Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "bethlehem"

In its listing of recommended books new to paperback, The New York Times features the second of my Palestinian crime novels A GRAVE IN GAZA, just out in softcover from Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (The UK paperback, titled THE SALADIN MURDERS, has been out in small format for a while already.) Here's what the Times writes:
"Omar Yussef, an aging Palestinian schoolteacher, is the hero of a series of mysteries by Rees, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time magazine. In this one, he encounters corruption and violence when he attempts to free a teacher from one of the United Nations schools who’s been jailed on spying charges. “Setting a mystery in the epicenter of a war zone challenges the genre conventions,” Marilyn Stasio wrote in the [New York Times:] Book Review about the series’s first book, THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM, but “it clarifies the role of the detective as the voice of reason.”
Incidentally, 'The Collaborator of Bethlehem' is titled THE BETHLEHEM MURDERS in the UK.

Guest blogging on A Book Blogger's Diary, I write about why my publishers like to have a new title for the same book in almost every country...Choosing one is almost as hard as writing the book itself... Almost.

By Matt Beynon Rees, on Global Post
JERUSALEM — If you happen to be in the Holy Land next week and you have a beef with the pope, get to the back of the line.

In Nazareth, where Pope Benedict XVI will say Mass on May 14, the Islamic Movement accuses the pontiff of insulting Islam in a 2006 speech and leaflets have been distributed in the town calling for violence against the pontiff. In Gaza, the small Christian community there is upset that he won’t visit them as a show of solidarity after the violence in January.

The Israeli security services say the popemobile isn’t safe enough and want to cocoon Benedict in an armored limo, where pilgrims won’t be able to see him. Refugees in a Bethlehem camp that Benedict plans to visit are setting up a platform for his appearance right in front of the tall concrete wall Israel has built around the town and camp leaders refuse to locate it somewhere with a less emotive backdrop.

The Catholic Church, too, has done its share of complaining in advance of the pope’s arrival in Israel May 11, insisting that the planned tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, should bypass an exhibit that suggests Benedict’s predecessor, Pius XII, maintained a “neutral position” on the mass murder of Jews during World War II. The pope will pray at the memorial to victims of the Holocaust but won’t enter the museum.

To Father William Shomali, it all looks distressingly familiar.

Rector of the Latin Seminary in Beit Jala, a Christian village attached to Bethlehem, Shomali organized an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem during the visit of the previous pope, John Paul II, in March 2000. John Paul was the first pope to visit Rome’s main synagogue and also made a historic stop in a Damascus mosque. But his attempts at reconciliation couldn’t overcome the all-around nastiness of the Middle East.

At Notre Dame, a Catholic complex overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and the Palestinian Authority’s chief Islamic judge Taisir Tamimi refused to plant an olive tree with the pope because they didn’t want to shake hands with each other. Shomali had to ask John Paul to plant the symbol of peace on his own.

The public meeting that followed was notable for the image of John Paul hunched between Lau, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and a stony-faced Tamimi.

“They only talked about their own suffering,” Shomali said. “We need to get out of this victim mentality and recognize our own guilt, before there can be reconciliation.”

Since that meeting in 2000, Palestinians and Israelis have lived through five years of intifada violence and a devastating war in Gaza. It hasn’t made them any more willing to acknowledge their own guilt.

With that in mind, Benedict gamely plans to have another try.

On his first day in Jerusalem, he’ll return to Notre Dame for a meeting with Israel’s chief rabbis, a leading Muslim jurist, and heads of the Druze minority in Israel.

The message of such a meeting is clear. “His Holiness rejects denial of the Other,” says Bishop Munib Younan, head of the Lutheran Church in the Holy Land.

For Younan, the pope’s dual status as a religious figure and head of a state — the Vatican — gives his spiritual interventions a political element. That, he hopes, could reverse the disturbing politicization of religion in the Middle East.

“Politics and religion are intertwined,” he says. “We would just like to have religion lead politics, rather than the other way round.”

That could give an important shove to peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, as Christian leaders see it.

More immediately — and more likely perhaps — the pope will give a boost to the embattled Christian Arab community in Israel and the West Bank. In towns like Bethlehem and Nazareth, Christians used to be a majority, but now face hatred and sometimes violence from the growing Muslim population. Bishop Younan describes it as “Christianophobia,” in the face of which much of his congregation and many members of other denominations are emigrating to the U.S. or South America.

Of course, that might depend on whether Benedict can quell the “Popeophobia” circulating before his arrival

For those who happen to read some French, Planete Polar is a wonderful source of news and reviews about crime fiction, crime writers, and movie offshoots. It's written by Philippe Lemaire, cultural correspondent for Le Parisien. Philippe's a delightful fellow who's interviewed me a couple of times -- once in Paris, and also in Bethlehem when he came to write about my first crime novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem. One of my favorite recent posts on Planete Polar is his amusing assessment of a "slightly mad" book about the crime novels of Fred Vargas. His blog isn't restricted to French writers, of course ("Polar" is the French word for crime novels, and "Planete"...well, even a Parisian would admit that there's more to the planet than French novels) and Philippe has access to all the big writers from around the world visiting Paris for publication of their latest books. Take a look at Philippe's newest post, in which he decidedly gets under the skin of Douglas Kennedy....

One of the jobs authors are required to perform to help promote their work is the strange task of procuring from other authors something called a “blurb”—the praise you’ll find on the back cover of books. They ought to come from authors whose readers might also be interested in your book--that's the idea. In 2006, when I sent out advance copies of my first novel “The Collaborator of Bethlehem,” I had no doubt I wanted one to go to Barbara Nadel, winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger the previous year. Her fabulous series of novels about Istanbul detective Cetin Ikmen delves into a society that we think we know a great deal about – only to demonstrate how much more complex is the reality. That’s one of the things I was trying to do with my Palestinian detective Omar Yussef. I’m pleased to report that Barbara recognized that, and she was kind enough to read and comment (favorably!) on my book. She’s published 11 terrific Turkish novels and is about to publish a new novel in her other series, in which the hero is a London undertaker. The two series are rather different and make varied demands on this intelligent writer, so I thought it’d be fascinating to ask her about The Writing Life.

How long did it take you to get published?

I first started trying to get published in 1992. At that time the notion of a mystery book, much less a series set in Turkey, was rejected as almost laughable. I’ll be honest, I gave up and put my first book Belshazzar’s Daughter in a drawer for 7 years. The only reason I ever took it out again was because in 1999 I was, yet again, totally broke and I thought, ‘why not give this old thing one more go? Maybe someone will give me some cash?’ So I sent it to an agent who, on this occasion, liked it. The next thing I knew I was involved in a three book contract! Now ten years on, I write two mystery series; the Inspector İkmen stories set in modern Turkey and the Francis Hancock mysteries set in 1940s London.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

I have to admit that I’ve never read any!

What’s a typical writing day?

I live in the north of England and so my first task of the day is to look out of the window and see what the sky is doing. That done, I try to get to my desk by about 8am and then work through until lunchtime. I don’t generally do lunch – a legacy of past chain-smoking – but just have a cup of tea and maybe, just occasionally, a cigarette. I’ll then work through until about 5 or 6pm. I don’t do this every day but try to work this schedule Monday to Friday if I can. I have pretty heavy family commitments and so it’s not always possible.

Plug your latest book. Why is it so great?

I have two books out next month, one paperback, an İkmen mystery called River of the Dead, and a new Hancock hardback called Sure and Certain Death.


River of the Dead sees İkmen and his protégé Suleyman, in pursuit of an escaped prisoner. Yusuf Kaya is a murderer and drug dealer and when he escapes from prison in İstanbul it is suspected he has had help. Also because Kaya’s home town is in eastern Turkey it is strongly suspected he has gone back there. And so while İkmen pursues the investigation in İstanbul, Suleyman flies out to the eastern city of Mardin. There he finds not only drug dealing, gun running and the threat of terrorist attack, but also an exotic mix of people including Kurds, Suriani Christians and those who believe in an ancient snake goddess, the Sharmeran. This book came about as a result of a trip I made out to Mardin in 2007 and is I hope imbued with the same sense of magic and unreality that I found there. That said River of the Dead is also a tough book which address very real issues I talked to people about in Mardin, like the Iraq war. I think it’s great because although it is a crime story it is also a social commentary as well as, hopefully, introducing some people to the glories of south eastern Turkey.


Sure and Certain Death is about a series of killings that take place in the London Borough of West Ham in 1941. Middle aged women are being attacked and eviscerated. Local people start whispering about Jack the Ripper being on the prowl again. One such victim is discovered in a bombed out house by undertaker Francis Hancock. A veteran of World War I, Francis suffers from shell-shock which means that sometimes he doesn’t always know that what he is experiencing is actually real. But soon the murders come close to home and he finds himself fearing for his own sister. Sure and Certain Death is a story about World War 2 that has its murderous roots in the darkest corners of Word War 1. I think it’s a good book because it is not either an obvious murder story or a straightforward story of the London Blitz. My father experienced the Blitz when he was a child and although the Hancock books do tell of the heroism of that time, they also aim to tell it like it was too. Francis Hancock’s world is therefore one of privation, dirt, anxiety and sometimes madness.

How much of what you do is dictated by genre formula, personal formula or complete originality?

My aim is always not to write to formula but to produce something fresh every time. However within the crime/mystery genre there are certain constraints, like having a ‘tidy’ ending. Not to do this is unsatisfying for the reader, even though I do sometimes want to reflect the sheer messiness of real life. In addition series characters do have back stories which have to be addressed in some form in every book and so formula could be said to apply there too. In the main however I don’t write to formula.

What’s your favourite sentence in all literature and why?

From Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. These are the first words Miss Havisham ever speaks to Pip. They sum up both the bitterness and the tragedy of her situation perfectly.

‘This,’ said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, ‘is where I shall be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.’

She knows that her relatives will only ‘come and look’ at her. They won’t grieve. They are only interested in her money. All this is conveyed so well in this cold little sentence.

How much research is involved in each of your books?

Quite a lot, although of course it does depend on the book. For River of the Dead I had to go to Mardin and its environs and talk to people so that was pretty full-on. With the Hancock series of course I have to do historical research into aspects of World War 2 every time. Enjoyable but time consuming.

Do you live entirely off your writing? How many books did you write before you could make a living at it?

For the first 6 years of my writing career I couldn’t make my living just from my books. I had a day job in a psychiatric hospital and wrote at night and at weekends. Since the Hancock series began however (4 years ago) I have (just) been able to survive on writing. However it’s not easy and I do have to supplement my income by writing short stories and bits of journalism.

How many books did you write before you were published?

I had one academic book published before ‘Belshazzar’s Daughter’ but no fiction. Not that I didn’t try. I wrote two books which I haven’t had published. Goodness knows if they’ll ever see the light of day!

What’s the strangest thing that ever happened to you on a book tour?

Meeting an old man who was called Mr İkmen and then, not twenty four hours later, seeing a Turkish policeman who looked just like my internal vision of İkmen’s protégé, Suleyman!

What’s your weirdest idea for a book you’ll never get to publish?

A horror story about a Victorian side-show man who kills people and then places them in sentimental tableau which he charges the public one penny to view. Ghastly and weird and clearly the product of a brain that is not what it should be. Mind you, Goths would like it I am sure!

Pope's visit satisfies few
Analysis: After a five-day visit to the Holy Land, the Pope may be wondering why he came. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — As the Pope’s special El Al flight departed Tel Aviv for Rome Friday at the end of his five-day visit to the Holy Land, he might have kicked off his red slippers, dropped his seat into recline, and wondered why he bothered to come.

He had to endure a nasty anti-Israel tirade by a Palestinian cleric at what was supposed to be an interfaith dialogue meeting in Jerusalem. He was excoriated in the Israeli press for insufficient hand-wringing at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. Then the Israeli prime minister buttonholed him about Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions, which would hardly be within the remit of Benedict XVI’s “personal pilgrimage” to the Holy Land.

Of course, the Pope wouldn’t be the only one wondering why he came. Israeli newspaper commentators acknowledged that, at best, he meant well. Palestinians were glad he posed in front of the Israeli wall around Bethlehem, but wanted a stronger denunciation of Israel — on that score it’s fair to say they’re hard to please. Even local Christians were disappointed that, unlike his predecessor, Benedict chose not to boost their flagging community by urging Catholics around the world to make a pilgrimage to the Christian sites of the Holy Land.

And everyone wondered why the 82-year-old pontiff didn’t smile.

When he visited the Western Wall on Tuesday, the Pope faced the old Herodian stones of the ancient Jewish Temple’s retaining wall and recited Psalm 122: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.”

The response from the people of Jerusalem was, in effect: “Prayers? That’s all you’ve got?”

Because the people of Jerusalem had more than just prayers for Benedict.

At the Notre Dame Pontifical Institute opposite the New Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, the Pope concluded his first day in the Holy Land by walking off the stage to signal his disapproval of an undoubtedly pre-planned outburst by Sheikh Taisir Tamimi, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Islamic courts. Tamimi grabbed the microphone to welcome Benedict to “the eternal political, national and spiritual capital of Palestine.”

The interfaith meeting was billed as an occasion to recognize the suffering of others, rather than dwelling on one’s own victimhood as is the wont of Israelis and Palestinians. The Pope’s address was a rather esoteric meditation on religion’s role in a world made somehow smaller by new communications technologies.

“Can we then make spaces — oases of peace and profound reflection — where God's voice can be heard anew,” he said, “where His truth can be discovered within the universality of reason, where every individual, regardless of dwelling, or ethnic group, or political hue, or religious belief, can be respected as a person, as a fellow human being?”

Tamimi had the microphone for 10 minutes. But he’d only have needed one word to give his response to the Pope’s question: No. (Although his accustomed style would’ve necessitated three words: No, no, no. And an exclamation mark.)

Given that Tamimi was the cleric who, at the same location, rained on the parade of the much more popular John Paul II in 2000, the Pope’s entourage ought to have seen this coming. The Sheikh went on to invite Christians to join the Muslim struggle against Israel.

Had anyone bothered to translate the Sheikh’s remarks for Benedict, he might have responded that Tamimi should’ve heard what he said at Yad Vashem an hour earlier: “The Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to a genuine and lasting reconciliation between Christians and Jews."

Of course, Tamimi wasn’t the only one who didn’t listen to those words. Israeli commentators paid more attention to what Benedict failed to say. They attacked him because he didn’t refer to his membership in the Hitler Youth, to his German nationality, or even apologize for centuries of institutionalized anti-Semitism from the Catholic Church. (Just before his departure on Friday, the Pope called the Holocaust an "appalling chapter in history" that must "never be forgotten or denied," and said that many Jews had been "brutally exterminated under a godless regime," according to wire reports.)

It was the same story much of the week. It must have been a relief for the pontiff to arrive Thursday at an interfaith meeting in Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up and which is now in northern Israel, to hear representatives of the three major Abrahamic faiths actually talk to each other in a spirit of respect and forgiveness.

At the Church of Annunciation, where Christians believe the Angel Gabriel told Mary she’d bear the son of God, Sheikh Muhammad Abu Obeid, the judge of Nazareth's Islamic court, said: “The Muslim has become a suspect for his mere name, and the Christian's motives are doubted because of his mere words, and the Jew faces anger for his mere entity. All of this disturbs the world's balance and leads it toward evil.”

At the end of the meeting, the Pope joined hands with a rabbi and a Druze religious leader, as they sang a song of peace. Then, finally, he smiled.

It’s great to hear good news. It’s even better to hear it when you’ve just arrived in Paris. Everything sounds better when you hear it in Paris.

Last week I had a few days in the French capital courtesy of my publisher Albin Michel, which brought me over for the release of my third Palestinian crime novel “Meurtre chez les Samaritains” (English title: “The Samaritan’s Secret”).

On arrival my publicist, a delightful Marseillaise named Agnes Chalnot who works with the elegantly Parisienne Florence Godfernaux, informed me that the first of my Palestinian crime novels “Le Collaborateur de Bethleem” (“The Collaborator of Bethlehem” in the US; "The Bethlehem Murders" in the UK) had been shortlisted for the Prix des Livres de Poche. The winner will be announced in the autumn, but in the meantime it was a lovely way to start my visit.

Albin Michel usually puts me up in the Hotel Lennox, just around the corner from their offices in Montparnasse (that’s the 14th Arondissement, if the numbers make sense to you as they spiral out from the very center of Paris…). It’s a fabulous old artistic area. Norwegian-born photographer Ulf Andersen has lived in the neighborhood a long time and, as we walked about, he showed me the atelier where Picasso used to work, the café where Sartre (“He was very ugly,” Ulf remembers) used to have his morning coffee, and the art deco Hotel Aiglon where Bunuel used to stay when he visited Paris. Nowadays Montparnasse is a bit too pricey for artists, who tend to live in the area near the Bastille.

I enjoy returning each year to Paris when my books come out. Partially that’s because of the culture of books and intellectualism that’s specific to France. The head of Albin Michel who’s a great supporter of my books, Olivier Betourne, used to be the editor of Jacques Derrida, the great deconstructionist philosopher, and my editor Vaiju Naravane is a polymath Indian woman who’s able to tell hilarious tales of trekking to the furthest regions of southern India with Shiva Naipaul.

It’s also because I’ve come to know some of the journalists I meet quite well, particularly those like Philippe Lemaire of Le Parisien and Vladimir de Gmeline of Valeurs Actuelles who have been out to Jerusalem to tour the West Bank with me. This year Philippe remarked that I seemed more relaxed than when my last book came out. I was pleased to hear it, and I must credit my wife Devorah and my son Cai for calming me down!

Another friend I was glad to see during my quick visit was Francois Busnel. He’s one of the most important literary journalists in France and he has an approach to his work that’s vastly different from most of those who write about books. Francois came to Jerusalem to write about me a couple of years ago. He travels each month to interview writers around the world. This summer he’s spending a few weeks in Afghanistan with his friend Kabul-born Atiq Rahimi, who won the Prix Goncourt last year. Not your typical book reviewer, as you can see. If you read French, take a look at his articles in L’Express. They’re excellent.

With only a few hours left in Paris, I picked up a Quiche Lorraine and feuillete de Roquefort near the parliament. The quiche you probably know has chunks of ham. The feuillete is a rich, rich pastry packed with Roquefort, and frankly it was a little too intense for me. But as I sat in the Jardins du Luxembourg with my pastries, watching the French reading books (not playing with Blackberrys) beneath the massive bust of Paul Verlaine, I wished I could take a little of their ethos home with me.

A new review in the Ann Arbor Chronicle suggests healthy grassroots popularity for my Palestinian crime novels. The review of my first Palestinian crime novel "The Collaborator of Bethlehem" (UK Title: The Bethlehem Murders) is written by Robin Agnew, owner of Aunt Agatha's Mystery Bookstore in Ann Arbor. She writes: "When enough customers ask you about a certain author in a short period of time, it makes you take notice. When several of my more discerning “guy” readers mentioned Matt Rees as a wonderful writer, I was intrigued enough to pick up the first book."

Robin goes on to say:"Rees is able – like the very best of novelists – to convey absolute horror without sentimentality. Some of the things that happen in this book will probably haunt you, but they also seem like things that can and do happen. The real bit of grace in the book is the way Yussef chooses to deal with what happens. He shows that even a somewhat frail 56 year old can find a reason to move ahead in the world. I can’t recommend this book highly enough." Read the full review in The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

The magazine of Harvard's Nieman Fellowship asked me to write an essay about Jeffrey Fleishman's "Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad". I wrote about why international correspondents like me and Fleishman, Cairo bureau chief for the LA Times, turn to novels to express the depth of what we learn about a foreign culture. Here's how the article begins:

Jay Morgan, the central character of Jeffrey Fleishman’s thought provoking “novel of Jihad,” carries an undeveloped roll of film shot by his young photographer wife in the moments before she was killed in Beirut. Morgan lifts her wounded body to safety, but she dies anyway. It’s a fitting image on which to build Morgan’s deep bitterness and disillusion about journalism as he covers the war in Kosovo. In these days of cyberjournalism, idiotic reader “talkbacks” and nonsensical newsroom cutbacks, the only thing apparently more useless to the media industry than an undeveloped film or a dead photographer is a living foreign correspondent.

The story of “Promised Virgins” revolves around Morgan’s trek through the mountains as he interviews Serbs, Albanians and CIA operatives on the hunt for a newly arrived jihadi who has brought Islamic fundamentalism to the otherwise nationalistic Muslims of Kosovo. In truth, the book is about a foreign correspondent’s uncomfortable personal connections with the society he covers and his realization that they’re the only things keeping him from despair at his ever-shabbier trade. Read more...

The video blog Watch the Video features the clip I made for the second of my Palestinian crime novels A Grave in Gaza (UK title: The Saladin Murders). The rest of my videos feature on my Youtube channel.

Many writers make promotional videos for their books these days, as you'll see from the Watch the Video site. Most of them are made up largely of still photos and have quite a lot in common with the narrative voice-over of movie trailers ("In a time of wearing boxers, one man wore briefs..." etc.)

I've tried to give each of my videos for each book a different flavor. For A Grave in Gaza, videographer David Blumenfeld and I chose to imitate the great noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s. We watched Carol Reid's "The Third Man" to study the angles and lighting. I wrote a brief script in which I aimed to deliver my lines in the rasping, hardboiled tone of that period.

We figured the contrast of a style associated with Los Angeles or post-war Vienna with the backdrop of Jerusalem's Old City would be thought-provoking.

I also wanted to show that the book, while based on my factual research and years of reporting in Gaza, was fiction. So I took a less journalistic approach the video than I had with the clip for my first novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem (UK title: The Bethlehem Murders).

Next week, David and I will be shooting a video for my next novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN. The book won't be out until January, but we'll be loading the video onto Youtube within a couple of weeks. We're taking a different approach to this book. I'll keep you posted on its progress and, having seen some of David's early footage, I'm sure you'll like it. Meanwhile enjoy the existing videos, which I hope will give you some insights into the locations of the books.