Sunday 30 December 2012

Realism in Rawiya: Women of the Middle East tell their story

An image by Newsha Tavakolian from Realism in Rawiya

This just in from my friends at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham, and fully endorsed by me: Realism in Rawiya, a stunning new exhibition of photography from the Middle East. For more details about the range of work at this show, please click here. The launch is on Thursday 24 January 2013, 6pm-9pm at the New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham NG7 6BE.

Realism in Rawiya presents the work of Rawiya – the first all-female photographic collective to emerge from the Middle East. Operating within what is still a predominantly male-dominated industry, and one fraught with politics, the group credits pooling resources and talents for their rapidly developing profile throughout the Middle Eastern region and beyond. Following on from their success at FORMAT photography festival in 2011, this exhibition marks Rawiya’s first major group exhibition in the UK.

Rawiya, meaning ‘she who tells a story’ or ‘storyteller’ in Arabic, presents the photographers Myriam Abdelaziz (currently in Cairo), Laura Boushnak (currently in Sarajevo), Tanya Habjouqa (currently in East Jerusalem), Tamara Abdul Hadi (currently in Beirut), Dalia Khamissy (currently in Beirut) and Newsha Tavakolian (currently in Tehran).

Each artist established their individual careers as photojournalists, working for news agencies and publications across the Arab world. By living and reporting in the region, the photographers gained an insider’s view of the extremities of these settings, whilst also observing how their reportage could become reframed in the international media’s final edit of events. This shared experience inspired the members to create their own platform, to present what they felt to be the wider political and social stories currently going unseen.

Presented as a collective body of work which bridges the worlds of documentary and art, this exhibition captures the vision of the Rawiya: a multitude of stories and first-hand accounts which challenge the status quo of racism and orientalism often presented in mainstream media.With a specific focus on gender and identity, the exhibition presents a thoughtful viewof a region in flux, balancing its contradictions while reflecting on social and political issues and stereotypes.

Text (c) New Art Exchange

Friday 28 December 2012

Fighting for freedom and film: The Bristol Palestine Film Festival


Following requests, below is the talk I gave at the opening of the 2012 Bristol Palestine Film Festival.

We’re living in revolutionary and unstable times, full of promise and risk, energy, rupture and antagonism. Citizens across the Middle East are demanding the building blocks of fair and peaceful states: stability, freedom, justice; the integrity of government; working national structures and infrastructures; independent, reliable and efficient institutions; high quality national education and healthcare for all; liberation from reactionary dogma, doctrine and dictatorship;  opportunity, democracy, equality and liberty. These issues are no less pertinent here today as we celebrate the culture and resistance of Palestinians not only in Gaza and the West Bank but further out, in the Palestinian diaspora.

Yet revolutions are not defined by marches, protests, fighting and demonstrations alone. No revolution is truly powerful unless it is also creative, uplifting, collective and lasting; and the most profound revolutions affect every part of society. In this way, we use all of the potential of people – not only to resist and react, not only to challenge and confront, not only to defend and fight but also to create, to transform and to promise a better future for all. This year’s festival and its debates are more serious and urgent that ever before, because of recent political and military events [in Gaza]. However, the festival is not just about activism or political identity but about the great wealth of creative talent which deserves to be seen by the world and can in its turn shed light on life everywhere in the world. Great art has universal application even though it comes from a specific context.

At this year’s festival you will find a great variety of film work from and about Palestine. For those wishing to understand the reality of living in constant confrontation with the army, the separation wall and the cruelty and daily caprice of military occupation, combined with the concerted encroachment on and sabotage of historic and valuable olive groves, there are three gritty, important and unflinching films: The Colour of Olives (dir. Carolina Rivas and Daoud Sarhandi), 5 Broken Cameras (dir. Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi) and They Came in the Morning, directed by Leila Sansour. Yet Palestinian film is not defined by victimisation. In Yala to the Moon, directed by Suhel Nafar and Jacqueline Reem Salloum, a woman recreates her world using the gifts of her imagination. And Habibi, a wonderful film directed by Susan Youssef, is a Gaza-set story about forbidden love, defiance, graffiti and urban love poetry. It won the Best Arab Feature award at the 2011 8th Dubai International Film Festival and the honour was richly deserved. Other films in the festival tackle universal themes of human behaviour and of how we choose to react to events. In The Choice, directed by Yasin Erik Bognar, a father and daughter in Ramallah express grief in different ways. And in Sameh Zoabi’s comedy drama Man Without A Cellphone, a cocky young playboy has to grow up and step up in the fight against a nearby cellphone tower which might be leaking radiation.

These are just a sample of the diversity of work being produced by Palestinian directors or representing life in Palestine. Palestine is not just a ‘cause’ to be taken up, a site of suffering or a fashionable issue in which people show ‘tremendous human resilience, courage and spirit’ and are full of ‘warmth, humanity and hospitality’ despite their ‘plight’. Palestine is not a racial or cultural cliché to be explored and exploited, patronised and stereotyped, but a rich society of individuals who love everything from film, art, performance and literature to freedom, truth and justice ...which are all related and are for everyone, by everyone, without prejudice.




Sunday 9 December 2012

Poetry for Peace, inspired by Rabindranath Tagore

Several months ago I was invited by Wasafiri Magazine of International Writing to contribute to a reading event at Asia House in London. Three writers of South Asian descent – me, poet DaljitNagra and writer and broadcaster Shyama Perera – were to read through an issue of the magazine which was dedicated to appraising and honouring the cultural contribution of radical sub-continental writers. We had to choose an article as inspiration and create an original work in response to it. A full feature on the event, including pictures, can be found here.

I chose a critical essay about the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore has long been a literary touchstone in my household and I thought I might create from his formal high Bengali a new interpretation of his thoughts, language and imagery. A straight translation wouldn’t work – indeed, even the Wasafiri essay conceded that Tagore was rendered more acutely and subtly in French than English. I wanted instead to distil his essence and compose some new work that was totally Tagore and yet also completely, freshly, creatively myself.

There was one missing link: my mother, a writer and academic. We took down our many Bengali volumes of Tagore and she read some pieces aloud to me, just a few lines, to get the flavour. I found many verses that piqued my interest, particularly the songs from the Gitobitan, the Collection of Songs, which was published in India in 1931. The two pieces I chose to work on come from the section of the collection called Shodesh, translated as Homeland, which contains songs pertaining to India’s dignity, unity, strength and patriotic zeal in the fight against British rulership and exploitation.

I understand and can speak Bengali but can’t read or write it, to my regret. My mother read out the two short songs and we carefully discussed the meaning and rhythm of each line. Then she created a literal word-for-word translation, which I could not have done without and took strong inspiration from in crafting my own pieces. I gave them my own voice, my own words, ideas, rhythm, syntax and form, and I titled them. But their hearts are Tagore’s. The first piece I offer is inspired by a song written in 1905, while the second occurs much later in the original selection and cannot be dated.

Despite the specificity of their first origins, to me the songs are about the struggle for dignity, self-determination and emancipation anywhere, in all situations, not just at a national or outwardly political level. They affirm the power of the individual, they honour the bravery of independent action and acknowledge the risks of speaking out and standing alone. They also pay sad tribute to the way oppressive situations warp and brutalise everyone in them including the perpetrators. The songs are, above all, full of hope for change and faith in people to make that change, to right wrongs, to correct a crooked path, to agitate, to be proud, to be brave, to save, to redeem and to transform.

The Asia House event was a wonderful mixture of Daljit Nagra’s inventiveness, hilarity and wonderful performing skills, Shyama Perera’s intelligence, insight, rigour and candour and my nerves.  I think – I hope – I wrote and read the poems well and I had also hoped that my work wouldn’t disappear without a trace. As serendipity would have it, a few weeks later I received the following message:

We are writing to you and other distinguished figures with strong connections to South Asia, from Iran to Burma, and Tibet to the Maldives, to seek your help in our literary project.
We’re calling the project ‘Poetry for Peace’, a title that can be interpreted in various ways: peace between nations, between communities or between individuals, or peace within oneself.
We will donate 20% of the royalties from the sale of the anthology to Amnesty International and the remainder will help support the Rukhla Project, an active rural development project in Himachal Pradesh, India. The overall aim is to help foster initiatives that support and develop the local community and economy, including working with village schools, eco-volunteering, establishing links with educational institutions within India and abroad (including Japan), and so on. At the moment, the farm directly supports three families, including seven children. This figure is expected to rise as the project develops. There are plans to develop a cottage industry in the short term, producing apple vinegars, cheeses, and other artisan quality products using local materials and expertise. The buildings are being upgraded to accommodate guests, including trekkers, artists, poets, musicians and writers, as one of the aims is to develop it as a visitor centre where people can find their own inner peace and/or explore the forests and mountains with a local guide.

We hope that by sharing our love of words, we can add an idealistic drop to the pool of common good – a small reminder that we are one human race, with so much more uniting than dividing us: a common heritage, a common future, one common life.

I knew I couldn’t let it pass and have submitted the poems to the anthology, along with some of this introduction.

Tagore died in 1941. The national Indian liberty he had dreamed into being in his literature came to pass just a few years later, in 1947. As I write, the world is full of other freedom struggles against inequality, injustice, exploitation and prejudice. I hope that readers engaged in that long and righteous fight are inspired by my words, however flawed, as I was inspired by Tagore’s.




If there be no answer

If there be no answer, continue alone.
At the crossroads, on the high path, should they leave you,
On the dense road, at the tough pass, should they flee,
Should they turn their faces and offer no words,
Then read in secret the inward story
And walk the thorny road on your bloodied feet.
If there should be no lantern light, nor hearth, nor flame,
Then do what others cannot:

Go to the storm
Pluck out a rib
Light it with thunder
And burn alone.



 The victory banner

The tighter the binding, the looser it grows,
Our liberty escapes it, as light as a breath.
The trickier the knot, the rougher the rope,
Our freedom evades it, as subtle as scent.
The angrier they stare, bloodshot and stricken,
So softly we gaze, as open as children.

Inwardly we win, though outwardly submit,
The more vividly we dream, the more real is it.
The louder they shout, we grow more awake.
What’s rent by their hand, we privately remake.

If they strike, they hit water, waves rippling like silk.
If they stamp, they hit water, waves twisting like silk
If they kick, they hit water, waves flowing like silk -
The silk of their banner,
Torn as they tear.


©Bidisha, 2012

He thinks you’re scum but he fancies you, you’re humiliated but you fancy him: the Darcy dilemma in Pride and Prejudice


Mr Darcy is the ultimate punisher. Icily condescending or outright brusque, he is eloquent only when putting others down. Noticed immediately as “fine, tall... handsome… noble,”  at a dance, it becomes obvious that he is not just lean but mean too. Within the elegantly proportioned space of one Austenian sentence after his arrival, “his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity.”

For all his apparent loftiness Darcy has been perfectly happy in the company of his class peers but mental inferiors: Bingley the nice but dim best friend, braying Mr Hurst and the mean, shallow Bingley sisters.

When he meets his intellectual equal, Elizabeth Bennet, the cruel machinery of the novel means that it is she who is constantly humbled and humiliated, not him. Darcy’s scathing presumptions about the Bennets are almost completely correct. His one mistake is to underestimate Jane’s feelings for Bingley. But his assessment of Mrs Bennet’s vulgarity and avarice, his lack of surprise at not one but two sisters’ susceptibility to Wickham’s wiles and his assumption of Mr Bennet’s uselessness are proven right. Lizzy must face the wretched truth of all this; the worst Darcy must do is admit that he fancies someone whose family are inferior in both class and etiquette, apologise to Bingley for not mentioning that Jane was in town and wonder whether he should have told people about Wickham’s true nature.

Darcy’s manner changes somewhat after he is told off by Lizzy following his proposal. But his wealth and power protect him from any greater catharsis and weight the narrative entirely in his favour. That is not to say, however, that any reader with a drop of lifeblood in her would fail to be moved by one of the sexiest and most perfect moments in literature, when the two bump into each other at Pemberley: “Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immovable from surprise.”

But we know what happens immediately after that: Lydia’s ridiculous and perilous Wickham fling, which embarrasses everyone but herself and her mother in its crudeness. Darcy is the one who makes everything right; Lizzy gets no heroic moment. At the end of the book the Bennets are even less worthy of Darcy than they were at the start, for now he has the moral advantage as well as the monetary one. Nothing Lizzy can do in private will ever repay what he has done in rescuing the family from public humiliation.

The message of Pride and Prejudice is not that love conquers all but that a rich man can buy his way out of any pickle, that tricksters like Wickham always land on their feet and that women are nothing more than collateral in the dealings of worldly men. Such is the genius of Austen that long after the novel is over, one wonders whether Lizzy goes on to teach Darcy the power of laughter or whether he spends his life freezing her out over the breakfast table.


This article was originally commissioned by Intelligent Life magazine to celebrate the upcoming  200th publication anniversary of Pride and Prejudice in 2013.

Even the rich suffer: Swimming Home by Deborah Levy


It’s wonderful watching the toxic posh get their comeuppance. Deborah Levy’s novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize and is a masterwork of precision malice, a poisoned cocktail of high bourgeoisie, low motives, brittle manners and mean assumptions.

Swimming Home takes a series of cultural clichés and class, sex and national stereotypes and leaves them to fester in the summer sun until all the toxic matter oozes out. Nobody deserves this literary karma more than Levy’s cast of characters: an arrogant and sleazy poet, a desperately gauche pubescent daughter in a clangingly symbolic cherry print bikini, a bickering couple who own a boho antiques shop and a passive aggressive war reporter who’s traumatised from witnessing other people’s suffering. And there is no more apt place for them to confront their own and each other’s whiny demons than the kind of shabby chic villa you find littering the hills of Tuscany and the groves of Provence, full of braying British foodies.   

Swimming Home is set in a Mediterranean village of international crapsters, pretentious bohemians, uptight Eurochic and hateful and hate-filled locals. All are provincial and parochial clichés and the general plot of the novel is a cliché too: a group of frenemies renting a holiday home, whose dynamics are disrupted by the arrival of a beautiful young woman of mysterious motive. Anyone who’s watched Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty or Ozon’s Swimming Pool will recognise this set-up instantly. And anyone who’s been to a place like that, on a holiday like that, with people like that, will know that clichés are sometimes true.

Levy is brilliant at taking this much-used template and examining its self-conscious constructions and falsities. All of the older characters are quite deliberately enacting roles, both as individuals and as parts of the group. Privately, they chafe against these fake and thin identities, wondering how they have become trapped inside them. They are appalled at how their past, immense but unspeakable, has ossified around them. Publicly, they express their discomfort through vicious power-plays, mental battles, verbal barbs over the dinner table, insults disguised as jokes, egotistical bluster and brittle, small, symbolic acts of unwillingness or resistance.

This collection of unlikeables and insufferables thoroughly deserves to be drawn into some summertime mind-games. Enter Kitty Finch, who is also at the villa due to an apparent mix-up in rental dates. Kitty is every poor-little-lost-girl cliché you can think of: skinny, sexy, tough-but-vulnerable, dim yet scheming, crackers, manipulative, deceitful, hot but demonic. Even her name is revoltingly, self-consciously fake and minor: a little scratchy cat and a flighty little bird. Through her, the reader can see every damaged ingénue of page and screen, yet in Levy’s expert hands this interloper is shot through with terrible fragility and a sinister edge. Kitty Finch is a good old-fashioned man-worshipper, a grovelling groupie and a coquette who pretends not to be.

I won’t reveal how the poison plays out once everyone’s in place. That would blunt the cold sharp steel of Levy’s story and undercut the effect of its beautiful language. There is one more thing to point out, and it shows Levy’s brilliance at finding a false idea and stabbing it: the trope of a beautiful young woman arriving to disrupt the social and sexual dynamics of a bunch of villa-renting olive-eaters with her untrammelled foxy moxy voodoo lady-mojo is itself a literary delusion. In reality, gamine young women do not have any sexual power, do not wield decisive influence in psychological games, do not and cannot manipulate other people and do not have events centring around them. They are, instead, treated as bimbos and objects: leered at, harassed, exploited, groomed, pimped, used, abused, raped, objectified and then passed off as teases, liars, hysterics, attention-seekers or mad when they speak up. Beauty and sexiness in very young women seem powerful but are not; instead of being wily minxes, these girls are disempowered, isolated and insecure. They have no power to compel, and are victims. Levy smartly, lightly layers all of these images into her construction of Kitty, whose grovelling submissiveness towards the poet is matched only by his sleazy, pathetic susceptibility.

All these nasty people get exactly what they deserve and Levy delivers them to their fates in frozen, perfect, precise prose. Swimming Home is a brilliant novel about awful people; an absorbing narrative about the self-absorbed, whose pain never loses its tinge of pretension.



Swimming Home by Deborah Levy is published by And Other Stories, a small and brilliant press producing gorgeous contemporary books by some of the world most gifted thinkers. And Other Stories, if you're reading this, I would love to make some gorgeous volume with you.


Reflecting badly on horror: Dolly by Susan Hill


Spoiler alert: contains plot hints.

Does anyone do it better than Susan Hill? Give her a remote house, a graveyard, an attic with an iron-framed bed, some bad weather, circling birds and a childless mother or a motherless child and she’ll give you three hundred pages of expert ghastliness. Dead or ghostlike children, live or lifelike dolls, mirrors that reveal a true face, unjustly buried things trying to get out, unfairly banished things trying to get in, cots and rocking chairs that rock themselves, dead people who’ve lost something returning to look for it… we know what world we’re in.

Hill’s versatility as a literary novelist is well-known but there is a special, chilly pocket of appreciation reserved for her ghost stories The Man in the Picture, The Small Hand, The Mist in the Mirror and perhaps the most famous of all, The Woman in Black, which is onstage and onscreen as well as on the page.

Here’s an indiscreet anecdote from a namedropping writer colleague: “I’m friends with Susan Hill. If you’re worried about money, get a play on. The Woman in Black’s been showing for ever and Susan was telling me it makes so much money she doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Dolly is a long short story, beautifully presented as a black and green pocket hardback by Profile books. It performs the same clever Halloween trick as Hill’s other works, taking all the staples of historic horror and ghost genres and delivering something that is completely predictable, symmetrical and seemingly obvious. Yet it is Hill’s storytelling skill itself that makes these stories seem like they’ve been around forever and are part of some deep national dread.  

Here’s a comment from another colleague, a brilliant writer to whom I was praising Dolly but wondering why we need an old house and no Net for a proper horror story: 
“We need to strip away the modern for true horror because technology isn’t frightening,” she said.
“A literary editor once said to me, ‘No-one wants to read about people texting,’” I said.
“Well – screens might be frightening, people climbing out of them or going into them.”
“Like that Japanese film, The Ring.” 
“But what’s really frightening is people.”
“Or things behaving like people, or bad people pretending to be good people and getting away with it. Or wearing a mask in full view. Have you read the Freud essay, The Truth of Masks? It’s about how disguises are real. We choose the disguise that we think hides us, but we subconsciously choose the thing that reveals our true face.”
“…Or people pretending to be people you know. I once received a lovely letter from a young reader – I write for children – and she told me one of her most horrible dreams. She told me there was someone in her room, and she thought it was her mother. It looked like her mother. And she got close to it and suddenly it said, ‘I’m not your mother.’ And then, the girl wrote, ‘She took me to her cold dark nest.’ Isn’t that the phrase? ‘Cold dark nest.’ She was a writer’s daughter of course, her mother’s a writer, it starts so young.”

In Dolly, two children go to stay at an old house inhabited by a sullen housekeeper and a well-meaning but distant aunt. One child is a diffident and uninteresting little boy, who narrates the story as a grown-up. The other is a fiery, spoilt, unhappy girl whose flighty, frivolous (etc) mother has abandoned her. This girl, Leonora, wants a doll for her birthday. She doesn’t get the one she wants, expresses her rage in a jarringly ugly and ungrateful manner, and then…. There are no thrills or spills with Dolly, merely a momentary act of crude brattishness which is quickly forgotten by the young perpetrator but punished cruelly for decades afterwards by …well… and revealed with implacable, predictable (but no less affecting) calmness.

Dolly is about consequences, about the real monster not being the person or thing you thought it was, about the punishment being much greater than the crime and unfairly and disproportionately affecting many more people than just the perpetrator. It’s about the suffering of innocents and sometimes their revenge. The suffering comes out in twos: there are the two original children, each of whom has a daughter, and there are not one but two dolls, and there may be two or more perpetrators, and two of them might be the dolls – or maybe the dolls are merely reflecting the malice of Fate or the bitterness and pique of a grown adult who’s been hurt – or maybe it’s a very hard lesson that little girls shouldn’t misbehave….

At once frozen and hokey, underpowered yet overbaked, perverse yet obvious, smooth and inexorable, it’s also horribly satisfying. Yet the underlying (and I am sure, subconscious) politics of the story leave a bad impression. Though narrated by a male character, the story is about the nastiness, pettiness, malice and punishing of females, who are the perpetrators of most of the bad events in the book, but for one very significant act at the beginning; and the victims of this female malice are all very young girls themselves, almost babies. The flighty mother who abandons Leonora, the shrewd housekeeper who diagnoses Leonora on sight as evil – “She had looked into Leonora’s eyes when she had first arrived, and seen the devil there”, Leonora the malicious child herself, the childless aunt who seems kind but may not be, the changing female dolls who cause or mimic the suffering of the little girls and grow ugly in their boxes like “a wizened old woman, a crone” in one case and “no longer a beauty… a pariah” in another. The worst thing that is said of Leonora is that “she is too like her mother” – a bad girl taking after a bad woman – and the insult is delivered by another woman, the aunt, Leonora’s mother’s own sister. We are not only in an Edwardian physical setting but also its psychology: whether real or mannequins, young or old, absent or present, females are sad, mad, bad, petty, shrill, vicious, shrewish, irresponsible, occult, corrupt and corrupting.

If your desire to revel in the nastiness of Woman is satisfied and you want some racial and national stereotypes as a side dish then look no further than the Eastern European city the narrator visits as an adult. The medieval Old Town is in the middle, surrounded by hastily over-developed malls and motorways, the building work halted following a people’s revolution and the exile of the state leader. In the Old Town is… you can finish this sentence for me… a little old toy shop, and in the little old toy shop is a little old toy-restorer… “a very small old man” with an inscrutable manner and “a jeweller’s glass screwed into one eye”, from a Quality Street advert at Christmas, who seems to know exactly what the narrator is looking for.

If the Grimm climate of Eastern European cultural clichés is too chilly for you then let’s go to India – that palace of clichés! - with the narrator and his family, to a region which Hill does not even bother to give a name to, instead sketching it with a series of offhand, inexact, thrown-out and embarrassingly crude and ignorant pejoratives: “heat and humidity…extreme poverty” amongst “women and their children in a remote village, where there were no medical facilities and where clothes and people were washed in the great river that flowed through the area.” Tiny hint: there is no such thing as a remote village on the banks of a great river. If there’s a great river, it’s not a remote village but has the provision for irrigation for centuries of agriculture and therefore crops, food, flora and fauna; a prime position along an established transport route; a longstanding and probably classic trade route and the possibility of (to-be-purified) drinking water. Another hint: If you do not know a country, culture or people well, particularly one that was a former colony and subject to any number of racist clichés and Orientalist justifications, don’t patronise it with uneducated generalisations. Write about something you know and respect instead. Want more, reader? How about “terrible diseases… ravage this beautiful country. Poor sanitation, contaminated water, easy spread of infection…” easy and glib, just like that.

Dolly is a smoothly gut-churning story from one of England’s greatest living writers. From its lonely starting point it soon widens into an exploration of the depth and ineffability of curses. However, it leaves a bitter taste as much for its racial stereotypes and tinge of sexual slander as its sensational storytelling and core of fatalistic horror.

Dolly by Susan Hill is published by ProfileBooks.


Thursday 27 September 2012

Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine

"An unflinching portrait of life in the West Bank in the 21st Century."
Andrew Kelly, The Observer

Updated 25th October 2013

I am delighted to celebrate the publication of my fourth book, Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine (Seagull Books/Chicago University Press), which I discuss in a long interview with For Books' Sake. Read Part One here, read Part Two here and Part Three here. There's also a long interview on TYCI and another, by Julie Tomlin, on Digital Women. Further press mentions, hat-tips and interviews have included The New Statesman, World Literature Today, The MancunionThe List, Platform 51, La Carpa del Feo, Book ElfThe Boar, film-maker and writer Simon Guerrier's site, New Humanist, Ideas Tap, The Asian Writer, Variety, The Student Journals, SpikedNewsclick IndiaWomen's Views on News and The Observer.

Beyond the Wall was launched with a panel event at The Mosaic Rooms, entitled Writing A Path Through International Affairs. Journalist Susannah Tarbush has written an excellent report on the event, here. I was joined by Anna Blundy, former Times Moscow correspondent and author of a series of novels about war correspondent Faith Zanetti, inspired by Marie Colvin; poet, economist and novelist Nitasha Kaul, whose debut novel ‘Residue’ was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and who has written extensively about global economics, Kashmir, India and Bhutan; and Rosie Garthwaite, who began her reporting career straight out of university and the army in Basra, Iraq, and has worked as a reporter and producer for the BBC, Reuters and Al-Jazeera. Her book How to Avoid Being Killed in a Warzone is a survivors’ guide to staying alive in combat territory.

Publishers' blurb as follows:

Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine is a sharp, immediate reportage published by Seagull Books/Chicago University Press on 15th May 2012. It is the latest release in Seagull’s series of short Manifestos for the Twenty-First Century, which tackle current issues in international political affairs. The publisher’s page can be found here and the Amazon UK page, which has a little bit more blurb, is here.
Beyond the Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine is an unflinching portrait of life in the West Bank in the 21st Century, seen through the eyes of its activists, its ordinary citizens, its children, its population of international aid workers, reporters and foreign visitors. From my first experience of the caprices and cruelties of checkpoint culture upon entering the West Bank to a final confrontation with the army in Silwan I report, reflect upon and analyse multiple aspects of life in an occupied territory. Covering Bethlehem, Hebron, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus and Nazareth, speaking to children in the refugee camps at Balata and degree students in the lecture halls of Birzeit University, I share observations of Palestinians from all walks of life.
Beyond The Wall: Writing A Path Through Palestine is based on my first visit to the West Bank as a reporter in 2011. A short film by Murat Gokmen, summarising the effects of the trip on some of the participants including Anne Chisholm, Ghada Karmi, Ursula Owen and me can be viewed here. I was not a Middle East activist or specialist and went with the intention of reporting exactly what I saw, as it happened. I was both shocked by the behaviour of the military and circumspect about many aspects of Palestinian culture. My final vision balances faith in the vigour of the country's young activists, shock at the perverse effects of military occupation on the mentality of the occupied and the occupiers alike and sorrow at seeing the frustration and anger of the country's youngest citizens.


Excerpt:
It is only now, about halfway into the trip, that I think about the strategy of occupation. How do you subjugate a people? By nihilism, chaos and anarchy in the name of control. You do it by sabotaging their certainty, by toying capriciously with their presumptions, by continually tilting the playing field, moving the goalposts, reversing decisions, twisting definitions, warping parameters. You control where people can and can’t go, then change the rules arbitrarily so that they cannot make plans or have any stable expectations. You give a permit to one person but deny one to another person who’s in exactly the same circumstances, so that people cannot deduce, conjecture or extrapolate based on an individual’s experience. You make them feel that their house is not their home and can be violated, occupied, demolished or taken at any time, so they cannot fully relax even in their own beds. You isolate them and put a wall where their view used to be. You instigate a faux ‘system’ of permits, which is deliberately obscure and can be changed at any time. You shout at them in a language that is not their own and which they do not understand. You monitor them. When they travel you put your hands all over their possessions. You arrest and question anyone for any reason at any time, or threaten to, so they are always in fear of it. You are armed. You intimidate their children. You change the appearance of their cities and ensure that the new, alien elements—the walls, roads, settlements, sides of walkways, gates, tanks, surveillance towers, concrete blocks—are much bigger than them or on higher ground so that they feel diminished and watched. You make everything ugly so that seeing is painful.

Their consolation is that if they die, the euphemism ‘martyr’ will conceal the ignominy.


Further launch events related to Palestine, the Middle East, war reporting, international reportage and international affairs include the below. A full and updated list of appearances can be found here

  • [Friday 4th May, 4.30pm, The Globe Theatre, London. I will be participating in a panel discussion entitled Theatre under Occupation: What Does Shakespeare Have to Say to the Palestinians? following the Ramallah-based Ashtar theatre company's staging of Richard II in Arabic.]
  • [Saturday 19th May, 2pm, Watershed, Bristol. I will be in conversation with novelist Selma Dabbagh as part of Bristol's Festival of Ideas, in an event called Palestine Now. Click here for details.]
  • [Wednesday 30th May 2012, 7pm, Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre, Liverpool, as part of the city's Writing on the Wall festival. I will be in conversation with novelist Ahdaf Soueif about the Middle East revolutions. Further event details here.]
  • [Saturday 9th June, 11.30am, Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye. I will be interviewing war reporter Janine di Giovanni. Further event details here.]
  • [Sunday 10th June, 11.30am, Hay Festival. I will be interviewing Ahdaf Soueif about Cairo and the Arab Spring. Further event details here.]
  • [Saturday 7th July 2012, 5.30pm, Southbank Centre, London. I will be chairing a discussion on The Art of War (Reportage), with BBC war reporter Frances Harrison, journalist Oliver Bullough and Caine prize winning writer Michela Wrong. For event details click here.]
  • [Monday 9th July 2012, 5.30pm, Bluecoat, Liverpool. I will be giving a solo reading and talk on the effects of the military occupation in Palestine as part of the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival. For event details click here.]
  • [Friday 17th August 2012, 4pm, Edinburgh International Book Festival. I will be chairing a panel discussion on international war reportage with Ed Vulliamy and Janine di Giovanni.]
  • [Tuesday 9th October 2012, 5.30pm, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), London. I will be curating and chairing a panel event called Palestine Now: Writers Respond as part of the university's autumn series of lectures on the contemporary Middle East. Further details here. My speakers will be Rachel Shabi, Naomi Foyle, Miranda Pennell and Selma Dabbagh.] 
  • [Sunday 11th November 2012, 6.30pm, The Map cafe, Kentish Town, London. I will be discussing Palestine with the writer and academic Ghada Karmi.]
  • [Friday 16th November and Saturday 17th November 2012. Location and speaker details confidential. I am speaking at a leaders' conference about art, culture, politics and the role of the media amongst Arab Spring states.]  
  • [Sunday 18th November 2012, Leighton House, London, 3pm. I will be in conversation with British Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh as part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's Nour festival of North African Arts. Event details here.]
  • [Friday 7th December 2012, The Watershed, Bristol, 8pm. I will be opening the Bristol Palestine Film Festival and chairing a Q&A with speakers including film directors Ken Loach and Leila Sansour after a screening of the film 5 Broken Cameras. Details here.]
  • [Saturday 8th December 2012, The Watershed, Bristol, 6pm. I will be speaking and reading at an event called Writing A Path Through Palestine alongside writers Selma Dabbagh and Guy Mannes-Abbott. Details here.]
     

Thursday 20 September 2012

Peace is not peace without women

(c) Womankind Worldwide and ActionAid

On the eve of International Peace Day, new research from the charities Womankind Worldwide and ActionAid shows that in five former warzones peace applies to just half the population. Women play a critical role building peace at the local level, but their efforts are undermined by a lack of support and political will.

While women are hit hardest by war they are shut out of peace processes: over the last 25 years only 1 in 40 peace treaty signatories have been women. Interviews conducted in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone show that women’s priorities – human rights, education, freedom from violence – are not addressed in national peace plans.

The joint report ‘From The Ground Up’ highlights how women work together to make peace a reality for themselves and their communities by providing crucial services, resolving disputes and securing justice. Their work goes unrecognised and unsupported and many groups struggle to survive.

From The Ground Up is a new report from Womankind Worldwide, ActionAid and the Institute of Development Studies, which examines the roles that women play in local peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. Whilst much attention has focused on women’s participation in international and national level peace processes, little has been documented on women’s roles building peace in their local communities. Researchers spoke to over 550 women and men across the five countries, including representatives of women’s rights organisations, and discovered that despite the geographical, social and cultural differences, there were some striking similarities:
  • Women and men have different understandings of what peace means, with women more likely to cite freedom of movement, freedom from domestic violence, food and financial security, and access to education for themselves and their children.
  • Women are likely to work collectively, rather than individually, in pursuit of peace. Collective action provides both a greater degree of security, and an amplified voice.
  • Women’s local peacebuilding is making a vital difference but too often unsupported. Women are building peace on a shoestring, without basic resources. Their efforts at local level are not recognised, nor their voices heard, in national and international processes

Womankind’s newly appointed Chief Executive Jackie Ballard said:
Women work together in some of the most difficult and dangerous places in the world to try to build lasting peace for themselves and their families. A tough job is made tougher by a lack of support. The money is there in the Conflict Pool, but is not being dedicated to those grassroots women’s groups who are rebuilding communities without basic supplies and support.
When women are excluded peace is more fragile, so by denying them a fair share of UK support we’re not just short changing women but also ourselves.

The UK already has a peacebuilding fund – the Conflict Pool – which seeks to reduce the number of people around the world whose lives are affected by violent conflict. Womankind Worldwide are calling for 15% of this existing expenditure to be dedicated to supporting women’s participation in peacebuilding, the minimum recommended by the UN.

Bandana Rana, Executive Chair of Saathi Nepal and member of UN Women Global Civil Society Advisory Group, said:

From Nepal to Liberia, from Pakistan to Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, a common thread of peace pulls women together, and compels them to act at local level for a just and equal future.
Learning from and supporting the work of women's organisations, who are at the frontline of building peace at local level, is a crucial part of a future where peace can prosper, not for just half the population, but for everyone.

NOTES:
  • For more information including a copy of the report please contact Womankind’s Communications Manager Sarah Jackson, sarahj@womankind.org.uk  
  • Country-specific information, images and quotes available for Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Nepal and Liberia.
  • Womankind’s Chief Executive Jackie Ballard is available for interviews and comments. Quotes from women and men interviewed as part of the research are also available, please contact Sarah Jackson as above.
  •  The UK’s National Action Plan on women, peace and security is being reviewed in 2013. Womankind is asking supporters to write to their MPs, and ask them to take action in three ways: Writing to the Foreign Secretary, asking for 15% of the Conflict pool to be dedicated to activities whose principal objective is to address women’s specific needs, advance gender equality or empower women, in line with UN commitments; asking a parliamentary question; and joining or supporting the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Make some Violet Noise

Are you creative, crafty, musical, political? Feel like mainstream depictions of women don't represent you? Then join Violet Noise, a new 100% female-run collaboration based in London. This is what they have to say, and I support them totally:
Influenced by the DIY movements of our feminist forebears, we seek to promote female musicians and creatives and create a space to have fun, be inspired and meet like-minded people. We will be having regular events at the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen. The launch night will be 1st October from 8 p.m. when we celebrate the launch of Katie Allen’s new book Just Sew Stories. It will be FREE ENTRY, there will be sets from awesome female DJs, live music from The Hysterical Injury plus a free craft table where you can decorate and take home your own tote bag.


Join the Violet Noise Facebook group to keep up to date, come to the event and follow them on Twitter.

Tuesday 4 September 2012

Want to support women all over Asia? Do a PAWA walk

This just in from my friends at PAWA, the Pan Asian Women's Association, and wholly endorsed with great admiration by me:

PAWA is a registered charity set up in 2009 to raise the profile of Asian women in the UK and fundraise to benefit girls’ education in Asia.  They are managed entirely by volunteers and in the past two years over 95% of their income has been donated to support grassroots projects, which are carefully vetted and proposed by PAWA members, voted by members and members are encouraged to visit the projects. PAWA donations focus on the education of girls during the vulnerable teenage years.

PAWA covers 30 countries from Iran to Japan, Indonesia to Kazakhstan. Participation is open to all, women and men, Asian and non-Asian. This year, everyone can walk the talk - with a public fundraising Walkathon.
  • Date: SUNDAY 23 September 2012 from 10:00am.
  • Route: A 5 kilometers walkathon in Regents Park followed by a picnic family lunch.
  • The Participants: This is open to the public so anyone who wishes to support PAWA’s donation mission can register.  PAWA are aiming for approximately 500 participants and their families alongside PAWA partner organisations, societies and charities. Asian embassies will be invited to participate and field a team, to be led by the wife of the ambassador. Independent and state secondary schools will be invited to participate.
  • Contact:  Betty Yao MBE, Chair, on betty@pawa-london.org or Zehan Albakri, Vice-chair, on zehan@pawa-london.org

Charities that PAWA currently support:
Banyan Tree – Kerala, India
Supporting girls from disadvantaged Dalit families. PAWA funds enabled 3 girls to finish their training in nursing, teaching and medical transcription. PAWA funds also went towards building a community centre where 250 teenagers attend for English tuition.

Chow Kit Kids – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Situated in the red light district of Kuala Lumpur, PAWA funds support a Youth Centre for 13-21 year olds who are vulnerable victims of child trafficking. PAWA also funds a trained counsellor to help teenage daughters of sex-workers to stay on in education instead of following their mothers to a life on the streets.

Burma Assist – Based in India
Works with Burmese refugees in New Delhi, PAWA funds support a tailoring centre managed by 3 Burmese women. The centre runs 6-month tailoring training courses to help the most vulnerable girls in the refugee community learn a skill so they will be able to support themselves and help their families.

There are also some additional charities that PAWA members selected to support from PAWA Walk donations. Donations will be ring-fenced for girls’ education projects with each charity:


Care Pakistan – Pakistan
Funding a girls’ secondary school where it costs just £1 per child per month. School building and land have been given by the regional authorities in a Public-Private partnership.

Sahabat Anak – Indonesia
Entrepreneurship programme for teenage girls.

Rebuilding Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka
Building a library which would benefit 4,000 children.

Afghanaid – Afghanistan
To support a programme to provide the means for girls to go to school where that is feasible and with home schooling where schools are not viable.

Dil Trust – Pakistan
Runs a programme called: Girls not Brides. With permission from parents and village elders this project allows girls to continue their education. Much needed are computers and computer skills training.

Friday 31 August 2012

Asylum: no woman should be missed out

A few weeks ago I wrote a long feature entitled Rape, refusal, destitution, denial: dancing at the edges of the world, about my experience working with asylum seekers' and refugees' centres in London and describing some of the incredible work of Natasha Walter's charity Women For Refugee Women. In particular, WFRW highlighted the experiences of rape and other forms of gendered violence survived by a number of female asylum seekers who had been refused asylum in the UK. You can read the full feature here.

I have now been contacted by another amazing and important charity, Asylum Aid, whose new campaign No Woman Should Be Missed Out calls for far more detailed commitments to protect the safety of women seeking asylum in the UK. The following text is from their press release.


No Woman Should Be Missed Out is particularly timely given that in November the government is due to report on the progress of its Strategy to End Violence Against Women and Girls. The strategy was published shortly after the coalition came to power and promised work across government departments to address the causes and consequences of violence against women, providing “cohesive and comprehensive” action in the UK and overseas. Asylum Aid say it "dedicates just one, heavily-qualified sentence to the needs of women seeking asylum."

Debora Singer, Policy and Research Manager at Asylum Aid, said:
The government’s Violence Against Women and Girls strategy provides a vision of how women’s basic rights should be protected in modern Britain and around the world. So it is absurd that thousands of women each year on our doorstep are largely missed out.
Documents like this one help decide policy priorities and how to allocate funds. We see women who have fled from rape and sexual violence overseas and claimed asylum, yet end up destitute on our streets and in danger of yet more abuse.

We aren’t asking for special treatment – just the same rights as everyone else. These women cannot be missed out from government thinking.
 
NOTES:
  • Asylum Aid is a registered charity that provides free legal advice and representation to asylum seekers and campaigns for their fair treatment in the UK. The Women’s Project at Asylum Aid provides legal advice specifically for women asylum seekers, backed up by a programme of research, advocacy, outreach and training.
  • You can read more about Missed Out here.
  • The Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum is co-ordinated by Asylum Aid, and has been endorsed by more than 300 organisations including Oxfam, Liberty and Amnesty International. The previous campaign launched under the Charter was Every Single Woman in 2009.
  • The government’s Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls was published in November 2010, and can be downloaded here.

Monday 27 August 2012

The Liars’ Gospel by Naomi Alderman

I was compelled to write about this even after presenting the edition of Saturday Review where my guests Maeve Kennedy, Dreda Say Mitchell and Cahal Dallat raved about it. Then, I had to keep my neutrality as a presenter – but I give myself full licence here…

Jesus: what a crapster. Work-shy, arrogant, disrespectful and preening, he posed and sweet-talked his way around Roman-occupied Judea performing miracles that were nothing more than hustlers’ street tricks, recycling age-old advice from the Torah as his own words of wisdom and taking whatever free hospitality and perks he could get, egged on by gullible friends happy to warm themselves by his light, puffed up by the credulity of simple-minded locals desperate for relief, distraction and entertainment. When the rumours were put to him that he was the Messiah, the expected king, the one whom they all had been waiting for, in his pride he neither demurred nor denied, but silently maintained a smug face. Seeing this, his friend Judas lost faith and respect for him and betrayed him to Pontius Pilate, who executed him.

That is just one perspective on the short and ignominious life of Jesus – or Yehoshuah, to return to him his proper name and not the simplified moniker given by his Roman executors. Naomi Alderman’s stunningly accomplished and powerful third novel The Liars’ Gospel examines various interpretations of the figure whose legacy still has the power to inspire, to compel, to humble, to educate and to fascinate billions of people two thousand years after his execution alongside countless other Jews viewed by the Roman empire as threats, insurgents, pretenders, dangerous rebels, saboteurs or provocateurs. Alderman’s previous novels, Disobedience and The Lessons, are both excellent – but this third publication is of a totally different order, a novel of such intensity, meaning and depth that it must be destined to become a classic. It feels like the book Alderman knew she was meant to write – and indeed such an impulse is hinted at in the author’s afterword.

The novel begins a year after Yehoshuah’s execution and is told in four parts, each of which delivers an ever wider and deeper analysis of the consequences of his shiftless, bootless life; of the increasing brutality of the Roman occupiers; and of the mounting desperation, anger and confusion of the Jews themselves as a once thriving, civilised, proud and complex society is torn apart. The consequences begin closest to Yehoshuah, in his village of Nazareth and amongst his family and former neighbours, with the first part of the story narrated by his grieving mother, Miryam.

To Miryam, Yehoshuah is a beloved but distant son, intensely charismatic but difficult to understand, bristling and unsympathetic, hostile towards his father Yosef. Miryam’s voice is shrewd, a survivor’s voice, and she spares no pity for herself, nor does she spare any diplomacy on the story. Yehoshuah is not the product of a virgin birth, nor is he an immaculate conception (that is, uniquely born free from sin), but a chippy and careless wastrel who snubs his mother and goads and enrages his father. Well past the customary age to marry and establish his own house, he spends his time wandering about alone or with his friends, courting his increasing numbers of fans yet (as is written in the Gospel of Mark) turning his own mother away from a feast.

Miryam is not a believer or an unbeliever but a rugged individual who is struggling not only with the personal aftermath of the death of her son but also with the political aftermath of the occupying force’s suspicion of her, especially when she takes in a young man, Gidon, who had been one of the rebel rabble following Yehoshuah. When Gidon claims that Yehoshuah has “risen” – based on the fact that when various friends, vested interests and family go to claim the body, it has gone, and each party assumes it was stolen or taken by the other – it has no mystical meaning for her, or for anyone else. The detail about the missing body remains a logistical puzzle and a running joke, with no ethereal dimension.

Judas – or Iehuda, to give him his proper name – then takes up the story, which is largely one of his own jealousy and increasing cynicism, disbelief and ultimate loss of faith. Alderman’s representation of this famous backstabber and traitor is lean, flinty and melancholy. Iehuda is a serious and somewhat ascetic man, thoughtful and watchful but not malicious. As he tells it, with the slippery uneasiness of a man trying to convince himself he’s in the right, he genuinely or almost-genuinely believes that Yehoshuah is deceiving his followers and that his increasing popularity is based on false and exploitative showmanship and glib second-hand words. Initially enthralled, he steadily witnesses Yehoshuah’s increase in confidence until he sees him as unbearably pompous. He thinks that the Romans will merely flog Yehoshuah lightly to make an example of him to other sham prophets, then release him to demonstrate the ‘mercy’ of Rome.

When Yehoshuah is crucified, Iehuda’s guilt plays out with slow turmoil as he remembers the astonished faces of the other disciples when they realise who has summoned the Romans. Afterwards, Iehuda cannot summon up any defiance, only a lurking restlessness and darkness and a bleak telling of what happens next. Unable to live with himself peacefully in the same world as before, he humiliates himself by becoming the party-piece of a rich tourist who had followed Yehoshuah’s camp for his own amusement. At this rich man’s house he is patronised by and amuses the guests by telling the story how he betrayed Yehoshuah.

What The Liars’ Gospel makes clear is that Yehoshuah was not a legend in his own lifetime nor even in the decades that followed, although “there may well indeed have been such a man, or several men whose sayings are united under that one name. Tales accreted to him, and theories grew up around and over him.” In his own time, he was a forgotten semi-nobody, swamped by the violence to come, just another bit of collateral damage recalled with regret and bitterness, even ambivalence, by his friends and family and former followers. What immediately followed his short life – vindicating a prediction Yehoshuah himself had made, although it was an easy and obvious one requiring no special insight – was years of increasing violence, Roman control, Jewish rebellion and brutal Roman oppression and the infiltration and then defilement of the Temple, resulting in catastrophe.

The final two narratives of the novel, those of the shrewd temple High Priest Caiaphas and of a later rebel named Bar-Avo (or Barrabas) who has risen to importance Mafioso-style through the criminal alleyways and hustling local politics of Jerusalem, demonstrate the drastic social, economic, religious, political and brutalising effects of the occupation. The atmosphere moved from the personal and mysterious to the military, the ethereal to the ruggedly tactical. Caiaphas treads an increasingly self-incriminating line between religious integrity, personal hypocrisy, respected social power amongst the local community and diplomatic control when dealing with Pontius Pilate. He represents the thinking, feeling, scheming worldly man who is stretched to his utmost by tyrannical demands from above and an increasingly desperate populace all around. Alderman is incredibly sharp when tracing the petty, patronising concessions of those in power towards those they are dominating, the sense of cultural superiority they bear towards those they feel they are rightfully subjugating. On the receiving end there is Caiaphas’s pitiful pride in small rituals preserved, even as everything is gradually destroyed in a wider sense and the Temple itself is under increasing threat. At the same time Alderman takes ripe, cynical comedy from the sleaziness, arrogance, pretension and sexual and class hypocrisy of the priestly class who sanctimoniously and tenderly sacrifice lambs while using women as pieces of meat, compare tributes of oil and wine from wealthy supporters and bargain in small disputes between rival traders in the town.

Throughout the novel images of blood and bloodshed, meat, sacrifice and the cutting and piercing of flesh abound. The sacrificial lambs slaughtered inside the Temple recall the Jews massacred by Pompey, Pilate, Tiberius, Caligula, Titus, all Romans of varying status, madness, pomp and arrogance. Rome is represented as diseased yet indomitable, decadent yet decisive, distant but unerring in its quashing of all rebellion. Incidentally, The Liars’ Gospel features some of the most unflinching, exciting, hardy and physical war writing I have ever read. She understands everything from broad tactics (“First, encircle the city with a great host of men….see that no man can leave or come into the city… guard the high mountain passes… allow no food in, no wagons delivering grain…then it is wise to build a high wall around the city…”) to group fights, ambushes, surveillance and even individual scuffles. She seems to know about everything: Temple rituals, military strategy, the distinctions of Greek, Roman and Jewish culture and habits, political history and the way geography, politics, economics, commerce and trade influence each other.

With every page the novel becomes wider, deeper, darker, more foreboding and more violent. Time speeds forward and violence runs swiftly outwards like blood in Jerusalem’s stone gutters. Bar-Avo is a new kind of Jerusalem man. Streetwise, selfish and without the class pride of Caiaphas, born into degradation, boredom and anger, careless of the pacifism and weightless words of Yehoshuah’s set and of the sanctity of the Temple, he is a gangland underlord and fixer who becomes a people’s leader, intent upon removing the new High Priest – not Caiaphas now, but a man placed there by Rome itself. Alderman writes:

Massacres and riots and rebellions and battles are nothing new now. ….For every Roman excess there is a rebellion. Every rebellion is put down with increasing brutality. Every brutality hardens the people a little further, making the next uprising more violent. Every act of violence justifies a more extreme show of force in suppressing it. There are fewer and fewer people amongst the Jews who trust Rome at all. …The thing has no end. Or no end but one.
There is a steady poisoning of civil society by violent rebels and violent Roman spies alike, a forcible turnover from thought to action and action to violence and a horrific and haunting end which has consequences, as we know, for many centuries to come.

By the resounding, huge-scale end of the book, the barely remembered Yehoshuah’s words and deeds have a desperate, poignant purity and simplicity. When it comes to him, The Liars’ Gospel is simultaneously the construction and deconstruction of a legend, a tribute and a takedown, written by an author who is both bedazzled and bemused. Yehoshuah appears and disappears with sudden consequence, irritating yet meaningful, underwhelming but unnerving. He buys his own hype, alternating between destructive volatility, nonsensical babbling and insufferable piety. Each manifestation brings with it the thrill of charisma, the tremor of social threat and political change, a charge of mystery, the toll of oncoming treachery. Yet this figure remains an enigma, even to his own mother, even to his betrayer, even to his enemies. He was one of many young men milling about, enraged by the occupation, unwilling to submit to the violating and oppressive presence of soldiers or the weight of Rome, in a society that was full to the fringes of fake prophets, misfits, schemers, fakes, failed rebels and conmen.

The question, Who was Jesus? has haunted millions, even those who like me are non-religious and do not believe in God, for thousands of years. Naomi Alderman has not answered that question, and I hope nobody does, because (as she hints), his meaning is in his mystery. And it probably doesn’t matter exactly who he was. It certainly didn’t matter to the Romans, who crucified many thousands alongside him. What Alderman has written instead of an easily digestible Jesus parable complete with prophecy, miracles, martyrdom, resurrection and return, is a visceral, beautifully structured, flawlessly written and totally devastating major novel about occupation, violence, brutality, ignorance, oppression, resistance – and ruin.


The Liars’ Gospel by Naomi Alderman is published by Penguin.

Sunday 26 August 2012

Glasgow Women's Library celebrates its 21st birthday

This press release just in from the brilliant team at the GWL:
 
In celebration of its 21st anniversary Glasgow Women’s Library will launch an exhibition entitled 21 Revolutions: Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Library at the Intermedia Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow on 21st September 2012. This exhibition heralds an unprecedented showcasing of women artists’ work in Scotland. Glasgow School of Art currently has a major survey show of the post ‘Glasgow Girls’ generation of women artists (1920- present day) and Paisley Museum and Art Gallery is showcasing the original ‘Girls’ along with a new show by Sharon Thomas that celebrates Scottish female figures of note. Now, Glasgow Women’s Library, the only resource of its kind in Scotland, has commissioned 21 of Scotland’s most exciting women artists to each create new limited edition fine art prints inspired by items and artefacts in its library, archive and museum collections.
 
These new works draw on sources including campaign badges, knitting patterns, Suffragette memorabilia, album covers, recipe books, feminist newsletters and a myriad of books from the GWL shelves. A selection of these objects will also be displayed in the CCA exhibition along with the prints. Among those exhibiting in ‘21 Revolutions’ are internationally renowned artist Claire Barclay, who has shown work in Tate Britain and represented Scotland in the prestigious Venice Biennale, and two recent Turner Prize nominees, Karla Black and Lucy Skaer. To raise funds to support the Women’s Library’s ongoing work, the exclusively commissioned prints - limited to an edition of only 20 each - will be available to buy from the CCA exhibition and from GWL’s website. As part of the overall ‘Two Decades of Changing Minds’ programme, supported by Creative Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland, GWL also commissioned 21 high-profile and emerging women writers to create new short stories or poems similarly inspired by its collections.

Authors including Louise Welsh, Liz Lochhead, Denise Mina, Jackie Kay and A. L. Kennedy have produced new texts that will be launched at reading events as part of the Women’s Library’s ongoing Lifelong Learning programme and through a series of downloadable podcasts from September 2012. The importance of GWL’s collection was recognised last year when the Library gained Full Accreditation as a Museum. The sole resource of its kind in Scotland, GWL has amassed a significant collection of historical and contemporary artefacts and archive materials celebrating the lives, histories and achievements of women in Scotland. The collection encompasses rare pieces from the Suffragette movement, 1930s dress making patterns and important newsletters and documents from the Second-Wave Feminist Movement, as well as housing the UK’s National Lesbian archives. GWL also provides a range of innovative lifelong learning programmes supporting thousands of women across Scotland every year, including several dedicated projects targeted at engaging women who feel remote from cultural and learning establishments.

Co-founder of Glasgow Women’s Library, Dr Adele Patrick, who is now the Library’s Lifelong Learning and Creative Development Manager, said,
Throughout its history the Women’s Library has promoted and worked with a range of local, national and international women artists, writers and performers. We are really excited about this 21st anniversary programme, which will celebrate the richness of our collections, while using them as a catalyst for new work from established and up and coming contemporary women artists and writers.
Reflecting on the Library’s history Dr Patrick stated,
It’s changed days since our birth as a grassroots organisation, staffed entirely by volunteers. I well remember a small group of us setting up in a small, freezing space in Garnethill, inspired by the idea of a place dedicated to celebrating the richness of women’s culture in Glasgow and Scotland. The damp, inaccessible conditions weren’t promising and it would be several years before the Library appointed its first employee and several more before it was able to recruit a Librarian thanks to support from Glasgow City Council. Now we have 14 paid members of staff and seven major projects, we have expanded our work right across Scotland and are a fully Accredited Museum. The next step for us is to work towards further accreditation to become Scotland’s recognised and re-named national women’s library, museum and archive. GWL sees this initiative as a major contribution to our Social Enterprise expansion, so that we generate our own income and work towards more financial independence. We are thriving and growing year on year but, in stark contrast, our sister organisation, The Women’s Library in London, is faced with closure due to public sector cuts. As a charity we always need to work hard to attract income from a range of sources – we can never be complacent.
Set up in 1991, GWL opened its first premises in Garnethill, having developed from the broad-based arts organisation, Women in Profile, launched in 1987 to ensure that the representation of women’s culture in Glasgow was visible during the City’s tenure as the European City of Culture in 1990. GWL remains an important legacy for the City from that European City of Culture year.Glasgow Women’s Library is unique in Scotland and the key hub for information on gender and women. GWL’s library and archive collections house the most significant range of feminist and women’s issues related texts in Scotland. It has a collection of materials that link the Suffragette campaigns of the 19th and early 20th century to the explosion of political campaigns and social shifts brought about by Second Wave Feminist activism from the 1970s onwards. Items in the GWL’s collections are wide-ranging encompassing texts, posters, badges, banners, pamphlets and materials that relate to the array of women’s lives and experiences, from radical feminist literature to lesbian ‘Dime’ novels, dressmaking patterns to recipe books.
Notes:
  • 21 Revolutions: Two Decades of Changing Minds at Glasgow Women’s Library will preview on Friday 21st September 2012 , 6-9pm and will run from Saturday 22 September –Saturday 13 October, open Tuesday to Saturday,11am – 6pm at the Intermedia Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD.
  • The participating visual artists are Sam Ainsley, Claire Barclay, Ruth Barker, Karla Black, Nicky Bird, Ashley Cook, Delphine Dallison, Kate Davis, Fiona Dean, Helen de Main, Kate Gibson, Ellie Harrison, Elspeth Lamb, Shauna McMullan, Jacki Parry, Ciara Phillips, Lucy Skaer, Corin Sworn, Sharon Thomas, Amanda Thomson, Sarah Wright.
  • The participating writers are Karen Campbell, Anne Donovan, Margaret Elphinstone, Vicki Feaver, Helen Fitzgerald, Muriel Gray, Jen Hadfield, Jackie Kay, A. L. Kennedy, Liz Lochhead, Kirsty Logan, Laura Marney, Heather Middleton, Alison Miller, Denise Mina, Donna Moore, Elizabeth Reeder, Leela Soma, Zoë Strachan, Louise Welsh, Zoë Wicomb.
  • Gallery tours of the ‘21 Revolutions’ exhibition will take place with artists and the GWL Archivists on Saturday 29th September at 2pm and Saturday 6th October at 2pm at the CCA.
  • Readings of work commissioned from the writers will take place on Wednesday 26th September, 6.30pm – 8pm; Wednesday 3rd October, 6.30pm – 8pm; and Saturday 13th October, 4pm – 5.30pm at the CCA. For further information contact: Dr Adele Patrick, adele.patrick@womenslibrary.org.uk Glasgow Women’s Library, 15 Berkeley Street, Glasgow G3 7BW

Thursday 19 July 2012

Dinner with a rapist

This, from Change.org:

In 1992, Mike Tyson was convicted of raping an 18 year old woman and served just three years. Now Portsmouth Guildhall are describing him as a "legendary figure" - as did Sky Sports magazine last year - and promoting a dinner with him.

Local women's organisation, Aurora New Dawn, say heralding a rapist as a hero sends a dangerous message. They've started a petition on Change.org asking the Guildhall to immediately remove Mike Tyson from their programme. Click here to support their campaign. Aurora New Dawn believe that describing anyone convicted of rape as a legend or hero diminishes the importance and seriousness of rape and sexual assault.

Last year in Belfast an event with Mike Tyson was cancelled following public outcry. Aurora New Dawn believe that if enough people speak out, the Guildhall will have to reverse their decision and protect Portsmouth's reputation as a city committed to eradicating violence against women.

Will you join Aurora New Dawn and ask the Guildhall, Portsmouth to cancel the evening with Mike Tyson?

Aurora New Dawn provide services to women who've been victims of sexual and domestic violence. In recognition of their and other groups' work, Portsmouth was awarded 'White Ribbon City' status. But by inviting a convicted rapist to speak at the Guildhall, local groups believe their work is being undermined.

Click here to sign their petition calling for the event to be cancelled now.

All text (c) Change.org

UPDATE: I have now been contacted by one of the many people involved in the protest against Portsmouth Guildhall. This is what they say:

We have had no indication from the Guildhall so far that they have any intention of cancelling the event, but there have been similar campaigns in the past in other cities, and at least one that I know of was successful.

The Guildhall are currently holding the position that Tyson has 'served his time' and should now be allowed to appear in public on the basis of his boxing career. This does not hold water for the Aurora campaign team - we hold that Tyson's openly misogynist positioning in public means that his dangerous attitudes to women cannot be separated from his boxing career. Indeed, he has consistently conflated the two in order to gain publicity (for example giving interviews where he expresses incredibly violent attitudes towards women) and it is hypocritical to suggest that other people should be able to separate the two when he does not. It is not possible to separate Mike Tyson the boxer from Mike Tyson the misogynist and convicted rapist. He cannot demand that people separate the two whenever someone wants to call him up on making a living from glorifying misogyny and violence.
The writer Sarah Cheverton has reported on this issue for Women's Views on News as it has been ignored by the national media.

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Rape, refusal, destitution, denial: refugees dancing at the edge of the world

Earlier this year I spent several months doing outreach work in migrants’, refugees’ and asylum seekers’ centres in London, in association with English PEN. My students were male and female, aged from twenty to over sixty, from Uganda, Cameroon, Iran, the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and beyond. I have never met such garrulous, anarchic people. They introduced me to the useful concept of ‘international time’: lateness of anything up to 45 minutes is permissible and any chagrin on the part of the teacher is caused by grave cultural misunderstandings relating to unnecessarily rigid Anglo Saxon scheduling methods – although once, when I myself was late to turn up, I was collared by a student (literally) and dragged ruefully up the stairs into the room while the student declared with great glee, “I found Teacher on the street! And she was running!”  The class teased, argued, encouraged, remonstrated and back-slapped, trading jokes across the classroom. I taught them little but laughed a lot, in between being jovially bullied, teased and exhorted to talk about something useful, explain why ‘Van Gogh’ and ‘cough’ were pronounced similarly but ‘cough’, ‘through’, ‘rough’ and ‘slough’ were all pronounced differently from each other, intercede with various authorities on their behalf and contact the Home Office with a testimony of their ardent desire to be granted leave to stay, to work, to learn, to teach, to participate fairly and equally in British society and to help others in a similar position navigate life in a new, uncomprehending and sometimes incomprehensible country.

Yet close beneath the students’ good humour were countless experiences of brutality, which their high-spirited conversation and patient writing exercises occasionally hinted at. I had been counselled in advance not to use any journalistic cunning to coerce these women and men for their ‘stories’. The students were there for writing and composition classes. They were not to be used to elicit exciting narratives, unlocked through guile or coercion under the pretence of rightful concern, then enjoyed for the vicarious, exotic thrill they provided. They warned me themselves that if I were to ask what brought them to the UK, “You will have nightmares.” They did not want to talk about the persecution, civil and cross-border wars, terrorisation, corruption and violence that caused them to risk everything, yield all that was familiar and beloved and leave their lives and identities behind: homes, jobs, histories, studies, parents and siblings, children.

Despite their determination to focus on survival in the present, hints about their previous lives crept through as the sessions continued. As we gained each other’s trust, I learned more about the many places in the world that are unstable with violence, poisoned by corruption, soaked in spilt blood, tormented by trauma, betrayed and exploited (or split into warring factions) by their own rulers, intimidated by aggressors and divided by countless inequalities and abuses. I saw the effect on ordinary people, not rulers, not activists, certainly not the high elite or the privileged, and the way environments of extreme danger and violence had forced each of these people to act with unimaginable bravery in leaving. They had to change their lives in every way, in an attempt to save their lives. I have written an account of those revealing and transformative months, composed with my students’ blessing and featuring some of their own testimonies, and it will be published in a forthcoming book, to be announced next year.

I also learned about strength, survival and resistance from the asylum seekers, refugees, displaced and undocumented people I worked with. In many cases, their treatment in the UK matched their mistreatment in their home countries, with the cruel addition that their testimonies were dismissed as lies. The majority of my students had not been granted indefinite leave to stay, permission to work or study, the provision of stable housing or any sustainable means of support. Some were caught in a years-long limbo, awaiting a final decision on their status from the Home Office. Others were or had been homeless. Many had been refused permission to stay and were awaiting deportation. Many were living on the kindness of friends and near-strangers, walking for miles (or taking interminable bus journeys) from the further parts of Greater London to reach my classes, living on five pounds or less a day. Many were working illegally and in exploitative, sometimes dangerous, unstable and heavily underpaid conditions as factory labourers, unskilled building site workers, cleaners and casual help. Many had been persecuted, prosecuted, incarcerated in prisons and detention centres, bullied and harassed by officials of various kinds. All were intelligent, politicised, professional, multi-lingual. Many were educated to college or university level. All wanted to work legitimately – in fact, they were desperate to do so. All were affected mentally and physically by the small, crushing humiliations, degradations, frustrations and limitations of daily life in a society that did not see them, help them, acknowledge them, respect them, listen to them or believe them. The class of twenty roared with laughter and recognition when one man described his Home Office interview, when his account of what he had witnessed and experienced in the Congo was met the with words, “Everything you’re telling me is [….the whole class chimed in…] a story you’ve just made up.”

While all spoke about the violence they had witnessed, many of the women approached me during breaks in my teaching sessions and talked specifically about the additional issue of gendered brutality. “If we go back they will take us and rape us and kill us. Please believe me, I am telling the truth,” said one.

I did believe her. I do believe her, as I believe all survivors of sexual violence, violation and abuse. But so often the Home Office does not. The disbelieving of survivors of gendered brutality is endemic all over the world, in all societies in all hemispheres, in peacetime and wartime, crossing cultures, languages, religions and regimes. The denial of victims’ testimonies is as ubiquitous as the violence itself, and is part of it and reinforces and redoubles it. To deny victims is to support perpetrators, to aid perpetrators and to tacitly promise all perpetrators that they can continue to rape and abuse women with impunity.

Now the charity Women for Refugee Women has released Refused, a major research project which uncovers extremely disturbing evidence about the treatment of women seeking asylum in the UK and the gendered violence they have been subjected to before their arrival here. It casts a critical light on the Home Office’s treatment of these women, which represents in intensified and concentrated form the attitudes always brought to bear upon sexual violence survivors in all contexts. The consequences of victim-denying in this specific case, however, are even more severe than is usual.

The following factual material is taken from Women for Refugee Women’s full report, Refused, and from the report summary. The research was carried out by Women for Refugee Women, Women Asylum Seekers Together (WAST) London, WAST Manchester, Women Seeking Sanctuary Advocacy Group Cardiff, Embrace in Stoke on Trent, Bradford Refugee & Asylum Seeker Stories, the Women’s Group at the Young Asylum Seeker Support Service in Newport and the Refugee Women’s Strategy Group in Glasgow.

Along with other countries, the UK has made a commitment to give asylum to those fleeing persecution if their own state cannot protect them. Refused explores the experiences of 72 women who have sought asylum in the UK.

  • 49% had experienced arrest or imprisonment as part of the experiences they were fleeing
  • 66% had experienced gender-related persecution, including sexual violence, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.
  • 52% had experienced violence from soldiers, police or prison guards
  • 32% had been raped by soldiers, police or prison guards
  • 21% had been raped by their husband, family member or someone else
  • Others were fleeing forced marriage, forced prostitution and female genital mutilation
  • Altogether, 66% had experienced some kind of gender-related persecution and 48% had experienced rape

Almost all these women (67 out of 72) had been refused asylum.

  • Of these, 75% said that they had not been believed
  • 67% had then been made destitute (left without any means of support or accommodation)
  • 25% had then been detained.
  • Not a single woman felt able to contemplate returning to their country of origin.

The consequences for these women were severe:

  • Of those who had been made destitute, 96% relied on charities for food and 56% had been forced to sleep outside.
  • 16% had been subjected to sexual violence while destitute and a similar number had worked unpaid for food or shelter.
  • One woman said, “I was forced to sleep with men for me to have accommodation and food. I was forced to go and be a prostitute for me to survive.”
  • When asked what they felt about being refused asylum, 97% said they were
  • Depressed, 93% were scared and 63% said they had thought about killing themselves.

One woman said, “They kill me already. I feel like the walking dead.”

The director of Women for Refugee Women, writer Natasha Walter, highlights the failure of the government to respond to the needs of survivors of gender-based violence "who have survived rape and abuse [and] are refused asylum and experience destitution, detention and despair in this country.”

Debora Singer, Policy and Research Manager at Asylum Aid, said: “The harrowing stories told in Refused are a crucial reminder of how often women are failed by our asylum system. These are women fleeing unspeakable violence, yet they are routinely let down when they turn to the UK for help.” She added, “Women are routinely, arbitrarily disbelieved by officials when they explain what has happened to them. We know that women are more likely than men to see asylum decisions overturned on appeal, so woeful is Home Office decision-making. And we know that the government hasn’t honoured its promise to introduce meaningful gender-sensitive reforms. As a result, women are left destitute on our streets, exposed to exploitation and abuse. The whole system desperately needs reform, and it needs it now.”


The reform of the asylum process and the issues it raises must not be hijacked by the tabloid press, by fear, by racism and xenophobia, by reductive thinking, by generalisation, by meaningless rhetoric or by ignorance. In order to create a progressive, just and peaceful world society campaigners, politicians and leaders must publicly challenge the poisonous myths (about sexual violence, about race and culture and about immigration) which keep inequality in place and support abusive, cruel and inhumane practices.

The report advocates several measures including ministerial leadership and influence in challenging the Home Office culture of disbelief; improvements in the quality of asylum decision-making by everyone up to judge level, through training, guidance and consciousness raising about the nature and impact of gender-related persecution; access to free quality legal advice and representation for all asylum seekers; a ceasing of the destitution of those refused asylum; granting asylum seekers permission to work if their case has not been resolved within six months or they have been refused but temporarily cannot be returned through no fault of their own; welfare support for all asylum seekers who need it, until the point of return or integration.

The report states:
The numbers of people entering the UK to claim asylum are not large. Many of the women who come here to seek refuge have fled persecution that we would struggle to imagine, and are desperate to find safety. It is time that we built a just and humane asylum process, in order to give every woman who comes to this country fleeing persecution a fair hearing and a chance to rebuild her life.
Women for Women International, in association with many other groups focused on the rights and welfare of asylum seekers, asks the government to heed the findings in Refused, note the upsurge in campaigning and concern around the issue and reform the asylum process in such a way that women are respectfully heard, understood by informed and enlightened listeners, believed and then treated with humanity and dignity. These women (and also their brothers, fathers, sons) are victims, not perpetrators; survivors, not criminals; refugees and escapees, not parasites and exploiters.

A criticism of asylum seekers is that they want something for free. I agree with that. They demand an awful lot which is free: kindness, basic humanity, faith and trust. And they deserve to be given it.

Notes and links:
  • Women for Women International have produced a short film which summarises the issues in Refused. Click here to view it.
  • The foreword to Refused has been written by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and the report launch was hosted by Baroness Joan Bakewell at the House of Lords late last month.
  • Novelist Esther Freud has written an interview with a refugee woman for Refused, while Livia Firth, Mariella Frostrup, Oona King and Juliet Stevenson have recorded filmed messages of support.
  • The Times featured the story of Saron, a refugee from Ethiopia who had been imprisoned, raped and tortured in her home country, but who was refused asylum in the UK
  • Natasha Walter spoke on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 with a woman who fled Ethiopia after she was imprisoned and beaten.
  • Comedian and campaigner Kate Smurthwaite wrote about the issue in The Independent.
  • There was further coverage by Sky News, MSN, The Scotsman, ITV, The Huffington Post, Belfast Telegraph and Mumsnet.
  • Women for Refugee Women enables women refugees themselves to speak out. Find out about Journeys, which tells the story of Saron and Alicia, who were refused asylum, detained and threatened with deportation; Motherland, which tells the stories of women and children detained at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre; and the Break the Silence event which showcased Lydia Besong’s play How I Became an Asylum Seeker.
  • Finally let me express my admiration for Natasha Walter, who not only talks the talk and writes the rights, she also rights the wrongs and walks the walk.