Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "beirut"
Stranger than zinc bars and literary fiction
Foreign correspondents are always more enthusiastic about Beirut than about Amman. Just like critics prefer “literary” fiction to crime novels.
It seems to me they’re both wrong, and for the same reasons.
Visiting reporters always rave about Beirut. Mainly because there’s a very un-Middle Eastern nightlife there. Zinc bars. Beautiful girls in spaghetti-strap tops beside the zinc bars. Booze, dance clubs, DJs.
They’re not really interested in the broken-down refugee camps or the ride up into the Shouf Mountains or the remnants of wars, bulletholes dug into the walls of buildings both inhabited and abandoned. It’s the zinc bars, that’s all. The things that are just like home.
But Amman. It’s “boring,” because despite its size it’s somehow still a big Bedouin encampment. Slow and formal.
Foreign, in fact.
Turns out, foreign correspondents aren’t so interested in “foreign” places. That’s why they like the bars, zinc or otherwise, at their hotels.
Amman has an astonishing history. It was one of the 10 Roman cities of the region – the original Philadelphia, according to its ancient name. The oldest parts of town down in the valley between the hills where the wealthier people live aren’t picturesque in the way central Damascus is. But they’re teeming with life and with conflicts and with striving – Palestinian refugees, Iraqi refugees, Syrian migrant workers.
No nightlife, though. When old King Hussein was dieing, hundreds of foreign correspondents were forced to endure nights at the Hard Rock Café (since closed) where the highlight was the Village People’s “YMCA”, danced by a staff which was not always familiar with the moves. Probably they didn’t read the Western alphabet, so they had no idea why two arms in the air had to go along with “Y” or why you had to dip to the side to make a “C.”
Having lived away from the country of my birth my entire adult life, I don’t see how anyone can say that any foreign city is boring. The culture will always be different to the one you’re familiar with. Understanding how people think in a world different to your own is the most fascinating thing.
But people prefer the zinc bar, and that’s often true of books, too.
Some genre fiction is not “foreign” enough. I don’t mean that the location has to be overseas, as in my Palestinian crime series. I mean that the subject it tackles or the way of examining the actions of the characters needs to have the challenging, uncomfortable quality of an alien culture.
A book ought to be like a visit to a foreign place, even if it’s set in your own town. Genre doesn’t matter. The way a writer answers this challenge is what makes a book good or bad.
There are cheap ways of engaging readers on this level, and then there are genuine ways.
You might think at first that so-called “genre” fiction would be less foreign, because of the apparent comfort of formula. (For a "formula is cosy and therefore any idiot can read it" appraisal, see The New Yorker's article this week on Nora Roberts.) But it's not so.
Take my Palestinian crime novels. Everything that’s written about Palestinians makes me cringe or toss it aside in boredom. Because “literary” authors like Robert Stone (“Damascus Gate”) find themselves writing about a false construct, an image of the Palestinians or of Jerusalem. They see the people and places of the region only in ways that others have seen them before.
I took the real Palestinians and stories I’d covered as a journalist, shook them out of the stable formula in which they usually appeared in the newspapers, and made them strange, which in turn made them visible in a new way. (For those lit. crit. fans out there, I cite Viktor Shklovsky, Russian formalist, “ostranenie,” art brings about the perception of a thing, rather than creating the thing itself.)
So visit Amman, instead of Beirut. And on the way over, read my Palestinian novels.
It seems to me they’re both wrong, and for the same reasons.
Visiting reporters always rave about Beirut. Mainly because there’s a very un-Middle Eastern nightlife there. Zinc bars. Beautiful girls in spaghetti-strap tops beside the zinc bars. Booze, dance clubs, DJs.
They’re not really interested in the broken-down refugee camps or the ride up into the Shouf Mountains or the remnants of wars, bulletholes dug into the walls of buildings both inhabited and abandoned. It’s the zinc bars, that’s all. The things that are just like home.
But Amman. It’s “boring,” because despite its size it’s somehow still a big Bedouin encampment. Slow and formal.
Foreign, in fact.
Turns out, foreign correspondents aren’t so interested in “foreign” places. That’s why they like the bars, zinc or otherwise, at their hotels.
Amman has an astonishing history. It was one of the 10 Roman cities of the region – the original Philadelphia, according to its ancient name. The oldest parts of town down in the valley between the hills where the wealthier people live aren’t picturesque in the way central Damascus is. But they’re teeming with life and with conflicts and with striving – Palestinian refugees, Iraqi refugees, Syrian migrant workers.
No nightlife, though. When old King Hussein was dieing, hundreds of foreign correspondents were forced to endure nights at the Hard Rock Café (since closed) where the highlight was the Village People’s “YMCA”, danced by a staff which was not always familiar with the moves. Probably they didn’t read the Western alphabet, so they had no idea why two arms in the air had to go along with “Y” or why you had to dip to the side to make a “C.”
Having lived away from the country of my birth my entire adult life, I don’t see how anyone can say that any foreign city is boring. The culture will always be different to the one you’re familiar with. Understanding how people think in a world different to your own is the most fascinating thing.
But people prefer the zinc bar, and that’s often true of books, too.
Some genre fiction is not “foreign” enough. I don’t mean that the location has to be overseas, as in my Palestinian crime series. I mean that the subject it tackles or the way of examining the actions of the characters needs to have the challenging, uncomfortable quality of an alien culture.
A book ought to be like a visit to a foreign place, even if it’s set in your own town. Genre doesn’t matter. The way a writer answers this challenge is what makes a book good or bad.
There are cheap ways of engaging readers on this level, and then there are genuine ways.
You might think at first that so-called “genre” fiction would be less foreign, because of the apparent comfort of formula. (For a "formula is cosy and therefore any idiot can read it" appraisal, see The New Yorker's article this week on Nora Roberts.) But it's not so.
Take my Palestinian crime novels. Everything that’s written about Palestinians makes me cringe or toss it aside in boredom. Because “literary” authors like Robert Stone (“Damascus Gate”) find themselves writing about a false construct, an image of the Palestinians or of Jerusalem. They see the people and places of the region only in ways that others have seen them before.
I took the real Palestinians and stories I’d covered as a journalist, shook them out of the stable formula in which they usually appeared in the newspapers, and made them strange, which in turn made them visible in a new way. (For those lit. crit. fans out there, I cite Viktor Shklovsky, Russian formalist, “ostranenie,” art brings about the perception of a thing, rather than creating the thing itself.)
So visit Amman, instead of Beirut. And on the way over, read my Palestinian novels.
Just like the (good?) old days
With US diplomats roaming the streets of Jerusalem, it's like the intifada never happened.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — It’s like the intifada never happened.
American diplomats mobbed the streets of Jerusalem this week. Even Iran point man Dennis Ross, whose sad-sack demeanor was a frequent feature of the Oslo peace process, stopped by to keep the U.S. defense secretary, the Mideast peace envoy, and the national security adviser company.
Meanwhile, in Palestinian politics, where hatred of Israel once brought everyone together for secret terror summits, Hamas again hates Fatah, which hates Hamas and also dislikes itself. In Israel, the two most powerful men are Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak.
Just like the old days. Before the five years of violence known as the intifada that began in September 2000, when Palestinian riots turned into gunbattles and the Israeli army reoccupied all the Palestinian towns it had evacuated during the previous seven years of the peace process.
Except there’s one reminder this week that the intifada actually did take place: Fouad Shoubaki is still screwed.
The man who ran military procurement and budgets for Yasser Arafat was convicted by an Israeli military court Wednesday of handing on $7 million worth in arms to the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which used the weapons to kill Israelis during the intifada.
The court also found Shoubaki guilty of paying $125,000 (from Arafat) to fund the voyage of a ship called the Karine A. When Israeli commandos from the Shayetet 13 — the equivalent of the Navy Seals — captured the Karine A in January 2002, it was carrying 50 tons of guns, missiles and material, loaded on board by Hezbollah operatives off the Iranian coast.
Though the intifada was 15 months old at the time the Karine A was captured, many in Washington and other world capitals became convinced that Arafat really did think he was at war with Israel. They stopped talking about “putting the peace process back on track.” Until recently.
The Palestinians put Shoubaki in jail in Jericho. The Israelis said all along that he was just a fall guy being held for appearances sake. In 2006, when it seemed Shoubaki might be released, the Israelis raided the Jericho jail and captured him. His trial lasted three years.
In the court, Shoubaki claimed to “have sought peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis and to build neighborly relations.” He said he was close to current Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who’s considered a moderate in favor of peace talks with Israel (although he won’t talk to them just now).
But the court also heard that Shoubaki admitted some unneighborly actions during his interrogation by the Israeli domestic security service, the Shin Bet.
He was the go-between for Arafat’s contacts with Imad Mughniya, a top Hezbollah operative believed to have been behind the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed more than 300 people. (Mughniya, whose bloody resume was much longer than can be detailed here, died in a car bomb in Damascus in February last year. Hezbollah factions, the Syrian government and the Israeli Mossad have all been blamed for his killing at one time or another.)
Shoubaki maintained, under interrogation, that he was just following orders. Arafat signed off on all the payments and it was a time of war, so Shoubaki can’t be held responsible, he argued. At his sentencing next month, the 70-year-old looks certain to get life.
Shoubaki’s activities seem to belong to a distant era, now that the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank are following orders from their U.S. adviser, Gen. Keith Dayton, and Israeli officials describe cooperation as better even than during the Oslo period.
But it’s only a few years, really. Many of the same people are in power on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. The same is true of much of the U.S. negotiating team. While they may not be capable of messing up on the scale Arafat managed in the early years of the intifada, there are signs that what seemed like momentum two months ago is fizzling.
The U.S. had demanded a freeze on construction in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Special envoy George Mitchell was here this week trying to get the Israelis to agree to a partial freeze. Israeli officials say the Americans are now attempting to get the Israelis to stop some construction in return for a removal of restrictions in certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlements.
But such new construction will take up Palestinian land just like the settlements whose expansion Israel is on track to halt. And the settlements which will get the green light are where the building is most frenetic, because of high birth rates among ultra-Orthodox communities.
The Palestinians, too, are repeating the mistakes that led them to bring the Oslo edifice down about their own heads. A meeting set for next week in Bethlehem to reform the ruling Fatah faction may not go ahead, and even if it does it won’t sweep away as many corrupt old hacks as the party’s young guard wants.
Last time that happened, the young leaders decided to destroy the peace process, which formed the power base of the old cadres, so that Arafat would have to turn to them for support. It didn’t work out, of course, but there are plenty who might want to have another shot.
Shoubaki may be going to jail forever, but his old pals might soon need his Rolodex.
By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — It’s like the intifada never happened.
American diplomats mobbed the streets of Jerusalem this week. Even Iran point man Dennis Ross, whose sad-sack demeanor was a frequent feature of the Oslo peace process, stopped by to keep the U.S. defense secretary, the Mideast peace envoy, and the national security adviser company.
Meanwhile, in Palestinian politics, where hatred of Israel once brought everyone together for secret terror summits, Hamas again hates Fatah, which hates Hamas and also dislikes itself. In Israel, the two most powerful men are Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak.
Just like the old days. Before the five years of violence known as the intifada that began in September 2000, when Palestinian riots turned into gunbattles and the Israeli army reoccupied all the Palestinian towns it had evacuated during the previous seven years of the peace process.
Except there’s one reminder this week that the intifada actually did take place: Fouad Shoubaki is still screwed.
The man who ran military procurement and budgets for Yasser Arafat was convicted by an Israeli military court Wednesday of handing on $7 million worth in arms to the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which used the weapons to kill Israelis during the intifada.
The court also found Shoubaki guilty of paying $125,000 (from Arafat) to fund the voyage of a ship called the Karine A. When Israeli commandos from the Shayetet 13 — the equivalent of the Navy Seals — captured the Karine A in January 2002, it was carrying 50 tons of guns, missiles and material, loaded on board by Hezbollah operatives off the Iranian coast.
Though the intifada was 15 months old at the time the Karine A was captured, many in Washington and other world capitals became convinced that Arafat really did think he was at war with Israel. They stopped talking about “putting the peace process back on track.” Until recently.
The Palestinians put Shoubaki in jail in Jericho. The Israelis said all along that he was just a fall guy being held for appearances sake. In 2006, when it seemed Shoubaki might be released, the Israelis raided the Jericho jail and captured him. His trial lasted three years.
In the court, Shoubaki claimed to “have sought peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis and to build neighborly relations.” He said he was close to current Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who’s considered a moderate in favor of peace talks with Israel (although he won’t talk to them just now).
But the court also heard that Shoubaki admitted some unneighborly actions during his interrogation by the Israeli domestic security service, the Shin Bet.
He was the go-between for Arafat’s contacts with Imad Mughniya, a top Hezbollah operative believed to have been behind the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed more than 300 people. (Mughniya, whose bloody resume was much longer than can be detailed here, died in a car bomb in Damascus in February last year. Hezbollah factions, the Syrian government and the Israeli Mossad have all been blamed for his killing at one time or another.)
Shoubaki maintained, under interrogation, that he was just following orders. Arafat signed off on all the payments and it was a time of war, so Shoubaki can’t be held responsible, he argued. At his sentencing next month, the 70-year-old looks certain to get life.
Shoubaki’s activities seem to belong to a distant era, now that the Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank are following orders from their U.S. adviser, Gen. Keith Dayton, and Israeli officials describe cooperation as better even than during the Oslo period.
But it’s only a few years, really. Many of the same people are in power on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. The same is true of much of the U.S. negotiating team. While they may not be capable of messing up on the scale Arafat managed in the early years of the intifada, there are signs that what seemed like momentum two months ago is fizzling.
The U.S. had demanded a freeze on construction in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Special envoy George Mitchell was here this week trying to get the Israelis to agree to a partial freeze. Israeli officials say the Americans are now attempting to get the Israelis to stop some construction in return for a removal of restrictions in certain ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlements.
But such new construction will take up Palestinian land just like the settlements whose expansion Israel is on track to halt. And the settlements which will get the green light are where the building is most frenetic, because of high birth rates among ultra-Orthodox communities.
The Palestinians, too, are repeating the mistakes that led them to bring the Oslo edifice down about their own heads. A meeting set for next week in Bethlehem to reform the ruling Fatah faction may not go ahead, and even if it does it won’t sweep away as many corrupt old hacks as the party’s young guard wants.
Last time that happened, the young leaders decided to destroy the peace process, which formed the power base of the old cadres, so that Arafat would have to turn to them for support. It didn’t work out, of course, but there are plenty who might want to have another shot.
Shoubaki may be going to jail forever, but his old pals might soon need his Rolodex.
Review: The year's best Police procedural
Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo and Pygmies
By Stewart Copeland
Publisher UK: The Friday Project US: HarperStudio
Just because I write crime fiction doesn’t make me obsessed by The Police. However, this new memoir by The Police drummer is absolutely the most delightful surprise of the year. Copeland writes with the same verve and invention he displays in his deceptively tricky drumming. Turns out he’s the son of the CIA Beirut station chief and grew up frolicking in the Mediterranean waves with the son of Kim Philby, the British spy who was a double agent for Moscow. The book is excellent on Copeland’s early days with the band Curved Air (he used to write letters to music newspapers assuming the identity of fans: “I just saw Curved Air. They’re great, and who’s that amazing drummer…”) The early days of The Police are handled inventively, and he writes about his second career scoring film soundtracks with great intelligence. The greatest pleasure is to see The Police’s reunion tour from the inside. There’s a lot of creativity and bemusement as Copeland finds himself once again playing with Sting and Andy Summers, being feted everywhere. He’s also great on the resurrection of the nettlesome relationship with the band’s most famous member. (At one gig in Turin, Sting keeps turning toward him and angrily mouthing that he ought to play differently. Copeland, who’s in his 50s and has been banging the tubs since he was 12, begs to differ. Mid-concert he finds himself screaming into his drums: “You fucking—Fucking—Fuckkkkinnnng bastard!”) Could’ve titled this one: “Sometimes Even Millionaires Wonder Why the Hell They’re Doing What They Do.”
