Muhammad Abduh

A couple weeks ago TBE added a Reading Material tab to our masthead, but additions to it don’t show up in Google Reader and maybe other RSS readers, and the tab’s contents have the potential to become quite unruly, so we’ve decided to publish occasional book reviews on the main page as well as adding them to the reading material section. In this edition: A new biography of Muhammad Abduh, Wolf Hall, Dialogues in Arab Politics and the effects of Turkish Islamists’ governance on women’s educational and professional attainment.

We’ve also added the “subscribe via email” button for which those who have not yet accommodated themselves to the brave new world of RSS have long been clamoring. It’s below the links.

Muhammad Abduh by Mark Sedgwick

We haven’t read this book. The AUC Press version hasn’t even come out yet. According to their calendar it is supposed to come out this month, but an employee at the bookstore told TBE she thinks it’s been delayed.

At any rate it’s the first book-length biography of Abduh in English that we know of, though he has of course received a lot of attention in Hourani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age and elsewhere, and the Oxford UP website says that it draws on new sources and the latest research, so you might learn something new.

Some enterprising scholar or aspiring Ph.D. student should be shopping a Rashid Rida project.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Aside from the usual things, TBE is thankful to the Booker Prize Committee (and the Ice Cream Paint Job beat, for other reasons) for making us consider reading a historical novel, which we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. We’re only about 100 pages into the book but we’ve already concluded that the hype is justified.

The story is incredibly engaging, the prose is for the most part workwomanlike (used here as a compliment) with occasional forays into court wit. As an act of authorial imagination the book is pretty amazing.

One last note: Don’t be threatened by the length, if you’re the type to hate long books. The typeface used is exceedingly large.

Dialogues in Arab Politics by Michael N. Barnett

This is an oldie-but-goodie that has been on our minds, in our hearts and on our lips a lot recently, what with the ongoing Algerian-Egyptian imbroglio and the Saudi-Yemen-Iran tripartite d(is)alliance still unresolved. Because we don’t have the book in front of us, or even in this country with us, we’re not able to comment with any real authority, so we decided to reprint a musty old response paper we wrote about it back in the olden days… Please don’t take our criticisms to mean you shouldn’t read it, though. It’s the best Middle East IR book we’ve read.

As is often the case in political science books, Barnett seems eager to stake out more explanatory power for his preferred constructivist interpretation than it can logically bear. But the maximalism of Barnett’s constructivism can only be understood in dialogue with Realism. Just as the currently ascendant conservative Arab regimes were shaped by radical nationalism, so one hopes that someone will convincingly synthesize realism and constructivism, rather than positing them in opposition, as though only one could be right about everything.

This scholarly brinksmanship leads to some excesses on Barnett’s part, in failing to examine or glossing over events that would tend to support a realist view. One example of this is the treatment of the Yemeni civil war. Barnett claims that “Nasser’s decision to support the [Revolutionary Command Council] had little to do with military politics and everything to do with symbolic politics.”[1] Yet the previous sentence outlines Saudi fears of an Egyptian “foothold on the Arabian penninsula.” One can plausibly state that Nasser’s support for a radical interpretation of Arab nationalism forced him into the role of supporting the Yemeni revolutionaries, but Egypt’s involvement in Yemen was, at base, a classic instance of Offensive Realism, with Egypt attempting to achieve regional hegemony through territorial expansion or the creation of satellites. While Barnett’s reading of constructivism has many interesting things to say about the process of competitive bidding in bringing various Arab states to the brink of war and beyond, there are instances like Yemen’s civil war or Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, that are much better understood under the rubric of realism.

Another flaw in Barnett’s argument is his on-again, off-again relationship with using domestic and international public opinion as an explanatory variable, and a relative lack of discussion about the role of aggrieved state elites, as opposed to broad publics, in fomenting unrest in those Arab states with high regime turnover rates. One finds, early in the book, the contention that the main goal of Arab regimes was regime survival, a perfectly legitimate claim, and that they used interactions with other states to bolster their domestic status, another uncontestable claim.[2] Two inconvenient facts present themselves, however. First is that challenges to internal regime stability were far more likely to come from state elites than broad-based uprisings. This could be a failing of the regime’s themselves, rather than Barnett, though more discussion is warranted. Second is that public opinion is utterly disregarded, both by Barnett and, apparently, the regimes themselves, in instances when it would be expected to be highly mobilized, such as during the Jordanian civil war. In this instance, many regimes, including Egypt, sided with the Jordanians against the Palestinians, despite deep public sympathy for the latter.[3] In summary, Barnett initially theorizes that regime survival depends on domestic public support, but does not explore what happens when the regimes pursue a course contrary to public opinion.

[1] Barnett: 139.

[2] Ibid: 35.

[3] Ibid: 178-9.

Islamic Rule and the Emancipation of the Poor and Pious by Erik Meyersson

This paper, about the effects of “Islamic rule” in Turkish towns and cities on women’s educational attainment, ended up being far more stats-heavy than we expected. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it suffers from the same faults as much quant-based political science: the numbers are interesting, but the discussion “beyond the regressions” is simplistic. For some reason very few people produce work that does a good job synthesizing quantitative and qualitative approaches. We guess because the two approaches’ acolytes face very different incentive structures.

NO MAS !! ناموس

À l’ombre des jeunes moustiques en fleurs aka Season of Migration to TBE HQ

For some reason, many mosquitoes see fit to winter in TBE HQ. Our admittedly unthorough check of outlying areas have revealed no standing water, so we’re not sure where they’re breeding. Regardless, the alacritious manner in which they send reinforcements upon the death of one or more of their comrades leads us to believe that their secret breeding grounds, this New Jersey to TBE’s Boca Raton, are quite close, as the mosquito flies.

La Prisonnière aka Do Mosquitoes Dream of Somnolent Humans?

It might reveal a bit too much about TBE’s comfortable existence to say that its bane is the thought or reality of a mosquito buzzing by our ear in the moments before we fall asleep. But our commitment to understatement knows few if any bounds.

The reason the flyby is so awful will be obvious to anyone who has ever suffered through it. By our count, one is confronted by two equally onerous choices in this situation:

• One can let this aggression go unchecked and simply try to cover oneself to the best of one’s ability, in hopes of providing the mosquito and/or its fellows with the least possible amount of exposed skin to bite. But this is a highly unsatisfactory response, since everyone knows that your sleep will be less restful if you’re tense the whole time because you’re subconsciously thinking about ensuring your body’s sanctity in the face of this grievous assault. And there is a very real possibility of letting the covers slip at some point during the night, and allowing the mosquitoes free rein to go on a biting spree.
• Or one can get up out of bed and attempt to vanquish the mosquito or mosquitoes. This option is also unsavory, for one presumably got into bed in hopes of not rising until the morning, and it being winter the non-bed zone is likely quite cold. Also, victory is by no means assured, as clever mosquitoes will vacate the areas where they could most easily be killed, meaning that one will have to expend considerable effort to successfully vanquish this most worthy opponent.

Moustique Disparue/Le Temps Retrouvé aka The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Thankfully, man, in collaboration with electricity, has devised a means of almost guaranteeing that one’s feverish dreams of world domination will not be interrupted by these pesky pests. We are writing, of course, about those little machines that one feeds pellets then plugs in, at which time they begin cologning the air with a soothing scent that no mosquito can bear, leaving one to dream or read or do what one does in the bedroom in peace.

A few words about the scent are in order, because it plays (or played) such an important role in the product’s appeal to TBE. Last winter, when we first started using the product, it was an almost exact scent cognate to Ivory brand soap, which is not a soap we use with any great frequency, but which has a fragrance that for one reason or another reminds us of our childhood. We think our section titles have done the heavy lifting for the analogy we’re trying to draw here, so we’re not going to belabor the point any further.

The story does not end with some nod to the most overused literary device ever, however. Just a few days ago, TBE made its maiden winter 2009-10 purchase of mosquito pellets. The packaging, we noticed, had changed, and boldly declared that the pellets had been manufactured using a “New Japanese Formula.” We regret to inform you that, skilled as the Japanese may be in many fields of human and robotic endeavor, creating mosquito pellet formulas that create in TBE a longing for a simpler time is not among them.

The scent is not bad per se, just a bit underwhelming for TBE’s tastes, which run strongly in favor of the writing teacher school of product preferences. As such we want our products not to tell us that they are working through mere science or recommendations by the American Dentists Association or some such. Rather we like to be shown that the product is working via powerful scents, excessive lather and foaming and the like.

Product Information

Kito is not a city in Ecuador. Prints of this image are available from TBE for a nominal fee.

There are at least two of these machines on the market, one made by Raid brand and another by Kito. TBE’s product testing department has yet to try Raid’s product, because a) we find Raid’s advertising and whole persona (producta?) to be a bit militant and b) we’ve been very satisfied with Kito (until recently, and we’re trying to work through that problem), which has the added benefit of being less expensive.

One only has to purchase the actual part that plugs into the wall once; the pellets are available for sale a la carte. Both machine and pellets are available at Alfa and probably many other fine retailers.

Tips and Tricks

Kito will go to the mat for you.

If you’re broke or thrifty or forgot to purchase reinforcements or didn’t want to go all the way to the second floor of Alfa and are therefore trying to extend the life of a single pellet, it may be worth it to flip it. The faded blue parts are generally used up, while the deeper blue is still available for exploitation.

If you unplug your machine when you wake up in the morning and don’t generally sleep for hyper-extended periods, you should be able to get two nights out of each pellet. The scent may be quite faint on the second morning, but rest assured that mosquitoes’ sense of smell is much more powerful than yours. That’s how they can smell your blood from outside your body.

يا موزة... يك

TBE was innocently strolling through Zamalek the other day, en route to the impromptu petting zoo that has sprung up in the meat section of Alfa supermarket, when we saw a large number of vehicles brimming with state security deployed around the Algerian embassy. Our initial thought was that perhaps Egypt’s government had gotten wind of a plan to attack the Algerian embassy. Most likely, we concluded, for having the gall to sully the embassy’s exterior gate with poorly reproduced photographs of the Algerian countryside, an offense about which TBE has written previously here.

TBE is not afraid to admit we were wrong. In fact the ramped-up security had apparently been sent out to protect some beautiful and obviously priceless, considering the amount of security, mosaics with which the Algerians have replaced the offending photographs.* They are truly a site to behold, and TBE can now announce that Algeria has shot up from worst to first in our closely watched “Embassy Exterior Decoration Rankings™.”

In all seriousness, TBE thinks or hopes we can all agree that the one upshot of this whole ugly Algerian-Egyptian episode has been that, with the Algerian team coming to Cairo, a bevy of Algerian notables were bound to follow. And if there’s one thing we know about Algerian elites, it’s that they absolutely abhor poorly reproduced photographs. Hence the decision to spruce up the gates with mosaics, an art form near and dear to TBE’s heart. And of course we’re back-slapping and up-high-down-lowing for TBE’s role, small as it may have been, in beautifying the Algerian embassy, which should go some way in “t3zeezing the ol’ 3laqat” between the two countries.

*We would’ve liked to have included some photographic evidence of the beautiful mosaics, but our romanticism is not so deep that we were willing to die for art. The mosaic above is for demonstration purposes only.

Postscript:

In even more seriousness, TBE’s EIC got a haircut today. Since TBE is, as everyone knows, a paragon of journalistic integrity and always willing to go the extra mile for our readers, we tend to look down on those Western reporters who elicit quotes from taxi drivers or Alaa al-Aswani as “authentic voices of the Egyptians.” Instead we let our barber play that role. He told us that like all countries, including Egypt, there are good and bad people in Algeria, but still refused to believe that actual Egyptians had attacked the Algerian bus.

Then, walking back to our Boursa offices our EIC was slurred as Algerian, or more precisely as looking Algerian, by two young kids on the bridge. This despite his predominantly Polish-Irish Euromutt heritage, and the fact that we decided at the last second not to get our hair cut in the Fawzi Chauochi style (aka the Beur Blanc).

In short order, the fired-up “Ya Rab” of a few days ago has given way to the world-weary, mumbled “Ya Saatir Ya Rab” of today.

Despite the idiotic door policy in effect at Thursday night’s screening of Heliopolis, and the very real possibility of a Cairo bloggertwitterung, considering the large numbers of online denizens in attendance, it was nice to see such a large and enthusiastic turnout for what was a slow art film. Also TBE is always secretly overjoyed when we witness older folks take authority figures to task for their stupid policies, as occurred repeatedly that night (and that despite the fact that one of the ladies of a certain age who argued so vociferously at the door then sat behind TBE chatting with her friend and taking phone calls through the whole movie). Also it provided evidence for our theory, expounded in the waning lines of this recent post, about the existence of a critical mass audience for art.

The review, after the jump.

As for the movie itself, it was a bit boring but visually was amazing, the best looking Egyptian film we’ve seen in terms of making Egypt look like Egypt and not some stylized version of Egypt (Note to Egyptian filmmakers: Film on location more often), and also on its own terms. It was the kind of movie with enough visual interest that it could be projected soundless onto the wall in a club, as is sometimes done to create “atmosphere.”

Some of the plot lines were underdeveloped, particularly Khaled Aboul Naga’s. His character seemed subject to wild mood swings only semi-explained by what was going on around him. Although the bar scene disrupted the viewer’s expectation that his friend was going to say that he himself was going to marry the girl, it was a bit melodramatic for him to engage in such a long setup just to tell poor Khaled that his ex was getting married to someone else. Cairo is small enough that he would have already known, as he did. Also it struck us as a bit silly that the engaged couple would be so steamed about missing out on saving a measly LE300, considering they were on the market for what looked like a very expensive flat in Heliopolis.

The answering machine scene that ended the film was tops, though, as was the scene where someone else calls to inquire about the doctor’s flat, particularly his brief pause upon hearing “salaam aleikum” on the other end of the line. In general, scenes involving phones and implements of telephony were well wrought. And no review would be complete without paying homage to the film’s humanizing portrait of the “unknown soldier.”

We’re not sure how we feel about the film’s political message, if there was one. It seems like everyone’s become a creationist of late. Whereas the old arguments used to center around whether Sadat or Nasser were better, the new (old) thing is to look back achingly to the pre-revolutionary era. Perhaps the contentious politics of the era would have eventually borne fruit in the form of an actually existing parliamentary democracy, but maybe the alternative would’ve been worse. And one shouldn’t forget on whose backs the prosperity and glamour of the era were built.

Despite these mild flaws, the movie did convey Egypt’s stifling atmosphere, and we thought it quite a unique and daring narrative strategy for the director to take, in conveying the characters’ sense of ennui by making the audience feel that same emotion while watching the film, even at the expense of plot development.

Heliopolis is a more subtle version of the “message films” (Dukan Shehata, Ehki Ya Shahrazad, Hena Maysara) that have become increasingly common. It is probably too oblique to receive a wide release in Egypt, and members of the international art film crowd don’t care enough about movies from Egypt that are so unbombastic to distribute them abroad.

We’ll end on a clichéd note: Though flawed, Heliopolis heralds the arrival of a major new talent on the Egyptian film scene, and we expect great things from Ahmad Abdallah, the film’s director.

“Back on the scene, crispy and clean”

Not exactly fresh news, but “Rob,” of Arabic Media Shack fame, is blogging again, this time at War and Peace. For those that don’t know, Rob is something of an iconoclast, and his thoughts and ideas are always worth reading. Our blogroll has been updated. Has yours?

“You better learn how to add”

We also added Chocolate & Zucchini to the food section. While not all of their recipes are really doable in Cairo, some of them are. Also we were just pondering why zucchini is one of those vegetables that is available all year round in Cairo, along with tomatoes, onions, potatoes and cucumbers. Why are some vegetables seasonal and others not in countries where the growing season lasts all year?

“Read More Learn More Change the Globe”

TBE has also added another tab on the top of the page, called “Reading Material.” Readers should know that this decision engendered a huge argument at TBE HQ. TBE’s Facebook editor argued that he finds those “What I’m Reading Now” applications to be insidious examples of intellectual one-upmanship, meant less to recommend books than to show off, and drew a parallel between those applications and our proposed new feature. Our Long Article and Book Reading correspondent offered a vicious riposte on TBE’s in-house listserv, attacking the vacuity of anyone whose career aspirations led them to become a “social media expert.” Despite recognizing our correspondent’s tactic as attacking the person making the argument instead of taking on the argument itself, we decided to humor him, at least temporarily.

TBE Meta-Commentary: In this piece, our fearless correspondent Michael Jeffrey Flackslashman offers a highly speculative reading of recent developments in Egypt. We aren’t sure he’s right about what’s going on, but we hope it sparks a broader discussion about changing socio-political dynamics and where they are likely to lead.

For background reading, please see Jack Shenker’s recent Guardian article on the wages of structural adjustment, a glancing mention of the middle class or lack thereof at Egyptian Chronicles, and this post by The Traveller Within, which isn’t strictly related but does have some bearing on the below points.

News Analysis: Bringing Order to Cairo’s Chaotic Streets

By Michael Jeffrey Flackslashman

Cairo – Were it not for the all-too-modern traffic snarls in the streets leading in and out, downtown Cairo’s Talaat Harb Square might recall a more genteel time in Egypt’s history. Named after a cherished nationalist icon, the square’s elegant facades were recently restored by a public-private consortium. Having defeated Cairo’s persistent grime, which renders most of the city’s buildings a uniform taupe, city planners are now attempting another task thought impossible until recently: taming Cairo’s traffic.

To do so, they are installing traffic lights, tricked out with cameras to catch scofflaws. Along with the familiar three-color traffic light, flashing lights have been embedded in the streets’ surfaces, to ensure that no driver can claim not to have noticed that the light had changed. New license plates are also being issued, featuring clear numbers and letters, rendering the cameras’ job that much easier. Pedestrian crossings have also received the luxe treatment. Walk signals at some intersections now feature a person of indeterminate gender doing the running man, a popular dance from the 1980s.

The transition has not been smooth, however. One prominent blogger posted a video of the traffic cameras snapping photos of license plates when the lights were green. On a recent ride through a major downtown square, the traffic lights were not yet functional, but the police, whose presence previously provided the only modicum of control, had decamped to the sentry boxes ringing the square. Even taxi drivers, who usually navigate the chaos with aplomb, appeared at a loss.

While government officials claim that the moves are part of a long-standing commitment to improving and updating the infrastructure in Africa’s largest city, critics in the opposition counter that recent developments are aimed at consolidating one-party rule, in hopes of installing the president’s son, Gamal, in the presidency.

The scheme to replace old, hand-numbered license plates with new ones, they say, is another way for the government to keep tabs on its citizens. Furthermore, they claim, it is no accident that the first place the regime decided to install new traffic lights is Talaat Harb Square, has previously been the site of protests, and also contains the headquarters of the Gad party, whose leader, Ayman Nour, ran against President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s last presidential elections.

Other recent moves, such as using fears of swine flu as a pretext to clamp down on the popular festivals of saint veneration known as moulids, which attract large and unruly crowds of revelers, and the rumored closure of Cairo’s Friday market, are seen in a similar light, as a government attempt to extend its authority, accomplished through a direct assault on the few venues for socializing and merriment available to Egypt’s downtrodden masses.

Independent analysts offer a more subtle reading of the situation. They note that the government of President Hosni Mubarak could install Gamal Mubarak without having taken these recent actions. Instead, they say, the government is attempting to draw support from the slowly growing middle class. Having decamped to the suburbs, this middle class is rarely seen in the affected downtown neighborhoods, but many members of the class maintain ties there, be they familial or professional.

Despite their invisibility to the casual observer, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) is keenly aware of middle classes concerns. Having risen above the day-to-day struggles to put food on the table that many Egyptians endure, they are thought more likely to focus on quality of life issues. While downtown Cairo might satisfy tourists’ taste for the exotic, it is viewed as anarchic by many nouveau riches.

The NDP also recognizes that early cooptation of this new middle class is crucial. While the regime’s current opposition remains fragmented and weak, a challenge from the emergent middle class would be more difficult to write off as the work of fringe elements, and consequently harder to fend off.

The analysts’ reading of the situation draws partly on academic scholarship on the subject, which has traditionally viewed the middle classes as the driver of democratization, and partly based on Egypt’s own history. Many leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, are drawn from the professional classes, who, after having become successful in their fields, might have expected a larger role in the running of the country, but were ultimately denied access to the corridors of power. The government seems keen not to let the new middle class, more a product of structural reform and the private sector than the professionals who form the core of the Brotherhood leadership, slip into the Islamist group’s waiting arms, even if it requires a recalibration of the regime’s bases of support.

Thus what started as a populist regime in the days of Gamal Abd al-Nasser, then came to rely increasingly on the military and intelligence services under Presidents Sadat and Mubarak, now seems intent on shifting to a third base of support, the emergent middle classes, just as the ruling elite (and just about everyone else) ponders the ascension of post-1952 Egypt’s first non-military president.

Whether these classes will ultimately give the green light to the strategy, and whether it will forestall a drive for change, remains to be seen.

* * *

To help raise awareness about the changes to downtown traffic, Kanye West recorded a PSA for the government’s new traffic initiative, “For Your Car’s Sake.”

TBE loves nothing more than royal coats of arms emblazoned with stylized dolphins.

Real talk: Back in the late 1990s, a TBE correspondent used to work at the now-defunct location of Blockbuster Video in the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington, DC. One evening a number of men wearing wool greatcoats swept into the building. DC not yet having been overrun by czars, TBE was unsure what to make of their uniform attire, other than to remember his training, which called for increased vigilance when people in baggy coats stepped into the building, lest they be thieves.

They were not, as it turns out, thieves. Rather they were members of the secret service escorting Tipper Gore as she picked up a couple movies. One of the movies she rented was Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead.

So that’s where we got the title of this post.

Fittingly, considering that Al Gore was once a Democratic dauphin of sorts, the first recipe we’re featuring is Gratin Dauphinois, which is really simple and delicious aside from the tedious slicing of potatoes.

But first, one final aside: In order to forestall what would surely be a torrent of comments from correspondents angry at the fact that we misidentified the origin of the name of the dish called Gratin Dauphinois, let us now declare now that we are aware that the dish is in fact named after the dearly departed French province of Dauphiné, and not, as we’ve implied, the dauphin himself. If you’re interested in learning more about the distinction, you could do worse than to read this passage from Wikipedia, about which we’d like to learn more: “A major condition [of the 1349 treaty incorporating Dauphiné into France] was that the heir to the throne of France would be known as le Dauphin, which was the case from that time until the revolution.”

Recipes and more after the jump.

Gratin Dauphinois

Recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini, italically annotated by TBE.

- 1 kg (2.2 pounds) potatoes (The recipe says to use a mix of waxy and baking potatoes, but we don’t know the difference so we just use the ones our vegetable seller sells. It might be wise to ask for large potatoes when making this recipe, because cutting two giant potatoes is less taxing than cutting a bunch of small potatoes.)

- 500 ml (2 cups) milk (whole or part-skim, not skim) (We use whole milk.)

- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (No need to be overly precise here, in case you were tempted.)

- freshly grated nutmeg (Nutmeg is جوزة الطيب in Arabic. Any decent or even lackluster spice shop will have fresh nutmeg. We use the gratings from one whole clove? Nut? Meg? What does one call a nutmeg?)

- 1 clove garlic, sliced lengthwise
(We find the garlic step (see below) super cute and we feel sophisticated doing it, but we’re dubious about its flavor-enhancing power. Do it to feel like a chef.)

- 3 tablespoons finely chopped chives (optional)
(We haven’t exercised this option yet.)

- 60 ml (1/4 cup) heavy cream (Here’s a little tidbit TBE chefs have learned after long months perusing the backs of heavy cream packages in supermarket dairy aisles: Even though one of the Juhayna brand cream products is labeled Cooking Creme (and packaged in a savory-signifying green box) and the other one is labeled Whipping Cream (and packaged in a box whose blue hue brings dessert to mind), the latter does not in fact have any sugar added, it is just heavier cream (at least 35% fat) than the Cooking Cream. In the interest of deriving the most possible flavor from fat, we always go blue. Also TBE Coptic Art and Lemon Tart correspondent HB says Juhayna is better than the expensive imported Euro brands, which are over-pasteurized, in her estimation.)

Serves 6 as a side dish. (More like 2)

Peel the potatoes, rinse them briefly, and slice them thinly (about 3mm or 1/10th of an inch) and evenly. (A food processor or a mandoline come in handy at this point.) Do not rinse after slicing, or you will lose all that precious starch. (We wash them before slicing but don’t peel them, because we’re into the rustic look.)

Combine the sliced potatoes, milk, salt and a good grating of nutmeg in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, and keep simmering for 8 minutes, stirring the potatoes and scraping the bottom of the pan regularly to prevent sticking/scorching. (Don’t neglect this step, it sticks with alacrity.) The milk will gradually thicken to a creamy consistency.

While the potatoes are simmering, preheat the oven to 220°C (430°F) and rub the bottom and sides of a medium earthenware or glass baking dish (I use an oval dish that’s 26 cm/10 inches at its widest, and 2 liters/2 quarts in capacity) with the cut sides of the garlic clove. (We use a glass Pyrex number, we have no idea of the measurements.)

Transfer half of the potatoes into the baking dish, sprinkle with the chives if using, and drizzle with half of the cream. Add the rest of the potatoes, pour the cooking milk over them, and drizzle with the remaining cream.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until bubbly on the edges and nicely browned at the top. Let stand for 5 minutes before serving. (The nutmeg gives the sauce a pink tint, reminiscent of Lobster Newburg.)

*          *          *

When TBE has some leftover enthusiasm for things other than stylized dolphins, we like to extend it to things that are glazed. Whether doughnuts, ceramics, carrots or eyes, it matters very little.

Knowing our love for glazed matter, and TBE HQ’s reputation as a den of two-bedroom apartment intrigue, in which our correspondents are forever trying to curry favor with the editors while simultaneously launching vicious campaigns against one another, it should surprise no one to learn that when one of our contributors returned from a recent trip to Yemen, she was carrying not just daggers to fend off her enemies in the court of St. TBE, but also a gift of honey, which is astoundingly good. According to the tasting notes provided to us by an emissary from the Court of St. James, it “tastes like treacle,” which is a compliment in his strange and far-off land.

Needless to say, this dish will most assuredly feature on the menu of the Yemeni-homestyle New England fusion restaurant TBE plans to open with President Saleh, if he ever takes us up on our offer and pulls a reverse Karzai.

Also it’s so easy even ahl al-kahf could do it. Don’t sleep.

Honey-Glazed Carrots

Recipe from TBE.

- some carrots

- a couple spoonfuls of honey, preferably from Yemen

- butter (optional)

- parsley, chopped (optional)

- chili powder (We’ve been tempted to add it, but haven’t yet done so.)

Wash, peel and slice the carrots into bite-sized nuggets.

Cook the carrots in a small amount of water, until they reach a consistency at which applying moderate pressure on a fork will cause it to penetrate through them, but are still sufficiently hard that the fork will lift them up if you raise your hand.

Drain the water and add the desired amount of honey (and butter and/or chili powder, if you’re so inclined) to taste. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about one minute or until the honey becomes a glaze.

Transfer to a warm bowl and toss with parsley, if using. Serve immediately.

*          *          *

Although we briefly considered including a main dish in this post, most likely roast chicken, we decided to take a principled stand against doing so. As staunch opponents of imperialism in all its guises, we thought it wrong to endorse the hegemony of one dish over others. We hope you will join us in calling for a more multipolar dining order.

TBE is more-or-less out of pocket due to a number of annoying intrusions on our regularly scheduled bloggingzeit, so we’ll probably be reduced to subsistence blogging during the next period.

EGYPT

When TBE’s Editor-in-Chief was a youngster, this girl in one of his classes had a sweatshirt that featured toads clinging to the oars of a rowboat. The sweatshirt’s legend read: “Toadly Oarsome!” For some reason we can’t remember whether the actually rowers of the boat were human or dancer or more toads. But the moral of the story is that TBE’s initial response to this video mashup of the NDP’s Annual Conference was that it was totally awesome, which then inspired the above-cited digression.

LITERARY

Construction is underway on the corner of Qasr al-Aini and Sheikh Rihan for the entrance to the new AUC Bookstore. It looked kind of glitzy to us, but we’re withholding judgment for the moment. We’re hoping they install comfortable chairs so layabouts like TBE can laze away the days in comfort.

An outlet of Dar al-Shorouk bookstore opened in Zamalek. It was understocked when we went, and had TBE questioning the sagacity of opening a branch in Zamalek at all. Having written that, it is a shoo-in for TBE’s prestigious “Best Use of Astroturf in a Book Store” award.

HIP-HOP

TBE is staunchly opposed to musical preference profiling, perhaps a consequence of having often been wrongly profiled by nitwits and others. We see as an infringement on our readers’ music rights. Nonetheless, we have an idea that most of our readers don’t read this blog for tips on hip-hop downloads.

Clipse and Cam’ron- Popular Demand (Popeye’s)

As Pusha said on their seminal We Got It For Cheap, Vol. 2, “Now how could we not do this one?” The best Cam song since Gone and Popeye’s. Not the best Clipse verses ever and the chorus is a bit long but whatever.

DJ Benzi: Get Right Radio- Summer 09

In internet years this is old as dirt, Chester French, the host, is downright insufferable, and the cheesiness of many of the songs may make you uncomfortable. But this fills the important “uptempo music that might inspire an optimal performance on a cardiovascular machine” niche, so until something better comes along to make us forget that we’re so alienated from physical labor that we choose to ride machines that look like giant insects, it’ll still be in the rotation.

Don Cannon and Yung Dro present R.I.P.

Yung Dro is widely acknowledged as the world’s foremost describer of custom car colors (exteriors and interiors). And his ability really is uncanny. It also presents us with a teachable moment. Instead of getting mad at Cairo’s ever-present traffic, perhaps it’s better to take a page out of Dro’s playbook and take the time to think of very creative ways to describe the colors of the cars around you.

Tilting at Straw Men; or, Upsetting the Apple Cart Before the Horse

As others who are much more knowledgeable about Arabic literature than us have already pointed out, a big chunk of the current issue of literary journal Public Spaces is devoted to young Egyptian writers. One thing we pondered while reading the lead article, which is the only content available online, is the interest in placing writers into distinct “generations” (not least by writers themselves, it seems) and the perceived need to frame the discussion politically. Not having the vocabularial fortitude to read Arabic literature in its native language, we’re ill-suited to analyze the issue (or even moreso than we usually are, as it were). But in the spirit of Einstein, we’ll do so anyway, if only as a means of taking a couple of our hobbyhorses for a stroll around the corral, and in hopes of gaining a larger audience for the journal and its featured authors in the days and years to come.

“Age Ain’t Nothin But a Number”

Even if it may have been based on self-serving R. Kelly propaganda, there is some truth to Aaliyah’s pronouncement. As such, we find the general tendency to group together novelists/poets/bellelettrists into generations unnecessary, because it tends to obscure rather than enlighten, and to overly ascribe stylistic similarities to accidents of birth. Far better, in our opinions, to group similar writers by “schools” of literature, which at least contains descriptive content, and allows for cross-generational stylistic affinities to be recognized.

Another thing that annoys us about the generational dialectic is its imprecision. When does a new generation start and the previous one end? Do new generations happen faster in places like Egypt where the fertility rate is higher than in Europe or the US? Aren’t generations just a construct to hate on (“the enormous self-regard of the baby boom generation”) or celebrate (“The Greatest Generation”) your elders or younger cohorts?

Politically Incorrect

Aside from our misgivings about generations, we had mixed feelings about using the disappearance/moribundity of a political movement to bracket (or open the parentheses on) the new generation, regardless of the political activities or lack thereof of some or even all members of said generation. With occasional bright spots, politics is among the most stultifyingly boring aspects of Egyptian culture, in which very little of consequence ever happens. Yet it receives the vast majority of coverage in English.

TBE is obviously not immune, even if in our salad days we attempted to eschew politics. But believe us when we write that we’d rather read almost anything about Arabic literature than another story/blogpost about succession, and it is only with a deep and abiding self-loathing that we carry on with the latter. By our count there are a few reasons for politics’ competitive advantage in garnering interest: First, politics is a universal language, in a way that untranslated literature (and music, to a lesser extent) are for obvious reasons not. The barriers to entry in the political commentary market are very low, and consequently the quality of analysis, even in prestige news outlets, is often found lacking. Second, the raison d’étudier for many people, particularly Americans of the post-September 11^th generation, is politics. (Here is a place where a generational framework is useful, because there is a distinction between (many of) those who studied Middle East topics before 9/11 and (many of) those whose interest was catalyzed by the event itself or in the post- era.) Third, there is no third yet.

If politics is seen as Arabic literature’s only entrée into the politics-addled minds of the masses, we’re all for it. At the same time we believe the literature itself is transcending politics, insofar as that’s possible. People whose reading, enjoyment and analysis of literature is based on the degree to which it “sticks it to the man” or takes some other political position are boring. It’s the same impulse that makes a lot of discourse about hip hop revolve around Public Enemy, as though they were the apotheosis of the art form just because they were explicitly political, and so comprehensible in a pre-existing framework, whereas a lot of other hip hop upset notions of how an oppressed minority should act, and so was de-valorized or even despised for not living up to expectations. That shouldn’t happen to the oppressed majority in Egypt.

Parenthetical Pronouncements

(We are not saying that this is what is happening in the essay at hand. It is not. Only that using politics as a framing device, even while stating that “…the big pronouncements here are more muted or ironic…and sometimes they are even refused,” tends to create expectations around a body of work that might not be helpful, in contributing to the reductio ad politicum of a culture and literature that is, like all cultures or literatures, far more interesting than the sum of its political parts. )

(Furthermore, we understand that politics affects everything, even if very few people affect politics. The point is not to establish, or pretend the existence of, some cultural sphere unconnected to politics. Instead we would like to see literature approached and appreciated (or not) based on criteria that extend beyond the political sympathies of its authors, even if those sentiments are apathetic. Based on the limited evidence we’ve seen, the stylistic differences between, say, Naguib Mahfouz and some member of the younger generation are at least as great as their respective contributions (or not) to a political project, and are certainly just as interesting, so why adopt the political rather than the stylistic frame?)

Markets in Everything!

We’re fairly certain there is a market for a less politics-centric approach. As one TBE correspondent (in both senses of the word) put it to us in a recent email (reprinted here without permission), “…the ins and outs of regional politics bore me unless they are primarily the backdrop to lascivious family/romantic drama or adventures in baking.” Another of our frequent interlocutors recently made the same point in a somewhat different context. Our style manual, TBE’s Rules for Journalism, states, “the plural of anecdote is, in fact, evidence, despite evidence to the contrary.” And, “One is an aberration, two’s a trend.” So we’re quite obviously on to something here.

Let a thousand Arabic literature/cinema/music blogs bloom!

“Ain’t got shit to do with this but I just thought that I should mention”:

UPDATE: This post is a continuation of the post immediately below it, Mr. Mubarak Goes to Washington.

Al-Shorouk has an occasional annoying habit of committing acts that can’t properly be considered journalism, in which they find some press release or conference agenda then print it as news. Which it is, in the sense of conveying to the reader something that he or she may not have known, but it’s also just a glorified press release.

TBE has decided to adopt it as a modus reportandi as well. This just in:

TBE has noticed an asterisk next to Gamal Mubarak’s name on the Arab Global Forum’s agenda, along with those of many other attendees. The asterisk means that he is an “invited guest,” a rather ambiguous term that could signal a) that other attendees and panelists are uninvited but since they have a well-known propensity to crash conferences and convene wildcat panels, the organizers have thrown their collective hands up and decided to put them on the agenda; b) Gamal (along with Saad Hariri and many others) have been invited but haven’t responded, acting like primo dons just because they can; or, c) that asterisk is a mark of distinction, the technological/technocratic version of the military medal that would’ve been pinned to their chests in the olden days.

Burned After Reading

The agenda, which al-Shorouk rather breathlessly said was “secret,” is in fact labeled “confidential” but is also freely available on the conference’s own website, which makes us think that either al-Shorouk’s reporter was overly credulous or else was trying to pull a fast one.

No “Robust Public Option” for Egypt?

Al-Shorouk also missed the one panel in the program that could have started a (justified or not) firestorm in the Egyptian press: Minister of Health Hatem al-Gebaly’s participation in a panel on private investment in health care. As is well understood in both US and Egyptian politics, entitlements, once enacted, are sacrosanct, and people react strongly at the slightest hint of privatization and/or doing away with benefits. That’s why Republicans (and a few Democrats) are fighting tooth-and-nail to defeat health care reform in the US, and why social security was such a political winner for Democrats in 2006 and removing food subsidies was such a political loser for Sadat in 1977.

Some Notable Absences

By TBE’s count there is exactly one Republican invited or attending (excluding Roy LaHood), and that’s Chuck Hagel, who is basically the Republican version of a “tenured radical.” Considering the party’s current direction, that’s not unexpected, we suppose, but tokenism is a powerful force in US politics…

Likewise the lack of Arab journalists invited to sit on panels (or just sit pretty on the dais while others do the talking, as the case may be). There are a large number of prestige US journalists attending, but we don’t see any Arab scribes of similar stature in the program.

Bottom Lines

Having carefully weighed the evidence, we’re inclined to believe that Gamal and his entourage will attend, despite some initial skepticism, for the following reasons:

• As the original article pointed out, the event is co-sponsored by Egypt’s International Economic Forum, and is primarily oriented toward Egypt and the Gulf.
• Claude Smadja, founder of principal of Smadja and Associates, is no joke. He was previously the Managing Director of the World Economic Forum, and we’re sure his firm was brought on board in part to leverage his contact list.

The age-old journalistic question, “Who’s paying for this shindig?” still applies.

Dept. of Unintentional Humor

A cheap joke, we know, but the hotel name… Hello? Couldn’t they have held it at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City? It’s sooooo much more convenient to the shopping at Tyson’s.