Just a little gloating

Tahrir Documents from my last post has shown up in an excellent blog I read, My heart's in Acre. Yes, I'm posting on my blog a link to a blog with a link to a site that I've already linked to on this blog.

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/03/29/links-for-2011-03-29/

ANNOUNCING TAHRIR DOCUMENTS

Hi all, people I know tapped me to help with Tahrir Documents, a project translating the multitude of pamphlets, small-run newspapers, party platforms, etc that have come out during the Egyptian revolution, and hosting the documents and their translation for posterity, journalists, academics, and curious members of the public (=you!).

Check out our official press release, and my first article. The translation is not perfect by any means but is faithful.

No the constitutional amendments yes to a new constitution

ANNOUNCING TAHRIR DOCUMENTS

We are pleased to announce the launch of Tahrir Documents, an ongoing project to archive and translate printed discourse from the 2011 Egyptian revolution and its aftermath. The website presents a diverse collection of materials — among them activist newspapers, personal essays, advertisements, missives, and party communications —- in complete English translation alongside reproductions of the Arabic-language originals. The site will be updated regularly, frequently, and indefinitely as new writings appear in response to post-revolution developments, and as we locate earlier materials.

The assembled documents address a variety of contemporary concerns including Muslim-Christian relations, constitutional amendments, moral conduct, revolutionary strategy, and the women's rights movement. Some of the highlights of the collection:

• A defense of protestors' continued sit-in at Tahrir Square released on March 9th, the same day on which their encampment was destroyed by thugs
• Guidelines for personal behavior after the revolution
• Numerous denunciations of sectarian violence
• The announcement of new political parties and presidential candidates.
• Numerous articles debating the constitutional amendments passed last week
• Selections from Gurnal and Revolutionary Egypt, activist newspapers founded after the revolution

We invite you to examine the the website, and to return regularly as we post communications and commentaries from the post-Mubarak era. We believe the archive indicative of the diversity of political thought and action in contemporary Egypt, and hope that this diversity is of interest to anyone following the country's transforming situation. The archive is searchable.

Tahrir Documents is the work of volunteer translators in Egypt and abroad. It is not affiliated with any of those authors or groups whose works appear in translation on the website, nor with any organization foreign or domestic.

For more information please write to the editorial board at tahrirdocuments@gmail.com. We invite the submission of materials for translation and publication on the website.

Regards,

The Editors and Staff of Tahrir Documents

Dramatic events of last night and why this isn't the Twitter Revolution

First a (breathless) account of citizens storming state security offices in a number of cities, fights with the security members themselves, and the army eventually enabling the citizens to enter, only to find piles upon piles of shredded documents. There was also a suspicious fire several days ago in "Central Accounting", destroying a number of documents as well.

http://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/03/fall-of-state-security-kingdom-in-egypt.html

Secondly, I was uncomfortable from the start when people would go on and on about the role of facebook and twitter in the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, but for a long time I had a hard time pinpointing why I thought it inappropriate.

First of all, you can understand without being a specialist that these media are a bit incidental, actually. Many peoples have revolted against many regimes in the past, and their successes indicate how social properties of the movements are probably more important than technological ones.

But finally it came together when a friend Alya pointed out that to call these revolutions facebook or twitter revolutions takes agency out of the individuals or the society and puts it into these foreign companies. What is more, it neatly parallels old colonialist narratives: in the old days, the colonial mission was to raise new generations of "the right kind of colonials" - ones with education, liberal values, etc. Even when they overthrew their colonial masters, the colonizers attempted to claim that it was their Western liberalism which freed these people. Similarly, today the claim is made that these Western technologies have some kind of unique liberating power to them, and so Egyptians' perseverance and organization is erased from the narrative.

An official restart to this little blog

Though it briefly seemed that this blog was about to turn into reblogging the New York Times, I'm happy to report that I'm safe in Egypt and am breathing life back into this blog, unintentionally ironic name and all.

Since arriving in Egypt the biggest piece of news was going over to middle-aged friends of my friend Noel's. They live a very humble life in a normal 3-room apartment. Our hosts made incredible stuffed cabbage (think like grape leaves, stuffed with rice with duck broth), and then we stayed for tea, for coffee, and then hibiscus tea. The best part of all was hours and hours of family gossip, including how much they dislike their three children's spouses (two of them, as much as the devil; the third, well he's just a normal guy who doesn't deserve their daughter..) I promised to make them musakhan, my favorite Palestinian dish, and they invited us over tomorrow for more food.

No pictures from the visit but welcome back to oneyearinsyria or Egypt or wherever we end up...

Just a link

In short, life in Budapest over the last three weeks has been excellent and life on this blog is about to get a whole lot more exciting. For the moment, enjoy these lovely pictures of Budapest from my new favorite blog. What's pictured is the downtown of Pest and the overlooking hills of Buda across the river. The Pest side (where the pictures are taken from) is about a 15 minute walk from my house and I end up walking around in that neighborhood nearly every day for some reason or another.

http://riowang.blogspot.com/2010/12/homeward.html

in the New York Times today

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/middleeast/30syria.html?th&emc=th

Hope all is well in North America!
Tim

Poetry night

A short post before I can get back to posting pictures. I saw two great
pieces in the New York Times yesterday that I thought I would share.

The first is about the theft of bricks from St. Louis, which are then
transported as far as New Orleans! This really resonated with me as I
loved just driving through town and seeing the beautiful brick buildings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20brick.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

The second is about this poetry night called Beit al-Qaseed that takes
place every Monday night in Damascus. It's a small event that usually has
between 50 to 75 people in a basement bar of a fancy hotel in Damascus.
Drinks are reasonably priced, the poetry varies from okay to excellent, and
the crowd can always be counted on to be loud, talking back to the reader,
making corrections or suggestions, and expressing praise or contempt.

The one time I was unhappy about Beit al-Qaseed was when a Syrian woman was
reading, and the crowd absolutely would not quiet down to give her time to
speak. In general, even if a poet is mediocre, I favor giving them their
time to bore everyone, but the crowd just yelled over her, offering
pseudo-corrections to her Arabic.. the whole experience had a thick cloud
of sexism hanging over it, as even pretty bad male poets generally don't
get run off the stage, but a woman speaking in public remains threatening
even (especially?) to members of the cultured class.

In addition to original work, the event takes translations of foreign works
or readings of Classical Arabic poetry. A Syrian friend of mine is
nicknamed Shakespeare for his Shakespeare and Donne readings, and an
American friend is hoping to read an Andalusian (= Arab from Spain) poet
from the Middle Ages. I myself am hoping to read Eliot in the next few
weeks, but I need help with the translation from friends..

The best part about Beit al-Qaseed is that this fall our schedule was
changed so that we have every Tuesday off, which means I can go out and
sleep in and not be tired on Tuesdays anymore.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/world/middleeast/20poetry.html?ref=world

Until next time!