Adventures of Isabel

I’ve been hard at work making slideshows from interviews and photo sessions Hossam and I did in Egypt, and I’m finally on the home stretch. You can follow my progress on my vimeo account

I think this video is my favorite from the project. In the West, I we’re too often taught to assume that a woman in hijab — an Arab, a Muslim, a wife and a mother — is automatically a victim, passive and oppressed. I wish we got to see more of women like Mervat, who plays an active role in agitating for her own rights and those of her colleagues. She was on the front lines of the struggle to unionize the tax collectors, sleeping on the streets during the strike, facing down government officials, and persevering despite threats against her and her family.

It’s also quite touching to see the support she gets from her husband and son.

Tags:   Egypt · multimedia · Tax CollectorsNo Comments.

I haven’t been on here much lately, for which I am truly sorry. (Work, chaos, agonizing about the future and arranging a summer position at the Jakarta Post and a research trip to Mindanao, about which more later.)

But I interrupt the silence to announce that the Egypt’s Real Estate Tax Collectors, whose story I’m working on telling in a multimedia package, handed in yesterday the paperwork necessary to formally establish their union — Egypt’s first independent trade union in half a century.

Mabrouk to the Tax Collectors.

And watch this space. The multimedia project — or at least the English-language version of it — will be completed by May 7.

Tags:   Egypt · Tax CollectorsNo Comments.

It seems like most of the people in my life have had to deal with a lot of negativity from me lately. So, to counter it, here’s a short and (thankfully) by no means comprehensive list of things that have made me smile in the last few days:

• A sesame seed bagel, strong coffee and good orange juice. Still the perfect breakfast; yet somehow the most impossible to obtain outside of the United States. (Mostly, the bagel is the issue. Just poking a hole in bread does not a bagel make, my friends.)
• A care package from a friend that included, among other things: two pounds of fancy coffee, hello kitty temporary tattoos and a travel pack of tampons. (!?!)
• The pcij’s list of “Hello Garci” ringtones from 2005. This is why I’ll always love the Philippines, no matter how crazy it makes me. How else can you feel about a society that reacts to a political scandal with a techno remix ringtone? (Tapes were leaked of President Arroyo making a very suspicious phone call to an election commissioner on the eve of her 2004 election. Evidently, the ringtones made were among the top ringtone downloads in the world. “Hello Garci” boom-chikka-boom-boom “Hello, Ma’am”)
• Being reminded that even though I usually run around like a decapitated chicken , I seem to manage to act like a professional when it counts. I needed to find a quote I was pretty sure was in an interview I did in Mindanao this summer. It was in my notebook, basically legible and properly id’ed, the audio track was noted correctly, matched my handwritten notes, and has pretty decent sound quality.

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Tags:   Berkeley · homeNo Comments.

In the latest twist of the Subic Bay Rape case, “Nicole,” the (pseudonym of the) Filipina whose accusation led to US Marine Daniel Smith’s rape conviction, has recanted her testimony and relocated to the United States.

Nicole has been through three years of absolute hell — from the incident itself, to the trial, the media circus, and vicious attacks on her character from all sides — and I don’t think I have any right to comment on her decision to recant. The only thing I can say is, ‘of course.’

Of course it would end this way.

The Philippine Supreme Court has ruled that Smith must be returned to Philippine custody. The U.S. has steadfastly refused to comply. The Visiting Forces Agreement is being seriously challenged, with both sides of the debate marshaling up in force.

Both the US and the Philippine governments desperately need a way for this case to disappear without having to publicly back down. And then there’s this one woman, who just wants to live the rest of her life in peace (preferably in the U.S.) who has the power to make it all go away…

Tags:   Philippines · Subic Bay Rape Case · VFANo Comments.

I turn 27 today – old enough that birthdays not divisible by five don’t seem particularly significant. Still, it’s always good punctuation to the year. In fact, whenever I’m confused by the chronology of my own life, I tend to try to orient myself by birthday. Like, “Okay, that was just after I left Mostar, which was where I was heading on my 21st birthday, so I guess it must’ve been in 2003.”

Looking back over the last 10 birthdays, in fact, is quite a good series of snapshots in my life.

17 – It was during very last weeks before I moved out of my parents’ house for good. A strange, chaotic time, but also one when life felt completely open, replete with possibilities. I remember I had planned to go to Baltimore, but was trapped in by an unexpected snowstorm.

18 – Flagstaff, Arizona. A birthday party that more or less happened without me. I had been living out on the Navajo reservation, doing support work for traditional elders fighting forced relocation off their ancestral lands. Or, to put it in less glamorous terms, getting up at sunset, cooking breakfast on a woodstove, feeding animals and shoveling goat shit all day, then passing out at sundown. I had the chance for a ride into town on my birthday, and jumped at the opportunity (Electricity! Hot shower! Pay phones! Internet!). I split the cost of a hotel room with friends, and got enthusiastic about having a little birthday gathering. Unfortunately, as soon as the sun started to go down, so did my eyelids. My friend Nettle gave me a massage for my birthday present, then let me slip into blissful sleep while everyone else tried to have a very quiet party.
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I know that what I really need is a nice vacation, a week off to relax, get enough sleep and rest, and get caught up on my backlog of unfinished projects. (See below.)

But airfares are so low right now I’m more than a little tempted to grab my camera, throw a few changes of clothes into a backpack, head to the airport and wind up somewhere completely unexpected.

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Grad school insanity (in my case) and general Egyptian turmoil (in Hossam’s) have kept us from making much progress on the Tax Collectors’ strike project.  My spring break is coming up, though, so there’s reason to hope it’ll be finished by the end of the month.

In the meantime, a few more slideshows are subtitled and up on vimeo.

Strike leader Kamal Abu Eita, a long-time activist, explains how his record as a student activist kept him from his planned career, and how he has kept his activism alive while working as a tax collector:

Kamal Abu Eita explains that unlike previous strikes in Egypt, which were confined to a single workplace, the tax collectors’ strike drew workers from offices all across Egypt:

This short clip illustrates unity between Muslim and Coptic Christian strikers. The recent wave of labor activism in Egypt has been marked by cooperation between Muslims and Copts, belying the popular myth of irresolvable communal conflict:

Abdel Qader Nada on life on the picket line:

I’m hoping to work next on interviews with Mervat Qasim Helal Mohammed, one of the many women instrumental in planning and conducting the strike. Not only is she one hell of a character, but I think stories like hers help counter the media trope of “veiled Muslim woman as passive victim.”

related: Hossam posts the slideshows here

Tags:   Complaining about schoolwork · Egypt · multimedia · Tax CollectorsNo Comments.

It’s always  a little sobering to hear about bombs going off in places I’ve recently been.

Khan al Khalili, January 2009.

Al Hussein Mosque

Al-Azhar area

It’s interesting, though, that because I subscribe to the Jaiku feeds of several Cairo-based journalists and bloggers, by the time I woke up this morning I had more detailed and complete news sitting in my cellphone inbox than was available through the mainstream media.

Tags:   bombing · Cairo · Egypt · PhotosNo Comments.

On February 11, the Philippine Supreme court ruled Daniel Smith, the US Marine convicted in the Subic Bay Rape Case must be handed back over to Philippine Authorities, providing the latest twist in a high-profile case that has dragged on for two and a half years.  The US Embassy, which has maintained custody of Daniel Smith, has so far refused to obey the ruling.

While I would be the last person to argue that the justice system in the Philippines is fair, or that  prisons there are fit for any human beings, no matter how reprehensible their crimes, I still find the United States’ refusal to hand him over to local authorities indefensable.  The American Embassy has happily turned a blind eye to hundreds of political killings and thousands of cases of torture, illegal arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of activists, Islamists, communists and other “enemies of the Philippine state.”  As long as the US continues backing the Arroyo government, it has zero moral authority to shield one of its citizens who has been tried and convicted in local courts.

Below is an old article of mine, updated and lightly rewritten to reflect current events:

On December 4, 2006, Philippine courts sentenced U.S. marine Daniel Smith to 40 years in prison for getting a young Filipina drunk, raping her inside a van, and tossing her half-naked onto the street. The guilty verdict was a dramatic victory for people seeking to hold American servicemen accountable for their crimes against civilian populations.

On December 29, 2006, the hopes raised by Smith’s conviction were shattered when the US Embassy removed him from Philippine custody.

Smith remains in the custody of the US Embassy in Manila while he appeals the verdict, causing widespread public outrage in the Philippines. The impulse to prevent Smith from languishing in an overcrowded, under-serviced prison while his case is resolved is understandable. But the “protect our boys” ethic that underlies it, which dictates that U.S. personnel abroad should invariably be shielded from local accountability, needs to be seriously reexamined.

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Tags:   Daniel Smith · Impunity · Philippines · rape case · Subic Bay · VFA · War on TerrorNo Comments.

Guess where, and when, the following lines were written (in literal if not literary translation):

This unredeemed people
may perhaps succumb in the struggle,
but only its corpse
can be yoked by alien tyranny.

Yankee! If you defeat us
with the powerful weight of weapons,
you will not live happily, because you are hated
even by the air of my native land.

Yankee! If my verses
survive me, their words
will echo in the centuries to come
the eternal hate of the eternal outcast.

Is it Afghanistan in 2001? Iraq 2003?
Maybe Vietnam in 1965?

Try the Philippines, 1899 — America’s very first colonial adventure. (Probably not much of a surprise, actually, to anyone who pays any attention to what I normally post here.)

I’m sad to report that the US did not leave the Philippines until 1946 (and even then, not really), and that colonial officials did rather well for themselves. And I’m not sure Cecilio Apostol, the nationalist poet who wrote “Al Yankee,” would be comforted to know that his words do seem to have been echoed, again and again, for more than a century, as the march of U.S. imperialism spread across the globe. [Read more →]

Tags:   Al Yankee · Cecilio Apostol · colonialism · imperialism · Philippines · poetry · To the Yankee1 Comment