I like to take the train from Penn Station out to Paterson. It stops in Secaucus Junction, a new and gleaming place that never seems to have anyone in it, just cavernous halls of light marble and a lonely bar tucked in one corner, the woodwork of which seems laughable and out of place and therefore sympathetic. The barkeep told me it would be a great place to work if a few hundred more customers came through every day.

I always ride in the space between train cars from Penn to Secaucus. It is loud and feels like what I imagine train travel to have been like in the olden days; jarring, big, transformative. The train smells more like itself between the cars, especially when it is raining in the evening. As you bumble your way out of the big city and into the tunnels under the Hudson you can watch the rivulets of water splashing down into the lonely puddles that pockmark the railway trenches of the far West Side. The last few streams of light make their way through the clouds and glimmer in the raindrops and the dirt like a faded painting.

I don’t object to the changes in all things. I don’t object to the fact that all experiences are washed away in time. But I like the way that the little metal platform between train cars is protecting a feeling that has barely changed for generations.

The train pulls out of Secaucus Junction and then putters along through the marshy fields that make up the Jersey wilds just outside of Manhattan. There is tantalizingly little to see until the industrial ruins of Paterson begin to show themselves with not much fanfare. The train ride doesn’t get somewhere so much as end.

*

No one knows exactly why William Carlos Williams chose Paterson as the subject and location for a new poetry. He was working on his variable triadic foot. It was a new meter, so he said. It has never been entirely clear how it’s supposed to scan. Maybe Williams himself never really understood it. But he was messing around, trying to capture the American idiom and thereby the American experience. He stayed in New Jersey while all the other Americans went to Paris or wherever chasing something they thought was going to turn out big. For some it did. For some it didn’t. Williams stayed and stayed some more. He wasn’t having fun, he was working. He was listening to the Paterson Falls and he was crafting in his forge. “No ideas but in things”: a new poetic empiricism.

*

These days Paterson is broken, let’s be honest. She has her honor, like an old hooker, but she’s broken. It is probably impossible to know what finally breaks a city, what makes it give up and fall apart into petty fiefdoms and the inability to live. All the factors, of course, play their roles: economics, politics, the ongoing terrible American abyss of race. But something else happens when a city breaks, something nobody has a handle on exactly. In that way a city can be like a person. And no one can say precisely what happens to a person when they walk outside and look at the bricks around them, the houses and buildings, and suddenly see nothing at all. What seemed to be a world of meaning around them, the context for living a life, turns into something empty and irrelevant. When that happens you’re not living in the world anymore, you’re simply existing alongside it.

*

There’s a statue of Alexander Hamilton standing at the Paterson Falls, just looking. The Paterson Falls ought to be a marvel of the East Coast. They are nature in its aspect of the sublime. To one’s consistent amazement, they sit there in the midst of a neighborhood, right there in the lap of a city that suddenly shifts gears and gives way to a torrent of rushing water and black rocks.

Hamilton stands there and watches the falls decade after decade. Not many people remember it anymore but a battle took place here long ago. It was a struggle between competing dreams. To simplify, one was Jeffersonian and one was Hamiltonian. Jefferson dreamed of something agrarian, something manageable. He wanted a small democracy built up of autonomous men. It was a decent dream so far as it went. Hamilton dreamed of something else, of the wheels of industry churning out goods and wealth within an urban milieu that the world hadn’t seen yet.

One wonders what Hamilton would have thought about the actual history of Paterson. The way that Paterson ended up being intertwined with the American imagination, the American tragicomedy, the American story, is hundreds of times more complicated than he could have dreamed. But he dreamed it all up nonetheless. Now he stands at the Falls with his back to the city and watches, just looking.

by Ruth Crossman

“I don’t know how things work in America, but I’m sorry, you’re not going to find a single bank in London open on a Saturday.”

I was standing in front of the Willesden Green Tube Station with all of my earthly possessions in a pile in front of me, on the phone with the manager of London Accomodation. Five minutes earlier, her Australian secretary had assured me that there was an HSBC in Tottenham Court which was open on Saturday, and so if I was willing to make the schlep I could go there and deposit my meager severance packet. But Lady Posh had a point to prove and I was in no mood to argue. I had just been sacked from my job at an EFL summer camp after an unfortunate incident involving a bomb scare at a national monument, and I was desperate for a room. I just sighed and said that in that case, I would be paying half the deposit in cash and putting the other half on my nearly-maxed American Visa card. I had gotten used to acquiescing to the Brits, especially when I heard the phrase “I don’t know how things work in America, but here in England…”

I had been the token American at the summer camp, and had begun to wonder if “take the piss out of the Yankee” was some kind of national sport. The string of questions and comments was endless-“why do you smile so much?” “why do you say like all the time?” “why did Bush get re-elected if so many of you voted for Kerry?” At first, I had tried to play the role of the cultural translator. But after a while I just started staring my tormentors down and fixing them with a grim smirk. That usually shut them up. At least in Westonbirt, I had been gainfully employed and given free room and board. London, as I was soon to find out, would be a whole different story.

Camus once compared the concentric canals of Amsterdam to the circles of hell, and I began to feel much the same way about the Tube zones in the Big Smoke. A city full of immigrants rubbing against horrified locals, each group of foreigners occupied their own level. The Desis ran the off-licenses and sold the cell phones. The Poles unclogged the toilets. The French waited tables and ran the kitchens. But the most ironic level was reserved for the native speakers-the Aussies, the Kiwis, and the Yankees. The others were there either out of dire economic need or a desire to learn the language. Our reason for coming could usually be summed up in two words-“pound sterling.” We were the paper pushers, the petty bureaucrats, or, in my case, the substitute teachers. English culture has a strong streak of xenophobia to it, but the English seemed to reserve a special brand of contempt for the Americans. I remember explaining to a Polish friend of mine that while the Londoners seemed to resent the foreign influx, my case was rather special. They might feel guilty for the misery their empire had brought to India and Pakistan. They might pity the Poles because of the history of their country. They might look down on the Aussies and Kiwis, but they saw them as brothers in the commonwealth, bastard children of the Queen Mum. For the Americans, they had not a shred of sympathy. I saw a definite glitter in the eyes of my landlords and employers when they realized I needed something from them. So, Yankee, the tables have turned. If you want my money, if you want my flat, be prepared to get on your knees and beg for it. And I did.

I spent a miserable four weeks fighting for survival in London before I gave up. I had a free apartment and a cushy teaching job waiting for me in Slovakia in mid-September, so in the last week of August I scraped together all the money I had left, bought a one way ticket to Bratislava, and made a call to my new boss. I fell in love with Slovakia the minute the plane touched down. The people were warm hearted, they were loud and flashy, and they were emotionally demonstrative, like the Americans. Despite the language barrier, I felt a hundred times more comfortable with the Slovaks than I had with the English.

But Britannia gave me one last parting shot. I was in a hostel, preparing to move into my new apartment, when two English girls with the kind of posh London accent that sets my teeth on edge walked into the room.

“So how long have you been here?”

I could have pretended I didn’t speak English, but I decided to be civil.

“About a week.”

“It’s a bit of a dive, don’t you think?”

“You mean the hostel?”

“No, the city. It’s really a mess, isn’t it? So dirty and ugly. Not like Vienna.”

My gut reaction was to slap them across the face and tell them to home if they hated it so much, but I bit my tongue and chose my words carefully.

“You know, the thing about Bratislava is that the people are nice. The same cannot be said for London.”

And with that, I grabbed my backpack and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind me like an uncouth Yankee.

Ruth Crossman is a free lance writer and English teacher currently based out of Bratislava, Slovakia. Her interests include language acquisition, travel, and international politics.

Imagine an American TV network deciding to take the American Idol format and apply it to poetry; lining up poets to read their poems in front of temperamental judges while the nation gets out its mobile phones to vote for its favorite poet. One can be sure the show would not survive the first commercial break before the chastened executives pull the plug on it and replace it with yet another series on the Life and Times of Nicole Ritchie. Yet, that was exactly the formula for the latest TV sensation to take Arab countries by storm.

Perhaps the only thing that is as hard as translating Arab poetry to other languages is trying to explain to non-Arabs the extent of poetry’s popularity, importance and Arabs’ strong attachment to it. Whereas poetry in America has been largely reduced to a ceremonial eccentricity that survives thanks to grants and subsidies from fanatics who care about it too much, in the Arab world it remains amongst the most popular forms of both literature and entertainment. Whereas America’s top poets may struggle to fill a small Barnes & Noble store for a reading, Palestine’s Mahmoud Darwish has filled football stadiums with thousands of fans eager to hear his unique recital of his powerful poems. And while in America a good poetry collection can expect to sell some 2,000 copies, in the Arab world the poems of pre-Islamic era poets are still widely read today in their original words, as are those from the different Islamic eras leading to the present. The late Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani had a cult following across the Arab world, and his romantic poems have for decades constituted standard covert currency between lovers.

The Arab World has had its own enormously successful pop music answer to American Idol in Superstar which has concluded its fourth season with resounding success, unearthing some real stars of today’s thriving Arabic cheesy pop scene. But a few months ago, the governors of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi took a bold move by organizing a similar contest for poets. This comes as another step in Abu Dhabi’s ambitious attempts to use its petro-dollars to transform itself into the capital of Arab culture, and one of the world’s leading cultural centers; a Florence to Dubai’s London.

The show, named Prince of Poets, was an enormous success. Some 4,000 poets from across the Arab world sent in submissions to be considered. 35 were chosen for the show, and millions of viewers from across the Arab world tuned in to watch them recite their poetry, get criticized by Arab poetry’s answer to Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson (5 older poets and professors), improvise verses on the spot, and address wide-ranging issues from women’s rights, Iraq, love, democratization, Palestine and the old staple of Arab poetry: self-aggrandization. The winner would not only gain fame, but also a grand prize of 1,000,000 UAE Dirhams ($270,000).

The success of the show was wilder than anyone could’ve expected. The Arab press has had reports about how it has achieved the highest ratings in its spot, overtaking football matches and reality-TV; and millions have paid for text messages to vote for their favorite poet.

The turning point in the show’s popularity, many have speculated, came when young Palestinian poet, Tamim Al-Barghouti, read his poem “In Jerusalem“. Tamim, who is a distant cousin and close friend of mine, is the son of famous Palestinian poet and writer Mourid Al-Barghouti (author of the excellent I Saw Ramallah) and Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour. Tamim’s charisma, poetry, personality and politics captured the imagination of the Arab world. A veteran of years of student political activism in Palestine and Egypt, Tamim was once deported from Egypt by the authorities after engaging in one too many anti-Iraq War protests for the liking of Egypt’s regime. He then moved to America where he completed a Ph.D. in Political Science at Boston University in only three years, before working for the United Nations in Sudan. Through all of this, he has managed to publish four collections of poetry that have received critical acclaim and is expanding his Ph.D. thesis into a book on political identity in the Middle East to be published in 2008. He is now headed to Germany to become a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.

While many contestants opted away from talking about politics in their poems, hoping to not cause any grievance to the generous leaders of the United Arab Emirates who are hosting this show, or to any of the other Arab leaders, Tamim’s poetry was almost entirely political. Whether it was about Palestine, Iraq, or Arab dictatorships, Tamim was as courageous as he was eloquent, raising a few eyebrows in the quiet Emirate where discussing regional politics is not considered the wisest choice of discussion topic.

“In Jerusalem” is a poetic diary of Tamim’s last visit to his land’s occupied capital; a sad traverse through its occupied streets defiled by the occupation soldiers and the illegal settlers living on stolen Palestinian land, and around the apartheid walls choking the city with their racist denial of Palestinians’ basic freedoms and rights. Nonetheless, the poem ends on a cheery and optimistic tone, leading to the jubilant excitement with which the Arab world enjoyed the poem.

Palestinian newspapers have dubbed Tamim The Poet of Al-Aqsa; his posters hang on the streets of Jerusalem and other Palestinian cities, where key-chains are being sold with his picture on them. Sections of the poem have even become ring-tones blaring out from mobile phones across the Arab World, and 10-year-old kids compete in memorizing and reciting it. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen Tamim’s poems on Youtube and other video websites.

But perhaps Tamim’s most amazing feat was how he has galvanized all Palestinians into following him and supporting him. After all of the troubles that Palestine has been through recently, and all the divisions that have been spawned within the Palestinian people, it was very refreshing to finally find something that unequivocally unites all Palestinians, and rouses millions of Arabs behind the cause that was tarred recently by the actions of some Palestinians.

This unifying effect was most glaringly captured when the TV stations of both Hamas and Fatah threw their support behind the unsuspecting Tamim, broadcasting his poems repeatedly, and urging people to vote for him, catapulting him from a little known young poet into a symbol of national resistance and unity. Finally, after months of divisions amongst Palestinians, there was something uniting them: a reminder of the true essence of the cause of the Palestinians, of the real problem, the real enemies and the real need for unity to face these challenges for the sake of Palestinian people and their just cause.

All of which made the final result of the contest most surprising. After having consistently received the highest ranking from the viewers’ votes and the unanimous flattery of the judges, and after a barn-storming flawless last poem that had the judges gushing, Tamim ended up in fifth place out of the five finalists. The poetess that was expected to most strongly challenge Tamim, the Sudanese Rawda Al-Hajj, who had focused her poems on women’s empowerment, finished fourth. The winner, perhaps unsurprisingly, was Abdulkareem Maatouk, a poet from the host country, the United Arab Emirates, whose poems had steered clear of anything political or controversial.

Though Tamim refused to comment, speculation was rife that the results were rigged. That Tamim and Rawda, widely viewed as the two best poets, would finish bottom of the finalists was certainly implausible, and one could not help but imagine that politics came into play. Abu Dhabi may want to fashion itself as the capital of culture, but it probably values its political stability more than any cultural pretenses. Arab regimes may have behaved like warring tribes with narrow self-interest over the past century, but there is one thing in which their cooperation was always exemplary: the effective suppression of all voices of dissent. As the contest became more popular, and the crown of the Prince of Poets more prestigious, it may have become too hard for the organizers to accept giving the trophy to a Palestinian rabble-rouser who in one of his poems bemoaned the times that have “degraded the free amongst us, and made scoundrels into our rulers.”

Nonetheless, there is no doubt who the real winner was; it was not just Tamim and his poetry which will now rival Mahmoud Darwish’s as the voice of the Palestinians, but also the Palestinian people who were reminded of the meaning of their unity, and their cause, which has found its best advertisement that has strengthened the mutual affection, dedication and support of millions of Arabs in the midst of one of its darkest hours.

For more of my writings, see my blog The Saif House

by Ram Manikkalingam & Pablo Policzer

On September 11, 2001 Al Qaeda conducted an attack that ‘shocked and awed’ the United States. The US responded with a military attack on Al Qaeda at its center: Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. It also pursued a further strategy of tightening the noose around Al Qaeda’s funding, arms supplies, recruitment, ideologues, and supporters. Notwithstanding the overthrow of the Taliban regime and the expulsion of Al Qaeda from its base in Afghanistan, six years on the US war against Al Qaeda has reached a stalemate. Osama Bin Laden remains at large, Al Qaeda has not been defeated, and there is growing speculation that it possibly cannot be defeated, at least in the near term. Opposition to the United States and support for Al Qaeda have both increased over the past several years. Moreover, Al Qaeda has learned how to disperse and survive in response to US military pressures, and it is arguably a more formidable adversary, and harder to annihilate, than in the past.

On September 10th, the eve of the sixth year of the attack by Al Qaeda, I thought it might be appropriate to summarize and link a paper I wrote with my colleague Prof. Pablo Policzer for a conference a few months back on a different approach to Al Qaeda, prompted by our dissatisfaction with what we see as the two dominant approaches – fight smarter or talk harder. (short version & long version)

The first response deplores the distraction of Iraq and the dispersion of US national security attention away from the focus on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. This response argues that the current US approach, especially on Iraq, has multiplied the number of enemies poised against it, weakened its position in the world, and undermined its own citizens’ security. The second type of response urges recognizing Al Qaeda as a rational actor with clear political demands, and calls for negotiations with the group over these. The argument here is that such political engagement offers more promise than a prolonged military standoff.

By contrast to both of these positions, we argue that Al Qaeda’s dispersion needs to be taken more seriously as a political, military, organizational, and analytical challenge. Paradoxically, the same dispersal strategies that have allowed the center of Al Qaeda to survive by making it harder to target militarily, make it easier to bypass politically. In other words, the very adaptation that has led to the calls for talking to Al Qaeda – its flexibility and resilience – is also the strongest reason for not doing so at its center. Instead, engagement should take place at the periphery. Devolving engagement in this way requires disaggregating demands, evading global divides, and multiplying local and regional responses.

Understanding the organizational, political, and military challenges of engaging Al Qaeda will shed light on the more general challenge of engaging armed groups. Al Qaeda is not the exception to this challenge (a position implicitly shared by the advocates of military as well as political engagement of Al Qaeda at the center), but the latest, if most complicated, instance of it.

Seen this way, the conflict between Al Qaeda, and the United States and its allies, begins to look less like a global clash between two formidable opponents, and more like a series of overlapping local, national, and regional conflicts with multiple players, some more connected than others. Similarly, Al Qaeda begins to look less like a single transnational terrorist organization capable of carrying out devastating attacks anywhere in the world, and more like a number of armed groups that are more or less allied to one another (and to some states), confronting and combating a number of states that are more or less allied with one another (as well as to some armed groups). These conflicts are more numerous than the single contest of the United States against Al Qaeda, but they are also possibly more amenable to resolution. This is because some of these armed groups may themselves be more willing to resolve their conflicts, and because we are more familiar with the tools — security, military, political, humanitarian and economic — that can be applied locally, nationally, and regionally in such cases.

Building on this notion, the focus of our attentions should not be a single Al Qaeda center, albeit with many peripheries. It should be multiple centers and peripheries, with varying degrees of attachment to Al Qaeda and to Osama Bin Laden, and with varying degrees of commitments to the political, ideological, or social projects espoused by them. Each of the numerous armed groups – such as the Taliban, Abu Sayyaf or even Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia – can be distinguished by its organizational structure, aims and capacities from Al Qaeda. And each of their goals may, depending on the shifting political and military context, range from clinics to treat the sick to the global caliphate to convert the unbelievers. Similarly, each of the problems, such as democratic transition, immigration, pluralism, and state-building, that are lumped together, can and should be disentangled from the single divide between Islam and the West that the conflict with Al Qaeda suggests. And should be addressed autonomously, on its own terms. All of these challenges are familiar to us, not because we have always been successful in addressing them, but because we have dealt with them before in other parts of the globe.