PalFest celebrates 5th anniversary with premiere of the film 'PalFest Gaza 2012'

The short film PalFest Gaza 2012, made during the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) visit to Gaza in May, received its premiere on the night of 5th December at the Free Word Centre in London, during PalFest's 5th birthday celebrations.

PalFest, established in 2008, aims to support cultural life in Palestine, break the cultural siege imposed on Palestinians by the Israeli military occupation and strengthen cultural links between Palestine and the rest of the world. It reaffirms, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power". PalFest's annual literary festival in Palestine is at the heart of its activities. PalFest has taken to Palestine many influential literary figures from the UK, US, Arab world and elsewhere to teach workshops and perform in free public events. Every year PalFest partners with many cultural and educational Palestinian organizations.

The PalFest producer Omar Robert Hamilton, an independent filmmaker, explained before the screening of PalFest Gaza 2012 that PalFest had tried for years to get into Gaza "because obviously we insisted on the unity of the Palestinian state, and the division of the West Bank and Gaza is one of the key means of Israeli control."

But PalFest was unable to enter Gaza until May this year when "because of the Egyptian revolution we decided that this was the time to pressure the Egyptian government and to take a delegation of people in through Rafah, through Egypt." This first Gaza visit of PalFest to Gaza was "a tremendous success", as demonstrated in the film PalFest Gaza 2012 which was  directed, filmed and edited by Murat Gökmen. (The PalFest Gaza programme can be found at Global Voices Online ; a "Sleepless in Gaza" blog post recounts some of the difficulties that were encountered.)

Omar Robert Hamilton

The film is a moving tribute to the value of the Gaza Palfest as seen from the point of view of Gazans  and of four visiting PalFest delegates: PalFest's chair and founder, Egyptian-British novelist, author and activist Ahdaf Soueif;  Egyptian novelists Sahar Elmougy and Khaled Al Khamissi, and Sudanese-British novelist Jamal Mahjoub.

The film shows the damage from the Israeli offensive of 2008/09 and the impact of the siege, including on the livelihood of Gaza's fishermen. It conveys the tremendous energy and enthusiasm for reading literature and writing among the Gazans involved in PalFest events, who eloquently explain the value of writing and literature in helping them transcend their situation.

PalFest organised workshops and seminars in Gaza schools and universities.  The  programme also included a concert performance by the Egyptian group Eskenderella. In the film Soueif is seen addressing a workshop of some 130 young women in a packed hall at Al Aqsa University, "all of whom were well read, and had a lot of questions, and wanted to work". The students work in difficult conditions and during the event the electricity "went off every 10 minutes".

Al Khamissi said the reactions of the Gaza students taking part in PalFest "were amazing;  they were glowing, their questions were glowing, their ideas were glowing." One girl asks Al Khamissi: "In terms of political and literary maturity, where does the Arab world rank for you? Because hardly any Arabic books are translated into other languages. Very little of what goes on inside ourselves is translated to the outside world."

The guests at PalFest's 5th birthday party included many who have been involved with PalFest as founders, board members, partners, and as participants have been on the journey to Palestine with the Festival. Some participants have a continuing involvement with Palestine - for example returning for writing workshops or, like Alexandra Pringle of publisher Bloomsbury, offering internships. At the beginning of the festivities it was announced that PalFest has become an associate member of the Free Word Centre.

Speaking from the platform Soueif said: "We are in the heart of a big collaborative effort that people undertake out of love and out of commitment, because really the Palestine issue has become  an issue of conscience for people across the world," as was the case with apartheid South Africa. "We see individuals and groups all over the world taking matters into their own hands because they are dissatisfied with what their governments do for the Palestine issue."

 Ahdaf Soueif

Soueif said it might seem very little to go to Palestine and read poetry, or run a translation workshop, at at a time when people there are being dispossessed or killed, or having their homes pulled down around their ears.  However, those who follow events in Palestine, and those who have been there, know the degree to which occupation and dispossession inform and affects the texture of daily life "every minute of every person's day". An intervention at the level of PalFest is of value  in "changing of the texture of the day, and what somebody can feel or can look forward to or can talk about - as indeed you heard the young students in Gaza saying."

One of the 500 or so young Egyptian activists who crossed into Gaza during the recent Israeli attacks in order to give blood at Al-Shifa hospital told Ahdaf that she was asked by Gazans whether it was  her first time there. When she said she had been there before, for Gaza Palfest, she was told that people in Gaza are still talking about the Festival, and habout how it made a difference to them.

Soueif said PalFest is a commitment, but that it is also "an enormous privilege to be able to do this and be part of this And every year that we do it, and more people join this group, this community, it feels like more and more of a privilege." She stated that BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is necessary, with conditions for the Palestinians deteriorating. Conditions for the Palestinians in Jerusalem for example have noticeably worsened in the five years PalFest has been going there.

The speakers included publisher turned author Carmen Callil who read from the diary she had kept during her first visit to Palestine, for PalFest 2009. She said that before PalFest 2009 she had spent  nine years writing a book, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland, about Vichy France: "In other words I spent many years living in close quarters with the history and actions of a rogue state." She describes in her diary similarites she found between Vichy France and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians: photographs of the Wall covered with barbed wire resemble photos of the French concentration camp at Gurs. Callil vividly depicted the way in which checkpoints, passport controls, permits, roads for Jews only and so on constrain the movement of Palestinians.

 Carmen Callil

Palestinians may have to walk for mile and pass through a checkpoint to see a neighbour who lives only a stone's throw away.  "The intricacies of who can go where formed the black spider's web through every conversation I had in Palestine." She spoke also about the endless illegal Israeli settlements and the way in which Israel controls water and sells it back to Palestinians in the camps.

She wrote in her diary of how children and students resist all this with their Palestinian culture, "one of their few and best weapons. This is why PalFest is so important: it honours their culture." Before travelling to Palestine she had written about evil and cruelty and the death of innocent children, and had written about Jewish children, "but until I went to Palestine I'd never seen such things for myself. I saw things in Palestine that cracked my heart. Three years later, my heart remains cracked." Far too many people in Europe ignore the injustice done to the Palestinians and their plight as a result of the evils of the rogue state of Israel. "In so doing, grave injustice is done to the Jewish people too. Accepting injustice requires us to lose our own humanity. It's for our own sakes as well as the Palestinians' that we must fight for them. We owe a great debt to PalFest for teaching us this lesson."

The editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury Publishing, Alexandra Pringle, took part with Callil in PalFest  2009. She said: "When I went to Palestine I knew what I thought about Palestine, but I didn't know what I felt about it. And literally from the moment we were all at that border waiting in the hot sunshine for those of us who had gone through very quickly, and the Arab writers who were kept back all those hours, that's when the feeling about Palestine began. And every moment of every day it accumulated and  accumulated"

Pringle recalled the Festival as a mixture of things that were desperate and terrible, and things that were wonderful: "There were, I have to say, a lot of good times". She added: "When you think of literary festivals you think of having fun and you think about literature - you don't think that a literary festival is going to change your life. This is what this literary festival did. We were completely overturned, we were all absolutely changed by what we saw, and what we heard, and what we felt."

During the visit to Palestine there had come a moment when Callil turned to her and said: "Darling, we writers can't do very much, but you are a publisher and you can do something." And that is what Pringle has done. At the time she went to PalFest, Bloomsbury had already  published books by Edward Said and Mourid Barghouthi, and she had just bought for Bloomsbury the multi-generational novel Mornings in Jenin by Palestinian writer Susan Abulhawa. "I went back absolutely determined to publish the hell out of that book."

Since then, Bloomsbury has published other works by Palestinians. "Our sister company BQFP (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing) publishes Suad Amiry who had us hooting with laughter in PalFest. We also published Izzeldin Abuelaish's I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity which is the most horrifying and anguishing book to read." Bloomsbury has also published the novel  Out of It - by Selma Dabbagh, a guest at the evening. The novel is  "her incredible account of what it's like to live in Gaza right now.

Alexandra Pringle

Pringle said she was very proud that Bloomsbury will next year publish a novel by PalFest alumnus, William Sutcliffe, who is Jewish . His novel,  The Wall , is aimed at adults and young adults. It takes the reader into Palestine from the point of view of a 13-year old Israeli Jewish settler boy "who finds his way onto the other side of the wall, and finds out what the truth is."

Pringle said she thinks it is "so courageous of him to write this book.  I had an incredible email last week from Raja Shehadeh who said this is an important novel that he will do everything for, and that we must do everything for." Pringle added: "What has  happened to me is that I want to publish everything that I can on the Palestinian cause, but in the most imaginative way. And for me there is nothing quite like reading a novel that takes you out of your world and puts you into that other world and helps you emotionally understand and feel what it is that has happened in that place at that time."

During the evening there were performances by two leading Palestinian poet activists. Rafeef Ziadah gave a compelling, impassioned recitation of her poem 'We Teach Life, Sir' - She was just off the plane from the World Social Forum Free Palestine held in Brazil. (This video is from an earlier performance of Ziadah's poem ).

Rafeef Ziadah

Remi Kanazi 

New York-based Palestinian poet  Remi Kanazi was among the participants in PalFest 2010 and took part in a writing workshop.  "For me it was really an honour to be able to go over, to connect, to build with different communities." He performed  Normalize This during the PalFest anniversary evening. He strongly criticised US military support for Israel and its "preferential trade agreements with an apartheid regime. It's up to us, the global community, to stand against that." He also noted the way in which Israel uses culture and art for state propaganda, or for normalization projects. "When culture and art and bringing dialogue together is used to service propaganda, we have to challenge it."

 Jeremy Harding

Writer and journalist Jeremy Harding took part in PalFest 2009 and has since then been involved in workshops under PalFest's auspices. More funding is needed for the workshops: "I think it would be a really good thing if more writers were able to get out but there is a financial issue." In order to bring alive the sense of what a workshop can be, he read out a striking text in the form of a profile of a Palestinian grandmother,  produced by a participant in an editing course in Nablus in which Harding took part last year.

At the conclusion of the speeches Soueif said: "We are at that point now where really we either grow or we vanish. And PalFest is straining to grow - so the workshops happen without our having planned them and they're being carried on by people in quite hard circumstances in Ramallah. We've been given a beautiful house in Birzeit but we can't afford the heating of it and so it can only be used briefly." She added: "We're finding it very hard to get core funding for a director who will take responsibility for the running of the Festival. So far we have been doing this on a voluntary and semi-voluntary basis for a long time. A full-time director is needed if PalFest is to be able to follow up all the leads and gestures of goodwill that come its way. 

Soueif confirmed that PalFest will return to Palestinian cities on the West Bank in late May 2013. 

"We feel that we should continue to be involved in Gaza, but we believe that Gaza does not need us to drop in once a  year. The West Bank is fine for that because there is a lot going on there, but in Gaza what is needed is a more ongoing and possibly lower-profile engagement, with one or two people going in maybe every three weeks to do something for a few days."

The guests were given cotton party bags on their way out, bearing the original PalFest logo designed by Jeff Fisher, and printed in Egypt. The contents included books donated by Bloomsbury, Garnet Publishing and Profile Books, literature from the Palestiine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)  - and bottles of Zaytoun organic extra-virgin Palestinian olive oil.

report and pictures by Susannah Tarbush

IPAF longlist: a hat trick for Rabee Jaber, and a first for Kuwait

Today saw the release of the 16-novel longlist  of the  International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) 2013, worth a total of $60,000 to the winner including the $10,000 that will go to each of six shortlisted finalists.  The IPAF 2012 winner, Lebanese writer Rabee Jaber, is longlisted for a third time, for The Birds of Holiday Inn (the English translation of an excerpt is posted on the Banipal website), while Kuwait features for the first time with The Bamboo Stick by Saud Alsanousi.

 Rabee Jaber

Jaber won IPAF 2012 for The Druze of Belgrade. He was shortlisted for IPAFwith America in 2010. In terms of nationality of authors, Lebanon tops the longlist with four authors (including for the first time the long-established and acclaimed Elias Khoury and Hoda Barakat) followed by Egypt with three.

As always in the IPAF judging process, the identity of the panel of five judges is being kept secret until the announcement of the six-novel shortlist, which will take place in Tunis on 9 January. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 23 April, on the eve of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The prize is funded by the TCA, Abu Dhabi, and is run with the support of the Booker Prize Foundation in London (IPAF is often known as the Arabic Booker Prize).

The chair of the judges said the members of the judging panel "did not find it difficult to come to a decision about the longlist. They were delighted to discover new literary talents, many of whom have not had wide exposure until now."

The Chair added: "Needless to say, the Judging Panel did not allow themselves to be influenced by the fame of the writer, or his or her political persuasion or nationality. Rather, the panel’s interest was focused on the talent displayed in the novel, the writer’s ability to express his or her thoughts, and with what each novel can offer – both to Arab society and to the reader, wherever he or she may be."

The IPAF 2013 contenders were selected from 133 entries from 15 countries, published in the last 12 months. The longlisted authors are from nine countries: 4 from Lebanon; 3 from Egypt; 2 from Iraq; 2 from Palestine; 2 from Algeria and one from each of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Algeria, Tunisia, and Jordan (counting Ibrahim Nasrallah as both Palestinian and Jordanian).

Previously shortlisted authors on the longlist include Algerian Waciny Laredj (shortlisted for The Andalucian House, in 2011) and Palestinian-Jordanian Ibrahim Nasrallah (shortlisted in 2009 for Time of the White Horses). Iraqi Muhsin al-Ramly was longlisted in 2010 for Fingers Pass.

Twelve of the 16 writers have never previously been longlisted or shortlisted, although IPAF points out that Saudi Mohammed Hassan Alwan took part in IPAF’s inaugural writer’s workshop - nadwa - in 2009  and that it was during this nadwa that Alwan began writing his longlisted novel The Beaver: an extract can be read here. (The output from the nadwa was published in the anthology Emerging Arab Voices).

The statement announcing the longlist pointed out that unlike some previous longlists the 2013 longlist moves away from historical settings, with the majority focusing on contemporary issues from the last 25 years. The issues explored in the longlisted novels include the impact of 9/11 on Arabs living in Europe; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and political and sexual freedom and emancipation. The Arab Spring featured heavily across this year’s submissions in general, but the judges noted that "the subject still needs some time to mature".

The 2013 longlist:

Oh Mary (Al-Jamal)
by Sinan Antoon (Iraq)

Sinan Antoon

Toya (Al-Dar al-Masriya al-Lubnaniya)
by Ashraf El Ashmawi (Egypt)

The Kingdom of this Earth (Dar al-Adab)
by Hoda Barakat( Lebanon)

 Hoda Barakat (from Banipal website)

I, She and Other Women  (Arab Scientific Publishers)
by Jana Elhassan (Lebanon)

Jana Elhassan

Jaffa Prepares Morning Coffee (The Arabic Insitute for Research and Publishing)
by Anwar Hamed (Palestine)

The Beaver ( Dar al-Saq)
by Mohammed Hassan Alwan (Saudi Arabia)

Mohammed Hassan Alwan

Our Master (Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing - BQFP)
by Ibrahim Issa (Egypt)

The Birds of the Holiday Inn  ( Dar al-Tanwir)
by Rabee Jaber (Lebanon)

Sinalkul (Dar al-Adab)
by Elias Khoury (Lebanon)

Lolita’s Fingers (Dar al-Ada)
by Waciny Laredj (Algeria)

The Return of the Sheikh  (Rawafid)
by Mohammed Abdel Nabi (Egypt)

Lanterns of the King of Galilee (Arab Scientific Publishers)
by Ibrahim Nasrallah (Palestine-Jordan)

Ibrahim Nasrallah

The President’s Gardens(Thaqafa) 
by Muhsin al-Ramly(Iraq)

The Bamboo Stick (Arab Scientific Publishers)
by Saud Alsanousi (Kuwait)

His Excellency the Minister  (Dar al-Janu)
by Hussein Al-Wad (Tunisia)

The Goatherd  (Al-Ikhtilef )
by Amin Zaoui (Algeria)

IPAF, considered the leading prize for Arabic novels, is in its sixth year. The organisers not there was a notable increase in submissions this year from authors and publishers from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia and Syria.

Twenty Iraqi authors entered, a big increase from last year's eight, and while there were no Libyan entrants for IPAF 2012 there were five for IPAF 2013 even if none made it to the longlist.  In a change to the the entry rules this year, publishers were able to submit any new title by an author who had previously been shortlisted for the Prize, in addition to three other novels submitted by that publisher. The aim of this change in rule is to widen the IPAF opportunities for emerging writers.

The chair of the IPAF Board of Trustees Jonathan Taylor, Chair of the Board of Trustees, commented: "The IPAF Judges have chosen another outstanding longlist. It is chosen without regard to nationality, religion, gender, age or politics. The Judges’ only objective is to identify Arabic literary fiction of the very highest quality."

In accordance with its stated aim of inreasing the  international reach of Arabic fiction, IPAF  has guaranteed English translations for all of its winners: Bahaa Taher (2008), Youssef Ziedan (2009), Abdo Khal (2010) and joint winners Mohammed Achaari and Raja Alem (2011).

Taher’s Sunset Oasis was published in English by Sceptre (an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton) in 2009 and has gone on to be translated into at least eight languages worldwide. Ziedan’s Azazel was published in the UK by Atlantic Books in April 2012 and English translations of Abdo Khal and Mohammed Achaari’s winning novels are imminent, through Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP).

Susannah Tarbush

Banipal Book Club's Story Circles at the V&A

Seven months after it was launched at its first meeting, the London-based monthly Banipal Book Club last night spread its wings beyond its home in the Banipal Library in the Arab British Centre and held three public Short Story Circles at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington. To judge by the size of the audiences attracted to the Circles, and the lively discussions of the three stories chosen for the event, the experiment tapped into a considerable interest in reading and talking about Arabic literature in English translation.

a segment of a Banipal Book Club Story Circle audience

The stories chosen for the three sessions had appeared in different issues of  Banipal Magazine of Modern Arab Literature. Their authors are from a broad geographical sweep in the Arab world: from the Maghreb there was The Way to Poppy Street by Tunisian Rachida el-Charni, translated by Piers Amodia; from the Gulf there was Kuya's Little Things by Abdul Hamid Ahmed of the UAE, in translation by Thomas Aplin; and from Palestine there was A Fateful Meal by Nazareth-born 1948 Palestinian Eyad Barghuthy, rendered into English by John Peate. Participants in the circles were able to download PDF versions of the stories from the Banipal website in advance, and staff of the Victoria and Albert had printed out extra copies.

 Tunisian writer Rachida el-Charni (picture: Banipal)

The Circles were held during a 'Friday Late' opening at the Victoria and Albert, held on the last Friday of every month. Last night's  Friday Late with MasterCard: Record, Reframe, Reset, was part of the Nour Festival of Arts: Contemporary Art, Design, Films, Music and Literature from the Middle East and North Africa. The Festival has been held in venues throughout the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea during October and November. The Victoria and Albert collaborated with numerous artists and organisations to put on Record, Reframe, Reset, including Banipal Magazine - which this year celebrates its 15th anniversary of publication - as well as the Sharjah Art Foundation, The Mosaic Rooms, the Febrik platform for participatory art and design research projects, Arabic trip-hop duo Zeid Hamdan and Maryam Saleh, and artists Aya Haidar and  Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

 the latest issue of Banipal, 45, has a special focus on writers from Palestine

The rich programme of events for the evening was scatttered among different locations within the Museum. The Story Circles, which fell within the 'workshop' category of events, were held in a seminar room in the Sackler Centre - the Victoria and Albert's centre for public learning through creative design and the arts. 

the foyer of the Sackler Centre

The circles were held in three half-hour sessions, separated by 15-minute breaks. Some members of the audience stayed for all three sessions; others came and went. Chairs were arranged in a large circle and the many tea-light candles glowing on tables and other surfaces added to the warm ambience, as did the delicious Arabic sweets offered to participants. As more and more people engaged with the event the audience swelled well beyond the circle of chairs into a standing-room only zone. 

 Amira Abd El-Khalek reads from The Way to Poppy Street

Banipal's co-founder and publisher Margaret Obank told the participants about Banipal magazine and the Banipal Book Club, and noted that the magazine pays attention to to lesser known Arab literatures with its special features on countries including Tunisia, Libya, the UAE and, most recently, Palestine. In fact during the past two years of Arab upheavals and revolutions, issues of Banipal focusing on a particular country have had an uncanny habit of coinciding with a revolutionary upsurge there. Publication of the latest issue, focusing on Palestinian literature, coincided with the Gaza conflict and with the UN General Assembly vote recognising Palestine as a non-member observer state by a vote of 138-9 in favour, with 41 abstensions. 

Obank informed the audience that Banipal is hosting an informal discussion evening with Iraqi novelist and poet Fadhil al-Azzawi on Thursday 6th December at 6.30pm in the Library and Meeting Room of the Arab British Centre. She invited participants to come along.


Each Story Circle was chaired by a member of the Banipal Book Club, while another club member read  extracts from the story under consideration. The three powerful stories tackled some of the most pressing issues in the contemporary Arab world, and each was written in a compact style and lent itself to metphorical interpretations. The discussions were enriched by the way in which Arab and non-Arab members of the audience contributed their diverse perspectives, knowledge and experiences. 

Aurora Tellenbach chaired the first story circle, on The Way to Poppy Street, with readings by Amira Abd El-Khalek. In the story a young woman is attacked and robbed of her gold necklace by a young man who had asked her if she knew the way to Poppy Street. A crowd gathers when the girl chases the thief. She manages to catch hold of him but he produces a knife and brandishes it in her face. No one in the crowd helps her; on the contrary, they are defeatist, advising her to back off. Rather than praising her courage they belittle her and she is accused of being a stubborn woman. 

After the robber beats and kicks her and escapes with an accomplice on a motorbike, the girl starts crying. "A tremor of shame ran through her body, shame at being an inhabitant of that street: the submissiveness of her neighbours was a harder blow than the stranger's aggression." She angrily tells the bystanders that they are "Gutless, spineless cowards! Since when has standing up for yourself ever been something to laugh about?"

The story was  originally published in 2002 under the title Tareeq Dar al-Ajayeb in Rachida El-Charni's collection Saheel al-Asaila. After appearing in Banipal 39 in Winter 2010 the English translation was republished in the Granta Book of the African Short Story (2012) edited by Helon Habila. 

The story first appeared in Arabic some eight years before the Tunisian revolution, and some of the discussion of it examined what the story said about a society where the masses were generally passive observers until a young individual, and his generation, decided they had had enough. They found their voice and rose up against corruption and abuses of power. The discussion also examined the female angle of the story, with women sometimes being abused during the Arab revolutions. During her ordeal, the girl at the centre of the story remembers a girl who was raped by youths in a Cairo streets with no passer-by coming to her aid.

 UAE writer Abdul Hamid Ahmed (picture: Banipal)

The second circle discussed Kuya's Little Things and was chaired by Charis Bredin. The author, Abdul Hamid Ahmed, was born in Dubai in 1957. He is regarded as a pioneer of the short story in the UAE, with three volumes of short stories as well as several collections of essays to his name. He is editor-in-chief of the English-language daily Gulf News.  

The Kuya of the title is a worker who, like many other foreign workers in the Gulf, comes from Kerala, India. The story shines a light on the plight of an immigrant worker  whose wife back home has just given birth to a longed-for son. Kuya's first-born son had been killed in a rail accident 14 years earlier, and he has had four daughters since then. He excitedly buys presents for his wife and new-born son using a 100-dirham short-term loan from his employer, before realising the remainder of his cash will not cover the cost of sending a parcel to Kerala. In desperation he tries to sell in the market the material  he bought for his wife, but finds no buyer. The story ends with Kuya still walking the streets of the big city trying to sell the piece of material. 

Some members of the audience were surprised that an Emirati writer showed such empathy with the harsh realities of life for immigrant labourers. Kuya and his workmates had built "this very pavement, this street" in which he wanders.

 Palestinian writer Eyad Barghuthy

The third circle, chaired by Margaret Obank with readings by Maureen O'Rourke, discussed A Fateful Meal by Eyad Barghuthy. Born in Nazareth in 1980, Barthuthy edits the weekly Fasi Al-Maqaal journal and is project director of the Arab Cultural Association in Nazareth. He lives in the coastal city of Acre, where his story is set. 

The "fateful  meal" takes place in a fish restaurant where a Dr Mufid tells his daughter Samar that he  knows she is seeing a boy, and demands to know who he is. Samar reluctantly reveals that the young man, Khalil, is the son of a "druggie" named Saber, who had been a childhood friend of Dr Mufid. Both men's fathers had fled the same village for Acre after the 1948 nakba. Samar tries to convince her father of the excellent qualities of the "brilliant, moral" Khalil who for example hates drugs, having seen what they did to his father and his family. She begs her father to meet him. The reader learns that when Samar was two Dr Mufid had closed his  clinic in Old Acre - where he had treated the poor, disadvantaged and drug-addicted - in order to go into the more lucrative business of cosmetic surgery. Khalil sees the doctor as something of a role model, remembering how he had tried to get his father off drugs. 

As some participants observed, Samar's mobile phone is almost like a third person at the meal. She rejects Khalil's first call during the meal, but when she does answer a call from him she receives some shattering news. 

The discussion of Barghuthy's story benfited from the presence in the audience of one of the author's fellow Palestinian contributors to Banipal 45: the writer and lawyer Haneen Naamneh, who is currently studying for her Masters degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University. Naamneh was able to shed light on the social and cultural context of the story.
 

Palestinian writer and lawyer Haneen Naamneh

report by Susannah Tarbush

British Museum's Cyrus Cylinder to tour 5 US museum venues

the Cyrus Cylinder 

British Museum Press Release:


The Cyrus Cylinder travels to the US

‘First declaration of human rights’ to tour five cities in the United States

The British Museum today announced that one of its most iconic objects, the Cyrus Cylinder, will tour to five major museum venues in the United States in 2013. This will be the first time this object has been seen in the US and the tour is supported by the Iran Heritage Foundation.

The Cyrus Cylinder is one of the most famous objects to have survived from the ancient world. The Cylinder was inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform (cuneiform is the earliest form of writing) on the orders of the Persian King Cyrus the Great (559-530BC) after he captured Babylon in 539BC. It is often referred to as the first bill of human rights as it appears to encourage freedom of worship throughout the Persian Empire and to allow deported people to return to their homelands. It was found in Babylon in modern Iraq in 1879 during a British Museum excavation and has been on display ever since.

The Cyrus Cylinder is truly an object of world heritage, produced for a Persian king in Iraq and seen and studied for over 130 years in the British Museum. It is valued by people all around the world as a symbol of tolerance and respect for different peoples and different faiths, so much so that a copy of the cylinder is on display in the United Nations building in New York. The Museum has previously lent the Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran in 2010 - 2011 where it was seen by over one million people. This tour will provide the first opportunity for a wide US audience to engage with this unique object of world importance.

The Cylinder will travel with an exhibition of sixteen objects under the title ‘The Cyrus Cylinder in Ancient Persia’. The exhibition shows the innovations initiated by Persian rule in the Ancient Near East (550 BC-331 BC). The Persian Empire was then the largest the world had known. It had a huge impact on the ancient world, introducing changes in terms of ethical behaviour as witnessed in the proclamation on the Cyrus Cylinder. A gold plaque from the Oxus Treasure with the representation of a priest shows the spread of the Zoroastrian religion at this time. Persian kings also introduced a new writing system, Old Persian cuneiform, as seen on part of a column base from Hamadan, and on the famous seal of Darius (522-486 BC). They also developed new forms of luxury goods including beautifully decorated gold and silver bowls and sumptuous gold bracelets featuring fantastic animal shapes, some of them from the Oxus Treasure.

The tour will debut at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington DC in March 2013 before travelling to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco and will conclude at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa Los Angeles in October. The exhibition is curated by John Curtis, Keeper of Special Middle East Projects at the British Museum and curatorial colleagues at each of the venues.

 Neil MacGregor

Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum said, “You could almost say that the Cyrus Cylinder is A History of the Middle East in one object and it is a link to a past which we all share and to a key moment in history that has shaped the world around us. Objects are uniquely able to speak across time and space and this object must be shared as widely as possible. I am delighted that it will travel to the US and am hugely grateful to both our US partners and the Iran Heritage Foundation for making this possible.”

John Curtis, Keeper of Special Middle East Projects at the British Museum said “The Cyrus Cylinder and associated objects represent a new beginning for the Ancient Near East. The Persian period, commencing in 550 BC, was not just a change of dynasty but a time of change in the ancient world. Some of these changes and innovations are highlighted in the exhibition.”

Alireza Rastegar, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Iran Heritage Foundation America, said "Iran Heritage Foundation is proud to be partners with the British Museum and leading US venues in bringing this magnificent exhibition to the United States. The Cyrus Cylinder and its message of respect for diversity and universal human rights carries a timely message about tolerance for all of us today. We are very grateful to the Iranian American community who have supported us in this endeavour and are looking forward to a positive reception as the Cylinder tours the US.”

 Julian Raby

Julian Raby, the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art said "For thousands of years, philosophers viewed Cyrus the Great as the paragon of the 'Virtuous Ruler,' and the Bible refers to him as 'the anointed' of the Lord, crediting him with permitting Jews to rebuild their Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This magnanimous image inspired even the Founding Fathers of the United States. One of the goals of this exhibition is to encourage us to reflect that relations between Persians and Jews have not always been marked by the discord that disfigures the political map of the Near East today."

Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston said “The Cyrus Cylinder tells a great story of human history. We are thrilled to be able to bring this touchstone of ancient civilization to Houston, and to present the Cyrus Cylinder and related objects in the context of our collections.”

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, said: “The new world view enshrined by the Cyrus Cylinder and the objects in this exhibition remains as relevant today as it did several millennia ago. The tolerance embraced by the Cylinder’s text has been applauded throughout history and we at The Metropolitan Museum of Art are proud to share this message with our diverse international audience.”

 Jay Xu, director of the Asian Art Museum, said, "The San Francisco Bay Area is home to both the signing of the United Nations Charter and the birth of the Free Speech Movement, major pillars supporting human rights and civil liberties. The Asian Art Museum is proud to partner with the British Museum and our US museum partners to bring the Cyrus Cylinder to San Francisco. This important object not only provides a foundation for understanding the ancient world, but also a touchstone for continued efforts to strive for common human freedoms."

Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, said, “The Cyrus Cylinder is one of the most important artefacts to have survived from the ancient world and we are delighted that it will be on view next fall to visitors at the Getty Villa, where it will be shown in the context of other artefacts and inscriptions from the period of the Achaemenian empire. More than any other document from the ancient world, this declaration by King Cyrus of the return of conquered nations to their settlements, has a continuing relevance to the peoples of the Middle East and indeed throughout the world. As home to the largest community of Iranian Americans in the United States, I have no doubt that Los Angeles will thrilled by this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Tour Dates

Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 9th March – 28th April 2013

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 3rd May – 14th June 2013

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 20th June – 4th August 2013

Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, 9th August – 22nd September 2013

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, Los Angeles, 2nd October – 2nd December 2013

Iran Heritage Foundation is the leading supporter of Iranian studies in the UK. It promotes academic research through fellowships, grants, scholarships and publications. In association with museums and leading institutions, the IHF organises exhibitions and convenes conferences on the history and contemporary culture of Iran. IHF America, launched in 2012 as a US based non-profit organisation, administers a number of grants to North American institutions and is the core funder of the tour of the Cyrus Cylinder.

The Cyrus Cylinder:
The Cylinder is 22.86cm in length, is barrel-shaped and is made of baked clay. It is inscribed all the way round with a proclamation in cuneiform script. Originally it was inscribed and buried in the foundations of a wall after Cyrus the Great, the Persian Emperor, captured Babylon in 539 BC. The cylinder is written in Babylonian cuneiform by a Babylonian scribe. It records that aided by the god Marduk Cyrus captured Babylon without a struggle, restored shrines dedicated to different gods, and repatriated deported peoples who had been brought to Babylon. The text does not mention specific religious groups but it is thought that the Jews were amongst the peoples deported by Nebuchadnezzar (the previous ruler of Babylon) who were now allowed to return home. The Bible reports that the deported Jews returned from Babylon at this time and rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem. Indeed Cyrus is revered in the Hebrew Bible because of the qualities of tolerance and respect enshrined in the cylinder proclamation. These were enlightened acts, rare in antiquity.

In 2010 the British Museum discovered two fragments of tablet in its extensive collection of cuneiform tablets which had also been found in 19th century British Museum excavations in or near Babylon. These fragments were identified by experts at the Museum as being inscribed with parts of the same text as the Cylinder but do not belong to it. They show that the text of the Cylinder was probably a proclamation that was widely distributed across the Persian Empire.

new film highlights role of Afghanistan National Institute of Music

ANIM students (picture from ANIM website)

In mid-2001 Dr John Baily, Professor of Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths College, London University, wrote a report on music censorship in Afghanistan entitled Can You Stop the Birds Singing? The report was commissioned by the Danish NGO Freemuse, which campaigns for freedom of musical expression. The report, Freemuse's first-ever published study, was highly topical as it appeared at a time when the Taliban regime in Afghanistan had imposed an extreme form of music censorship. The report  traced the various types of music censorship imposed by different regimes in Afghanistan from 1978. It was accompanied by a CD with 10 examples of music and religious singing.

Now Professor Baily has made a film whose title -  Return of the Nightingales - partially answers the question posed by the title of his Freemuse report. It focuses on a bold initiative to rebuild music culture among the younger generation in Afghanistan - the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM). This vocational music school is the brainchild of its Afghan-Australian founder and director, musicologist Dr Ahmed Sarmast. The film was recently premiered at Goldsmiths College in the Music Department's Graduate Forum. At the premiere Baily described Sarmast as "a very gifted educationalist" whose ambition was to make music in Afghanistan part of the school curriculum, which it never had been in the past.

Dr Ahmed Sarmast 

In Return of the Nightingales Afghan boys and girls, singly or in groups, work enthusiastically with tutors from various countries learning how to play western, Afghan and Indian instruments including violin, trumpet, piano, rubab, guitar, cello, sitar, xylophone, tabla, sitar, oud, flute and clarinet. The children also teach each other. When the Swedish ambassador to Afghanistan visits ANIM the children perform Ravel's Bolero for the smiling diplomat, led by their animated conductor. At the end of the performance the ambassador kindly says "this is the best Bolero I have heard for a very long time - I think Ravel would have been surprised." Some of the young musicians, especially those playing with skill traditional Afghan instruments such as rubab, presumably come from families of hereditary musicians such as those found in the Kabul musicians' quarter of Kucheh Kharabat

Dr Sarmast is from Kabul and is the son of the late Ustad Salim Sarmast, a well-known Afghan composer, conductor and musician. He received his basic training in western music in Kabul, and then studied music in Moscow at the time of communist governments in Afghanistan. After migrating to Australia he gained his MMus and PhD at Monash University, Victoria. Baily describes Dr Sarmast's 2004 PhD as "a very important survey of music in Afghanistan, a work I have used extensively in my own writings."

Dr Sarmast founded the Revival of Afghan Music (ROAM) project while a post-doctoral fellow in the Monash Asia Institute. With generous funding from the World Bank and many other donors, particularly in Germany and the USA, Dr Sarmast was able to implement the ROAM project and in 2010 ANIM was official inaugurated.

Baily, who is now Emeritus Professor at Goldsmiths, is a world authority on the music of Afghanistan. He and his wife Veronica Doubleday (who wrote the book Three Women of Herat) began researching and recording music in Afghanistan in 1973 and later extended their research to Afghan communities in exile. They are accomplished performers of Afghan music, and frequently perform in public, often at charity events.

In the 11 years since publication of Can You Stop the Birds Singing?, and the ousting of the Taliban, Baily has endeavoured to document and help re-establish traditional Afghan musical life inside and outside Afghanistan. As part of these efforts he set up the Afghanistan Music Unit at Goldsmiths in 2002. His activities have included making films including A Kabul Music Diary shot during a trip to Afghanistan in 2002, and Scenes of Afghan Music: London, Kabul, Hamburg, Dublin (2007).

ANIM students (from ANIM website)

Baily visited ANIM in October 2011 as the "cultural ambassador to Afghanistan" of the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), based in the Institute of Education, London University. SEMPRE is one of the financial backers of the school, specifically for staff development. Baily did not visit ANIM with the specific intention of making a film but while there  he shot five hours of video which was edited by Evangelos Himonides in the Institute of Education into the 30-minute film Return of the Nightingales. Baily studied ethnographic filmmaking at the National Film and Television School in the 1980s, and at the premiere he explained he was trained in the "observational" style, showing rather than telling and, as far as possible, avoiding voice-over commentary. "The film is intended to give you 'the feeling of being there', to enter into the spirit of visiting ANIM." The film has a structure, "but it was our intention to make this as lyrical an experience as possible, lyrical in the sense of expressing deep personal emotion or observations, highly enthusiastic, rhapsodic."

ANIM offers coeducational education (picture from ANIM website)

ANIM teaches Afghan, Indian and western music, but particularly emphasises western music, both classical and popular. Baily noted in his introductory remarks at the film screening that people often ask "why does Afghanistan need western art music?" and "is this not an example of cultural neo-imperialism?" He explained that the history of the presence of Western music in Afghanistan, goes back to the military music "imported from British India, along with British armaments for the new army of Amir Abdur Rehman" in the 19th century. A school of military music was established in the 1920s. There were Turkish bandmasters and through them connections with Germany.

 

When Radio Afghanistan was established in the 1940s it had three resident ensembles: Kabuli art music, with strong Indian roots; Afghan folk music from Logar, a mixed Pushtun-Tajik music; and a western ensemble with musicians from the military-municipal background. and "Arkestar Jaz". In 1970 the three ensembles, while continuing to have their own identifies, combined in the Arkestar-e Bozorg Radio Afghanistan (Big Orchestra of Radio Afghanistan) which brought together Afghan, Indian and Western instruments. The leader of the Big Orchestra, as well as its composer and arranger, was Dr Sarmast's father, Ustad Salim Sarmast.

A Vocational School of Music was opened in 1974 by the Ministry for Education, providing tuition in western music theory, and in various instruments, under the tutelage of Ustad Sarmast and others. In 1987 training in Afghan instruments was introduced. Among the Afghan musicians working in the western musical idiom who were trained at the Vocational School of Music was Dr Ahmad Sarmast. But all this was lost after the Islamists came to power in 1992. ANIM is a recreation of the old Vocational School, in the same buildings but vastly refurbished. Sarmast has raised millions of dollars and is now building a concert hall and a dormitory for some of the children.

 

school photograph (from the ANIM website)

The film is not designed to be shown on TV or publicly distributed, but is primarily intended to be seen by music graduates who might be interested in going to Kabul to work as interns at ANIM where there is already a considerable amount of teaching by western music educators.

ANIM is clearly a ground-breaking project in a number of ways. ANIM is an Afghan initiative, rather than implanted by a Western NGO. And it is coeducational with boys and headscarved girls mixing. In addition, the children are encouraged to have a say in the running of the school through the election of student representatives to the management committee.

ANIM has made a promising start in  helping nurture and develop Afghan musical talent. ROAM's 2008 statement Rebuilding Vocational Music Education in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan said: "To establish a vocational school of music it is important to identify and assist Afghan children with special musical gifts, regardless of their gender, personal and social circumstances.

"Such children, especially orphans, can benefit greatly from receiving specialist music training as part of their general education. Such training will enable them to proceed towards careers in music, and in this manner also promote job creation in Afghanistan."
report by Susannah Tarbush

a brief video clip from Reem Kelani's Nour Festival concert at the Tabernacle

This brief video clip is a sample of the atmosphere at Palestinian singer and musician Reem Kelani's wonderful concert held at the Tabernacle, West London, last night as part of the Nour Festival. In the clip Kelani initiates a musical "fight" between Palestinian oud player Tamer Abu Ghazaleh and Cornish double bass player Ryan Trebilcock, to great effect, and invites Trebilcock to challenge the beatifically smiling drummer Antonio Fusco. Bruno Heinen, in top form, is on piano. I plan to write more on the concert, which was received with wild enthusiasm by the audience and ended with a standing ovation. I have another, longer, video clip of Reem singing after the interval but unfortunately Blogger seemed unable to cope with its size when it came to uploading it.

collection of 70 Arabic-English titles launched at RBKC libraries

Selma Dabbbagh opens the launch event 
picture credit: Mike Massaro / Double Negative

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) in London hosts a substantial Arab presence and Arabic is the borough's second most spoken language after English. Now libraries across the borough are stocking 70 new Arabic-English titles, thanks to a partnership between RBKC Council, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) and Nour Festival of Arts from the Middle East and North Africa which has been running in venues in the borough through October and November.

The new collection of books includes fiction, non-fiction, biography, arts and children's books. It  was launched at an event held at North Kensington Library on Ladbroke Grove last Thursday, opened by Palestinian-British writer Selma Dabbagh, Nour Festival's Writer in Residence. Dabbagh's debut novel Out of It, set in Gaza, the West Bank, London and the Gulf, was published late last year by BQFP, and has been translated by Samer Abouhawwach for publication by BQFP under the title Kharij Ghazze.

Councillor Elizabeth Campbell, Cabinet Member for Libraries, said: ‘We pride ourselves on having excellent libraries at the heart of our community and always want to make sure that our book stock is relevant and up-to-date. I'm very pleased that a new range of Arabic-English titles is now available.’

books from the collection on display 
picture credit: Mike Massaro / Double Negative

The Nour Festival appointed Sophia Blackwell, marketing manager at Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, and the publishing consultant Nahla El Geyoushi, to source new, up-to-date stock. Nahla El Geyoushi's involvement was particularly important for Kensington and Chelsea as she is the Heritage and Culture Project Consultant at Al-Manaar, The Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in North Kensington, and has expert knowledge of what local people are looking to read. Sophia and Nahla worked in partnership with Alan Kirwan, curator, Nour Festival of Arts, and Andrew Norton of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries. At the launch, Nahla El Geyoushi took guests through the new selection.

Julia Donaldson's children's book The Gruffalo is among the books in the collection 
picture credit: Mike Massaro /Double Negative

It was after receiving feedback from local residents at last year’s Nour Festival that local librarians decided they wanted to provide more high-quality children’s literature in Arabic or dual language Arabic-English editions at their local library. Kensington and Chelsea Libraries will arrange a number of events and activities to help promote the collection. Library members can also use their library card in neighbouring Westminster’s libraries, where Paddington Library has a large collection of Arabic books.

North Kensington Library in Ladbroke Grove
picture credit: Mike Massaro / Double Negative

The books featured in the photographs in this report include:

• The Kite Runner (Arabic edition) by Khaled Hosseini
• Out of It (English edition) by Selma Dabbagh, Nour Writer-in-Residence
• Mowlana (Arabic) by Ezzedine Choukri Fishere
• Burnt Shadows (Arabic edition) by Kamila Shamsie
• Little Secrets (Arabic) by Rita Khoury
• The Gruffalo (Arabic edition) by Julia Donaldson
• Hamda and Fisaikra (Arabic, also available in English) by Kaltham al-Ghanem
• Victory over Abu Derya (English, also available in Arabic) by Mohammed Ali