Elsa Marston responds to your comments on Honor

Dear Rima--

I've been considering how to respond to the students' discussion of the "Honor" story, and I've decided it may be best just to give my thoughts on some of the points raised. One seems to be, whether Islam condones or even requires punishment like what Uncle Nabeel believes in, in the story. No, I certainly don't believe that it does. From my study of the Prophet's life and mission, and what came afterward, I believe he had a rational and humane view of women and the way they should be treated, and he tried to convey this to his followers. Of course they were men of their times, and the patriarchal system was in effect throughout the Middle East (if not most of the world!); but there's a lot we don't know about the rights of women in 7th-century Arabia, how they were treated and how they lived. Maybe they were not particularly oppressed--and maybe they were. What does seem clear is that after the death of Muhammad, other people, with less enlightened minds, came into power (and struggles for power became quite violent at times). Maybe it's a characteristic of human nature, when societies are under stress such as warfare, deprivation, etc., for men to try to control with a heavy hand whatever they can control--and that's usually women. Also, as Islam spread to other societies (Persian, Christian, African), Muslims adopted some of the customs and beliefs of those societies, including seclusion and disrespect of women.

Uncle Nabeel, therefore, is reflecting not Islamic principles (especially as interpreted in modern times--and not by extremists, who are another problem altogether), but tribal traditions that may be quite destructive. I tried to research the origins of the idea of "honor killing," and could find very little, other than that it's tied to the importance of the idea of "shame," which is found throughout the Mediterranean world. The most likely explanation I've come across is that in nomadic society, when the bare resources for life are scarce and just surviving may be very difficult, people felt that strong leadership was essential. For a man to be obeyed, he had to show control, starting with his family. If his women defied him by having sexual relationships that were against his wishes, it would weaken his power; and furthermore, those relationships might produce offspring that he would not want to support--especially if food was scarce. Whatever the origins, the idea that a man--and his family--must punish a girl or woman who defies his authority in this way has survived all this time. Even though educated people have long since abandoned this way of thinking, in some societies or communities where it still exists, it can still carry a lot of weight. And needless to say, it produces suspicion and misery in everyone, not just the girl and her family concerned. But people tend to cling even to bad ideas, when their world is being threatened by change that they don't understand and feel powerless to oppose. (The example of white racists who can't stand the idea of an American president with African roots, and who take out their anger, frustration, and confusion on other black people, is not too different!)

One of the students raised the very interesting and important point regarding community vis-a-vis individual rights. She or he wrote, "individuals as part of the community must have thoughts that bind them together and by which they live. They must also share the same emotions .... and must have one system to address all of their life's problems." Well, yes and no. If everyone believes in, or at least obeys, the same set of rules (thoughts, emotions, behavior), it does avoid friction and trouble. But who determines that thought system? What if it's a bad set of rules, or, over time and depending on who is in power, becomes bad? Then you have people living under tyranny, dictatorship, oppression; and nobody can say that that's a good thing, even if it does prevent some trouble. I believe that there's no one system that can satisfactorily "address all of life's problems." That system has to be devised by humans (usually men, whose interests are different from those of women), or at least interpreted by humans; and humans make mistakes and mess up--even when they're trying not to. I believe very strongly that educated, enlightened people have to be open-minded, question their own systems of beliefs, hold on to what they feel is good but look farther afield for better ideas that may be found in other systems. Thoughts, ideas, emotions, and resulting behavior cannot be chiseled in stone, determined for everyone and for all time. There has to be freedom for individuals to seek their own ways of believing and behaving--even if they do sometimes get into trouble and cause trouble for others. That's what "growing up" is all about.

Another student made the point that we must take responsibility for our actions, and accept punishment if we do something we know is wrong. Yes, I feel that way, too. But I also believe that mercy is always essential, and a merciful treatment of a wrong-doer may well do far more good than a strict punishment according to the letter of the law. I like the passages in the Koran about Allah being a God of mercy.

Well, maybe this is enough, at least for now! Please, if your students would like to discuss these or other points further, if they'd like to say something or ask questions about any others of the stories in SANTA CLAUS IN BAGHDAD, I would be happy to hear from them (through you, Rima, or however you want to handle it); and I would try to respond more quickly. In the meantime, I am busy pursuing any possibility to speak and to write about my experiences and observations in the West Bank, and I HOPE, before long, to be able to start a new story--though probably for younger readers ... something about olive trees.

The people of this country, for a variety of reasons, have a very long way to go in understanding that the reality of what has happened and is happening to Palestinians and their country is not at all what they've been led to believe; but more and more are learning.. And most of our politicians have a long way to go in learning to listen to those who say that the course of action the U.S. has been following for so long with regard to Israel is NOT in anyone's interest--other than extremists, who would willingly destroy everything in order to have their own way. But there is increasing evidence (in spite of the disgraceful behavior of the administration and Congress regarding the Goldstone Report) that many are beginning to see the light.

With appreciation for the very pleasant and interesting welcome you gave me--and my friends--at your university, and with every good wish for your courage, welfare, and hopefulness,

Elsa

Explicate a Poem by Talah Abu Rahmeh

Talah Abu Rahmeh is a Palestinian poet and writer. Originally from Yaffa, she was born in Amman in 1984 and moved to Ramallah ten years later. After graduating from Birzeit University with a degree in English, she pursued an MFA (Master's in Fine Arts) degree in Creative Writing at American University in Washington D.C. In May 2009, she received the Myra Sklarew Award in Poetry for her capstone thesis in creative writing. The award is given by the MFA faculty at American University each year to the graduating MFA students with the most original prose and poetry theses.

Some of you might recall Palestinian-American poet Suhair Hammad's visit to AAUJ last year during the Palestinian Literature Festival (PALFEST). You might be interested to know that she has won the 2009 American Book Award for Breaking Poems, published by Cypher Books.

The following poem by Talah Abu Rahmeh is featured in the upcoming anthology 25 Under 25, which is edited by Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet and writer. Read the poem and then write a paragraph explicating the poem (that means explaining, interpreting and analyzing it). Here are some questions to help you do that:

1) Who is the speaker?
2) What is the speaker reflecting on?
3) What settings, emotions and values emerge in the poem?
4) In what world is the speaker more comfortable?
5) How do you know any of the above?

If Talah Abu Rahmeh were to add one or two lines to the poem at the end, what do you think she would say?

Upon Arrival

I don't know anymore,
What if I love it more, over there?
What's not to love over here?

Mama says there is nothing like home
Everyone knows you and even if they don't
They still impose.

I used to say take me home
Where everybody can pronounce my name,
roll it off the tongue like sugar, take me

Home.

I shake hands of relatives
I never liked
"Yes, of course I will come back to the country.

If we, the educated, don't come back
Who will?"
I want to scream:

I'm getting too used to having
A dignity. I'm getting used to not crossing
Checkpoints, I'm getting used to staying out
Late without the fear of a tank barging in, I'm getting

used to crying, over little things, like the bus is late,
or the milk has run out.

Honor: A Story from Jordan

In Honor by Elsa Marston, Uncle Nabeel says to Wafa's father, "You’re forgetting your values, the values of our family, our people. Some things must never change."

Explain what values Uncle Nabeel is talking about. What values do Yasmine and her family hold? How do you know? What is the position of the author regarding Uncle Nabeel's values? How do you know? What are your own values regarding the issue of honor killing?

Summary of one of Elsa Marston's stories

Write a summary of one of Elsa Marston's stories in no more than 500 words. Make a list of the main events of the story first.

My favorite selection

Choose one of the three selections you have read recently from World Views: Multicultural Literature for Critical Writers, Readers and Thinkers (last Jump by James W. Ryan, Number One Son by Monfoon Leong and Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko). Think of one major reason why you liked or did not like reading the selection and develop your answer in a well-constructed paragraph. Be specific; do not write exclusively in generalities or abstractions.

Independent Summer Reading Assignment

Required summer reading: A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird.

The following is a transcript of a broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States when A Little Piece of Ground was first published. "Day to Day' is the name of the radio program. The reporter (Madeleine Brand) uses Elizabeth Laird's comments to develop her report. Read the following NPR report and the letter that follows and then comment on what you have read and on your own experience of reading the book.

Listen to audio here.

PROFILE: CONTROVERSY OVER CHILDREN'S BOOK "A LITTLE PIECE OF GROUND"

Day to Day: September 30, 2003

A children's book, not yet published in the US, is already controversial. The author is a British writer named Elizabeth Laird. She's written several other children's books that critics liked, most with themes of social or political injustice. This new book tells the story of a group of young Palestinian boys living in the occupied territories.

MADELEINE BRAND reporting:

"A Little Piece of Ground" is about three 12-year-old Palestinian boys.

Ms. ELIZABETH LAIRD (Author, "A Little Piece of Ground"): And like ordinary boys everywhere, they have their own personal obsessions. And the main obsession that they have is playing soccer, and they want to find a place to play soccer.

BRAND: `A little piece of ground.'

That's the author, Elizabeth Laird. She says it's a metaphor for the Palestinian hope for their own piece of ground. Laird writes for the young adult market, children who would read the "Harry Potter" books by another British author, J.K. Rowling. But unlike Rowling's books, Laird's are about real life, set in the present day. She's written about Kurdish children fleeing Iraqi oppression and about homeless Ethiopian kids living on the streets. She says she felt compelled to write "A Little Piece of Ground" after she visited Ramallah.

Ms. LAIRD: I was profoundly shocked by what I found, by the real dreadfulness of people's everyday life, the increasing poverty, the harassment, the curfews. And it occurred to me then that it would be a proper subject for a novel to see how children are managing under these circumstances.

BRAND: So she lived with a Palestinian family to gather material for her book.

Ms. LAIRD: The task of the novelist is to be true to the story. And what I've tried to do in my book is to be as true as possible to what it is like to be a Palestinian child today.

BRAND: But what is truthful depends on which side of the Green Line you're standing on. For Linda Silver, a children's book critic for Jewish Book World here in the US, Laird has been anything but truthful.

Ms. LINDA SILVER (Children's Book Critic, Jewish Book World): It's as though the Israelis were invaders from outer space who are simply motivated by malicious desire to make people's lives miserable. They're just mindless killing machines.

BRAND: One of the passages in the book that has Linda Silver so angry is where Israeli soldiers pull over a Palestinian family. They order the father to get out of the car and line up with other men for a strip search. Twelve-year-old Karim watches with his mother and young sister in the car.

Unidentified Man: (Reading) `There was a burning pain inside him. He'd never thought much about his father before. He'd always assumed that his father knew best, that his decisions were right, that he could protect his family. All those sure things shifted in his mind as he saw his father's humiliation. Hot, red anger pulsed behind his eyes.

`He came to with a start at the sound of a click. Serene(ph) had wriggled off Lamia's(ph) lap and was back in the driver's seat. She had opened the door and was jumping out onto the road. "No!" shouted Karim. "Serene, come back!" Without stopping to think, he opened his own door and ran to pick her up. He heard a shout, and before he could reach her, was pulled up short by a soldier grabbing his arm. "What are you doing, Palestinian?" the soldier snarled at him. "My sister," babbled Karim, "she's only four. She opened the door herself. I"--Serene had run back and grabbed hold of his leg. With the other hand, she pulled at the soldier's gray-green uniform trousers. "Please, Uncle," she said, "I want my babba(ph)."

`The young soldier looked down at her as if he didn't understand. He hesitated, seemingly disconcerted at the touch of the little girl's hand. Karim could feel that the soldier's fingers still gripping his arm were shaking. "He's terrified," he thought with surprise. "He thinks we're going to attack him." He could almost smell the soldier's fear. "She didn't mean any harm," he said, hating the placating note he could hear in his own voice. "I'll take her back to the car." The soldier shoved at him roughly. "Take her. If there's any more trouble from you, you go over there and join the other terrorists." Karim scooped Serene up in his arms and ran back to the car with her.

`Karim was trembling violently. He felt sick with the backwash of fear. "I hate them. I hate them. I hate them," he thought, unable now to look at his father who still stood, reduced to an object of ridicule beside the bewildered old man.'

BRAND: A reading of "A Little Piece of Ground," the children's book that some critics say is an unfair depiction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The owner of Canada's largest bookstore says she won't sell the book because she's so offended. In a letter to the publisher, Phyllis Simon said she was disgusted at the irresponsible decision to publish what she feels is a racist, inflammatory and totally one-sided piece of propaganda, and she's called on Macmillan to reconsider publishing it. Simon refused to comment for this story, but her views are echoed by children's book reviewer Linda Silver. Silver says author's of children's books have a particular responsibility to portray multiple sides of a sensitive political situation because children don't have the same critical faculties as adults.

Ms. SILVER: It is, at the least, dishonest to portray a political conflict in totally unpolitical terms, particularly when it's written for kids who can't be assumed to know what the political context is. The author in that case has some responsibility, I think, to supply some, and she doesn't.

Ms. LAIRD: Well, I think this is an interesting criticism. I wrote a book called "Kiss the Dust," and it's about a Kurdish family who escape from Iraqi Kurdistan and are interned in an Iranian refugee camp under very harsh conditions. Nobody has ever said to me that I should have shown the point of view of the Iranian guards in that camp. I would very much have liked to have put in that story a sympathetic Israeli character and, indeed, I tried to see how that could be done. But there's no point in making a sentimental attempt to show a half-truth when the whole truth is there in front of me.

BRAND: The publisher is standing firmly behind Elizabeth Laird's book, saying it is just one of many stories to be told about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Macmillan will try to sell "A Little Piece of Ground" to publishers worldwide next week at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In the past, Laird's book have been snapped up by American publishers, but Macmillan acknowledges that this time it's not at all certain what will happen. For DAY TO DAY, I'm Madeleine Brand in New York.
.

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Letter to The Guardian
26-08-2003

We should thank Liz Laird for her courage in writing a novel while knowing that she was bound to face charges of bias (Children's author faces Jewish wrath, August 23).

There are many excellent novels that encourage us to understand the horrors of the Holocaust through the eyes of Jewish children. A Little Piece of Ground is the first British novel that lets us fully enter the world of a 12-year-old Palestinian under occupation.

If someone can dispute the credibility of the author's imagination and say that her character would not perceive the world in the way he does, that is legitimate critique. A novel has to stand or fall as literature and, in my judgment, this is a fine work.

Beverley Naidoo
Bournemouth, Dorset

Beverley Naidoo is an award winning children's author, who through her words and actions fought the apartheid regime in South Africa. Due to her resistance to apartheid, at aged 21 she was imprisoned - in solitary confinment for 8 weeks. Later her books were banned, she gave half of the royalties from her book "Journey to Jo'burg" to the British Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, that was helping the families of political prisoners.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1029181,00.html