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Commentary

Teaching the f-word

200709_interact.jpgCombative English: lesson one.


 

Sachiko must be considered “different” here in Japan. She works in the male-dominated research and development section of a major automobile company. Her interests include English, Hollywood movies, and fast cars. She wears dark, thick-framed glasses that cover most of her round, childlike face. She could easily pass as an elementary school student, but was taking an adult, basic-level English class I was teaching.

One day, she stayed behind to ask me a question. She could hardly put two words together. But no matter. After my having taught English for more than 10 years in Japan, my teacher instincts fill in those pesky prepositions or pronouns that often make even the more advanced students cringe with fear. It’s amazing how ideas can be conveyed without these trimmings. Such bare, stripped-down sentences deliver more impact to what the speaker wants to say.

“Very sorry. I have question. What do you say, ‘don’t touch me’ in English?” she asked, in broken, uncertain English.

I asked what she meant. And she began to tell me a story in a pidgin mix of English and Japanese about what had happened to her.

It was at an art museum, she said. While she was examining a print, a man came up to her and began stroking her on the buttocks. She pleaded with him in Japanese to stop, but he continued to harass her, and then began touching her breasts with impunity.

I asked why she didn’t scream out for help or run away, but she only said she didn’t want to make trouble, and therefore endured the harassment. Then she told me it was not the first time. Her pleas in Japanese were always ignored.

If her pleas were in English, she said, everything would change. She’s seen the movies — the Western women on celluloid who take no shit from anyone. Even if the guys who touched her didn’t understand a word, it wouldn’t matter. The English would be enough to send them scurrying away.

The language has the potency of a karate chop to the head. The economic and military superpowers of the English-speaking world were to thank for that. And an appreciative nod goes to Hollywood as well for making English the world language. Thank God Johnny Depp was endowed with a native English tongue.

The dialog in our classroom’s English textbook always seemed dead to me: a utopia on paper where everyone wants to be your friend, where a “Hi, how are you?” will make you the instant life of the party.

Finally, here arose a lesson that was practical, one a student could finally use and benefit from, as opposed to the American middle-class values instilled by those textbooks.

After some hesitation, I finally wrote “Get the fuck off me!” on the blackboard, and began teaching her the unsubtle nuances of the word “fuck.”

She read the words slowly, deliberately, and in monotone: “Get … the … fuck … off … me.”

The softness in Sachiko’s voice sounded as if she were reciting “Mother Goose” to a group of children. “Fuck” never sounded so sweet.

English, especially “combative English” (for lack of a better term), was all about stress, I emphasized while pointing at the word “fuck” on the blackboard. This, I said — tapping at the word — is where the stress should lie.

Even if the intended listener didn’t understand, it wouldn’t matter. The strong vocalization of the one word alone would do the job. Even the formation of the sound of the letter “f” looks intimidating. The raised upper lip reveals the front teeth while the lower lip is tucked underneath. Any such articulation that bares a set of teeth brings us closer to our primal instincts of survival. If that isn’t enough to scare off a predator, the hard, menacing sound of the “k” could be the coup de grâce.

Sachiko repeated the phrase on the blackboard with more emphasis, more confident about what she had to do. While most of her classmates talk about learning English to learn about other cultures, to have an advantage in the workplace, and to meet Westerners, Sachiko won’t be making new friends with this newly acquired phrase. She said it to herself a few times, and even began to sound a little menacing.

For her, it’s just a sound, a magic word. She knows it’s swearing, but she’s unaware of the hatred, anger, and confrontation that its English speakers intend to express when using the word. You could say baka yaro until your face turns blue, but more likely than not, you wouldn’t get that same tingling in your stomach as you would from saying “Fucking idiot.”

English sells. Or rather, the likeness of English sells. In Japan, the language is hip, even if you don’t understand what is being said.

Sachiko thanked me and practiced the phrase over and over again under her breath as she walked out the door. She’s finally mastered it. She’s armed — with a phrase that will embolden her.

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Commentary

Married in Iowa — almost

“Application pending.”


For about 24 hours in Polk County, Iowa, same-sex couples were allowed to apply for marriage licenses. Below is a letter sent by Pam Lee and Beth Beglin of Coralville to their friends and loved ones.

August 31, 2007

Dear Friends, Family, and Co-Workers,

Pam and I wanted to share our accounting of a very unique day in our life, most notable for the support of some very special individuals and the wild swings of emotions we experienced. We chose this co-authored story as the easiest way for us to share this event, despite the fact that you may not know any of the individuals involved (other than us). We also thought it would help us keep faith that at some point in the future, we will actually celebrate our legally valid marriage with you.

We were surprised, admittedly stunned, after yesterday’s ruling by Polk County Judge Robert Hanson striking down Iowa’s marriage laws limiting marriage to a “man and a woman,” thus paving the way for same-sex marriages in the Hawkeye State. The decision was sweeping in its breath, invalidating the law on both a due process and equal protection basis, and at every level of judicial review, from strict scrutiny to rational basis. We just didn’t think it would happen here, in the heart of the Heartland, in Iowa, at least not yet. Coming home from an evening fundraiser for Community Mental Health, Pam and I re-read the decision, and then I proposed. Admittedly it wasn’t even close to romantic, but I have to say I really didn’t expect a “Maybe.” After almost twenty years of sharing our lives, I thought we were past the “tryout stage.” We went to bed thinking, “Did this really happen?”

Those of you who know me well know that I am not an early morning person. It’s all I can do to make our 9:30 am start for our Sunday morning coffee klatch. But this morning was different. Wide awake at first light, Pam and I reached a mutual decision, “We should do this.” Knowing a judicial stay was only a matter of time, we sprang out of bed, grabbed the computer, researched Iowa’s marriage requirements, and printed an application, which we began to immediately complete before coming to our first dilemma. Who wanted to be the “Groom” and who wanted to be the “Bride,” as those were the designated categorical descriptions contained in the application? Frankly, we had never considered it before. Could we cross out “groom” and both be brides? Would this invalidate the form? Are we really having a discussion about this? Would the sanctity of marriage be ruined with gender-neutral language?? Okay, flip a coin. Beth is the groom, Pam is the bride.

First bridge crossed, we worked our way through the rest of the form. Who requires a form to be completed only in upper and lower case printing? Who asks for State, County, City, Address, and Zip Code, in that particular order, on any required form? Three shredded copies later, and an early morning phone call to confirm the spelling of Pam’s mother’s middle name, Francis with an “i” or Frances with an “e” (it’s “e”), and we were ready to go. Now we only needed a witness! That decision was easy, as there was no other person we would have wanted to ask but Sally Cline, our long time friend and neighbor, and someone who has shared many late night bottles of wine with me discussing marriage and gay rights. Our 7:00 am phone call elicited a momentary pause, especially when I asked Sally what her plans were for the morning. “Well, I had eventually planned on getting into work at some point, why?” “Well, Pam and I wanted to know if you would be our witness for our marriage application as we can’t think of anyone else that we would rather have.” Dead silence. “Hello? Hello?” Only when I heard Sally’s emotionally choked reply, “I would be honored” did my own eyes begin to well as I realized our marriage was an actual possibility. “We’ll meet you at the Johnson County Recorder’s office at 8:00 am,” I softly choked back, hoping that we would be able to process our application without the necessity of a trip to Des Moines.

“I’m sorry, but the Judge’s ruling is valid only in Polk County. You will have to go to Des Moines to apply for a marriage license,” explained Johnson County Recorder Kim Painter. Pam and I exchanged glances, and said, “Let’s go.” First stop was the Johnson County Courthouse, where Sally validated our marriage application by affixing her signature as a “disinterested” witness, confirming our identities in front of Teresa, our office notary and legal assistant, and quite a few of my fellow co-workers.

We were not quite sure who was more excited at this sudden course of events, all of my coworkers, or Pam and I. Just as Sally was about to sign our application, Iris stopped the proceedings, said no marriage could take place without flowers, and proceeded to Meredith’s office, where she grabbed Meredith’s “Welcome back from your maternity leave” bouquet, divided it in half, wrapped and taped the stems in damp towels, and handed us our floral arrangements for the signing ceremony. Meanwhile, Janet was closing file cabinets and doors so we would have a better photo backdrop. Co-workers snapped pictures for us as Pam and I traded signs of “Bride” and “Groom” while flashbulbs popped. We later did tell Iris that this Irish-Catholic/Buddhist Unitarian couple would gladly hire her, the Jewish American Princess wedding planner, for our actual ceremony. Andy gave us newly printed MapQuest directions to the Polk County Administration Building, we hopped in the Miata, and bolted.

Flying past golden cornfields, Pam and I talked and planned the entire ride to Des Moines. We made our invitation list, discussed possible dates for a reception, began picking music, and even went so far as to consider the actual details of the ceremony we would hold for friends and family after our courthouse marriage. We became so excited about a possibility that had been long been closed to us. Imagine having the same legal protections as every other citizen in a committed relationship! We couldn’t fathom it.

Arriving at the Polk County Administration Building, we walked inside towards the Recorder’s Office, traversing a long hallway occupied by several TV crews and cameras. As soon as we approached, they said “Lesbians!” grabbed their cameras, and quickly began filming. Okay, they really didn’t say “Lesbians,” but all the rest is true. Pam and I felt like we had “GAY MARRIAGE” stamped on our foreheads. Guess it’s a good thing we are “out.” We had our application signed and notarized, and headed to the Polk County Courthouse with an application to waive the three-day waiting period, which required a judge’s signature. Our plan was to get the waiver signed, file it, receive our marriage license, and head back to Iowa City to be married that afternoon. We requested to see Judge Rosenberg as he had signed waivers for other applicants, and we were seated in his courtroom, just outside of his open office door. We vaguely heard the judge on the telephone, and after hanging up, he invited us into his office. Pam and I introduced ourselves, explained our request, and heard the judge say:

I apologize for having to give you bad news, but I just spoke with Judge Hanson, who authored yesterday’s decision. He just informed me he has issued an immediate stay of his ruling, pending appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. I am so sorry.

Before we left Iowa City this morning, we knew this was the possible, even likely, outcome of our marriage attempt. We knew we had limited time, and that an appeal and stay could occur at any minute. We honestly thought we had steeled ourselves against such a disappointment. Yet, when it came, it hurt, more than we could ever have imagined, and more than we can ever express in words. Deflated, we thanked Judge Rosenberg, and walked silently back to the Administration Building, handed back our notarized application“ with the required fee, and now have a file stamped “marriage application pending”, awaiting a decision by the Iowa Supreme Court. When that will come is anyone’s guess, as is the eventual outcome of the ruling. In the meantime, 21 Iowa same-sex couples were issued marriage licenses that will not be accepted, and a male couple comprised of two Iowa State students became the first and only legally recognized gay marriage in Iowa.

It’s funny but when something isn’t legally permissible for a class of individuals to which you belong, you can fool yourself into believing it doesn’t matter all that much. However, when something so fundamental as being treated equally in the eyes of the law as every other citizen moves into the realm of being a real possibility, it is incredibly difficult to return to one’s previous state of denial when that possibility is quashed. Marriage, and its attendant rights and responsibilities, matters, at least to us. For almost 20 years, we have gladly shared in its responsibilities. Today, we were hoping beyond hope to finally avail ourselves of its accordant rights.

Pam and I left the Polk County Administration Building, driving to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Ironically, it is the same restaurant we dined at two-and-a-half years ago after I was deemed morally fit enough to be admitted to the Iowa Bar, and sworn in by one of the same justices who will now decide whether I should have the same rights as every other Iowa citizen for whom I can legally advocate. As we unsuccessfully attempted to blink back our tears, we tried to focus on what we will always remember from today, the love, support and excitement of our friends, family, and co-workers. Thank you, from the very bottom of our broken hearts.

Beth and Pam

 

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Cairo
Commentary

Cornerless City

Best of In The Fray 2007. A view of Cairo from the outside in.


I’ve been walking down the streets of Cairo for weeks now, but I’ve never been to a corner. A map of the city’s geography slowly surfaces in my imagination, peopled with various urban landmarks. But in my vision of Cairo, the corners are nowhere to be found.

There are, of course, places where the sides of a block meet at an angle. In other cities, however, corners parse and define elements of urban space, reminders that there is a manufactured grid underlying the people and pavement. In my native New York, corners help orient a civilization that can no longer locate itself with respect to the stars. But here, corners are an afterthought. Edges and angles ebb and flow in a dance between spaces and crowds, like air pockets in clay — incidental to a social thicket that defies any preconceived scheme.

Here, corners are not actually extinct, but rather are like an obsolete tailbone. The newer outlying neighborhoods, where wealthier Cairenes reside, do mimic the clean edges of “developed” metropolises around the world. And the major commercial thoroughfares do fit into roughly perpendicular lines. Still, the Cairo I see, where pedestrians and vehicles blur in the frenetic, dust-caked streets, is fueled by a gnarled urban core that has little use for the conventional corner.

Here, spasmodic traffic neither follows rules nor needs them. Carts of cactus and melon butt against crookedly parked fiats. Clouds of lush trees erupt from scorched ground over an architectural jumble of postwar-socialist concrete slabs, high-rises, and European-style townhouses.

Cairo has plenty of squares — plazas known as midans, which are loftily titled after heroes, or “liberation” (tahrir), or the Sphinx. But these spaces are far from the manicured quadrilaterals characteristic of Western cities. To reserve a corner in the chaos just for hailing a cab or meeting a friend would seem an utter waste.

In the Dokki district where I live, when crumbling sidewalks kiss their cross streets, they typically curl narrowly around the foot of a cement stack of apartments. The “corner” might be colonized by a tree jutting from the concrete, or pensive men — maybe cabbies, maybe poets — sitting and puffing shisha from standing metal pipes. Pedestrians find it easier to share the adjacent asphalt with taxis and donkeys.

Cairo’s layout evokes the lyrical cursive of the Arabic script. Walls, alleys, and other spaces are distinct facets in the landscape, but they sometimes weave into each other, matted and coiling. Even the bricks seem somewhat elastic; the architectural contours rearrange themselves mischievously when you’re not looking to make you lose your way.

When you expect to turn a corner, you happen upon a roundabout, where traffic spools into a haphazard knot encircled by storefronts and cracked cement. Or a twist in your path zigzags into a bazaar of Orientalist clichés, like the Khan Al-Khalili suq, where hawkers haggle with tourists over brass lamps, papyrus posters, and other contemporary relics.

Follow another strip and find it suddenly swallowed by the entryway of a brightly lit mosque, where legions of beat-up shoes stand guard. Inside, socks and foreheads softly touch the carpet, and men check their cell phone messages amid an arabesque of delicate shadows.

In the Zamalek district on Cairo’s central island, artists have spun a would-be dead-end into a buoy of cultural happenings. At the terminus of 26th of July Street — named for the day Egypt took over the Suez Canal — the Culture Wheel harbors concert halls, lecture rooms, and photo galleries. On one side of the venue, beneath chugging traffic, a tiled pavilion flanking the murky belt of the Nile offers refuge to wistful minds.

Despite its physical anarchy, the city falls reflexively into a structured rhythm. Every day is punctuated by five moaning calls to prayer that swell up through the loudspeakers of mosques in simultaneity. For a few minutes, all of Cairo sings with the same tension, aligning the churning crowds into one spiritual refrain.

While the lack of straight lines and angles can feel liberating, it can stifle an outsider. Sometimes each turn reminds me of my alien status as passersby jeer in Arabic and stare. The sharpest corner I’ve encountered, perhaps, is the one that my foreignness backs me into, though I know I will escape by retracing my path back to the order and predictability of America.

But Cairo’s fluid landscape has always enough give to absorb outside elements. The Persians, Romans, and modern imperialists of every sort have occupied the city in turns. The sheer weight of its past collapses borders, mashing together churches and mosques and skin tones of every shade.

In a region percolating with war and paranoia, Cairo spins in relative peace on its own axis, slippery with honey and grease, and the sweat under headscarves and three-piece suits.

You don’t have to be here long to sense the odd joy — hushed but proud, a reason for the city to resonate praise to God each day. Without corners, it’s hard for me to grasp this place and how it plods on with such flair. But I’d rather that Cairo keep its secrets to itself and roll on as it always has, slipping through history’s fingers.

Sherif Megid is a Cairo-based photographer, filmmaker and writer of short stories. His works are inspired by the history and images of the street where he grew up, Sharaa El Khalifa in Islamic Cairo. He has published two collections of short stories and recently held an acclaimed exhibition of his street photography in Cairo.

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News

We All Want Love to Win Out. But Whose?

Best of In The Fray 2007. The ex-gay movement and the battle over what it means to be whole.


Snow is falling on Tremont Street, and people are shouting. Hate is curable and preventable! Conversion therapy kills gay teens! Jesus, cleanse this temple! The steps of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church are filled with snow and people pushing up against a line of riot police and shivering in the surprise of a violent October snowstorm.

Inside, a kid in an argyle sweater and glasses sits next to his mother in the crowded pews. The muffled din of protesters bursts its way into the church every time the security guards open the doors. Tom M. (who asked that only his last initial be used) came to this conference because he loves his mom and wants to show his support for her. His mom came because she loves Tom and she’s worried about him getting into drugs, contracting AIDS, and going to hell.

Over the summer, Tom, who is 20 and a college student, finally told his mom, who is Greek Christian Orthodox and a doctor, that he’s gay. Instead of dragging him to the family priest, as Tom expected, his mom went on the Internet. She learned that Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, the president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), would be speaking on “the condition of male homosexuality” at the next “Love Won Out” meeting — a traveling conference series created by the Christian powerhouse Focus on the Family — so she bought two plane tickets from Cleveland to Boston.

They were a little late getting to the conference, and by the time they arrived, protesters had lined the steps of the church. Tom felt embarrassed and ashamed as they were escorted into the building, bag-searched, and given orange identification bracelets, but he decided to go through with it for the sake of his mom.

A few rows away from Tom sits Josh Greene (who asked that his name be changed), a young man in a tight white T-shirt and yarmulke. Unlike most people at events like “Love Won Out,” Josh, who’s 28, is Jewish Orthodox, not socially conservative — he’s in favor of gay marriage, and doesn’t believe homosexuality is necessarily bad. Most of his friends are gay, and he pretty much dates only men. He has lived in Manhattan, New York City, his whole life, surrounded by gay-affirmative culture. Josh is at the meeting because for the past three years, he has been seeing a private reparative therapist trained by Dr. Nicolosi. Even though he has same-sex attractions, he doesn’t believe he was born gay.

“Love Won Out” is here today in Boston to send the message to the state of Massachusetts — which in May 2004 became the first state to allow gay marriages — that gay people can turn straight. Tom and Josh — two gay men — sit among the people inside the church, many of whom are raising their hands into the air and praying. They pray for the queers outside, and for the depravity that has seeped into the community. They pray along with the pastor, who says: “They’re standing out there and it’s snowing. It’s bitterly cold. I can see the hurt, the anger, the hatred in their eyes.” Some people are looking a little shaky. A couple of cops have come inside to stand guard, and a woman clutches her purse while telling her friend that not even the Disney channel is safe anymore.

There’s an audible sigh of relief when Melissa Fryrear, director of gender issues for Focus on the Family’s government and public policy division, starts tapping the microphone. She says that in Kentucky, where she’s from, they do two things well: fast horses and big women. Melissa, a bubbly gal of generous proportions, came all the way to Boston to spread a little sweetness over the bitter pill a lot of folks in the audience are having trouble swallowing. It’s called being gay. But Melissa, who “used to be 99.9 percent a lesbian” but is now “seeking a tall red-headed man in his early 40s, who loves football and might look great in a Scottish kilt,” came here to spread what she calls a message of hope: Homosexuality is not immutable; there is no such thing as the perfect family; and there are lies being put forward by the enemy, not the truth.

Arguing over the definition of success

The Boston conference was a first for both Tom and Josh, but both had done their homework on the history of “Love Won Out” before attending. Developed in 1998 by Focus on the Family — an evangelical Christian nonprofit that works interdenominationally to preserve traditional family values — “Love Won Out” is touted by its organizers as a response to the “gay propaganda” being embraced by many American schools and churches. Focus was concerned by the cultural shift toward widespread acceptance of the gay lifestyle, and felt that many people were confused about what to believe. “Love Won Out” was created to answer those questions, primarily through testimonials of former homosexuals who claim to have turned heterosexual.

One such former homosexual is Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, the world’s largest Christian ex-gay organization. Focus regularly hires Chambers and other Exodus representatives to promote the message at “Love Won Out” that change is possible. At today’s conference, Chambers’ speech on “Hope for Those Who Struggle” is aimed specifically at people who are unhappy living the gay lifestyle, and one thing Chambers really enjoys is giving hope through metaphor.

“Ever been on an airplane and gotten dehydrated?” asks Chambers. “You know you’re supposed to drink water instead of Coke, but you really want to order the Coke instead. But contrary to what they say, Coke isn’t the real thing. It may quench your thirst, but it doesn’t do what water is intended to do.”

People nod their heads and chuckle; it seems true enough. They’re here today, most of them, because they’re gay or love someone who is, and in Chambers’ estimation, that’s bad because — like Coke — homosexuality isn’t natural and good for you. The belief that homosexuality is unnatural forms the underlying basis of reparative or conversion therapy, a form of psychotherapy meant to change a person’s sexual orientation from gay to straight, and groups like Exodus draw heavily on reparative literature. (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays [PFLAG], a gay-affirmative organization, notes on its website that reparative therapy has no support from major medical and mental health professional organizations.)

Chambers doesn’t sugarcoat his message by telling people it’s easy to change from gay to straight, but that’s because he doesn’t have to. Most “Love Won Out” attendees already agree that homosexuality is like Coke: It won’t necessarily kill you, but it’s not going to improve your health. Moreover, the idea of a perennial battle against cravings and desires is a familiar one to religious fundamentalists, who make up a large part of the audience at these events. So when Chambers talks about the necessary suppression of urges and tells the crowd “there is no such thing as a struggle-free life,” the crowd doesn’t wonder why indulging certain urges would be bad.

Except for Tom. Chambers has been explaining that homosexuality is “cannibalistic” and “a medication that keeps us coming back over and over again” and “like living off credit cards — it’s a counterfeit to make us feel better for a period of time.” And Tom has been rummaging around in his book bag. When Chambers opens the floor for discussion, Tom pulls out a copy of The Advocate, a national gay and lesbian publication, and raises his hand.

“Have you heard of John Evans?” asks Tom, whose mom sits beside him, looking troubled. Chambers, too, seems uneasy, but admits that he does know Evans, who, as cofounder of the ex-gay group Love in Action, later renounced that organization as misleading and harmful to gays. Quoting Evans, Tom goes on: “Since leaving the ex-gay ministry I have seen nothing but shattered lives, depression, and even suicide among those connected with the ex-gay movement.” Then he asks Chambers, “What’s your opinion of Evans, and how can you continue to preach this information when a founder saw after a few years how wrong it was to try and change the way people are?”

Not a bad question. In fact, no one really knows how well transformational ministries and reparative therapy work, which is to say that people measure success and failure differently, and in the jargon of groups like Exodus, someone who “struggles with same-sex attraction” isn’t “gay” because “homosexuality” doesn’t “exist.” To be gay in this estimation means simply to take on the political and social identity of gayness; heterosexuality is the natural and indisputable norm, regardless of homosexual feelings, because a man’s body and a woman’s body together enable humankind. No one’s denying homosexual urges exist; the question is what to do with those urges. Chambers analogizes it this way: “Your feelings lie to you all the time. If there’s a piece of chocolate in front of me, of course I want to eat it, and my feelings say yes. But eating chocolate isn’t good for me, and if I eat enough of it, it could make me die.”

Then there’s the issue of whether change is possible, and how to measure it. According to reparative therapist Jim Phelan, it’s important to recognize the difference between change and success. “Very few people change,” he says, noting that only a third of his clients reach true heterosexuality. “But many have success, which is measured differently for each person. For some men, success means being married and having sex with their wife and not thinking of a man when they do.”

But Chambers doesn’t mention the issue in his response to Tom. “Well,” says Chambers, “we can live how we choose. I see very little despair in ex-gays. What John Evans says has not been my experience. Next question?”

Josh raises his hand and asks for more specifics in terms of the methods and techniques Exodus uses to help strugglers.

“We’ve got over 130 member ministries, and all of them are different,” Chambers explains. “We don’t endorse shock therapy or aversion therapy. Our most important thing is not that people change their sexual orientation, but that they change their relationship with Jesus Christ.” Adjusting his yarmulke, Josh looks somewhat puzzled, but Chambers quickly moves on to another question, this time from a woman who wants to know about expectations for those who are struggling with homosexuality.

“You can expect a life of struggle with sin, but you can also expect joy incomparable,” advises Chambers, adding that even his worst day in heterosexual life is still better than his best day in the gay community.

The symbolism of suffrage, of an existence driven by struggle against temptation, isn’t lost on religious members of the audience, but to others, such language seems hypocritical. “I have a problem with the term ‘struggle,’” says Wayne Besen, a gay rights activist and author of Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth. “That’s a false term when it comes to the ex-gay ministries, because a struggle suggests that you have a chance to win. If you don’t, it’s not a struggle. It’s a slaughter.” Besen, who spent years documenting the ex-gay movement by interviewing ministry leaders and attending ex-gay groups undercover, claims that for most people who get involved in reparative therapy, trying to change their sexual orientation is fruitless. “In six months, these people are going to be just as gay as the day they walked in the door,” he says. “What struggle? I have never seen a struggle, I’ve just seen misery.”

But Chambers is focused on hope. He turns the question on the audience, asking what they hope for. The answers spill forth: Freedom for my children. The joy you talked about. The right answers. The compassion to understand. That God will take over the heart of anyone who just wants to get homosexuality out. To feel about girls the way I feel about guys.

This isn’t just about God, or Biblical interpretation, or converting people to Christianity, or impressionable youth, or the culture wars, or the political agenda of the religious right, though all are reasons why the ex-gay movement has recently experienced a drastic increase in size and scope. It’s about people knee-deep in emotional pain. But the key players in the ex-gay movement have their eye on a much bigger bounty: the establishment of a Christian nation.

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Photo Essays

Dads

dadsthumbnail.jpg A tribute to fathers from all walks of life.


dadsintro.jpg 

Photography is like a religion, but after my son was born, I had a dream that the house was on fire and I had to save my negatives or my son, so I saved my son. Being a dad is the thing I enjoy most in my life.

I realized from a policy standpoint that as a country we were totally ignoring fathers. We weren’t looking at a dad as an integrated part of a family. I realized that we weren’t valuing men.

What tied together the dads I photographed is lots of fatherhood programs. These focus on relationships – listening to your wife and being responsible. In a relationship you need to give people what they need and want, not what you think they need and want.

The picture of the man and father mowing the lawn – that shows the importance of men as role models. The picture of the man being fed ice cream – he’s a father who’s dressed like he’s in a gang. In the [fatherhood] program, he went back to school and started taking care of kids. That’s what’s inspiring in the different [fatherhood] projects I saw – what good fathers these men were.

Non-white fathers and poor fathers are seen in a different way [by society] and I hope that comes through in these pictures. Everybody is capable of being a good or bad parent. I made so many mistakes raising my own son. Nobody’s a perfect parent and nobody’s got no redeeming parent qualities. These guys really were becoming better dads. I hope these pictures will help people realize how important dads are.

[Click here to enter the photo essay.] 

 

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Commentary

Of trials and tea

200708_ttlg.jpgFollowing tradition while kneeling.


 

A month after moving to Japan, I find myself kneeling on a straw tatami mat, a tea whisk awkward in my right hand as my bespectacled teacher instructs me on the correct way to whip matcha — powdered green tea — into the perfect, bitter froth.

Her smooth, Kyoto-accented Japanese rushes over me like a gentle wave, and is about as comprehensible as one. Though I’ve been studying Japanese for two years now in a sterile classroom environment, nothing has prepared me for this — trying to master the intricacies of the tea ceremony from a teacher who speaks no English.

My teacher smiles at the end of her explanation, and I nod enthusiastically with all the understanding I don’t have. Satisfied for the moment, she effortlessly rises from her knees to glide across the room on white tabi socks, attending to her more advanced students in the corner.

I watch her float by, a kimono-clad vision of grace, touching another student on the shoulder, who smiles at her attention and asks a question. Frankly, I’m envious of their easy understanding. I remember when all it took to ask a question was a thought and a voice, no quicksand of translation to struggle through.

With a sigh, I shift my aching legs and my attention diverts to the jolts of pain searing upwards. The proper sitting position for tea ceremony is seiza, or on one’s knees, which my teacher seems to be able to do for hours, but it puts my ill-bred legs to sleep in minutes.

“Stop it,” I say firmly to myself, cheating with English. Whining about sore legs or my woeful lack of Japanese comprehension doesn’t help to make the tea.

This is the first time my teacher has let me near a whisk and hot water on my own. My first couple of lessons were dedicated to watching — an exercise in kneeling for entirely too long while observing the other students pour, mix, bow, and present perfectly whipped bowls of green ambrosia every time.

Pursing my lips, I go through the ritual with my little practice tray. The Japanese tea ceremony is a very exact science — there’s just the right way to pick up the bowl, a certain number of rotations involved in wiping the bowl, the right distance to put the bowl between the jar holding the tea and the whisk, and an exact angle to balance the tea scoop, or chashaku, on the tea container. The first time my teacher had explained this level of detail, entirely straight-faced, I had fully expected a dictated number of tea molecules to be rationed per serving.

Going through the motions, I’m pretty positive I’ve folded the wiping cloth incorrectly and can’t remember the amount of times I was supposed to rinse the bowl, but my teacher is still occupied with other students who actually speak her language, so I duck my head and diligently continue to make mistakes.

Much of Japan has been to this tune. I can’t wrap my head around a bonanza of things: kanji characters that mystically change pronunciation with no warning; a smorgasbord of the endlessly frustrating, like the unexplainable reluctance of the Japanese to come out and say no when they mean it; or the downright hazardous, such as the many times I’ve almost gotten plowed over by a car since they drive on the other side of the street here.

Another constant problem is my left-handedness. It’s ruled me out from pursuing my original Asian cultural torture of choice: calligraphy. An ancient geometric principle (that I couldn’t quite understand when explained to me in rapid Japanese) prohibits the use of the left hand for writing as art. Aside from my left-handed geometric limitations, anything remotely calligraphic I tried to produce with my right hand caused the teacher to hum sympathetically, tap his finger against his stubble and say, “Maybe we could try that again?”

Maybe, I had decided, I’ll try tea ceremony instead.

So here I am, my legs numb beneath me as I carefully measure out the tea powder into the bowl, tapping the bamboo scoop the prescribed number of times against the side (loudly; this is one of the things I’m sure I remember correctly), and balancing it perfectly straight on top of the lacquered tea container.

I am not by nature a serene person. I like to play rugby, argue politics, sing bawdy songs, and drink beer. This tearoom, with its quiet breathy calm and dreamy charcoal sketches, is completely foreign to me in every way. As I reach forward for the hot water pot (not yet allowed to use the bamboo dipper), I inhale that deep, patient scent of fine incense and old wood.

Pouring the hot water, I draw it all in, the kanji, the botched calligraphy, my leg pains, the quicksand of translation, and pick up the whisk.

Of course, in the perfectly ordered Way of Tea, one uses one’s right hand to whisk the matcha. Pressing the whisk against the side of the bowl, I manage a few weak swirls, but can’t force my wrist go to fast enough to whip it into a fine, bubbly froth, making the tea “stand,” as my teacher explained it.

“What’s wrong?” Returning to my side, the teacher kneels in a wave of elegant mauve silk and airs her question in equally elegant Japanese. With a rueful smile I sit back on my heels, wincing, as I can no longer feel anything below my knees.

“I use my left hand,” I say, wiggling the tea-and-water–covered whisk in my impotent right hand, dripping on the tatami.

My teacher purses her red lips, painted brows drawn together in confusion. In despair, I start to consider music lessons before she asks, “Then why don’t you use your left hand?”

Shocked, I nearly drop the whisk. “Really?”

“Of course,” she says with a smile. Drawing back her ample sleeve, she shows me her own left hand. “I use my left hand too.”

It’s a small, small victory, but I can’t help the big goofy grin that spreads across my face as I transfer the whisk to my dominant hand and quickly produce a bowl of green heaven, heavy with foam.

“I’ll be your guest,” my teacher says, sliding back to assume the proper position.

Still awed, I pick up the bowl, turn it on my palm two times so the painted design faces the guest, as I have been told to do, and place it before my teacher. 

Pulling it forward, my teacher bows, palms flat on either side of the cup. “Otemae choudai itashimasu,” she murmurs. I humbly receive from you.

She drinks it, and smothers me with compliments about how delicious it is. Still smiling like a loon, I finally allow my legs to fall out of seiza position. The world becomes an odd mix of happiness and pain as blood rushes back into my beleaguered limbs.

I’m not Japanese. I’m not right-handed. I boast the language skills of a five-year-old and the inherent grace of an ox. But none of this matters in the face of my left-handed tea ceremony teacher drinking tea that I myself have concocted, both of us sharing the time-honored tradition of exchanging hospitality.

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Rowing in place

Victor Mooney’s boat show.


Victor Mooney dreamed of the ocean a few days before I met him. We were sitting together in a downtown Brooklyn, New York Au Bon Pain when he closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and revisited the dream. He was in a boat, he told me, that suddenly, yet peacefully, elevated on a giant wave above the water’s surface. Mooney raised both of his arms to indicate the height to which he’d been lifted. As I watched him, I noticed that he was sweating; his forehead gleamed.

A little while later, Mooney asked me, indirectly, if I thought he was crazy. We were discussing the relative popularity of ocean rowing — specifically, trans-Atlantic rowing — in Britain and the United States. England’s ancient ocean rowing societies have sent generations of athletes on trans-Atlantic crossings — generally in teams, on long boats, and often with the goal of breaking speed records. The best rowers in the United States, meanwhile, tend to content themselves with routes that hug the coast, or with workouts on fresh water. “Here, when you’re doing something like I am,” Mooney said, drawing an index finger to his temple to make the universal symbol for crazy, “people tend to think …”

Like many people who speak slowly and pause before completing their sentences, Mooney sometimes calls on his interlocutors to help obviate conversational logjams. As he looked at me now, with his finger pointing toward his temple, I understood that he was calling on me.

Hercules or Mitty?
   
Victor Mooney is one part Walter Mitty and one part Herculean hero. Like Mitty, he spends most of his time working his middlebrow job. He is a public affairs officer at ASA: The College for Excellence, a private college with campuses in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. He even has a wife and family that he lives with in Forrest Hills, Queens, New York. Unlike Mitty, Mooney’s fantasies of what he could do and who he could be have some basis in what he has already done. In 2000, he rowed from the Queensboro Bridge to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in a sports canoe. Two summers later, he circumnavigated Long Island — a 300-mile loop that he completed in 13 days (he docked each night to sleep). In 2003, he rowed around Long Island, and then paddled west to circumnavigate the island of Manhattan. While traveling along the East River, he encountered a police boat whose captain encouraged him to row further on his next venture. A few weeks later, he began planning to row across the Atlantic Ocean, from Goree, a former slave port island off the coast of Senegal, to the Brooklyn Bridge, in a one-man boat. He has been preparing for a trans-Atlantic crossing — training, boat building, and fundraising — ever since.

I met Mooney by chance, stopping at his booth at the 2007 New York National Boat Show, an event that fills the Javits Convention Center with half-million-dollar yachts and ruddy yacht salesmen at the beginning of each year. Mooney’s booth stood on the periphery of the showroom, pinched between the towering portside of a Sea Ray 48 Sundancer and a cinderblock wall. A scattershot display that included press clippings (Mooney was awarded the Brooklyn Paper’s annual Don Quixote Award) and a waterproof medical kit was arranged on three small tables. Behind them was a metal scaffolding draped with forlorn-looking marine equipment — a poncho, a wet suit, and a rope. In contrast with the slick presentation of the yacht manufacturers, Mooney’s setup looked as though it might have been tossed off the side of a boat.

So did he: Though he has the bulging shoulders of an oarsman, Mooney lacks the endorphin-rich aura of an endurance athlete. He has a round, lightly freckled face — and even a modest gut that belies his avocation (this May, Mooney’s web site boasted that he had lost 30 pounds). He is neither tall nor strapping, and his chin bunches into folds. The afternoon I met him, he was wearing a dark, rumpled suit and a worn tie with a slipshod knot. He paced slowly, with his hands clasped behind his back.

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No ordinary slur

200708_wray.jpgMatthew Wray’s Not Quite White traces the history of the term “white trash.”


 

Mention monster trucks, cheap beer, trailer parks, and NASCAR races, and the term “white trash” inevitably comes to mind. Some people, including those who would not dream of describing a racial minority with an epithet, might even say the classist phrase aloud. While some self-caricaturists have reclaimed and defanged the slur, in many circles, people still use it to suggest their separation from a so-called lower class.

In Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (2006: Duke University Press), Matt Wray traces the history of the term “white trash” from its origination in the colonial-era South. Inspired by his own impoverished upbringing, Wray — who is white — explores the concept of “white trash” and the reason the epithet remains powerful more than a century after its first recorded use.

Wray, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, argues that the status of middle-class whites at the turn of the 20th century relied in part on their categorizations of lower-class whites as “white trash,” derived from its inception as a derisive term among blacks in the pre-Civil War South.

Class scapegoating is not the only reason the epithet outlasted its predecessors. According to Wray, the unusually compelling term derives its power from the tension created by juxtaposing “white” — with all its connotations of racial superiority — and “trash,” which is valueless and disgusting.

“But why white trash? Split the phrase in two and read the meanings against each other: white and trash,” Wray writes in the introduction. “Slowly, the term reveals itself as an expression of fundamental tensions and deep structural antimonies: between the sacred and the profane, purity and impurity, morality and immorality, cleanliness and dirt. In conjoining such primal opposites into a single category, white trash names a kind of disturbing liminality: a monstrous, transgressive identity of mutually violating boundary terms, a dangerous threshold state of being neither one nor the other … This is no ordinary slur.”

In fact, argues Wray, the term “white trash” evolved out of two other colonial-era slurs — “lubber” and “cracker.” One of the earliest descriptions of the poor rural whites known as lubbers occurs in the writings of William Byrd, a legislator in colonial Virginia who went on a surveying trip to settle a boundary dispute with North Carolina. According to Byrd, lubbers affronted respectable whites not only by being destitute, but also by disregarding conventional morality, social boundaries, and gender roles. In the diary of his journey, which Wray quotes, Byrd depicted lubbers as idle men content to leave strenuous labor to their industrious wives. In Byrd’s account, lubber men interacted openly and closely with blacks and American Indians, a habit rare among elite whites at the time. Lubber women, to Byrd, were notable for their sexual availability to high-status white men. Byrd went on to describe these poor whites as sick-looking and lazy, characteristics that would be associated with “white trash” for centuries to come.

Crackers shared with lubbers a tendency to laziness, but were construed as bragging, nomadic, mean-spirited outlaws who stole from American Indians and wealthy whites. When charged with theft, crackers blatantly defied agents of both law enforcement and government.

For a while, “cracker” and “lubber” were used prevalently to describe poor Caucasians, but “white trash” eclipsed them before the Civil War, says Wray, who attributes the first recorded use to an English actress and abolitionist who included it in an 1835 account of her tour of the United States. “… the greater proportion of domestics being slaves, all species of servitude whatever is looked upon as a degradation; and the slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as ‘poor white trash,’” wrote Fanny Kemble in her journal.

“White trash” both reflected and created class- and race-based contempt. After white domestic workers gained the right to vote when the franchise was extended to non-landholders in the 1820s, enslaved Africans used the term to express their disdain for their fellow servants.
 
“This historical situation suggests the likelihood that blacks, in labeling white servants poor white trash, were reacting with resentment and hostility to white domestics’ claims to superiority. They were, after all, doing similar if not identical kinds of work, but the shifting political landscape meant that white servants, despite their immigrant status, could demand and reasonably expect to be granted limited privileges over blacks,” Wray writes.

The term then entered the mainstream through the printed word, and was perpetuated by higher, literate classes as a means to oppress the lower class. Expanding printing operations in the 1850s meant more books for those in the middle class or above, including volumes reflecting on the social landscape of the young country. Authors discussing class disparities in the South explained the condition of poor whites differently, depending on the writers’ views of slavery. For abolitionists, those who fell into the “poor white trash” category were victims of an immoral system: Not only did slavery oppress those enslaved, but it also forced poor whites, who had to compete against a captive population forced to work for free, to live in poverty. By contrast, authors who supported slavery argued that poor whites’ biological predisposition to laziness and immorality made their penury inevitable. Proslavery writers noted that “white trash” lived in northern states as well, so the forced labor system could not be to blame.
 
The written debate over why whites were not living up to commonly held expectations for their race brought the phrase and concept of “white trash” to a wider audience, and cast it as a national issue, Wray explains. Out of the initial divisions over whether poor whites’ existence had become degraded due to biology or circumstance evolved an even more sinister debate over how to deal with their problem.
 
“White trash” became targets of eugenics researchers advocating involuntary sterilization and hookworm crusaders seeking to rid them of the “germ of laziness.” Eugenics research led to a chilling 1926 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a law that allowed Virginia to involuntarily sterilize an 18-year-old, “feebleminded,” unwed mother to prevent the birth of generations of destitute criminals. “The strength of the sterilization movement in the United States was such that by the early 1930s, eugenics reformers routinely performed involuntary sterilization (ovariotomies for women and vasectomies or castration for men), believing it to be the only sure way to stop the propagation and proliferation of the ‘unfit,’” writes Wray.

Another group of researchers opposed the prevailing wisdom that poor whites’ biology made them destined for degeneracy. These “anti-hookworm” advocates argued that the unhealthy complexions and sluggish habits associated with “white trash” stemmed not from genetic inferiority, but from a parasitic illness acquired by walking barefoot in areas where human feces containing worm eggs frequently mixed with the soil. These “advocates” presented shoes and outhouses as solutions to what they argued was an environmental, not a hereditary, problem.

Unfortunately, Wray concludes his history of “white trash” here. Although he skillfully traces the term “white trash” into the early 20th century, he fails to explore the more recent history that could illuminate how the term helps create and perpetuate class divisions today. Also missing are first-person accounts, such as the memoir of trailer park life that opened White Trash: Race and Class in America (1996: Routledge), a collection of essays coedited by Wray. In spite of its limited historic and narrative scope, Not Quite White offers valuable insight into a term that is still disturbingly common in American English. Understanding the genesis of the slur might be the first step toward making it as taboo as other racist epithets we’ve come to despise.

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Balkin’ at war

200708_pekar.jpgCollaborative graphic novel Macedonia explores the eye of the Balkan storm.


 

Less than one year after Gavrilo Princip assassinated Franz Ferdinand, archduke of the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, the American journalist and future Red army fighter, John Reed, set off for the Balkans with likeminded, and sometimes controversial, political cartoonist Boardman Robinson to cover the war Princip had sparked: World War I.

Since Reed and Robinson published their illustrated history, The War in Eastern Europe, a historical consensus seems to have emerged that of all the soldiers who fought in all the world’s wars, those who fought in World War I were the most confused about what, if anything, they were fighting for. While Princip himself may not have known why he had been instructed to shoot the archduke, aside from the pressing matter of removing the term “archduke” from the Austrian lexicon, his superiors certainly did. The leaders of the Black Hand — Bosnian Serbs tired of Catholic Austria-Hungary’s vicious rule, and envious of neighboring Serbia’s independence — agreed that Ferdinand’s death would expedite the creation of Yugoslavia, a national home for the South Slavs.

Nearly a century later, the Black Hand’s accomplishment undone and the republics that briefly comprised Yugoslavia again plunged into war, Harvey Pekar, Ed Piskor, and Heather Roberson take up where Reed and Robinson left off in their graphic novel, Macedonia: What does it take to stop a war? — written by Roberson, illustrated by Piskor, and orchestrated by Pekar.

While Reed covered the Balkans after people “had settled down to war as a business, had begun to adjust themselves to this new way of life,” Roberson wants Macedonia to give people “a firm idea about what peace is.” Pekar similarly describes the book as having an opposing agenda. “There isn’t any fighting going on. There are disagreements, but people aren’t shooting at each other.”

A motivated, Gandhi-admiring student in University of California, Berkeley’s Peace and Conflict Studies Program, Roberson met Pekar by chance in 2003, when her sister invited him to speak at a showing of American Splendor, a movie based on Pekar’s successful comic book series, in their hometown of Columbus, Missouri. The timing was fortuitous. Roberson happened to be stopping through Missouri en route to Macedonia where, she told Pekar, she planned to spend a month researching why that country did not descend into civil war in the 1990s while the other former Yugoslav Republics — Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia — did. Intrigued, Pekar asked Roberson to send him some notes that he could use as the basis for a story. “I was expecting to do at most a long short story, maybe 25 to 50 pages,” says Pekar. “But she sent me almost 150 pages of material, and I thought ‘Wow, we could make a book out of it.’”

While Pekar’s earlier work rarely comes across as political, he says he cares “much more about history and politics than people realize.” Indeed, he lectured me authoritatively for 20 minutes, succinctly summarizing Yugoslavia’s history since the archduke’s assassination. When World War I ended four years and many deaths after that fateful event, Yugoslavia was created, he explains. If millions of people had fought and died for naught, at least Princip’s superiors could take solace in the fact that the Yugoslavian nationalists had not.

“When the Second World War started,” explains Pekar, “Germany invaded Yugoslavia and there was all this guerrilla warfare. The most effective guerrillas were led by [Josip Broz] Tito. Tito managed to pull Yugoslavia together, to pull all these ethnic groups together who had a lot in common with each other, but who, nevertheless, had been fighting each other for God knows how long.”

Tito’s Yugoslavia was communist but unaligned, undemocratic but relatively free, and — despite ethnic and religious variety — united. But after Tito died in 1980, the common identity he had managed to instill in, or force on, the Yugoslavian people began to fade away. When the new leader, Slobodan Milosevic, tried to reimpose that identity (albeit with less popular support and less skill than his predecessor), local nationalisms were awakened and civil wars broke out. Macedonia, with its large Albanian minority and weak central government, was a prime candidate for violence. Surprisingly, some might say, war never broke out.

Roberson is a firm believer in peace, but it does seem remarkable, given the unwavering pessimism with which journalists, scholars, and Macedonians alike prophesied Macedonia’s demise after its secession in 1991, that war never came. In Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts, the editor in chief of Macedonia’s largest daily newspaper is quoted as saying, “This is the most volatile area of the Balkans. We are a weak, new nation surrounded by old enemies. Several nations could come to war here as they did at the beginning of the century … And don’t forget that we are a quiet Kossovo: twenty three percent of Macedonia’s population is actually Albanian … We face the same fate as the Serbs in their historical homeland.”

Perhaps it is this fear that makes Macedonians so nostalgic. As one woman tells Roberson, Yugoslavia “was wonderful. Just traveling was so different then. We could go wherever we wanted. We used to go to the beach in Croatia … I was very young, but yes, I cried at his [Tito’s] funeral. Everyone was devastated.” Surprising or not, the avoidance of war in Macedonia proves Roberson’s point: What is needed to prevent a civil war is that “people within the country and in the international community make a commitment to peace and diplomacy as a strategy.”

For Roberson, peace does not necessarily mean harmony. It may actually entail conflict, which she sees as a good thing. “Conflict is how we learn,” she says, “it’s how we uncover problems in our own way of thinking.” Despite being a tiny country of barely 2 million people, Roberson insists, Macedonia’s case is applicable elsewhere, even to larger countries with valuable natural resources. Pekar adds, “Macedonia shows that if you can ever get international cooperation, a lot of things could be accomplished. Right now, there’s very little cooperation.”

A graphic novel whose illustrations are both immensely comical and brutally honest, especially in their depiction of prejudice, Macedonia is much more than a lesson in political optimism. Perhaps Pekar’s disillusionment with the standard superhero comic — which he had grown sick of by age 11 — and his desire to break away from the arbitrary limits imposed on the graphic novel as a medium, make him underestimate the humor inherent in this book. “Some parts of Macedonia are funny,” he admits, “but basically, I saw this as a serious project and I didn’t have any problem with that. Just because it’s never been done doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

But scarcely a page lacks an image or anecdote worthy of a hearty chuckle. The existence of a Bill Clinton Street in Kosovo, for example, is very funny, as is the anecdote about a policeman who pulls over an international worker because he mistakenly believes a dog is driving his car.

Amusing, informative, and often compelling, Macedonia fits into no preexisting genre; its format serves its purpose effectively. Roberson explains, “A graphic novel is a great way to tell a story that has so much to do with geography, so much to do with where a place is and who lives there.” Even more so when the story concerns Yugoslavia, a historical labyrinth that not even Borges could have concocted. Boasting “the most frightful mix-up of races ever imagined,” as John Reed put it, Yugoslavia’s constantly changing names and boundaries, regular population transfers, and wealth of religions and alphabets render the Macedonian situation entirely inseparable from Yugoslavia’s sprawling history. This book serves as “a primer, something that is as accessible as possible, but that has the history people need to know in order to understand Macedonia and why it was so exceptional for dealing with its conflicts peacefully,” says Roberson.

The huge cross that sits atop a hill overlooking Skopje and reminding Muslim Albanians that they are not in charge; the segregation between ethnic Albanians and Macedonians; the rumors of Macedonian doctors who poison Albanian children — these are not exactly signs of a harmonious society. But in the same country, citizens plaster billboards with antigun posters; graffiti declares “war is bad for your health”; NATO troops peacefully disarm militias; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) listen to Albanian grievances and pressure the Macedonian government to consider them; and young people set up a multiethnic university. Only segregation has found its way into history books, but it’s been the antiviolence campaigns and the cooperation that have ultimately triumphed; it is these symbols that should be recorded as phenomena of historical significance.

Macedonia is a valiant attempt to set history straight. Roberson, Pekar, and Piskor have created a moving and memorable book that has revolutionized the art of the comic and has the potential to alter the long-dominant discourse on war.

Visit jeremygillick.blogspot.com for the full interviews.

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Odd American out in Prague

200708_interact1.jpg“Kafka was bug.”


 

A few years ago, I took a personality test. A hundred “yes” or “no” questions, such as Do you require structure (yes), Do you keep your thoughts to yourself (no), Would you like some level of fame (duh). The last question was fill-in-the-blank: Describe your self-image. I got stuck on that one. How can you sum it up in a single word? Writer, teacher, Democrat, Chicagoan, and on and on. How you fit all that into an inch-long fill-in-the-blank is beyond me.

But then I moved to the Czech Republic.

I teach in the fiction department at Columbia College in Chicago, and I am a faculty member in its study abroad program in Prague. I teach the works of Franz Kafka, drink wine in cafés, sit around being obnoxiously literary, and yes, it’s just as great as everyone says — so much so that in 2004, I decided to stay. I went on sabbatical for the fall semester, sold all my stuff, and stashed my car at Gramma’s. My boyfriend, Christopher, and I rented a furnished flat on Belgitzka in Namesti Miru, a primarily expatriate community. Our landlords were Yugoslav, a French couple lived on the second floor, and the only decent Mexican restaurant in the city was across the street. Had I, at that time, been asked to fill in my self-image, it would have been easy: I was an American.

Prague is a true fairytale, all castles and churches and curving cobblestone streets—hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. But as you know, beauty attracts, and every summer, tourists overrun the city. Many are American, and they — ahem — we are easy to spot.

I’d be writing in a café, sitting next to a table of girls. I could tell they were American because of 1) the accent and 2) the pants. Great fuckin’ pants, those American girls, with their credit cards, full-on makeup, and loud voices: “Are you ser-ious?” They’d flip through entertainment guides, go to the Roxy later, and talk about Doug calling last night from Ohio. “He’s, like, coming to visit in November and I, like, cannot wait!” they’d say and then reapply their high-end lip gloss — always MAC or Chanel, those American girls!

I’ll pause to marvel at my own hypocrisy, sitting here in my Ralph Lauren. How am I different from those girls? Certainly I can answer that question, but what about the Czechs? To them, my image was the same as those girls: We were American.

“You are not American,” said my waitress at Cartouche, a restaurant where Christopher and I ate nearly every week.

I assured her I was.

“No, Americans — they talk like this,” she said, and then, in pitch-perfect Valley Girl: “What you mean I must eat potato! You know how much the carb in potato?”

Looking back on it, I should have been flattered that she didn’t think I sounded “American.” In the moment, though, I was drunk on Frankovka, and all I did was laugh.

“You eat here long time,” she said. “Why you in Czech Republic?”

I told her I was teaching Kafka, the writer whose picture happens to adorn every T-shirt and coffee mug in the city.

“Io, Kafka. He was bug,” she said, referring to his story The Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes up as a giant cockroach. “You smoke the water pipe? Tomorrow you come my house. We smoke water pipe. Okay? Bye bye.”

This was Marketa, our first Czech friend.

We needed one. The war in Iraq was going strong, and the campaign for the U.S. presidential election was well under way. Foreign anti-American sentiment was high, and some of my students had sewn Canadian patches onto their backpacks as a precaution. 

We met Marketa in her studio apartment. A mattress sat on the floor. The table was a piece of plywood laid across a crate. Candles were everywhere, and she pointed out the different countries where she’d bought them: Tunisia, Morocco, France, and Croatia.

“One time, I wait on your president,” she told us, pouring wine into teacups. “He was here for party, and I am catering. We must keep our arms like this,” she clasped her arms at her sides, “so his soldiers can see our hands.”  

“His soldiers?”           

“Secret Service,” Christopher said.           

“Yes, and he just sit there all night with look on his face.” She set her expression in a creepy joker-type grin. “He is really … what’s the word …

She flipped through the Czech-English dictionary. “No, here,” she said. “He is … ray-deck-oo-lush, no, LUS, ray-deck —”

“Ridiculous.”           

“Rideck … ah, my mouth does not do this word. Here, there are more.” She looked back at the dictionary. “Laughable. He is laughable, yes?”           

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Back in Chicago, among my liberal friends, I would’ve said the obvious: “Yes, he is laughable.” But sitting in Marketa’s living room so far from home, an unfamiliar confusion grew in the pit of my stomach. How could I feel both pride for my country and disdain for my president?

Marketa interrupted my thoughts. “There is election soon in your country,” she said. “For which do you vote?”

“Kerry,” I told her.

“Good,” she said. “Now we may be friends.”

Our friendship with Marketa had two main parts:

1) She took care of us. When Christopher and I got food poisoning, it was Marketa who explained to the pharmacist what we needed. We’d get text messages that read my Megane, tomorrow is state holiday so the stores they will be closed so shop today, please.

2) We dispelled her image of what “America” was.

“Chicago is dangerous,” Marketa said over beer and foosball. “There are gangsters.

“There are gangs,” Christopher told her. “They’re not like Al Capone.”

“What are gangs?” she asked.

This happened over and over, these words in the English language that I’ve never had to explain because I’ve always lived them. But, lived them how? What is a white, middle-class girl doing explaining Chicago gang culture?

Gang culture is a part of America. So are farming, and Republicans, and Xbox, and factory work, and millionaire CEOs, and all the things I can’t understand myself, let alone explain.

That really came to a head after the election. Our Czech friends would ask, “Why do the American people vote for this man?” It forced me to think outside my shock, anger, and political affiliations. I’d say, “There are some people in my country who feel differently,” and in trying to explain how “those other people” felt, I’d like to think I understood a little more about my country.

On the day after the election, Marketa sent us a text message: Oh no!  I would like to cry! Shit! I don’t understand people who want to have so bad president! Don’t be sad please, I am sorry about your bad president and I still like you.

While she still liked us, many others just saw us as Americans. On the day Bush asked the Czech government for soldiers to replace Americans in Iraq, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 came out in Eastern Europe. Christopher and I attended a post-screening discussion, and it became very clear what Czechs thought of our government. I felt more and more confused and disconnected: How could I be homesick for a place that was pissing me off so much?

Shortly before we returned to Chicago, Christopher and I were walking through Old Town Square, warm from the wine we had at dinner. It was a beautiful, cool night. Every A-frame and tower-top lit the sky like a theater set. In the center of the square was a huge crowd, at least 100 people, all of them singing “Another Day in Paradise.” In the middle of it all was one guy and a guitar, which he played badly, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the song, a single, stupid song that every person — whatever their nationality — knows the words to, and in that moment we were all together, all of us singing (even me, and I hate Phil Collins!). There were little kids, and older people, and couples holding hands. The woman next to me was wearing a sari, and she smiled, and we sang, and I wasn’t confused or disconnected that night. I was part of something greater.

The day before we left, Marketa gave me one of her candles. “Don’t worry about being American,” she told me. “It is more important that you are my friend.”

If someone were to ask me now what my self-image is, I’d still say Writer. Teacher. Democrat. I’d also say American. What I’ve got to come to terms with is what that means for me. But if there’s room for only one word to fill in the blank, I’d put: friend.

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The difficulties of ending a war

200707_uganda3.jpgWhy Uganda’s victims don’t want The Hague to prosecute.


 

Stopping an insurgency isn’t easy.
 
That’s the lesson in northern Uganda, home to Africa’s longest running conflict, where a rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been fighting the Ugandan government since 1986.
 
For years, the war, which has claimed an estimated 100,000 people and displaced more than a million, has defied mediation attempts.
 
But peace talks are under way here, and there is renewed hope that the most recent negotiations in Juba, Sudan, can end the war for good.
 
There is only one problem.
 
Of all the issues on the table, including the disarmament of rebels and reparations for victims, the main sticking point revolves around arrest warrants against four of the top LRA commanders, including its leader and self-declared prophet, Joseph Kony.
 
There are many Ugandans, including most of the war’s victims, who believe the warrants issued by The Hague (The Netherlands)-based International Criminal Court (ICC) will hurt the negotiations at a time when peace finally seems within reach.
 
Recently, Vincent Otti, second-in-command of the LRA and also named in the indictment, told Reuters that the war will continue as long as the ICC presses its case.
 
In camps for displaced persons in northern Uganda’s Gulu District, there is a near unanimous chorus from the war’s victims. When asked, they say peace will not come until the arrest warrants are retracted.
 
“I think that the ICC is making a lot of problems here,” said 17-year-old Ronaldo Otto, whose parents were killed by the LRA. He now lives at the Awoch IDP camp in squalid conditions with 14,000 others. “We need to forgive the LRA leaders so that the peace talks continue, because if we decide to punish them, I know the peace talks will fail. The LRA will start [attacking] us very seriously. So what I want is forgiveness.”
 
But that doesn’t sit well with international observers and many human rights groups, which argue that formal justice is vital to a lasting peace, and want to see the fledgling ICC establish itself.

“In northern Uganda’s 21-year-conflict, horrific crimes have been committed,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch in a statement on May 30, 2007. “Fair and credible prosecutions with appropriate penalties will tell would-be perpetrators that no one is above the law, thereby helping to promote a peace that is durable.”

The ICC is unlikely to pull out now, said Eric Stover, director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, which is preparing a report from the region on this issue.

But if the ICC did withdraw, said Stover, “Kony and the leaders of the LRA, who have committed up to 37,000 abductions, could get away with murder. The question is: Do people want peace without any justice? And do they understand what exactly the ICC is? Do they understand that it’s not the rank-and-file [soldiers] that people in northern Uganda want home who will be prosecuted, but the top LRA leaders?”

One of the ICC’s first cases, northern Uganda is emerging as a critical test of the court’s legitimacy.
 
But Human Rights Focus, a Gulu-based human rights organization, says the ICC intervention here is arbitrary.
 
“I’ve told the ICC, they should deal with those recalcitrant countries like the U.S. who don’t want to be under the armpit of the ICC, not a banana republic like Uganda,” said James A.A. Otto, executive director of the group. The U.S. is a not a signatory to the ICC and is exempt from prosecution, he noted.

Otto also argued that the ICC is biased because it is not prosecuting the alleged human rights violations committed by the Ugandan military, the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF).

But the people of northern Uganda seem unconcerned with any nuanced questions of international justice. They feel they have suffered enough and just want the ICC to go away.
 
Those living in the war torn area say the ICC arrest warrants provide a disincentive for LRA rebels to come out of the bush and stop fighting.
 
“Now there is no way the rebel leaders can be punished,” said Yafes Okot, a 30-year-old former rebel who was forced by his commanders to butcher others who tried to escape. “If they know they will be punished and are asked to come out of the bush for peace talks, they won’t come. What else can be done?”

 

Retired Anglican Bishop Baker Ochola, former vice president of the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative, believes the ICC is only concerned with international legitimacy, not with healing a shattered community.  
 
“Real justice is not punishment,” said Ochola, who lost his wife to an LRA landmine. Instead of the ICC’s arrest warrants, Ochola and many other Ugandans support more traditional mechanisms of peace, including a truth and reconciliation commission and tribal justice ceremonies.

“Real justice is not killing someone because someone has killed your child, because now you’re becoming a killer just like him or her,” said Ochola. “So for us, we bring a different perspective: We are not going to kill you. We’re going to give you back your life. That’s the difference. Truth, mercy, justice, and peace must stand together.”
 
The local tribal justice systems help to rebuild the relationships between the perpetrator and the victim through reconciliation ceremonies, he said. One such ceremony is the Mato oput, a system of truth-telling followed by a series of ceremonial gestures like slaughtering livestock, sharing a meal, and drinking from the same cup.
 
Such systems stress forgiveness over punishment and accountability. But given the extent of massacres, maiming, and forced abductions by the LRA, Kony and his top commanders have a lot to account for.
 
“A culture of impunity should not be encouraged anywhere in the world for those who commit war crimes against the population,” said Lt. Col. Francis Achoka Ongom, Civil Military Relations Officer for the UPDF, whose duties include the protection of civilians in conflict areas. “That is why [the government] sought help from the ICC, so that the ICC could help the government solve this problem.”

But now, even the Ugandan government is sending mixed signals about its preference for the court. After initially inviting the ICC, the government recently signed a peace agreement with the rebels acknowledging that “the national legal and institutional framework provides a sufficient basis for ensuring accountability and reconciliation.”
 
In other words, Uganda can take care of itself.

In the coming weeks, the Ugandan government may request that the ICC abandon its prosecution of the LRA rebels.
 
If that occurs, the court will have to make a difficult decision: It can ignore the request, continue to pursue the prosecutions, and risk prolonging the war, thereby losing legitimacy in the eyes of the victims.

Or the court can abandon the prosecutions, and lose legitimacy in the eyes of international observers.

 

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From dust to dust

200707_offtheshelf.jpgA look at Dave Eggers’ What Is the What, an account of a Sudanese refugee’s struggle to adapt in the United States.


Growing up amidst the horrors of civil war in Sudan in the 1980s, Valentino Achak Deng witnessed acts that could stamp out the faith of even the staunchest believers in humanity. Hordes of armed men from the north torched his village and massacred his relatives and neighbors when he was just seven years old. Later, Deng saw hundreds of boys his age die as they walked across the desert to seek shelter in Ethiopia. The army that supposedly was fighting for his freedom — the Sudan People’s Liberation Army — drove many other boys to their deaths. But the book that tells the story of Deng’s brutal and courageous life is as much a commentary on its readers as it is on Deng’s experiences and his native country. What is the What, the creative retelling of Deng’s life by journalist and author Dave Eggers, seems to convey that Deng has been victimized by the citizens of his adopted society in America perhaps even more cruelly than he had been during the bleakest days of the war.

Deng’s story involves a 13-year journey from his ravaged village in southern Sudan to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya until, at long last, he is granted asylum in the United States and flown to Atlanta. What Is the What, a fictionalized version of Deng’s life with Deng as the narrator, focuses on a two-day period in Atlanta, opening with him being assaulted and robbed in his own home. In the book, Deng imagines addressing his attackers when they leave him tied-up and bloodied on the floor, then the God-fearing neighbors oblivious to his calls for help, the cop indifferent to the glaring clues at the crime scene, the emergency room receptionist who makes him wait 14 hours for an MRI, and lastly, the harried clients at the fitness center where he works as a receptionist.

A theme running throughout Deng’s narrative is his recurring doubt as to whether he actually exists to the Americans he encounters. All the characters he meets within the two-day span of the novel behave as though Deng were either not alive or not a human being. “This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book,” Deng surmises when the child of his attackers drops a phone book on his head to shut him up. When Deng calls his own stolen cell phone after he is freed and the child answers, he expresses defeat that the police never bothered to trace his phone number. “This is the moment, above any other, when I wonder if I actually exist. If one of the parties involved, the police or the criminals, believed that I had worth or a voice, then this phone would have been disposed of. But it seems clear that there has been no acknowledgment of my existence on either side of this crime.”

Deng expresses more outrage here than he does when describing the events of his horrific past. Brutal injustices can be wrought by governments and men during times of war; perhaps they are expected. It is these lesser abuses æ such as being ignored æ that truly offend Deng. “In a furious burst, I kick and kick again, flailing my body like a fish run aground,” Deng says, describing his attempts to free himself after the perpetrators leave him bound and gagged on the floor of his apartment. “Hear me, Christian neighbors!  Hear your brother just above!” He waits. “Nothing again. No one is listening. No one is waiting to hear the kicking of a man above. It is unexpected. You have no ears for someone like me.”

A reader will likely feel frustrated for Deng. How could anyone assault someone who has endured so much? How could the police not intervene? How could the neighbors be deaf to his pleas? But in fact, we too are his neighbors. How many times have we been deaf to the kicking of a man above? How many of us consider ourselves sensitive and empathetic, only to act as if some around us don’t exist?
 
“Does this interest you, Julian?” Deng asks the receptionist who sits ignoring him as he waits hours in an empty emergency room for treatment for his bloodied head. “You seem to be well-informed and of empathetic nature, though your compassion surely has a limit. You hear my story of being attacked in my own home, and you shake my hand and look into my eyes and promise treatment to me, but then I wait. … You wear a uniform and have worked at a hospital for some time; I would accept treatment from you, even if you were unsure. But you sit and think you can do nothing.”

Julian does not hear this, of course; Deng is not speaking aloud. But Deng’s words ring in the minds of the readers. It is us he is addressing, and his acknowledgement of our existence despite our ignorance serves as an accusation. “I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run,” Deng states in the book’s final paragraph. “All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Though Deng’s closing tone is a hopeless one — for of course, we can and do act as if he doesn’t exist — his exhortation is clear. To rekindle belief in humanity, we needn’t put an end to all its wars. We must simply assume the responsibility of hearing those we deafly ignore. 

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