“A new language
was formed by old ones running underneath and over one another. An
ever-changing in-between. Christine could accept this fluidity as she now
accepted the night creeping up over her, this blanket of warm dusk. And not
just because it was inevitable, but because it was different every night: a
performance, an adventure. She would have to learn all over again how to live
in this new old place called home. The sky was now completely black. And
somewhere far away, right now, it was dawn.” – Doreen Baingana, Tropical Fish
Day 1: Year of Arabia
Today, I did not read extensively
about Arabia. Nor did I study its complex language. I did not travel its
deserts or delight in its oases. Instead, I showed off the beauty of my own
land by taking a Libyan friend to see the Oregon coast; it was his first time
going to the ocean. A native of Tripoli, my new friend was no stranger to the
sea, but oceans are not seas, and the mighty Pacific is even less so than most.
I relished being on the opposite
side of tourism for once and maybe helping to balance out my extraordinary debt
to those who have gone out of their way to show me their homelands. I
will never be able to truly balance this enormous debt, but I must occasionally
try.
I really enjoyed the trip and I
hope he can say the same. The weather was beautiful, if atypical: blue skies
and sunshine the whole time. After initially dipping a toe in the frigid surf,
my friend swore off the idea of wading and instead, we found a rocky area and
climbed around for a long time. I taught him the vocabulary of tide pools and
their inhabitants and even convinced him to touch a sea anemone. He taught me
Arabic numbers 11-20 and also patiently explained how anesthesiology basically
works (he is a physician and I was curious).
At lunch we encountered our first
major hurdle. He only ate halal meats and he personally did not like seafood
either. I’ve never had a Muslim friend in America who has followed any dietary
restrictions other than abstaining from pork so I didn't plan for that ahead of time. He politely picked at a basket of
fries while I devoured a delicious clam chowder. If we go on any other
excursions, perhaps packing our own lunches would be a better option.
Despite the mealtime hiccup, the
day was great and I dropped him off in the late afternoon. On my way home, I
stopped to run a few errands and bumped into Michael. Back for a month from the
Netherlands, he was very busy preparing for his upcoming year at a university
in Beirut, but not too busy for tea. We stopped into a little place called Arabian Nights and grabbed a table. The
waiters were super nice and impressed with Michael’s ability to order exclusively
in Arabic. I was envious.
In the end, despite the rough
weekend beforehand and despite being stuck in Portland, I feel that my year of
Arabia got off to a solid start.
Reading and Watching
1) The Secret Life of Saeed the
Ill-fated Pessoptimist – Introduction by Salma Khadra Jayyusi
I read the introduction of this
short book today and was thrilled to find that the writer introducing the novel
compared it to Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good
Soldier Svejk. Hasek’s work is surely one of my top 10 novels and I come
back to it again and again in my mind. Good literary satire is surely the most
rare kind of find and my expectations of the novel I held in my hands bloomed.
Beyond that, the introduction
discussed the history of Arab literature in general and the entities in which
this book poked fun at, including apparently the Palestinian upper class, “the
author [Habiby] implies that the Palestinian catastrophe is not an isolated
phenomenon; war and aggression were not inflicted upon a progressive social
order but were the result of a double moral bankruptcy; the encounter of
Israeli aggression and reactionary Arab politics”.
The introduction finishes by
speaking about the changed expectations of humanity in our modern world and a “global
recognition of the possibility for freedom, liberty, and human dignity, and its
determination to defy all forms of aggression”. This is true. Ideas of dignity
travel instantly across the planet and give humans heightened expectations and
deepened dissatisfactions.
2) Gaddafi Libya a Short Cartoon to Try and Simplify the History
