a kaddish for qaddafi. of sorts.

This one is reposted from kaddish in two-part harmony, but maybe it belongs here as well, what with all the Ibn Khaldun and thoughts about current uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Comments are welcome at either site.

I feel like I'm supposed to write a kaddish for Qaddafi. And I'm having a lot of trouble doing so. What I want to do is defend him somehow. Say that he's been maligned for decades. Tell you about the jokes Tunisians (Libya's neighbors to the the west) used to tell about Qaddafi, all the way back in the 1970's...

In those days, Tunisians used to sneak over the border 'basbor de-la-lune' into Libya to work. They'd cross over at night, their passports being nothing but the light of the full moon. Qaddafi put people to work. Even Tunisians.

In Tebourba, people said that just working in a cafe in Libya brought home more money than anything they could do back home.  And so they'd go. And they'd stay until they'd made their fortune. Two years. Five years. And then they'd come home briefly, bearing massive gifts. Sewing machines and heaters. Fancy fuzzy carpet and grandfather clocks. Electric fans and electric ovens. Even if the electricity couldn't handle it. They brought the hope of employment and wealth. And then they'd be gone again. To bring back more.

Tunisians used to joke that Qaddafi gave everyone a car and everyone a house.  Every Libyan, that is. And that Libya was so rich, that when the car ran out of gas, they'd just abandon it right where it stood. Libya was that rich.  It was a very Tunisian joke. Tunisia was surrounded by rich neighbors, and their humor was the worst kind of self-deprecating.

Until last year. When Tunisia led the way.

And then the neighbors followed.

So.

Qaddafi was killed today.

And the media is still making jokes about him. How ludicrous he was. The crimes he perpetrated. Remember when Reagan called Qaddafi a 'Barbarian and a rat fink'?  It was headline in the SF Chronicle way back when. Today, even NPR still felt the need to joke about Qaddafi's hats, his ego, and his tent. The media has enjoyed decades of making him look clownish and stupid. A country bumpkin who ended up in power. Although, he never did hold any official title beyond 'colonel.'

My favorite Qaddafi story is when some Minister in Tunisian President Bourguiba's cabinet handed him an edict, and the first president of the republic signed it, sight unseen. Only to discover that he'd just given his country away. To Qaddafi.  Under the edict, Bourguiba would stay president of the newly combined nation, and Qaddafi would head the military.

Oops.

When Bourguiba realized his mistake, the story goes, he threw the Minister in prison for a while, and went on national TV.

"I'm an old man," President Bourguiba said, "and someone took advantage of me."

Tebourbis told me this story. They loved this story.

And then Bourguiba—right there on the tube in front of his entire nation—admitted that he'd made a mistake.

He picked up the edict in his two hands, held it up for all to see, and tore it to pieces. Khalass. No more treaty.

God, that was simple.

And that was the difference between the two North African leaders.

Qaddafi tried to merge Libya with Egypt, too. And Chad, as well. It just never seemed to take.

I was once in Chad when Qaddafi was visiting N'Djemena. As we traveled south from the capital, the tribesmen were riding north to pay him homage.  Thirty five years later, he still had sub-Saharan and even Tuareg allegiance, even in recent days. He desired a greater Maghrebi union. And believed that kings and royalty were anachronistic in the modern age. That the Middle East and North Africa should let go of monarchy already. For himself, no title, just rule. Seems he was more opposed to titles than despotism.

So.

Long live the revolution. That's what Qaddafi used to say.

But if the rest of the world is holding its collective breath for the blossoming democratic institutions any time soon, you can say kaddish for that one starting right now.

Yes, I know. You're sick of my invoking Ibn Khaldun. But there it is. A prediction of yet another oscillation of elites. The 'Arab Spring' may well be an upheaval against a generation of despotic rulers across the Middle East and North Africa. But expect preexisting opposition factions, parties, and leaders-in-exile (or prison) to step into power vacuum more than democratic proceedings.

But if democratic institutions somehow miraculously do flourish one day—thank this eager new generation (with their cell phones, smart phones, social networks) for finally doing what every generation before them could not manage. Keep in mind how the 'Arab Spring' started. In Tunisia. With one young man. Underemployed, and bureaucratically hampered. One young man with no future at all.

Unemployment of a plugged in hip new generation. Linked in to global scene. Aware of options and lack of options. No movement, uprising, or revolution has solved that one at all.  Not anywhere. Not even here.

The next leader and government of Libya is going to have to do at least one thing that Qaddafi did. He—or she—is going to have to somehow put this next generation to work.

picturing devastation: japan's 8.9 on the richter scale

I was thinking about Tunisia when Egypt happened. Thinking about Egypt and Tunisia when Yemen and Bahrain started to unravel. Thinking about Yemen and Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia, when Libya grabbed my attention. I was still desperately seeking more news on the little country that 'started it all.' Tunisia holds a special place in my heart, after all. When Japan happened. Which isn't to say that anything else in the world isn't still happening. There's collective bargaining down the drain in Wisconsin, and that too is a devastation that will spread like a virus and infect us all. Of all that has happened of late, that's the one that likely touches me personally more than any of the others, but —

The photographs started pouring in. Tahrir Square mobilized. Very moving. Qaddafi yet again made to look like a fool, which he isn't. Just upsetting. Mohamed Bouazizi's mother speaking out against tyranny. Even more moving and upsetting.

But I didn't cry.

And as a pessimist (who also studies the Middle East), I have few illusions that structural change in the 'democratic' direction will come to characterize the region as a whole. Ibn Khaldun, Wittfogel, and others have taught me that rulers (what we call dictators these days) have some advantages over the democratic process in nations where tribal affiliation still holds sway.

Point is, I've been paying attention. But I've also been stuck here in my distanced analytical brain.

Pictures, like music, bypass our rationality. They hit us in the gut. They hit us in the heart. All before we know that we've been hit. For this reason I prefer nice distant, rational photographs that remind us of perspective. The one above, for example, from Sendai, Japan — shown in the New York Times. You don't have to feel much at all, except the beauty of the planet giving a little stretch after a nap. Or stretch marks on a pregnant woman's expanding belly, making room for a growing child. Beautiful. Yes I called it that. But then there are all the pictures of human devastation. Mountains of detritus of the products of man. Houses crashed over each other, splinters of urban life lying there in the photo, like ten million pieces of pick-up sticks waiting for the game to begin. Knowing we will pick up all those sticks, but we still won't win.

There are some amazing photos out there of the 8.9 earthquake in Japan. Shipwrecks among housing wrecks. Car wrecks out there in the ocean. Human faces crumbling or facing terrible loss. Photos that capture the shock of it all. And one of those photos got to me. Finally. It hit me hard. And I've been staring at these photos, glued to them, examining every corner of them, not looking for anything I can put my finger on. But this one, this one — and it's not even a great cinematic photo. Just maybe a shapshot, really. But it hit me with tsunami force.



It's this little photo, with nothing much there to see. Two parents who've been searching for their daughter — and just found her. She's barely visible, still in her car. Just a wisp of her hair, a quarter of her face. That's all you see of her. And her parents are looking at her — not emoting for the camera. Her mother reaches out to touch her hair. This is a private devastation, caught in a quiet landscape of post-earthquake and post-tsunami Japan.

And it just broke me up. It got to me.

I much prefer the stretch marks view of natural disaster. The aren't-we-humans-stupid view of where we build our cities (not to mention our nuclear plants). But truth to tell, there are no safe places to hide from 'mother' nature. There are no corners of the globe that guarantee safe little lives free from a planetary yawn. Still, the view from afar — the these-things-are-natural — equanimity vastly contrasts with how we might feel about devastation of our own making. Middle Eastern wars, nuclear accidents, holocausts and inquisitions. We shake our heads or get engaged. We take sides. We get adamant.

We can't even blame global warming on this one. No one to blame really, but surely we'll find a way. It's so human to seek out culpability. So reassuring, somehow. Like maybe it'll keep us safe and sound. No war here, we can say. Nothing to worry about. We live in a peaceful part of the globe. And I live in beautiful ... San Francisco. What a safe haven from the political woes of the world. No earthquakes here, right? I mean, we're not due for another ten years, easy. What great building codes we have, right? ("What big teeth, you have, grandmother" said Little Red Riding Hood to the wolf). We see what we want to see — until the truth slams us hard awake.

Just like Sendai.

Just like that couple staring into that twisted iron that used to be a car. Staring into a young girl's face, a girl who used to be their daughter. Finding her that way. No, stuff like that — I just can't take.

Retreat. Retreat! As far back as I can. Can I make this not personal? I'm not sure that I can. But those parents just lost their child. How is that not personal?

A kaddish for all those who mourn the devastation that surrounds them. A kaddish, one daughter at a time.

say something about veils...

Here's something I'm actually pretty angry about. There, I said it out loud. I'm angry about my great-grandmother's veils.

My dad spent decades scouring the earth for Judaica. To rescue it and give it a home. Not our home, mind you. But something more permanent. A place where these fragmented treasures of our People would be (or might be) preserved this time forever.

I come from a museum family, in which no object —excuse me, artifact— is really personal. History has taken so much from us, my mother would say. We were robbed by the Expulsion, the Inquisition, the Holocaust. And so, my sibling, the museum, got all the attention. History was not our own to be kept, held or savored just in our tiny fragment of a family (or anyone else's family either). It must be preserved — institutionalized — as yet another symbol of the heritage that we collectively lost. Preserved for all to treasure equally. Not for any of us to keep for ourselves.

And so, my great-grandmother's veils, when they were eventually uncovered in my nona's house, went straight to the museum. I only got to wear them once, but I remember how beautiful they were, how delicate, and exactly how complicated it was to wear them. Somewhere, I know there is a picture of me in her veils. But clearly I was not to be entrusted with them beyond that momentary loan.

Besides, my research interests were primarily among Muslim populations (or nominally Muslim, anyway). I keep thinking that perhaps I wasn't worthy of keeping the family veils. I was studying, perhaps, the wrong tradition! The Bukharan veils were all that was left from that particular line of the family. Maybe my parents were right to have them incarcerated. So they could be put on display on a mannequin every five or ten years for little Jewish school children to gawk at for a second or two before moving on to the next exhibit.

My dad collected everything. But he wasn't materialistic about any of the stuff he 'rescued.' What he treasured were the stories they could help uncover. Each object, each bit of junk held a piece of the puzzle. And if you were a good researcher, you could find enough bits of junk to be able to see the whole picture. He was, in his way, an archaeologist of of our fragmented history. And when he died, his apartment became my own excavation site. And it's now my job to find homes for all the remaining orphaned bits of unclaimed culture. And I became the curator of my dad's leftover homeless treasures.

At some point along the way, I started to collect some pretty nifty veils. My travel-veils, I call them. My favorites are the Egyptian ones with all the beaded sparklies on them. They're the closest thing I've found that feel like my noni's veils, though nothing's very close. And when I wear my veils, I feel at home, and safe, and linked up to a line that goes back through time, a thousand years, or two, or three, or longer.

"History is always now," my mom always said. And wearing those veils, well, I can feel it. But truth be told, I really don't like museums very much. It's not just the sibling rivalry. I'd just rather wear my history than stare at it through glass.