Identities in Beirut: Who is an Arab?

Overlooking the street in Hamra from the balcony of where I lived

During my one-month stay in Beirut, I mostly walked and took the bus to the Arabic language institute Saifi in the area called Gemmayze. I lived in Hamra, which is towards the west side of the city. Although they are only three miles apart, they are vastly different. Gemmayze is an art district frequented by hipsters and fashionably-dressed tourists at day and party-goers at night. While Hamra is also known for its party-goers and tourists, the European / white Americans are less conspicuous. More locals patronize Hamra, which has also been known for its historical cafe culture. More pan-handlers are also visible in Hamra. It is also much more hustling and bustling throughout the day and night. In between these two areas, I would cross by heavily guarded Christian churches, poorer Shi'i neighborhoods, as well as the heavily gentrified / reconstructed Downtown area. 

Houses of a poor Shi'i neighborhood

Through traveling from the West to the East side of Beirut almost every day, I picked up many markers of gender, class, and sects in the urban spaces. While the class differences and high level of commercialized property in Beirut were more obvious to me, symbols of sects and discourses surrounding identity also came to me through my walks or chance-encounters. This is one of the experiences I have encountered; it is significant not only because the conversation was related to identity, but also because it was one of the few times the interlocutor was extremely vocal in regards to politics. I will write at least two more, featuring a Christian book shop in Hamra and a friend who lives in Dahiya.

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On my last day in Beirut, I ordered an Uber car for my trip to the airport. Dani accepted my request and drove up in a rather large car. He could not help me move the luggage from upstairs, since he could not leave the car unattended, but he helped me load it in the car. I was very flustered because I packed most of the things last-minute and was drenched in sweat. I was also worried about the cab fare's payment option, since I was not very familiar with the Uber app. (The last time I used it was in eight months ago.) The east-bound traffic was also terrible. Dani noticed my stress and he was very eager to divert my attention to other things. He offered me water and mints and told me that even if the payment doesn't go through, things will be alright. I noticed that there was a wooden cross hanging at the rear view mirror as soon as I entered the car, and picked up that he was probably a Christian.

He could speak some sentences in English, such as praising the flavor of the mints or informing me the adequate time one should arrive at the airport for an international flight (3 hours, according to him, although later I found out that nobody really does that). I also used some Arabic that I learned over the summer course.  I learned that he is 42 years old and lives about 20 minutes away from Beirut (Either in the town of "Baouchriyeh" or "Bacha"). For more complicated conversations, we relied on the Google translate audio function on his phone, which was surprisingly accurate. Somehow he knew that I was in a very reflective period of my life. He told me in a heart-felt and philosophical manner that happiness is most important thing. "Money is not important. If you have a loving family and a house of your own, you will be happy," showed Google translate. He was curious about my deal in Beirut as well. At one point he asked me if I work for the US government (in a totally calm and natural way). I knew that many Americans in the region probably work for the government, so I said no without thinking too much about it. Then he asked, Why are you studying Arabic? I tried to express my interest in politics and history. He was even ready to settle for the seemingly unsatisfactory answer.  Then I landed on "hab"(which i wanted to use for a special interest in  cultures) but then he understood it as love in general. I also accepted at that point of the difficult conversation that the reason can be explained as for love. I said I have an Iraqi friend. 

"Have you been to Iraq?"

"Not yet. Will go some day."

I said that Beirut does not seem to be a very happy place. He did not disagree outright, but explained it through economic terms. He said that Lebanon has a lot of money. Some people have jobs and money, some people don't have money. Some people work a lot, and have three jobs. 

He complimented US society because it is the dream for a lot of people and is the land of opportunity. I did not know how to explain to him the various issues of race and economic inequality, so I just nodded along. 

Then he started to talk about how the politicians in Lebanon are corrupt. He said that Lebanon is using a multi-denominational system. There is no accountability because of this arrangement. I said that there will be a new constitution next year, so hopefully things will change then. He said that if they apply constitution, Lebanon would be the most beautiful country in the world. (In my opinion, it is already very beautiful, but I thought it is always nice to aspire to more as a public citizen, so I didn't say anything.) He also pointed out later that there is trash littered on the road to the airport and it hurts him to see it as such.

Then the conversation took a surprising turn. He started blaming Arabs. He said that 90 percent of Arabs are bad. I asked, are you not an Arab? He said, I am Phoenician (Fini). I did not need Google translate for this identity marker.  I already knew about the politicization of the ethnic marker Phoenician and it was also featured during a Father-Son dialogue in the film West Beirut. (It was also strangely similar--they started discussing problems of Lebanon and how the Arab world has made it worse, to which the son decidedly distances himself by declaring that he is Phoenician.) The last time I asked this question related to the Arab ethnicity was during the start of my Lebanon trip. A friend of my host, who I will call W, was giving me a concise version of his view of Arab historiography. His politics of Arab nationalism, which included a union of Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, stemmed from his view of history. At one point I asked, if everyone is "Arab", then why different languages exist? And are you an Arab? W said that different groups of people decided to adopt the language, and that those who did adopt the language "became" Arab, like he did. The ironic thing was that he was a light-skinned ginger who has emigrated to Italy and often passes as an Italian.

Back to the cab ride. Dani proceeded to say something that astonished me so much I could only laugh: "The Arab was created to sleep." Google translate wrote. I was kind of confused until he clarified with gestures that he meant--Arabs were created to eat and sleep. He explained that Arabs take things for granted: "Thank you China, thank you Japan. Without the west we would only be on horses. No cars, no nothing (Ma fi shi)." I did not say much to that, because it was the first time someone was so honest to me about this issue. Later he helped me exchange my remaining Lebanese pounds to dollars, we arrived at the airport and I shook his hands goodbye. Behind this sentiment is a lot of colonial baggage (akin to intellectual and dissident Liu Xiaobo's statement that China should be colonized for societal progress) and also reveals the trend in which many Lebanese Christians have emigrated abroad. I am still confused how someone like Dani could be so attuned to societal problems and care for its betterment yet still come to simplistic conclusions. It is far too simple to say that Dani is "racist" or pro-Western: at least he has chosen to stay in Lebanon. He could see that religion is not only a practice but also an institution, since he knows that the multidenominational institutions in Lebanon systematically separate the people into groups so that the elites can divide the spoils. These were the same sentiments expressed during the 2015 "You Stink!" protests against the corruption of the Lebanese government. (Read more about the antagonistic relationship between sectarianism and government reform from the chapter "The Architecture of Sectarianization in Lebanon" by Bassel Salloukh in Sectarianization) Still, I am hopeful that behind contradictory notions, there is also hope. 

Towards a Non-State Centric Understanding of Iraqi History

While reading historian Eric Davis's Memories of the State, I came across his description about how the British colonizers favored a compliant chess piece, Faisel II, and his regent, Prince Abdullah among the successors for the Hashemite royal family in the mid-1930s. Davis argued that the compliant Prince saw that the British could help him stay in power, and thus allowed for more British interference in Iraq.

Book cover

This description struck me because it seemed that the state harbors a magical "seat" where the person who manages to sit in that place, would become more invincible than other political actors. Thus generations compete for power at the magical seat, which replicates the preexisting organs and arrangements of the state, including colonialism arrangements such as the British mandate. It does not seem to be that much different from a pre-French revolution "monarchy," even though it is clear that the 20th century Hashemite monarchy was anything but like it. While Davis is aware of the differences and impact of colonial designs on the Hashemite monarchy, he still presumes a rather monolithic, state-centered narrative in the unraveling of the Hashemite monarchy for his readers.


The implicit question seems to be the age-old one: How can a "modern historical account" explain how an "Oriental despotic regime" becomes a "modern state," which has institutions providing checks and balances?

But this frame seems to be exactly the problem. The frame assumes that everyone is power-hungry as rational decision makers, and thus would definitely seize the opportunity to enter the power vacuum when available. In the Iraqi case, the colonialists could presumably offer anyone that magical seat, and anyone would capitulate. Even idealists such as leftists and nationalists might squander the opportunity during the power machination process. At the same time, states are also in competition with each other, and thus, they would all have to maintain internal stability to "get ahead" in the race. In Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, scholar Vijay Prashad has also noted how "regional stability" is also a key code word for U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. In this sense, one could see how there are people who support a state-centered narrative (including a wide range of people from U.S. foreign policy heads to certain Ba'athists and Communists), and those who would differ.

Rather than state-centered narratives, I find Foucault's conception of power more nuanced in order to understand these processes. He critiques the idea of power as a magical seat in Society Must Be Defended (p13):

In the case of the classic juridical theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be  possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly, through  a juridical act or  an act that founds a right—it does not matter which,  for the  moment—thanks to the surrender of something or thanks to a contract. Power is the concrete  power that any individual can hold, and which he can surrender, either as  a  whole or in  part, so  as to constitute a power or a political sovereignty. 

Under the Iraqi state's eyes, "Communists," "Shias," "minorities,"and "women" are separate categories. Davis takes cue from Gramsci in his formulation of the state and anti-state resistance. While Davis's book emphasized that there had been functioning political institutions and democratic activity in Iraq in 1954 and complicates a despotic stereotype of pre-1960s Iraq, his state-centric understanding of power is still limiting and replicates these monolithic categories of women, Shias, minorities and communists. Similarly, the good-intentioned policymakers have made and would continue to make the same mistake while navigating through ethnic loyalties and political affiliations of Iraq if they continue to view society from a state-centric vantage point.

Rather than staring at the magical seat, we should pay more attention to where the power projects itself toward and how it is embodied. Foucault also admits that there are not so many methods outside of this model to understand power. One can read more about that in his lectures. While recognizing the Iraqi Left-leaning intellectuals' enormous contribution in historicizing sectarianism, documenting "voices from below" and analyzing class formation in Iraq, I would also like to see more Foucauldian or non-state-centric analyses of Iraqi history.

Overall, the mainland Chinese academia also suffers from obsession with state-centric narratives. They are also using the same paradigms to understand the outside world as well. That is why I find studies on the effects of colonialism so curative to the current academic obsession. As Timothy Mitchell as written in 1991 in the article "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," "Political subjects and their modes of resistance are formed as much within the organizational terrain we call the state, rather than in some wholly exterior social space." This understanding would also become beneficial to critiquing and resisting the communist government: currently many dissidents cannot formulate a strong response to the assumption that "without the communist government, China will surely become chaotic." This assumption similarly uses the overempowering ideal of a sovereign that keeps things in check: Without that sovereign, any opportunist will seize the magical seat. To have any meaningful resistance against the increasingly prevelant communist state, dissidents and resisters have to undo this understanding of the magical seat.

Social Relations and Sexual Assault

Yesterday a scholar came from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to speak on her research work on sex workers of Bombay. Her main concern is that most legal and policy discourses do not take into account the differences in terms they use and the terms the sex workers use. For example, a daily wage laborer who may have been engaging in sex work as well would use the term majburi to describe her undesirable circumstances. A Dalit man Muku also used the same word majburi for moving after a drought in his Maharastrian village. This term is best translated as having to do something under constraint, but even that for the scholar is unsatisfactory and disempowering. Policymakers would usually use the words like "forced" for majburi, e.g., someone was forced to engage in sex work. She finds that this translation reduces the legitimacy of their means of liveligood, which includes sex work. She also finds issue with the liberal paradigm of sex as individual expression and, rather than something socially mediated. She also proposed that there is a strong overlap of sexual labor and daily wage labor for these lower-classed, lower-caste people. She brings up the issue of caste, such as hijras are not only a community seen in a sexually charged manner, but also through caste lenses; but I found the caste issue to have been more of an auxiliary to the talk as a whole. I would have been more keen on understanding how caste is reflected in such an urban sexual economy. The talk garnered a lot of attention and much discussion. Most questions were thinking about how one could link the ethnography with the center questions. I also asked a question about how to think about these undisciplined sexualities in general, since intercaste marriages in India are also punished for breaching the dominant regulation of a casteist sexual economy. I did not get a satisfactory answer.

This post will be discussing another incident related to the idea of ambiguity and sexual relations bounded by social processes. I was exchanging in Delhi at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2015. I befriended A.S. at the Brahmaputra Hostel, where I went to eat most of the time. Like most people staying at this Hostel, he was a PhD student. Towards the end of the semester, I had the opportunity to travel with him to Gwalior. We stayed overnight in separate accommodations. It was a nice trip overall, with some hiccups in between. We had to wait for several hours due to some planning errors outside of the Gwalior Fort. During this time he mentioned to me about a Lucknow girl who he claimed to be madly in love with. He said that she did not love him as much. We even had beers in a restaurant, which is rather unusual given the relatively conservative environment of the city. At the train station, I bought the memoir Lucknow Boy written by Vinod Mehta, while A.S. continued to reminisce about “his” Lucknow girl. We also played the game of Antakshari (a South Asian spoken parlor game played with song verses) while waiting in the train station. We arrived in Delhi around 5AM, and it was relatively cold. He suggested for me to stay at his hostel for some time, but I refused. We remained on good terms afterwards. I also hosted my birthday party in December in his room, in which he was invited. After the party, he expressed interest in one of my friends who attended as well, to which I downplayed since I thought they would probably not be suitable as a couple. 

A month later I finished my semester. He helped me handle some of my luggage on the last day before I returned to Germany in 2016. He received the opportunity to exchange on scholarship in an Eastern European country, and left for said country in March, but we did not meet. 

Last year, September 27th, I was in the U.S. and recounted the memories of traveling in Gwalior to another friend of mine on Wechat. Then coincidentally, some news about A.S. popped up on my facebook timeline. It was a link reporting sexual assault charges against him. The victim said that he promised he would marry her, which he did not. I automatically assumed that this was the Lucknow girl he used to speak so often about (I was wrong. I searched for this news again today, which has been either cleaned from Google or swamped by other more controversial cases of sexual assault that have since been unfolding. But I did manage to find a link to a news report and in that report, it is said that this girl studied at Delhi University. Only then did I realize I had wrongly assumed the identity of the victim for the nine months.). An Eastern European friend of A.S. had shared the link and defended A.S. against the news. The friend personally vouched that A.S. is a good person and would never do such a thing. This was during the time when JNU had experienced much attack from a biased news media, so I was very skeptical of this report and defensive as well. I discussed this issue with my mom in the same manner and stressed that perhaps it was because of his changed circumstances that severely affected his relation with the Lucknow girl, and this claim was being subsequently being made against him.

My mom thought that such incidents often happen under an environment where people become upward mobile in a short period of time. According to her analysis, the woman would want to share some glory with the successful man who had the ability to go abroad. When she does not get what she wants, she resorts to claims of sexual assault or rape. My mother thought that when it comes down to cases of sexual assault, it is a game of he-said, she-said: the outcome largely depends on the clout of each party involved. If the man has more social and legal resources, then the girl would usually “lose,” regardless of what actually happened. 

The matter stayed in my mind for some time and I gradually forgot about it. When I visited JNU again this year in March, I was again confronted with more details about this case. I met up with Sardarji, who is an affable and popular guard at the university and a true friend of mine. He had met A.S. on two separate occasions with me as well. A.S. and I were once invited to eat handmade makki ki roti (unleavened Punjabi bread made from corn flour) at Sardarji’s home across the road from the University. We had a really good time eating and talking about how the University is often a social force of its own that defends its turf against the other corrupt and elite groups of Delhi, including those that have ties with the state. The other time was when Sardarji attended the birthday party hosted in A.S.’s room.



When Sardarji and I met, I felt like there was much to discuss since we do not have very good ways of communication when we are in different countries. We spoke in Hindi. I prefer to talk in Hindu with someone in person rather than on the phone, because there would be more visual cues for me to understand. Sardarji thought that the case of A.S. was one of the important things to be discussed with me, since we were friends. He asked me if I knew about the case. I said yes, I had read about it, and I was very shocked about the situation. He said he was shocked as well, since A.S. seemed to have been such an innocent boy (sada). We both agreed that A.S. seemed innocent. Sardarji gave me more details which he witnessed on the night of the police raid after the FIR was filed: the policemen stormed Brahmaputra hostel and one even slapped A.S. The moral accusations hurled at A.S. that night by various agents of the law seemed to be more emotionally charged than the actual “crime”: he was married at home and was having relations with more than one girl who were not his wife. Sardarji also seemed to be more appalled by the promiscuity rather than the rape. It is very ironic that the last time all three of us bonded, Sardarji, A.S. and I were discussing about the acts that rebelled against the state (in Hindi): JNU students had been defending one JNU female student who had been harassed by a Delhi elite who was the son of some politician. The police came to arrest students and it was a total chaotic clash. This time, for Sardarji, the police now represented moral authority that rightly punished the philanderer. I listened with awe to both cases, since 1) I did not witness or could not have read about it anywhere and 2) my language capabilities restricted me from posing questions that would generate more nuanced details. Sardarji and I talked perhaps for 40 minutes and this case was the most prominent theme.  We said goodbye and I left the campus.
Through facebook, A.S. also learned that I was in Delhi and reached out on facebook to meet up.  I did not know how to make about the whole situation and I did not reply.

Today, I was reading Nivedita Menon’s book Recovering Subversion and the chapter on rape was particularly thought-provoking. “Law’s claim to truth is based on a binary logic which sets up oppositions like truth/untruth, guilt/innocence, consent/non-consent. This binary logic, [Carol Smart] argues, is completely inappropriate to what she calls the ‘ambiguity of rape.’ In criminal law the object is to establish guilt or innocence, and in rape cases, the establishing of either, turns on another pair of opposites: that of consent/non-consent.

The dualism of consent/non-consent is “completely irrelevant to women’s experience of sex. Neither begins to approach the complexity of a woman’s position when she is being sexually propositioned or abused… (T)he ‘telling’ of a story of rape or abuse inevitably reveals ambiguities. Hence a woman may agree to a certain amount of intimacy but not to sexual intercourse. In the legal model however, consent to the former is consent to full intercourse… (I)n legal terms submission fits on the consent side of the dichotomy. The only alternative when non-consent is not established is to presume consent.” (p123)

This story came up again in my mind and I decided to write down what I have learned so far. How to think about an anthropology of sexual assault or sex work that does not fall into the binaries of consent/non-consent or agency and oppression?

Access to the Iraqi Field

In between a trip to Prague, I have been reading books on the modern history of Iraq, the legal history of women's rights in Iraq, and biographical narratives of diasporic Iraqi women. This coming month also marks the third year since I permanently moved from Beijing, which was my home for many years. Many reflections on diaspora and the meaning of living abroad came up when I read books on Iraqi politics as well as Kundera's classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I also compare diasporic conditions cross cultures during my time spent with the Pakistani student community in Gottingen. While the background of my interest is mostly personal, this blog post will mainly address the political issues and questions of methodologies that surfaced when I read the books on Iraq.

In her book Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, Dr. Nadje Sadig Al-Ali presents material she gathered through interviews with women from four different diasporic communities, including Amman, London, San Diego, and Detroit. There are many similarities between the Iraqi communities I am reading about in Dr. Al-Ali's work and the Pakistani community I encountered, such as the highly contested narratives of the twentieth century. Given the hetergenous makeup of the Iraqi diasporic community, with different ethnic groups, sects and classes occupying different social and political lives, the matter is evidently complex. Generations also mattered: the order of persecution entailed a different relationship with politics. This was also spelled out to me during a conversation with a Kurdish friend, P., who comes from Syrian-occupied Kurdistan. He has stayed in Germany for many years and most of his family is here. He works, studies, and likes the idea that his future would be bounded with Germany. I told him during a conversation about the sufferings of my other Syrian friend who lives in India right now and has been separated from his family since the war started. He replied that indeed, it is a hard life for my friend and other recently exiled Syrians, but his own family had established themselves abroad earlier because they have been persecuted earlier as a religious minority. In other words, my friend may suffer now, but it's because he didn't have to think about it earlier. We each receive our own due in time.

Al-Ali also addresses the sectarian issue through her experiences in the field. During her research in the U.S., she stays with various Iraqi families and acutely notices the differences in locale and socialization. During her research in Dearborn and the broader Detroit Area, the issue of sect becomes strong enough for her to voice her own opinions in this particular situation:

As I talked to the group of young women refugees, it became evident that at least this group of recently arrived women had a very strong sense of their roots and identity, both as Iraqis and Shi'is involved a strong sense of entitlement in terms of rights and privileges in the new Iraq. It also entailed a very strong and, for me personally, disturbing sectarianism that was directed not only at Sunni Iraqis but also at Iraqi Chaldeans. Khadija, just like Fatima and her sister Zeinab, criticized Iraqi Chaldeans for having been supporters of the previous regime and for failing to engage in anti-government activities in previous years. I was puzzled by this sweeping generalization and condemnation of the Chaldean community. Although several Chaldeans I talked to had clearly appreciated the generally secular nature of the previous regime, especially before 1991, which allowed for the relative religious freedom of minorities, many of the more established and well-to-do Chaldean families have been active supporters of the Bush government and his war on Iraq. (p38, emphasis my own)

I also encounter this question of methodology when I conducted research in Germany and Lucknow. When I encounter South Asian and Iraqi Muslims and explain that one of my research interests include Shi'ism, it often sends a message that I am someone who has affinity with the imagined community of Shi'as. The scope of the imagined community depends on the world view and values of the person in question, and how he or she would answer the question of "who is a Shi'a." For me, the question is extremely delicate and variable on situation.

A picture of Imam Hussain in a food store owned by Iraqis. Louisville, KY,  2016

The paragraph by Al-Ali also raises the question of politics and religion: to what extent can one draw the line between sectarianism and political activism? Many of the NGOs and charities related to Iraq claim that they service all sects, which clearly shows there are many NGOs and charities that have particular sectarian identity, subtle or not. When does a "sectarian" conversation or situation call for an activist scholar, such as Al-Ali, to intervene? This also goes back to the debate within race and sociology: is one studying a social group for the purpose of an empirical understanding, or is there an ethical obligation to that group's future? When one labels and understands situations through the lense of sects in an informed manner, the research is usually empirically rich and analytically strong. But what are the additional methodological concerns?

In evaluating narratives of women's rights in Ba'athist Iraq, historian Noga Efrati has noted in her book Women in Iraq how positionality affects the written historical accounts.

Doreen Ingrams and Deborah Cobbet present the clearest examples of following only one narrative. Whereas Ingrams favors the Iraqi Women's Union narrative, Cobbett bases her work on the League for the Defense of Women's Rights narrative. Their contrasting historical probes were probably influenced mainly by their conflicting attitude toward the Ba'ath regime as well as by their personal connections with different Iraqi women. Ingrams, at least at the beginning of the 1980s, sided with regime supporters, whereas Cobbett sided with its opponents. (p134, emphasis my own)

Furthermore, what happens when one relies on one's own group identity to gain access? Researchers such as Nadje Al-Ali (p29) as well as anthropologist Hayder al-Mohammad have mentioned how their family introduced them to certain contacts in the field. Al-Ali has also met many contacts through her own activism in London and Hayder al-Mohammad established contacts from arising circumstances over the length of five years in Basra. Dr. Lila Abu-Lughod also discusses her father's role in her field:

[M]any people remain intrigued by what I wrote about my father having introduced me to this community, perhaps because it makes us think hard about our inevitable positionality in fieldwork. I understand my father’s motives a bit differently now that I am a parent, but I also worry that people exaggerate the importance of this introduction. I still treasure the ways I was able to participate in the intimate and lively women’s world. I know that it was a bit easier for me to be part of this family because of this identity. But even though being perceived as Arab, Muslim, and respectable (under the protection of my father) was important, I don’t think we should overstate its importance. Fieldwork is intense and interpersonally complicated for everyone. Once you are there, no matter how introduced, it is you—as a person—who develops the relationships you do, even as you never escape your locatedness.

It would be an overstatement to say that their research would have been markedly different without the family contacts; still, the question is unresolved in my mind. Al-Mohammad does a wonderful job of historicizing the idea of "tribes." He questions the method which sees tribes as the dominant form of social organization in his 2011 article "You have Car Insurance, We have Tribes." Still, access to tribes were crucial in the field, and the male Iraqi identity was no doubt a gamechanger in terms of on-the-ground research. He writes, "Many leaders are very generous, not only with their wealth and power, but also with their time. Many have also been tremendously protective of me, with no hope of ever seeing anything in return other than friendship and gratitude." Identity plays such a crucial role in these sites, and thus to present oneself with an established lineage (sect or locale) affects how one is perceived in the field. I would like to read more about the implications of this approach.

Al-Mohammad passionately argues about his positionality in an interview and invokes his "brown eyes" that sees what non-brown eyes fail to see--

I have skin in this game, to invoke an idiom I am rather fond of. I’m an Iraqi. I consider Basra my home and not London where I have spent more than twenty years. The problem is, then, where can I turn to that has been relatively untarnished by the theorizers and fly-by-night Iraq specialists? What I noticed was that events, local happenings and moments, are too small for the young bucks, trying to make their name in this racket, to get their hands dirty in. They also did not have access to such experiences, nor did they have a grasp of the background knowledge and ways of life of ordinary Iraqis, hence struggled to notice the significance of certain events. Many have conducted interviews in the north of Iraq in Erbil, or outside Iraq in Amman and Cairo with Iraqi refugees, but essentially, everyday life in Iraq has been beyond the reach of the machinery.

Finally, it is appropriate to end with this observation on academia by Hayder al-Mohammad, to understand the importance of entering the field with his particular approach:

The reason why anthropologists have turned to institutions, cults, groups, and scholars is because of the obvious difficulty in locating one’s fieldwork. Not being natives of the region where they are working in, most anthropologists have few doors open to them. But what starts off as a difficulty in locating where one should, and actually could, conduct fieldwork has a very serious impact on what is studied and how it is studied. Clearly, working with religious scholars and Imams will give you a very limited picture of Islam as it is lived.

...

Most anthropologists do not make clear at all how extraordinarily artificial the pictures they draw of Islam and the life of Muslims are because of the limitations of where they do their fieldwork. So artificial indeed that I have on many occasions sat with my ethnographies of Islam and translated it into Arabic to small crowds in Iraq for most to eventually breakdown into fits of laughter. The comments I hear on many occasions tend to be: “They must think we are really stupid in the West.” (emphasis my own)

A Layover in Mumbai: Thoughts on Humiliation

On my return journey to Germany from South Asia, I booked my flight from Kathmandu to Mumbai to Amsterdam to Hamburg. It was quite a journey, not to mention the eight-hour layover I had at Mumbai Airport. Luckily, I met some fellow travelers (humsafar) on the Kathmandu to Mumbai leg of the trip. One of them was my neighbor, whose name is Paurab. I heard him say hello to others with a similar style in dress and I figured out he was traveling in a group. He wore a simple unfashionable shirt and could not speak English. I had to admit that was surprised to see them traveling to India on a plane. Later on I learned that he and the others were migrant laborers on their way to Oman.

Paurab struck up a conversation with me after having some beer. We spoke in Hindi and he was surprised I could speak Hindi. On the plane, he shmumowed me pictures of his family in "Kathmandu." Later I learned that Paurab is actually Madhesi from the border area, but prefers to claim to be from the Kathmandu area for convenience's sake. He also had a few hours to kill at the Mumbai airport, so we decided to accompany each other a bit longer. I was unclear about how they ended up in Oman, and his future construction job would have nothing to do with his previous job where he worked as a driver in another Gulf country. He also learned to speak Arabic there and could orient himself around the metropolitan city. It sounded a bit of a waste of talent to me since he already learned so much about his first labor site and could use that to advance for himself as well as become of more use to the society. But as capitalism and middlemen dictates labor migration, he had to move on to the new place of Oman. 

He had only met the others he was traveling with in Kathmandu. It seems that they were lodged in the same room for some days prior to their departure. Another man, who seemed to act like their leader, was a Muslim and also made a point to talk with me in English. We shared bananas and a particularly hard cookie, which I was extremely grateful for, since I was out of Indian rupees and had an eight-hour layover to endure. Another one of the group showed me pictures of his wife in western clothing. She posed with a filmy self-consciousness that indicated these clothes were not meant for daily wearing, which I found quite intriguing.

Even though we did not have the means to purchase anything, we walked around the Mumbai airport window-shopping. Paurab dreamed about having a wife soon. We joked that we are practicing now for his future life, when he would buy things for his beloved. (Notice the actions of 'love' mediated through consumption). He pointed to a nearby area in Mumbai and said that he had also worked there before. I was surprised by how much he knew about India through his work experience. He joked that I should jump ship and go outside of the airport to roam around Mumbai. I said I wouldn't have a visa. He said you should just claim to be from Nepal! (Since people from Nepal do not need an ID or visa to cross the border. I thought that was an ingenious joke.)  He said he was 26 but looked a bit older. He asked if I could invite him to come to Germany; I warned him that he would have to learn German to survive. He said with a smile that he wouldn't worry-- he could easily learn it as he would settle there.  I admired his courage, flexibility and resourcefulness.


I wanted especially to share two moments of embarrassment and humiliation in this post experienced by him as seen through my eyes. We waited in an area right after landing in Mumbai, where we would have to be checked again for the visa validity and go through another security scan. The Jet Airways flight attendant called for each country of destination--"Dubai? Dubai? Aap dubai jaeenge?" Then a bit later, she asked for other destiations--"Qatar? Qatar? Aap?" She had to repeat such calls over and over and was impatient in her tone. The Nepali humsafars heading to Oman were also agitated and asked when Oman would be called. But since the attendant was busy she did not respond to their request about the order. It was the most chaotic transfer I have witnessed during my many trips in and out of different places. The other obviously European passengers were chauffeured to a seated area, while the other non-migrant laborer travelers who looked Asian had to figure that part out by themselves. I waited with them for some time and then I realized that I had to go to the restroom. I could not wait with them or pass the security check either, so I planned to meet up with Paurab after the check.

When I went through the checkpoint, the security guards from the Indian forces were extremely rude, regardless of their gender. They barked orders continuously with Hindi. One passenger from Nepal told one guard that he could not understand Hindi and requested him to speak in English. Another person who could speak Hindi acted as a go-between. The guard asked contemptuously, in Hindi, "Isn't he from Nepal?" Implying that everyone from there should understand Hindi. I was similarly expected to understand until some of the guards realized I was probably of another origin. It was quite a bothersome experience and I acutely felt the marginality of Nepal in the eyes of the big Indian sarkari fellows. 
I met up with Paurab, who was waiting for me. I complained to him immediately about the rough treatment. He brushed it off and didn't mind it as much. But I knew that he would have been treated in a similar way--the difference was that he could speak Hindi and avoid trouble. Later on, the second incident occurred when we would try to ask for the WiFi log-in code from the front desk. I never had any issues before, but for Paurab he hesitates to interact with the suited people of the Mumbai airport. He suggested that since my English is good, I should ask for both of us. I reluctantly agreed the first time. When the first WiFi code expired, we had to go the second time and I wanted him to ask for both of us. I stood next to him. The receptionist (which was a different person that the first time) clearly gave him much more trouble than when I asked, suggesting Paurab to log in with his SIM information. But we both did not have an Indian SIM, so we continued to wait for the code. The receptionist addressed me and asked what request did I have. I said I had the same issue, which is that I need the WiFi code. Only then did the receptionist give us both codes. 

I remembered these two incidents because I read a really enlightening paragraph from scholar Sanjay Srivastava on marginality:

"One way of thinking about 'humiliation' in the Indian context might be to consider it as a trope that serves to remind economically and culturally marginal men about their marginality. That, for men like them, the city is, indeed, a place of many dangers and repeated humiliations at the hands of others more powerful; that within the hierarchy of masculinities, theirs may stand at a precipice, teetering between feminisation and re-masculinisation, not always allowing of a stable, delimited sense of the masculine. This is the juncture of where the self-that-wants-to-be is mortified by the actual expereinces of being towards an anxious--fluctuating--subjectivity. It is also the moment where the masculine self may experience itself as a member of a class, its masculinity inscribed and restrained by the rules of inter-class intercourse." (quoted from The Masculinity of Dis-location, in South Asian Masculinities p215)

Although I did not hear the expressions of explicit experiences of humiliation from Paurab, I gained a sense of what it might feel like even within the region of his origin. I worry about the similar experiences he had abroad. While we have not talked since we departed from the airport, there is always the possibility of reconnecting as humsafars. 


Further academic reading on the subject of Nepalese migrant laborers in the Gulf region:

What Kind of Place is this?
Daily Life, Privacy and the Inmate Metaphor in a Nepalese Workers' Labour Camp (Qatar)https://samaj.revues.org/3446

Tamil Nadu Politics and Bullfighting (Jallikattu)

This is one of the reflections I wrote on a 10-day school trip to Tamil Nadu in February, organized by University of Göttingen.

We traveled to Tamil Nadu during a very crucial time in its political history. The key figure of the Dravidian ruling party All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Jayalalithaa, recently died. The party was founded on a charismatic leader and former film star, M. G. Ramachandran. He successfully projected “himself as a Hero, as the true Tamil man” in films and campaigns alike. During campaign seasons, many imitations and plays of him are enacted before meetings of AIADMK officials and voters. Jayalalithaa similarly used her charm and chaste feminine image to her electoral benefit. She survived many probes into allegations of corruption since 1996, and has expelled some members from the party to distance herself from the allegations.

Yet the issue of corruption continued to overshadow the consequent debates over political succession after her death. In early February of 2017, the AIADMK declared that Jayalalithaa’s close aide and confidante Sasikala Natarajan would become her successor. The other contender, who was the acting Chief Minister since October 2016, O Panneerselvam, resigned. However, Sasikala was convicted of corruption just prior to our group’s arrival in Tamil Nadu on February 14. She cannot hold public office for the next six years. Edappadi K Palaniswami, another politician from her faction in AIADMK, swore in as the Chief Minister on February 6. Since the change was very sudden, I saw a lot of advertisements in villages portraying Jayalalithaa posing with Sasikala. As of March during the writing of this report, the two factions of AIADMK are still battling over rules and regulations regarding campaigns, e.g., the right to use the party symbol of two leaves. The dust has yet to settle. Based on my understanding, Sasikala’s inability to govern was more due to her failures in the factional contest rather than corruption per se.

Intense action, with Police in Beige uniforms watching over the grounds. Photo taken by author

Overall I heard very little about the dramatic events within AIADMK from the people we had met over the ten day. We did not meet anyone through the excursion with explicit ties to the party. Thus the understanding of the factional split has been mostly based on news reports. However, the trip was filled with discussions and firsthand experience of politics of a different sort. For example, in a village of the Madurai district, we had the golden opportunity to witness traditional Tamil bull fighting (jallikattu) in action on February 17th. This event has a history of more than two thousand years and has been popularized through Tamil cinema. Personally, the brief glimpses of the village jallikattu had the largest participation of people in a grassroots event I have seen in my four visits in India. The air was also charged with exuberant energy. The policemen welcomed us to come to the fore and engaged in the event as spectators, waving at the bull with their lathis with excitement, while also maintaining order. Most attendees and spectators were men, with a handful of women peering behind the fences. It occurs every year during the harvest festival Pongal and the hero who tames the bull is often portrayed in cinema as a masculine hero and appealing to women. The trope of women falling in love with the bull tamer is as old as Tamil Sangam literature. While injuries are inevitable, participants and spectators alike consider taming the bull a matter of honor. While there usually are prizes for the successful tamers, more rewards of the social nature are also at stake.

Advertisement board for Jallikattu. 

Advertisement board for Jallikattu. Notice Ambedkar on the right side of the board. Photo taken by author

Jallikattu was never a static event. While at some points, most people involved were agricultural workers, other points in time landlords also vigorously engaged in the event as organizers. In an 1893 Tamil novel, the landlord skinned “alive his bull that lost in Jallikattu.” The event has recently reached the height of national political debate due to allegations of animal cruelty and threat to public safety. The use of bulls in this event was contested by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in 2010 but still practiced under the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act No 27 of 2009. In 2014, India’s Supreme Court struck down the state law and banned it. Many people of Tamil Nadu saw it as an affront on Tamil identity and protested the ban in 2016 and 2017. In addition to Tamil nationalism, anti-Modi sentiment was high but underreported by the media. Most protestors were young people—“students, IT professionals, and activists—many of whom, as residents of urban areas, did not regularly witness or participate in Jallikattu.” Prof. Ayyathurai also pointed out during a discussion that he did not witness Jallikattu in action when he lived in his hometown of central Tamil Nadu. This point is interesting in analyzing the construction of Tamil identity through media rather than mere praxis.

Spectators leaving the grounds. Photo taken by author

Spectators. Photo taken by author

Caste is also a point of contention—certain Dalits find the activity to reinforce caste hegemonies. The village jallikattu we witnessed starred the lower-caste group Thevar, who are dominant. They were the one of the major benefitting social groups of the politically foundational anti-Brahmin Self Respect movement. They are considered to favor the AIADMK party and vice versa. In addition to intense conflicts between Thevars and Pallars (a particular Dalit group) since the 1990s, social pressure also plays out in the form of a ban on Dalits from participating in jallikattu. “Dalits are often forced to do markedly less glamorous jobs like playing the melam (a percussion instrument) to set the tone, and take care of the bulls” during jallikattu and are not paid for it. Women are also rarely the center of this sport. Writer Uma Devi, whom we also met during the last event of our trip, pointed that she cannot fathom that the overtly macho sport should represent Tamil culture. Scholar G. A. Aloysius similarly points out that there are many forms of social dominance in his analysis of caste.

Still, the spectacle has interesting connotations for Dalit assertion as well, once have the opportunity to participate. Many Dalit scholars engage in interpreting bull fighting, including some of our trip guides at the Madurai University. As histories of Hinduism shows, one cannot ignore that ownership of rituals is contested and Dalits have the potential to (re)claim certain events. One news narrative that relegates all Dalits who identify as Hindus or participate in Hindu rituals to be pawns of Hindutva significantly neglects Dalit agency.

On a broader point, University of Göttingen’s anthropologist Nate Roberts has argued in a book review that Tamil identity allows for lower caste organization. “In the historical context of modern Tamil Nadu, ‘Tamil’ refers not merely to a particular linguistic identity, but equally to the universal progressive values—anti-caste, feminist, pro-poor, democratic, and humanist—that Dravidian leaders, following the lead of early Dalit leader Iyothee Thass, sought to characterize as inherent to Tamil Nadu’s authentic (pre-Aryan) culture.” Jallikattu could be a key part to this overarching ongoing research on Tamil identity and caste politics.

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