Meeting Violence With a Volley of Optimism

January 1, 2005
By HASSAN M. FATTAH





AMMAN, Jordan

AT a tiny meeting spot for Arab culture, the search for
direction quietly continues.

Here at the Arab Culture Shack, a toolshed-size bookstore
in the heart of downtown Amman, Hassan al-Beer, a man who
lives by the book and intends to die by the book, has a
motto that he regards as inviolable. "Only the mind can
conquer the Kalashnikov," he says, as he has for decades.

With war raging in Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict grinding steadily on, Mr. Beer, 63, guardedly
calls himself an optimist. He is better known as Abu Ali, a
champion of the very Arab culture forgotten over decades of
turmoil. And from his unlikely perch, he presides over a
daily debate with his customers over the future of the Arab
world, inciting, refereeing and hoping to inform their
quest for a new direction.

"Where did these extremists and fundamentalists come from?"
Abu Ali demands rhetorically. "How did we get to the stage
where people are being executed on evening TV?"

He pins part of the blame on America, but he has an even
bigger problem with his Arab friends and neighbors. "This
is mainly because of closed minds and closed mouths," he
says in answer to his own questions.

Abu Ali is in the business of open minds. For the past 33
years, he has held court in his bookshop, which he calls a
shrine to Arab pen and culture. Distinct from the other
newspaper kiosks that line the street above and below his,
Abu Ali's Culture Shack is a bookstore first and an open
forum second, a brave meeting ground for Amman's
intelligentsia who grew up alongside Abu Ali in the heady
days of Arab nationalism.

The books stacked high and deep encircling Mr. Beer's
kiosk, he says, hold at least some of the answers to the
questions that today dog the Arab world. Works by
well-known Arab writers like Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel
Prize laureate from Egypt, and Mahmoud Darwish, the
Palestinian poet, offer a reminder of where the Arab world
came from and what it aspired to be.

But you'll also find works meant as much to incite as to be
insightful - Arabic translations of the Talmud, of Henry A.
Kissinger's memoirs, and of Michael Moore's "Stupid White
Men."

MOST customers open conversation with, "What do you have
for me, Abu Ali?" For one woman he picks out a book of
short stories, for a middle-aged man, a book by a
Palestinian author. His tastes are as quirky as they are
particular, but that's one reason his regulars keep coming
back. Soon they get to talking.

"I now take the line that the Americans are bastards, pure
bastards," declares a man who identifies himself only as
Abu Elias, an optometrist. "We've been demolished,
eviscerated - culturally, emotionally, personally. But
remember, after every night comes day."

"Don't you think we share the blame?" an onlooker asks.


"Keep talking," Abu Ali encourages him.

"Of course the problem is in us - the poverty, the
dictatorships," says Abu Elias, his voice rising in
frustration. "But any country that has to send its troops
clear across the world to take over another country is
nothing short of a colonialist."

"Say it!" Abu Ali adds.

What about all the dictators and paternalism? he goes on.


"That's the problem," Abu Elias says. "We counted on some
of them, but they've all let us down. But our culture will
survive."

Ultimately Abu Ali is selling optimism - of a better day,
of better understanding, of a world moving forward, not
backward. That makes the conundrum of men like Abu Elias
all the more lamentable, he notes. The region seemed to be
making gains before Sept. 11, 2001. Now, those gains lie in
the rubble of the conflict in Iraq, Abu Ali insists.

"If Afghanistan and Iraq had not happened, we would have
done well," he says. "We were already on the way." Now,
Iraq hangs like a pall over the region. Anyone who speaks
of reform falls in the American camp, and is therefore
discredited on the street. Even people like him feel they
have to be more discreet in their language.

Part of Abu Ali's thesis is that people don't read books
like they used to. Falling standards of living and the
rising cost of books have made them more of a luxury, and
lending libraries are few. It used to be, in the 70's, that
one Jordanian dinar (about $3 in today's money) would buy
three books, Abu Ali says, but these days one can barely
buy one book for 10 dinars - and he makes little profit on
that.

Then there are the distractions of cellphones and satellite
television.

The book business being a shadow of what it was, on any
given day Abu Ali barely has $100 to his name. In fact,
selling newspapers accounts for most of his business, he
admits. He has made sure all nine of his children are
college educated; none of them work with him.

A stately woman walks in, and hears the talk and scoffs.
"All they do is talk history. We want to talk about the
future," she says. "The Arab man is lost, and he doesn't
know what direction to head."

FOR all the talk, Abu Ali insists he has no interest in
politics. After all, that's how things went wrong. What has
been missing in recent years is the sense of culture and
history, he says, and despite the political undertones of
everything in his shack, the books are fundamentally about
culture, arts and philosophy. In 2002, in recognition of
his support of Arab culture, King Abdullah awarded him a
silver medal.

"I don't do politics, I do culture," he says.

Yet the
Culture Shack's mere existence is political. When he
arrived in Amman as a Palestinian refugee in 1948, Abu Ali
hustled as a paperboy, giving up school after the fifth
grade. Then in 1971, at the height of Arab nationalistic
fervor, he won a lease for the 9-foot-by-9-foot shack from
the Jordanian Press Syndicate and has remained ever since.

He opened his shop at a time when political parties and
intellectuals roamed downtown streets speaking of Arab
unity and identity. He still remembers the day when King
Hussein stopped to buy a newspaper from him; Arab authors
and thinkers were regulars.

It was a time of intense ideological clashes, so much so
that in the early 1970's Jordan faced near civil war. These
days, most of the neighborhood's cafes and bookshops are
gone and the politicians and intellectuals have either died
off or moved on to fancier joints uptown.

Even in Amman, arguably one of the most open of Arab
capitals, dialogue has moved behind closed doors or
disappeared altogether.

As he straightened out his papers late one evening, Abu Ali
grew pensive. He leaned against the wall and looked out
into the bustling street. "People are afraid to talk," he
said. "Even as I talk, I am afraid."

It's not fear of the government exactly, but of violence at
the hands of those with sealed minds. It's never been more
difficult to be an optimist, Abu Ali admits. But he is
hanging on for his regulars, hoping this, too, shall pass.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/international/middleeast/01fprofile.html?ex=1105586652&ei=1&en=14a461eb690cba16

Thanks Aminah for sending this article my way!