Philistines

In modern parlance a philistine is someone who at best is indifferent to art and culture, and at worst is actively opposed to them. A philistine is someone who believes that government money spent on the arts is money wasted. They are the kind of people who scoff at the student who goes to university to study medieval French poetry. How did this come about? Are the people of Gaza truly uncultured?

The Philistines were a race of people who traditionally occupied the area that now forms the Gaza Strip. The Egyptians recorded raids on their territory by a confederation of “Sea Peoples” in the 14th Century BC. Named the Peleset by the Egyptians these are thought to be the tribe that became the Philistines. At the end of the Bronze Age major empires collapsed and the power vacuum in the Eastern Mediterranean was filled by seafaring peoples who raided all round the coasts.

Following this disruption the Philistines may have established themselves on the coastline near the fertile land of Canaan in the Jordan Valley. The Phonecians occupied a similar location just to the north around the cities of Tyre and Acre.

In the histories of the Israelites the Philistines are positioned as “the bad guys”. In the 10th Century BC the Philistines dominated the region and this is represented in the bible by the battles with Samson and King David’s duel with Goliath. In spiritual terms the Philistines became a symbol for the wrath of God enacted against the Jews when they lost faith.

Archeology from the Pentapolis; the five major city states, demonstrates that the Philistines had a rich spiritual and material culture with evidence of visual arts. So how did the Philistines come to be associated with enmity to culture?

Fast forward to Germany in the 17th Century. In Jena relations between university students and the townspeople became tetchy. The Age of Enlightenment swept over the University campus, but the radical new notions of the students were not embraced by the more conservative townspeople. In 1689 a violent altercation resulted in a number of deaths. The University Chaplain Georg Heinrich Gotze preached a sermon where he aligned the “Gowns” with the Israelites and the “Towns” with the Philistines. The students took to calling the townies “Philister”; the German for Philistines. It soon morphed into a term that described anyone who did not have a University education.

The term “Philistine” used to represent the uneducated made its way to Victorian England in the 1820’s and began to be used to distinguish between Old Money and New. The fabulously rich middle class who made their fortunes on wool, cotton, sugar or brown sauce might have money, but could not rise in the highly stratified English society. Appreciation of culture was adopted by the upper classes as a means of denying the wealthy middle class a greater position in society. In an essay written in 1869 (Culture and Anarchy: an essay in political and social criticism) Matthew Arnold writes:  If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future, as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the people whom we call the Philistines.

It is the battle of Class vs Crass, Style vs Fashion, Culture vs Bling. In England an idiom used to symbolize this dichotomy is “Gordon Bennett”. James Gordon Bennett Jr. was owner and editor of the New York Herald from 1868 to 1918. He was flamboyantly on the “bling” side of the equation. He founded the Gordon Bennet Classic Car races to promote his paper and also to gain access in society. In the USA money could buy status but when he arrived in London he found doors closed to him. There is an apocryphal story that he hosted a major party in one of the swanky hotels in London and invited the movers and shakers of London society. In the middle of the party he required the bathroom, but elected to pee into the fireplace instead and with that faux pas lost the room. It is exactly at such a face palm moment that a Londoner is likely to declaim “Gordon Bennett”.

The Philistine; by Thomas MacDonagh

I gave my poems to a man,
who said that they were very great –
they showed just how my love began
and ended, but too intimate

to give to read to every one.
I took my book and left him there,
and went out where the sinking sun
was calling stars into the air.

He thought that I had let them look
privily in behind the bars,
had sold my secret with a book –
I cursed him and I cursed the stars.

-=o0o=-

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Happy Birthday Chaim Herzog

Born in Belfast on Sept 17th, 1918 Chaim Herzog had a most interesting life and career. He grew up in Dublin, the son of Ireland’s Chief Rabbi. His father was born in Poland and his mother in Latvia before it became independent of the USSR.

The family were early Israeli’s emigrating to British Mandatory Palestine in 1935. Chaim served in the military from 1936 to 1939 defending Israeli villages during the Arab revolt as a member of Haganah. The Israelis were trained by one of the great British military mavericks Orde Wingate, who created the Israeli “Special Night Squads”.

At the outbreak of WW2 he volunteered to joint the British Army, serving as a tank commander in the armoured corps. Somehow along the way he picked up a Bachelors Degree in Law and was called to the bar in Lincoln’s in London. During the war he went by the name “Vivian” because his fellow soldiers could not wrap their mouths around Chaim.

He was moved into the intelligence corps in 1943 and in the latter stages of the war he assisted with the liberation of several concentration camps. He also assisted in the capture of Heinrich Himmler, who attempted to disguise himself as an army sergeant.

He left the British Army in 1947 with the rank of Major, and immediately returned to Palestine. He fought in the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 at the battles for Latrun, one of the failures of Israeli forces. The tough and professional Jordanian Arab Legion proved its mettle. His experience in British Military Intelligence led to Chaim becoming head of the IDF Military Intelligence Branch. In the 1950’s he was posted to a shady role in the Israeli embassy to the USA. He left the country to escape an FBI warrant. In 1962 he retired from military intelligence with the rank of Major-General.

He then went into private law practice in Israel. That lasted until 1967 when he was recruited back into the Military for the third Arab-Israeli war, known as the 6 day war. At the end of the war he was appointed Military Governor of East Jerusalem. By 1972 he had taken his legal practice into partnership and Herzog, Fox & Neeman remains one of the largest law firms in Israel to this day.

From 1975 to 1978 he was the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, in which role he famously tore up the resolution which stated that Zionism is Racism. In 1981 he sought and gained election to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. From 1983 to 1993 he served two 5 year terms, the maximum permitted, as President of Israel. He retired from public life in 1993 and passed away in 1997.

So in the course of his career he was a paramilitary, a soldier, a spy, a spymaster, a military governor, a lawyer, a politician, an ambassador and a statesman.

-=o0o=-

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Understanding China

A key to understanding China, it’s politics, it’s foreign policy and it’s long term plans, is to internalise the Hu line. This imaginary line runs from Heihe on the border with Russia in the North to Tengchong on the Myanmar border. For this reason it is also called the Heihe-Tengchong Line.

On the East of this line is most of what we consider “China”. In 43% of the land area you will find 94% of the entire population. When you see the elevation map above you can understand why. The eastern area is where you find the fertile lowlands, the wheat and rice fields and the intensive agriculture required to feed a massive population. It is the area densely populated by the Han Chinese people.

Across the line is the “Wild West”. It is a land of high mountains, badlands and punishing deserts. Only 6% of the population occupying 57% of the land area. It is a land of pastoralists rather than farmers, the cowboys of China’s wild west. Here you find the minority populations of Tibetans, Uigurs, Kazakhs and Kirgiz. They speak different languages, they worship their religions, they even look different to Han Chinese. These are the peoples of the ancient silk roads who bridged the gap between Imperial China and the Persian world since the days of Ancient Greece and Rome.

From the densely populated East they see a vast, underpopulated, under-exploited wasteland. They see the potential to convert this enormous area into a bread basket for the East. Beijing is pushing West using their new Silk Roads: the China Belt and Road Initiative. The intention is to include the wild west by making it an integral part of the overland routes to Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Turkic former Soviet Republics. Like the Israelis in the Negev the Chinese believe they can use engineering and technology to make their deserts flourish.

All along the desert fringes is their Great Green Wall of China, officially called the Three-North Shelterbelt Program. Its aim is to stop and even reverse the encroachment of the Gobi desert into former grasslands. Sadly much of the environmental damage was done by the Chinese themselves during the Cultural Revolution. Intellectuals were removed from their university posts, handed chainsaws and were sent to the frontier to do dangerous physical work under Mao Zedong. Ultimately the hope is to reverse the damage and even convert the recovered grasslands to horticultural production. This is very similar to what is happening across the Sahel in Africa and the tale of Yacouba Sawadogo.

Ningxia is being developed as China’s wine producing state. Gansu, the elongated province that was defined by the Silk Road, suffers from heavy metal pollution due to poor environmental practices in the past. As a result it is a centre of development for power, including wind, solar and more covertly, nuclear.

In the West we have heard many rumblings about how the Uigurs of Xinjiang province and the Tibetans of both Tibet and Qinghai are treated by the authorities. The Chinese view is that they are modernizing and improving life for the most uneducated, poorest and least developed populations in their country. But this involves forced education through the medium of Mandarin Chinese and the elimination of local cultural and religious nuances from the educational curriculum. This is a form of imposed colonialism all too familiar to indigenous populations under the thumb of a “Big Brother”. Here in Ireland the English used similar tactics in their attempt to wipe out Irish identity.

Han China has a great embedded distrust and even fear of the wild Western barbarians. In Europe we always imagine that the great threat to China was from the North, the Mongol hordes of the steppes. In fact Tibet was the greatest enemy of the early Chinese dynasties. Here is an ode to General Geshu, a great soldier of the 8th century Tang dynasty. He fought campaigns against the Tibetans in Qinghai, where he was a prince of the Turgesh people. Every year at harvest time the raiders would pillage the villages. General Geshu set up an ambush that trapped the bandits, wiping them out as a force for a generation.

哥舒歌

北斗七星高
哥舒夜帶刀
至今窺牧馬
不敢過臨洮

The song of Geshu Han (anonymous)

Beneath the starry plough he stands;
Shuge with his knife in hand.
Outside Tibetan raiders wait
fearing to pass Lintao gate.

-=o0o=-

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أهلا وسهلا

The Arabic title of this post is a quote from May 1967 when Egyptian President Nasser visited his pilots at the Bir Gifgafa airbase in Sinai. In a well publicized press briefing he stated his intentions.  ‘We are now on the verge of a confrontation with Israel …If the Jews threaten us war? I say to them Welcome, we are ready for war!”

Welcome: Ahlan wa sahlan.

On this day in 1967 the Jews arrived. They launched a pre-emptive strike which effectively wiped out the Egyptian Air Force, the largest air force in the Arab world and the greatest threat to Israel. 188 Israeli aircraft destroyed 338 Egyptian aircraft and killed 100 pilots. In the process they shredded the Egyptian runways with specially designed bombs to prevent any surviving aircraft from taking off.

The Third Arab-Israeli war began, and lasted only 6 days. The Israeli Defense Force was able to demonstrate the value of complete air supremacy. Egyptian ground defenses designed with Russian assistance to be triple layered deep and armored were unable to resist once tank-busting aircraft had freedom of the skies.

The photo of Nasser laughing and joking with his pilots says much to me. The handsome strong man leader, confident to the point of cockiness. All the Arab world looked up to him. He spoke words that struck fear into the hearts of the Jews and set them to digging trenches and filling sandbags. Nasser said “Our path to Palestine will not be covered with a red carpet or with yellow sand. Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood.”

Israel believed his rhetoric. The Jews treated the war as an existential crisis. They believed that losing a war would be the end of Israel. So Israel was ready for war. What quickly became clear is that Egypt, despite all the rhetoric was anything BUT ready for war. I am reminded of the story about the Coyote who is mocked by his brothers when he fails to catch a jackrabbit. They coyote tells his brothers “I was only running for my dinner, he was running for his life”.

Our poet today is Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian Arab who was born in what is now Israel. His village was razed by the Israelis and he became a refugee in his own land. Israeli authorities consider him a “Resistance Poet” and arrested him for moving between villages without a permit. His poem “Identity Card” is an anthem of the Arab resistance.

To Our Land; by Mahmoud Darwish

To our land,
and it is the one near the word of god,
a ceiling of clouds
To our land,
and it is the one far from the adjectives of nouns,
the map of absence
To our land,
and it is the one tiny as a sesame seed,
a heavenly horizon … and a hidden chasm
To our land,
and it is the one poor as a grouse’s wings,
holy books … and an identity wound
To our land,
and it is the one surrounded with torn hills,
the ambush of a new past
To our land, and it is a prize of war,
the freedom to die from longing and burning
and our land, in its bloodied night,
is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far
and illuminates what’s outside it …
As for us, inside,
we suffocate more!

Aftermath

Hard Rain; by Donal Clancy

May 20th, 2021
Yellow warning winds whipped
over our Emerald isle
al jazeera al khadra
umbrella smashing winds
Theresa Mannion weather
unnecessary journeys cancelled
tropical rain drumming
trommelfeuer at Verdun
churning the lovely Lee
into a chocolate Congo.

Air raid sirens screamed
over Ashkelon and Beersheba
of the Light Horse Charge
the Iron Dome umbrella
penetrated by Qassams
as Israeli chariots
mighty Merkavas
fired fairy dust phosphorous
and toppled towers
Al Jazeera at al-Jala
legitimate military targets.

Today a zephyr blows
through the downed branches
as the aftermath is assessed
insurance claims considered
loose slates wiped clean
the muezzin calls the faithful
to pray in the rubble
blessings of the ceasefire
a new Atlantic depression forms
as replacements are shipped
F-15’s and fertilizer.

————————

Today the ceasefire came into force in Israel and Palestine following 11 days of violence during which 12 lives were lost in Israel including one Indian and two Thai nationals. In the Gaza strip 232 lives were lost and Israeli airstrikes caused widespread infrastructural damage. In Ireland it was pretty wet.

-=o0o=-

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Passes another poet.

I am bookending this post with two photographs. The first shows the damage to Palestinian property in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza strip, caused by the Israeli military response to the launching of rockets from the Gaza strip. The second shows the damage to Israeli property in Ashkelon caused by the rockets that triggered the response. On the one hand devastation and on the other a bit of building repair and panel beating. The car on the left may also have scratches.

The photos serve to highlight the asymmetry of the “War” between Israel and Palestine.

Northern Ireland also suffered the asymmetry of a “War” against the British Army. If you read my blog you will know I seldom mark the deaths of people. I have lots of posts celebrating the births of poets, but I don’t celebrate death. I make an exception this time for Seamus Deane. A Derry Born writer and classmate of no less than Seamus Heaney. A highly respected writer and academic, Deane passed away this week, on the night of the 12th of May, 2021. This poem was inspired by the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972. He could easily have been writing it this week about Jerusalem and Gaza.

After Derry, 30 January 1972; by Seamus Deane

Lightenings slaughtered
the distance. In the harmless houses
faces narrowed. The membrane
of power darkened
above the valley,
and in a flood of khaki
burst. Indigoed
as rain they came
as the thunder radioed
for a further
haemorrhage of flame.

The roads died, the clocks
went out. the peace
had been a delicately flawed
honeymoon signalling
the fearful marriage
to come. Death had been
a form of doubt.
Now it was moving
like a missionary
through the collapsed cities
converting all it came among.

And when the storm passed
we came out of the back rooms
withing we could say
ruin itself would last.
But the dead would not
listen. Nor could we speak
of love. Brothers had been
pitiless. What could ignite
this sodden night?
Let us bury the corpses.
Fast. Death is our future

and now is our past.
There are new children
in the gaunt houses.
Their eyes are fused.
Youth has gone out
like a light. Only the insects
grovel for life, their strange heads
twitching. No one kills them
anymore. This is the honeymoon
of the cockroach, the small
spiderless eternity of the fly.

Eid and Independence

Here we are 7 years on from the last bit of madness in Gaza

I cannot imagine the events today have not been carefully orchestrated. On the one hand the Islamic extremists in Gaza timing their civil violence in Jerusalem to coincide with the end of Ramadan and Eid Al Fitr today. On the other hand Israeli extremists timing their civil violence to coincide with the anniversary of the Kfar Etzion massacre and of course Israel Independence day tomorrow.

For 7 years Islamic extremists have stockpiled rockets that they now fire off into Israel in an orgy of violence. For 7 years a hardline Israeli government has supported the Settler Movement in the displacement of Arabs in the West Bank. The Israel/Palestine conflicts seem to follow roughly a 7 year cycle. And each cycle seems to be more bitter, more savage and more destructive than the last.

This year Ireland holds a seat on the UN Security Council. Any attempt at meaningful action in the region will be vetoed by the permanent members of the council. The UN, like the League of Nations before it, has been emasculated.

There will be much talk of protests, boycotts, attempts to send aid. There will be pleas for rational action, scaling back from the brink and peaceful overtures. As long as the USA protects Israel nothing will change. For Benjamin Netanyahu an Olive Branch represents a useful stick to beat someone. Any hope of a return to the 2 state solution proposed by the UN in 1948, rejected by the Arabs at that time, is long gone. Israel will never surrender one acre of the land it has acquired in the last 70 years. It cost too much blood. Palestinians will never accept the dispossession of their lands. Peace is hard work. Hatred is easy. Hate wins votes.

There are no petals soft
no yellow centres
no polished pebble melodies
piled into song
My words are rough-hewn from
these rocks where men toil
the plaintive voices of children
the plod of prisoners feet
the curses of the peasant woman
are the wattle of my song

My pictures are the colour of dust
and I sing only of rust
I have swum in the flood
and I know better
for I am bound to this land
by blood.

From 'I am bound to this land by blood' by Olu Oguibe

Sinn Féin Rabbi

Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog – Irish Chief Rabbi

The friends of the enemies of your friends may be the enemies of your enemies. (Donal Clancy 2020)

Pardon me a bit of a ramble through history here, but I want to make a case for the ridiculous alignment of the modern Sinn Féin party in Ireland with the cause of Palestinian Arabs and the even more ridiculous support of the Ulster Unionists for Israel which is simply in opposition to the Nationalist association with the Arab cause.

Just to understand the basics – the Sinn Féin party today in Ireland is a regular flier of the Palestinian flag and supporter of the Palestinian cause and protester against anything Jewish or Israeli. How did this come about? Please read on, there is a good laugh to be had at the end of this story.

Wind back to the nascent Irish State in 1919. In the war of independence against the British the Irish had an unlikely ally on our side. A Polish Jew who arrived in Belfast by way of Leeds in the UK, who became fluent in the Irish language. For his support of the cause of Irish nationalism Isaac Herzog gained the nickname “The Sinn Féin Rabbi”. Sinn Féin was the monolithic political party of Irish Unity. After independence Sinn Féin split into Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Modern Sinn Féin is not the party of 1919.

From 1921 to 1936 the Sinn Féin Rabbi was Chief Rabbi of Ireland before taking up the position of Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the Palestinian mandate ruled by Great Britain. While in Belfast Isaac’s son Chaim was born, but the family moved to Dublin in 1919, which is where Chaim grew up. He emigrated to Palestine with his family in 1936 and aged 18 joined Haganah. He clearly learned a lot about the armed struggle for independence from his Irish upbringing.

Chaim studied law in England and served in the British Army in WW2 where he earned his name Vivian as the English could not pronounce his Jewish name. After the war he returned to Palestine and fought for the independence of Israel. He served in military intelligence, the diplomatic corps and ran out of the USA ahead of a charge of espionage. Chaim went on to serve as an elderly statesman as president of Israel from 1983 for a decade.

In the 1980’s when Herzog was president a new generation of Irish rebels was assembled in Northern Ireland. Following the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972 the Provisional IRA parted company with the “Old” IRA and began a new paramilitary campaign.

The Provo’s found a friend in none other than the pan-Arab nationalist Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the brotherly leader of Libya. Gaddafi was happy to train and arm Arabic groups; and his welcome extended to the enemies of the old colonial powers. Groups of young IRA traveled to the Libyan desert where they trained in the use of arms, explosives and terror tactics. They found themselves side by side with Palestinians who’s parents had been dispossessed in the catastrophe of 1947 or in the Six Day War of 1967.

From their association with groups like the PLF and the PLO the IRA and their political wing, Sinn Féin, became sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. In their eyes Israel had moved from the status of plucky underdog to become a brutal oppressor. They have more in common with Great Britain today than they do with Ireland in relation to their human rights record.

Northern Ireland is much more about who you oppose than about who you support. When the Irish Republicans began to fly flags of support for the cause of Palestine it sparked a knee jerk reaction in the Unionist community. This is when things move from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Unionists of Northern Ireland are intensely pro-British. British Mainland Nationalists observed the Ulster Unionist marches which are led out by bowler hatted members of the Loyal Orange Lodges proudly wearing their orange sashes, supported by cheering crowds flying a sea of union jacks.

The British Unionists decided to lend a show of support for their British Northern Ireland Brothers and a large group of them turned up for the annual marching season. As they were getting ready to start a parade the Unionist supporters of Northern Ireland began to hand out Israeli flags. These are a symbol of opposition to the Republican support in the twisted politics of Northern Ireland. But the British Unionists are rabidly anti-Semitic.

That day they found out that the friends of the enemies of your friends may be the enemies of your enemies.

And with that I give you not a Jewish poet, but in celebration of Isaac Herzog’s command of the Irish language a poem originally written in Gaelic and translated to the beautiful lilting Cork English of Frank O’Connor. Frank was born on this day in 1903 and Chaim was born on this day in 1918.

I Shall Not Die; Padraic Colum (Trans. Frank O’Connor)

I shall not die because of you,
O woman, though you shame the swan;
they were foolish men you killed;
do not think me a foolish man.

Why should I leave the world behind
for the soft hand, the dreaming eye,
the scarlet mouth, the breasts of snow,
is it for these you’d have me die?

The joyous air, the fancy free,
the slender palm, the eye of blue,
the side like foam, the virgin neck?
I shall not die because of you.

The devil take the golden hair!
The maiden thought, the voice so gay,
the rounded heel, the pillared calf
only some foolish man would slay.

O woman, though you shame the swan,
a wise man taught me all he knew,
I know the subtleties of love,
I shall not die because of you.

-=o0o=-

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If you win you lose.

Israel and Egypt have a peace treaty that was signed by Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel in 1979.  The peace was made possible by the Egyptian gains in the Yom Kippur War which began on October 6th 1973.  The real-politik of that “victory” is a crucial lesson on a path to peace.

Egypt was humiliated by Israel in the 6 day war of 1967.  Their air force was wiped out by the Israelis and they lost the Sinai all the way back to the Suez canal.

A weak power which has just lost a war cannot negotiate a peace.  Whatever is negotiated will be seen as a surrender by both sides.  In order to negotiate a peace nations require a parity of gain or loss.  They need a stalemate of sorts.

In 1973, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, when many Israeli soldiers were given holiday leave, the Egyptians and Syrians caught the IDF napping.  It was during Ramadan, the muslim holy month, and the Israelis thought they were safe.  The military build up by the Arabic forces was observed by the Israeli military intelligence, but Egyptian disinformation was excellent.  They sent streams of misleading communications about missing spare parts, malfunctioning equipment and lack of training on new weapons.  They also dismissed their Russian military advisors in the months leading up to the war.

Then, in the summer of 1973 the Egyptians mounted huge military exercises along the Suez canal and the Israelis were forced to mobilise defence forces, at great expense, to shadow the Egyptian movements.  As the exercises went on, month after month, the natural inclination for the Israelis was to downgrade the alert levels.  By the time Yom Kippur arrived many of the soldiers were overdue some leave.

The Arabs made good early gains, the Egyptians especially, retaking large parts of the Sinai.  The inevitable Israeli response was swift and furious.  Within 3 days the fronts were stabilised.

This is when things get really interesting.  Israel was able to throw the Syrians back to the pre-attack lines on the Golan Plateau.  The Syrian attack was a failure and the battle lines remain in contention to this day.

In the Sinai the Israelis were unable to dislodge the Egyptians and a stalemate ensued.  The Israelis had to hold up their hands and admit they had been caught off guard.  The Egyptians were able to sell the conflict as a victory to the Egyptian people.

This perception of a victory allowed Anwar Sadat to underscore his position to the people of Egypt as a strongman.  As a victorious General he could go to the negotiation table and forge a peace with Israel.  Without some form of victory in the Yom Kippur war he could never have agreed the peace treaty with Israel.  The Egyptian hawks would have portrayed any deal as a surrender.

The peace between Egypt and Israel holds to this day.  Although it has its skeptics, those who describe it as a “Cold Peace” akin to a Cold War, the fact is that it has stabilised the region.

What I find interesting is that the Israelis had to give up on victory to secure an enduring peace.  Sometimes when you win you lose, because your victory weakens your opponent, who must then fight on.  The result is decades of conflict.

On the other hand, as in this case, by losing a bit you win the bigger game.  Accept a defeat, give strength to your opponent, and they can sue for peace that will endure.

Anwar Sadat began the Yom Kippur war on this day in 1973.  On this day in 1981 he was assassinated by an islamic fundamentalist group of his own military officers during the annual victory parade celebrating the crossing of the Suez Canal.  Sometimes if you win you lose.

Calendar Wars III

Nizar Qabbani : Syrian Poet

Last night was the spring, or vernal equinox.  In astrological terms that makes today the first day of the new astrological year.  The first month of the Zodiac calendar is Aries, the Ram.  We all love to make fun of horoscopes and the notion that you can predict your future from the rotation of the planet and the precession of the stars.

At the same time the human brain is pre-programmed to seek patterns in nature.  Random chance is a frightening threat, so we seek solace in order and causality.  Reading horoscopes is simply a manifestation of the real human need to make sense of our world.

Today is also the first day of the new year in the Bahá’í calendar, a religion from Iran.  Year 1 of this calendar begins in 1844 CE making this year 175BE.  Though it originates in Iran it is most heavily persecuted there.  It is sad that Islam, which was once renowned for its tolerance of other faiths, has become so prohibitive of other peoples beliefs.

So to poetry and today I have a poem from one of the most famous and best loved Syrian poets.  Nizar Qabbani was born on March 21st 1923 in Damascus which he described in his will as “the womb that taught me poetry, taught me creativity and granted me the alphabet of Jasmine“.

The suicide of his older sister when he was aged 15 had a profound influence on the young Qabbani.  She made the ultimate refusal to an arranged marriage.  All his life he advocated feminism and an examination of the relationship between men and women in Arabic society.

The defeat of Syria and the Arab allies in the 6 day war by Israel also had a profound effect on his work and shifted his focus from the poetry of love to the poetry of politics.

A lesson in Drawing; by Nizar Qabbani

My son places his paint box in front of me
and asks me to draw a bird for him.
Into the color gray I dip the brush
and draw a square with locks and bars.
Astonishment fills his eyes:
‘… But this is a prison, Father,
Don’t you know, how to draw a bird?’
And I tell him: ‘Son, forgive me.
I’ve forgotten the shapes of birds.’

My son puts the drawing book in front of me
and asks me to draw a wheatstalk.
I hold the pen
and draw a gun.
My son mocks my ignorance,
demanding,
‘Don’t you know, Father, the difference between a
wheatstalk and a gun?’
I tell him, ‘Son,
once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks
the shape of the loaf
the shape of the rose
But in this hardened time
the trees of the forest have joined
the militia men
and the rose wears dull fatigues
In this time of armed wheatstalks
armed birds
armed culture
and armed religion
you can’t buy a loaf
without finding a gun inside
you can’t pluck a rose in the field
without its raising its thorns in your face
you can’t buy a book
that doesn’t explode between your fingers.’

My son sits at the edge of my bed
and asks me to recite a poem,
A tear falls from my eyes onto the pillow.
My son licks it up, astonished, saying:
‘But this is a tear, father, not a poem!’
And I tell him:
‘When you grow up, my son,
and read the diwan of Arabic poetry
you’ll discover that the word and the tear are twins
and the Arabic poem
is no more than a tear wept by writing fingers.’

My son lays down his pens, his crayon box in
front of me
and asks me to draw a homeland for him.
The brush trembles in my hands
and I sink, weeping.