Technology cant keep up w/ my brain on this and I lost (& rewrote) the first part of the post evidently: Whenever I hear the acronym ISIS I think of the goddess See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis and For other uses, see Isis (disambiguation) although evidently Isis is a mispronunciation (leave it to the colonizers) of the original name... In the article I am posting, Maureen Dowd criticizes Obamas use of ISIL (which gives me somewhat less pause/cognitive dissonance since I am not thinking GODDESS)the L standing for Levant. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant ) She says: Maureen Dowd wrote in an Aug. 9 column: It’s a bit odd that the administration is using “the Levant,” given that it conjures up a colonial association from the early 20th century, when Britain and France drew their maps, carving up Mesopotamia guided by economic gain rather than tribal allegiances. Unless it’s a nostalgic nod to a time when puppets were more malleable and grateful to their imperial overlords. The article continues The White House has often faced an army of deconstructionists whenever words come out of Obamas mouth -- and even when they dont -- and it seems a bit excessive to infer an entire foreign policy from an acronym. But politicians and media organizations all over have struggled with what to call this group of Sunni insurgents, and how their choice would be interpreted. Yet, the Levant, in my understanding preceded colonialism, so I wiped the dust off one of my favorite books House of Stone by Anthony Shadid. I could not find the passage I remembered though--maybe it was an amalgamation of his description of the Levant, so I went back to the internet and found his description in a wonderful interview (linked below the quotes).. You mention the Levant often in your book. What is the notion, and how does it fit into this narrative that you’re describing of identities? I always think of the Levant as an older, more tolerant, even more indulgent version of today’s Middle East. First and foremost, it was about movement, the antithesis of those borders I mentioned earlier. Diversities mingled, and while the Ottoman Empire was replete with instances of bloodshed, tumult and massacre, there were times when its domain served as a realm of intersections, a crossroads of language, culture, religions and traditions. In idea at least, the Levant was open-minded and cosmopolitan, and it always struck me how my great-grandfather and the family’s house seemed to express that ideal. He roamed from Marjayoun to the volcanic plains of southern Syria to the Hula Valley in northern Palestine. His house borrowed from Venetian styles. It was built with materials imported from France and Italy. In a way, the house celebrated differences, a contrast to what often marks the Middle East these days: conformity, reaction and narrow thinking. You spend a lot of time searching for an old tile called cemento. In fact, the tile becomes a theme of the book. How does that fit in with your idea of the Levant? The tile was a symbol of all that movement. Before World War I, it was considered the epitome of what was splendid, and it covered the floors of tsars’ palaces, mansions of the Côte d’Azur, and offices of great import in Berlin. It was present in Barcelona, in the work of the architect Antoni Gaudí, who designed some tiles himself. Colonists took the tile to the imperial possessions of France, Spain, and Portugal. Along with its high commissioners and chasseurs, France brought the tile to the countries of the Levant. In fact, it became so commonly associated with things Levantine that it always seemed to me to stand for that lost era. In finding the tile for my family’s house, through endless negotiations, I felt like I would occasionally touch that older world. One of the vendors even spelled it out for me, a charming man of bonhomie, Edgard Chaya. “My love for the old grew in proportion to my hate for the new and the modern,” he told me. blogs.wsj/speakeasy/2012/02/17/anthony-shadid-his-final-words-to-his-publisher/ Tonight I wont get into why the first part of the acronym bugs me as well…it is not far off from the irking feelings of the term Christian being vandalized by folks full of a lot of hatred. Rather, at the risk of fetishizing the very imperfect past, Ill end on the note above, which certainly seems appropriate, “My love for the old grew in proportion to my hate for the new and the modern,” Now if I didnt need to sleep, Id check out cemento tile to see if it is not the same as the Mexican tile that embellishes the stucco walls of my house…
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 10:37:59 +0000
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