Filed under: Media
It is surreal, this conflict between Egyptians and Algerians over some football game, as national pride rolls among the feet of the players and their fans, long after the game was over.
The day after Egypt lost the game with Algeria I was in the elevator, and I decided to take part in the conversation taking place between two bank employees, an Indian and an Egyptian. The Indian man asked the Egyptian whether he watched the game. The Egyptian of course did. I asked who won, and they both looked at me and in one tone almost embarrased said: Algeria.
I smiled. The Egyptian asked me: Are you Algerian? I said no..
I had a vague idea about the game from the reports on divorces between Egyptian/Algerian couples because of the game. It all seemed so pathetic to me.
Two days ago, I met S, a friend of a friend, and I asked him about the game. S, an Egyptian, said the whole story was sad, but he also said that Algerians were very aggressive in their nature. I did not say much.
Now, I keep hearing stories. Egyptians are bitter. I saw this as an amusement at the beginning, but as the story goes on, it becomes really disgusting. I can say no less.
My disappointment arises from the following:
1- Egyptians (and I say Egyptians because the media bluntly continues to highlight their point of view over the Algerian’s although the other side is just as redhanded) have lost all contact with the world and with their causes to the extent that actors, artists and politicians now take the opportunity at every turn to re-underline their civilisation, history and thus superiority. Meanwhile, the life standards of Egyptians continue to deteriorate, their basic rights ignored, their needs smothered by hash, football and the Shaaban AbdelRahim syndrome.
2- The feeling of superiority banishes any feeling of brotherhood between two Arab states, at a very crucial time in the region’s political and economical course and context. The elitist cliches on Arab unity, almost a meaningless blabbering, is in its worst stages of humiliation.
Filed under: Media
The clash between public relations people and media people continues, despite that the crisis has proven that cooperation between the two parties would be best to help them keep their jobs. Journalists find themselves compelled to write stories about companies in a positive tone perhaps to lure advertising to their media, while public relations professionals are pushing to find alternative ways which they call “more professional” to service their clients’ communications needs.
That is what the PR measurement summit has been discussing during the last two days of its 3-day schedule.
David Baker, Regional CEO of Action PR, said the PR industry was still facing difficulties and the outlook for at least the first quarter of next year wasn’t looking so bright either. He said: “This summit is meant to save us, convince the clients that PR isn’t just an additional tactic and that it is an essential part of the communications strategy that can be measured scientifically.”
The PR measurement Summit called for abandoning the Advertising Value Equivalence formula, still widely used in this market. The message being that the media are not the absolute way to reach out to the audience, considering that 29 per cent of the Arab population is illiterate and thus have no access whatsoever to print or social media.
Journalists on the other hand get in two different lights. It might be somehow a relief that the future relationship with the PR industry will not be a constant tugging and nagging to get in stories into their pages. Yet, as one journalist told me, this would be like condemning the media for a system that the PR has created altogether. “Are we supposed to take moral responsibility for the inefficiencies of messages pushed through from their end? And now that those agencies who are not able to justify their activities are blaming the media, saying that it would be meaningless to measure media coverage because media can be manipulated and bought!”
AVE’s, however, have been abandoned asa practice on a wide global scale. UK PR Week awards disqualify campaigns submitted with AVE measurements, and having worked in public relations, I know for certain that such measurement is indeed non-qualifying, simply because the media as tool does not qualify as the best way to communicate at all times.
Meanwhile, an incident this week have brought media gifts back into question.
I was attending an event over the weekend and it was a sort of a gala dinner. An Arab journalist was standing next to me. The PR manager for the event organisers came with a media pack and handed it over to us. The journalist sighed and said: “What a shame.. Old days were better. Six years ago you would receive a media bag with a set of diamonds in it.”
The PR manager said: “We are setting up a box for donations outside”, smile and added: Crisis..
Filed under: Dima
Rihana finally spoke. Not that she didn’t want to, but being deaf, she insisted on making me hear her voice when she uttered the question. I still do not understand why it was so important to her to articulate it.
She asked to meet me and I went out to see her the moment she came. I could hear some music coming out from her iPod and she was dancing in the middle of the road. Yes she is deaf.
She then stopped and said: “Who is the whore?”, and she danced away into the street past the restaurant, the car workshop and three black clad ladies who eyed her in contempt.
I crossed my legs so tight and sipped at my tea. Reem, who was recently divorced said: “I do not understand all these women. They could kill for a husband, and all that it boils down to is 7 minutes of in and out. End of story.” She remarried 7 months later.
“I swear I heard a voice coming from it”, said Leila. She was not walking properly yet, and feeling a bit soar. What did it say? I asked. It was reading a sort of a poem, at least it had that tone. I could not figure out what language it was, although something was so certain in me that it was in French. What was it? I don’t know. She closed her eyes, and I figured it was pain, but then she started humming a poem recital tone like that we all had in childhood, standing infront of the chalk board, swinging on our feet and stopping to catch a breath between two long sentences. Her fiance came to pick her up, because she never went on the streets alone, it was immodest. She stood upright, swallowed her pain and walked away. Half way she screamed at him for trying to hold her hand.
“He left me”, Amani wept. I was in earnest, struggling to listen to her while my head kept wandering off to a pinpointed mountain top. I came back for one second to ask her why he left her. She wept louder. She finally said: “He had a dream, he told me. He was standing on the sidewalk and this bus stopped at a sign. He was going to get on the bus, but 10 men walked past him and caught the door first. When the bus drove off to the next corner, he told me, it stopped and started taking off something like a yellow jacket and there was no bus anymore, it was me. He broke off with me and went to buy a new car!” She was 19 years old.
Rihana wrote to me. She read: “My self is like a big old mansion. Sometimes I like to grab a chair and place it across from the doorway. In those many rooms up behind, I could picture old women wailing, their agonised voices echoing in my soul, their laughters turning into bewitched shrieks, their whispers like burning venom. The pain is metallic cold. I could picture lost children running through halls and knocking down candles, a girl craving for love locked in her room, her fingers wandering away in fantasy over her skin, curtains breathing in the winds from wide-open windows, and a silver darkness. As I sit on my chair exposed to the night stars, I long for things that I can’t have, and it grows dead lonely.”
She put me to sleep and we lay there on a green bed. Through my closed lids I saw her close on her trembling bosom, and fight for sweet sleep that doesn’t come. “I hate my father..” she said finally. I did not open my eyes, but my legs grew stiff, as if I would prance off in a second, to avoid a devastatinng wave of anger. She hugged herself and the pillow and said again: “I hate my father, but he did not hurt my sister.” Jana said no more.
Is there God? Her voice was like a horrid scortching sigh in hollow lead cylinder. She hugged her legs, smoked a cigarette, patted her flat stomach and reflected on a crime she never committed. I sacrificed my baby, I gave away my marriage he used to hit me. Their idea of support was to ask whether I had become a Lesbian. I would have just for spite. Women are soft on women, I reckon, softer than this world. I cut my hair to look ugly, said Maryam. She closed her face down on mine in a scary stare and touched the remaining inch of cropped hair. Do you see? Do you see? I am tired of suffering, If I go back it is only to shame. I think sometimes I should go and marry that man in the bank. He offered me money, a house and a maid. Hell, that is prostitution under a contract! Would you like me to do that? Would you like me to do that? She screamed like a nightmare.
In the hospital, I remembered Leila. I could hear the voice talked about. There were two, three, million of them in a chorus. They recited a poem, and it was in Arabic. Oh Mother Mary! Virgin Mary, full of grace, the Lord is wih thee, blessed thou art among women, the voices said. The prayer turned to a sunflower field and the flowers were singing. Their petals clutched, fastened with paper glue. They looked like giant moist eyelashes that were burdened down with infection. At the border of the field was an old sewing factory from another time, a medieval time. Sorceresses were sewing at big machines. What were they making?
I held my hands out looking at a pamphlet that fell from the sky. The paper was black, the writing was black, a black trickle gently leaked onto my fingers. There was a strike. I looked around and the street was flooded with distorted figures, all blackened with soot. They were not human beings, yet they were. On their bodies were maps. The maps stopped at dead ends. Their voices loud but feminine. I tried to read the pamphlet. It turned to a video screen in my hand and it seemed to play a movie. The woman in the movie was moaning, and there was man standing near her. He did not touch her, as if he did not see her, but she went on moaning. At times she would smile and say: I am being raped. On the corner of the screen there was an advertising for her music album. They deceived me, she said and continued to moan, now in pleasure, I am being raped, she went on. A website address appeared at the bottom of the screen, saying: Buy the music album for 20 per cent discount and you will get the movie for free. The streets continued to flood with strikers, as if they filled the whole world. The whore! screamed the victims, their dead-end maps glowing in the gory sun.
Filed under: Media
I have been writing about the phenomenal growth of the Arab online population for more than a year now.
Figures definitely support the claim:
1- an average of almost 1200 per cent growth in the past 8 years
2- 60 per cent internet penetration in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and the rest following suit
3-Regional spending on online advertising is expected to grow by 25 to 35 per cent in 2009 as a result of the downturn, as we witness a greater shift from print to online advertising, according to a study titled “Game Not Over”, released by global management consultant firm, Booz & Company. (*Startuparabia.com, Feb 09)
4- Google is launching more Arabic applications one set to be associated with wikipedia to build Arabic content, and Yahoo finalises its deal with Maktoob to arabise its applications and start developing original Arabic content.
Great! Yet, there seems to be a couple of issues with the Arabic content on news and entertainment portals:
1- The audience that is most taken into consideration is the Saudi audience. Knowing that the Saudi online population has been very active in social networks mobilising the public for serious social and consumer related issues, this audience is mostly fed with cheap entertainment news.
An employee who had access to the web analytics of a major media company news site, said the second top search keyword for the site was, for a long while, sex. This major company is mainly targeted at the Saudi market.
According to Google Insights for Search, Saudi Arabia top 10 search terms for the past year, fell mainly into social networking, youtube and music sites.
2- Media organisations have not yet fully understood the essence of online news. The organisational and operational structure built around online media is not much altered from the traditional structures, in terms of hierarchy, centralisation of the news, speed, technicalities of online writing and decisions on toplines, multi-media online publishing, interactivity, and most of all understanding the online audience – their demographic and professional segmentation and habits of online choice of news.
3- Misunderstanding of the role of online reporting regarding breaking news and “sensational” news – just another form of a car ad with a white, blond, sexy woman standing infront of it.
All those factors combined result in the vivd typecast of the MBC entertainment news website, and the likes of Elaph.com, mostly still questioned for their news credibility and more interested in creating the “hot” news rather than maintaining professionalism.
MBC.net for instance had an amazing set of news yesterday that reflects such defects I have mentioned. There is an obvious commercialism that tends mostly to target the Saudi reader almost depicted as no less than “perverted”, knowing that reporters’ guidelines for selecting the stories for the website is based on three keywords: sex, rape and scandal. The way the website churns news takes a wrong turn most of the time when the writers on this site find themselves under constant pressure to come up with “sexy” stories.
A journalist friend of mine calls this the “Fatima” type of stories. This he says in reference to a story he had to fabricate to spice up his reporting from a village struck by a natural disaster about the one woman he called “Fatima” who refused to be evacuated and leave her house and went on cooking for the aid workers, the only people who remained behind in the flood. A lot of them in my world say that is journalism, and from paper to handheld computer screens, content and ethics don’t seem to have evolved an inch further. Meanwhile, journalists who seek professionalism find themselves in a constant morning gossip session of what translates from Arabic, “the women at the baker’s”, or what Google translate sites (just for the laugh) as “wenches oven”.
Filed under: Media
Documentaries on Islam have become a trend since the war on terrorism that US President George W. Bush waged after 9/11. Tarif Sayid, Managing Director of The Frames, a UAE-based production company, said international broadcasters and producton houses have been commissioning a lot of documentaries on Islam.
Nine years after the two ill-fated planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the subject of terrorism has been exhausted. “Now they are going more into details, mostly social and cultural”, said Sayid.
Of course, people in the Christian “world” are more eager to know about Islam, because somehow a religion cannot be all about killing (if it ever is). The discourse created by intellectuals, media reporters and politicians about the issues of Jihad, suicide bombers and Islam have triggered this curiosity, and now to be self-righteous, there is a need to study the meanings that have been so long dodged.
“Documentaries now explore sufi music, for instance. With the economic crisis, Islamic banking has also become a focus. They want to know why economists seem to reiterate perpetually that Islamic finance will be less affected by the downturn”, explained Sayid.
Documentaries are the more expensive face of media and probably the less profitable. Tarif Sayid, Managing Director of The Frames, a UAE-based production company, challenges that saying that the problem with documentaries in the Arab world is as much the same as the problem with any other thing, it is the lack of the business mind.
Such productions according to him have long been commissioned by state owned or financed TV stations which did not seek profit. Therefore, when a documentary is being produced, there is no realistic study of how to market it and make it a profitable piece of work. “How much of the supply would these TV stations be able to absorb? There is a limit beyond which those documentaries have no market”, said Sayid. As a result, many of the documentaries produced are either poor in content or low in quality.
When it comes to the theme of Islam, large production companies driven by the size of the Saudi market, prefer to produce documentaries that fit into the guidelines of the Saudi culture and are therefore irrelevant to the rest of the world.
Sayid suggested a narrow-mindedness that rules over the culture of documentary production in the region. “Instead, those companies can invest heavily in a top-quality documentary whose copyrights could be sold partially in different regions and markets, thus widening the exposure and tapping a bigger marketplace with multi-fold revenue.”
Filed under: Media
Today’s BBC news was all about Islam, I even got the idea of running a study on the proportion of Islam-related crime news in the media. I would pose the question: How does quantity of negative Islam mentions with respect to time impact the public perception in a mathematical sense? Should the public perception grow more and more negative towards Islam, what is to be expected, based on the study of mechanisms of fear and hate in human behaviour?
1- A Muslim American soldier killed several civilians before being killed by a woman police officer.
2- Buddhists in Thailand being armed by the government to defend themselves from Muslim fundamentalist terrorists.
3- Ad promotion: A documentary about clashes between the two great faiths Islam and Christianity since the wars between Salaheddine and Richard Lion Heart, leader of the Crusaders. (The voice over says: Muslims were regarded by Christians as infidels and Christians were seen by Muslims as savages!)
4- Palestinian children being taken to Israeli courts for throwing stones “which according to a reporter can be deadly if they fall on a car on the highway and it swerves from its course and causes an accident.” (No one knows that Palestinians could also be Christians)
I do not appreciate lousy advertising and marketing gimmicks especially when women are shuffled along, even more so when it is about the unquestioned cliches that incriminate those who fall victims of discrimination far more than those who discriminate.
I was caught by surprise when sitting down for an interview with one of the exhibitors at the Media and Marketing Show a flock of five women in white clothes and blond wigs lined just infront of us and in a coquettish unbefitting manner one of them said: “Please join us to the seminar we are hosting.”
My American guest, an online marketing expert said: “Is that a personal invitation for me? I will attend as long as you are going to be there.”
We laughed, and the women left in a flock as they had appeared.
I finished my interview and went up to their booth. The ladies were so obliging they let me take a picture of them. I asked: “So what is with the white and blond hair?”
The girl with the coquettish voice said in the same unflattering way she spoke before: “White, blond, clean.” She elongated the last word and bent her head to the side and smiled seducingly.
She pointed to he boss at the corner of the booth, I thought I should walk up to him.
The guy seemed he hadn’t gone beyond the first class in color theory at some graphic design course. He explained about the business which seemed close to offering product placements in a GPS directory. I could barely understand the relation between white/clean and his business objectives. He said white seemed the most suitable color to brand his service! Fine, what about the women?!
I longed to talk to Laura Boushnak that instant. Her recent “I read, I write” photography project was just fresh on my mind. Having seen it the night before at Portfolio Gallery in Dubai, the work focused on Egyptian women who were struggling to give shapes and forms for their ideas, by learning how to read and write. The photos showed the women, a few teenagers, but mostly women in their thirties and even older ladies, writing down with the little they knew of the alphabet about their dreams, their fears and the shame they felt because they were ignorant. Her photos were simple, unmanipulated and true. One woman wrote: Who am I? and she wrote down her name. That was all she could write.
*http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=157362383651&ref=mf
(Laura Boushnak)
Filed under: Media
An alteration of the Palestinian anthem intending to criticize the internal conflict among Palestinians and the growing corruption in various leadership levels, stirred some angry voices accusing it of being some sort of betrayal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePWvVQ4-IbA
The reason, those angry voices say, is that the lyrics “sabotage” the sublime concept of the nation. It is now regarded as an offense to the anthem itself rather than the insufferably deteriorating situation among the Palestinians. (I am including a link to the anthem on Youtube, and for those who do not know Arabic, it is enough to read the comments to understand what it is all about).
What is provocative, however, is realising how bad the situation is, how incurable the hatred has grown among Fatah and Hamas, that there seems no room for any objective discourse that evaluates the severity of internal discord and its implications on the future of the Palestinians. I do not wish to delve into politics, but would just like to point out – because I am an outsider – how bad Palestinians have been in publicity. I say “because I am an outsider”, because I know there will be many who will say that I do not understand the inevitability of this discord (only Palestinians who live in the occupied lands would see how expressive this conflict is of the diverging ideologies regarding vital issues such as forming the state, resistance, peace talks and naturalisation with Israel).
Indeed, I don’t understand, but it is not really my job to understand that. As an outsider, I can see how Jewish lobbies and Israelis cooperate to deliver a propagandist message that is extremely impressive, given the diversity of its aspects, and the professionalism with wihch it is carried out. Meanwhile, I can see that Palestinians are not even close.
I am not a big fan of writing a mere criticism at the moment, however, I just wonder how significant the question “why” is to the Palestinians. Do they ask why? If they do, what determines when to pose this question and how to find the answer to it? Because that question would help put things in perspective.
I also wonder wether the lack of the “why” in the literature exchanged among the “elitists” of Palestine, those who are now flooding internet forums, is a result of some kind of socio-religious values which generally rule the Arab world and its culture based on Islam as a way of life.
In religion, the “why” is considered above the human capacity to answer, and thus faith. In the mean time, why signifies philosophy, and philosophy at a certain fundamental level is considered next to blasphemy.
Should they ask this question, they’d probably find better answers to resolve their issues. Why does the internal conflict present itself so severely now, since the war on Gaza? Why in ordinary life, do Palestinians eat Israeli food, and wear Israeli clothes but refuse to read the Israeli literature for example?
A friend of mine pointed out the dismal situation that Palestinians live in, he said they are not to blame. Who is to blame then? Abdul Nasser’s Arab nationalist ideology? Julia Butrous’ song “Where is the Arab people?” I understand it is difficult, but for those who spend time, or in fact have time to spare, to write long conspiracy articles in obsolete Arabic words, and publish opinions on blogs and internet forums, it is just a matter of using the time in a more productive way.
This might go off track, but I was intrigued by a radio show the other day on BBC about Yiddish language. The show was not about the Jew’s right to live in peace, it was not about Palestine, perhaps only a little related to the Holocaust. A professor of Yiddish said: “it is a very beautiful language, and it is dying away”.
It is enough to use emotional words like that to make a stranger feel compassion with a “language”. They’d think of all the words meaning love, perhaps words that describe beautiful colors of the sky, children laughing, and the “language” suddenly becomes something else, a being that breathes and strolls like an angel or a prances like a harmless deer. It was enough to make a case.. What does the Arabic language stand for in media? Why?
PS: I am including the Arabic article I received by email about the critical alteration of the Palestinian anthem. What can someone make out of that?
موطني بين كانَ وأخواتها
فاروق واديربما تحتاج إلى سماع نشيد “موطني”، الذي أسهم في صقل وعي طفولتنا وشبابنا، ألف مرّة، لتغسل روحك وتُنقيها بعد سماعك النشيد مُشوّهاً تحت عنوان “كان موطني”، الذي تتداوله الرسائل الإلكترونيّة بكثرة هذه الأيّام.
كنتُ أقرأ مقالة فهمي هويدي المثيرة للرعب والأسى في “الشروق” القاهريّة، حول الفلسطيني الجديد الذي يُراد استنساخه من تجربة الهنود الحُمر في أميركا، وما تعرّضوا له من تبديدٍ وجودي وثقافيّ على مدى الزمن. وتعبير “الفلسطيني الجديد” الذي صاغه الجنرال كيث دايتون وأطلقه في محاضرة ألقاها بمعهد واشنطن لسياسة الشرق الأدنى، يهدف إلى تخليق جيل جديد من الفلسطينيين ينفر من المقاومة ويُسلِّم بكونها إرهاباً، ويتصالح مع أعدائه بعد أن تكون ذاكرته التاريخيّة قد تعرّضت للمسخ والتشويه، وبعد أن يكون قد جرى إعادة إنتاجه، بحيث يصبح إنساناً موظفاً، ينتمي إلى مهنة لا إلى وطن.
كنتُ أقرأ المقالة، عندما تكرّر وصول رابط “كان موطني” إلى بريدي غير مرّة، فأوصلني إلى مسوخ النشيد الذي طالما رددناه، بصيغته الأولى (من كلمات إبراهيم طوقان ولحن محمّد فليفل)، في طفولتنا وصبانا، ليحلّ علينا الآن بصيغة مشوّهة، غير بريئة، ومثيرة للحزن والكآبة.
تغييب مفهوم الوطن، هويّة وانتماء، تاريخاً وجغرافيا ومشاعر عارمة شديدة الخصوصيّة، بل وكسر قدسيته، هو أوّل ما لفتني عندما فتحت الرابط الذي يتحدّث عن الوطن بصيغة ماضٍ انقضى، ووجدتُ فيه نتاجاً يندرج في مشروع الفلسطيني الجديد.
ما يثير الانتباه، أولاً، أن العمل المُشار إليه يتميّز بدرجة معقولة من الاشتغال أو التركيب التقني يتجاوز الجهد الفردي الذي تحتاجه فشّة الخُلق، ليصل إلى ما هو أبعد من ذلك. فثمّة شخص له علاقة بالإيقاع الشعرى وصياغة تناص، مهما كان ملفّقاً وبائساً، عن قصيدة إبراهيم طوقان المعروفة. وثمّة من له علاقة باللحن والإيقاع للتوفيق بين الكلمات المحوّرة، واللحن الذي يتكئ على محمد فليفل. وهناك “كورال” يضمّ عدداً من أصوات الرجال “البروفيشنال” في هذا المجال، والموجهة ضمن توزيع موسيقي مُحدّد، والتي لا شكّ في أنها أجرت تدريبات عديدة لتبلغ درجة مقبولة من الإتقان، ضمن منظور أصحاب العمل والواقفين خلفه. إضافة إلى أن هناك من يُتقن العمل على تصميم الفوتوشوب، ممن تولى الإشراف على إخراج الصّورة المرئيّة.
معنى ذلك، ولن يهمني الاتهام بأنني أتبنى نظريّة المؤامرة (بعد أن أصبحت المؤامرات حول فلسطين وقضيتها وإنسانها مبذولة في الطرقات)، أن هناك من يقف وراء هذا العمل الخطير.. وترويجه، بهدف إشاعة يأسٍ على يأس، وتكريسه في النفوس.
هنا، نحن نبيح لأنفسنا إعفاء حركتيّ فتح وحماس من تهمة إنتاج وترويج مثل هذا العمل، ونعفي معهما السلطة الفلسطينيّة ومؤسساتها المختلفة، كون “كان موطني” لم يفرِّط في هجاء الرموز القياديّة فيها جميعاً، بلا استثناء.
فمع صور القادة التي تتقاطر أمامنا، واحداً تلو الآخر، والذين لا تعنينا هنا مسألة تأييد اتهامهم أو الدفاع عنهم، يُردِّد النشيد المُحوّر كلمات “الطغاة.. والبغاة.. والدهاء لا الوفاء في حماك”، ليصل إلى رؤية الوطن مكبّلاً وخانعاً لا حول له ولا قوّة.. “خانعاً مكمماً بقادتك مسمماً”!
أي أنه، بالمنطق السّاذج والبسيط: إذا كان القادة طغاة وبغاة، وهمهم الدولار والدينار والعقار، فإن الكفر في الوطن يصبح مشروعاً، ويغدو “موطني” في خبر “كان”!
إن الذين وقفوا ويقفون وراء إنتاج مثل هذا العمل، لا شكّ في أنهم وجدوا في العزف على وتر هجاء القادة الفلسطينيين، في كلّ مواقعهم السياسيّة والتنظيميّة والإداريّة، تربة صالحة لإيجاد استجابة في الشّارع الفلسطيني المحبط سياسياً، والتي تفاقمت بعد خطيئة الموافقة على تأجيل التصويت على تقرير غولدستون، وما أثاره من استياء شعبي عارم، أتاح الفرصة لأصحاب الشريط للمسّ بالوطن نفسه، الذي يتسرّب أمام عيوننا وتجتاحه المستوطنات وتجليات الأسرلة، ويريدون له أن يتسرّب من قيمنا وانتماءاتنا، ويُسلب من عواطفنا ومشاعرنا الوطنيّة.
ولعلني لا أغالي إذ اعتبر أن هذا العمل يشكِّل اعتداء مقصوداً للنيل من روحنا ووعينا وصميم تراثنا وثقافتنا، وتنازلاً مجانياً عن معاني الوطن ودلالاته في ضميرنا. وإلاّ، فلماذا يجري الترويج لمثل هذا الشريط بسوء نيّة، وبغياب مُطلق لأي روح نقديّة حقيقيّة؟ ومن هي الجهة التي تقف وراء تمويله من أصحاب التمويل المشبوه، والجهة التي أنتجته (إذ لم يتضمن الشريط اسماً لأفراد أو مؤسسات)، ليجري تداوله بين الشّباب بنوايا طيِّبة، وكطرفة هجائيّة تبدو بريئة، رغم أنها تخبئ ما هو أخطر من مجرّد الهجاء.
…”كان موطني”
لكن الوطن لا يتقبّل مفردة “كان”، إلاّ عند الذين يعملون على إثارة اليأس في النفوس، والذين يعكفون على تلفيق وتخليق الفلسطيني الجديد بمواصفات دايتون. وموطني، الذي يرفض “كان”، إلاّ عندما تشير المُفردة إلى تاريخ تجذُّر الوطن في المكان عبر الزمان وتكريس حقيقته الأزليّة، يبقى، في كلّ الأحوال، قابلاً لاحتضان أخواتها: ظلّ.. وما زال.. وما برح.. وما فتئ.. وما انفكّ.. موطني..
موطني
Photography never makes sense. I become indifferent to the world. Let them not see what I see. What does it matter?
Some secrets are best not told, they are only lived by those who bear them.
Women on the roads, men in coffee shops, cows and monkeys on the street, deer and elephants in the forest. What difference does it make to take a photo? It will only entice the momentary obligation of showing amazement. I do not need that hypocrisy, neither do all those women and men and animals.
Margin: drifting away from the original text.
I remember thinking on my three-hour drive up the uneven forest road about my ideals those linked to my fascination with photography. I remember having two particular images in my mind, one of them the Pulitzer-winning shot of a starving Sudanese toddler stalked by a vulture by Kevin Carter, the South African photographer.
Many would argue the power of the image, how photographers can carry the mission of revealing the truth. Well, Carter committed suicide, and photos cannot transmit the smell. This must say something about the image, and the extent to which the eye is capable of interpreting everything that needs to be interpreted, and the consequences of depriving the reality from its actual context once it is framed – also probably a fault with the capability of the human face of drawing a clear line between an expression of sadness, for example, and an involuntary reaction to the light of the sun. But that is just an example, which can also be rendered in the “chaotic” placement of the nature-made, something almost always confused with neglect versus the human-made orderliness which is simplistically made synonymous with the human virtue of progress. Well, a photograph, cannot reverse this easily, although driving on the road, the human-made small tea plantations seemed dreadful on one side, while naturally grown plants seemed peaceful and friendly on the other.
What am I talking about? Reduction.
Images are not like words. They are clear, evident, and undeceiving. Words are much more complicated. But images lack the word, just as a word lacks the image representation. There is always something missing, and with that is a whole chapter of data unavailable to be processed by the mind to reach the accurate conclusion. The result, misjudging, stereotypical images, and vast opportunity for manipulation. I will call it the “synopsis” effect.
Post Script:
When I looked at my notebook, I realised that I had skipped Face 7 and jumped directly to Face 8. Yet, Face 7 still exists and I would like to call it the Face of Good.
Note:
The Face of Good is like other faces, a phase. It never prevails, but is always there. Similar to love, hatred, sadness, purity, beauty, and simplicity. The Kingdom of Nine does not have the Hollywood type of good guys against bad guys. True that in some of the artwork of the colonial era, many of the good characters were depicted white and the evil black, but that is just the colonial art.
In the Kingdom of Nine the power of destruction is worshipped equally with the power of creation, for there is no life without death, and even the good dies, only to be resurrected, only to continue to survive in the joy of the people.
And in the Kingdom of Nine people are feasting for the coming 10 days.
The story, they say is that of a good ruler who was killed by a villain. The good ruler had made their land so rich and prosperous, and those who remain true to him, await his visit every year with festivities. They only want to prove that what he has given to their land has lived on.
