For readers today, I have three books on various topics to write about; they have nothing in common other than they are ink on paper, each with a front cover and a back cover. The first book is called "Crisis State and Confused Society," by Dr. Suleiman Abdel-Monem. Every chapter reflects the academic standing of the writer, who is the secretary general of the Arab Thought Foundation. It talks about the crisis of politics, and the crisis of society. The Introduction paves the way by discussing the phenomenon of the prevalence of responsibility and the absence of accountability, and the relationship of temptation and enabling between the authorities and the elites. The first group tries to tempt the second, while the second enables the first; this is how you have a state in crisis, and a society in confusion. In his explication, Dr. Abdel-Monem heavily relies on events in his country, Egypt. The chapters can be considered a series of condensed, very useful lectures for readers with an open mind. However, the writer himself asks in one chapter, "Are we truly a nation that does not read?" He dreams of an initiative that will recover the value of reading for Arabs, which means that he acknowledges this absence of this at present. In another chapter, he asks, "Why is it that we do not know how to differ?" In this chapter, he talks about the work of people like me. When I differ with readers, they accuse me of having a personal or financial interest in the matter; they cannot see that we merely have a difference of opinion. The writer is speaking for many people like me when he says we do not know how to differ with each other. Settling dialogue requires the tools of logic, and not the talent of hurtful words, which are what we use. Dr. Abdel-Monem, with his academic background and work expertise, if completely qualified to respond to the questions posed by the titles of the various chapters, and his book is rich in ideas – if only we were a nation that reads. The second book is "The Boy Who Saw the Color of Air," by my colleague Abdo Wazen, a Lebanese writer and poet who is responsible for al-Hayat's Culture page, and has written a number of books. I read the book two months ago and returned to it after I followed the work of an international conference on children's literature in Beirut the past month. My colleague's novel centers on a blind child, Bassem, and other children for readers of all ages. It was my haven, after all of the vagaries of Arab politics, now and in the future, as explained by Dr. Suleiman. I found myself in a state of crying over a blind child after crying over the Arab nation. The first pages of the novel explain how the family discovered after some weeks that the child was blind. The father cried, and the mother cried, as did the uncle and his daughter, Zeinab. Since Abdo is a friend, and objectivity requires that I criticize the novel to retain my credibility, I will say that it paints an idealistic of relations among family members, and among members of the entire village. The mayor wants Bassim to go to a school for the blind, as does the school principal, when Bassim takes classes relying on his hearing abilities. When the novel's protagonist goes from his southern village to a school near Beirut the idealism remains, in the form of the principal, the teachers and the students. The novel ends with Bassim's success; he has become a teacher at the school, to help blind students like him. Thus, a happy ending. Abdo Wazen has made a huge effort to understand Braille, developed by the poor, blind Frenchman Louis Braille in the 19th century. It was brought to Arabic by Mohammed al-Onsi in the mid-20th century. The author also studied the games played by blind people, including football, where a bell is inside the ball, something about which I had never heard. I will end with a book that I will not review for readers, because it would require a full newspaper page, which I do not have at my disposal. However, I will register an objection. The book is "Jerusalem: the Biography," by the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, a Jew from a rich European family that tried to help Jews settle in Jerusalem in the 19th and 20th centuries. Montefiore is a prominent historian and the references used in his book on Jerusalem reflect the scope of his knowledge and the depth of his learning. A journalist like me should not criticize him, even though history was part of my studies in college, but I will suffice here with what concerns me personally. Montefiore begins with the Jews of Jerusalem and finds a role for them from one chapter to the next, and ends with them. He tries to prove that they exist, to the degree that he considers an inscription on a broken wall in Tel Dan in Galilee in 1993 or 1994 proof of the existence of King David, without saying that there is an academic dispute about the letters that indicate this. Moreover, is the existence of a name on a rock sufficient proof, in the absence of any relics belonging to the Jews or their kingdoms in Egypt and Palestine and any other country? There are Jews from various tribes and clans in the entire region, but not kingdoms, except in the fables of the Torah. I also reject the author's claim that the Caliph Omar bin Khattab visited the "Temple Mount," or the Haram al-Sharif, and built his mosque there. Montefiore himself says that the Caliph visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher with Patriarch Sophronius, who suggested that his visitor pray there. The Caliph refused, so that the Muslims would not turn it into a mosque, and instead prayed nearby, where the Mosque of Omar now stands. It is in a Christian neighborhood, only 50 meters from the church, while the al-Aqsa Mosque is a few kilometers away. [email protected]
