Mark Le Vine The new Arab exiles The new Arab exiles – a largely well-educated group of activists that are creating thriving communities in Europe and North 109 America – are a core component of the emerging trans-Europe- 2016 an and Mediterranean public sphere. By representing an alter- 71-72 native to jihadis and by forming a bridge between their coun- tries of origin and their new hosts, they are bound to challenge Aspenia not just individual regimes and governments, but to help rede- fine the very meaning of the term “European”. From the ancient Greeks’ “ostracism” (ostrakophoria) to the Roman term exsilium and the English “banishment”, the involuntary removal from one’s native land has long been experienced as among the harshest of punish- ments for anyone challenging state power. Cicero nearly committed suicide when he was exiled from Rome, saved only by the Mark Le Vine, an accomplished guitarist, teaches pleadings of a friend. Ovid Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine and at the Cen- blamed exile for ruining his ter for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University. poetic genius. Legend even He is currently working on a book on the Arab up- risings after five years. 109-119-Le Vine-ingl_71-72 CORRETTO.indd 109 20/05/16 18.23 has it that Dante’s Inferno was inspired by the hell of a wandering life after his exile from Florence; Casanova was forced to spend the last part of his life as a librarian in a Bohemian castle, after his second exile from Venice. As Dante described it, “Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta più caramente; e ques- to è quello strale che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta. Tu proverai sì come sa di sale lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle lo scendere e ’l salir per l’altrui scale.” (You will leave everything you love most: this is the arrow that the bow of exile shoots first. You will know how salty another’s bread tastes and how hard it is to ascend and descend another’s stairs” (Paradiso XVII: 55-60). But exile could also be a blessing, or at least far less of a curse than the al- ternative punishment, which was almost always death. It offered the hope of 110 return, of reinstatement into the collective, a chance to feel whole again, at some point in the future. As Siegfried Kracauer, mentor to Theodor Adorno and an inspiration for the Frankfurt School, described his life in pre-war Berlin, “It appears as if this city had control of the magical means of eradi- cating all memories... Whoever stays any length of time in Berlin hardly knows where they actually came from.” THE INTELLECTUAL PRECEDENT. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries political and cultural – particularly “literary” – exile became al- most a right of passage for artists, troublemakers and revolutionaries of var- ious persuasions: Byron and Zola, Lenin and Che, Freud and Einstein, Ben- jamin and Adorno, Saddam and Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid. The number of thinkers, activists, thugs, would be and actual revolutionaries and dictators who were forced out of their home countries for significant periods of time is almost impossible to count. Europe in particular has long been a haven for political exiles from around the world. This is not surprising given both the global footprint of European 109-119-Le Vine-ingl_71-72 CORRETTO.indd 110 20/05/16 18.23 empire and colonialism, and the powerful if extremely fragile (and some- times failed) identity of many European societies as havens for the persecut- ed and for free political and cultural expression. Closer to the present day, Europe became especially important for Latin American dissidents during the era of rightwing dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s. Their experienc- es shed important light on the core dissonance of the exile experience, of 111 Khalid Albaih their being “pulled in two different directions,” as their intention to return to their countries of origin and desire to remain part of the political commu- nities they left behind ran into the inevitable reality of slowly building new lives and even families in their adoptive homes.1 “It’s not as if you had decided to immigrate and start another life; an exile never made the decision to leave,” an Argentinian journalist who’d fled to Italy told the New York Times in 1984. “Your return enters in all your acts.” Whether they just “needed some air” away from a stifling cultural and po- litical milieu or were directly threatened or otherwise forced to leave, exile is rarely “golden”, despite the generosity with which some countries receive activists. Assimilation into a very different political culture can be very difficult and the exile often lives “in an imaginary country [...] in parenthe- ses, like living in a waiting room.”2 109-119-Le Vine-ingl_71-72 CORRETTO.indd 111 20/05/16 18.23 THE NEW ARAB EXILES. In the last five years, since the start of the Arab uprisings in late 2010, Europe has again become home to significant communities of political exiles. The young revolutionaries of the region have increasingly made their way to major cities across the continent, and to Turkey as well, in response to the counter-revolutionary successes of regime-allied, conservative forces in their countries. I believe they can be seen as an identifiable group, which I term the “new Arab exiles”. With them, the hope and confusion faced by generations of exiles past is once again being felt across Europe. With the influx of many hundreds of thousands of refugees to Europe during the last years in response to ramped up civil wars, insurgencies and mass 112 terrorism – state and Islamist – across the Middle East and North Africa, analysts are rightly concerned about better understanding the dynamics, im- plications and likely directions of this unprecedented flow to Europe from across the Mediterranean and Levant. This phenomenon is literally changing the face of Europe, and putting huge strains on the political, security and economic systems, as well as on the logistical abilities and cultural openness of even the most welcoming countries (such as Sweden and Germany). Of course, however important the present refugee crisis may be, it is not without precedent in Europe. And the question of how to take in, process and house so many people from seemingly very different cultures is ulti- mately one more of political will than of economic abilities. I believe that an equally important development within the broader issue is that of the emer- gence of small communities of Arab exiles in key cities across Europe in the period leading up to the refugee flood. These exile hubs overlap with but are not identical to the major refugee in- take centers. They include Berlin, Paris, London, the southern Swedish city of Malmö and Istanbul. Each location is unique, and the reasons for various 109-119-Le Vine-ingl_71-72 CORRETTO.indd 112 20/05/16 18.23 exiles being concentrated owes to a combination of existing Arab communi- ties, asylum policies of the host countries, and similar issues. From my fieldwork during the last five years it is clear that many of the activists who have come to live in these communities are among the most innovative, well-known figures from the region who have managed to avoid imprison- ment, torture and death at the hands of their governments. Some cities, like Berlin and London, have a well-earned reputation for tol- erance and diversity, which have made them hospitable to exiles of all kinds – from Bowie and Iggy Pop to Syrian artists and even American journalists today.3 In Berlin’s case, of course, this reputation has been augmented by Germany’s unprecedented welcoming of upwards of one million refugees. Other cities, like Malmö, have seen the influx add to a recently troubled 113 brew of ethnoreligious marginalization experienced by the previous genera- tion of Muslim immigrants to Sweden, while cities like Paris and Brussels have a long but ambivalent relationship with the communities from which the new exiles are hailing. This is further complicated today by the rise of the Islamic State ideology among young people, most of them in fact citizens or even born in the “host” countries. The new Arab exiles include members of the Gaza Youth Breaks Out move- ment, organizers from Tahrir Square, Syrian and Moroccan activists and, as important, many of the Arab Spring’s greatest musical and visual artists, writers and playwrights. Although they do not share a single ideological or political position, they do broadly share the democratic revolutionary out- look that characterized the seminal period of the uprisings, from late 2010 through 2012 – the period before Syria, Iraq and Libya descended into ever deeper levels of chaos and civil war, before the rise of ISIS, and before the military coup in Egypt. They are distinguished from the many compatriots in Europe who remain 109-119-Le Vine-ingl_71-72 CORRETTO.indd 113 20/05/16 18.23 attached to specific political factions such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Fa- tah, and other partisan tendencies, whose political differences continue to define their public activities in their host countries. ACTIVISM ABROAD. I believe that the new Arab exiles, along with their fellow Kurdish, Turkish, Iranian and other regional activists, presently in Europe, have the potential to play a crucial role both in the ongoing pro- democracy struggles in their home countries and in helping mediate between European governments and the refugee populations. Indeed, the two processes are inextricably linked, since long-term European (including Russian) and American support for authoritarian regimes from Morocco to 114 Syria are among the root causes of the present crises.