The Mother of Orientalist Cliches. I was reading Nir Rosen's new book, In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. And Nir hit me on page 11: "There is no separation of church and state. The concept does not exist in Islam." What is that, and what does that mean? But that is not the only problem with the book. Just look at the title: I have not seen a title that manages to include so many stereotypes and cliches collapsed together. I was alas expecting a belly dancer and a camel, or a belly dancer riding a camel, to appear on the cover. I know, the writer may not always select the title, but there are serious problems with the contents too. In fact, the book may be a job application for the New York Times or US World and News Report. And there are problems there. And Nir kept bragging about his mastery of "Iraqi Arabic." What does he mean? Where did he study to achieve his mastery of Iraqi Arabic? Yet, the Arabic in the book, and the transliteration of Arabic, are often wrong or inaccurate, but that does not stop the author from making wild generalizations and sweeping judgments. In fact, the author poses as Lawrence of Iraq of sorts, with much bravado and macho posturing. Nir translates Al-Imam Al-`Adham as "the greatest saint" (p. 36)--saint?? And Nir relishes, just relishes finding and quoting grotesque anti-Jewish statements by Arabs, but does not seem as attentive to anti-Muslim or anti-Arab statements by Westerners, or by occupation soldiers. On p. 84, Nir attributes Iraqi rejection of US (and Macedonian) occupation to "revenge", thereby underlining atavistic inclinations of a backward population. I never ever knew of a more brutal revenge than US wars that followed Sep. 11. Were the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq not wars of revenge? But the word revenge is reserved for native populations not for advance races. On p. 105, Nir uses the phrase "the paranoid Sunni mind." On p. 135, Nir informs you that Sunnis and Shi`ite leaders--presumably all of them--"hated each other." But the problem of the book begins on the very first page when Nir claims that the word "sahel" (it should be sahl) is "unique to the Arabic of Iraq." That sounds like a claim that Amatzia Baram would make. Nir makes wild generalizations consistently, even when he is consistently inaccurate. Sahl is not an Iraqi word, it is an Arabic word. In fact, it is an old word, a very old word, but Nir does not know any of that, and he should have acknowledged to himself and to the reader that his Arabic is in fact much more limited than he claims.
Sahl is mentioned in Ibn Mandhur's Lisan Al-`Arab, defined as:
"الضرب بالسياط يكشط الجلد"
To hit somebody until the skin is peeled off is sahl. And Nir reports on things, and cite quotations without ever providing a source; he has no sources whatever, even when he talks about "honor crimes" (p. 136) the way Barbara Walters talks about it on 20-20. He cites somebody describing Al-Jazeera's correspondent as a "cheerleader" when there is no Arabic word for "cheerleader." That casts doubt on the reliability of other materials in the book. And since the blurb on the book covers says that Nir speaks "Iraqi-accented" Arabic, I can only say: "shaku maku?"