The Last Iraqi Communist Comes to Heaven

“Change with the Red” (غيّر بالأحمر), is today’s slogan of the Lebanese Communist Party for its 85th anniversary, a good opportunity to recall the very significant role of the various Marxist parties in the intellectual and cultural life of the modern Arab world. A good example is Iraq where the “Red menace” is still rearing its ugly head in the literary field after democracy has been generously “given” to its native people!

Around the middle of the 20th century, various young Iraqi poets conduced the Arabic poetic revolution. Among them, Badr Shakir Sayyab (بدر شاكر السياب). Born in a modest family from southern part of the country, Sayyab joined the (then) powerful communist party during his studies in Bagdad. Later, he publicly moved away from his former “comrades” with a collection of articles first published in the Iraqi daily Al-Hurriya, then collected in a book in Beirut under the title “I was a communist”. (The book has been recently reissued by Al-Jamal, an Arabic Publishing house in Germany.)

Also coming from the south of the country, Saadi Youssef (سعدي يوسف) may be the last « great Arab poet » after Mahmud Darwish’s death. Faithfully following the poetic innovations of the 1950’, Saadi Youssef carries on his writing year after year. Two years ago, he has published a new collection: The Last Communist Comes to Heaven. A telling title for somebody grown up in the feverish atmosphere of the communist militants a mid-century ago and now established in London when its country is occupied by foreign troops.

As the inexorable decline of poetry in Arab literature is balanced by the irresistible rise of prose fiction, the formally Iraqi poet Ali Badr will be our third example. After his first novel, Papa Sartre, which gives an ironic description of the leftist intellectual life in the Bagdag of the sixties (the book has been translated into English), Ali Badr has written other books such as Chasing the wolves (الركض وراء الذئاب), a brilliant story which relates the fate of various Iraqi communists in Africa, where they fled the Saddam Hussein’s regime.

As usual, here is the link to the more developed post in French.

Playing on the borders of the National Identity: Khaled under the flags

Identity for the people living in the Arab world is far to limit itself to the only Islamic and Arabic components. For instance, national identification has indeed some importance.

A fact very well perceived by many artistât (for the meaning of that word, see previous post) who play with the national feelings of their audience in order to raise the bidding. Although they can’t display the same selling points, singers very tug at the national heartstrings, for instance in displaying the national flag in all sorts of ways.

At times, playing with a national banner may be dangerous, as it has been the case with Saad al-Saghir and, at various occasions, with chebb Khaled. During his Summer tour of Morocco in 2008, the singer has had all sorts of problems because of a photography of him with the emblem of the Polisario Front. To make things worst, the Algerian pop star was politically naïve enough to also stand on a stage with an Amazigh flag between his hands.

Did the blunderer want to clear his name? Recently, an interview in the Moroccan weekly TelQuel caused uproar in Algeria. According to the Algerian press, the singer had compared the expelling of thousands of Moroccans citizens in the mid 1970’s to the deportation of Jews during Word War II!

Fortunately, the “fuss and muss” over Khaled’s alleged declarations stopped after a vigorous denial from the singer. But Al-Quds al-'arabi - Novembre 2sd - mentions that the Algerian star, repeating that politics and culture should not mix (he should read this blog more frequently!) asked again for an opening of the borders between the two countries.


Link to the orginal in French, with more details.

TV Serials between Comedy and Tragedy in Palestine

Although many Arab TV serials dealt with the Palestine issue during the last years, it has not been the case in Ramadan 09, a fact which can be explained by the economical situation of most of major Panarab channels, but also by the situation of the Palestinian political scene.

Nonetheless, one of the good surprises of last Ramadan TV programs came from Palestine where millions of TV viewers have been watching Watan ‘a watar (something like “a country on the tightrope”).

A success which is linked to the way the authors and comedians dealt with day-to-day problems with a frankness and a boldness quite unusual on the national channel. For instance, an episode was filmed at the 7th Fatah’s congress hold in Nablus in 2509 with the great-great grandsons of the actual leaders and an everlasting Mahmoud Abbas repeating in an infinite loop: negotiations, always negotiations, and only negotiations!

It is said that the President of the Palestinian Authority had a good laugh watching his own caricature. But all of this happened just before the UN Human Right Council took the decision to postpone its vote for the approval of the Goldstone report.

Sadly enough, the Palestinian officials did not make very sincere efforts in order to gain the approval of the majority at the Council. Thus they proved to their many critics among the Palestinian people how right they are when they laugh at their leaders who act and speak like the ridiculous characters of a sad muppet show.


Various links to be found in the original post in French.

About Marriage and Divorce in the Arab World

Four posts about related questions dealing with marriage and divorce in today’s Arab societies (links to the original ones in French).

In the first one, mention was made to Urîdu hâlan (I want a solution), a movie with (and largely thanks to) Faten Hamama. An interesting example of an art production which has had a real impact on the Egyptian society. After years of discussions, the Egyptian law finally gave the women the right – under certain circumstances – to divorce their husband.

Today’s Egyptian women publicly speak not only of their legal right to divorce but of the personal satisfaction they may find living as single, after a divorce or ever-postponing a socially expected marriage. Examples of this new attitude may be found in the writings of two bloggers whose writing have been published in books. In both cases, the colloquial form for “I want”, in Ghada Abdelal’s (غادة عبد العال) I want to get married (عايزة اتجوز) and Mahasen Saber’s (محاسن صابر) I want to get divorced (عايزة اطلق) is a clear reference to the classical verbal form used by Faten Hamama’s point, thirteen years ago.

The second post was about the rising number of unmarried young people (9 millions adult above 35 years in Egypt for instance). The cost of the wedding ceremony may explain this situation, probably connected to the growing phenomenon of sexual harassment in Cairo streets and which is exploited by all sorts of crooks using internet phishing sites. It is also linked to the rising number of non-official unions with the resulting issue of thousands of children born from such unions without any legal status as women does not have the right to declare a birth according to the actual Egyptian law. Considering the great number of students who are engaged in such “unlegal” unions (almost 20% of them according to various studies), one has to think that the sexual practices of many young Arabs are undergoing a radical transformation.

An evolution which is probably conformed by the rising number of divorces in many Arab countries (data in the original post in French from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Arab Emirates and even Gaza. Even in this last case, local analysts emphasize the fact that economical difficulties only cannot explain the breaking of so many unions – and the rising number of unmarried young people. On the contrary, for a growing number of young Arabs, the need to reach personal/individual fulfilment probably becomes more important that the necessity to obey the social requirement of a “family arranged” marriage.

Nonetheless, local traditions remain very strong in many areas, as it is the case with child marriage. Here again (see last post), the increasing denunciation of this phenomenon in the Arab press can be interpreted as the sign of a change. Even if too publicized stories in the Western media like the one of the little Nojood Ali in Yemen (among Glamour magazine “women of the year” !!!”) seem to show the contrary, recent public discussions and legal decisions in Yemen Saudi Arabia or even Morocco are a clear indication that sexual habits, representations and practices in the Arab world are changing.

Ads and Ramadan TV

Great, this week The Arabist - a blog you must know for sure! - has donne the job for me! Here is his summary, with somme adding, of the post originaly published in french (so you'll discover who his the charming lading making an ad for Faruk's Nablus Soap there. Many thanks!

The excellent [!!!: my comment] Culture et Politique Arabes site has a detailed analysis of the commercial underpinnings of Ramadan entertainment (Al Quds Al Arabi estimates that the Holy months brings in $100 million in TV advertising revenues). The post points out that the Egyptians got the jump on other Arab countries this year–in an increasingly competitive TV market–by starting to air their Ramadan soap operas a night before everyone else. The post also mentions the lack of Ramadan spirit in the new Egyptian TV channel El Qahera wa En-Nas (Cairo Centric in English) whose yellow posters all across Cairo have been promising “Ramadan’s most daring TV.” The campaign has clearly already raised some hackles, as this article in Islam Online describes what they consider to be a controversial exchange on one of the stations’ talk shows, in which the director Ines El Daghidi, to the question “When do you think you might take the veil?” replied يا رب ماتكتها علي” (”Oh God, don’t decree this for me”–I think). What’s extraordinary is that apparently this “daring” station is considering editing the exchange out of the broadcast. (...)
Link to The Arabist original post.

Cartoons in the Emirates

Hamdoon, a cartoon character, is more and more popular in the Emirates particularly among the locals who use that word as a diminutive for Hamdan, a very common name which also refers to the typically Emirati way of wearing the tarha, the head-scarf.

Supported by official institutions like the Khalifa Fund to Support and Develop Small & Medium Enterprises and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, Hamdoon, created by Abdullah Mohammad Al Sharhan (عبدالله محمد الشرهان), is another attempt to foster the Emirati (political) identity with popular cartoon characters, popular with the young generation, like (Ajaaj in Dubai a few months ago.

Cartoons are flourishing in the Emirates, but not only for the young. The coming Ramadan should see new episodes of very successful series directed to a family audience, like Shaabiyat al-cartoon (شعبية الكرتون), by Haydar Muhammad (حيدر محمد), or Freej (فريج, for “the district”), a rather unconventional carton created by Mohammed Harib (محمد حارب) whose main characters are four aged ladies commenting the amazing transformations in the Emirates.

From Hamdoon to Freej, via Ajaaj and many others, cartoons are not at all stripped off of some political meaning.

As uasual, more links and details with the original post in French.

Arabîzî : the Romanisation of Arabic

Even if Arabizi means nothing to you, you may use it everyday when you work on your laptop or send messages from your cell-phone. Arabizi is one of the expressions for what is also called ‘arabiyyat al-dardasha, i.e. the more or less phonetic Arabic written with Roman characters in order to use various IT applications when an Arabic keyboard is not available and/or easy to employ.

‘Arabizi – or Aralish, or Franco (for franco-arabe in the Maghreb countries) – is not anymore an absolute necessity in order to communicate in Arabic as it was in the early ‘90s with the very beginning of a widespread Internet but it remains useful at times. Above all, it has become a funny way, now adopted by many young Arabs (and marketed by advertising agencies) to express oneself with the too serious and intimidating written Arabic.

It is worth mentioning that the mere existence of Arabizi gives some credit to those who think that something like a “common Arab culture” still exists! Indeed, Arabizi has appeared and developed itself as an accepted code among all IT Arab users, without any interference of any kind from any official body.

Arabisi may be understood as a new lingua franca (the "lingua franca" was a kind of pidgin, mainly a mixture of Arabic and various Roman languages, which was still in use around the Mediterranean shores at the end of the 19th century). Promoted by the more dynamic and globalised segments of the society, Arabizi is the language of the youth, a language which has absolutely no respect for the older elites and for their command of the (difficult) written Arabic used as a tool for their “symbolic domination”.

Indeed, many (grown-up) people will condemn such a “foolish” attitude toward the Arabic language which is considered to be the core symbol of the Arabic and/or Islamic community. And sometimes they could not be blamed when you watch ads like the one which promotes Maren, one of the tools developed to type Arabic from an English keyboard: it gives the impression that nobody had never typed in Arabic before Microsoft software!

Even more, the ones who are afraid of the spread of these news tools which make easier the shift from the Arabic to the Latin alphabet remember that if the use of the Arabic alphabet in order to transcript other languages like Berber, Persian, Urdu and many others has been historically the rule, in modern times, the first example which comes to mind is, on the contrary, the romanisation of the Turkish language in 1928, shortly after another very symbolic decision by Kamal Atatürk, the abolition of the Califate in 1924.


Links to the some softwares for a “romanised” writing of Arabic to be found in the original post in French.