Dearest,
I'm sitting on an iron cold chair at the airport, brain drained, my back is killing me, but I can't stop writing postponed offline e-mails. I'm wondering if you responded to my last e-mail, if you didn't then its taking you some time. I also wonder if you were up last night and decided not to call me. I'm dried out, my ego needs some watering...
It's been very volatile, the Turkish and Iraqi armies are stationed on the northern borders of Syria, and there are American military ships on the shores of Beirut... they say Syria is Russia's puppet…
So the affair starts today; a secret Syrian military delegation just landed in Cairo, they're here to negotiate the contract without the knowledge of the Syrian government… Nasser is weary of this contract, he would rather have a Federal unity, one that is strong enough to silence the communists here and the conspiring neighboring allies.
They tried to manipulate him with people's love, their Pan-Arab sentiments, you would let down the enamored Arab millions, they said… He attempted to fight for internal autonomy, but his fatherly commitment took over!
It's important that we do some research into rethinking Pan-Arabism for our project, you have any books in mind? Maybe diaries or a novel? But we need some more personal historical background, maybe ask your father or your mother?
I thought you would find this funny; I read in Akram Hourani's diaries while surfing the internet that the Ba'athists were worried that the Communists in Syria were gaining popularity for the next elections due to the Soviets' successful space project, claiming that this is a victory for all the communists in the world…So the Baathists thought they would use the union as their sputnik against the communists!
I started looking for letters exchanged between lovers, friends, generations as we discussed…and I came across this quote from Judith Butler perhaps it can get us started… as I'm not sure our exchange of e-mails, with the loose weaving of love, marriage, Pan-Arabism and the union will suffice…
She writes:
'Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.'
Would you come to Beirut for the weekend? Or the 23rd perhaps and we go back together? We could all go up to the Hermel...
Anyways I'll shut up now, lets skype soon?
Kisses
Ya Hilweh,
I'm sitting at home in Ramallah, beside my big window overlooking the dark view of the lightless valley... I can't see anything, but I can hear a cockroach singing, a dog barking and the fridge… I'm still waiting for my new desk to arrive, Samer 'the carpenter' is taking longer than expected, and I find it hard to write while sitting on the couch, I feel sleepy…
But this is what I heard: Actually the Communists are the ones who insisted on full unity; It's either marriage or nothing they said, they thought Nasser was not ready for that, that he would pull out, but he tricked them; It's been three days of intense and continuous meetings between the two committees, and everyone is there: Jado, Afeef, Jamal, Abdel Hakeem, Amin, Salah… But Shukri al Kuwwatli wasn't there – he saw it as a coup d'ètàt but was powerless to stop it.
I like the quote you sent, where did you find it? Butler could have been writing about this union! There was an uneven exchange, just like ours! Or those lovers who unite in order to complete their selves with no recognition of the other… the Unionists!
I was leafing through the letter exchange published later in a book between poets Mahmoud Darwish and Samih Al-Qasim. They write about tricking the format; they decide to write letters to each other knowing that they're going to be published, read, conscious of the disclosure it entails... Conscious of its posthumous persistence, where unfinished thoughts, marginalia, and fractures that could not sit within a literary work find a place in these letters. I thought this could be interesting for our project...
Did I tell you what my father once told me about how they, in the Arab nationalist movement, began reading Marx? He said that they did that simply to be able to defeat the communists when they had debates, only to end up becoming Marxists themselves, this is why he is afraid to read for Islamic thinkers, he is afraid to fall in the trap again... This love hate relationship that surrounds Pan Arabism... I tell you something (that you told me once) Pan-Arabism is a failed love story... And nothing else.
salam
My dear,
Here I am in Saas-Fee faced by the sublime Alps, poaching on a sunbed in my lunch break... I'm so fed up of those continental philosophers all I want to do is read my novel and cut class. Did I tell you about the book I'm reading? My mom gave it to me some time ago; it's called The Fallen Comrades its by Khalil Saeed, do you know it?
Anyway Alain Badiou said something interesting in his seminar yesterday: 'Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism.'
Today is the wedding day. They publicly announced the union; they called it the United Arab Republic they were hoping other lovers would soon join the union: Yemen, Iraq, Libya…
Interesting what you say about the lovers completing each other… The other day I decided to go join a public reading group with a friend. They were discussing a text by Mikhail Bakhtin titled, Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity, in it he discusses the relationship between the author and her hero as the 'I and the other'… That one can never see oneself in completeness, even if mediated by say, a mirror, one is always fragmented, alienated from one's own body in time and space. I now try to look at my own hand, it's true…while the other sees me in my completeness and finitude… One completes oneself through the other's gaze… Perhaps that's what they were attempting, perhaps that's what we all attempt… They were each other's evil eye…
Will you perhaps try not to look at me anymore? maybe those e-mails that we exchange are an attempt at a certain iconoclasm between us.
Stay well and not so anxious. Lovingly.
Habibti…
Today Abdel Nasser became the president of the UAR winning most votes of the referendum.
His idea of unity was about one dissolving into the other; his two conditions for the realization of this unity was to dissolve all political parties, and the a-politicization of the army, he wanted the two provinces to become the same, isn't this what a union is?
…but this will be the core of its problems, a total disregard of the different histories of the two 'lovers'. In Syria there were grass roots political parties… while in Egypt the revolution was lead by the military elite enforcing it's agenda. There were hardly any political movements in Egypt...
The gaze isn't to the outside, but rather to the inside, the feeling of marginality that the union produced… Although the Syrians were the initiators of the union, soon after its success, they were put aside in the name of this same union. Was he punishing them for their desire for a contract; was he acting like a bitter lover who has been tricked into marriage?
Shukri Al Kuwatli, became the first Arab citizen! what does that even mean?
By the way, happy Eid, I have to finish a text about issues of representation in Palestinian art by tomorrow evening, and I don't like what I have written. I'm totally uninspired by anything, especially this topic of representation, the more I think of it the more I get obsessed with this question: who the fuck are we?
Is it because we try to answer this question that we are thrown to the margins of humanity?
I miss you...
Best
PS. I haven't come across a novel called The Fallen Comrades, but the name of the author sounds familiar…
I'm sitting in my office, but on the couch, as this way the heater is closer, and I don't need to pretend to be the Director... You're gone, and as I was getting ready to devour the 'mtaffayeh' I cooked for my sisters today, I thought of you, and how I promised to cook you some…
Nasser had just realized the socialist Pan-Arabist dream; he nationalizes the cotton industry, banks, heavy industries, Insurance companies… Land reforms are introduced; interest rates are eliminated for farmers, taxes are instituted for the rich, the average work day is reduced from 8 hours to 7 hours without reductions in pay…
You know that famous paradox of which came first, the egg or the chicken, Nasser and the Ba'athists argued which comes first, freedom, unity, or socialism. and they took that seriously. Nasser's famous slogen was Freedom, Socialism, Unity... Whereas the Ba'athists had it as Unity, Freedom, and then Socialism…
Nasser believed that in order to achieve real unity, socialism needs to be implemented first, whereas the Ba'athist thought that unity is a political matter that can be achieved before economical and political reforms…
I've been secretly reading my novel at the office instead of working the past few days, I don't feel like working, its all too overwhelming, and I honestly can't stop reading… It traces the whole generation of my parents through the story of two comrades that fall in love as they meet through the Communist Party, and how their life together is an enactment of all they believe in from women's emancipation to communal living to renouncing their bourgeoisie family legacies and inheritance… There are so many characters in the novel that I recognise actually, and so many stories that seem very familiar, like those secret party meetings that I almost suspect took place at our house. I even called my mom to ask her about the writer and the novel, she said she doesn't know him nor does she think it has anything to do with us, but I know its not true, the more I read, the more its all so familiar.
Anyway I did a few studio visits yesterday and it seems that the map as a form/an image is so present, does this forebode some event of loss? Isolation?
You mentioned it; the lines/borders of Palestine when traced, drawn, bordered conjure a sense of isolation; it marks an absence of the rest of the geography, the other Arab countries that surround it ...when did we start using this map?
I finally got around to asking my father why the Arab communists were against the union...and as usual he denied that they were at first, defended Abdel Nasser saying he had to do what he had to do, but then explained that their problem with Pan-Arabism was that you can be a Pan-Arab capitalist, chauvinist, conservative, etc. They wanted Pan-Arabism to be socialist... They also were trans-nationalists so nationalism wouldn't make any sense for a communist… He also said with a bit of bitterness that the Arab Union was built on the basis that all parties were to be dissolved, the first of those was the Communist Party… It was strange, always to hear him contradict himself… And I said something towards that it was all part of an ideology and that they were perhaps a bit blind? That closed off the conversation, I shouldn't have said it...
Oh by the way I'm free on the 28th let's meet then, but till then stay sane and be good.
Kisses
Dearest,
I hate your long e-mails…
Lying down on a mattress in Los Angeles... Enjoying my jet-lag while everyone is still sleeping and I'm awake like an owl… I slept a lot on the plane as usual, got so drunk in Frankfurt airport…12 hours later I landed in the image... L.A. was like a frame in a movie, the policemen were like extras in a film.
I wanted to touch them to make sure they were real, to make sure that I wasn't in a movie, and that I wasn't an extra too... Everything looks familiar, every photo I took felt like a dèjà vu, where ever I pointed my camera to frame a scene, I made a photograph that I could relate to. America is the reality of its image…
I feel vulnerable, powerless, secondary… Yes, he nationalized but he never asked the Syrians or anyone else what they want; yes, the distribution of labour is maybe a bit more fair but what about the distribution of power? And the elimination of political parties?
Nasser never wanted to share power… Even the most callous of them all; al Sarraj, Nasser's man in Syria became a blind man in Cairo. Tearful, he asked Nasser to be sent back to Damascus… Everything was centralized, they abolished regional governments, controlled the army, appointed Abdel Hakim Amer to rule Syria…so what do you mean by the socialist dream of yours?
Basel and Farah woke up… their kids are all around me… and I'm trying to read your email to get inspiration from… the map... the map of the Arab world that looks like a rhinoceros, detached from all surroundings, a rhinoceros running in space to nowhere.. while singing that song that names the cities on the edge of the map..
We sing together (Bilado El-O'rb Awtani – Arab countries are my homeland)
بلاد العرب أوطاني ــــــــــــ من الشام لبغدان
ومن نجد إلى يمن ــــــــــــ إلى مصر فتطوان
…a floating map like the map of Palestine... The triangular map, with sharp edges… Like a dagger that stabs through our hearts... The killer map...
What does a map propose for a pan-nationalist movement? A separation from the rest of the world?
And, no, I'm not meeting you on the 26th..
Your book sounds good, I'll ask around once I'm back to Ramallah if anyone has a copy... It would be nice to read, as you know I envy this memory you have of the eighties in Palestine... And although I do know of many political marriages around my parents, theirs was a pragmatic one, they were both getting older and wanted a family… Maybe this is why they didn't divorce... Yet, at least…
bye
'A giving which gives only its gift but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws, such a gift we call sending.' I've been reading Derrida's The Postcard and I've been thinking about our acts of 'sending each other' those e-mails: 'I send you', 'you send me', I send you back yourself... I speak through sending you an e-mail and you speak through me... What is this exchange? What if I receive your reply before I send you mine? What's the sequence of events here? Anyway, as I was reading I kept thinking of how, when in love we project on each other a desire; remember my problem with cliches? When a lover calls me their habibti, their lover, their wife I become only that; a body called lover in which they can project their fantasies on... That's unity. Remember your father in his diaries wrote that the young Pan-Arabists in Syria grew tired and frustrated with the unity because Egypt was rehearsing it's authority/projecting its fantasies of being umm el dunia... It created tension between Arabs instead of any sense of unity…
Here I am sitting in neo-liberal Ramallah eating this biscuit, and suddenly it revealed itself as the broken map of the Middle East... I'm attaching it for you to look at, as I might be going a bit crazy, do you see the Sinai in the middle; the Red Sea; Egypt to the left; Syria, Palestine and Lebanon to the right...
News travels fast; they told Nasser that there's something being concocted in the northern Province… He was in denial… 'But the people love me' he said in confidence…they won't abandon me...
Meet me tomorrow
Kisses
I just landed in New York.
A coup d'étàt in Damascus. An end of the Union with Cairo. The demands are simple they want the unity but with a genuine sharing of power. Nasser is in shock, but he decides not to send the army to bring order back to Syria because he didn't want to keep on carrying a moody and multiple political burden… He declares he would never give up his goal for the establishment of an ultimate Arab Union, he keeps the flag and the name of the United Arab Republic even if Egypt was alone in it… What does the second star in the flag refer to now? An absence?
But I have no energy of any kind... What can one write when one is away from a war? Sitting here in New York watching the news hours after it happened defies the role of media in contemporary warfare where one follows the news live, this time difference confuses the senses… Maybe this is why the Americans can't feel anything about the wars they make in the Middle East, it always takes place while they are sleeping…
I wonder, does the idea of unity separate people... Is unity a separation?
I think its goodbye for now...
x.
Dearest,
I'm finally at Amman airport... I thought I would never make it…
My brother and his girlfriend – a strange couple – dropped me at the checkpoint leading to Allenby bridge. I took a taxi for the rest of the 10 minute ride away from Allenby... There was traffic at the checkpoint, but we thought it nothing unusual on a Thursday evening before a holiday... When we got closer to the checkpoint, it turns out an electric pole had fallen on the street 5 meters into the checkpoint, and so I was stranded for three hours watching the Israelis deal chaotically with this electric disaster... It was strange, as for once we were both powerless in the literal sense of the word, they had to cut the power from the whole area so that the highly charged pole would not electrify either side... I watched from the window and for the first time, I notice birdnests in the folds of the iron structure above the checkpoint. I think it funny that pigeons should find it a safe place to settle even if temporarily. Four hours later we finally make it to the Israeli side, I rush to the window to get my exit permit; frustrated, cranky and exhausted I decide I will be nice to the Israeli soldier behind the window, so that I cross swiftly, as I do not desire to prolong my misery... She reads out my name: 'You?' 'Really?' 'Why not?' I answer. the other soldier sitting in the next window laughs... She cringes, she looks at me and then back at my ID card, 'You had straight hair she says, well yes, but isn't it nicer curly? I reply, of course to my surprise she shoots: No, you don't have nice curly hair, your curls are frizzy... And laughs wildly while turning to the next soldier in the cubicle... Images of a news headline flash instantly through my mind; murder at Allenby; and a photo of her lying in a pool of blood, and a bald mug shot of myself... I reprimand myself while walking to the bus; you deserve what just happened, why did you attempt to engage in a chit-chat anyway, why did you ask her, smile, touch your hair! you got what you asked for... I felt dirty and cheap, thinking I could prostitute myself through Allenby!
It is the 13th today, the day before their reunion, to start the negotiations, a re-union for the union! as they saw the two years in between as separation from a union, a break, a siesta, a stutter… This time the Iraqis are present, for they finally over threw the monarchy last year and just recently also the communists who were against the union in 58. the Ba'athists are now in Damascus and Baghdad, funny, they were behind the failure of the first union and now they are pushing for a second attempt…political affairs… The meetings were not private, they were being intensely reported live by the media, even radio DJs at breaks were involved, in the Damascus radio broadcast, they played Sabah's when things got ugly with Nasser…
Salam
Dearest
So, me too, I'm at the new amman airport, sipping coffee I bought from Starbucks, a place I would usually judge people who don't boycott it, but here I am, paying the price a nation has to pay in order to become contemporary, and have Starbucks as the only option for having coffee.
Al-Kalha – the famous falafel place in Amman – now has a stall with a lame slogan 'Love from the First Flight'. I wonder what will we have to sell in the Palestinian airport that is rumored to be built near Jericho. I wonder if Abbas ever used this argument while negotiating with the Israeli's for a state: we now have KFC, Pizza hut, dominoes pizza and soon McDonalds and the only franchise we are still missing is the State.
Your voice seemed tired.
Today they officially met in Cairo. Like a betrayed husband Nasser was bitter; but he welcomed the union with Syria and Iraq; this time he was talking politics rather than love, he was bitter, he wanted it to be a union not a separation posing as a union. He feared that egypt will become more egyptian than Arab…
He didn't know whether it was the Ba'ath party or Syria he was speaking to. His ego was hurt by the Ba'athists call for a unity without him, as if he himself was the problem… In 1958 this is how they convinced him to jump into holy matrimony, they used emotional blackmail; what would the populations in the Arab world think of you if you refused our proposal for unity? They said… What is to be done? A federation or a confederation? a gesture, or a real union? a realized affair or postponed desire?
They would flatter his ego by broadcasting a song by Najah Salam in which she is asking for a brown skinned groom with the condition that he is from the United Arab Republic… and then she screams that she loves anyone who loves Abu Khaled, Nasser's nick name…
I searched for Al-Arabi Magazine, the one published in Kuwait and sold in the arab world for $1, I used to buy it from the old airport's giftshop, now i can't find it… How do these things disappear??
Al-Arabi would be an interesting topic to research, it was first published in 1958, the year of the union.
Everywhere looks like everywhere, the memory of that little airport gives me a nostalgic buzz… Jordan for a West Banker is the land between the bridge and the airport, that airport was Jordan for me. And now a new Jordan has occurred, one that looks like dubai, or the future Palestinian state.
I go to the gate, I continue later.
PS. On the way to the gate I found Al-Arabi magazine. I guess all my nostalgic theory doesn't work, now everything can be sold everywhere. And by the way, I looked for The Fallen Comrades everywhere, but no one seems to know about it, weird… Are you still reading it? You stopped writing about it...
I'm at Istanbul airport, I'm so tired of traveling… I walked a woman to her gate just now; she seemed lost, she clung to me… She was looking for the gate that takes her to Sulaimaniyyah, I thought this is the only relationship I've had with a woman from there... She warmly kissed me goodbye and told me I have beautiful hair… I smiled, that's how one knows an enemy from a friend… But I felt like speaking to someone, exchanging niceties, I hadn't done that in hours... And I thought it curious how she asked only people about directions and not officers, or information desks... I do that in cities, I stop consulting the map and ask people who sometimes point at my map hanging out of my bag and suggest that people are misleading, while maps dependable… I disagree, and hide my map better the next time.
It's the third day, they seem weary of each other, there's more and more paranoia, and so they start asking existential questions about meanings of freedom, socialism, democracy… The Ba'athists keep insinuating that Nasser was after the dissolving of parties in Syria, he bitterly denounced that there were some that claimed the first union an era of Egyptian colonialism… The Syrians boasted that the baathists have been for 15 years working towards and thinking of those terms; that the formation of a parliament is just bourgeoisie democracy... Popular democracy has to take the form of a cluster of parties that produce a political leadership…It was almost a discussion of the best form of dictatorship masked by socialism...
Again the rockets, I found this footage while searching on youtube, last year Nasser launched the Egyptian rocket project with al dhafer and al qaher… It was an attempt for propaganda of power, 'we can now join the race to space' the commentator says, but it turns out they were fraud, but that's another story…
I am still reading the novel, its quite long, and I'm busy, I wish I could have a weekend to read it at one go, its that kind of book. But as I said the last time, it gets more and more familiar, as if I've read it before, or even know the author very well...I did ask my father about it the other day when I spoke to him, he said that Khalil Said is a pseudonym and for more than one person, its a pseudonym they used in the communist party, and that many used for literary and political adventures! so i'm even more suspicious now...The novel is taking a heart wrenching turn.
Did you arrive well?
Dear,
I arrived well... Fell asleep on the coach with my clothes on...
Will go out for coffee and breakfast, I rented a car from the airport, so I will take my stuff and drive around...
We flew inside a storm on the way above Palestine and Jordan, the plane was shaking and the lady beside me nearly finished reading the whole quran, she was sweating and tears flowed down her cheeks… I was calm… I tried to remember the statistics done on plane crashes, how the possibility of dying in a plane crash is less than being eaten by a shark... But then I thought maybe these are statistics made in Australia not in a sealess country like ours... But then I thought it must be less than the possibility of dying on a checkpoint... Anyway, I didn't really mind dying in a plane crash... Such accidents give one enough time to remember and think before the final crash happens, I took out my iPad and was ready to write something short to you, in case of anything, but then I thought the iPad will get destroyed in such an accident... So I looked at the woman beside me, her lips shaking in anxiety... 'Madam, do u have a pen?', I asked her. 'What for?' she asked back. 'Oh I want to write my will...,' I answered... She started crying hysterically… And of course I didn't get my pen...
We landed safely... I felt happy... It's exciting to have these near death experiences… it gives a fake feeling of new beginnings…
So, today i begin the serious research, searching for the diaries of the politicians who were involved in the unification.. and it seems that separating is much easier than uniting, that unity was a big mess... A series of reactionary acts that could lead to nothing but separation... a unity towards separation...
Today they released the union's charter between Egypt, Syria and Iraq… There were celebrations in all the countries… But it was all a waste of time; the main issue remained the same, it was a conflict of power, of governance… The Ba'athists in Syria took full control while the national unity government was busy negotiating the union in Cairo. A subtle political coup d'etat by the Ba'athists, slowly controlling the army… They were with the Union, but wanted more power within it, which eventually led to an aborted attempt at a re-union…
A re-union that was suddenly resurrected out of the dead by the insanely brutal ISIS. Actually, a friend said that this might be a perverse Frankenstein return of the failed anti-colonial project in the Arab world of the 1960s and 70s. In the absence of any grass root anti-colonial political left in the Arab world due to years of tyranny and in the shadow of failed nation states built on neoliberal economies, while living within the historical extension of Sykes-Picot borders, a desperate and mislead generation emerges out of this gap of suppressed, postponed politics, resurrecting a dormant project, and we all know what happens when dormant projects are left to die for too long, they resurrect as monsters that haunt us!
I still can't find any trace of the novel, nor Khalil Saeed... I feel this belongs to the gap between the different histories of the Palestinian revolution, one that was happening overground outside palestine, and the other happening underground in Palestine… Does this impossibility to find it suggests that there is something still happening underground? and that by it refusing to resurfice means that one still has to go underground to join the revolution…? ahhh... It is all confusing now…
Anyway, i have to travel back home now…
x
Dear,
I envy you, you're home at last... I have a few more days, but my patience is running out.
I'm very tired, I have a soar throat, I can feel sickness creeping upwards from my frost bitten feet to my heavy heavy head... I miss you... I thought I saw you from a distance boarding, but why would you go to Osaka? I spoke to you today, why would you not mention it… I remembered what my father told me, we were standing on the balcony smoking a cigarette he was trying to make sure I was fine, kept saying that it is fine to grieve, to miss him, to wonder about getting back together; and for the first time, he spoke of his and my mother's divorce; he said that years after he would imagine seeing my mother among pedestrians… My heart wrenched, he remembers his pain, I envy him, as I feel nothing, a detached shiver at most.
It's very strange this novel... It seems its only readers are myself and my mother... It's crushingly sad, as after chronicling years of the strong relationship of support between the couple who are doing underground political work while at the same time caring for three children. Suddenly at the beginning of the 90s with the fall of the leftist parties all around, especially the USSR, the communist party in Palestine also starts faltering, so does this couple's marriage, their marriage was based on a certain political affinity that was mediated by the communist party, that was based on a vision of a future for not only Palestine but the world, so when this paradigm fell, their marriage followed coarse. With the Oslo agreement, and the seeming end of the struggle for emancipation, everything fell apart, their marriage, the party, the whole support system... They conflated politics with love, they thought that the political dreams they once had were feelings, but when politics failed love failed as well… Strange things started to happen, he stopped sharing house chores, he wanted his wife to iron all his shirts for him, he started being strict with his daughters, it wasn't a religious turn as he was still an atheist, but he became more conservative suddenly. She became selfish, she knew she needed to survive, they both looked around and saw comrades join the ranks of the Palestinian authority, open businesses and NGOs to welcome the economic boom, they receded into doubt, feeling betrayed by everyone and each other... But it is also paradoxical as the failure in politics could have been caused by their failed love…
But maybe you are right... maybe such novel should stay secret and circulate underground… as once its historicised it would bring the death of any existing politics of emancipation...
xx
