Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "appearances"

Je fais une lecture en francais chez la librairie francaise a Jerusalem ce mois. Voici les detailles :

«Meurtre chez les Samaritains» de Matt Rees, Editions Albin Michel
Tout est possible en Palestine, et rien ne dit que le jeune Ishaq, le fils du prêtre des Samaritains de Naplouse, n’a pas été exécuté parce qu’il était homosexuel. Rien ne dit non plus que sa connaissance intime des caisses noires du Vieux, l’ancien Président de l’Autorité palestinienne, ne lui a pas été fatale. Après Le Collaborateur de Bethléem (qui vient de sortir en poche) et Une tombe à Gaza, qui ont installé Matt Rees comme l’un des maîtres du polar, cette troisième enquête d’Omar Youssef quadrille le labyrinthe de la casbah de l’antique cité de Cisjordanie et explore les arcanes de l’univers des Samaritains.
"Omar Youssef est le Marlowe de la rue arabe." NewYork Magazine
Matt REES sera à la librairie et signera ses livres le dimanche 28 Juin à 18h30

Librairie Vice-Versa
par téléphone: 02-6244412
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par mail: lib@viceversalib.com – Notre site: viceversalib.com

I bet you didn't know there was an underground scene in Jerusalem (at least not an underground music scene; you've probably heard of some other undergrounds that operate here). Here's a little bit of Middle East insider poop for you: what's the most obscure underground band in Jerusalem?

Answer: Dolly Weinstein.

A fivesome (formerly a sixsome, sometimes foursome) of folk rock and rock standards, featuring yours truly on bass.

Other writers are notable for playing in not very good rock bands -- Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Dave Barry, for example, in the Rock Bottom Remainders (too many people on stage, always makes me think of Live Aid and horrible things like that -- not very "underground" at all). But which of them can say they've played in a basement bar under a dreary 1970s tower block in the center of Jerusalem? Or that they'll be the opening act at a Woodstock tribute concert in a football stadium in Jerusalem on August 6?

So here's Dolly Weinstein in action. A 56-second clip on Youtube.

There it is. Fifty-six seconds of underground Jerusalem. That's about what it's worth.

This weekend I was the guest of Munther Fahmi, who runs the excellent bookshop at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, for a reading from my newest Palestinian crime novel THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET. Munther and I have been scheming for some time to organize an event, so it was great to finally get it together.

I knew it'd be an interesting crowd at the Colony, which manages to be something like neutral ground (although many Israelis might dispute that) in Jerusalem. There were foreign journalists and diplomats, Israelis and Palestinians among the sizeable crowd, including some old friends I haven't seen for some time. Oh, and tourists, too -- a rare species since the intifada, but I signed for visitors from Berlin and Seattle, Ireland and Serbia.

I was also delighted that one of the people on whom I based the character of a World Bank worker in THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET happened to be staying at the Colony this weekend. I was able to give him the news that I'd turned him into a woman and changed his employer. He seemed pleased with both alterations, and I hope he enjoys the book.



I've edited the photos so that you can't see how hot it became in the room. By the time I was signing the books at the end I was rather inelegantly dripping with sweat. The alternative, of course, was the honking of passing Arab wedding convoys and, as antiglobalization activist Naomi Klein discovered when the windows were opened to let in some air for her reading immediately after mine, the evening call to prayers by the muezzin at the mosque next door. (It's the Mosque of Sheikh Jarrah, named after Saladin's doctor, whose tomb it houses.)

To get on Munther's mailing list for future readings at his excellent bookshop, write to him at bookshopat@gmail.com.

The whole point of travel is to see Red Light districts around the world. That’s what I assume my German publisher C.H. Beck thinks. Or maybe that's what they think I'll like. Anyway, they keep sending me to Hamburg, which has one of the most famous naughty neighborhoods in the world.

At the invitation of the extremely professional Harbour Front Literaturfestival and in the company of my Beck “handler,” I made another visit to Hamburg last month. I really like the place tremendously. Not because of the Reeperbahn, the red light strip, but because the city faces the wide River Elbe in every sense, it’s affordable, and its people are liberal and open.

That’s a very pleasant change for me, given that I live in the Middle East, a region where there’s no water, things are quite expensive, and the people… Well, I think you’ve read about them.

I wandered the Reeperbahn with Miriam Froitzheim, the wonderful Beck lady whose job is to get me on the right trains, feed me, and pretend that it isn’t boring for her to listen to my same shtick every night at my readings. We particularly enjoyed the public toilet on the center-island of the road, which was decorated with two little neon boys peeing pink neon streams of urine at each other.

Other than that, it must be said that red light districts put me in mind less of sex than they do of sexually transmitted disease. Not to mention theft and violence. I gave some money to a beggar because it seemed better than putting it in the slot of a peep-show and headed for the river.

I stayed a couple of nights on the Cap San Diego, a 1920s ocean liner which is now a floating hotel in the heart of Hamburg’s docks (It goes downriver to the sea twice a year). It’s only 80 Euros a night, which makes it pretty cheap for a hotel anywhere in Europe. Its comfortable wooden interiors look out onto the cranes of the dockyard across the rolling Elbe.

You can see the yacht Roman Abramovic (Russian oligarch owner of a boring English soccer club) is building at 1 million Euros a meter, which is less than what he pays for soccer players but still quite expensive. It’ll be 150 meters long when it's finished early in the winter. Along the river is a new Philharmonic building, which probably cost less than the yacht and isn’t crass or disgusting.

From my porthole, I also watched boats ferrying people to the theater on the other side of the river. Now showing, “The Lion King”: a nine-year run, booked six months ahead. Another boat went by advertising “Tarzan,” a musical with songs by Phil Collins which was cast on a German tv reality show.

I commented to Miriam that I’m insulated from such pop-cultural crap. By living in Jerusalem, a city where nothing ever happens. Except terrorism.

She used the opportunity to introduce me to a very useful German expression: “Was bringt dich auf die Palme?” Literally, what sends you up a palm tree? (ie. What drives you nuts?) Answer: Phil Collins musicals, of course.

En route to Hamburg, my train stopped in Hannover. Throughout the intifada, I drove a Mercedes armored car through the West Bank. It had Hannover plates (I’d imported it from Germany). I gave a quiet thanks to the town which had stopped a few bullets for me.

Then it was off to Aachen, near the Dutch border, where my reading was in Charlemagne’s 1200-year-old hunting lodge, the Frankenbergerhof. Charlemagne is the main man in Aachen. His throne sits in the town’s cathedral, which is a beautiful hodge-podge that looks enormous on the outside and is quite small on the inside. Unless the Aachners were hiding some part of it from me.

They also have the Devil’s thumbprint on the door of the cathedral. That happened when Lucifer got his finger caught in the door. The Devil being that stupid, you see.

Opposite the lovely Aachen town hall, I sat for lunch at the Brauerei Goldener Schwan. While some may travel for red light districts, I go for the food. I ate Aachner puttes, also known as Himmel und Erd (Heaven and Earth): blood sausage of a very soft consistency, fried onions, fried apples, and mashed potatos. More Himmel than Erd, I’d say.

I worked off the “puttes” by wandering Aachen with Miriam, a native of the town. Actually I didn’t really walk off the lunch. As we strolled, we bought a packet of Aachner Printen, the clovey gingerbread-like cookies for which the town is famed (not really gingerbread, which is sweetened with honey; these are sweetened with sugar). So on balance I probably got fatter in Aachen.

But at least no one peed neon at me.

Next post: I finish my German-language reading tour in Switzerland and actually take a vacation for the first time in two years, bumping into someone who used to play football for Roman Abramovic… Next post after that: I field emails from people telling me that reading tours sound much like vacations, so I oughtn’t to complain that it’s been two years since I had a formal break….

One of the advantages of being an author in an “exotic” locale is that people visit and want to hear from you as someone who knows the place well. It’s also one of the disadvantages.

Last Friday night, I drove out to Ein Kerem to meet one such group of visitors from Reboot, a U.S. organization that brings together mostly liberal – and certainly not conventional-thinking – Jews to discuss issues related to Judaism and Israel. It turned out to be one of those occasions where I take a certain amount of pleasure in the people I meet, but am also reminded why I chose to spend my days alone with imaginary characters.

Ein Kerem is an old village on the edge of Jerusalem that’s less regimented in its architecture and layout than the neighborhoods of the city built in the last 60 years. John the Baptist was born there. So was my son, because there’s now a hospital overlooking the valley with its collection of churches, convents and restaurants. When I arrived, I stood by my car for a few minutes watching a desert fox prowl the street, its brush silhouetted against the lights of the hospital.

The Reboot people had spent the day being spat upon by ultra-Orthodox Jews who objected to their visit to a religious neighborhood of Jerusalem. The previous day a friend of mine who works with asylum seekers had shown them around a Tel Aviv slum where illegal immigrants from Africa and the Far East congregate.

In the private house where Reboot had arranged for the dinner, I went out to the garden with the 15 members of the group. The owner of the house started telling them about the village. She began with the fact that it had been home to Palestinian Arabs. She didn’t mention that in 1948 a massacre in a nearby village lead them to flee. One of the “Rebooters” called her on it: “What happened to the Arabs?”

Nothing wrong with that, except that it wasn’t really a question – he could’ve guessed the answer. There was a tone of self-righteous confrontation to which I’m deeply attuned after 13 years here.

Well, not as deeply attuned as I thought. Because then I made my mistake.

I’d been asked to speak about “Jerusalem and what it means to the Jews.” God knows why. But I never turn down an audience when there’s a chance of plugging my books. My mistake was to say that I’d be prepared to talk about broader political issues than Jerusalem.

I can do that perfectly well. For several hours in fact I discussed the changes – for the worse – in the chances for peace over the years. The growth of Israeli settlements, in the face of agreements to which Israel is a signatory. The sense among senior Palestinian politicians that they can let peace talks languish because time is somehow on their side. Everyone behaving as though the problems they’re prolonging will disappear.

But people don’t know the energy it costs me to discuss this shit. And after 13 years here that’s what it is. Shit.

As the evening drew on, I found myself subject to a familiar feeling. Sapped of energy, tightness at the back of my jaw, wanting to fall off my chair. I’d connected with a few members of the group. But still others wanted answers to questions which have no answer (unless you think, for example, that the world just hates Jews and wants Israel gone, or that Muslims are born crazy.) I suppose I ought to have said that politicians disgust me and let’s quit talking politics… Let’s talk about how you build a sentence. What it’s like to bury yourself in a novel for months at a time. How different a culture looks when you put aside politics and try to imagine the taste of hummus on a tongue that recalls a time when your mother fed it to you as a baby.

It’s not for nothing that the people closest to me at the table were the ones with which I connected and the ones at the farthest end asked questions on an impersonal political level. At the far end of the table I probably seemed like a lecturer, rather than the actual human being visible to those sitting close to me.

I wrote my novels to escape this sort of dialogue. I wanted to show the human concerns of the Palestinians I’d come to know, rather than the stereotypes of their political portrayal.

Why? Because politics in the Middle East goes around in circles. Circles of victimization, everyone competing to show that they’re misunderstood and that they suffer more than the other side of the conflict. Refusing to see the other side as human.

The longer I’m here the less interested I am in exploring that. Palestinians are people to me – not symbols of victimization and oppression. Israelis, too. To a novelist, people can be characters. To a politician, they’re only ever symbols and numbers to be shunted about or used.

When I talked to the Rebooters, I was able to explain this, but only when the conversation turned to my books. It’s fair enough that most of them hadn’t yet read my books and that they returned to political issues and media coverage of the conflict.

As I drove home through the empty streets of a quiet Jerusalem already six hours into the Jewish Sabbath, I realized that I turned to novels because I’d come to know myself well. I didn’t want to turn my attention outward as a journalist, to record the emotional responses of others. I wanted to take readers into my characters’ heads – and, of course, into mine. Into the extreme experiences and emotions I’d gone through covering the intifada, learning about the real Palestinian culture. I decided that I would no longer speak about political issues, except where they touched upon the content of my Palestinian crime novels.

From now on, the Middle East is me.

(I posted this on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog.)

I'll be talking about my Palestinian crime novels in Jerusalem on Monday, Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. The location is Beit Frankforter, 80 Bethlehem Road, in Baka. So call in sick (if you still have a job) and come along.