Homophobic Lebanese singer to perform in Canada

First published on BIKYAMASR

One of the greatest catalyzers for the cause of human rights, freedom of speech and freedom in general in Lebanon has been art. It is often the case that Lebanese artists, perhaps not so much out of advocacy, but with their own work, challenge the perceptions of society about certain taboo topics such as the Civil War, the status of women’s rights, homosexuality and sectarianism.

This is probably not so willy-nilly, as artists themselves are subject to tight censorship of their songs, films, plays and books and although rare, artists can be imprisoned over a song, in a country where weapons flow free across its borders and where criminals run free and attend their own press conferences, while people are legally prevented from expressing their opinions, put on trial for their sexual orientation and freely terrorized at times.

While this is true for many artists, it is not for all and in the growing industry of spectacle and entertainment there are always performers in the scene of Arab pop who are happy to appeal to the populism and prejudice of a society in which their popularity and rise to stardom is the result of this selfsame populism and prejudice. More than helping shape a culture already decadent, the society of celebrities and stars is but shaped by this culture.

One case in point is that of Mohamed Eskander, a pop singer from the Bekaa region, whose voice is characterized by critics in the industry as a “strong, unique voice, marked by manhood and sensitivity”. Iskander’s career launched in 1988 when he appeared in the amateur program “Layali Lubnaan” and established himself a year later. Since then he has released more than 250 songs, to popular acclaim.

What is not as impressive as his musical career is his sexism and handling of certain delicate topics in Lebanese society; while his case is not unique, it is still remarkable the boldness of his approach: In recent years he released the song “Jomhouryet Albi” which is a dialogue between a father and his college-graduate daughter. In the otherwise apparently traditional and sweet lyrics, he uses his reasoning to talk his daughter into not pursuing a career.

With statements such as “our daughters don’t work”, “why bring [that] trouble into your life?” and “what will we do in that case with your beauty?” he makes his case, which is reinforced by saying that in the future an office manager will fall in love with her, while the song’s video clip you can see the boss harassing the girl physically and the father pulling a gun on him. The video includes other features like a maid hitting the woman’s child while she’s working. Following from this elaborate argument, the song mentions cynically that “Women’s rights are extremely important”.

How important are they? Violence against women in Lebanon is widely underreported and a study from 2002 revealed that 35% of women report experiencing domestic violence and 22% had family members who did. In December 2011 a draft law on violence against women had the Lebanese split and faced opposition from religious and conservative leaders. Most cases of domestic violence are dealt with by religious courts and rape within marriage is not considered a crime; a multinational company advertised via social media in Lebanon, its products – washing machines – as a perfect gift for mother’s day.

In 2012, Eskander, he released yet an even bolder song “Dod El 3enf” (Against Violence) which is a slogan used by LGBT to promote awareness against discrimination; to the same extent that Iskander mocks the plight of women rights in Lebanon, he does the same with LGBT rights. The song portrays a fight between a parenting couple because of their son’s sexual orientation and blaming the separation of his parents on the son’s homosexuality.

He goes on further to ridicule the young man with feminine mannerisms and suggests that men lost their masculinity since they stopped enlisting in the army. The song further encourages violence against boys displaying any feminine traits and the video clip features a wide array of gay stereotypes, including sexual intercourse in washrooms and boys wearing women’s heels and playing with dolls.

It is unsurprising then that in Mr. Eskander’s country – where he is of course not censored for any of the above – homosexuality is a considered a crime under article 534 of the penal code, and recently it was reported on BikyaMasr.com that security authorities raided a cinema frequented by gay men after another media celebrity – MTV channel host Joe Maalouf – demanded authorities to act upon it in live television.

This sparked outrage and protests because of the “tests of shame” performed on the detainees to determine their homosexuality, yet two more men were arrested later in the month under suspicion of homosexuality, at the same time that Beirut was being terrorized by an armed gang with the purpose of kidnapping Syrian and pro-Syrian activists and the authorities stood idly watching.

None of this would be of interest outside Lebanon, weren’t it for the fact that Mr. Eskander, who has a standing record of homophobic and sexist slurs, was invited to perform in Canada, at Place Vertu Center on September 1, 2012 and at restaurant Mazaj in Ottawa on September 2, 2012. Lebanese LGBT-advocacy organization HELEM – that has a chapter in Montreal, Canada – has strongly condemned the invitation in the strongest terms.

A Lebanese doctor, Hasan Abdessamad, who is himself living in Canada, wrote in his blog: “It is time we stand up against cultural terrorism and hate speech in Lebanese art. This Lebanese singer has been advocating for using violence against kids if you suspect them to be homosexual. He calls on women to stay home and serve their husband because there is no place for them outside home. Women should not pursue educational degrees according to Eskander’s songs and should specialize in serving and pleasing their husbands at home. His lyrics are outrageous and offensive to say the least. A group of Lebanese feminists has protested his songs back in 2010. Recently a group of Arabs protested his performance in Denmark. No action has seemed to stop him and his hate speech to be persistent and escalating.”

HELEM Montreal released an open letter in both English and French yesterday, condemning the invitation of the singer to Canada because it contradicts the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and violates the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, the Ontario Human Rights Code, and numerous provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code. In their opinion, “Mr. Iskander’s offensive art contradicts Canadian values and amounts to hate speech.”

HELEM has also announced that they will ask federal and provincial authorities to hold the artist, promoters and the establishments hosting his concerts, liable for hateful behavior on the part of Mr. Eskander that exposes LGBT persons to hate, contempt or ridicule: “HELEM Montreal also reserves the right to seek any possible remedy, and exercise all legal recourse available under the law to defend LGBT rights and keep Canada free from hate speech and discrimination.”

Last week, HELEM Montreal and Lebanese LGBT were present at Montreal Pride and a banner was spotted that read “In Canada, I have the right to marry. In Lebanon, I have no rights!” Activists were present in the march to highlight that the tests of shame are still performed in Lebanon. It remains to be seen whether those, like Mr. Eskander, who curb people’s freedom and dignity in Lebanon, will have a free pass to do the same in Canada, where freedoms and dignity are supposed to be protected by the authorities; unlike Lebanon.

At the Square IX

First published on THE MANTLE

For S. Haroun & G. Maalouf

"I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past." -Virginia Woolf

Cherries. Blackberries. Blueberries. It's good to be back, you know, but it seems we are all Ghouraba(*) here now. How I loved La Cigalé, at day time specially."...Here was the one place they could truly feel alive." Once I literally ran all the way from the library to get one of those tartalettes with glazé on the top. I wasn't particularly fond of sweets, or I am not; the taste is icy, somewhat piercing, but I loved the colors. Eman was here too, she loved the chocolate cakes, or rather, the textures inside them; it was a long time ago, that day when we met a certain famous writer. How long did it take us to get here? I can't recognize anything. "To be sure, the maze of old alleys that had perplexed Poujoulat still survived, leading Henriette Renan to remark in 1861: 'To know where one is in Beirut seems to me an impossible problem'". Did you read Maalouf's latest novel? I heard he came back too, in his dreams. "The novel begins with a phone call, that Adam answers, the main character in the story, and thus, it is also the writer's double." I think it's something about his best friend, who was dying somewhere nearby. "Locked up in a prison cell by the patriarchate, in Qannubin, Shidyaq succumbed to privations and mistreatment after a few years."

Reading an old newspaper, eh? It's good to pass the time; this is a rather long road."Eventually they found him... That is how it ends, or at least some hope so, the last act in this shame comedy that began one day in March 1985, when Michel Seurat was kidnapped, him and his colleague, the journalist Jean-Paul Kaufmann, along the road between the airport and downtown Beirut." You know Saad, it's strange, I hear the jolts, the crowds, the cars, tip-toeing, but it is as if there was no one here, not a single soul, except you and me. "In the heart of the old downtown -between Place des Martyrs, Place de l'Etoile, Rue Foch, Rue Allenby, and the Tawileh souq -the only pedestrians were stray dogs." What? The resistance? Ha. "We don't need any Zionist hostages, we're all the hostages in this country anyway". Yes, Saad, you're right, and anyway the Israelis bombed the synagogue and everything else in 1982, so we have nowhere to take the prisoners of war to in case they want to invoke their own supersititions. Bassita(**), Michel,bassita; you must be on the way home, if not there already. Tell your wife this was like the army, that you had no choice.

[Par un jour de violence ordinaire, mon ami Michel Seurat. Film, 1995. Omar Amiralay]

I tell you what, Saad, these were the great names of Beirut, the great thinkers. Lupercus, Publius Egnatius Celer, Strato, Marcus Valerius Probus, Hermippus, Theodorus, Lucius Cavenus Taurus. The sages from the School of Laws. The rest of the names I can't remember. Who knows what happened here? Who is young enough to remember it? "After the tablets of Tel el-Amarna and the letters ofUgarit, centuries passed without any mention of Biruta in a written text [...] Two possible explanations have been advanced in this regard: either Biruta was destroyed in the course of the invasion by the Sea Peoples in the twelfth century, or it was annexed by a neighboring city, perhaps Byblos or Sidon." It's not so important. Oh, yes, the novel, I was in the middle of telling you. Let's continue with that. "What is then the real reason for returning to this beloved country, whose name I'm afraid to mention?" You know, the other day, George asked Susan if he would ever get to see the Holy Land. I don't know. What do you think?"Unavoidably, being only one or two days distant from the places that saw the birth of Christianity, Beirut was a point of departure in its expansion and, if one considers the Holy Land in the broad sense, actually a part of this land."

That I remember. Were you there too? The parties on the roof, belle epoque, the empty streets, it was an ocean of sleepwalkers, one more beautiful than the other. Ah, that July. How to forget what it means to be saved? Isn't that what heaven feels like? "Military victories, the traditional reason for public celebrations, were no longer available to the empire; but there were more than a few occasions to hold parades and declare holidays, which made it possible in turn and in spite of all appearances to the contrary, to maintain an image of power and to indicate its extent." This was such a beautiful journey, you know. George, you mean? Oh he was busy, he couldn't come this time, maybe he will come tomorrow or the day after. No, no, he is not like Godot. He always comes, in fact, he didn't even have to come once, he had been there from the very beginning, it's just that I didn't know it. Would you like to come with us next time? "The novel ends in darkness, solely with the purpose of showing that 'the disappearance of the past is something one can find consolation for easily'; what is inconsolable is the disappearance of the future as well." No, Saad, it might take hours from here to the square, let's wait. 

"That he should die there was perhaps inevitable."Why don't they leave us alone now?" one of his young neighbors asked me before the cops towed Kassir's Alfa Romeo away and his followers spread a sea of candles across the road. "Why must they go on using this methodology of murder? We have to stop this. Are they trying to drive all the young people out of Lebanon?" Not longer after Kassir's killing, his colleague and editor at An-Nahar was atomized by a car bomb in eastern Beirut. There were twelve political murders at this time -a dozen in just three years, including that of Kassir. No arrests, of course. There never are in Beirut. Warm and gentle Beirut may be. But tough and cruel." What does it mean, Michel? What does it mean to regret when you had no choice?

[Passages from Samir Kassir taken from "Beirut", University of California Press, 2011; "Michel Seurat, sans commentaires...", An-Nahar newspaper, July 24th, 1998. Passages from Amin Maalouf/Georgia Makhlouf taken from "Amin Maalouf: l'écrivain et son double", L'Orient Littéraire, August 2012]

*Ghouraba: Lebanese expression to refer to Arab strangers, used pejoratively against Palestinian and Syrian workers. **Bassita: Lebanese expression: Don't worry; Take it easy; It's fine.

The Artist as Mystic

First published on ART CLVB / REORIENT

‘To write is to practice, with particular intensity and attentiveness, the art of reading’. Such did the acclaimed American writer Susan Sontag begin her reflections, Writing as Reading, a contribution solicited by the New York Times in 2000 for a series entitled Writers on Writing. Sontag goes on to explain that to write is to read, re-read, and sit oneself in judgment, using Henrik Ibsen’s expression.

Why do writers read? According to Sontag:

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. And, long after you’ve become a writer, reading books others write – and rereading the beloved books of the past – constitutes an irresistible distraction from writing. Distraction. Consolation. Torment. And, yes, inspiration.

For writers, the reading of and commenting on great books from the past is the sign of their unchallengeable seriousness, with which they position themselves inside the human enterprise of writing. For those who write, to read other authors is to pay attention to the world; and this is precisely the art that the Egyptian-American poet Yahia Lababidi has mastered.

In a conversation with fellow writer Alex Stein, Lababidi elaborates on this ‘attention’ as such:

The artist prays through attention. I think of my dreams. I think of those times when I fly in my dreams. I think there must be some connection between how I fly in my dreams and this state I sometimes come to in writing where I feel I am aloft, ecstatic.

Lababidi’s book, Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Belly Dancing, provides a bird’s eye view to what exactly the Egyptian poet is trying to achieve. In what could be otherwise mistaken for a series of essays in which different topics are investigated, he redefines for himself the original meaning of the ‘essay’ – a term coined by the French writer Montaigne – as judgment. And, like Ibsen, he indeed sits himself in judgment.

As Lababidi notes regarding Trial by Ink:

This [the book], too, is a subjective work where I attempt to evaluate what I care for, and generally test my responsiveness to literature and culture. In the course of such investigations, particular judgments emerge, expressions of taste and values. These are my trials, where I am simultaneously scratching my head and pen across paper, to determine what I think about a given subject.

What Lababidi is judging however, isn’t only the Western literary culture in which he so easily feels ‘at home’, but also the popular culture of our times – one of the most neglected topics in the work of serious writers – and the culture of the Middle East that he has experienced firsthand in both Egypt and Lebanon. Accordingly, he spares no effort to portray the profound sense of contradiction between religiosity and eroticism that invades everyday life in Cairo and Beirut.

At the same time, it would be wrong to think of Lababidi as an essayist, as the strong, personal, and poetic voice to be found in his work reveals him to be more of a prose writer. It is in the realm of poetry and aphorisms that Lababidi excels, with Trial by Ink being the only intermediary between his celebrated collection of aphorisms, Signposts to Elsewhere, and his volume of poetry, Fever Dreams.

I think there must be some connection between how I fly in my dreams and this state I sometimes come to in writing where I feel I am aloft, ecstatic – Yahia Lababidi

Lababidi’s poetry has traveled far. It has been translated into several languages, and is widely available on the Internet, not only in its original form, but also in the form of video clips, readings and accompanying other texts. Today, it is no longer uncommon for authors from the Middle East to write their books in English – or other languages, for that matter – and engage global audiences, while still remaining anchored in the contemporary anxieties of the region. On February 2011 – only shortly after the beginning of the Egyptian protests which later turned into a full-scale revolution – his poem What is to Give Light, a poetic tribute to the Tunisian fruit-seller who helped spark (literally) the wave of protests extending from the Maghreb to the Persian Gulf, was published. A year later in March 2012, his essay Poetry, and Journalism of the Spirit appeared on the The Mantle, the widely-read American forum for progressive critique.

In Poetry and Journalism of the Spirit, Lababidi laid out his thoughts and reflections on the place of poetry in the context of the Egyptian revolution and the larger ‘Arab Spring’ movement, looking to the great writers of the West for inspiration. What he does – together with Alex Stein – in his most recent book, The Artist as Mystic: Conversations with Yahia Lababidi is a similar exercise, in that he pays attention to what other writers have said about writing and poetry.

Stein commences the book by noting that ‘Conversation is the litmus test … Conversation is pudding in which the proof resides. In conversation we give the most complete, up to date, version of ourselves’. Together, Stein and Lababidi set out on a perilous journey to discuss those authors who have provided Lababidi with the living material for his poetry, most notably Rimbaud, Kafka, Bataille, Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, among others.

Detail of a Persian miniature from Rumi’s Masnavi

For Yahia Lababidi, the condition of the artist is exalted, and as such requires a withdrawal from the world, as if one were a mystic or saint. As Franz Kafka mentions in his Blue Octavo Notebooks, one of Lababidi’s favourite books:

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the only suffering you could avoid.

In The Artist as Mystic, Lababidi questions the ecstatic state of the poet, comparing mystics from the Persian Sufi tradition to contemporary authors such as Kafka. As he says:

The Ecstatics from my tradition, the Persian tradition, could be wildly erotic, but because they were addressing themselves to God they felt safe. For Kafka, the mystic ritual he called ‘writing’ was his safe zone.

Accordingly, the reader cannot help but feel the strong sense of identification of Lababidi with the works of such enigmatic and somewhat cryptic poets and writers.

In the culture I come from, a saying is a magical thing – Yahia Lababidi

The works of Lababidi’s that have been most widely read are his aphorisms, perhaps because they are more intellectually accessible to the public. However, unlike the European aphorists, practitioners of the fragment and the freeze-frame, Lababidi finds inspiration in the oral narratives of the Middle East. ‘In the culture I come from, a saying is a magical thing. It was something people were always happy to hear or recite, and if I happened to have written it, that was good, too’, he mentions.

Frederic Nietzche

In one of the most significant passages in his conversations with Stein, Lababidi discusses his reading of Nietzsche in his native Egypt. ‘When I read it [Nietzche’s work] again, maybe a decade later, more intentionally, in the desert outside Cairo, it was like a long slow exhalation that let me finally examined what I had received’, he reflects. It was in the Egyptian desert, where the contemplative and mystical traditions of the West emerged since the time of the Desert Fathers, and he knows this well.

On a similar note, Lababidi allows himself a singular comparison between the work of Nietzsche and the desert. As he posits:

The desert is inhospitable. It doesn’t really want you there, but if you could stay there, if you could stick it out, you could be granted an access that you couldn’t find anywhere else. There’s a desert quality to Nietzsche’s writing, I think. It doesn’t care much for you. It may, perhaps, want you there, but it doesn’t need you there.

The vocation of the artist is omnipresent throughout these conversations, and partly echoes Sontag’s conclusion to Writing as Reading in 2000, in which she states regarding the difference between reading and writing that ‘Reading is a vocation, a skill at which, with practice, you are bound to become an expert. What you accumulate as a writer is mostly uncertainties and anxieties’.

However, Yahia Lababidi – as his conversations with Alex Stein make manifest – isn’t simply reading; he is also listening and paying careful attention to what the writers of the past have said. In doing so, he attempts to enter their worlds and inhabit them – if only temporarily – as if they were other pathways leading him to poetry.

It was perhaps another mystic, the French writer Simone Weil, who said it best: ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’.

 

At the Square VIII

First published on THE MANTLE

For E. Magdi & G. Maalouf

[Camille Pisarro, "The Louvre, Morning, Winter Sunshine", 1901]

"Well, no one has ever painted the landscape, man absent but entirely within the landscape"-Paul Cézanne

Passe-partout? Yes, the frame. I had never seen the frame in this painting. When I first saw it, in the years before the war, it seemed to me as if the painting was nothing but a little drawing, in blue, set against faded cerulean cardboard. "A phoenix of a book, written out of the ashes of another book, the novel is a tribute to bitterness and to tenacity - that of the bereft girl of the early 1600's who will, against all odds, become a renowned painter, that of a bereaved author who will write a novel that is surely more original than the one consumed in the fires of war. Loss had made the author free to enter the book, talking to herself and toArtemisia." Did you see the lake, Eman? No, I didn't see it myself. I think there were some young men in a boat. It's a difficult drawing I know, especially if you're focusing on the water, not wanting to see the faces; but if you don't want to draw the faces, you can begin by drawing the empty space around them. You can always imagine not that it is a void, but a still-life; remember the Flemish painters? It was Clara Peeters, I think. "But there was time; this was supposed to last a lifetime." Now the frame was almost bigger than the painting, so adorned, extravagant, baroque.

"How do people paint from memory? And from the memory of others?" That is a legitimate question Eman; my problem with still-life is that it seems as if there, the world is already redeemed and I don't want that. "Injustice is a wine that intoxicates both the judge and the victim. I have known the taste of that wine." I really wanted to be at the lake. It is a lesson, Saint Augustine would say: "Who will hold the heart, and fix it so that it may stand still for a little while and catch for a moment the splendor of eternity which stands still forever, and compare this with temporal moments that never stand still, and see that it is comparable... but that all this while in the eternal, nothing passes but the whole is present." This is the problem with memory, that is so corruptible, because you have access to all of your experience simultaneously; there are no blocks, no fragments. "But if nothing stands still, how do you paint?" I think you need some trust Eman, you need to believe that his essence can be touched, felt as carnal and the lines on the torso seen unsymmetrical, imperfect. "It is Artemisia who becomes a time traveler, a visitor, a phantom so real she can be measured even physically in the author’s consciousness."

[Pierre Sadek, political poster, Battle of Zahlé, 1983]

Love is strange, Eman; it makes you at home by destroying the distance that the world demands for being an object, but yet it is the requirement to make oneself at home in it, with others as well. "It was a faceless love, without end or hope, enlightened, with fogs and snows, an immense river, boats with musicians and dances over the fresh grass". Things are very important to me, thingness, embodiment; but no matter how ensouled, objects do not love you back. "Then why do you want to find the icon? Had you wished it, you would know where to go, perhaps you wouldn't even need to go anywhere at all." Yes, Eman, you're right, nothing has changed. "We chase each other, Artemisia and I, and play to seize each other not without tricks, from the most material and obvious, to the most secretive. I abandon her after the war, during the first journey, from which I say, I may never come back. She pours ink on my paper from a vial and then we stare into each other." Perhaps. Perhaps he has come back. Perhaps a letter already arrived, all while we loitered about. You know, my whole life, I thought Gemayelwas a hero, that he had saved us, that we had won. We all had been lied to. "We're all displaced people after all", George said.

The rubble got into my shoes, all the way to Nottingham, and drowned from time to time at Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, that takes its name from the 12th centuryCrusades to the Holy Land. According to the legend, knights who answered the call of Richard I to join the crusades stopped off there for a pint on the way toJerusalem. We might have seen them, George, at Mousayliha, sitting in the pitch-dark. I couldn't remember one single thing and the Englishmen kindly handed out to me old newspapers with pictures from the siege of Beirut, replete with questions. "To write about the past is to write something like fantastic fiction. It is the strangeness of the past, rendered with piercing concreteness, that gives the effect of realism." I had to imagine everything again. "Anna Banti did not want to lose her manuscript in the battle of Florence in early August 1944. No writer could welcome such a destiny." Do you remember, Eman, when we read Joyce? "But this is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life".

"Non piangere. Don't cry. Who is talking? And where? It's the author, still in her nightgown (as in a dream, she writes), sitting on a gravel path in the Boboli Gardens -on the promontory on the south side of the Arno -sobbing, telling herself not to cry, and finally ceasing to cry, stunned by the even sharper realization of what was destroyed in the havoc of a few hours before." We've finally arrived, Eman. Beirut. George... How I had missed you, in the thousand years that passed; I'm so afraid, but I promise not to be afraid of that.

[Passages from Anna Banti, taken from "Artemisia: Romanzo", Mondadori, 1953. Passages from Susan Sontag, taken from "A Double Destiny: On Anna Banti's Artemisia", London Review of Books, 2003]

At the Square VII

First published on THE MANTLE

For E. Magdi & G. Maalouf

For E. Magdi & G. Maalouf

[Bayeux Tapestry, 1070]

"These men marvel at the star" -from the Bayeux Tapestry, recording the brilliant apparition of Halley's comet in 1066, during the days immediately following King Harold's coronation.

First he was beatified by Pope Jean Paul II on May 10th 1998 and then canonized on May 17th 2004. The young priest, a European, explained and then turned to Eman, chattering about the secrets of the icon, contemplation in color, transfiguration, embodiment, and the mystery of apocatastasis from the Acts of the Apostles: "Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began". The image is a memorial, read a line from St. John of Damascus, placed atop. What I imagined then: Will the Kingdom of God be restored? Everything will be like before? What was it like before? "What makes a genuine work of art and where is the secret of its perfection?" The young man asked her, in half ignorance, half arrogance. I stopped listening then and kept walking slowly and very close to the wall, almost embracing the calid stones with my limbs, staring into the half lit icons, maybe thinking that I would find him inside one of those woodcuts, like before.

Why was the saint in the desert? Maybe it was a reference to Saint Anthony the Great, credited with having founded Qozhaya, and the leader of the Desert Fathers. I had also been told that nature is never depicted in the icons, and we wondered about this together. Perhaps it was a recent rendition, because the golden glow was so fresh and not yet dead. Looking out the vaulted window without glass, the Kadisha Valley, spread between the two villages of the poet, without arms; our destination seemed far. "In that room there was a bed made from green pine, resembling in everything her own bed in Naples. She was lulled into believing that she was home and that this was the end of the journey." It was her first drawing outdoors, and she was sorry that she couldn't paint without characters, because it was like a drawing a void. The valley however, was heavily populated, by the Forest of the Cedars of God, that was so admired by the Israelites, who brought the cedars to Jerusalem to build their temples.

[Saint Nimatullah Kassab Al-Hardini, icon by Christine Habib El Daye]

"The Israelites haven't returned since then", complained one of the trees, standing there since the days of Solomon. Where else could I look for him? There are also the monasteries of Qannubin and Mar Sarkis, I thought. How could I have lost him? Lost him in this country?  "Under the ruins of my house, I have lost Artemisia, my companion of three centuries, as she laid down in the quiet, breathing, put to sleep by me in one hundred pages of writing." The priests had said that contemplating the icons would lead man straight to God, through the saints, and that made me believe that should I find the icon, the same icon Eman had done of him, in one of these monasteries, I could come to him. The night seized us, and she could no longer distinguish between the contours of the hills; in the distance, the smoke. "People that at four in the morning flee in droves, aghast, at the sight of the homeland turning into rubble; staring twice, to come to realize the terrors of a night in which the German landmines, one after another, shook the womb of the earth."

Some of the hermits lived in the vaulted caves, outside the forest, in Christian solitude; waiting. "It rains on the ruins over which I've already cried; on their contours the sounds had deadened their fright that after the first stroke of the shovel were now silenced forever. Artemisia's two graves, the real and the imaginary, are now the same, just inhaled dust." Can you see her, Eman? Can you see Artemisia? She tried so hard, but the light was too strong in the dark, and Artemisia never saw the light in the painting, only the perspective. "How could she not see the light?" Eman asked. And I didn't see it either. "Scorched a thousand times by the burns of the offense, a thousand times more does Artemisia fall back and catch her breath once again, to throw herself into the fire." Nothing in the direction of Bsharri, nothing in the direction of Tourza. "Almost nothing exists for me in this tired and faded white of dawn on a day of August. I lay on the soil, over the gravel paths in the Boboli Gardens, still in a nightgown, as if in dream." Saint Hardini, do you have friends?

"In Banti's account, what is central to Artemisia's life is not the rape; not the marriage with an obscure young man that her father imposed on her once the verdict was brought against the rapist; nor the four children (three of whom died) she bore her husband. It is her solitude, the inexorable result of her commitment to art." Eman, are you there? I don't think I can find him. George never told me the name of his village. 

[Artemisia Gentileschi, "Autoritratto come Allegoria della Pittura", 1638/39]

[Passages from Anna Banti, taken from "Artemisia: Romanzo", Mondadori, 1953. Passages from Susan Sontag, taken from "A Double Destiny: On Anna Banti's Artemisia", London Review of Books, 2003]

For E. Magdi & G. Maalouf

[Bayeux Tapestry, 1070]

"These men marvel at the star" -from the Bayeux Tapestry, recording the brilliant apparition of Halley's comet in 1066, during the days immediately following King Harold's coronation.

First he was beatified by Pope Jean Paul II on May 10th 1998 and then canonized on May 17th 2004. The young priest, a European, explained and then turned to Eman, chattering about the secrets of the icon, contemplation in color, transfiguration, embodiment, and the mystery of apocatastasis from the Acts of the Apostles: "Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began". The image is a memorial, read a line from St. John of Damascus, placed atop. What I imagined then: Will the Kingdom of God be restored? Everything will be like before? What was it like before? "What makes a genuine work of art and where is the secret of its perfection?" The young man asked her, in half ignorance, half arrogance. I stopped listening then and kept walking slowly and very close to the wall, almost embracing the calid stones with my limbs, staring into the half lit icons, maybe thinking that I would find him inside one of those woodcuts, like before.

Why was the saint in the desert? Maybe it was a reference to Saint Anthony the Great, credited with having founded Qozhaya, and the leader of the Desert Fathers. I had also been told that nature is never depicted in the icons, and we wondered about this together. Perhaps it was a recent rendition, because the golden glow was so fresh and not yet dead. Looking out the vaulted window without glass, the Kadisha Valley, spread between the two villages of the poet, without arms; our destination seemed far. "In that room there was a bed made from green pine, resembling in everything her own bed in Naples. She was lulled into believing that she was home and that this was the end of the journey." It was her first drawing outdoors, and she was sorry that she couldn't paint without characters, because it was like a drawing a void. The valley however, was heavily populated, by the Forest of the Cedars of God, that was so admired by the Israelites, who brought the cedars to Jerusalem to build their temples.

[Saint Nimatullah Kassab Al-Hardini, icon by Christine Habib El Daye]

"The Israelites haven't returned since then", complained one of the trees, standing there since the days of Solomon. Where else could I look for him? There are also the monasteries of Qannubin and Mar Sarkis, I thought. How could I have lost him? Lost him in this country?  "Under the ruins of my house, I have lost Artemisia, my companion of three centuries, as she laid down in the quiet, breathing, put to sleep by me in one hundred pages of writing." The priests had said that contemplating the icons would lead man straight to God, through the saints, and that made me believe that should I find the icon, the same icon Eman had done of him, in one of these monasteries, I could come to him. The night seized us, and she could no longer distinguish between the contours of the hills; in the distance, the smoke. "People that at four in the morning flee in droves, aghast, at the sight of the homeland turning into rubble; staring twice, to come to realize the terrors of a night in which the German landmines, one after another, shook the womb of the earth."

Some of the hermits lived in the vaulted caves, outside the forest, in Christian solitude; waiting. "It rains on the ruins over which I've already cried; on their contours the sounds had deadened their fright that after the first stroke of the shovel were now silenced forever. Artemisia's two graves, the real and the imaginary, are now the same, just inhaled dust." Can you see her, Eman? Can you see Artemisia? She tried so hard, but the light was too strong in the dark, and Artemisia never saw the light in the painting, only the perspective. "How could she not see the light?" Eman asked. And I didn't see it either. "Scorched a thousand times by the burns of the offense, a thousand times more does Artemisia fall back and catch her breath once again, to throw herself into the fire." Nothing in the direction of Bsharri, nothing in the direction of Tourza. "Almost nothing exists for me in this tired and faded white of dawn on a day of August. I lay on the soil, over the gravel paths in the Boboli Gardens, still in a nightgown, as if in dream." Saint Hardini, do you have friends?

"In Banti's account, what is central to Artemisia's life is not the rape; not the marriage with an obscure young man that her father imposed on her once the verdict was brought against the rapist; nor the four children (three of whom died) she bore her husband. It is her solitude, the inexorable result of her commitment to art." Eman, are you there? I don't think I can find him. George never told me the name of his village. 

[Artemisia Gentileschi, "Autoritratto come Allegoria della Pittura", 1638/39]

[Passages from Anna Banti, taken from "Artemisia: Romanzo", Mondadori, 1953. Passages from Susan Sontag, taken from "A Double Destiny: On Anna Banti's Artemisia", London Review of Books, 2003]For E. Magdi & G. Maalouf

[Bayeux Tapestry, 1070]

"These men marvel at the star" -from the Bayeux Tapestry, recording the brilliant apparition of Halley's Comet in 1066, during the days immediately following King Harold's coronation.

First he was beatified by Pope Jean Paul II on May 10th 1998 and then canonized on May 17th 2004. The young priest, a European, explained and then turned to Eman, chattering about the secrets of the icons, contemplation in color, transfiguration, embodiment, and the mystery of the apocatastasis from the Acts of the Apostles: "Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began". The image is a memorial, read a line from St. John of Damascus, placed atop. What I imagined then: Will the Kingdom of God be restored? Everything will be like before? What was it like before? "What makes a genuine work of art and where is the secret of its perfection?" The young man asked her, in half ignorance, half arrogance. I stopped listening then and kept walking slowly and very close to the wall, almost embracing the calid stones with my limbs, staring into the half lit icons, maybe thinking that I would find him inside one of the woodcuts, like before.

Why was the saint standing in the desert? Maybe it was a reference to Saint Anthony the Great, credited with having founded Qozhaya, and the leader of theDesert Fathers. I had also been told that nature is never depicted in the icons, and we wondered about this together. Perhaps it was a recent rendition, because the golden glow was so fresh and not yet dead. Looking out of the vaulted window without glass, the Kadisha Valley, spread between the two villages of the poet, without arms; our destination seemed far. "In that room there was a bed made from green pine, resembling in everything her own bed in Naples. She was lulled into believing that she was home and that this was the end of the journey." It was her first drawing outdoors, and she was sorry that she couldn't paint without characters, because it was like a drawing a void. The valley however, was peopled by the Forest of the Cedars of God that was so admired by the Israelites, who brought the cedars to Jerusalem to build their temples.

[Saint Nimatullah Kassab Al-Hardini, icon by Christine Habib El Daye]

"The Israelites haven't returned since then", complained one of the trees, standing there since those days. Where else could I look for him? There are also the monasteries of Qannubin and Mar Sarkis, I thought. How could I have lost him? Lost him in this country?  "Under the ruins of my house, I have lost Artemisia, my companion of three centuries, as she laid down in the quiet, breathing, put to sleep by me in one hundred pages of writing." The priests had said that contemplating the icons would lead man straight to God, through the saints, and that made me believe that should I find that icon, in one of these monasteries, I could come to him, to my lost friend. The night seized us, and she could no longer distinguish the composition of the hills; in the distance, the smoke. "People that at four in the morning flee in droves, aghast, at the sight of the homeland turning into rubble; staring twice, to come to realize the terrors of a night in which the German landmines, one after another, shook the womb of the earth."

Some of the hermits lived in the vaulted caves, outside the forest, in Christian solitude; waiting. "It rains on the ruins over which I've already cried; on their contours the sounds had deadened their fright that after the first stroke of the shovel were now silenced forever. Artemisia's two graves, the real and the imaginary, are now the same; just inhaled dust." Can you see her, Eman? Can you see Artemisia? She tried so hard, but the light was too strong in the interstices, and Artemisia never saw the light in the painting, only the perspective. "How could she not see the light?" Eman asked. And I didn't see it either. "Scorched a thousand times by the burns of the offense, a thousand times more does Artemisia fall back and catch her breath once again, to throw herself into the fire." Nothing in the direction of Bsharri, nothing in the direction of Tourza. "Almost nothing exists for me in this tired and faded white of dawn on a day of August. I lay on the soil, over the gravel paths in the Boboli Gardens, still in a nightgown, as if in a dream."Saint Hardini, do you have friends?

"In Banti's account, what is central to Artemisia's life is not the rape; not the marriage with an obscure young man that her father imposed on her once the verdict was brought against the rapist; nor the four children (three of whom died) she bore her husband. It is her solitude, the inexorable result of her commitment to her art." Eman, are you there? I don't think I can find him. George never told me the name of his village.

[Passages from Anna Banti, taken from "Artemisia: Romanzo", Mondadori, 1953. Passages from Susan Sontag, taken from "A Double Destiny: On Anna Banti's Artemisia", London Review of Books, 2003]

[Artemisia Gentileschi, "Autoritratto come Allegoria della Pittura", 1638/39]

“You are Free”: Not in Lebanon

First published on BIKYAMASR

Early in June, with the beginning of the summer, as visitors prepared for holidays in the shores of the Mediterranean, a couple of LGBT-sites ran features on Lebanon, describing it as a melting pot of cultures from East and West, and praised its vibrant night life: “A visit to Lebanon reveals Roman treasures, natural wonders, outstanding food, cosmopolitan fun and a growing gay scene.”

While there is no doubt that the traditional view of Lebanon as the freest country in the Arab world is not without foundation, the truth is that the Lebanese have fought very hard for those freedoms and those freedoms remain increasingly threatened due to a combination of laissez-faire policy and tight censorship.

A Lebanese user commented to the article “Beirut and Lebanon: The gay paradise of the Arab world” with singular wit: “It is really a terrific place once you get past the routine power outs, the incredibly high prices, the harassment of gays in virtually any public venue, the criminal status of homosexuality, the corrupt, racist and homophobic police department, the sporadic tire-burnings and gun fights and the control that Islamic and Christian fundamentalists have over large parts of the country both in terms of territory and media. But yeah, other than that it’s terrific.” It’s true as well that there have been some improvements in Lebanon in regard to LGBT rights, but the situation remains precarious and legal status unchanged.

It was also in June that French newspaper Le Monde reported – based on a report of Human Rights Watch – that the practice of invasive tests to determine homosexuality of the orders of the Lebanese judiciary goes against international standards on prisoners. According to article 534 of the Lebanese penal code, homosexuality remains illegal on the ground of outlawing unnatural sexual activity. Regardless the violation of medical practice that these tests constitute, doctors admitted then that they performed them four or five times a month, even though they themselves admit as well that they cannot be considered scientifically accurate or conclusive in determining homosexuality.

On May 23rd the seminar “Test of Shame” was organized by NGO Legal Agenda at St. Joseph University to discuss the violent practice, and the Lebanese Medical Society also held a discussion in which they concluded that the tests have no scientific value. Even though a Lebanese judge ruled in 2009 against the use of article 534 to prosecute homosexuals, the practice – albeit not generalized – continues and in the words of Nizar Saghieh, a lawyer, activist and founder of Legal Agenda, the ultimate goal of the tests was not only to humiliate but also to intimidate detainees, some of which are randomly detained on an arbitrary practice over which there are no clear arguments or policies.

A new incident involving arrests and performance of the tests took place on July 28th but this time with the added aggravation of being sparked by media celebrity Joe Maalouf during his talk show “Enta Horr” (“You’re Free”) on Murr TV (MTV). During the program, Maalouf made explicit reference to a porn cinema in Beirut where it is known that men have sexual encounters with other men. He claimed that the authorities were protecting “perverts” and demanded the authorities to act upon it. Quickly thereafter, the cinema was raided, 36 men arrested and were subjected to anal examinations, supposedly to prove their homosexuality. MTV reported on the arrest of the 36 men with viciously homophobic language.

This was not the first or only time that Maalouf not only expressed publicly his homophobic feelings but also invaded the privacy of citizens: In May his program featured an undercover camera filming men having sexual intercourse in porn cinema in the northern city of Tripoli and clearly exposing their identities. His show also abused the case of a horrible crime to prompt a vigilante attitude, using the grief of the victim’s family to spark sectarian remarks and incite for capital punishment. Previously, he had also come under fire for publicizing the names of victims of sexual harassment in a school in Lebanon.

A controversy ensued between Maalouf – who is not in the country – and LGBT activists and supporters in Lebanon, in which Maalouf, in spite of being a media personality, has resorted to vulgar language and threats, that speaks volumes for his professional standards and those of a show, that while apparently is meant to give a voice to the weak and underrepresented in Lebanese society, is often thriving on controversy and sensationalism, at the expense of the privacy, dignity and in this case, security of the people involved. Maalouf was outed as gay himself by gay activists; accusations that he insists on denying and has threatened to sue George Azzi, the co-founder of LGBT-organization Helem, for slander.

Timely enough, Lebanese channel LBC, in response, took a strong stand against homophobia and the constant violations of human rights during prime time, with their “Republic of Shame” that pointed clearly at the humiliating practice. Other media in Lebanon have also taken a stand against the position of MTV that so far remains unchanged. Whether Maalouf himself is gay or not is maybe not the greatest concern here, but the fact that in spite all the outrage, the penal code remains unchanged and people can still fall prey to the openly abusive practice of the tests. The responses of users on social media have been largely positive but it remains to be seen if that translates into concrete actions, which is hardly the case in Lebanon.

Naturally, a number of responses have emerged among the Lebanese to this disgraceful incident, from the commonplace sectarianism of accusing Christians (since the surnames Murr and Maalouf obviously are) of being criminals, pimps and drug dealers, to the apparently liberal response that Maalouf is an “homophobic gay” and that therefore gays themselves are to be blamed for the crackdown. The lack of accountability on all levels of society is remarkable but hardly surprising: Anyone familiar with Lebanon knows full well how widespread homophobia is in the country, and how supportive a big percentage of the population is of the ordeal that LGBT people go through daily.

Lebanese doctor Hasan Abdessamad wrote on Maalouf’s Facebook page: “How does it feel to have 36 men arrested, taking them away from their families and out of the safety of their closets, throwing them under the cruelty of our merciless judgmental society, putting them at risk for losing their jobs, and throwing them in a jail where they already got abused by exposing them to “dignity anal testing”? Why is your target always the misfortunate and weak? Go after all the corrupt people in power dressed in suits and causing real harm to our Lebanese society.” Many citizens – including prominent activists – have spoken for a boycott of MTV.

MTV was originally launched in the aftermath of the Civil War in 1991 and for many was considered an alternative to the more traditional networks, but as it often happens to be the case in Lebanon, they have also caught up quickly with the opportunism, sectarianism and sensationalism that plague the entire Lebanese media. LGBT and civil society organizations are getting organized to act and the incident is unlikely to pass unnoticed. Maalouf himself denied accusations of homophobia and excused himself saying the exposé was an effort to highlight the mistreatment of teenagers who frequent such cinemas; George Azzi, however, has pointed out that no one appeared to be underage in the aired footage.

Most of the men have been released and activists have filed an appeal to the Justice Ministry to end the practice of the tests. In yet another display of blatant hypocrisy, the Internal Security Forces said through a spokesman that ISF opposed article 534 and supported its abolition, after having stood by the practice only a few days beforehand. It often happens in Lebanon that when such shameful acts are exposed, the whole society mobilizes with loud cries and demands, but yet just as often it dies there, until the next time another case is exposed. In a country so praised by others for its freedoms, it seems freedom is a luxury only available to irresponsible celebrities like Joe Maalouf and his channel MTV, but denied to the citizens who are condemned to anonymity and illegality for simply being who they are.