saudi girl

epilogue: l'agente provocateuse

2006-01-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

Yes. This poem is terminated.

The truth: "saudigirl" was a literary experiment, an instance of rhetorical transvestism, an attempt by a young saudi guy to create a female character, in blog/poetic form.

Why? Well, it's complicated. But here's a stab at my thinking at the time:

It first started when I became livid by some of the idiotic arguments that certain public men were using to justify, or make apologies for, the dearth of women's rights in Saudi Arabia. I decided to write to these men in a public fashion. Why not write as a man you ask? Well, I thought it would be more effective (for the cause) if a woman demonstrated the total absence of logic in their arguments.

So Alia, a character created for an angry email, became my Arab Amazon, fighting for her rights, and for the rights of all downtrodden Saudi women. That was the vision... the reality, well... was a bit different as you can surmise. As literary constructs do, she developed in unforeseen ways, lodging herself in a particularly autonomous zone in my mind, reading feminist literature, and acquiring knowledge on Saudi women's issues, all the while finding that she could not do anything but verbally attack that set of glaring problems immediately pertaining to women in Saudi Arabia.

But many exceedingly important issues, she noticed, were “human” issues and therefore super-sexual. They rose above gender/ethnic/national/cultural lines. This observation, along with another in which she noticed the inordinate time and energy devoted to separating people from one another led her to conclude that this need to segregate all issues into those of women and those of men was a sign of an unhealthy society: pathologically divided and unable to harness the collective talents of its members.

Not being able to operate in the real world, she became horrified by the sublime proportions of the problem. Overcome and depressed, she followed the hermetic poets under fascism into solipsistic art, music and sound -- into the warm (and universal) embrace of the insular aesthetic.

And what of those poor oppressed women? I asked, appalled at this abandonment of her raison d'etre. She quoted Bernard Crick to me: “The person who wishes not to be troubled by politics and to be left alone finds himself the unwitting ally of those to whom politics is a troublesome obstacle to their well-meant intentions to leave nothing alone.” She then packed her bags and emigrated to a Greek island, muttering on her way out of the door: “Life's too short to waste on the likes of you...”

I'm surprised it lasted so long. Even if it did continue, I really could not see it developing further than a few months given her exceedingly demanding nature. Ultimately, I no longer wanted to spend time with my exhausted heroine. I got bored with her, and she with me. She is gone.

It is, of course, for the better.

Ali K

PS: Thank you for reading/participating; apologies if this liberal interpretation of poetic license offended anyone along the way. As one of my readers said, I'll see you all on the 'other side' (-;

the end

2005-12-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

I was a heteronym.

ten questions for a listener

2005-10-22T23:33:00.000-07:00

"The purpose of this exercise is to facilitate a discovery of new meanings in sounds that are normally taken for granted.

1. Find a location - indoors or out, public or private - with an interesting array of sounds. Sit down in this location on your own and listen for 30 minutes or more.

2. When you begin listening, try to gather and give attention to all of the sounds occurring around you - no matter how familiar or mundane.

3. Try to collect and remember in your mind as many of these sounds as you can. After a few minutes, focus your concentration on just one of the sounds. Try to select a sound that you think will be frequently heard.

4. For the remainder of the listening session your concentration will be directed primarily to this one sound.

5. Once you have selected your sound, you can begin responding to the sequence of questions that follow. Devote a minimum of 90 seconds to every question... Dedicate more time to questions that relate more appropriately to your sound.

Ten Questions

1. Off the top of your head, what would you say to describe your sound? What is its most distinguishing characteristic?

2. During what time of the day or week would your normally hear your sound in this location?

3. Since you arrived in this location, how frequently have you heard your sound? Would you measure its frequency by the minute, second, or milli-second? Does its regularity follow a recognisable pattern?

4. How does your sound complement (or detract from) the other sounds in your environment?

5. What objects in your environment does your sound directly or indirectly identify? Are there objects and surfaces in your environment that your sound helps to illuminate or hide?

6. What social, geographical, or physical features of your environment could your sound symbolically represent?

7. Are you likely to encounter your sound in other environments? How identical are these environments to the one you are currently in?

8. Can your sound be associated with any memories from your past?

9. How has your sound changed since the time you first arrived?

10. Overall, what does your sound contribute to your experience of this environment? Does it have an influence on the mood or character of things around you?"

[quoted verbatim from an article by Darren Copeland in the Journal of the Communautè èlectroacoustique Canadienne]

frottage

2005-10-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

from Reaktions.com:

"Skelm is a Johannesburg based paranoiac with an unhealthy interest in electronically mangled sound. There are many reasons for this paranoia, but most have been systemically erased through a sustained scorched-earth attack on Skelm’s memory facilities. Inevitably, some formative influences, typically those associated with childhood trauma and those awful attacks on the public transport system, escaped unscathed. Plagued by these lingering fragments of mal-consciousness, and determined to erase those neurological circuits which (mis)lead the brain into constructing a simulacrum of a coherent world, when what in fact exists are random and meaningless events, objects and interactions, Skelm stumbled on the idea of using sound to induce a gap in consciousness. Fortuitously, there is a neurological precedent for this endeavour. A scotoma (darkness/ shadow) is a disconnection or hiatus in perception, or a gap in consciousness. Previously considered to be an affliction, bleeding edge theory now sees scotoma as the logical next step in biogenetic engineering- the potential to eradicate those parts of the subconscious which cause undesirable traits or behaviour. If this experiment in sound-induced scotoma works, you will have no recollection of reading this page, listening to this music, or ever having used Reaktor. However, you will live the rest of your life with a vague sense of discombobulation and an uncontrollable desire to commit frottage with strangers on buses."

violaceae

2005-10-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

"Nobody sees a flower, really – it is so small – we haven't time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."

Georgia O'Keeffe

neomemory

2005-10-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't be writing to you as you have stopped all contact with me.

But you are the 1st letter of this letter, and given that I feel separated from my reason to be, presently paranoid to the possibility of all-seeing agencies, and mad at myself for not accepting responsibility on so many fronts, I would like to ask you this: do you miss the day we met?

Perhaps it was the way you explained our attraction in terms of valence bonds, and love in terms of symmetry which you defined as “the invariance of a configuration of elements under a group of automorphic transformations”. Perhaps it was the red glow of the exit sign above the entrance to the underground Roman bath-house-turned-bar where we first danced. Perhaps it was the painful company of your absence during my reading of Balzac’s harlot high and low. Perhaps it was the memory of that night when I brought you an ashtray so you could keep me on ice until my body returned. Perhaps it was the laughter heard with you and the silent fear of what was to come. Perhaps it was the emergence of the possible end of the relationship as an idea in my mind. Perhaps it was the proximity of air-conditioned sounds to our bed. Perhaps it was your morning mood swings and temper tantrums suggesting you had a more variable body bubble than most. Perhaps it was that I liked thinking about you or liked myself thinking about you. Perhaps it was your unbearable tendency to say 'perhaps'.

You were so effortlessly intuitive - 'a simpler interface is a more perfect interface'.

And all your analytical judgements – nothing next to your smile.

understood

2005-09-21T00:41:00.000-07:00

"I can’t sleep…" he says.

He has called me "his unknown entity".

He says he wants to understand me so that he can "understand himself better through me". I suspect this is his way of saying that he does not yet understand himself sufficiently well to know what he wants. And if he does not know what he wants by now, then how can I be what he wants? Perhaps I am some temporary placeholder between states of lesser or greater self-understanding on his part - a convenient means by which he seeks to become what he wants.

Every now and then, a contradiction appears in his explicit articulation of what he wants, and when I point out the flaw, inconsistency, contradiction, he immediately agrees:

“You are absolutely right, but it's only natural that I reflect the contradictions in the ways and practices of the culture we live in. I am aware of them, but I cannot completely reject them -- to reject them openly, i.e. to announce this rejection from the rooftops, is to apparently reject the culture as a whole and risk physical alienation from those around me; to reject it privately is to remain a hypocrite, but to somehow better 'manage' my alienation, or 'contain' it, so to speak."

I don't like his explanation or his alternatives, and say:

"One way of dealing with your problem is to find common ground with similar hypocrites or conformists, find those who exhibit similar patterns of contradictory behaviour, similar asymmetries.

Another way is to try resolve these contradictions and come up with a well-formed and internally consistent belief-structure. If you do this, you can then decide to keep these ideas to yourself or expose them to the public. If you want to keep them to yourself, then you will have to resort to a kind of personal pragmatism; otherwise, you can release the generalized version into the wild and entertain criticism until the structures become resilient and strong, better able to acquire a life outside the confines of one’s head."

"Look, I really don't have time to figure this all out right now. I really have to go to bed as I've got an early appointment tomorrow..." is his response.

I can’t sleep.

muse modulated

2005-09-20T02:53:00.000-07:00

Restarting my correspondence was not easy. I had not written to her lately, at least not in the same tones that were used before.

And I had forgotten that she is made of muse -- inspiring in her articulate suffering: Woman as aesthetic catalyst -- living in a place where there is little public respect for artists, she needs to provide the fuel for her art from within.

This makes her self-sufficient, but also an intensely self-immolating person.

Sometimes she fails to meet the conditions for (as she puts it) being aesthetic, due to environment, personality shifts, or changes of the like. She writes of this loss of confidence:

"I have stopped painting because of a painful realization that my worldview is not universal or transcendent, but provisional and particular; not a product of authentic experience, but of obscurantist theorizing. I felt terrible. Although I could readily recognize genius in others, I was somehow always inadequate in my thoughts, and would hide my confusion behind the politely expansive interpretations that one affords a public 'artist'.

Yet I hesitate to call myself an artist. No doubt my categories are confused. I don't know what I am. The more knowledge I acquire, the more uncertain it makes me."

Later, much later, her confidence returns and she gains a little perspective:

"I suppose I can tell you what has preoccupied me since we last spoke. Let's see... I've started painting again. This time the medium is different.

It's an underground 'journal', meant for an audience of one. Its primary purpose is self-modulation.

Yet I am still miserable: a misery tempered by the knowledge that these sky-sought or downcast curves are largely chemical, a consequence of vitamins and cornflakes, of abstinence and exercise. i.e that my moods are controllable, and not due to the unique human condition that afflicts me and only me.

Someone, something has disconnected me from my immediate surroundings today. I don't only feel lonely, I feel empty and useless."

Of course, she has her occasional highs too:

“How are you? Happy with people (aforementioned species, self-appointed teachers, professors, smile-conquered slaves, friends, new-friends, about-to-be-friends, friends-to-be-lovers, lovers-to-be-non-friends) amused, nervous, sad-sometimes, wanting-to-be-alone-sometimes, million-miles-of-up-sometimes? and work? the objects of desire? are they kind to you?

Uncertain statement: it is difficult but not impossible to maintain relations within a consistent group, interests rarely intertwine outside the night, people get bored of one another and, since substitution is the most popular practice here, the unfortunate many of the efficient society usually find out in no uncertain time when others have no time for them.

Yes-No-society. made for machines. authentic human exchange please everyday please. sincere empathetic understanding please. no, not there. by the peas. please.

(defining from the hip)

IDcrisis is the common affliction of the need-to-be-different: odd disoriented tourist, self-styled performance artist unfortunate enough never to be told just how bad his art is, capitalist revolutionary to conquer the world by selling it --- all need to be "hip" to what's happening (to know about something before the masses get to it) without seeing that the very use of the category disqualifies one from membership to the set it describes.

The common urbane wolfe: analytically spontaneous and spontaneously analytical, living according to the unspoken creeds: "be calculating but sincere", "measure and live the moment", "cruelty and love are coterminous", "destroy (politely) every obstacle that stands in your way"

Excess. ustinkofdecadence. excessive. fat full of selfhood. willingly or otherwise, i join in: substantial or otherwise, no time to do anything but see limits surpassed, values tested. obey the orgy to be -- more efficient in the use of my everyday, more productive, more material, more excessive in effect, more-machine. less-human-all-too-human...

gadfly

2005-09-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

Anxiety or tension associated with the stress of everyday life usually does not require treatment with an anxiolytic.

Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by unrealistic or excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation) about two or more life circumstances, for a period of six months or longer, during which the person has been bothered more days than not by these concerns. At least 6 of the following 18 symptoms are often present in these patients:

Motor Tension: Trembling, twitching, or feeling shaky; muscle tension, aches, or soreness; restlessness; easy fatigability.

Autonomic Hyperactivity: Shortness of breath or smothering sensations; palpitations or accelerated heart rate; sweating, or cold clammy hands; dry mouth; dizziness or lightheadedness; nausea, diarrhea, or other abdominal distress; flushes or chills; frequent urination; trouble swallowing or 'lump in throat').

Vigilance and Scanning: Feeling keyed up or on edge; exaggerated startle response; difficulty concentrating or 'mind going blank' because of anxiety; trouble falling or staying asleep; irritability.

These symptoms must not be secondary to another psychiatric disorder or caused by some organic factor.

sms haiku

2005-08-20T10:07:00.000-07:00

Amazing how the simple act of exchanging sms haikus with your girlfriend can make one more aware of the world...

It began with this one:

Green man walking past silhouette reformed,
snow cloud solitary above the trees

and she bettered me by sending this one:

And the breeze passes through me, empty
I help a friend's plant grow by sighing

and then this one a little later:

Roof top forks and knives and mouths
rababa sadness blows my mind like crunchy leaves

advocatus diaboli

2005-08-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

An enlightening evening: defending the indefensible just to give the wise a chance to set things right.

"By sitting alone all day long
I clear my mind of a thousand thoughts.

To speak of this is beyond our words;
Only by sitting under the quiet forest
Can we ever understand."

- Fa Yen (885-958)

blech yourself....

2005-08-12T05:44:00.000-07:00

I've been recently really dissatisfied with this blog, initially conceived to ‘self-analyze’. It bores me like the internet or technology sometimes bores me… like text does. Often the voice, that expressive flow, is nowhere around and I can’t really synthesize the fragments in my head... posts then become perfunctory, simply there for the sake of saying something -- like turning on the TV when no one is around.

This ebb and flow of interest applies to everything… being totally switched on to something and then revulsion… bypass the thought.

polyglamorous paths

2005-08-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

Sameday consumption of article and radio show leads me to a polygamist.

autopsychography

2005-08-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

I walked into a bookstore (next to a square named after a saint) in a city to the west of where I am now.

Touching the spines of books in the philosophy section, I turned away momentarily and found myself facing a “Book of Disquietude”.

Strange word.

Disquiet: a feeling of mild anxiety about possible developments, a sense of worried unease.

A smile considered how frequently I felt this way.

summer lovin

2005-08-02T05:59:00.000-07:00

Continuing this week's survey of "feminist" misandrists, I find that the late Andrea Dworkin offered some harsh insights about Saudi Arabia in 1978:

"Seductive mirages of progress notwithstanding, nowhere in the world is apartheid practiced with more cruelty and finality than in Saudi Arabia. Of course, it is women who are locked in and kept out, exiled to invisibility and abject powerlessness within their own country. It is women who are degraded systematically from birth to early death, utterly and totally and without exception deprived of freedom. It is women who are sold into marriage or concubinage, often before puberty; killed if their hymens are not intact on the wedding night; kept confined, ignorant, pregnant, poor, without choice or recourse. It is women who are raped and beaten with full sanction of the law. It is women who cannot own property or work for a living or determine in any way the circumstances of their own lives. It is women who are subject to a despotism that knows no restraint."

Obviously this is an unkind assessment by someone who never visited the country. (-;

AK

mucus

2005-07-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

this androphobia as art thing:

"Isolation, Suburbs, and Prevention of Community: Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual through becoming a 'rugged individualist', a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality."

does this sound like somewhere you know?

AK

a difference of mind

2005-03-21T13:01:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts from the edge:

Men's minds, for the most part, work along a single longitudinal path: A triggers B, B triggers C and so forth. They consider themselves to be smart, because they are barely able to grasp causal chains. Men's intelligence is expressed by the extent to which they can estimate or predict a sequence of steps in a chain reaction. Like chess players, some men can think one or two steps ahead, some seven or eight. Alternatives to their one-dimensional, allegedly "logical" path of thinking are beyond their imagination.

Womens minds, on the other hand, are much more complex. Women embrace several different natures in their personality. In addition to the men's straightforward "logical" way of thinking, they (according to C. G. Jung) incorporate a personification of the unconscious counter-sexual image, in other words the inner man in a woman. This archetype encompasses a number of instincts that are quite useful in supplementing a woman's emotions. In addition, women's minds embrace a third governing force, the so-called "shadow", a counter-image of their true character. The working-type woman, for instance, can identify with the feelings of a spoiled tootsie. A woman who has run expeditions in Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan all her life, can suddenly become flustered at the run of a nylon stocking. What makes women so unfathomable to men is that they can leap in a split second from one level of their personality to the other. As a consequence, that charming lady you are flirting with suddenly turns into a sharp-tongued businesswoman, only to react like a helpless college girl in the next moment. It would be asking too much of a man's mind, being merely a simplified, incomplete version of a woman's mind, to be able to comprehend this kind of complexity in the opposite gender.

le rêve fraîchit

2005-03-18T04:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, you have to resort to a poet who renounces poetry to describe how you are feeling:

C’est le repos éclairé, ni fièvre ni langueur, sur le lit ou sur le pré.
C’est l’ami ni ardent ni faible. L’ami.
C’est l’aimée ni tourmentante ni tourmentée. L’aimée.
L’air et le monde point cherchés. La vie.
- Était-ce donc ceci?
- Et le rêve fraîchit.

It is rest in the light, neither fever nor languor, on the bed or on the meadow.
It is the friend neither ardent nor weak. The friend.
It is the beloved neither tormenting nor tormented. The beloved.
The atmosphere and world unsought. Life.
- Was it this, then?
- And the dream is growing cold.

icky overtures

2005-03-02T02:10:00.000-08:00

AK's taking the literary veil.

the man does not realize

2005-01-12T16:27:00.000-08:00

that he is dominated by his tendency to dominate.

that he is guilty of inaction, living within elaborate lie, transferring his own guilt from one scale of consciousness to the other, rarely allowing it the repose of adequate judgment.

the paradox in power: no force without resistance, and insofar as there is resistance, the desire to feel complete power is never fully satisfied.

that power is to be shared (symmetrically): that he partially exists in her capacity to do something affecting him, changing the probable pattern of future events; that he is enabled by her ability to get him to do something he would not otherwise do when she participates in decisions that affect him; that this power is also exercised when she devotes her energies to creating or reinforcing values and practices that limit the scope of verbal exchanges to considerations of only those issues which are comparitively innocuous to her. To the extent that she succeeds in doing this, he is prevented, for all practical purposes from bringing to the fore any issues that might in resolution be seriously detrimental to her set of preferences.

that love does not equal power.

that what is fundamental is love.

speak to the telephone

2005-01-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

A phone call from a friend tonight: he is a little younger, effectively alone in some part of the kingdom. We can't remember the last time we spoke.

He is unhappy.

Why are you unhappy? I think it's the environment or the people around me. But I'm not sure. Maybe it's both... maybe it's me, but I'm sick of everything and I do nothing, absolutely nothing.

As I listen to him, he draws me into his self-diminution/pity... but I am not feeling his pain. For some reason, I am numb.

He goes: Well you have to ask yourself one question: is the environment going to change enough in my lifetime to allow for my happiness?

Dear dear depressed one. You're looking at it all wrong...

Assume that there exists a space or environment H in the world that is optimal for your happiness and that is not identical to the present environment U which makes you so unhappy.

So to get to H, you have to either: (1) find it, if it is elsewhere, or (2) transform U such that it becomes similar or identical to H.

If you decide to try (1) then you need to know where to look. Where is this perfect elsewhere that works for you? Where is your H to be found? You probably need to spend some time in U to think about it. Knowing you as I do, you will probably spend your whole life in U looking for H.

Of course, you may try to (2) but that requires energy and time, both of which are limited resources in this world. You may find that you do not possess enough of either to make such a transformation. You may find that your U is someone else's H and that he will cancel out all your efforts and hours to keep the status quo. Indeed, your strategem to recruit others to help you transform U to H may be countered with similar moves to keep U from H. In fact, it may be impossible in your lifetime to successfully close the distance.

On the other hand, it may be possible, but if it takes too long then by the time you've gathered enough energy and hours to turn U into H, you may find that since H and U are now identical you're actually back where you began. At this moment, someone next to you will probably argue with you about the need to shift H to H' and asks you to lend him what's left of your energy and hours. But by this time you're too old... you don't have enough left in your life. Soon you will die, and the problem will disappear.

AK

ban smoking in saudi

2005-01-10T11:31:00.000-08:00

I think Saudi Arabia should follow Italy and Ireland in banning smoking from enclosed public spaces such as pubs, bars, discos, cafes, cinemas, etc..

fear of the whole

2005-01-06T16:02:00.000-08:00

A recent article suggests that women will be allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia in 2009. It further gives apparent reasons why women were not allowed to vote this time round:

...the "Chairman of the General Committee for Municipal Elections explained that the only reason women were not allowed to vote in this round was because municipal elections are a new experience and the short time given to prepare for them made it impossible to allow women’s participation this time."

I showed this article to one of my girlfriends, and she said: "You see, you can stop complaining now, there is real progress... women will be allowed to vote in 2009."

My response to her was something along the lines of the following:

Assuming the chairman did in fact say these things, the positive thing here seems to be that the government is in principle not opposed to women voting (although it is unfortunate that no mention was made of women standing as candidates).

But apart from the amusing (considering pregnancy) implication that women are less capable of handling new experiences than men, I simply don't buy the point that insufficient time was given to the organizers of the election.

It is difficult to accept that a policy requirement that women should be part of the vote would have carried less weight than an arbitrary schedule. In other words, it is clear that if the government really wanted women to participate in these elections, arrangements would have been made to make it happen.

One apparent subtext of the explanation seems consistent with a careful strategy of 'piecemealism' on the part of the government.

To do things piecemeal is to do them (i) a small amount at a time; in stages or (ii) in pieces; apart. In the context of political reform, 'piecemealism' amounts to a strategy or practice by the government of making small political concessions over time. This is a conservative approach which involves testing the environment and the forces at play within and without the body politic, seeing how they react, and then adapting to their reaction.

The usual reason why this strategy is justified is that "non-piecemealist strategies are radical and Saudi Arabia is simply not ready for radical reform which can destabilize the country." The typical counter-argument is that "insufficient reform will destabilize the country anyway."

Frankly, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this strategy. But it should be obvious that some reforms are useless in isolation, only properly functioning as part of a larger system of reforms and depending on other reforms to be effective.

It should also be clear that the chances of this strategy working are increased if each 'concession' is part of a well thought out and systematic plan or program for political reform, and if each step sufficiently resolves the pressing needs of society at the time.

I don't suppose an interested citizen would be out of line by asking about: whether such a plan exists, and if it does, how is it constituted, how is it updated, how is it communicated etc..

She would also want to find out about how a citizen is supposed to know whether a reform is effective or not. What are the metrics to measure success? Are there targets which are set and published? Who is accountable if specific reforms fail to achieve their objectives?

Furthermore, many reforms are only meaningful if they are conceived and implemented in the spirit of the principles that inspired them. This also leads to another series of questions: just what are these principles that provide a conceptual and/or moral foundation for reform? Can I read about them and freely debate them in public? Who are the initial, intermediate, and final arbiters of what is a legitimate principle? How do they get selected? What are their qualifications? etc..

That the present elections are so limited (no women, half appointed), and that the initial response has been so lukewarm is perhaps an indication that a bolder approach could have excited the population to take a more active interest in self-governance. One can only speculate that this would have helped a government that has its hands full dealing with pressing security and employment issues.

national diatribe

2004-12-09T11:09:00.000-08:00

I am always interested in the reasoning, or the lack thereof, behind certain decisions that affect large numbers of people in Saudi Arabia.

Sometimes, all or some of the reasons to justify a course of action are made public: press conferences are held, statements are released to the newspapers, essays are written, and scientific studies are published.

Other times, the lines of reasoning remain, perhaps conveniently, unstated by the primary decision-makers, and it is left to apologists and spin-doctors to make and defend the case.

That primary decision-makers are not willing to go on record with a weak argument is perhaps an indication that there are real reasons out there that are not meant to be discussed in public.

You can only guess at my answer to the question on whether this applies to the two recent and important decisions in Saudi Arabia to:

(1) not allow women to vote or stand for office; and

(2) to hold the sessions for the Saudi ‘national dialogue’ behind closed doors.

I have discussed (1) in the prior posting. My irritation today is with (2), for it is absurd that a ‘national’ dialogue should not be a ‘public’ one.

What reasons could they have for not televising the proceedings, or for not allowing the sessions to be freely reported by the press, or for not publishing the transcripts of the ‘dialogues’?

Isn’t the primary purpose of a national dialogue to promote public discussion of problems of public interest? Will someone tell me how it is in the public interest not to involve the public?

One of my close friends once complained to me in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 about the frustrating lack of freedom of expression in the Middle East, writing that the: “region has become an environment in which badly formed ideas walk unchallenged, unchecked, and untested by rationality or common sense... Public debate does not occur, because there are few public forums for debate or for the discussion of social problems... of course, the result is that these discussions go underground: which is always unhealthy, given that social problems (and solutions) are the property of the many. In the end, censorship means that better ideas are hardly allowed to see the light of day; and bad ideas are transformed more readily into bad actions with the terrible consequences we have just observed.”

This struck a resonant note in me at the time… it made total sense: too much control of the intellectual agenda is bad for our civil society, and civil society is our only real defense against extremism.

Or if you prefer the language of economics: if you stifle the economy of ideas by overregulation you are responsible for a loss in the analytical capacity of your population and an increase in badly informed beliefs.

Enough of this rant… I’m off to paint my toes.

AK

ad feminem

2004-12-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

Some of those dropping by this blog have emailed me asking questions about my personal history: questions such as 'who are you', 'what do you do', 'what did you study', 'where have you lived', etc…

I must say that I am uncomfortable answering such questions for a couple of reasons:

(1) If I answer, I would prefer to answer truthfully, freely, but as it is a perfect stranger who is doing the asking, I would probably be inclined to limit my response and edit myself out of character, which is out of character.

(2) A limited awareness of certain snippets of information about an individual's personal history can lead to an unjust generalization.

Let’s say person A learns that B has made a particular decision at one point in his life. A, however, is not fully aware of the context of that decision or of its aftermath. He simply learns of the decision as a singular solitary all-meaningful event. For whatever reasons, cultural, religious, experiential, it become excessively significant. The result is that A then forms a categorical opinion about the behavior, intelligence, and morality of B. Indeed, A damns B to hell.

Another illustrative example is of a man (let’s also call him A) who is mugged in the street by another man who happens to be of Arab origin (let’s call him B). Now A finds himself beaten to the ground and robbed of his valuables through the actions of B. As a result of this encounter, A develops a world-view that says: all Arabs are thieves.

A is then not only a victim of the nefarious actions of B, but also falls prey to the bitter confusion of the inductive fallacy: an error in reasoning in which the premises do not provide sufficient support for the conclusion.

premise: Yesterday, I was robbed by an Arab.
conclusion: All Arabs are thieves.

Can it be that my unwillingness to answer questions about my personal history is really a deliberate effort to minimize the possibility of such generalizations?

Well, I don’t know… I do know that I deeply want this blog to be about my words, and not about the person who writes them.

AK

a saudi girl's rights

2004-11-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Here's a letter I wrote to Raid Qusti's article in Arab news:

Dear Raid,

With reference to your article "Reporting Saudi Arabia as It Should Be", you criticise foreign journalists for offering unbalanced and provisional perspectives of Saudi Arabia. This may be true, but it should also be mentioned that for years many Saudi journalists have not necessarily been true to the principles of their profession either.

Thankfully, courageous and constructive analysis is becoming more and more common these days. But I'm always curious why it is the practice of certain journalists to abuse the intelligence of the public by offering illogical arguments to justify the denial of women's rights.

This may seem like a harsh judgement, but I think your article is an exemplary instance of this practice and as someone who writes for a national and (with the internet) international audience, it is only appropriate that you be taken to task for your words. So please bear with me as I closely examine your claim that:

(A) "Our society is not ready for women voting or standing as candidates."

The reasons you give are:

(i) "…the difficulty of having separate places where women only could cast their votes and thus, according to some, the sinful mixing of sexes would not occur. In other words, instead of 140 centers in Riyadh and the region, we would need 280."

If the state places its own particular constraints on society (in this case, the segregation of the sexes), then it is also up to the state to provide for creative solutions to the particular problems which such constraints place on a given process. That is to say, logistical questions aside for such a rich country enjoying the recent windfalls of a high price of oil, from the premise that men and women are not allowed to freely mix it does not follow that women should be deprived from voting or from running for office.

(ii) "We would also need to employ women to answer questions from women members of the public…"

I believe the jobless rate for women in Saudi Arabia is quite high. Why then is the employment of women in the service of the public (and of their own) interest so problematic?

(iii) "…It also means municipalities would have to find women who would be willing to work in remote areas."

Well, unless municipalities actually make a proper attempt to find women who would be willing to work in remote areas, we’ll never know will we?

(iv) "And in turn, that would mean drivers were needed to take the women there and if they remained in the remote area, they would also need a male escort."

Please see my answer to (i)

In all honesty I don’t see how you can make claim (A) unless you have gone through the trouble of actually conducting a scientific survey of members of Saudi society in which you pose the question: “Is Saudi society ready for women voting or standing as candidates?”

Now, if you assume that women are members of Saudi society, then for the survey to be relevant and “statistically representative” one half of those questioned must be women, since they comprise at least 50% of the population.

If you don’t, as a point of departure, accept that Saudi women are members of Saudi society, then you should at least ask a statistically representative sample of men the same question. Then the results would only give us information about Saudi male opinion of Saudi women’s political rights, and not of Saudi society as a whole (which probably includes women as members).

Now given that you have not conducted a survey. It is only proper that you should preface your statement with the words: “In my humble opinion…”

An election is analogous to a survey: the process collects and records votes or opinions, always with the assumption that such votes are of value. To exclude half the population from the process is to tell them without distinction, that they are not properly members of Saudi society, that their opinions are of no consequence, and that their voices are not to be heard.

Which brings us to the kernel of the problem: it is only through an effective inclusive democratic process that we can get an informed sense of public opinion, of what people actually think. So if the majority of Saudis (including women) are ultra-conservative and traditional then so be it, society will accept it willingly, but let’s at least ask them what they think.

We are never any wiser or more informed 'about public opinion' by reading about, or listening to, single individual views such as yours or mine.

Sincerely yours,

Alia Khouri

writing in the dark

2004-10-09T17:58:00.000-07:00

Don't have much to say today. There is, as usual, much to complain about, but I'm not in the mood... sleeping next to.

silence

2004-10-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

It's important to have something/structure to embrace/despise... some days when it's open-ended and empty, and there's a recursive nothingness that prevails, and I don't want to think or do anything, or relate myself, or be related, I discover my meaning of silence.

Why Blog?

2004-10-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

To disclose to the whole world what I haven't yet disclosed to my closest friend.
The world then becomes my closest friend.

self-apparent properties of the self:

young. saudi chick. unveiled, unconservatized.

computer literate. happy in hypertext.

enjoy code. others.

supposedly literate. bilingual. reading always.

musical. sometimes. produce it sometimes. prefer minimal ambient variations with stochastic parts.

write sometimes, trying to write more. but atmosphere in saudi does not encourage that euphoric species of writing that I like... danger of reverting to literature of frustration.

politics: quantum: constrained by social, cultural, political context, sex. I've never voted, although one day I hope to walk in on a ballot box in jeans, t-shirt, and flip-flops so that everyone can see my pretty toes while I express my freedom.

bye.

first post

2004-06-27T03:42:00.000-07:00

I am going to record my dailies and post them to the world!