A confession, of sorts.

So I think it's been determined that I'm an Orientalist. Edward Said would be ashamed of me. Professor Mitra will be ashamed of me. Professor Steve will be ashamed of me.

After a review last week from Axel Blaze, my original character Audemade from my Kingdom of Heaven story up and decided she didn't want to marry a Frankish knight, go back to France, and have five lovely children. No, she wanted to marry Nasir Imad al-Din al-Isfahani and make my life difficult.

I'm sure the august personages mentioned at the beginning of this blog post would chalk this sudden change of heart up to Audemande's creator's weakness for Arabic love poetry and an ongoing love affair with the image of a world that has never existed, and they'd be very right. If Post Colonial Lit is teaching me anything, it's that I'm very much an Orientalist. I love to read about "the mystic east," about Mughal India and pre-Meiji Restoration Japan and the Middle East under the Ayubbid caliphate. "Latticework, caravanserai, fountains," to quote Nazim Hikmet, the Turkish poet. "This is the Orient the French poet sees. This is the Orient of the books that come out of the press at the rate of a million a minute. But yesterday today or tomorrow an Orient like this never existed and never will."

So true, Mr. Hikmet. I'm sure you wouldn't approve of this turn either. It involves a franj woman falling in love with a poem-composing Syrian general. Somewhere everyone who fought against the image of the lacivious Arab is turning over in his or her grave. Hopefully I won't rouse too many ghosts -- this is going to be a relationship built on mutual appreciation. And I'm well aware I'm going into dangerous territory here -- now it's not just my own religious history I'm fiddling with, but someone else's. But what is art besides taking chances?

So, in response to this turn of events in my Kingdom of Heaven story, the readingand research list for this week looks like this:

Music of a Distant Drum. An anthology of classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew poems. I read this today. Those 9th century arab poets really knew how to turn a phrase. Some of the best love poetry I think I've ever read.

Arabic Script. A book on the art of Arab calligraphy. Beautiful work. It's making me want to learn calligraphy in any language.

Becoming Muslim: Western Women's Conversions to Islam. Because the contents of this book may become necessary to the direction of the story. I still have to look into this.

EDIT: Success! Apparently Aude doesn't need to convert at the end of the story! Women in Islam, by Wiebke Walther, tells me that Muslim men may marry non-Muslim women, but Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire (which I own, by the way -- wonderful text) only mentions women who converted and my hasty scanning of the Qu'ran online seems to indicate otherwise. I think I need to find out which theology professor teaches the Islamic studies course here...

Islamic Art and Archaeology of Palestine. I get to design Nasir's house, and I needed suggestions. I at least know they weren't all zenanas and flowering gardens.

Night and Heros and The Desert: An anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. More poetry. I am a glutton.

Di'bil b. 'Ali. A poet of the Ayubbid period, so someone who would have been Nasir's contemporary. I need him for stylistic purposes. 12th century arabic poetry has a very set form, and I have a feeling I'm not talented enough to recreate that in translation, because of course I will be composing thier love poems in English.

The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival. Fascinating book -- started some of it last night at dinner. The Author mentioned Orientalism in the introduction.


Yes, it's going to be an interesting next few weeks.

'Cause We Are Living in a Colonial World

...and I am the product of a colonial system. *music notes*

Not the Madonna song you all know and love, is it? Hey, materialism has everything do with colonialism. Joseph Conrad's insistence on the prevalence of the ivory trade out of the Congo tells me so. ( I could use this post to rant about how much I hate Heart of Darkness, but I have other fish to fry.)

In my Post-Colonial Lit class we started out by reading several articles by people like Edward Said, theorists and authors who have made it their life's work to understand the relationship between 'The West' and 'The East' in thought, writing, and politics. Said posits that there's a mindset Europeans have called Orientalism that colors the way they see the Eastern world (ie, anything that's not Europe) and that this mindset is still prevalent in today's society, especially in our news and entertainment media.

Today's example comes to us courtesy of BBC's recent adaptation of the Robin Hood legend. As BBC dramas go, it's not their best, but it's entertaining and it kills time on weeknights when I'm supposed to be doing homework. I've got a lot of problems with it, though, and one of them is increasingly becoming the portrayal of non-Europeans on the show, mainly because all the non-European characters turn into stereotypes. My problem yesterday was that some of the characters were of African descent, and, while I have the highest respect for equal opportunity hiring practices, I contend that there were no people of African descent wandering around in England in the 12th century, slave or freeperson. However, today's problem was with their portrayal of Arabs. Since this is the 12th century, and Robin has just come back from the Crusades, I buy that they can (and should) show up in this story. However, the re-occuring Arabic character on the show, Djac (say: Jack -- I have no idea where this name came from, as it doesn’t quite sound right for the period or the character) is played by an Indian actress (a very fun, spunky actress -- I give her props) and this, I think shows just a little of what Said is talking about when he indicates that Europeans tend to group everyone into "Us" and "Not Us."

The episode I'm watching today includes the character al-Malik, Saladin's nephew and a real historical character. However, this man is portrayed as wearing eyeshadow, bright red robes, and speaking English without necessary articles like 'the' and 'a.' He eats food that the European characters don't, he's a little effeminate – these are all hallmarks of the classic stereotype of the Eastern male. (He also refers to himself as Saracen, something no Muslim or Arab would EVER do, as Saracen is a European designate.) Chinua Achebe, whose article “An Image of Africa” we had to read for next class, gives the reason for these negative portrayals thusly, a description that applies to Arabs as much as it applies to the African peoples Achebe is really talking about –

“For some reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry, the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparing it with Africa.”

By using Non-Europeans as the bearers of ‘bad’, ‘backwards’ characteristics, the European characters look much smarter and better than their “Eastern” counterparts.

Back to the show -- al-Malik is trying to broker peace between the English and the Muslims, and Saladin has sent assassins, (not THE Assassins, unfortunately) to kill him in order to stop this from happening, something I think the real Saladin would not have done as the real Saladin did, at one point, try to broker peace using al-Malik. (The plan was to marry his nephew to Richard's sister Johanna, but that fell through when they both refused to convert to the other's religion. Go figure.)

But wait, it gets better -- the assassins are all women. Women wearing turbans and green bodysuits, who undress in the presence of men and then do a cool slightly ninja-esque thing with their swords to totally own Robin Hood and his men. Now I know that modern Muslim women are a lot more enfranchised than their 12th century counterparts, and I know that there are several examples of women who held tremendous power in the Arab world in the 12th century (Thank you, Fatima Mernissi), but the bodysuits and the unveiling and the being assassins bit strikes me as a little odd. There's also a point where these women look to be doing something like tai-chi and using throwing stars, which, as all men of learning know, are both CHINESE. al-Malik is also going to present the peace delegation with something that looks suspiciously like an acupuncture dummy, another Chinese innovation.

My point is, whoever cast this show or wrote it was thinking as Said implies all Westerners think -- as Us and Them. There's no real distinction between the inventions and culture of the Chinese and the inventions and culture of the Arab world, two great cultural traditions that should be given their own due. They’re both not European, and that means they can be lumped together.

In the show’s defense, there are a few bright spots. When Much tells Djac she could escape slavery by renouncing her god and saying that she’s a Christian (the sale of Christian slaves is forbidden, but any non-Christians, apparently, are open game on the slave market), Djac tells him to try it first if it’s so easy. Much, after a lot of trepidation about the Hand of God coming down to smite him, realizes he can’t do it, and Djac, smirking, makes him come to terms with the fact that it’s no easier to denounce Allah than it is to denounce the Christian God. Robin, at one point, quotes the Qu’ran, calling it the “Saracen Bible” when the rest of the Merry Men ask if he’s quoting the Christian Bible instead. It’s a nice interfaith dialogue moment, even if it’s a mislabeled one. At the end of the episode, al-Malik and Robin have a chat about peace, and he is allowed to continue on home with a shell-shocked crusades veteran who is going to try some Arabic medicine to see if he can’t get better that way.

My Post Colonial Lit professor stressed at the beginning of the semester that the point of Post Colonial literature is something along the lines of making the world understand the validity of all experiences, colonized as well as colonizer, and that one of the first steps along this journey we’re taking this semester is evaluating how we read and perceive works of literature. Recognizing Orientalism is one step.

I think I’ve got that down, or at least, I hope so. Or is this entire post and my observations just another unenlightened westerner preaching about what the East is really like? I think I’ll need Professor Mitra’s opinion, just to be sure.

The Liberating Writer (and a few thoughts on Women's Studies)

I've blogged before about the nature of words in different langauges (A Million Words for Love, February 08) and I've found another that I think writers and readers everywhere will appreciate. And once again, this linguistic revelation comes to us courtesy of Arabic.

I'm reading a book now called "The Forgotten Queens of Islam" by Fatima Mernissi (University of MN Press 1993) and Ms. Mernissi, in explaining the difference between levels of power in the early Islamic state, has this to say on the subject of freedom and, by association, writing:

"In Arabic words like hurr (free) and hurriyya (freedom) have little to do with the modern human rights connotation....Hurr also has to do with the idea of resistance, since one says of a bride that she has spent the night hurra if she was not deflowered on her wedding night, since her husband could not penetrate her. This idea of resisting, of concentrated energy contained in hurr, is evident in the word harrara, which means 'to write.' When you decide to write a text, what you are in fact doing is liberating words (tahir al-kitaba). You are arranging alphabet letters in a specific order that makes sense and liberates meanings. Al-muharrir (the liberator) is one of the many words for a writer. One of the many duties of the hurr, the aristocrat, is to think globally..."

Being a liberator of words is a beautiful image of writing, if, of course, one writes well. I'm sure some of my writer freinds would say that bad writing does not liberate words but rather enslaves them for evil and terrible purposes(see Simon's The Coming of the Madness to see what I mean.) But more than being liberators of words, I would also contend that writing is a liberating of ideas. Certainly we have seen that many movements for change and political ideologies have come from written texts, in which words have been set down and the reader is inspired to think on them. With Mernissi's acknowledgement of a writer as al-muharrir, (and certainly she fills this position with her writing, ) English speakers can also consider the idea of the author as an authority (note similarity of root), the teacher and beginner of discourse, as theorists like Foucault ("What is an Author?") point out to us.

So far the book has been exceedingly interesting, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Women's Studies. On the back, one of the commentaries from another academic, Ella Shohat, says this: "Mernissi's breathtaking investigation challenges both contemporary fundamentalist Islamic opposition to women in the public sphere and one-dimensional Western representations of Muslim women as completely lacking in agency..." {bold my own}

Ms. Shohat is also the author of "Unthinking Eurocentrism" so I think we all know what her aim in life is. But really, she has a point. We of the West never hear about exemplary women of other cultures, the Nur Jahans and Aisha al-Hurras and Trung Sisters of the world (It took me about five minutes to come up with that list, and I can only explain two of the three on it, so don't laud me just yet) while we valiantly praise the Victoria Woodhulls and Susan B. Anthonys and Gloria Steinams (and that list is entirely American, so that goes to show something else about my education, too).

When I came back to school, I began reading a lot of non-fiction books, and many of them had to do with the subject of women. I read Something from the Oven, a book on the culture of domestic perfection that grew up in American households after World War II, Hen Frigates, a book on the lives of women as wives and daughters of sailing captains in the 19th and early 20th centures, Women of the Raj, a book on the role of women in British Imperial India, and Women, Crusading, and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative , which kind of explains its subject matter itself. It was a Eurocentric reading list, to be sure. So, when I started this past weekend writing a Kingdom of Heaven fanfic based around the arabic origin of the word checkmate (shah-mat, the king is dead in Arabic or more appropriately the king is helpless in Persian) I realized I was woefully underprepared to deal with the Sultan Saladin (or Salah Al Din, as it is appropriately spelled) as a character.

Bearing this in mind, I went to the library to find a book on him. Easier said than done, but I did find Ms. Mernissi's book. After reading it I feel a little better about my reading habits (although I did find the book towards the end a little poorly organized, to be truthful) but I also realised something else, a unique similarity between women's cultures around the world.

In the last passage of her book, Ms. Mernissi says this:

"We, the inhabitants of medina democracies, are whirling around between Heaven and Earth, astronauts despite ourselves, without space suits or oxygen masks, launched into that planetary dance with bare faces and open palms. And there is one far from negligable difference; we women have to do all that whirling around wearing the veil. Heavens! When I think about our power! But shhh! We mustn't talk about it. We might attract the evil eye!"

After reading that, I recalled another saying, much in the same tone, from a western source --

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels."

I may not have understood the politics and various intrigues of the worlds and religious tones that Mernissi was talking about, but I did at least understand that what they did was exemplary.

(I realize, also, that this blog post was very poorly organized, but there was so much to be talked about!)