I don't have a plan, I hate to sound like it just
happens but I don't know, as someone-- it
doesn't have to do with myself having lived through war
but just I am surprised that fellow human beings are not
struck by the fact that human bodies are so dispensable
and so completely meaningless.
And if it's the body of the homeless person we see around
and we all have managed some kind of mechanisms
whereby we pretend that he or she are not there
or they're just the piles of bodies that die.
And on the other hand, there's this eternal theme
of that it's the same body that's
capable of all the horrors and evils and all of the pain,
it's the same body which is capable of all the pleasure.
So I don't have a plan, just I think
it has to do with my readings.
It's the kind of stuff that I read I think
but, I mean, this is the most essential thing that we
all share, our anatomies, so it's the most common thing.
But I am personally fascinated and disturbed
by the coexistence of civilization and barbarism
of violence and tenderness in every single human being,
in every instance.
Although most human beings like to think that barbarism
is out there but the way I see it
is that they'll always coexist within us
and within everything we do and say,
so perhaps that's one way of dealing with that
or trying to disentangle it.
But there are no plans, I mean, if there
were plans to write poems then we'd all go and read them
but there are no plans, it's kind of a chemical process that
involves reading, feelings, what one sees on a daily basis.
And I watch the news and you see the bodies piling up
and what else am I supposed to think when you see people
losing their heads or arms?
I mean, it's not easy to write about this
and I think a lot of people shy away from it.
But I think the great thing about poetry
is that everything should be a subject of poetry, so.
No, see, that's the thing about poets, we are liars.
[LAUGHTER]
But there are these angels on the ceiling
and I swear, for five months I will look at them
and they were beautiful and I'm thinking something
has to come out of this.
So then I imagined one of them did look crooked
and I was scared for a while but [LAUGHTER] they never fell.
That's a good question, and Nizar Qabbani
is kind of a very famous poet, one of the most popular
in the Arab world in the second half of the last century.
And he was very open in writing poetry
about the human body, specifically the female body.
But actually your question remind me of something,
much of what I read and was trained in
is classical Arabic poetry.
And a significant section in every poem
was the description of the body of the beloved most of the time
happened to be female.
So perhaps it's in the culture of unconscious
but it's not uncommon for poets and for Arab poets to--
so it's part of the tradition.
And I think if you mix that with what's
happening to the body because of technology and modern warfare,
then--
so I like to think that I'm not that influenced
by Nizar Qabbani because I stopped reading him
when I turned 18.
[LAUGHTER] No, I mean, he's very talented but what is very--
I think he's fascinated by it.
But you're right, I think he kind of reopened,
encouraged other poets that not to shy away
from discussing anything and that nothing is taboo, yes.
Yeah, I mean, the criticism against Nizar Qabbani,
he's a great poet and all but his worldview
was very bourgeois, which is OK I mean, but it was always
the lover and the beloved and a beautiful surroundings
and, of course, society is at the door, but--
Also, I mean, there were wars during his time
but he did not live to see.
I think the advent of satellite TV and all of that
has made things worse for some of us
because back then there were newspapers
and you would see photographs and they were powerful
but I think the horrors of the era
now is that it's so banal and so available.
But we've never in our history were
able to see everything that's been happening as it happens
all the time, everywhere, so I think
that adds to the horror of what can happen to the human body.
Yeah, but Nizar Qabbani, I mean, it's true but Nizar Qabbani,
you know, he wrote about political oppression
while he worked as a diplomat and then he
talked about the abstract ruthless ruler
and he never said anything about the actual ruthless rulers.
And he claimed that he had opened
a new vista in Arabic poetry but his entire diction
is something that was achieved 800 years ago in Arabic poetry.
But this is what some post-colonial societies suffer
from, is this cultural amnesia.
So we think it's modernity that brought us--
modernity brought some good things
but the erotic poetry and wine songs and wine poetry
existed 700 years before.
All that Nazar Qabbani did is that he was talented
and he read that tradition and realized that actually
fusing classical traditions with modern Western poetry
into something new is good.
And him being the product of his own background, I mean,
he is the guy who is a diplomat and a cultural attache,
which is all great.
He spent his time at parties and having fun so, of course,
he would write about all of these things, so.
Well, the manuscript is actually about the actual, I mean,
one of the tragedies of this last war in 2003
is the massive cultural destruction
in Iraq of objects that are valuable to humanity,
not just to soar once again.
And to me, maybe it's problematic
but I always said that I think, and allow me for saying this,
I think the Nazis were more sensitive
to cultural treasures.
I mean, they were horrible but when
they knew that there were cultural treasures around them,
made sure to take them out and preserve them and sell them.
It's a mixture of arrogance and ignorance
that, no, that Babylon is completely destroyed now
because it became a base.
And it's more egregious because this is the second time
around, in 1991, and it's more egregious
because archeologists, the American scholars
warn the State Department that this should not be done
and yet all of this was done.
So to me it's just a moment when you realize
that, of course, at the same time
I criticize people who, of course, spend
so much time worrying about manuscripts and artifacts
but they don't care about human beings.
So I always, at the same time, I mean,
I'm maybe guilty of this because I feel sad for manuscripts
because that's my training and field
but at the end of the day, there are human beings dying
and no one seems to care about that.
So that's one thing, the other question was about?
The question was the country that never was.
The country, well, it's-- you know,
all of these post-colonial countries,
and sorry for saying the word post-colonial,
I think a lot of people have an allergic reaction to it,
because all the national myths that every country grows up
with, that we in Iraq grow up with them about what
the country was.
And on the other hand, it was what
it's supposed to be because for those who were pro-Saddam
would tell us about all the great things
they achieved under Saddam, which
is a reductive way of looking at history because Iraq is
a nation state that was built in 1920s
and Saddam is a latecomer.
And he actually, if you look at it from a bird's eye view,
he didn't do much, he actually did more destruction
but for whatever reason, the pro-Saddamists and others
think, say, Iraq was so great because of Saddam.
And the other, the pro-war party,
which is not only Americans but some Iraqis
also what at the time you remember promising us
that this is going to be Hong Kong,
this is going to be all of that.
So both discourses were hollow and this country
was never the way it's being described
right now because one horrible thing is what nostalgia does.
I mean, one of our greatest living poets
says, "Nostalgia my enemy," because he's
saying that nostalgia is important,
of course, for diaspora community
but it's also destructive because it
creates this mythical past that never existed.
So the problem is how do you articulate a position whereby
you're against dictatorship and you are against invasion
and you want to acknowledge the suffering and the victims
of all.
Nowadays a lot of people, even in this country,
care more about the victims of the occupation than the victims
of Saddam, so there is a silencing,
even by some American citizens who are, of course,
anti-imperialist.
So if we have a meeting to organize
and I say something about suffering under Saddam,
I'm silenced right away and I'm told that I'm an imperialist.
And on the other side, people are like,
well, we should-- let's not, Saddam is gone and it's over.
So it's a horrible way of looking at history
because if you do not understand what really took place
and what the effects were on society, it will keep going on.
So I tried to crystallize it all in to show
the impossibility of this moment because nowadays also people
are changing positions so that caring about Iraq by Iraqis
and non-Iraqis and feeling sad for its suffering is hijacked
and translated into Saddam was really good
and things were much better and all these ridiculous things
that are an affront to human beings.
Because if a person is killed by Saddam Hussein or by a soldier,
a person is killed and it's a life but these values--
I'm always fascinated by the value we assign to human life.
If I had more time I'm thinking of an installation
whereby there is a chart because who really
equals one real human life, as Judith Butler says,
that's grievous and worthy.
And you can imagine, because one person from a certain society
is obviously equal to 800,000 from another society,
and so on and so forth.
So I don't know, your questions took me--
I don't know if I'm making any sense
but, hey, it's a good opportunity to vent.
[LAUGHTER] No, but I one example, sorry,
we took us away from poetry but, for example,
the value of human life.
In Darfur there is genocide or we differ over the terminology
and people are really upset and, OK, in the neighboring country,
the Central African Republic, there
are more people being killed and no one ever mentions them
because also even the issue of human rights
becomes kind of a boutique approach,
you know, I'm going to care about these human lives.
And, of course, the victims acquire more humanity
depending on their oppressors.
So let's face it, because in Darfur the Arabs
and the Muslims can be blamed for killing, it's good,
let's bring it on but in the Congo it's a bit more complex
and you can't identify one monstrous oppressor, what's
his name in the New York Times?
He's never writes about it, Nicholas Kristof.
So that's a very prosaic end to the Q&A period
but thank you very much for your patience.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Thank you.