I have a BEEF with the ridiculous voting thing that 3QD has – one can only vote for one post (wha?!?). But I want you all to go vote for one of Lapata’s amazing three post (I will be voting for the Stay at-Home Man).

The blogzine 3QuarksDaily Arts & Literature Prize has declared its voting season as open! Five CM posts are there for your pickings, along with 200 other amazing pieces of writing. It has been a good year, looks like.

If Lapata wins, she promises to throw a party and invite only those who voted for her. So, vote for her, then email her your addresses.

Love,
S

P.S. Lapata Sez:

For a trip down memory lane, here are the posts up for nomination:

1. Bookslut: In Search of Spiraling Time (by Lapata)
2. CM: I am Bhains (by Sepoy)
3. CM: Oscar, Wow! (by Lapata)
4. CM: Peccavistan (by Sepoy)
5. CM: The Stay-at-Home Man (by Lapata)

Ki Muhammad se wafa tu nay to hum teray hain/ Yeh Jahan chiz hay kiya, Loh o Qalam teray hain

Be faithful to Muhammad and I am yours/ This world is nothing, the Tablet and Pen are yours.

I have a short piece in The Caravan India: Forfeiting the Future: Pakistan’s crisis can’t simply be explained by religion.

Do let me know, here.

Ralph Luker, at Cliopatria, announces the Annual Cliopatria Awards in the History blogosphere. Guess who won a 2010!

Best Writer: Lapata @ Chapati Mystery

Lapata’s essays are not so much written as they are assembled, careful collages of visuals, text, and quotations always cunningly integrated into architectural unities. Her style always serves her subject: in pieces like “The Reluctant Feudalist,” the contrapuntal conversation she stages between writers and readers, past and present, catches so much more of what is ambiguous or fragmentary about her subject that a more didactic or polemic style would ever allow. In “The Stay-at-Home Man,” her narrative pursuit of the elusive and mystifying Naiyer Masud is just as appropriately elusive as the author himself. It is the mark of a superb writer that calling her a south-Asian historian, literary critic, visual artist, or narrative non-fiction writer doesn’t seem to quite catch the totality. It’s the particular way she combines all at once — with never a comma or full-stop out of place, never a tiresome clause — that makes her writing shine.

We are so very, very proud.

New readers simply click here and keep on clicking.

I have a review of Robert D. Kaplan’s new tome Monsoon up at The National UAE: Recall America’s imperial past, understand its present.

The policy readers of this book will find it sober reading. The empire, which does listen to Robert Kaplan, will surely invite him to speak to groups with shiny brass and shinier domes. The historians reading this book will have less cause to be charitable. The now-standard collapse of lived history from “Alexander the Great” to “us” would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.

Again and again, centuries disappear from Kaplan’s narrative as routinely elaborated customs and practices are relegated to either geographic determinism or something called “Desert Islam”. Those inhabitants of the climes in which Kaplan locates his narrative will have more than ample reason to be offended by his caricatures or by his invocations to the healing power of violence – be it Robert Clive or Sultan Qaboos. In this, however, Kaplan is neither unique nor exemplary in a pantheon of great American commentators which stretches from Thomas L Friedman to Fareed Zakaria.

Go Read and come back and tell me how you like it.

Gentle Readers,

I am sorry, but I have been drowning in writing deadlines, some of which will trickle into consciousness here over the next year or so and I will delightfully point to this period of non-activity (seeming). In the meantime, some announcements:

A. I AM GOING TO CAIRO!!!. I will be there from Dec 4 thru Dec 16th – hanging out at the AUC – giving a public talk on Monday, the 14th at the Oriental Hall (!!). Everyone I know in Cairo must meet up. Use the comments below or email me etc.

1. Historian Vinay Lal (am a big fan!) has a book coming out this month that I really want (HINT to my Indian conspirators!), Deewaar: The Footpath, the City and the Angry Young Man. He has linked to it, and given us a taste of it, here.

2. Vinay Lal was recently in Berlin for a conference called “What’s Next: Postcolonialism?” or “Who got Next? Postcolonialism” or “Postcolonialism: What’s next?”. I am not entirely sure how that peach was sliced. The good news is that it has prompted Lal to embark on a (already) substantial engagement with postcolonial thought in a series, The Politics of Culture and Knowledge after Postcolonialism: Nine Theses (and a Prologue). You can read Thesis One and Two. Please await the remaindering or start the discussion now! Preferably the now!

3. There are some guest posts in the pipeline – they will come next week.

4. As Aaron puts it, “the internet decid[ed] to stage woodstock at my blog“. Go read. Seriously.

To the many “Pakistan” related things clamoring for your desensitized attention, may I add a couple more?

I. Artist and film-maker Sophiya Pandeya travels to Hingal, Baluchistan and visits “Nani Mandir” of Hinglaj Mata. This darshan tale is touching, illuminating and worthy of your time. You can watch it below. You can also see a picture gallery from KO of a trip to the same Park.

II. Sasti-Masti is a short made by director Ahmer Naqvi aka Karachikhatmal. A homage to Lollywood, to Lahore, to Ji-woon Kim’s Bittersweet Life, it works wonderfully on many registers – not the least being the tongue-in-cheek one.

J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 1979.

Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in this wistful vision. I am not unaware of what such daydreams signify, dreams of becoming an unthinking savage, of taking the cold road back to the capital, of groping my way out to the ruins in the desert, of returning to the confinement of my cell, of seeking out the barbarians and offering myself to them to use as they wish. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. And everyone, I know, in that walled town sinking now into darkness (I hear the two thin trumpet calls that announce the closing of the gates) is similarly preoccupied. Everyone but the children! The children never doubt that the great old trees in whose shade they play will stand forever, that one day they will grow to be strong like their fathers, fertile like their mothers, that they will live and prosper and raise their own children and grow old in the place where they were born. What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one: I, wading in the ooze, am no less infected with it than the faithful Colonel Joll as he tracks the enemies of Empire through the boundless desert, sword unsheathed to cut down barbarian after barbarian until at last he finds and slays the one whose destiny it should be (or if not he then his son’s or unborn grandson’s) to climb the bronze gateway to the Summer Palace and topple the globe surmounted by the tiger rampant that symbolizes eternal dominion, while his comrades below cheer and fire their muskets in the air.

Both this book and Foe (1986) are worth your time.

“Waiting for the Barbarians” by Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933) , translated by Robert Pinsky:

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying their elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
There are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without the barbarians?
These people were a kind of solution.

Just wanted to note here that I taped a show with Worldview last week on Zaid Hamid. Apparently it was posted on the official Syed Zaid Hamid facebook group which generated a lot of comments. Some of the wise ones went over to the CPR site as well, and left comments. I gathered some choice ones. Now you can enjoy too:

Usman // Sunday, July 25, 2010 @ 12:56 PM

Mr. Manan and respected Host, you can’t even begin to perceive that being a patriotic Pakistani directly/indirectly links to the Islamic belief. Zaid Hamid’s followers are the school/college/university students that aren’t ignorant and have their own way of looking at things. You can not analyze current affairs happening in Pakistan while sitting out. Zionist Brahman Idiology is simply targeting the minorities in India which include and isn’t limited to Muslims. Manan Sahab, you better be prepared next time before being a guest on a show as a “historian”. No illusions being drawn by Zaid Hamid.. you are just ignorant and are unable to view events on a larger scale. Our GOAL is the Re-establishment of Khilafah. Ahmadis have been declared non-Muslim by the fiqah and aren’t even allowed to enter Mecca.
–

u illiterate pathetic so called Pakistani historian. Im sure u wouldnt even know when did the Pakistan movement started

–
this fake manan ahmed is infact india hindo, only acting as pakistani. chicago radio you should be ashmed of yourself.

–
Mr. Mannan is a bad bad historian & even a worse “Analyst” of situation on ground in Pakistan.

I am still -swamped- but thought I’d let y’all know of this first (hesitant) piece I wrote about Berlin and which appeared in Express Tribune‘s Sunday Magazine this past weekend. The print layout is nicer so here it is embedded.

I will update this with other hospitalities in the war zone as I encounter more data points. Others please contribute.

Date 2007-02-07 00:00:00

Following the formal discussion, they set a table of finger foods and chi [sic]. We continued to talk discussing more personal histories and the two officers were very open and candid. We took a group photo (they had taken several of us already while we were sitting there) and then left the way we came.

Date 2007-02-08 15:21:00

The Pakmil were very hospitable, they were on time at the border and transported the party to Chaman Fort without event. At the fort they provided light refreshment with snacks and curry lunch with music post meeting.

Date 2007-04-16 10:15:00

Atmospherics: (reception of HCA, reactions to ANSF and Coalition forces, etc): All villagers/elders were extremely pleased with the products that we gave to them along. Only the elder didnt want his village taking the products. He personally blamed George Bush for his AK-47 being taken from him. He doesnt want us to give stuff to his village because of fear from the enemy punishing him. He did say he would take money though. Only about 6 kids came out to get stuff. We gave some stuff for the women of the village too.

I shall be in London next two days. Come say hi.

Birth of Venus

*The punishment is called “Murgha bana na” (to make one into a rooster). One is to grab the ears from behind the legs (not like this). Uncomfortable! And quite popular in schools across South Asia as well as in other settings. The gentleman above, holding the Murgha pose, was washing his rickshaw in the surf as the cyclone Phet approached and people were ordered away from the beaches. This is the best photo, representing a bygone age, that I have seen. A policeman with a lathi and not a klashnikov. Sigh.

Maya Yazigi, “Defense and Validation in Shi’i and Sunni Tradition: The Case of Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr” Studia Islamica, No. 98/99 (2004), pp. 49-70

One further factor needs to be taken into account. The horrific death that Muhammad b. Abi Bakr met in Egypt at the hands of Mu’āwiya’s men made him a perfect exemplar of the atrocities associated with civil war in both traditions. The precise circumstances of his death are unclear. Some reports suggest that he died in combat. The more general belief, however, is that he was killed outside the main fray, then stuffed into the carcass of a jackass and burnt, or even – according to one report – burnt alive inside the carcass. Other reports suggest that he was decapitated before being burnt and that his head was sent for display at the court of Mu’āwiya. Whatever its basis in reality, this richly symbolic gesture became an important topos in Islamic historiography. It allowed Muhammad’s death to be remembered in a realm apart, that of firsts (or awā’il): the same accounts that report the despatch of his head to Mu’āwiya also make this the first head to be so transported and paraded in Islam.

Since moving to Berlin, I haven’t watched any Fox or gone to political websites or kept up with all that stuff. Guido keeps me up. Check this, though. Huma Imtiaz and Rahma are twittering across Sindh/Punjab and beyond (follow them here and here) and snapped this at a bazaar in Multan.

Obama's Pakistani National I.D. Card

The reason it makes it a worthy induction into the Yes! series is that the entry for “Distinguishing Marks” reads Aasteen ka Sanp – literally the snake which lives in one’s sleeve. An idiomatic phrase, this is a contraction of Aasteen mein Sanp palna – to nurture snakes in one’s sleeve – meaning to keep one’s enemies at really close quarters. As Mushafi (1748-1824) said, Daytah hai apnay dil mein us zulf ko jo jahGah/Goya kay Aasteen mein wo sanp palta hai – Whoever gives that (curling, maybe) Lock (of hair) a place in his/her heart; It is as if he/she grows a snake in his/her sleeve. Wow, that is the least effort I have ever made in a translation.

So, Obama then, in Multan, is a snake, hiding in someone’s sleeve (Zardari?). Brilliant.

Previously on Yes! I, II, III, IV, V,VI, VII, VIII, IX, X.

3 QUARKS DAILY PRIZE IN ARTS & LITERATURE:

We are now going to do the Arts and Literature Prizes, and here’s how it will work: we will soon begin accepting nominations for this prize. After the nominating period is over, there will be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this period, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the four main daily editors of 3 Quarks Daily (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and Azra Raza) will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add up to three wildcard entries of their own choosing. The three winners will be chosen from these by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, who, we are extremely pleased, has agreed to be the final judge.

Go, nominate.

Hasan demands that this headline exist somewhere, and so it does. Here is a statistical analysis of over 210 million facebook accounts which one can query by country etc. Pakistan’s lists of group likes are quite instructive: Vin Diesel, for example, beats out the Prophet Muhammad. “I really hate slow computers” tells you something more.

Pakistan’s aggregated Likes contain nothing along “national” lines. Contrasted, with Afghanistan, which has “Afghanistan”, “Pushto”, “Pushtuns”, and local figures like Sardar Muhammad and Ahmad Zahir etc. India has the iconic national hero Zoozoo. Also, look at the relationships between Pakistan and US and further notice the lack between Pakistan/Bangladesh/India/Afghanistan. Bangladesh is the only country with a noticeable graph towards India.

And we are done.

My friend Atiya Khan has a piece in The Platypus Review, The poverty of Pakistan’s politics (PPP), in which she takes me and Faisal Devji (finally, together!) to task for making “concessions to the Right” by not understanding, or not conceptualizing, or not realizing the “crypto-fascism” of the Taliban. This, accordingly, corresponds to the death of the Left in Pakistan since 1970.

Since her piece is in print, I will respond in print as well – either by sending in a letter or printing up flyers for Hyde Park. In the meanwhile, every one should go read her critique and reach their own conclusions (and discuss, of course).

Who among us hasn’t dreamed of unearthing rare historical treasures in old cast-aside trunks? Ok, maybe you haven’t but I stay up all night dreaming such scenarios.

Jeremy Kahn, Kulwant Roy: Indian history in a yellow crate of negatives, NYT, Tuesday, June 17, 2008.

Also, some of the photos are on Outlook India. I especially loved this one, with the caption:

[Tons Of Joy: Wrestling champ ‘Daula’ pins down his English adversary ‘Clark’, to the patent dismay of the referee, at a fundraiser for the Lahore Warplanes Fund, the Police Spitfire Fund and the Minto Park Fund, in Lahore in the late 1930s]

[h/t qalandar and sundeep]

A german nursery rhyme, that I just found. I need coffee, desperately.

C-a-f-f-e-e / C-o-f-f-e-e
C-a-f-f-e-e / C-o-f-f-e-e
trink nicht so viel Caffee! / Don’t drink so much coffee
nicht für Kinder ist der Türkentrank / Not for children is this Turkish drink
schwächt die Nerven / Weakens your nerves
macht dich blaß lassen und krank / makes you pale and sick
Sei doch kein Muselmann / Don’t be a Muslim
der das nicht lassen kann! / who cannot leave it

– Carl Gottlieb Hering?

Maybe I get this?