Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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It seems we have reached the stage where we need to listen to the wisdom of young people, and when I say "we" I mean octogenarians like myself who still lumber to produce reasonable opinions. I am a great believer in the youth of this country: in spite of all retograde and fundamentalist trends, I know that young people are the saving grace of Egypt.

These thoughts were confirmed when I finished reading a book by Ibrahim Saleh, a young, indeed remarkably young, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American University in Cairo. This, Saleh's third book, is entitled Prior to the Eruption of the Grapes of Wrath in the Middle East. It is published in both Arabic and English, and hence addresses different readerships.

Having finished the book, I do not know how to classify it. Reviewers and literary critics like myself always like to assign any book a category. But this book is hard to categorise since it raises a whole range of issues and recounts lots of anecdotes in the process -- Middle East problems, the clash of civilisations thesis and video conferencing between American University in Cairo students and their counterparts in other American universities, among others.

So what is this book about? Well, it is about everything. The author comes across as anything but parochial, concerned as he is with global issues such as the notions of war and peace, tolerance and intolerance, and love and hate. He handles all these broad issues with sound scholarship, and ample references to Egyptian, European and American writers.

Naturally, the Middle East is the core of the book, and all other issues are discussed in terms of the bearing they have on the region. The author describes the importance of the region as "a major junction for transportation routes and a passageway for military expeditions", given that it governs passage through the Suez Canal, Gibraltar and the Gulf. Besides, the region has offered investment opportunities for the West, as well as being an enormous source of raw material and a great outlet for marketing western products.

Using the "grapes of wrath" metaphor, the author goes on to explain what he calls "wrath primers" -- the Arab-Israeli conflict which he describes as "an extension of the series of imperialistic practices that accompanied the first industrial revolution".

We are then given a survey of the rise and growth of Zionism, as well as Jewish history starting from the "servitude in Egypt", the exodus, and resettlement in Canaan and the later development of the myth of the "promised land".

Saleh then moves on to the invasion of Iraq which, in his opinion, was "the beginning of a new phase of war that America... called 'war on terrorism'". The invasion took place under the banner of installing democracy, but the result is a tragedy, one that "is going on without even achieving one step towards attaining real peace."

The author then goes on to explain that the "clash of civilisations" is simply a new name for quite an ancient tendency, namely the tribal conception of who is an insider and who is an outsider. Differences between civilisations should never be a source of dissension if mutual respect and appreciation of the multiplicity and freedom of different parties prevails.

In spite of its small size (only 170 pages), the book manages to pack in several volumes' worth of information and opinions. Again, it is surprising how much work such a young scholar has put into this book. Finally, I must note that the book, having been published quite a while before the war on Lebanon, is quite prophetic. The grapes of wrath against which the author warms have, in effect, arrived.