Letter from Damascus: Superhighway to Damascus

BookForum – Jan/Dec 2005

One of the most significant deficits in the Arab world today—and one which the highly publicized United Nations Arab Human Development Reports have so far failed to mention—is the staggering absence of young voices on the intellectual scene and in the public debate concerning societal and political reform. This is perhaps the starkest manifestation of the “knowledge gap or deficit” referred to in the reports, issued annually by the United Nations Development Program to monitor socioeconomic and political conditions in the Arab states. Arab countries, it seems, have somehow ceased to produce intellectuals—artists, novelists, poets, and political and social analysts—who could navigate new courses and harness popular sentiment to help lift their countries out of the morass in which they are mired. Continue reading “Letter from Damascus: Superhighway to Damascus” →

The Siege!

I just saw The Siege on TV, the movie with Denzel Washington. Things may not have happened exactly as indirectly predicted by the movie: a major terrorist attack in New York did not exactly lead to declaring martial law, but it did lead to the Patriot Act, Preemptive War, Guantanamo Bay and an invasion of a country on the basis of false pretexts, and consequently to Abu Ghraib and other human rights abuses. The movie was based on common sense deductions. It is amazing what little common sense can do, and equally amazing how very few people are willing to listen to it.

The Young Syrian

The Jerusalem Report / page 24

Ammar Abdulhamid hopes to spark an intellectual renaissance and encourage political reform at home in Damascus.

Yigal Schleifer / Istanbul

SYRIAN PUBLISHER AND author Ammar Abdulhamid doesn’t like to think small scale. The founder of a year-old nonprofit Damascus publishing house, Abdulhamid is embarking on a translation project through which he plans to introduce the Syrian public to the classic literary and philosophical works of the Western canon. Continue reading “The Young Syrian” →

If Hillary can make it in Arabic, will Rousseau?

By Samar Farah | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

DAMASCUS, SYRIA – Nouri Bookstore, one of the main book dealers in Damascus, bulges and buckles with Arabic translations of Western texts – mostly books on computers, medicine, and cooking. On prominent display: a book by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke with the very loosely translated title “My Awakening, the Jewish Control over USA”; a copy of Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, and other works on Sept. 11 and the Iraq war. Continue reading “If Hillary can make it in Arabic, will Rousseau?” →