My Turkish Bath

When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they inherited many of the city's Roman customs. One was the public bath. When indoor plumbing was unavailable, people bathed very little--sometimes only once a year, other times for special events. The Romans turned bathing into a social occasion when men would meet and socialize, loiter, and gossip about the city's affairs. When their territories were conquered in the East, the public bath was preserved and enriched with elements from the culture of the new imperial overlords, leading to syncretic and distinctive forms that persist to this day. I therefore had to experience a Turkish bath because I wanted a sense of how the Romans bathed and how the conquering Turks added their own practices to the custom. It was a journey into the era when private showers and bathtubs did not exist, as well as a taste of a local custom that has persisted for thousands of years and that is basically foreign to anybody born and raised in North America (and most parts of Europe for that matter).

That is not me in the picture. But that closely approximates my own experience of a Turkish bath

I had two options: go to the touristic public baths and pay a hefty price, or go to the one in the Fatih neighborhood, the Islamic/conservative part of town where prices for everything--including baths--are cheaper and where there are few, if any, tourists. I opted for the latter option, not only because of the huge difference in price (40 Turkish lira rather than 120 that one pays in the tourist area), but also because it would be much more adventurous and perhaps authentic.

When I entered the place, the first thing I noticed was that none of the staff spoke a word of English. They could only express the numbers that referred to the prices of the services--20 lira for the bath only, and 40 lira for a bath and a massage. I opted for the latter. Despite the language barrier, I could communicate with the staff using hand gestures and other non-verbal signs. First I was led me into a small private change room and instructed to completely undress and cover myself with a towel, to leave my belongings there, to lock the door, and take the key with me (all of this was expressed with non-verbal communication and clearly understood). The staff member then led me into the bathing and steam room, which is an area that is completely marble--the floors, the walls, the sinks, everything except the ceiling, which seemed to be built of another kind of stone with patterned holes that allowed the steam to exit the room. The first thing I noticed was that there were about 10-12 local Turks bathing and talking, and I thought: why are these men paying to bathe here when presumably they have indoor plumbing? Maybe they were there because of the social aspect of bathing, or maybe they lacked hot water at home, or maybe--although very unlikely--some of them lived in homes that still lacked private showers and bathrooms. In any event, I had no idea what to do, and so I just made friendly eye contact and copied the others, who were sitting down--some completely naked, others partly covered in towels--beside steaming and marble sinks with hot water and plastic bowls; they would  fill the bowls with water and pour it all over themselves, lather their bodies with soap, and then rinse with the same hot water.

I did this for about ten minutes and then wondered when, and how, and by whom, I would get a massage. I was then approached by a fat, hairy, and middle-aged man who said something to me in Turkish that I did not understand. I said "massage"? And he nodded to express yes. He sat me down beside the sink, and proceeded to pour hot steaming water all over me. Then he put on a glove-like device and rubbed me all over with it (except the private parts), including my scalp. I later learned that this was meant to remove dead skin cells. He then took me to the middle of the room, where there was an elevated area where one could sit or lie down. He instructed me with his hands to lie on my back, and then he covered me with with soap and proceeded to give me a massage that was very rough and intense. Apart from his somewhat smelly armpits and the pain from his intense prodding, rubbing, and pocking of my thighs and upper body, it was an interesting experience. He then did a few things that anyone who has visited a chiropractor is familiar with: crossing your arms and twisting your torso while giving a hard pushes that cause snapping noises in your spine. At one point I heard a snapping noise in the right-side of my rib-cage, and since then I have had a slight pain in that area, making me wonder whether he broke a rib.  Whenever he would press too hard, I would grunt and groan and make eye-contact with him, presumably with an expression on my face that showed some discomfort; he stared and smiled at me with silent amusement, knowing that I was a foreigner who had never experienced a Turkish bath.

After the soap-filled and rough massage over my entire body (except my private parts), I was instructed to rinse myself off (again, only with hand gestures but perfectly understandable) and subsequently led into the private room where I initially undressed. Here I was covered with towels by the staff who continued massaging my back and scalp. After that, I stayed there until I was completely dry, and then exited the room. When I approached the cashier to pay, there appeared the middle-aged hairy fat man who gave me the massage 15 minutes prior, motioning with his hands that he wanted a tip. I gave him one of five lira, even though I suspected that he might have cracked my rib.

After the Turkish bath I went to have a delicious chicken dona (or "shawarma"; the food here--as in all Mediterranean countries--is delightful), and then walked all the way to the Chora, a Bynzantine Church with amazingly preserved mosaics and frescoes. I also walked along the Theodosius wall, which protected the city for 1 thousand years until the Ottomans, with canon and superior numbers, managed to destroy parts of it, allowing them to conquer Constantinople in 1453, destroy the last vestiges of the Roman Empire, impose their own Sharia system of governance, and change the course of history. Observing that part of the wall, and reflecting on the epochal and momentous events that transpired there was awe-inspiring. I have read about that event many times, but being at the actual place allowed the imagination to run wild. I could almost hear the yelling, the pounding of the canons that destroyed the wall, and see the corpses that littered the battlefield. I could almost sense the humiliation of the Romans at losing their historic capital and the triumph of the Ottomans at taking it. It would be roughly equivalent to a Chinese army conquering Washington D.C., destroying the American constitutional and political order, subjugating the inhabitants of the US, taking its territorial possessions and wealth, and imposing a new world order based on the Chinese system of governance. Wow is an understatement.

 Today--the day after--I feel the after-effects of the Turkish bath: minor and totally tolerable aches around my upper shoulder and the rib area where I suspect I may have a cracked rib. I also feel aches in my legs, but this is mostly because yesterday I walked for over 10 hours, although I think the rough treatment of my legs during the massage has something to do with it.

A Day With My Kurdish and Turkish Friends

The weather in Istanbul today was cold and rainy. I had planned to spend the day walking many miles to see an ancient Church with well-preserved frescoes, the wall built by the emperor Theodosius, and to experience a Turkish bath. But when I walked outside to go and get breakfast, the cold rain changed my mind, and I decided to instead stay in the hostel to get work done (mostly marking papers). Around mid-day, the owner of the hostel asked me whether I would like to accompany his son and his son's friend to a town a few hundred kilometers away. He had to go there to pick up some documents from the local university. I immediately decided to go because I saw it as an opportunity to spend the day with locals who I could query--about their lives, and their views on Turkish politics. I also thought it would be nice to get out of Istanbul for the day.

My new friends in Turkey. I am in the middle.

The trip was worth it. The locals who I was with spoke passable English. They are close friends who went to school together, and one is an ethnic Kurd, the other an ethnic Turk. Whenever the Western media speaks about the Kurds and Turks together, it is usually about the problems that the Turkish government has in its attempts to accommodate the wish of the Kurdish minority for more autonomy. It was therefore delightful to see these two young men interact as genuine friends and nothing more; their separate ethnicities did not seem to matter at all. They were very friendly and affectionate towards me and perhaps a bit intrigued about my genuine interest in their lives and beliefs. I asked them questions about their experiences as youngsters in Turkey, their religious views and political beliefs, and their life goals. This conversation took place during a two hour car ride to our destination, and on the way I noticed several things worth mentioning. The first is the sheer size of Istanbul; it took us almost three quarters of an hour to finally reach the city limit and get on the freeway that took us to the next town. Signs of Istanbul's breakneck growth and huge population are everywhere. There are cranes dotting the panorama which attest to the hundreds of new high rises being built, and this is on top of the sprawling and high density already-inhabited buildings and houses that mark the huge landscape. The darker side of this growth was evident as well: when driving on an elevated part of the road one could see clouds of smog below covering entire neighborhoods. I also saw truck drivers relieving themselves on the side of the road--twice. One defecated, and the other urinated, and they seemed pretty nonchalant about it, suggesting that it is considered normal. I am not surprised, since the traffic in Istanbul is so bad that it is easy to imagine a situation whereby nature calls and, because cars are crawling forward very slowly, one cannot wait to reach a toilet and hence must pull over and do their business.

We arrived at our destination and parked the car in a lot where cars seemed to be parked wherever it was convenient or where they could find space; it was not the kind of orderly parking someone from North American is accustomed to. When entering the university, the first thing I noticed was that there are pictures of Mustafa Kemal (or Attaturk, meaning "Father of the Turks") everywhere--in all the hallways, in all the offices, even in the eating area. It really gives the impression that Kemal and his successors built a cult of personality that even the current Islamist government would have a hard time extirpating. One of the questions I have asked people here in Turkey is what they think of Kemal, and the range of responses are interesting. My Kurdish friend told me that he does not like Kemal because he killed a lot of Kurds, while my Turkish friend said that he really liked him. The other day I had dinner with a professor of American origin, and his response was the most interesting. He told me that the omnipresent images of Mustafa Kemal are, to him, a comfortable reminder that Turkey is still a secular republic and that the legacy of Kemalism is one of the only constraints that prevents the current Islamist government from bringing Turkey towards an Iranian-style theocracy. He also said that the current government is slowly dismantling the Kemalist institutions that helped to preserve Turkey's secular political order, such as the army, which last year was purged of secularists and replaced with cronies of Erdogan who are sympathetic to his Islamist agenda. The most intriguing thing he told me was that if he starts to see the omnipresent images of Mustafa Kemal being removed, it would be a sign that the days of the secular republic are numbered and, at that point, he would have to leave the country.

As we were leaving the university, we said our goodbyes to some of the staff with a distinctive Turkish salutation that expresses affection in a very Mediterranean fashion. It is similar to the Italian way of greeting or saying bye: kissing twice on the cheeks while holding the others' hand and placing the other hand on the others' shoulder or upper arm. The Turkish version also has contact with the hands, but rather than kissing on the cheek, there is a contact of the temple area of each others' heads, just above and to the side of eyebrow. I did it for the first time, and it was a bit awkward because I was wearing my glasses, and the salutation ended up misaligning my glasses, forcing me to re-adjust them, but this was a minor issue. I rather appreciated experiencing this distinctive cultural practice which is not that different from the one I am used to using especially with other Italians.

The conversation with my Turkish friends went in many directions, and they mostly expressed the things that youth everywhere are concerned with: jobs, love, and security. They seemed to be cautiously optimistic about the future. One just graduated and was starting a new job, and soon to be married. The other just finished his first degree and plans on pursuing a doctorate in economics. They told me that they oppose Turkey's entrance into the EU. To my question of why, they responded that Europe is a mess and that they do not want Turkey to be liable for the problems of the weaker members. Ten or fifteen years ago, they said, it might have been a good idea for Turkey to join, but not now. I could not help but be amused at this response, because it was remarkably similar to the responses I received from some British euroskeptics who I interviewed for my PhD thesis two and a half years ago, who told me that most Britons want to leave the EU because "they could see what a fucking mess it is".

I just arrived back in the hostel, and soon I will be having dinner with an academic who teaches in the US and who happens to be in Istanbul for similar reasons as me. Tomorrow I will go and do the things that I had planned on doing today: seeing the ancient frescoes, the Theodosius wall, and getting a Turkish bath.

Turkey's Torn Soul

The much-maligned and sometimes misunderstood former Harvard professor Samuel Huntington proposed a thesis on the Clash of Civilizations which asserted that the post-Cold War world would be defined by conflict rooted in culture. Different cultural units, or civilizations, were defined by their religious traditions: Islamic, Western Christian, Eastern Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, and others were the main civilizations which would replace ideologies and the nation-state as the foci of political competition, struggle and domination.  He also proposed a category that did not neatly fit into his framework: "torn countries", that is, those states that are internally divided at the level of culture and hence had to make a choice on which side of the global struggle they would join. Torn countries included Mexico, Russia, and the country that will be the subject of this blog post: Turkey.

I arrived in Turkey last week, and since then I have walked around extensively, silently making observations about the people I talk to and the places I see. On this basis, I can confirm that Huntington was on to something when he called Turkey a torn county, because signs of a divided soul are easy to see. The first is the territorial division of Istanbul: the Western part of the city is in continental Europe, while the Eastern part is in Asia, and these sections of the city are divided by the Bosphorus waterway. Within both the Western and Eastern parts there are geographical divisions that coincide with different cultural expressions: Islam and the West. The hostel I am staying at is in the "European" part, both geographically and culturally. It is in a neighborhood characterized with features that are present in pretty much any modern Western city: Churches that reflect its Christian heritage, and the elements that reflect the secularism that most Christian societies have become: bars where people openly drink large amounts of alcohol, advertisements with scantily clad and food deprived models, couples--both gay and straight--openly displaying affection for each other, women seductively flaunting their features, some with style, others crassly.

The Islamic/conservative part of the city, the Fatih neighborhood, is about a 25 minute walk from where I am, and walking there gave me the sense of being in another civilization.The first thing I noticed was that there were fewer tourists, although I am not sure why, since there is a lot to see. There are also fewer European-looking people, more Arabs, more women with full length veils and face coverings, more men with beards and the traditional cap and Abayas rather than trousers. The stores in the European part usually have the names and prices of goods in English as well as Turkish. In Fatih the main language other than Turkish was Arabic. I did not see any bars or people openly drinking, although I am sure that alcohol is available. There are also more mosques. One of the more interesting experiences of being here is hearing the call to prayer, when the Muezzin reminds worshipers through loudspeakers from the Minarets that it is time to worship Allah. Although these can be heard across the city, even in the European part, in Fatih one hears a cacophony as many Muezzin from many Mosques simultaneously recite the call. The call to prayer there is louder but also more melodic and rhythmic, penetrating windows and walls so all can hear. Most people in public places ignore it, but for somebody hearing it for the first time it can have quite the effect, giving one a sense that here, religion continues to play a significant role in the public sphere. It creates the impression that Islamic belief suffuses even the minutiae of daily life; this strongly contrasts with the West, where in all but a few places explicit expressions of religion have been relegated to the margins of society.

The Hagia Sophia embodies Turkey's torn soul as it represents the clash between Christianity, Islam, and secularism. This Church was founded by Constantine the Great in the fourth century and remained the largest place of worship in Christendom for over a thousand years. Then it was taken by Muslims in the famous battle of Constantinople, who proceeded to turn the Churches, including the Hagia Sophia, into Mosques. It was from Istanbul that the Ottomans governed their huge and diverse empire, and their luxurious palace--the splendour of which rivals the palaces in Europe--is situated right next to the Hagia Sofia. One can picture the Sultan and other dignitaries praying in that Church-turned-Mosque as a symbol of their domination over former Christian lands. After the rise of Mustafa Kemal in the early 20th century, Turkey became a secular republic and, consistent with his contempt of all religion, Kemal turned the Hagia Sophia into a Museum. Today, it bears all the fingerprints of this tortured history. With the exception of the minarets, the external structure displays the typical form of a Byzantine Church. Inside, the main floor has been altered to suit the sensibilities of the Ottoman conquerors: depictions of prophets, angels, or any human form, whether pictorial or otherwise, have been expunged and replaced with large signs that dominate the main hall and with Arabic inscriptions that say "There is no god but Allah" and with the names of first Caliphs. On the second floor, there are the remains of the Christian frescoes that depict Christ and Mary, although these were, to my knowledge, only uncovered by restorations that took place in the 20th century. Now that the Hagia Sophia is a museum, it is no longer a symbol of imperial power--Christian or Muslim. It reflects to some extent the secularism that Kemal embodied: open to all regardless of creed and to be viewed and enjoyed as art from the temporal world, not as holy or transcendent. Out of the three worldviews that the history of the Hagia Sophia represents--Eastern Christianity, Islam, and secularism--it is the last two that currently represent the struggle for Turkey's soul at both the political and cultural levels.

The current government in Turkey clearly represents the Islamic side of this divide. Led by President Erdogan, the leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (the Economist uses the curious term "mildly Islamist" to describe the party), the government receives much of its support from the poor, religious, and conservative folks who crowd some parts of Istanbul and the hinterland. Many, perhaps most, vote for economic reasons--after all, under Erdogan Turkey has enjoyed very fast rates of growth. But others vote for religious reasons, which is odd when one considers that it is illegal under Turkey's secular constitution for political parties to openly call for a return to the Sharia law that provided the ethical and legal code for the Ottoman empire before it was disbanded by Mustafa Kemal. Many of the secularists I spoke to in Istanbul fear that Erdogan is bringing Turkey into an Islamic direction, and they cited many examples that justify their concern: Turkey's support for Islamist political movements across the Middle East, especially during the Arab Spring, controversial comments from the Minister of religious affairs which suggested turning the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque again, the introduction of mandatory religious instruction in schools, the attempt to make adultery illegal, high taxes and other punitive measures that make alcohol unavailable except in tourist areas, and retrograde comments on the status of women (Erdogan recently said that men and women are not equal).

At the cultural level the divide is equally pronounced. As mentioned above, the life and atmosphere of religious parts of the city seem to be worlds apart from those in the secular part. There is also often barely disguised contempt between the two sides. I have heard that one expression that secularists use when referring to women who wear the full face covering is "cockroaches". Many religious folks, on the other hand, view the lifestyles of secular Turks as morally degrading and corrupt. Of course, this polarization does not tell the entire story. There is a veritable kaleidoscope of orientations here, with various shades of belief and unbelief fluidly intermixing within families and friends. One common sight is groups of young female friends walking around taking selfies and enjoying each others' company, with one or two wearing the traditional Islamic garb while the others dress in typical European style. This cultural schizophrenia certainly exists at the individual level as well. One gets the sense that many of the people here expressing Islamic belief, either in dress or speech, engage in pre-marital sex and drink alcohol when their parents aren't looking, both of which are prohibited in Islam. In this, they are not that different from some of the late-modern Ottomans who were infamous for professing piety while engaging in all the sultry pleasures that their positions of power gave them access to.

Turkey's divided soul has important implications for one of the most important political questions facing the country: whether it should join the European Union. It is my opinion that Turkey will never join for the simple reason that Europe's great powers, France and Germany, do not want it to. Turkey's huge population and growing economy mean that, were it to join the EU, the influence of France and Germany would be greatly reduced (this is one of the cynical reasons for which Italy and the UK support Turkey's accession). But apart from these political realities, it is worth reflecting on whether Turkey belongs in Europe. Many of my secular friends here certainly think so, and in fact they support Turkey's attempt to become a member of the EU precisely because they believe (or, more accurately, hope) that Europe will bring their country closer to its civilization. What is more, as mentioned above, some parts of Turkey are unmistakably European, and there is also the fact that this was the centre of the Eastern Roman Empire for over 1000 years. This suggests that Turkey has the cultural and historical requisites for EU membership. 

However, officials in Paris and Berlin cannot but notice that Erdogan is pushing Turkey into a more Islamic direction. This trend certainly militates against Turkey's potential EU membership. Whether Erdogan will succeed in fully Islamicizing Turkey is open to doubt, however. If a major economic slump reduced his popularity, and the secular opposition were to unify, the political winds might change and the Islamists would be thrown out of office, which would halt or reverse many of Erdogan's policies. When or if that happens, Turkey might see a trend towards secularism and away from Islam, but the country would still have a torn soul, as Huntington accurately observed. Maybe this is not a bad thing, and perhaps it was meant to be this way; after all, the country has been and is the cultural and geographic cross road between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the far east, and even now the population is composed of a bewildering array of different sects and ethnicities that set their roots here at one time or another in the 9000 years that this land has been inhabited. Having a torn soul, in addition, in individuals as in countries, provides the diversity and creativity that makes life colourful and interesting even if it is chaotic and unstable. Besides, would Turkey be as interesting as it now is if it was more culturally homogeneous? I strongly doubt it.

Sex, Death, and Shit—the Great Taboos

They evoke, depending on the person, context, or culture, intense emotions such as fascination, fear, vulnerability, shame, desire, disgust, mystery, and a reminder that we are subject to forces that we do not really control. It is perhaps for this reason that in D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, those three things seem to be weaved together in the lives of the main characters, especially Connie, the upper-class woman who has an affair with Mellors, the lower class servant of Sir Clifford, Connie’s husband who embodies everything that socialists despise: a greedy industrial capitalist with little empathy for his workers and who profits from their labours while living in comfort and luxury. Another major theme of the novel is the intersection between sex, class relations, and the geopolitical context of the time when the novel was written: just after World War 1, which had left deep scars on all of Europe and which, among other things, led to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the existential clash between the West and the East. This ideological clash, as we will see, impacted even the most intimate relations of people who were present at the time.

The novel begins with the Great War. Shortly after the marriage between Connie and Sir Clifford, the latter, like most young British men, went to the front to fight and was seriously wounded, coming back to his young wife permanently paralyzed from the waist down and unable to perform the conjugal functions of a husband. Initially, it seems as if he and Connie could preserve the matrimonial bond through their mental connection: Clifford demonstrates the bourgeoisie appreciation for art and the life of the mind, which Connie finds attractive. But their lack of physical intimacy leaves her deeply dissatisfied, leading to a kind of emotional crisis which leads to a brief affair with the insecure and peripatetic artist Michealis. Although she is fascinated by his “unscrupulousness” and youthful beauty, his sexual egoism ultimately leaves her dejected. She then meets Mellors, the gatekeeper and servant of Sir Clifford. She perceives in him “a vividness not far from death itself”.  Her consciousness of death, and her attendant emotional crisis is also captured when, during a walk in the woods, she sees the cemetery by the Church, “with hideous tombstones that seem like teeth”, and comes to the realization that she will soon be buried there.

Shortly after, the romance between her and Mellors begins, but it does not follow the traditional script of courtship, flirtation, and consummation. Rather, it has an animal like-quality to it: after a chance meeting in the woods, Mellors is overcome with the male procreative urge, while Connie is seemingly helpless to her impulses as well. It is as if their union has the force of nature, almost completely independent of each other’s will. Although, at least initially, the dalliance follows the traditional pattern of Mellors as the dominant male and Connie as the submissive female, both are subject to forces that neither can control. As we will see, this kind of romance is a metaphorical kind of resistance to the bourgeoisie order that both parties are contemptuous of: instrumentally rational, rule based, suppressive of the natural and instinctual, and organized around the seeming impermeability between the classes.

The novel depicts their love-making in explicit detail and with a poetic force that must have jarred the sensibilities of readers in early 20^th century Britain, when the book was published. Their union is compared to the creative force “at the beginning of time” and Connie’s orgasms are described as “rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite, and melting all of her molten inside”. That is quite the literary achievement: capturing and conveying the seemingly ineffable subjective sensations of orgasm with the English language is no easy feat, and D.H. Lawrence has done it. Another curious feature of the lovemaking between the two is its association with human excrement. Before making love, the novel repeatedly refers to how they could feel the sexual attraction for each other “in their bowels”. Mellors displays a curious fascination with Connie’s anus, at one point touching it and saying “if that shits and the other pisses, I’m glad. I don’t want no woman that couldn’t shit or piss”. Later in the novel, he asks Connie why she likes him, and she replies “your courage and tenderness to put your hand in my tail” (one of D.H. Lawrence’s curious euphemisms for anus). This, I think, provides a clue to their love: there is a primordial tenderness that does not shy away from the deepest (pardon the pun) and most vulnerable parts of the naked body. It is no coincidence that this kind of sex clashed with the upper-class bourgeois and industrial post-war order that both parties detested, where the union between men and women was more about producing offspring to bequeath inherited wealth rather than satisfying the animal lust that humans are often subject to.

Sex and Geopolitics

As a political scientist my knowledge of the Great War tends to be restricted to the realm of geopolitics. As any first year student knows, the conflict led to a new world order: the rise of the US as the world’s dominant power, its mission to spread democracy and a world governed by law rather than force, the creation of the League of Nations (the precursor to the UN) and other global governance institutions, the complete redrawing of borders in Europe, Asia, and especially the Middle East (and for the last of those regions we are still living with the aftermath). One of the beneficial aspects of reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover is learning about the intersections between World War 1 and the intimate relations between the sexes. The immense slaughter and industrial-scale violence impacted families all across Europe, and this was also the case for the characters discussed here. After being wounded in battle Sir Clifford becomes paralyzed from the waist down, and hence his marital union with Connie cannot be completed. With all his British stoicism Clifford seems to be resigned to his fate and is content to pursue the life of the mind, but not Connie. She is young (28), brimming with the desire to fully explore and pursue her womanhood, and to eventually reproduce. Clifford understands this, and even encourages her to have an affair while in Italy and become pregnant so that they could raise a child as if it was his. This would also ensure offspring for Clifford to whom he could bequeath his accumulated property.

It does not turn out that way, of course. Connie feels free to pursue affairs with other men, but ends up with one of Clifford’s servants. The political content is inescapable: Connie’s union with a man below her in status, wealth, prestige, and class is a direct affront to Clifford’s bourgeois world which was characterized (and still is, I would argue) with the near impermeability between the classes. Different cultures, habits, tastes, rhythms of life, language, and networks usually ensure that mating is usually intra- rather than inter- class, and this continues to be true today. It is a major channel that directly transmits the economic inequality of the system to future generations and ensures the perpetuation of the existing order. Connie’s passion for Mellors is a direct assault on this pattern, which is one of the things that makes it so intriguing.

During their discussions and pillow talk, Mellors reveals himself as sympathetic to the ideals of the Bolsheviks, whose revolution in Russia in 1917 was made possible by convulsions of World War 1. He rails against the institutionalized greed of the capitalist system, and how it subjects the classes to a dehumanizing and degrading existence, and how it prioritizes industry, rationalization, and rules over instinct, the intuitive faculty, and the body’s natural functions. In an echo of the later complaints of environmentalists, he also condemns the ugliness of the factories and the towns organized around them, and how they despoil the beauty of nature. Connie agrees with him, but unlike Mellors she is a direct beneficiary of the system: her upper-class upbringing and education, her life of comfort and luxury with Clifford, were made possible by the wealth that her class accumulated. These philosophical disagreements come to the fore in one dramatic scene when she argues with Clifford, condemning him and the order that he embodies. Her sympathy for the ideals of the Bolsheviks represents a direct and irreconcilable clash with Clifford. He replies that inequality has always existed, regardless of the economic or political system in place (he is right about that), and that societies will always divide themselves into classes because that is the nature of things. She senses he is right, and although her love affair with Mellors is a direct refutation of his observation, she is perhaps dimly aware that it is radically unique and rare. More common is the attitude of her sister, Hilda, who has sympathy for the plight of the working classes but would not genuinely inter-mix (in every sense of the term) with them, because of the radical differences in outlook, communication, taste, and all the other building blocks of human bonding and intercourse.

The association of death, sex, and shit throughout the text has an ominous undertone at times, and one could not help but think that the love triangle between Clifford, Connie, and Mellors would end in tragedy, perhaps with Clifford murdering Mellors or vice versa. Happily, it does not turn out that way. Connie becomes pregnant with Mellors’s child, and has to make the grindingly difficult decision on whether to stay with Clifford and raise the child as the latter’s son (and give him an heir) or follow her instincts and leave Clifford so that she could be with Mellors. In light of the general thrust (wink) of the text, it is unsurprising that she chooses the latter option. The book ends there, leaving the reader wondering whether the love between her and Mellors endures the trials and tribulations of Connie choosing to live with a much lower standard of living than she was used to, and raising a child under these new conditions. In the real world, one could imagine that this would eventually cause a lot of strife between them, especially after the intensity of their passionate love died down, as it often does. Or perhaps they would have remained together, monogamous and faithful, raising children and diligently working hard to ensure that all their material needs were met. This would have been ironic, since their love affair, which began as a form of resistance to the system, would have ended in classic bourgeois style.

What Hip-Hop Dancing has Taught Me About Life

As a teenager in the late eighties and early nineties I was an avid hip-hop and break-dancer. This was an era when those interested in the genre would sometimes, while walking in public spaces, carry bulky stereos on their shoulders with pounding music that caused equal amounts of annoyance and amusement. Often, on the sidewalk or in the park, the stereo and sheets of cardboard would be placed on the ground, a circle would form, and we would practise our moves and compete against each other. Twenty years have passed since then, and now I am an almost middle-aged academic. My students have probably never seen one of those stereos except in some eighties flick or a museum.

Although I stopped dancing regularly, there still is a part of me that has a blast moving to the rhythmic melodies, rhyming lyrics, and booming beats. In fact throughout the past few decades I continued to dance, but only occasionally and for fun—sometimes at home in the living room, other times at clubs with friends. This year I decided to take up hip-hop dancing again, even though it would be hard to reconcile with the punishing hours involved in my teaching and research. It has been two months since I started taking weekly classes. I am still in the beginner-intermediate level, and plan to make it to the full-intermediate by winter 2015 and to the advanced-level by 2016, but already I have learned that hip-hop dancing has a lot of life lessons to teach:

1) Humiliation is necessary for success

Entering my first class was very awkward, mainly because I was twice the age of almost everyone else. Generally I am a pretty confident guy, but this confidence did not prepare me for the embarrassment that I felt when I was unable to keep up with the others. I thought that my past history of dancing would have made a beginner class a breeze. What I found, rather, was that I could not follow all the moves of the instructor, nor coordinate with everybody else. The humiliation was compounded by the fact that all this happened in front of a huge mirror, where everyone could see how out of step I was. At certain moments, I just wanted to leave the room, with my tail between my legs, and forget about the whole experience, never to return. But I was determined. Two months later, I have improved considerably, such that I can now keep up with the instructor and with everyone else.

Last week I decided to take my first intermediate class. I thought I would be able to handle it because I have become good at the beginner level. I was wrong; the next level is harder than I thought, and, similar to my first beginner class, I was humiliated because I was the only person in the room who could not keep up. But this did not discourage me. In fact it made me more determined than ever to master the intermediate level. It also made me more comfortable with humiliation, which is salutary in so many ways. It not only forced me to think about what went wrong and how to improve. It also deflated my ego, which is a good defense against pride, one of the major defects of character that afflicts the human race.

2) Anything worth having is hard

My objective is not to become a professional dancer. At this stage in my life it would not be prudent to throw away the ten years of university that it took to obtain a PhD and aim to tour as a back-up dancer for J-Lo or J-Z. My definition of success is more modest: to reach the advanced level in less than two years. But even this will take a lot of dedication, sweat, and hard work. And who knows? I might discover, after reaching that modest objective, that my definition of success was too restricted and that I should aim for the stars, although with my already aching knees that is very unlikely.

3) To be original, one must first learn from the experts

We live in an age in which originality and individual self-expression are supreme values, often irrespective of the quality of these things (in some circles, the very notion of “quality” is a bourgeois anachronism that devalues human equality). One of the ironies of the times, though, is that as more people aim to be original, they actually become more like each other. Most claims or perceptions of originality, then, are quite shallow. True originality should therefore include the element of quality; it must not only be different, but in some sense an improvement. This takes a lot of hard work, and before one can get there, one must learn from the masters of the trade. This is true whether one is completing a PhD or learning how to dance. Because of my history of dancing it would be easy to delude myself into thinking that I can come up with better moves than my teacher, but this is not the case. My sense is that I will be able to be truly original when I have mastered the advanced level. After that, I can start to try to develop my own techniques and routines that build upon and improve what I have been taught. This is no guarantee that true originality will emerge, but it will be worth trying.

4) With art, feeling is more important than thinking

Taking hip-hop classes has forced me to train my brain to learn in new ways. I remember ideas pretty well. After reading a book, I will remember most of the main ideas of the text; give me a newspaper, and after reading it I will be able to recall the content of most of the articles; ditto for poetry: with a little effort I can memorize entire pieces of verse, like Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be”. The reason, I think, is that I have always been a reader, and my brain—either through learning, genetics, or both—is equipped to process and internalize ideas. One of the reasons I struggled during my first hip-hop classes was that I tried to learn the dance routine the same way that I learn ideas: through thinking and memorization. Luckily, I had a good instructor to tell me that that was the wrong approach. He told me that I had to “feel” the moves. How, I asked? He replied that every move should be felt as a whole body sensation. That little piece of advice made a dramatic difference in my capacity to learn.

Feeling is important for other reasons. When listening to a beautiful piece of music, or reading a moving poem, or observing a delightful painting, we are touched because of the way that these pieces of art make us feel. We can intellectualize all we want about why Hamlet’s “To Be or Not to Be” can stir the soul, but fundamentally the poem’s power has endured for centuries because of its emotional impact on the reader. The same is true for hip-hop dancing. Watching the instructor dance is beautiful because of the way his talent makes the observer feel. Success, then, will be measured, not mainly on the basis of how much I have learned, but on the way that people feel when they see me dance. Did I impact them emotionally in some way? If not, then I have a lot to learn.

Lastly, the beliefs “if it feels right, do it” or “follow your heart” or “it is right if you feel it” have no place in the attempt to become a good hip-hop dancer. In fact in many ways this genre teaches me to ignore the way I feel. Had I followed my “feelings”, I would not have returned to the class after those humiliating experiences, nor would I risk dancing in front of others when I am so unsure of myself. One of the beautiful things about this experience is that it is helping me to become comfortable with negative feelings, to not run away whenever things get uncomfortable or hard, to accept my flaws and weaknesses. This is difficult but wholly salutary for all areas of life. Progress is slow but with determination becomes inexorable.

5) Harmony and coordination with others compliments individual talent.

Hip-Hop dancing has been a helpful reminder that we are not equally endowed. For reasons of biology, learning, and plain old luck, some are simply more talented than others. At the classes, I sometimes cannot help but be envious at some of the dancers in the room who seem to be able to learn and perform the moves with ease, while I am struggling. But although—at least at this point—I am not as good as the others, I am getting better. And when I dance with those who are better than me, it helps to motivate me to improve.

When we dance together as a group, this inequality of talent is somewhat reduced because we are all doing the same moves. Some do them better than others because they have more rhythm in their bounce, or because they can somehow incorporate their entire bodies—including the slightest facial expressions—into each move, giving the motions much more soul than would otherwise be the case. But these differences are minimized when as a group we do the same routine, and when we are coordinating the moves with one another. This seems to be a metaphor for other spheres of human activity. The intrinsic inequality of talent between human beings is somewhat attenuated when they work together for a shared goal—whether in the seminar room, business enterprise, or dance studio. This does not, of course, negate the value of individual genius. Watching Michael Jackson dance is a reminder that some will always tower above the others, and no amount of team work can change that. But still: there is something magical when people dance together because, almost through osmosis, the skills of the best are transferred to the less talented, creating something that is more than the sum of the individual parts.

 

 

Zionism and the Birth of Israel

When one speaks of “history”, the event in question  is often presented as objectively true in the sense that most people agree on what happened. But this obscures the extent to which many of the facts and events of the past that people take for granted are actually the constructs of scholars and historians who disagree among themselves on what constituted the historical event. In this regard, a useful conceptual distinction is between “history” and “historiography”: the latter refers to the methods and theories that scholars deploy to understand the past, while “history” refers to the popular—and mistaken—use of the term, namely, that history can be objectively and conclusively known. This is rarely the case, and that is especially true for the circumstances that surrounded the birth of Israel, which led to one of history’s most intractable and interminable conflicts that persists to this day and will likely continue to for many generations. The previous blogpost on Israel was about a book written by Menachem Begin, a Zionist whose interpretations of the past differ greatly from others that will be the focus here. “New Historians”, as they are called, are a group of Israeli scholars who challenge the Zionist narrative that Israel is surrounded by enemies bent on its destruction, that it miraculously won the war of independence in 1948 against seemingly insurmountable odds, that the Palestinian Arab refugees voluntarily fled their homes because they were told to by their brethren in neighbouring countries,  and that the conflict is ultimately rooted in the Palestinians’ intransigent refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

A discussion of the birth of modern Israel must start with the policy of Britain, the colonial power that ruled the Holy Land in the crucial years before 1948. Zionists tend to focus on the Balfour declaration, which established the legal basis for a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Zionists are correct that legally, as the ruling power, Britain did have the authority to make that decision. It is worth recalling that it was made before the right of national self-determination had become an established principle of international relations. This meant that Britain did not have a legal obligation to consult with the locals who might have objected, even if it had a moral obligation to do so. In fact many of today’s states in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa were created by the great powers in Paris after World War 1 precisely because, at the time, drawing borders and installing client states was how international politics worked. Locals often resisted, but unlike in the present time there was no universal legal code that they could appeal to.

However, what the Zionists neglect to mention is that Britain also promised a state to the local Arabs in Palestine in return for their services to the British Empire in its fight against the Ottoman Turks. In other words, Britain made promises to both communities that were contradictory and unrealizable. Perhaps this was done in good faith; the British may have thought that the two communities would find some sort of compromise that would allow some form of co-existence. Maybe it was the perfidious Albion making promises it knew it could not keep because it furthered the interests of the Empire. The truth is probably more prosaic: human stupidity. Britain bungled the situation because it stumbled in its temptation to satisfy both parties. The rest, as they say, is history.

When it became clear that Jews and Arabs would not find a compromise, Britain threw its hands in the air and passed the problem to the United Nations, which imposed a partition. Jews accepted it, the Arabs did not and subsequently invaded the nascent Jewish state. This is one of the only events that the Zionists and the New Historians agree happened. However, their interpretations of the events are very different. First, the New Historians do not accept that all the Arab states shared the same goal of pushing Jews into the sea. Rather, there were mixed motives. King Abdullah of Jordan, for example, was the nominal leader of the Arab invasion of Israel, but his main agenda seemed to be territorial aggrandizement for Jordan in some areas even if it meant making peace with the Jews. This may have clashed with the motives of others, like the Mufti of Jerusalem, who openly proclaimed a jihad against the Jewish inhabitants and directed his followers to fight them uncompromisingly. These mixed motives, as well as poor organization, training, communication, and transportation, are what contributed to the Arab defeat, at least according to the New Historians who want to dispute the Zionist belief that the Jewish victory was some sort of miracle that could be explained only by divine intervention. The New Historians also have a different take on the reaction to the UN’s partition plan. Although it is correct that the Jews accepted it and Arabs did not, the founders of Israel never really believed that the borders were final. Territorial expansion was the plan from the beginning, and this seemed to be confirmed by the capture of Arab territory in subsequent wars and the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal and recognized by no country, not even Israel’s allies. According to this interpretation, the Jews’ acceptance of the UN partition is essentially a moot point, since from the beginning there were plans to encroach on Arab territory.

The war of 1948 between Jews and Arabs led to an exodus of around 700 thousand refugees that continues to stain historical memory and that prevents a final resolution to the conflict. Israel’s supporters have long held that the Arabs voluntarily fled their homes because they were encouraged by neighbouring Arab states who sent messages via radio frequency that warned of an impending invasion and that encouraged them to leave, promising that they could return after they had destroyed the Jewish state. This, of course, is very self-serving, for, if the local Arabs left of their own volition, than they are responsible. The New Historians have adduced evidence that poses a fundamental challenge to this account of the refugees, thumbing their noses at this attempt to shroud the Jewish states’ complicity. Benny Morris, for example, argues that many Arabs fled because there were many massacres of innocent civilians in Arab villages. Their flight, then, was coerced in the sense that staying might have meant a violent death. Avi Shlaim goes further, arguing that there was a systematic plan among the Jewish leadership to expel as many Arabs as possible to make room for Jewish settlement. In this regard, he quotes Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, who expressly ordered his men to expel Arabs.

The stakes of this debate are not only scholarly. They raise existential questions about the legitimacy of Israel itself. One of the characteristics of the Zionists is that they are internally consistent: their narrative, although partial and perhaps even tendentious, supports the case for Israel’s sovereignty in Palestine—legally and morally. The same cannot be said of the New Historians. Their narrative arrives at an inescapable conclusion: that a monumental and epochal injustice was done to the local Arabs when Israel was created. And yet the New Historians persist in proclaiming that the Jewish state has a right to exist. The mental gymnastics required to square that circle are worth mentioning. Avi Shlaim, one of the most articulate New Historians, argues that Israel’s legitimacy rests on the United Nations partition plan. Legally he is absolutely correct: the recognition of Israel by the great powers of the Security Council does give the Jewish state juridical legitimacy. But this elides the fact that the Security Council did not have the consent of the local Arabs or the Arab countries in the region. In a sense, then, the Security Council was acting imperially, the way that empires have always acted: drawing borders as they please, and locals’ wishes were secondary to the superior military force of imperial masters. The fact that it was an international body ostensibly suffused with the ideals of the United Nations does not change that.

Many Arab states have reluctantly resigned themselves to Israel’s existence. The Jewish state has signed peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and has ratified agreements with the moderate Palestinian leadership that recognizes Israel’s right to exist. What is more, even Arab states that still do not formally recognize Israel, like Saudi Arabia, have expressed a willingness to do so provided it makes major concessions on borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. This is progress, of a sort, even when we take into account that Arab masses likely do not feel the same, and that the Jewish state still has implacable foes bent on its annihilation, like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and others. The climate in the region remains poisonous and toxic, raising questions about whether, and how, the conflict can be solved.

There have been many missed opportunities to resolve the conflict, and this is another area where Zionists and New Historians disagree. The former sustains that the conflict has not been solved because of the Palestinians’ unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. One example that supports their view is the collapse of the second Oslo negotiations. Then, the Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat over 80% of the West Bank, the return of East Jerusalem which would become Palestine’s capital, and a solution to the refugee problem that included accepting 500 refugees a year plus compensation. It was an unprecedented offer, and broke many taboos, especially on Jerusalem, which for Zionists must remain under complete Israeli control. Arafat, under pressure from other Arab countries, refused the offer, and, even worse, did not make any counter-offers. The talks collapsed, and even former US president Bill Clinton blamed Arafat. It seemed to confirm the Zionist belief that the Arabs do not really want a two state solution, otherwise they would have accepted it when it was offered to them.

The New Historians agree that Arafat missed an historic opportunity to finally end the conflict, but they point out that this does not absolve Israel from its illegal settlement expansion that makes a two-state solution more remote than ever. They also mention that the Jewish state has also rejected offers from Arab states to end the conflict. For example, after the 1948 war, some Arab modernizers, like Colonel Zaim of Syria, were willing to accept Israel’s existence and even help solve the refugee problem in exchange for territorial concessions that would not have threatened the country. Israel, from a position of strength, declined the offer, arguing that the armistice agreements were sufficient to keep the peace. According to Avi Shlaim, this represents a missed opportunity that might have led to peace between Israel and Syria, which to this day remain hostile enemies.

So where do we go from here? Global elites and members of the commentariat believe that the two-state solution is the only way for the communities to co-exist. Every time there is a war between them—around every 2-3 years—that “solution” is uncritically bandied about as if it is self-evident to all thinking and well-meaning people. I too believed that, until I travelled to Israel and Palestine in the spring of 2014. It was then that I realized that the so called two-state idea is largely an elite construction that does not accord with many facts on the ground. First is the fact that many, perhaps most, Palestinians would not want to live in a Palestinian state, regardless of what they tell pollsters or foreign journalists. Why? Because such an entity would probably be corrupt and poor and mostly dependent on foreign aid. Consider this: Arabs living in Israel enjoy one of the highest living standards in the world, with access to world class schools and public services that rival and even surpass those in the developed world. How many of them would give up these benefits to live in some Palestinian state that would be much poorer, where perhaps only the politically connected would enjoy a high standard of living? This speaks volumes about the viability of a Palestinian state. It also confirms one of the observations I made through the simple act of talking to average people: most do not care about abstractions like “two-states”. Rather, most want the things that others take for granted: a job that can support a family, security of property, and good public services. This basic fact is obscured to Westerners because the media provides a skewed version of reality. We see either images of negotiations between elites, or the after effects of violence perpetrated by extremists. But this does not reflect the reality of the majority who do not share the interests of either the elites or the radicals.

A two-state solution is not viable for other reasons. When I was in the Holy Land, I was struck by how closely the communities were to each other. I recall seeing an Israeli settlement in Bethlehem (in the West Bank) that was a stone throw’s distance from Palestinian homes. East Jerusalem, which many Arabs would like as their future capital, seems to seamlessly connect with the Christian parts of the city. In Hebron, the tomb of Sarah and Abraham—holy to both Islam and Judaism—is in an ancient building that is divided between Jewish and Muslim sections. Jewish settlements in Hebron are also often atop Palestinian stores and apartments. How would the two state idea be applied to communities who live in such close proximity? In theory, Jews would be subject to the laws of their state, and Palestinians to the laws of their own state, even though in practice they are essentially sharing the same territory. This seems unfeasible, to put it lightly, and one can envisage endless legal disputes between two nominally sovereign nations that would be difficult to resolve.

It seems, then, that the only viable idea is a bi-national unitary state. This would challenge the whole paradigm of the conflict, since the mantra of the two-state solution has become so unthinkingly entrenched in the discourse on Israelis and Arabs. This was recognized by Edward Said, a Palestinian Christian born in Jerusalem whose family fled the 1948 war. He was one of the world’s most articulate and vocal defenders of Palestinian rights, and he too believed in the two state idea—until he travelled back to his homeland and realized that the facts on the ground make it unrealizable. A unitary state would not be a panacea, and it would be difficult to overcome resistance from those who want to preserve Israel’s Jewish identity. But compromises could be found that allow, at least for the time being, the state to retain its Jewish identity while granting citizenship rights to Palestinians. The current Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, is a proponent of the one state idea, as are several groups among both Israelis and Palestinians. Under current conditions, it will not happen, but neither will the two-state idea. We can therefore expect conflict to continue, with wars breaking out every two or three years. Sooner or later, though, events may force the major actors towards radical solutions like the bi-national unitary state.

The Jewish Revolt Against the British in Palestine

More has been written about the politics of the Middle East than one can read in a lifetime. One can therefore imagine the difficulties of choosing the readings for a course on the topic that I will be teaching this year at Trent University. It is a year-long course, and I divided it into two broad sections: the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Islamist ideology. For both, I assigned only books, as this would allow my students and I to delve deep into the subjects. The first book we read, The Revolt, was written by the former Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin. He was a member of the Irgun, the terrorist organization which infamously blew up the King David Hotel and that helped to expel the British, a necessary condition for the foundation of the state of Israel. The book is essentially an apologia on the foundation of the Jewish state, but there is much more that makes it an entertaining read: it recounts Begin’s first-hand experiences in the fight against the British with often macabre and gripping scenes that attest to man’s capability to suffer and die for a cause greater than himself, a sentiment that has largely been lost in the modern and secular West and that is now associated mainly with jihadists and other unsavoury characters who  fill the headlines.

Those who closely follow the politics of the Middle East are aware that the Left is generally critical of Israel and favourable to the Arabs. Readers of The Revolt might therefore be surprised to learn that when the state was founded, the roles were reversed: progressives cheered for Israel in its fights against the enemies it is surrounded with.  One of the more interesting parts of the text is the analysis of the role in the USSR in saving Jews from the Nazis and in founding the Israeli state. Begin himself is a Russian Jew, and the book starts with his experiences in the Russian gulag, where he is interrogated on suspicion of being a counter-revolutionary. Despite this experience, Begin has a lot of nice things to say about Russia. He admires Russians’ tolerance for suffering without which it would have been impossible to defeat the Nazis. He is grateful for Russia’s support for Israel’s fight against the British, even though the firsts’ motives were anything but altruistic: Britain was the symbol of the international bourgeoisie, and removing its colonial possessions in the Middle East constituted a victory for the broader struggle against capitalism. Furthermore, Israel’s founders, including Begin, were secular socialists and hence their ideology was closer to Russia’s than to the West’s, at least at the time of the state’s founding. In light of this history, the turn-around in global political alignments is remarkable: now, it is the Right which is mostly supportive of Israel. I posed the question of why to my students, and the most convincing answer is that the Left generally cheers for the underdog, and Israel did indeed have that status in its fight against the mighty British Empire and the surrounding Arabs. It is no coincidence that the Left took a major turn in its views about the Jewish state after its victory in the war of 1967, which established its unmatched supremacy in the region despite the fact that its Arab enemies vastly outnumber it, in terms of population.

The Revolt is not a scholarly account of the foundation of Israel, and Begin admits as much in the book. There are therefore no theoretical expositions of the conflict and no nuanced accounts of the different perspectives of the main actors. It is rather a narrative rooted in the collective experiences of a long oppressed people, with the scintillating elements of a good story: good and evil, suffering and redemption, tragedy and triumph. The first great evil, according to Begin, was the Roman conquest of Israel and its expulsion of its Jewish inhabitants, which created a stateless diaspora that wandered across the world for nearly 2000 years. Throughout this period they were mostly defenceless against whichever country hosted them and could not protect themselves against the anti-Jewish pogroms that periodically happened. This culminated into the Holocaust, which killed almost half of world Jewry. It was this event which helped to provide the impetus for the necessity of the creation of Israel. The founding, then, was justified for two main reasons: that Israel had rights to that territory going back thousands of years, and that it needed a state to provide a secure homeland for Jews. This is compelling stuff, until one recognizes that a lot happened in the nearly 2000 years since the Romans expelled the Jews: that land has been occupied by many different empires, and each has claimed it, at one time or another, as their possession. The conquest that is more important to current events is Caliph Umar’s invasion in AD 637. After that, the Holy Land was a Muslim possession, with the exception of the two century period when it was conquered by the Crusaders. After the Muslim conquest, Jerusalem became a holy city for Islam, a fact which finds its most concrete expression in the Al Aqsa Mosque which sits atop of the Temple Mount. Muslim empires ruled the Holy Land until World War One, after which it became a British possession.

The wishes and experiences of the local Arabs are not given much attention in The Revolt, and this is perhaps one of the greatest weaknesses of the book. Arabs are certainly not depicted in the same light as the British, the latter of which are presented as the epitome of evil, as extremely cynical in their administration of their rule in Palestine. Despite this, Begin is very condescending to the Arabs, depicting them either as an irrelevant sideshow or as pawns of the British. In fact reading the book one gets the sense that the British are responsible for the Israeli-Arab conflict: their policy of divide and rule, which formed such an effective strategy in the administration of their colonies, helped to cement the divisions that still characterize the conflict today. This implies that, but for British cynicism, the Arabs would have accepted the establishment of the Israel. This is questionable. That land was deemed to be part of Dar al Islam, and Muslims did form a majority there before the large-scale Jewish immigration after the foundation of the state. Jerusalem, too, was and is believed to be one of Islam’s holy cities. It therefore stretches credulity to think that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be blamed on the British. In fact one could argue that the region was more peaceful under British hegemony, which used its iron fist to keep the peace between conflicting peoples.

But this shortcoming is perhaps understandable given that the book is written by a partisan and revolutionary, not a disinterested scholar. Although this militated against any semblance of scholarly impartiality, it also allowed for poetic passages that stir the soul and that are never found in dry academic prose. A few examples will illustrate:

“Faith is perhaps stronger that reality; faith itself creates reality.”

“The angel of forgetfulness is a blessed creature. The touch of its wings goes far to heal our wounds. Our capacity to forget is every bit as important as ur capacity to remember.”

“The atrophy of natural, deep human feelings is no proof of a strong character. If such a thing as a ‘heart of steel’ exists or evolves, it is acquired at a heavy cost in suffering.”

These penetrating insights into the soul of man emerged from Begin’s unique experiences of suffering as a Russian prisoner, as a member of a group which suffered mass genocide, and as an actor in the fight against the British Empire; for Begin, this immense suffering was redeemed through the foundation of Israel. The Revolt is not only an entertaining read, but also essential reading to anyone who wants to understand the mindset of the founders of the Jewish state.

The Catcher in the Rye

As I was reading J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, a recurring thought was: what is it that made this book a best seller? Why did it resonate with so many people? The book has sold millions of copies and has been translated into 145 languages; illustrious writers like Adam Gopnik have called the book one of the three best novels in American literature. My impression of the book was very different: it is essentially a two hundred page narcissistic dialogue of an angry, sexually frustrated, and alienated young man growing up in the fifties. Of course, feeling those things is not unique to that era; most teenage males, including my generation (which grew up in the eighties and early nineties) felt similarly. This, then, might be the secret of the book’s success: it speaks to the experiences of youth that are universally felt regardless of the era. Dissatisfaction with the norms, values, and beliefs of our parents, the desire to rebel, the seemingly inescapable cage of endless self-absorption, the need for approval from one’s peers, the wish to escape it all; these are the things that many youth must go through in that sometimes tortured phase from childhood to adulthood.

The main character of the Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, experiences all these things with the fiery intensity that characterizes the adolescent and teenage years. The book starts with his problems at the boarding school. He is obviously a bright kid with a talent for writing but he is unable to follow the school’s rules and strictures, nor can he tolerate most of his classmates, one of whom he violently clashes with. He eventually flunks, and most of the rest of the book is about his journey home from school. This journey, of course, is interpreted through the narcissistic dialogue adumbrated above, but there are some features of this experience that are genuinely interesting. There are, for example, his impressions of New York that illuminate the character and life of the city in the forties and fifties. One particularly memorable part was in the dingy hotel that he found himself in, and the sexual perverts he would see through the window in the buildings across the street. In the same hotel, he is cajoled by an elevator-attendant (another indication of a long-gone era) into buying the services of a prostitute. When she comes to his room she is surprised to discover that Holden does not want sex with her; he just wants her company, an indication that behind the veneer of anger and alienation is a deep longing to be loved and accepted.

Holden eventually goes to the home of one of his former teachers who had left a good impression on him. The teacher offers Holden a place to stay, and before bedtime gives him an inspiring talk about the need to read to escape the cage of self-absorption, about how reading helps us to realize that we are not alone, that our feelings of anger and alienation are shared by even some of the greatest minds, and that how reading the best that has been written can unleash our potential to contribute something larger than ourselves. Holden’s former teacher seems to be that rare creature in the teaching profession who goes beyond and above others to transform the character and direction of young minds. This is impressive stuff, until the scene that suggests the teacher is—gulp—an alcoholic and a pedophile. Holden dashes from the apartment, and eventually goes home, where he finds his sister whom he adores. The love between the two siblings is perhaps the most heartwarming part of the book, for it highlights that even the in the cesspool of humanity that Holden finds himself in, there are pure and noble relationships and experiences.

One of the redeeming qualities of the book is that it can be interpreted through the lens of psychology to discover patterns that reveal insights into Holden’s thought processes and behaviour. For example, one of Holden’s traits—shared by many adolescents—is the tendency to lie and speak hyperbolically for no apparent reason. He seems to do this with everyone, raising the question of why. Perhaps it is the desire to fit in, or a deep sense of insecurity, or the need for approval, or a combination of these things. There is a deep irony here: Holden expresses his hatred for people countless times because they are “phony”, and yet he himself is the phoniest of all. His hatred of society, therefore, perhaps more accurately reflects his hatred of himself that he then projects outwards to others. One is reminded of the syllogism that people often become the very thing they detest; for Holden it is the reverse: he detests himself and then radiates it outwards to others.

The book might also appeal to those who, like me, are interested in the evolution of language. The Catcher in the Rye contains words and phrases that have largely fallen into disuse, such as “yellow” (coward), “wad” (handful of cash), “necking” (kissing the neck) and “phony” (fake). Reading them gives one the feeling of being transported to another era that, although within living memory of my parents, seems to be as distant as another planet. One also gets the sense that the Catcher in the Rye helped to provide the vocabulary of a whole generation of angry youth that they carried with them into adulthood. I still recall hearing the use of these phrases when I was a kid, especially from the generation before me (which would be the one born in the fifties).

Despite these qualities, overall I did not enjoy the book, but this perhaps has more to do with me than with the text. I am thirty six years old and very curious about the world outside of me, and hence I prefer books that address some of the existential concerns of adults, and that have something insightful to say about their characters’ society, surroundings, and relationships. The Catcher in the Rye does none of these things. It is essentially a long winded rant that expresses the anger, alienation, and frustration of adolescence and the teenage years. I might have enjoyed the book had I read it 20 years ago, when I was about Holden’s age. But those days are—thankfully—long gone.

The Fragility of Life

                                                    Life’s Fragility

A frightened teenager with tender pink skin lies on a gurney as his father caresses his hair.

An elderly woman enters. She is coughing blood, this ominous symptom giving her terror.

Parents clutching feverish and crying babies. Homeless men,

Either drunk or disoriented or both, crying for attention.

The nurses tend to them. Friendly yet detached, warm yet indifferent, fulfilling their role

Helping people when they are at their most vulnerable,

When they are afraid of death, afraid of a life that is so fragile,

A fragility that is often ignored or forgotten, and difficult to reconcile,

With life’s delights. Until one, inevitably, finds himself in the sterilized confinement of the emergency room,

Surrounded by the sick and needy, impatient to leave the hospital, impatient to resume

Their fragile lives

This was inspired by my visit to the hospital emergency room in Toronto last week. I was there because I fell off my bike: as I was cycling across an intersection that was full of streetcar tracks, my front tire got caught in one of them and I lost control, impacting the cold hard pavement while onlookers stared, wondering whether I was seriously injured. It turns out that I was not. I got up immediately, picked up my damaged bike and took it to the sidewalk. The elbow and knee on the right side of my body were bloodied, and although I could walk, I felt a piercing pain on my right hip and in my right-side rib cage. Luckily, I was about 100 meters from St. Joseph’s hospital. I walked over to the emergency room to get checked out, and it turns out that I broke a rib. My first question to the doctor was: could I continue to cycle? He said yes, but that I should be more careful. My next question was: could I continue my hip hop dance lessons? He said of course because I am in good shape.

The experience was and is painful. Certain movements and activities, like lying down or laughing, hurt. But it was also very positive for several reasons. First, it forced me to rethink my capacity as a cyclist. I have been an avid bike-rider for almost three decades, and in that time period I have developed a certain talent, the kind that comes whenever one repeatedly practises something. The knowledge of this talent made me overconfident, and falling and breaking my rib has taught me that I have a lot to learn. No matter how good I get, there will always be that unforeseen circumstance that happens when one least expects it. Now, I am hyper aware whenever I cross streetcar tracks, and this awareness will likely prevent that kind of accident from ever happening again, but who knows? Lurking silently around the corner of some other street might be some other known-unknown that will make me vulnerable to another bike accident.

Mostly importantly was the reminder of how fragile life is. One moment I was cycling down Queen Street, full of energy and life and potential and optimism, and the next moment I was lying bloodied and broken on the street, and in need of the help of medical doctors who thankfully were but a short distance away. It was a metaphor of this strange life that we find ourselves in, where one wrong turn, or a miscalculation, or one momentary distraction can lead even the strongest among us lying helpless and in need of assistance. My strong impression of life’s fragility was reinforced when I entered the emergency room. While I was groaning in pain and impatiently waiting to be attended to, I closely observed the people coming in, some of whom are mentioned in the poem above. A young man, no older than 19 or 20, comes in shaking and crying and complaining of severe chest pain. He probably believed he was dying of a heart attack, although most likely he was suffering from severe anxiety. And then an elderly woman comes in coughing blood into a rag. I listened as the nurse asked her questions: “do you have a history of tuberculosis? Do you have cancer?” “Not that I know of,” answered the elderly lady. For all I know, she may have been diagnosed with cancer or something serious shortly after she was taken to speak to a doctor.

The knowledge of life’s fragility is unnerving, but it is also a salutary reminder that tomorrow is not guaranteed to anyone. This induces a kind of existential humility about the universe and one’s place in it. It encourages one to treasure the things that matter, such as love, and recognize that the things that we often strive for—material gain, status, and prestige—are ultimately irrelevant. It helps one to be grateful to be alive, to have a sensory apparatus to perceive, a mind to think, and people to care for. Funny how it takes a biking accident to become vividly conscious of that.

The Interconnections Between Property, Love and Power (a book review of George Eliot's "Middlemarch")

George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” is a book about the web of relationships in an eponymously named town in early nineteenth century England, when many significant and long-lasting social and political changes were taking place, such as the abolition of slavery and the granting of the franchise to men without property. These political changes play a significant role in the book, and for good reason: George Eliot (her real name is Mary Evans) was a feminist who promoted many of the progressive causes of that time (although some of her observations would anger contemporary feminists; more on that below). It was also a time of the flourishing of science and the decline of religious belief among elites, and Middlemarch nicely captures those cultural changes in many of the characters, like Dr. Lydgate, who represent the archetype of the hero of science: irreligious, determined to expend most of their time and effort to reveal the secrets of the material universe even if it costs them their careers, families, and other petty pleasures that average people pursue.

These cultural and political layers are the background to the more important part of the book, that which forms the substance, the crux, the issues that take up most of the space and analysis: romantic love and the way it manifested itself within the constraints in that time period. These constraints were experienced by both men and women. For the latter, the fact of essentially being property of the father or brother meant that for a love to be consummated in a way that ensured a good standing in the community, the male members of the family had to give their consent. This clearly limited the woman’s options; a dalliance or love affair would be difficult if the father or patron of the household objected. On this basis, it would be easy to assume that men had more freedom in romantic love, but this is only superficially true. In order for a man to get the woman he loved (in the sense of getting both her and her fathers’ consent) he would have to have property, and this obviously constrained the many men who either did not have the privilege of being born into wealth or who did not have some aristocratic lineage.

The interconnections between property, love, and marriage are Eliot’s way, I would argue, of highlighting how so many relationships depend on factors that are mostly outside our control. We see this, to some extent or another, in most of the main romances in the book—Dorothea and Casaubon, Dorothea and Ladislaw, Fred and Mary, Celia and James, and Rosamond and Lydgate. All of these relationships either begin with the promise of property, are impeded because of the absence of property, or deteriorate because the expectations of property are not met. Take Dorothea and Casaubon. She falls in love with him because he has the knowledge that she wants, and because she wants to be of service to his scholarly and religious inclinations. This happens despite the fact that they are a poor match: she is young and desirous of a vibrant emotional life, and he is old, apathetic, and emotionally detached. This mismatch would not have happened had Mr. Casaubon not inherited wealth that allowed him to pursue his ultimately fruitless scholarly ambitions while supporting a wife. After the pathetic Mr. Casaubon dies, Dorothea and Ladislaw fall in love, and their union is nearly scuttled precisely because Ladislaw does not have any property. In a similar vein, the vain Rosamond falls in love with Lydgate partly because of her wish to connect with his aristocratic lineage. She has expectations of endlessly frolicking with barons and others with fancy titles while servants meet her every need, and these romanticized beliefs help her to overlook the fact that Lydgate is what today might be called a “starving artist”, even though he was a medical doctor trained in Paris (evidently being a physician in George Eliot’s time was not as remunerative as it is now).

Of course property, lineage, and wealth are not the main aspects of the relationships in the book. More importantly are the emotional dimensions of courtship, love, and union. Eliot is at her best when she recounts the internal dialogues and associated subjective impressions that are experienced when falling in love, an experience that was aptly described elsewhere as coming and going “independently of the will”. The character of Dorothea nicely embodies this. She first falls in love with Mr. Casaubon, but it was the naïve type of love that anybody over 25 would recognize, based on a highly misleading reading of the beloved by “filling in the blanks with unmanifested perfections”. It was a love that flowed from two aspects of her personality: the classical love of knowledge and the Christian spirit of self-sacrificial service to humanity. Mr. Casaubon, described above, seemed to have the qualities that would have allowed these noble motives to flourish, but her desires clouded her judgement, ultimately leading to an unhappy marriage with someone whose true character is revealed only when it is too late. After he passes away, Dorothea and Ladislaw fall in love, and their budding romance is one of the most interesting parts of the book. Her feelings for Ladislaw begin with friendship and outrage at the unfairness of the injustice that happened to him: he was denied his family’s property only because his mother fell in love with and married a poor Polish Jew. Dorothea aims to correct this injustice by appealing to Mr Casaubon, who is Ladislaw’s cousin, to give the latter his share of the property that he inherited. Mr. Casaubon, correctly suspicious of the germinating romance between them, refuses, and out of pure spite writes in his will that, upon his death, Dorothea would not inherit his property if she married Ladislaw. But her feelings of warmth and caring and love for Ladislaw overcome this attempt by Mr. Casaubon to prevent their union. Initially, she is not aware of her love for him. She only knows that she cares for him, and misses him when he is not around. Her love for him only registers when her heart starts palpitating violently when she overhears that Ladislaw might be in love with another; it is the feeling of jealousy—an emotion that is seemingly so contrary to Dorothea’s pure and untainted soul—that makes it clear to her that she loves him. Ladislaw’s love for Dorothea is also beautifully recounted, as in the scene when Rosamond berates him because of his preference for Dorothea, and he angrily replies “I never had any preference for her any more than I had a preference for breathing!”

But I digress. Eliot promoted women’s rights and other progressive causes but there are passages in the text that would anger many contemporary feminists. Notable in this regard is when she says that women “enslave” men and “conquer” them even when they are married, and that men are the “subjects” of women (subjects require rulers, and the obvious implication is that women are the rulers). This asymmetric power relationship between the sexes plays itself out most vividly in the marriage between Rosamond and Lydgate. His whole raison d’etre seems to be the futile attempt to please her, and his failure to do so creates misery and despair that undermines his true vocation to be the heroic scientist. When he encounters financial difficulty, the most logical response is to reduce their standard of living until things improve, but Rosamond would have none of it. She betrays him several times, and although he gets upset, it does not in any way undermine his wish to make her happy. This poor soul—perhaps unsurprisingly—meets a tragic end, dying young of disease while Rosamond, shortly after, marries a wealthy and older aristocrat who can meet her seemingly inexhaustible needs.  What Eliot is saying here, I think, is her belief in the capacity of romantic love to metaphorically enslave men, and that this power can be more meaningful in people’s lives than the political and social power that comes from having equal rights. That Eliot, a progressive female intellectual, would imply such a thing would jar the nerves of many. My precocious 14 year old daughter, for example, is a committed feminist and would probably be outraged at the idea that women of the early 19^th century were anything but oppressed chattel under the yoke of male dominated social structures. This theme of the disparate and perhaps conflicting power relations in the romantic sphere versus the political and social habitat is too complex to address here; suffice to say that some of the observations in Middlemarch on the subject give a lot to chew on.

My version of Middlemarch is 800 pages—hardly the stuff of easy beach reading. But the time and effort required to get through the text is worth it, and the book deserves its status as a classic. There are many layers of meaning that will satiate the intellectually hungry soul—political, scientific, social, and romantic. What is more, George Eliot does this with prose that is deeply nuanced, entertaining, and page turning, making the reader hungry for more, especially as the book progresses. Once one really gets into the lives of the characters, it is hard to not want to taste what comes next, and what does happen is a delightfully sweet exposition of the human heart and the way it is constrained by social and political factors outside its control. But those with a stomach for drama will not be disappointed, as the book ultimately quenches the thirst for a happy ending.