Solidarity, Dissimulation, and Making Space

Many recent articles now have discussed the rather unwelcoming world of activism and how it could potentially discourage activism. I personally have yet to be fully engaged in any offline activist community, due to my transient occupation as a student. But I do see these trends and feel the effect. Similarly, there have been heated debates revolving the politics of Ta-Nahisi Coates and Cornel West. While I do agree with West's analysis, there are also the issues of authority and personal relations at stake: Who gets to call someone a neoliberal? Who are we talking to? Where is the public sphere? Twitter? Cafes? Likewise, there have been intense name-calling among Arabs in the U.S., especially in light of the Lebanese-Saudi tensions. A Lebanese performer in Boston criticized the policies of Saudi Arabia last month, which caused many people to leave the venue in either outrage or dismay. I was not there so I am not sure what was exactly said. I wish there was a way for people to share their opinions without resigning to a simple refusal. Al Jazeera also published a good piece about the value of connected histories and a certain type of mindset that prevents these histories. I agree with him that "What we are witnessing throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a battle for the soul of the Muslim past to inhabit the spirit of the Muslim future." Perhaps that is also why Cemil Aydin's history book on The Idea of the Muslim world is so timely. He also shares a lot of contemporary connections with politics on a great episode of the Ottoman History podcast. He argues: through tracing the historical roots of Pan-Islamism, one can become wary of the sloganeering of politicians and rebel factions. The author of the Al Jazeera piece, Professor Hamid Dabashi, also published a book Being a Muslim in the World engaging in similar themes. 

I also have been questioned by an Iraqi Kurdish person in the U.S. in regards to my allegiance vis-a-vis Arab-Kurd relations, which prompted me to think: How should we make space for one another in this context?  Much effort is dedicated to explaining Others to an "American" public, but identities are fluid and Muslim / Brown-skinned folks living in the U.S. also should provide space for each other. In other words, we are also entitled to the public sphere to process our own beefs as much as anyone. 

A friend studying in Turkey wrote about the book markets of Istanbul and how patrons usually avoid political subjects. This phenomenon can be traced to the Ottoman era, and is a mark of being "cultured." Nowadays, most of us in the U.S. no longer have that leisure to be that "cultured." At the same time, too much criticism also can be a hindrance to forming solidarity.

It also reminds me of a history paper presented on a learned scholar who practiced dissimulation in the Ottoman era. The paper argued that the scholar was Shi'a and most people around him knew about it for decades on end. In my understanding, even dissimulation, in either the religious or political sense, is not simply an individual act and requires patience for and understanding of each other. Dissimulation (into whiteness or heteronormativity) requires not only the person to meticulously dissimulate and pose as a  authentic member of the "mainstream," but also a community of people who take him/her at his/her words and not reveal.

In a rather different context, for many who faced discriminatory checkpoints in the post-2005 urban Iraq, pretending to be a person from different sect was an important survival skill. While the scale of violence has yet to become that high in the U.S., there are definitely rising tensions around me. Much has been written about how to organize without leaking information about undocumented people to the ICE. Yet I am also speaking about a social issue. At times, exclusionary views seem to be much easier to espouse than inclusive ones, which then silences and erases certain people's experiences. How can we devise politics that allows space for thinking and debating, without invoking too much of a person's identity that s/he/they would rather not speak about? 

Below is an interesting passage on South Asian-Iraqi connections from page 45 of Recasting the Region by historian Neilesh Bose. Even though he was writing about political organizing of the early twentieth century, it is equally relevant to today as well. 

“Shatt-il Arab” one of Nazrul’s most well-known poems from this era, expresses the feeling of a Bengali soldier in Iraq, near the Shatt-il Arab, and his loving feeling of admiration for Arab heroes in Iraq, the ‘land of martyrs’. Repeated laments over the ‘spilt blood of valiant Arabs’ and pure Arabian riverbanks establish the poem as a paean to Arabic culture and Islamic civilization in that region. The poem also sings a song of fondness to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates as a measure of universalist Islamic identity. The end of the poem places the suffering of the Bengali soldier, the pain, sorrow, and hurt felt in war, and in death, alongside the Iraqi army: Iraqi army! Here in this story / We in the Bengal army / Can say your suffering is ours!” Regarding Muslims identity, Nazrul places the Bengali and the Iraqi into a common Muslim world of mutual love and admiration. The Bengali protagonist remains a Bengali, never to be shorn of a particular cultural location. Muslim identity is part of a larger universalism which doesn’t exclude, but rather, actively includes the local sense of identity. It is one of the first poems to appear after WWI that combines a look towards the future with a feeling of belonging in the Muslim and Bengali world.

While one may be skeptical about the "objectivity" in the idealism invoked by the poet Nazrul, it is also a breeze amidst heated geopolitical contestations and certain venomous youtube comments. 

Iraq, Indian soldiers within the British forces in a suburb of western Baghdad in 1917. First shared by Old Iraqi Pictures

Learning Arabic Here and There

It has been five months since I started learning Arabic! Although the actual time I have put in studying is around three months. I took a break in between the Beirut Urban Arabic class that happened in July, and the college Formal Arabic 1 class, which lasted from September till this week. I treated it like a daily vocation in July. The task kept me floating and motivated to leave the house. Beirutis were eager to communicate with me since 1) I was such a novelty to most, so they wanted to ask why I am here; and 2) we often had business to communicate, e.g., the bus driver would have to communicate me if I wanted to go somewhere. Even though people say Beirut is not the best place to learn Arabic, it was still an inviting environment. I also had the wonderful classmate, Morgana, who would practice with me in the bus or in the hostel room. Even though one time I was suffering from altitude sickness, learning with a friend was doable.

Ahmad and Morgana in our Urban Arabic class

My teacher in Beirut, Ahmad Orfaly, was also very patient and kind in the Urban Arabic class. He was also humble and said he would not be able to teach the formal Arabic course. The textbook was very well-designed and did not have many family-oriented questions.

In contrast, the Alif Baa and Al Kitaab textbooks we used in the American college classroom have quite a lot of dialogues involving family, which I dislike. I would freeze up every time I was expected to talk about my family. I think my teacher knew, and الحمدلله, she didn't ask about my family during the oral exam.

In class, we are also careful to avoid any racy or controversial topics. In contrast, in Beirut, we were aware of the country's painful past, such as when we learned the word rafiq, (رفيق) one asked if it is the same as the name of the former PM, Rafic Hariri. (It is.) Then we got into a short discussion on his assassination. Students would travel outside of Beirut almost every weekend, so sometimes we would also discuss the ongoing news, such as the Lebanese military action in Beqaa Valley. I could also combine the information I learned from the street environments for my homework, such as "al-Hamra." In contrast, we are much more removed from such contexts in the American classroom, so a lot of brain power is put into use to make something up or look up how to write "Boston" #بوسطن. I exclaimed once to my Saudi friend Abdullah how amazing it is that American places can also be written in Arabic. It is just that I am so English/Chinese/Indo-centric that I never expected Arabic-speaking people would write Boston in their own alphabet. My friend Ahmad told me when I was in Beirut that Arabic has been less susceptible to new English loan words since there are many roots that can make new Arabic words. So even new things like airplane has its non-English phonetic word.

I learned the word "street" this semester, even though I already "saw" it in Beirut.

I also felt awkward bringing up current events, since I did not know if my teacher would like to discuss it or not and whether or not the other students would be interested. I know that it shouldn't be the responsibility of those suffering to discuss matters such as the Muslim Ban, and yet it is the Elephant in the Room. She did once light-heartedly bring up Donald Trump and used photos from his family in a powerpoint for us to practice Arabic; but the politeness reigned. Once she used the Arabic BBC website for examples; hopefully next semester it would become more integrated. We also had video materials recorded by the textbook producers. Our language department also organized a couple of Arabic events, and I attended one film screening.

Exposure to the Egyptian dialect was a useful component from Alif Baa and Al Kitaab. I was much more acquainted with the Levantine dialect before. Other than the most common greeting words, the knowledge for accents were not required; it was just used as an aid for context. The Arabic teacher, Ustaadha Batool, is also very sweet and kind. She sometimes shares her life from Egypt with us in the class. She has a PhD in theatre and also incorporates theatre skits in her teaching. Writing those skits also improved my general sense of the Formal spoken pattern.

The class in Beirut and the class in the U.S. were equally challenging; perhaps because the U.S. course is modeled off of the Middlebury program, which is the country's best. Ustaadha also used to teach there, as well as the editors of the textbooks. She had a good eye for spotting any missing diacritics, which I did not have to know in Beirut. I was mostly cruising along the first few weeks of this semester, since I knew the alphabet and basic grammar. Later on the course was still intense and introduced a lot of new material. I got an A from the Beirut class and will probably pass this class as well; but if I took it for ABCD grades, I would probably not get an A this time around.
Ustaadha told us that the college Spanish 1 course doesn't even teach as much as what we did, and the Spanish-learning students already know most of the alphabet!

This semester, I relied my friend, Ahmad for practicing oral dialogues or grammatical questions. I am becoming more familiar with the available English-Arabic online resources, such as dictionaries and Youtube songs / Quran recitations. Google translate now also has a new function function--when typing in latin, Arabic can show up in the text box directly. I also watch Snapchatters from the Gulf talk about their lives in Khaleeji accents, and it has been a great source of motivation. Their consistency seems to remind me that even if I flunk the course altogether they will still be there speaking Arabic.

A snapshot I took from a snapchat post by Arizonan / Qatari snapchatter Aziz

Sometimes stress makes one feel like everyone else will also stop because your "world" has "ended." I felt more angst and stress due to other factors while taking the college course. I had 5 days of Thanksgiving break in which I did not study Arabic at all, as well as the two days this week, after turning in all the papers. As I become more and more acquainted with my brain's relationship with language, the time spent Not-Studying is often as useful as Studying. There is a good Anonymous piece from The Guardian on how language learning helps combat depression.

...the hardest part of the process is being kind to myself. The voice of depression always chides me for not doing more. It is true that learning a language can often feel like an immense task, but breaking it down into steps – one more podcast, one more Duolingo lesson, one more chapter in my textbook – can remind me I am progressing. I can check the number of words studied, the videos watched. This helps me talk back to the voice of depression that says I can’t do it.

 Prof. Brinkley Messick talking about his new book Shari'a Scripts

I also study Arabic not only for knowledge purposes but also to switch gears from reading scholarly papers and thinking immensely large sociopolitical questions. I also have to remind myself that I am learning for myself, rather than to prove to someone else that I am a hardcore language-learner or Arabophile. I will still take it next semester with Ustaadha Batool, if other conditions allow.

Lastly, I wanted to share that I had the chance to listen to a lot of great scholars of Islam last weekend at the Shi'i studies conference at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, NJ. It was very exciting to see Arabic skills used for reading primary historical sources.

I might write more about my experience after my exam on Monday. "Allah maaek" to myself lol!