There is no Lonely Planet Iraqi Kurdistan, and Ahmed Awa was not on the map we’d printed out. My sense–wrongly as it turns out–was that Ahmed Awa lay northwest of Sulaimania, in the direction of Dokan Lake (and Dokan Resort), another scenic area we’d considered visiting during our trip through Kurdistan. [...]

At about 11:30 AM I called Shane. He told me the weather had been mild all night. That morning they had woken up early and resumed hiking along the same trail. Shane sounded very calm and content, happy to be in a beautiful environment, and made absolutely no mention of any risk whatsoever. I am absolutely certain that they had no knowledge of their proximity to the Iranian border or they would have never continued in that direction.

Still thinking of my friends, and hoping for a quick(er) resolution to all this.

I am personally offended by comments I have read and heard about these three insinuating that they are U.S. government agents of any kind.  Shane and Sarah are people of great integrity who stand against the abuse of U.S. power in the Middle East.  Additionally, they are very experienced travelers, and I can only speculate as to how they might have miscalculated so badly as to wander into Iranian territory.  I hope that they will be released soon and emerge from all of this unscathed.

A small level-one student raised her hand and offered somewhat doubtfully, “Because God can see you better when you move around?”

I love these kinds of comments because they’re so unintentionally revealing of unexamined ideas about the physicality of God, who is apparently located far away, probably far up in the sky and perhaps sitting on a cloud in the stratosphere, and must really be an old man because he has bad eyesight, and needs humans to mix it up a little bit in order to pick out individuals who otherwise don’t attract much attention, massing like so many ants.  I don’t know much about this student’s religious background or upbringing, but I rather wonder if drawings for children of a God who sits up in the sky, aging and aloof, didn’t leave a much stronger impression than implicit threats that God, like Santa, some third-world dictators, and the CIA, is always watching us.  I’m definitely not religious, but if I can put in my own two cents anyway then I think I rather prefer the student’s theological vision to the traditional one.

Two weeks ago, when I saw this New York Times headline last week–”Sotomayor Says Identity Won’t Distort Decisions.“–I remembered the time that a friend of mine in college suggested that it might be progressive to form a White Studies department at our university, so that we would be forced to acknowledge that white culture–or more precisely, middle class, Western culture– is not a sort of neutral slate against which all other cultures should be viewed, but one culture among many in which none take precedence over others or be considered the measure of their peers.

The New York Times article began:

Republican senators sparred with Judge Sonia Sotomayor
on Tuesday over racial bias, judicial activism and temperament as she
presented herself as a reliable follower of precedent rather than a
jurist shaped by gender and ethnicity, as some of her past speeches
suggested.

That’s what she said in the hearings; but as the New York Times and some of her dectractors quoted, she also said in previously in a speech: “I accept that there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

That, too me, seems like the more honest answer.  Of course Judge Sotomayor’s worldview has been influenced by her gender and ethnicity!  Just like all of the rest of us, and just like the worldview of the other Supreme Court Justices, and the Senators
questioning her–except in their case, it’s more likely to have been the fact of being male and white in a patriarchal and racist society that influenced them.  This perspective, however, goes unacknowledged and perhaps unnoticed, such that when it is demanded that she move away from any personal influences on her thinking by her status as a woman and a Latina, what is really being asked is that she adopt the position of the silent majority, which apparently is not actually a perspective influenced by personal experiences, but rather a sort of neutral standpoint from which to view the world.

The fact that one hails from a dominant culture that determines, among other things, what seems logical and what doesn’t, shouldn’t be confused with having an objective point of view, if such a thing is even possible.  Working from a powerful position within a given system carries its own unique perspective, and it’s one that should be acknowledged and examined as well.

If near-suburbia is slightly depressing, however, at least it’s easy to escape it through my job at an “inner-city” school, in an area of Boston that was described as a “ghetto” by friends who grew up in the city (although all the word showed me was that they’d never visited this neighborhood, since that turned out to be a gross exaggeration).  I teach Arabic to high school students at a summer program led by a crusading public high school teacher with three Masters degrees who’s out to change who, exactly, can study this language.  It is, in fact, pretty difficult to get very far with Arabic if you’re not from a certain socio-economic class, as a list of my CASA classmates’ alma maters’ suggets: Harvard, Columbia, Harvard, NYU, University of Chicago, Georgetown, Georgetown, University of Pennsylvania… In short, it’s difficult to get into Arabic, much less continue with it, outside of only a handful of higher-education institutions–and the few high schools that are beginning to teach Arabic are overwhelmingly private and expensive prep schools.  The program I teach with, however, is free to all students, who recieve a $500 scholarship if they pass the course; in addition, students whose families make less than a certain amount each year are also paid $8.00 for each hour they spend in class, in order to enable them to study rather than work in the summer.  So a majority of the students are from racial or ethnic “minorities”; about half are from public high schools; and just under half don’t speak English as their first language.  The mixed relationships these students have with educational institutions can make teaching a challenge, mainly because it isn’t always clear whether we should prioritize teaching Arabic for those who will continue to study it in college, or making Arabic “fun”–which is one way, but perhaps the slowest way, to  teach it–in order to try to spark an interest in Middle Eastern issues for those who aren’t already, or simply giving kids who have very few opportunities to travel a wider perspective on the world.  Ideally, of course, we’d do all three, but the press of time usually means we have to pick and choose–something I’ll write a little more about later.

Today, my mother brought my attention to a good example of the way that Obama’s speech is being used to frame the political debate in America, with both positive and negative consequences.  She called to recommend that I turn on our local public radio station to listen to a debate between Portlanders at Pioneer Courthouse Square on Israel and Palestine, and when I did, I found that the precise issue under debate was whether or not Obama was fair in asking Israelis to halt the expansion of the settlements, using this part of Obama’s speech as a jumping-off point:

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s
right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United
States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.  This
construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to
achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

This is a great example of the disconnect between the debate within America and in the Arab world, which Obama’s speech mostly failed to bridge.  Although I hate to speak for other people, I think it’s already self-evident to most Arabs that the Israeli settlements need to stop; furthermore, it is also already clear that the existing settlements need to be removed.  For the radio debate moderator, however, the question of the removal of existing settlements was a secondary one that he only brought up later on.  If Obama had called for the removal of these settlements, however, he could have encouraged the political debate to bypass the far less pertinent question of a halt and cut straight to this more key issue (which is not, by the way, even a subject of debate in the Arab world that I’ve ever seen).

There’s quite a contradtion in the quotation above, in which Obama calls for the creation of a Palestinian state, but not necessarily the removal of settlements, in the same breath.  I’m not sure how there could possibly be a Palestinian state with the Israeli settlements fragmenting the West Bank as they do.  The best (or at least most visually interesting) representation of this is the widely-circulated image called “L’archipel de Palestine orientale,” which I saw on the wonderful blog Strange Maps, that skillfully conveys the way that Israeli settlements and the Oslo zoning process (which dictated which pieces of the West Bank would be under Israeli and PA control) have reduced the West Bank to a series of “islands,” the sum of which don’t equal a single, governable state.  One could logically be against the creation of a Palestinian state and also against the removal of settlements, but not for the former and against the latter, and this is the more important question that should have been brought up for debate.

To be fair, of course, Obama didn’t say he was against the removal of settlements; he just didn’t call for it.  It remains to be seen whether he’ll find the political courage to do so.

A GV article charactized Egyptian bloggers’ responses:

While many praised his eloquence, charisma, intelligence and awareness
of Arab and Islamic history, more believed it was just the same talk
they had heard from other presidents but in a better wrapping. Also,
they almost all agreed they are waiting for “action” to prove the
supposed “good intentions.”

Another Global voices article also summarized other Middle Eastern bloggers’ reactions, which struck a similar tone.

Obama had a hard path to walk; if I’m impressed by any of his comments, it’s in light of the internal American political scene and the rhetoric I’ve become accustomed to from our politicians. Part of the problem, however, is that what may seem a radical admission for an American president–that Islam contributed to Western civilization, that Hamas enjoys some support among Palestinians, that Palestinians suffer from an occupation–are already glaringly and painfully obvious to someone outside of the American political context. Hearing them acknowledged may be mildly gratifying, but not as gratifying as it would be to seem them used as a basis for action.

Although the force is officially controlled by the Iraqi government, popular perception in Baghdad is that the ISOF–the dirty brigade–is a covert, all-Iraqi branch of the US military. That reading isn’t far from the truth. The US Special Forces are still closely involved with every level of the ISOF, from planning and carrying out missions to deciding tactics and creating policy. According to Brig. Gen. Simeon Trombitas, commander of the Iraq National Counter-Terror Force Transition Team, part of the multinational command responsible for turning control of the ISOF over to the Iraqi government, the US Special Forces continue to “have advisers at every level of the chain of command.”

Shane traveled to Iraq at the beginning of the year to research this piece, and he’s one Western journalist who speaks Arabic fluently and knows the region well.  His article calls into question the real meaning of an American withdrawal when such proxy forces are still left to act on their behalf.

“Do you know some Spanish?” he asked me conversationally.

“Umm…a little,” I said, more than a little perplexed by the question.

He peered at the customs form I’d filled out, at the space where one lists the countries one has visited while outside of the U.S.

“Oh…Syria,” he said.  “I thought you had written Spain.”  He didn’t ask me if I knew any Arabic.

Getting through the Egyptian airport the previous evening was a little more challenging, since the official in charge of transit first tried to insist that there was no flight to New York that night and that he would find me a hotel to stay in instead; after some arguing, he checked and found out that there was indeed a flight, but set up a special chair for me to wait in by myself for assistance because apparently transferring to a Delta flight required extra procedures.  At first I found the Egyptians cold in comparison to Syrian friendliness, but they warmed up after one was impressed by my Arabic and insisted for several minutes that I must be from an Arab country.  I showed him my passport but perhaps he couldn’t read English very well; at any rate, he didn’t change his mind.  He was so enthusiastic about the idea that I finally told him my family was Syrian but had lived in the U.S. for a long time, and hoped there were no Syrians walking by at the moment, since they would see through my story in a minute.  He found the answer extremely satisfying and devoted personal attention to finishing up my paperwork, which took several hours nonetheless.

Everything in the U.S. airports–all I’ve seen of the country, up till now–seems ridiculously shiny and new.  The fast food tastes ridiculously like plastic.  And  I no longer feel like The Other; that has to be the strangest thing.