MEMBER BLOG TAG: arab
| Wednesday, September 28, 2011 6:47PM | | | | Bridge Over the Bosporus | Tags: citizenship, Arab Spring, Bosporus, Turkey, Erdogan, PEN International, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
| | | The sun glints off the waves of the Bosporus as the wind skims across the surface of the water, and power boats, tourist ships and ferries cruise between the shores of Europe and Asia on Istanbul’s great waterway. I’ve arrived to an Indian summer in this city at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East after a PEN International Congress an hour and a half away in Belgrade where the theme was Literature—Language of the World.
I’m here with purpose and meetings, but for the afternoon I have a few hours to sit on the banks of the waterway and write and contemplate the bridges linking the two continents and consider... | | | | | | | Thursday, April 28, 2011 3:07PM | | | | Revolutionaries in the Arab World | Tags: Abdelkader Benali, Rula Jebreal, Abdellah Taia, Alex Nunns, Issandr El Amrani, Jacob Weisberg, 92Y, Revolution, Arab World
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The optimism and energy of Wednesday night's "Revolutionaries in the Arab World" panel was contagious. The panelists included Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, Dutch-Moroccan writer Abdelkader Benali, The Arabist founder Issandr El Amrani, Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia, and Alex Nunns, who recently published a book called Tweets from Tahrir. I'm not sure if they were friends before, but I got the sense that they had all become friends--the kind of friendship that happens after a long, difficult journey.
Among the anecdotes shared, all shocking and poignant--
Jebreal recalled her first interview with Qaddafi in 1991, when he compared himself to Saladin and quoted from his own "Green Book," a text where he confuses... | | | | | | | Monday, May 4, 2009 3:14PM | | | | Flavor of the Month Taboos at PEN | Tags: Taboos, Arab sexual writing, gay writing, gay indian writing, Western taboos, Publishing Taboos, Taboos for Writers, Literary Guide to Taboos, Taboo Update, Boo to Taboos
| | | Forbidden Flavors of the Month Taboos
On the “What’s Taboo?” PEN panel with Salwa Al Neimi, Zsofia Ban, Nicole Brossard, Rakesh Satyal, and Victoria Redel.
There are social, political, religious, literary, and publishing taboos, Western and Eastern taboos, Taboos that it is taboo to write about and acknowledge, even in PEN, and but for some startlingly illuminating contributions by Nicole Brossard and Salwa Al Neimi, the PEN World Voices panel seemed fixated mainly with the Forbidden Flavor of the Month taboo, that is, Taboos Permissible and Fashionable, and Long Untaboo Western Taboos: the taboo against writing about homosexuality, male or female, or about Sexual Perversity in Saudi Arabia. And for this reason, something was lost.
But first,... | | | | | | | Saturday, May 31, 2008 9:57PM | | | | Slouching Toward Zion, Part IV | Tags: religion, Christian, Arab, Jew, Baptist, Missionary, Christ, scripture, Satan
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When Thurston and Elaine returned to Chillicothe from their visit to the Middle East they were changed forever. Elaine, who had never before traveled farther than Wichita Falls had a spiritual, intellectual and gynecological experience.
Thurston, who had chosen the gastronomical rather than the cultural tour, had experienced delight, dismay and diarrhea. He had discovered Arab cuisine. She had discovered what her gender meant.
Elaine had been born a woman and in... | | | | | |
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