Viewpoints The State of the Arts in the Middle East: Volume IV

The Middle East Institute Washington, DC March 2009

Literature, visual art, and photography not only serve an aesthetic purpose, but often act as mediums through which their creators explore deeply personal experiences and their broader social implications. In this, the fourth volume of MEI’s “The State of the Arts in the Middle East,” Najat Rahman considers the works of the Palestinian artists Emily Jacir and Eman Haram, and W. Scott Chahanovich (with Pauline Pannier) discusses the memoirs of the Moroccan-born writer Abdellah Taïa. As the essays by Rahman and Chahanovich reveal, these artists have pushed the boundaries of their respective crafts, and in so doing, have shed light on the transformational role that memory can play in shaping individual and collective identity.

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Call for Papers

The arts of the Middle East are “alive” — with new artists, genres, and themes continuously being graft- ed onto old, adding shades and texture. While some of these are represented in this volume, many more are not. In the interest of providing a fuller picture of the state of the arts in the region, MEI welcomes additional essays from young and established scholars. These essays (1,000-1,200 words) must be acces- sible to non-specialists and aim to shed light on the importance of a specific artist, body of work, theme, or genre. Topic proposals will be accepted on a rolling or ongoing basis. Essays accepted for publication will be added to the current collection and published in electronic format. Please submit topic propos- als in the form of a 100-word abstract (including full name, title, and affiliation) to Dr. John Calabrese at [email protected]

Cover photos are credited, where necessary, in the body of the collection. 104 Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu Viewpoints Special Edition

The State of the Arts in the Middle East: Volume IV

To read Volume I, please click here or visit http://tinyurl.com/no2s2g To read Volume II, please click here or visit http://tinyurl.com/yjp4lo4 To read Volume III, please click here or visit http://tinyurl.com/ykb8rvr

Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu 105 Against Erasures: Memory and Loss in the Art of Emily Jacir and Eman Haram

Najat Rahman

The visual art of Emily Jacir, “Where We Come From” (2003), and Eman Haram’s photo exhibit, “Involuntary Memory” (2006), inscribe a memory that resists the systematic effacement of collective history, and a loss inherent in any displacement.1 It is a memory that is intimate and plural, fluid and performative, and that spans many displacements and transformations. Rather than preserving a memory of what was, loss emerges in their work as continuous, not an event passed. Memory, however, rooted in the present, opens onto a future. Through different media, their work becomes a conscious interven- tion to counter such historical erasure and violent fragmentation. A dynamic search for form that could speak to the loss reveals how the political need not be at odds with the aesthetic. The human dimension of loss transcends any particular identity in their work without eliding the historical. Najat Rahman is Associate Professor of Comparative Palestinian artists are creating new transnational networks, languages, and identities Literature at the University in the way they employ mass culture, performance art, and media. Their art is in turn of Montreal. She is author pluralized by this use. It is a cultural expression marked by unique images and lan- of Literary Disinheritance: guage. Like the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and the stories of Ghassan Kanafani, this Home in the Writings of art resists the erasure of Palestinian history, but it ultimately transforms and reinvents Mahmoud Darwish and As- tradition through medium, image, and language. It also transforms prevalent notions of sia Djebar (Lexington Books, identity and of belonging. Henceforth, “dislocations felt by displaced subjects towards 2008) and co-editor of Exile’s disrupted histories and to shifting and transient national identities” will constitute this Poet, Mahmoud Darwish: belonging.2 As exilic identities, they are “constantly producing and reproducing them- Critical Essays (Interlink selves anew, through transformations and difference.”3 Books, 2008).

In the past decade, Palestinian es- thetic production — local and diasporic — has gained increasing visibility and recognition on the in- ternational scene. (Emily Jacir’s pres- tigious Hugo Boss Prize in 2008 and Sharif Waked’s exhibits in the Tate Modern and the Guggenheim are but the latest examples). This atten- tion is testimony to the innovations of young artists and is crucial to the dissemination of an artistic experi- Eman Haram, “All the Erased Faces Haunt My ence that has historically remained Remembrances,” 2006. on the margins. It also points to a wider and more extensive experimentation that is taking place in the Palestinian cul- tural scene. Have the 1990s heralded a new period of creativity in the wake of Oslo, and

1. Jacir’s piece is also compiled in Christian Kravagna et al., Belongings: Arbeiten/Works 1998-2003 (Verlag, 2004), while Haram’s photos are available at Saatchi Gallery. 2. Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: Geography’s Visual Culture (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 15. 3. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Sydelle Rubin and Nicholas Mirzoeff, eds.,Diaspora and Visual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews (New York: Routledge, 2000), cited in Fran Lloyd, Contemporary Arab Women’s Art: Dialogues of the Present (: Women’s Art Library, 1999), p. 34. Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu 106 Rahman...

“as a result of the decentralization of the Palestinian political scene,” as Ilan Pappé argues?4 Kamal Boullata notes the number of women among the leading innovators and points to the challenges of tracing developments in “across disconnected territories and different cultural environments.”5

Marked by its diversity, whereby dispersal and rupture, which began in 1948, become points of inscription, this esthetic corpus does not relate a unified story of the Pales- tinian experience. While each artist interro- gates identity in a unique manner, it is the negotiation of the personal and the collec- tive, the historic and the esthetic that they seem to share.6 This diversity also manifests itself in the use of the medium, in the cre- Eman Haram, “Untitled,” 2006. ation of a new language in the visual work of art (photography, spatial installation, video, personal performance). Boullata argues, however, that “memory of place” unites Palestinian artists of the post- period, despite their dispersal.7 More than individual visions, this art has incorporated aspects of global culture to affirm its national belonging as it addresses Western audiences and as it re- mains deeply rooted in Palestinian life. More importantly, Palestinian identity is revealed in these works as plural and dynamic.

Emily Jacir’s “Where We Come From” speaks of the fundamental link of memory and loss, life and art, the collective exile and the personal displacement: It is “coming from my experience of spending my whole life going back and forth between and other parts of the world.”8 “Where We Come From” performs both the displacement of Palestin- ians and the restrictions on their movement. The artist herself, an American citizen, is able to travel. In this work, she carries out personal requests of who cannot go home, or cannot cross certain borders of their country to see friends or family, who ask her to visit particular places and people dear to them. In documenting her visits in pho- tographs, she reveals the absurd and abject circumstances in which Palestinians often find themselves, conditions in which they lack freedom of movement among others. She states: “I have seen the deliberate fragmentation of our lands and the isolation of our people from each other by the Israelis. This is an extreme form of violence. For me, this piece was a dialogue between ourselves across these artificial islands and borders that have been created. I conceived of this piece for Palestine.”9 Her photos reflect the dispersion that she tries to overcome: Images of absence mark incomplete lives, and yet they create links with others.10

One such wish is from Jihad, identified in an -English bilingual text as “Born in Shati Refugee Camp, Gaza City/Living in /Gazan I.D. card/Father and mother from Asdud/ (exiled in 1948).” The text reads: “Visit my mother, hug and kiss her … Visit the sea at sunset and smell it for me and walk a bit … enough. Am I greedy?… I left Gaza for Ramallah in 1995 and cannot go back. I also cannot move to any place in the because of the Israeli restrictions.” A note is included at the bottom describing the visit, how they had tea, how the mother inquired after Jihad. The color image next to the text shows the back of the artist as she holds and kisses the mother who is closer to 4. Ilan Pappé, The Modern Middle East (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 216. 5. Several studies on Palestinian art have appeared in the last years, most notably Kamal Boullata’s Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Pres- ent (London: Dar Saqi, 2009) and Gannit Ankori’s work, Palestinian Art (London: Reaktion Books, 2006). See Boullata, Palestinian Art, pp. 30 and 28. 6. See Ankori, Palestinian Art, pp. 8 and 217; see also Boullata, Palestinian Art. 7. See Ankori, Palestinian Art, pp. 21, 18. Narratives about Palestinian art tend to locate its beginning in 1948, although many acknowledge that a vibrant art movement existed before the Nakba and is now difficult to trace. 8. Jacir, in an interview with Stella Rollig, Belongings, p. 9. 9. Jacir speaking to Rollig, Belongings, p. 9. 10. T.J. Demos, “Poetry’s Beyond,” The Hugo Boss Prize 2008, p. 59. Rahman...

the viewer.11

Jacir’s work testifies to irrecoverable loss and to a belonging that persists against all fragmentation. Ultimately her im- ages are a “memorial to untold stories:”12 “anti-images, unspectacular private pictures,” “a self-portrait which also speaks collectively of a people,” a “personal archive as a proxy for the disappearing archives of Palestine.”13 The artist nonethe- less recognizes certain paradoxes of her art project: “Where We Come From is a failure in some way. I am not sure how to reconcile the notion that non-Palestinians are being entertained by our sorrows and dreams.”14 Yet, consequently, she is no longer allowed to go to Gaza and to certain parts of the West Bank: “Jacir could not create this work today.”15

Eman Haram’s “Involuntary Memory” also ruminates on the process of loss, but as erasure — sometimes due to the nature of memory but more significantly as historical effacements, a process where memory nonetheless also persists. Involuntary memory represents “the more indirect and deep sense of personal experience (times, places, feelings, and situations) that are not subject to immediate recall but instead are involuntarily triggered by objects or events associated with that experience.”16 Calling her photographic experiments “ongoing explorations,” and “disconnected lives,” Haram suggests in this series how history is intimately at the heart of her art, where the self also issues forth a collective experi- ence, where memory recalls a forgetting. Her photos expose the effacement, and by so doing also resist it.

“Untitled” (composite digital photo, 2006) uses language in conjunction with image to clearly evoke historical erasures of identity, of the past, of collectivities. The fading, blurred images of faces recall the inscription of effacement. The black and white seems to evoke the past, as the image’s grainy quality evokes a negative of a receding original. The words too are faded, to differing degrees: “colonized” and “erased” alluding to the past, while “occidentalized,” “occupied,” and “justified” in bold, suggest the Eman Haram, “Erasures,” 2007. present. The word “erased” echoes with each historical violence named. An accusation and a judgment frame the words, “colonized. Erased … Occidentalized … erased … erased … occupied … justified.” Lan- guage provokes, by what remains essentially unsaid. The rhythm of language coincides with the image and forcefully drills against that vanishing. Just like the suspension points, the image remains an overture rather than a foreclosed conclusion. The English words target an audience. The word “occidentalized” is used rather than “westernized,” which is an anglicized rendition of the French word. Such use further performs this process of erasure in the layering of identities: The Palestinian-American artist now living in Francophone Montreal (having lived previously in the United States, Syria, and Lebanon) has been further estranged from the English she uses. The artist’s language occupies the position of “in-between” many languages, revealing a critical posture, and “the continuous quest for a language of self- expression.”17

“All the Erased Faces Haunt my Remembrances” (2006, constructed digital photo) reveals the blurred images of women’s faces turned to the viewer as they advance forward. In contrasting black forms to white headscarves, the remembrances

11. See Belongings, n.p. 12. Cited in Demos, “Poetry’s Beyond,” p. 59. 13. Andreas Bauer and Roland Wäspe, Installation Shots at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, pp. 9-10. 14. Jacir speaking to Rollig, Belongings, p. 10. 15. Demos, “Poetry’s Beyond,” pp. 61, 62. 16. Nada Shabout, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2007), p. 122. 17. Ankori, Palestinian Art, p. 173. Rahman...

have clearly turned to haunting, and the group of passersby strangely inhabit the self. The haunting of collectivities in both images are projections of the intimate self, the past that continues to inhabit the present. The haunting of that which should no longer be there seems to work counter to the erasure, even while defining its nature (i.e. that the haunt- ing is that of all erasures of selves, whether political or social). The encompassing “all” embraces a collectivity of women without losing the singularity of the self.

In “Erasures” (composite digital photo, 2007), schoolgirls are photo- graphed from the shoulders down, in uniform clothes and postures. As education is primarily concerned with the mind, the absence of heads implies effacement by a process of education. As in the art- ist’s history of growing up attending a Protestant school, education is linked to Western missions. The x-ray dimension of the image exemplifies a photographic exploration of the self where the object becomes elusive. Memory captures a searing image. One panel bor- dered and colored arbitrarily marks a self.

“Erase the oblivion” (2006, constructed digital photo) presents a likely family photo, and a seemingly natural process of fading away Eman Haram, “Erase the Oblivion,” 2006. juxtaposed to the torn borders between the women, as if in panels, and the angst of the appeal to “erase the oblivion.” The series seems to enumerate various erasures — from the historical and the social to the seemingly natural — that occupy the self.

Uneasy with solely political interpretation of their work, Palestinian artists also resist the eliding of its political dimen- sions. While art may contribute to healing social and historical wounds, both artists are vigilant to the way art can be easily recuperated for the enjoyment of others without registering the protest.18 This art has in its very constitution challenged such recuperations. In Edward Said’s words, this art becomes a “defiant memory,” “unwilling to let go of the past,” while being marked by change. It is devoid of “sentimental homecoming,” reflecting “a state of lucid exile,” that “offers neither rest nor respite.”19

18. For a discussion on the co-option of Palestinian art, see Yara al-Ghadban, “The Ghost in the Art Work,” blog post by Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism Blog, September 10, 2009, http://jhbwtc.blogspot.com. 19. See Edward Said, “The Art of Displacement: Mona Hattoum’s Logic of Irreconcilables,” inThe Entire World as a Foreign Land (London: Tate Gallery, 2000), pp. 7-17, cited in Boullata, Palestinian Art, p. 176, and in Ankori, Palestinian Art, p. 154. Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu 109 Orientalism and Sexual Identity in the Works of Abdellah Taïa

W. Scott Chahanovich, with contributions from Pauline Pannier

Outside of the burqa and the banlieues, French public debate allows little space for North African immigrants. Muslim immigrant communities play static stereotypes in the French mind; recent debate about the veil, fomented by the bien-pensant govern- ment of President Nicolas Sarkozy, has further squeezed shut a conciliatory place for Arab Muslims, in general, in the French national imagination. The former North Af- rican subjects are “caught between two chairs” (le cul entre deux chaises), as the crude French saying has it. Moreover, a French penchant for Orientalist dialogue — some- times benign, sometimes sexual, but always dominant — precludes a hope for cultural contribution from the immigrant sons of Parisian suburbs, other than the otiose ke- bab kiosk. Yet, emerging from between the banlieues and out from Gérôme’s The Snake Charmer, Abdellah Taïa is re-mapping the French collective imagination, and pushing W. Scott Chahanovich works sexual envelopes, one book at a time. as a freelance Arabic literary journalist, with a specific in- Desiring Taïa terest in the role of literature in civil society. Next year, he will The quiet Arab of Albert Camus’L’Etranger has become more obstreperous since decol- be pursuing a master’s degree onization. Herein struggles Abdellah Taïa. In the tradition of Frantz Fanon, Taïa writes in Middle Eastern History at in the “imperial” language. His reading public consists essentially of wealthy Arabs and St. Andrews University. Francophone Europeans. How, then, is his work relevant? Looking for his books at Fnac in Paris, the French equivalent of Barnes and Noble, one would assume that since Taïa Pauline Pannier is a French both writes in French and lives in Paris, his works would be in the French literature sec- MA student in public policy tion. How naïve. One must first be brought to a vague “Middle Eastern and North Af- and political philosophy at rican Literature” section. This does not abrogate the implications of his work, however. Sciences Po and the Ecole des Although he neither resides in Morocco nor writes in Arabic, the author is re-mapping Hautes Etudes en Sciences the French Orientalist imagination, complicating sexual discourses, and unveiling the Sociales in Paris. Her current dominance of French cultural imperialism. research deals with intercul- tural relations, secularism, Taïa was born in 1975 in Salé, Morocco, a village just outside the capital Rabat. There, in and the place of Islam in Eu- a three-bedroom house, Taïa lived in close quarters with his family. “One room for my rope. She would like to thank six sisters, my mother, my little brother and me,” he explained to journalist Brian Whi- Scott Chahanovich for giving taker of The Guardian in Paris in January 2009. “The other room was for my big brother her the opportunity to collab- and the last one for my father. What I try to show is what it’s like being in the middle of orate with him on this article, this group and being influenced by the bodies of these people that I was so close to. I was as well as for their regular attracted to some of them but of course there were barriers, which I couldn’t cross.” and highly instructive corre- spondence on those issues. In The Salvation Army, an account of his first experience on the harsh streets of Geneva as a scholarship student, Taïa further jostles sensitivities. Letting his “imagination” go, he “ventures in this torrid and slightly incestuous ground with a certain excitation.” He also discovers a cacophony of sexual desire, love, and admiration for his older brother Abdelkebir.

One is struck by both this extremely explicit, and very unexpected, memoir. The style re- sembles, somewhat, Rousseau’s Confessions: part autobiography, part fiction, but entirely provocative. As a Western reader, one is also confounded. Modern populist discourse tells us that the Arab Muslim world is über-conservative, stringent, and fundamentalist;

110 Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu Chahanovich...

sex is wrapped in the burqa and kept out of sight. But classic Orientalist dialogue characterized the Oriental as sexual, wild, polygamous, incestuous, and homo-erotic. Which is it, then, that Taïa seeks to convey? As a Western reader, are we to re-embrace images such as Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus, Ingres’ Turkish Bath, or Gérôme’s The Snake Charmer? The re-mapping of a modern Orientalist imagination has begun.

The curious case of sexuality in the Middle East may seem odd. But in light of Jo- seph Massad’s 2007 publication Desiring Arabs, Taïa presents another implication. Massad argues that homosexuality is a Western construct, an identity that is not organic to the non-European world — the Arab world in particular, as the title sug- gests — and is ideologically perpetuated and imposed on the Arab by what he calls the “Gay International.” Massad does not offer a moralistic assessment of homo- sexuality as such; the book is staunchly academic and printed by the prestigious Chicago University Press. Rather, he asserts that the Gay International is part of a missionary campaign by the West, its roots in the Carter Administration’s Hu- man Rights campaign against Soviet transgressions — a Cold War ideology which birthed America’s myriad proxy wars, of which the Afghan Taliban counts among US policy bumblings. Massad writes: “Like the major US- and European-based hu- man rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International) and fol- lowing the line taken up by white Western women’s organizations and publications, the Gay International was to reserve a special place for the Muslim countries in its discourse as well as its advocacy. The Orientalist impulse … continues to guide all branches of the human rights community.” Taïa, however, both confirms and rebuts Massad in The Salvation Army and An Arab Melancholy.

In The Salvation Army, an account of his first exposure to cruel Geneva, Taïa conveys a tense relationship with Western men. They always suspect Taïa and other Moroccans of being prostitutes, both gay and straight. However, this Western- imposed sexuality on the Oriental did not catalyze Taïa’s homosexuality. That is, Taïa is clear that he is not an oppressed, poor Arab who interiorized a sexuality projected by white European men. In contrast, he insistently describes the devel- opment of his homosexual identity with other Moroccan teenagers, whether it be his older brother, or his group of “bad boy” friends, who engage in sexual boundary pushing in their impoverished town. Taïa clearly gives the impression that he did not first need to go to Europe to realize what it meant that he preferred men, i.e., that he is gay. Rather it was in Europe that he fully realized that he and other Moroccans are commodities to be bought and sold.

In An Arab Melancholy, Taïa tells another tale of sexual initiation, and a less tender one than his family stories in The Salvation Army. Specifically, he relates the time where he escaped collective rape by a group of Moroccan “bad boys.” The boys, however, are held back by the muezzin’s call to prayer. Throughout, homosexual desire is depicted as prevalent and real, though more aggressive and derisive. For example, a policeman yells slurs at the young author as he accompanies a white man around Marrakech. Thus, the vision of prudish, violently homophobic Muslim countries is complicated. Also, Massad’s assertion that homosexual identity and/or emotional attraction are Western imports and imposed con- structs weakens.

Lastly, Taïa exposes French domination over Morocco, and by extension, North Africa in general. First, the male Euro- pean character is sketched in detail in The Salvation Army. Being European is a consummate ideal. Salim, the first man with whom Taïa has sex, is a Moroccan émigré to Paris; he does not speak Arabic. France, and Europe, therefore con- sume and overpower l’etranger. Foreigners must self-immolate into the burning torch of French identity or get burned. Those who get burned huddle, nameless, in the banlieues.

Second, the European male is dominant and controlling. The Oriental is, for the European, a fetish, a pastime. For ex-

Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu 111 Chahanovich... ample, Jean, Taïa’s Swiss lover, calls the author a “little whore” when they break up. Labeling a man as not only a woman, but pathetically small, suggests a dialogue of domination. Another Swiss man, a random pedestrian, initiates Taïa into the under- ground gay sex scene. Taïa exudes a certain passivity and acceptance regarding his status as a prostitute in the eyes of European men. Hence, the European possesses knowledge and can manipulate the Oriental. Europe is his territory, as much as the colonies were once his. Also, as the author narrates, “a little elegant, arrogant fifty- year-old man walks up to [Taïa] and gives [him] a business card, upon which is written: I pay well.” This is, for Taïa, the sine qua non of the double-faced European fascination of Moroccans. All these characters, whether integrated émigrés or blue- blooded Europeans, are the prototype of the powerful European who can control, buy, and impose an identity on the Oriental. The classical Orientalist presupposition is reified. The Arab is somehow more sexual than the European and any European can have sex with an Arab, or for Taïa, a Moroccan.

Flying back to Morocco, Taïa best conveys the implication: “The plane that brought me back to Morocco, a couple of weeks later, was full with Moroccan women who thought they were chic. They were high-class prostitutes. They had just finished their season in Switzerland, and were triumphantly going back to Morocco, their pockets full, their freedom finally acquired thanks to Swiss francs. Over there, like here, everything could be bought.” Europe and the West remain the historic and contemporary dominators, be it financially, politically, or racially. The Oriental remains the subject of study, domination, and desire. Such is the task of desiring Taïa.

112 Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu The State of the Arts in the Middle East Cumulative Index

Volume I (May 2009) Introduction 7

I. Language and Literature

Fiction and Publics: The Emergence of the “Arabic Best-Seller”, by Roger Allen 9

An Introduction to Arabic Calligraphy, by Mahdi Alosh and Muhammad Ali Aziz 13

Turkey through the Looking Glass: Modern Fiction, by Robert Finn 17

Resistance in Writing: Ghassan Kanafani and the “Question of Palestine”, by Barbara Harlow 20

Illustrating Independence: The Algerian War Comic of the 1980s, by Jennifer Howell 23

The Iraqi Tragedy, Scheherazade, and Her Granddaughters, by Ikram Masmoudi 26

II. Performing Arts

Flourishing Arts in the Arabian Peninsula, by Steven Caton 31

Flowers in the Desert, by Mark LeVine 34

The Palestinian Cultural Scene: Narrating the Nakba, by Hala Khamis Nassar 38

The Hilarity of Evil: The Terrorist Drama in Israeli and Palestinian Films, by Yaron Shemer 40

Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu 113 Two Icons of Hollywood on the Nile’s Unlikely Golden Age, by Christopher Stone 44

III. Visual Arts

Art and Revolution in the Islamic Republic of Iran, by Shiva Balaghi 49

Hosay: A Shi‘i Ritual Transformed, by Peter J. Chelkowski 53

Mapping Modernity in Arab Art, by Nuha N.N. Khoury 56

L’appartement 22: Creating Space for Art and Social Discourse in Morocco, by Katarzyna Pieprzak 59

Iraqi Art: Dafatir, by Nada Shabout 62

Orientalist Art in Morocco, by Mary Vogl 65

Arts of the Middle East: Selected Web Resources 69

Volume II (September 2009)

Samia Zaru, by Carol Malt 74

Mutiny in the Harem: Nadir Moknèche’s Algiers Trilogy, by May Telmissany 77

Turkish Cypriot Women Artists and Their Role in Society, by Netice Yildiz 81

Volume III (December 2009)

Mostafa Fathi’s The World of Boys: TheShabab Literature Movement of Egypt and Breaking Taboos, by W. Scott Chahanovich 90

Sabiha Sumar — Pakistan’s Award-Winning Filmmaker, by Martin Gani 93

The Egyptian Culture in Spoken Language, by Gamil Sinki 96 114 Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu Volume IV (March 2010)

Against Erasures: Memory and Loss in the Art of Emily Jacir and Eman Haram, by Najat Rahman 106

Orientalism and Sexual Identity in the Works of Abdellah Taïa, by W. Scott Chahanovich, with contributions from Pauline Pannier 109

Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu 115 Middle East Institute

116 Middle East Institute Viewpoints • www.mei.edu