Download Amina Abdullah Arraf’s fake memoir here: A Thousand Sighs- Part I.pdf

On May 9, a friend of a friend sent an email to me and two other women writers asking if we would help a young lesbian, a Syrian American political blogger, to find a literary agent for her memoir. He pointed us toward this powerful post.

According to her blog, Amina Abdullah Arraf was on the run in Syria, he said. Though he’d never met her, this kind man was moved to try and help her.

We had a short email exchange in which I offered some standard publishing advice and named three agents who might be interested. I soon received the following email from aminaarraf@gmail.com :

Hi Minal,
I’ve attached a section of my book in progress … if you can forward
to [name deleted], I’d be very appreciative. You can also send her to
my blog: http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/

I really have no idea at all about the business end of things …

Amina

The attached document was titled “A Thousand Sighs, and a Sigh: An Arab American Education.” I skimmed it, found it rambling and in need of a lot of work, and did not forward it to the agent — probably the best decision I made in this whole process. Instead I offered some editorial feedback via my friend’s friend, and did not hear back.

Last week, when I saw the story that Amina had been abducted, I wrote an email to Lambda Literary, the queer writers’ organization. I suggested that the organization get involved in some effort to assist Amina and offered my help.

As the whole world knows today, there is no Amina. Countless people, moved by compassion, wasted much more time and energy than I did on a spectre.

This spectre was more than a cynical act of manipulation, however.

Amina was an idealized projection, the white man’s fantasy of an oppressed yet courageous Arab women. Bright, reckless, courageous, American, fighting patriarchy and Islamic repression at once: She was the perfect superhero, the perfect wet dream.

It is ironic that the hoaxster, in his mea culpa, says he wanted to contest “the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.”

For that is the very genre in which he chose to express his literary pretensions. By inventing this persona, creating an elaborate blog, and — apparently — intending to pursue book publication, Tom MacMaster was well on his way to pioneering “new forms of liberal Orientalism.”

Today I have read the autobiography much more carefully than I did the first time. The faked lesbian sex scenes turn my stomach. The narcissistic writing, the sprinkling of quotations from the Qu’ran and tidbits from Syrian history, the stock stories compiled from a thousand news clippings — it all seems painfully obvious.

So I find myself among the countless people — among them journalists for many (though not all) of the world’s most respected news organizations — who today are kicking themselves for believing, and trying to help.

Here are some excerpts from the memoir:

Of Amina’s ancestors, whose stories are told in long passages of pseudo-fantasy-novel style:

Now, Hajj Musa tried to take Nashqua to his bed for she enraptured him. She refused him, saying that, though she was a servant now, she had been born free in her own land and was of an ancient noble lineage; if he would have her, he would need first to ask for her hand and do all things properly. She was no slave and would be no man’s doxy.

Amina as a child, while her family is fleeing Syria:

“I ask, is America near the sea? I’d like to see the sea …”
“Yes, you will see the sea …”

Growing up in the United States, a perfect model minority girl:

I was almost always the first one done with tests, the one who had her hand up first with the answers and so on. (If you’ve ever seen the Simpsons, I was a lot like Lisa though with less self-confidence.) I took standardized tests and did ridiculously well on them (I’m still more than a little embarrassed about my listed IQ).

Her first crush on a woman (white, of course):

The whole time, I was noticing how mature and pretty she was; long, wavy golden hair tied up in a bun, bright blue eyes, an almost pinkish face and a woman’s body, just the way that I wished that I looked.

An exchange with her father, during her adolescence:

“Remember, Amina,” he sent [SIC], waving a finger, “if the young man and the young woman are alone together, the Shaitan makes three!”
“Yes, dad,” I nodded. “No Shaitan, I got it.”

When she realizes she is a lesbian:

I couldn’t help but think of myself as evil, foul, a sinner, and a corrupter …

And it goes on.

A thousand sighs, indeed.

Last weekend I introduced a retrospective of Jenni Olson’s films at Kashish, the Mumbai International Queer Film Festival. Below is a slightly spruced-up version of what I said.

*

Good afternoon, thank you for coming. I feel honored to have been asked to introduce this program of films, “The Streets of San Francisco,” set in my beautiful hometown.

With this retrospective, Kashish honors both Jenni Olson’s vision as a filmmaker and her longtime contribution and commitment to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender film community. She has been an instrumental figure in the United States in creating organizations and infrastructure for queer culture. While still a student back in 1986, she founded an LGBT film festival at her university campus. She later became co-director of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and was a co-founder of the website PlanetOut.com, as well as of the queer gathering at the Sundance Film Festival. She’s now director of e-commerce at the world’s largest exclusive distributor of gay and lesbian films. The books she has authored are both critical to documenting and preserving queer film culture: The Ultimate Guide to Lesbian & Gay Film and Video and The Queer Movie Poster Book.

Creatively, Jenni Olson’s first films were documentary feature-length films that compiled vintage movie trailers with queer content. The first one was called Homo Promo and the latest is Bride of Trailer Camp. We aren’t showing these films today, but you can see some very entertaining samples on her website, www.butch.org.

Today’s program begins with a few shorts in which you see her signature style develop. The main feature is a documentary called “The Joy of Life,” and here is where we see Jenni Olson’s unique vision as a filmmaker really emerge. I think of it less as a movie, with lots of action and naacha gaana [song and dance] going on—in fact there are almost no people in it— and almost more like a photo album with a story. It reminds me of sitting in someone’s living room in San Francisco, looking out the bay windows, having several cups of tea and listening to a friend talk about what’s going on with her: “Well, you know, there’s this girl … It’s been kind of hard …” [here the Kashish audience laughed].

“The Joy of Life” has three parts. The first is an apparently meandering story about queer relationships narrated by Harry (Harriet) Dodge, who is another key figure in American queer culture. Then there is a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco poet of the Beat generation, about the city, which acts as a sort of bridge. And then there is the story of the Golden Gate Bridge, where more than 30 people a year jump to their deaths every year.

This film was quite influential, along with another film (“The Bridge” by Eric Steel) that came out soon afterward, in getting the bureaucracy in charge of the bridge to reconsider the safety of the bridge. I can speak more about that afterward during the q&a if you’re interested.

Jenni Olson made this film after her co-director at the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Mark Finch, killed himself by jumping off the bridge. In my perception, linking queerness and suicide is very much at the heart of this project, but in a very subtle, never didactic way.

Last night I had a chance to touch base (thanks, Facebook!) with Jenni Olson and asked her if she wanted to share a few words with you. This is what she said:

I am honored to have my work included in such an important and prestigious film festival. I want to say Thank You in advance for your thoughtful attention to my unique cinematic approach — prioritizing urban landscapes and voiceover as my preferred method of storytelling. I hope you enjoy this meditative viewing experience and would love to hear your impressions if you want to look me up online at butch@butch.org!

With that, please relax and enjoy the film.
*

Here is the official film trailer. You can read more about “The Joy of Life” here or buy it here.

*

Trying to ignore the loudspeaker right outside my hotel room, which backs onto a five-star hotel’s parking lot, booming with strings of numbers and letters called out to summon drivers when their passengers are ready to go somewhere.

*

Befriending the Brazilian ex-dancer who wears beautiful saris to the performances every day, who’s braving India for the first time, and who spent two hours in a rickshaw today because the driver couldn’t find where she wanted to go and she didn’t know how to direct him.

*

Admiring the strange, surreal costuming of the Kathakali drama. (Picture a man in green face paint, a large golden headdress, and a hoop skirt … yes, that’s the villain.)

*

Dreaming vividly … last night, being seated in a restaurant amid flowing rivers.

*

Feeling famous … getting recognized in public twice in one day, after this article appeared on page 2 of the Times of India Chennai edition.

*

Buying saris by myself for the very first time, from the very nice folks at Tulsi Silks in Mylapore.

*

Meeting S. Muthiah, the eminent South Indian historian, who told me Leaving India was the best book he’d read in the last three years. Who knew an 80-year-old gentleman could make me feel so warm & fuzzy?

*

Listening to Lydia, who was in town to perform at the All-India Whistling Convention, whistle a selection from Verdi’s Rigoletto.

*

Doing a fun conversation/reading at Full Circle Bookstore attended by a great audience of 50-60 people, including journalists, queer community, consulate friends, Fulbrighters, book group ladies, scholars, & readers with lovely, smart questions.

*

Eating a fabulous South Indian thali while talking with Sunil Menon, one of my activist heroes, a pioneer of HIV/queer organizing in India.

*

Immersing in a week of amazing performances in the annual dance and music festival … taking pages and pages of notes and feeling ideas for my novel flow … way more than I can possibly describe.

*

Inventing the chikku-lime smoothie, with the collaboration of the juice guy at the Music Academy canteen (and getting others to order it too). Recipe: 3-4 chikus, 2 sweet limes, 2 spoons sugar, yum!

*

Meeting old and new friends … chance encounters with people I know (a writer from Michigan, a dancer from San Francisco, an activist from Seattle) and beautiful new connections with people I met here.

*

Reading newspapers’ music reviews, realizing it would take me another lifetime or two to understand passages like: “As a contrast, he rendered ‘Ni Dayarada’ the Vasanthabhairavi raga kriti of Tyagaraja in durita kalam. The raga alapana of Shanmughapriya for the RTP was grand, with all its sangatis in place, karvais in style and akaara prayoga reminiscent of Semmangudi.” !!

*

Having a rickshaw driver explain to me that he’s really a Brahmin pandit who has written several books in Tamil about the nature of atman and brahman, and is studying Sanskrit, several verses of which he proceeded to recite to me.

*

Running into Shri Shanmuga Sundaran in a parking lot and being invited to “Amour,” his gorgeous bharatanatyam piece based on the sculptures of Auguste Rodin (who, I learned, was inspired by Indian sculpture and myth) … and sitting right behind the French ambassador at the performance.

*

All in all, this has been a most excellent week. And what’s strange is, I spent most of my first day in Chennai totally miserable.

I had just come from Kolkata, where I’d spent time with two good friends and traveled to the Sundarbans, an idyllic area where we spent our days on boats and our nights on an island with no cars, minimal electricity, and extreme peace.

So when I arrived in Chennai on Monday, I was feeling that I didn’t really know anyone here, I couldn’t speak the language, my attempts to organize get-togethers and introductions weren’t coming through, it was just one more giant city to learn to navigate, the hotel was too noisy, the one mosquito in my room was actually hordes of them, I would much rather be home — or at least in Mumbai where I’d been starting to feel grounded, instead of starting all over again — etc., etc.

I hunkered down for most of the day, playing around on the Internet and basically avoiding dealing, knowing the whole time that there were all these fabulous performances happening that I was missing because I was just so cranky … until around 4pm I got so hungry I just had to get dressed and leave the room.

And then I made a couple of Skype dates with friends at home, which made me feel better. And I got through on the phone to an acquaintance in Chennai, who said they were going to a certain evening performance too, and we agreed to meet. And the show was excellent, and the company even more so.

And the week just got better and better.

I was on a beach in Goa while my book received its fourth award — this one from Pen Center USA, a branch of the international writers’ organization, at the Beverly Hills Hotel last weekend. An L.A. blog covering the event mentioned me and Hugh Hefner in the same paragraph:

In Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee’s acceptance of the Research Nonfiction award on behalf of Minal Hajratwala, she reminded the audience that as we enjoyed our delectable cinnamon ice-cream, Arundhati Roy had received more threats for her work. Hugh Hefner echoed these sentiments in his very brief acceptance speech when he dedicated his award to Erwin Arnada, the former editor of the Indonesian version of Playboy who remains behind bars for publication of a non-nude Playboy issue.

Strange bedfellows!

Anyway, my friend Cecilia, an excellent writer herself, was kind enough to go, take photos, and send me an email about the glamorous event. With her permission, I’m sharing her report here.

Hey Minal,

It was a great time last night at the PEN awards. I met some nice people, didn’t get to meet Hef, but here’s a picture of him:

I’m very bad at taking pix unless I’m in photographer mode, so here’s one of the chandelier in the reception room:

I didn’t get to see The Fonz, since he only came via video feed. But I did meet Lin Oliver and Amy Catanzano, the woman who won the Poetry award this year. I have the program and a small stack of books for you, if you want them — “This Lovely Life” by Vicki Forman, “The Pastoral Clinic” by Angela Garcia, and “The Dunderheads” by Paul Feischman.

AND of course, your award.

Which is beautiful and a nice, heavy glass. It’ll make a good paperweight and/or murder weapon, I’m sure.

xx
Cecilia

Here’s the full list of award winners and the official event pictures/slideshow.

And, just to make this a *really* long blog entry, here’s the acceptance speech:

It’s a great honor to be recognized here among so many distinguished writers and thinkers. I’d like to thank my families, both given and chosen, without whom this book would not have been written.

I regret that I can’t be with you here tonight because I’m in Mumbai, India, where as it happens, the mission of PEN is incredibly relevant as right-wing politics are threatening the freedom of writers. In the past few weeks, Arundhati Roy has been subject to threats of jail time, and a mob has attacked her home. Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such a Long Journey has fallen prey to censorship and book-burning; on that matter, I hope you all will consider signing the PEN petition, which complements efforts by Indian activists to uphold freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy.

Traveling as an American across the planet, I am deeply aware of the privileges we possess, and also how the work of authors worldwide is so very precious and so countercultural. We who write books –- these archaic objects that require hundreds of pages and hours of time to digest, let alone many years to write -– are always working against the dominant narrative. We are restoring complexity to topics which most of our culture and our media is devoted to oversimplifying.

In the United States, immigration is one such topic. We’ve just suffered through a political season in which, once again, immigration was invoked as a wedge issue.

Leaving India tells the story of my family of migrants, and the larger story of India’s diaspora, of how and why 30 million people migrated out of India all over the world over the past 100 years. Through this process, I came to find my home here in the great state of California, which has seen countless waves of migration in its young life. At each juncture, ordinary people and their representatives have had to decide what kind of California they want, and they have not always chosen well.

A hundred years ago, a Government report described people of India as “the most undesirable immigrant in the state,” absolutely “unfit for association with American people.” Barred from owning property. Turned back at the borders. Denied citizenship when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed that “the common man” would “instinctively… reject the thought of assimilation” with “the Hindoo.” And for nearly fifty years, America’s borders were closed to Indians.

But history is cyclical, and everything changes. Just over a week ago, President Obama was in Mumbai forging new partnerships, promising to work hand in hand with the people of India, guided largely by some of the 1.7 million people of Indian descent who now live in the United States.

I’d like to thank Pen USA and the judges for recognizing the importance of these stories, the stories of migrants, and each of our personal and historical memories. Because, despite the rhetoric, it is our own intimate histories which add up to the real story, the complex story, the one we know in our bones to be true, which is that this land has been and will continue to be shaped by immigrants and the children of immigrants — with or without books to their names; with or without the right papers.

Thank you very much.