Bridges over troubled waters
Gamal El-Shaer* reflects on the highs and lows of the US-Arab Economic Forum hosted in America's Motor City earlier this month
A hyperactive boy is bothering his father with constant noise and interruption. To keep him busy, the father hands the child a large jigsaw puzzle map of the world and asks him to put it back together, thinking he bought himself hours of respite. A half hour later, the boy shows up with the map in one piece. Puzzled, the father asks him how he did it so fast. "On the back of the torn map, there was a picture of a man. I put that together, and the map was whole again," says the boy. Of course. "If the man is whole, the world is whole," goes an old saying.
The Arab world is in no shortage of whole men. I was recently in Detroit, Michigan, to attend the US-Arab Economic Forum, an occasion that brought together dozens of our best minds, some living in America and some arriving from abroad. So precise and inspiring were the papers presented that I was at a loss as to which I should focus on -- a perplexity reminiscent of that old line of poetry, "the deer around Kharash were so many, that Kharash knew not which to hunt."
The Arab League initiative aimed to break through the barrier of pro-Israeli bias in America, and build bridges with cultural, economic, and political US elites. Timely too, for we have yet to free ourselves from the cloud of self-pity that has engulfed us, from pointless martyrdom, and from the phobia of Jewish lobbies. The gathering was the brainchild of Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general who advocates a harmony between initiative, dialogue and action. We have to set our image right, Moussa insists, even through the creation of an Arab lobby -- yes, an Arab lobby -- overseas. Not so far-fetched an idea when one reflects that the industrial city of Detroit alone has half a million Arab American residents.
In the United States, there are eight million Muslims, most of whom come from Arab origins. In Latin America, there are 16 million. In Australia, a million. In Europe, 1.5 million. In all, some 40 million Arab and Muslim Arabs live overseas, a latent power with immense economic, technological, and political potential. The Detroit gathering, drawing the attention, and attendance, of the heads of the world's largest corporations, as well as top lawmakers, is testament to this under-estimated promise.
I felt the loss, however, of Edward Said in this gathering. I caught a documentary about Said, the late leading Palestinian scholar and writer, on US television. The programme reviewed his intellectual contribution and praised his objectivity. Said's approach to the Arab political scene was brilliantly level-headed. He criticised US and Israeli policy, but welcomed any positive initiative by any side of the conflict. The death of this great writer is a reminder of how much we need to conduct cultural dialogue through knowledgeable minds who know how to speak the language of the world. Can culture mend what politics has torn asunder? Cultural diplomacy can reduce misunderstanding, conflict, and tragedy. This is why it is important to keep in touch with intellectuals and public opinion in all parts of the world. Had the US marines known the first thing about Arab wedding traditions, for example that Arabs are prone to firing rounds in the air in celebration, they perhaps would not have shot at a wedding party in Iraq, turning it into a funeral.
The Arab League has an excellent cultural agenda to promote Arab cultural presence in international forums. Unfortunately, it rarely can raise the interest or money needed to implement this agenda. "One World, Two Cultures, Endless Possibilities" was the title under which the US-Arab Economic Forum was held. A great vision, but it requires an ongoing mechanism to keep it alive. We need a formalised forum, or set of forums, to keep our dialogue current with centres of opinion and decision-making in Europe and America. In Washington, I ran into a woman demonstrating in front of the White House. Frantically, she yelled at me, "the cards of the game are not here in the White House or even in Tel Aviv, where the neo- Nazis have taken hold, but in the good old house of the Arabs!" I couldn't disagree. I hoped others in Detroit had felt similarly.
Then there was the show. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived to address a dinner banquet, and generated a certain amount of self-reflection and sarcasm. "Have you noticed how many times Powell quoted President Bush?" one senior journalist asked. The US secretary of state referred to presidential instructions over a dozen times. Yet Americans and the world nonetheless criticise Arab states for their degree of dependence on their presidents.
To be fair, the land of the free has not yet totally lost its touch. Newspapers publish ads by non- governmental organisations and ordinary citizens calling for the resignation of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In Stupid White Men, Michael Moore calls for the UN to send international observers to the United States to protect it from right-wing hawks. But as a divide exists in the Arab world -- one which must be addressed, and can be addressed through efforts in cultural understanding -- let us not forget the divide that exists in America too.
In the political equivalent of a marketing pitch, Powell, back in Detroit, extolled the US- occupation of Iraq, expounded the wonderful things the Americans are doing to rebuild that country, and waxed lyrical about the bright future that awaits the Iraqis once they are democratised and, presumably, Americanised. "Fill out an application form and win an American invasion," an Arab ambassador remarked to a diplomat. If Detroit teaches us anything it is that both cultures and both histories have a lot yet to face, and to understand.
* The writer is head of the Nile Culture TV Channel.
