MEMBER BLOG TAG: abdelkader benali
| 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
| | | 
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... | | | | | | | Tuesday, April 26, 2011 7:54AM | | | | Written on Water | Tags: Written on Water, Opening Night, Gioconda Belli, Prison Writing Program, writers in peril, freedom, Salman Rushdie, Liao Yiwu, Abdelkader Benali, Hanif Kureishi, Malcolm Gladwell, Andrea Levy, Wallace Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg
| | | 
The Opening Night Reading "Written on Water" was held in The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, which peered over a very foggy Hudson River last night. The lights from New Jersey seemed brighter than usual.
As water rippled outside against the docks, a giant screen with projected water lapped behind the stage. Water on plasma, noted the Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli.
Belli had perhaps the best interpretation of the "Written on Water" theme that all writers were asked to respond to in their fashion. "My name will be written in lights," Belli read, from a series of poems that discussed the ephemeral nature of each individual life.
| | | | | |
|
|
