Spiritual Envy in Harar

Here is one of my first posts at my Camera Lucida blog (2005-2013). It was on Harar:

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Friday September 30, 2005                                                                                                              Writers in Harar 

Arthur Rimbaud has his own house/museum in the city of Harar. Perhaps it is in the name of literary tradition that Canadian novelist Camilla Gibb has made a special ode to this walled, Southern Islamic city in Ethiopia in her new book "Sweetness in the Belly".

It is always curious why writers pay such high praises to this city. Although Rimbaud initially said he was living in boredom, he stayed in Harar on-and-off for ten years.

Sir Richard Burton preferred to investigate Harar in his "First Footsteps in East Africa" rather than travel to the northern Christian Highlands of the Amhara people. And even Evelyn Waugh couldn’t see the ancient strength of this Christian civilization, and in his journalistic travelogues "Waugh in Abyssinia" and "Remote People" at times appeared much more complimentary toward the Southern Harare/Somali Muslims. His novel "Scoop", based on his journalistic experience of the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, is centered around the fictional ‘East African’ country of…Ishmaelia. This is all the more surprising in light of Waugh’s recent conversion to Catholicism. But it could just be that he was temporarily side-tracked by the Catholic (yet fascist) Italians. And such a basic Christianity may have been too much to handle.

I suspect that it is mostly atheist/pantheist/agnostic writers who are lured into the facile spirituality (sensuality) of places like Harar. As always with exotic works, the subject rings of the writer/traveler himself, in his spiritual (or similar) quest to find some meaning in his life. Usually, the farther away from home, the better.

The disciplined, ancient and exclusive Christianity of the highlander Amhara is too difficult and too demanding, and too close to home. I think this Biblical fear drives these writers away. It is easier to wallow in the accessible sensuality of a Southern Muslim city, in search of a generalized spirituality.

The Islam of Harar may be beguiling, and easier to enter. But it is far less forgiving and far less compassionate than the Christianity of the austere Highlanders.

From a TVOntario interview of Camilla Gibb, who says that after the events of 9/11, she changed the direction of her novel to take on a lighter, gentler Islam, making her an (atheist) Islam apologist: 

When the capacity for some kind of spiritual life is taken from you, and not even fostered, you can never reclaim it, or at least not in any kind of conventional way... 

It is curious that a devout atheist should end up writing a book...that has so much to do with spirituality, but I think it is born of a place of envy.

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Post on Gibb and her background

NB (2021): I cannot find the source of the TVOntario quote above, but I will still leave it up, and update any new finds.

Addendum (2021): Here is a drawing by Vincent Smith (whose drawing of Rimbaud's house in Harar is here).

It is fascinating that he titles this image "Ethiopian Women Wearing Traditional Shama"

Shama is the general term used for the traditional Amhara dress, which consists of finely woven cotton material made into dress and shawl. There is NO mistaking shama.

What we have here is "traditional Harari women" and the requisitory veil that Muslim women wear.

Facts become irrelevant (or not necessary) for the lazy, and agenda-prone writer/photographer/traveler.

And, Vincent Smith is a "civil rights" era Black American, so he clearly brings his own agenda with him. 

And the agenda is as I wrote above: the beguiling spirituality of Harar for the atheist traveler.

Also, the spiritually confident, strict, Orthodox Christian Amhara would have none of this facile traveler, and make demands on him that he wouldn't be able to meet.

More posts on Ethiopian dress:

- The Diamond Receptacle

Faya Dayi - My comment - More Reivews and Critique - on Beshir's Film - At Film Comment

Posted at Film Comment:

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Dear Mr. Taylor

You set the tone of your review of Faya Dayi with this phrase, in the first paragraph:

"In cahoots with the editing and sound design, the heavy monochromatic images cloak Ethiopia

in a hazy, dreamlike aura that's foundational to the film's tone and point of view."

And in the following paragraph, you ask:

"Does the gorgeousness of the imagery actually serve the film, or is it too loaded down to carry its

 own weight? How much movie truly lies underneath all this black and silver? Well..."

I believe you are asking about form and content, the perennial choice that all artists must make with their work,

and which they must decide takes precedence, or whether to weigh them both equally.

Beshir chose form over content. Or more precisely, she chose to camouflage content with form.

The "hazy, dreamlike aura" hides this content, which you adroitly describe: "There isn't much structure

connecting one scene or testimony of Faya Dayi to the next..." And "...Beshir's style doesn't really facilitate the

sort of portraiture she's aiming for..."

Beshir uses khat as a subject, a protagonist, that leads and guides the direction of the film, but whose "haze"

hides the truth of these Oromo youth. For example, the young man who wants to go to Egypt has no game plan,

and khat becomes his crutch, his "co-actor," as the drug he takes to avoid the reality, the content, of his life.

And Beshir also uses this khat as a stylistic, cinematic metaphor, to hide from us, the viewers, the content and

reality behind her film. She films as though she herself is under the chewable spell of this drug, and it is likely

that she took khat as part of her filming process.

Khat causes devastation, but it also produces the spiritual Sufi high, and it provided her (literally, possibly, but

certainly cinematically) the form with which she can shoot and produce this film, whose main protagonist, as

I said earlier is khat, but perhaps khat's merkhanna might be more precise.

She cannot full-on discuss the devastation that the khat crop produces for this Harari-Oromo Ethiopians,

since khat is after all part of the merkhanna, the spiritual high, that is sought after by the regional Sufi-Harari

Muslims. This film should have centred directly on this agricultural devastation, rather than weave through

"spirituality" and mekhanna, through khat.

Khat thus becomes the distinguishing object, the"Sufiness," and the merkhanna upon which this film rest

it laurels.

But what is Beshir hiding, what is she camouflaging?

Of course, more directly, it it the devastating, life-destroying drug that has become the life of these

Harari-Oromo youth.

But Beshir is also projecting a political angle, and a strong one. The Harari-Oromo youth,

through oppression, governmental neglect, and poverty, are forced to give up other cash crops like coffee

in order to grow this substance for their livelihood, and their energy-inducing chanting calls

(mimicking religious chants) gives them the rhythmic, and spell-binding, strength to harvest their currency.

And of course, through the haze of her cinematography, it is not clear which government, which export route,

 and what kind of neglect.

Once Beshir starts to clearly answer, or present, these issues, then her khat thesis of the oppressed, neglected,

and devastated Oromo youth falls apart.

Beshir is talking about the governments previous to this one, whose current leader is Abiy Ahmed Ali,

a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize winner, whose father is Oromo-Muslim (and mother an Orthodox Christian Amhara -

and he himself grew up a Christian, and married an Amhara Christian wife), and who was born in the Jimma

region of the Oromo province.

Previous to PM Abiy Amhed Ali, Ethiopia was run by two successive, vicious, Marxist governments.

The first was installed after massacres of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian, of all ethnicities, as the

Emperor Haile Selassie, the emperor who stood his ground against fascist Mussolini's invasion, was deposed

in the early 1970s. Decades of rule under Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Communist head of state of Ethiopia

until he was removed by another group of hard-core Marxists in 1991. This second group also spared

no lives to further their totalitarian regime.

PM Abiy was a young man when he became an officer and joined forces to oust this second regime.

He eventually went on to become a re-elected leader of Ethiopia (Ethiopian elections were completed

just last year).

During both these eras of Communist rule, through manufactured famines, mass executions, perpetual states

of emergency, and innumerable non-trial arrests, Ethiopians still endured. But, these totalitarians saved no

person, had mercy on no-one. Oromo, Amhara, Tigray, and a host of smaller ethnic groups received the same

harsh treatment under the self-installed "judicial" system of these post-Haile Selassie, and pre-Abiy Ahmed,

leaders.

This is the back story Beshir's camera cannot tell you, which Beshir will not tell you.

She theretofore picks up a pet project - khat - which she remembers her grandmother harvesting in her garden

as she practiced her Sufi incantations - and projects it into the lives of these Oromo youth, upon whose poverty,

and whose backs, she builds her cinematographically hazy images, from her smart, Brooklyn apartment,

gathering monies and grants from a host of "sympathetic" agencies, and screening her films in

art-house film festivals, who profess support for oppressed peoples of the world, in the pop-corn outfitted

theatres, in air-conditions auditoriums.

And, here is, I believe, her end goal. Her film, and her picking at these sores and frustrations, could instigate

enough anger in her "oppressed" Oromo youth, that they may be ready to pick up whatever sticks, stones

and few gunpowder, to start their own "revolution" for "freedom." And these Western audiences would shower

their support, their concern, and their editorial opinions. Faya Dayi becomes/is a reference manual.

Beshir is evasively active in numerous Oromo liberation groups - through Facebook, Twitter, and through her

meetings/screenings of her film Faya Dayi, and other films she's done to date, namely one titled Hariat on the

hyena in Harar, in the US and now in Canada. She will never openly present this, since there would be too much

negative reaction, especially from her funders, and especially from her viewing public.

Her film gives her some validity in the eyes of those who publicly pronounce this liberation movement, and acts

as a documented reference for future activities, and actions. They can cut through the form in Faya Dayi, andget at its content.

One other thing Beshir won't dwell upon is her use of "Ethiopian" as she describes her identity. She calls

herself Mexican-Ethiopian.

She shows no love for Ethiopia, and uses that word opportunistically, as she uses those devastated youth of

Harar, to gain access into world view, and to be recognized (and noticed). Mexican-Oromo doesn't cut it.

And if she were really sincere, she would simply call herself "Oromo" and return to the land which she

left as a teen-ager, and make amends. Opening up a drug rehabilitation centre would be one way.  

And PM Abiy, through his Ethiopian First commitment, has already started khat-rehabilitation projects for

these youth. Beshir already has the place to go, where her Faya Dayi prize money might stand a chance.

I will be watching her next subversive, elusive, moves, as I suggest you do too.

I commend you for understanding the elusive nature of this documentary.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

https://artandcommentarybykidist.blogspot.com/p/ethiopias-elections-strong-and-united.html

Flutter of the Butterfly's Wings

 

 [Photo by KPA] - Blue Morpho Butterfly 

The Butterfly Conservatory, Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens, Ontario

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I am part of an email group, and have attended meetings and social gatherings with this group in New York for a number of years. We discuss mostly socio-political issues, mostly centered around the United States, and with my contribution, Canada. A few times, I have presented the Ethiopian point of view, my idea being that the Christian country has more in common with the West than with the East.

Recently, I presented a proposition that we should support the PM of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, and his efforts to build this greater Ethiopia, in the tradition of the Ethiopian emperors, up to and including the late Emperor Haile Selassie.

One member of the group would have none of this, and my earnest efforts and my individual pursuits, from my art, to my Reclaiming Beauty (and Camera Lucida) 10+ years of documentations, stories, photographs, and views.

She accused me of "narcissism"  - imagine, a supposedly honorable member of this group stooping to name-calling. She demanded to be removed from this list, and so she has been.

I wrote about Mullarkey here, about five years ago. She's a painter, and I said about her work:

Her style is stark and bleak...

I have been called worse than a narcissist! But this has only built a thick skin, and I continue with my endeavors and ideas. Who is one "email" acquaintance to dictate my ideas and my thoughts? I have never personally met this woman, who has only recently asked to be included in the group. Late to come, first to go! Good riddance.

Those intuitive and intelligent should realize that what I say makes sense. The world is now constructed in "global" terms. A small country in the north of Africa could be the butterfly wing that starts the wave of crashes around the world.

About 70 years ago, a similar event occurred, where Italian Fascists decided that they would complete their earlier entry into Ethiopia, which was met in defeat under the now celebrated Adwa Victory, and take that land as part of their late-comers colonial swoop.

They failed again, but in a different way. Ethiopia was eventually liberated, with men from all over the country taking arms to fight this enemy. But, Haile Selassie's appeal to the impotent League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) was ignored, and the world sided with war, with devastating effects of the Second World War.

Sometimes faith in your message is what you need, or to be more precise, what you are obligated to have. Other messengers have come up short, wrong, and even pernicious. I have a long history, both at Reclaiming Beauty, and at Camera Lucida, of siding with Truth.

Shame. 

Jessica Beshir's Khat-High "Obs-Doc"

 I love the way ALL reviews of Faya Dayi, Jessica Beshir's khat-high "obs doc," skirt around, carefully, culturally-sensitively, around the fact that khat is a narcotic, which induces a "pharmacological" reaction in all its users.

Here is one interesting one:

[Faya Dayi is...] an evergreen psychotropic drug....[From The Brattle - for an upcoming interview with Beshir on December 13, 2021]

Evergreen - definition 

Happy New Year - Melkam Addis Amet

 A new year for Ethiopia, for new beginnings.

Sunflowers for a New Year

[Photo By: KPA]

Art Sabotage

I have my photograph at the "Sunflower" exhibition hosted by Visual Arts Mississauga.

It is of the barn, with sunflowers, at Visual Arts Mississauga, which I titled Barn Glow with Sunflowers.

I sent the same photograph for the Art Gallery of Mississauga's "Juried" exhibition, coming up in November. The AGM's site was long in describing the event, and who the "juries" were to be. Very close to the application deadline, they produced this list:

You can see their credentials at the site, here (or by clicking on their names at the announcement page, here).

Both Asma Sultana and Asma Mahmood are "South Asians."

Here are a few details about their artistic activities, and associations.

Mahmood's Face Book page has as its header this image:

Her post on this image says this:

I contacted Bushra Mahmood, through her website (I found through google - there is no link on Asma Mahmood's post) and asked her this:

To whom it may concern:

I found this image (attached) on the web, and was wondering if it is yours. The background looks like a "sunflower halo." If so, would you have a title for it, and its context.

Of course, the "sunflower" would fit in the theme of the recent Visual Arts Mississauga exhibition, of which Asma Mahmood would be aware.

I never heard back from B. Mahmood, but I found the image's exhibition history (through image search on google) at mybindi.com, supposedly posted on September 2013, although the actual site does not display the image. 

 

So what is it?

It looks like, besides the sunflower "glow," (or a sunflower crown?) of a youngish girl slurping blood through her hand, while holding a goat (a lamb?) on the other.

After the initial horror - blood, and young animals - I realized that this is clearly a "Christian" theme of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb of God, surrounded by a halo, which Mahmood has translated into her own fetish. And hers is a kid (a goat) not the sacrificial lamb that Abraham offered to God.

Mahmood's webiste address is goatsandbacon.com, where she "builds tools for the future," but there is no posting that directly reference goats, or bacon, or this goatherd with blood on her hands and mouth surrounded by a sunflower .

Bacon is the Muslim prohibition against eating pork meat, the goat is a well-known symbol for Baphomet, and at the final judgment, God separates the sheep, who stay with him, from the goats: 

31 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne

32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

This drawing now stands as the Face Book header of Asma Mahmood, a Mississauga woman who has been given the task of judging art work that is meant to represent Mississauga's artists. 

I sent an email to the jury group for the Juried Show of Fine Arts:

I find it very interesting that you purport to be a "Mississuagan," i.e. a Canadian, organization, yet your jury is composed of two women (out of four jurors, that is 50% of the jury) who call themselves "Asma" and whose works is posted all over the internet for all to see advocating their Pakistani and Bangladeshi roots, and even presented in their own script and language.

What dies the twitter head of Asma Arshad Mahmood mean? What does that have to do with Canada? Hwo will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what she says on her twitter page?

Why is Asma Sultana's facebook page, and her webpage showing me her work mostly in an Indian language script? What is she saying? How will she "judge" my entry if I don't even understand what says about her own "art?" 

You don't even attempt to present yourselves as "multicultural" and instead you have been hijacked by Indians/Pakistani/Bangladeshi who will have their own criteria for judging and critiquing Canadian art and artists.

This is a very interesting, and important, development 

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Art and Commentary by Kidist Paulos Asrat

By the way, the other two aren't much better.

Fauste Facciponte photographs dolls, which Globe and Mail writer R. M. Vaughn describes thus in a 2011 article "Double Visions and Scary Dolls" (the excerpt is of a screen shot from a pdf file):

 

 

And here is Jay Wilson's Toothpick Mountain

And here is Asma Sultana's twitter page entry, clearly a self-portrait. But what does it say?

And the banner for the show? The background to the banner is what looks like clipped paper collage,

 

whereas it is an acrylic painting, by Elizabeth Elkin, 

who nonetheless paints still lifes and flowers with skill.

Ethiopia's Elections - A Strong and United Ethiopia

[This article was in draft form, originally written on June 24, 2021]

Prime Minister Abiy completed his promised election in Ethiopia, with more than a dozen parties. All that is left is ballot count, and he is the clear winner. 

It was extraordinary. People voted! It was not so much the "vote" but the promise that each person can have his say, and will be part of the collective, national decision. Ethiopians can have their say, is what Abiy said, and delivered. "I have a duty to chose whomever will represent me," said one, who came late after work. 

And one old lady, possibly in her seventies, said: "I came happily, I came happily to choose." And her wishes for Abiy: "May they [this is is a polite, formal, way for saying "he"] live in peace...And let Ethiopia grow, let her live, let her live for us." 

"Thanks be to God," says another women. "May God bless our country, and make it peaceful."

And one man says: "And the results after the election, and until the election results are revealed, then each one of us should protect our country with care, keeping the peace, as we wait for the results."

Each person, in the wisdom of the unsophisticated, simply says that he came because he was given the chance to decide.

But, there is also a unique intelligence of these sincere, and patient people. They have been through so much, and yet they are not bitter. They accepted to come with trust, and faith.

Of course, Abiy's promise is democracy, which, I am sure even he realizes is a symbolic promise, a promise that people can live their lives free from fear.

All those critics, naysayers, and those that put obstacles, whether physical, ideological, or simply diffusing subtly damning words, can now rethink their positions. 

I think that this is a new era for Ethiopia. There are enemies throughout. None of the media reported on this, other than a Reuters report, and BBC-Africa report, which was more vicious than reporting. "You have war and famine in Tigray" says the female Ugandan BBC-Africa reporter, who was sent to Ethiopia for the election. "There is no war, there is no famine in Tigray," tells her the clearly irritated, but patient, Abiy, who knows who these people are and what their agenda is. He waves her off after her persistence, and walks away.

Western countries, i.e. Western liberal countries, completely ignored this. There is nothing from the US or Canada. No well-wishers for Ethiopia - Biden and Trudeau are completely silent. Nothing from England or France (Macron was supposedly Abiy's "buddy" - they are the under-fifties leaders). 

I believe they want him to fail. A strong and united Ethiopia means a strong region, and who wants that? Better war and famine. 

It is fascinating for all these reasons. I think it is a historical moment. And those that wouldn't see it as such, and who put obstacles in its place over these years, shame on them.

In the Beginning

In the beginning:

Kara Walker

Savant from an Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters/AKA The Full-On Mask

2020

It is fascinating to find this image. I wasn't looking for it, but rather found Kara Walker, whom I know as the "cut-out" artists, a black American women - married, by the way to two white men, one she divorced and with whom she has a daughter - who spent her artist's career finding ways to malign white America (and America in general).

Her masked black woman is of course a metaphor for the "muzzling" that whites have done to blacks - her own radical perspective, which she hypocritically holds as she lives her life with those muzzling white men, and as she finds prestige in those very same white-built and white-organized museums, who genuflect to her otherness induced by their centuries-induced guilt for an event that took several hundred years ago, and for which, for all practical purposes - including monetary - they have redeemed themselves.

Still, the unforgiving, and money-grabbing, Walker will have none of this.

The muzzling mask is prescient. This is now happening on a global scale, but through which her own black "brothers and sisters" are suffering the most.

Full-on is what we should expect, metaphorically or not.

Clockwise from bottom left: MacArthur Fellows Ta Nehisi Coates, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jad Abumarad, Kara Walker, David C. Page, Angela Duckworth, Robert Axelrod and Junot Diaz.

[Image Source]

So. How exactly did Walker come up with this mask, an (almost) exact rendition of the mask the American, and Canadian, Sheep, are wearing? All that is left, and as we can conclude, is that the future of the mask is a la Walker. The Full-On.

Above, Kara Walker with daughter Octavia Brugel (image source) from around 2007. 

Brugel appears to be in her very early teens (she was born in 1997), 

and below Brugel with Walke in 2007.

Summer! (Still)

[Photo By: KPA]

Spring!

Spring: Magnolia Tree Flowers - Jubilee Garden, Mississauga

[Photo By: KPA]