Blog

Infant sex change


In what should have been a routine circumcision, an eight-month-old boy had his entire penis burned off, thanks to a doctor’s error. After encouragement from a psychologist, the child’s parents agreed to have the child undergo an infant sex change and to raise the child as a girl. That boy was David Reimer, who for a period was called Brenda.

As John Colapinto — who wrote a book about David Reimer’s experiences in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl — writes in Slate magazine, Reimer’s sexual reassignment was traumatic. Brenda was teased at school for her masculinity, crossly refused to wear dresses, and expressed to the adults in her life that she felt like a boy. Under the instructions of the curiously named Dr. Money, who had encouraged Reimer’s parents to have their son undergo sexual reassignment, the adults lied to Reimer and asserted that such feelings were a passing phase. At age 14, however, Reimer discovered the truth, and he eventually decided upon a surgical return to the male sex. Reimer underwent a double mastectomy to rid himself of his breasts — a result of estrogen therapy — his synthetic vagina was replaced with a synthetic penis and testicles, and he underwent yet more hormone therapy.

This spring, David Reimer committed suicide at the age of 38. Two years ago, his identical twin, Brian, had died from overdosing on antidepressants.  

It would be presumptuous and reductive to hazard guesses as to why Reimer committed suicide, but his story should at least give us pause and force us to consider not only the roles of nature and nurture in formulating an individual’s identity as it relates to gender — as distinguished from biological and physiological sex — but it should also remind us of the human cost of asking such questions. This is not to question the scientific validity of research into gender and identity. Rather, we should remember that David Reimer was the subject of a medical study and, like a lab rat, he had no say in the matter. His identical twin brother provided the perfect control, and until the age of 14, Reimer was an unwitting participant in an experiment known in the 1960s and 1970s as the John/Joan case. According to The New York Times, Janet Reimer, David’s mother, believes that it was the emotional strain of the experiment of David Reimer’s life that led to his death.

Lest we reduce David Reimer’s fascinating and harrowing experiences to a medical and social curiosity, we should remind ourselves that, as fascinating as the scientific research may be, if the methodology destroys the human being in the process, it may only be morally responsible to table such research for the time being.

—Mimi Hanaoka

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Blog

The strangest despot in the world


What do we make of a president who renamed some months of the year after himself, built an enormous revolving statue of himself, held an international symposium on melons — although his country is largely desert — and who is now demanding that words from his book be inscribed next to verses of the Qur’an on a mosque? What, in short, do we make of Mr. Saparmyrat Atayevich Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan, who, as president for life, sits atop of a considerable amount of oil and the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world?  
  
In the competition for bizarre despots, Mr. Niyazov rivals Kim Jong-il, and in his most recent display of unchecked authority, he has decreed that the walls of a mosque currently under construction in the capital Ashgabat be inscribed not only with verses from the Qur’an but also with his own words of wisdom that he recorded in the Ruhnama (translated as The Book of the Soul), which was published in 2001 and is already required reading in schools in Turkmenistan. Even without Mr. Niyazov’s self-aggrandizing architectural flourishes, the mosque in Ashgabat will likely be a decadent affair — it may become the largest mosque in Asia, with a capacity for 10,000 faithful and a dome that staggers 50 meters tall, which has already been installed by helicopter.

Turkmenistan is tucked in the Central Asian region between Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The BBC reported in March of 2003 that the Central Asia division’s director of the International Crisis Group, Robert Templer, warned that Turkmenistan could “become the next Afghanistan — and it certainly could become a danger to the rest of the world.”

The government has an absolute stranglehold on all of the media in Turkmenistan. According to the International Freedom of Expression exchange forum, Turkmenistan can only boast of having “one of the worst media climates in the world.”

Determined to quash any independent religious voice, in addition to stifling all independent, secular outlets for discourse, in March of 2004, the Turkmen authorities imprisoned the chief Mufti, Nasrullah Ibn Ibadullah, who had been heading the board of Islamic scholars who lead the religious affairs of Turkmenistan. Nasrullah Ibn Ibadullah has been sentenced to over 20 years in prison, and yet the BBC reports that the Mufti’s crime and reason for arrest are still unclear.

When the leader of a government that is ostensibly not a theocracy begins to consolidate secular and religious authority in a curious but unquestionable move towards a contemporary, bizarre, and Islamic version of Ceasaropapism, all of those who advocate a coherent civil society should cast a wary gaze on Mr. Niyazov and his unchecked power in Turkmenistan.  

—Mimi Hanaoka

  

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Blog

Next stop, everyland


issue banner

Gazing out the window at the chirping birds and radiant sun, it’s difficult not to get a little giddy about the prospects of warm weather and seemingly exotic vacations. But while travel often sounds inviting — even relaxing — people around the world know that the checkout line images of shiny, happy people holding hands and frolicking across white sands rarely depict reality.

In this issue of InTheFray Magazine, we ask readers to look beyond the sleek advertisements and step outside their respective comfort zones, shed their sense of local belonging and explore the far reaches of the globe. Before we set off on our journey, credit cards and travelers’ checks in tow, Thomas J. Clancy urges readers to grab their wallets, reconsider whether “Visa [is really] everywhere you want to be,” and explore how we’ve exchanged our genuine economic security and belonging for a Society of cards.

Our not–so-foreign travels begin in Asia, where we invite readers to peer THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, home to our new travel channel, and the terrain where Michelle Chen reconciles her Western desires for rugged simplicity with the unique brand of eclectic modernity practiced in China’s Yunnan Province in Eating bitter. And in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist John Kaplan explores the austere side of the looking glass, documenting Life after torture, through a series of photographs that may upset — even pain — viewers. But as Kaplan reminds us “speak [and look] we must.”

The next stop on our journey is France, where the national government recently banned the wearing of the Islamic veil in public institutions. Illuminating how the cultural definition of French citizenship is complicated by divides between secularism and faith, enlightenment values and multiculturalism, black and white, Russell Cobb looks Behind the veil to explore how French Muslims are negotiating the tension between their national identity and religious traditions.

Back on U.S. soil in East Los Angeles, Avelardo Ibarra blurs the lines between fiction and reality, “domestic” and “foreign,” in the story of El Jefe and the “day laborers, bums, drop outs, and the occasional nine-to-fiver” with whom he forges makeshift fraternities, bonding over shared socio-economic status, booze, women, and body fluids. Just on the other side of Los Angeles, ITF Literary Editor Justin Clark asks whether Violence is golden in Benjamin Weissman’s Headless, (this month’s featured book for ITF – Off the Shelf) or whether the masculine sadism saturating Weissman’s work is too much to handle in a world where violence seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Registered members of the site can also read ITF’s exclusive interview with Weissman. (If you’re not already a member, you can register now for free!)

Rounding out this month’s stories, as always, are the writings of our columnists. Daisy Hernandez, who helped launch the ITF columns, has moved on to work at Colorlines magazine, but we are excited to welcome Henry P. Belanger, a frequent ITF contributor and a regular PULSE columnist, onboard as our new Assistant Managing Editor and one of our featured columnists. Examining the controversy surrounding Bill Cosby’s ridicule of “lower-economic people” in the black community for their values, mannerisms, and dysfunction, Belanger’s inaugural column, Insert Jell-o reference here, discusses our collective impulse to be offended by “unpopular truths.”

This month Afi Scruggs is taking a short break while she travels to Senegal to gather material for her next column on being an African American in an African nation. But Scruggs isn’t the only one gravitating toward warmer climates. Be sure to check out the temperature of love in a time of conflict — that is, how you voted in our April reader survey!

Next month, ITF will continue its exploration of the relationship between the local and global as we co-sponsor an event with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW), a grassroots nonprofit organization based in New York City’s Koreatown. On Thursday, July 15, the Workshop will host a multidisciplinary event centered on the theme of immigrant and refugee experience in the United States. The evening’s schedule will include poetry, theater, short films, and storytelling exploring ideas of “home” (adopted and imagined), identity, and work. As a co-sponsor, ITF invites writers and artists to contribute to both the workshop and a special issue of InTheFray. Finally, as part of this special event, we also encourage you to pick up a copy of David Bezmozgis’ Natasha and Other Stories, ITF – Off the Shelf’s featured book for July. To learn more about how you can participate in this special AAWW-ITF event, please email us.

Thanks for joining us on our journey!

Laura Nathan
Managing Editor
Austin, Texas“

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Photo Essays

Life after torture

BEST OF IMAGE (SO FAR)
2004 Best of Image (runner-up)

Hoping to kill off the ghosts of Abu Ghraib, President Bush wants to tear down the now infamous Iraqi prison. But getting rid of Abu Ghraib won't ameliorate the trauma — at least not for the tortured, who struggle with their pasts on into the present.


Click here to enter the visual essay.

Investing the time to learn about the horrors of torture is in no way pleasant. In recent times, the world has endured terrorist attacks in the United States, merciless bloodshed in the Middle East, and continued instability across the globe. Why now pay attention to yet another crisis, that of torture survivors languishing in refugee camps in Africa, when we have real problems at home? In an era when our duty of compassion has been tested over and over again, why should we be willing to look at truly horrific photos, an offense to the senses, documenting the worst horrors of human existence?

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Commentary

Insert Jell-O reference here

A recent speech by Bill Cosby suggests that, despite the dangers, there’s always room for candor.


On May 17, during an appearance at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Bill Cosby made some colorful remarks about race and responsibility. For a few days last month — alright, let’s get the Jell-O reference out of the way — he was in deep pudding with the P.C. police.

During a celebration for the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision, in our nation’s capital of equivocation and obfuscation, and in the presence of the presidents of Howard University and the NAACP, “Combustible” Huxtable had the bad taste to make frank, critical comments about the state of black society in America.

Thankfully, he has yet to back down.

Howard University hasn’t released a full transcript of the speech, but according to numerous media reports, here are some of the greatest hits:

Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids — $500 sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 on ‘Hooked on Phonics’ …

They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: ‘Why you ain’t, Where you is’ … And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.  Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads . . .

You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!

As you might expect, there were mixed reactions about the propriety of his remarks. Is Bill Cosby giving ammunition to arch-conservatives who want to believe that blacks lack a sense of personal responsibility? Is a celebration of an historic milestone of equality the right occasion for airing such pointed criticisms?

Cosby was accused of being a classist and betraying his race. But ultimately, many people, black and white, applauded his frankness. He may not have been accurate or precise (generalizations never are), but in the antiseptic haze of national politics, where every word is calculated to offend the fewest people, it was refreshing to hear some uncensored honesty. For too long, the American obsession with political correctness — especially on issues of race — has crippled the national dialogue.

Americans are so thirsty for candor, we’ll take it any way we can get it.

“Nothing Cosby said hasn’t been uttered by other black people,” Renee Graham wrote in the Boston Globe, “but usually only among ourselves at dinner parties, on back porches, and in barbershops.”

“Had a white person made comments similar to those expressed by Cosby,” Graham wrote, “without fail he or she would be strong-armed into an apology.” She’s right. More accurately, if he or she were a politician, the P.C. police would be in full battle mode before you could say, “Confederate flag.” Remember Howard Dean?

On November 2, 2003, the Des Moines Register published an interview with Dean in which he said he wanted to be “the candidate for guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks.” Like Cosby’s remarks, Dean’s comment was broad and open to misunderstanding. It offended some people. But the sentiment behind it was sound.

“We can’t beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats,” Dean continued. Hardly a contestable suggestion. Even so, Dean’s fellow democratic candidates feigned indignation. John Kerry and Al Sharpton demanded an apology. For all of three days, Dean stood his ground.

“I started this discussion in a clumsy way,” Dean said on November 6. “I regret the pain that I may have caused either to African American or Southern white voters.”

These are grown men. Howard Dean meant what he said. But instead of applauding Dean for being forthright, Kerry offered this disingenuous plea: “Rather than politics as usual, Howard Dean should have taken responsibility for his rhetoric and simply said, ‘I was wrong.’”

Kerry was right in one sense: Howard Dean should have taken responsibility for what he said — and stuck to it.

Unfortunately, you have to meet some lofty criteria to get away with being blunt in Washington, D.C. Who but Bill Cosby could be so candid about such an explosive subject? Besides being one of the most beloved entertainers of all time, he is a doctor (he got his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts in 1977). Before he became a comedian and a gajillionaire, he was one of those “lower economic people.” He’s black. And most notably, he isn’t a politician.

Three weeks after the fact, we’re still talking about Bill Cosby’s thoughts on race. And he’s not even an elected official. He’s an entertainer.

We’re still talking about Cosby’s comments, not because the ideas weren’t around before, but because somebody we respect had the temerity to address it in public, rather than behind the doors of a cozy dinner party or local barbershop.

Agree with Bill Cosby or don’t. Dissect his statements and parse the exceptions from the rules. But don’t ask him to apologize for the pain he may have caused. Presumably, he thought about what he was going to say. And whether or not anybody thought it was appropriate, the national dialogue is better off for him having said it.

If only Bush and Kerry would follow his lead.

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Interviews

Dear violent person

A conversation with Benjamin Weissman about violence, writing violence, and his most recent collection, Headless.


The interviewer: Justin Clark, InTheFray Literary Editor
The interviewee: Benjamin Weissman, Author, Headless

Headless has been compared to the writings of Henry Miller and Philip Roth, both authors whose works shocked their readers. The scatalogical and sexual themes in your fiction seem to aim for something other than shock value, however. It’s almost as if there’s a desire to show the innocence of serial killers and rapists, to fuse together the homicidal and the infantile.  Is your work about breaking taboos, or showing the comedy of transgression, or something else?

I’m not interested in shocking people. And I don’t think people are shockable … We’re trained to consume anything, and it’s all art.  But I think the art-viewing and the reading public are different.  Sometimes the public is freaked out right away; I’m trained genetically to write about stuff like this, it’s in my blood from childhood.  I have an autobiographical inclination to go there: [My] mother … was really morbid, and I was predisposed to this kind of material.  I don’t want to go the obvious routes.  I’m also thinking about murderers who will kill somebody and then eat their food, and I also think that’s so remarkable.  I’m always trying to go less predictable routes, and I do think that killers do have human sides, but I’m not trying to make them friendly or palatable.  It’s almost like trying different textures — if I’m going at you with something hard and sharp, I want to break in some soft things to break up the monotony.  The same thing happens in films I like.

In “Marnie,” a much more traditional story concerning the death of a friend, you seem less concerned with displaying a less perverse vision.  Other than the ski slope setting, [which is present in many of the stories in Headless], what ties ”Marnie” to the [other stories in the book], and how do you know when all of the violence and bodily fluids have gotten to be too much?

I think the bodily fluids thing is spontaneous, and it’s just about what fits or belongs or what seems fun to go into and explore.  I kind of don’t think too much about the reader, ever.  I’m just trying to make a story that works.  Maybe the reader is a couple of trusted friends.  Marnie is a story that afflicted me — it reads like it really happened, and it did really happen, and it was the kind of thing I put down to honor a friend who died.  I just sort of worked on it endlessly, and [the final text of “Marnie”] was a lot longer than the published story …  I was talking to a lot of people, and it was really slowing down my whole life. And I was reading the things they carry, and I was thinking this was my kind of Vietnam, the first time I’d experienced someone dying in front of me.  I wasn’t trying to write a story to make people cry, although I know that’s the effect it has on people, even though it works me up because I have vivid memories of what happened. At one point I thought I was just going to write a personal essay about it.  I was asked why I was struggling — the first time I saw [Marnie] naked was when the paramedics were cutting her clothes off — the friend said, “That’s your first sentence, and if you don’t use it I will.” You can be a perfectionist to the point where you don’t write and don’t publish anything, and I wrote something that was close to it. I think I was excited by putting that story next to others that were completely over the top.  I wanted to make it a less predictable collection.  Each story was going to push you in a different direction.  Me as a reader, I kind of want that from a writer.  It’s a horrible thing for readers to put down books.  It seems to happen so much, people who can’t get through a lot of really good books.  I originally had the story later on, but Dennis [Cooper] was smart enough to throw it in the middle … section [with the] family stories.  But that in itself was very different.

You seem particularly interested in the banality of evil.  How does your vision of evil compare with that being promoted in American popular culture and by American politicians?

I feel America is my homeland; my grandparents are from Austria.  When I’ve gone there and done exhibitions, [I notice that in] the work I’ve seen with other artists, there’s a graphic weird mixing of sexual violent things, and I’ve always been floored by that work and [the feeling that] I was among my brothers and sisters.  When you talked to someone with a high-pitched voice, doctors will ask, “Why did this voice stay with them?” And [the doctors will] ask if this is some kind of trauma that was locked in at a particular age.  Maybe there was a time when I was a kid and listening to stories from my peculiar mom and that became a story mode I was going to replicate later on.  Violent stories, stories of fear and paranoia.  She would cut articles out and send them to me.  Lots of strange things about killers, and the family would totally ignore it … Trying to comprehend … where inappropriate humor comes from … was a constant at the dinner table, talking about Nazis — it’s a coping device.  I think for me the stuff was so far removed that Hitler was as bland as a glass of water or as gigantic and horrible as he is.  We had relatives that were killed on both sides of the family [in the Holocaust].

I think I’m pretty motivated by writing about terrible experiences.  A good happy life — I can’t write about them, I have no use for them except to have one.  I feast on for my writing the way the world is tearing itself apart and people are just ripping each other to shreds.  I’m amazed at the weird position people are in, where your life is placid and safe and just outside or several thousand miles away, or an hour from now it’s absolutely violent and atrocious.

There are some differences in the prose style between Headless and Dear Dead Person, your previous collection. Your sentences seem to be more syntactically complicated — lush even — with more adjectives and clauses.  What inspired you to use a more literary voice with this collection?

I think it’s the evolution for me or just growing up; I think [during your] evolution … as a writer, you’re pushing yourself to deal with sentences differently.  I haven’t looked at Dear Dead Person in so long, but I imagine the sentences were short and blunt.  I took a lot of pleasure out of it.  I’m glad that you said that.  In a way I feel a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing is pretty intuitive, of one’s language getting more sophisticated as one grows up.  I didn’t think in this book I wanted this language.  I just think it happens with maturity.  I’m not sure what I picked up from Robert Walser, but I couldn’t get rid of it.  There’s a child-like thing that happens in a lot of his work, and in Thomas Bernhard[‘s] work, and Lydia Davis’ work that I can’t get rid of. Those writers mean so much to me, and they are my ideals.”

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Reviews

Violence is golden

Reading about violence isn’t everyone’s idea of leisure, but navigating the sadism of Benjamin Weissman’s world — and our own — certainly breaks up the monotony of daily life.


(Registered members of the site are invited to read Justin Clark’s exclusive interview with Benjamin Weissman. If you are not yet a registered member, please register now. If you are a registered member and would like to read the interview, please click here).

It helps the satirist’s cause if he has at least some warm feelings for the culture he intends to skewer. Twenty years have passed since the short stories of Benjamin Weissman first appeared in such literary journals and art magazines as The Santa Monica Review and The Village Voice Literary Supplement.  In that time he has published two story collections, Dear Dead Person (High Risk Books, 1994) and Headless (Akashic Books, 2004), both featuring the same grotesque gallery of serial killers, pederasts, porn stars, neo-Nazis, and average dysfunctional Americans.  Both also consist of interior monologues, usually under ten pages and often as short as two, and read like a pastiche of the abject voices of William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, and Dennis Cooper — writers who subject the reader to a prose as tortured, hypersexual, and banal as their characters’ twisted lives.  

Take, for instance, “Flesh is for Hacking” (1986), Weissman’s deadpan description of a pedophile copulating with the severed head of a young murder victim:

I twirl the head around like a slow pinwheel.  When was the last time he brushed those teeth?  I know it’s been at least two days.  Teeth feel good.  I like it when it hurts.  Yes, yes, just like that.  Uh huh.  Oh you little fuckhead, you dead little shit.  My God, you can’t do this to me.  And when I’ve suffered as much pain as I can stand I pull out and squirt on your eyelids.  Killing, cutting up boys has made me a better person.  It took me so long to notice.  For instance, now I give without expecting something in return.

The results, it goes without saying, are sometimes unfriendly to the reader.  Five years after the story’s publication, many people reacted squeamishly toward Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, a serial killer novel that likewise aimed at illustrating how inured our society has become to suffering.  It is easy to see why readers were even less sympathetic to Weissman’s first serial killer stories, which take readers so far into the perpetrator’s mind that evil becomes uncomfortably banal, and not, as with Ellis, monstrously ironic.

Writing violence

Weissman has matured with regard to the style and content of his prose. Writing sentences that seem to be more syntactically complicated, lush even, with more adjectives and clauses, Weissman seems to have found a literary voice, while also achieving what his work was looking for: Sublimity in abnormality, an immersion in violence that leads beyond “dark humor” into the violent egotism of a book like Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.  

Consider, for instance, “Morality Play (Six Hours in Length)” from Headless, “an old-fashioned fable of the unendurable man known only as (raises his arm) … who wakes up one morning sick to his stomach.”  Not unlike the protagonist of Albert Camus’ The Stranger, “this unendurable man” goes on to commit casual violence:

He shoots his daughter and son, strangles his wife, and heaves their newborn infant against the wall; clutter, he screams, every person takes up so much room … the world is passive, he says as smoke rises all around him, I am the active one, the spring rain of contempt, a swift morose icon, my gift is misguided love, I’m the only person who’s truly supposed to be here.

The prose’s lyricism gives the story’s violence an entirely different meaning. If “Flesh is for Hacking” is, as its critics accuse, only a hair’s breadth from being pornography, and if “Dear Dead Person” is a darkly humorous psychological cartoon, “Morality Play” longs to be like a grandly violent Renaissance painting — “The Rape of Cassandra” set in the modern living room.

At a few moments in Headless, Weissman becomes unexpectedly clever.  In subject matter, “Of Two Minds” is familiar territory: The tale of a boy who exacts his revenge on his mother’s bullying friend. But here Weissman plays a game with the point-of-view, alternating at every sentence between the first and third person, until the difference between inhabiting a violent mind and watching it is negligible:

One voice is distant, observational, policelike, as if it were narrating all physical and cognitive action. The other was intimate subjective, which is another way of saying, I’m all about double-talk. First he sees himself behaving in the present moment. Then I found myself blathering on about something I’d just done … He leaps at the horsy madame and begins to strangle her. With intent to choke, the galloping equine was advanced upon by yours truly.

Even at the collection’s smartest moments, the violence grows tedious, because Weissman seems so intent on exploring it at the cost of other themes.

There are strange lacunae in Weissman’s style, however.  

In “Marnie” Weissman adopts a more conventional voice to relate the story of a friend’s accidental death on a ski slope — a woman for whom the narrator had secretly pined. Here Weissman seems less concerned with displaying a less perverse vision. After so much blood and guts, Weissman’s readers may be shocked by the narrator’s vulnerability when he describes the paramedics who tear into his friend’s clothes in order to save her life. “They needed to get to her heart. Didn’t we all?”

With Weissman teetering on regarding the human heart as something more than a horror movie prop here, one can’t help but wonder what it is that ties ”Marnie” to the other stories in Headless. Written to honor a friend who died in a skiing accident that Weissman witnessed, “Marnie” is what Weissman terms “my kind of Vietnam,” a terrain for the author to struggle with the excruciating experience of witnessing death for the first time. If “Marnie” seems out of place in a book full of masculine sadism, it is only a testament to Weissman’s quest to push readers “in a different direction,” to challenge their sensibilities, and keep them reading.

Stomaching Weissman’s violence in a post-9/11 world

In light of the allusions to war and terrorism predominating the media today, those looking to do a little leisure reading might prefer something a little lighter and fluffier than Headless. Many readers may even contemplate putting Weissman’s book down before making it to the final page. But while the simultaneously ironic and banal tenor of Headless, like most of Weissman’s work, can be difficult to stomach, this discomfort is reason enough to continue reading — both the pages of Headless and the cultural and political milieu of Weissman’s seemingly fictional world and the stranger-than-fiction reality of post-9/11 America.

That is, like Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine,  Headless provides a fascinating domestic parallel to the destruction America has become entangled in overseas since 9/11. While the body count in Iraq and Afghanistan increases daily, the media avoids presenting the more graphic evidence of the conflict. An outcry ensued after the recent beheading of 26-year-old businessman Nick Berg in Iraq was posted on Salon.com, yet nightly news stories of murder-suicides and serial killers continue to titillate audiences without evoking the same indignation. Domestic violence in America is necessarily upstaged by news involving troops overseas, and yet graphic depiction of battles and their aftermath is censored.  

Though it does not depict violence America realistically, Weissman’s work provides an interesting snapshot of the frightened, aggressive, and sometimes callous mental atmosphere that has developed since 9/11 and redefined the domestic landscape. That is reason enough to seek refuge in Headless rather than our usual comfort zones, where violence, for many of us, seems rather distant — at least until it strikes a little too close to home.

STORY INDEX

MARKETPLACE >

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0679735771

Dear Dead Person: Short Fiction by Benjamin Weissman
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=1852423307

Headless by Benjamin Weissman
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=1888451491

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0395925037

The Stranger by Albert Camus
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28164&cgi=product&isbn=0679720200

Commentary >

“Jumps of Imagination” by Juliet Waters
URL: http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2004/021904/books.html

Interviews >

Interview with Benjamin Weissman by Raul Deznermio
URL: http://www.akashicbooks.com/benwintv.htm

Justin Clark’s interview with Benjamin Weissman
URL: content/view/479/39

“

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Commentary

Society of cards

With our wallets looking more like a deck of cards with each passing day, it's time to ask just how flimsy a society built on cards can be.


(photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl)

Digging through my wallet today I have discovered — I never really thought about it before — that I have many kinds of cards; too many, I think. Some are credit cards and thus a constant reminder of the monthly burden I’ve placed on myself.

Many are flimsy business cards, some you might even call calling cards, and there are a few gift cards to various computer stores and book stores. I have membership cards to the few societies I am a member of and insurance cards that are there, I suppose, to give me some sense of security regarding my health or the health of my car. I have several security cards instead of keys: one for the building I work in, and another for the suite that houses the cubicle within the building I work in, and most recently I have acquired a parking pass (yet one more card) that allows me access each morning to the parking garage a block from the building that houses the suite which houses the cubicle I work in, and for which I pay the sum of $100 per month for this very privilege.

My driver’s license is a card, as is my Social Security card. I even have a debit card that parades itself as a MasterCard, but in reality gives me no credit whatsoever, no matter how well I treat it. I have discount cards and privilege cards. I have rewards cards that allow me to collect points for purchases, food punch cards that allow me to collect punches for purchases, and ink-stamp cards that allow me to collect ink-stamps for purchases  — all of which I summarily forget to produce from my wallet whenever I find myself standing in front of a checkout clerk. I even have something called a “universal access card,” but I have no idea what it could possibly access — the universe, perhaps?

We are a society of cards and they’re filling our pockets and our wallets and our purses and our landfills and the very desk I write these words upon. We need cards to access this, or cards to purchase that, or cards to even prove we are who we say we are — apparently no one’s word is good any longer. We have playing cards of all sorts, and packs of cards with pictures of sportsmen and heroes, of villains and heroines, all with a stick of hard, pink bubblegum.

We have catalogs of cards to find our way through the mazes of shelves and stacks in the public libraries. We have index cards for jotting down notes lest we forget our speeches or our thoughts or our recipes or how to make the perfect dry martini.

We send out a card to thank someone for a birthday gift that, no doubt, was itself a card for us to purchase ourselves the gift that someone hadn’t the insight or the time or the inkling of understanding to purchase for us.

How simple it is to walk into the video store and ask, “Please may I purchase a gift card?”

“Why certainly … how much would you like to spend?”

And then you wonder … what is this friend worth? $20, $50, $14.72? You don’t even know, so you say, “How about 20 bucks,” and then you get, “They only come in denominations of $5, $10, $25 and $50.”

So you wonder and you ponder and you consider and you contemplate and in the end you buy the $25 card because that sounds fair enough, and then you’re asked if you’d like to buy a discount card which would save you 10 percent on any purchase made today and so you ask the lady behind the counter, “Would I save 10 percent on the purchase of the gift card?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head, probably thinking to herself that you’re cheap. “Discount cards are no good towards the purchase of the gift cards.”

And, you think to yourself as you look around and spot the various sale items, posters, T-shirts, mugs, and other bits of movie paraphernalia that litter the store, they probably aren’t good for much else, either.

So out of embarrassment you buy the discount card anyway because you don’t think you’re cheap and you certainly don’t want her to think you’re cheap; the card costs you $25, but don’t worry, she tells you, you can make all that back in no time at all and save money, too … and of course you know full well, as you shake your head and smile to yourself (and as you attempt to stuff yet one more card into your bulging wallet), that you don’t watch movies let alone purchase them and you’ll probably never be back until the next friend’s birthday and it doesn’t matter anyway because the discount card that now occupies your wallet behind the sub-club card and your all American Big Bank Visa card is no good towards the purchase of the gift cards.

STORY INDEX

ARTICLES >

“America’s deepening credit card hole” by Jim Hightower
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=7979

“Calling all shoppers: On grocery store loyalty cards” by Deborah Pierce
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13684

“Charge now, think later” by Elizabeth Zipper
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12275

“Credit card companies close Muslim accounts” by Hillary Russ
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15659

“Letting consumerism get under your skin” by Jim Hightower
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18729

“

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Fiction & Poetry

El Jefe

A man from Tijuana, Mexico, learns about living and loving in East L.A. in this original short story.


None of the guys drinking in the alley behind Panson’s Beer and Wine knew El Jefe’s real name. In ephemeral fraternities, behind liquor stores or do-it-yourself car washes, names are hardly required. They all drink, laugh, cry, and pass out at all hours of the day. A rotating cast of characters, day laborers, bums, dropouts, and the occasional nine-to-fiver chat, earn nicknames, exchange philosophies and whistle at passing girls regardless of their age.

Tonight was El Jefe’s third night as celebrity of the week in the alley behind Panson’s, one of East L.A.’s most frequented liquor stores. Panson’s was a classic spot along Whittier Boulevard, a strip famous in the late 70s for its heavy cruising. That nightlife was long gone but Panson’s remained a crucial stopover. Crowds of cholos, Chicano yuppies, immigrant day laborers, aproned housewives, and rowdy junior high students kept the place alive from a.m. to a.m. The new owner was a pompous and polished pocho named Juan Martin, who the guys in the alley called Juan Martin del Mar Malvado, or Juan Martin of the Wicked Sea. That night he could be heard slobbering over his elected girl behind the huge blue dumpster. The girl giggled and moaned.

The alley guys, two mechanics, a butcher, a veterano on crutches, and El Jefe swigged at their paper bagged forties as they playfully threw pebbles at the ankles of Juan’s girl from under the dumpster.

“Pinche perros!” the girl squealed.  

“I’m sorry purdy perrita!” El Jefe retorted.

The alley guys collapsed hysterically. El Jefe held up his beer to the applause. Since coming from Tijuana, he had been continuing his career in taco trucks. Cooking was his talent, eating was his downfall. He had always been the fat sidekick for the men and the chubby confidante to the ladies. Even his family glossed over his billowing unattractiveness by nicknaming him El Jefe, or “the chief,” to compensate for the hurtful nickname Panson, or “fatso,” that had begun to circulate in their neighborhood.

El Jefe had never had a girlfriend nor kissed a girl that wasn’t just too drunk to understand the mistake she was making. He swore to himself that coming north to Los Angeles would not only guarantee him better pay but better luck with the ladies — a deception so outdated only a charismatic fat man could seem lucky enough to pull it off.  

“Buenas noches cabrones!” Juan’s butterfly collar was smeared with lipstick. He emerged from behind the dumpster, zipping his fly. His good looks were merely a blend of grooming, accessories, and attitude.

“You be crazy every night, compa!” said El Jefe, who had developed an admiration for Juan’s smoothness with the neighborhood girls.

Juan’s girl of the night shuffled out from behind the dumpster shielding her face and clasping her ripped blouse.

“Hey that ain’t your Flaca!”

The girl stopped in her tracks, “I’m better than La Flaca you fuckin’ wino!”

She gave them the finger and then took off running.

“Who’s La Flaca?” El Jefe asked, offering Juan a drink of his beer.

Juan downed it entirely, “Some puta …”

El Jefe chuckled, “Okay, three putas sit at a bar. One puta says, ‘Yeah I so loose, I stick my cup in my twat.’ The other puta says, ‘I so loose I stick the pitcher in my twat.’ The last puta says, ‘I so loose’ — and she slides into the stool.”

More phlegmy laughter and applause. The cackling butcher downed his beer and hurled his bottle against a brick wall. El Jefe sucked at the remaining foam.

“You’ve been making these fuckers laugh all week,” Juan zeroed in on El Jefe.  

“You don’t have nothing better to do?”

“Not really. They call me El Jefe, but I never in charge of nothing. Maybe you gimme work here at your hotel.”

“Sure, I need a new guy.”

The alley guys were now laughing nervously. They knew what would happen next. Juan would offer El Jefe a decent wage but bury him in work. After all, Juan only wanted him as a mascot; Panson himself would now be working at Panson’s Beer and Wine. Every one of the alley guys felt an urge to warn El Jefe not to accept Juan’s job offer. Instead they finished their beer. Drunks, for better or worse, always seem to let nature take its course.

El Jefe arrived at his new job a little before 10 p.m. with a little paper bag in hand.

Juan looked at it and cackled, “You mojados — always waiting for lunch time. Don’t worry, you’ll work just a little past midnight. First I want you to make sure all those bottles in the back get stocked. Then sweep and mop. If I need anything else, I’ll holler.”

For the most part, El Jefe was a stocker and janitor. Panson’s was larger than most liquor stores in the area. In addition to carrying the most varied collection of spirits, tobacco, soda, and snacks, Juan had expanded into dairy products, canned goods, piñatas, diapers, and an assortment of imported Mexican goods. There were round surveillance mirrors in every corner, and the walls were lined with autographed pictures of all the stars that had chanced to stop by for a bottle, people from Oscar de la Hoya to Maria Conchita Alonso. In such a popular store, El Jefe saw that Juan needed a second clerk. Juan was always managing to get himself entangled in drunk talk with the cholitas that thought they could score a pint of vodka if they flaunted nipple. El Jefe assured Juan that he had experience handling dollars in Tijuana. So, on the third night of his new job, El Jefe — burly and moustached — found himself behind the checkout counter, his belly peaking from below his t-shirt, earning a dollar more as clerk.

El Jefe quickly realized the irony of working at Panson’s. It didn’t help that Juan had invested in a sound loop that would blare through speakers every 15 minutes the California Lottery catch phrase “Pegale al Gordo!” (Strike the Fat One). Customer after customer would reach across the counter to playfully sock El Jefe in hopes of striking it rich with their Scratchers or Lotto tickets.

On his fourth night as clerk, El Jefe thought nothing could surprise of him anymore. But that night, Irma Molacha walked into Panson’s, sashaying in bear claw slippers. El Jefe saw her and figured she had been drunk since noon. Irma managed to trip over a stack of newspapers that was not in her way. She was a Panson’s regular who always wore heavy eye makeup and rouge, even on her waddle. She always donned a zebra print coat of dirty plush. Her drunken craving for Now and Laters and Cracker Jacks made her teeth rot and earned her the name Molacha (Toothless).

She had never really been pretty, not even 20 years ago when she first started showing up at Panson’s, dressed for a disco to see who might treat her to a forty. Back then, the guys would bet each other to see who could stand kissing such an ugly girl the longest. The pinnacle of their fun was driving Irma to a faraway neighborhood and pushing her out of the car. She would giggle and look around to see who might be watching like an embarrassed celebrity, then hitchhike back to the liquor store.

She thrived on her imaginary fame and confused the blow jobs she performed for every former owner of Panson’s with real intimacy. Juan Martin del Mar Malvado was the only owner of Panson’s that would never play her game. She swore he was gay. How could someone find her undesirable?

Irma stumbled throughout the store. Taking advantage of the commotion created by a crowd of teenage girls at the checkout counter, she stuffed her pockets with chocolate bars and single-dose aspirin packets. When she finally approached the register for El Jefe to ring up her single can of Tecate, she licked her finger tips and brushed them across her eyebrows to sadly flirt for a discount.

“Finally, a strong panson here at Panson’s. I knew the original panson very well if you know what I mean,” her laugh allowed a view of her ruined teeth. “This place used to be a lot classier back then. Look at all these hootchies. Except La Flaca of course, she’s got my blessing. Have you seen my flaquita tonight?”

El Jefe shook his head.

She darted a sudden look of concern, more like a gossip than someone who cares.

“You know what? I think they don’t know where she is. She’s always following guys to whereever they want. I’ve always told her don’t let them take you into no garage, but she’s so crazy and real purty, huh?”

Irma Molacha paid for her beer, making too great an effort to conceal her secret. She shouted for Juan’s attention, showering him with “goodbyes” and “take cares.”
He had been tickling bellies and licking earlobes. Juan let her stumble out before he called over to El Jefe. “Next time, try shaking out all the candy she shoved down her panties.”

The crowd of girls giggled, and Juan put his arms around the two prettiest ones. He escorted them to his car for a few favors.

Bruno Urquidi walked into the store gawking at every exiting female ass. He came almost nightly at this hour. The boulevard’s most unsuccessful realtor was always preceded by his bloodshot eyes. Bruno’s firm was known for the collage of Polaroids covering the front window of the office, offering to pedestrians images of the worst investments they could make from City of Commerce to Bell Gardens. His handful of associates waited back at the office, drinking the Coronas and smoking the cheap cigars that Bruno offered as a stipend for remaining in his fruitless firm.

Bruno, dark and leathery faced was even more pompous than Juan. He massaged his moustache as he pondered the vital liquor decision.

“Gimme the tallest Presidente,” Bruno was not coordinated enough to handle money and talk at the same time. He counted and recounted his bills. “And hey, if you see La Flaca tonight, let her know Bruno is looking for her.”

Bruno didn’t hesitate to open the bottle and take the first swig of its genie.
“It’s gonna be a cold night at the office. Pinche Flaca, never around when you need her.”

He staggered out, coughing and commenting to himself.

Chano rolled into the store on his low rider bicycle and carefully set it to lean against a counter topped with jars of beef jerky and pickled pigs feet. Everything about this junior high dropout suggested a street hardened cholo, his posture and strut, the tattoos of the Raiders and Dodgers logos, and a voluptuous naked woman in the company of Our Lady. But his baby face and cracking voice betrayed him.

He was the only son of a reputable cholo who had been shot and killed well before Chano wet his first diaper. Juan knew all the veteranos and had great respect for the memory of Chano’s father. Knowing this, Chano felt free to hang out in the aisles of the store as if it were his turf. He got away with buying liquor and cigarettes in exchange for nickel sacks of pot.

Chano brought a six-pack and a bag of Doritos to the checkout counter. El Jefe was ready to ask for ID when Juan returned from the rendezvous in his back seat. He erupted in glee at seeing Chano and took over the register.

“Hey, you know where I can find my Flaquita tonight?” Juan whispered as he gave the boy a good discount.

Chano gasped, giggled then coughed — a stoner could be astonished by any statement. “Nah man, supposably she was gonna stay home. I dunno.”

He got on his bike, swung the bag over his shoulder, and rolled out of Panson’s without looking back.

El Jefe, ever the good worker, grabbed the push broom. Seeing that there were no customers, he casually asked, “So, who the hell is La Flaca, everyone asking for?”

Juan chuckled and pondered the question before he answered. “La Flaca is the prettiest little lost soul along the alley. I don’t even know her real name. Nobody cares what her real name is anyway.”

El Jefe listened to Juan as he slowly made his way throughout the store sweeping and arranging merchandise. Juan described La Flaca with half interest as he focused on the entrance in anticipation of the next batch of hootchies.

La Flaca lived with her grandmother in a dilapidated little bungalow behind a vacant storefront, but she preferred saying she was just from the alley. She barely managed to finish high school. When she did, she had no clue what to do next. She had no real guidance and no true friends. The girls her age envied her slender figure and cringed at her penchant for tube tops and caked-on mascara. The school teachers had never looked passed her slutty behavior during nutrition and lunch time. Boys and their fathers kept her phone number in secret drawers. She was not a prostitute that you pay with money, Juan noted. Only if she happened to mention that she wants something really bad was it customary for a man to give her a few dollars. La Flaca quite simply loved the company of men and boys. There were no positions she wouldn’t explore. The more adventurous the man, the better the sex. The higher they exalted her looks, the longer she stayed. No guy knows what she really thinks of him. And when she talks, nobody knows what she really means. She was quite animated when she talked about things that interested her, she motioned with her press-on nails, and looked up at the sky to search for her words, but nobody ever really listened to what she was describing. Her neck was covered by a chain of hickeys that she seemed totally unaware of, perhaps placed there while she was still talking. It wasn’t unlike her to be missing like this — she liked to deprive the public of her presence every once in a while — it seemed a reasonable way to maintain the equilibrium of her legend.

The phone rang near closing time. “Hey Juan, it’s Bruno, where the fuck’s La Flaca tonight?”

“I haven’t seen the skank. I guess you should just send ‘em home early tonight.”
Juan slammed the phone.  

El Jefe made his way into the huge refrigerator to stock the beer and soda. The cold made him shiver for a quick second. He could hear Juan behind the register whistling at a couple of cholas as an intro to his suave routine. Assured that Juan was distracted, El Jefe grabbed a Mickey’s and muffled the twist of the cap with his shirt.  He tried to gulp it down in one swig but coughed it out suddenly when he caught sight of vapors coming from someone breathing hoarsely behind a stack of boxes.

Juan shouted from the front of the store, “You awright, compa?”

“Is okay, is Okay!”

El Jefe set the half drunken beer aside. He could have tipped off Juan that there was a thief hiding in the refrigerator, but he figured it would earn him more points if he caught this guy himself. El Jefe’s huge arms embraced three boxes and set them on the floor. His blood chilled further when he revealed a slender girl picking dirt from under her nails, leaning without effect against the freezing aluminum siding.

La Flaca brought a finger to her mouth, pleading him to remain silent. Her lips were matted with a thin frost. “Don’t say nothing.”

He brought his own finger to his mouth in agreement with the seductress. Although she stood a few feet away, it was as if her words were spoken directly into his ears in the manner of lovers and hallucinations. In the short time he’d been in this country, he had never heard a voice utter such a simple phrase with that lusciousness of the Mexican silver screen. Her alabaster skin and opaque curls made him think Maria Felix herself might be keeping him captive in Panson’s refrigerator. She brought her body closer to warm herself against El Jefe’s massive belly.

“They’re looking for me . . .”

He nodded.

“I decide who finds me now. Don’t tell anybody where I am. I like you. I can tell you’ll take care of me.”

She pressed her freezing hands under his shirt, gliding her palms over the carpet of hair that stood upright at her touch. She was tiny and fragile standing next to El Jefe, who had not felt the hair of a woman near his lips in a long time. La Flaca looked up at him and brought her mouth to kiss his lower lip. She kept her eyes open at this delicate moment. El Jefe’s puckered lips sucked like a boy staggering through his first kiss.

As she withdrew, her chilled lip clung to his and ripped a thin layer of flesh. Her mannequin-like gaze pressed against his face weightlessly. El Jefe took a step away from her and let his head hang, thinking he had lost his mind. To convince him of the truth, La Flaca brought his hands to her chest, guided them along her contours and down to rest on her ass. She invited his tongue into her mouth with the tip of her own. El Jefe unleashed the desire he had been harboring since he left Tijuana, delivering his entire tongue for her.

In the front of the store, Juan had been busy pouring shots of tequila for the cholas in hopes of taking one home for the night.

“All right, I’ve been a good host. Now, how ‘bout I show you how hot it can get in my car?”

The girls recoiled and threw their cups.

“Nah-uh, I ain’t La Flaca!”

“Fuck that — my shit ain’t that cheap!”

Juan didn’t hesitate to shove the drunk girls out the door

“Awright, closing time!” He drew the front grate with frustration.

El Jefe and La Flaca retrieved their faces from one another’s with eyes closed, the way shipwrecked sailors bring their heads out from a stream they chance to come across. She brought her finger back to her hushing mouth and gently pushed him away, repeating that nobody should know of their encounter.

The cash was counted. All the doors were shut, and every light turned off except for Panson’s pulsing neon signs. Juan believed it was bad luck to keep a business completely dark after hours. As he opened the door of his car to give El Jefe a ride home, he continued with his sensible lunacies.

“No business, no relationship, no matter is ever really closed. I love my store. I’ll be thinking about it all the way home. I’ll probably dream about it . . . What the fuck happened to your lip?”

xxxxx

El Jefe returned to Panson’s exhausted from that afternoon’s labor in a Chinese family’s yard. It wasn’t the lure of money that revived him for his night job, but the sweetness that lingered on his lips from La Flaca’s mouth. He headed straight to the refrigerator with half a hard-on but found no sign of his pretty girl. He looked in ridiculous places for his lover, between magazine racks and stacks of boxes, to no avail. As there was no stocking to be done in the storage spaces, where an encounter with her seemed most likely, El Jefe reluctantly took his post behind the counter. Juan had already managed to ensnare a group of underage girls in flirtatious chit-chat. El Jefe instantly had his hands full ringing up customers and bagging their purchases.

A wrinkled wino with the rosiest of cheeks, lips, and irises approached the counter with a bottle of the cheapest beer. A curious smile arrived on the wino’s dirty face in slow motion as he noticed the drops of sweat pouring from El Jefe’s forehead and collecting at the tip of his nose.

“A dollar seven, El Jefe said, struggling with the simple task of bagging a can.

There was an awkward pause before the pink drunk placed the money on the counter. El Jefe panicked at the thought this drunk might know his secret. It was as if the roles were reversed and El Jefe was the one suspected of shoplifting. He watched as the filthy man puckered his lips and seemed to kiss the bottle that delivered its genie. He suddenly coughed the beer through his nose and scudded out the door.

El Jefe finally exhaled and wiped his forehead with a paper bag. His eyes fogged over as he remembered La Flaca’s pretty face. To celebrate the survival of his secret, he glided his tongue over the tiny gash of tender flesh left on his lower lip as a scar from her kiss.

“Wake up, panson!” Juan smacked the thick skin bulging from the back of
El Jefe’s neck.

“Don’t touch me!” El Jefe kept from lunging at him.

“I run this store my way, panson.”

“I not one of your putas!” El Jefe shot the first genuine frown of his life. His blood suddenly boiled with the memory of Juan’s nasty description of La Flaca.

Juan froze in shock at El Jefe’s balls. He pealed a sinister half smile.

“Let’s talk about this after closing, Jefe. You have a customer.”

Irma Molacha’s wrecked mouth awaited El Jefe’s service on the other side of the counter. Her drunk tongue, drunk eyes, and drunk nose all declared their independence and swayed, curled and flared about. Irma’s left eye seemed flirtatious, and the right one stared dire like an accuser. Her right nostril struggled to breathe. Her left cheek sagged, and her tongue flickered like a lizard’s. As usual, she placed a single can of beer on the counter and sifted through her purse for a while, expecting for Juan to intercede and give her a discount.

“You know what?” she grinned like a witch casting a spell, “I don’t think they know where La Flaca is.”

Irma searched her pockets for her crumbled bills, bypassing the stolen Chiclets and little packs of Saladitos. El Jefe continued to sweat with every mention of his Flaca, a girl Irma described with such precision that one might think she was a figment of her own imagination.

“She’s purty, huh? But you know drunks. They always do the things they would never do if they were sober. She does the things Panson makes her do,” she cackled and quickly returned with a serious look. “They don’t even know where she is, huh?”

Although his light English was enough for him to understand Irma’s words, El Jefe could not bear another person knowing his secret, and he pretended he had no idea what she had just said.

“Si, si, si, is OK, is OK.”

Irma brought out her index finger and extended it to his lips like La Flaca had when her majesty shushed him. But Irma’s fingernails were like rocks with dull red house paint spilled over them. She didn’t bring the shushing finger to her own lips the way the mermaid had, but pointed it at him like the Chimoltrufia to Botijas.

“Don’t purten to be my fren, awright? Don’t tell me to leave, awright? I’ll go when I want, okay?”

“Irma! Irma, mi amor!” Juan shouted as he emerged from the crowd of giggling girls with his hands outstretched like the pope.

Her eyes peeled back. Her lips drew back like curtains, revealing a set of lower teeth that rotted in a perfect semi-circle and bicuspids worn to reveal their graying marrow. Juan’s attention transformed her into a hyena as if by magic. She burst into song.

“Juan del Mar, Juan de mi Corazon, Juan del mar panson.”

“What’s that in your pocket, Irma?” he retorted as he frisked her.

Irma giggled nervously. Juan’s groupies, with their blouses knotted at the belly, laughed and applauded, glancing back and forth like twins confirming that they are in sync with one another.

Irma seemed to realize that she was being used as a prop in Juan’s show. She started slapping at him in hopes of getting his face. He grabbed her by the wrists. She growled and shook violently.

El Jefe had been watching the commotion from his post at the register when he heard a faint chirping. Perhaps a pigeon had become trapped in the store. His eyes darted to investigate the refrigerators at the back of the store. The chirping quickly became a squeaking.

As Juan brought out all the stolen goods from Irma Molacha’s pockets, El Jefe looked in the space beneath the counter to search for the bat making that noise. Tucked like a stowaway in the tight space beneath the cash register that harbors a little wastebasket and extra receipt rolls, La Flaca sat with her skeletal hands clasped around her folded legs. She might have been wearing a mini skirt and halter top, but her body was huddled so tight that El Jefe was convinced her majesty had returned in the nude. He took the deepest breath of his life and it made him feel suddenly drunk. If this sight of La Flaca — cherry nipples, skin without pores, hair like finely sliced vinyl — meant that he had inexplicably lost his mind, this sudden madness could not be considered a punishment. She stroked at his pant leg and tongued his calves.  When she finally made eye contact, her sultry look was flushed by a sweet smile. A creaking was heard from her throat but no voice was issued this time. She licked her lips over and over to replace the gloss that seemed to be absorbed by the flesh that insisted on remaining matted.

Irma Molacha howled and scratched at Juan like a humiliated tiger. She grabbed a whole rack of Fritos and scudded out the door. Juan retrieved a pen from his shirt pocket and held it up like a dagger as he chased after her. The novice sluts panicked that their man was getting away and they dashed out the door too.

Unaware of the commotion, Bruno Urquidi came stomping into Panson’s. His hair was a mess, his breath stunk of liquor, and his unbuttoned shirt revealed his damp fur. This time, a massive bruise had been added to the features of his wasted face. Bruno clung to the counter with one hand and massaged his bruise with the other.

El Jefe saw this but could not utter a word, as La Flaca threatened to spring out of her cave beneath the register at any moment. El Jefe stupidly offered his hand to Bruno and stuttered nervous hellos.

“Where the fuck is Juan?”

Drops of Bruno’s saliva fell across El Jefe’s face as La Flaca taunted him from below. Her hands ran up and down his inner thigh until she felt his flaccid bulge.
She massaged his balls and taunted him with slight slaps that sent shocks up to his vocal chords as he responded to Bruno with a prepubescent screech.

“I dunno, I dunno where he is.”

Somehow Bruno’s wife had been tipped off about his cheating. She had stormed into his office amid the stench of cigar smoke and the raucous of crooked realtors being blown by their coked-out receptionist and struck Bruno in the face with his own bottle of beer. Bruno had come to the only place he could imagine his wife had heard the truth. He pounded his fist against the counter.

“Somebody told my wife a lot of shit! Fucking Juan better know who he’s dealing with!”

La Flaca dared to reach for El Jefe’s fly. He gasped and dropped his elbows onto the counter. Bruno mumbled unintelligible curses. Shivers shot throughout El Jefe when he felt La Flaca’s hand searching through his trousers for his cock. Registering her touch, bucketsful of blood came rushing into it. He shivered as she pulled back his foreskin and flicked her chilled tongue against him.  

Bruno boiled at El Jefe’s disregard for his emergency. “Who the fuck called my wife?”

He grabbed the life size cardboard Budweiser girl and ripped her head off.

“If it was that fuckin’ Flaca, tell her that there’s five of us that need to settle shit with that cunt.”

El Jefe was far from conversation. La Flaca’s mouth engulfed his shaft and laved its girth with an undulating motion. He could see Bruno stamping, puffing, and tossing TV Guides, but El Jefe was deaf to his wails.

“Gimme that tall Jose Cuervo you fucker!”

La Flaca’s jaw locked on El Jefe as if her very pulse relied on this connection. She shifted her posture so that she was on her bare knees reaching with her arms to embrace his legs, enabling her to impale her head more firmly on his mass.

“Gimme my fuckin’ bottle, pinche wetback!”

Vertigo set in for both. Bruno felt the spirits of Presidente dancing in his throat as if he’d vomit. El Jefe heaved and hissed as his own spirit neared a beheading by La Flaca.

Chano strutted through the entrance with a nervous coolness. His hands were buried in a bulky windbreaker with its collar raised to conceal half of his face. It could not have been a cold enough night to require such attire nor warrant that pale face that surveyed emotionlessly the comedy in the store. El Jefe’s eyes rolled back into his sockets. His laugh regressed to its adolescent discovery of naughty acts, as La Flaca pumped on him with choking urgency.

Chano took a rigid stance before the register as he nervously drew a gun from his pocket.

Bruno darted his arms to the air.

“No mijo, you’re making a big mistake!”

But the boy was determined to become a criminal, perhaps driven to this poor beginning by a boring night. Chano was a sucker for being called mijo and with a shake of the head advised that Bruno quickly leave the store.

“Don’t do anything crazy, Chano!”

“Awright, gimme all the money panson.”

El Jefe already felt cornered by the throes channeled from La Flaca’s mouth. And just as his heart could not beat any faster, it leapt again when Chano pointed his gun straight at him. It was too late for him to pull out from La Flaca without blasting a shot of his own.

“La Flaca! La Flaca!” Juan came running into the store, his pants and shirt undone, his face a white sheet. He had been working on a young girl in the alley near the dumpsters when an uncanny smell led him to find La Flaca’s corpse rotting among the trash.

El Jefe could not retain any longer, and as if shot by Chano’s weapon and Juan’s declaration of the name he loved, he fell back into the shelves behind him, his spurts of cum arching through the air as the most expensive bottles of Absolut came crashing over him. Chano dropped the toy gun and ran out.

“She’s right here,” El Jefe moaned as he wiped the blood from a gash on his brow and licked it from his fingers. He pointed at the empty space beneath the counter. “She’s right there!””

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Commentary

Eating bitter and other Western dreams of China

An influx of backpackers has made hiking China's Yunnan Province more complex for tourists and locals alike. Part one of a three-part series.


View of Tiger Leaping Gorge from the hiker’s trail.

“Man man shou shi” called the bronzed and leathery man with a crew cut and a donkey as he waited for me to stuff my sweater in my backpack. He was telling me to take my time, as he was planning on following me. Since embarking on the trail winding along Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan Province, I had slowly peeled off the top three layers of clothing I had worn in anticipation of frigid mountain air. Betraying my background as a not-at-one-with-nature New Yorker, I found myself ascending a mountain as the daytime temperature rose rapidly. The jacket and two fleeces went first, followed by the wool sweater, but there was little I could do about the long underwear, at least not with the donkey man following closely behind.

The man tailing me was patiently waiting for me to collapse on the trail. He hoped that I would subsequently avail myself of his donkey and allow him to carry me in a formless, sweaty mass for the rest of the trip. Of course, this made me all the more determined to continue on the narrow, rocky footpath, wishing to match the ruggedness of my surroundings.

Below, the steep shoulders of the green mountain range shrugged into a glistening strip of the Yangtze. Yet as the trail grew steeper, I found myself hardly noticing the majestic scenery and instead focusing on my feet, gingerly feeling around for a firm foothold amid sand, pebbles, and gnarled vegetation. As my hiking companion pulled further ahead and disappeared around the sharp twists, the man stayed a few paces behind and offered the donkey for 10 Renminbi (approximately US$1.25).

“Do I look like I’m about to give up?” I grumbled as I shifted my weight from rock to rock, my knees growing increasingly numb with each step.

“Just about,” he replied. Partially in recognition of my exhaustion and partially to distract myself from the uphill battle as we approached the steepest portion of the trail, known to backpackers as the Twenty-eight Bends, I began to bargain with him. By the time we embarked on the first few bends, I had already talked him down to five Kuai. I’m aware that this amounts to a discount of about 60 cents, but I share the shameless disdain for getting ripped off of many other foreigners It’s not so much a matter of money, but of dignity; no one wants to be the sucker, and no one wants to be the stupid laowai who gets cheated. But perhaps our tenacity in haggling stems from our paranoia that being tricked is unavoidable — and indeed, sort of a right of passage here.

I allowed the donkey to carry my backpack, but remained determined to make all Twenty-eight Bends by foot, or hands and knees if need be. I continued talking with him as he rode the donkey with my pack on his back. Whereas other guides I had encountered at Chinese tourist destinations were mainly desperately impoverished villagers, he was surprisingly cosmopolitan compared to his humble surroundings. He was a miner by trade, since in his area, few people could rely solely on farming for income. He had two children in college and one in the army. The company he worked for had taken him to several Chinese cities on business and once to Thailand as a reward for his hard work.

“I haven’t been to America, though,” he said.

His “been there, done that” tone indicated that, having been outside the country, America didn’t hold the same fascination for him that it did for other Chinese, or maybe that he at any rate preferred Yunnan to any place abroad.

The homes we passed on the trail were scattered, drab brick huts with tile roofs overlooking terrace-farmed crops. I had trouble imagining that any of the inhabitants would leave Yunnan — one of the poorest provinces in China — in their lifetimes, but I suppose the donkey escort, along with the satellite dish hanging over a pair of old women shelling walnuts by the roadside, proved that the villages flanking the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail were as unpredictable as the terrain.

After about an hour of protracted agony, we reached the top of the Twenty-eight Bends, the apex of the trail, whereupon Donkey Man gruffly deemed me lihai or “powerful” and said he was impressed that I made it up by myself.  We edged down to a cliff overlooking the Gorge, where we were greeted by a scruffy villager who took “toll money” from those who used the path to the cliff, which he supposedly built himself.

Liberated from my oppressive layers and most unforgiving chunk of the trail, I could finally take in my surroundings. In the afternoon sun, the Jin Sha Jiang, or Golden Sand River spun a mercury thread between the bases of two chunks of velvety green and gray rock, the Jade Snow Mountain and the Dragon Snow Mountain. The Gorge’s namesake refers to a spunky tiger, the head honcho of the animal kingdom in Chinese myth who made the only successful dash in history across the 3,000-meter deep cleft. Since then, dozens of mortals (that is, overconfident Westerners) have misstepped into the depths of the Yangtze and floated into backpacker lore.

But the footprints that dotted the path before us were evidence that, the hike, which followed the precarious curves of an old miner’ trail, is becoming increasingly manageable, barring extremely bad fortune. The path varies in width from about two knees wide to just large enough for a local farmer and his cows to cross as the American tourist awkwardly yields onto the grassy shoulder. We passed only two other hikers in two days, so it seemed for a while that we had happened upon a place in Yunnan not yet invaded by the tourist industry. However, there were signs that the pristine trail had been deflowered since the rise of the Lonely Planet series. The farmers on the path were not surprised to see foreigners but rather smiled in amusement at hikers striving to “chi ku” or “eat bitter,” with the masochistic trek. The yellow and red arrows directing hikers where to go and marking the distance to various guesthouses (Woody’s, Tina’s, Sean’s) also betrayed the fact that the gorge had long since become an official destination.

Local tourist industry workers: the donkey man and toll collector.

Necessary self-deceptions

In 1997, Salon.com ran an article entitled “The Tragedy of Tiger Leaping Gorge,” by Simon Winchester, in which the English travel writer lamented that civilization was threatening to trample the natural treasures of the gorge.

“There is electricity,” he wrote. “There is talk of telephones. I saw a satellite dish.”
He recorded one villager’s gloomy prediction: “Soon … there will be no more walkers, only cars that will speed through the gorge in a matter of minutes. There will probably before long be a proper hotel in Walnut Grove, not the cozy inn that exists today, and it will no doubt take credit cards, and in its rooms will be color televisions that show CNN and Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV.”

Thankfully, six years later, the Gorge has not yet been totally ravaged by tourists, perhaps because the local industry self-regulates its development to keep things charmingly “rustic.” Yet we were not disappointed that our Naxi host at the Tea Horse Guesthouse knew how to make omelets (though the walnut pancakes we requested more closely resembled a plate-sized muffin). The menu, written in English on bamboo slats, also offered hot cocoa, oatmeal, and banana crepes alongside the traditional Naxi baba flatbread. And although CNN doesn’t reach most television sets in rural China, we spent the evening watching Chinese soap operas in our hostess’s living room.

The manager of the guesthouse, a contemporary Naxi matriarch, decided to open her own business when she realized that her house was perfectly situated at the point where many exhausted hikers, en route to other guesthouses, expired and came to her for a warm bed. Tea Horse is apparently the only true Naxi bed-and-breakfast on the trail; the rest, explained our host as she cooked dinner over a country-style wok about a meter wide, are now run by Han people who have settled in the area. Of course, cultural authenticity is a malleable concept when it comes to accommodating guests. Clad in gold hoop earrings and a traditional headdress, she giggled as she offered us a local specialty, Yunnan marijuana leaves in a white teapot.

In the morning, my New Yorker hamstrings still tender from the day before, I was thankful for the few Western amenities we were afforded, including a trickle of running water, before setting off on the remainder of the trail. Our route for the second half of the trail, mostly descending, hugged the craggy mountainside, snaking parallel to the sparkling rapids below. We were undisturbed except for the occasional goat or dog encroaching on our path, and the telephone poles that cut into our camera viewfinders.

As we approached Walnut Grove, the trail merged with a highway at the construction site for a bridge designed to reduce the great tiger leap over the Yangtze to a bumpy four-minute crossing by truck or taxi. But Walnut Grove, unlike Winchester’s grave premonition, was not replete with four-star hotels. It was rather a quaint example of the kind of rural prosperity that the Chinese government is trying to promote in the Western part of the country: lush green terrace farms, simple but well-kept stone homes with fluted tile roofs, and the fresh construction of glossy wooden houses inspired by ancient Naxi architecture. Winchester may have denounced the Gorge’s fall from sublime isolation, but for a peasant family who can put their children through college selling soft drinks to backpackers, the tourist industry is not only a welcome element of modernity; it may be the only chance to clamber at the wealth that the Reform Era has promised the masses.

Again, I encountered the ambiguous footprint of legions of backpackers, who like me sought the singular delights of Yunnan’s mountain landscapes but were not quite willing to admit that the experience was now hardly unique. The wooden signs on the road advertising the town’s guesthouses boasting cold beer and the only Western-style toilet in Walnut Grove did somewhat puncture the lofty pride I felt for having completed the two-day trek. Then again, I might not have completed the journey were it not for the small — yet upon closer examination, not so subtle — comforts that capitalism’s invasion of this once-virgin territory afforded me.

Likewise, if the journey had been any rougher, I’m not sure an urbanite like myself would have been able to appreciate thoroughly the sweeping beauty of the gorge. For the momentary pleasure of conquering the trail, I figured it was worth the slight shame of deceiving myself slightly with the idea of being a true adventurer. Like being duped out of a few kuai by local peddlers, harmless falsities can produce true emotional rewards. The idea is just to let go. The Gorge had been christened by many before me, but in my mind, the green terraces of Walnut Grove were the picture of the Yunnan countryside’s pre-Liberation nubility.

The only true Tiger Leaping Gorge purists may be the idealistic Westerners wrestling with the liberal guilt of their complicity in the tourist industry. The locals didn’t seem to mind, as long as every flapjack they flipped was the equivalent of a deposit in their children’s college savings account. Incidentally, the villager Winchester quoted in 1997, “a kindly man whom passers-by had once named Woody,” is now the proud owner of “Chateau de Woody,” a guesthouse noted in every backpacker guidebook for its charming vistas and Western snacks. The sign outside proclaims a motto befitting the backpacker subculture: “Eat. Drink. Live.” A simple plan for a corner of the world that is growing as complex as it is beautiful.

STORY INDEX

TOPICS > ECONOMICS>

“Tourism Helps Boost Yunnan Economy”
Article by Feng Yikun
URL: http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/37548.htm

“An assessment of economic development policy in Yunnan Province”
Article by Andrew Watson, China Representative of the Ford Foundation
URL: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/china/AWP.html

TOPICS > PLACES >

“The Tragedy of Tiger Leaping Gorge”
Article by Simon Winchester
URL: http://www.salon.com/june97/wanderlust/china970610.html

China.org.cn’s report on Yunnan Province
URL: http://www.china.org.cn/e-xibu/2JI/3JI/yunnan/yunnan-ban.htm

TOPICS > PEOPLE >

The Han people
URL: http://countrystudies.us/china/41.htm

The Naxi people
URL: http://www.china.org.cn/e-groups/shaoshu/shao-2-naxi.htm

“

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News

Behind the veil

As if attending school wasn't tough enough, the French government is making life more difficult for some Muslim students who are now banned from wearing Islamic headscarves in public institutions. A view of the explosive and complex debate — and what it reveals about the country — from inside the classroom.


Sonia, a 25-year-old convert to Islam, was born in France but says that many French perceive her as a foreigner. Discrimination has only gotten worse since 9/11,” she says. (photo by Tanguy Kouessan)

In a scruffy classroom at the University of Paris X at Nanterre, in a suburb outside Paris, a group of academics, journalists, and activists of all stripes gathered in March to hash out the “crisis”: what to do about the Islamic veil in French schools.  A small group of college-aged women at the back of the room listened quietly until a man at the front pointed in their direction. Three of the women wore a hijab covering their hair, forehead, and neck. Together, they had been half-heartedly working on a crossword puzzle, but now they were on the spot.

“When I look at these girls,” the man said, “I can’t help but think that they’ve been branded ‘hallal’ — like a piece of meat — by an Islamist patriarchy. I fled Algeria for France to get away from this sort of intolerance, and now it’s infiltrating the Republic!”

One of them put down the crossword. “I’ve been wearing this veil since I was twelve, and it was my personal decision to put it on.” she said.  “It’s not a question of submission to men, but of religious expression.”

Her voice started to shake, and then, fighting back tears, she said, “I’m a French citizen. I was born here. I thought the French Revolution was fought for freedom, but here we are being marginalized and humiliated once again. Stop insulting our intelligence! Stop treating us like imbeciles!”

“Islamism is a wart on the face of this country.” responded the man, Derri Berkani, a journalist, filmmaker, and practicing Muslim. Berkani said he had heard enough about the symbolism of the voile.  “The veil is not a religious issue, but a political one, so I could give a damn about their cause,” he said. “There’s nothing in the Koran that obliges a woman to wear a veil.”

The packed lecture hall erupted in fragmented arguments and debates that exceeded my level of French. A literature professor who called himself a communist extolled the secular values of the Republic as a counterweight to religious extremism and American imperialism, while a young Moroccan proclaimed that only Islam could combat the moral decline of the West. Just when the room verged on complete anarchy, Nelcya Delanoë, a professor in the Anglo American Studies department at Nanterre, called for order, but the women in the back were still seething.

The veiled woman who had spoken earlier, a 23-year-old political science student named Khalidja (students quoted in this article requested that only their first names be used), asked Delanoë if she could respond to some of the comments, but slipped into the informal “tu,” rather than the more formal “vous,” in her request.

“You will not address me as ‘tu,’ young lady,” Delanoë chided. “You will show me some respect!”

“Only when you show us some respect,” Khalidja replied.

When I found Khalidja after the meeting, she was exasperated and enraged. Surrounded by a group of friends chatting away on cell phones, some wearing veils, some not, she seemed to embody all the contradictions of a reinvigorated Islam in secular France: She wore stylish sneakers poking out from under an austere robe and sprinkled her French with a variety of curse words. Khalidja had almost finished the equivalent of a master’s degree and would soon start looking for a job, probably as a government functionary.

I asked her if she would have to take off the veil if she worked in government.

“I will leave France before I’m forced to take off my veil. I’m French and I don’t see a contradiction between my country and my religion, but I’ll move to the U.S. if it comes to that,” she said.

I asked her if she thought Islamophobia — a popular term in the French media — is a problem in the United States as well. Like almost every French person I had met, she despised President George W. Bush and prefaced her answer with a denunciation of the war in Iraq and the current administration’s Middle East policies.

“But do you think the United States is more tolerant?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Religion is important in the States. Here if you have any sort of religious belief people think you’re a barbarian or just plain retarded.”

The Paris Mosque is the spiritual center of France’s “second religion,” Islam. Many French now question whether the growing popularity of Islam is compatible with the country’s strict secular traditions. (photo by Tanguy Kouessan)

Lost in translation

Like the United States, France constantly wrings its hands over the separation of church and state, although the rebirth of Islam in the marginalized banlieues — dreary, crime-ridden suburbs — poses a problem for France which the United States has yet to face on the same scale. It is undoubtedly a vast, complex problem that has much to do with France’s troubled colonial history as it does with religious extremism. Nevertheless, the veil has become the flashpoint for almost every discussion about immigration, Islam, terrorism, or French identity since last December when a 20-member commission, assembled by French President Jacques Chirac, named the Stasi Commission (after a former education secretary), recommended a ban on all conspicuous religious symbols in state-run spaces. In addition to the ban on the veil, the commission called for a ban on large crosses and yarmulkes, the Jewish skullcaps, as well as two new official days off for Yom Kippur and Aid-e l-Kebir as tokens of acceptance of non-Catholic holidays in a country where Ascension Day is still a paid holiday.

By all accounts, a majority of the French supported the ban: in a poll taken in early February  2004, 57 percent said that conspicuous religious symbols were “a threat to national cohesion” and 69 percent said they favored banning the headscarf from public schools. The law sailed through the National Assembly shortly after the poll was taken, with little opposition.  Although Chirac signed the bill into law in February, it took the French Council on Education until May to work out the finer details, like whether bandanas will be prohibited (it will depend on the point of view of individual principals). The law is set to go into effect at the start of the next school year. Among the few politicians to criticize the law was France’s new economics minister and fastest rising political star, Nicolas Sarkozy, who went so far as to call the ban “secularist fundamentalism.”

To really understand why the Islamic headscarf has become so controversial in France, one must try to understand two words that are often bandied about in this debate and are not easy to translate into English: laïcité and communautarisme. The first term is often translated in the American press as “secularism,” as if it simply designated the separation of church and state, a familiar issue to Americans. In reality, laïcité implies a set of political and cultural values, that, in a way, have become a pseudo-religion of the state.

As one member of Chirac’s Stasi Commission, philosopher Henri Peña-Ruiz, put it in Le Monde Diplomatique recently, “laïcité only favors what is in the common interest [of the Republic]. With moral and intellectual autonomy, it promotes the freedom of conscience and the total equality of rights without regard to sex, [ethnic] origin, or spiritual conviction.” Because of laïcité, he continued, “tomorrow, thousands of young women will be recognized by the Republic as having preserved their right to bare their heads at school and sit next to boys who have the same status as them.”

Communautarisme, on the other hand, roughly means “multiculturalism,” although its connotations are almost entirely negative. Communautarisme, to the French, is what happens when you let immigrants form their own communities, speak their own languages, and practice their own religions. Consequently, France becomes less “French” and more open to foreign values and cultural practices.

To be sure, there are real dangers associated with communautarisme — such as support for female circumcision in Malian or Senegalese communities or acceptance of stoning women who are accused of adultery by certain Muslim imams — but it’s hard to distinguish when legitimate concerns about human rights cross over into racist notions about cultural superiority.

The controversy surrounding the Islamic veil actually dates back to at least 1989, when the Council of State, one of France’s high courts, ruled that religious symbols that “constitute an act of intimidation, provocation, proselytizing or propaganda” could not be worn in public schools. Under this decision, individual schools were left to determine what was a provocation and what was simply a personal expression of faith. Often, this came down to a judgment call by individual teachers and principals.

“I had girls with half-scarves and full-on veils,” remembers Isabelle, a middle-aged English teacher in a poor suburb northeast of Paris who did not want her last name used. “You couldn’t tell the difference between religious proselytism and fashion. That’s why I supported Chirac’s law at first: It backed teachers up so that it wasn’t just us against the students and their parents.”

Now, however, some of the same teachers who favored the ban are rethinking their positions. “It’s going to be impossible to enforce,” Isabelle predicts. “And the Muslim girls who refuse to take off their veils — where are they going to go?”

Khalidja, the political science student, says she favors opening up more Muslim private schools if France won’t compromise on the veil issue. So far, however, there is only one Muslim school in the entire country, in the far north near the Belgian border. “Every time we start the process of opening up a school, the government shuts it down,” Khalidja says. “Catholics and Jews can have their own schools, but if Muslims want one, it’s labeled as communautarisme by the government. It’s a totally hypocritical position.”

Contrary to popular belief, many leading French Muslims like Dalil Boubaker, the rector of the Paris Mosque, have not opposed the new law, and some of its most vociferous proponents, such as Derri Berkani, the filmmaker and journalist at the Nanterre meeting, are Muslims themselves.  Although many Muslims I spoke with took varying positions on the veil, the sense of discrimination at the hands of the secular French state seemed nearly universal.

“I’d say the biggest problem is not the veil at all, but jobs,” says Sonia, a 25-year-old Muslim convert who wears the veil. “You don’t see any diversity in French media or French politics. I’m a French citizen, but because I’m black and because I wear a veil, I’m doubly marginalized,” she explains. “I’ve had people scream, ‘Go back to Morocco,’ at me from their cars. I’m from France and my parents are from Benin.”

“This isn’t about the veil,” one Moroccan-born student at the Nanterre meeting had said. “It’s about a profound problem that France has with Islam.”  

Many staunch advocates of laïcité argue, on the other hand, that it is the version of Islam which refuses to separate religion from the public sphere that is the problem. This is what Nelcya Delanoë, the professor who kept order at the meeting, tells me later.  When I sum up Khalidja’s and Sonia’s arguments to her on an unseasonably hot May day at her apartment in central Paris, she seems unimpressed.

Delanoë has written extensively about secularism in Morocco and France, but doesn’t view this issue with the typical detachment of a scholar. Delanoë was born and raised in Morocco and speaks Arabic. Her father, a Moroccan-born Frenchman who was also raised Jewish, fought against the French occupation of his homeland and envisaged a “liberal and independent” country quite different from the Morocco of today. Delanoë shares that vision and works closely with liberal Moroccans on human rights and women’s rights issues. For her, the headscarf is a pretext to legitimize an extremist political movement.

“There were no headscarves here three years ago,” Delanoë claims, referring to the Nanterre campus. “Now, they’re everywhere. I’ve heard people say, ‘This is multiculturalism, this is great,’ but we’ll see where it leads in ten years.” She cites her experience in Morocco as proof that Islamism is indeed a threat to democratic countries like France. The Islamists “claim that there’s no contradiction between their religious beliefs and democracy, but they have an ignorant understanding of democracy: It’s not just voting, but a social contract,” she insists. “I’ve changed my mind on this issue about fifteen times, but I’m now convinced that each new veil is a victory for the Islamists.”

A popular poster at the university in Nanterre labels George Bush as the world’s biggest terrorist. (photo by Russell Cobb)

The Revolution is dead. Long live the Revolution!

My window into this controversy opened last year when I took a year-long position as an adjunct English teacher at the university in Nanterre. It is a strange place: Most of the buildings were built in the early 1960’s and resemble a modern American-style commuter campus. Despite its placid exterior, it has been a hotspot for radicalism. In fact, Nanterre has changed the course of French history at least once. In May 1968, a group of students protesting everything from same-sex dorms to the Vietnam War ignited a sequence of events that eventually led to the downfall of President Charles de Gaulle a year later.

Decades later, the place is still roiling in political turmoil, and classes are often disrupted by routine strikes, sit-ins, and sometimes violent protests over Israel, Iraq, and the length of spring break. Non-French professors and lecturers, such as I, learn to take these things in stride. When a chalkboard is spray-painted with graffiti or a lecture is interrupted by a megaphone call for a general strike, we generally sigh and say, “c’est Nanterre.”

It was surprising, then, that when I asked my students to debate the headscarf controversy in class, I got an almost uniform endorsement of French Enlightenment values over what was perceived as American-style multiculturalism. Rare was the student who argued against Chirac’s new law. I asked one Jewish student, a 19-year-old named Nili, if she thought that banning religious symbols from schools might backfire and intensify religious extremism and anti-Semitism.  “France’s policy of laïcité is preceded by the concept of equality, which prohibits any sort of discrimination. In order to maintain social cohesion and public order, we must keep religion out of public space,” she said thoughtfully.

I received similar — almost identical — responses from most of my students, who agreed that the Islamic headscarf should be banned. My plans for class debates turned into rousing eulogies to French values: liberty, equality, fraternity, and, most importantly, secularism.  

I taught, arguably, some of the best and brightest in the university system: future lawyers and technocrats studying for the equivalent of a major in English and a law degree. Whenever the subject of religious symbols came up, however, the students started to sound like modern-day Jacobins. “If you allow religion into the public sphere,” one bright Italian student said, “France could become like the United States, where the president declares war while in church.”

Declaration of war? In church? Did I miss something? I tried to explain that in the United States there is also a separation of church and state — however precarious it may seem these days — and that no president since Roosevelt had actually declared war. Still, it was useless: These law students were convinced that France was caught between two dangerous fundamentalist movements: one Christian (led by George W. Bush), and one Muslim (led as much by radical French imams as by Al-Qaeda).

But while France has proven largely immune to Bush’s seemingly messianic vision — a recent New York Times poll reported that 85 percent of French respondents had a “negative” image of the American president — radical Islam appears to be gaining a foothold in the marginalized outskirts of the country’s big cities. Young, firebrand intellectuals like Tariq Ramadan have gained popularity at the expense of more moderate, government-backed leaders like Dalil Boubaker. Politicized Islam is becoming a force to be reckoned with among France’s five million or so Muslims, about 8 percent of the total population; the questions, of course, are how significant this force is and how to respond to it.

The government’s reaction to political Islam has been famously heavy-handed. Clerics accused of spouting anti-Semitism have been deported in recent weeks. Police arrest and interrogate Arab-looking men in the banlieues and in the Paris Métro without cause. The far right party of Jean-Marie Le Pen continues to gain popularity in some areas. And now Islamic headwear is banned in schools, even though the Sikh turban, for example, is still allowed. On the campus of Nanterre, meanwhile, Arab students have complained of the appearance of a mysterious group called the Jewish Defense League and of being singled out and beaten up by university security guards since the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict broke out. The whole thing, many Muslims claim, smacks of a growing Islamophobia at best, and at worst, a European import of Middle Eastern conflicts.

Considering the complexity and gravity of the issue, it started to bother me that my students all had the same point of view. So I devised an experiment. I divided my classes into pairs and told them to debate the pros and cons of such hot-button topics as the death penalty, the war in Iraq, and, of course, the veil. We talked about multiculturalism vs. equality, personal freedom vs. security, and private vs. public space. We had very interesting discussions, but when I asked them to give their honest opinions about the headscarf issue at the end, only one, an 18-year-old named Caroline, said she was definitely opposed to the ban.

“You can’t be serious, can you?” Valentin, the guy sitting next to her exclaimed in French.

But while my mostly white, middle-class students attacked the veil and supported the government, others on campus have a quite different take. After I asked professors and minority students about the issue, I found that everyone on campus had become hyperconscious about headwear and its symbolic power, but no one could agree on what the Islamic headscarf actually represented. Oppression by a fundamentalist patriarchy? An Islamic expression of feminism? The latest fashion in teen rebellion?

Michel Allner, a professor in American Studies at Nanterre who has recently finished a book about the West’s perception of Islam, explains that the foulard has replaced Che Guevara T-shirts as the ultimate symbol of anti-Western imperialism. “The veil is a uniform in opposition,” he says with the lyrical abstraction so often found in French intellectuals.

I heard all sorts of interpretations on the veil’s true meaning. Still, the diversity of the foulard itself made it hard to generalize about its symbolism. At one point, I had a Lebanese student in my class who wore a polka-dotted silk scarf lightly draped over the top of her head. But she also wore more make-up than most of my “French” students. Certainly her headscarf did not mean the same thing as Khalidja’s all-black veil, which covered the forehead down to the eyebrows.

Civilizing the natives

Nanterre and its surrounding communities — like many Parisian banlieues, or suburbs — are heavily populated by Muslim immigrants from North Africa, many of whom live completely cut off from mainstream French culture. Among young people, unemployment runs as high as 50 percent in some banlieues and crime has soared the past two decades, even though it slacked recently in the face of controversial, Giuliani-esque tactics taken by Nicolas Sarkozy during his tenure as interior minister, which expired in April.  

To see a slice of la France communautariste, I went to a suburb in Northeast Paris widely regarded as one of the poorest and most disadvantaged. Collectively, the area is known as “93,” for its postal code. The high school I visited, Olympe de Gourges, has one of the lowest graduation rates in all of France and teacher turnover is high.

I expected the worst. The French media play up ethnic tensions in the banlieue to the point that it seems, in the eyes of a bourgeois Parisian, like the Balkan Peninsula circa 1995. There are stories every day of Muslim dads keeping their daughters out of P.E. and biology classes, teachers derided for teaching the Holocaust, and Jewish students beaten up and called “salle juif” (or “dirty Jew”) by their Muslim classmates.

So I was surprised to find the most diverse group of French I’ve ever encountered, lingering outside the school’s gates. There was a Russian-Congolese guy flirting with a blond French girl, whose best friend was Algerian. They weren’t dealing drugs or beating each other up; they weren’t even engaged in the national pastimes of smoking and arguing. They were like poster-children for racial harmony: They smiled and took turns practicing their English on me. They all seemed to get along so well, I decided to ask them what all the fuss was about.

“I think it’s played up by TV,” Olaf, the Russian-Congolese kid says. “There’s no intolerance here at school,” he says even as his face darkens. He points across the street to a housing project. “Over there, though, now there’s intolerance.”

More and more of these students — children of immigrants — have entered the university system, which, with its promise of free and universal acceptance to all French students holding a high school diploma, promises to be the great equalizer of socio-economic and cultural difference.  Despite the relatively new influence of Anglo American concepts like multiculturalism and affirmative action (or “positive discrimination” as it is known here), many French still believe, like Diderot over two centuries ago, that “to teach is also to civilize.” The pinnacle of civilization being, of course, the French version, armed with the ideals of its Great Men buried at the Pantheon: Rousseau, Voltaire, Hugo, et al.

Indeed, the French secular state has become a sort of church unto itself, in which all loyalties, allegiances, and creeds must be sworn off in favor of Enlightenment values. One Stasi commission member, Régis Debray, a former Marxist revolutionary-turned-public intellectual, has unwittingly supported this argument with an oft-quoted analogy: “If I visit a mosque, I take my shoes off before I enter as a sign of respect. We only ask that Muslims show the same respect when they enter the French schools.” Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the blunt Prime Minister, has noted with optimism, “Secularism has a chance to become the religion of France.”

If the school’s job is to create model citizens of the French Republic, then the university’s job is to be “the temple of reason,” claims Michel Allner. “This is the heritage of the Third Republic,” Allner tells me. “The idea back then was to erase regional differences and build a nation based on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Regional dialects and customs from Brittany and the Basque Country, for example, were suppressed and the tablier (a sort of white smock) was imposed as the uniform for all schoolchildren. It was a very repressive system and I think we can agree now that it was a mistake.” As is the current ban on religious symbols, Allner says. “I know it’s an unpopular position, but I think multiculturalism is the way to go.”

Not surprisingly, many high school students I spoke with agreed that any sort of dress code for kids was a bad idea. “The teachers want to make us all equal,” a 17-year-old student at Olympe de Gourges named Camelia says. “But look at how we dress — of course we’re not equal. Still, I think we’re old enough to make our own decisions about how we want to dress.” Camelia, for example, comes from a conservative family of Algerian origin but no one — including her parents — has ever tried to force her to wear a veil. “I wouldn’t wear it even if they did,” she says firmly.

Nicolas Ginsburger, a professor of Franco-American relations at Nanterre, disagrees that secularism à la française is simply about freedom of choice, as many Americans would believe. The law that definitively separated church and state in 1905, notes Ginsburger, declares that the state must remain neutral with respect to religion. “That means in school, the student and teacher must remain neutral as well,” he notes. “This law has guaranteed civil peace in France and put an end to many centuries of religious warfare. ”

Ginsburger puts the issue in a historical context, which is perhaps lost in the media frenzy over exotic images of veiled young women living in what is, after all, a highly sexualized country. The current flare-up over the veil is nothing, he says, compared to the civil wars between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, or even 19th-century anti-Semitism.

Nevertheless, Ginsburger has been shocked by the negative reaction to the ban on religious symbols coming from the American media and government. Last month, a Justice Department spokesperson called a similar ban on headwear in an Oklahoma school district “un-American” and “morally despicable.” Also, last December the U.S. ambassador on religious freedom said that the Bush administration would “watch carefully” what happened in France on the headscarf front. “Why can’t they mind their own business?” Ginsburger asks. “The big difference is that, in America, religion is used as proof of morality in political life,” he says. “In France, the idea is that the less religious one is, the better.”

When clichés come home to roost

Throughout my year in France, I discovered that the two primary fears in French society — radical Islam and Americanization — are often mingled into one discourse. During the meeting at Nanterre, for example, the only thing the leftist French professors and Islamist students could find in common was their disgust for American cultural relativism and political correctness.  The professors worried about American-style multiculturalism ruining the secular “exception française”,  while some Muslim students voiced conservative concerns about the liberal American influence on the gay marriage debate in France. The “threat” always came from elsewhere — the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Algeria — and never from a domestic source.

A similar phenomenon took place in my classroom: When it came to tough issues like the veil or racism, students blamed the Other. I was reminded of the reaction to a tragic incident that took place two years ago at the Nanterre City Council, when a gunman burst into a meeting and killed eight people. The next day, French newspapers called it an “American-style massacre,” as if the United States invented mass-murder. “Everyone in America carries a weapon,” proclaimed one of my students, 19-year-old Alexandra. I told her that I had never owned a weapon and did not know anyone who actually carried a gun. “This can’t be possible,” she responded. “Have you not seen Bowling for Columbine? That is the real America!”

I suddenly felt a strange solidarity with Sonia and Khalidja, the two women I had met who wore veils: I knew what it felt like to be assaulted by stereotypes. That wasn’t my America, I wanted to answer Alexandra. Instead, I was seized with the opportunity to impart a little English language pedagogy.

“Here’s a good idiomatic phrase to learn,” I said. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

STORY INDEX

TOPICS >

“A Frenchman or a Jew”
By Fernanda Eberstadt. Published by The New York Times Magazine. February 29, 2004.
URL: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40D1FFF3C580C7A8EDDAB0894DC404482

Le Monde Diplomatique dossier on secularism and the headscarf
URL: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/index/sujet/laicite

ORGANIZATIONS >

Ni putes ni soumises (Neither whores nor doormats)
URL: http://www.niputesnisoumises.com/html/index.php

The Brookings Institution’s take on Islam in France
URL: http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cusf/analysis/islam.htm

“

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Blog

Say goodbye to the Beemer …


Here’s the problem — I can’t decide whether I find Sí TV’s new reality show “Urban Jungle” revolting or delicious.  

The show extracts “nine suburban yuppies from their oh-so-comfortable lives” and drops them in East Los Angeles’ barrio to survive on low income wages. The teenagers are charged with adapting to their new life in the ‘hood, and are judged by three padrinos, who “evict” a cast member each episode.

At first I was appalled. The show panders to all of the simplest stereotypes: silly, rich, naïve white kids from Burbs vs. bad-ass, street-wise, and pragmatic residents of the inner city. You can predict the encounters between the visitors and the residents almost without watching. The presence of a TV camera reasonably guarantees that no serious danger will come to the show’s stars, but simultaneously ensures that people will act as they think they should — that is, that both the teenagers and the residents will play up the roles they know their audience is assuming they’ll fulfill.

Maybe I’m particularly sensitive to the perpetuation of these stereotypes because the neighborhood I’ve worked in the for the past several years lives with the same kind of experiment. West Philadelphia is home to a large, low-income African American community — and the University of Pennsylvania. It’s jarring to ride the bus to work and watch shirtless fraternity brothers playing drinking games on their porches alongside the falling down homes of my clients and the delis where you can buy a single cigarette for 50 cents. There’s an unsurprising tension within the community, and little is done to bridge the gaps of understanding between the disparate groups. No less jarring are the non-students in the neighborhood — kids living and squatting in communal houses and playing Frisbee in the parks. They’re almost more out of place because of their attempts to fit in: they shop at the cheaper supermarkets and visit the free health clinic.

Assimilation is a tricky business. I’ll go out on a limb and argue that we can’t even begin to address it within the confines of a reality TV show. Jeff Valdez, the show’s creator and founder of the network says:  

This is more than just a reality show, it’s a social experiment. We’re taking these kids, whose only window into the barrio is a crime story on the late night news, and immersing them into a brand new environment. This show will humanize the Latino barrio and hopefully teach these kids a thing or two about life on the other side of the tracks.

A social experiment? A simplistic one at best, because while playing at poverty isn’t very funny, playing at poverty for an audience ensconced in their arm chairs isn’t funny at all. But maybe I’d feel a little less sympathetic towards the show’s hapless stars if they were making their mistakes on a major cable network, instead of Sí TV. The network is the only English-language Latino network available on your remote — in itself, a grand experiment in assimilation. As The New York Times points out, the network caters towards the projected 33 million Latinos who will live in bilingual or English-speaking households by the year 2010.

So, I confess: When the show premieres this Sunday, I’ll be watching. I’m expecting something thrillingly awful from “Urban Jungle.” Part of that is the ironic glee with which I can’t help but view all reality TV. But part of it too is that I’m hoping that by exposing the blatant frustrations and mistakes of culture-bending, it’ll make it a little easier for us to talk about what assimilation and differences really look like.

—Laura Louison

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