The Frontier in Indian Ocean History

As part of an Envirornmental History class for the esteemed Dr. John McNeill, I am trying to integrate an ecological and envirornmental focus into my study of identity, trade, social change and state building in the Eastern Congo. In other words, I want to know not only how merchants like Tippu Tip built nascent state structures and incorporated Swahili, Manyema, Nyamwezi, and other corporate or ethno-cultural groups into their organization, but also how the movement of these merchant-princes impacted the ecology of the Eastern Congo. What kind of crops did the Swahili Arab settlers plant? What sort of envirornmental changes did they set in motion?

It occured to me that such a project may be difficult to undertake without delving into Congolese and Omani archives. So, as part of a related but alternate set of questions, I would also like to explore how the competing discourses of Belgian, British, German and Arab primary sources sought to portray the envirornmental and social changes the Arabs set in motion. On the one hand, the Arabs called Nyangwe the 'New Bengal' and viewed themselves as bringing civilization and order to the land. They tamed the forest, and brought peace and order.

On the other hand, the many European travel accounts emphasize the devastation of Arab slave-trading, the many famines (which they linked with Arab settlement) and the general negative impact of the Arab presence. Of course this discourse itself, even if it was accurate, came to fulfillment only with European colonization--the worst years of ecological and social devastation were assuredly after the 1890s and the routing of Arab power in the Congo.

This relates back to the concept of the frontier in Indian Ocean history. Is there a way I can talk within an Indian Ocean framework of land-based frontiers? On the surface it doesn't appear to be an obviously helpful narrative framework. However, there are compelling cultural links (the presence of Comorians, Baluchis, and Omani Arabs in the Congo) and economic links (Indian financiers in Zanzibar linked the Congo River basin with the circuits of Indian Ocean capital) that make such a framework interesting. Using the idea of systems theory, which posits that we can find common features of a given 'unit' in terms of shared aspects of organization, I submit we can talk of the penetration of Indian Ocean cultural 'clusters' and the integration of Central Africa into Indian Ocean economic exchange and have legitimate historical evidence to back up our assertion. I am reminded as I consider this question of John Wilkinson's insight about Oman: "Oman as a 'natural' region has no real frontiers: like all such regions it tends to be rather more 'Omani' in places than others."

So it goes with the Indian Ocean: if we identify a set of shared religious practices, common clothing items, culinary features, familial organization, vocabulary, and more, that are found in the Indian Ocean, then certain places will have more ties than others, and this is also related to which 'features' we choose to compare.

Of course the challenge is to determine how much the 'Indian Ocean' actually explains; we want it to do some theoretical work, but we would err to depend on it to do heavy historical work as it relates to Central African history in general--most of the history of the Eastern Congo has logical connections with other lake regions in Tanganyika, Zambia, as well as points north in Uganda. But the fact that so few historians have even attempted to use it to look at the history of Central Africa during the late nineteenth century means that some potentially valuable understandings from this perspective can be integrated in with the existing literature.

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Representing Africa: Spatial, Temporal, and Ideological Perspectives

NOTE: I am posting this from Dr. Mavhunga at MIT; its from the H-AFRICA listserv. Its an excellent statement for getting at the keys to African history as well as the importance of not privileging the archive in all cases. This is in response to Cyril Hromnik, another historian who claimed there was no precolonial state institutions in Africa to build on:


"I was thinking that the Hromnik's position is passe. There has been extensive discussion on this in Terence Osborne Ranger's "The Invention of Tradition" and the "The Invention of Tradition Revisited". Multiple trajectories span off from that discussion, notably Valentin Mudimbe's The Invention of Africa and The Idea of Africa. There have been countless other works, among the Pier Larson, Carolyn Hamilton, and many others.

For me, the question seems to be how to how to take that debate beyond cultural and political histories, beyond an Africa defined according to the temporal and spatial frames of political and other elites. Once we get to that extent of shifting the analysis beyond thematics and physicalities that privilege the elites to the experiences and imagineries of Africa from "the gallery" (ordinary people), my sense is that some of these high-end ideologies like "pan-Africanism", "patriotism", "sovereignty", "power" and so forth acquire new meanings or even lose them. The question then is: Seen from the rural village, from the household of a poor person, what exactly is "pan-Africanism", "colonialism", "institutions', etc.?

As I see it, we risk eulogizing the powerful of Africa and silencing the majority by focusing on "important people". The more you get to the villages, the more you see all this amazing innovation at play, with the relevance of the state being only so far as it provides specific individual needs. Otherwise it is dead to them. Upon examining further these grassroots modes of innovation, it turns out that they pre-date the colonial moment; in fact, they are the sociotechnical infrastructure with which people processed colonial rule into their existence and maneuvered their own existence under colonialism.

Instead of giving colonialism (un)godly powers, we need to go well beyond what Mudimbe called "the colonial library", viz. the record of the pre-colonial and colonial that was compiled after all by colonial writers (Europeans or Africans influenced by European systems of classification). I think going to Africa to examine not just "oral traditions or testimonies" but more-so the "practices" would be a very good preparation to then go into the "colonial library" that Mudimbe was talking about and which is written and stored in dusty boxes.

I would not end or worse yet start in the built archive but the archive of practice and spoken word.

Without belaboring the point further, I must insist that Hromnik was giving the "colonial library" (or a lukewarm reading of it) (un)godly powers. His approach is now in the rear view mirror of history and receding fast.

Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology & Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
E-mail: clappertonm@yahoo.com

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Paris: Secularism Unveiled

I was in a false position everywhere, except within myself, where I was convinced I was telling the truth.
--A House At The Edge of Tears, Venus Khoury Ghata.

I was pretty excited to head to Paris after my Oman trip. I was invited by my friend Dinah, who was TA-ing a class on Immigration and Multiculturalism in Paris for the University of Illinois. The course was taught by a retired professor of French, Evelyne Accad, a Lebanese woman who has written about international women's issues.

The class did not disappoint. From discussing polygamy and the French state to civil war in Lebanon to the issue of female genital mutiliation, I learned a lot and was able to make some interesting observations about French culture and society at the same time.

Disclaimer: I do not speak French. Therefore everything I learned (with the exception of the bits of French I picked up) was through English translation or talks in English. That said, I don't think it made a difference in some of the observations I am about to make.

Its wierd because I had the impression that the French were more progressive than Americans on the whole, but I have to say this is both a stereotype in which Americans associate everything French with being 'cultured' and a factor that depends on the particular French community one is referring to. For instance, it is true that students tend to be more activist, more politically aware, more cosmopolitian (Most students learn at least three languages) than their American counterparts. Having visited several French schools I feel I am on safe ground saying that.

However France illustrates some of the strange contradictions of secular society-- its particular blind spots that are often intimately linked to a strong sense of national and even racial identity (the so-called Gaullic exceptionalism). Nowhere is this contradiction more aptly symbolized than the banning of headscarves in the classroom of public schools. (ironically Turkey, a majority Muslim country, is facing its own version of this secular quandary). Here is where the rubber of religion's removal from the 'public sphere' meets the road of individual freedom. French efforts to promote the growth of the French state and to reify 'Frenchness' is not a project that can tolerate a multiplicity of identities, and is thus at odds with French notions of 'pluralism'. And that explains why not only are headscarves banned, but the call to prayer (اذان) as well.

Obama notwithstanding (I have a feeling a lot of my sentences are going to begin with that from here on out), America has never really resolved this conflict in practice either. For example, witness the powerful pull of the ignorant and racist 'English-only' educational movement. I guess my philosophy would be that, social movements that emphasize a particular aspect of identity are inevitable, especially enlight of forming social movements against powerfully entrenched interests of global corporations, powerful nation-states, and the like. Nevertheless, the insistence on one's single identity inevitably falsifys the richness of everyone's historical reality.

My own observation is that France has a stronger tradition of anthropologizing the 'other', in the sense of making outside cultures a subject of study for consumption by exotic-o-philes. Walking through an exhibit on matriarchy in Africa I had this feeling, and it was accentuated gazing at the innumerable artifacts stolen from the tombs of Pharaonic Egypt in the Louvre. It was a feeling similar to the one I had walking through the Indian Museum in Washington DC a couple years ago: like an eerie sense of displacement and invasion. I felt as if I walking through someone's most intimate personal belongings that had been put out at a common garage sale.

One highlight of the trip (other than my birthday :)) was reading a trio of great books by Lebanese Christian women and getting to meet two of the authors. We read Evelyne Accad's The Excised, Etel Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose, and Venus Khoury-Ghata's A House At The Edge of Tears. All three are very lyrical meditations on religion and growing up, war, beauty, violence, and sexuality. From Khoury-Ghata's book, I learned that apparently some Arabs of the Levant, Swahili is a derisive term for nonsense or baby talk. For me Dr. Accad's book was the most personally evocative, while Sitt Marie Rose is the most innovative in terms of narrative structure and voice. I will end with a meditation from that book, a tribute and affirmation of life in the midst of war-torn Beirut:

"Morality is violence. An invisible violence at first. Love is a supreme violence, hidden deep in the darkness of our atoms. When a stream flows into a river, it's love and its violence. When a cloud loses itself in the sky, it's a marriage. When the roots of a tree split open a rock it's the movement of life. When the sea rises and falls back only to rise again, it's the process of history. When a man and a woman find each other in the silence of the night, it's the beginning of the end of the tribe's power, and death itself becomes a challenge to the ascendancy of the group."

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This is Not a Poem

Grabbing hold of signs
I eloped with a girl who danced on a pole
and her cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold

We wandered lonely as the crowds
who float thru ticket gates to trains
when all at once we wondered how
we'd ever reach our place the same

Thru familiar roads we tarried
lost like highways thru fields of dust
I remember how we met

Shall I compare it to a summer day
Block locked parades of children riding mopeds thru a hydrant's spray
then you looked at me
Told a story with your eyelids,
leaking tears of passion onto your paper plate
at your cousin's 30th birthday

You were chewing celery
talked of getting your distorted chi unraveled
Two dimples between your ears,
I kissed the one less traveled

You spoke of rivers
as I watched the crystal stair in your mouth glitter
We were together all that summer: Me and my Jones

I used to watch her while she sat scribbling parables
and triangulating blue notes
for those whose mornings were murdered dreams

I watched for Jabberwocks and jinns
while she taught my infant words to swim

water water everywhere
but not a word to think
I felt with sound, I dealt with sound
creation on the brink

We were not in love
but i craved her
as if i could be reborn of self
through that knowledge.

And I shall never cease from exploring
but now the ocean of sound is a depth
not an expanse.

and i go down

to all the creatures
living beneath the mirror of water,
that I might find paradise's garden
and become planted by it.

I will leave the rivers of Babylon
at low tide
and walk deep into the sea
and hold my breath until You come to me beneath the waves.

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I'm on YouTube

Representing SNK crew and hiphop in the Gulf. Check out their Website.

With lyrics:

Woke up in the morning out the bed and let my feet touch the ground,
I got the Canon in my head you know the beat set to pound.
But first I gotta converse with my man
throw on some Chucks bust this verse for SNK and Sultan,
hit the streets of Muscat,
you know the weather is hot
cool out with this track
watching fedha yetu stack.
Tunajaribu kuwaletea kitu freshi sana,
especially lyrics we specialize in putting hurting on ya.

Well representing style we go miles for the freshest dough.
Staying with a smile through my trials I confess through flow
Playing with the fire so the heat will just ignite my soul.

You'll never understand, I'm always over your head, cuz I'm the type of MC that multiplying my bread
and then I stay baking
You stay caking
I roll with SNK man, you know they stay breaking.
And I'm thankful y'all just to be in this booth, you see I'm cold like Duluth
I can melt a polar ice cap like a inconvenient truth.

Check my facts, I was born to rock a crowd
you can call my crew the warrants cuz we serve and knock so loud.
Wondering how? We broke it down, flips headspins and pounds now.
Umetuona sasa, tunashinda kikosi chako, na chukua kwako, wewe huna budi isipokuwa jina lako.
Well we're SNK,.
You gotta pay to play.
Breaking sneakers, breaking posers, breaking knowledge till the break of day,
rivals we slay, so you better come correct.
We got the heaviest artillery we firing from upper deck
and there's one last thing you know its part of the plan
we be on stage with the planet in the palm of our hand
and the night is late, but you know the crowd wanna stay,
everybody throw their hands in the air and scream SNK!
@2008 Nathaniel 'Nader' Mathews

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Symbolism and Allegory in the Quran

This is from The Message of The Quran
Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam and one of the great Islamic scholars of the twentieth century, in my humble opinion. This relates to several earlier conversations I was having with different groups of people. This is a really amazing essay and I think is relevant to the methodology of scriptural iinterpretation in other contexts as well.

When studying the Quran, one frequently encounters what may be described as
"key­- phrases" - that is to say, statements which provide a clear, concise indication of the idea underlying a particular passage or passages: for instance, the many references to the creation of man "out of dust" and "out of a drop of sperm", pointing to the lowly biological origin of the human species; or the statement in the ninety-ninth surah (Az-Zalzalah) that on Resurrection Day "he who shall have done an atom's weight of good, shall behold it; and he who shall have done an atom's weight of evil, shall behold it" - indicating the inelucctible afterlife consequences of, and the responsibility for, all that man consciously does in this world; or the divine declaration (in 38:27), "We have not created heaven and earth and all that is between them without meaning and purpose (baatilan), as is the surmise of those who are bent on denying the truth."



Instances of such Quranic key-phrases can be quoted almost ad infinitum, and in many varying formulations. But there is one fundamental statement in the Quran which occurs only once, and which may be qualified as "the key-phrase of all its key-phrases": the statement in verse 3:7 to the effect that the Quran "contains messages that are clear in and by themselves (ayat-e-muhkamaat) as well as others that are allegorical (mutashabihaat)". It is this verse which represents, in an absolute sense, a key to the understanding of the Qur'anic message and makes the whole of it accessible to "people who think" (li-qawmin yatafakkarUn).



In my notes on the above-mentioned verse I have tried to elucidate the meaning of the expression ayaat muhkimaat as well as the general purport of what is termed mutashabih ("allegorical" or "symbolic"). Without a proper grasp of what is implied by this latter term, much of the Qur~an is liable to be - and, in fact, has often been - grossly misunderstood both by believers and by such as refuse to believe in its divinely-inspired origin. However, an appreciation of what is meant by "allegory" or "symbolism" in the context of the Quran is, by itself, not enough to make one fully understand its world-view: in order to achieve this we must relate the Quranic use of these terms to a concept touched upon almost at the very beginning of the divine writ - namely, the existence of "a realm which is beyond the reach of human perception" (aI-ghayb). It is this concept that constitutes the basic premise for an understanding of the call of the Quran, and, indeed, of the principle of religion - every religion - as such: for all truly religious cognition arises from and is based on the fact that only a small segment of reality is open to man's perception and imagination, and that by far the larger part of it escapes his comprehension altogether.



However, side by side with this clear-cut metaphysical concept we have a not less clear-cut finding of a psychological nature: namely, the finding that the human mind (in which term we comprise conscious thinking, imagination, dream-life, intuition, memory, etc.) can operate only on the basis of perceptions previously experienced by that very mind either in their entirety or in some of their constituent elements: that is to say, it cannot visualize, or form an idea of, something that lies entirely outside the realm of previously realized experiences. Hence, whenever we arrive at a seemingly "new" mental image or idea, we find, on closer examination, that even if it is new as a composite entity, it is not really new as regards its component elements, for these are invariably derived from previous - and sometimes quite disparate - mental experiences which are now but brought together in a new combination or series of new combinations.



Now as soon as we realize that the human mind cannot operate otherwise than on the basis of previous experiences - that is to say, on the basis of apperceptions and cognitions already recorded in that mind - we are faced by a weighty question: Since the metaphysical ideas of religion relate, by virtue of their nature, to a realm beyond the reach of human perception or experience - how can they be successfully conveyed too us? How can we he expected to grasp ideas which have no counterpart, not even a fractional one, in any of the apperceptions which we have arrived at empirically?



The answer is self-evident: By means of loan-images derived from our actual - physical or mental - experiences; or, as Zamakhshari phrases it in his commentary on 13:35, "through a parabolic illustration, by means of something which we know from our experience, of something that is beyond the reach of our perception" (tamtheelan li-ma ghaaba anna bi-ma nushaahid). And this is the innermost purport of the term and concept of al-mutashaabihaat as used in the Quran.



Thus, the Qur~an tells us clearly that many of its passages and expressions must be understood in an allegorical sense for the simple reason that, being intended for human understanding, they could not have been conveyed to us in any other way.. It follows, therefore, that if we were to take every Quranic passage, statement or expression in its outward, literal sense and disregard the possibility of its being an allegory, a metaphor or a parable, we would be offending against the very spirit of the divine writ.



Consider, for instance, some of the Quranic references to God's Being - Being indefinable, infinite in time and space, and utterly beyond any creature's comprehension. Far from being able to imagine Him, we can only realize what He is not: namely, not limited in either time or space, not definable in terms of comparison, and not to be comprised within any category of human thought. Hence, only very generalized metaphors can convey to us, though most inadequately, the idea of His existence and activity.



And so, when the Quran speaks of Him as being "in the heavens" or "established on His throne (al-arsh)", we cannot possibly take these phrases in their literal senses, since then they would imply, however vaguely, that God is limited in space: and since such a limitation would contradict the concept of an Infinite Being, we know immediately, without the least doubt that the "heavens" and the "throne" and God's being "established" on it are but linguistic vehicles meant to convey an idea which is outside all human experience, namely, the idea of God's almightiness and absolute sway over all that exists. Similarly, whenever He is described as "all-seeing", "all-hearing" or "all-aware", we know that these descriptions have nothing to do with the phenomena of physical seeing or hearing hut simply circumscribe, in terms understandable to man, the fact of God's eternal Presence in all that is or happens. And since "no human vision can encompass Him" (Quran 6:103), man is not expected to realize His existence otherwise than through observing the effects of His unceasing activity within and upon the universe created by Him.



But whereas our belief in God's existence does not - and, indeed, could not - depend on our grasping the unfathomable "how" of His Being, the same is not the case with problems connected with man's own existence, and, in particular, with the idea of a life in the hereafter: for, man's psyche is so constituted that it cannot accept any proposition relating to himself without being given a clear exposition of its purport.



The Quran tells us that man's life in this world is but the first stage - a very short stage - of a life that continues beyond the hiatus called "death" ; and the same Quran stresses again and again the principle of man's moral responsibility for all his conscious actions and his behaviour, and of the continuation of this responsibility, in the shape of inescapable consequences, good or bad, in a person's life in the hereafter. But how could man be made to understand the nature of these consequences and, thus, of the quality of the life that awaits him'? - for, obviously, inasmuch as man's resurrection will be the result of what the Quran describes as "a new act of creation", the life that will follow upon it must be entirely different from anything that man can and does experience in this world.



This being so, it is not enough for man to be told, "If you behave righteously in this world, you will attain to happiness in the life to come" , or, alternatively, "If you do wrong in this world, you will suffer for it in the hereafter". Such statements would be far too general and abstract to appeal to man's imagination and, thus, to influence his behaviour. What is needed is a more direct appeal to the intellect, resulting in a kind of "visualization" of the consequences of one's conscious acts and omissions: and such an appeal can be effectively produced by means of metaphors, allegories and parables, each of them stressing, on the one hand, the absolute dissimilarity of all that man will experience after resurrection from whatever he did or could experience in this world; and, on the other hand, establishing means of comparison between these two categories of experience.



Thus, explaining the reference to the bliss of paradise in 32:17, the Prophet indicated the essential difference between man's life in this world and in the hereafter in these words: "God says, 'I have readied for My righteous servants what no eye has ever seen, and no ear has ever heard, and no heart of man has ever conceived"' (Bukhãri, Muslim, Tirmidhi). On the other hand, in 2:25 the Quran speaks thus of the blessed in paradise: "Whenever they are granted fruits therefrom as their appointed sustenance, they will say, 'It is this that in days of yore was granted to us as our sustenance' - for they shall be given something which will recall that

[past]": and so we have the image of gardens through which running waters flow, blissful shade, spouses of indescribable beauty, and many other delights infinitely varied and unending, and yet somehow comparable to what may be conceived of as most delightful in this world.



However, this possibility of an intellectual comparison between the two stages of human existence is to a large extent limited by the fact that all our thinking and imagining is indissolubly connected with the concepts of finite time and finite space: in other words, we cannot imagine infinity in either time or space - and therefore cannot imagine a state of existence independent of time and space - or, as the Qur'~n phrases it with reference to a state of happiness in afterlife, "a paradise as vast as the heavens and the earth" (3:133): which expression is the Qur'anic synonym for the entire created universe. On the other hand, we know that every Qur'anic statement is directed to man's reason and must, therefore, be comprehensible either in its literal sense (as in the case of the dyãt muhkamdt) or allegorically (as in the ayat-e-mutashaabihaat); and since, owing to the constitution of the human mind, neither infinity nor eternity are comprehensible to us, it follows that the reference to the infinite "vastness" of paradise cannot relate to anything but the intensity of sensation which it will offer to the blest.



By obvious analogy, the principle of a "comparison through allegory" applied in the Qur~ãn to all references to paradise - i.e., a state of unimaginable happiness in afterlife - must be extended to all descriptions of otherworldly suffering - i.e., hell - in respect of its utter dissimilarity from all earthly experiences as well as its unmeasurable intensity. In both cases the descriptive method of the Qur'ãn is the same. We are told, as it

were: "Imagine the most joyous sensations, bodily as well as emotional, accessible to man: indescribable beauty, love physical and spiritual, conscious­ness of fulfilment, perfect peace and harmony; and imagine these sensations intensified beyond anything imaginable in this world - and at the same time entirely different from anything imaginable: and you have an inkling, however vague, of what is meant by 'paradise'." And, on the other

hand: "Imagine the greatest suffering, bodily as well as spiritual, which man may experience: burning by fire, utter loneliness and bitter desolation, the torment of unceasing frustration, a condition of neither living nor dying; and imagine this pain, this darkness and this despair intensified beyond anything imaginable in this world - and at the same time entirely different from anything imaginable: and you will know, however vaguely, what is meant by 'hell'."



Side by side with these allegories relating to man's life after death we find in the Qur'ãn many symbolical expressions referring to the evidence of God's activity. Owing to the limitations of human language - which, in their turn, arise from the inborn limitations of the human mind - this activity can only be circumscribed and never really described. Just as it is impossible for us to imagine or define God's Being, so the true nature of His creativeness - and, therefore, of His plan of creation - must remain beyond our grasp. But since the Quran aims at conveying to us an ethical teaching based, precisely, on the concept of God's purposeful creativeness, the latter must be, as it were, "translated" into categories of thought accessible to man. Hence the use of expressions which at first sight have an almost anthropomorphic hue, for instance, God's "wrath" (ghadab) or "condemnation"; His "pleasure" at good deeds or "love" for His creatures; or His being "oblivious" of a sinner who was oblivious of Him; or "asking" a wrongdoer on Resurrection Day about his wrongdoing; and so forth. All such verbal "translations" of God's activity into human terminology are unavoidable as long as we are expected to conform to ethical principles revealed to us by means of a human language; but there can be no greater mistake than to think that these "translations" could ever enable us to define the Undefinable.



And, as the Quran makes it clear in the seventh verse 3:7, only "those whose hearts are given to swerving from the truth go after that part of the divine writ which has been expressed in allegory, seeking out [what is bound to create] confusion, and seeking [to arrive at] its final meaning [in an arbitrary manner]: but none save God knows its final meaning."

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Bombings in Gaza

How is this being reported on CNN, Fox News, and NBC? Is it being reported at all? Its a big deal here, as well it should be. I was sitting watching Al-Jazeera with my host mother and she made the observation: "Its these actions that create recruits for al-Qaeda, that help encourage hatred of whole peoples." Well said. I have heard it said, in defense of Israel, that Hamas fired first, and that the Israelis are wiping out 'terrorists'. By and large, the first statement is true; Israel performs these bombing strikes in retaliation. But in retaliation for WHAT? Does the fact that 4 people were killed by a Hamas rocket attack justify flattening homes and villages and killing nearly 300 people?

The logic that justifies such actions is the logic of raw power, the power of the world's most powerful military (US) and all the privileges it brings. It is not the logic of justice, or even the logic of revenge (eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth) but the delusional and dangerous belief in the supremacy of pure force. And this belief is in my opinion, infinitely more threatening to the world at large than the irresponsible provocations of a ragtag militia turned government in Gaza.


From The AP
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli warplanes pressing one of Israel's deadliest assaults ever on Palestinian militants dropped bombs and missiles on a top security installation, a mosque, a TV station and dozens of other targets across the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Sunday.

Some 280 Palestinians have been killed and 600 people wounded since Israel's campaign to quash rocket barrages from Gaza began at midday Saturday, a Gaza health official said. Most of the dead were Hamas police. Israel launched some 250 airstrikes in the first 24 hours.

Israel's prime minister said the campaign could last longer than initially anticipated and the Israeli Cabinet approved the callup of thousands of reservists at its weekly meeting Sunday. Infantry and armored units were already headed to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion.

Militants, unbowed, kept up the pressure on Israel, firing dozens more rockets and mortars at Israeli border communities Sunday. Two rockets struck close to the largest city in southern Israel, Ashdod, some 38 kilometers (23 miles) from Gaza, reaching deeper into Israel than ever before. The targeting of Ashdod confirmed Israel's concern that militants are capable of putting major cities within rocket range. No injuries were reported.

The Palestinians' moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas, urged the Islamic militant group to renew a truce with Israel that collapsed last week.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council expressed serious concern about the escalating situation in Gaza and called on Israel and the Palestinians to immediately halt all violence and military activities. The U.N.'s most powerful body called for a new cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and for opening border crossings into Gaza to enable humanitarian supplies to reach the territory.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak allowed limited supplies of fuel and medicine to enter Gaza.

Many of Israel's Western allies urged restraint on both sides, though the U.S. blamed Hamas for the fighting.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Israel's closest ally on the Security Council, said "the key issue here was not to point a finger at Israel. The key issue was to urge all parties to end the violence and address the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza."

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said that in the face of constant rocket attacks, Israel had "no choice but to go on a military operation and the only party to blame is the Hamas."

The offensive began eight days after a six-month truce between Israel and the militants expired. The Israeli army says Palestinian militants have fired more than 300 rockets and mortars at Israeli targets over the past week and 10 times that number over the past year.

Streets were empty in Gaza City on Sunday as most residents stayed home, fearing more airstrikes. A few lined up to buy bread outside two bakeries. Schools were shut for a three-day mourning period the Gaza government declared Saturday for the campaign's dead.

Hamas police kept a low profile, wearing jackets over their dark blue uniforms and walking close to walls, hoping to evade the detection by Israeli pilots.

Aircraft struck one of Hamas' main security compounds in Gaza City — a major symbol of the group's authority. Health officials said four people were killed and 25 wounded in the attack.

A column of black smoke towered from the building and some inmates of the compound's prison fled after the missiles struck. Hamas police nabbed some of them.

One prisoner trapped under the rubble waved his hand in the hope of being rescued. Two other prisoners helped a bleeding friend walk through the debris.

Minutes after the strike, Hamas police defiantly planted the movement's green flag in the rubble.

"These strikes fuel our popular support, our military power and the firmness of our positions," said Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas legislator. "We will survive, we will move forward, we will not surrender, we will not be shaken."

Senior Hamas leaders went into hiding before the offensive began, shutting off their phones. Hamas' Gaza prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, spoke on a televised address on Saturday evening but it was not immediately clear where the address was taped.

Earlier, Palestinians said Israeli bombs destroyed a mosque outside Gaza's main hospital in Gaza City; the military called it a "base for terrorist activities."

In southern Gaza, aircraft targeted a Gaza tanker truck, touching off a blaze that raged out of control and spread to about a dozen nearby houses. One of the main medicine warehouses supplying local pharmacies in southern Gaza was attacked in another sortie.

Local residents said the tanker and the warehouse contained supplies that had been smuggled in from Gaza through underground tunnels with Egypt, suggesting Israel was widening its offensive to go after businesses that are a source of income for Hamas.

Warplanes attacked the headquarters of the local Hamas television station early Sunday, but it continued to broadcast from a mobile unit.

The initial waves of attacks Saturday focused on key Hamas security installations and rocket-launching pads.

Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said at least 280 people were killed, including 183 members of Hamas' uniformed security forces. It was not clear how many of the others were gunmen or civilians.

The civilian casualties included a 15-year-old boy who died in southern Gaza on Sunday in an attack on a greenhouse near the border. At least 644 people were wounded, Hassanain said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was unclear when the operation would end. The situation in southern Israel "is liable to last longer than we are able to foresee at this time," he told his Cabinet.

Benayahu said Israel's objective was not to halt all rocket attacks but to cripple militants' intention and motivation to assault Israel. "To change the situation, we don't have to go after the last of the rocket launchers," Benayahu told Army Radio.

The rockets that struck close to Ashdod, extending the militants' reach closer to Israel's heartland, landed some 23 miles (38 kilometers) from Gaza. Gaza's Hamas rulers have been stockpiling weapons in recent months, including medium-range missiles. Until Sunday, the deepest targets inside Israel had been the city of Ashkelon and the town of Netivot, which are about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Gaza.

Since the campaign began, around 150 rockets and mortars have bombarded southern Israel, according to the military's count.

In Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people about 11 miles (17 kilometers) from Gaza, bustling sidewalks immediately emptied after a rocket fell downtown. "I am afraid to walk," said Tzipi Moshe, 59, nervously puffing a cigarette as she ran into a building for cover.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, dominated by Abbas' Fatah movement, called a one-day commercial strike through the West Bank and urged Palestinians to take to the streets in peaceful protests.

Israel's military was on alert for possible disturbances in the West Bank. The campaign has inflamed public opinion across the Arab world, which has responded with protests and condemnations.

___

Additional reporting by Aron Heller in Ashkelon. Amy Teibel reported from Jerusalem.

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Passing Time by Making Lists in the Airport

The Best Things about Oman

1. The attitude of the people. Its so different than in the United States in terms of people's willingness to be open and helping...for no reason at all. For instance, me and a friend were stranded in a patch of deep sand at night, and two guys pulled over and helped push us out. This was just one instance of many. This cultivation of caring has been almost totally lost in the United States at least.

2. The Adhan. Its easy to measure your life by the calls to prayer, and there is a masjid virtually any place you go, including the mall and the airport! Praying was never so easy.

3. Its not Dubai. There are no tall buildings, and life moves at a more relaxed pace--i.e. it does not seem as if you are living in a giant construction site.

4. Somehow the Omanis cultivate both a healthy sense of piety and the openness to allow other cultures to be themselves and practice their religion.

5. Al-Jazeera International. Not unique to Oman, obviously. But anyone who watches it for a few hours will be absolutely astounded at how little of what is truly news actually gets reported on the major US networks.


The Worst Things About Oman

1. Some people cannot drive. And Omani drivers will tail you and flash their lights repeatedly if you are going slower than them on the freeway (even if you are going more than the speed limit). Seriously. I am lucky to be alive.

2. Taxi drivers will rob you absolutely blind (like one who asked 5 riyals for a 500 baisa fare) if you 1) are obviously from America or Europe or 2) don't know the usual fare or don't ask for it ahead of time.

3. Occasional moments of what may be termed 'cultural exaggeration'--i.e. Those people who claimed Omanis 'invented' Swahili to communicate with Africans.

4. The treatment of Bengalis, Pakistanis, Phillipinos and other house and farm labor is really low (though there are exceptions).

5. The heat. Self explanatory.

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Last Days in Oman

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A Bend In the River

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

So begins V.S. Naipaul's classic of African literature. My last week in Oman had me searching for something to fill the spaces between the history and physics reading. I was pleased to pick up A Bend in the River a masterpiece from an extraordinarily gifted writer. I must tell you I "finished" it in two days. I say "finished" because my copy ends on page 286, as Salim the narrator heads downriver, escaping from the small town in the Congo where he has made his life. The last page is a like an ending, but I am left mysteriously wondering if there is more from Salim, whether the narrative has room for his other life at the end of that steamer voyage. Instead, the last few sentences read: "the sky hazed over, and the sinking sun showed orange and was reflected in a broken golden line in the muddy water. Then we sailed into a golden glow." A full stop, but not an ending.

Naipaul has both fascinated with his brilliant prose, and vexed with the often reactionary observations of his narrators, so much like autobiography. The man has undeniable talent, but I felt as I did when reading Paul Theroux's book Dark Star Safari; the man is grouchy, content with his sweeping views of 'Africans' and seemingly obsessed with the achievement of Europeans in contrasting his society with theirs. In this way the book reminds one of Heart of Darkness Perhaps this is a particular feature of our narrarator that Naipaul has captured with great skill, but, having read other of Naipaul's work, I suspect that Naipaul is able to write so penetratingly into Salim's mind because he himself feels the ambivalence of place, the loneliness, and the slight contempt of the privileged outsider.

Salim's family is from Africa, part of an Indian trading caste (the Khoja) who were originally Hindus but converted to Islam, particularly Ismaili Shi'a Islam. Salim introduces himself as an outsider/insider: "The coast was not truly African. It was an Arab-Indian-Persian-Portuguese place, and we who lived there were really people of the Indian Ocean. True Africa was at our back. Many miles of scrub or desert seperated us from the up-country people; we looked east to the lands of with which we traded--Arabia, India, Persia. These were also the lands of our ancestors. But we could no longer say that we were Arabians or Indians or Persians; when we compared ourselves with these people, we felt like people of Africa."

Salim feels insecure in his family, because they are static, falling behind in changing times. He wishes to get away. He lacks the religious conviction of his fathers and brothers and does not have a temperament like them to be "buried so deep in their lives that they were not able to stand back and consider that nature of their lives." This pessimism of Salim's "can drive men to do wonders" and it pushes him into Central Africa as a shop owner in Kisingani (one of the many way stops for the ivory trade, it was founded in 1883 by Henry Stanley). But even there, he writes of his displacement and loneliness, in a deliberate way: "I seperated myself from them. I still thought of myself as a man just passing through. But where was the good place? I couldn't say. I never thought constructively about it. I was waiting for some illumination to come to me, to guide me to the good place and the 'life' I was still waiting for."

Salim's commentary on both Africa and Europe reveals this insider/outsider dynamic. On the one hand, he and his family have mixed African-Indian servants, speak Swahili, and occupy a long established niche in African commerce. But one of the overriding themes of the book is the ambivalence of Salim's racial and cultural heritage. For instance, while his family and tribe continue to live in Africa and avoid political discussion of Africa's future, Europeans (through the eyes of Salim) are a more creative force in the modern world, and this makes him both envy and despise them:

"The Europeans could do one thing and say something quite different; and they could act in this way because they had an idea of what they owed to their civilization. It was their great advantage over us. The Europeans wanted gold and slaves like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves. Being an intelligent and energetic people, and at the peak of their powers, they could express both sides of their civilization; and they got both the slaves and the statues"

This dynamic finds expression in the affair he begins with Yvette, the young and beautiful wife of a European professor whose 'expertise' on this region of Africa is a penetrating example of the uses and misuses of historical knowledge. Salim reads the scholar's articles and eats with him and Yvette in their home, and then leaves to be with the latter at his house. He finds their company stimulating and it takes away his loneliness; this is the optimistic period where Salim and others in the new African university (The Domain) live "in the companionship of that pretence, to feel that...we all lived beautifully and bravely with injustice and imminent death and consoled ourselves with love."

Salim's discussions with his friend Indar reveal one of the book's dynamic figures. Indar leaves Africa, goes to university in London, and returns as a Lecturer in The Domain. Indar, like Salim, wanted more, but unlike Salim, he was rich and more ambitious. He tells Salim, "I found myself growing false to myself, acting to myself, convincing myself of my rightness for whatever was being described. And this is where I suppose life ends for most people, who stiffen in the attitudes they adopt to make themselves suitable for the jobs and lives that other people have laid out for them."

Of course, the affair ends badly, the situation under the unnamed but obvious character of The President (Mobutu) gets steadily worse, and Salim has to flee. The plot is simple, and the characters, when they are not Indian or European, seem curiously immune from Salim's otherwise penetrating interior gaze. Rarely do we see or hear about the inner life and thoughts of any African from Salim. Even his closest companion, Metty, the mixed Indian-African, is always there attendant to Salim's needs, obsequious, and seemingly concerned only with his female liasons. In the end it is Metty who Salim suspects of betraying him, after Salim tells him he can no longer take care of him. None of the African women Salim sleeps with in the brothels merit so much as a name, and there are only two other African characters who are given any narrative importance. One is Zabeth, a customer from a forest village who Salim admires for her enterprise and attachment to her village traditions. The other is her son, Ferdinand, a boy who grows into a man during Salim's stay in the Congo. I felt Ferdinand was more of a narrative device than a true character, he exemplifies for Salim the ambivalence he feels about the new generation of Africans. For Ferdinand was put in Salim's care by Zabeth, and at each juncture of the novel, Ferdinand straddles the ideological and social debates of post-colonial Africa: loss of tribal allegiance, European education, the African personality. Eventually it is he, as a newly appointed appendage of the post-colonial state, who saves Salim's life.

I always feel a sense of quiet pessimism upon finishing Naipaul's work. His prose tends towards the themes of decay and stagnation, loneliness and the loss of stability in the world. As a writer he must have struggled with this most explicitly as an Indian from Trinidad who was educated at Oxford. I suspect that in writing this book, Naipaul drew quite heavily on his own 'African experience' as an Indian minority in a majority African, postcolonial country. There are bits of him in both Salim and Indar. Of course, writing is autobiography, so this shouldn't surprise, but it ought to make one aware that the position of relentless outsider is not the only legitimate position of a writer, but the product of a unique background. (see Alan Nest's excellent review of the book which touches on this) I can identify in some ways with Naipaul's internal anguish. But I am still debating whether one has to, like Ferdinand, choose an identity and be subsumed by it, or pay the price of loneliness and exile like Salim for the sake of writing with a critical distance. I am not sure this is even the correct way to frame this debate. Can one maintain a critical distance, be true to oneself, and still be a participating member of a given community. Is it really that easy? Is 'fitting in' worth the inevitable price? Are these questions only relevant to those who, through some trick of fate, have lost their own true identity? For historians and anthropologists who want to consider the value of their own knowledge and who they produce it for, these are essential questions to fit within an ongoing critical self-analysis.

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