The Post-Thesis Zombie

Where's my medal?

Hello dear readers,

It has been a while, I know. Some of you undoubtedly thought my procrastinatory instincts had finally gotten the best of me and that I had abandoned this blog. True, The Wayward Orientalist has been on an extended hiatus while I was busy with the writing I was paid to do (yay journalism!) and the writing I was paying to do (yay grad school!).

But finally, after about a year of trials and tribulations (some of which were documented here), the thesis beast has finally been slain, thus ending my academic career once and (hopefully) for all. This victory, however, came at a price. I have had to sacrifice many things over the past year, including:

Don't blame me

It happens every so often. A male acquaintance will do something that makes me uncomfortable—whether an unwanted touch, an objectifying comment or a wolf-whistle—something that triggers a deep-seated sense of apprehension in my stomach. But as soon as I protest, the expression of my discomfort backfires as it all becomes about their hurt feelings.

"You're exaggerating!"

"That's not what I meant!"

"I can't believe you're treating me like I'm a random guy in the street!"

My standing up for myself becomes a betrayal of whatever bond of camaraderie said person thought we had. In their eyes, I suddenly turn into an overreacting harpy for responding so seriously to something so insignificant.

But for all the men who have ever gotten huffy at me for setting boundaries, those who have joked that "come on, I'm not gonna rape you" when I turned down a ride home, I wish I could have said:

Don't blame me.

Blame them:

A Cruel Winter

A Syrian child, wearing sandals in the snow. Photo from Facebook.

Winter made it way to Lebanon last week in the most drastic way. A winter storm, dubbed Alexa, swept through the region, bringing gusty winds, rain, and snow to what had so far been a mild end to fall. In an area already fraught with disaster, the weather has turned out to be the latest violence inflicted on us all, but most especially on the Syrian refugees.

On Wednesday evening, my roommate and I found ourselves in the dark as the storm cut off our electricity for four hours, leaving us shaking from the cold in the living room despite wearing two layers of every item of clothing. And yet, we had a roof over our heads, and walls around us, no matter how poorly isolated they might have been. Across Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of Syrians were trying to survive the night under tents and flimsy shelters.

The Wayward Orientalist vs. Media Tropes

As previously mentioned, I read the news for a living*. This means I end up identifying a lot of recurring tropes—conventional storytelling devices—in mainstream media, whose goal is to simplify the narrative(s) about the Middle East in a way that is easily digestible for a (presumedly) Western audience.

As you can guess, the vast majority of these tropes are ridiculous, insulting and just plain stupid. Here are a handful that I happen to find extremely grating.

The Middle East is one big blob.

Two years on

Yesterday marked two years since I first came to Lebanon. It’s still surreal to think of all the factors that contributed to my being here. If I hadn’t felt unfulfilled with my job, if I hadn’t gone through a big break-up, if my mother hadn’t mentioned an article about AUB, if I hadn’t had coffee with my friend L. who had just moved to Beirut… my life would be much different. Much blander.

These two years have felt both very short and very long. I have seen so many things change progressively throughout my stay here: friends came and went, bars opened and closed, buildings rose from the ground and other were demolished. I have seen children slowly crowd the streets of Hamra trying to peddle gum and plastic roses as thousands upon thousands of Syrians took refuge in Lebanon only to live in abject poverty.

A year ago, I had no doubt whatsoever that I would still be here by the time September 2013 rolled around. But now, I'm not so sure. Beyond my yearning to explore somewhere else in a year's time, the situation seems hard to predict on the short term.

Trouble in the land of the lotus eaters

Credit: Tumblr

In Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses and his men spend ten years lost at sea on their way home after the Trojan War. One day, they land in the realm of the lotus eaters, whose inhabitants subsist on a flower so intoxicating those who consume it lose all sense of purpose.

Those who ate the honey-sweet lotus fruit no longer wished to bring back word to us, or sail for home. They wanted to stay with the Lotus eaters, eating the lotus, forgetting all thoughts of return.

Who knows what the lotus eaters were trying to forget? There is a certain comfort in letting go of reality, focusing only on the hedonistic pleasures of life, even if it means ignoring the omens of impending catastrophe.

Lebanon has often felt to me like this mythological land of lotus. Life in Beirut can sometimes seem so easy, an oasis of carefree festivity mere kilometers away from the unrelenting Syrian conflict. For some, obliviousness is a survival instinct after having experienced the trauma of war and its consequences up close. Many foreigners are also seduced by Beirut's heady insouciance, its levity in spite of everything. Beirut can feel like the eye of the storm.

The Thesis Paperwork Zombie

Artistic rendition of the paperwork process
(Source)

Working on my thesis mainly involves mustering the motivation to plow through volumes of theory on inclusive citizenship and feminist praxis (Note to self: memorize what the word "praxis" means).

But in addition to the properly academic work in this endeavor, I must obtain the go-ahead from my university's institutional review board (hereafter known as IRB) to proceed with the interview portion of my research.

After contacting the IRB, I was told I needed to fill in a 17-page form in order to get the green-light for my research. Seventeen pages of exhaustive, detail-oriented questions, some of whom I am sharing with you here, in a worldwide exclusive, along with the answers I wish I had had the guts to write.

Ya Madame

The horror! The horror! (Image found on Tumblr)

I turned 26 this month. I am now solidly in "mid-20s" territory, toeing into the "late 20s," and I have a lot of feelings about it. Angst about growing old is a pretty universal sentiment, but I feel like there has been a conspiracy against me as of late to remind me that not only am I no longer a spritely teenager, I don't look like one either.

It happened one evening in June. As I was headed home, I had to pass through an alley in which a soldier and another man were standing. The soldier gestured to his friend to move out of the way and "let the mademoiselle go through." All well and good, until I got to his level, and heard him add: "or is it madame?"

For the first time in my life, I had been madame-d.

Has anyone seen Lebanon's sovereignty?

Nope, it's definitely not here! (Photo: Mohammed Zaatari, AP) 

In the almost two years I've lived in Lebanon, I have witnessed quite a few ups and downs in terms of politics and national security. But these past several weeks have witnessed a series of events which show that, for all the leaders' grand speeches, the nation's sovereignty and political legitimacy are being hacked at with a chainsaw.

Lebanon's sovereignty has long been the source of wry jokes. Between the French Mandate (1920-1943), the civil war (1975-1990), the Israeli occupation (1982-2000), and decades of steadfast Syrian military presence in the country (1976-2005), the country has barely had a break from conflict and external interventions. Similarly, and despite its high visibility in the streets of Beirut, the army is a weak institution which few Lebanese seriously trust to take care of their security.

But no matter how fragile these foundations are, the flagrant disregard for the basic elements of Lebanon's statehood are spelling serious trouble.

The Thesis Proposal Zombie

As mentioned before, I decided to delay my thesis by a semester, which means that, while most of my friends have just submitted their theses to the university library and are now dusting off their party clothes and ready to celebrate the rebirth of their social lives, I am still in the throes of working on my thesis proposal.

For those who are interested, my research will deal with the political gender quota debate in Lebanon, and I plan on interviewing relevant activists, politicians, NGOs, etc. to analyze the obstacles/enabling factors for gender quotas in Lebanon, and whether they are a policy worth pursuing. Some professors have told that this research is relevant and timely, and it's nice knowing that some people find my research topic interesting.

But let's be honest, I am not handling the stress of academic research very gracefully. I keep waiting for someone to discover that I am a fraud with a minimal grasp of political theory who is just in the master's biz for the visa.

Views of Beirut, 2012

As I was gazing through the bus window at the Beirut cityscape one afternoon, I realized how this place never ceases to charm me. There is something about Beirut, a beauty that is neither quite slick nor gritty, but is nevertheless there, and undeniably so. The elegant balcony railings, the rebellious graffiti, the colorful shutters, and this omnipresent warm yellow, coating the walls of so many buildings.

I haven't been very good at posting pictures on this blog. I actually haven't been very good at taking pictures, period. But here are a few I took last year, mostly in the neighborhood of Hamra and nearby. I have since then moved to the east side of Beirut, and hopefully I'll take the time to capture some more views of the city.

Manara

A Season of Goodbyes

While spring has only indecisively tiptoed its way back to Beirut, the end of the school year is already inching closer, which means the inevitable graduation of the class with whom I began this master's degree endeavor. I would have been one of them, if I wasn't willingly delaying my thesis for a myriad of reasons—not least of which my desire to stay in Lebanon for as long as possible.

The ebb and flow of arrivals and departures in Beirut seems to follow a migration pattern mirroring the academic calendar. And while I have already seen some very dear friends leave Lebanon in the past year and a half, the next two months are filled with the exodus of many people I have grown to care about since I have come here.

I have come to the strange realization of how fragile the social nest I have built here can be, and how unwittingly reliant it has been on people who have always meant to leave, at some point or another.

On banning "Arab Spring" from your vocabulary

No one can tell how Arab, Spanish or American you are behind a Guy Fawkes mask.
Photo found on The Examiner.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, you're about to sit through another one of my rants. (It's still not too late to close the tab.)

One of the things that irk me when reading the news (and you must be aware by now that many things irk me) is this easy turn of phrase to summarize just about everything going on in the region for the past two years: the "Arab Spring." Here is my case for why you should stop using this term once and for all.

The Confused Wayward Orientalist

La mort de Sardanapale by Eugène Delacroix, or
Sensual Oppressed Ladiez and Violent Menz: the Middle East in a Nutshell, Y'all!

As many of you might know, my life calling is to scour the Internet for articles and cute animal pictures. And one of my favorite things to do—besides showing dog photos to my roommate to try and convince her that we should get a pet—is to become overly aggravated about offensive articles on a) women and b) the Middle East. Articles about idiotic Republican policies are a close third... and often tied to the two aforementioned topics.

For example, this perfect illustration of modern-day Orientalism is the sort of news that will send me down an inevitable spiral of angry ranting ("An Oriental adventure"? "The history and the culture of the region"? Monolithism much??? ARGH MY BLOOD PRESSURE).

But of course, not all articles on the region fall into the sort of oversimplifications barely worth the exertion of rolling one's eyes. Much of the news coming out of the Arab world deals with death, destruction and oppression, as if nothing positive and empowering ever came out of the Middle East. The early days of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions* might have been a short truce, if only because the Western media thought this meant the whole Middle East was going to become more like "us."

I have written in the past about my fear that, by writing this blog, I would either contribute to the vast canon of negative clichés on Lebanon and the Middle East, or go too far in the other direction and gloss over the problematic aspects of Middle Eastern cultures. This has led to numerous occasions when my feminist and anti-colonialist/orientalist beliefs have felt at odds.

The shameful case of Georges Abdallah

"Free Georges"—Protester at the French embassy in Beirut. Photo from assawra.info.

For the past two weeks, the usually bon chic bon genre neighborhood surrounding the French embassy in Beirut has gone through quite a makeover. Graffiti has covered every nook and cranny of the once pristine walls. A tent set up across the street from the embassy hosted keffieh-clad protesters day and night who demanded one thing: the liberation of Georges Abdallah.

For the past 28 years, Georges Abdallah has been rotting in prison in France for a crime he most likely did not commit.

Personal evolutions on Palestine

Across the border from Palestine

This reflection has been brought about, of course, by the landslide vote at the UN General Assembly to grant Palestine the status of "observer state." But most of all, this has been influenced by the recent attack on Gaza. The terrible images and news coming from the Strip were harrowing—I am haunted by these photos of the howling pain of grieving fathers.

I have considered myself to be a supporter of the Palestinian cause for a long time. But there is a specific privilege that comes with supporting the abstract notion of the rights of a given people from thousands of miles away. The privilege of oversimplification, of even-handed assignment of blame, and most of all, the privilege of being able to shut out information whenever needed or desired.

Coming to Lebanon hasn't completely taken that privilege away from me, but the consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become realer to me—and the implications of my opinions, inescapable.

Déja-vu

How do you even start talking about tragedies? How can you write personally about events that take lives, shake some people's worlds intensely and intimately without sounding callous, cold, or even reappropriating them by talking at length about your personal feelings on the matter?

I have been trying to think of how I can possibly discuss the car bomb that happened almost two weeks ago near Sassine Square in the east Beirut. How the immediate aftermath was one of panic, incomprehension and solidarity, before once again falling prey to the ugliness of political divisions.

It's during moments like these that I hate politics the most—the indecency of politicians tripping over themselves to get on television first and try to spin death and destruction to their advantage. When it was revealed that the attack targeted Wissam al-Hassan, dread set in the pit of my stomach. There was no escaping the political now.

Who is innocent?

The story that has been shaking the world these past two weeks is the hateful, racist, and overall shitty movie called "The Innocence of Muslims," and the resulting uproar which has led to the death of at least 30 people, including the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher  Stevens.

These events were tragic enough on their own, but on Wednesday, French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo decided to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. This is not the first time this publication has targeted Islam. Their offices were bombed a year ago in response to an issue they had renamed "Sharia Hebdo," and the infamous Danish cartoon also graced its pages in 2007. To say that Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to controversy is quite an understatement, but this instance smacks of gross opportunism and recklessness.

It's been a year

A year in Lebanon... and what a year it's been. Rarely before have I felt like I was right where I needed to be, yet felt so constantly challenged in my assumptions, for the best.

I have learned so much in this past year, what better way once again to celebrate an anniversary than by a list?

I am thankful that...

On Race and Racism: "Arabness" and the Lebanese identity

The thing about discussions on race and identity is that nothing is as straightforward as it might seem. While the world seems to have clear-cut notions of what being "black," "Asian" or "French" might mean or look like, in practice, it is a completely different story. As I quickly found out, this is also the case with the notion of "Arabness" in Lebanon.

From a complete outsider's perspective, the question of whether Lebanon is an Arab state seems like an easy one: its population speaks Arabic and the country is situated in a historically Arab region (current Zionist neighbor notwithstanding). What else could it be? So why is there such a debate on Lebanon's Arab identity?