July 06, 2014
The United Nations said in June
that 10.8 million Syrians—nearly half the population—were in need of
humanitarian aid. For participants in Hyper Paralysis: Global Governance and the
Syrian Question, a recent panel discussion in
AUC’s Tahrir Dialogues series, the problem of aid distribution cannot be solved
without a political solution. “By humanizing the Syrian question, often we do
something else: we take the humanity out of the Syrians themselves,” said Hani Sayed, chair of AUC’s Law Department. “We turn them into victims. Helpless
victims.” Abeer Etefa, senior regional public
information officer at the World Food Programme, noted that some donor
countries complain about directing aid to one side or another, but an untenable
weighing of “good” and “bad” citizens would result without a policy of
neutrality. Georges Michel Abi-Saab, professor of
international law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development
Studies in Geneva, lamented the bleak prospects for a political solution. “What
we are seeing,” he said, “is a new level of barbarism.”
Does translation offer a means
for rapprochement between cultures in conflict? The conventional answer is yes.
English translations of Arabic literature have increased; this year, Arabic is
the fourth most translated language into English in the United States. But the
Iraqi translator Sinan Antoon, an associate professor of Arab
literature at New York University, argues that the English translations served
not only as a reference for better understanding but as “a form of cultural
interrogation” of Middle Eastern society. Many Americans, Antoon explained in a
lecture titled “Translation as Mourning” hosted by AUC’s Center for Translation Studies, sought evidence that would justify blaming Muslims for their trauma and
loss. Iraqis, he reminded his listeners, have their own need for explanations
of American “wars of terror that are labeled as wars on terror.” A noble
purpose of translation, Antoon argued, is offering a means to understand loss.
He recited verses by Sargon Boulus, an Assyrian Iraqi poet, whose
work mourns Iraqi losses using ghosts as a motif—victims of invasions and
sanctions who demand no revenge or retribution, seeking only to be recognized
as part of humanity.