I'm Trying to Avoid the Obvious Headline Metaphor About Egypt's Government Being a "Train Wreck"

But someone's going to use that headline soon, I'm sure. Egypt's latest train disaster, coming only two months after its last one, is drawing a lot of criticism of the government's inability to do anything about these sorts of preventable disasters. Prime Minister Qandil, visiting the site of the wreck, had to be rushed to safety when crowds started throwing things. The train,  carrying Central Security Forces recruits, derailed after a car became uncoupled and crashed into a freight train, leaving 19 dead and over 100 injured. In November, another train hit a school bus at a grade crossing which had not been closed, killing 51 schoolchildren. Ahram Online provides a helpful timeline of fatal train crashes since 1992; just since last July there have been four (excluding this latest), but involving six trains, since two of those were collisions. That's five wrecks involving eight trains in a little over six months, and those are just the ones with fatalities.

There are reports that the recruits aboard thought the train was being operated improperly but were afraid to complain because of military discipline. Zeinobia is reporting there were 1200 conscripts on the train,  with six seated in each space designed for two, and with neither lights nor toilets. She also says the Prime Minister initially sent condolences to the Defense Ministry, though these were Interior Ministry conscripts.

Whatever the reasons in this case, there is a long history of overcrowded and overloaded trains, operated at excessive speeds on deteriorating trackbeds, collisions at speed,  ungated crossings, and the like. There are regulations of course, but they are poorly enforced (if at all).

Apparently recognizing the growing public anger, the Muslim Brotherhood promptly blamed Husni Mubarak. (Though Zeinobia also refers to conspiracy theories blaming the opposition.) Thirty years of neglect is certainly a factor, but all those crashes in 2012 and now this one are  wearing popular patience thin.

The Moroccans at the Casablanca Conference: the Sultan Dines with FDR and Churchill: Did FDR Support Moroccan Independence?

In my post yesterday on the 70th anniversary of the Casablanca Conference, I said that it was "in, but not of" Morocco, and that Moroccans were excluded from the  bubble in which it took place. That was not of course, 100% true: Morocco was a French Protectorate, not a colony, and its ruler was technically Sultan (later King) Mohammed V (Muhammad V). (I've posted previously about General George S. Patton's impressions of the Sultan.) Ceremonially speaking, at least, he was the host of the Conference (though not involved in the negotiations), and on January 22, President Franklin Roosevelt hosted a banquet in honor of the nominal host. (But read on: there's some evidence FDR was sending an anti-colonial message to the French by hosting the Sultan) Photos of this event seem few and far between, and this is the only one I could find, but it shows most of the key players and offers a good introduction to talking about the banquet.

On the couch: Sultan Mohammed V, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Back row from left: Gen. George S. Patton (US Military Commander in Morocco), Robert Murphy (US diplomatic representative in French North Africa), Harry Hopkins (Roosevelt aide and personal friend), Moroccan Crown Prince Moulay Hassan (future King Hassan II, then 13), General Charles Noguès (French Governor-General of Morocco), the Moroccan Chief of Protocol, the Moroccan Grand Vizier, Lt. Col. Elliott Roosevelt (the President's son), Roosevelt's Naval Aide Captain John L. McCrea.

General Patton's diary offers one memory of the evening:

At dinner  . . .  President, Sultan, Protocol, self, Crown Prince. Elliott Roosevelt, Nogues, Hopkins, Murphy. Grand Vizier, Churchill. No wine, only orange juice and water. Churchill was very rude, the President was great, talking volubly in bad French and really doing his stuff. After dinner we had [motion] pictures and more talk . . .

I rode with Sultan and Grand Vizier to house of latter. On way Sultan said, "Truly your President is a very great man and a great friend of myself and of my people. He shines by comparison with the other one."[presumably Churchill] . . .

Nogues was delighted that the P.M. was such a boor. [The Patton Papers. Vol. II. p. 158]

General Noguès, by the way, was a Vichy holdover who had vacillated so much in negotiation with the Americans that General Eisenhower reportedly referred to him as "General No-Yes."

Harry Hopkins' notes add some color:

The Sultan arrived at 7:40, which caused me to put on my black tie for the first time on this trip. He had expressed a desire to see the President alone prior to Churchill's arrival at eight, and he came loaded with presents — a gold dagger for the President, and some gold bracelets for Mrs Roosevelt, and a gold tiara which looked to me like the kind the gals wear in the circus, riding on white horses. I can just see Mrs. Roosevelt when she takes a look at this. The Sultan wore white silk robes. Apparently the etiquette prohibits the drinking of liquor publicly, so we had nothing alcoholic either before, during, or after dinner. I fortified myself an hour earlier, however.

Also, no part of a pig may be eaten, and the Sultan didn't smoke. He had a young son there with a red fez on, which he kept on while eating. He was a kid about thirteen who seemed quite bright. [Moulay Hassan: the future King Hassan II, reigned 1961-1999.]

. . . Churchill was glum at dinner and seemed to be real bored. . .The President gave the Sultan his picture in a handsome silver frame.  and a good time seemed to be had by all, except the Prime Minister. [Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 689-690]

Churchill had apparently just met with de Gaulle; that, combined with the absence of alcohol and tobacco (which Churchill normally considered essentials at dinner), might explain his mood, as our next quote also suggests.Though Churchill's massive six volume memoir of the war is far more extensive than other memoirs, I find no mention in it of the dinner at all.

The Patton and Hopkins anecdotes give us lots of color and Orientalist exoticism. Robert Murphy, writing many years later in his 1964 memoir,  Diplomat Among Warriors,  offers a very different, anti-colonialist spin:

The evening of the day De Gaulle arrived in Casablanca, just before he and Roosevelt were to meet with each other for the first time, the President gave a dinner in honor of the Sultan of Morocco. This affair was entirely Roosevelt's own idea. He had not forgotten the reluctance of General Nogues to deliver his letter to the Sultan at the time of the landings, and one of the first things the President asked me to do was to arrange an intimate little dinner at his villa. The Sultan was accompanied by his eldest son, and the other guests were Nogues — who was invited as the Sultan's Foreign Minister under the French Protectorate — Churchill, Macmillan, Marshall, Patton, Hopkins, Elliott Roosevelt, and me. [Other memoirs don't mention George C. Marshall's or Macmillan's presence, nor is he in the photo. Harold Macmillan might have been left out but it's unlikely Marshall would not have been in the photo when his subordinate Patton was, nor can I find any evidence in his biographies that he attended.] In deference to the Sultan's Moslem code of behavior, no alcoholic beverages of any kind were served before, during, or after the dinner. Perhaps it was this rare abstinence which caused the British Prime Minister to be unnaturally glum throughout the evening, or perhaps he remained silent because he regarded the whole occasion as deliberately provocative.

The President began the serious conversation by expressing sympathy with colonial aspirations for independence, and soon he was proposing to the Sultan that arrangements should be made after the war for American-Moroccan economic co-operation. Nogues, who had devoted his career to fortifying the French position in Morocco, could not conceal his outraged feelings. Hopkins observed that Nogues seemed to be uneasy "because he knows we may throw him out any minute." I suggested to Hopkins, "Perhaps the President’s approaches to the Sultan also aggravate Nogues’s fears about American designs on the French Empire. From the point of view of any imperialist — including De Gaulle and Churchill— the President’s conversation with the Sultan could seem subversive." With an impatient shrug, Hopkins changed the subject.

Of course, De Gaulle's informants told him about the President's overtures to the Sultan. and this increased the General's distrust of Roosevelt. Although it was De Gaulle, and not the Americans, who eventually threw Nogues out of his position in Morocco, De Gaulle saw eye to eye with Nogues on what De Gaulle has described as Roosevelt's "insinuations" to the Sultan. De Gaulle recorded in his memoirs that the Sultan remained loyal to France in spite of Roosevelt's interference . . . (Diplomat Among Warriors, 172-173)

The Sultan would be deposed later, not by de Gaulle. and then returned to power and be elevated to King on Moroccan independence. Though ignored by diarists at the time, Roosevelt's probing the Sultan for future post-colonial relations is characteristic of his known attitudes.

[An editorial addendum since I'm an editor and all: I've kept all spellings as in the original. None of the Americans put the accent on Noguès (though the "General No-Yes" joke only makes sense if you pronounce it Noguès), and Murphy insists on "De Gaulle" rather than the more correct "de Gaulle."]

Mausoleum of Sidi Bou Said Destroyed in Tunisia

The Burned Mausoleum

The latest apparent Salafi attack and destruction of a Sufi saint's tomb in North Africa is one I'm taking somewhat personally: nearly 20 years ago my wife and I took our honeymoon in Sidi Bou Said, the beautiful Tunisian coastal town on a promontory near Tunis, known for its white houses with blue trim, its stunning views of the Mediterranean and its popularity as an artist's colony. Sidi Bou Said takes its name from its local saint who settled there in the late 12th/early 13 century AD, became a respected local marabout, and around whose mausoleum/shrine the town grew up, Sidi Bou Said is a popular tourist destination, though most tourists probably either do not notice his tomb or would not recognize it as a saint's tomb.

Yesterday we learned that a fire, which the authorities believe was arson, destroyed the mausoleum of Sidi Bou Said. Though no official suspects were named and officially it is being branded an attack on the nation's cultural heritage, prominent Sufi shrines across North Africa have come under attack from Salafis who consider the veneration of saints as idolatry, and the more famous the shrine, the likelier it seems to be that it will be targeted. The town, where Sufis gather annually to celebrate the saint, has lost one of its landmarks in what appears to be the latest Salafi assault on Islamic heritage.

And ironically, today marks the second anniversary of President Ben Ali's departure and the success of the Tunisian Revolution.

Sidi Bou Said

The Casablanca Conference Convenes

Casablanca 1943: Behind FDR and Churchill are the Combined [US-UK] Chiefs of Staff: US Army Air Forces Chief Hap Arnold, Admiral Ernie King, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall; British First Sea Lord Fleet Admiral Sir Dudley Pound;  Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir  Charles Portal (later Viscount Portal of Hungerford); Chief of the Imperial General Staff and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee General Sir Alan Brooke (later Viscount Alanbrooke); and Chief of Combined Operations Vice Admiral Louis Mountbatten (later Earl Mountbatten of Burma)

I've already foreshadowed the 70th anniversary of the Casablanca Conference in a couple of recent posts. 

Today marks the beginning of the Conference in the Anfa resort area on January 14, 1943. The Conference was in, but very much not of (or about), Morocco. Sultan Muhammad V was not among the participants. It was essentially an Anglo-American summit with a French subtext, as the Allies sought to reconcile the two hostile figures seeking to lead the French abroad: Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud. But the main purpose was to allow the Combined Chiefs of Staff of the UK and US to meet in purpose, as well as FDR and Churchill. Stalin had also been invited, but in late 1942 the Red Army had broken through at Stalingrad and surrounded the German VIth Army Group, which was now starving and cut off but ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man. Stalin felt he couldn't travel.

Some video:

 

The Conference is mainly remembered today for the US-British insistence on "unconditional surrender" by the Axis (which would cause some problems later on), and for the de Gaulle-Giraud meeting, shown in the photos at bottom, which I'll blog more about later as it occurred at the end of the Conference. It was the first Roosevelt trip abroad (excluding Canada) while in office and the first by any US President during wartime. It was also the first of the summits to be held in the Middle East (Cairo and Tehran would follow). Like them, it took place in a bubble isolated from the Moroccans all around it.

Giraud, FDR, de Gaulle, Churchill

Stiff handshake: Giraud meeting de Gaulle

January 11, 1943: FDR Leaves for North Africa

FDR aboard the Dixie Clipper on return flight from
Casablanca, toasting his 61st birthday (Jan 30, 1943)

January 11, 1943: Seventy years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared to become the first US President to leave North America during wartime. He was also about to become the first sitting US President to visit the Arab world, although he would have thought of it as French North Africa. (Ulysses S. Grant had visited Egypt after his Presidency, as had Teddy Roosevelt, who'd also been there as a young man on a world tour, but no President had gone while in office.) (If I've missed any Presidents leave a comment.)

On  New Year's Eve, I noted how FDR had enjoyed an inside joke by showing his guests the film Casablanca, though the imminent Casablanca Conference was of course a tightly held secret, since the President, Winston Churchill, and all the US and UK Chiefs of Staff would be crossing an ocean full of German U-boats and meeting in a city that had been controlled by Vichy only weeks before.

A Pan Am Clipper

The trip itself was roundabout and difficult. Roosevelt took his train to Miami, Florida, where they met two Boeing 314 Clipper flying boats on loan from Pan Am. Roosevelt used the Dixie Clipper,which had been the first to provide regularly scheduled commercial trans-Atlantic air service in 1939. His closest advisers traveled with him, while the rest of the party boarded the sister ship, the Atlantic Clipper. On the 11th, the two planes flew to Trinidad. Admiral William Leahy, Roosevelt's personal Chief of Staff, who had been US Ambassador to Vichy and was needed for his expertise on France, stayed behind in Trinidad with a fever from influenza. The planes flew the next day to Belem, Brazil, then crossed the Atlantic to Bathurst (now Banjul) in Gambia (then a British colony). They dined aboard the USS Memphis, which was in port. From there a military C-54 flew the party to Casablanca.

Roosevelt, who had not flown for some years, was having a grand time. According to Harry Hopkins, who traveled with him:

I sat with him, strapped him in, as the plane rose from the water — and he acted like a sixteen-year-old, for he had done no flying since he was President.

Hopkins also noted that they served cocktails aboard the Clipper.

Next week, I'll discuss the anniverserary of the Casablanca Conference in greater detail.

Roosevelt reviews troops in Morocco

Umm Kulthum Hologram

The idea of holographic recreations of dead artists seems to be catching on; for the opening of MBC Egypt they created a hologram of the late Oum Kulthoum. Apparently this aired in November but has only now gone viral in the Arab world. For an earlier post on Oum Kulthum, see here.

The Snow Story

After heavy rains and extensive flooding, now we have snow across the Levant as well as in parts of Egypt. The media are showing photos of snow in Jerusalem and elsewhere (below, the Western Wall in Jerusalem and Umayyad Mosque in Damascus) and commenting on how rare it is; I've already posted some snow pictures myself, including Bashar making a snowman. But, without wanting to provoke any climate change deniers out there, I just thought I'd point out that this "extremely rare" wave of snows and floods last happened just two years ago, when I blogged about it in December 2010.

"Archaeologists Outraged" Over Statue That's Been There 138 Years

Egypt Independent has a piece about how some Egyptian Archaeologists are "outraged" by a statue of Jean-Francois Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphics, with his foot on the head of a ruined statue of a pharaoh. In fact:

“The Foreign Ministry did nothing about it,” said Omar al-Hadary, chairman of the Tourism and Antiquities Committee of the Revolutionary Youth Federation on Thursday. “The West will repeat such things if there is no firm reply.”

“This will make us hate the West more,” he continued. “The French learned a hard lesson during their campaign that Egypt gained independence with the blood and lives of its sons.”

“The French government must remove this shameful statue or we will make thousands of insulting statues to put in all squares of Egypt and outside the French Embassy,” Hadary added.

The chairman asked the Ministry of Antiquities to stop all French archaeological missions working in Egypt until a formal apology is issued and the statue is removed. He also requested that all streets named after the Frenchman be renamed. [A main street in Central Cairo is named for Champollion.—MCD]

Now, there's just one thing left out of this story: the statue in the courtyard of the College de France is by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Americans know him for the Statue of Liberty), and it's been there since 1875.

What, no Egyptians ever noticed it before? Or is this a case of manufactured outrage? An online petition only has a few hundred signatures. France conducted military operations against Egypt at Suez in 1956, but they want to retaliate for an 1875 statue?

Oh, and Egyptian archaeologists: every time you read hieroglyphics, you owe one to Champollion.

What? Me Worry?

Bashar al-Asad is making snowmen. Let them eat snow.
If fire breaks out in Damascus, does he own a fiddle?

It'll Be a Cold Day in Amman ...

Actually, snow is not all that unheard of in Jordan, but with all the heavy rains and floods soaking the Middle East, at least Amman got snow:

Al Jazeera English on the Samaritans

The Samaritans are one of the Middle East's easily forgotten surviving minorities; numbered today in the hundreds, some at Holon in Israel and some on Mount Gerizim above Nablus in the West Bank, two out of three of my previous posts on them related to the death of the former High Priest and the installation of the new one back in 2010. 

(The Samaritans retain a High Priesthood claiming descent from Aaron, and which indeed preserves the so-called "Cohen gene.")

This Al Jazeera English report emphasizes another genetic issue: the problem of birth defects due to inbreeding in such a small breeding population, and the decision made by the Samaritans to encourage exogamy in order to preserve the fragile community:

 

Life Magazine, 1952: Samia Gamal's Contribution to Science

I thought I'd contribute this bit of academic historical research to the ongoing debate between Islamists who want to ban belly-dancing in Egypt, arguably the land that made the art famous, and those who see it as an art. I think we took my daughter to a restaurant with  belly-dancing for the first time when she was about six. As an indication of its mainstream nature, I thought I'd present this piece from Life Magazine from 1952. Older Americans will be aware of the enormous power Life  once had in American life before its weekly existence ended in the 1970s. It was a photo magazine that formed American images of the world before television took over completely. It was as mainstream, white-bread, middle class Middle American as it could be, and never more so than in 1952.

And it ran a photo feature on Egyptian belly-dancer Samia Gamal (1924-1994), considered by many as one of the immortals, second only to Tahia Carioca herself, which not only relates to her dancing but to her important contribution to science, by illustrating via a flashlight how her hips move:















The immediate source of the photo is here; the full article in the issue of March 24, 1952 is here. At the time Samia Gamal appeared in this mainstream American magazine she was also a familiar figure (sorry) in Egyptian magazines as well.

This second photo doesn't have any direct connection to this Life story that I know of, but it is also of Samia Gamal in her prime so I'm sending it out to President Morsi, Supreme Guide Badie, and Muslim Brothers everywhere. If she was OK for Life Magazine in 1952, lighten up.

"A Tribute to the Women of Egypt" in Graffiti by "suzee"

suzeeinthecity

I've frequently posted about the revolutionary graffiti of Egypt and a great many of my posts have beens by shamelessly stolen (though always with full credit) from the blogger who goes by suzeeinthecity, an indefatigable collector. She has  a new collection online specifically dedicated to graffiti dealing with Egyptian women: "Women in Graffiti: A Tribute to the Women of Egypt."

Like her earlier posts, it's an important document.

"Endgame: Syria" Computer Game Blocked by Apple

As it happens, the Winter 2013 issue of The Middle East Journal, which will mail to subscribers soon, has an unusual lead Book Review Article: a group review by Prof. Rex Brynen of a number of computer games dealing with conflict in the Middle East.

As if right on cue, comes word of a new game called "Endgame: Syria," a simulation game which allows one to play out various endgames for the Syrian civil war. It is making news largely because Apple has rejected it for the App Store:

Weeks passed after the game was submitted to the App Store, and eventually Rawlings found out it would not be accepted — it did not abide by the store’s terms and conditions, which state that no game should “solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity.”

“I’d like to see them clarify it a little more,” Rawlings told Wired.co.uk. “They should trust their users to make their own judgments a little more; I think they would see the difference between something exploitative and something respectful, so they should err on the side of letting apps pass.”

Another account here. The British developers argue that the game educates players about real events in the news and is not exploitative. Though the Apple version has been rejected, it's also available for Android and as an HTML5 game. If you want, you can try it out online here.

"Tamerlane in Damascus"

 Zayde Antrim has a piece at Jadaliyya recalling Tamerlane's siege and looting of Damascus in 1400-1401, and its lingering imagery for Syrians and Damascenes, who have reserved the name "Timur" as a particular insult. Including one now applied, apparently, to Bashar al-Asad. It's a useful reminder of how historical events continue to resonate in today's Middle East, a theme we've often revisited in this blog.

Before Tamerlane got to Damascus,he'd razed the walls of Aleppo and destroyed much of Hama,

56 Years Ago: Massu Launches the Battle of Algiers

On January 8, 1957, in the midst of the Algerian War of Independence, France began the most notorious phase of its war to retain Algeria: the Battle of Algiers. General Jacques Massu and the Army had just been given extraordinary powers by the French government to eliminate the National Liberation Front (FLN) from the capital, through any means necessary, including torture, detention without charge and other extra-legal measures. On the 8th the French Paras moved into the Casbah.

The Algerian war was one of the most brutal of the colonial wars, and it arguably did as much damage to France (bringing down the Fourth Republic) as to Algeria. The brutality of urban guerrilla warfare has not abated in the 56 years since. (Note: My original headline said 55 years ago today. Like a lot of people, my brain still thinks it's 2012.) Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film The Battle of Algiers remains a  masterpiece of film-making about a revolutionary movement.

Egypt's New Cabinet

I've been working on a presentation I have to make  next week on Egypt and so I'll probably have several items this week looking at the continuing tensions there. Until they're ready, do note The Arabist's take on Egypt's new Cabinet (now with added Muslim Brothers!). More to come.

Egypt's First Paper Pound: Where'd That Bactrian Come From?

Here's one for any of you who are numismatists or historians of paper currency. Though the Egyptian pound was first authorized in 1834, it circulated as specie until 1899, when the first Egyptian paper pound appeared (January 5 marked its anniversary):

Look at the camels. The sitting camel has two humps: it's a Bactrian, from Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia or points East. Outside of zoos, there are no Bactrians in Egypt or the rest of North Africa. (And while it may be due to the artist, it seems smaller than the one-humped camel, whereas Bactrians tend to be rather bulky and have longer hair.)

So why? A European engraver who had no clue about camels? Lobbying by the Camel Campaign for Equal Humps? (And all this is without commenting on the stereotype of choosing camels as Egypt's symbol in the first place: why not pyramids?)

More to the point, what did Egyptians using this banknote think of it?

A Nervous Coptic Christmas in the Morsi Era

Today is Eastern Christmas. The largest Christian church in the Middle East is the Coptic Church, and traditionally Egyptian heads of state, though Muslim, often attend Christmas Eve services at Saint Mark's Cathedral. As Husni Mubarak aged, his son Gamal and senior ministers attended, and last year most of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces were there. When Pope Tawadros II was installed, Prime Minister Qandil attended, With a new and controversial constitution in place, that many minorities feel reduces their rights and protections, there was speculation about whether President Morsi would attend.

Instead, he phoned Pope Tawadros to wish him a Merry Christmas. The highest-ranking figure from the government was apparently the President's Chief of Staff.

The Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood also sent greetings, but the presence was so reduced from previous years as to further increase minority jitters, especially since the Education Minister has announced that Baha'is can't enroll their children in public schools as the Constitution only recognizes Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

A number of media seem to have decided the future of the Copts is an appropriate subject for an Eastern Chrtistmas feature, so you can find articles here and here and here, though as I've said before, the Western Churches tend to forget the Eastern Churches exist except once or twice a year.

Pope Tawadros gave an interview with Al Jazeera English which is worth watching; his message seems to be that the Church will concentrate on its teaching and charitable work and avoid politics, at least in these uncertain times:
A brief excerpt from last night's Christmas service here:

And for those of you with a great deal of patience and nothing else to do today, the whole thing (no, I haven't watched it all):

Eastern Christmas Greetings

Greetings on Eastern Christmas to all who are celebrating today.

Armenian Christmas/Orthodox Christmas Eve

Today in the Latin Christian calendar is the Feast of the Epiphany, "the twelfth day of Christmas," (and I hope all those drummers drumming aren't keeping you up). More to our point here, it's also the day Armenian Christians outside the Holy Land celebrate the Nativity. (Those in the Holy Land have to wait twelve more days.)

For different reasons (the Gregorian/Julian calendar difference), tonight marks Christmas Eve and tomorrow Christmas Day in the tradition of the Orthodox and most other Eastern churches, so greetings to all whose celebration is today, tonight, or tomorrow.

The Coptic Christmas hymn E Parthenos, (the virgin: parthenos  is of course from Greek), with . English subtitles.

Something Different for the Weekend: Mish-Mish Effendi, Egypt's First Cartoon Star

I like to do something a little different for the weekend, so how's this: Egypt's first animated cartoons began in the 1930s, produced by the Frenkel brothers, and clearly directly influenced by (and imitating) American pioneer cartoons like Mickey Mouse and Tom & Jerry. Their character, Mish-Mish Effendi, is an Egyptian everyman; his lady-love, Baheya, is a belly-dancer (and looks like a direct steal from Betty Boop). ("Mish-mish" means apricots, but he apparently got his name from the Egyptian phrase bukra fi'l mish-mish, "tomorrow in the apricots," a way of saying "never.")

The first Mish-Mish cartoon dates from 1936. They were made into the 1950s, when the Frenkel brothers, who were Jewish, left Egypt for France. You can find a short history in English here, though it is in an English that looks like it's been machine translated.

 One that survives complete dates from 1939-1940, ordered by the Ministry of War to support a national defense bond issue aimed at strengthening the Egyptian Army as World War II began in Europe. It's in Egyptian colloquial with some titles in English, but is pretty straightforward for anyone familiar with 1930s cartoon tropes, for those who don't know Arabic. (And this YouTube version is for some reason subtitled in German.)

It's called "Mish-Mish Effendi and the National Defense." Like other cartoon characters in the era, Mish-Mish is used to spread some patriotic propaganda. In part one we see Mish-Mish wooing Baheya, then see her belly-dance (with cameo appearances by bad caricatures of Laurel and Hardy and other celebrities). In the second part, we see Egyptians contributing to the war loan. Then Mish-Mish Effendi goes to war, becomes a war hero, beats the (unspecified) enemy, and gets the girl. It's not up to Disney standards (though a lot of US cartoons have provided inspiration), but it's a fascinating artifact. Parts one and two:

A Note on Gulf "Arabics"

Regular readers know I'm interested in Arabic dialects and the questions raised by widespread diglossia, so I thought I'd toss this your way: Saqer Almarri on "Language Diversity in the Gulf: The Arabics" (sic). I'm not really qualified to comment on the specific dialects, but it seems germane to the discussion.

The Salafi Nour Party Split

A much longer post on Egypt will be coming, but I wanted to briefly address the split in the Salafi Al-Nour Party over the past few days, which is likely to affect the outcome of the Parliamentary elections, now due within two months.

The split was provoked by the Party's removal of its Chairman, Emad al-Din Abdel Ghafour, who has no formed his own party, Al-Watan (Homeland).. Other Nour Party figures are also jumping ship, but the Salafist Call Movement (Al-Da‘wa al-Salafiyya), the religious movement behind the Nour Party, insists that Nour is still its sole representative.

While in part the split seems to be a conflict between followers of different sheikhs, the impact of the split on Parliamentary elections is still unclear, though it is probably welcome news for the Muslim Brotherhood. In the first freely elected Parliament (dissolved by the courts last year), Nour ran a strong second to the Muslim Brotherhood; only by forming an alliance was an Islamist majority achieved. That meant Nour was able to pull the Brotherhood farther to the right, and to a more Salafi stance; the Salafis distrust the Brotherhood, not only for its supposed moderation but its secrecy and its loyalty to a single Guide. The Brotherhood has already shown its authoritarian tendencies, and has little desire to form alliances. The Nour split could weaken the Islamist alternatives to the Brotherhood. That could be good news for the Brotherhood, less good for those suspicious of its tendencies.

The rise of the Nour Party surprised most observers, especially given its strong performance. Its demise is by no means certain; Watan could prove to be a splinter party, but so far it seems to be drawing quite a lot of Nour supporters.  Splitting so close to Parliamentary elections probably does not augur well for Nour's performance this time around, but that is more likely to be welcome news to the Brotherhood, rather than their secular opponents.

Hof and Landis on the Future of Syria; Also New MEI Summary

Two people who know Syria a hell of a lot better than I do have weighed in on the future of Syria in 2013. Forget all your "tipping points": neither paints an optimistic picture. And my MEI colleague John Calabrese has provided a summary of discussions carried out by MEI with the Hollings Center on "The Regional Implications of the Syria Crisis." which also can serve as a good summary of the state of play.

More sobering are the assessments from Fred Hof and Josh Landis. Hof, who recently left the State Department after working as a special advisor on Syria, and is now at the Atlantic Council, offers "Syria 2013: Will the Poison Pill of Sectarianism Work?" He begins thus:

At the dawn of the New Year President Bashar al-Assad and his regime remain committed to pursuing a corrosively destructive sectarian survival strategy, one enjoying a critical assist from an increasingly radicalized and politically directionless armed opposition.  Left to their own devices—as both the West and Russia seemed inclined to leave them—the regime and its armed opponents seem poised to devote 2013 to putting Syria on an irreversible course to state failure and perpetual sectarian conflict.

He argues that the regime strategy of relying on sectarian cliques dooms the country's future if it is successful; it's a grim and lengthy assessment worthy of your reading it in full.At the end he offers some hope:

Yet if 66 years of independence have produced anything resembling secular, civic citizenship overriding all other categorical distinctions, there is hope that the state-killing enterprise of a family regime can be defeated and a Syria of 23 million citizens saved.  For this to happen, however, those who oppose the regime must apply antidotes to the poison pill with intelligence, discipline, and credibility.  Meanwhile, perhaps those occupying key positions within the regime will have second thoughts about a strategy whose targeting of innocents will surely wreck the country and for which they will be held personally accountable. 

Meanwhile Joshua Landis seemed the odd man out a year ago when he predicted the Asad regime (though Hof and Landis both prefer "Assad") could survive through 2013. That alone should be reason to listen when he says "Assad Regime May Well Survive to 2014." He gives his reasons at his site, citing interviews he has given.

UPDATE: And while we're on Syria, check out Bilal Saab and Andrew J. Tabler at Foreign Affairs: "No Settlement in Damascus."

Le Monde on Islamist Efforts to Ban the 1,001 Nights

There's an interesting piece at Le Monde on Islamist efforts to ban or suppress the 1,001 Nights, a perennial target. It's fairly detailed and, while it also talks about campaigns against belly-dancing (a subject also overdue for an updated report here), it mostly concentrates on the Nights and its role in Arabic popular culture and entertainment: Les Frères musulmans font taire Schéhérazade (The Muslim Brothers would Silence Scheherezade.) This is not the first time of course; there was an effort in 2010, and various editions of the work have frequently come under fire. (As an aside, this appears to be a post on what is seemingly "Le Monde's sex blog". Who knew? I mean they're French and all, but so stuffy and intellectual ...)

The Western media tends to focus on the culture wars aspect of Islamist puritanism, since most of it is fairly straightforward: attempts to ban alcohol, or belly-dancing, or certain movies, or bikinis on beaches catch the Western imagination. Literary censorship is less frequently reported because it's harder to illustrate (though Le Monde does a pretty good job). And while many people may be at least aware of the erotic content in some of the Nights tales, most people probably associate them with Sinbad's adventures, or Ali Baba, or Disney's version of Aladdin.

Islamists (by no means just the Brotherhood, despite the article's title) are, like censors everywhere, more than willing to put their own persons at risk by finding all the dirty words or suggestive scenes in even enormous collections like the Alf Layla wa Layla, in order to protect us weaker creatures from them. This huge collection of tales may have roots in India and pre-Islamic Persia, sets many of its tales in the Abbasid Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid (but others as far afield as China, the distant seas, or the kingdoms of the jinn). Collected over centuries and varying according to the taste of the storyteller, they are tales of ordinary human beings (and a few supernatural ones of course), with all the flaws and failings of ordinary human beings. There is no shortage of infidelities (one even underpins the framing story: King Shahryar is killing a new bride each night because his queen was unfaithful), and sexuality, both straight and gay, is taken as a part of life. That probably reflects the reality in Arab and Persian cities in the classical age, where these stories took shape. It is reflected in the poetry and more serious literature of the day as well, the day when Islam led the world in science and astronomy and mathematics and medicine, but it is not the portrait of a golden age of Islam the Salafis want to encourage in their followers.

As a whole, to approach the 1,001 Nights as essentially erotic in its content is misleading; it is far too varied for that, and there is nothing objectionable in many of the tales. On the one hand Islamists are trying to ban the whole for a few of its parts, like American school boards who ban books from high schools due to one or two objectionable words. But I think a point made in the Le Monde article is important: the tales are also full of strong, independent-minded women, easily equal to men, and none more so than the narrator herself, Shahrazad or Scheherezade, who not only seemingly knows every story ever told, but whose ruse lasts for 1,001 nights and saves her life. King Shahryar, by contrast, comes across as a rather dim bulb. Of course her stories captivated him so he let her live each night. (Since the framing story says she also bore him three sons during the period, they must have taken some breaks from the tale telling, yet he still didn't catch on.)

According to the article there have also been efforts to replace Shahrazad with a male narrator. Perhaps the real objection is not just the (occasional) erotic passage but that narrator who constantly runs rings around her rather slow-to-catch-on husband.

The 10th century Arab bibliographer Ibn Nadim in his Fihrist describes a Persian work called the Hazar Afsana (1000 tales) that originated in pre-Islamic Sassanid times; Masudi in the same century mentions that there is an Arabic version called the Alf Layla (1000 nights). They picked up an additional night (and a lot of additional tales) over the centuries, but the stories have been around for over 1,001 years by now. I think that, rage and burn books though the Islamists may do, the clever tellers of the tales will, like Shahrazad, outsmart the dense ruler and guarantee the tales live on.

On a More Positive Note . . .

My previous post was fairly gloomy in looking at where we stand in the region today. On a more positive note, Marsha B. Cohen reminds us of the "2012 Predictions of War with Iran That Didn't Happen (20th Anniversary Edition)."  Of course Israel is still threatening war with Iran, whose nuclear program is on the brink of success, as it has been since 1992.  Though if Netanyahu wins big in the elections, I'm still going to be a bit nervous . . .

Looking Ahead

Now that the "holidays" are past (though not in the Middle East, where Orthodox Christmas still lies ahead) and the new year begun, everyone is looking back on the year past and toward the year now beginning. I already noted yesterday that we have a lot of elections queued up in the first part of this year, with Israel and Jordan both this month and Egypt due to choose a new Parliament soon. In June Iran will elect a successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I'll have a number of posts on specifics, including a big one on Egypt,  but I must say the overall outlook isn't terribly cheery. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process seems beyond rescue, and if the two-state solution lies beyond reach, it's hard to forecast where we go from here. In Syria, with 60,000 dead already and no endgame in sight, things are going to get worse before they get — well, even worse than that. When an endgame does come, it may be bloodier than what has gone before. Egypt is at best in for a struggle between its Islamists and secularists. Libya is still very much contested ground. Violence is continuing in Iraq, and unresolved disputes with the Kurdish region could still tear the country apart. Bahrain is keeping the lid on, but at a cost. Jordan continues to stir.

There may be a few bright spots; Tunisia, despite continuing Salafi violence, is still handling the democratic transition better than most. On the other hand two years ago the region seemed impervious to change.  Now, change seems a way of life. More on individual countries and issues will be coming.

The Elections of 2013

The new year looks to be an important one for elections in the Middle East, some of which are likely to have major consequences. Beginning with Israel's elections on January 22, and Jordanian Parliamentary elections just a day later, they will gather momentum in June with the first round of the Iranian Presidential elections on June 14, and Tunisia's Presidential. and Parliamentary elections on June 23.

Egypt's newly adopted constitution calls for a new Parliament to be elected within two months of the adoption of the Constitution,  so those are coming up as well.

Later in the year Qatar and Pakistan are due to hold legislative elections and there will be Presidential elections in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

For the New Year, an Auldie but a Goodie

 More later, but a Happy New Year once again, and "Auld Lang Syne" sung properly: