thetravelingminstrel

The Beekeepers

Try as we might to hope that the two apian titles speak only of positive lessons from bees — of how theirs is a society where each one functions for the good of the entire colony, of how they continue to work even when everything around them is dying — I am afraid they don’t.

Two beekeepers of neighboring nations; one real, the other fictional. Both written by women; one an Iraqi journalist and poet, the other a novelist who volunteered in refugee centers, herself a daughter of Cypriot refugees.

The Beekeeper of Sinjar is Abdullah Shrem. When DAESH (ISIS) began terrorizing Yazidi communities and abducting their women including Abdullah’s sister, he took advantage of his knowledge of the terrain and select personal contacts to rescue and smuggle women back to safety. Each time he saved a captive woman, he felt that he was also saving his sister.

Among the stolen women was Nadia Murad, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, the first Iraqi and Yazidi to be awarded the prize.

Dunya Mikhail initially inserts poems into a journalistic approach and recounts distressing interviews with the rescued women who were sold, beaten, and raped repeatedly, but who nonetheless opened up to the author so that she could write about their suffering. “It’s important that your book see the light of day, so that the world will know what’s going on here.” The journalistic eventually veers into the poetic, and I feel that this is one of the books from the region that will endure not only as an overwhelming account but also as a literary work.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo is the fictional Nuri Ibrahim, but through him and the plight he shares with his blind wife, Christy Lefteri expresses the unspeakable realities and consequences of war, of lives ended, uprooted, wasted, abused, and destroyed.

“War,” writes Dunya Mikhail, “comes with various names but with only one face.”

Even though it seems that love and hope is universal, unfortunately, so is war.

“The problem isn’t that the world is going to end, but that it continues without any change.” — Nadia Murad

Rebecca Solnit: The Faraway Nearby

The sound of sirens woke me up. Whose witty idea was it to celebrate Women’s Month with Fire Prevention Month in the Philippines? Woman is a fire you cannot prevent. Sirens are also women.

These were my tangled thoughts as I got up on the first day of March, a month I look forward to as a reading woman. It’s when I devote most of my reading time to women authors.

Rebecca had to be the first choice, because maybe my mind treats literature like medicine and it cyclically hankers for a more potent dose to achieve efficacy, and she lives up to this promise — this sort of writing that painfully confronts the hurts and pinpoints the ills but becomes the balm through impeccable information-giving and matchless storytelling, all administered with strength and grace.

The title is an acknowledgement to how the artist Georgia O’Keefe signed her letters for the people she loved, “from the faraway nearby.” A way to measure physical and psychic geography together, Rebecca observes. “We’re close, we say, to mean that we’re emotionally connected, that we are not separate… emotion has its geography, affection is what is nearby…” We can be distant from the person next to us but be hopelessly attached to another who is hundreds of miles away. Was it Ondaatje who asked, “Do you understand the sadness of geography?” It seems Rebecca understands and she holds your hand through this sadness.

But that is only one of the myriads of things meaningful to me that she weaves artfully into this narrative. The curious format of this book is a nod to the Arabian Nights. It was only recently when I remarked how Latin American and Eastern European literature are under Scheherazade’s spell, but this book makes me ask, “Who isn’t?”

“The fairy-tale heroines spin cobwebs, straw, nettles into whatever is necessary to survive. Scheherazade forestalls her death by telling a story that is like a thread that cannot be cut; she keeps spinning and spinning, incorporating new fragments, characters, incidents, into her unbroken, unbreakable narrative thread. Penelope at the other end of the treasury of stories prevents her wedding to any of her suitors by unweaving at night what she weaves by day… By spinning, weaving, and unraveling, these women master time itself, and though master is a masculine word, this mastery is feminine.”

“Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them…” This is the line with which Rebecca opens this book.

And this is how she ends. “Who drinks your tears? Who has your wings? Who hears your story?”

“Who has your wings?” Who else can ask such a poignant question?

This mastery is, indeed, feminine. Happy Women’s Month!

Simone Schwarz-Bart: The Bridge of Beyond

The woman who has laughed is the same one as she who will cry, and that is why one knows already, from the way a woman is happy, how she will behave in the face of adversity. I’d liked that saying of Queen Without a Name, once, but now… it frightened me, and above all it saddened me, for I saw clearly that I didn’t know how to suffer.

At a time when the “music of the whip” was supposed to be no longer in their ears, the great-granddaughter of a freed slave tells her story; and through her story, the history of their people, the history of their women.

Beyond the beautiful cover designs and the excellent translations of NYRB publications, I am most grateful for how they usually bring together two forces of literature in a single book — Jamaica Kincaid, projected to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2021 writes the introduction to this edition of Simone Schwartz-Bart’s potent novel.

The only downside is that if someone like Kincaid has already extracted the essence and bottled it for us in the introduction, my words would immediately pale in comparison and attempting a review would be futile; and all I can do is agree with her when she writes of this book as, “An unforgettable hymn to the resilience and power of women.” Truly a masterpiece, not only of Caribbean literature but also of feminist literature.

Although Kincaid did leave something out for me to realize on my own — that there are many forms of slavery; sometimes it is imposed on people, sometimes it is inherited, and sometimes we impose it upon ourselves.

There is so much sorrow in this book and I thought of putting it down many times because there was already so much sorrow in the world as I read it.

But a novel touching on slavery can only ask questions about freedom, the same way a novel about sorrow can only be a contemplation on happiness. And so I read…

Luis Sagasti: A Musical Offering

“Weren’t you just reading The Books of Jacob?” My mom asked when she saw me with this a day after I finished reading Olga Tokarczuk’s magnum opus.

“Recovery read,” I answered with a wink.

She shot me a questioning look.

“You know how runners do a short recovery run within 24 hours after a marathon?”

She could only laugh and shake her head.

It was the perfect easy run for this reader! In fact, I think every little detail of this book is perfect!

From the cover design, to the French flaps, to the first page that quotes Leonard Cohen:

Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord / But you don’t really care for music, do you?

And truly, if you care for art and music, brilliant is an understatement of how this book is written. Think Apeirogon, think When We Cease to Understand the World but instead of physicists and mathematicians, musicians and artists — Bach, The Beatles, Brahms, Messiaen, Glenn Gould, Rothko, Mahler, Scheherazade… yes, Scheherazade!

Haven’t we already noticed that literature around the world is still undoubtedly under her spell, especially the Eastern Europeans and South Americans? Argentine Luis Sagasti’s musical offering puts us in the shoes of the bewitched Persian King Shahryar.

And we can only dream of a thousand nights more…

Olga Tokarczuk: The Books of Jacob

I will not be stingy with truth. And because the truth is often bound to be difficult and makes us squirm in our comfortable seats, the question is not whether you will like this. The question is whether you can swallow it — the nature of flawed leaders, of spiritual shepherds who are wolves to their own flock, of society, of human beings, of real characters.

This is what Olga Tokarczuk conveys to me right from the first of seven books in The Books of Jacob.

She thrusts us into 1752 Poland where there is a growing animosity towards the Jews and the longing for a messiah is intensified. But only in the second book do we meet the messianic figure: Jacob Frank who asks, “What do we want some sage for?” Jacob whose sexual perversities are now being slowly divulged to the reader. Jacob who ridicules his most earnest followers while they, in the goodness of their hearts, concoct half-truths and falsehoods about him to glorify him; because he is seemingly authentic in everything he does; and although repulsive, he is charming.

All these, eerily juxtaposed with current events in the Philippines: the FBI issuing a poster of church leader Apollo Quiboloy’s warrant of arrest for fraud, coercion, and sex trafficking; a dictator’s son who is a tax code offender leading the presidential polls; the former being an open endorser of the latter.

With an increasing throng of followers, this charismatic Jacob Frank preached the idea that the notion of sin no longer applies. There was no room for conventional morality in his philosophy. “We are to trample all the laws because they are no longer in effect…”

There is no more morality — a common refrain among leaders and their supporters today who justify wrongdoing and do not wish to face accountability!

I was wrong. Olga did not thrust us into events over two centuries ago with this opus. She brings us to the present. This is us. This is us. Because isn’t morality dead to us unless and until the injustice is done by those we dislike, and then we cry foul and demand morality and justice?

This colossus — a lyrical galaxy of darkness and light, weakness and strength, of comets and plagues set in some of the most exciting places I have actually been to, of beautiful passages about literature and how it somehow makes solid the ground beneath us despite this chaotic world, of history and its excruciating details — is not exactly about Jacob. It is about society and how we create the tapestry of history with our actions and our choices… and it seems like we never learn.

Ryszard Kapuscinski: The Other

There is the romantic in me who would like to write an ode of admiration to this exceptional journalist for tackling a most pertinent matter and there is also the dormant journalist tempted to fangirl. However, the teacher of little children prevailed and simplified the lessons instead.

Who is my “Other”?

Those who do not hold the same beliefs. The most obvious right now are those who do not share the same political views.

How should we relate to Others?

There seems to be three approaches: War, isolation, and a third one learned through trade routes like the Silk Road — cooperation.

Why not war?

“It is hard to justify wars; I think everyone loses them, because it is a defeat for the human being. It exposes his inability to come to terms, to empathize with the Other, to be kind and reasonable…”

Why not isolation?

“The idea that prompted man to build great walls and vast moats, to surround himself with them and isolate himself from others, has in modern times been given the name of the doctrine of apartheid.”

What is the main content of the encounter with the Other?

Dialogue. Dialogical openness, perspective, and awareness. “The will to become acquainted.”

What should I equip myself with?

“…it is so important to have one’s own distinct identity, a sense of its strength, value and maturity. Only then can a man boldly confront another culture. Otherwise he will lurk in his hiding place, fearfully isolating himself from others.”

Why should we cooperate and why should we relate to the Other?

Because building bridges of understanding with Others “is not just an ethical duty but also an urgent task for our time in a world where everything is so fragile and where there is so much demagogy, disorientation, fanaticism and bad will.”

“The Self not only has to relate to the Other, but must assume responsibility for him and be prepared to bear the consequences for such a decision, such an attitude. Is there a Christian act of sacrifice in this? Yes — of sacrifice, renunciation and humility.”

Conversations with Edward Said and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

What a pleasure to have spent the past few days eavesdropping on these conversations!

My introduction to Edward W. Said was not through my current reading project but through classical music years ago via the Daniel Barenboim connection when they co-wrote an illuminating book and founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra — Said a Palestinian intellectual and Barenboim an Israeli pianist and conductor, bringing together musicians from areas of conflict to show the world that it is possible to create peace among people from these nations, to harmonize, and produce beautiful music. And now, I am reintroduced to Said through the enlightening forewords he has written for many of the literary works I am reading from that part of the world.

As for dear Gabo, I still vividly remember the day my best friend presented me with my first Marquez in our teens and I gave him John Fowles’ The Magus in return. This act of his, which was not entirely innocent, led to a Latin American reading stage that brought me to magical literary adventures.

When asked whether the inability to love is very serious, Gabo replies, “I don’t think there’s any human misery greater than that. Not only for the person afflicted but for all those whose misfortune it is to come within his orbit.” Love is something to be learned, he adds, and even lets one of his fictional characters echo this.

Said on the hand, gave me more lines to note in my journal and reminded me why he was once an intellectual crush.

“I’ve never felt myself to belong to any establishment of any kind, any mainstream. I’m interested in mainstreams, I’m jealous of them, I sometimes, occasionally, envy people who belong to them—because I certainly don’t—but on the whole I think they’re the enemy. I feel that authorities, canons, dogmas, orthodoxies, establishments, are really what we’re up against. At least what I’m up against, most of the time. They deaden thought.”

“I think a lot of this business we were talking about earlier, about politics and culture being separate, is really laziness. There’s a critical establishment that says you’re supposed to only study this, and that’s because you don’t have the time or the energy to study other things. For me it’s a manifestation of laziness and idleness. And all of them, it seems to me, in the end, really don’t advance to anything.”

“And far from being right, I think it’s important to be critical.”

These conversations bring together two significant reading phases of my life.

What struck me this time was in realizing how much their musical tastes influenced their writings greatly. Chopin among others for Said, Bartok and Caribbean music for Gabo. Because he was a revolutionary says the former and the mixture of the two had to be explosive says the latter. Through this we see that they did not confine themselves to one form of art but saw art as something encompassing rather than something to be compartmentalized.

Said and Gabo are very much alive in these pages. These great minds that impacted and straddled two centuries while they lived; and even in death, continue to change the way we think, read, and perceive the world; their inspiration consistently outliving the last page of each of their books; saying it in their own distinct way but always reminding us to live as fully and as passionately as we can.

Mourid Barghouti: I Saw Ramallah

“Here I am walking toward the land of the poem…”

When a poet writes a memoir, the entire book is a poignant song. Exiled from his homeland after the Six Day War, Mourid Barghouti returns after thirty years and sings of his experience and his memories.

“And now I pass from my exile to their… homeland? My homeland? The West Bank and Gaza? The Occupied Territories? The Areas? Judea and Samaria? The Autonomous Government? Israel? Palestine? Is there any other country in the world that so perplexes you with its names?”

And yet, as Edward W. Said intimates in the foreword, the account is free of bitterness and recrimination.

“I know that it is the easiest thing to stare at the faults of others and that if you look for faults you see little else. Which is why—after each setback that befalls us—I look for our faults too; the faults of our song. I ask if my attachment to the homeland can reach a sophistication that is reflected in my song for it. Does a poet live in space or time? Our homeland is the shape of the time we spent in it.”

The pages teem with beautiful questions…

“Who has stolen our gentleness?”

“Are they really afraid of us or is it we who are afraid?”

“What should we remember and what should we forget?”

“Did I paint for strangers an ideal Palestine because I had lost it?”

…and express in simple ways the everyday sorrows of displacement.

“I have never been able to collect my own library. I have moved between houses and furnished apartments, and become used to the passing and the temporary. I have tamed myself to the feeling that the coffeepot is not mine.”

But in the vast desert of pain, there is room for love and joy…

“Love is the confusion of roles between the giver and the taker.”

“Joy needs training and experience. You have to take the first step.”

…and even vaster spaces for art.

“I said to myself that the heart of the matter was in a detailed knowledge of life, and of the human maturity that is the foundation for all artistic maturity. These are features that no work of art worthy of the name can do without, whatever the lived experience. What is important is the piercing insight and the special sensitivity with which we receive experience, not simply our presence at the event, which, important as it is, is not enough to create art.”

I Saw Ramallah — read, once again, to humanize what we tend to generalize.

Mario Vargas Llosa: The Language of Passion

The Language of Passion is an excellent education on writing and thinking.

The topics in this Nobel laureate’s book of essays and articles are broad — from politics and religion to art, literature, and spaces; and the scope of the material manifests the breadth of his mind.

“That two truths are ‘contradictory’ doesn’t mean they can’t exist side by side,” Llosa writes. This reminds me of another line I encountered in Maria Popova’s Figuring, “It seems to be difficult for anyone to take in the idea that two truths cannot conflict.”

Llosa was writing about both the Israeli and Palestinian right to a particular piece of land and Popova was referring to the conflict between religion and science.

This is the sort of contemplation that I am subscribing to at this point in life; and that I did not have to embrace all of his opinions while admiring the way he expressed his thoughts is, I believe, part of the immediate result of a Llosa education.

Abdulrazak Gurnah: Desertion

If you intend to read this, do not allow the abrupt and tidy ending of the love story in the first part to dissuade you from continuing. That’s not exactly how it ends. Make sure you persevere until the second to the last chapter to find the poetic piece of the puzzle that renders the last chapter almost unnecessary and makes the whole book worth reading.

And do not read this if you are in a hurry. It is writing that begs you to slow down, to savor elegant lines such as “…he was an upright shadow moving so slowly that in that peculiar underwater light his approach was almost imperceptible, inching forward like destiny”; it is writing that urges you to be there in an East African town of a British protectorate with Hassanali when he finds the half-conscious sunstricken Englishman, Martin Pearce, in 1899.

1899, only a year after our independence from another entitled European power who thought the world was intended for European colonization. “So I had to learn about that,” our narrator remarks, “and about imperialism and how deeply the narratives of our inferiority and the aptness of European overlordship had bedded down in what passed for knowledge in the world.”

As a Filipina, this book made me understand and applaud the Nobel Prize motivation — for Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

As a woman, I felt the bitter aftertaste of the intergenerational injuries colonialists cause, not just to a place but to their women.

As a daughter and a lover, I recognized that honorable layer of filial duty and the sacrifices we make for love.

As a reader, I relished the passages that put weight on the value of stories: “She missed his noises, his voice, his bulk, his presence, but after that she realized how much more she missed his stories.”

“It is about how one story contains many and how they belong not to us but are part of the random currents of our time, and about how stories capture us and entangle us for all time.”

“It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that these people have got by for centuries without writing anything down… everything is memorized and passed on… It’s a staggering thought, that no African language had writing until the missionaries arrived,” says one English character in the book.

It is remarkable, and even more remarkable that Tanzania now has a Nobel Prize laureate in literature.

Desertion is a sorrowful title. But as it is written in my favorite chapter, “Sorrow has its gifts.”