Them - and Us
I'm taking the liberty of posting a comment that appeared on the blog this morning. It's from a friend of mine, Raf and I'm posting my reply here. It might help stimulate some healthy debate. Who knows?
raphaele has left a new comment on your post "Victory Celebration. Dahieh, Beirut":
the pics are great, the very last one could really have been taken on a futball victory ... the women are all covered. and anyway ... and i wonder if your way of telling things (tea, pastery and smiling people) isn't another way of writting propaganda !!! am i going to get censored ? anyway, i'm a desperate case, i'll never be a hezbollah fan whatever you write and say. looking at their leaders paintings is enough to discourage me. i'm going to brussels today, back at the end of the week. Hope to speak to you then.
Of course I'm going to publish it! This is the world of Hassan Nazrullah! We allow everything. Ooops! I've been brainwashed - Help! - maybe it was something they put in those biscuits!
But seriously, Raf, which 'way of telling things' would you prefer? Would you like me to tell it this way: That all these women were secretly unhappy that they were having to wear the hijab? Or, 'in truth', oppressed? That when they got home their arab husbands beat them (because, of course, it's well known that all arab husbands beat their wives) - so all their smiles on the Celebration were really false smiles? Or that many of the people who came to the Celebration, in their heart of hearts, don't actually like Hassan Nazrullah or Hezbollah, but are too afraid to say it? Or that some of the people who came in the coaches Hezbollah organised came because they'd never left their poor little villages and rather fancied a trip to a scruffy bit of wasteland in a poor suburb of Beirut, just to escape the daily wretchedness of their unbearable arab lives? Or that they were forced to come by local Hezbollah thugs, after threats made to their loved ones?
Or that all the children there, dancing around and waving flags, 'knew no better'? That they were just being manipulated - and practically ABUSED - by their parents? Or that even if all the people who were there were there of their own free choice, they don't actually understand what kind of organisation Hezbollah really is? Really. In reality. That, actually, those people we're - actually - just all being hysterical? Because, of course, being arabs, and being poor, and being Muslims, and being black - as near as damn it - they're just badly educated and don't know any better?... Maybe.... maybe....
But wait a minute. Haven't I heard that all before? Isn't that the Figaro script? Remind me. Or the CNN one? Or the BBC's? Or the Time's? Or the Telegraph's? Or La Stampa's? Or The New York Time's. I forget. And, of course, these august news organisations always know best.... After all, they're not hysterical... they're objective... they're not black .... or arab.... they have The Truth.... despite anything - ANYTHING - that the local people might think or say or feel....
because, of course, WE IN THE WEST KNOW BETTER!! And always do.
Ok. Raf, I'm not pretending I didn't go there with an agenda. Everybody has an agenda. But it's the people who pretend they don't have the agenda who worry me. Particularly when they work for big news organisations.
At least I was there. I chose to go there. By choosing I already have an agenda, sure. But at least I was there on the ground. At least I was talking to ordinary people for four hours. Recording my impressions, however 'agendered' they were. And I'm just giving you one person's impression. Just one person. Isn't even that allowed any more? Not even one person's impression that disagrees with the orthodoxy? With the norm? With The Truth? With Le Monde? Not one? Forgive me. Forgive me for abusing the sacred. Forgive me for abusing the Truth. Forgive me for abusing The Orthodoxy. Confessio. Confessio. Confessio. Mea Culpa.
Raf. Next time come with me to Lebanon. I really hope to go again. And I really hope to go again soon. Come with me to Dahieh. To the Madrasat. To the bombed bridge. To the thirteen storey block of flats that's now a hole in the ground. Come and meet Zahraa with the hijab and the four Mohammeds and Abdullah and Zenaib (also with the hijab) and Hussein and Helen and La Donna and Heba and Ola and Jamal and Hanane and Hanifa and Rami. And then we can have a good dialogue...
Oh, my god! It must have been something they put in the Lemonade!
posted by Steve @ Tuesday, September 26, 2006
6 Comments:
ohhhh my god !!! censorship might have been better !!!! are you're friends going to think i worship Israel bombings ?
steve, i'd really like to come with you to beirut. I don't worship Israel either you know ...
are you really serious when you say that i can't talk about thing i haven't seen through my eyes ? well, this is going to shut my mouth for a large range of topics ;-) ... i won't even been able to comment on Wimbledon ?
but, hapilly, i happen to live next to the Great Mosquee in Paris, so one thing i can tell: i don't like the parisian fundamentalists and their wifes in hijab... and to me, Nazrullah looks the same: hatefull to western world i belong to, hatefull to whatever i believe in ... maybe for some really good reasons, like the destroyed bridges etc ... still, to me Nazrullah is exactly what Bush and his crazy christians need and want: someone hatefull enough to justify their own fundamentalism.
Hopefully, Nazrullah 's isn't the only one to have right to speak for lebanon and he has contradictors
!!!
no, I'm not saying you can't say anything by not being there. But can you say anything about Sharapova's style of tennis if you've never seen her play. Or if your own knowledge of Sharapova is through the tennis correspondent of a newspaper which, for some reason, is against her?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hi Steve,
I've stumbled across your blog and have been following with interest for the last few days.
It seems a shame to me that your "agenda" has slipped - wasn't this trip supposed to be about workshops with volunteers? Or was this just an excuse to enable you to pursue your true agenda?
Hi jonathan!
Thanks for following the blog. Please continue - and continue to write.
Re: My agenda. It hasn't 'slipped' and, in my humble opinion, there isn't a 'true' agenda and an 'untrue' agenda. In fact there isn't any real agenda any more than any of us has 'an agenda'.
I was asked to deliver a workshop to Volunteers in Lebanon and I did that to the absolute best of my ability. You judge how well you think it went from my posts; I'm an excellent teacher; that's why I was asked.
But I also have other aspects to myself: I'm a playwright and theatre director. And I'm also very interested in what goes on in the world. Recently: the thirty-four day bombing of a country that has no airforce to speak of; a campaign that led to the murder of 1300 of its civilian population.
This caught my eye.
In London, like tens of thousands of other people I went on protests about this - and my Prime Minister's strange refusal to call for a cease-fire.
And there it would have ended, but a few days after the end of the bombing, I was lucky enough to be invited to work with some young people in that country and I accepted.
And then, when I was there, and only when I was there, I heard about 'The Celebration of Victory' - just a couple of days before, as it happened.
Well... I felt I'd be completely mad to miss it.
To have missed it would have been been like having a lie-in the day the Berlin Wall came down or staying at home for a quiet drink on 9/11.
This was history in the making. People, from all round the world, particularly the Arab world and Muslim world - over a billion in number - will remember this event for years to come. Both the 'celebration' and the 'victory'.
But, to tell you the truth, and I won't hide it, I was nervous. People warned me off. Said it was dangerous. There might be hot-heads in the crowd. That the Israelis might bomb the platform while Nazrullah was speaking. But I made a decision. And went. And I'm glad I went. These things didn't happen. Other things happened. And I wrote about them afterwards. And ...
And that's all.
I just wrote down what I saw there. That was my agenda, if I had one: I was there and I wrote down what I saw there and felt there. That's all.
As for your writing, I'm assuming you have, if not visited Lebanon or lived there, some pretty clear ideas about the country, else you wouldn't have been following the blog. That's great. I'd be interested to know what they are and how they're developing.
We all need to shed as much light as possible on what is both a highly complex thing. And probably a very simple one, too.
So, do write back. I look forward.
Just a quick response to Jonathan: I have to say, although modesty isn't high on the list of Steve's qualities, I can't fault his personal integrity. He's right - he did deliver excellent workshops in challenging circumstances exactly as promised (I know because I was asked to evaluate one of them. And as far as any personal agenda is concerned, he was pretty clear, certainly to the rest of the team, where he was coming from even before we left. I'm not sure that I can engage easily with his perspective on life, the universe or the trip but he's never pretended to be documenting anything other than his own personal experience.
Post a Comment
<< Home