Timesman Ethan Bronner has written a good response to As'ad AbuKhalil's critique of his obituary of Mahmoud Darwish in the New York Times. He points out that he does speak Arabic OK and that he has spurred the hiring of other Arabic-speakers and the promotion of Arabic education at the Times. Good for him. (Though AbuKhalil responds to Bronner that he hears he can't read a newspaper in Arabic, can't conduct interviews in Arabic. I once had a similar throw-down with Thomas Friedman. He mumbled that he never put himself forward as a great Arabic speaker. This was in the days before you could go thru a reporter's garbage on the internet.)
It is also a great thing that Bronner responded to AbuKhalil. It reflects the growing power of the blogosphere, also Bronner's being a thoughtful human being. Progress on all fronts.
That said, two things leapt out from Bronner's response. He said that it was not necessary to describe the circumstances of Darwish's family leaving its Galilee village in 1948, and that while he was not familiar with Darwish's poetics, he consulted with two Palestinian employess of the Times who do know his work:
I would agree that saying Darwish “left” Palestine doesn’t portray the situation in 1948. But I can’t believe anyone has any doubts about who razed his village and that struck me as a fairly weird reason to complain….In reporting the obit, I spoke with several Arabic scholars about his poetic language as well as with two of the three Palestinians who work for The Times here – Khaled Abu Akr and Taghreed el-Khodary. Both love his work. So I tried hard to get a sense of his poetics from those who care deeply about it.
Very interesting. (A little Arabic-name-droppy; I do the same.) First, it's actually easy to believe that many Americans have doubts about who razed Darwish's village and the circumstances under which his family fled. This was the most important event of Darwish's young life; wasn't this a perfect opportunity to talk about the Nakba? Just read Saif Ammous's direct and griefstricken obit to see how accessible those exotic oriental concepts can be to people who speak English. Ammous's description of the family's frenetic movements recalls stories about European refugees–stories we get in all their poetic glory say with a Wiesel or an Eva Hoffman. Bronner's letter also contains a tragic confession: two Palestinians work for the Times and love Darwish's work but didn't get to write his obit. Now maybe these Palestinians are just office workers, I don't know. But it is a common practice at the Times and other great papers to assign the obit of a literary figure to someone who reveres his or her work, who can quote from works he/she is familiar with with real feeling. Too bad that Darwish was not accorded that respect. Maybe these Palestinians aren't full-fledged reporters. But they know Darwish's poetics. Couldn't they have at least shared the byline?
When will Americans open their hearts and minds to the Arab world? Actually: When will journalists allow them to do so?
Related Posts
- ‘Here Lie a Murderer and the Murdered, Sleeping in One Hole’ (Mahmoud Darwish, Remembered by Two Arabic-Speakers)
- Mahmoud Darwish Could Have Been an Israeli Poet
- Celebration of Darwish at Harvard
- Mahmoud Darwish: ‘The invader fears his memories…’
- Avnery: Darwish Didn’t Want to be a National Poet, But His People Needed That of Him
{ 14 comments }
Have you read Darwish? Or other Palestinian or Arab poets?
What did you think?
I'm looking for recommendations.
Very interesting. …
This is the central point, Richard. If you take your grand "generalization-summerization" theory serious, this should have made you stop and ponder. …
And why don't you ask Saif, what he would recommend and why?
Hey!!!
Maybe Phil could invite Saif for a guest comment?
Were to start. Reading Darwish. And Introduction for nitwits in Arabic literature
Strictly I have wondered too, were to start and hmmmm? I hate translations. I noticed there are bi-lingual editions here in Germany.
And thinking along similar lines as Richard Witty, I have been extensively following the ads on Phil's site lately that are connected with Hebrew and Arabic online courses.
If I remember correctly, the Times assigned Yasser Arafat's obit to Judy Miller.
There's a rather moving recitation of a Darwish poem by a young Palestinian girl on YouTube–
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB5B4rydGMw
You don't need to know Arabic to get it.
Bronner spoke at Alwan for the Arts in Manhattan in December, 2007. He told the audience that time that he was working hard on learning Arabic. He then went onto pronounce a Palestinian name in the distinctive manner that only Hebrew speakers use, with no resemblance to Arabic pronunciation, actually demonstrating basic ignorance of Arabic (I speak Arabic). It was laughable.
So Ethan's claim is not a new one. Previously, in his ignorance, he quickly belied his own claim and instead showed his much greater comfort with Hebrew. Are we to believe Ethan's claim now and assume that eight months later he has really improved his Arabic that much? Seems likely that instead he again doesn't know what he doesn't know.
Run down by fate's spite
my body hangs, a mantle on a broom;
with wealth enough to ease all pain
I turn at night from back to belly
side after side after side
Who put pebbles on my couch when my sons died?
I tried but could not shield
them well enough from fate
whose talon-grip
turns amulet to toy.
Thorns tear out my eyes. I lie,
a flagstone at the feet of Time
all men wear me down
but even those my pain delights
envy that I cannot cringe
at fortune's spite.
'Lament for Five Sons Lost in a Plague'
Abu Dhu'ayb al-Hudhali, d. 649., a contemporary of the Prophet.
This is such a terrible, silly and duplicitous reply that it could almost pass for a NYTimes editorial on the Middle East.
Bronner is basically saying: "Yes, I don't understand Darwish's poetry, but I've taken a few classes and I know some Palestinians, so I am therefor perfectly qualified to write Darwish's obit." Like Bronner with Arabic, I can't speak Spanish well, but I've taken a few classes and some of my best friends are Mexicans(!), surely this makes me perfectly qualified to write for the Times on Mexican poets.
And wow, all those classes and hard-work to teach grown men an impossibly difficult language: it's amazing the lengths to which the Times would go in order to avoid hiring Arabs, Palestinians or native-speakers who might have a shred of respect for Palestinians' humanity. They'll only hire one guy in a blue moon, and he'll either be an Uncle Tom, or someone tasked with very mundane reporting. The important tasks, analysis and poet obituaries, must of course go to the NYPravda's devout Zionut contingent.
Curiously, Bronner fails to mention why the NYT would never task a Palestinian or an Arabic-speaker to write Darwish's op-ed. As'ad Abu-Khalil himself, of course, has written a far superior obituary than Bronner's and yet he'll never even get a letter published in the Times. I wonder why.
Speaking of obituaries, who do you think the Times will assign to The Butcher of Beirut?
The future can't be known — all we can say with certainty now is that he or she will be Jewish.
But that's all right, because the Middle East is after all a Jewish subject.
The two Times Palestinian staffers Bronner mentioned are full fledged reporters who would've been entirely capable of either writing the obit themselves or collaborating with Bronner on it.
Assigning Bronner to write the obit is a bit like assigning William F. Buckley to write the obit of Malcolm X. At the least it's insensitive.
And as for replying to Abu Khalil, I'm glad he did so. But I've written Bronner 2 lengthy e mails critiquing his recent work AND I've criticized him in my blog. Not a word in reply. I guess being criticized by an Arab hurts him more where he lives than by a Jew.
As for recommendations about Darwish's poetry, if you go to my blog & click on Tikun Olam Store in my sidebar, you'll find a volume of his poetry I feature, plus a wonderful album by Marcel Khalife featuring Darwish's poetry set to music. I can't recommend it highly enough.
I encouraged Phil to question Thomas Friedman about his Arabic a few years ago, when Phil still published in The New York Observer. Friedman regularly wrote, "I don't listen to Yassir Arafat when he speaks in English to the world; I listen to what he says in Arabic to his own people."
Then I ran into David Hirst, the British veteran Mideast correspondent — who told me Friedman's Arabic was actually very basic.
Phil called Friedman, who to his credit owned up to the truth. Several years passed. Then, once again Friedman started implying that he knew Arabic.
It's no crime to not be fluent in Arabic. It is wrong to lie and imply that you do.
Thanks Richard.
A good start.
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