Laila Lalami

In a new piece for Foregin Policy, I write about why the February 20 movement’s demands in Morocco have so far been restricted to constitutional reforms. Here is an excerpt:

When I was living in Morocco in 2007, I often noticed that foreign journalists were completely confounded by the country. And understandably so, because, depending on whom they talked to, the country was either on the verge of full democratization or about to have a Russian-style revolution. Elections were going to bring about an Islamist tsunami or the leftist coalition would surprise everyone by its strong showing. The recent family law reforms had brought in real change for women or it did not matter because the judges were not applying the new law anyway. The Equity and Reconciliation commission was proof that the infamous Years of Lead — a period during the 1960s to 1980s characterized by widespread extralegal detentions and torture — were being reckoned with or that the victims of abuse had been unwittingly co-opted by a wily government. The francophone elite was fleecing the country or it was the country’s only chance of moving forward in an era of globalization. The king’s right-hand man had quit his post and run for a parliamentary seat because he had fallen out of favor in the palace or he had quit because he was going to be appointed prime minister.

The truth was, nobody knew.

You can read the rest here.

In a follow-up post for The Nation, I write about the protests that have taken place throughout Morocco on February 20.

In spite of the Moroccan government’s campaign—through its official media, its ministers and its allies—to discredit the February 20 movement, peaceful protests took place today throughout the country. Thousands of protesters gathered simultaneously in Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier, Tetuan, Beni Mellal, Kenitra, Agadir, Marrakech, Essaouira and in other, smaller cities such as Bouarfa, Sefrou, Bejaad and Jerada.

As I explained in an earlier post, the campaign against the movement included accusations that it was led by agents of the Polisario Front; by atheists and other assorted non-Muslims; by republican revolutionaries; by Moroccans living comfortably abroad; or by people who are disorganized, unclear about their demands and leaderless. But even before the democracy protests got underway today, it was clear that the tide was turning and that the virulent government campaign had only served to bring about support from a wide cross-section of Moroccan society.

You can read the rest here.

(Photo credit: AP)

In a new post for The Nation, I write about the protests that are planned for February 20 in Morocco.

With the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, the Arab world has erupted in popular protests in favor of democracy and dignity. Morocco, long considered one of the most stable Arab countries, is not immune to this regional trend. Inspired by the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, a group of young activists are using social media to spread the word about a protest in Casablanca on February 20. A video they have made to promote the protests has already gone viral. It features thirteen young Moroccan men and women, speaking in their native Arabic or Berber. “I am Moroccan and I will take part in the protest on February 20,” they all say, and then go on to explain their reasons for marching: freedom, equality, better living standards, education, labor rights, minority rights, and so on. (You can view the video, with English subtitles, here.)

The February 20 movement was started by a group calling itself Democracy and Freedom Now. Their demands include constitutional reforms, the dissolution of the present parliament, the creation of a temporary transitional government, an independent judiciary, accountability for elected officials, language rights for Berber speakers, and the release of all political prisoners. Democracy and Freedom Now was soon joined by a loose coalition of cyber-activists, traditional lefties, Islamists, and 20 human rights organizations, including the Moroccan Association of Human Rights and Amnesty Morocco.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

For the next two weeks, I will be writing guest posts for the Notion, the Nation magazine’s blog. My first post is about the recently reported attack on the reporter Lara Logan:

A woman has been sexually assaulted—what should the reaction to such a heinous crime be? Blaming its victim? Disparaging the country she’s in? Looking for a scapegoat?

Stunningly enough, all of these reactions have been voiced since yesterday, when it was revealed that Lara Logan, the Chief Foreign Correspondent for CBS, had survived sexual assault in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The network has released few details about the attack, except to say that, when Hosni Mubarak’s resignation was announced and crowds filled the square, a mob surrounded Logan and her crew. She was separated from them in the ensuing frenzy and suffered “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.” Logan flew back to the United States the following day and is now recovering in a hospital.

Read the rest here.

Last Friday, about fifteen minutes after it was announced that Mubarak had resigned, a close friend called me from Morocco, cheering for the Egyptian people. And then another friend called, emails arrived—all expressing the same joy at the fall of the tyrant. Over at the Daily Beast, I have an opinion piece about the effect of the ongoing revolutions on how people think about Arab world.

It was nearly 20 years ago that Samuel Huntington put forth the idea that major sources of world conflict in the aftermath of the Cold War would be cultural. Certain civilizations could coexist peacefully with one another, he argued, but others were bound to come into conflict because their inherent values and belief systems were polar opposites. The contrast between “the West” and “Islam” provided the clearest illustration of his argument and, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it gained an even wider following. Huntington’s theory has so pervaded public discourse that when people speak of his “Clash of Civilizations,” they usually mean the inevitable clash between the West and Islam.

People in Western countries were told by their elected leaders that the Arabs were fundamentally incapable of governing themselves in a democratic way, that they needed strongmen to keep them in line or else they might lash back in another major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, citizens of Arab countries were told by their local dictators that, well, this was the best they could do. Their nations were stable, they had a functioning government, and there was some sort of law and order on the streets. That was enough. And it was either that or the local Islamist party, which, if it were ever allowed to come to power or have a say in government, would endeavor to take away whatever rights the Arabs were lucky enough to have.

And you can read the piece in full here.

(Photo credit: AP)

At a dinner with friends the other day, all any of us wanted to talk about was the uprising against Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. I think we all know that we’re witnessing something unique here, something that will have far-reaching effects for the region. My latest piece for The Nation magazine is a commentary about this winter of discontent in the Arab world. Here is how it opens:

For those of us who have grown up in a dictatorship, the protests that have ignited throughout the Arab world feel like the fulfillment of a great promise. This promise was made to our parents and grandparents, to all those who fought for independence: that we would have the right to decide our future. Instead, our leaders delivered us into a world of silence and fear and told us that we must watch what we say and watch what we do. Our institutions were undermined or dismantled, our political parties were stifled or co-opted, their members disappeared or neutralized. And whenever we looked to the West for help, its presidents and prime ministers spoke with forked tongues, one moment lecturing us on democracy and another offering support to our dictators.

You can read the piece in full here.

(Photo Credit: Reuters)

Yesterday, in between writing and grading, I kept thinking about this line from Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians: “All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.” Over the last few weeks, people throughout the Arab world have been reconnecting with this memory and demanding change. The people of Egypt have taken to the streets today to pursue this goal; the Mubarak regime’s response has been, as always, violent repression.

The Guardian asked a group of writers, including me, what we make of the protests that are now rocking the region. Here is my contribution:

In Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, published in 1966, an unnamed university graduate returns to his home country, Sudan, full of hope about the new era of independence in his country. But an old man from his ancestral village warns him: “Mark these words of mine, my son. Has not the country become independent? Have we not become free men in our own country? Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do.”

As Salih predicted, the regimes that have followed European occupation of the Arab world have consolidated power in the hands of a small elite, which was often beholden to foreign countries and bent on repressing the civil and human rights of its people. Over the last two generations, the majority of young Arabs have known only two or three heads of state, each brought to office thanks to heredity, coup d’état, or sham elections. This is why, reading about the events in Tunisia earlier this month, it seemed to me I was witnessing the first national uprising in the Arab world since independence.

You can read it all here.

(Photo credit: AP/NYT)

Over the last few weeks, I have been following the unraveling of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, my emotions changing from surprise, to awe, and then to elation. As you probably know by now, the protests began on December 17 when Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable vendor who had suffered from police harassment for some time, had his unlicensed cart confiscated. He set himself on fire in the main square in the town of Sidi Bouzid, an act of desperation that inspired the country’s thousands of unemployed graduates to take to the streets in protest. It was perhaps understandable for some observers to initially dismiss the protests as another one of the region’s “bread riots.” But this was Tunisia, a country so tightly controlled that the protests themselves were highly unusual.

The police did what police do in dictatorships: they used tear gas, beat up protestors with clubs, and fired live ammunition, killing dozens of people. But the protests continued. Two weeks into the unrest, Ben Ali gave a television address, where he tried to show sympathy for the unemployed, while also blaming the country’s troubles on foreign hands and agent provocateurs. His speech was interrupted by a ringing cell phone, which turned a solemn affair into a comic one, as a flustered Ben Ali leaned forward and back in his chair without answering it. His patina of stern dictator seemed to crack. For the first time, his portraits were ripped from street corners. Trade union members and professionals joined students in the protests, which reached a fever pitch on January 4th, when it was reported that Bouazizi had died of his wounds.

Ben Ali dismissed a few members of his cabinet, but the protests grew even more popular, spreading from Sidi Bouzid to Kasserine, Sfax, Hammamet, and the capital. Then, on January 13th, he delivered a long litany of promises: he would create jobs, he would allow more personal freedoms, he would appoint an investigative commission, and, most significantly, he would leave office in 2014. Here was the dictator on television again, a man of seventy-four years with unnaturally dark hair and a chubby face, but the expression behind his eyeglasses was one of astonishment and fear. I had seen that expression before, a long, long time ago—on the face of Ceauşescu.

In the February 7 issue of The Nation magazine, I comment on the Tunisian events, and offer some context for them. Here is the opening paragraph:

In conventional thinking about the Middle East, perhaps the most persistent cliché is “moderate Arab country.” The label seems to apply indiscriminately to monarchies and republics, ancient dictatorships and newly installed ones, from the Atlantic Coast to the Persian Gulf, so long as the country in question is of some use to the United States. And, almost always, it crops up in articles and policy papers vaunting the need for America to support these countries, bulwarks against growing Islamic extremism in the Arab world.

A perfect example is Tunisia. Just three summers ago, Christopher Hitchens delivered a 2,000-word ode to the North African nation in Vanity Fair, describing it as an “enclave of development” menaced by “the harsh extremists of a desert religion.” This is a country with good economic growth, a country where polygamy was outlawed in 1956, a country with high levels of education, a country with perfect sandy beaches. And, Hitchens wrote, it “makes delicious wine and even exports it to France.

You can read the piece in its entirety here. And you can subscribe to the magazine here.

(Photo Credit: AP)

Not long ago, I received a kind email from a reader in Pakistan, telling me how much he enjoyed reading my first book, which he had read in its Urdu translation. An “excellent work,” he called it, and he wanted to know whether I was working on something new. This is very flattering, of course, and I was touched by the compliment, but I confess my first thought was: what Urdu translation? My collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in a bunch of different foreign languages, but I was pretty sure Urdu wasn’t one of them. I asked this gentle reader if he wouldn’t mind sending me a copy. He said yes, and about four weeks later, I received a book wrapped only in a white band (which I imagine made it easier for customs officials to check the package). So here it is, a pirated translation of my book.

Now, I don’t speak Urdu, but, as it happens, this language uses an Arabic-like script, so I’m at least able to decipher a few words. I could read my name, and I could decipher a title, and I could even make out the name of the translator. It seemed vaguely familiar. Hmm, where had I heard it before? A quick search through my email showed that this gentleman had gotten in touch with me in the fall of 2006, to ask how he could spell my name in Arabic. I gave him the information, but when I asked why he needed it, I didn’t hear from him until early 2007, when he wrote to inform me that he had translated Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits into Urdu. And, he added, he was doing this sort of work for the greater good and he hoped I could find it in my heart to do the same.

After I got over my shock, I forwarded the message to my publisher, who wrote him directly to say that he needed to secure copyright permission if he wanted to publish his translation. “I was thinking of publishing the translation eventually,” the translator replied, although “no publisher commissioned me for [it].” And, well, why don’t I just quote the rest of the email:

As I wrote to Ms. Lalami, literature doesn’t sell well with Urdu readership. What does sell is mostly travel writing, women’s digests, bittersweet romances, and religious books. No mainstream publisher would even touch novels, etc. in the hope of making money Those who print this kind of literature are people like me, I mean people whose main source of income is a profession other than publishing or writing. I was not exaggerating when I said that the ordinary print run for novels is only a few hundred copies. Of these, twenty copies will come to me, if I’m fortunate enough to find a publisher, about 40 to 50 will go as complimentary copies to other writer friends, and the remaining copies will take a few years to sell. There is no question of a reprint. (I might also add here that the price of a book of about 200 pages would be between 2 to 3 US dollars.)

Pretty bleak picture, wouldn’t you say? But that is the fact. What some of us wrongheaded people do makes no sense in this country. But we do it anyway, wrongheaded or not. After all, one of our poets says to his beloved: “Come one day … if only not to come.” Paradox?! Whatever. But we instinctively know what all it means.

No, I didn’t clear the copyright issue with you. But this is just as good a time as any. I’d be personally grateful if you would consider granting it. Of course, I can’t pay for it. In recognition of the favor, and as a gesture of thankfulness, I’d be happy to share some of my copies, assuming we will get to that stage, with you and Ms. Lalami. And, of course, I’ll make sure that your permission is acknowledged on the translation, in a wording of your choice. If this isn’t what you were expecting, I’m very sorry.

The person in charge of copyright clearance at Algonquin Books replied that permissions were normally granted to publishing houses, not to freelance translators, and that he should have his publisher contact us directly. We never heard back, and I thought that was it. Until a few weeks ago, when this gentle Pakistani reader wrote to tell me about the translation he had bought in a Karachi bookstore.

Part of me feels like, hey, how cool is it that my work is pirated? How edgy. And the other part of me is outraged that someone, a professor at a major American university no less, would simply translate and publish a work of literature abroad without proper copyright permission. I’m not into writing for the money, God knows, but these translations are illegal, there is no guarantee that they are faithful to the original, and they punish other publishing houses and translators, those who do sign the proper agreements. And that’s neither cool nor edgy. That’s destructive. How do you translate that in Urdu?

I just got back from two weeks in Cuba—not the easiest place in the world to get to from the United States, especially in these times of heightened scrutiny. (The recent relaxation of rules by the Obama administration made the trip possible for family reasons.) My first impression upon leaving Aeropuerto Internacional José Martí-La Habana was of the ubiquity of street placards with revolutionary slogans. “Comandante en Jefe, tus ideas son invencibles,” said one, under a picture of a younger-looking Fidel Castro. Another warned, “La vigilancia revolucionaria: tarea de todos.” Perhaps my favorite sign was the one that boasted, “250 milliones de niños en el mundo duermen hoy en las calles. Ninguno es cubano.”

For all the revolutionary slogans, Cuba has inched further and further toward a free market economy, of sorts. There are now many private businesses: paladars and guest houses, for instance, which are frequented almost exclusively by tourists. The introduction of convertible pesos has created a system in which a few Cubans have access to this valuable currency, while the majority does not. As a result, people are always trying to get their hands on the convertible pesos and now you see street hustlers in a country that used to be mercifully free of them. The revolutionary ideals have become little more than a selling point, a way to attract foreign tourists.

There was so much to see and so little time to do it, given family obligations. We took a walking tour of Habana Vieja, with its stunning architecture; visited the Museo de la Revolución, where you can see the American yacht Granma, used by Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and 79 others to launch the Cuban revolution; saw a performance by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in an old church; waited for the cannon shot at the Fortaleza de San Carlos; took a tour of the Partagas Cigar Factory, which was smelly, loud, and frankly a bit Dickensian; and browsed many, many bookstores. By far the oddest sight for me were the Afghan students in Cienfuegos, amid scantily clad tourists and locals. They were apparently there to train as doctors, as part of the country’s own efforts to win hearts and minds. (I’m going to take a wild guess and say that training doctors might work better than dropping bombs.)

So this wraps up this very quiet and productive year for me. Thank you all for continuing to read my blog and to write to me with your thoughts. I wish you all a happy and healthy new year, filled with joy and prosperity.