DOCSLIB.ORG

Middle East & North Africa

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Middle East & North Africa Issue 6 December 2013 Middle East & North Africa I do not want to be born a refugee Naela Mansour 2 Marta Bogdanska 12 Haid Haid 52 Displacement Exilium Female Syrian Refugees Violating Rights in the Name of Protecting Women Editorial Contents Arsaal, North Lebanon. Lots of Syrian refugees stay in this northern village close to the Syrian border Editorial 1 Sadly, the Middle East has witnessed some conditions, fl oods and three children who froze Displacement 2 of the largest mass displacements of people to death. Nejat Taştan explains how the de jure Naela Mansour worldwide over the past decade. As it currently and de facto situation of refugees and their host The Winding Road Between Damascus and Beirut 8 stands, millions of Syrians are fleeing their communities works in Turkey. As for Lebanon, Dima Wannous homes, moving within the country and Rayan Majed traces the refugee experience in Exilium 12 sometimes far outside of it. Not surprisingly, a country that has received the largest number Marta Bogdanska neighboring states have absorbed most of of displaced persons and is the only country Trapped in Disaster - Iraqi Refugees in Syria 16 these people and have managed well under the to still keep its borders open. Pierre Abi Saab Kelsey Lundgren circumstances. However, the question of how reviews the fi lm “Not Who We Are” by Lebanese Fleeing Towards Another Death - Syrian Palestinians in Lebanon 21 to deal with the waves of those who have lost documentary filmmaker Carol Mansour – a Mitwali Abu Nasser everything and might not be able to go back production made in cooperation with hbs. Haves and Have-Nots in Jordan’s Za’atari Camp 28 in the near future is a huge challenge for the In a reportage, Ryme Katkhouda looks Areej Abuqudairi refugees and for host communities, especially into the impact of Syrian refugees on Lebanese The Syrian Refugee Crisis in Turkey 31 since there is no settlement on the horizon. society and its economy. Since the situation Nejat Taştan Naela Mansour traces stories of particularly affects children, Emma Gatten On the Circumstances Syrian Refugees are Facing in Lebanon 35 displacement within Syria. While for most explores what exile means for Syrian children Rayan Majed refugees, exile is a dire prospect, Dima Wannous in terms of schooling and fi nding something Carole Mansour Wants Us to See / Wants to Show Us Something 41 elaborates on how, for some Syrian artists, their akin to home. Pierre Abi Saab fl ight to Beirut gave them a space to breathe. We Finally, Haid Haid explains how We Love the Syrians, Yet… 42 are also featuring a part of Marta Bogdanska’s “protection” has become the legal and ethical Ryme Katkhouda project “Exilium.” The photographer asks cover for ignoring the personal and sexual Syria's Children Seek Another Childhood in Lebanon 48 refugees about one item in their possession and rights of female Syrian refugees in neighboring Emma Gatten traces how a trivial lighter, a photo, a table cloth countries. In her article on early and often Female Syrian Refugees - Violating Rights in the Name of Protecting Women 52 all of a sudden assumes a diff erent meaning in not formally registered marriages of Syrian Haid Haid their life. refugees in Jordan Areej Abuqudairi shares her Wed in Refuge - Syrian Women and Girls in Jordan 58 There are stories of multiple insights on the legal vulnerability of women Areej Abuqudairi displacements as well. After the Iraq War in 2003, and families in the context of exile. more than one million Iraqi refugees came to Of course, the many diff erent facets Syria and are now stuck, as Kelsey Lundgren of this topic make it nearly impossible to cover shows, with a home that has vanished long them all in only one issue of a magazine. Still, it ago and an uncertain future in their refuge is our hope that we can at least shed some light home . Palestinians, who were more privileged on several key aspects of the Syrian refugee as refugees in Syria than in any other Arab crisis through voices that are on the ground, country, face the problem of where to go from living the tragedy. here. Mitwali Abu Nasser travelled to Palestinian We will also continue the discussion camps in Lebanon to assess their situation online at our website, which you are directly. encouraged to visit: www.lb.boell.org Areej Abuqudairi looks at how the internal economics of the Zaatari refugee Bente Scheller, René Wildangel & Joachim Paul camp in Jordan has developed after it became infamous as a result of the tough weather 2 Displacement Displacement 3 married a man from the Syrian Golan Heights, start of the Syrian revolution and the South “the immigrants” as they are called in Syrian joining Damascus in mounting demonstrations, Displacement dialect. She had nine children by this man and and later, armed resistance, Umm Ahmed was forced to help provide for them, washing would voice her deep concern over what was Naela Mansour down the entrance steps of buildings and happening where she lived. Many ordinary cleaning apartments. She then moved with her Syrians had a premonition of what the regime family from their camp near Adra and after “a might do if its power and authority were lifetime’s hardship,” arrived in al-Dhiyabiya, one challenged and were well aware that they were of the neglected and chaotic locations in the more exposed than anybody, more likely to South of rural Damascus. But she was delighted pay the ultimate price, and had absolutely no with what she had managed to achieve. She way to off set this fate. This is why they did not had put her nine children through school, with join the revolution openly, but remained silent all of them taking their baccalaureate and some and scared. Umm Ahmed was protective of her going on to university, and with her husband family’s modest assets and scared that it might she had built their large (illegal) home: Big all crumble away like some passing dream. enough, as she puts it, for both girls and boys She remained where she was for a to have the privacy they require. With the year and a half, beneath a hail of bombs and shells, until Ramadan 2012, when her house How might we speak of displacement? A lost a wall, its windows and part of the roof. dislocation? A yearning to be settled and the When the army stepped up its operations familiar landmarks nowhere to be found? against al-Dhiyabiya, al-Hajira and Sayyida Economic decline and the collapse of the Zeinab, she was forced to leave for Damascus, infrastructure that supports family and with her daughters, where she was joined by individual? It is more than all these things. It is a her husband and her sons at the house owned lassitude, an impotence, but also a fl aw in how by her husband’s family. Umm Ahmed says that time manifests itself: Having abandoned home this early morning journey was even more bitter one feels that time passes excruciatingly slowly; and more arduous than her trip from Tabariya with the change of environment the slowness of to Damascus, and that she hoped to die before time becomes infi nite. The migrant is paralyzed; “the war that was coming,” as though war and he loses his sense of initiative. Yet even this is exile were a seasonal rite that every Levantine not enough for us to talk of displacement. We must pass though. But the true torment was bring you here vignettes, of people who have to come: The quest for new accommodation. left their lands and emigrated; tales that shape Umm Ahmed tried to convince her daughters a society called Nowhere, called Suspended, that they should go to one of the refugee areas with all its gifts and pains. There is much pain that were housed in the Damascus schools, but and bitterness here, but sometimes, too, new they refused outright. They had no intention seeds send green shoots through the ashes, of going through such a degrading experience, and life goes on. especially since they were educated women: “Well-off,” with salaries. The search started in the housing developments of Barzeh, then on Umm Ahmed: “Is the road to to Jaramana, then the neighborhood of Harna close to al-Tell, before leading them back to al-Dhiyabiya open? Barzeh. Umm Ahmed could not feel at home Umm Ahmed, or Amina, was born in Palestine, anywhere after leaving her house in the South. in a camp in Tabariya, to parents who had Every time she would give some plausible moved there from Safad. She lived there for excuse in order to leave the place and attempt seven years before she and her family were to go back to her house in al-Dhiyabiya: The compelled to relocate once more in 1967. From water was cut off, the air was too cold and that journey, Umm Ahmed remembers the dry, there wasn’t enough furniture, the rent voices of the Israeli soldiers as they gave them was too high. And every time, she would force orders: “Damascus! Damascus!” she remembers, her nervous and unsettled family to continue with her siblings and her family being forced to searching. Between excuses she would come pick fruit from the trees. She also remembers each morning to the Sayyida Zeinab bus depot arriving barefoot at the gates of Damascus. and ask the drivers, “Is the road to al-Dhiyabiya When they reached Damascus they open...?” Every day they would insist that Naela Mansour holds a Ph.D.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Workshop Leaders and Speakers
    WORKSHOP LEADERS AND SPEAKERS Arabic to English group: Jonathan Wright Jonathan Wright is a British journalist and literary translator. He joined Reuters news agency in 1980 as a correspondent, and has been based in the Middle East for most of the last three decades. He has served as Reuters' Cairo bureau chief, and he has lived and worked throughout the region, including in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Tunisia and the Gulf. From 1998 to 2003, he was based in Washington, DC, covering U.S. foreign policy for Reuters. For two years until the fall of 2011 Wright was editor of the Arab Media & Society Journal, published by the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo. Elisabeth Jaquette Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from the Arabic and Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Her work has been shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize, longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, and supported by several English PEN Translates Awards, a Jan Michalski Foundation residency, and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund. She has also served as a judge for numerous translation prizes, including most recently the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Elisabeth’s book-length translations include The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz (Melville House), Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun (Comma Press), and The Apartment in Bab el-Louk by Donia Maher (Darf Publishers). Forthcoming in 2020 are The Frightened Ones by Dima Wannous (Harvill Secker/Knopf) and Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (Fitzcarraldo/New Directions). English to Arabic group: Boutheina Khaldi Boutheina Khaldi is Associate professor of Arabic and translation studies at the American University of Sharjah.
    [Show full text]
  • Asmahan Presence and Distinctive Performance Style
    A versatile singer renowned for her powerful voice, enchanting stage Asmahan presence and distinctive performance style. Amal Al-Atrash, (1912-1944), better known by her stage name Asmahan, was an exceptional Syrian-Egyptian singer and actor who rose to fame in Egypt in the 1930s and early 1940s. Born into a prominent family, she moved from Syria to Egypt with her mother and siblings due to political unrest. To earn a living, her mother, who had an excellent voice, began singing and playing the oud. She was a source of inspiration for Asmahan and her brother, Farid Al-Atrash, who also became a famous musician. Asmahan, like her mother, demonstrated vocal talent from an early age, and went on to sing songs written by DID YOU KNOW? renowned musicians in some of Egypt’s most important venues. Asmahan collaborated with the great artist Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Asmahan was a versatile singer celebrated singing one of his compositions for for her powerful voice, enchanting stage the Film Yawm Sa’id (Happy Day). presence and distinctive performance style. She was not only skilled in tarab, but she was also incredibly innovative. Her voice was FUN FACT regarded as one of the few in the Arab world at the time able to compete with renowned Asmahan and her brother Farid Al- Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Atrash starred in the successful 1941 film Intisar al-Shabab (The Triumph Despite her short life, Asmahan performed of Youth), in which they portray two and recorded several memorable songs young singers looking for fame in Egypt. composed by renowned musicians, including her brother Farid Al-Atrash.
    [Show full text]
  • 'These 39 Arab Writers Are All Under the Age of 40. They Have Flung Open
    JOUMANA HADDAD FAIZA GUENE ABDELKADER BENALI Joumana Haddad was born in Lebanon in 1970. She is Faiza Guene was born in France in head of the Cultural pages of the prestigious “An Nahar” Abdelkader Benali was born in 1975 in The Netherlands, 1985 to Algerian parents. She wrote her newspaper, as well as the administrator of the IPAF literary of Moroccan origins. Benali published his fi rst novel fi rst novel, “Kiffe kiffe demain” (Just like SAMAR YAZBEK prize (the “Arab Booker”) and the editor-in-chief of Jasad “Bruiloft aan zee” (Wedding by the Sea) in 1996, for Tomorrow) when she was 17 years old. magazine, a controversial Arabic magazine specialized in the which he received the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize. For It was a huge success in France, selling SAMER ABOU HAWWASH literature and arts of the body. Amongst her books, “Time his second novel, “De langverwachte” (The Long-Awaited, over 360,000 copies and translation for a dream” (1995), “Invitation to a secret feast” (1998), 2002), Benali was awarded the Libris Literature Prize. He Samer Abou Hawwash was born rights around the world. She’s also the “I did not sin enough” (2003), “Lilith’s Return” (2004), has since published the novels “Laat het morgen mooi in 1972 in the southern Lebanese author of “Du rêve pour les oufs” in “Conversations with international writers”, (2006), “Death weer zijn” (Let Tomorrow Be Fine, 2005) and “Feldman city of Sidon. Abou Hawwash has 2006 and “Les gens du Balto” in 2008. will come and it will have your eyes” and “Anthology of 150 en ik” (Feldman and I, 2006).
    [Show full text]
  • Le Prix De La Littérature Arabe 2019
    Communiqué de presse Paris, le 7 novembre 2019 Le Prix de la littérature arabe 2019 (doté de 10 000 €), créé par l’Institut du monde arabe et la Fondation Jean-Luc Lagardère, est décerné à l’écrivain égyptien Mohammed Abdelnabi pour son roman La Chambre de l’araignée (Actes Sud / Sindbad) traduit de l’arabe (Égypte) par Gilles Gauthier Le jury, présidé par Pierre Leroy, cogérant de Lagardère SCA, et composé de personnalités du monde des médias, des arts et de la culture ainsi que de spécialistes du monde arabe, a élu, à l’unanimité, le texte de Mohammed Abdelnabi, saluant « un écrivain audacieux au style affirmé et percutant qui fait plonger le lecteur au cœur des tabous de la société égyptienne et arabe. Un roman qui se veut une ode à la tolérance et à l’humanisme. » A l’occasion de la cérémonie de remise du prix, le 6 novembre 2019 à l’IMA, Jack Lang, Président de l’Institut, a rappelé le caractère unique du Prix et son rôle essentiel en tant que « caisse de résonnance pour les écrivains qui témoignent de l’extraordinaire vitalité de la littérature contemporaine arabe ». Pour Pierre Leroy, Président du Jury du Prix : « Transformant un événement précis en un vibrant plaidoyer pour la tolérance, Mohammed Abdelnabi accomplit ce qui peut être l’une des raisons de la littérature : porter un message politique dans l’espoir de faire évoluer la société ». Les membres du jury ont souligné la remarquable qualité des livres également retenus dans la dernière sélection de cette édition 2019 : Les petits de Décembre, de Kaouther Adimi (Éditions du Seuil) ; Ougarit, de Camille Ammoun (éditions incultes) ; Le Ciel sous nos pas, de Leïla Bahsaïn (Albin Michel) ; Égypte 51, de Yasmine Khlat (Elyzad) ; Port-au-Prince Aller-Retour, de Georgia Makhlouf (La Cheminante) ; Ceux qui ont peur (traduit de l’arabe par François Zabbal), de Dima Wannous (Gallimard).
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Configurations Contextualising Transformation Processes and Lasting Crises in the Middle East and North Africa Politik Und Gesellschaft Des Nahen Ostens
    Politik und Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens Rachid Ouaissa · Friederike Pannewick Alena Strohmaier Editors Re-Configurations Contextualising Transformation Processes and Lasting Crises in the Middle East and North Africa Politik und Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens Series Editors Martin Beck, Institute of History, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark Cilja Harders, Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany Annette Jünemann, Institut für Internationale Politik, Helmut Schmidt Universität, Hamburg, Germany Rachid Ouaissa, Centrum für Nah- und Mittelost-Stud, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany Stephan Stetter, Institut für Politikwissenschaften, Universität der Bundeswehr München, München, Germany Die Reihe beschäftigt sich mit aktuellen Entwicklungen und Umbruchen̈ in Nor- dafrika, dem Nahen Osten, der Golfregion und darüber hinaus. Die politischen, sozialen und ökonomischen Dynamiken in der Region sind von hoher globaler Bedeutung und sie strahlen intensiv auf Europa aus. Die Reihe behandelt die gesa- mte Bandbreite soziopolitischer Themen in der Region: Veränderungen in Konfikt- mustern und Kooperationsbeziehungen in Folge der Arabischen Revolten 2010/11 wie etwa Euro-Arabische und Euro-Mediterrane Beziehungen oder den Nahost- konfikt. Auf nationaler Ebene geht es um Themen wie Reform, Transformation und Autoritarismus, Islam und Islamismus, soziale Bewegungen, Geschlechterver- hältnisse aber auch energie- und umweltpolitische Fragen, Migrationsdynamiken oder neue Entwicklungen in der Politischen Ökonomie. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf innovativen politikwissenschaftlichen Werken, die die gesamte theoretische Breite des Faches abdecken. Eingang fnden aber auch Beiträge aus anderen sozialwissen- schaftlichen Disziplinen, die relevante politische Zusammenhänge behandeln. This book series focuses on key developments in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the Gulf and beyond. The regions’ political, economic and social dynam- ics are of high global signifcance, not the least for Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God Back Down to Earth the Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God Back Down to Earth 23
    22 The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God back down to Earth The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a God back down to Earth 23 and unsupported by any developed critical SANA, and uploaded onto ‘blocked’ Facebook rationality. pages that could only be accessed via proxies. The Iconoclasts: How Syrian Citizens Brought a It was this type of thing that made people gasp Exalted Totalitarianism when they caught sight of Bashar or Asma in the street, as though they were movie stars God back down to Earth For decades the Syrian regime has fashioned and not the president and his wife. Compare an entirely separate world for itself. The this to the famous phrase uttered by the late Dima Wannous world in which Bashar al-Assad and his wife Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish after one Asma al-Akhras live is conceivably even more of his performances in Damascus. As usual he detached than was the world of his father Hafez had received rapturous applause, but after the al-Assad and his mother Anisa Makhlouf. This is show he grumpily confided to a friend: ’I don’t despite cosmetic attempts to give the opposite like all that. What am I, Ragheb Alama (a famous impression. No one knows where the family Lebanese singer), or something?’ and those around them live. The security that By contrast, Bashar and his wife became surrounds their existence is absolute and even obsessed with being seen as the most beautiful, overdone, given that they lived in a peaceful the cleverest, the chicest. Their media machine nation without any political life to speak of: even managed to convince Vogue to publish no independent parties, no autonomous ‘Was Maher al-Assad1 present in the great al-Assad as an ’acceptable‘ Alawite leader.
    [Show full text]
  • Why They Died Civilian Casualties in Lebanon During the 2006 War
    September 2007 Volume 19, No. 5(E) Why They Died Civilian Casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 War Map: Administrative Divisions of Lebanon .............................................................................1 Map: Southern Lebanon ....................................................................................................... 2 Map: Northern Lebanon ........................................................................................................ 3 I. Executive Summary ........................................................................................................... 4 Israeli Policies Contributing to the Civilian Death Toll ....................................................... 6 Hezbollah Conduct During the War .................................................................................. 14 Summary of Methodology and Errors Corrected ............................................................... 17 II. Recommendations........................................................................................................ 20 III. Methodology................................................................................................................ 23 IV. Legal Standards Applicable to the Conflict......................................................................31 A. Applicable International Law ....................................................................................... 31 B. Protections for Civilians and Civilian Objects ...............................................................33
    [Show full text]
  • Civil Marriage in Lebanon
    Empowering Women or Dislodging Sectarianism?: Civil Marriage in Lebanon Sherifa Zuhurt In this article, I reflect on the proposed Lebanese civil marriage law, which initiated a political crisis in Lebanon in March of 1998 and was followed by an indefinite shelving of that proposed law. Many Westerners assume that women in today's Middle East passively submit to extreme male chauvinism and glaring legal inequalities. In fact, Middle Eastern women have been actively engaged in a quest for empowerment and equity through legal, educational, political, and workplace reforms for many decades, and through publication of their writings in some countries for over a century. Although women's rights were at stake in the proposed law, it is curious that many failed to perceive the connection between legal reform and women's empowerment. Those who understand this linkage only too well are the most frequent opponents of such legal reform, arguing that it will destroy the very fabric of society and its existing religious and social divisions. First, I will provide some information on the history of sectarianism (known as ta'ifzyya in Arabic) in Lebanon. The drama surrounding the proposed bill's debut will be followed by information on women's politically and socially transitional status in the country. I relate women's status to their inability to lobby effectively for such a reform. I will allude to similar or related regional reforms in the area of personal status in order to challenge the idea of Lebanon's exceptionalism. I then explore the politicized nature of the t Sherifa Zuhur holds a Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • Emerging Infectious Diseases
    Peer-Reviewed Journal Tracking and Analyzing Disease Trends pages 349-520 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF D. Peter Drotman Associate Editors EDITORIAL BOARD Paul Arguin, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Dennis Alexander, Addlestone, Surrey, UK Charles Ben Beard, Ft. Collins, Colorado, USA Timothy Barrett, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Ermias Belay, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Barry J. Beaty, Ft. Collins, Colorado, USA David Bell, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Martin J. Blaser, New York, New York, USA Sharon Bloom, Atlanta, GA, USA Christopher Braden, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Mary Brandt, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Arturo Casadevall, New York, New York, USA Corrie Brown, Athens, Georgia, USA Kenneth C. Castro, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Charles H. Calisher, Ft. Collins, Colorado, USA Louisa Chapman, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Michel Drancourt, Marseille, France Thomas Cleary, Houston, Texas, USA Paul V. Effler, Perth, Australia Vincent Deubel, Shanghai, China David Freedman, Birmingham, Alabama, USA Ed Eitzen, Washington, DC, USA Peter Gerner-Smidt, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Daniel Feikin, Baltimore, Maryland, USA Stephen Hadler, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Anthony Fiore, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Nina Marano, Nairobi, Kenya Kathleen Gensheimer, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Martin I. Meltzer, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Duane J. Gubler, Singapore David Morens, Bethesda, Maryland, USA Richard L. Guerrant, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA J. Glenn Morris, Gainesville, Florida, USA Scott Halstead, Arlington, Virginia, USA Patrice Nordmann, Fribourg, Switzerland Katrina Hedberg, Portland, Oregon, USA Tanja Popovic, Atlanta, Georgia, USA David L. Heymann, London, UK Didier Raoult, Marseille, France Charles King, Cleveland, Ohio, USA Pierre Rollin, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Keith Klugman, Seattle, Washington, USA Ronald M. Rosenberg, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA Takeshi Kurata, Tokyo, Japan Frank Sorvillo, Los Angeles, California, USA S.K.
    [Show full text]
  • Aswat Zellerbach Hall (“Voices”)
    Cal Performances Presents Program Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 8pm Aswat Zellerbach Hall (“Voices”) Aswat PROGRAM (“Voices”) Mohammad Abdel Wahhab (1907–1991) Fakkaruni Wadi’ Al-Safi (b. 1921) Jannat Al-Safi Weili Laou Yidrun Wahhab Sakana l-Layl Zakariyya Ahmad (1896–1961) Il Wardi Gamil Assi Rahbani (1923–1986) & Mansour Rahbani (1925–2009) Sahrit Hubb INTERMISSION Celebrating the Golden Age of Arab Music & Cinema Farid Al-Atrash (1915–1974) Kahramana starring Al-Atrash Layalil Unsi Fi Vienna Ibrahim Azzam Ahmad Ana Fi Intidharak Malleit Sonia M’barek Wahhab Ya Wardi Min Yishtirik Khalil Abonula Rima Khcheich Al-Atrash Ma ‘Alli w-‘Ultillu Wahhab Ya Di n-Na’im Simon Shaheen, director Presented in Association with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan. Cal Performances’ 2008–2009 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo Bank. 4 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 5 Program Notes Cast Aswat Repertoire The Aswat Orchestra Fakkaruni (“Remind Me”) This traditional Arab orchestra features virtuoso instrumentalists playing violins, ouds, double An instrumental arrangement of a vocal master- an instrumental dance performed in his filmAfrita bass, cello, nay, qanun (zither) and percussion under the direction of maestro Simon Shaheen, piece composed in 1966 by Mohammad Abdel Hanim (“Jinni”), produced in Egypt in 1949. It was recreating the sound of the Golden Age. Wahhab and sung by Egyptian diva Um Kulthum. composed for dancer and actress Samia Gamal, The song starts with a lengthy introduction and in- who played the main role next to Al-Atrash. Director, Violin Simon Shaheen cludes several interludes that link together to form a fantastic instrumental.
    [Show full text]
  • Asmahan's Secrets: Art, Gender and Cultural Disputations by Sherifa Zuhur Ameican University of Cairo (AUC)
    Asmahan's Secrets: Art, Gender and Cultural Disputations by Sherifa Zuhur Ameican University of Cairo (AUC) Asmahan, born Amal al-Atrash, of the Suwayda' branch of Ghusn. In this atmosphere, the young Farid and Asmahan the Druze al-Atrash clan of southern Syria, achieved fame in were encouraged to perform first in private and later in pub­ Arabic music and cinema from J 938 until her death in 1944. lic settings, the young man as an instrumentalist and Asmahan My general acquaintance with Asmahan dates from my late as a vocalist. She reportedly debuted at the Opera in a concert teenage years, when I went mad for Arabic music. I learned in 1931 and then began performing in the salon of Mary one of her songs in the early 1980s from a gifted musician, Mansur until her fledgling career was interrupted by a mar­ my friend Simon Shaheen - "Imta Hata' raf Imta". Later I riage with her cousin Hasan al-Atrash of Suwayda. began work on a paper on her first film, Intisar al-Shabab, which was an exploration of themes of social mobility. I She spent six years in Syria with Hasan, but returned to searched for funding to do a film version of her life in 1990 Egypt to give birth to her daughter Kamilia and resumed her and at that point began to notice discrepancies in the sources career which blossomed through performances of the com­ and certain aspects of her mystique that intrigued me. In positions of Muhammad al-Qasabji, Riyad al-Sunbati, 1993 and 19941 spent a Fulbright year on this project, inter­ Madhat 'Assim and eventually her brother Farid al-Atrash.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Previously Published Works
    UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Previously Published Works Title “Of Marabouts, Acrobats, and Auteurs: Framing the Global Popular in Moumen Smihi’s World Cinema.” Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1r86d1c5 Author Limbrick, Peter Publication Date 2021 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California FINAL ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT, FORTHCOMING IN CULTURAL CRITIQUE, 2021 “Of Marabouts, Acrobats, and Auteurs: Framing the Global Popular in Moumen Smihi’s World Cinema.” Peter Limbrick, Film and Digital Media, University of California, Santa Cruz One of the critical commonplaces in the study of Arab cinemas is the idea that we can distinguish between Egyptian cinema, a dominant popular and industrial cinema akin to Hollywood, and smaller national or regional cinemas (Palestinian, Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan) which are typically discussed as auteur or art cinemas. While historically defensible, in that Egypt preceded these others in having its own studios and industry, such an assessment nonetheless tends to foreclose on the possibilities for those films inhabiting the “non-Egyptian” model ever be accorded the status of popular cinema. Moreover, where local distribution and exhibition for North African films has been historically partial or non-existent (due to commercial decisions that have historically favored Egyptian, Indian, and Euro-American productions), it has been difficult for many directors in countries like Morocco to avoid the charge that their films—which are often more visible in European festivals than at home—are made for other markets or audiences. Whether in sympathy with the idea of distinctive local or national cinemas and resistance to cultural hegemony, or in suspicion of the politics of international funding and coproduction, many critical treatments of non-Egyptian Arab films make of the popular an evaluative term that signifies local authenticity and a resistance towards European art cinema tendencies and that privileges commercial success over experimentation.
    [Show full text]