The Arab revolutions of rage are almost depriving me of the pleasure of reading. Since the beginning of this year, new books have been gathering at my office or home, while I have been overwhelmed by the news or I was busy travelling in their pursuit. After Bahrain, I visited Kuwait and Lebanon, and I am on my way to Egypt this week. I have been reading periodical publications, magazines and newspapers in the air, especially British and American week-end editions, and often find them reviewing books I have ordered. But as I get motivated to read these books, I am defeated by the youths' resolutions, as though I were the president of Tunisia or Egypt. The Arabic Booker prize was awarded this year to two books: The Dove's Necklace by Saudi writer Raja Alem, and The Arch and the Butterfly by Moroccan writer Mohammed Achaari, who is also a poet and former minister. The books will be translated into English, as part of the award, and perhaps even into other languages. What I read about the books reminded me of Alaa al-Aswany and his famous novel The Yacoubian Building. Arab novelists, it seems, had beaten the traditional media in anticipating the Arab uprisings when they addressed corruption, religious extremism and sexual repression, and all other problems that regimes denied even when they were faced and affected by these problems. Achaari in his novel talks about a liberal man who thinks that his son is studying in France, but receives one day a letter from al-Qaeda telling him that his son was ‘martyred' in Afghanistan, and how this news turned the family's life upside down and affected the father's relationship with his wife. Meanwhile, Raja talks about the dark side of living in her hometown of Mecca, with extremism, crime, the corruption of the contractors there and the abuse of foreign workers, and also about a young woman who writes love letters to a German friend. Both books have arrived at my office in London, and before them, the book Known and Unknown by the war criminal Donald Rumsfeld. The 800-page book is his memoirs, or Rumsfeld's defense plea. However, in my opinion, the book is a failure, and only incriminates him. Rumsfeld is a former congressman, ambassador to NATO, White House chief of staff, and twice defense minister (the first time with Gerald Ford). He was also the CEO of several major corporations including Nutrasweet, a manufacturer of sugar substitutes. He was also an accomplice in the falsification of evidence to invade Iraq. Whether he wrote 800 pages or 8000 pages, no one will forget his claim that “Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons … including VX, sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox…” Or that he said about Saddam Hussein that he “claims to have no chemical or biological weapons, yet we know he continues to hide biological weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12-24 hours…” He also made claims about mobile biological weapons and that “[they have], in fact captured and have in custody two of the mobile trailers that Secretary Powell talked about…” I remind the reader here that Powell said later that his speech at the UN on the eve of the war was the lowest point of his political career. Rumsfeld is a war criminal and should end up in Guantanamo in preparation for his trail. His guards there should be from amongst the current detainees who have been there for ten years without a trial. I also received from Amazon the book I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian doctor who was doing humanitarian work between Gaza and Israel (Occupied Palestine), but who was rewarded by Israel on 16/01/2009 with a bomb that killed three of his daughters, Bissane (20), Mayar (15), and Aya (13), in addition to his niece Nour (17). We all saw Dr. Abuelaish sob and scream in pain with the blood of the pure girls smearing the floor and the walls of their room. He received a phone call, and it turned out to be an Israeli who saw what happened on TV and cried, and said: My God, My God, What have we done? What they have done is recorded in the book And No One Wants to Know: Israeli Soldiers on the Occupation, by David Shulman, who offers condemnation of Israel from within. The writer reproduces testimonies by the soldiers about the suffering of the Palestinians under the occupation and the crimes of the settlers against them. The book falls in 431 pages, and quotes men and women in the Israeli army who served in the Occupied Territory, and had the courage to talk about what they saw. There are two more books on my reading list: The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda, by Peter Bergen, an American journalist, and Osama bin Laden, by Michael Scheuer, a former CIA operative assigned to track Bin Laden. I recommend these books, and others, to the reader, who may perhaps have more time than I do these days. In the meantime, I shall return to following up the Arab revolutions of rage. [email protected]
