Qatari Jasmine
“Why, why do these regimes
import everything from the West —
everything but the rule of law, that is,
and everything but freedom?”
- Mohammed Al-Ajami
Poets have always played the unique role as songbirds for revolutions. Jose Marti, oracle of the true Cuban Revolution, pronounced his verse as both “gentle green” and “flaming red.” William Butler Yeats wept over the “terrible beauty” of the Irish Uprising in “Easter, 1916.” Even later, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” described the upheavals of 1960’s, “Your sons and your daughters/Are beyond your command.” Qatar’s Mohammed Al-Ajami has been one among the many fabulous troubadours of the Arab Spring. He certainly stands alongside Ramy Essam, who composed “Irhal” in the heat of Egypt’s discontent with Hosni Mubarak. Al-Ajami was arrested in 2012 for celebrating the Tunisian protests that sparked the Arab protests, saying, “All of us are Tunisia in the face of these oppressors.” He was released just this year by royal pardon, and we would all do well to remember his valor.
PEN America describes Mohammed Al-Ajami as not only a poet, but as a third-year literature student from Cairo University, as well as a married father of four children (one of whom was born while he was imprisoned). Al-Ajami was arrested on November 16, 2011, under the charges of “inciting the overthrow of the ruling regime” and “criticizing the Emir.” These charges came as the result of his two poems. One was done vocally as part of a private poetry slam at Cairo University in 2010. The other, “Tunisian Jasmine”, was written in 2011 in response to the Tunisian protests. Ajami’s trial was held in secret, and he was barred from court, while his defense lawyer, Najeed Al-Nauimi, was blocked from making arguments (“Mohammed Al-Ajami”).
Arrested for a poem. Can you imagine it? Poetry is such an oft neglected area of literature, not quite as sexy as the novel or the autobiography. My Spanish professor once lamented how it isn’t in fashion to encourage students to memorize poems anymore. One could argue that the poetic voice has simply taken on the form the form of songwriting, and to some extent this is true, but there is something to be appreciated in the nuances of the lone poetic voice, without music. Poets have a long history of being taken for granted, even Ovid was discouraged from the profession by his father. Defenses of the genre go back far, a favorite of English literature students being Sir Philip Sidney’s in the sixteenth century. He argues that poets aren’t merely deluded romantics singing in the wilderness, but the very shapers of civilizations,
“And first, truly, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh against poetry, may justly be objected that they go very near to ungratefulness, to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations and languages that are known, has been the first light-giver to ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges. And will they now play the hedgehog, that, being received into the den, drove out his host? Or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill their parents? Let learned Greece in any of her manifold sciences be able to show me one book before Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod, all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any history be brought that can say any writers were there before them, if they were not men of the same skill, as Orpheus, Linus, and some other are named, who, having been the first of that country that made pens deliver of their knowledge to their posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in learning. For not only in time they had this priority — although in itself antiquity be venerable — but went before them as causes, to draw with their charming sweetness the wild untamed wits to an admiration of knowledge. So as Amphion was said to move stones with his poetry to build Thebes, and Orpheus to be listened to by beasts, — indeed stony and beastly people. So among the Romans were Livius Andronicus and Ennius; so in the Italian language the first that made it aspire to be a treasure-house of science were the poets Dante, Boccace, and Petrarch; so in our English were Gower and Chaucer, after whom, encouraged and delighted with their excellent foregoing, others have followed to beautify our mother-tongue, as well in the same kind as in other arts.”
I believe that Al-Ajami similarly followed in this tradition. While poetry is very much a low-key area of literature, it still offends, effects, and inspires. Though much like, say, “the Force” in Star Wars, poetry can be used for good as well as evil. One need only read Ezra Pound’s Pisan Cantos to understand this point. The dark side of poetic influence has been well illustrated by the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek,
“Soldiers are not bad per se but soldiers mobilised by nationalist poetry are. There is no ethnic cleansing without poetry. Why? Because we live in an era that perceives itself as post-ideological. Given that great public causes no longer have the force to mobilise people for mass violence, a larger sacred cause is needed, one that makes petty individual concerns about killing seem trivial.”
The Qatari emir surely believed that Al-Ajami’s poetry fell into Zizek’s description better than Sidney’s, but then he’d probably say that about anything that offended him, content be damned. Yet when Al-Ajami’s poetry is read in full context, it becomes clear that he’s appealing to our best natures, not our worst. In “Tunisian Jasmine”, he mocks the “strength” of the corrupt leaders, with a series of paradoxes: “whose people starve/while the regime boasts of prosperity”, “whose rule deems that power/comes from the American army”, and “one moment you have your rights/the next they are taken from you.” In a sense, it would be very much correct to say that Al-Ajami wants to overthrow the Qatari regime, and why shouldn’t he? In our own Declaration of Independence, the Founders wrote that governments long established should not be overthrown for light and transient causes, but that when a long train of abuses evinces a design of absolute despotism, it is the people’s right and duty to find new guards for their security. It is in such an intolerable state of affairs that the Qatari people now find themselves. As Al-Ajami has written,
“Prime Minister, Mohamed al-Ghannouchi:
If we measured your might
it wouldn’t hold a candle
to a constitution.
We shed no tears for Ben Ali,
nor any for his reign.
It was nothing more than a moment
in time for us,
historical
and dictatorial,
a system of oppression,
an era of autocracy.
Tunisia declared the people’s revolt:
When we lay blame
only the base and vile suffer from it;
and when we praise
we do so with all our hearts.
A revolution was kindled with the blood of the people:
their glory had worn away,
the glory of every living soul.
So, rebel, tell them,
tell them in a shrouded voice, a voice from the grave:
tell them that tragedies precede all victories.
A warning to the country whose ruler is ignorant,
whose ruler deems that power
comes from the American army.
A warning to the country whose people starve
while the regime boasts of its prosperity.
A warning to the country whose citizens sleep:
one moment you have your rights,
the next they’re taken from you.
A warning to the system — inherited — of oppression.
How long have all of you been slaves
to one man’s selfish predilections?
How long will the people remain
ignorant of their own strength,
while a despot makes decrees and appointments,
the will of the people all but forgotten?
Why is it that a ruler’s decisions are carried out?
They’ll come back to haunt him
in a country willing
to rid itself of coercion.
Let him know, he
who pleases only himself, and does nothing
but vex his own people; let him know
that tomorrow
someone else will be seated on that throne,
someone who knows the nation’s not his own,
nor the property of his children.
It belongs to the people, and its glories
are the glories of the people.
They gave their reply, and their voice was one,
and their fate, too, was one.
All of us are Tunisia
in the face of these oppressors.
The Arab regimes and those who rule them
are all, without exception,
without a single exception,
shameful, thieves.
This question that keeps you up at night —
its answer won’t be found
on any of the official channels…
Why, why do these regimes
import everything from the West —
everything but the rule of law, that is,
and everything but freedom?”
In March of this year, Al-Ajami was released, but the tyranny remains. Al-Ajami, I’m sad to say, is among the fortunate, as another critic in the Gulf region, Raif Badawi, still languishes in a Saudi prison. Revolutions are not begun by one man, but by the many, and until the Qatari people’s “voice be one” and “fate be one”, that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. The violence which erupted in Egypt, Libya, and Syria, has done well to discourage the enthusiasm for democracy in the Arab region. Badawi has written of the “birth pangs” of democracy, and indeed, republics rarely emerge without bloodshed. Let us not forget that our own revolution came at the cost of black freedom and native lands, or that to maintain it, Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion were suppressed. Regardless of these risks, I still believe that it is in the long-term interests of the Qataris to overthrow their oppressors and seek their freedom. It’ll come when Qatar is ready, and it will come in time, because as Al-Ajami has said,
“The Arab regimes
and those who rule them
are all, without exception, without a single exception,
shameful, thieves.”
Bibliography
“Mohammed Al-Ajami.” PEN America. Web. https://pen.org/defending-writers/mohammed-al-ajami
Mlynxqualey. “Qatar Upholds 15-year Sentence for Poet Muhammad Al-Ajami.” Arabic Literature (In English), October 21, 2013. Web. https://arablit.org/2013/10/21/qatar-upholds-15-year-sentence-for-poet-muhammad-al-ajami/
Sidney, Sir Phillip. “The Defence of Poesy.” Poetry Foundation, 1583. Web. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/essays/detail/69375
Zizek, Slavoj. “Sing of the new invasion.” The New Statesman, December 12, 2011. Web. http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2011/12/coriolanus-freedom-play
Originally published at sansuthecat.blogspot.com on May 13, 2016.
