9UNP0216SD_Bayoumi_Kumar_WordPress

- Okay, it is with great pleasure that I welcome you to a reading by Moustafa Bayoumi and Amitava Kumar. And I take a great personal pleasure in this, because I rank these esteemed writers also as very dear friends. And one thing that I have in common, other than the theme of today's readings, is that they're both very committed political writers, but also have a lyrical energy to their writing, which I've enjoyed a great deal. And I think one of the things about our world, is that it's filled with a lot of shouting. And in reading both of their most recent books, I'm struck by the quality of their listening, the amount of time they spend tracking down people whose voices and lives are either excised from the media or stereotyped in the media. And the patience, the caliber of patience that they bring to their interviews and to their writings themselves. And I think both of the books that we'll be hearing from today are wonderful books of characterization. In other words, they put voices and flesh on lives, and do so with great political commitment, but also with humor, and wit, and complexity. And I think those qualities are characteristic of both these writers throughout their work. 

Moustafa Bayoumi will be reading first. And he'll be reading from his new book, "How Does It Feel To Be A Problem, Being Young and Arab in America." Moustafa is a professor of English at Brooklyn College. In addition to this book, he's edited a book, a collection of Edward Said's writings. His essays on Jazz have been included in "Best American Essays in Music." He has written for London Review of Books, the Nation, the Village Voice, and a number of other publications. He's an editor at Middle Eastern Report. And also, an Op-Ed columnist for the Progressive Media Project. Amitava Kumar is a professor of English at Vassar College. He's the author of a number of books that are almost unclassifiable works of journalism, memoir, political investigation, "Passport Photos," "Bombay London New York." 

"Married to a Fanatic," a semi-autobiographical work of journalism. And his latest book, from which he'll be reading, "A Foreigner Carrying In The Crook Of His Arm, A Tiny Bomb." He's also written a wonderful novel called "Home Products," which was a finalist for India's premier fiction award this year. His work has appeared in the Nation, Harper's Magazine, New Statesman in Britain, and almost every, probably every major Indian publication from the Hindu, to the Times of India, and so forth. So it's with great delight that I welcome these two writers. As I say, writing about subjects that simply do not receive much in-depth attention from the mainstream media. And specifically, the question of how has the war on terror impacted the civil liberties of people who, by virtue of religion, race, appearance, name, are positioned as suspicious. So I ask you to welcome Amitava Kumar and Moustafa Bayoumi. 
(applause)

- Thank you. Hello. Thanks for coming. Thank you to Rob for that very kind introduction. I've known Rob Nixon now for, what, it must be more than 15 years. And it's always a pleasure to see him. It's a pleasure to be back here in Madison. I think this is the third time that I've come here. And I feel, each time, just a little bit more Madisonian, I guess. And my connection with Rob, and hence the university, and also with the Progressive Magazine, which is a great fixture here in the city, and now with the Book Festival. 

It gets deeper each time. So it's really a pleasure and an honor to be here. I'm here today to talk to you about my new book, "How Does It Feel To Be A Problem, Being Young And Arab In America." And people often ask me, so how does it feel to be a problem? And it kind of sucks, I guess. 
(laughter)

 But the real origin of the title is not a question that my mother might ask me, or something like that, but's it's actually from a book of W.E.B. DuBois' called, "The Souls of Black Folk," from 1903. And in that book, it's DuBois who actually asks the question. He says people ask him all the time, you know, there are all these lynchings going on. It was a terrible environment of hatred around him. 

So people would come up to him and ask him, whisper in his ear, and say, so what do you think about the latest outrages, how does it feel to be a problem. And he answers by saying, to that question, I answer seldom a word. Then he writes, of course, the whole book after that. That's in the very beginning of the book. And his answer is really that book, "The Souls of Black Folk," which he describes as lifting the veil to the wider American public, about what the African American experience is about. This is a time, of course, of official segregation, of Jim Crow, of discrimination at really, the legal level, and coming out of slavery. And so there was a reason why those two populations were separated from each other. So his is an attempt to really, I think, in a lot of ways, to bridge that gap. Much in the same way that my book is also an attempt to bridge a gap. The gap between the Arab and Muslim communities in this country, that I feel are largely unknown, to wider American society. 

And so, I thought that I would also look at their lives, and try to give a sense of the rhythms of their lives, and really, what ordinary life is like, even in extraordinary kind of times. I did that by looking at basically the lives of seven different young people in my book. And all of them from Arab backgrounds. And all of them also living in Brooklyn. And all of them between the ages of 18 and 29, essentially, so in their 20s, 20-somethings. It seemed to me also important to do this, because there's a way in which I feel that the ideology of our age today, although nothing like slavery. I don't want to make-- I should make it clear that I'm not saying there's any kind of equivalence between these two moments. But we can learn by comparison. But the ideology of our age today, it seems to me, is constantly invoking a kind of progressive dehumanization of a population. So my book is an attempt to essentially humanize the population that's increasingly dehumanized. 

And I thought that the narrative form, the story form, is a really good way of doing that. It's an aesthetic and a literary kind of intervention, I guess, you could say, in that way. And I also decided to focus on Brooklyn. Let me tell you a couple of reasons why I focused on Brooklyn, and give you a short breakdown of the book, and the different types of stories that I do tell in the book. And then I'll maybe tell an anecdote or two, and then read very briefly from the book. And the reason why I decided to focus on Brooklyn is because, for one thing, I live there. So I didn't have to go anywhere for my research, I suppose. But the other reason, the major reasons are several. For one thing, also, Brooklyn is in the shadows, really, of the World Trade Center, the so-called Ground Zero today. So there's a way in which the September 11 attacks also resonate very much within that geography, obviously. 

Secondly, if you look at the 2000 United States census, it was the first time that the long form asked for ethnicity of Arab Americans. And so, it was the first time that they had, through the census, they had the number and quantification of where Arab Americans lived in the country. What they found was that the largest number of Arab Americans live in New York City, than anywhere else in the country. And within New York City, Brooklyn had the most, the highest number. So now of course, in terms of concentration, they're much higher in Dearborn, Michigan. There's probably a third of the population is Arab American in Dearborn, whereas in Brooklyn, it's maybe, according to the census, about 40,000 people. So of course, the numbers are different. Dearborn's about 35,000 and Brooklyn is about 40,000. But the numbers say that Brooklyn has the largest Arab American population. So that's another reason why to choose Brooklyn. 

And the third reason, it seemed to me, is precisely because in Brooklyn, increasingly no group has any kind of majority anymore, right? Everybody's in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is, in some ways, the history and the future of the United States. There's a kind of great mythology. There's a lot of books written about Brooklyn. Brooklyn has a kind of literary-ness to it, at the same time it has a kind of forward looking-ness to I think what the United States will be in the future. And so, I'll read to you a little section that I have about my reasons for choosing Brooklyn. In fact, why don't I just read from that right now, if you don't mind. So, as I said, Brooklyn has the highest number. Yet far more important than base numbers is the Burrough, itself. 

Brooklyn is chiefly no whole or recognizable animal, writes James Agee, but an exorbitant pulsing mass of scarcely discernable cellular jellies and tissues. With more than 2.5 million residents, it is the third largest metropolitan area in the country. Yet size alone does not account for its energy. Robber barons, refugees, free blacks, and the international working class have all settled here, whether in leafy Victorian mansions or in limestone, brownstone, or federal style row houses, making the story of Brooklyn a short history of human escape and re-invention, flattened through geography, and narrated through architecture. Walt Whitman once called it the city of homes and churches, and yet it is more. A country on its own, Brooklyn continuously repopulates itself, first by boat and ferry, and now by planeloads of the world's exiles and emmigrés. And it brims with all the rhythms and pageantry of 21st century American life. Today, Brooklyn is Prospect Heights, with its late night barber shops, all fabulous hair and atomic white light at 12am. Or Coney Island, a seasonal experiment in radical democracy, held in a riot of colors and sound track to amusement park songs. It's the Friday afternoon call to prayer in Bedford-Stuyvesant. 

Brooklyn is a tourist-free Chinatown in Sunset Park, or the Dollar Stores of Flatbush Avenue that spill their wares onto the noisy street, and away from their weeping, scarred and aching buildings. It's dreadlocked West Indians flying kites in Prospect Park, or the colony of middle American defectors in Williamsburg. Urban hipsters costumed in androgynous jeans and monotonous tattoos. It's the bourgeoisie of Brooklyn Heights, living in stately grace, but with barely suppressed feelings of self-loathing for not owning a 212 area code. Brooklyn is the slowly dissolving Italian hub of Bensonhurst, the Syrian Jews of Ocean Parkway, and the Pakistanis of Coney Island Avenue. It's the birds of Greenwood Cemetery, singing their songs to the Civil War dead. Uppercrust Haitians living well in Midwood Estates, and intrepid diners visiting Bay Ridge's transplanted Mediterranean Coast. Where high on the old Nordic Third Avenue, sea air mingles with the garlic aromas floating out of the Arab, Greek and Italian eateries that line the street. Brooklyn is the informal urban apartheid of Eastern Parkway, the soft socialism of Park Slope, the Russian capitalism of Brighton Beach. It's the salt marshes of Marine Park, the roast beef sandwiches on Nostrand Avenue, DiFara's Pizza, FoxPop and Vinegar Hill. 

Brooklyn is the dangerous rush of traffic on Atlantic Avenue, where bus exhaust mixes with the smells of fresh bread and Arabic spices. It's the madness of Pacific Street, where parents seek refuge from the urban cacophony in its tiny community garden. And Dean Street, where the Chinese food is Hillel. Brooklyn is the concentrated, unedited 21st century answer to who we, as Americans are as a people. So after I decided on Brooklyn-- And the other reason, incidentally why I chose Brooklyn, too, is it seems to me that there is really too much ideology and abstraction in our age. So if I wanted to write a book about the human experiences of the post-September 11 environment, it seemed necessary to ground it in a specific geography. So I wanted to choose one geography in which I could really get at people's lived experiences. So Brooklyn became that for me. I went around looking for stories. And these are the seven stories that I eventually found. 

The book begins with Rasha, who is a young Syrian American. She's lived about 20 of her 25 years in the United States, almost all in Brooklyn. She came from Syria, where she was born, as a very young child. And her family came on tourist visas. And eventually, they applied for asylum. And if you know anything about immigration law in the United States, you know that it drags on forever. So their immigration status was, she was living in a kind of gray area of immigration status, with her family. And what happened after September 11, was people who were in that status in particular, were especially vulnerable. About six months after September 11, she and all of her family, except for two of her youngest brothers who were born in the United States, and thus American citizens, were arrested in a midnight raid and taken to prison for three months, on the suspicion of being terrorists. It was quickly disposed of. 

It was clearly not true. And then without explanation, summarily they were let go. And Rasha comes out of the experience, at first horrified and distressed that this would happen, and upset and feeling that vengeance had been taken out on her for something she had never done. She says to me that she thought she would only go to prison if she had done something wrong. Why was she in prison? Eventually, she actually takes up the cause of human rights advocacy, after leaving prison. She decides to enter into a program for that. So her story tells a lot, something of the detentions that happened after September 11. Then, quickly to go through the other stories, there's another story of a young man who joins the Marines. A young Arab American, he's a Christian Arab American. 

He joins the Marines. And on September 10, 2001, he boards a midnight bus to go to Marine Combat Training. And of course, they find out what happened the next day. And his whole world changes. Because now he knows he joined the Marines just for something to do. He's actually going to war. And he goes to war. Two tours in Iraq. And he comes back. And what's interesting is that in his time in Iraq, he had very little Arab identification in the United States when he was growing up. 

But in Iraq, he becomes more Arab identified. And he comes back, and he starts to look for familiarity and association. And the Arab association that he has on his campus. And they don't want to have that much to do with him, since he's fought in an unpopular war. So he has very interesting identity issues going on. There's a story of Yasmin, who's a young Egyptian woman growing up in Brooklyn, who's religious. She decides that she's going to run for office in her high school. And she does. And she thinks at first, nobody's going to vote for her. She wears Hajeb. 

Why would anybody vote for her? But she wins and she becomes the secretary of her high school as a freshman. And then one of the first duties that she has, actually, she's told that she has to go and attend the school dances. She says she's religious and that she's not going to go to the dances. Essentially, the school forces her to resign her position. They say if you can't fulfill your duties, then you have to resign. She feels a great injustice has been done to her, so she starts fighting back after resigning. She goes to the public library and takes out books like, "Sue the Bastards," and "Law for Dummies." 
(laughter)

 And no one is listening to her. 

No one listens. And eventually, she does find a sympathetic ear. And her story ensues from there. I won't tell you how it ends, so you'll buy the book. Akram is a young man who works in his family's store. If you know anything about Brooklyn, you know the grocery store is a central location for Arab American life. Most of the little stores are run by Arab Americans. His father came with nothing from the West Bank, and built himself up. The classic American dream. In a generation. 

His father now owns the store. Akram has very little interest in staying in the store and working in the store. Partly because of the kind of work that's involved. He works there 90 hours a week during the summer. But also because of all the negativity that's in the culture around him. He, and many of his generation have other aspirations. They, instead of looking for the American dream, they look to Dubai, what I call the Arab American dream. So we have another generation looking abroad for opportunity. You have the story of Lina, who's a young Iraqi American. I thought an Iraqi American would be an interesting story as well. 

And she has this very roller coaster of a life that, essentially, is involved with two different men, one of whom is from a dissident family, against Saddam Hussein. And the other one turns out to be working as a spy for Saddam Hussein. He's arrested and eventually deported to Jordan. I know it sound crazy, but it's true. Omar is a young man who worked at al jazeera, as an intern. He was a communications major in university, and thought that this was going to launch his journalistic career. He loved the work there. And yet after he finished at al jazeera, he started applying for full-time jobs. And he wasn't hearing anything from any of them. So all of a sudden, he started to wonder if maybe his al jazeera job had become, rather than a launching pad, a liability to him. 

And his chapter explores employment discrimination, which is quite pronounced within the community, especially among the men. They're very concerned that their names, their backgrounds, are going to hinder their opportunities. And the last one is also a detention story, about a young Palestinian boy, a young Palestinian man, whose father is arrested because the authorities put an informant in his store. He's arrested and goes through immigration charges. He's arrested for cigarette smuggling, which is relatively common. And usually you pay a fine and you're done with it, prior to September 11. But we live in a different age now. His father then goes through these elaborate immigration proceedings and is incarcerated for a very long time. And while his father is incarcerated, the young man, Rami, becomes more religious. And the father actually becomes more religious in prison, as well. 

So the two become more religious independent of each other. Rami's chapter explores this growing religious awakening that's going on in many people in his generation. So the book is really a kind of, it's an attempt to tell a broad spectrum of stories that I think, I was trying to get to all the major issues that are impacting Arab American life. So let me read to you, just one small section from Yasmin's chapter. And I'll conclude with that. Yasmin is the young woman who ran for high school student council. And at this point, where I'm going to read from, she had gone through all kinds of hoops to try and get people to pay attention to her. Nobody was paying attention to her until finally, one lawyer did say that the case might be interesting, so please to come and see him. So she and her father went to see this lawyer one day in Manhattan. It was an early evening meeting, and Yasmin and her father took the subway to midtown Manhattan after school. 

They exited the elevator and found the offices empty except for the attorney, who invited them in. Yasmin was impressed by the stately, reserved elegance of the place. A Muslim lawyer, she thought, That's awesome! He sat them down in a boardroom with a big oak table and asked Yasmin to explain the story. She immediately launched in by describing the Equal Access Act and the basics of contract law. 
(laughter)

 "Just explain the story to me," he said patiently. So she did. She took out her smiley-face folder and detailed how she had won the election, been forced to resign, lost her right to run again, and everything else that had happened. He took notes on a yellow legal pad as she spoke, interspersed with nodding his head or humming assent. 

Yasmin finished, and then he spoke, first offering the now 17-year-old some advice. Whenever anyone said something related to the case, he told her, she should note what was said, the speaker, and the date. Yasmin listened with open ears and canyon-wide eyes. That will be your evidence, he said, and Yasmin nodded. "So what should we do?" she asked, almost holding her breath. He thought they had a case, he said, and she began breathing again. He couldn't promise they would win, he said, but there was a case to be made here, one that the courts would decide. And then he started talking about money. He told Yasmin and her father that a lower court decision would require a $6,000 retainer. 

If it moved to a higher court, fees might reach $10,000-$12,000. And he kept walking up the litigation ladder with higher figures and higher courts while Yasmin nodded and her father said nothing. The meeting ended. "Think about it," he said, as he showed them out. "You know how to contact me." For the first time, the thought hit Yasmin. Wait, is my dad going to pay for this? He'd said it was worth it, she surmised, so he'd probably pay. Outside, Yasmin was bubbling with excitement over the meeting. She turned to her father. 

"What do you think, Baba?" They were walking to the subway, descending the stairs. "It's a good case, habibti," her father said, "but I have four daughters. I have to put you all through college. I can't pay $12,000 to $20,000 to bring a case to court that might lose." They waited on the platform, and suddenly Yasmin felt her imminent victory sliding away. "But, Baba," she pleaded. "It's for a good cause! It's for all the Muslims! If it becomes a good law, then it applies everywhere!" 

She had learned this from her legal research. The subway roared in, all rattling noise and clanging steel. "Think of the money, Yasmin. It wouldn't be fair to your sisters. They have to go to school, too." He paused, and the conductor announced, "Stand clear of the closing doors, please." "We'll think about it," he said, which in Egyptian parentspeak, as Yasmin well knew, really means no. Thank you. 
(applause)

- That was lovely. You all should buy Moustafa's book, but I'll hide it from my wife, because she's been asking us to move to Brooklyn. And it's a long commute from Poughkeepsie. 
(laughter)

 Ain't going to do that! But it's a very lyrical passage. It is great to be here. It is an honor. When I grow up, I want to be like Rob Nixon, just wonderful to be. I love the fact that there's a television out here, because I want to address the American people directly. 
(laughter)

 And this reading is for Joe the Plumber. 
(laughter and applause)

 I'm going to read for a few minutes from a book called, "Husband of a Fanatic," and then I'll move to the unpublished work. In the days following the September 11 attacks, I would read the newspaper every day looking for stories. On October 3, there was a report that several children in a school in Brooklyn had falsely claimed that their fathers had died in the Twin Towers. The children had done this, the newspapers said, in a muddled attempt to identify with classmates who actually had lost parents. A few days later, I was sitting in a meeting at my university, a sheet of paper in my hand. The sheet that I held had a glossary of terms printed on it. Item number 23 read, "Muslim," Muslim, a follower of Islam, one who submits to God's will. 

There were other terms on that list, words like Haj, Hajeb, and Jihad. Students sat on either side of me. A white American woman wearing a head scarf, I later learned that she was a professor at the university, she had converted when she married a Muslim man, an immigrant from Egypt, was addressing us. Professor Kuhn spoke of great zeal of the ways in which her religion represented love, and compassion, and peace. She said that she doubted the hijackers of September 11 had really been Muslims. After all, they had consumed alcohol and paid for lap dances in a Florida bar. With her face wrapped in a stern Midwestern sanctimony... I know that's a dangerous phrase to use! 
(laughter)

 Professor Kuhn was trying to convey a sense of injury. 

Her voice sounded by tones, indignant and hurt. The crude glossary had been discarded. What we now saw that the concerns around September 11 had been reduced to the idea that our speaker had of her own victimhood. Muslims the world over, she said, were being seen as terrorists. In America, two ordinary Muslims going about their daily business had been assaulted. The professor herself had received an email message filled with hate. And she feared for her own and her children's safety. It was of course right to protest attacks by bigots. And it was also necessary to raise our voices against the bustling national state machinery which had declared its intent to curb civil rights, and in its more imperial guise, drop bombs on innocent people. I'm sure that most people in the audience that day, myself included, had gathered for that very purpose. 

But in what was being said, there was no acknowledgement of the plain shock of what had happened, and how disturbing and depressing it was. Instead, we were getting a little dose of identity politics. Like all those who had wrongly reduced Islam to a religion of terror, and its followers to a hoard of suicide bombers, Professor Kuhn was erasing all complexity of experience from the faith she was seeking to defend. In a story of Islam, there were no contradictions, no traditions of internal dissent, no real history, no ugliness, and therefore, also no beauty. There were no people in Islam. There was only Professor Kuhn. Even worse, was her audience. Like the children in the Brooklyn school, identifying with their grieved classmates, it wanted to be one with the wronged Muslim, that vast, faceless, collective subject, now presented as Number 23 on our glossary list. Who's a Muslim? The terrible events of September 11 had made it necessary for Americans to ask this question. 

The logic of that questioning meant, however, that answers were already in place. And rarely, were these answers provided by Muslims themselves. On those rare occasions, when we saw the Muslims on our television screens, especially Muslims from other countries of the world, their responses were pre-determined by what had happened on that September morning. It was as if the Muslims of the world were being asked to explain the sum total of their lives and their daily realities in relation to that singular event. Often, even this chance was not given to them. The mother of a young woman who had died at the World Trade Center, when asked to speak about Muslims in an HBO documentary, said, "I want them tortured, men, women, children." It was impossible not to feel immense sadness for everyone concerned. When they appeared on our screens, Muslims were being put in the absurd position of having to either condemn or celebrate that overwhelming occurrence. Two jets carrying passengers and loaded with fuel, crashing into buildings filled with people. To be a Muslim was to simply serve as the explanation for why what had happened had happened. 

Several weeks after September 11, I was on a visit to Pakistan. One evening, I was in Lahore, on my way to a dinner. The car belonged to a friend of mine, who is a well known editor and journalist. I was being driven through a crowded street, and I began to look at the row of roadside flower shops. The vendors had arranged roses, lilies, and marigolds under the light of bright, naked bulbs. Currency notes of various denominations were woven into the fat garlands of tube roses that hung from bamboo poles. There were dainty bracelets made from small blossoms, for guests to wear during weddings that were underway that night all over the city. Earlier in the evening, I had made my first contact with the leader of the fundamentalist Jihadi group, that a few weeks later was responsible for the kidnapping and then the murder of the American journalist, Daniel Pearl. I had given the man my name, which would have revealed to him that I was an Indian and a Hindu. But I wasn't worried about it much. 

I had told myself that the fundos, you know they call the fundamentalists "fundos" on the subcontinent. The fundos would harm a journalist. As the hours passed, there were more calls, and cell phone numbers exchanged. And a little before midnight, anticlimactically, the meeting was cancelled. If I remember that evening, it was for something more ordinary that happened as I was sitting in the car, looking at the flowers outside. My host's driver, Kasim, a slight man in his late 20s, with a thin mustache, quietly asked me where it is that I was visiting from. I told him that I was a writer living in the United States. He turned his face to me and said in Urdu, the Americans are the true Muslims. I did not understand this. The attacks in New York and Washington, DC, were still fresh in everyone's mind. 

I had also seen the images from the streets from Lahore, and the rest of Pakistan, of bearded men shouting slogans in support of the Taliban. Kasim said the Americans have read and really understood the message of the Koran. I was baffled, but Kasim explained his point to me. He said, 
(speaking in Urdu)

... The Americans treat their workers in the right way. They pay them overtime. Ah, overtime. Fair wages. 

Just working conditions. True democracy. Those little places on American television, and all their talk about terrorism, for this plain man's sublime understanding of his religion. Or for his deeply human and compassionate sense of the goodness of the American people. In fact, here was the proper antidote to Professor Kuhn. Islam in Pakistan had not freed Kasim. And he wanted his minimum wage. As far as Kasim was concerned, it was others in his own country, his fellow Muslims, who were the oppressors. On the other hand, the fair-minded employers of the poor in America, such as they were, when they died, were going to be gathered in the arms of the angels and lofted to heaven. Kasim's view of the world and religion could be considered simple minded and wrong. 

But I believe that his judgment is no more misplaced than the generalizations about opposed civilizations made by the pundits and politicians in the aftermath of September 11. Indeed, Kasim's tale has conveyed something else to me. A religion is not much more than the stories you told yourself about the world. And Kasim's account was interesting, because it had surprised me. His story was surprising. Although not in the way that the hate of the hijackers had been to so many. And this gave it significance. It spoke to me of the need to listen to the stories that people tell about themselves, and how they imagine their place in the world. I'll read a little section from the forthcoming work, too, if you don't mind. In 1993, there had been series of bomb explosions in the city of Bombay, the city that was then called Bombay, now it is called Mumbai. 

And those bomb explosions had been planned and executed by Muslim underworld, because of the way in which ordinary Muslims were slaughtered in riots at the hands of Hindu mobs, after the destruction of a mosque in the north that year a few months earlier. In the trial that started at the time, it took 13 years for the sentences to be awarded. And a few months before the sentences were awarded a couple of years ago, I went looking for a family that had been among the first people to be arrested after the explosion. I just wanted to read a little bit about them to you. In fact, let me tell you about them, then I'll go to the other section which I want to read. They're simply a working class family. The gentleman who was the head of the family had worked as a gas attendant in one of the small kingdoms in the Middle East. He had come back and was living this village. The police found what they claimed was a missile in his living room. And so they arrested the whole family. 

It took four days to realize that the alleged missile were actually pieces of textile machinery, bobbins, which are shaped like this. So, projectiles. Badly tortured, and every time they were tortured, they said the policemen would ask, where is your Allah now, you know, you traitors, where is your Allah now. Where is he to protect you? The thing that interested me about this, and why I chose this to introduce the book, "A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb," was because the gentleman who had, a friend of the family, this was an illiterate family, by the way. The gentlemen who informed the police about this, and said that this was a piece of textile machinery, is an egg seller in that town. And he had a theory about this. And I wanted to share that with you, because in continuation of what I read to you earlier, I'm very much interested in how people tell stories about September 11 itself, and how it reveals to us something about the world. So a few more minutes, I'll just read to you. So after the son was telling me about this torture. 

This man leaned closer to me and spoke, and speaking in a confidential tone, said, what the Americans were doing in Abu Ghraib, they learned from our policemen here. So remember, this is happening in 1993. The man's name was Abu Jalal. He owned a poultry business, and was the only one in the room with a little education. It was he who had told the police that the object they had mistaken for a projectile was only a piece of a textile machine. When I heard his remark about Abu Ghraib, I thought he was telling me that even in this tragedy, there was glory. It was we, who had taught the Americans. We had given knowledge to the dominating west. To the west that usurps for itself the role of the provider. But I then realized that Jalal, the poultry farmer, was only trying to link what had happened in -- to the wider world. 

Abu Ghraib was a name that people all over recognized. The torture practiced there had attracted universal condemnation. Could -- also please get its fair share of outrage, if not justice. I'm telling you this here, at the beginning, because this is a book about how ordinary men and women, whose lives are entangled in the war on terror, tells stories about themselves and their place in the world. You can see that these stories, whether as acts of fancy, or as pictures of grim reality, bring together different parts of our divided world. Of course, any writer knows that a story might begin at one place and end through an extraordinary, unexpected turn, end up somewhere else entirely. Abu Jalal was undeniably a minor --, spinning a striking tale that tied his village to a distant prison where a people and arguably of faith, were being treated as the enemy to be broken and humiliated. I think of him as a humble participant in the struggle over the meaning of September 11, and its global aftermath. Every time we watch the news these days, we are reminded that an authoritative influential story told about the reasons behind what occurred on a Tuesday morning in September has resulted in an array of far-reaching and devastating consequences. The disaster in Iraq is perhaps the most visible effect of the powerful story that began to be told soon after the attacks. 

But the war on terror has produced an enemy that is at once more singular and shadowy. This war attests to the arrival of a murkier world, where not only morality, but also identity gets blurred. Even those who are in possession of the facts employ elaborate ruses to sabotage the search for truth. Here is how Donald Rumsfeld offered in his smirking, didactic way, the map of the new world. I quote. "As we know, there are no knowns. We also know that there are no unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know." The individual vanishes in a dark place of secrets. Oh, we watch him disappear on the brazen stage of propaganda. 

The details that make up the individual, even when the said individual has been convicted of the crimes of terror he has committed, or he had hoped to commit, is the only lifeline we sometimes have to any firm reality. I'm going to read four more paragraphs. Is that okay, Rob? So this individual, the details, what are those details? And I just want to offer that. A little story about something that overlaps with Moustafa's book. He speaks to these Arab men who were friends of an individual, a Pakistani youth, who got arrested for conspiring to bomb the subway in New York City. And I just want to read a little section. The informant, who was Egyptian, says that someone upstate has been very receptive to a plan to sabotage and bomb the subway. And this character that I interviewed, his mother, and all that... 

He says, "Hmm? Tell him that we're very careful about people's lives. Have you told him this?" And the informant, --, says, "We have spoken of many things." So the kid says, "I don't want to be the one who drops it and have people die." So the informant says, "No, no, he agrees. He agrees about lots of things, because that's the principle, you know, no suiciding, no killing." So the guy says, the kid says, "No killing. Only economy problems. I'm going to work as a planner." 

And the informant says, "Are you okay with it?" And the kid says, "I have to, you know, ask my mother's permission. Every single thing matters." And the informant says, "Okay, here's the point. Are you willing to do Jihad?" And the kid says, "I will work with these brothers as a planner, or whatever, but dropping the bomb, I'm not sure. I have to think about it. Give me some time to feel comfortable with it." And the informant says, "So what's your part? Your part is out?" 

And they guy says, "With the 34th thing?" And the guy says, "Yeah, 34th." And the kid says, "I see you started smoking again. You have to control yourself. It's not good for your health. Plus, you have a daughter." And the informant says, "No, no, no. It's under control. I'm playing with cigarettes. I was a heavy smoker, and I don't smoke now. 

I'm totally under control with cigarettes." And the guy says, "It can hurt your liver, right, cirrhosis, the nicotine?" And the informant says, "Smoking has nothing to do with the liver." And the kid says, "But you cannot let that thing control you." And the guy says, "Smoking is not good. But did I say that smoking is good?" And the kid says, "It hurts the lungs." And the guy says, "But I don't inhale the smoke." And this kid, I'm reading from the evidence that was presented to the court, got 30 years, you know. They arrested him the day after he said he had to ask his mother. 

So those are the individual stories that I think I've tried to tell. And so has our man here. Thank you so much. 
(applause)