"Axes of Evil—Letters of Hope" in Norway

On Wednesday afternoon, Faiha Abdulhadi shouts to be heard above the noise of the wake. She places her hand on my hip, in part, to steady herself as the boat skips. She was in prison, she says; fifteen years old and tortured in front of her mother. Faiha tells me she lived for twenty years in Egypt, carries a Jordanian passport, and waits for Palestine statehood. She works in Ramallah, at the moment. Mahmoud Shuqair also works in Ramallah and is also a Palestinian. He is fortunate enough to be living in Jerusalem again after years in prison and exile in Lebanon. But he carries no passport. He leans his back against the cold railing and shows me his travel documents. He tells me his political writing was anonymous and that he was arrested for belonging to a political party. I ask whether they let him write in peace now and he says yes. I'm far too casual in my choice of words, but, to his credit, he pretends not to notice. Nawal El Saadawi looks out toward the harbor we've left and comments on the colors of the water, the curve of the wake, and the quiet islands. "We don't enjoy our days like this," she says. I nod, happy to finally be able to participate in banal social banter. But she looks me in the eye, "It's not like this in our country."

On Thursday, I relax over coffee with Muniam Alfaker, an Iraqi writer, telling him how much I enjoy his short and sadly humorous poems. I speak Norwegian and he speaks Danish, but we laugh together about Scandinavian social norms. He writes something in my copy of his latest book, right to left, words I'll never be able to read. Something about living only through the poetry. My copy is in Norwegian, which has been translated from Danish, which has been translated from Arabic. I ask him whether he worries that much has been lost in the handing off and he only smiles. Since English is my first language, he'll send me a copy of his anthology. It's translated from Arabic, too, but it's the best we can do. Later that evening I listen to the celebrated and dynamic novelist Espido Freire talking about the changing cultures of Spain, the role of women there, and her novel in which it's always October, "when the leaves are always rotting". I want to read her novel, but it hasn't been translated into English yet. It will be available in Danish in five months, though, and on Saturday afternoon we will eat sushi together and talk about trivial matters, like men and romantic relationships. By then, it will be a half hour we both need.

On Friday, the festival conference "Axes of Evil—Letters of Hope" begins with the Afghani writers Maryam Azimi and Spojmai Zariab. Then Tariq Ali presents his lecture, "The Clash of Fundamentalism", the focal point of the conference. For several hours I forget, we all forget, that this is a literature conference, or even a Mid-East conference. It is all about the Israelis, the Palestinians, and America. Mr. Ali is tall and charismatic and not without contempt. He repeatedly refers to The Great Thinking President of America and tells the Norwegian audience that the Oslo Peace Accords disgraced them. He plays down the significance of the Islamic fundamentalists and simultaneously blames America for their existence (citing America's encouragement of religious extremists during the Cold War). He praises German Chancellor Schroeder's stance against America's current policies and challenges Europe to follow his lead. Ali says The Great Thinking President has thrown North Korea into the Evil Axes mix only to cover up his own, and America's, Christian Fundamentalism. Ali's "Letters of Hope"? He looks to contemporary Iranian filmmakers, to the Americans who demonstrated in Seattle against globalization, and to the intellectuals of Europe who can sway public opinion in their own countries and in America.

Later, near 11 p.m., in a more casual venue, with our respective juice, coffee or beer in hand, we hear the Palestinian voices. Mahmoud Shuqair reads his very short stories, so rich in detail they verge on prose poems. When Faiha Abdulhadi begins to read in Arabic, I hear the music of a defiant girl, skipping and courageous. This is the woman I met on the boat, the woman with whom I ate cake, the woman who likes to drink warm milk in the evenings. But her second poem is different. This music is defiant and militant. It is angry and harsh and explosive. Called "The Rainbow", it is a list of martyrs. When she repeats it in English, I don't hear poetry; I hear what Margalit, on Saturday, will call "the cult of death".

On Saturday morning, we meet to hear seven hours of discussion. I am little-girl-giddy to be in the same room with Jacques Derrida and these writers of such passion:  Avishai Margalit, Izzat al-Ghazzawi, Faiha Abdulhadi, Mahmoud Shuquair, Jasmina Tesanovic, Ghassan Zaqtan, Nawal El Saadawi, Edwin Schoulgin and Etgar Keret. I am also little-girl-ignorant.

America was so much an integral part of this discussion—whether that was appropriate or not can be debated—and yet America wasn't represented. No American writer was invited.

Jasmina Tesanovic talks about writing Diary of a Political Idiot—'idiot' in the Greek sense, she says. I am a political idiot of the vernacular sort. But Tesanovic talks about anger, forgiveness, and love in terms uncapitalized and tangible. She does talk about her President, but she knows she's not there to make a political statement. The others will do that, each with his or her own agenda. But she wonders whether the problem isn't love. Our children's organs are withering and dying from the lack of love alone. Are we rearing our children with enough love to get them to thrive in this world? She points to the real line that separates the victims from the survivors:  death. Etgar Keret criticizes what he calls the Ultimate Suffering Syndrome—using playground metaphors to explain the belief that if one has suffered the greater wounds, one is beyond criticism. In one breath he invites the Palestinian settlers to dinner, and in the next he whispers them back to New York.

Faiha Abdulhadi breaks all rules of decorum and uses her fifteen minutes on the panel debate to read the transcript of a Palestinian woman's testimony. Margalit compares the al Qaeda to pirates, the few powerful men who choked off the route of communication between East and West. He denies any intrinsic clash of civilization. He pleads for an end to unilateral policies, calls terrorism a misnomer, and traces the roots of Islamic Fundamentalism to German Conservatives. Ali accuses Margalit of using rhetorical "sleights of hand" and Nawal El Saadawi accuses them both of beginning their histories where they find it convenient instead of going back to the beginning:  the three holy books, all of which provide grounds to justify invasion and domination. El Saadawi says hope lies not with the intellectuals of Europe, but with all the people of the world.

It is Derrida who brings us back to literature, saying that poetry and literature are the "main place for a new political agenda". If literature is the way for non-unilateral ideas to proceed, the challenge is to avoid homogeny of language, to maintain a "multiplicity of idioms without translating them into nationalistic idioms".

Letters of Hope must come from a New Europe, says Derrida, a Europe that is not at one with America. A Europe achieved through secularisation, and that will transform the United Nations. "The Power of poets and writers is larger than we think."

Izzat Al-Gharazzarri says there is a fine line between the politician and the writer. Edwin Schoulgin appeals to the writer's personal responsibility.

I have always been skeptical in regard to the writer's political responsibility. But listening now, to so many voices in conflict, being unwillingly drawn in as an expatriated American, bouncing between personal beliefs, political embarrassments, and emotional patriotism, I'm not longer a skeptic. I've been comfortable being politically ignorant. But what if Tariq Ali is right and we are on the verge of another world war? If Edwin Schoulgin is right and we are entering an "era that will be horrible in the history of mankind"? Saying that I prefer the poetry of details, of individuals, to express human nature will not be an excuse for political ignorance. Jamina Tesanovic says she couldn't figure out who was wrong or right. The only important thing was to stand against her own aggressors.

Politics are in the details. In the subtext. In each and every idiom.

"It's not like this in our country." Nawal El Saadawi isn't really talking about geography. She's talking about a community of people in a continual struggle against the wielding of unilateral power. I don't think I want to live in El Saadawi's country, but this is where I will have to live from now on. We are all here, skeptics or not.

"Axes of Evil—Letters of Hope" was sponsored in part by Norwegian P.E.N. Kapittel:  The Stavanger International Festival of Literature and Freedom of Speech has been arranged annually since 1995 by Stavanger's Arts Center Sølvberget. The 2003 festival is scheduled for September 24-29, and will include a conference on Scottish Literature. http://www.kapittel.com.

(Ren Powell is an American writer/translator living in Stavanger, Norway. Her first book of poems, Fairy Tales and Soil, was published in Norway in a bilingual edition in 1999. Her work has also been included in Barnes and Noble's Voices from the Cutting Edge: New Works for Theater series in Los Angeles. Her long poem, "Dark. Like Snow", appeared in the Sep '02 issue of Big City Lit and was heard on WNYE 91.5 FM as performed by Thad Rutkowski as part of the magazine's 9/14 event, "Degree 365:  Change and Reclamation — Year One of 9/11", recorded at the Museum of the City of New York.)