surely god is a book lover, or the security threat that is michael palin

Books or soldiers? The closure of Palfest literary festival 2009 by Israeli soldiers.
Surely God is a Lover is a Paul Kelly song. You can have a listen if you go to his homepage and register for the A-Z songs (free), then go to 'S' and download from there. The 'S' songs will only be up for a month. Thereafter you can download them from Robin Bell Books.

There would be others who would argue that Surely God is a Book Lover. I know there are many out there who love books more than life itself, figuratively speaking, whether they love or believe in God or not. Therefore, the following report even though a little old, should be as distressing to them as it is to me.

Walking miles in Palestinian feet
By Claire Messud June 29, 2009

I RECENTLY returned from a literary festival that was to have opened and closed in Jerusalem; but which, to our surprise, opened in France and closed in the United Kingdom.

Some 20-odd writers from the world over - including the popular British travel writer and comedian Michael Palin; Sweden’s preeminent thriller writer Henning Mankell; and Canada’s Giller Prize-winning M.G. Vassanji - found our events at Jerusalem’s Palestine National Theater shut down by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers in flak jackets. On the first evening, with a Gallic flourish, Jean-Paul Ghoneim of the French Consulate opened the French Cultural Center impromptu, and hosted our event on nominally French soil: we paraded through the streets in our party clothes, bearing trays of canapés and looking, I’m sure, very threatening indeed.

By the festival’s closing night, the British Consul General Richard Makepeace had made plans to welcome us at the British Council - which was fitting because the British Council was the festival’s primary sponsor.

Closing night at the British Council
You might well ask how a bunch of novelists and nonfiction writers could be so dangerous as to require a military-ordained ban in a democratic country. I can’t tell you; except that our literary festival had the word “Palestine’’ in its title, and the use of this word in Jerusalem apparently constitutes a security threat. The city has been declared the Capital of Arab Culture for 2009, and according to Palestinians we met, the Jerusalem police have shut down more cultural events than they have permitted - including the timed release, by schoolchildren, of colored balloons in celebration of Al-Quds. Balloons are also a security risk.

During the week of the Palestine Festival of Literature (Palfest for short), we gave readings in Ramallah and Bethlehem as well as in Jerusalem, and taught workshops at universities in Ramallah, Jenin, and Hebron.

Panel in Bethlehem
We lumbered about in a great tour bus, repeatedly grateful for our foreign passports (nowhere have I been more conscious of the liberating power of my US citizenship); but still, privileged as we were, we waited interminably at borders and checkpoints, in the shadow of the vast, ugly hopelessness that is the Wall, under the panopticon scrutiny of the watchtowers. We answered questions barked by teenagers at the point of their guns. We got a very small taste of what it’s like to be Palestinian. Members of our group likened it to living under apartheid; to Orwell’s “1984’’; to Kafka. But none of these allusions fully conveys the disturbing psychological experiment currently perpetrated on Palestinians in the West Bank. Read more

Sonja Karkar from Australian Women for Palestine and Australians for Palestine, which first drew my attention to this article here (the photos in this article are from the AFP article) points out the following:

The closure occurred - according to an Israeli police spokesman and reported by The Guardian’s Micky Rosenfeld - because Israel believed it was organised or funded by the Palestinian Authority (PA), despite being supported by UNESCO and the British Council. Now, if Israel thought it was organised and funded by Hamas, it would have made more sense, but the PA, the governing body of the Palestinian state that US President Obama and other world leaders are so committed to seeing emerge? The PA that has just been offered $10 million in aid by our deputy prime Minister Julia Gillard? So much for that “shining light on the hill” democracy that journalists and politicians are all too eager to laud without questioning how that phrase ever came to be coined.

Similar news here of the prevention of a folklore and creative dance evening from convening in East Jerusalem.

El Funoun dance company
Sonja Karkar also points out that Israel has a cultural partnership with the Melbourne International Film Festival being held from 24 July – 9 August and is asking anyone who wants to help protest such a partnership to please contact AFP. Contact details can be found on their website, here. http://www.australiansforpalestine.com

There are many writers, performers, commenters, activists and so on who protest Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories, despite the blanket support their governments seem to provide for all Israeli actions. Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, Haruki Murakami and Naomi Klein are among them. There are many Israelis, themselves, who are not happy with the state sponsored terrorism, as it has been so eloquently put, since at least the seventies, regarding the well-detailed Israeli encroachment on Palestinian lands and lives every day, in every way.

the I that is I

I'm not so interested in 'I' - the 'I' that is 'I', though I know its strength as a narrative device. However, I am very interested in other "I's". During the two weeks I spent in Perth, I read about 14 books, a good percentage autobiography. A few fiction were in there too, but all told from first person perspective. That's not to say it is the only perspective. I still love Underworld, by De Lillo, which I think is mostly third person, but opens in second person: "He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful."
And the beginning of Jazz by Toni Morrison: "Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too". Come in and share my story, maybe it is your story, too.

Below are some of the books I read. Some of them might only be available in Australia, and not all of them are new books by any means. But I think you'd enjoy them if you delved into them, or if not, just enjoy the cover art.

unimagined. I saw Imran speak twice at the Perth Writers' Festival, the first time with Alice Pung and James McBride, whose books are below. He was hilarious. His book is also funny, but poignant in a way that his performance was not. He is also on the board of British Muslims for Secular Democracy whose tagline is: 'No individual, group or gender should have any theological or regressive cultural values imposed upon them.'. He has a blog, here. I haven't looked through it yet, but the few bits and pieces I have read are interesting.

unpolished gem. Alice Pung is an Asian-Australian, or Australian-Asian whose family came from Cambodia. She was hilarious, too. This autobiography and the collection she edited, Growing up Asian in Australia (directly below) are important for sharing different points of view, to the mainstream Australian image. Plus, they tell damn good stories.

growing up Asian in Australia.


James McBride was the third of the three to present, and was also sharp, funny and caustic (Ahmad and Pung were not so caustic). I haven't included any links to his book, because it is very well known, and was released more than ten years ago. It's a great read, though: an African-American writer talking about growing up with his white, converted to Christianity, Jewish mother. Both her story, and his own, are fascinating, sad and heartening.


the rugmaker of mazar-e-sharif. I also saw this guy, Najaf Mazari speak at the festival. Talk about walking humanity. With him was Robert Hillman, who cowrote the book with him. Hillman has his own autobiography below. Mazari was a Hazara who had to flee Afghanistan. He was in detention in Australia for some time, as was the immigration policy at the time. He was one of two people in Australia with a working knowledge of how to make, repair, dye, and so on, Afghan carpets and rugs. He worked hard, and has a store in Phrahran, now. A very heartening story, and beautifully told.


the boy in the green suit.
Robert Hillman, who is the writer who Najaf above told his story to, has his own book. At 16 in 1965, with only two pounds and a one way ticket, he decided to embark on a journey to the Seychelles. He never made it, but he did wander through Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Kuwait, Iran and Pakistan. It is an amazing read that reflects on the incredible naivety, and therefore ability to undertake and do many things, that we have when we are young.

where the streets had a name - review. Randa Abdel-Fattah is Australian born of an Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father. She was not at the festival, but the topics of her books seem to tie into a recurring theme of the festival, which seemed to deal with a lot of issues revolving around religion, culture and the concepts, perceptions and history of the Middle East. She is a teen writer, but also a lawyer (as is Alice Pung), and a mother of two. I think she is only 30, so, of course I feel terribly inadequate, but, good luck to her.

I was, and am, as you can probably tell from my blog, interested in stories about people rather than the demonisation of them. All three of her books deal with being Muslim, the first two below, with being Muslim in Australia, and the one above of living in the occupied territories in Palestine. They are aimed at a teen audience. The writer seems to be religious, and is part of inter-faith groups in Australia. The discussion of religion seems to be a necessary part of describing the day to day that her characters face, though. The books are humourous and human. Lots of fun, particularly if you have kids, and want to present them with a more balanced view of the diversity that exists within multi-cultural societies, and in the world as a whole.



overview of Abdel-Fattah and book summary

White Tiger. Apart from the young adult reads above, this was the only fiction I read. White Tiger won the Booker, and is perhaps a good companion piece to Slumdog Millionaire detailing the underbelly of the emerging slick, fast and modern India. Easy to read. The writer did a fair part of his schooling in Australia.

my invented country. by Isabel Allende. I read this in Malaysia, actually. I really enjoy Allende's early work: House of Spirits and Eva Luna. This is enjoyable, too. She is a political beast, though maybe not enough for some. She covered far more of the time when she had to flee Chile in Paula, but there are still accounts within this. Paula is maybe the better book, but I still enjoyed learning more about her family, her country, and the sad history of Chile. This book is far from new, too.