head, telling me their stories.
I had read widely about Africa, but at the time I had only been to Kenya on a traditional safari. I continued reading African literature, audited courses on African folklore and politics. While writing the book, I returned to Africa, to Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, where I visited schools and children I’d been engaged with through a nonprofit organization. I listened to the rhythms of the languages, to the songs, observed the colors of the green hills, the red dirt, the fuchsia, orange, yellow and blue flowers, the clothing of the same astonishing colors and patterns. I met with fellow writers and artists.
I have since returned to Africa dozens of times. I’ve visited schools in east, west, central, and southern Africa. In Uganda, I’ve plowed through the bush in a jeep to arrive at classrooms in a clearing whose materials hung from the roofs of huts with no doors so the cows of the pastoralist herders wouldn’t trample them. I’ve visited brick schools built by villagers in Malawi where the children sat on the extra bricks for stools: I’ve sat in classes in bullet-scarred schools that have been rebuilt after the civil war in Sierra Leone. In Ethiopia I’ve participated in a village bridal ceremony, have sat around smoking fires in villages in Mali eating goat and rice, have walked through the modern capitol buildings of Abuja, Nigeria, watched the sun rise over the Indian Ocean in Tanzania and set on the Atlantic in Sierra Leone.
I’ve listened to literature as I traveled in Ghana and Senegal, where writers are revered since the first President of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, was a world renowned poet. I’ve ridden a camel through the desert in Morocco and galloped on a white stallion at sunset in the Sahara in Egypt, stood awestruck at Victoria Falls, watched a bird tiptoe over lily pads on top of the water in the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and witnessed the charging, turbaned horsemen in the Durbar in northern Nigeria. I’ve stood silenced in the slave holding areas peering through the portals where human beings were shipped to market from Gorée Island in Senegal and Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast of Ghana.
From modern capitols to the remotest villages without electricity, where villagers share the river with the baboons, lions and crocodiles, Africa encompasses centuries in one continent, often in one country. Through my work as a writer and with organizations in education, I’ve had the opportunity to visit and work in at least 15 countries over the past decades.
Africa for me began in imagination with people and has expanded with people– with the illiterate father in Mali who advocated for his daughter to go to school so she could help him when he went to market and assure he wasn’t cheated, to the witty Nigerian poet who asked in his poem, “Who Killed Macbeth?”and had a host of citizens blaming each other, to the courageous newspaper editor who gave his life in fighting corruption in the Gambia, to the woman organizer who organized women all over Sierra Leone for good government and then had the audacity to run for President herself and later to cheer when her good friend in neighboring Liberia actually won.
Many journeys to Africa are still ahead, I hope. Now I visit real friends as well as imaginary ones.