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‘The Power of History: ‘A Day of Dignity: Karama with the ‘Sin, Redemption, and Vision of Reappropriating Syria’s Past,’ Blood of Innocents,’ a film review Female Illness in Modern Arab a review of ‘Among the Ruins: of ‘Karama Has No Walls,’ p. 14 Literature,’ a book review, p. 25 Syria Past and Present,’ p . 17 AL JADID A Review & Record of Arab Culture and Arts COPYRIGHT AL JADID www.ALJADID.com VOL. 19, No. 69 (2015) Rescuing Christianity in Syria! by Salam Kawakibi Shoman Collection Embraces Broad Spectrum th st of 20 to 21 Century Arab Artists by Doris Bittar When a Corpse Becomes an Icon for Syria’s Agony! by Elie Chalala Unmasking the Assad Regime by Bobby Gulshan Women of the Revolutions: The New Faces of Arab Feminism by Angele Ellis Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Foretelling of Future Young People’s Revolutions by Nada Ramadan Elnahla Whatever is Left of the Levantine Spirit? by Elie Chalala Novel Offers Travelogue Through Syrian Dystopia by D.W. Aossey A Balanced and Elegant Depiction: Contemporary Arabic Poetry by Zaid Shlah From Kansas to Beirut: A Tale of Two Women by Lynne Rogers ‘Encoded Walk: On Beaten Path in Hama’ (2015) by Doris Bittar Editor’s Notebook When a Corpse Becomes an Icon for Syria’s Agony and Abandonment! “For a moment I was in a state of disbelief, thinking a capsized boat. He didn’t know that his picture would sleep had overtaken him,” wrote Mr. Ghassan Charbel dominate TV screens and front pages” (The words quoted, about Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who died when a like all previous and subsequent quotes unless otherwise boat carrying Syrian migrants to the Greek island of Kos attributed, are from Mr. Ghassan Charbel.) Unquestionably, capsized near the Turkish city of Bodrum. “There are Aylan’s image mesmerized much of the world, even touching neither holes in his clothes, nor signs of torture and nothing those who had closed their eyes and ears to dying Syrians. appears unusual about this Syrian child lying on a Turkish Aylan Kurdi’s death has vividly called attention to the shore,” continued Charbel, Al Hayat’s editor-in-chief. tragic transformation of Syrian lives since 2011. “How News of this tragic death dominated the front pages of the difficult to be Syrian in these days, how horrible to be world’s newspapers and exploded on television and social Syrian-Kurd in all days, and how even more painful to be media. Many agree that the images of Aylan seared into from Kobani, which we Arabs call ‘Eye of the Arabs.’” our psyches, distinguishing themselves from those of other Assad’s real-life reign of terror -- which culminated in Syrian deaths to which Charbel and much of the world have 2011 with unprecedented atrocities -- fires the imagination of sadly become habituated during the last four and a half years. writers and ordinary citizens alike, allowing for language to Articles show photos of Aylan’s death which some have stretch in order to grasp meaning. Charbel’s prose proves no deceptively described as “peaceful” only because no one exception. “I almost accused Aylan of deliberately committing gassed, barrel-bombed, massacred, or tortured this little boy. suicide out of desperation [to escape] from a country that (Artwork: While the photo of Aylan on the Turkish shore is web-based, the other is a calligraphy by Dr. Fayeq Oweis, which reads in Arabic the name of Aylan). Charbel continues with his captivating prose, “I almost murders its children in its own territory and, frequently, said be careful not to wake him. Try to stop, for a little bit, in the oceans. It expels them and then throws them into the the pounding thunder of the guns, the roar of aircraft, the teeth of the dream sellers which deliver them to their graves. shrills of the barrel bombs and thermobaric missiles, the Perhaps he committed suicide to throw his corpse into the concussion of booby-trapped cars and explosive belts.” face of this predator world. He wanted to throw his corpse His words aptly describe the Syrian theater of war. While into the face of a clown called world conscience which Aylan died in the sea, other Syrian children have died each has remained a bystander to the open Syrian wound.” He day for the past four years, if not from aircraft bombing or wanted to throw his corpse “into the face of the supermarket from chemical attacks, then from the sheer fear of witnessing of the United Nations, and the shop of the Arab League, as brutal, and indiscriminate bombings. “Perhaps he had bet well as the shops of the decision-making world capitals.” that his brother Ghalib would wake him after a while, and At the dawn of the revolution, Syrians took most of the that his mother Rihana would call him to continue the trip in Arab world and the international community at their words, case Ghalib overslept. Perhaps Aylan didn’t know that Ghalib expecting rescue from an unrestrained, tyrannical regime, had died before he could awaken him, and so had his mother especially when the dead reached the hundreds of thousands Rihana before she had a chance to call out to him... Perhaps and the displaced numbered in the millions. Still, no rescue the three-year old Aylan did not notice that the boat with the came, neither from their neighboring brothers or from afar. This fleeing Syrians had capsized, and that Syria itself resembled indifference has fostered a sense of helplessness, gradually 2 www.ALJADID.com AL JADID Vol. 19, no. 68 Editor’s Notebook paving the way for the rise of vicious, violent organizations that Mr. Charbel’s answer proved telling, and predictable, given the have damaged the revolution more than the regime. Thus, the current tragedy in Syria. “I listened to her words and was tempted notion of forgetfulness and abandonment has become a common by a desire to smile. There is no justification for me, an Arab, to mindset among many Syrians, and these sentiments echo in go to Auschwitz. I have no right to examine history’s genocides Charbel’s essay. “This monstrous world has a fickle memory; while I am drowning in the holocausts of the present. I am from a tomorrow it will get bored with the corpse of Aylan and will turn region whose armies and militias do not hate the ‘final solution.’” the page, and for this reason the corpse needs to be preserved Mesmerized by the corpse of Aylan lying on a Turkish and presented to the U.N. Security Council so that John Kerry is shore, Charbel envisions it to be crying out “against the long reminded of the “flowing river of corpses in the region, regardless season of shame, the season of the fleeing refugee convoys. I of his frequent visits or his smiles…It should be sent also to his have heard them on TV praising the countries which received master, the hero of the “Red Line” series.” Charbel did not forget them with open arms” after their native homelands abandoned to add Sergey Lavrov and his master in the Kremlin to the list, two them. “It is a long season of shame. The foreign country is names which will inhabit a place of infamy in Syrian memory. more merciful…How harsh these places which we call home.” Al Hayat’s editor-in-chief shares a recent experience in “Be careful not to wake [Aylan] up. He will tell of the Warsaw, when the tourist guide in the hotel said to him: “It is horrors of his journey, and the horrors of his country,” warns important to go to Auschwitz to view the effects of the holocaust, Mr. Charbel at the conclusion of his painful meditation. the gas chambers and the atrocities committed by the Nazis.” Bab Touma from above, with minaret and belfry, Damascus (Courtesey of “Among The Ruins) Whatever is Left of the Levantine Spirit? The Arab world lives in a state of nostalgia for bygone Levant, a place which historically has represented the polar days, when much of the hatred and intolerance of today had opposite of ISIS ideology, causes dissonance. While watching not set in, and the demographic minorities of what was once Steve Kroft of CBS 60 Minutes’ interviewing president called the Levant were not escaping to Europe and elsewhere. Obama, I could not help noticing that Kroft used the acronym But the Levant of peaceful coexistence between religious ISIS while Obama used the term ISIL in his answers. It and ethnic minorities and the Muslim majority has suffered a further begs the question: what and where is “The Levant?” physical blow with the rise of the terroristic Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). While most of the world has been using -1- the term ISIS, and major Arab media sources have subsequently The term Levant refers to where “cultures met, borders reduced the name to The Islamic State, Obama and his State blurred, and religions and people cross-bred for better or for Department have delivered an additional moral blow by using worse,” according to Adina Hoffman’s review (“Writings from the acronym ISIL (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). the Most Fractured Place on Earth”) of four Levant-related Using the word Levant has raised much curiosity, books in The Nation Magazine on August 27, 2015. The title of both intellectual and political. Identifying the vicious and obscurantist ISIS movement with the region called the Continued on page 6 AL JADID Vol. 19, no.