Short Stories

As Ashley also said in her blog about the short stories we read, the title of the second is ironic. In fact there was no plan at all in this story. I also felt that the story was only from Isam al-Baqli and eventhough it was mainly his point of view and we didn’t see the story from different eyes I found myself strongly disliking his character. It was almost appalling the way he spoke to his mother, telling her to hurry up and die. I was also annoyed by how lazy and sarcastic this character is, usually I find sarcasm amusing but this was uncomfortable. I suppose that the idea driving this story is that if you want happiness money cannot be your only mistress, but I only got that idea from the very end of the story. Perhaps Isam dies alone but he dies happy with food in his belly and in death he still has not learned from his lazy lifestyle. He merely why God would give him money and then kill him, he does not understand that he has only asked and never given. In this sense I feel like the ending is ironic, he is given money (as he wanted) in return for his life. Over all I enjoyed the first story more.

Camels!

When I first started reading this book, I thought it was going to be geared towards a younger audience, perhaps a ten to twelve year-old. The boy’s extreme love for his pet and the writing style seemed to be simple. I was mistaken. The love this boy had for his camel seemed like an obsession. With in the first few chapters there was a gruesome and explicit scene involving two camels having sex. I did not enjoy this book very much, but I did enjoy that the book was given to us in a packet and I did not have to try to find it myself, so Thank You Arabic Group two! One thing that caught my eye when we did the in class exercise was that some one made the connection that the camel represented the seven deadly sins. From the way the boy acts around his camel I can definitely see, Greed, and Pride, and when you look further into the novel you can pull out the others. But in general I did not understand how important this camel was.

Out Side Reading 2

For about two weeks I have been trying to read my second outside reading book and have only gone through ten pages. I originally picked this book because I thought it would be interesting to see an Iraqi’s point of view on the war, but what I didn’t know was that I probably should have been on top of the news before I started reading. Because I do not follow the news I do not know about most of the people and events that this girl talks about in her blog. The book is Baghdad Burning by Riverbend. Another problem I have with this book is it is less about Iraq and instead she complains about people who comment on her blog and disagree with her. I am going to continue to try to slosh through this book but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you keep up with the news and do not mind complaints and rants.

Children's Literature

The last time I really read children’s books was when I was about 7 years old, and since then I have forgotten how simplistic the language is, but I never noticed how in tune with our senses and how political they can be.

The first of the stories played on the readers’ sense of sound mentioning the noises that even the sand makes. The narrator even said that his name became music in the symphony of sound that is his city. The narrator also played on the ideas of color. Using sounds and colors definitely adheres to a child when they are learning to read. This book though the actions of the characters are specific to Arabic culture the ideas about wanting to grow strong, being excited about a secret, and proud of learning to write our names in entirely universal.

The second story we were told to read was definitely more political than any of the children’s books I read as a child; but perhaps that is just due to the culture I live in, a culture where censorship is extreme, especially towards children. The books I read were ones like the orange cat put on a red hat and the dog wants to play. I did however read one book that was sort of political called Tiki Tiki Tembo by Arlene Mosel, but that was merely about how parents name their children in China. The way this second book was written seemed like it was targeted for a slightly older child perhaps third or fourth grade, but even still the narrator seemed so young to have been so comfortable with the danger he lived in. Furthermore, it seemed like the children were being used as political bait, when they were sent to march against the violence. Even beneath the political aspect of this story it still played on senses and the idea of growing strong.

Reading these books makes me think that perhaps I should re-look at some of my favorite childhood stories.

Arabic Group's Guest Speaker

I enjoyed the guest speaker that the Arabic group brought into class because he was a real person with real experiences, rather than the ones that are fictitious and written in novels. I definitely learned so much about Egyptian culture; it is far different from the culture of the Western World. First I can not imagine studying 12 hours a day in high school, or even now that I am in college; having a social life is hard enough as it is and I think I would die if I studied 12 hours a day. But that is just it, U.S. culture does not put such emphasis on our education, there are many people who grow successfully even after poor grades in high school. School has always been important to me but our guest speaker seemed so passionate about learning, listening to him speak was almost like listening to the Imam speak when we went to the Mosque. Another difference between the two cultures of education is that your high school GPA does not determine what types of programs and types of careers you can have. I had a fairly high GPA but that does not mean I have to go into Political Science, and I had friends with lower GPAs but they were not restricted to being farmers or teachers. Also the level of respect for teachers is far greater in Egypt than it is here in the United States, and to me this is a bit ridiculous, because they teach our future, they should at least have some respect. There is a similarity in the way teachers are treated in these two cultures however, both pay their teachers almost nothing. Although this is true, Egyptian teachers have it worse off, I cannot even fathom how Ashley’s Arabic professor survived on 16 dollars a month for teaching and having to work 12 hour shifts to make up for the difference and then returning to teach for the next day. Another interesting fact that our speaker brought to my attention was the fact that there are more women than men at the Universities and that the scientist behind the weapons of mass destruction was a woman. Though these ideas point towards equality of women I still have a hard time believing that women are equal to men, as the Professor was saying.

Our Trip to the Islamic Learning Center

I would love to say that our trip to the mosque was insightful, but if I did it would not be entirely truthful. Though I did learn some new information I would be hard pressed to pass a test if we were to be quizzed over the fieldtrip. Most of the information that I have retained from this class was information I had learned last year in my comparative world religions class. The Imam was so excited about his religion that he spoke a million words a minute in an attempt to teach us all about Islam and break down the stereotypes we might have had in only ninety minutes. For instance he would talk about all of the languages he had learned and that would spark a discussion about how he memorized the Qur’an in Arabic at age 9. Though this is beyond impressive, he did not return to the original conversation about the languages he knows. He did this on two other specific occasions: once when he was talking about the three holy cities, I never learned the third holy city because Jerusalem sparked another discussion; also when he was talking about Muhammad’s wives he said that Muhammad had two wives but the Imam spoke so much about the first wife and the idea of being polygamous, he forgot to mention the second.

I definitely enjoyed how excited and in love with his religion the Imam was, I wish that everyone was as passionate about something. However, I did feel like a few of his comments showed that he was accepting of other religions but not accepting of those who are not religious. I am not a religious person and so I felt like he was trying to push Islam and almost said that it was the only correct religion. As Bri mentioned in class, it would have been interesting to speak to some one who left Islam and hear their opinion on the religion. Being a non-religious person put me at an advantage, I feel, because I was able to learn about Islam without being bias and disagreeing with the differences between religions.

"The Road to Love"

Personally I did not enjoy the movie. The lighting was worse than home movies my parents have, and the fact that I had to read subtitles due to the language being spoken was a huge turn off. I had difficulty understanding what was happening in the movie if I wanted to watch the scene I had no idea what they were talking about and if I wanted to know what was being said I would miss what was happening in the body language.

I do not feel as though I know enough about Arabic culture to be able to take that step towards understanding their acceptance of homosexuality. And for this reason the movie did not hold my interest. Personally I think that a personal life should be just that, personal. I do not enjoy seeing a homosexual couple be intimate with each other just as much as I do not enjoy seeing a heterosexual couple being intimate. Thus this film made me a little uncomfortable. Furthermore, I was thrown off by the nudity, which is another belief I have, our bodies should be kept hidden for our eyes and our partner’s eyes alone. When nudity came on the screen I had to look towards the ceiling and again missed what the people on screen were saying.

For the reasons I have just given I do not feel like I have acquired any knowledge and did not retain any information. This film bored me.

Support our Troops?

For my outside reading book I am reading Five Years of My Life by Murat Kurnaz. It is his story of the five years he spent as an innocent man in Guantanamo Bay. This story, as far as I have read, really opened my eyes to how disgusting people can be. I know that I’ve talked about Hollywood using Nazi like propaganda, but the way the United States soldiers treated these prisoners is heading down the path of Nazi cruelty. I knew from pictures on the news that some of the soldiers treated the prisoners like they were less because of their racial background, but I did not know that they treated prisoners like test dummies. One of the torture treatments that disgusted me was one I shared in class; prisoners were hung up by their wrists from ceiling rafters for hours and for days, they would only be let down so that doctors could check to see if they were still living and if they were the prisoners would be raised up back into the rafters. Much like Nazi doctors the doctors Guantanamo used the prisoners as experiments. Prisoners were even tortured and beaten into admitting to being a terrorist, and then for admitting to it they were beaten and tortured more. Originally I picked this book out because I thought it would be interesting to look at the reactions of the innocent who were accused of being terrorists, just as another point of view in war, but I didn’t know I would be so interested in Kurnaz’s story. I also learned that most of the prisoners in Guantanamo were nowhere near terrorists. In factmost were victims of the United States paying bounties to countries for people that they could use in the media to pretend that they were capturing terrorists. I would definitely recommend this book to those who are pro and anti-war. How can this cruelty be humane and legal?