Orientalism Revisited and Occidentalism Redefined in Post 9/11 Era

Home , Abdul Rahman Munif, Occidentalism

Who Defines Me: Orientalism Revisited and Occidentalism Redefined in Post 9/11 Era

By Eid Ahmed Abdelwahab Mohamed

B.A. in English, June 1998, Al-Azhar University M.A. in English, August 2005, Minia University M.A. in American Studies, May 2011, The George Washington University

A Dissertation submitted to

The Faculty of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

August 31, 2011

Dissertation directed by

Melani McAlister Associate Professor of American Studies, International Affairs, and Media and Public Affairs

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University

certifies that Eid Ahmed Abdelwahab Mohamed has passed the Final Examination for

the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of July 28, 2011. This is the final and approved

form of the dissertation.

Who Defines Me: Orientalism Revisited and Occidentalism Revisited in Post 9/11 Era

Eid Ahmed Abdelwahab Mohamed

Dissertation Research Committee:

Melani McAlister, Associate Professor of American Studies, International Affairs, and Media and Public Affairs Dissertation Director

James Miller, Professor of English and American Studies Committee Member

Amr Hamzawy, Research Director and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center, Professor of Political Science, Cairo University Committee Member

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Dedication

For my parents

And

Adam, Noah and Mona

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments can never be made to all who have nourished one's intellectual life. I owe an especially heavy debt of gratitude to my advisor Melani McAlister who read the dissertation with meticulous care, called attention to matters that needed correction or revision, and made thoughtful suggestions that resulted in an improved treatment. In addition, her continuing investment of time and effort was fundamental to the success of the dissertation process. Melani provided counsel and encouragement that can only come from a true teacher and educator. I am also so grateful to James Miller for his generous help and his comments that were penetrating and relevant. From across the Atlantic, I owe thanks to

Amr Hamzawy at Carnegie Middle East for his invaluable ongoing assistance. I also appreciate the efforts of Dalia Mogahed at Gallup Organization. I am grateful to

Abderrahman Beggar at Wilfred Laurier University for his interest in the topic and investment of time and effort. My thanks go to Sandra Heard and Rami Fawaz for their willingness to sit down and provide me with their support, encouragement, and interest.

I am particularly impressed by the incredible spirit, wisdom, and strength of the

Egyptian people who made the January 25th Revolution that changed a lot of concepts held by Westerners about Arabs. I am indebted to those young people who came together, demanding the personal freedoms and rights that Egyptians have so long been denied.

Their message of peace and hope was easily delivered to the rest of the world through their cheering, singing, praying for their freedom in Tahrir Square.

Among those who have given me sustenance, I cannot fail to mention my colleagues at Faculty of Languages and Translation, Al-Azhar University for their friendly v spiritual support. My heart-felt thanks to all those unnamed others, too many to be named personally, who encouraged me to continue, who supplied ideas, and took the time to carry on useful discussions, thereby helping me through the completion of this dissertation. My parents, my brother Abdelwahab, my wife Mona, and my two sons Adam and Noah gave me confidence to soar beyond my expectations. Finally, all praise be to God through His

Blessings all good deeds are completed.

Abstract of Dissertation

Who Defines Me: Orientalism Revisited and Occidentalism Redefined in Post 9/11 Era

This dissertation explores how Arab media, cinema and fiction especially after the election of President Barack Obama, assert the value of America as a potential source of

‗change‘ while attempting to renegotiate the Arab and Muslim worlds‘ positions in the international system. Unlike many previous studies, my dissertation presents a full-fledged comparative perspective on the field. My work focuses on those works, mostly Egyptian, that manage to ask pointed questions about how cultural stereotypes produce new forms of political "sight" and thus create the binary of ‗us‘ and ‗them.‘ This dissertation proposes a contrapuntal perspective, to borrow a Saidian term, by examining Egyptian/Arab cultural representations of the US and its foreign policy. My reading of Egyptian/Arab fiction, for example, argues that contemporary Egyptian/Arab writers put forward a fictional counter- telling and a complex understanding of US-Arab encounters. Moreover, what Arab novelists convey in their works about Arab societies is still part and parcel of the discourse about the East-West encounter. This is evident in the way Arab novels convey details of

Arabs‘ daily lives that assert the superficial differences between ―us‖ and ―them,‖ yet remind us ultimately of our deep similarities.

The dissertation also analyzes Egyptian/Arab filmic representations of the US which explores how Egyptian/Arab cinema is and has always been under the impact of

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Hollywood. Arabs, who are enamored of American cinema-making, are at odds with

American foreign policy.

Moreover, this dissertation indicates how fast news media have increasingly contributed in an instant communication among peoples and nations all over the world.

Arabs and Americans are forcefully directed and shaped by the powerful impact of mass media. It deals with selected incidents that have occupied the Arab intellectual climate in the post-9/11 era, and contributed to a cultural encounter between US and Middle East.

These incidents that may seem small or isolated are able to reflect the whole intellectual climate in the Arab world within a historical and political context often neglected, misunderstood, or ignored by proponents of ―clash of civilizations‖ argument.

This dissertation also demonstrates Arab-Americans‘ cultural response to 9/11 and their forced move from invisibility to being visible. Historically, negative images of Arabs and Muslims trot out whenever Middle East crises emerge. Arab-Americans who already suffer from double identity face double burden of feeling sorrow for their country‘s catastrophe and attempting to disprove the stereotypes about their Arab heritage.

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Table of Contents

Dedication…………………………………………………………………….iv

Acknowledgments ...... v

Abstract of Dissertation ...... vii

Table of Contents……………………………………………………………..ix

List of Figures ...... x

Introduction:...... 1

Chapter 1: US in Post 9/11 Arab Fiction ...... 25

Chapter 2: US in Post 9/11 Arab Media and Intellectual Life ...... 71

Chapter 3: US in Post 9/11 Arab Cinema ...... 127

Chapter 4: Arab American Cultural Response to 9/11 ...... 178

Conclusion………………………………………………………………….221

Bibliography ...... 228

List of Figures

Figure 1………………………………………………………………………………….87

Figure 2………………………………………………………………………………….89

Figure 3………………………………………………………………………………….90

Figure 4………………………………………………………………………………….92

Figure 5………………………………………………………………………………….92

Figure 6………………………………………………………………………………….93

Figure 7………………………………………………………………………………….95

Figure 8………………………………………………………………………………….96

Figure 9………………………………………………………………………………….97

Figure 10..……………………………………………………………………………….98

Figure 11..……………………………………………………………………………….108

Figure 12..……………………………………………………………………………….109

Figure 13..……………………………………………………………………………….111

Figure 14..……………………………………………………………………………….114

Figure 15…..…………………………………………………………………………….144

Figure 16…..…………………………………………………………………………….157

Figure 17…..…………………………………………………………………………….161

Figure 18…..…………………………………………………………………………….163

Figure 19…..…………………………………………………………………………….168

Figure 20…..…………………………………………………………………………….170

Figure 21…..…………………………………………………………………………….171

INTRODUCTION

I. Overview

This dissertation investigates post-9/11 U.S.-Middle East encounters in order to map out how they balance conflicting pressures—internal dissent and outward threats. My project specifically explores how Arab, especially Egyptian, culture asserts the value of

America as a potential model, especially after Barack Obama‘s election, of ―change‖ while attempting to renegotiate the Arab and Muslim worlds‘ positions in the international system. This project fills a niche because it is an attempt to understand the relationship between the Obama era in the U.S. and the social/political change movements throughout the ―Arab Spring‖, crowned with Tunisia‘s most recent ―Jasmine Revolution,‖ Egypt‘s

―Lotus Revolution,‖ and other pro-democracy movements in Libya, Yemen, Syria, and

Bahrain. However, I would like to stress the fact that this study ends before the ―Arab

Spring,‖ and I think the material here can help explain the multiple ways in which people understood the U.S. in the almost 10 years between 9/11 and January 2011.

Unlike many previous studies, my dissertation presents a full-fledged comparative perspective on the field. This dissertation focuses on those works with politically charged content that ask pointed questions about how cultural stereotypes produce texts. These texts are largely Egyptian, and often offer new political ―visions,‖ challenging the ways in which 1

U.S. cultural texts have created the binary of ―us‖ and ―them.‖ Egypt is central because of its historic centrality in the Arab world and the prevalence of its filmmaking and cultural industries. There are, of course, other important countries in the Middle East, and that it would be of great interest for me to expand or even revise some of the work I have done here to do a broader truly representative sample of Arab world opinion and/or cultural productions as well as to highlight North Africa, or the Levant.

My reading of Egyptian/Arab news media, cinema, and fiction argues that contemporary Arab culture puts forward a counter-narrative of a complex understanding of

U.S.-Arab encounters. Moreover, what Egyptian/Arab cultural producers convey in their works about Arab societies is often part-and-parcel of the discourse about the East-West encounter. This is evident in the way many Egyptian/Arab novels and films convey details of Arabs‘ daily lives that expose superficial differences between ―us‖ and ―them‖ in the

U.S.-Arab encounter, yet also ultimately evoke deep similarities. Of course, there are many other cultural texts that do not do that, that may not be particularly interested in the West, or which may not have a humanist conclusion acknowledging similarities, but I have selected certain texts that share this approach. My study intends to unpack the

Western/American narratives that present Arab Muslims‘ interaction with Western modernity as an impetus for Arab Muslims to assimilate Western cultural values. For example, the chapter on Arab media shows how many Arabs use Western new media to foster intercultural interactions and enhance national media performance.

My research engages with popular Arabic texts that heavily contribute to the Arab perception of the ―other.‖ My choice of these texts—literary, filmic, and journalistic—is

based on their popularity as bestselling novels, blockbuster movies, and the most popular collection of columns, cartoons, and photojournalism. The choice of these texts is also based on their engagement with American foreign policy in the Middle East, and what they demonstrate about the American political and social construction of Islam as a religion and

Arab Muslims as a group. Moreover, Egypt is the main fount of these texts due to its being a major cultural and political center in the Arab world. Being home to one of history‘s first great civilizations, its strong Islamic traditions, its cosmopolitanism, its modern pan-Arab political and intellectual history, and its regional leadership give enduring boost to its standing as the cultural capital of Arab world. Moreover, it is notable that Egypt has the largest film and television industry in the Arab world that dominates the Arab television and cinema, as does popular Egyptian music. Egypt has also been a source of Arabic literature having produced some of the most prominent 20th century Arab writers from

Taha Hussein and Tawfiq Al Hakim to Nobel prize-winner novelist Naguib Mahfouz.

This dissertation asks several research questions: How do Arab Egyptian films and popular fiction discuss America/Americans? How do they depict or represent them to the readership/audience in the post-9/11 era? What are the central themes that are brought up in the image-building of Americans? Is there any significant change in the representation of the U.S. in Arab media/literature/films based on the current image and representation of

Arabs/Muslims in U.S. media/literature/films? The materials I analyze include several novels, films, cartoons, and journalistic columns.

My dissertation seeks to accomplish its task by employing a broad range of cultural and transnational studies to my research materials, and I discuss the theoretical models for

my project below. I work to analyze the different cultural texts in this dissertation by examining them within their historical context, which Arab cultural producers attempt to negotiate their positions in the post-9/11 world, shaped by the ―War on Terror,‖ the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and U.S. hegemony, more broadly. In this context, Arabs need to negotiate two realities: the history of Orientalism and Occidentalism, on one hand, and the longing on the part of many Arabs to create terms of mutual understanding and connections between the U.S. and the Middle East, on the other. This longing remains strong, despite the serious and ongoing critiques of U.S. policy that are at the heart of much Arab cultural productions after 9/11.

II. Orientalism Revisited and Occidentalism Redefined

In Orientalism (1978), Edward Said states that the ―East‖ underwent

―orientalization‖ and was transformed into a stereotype over centuries by religious wars, literary depictions, and a scholarly discourse and a body of knowledge constituting

Orientalism. Said asserts that Orientalists have formed the idea of the Orient as an aberration from Western norms. Moreover, Said delves into questions of alterity informing the relationship between the Western Self and the Eastern Other in relation to Orientalism, that is, sometimes the Other is constructed not as an Other but as a distorted image of the

Self. Therefore, Said underlines the success of Orientalists in the creation of the Orient by sustaining the Western ideology of superiority and at the same time rhetorically making the

West as the norm from which the Orient has departed in an effort to alienate or isolate the

Self the Occident. In this way the Other was introduced and known only through texts

written by Western writers. With the absence of the Other in their writings, the Orientalists‘ presence is all-pervasive.

While Orientalism is revisited in the West, Occidentalism is invoked in the East, resulting in cultural texts—literary, filmic, or journalistic—that reflect Occidentalist viewpoints. The post-9/11 colonial presence of the U.S. in the Middle East contributes to the replacement of negative images of the old colonial powers, i.e., English, French, and

Italian, with new American ones. Jokes about English soldiers in Egypt are substituted with ones about Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as about President Bush‘s shoe- throwing incident. Just as the mainstream West has Arabized all Muslims, mainstream

Arabs have Americanized the entire West. This indicates the absence or silence of

European countries from the Eastern map of encounters and the emergence of the U.S. as the sole power in the world by the end of the 20th century. This is a fundamental problem as

Arab cultural producers, on the one hand, are all sensitive and trying to create new humanistic encounters that are different than the one-sided images produced in the West.

This humanistic approach focuses on shared human values and concerns. On the other, they match U.S. Orientalism with Occidentalism, which is its own kind of stereotyping.

Before 9/11 Orientalism was revisited many times in the 20th century in the form of stereotyping and dehumanizing views of Arabs/Muslims. Post-9/11 Orientalism and

Occidentalism are invoked through the ―objective correlative.‖ The term is devised by T. S.

Eliot1 to describe a poet‘s attempt to find a concrete or specific situation/location/object that evokes a particular emotion in the reader (as opposed to attempting to describe the

1 Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888-January 4, 1965) is an American-born English poet and critic. He is one of the most venturesome innovators of 20th-century poetry and criticism. 5

emotion itself). An objective correlative is an object, a situation, or a sequence of events that recalls a particular emotion to the mind of a reader or audience. The objective correlative thus sets the emotional tone for a character. Thus, in Arab texts, representations of the War against Iraq and Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the unbalanced U.S. policy in the region, and U.S. support of undemocratic regimes in the area function to evoke anger and to signify the absence of ethics in the American approach towards the

East. On the other hand, the Western texts use 9/11 attacks, as well as other terrorist assaults in Europe and other parts of the world that are linked to Muslims, to stand for the violent nature of Islam as a religion and Arabs/Muslims as a nation. In this way, representation can find/create some objective and specific image or object in the cultural text to stand in for or evoke certain emotions.

In Covering Islam2, Edward Said reflects on how in the late 20th century U.S. politicians and mainstream media discovered the market value of Islam as a threat. Thus, books, articles, and TV programs on themes such as Red Sword of Allah 3, Militant Islam

Reaches America4, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How

We Can Do It5 and What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the

Middle East,6 were created and magnified in U.S. mainstream media. This project explores

2 Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Vintage Books, 1981). 3 Gregory Kilgore, The Red Sword of Allah (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2009). 4 Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003). 5 Brigitte Gabriel. They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (New York: St. Martin‘s Press, 2008) 6 Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. (New York: Harper Perennial 2003) 6

the way such themes are received in the Middle East and how they affect the way Arabs and Muslims perceive and redefine the Occident.

The distorted image of the U.S. in the Arab world is a central topic of research for the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI). Based on a trip to Egypt and Saudi

Arabia the institute published a report assessing Arab perceptions of the U.S. (in countries allied to the U.S.):

Six C‘s—cowboys, colonialism, conspiracy, Coca-Cola, cowardice, and clientitus.

The client is Israel. The cowardice is the perception that we are a schoolyard bully.

Coca-Cola is the symbol of an alien consumer society; conspiracy is based on

unrealistic expectations of U.S. capabilities; colonialism is premised on a U.S. drive

to control oil; and cowboys is drawn from a Hollywood style perception that the

[Bush] Administration shoots from the hip. The reality is that when Arabs think of

the United States they think of Israel.7

The six C‘s that summarize the U.S. image in the Middle East have their own counterpart in the three B‘s of Arab stereotypes, discussed in Mazin B. Qumsiyeh‘s report ―100 Years of Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping‖: bombers, belly dancers, and billionaires.

This dissertation argues for the greater sophistication and nuance of Arab culture‘s engagement with the U.S. It attempts to show how Arab representations of America and

Americans are sophisticated, diverse and historically fluid before and after 9/11. My work seeks to demonstrate and exemplify the heterogeneous nature of categories such as

7 Visit took place during December 2002. See Edward S. Walker, ―Gloomy Mood in Egypt and Saudi Arabia,‖ Middle East Institute Perspective, January 22, 2003. Reprinted by Gulfwire E-Newsletters, 23 January, 2003, 1. 7

―Occidentalism‖ and ―the East‖. As such, it instantiates a conviction that the critique of

Occidentalism must entail a departure from ―Orientalist‖ discourses that represent the

Arab/Middle East as homogeneous in the way it represents the U.S./West, and who ignore the diversity of mainstream Arab social discourses. The selected texts challenge the view of

Islam/Arabs as a passive victim of Orientalism.

The representation of the Middle East not only paves the way for a new colonial era, but also, as stated by Melani McAlister, plays a crucial role in ―the construction of postwar U.S. nationalism and the contest over the meanings of ‗Americanness.‘‖8 As

Margaret Nydell explains, after 9/11, one of the ―greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to confront the Islamic threat lies in continuing to believe—at the urging of senior U.S. leaders—that Muslims hate us and attack us for what we are and what we think, rather than for what we do.‖9 This belief emerges from writings like those by Samuel

Huntington, who popularized the ―clash of civilizations10‖ thesis, which was actually coined by Bernard Lewis. This kind of perception not only indicates a change in Arabs‘ location on the political map of power but also stresses the American self-identification in relation to global politics and power. Since the 9/11 terror attacks, Americans have increasingly been told to believe that political Islam is a mortal threat to the West, an aggressive and totalitarian ideology, dedicated to random destruction and global subjugation.

8 Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 39. 9 Margaret K. Nydell, Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times. (Boston: Intercultural Press, 2005), 117. 10 Samuel P. Huntington, ―The Clash of Civilisations?‖, Foreign Affairs (Summer 1993), 22-49. Also, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998). 8

Edward Said, in his influential work Covering Islam, asserts that the Islamic world also contributes to the negative representations of Islam, Muslims, and political Islam by

Western media.11 The Islamic Revolution in Iran (particularly the hostage situation at the

U.S. embassy in Tehran) and the militancy exhibited by some extreme groups (most notorious are the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda) are just a couple of illustrations. In addition, because political Islam is on the rise in the Middle East, gaining votes through democratic elections (Hezbollah in Lebanon winning 18% in the parliamentary election in May 2005, the Egypt‘s Muslim Brotherhood winning 20% in the parliamentary election in November

2005, the victory of Hamas winning the majority vote in the parliamentary election in the

Palestinian Territories in January 2006), there is a reinforced perception in the West that political Islam is ―inexorably on the march,‖ fortifying its alleged aggressive and totalitarian ideology.12 Political Islam has indeed taken the path of democracy to achieve political objectives, one thing that was promoted by the U.S. government and in particular propagated by George W. Bush‘s administration.13

On the other side, there is a trend in the Arab world to look at America and

Americans through the political attitudes of their government as well as the Hollywood

11 Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Vintage Books, 1981). 12 Fawaz A. Gerges, ―Is Political Islam on the March?‖, Christian Science Monitor (June 6, 2006), 9 13 In his 2005 Inaugural Address, President Bush traced out the logic of a new, post-9/11 American foreign policy: ―For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny,‖ he declared, violence ―will gather … and cross the most defended borders‖—i.e., our own. Therefore he announces, ―it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.‖ Quoted in James Traub, ―Islamic Democrats‖, April 29, 2007, 44. 9

movies.14 For example, many Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East have preconceptions about all or most Americans being anti-Arabs/-Muslims. That all Jewish-Americans are pro-Israel is another example of many stereotypes that result in widening the gap between the two nations. This anti-American sentiment is ―due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for

Israel.‖15 Moreover, Hollywood contributes in exacerbating the conception that Americans are morally corrupt, by highlighting figures such as atheists, criminals, and perverts. The history of U.S. foreign-policy failure in the Middle East further reinforces ideas about the immorality of American society in the eyes of many Arabs.

III. Post-9/11 Images

Soon after the attacks of 9/11, mainstream U.S. media, as well as those of many other Western countries, have linked Islam and Muslims in general with the attacks. Islam and Muslims have been described by U.S. media as being the source of terrorism, religious fanaticism, and cultural backwardness. This was evident when then-President Bush used the term ―crusade‖ to describe his war against terrorism, recalling the famous wars waged by the West against Arabs and Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. The associations of ―Crusade‖ in English are still positive in spite of recent Western scholarly reassessments of these wars, while in the East the term has strong negative associations.

TV Evangelist Pat Robertson said Muslims were worse than Nazis. The Televangelist and

Christian leader Jerry Falwell described Prophet Muhammad as a ―terrorist,‖ while the

14 This is evident in the the Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll, conducted by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland with the respected polling firm Zogby International. Most of these polls show the gap between American policies and Arab public perceptions of the United States. 15 James Zogby, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us and Why It Matters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 173. 10

American preacher Jerry Vines described him as a ―demon-obsessed pedophile.‖16 Ann

Coulter, one of America's most controversial commentators, wrote in a column published on September 13, 2001 (and was widely quoted around the world): ―We should invade

[Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.‖17

This dissertation deals with texts that have been produced in the Middle East in the post-9/11 era which contribute to a cultural encounter between the U.S. and the Arab world. My choice of such works is based on their popularity and ability to come to the attention of literary and cultural critics in the U.S., and to spark debates about the U.S.-

Middle East encounter. For example, works by Alaa Al Aswany whose world popularity, thanks to his work The Yacoubian Building, helps bring his novel Chicago to the attention of many American readers and literary critics. Indeed, such texts are capable of reaching out directly to many people and establishing a transnational dialogue that affects people‘s knowledge about the Other. On the Arab side the actors participating in the dialogue hope to legitimize their attempts at renegotiating the position of the Arab/Muslim world in the international system.

Arab and Muslim fiction will include the following works: Chicago (2007) by Alaa

Al Aswany and Birds of the South (2005) by Amani Abul Fadl. In these two works by

Arab-Muslim writers, there are attempts to approach the worries of both Arabs/Muslims in the U.S. and in the Arab/Muslim world. In Chicago and Birds of the South there is a vivid picture of clashing cultures and religious sects in typical multicultural American cities

16 Lawrence Pintak, Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas (London: Pluto Press, 2006), 101. 17 Ibid, 101. 11

(Chicago and New York). Both novels are introduced through realistic Arab and Arab-

American characters. It throws light on the crisis of identity in post-9/11 America. Arab movies include Al Assifa (2000), Alexandria … New York (2004), 11'09''01 - September 11

(2002), The Night Baghdad Fell (2005), and Laylat El-Baby Doll or Baby Doll Night

(2008).

III. Frameworks and Literature Review

I used a method of cross-cultural analysis employing a range of theories in order to gain a greater understanding of culture and power in relation. Rather than apply any single theory uniformly to such a diverse body of literature, I have found many interrelated theories that speak to various texts in fruitful ways. For instance, the works of Edward Said have given me the ability to interrogate the liberatory potential of representation and its simultaneous disciplining and surveillance by governmental and policy-making authorities.

This is evident in Said‘s attempt to study how culture has used its surveillance and construction of the Western mind as a way of mapping that stereotyping onto a wider political culture. I am interested in carefully applying theories that can parse the ways that such mappings occur in visual, literary, and social realms. Veering away from traditional formalistic approaches, this work employs visual and cultural studies scholarship to illuminate how Arab media, fiction, and cinema have been vehicles for critiquing American cultural and political, including imperial, presence in the Arab world.

Building on Foucault‘s theory and borrowing his notion of ―discourse,‖ Said concludes that the ―discourse‖ created by Orientalism reinforces and, moreover, constructs

European imperialism. Said uses Foucault to argue that Orientalism helps produce

European imperialism. ―No more glaring parallel exists,‖ Said says, ―between power and knowledge in the modern history of philology than in the case of Orientalism.‖18 Said sees

Orientalists‘ major contribution to the study of the Orient as fixing it as an entity whose sole identification is its aberration from Western norms, which is a deviation that is essentialized not in characteristics but existence: ―they‖ are different from us; ―they‖ are not us.

Amy Kaplan‘s work has been particularly valuable to my shaping of this project. In

The Cultures of United States Imperialism, Kaplan‘s ―Left Alone with America‖ draws attention to the importance of culture that ―has gone unrecognized in historical studies of

American imperialism,‖ and that ―the role of empire has been equally ignored in the study of American culture.‖19 Kaplan also stresses the fact that imperialism is inseparable from

―the social relations and cultural discourses of race, gender, ethnicity, and class at home.‖20

Thus, the formation of the idea of nation as home is related to the imperial distinction between home and abroad. This remains the most consistent piece of knowledge in what

Kaplan terms an otherwise anarchic and chaotic perceptions of the Self and Other in an imperialistic context. Imperialism permits an interchangeability of roles whose sole commonality is the need to affirm the stability of the American Self against a threatening foreign Other. Kaplan advances her argument through two analytical rubrics: gender and race. In ―Manifest Domesticity‖ Kaplan argues that this ―American self‖ is fully

18 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 343. 19 Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, Cultures of United States Imperialism: New Americanists (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993),14. 20 Ibid.,16. 13

differentiated by gender—not one self, but at least two.21 Her attention to the ―anarchic and chaotic‖ perceptions of empire is so important, and she is constantly insisting that imperial projects are diverse. The juxtaposition of such theories and analytical techniques serve to enrich the existing interdisciplinary approach of my study. Placed in conjunction with one another, these theorists produce new cultural spaces where the utopian possibility of solidarity across difference, the reappraisal of historical atrocities, and the reassertion of politically liberatory modes of thought can be represented textually and visually.

The key arguments of scholarship in the field of U.S.-Middle East cultural relations revolve around the question of whether the United States has achieved what Samuel P.

Huntington calls in The Clash of Civilizations, ―elements of commonality‖ that constitute

―a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests.‖22

In American Orientalism Douglas Little directs our attention to the cultural misunderstandings that constitute real obstacles to American foreign policy, resulting in many negative consequences that get the U.S. into trouble. Americans, in Little‘s view, have exerted great effort to make Middle Eastern societies ―modern‖ and ―western‖: ―Yet early in the new millennium many Americans remain frustrated by the slow pace of social change, disturbed by the persistence of political autocracy, and appalled by the violent xenophobia of groups such as al-Qaeda emanating from a part of the world whose strategic

21 Amy Kaplan, ―Manifest Domesticity,‖ American Literature 70, no. 3 (September 1998), 22-49. 22 Michael H. Hunt, The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 324. 14

and economic importance remains unsurpassed.‖23 This makes the U.S. encounter with the

Middle East ―the byproduct of two contradictory ingredients: an irresistible impulse to remake the world in America's image and a profound ambivalence about the peoples to be remade.‖24

Little begins and ends his book with references to Mark Twain‘s Innocents Abroad to give a long-range perspective. Little observes how Americans continue to perceive

Arabs as ―backward, exotic, and occasionally dangerous people who have needed and will continue to need U.S. help and guidance if they are to undergo political and cultural modernization.‖25 He uses the iconic publication National Geographic and the Disney film

Aladdin (1992) to get his readers closer to the point and to demonstrate the difference between the image of Arabs in American popular culture as ―backward, exotic, and occasionally dangerous folk‖ and Israelis as Western and ―modern.‖ Thus, Little concludes that ―it should come as no surprise that since 1945 the U.S. public and policy-makers have ostracized Arab radicals who threaten Israeli security or challenge western control over

Middle East oil."26 By the end of his book, Little asserts that U.S. relations with the Middle

East have become problematic because of American Orientalism, which makes Americans

―underestimate the peoples of the region and overestimate America's ability to make a bad situation better.‖27

Zachary Lockman's Contending Visions of the Middle East gives a historical

23 Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 2. 24 Ibid., 3. 25 Ibid., 11. 26 Ibid., 42 27 Ibid., 314 15

context to present ―Western‖ attitudes toward the Middle East/Islam/Arabs, which he argues have embraced and espoused crude prejudices. His arguments, while not particularly new or unique, provide us with a historiography of some of the past arguments about the

Middle East and assert the role of history in shaping the relationship between the mainstream ―us‖ and the majority ―them.‖ Lockman attempts to draw our attention to the importance of reading current events in a historical framework. Our contemporary facts and events do not stand alone away from their historical roots. If the present builds on the past, our vision of it should be extended beyond its limited space and time. If Douglas Little concentrates his account on U.S.-Middle East relations in the 20th century, Lockman is able to make a broad survey of the development of Western knowledge about Islam and the

Middle East since ancient Greece and the Romans up until the post-9/11 era. Moreover,

Lockman‘s book is more about theorizing Orientalism rather than about practicing it.

Rashid Khalidi is an example of someone who historicizes the U.S.-Middle East relationship but without paying attention to culture. In Resurrecting Empire: Western

Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East, Khalidi emphasizes the importance of exploring the past to help us find better ways of dealing with current situations. The book starts with the current American occupation of Iraq, asserting that this war has been waged out of the personal interests of the Bush Administration. Khalidi returns to historical relations of the past to analyze the failure of British and French colonization in this region because of its peoples‘ determination to win independence.

Actually, I think many scholarships on the U.S. role in the Middle East returns to the past and also look at the history of colonialism. Moreover, Khalidi traces the relations between

the U.S. and the Arab world in the 20th century through a reading of the history of the region. Khalidi fails to analyze the colonial presence of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle

East early in the 20th century, which might be seen by some as unbalanced and a convenent component of the East vs. West scenario, despite the fact that his book actually challenges the clash of civilizations thesis, by historicizing U.S. power.

Other scholars look at the present time through 9/11 attacks and read the attacks and their aftermath as a new stage in the history of the U.S. and the world. The ten essays in Mary Dudziak's edited volume, September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment?, reflect on the 9/11 attacks as a watershed moment in the history of the United States, Islam, and international relations. Other scholarship shows interest in describing and assessing the complexity of anti-American sentiment. Denis Lacorne and Tony Judt, in their edited volume With US or Against US: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism, follow the complexity of anti-Americanism in six distinct parts of the world: Western Europe, Eastern

Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia. In What They Think of Us:

International Perceptions of the United States since 9/11 David Farber offers a broad international perspective on anti-American attitudes. What is interesting and unique about this book are the commentaries on U.S. foreign policy from foreign writers who explain the roots of anti-American sentiment. This is close to what this dissertation intends to do, with a focus on the Arab world.

In Epic Encounters Melani McAlister discerns in domestic diversity a major factor in U.S. representations of the Middle East. Again, the domestic and the foreign are woven together. Deciding the ―whiteness‖ or ―blackness‖ of Arabs in the U.S. plays an important

role in the way the Arabs of the Middle East are perceived in the U.S. McAlister shows how culture works as a social and historical phenomenon that shapes both identity and politics. Her close readings of popular culture as a means to delve deep into the U.S. foreign policy are ways of seeing its departure from U.S. domestic politics of race.

McAlister manages to show how different cultural products have shaped public perception in relation to the U.S.-Middle East encounter. Expanding upon and unearthing further layers of Said‘s Orientalism, McAlister shows how representations of the Middle East have been a space of contention over American foreign policy through construction of domestic issues of race, religion, and gender. It seems that the challenges of 21st century globalization, anti-colonialist resistance, decolonization, and nationalism erase any possibility to retain the Orientalized conceptions of race and color as proposed by earlier

Orientalists.

I would like to stress the fact that most surveys in the field are one-sided, for their authors barely bring any sources from the Middle East and confine themselves mainly to

American cultural and political sources. Of course there are exceptions; Brian Edwards‘

Morocco Bound and Ussama Makdisi‘s Faith Misplaced are important examples. I examined the bibliographies of many prominent works in the field and noticed the complete absence of the ―Other Arab‖ in their works. This is due to the inaccessibility of translated literature or the unavailability of translation for literature. The transnational approach necessitates cultural translation to bridge the gap between the two worlds, i.e., the

Middle East and the West.

The frame in which the theorists of the field typically operate is characterized by

relativism. So, I see that this field is in dire need of a synthesis. For while the scholarship successfully illustrates American experiences of September 11, it describes the rest of the globe not as an actor but as a passive space upon which American imperialism moves freely every day and in every way. This synthesis is required to present a full-fledged comparative perspective on the field.

I am interested in starting my project by introducing particular sources that typify the intellectual and cultural exchange in 21st-century cultural anxieties. It is strange to find in these cultural exchanges Islam, which is a religion, being held in comparison with the

West, which is a geographical area. Geographizing Arabs and Muslims religiously is a mark of a long history of Western Orientalism. Every Arab is a Muslim and every Muslim is an Arab. Both belong to Islam whose reform is perceived, as noted by Said, from an

Orientalist perspective, as an oxymoron. Muslims/Arabs are required to change but their

Islamic system of thought is beyond any reform, while the West‘s values and culture are stable and beyond any question of change.

I. Annotated Chapter Outline

In the first chapter, I discuss the ways in which the writers Alaa Al Aswany and

Amani Abul-Fadl contest American-centric writings by writing about Arabs from the viewpoint of the American-educated Arabs. They refuse to believe that Arab and American identities are natural opposites, a view promoted by Orientalists. The two Egyptian writers refuse claims of ―clash of civilizations‖ and focus on reconstructing the historical conditions that help create the binary of ―us‖ vs. ―them.‖ Both the novels Chicago and

Birds of the South trace how differences are formed, exclusions are practiced, and stereotypes emerge. Arab novelists focus on particular instances of self-criticism and delve into the process of producing and reproducing stereotypes. Moreover, there is a counterbalance of these stereotypes by giving expression to moderate voices concealed and silenced by the rhetoric of ―clash‖ forces. Both writers display resistance to the totalizing representation of Self and Other.

The appeal of Al Aswany‘s novels is due to the diversity of the thematic aspects of his novels, evident in the wide spectrum of human, political, and social themes that his works reflect. In addition, there is appeal in his ability to record the modern social and political history of Egypt. Through his characters, he fervently relates Egyptians‘ hopes, pains, successes, failures, frustrations, and disappointments. Al Aswany‘s novels attract audiences of both literature and cinema because they can easily identify themselves with his characters. Although the main characters in Chicago are Egyptian, but this does not necessarily matter in being citizens of oppressive governments, and in being Arabs in the

US. They share important commonalities, so that they can be seen as a kind of everyman.

However, there is not one "Arab" experience or Arab history or Arab viewpoint. That when such convergences occur, when "Arab" is a truly meaningful category, it also operates across and against national and religious differences, as well as differences of political opinion. This makes ―Arab‖ a more complicated category.

In the second chapter, ―U.S. in Modern Arab Media and Intellectual Life‖, I attempt to analyze two post-9/11 events for their repertoire of stereotypes about Self and Other. I depend on methods brought to light by Said‘s Orientalism as a means of addressing the role

of representation in the construction of the Occident. I attempt to show how media constitutes a redemptive site through which stereotypes can be mimicked and appropriated.

It raises important questions regarding the relation between the long history of stereotyping and knowledge production that hinder interaction between the U.S. and the Arab world. My dissertation aims to bridge the gaps in an understanding of the ―covered‖ Other. I draw together a range of material to reflect on two incidents: the shoe-throwing incident involving Bush in Iraq and the election of Obama. In this part of the project I analyze these two incidents in terms of textual minutiae as the basis of competing interpretative worlds. I have thus emphasized a mode of analysis that investigates the world in which the text accrues meaning. Doing so, I focus on opinion, critique, and the consideration of representation as a series of practices and perspectives. This is done through a meticulous reading of different kinds of writings --Islamist, secular, liberal, etc. Despite these very different backgrounds and investments, yet I saw in the reactions to the two incidents -- shoe-throwing and the election of Obama-- remarkable similarity in Arab writers‘ reactions.

Cinema, with its visual impact, goes beyond the limitations of the written texts to communicate with an audience perhaps discouraged by various conditions that have prevented it from reading. This is probably one of the reasons why cinema was taken more seriously in the post-1952 period. This was during post-revolution Egypt led by Gamal

Abdel Nasser, who abolished the monarchy and established the Arab Republic of Egypt.

The state took over the film industry in the 1960s in order to improve film quality by directly involving itself in filmmaking or by supporting private-sector companies. Because

of the state‘s censorship, however, the result was not as fruitful as expected. This censorship faded with the arrival of Sadat and the emergence of Egyptian films‘ criticism of the current Egyptian society. Thus, films by Yousef Chahine and Khaled Yousef that focus on negative aspects of Egyptian society were able to emerge. Since the films are based on fictional works, they deal with an invented reality based on the author‘s ideological perspective. In this way, the filmmaker role is reproducing the original invented reality into another medium and redefining the reality to respond to his/her own ideological perspective.

In the third chapter I analyze how Egyptian/Arab films attempt to demonstrate that the oppressed, the excluded, the demonized pose a constant threat to any dialogue between the U.S. and the Arab world. Arab films show gaps and fluidities in the discourse between the U.S. and the Arab world. Egyptian/Arab filmmakers produce controversial discourses by strongly emphasizing their belief in the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict, war in

Iraq, and anti-Arab sentiment. Arab films reveal that Arab and American cultural differences are repeatedly articulated through oppressive and tyrannical attitudes toward each other. Therefore, Arab filmmakers offer new interpretations of history by articulating it from the perspective of the oppressed Other. They attempt to construct a world without

―war.‖ It is a world where, as Sam Keen points out,

[The] real enemy against which we must struggle is the war system. This system

includes both the political institutions through which we educate and habituate

ourselves to war and the psychological defense mechanisms …The immediate

impediment to ending war is the mindset, which convinces us that war is inevitable

and any hope of a world without war is Utopian.28

Keen‘s insights into the workings of the ―war system‖ help to understand the challenges

Arab filmmakers pose to the Arab-U.S. encounter. They promote alternative discourses that question ―civilizational clashes‖ and war in order to displace such rhetoric and claims with new terms of justice, tolerance, and protean human interactions. They link the ―inside‖ with the ―outside‖ in an attempt to respond to the globalized spirit of the age.

In the fourth chapter I analyze two Arab-American literary texts for their repertoire of stereotypes and exile fantasies. Mohja Kahf's E-Mails from Scheherazad thematizes the hardships of Arab/Muslim minorities in the U.S. by creating a representational space from the legendary The Thousand and One Nights. The Arab-American writer depicts the lives of those who are not heard within the normative national discourse of both the U.S. and the

Arab world. Kahf‘s work is a call for a return to a self-supporting Arab woman and a move towards independence and the rejection of male rule. Moreover, it is a cry to return to the tradition and self-reliance of the past. E-Mails from Scheherazad shows that Arab-

American women have much to offer to America in its 9/11 crisis. This is to be done through recuperating tradition while coming to terms with the myriad effects of modernity.

The American Scheherazad uses her traditional ways of the past to confront a modern mirror of herself.

Laila Halaby structures her novel Once In A Promised Land as a prolonged

28 Sam Keen, Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination (San Francisco: Harper &Row Publishers, 1986), 167. 23

flashback, emphasizing the ways in which the past informs the present and culminates in a futureless world. Halaby‘s heroine Salwa is damaged by the experiment of freedom. Once

In A Promised Land allegorizes what is otherwise a simple story set in a highly specific historical and social landscape. In many ways, the tension between Self and Other is played out in the encounter between the couple Salwa and Jassim and the ―foreign‖ Other. The

9/11 events become a trope for all of the moves towards alienation taken by Salwa and

Jassim, and the tragic and confusing consequences, which result in a colonial outlook that continues to inform the present. At the very base of postcoloniality it examines the tensions produced through the interconnection of independence and the colonized subject. Tradition somewhat protects the couple Salwa and Jassim but the loss of tradition evokes a final rupture from the past. It is this loss which disrupts the very idea of the Arab-American, as the identity in the novel seeks redefinition; tradition loses its ability to protect and becomes yet another source of conflict. Halaby centers on the small, familial space as a source for allegorizing the larger world in order to investigate the postcolonial dilemma. As globalization has come to explain the hybrid nature of Arab-American writers, there is a third national/local dimension, a new cultural hybrid integrating two national cultures through a process of mental and emotional bricolage. In their writings, Arab Americans attempt to explicate for the exilic and hybrid a way for negotiating identity. They seek to construct alternative and subversive identities that rather focus on the moment and attempt to dislodge the ways in which identity is constructed within the bounds of history and time.

CHAPTER ONE

U.S. in Post-9/11 Arab Fiction

Objectivity can mean a selfless openness to the needs of others, one which

lies very close to love. It is the opposite not of personal interests and

convictions, but of egoism. To try to see the other's situation as it really is an

essential condition of caring for them … Contrary to the adage that love is

blind, it is because love involves a radical acceptance that it allows us to see

others for what they are.29

Terry Eagleton traces a link between the objectivity of the literary artist or critic and his or her social role. Objectivity requires the creative artist, as well as the critic, to care for the outer world rather than the inner self, and to get himself out of what he is writing about.

It is in this way that s/he becomes a social benefactor whose success in literature and criticism is measured by his/her study, evaluation, and interpretation of the works of art in relation to current social, cultural, and political present. In this way, the writer takes on

29 Terry Eagleton, After Theory (London: Basic Books, 2003), 131. 25

social concerns and issues of the time to unearth other problems that potentially lie beneath the surface of the issues.

As early as 1975, Syrian sociologist and novelist Halim Barakat articulates the way

Arab writers both determine and reflect any ―change‖ in an Arab society:

A writer could not be part of Arab society and yet not concern himself with change

… the theory of influence which sees writers as agents of social change, applies

more accurately to contemporary Arab novelists than the theory of reflection, which

sees writers as objective and detached observers holding a mirror to reality.30

Barakat continues, ―Literature can subordinate politics to creative and reflective thinking, and undertake the task of promoting a new consciousness.‖31 A novel, in any language, can be studied as a source of different types of knowledge about its ―nation of birth‖. This knowledge can be historical, social, political, anthropological, etc. Many Arab writers have a firm determination to create a vehicle for their ideas. This vehicle might be a novel, a play, a poem, or an article on culture, politics, science, criticism, or history. Arab novels are placed within their relevant historical, social, and generic contexts. This process of Arab novelists is like Scheherazade‘s in One Thousand and One Nights, wherein she manages to survive and liberate herself and the kingdom‘s women through her narratives. In the

30 Halim Barakat, ―Arabic Novels and Social Transformation‖, in Studies in Modern Arabic Literature, Robin Ostle ed, (Warminster: Aris and Philips), 126-127. 31 Ibid., 137. 26

present, it is a real-life decolonizing trope, which parallels a material quest for independence from the Western colonial powers.

Arab writers have consistently commented upon their social worlds. This is evident in the works of Naguib Mahfouz in which we can trace the main social concerns of his time.

Although modern Arab writers vary in their literary styles and perspectives, they share a refusal of certain aspects of the material concerns of their time. If the function of literature is not simply to represent experience but to offer possible worlds which may expand and/or critique our vision or understanding of human life, then the Arabic literary scene of the modern era is not only a mirror of the present but also an indicator of a desired future. Arab novelists use fiction as a redemptive site through which colonial stereotypes can be mimicked, appropriated, and ultimately subverted.32

The contemporary Arabic novel has shifted from following the tradition of Western novels to exploring Arab realities from a specific regional and cultural context that explores social reality neither through Western imitation nor through Arab/Islamic triumphal historical evocations, but through penetrating the current problematic Arab realities.

Examples are the works of Naguib Mahfouz, Alaa Al Aswany‘s The Yacoubian Building and Chicago, Gamal al-Ghitani‘s Zini Barakat, Ahlam Mosteghanemi‘s Memory in the

Flesh, Ghada al-Samman‘s The Departure of Old Ports, Hanan al-Shaykh‘s The Story of

32 See, for example, Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994); Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin (eds.), The Empire Writes Back (London: Routledge, 1994); Homi Bhaba, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); and as pertains to Egypt, Samia Mehrez, Egyptian Writers Between History and Fiction (Cairo: AUC Press, 2005); Samah Selim, The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt 1880-1985 (London: Routledge, 2004); Muhammad Siddiq, Arab Culture and the Novel: Genre, Identity and Agency in Egyptian Fiction (London: Routledge, 2007).

Zahra, Abdel Rahman Munif‘s Cities of Salt, Ibrahim al-Koni‘s Gold Dust, and Mohamed

Choukri‘s For Bread Alone, and many others that reveal the hidden parts of a ―sacred‖

Arab reality.

During the first half of the 20th century, anti-colonialism constituted the main theme in many works with attempts to interpret the different facets of the East-West encounter.

However, modern Arab writers now reflect in their writings the changing political and social conditions in the Arab world. In the second half of the 20th century Arab writers have focused on themes such as corruption, social dissent, and political upheaval, which has led to writers, like Sonallah Ibrahim and Abdul Rahman Munif, being imprisoned or persecuted for their efforts. In his Cairo Trilogy Naguib Mahfouz depicts life in Cairo through the struggles of one family across three generations.

I. Arab Intellectuals’ Engagement with American Culture

It is notable that the Western colonial era in the Arab world has left Arab writers with a desire to free their literary production from Western domination in the sense that there is an interest in the particularity of their social and cultural contexts. For Ibrahim al-Mâzinî, an Egyptian novelist, ―The belief that it is desirable for the Arabic novel to be analogous to the Western novel is a mistake; each community has the particularities of its life.‖33 In Arab

Culture and the Novel: Genre, Identity, and Agency in Egyptian Fiction, Muhammad

Siddiq argues that

33 Jurj Taräblshr. Uqdat Audib fi al-Riwaya al-'Arabiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Talr'a lil-Tibâ'a wa al-Nashr, 1982), 10. 28

The Arab novel continues to suffer from the congenital stigma of its putative

origins in the West and its subsequent importation into Arab culture under the

auspices of Western colonial domination. Many classics of Egyptian (and Arabic)

fiction go to great lengths to dramatize the psychological and intellectual paralysis

that grips fictional characters who venture into hazardous terrain of encounter with

the cultural ―Other.‖34

Taha Hussein, one of the most prominent Arab intellectual figures in the 20th century, wrote an introduction to the Arabic translation of Studies in American Literature, an early example of the work of Arab writers ―in contact‖ with American culture and literature. The early work by Arab writers, which emerged under English and French colonial systems, attempts to explore the U.S. as a guide and gauge for the values of justice and democracy.

Hussein‘s views show an optimistic vision of the U.S. as a force of ―change‖. Known as the

―Dean of Arabic Literature‖, Hussein caused a literary revolution by examining classical

Arabic poetry and Arabic culture through the lens of modern literary and cultural theories.

This was a shock to many of his contemporaries and provoked many attacks against his work, some of which are still used today.

In his introduction, Hussein argues that Arabs were excluded from American cultural and literary productions by the colonial power of the English and French who attempted to control not only the natural resources of Arab nations but also their cultural and intellectual resources. Hussein takes up the Arab preconception that Americans are materialistically inclined. He asserts that Americans could not achieve technological advancement without a

34 Muhammad Siddiq, Arab Culture and the Novel: Genre, Identity, and Agency in Egyptian Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2007), xii. 29

strong ethical, cultural, philosophical, and literary basis. Hussein adds that he spent much time trying to convince ―some educated Egyptians that North Americans have a sublime spiritual life that lies behind their embroilment in the Great World War. Their sole motivation in the two world wars was to safeguard the very same values that have enlightened civilized nations for long.‖35

Hussein calls for Arabs to be open to world literatures, especially American literature, which he asserts contain lessons about American values. Hussein also invites Americans to be open to other nations by translating their national literature into English:

It is not enough to introduce yourself to the world through your economic, political

and military power since nations are better known through their intellectual

achievements. Recurring to military power as the only way to affect the world will

result in imaging the U.S. as a monster to be feared rather than a nation to be loved.

Fear will produce hatred and dubiety towards you.36

Arab writers found in American literature and culture a source of knowledge for democratic values. However, this Arab intellectual perspective began to change in the second half of the 20th century in response to American involvement in the Middle East and with the rise of Arab nationalism.

Rasheed El-Enany‘s Arab Representations of the Occident challenges the claim that

Edward Said‘s Orientalism focuses exclusively on Western perspectives and neglected resistance to its hegemony. El-Enany asserts that Arab culture has never been anti-Western and Arabs‘ perception of the West has never been static. He states, ―Unlike their Western

35 Taha Hussein, Studies in American Literature (Cairo. No date of publication),110. 36 Ibid., 111. 30

counterparts of the colonial age, studied by Edward Said, Arab intellectuals have displayed a very rational and appreciative attitude towards Western culture despite the colonialism of modern times and older clashes.‖37 The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel Prize winner, elaborates: ―We were in conflict with the English; we used to demonstrate against them and shout, ‗Complete independence or violent death!‘ But at the same time, we valued highly English literature and English thought … We made distinction between

[Britain‘s] ugly colonial face and its radiant civilized one…‖38 In this way Mahfouz draws a line between Western policy in the region and Western literary and cultural production.

He attempts to explain how Arabs are able to recognize Western values while being at odds with Western colonial presence in the Arab world. This refers to an ―objective‖ attitude toward the West and asserts a ―civilized‖ approach on the Arab writers‘ part.

In Orientalism, Said claims that Western knowledge about the Orient is used to serve

Western colonial ends. Said states that ―European and then American interest in the Orient was political … but that it was the culture that created that interest, that acted dynamically along with brute political, economic, and military rationales to make the Orient the varied and complicated place.‖39 El-Enany asserts that Said‘s book came to represent the sole

Western perspective without paying any heed to the Oriental counter-response and resistance to the Western cultural onslaught. The Orient‘s perception of the West has never been static, as some Arab writers are pro-Western, others are anti-Western, and still others

37 Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representations of the Occident: East-West Encounters in Arabic Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 2 38 Raja Al-Naqqash, Naguib Mahfouz: Safhat min Mudhakkiratihi wa Adwa Jadida Ala Adabihiwa Hayatihi, 64. 39 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 12. 31

admire Western technological advances while rejecting its moral stances. El-Enany presents a systematic, chronologically ordered account of Arab writers‘ encounters with

Western culture. Alaa Al Aswany and Amani Abul-Fadl, the Egyptian novelists chosen for this study, constitute an example of El-Enany‘s explorations of Arab writers‘ accounts of

East-West encounters.

II. Alaa Al Aswany

I saw 9/11 as a crime, and I have written against it. But I believe that events are

always manipulated by regimes for their own purposes. Just as the American

government has used Osama bin Laden to deflect attention away from its own

problems, many of the Arab governments used 9/11 to play on anti-American

emotions. They were hoping to convert the negative emotions people harbored

against their regimes and channel those emotions onto a foreign entity.40

A common approach to the relations of literature and society is the study of works of literature as social documents, as portraits of social reality. I argue that a social portrait can be abstracted from literature. In this way we can study a writer as a ―social being‖ who, in his literary productions, represents not only himself but reflects aspects of the whole society. Moreover, in studying the writer's biography we are introduced to the social factors that may affect him and lie behind his literary and intellectual purpose. That is why it is

40 Alaa Al Aswany, National Geographic (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0609/voices.html), accessed August 20, 2010. 32

important to integrate into this study a brief introduction of Al Aswany‘s background and literary development.

Born in Egypt in 1957 and educated in French schools, Al Aswany was exposed to

Western culture at a young age. The Egyptian dentist-turned-writer is not only a novelist but also a journalist who writes prolifically for Egyptian newspapers on literature, politics, and social issues. It was The Yocoubian Building, his second novel published in 2002, that brought Al Aswany fame, not only in the Arab world, but worldwide. The Yocoubian

Building has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages, and in 2006 it was adapted to film. The novel delves into the problems of modern Egypt through the depiction of a group of residents in a once-fashionable building in downtown Cairo:

From the pious son of the building's doorkeeper and the raucous, impoverished

squatters on its roof, via the tattered aristocrat and the gay intellectual in its

apartments, to the ruthless businessman whose stores occupy its ground floor, each

sharply etched character embodies a facet of modern Egypt - where political

corruption, ill-gotten wealth, and religious hypocrisy are natural allies, where the

arrogance and defensiveness of the powerful find expression in the exploitation of

the weak, where youthful idealism can turn quickly to extremism, and where an

older, less violent vision of society may yet prevail.41

41 Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2004). 33

Al Aswany, who was accepted into a Master‘s program in dentistry at the University of

Illinois in Chicago in 1985, spent three years there studying, traveling, and exploring

American culture and society. In 2007 he wrote the novel Chicago, which explores relations between Egyptian scholars living in Chicago. Al Aswany weaves different characters, Egyptian and American, on one loom to demonstrate their commonalities. He depicts Arabs and Americans suffering shared problems. Pluralism constitutes an important factor in Al Aswany‘s writings. He acknowledges that ―literature‖ is more pluralistic in the modern age, and that society ought to be so, too. Al Aswany‘s pluralistic views influence his perspective on the ―War on Terror‖, not in terms of a binaristic East-West encounter, but rather as a conflict between

the majority of human beings and the interests of some groups who are not human

at all. Most people are on the human side. They want to work, they want life to be

better for their children. Some are artists and thinkers. On the non-human side, you

find the big corporations, George Bush and fanatics like Osama bin Laden. I think

human values will overcome in the end. That's why we are here, after all these

centuries. Bush, bin Laden: they have no vision; they see the world through a

pinhole. The rest of us, we have a better view. So I'm optimistic.42

Al Aswany believes that the ―clash of civilizations‖ thesis is not determined by reality but rather functions as an instrumental element in foreign policy interests, those that lie behind any conflict. He attempts through his work to uncover the hidden struggle in Egyptian society between power, religion, and love. Al Aswany also explores the abuses of power

42 Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/may/31/alaa-al-aswany-interview), accessed August 20, 2010. 34

and corruption that permeate Egyptian society and Egyptian communities situated outside of Egypt, as can be demonstrated in the novel Chicago. He juxtaposes two generations of

Egyptian immigrants that stand in stark contrast to each other, with the old generation‘s pessimism and lack of patriotism depicted against the new generation‘s idealism and optimism. The novel portrays different experiences of immigration, mediated by a negotiation with connections to Egypt the homeland. Characters emerge all along the spectrum of assimilation: one character refuses to acknowledge his Egyptian/Arab roots in order to strive to become fully ―Americanized‖ and another who expresses deep guilt for leaving Egypt to escape its repressive political and social system. The character of Nagi, a student who was once a political detainee, speaks in the first person to create a deeper intimacy with readers, suggesting that the novel might be loosely based on real events.

Different characters from different backgrounds and various cultures emerge and develop in the immigrant community in Chicago.

III. Scene Background: Arab Immigrants as “Frozen Cells” in America’s

Melting Pot

Stereotypes about Arabs/Muslims attract many Americans‘ attention to whatever and whoever corresponds to these stereotypes and make them refute whatever is inconsistent with them. So, their eyes look around to catch what is not integrated and pay less attention to the elements of integration. After 9/11, Arab/Muslim immigrants took on the media representation of Arabs as a ―problem‖ in American life, compelling many to exclude themselves from political participation. Social exclusion is based on notions of the

incompatibility of the Arab Other culturally, specifically the threat to the local culture and identity that Arab identity presents. Moreover, social exclusion is often generally tied to a generational rift represented by Arab/Muslim immigrants, especially the first generation, in terms of broader issues, such as lack of models for youth, low self-esteem from negative media representations, victimization, passivity within the community, and isolationism. In

Chicago Al Aswany depicts the generational rifts of the immigrant community along with the confrontations many have with negative Arab stereotypes in the post-9/11 period by revealing characters‘ different relationships with American values/culture as elements subject to integration and appropriation in their own lives.

When immigrants are incapable of interacting with their new society, community ghettoization and identity crisises (for following generations, as well) are a risk.

Unfortunately, unawareness toward other ―cultures‖ inevitably results in xenophobia and racism in American society, if not the institutionalization of intolerance. In such a situation it is difficult for Arab/Muslim migrants to abandon the negative perception s/he has of herself/himself as a second-class-citizen. This phenomenon steps up the social exclusion, wherein stereotyping, invisibility, and discrimination arise. Joanna Kadi states, ―It's tough to name a group when most people aren't aware the group exists ... that's why ... I coined this phrase for our community: The Most Invisible of the Invisibles.‖43 This invisibility is imposed on Arab Americans, who also sometimes find the cultural, political, and religious values of their homeland or family‘s homeland in tension with mainstream American

43 Joanna Kadi, ―Introduction‖, in Joanna Kadi (ed.), Food for our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab American and Arab Canadian Feminists (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1994), xix. 36

culture. This identity in tension, in duality, is evident in Abedeen Jabara explanation of his

Arab and American experiences:

When I tell my fellow Americans that my immigrant grandfather homesteaded in

North Dakota, I am seen as the descendent of a pioneering American. When I say

that I was born in Mancelona, Michigan, graduated from Wayne State University‘ s

Law School in Detroit, I am regarded as an urban professional. When I brag that my

brothers have done well in business and local politics, I am congratulated for their

success. But when I pronounce my name, I see people pull away. When I reveal

that I am a Muslim, they seem to wonder if I might be a terrorist. When I state that I

have been politically active on behalf of the Palestinians, they look as if I am surely

a terrorist and subversive. My `problem‘ is that I am an Arab American and,

therefore, I am one of my country‘s better-kept secrets.44

Jabara‘s words refer to the way Arab Americans in the aftermath of September 11 are caught between two worlds — the American world in which they live, succeed, and constitute a part of, and a perceived identity, marked with discrimination, suddenly assigned to them because of their names, appearance, ethnicity or religion. Without this misrepresented identity, they are ‗good‘ citizens, but once their identity is uncovered through their names or religion, they become ‗subjects.‘ That is why many Arab Americans lay much emphasis on educating their fellow Americans about Arab as a culture and Islam

44 Abedeen Jabara, ―Time for a Change: Arabs in America‖, in Arab World Notebook Secondary School Level, Women Concerned about the Middle East, eds. Audrey Shabbas and Ayad al-Qazzaz (Berkeley CA, Najda, 1989).

as a religion. They stress the crucial role that representation plays in fostering understanding and bridging the Middle East/West divide.

Al Aswany‘s Chicago is set in an academic environment to lay much emphasis on education as a primary force and a strategic initiative behind any anticipated ―change‖ in the way Arabs/Muslims are perceived in the U.S.

IV. Chicago

It seems that the title of the novel Chicago stands for the fact that Chicago was the scene for a number of important events whose impact is still in process in the present time.

Al Aswany looks at the present time through the past that witnessed similar events. Also,

Chicago is the place where the writer studied medicine at the University of Illinois and where he met many controversial characters and witnessed various events that helped him weave the various plot threads in his novel. It seems that Chicago has some autobiographical narrative along with a biographical sketch of others during Al Aswany‘s stay in the U.S. The leftist poet-scientist Nagi Abdul-Samad appears to share a ―profile‖ with the writer Al Aswany.

Chicago weaves together various stories of Middle Easterners who ―anchor their ships‖ on the coast of Western civilization, only to find it in opposition to their values, traditions, cultures, and systems of government. They simultaneously desire Western values and hate them, generating a clash that bleeds the heart before the body. Al Aswany depicts a community of immigrants who are unable to abandon their Arab culture after spending decades in the West in a timely novel that throws light on the wide gap between

the East and the West. In the novel, the lab is a central allegorical site for this gap of East and West, Self and Other, wherein the writer attempts to make his readers look at the Other as a ―living cell‖ that requires close study. It is impossible for the Other to be an exact version of the Self. Chicago is written with a high sense of suspense, so when the events of the story escalate, Al Aswany takes his reader to a different sub-plot and another ‗living cell.‘ This makes his work offering different versions of Arab and Arab American lives and experiences. It is an attempt to defy the one-track image circulated in mainstream U.S. media, Hollywood cinema and culture.

Time, in the novel, if we exclude the introduction for the origin of the word

―Chicago‖, is a time of internal movement, the movement of the characters and events despite the fragmentation of the chronological order by the retrieval of history and self. The writer has benefited from choosing Chicago to be the scene of his novel in order to represent the dialectical relationship between East and West. It seems that the author has much interest in unraveling this East-West encounter, as is evident in his previous work,

The Yacoubian Building, which takes place in a European-style building built by a Greek architect in downtown Cairo. The building where aristocrats who adopt a Western lifestyle live becomes the residence of working-class Egyptians soon after the 1952 revolution that puts an end to the English occupation. The Yacoubian Building is a scathing satire of

Egyptian politics and society and functions as a microcosm of modern Egypt. In Chicago,

Al Aswany transfers the whole scene to the U.S. to explore the dialectic relationship between the two cultures (Egyptian and American).

Setting part of the novel in the department of histology at the School of Medicine has more than one signification. On the one hand, it refers to Egyptian scholars studying in a ―neutral‖ and ―objective‖ field of study, showing them spending most of their days reflecting on cells and tissues in the human body without any political aspiration that might disturb the status quo. However, their daily lives, before and after immigration, are vigilantly tracked and monitored by the long arm of political surveillance in their homeland. The department of histology also suggests the dispersion of Egyptians as each one of them acts like a separate ―living cell‖ by him/herself. It seems that the troubled situation in their country prevents them from uniting or finding commonalities, as problems in Egypt ultimately succeed in dividing them. In America, there is still a residue of hatred and conflict from an omniscient, troubled Egyptian political and cultural scene.

Al Aswany introduces each character as a separate ―living cell‖ by him/herself, since all the characters live apart and their meetings are no more than fleeting moments that do not amount to any sort of profound experience. Al Aswany introduces a divided community of Egyptian academics and students in the U.S. who struggle to adapt to

American life while maintaining conflicted relationships with their homeland. It is interesting to find that the lives of Egyptian immigrants in the U.S. are constructed around two main illusions: devastating regret at having abandoned one‘s country as evident in the character of Dr. Salah or immense pride of being a ―genuine American, pure and without blemish,‖ as represented by Dr. Thabit. By the end of the novel these illusions evaporate.

As Dr. Karam Doss puts it, after 30 homesick years, American life is just like its supermarket fruit, ―shiny and appetizing on the outside, but tasteless.‖ This refers to the

way many Arab/Egyptian immigrants harbor a deep sense of homesickness despite the veneer of brilliant success they achieve in the U.S.

V. Chicago: A Dramatic Plot

The novel begins with a brief history of the city of Chicago, which comes to represent in the novel the history of the U.S. Al Aswany recalls the history from the time that saw the massacres of Native Americans in the 17th century to, the fire of 1871 that left 300 dead,

100,000 homeless, and destroyed $200 million worth of property. The small fire at Mrs.

O‘Leary‘s that spread to engulf the entire city of Chicago in flames parallels the small fire accidentally started by one of the characters, providing a foundation to the intersection of

Egyptian, Egyptian-American, and American characters in a unifying locale, the University of Illinois in Chicago.

The novel starts and ends with Shaimaa Muhammady, a 33 -year-old doctoral student at the University of Illinois histology department, who hails from the city of Tanta in Egypt. A religious, diligent, intelligent student, Shaimaa‘s scholarship from the Egyptian government gives her the opportunity to study in the U.S. It also provides an a opportunity for Shaimaa to escape ―the psychological pressures that she is suffering because of her failure to get married … as if she were running away from her situation or postponing facing reality.‖45 The move from Tanta to Chicago is not easy especially for a veiled

Muslim woman in the post-9/11 era. As she lands at O'Hare Airport she battles feelings of dejection as she faces waves of Americans, men and women, ―streaming forth from all

45 Alaa Al Aswany, Chicago (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 8. 41

directions,‖ shying away from her, because, as she claims, ―I am Arab and because I am veiled.‖ She takes in the hostile reception that characterizes her first encounter with

America when a security officer at the airport suspects her as a threat because of her veil. A kitchen accident brings another Egyptian student, Tariq Haseeb, into her life. Tariq, who belongs to a middle-class family in Egypt, studies excessively to achieve academic excellence. His treatment of women is put up to inspection, as revealed by the scenes in which his aggressive treatment of women is apparently fueled by a desire for intimacy.

That is why his first encounter with Shaimaa is full of tension but soon turns into intimacy and romance. Shaymaa, an idealistic Muslim woman, who comes to the U.S. to find herself wrestling with unmatched grip a world that is completely different from the one she leaves behind.

Just like Yacoubian Building, Chicago has a large cast of central and minor characters with various levels of social and psychological depth. Ra‘fat Thabet is an

Egyptian-American professor of histology who pursues a new life in the U.S. to fulfill his

―American Dream‖. He has an American wife, Michelle, drives a Cadillac, and owns a large house with a dog in an affluent suburb. After 9/11 Thabet emerges publicly to denounce fellow Arabs and Muslims, using language that most fanatical Americans might be reluctant to use: ―The United States has the right to ban any Arab from coming in until it is certain that such a person is civilized and does not think that killing is a religious duty.‖46

Thabet expresses his contempt for whatever is Egyptian, but he cannot escape his Arab background. He despises his culture and yet carries it with him at the same time. His

46 Ibid, 30. 42

contradictions burst to the surface when his only daughter Sarah decides to leave the house to live with an artist named Jeff. Ra'fat cannot stand the idea that his daughter is having a relationship outside marriage. He is also shocked to find out that his daughter develops a drug addiction, introduced by her boyfriend Jeff. Always in defense of Western culture,

Thabet ultimately cannot shake the values of marriage and sexuality with which he grew up when it comes to his daughter, even though they are values he regularly attacks and mocks.

Muhammad Salah‘s character stands in contrast to Thabet‘s character. Salah is engulfed in nostalgia for Egypt after three decades in America. Rather than live in the present with his American wife, he prefers to retreat in memories of his Egyptian sweetheart Zeinab Radwan, who considers Salah‘s immigration to the U.S. an escape from national duties: ―I regret to tell you that you‘re a coward‖ is a phrase that continually resonates with Salah, causing him much psychological pain. Unable to let go of the past, he is described as someone who had ―bought American clothes but … couldn‘t bring himself to get rid of his Egyptian clothes.‖ After 30 years in the U.S., Salah tries to re-establish links with his homeland. In a desperate attempt to revisit the political ideals of his youth,

Salah agrees to Nagi‘s plan to sacrifice his career and disrupt the Egyptian president‘s visit to Chicago. Yet he is a product of Egypt‘s culture of fear created by its police state, so he ultimately surrenders to his fears. Salah fails his fellow Egyptians by refusing to deliver a statement on rights and freedom in front of the Egyptian president, which he bitterly regrets until he commits suicide at the end of the novel.

A former 60s radical, John Graham is a statistics professor at the histology department. He bears a considerable facial resemblance to the American writer Ernest

Hemingway. Graham lives with a younger African-American woman named Carol and her five-year-old, Mark. Carol experiences racism, is unable to find a job, and is forced to sell her body to earn a living. Another American professor is Dr. Dennis Baker, a towering figure in his field and the advisor of an Egyptian student named Ahmed Danana, the corpulent head of the Egyptian Students' Union. Danana is a failed student who owes his academic standing to his lifelong collaboration with security officials in Egypt. He works for the government intelligence agency by spying on his fellow students. He dreams of getting a good political position back in Cairo. Danana, who is ready to sell anything to achieve his dream of becoming powerful, closes his eyes to the attempts of Safwat Shaker, the intelligence attaché in the Egyptian embassy, to sexually abuse his wife Marwa. Shaker is a womanizing sadist who preys on the poor, broken wives of Islamist activists that he persecutes and imprisons. Al Aswany heaps bilious contempt on Danana and Shaker, two agents of the corrupt regime in Egypt.

Nagi Abdel Samad is a poet and a Masters student of histology at the University of

Illinois. He establishes a romantic but short-lived relationship with a Jewish-American woman named Wendy Schor. During a visit to Professor Graham‘s house, Abdal Samad meets Dr. Karam Doss, a Coptic heart surgeon who immigrated to Chicago in the 1970s to escape discrimination in Egypt. Doss and Abdel Samad, who initially dislike each other, turn into close friends who conspire together to embarrass the Egyptian president while he is on a visit to Chicago. They intend to make Dr. Muhammad Salah deliver a public

petition for democracy and freedom in Egypt. Their attempt fails when Dr. Salah, unable to overcome his fears of the Egyptian regime, refuses to deliver a statement prepared by Doss and Abdel Samad in which they ask the Egyptian president to give credence to democracy in Egypt. The novel ends tragically as Salah kills himself, Thabet‘s daughter Sarah dies because of her addiction, and Shaymaa, resorts to abortion to avoid a scandal for her family that would haunt them forever.

VI. Memory, Home, and Exile in Chicago

Al Aswany, a committed pluralist, sets his novels in locations where diverse individuals face the task of living together without ripping out each other‘s throats. It was an apartment block in downtown Cairo in The Yacoubian Building; in Chicago, it is the campus of the

University of Illinois Medical Centre, where the author studied dentistry in the Eighties.47

Al Aswany‘s work revolves around two principal forces: a corrupt regime in Egypt that aims to erase memory of the past, and a people who struggle to keep that past alive in order to bring about democratic change. At the heart of Chicago‘s text lies the practice of memory that constitutes a political act. Memory in Al Aswany‘s work serves not only to keep the past alive but also functions as a lens on the present that helps to secure a more hopeful future. Within the past are the keys to identity, which are inescapable. Memory is the link to this identity that enables us a bridge between present and future. Remembering the past allows for a more in-depth understanding of the present as well as building hope for the future. Chicago is a striking book that constitutes a call for social change in Egypt

47 Ed King, Telegraph News (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/fictionreviews/3559820/Review- Chicago-by-Alaa-Al-Aswany.html), accessed August 16, 2010. 45

and/from America. It is an Arab attempt to introduce us to the world of Arab expatriates living in the U.S./West.

Sociologist David Pollock defines a ―third-culture kid‖ as ―an individual who, having spent a significant part of the developmental years in a culture other than the parents‘ culture, develops a sense of relationship to all those cultures, while not having full ownership of any‖.48 Amin Maalouf argues in On Identity that any individual has more than one identity, which is ―made up of many components combined together in a mixture that is unique.‖49 Moreover, each person is ―a meeting ground for many different allegiances,‖ which might be in conflict with one other.50 After a long time in the U.S., most characters in Chicago feel allegiance to America, since it allows them to pursue their personal and professional lives freely. However, because they still feel ties to their country- of-origin that they end up forming alternative allegiances. Ultimately those immigrants develop what Edward Said calls ―contrapuntal consciousness,‖ which is the double cultural vision gained as a result of being exposed to two or more cultures.51

Many Egyptians carry with them their concerns wherever they travel or immigrate.

Chicago traces the journey of a group of Egyptians as they move to and begin to settle in the heart of Chicago. Even when they succeed in the U.S., their eyes remain directed toward their homeland. This does not mean that love is the only motive behind this longing

48 Quoted in Amal Saleeby Malek, Returning Home: A Postwar Lebanese Phenomenon (Beirut: Dar Al- Mourad, 2001), 107. 49 Amin Maalouf, On Identity, trans. Barbara Bray (London: Harvill, 2000), 3. 50 Ibid., 5. 51 Edward Said, ―Reflections on Exile,‖ in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, eds. Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trink T. Minh-Ha, and Cornel West. New York: New York Museum of Contemporary Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 357-366. 46

and homesickness; it also applies to the hatred many of them have toward a regime and nation from which they believe they are expelled or excluded to the point of a humiliating immigration to a ―foreign‖ land.

In Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women’s

Fiction, Roberta Rubenstein argues that home is not only ―a physical structure or a geographical location but always an emotional space … home is among the most emotionally complex and resonant concepts in our psychic vocabularies, given its association with the most influential, and often most ambivalent, elements of our earliest physical environment and psychological experiences as well as their ripple effect throughout our lives‖52 Moreover, Rubenstein asserts that when notions of home, loss, and nostalgia recur in certain narratives, they do so to ―fix‖ the past by attaching it firmly in the recipients‘ imagination, and at the same time correct it by revisiting it. By doing so, such narratives are able to bridge the gap between longing and belonging.53 In Chicago we read about characters vacillating between past and present or between belonging and longing.

They come from Egypt with many social, psychological, and political troubles, and they attempt to overcome these troubles in the ―free‖ land of Chicago. But despite the seemingly

―open‖ environment of Chicago, they are still imprisoned by the ―limited‖ relation to their country-of-origin. Rubenstein assumes that authors attempt through their characters to bring back or fix ―emotional architecture of that multivalent space.‖54

52 Roberta Rubenstein, Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women’s Fiction (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 1-2. 53 Ibid., 6. 54 Ibid., 6. 47

In Chicago, Al Aswany continues what he began in his novel The Yacoubian

Building, a criticism of contemporary political and social developments in Egypt. The novel relates the stories of a group of Egyptian scholars who are sponsored by the Egyptian government to study medicine at the University of Illinois, at the largest department of histology worldwide: ―Histology is a Latin word that means the science that uses a microscope to study living tissue, which forms the basis of medicine since the discovery of treatment of any disease always starts with the study of tissue in its natural state.‖55 The time of the novel is a time of confrontation between the United States, and Arabs and

Muslims, a time Arabs/Muslims are subject to the American imperialism under the cover of the ―War on Terror‖. But Chicago’s time does not begin or end with 9/11 events, but moves back and forth between past and present, between the U.S. or in the Arab World.

The use of the words ―past‘ and ‗present‘ here is in accordance with the actual divisions of time, but the reality of time in the novel, despite the clarity of those rebounds between past and present, it seems a single space as broad and wide as the characters in the novel.

Time for the present generation of young scholars is paralleled by the past and present of the old generation of professors, which is wider than the time of the young generation according to the physical mechanism that counts the ongoing passage of time.

The experiences, practices and conflicts are open at all times, regardless of this real division of time. Perhaps this is what unfolds the value of time in the novel through the depth of the characters and the size of their struggles and conflicts with the surrounding world, and not according to time as a dimension in which events occur in sequence. It is

55 Alaa Al Aswany, Chicago (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 23. 48

also interesting to find that the place is not limited to Chicago, although it is the main center of the narrative. Al Aswany‘s setting is a place transformed on a historical spectrum, as he takes readers from the ―past‖ Chicago of Native American struggles in the 17th century, to the ―present‖ Chicago of giant skyscrapers and racism against African

Americans. The Egypt he depicts is also diverse, from the simple Egyptian city of Tanta to other bustling Egyptian urban centers. There is a special love of place, whether it is a large city such as Chicago, or a smaller space within, such as the School of Medicine at the

University of Illinois. The unifying, common characteristic between times and places is the person facing social injustice and political oppression, whether in the past or in the present, whether in the past Chicago of Native Americans or the present Chicago of skyscrapers and other race struggles, and even in the dark and desperate prisons in Egypt.

Through the oscillations of time and the spatial heterogeneity lies a rejection and repudiation of all political persecutions in all forms and manifestations, which constitutes an important link between the various times and spaces and different generations. The novel opens with a simple historical retelling of Chicago‘s to reveal the greatness and glamour of the city, which only conceals the tragically violent and racist trajectory of

American history belonging to Native Americans and African Americans, in the past and the present. Moreover, the novel renders a ―histological‖ study of the new Egyptian generation of researchers in comparison to the older generation of Egyptian immigrants who migrated in the sixties, either to escape political oppression or religious persecution.

Chicago portrays two generations that face similar problems globally and regionally and share the ideological and intellectual diversity toward political systems. Migrants in Al

Aswany‘s work are of two types: native immigrants and foreigners. Native immigrants in

Al Aswany‘s novel are those American professors (born and raised in America) who are like ―immigrants‖ in their own homeland as they suffer the effects of capitalist. Foreign immigrants are those Egyptian professors who suffer in Egypt and suffer when they leave it. They spend most of their life in the U.S., but they remain homesick.

In The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century Fiction,

Rosemary George argues that home, ―along with gender/sexuality, race, and class, acts as an ideological determinant of the subject.‖56 In her view, ―home-country‖ stands for the

―intersection of private and public and of individual and communal that is manifest in imagining a space as home.‖57 Chicago is formed at the junction of intimate relationships between men and women. Through these relationships we see the characters attempting to work out the political problems prevalent in their communities, despite the failure of these.

The novel, despite its many female characters, and despite the extent of entanglements where men and women disclose the emptiness of these relations, and that it ultimately can only lead to separation and disasters, not only because of the edges, but because of the nature of the societal context in power, and very norms bourgeoisie in the worst manifestations of depression and alienation.

VII. Binaries’ Conflicts

Chicago revolves around three main axes: sex, power, and alienation. Each of these themes could be traced to the multiple characters who experience the effects of these

56 George, Rosemary Marangoly, The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth-Century Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 2. 57 Ibid., 11. 50

themes on various lands and social sites. The element of place is important to Al Aswany, which is actually a framework that manages the debates, events, and people to complete this magnificent work of art in the context of a particular place and times in a row contained in place.

Shaimaa Mohammadi, a graduate student in the histology department, is rooted in the rural history of the city of Tanta in Egypt. Shaimaa is unmarried, religious like her parents. While she cooks Egyptian food, smoke raises from the boiling oil vessel, thereby the fire alarm triggered off. With this warning, Al Aswany starts his take on the characters of his work, and when the big fuss calms down and fades, there revealed to us the rich world of characters whether Egyptians, Americans or other ―hybrid‖, i.e., a joint between the two countries. From its beginning Chicago throws light on the conflict between binaries whether it is a binary of citizen-country or that of man-self. This poses a question about the nature of immigration in Chicago and whether it is from one‘s homeland or there is a parallel type of immigration from Self.

Alienation emerges as a deeper trauma exacerbated by the distance from the homeland from which the migrant characters bring along their unresolved stories that seek a closure, whether hopeful or tragic in the new land, where the parameters of freedom appear more expansive and control over their lives appears more certain. In Chicago we see divided characters torn between their past and present. Chicago is a life filled with characters that varies from the climber Ahmed Danana, the revolutionary Naji Abdul

Samad, the harsh intelligence agent Safwat Shaker, and the cowardly fugitive Dr. Salah.

Each one of them is a ―living cell‖ entirely separate in its entity. The reader is in search and

eagerly following up not only the fate of those characters but his/her own fate which they exemplify.

VIII. Political Reality

It is notable that in Chicago there is identification between the author and his reader. This happens through the living characters that have rich and multifaceted sides to cast a shadow on certain ideas. Al Aswany puts a reference in p. 6 (which is not translated in the English version published by the American University in Cairo Press), which states,

―pages and paragraphs that are italicized and written in bold are a replica of the notes written by Naji Abdul Samad during his trip.‖ This autobiographical element in Chicago along with the fact that Al Aswany is a political activist makes the novel quite related to the current political reality in Egypt. Naji Abdul Samad makes a direct political analysis of the

Egyptian political situation.

Moreover, Al Aswany asserts that the current Egyptian political and social arena is the outcome of ―repression, poverty, oppression, having no hope in the future, the absence of any national goal: Egyptians have given up on justice in this world, so they are waiting for it in the next.‖58 This is how an Egyptian-American, Dr. Salah Mohamed, sees his country after many decades in the U.S. Al Aswany explains the illnesses of Arab society, and it is not limited to the Egyptian society, which is at the core of his novel. He wants to show the similarities and differences between three different mentalities: Egyptians/Arabs,

Egyptian/Arab Americans, and Americans. The 9/11 attacks have affected all of them and

58 Ibid.,285. 52

are still in play in the present. September 11 events and the ―War on Terror‖ uncover the attitudes of the American public toward Arabs and Muslims in the post-9/11 era as well as the subsequent alienation of the immigrants. Al Aswany stresses deep-rooted loyalty to one‘s country whatever the circumstances and the reciprocal relation between home- stability and citizen-loyalty. He also shows Arab educational missions‘ mechanisms and the presence of opportunists at the head of these missions. Chicago displays the clash of values in the community of migrants, and thought and practice in contradiction in immigrants‘ life.

It is notable that Naji, the Egyptian political activist, has a romantic relationship with ―Wendy‖ a Jewish girl. Al Aswany wants to deliver a message that religion is not the main reason behind any conflict in the Middle East. He portrays the relationships between

Arabs and American Jews through Naji‘s discussions with his girlfriend Wendy. He tells her, ―Read the history. Jews lived under Arab rule for many centuries without problems or persecution. They even enjoyed the trust of Arabs as evidenced by the fact that, for a period of a thousand years, an Arab sultan‘s personal physician was most likely to be a Jew.‖ He adds,

In Muslim Spain, Jews lived as citizens that had full rights, and when Andalusia fell

into the hands of the Christian Spaniards, they persecuted both Muslims and Jews,

They gave the choice between Christianity and death. Then they went as far as

coming up with the Inquisition for the first time in history, to get rid of Jews and

Muslims who had recently converted to Christianity. The priests would ask them

theological questions and when they failed to answer, they gave them the choice

between being burned or drowned.59

Al Aswany addresses the most important element of the gap between Arabs and Jews, i.e., the absence of ―trust‖. He invites both parties to reread history to confront their current problems. According to Al Aswany, terrorism has no religion and is not confined to a certain culture or nation.

IX. U.S. through the Eyes of Al Aswany

Here they use genetic engineering to make the fruit much larger and yet it doesn't

taste so good. Life in America, Nagi, is like American fruit: shiny and appetizing on

the outside, but tasteless.60

Dr. Karam, an Egyptian physician who achieves brilliant success in the U.S. still thinks ―all success outside one‘s homeland is deficient.‖ The novel‘s America is full of contradictions as it is stated by Nagi Abdul-Samad, the narrator of the story, ―kind

Americans who treat strangers nicely...who help you…and thank you profusely for the slightest reason? Do they realize the horrendous crimes their governments commit against humanity?‖61 America is simultaneously depicted as a peaceful society and an aggressive government. The positive side of America shown by Al Aswany in Chicago might be shocking to many Arab readers who suffer by virtue of unbalanced U.S. policies in the

Middle East. But Al Aswany is more concerned about ―humans‖, and the possibility of

59 Alaa Al Aswany,, Chicago (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 208. 60 Alaa Al Aswany, Chicago (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. 2007), 157. 61 Ibid., 36. 54

achieving ―change‖ through the will of the people. Al Aswany reveals both Arabs and

Americans as humane, compassionate, and empathic toward each other. He differentiates between the policy-making U.S. and the U.S. of people with everyday problems and issues.

Al Aswany portrays Americans as victims of the media, almost as government-controlled as it is in some Middle Eastern countries.

Al Aswany‘s novel, however, does seem to render an often uninformed narrative about America, its people, and academic life in many parts of the book. The Egyptian author seems to have gleaned most of his knowledge about Chicago and the U.S. from old

Hollywood movies. Chicago is written for an Egyptian/Arab audience, and the author attempts to meet his readers‘ expectations of America, often without attentiveness to its nuances. He paints America as a place of dreams but at the same time a place of capitalist greed and rampant racism, the one used by dictatorial regimes in disposing of political opposition activists, like Nagi at the end of Chicago. The scenario is not completely unrealistic, but Chicago suggests that these scenarios are highly representative of the U.S. and its political climate. Also, establishing a black woman character as someone who can survive only if she is willing to sell her body is a characterization that verges on racial victimization in the context of American history. Al Aswany sometimes appears to construct or reveal negative stereotypes about America/Americans while undermining stereotypes about Arabs/Muslims.

Americans (non-Arab-Americans) in Chicago are often rendered as Arabs with

American names. This is evident in various conversations between Professor Graham and the African-American Carol whose responses make her look like a pure Middle Eastern

woman. Al Aswany remains on the margins of a community to which he does not belong, i.e., American society. He attempts to work through this Western society with a sense of counter-Orientalism. He delves into American history and its figures to view them through the eyes of a Middle Eastern writer. Hot issues, like racial discrimination and the savage capitalism are discussed in Chicago with an occidentalist sense more than a fiction writer.

X. Birds of the South

Birds of the South introduces readers to the divided community of Arab expatriates living in the U.S. Even though the novel is set in multicultural New York, it emerges as a generic, typical American city where a Muslim minority is fragmented by religious, sectarian, class, and racial differences. It narrates a romance in which love is used as a metaphor for freedom and religious tolerance, an experimental zone in which the different dynamics between an Arab/Muslim Shiite woman and an Arab/Muslim Sunni man are explored and bridged. Birds of the South is an endearing mix of righteous political and religious critique and rich melodrama, revealing members of one Islamic sect unable to recognize members of other sects as fellow Muslims. The novel plays out these divisions and the climate of religious hypocrisy on the busy streets of New York.

Birds of the South has the same structure and broad canvas as Chicago. The religious and political plots are interspersed with tender tales of unexpected love between a Shiite woman and a Sunni man, as well of tales of discriminatory hatred attempting to dissolve this relationship. Like Chicago, Birds of the South is able to draw the characters from the comfort of their own cultures, like Salah, to a more troubled world of exile. The

atmosphere of freedom in the U.S. helps to strip off the Arab/Muslims characters of their fantasies, prejudices, and limitations, which end up laid bare. As the writer states in the novel‘s introduction, Birds of the South ―raises the question: Is the crisis of our nation the product of the Other?‖ Abul Fadl attempts to explore the absence of democracy and freedom of expression in the Arab world. Abul Fadl suggests that ethnic and sectarian divisions lie behind what she considers to be conservatism and repression in the Arab world. The novel bears a warning that these divides represent the real danger within the

Arab/Muslim world. The end raises questions about the source of these divisions, implying a history of Western manipulation at the heart of this division to weaken Arabs/Muslim influence and empower imperialist aspirations in the region.

The schism between Sunnis and Shiites dates back to the 7th century when a dispute erupted over who would succeed the fourth caliph, Uthman Ibn Affan. While Sunnis regard

Ali as the fourth and last of the caliphs,62 Shiites believe that Prophet Muhammad‘s son-in- law Ali should have been the first Caliph and that his descendants are divinely ordained to lead the Muslim nation. Over centuries, the gap between Sunnis and Shiites has widened, and differences in ritual, jurisprudence, and Islamic doctrines have increased. Shiites are the majority in Iran, Bahrain, and Iraq, and constitute a substantial minority in Lebanon,

Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.

XI. Plot

A young religious upper-Egyptian man, Salah, manages to make his way to the land of dreams, the U.S., to work as a physical therapist. He lives with an Iraqi family, which he

62 Successors to the Prophet Mohammed as leader of the Muslims following Abu Bakr (632-634), Umar (634-644), and Uthman (644-656). 57

discovers later are Shiite. Salah quickly engages in Islamic activities in New York, while facing many difficulties with contentious sects and Islamic groups in a way he has never experienced in his tranquil city of Aswan on the banks of the Nile. Salah finds himself in a harmonious relationship with the Iraqi Jawad, but knowing that he is a Shiite also causes him to be conflicted. The conflict is between the respect and love he feels for the Shiite

Iraqi family and the hatred taught to him by fundamentalists towards Shiites. Salah‘s Sunni friends, Ibrahim and Diaa, consider Shiites to be worse than ―Zionists‖.63 Salah likes Jawad and his family, but at the same time he feels uncomfortable with his relationship with

Shiites. He decides to move elsewhere, even though he has an encounter with a religious teacher, Sheikh Hassan, who explains the historical commonalities and solidarity between

Sunnis and Shiites.

Good relations and friendship between the two parties deepen until 9/11 come into play, stirring up feelings of hatred against all Muslims and Arabs, whether Sunni, Shiite, or

Arab Christian. The role of love also comes into play a role when Salah decides to marry his neighbor Laila, a Shiite, despite the critical attitudes of those around them. Around the love story between Salah and Laila the narrative of tension between both sects escalates, especially as all are facing a wave of animosity from the American community in the aftermath of 9/11. This becomes quite clear in a chapter Abul Fadl names ―Umm el

Maarek‖ or ―Mother of All Battles,‖ a term Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, used to describe the 1991 Gulf war. This was when Iraq invaded Kuwait claiming it a territory of Iraq, which gave the U.S. public justification to lead an international coalition

63 Amani Abul Fadl, Birds of the South (Beirut: Dar Al-Fikr, 2005), 65. 58

for involvement in the conflict. It was an Arab/Arab conflict. In this chapter Abul Fadl shows how this conflict is used by other parties to fuel hostility between Sunnis and Shiites by way of a contentious public debate.

After an escalation of tensions between the two sects is reached, there comes a meeting between the Sunni Sheikh Hassan and the Shiite Mr. Mustafa in a peaceful dialogue to establish a committee to bridge the gap between the two sects in the diaspora.

However, the hand of treachery, which operates in secret, succeeds in undermined this reunification by force. The novel ends tragically when Laila is killed on her day of marriage, a victim to the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Laila‘s tragic death wakes up the bereaved crowd in a dramatic scene and unifies them at her funeral.

XII. The Fictional “Arab” New York City

Many Arab novelists adopt an ―Arabized‖ approach to the novel, as evident in the works of Abdelrahman Munif that show a preoccupation with the traditional themes of desert life and culture. The social and political disasters that follow 9/11 forces writers like

Alaa Al Aswany and Amani Abul Fadl to deviate from the Arab literary tradition to focus more on contemporary settings and social concerns. This ―led to experiments on the part of some authors with a radical fragmentation of form, in an attempt to express the sense of complete dislocation caused by the conflict.‖64 And the objectives have been to ―disrupt the relation between the reader and narrative voice in order to create a heightened level of

64 Stefan G. Meyer, The Experimental Arabic Novel: Postcolonial Literary Modernism in the Levant (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 117. 59

awareness on the part of the reader toward the subject matter that they wish to convey.‖65 It is notable that Abul Fadl is able to provide a novel of ideas without falling into the trap of being a preacher, although directivity is a prominent feature in her work. In Birds of the

South Abul Fadl is able to make at least the main characters, Salah, Jawad, and Leila, alive human beings of flesh and blood, not just fictional blowing their horns of certain ideas like

Ibrahim, Diaa and al-Safawi.

The writer sets the novel in the U.S., and specifically New York, where there is presumably freedom and justice, where multiple cultures and nationalities live and work together without fear, hatred, or clashes. The U.S., where freedom of religion and political beliefs is guaranteed for all, turns out to be a place of hatred and religious fanaticism among a group of Arab/Muslim immigrants. Unlike in Chicago, rarely does the reader encounter American characters contributing to the main plot or sub-plot in Birds of the

South. New York emerges as an Arab city in the U.S. where street/places names are the only reminders that the city is outside the Arab region. When Salah asks Jawad to get him to a mosque where he believes he can socialize, Jawad takes him to a street where two mosques are side by side: the mosque of Bilal Ibn Rabah on one side and the mosque of the

Sunni community on the other. Salah is surprised since ―the neighborhood is mighty big geographically, and it doesn‘t have any other mosques, so why did he who built the second mosque choose it to be adjacent to the first.‖ He is surprised further when he finds Jawad praying in another mosque in New Jersey, ―an hour to reach your mosque, while the mosque is here on the corner.‖ The Sunni-Shiite conflict which is evident in the separation

65 Ibid., 118. 60

or division of their places of worship is transferred from homeland to transnational boundaries.

Unwittingly, Salah begins to discover the map of sectarian differences. Bilal bin

Rabah mosque, with its poor appearance, represents the ―Nation of Islam,‖ and the other mosque is the worship site for the Sunni community. Even inside the Sunni mosque there are two divided groups. There is a team headed by Ibrahim, an Egyptian deserter, and Diaa, a Pakistani from a poor family whose source for his expensive studies at American universities remains a mystery. Both are radicals in upholding the trivial while terrorizing whoever debates them intellectually. They believe that religion should be kept in the mosque as it has nothing to do with politics. Whoever disagrees is ousted from the ―Saved

Group‖ which they represent, and they keep raising old issues like ―the creation of the

Quran‖ and ―Alasha‘ira‘s views.‖

The other party in the mosque of the Sunni community is represented by Sheikh

Hassan, from Gaza, who fought the Israelis along with the popular resistance in Suez in

1967 under the leadership of Sheikh Hafiz Salama. Sheikh Hassan finds that areas of agreement with the Shiite ―Other‖ are far bigger than points of difference, and that dialogue between various groups and sects should be in search of a common ground rather than as a means to raise issues of difference. Dialogue should not be a means through which each party tries to dissolve the other and get him melted in his/her pot.

The Committee of Muslim Community Support, where Hassan is one of its most prominent activists, contributes to the education of youth and children through camps, sports, and the teaching of Arabic language and Quran. Hassan‘s friend, a Turkish man,

considers the Committee of Muslim Community Support as the most important institution that serves Islam and Muslims in New York, while it is considered by Ibrahim and Diaa as the ―House of Satan, where women participate as activists, and some men are of shaven beards, and where they have art exhibitions, sublime concerts, albeit within the limits of

Islam! And the worst thing about it is talking about politics.‖

XIII. Sectarianism and Extremism Knows No Religion

In New York, Salah gets to know the Orthodox Christian family of Sobhi and Mona to whom he delivers a letter from his friend Egyptian Munir. Munir is Sobhi‘s son-in-law, who has displeased his mother-in-law, Mona, by taking her daughter, his wife back to

Egypt. Through his kindness and sense of humor, Salah is able to charm the couple with whom he shares admiration for the Egyptian poet Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudi. Thereafter, their meetings together are to read the poetry of al-Abnoudi in the Upper-Egyptian dialect, which gives all of them a sense that they had never left Egypt.

Salah discovers that Christian Copts are not one united group. For example, Zaki and his son Michael trade in what they call ―the problem of Copts in Egypt‖. They argue that there is an Islamic plan implemented by the Egyptian government ―aimed at making an ethnic cleansing of Egypt‘s indigenous people.‖ Zaki and Michael even claim the existence of massacres that never happened to win American public opinion and urge American military intervention in Egypt on behalf of its Christians. Zaki and Michael even see the

Pope as a traitor, because he prevents Christians from going to Jerusalem as long as it is occupied by Israel. On the other hand, despite his weak character, Sobhi opposes Zaki and his son in inciting hatred and propagating an extremist viewpoint. 62

The Copt vs. Copt conflict in New York coincides with a Muslim Sunni-Shiite divide over claims of belonging to the ―Saved Group.‖66 When Salah discovers that Jawad and his family are Shiite, he is so disturbed that he decides to move away, mainly due to the influence exercised by the prejudiced Diaa and Ibrahim. Diaa confides to Salah about his

Shiite discrimination: that people do not know that ―nine-tenths of this nation are non-

Muslims,‖ that Shiites‘ slaughtered meat ―is not permissible, since they are not even from the People of the Book,‖ that they ―do not worship God, but worship the Imams,‖ and that

―the Zionist is a clear enemy, while Shiites constitute a hidden one.‖

Salah falls into deep confusion, and he does not know what to do. He goes to Sheikh

Hassan in his home and explains his position. Hassan assures him: ―our permanent fault is the lack of knowledge. Shiites are of various groups and sects, and each one has a separate rule.‖ Salah asks him directly, ―Do you accuse them of infidelity, as Ibrahim and Diaa did?‖ Hassan answered him, ―I do not accuse anyone of disbelief, God forbid, and what

Ibrahim and Diaa did is just like your stance which is based on no knowledge.‖ Salah replies, ―But Diaa told me that they harbor disbelief and demonstrate faith, so how do you judge them?‖ Hassan replies, ―I judge people according to their outward behavior since we are forbidden to split their hearts to see their intentions.‖

Salah goes back home to find Jawad sitting in the park reading the Quran in a nice voice imitating the famous Egyptian reciter Sheikh al-Hosiery with Leila sitting next to him. Salah who gets rid of Ibrahim and Diaa‘s influence restores his friendship with Jawad.

66 There is a saying by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that ―those who came before you of the People of the Book split into seventy-two sects, and this ummah (nation) will split into seventy-three: seventy-two in Hell and one in Paradise, and that is the jamaa‘ah (main body of Muslims).‖ This sect is always referred to as the ―Saved Group.‖ 63

Salah accompanies Jawad to al-Hadi Mosque, the mosque of the Shiites in New Jersey, to discover that there are two groups there, too. The moderate group led by Mr. Mustafa

Anwar, a Lebanese who studied in Iraq, and fought along with the resistance in Lebanon until wounded in the leg, and the narrow-minded and extremist group headed by Sheikh Ali al-Safawi.

Salah discovers the existence of non-religious Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites, and detects the presence of Zionists fighting Islam and Muslims. Moreover, 9/11 attacks left some Americans with a desire to destroy all that is Arab or Muslim or Eastern. A radical

American makes an assault upon Leila in the street and others try to break into the house of the Christian Sobhi and Mona to kill them. Following this attack, Mona comes to fight with

Sobhi, accusing him of being careless: ―You're the reason, O Sobhi! I told you to attach the cross on the door of the house from the first day they began the attack on Muslims‘ houses.‖ Sobhi replies, ―I will not do that; they want to kill us because we are Arabs, so do you want me to hang on the Star of David on our door?‖

In Birds of the South, extremists from all sides feed the clash and rupture in the community. Surprisingly, love does grow in the poisonous atmosphere; love affair between devout Sunni Salah and religious Shiite Leila. Salah asks Jawad to marry Leila in a marriage against which the whole community stands. For the first time, extremists from both sides agree on one thing: the marriage is a catastrophe. They even organize a public debate between Sunnis and Shiites at the Holiday Inn, which, says Mr. Mustafa, ―is owned by Robert Cohen. I bet that he gave you the room free of charge, and might have paid for you to do this mockery of religious dialogue, in order to call newspapers and TV stations to

show the backwardness of Muslims and their culture, who deserve nothing but genocide, invasion, and the loss of their undeserved wealth.‖

At the debate, Dr. Adnan, the head of the Muslim Community Support Committee, admits, ―I am terrified of what happened, those people are neither Shiites nor Sunnis; they are paid.‖ It seems that his opinion is true, as the American-Middle Eastern Cooperation

Organization offers to sponsor this activity and make it a monthly debate. Sheikh al-Safawi proudly announces that this organization ―hired us and Sunnis as experts, and made us a fixed budget allocated to our travel throughout the United States of America, and to extend our debates to Europe too.‖ Following this negative image of extremists from both sides, the writer is keen on showing the existence of hope as represented by moderates on both sides. A dialogue between Sheikh Hassan and Mr. Mustafa emerges to create a real debate between the two sects. They end up finding what brings both sects together and clarify points of difference that might constitute a barrier between them. They both agree on the necessity to initiate a committee in the diaspora to teach Sunnis and Shiites about what both sects have in common and show them how to deal with points of difference.

Abul Fadl asserts that political regimes in Arab and Muslim countries—as well as in the West —have had a lasting interest in expanding the rift between followers of different religions and sects and strengthening extremism on all sides. Dr. Adnan states:

Oh my God! I have not seen hatred fomenting and filling our lives as it is doing

now. When I shook hands with Jawad at the symposium, Kuwaitis rebelled against

me...Why? Because he is from Iraq! They didn‘t notice that he is here because of

his being a victim of the same regime that destroyed our country! They forgot that I

myself was a victim of the same regime…my uncle and my cousin are still

prisoners in Iraq and we do not know anything about them. Whoever leads us to

this hatred is for sure neither an Arab nor a Muslim; it is a devil! We no longer

worship God, rather we worship princes, leaders and Sheiks. We lost our

monotheistic faith and we all become polytheists.

Despite this horrible atmosphere of hatred, anger, rivalry, and rejection, Salah and Leila insist on having their wedding and then traveling to Aswan for the honeymoon. Many shun the couple‘s wedding, and so Salah takes his bride to the Brooklyn Bridge, which he has loved since his arrival New York. As they discuss Aswan and the Nile, their dreams for the future and having children, they begin to forget about the sorrow wrought by the inflamed and bigoted atmosphere they leave behind. It appears that although love allows Salah and

Leila to forget the hatred surrounding them, the religious hatred is unable to forget them: two masked men interrupt the loving scene and attack Leila, stabbing her in the neck and killing her. In the sectarian and post-9/11 Islamophobic climate of hostility, the two lovers are prevented from a ―common‖, shared life together. While no one attended Leila‘s wedding while she was alive, the repentant Muslim community of more than 3,000 Sunnis and Shiites attend the funeral. Even Michael is there to console Salah on behalf of Sobhi and his wife Mona and to give consolation to Leila‘s family on behalf of the church in New

York.

XIV. Conclusion

Chicago provides an image of Arab/Muslim immigrants that despite its many true aspects is still negligent toward many other images of successful migrants who are more cohesive and resolute in their lives throughout the diaspora. The novel sticks to certain perceptions of Arabs/Muslims and obliges all characters to attach themselves to a stereotype compatible with Western views against Arabs and Muslims. Even the revolutionary Nagi Abdul-Samad seems weak and broken in front of his Jewish girlfriend, who appears more powerful than him. Does Al Aswany want to address an essentializing binary of Arabs/us and the West/them? Most probably the novel is written for the Arab reader, and the writer is bound to unite with the other West, by supporting his statements and scenarios. So the story brings features Arab characters who stimulate the appetite of

Western publishing houses and pay an impetus to further tarnish the image of Arabs and

Muslims.

Although Al Aswany presents intolerant American characters, he also displays tolerant American figures, like Graham, who calls for a pluralistic and open approach towards other cultures and defends the rights of minorities. Al Aswany attempts to prove that there is an estrangement between the cultured American who is sincere with himself/herself and the policy makers of his/her authoritarian government. The Egyptian novelist who condemns American intolerance also condemns dictatorial and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. In Chicago Al Aswany also refers to the political coalition between the U.S. and totalitarian Arab regimes.

Al Aswany‘s characters in Chicago emerge, as they do in The Yacoubian Building, from the depth of the Egyptian street to the pages of the novel to reveal its pulse and speak its language. In Chicago we see citizens in crisis escaping from the homeland to the cruelty of alienation. One effect is Al Aswany‘s character whose patriotism turns into hate against his country, and further a dissociation from all that is Egyptian by throwing himself into

American culture, glorifying its values and magnifying its ideals. However, in the depth of such a character there is still love for his homeland. This internal conflict reaches its peak in the character of Ra‘fat Thabit, especially after the eruption of his dramatic downfall by the loss of his daughter Sarah as an outcome of the collapse of values and the loss of ideals; the Arab values and ideals which he tries to hide and purge after decades in the U.S.

But while Al Aswany pays more attention to cinematic technique and sexual content to produce works that invite comparison with contemporary American/Western texts, Abul Fadl‘s work combines elements of ―didactic‖ narration. Abul Fadl is rooted in ideas while Al Aswany is more inclined to delve deep into the human emotions to lay them bare in front of his readers. Abul Fadl becomes lost in the contemplation of the idea of sectarianism between Sunnis and Shiites. There is implicit criticism of political and moral corruption and its consequences on ordinary people at the mercy of ignorant leaders, whether Sunnis or Shiites. If Al Aswany is able to present the bare bones of life to understand contemporary Egypt and ―modern‘‖ imperialism, Abul Fadl is able to criticize the passivity of Arab/Muslim society and the weed of ignorance, which might be cultivated by modern imperial powers to gain control over the Arab dispersed body. Both writers look

into the current situation in the Arab world through a lens of collusion between imperial interests, dictatorial regimes, and religious interests masking materialistic motives.

Roger Allen wrote that in the second half of the 20th century ―the majority of Arabic novelists chose to engage … social and political realities in the most obviously available fictional mode, that of realism.‖67 Both Al Aswany and Abul Fadl adopt a realist approach in their tales of Arab/Egyptian migrant communities in Chicago and New York. Both take their characters to America to see if they can cast off the identities into which they were born and become fully ―Americanized.‖ It is notable that characters in Chicago and Birds of the South fail to achieve a satisfactory balance between their Arab and American selves. Moreover, the narrators fail to free their narrative from their domination despite their attempts to show the main characters‘ viewpoints as neither identical nor strictly separate. This is due to the realist approach that is clear in both novels. As Fabio Caiani puts it,

the metaphor of art as a mirror held up to the world is generally still valid …. even

if at times the mirror which the innovative Arabic novel holds up has two glasses—

one reflecting the world and the other itself and its own history, with reference to

the non-Arabic novel and the Arab literary heritage. The nature of such texts seems

to be further enriched (and complicated) by a necessity born out of certain socio-

political circumstances typical of the Arab world.68

67 Allen Roger, The Arabic Novel: An Historical and Critical Introduction, 2d ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 65. 68 Fabio Caiani, Contemporary Arab Fiction: Innovation from Rama to Yalu (New York: Routledge, 2007), 3. 69

Complete objectivity for a literary critic is inconceivable. Personal likes and dislikes, religious and political commitments, and the complex nature of the literary work itself tend to disturb the objectivity of any ideal critic. Moreover, it is not always profitable for literary artists to draw upon the past. Literature expresses the zeitgeist, the spirit of the contemporary age. Writers are inclined to choose subjects from the world of their own experience. The works of the past may embody cultural or symbolic meanings, which are not fully clear to any artist and may emerge only through historical or other cultural perspectives. Thus, it is difficult to compare the works of the past to the contemporary ones as the historical and cultural context is totally different. Moreover, sometimes the works of the past are read in a new way that matches the contemporary scene that is different from the old one. Artists, whether dead or alive, may not be conscious of all of the motives that attend their own work; hence, new interpretations of their work are possible at different times. This is evident in Shakespearean plays that are still subject to different readings, and sometimes we find writers like Tom Stoppard and others rewriting the Shakespearean tragedies; adding to them a new tone that fits this present age. Thus, in different time periods, with different cultural perspectives, we can arrive at different readings of works.

However, any literary work, even the most meager, will necessarily refer to and draw on preceding works in its genre, in its culture, and traditions, since any work is inevitably part of the circulation of discourse in its culture.

CHAPTER TWO

The U.S. in Contemporary Arab Media and Intellectual Life

Up until the mid-20th century, representations of the West in the Arab world have always been of Europe. In Arab Representations of the Occident: East-West Encounters in

Arab Fiction, Rasheed El-Enany states that Europe constitutes ―the geographic home of the colonial powers which dominated the Arab world for so long and challenged it with their different worldview.‖69 Arabs‘ first encounter with the U.S. was through Hollywood, a

―soft‖ encounter that has had a profound impact on Arabs‘ view of America as the

Promised Land. It might be true that since its inception the distorted lens of Hollywood has been vilifying Arabs/Muslims, but at that time Arabs were more concerned about knowing this remote Other rather than how this Other was capturing them. After 1945, a long history of mistrust and misrepresentation follows. The deadly attacks in New York and

Washington DC on September 11, 2001 and the subsequent invasions of Iraq and

Afghanistan represent the culmination of hostility between the Arab/Muslim world and the

U.S.

69 Rasheed El-Enany, Arab Representations of the Occident: East/West Encounters in Arab Fiction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 153. 71

The 9/11 attacks were followed by an anti-Arab/Muslim media sentiment in the

U.S. that was carried instantly to the Arab world through Al Jazeera and other Arab media channels. This American media sentiment has prompted many calls for a new dialogue in the Arab world between ―us‖ and ―them.‖ This is evident in the launching of English satellites like Al Jazeera English, and English version of many newspapers like Almasry

Alyoum. Many Arabs think that their dialogue with the West should be embodied in a definite political, religious, and racial form. They believe that a recognition of the realities of the Arab world is essential for new understandings. Politically, the majority of Arabs and

Muslims strongly oppose the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Religiously, the image of Islam should be cleared in the eyes of all Americans after being distorted by claims that Islam is the source of all terror. Racially, Americans should know that not all Arabs are Muslims and that not all Muslims are Arabs.

I. Introduction

This chapter deals with incidents that have occupied the Arab intellectual climate in the post-9/11 era. These incidents, which may seem small or isolated, are able to reflect on the larger intellectual climate in the Arab world within a historical and political context often neglected, misunderstood, or ignored by proponents of the ―clash of civilizations‖ argument.70 Understanding Arab views, and the complex ways that Arab media represented and shaped those views, can lead to a broader understanding of the ways in which Arab

70 This is evident in the writings of Bernard Lewis, such as ―The Revolt of Islam: A New Turn in a Long War with the West,‖ New York, 19 November, 2001, 50-60. The most obvious statement in this regard is Samuel Huntington, ―The Clash of Civilizations?,‖ Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993), 22-49. 72

reactions to U.S. foreign policy and U.S. media shaped perceptions of the West in the Arab world.

In this respect, for the past sixty years the dominating issue in the U.S.-Middle East encounter has been the Arab-Israeli conflict and its consequences. Even the invasion of Iraq was seen by some Arabs as a way of protecting Israel from Saddam Hussein‘s regime that threatened to attack Israel.71 On Al Jazeera, Ahmed Janabi states, ―For many Arab countries, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq signaled the loss of a strategic asset in their conflict with Israel.‖ He elaborates:

Iraqi ties with the U.S. were cut after the U.S. supported Israel in the 1967 war, and

although they were restored in 1984, commercial deals with the U.S. were kept to a

minimum. Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq endured 13 years of UN sanctions.

During this time speculation was rife that one of the aims of the sanctions was to

force Iraq into a peace process with Israel. Al Jazeera has obtained a document

written by Saddam Hussein's secretary, which conveys Hussein's rejection of an

offer to partake in a peace process with Israel in exchange for the lifting of

sanctions.72

71In a poll conducted by Al Jazeera English about U.S. motives in Iraq, around 3500 said the invasion of Iraq was to safeguard Israeli interests in the region. http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2003/09/200849134733816512.html), accessed March 9, 2003. 72 Al Jazeera English (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/2009102712157981279.html), accessed November 9, 2009. 73

Essays like these, and the fact that Bush‘s claim that Iraq possessed WMDs was revealed as false, consolidated the Arab view of the centrality of the Arab-Israeli conflict in discussions of U.S. policy in the Middle East. In fact, since the 1973 war, at least, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been understood as central to the entire region, and most U.S. presidents have recognized this, as well, even if they have tried to avoid pressing Israel for a just solution.

But it is notable to find Arabs getting 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq into the same discursive pot of pan-Israel American policy.

Both incidents under consideration here captured the attention of cultural critics in the Middle East, sparking debates that sometimes resulted in counter-texts. Muntadher Al

Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, threw both of his shoes at President Bush during a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad in December 2008. Al

Zaidi pitched his shoes at the former U.S. president while shouting in Arabic, ―This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog.‖ The shoe-throwing incident, which might have been an isolated incident, evoked not only all the atrocities witnessed by people in the

Middle East in general, and Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, but also tested the

―democratic era and the freedom of expression‖ that Iraqis were promised by Bush and his administration. Moreover, the way this incident was received in the street came to mirror the general frustrations of most Iraqis and Arabs with the Bush administration.

The second event is the election of Obama, the first black U.S. president. Obama was to take the U.S.-Middle East encounter into a new era of ―realist‖ policies upon the demise of Bush‘s ―freedom agenda.‖ Obama‘s election was accompanied by unprecedented interest from the Arab world, which made the Arab media provide intensive coverage of

the campaign and the presidential debates broadcast live during the early hours of the day, and, yet, still watched by many Arabs.73 Many Arabs thought of Obama‘s election as the beginning of the end to the ―9/11 mentality‖. Most Arabs, just like many citizens of oppressed nations all over the world, thought of Obama as a source of ―hope and change‖, per his campaign slogan. Obama‘s African-American origins explain some of his popularity in the Arab world. Abdel-Moneim Said, chairman of the board of Al-Ahram, compared Obama to Mohamed Ali (his previous name was Cassius Clay) who gained popularity in the Arab world because of his African-American origins, as well as his

Muslim religion. Said wrote in Almasry Alyoum, ―I also believe that the massive popularity of Mohamed Ali Clay achieved in the Arab world stemmed from the fact that he was a

Muslim, as well as black.‖74 Obama‘s middle name, Hussein, evoked much interest from many Arabs who thought his heritage automatically gave him Muslim religious qualities.

Both incidents are highly covered in the Arab press. While one event seems very small in the U.S. context (the shoe-throwing) and the other obviously major (the election of

Obama), they are both significant because of the lively and, often, heated discussions they engendered in the Arab media. The two incidents ironically represent two problems faced by Arabs in their own homelands and lie behind their current failure politically and economically. Failure of Arab governments to oppose Washington DC‘s policy in the

Middle East, as well as the longing for ―change‖ made the shoe-throwing incident and

Obama‘s election central to discussions about the U.S.-Middle East encounter. Many Arabs

73 ―President Obama and Middle East Expectations,‖ Policy Brief, Beirut: Carnegie Middle East Center, January 2009. 74 Almasry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=75523), accessed September 9, 2007. 75

suffer from a sense of powerlessness and their being totally ineffectual whether inside or outside, or with their fellow ―Other‖ or the foreign ―Other‖. The shoe-throwing incident rejuvenated the weakened ―power‖ of many Arabs who wanted to express their anger and resistance, as Al-Zaidi did. The election of Obama, who is considered by some to be

―Arab-looking‖ and to have an Arabic middle name, made many Arabs feel enthusiastic about the president. The election of Obama, and the resistance of Al-Zaidi, both constituted a source of hope, and opened up the possibility of a real change in Arabs‘ attitude toward the interior ―other‖ and the foreign ―other‖.

II. Sources

The study focuses on articles taken from two Egyptian newspapers, Al-Ahram and

Al-Masry Alyoum, the London-based Asharq Alawsat, as well as the news website of Al-

Jazeera. On occasion, I also examine other newspaper articles written by very well-known authors or that gained wide response among Arab readers. The Egyptian newspaper Al-

Ahram is considered an influential source of news and opinion in the Arab world with many notable writers even if it no longer has the cultural authority as it is considered a voice for the Egyptian government. Al-Masry Alyoum is an independent Egyptian newspaper that gained an influential and unique position in the Egyptian community in the last few years, making it a competitor to Al-Ahram. Asharq Alawsat is an independent Arab newspaper that launched in London with many notable writers from across the Arab world.

Al Jazeera, on the other hand, has made much more of an influential impact on the formation of opinions of the ―Arab street.‖ Al Jazeera revolutionized Arab television news

and broke many taboos. The post-9/11 English version of the Arab news channel broadened its accessibility and appeal to the West to challenge the U.S. monopoly on the global marketplace of news and information.

Al Jazeera, a news satellite station broadcasting in Arabic, was launched in 1996 to mark a new era of ―independent‖ media. Al Jazeera has been demonized by Arab governments for being an intellectual avenue for opposition figures. It ―offered a combination of international news agency video plus video from its own camerapersons, correspondents, and stringers. But it also offered discussions, debates, and confrontations involving studio guests and interviewers. Both news and discussion featured conflict on several levels.‖75 Al Jazeera‘s popularity has been boosted worldwide in the post-9/11 era, especially after the war on Iraq and after the Bush administration‘s attack on the Arab news channel. Al Jazeera has revolutionized news coverage and media work in the Middle East, but at the same time contributed in widening the gap between the U.S. and the Arab world.

For example, on July 10, 2001 (two months before 9/11 attacks), in one of the most famous programs on Al Jazeera, ―Al-Ittijah al-Muakis‖, or ―The Opposite Direction‖, Osama Bin

Laden was portrayed as an Arab hero who stood up to the West. Faisal Al-Qassim, the anchor of this controversial political debate show, started his talk by saying that ―Bin

Laden has made the greatest power in history shudder at the sound of his name, while the

… heavyweights [Arab leaders] arouse only America‘s pity and ridicule.‖76 Al Jazeera‘s tone has drawn Western media criticism for being a source of misperceptions about the

75 Jeremy Tunstall, The Media Were American: U.S. Mass Media in Decline (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 379. 76 Al-Jazeera, 10 July, 2001 (http://aljazeera.net/channel/archive/archive?ArchiveId=89762), accessed January 11, 2010. 77

U.S. and its allies. The New York Times reports that although Al Jazeera claims a viewership of over 35 million Arabs and is thus the most influential television station in the

Middle East, it ―has sometimes been hailed in the West for being an autonomous Arabic news outlet.‖ Thus, ―it would be a mistake to call it a fair or responsible one. Day in and day out, Al Jazeera deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage.‖ Moreover, the New

York Times claims its independent ―reporters see themselves as anti-imperialists… convinced that the rulers of the Arab world have given in to American might.‖77

III. Frame Analysis

Framing constitutes an important factor in studying media coverage. Daniela

Dimitrove and Colleen Connolly-Athern state, ―Making certain aspects more salient than others in media content leads to different construction of reality. Ultimately, framing has implications for the worldview of those exposed to it.78 The importance of framing is also affirmed by Dietram A. Scheufele who defines media frames as ―a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events…The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue‖.79 In short, media frames set up likely interpretations and expectations for news coverage. Scheufele affirms that ―not only are agenda setting and framing effects related, framing is, in fact, an extension of agenda

77 Fouad Ajami, ―What the Muslim World Is Watching,‖ New York Times Magazine, 18 November, 2001. 78 Daniela V Dimitrove and Colleen Connolly-Athrn, ―A Tale of Two Wars: Framing Analysis of Online News Sites in Coalition Countries and the Arab World during the Iraq War,‖ Howard Journal of Communications18, no. 2 (2007), 153-168. 79 Dietram A. Scheufele, ―Framing as a Theory of Media Effects‖, Journal of Communication 49, no. 1 (1999), 106. 78

setting‖.80 The role of framing is significant in any political discourse and the way it emerges from a certain objective or agenda. In this case, mass media keenly establishes

―the frame of references that readers or viewers use to interpret and discuss public events‖.81

Pan and Kosicki (1993), as quoted by Scheufele, establish four main news structural dimensions that influence the formation of frames:

(a) syntactic structures, or patterns in the arrangements of words or phrases; (b)

script structures, referring to the general newsworthiness of an event as well as the

intention to communicate news and events to the audience that transcends their

limited sensory experiences; (c) thematic structures, reflecting the tendency of

journalists to impose a causal theme on their news stories, either in the form of

explicit causal statements or by linking observations to the direct quote of a source;

and (d) rhetorical structures, referring to the ―the stylistic choices made journalists

in relation to their intended effects.‖82

The current study will attempt to use these four of framing strategies in analyzing Arab media responses to the two incidents that have informed much of the discussions around the U.S.-Middle East media encounter, the shoe-throwing incident and Obama‘s election.

Cultural differences between the Arab world and the U.S. result in differences in ―thematic

80 Ibid, Scheufele, 103. 81 Ibid, Scheufele, 105. 82 Ibid, Scheufele, 111. 79

structures‖ used in Arab media when compared to their counterparts in Western media.

This is extremely evident in the shoe-throwing incident, interpreted in the West as a violent act while seen in the Arab world as an act of opposition against oppression and occupation.

Moreover, cultural differences can be discerned in the reception of Obama‘s election, perceived in the West as proof of American racial equality, while seen in the Arab world as a living example of American democracy. In other words, Obama‘s election is associated with the ―maturity‖ of race relations in America, while in the Arab world it is associated with political reform.

The Arab media revolution in the post-9/11 era and its appeal to people in the West illuminates the encounter between the Middle East and the West. The universal language of photography invites people in the West to look differently at those in the Middle East: ―The widespread negative image and stereotype of the Arab world and the Arab culture in the

West has been mirrored by unfavorable images of the West in the Arab world.‖83 People in the West can get a glimpse behind these unfavorable views when they see, for example, pictures of the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.

The rejection of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is easily captured by the images of the shoe- throwing incident and the support it gained on the ―Arab street.‖ 9/11 attacks invite people in the West to look at this ―passive other‖ to know the answer to the question raised at the time: why do they hate us? The 9/11 era in the U.S. coincided with the Al Jazeera era in the

Arab world. What the majority of Americans most likely do not hear or read about in their popular news media will be carried by Al Jazeera, which has marked the end of an era of

83 Sami Khasawnih, ed., Arab-American Relations: Towards a Bright Future. (Amman: University of Jordan Press, 2001), 41. 80

censorship and the beginning of an era of ―close-ups‖ of the encounter between the Middle

East and the West.

IV. Media Change after 9/11

It is notable that Arabs‘ interest in America has started early in the mid-20th century when they noticed its inevitable role in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In What the Arabs Think of

America Andrew Hammond states that after 9/11, ―The Arab world realizes as much as

America does that their relationship has reached, if not its historical nadir, then at least a situation of raw, close-up anger. One might say that a bust-up that had been brewing for at least three decades has finally erupted and both parties have been forced to ask with brutal honesty what they want and what they expect to get from the other side.‖84 I think what

Hammond declares applies to Americans more than it does to Arabs. While many

Americans were oblivious to Arab-Israeli issue, the mainstream Arab publics are preoccupied with the on-going conflict and are shocked at the way they are neglected by the U.S. policy in the region. They are shocked to see how the U.S. defends freedom on its land while standing against it in Palestine. Arabs and Muslims express desire for a fair

American policy in the Middle East while playing the role of mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But American foreign policy has been met with disapproval and disappointment in the Arab/Muslim world, particularly in the struggle with Israel and in attempts to garner support for democratic governance in Arab countries. The U.S. government is perceived to be producing biased policy in the Middle East while most Americans are perceived to be

84 Andrew Hammond, What the Arabs Think of America (Oxford: Green World Publishing, 2007), 1. 81

uninformed about many facts on the ground there. September 11 attacks in New York and

Washington DC tragically directed Americans towards this area to ask the question that remains lingering to this day, ―Why do they hate us?‖ What followed were the invasion of

Iraq and the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that drew Americans‘ attention to the discrepancy between their ideals and their government‘s foreign policy. Bush‘s legacy of failure in Iraq, including the loss of the ―common will‖ of Americans, paved the way to a new spirit and direction for U.S. foreign policy, buoyed by the first African-American presidency in the United States. The spirit of ―change‖, born in post Bush-era America found its way to the Arab world, which has since then seen more calls for democracy and

―change‖, domestically and internationally.

Although millions of Muslims worldwide denounced and condemned the 9/11 attacks, the Arab/Muslim image has increasingly deteriorated since then. Scenes of crowds celebrating in Gaza or individuals expressing approval in Cairo over the violent attacks likely reflect a minority and should not be viewed as representatives of the majority who denounced these attacks. But these scenes were used by Western media to exacerbate the tensions of the U.S.-Middle East encounter. The result can be seen in a 2006 poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post that showed that almost half of Americans expressed an unfavorable opinion of Muslims and Arabs. In the poll, 45% think Islam does not teach respect for the beliefs of non-Muslims. Nearly 6 in 10 think Islam is prone to violence.85

85 ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1700599), access: November 5, 2007. 82

The fast news media have increasingly contributed to instant communication among people and nations all over the world. It is interesting that new media generates new ways of expression as well as new methods of communications. New media and new technology paved the way for a global society of communicative interactions and exchanges that stimulates profound cultural transformations and realignments. ―Images, films, performances, and other youth media representations can function as tools for activism and advocacy at the regional and international levels. At these levels, participatory media communicate stories across borders that raise awareness about local issues and often inspire them.‖86 Arabs and Americans are forcefully directed and shaped by the powerful impact of mass media and the hyper-interconnected world.

While many Americans showed interest in Al Jazeera only after 9/11 attacks, many

Arabs used to distrust their media channels and turn to foreign ones that broadcast in

Arabic to follow up on domestic and international news. According to the Los Angeles

Times, ―Because of tight censorship, newspapers and television stations in the Arab world frequently reflect the biases or outright propaganda of their government. But radio broadcast from outside the region travel easily across borders and long distances, and many

Arabs regard those stations as the most reliable sources of unbiased news.‖ The BBC

(based in London) and Radio Monte Carlo Middle East (based in Paris) are the main transnational program sources.87 It is evident here how Arabs who are at odds with the

86 Julie Norman, ―Creative Activism: Youth Media in Palestine,‖ Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 2, no. 2 (2009), 261. 87 Shirley Biagi, Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2006), 346. 83

Western policy in their region are shaped by the powerful Western global media-driven culture that influences their attitude towards ‗self‘ and ‗other.‘

There are many factors that have impeded the progress of Arab mass media despite its lengthy history. The main reasons can be attributed to undemocratic regimes that control and permit only state-sponsored and state-approved television, radio, and press.88 The

1990s witnessed the spread of satellite television channels, privately owned and non- governmental, which put an end to traditional state-run television and historically stringent censorship. These channels, particularly Al Jazeera, have become the primary sources of information in the Arab world. Al Jazeera has not only rebuilt confidence between Arabs and the press, but it challenges both Arab regimes and American hegemony: ―The horizontal proliferation of information undermines vertical lines of control. Day by Day, it seems, the ministry of information becomes more important as a sources of employment than a means of control.‖89

The new direction in the U.S.-Middle East encounter has been shaped by Al

Jazeera, as well as the Bush administration and its policies in the region. In a speech about the ―War on Terror‖, Bush referred to ―crusades‖ to describe his war against terrorism, recalling the wars waged by Christians against Arabs and Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. The connotation of ―crusade‖ in English is still fairly positive in spite of recent

Western scholarly reassessments of these wars, while in the East the term has strong

88 Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955); William A. Rugh, The Arab Press: News Media and Political Process in the Arab World (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987); Trevor Mostyn, Censorship in Islamic Societies (London: Saqi Books, 2002); Nabil H. Dajani, ―An Analysis of the Press in Four Arab Countries,‖ in The Vigilant Press: A Collection of Case Studies (Paris: UNESCO, 1989), 75-88. 89 Dale F. Eickelman and John W. Anderson, eds., New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 23. 84

negative associations. Many Arab media channels took Bush‘s statement about the ―War on Terror‖ to refer to a new war against Islam and Muslims. Moreover, Bush‘s ―axis of evil‖ speech strengthened this view since two-thirds of the axis (Iran and Iraq) he condemned is Muslim, and the organizations he classified as ―terrorist‖ during the speech were all Muslim.90 The Kuwaiti liberal parliamentarian Ahmad al-Rubei stated in the newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that due to media reports, ―the Arab person is waking up and going to sleep every day with different and exaggerated analyses that are not based on realities but rather on wishes and prefabricated positions. Every news item in any U.S. newspaper is being treated as a complete truth, every U.S. statement is taken as part of the official policy, and every analysis, though very imaginative, is taken very seriously.‖91 Al-

Rubei asserts that Arab audiences follow U.S. news stories and build their perception of the

U.S. on them. It reveals that exclusively addressing domestic audiences is no longer realistic since there are no exclusively domestic or international news agencies since the media landscape expanded globally to become a more open public space.

In November 2006 Al Jazeera network launched Al Jazeera English, with the objective to reverse the flow of information, so that it flowed from East to West. Josh

Rushing, a former U.S. marine who joined Al Jazeera English in 2005, states that Al

Jazeera English's mission is to cover the developing world, which has been largely ignored

90 Riad Abdelkarim, ―PR Alone Won‘t Win Arab, Muslim Hearts and Minds,‖ Arab News, February 6, 2002. (http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=12593&d=6&m=2&y=2002), accessed December 24, 2009. 91 Ahmad al-Rubei, writer for Asharq al-Awsat, a London daily Arabic language newspaper, January 14, 2003. 85

by other global networks.92 Dawn Kawamoto wrote about the way the war on Iraq encouraged many Americans to explore overseas channels for war news. To better serve those ―news seekers‖, Al Jazeera launched its English news website in 2003, which was re- launched with the emergence of its English television channel in 2006. At the beginning of the Iraq war, there was heavy traffic from Americans on the Al Jazeera website; observers estimated one million visitors during March 2003.93 This marks an important change in

Americans‘ attitude towards the Middle East, a new way of looking at the ―other‖ as an independent entity capable of self-expression. The globalized media initiates what can be called ―self-manufacturing‖ or ―homemade image‖, and U.S. and Middle East media clearly aim to represent local or domestic interests during critical incidents to declare the importance of ―self-definition‖ in a globalized world.

Arab cartoonists are able to translate many political events into the unique language of cartooning. They are able to play an important role in educating people about the political scene and the social conditions in the Arab world and worldwide through their creative strategies that enable them to deliver their messages across despite censorship and suppression. Cartoons have played an important role in Arabs‘ struggle against the authoritarian Arab regimes and the deterioration of the current political, economic and social conditions in the Arab region. ―The appearance of cartoons in the Middle East during the mid-19th century coincided with the rise of Western Influence.‖94 Using a

92 Josh Rushing, Mission Al-Jazeera: Build a Bridge, Seek the Truth, Change the World, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 93 Dawn Kawamoto, War Briefly Draws Traffic to News Sites, 24 April, 2003 (http://news.cnet.com/War- briefly-draws-traffic-to-news-sites/2100-1032_3-998229.html?tag=mncol), accessed January 19, 2010. 94 Fatma Muge Gocek, ed., Political Cartoons in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1998), 6. 86

―Western‖ product with a universal language refers again to the importance of ―self- definition‖ in giving the U.S.-Middle East encounter a new dimension. Cartoons that have been constructed as tools of Western cultural imperialism are used by Arabs to deconstruct the Western reading of Arab culture and nation.

V. Shoe-throwing Incident: An Iraqi “Intifada” or Freedom of Expression

In response to the shoe-throwing incident most Iraqis and most Arabs, in general, have expressed their opposition to the American occupation through celebration of a journalist who threw his shoes at a U.S. president. The Americans, on the other side, express resentment toward the U.S. war administration by choosing the first black

American president to mend the U.S. image that has been distorted by the Bush administration.

Various anti-U.S. and pro-Arab sentiments frame the shoe-throwing incident.

Hurling a shoe at someone is considered in the Arab world one of the most insulting acts.

Bush made light of it by describing it as a ―way for people to draw attention‖ to themselves, but in the Arab world, it represented more than attention-seeking.

Figure 1. ―This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq‖ Al-Zaidi yelled. Courtesy of New York Times

Muntadhar Al-Zaidi, who was sentenced to one year in prison for assaulting a foreign head of state during an official visit, became a ―hero‖ in Iraq and many parts of the

Arab world. This was evident in the way hundreds took to the streets to demand his release.

Al-Zaidi, in the eyes of many Arabs, became a symbol of victory over oppression. In his testimony before the court, Al-Zaidi asserted that it was Bush‘s ―bloodless and soulless smile‖ while talking about his victories and achievements that motivated his actions. Bush was discussing victories and achievements, while Al-Zaidi was recalling all the mosques that were destroyed and all the women who were raped. Al-Zaidi claims he was spurred on by the ―violations that are committed against the Iraqi people.‖ He states, ―I could only see

Bush and feel the blood of the innocents flow under his feet, as he was smiling that smile‖.

He continues, ―At that moment, I felt this is the man who killed our nation ... the main murderer and the main person responsible for killing our nation.‖95 He concludes that he

―wanted to restore the pride of the Iraqis in any way possible, apart from using weapons.‖96

Iraqis brought their support of Al-Zaidi to the street.

95 CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/19/iraq.shoe.thrower/index.html), accessed December 19, 2009. 96ABC News, (http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=6911229&page=3), accesed December 19, 2009. 88

Figure 2. Courtesy of Al Jazeera

The image shows an Iraqi displaying the bottom of a shoe where Bush‘s name is written, 97

Writing Bush‘s name in English publicizes the message in the West and makes it more accessible worldwide. This realization of the importance of reaching out to audiences in the

West started even before 9/11, when English-language signs were held up in Iran in 1979 or when many English signs are displayed at Palestinian protests. But it is evident now more than ever that Arabs are aware the West is no longer dominating global news reporting. All new media became common tools of political protest, domestically and internationally. Domestically, for example, Egyptian Internet torture videos were able to open up a debate on police brutality. Internationally, the images of Abu Ghraib, initially revealed by CBS and the New Yorker, rather than by Arab media, showing Iraqis brutally tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers, shocked most Americans and distorted the U.S. image worldwide.

97Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/theobamapresidency/2008/12/2008121619503329516.html), accessed January 11, 2009. 89

Many stereotypes about Arabs in the U.S. emerge when they are presented as the

―other‖ who is ―passive and unreachable.‖ However, new media presents varied responses to the Arab ―other‖ that has emerged in U.S. media. Many researchers note the emergence of positive representations of Arabs/Muslims in U.S. media post-9/11 era, against all expectations. Due to the global expansion of Arab media, Americans are able to see the

Arab world differently, through categories and images Arab media produced, in addition to representations produced by U.S. media. Arabs are able to speak for themselves and express their being at odds with the U.S. military existence in Iraq. This is evident in the image below, which appeared in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, showing Iraqi people calling for Al-Zaidi‘s release and the departure of the U.S. forces from Iraq.98

Figure 3. Courtesy of the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar

In this image Iraqi protestors raise banners written in English and Arabic. One banner reads, ―Go Out U.S.A.,‖ and another misspelling banner reads, ―We Wunt Freedom to Zaidi.‖ Another Arabic banner reads, ―Release al-Zaidi Now in Line with Democracy and Freedom of expression.‖ This image shows how the shoe-throwing incident is

98 Al-Akhbar, (www.al-akhbar.com/ar/taxonomy/term/15616?page=8), accessed December 27, 2008. 90

indicative of larger views, and not just representing the views of one faction or political party.

The U.S. war in Iraq led to what Edward Said described in his introduction to

Orientalism as ―the terrible reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like ―America,‖ the ―West,‖ or ―Islam‖, and invent collective identities for large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot remain as potent as they are, and must be opposed, their murderous effectiveness vastly reduced in influence and mobilizing power.‖99 The central concern of this research is how the shift in public opinion after the war on Iraq contributed to reframing news in the U.S. or the Arab world about an emerging and increasingly influential antiwar movement. The counter-frame is determined by the emergence of war news concealed or downplayed by the Bush administration.

Images were used to create news frames, thereby contributing to redirection of public perceptions and opinions.

Al-Zaiya‘s defiance was not the first instance of well-publicized shoe-throwing in the Iraq war. Pictures of the toppling Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad on April 9, 2003, portray the fall of a dictator. Some of these images capture cheerful crowds of Iraqis as the statue is both brought down and bombarded by shoes, thereby affirming the earlier war rhetoric of the Bush administration that U.S.-led forces would serve as ―liberators‖.100

99 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), xxviii. 100 BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8133639.stm), accessed July 6, 2009. 91

Figure 4. Courtesy of BBC

The Iraqi people, who threw their shoes at Saddam Hussein‘s statue in 2003, do the same with Bush‘s pictures in 2008.

Figure 5. Courtesy of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar published the above picture of an Iraqi throwing his shoe at Bush‘s portrait.101 The photograph of George W. Bush coming under ―shoe attack‖ demonstrates the disapproval of many Iraqis, who view him as a ―liar‖ and a ―killer.‖

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has produced many iconic images, such as the invasion of

Baghdad, the fall of Saddam‘s statue, torture in Abu Ghraib, and the shoes thrown at Bush during his farewell visit to Iraq. Across the Middle East the shoe has become a symbol of

101 Al-Akhbar (www.al-akhbar.com/ar/taxonomy/term/15616?page=8), accessed January 1, 2009. 92

anger against policies emerging from the White House. Raising a shoe in an Arab demonstration is seen as powerful as burning the American flag. Al-Zaidi received vocal support, not only from fellow Iraqis, but also from most Arabs. Hundreds went to the street demanding his release. Even in Canada, the anti-war protest group ―Block the Empire‖ invited Canadians to hurl their footwear at the U.S. consulate in Montreal in solidarity with

Al-Zaidi.102 Celebration of Al-Zaidi is evident in the Arab world, too. For example, the following image published in Al Masry Alyoum shows a man having a shoe and Al-Zaidi‘s name shaved on his head to express his support for Al-Zaidi.103

Figure 6. Courtesy of the Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Alyoum

Due to cultural differences, we can expect there to be different ―thematic structures‖ in understanding the shoe-throwing incident. Bush said in an interview that he thought Al-Zaidi threw his shoes at him because he wanted to become famous. Despite the fact that there are many Americans who disagree with Bush‘s policies; however, they do

102Centre for Media Alternatives Quebec (CMAQ) (http://www.cmaq.net/en/node/31723), accessed December 17, 2008. 103 Al Masry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=191425&IssueID=1262), accessed December 22, 2009. 93

not accept Al-Zaidi‘s act. ―There were many Americans who don't like Bush but were uncomfortable with this action because they saw it as rude.‖104 Many Americans were unable to understand the logic behind Al-Zaidi‘s act and observed it as an act of violence rather than as a form of protest. However, the insult in the act can be realized in all cultures.

Al-Zaidi‘s act has been used by the Arab media to exalt an Arab who was able to stand up and make public a collective anger and resentment against the American president.

Analysis of the different responses that this incident elicited in the Middle East shows significant changes in representations of the U.S. in Arab intellectual life. This change can be discerned in the way Iraqis celebrated Saddam Hussein‘s overthrow by the Bush administration but ended up expressing approval for the shoe-throwing incident..

The show-throwing incident in Arab newspapers is represented in caricatures that not only draw attention to the image of the U.S. in the Arab world but also knowingly point to many stereotypes about Arabs/Muslims in the U.S. Clearly, this change is based on the observation of the current image and representation of Arabs/Muslims in the U.S. media.

Arabs compare their negative images in the U.S. to the American actions in the Arab world. They look at the 9/11 attacks as an unacceptable violent action executed by some

Arabs/Muslims who should not be viewed as representative of the mainstream

Arabs/Muslims. But the American occupation of Iraq and the scandals of Abu Ghraib left

Arabs startled that the U.S. had become this base on all levels.

104 The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/medea-benjamin/the-iraqi-shoe-thrower- sh_b_175621.html), accessed December 30, 2009. 94

A caricature published on maktoob.com105 refers to suicide bombers using shoes instead of bombs. The violent, aggressive stereotype of the Arab bomber in the West in general and the U.S. in particular is reappropriated by the cartoon below, which instead indicates the way Arab powerlessness, evident in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, has generated a new type of bomber, the shoe-bomber.106

Figure 7. Courtesy of Maktoob.com

The shoe-throwing incident turned into a political incident. The way Iraqis responded to the incident marked their contempt for Bush who invaded their country under false pretenses.

Many Iraqis found in the incident a kind of cathartic release for their frustrations with the

Iraq war. They saw in Al Zaidi‘s act succeeded in terrifying Bush who filled Iraq with terror. Arab cartoonists reveal in their cartoon the symbolic power of the shoe-throwing incident, which can be as powerful in terrorizing the U.S. as suicide bombing. The palm tree in the background and the word ―Iraq‖ at the top, establishing the setting show Arabs defending their homelands rather than attacking others. The cartoon implies the difference

105 Maktoob was launched in the year 2000 as the first Arabic Web-based email solution on the Internet. Maktoob.com is a leading Arab portal with over fifteen million visitors. 106 Maktoob.com (http://majdah.maktoob.com/vb/majdah122235/), accessed February 5, 2009. 95

between the ways Arabs and Westerners read the current scene in Iraq: what is considered terrorism in the West is regarded as a defiance of occupation in the Middle East.

Another cartoon published on the Saudi newspaper Al Riyadh refers to the incident as ―December 14‖, echoing 9/11 to mock Bush and to show the shoe-attacks as opposed to the planes attacks on 9/11. On 9/11 the targets of attacks were the World Trade Center, symbol of America‘s economic supremacy, and the Pentagon, sign of its military power.

On December 14, 2008, Al-Zaidi pulled his shoes off and hurled them at George W. Bush, the then-President of the U.S., and who is a living symbol of the American nation. On

December 14, President George W. Bush came under a ―shoe attack.‖107

Figure 8. Courtesy of the Saudi newspaper Al Riyadh.

The cartoon below refers to the way Arabs honor Al-Zaidi‘s act by framing and hanging a picture of his shoe on their walls. The image shows the shoe, usually left on the floor, raised up for the dignity it brought to Arabs. When Bush leaves the White House, Al-

107 Al Riyadh (http://www.alriyadh.com/2008/12/17/article395599.html), accessed January 11, 2009. 96

Zaidi‘s shoe will remain a symbol of victory over oppression for Iraqis. Hanging a picture for the shoe on Iraqis‘ walls refers to the ―honor the shoe gained as the only weapon to be launched against Bush.

Figure 9. Courtesy of Al Jazeera.net

The Saudi newspaper Alwatan published the following caricature showing Bush bearing Al-Zaidi‘s shoe and entering the door of history surrounded by myriad forms of destruction in Iraq/Middle East.108 The cartoon suggests that history will remember the president not as a liberator, as he tried in vain to promote himself and his administration, but as a humiliated shoe-bearer who left behind a legacy of war. Bearing a shoe connotes bearing death and destruction to Iraqis. The cartoon indicates that the shoe-throwing incident will remain as a sign for all atrocities committed by Bush and his administration in

Iraq. The shoe that missed Bush will accompany him into the history books. The shoe will act as a witness for the ―unwelcomed‖ existence of American troops in Iraq. Laura Bush, then first lady, looked at the December 14 event positively: ―bad as the incident is, in my

108 Maktoob.com (http://majdah.maktoob.com/vb/majdah122235/), accessed February 5, 2009. 97

view, it is a sign that Iraqis feel a lot more free to express themselves.‖109 The way the U.S. first lady, as well as many Americans, looked at this event is different than the way many

Arabs perceived it. The cartoon below shows how Arabs found that the incident helped globally publicize the view that Bush was a disaster for Iraq, in particular, and the whole

Arab world, in general.

Figure 10. Courtesy of the Saudi newspaper Alwatan

Bush came to Iraq to claim success for the war but Iraqis insisted on exposing him in front of the world. That the leader of the U.S. was publicly assaulted with a pair of shoes by an

Iraqi journalist is characteristic of the regional perception that the U.S. was weakened after its invasion of Iraq. Arab public-opinion polls showed that Arabs believe that ―America is now weaker than it was before the Iraq War.‖110

109 Politico News (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16887.html), accessed December 25, 2009. 110 Program for International Public Attitudes, University of Maryland, The Iraqi Public on the U.S. Presence and the Future of Iraq— A WorldPublicOpinion.org Poll, (PIPA, 27 September, 2006) (http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf.) 98

VI. Arab Media Coverage: Occidentalism, or a Counter-Orientalism of Sorts

The shoe-throwing incident is interpreted differently by Arab writers. Some see the incident as a way of protest against the death and destruction the Bush regime unleashed on

Iraq. They perceive it through the lens of the occupier/occupied encounter. Others look at the shoe-throwing incident as hitting the very personification of American imperial authority. This group found in the incident an opportunity to recall the history of the relationship between the Middle East and the West, and considered Al-Zaidi‘s act as the most apt response to U.S. policies that constitute the source of violent repression in the

Arab and Islamic worlds. A few Arab writers consider the incident childish and unprofessional, undermining the ethics of journalism. A few other Arab commentators concluded that the incident was a sign that the U.S. succeeded in bringing democracy to

Iraq. It was a view announced by some American media, proudly proclaiming that the incident was unthinkable under Saddam.

Most Arab writers consider the shoe-throwing incident a brave act worthy of praise rather than criticism. To them, Al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush to express and release justified anger toward the Bush administration‘s destruction of Iraq. Many Arab commentators look at the shoe throwing incident not through the lens of an East-West encounter or one reminiscent of the ―clash of civilizations‖ thesis, but through the lens of an occupied-occupier encounter in which the occupied publicly displays contempt for the occupier, whether the occupier is eastern or western.

Mohamed Salmawy, President of the Writers‘ Union of Egypt and Secretary

General of the General Union of Arab Writers, wrote an Almasry Alyoum article entitled

―Shoe of Massive Destruction‖ in which he asserted that it is not only Al-Zaidi who threw his pair of shoes at Bush but rather ―hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people who are standing against the U.S. occupation, which has upset all human, cultural, and legal values that Baghdad used to embody before the arrival of the Americans (such as the father of all laws Hammurabi, the Mesopotamian civilization, and the Islamic Caliphate).‖ Salmawy emphasizes that what Al-Zaidi faced after the incident pointed to the falseness of Bush‘s claim that the U.S. brought ―democracy‖ to Iraqis.111

In Al-Ahram Ramzy Baroud claimed that most Arab and Muslim media ―framed

Al-Zaidi's deed within its proper context, that of a horrific, genocidal war, bloody and humiliating occupation and the colonial hubris of a superpower that gave itself the right and

‗moral‘ justification to devastate a sovereign nation for the sake of oil, Israel and its desire for sheer hegemony.‖ Baroud, editor of PalestineChronicle.com, concluded that Al-Zaidi is

―a typical Iraqi who was merely responding to the subjugation of his own people.‖112

Baroud expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Arab media has turned the story into an

―amusing‖ narrative about Arab response to U.S. bloody war in Iraq. He added, ―Al-Zaidi's action was reduced in the mainstream media perhaps because he was an Iraqi fighter of a different type, the kind that fails to fit the media's stereotype, that of the sectarian militant, blowing people up, gunning them down, or detonating their homes and houses of worship.

111 Al Masry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=191075&IssueID=1259), accessed December 22, 2009. 112Al Ahram (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/941/op6.htm), accessed December 10, 2009. 100

Indeed, Al-Zaidi didn't only challenge Bush, the occupation, and the quisling government of Iraq, but the media's perception itself.‖113 Baroud showed his anger on the way Arab media are responding not just to political events, but to the representation of events in the

U.S./Western media.

Other Arab writers consider it easy for some western media to think of the shoe- throwing incident as an act of violence, but this idea detracts from the subjugation that is an integral part of the East-West encounter through which the act can be observed. Shoe- throwing is an Arab way of refusal, angry resistance, or at least a way of expressing powerlessness in the face of subjugation. But really the incident was neither testimony to freedom of expression nor a reasonable expression of anger. The former was too aggressive to qualify for protection as mere freedom of speech and the latter was not nearly an aggressive enough act in many Iraqis‘ estimation. In the Middle East the throwing of shoes is a grave display of contempt and disrespect far weightier than the physical act appears to be. Magdy El-Gallad, editor-in-chief of the well-known Egyptian newspaper Almasry

Alyoum wrote, ―The shoe is the only winner; it has become a memorial of U.S. brutality and Arab incapability.‖114 El-Gallad implies Al-Zaidi‘s shoe, or the expression of resistance, will retain its secure place in history while the American invasion and Arab regimes‘ cowardice will remain on the wrong side of history Amin Howeidy, in the Al-

Ahram article ―Shoe of Dignity‖, compares Al-Zaidi and former President Bush: ―George

W. Bush walked into history without dignity. Al-Zaidi walked into history barefoot. Who is

113 Ibid. 114Al Masry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=191094), accessed December 22, 2009. 101

better off?‖115 The shoe became a symbol of dignity and victory for the Arab world, and

Arab writers celebrated it not as a means of defiance against the occupation but as a tool to avenge the dignity of all Iraqis/Arabs.

Some Arab writers read the shoe-throwing incident in the context of a real outraged person protesting the real deaths, injuries and massive destruction that have taken place in his country. The protest was directed squarely at the one man who is responsible. Al Zaidi made a visual criticism of Bush's recent legacy bolstering that his act would reach

Americans; the ones who have the power to fire Bush (and they did.) Bush's image in that region is a symbol of foreign aggression, imperialism, religious heresy, death and the division of Iraqi people. Iraqis hated, feared and privately loathed Saddam Hussein, but now they long for his iron-handed stability. In Iraq, Bush faced the real anger of the people he has harmed. Muhammad bin Mukhtar El-Shanqiti writes on Al Jazeera.net that ―The incident recalls the question posed by George W. Bush awkwardly after the events of

September 11: ‗Why do they hate us?‘ Perhaps the shoe-throwing incident gave a clear answer to this question. The shoe-thrower said while throwing his shoes, "This is from the widows and orphans." After Al-Zaidi‘s message, it would be an ignorant question to ask

‗Why do they hate us?‘‖116 The writer considers the message delivered through Al-Zaidi‘s shoes powerful even though the shoe missed Bush, because the shoe hit the American flag, thus successfully registering the insult against the most powerful country in the world. He frames the shoe-throwing incident as a response, encompassing not only the U.S.

115 Al Ahram (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/929/op8.htm), accessed December 22, 2009. 116 Al Jazeera (http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BCD72480-1AE5-4A68-810D-740477573263.htm), accessed December 12, 2009. 102

occupation of Iraq but also the whole U.S.-Middle East encounter, to the U.S. post-9/11 question ―why do they hate us?‖. This reading reflects the anti-American sentiment that soared in the Arab world at the time.

On the other hand, there are a few Arab writers who perceive Al-Zaidi‘s act differently. They consider Al-Zaidi‘s act as vain, meaningless, and detrimental to the image of his profession, country, and culture. Amr Hamzawy, Senior Associate at Carnegie, was aware of the way the Arab media was taking the incident into a different direction. He wrote an article under the title ―A Paper Hero‖ in which he stated, ―Many media pundits in the Arab world … have portrayed Al-Zaidi as an Iraqi hero that our part of the world had been waiting for. By throwing his shoe, this hero became a great fighter who undermined

Bush and the United States‘s dignity in the Middle East and the world as a whole.‖

Hamzawy showed that attacking or attempting to jeopardize the personal safety of any human being, whoever s/he is, is an action to be condemned and cannot be justified…as this contradicts human rights. The Carnegie researcher also asserted that the fact that it was a journalist who threw the shoe was another reason why this action should be rejected, since journalists‘ tools are questions, answers, and verbal opposition rather than shoes.

Finally, Hamzawy stated, ―Indeed, being overjoyed at this act and getting it surrounded with a false halo of heroism shows a lack of both depth and meaning. We need to listen to reason and consider how to cope with the US presence in Iraq, and the bad policies of the current world superpowers.‖117 Hamzawy calls Arab media to reason out a more sober judgment of the incident. Instead of journalistic counter-attacks, Hamzawy asserts that

117 Al Masry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=190990), accessed December 22, 2009. 103

journalists should resort to logical reasoning to determine if the act was correct or not.

Hamzawy adopts the idea that Arabs should focus on providing serious intellectual opposition to the occupation, not empty incidents like the shoe-throwing.

Discussing the shoe-throwing incident in terms of ―human rights‖ led As'ad

AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, to attack

Hamzawy in the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar. AbuKhalil mocks Arab writers who consider Al-Zaidi‘s act as a violation of human rights, or as not being the best way to deliver a message to the West. To him, the ―flying shoe‖ speaks louder for Arab public opinion than all the despots/puppets that Bush meets during his travels in the Middle

East.118 AbuKhalil‘s viewpoint reveals how some Arab writers resent having Al-Zaidi‘s hero status questioned.

The shoe-throwing behavior would likely be considered offensive due to traditional

Arab/Iraqi customs. President Bush was a guest, and hospitality norms would frown open insulting a guest regardless of one‘s personal views, sentiments, or animosity. Yassin Al-

Hajj Saleh writes in the Lebanese newspaper Al Mustaqbal that ―Al-Zaidi‘s shoes thrown at the U.S. President George W. Bush revealed a serious problem in the mentality of the contemporary Arab nation.‖119 The writer went on to criticize many Arab writings on the incident that considered Al-Zaidi‘s act a symbol for dignity and victory. He even went on to support the idea that Al-Zaidi was merely looking for fame, which echoing Bush‘s statement about the incident. Saleh emphasizes the silence of the Arab world with regard to many atrocities taking place in Gaza and Iraq while offering formidable support for an

118 Al-Akhbar (http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/110233#comment-24931), accessed December 30, 2009. 119 Al Mustaqbal (http://www.almustaqbal.com/stories.aspx?StoryID=369933), accessed January 1, 2010. 104

―individual‖ act by an ―unknown‖ journalist. The writer considers the shoe-throwing act a symbolic action with no effect on political and reality.120 In Al Masry Alyoum, Alaa El-

Ghatrifi‘s ―The Shoe Brought No Dignity‖ also questions the effectiveness of the incident:

―It is so strange to find Arabs celebrating the shoe-throwing incident without paying heed to the naivety of their reactions that came in jokes, poetry, etc. Moreover, a Saudi rich man offers ten million dollars to buy Al-Zaidi‘s pair of shoes, and TV stations devote hours for telephone interventions that talk about the heroism of Al-Zaidi, who restored the dignity for

Iraq and the Arabs. This is nothing but nonsense and a kind of backwardness.‖ El-Ghatrifi attacks Al-Zaidi for raising a shoe instead of a pen. The writer asserts that Al-Zaidi‘s shoe missed its way, and that it is not Bush who deserves this shoe but Arab leaders who have welcomed him, the occupier, at their palaces.121 One wonders why different writers came to such different conclusions. It has nothing to do with any regional difference since Lebanese showed no different views than Egyptians. Moreover, the critique of al-Zaidi‘s act come from Western-educated elites like Amr Hamzawy, and the defense of the incident also come from American-educated Arabs like As'ad AbuKhalil. It seems that there is not any obvious political difference among the responses, which is worth noting. Arab writers are divided, not on regional, religious, or political lines, but in terms of their individual assessments of strategy and symbolism.

Perhaps Arabic writing on the shoe-throwing incident can be regarded as a counter-

Orientalism of sorts. U.S. policies contribute to Arab public perception of the U.S. as

120 Ibid. 121 Al Masry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=191232&IssueID=1260), accessed December 22, 2009. 105

immoral, greedy, and bent on colonizing the region. This view has been bolstered by the war on Iraq based on lack of evidence, i.e., the existence of WMDs, as well as by what are perceived to be U.S. hypocritical policies on democratization in the region, as evident in the longstanding U.S. support for undemocratic regimes in the Middle East. Most polls conducted by Gallup and other U.S. organizations conclude that Arabs like American values, people, and culture while disliking its policies in the region. The shoe-throwing incident has created much discussion surrounding the East-West encounter in spite of the fact that it was only the U.S. that was involved in this incident. Moreover, some Arab writers consider the incident a truly historic moment that delivers a clear anti-war message to President Obama.

VII. Obamaism as Seen in the Arab World

President Obama, who has an Arabic middle name, made many Arabs enthused about the ―change‖ he promised. However, many in the Arab world were certain that there would be no radical change in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Obama‘s representation in Arabic cartoon and caricature has some irreconcilable thematic elements. He is rendered either as an exact copy of Bush in his policies regarding the Middle East or as a savior from the injustices Arabs face internally and regionally. These different views can be categorized by two types of Arab writers. There are those who acknowledge that Obama cannot make an ultimate change in U.S. foreign policy because the executive power that lies in the hands of the U.S. president is not similar to the absolute dictatorial power enjoyed by Arab regimes. And, there are those who look at Obama as an African-American with a Muslim

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father who will be able to change the whole situation in the Middle East by adopting fair policy in the region.

Al-Khalij, the Emirati news agency, published the following cartoon that shows a road drawn by George W. Bush, with Obama doing nothing but following in Bush‘s steps.

Obama is shown holding a file bearing the Israeli flag along with Obama‘s name to demonstrate that any U.S. President will not be able change the American agenda in the

Middle East under blind support for Israel. The cartoon implies that Israel issues a file for each new president, with instructions.

Figure 10. Courtesy of Al-Khalij.

Another cartoon from Al-Ghad, an Egyptian newspaper, shows Obama emerging from an Israeli egg, implying anticipated support of Israel in its conflict with Arabs. The cartoon below shows how Arabs believe in the role played by the pro-Israel lobby in directing U.S. foreign policy.

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Figure 11. Courtesy of Al-Ghad (Egypt)

It is widely believed in the Arab world that it is prerequisite for an American president to be approved by AIPAC. Many Arabs would believe that the US Presidents have to seek

AIPAC-Israel approval as a precondition to run for office when they see what Bill

Clinton, the ex-President of the U.S.A., writes in his book about Paster W. O. Vaught telling him, ―Bill, I think, you're going to be a president, someday. I think, you'll do a good job, but there's one thing, above all, you must remember: God will never forget you, if you doesn‘t stand by Israel.‖122 Such writings enhance Arabs‘ belief that the AIPAC influences U.S. Foreign policy in the Middle East. The cartoon below from Al-Watan, a

Saudi newspaper, shows Obama holding a club concealed as a carrot for the benefit of deceiving Arabs at a convention of the Israeli lobby group, AIPAC:

122 Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Vintage, 2005), 353. 108

Figure 12. Courtesy of Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia)

Obama has also been represented as a symbol of hope, change, and emancipation.

There is no doubt that Arabs and Muslims are like many other people all over the world who were pleased with the election of Barack Obama presenting an opportunity for ―hope of change‖. Arabs welcomed Obama enthusiastically enough to have Arab writers call for a moment of sobriety until Obama‘s promised ―change‖ became evident in his policies.

However, many of them show interest in the Obama euphoria blowing the winds of change through the Arab world. Arab journalists look at Obama‘s victory as a model of democratic change to people around the Arab world yearning for democratic reform.

Ibrahim Eissa, the Egyptian columnist and editor-in-chief of Al-Dostor newspaper, wrote an article entitled ―Obama‘s Brother in Cairo!‖ in which he depicts a fanciful hypothetical scenario in which Hussein Obama stopped by Cairo before going to the U.S.,

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Assume with me that the Muslim Kenyan citizen Hussein Obama, before traveling

in the early sixties to the United States, decided to change his destination and travel

first to Egypt, the country of Al-Azhar, like other Muslims of Africa to learn and

work in Cairo … Obama came and joined Al-Azhar University. Then, he knew an

Egyptian girl from a white Egyptian family living in the district of Heliopolis and

decided to get married. The girl‘s family firmly rejected this marriage … But the

intransigence of the girl and her love outweighed the barriers and obstacles

presented by her parents, and she married Hussein Obama … and had a son named

Mabrouk … [Hussein] then traveled to the United States where he married an

American girl and got his second son Barack.123

Eissa continues to follow the lives of the Egyptian born son, Mabrouk, versus the U.S.-born son, Barack:

A Black man of Kenyan origin has the right to become the President of the United

States of America, while in Egypt neither a Kenyan nor an Egyptian, whether black

or white, has the right to even dream of running for the presidency … The only

condition to being president is being the son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak

... this is not the only difference between Mubarak and Barack Obama, but it is the

main difference between backwardness and forwardness …124

Eissa‘s criticism of Egyptian in response to Obama‘s presidency reveals how some Arab intellectuals view American values and democracy in providing an African-American the

123 Al Dostor (www.dostor.org) accessed September 3, 2008. 124 Ibid. 110

opportunity to be the leader of the U.S. Eissa‘s article is echoed in the cartoon below from mahjoob.com that shows two different versions of Obama: the Arab Obama and the

American Obama. The Arab Obama is of humble origin, with a dark complexion and a foreign agenda, and he cannot even dream of getting Arab citizenship. The American

Obama, on the other hand, with an African migrant father is a lawyer and a human-rights activist who eventually becomes elected president of the United States of America.

Figure 13. Courtesy of Mahjoob.com

Eissa‘s article and the Mahjoob.com cartoon refer to political suppression in Egypt and crackdowns on dissent, but also to the ways in which dissent and pro-democracy activism is still very much alive. Unfortunately, post-9/11, conditions for reform were even less possible across the Arab world since the ―War on Terror‖ was used by Arab regimes

―to deny any space to the opposition and deny any exercise of basic human rights to

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whomever they choose.‖125 Arab public opinion was kept under control before 9/11, but after it was used by Arab regimes to get more power over public opinion. However, ―it is now commonplace to argue that developments in global media culture have eroded state hegemony in the cultural realm, making the fragmentation and dispersal of cultural identities inevitable.‖126 In this way, media globalisation is able to disseminate a range of new, hybrid, cultural concepts.

Another cartoon appeared in Al Ahram, the leading Egyptian government- controlled newspaper, which caused troubles for the Egyptian regime. The cartoon shows

President Obama saying, ―Change has come to America,‖ while a rural Egyptian woman, looking up to the smiling Obama, congratulates him and reminds him not to forget that people around the world who have been hoping and praying for his victory. The woman says, ―Congratulations my son … May the same [change] happens to us … And, don‘t forget that we prayed for your success.‖ The Egyptian opposition weekly Sawt al-Umma states that Al Ahram that quickly removed 150,000 copies of its first edition from the streets to destroy, and its second edition came without the troublesome phrase, ―May the same

[change] happens to us.‖ This shows how political cartoons are able to stir the worries of the Mubarak regime especially when they deal with Obama‘s victory that came on the change mantra. The uncut edition of the cartoon appeared in the Egyptian independent newspapers Sawt al Umma, Al Badil, and other news websites.127

125 Dale F. Eickelman and John W. Anderson, eds., New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 30. 126 Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors, eds., Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 227. 127 ShobikLobik.com (http://www.shobiklobik.com/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=172011), accessed February 12, 2010. 112

After Before

This cartoon also exemplifies the way Arab cartoonists are trying to empower rural

Egyptian women to politically participate. It not only refers to rural women but to all neglected minorities in Egyptian society whose political participation is needed for a real

―change‖ to come true. The rural woman represents the authentic Egyptian voice, and thus all Egyptians. Thus, ―Obamaism‖ urged Egyptians to think not only about U.S. policy in the region, but about their own ―dead‖ political scene. Egyptians, as well as many Arabs, are aware of the importance of political ―change‖ in raising Arabs‘ status internationally, and transforming the blind support for Israel the U.S. is perceived to.

Arab journalists and cartoonists look with respect toward U.S. values of democracy; however, they think America‘s foreign policy has distorted its image. At the same time they believe that by winning the U.S. presidential elections, Barack Obama has improved

America's image across the globe. And despite the cynicism many have long felt towards 113

the American policies in the Middle East, the elections were able to produce positive sentiments since a black American, with Muslim, third-world roots, made it to the White

House. However, the U.S.‘s distorted image in the Arab/Muslim world still needs much effort from Obama to be improved. A cartoon from the Egyptian newspaper Al-Gomhoria shows Obama renovating America‘s image by dusting off the Statue of Liberty, or restoring America‘s neglected values of freedom and democracy.

Figure 14. Courtesy of Al-Gomhoria (Egypt)

VIII. Barack Hussein Obama: A Breath of Fresh Air or the Winds of Change

Arab media provided extensive coverage of the election of Obama and brilliant rise to power and prominence. It is his African and Muslim background as well as his skin color that attract Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East. Arab analysts, while hoping for more

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balanced and acceptable policies than those pro-Israel by the Bush administration, are under no illusions there will be a ―change‖ concerning the Middle East. Many Arabs were cautiously optimistic about Obama's election victory in November 2008, hoping that a fresh face in the White House would be a better alternative to Bush. But Obama‘s foreign policy team, especially Hillary Clinton as U.S. Secretary of State and Rahm Emmanuel as

White House Chief-of-Staff, raised doubts that much would change. The only perceived change was in the abandonment of Bush‘s fiery political rhetoric in an attempt to restore the international image of the U.S.

Thus, irreconcilable thematic elements are evident while trying to document

Obamaism in the Arab world, discussing major attitudes about it, dividing them into analytic categories of ―positive,‖ ―neutral,‖ and ―negative,‖ with positives outweighing negatives within the early period of Obama‘s election, and negatives outweighing positives after a few months of his presidency. Obviously, the Arab responses to Obama‘s election fit together in shaping and reflecting the dominant thinking of Arab people. Desire for the

Obama to change policies and not just tone was evident in the early response to his election. A few months later Arab opinion about Obama was affirmative regarding his rhetorical talent, but doubtful about implementation of policies.

A survey of Arab media response to Obama‘s election begins with ―Americans‘

Image in the Arab World Is Far Worse than Arabs‘ Image in the U.S.‖, written by Samir

Farid, film critic, on Almasry Alyoum. Farid claims that people in the Arab world are under the illusion that the individual who is in ―power‖ could bring about significant social change. Farid explains that this is applicable in non-democratic regimes, like those in the

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Middle East, while this is not the case in democratic regimes like the U.S.128 Farid implicitly refers to the effective role of Congress, the Senate, and the House of

Representatives in shaping U.S. policies, as opposed to Egypt and other undemocratic regimes, wherein the president has absolute power over foreign and domestic policies.

The election of Obama was so great that a remarkable number of commentaries about his anticipated transnational role ritually genuflected to his call for change but still doubt his ability to transfer it beyond the boundaries of the U.S. Obama‘s victory provided the rationale for an Arab hope of change which in some commentators‘ view is a form of failure on their part. Many Arabs expressed the hope of change to the policies of

Washington over Arab and Islamic issues in view of what they see in Obama‘s Islamic roots. In Al-Ahram El-Sayed Amin Shalabi‘s article ―Awaiting Obama‖ explains that

―Obama won the election largely on the strength of his pledge of change, and the U.S. and the world are eager to see whether he fulfills his pledge. How will this apply to the Middle

East? Specifically, will the Obama administration be able to break free of Washington's tradition of blind support for Israel that has long obstructed a just solution to guarantee

Israeli security and meet the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians? The writer claims that all U.S. past administrations had their hands bound due to overwhelming support for

Israel in American society, whether this support is due to the powerful pro-Israel lobby or due to ―popular perceptions of Israel as sharing the same cultural values or being, for a growing and increasingly influential segment of U.S. society, central to the religious vision of the second coming of Christ, which has generated a close relation between the Christian

128 Almasry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=214028), accessed February 1, 2010. 116

fundamentalist ultra right and Zionist forces in the U.S. and Israel.‖129 Here the writer is not blaming Obama as much as he is blaming Arabs for awaiting Obama to solve their problems. Shalabi warns against misunderstanding American foreign policy and overestimating ―individuals‖ over ―tradition‖. U.S. support for Israel is part and parcel of its foreign policy and no change is expected in this regard with a change of the head of state. Shalabi ends his article by inviting Arabs to ―take the initiative to produce a cohesive

Arab vision on the principles that should govern a settlement. Such an action would go a long way to persuading the new administration that it is dealing with an Arab partner with a united stance.‖130

Fahmy Howeidy, a well-known Egyptian columnist, wrote in the Egyptian daily Al

Dostor that the way Arabs rely on Obama‘s election is reflective of a sense of their own powerlessness and hopelessness. He adds,

The despair and frustration we suffer from make us await a savior from outside as

we lost any hope to get him from those who are in power in our countries. In

addition, Obama, unlike Bush, expressed respect for us, and by doing so, it seems

he has struck a chord, and raised the ceiling of our expectations from him. This is

due to the fact that our experiences with the U.S, left us with a belief that the word

respect, was not included in the lexicon of Arab-American relations131

129 Al Ahram (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/930/op11.htm), accessed February 2, 2010. 130 Ibid. 131 Fahmy Howeidy BlogSpot (http://fahmyhoweidy.blogspot.com/2009/01/blog-post_24.html), accessed February 12, 2010. 117

Howeidy asserts that Obama‘s positive words about the Muslim world indicate that his administration might change the tone but the goals and strategy will remain unchanged.132 Many Arab writers are aware that the U.S. will not change its policy in the

Middle East as long as there are no ―strong‖ Arab foreign policy partners. Howeidy also explains that much of the admiration that Obama gained in the Arab world is due to the respect he shows to Arabs/Muslims and Islam. In this way, Howeidy is referring to the long history of aggression and negligence that marks U.S. policies toward Arabs/Muslims. The

U.S. has made strong allies in the region, but shows no respect for most people‘s welfare, certainly. The problem is not a general neglect or disrespect, but neglect of life of ordinary

Arabs and support for their dictators.

On the other hand, Arab reformers showed hope for Obama‘s victory in U.S. elections. Ayman Nour in Egypt, for example, showed his enthusiasm in a letter he sent to

Obama upon his official nomination by the Democratic Party. Nour, who was sentenced in

December 2005 to a five-year prison term on what his defenders say are fabricated charges, was released in February 2009 for health reasons. Writing from prison in August 2008,

Nour wrote to Barack Obama appealing for his support for Arab reformers who aspire to

―change‖ under current dictatorial regimes. Nour states, ―The writer of these lines is a human being, about your age, who was — and still is — dreaming like you of change and reform in his country. However, in our countries legitimate dreams turn into horrifying nightmares!!‖133 Nour ended his message with the following: ―Senator Obama: We await

132 Ibid. 133 Ayman Nour BlogSpot (http://aymanoormasr.blogspot.com/2008/08/imprisoned-egyptian-liberal.html), accessed February 12, 2010. 118

much from you as a Democratic candidate and president expected to lead the whole world towards a real and fair change. Your generation and all the powers of reform, democrats and liberals in Egypt and the Arab world hope that January 20 becomes a day of freedom and democracy, not only in the U.S. but in the whole world primarily by rectifying the wrongs caused by long years of supporting dictators under the pretext of protecting interests at the account of principles.‖ 134 Nour refers to the way Arab reformers were renewing their confidence in America as a pro-reform world superpower. George W.

Bush‘s wars, his approval of torture in Guantanamo, and his support for domestic surveillance made any pro-reform calls by the U.S. during his presidency devoid of value.

It seems that most Arab reformers look at Obamaism more than they look at Obama himself. Here, I refer to the way Obama became a phenomenon capable of reaching out to people all over the globe not as a person but as a ―case.‖ Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian reformer living in the U.S., wrote in Almasry Alyoum about the similarity between Obama in the U.S. and Mohamed El Baradei, the ex-Director General of the International Atomic

Energy Agency (IAEA), who was considered a possible candidate for the Egyptian presidency election in 2011. Ibrahim indicates that Obama is ―outside the box‖ since he is the first ―black‖ U.S. president born to a Muslim father. On the other side, the Egyptian

―box‖ since July 1952 has remained immutable, a ―military‖ rather than ―civilian‖ construction of authority. El Baradei, a civilian, is compared to Obama in representing ―a fresh new face‖ whose background and position are ―outside the box.‖135 Obama, the case,

134 Ibid. 135 Almasry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=238756), accessed January 2, 2010. 119

is much more important to most Arabs than Obama the person. Being able to ―change‖ what is perceived ―unchangeable,‖ i.e., becoming a black president in America, invites many Arabs to believe in their ability to change the repressive situation in their countries.

Most Arabs believe in the existence of the value of ―democracy‖ in the U.S. and believe that Bush came to presidency through fair elections, but Obama‘s victory broke many

―taboos.‖ That is why Arabs look at it as a different ―version‖ of democracy and a pioneering step in the ―land of dreams‖ to lead the whole world into a new era of ―change.‖

The spirit of optimism with the arrival of Obama and the departure of Bush disappeared a few months into Obama‘s presidency. Most Arabs, as well as many

Americans, began discussing his unfulfilled promises. Munir Shafiq wrote an article on Al jazeera.net titled ―Between Barack Obama and G. W. Bush‖ that starts as follows, ―With the approach of one year after Barack Obama became the President of the United States, no one can notice any fulfillment of even some of his pre-election promises.‖ Shafiq states that, ―When Obama came to the U.S. presidency with many promises of change, some interpreted that he would change substantially the policies of his notorious predecessor,

George W. Bush. But practically Obama walked in Bush‘s footsteps, using only a different language of discourse while keeping the same content of policies.‖ Shafiq goes on to argue that Bush‘s last two years of presidency were better than Obama‘s first year with regard to

U.S. policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The writer criticizes those who welcomed Obama‘s victory by claiming,

Surprisingly, those who rushed to welcome Obama and his promises of ‗change‘

know how the process of selecting U.S. presidents and policy-maker is based on

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those nominees‘ readiness to confirm to the U.S. long-term foreign policy towards

the Middle East, but they preferred to give priority to their aspirations over that

knowledge. Those who welcomed Obama found it appropriate to clear their names

from being involved in supporting Bush's policies or bowing to their winds, and to

argue that if the U.S. is self-correcting, so America is inevitably good.136

Yousri Fouda, a well-known ex-reporter for Al Jazeera, wrote in Almasry Alyoum an article entitled ―Kidnapping Obama‖ in which he asserts that just like imperialism has taken different forms in modern age, there is a possibility that Obama, with his oratory skills, is being used by other powers behind the scene in the U.S. to perform their agenda.

He indicates that if one cannot occupy a country militarily, he can invade it culturally, politically, and economically. Similarly, if one cannot assassinate a leader, he can ―kidnap‖ him morally and make use of him politically. Fouda concluded that ―the difference between

Obama in December 2008 and Obama in December 2009 compels us not to expect from

Obama in December 2010 what could please us, with all due respect to Obama as a person and for his principles.‖137 It seems that Obama, the U.S. president, has kidnapped

―Obamaism,‖ the phenomenon, from many in the Arab world. Most Arabs‘ expectations in regard to Obamaism are beyond the realm of Obama the individual, who is presumed to be more liberal than he is. The first ―black‖ U.S. president, when nominated as a candidate by the Democratic Party, was chosen to serve the agenda of this party rather than his own views, which are not and were never very far from the Democratic party overall.

136 Al Jazeera.net (http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B62C3B0F-4FDA-4DF9-9CAC-432709435BEC.htm), accessed February 12, 2010. 137 Almasry Alyoum (http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=236526), accessed December 13, 2009. 121

Burhan Ghalioun‘s article ―Obama Is Not the Awaited Mahdi nor the One-eyed

Daggal‖ is not only situated in the contemporary Middle East but recalls a longer history of

Middle East-West encounters, in which the West attempts to gain control over the Arab world. Ghalioun proposes a new vision deeper than the two reactions to Obama‘s speech to the Arab/Muslim worlds. These reactions ―ranged from viewing Obama as a savior, or

Mahdi, and finding in his visit and the content of his speech [at Cairo University in Egypt] nothing but a reiteration and defense of the U.S. policies, while phrasing them in sweet words that tickle Arabs/Muslims‘ emotions.‖ Ghalioun believes that Obama‘s rhetoric presented no more than an artificial truce compelled by America‘s current deteriorating strategic position in Iraq and Afghanistan. He ended his article by inviting Arabs to respond to Obama‘s speech, not by celebration or degradation, but by rising to the level of political action and acting as strategic players in the international scene.138

IX. Pop Obamaism in Egyptian Pop Song

Shaaban Abdel-Raheem, an Egyptian pop singer, released a song about Obama and the joy felt by Arabs for his victory. Shabola, as they usually call him in the Arab world, is known for this catchy tune and his most famous song, which starts with ―I hate

Israel and love President Mubarak‖. In Pop Culture Arab World: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle

Andrew Hammond states that Shaaban Abdel-Rahim ―became the toast of the nation when his song ―I Hate Israel‖ came out following realtime television coverage of Israel‘s attempts to crush the Palestinian uprising against occupation that began in September

138 Al Jazeera.net (http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/24B59928-6080-4315-A2D6-556E0357A7AE.htm), accessed February 13, 2010. 122

2000‖.139 His song about Obama, written by Islam Khalil, asks Arabs not to have hope centered on Obama because the dream can turn into a nightmare. The gist of the lyrics of this enthralling song about the U.S. president echo the way much of the Arab world relates to Obama‘s presidency:

I see the smile and glee on the faces Oh people, hopefully Obama will not be like Bush …. And Obama, people are imagining him to be Saladin ….Let us not dream too early, so the dream wouldn‘t turn into a nightmare …..Bush went, Obama came, what will he do?! What will happen?! Palestine is still occupied, and Iraq is still at war …… Oh you Arab…how poor you are! Sitting there, waiting for Obama, to take you by the hand To have sympathy on/baby you Neither Bush or any Obama will ever think of you Oh Arab, nothing but your own hand will ever protect you.

It is notable that the song recalls Saladin just as Bush recalls the Crusades in his speech about the ―War on Terror‖. The song ends with the idea that U.S. policy will never change whether Bush or Obama is in charge.

A young American woman named Luna Paris came to Cairo to make a duet with

Shaaban Abdel Rahim. When he changed his mind, she composed a song and video clip in

Arabic as a challenge to Shabola. The song is about the end of the Bush era and the beginning of a new age for America and the world. While Luna considers Shaaban to be anti-American in her song, her song also reveals a yearning to bridge the gap between

Americans and Egyptians. Luna starts her song by blaming Shaaban for hating Americans:

139 Andrew Hammond, Pop Culture Arab World: Media, Arts, and Lifestyle (California: ABC-CLIO, 2005),155. 123

Why do you hate Americans? And say they are evil predators?

Luna‘s song asserts a shared objective of peace by Americans and Egyptians, mentioning that one million Egyptians live in peace in the U.S.:

American people are kind, And Egyptian people, too. Ask the million Egyptians Living there in peace. The song ends by an invitation to await the peace that Obama will bring:

Tomorrow peace will come. Let‘s say, ―long live Obama‖.

Luna Paris is not well known in the Arab world, and her song was not well- received. This might be because of her Arabic accent, which made it difficult for many to understand her. However, some people are impressed with her longing for peace. Luna was interviewed by Arab TV channels to deliver her message of peace to Arab people. Luna has taken on the challenge of crossing cultures on a mission of understanding between East and

West. Her song is a mixture of popular song-style and contemporary new East-West fusion styles. Luna who came to Cairo to do a duet with singer Shaban Abd el Rahim but he backed out at the last minute, made this song with hopes for new peace and good feelings now that Bush is gone, perhaps the damage can be repaired.

X. Conclusion

Recent events in international politics clearly drove both Americans and Arabs toward rethinking approaches, methods, and intellectual priorities. In the U.S. many

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scholars address the most challenging element of U.S. influence/U.S. imperialism in the

Middle East, as the recognition of the Other and as a ―subject‖ rather than an ―object.‖ On the other side, some Arab and Muslim scholars have turned to reason in dealing with accusations of ―backwardness‖ and ―fundamentalism‖. Arabs use the U.S. invasion of Iraq and all atrocities committed there to accuse Americans of ―backwardness‖ and ―evil‖, the same words attributed to Arabs by some Americans. Some Arab intellectuals found in the

Iraq war an opportunity to prove to people all over the globe that Americans are ―barbaric‖ and ―racist‖. While George W. Bush is used as a representative of the American nation, other intellectuals think of Bush as not representative of the U.S. and that Obama stands as an opportunity for image improvement and self-correction. That is why we find the prominent Arab poet Farouq Goweida writing a poem addressing Bush as someone who committed crimes against humanity that he bore disgracefully when he left office:

On your hands is the blood of an armless people When it disappears, it will not depart your eyes. All the children lost in Baghdad‘s seas of blood Become a stain of shame on your forehead.140

Obama‘s slogans of ―hope and change‖ were embraced, not only by Americans, but also by many Arabs and Muslims with whom Bush‘s policies left many unhealed wounds.

The different responses to Bush‘s departure with a ―farewell shoe‖ and the arrival of

Obama with ―cheering‖ show that the two incidents represent very different moments in

140Islamonline.net (http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=ArticleA_C&cid=1231223530943&pagename=Zone-Arabic- ArtCulture%2FACALayout), access: February 13, 2010. 125

time and highlight the ambivalence and diversity of opinion in the Arab world. Arab coverage of Obama‘s election was enthusiastic and gradually optimistic, looking at the

U.S.-Arab encounter in a historical perspective as well as taking into consideration the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arab news organizations featured stories about the fact that Obama unblushingly was sworn in using his father's name, Hussein, as a middle name, and on his pledge to withdraw from Iraq in a responsible fashion. The symbolism of

Obama‘s middle name, Hussein, and the fact that he went to elementary school in

Indonesia certainly speaks to Arab media and audiences.

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CHAPTER THREE

U.S. in Post-9/11 Arab Cinema

Any discourse, whatever it be, is constituted by a set of utterances which are

produced each in its place and time.141

We think and produce cinema in the same way as the Americans do…We're trying

to work internationally because we need to communicate. This is the glamour or the

magic of cinema. We know the jeans or the hamburger, everything from the

American movies, so I think people will know us.142

Film scene in Egypt has a shallow level of debate. There are individuals who do not

have any values and are managing the mind and taste in Egypt, there are producers

who do not fit even to be viewers. There are orators about freedom and defenders of

slums and sympathizers with sexual promiscuity. There are idiots who use broken

141 Michel Foucault, ―My Body, This Paper, This Fire‖, Oxford Literary Review 4, no. 1 (1979), 19. 142 Adel Adeeb, director of "Baby Doll Night" and Managing Director of Good News4Film CNN, Neil Curry, article ―A New Golden Age for Egyptian Cinema?‖, CNN.com, March 21 2008. 127

language to excite laughter, and show drugs as a source for fun and a wonderful

life.143

Since the Vietnam War, the world has not witnessed dramatic and shocking events like those of September 11, 2001 and their repercussions. The incident was filmed and viewed by people worldwide. 9/11 attacks have become pivotal in many world films and in the sidelines of others. Arab cinema, just like other world cinemas, found in 9/11 attacks rich cinematic material, especially after the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. After 9/11 filmmakers in the Arab world attempted to show Arab culture as rich and receptive and

American culture as less receptive to the Other, and that the frantic events of 9/11 were able to show the depth and intensity of this fact.

Many Arab intellectuals call for new channels through which Arabs can address their contemporary negative image and provide a more accurate model for their reality away from counterfeiting. Arab filmmakers realize that Hollywood movies tell Arabs‘ stories in their own way, and that there is a need to market the films that tell Arabs‘ authentic stories to current and future generations. But they are also aware of the difficulty of entering Arab cinema into the American film industry and hence society. They focus on local/Arab audiences and pay less attention to exporting films to the West as they know in advance that their films will hardly find venues in the West.

Arab society is currently facing a sociopolitical and economic dilemma that affects its attitude toward Self and Other. The third millennium witnesses a media revolution that

143 Ahmed Al-Mislmani, ―Mollywood: Alliance of Error and Risk,‖ Almasry Alyoum (http://www.almasry- alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=252597), accessed September 9, 2009. 128

widens the gap between Arabs and their governments, while narrowing it between them and the outside world. The political suppression in Egypt, for example, led to a new wave of satiric comedy that allows Egyptians to watch their daily pain on the screen and laugh it off. Cinema reaches its peak when a country reaches its worst socio-political-economic moment. Moreover, when this moment lasts a while it leaves people with a belief that without this negative side, their society would not be as beautiful or intimate. In other words, when people find that their social problems are ignored and snowballed into permanent ones, they feel that finding a solution to their troubles become more difficult, if not impossible. Viola Shafik states, ―the political and economic stagnation common to the largely autocratic Arab regimes has been affecting culture and film continuously.‖144 The appearance of ―new comedy‖ in Egyptian cinema has made people cope with their troubles through laughter. The way Egyptians laugh at their pain also shows how the line separating agony and ecstasy has disappeared in the darkness of ―the political and economic stagnation‖ to which Shafik refers.

Known in the Arab world as the Hollywood of the East, Egypt‘s film industry is the largest and most popular in the Middle East and North Africa. After the 1952 Revolution in

Egypt that put an end to a long history of foreign colonization, there was an era of the U.S.-

Egypt ―soft‖ encounter. There was much co-operation politically and military that paved the way for a cultural open-border on the part of Egypt. A U.S. cultural ―onslaught‖ is evident in the way Egyptian cinema follows in Hollywood‘s steps. In Whatever Happened

144 Viola Shafik, Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity (Cairo: American University Press, 2007), 215. 129

to Egyptians: Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present, Galal Amin sums up the U.S. influence on the Egyptian society. He states,

All Egyptians … were suddenly exposed to a cultural onslaught that seemed to be

coming from a number of directions, but all of which originated in the United

States: fast food and Coca-Cola bottles in restaurants and coffee shops, big

American cars in the streets, novel ways of presenting the news in the media, new

types of songs on the radio, and the Hollywood films in the cinema.145

Amin goes on to affirm the manner in which Egyptian films in the 1970s and 1980s were following American cinema by ―allowing for more sexual permissiveness and violence as well as giving longer rein to their obsession with pure technique.‖146 The flows of

American cultural productions into Egypt and other Arab countries do not mean that all

Arabs are a homogeneous group which can easily be slotted in one ―westernized‖ category.

Many Arabs have expressed belief that the U.S. is widening the gap between Arabs by its blind support to Israel. Arabs partake of the cultural effects of globalization, as they drink

Coca-Cola, wear the latest American fashions, and watch Hollywood films; however, their opinion of the U.S. is still very much influenced and shaped by U.S. involvement in the

Palestinian-Israeli conflict and alignment with undemocratic Arab regimes.

A difficult dilemma faced by Arabs in the late 20th century is the lack of a unique

―language‖ capable of addressing properly the West in general and Americans in particular.

145 Galal Amin, Whatever Happened to Egyptians: Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present (Cairo: American University Press, 2007), 137. 146 Ibid., 139. 130

By ―language‖ I refer to the cultural, political, and of course economic tools that can enable

Arabs to affect U.S./West policy in the region. This dilemma emanates from a sense that

Arabs fail in attracting U.S. interests that will guarantee fair policy while assuming the role of broker in the peace process between Israel and Palestine. Lagging behind the West politically and economically, many Arab films come to discern the way Arabs become easy prey for Western and American hegemony, dominance, and of course negligence. Many

Arab films assert Arabs‘ refusal to submit in any way to this Western/American hegemony.

There is a rejection of any type of ―supremacy‖ to be exercised by ―white‖ nations. Arab films are able to respond to this expanding spirit within the Arab world. Many Arab films are highly critical of all forms of oppression, but while they show Arabs as resistant in the face of the West/U.S./Israel, they show themselves as weak and pitiful in the face of their own dictatorial regimes.147 Arab films show Arabs smarter than their naïve, gullible western counterparts. They picture Arabs as more powerful and more intelligent than westerners. However, they also show Arabs beset by a ―khawaga complex,‖ which refers to the way Arabs overvalue everything and everybody Western, European, or white.

I. The Egyptian Film Industry before and after 9/11

Exploring Egyptian cinema, the world‘s third oldest and fourth largest film industry, requires investigation into all the conditions it has faced from its inception to the present, especially with regard to its representation of the West in general and the U.S. in

147 This has changed after the social/political change movements in the Arab world crowned with the most recent ―Jasmine Revolution,‖ in Tunisia, and ―Lotus Revolution‖ in Egypt, and other movements for democracy in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Algeria. Tunisia‘s uprising invigorated frustrated people around the region. 131

particular. Egypt became familiar with cinema soon after its invention in Europe. The

Lumière brothers made one-minute films in Egypt and showed them for the first time in

January 1896 in Alexandria, then in Cairo a few days later. In 1908, 10 movie theatres (five in Cairo and three in Alexandria) were established in Egypt. This number increased to 80 by 1917. In 1912 foreign films with Arabic translation were shown in Egypt. By 1918

Egyptians started to produce their own films. The first film, al-Azhar al-Mumita (1918), or

Mortal Flowers, was banned by authorities because it showed Arabic Qur‘anic verses upside down.148 Other silent films were produced, and Leila remains the most well-known.

Leila (1927), Egypt‘s first long-feature film, is directed by an Egyptian woman, Aziza

Amir. The first Egyptian sound film, Awlad Al Zawat (The Children of Privilege), was screened in March 1932.149

Egyptians‘ first encounter with the U.S. was through Hollywood. Cinema in Egypt was seen as a means through which Egypt could compete with the U.S. The Egyptian daily newspaper al-Ahram published an article on November 1, 1927, that stated the following:

Silent acting has finally been born in Egypt. In the Egyptian sky a shining star has

arisen, a star, which seems to serve Egypt and the children of Egypt … which wants

to carry out a great propaganda service … what is this propaganda which will serve

the homeland in the greatest possible way? It is cinema … pure Egyptian, national

148 Oliver Leaman, Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2001), 23-24. 149 William Daniel, ―Youssef Wahby: Cinema and History,” Cine-Club Bulletin 6, no. 10, 285f. 132

cinema … What is preventing us from having, within a few short years, a city like

Hollywood?!150

Thus, the Egyptian newspaper discerns in cinema a mirror held up for Egypt‘s national face. To Egyptians, cinema is an eruption of a ―propaganda‖ that would be ―pure Egyptian‖ and would take them to a fascinating adventure. In the sky of cinema, Egyptians soar beyond their current circumstances and build what belongs to them apart from their existing lives. Unlike other arts, cinema is able to transport its audience towards a different world of their own. In this way, cinema would help ―the children of Egypt‖ to see Egypt as it should be rather than as an occupied country by the British. The first national breakthrough in investing in the realm of cinema came from the Egyptian economist Talaat

Harb, who founded the Egyptian Company for Cinema and Performance in 1925, his greatest achievement. The year of 1935 witnessed the inauguration of the fully equipped

Misr Studio.151

The Egyptian cinema, however, remained dependent on the supply of raw-film stock imported from the West that made the Egyptian film industry affected by world events. This was evident in the production crisis Egyptian cinema witnessed during World

War II. However, after the war the Egyptian cinema was able to produce an average of 45 films per year. Moreover, Misr Studio was keen to supply Egyptian directors with the required qualifications by sending them on scholarships to Europe.152

150 Quoted in Ahmed al-Hadri, History of Cinema in Egypt (Cairo: Cinema Club Press, 1989), 219. 151 Oliver Leaman, Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2001), 24. 152 Ibid., 26. 133

The 1952 Revolution declared the end of British interference in Egypt and the breakdown of the kingdom. The Free Officers led by Gamal Abdel-Nasser showed great interest in cinema, which resulted in much interference in its industry by the new republic state. This interference culminated in the nationalization of Egyptian cinema in the 1960s, which entailed transferring the ownership of all companies and studios to the state. The nationalization of the Egyptian cinema was intended to improve film quality either by involving the state in filmmaking or by supporting the private sector companies. But the result was not as expected as ―the nationalization policy led Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Jordanian producers and distributors to withdraw from Egypt and invest in Lebanon instead. This resulted in a temporary increase of Lebanese production during the 1960s, which in turn made extensive use of Egyptian stars and technical talent.‖153 When Anwar al-Sadat came to power in 1970 and inaugurated an ―open-door policy‖ that brought Egypt close to the West and distanced it from its socialist policies, in 1971 the public feature-film production came to end. This was followed by a privatization movement that is still in effect today. However, the state did maintain its control of the means of production. Since the 1970s most Egyptian films have been made by private filmmakers who have no option but to rent production facilities from the government. The privatization of cinema helps filmmakers to create their art without the strangling limitations that might be ordained by the state. The post 9/11 period witnesses the process of turning cinema over from the state to private sector control which is evident in films about governmental corruption and police brutality.

153 Ibid., 28. 134

My intention is to look at films discussed as artifacts of current historical events, especially the 9/11 attacks. Arab films have their own subjective reading of 9/11 attacks and their repercussions worldwide. So this study will explore to the way Arab films are able to construct certain ―Truths‖ in the context of the history of U.S./Arab encounters. The most prominent feature of this Arab reading of 9/11 attacks is the way films link ―inside‖ and ―outside.‖ Undemocratic regimes, unfair Western policy in the area, corruption, police brutality, etc., could produce but a terrorist. It is not a way of feeling sympathy and pity towards what the terrorists do as much as it is an attempt to delve deep into the process of manufacturing terrorism. Cinema cannot help but coincide with the spirit of the open-space age. New media break all taboos and Egyptian cinema walks in their steps to take the

Egyptian film into new markets around the globe. Films like The Yacoubian Building and

Heya Fawda (Chaos) were able to tackle sensitive issues like homosexuality and police brutality and corruption. In this way the Egyptian film industry ―can be used as a reference point, reflecting the general attitudes, perceptions, ideas, and self-definitions—the concept of me and the other- and events and values in the Middle East in general. Moreover, the

Egyptian film industry has served as a model for other Arab film industries.154

In addition, Egyptian cinema has played an important role in feeding Arab nationalism, as called for and defended by Gamal Abdel-Nasser. This Arab nationalism, as construction of the self, resulted in anti-Americanism and in deconstruction of the other.

Defining identity requires an other. Resurrecting the past with the brutality of the colonial

West and the bravery of the colonized East has dominated the trajectory of Arab cinema.

154 Hind Rassam Culhane, East/West and Ambiguous State of Being (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 5. 135

In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson provides a historical background for the emergence of nationalism, which has resonance with the way Egyptian cinema attempts to create or forge an Egyptian Arab ―nation‖ through disparagement of other nations, especially those that exercise the most influence upon Egyptians, i.e., the U.S. Anderson defines the nation as ―an imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.‖155 To Anderson, the nation is ―imagined‖ because its ―members … will never know most of their fellow members … yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.‖156 Each member of this community is ―imagining‖ the existence of the nation‘s boundaries that might not be physically there; Palestinian nationalism in diaspora is an example of this. The nation is ―limited‖ because ―even the largest of them … has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations.‖157 These boundaries encompass only the citizens of one national identity that excludes its Others. This exclusion does not mean hostility in any way, but as Anderson explains, ―the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible … for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.‖158 To become ―sovereign‖ is to gain freedom from traditional religious structure, and in Egypt‘s case, this can be achieved through immersion in the cultural production of the West, especially that of the U.S.

Actually, what Jaap Kooijman states about Americanization of European cultures is applicable in the U.S./Arab case:

155 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, Verso: 1983), 7. 156 Ibid., 6. 157 Ibid., 7. 158 Ibid., 7. 136

Traditionally, the Americanization of European cultures has been perceived in two

seemingly contradictory ways. On the one hand, Americanization has been equated

with American cultural imperialism. In this way, European consumers are seen as

passive victims of a globally mediated American mass culture that threatens local

and national cultures. On the other hand, Americanization has been equated with an

act of liberation.159

In this way, Americanization can interact in two different ways with the consuming culture.

If the receiving culture remains passive, it will gradually be Americanized. But if it can incorporate inflowing American culture into the local one, the national identity has a chance to be preserved. Egyptian cinema attempts at maintaining the second option through a constant connection to Egyptians‘ daily lives and an Egyptionization of the large

American cultural influxes through Hollywood and other cultural products. As a result, nationalism in Egyptian cinema attempts to disseminate a collective national identity capable of transcending any different intra-national identities based on class, gender, and religion. This collective identity could be found only when an ―Other‖ is defined and excluded. Calling Hollywood films ―foreign‖ instead of defining them as American or

Hollywood is an attempt to define the ―Other‖ and exclude it.

Thus, Egyptian cinema since 1952 has been torn between its ―limits‖ and its

―sovereignty‖, or between dehumanizing the Other and following in the Other‘s steps.

159 Jaap Kooijman, Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 11. 137

However, both of them are in effect and work side by side in the Egyptian community. For example, khawagas, or foreigners, are mostly represented in Egyptian cinema as barmen, smugglers, and cozeners. Moreover, in many Egyptian movies, the naïve, simple-minded character of the khawaga is used to enhance the comedic effects of a movie through broken

Arabic and childish actions. However, all aspects of Western civilization are clearly evident in the form and content of these movies. This is evident in the photographic and technical facilities of the industry. Moreover, in order to overcome national economic and social problems, Egyptian cinema adopted certain American social values presented in

Hollywood movies, such as those that put an end to the traditional model of women as homemaker and child educator. The Western/American influences helped give form to representations of women as active and participatory in the social and economic changes in their country as evident in an Arab cinematic rhetoric of women‘s employment and its liberating potential.

Egyptian filmmakers in the 21st century show much interest in touring the globe with their films, which usually meet the appraisal of various film festival audiences. To do so, they make use of the latest Western technologies in their productions, and at the same time put emphasis on all forms of indigenousness. To emphasize indigenousness, Egyptian films revisit the Egyptian national past to renew public memory, as evident in movies about

Abdel-Nasser and al-Sadat. John Bodnar explains that public memory is ―a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand both its past and present,

138

and by implication its future.‖160 The target behind such films ―is no longer imperialism and Egyptian traitors but rather a present that has become detached from the moving spirit of a bygone era. If not a clarion call to restore that spirit, [it] is certainly a lens through which to reimage and reassess that which has been lost.‖161 Recalling the past to reinstall the public with a prideful nationalistic spirit marks the Egyptian cinema over many historical events.

What really characterize Egyptian cinema in the third millennium are large budgets.

This is evident works produced by GoodNews4Film, a new Egyptian production company.

Baby Doll Night is the company‘s latest movie. It had a budget of forty million Egyptian pounds, about seven million dollars. Bigger budgets mean improved film quality. In the future, the company hopes to produce films in English to reach out to the English-speaking world. Adeeb acknowledges that in order to work internationally, subject matter has to change to be perhaps less tuned into local audiences in favor of wider ones, but he is convinced that cinema has the power to communicate over national borders. Adel Adeeb, director of Baby Doll Night and managing director of Good News4Film, says,

We think and produce cinema in the same way as the Americans do … We're

trying to work internationally because we need to communicate. This is the

glamour or the magic of cinema. We know the jeans or the hamburger, everything

from the American movies, so I think people will know us … The company aims to

160 John Bodnar, Remaking America: Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 15. 161 Walter Armbrust, ed., Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 166. 139

broaden minds beyond images of gun-battles and belly dancing synonymous with

the region.162

Taking the Other into consideration while producing movies about the Self is a post-9/11 feature of Egyptian cinema. Arab filmmakers have been sensing additional worldwide attention, that the West is seeking knowledge about Arabs/Muslims, and that

Arab/Egyptian cinema could be a lens on Arab culture and society. I think Egyptian cinema was already on the cusp of change even before 9/11, but 9/11 events gave the industry a new and more urgent set of political concerns that energized the content in significant ways.

II. Prescient 9/11 Arab Films

Many politically prescient films emerged before 9/11. Several of the most prescient films are Terrorism and the Kebab (1993), The Terrorist (1994), Birds of Darkness (1995),

The Other (1999), and Al Assifa or The Storm (2000). In each of these movies we find fundamentalists in the making, borne out of social and economic disorders. Egyptian filmmakers are deeply concerned with terrorism as a topic, and they want to show its social and political context to challenge Egyptian society. These films offer a self-analysis for

Egyptians and Arabs since they will not generally attract U.S. audiences. Arab/Egyptian cinema attempts through these movies to create a historical and documentary narrative about terrorism, its causes and cures.

162 Adel Adeeb, director of Baby Doll Night and managing director of Good News4Film CNN, Neil Curry, "A New Golden Age for Egyptian Cinema?" CNN.com, March 21 2008. 140

In these films, terrorists are shown on the margins, in inconspicuous, sterile, and small living spaces. In The Terrorist, for example, we find Ali Abdul-Zaher living in a poorly furnished room with limited space that reflects the ―limitedness‖ of his mind as well as his existence. He is considered a ―strange‖ element in his society and portrayed as an

―outsider‖. In The Terrorist more emphasis is put on the production (being a terrorist) rather than on the producer (the oppression and hard life "in Egypt). In Birds of Darkness we see how corrupt politics and religious extremism lead to the destruction of society. The

―wide‖ space of a ―big‖ politician is administered by a ―limited‖ space of a ―small‖ lawyer.

The relation between ―dark‖ and ―light‖ or between ―known‖ and ―hidden‖ reflects the cloudy political and social situation in the Egyptian society. In The Other the U.S.-Arab encounter is witnessed in ―limited‖ cyberspace where characters fight by means of

―connected‖ computers. The Other also discusses the meaning of terrorism, who is a terrorist, and who is a ―real‖ terrorist. Through a love story between an Egyptian-American who studies human rights and terrorism and an Egyptian female journalist whose own brother is a terrorist, the movie‘s plot gives the viewer different layers of meanings about

―terror‖ and ―power‖ and how those in power are responsible for generating those who terrorize.

The film Terrorism and Kebab (1993) explores how a terrorist is made out of an

―ordinary‖ citizen. Ahmed, a father who would like to move his children to a school closer to his house, goes to al-Mugamma, a famous administrative building in Cairo. He gets shuffled around from one office to another until he attacks a bureaucrat who uses praying to slack off at work. When a policeman intervenes, Ahmed ends up with a gun and a set of

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hostages under his control. He gains the support of people at al-Mugamma: a soldier who hates police officers for their mistreatment of him, a prostitute who sees herself a victim of the moral corruption of her society, a husband who escapes his harshly materialistic wife, and a shoe-shiner who has fled an attempted revenge163 killing in Upper Egypt. The

―unreal‖ terrorists start by demanding nothing more than a good shish kebab of the highest- grade lamb, as meat is too expensive for most Egyptians. The symbolic meaning of the demand is analyzed by the scriptwriter Wahid Hamed164 : ―People don't know what they want ... They are crushed, their dreams are impossible, they can't believe their demands can be fulfilled, so they ask for kebab.‖165 The Egyptian Minister of the Interior intervenes to secure a peaceful end to the standoff and the safe release of the hostages, yet when he gets around to negotiating, he is shocked to find that terrorists‘ major demand is for kebabs.

But after having a rich meal with his hostages, Ahmed‘s demands become more political when he asks for the resignation of government leaders. The film ends with no terrorists to arrest but rather conformists at risk because of what they face in their daily life.

Ahmed asks the ―hostages‖ to get out of the building, as the Egyptian police forces are getting ready to swarm the building. He intends to wait behind to meet up with the police, assuming he will be killed. The hostages, however, insist that he leave with them. They all walk out of the building together while the Egyptian Special Forces fail to find or recognize any terrorists in the empty building. The film warns that terrorists can easily be

163 Revenge in Upper Egypt, called "al-thaar," usually erupts out of family feuds, and may continue for decades resulting in massacres and ritual killings between conflicting families. 164 An Egyptian novelist, journalist, script writer, and producer who has made his name by breaking taboos, tackling terrorism, corruption, and impotence. 165 Nadia Abou El-Magd, Al-Ahram Weekly (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/515/profile.htm), accessed March 2, 2011). 142

manufactured through a corrupt society and the deaf ears of oppressors. Ahmed defines the terrorist in an answer to a question posed by a reporter about what the terrorist looks like by saying, ―Like any one of us.‖

In Al Assifa (2000), or The Storm, directed by Khaled Youssef, the Gulf War tragically enters the life of an Egyptian family. By coincidence, two brothers find themselves in two opposite camps. The Storm gives us an unusual perspective on the Gulf

War through the everyday realities of an Egyptian family that make up the bulk of the film.

This muddled political melodrama offers a view of Arab conflicts as they affect a middle- class Egyptian family. Hoda is a schoolteacher whose husband abandons her and his two sons due to a long-term psychological disorder. Hassan, Hoda‘s husband, fought in the

Arab-Israeli war of 1973 and was shocked to discover the Israeli flag rising in Cairo. Hoda refuses to remarry to raise her two sons, Ali and Nagy, as the whole family believes that the father is still alive. Ali and Nagy, upon enteringyoung adulthood, start facing the cruelty of social and economic problems in Egypt. Nagy falls in love with Hayat, a student and political activist who belongs to a rich family and whose father is against the idea of her marrying a poor man like Nagy. On his part, Nagy keeps trying his best to become worthy of Hayat by working and studying at the same time to save money for marriage. Ali, who graduates from the university, cannot find a job so he decides to go to Iraq to work in order to fund his brother‘s marriage to Hayat. In Iraq, Ali joins the Iraqi Army, thinking that he will be a technician, but he is shocked to find himself on the battlefield. He is forced to participate in the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, but refuses to kill any Kuwaitis during battle.

At the same time, his brother Nagy joins the Egyptian Army aiming to free Kuwait from

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Iraqi occupation. To their horror, the two brothers discover that they are fighting in opposing armies and are terrified that they may injure or kill one another. The film leaves all strands dangling with regard to the fate of the two brothers, while the final scene shows

Hoda along with Hayat participating in demonstrations by Cairo university students who shout slogans of hatred against the U.S. and Israel for pushing brothers (Arab vs. Arab or

Iraqi vs. Kuwaiti) to fight against each other and keeping a close eye on the Israeli occupation of Palestine while launching a war against Iraq for occupying Kuwait,

Figure 15: Burning the U.S. and Israel flags in Al-Assifa (The Storm).166

The film is structured around generational differences and historical changes. The old generations are divided into two categories. The first category is evident in the character of Hassan, warrior and father of Ali and Nagy, who still believes in Arabs‘ power and who rejects conciliatory policies with Israel. But Hassan has disappeared, highlighting

166 Al-Ahram (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/521/cu4.htm), accessed July 20, 2010. 144

that this type of older warrior has disappeared from the scene. The second category is represented by the university professor who urges students to stop being politically oriented and to pay attention only to their studies, as well as by the businessman (Hayat‘s father) who keeps trying to get his daughter away from politics and into a marriage to a wealthy man. Hayat‘s father represents Egyptian capitalists, most of which come from modest middle classes and most of which show no interest in politics, as long as it does not affect their business. Thus, surviving members of the old generation do not believe in the possibility of any military encounter between Arabs and Israel/U.S.

The symbolic scenario of two brothers facing each other in the Gulf War as a warning of an impending political ―storm‖ suggests the emergence of a new generation that has never been witness to war. The brothers find themselves involved in a war, not against the ―foreign‖ body in the region, i.e., Israel, but against themselves. Hassan is a symbol of

Arab victory in 1973, while his two sons refer to the failure of Arabs in everything, even in maintaining their ―brotherhood.‖ The failure is not just military but also psychological. In a scene with Hayat and her father, the businessman assures his daughter that Arabs can do nothing but submit to American hegemony, and Hayat, a political activist, cannot do anything but surrender to her father‘s claim. While Hassan‘s generation has fought against

Israel to restore their rights, the generations of ―Nagy and Ali‖ cannot do anything but demonstrate and burn American and Israeli flags. Hassan, who never returns to his family, symbolizes the absence of strong Arab regimes to face Israel and America. The film makes it clear that a storm is brewing against the U.S. in the Arab world.

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III. Reel Bad Americans: U.S. in Post-9/11 Arab Cinema

In this section there will be an attempt to examine the role of ―images‖ in determining how the U.S.-Middle East encounter is perceived and how certain actions become (im)possible, (il)legitimate, and (un)necessary. The most common approach to the relationship between cinema and society is the study of films as social documents, as pictures of social reality.

In Arab cinema, al-Quds, or Jerusalem, can be ―freed‖ by recalling Saladin,167 the

West can be overcome by remembering al-Andalus or Andalusia168 and the civilization

Arabs/Muslims built there. In order to appreciate present conditions, cinema collates them with those of the past. Escaping from the cruel present into the glorious past marks many nostalgic Egyptian films such as Saladin by Yousef Chahine and Nasser 56 by Mohamed

Fadel. However, the Egyptian/Arab past in these films could be a burden as much as a time of glory. And, sometimes the present is defined by problems that the past has no solution for such as the representation of Arab/Israeli conflict in many Egyptian movies about the

1973 War. So despite the many evocations of past glory, there remains much inter- generational tension pointing to the lack of past triumph and glory.

In this section an analysis of Arab filmic representations of the U.S. shows that

Arab cinema articulates above all what film critics Ella Shohat and Robert Stam term

―allegories of impotence‖ that probe social, political, and economic predicaments in the

167 Saladin (1137-1193), 'Salah Ad-din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub, founded the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt and Syria. He was also a renowned leader in the Crusades for his military prowess against the Crusaders and his honorable mercy to them. 168 Al-Andalus, what is now southern Spain as governed by Arab and Muslims, at various times in the period between 711 and 1492. For large parts of its history, Al-Andalus was a beacon of learning, and the city of Córdoba became one of the leading cultural and economic centers in both Europe and the Mediterranean basin and the Arab/Islamic world. 146

Arab world. Arab movies include 11'09''01 - September 11 (2002), Alexandria … New

York (2004), Laylat Soqut Baghdad (2005), or The Night Baghdad Fell, and Laylat El-Baby

Doll (2008), or Baby Doll Night. I will refer to another movie that deals with domestic issues that shed light on U.S. interests in the Middle East entitled Ayez Haqqi (2003), or I

Demand My Rights.

IV. Egyptian Filmmakers

Youssef Chahine: He is one of the most outstanding directors of Egyptian cinema who was able to make Egyptian local cinema cross national borders and reach people worldwide. Chahine was born in the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria in 1926 to a Lebanese father and a Greek mother. Moreover, he got his education at the cosmopolitan Victoria

College, one of the most prestigious schools in Egypt. The cosmopolitan nature of his background is reflected in his love and tolerance toward all ethnic and religious groups, a theme he seeks unflinchingly in his works and which is evident in films like Saladin and

Alexandria …Why?, and many others. Chahine was a leading voice of Arab cinema for more than five decades, with his work carefully sketching out Arab modern history.

Chahine‘s support of Arab nationalism is evident in films like Jamila, the Algerian (1958), which relates the story of Algerian resistance fighter Djamila Bouhired, and Saladin

(1963), which tells the story of the 12th-century sultan and his release of Jerusalem from

Christian Crusaders. Saladin shows Chahine‘s religious tolerance, which he inherited from his city of birth, Alexandria, and his first cultural manufacturer, Victoria College. In his autobiographical Alexandria Trilogy named after his city of birth, Alexandria… Why?

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(1978), Alexandria Again and Forever (1990), and Alexandria ... New York (2004),

Chahine links the personal and the political, the local and the international, as well as the past and the present. The personal and national stories are intertwined together to reflect on many issues varying from the image of the English in Egypt, to the corruptibility of the

Egyptian elites and the coming of Egypt into its own after its 1952 revolution. The trilogy gives us insight into Chahine‘s artistic and personal life, his distinctive themes and cinematic technique as well as his attempt to get his art recognized in the West.

Mohamed Ameen: Three films proved that the author and director Mohamed Ameen has a cinematic viewpoint that differs from prevailing film trends in Egypt. The first was his film

Film Thaqafi, Cultural Film (cultural here means pornographic), which deals with the problems of the sexually frustrated. His second film, Laylat Soqut Baghdad (2005), The

Night Baghdad Fell, is a farce about an average Egyptian family enduring the disturbing regional conditions represented by the current situation in Iraq and other countries in the region suffering from American aggression. The protagonist, a school headmaster, searches for someone who can invent a deterrent weapon that Egypt can use to defend itself against what he imagines would be an imminent American invasion. Ameen‘s third film is Bentain min Masr (2010), Two Girls from Egypt, deals with the problem of spinsterhood in Egypt through the story of two girls. In Ameen‘s films, sexuality functions as an important thematic tool for manipulation of current local or international social problems. It is one of the regular taboos in the Egyptian cinema that Ameen attempts to break.

Adel Adeeb: He is the son of the famous Egyptian screenwriter, Abdel Hay Adeeb, who authored more than a hundred screenplays for feature films. Adel Adeeb‘s recent films

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have been blockbusters. He is the producer of The Yacoubian Building, based on the bestselling novel by Egyptian author Alaa al-Aswany, which won the first Egyptian nomination for an Oscar. The film is a highly artistic portrayal of diverse Egyptian lives and delves deep into many contemporary issues like homosexuality with unprecedented frankness.

Adeeb directed Baby Doll Night, which is the biggest Egyptian film production of all times.

The film traces difficult and bloody history, starting from the Holocaust, to the Iraq war, touching on the Arab/Israeli conflict, and finally 9/11. Adeeb is very interested in reaching out to audiences all over the world who are seek to know more about the Arab world, especially after 9/11. He asserts that there is a world ―out there that is starving for knowledge of our world and that our films should reflect the good and the bad.‖169

It is notable that the films discussed in this section aim at different audiences, as they are not pure genres, but rather a blend of genres. However, these films are able to elicit both laughter and fear by exaggerating or playing with serious themes, language, action, relationships and characters, in order to captivate and entertain in a shared cathartic experience.

V. 11'09''01 - September 11 (Chahine’s Episode)

Eleven directors from all over the globe were invited to frame the worldwide reverberations of 9/11 attacks. Each one is allotted 11 minutes and 9 seconds to give his/her approach to the American tragedy. The film is a manifestation of multiculturalism as well as a witness to global multi-readings of 9/11 events. The Egyptian director Youssef

169 The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website. (http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2008/03/article_0004.html), accessed July 21, 2010. 149

Chahine is representative of the Arabs‘ approach to 9/11 through his 11-minute episode.

Chahine chooses to speak to the victims on both sides rather than those who are still alive.

In a fanciful way, he brings a U.S. marine who was killed at the bombing of the Marine

Barracks in Beirut in the 1980s and a Palestinian suicide-bomber to observe 9/11 through their tragedies. During his face-to-face dialogue with the U.S. soldier, Chahine insists on reminding the audience of the millions of victims killed at the hands of Americans in

Vietnam, Japan, Iraq, etc. He also refers to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda as basically creations of U.S. foreign policy and the CIA.

Chahine‘s episode starts with a filmmaker shooting scenes in New York and the police trying to prevent him from doing so. The filmmaker is Chahine himself who chooses to be in front and behind the camera to deliver the message ―I am what I make.‖ It is a

―postmodern‖ doubling of oneself on screen; he is the author, the character, and the director. In the first scene, Chahine shows how the World Trade Center constitutes an important image in the eyes of many Arabs. The filmmaker asserts this when he says,

―What are they going to say if I go home without having filmed the World Trade Center?‖

But this Arab interest in ―filming‖ America‘s ―symbols‖ is faced with a firm statement from the New York policeman: ―If you don‘t stop filming right now, I will shoot.‖ Chahine shows his intense sadness over the 9/11 tragedy as evident in the press conference he holds in Beirut on September 12, 2001, to talk about his new film. He wants to postpone the press conference because of the 9/11 catastrophe. His response to the tragic events is by

―thinking.‖ And it is this ―thinking‖ that makes him recall a U.S. marine who died years ago. The U.S. marine starts his dialogue with the Egyptian filmmaker by asking him the

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following question: ―What did you feel yesterday seeing the towers collapse?‖ To show the

U.S. soldier the complexity of his feelings and the density of the U.S./Middle East encounter Chahine takes the U.S. soldier to a Palestinian house, to listen to the story of a

Palestinian suicide-bomber, to teach him a lesson about the different readings of ―who is the real victim.‖ Suicide-bombers are the result of the Israeli tanks and missiles in the face of Palestinian rocks. By defending the idea that civilians are responsible, Chahine suggests that the West defines a ―terrorist‖ in a way that only fits Israeli interests, and that ignores

Palestinians‘ right to defend their occupied lands. I do not think that Chahine considers

Americans and Israeli civilians as ―fair targets‖ for being the ones who elect the governments that the bombers seek to attack. But he wants to deliver a message that we should look at our catastrophes in the larger context of world affairs.

Chahine is able to confront Hollywood in many ways. The Australian author and film critic Christos Tsiolkas states, ―Hollywood has trained us so well in cultural myopia that we take it for granted in blockbuster movies that cops in Moscow or Tel Aviv or Paris speak in broken English.‖ According to Tsiolkas, Chahine is able to confront ―us with an obviously fake restaging of the New York bombings in which the cops speak in Arabic. I don't think this is a cheap effect, but rather a device by which we are being asked to contemplate the nature of ―truth‖ and media.‖170 Actually, Chahine‘s episode confronts the

West in general by proposing a point of view that needs to be ―contemplated‖ by westerners before embracing the rhetoric of the ―clash of civilizations‖ and the ―war on terror.‖ In Chahine‘s piece lies an invitation to reread the tragedies of the past as well as

170 Senses of Cinema, (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/24/sept_11.html),accessed February 11, 2010. 151

those of the present with an eye on the ―Other‘s‖ concerns and fears, with the notion that victimizing the ―Self‖ and terrorizing the ―Other‖ will not lead to a way out of the cycles of conflict.

Chahine‘s episode faced many attacks from film critics in the U.S. and Europe as a statement of support for terrorism in an ―amateurish‖ segment. In a Salon.com article entitled ―The 9/11 Movie Hollywood Won't Let You See‖ Sarah Coleman writes,

Given that "11'09"01" has positioned itself partly as a memorial to the events of

Sept. 11, Chahine's use of his segment as a critique of American imperialism could

certainly be called tasteless. Actually, though, it doesn't seem altogether

inappropriate for an Arab filmmaker to address the rage and frustrations of the Arab

street -- it's just a shame that he chose to wrap important issues in a veil of

postmodern flim-flammery.171

However, there are still some others who see in Chahine‘s film a ―contribution [that] is fucking great.‖ As Tsiolkas, contends,

I'm using the expletive to convey how strongly I feel about this episode, particularly

because it has come under attack by many critics who detest its polemics and its

intentions. Combining melodramatic excess with personal reflection, it is the story

of a film director who cancels a press interview after hearing of the bombings in the

USA, and then is confronted by the ghosts of two soldiers who demand of him that

their individual stories be told. One of the ghosts is a US Marine who was killed

171 Sarah Coleman, ―The 9/11 Movie Hollywood Won't Let You See‖, accessed February 11, 2010. 152

during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1983. The other ghost is that of a

Palestinian youth, killed as part of the Israeli suppression of the Intifada.172

Tislokas thinks that Chahine, like any Arab intellectual or artist, is torn between the

―undeniable‖ nature of the 9/11 events and the irrefutable U.S. political, economic, and military interference in the Arab world. Chahine shows sympathy not only toward

Americans, but also toward Arabs that witness many crises borne from U.S. policy in the

Middle East and North Africa. Chahine‘s piece looks beyond the disaster of 9/11 to unfold the many hidden layers of conflict between the U.S. and the West on one side and

Arabs/Muslims on the other.

VI. Alexandria … New York

This is the third movie in a series of autobiographical films by Youssef Chahine,

(Alexandria Why: An Egyptian Story, Alexandria Again and Forever, and Alexandria …

New York). The final film in the Alexandria Trilogy, Alexandria … New York is both nostalgic and angry; it shows the U.S. as defined by its violence and hostility, which was not there in the mid-20th century. The U.S., which is supposed to stand for the values of democracy and freedom, has a distorted and racist image of Arabs; the mainstream media depict Arabs as illiterates still living in tents and riding around on camels. This is a film that is about films, wherein Chahine tells the story of his disillusionment both through the life story of a man (the filmmaker/himself) and through the history of film, which moves

172 Senses of Cinema, (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/24/sept_11.html), accessed February 11, 2010. 153

from an idealized moment in the 40s to violent hostility today. The American Dream that

Chahine believed in when he was young during his first journey to the U.S. in the 1960s is now only a memory. It‘s not just that the dream is less vivid; it‘s that it has been destroyed.

In Alexandria … New York Chahine reconsiders his relationship with America, the country that he admires most but whose policies he is now shocked to find going against the values that make it the land of dreams. In this movie, Yahia encounters his first love,

Ginger, an American girl from Virginia, also a student in California. Yahia eventually returns to Alexandria, Egypt, and twenty-five years after his last meeting with Ginger, he returns to America to discover that he has begotten a son with her. Yahia lives a true love story with Ginger, and his American Dream is manifested in the existence of his only son.

But to his surprise, Yahia finds that this son denies him because he is an Arab. Yahia looks very happy with his son‘s performance as a ballet dancer, but Alexander is not happy with this meeting. Alexander, the American son of Yahia, represents Yahia‘s debt to the U.S. where he gets his initial knowledge about cinema and the art of direction. Having achieved his dream of studying cinema in the U.S., Yahia‘s prestige grows in the film industry, but he is still ignored and trivialized in the U.S. Yahia never receives the honor he deserves from his first love and tutor, i.e., America. Knowing that his father hadn‘t known about him and that his mother had once been a prostitute, Alexander visits Yahia at his hotel and shocks him by saying, ―I was born in America for an American father, and I do not want to accept any ‗other‘ father.‖ Yahia replies to Alexander‘s words by saying, ―Where did you get all this cruelty?! Neither I nor your mother is cruel! ... For sure, it is America that taught you how to be cruel.‖ The son continues to expressing his pride in being an American, and

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being part of the most powerful country in the world, while the father reminds him that the history of empires enumerates only philosophers, thinkers, poets, and artists rather than military men, armies, and architects of bloody wars. Yahia eventually dismisses Alexander by telling him, ―Go away … it is me who refuses to have a son like you.‖

The difference between Ginger and her son represents the difference between pre-

9/11 and post-9/11 America. Yahia tells his son that the difference between him and his mother is ―simply the same difference between all the wonderful romantic dreamy 40‘s

Hollywood old movies and the cruel violent movies of today.‖ Chahine uses movies to historicize and show the difference between different eras. He lives through movies and life to him is in itself no more than a big movie. Reality is cinematic and cinema is a dream.

The picture Chahine represents in this movie of America as no longer a dream and losing its privilege as the land of freedom and democracy constitutes a turning point not only in

Chahine‘s life but in the way the U.S. is perceived in the Arab world. Chahine‘s work reveals his love for America; currently, he presents it in a sad form, as a love that is dying slowly in him as America today, to him, no longer follows the values it claims. America that defends democracy and freedom supports countries like Israel with weapons that kill innocent civilians. The utmost dream of Yahia was to have a son, and in America he achieved this dream with Alexander, his son from Ginger. However, this son rejects him even if he is one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. In turn, Yahia ends up rejecting this ―arrogant‖ American son, although he represents the dearest dream in his life.

The movie starts with a conversation between Yahia and his dearest friend, a Syrian intellectual named Adeeb. Yahia defends America because it had stopped the triple attack

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on Egypt by France, England, and Israel in 1956, but Adeeb corrects Yahia‘s information by telling him that it was the Russian warning that stopped the attack. At that time, Yahia, or Youssef Chahine, was still under the impact of the foggy American Dream. Then, Yahia is invited to attend a festival in New York to celebrate his films, but the 2000 Intifada made him hesitate to go to the U.S. Finally, he decides to go and talk to Americans face to face.

At this time, Yahia starts to feel the discrepancy between the America he values and its policies in the Arab world. He returns to America only face his son‘s anti-Arab attitude, which only work to reinforce his belief in the death of the American Dream.

Chahine reinforces the notion of the ―Other‖ cultivated by American foreign policy among popular society in 11'09''01 - September 11. The cruelty, which Yahia detects in his own son‘s attitude towards him, makes him believe that many Americans become harsh towards the ―Other‖ because of their country‘s ruthless foreign policies. The movie ends with Yahia, full of anger, walking in the crowded streets of New York while a song plays in the background: ―New York kills any nostalgia.‖

VII. Laylat Soqut Baghdad (The Night Baghdad Fell)

Laylat Soqut Baghdad (The Night Baghdad Fell), written and directed by Mohamed

Ameen,is a political satire in Arab cinema, with scathing, dizzyingly well-crafted dialogue that simultaneously targets Americans and Egyptians. Ameen tells Aljazeera.net, ―This is definitely an anti-American movie and it makes a point of illustrating Egyptian hatred for

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the U.S. But I'm actually mocking us Egyptians, not them.‖173 He also points out that there is a clear ―distinction [between the] American people and culture—which I respect—and devious, arrogant U.S. policies.‖174

Figure 16: Laylat Soqut Baghdad (The Night Baghdad Fell)

Shaker, a simple Egyptian man and school principal, traumatized by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, begins to imagine the fate of Egypt if it faces the same situation. Soon after watching news of the fall of Baghdad by American forces, nightmares and horrible dreams start haunting Shaker constantly. He is haunted by the ghosts of U.S. marines even when he is awake. At his school, he envisages that the Egyptian flag is replaced by an American one and fantasizes that his students turn out to be American troops. Shaker tries to think about a way to protect ―home‖ in the event of an American

173 Aljazeera.net (http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2006/01/200841016329556771.html), accessed July 20, 2010. 174 Ibid. 157

military attack. He thinks of picking a man of genius and financing his invention of a deterrent weapon to protect Egypt against future American attacks. At the same time, another character; Tariq, who is an Egyptian with a B.S. in Chemistry, is wholly obsessed with the ghost of unemployment. Tariq, the genius inventor, responds to the idea of his teacher and begins to research methods to counter potential U.S. aggression.

The film starts with Shaker and his family watching the American invasion of Iraq on the news. Shaker, then, goes to school to find students demonstrating against U.S. attacks on Iraq. When representatives from the Student Union ask him to make a protest sign and hang it at the school entrance in support of Iraq, he replies, ―We made one for

Afghanistan, so just add Iraq to the list,‖ suggesting that American wars in the region would continue, and that Afghanistan and Iraq were just the beginning. When the U.S. threatens both Iran and Syria, Shaker tells his students, ―add Iran‖ then ―Syria‖ and finally, he says, ―Just leave spots on the list open as we don‘t know who will be the next.‖

Demonstrators burn U.S. and Israeli flags and shout slogans to show their support for

Iraqis. The protestors criticize the U.S. for its Middle East policy and double standard in tackling regional affairs, noting that it does not enforce U.N. resolutions when it comes to

Israel.

Shaker‘s recurrent dreams of America‘s invasion of Cairo leave him with many psychological problems that culminate in sexual dysfunction. He visits a psychiatrist who advises him to lay aside his fanciful scenarios, as Egypt is different from Iraq and

Afghanistan. Surprisingly, one of the men who frequents the same café Shaker does repeats his wish for the American invasion to Egypt: ―to make us clean.‖ When Shaker asks him,

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―Do you think if they come here they will ‗clean‘ you?‖ He replies, ―I know that there will be like ten years of aggression, but soon we will be belonging to the ‗free nations.‘‖ Shaker keeps thinking about the current situation in the world where there is no place for the weak.

He believes that in order to feel safe one has to possess deterrent weapons. Shaker‘s friends assure him that ―Egypt does possess deterrent weapons.‖ He doubts this, and so they decide to visit one of their old friends, a veteran, to confirm. The old veteran asserts the importance of the weapons of ―will‘‖ and ―faith‖ but ends up telling them, ―We have nothing but these ‗spiritual‘ weapons.‖ This refers to the frustration of Arabs with regard to their status in the international system that relies on military strength especially with the increasingly intense rivalry for regional influence between Israel and Iran. The films emphasize Arabs‘ frustration over injustices in the region—both regional political issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and domestic political issues. It shows Arabs aspiration to achieve regional leadership through military and economic superiority that will lead to the emergence of a new Arab foreign policy orientation in the region that will stop the traditionally policy of following America‘s lead.

Shaker recalls the stories of one of his students named Tariq who used to be a genius inventor and decides to start looking for him. When he reaches his house and asks about him, Tariq‘s mother tells him that her son ―is working for the National Research

Center,‖ which pleases Shaker who finds his anticipated inventor is on the right track. But

Shaker is shocked to find Tariq at ―The National Hookah Center,‖ smoking hookah with no remaining interest in science and invention. Shaker is ready to sacrifice all he possesses to sponsor Tariq in order to get his help in the inventing deterrent. Tariq starts his job by

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staying at Shaker‘s house. On the roof of his building Shaker draws an American flag as a kind of camouflage. Shaker hangs many pictures from Abu Ghraib on the walls of Tariq‘s apartment to encourage him. Moreover, he gives him a tape that shows ―moments of honor‖ in Egyptian history from the war of 1973 to the present that would presumably encourage that Tariq when he gets frustrated. When Tariq views the tape he finds Egypt‘s victories in football games, and asserts that is the only way Egyptians win in reality.

Moreover, in Tariq‘s dreams, he wins the war against America, albeit in the bedroom and via sexual encounters. He dreams of Condoleezza Rice as one of his harem women belly- dancing in front of him, then of having sex with her, securing her total submission with his masculine vigor. If the ―belly-dancer‖ is one of the stereotypes that Americans have of

Arabs, Tariq reverses this stereotype in circumspect fashion by dreaming up a leading

American politician as a ―belly-dancer‖ succumbing to his Arab masculine allure. ―These aren't sexual scenes,‖ explains Ameen, ―they're sexual meanings. It's a universal language that everyone understands: The active partner, in this case Tariq, in a sexual act is always in the dominant, more powerful position. Tariq hates U.S. officials so he defeats them in bed in a dream scene with Rice.‖175

In a demonstration in front of the American embassy in Cairo, Shaker‘s daughter

Salma shouts slogans against the U.S. and its policies in the region. She says, ―If you managed to keep us backward by those traitors you have planted amongst us, now we are able to give a sober assessment of the situation.‖ Selma marries Tariq, who ends up suffering from sexual dysfunction due to his invasion anxiety. The situation gets worst after

175 Aljazeera.net (http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2006/01/200841016329556771.html (accessed July 20, 2010). 160

hearing about Abu Ghraib‘s scandals. Shaker has nightmares about American marines breaking into his home, taking his whole family to a prison like Abu Ghraib, and raping his daughter Salma. This makes him more furious about the future of his family at the hands of

―bad‖ Americans. He brings his veteran friend to train him along with his family on the use of arms. They use portraits of American soldiers for target practice.

Figure 17: Tariq and Shaker talk with cutouts of American marines in the background.

Tariq is able to overcome his sexual dysfunction by imagining Salma as an

American marine. Shaker and his friends use the same technique to overcome their sexual dysfunction. Salma complains about Tariq who refuses to have children with her. When asked about the reason, Tariq says, ―Whenever I look at news stories I find Arabs downtrodden, so do you want me to bring children into the world to be treated like this?!‖

Shaker is convinced by Tariq‘s viewpoint and asks his daughter to put motherhood on hold for one or two years to wait and see if Americans depart from the region. Salma says,

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―Then the Americans succeeded in making you frustrated about your future.‖ But the spirit of defiance is evident in a scene when two CIA agents, who are following Shaker and

Tariq‘s plans to invent a new weapon, visit Shaker‘s family at home to offer them millions of dollars, plus immigration to the States, in return for access to Tariq‘s research on the deterrent weapon. Shaker‘s family, headed by Salma, dismisses the CIA agents after reprimanding them and rejecting their deal.

Shaker represents an older generation that has witnessed the birth of a nationalist spirit at the hands of Gamal Abdel Nasser, as well as its death following the Naksa, or the

Setback of June 6, 1967.176 Tariq belongs to the post-1973 generation that grows up with a country deteriorating politically, socially, and economically. An inter-generational dialogue between Shaker and Tariq ensues, wherein Shaker criticizes Tariq for his delay in inventing the deterrent weapon, and Tariq replies, ―Where is your generation when the space between

‗us‘ and ‗them‘ gets wider and wider until it becomes as spacious as the cosmos itself ...

Now you want our generation to heal the broken world you left us!‖ Meanwhile, Tariq succeeds in having his invention work theoretically, although he is in need of funding to put his theory into practice. He, along with Shaker, submit their proposal to deaf ears from officials and businessmen who would prefer to sponsor football players, singers, or inventors interested in making new tones for cell phones. Shaker gets frustrated and, as he bends over, tells all his friends that ―we are nations without any dignity and the only way we act in time of disasters is get on our knees, beseeching our enemies, ‗Please don‘t fuck

176 Also known as the Six-Day War or the Third Arab-Israeli War. The war ended with Israel occupying the Gaza Strip, the West bank and East Jerusalem, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrian Golan Heights. 162

us.‘‖ Shaker says the last phrase in English and his friends follow him by doing the same and repeating his statement. This shows how Egyptians are frustrated with their government and policy-makers. They believe that people in power in the Arab world are not interested in changes or resisting American and Western hegemony.

CIA agents come to Tariq offering to help him put his deterrent weapon into practice by testing their own invention to overcome his weapon. Tariq agrees, anxious about the success of his weapon against that of the Americans. Tariq‘s weapon fails against the American one, and Shaker once again returns to being haunted by nightmares about the

American occupation of Egypt. He imagines a destroyed Egypt following an American invasion. Tariq himself is haunted by the possibility of being raped by an American marine called Jack. Determined that such a blow to his ―honor‖ will not be tolerated, he becomes encouraged again to invent a successful and powerful deterrent weapon.

Figure 18: Tariq imagines that an American marine is trying to rape him in the bathroom.

Tariq exerts every effort to make modifications in his deterrent weapon. The weapon becomes effective and proves the ability to protect Egypt‘s skies against any

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attacks from the U.S. The CIA agents come and threaten Shaker and Tariq with forced admission into a psychiatrist hospital. Salma tells her family not to worry as ―Egypt still has some honest people who would support them.‖ The following scene opens with Shaker and Tariq in a psychiatrist hospital where they spend many years until the American occupation of Egypt becomes a reality. The Egyptians use Tariq‘s weapon to protect the country against the American invasion. Shaker‘s friend, who longs for the arrival of

Americans to ―make us clean,‖ becomes the first to be killed by the American marines.

It is customary to use sarcasm as the lingua franca of politics, and The Night

Baghdad Fell, is testimony to that satiric view. With its darkly humorous dialogue, the film pokes fun at the absurdity and ineptitude of Arab leaders. With everyone seeking a deterrent weapon, and the fate of the Arab nation at stake, the ensemble cast of characters bumbles its way through Machiavellian political dealings across Arab countries and toward comic resolutions that are unforeseeable. In this search for a nation‘s defense, the absence of the Egyptian state is striking. People are moving by themselves to find a way out of an expected American invasion of the country. There is, the movie suggests, no other option.

In this way the film is a critique not only of America, but of the Egyptian government as well, which presumably can no longer be trusted to defend the country. The film argues that the hegemonic image of the U.S. is also an image of Egyptian failures, or the failure of the government that allies itself with the U.S. In that sense, the ―other‖ is not just America, it is (some) Egyptians themselves. Aljazeera reports. ―As the audience left a Heliopolis

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theatre after screening the film recently, a teenager was overheard telling his companion, ‗I really want to go and protest at the U.S/ embassy right now.‘‖177

With regard to the way Egyptian films link the ―inside‖ and the ―outside,‖ I would like to refer to another movie, Ayez Haqqi (2003), I Demand My Rights. It tells the story of a simple Egyptian man who discovers by chance that he has a share in public property.

Saber (an Arabic word that means patient and marked by calm endurance of pain or difficulty), the protagonist, gains the approval of more than fifty percent of the Egyptian population to sell their share in the public properties. Upon announcing this many international powers show interest in ―buying Egypt.‖ This throws light on ―money‖ as a

―weapon‖ substitute in imperialist adventures. The film hints that the U.S. and Israel are heads and tails of the same coin. This is evident in the last scene in which there is an auction to sell all public properties of Egypt. This political satire has an approach to political comedy unlike anything that has been attempted over the past 25 years. I would consider this film as belonging to what Fredric Jameson figured out as ―conspiracy film‖ in which ―it is the intent and the gesture that counts.‖178 This is evident in showing one of the bidders who are interested in buying the Egyptian public sector as ―anonymous.‖ Each bidder is supposed to show the flag of his/her country except for this ‗anonymous‘ bidder who says, ‗I will show the flag later.‘

The movie relates the story of a down-to-earth struggling taxi driver who is unable to get married due to economic problems. Saber discovers, by sheer chance, that Egypt‘s

177 Ibid. 178 Fredric Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), .3. 165

constitution grants him a share in the public property of his nation. But he cannot sell his own share by himself. He has to collect power-of-attorney authorization from more than

50% of Egypt‘s population to sell out the country and get married. It is a social comedy movie that narrates the story of a disappointed young man who, by the end of the movie, refuses to sell out his country to ―outsiders‖. The film refers to the way globalization instrumentalizes the local to serve the ends of world ―superpowers‖. After getting approval of more than 50% of Egypt‘s population to sell out the country, Saber becomes aware of the fact that ―after selling out his ―home‖ he won‘t be able to find another one anywhere at any price. The last scene of the movie is a public auction to sell out Egypt. The highest price comes from someone without an ―identifying national flag‖, and when asked about his flag he responds, ―The flag is not important right now.‖ When Saber starts warning

Egyptians, who come from everywhere in the country to attend the auction and get their

―share,‖ against selling the country to ―foreigners‖, one shouts back, ―Give the bread dough to the baker even if he eats half of it.‖ Saber refuses to sell out the country and says, ―I will never sell out my country, and my rights in it will never be lost.‖ Opposition parties in

Egypt make use of the idea of the movie and some of them even name their group under the name of the movie. The film manages to deliver a message that the ―Other‖ does not care about Egypt but about his/her interest. Moreover, the film makes it clear that any foreign interference in the region is serving only Israel‘s ends without paying attention to the mistreated people of the area.

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VIII. Laylat El-Baby Doll (The Baby Doll Night)

The company aims to broaden minds beyond images of gun-battles and belly

dancing synonymous with the region. "Night of the Baby Doll" is a comedy which

highlights misunderstandings between the Arab and Western worlds post-9/11—it

will be followed by an Arab take on the legend of Sinbad.179

Baby Doll Night presents, for the first time in the Arabic and Islamic cinematic history, an elaborate account of the factors that continue to shape U.S.-Arab/Muslim tensions, particularly in the post-9/11 context. This film is a blend of genres, combining comedy and deeply serious drama. It is able to stir laughter and fear by exaggerating the situation, language, action, relationships, and characters, which captivate and entertain at the same time.

The film revolves around the story of Hossam, an Egyptian-American tour guide, who is visiting Cairo for New Year‘s Eve along with a group of Americans prospecting business in Egypt. After a year's separation from his wife to get treatment for impotence in the U.S., Hossam aspires to a romantic night with his wife. His plans to conceive a child are thwarted by several events, some of which are comedic episodes as he and his wife travel around Cairo looking for a room, and some are dramatic as there is a terrorist plot to bomb the hotel where Hossam and the American tour group stay.

179 Neil Curry, "A New Golden Age for Egyptian Cinema?" CNN.com, March 21 2008.

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The film is a call for both East and West to listen to each other and try to bridge the language and culture gap. The first scene in the movie, which comes before the title sequence, is a flashback to 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. The stories that follow intertwine sex and politics to describe the impact of 9/11 for a broad range of people, Arab and American, and those who are both.

Figure 19: Laylat El-Baby Doll (The Baby Doll Night)

Laylat el Baby Doll, or Baby Doll Night, constitutes an artifact of many historical events, especially the 9/11 attacks. The movie is a mix of many storylines spanning New

York, Cairo, Palestine, and Iraq. The main idea of the movie is to emphasize that 9/11 is not the turning point in the history of U.S.-Arab/Muslim encounters; however, it plays an important role in the culmination of hostility between the Arab/Muslim world and the U.S.

Andrew Hammond states that after 9/11,

The Arab world realizes as much as America does that their relationship has

reached, if not its historical nadir, then at least a situation of raw, close-up anger.

One might say that a bust-up that had been brewing for at least three decades has

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finally erupted and both parties have been forced to ask with brutal honesty what

they want and what they expect to get from the other side.180

Baby Doll Night sheds light on the complexities of the current situation in the

Middle East. The movie‘s overlapping narratives and elaborate events elucidate the impossibility of painting a totalizing picture of any community, whether Arab or American.

The film starts with a New Year celebration, shedding light on 9/11, which starts a new phase of encounters between America and the Arab world. The movie‘s Website opens with the statement ―Can one night of pleasure mend sixty years of pain?‖ The question sums up a long history of misperceptions between Americans and Arabs. In this film, the

U.S. has been perceived as an imperialist power that employs its political, economic, and even military power in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which have already been dis- empowered by the long history of European colonialism, to address its own self-interests.

XI. Manufacturing Terrorism

In Baby Doll Night, we see how Abu Ghraib in Iraq was more a source of terrorism rather than a prison for terrorists. An Egyptian journalist becomes a terrorist not because he has always hated America but as a result of what he faced at the hands of American marines in Abu Ghraib. Awadheen Alasyouty is an Egyptian activist and journalist who becomes a terrorist. At one time, he craved peace in the Middle East. He is in love with

180 Andrew Hammond, What the Arabs Think of America (Oxford: Green World Publishing, 2007), 1. 169

Laila Corrie, a Jewish-American girl who is against the Israeli settlement in Palestinian lands. She is killed by an Israeli bulldozer while attempting to prevent Israeli forces from demolishing a Palestinian house. This parallels the story of Rachel Corrie, the young

American lady who was run over by an Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while trying to prevent the Israeli Defense Force from destroying a Palestinian house. Awadheen is hurt deeply by this incident. What really destroys him, however, and turns him into a terrorist is what happens to him when he goes to Iraq to cover the war. After being captured, he faces brutal torture in Abu Ghraib prison. At Abu Ghraib, Awadheen loses his virility when a

U.S. female soldier cuts his penis. The Egyptian journalist turns into a terrorist who wants nothing but to take revenge on the Americans that stole his ―manhood.‖

Figure 20: Awadheen being tortured in Abu Ghraib.

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Figure 21: Awadheen being tortured in Abu Ghraib.

General Peter, manager of Abu Ghraib who becomes a spokesperson of various

American corporations, asks Sarah Abraham, president of Peace Friends International

Community, ―Why do they hate us?‖ She responds, ―You really don‘t know! Between you and me, Peter, the secret that has become known to all people of the world that Bush‘s policies made us the most hated country in the world. Every action has a reaction.‖ The movie represents two different types of Americans: Sarah, an American liberal peace activist, is allied with Arabs. General Peter, an American conservative military officer, is moored by the clash-of-civilizations rhetoric and viewpoint. Sarah, Hossam, and Peter have a conversation about the oft-posed question ―Why do they hate us?‖ Hossam explains that

Arabs/Muslims hate U.S. policies rather than Americans themselves. He adds that the U.S. has spent three trillion dollars on its war on Iraq, money that could have developed the region through health care, education, and other projects, which would have posed a real threat to terrorism. In this scene we witness interactions and exchanges of ideas between

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Sarah, who stands for the American values of peace and democracy, Peter, who represents the imperial America, and Hossam who is an Arab/Muslim living in the U.S.

General Peter has a conversation with Awadheen that highlights two different readings of one action. When Peter asserts that he has information that links Awadheen to terrorists, Awadheen refutes this claim by confirming that he has ―many ties but with Iraqi resistance fighters.‖ General Peter thinks that those resistance fighters are terrorists since they are deliberate in killing U.S. troops. But Awadheen responds that resisting any occupation is recognized internationally, and that ―this is not an excuse to arrest the Iraqi resistance fighters, throw them in Abu Ghraib, and torture them.‖ Awadheen reads the struggle in Iraq as ―self-resistance,‖ while an American military leader interprets it as

―terrorism.‖

Shokri, Awadheen‘s friend, defends him in the beginning of the movie as someone who fights against oppression, but by the end of the movie Shokri finds him blinded by desire to avenge his subjection to torture and emasculation at the cost of innocent people.

Shokri explains, ―I am sorry but I will not be involved in your planned attack against civilians who did you no harm. I can understand you revenge against your oppressor but not against people living around you.‖ Looking at this as a violation of allegiance towards his ―right,‖ Awadheen kills Shokri who represents the mainstream

Egyptians/Arabs/Muslims who are against U.S. policies in the region, but who are at the same time opposed to violence against civilians. At the end of the movie, Awadheen is shot by Egyptian police snipers as he is shouting that he is not a terrorist but rather someone

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who wants to have his rights. Awadheen who starts out as an average

Egyptian/Arab/Muslim ends up a terrorist.

XII. Liberation vs. Colonization

In his Cairo speech, President Obama says:

I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent

years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be

clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any

other.

In his Nobel Peace Prize speech, President Obama states:

The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than

six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms …We have

borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of

self-enlightened interest.

Many Arabs/Muslims might think Obama‘s speech is a continuation of a discourse that attempts to legitimize U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The 2003 invasion of Iraq is a vivid example of U.S. imperialism preceded by the Bush Administration‘s pro-war rhetoric of promoting democracy and freedom in Iraq. Many Arabs/Muslims believe that this discourse is partly shaped by unjustified and unconfirmed reports of Iraqi nuclear threats.

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In Baby Doll Night, General Peter tells Sara, ―We came with our troops and children to liberate them from their rulers and their extremists‘ terrorism. We sacrificed everything we have to heal them.‖ But Sara replies, ―Nobody takes medicine against their will.‖ In order to best indicate this, the film takes its audience to Iraq to see a nameless

Iraqi, talking about how Iraqis see Iraq before and after the invasion. This nameless Iraqi man expresses his frustration and anger at the American presence in Iraq that make all

Iraqis long for Saddam‘s era. He tells Awahdeen, ―Saddam ruled Iraq for thirty-five years.

The number of those who died at his hands in that period is far less than those killed in one year at the hands of Americans and the armed militias.‖

Moreover, the Egyptian movie shows how the rhetoric of liberation in the Middle

East is undermined by the U.S. policy in Iraq. Killing freedom of speech in Iraq is dramatized in a scene in which a correspondent is shot dead by a U.S. soldier. There is also the existence of the infamous prison of Abu Ghraib, which is used to torture and crush opponents of the American military presence in Iraq. With images of American soldiers brutally treating their captives, it will be difficult for America to dissociate and distance itself from the violent legacy of Abu Ghraib. Images of American prison guards using sexual humiliation and snarling guard dogs to terrify naked Arab prisoners may well have lasting repercussions for U.S.-Middle East relations. These images of torture were aired on major Arab networks, like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. They elicited outrage from many

Arabs. The word ―scandal‖ was splashed across the front page of Egypt's Akhbar al-Yom above smiling U.S. soldiers posing by naked, hooded prisoners piled in a human pyramid.

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The Kuwaiti newspaper al-Watan warned that this ―barbaric‖ treatment would provoke and rally Islamic fundamentalists.181

Although millions of Muslims worldwide denounced and condemned the 9/11 attacks, the Arab/Muslim image has been tarnished ever since 9/11. A 2006 poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post showed that almost half of all Americans expressed an unfavorable opinion of Muslims and Arabs.182 A glimpse of this sentiment is caught in the film‘s portrayal of Hossam‘s post-9/11 agony. In a scene shot in Harlem, New York,

Hossam gets into a bar to ask about an African-American friend. In the bar Hossam gets introduced to his friend‘s uncle, an African-American man named Philip. Philip tells

Hossam that Egyptians are from Africa and that his ancestors are from Africa so they are related. Hossam faces a violent attack from a white man because of his being an

Arab/Muslim. Philip defends Hossam and warns the while man that Hossam is under his protection till he leaves the bar. In this way the Egyptian film shows how African-

Americans are analogous to Arabs. Moreover, the film makes one cringe at the thought of being in a situation like countless Arabs have been because of their appearance and/or surname. The Egyptian film not only shows sharp hostility towards Muslims and Arabs, but also indicates how African-Americans feel pity towards Egyptians who belong to

Africa. North Africans are indigenous to the continent despite the fact that they are not identified as African-American. African Americans are embraced, just as some African

Americans have embraced Egypt as central to their heritage. Not all African Americans

181 Sherry Ricchiardi, ―Missed Signals: Why Did It Take So Long for the News Media to Break the Story of Prisoner Abuse at Abu Ghraib?‖, American Journalism Review (http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3716), accessed February 18, 2011). 182 ABC News (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1700599 (accessed November 5, 2007). 175

agree, of course, and not all Egyptians, but there is an important marker of race and colonized status as sources of alliance.

The baby-doll nightgown arrives on a tank. The baby-doll nightgown symbolizes that which is American and western and does not belong on the Arab body. Hossam‘s wife does not get a chance to wear her baby-doll nightgown, suggesting that the Arab body rejects this ―foreign‖ production.

XIII. Conclusion

My argument is that we need to read cinema not as a simple index of what is represented on screen, but in terms of a relationship to time made thinkable in the visual encounter. Egyptian cinema is increasingly attracting the attention of film critics, scholars, and Middle East-studies specialists. Egyptian cinema is and has always been under the impact of Hollywood. Many Egyptian films imported Western visual and narrative conventions to narrate Egyptian/Arab histories. Arabs, while enamored with American filmmaking, are at odds with American foreign policy. Paul Maidment put it cleverly when he compared the Arab viewpoint to that of Europeans who ―love the idea of America, but they are not always so enamored by the practice.‖183

September 11 attacks left the world with a new culture: a culture of fear reinforced by post-9/11 rhetoric, like the ―War on Terror,‖ ―With Us or Against Us,‖ and the ―Axis of

Evil.‖ This culture insinuates itself into people‘s lives, affecting their way of thinking about

―Self‖ and ―Other.‖ It is worth noting that Egyptian films do participate fundamentally in

183 Paul Maidment, ―Is Brand America in Trouble?‖ Forbes.com, September 21, 2005. 176

this globalized culture of fear, in taking a stand against stereotyping, ignorance and oppression, and speaking out for freedom, progress and enlightenment. Post 9/11 Egyptian cinema blithely takes on themes that contribute to the overwhelming desire to broach topics of an East-West encounter. It uses symbolism to give a wider berth to the topic discussed, and to engage in battles to break the siege of misunderstanding and ignorance between

Arabs and Americans. Sexual impotence, for example, in Baby Doll Night is a symbol of the impotence of the will.

Memory plays an important role in Arab nationalism that occupies the scene most profoundly in times of ―encounter‖, whether military, political, or even cultural. In times of

―encounter,‖ people bond to fight against an ―Other‖ in the name of ―Self.‖ This trend marks Egyptian films in the post-9/11 era when Arabs find themselves accused of terrorism while they are terrorized. In Arab productions, Arabs want to resort to memory to gain a full sense of the current critical situation. 9/11 attacks, Arabs believe, cannot be extricated from 60 years of encounter and struggle. Baby Doll Night emerges as a response to the

American question ―Why do they hate us?‖ to provide an answer from a historical perspective. The answer in the film is clear: ―We do not hate you, but we hate your policy in our region.‖

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CHPATER FOUR

Arab-Americans’ Cultural Response to 9/11 and Its Aftermath

[If] the hyphen implies a well-formulated and/or single synthesis of the Arab and

American identities, then nothing can be further from the complex cultural realities

of the community where endless permutations are developed.184

This chapter provides an introduction to post-9/11 Arab-American literature, distinctive for its diversity of voices, topics, genres, and aims. Arab-American poets, like

Hayan Charara, Khaled Mattawa, Suheir Hammad, and novelists like Diana Abu-Jaber,

Toufic el Rassi, Elmaz Abinader, Laila Halaby, and essayists like Moustafa Bayoumi, and

Alia Malek, all detail in their writings how people who are perceived as Middle Eastern face the possibility of harassment after 9/11 attacks. This chapter provides accounts of Arab

Americans‘ cultural responses to 9/11 upon their shift from invisibility to visibility.

Historically, negative images of Arabs and Muslims are produced whenever Middle East crises emerge. Arab Americans who already suffer from a double or hyphenated identity face the double burden of sorrow for their country‘s catastrophe and disproval of Arab

184 Mervat F. Hatem, ―The Invisible American Half: Arab-American Hybridity and Feminist Discourses in the 1990s,‖ in Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, ed. Ella Shohat (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 386, note 1. 178

stereotypes. This chapter focuses on how Arab-American writers react to being both

Americans and Arabs. S/he is both Arab and American, and in fact her/his existence proves that these are not inherently contradictory categories. And while s/he may be seen as

―other‖ by some Americans, s/he might also be seen as other by family and friends in the

Arab world. Both parts are ―self,‖ and so this idea of an internal war is how Arab-American writers talk about it, but it is between two aspects of a ―self,‖ not an internal self v. an internal other.

In The Anarchy of Empire, Amy Kaplan argues that what is foreign and what is domestic are intertwined, as one is used to reflect and construct the perception of the other.

The threat of the foreign Other is projected on the domestic Other. So, for example, the fear of annexing Puerto Rico as part of the U.S. (rather than as a foreign possession) manifests in the perception of the image of slaves incapable of self-governing but whose empowerment could pose a threat to the white mainstream. That is why we find in Anzia

Yezierska‘s Bread Givers, for example, that the protagonist Sara assimilates to her new world in the quest for the American Dream. Sara escapes her old ―authoritarian‖ tradition to be captured by a new ―authority,‖ i.e., the authority of the dream. Rebelling against the authority of her father, Yezierska‘s protagonist surrenders helplessly to the authority of a whole society of strangers. Abandoning the ghetto does not necessarily entail an ability on

Sara‘s part to wash her hands of the influence that her father and her native culture have left on her. She cannot escape that part of her life; she cannot separate her past from her present since both are there. Her new Americanized version is not able to wipe out her old one.

This brings us closer to the picture of American society as a mixture of the old and the new,

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and makes us question the utility of having both of them melted in one pot. But to give the upper hand to one of them will result in a reciprocal attack from each one of the two identities against the other. This will not lead to the desired harmonious character of the

American nation. Moreover, ―the melting pot‖ will never be able to change the solid nature of each identity to a ―liquid state‖ amenable to an easy process of assimilation.

Joanna Kadi refers to Arab Americans as ―the Most Invisible of the Invisibles,‖ a phrase that ―raises questions about who the other invisibles are, and whether Arabs are really the most invisible.‖185 If the Arab-American community is viewed as an isolated enclave that separates itself from other ethnic groups and from the dominant, white mainstream center, Arab-American literary and critical production reflects this fluid identification. Initially considered ―not white,‖ then ―not quite white,‖ then legally ―white,‖ then ―somewhere outside the limits of racial categories,‖ Arab Americans have been confounded and befuddled with notions of ―blackness,‖ ―whiteness,‖ and ―in-betweenness‖ that left them as the most ―uncategorized group.‖ The Arab-American community attempts to make use of the American values of liberty and justice to negotiate and reconstruct the

Arab-American identity within an American system characterized with a cultural and racial hierarchy. The loss of identity and the cultural indeterminacy are quite evident in the works of Arab-Americans who collide with mainstream American culture.

In this chapter I analyze two Arab-American literary texts for their repertoire of post 9/11 stereotypes and exile fantasies. These two works are by Arab American women writers who have been marginalized and silenced, especially after 9/11, whether in the U.S.

185 Joanna Kadi, Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists (Boston: South End Press, 1994), xix. 180

or in the Arab world. Arab-American women writers are pointing out the racism, oppression, and marginalization they experience in the United States and are beginning to uncover the particularities of their own ethnic histories. It is evident that the mainstream

American culture seems to see them as powerless victims of their own religion/culture.

Mohja Kahf's E-Mails from Scheherazad thematizes the hardships of Arab/Muslim minorities in the U.S. through creating a representational space from the legendary

The Thousand and One Night. In Once In A Promised Land, Laila Halaby structured her novel in Arabian folklore and Western fairy tale, to follow the flow of important historical events and to emphasize the ways in which the past has informed the present, and culminates in a futureless world. Both Kahf and Halaby attempt to blur the distinction between being an Arab in America and an Arab-American; two groups incorrectly referred to as the same.

I. Arab Immigrant Literature and Pre-9/11 Situation of Arab Americans

Arab-American literature starts with the literature of Mahjar (place of immigration), which is centered in New York and lead by Khalil Gibran. Mahjar writers, who fled to America to escape the social, political, and religious conservative constraints of the Arab world and to enjoy the American values of liberty and freedom of thought, challenge Arab cultural norms.186 Most of the writings are in Arabic, except for the English work of Ameen Rihani, Khalil Gibran, and Mikhail Naimy. In their writings there is a

186 M. M. Badawi, A Critical Introduction to Arabic Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 203. 181

desire for reform in the Arab world and an interest in bridging the gap between the East and the West. The early Arab-American Mahjar writers showed interest in promoting Western social and political values in the East while introducing the West to the spiritual values of the East that could help it escape its mundane materialism. Their writings are similar in style to Arabic literature but without many religious and social conservative constraints.

The similarity to Arabic literature makes it possible for Mahjar literature to be taught at

Arab/Egyptian schools as part of the Arabic literary curriculum, and despite its socially and morally liberal approach, Muahjar literature finds its way to Al-Azhar schools which are conservative Islamic schools.

Michael Suleiman indicates that it is only after World War I that ―Arabs in the

United States become truly an Arab-American community.187 This is due to the fact that the war made it difficult for them to go back to their homeland. They found it necessary to identify themselves as Arab-Americans and as part of American society. In their attempt at quick assimilation they have been known to be more American-identified. As Evelyn

Shakir puts it:

The first generation of Arab-American writers (as might be expected of immigrants

of an age of rampant xenophobia) dressed carefully for their encounter with the

American public, putting on the guise of prophet, preacher, or man of letters. They

could not hide their foreignness, but they could make it respectable. Their

American-born children—those who came of age in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s—

187 Michael W Suliman ―Arab-Americans and the Political Process,‖ in The Development of Arab-American Identity, ed. Ernest McCams (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 43. 182

costumed themselves as ―regular Americans‖ and hoped to pass, which may be why

they produced so little literature.188

The second generation of Arab Americans found itself on neutral ground by distancing themselves from their ―Arab‖ heritage, viewing it with confusion, denial, but sometimes honor. This is evident in the work of Eugene Paul Nassar, Vance Bourjaily, and William

Peter Blatty, who used to identify themselves as mainstream writers rather than as Arab-

Americans.

The most identifiable beginning to a cohesive Arab-American community of writers came in the 1980s. This is exemplified in the publication of two anthologies of

Arab-American literature, a twenty-page collection called Wrapping the Grape Leaves: A

Sheaf of Contemporary Arab-American Poets (1982), edited by Gregory Orfalea, followed by a larger and more comprehensive anthology, Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab-

American Poetry (1988), edited by Orfalea and Sharif Elmusa. The presence of Grape

Leaves in bookstores and on library shelves, Lisa Suhair Majaj states, ―made it possible for general readers to discover Arab American writers without first acquiring specialized knowledge. Moreover its publication established 'Arab-American Literature‘ as a category on computer data-bases and in card catalogues.‖189

In this way Arab-American writers began to articulate what constitutes Arab-

American literature. Articulating the ―Self‖ necessitates a return to the past to get a particular set of what it means to be an Arab in America. Two Arab-American novels

188 Evelyn, Shakir, ―Arab-American Literature,‖ in New Immigrant Literatures in the United States, ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 6. 189 Lisa Suhair Majaj, ―Two Worlds Emerging: Arab-American Writing at the Crossroads,‖ Forkroads (Spring 1996), 71-72. 183

represent the articulation of the self through a traditionally empowering return to the past.

With Children of the Roojme: A Family’s Journey from Lebanon, published in 1991, and

Arabian Jazz, published in 1993, Elmaz Abinader and Diana Abu-Jaber have respectively made a remarkable contribution to Arab-American literature through an exploration of

Arab immigrant history in America. This theme recurs in works of many contemporary minority group writers who want to restore the past of their ancestors to show the distinctive nature of their ethnic communities. This escape from the present and return to the past emerges as a dominant element in the writings of many Arab Americans because of the difficult situations they face in American society. In addition, the Arab-Israeli conflict widens the gap between Arab Americans and Jewish American community as well as the U.S. population in general.

It is important to note that the writers of these two novels are Arab-American women who, in addition to suffering ethnic discrimination, endure gender issues. In their attempt to articulate their selves through the traditionally empowering return to the past they trace the past of Arab women in an Arab masculine society. Abinader and Abu-Jaber trace in a meticulous way the connection between the past and the present in creating the

Arab-American female identity. The past provides their characters with a means of invention to be able to deal with the present.

In Arabian Jazz Abu-Jaber relates the experiences of two first-generation young

Arab American women, Jem and Melvina. The two young women are partially American and partially Arab. This is due to the fact that their father is an Arab from Jordan while their mother is American, of Northern European origin. Jem and Melvina feel caught

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between two different cultures and try to establish their identity with the help of their father‘s sister Fatima. In Arabian Jazz the girls return to their past but they find only cruel incidents of racism against them. Jem remembers her school bus where she ―learned how to close her mind, how to disappear in her seat‖ in order to avoid the other children‘s comments about her name and her skin. Abu-Jaber devises different coping strategies for her characters. Matussem, their father, indulges in his love of jazz and pounds his drums to tune everything out and to keep himself away from the world of strangers around him. Jem and Melvina find comfort in professional commitment and short-term affairs with local boys. It is their aunt Fatima who finds relief in keeping herself attached to her Arab roots and preserving her Arab values.

With Children of the Roojme Abinader sets the scene of early Arab-American immigration and highlights differences and similarities in the sources of ambivalence of the early Arab-American women in comparison with their contemporary descendants.

Abinader‘s biographical account of her ―Family‘s Journey from Lebanon‖ goes three generations back and renders a feminist reconstruction of family history drawn from written and oral testimonies. Both Abinader and Abu-Jaber have their characters recall a gendered past which has been erased and which the two writers incorporate through fictional and real accounts of family stories into history.

In Arabian Jazz and Crescent, Abu-Jaber explores the dilemma of ―not belonging‖ that makes her first- and second-generation characters in a continuous clash with white hegemonic culture while assuming a semblance of ―whiteness.‖ The Arab-Americans in

Abu-Jaber‘s novels, upon their failure to ―achieve‖ full ―whiteness,‖ or assume a white

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identity, attempt to attach themselves to other ethnic minorities. In Arabian Jazz, the tense relationship between Arab Americans, as well as other different ethnicities, with mainstream white communities is evident in the characters‘ attempts to melt in the ―melting pot‖. A sense of displacement becomes articulated as the daughter rages at her father:

―There's only so much you can do to become American.‖ The daughter is bound by contradictory cultural perceptions, at times viewed as ―a wild American girl‖ and at other times as ―a boring Arab.‖ Finding themselves considered somewhat ―white‖ in a white community that is not fully convinced by their ―whiteness,‖ the characters align themselves with other ethnic groups, like African Americans and Latinos. In Crescent, Abu-Jaber contrives a mixture of characters from a wide range of Arab and other Middle-Eastern backgrounds that negate unsophisticated representations of Arab identity. They try to overcome the American racist community through the introduction of an Arab community in a café that gives them venue to live their culture and express their being a minority.

Diana Abu-Jaber tries to nationalize the international Arab communities in these two novels through the introduction of Arab culture to heal the gaps between Arab communities in the U.S., indicating an Arab nationalist approach. Moreover, the struggle with mainstream American culture brings into existence alliances between different ethnic groups, which left the reader with a cultural indeterminacy of both Arabian Jazz and

Crescent. Abu-Jaber could not escape the need to forge connections beyond the insular boundaries of group identity.

Before 9/11 Arab American writers examined their invisibility or marginality but after 9/11 they have been faced with a sudden visibility and a demand to represent their

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culture to mainstream Americans. Before 9/11 Arab-Americans tend to assimilate even while maintaining their Arab cultural features that help them reclaim a sense of nationalism. It is notable that by the 1990s, Arab-Americans started to celebrate their Arab culture intellectually and creatively to justify their position within American society which results in a heightened awareness of their hyphenated identity and the feeling of alienation from both the home and the host country. This in-between status is well-depicted by Gloria

Anzaldúa:

Chicanos and other people of color suffer economically for not acculturating. This

voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual

identity – we don‘t identify with the Anglo-American cultural values and we don‘t

totally identify with the Mexican cultural values. We are a synergy of two cultures

with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness.190

Arab-Americans in their works of literature try to find a way of dealing with a potentially polarized identity by exploring the hybrid identity drawn from Arab culture and American society.

II. Post-9/11 and the Renaissance of Arab-American Literature

It is useless to search for the right words to express the inexpressible pain that has

followed the horrible deaths of thousands in New York, Washington, DC, and

Pennsylvania. But there is another source of this pain: the severe blow that has been

190 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera. The New Mestiza. 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books: 1999), 85. 187

struck against the accomplishments made in recent years by Arab Americans

toward correcting centuries-old stereotypes of both themselves and Arabs in the

Middle East.191

September 11 attacks came to strengthen the boundaries that separated Arab

Americans from their fellow American citizens and to maintain and reinforce the already existing negative stereotypes of Arabs as the mysterious, inferior, and violent ―other,‖ constructed over a long period of Orientalist representation. The 9/11 event weakens the relationship between Arab Americans and American society, and invites them to draw upon their past to get strength and recharge their belief in themselves as equal to their native American counterparts.

Gender, race, religious affiliation, social identity, and economic status of Arab-

American immigrants are all in contrast and interaction with their counterparts in America, which collectively give life and essence to American culture. Arab Americans, just like other ethnic minorities in the U.S., suffer while they lead the struggle along their way to assimilation in American society. The first generation comes with the native Arab cultural goods that put them on the rim of belonging. Their new society does not accept their native cultures nor accept their being immersed in their new environment. In this way, the Arab immigrants abandon their native identity in search for an identity accepted by the community in which they live and work. Nostalgia is often a symptom of the failure of the process of Americanization. I think Arab-Americans‘ performance of American-ness is

191 Elie. Chalala, ―Arab Americans After September 11: Rethinking Ideas Not Carved in Stone,‖.4//aJW 7.36 (2001): 13-14. 188

analogous to the performance of gender. In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler refutes the perception of gender as a state of being, indicating it is rather a performative manifestation.

In other words, what makes us a specific gender is not being male or female but our performance of what is socially expected from a male or a female. Since even male/masculinity and female/femininity are no longer unambiguous and well-defined categories, the pursuit of gender definition in a patriarchal environment takes even a greater form. Since gender is performative, being a woman can be defined in relation to displays of femininity and sexuality. Marriage, therefore, does not only stabilize gender categories by creating the illusion of their certainty through the performance of sex but also maintains the hierarchy and the connotation related to marriage and motherhood and creates the clarity through which the exclusion of the Other can take place.

As is the case with the literature itself, Arab-American literary criticism responds to major trends in the wider field of literary criticism and to the social and political contexts in which it is produced. Arab-American literary criticism and theory has sought to explain and theorize the meaning of creative writing by Arab Americans. While criticism is the evaluation and interpretation of literature, literary theory is a more philosophical discussion of the overall goals of literature. In Arab-American literary culture, the boundaries between creative, critical, and theoretical work are porous. It is impossible to speak of Arab-

American literary criticism and theory without taking into consideration the contributions of Arab-American creative writers. In fact, some of the most important works of criticism emerge from the aesthetic productions of the artists themselves.

Arab-American literary criticism assumes ―race‖ to be a fundamental category of

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analysis. The definition of race, however, is always under scrutiny. The major debates that emerge from this body of work most often center on the relationship among aesthetics and politics and/or ideology. The first Arab-American novel in English is The Book of Khalid

(1911), written by Ameen Rihani who attempts to reconcile ―East‖ and ―West‖ by revealing common culture and values. He represents America as the world‘s superpower that the Arab world should learn from by way of its political ideals, freedom of religion, and its embrace of science and progress.

Current Arab-American writings are met with the skepticism of an intellectual community that questions the ―American-ness‖ of Arab Americans; consequently, since

9/11 Arab-American literature bore the burden of having to plead the case of Arab ethnicities. With the emergence of the post-9/11 narrative, Arab-American writing becomes directly engaged in the struggle for Arab causes in order to combat stereotypes and stilted representations of Arab cultures and peoples. Consequently, most criticism of Arab writing is centered on its veracity, its fidelity to representing the actual circumstances of Arab life.

Also, because Arab-American writing coexisted with racist caricatures of Arab/Muslim people in both popular and ―high‖ culture, critics viewed it not only with an eye toward the intellectual capacity of Arab people but also in relation to its ability to counter ―negative‖ images of the race. Rarely were early Arab-American writers subjected to the kind of rigorous criticism that considered craft and form. This failure of the mainstream critical establishment and of Arab intellectuals themselves became a major concern of many Arab-

American critics. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad explains:

190

The community is still in the process of being formed and reformed as policies by

the American government regulate the flow of immigrants from the Arab world.

Legislation limiting immigration, as well as American foreign policy and the

prevailing American prejudice against Arabs, Muslims, and Islam, has at times

accelerated and at other times impeded the integration and assimilation of the

community into American society.192

While we find writers like Evelyn Shakir who prefers to limit Arab-American writings to works that focus on Arab-American topics, we find others like Mohja Kahf who thinks that ethnic identity is the determining factor in recognizing Arab-American literature. In this way, writings by Mona Simpson (Anywhere But Here [1987] and The Lost Father [1992]), for example, which do not focus on Arab-American themes, are to be included in the genre.

It is interesting that the growing body of Arab-American literature has reached the critical mass where it might be considered an ethnic literature in itself. It reveals thematic links and shares a set of attributes not only with Arabic literature but with U.S. ethnic literatures as well. Arab-American literature is not a mere extension of Arabic literature; however, some Arab-American writers are acting as unofficial representatives of the wealthy Arab culture. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, director of the Project of Translation from the Arabic

(PROTA), which translates Arabic literature into English, insists, ―We need to make our voice heard in America, not just as writers in English, but also as ambassadors of a great and rich culture.‖193 In this way, the Arab immigrants‘ stories will enlighten the

192 Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Not Quite American? The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004), 2. 193 Lisa Suheir Majaj, "Of Stories and Storytellers," Saudi Aramco World 56.2 (2005), 31. 191

mainstream American readers to the travails specific to the Arab world, and show the cultural affinities/differences between the two cultures. However, there are other Arab-

American writers who do not want to feel like sojourners and insist, as Khaled Mattawa states, ―the more urgent task is to take stock of, and assert a claim to, the American context by enriching the dialogue among Arab-Americans' diverse influences.‖194 Mattawa wants

Arab-American writers to get their experiences acknowledged as part and parcel of the dominant culture through being deeply attached to the ―American context.‖

The post-9/11 era has witnessed an abundance of Arab-American writing signaling an Arab-American literary renaissance. It shows a sense of responsibility on the part of many Arab-American writers at this moment of national crisis. They believe that metaphors are much more tenacious than facts, and that they need to correct the image of their own

Arab identity through the use of images and words of their own American identity. This

Arab-American response marks a counter-narrative that is partly ―self‖ and partly ―other.‖

It came in different types of writing that includes novels, memoirs, poetry, as well as literary criticism and non-fiction prose pieces. Poets and essayists tend to be abundant in writing that examines 9/11 and its aftermath. However, some other genres that handle the topic include novels like Laila Halaby‘s ―Once in a Promised Land,‖ and short stories like

Mohja Kahf‘s The Spiced Chicken Queen of Mickaweaquah, Iowa, Samia Serageldin‘s It's

Not About That, and Amani Elkassabani‘s Hanaan's House. Critical essays include Steven

Salaita's ―Ethnic Identity and Imperative Patriotism: Arab American Before and After

9/11‖ and Salah Hassan's ―Arabs, Race and the Post-September 11 National Security

194 Ibid. 192

State,‖195 to name a few.

III. Arab-American Hyphenated Cultural Responses to 9/11 and the Ongoing

the “War on Terror” fire in the city air and i feared for my sister's life in a way never before. and then, and now, i fear for the rest of us. first, please god, let it be a mistake, the pilot's heart failed, the plane's engine died. then please god, let it be a nightmare, wake me now. please god, after the second plane, please, don't let it be anyone who looks like my brothers.

Arab Americans writers and artists use literary and cultural productions to respond to major historical and political events that have taken place in the Arab world and the

U.S.. From early life in the U.S. ending with 9/11 attacks, Arab-American writers and artists have produced literary and cultural productions that reveal a community‘s sense of severe pressure under political upheavals.

The contemporary development of Arab-American literature is a symptom of social changes in American society in the aftermath of 9/11. September 11 affected literature which, voicing the ferments and conflicts of the era, has became a compromise between old and new models. A sense of torn identity has given birth to a revolution in the critical and creative thought of Arab-American writers and artists. Upset by contradictions and revolutionary ideas, post-9/11 America became the ideal ground for the development of an

195 Salah D. Hassan, ―Arabs, Race, and the Post-September 11 National Security States,‖ Middle East Report 224 (Fall 2002), March 24, 2005. . 193

Arab-American literary renaissance. Resistance has marked most of the Arab-American literary works in post-9/11 America. This resistance constitutes a rebellion against Western negative stereotyping characterized by a heightened interest in revenge, emphasis on the

―Self‖, departure from the ―Other‖, and rebellion against established social and political values and conventions. Arab Americans attempt to produce art that can address humanity in general, represent the afflicted human spirit everywhere, and express the sterility of hatred in contrast with love. I think what T.S. Eliot states about the role of the poet in addressing the social problem of his time is applicable to the Arab-American literary ethic in the post 9/11 era:

The poet is much more vitally concerned with the social 'uses' of poetry, and with

his own place in society; and this problem is now perhaps more importunately

pressed upon his conscious attention than at any previous time. The uses of poetry

certainly vary as society alters, as the public to be addressed changes.196

This is when the literary work is tied to, or located in, the time and place of the artist. It is also in this way that the literary work may be interpreted in different ways and bear different readings. This idea is well-expressed in Terry Eagleton's book Literary Theory:

[The] meaning of a literary work is never exhausted by the intentions of its author;

as the work passes from one cultural or historical context to another, new meanings

may be culled from it which were perhaps never anticipated by its author or

contemporary audience.197

196 T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), 150. 197 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 71. 194

9/11 attacks and their aftermath characterize Arab-American literary production, but at the same time literary productions have not expelled the past from the scene. In order to appreciate the present conditions, Arab-American artists merge them with those of the past.

The present is after all nothing but a growth from of the past.

The real significance of art is its task as an ambassador of social reality. This makes me recall Du Bois‘s book The Souls of Black Folk in which he tries to confer the sufferings of the blacks through the melodies of songs. Du Bois asserts the idea that art is a unifying force capable of going beyond the boundaries of race and gender. For Du Bois, ―songs are indeed the siftings of centuries; the music is far more ancient than the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development.‖198 Du Bois considers music a vessel of history wherein the ―melting pot‖ reflects the black-white relations. In other words, in art the ―melting pot‖ can be observed more clearly than in the life of the society: ―One might go further and find a fourth step in this development, where the songs of white America have been distinctively influenced by the slave songs or have incorporated whole phrases of Negro melody, as ―Swanee River‖ and ―Old Black Joe.‖199 The way Du Bois refers to the effect of slave songs upon white ones is an attempt on his part to prove the syncretic quality of art. He asserts the way blacks can prove themselves as capable of extending some kind of authority by the establishment of artistic hegemony over the nation. These ideas by Du Bois take us to a work of art written by an Arab-American woman to introduce her readers to the challenges facing Arab-American women and the way they resist.

198 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Orig. published1903. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994), 157 199 Ibid, 159. 195

IV. Mohja Kahf's E-Mails from Scheherazad (2003)

Mohja Kahf's E-Mails from Scheherazad is a blend of the past represented in the legendary Scheherazad of the Thousand and One Nights and the present as evident in the

21st century New Jersey setting:

Hi, babe. It's Scheherazad. I‘m back For the millennium and living in Hackensack, New Jersey. I tell stories for a living. You ask if there is a living in that. You must remember: Where I come from, Words are to die for.

The original text in The Thousand and One Nights relates the story of Shahryar, a king who marries a new virgin everyday to behead her the next morning. He does so out of his anger for his first wife who betrayed him. He killed one thousand women in such a way until he married Scheherazad. Richard Burton, in his translation of The Thousand and One

Nights, describes Shahrazad as the one who

had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories,

examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had

collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers.

She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied

philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and

polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.200

200 Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Burton Club, 14. 196

On her first night with Shahryar, Scheherazad starts practicing her storytelling talent. She relates her first story until dawn, and when Shahryar asks her to finish it, she responds that dawn was breaking. In this way the king is forced to spare her life for one more day to listen to the next part of the story. But when she finishes this story she begins another exciting one, which helps spare her life for one more day. She keeps following the same strategy for one thousand and one nights until she tells the king that she has no more stories. But the king falls in love with her and has three sons with her, so he spares her life and makes her

Queen.

In bringing Scheherazad to post-9/11 America, Kahf makes her Americanized and modern. In The Thousand and One Nights Scheherazad uses her storytelling talent to save her life and the lives of all girls who might be put to Shahryar‘s sword. In Kahf‘s poetry collection Scheherazad is attempting to ―save‖ Arab/Muslim women in the U.S. from many perceptions and stereotypes that found their way into American society. The only thing that saves Scheherzad from getting beheaded are words and her narrative skills, and Kahf is using words to fight against attacks against ―visible‖ Muslim/Arab women in post-9/11

America. In her poem ―Hijab Scene #7‖ Kahf recounts many stereotypes about

Muslim/Arab women:

No, I’m not bald under the scarf No, I'm not from that country where women can't drive cars No, I would not like to defect I'm already American But thank you for offering What else do you need to know

197

relevant to my buying insurance, opening a bank account, reserving a seat on a flight? Yes, I speak English Yes, I carry explosives They're called words And if you don't get up Off your assumptions They're going to blow you away

The tone is angry and frustrated in response to stereotypes that degrade Arab/Muslim women to the status of ignorant, victimized, less-American creatures, or associate hijab with ugliness. Kahf‘s Scheherazad emphasizes her complete ―American-ness,‖ and that her most powerful weapons to face stereotyping are words that can blow away anyone with such ―assumptions‖ about Muslim/Arab women. Arab-American women writers face the dilemma of being Arab and American. They suffer from the patriarchal nature of the Arab society as well as of the Western one. When they probe into the problems of the Arab world, they are accused of being ―Westernized‖ and at odds with Arab culture.201 On the other side, Western societies still look at Muslim/Arab women with doubt in regard to both their national and ―veiled‖ identity. This affects the way they are received in the American community of readers. The history of East-West encounters cannot be ignored, politically or culturally, as Amal Amireh indicates: ―political events cannot be seen as marginal to literary reception. Arab women novelists still carry the burden of this history, whose effects are too obvious to ignore. They can be seen in the way Arab women books are marketed

201 Lisa Suhair Majaj, ―New Directions: Arab American Writing at Century‘s End,‖ in Post-Gibran: Anthology of New Arab American Writing, eds. Munir Akash and Khaled Mattawa (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 75. 198

and received in the West, in the way they are manipulated to meet the expectations and assumptions of Western readers.‖202

In her collection of poems, Kahf attempts to transcend this gap between being

Arab/Muslim and being American. She ignores the ―hyphen‖ and acts as an

―unhyphenated‖ American. She wants to speak for herself instead of being defined by

Others:

Statements were issued on our behalf by Arab nationalists, Iranian dissidents, Western feminists

The critic Amal Abdelrazek claims, ―Whereas earlier Arab American writers tried to claim a space within white American culture using various strategies of assimilation, which often involved a breaking away from their traditions and homelands, the speakers in

E-mails resist assimilation.‖203 However, Kahf‘s approach is not resistance but refusal.

What she attempts to propose in her book is not a resistance of assimilation but a no-need strategy towards it. Arab Americans in her poem see themselves as ―complete‖ Americans without any need to defend this point. They do not need to be melted in the pot as they are already dissolved in it. Scheherazad, who was able to face male violence with wit and words, is now reasserting her wit through the power of words to face the ailing psyche of her Arab and Western interlocutors. Like Scheherazad who helped the heart-wounded king to rethink about his violent approach toward women, the American Scheherazad attempts to help both Arabs and Americans to heal their distorted image of each other while

202 Amal Amireh, ―Publishing in the West: Problems and Prospects for Arab Women Writers,‖ Al Jadid Magzine 2.10 (1996) (http://www.aljadid.com/essays_and_features/0210amireh.html) 203 Abdelrazek, Amal Talaat. Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities and Border Crossing. New York: Cambria Press, 2007. P. 69. 199

perceiving herself as ―ArabAmerican‖ without any space or a hyphen. Kahf refuses to submit to the way each party, whether Arab or American, rejects them because of their

―incomplete Self and Other.‖ Kahf decides that despite their cultural and blood ties with the

East, Arab/Muslim Americans are complete citizens. As Edward Said points out, ―Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and this plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions, an awareness that-to borrow a phrase from music contrapuntal.‖204 But this

―undecided‖ identity left many Arab Americans with a feeling of loss and a desire to determine their nationality. Lisa Suhair Majaj explains, ―My childhood desire, often desperate, was not so much to be a particular nationality, to be American or Arab, but to be wholly one thing or another…I remained situated somewhere between Arab and American cultures-never quite rooted in either, always constrained by both.‖205

It is evident that what Sepp L. Tiefenhalter states about Jewish-Americans applies to Arab Americans, as well. He indicates that the ―twoness‖ of the immigrant‘s identity constitutes his/her great dilemma, ―the struggle to accommodate two selves and two cultural spaces into one integral identity.‖ To avoid being a ―foreigner‖ in one‘s land, most immigrants ―have resolved this conflict through a gradual process of assimilation and acculturation to the dominant mainstream culture of the receiving country, thereby transforming themselves into something like a palimpsest with only a few traces of the

204 Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 55. 205 Joanna Kadi, Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab American and Arab-Canadian Feminists (Boston: SouthEnd Press, 1994), 79. 200

original text remaining.‖206 Assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adopts the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture, is questioned by Kahf in her collection of poetry.

Kahf shows how immigrants cannot escape one part of their life; they cannot separate their past from their present since both together constitute their current identity.

Her new Americanized version is not able to wipe out her old Syrian/Arab one. This brings us closer to the picture of American society as a mixture of the old and the new, and makes us question the utility of having both of them melted in one pot. But to give the upper hand to one of them will result in a reciprocal attack from each one of the two identities against the other. This will not lead to the desired harmonious character of the American nation.

Moreover, the ―melting pot‖ will never be able to change the solid nature of each identity to a ―liquid state‖ amenable to an easy process of assimilation. There is a split in vision that cannot be healed by the ―melting pot.‖

And where did I go And what did I become? And in my new home did I eat cherries? And in my adopted family was I warm like Aleppan wool? What happens to a child who can no longer speak The language of its mother? What happens to a girl who wanted once to put her head On some pillow embroidered with her name

206 Sepp L. Tiefenthaler,―The Search for Cultural Identity: Jewish-American Immigrant Autobiographies as Agents of Ethnicity,‖ MELUS, 12, no. 4: 37-51, European Perspectives (Winter, 1985), 37.

201

Thus, it is an experience of assimilation and nostalgia at one and the same time; to live the outward and keep the inward or to move between two identities personally while representing one national identity socially. This moment of reconciliation between one‘s

―duality‖ constitutes the national flag that embraces the two selves in one entity, i.e.,

America. In other words, one‘s native identity dissolves in the battlefield of American life, leaving only one identity, i.e., the national one. Kahf points out how it is unavoidable for some Arab Americans to resort to their native identity when they are alone but in front of their fellow Americans they are keen to be seen as Americans. Kahf delves deep into her memories to reclaim her lost past:

This is the rim marked red With remembrance, horror, love, Her own blood filling This deep well

The red color signifies her family ties in her lost homeland whose memories are full of

―horror‖ and ―love.‖ The two words ―horror‖ and ―love‖ refer to her concern about her old homeland and at the same time her powerful caring feelings toward the place and its inhabitants.

Nostalgia arises when a place or time in the past is missed is missed. This part may be submerged; however, it is a part of rejuvenating one‘s memories. While leading a comparative and selective attitude toward the national culture, the immigrant still feels this part her own breathing inside him. Changing herself inside and out to be one of them is

202

beyond her power. During this process of donning the American flag the immigrant compares her old identity and her new one. This focus on cultural interaction and cultural loss is emphasized in Kahf‘s poem ―The Passing There‖ where she probes the dilemma faced by second-generation immigrants in the U.S. Her American identity has to face her old authoritarian identity and to escape being in the clutch of her parents. She points out the different experience of U.S.-born individuals and non-U.S.-born immigrants. In ―Passing

There‖ Kahf describes the story of herself and her brother passing through an Indiana field, looking for raspberries and sensing the farmer‘s suspicions about their religion and ethnic identity. The psychological, sexual, spiritual, and physical borderland is embodied in

Kahf‘s poems. Kahf and her brother feel that they were born to be bordered whether by the color of their skin or by the blood in their veins. The double identity is evident in their Arab names, Yaman and Mohja, to make them thereafter separate from American society. What

Gloria Anzaldua states about ―borderlands‖ is true of Mohja and her brother:

The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands and the

spiritual borderlands are not particular to the Southwest. In fact, the

Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures

edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same

territory, where the space between two individuals shrinks with

intimacy.207

Kahf attempts in E-mails from Scheherazad to prove that it is a lack of knowledge rather than a clash of civilizations. In the poem ―Lateefa,‖ Kahf starts with a type of ―clash‖

207 Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999), 19. 203

between the first and second generations of Arab immigrants. She shows how those who were born and raised in the U.S. do not feel the same enthusiasm towards their Arab homeland because of the fact that the only place they really know is America.

(Daddy, you can talk to me All you want about Palestine And I’ll be faithful to the end But I don’t know it, never Smelled its rainwet streets…) …. I know New Jersey.

This gap between the first generation and the second and third generations is due to a split in vision. This split in vision is evident in the relation between Arabs/Muslims and

Americans. The split in vision is attributed to a lack of knowledge about the other. Kahf demonstrates both parties as active participants in this battlefield of the ―clash of ignorance.‖ Americans and Arabs need to know more about each other‘s cultures to avoid misunderstanding and prejudices. In the poem ―My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the

Sink of the Bathroom at Sears,‖ Kahf provides a clear example of her thoughts on the

―clash of ignorance.‖ Performing ablution to get ready for prayers, her grandmother washes her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears. In sensible lines, Kahf relates a story that appeals to Arabs‘/Muslims‘ and Americans‘ sense of recognition: ―Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown / As they notice what my grandmother is doing, / An affront to American porcelain /…They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see / A clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom.‖ This clash refers to the work of

Samuel Huntington, who theorizes the ―clash of civilizations.‖ Kahf succeeds in 204

conducting a ―silent‖ dialogue between her grandmother, who considers ablutions to be part of her right to perform religious practices anytime and anywhere, and the Sears matrons, who fail to understand her act. This ―silent‖ dialogue exemplifies the scenario of

East vs. West and the ―clash of civilizations.‖ Representing Arab Americans as the connector at the border between two cultures, Kahf shows respect to both parties and sympathizes with their lack of knowledge about each other:

Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers, all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent … No one is fooled, but I hold the door open for everyone

The door here symbolizes her ―uncitizened‖ status in the U.S., or her ―undetermined‖

American-ness, due to her Arab/Muslim origins, while the mirror stands for her Arab identity. Whenever she looks at herself, and whenever others look at her, her Arab identity emerges at the surface. At the same time, her hybrid identity helps her to be acquainted with the two conflicting parts of her identity. She leaves the door open for both of them to run into her and to run towards each other.

In the last few poems of her collection, Kahf attempts to bridge the gap between the two peoples, inviting both to believe in their ability to put an end to their hostility towards each other. She denounces all forms of destruction, violence, and hatred. She denies the claim that one‘s religion, race, or nation can constitute a barrier between him and his fellow human being. In her poem ―Disbeliever,‖ recalls atrocities committed against powerless third-world nations to create bonds through empathy: 205

By the limping of the people of Iraq By the sound of frantic running in Qana, in Kosovo, By the men and boys of Hama massacred By the swollen bodies in a river in Rwanda and Afghani women and the writers of Algiers I am a disbeliever in everything that refuses to kiss full on the lips the ones still living and receive them in the bosom of the self no matter the religion or the nation or the race.

In this way Kahf delivers her hybrid message to both parties that religion, race, and nationality should not stop them from soaring beyond hatred and violence. They both need to transcend these superficial differences and stick to the human common ground they all share. In remembrance of the horrible attacks of 9/11, Kahf‘s poem ―We Will Continue

Like Twin Towers‖ came to weave pain and hope on one loom. She invites ―us‖ and

―them‖ to remember that: what we will never forget again: That our lives have always been as fragile, as dependent on each other, and as beautiful as the flight of the woman and the man, twin towers in my sight, who jumped into the last air hand in hand

Kahf acts as an agent to help both Arabs/Muslims and Americans break out of the jail of hatred and violence. In her collection of poetry, Kahf attempts to present Arab/Muslim women as intelligent and talented human beings who are able to go beyond the ―veil‖ and 206

to make themselves seen in a positive light according to American/Western cultural standards. Kahf‘s book manages to blend Arabic tradition represented in the legendary

Scheherazad of The Thousand and One Nights into the experiences of contemporary Arab-

American women using the most recent means of communication, i.e., e-mails. Kahf adopts a humanistic approach in her poetry in an attempt to heal the wounds and break through the stereotyping wall that separates the two communities. It is notable the way she is able to merge pain, hope, and beauty in her poems. Starting with the plight of immigrants in general, then focusing on Arab-Americans. Kahf gives the merest edge of her attention to Arab women showing their struggle and resistance in the U.S. and in the Arab world.

The poetry collection ends in a beautiful dialogue, using passionate language to comment on recent political events, especially the 9/11 attacks. The book shows the poet‘s ability to read the post-9/11 world with a critical eye that captures both the joy and tragedy of life.

The book is a ―hybrid‖ work that manages to link classical Arab characters with current- day events and characters. As Amal Abdelrazek states,

Like Scheherazad, Arab-American women writers are telling their stories over and

over again, using them to change the dominant configuration of their identities. In

telling their own stories, contemporary Arab-American writers take a stand against

both the Orientalist and Islamic or Arab fundamentalist streams. Both of these

perspectives obscure the complex web of gender, ethnic, and religious differences

that separate rather than unite Arab and Arab-American women.208

208 Amal Abdelrazek, ―Scheherazad‘s Legacy: Arab-American Women Writers and the Resisting, Healing, and Connecting Power of Their Storytelling,‖ MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (2005), 141. 207

Mohja Kahf succeeds in taking both Arabs/Muslims and Americans into borderlands, assuring both parties of her independent and hybrid identity. At the same time, she stretches her hands to both Arabs and Americans to cross boundaries of ignorance about each other, to stop hatred and violence, and to make an initiative of love and understanding.

V. Once In A Promised Land: A Social Commentary on the Post-9/11 Arab-

American Experience

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, a national rhetoric fuelled by misconstrued

patriotism rushed to vilify and marginalize persons of an allegedly suspicious racial

makeup. I will call this strategy moral racialization, and it is this strategy that

informs … Laila Halaby‘s novel Once in a Promised Land.209

In The Rise of the Novel Ian Watt indicates how the novel as a new genre proves to be unique and popular through its ability to imitate reality rather than create it. Unlike older genres of drama, epic, and narrative poetry, the novel‘s perspective on truth is not universal. The novel appeals to its readers in an individualistic tone represented by its true- to-life characters who allow readers to see into a place that most of us do not know about.

The novel, therefore, is able to capture the human condition perfectly in the web of its complex plot and the familiarity of its characters. Laila Halaby‘s Once In A Promised Land relates the story of a couple who are a walking personification of the American Dream, but who after 9/11 are branded as outcasts. As Halaby states in the preface, ―Salwa and Jassim

209 Georgiana Banita, ―Race, Risk, and Fiction in the War on Terror: Laila Halaby, Gayle Brandeis, and Michael Cunningham,‖ Literature Interpretation Theory 21 (2010), 243. 208

are both Arabs. Both Muslims, but of course they have nothing to do with what happened to the World Trade Center. Nothing and everything.‖210 The couple that lives in Tucson,

Arizona, far from NY and DC, still has to confront personal tragedies in the midst of

America's rising anger and bigotry for all Arabs/Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks.

The absence of communication between the couple, even before 9/11, is prominent in the novel. Salwa Haddad, a Jordanian of Palestinian heritage was born in the U.S. and grew up in Jordan. Laila Halaby keeps her characters within their Arab cultural and social boundaries to demonstrate that this results in their unacceptability in the American social system. This echoes Edward Said‘s perception of the novel‘s role in securing the readers‘ perception by keeping the characters in the knowable cultural and social context. This helps to keep binary of ―us‖ and ―them‖ in the context of the novel.

Once in a Promised Land is peppered with Arabic terms to lay emphasis on the characters‘ cultural background. Laila Halaby‘s text recalls works by Gloria Anzaldua featuring a hybrid language by Chicanos and Latinos. Through the use of Arabic words and expressions Halaby attempts convey a post-9/11 atmosphere that witnesses an incredible emergence of ―Americanized Arabic.‖ Halaby starts her novel in the traditional style of

Arab tales, used by Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights: ―Kan ya ma kan fi qadeem az-zaman,‖211 meaning ―Once upon a time … in olden times.‖ Such an introduction suggests that this is one story from amongst many of similar stories. The novel that starts in the pre-9/11 era relating the story of a Jordanian-American couple ends with a couple that stumble upon their marriage in the turbulent days following 9/11 attacks. It

210 Laila Halaby, Once in a Promised Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), viii. 211 Ibid., vii. 209

seems that Halaby uses the beginning of the traditional Arab tales to stress from the beginning of her novel the death of the American Dream, especially for post-9/11

Arabs/Muslims. They come from Jordan in search of the American Dream in Arizona.

Jassim is a hydrologist, responsible for lives by harvesting water, while Salwa is a banker and a real-estate agent who helps Americans with financial and housing issues. Thus, the couple is trusted with work essential to Americans‘ lives. Water and housing are vital for all forms of life. Both Jassim and Salwa possess the comforts of a well-ordered American life, evident in their beautiful home, Jassim‘s Mercedes Benz, and Salwa‘s large remittances to her family in Jordan. But behind this bright picture of success lies a marital life devoid of warmth and happiness, a routine life that makes them alienated from each other. 9/11 events extend the distance between the Jordanian couple and make their reunion impossible. The rupture is an internal and external one. They feel themselves ―outsiders‖ from themselves and from the Other. They end up confronting the superficiality of their material success in the U.S., as well as the hollowness of their American dream.

In The Location of Culture Homi Bhabha examines the concept of hybridity and the way it leaves minor pieces of identities built over time. This ―part‖ culture constitutes the bridge between the cultures as it is both and none at the same time. It is an ―in-between‖ culture that bafflingly both alike and different.212 Halaby‘s characters are unsure of their identities, questioning their own belonging, nationality, and their sub-consciousness. Their hybridity is notably dismantled and its elements are visibly recognized. They attempt to contemplate their undetermined identities. It might be this undetermined identity that

212 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture. (New York: Routledge, 1994), 53. 210

results in a twelve-year childless, colorless, unfulfilling marriage between Jassim and

Salwa.

Jassim silently accepts all occurrences of anti-Arab/-Muslim sentiment as if they are the unavoidable result of being a ―hybrid‖ person in America. He is unable to believe that a disbeliever in religion like himself is associated with Islamic fanaticism. When he knows about the worries of Salwa‘s friend Randa about her kids and how they might get hurt because of their Arab heritage, Jassim says, ―Why would anyone hurt Randa‘s kids?

People are not so ignorant as to take revenge on a Lebanese family for the act of a few extremist Saudis who destroyed these buildings?‖213 At other times he seems to gloat over the national catastrophe. This happens when he remembers the man he meets at the gym who keeps talking about Salwa‘s beauty: ―As the first plane was flying into the World

Trade Center building, Jack Franks was expounding on the beauty of Arab women and grilling me about my wife. There‘s a meaning in that somewhere…‖214 Salwa does not like this passivity on Jassim‘s part. Their societal alienation causes them to behave according to the social norms around them. Being treated as ―suspected persons‖ results in a sense of estrangement ingrained in them that affects their attitude towards each other and leads each one of them to lead a parallel life by him/herself. Jassim accidentally kills a teenage boy when he hits him with his car. Jassim‘s unsteady status leads him to hide his secret even from his wife Salwa. On the other hand, Salwa, who seeks tranquility in motherhood, becomes pregnant against Jassim‘s will. Like Jassim she is self-involved and unable to communicate with him, so she keeps her pregnancy secret from her husband. Then, she has

213 Laila Halaby, Once in a Promised Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 21. 214 Ibid., 35-36. 211

a miscarriage without telling Jassim. As the couple gets further away from each other, secrets, lies, and despair follow to widen the space between them. They end up finding an outlet in other people. Salwa seeks comfort from a younger American coworker who shows her the interest and emotions she could not get from Jassim. Jassim succumbs to the affections of Penny, a waitress who fills the emotional gap.

Halaby is able to give a global meaning to the personal problems of the Jordanian characters in the U.S. They live their version of the ―American dream‖ until they encounter racism and the harsh realities of being viewed as outsiders in the wake of 9/11. The way

Halaby focuses on the couple‘s failing marriage because of years of miscommunication might be a hint to the way Arab-Americans need to communicate with each other as well as with the American society around them. Jassim and Salwa have their own personal flaws but in the American Promised Land their tragic downfall is heightened and comes to a head after the tragedy of 9/11. September 11 attacks brought on a national rage that swept into the lives of many Arab-Americans without political concerns.

Salwa and Jassim think that they finally entered the American cultural mainstream, but 9/11 attacks ended up leaving them with a sense of intimidation, disillusionment, and potential backlash. Steven Salaita states that, ―Before 9/11 scholars examined Arab

American invisibility or marginality—or whatever other term they employed to denote peripherality—but after 9/11 they were faced with a demand to transmit or translate their culture to mainstream Americans.‖215 Halaby is able to profile her Arab-American characters who have to share the national tragedy and at the same time struggle to define

215 Steven Salaita, Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes from and What it Means for Politics Today (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006), 74. 212

themselves as normal citizens who should not face pervasive workplace discrimination and governmental surveillance, and cultural misunderstanding and insecurity.

The complexities of the migrant experience, comprising of the comprador, native informant, nationalist, and cosmopolitan positions, effectively emerged as hybrid representations. It is important to theorize the post-9/11 immigrant experience more fully, perhaps in relation to Saidian exile, Mufti‘s concept of world minorities, or Dabashi‘s work on post-Orientalism. Arab-Americans in Halaby‘s novel are at odds with their American identities:

We cannot live here anymore. All those years of schizophrenic reaction to

American culture, disdain for the superficial, which she had buried with each new

purchase and promotion, a spray of loathing she had denied in order to justify her

current arrangement-it all burst forward as if she were seeing it for the first time, as

though she had not spent the past nine years living this very life.216

The polarized realities of America as a Promised Land and its foreign policy gave and continue to give Arab-Americans a ―schizophrenic‖ character. They love the idea of

America where all their dreams can come true but at the same time they hate its unbalanced foreign policy in the Middle East. Moreover, September 11 attacks came to provoke violent reaction against Arabs/Muslims in the U.S., a negative societal reaction that has widened the gap between Arab-Americans and their Promised Land.

The U.S. foreign policy constitutes an important element in the profile of Arab

Americans regardless of being Muslim or Christian, conservative or liberal, politically

216 Laila Halaby, Once in a Promised Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 54. 213

engaged or politically reticent. Halaby‘s novel shows an unavoidable engagement with and an attention toward America‘s role in the Middle East as an integral part of the identity of

Arab Americans. Salah Hassan explains:

Although Arabs and other people from the Middle East are classified racially as

white according to the US Census and most affirmative action forms, since the

1960s, the US government has unofficially constituted them as a distinct racial

group by associating Arabs with terrorism and threats to national security. Unlike

other racial constructs, such as blackness or Asianness, which are defined officially

in opposition to whiteness, the contemporary racialization of Arabs appears to be

linked to US foreign policy in the Middle East and its translation into the domestic

context.217

For Halaby, the link between U.S. foreign policy, world events, and the daily lives of her characters as Arab-Americans is clear. She devotes substantial space to the blindness of

American media's treatment of the backlash of September 11 attacks.

Edward Said asserts the role of Middle East politics in unifying Arab Americans under one umbrella regardless of their religion, class, or gender. His memoir Out of Place, for example, narrates his life within a political context. It opens with the following:

I found myself telling the story of my life against the background of World War II,

the loss of Palestine and the establishment of Israel, the end of the Egyptian

monarchy, the Nasser years, the 1967 War, the emergence of the Palestinian

movement, the Lebanese Civil War, and the Oslo peace process. These are in my

217 Salah Hassan, ―Arabs, Race, and the Post-September 11 National Security State,‖ Middle East Report 224 (Fall 2002), 18 214

memoir only allusively, even though their fugitive presence can be seen here and

there.218

There are many other examples where personal crises are joined by narratives of high politics that relate to either Palestine or American foreign policy:

The remoteness of the Palestine I grew up in, my family's silence over

its role, and then its long disappearance from our lives, my mother's

open discomfort with the subject and later aggressive dislike of both

Palestine and politics, my lack of contact with Palestinians during the

eleven years of my American education: all this allowed me to live

my life at a great distance from the Palestine of remote memory,

unresolved sorrow, and uncomprehending anger.219

Halaby‘s characters keep moving between the U.S. and the Arab world while making their personal confession. The writer manages to connect their personal experiences with a critical attitude toward American foreign policy. A vivid example of how politics permeates into Arab-Americans‘ thoughts, mediates their relations with their fellow Americans, and even creeps into their dreams is when Salwa is asked by a customer at the bank, ―Where are you from?,‖ Salwa replies, ―I am Palestinian from Jordan.‖ The customer asks, ―What does this mean?‖ Salwa throws the ―bomb‖ of her narrative and relates the history of the U.S.-Middle East encounter since 1945: ―It means that my parents are Palestinian but that I was born and raised in Jordan, because my parents were refugees.

218 Edward Said, Out of Place: A Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), xi. 219 Ibid.,141. 215

They were kicked out of their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was established.

Where are you from?‖ Salwa ends her statement with a question about the customer‘s identity, making clear that if she is to be asked about her homeland, so do all Americans.

The woman replies, ―Here, born and raised. I‘m a native Tucsonian, American born and raised.‖ The clash of identities escalates when the customer expresses that she would be more comfortable working with someone else she can understand better. Salwa introduces

Palestine‘s effect on her life and family through the identification of herself. But her fellow

American woman is looking at the issue from a different angle and seeing things from a different perspective. She pays no attention to the tragedy of Salwa‘s family, but focuses only on her being an Arab. Salwa, who was raised in Palestine and has lived in the U.S. for several years, still longs for her Palestinian roots. Edward Said states,

It seems inexplicable to me now that having dominated our lives for generations,

the problem of Palestine and its tragic loss, which affected virtually everyone we

knew, deeply changing our world, should have been so relatively repressed,

undiscussed, or even remarked on by my parents. Palestine was where they were

born and grew up, even though their life in Egypt (and more frequently Lebanon)

provided a new setting for them. As children, my sisters and I were cloistered away

from "bad people" as well as from anything that might disturb our "little heads," as

my mother frequently put it.220

Exactly like Said, Halaby‘s characters are struggling with their quest for identity and assimilation. They have a desire to assimilate to their American life but at the same time

220 Ibid., 117. 216

they feel homesick as shown in Salwa‘s yearning for homeland. Halaby, whose father is

Jordanian and whose mother is American, is able to reflect her hybrid identity in the cross- cultural existence of her characters and to prove her talent in writing diasporic fiction. The way Salwa and Jassim move between their ethnicity, humanity, and hybridity is smooth to the point one does not even notice the fissures of their hybrid identity. This is what Orfalea refers to when he states, ―I think that as long as the Arab American novel addresses timeless, ethnicless themes —love, war, want— and does so boldly, it will continue to strengthen… Truly the self for an Arab American author is a gathering of stained glass, fractured, yet full of light and color, no one tile telling the whole story, no one emotion or belief telling all of it.‖221 This is quite evident in the character of Jassim who is represented as politically reticent; however, he too comes to face the fate of becoming an outcast in the aftermath of September 11 attacks. His passivity is evident in his conversation with the mother of the boy he hits with his car. She asked him, ―Where are you from? India or something?‖ Unlike Salwa‘s strong responses, Jassim‘s answer is straightforward and prepared: ―I am from Jordan … Between Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.‖ Jassim is just like many Arab-Americans who want to find their way in the American culture using ―smooth‖, or unthreatening or uncritical, language to avoid any clashes when ―disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.‖222 Jassim looks at Americans as ―pure, simple people, their culture governed by a few basic tenets, not complicated conspiracy theories.‖223

September 11 events and their aftermath reveal repercussions in which the ―good

221 George Orfalea. ―The Arab American Novel,‖ MELUS 31, no. 4, Arab American Literature (Winter, 2006), 127. 222 Homi.Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 23. 223 Laila Halaby, Once in a Promised Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 299. 217

citizenship‖ of Jassim is not recognized, but rather misrecognized as an Arab threat and target. He is asked to leave his job because he is an Arab. In ―water‖ Jassim, is able to forget about everything. Water is his area of specialty and his place of enjoyment. Jassim finds himself in water, the source of life.

Halaby is keen on representing a new image of Arab-American women as evident in the character of Salwa, who is brave enough to maintain a presence in both American and Arab cultures. Salwa, unlike Jassim, struggles within American culture to define herself and to assert her Arab identity in clear and visible words. It is Salwa who makes the readers examine Arab culture and place so vividly. Salwa refuses to live in-between and insists on making her readers feel her displacement in America. It is interesting to see

Salwa subjected to oppression not by an Arab man but by an American coworker who lures her into adultery. She wants to go home to be herself and to be with her ―culture, where things like this can‘t happen.‖224 Halaby manages to show an Arab woman as a prey of an

American white man to offer a new alternative discourse. Penny, Jassim‘s friend, looks at

Arabs/Muslims as ―those people over there, they oppress women and kill each other.

They‘re the ones who should be bombed.‖ This shows how mainstream American feminists are preoccupied with the dominant stereotypical discourse that, as Evelyn Shakir states, ―had generally followed (and sometimes led) the crowd who believe that all Arab women are victims of genital mutilation and forced marriage, and that all Arab men are oil sheiks, terrorists, or religious fanatics.‖225 In Once in a Promised Land Halaby develops a

224 Laila Halaby. Once in a Promised Land (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 288. 225 Evelyn Shaki, Bint Arab: Arab and Arab American Women in the U.S. (Westport, CT: Praeger,1997), 104. 218

counter-approach to these stereotypes, showing an Arab woman leading her distinct life of pain and resistance.

VI. Conclusion

Arab-Americans join their fellow citizens in pausing and reflecting upon the horrors of the September 11 event and its aftermath. But while they join most Americans in seeking unity and solace with their fellow citizens, some Americans are sowing seeds of hatred and ignorance. Arab-American writers promote the idea of culture as a site of multiple interactions: it can promote misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and racism, on the one hand, but, on the other, provides an avenue for cultural knowledge and connection and help and prevent misunderstanding and violence. In their writings, Arab-Americans stand as mediators between dominant U.S. images and perspectives of alliance and solidarity with the Arab world.

Mohja Kahf's E-Mails from Scheherazad is a blend of the past represented in the legendary Scheherazad of the Thousand and One Nights and the present as evident in the

21st century New Jersey setting. The spiritual weakness of the age, caused by the flourishing of self-interest and scientific materialism urged Kahf to look with reverence to classical works, as if they constitute a source for guidance and inspiration. Again, it is interesting to compare this approach by Arab-American writers and African American theorists like Du Bois whose work The Souls of Black Folk has many classical references throughout.

219

Laila Halaby is able out of her intense and personal experience to express a general image of Arab-Americans in the U.S. Halaby retains all the particularity of her experience to make of it a general symbol. Her novel is pervaded with a load of undefined terrors and anguish of spirit, hence, this novel can be taken by Arabs in America as a rallying cry.

Halaby is able to weed out all themes of liberation, political and social reaction, the terrors of 9/11 attacks and after, and the impact of all these upon Arab-American characters. The novel contributes tremendously to cross-cultural understanding through making her characters waver between two lands to no one of them they really belong. The novel is full of scenes related to displacement and nostalgia in which we can easily touch two currents of memoirs i.e. Jordan and Palestine, running in the same ―stream of consciousness,‖ especially in the character of Salwa.

It is to be noted that many Arab-American narratives are, to a large extent, linguistically inclined towards Arabic. This may be an indicative of the way the Arabs in

America try to adapt themselves to the American way of life; however, ethnicity is always there. They go back mentally to the Arab world to feel their unique entity and to get their complete identity away from the American ethnic life. They believe that it is in the Arab world that their dignity exists. Here we can quote Mirabal words, ―Nostalgia serves multiple functions. It keeps whole that which is fractured and in pain. It creates identity and purpose; it reminds and it renews. It is both fixed and fluid enough to hold memory and experience.‖226 It is very important to trace the contrast between exilic and ethnic elements in Halaby‘s story.

226 Nancy Raquel Mirabal, ―‗Ser de Aquí‘: Beyond the Cuban Exile Model.‖ Latino Studies, 1 (2003), 368. 220

CONCLUSION

Arabs‘ response to 9/11 and the ―War on Terror‖ can hardly be contained within the limits of this study. I, therefore, have focused on selected Arab and Arab-American texts from different discourses—cinematic, fictional, or journalistic—about the U.S./West and attempted to show how these works speak to a larger Arab counter-discourse that has never been static. I limit my study to the examination of the Occidentlist aspects of Arab texts and the ways in which they question and criticize the ideologically constructed binary opposition of the U.S. to Arabs/Islam. In many ways, these works deconstruct the East-

West binary by pointing out contradictions and ambivalences that underlie the U.S.-Arab

―clash of ignorance.‖ The East-West binary divides the world into two antagonistic forces: the barbaric Arabs/Islam and the civilized West/U.S. Such polarization reflects a distorted view of each party towards the other under the impact of a long history of stereotyping.

With the development of media, Arabs start to look at the U.S. through the lenses of

Aljazeera and other media channels. Arabs‘ use of modern media, exported by the U.S., is evident in the April 6 movement in Egypt that started in the spring of 2008 through massive text-messaging, email, and popular social networking platforms, like Facebook, blogs, etc.

Media progress in the Arab world in the post-9/11 era indicates how Arabs are able to make change through the use of Western tools rather than with the help of Western regimes. New post-9/11 Arab media refer to a new Arab discourse with Americans and the

221

West in general. Aljazeera, for example, is able to criticize and undermine the rhetoric of not only Arab regimes but American and Western regimes, as well. This understanding of the role of post 9/11 media encounter gives a much broader understanding of any discussion of Middle East-West encounter.

With regard to film industry, my analysis shows that Arab cinema articulates above all what film critics Ella Shohat and Robert Stam term ―allegories of impotence‖ that probe the social, political, and economic predicaments of the Arab nations. In fact, the dominant perspective of Arab representations of the U.S. negatively depicts American policymakers as hostile and anti-Arab/Muslim. Today‘s Arab image-makers regularly link the conflicts in the Middle East with Israel supremacy, and Western holy war. This study explores how

Egyptian cinema in particular, as a powerful Arab institution that shapes and reflects the dominant thinking of Arab culture, largely perpetuates a counter-response ideology vis-à- vis the U.S./West. If Hollywood deals with Arabs/Islam as a threat, Egyptian cinema scripts America as essentially colonialist. Arab filmmakers, I think, identify America‘s struggle for hegemony as the driving force behind any clash in the Middle East. By doing so, these films reveal not only the film industry‘s complex relationship with U.S. foreign policy in the region, but also the limits of liberalism when tackling outside vs. inside issues or anti-colonial discourse vs. anti-dictatorial commentary.

In their writings, Arab writers resist the binary not only by defending Arabs/Islam against the U.S./West or vice versa, but also through questioning ideological underpinnings of the binary. There is much coverage about Arabs/Islam in the American media but rarely do we see the other side. Covering Arabs and Islam through looking into their cultural

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production is the core of my work. The very negative and ill-founded images attributed to

Arabs/Muslims in the mainstream American/Western media left Arabs/Muslims with a need to promote alternative discourses that question and discredit the claims to ―clash of civilizations‖ and ―they hate our democracy.‖ Arab writings, thus, inscribe a double vision that aims to displace binaristic discourse and promotes a search for new terms to articulate identity and difference. Their quest results in their construction of a coherent identity that uses the language of the Other to write the Arab autobiography and to provide a space for negotiation of Arab and American cultures.

Engaging a contrapuntal perspective, to borrow a Saidian term, I examine Arab cultural representations of the U.S., as representative of Western modernity and Western foreign policy. My reading of Arab fiction argues that, while it puts forward a fictional counter-narrative and a more complex understanding of U.S.-Arab encounters, it still tends toward a monolithic representation of the U.S. For example, the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al

Aswany emerged in the post-9/11 era as one of the most important Arab novelists. His first novel, The Yacoubian Building, comprised many dysfunctional components of Egyptian society and the ruling regime. Al Aswany was able to portray Egyptian political corruption, sexual repression, and religious extremism through detailing the lives of his Egyptian characters. In his second novel, Chicago, he uses a series of vivid and interwoven episodes to detail the love affairs, ambitions, political views, and intricate lives of a group of

Egyptian scholars at the University of Illinois medical school. Chicago is a novel written for an Arab audience about Egyptians in America and how they look at themselves and their country.

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In proposing this model for understanding U.S.-Middle East relations, I have been influenced by many Islamic thinkers who have conceived alternatives to the models of conflict and misunderstanding, working from within Islamic thought. It is evident that

Western modernity appealed to the minds and hearts of early Muslim reformists who discerned many positive aspects in it. This is extremely clear in Muhammad Abduh's227 oft- quoted remark that whereas in the West he found Muslims without Islam, in the East he found Islam without Muslims.228 Abduh wanted to stress that people in the West manifested in their very conduct the ideals of Islam even though they were not Muslims, whereas in the Muslim world he was shocked to find people who identified as Muslims but whose conduct belied their belief.

The core of Muhammad Abduh‘s project is the reconciliation of Islam and Western modernity through a balanced process that allows Islam to become modernized while keeping the gist of its standards and values. It is this kind of discourse, led by Muhammad

Abduh, that dominated the scene until the third quarter of the 20th century. It was also the prevailing discourse in the Third World that observed Western modernity as a model.

Muhammad Abduh and his fellow scholars advocated all efforts to grasp the pioneering aspects of Western modernity and to compete with it on its own terms.

Another Arab Muslim scholar is Hassan Hanfi, who is able to bridge the gap between the Arab/Islamic culture and philosophy of life and the Western culture and philosophy of life. Showing cultural and philosophical competence, Hanfi is able to

227 An Egyptian religious and cultural reformer who was graduated from Al-Azhar University. Sheikh Abdu was famous for his reason-based views when interpreting the Quran and the Sunnah 228 Abdelwahab Elmessiri. ―Features of New Islamic Discourse,‖ Encounters, 3 (1): 45-63, 1997, 50. 224

introduce Islamic culture as being capable of absorbing the best in Western modernity.

These efforts by Hanfi are evident in his seminal work Al-Turath wa al-Tajdid,229 or

―Tradition and Renovation,‖ and his masterpiece ―Our Situation from Western Tradition:

Introduction to Westernization.‖230

It also includes an account of Arab Americans‘ cultural response to 9/11 and their forced move from invisibility to hyper-visibility. Historically, negative images of Arabs and Muslims are trotted out whenever Middle East crises emerge. Arab Americans who already suffer from double identity face the double burden of facing sorrow for their country‘s catastrophe and undermining stereotypes about Arab heritage. Arab-American cultural producers who detail how people in the U.S. who are construed as Middle Eastern face the possibility of harassment immediately after 9/11.

Finally, I contextualize my findings within a new post-9/11 U.S.-Middle East encounter. The huge publications that followed 9/11 on the East and Islam do not delve into a deep scholarly investigation of Arabs/Muslims, and are trapped into a new Western

Orientalism era. However, the recent scholarship in the field has challenged more traditional interpretations of the relationship between Western modernity and multiculturalism, political debates, and artistic movements. Simply put, few prior works have yet to explore the representation of the U.S. in Arab/Muslim culture. This project fills a niche because it is an attempt to understand the relationship between the Obama era in the

U.S. and the social/political change movements throughout the ―Arab Spring‖, crowned

229 Hasan Hanafi, Al-Turath wa al-Tajdid: Mawqifuna min al-Turath al-Qadim, 4th edition (Cairo: Al- Muassa al-Jamiiyya, 1991). 230 Hasan Hanafi, Muqaddima fi Ilm al-Istighrab, 2nd edition (Cairo: Al-Muassasa al-Jamiiyya, 1992).

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with Tunisia‘s most recent ―Jasmine Revolution,‖ Egypt‘s ―Lotus Revolution,‖ and other pro-democracy movements in Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. Tunisia‘s uprising invigorated frustrated citizens around the region. Few works have begun to understand how cultural texts like film, media, new media, and fiction function in the process of Arab social and political change. This dissertation fills this gap by interrogating the social change in cultural theory, integrating cultural-studies literature, and contributing to the prevailing theoretical trends in Orientalist-Occidental studies. It supplements current social and political theory on Orientalism-Occidentalism with a more comprehensive historical treatment of the roots of our contemporary accounts of U.S.-Middle East encounter and how it should be managed or confronted. Moreover, it makes a conceptual or theoretical contribution to the modern social sciences and the more traditional disciplines associated with Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.

Indeed, recent events in international politics clearly drove both Americans and

Muslims toward a rethinking of their approaches, methods, and intellectual priorities. In the

U.S, many scholars address the most challenging element in the success or failure of U.S. influence/U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, i.e., the recognition of the other and giving it the chance to be a ―subject‖ instead of making it always an ―object.‖ On the other side, some Arab and Muslim scholars have turned to Ijtihad or personal reasoning, which is considered one of the sources of the Islamic Sharia or law, to defend Islam against accusations of ―backwardness‖ and ―fundamentalism‖. They have provided the ultimate evidence to demonstrate that Islam does not inherently oppose modernity but actually welcomes it and is capable of adopting it. This study is an attempt to unpack the counter-

226

narratives of Arab Muslims‘ interaction with Western modernity as a very important formative factor in re-thinking universal causes and virtues. Moreover, it asserts that many negative images and concerns about the U.S. were well in place even before 9/11, and that the fears of US expansionism were not created by the Iraq war, although certainly intensified.

227

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