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Books in Brief Innovative Children's Book Features Arab Americans JAMEEL HAS A PROBLEM THAT GROWS AND GROWS, by Samar Barakat, designed and illustrated by Nadine Chahine, Prana Publishers, Beirut, 1998, 32 pp., paperback, children. Children of immigrants often pay a steep price for "being different," and Jameel, the young son of Lebanese immigrants to the United States, thinks he can bridge the cultural gap by changing his name to James and by removing his father's black mustache, which has made him the brunt of teasing from his California schoolmates. His efforts to remove these obvious signs of "foreigness" lead Jameel on a magic-realism adventure until he finds some resolution to his dual-identities and learns to appreciate his parent's cultural distinctiveness. Written for children ages 6 to 9, this warm, colorful book was inspired by a Jordanian couple living in the U.S. whose two daughters, Alia and Mary, were trying to deal with being different. Although the main character of this story is a boy, a young girl does figure prominently in the tale's resolution. The author, Samar Barakat, a writer based in Beirut who has also lived in the United States, runs the Beiurt-based publishing house Prana. In telling Jameel's story, she carefully specified his parents' place of origin as the fictitious village of Hasrmeet, a village without any particular sectarian identification, thus making Jameel representative of many Lebanese and Arab children in a similar situation. Nadine Chahine, a graphic design student at the American University of Beirut, brings Jameel's cultural discoveries to life with her illustrations. Using a variety of techniques "to convey the diverse cultural influences that enrich Jameel's upbringing," the art complements the storyline while serving as a visual enhancement of the experience. To highlight the psychological nature of the story, Chahine emphasizes facial features, providing a springboard for discussions with teachers or parents that can help other Jameels-and Alias- to recognize and verbalize their own responses to similar experiences. The book also incorporates a sampling of Arabic calligraphy and a small glossary, and sprinkles Arabic expressions in the dialogue-just enough to confirm his very contemporary family's hopes that their American schoolboy son will grow up with an appreciation of his cultural roots. At the same time, the book presents an opportunity for introducing Arab American culture to other children, whether in a school setting or individually. Supplementary materials that focus on language, vocabulary, culture, geography, and art are available from the publisher. Legacy of Baghdad's House of Wisdom THE HOUSE OF WISDOM, by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland, illustrated by Mary GrandPré, DK Publishing, Inc., New York, 1999, 42 pp, large format. "The House of Wisdom," a large, vibrantly illustrated book aimed at young readers, brings to life the legacy of the Arab World in its period of enlightenment 1,000 years ago. Through historically-based story-telling, it brings a sense of adventure into the realm of knowledge and its acquisition. The book's opening words set the tone for a brief, exciting journey to an era still admired for its elevation of learning: "From time to time, as the world turns, something different happens, something mysterious and astonishing. Ideas brush against one another and sparks fly! It can happen anywhere, anytime." Thus begins the true story of Ishaq, a young ninth-century Baghdad resident who lives in the great library known as bayt al-hikmah, the House of Wisdom-"the very center of the brightening"- where scholars preserved the great intellectual contributions of the ancient world. Ishaq's father is the master translator Hunayn, whom the Caliph pays in gold equal to the weight of each manuscript. As he matures in this historic period of enlightenment, Ishaq studies ancient Greek as well as Arabic, and one day is chosen to lead a book-gathering expedition that takes him to from Cordova to China. He returns to Baghdad three years later, delivering thousands of manuscripts. Fueled by his passion for knowledge, Ishaq ultimately becomes the world's greatest translator of Aristotle. The book is historically informative, written in lyrical prose by Florence Parry Heide, the author of more than 100 books for children, and her co-author and daughter, Judith Heide Gilliland, who has a master's degree in Near Eastern languages and literature and lived in the Middle East for five years. Visually, "The House of Wisdom" is breathtaking, filled with shimmering lights, handsome faces, and swirling, kinetic tableaux. Inspired by richly patterned Islamic art, the illustrations by Mary GrandPré use framed boxes and borders reminiscent of old Islamic books, and the figures are alive with movement and texture, depth and light. A brief historical and geographical review rounds out the narrative, stressing the contributions of the scholars of "The House of Wisdom" who "introduced Greek thought to Europe, sparking the Renaissance," and carried "the torch of civilization for the rest of the world." Palestine's Landscape in Maps and Memory From cartography to travel literature, geology to art history, the physical as well as cultural configurations of Palestine are outlined in a collection of 14 essays that emerged from a Birzeit University conference on Palestinian Landscapes. Edited by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Roger Heacock, and Khaled Nashef, the contributions of an inter-disciplinary group of international scholars, artists, and scientists together form "The Landscape of Palestine:Equivocal Poetry." In a foreword titled "Memory, Invention and Space," Edward Said reflects on the previous scholarship used to create the cultural myths surrounding Palestine and the current post-colonial trends which re-examine those myths. He discusses the interplay between geography, memory and invention, and focuses on the "unending cultural struggle over territory, which necessarily involves overlapping memories, narratives, and physical structures." In a brief but sweeping survey of how history has been re-invented to justify the usurping of land, he takes apart false versions of the Nakba-the catastrophe of 1948-and points out factors that have diluted and minimized the Palestinian efforts to maintain the narrative of their history. "Perhaps the greatest battle Palestinians have waged as a people has been over the right to a remembered presence, and with that presence, the right to possess and reclaim a collective historical reality. . ." In an epilogue titled "Landscape and Idolatry: Territory and Terror," W.J.T. Mitchell argues that landscape is "an idol . . .a false god that displaces the true one . . ." He is speaking of "the images, representations and stereotypes of the landscape that, while often demonstrably false and superficial, nevertheless have considerable power to mobilize political passions." Mitchell goes on to assume the role of provocative traveler in the Promised Land-"the greatest collective landscape mirage the human imagination has ever projected for itself." The essays in the collection examine various aspects of how the land and culture have impacted each other throughout various periods of history. Lebanese novelist Dominique Eddé draws on contemporary post-colonial literary theory in her analysis of the narratives of French travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries, and Nabil I. Matar looks at Renaissance cartography, stating that "the question of Palestine was posed cartographically in Europe long before it was posed politically or colonially." A Palestinian feminist is the topic of the paper by Garay Menicucci, who writes about Kulthum Auda and her contribution as a linguist, literary scholar, and ethnographer after her immigration to Russia in 1914. An essay by Karl Sabbagh, a Palestinian film director and producer, focuses on different images of Palestine presented in documentaries and films; Palestinian artist and art historian Samia Halaby gives an overview of the history of the Palestinian landscape in the pictorial arts. Other topics include "From Bride of the Sea to Disneyland: The Role of Architecture in the Battle for Tel Aviv's Arab Neighborhood" by Mark LeVine; "Literary Snapshots," an essay on the problematics of Mark Twain's and William Thackeray's revulsion for the Holy Land in relationship to their Christian heritage by Lynne D. Rogers; a summary on the origins and expansions of the stone terraces in Palestine by Ghattas J. Sayej; and "The Exilic Imagination: The Construction of the Landscape of Palestine from its Outside" by Glenn Bowman. Foodlore of the Arabs Through Literature Think Arab food, and an entire mental banquet gets served up: a feasting group, encircling platters heaped with huge portions; fragrant rounds of freshly baked bread that will be torn and scooped into an abundant variety of zesty morsels There is ceremony and spice in the humblest fare, which has fed not only hungry mouths, but has provided rich material for literature of the ages- stuff for metaphor, symbol and adab, all the necessary ingredients for a rich culinary semiotic code. In "God's Banquet: Food in Classical Arabic Literature," Geert Jan van Gelder has surveyed the ways in which food appeared in classical Arabic literature, including pre-Islamic poetry, the Koran, Islamic poetry and tales, the "Thousand and One Nights," and popular genres such as the adab anthologies and satires. Indeed, adab, the very word used today for "literature," means erudition as well as good manners, and there are many links to be found between eating and etiquette. Food may serve as a marker of many things, such as time, place, class, status, nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender and character. It is frequently used to represent many aspects of Arab life through the ages in many genres of literature, and although some new renditions of medieval Arabic cookery books have recently emerged, the interaction of eating and literature has been a relatively unexplored territory until "God's Banquet." Van Gelder is concerned with how food is depicted, as well as how literary texts have been shaped by theme of food, and drawing on a broad range of primary sources, he explores the connections between food and many themes central to Arabic culture, such as banquets and hospitality, in itself the most important connection between food and literature. With extensive reference notes, this rich book covers aspects of Arab life through the ages, from varied eating habits (Muhammed was known to have eaten locusts) to links between food and sex throughout the Arab literary tradition. Van Gelder is Laudian professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford, and is the author of several articles and books, including "Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Unity and Coherence of the Poem." This article appeared in Al Jadid Vol. 6, No. 30 (Winter 2000)
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