Ukraine might have knocked down the Lenin statues and stripped the Soviet names from the streets, but the architecture of memory still winds its way through public spaces, sometimes in contested ways, sometimes provoking protest, and sometimes settling into history and pseudohistory.
I always read the plaque; I’ll read the captions in art museums. But I usually find myself in limited company. For the most part, the plaques interpreting statues and monuments tend towards a parsimonious, narrow characterization of history. As such, plaques often fall beneath the radar, or register only enough to justify a passing glance.
That’s why I was fascinated by the consistency of attention shown to the plaque at the People’s Friendship Arch complex in Ukraine. The granite stele (shown in the photograph in profile in the background) commemorates the Pereyaslav Council. Though distant in time, the Pereyaslav Council represents a locus of competing memory narratives. In the 1654 Council, the Cossacks declared allegiance to the Russian tzar. Maps of the period show a constant ebb and flow of empires criss-crossing Ukraine. But due to its context – an event that, to Russians, represents the unification of slavic peoples under the Russian banner – the commemorative statue attracts substantial attention.
During my time in Ukraine, I visited the People’s Friendship Arch complex every weekend. I enjoyed the liveliness of the streets closed to traffic on Sundays, when families full of bounding kids would yell over the scratchy audio blasted by the omnipresent crew of hip hop dancers. I’d walk through the main plaza, which in 2014 hosted ice forts and gunfire. Now, wrought iron memorials dot the Maidan. Every so often, I encountered concrete strafed by bullets. From the main street, I’d wander through the maze of under-the-street malls serving as pedestrian underpasses. Right by the People’s Friendship Arch complex, the mall unraveled into an underpass dotted with both official murals and street memorials. Notes to martyrs of the Euromaidan, or entreaties to Russia to release Ukrainian prisoners, or simply the ubiquitous emblem and flag of Ukraine. I’d emerge, blinking, from the dark tunnel. I’d step out into the wan Ukrainian sunlight. There, near the street memorials to the war with Russia, lay steles commemorating unity, and a pair of statues commemorating friendship.
The plaque still displays the Soviet line. But Ukrainians take it upon themselves to correct the history, to dispute the version of memory promoted in this space. Ukrainians regularly spray paint the plaque. “Glory to Ukraine!” “To the independence of Ukraine!” “Our Ukraine.” On the arch above, activists have installed a crack. The rainbow connecting nations has been fractured. In lieu of removing the monument, for the moment at least, Ukraine has opted to make the confrontation visible in public space.
In this photo, I was interested in the two people walking underneath the monument, echoing the pair of sculptures commemorating Soviet friendship. On a daily basis, from defining terms to making choices about language to altering street signs and memorials, Ukrainians navigate a fraught history.
Walking through the complex, I caught snippets of both Ukrainian and Russian. A fair few people considered themselves Soviets, or Russians, caught in a country of artificial political borders. Yet people in the same demographic categories just as often expressed a profound affection for the Ukrainian state and optimism about Ukraine’s future. The sentiments expressed in these Soviet-era memorials can coexist in the minds of some Ukrainians with nationalist aspirations. The memorials are situated uneasily in collective memory, drawing attention, activism, and condemnation, but also affection. The architecture of memory retains its continuity, even as the political circumstances change the parameters for engagement with that history.
Mohamed El-Sawi Hassan is a Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Asian Languages and Civilizations at Amherst College and Director of the Five College Arabic Language Initiative. His field of research is Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies. He is a contributing editor of Metamorphoses, the Journal of the Five college Faculty Seminar on Literary Translation. His recent translations were published in The Common literary journal in Amherst, and in Waslamagazine in Egypt. He is the co-translator of African Folklore: An Encyclopedia into Arabic. His forthcoming book chapter is “Reshaping Social Practice in Post-Arab Spring in Egypt: Expression of Identity and Affiliation in New Media,” in Cultural Production and Social Movements After the Arab Spring: Nationalism, Politics and Transnational Identity, published by I. B. Tauris.
How did you come to do translations?
My field of study and research is applied linguistics. I studied both Arabic language and English language and it was sort of natural to me to get interested in how translation from one language to the other would work, how to analyze the structure and how to be faithful to the source and target language in a way that would apply to linguistics in general.
What are some of your recent translation projects or your favorite projects?
I’m thinking of a translation project that I was part of. It was an African folklore encyclopedia and it was a team of translators who translated this from English into Arabic for the Arabic reader. The encyclopedia was published in Egypt and it was an interesting journey to get to know about African folklore in the first place, and get to transfer this to the Arabic reader in reader-friendly Arabic language. The cultural parts were very rich and even the English original had a lot of transliterated words from the original African sources so it was particularly interesting to translate.
Another work was a short story I translated for “The Common,” an open access online journal based at Amherst College (https://www.thecommononline.org/about/). The interesting part about this translation from Arabic into English was that the Arabic had many rich layers of the colloquial and the standard and it was really a challenge to reflect this kind of discrepancy and functionality when translating this into English.
Given that Arabic has these two registers– the colloquial and the formal–how did you attempt to represent that in English?
Well, the functions between the colloquial and the standard in Arabic are different than those that exist in English. This is one of the areas that unfortunately gets somehow lost in the translation because the effect that this code switching has on the reader has to be transferred into the English somehow, and the language levels are not readily transferable. So it’s a challenge and there is a loss in translation in this area, I would assume. So the writer in this short story specifically made use of these colloquial phrases, colloquial allusions, references, et cetera, as opposed to using the standard Arabic, and I did my best. I’m hoping that the general meaning was communicated but there will still be some challenges.
How do you decide to take on a translation project?
I usually am interested in translations that would be challenging or that would be interesting to the reader: either the Arabic reader or the English reader. There is also the practical consideration of time, whether I would have the time to finish that [project] or not. I also care about acknowledging the work of the translator: if the book would be published, if the translator’s work would be acknowledged as part of the process. So these are things I care for and I decide based on these reasons.
In your translation projects, have you ever gotten the chance to actually work with the original author through your translation?
Yes. Generally I would have an idea about the author: if the author is around, I would be in touch with them and get a general sense of the work – but I wouldn’t go into showering them with questions or asking them what they mean. I do my homework in researching the translation and I probably send them the final draft to get their sense about how it generally looks. Generally, yes, that’s a privilege for the translator if the author is willing to be part of the process, but to a certain extent.
That makes sense. Looking more specifically at Arabic and the uniqueness of translating between Arabic and English, what words do you leave in the original language when you’re translating and how do you make those decisions?
I do not leave words out because there are certain techniques to handle words. So by leaving words out, do you mean not translating something?
I guess. For instance, last semester I read “Men in the Sun” by Ghassan Khanafani. One character is called “Abu Khuzairan”. In Arabic, this has the meaning of “Father Khuzairan”, because “abu” means “father”. But in the English translation, the name is simply written as “Abu Khuzairan”. For an English reader who doesn’t have a sense of Arabic, they would just assume that “Abu” is the first name. But in knowing Arabic, it’s more than that. “Abu” is a title as well. I was wondering if you’ve come across situations with similar challenges and you transliterated a name but it lost some of its meaning as a result.
Yes, that happens almost all of the time with references and differentialities in general. There is the “Stealth Gloss” technique to use to help the reader understand what this word would mean as part of the target language. Footnotes are the last resort because they interrupt the flow of reading for the reader. It’s not the preferred technique but sometimes you have to explain the specifics of a time period or what a proper name refers to in particular. Incorporating what you want to say in the text by explanations, that’s also a technique. But you don’t generally leave out something from the original text in the translation. There is more than one way to handle this type of difficulty. But yeah, definitely, some things if they have been transliterated as they are, they wouldn’t mean anything to the reader in the target language.
Leading on from that, what topics or words have you found to be most difficult to translate between English and Arabic?
Generally poetry would be the most challenging because it has more than one level of meaning. It has logical levels, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic, so it’s generally poetry. Also religious translations would be challenging. Not specific words, but generally culturally related words would be the hardest to transfer, because the concept itself might not be shared between the target language and the source language. So you’re not just transferring the word, you’re also trying to transfer the entire concept behind this word.
In translating from Arabic to English, to what extent can you domesticate the translation? Being that the culture is so foreign to many English readers, especially in America.
I do my best to domesticate the target language to the reader, because they wouldn’t be familiar with the source. That is my concept of translation. I confer with bilingual editors and sometimes monolingual editors or readers or sometimes monolingual friends to just go over the text and see how it makes sense to them, or not. So I make an effort to make it domesticated to the reader, unless there is a compelling reason to glaringly foreignize some aspect of it, which could be the case in translating jokes or slogans. The punchline, the rhyme, etc, these are elements that sometimes you need to highlight as foreign, but domestication would be the end goal.
At least in my view, there’s not been the same volume of Arabic translations into English in recent times as with other languages, especially western European languages, that have a lot more flow across their languages. Do you think this impacts the number of translations done between Arabic and English? Are there any genres or authors/writers whose voices are not being heard beyond/outside of Arabic audiences?
I would say definitely, yes. I was just reading a statement that says that roughly 3% of books published in the United States every year are works of translation, and of that 3%, only 4.3% are translations from Arabic. [Interviewer’s Note: This means that 0.13 % of all books published in the United States each year are translations from Arabic. Arabic ranks as the 5th most spoken language in the world, with 422 million speakers. Comparatively, French ranks 10th with only 229 million speakers. However, French is the most popular source language for translated English books published in the United States, by a wide margin. Arabic lands as 10th in that ranking.]
Wow.
So it’s a very small percentage. 4.3 percent OF 3 percent. And that gives you an idea about how little this is. There is a huge cultural production in the Arab countries, among Arabic speakers (over 300 million people and 22 countries) and very little gets translated. There are reasons for that: some would be just that they might not sell; another is the vision of what to translate, and then there’s the focus on some stereotypes that are related to the Middle East and the thought of not going beyond those stereotypes. So these might be reasons for the limited number of translations we see of works from Arabic into English.
So you’re speaking of the consumer market, as in would the works sell?
Yeah, that’s one reason. I’m not sure if it’s the market or the publishers or the readers who decide which Middle East they want to present through the translation and which voices they want to reflect or transfer.
An interesting phenomenon that I’ve seen is that a lot of the works that we ARE seeing in English translated from Arabic relate to war and crisis. It’s an interesting pattern, and I wonder: Is the vast majority of works produced in the Arab world on that topic, or is that just one genre that we see especially translated, whereas other, happier topics might be lost in translation?
That’s exactly the fact. What you’re saying is, yes, it does not represent the proportion or percentage of what’s being published in the Arabic language. What we see translated in English is kind of misrepresenting the actual proportion of, the landscape of, writings in Arabic. So, you get an inaccurate idea about the genre or even the topic of what’s being translated.
Thank you so much for your time.
Megan Barstow is a current student at Smith College in the class of 2020. She is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and a Concentration in Translation Studies, in which she is focused on translating between Arabic and English. She is based in Haverhill, MA.
What is farther outside of one’s comfort zone than being completely displaced in time, transported chronologically backwards through space to find oneself adapting to a foreign historical environment? While I do not possess the ability to time-travel, this essentially represents the mental sojourn that I undertook in my French course last semester called, “Les Années Noires: Living through the German Occupation In Paris, 1939-1945.” Using the methodology of creative assimilation, my peers and I absorbed ourselves in the vie quotidienne of those who lived in Nazi-occupied France, creating and embodying a fictitious character and chronicling their memoirs throughout the war. We transformed our classroom into a portal through which we gained an understanding of what it was like to live in Paris after the French defeat and under the German occupation. What were the daily humiliations, the moral dilemmas, the political risks and confrontations that Parisians faced as they struggled to survive?
Thus, embarking on the feat of creative fictional memoir writing in a second language, I plunged myself into the imagined life of Ève Leroux, a young orphaned cabaret dancer. Ève’s life, spent struggling to survive day-to-day under conditions of paranoia, suspicion, and fear, was a far cry from my own life. In the creation of this character, I tested my ability to think beyond my own political spectrum, opting to inhabit the mind of a collaborator who supported the German occupation, someone who is vilified for posterity and someone whose narrative belongs to the “wrong” side of World War II history. Since I pride myself on my high standards of moral integrity, I grappled with this decision; could I really inhabit the mind of someone whose belief system contradicts the liberty and democracy for which I stand? How would it be possible to elicit sympathy for a coward, for someone who is neither likeable, courageous, nor full of integrity?
It was often paralyzingly difficult to immerse myself in Ève’s ideological mindset, and one hurdle I had to overcome was developing the complexities of Ève’s character. As a multifaceted young woman coming of age in a tumultuous era, her primary focus was her own self-preservation. Ève’s crimes stemmed from labanalité du mal (“the banality of evil”) — a term which describes ordinary yet insidious everyday activity that perpetuated pro-Vichy ideology. By paying attention to her own needs but ignoring the need of others, she enabled herself to be indifferent in the face of injustice and annihilation. In the name of self-protection, she obeyed pro-nazi général Maréchal Pétain and those at the reigns of power, causing her to condone anti-semitic and xenophobic attitudes of the day. She shielded herself by turning her own back and closing her eyes to the violence that was happening around her, thus absolving herself from blame.
When I stepped out of my comfort and into the shoes of someone with a completely opposite vantage point, I was able to investigate why and how, in the face of blatant repressive extremism, French citizens were culpable or complicit in the atrocious domination that claimed the lives of millions of people. I hope that Eve’s memoirs represented les Années Noires for what they really were: les Années Grises, full of moral ambiguity, where every person held a degree of responsibility that needs to be reconciled.
Despite the discomfort, the process of writing Ève’s memoirs helped me to reach an understanding of a perspective that completely conflicts with my own values. Given that we are in the midst of a global resurgence in fascism, writing these memoirs in French taught me an important lesson, that we need to comprehend the origins of this deep-seated extremism in order to effectively tackle it. Most importantly, this experience taught me that when we expand our worldview to address the multitude of perspectives that exist inside of every history, we can take steps towards establishing a more tolerant and peaceful future.
Claire Lane ’20 is a sophomore Global STRIDE Scholar double-majoring in Dance and French Studies. Last summer, she took French language courses and trained in contemporary dance in Brussels, Belgium, and she looks forward to continuing these two avenues of study next year while spending her junior year abroad in London and Geneva. She is passionate about how languages, both verbal and physical, shape identity and culture and can be a vehicle to bridge global divides in order to sustain a more compassionate world.
Within the walls of the idyllic Reid Hall, which once served as the academic center for a number of graduate and undergraduate American university groups in Paris, Smith students were busy making their year in France a memorable one. The year was 1968, and Smithies had been enriching their academic experience by participating in the Junior Year Abroad program for more than four decades. Though most likely embarked on the journey expecting to improve their French or gain first-hand appreciation for another culture, few would have anticipated bearing witness to events which would later be printed in history books. For beyond the tranquility of Reid Hall’s picturesque courtyard, excitement and turmoil brought on by students not unlike themselves had brought the city to a standstill. Sometimes, a picture cannot convey the whole story.
On May 10, 1968, days of student unrest in Paris reached a fever pitch: an estimated 20,000 student demonstrators had accumulated at the Sorbonne (the former University of Paris). As daylight faded, something changed: rather than gathering their belongings and disbanding for the night, students gathered rocks for launching at the police and began erecting a barricade of overturned cars, a monument to their steadfast commitment to the cause. Once given permission to launch an assault, police forces set off an hours-long, brutal struggle, during which hundreds sustained injuries as “passers-by as well as demonstrators were beaten by the police.”
Though the streets were cleared briefly, the crisis intensified. Political supporters of the movement’s leftist demands launched a march of solidarity with the students, who reoccupied the Sorbonne. Battles with police continued. Millions of workers hung up their uniforms and declared a strike. A week later, France was essentially closed down by the threat of revolution.
Twenty-five students enrolled in Smith’s Junior Year Abroad program in Paris were caught in the chaos of the revolution during the 1967-1968 academic year, a year which, according to the “Report on the Junior Year Abroad” from the Office of the Registrar, “progressed smoothly enough […] until May when the student uprisings and strikes in Paris and France caused some inconvenience but no serious danger to the group.” Though the students were first permitted to finish their exams, all were urged to leave the country via emergency transportation and funds. Students were also implored, as the report continues, “to use good judgment, caution, and restraint and were instructed not to go into the Latin Quarter,” where many riots were taking place. A letter from program director Andrée Demay takes on a tone of reassurance, stating that “[t]here is no panic whatever” and, regarding her students, that they “are not in a mood to expose themselves to danger.”
Eventually, though not until after Smith students had evacuated, the crusade presenting such danger began to lose momentum as labor strikes were gradually abandoned, students were formally evicted from the Sorbonne, and resistance to anarchist revolution diminished support among non-student groups. In a memo received by Smith President Thomas Mendenhall from the Information Service on Study Abroad, Vice President Harry Epstein acknowledges that, although “the government nearly fell as a result of the student revolt,” the effort had “pretty much run out of steam by early June.” Despite apparent defeat, perhaps amplified by the reelection of French President Charles de Gaulle, some reforms were spurred by the movement, having encouraged French society to employ introspection in reassessing itself and its values.
Posters on the walls of the Sorbonne, 1968
As the 50th anniversary of the protests approaches, we remember a bold endeavor which, according to a New York Times remembrance of the 40th anniversary, “did not aim at human perfectibility but only at imagining that life could really be different and a whole lot better.”
Although the Smith Juniors in Paris do not appear to have taken part in the protests alongside their French classmates, they bore witness to a branch of one of only a handful of truly global efforts for social change.
References
Junior Year Abroad Program, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Paris files 1927-, Box 1132.
Junior Year Abroad Program, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Association of Former Juniors in France records, Box 1133 and 1134.
Office of President Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, Smith College Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Mass. Series III: Academic Programs, Box 2 & 4.
“Protests Mount in France.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/protests-mount-in-france
Steinfels, Peter. “Paris, May 1968: The Revolution That Never Was.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 11 May 2008.
Amanda Carberry ’21 is a prospective Government major with a strong interest in languages, the World War II era, international human rights, and the study of history as it relates to foreign policy today. She hopes to travel and study abroad in the near future. She is also an avid writer, having self-published a novella, and looks forward to having the opportunity to refine her writing abilities during her years at Smith.
I have a weird love-hate relationship with translation jokes. On one hand, that little rift between languages makes me chuckle. I think back to myself in the old days, a clueless kid who only had half of the riddle. It reminds me of how far I’ve come as a person.
On the other hand, how good a joke is doesn’t just depend on the joke. Jokes are inherently social. Whether you’re sharing one on the internet for likes and comments or telling one to a friend, there is a certain satisfaction you glean from being able to cause laughter. Because so many of my friends are American (read: non-Chinese speakers), they don’t get why I chuckle.
All jokes are inside jokes in some capacity. They rely on some sense of community. Translation jokes like this one are only funny to people like me who have hopped between two specific languages, and that reminds me of the weird position I’m in. Instead of bridging the gap between two cultures and languages, I hang between them, suspended, never fully inside of one or the other. I am the overlap of a Venn diagram that doesn’t exist outside of me and a handful of other people. My family, families like mine, and some friends.
Once upon a time, I lived in a monolingual world. It was as long ago as any fairytale. My experience overseas hasn’t just given me another language. It has fundamentally changed the way that I think, the way that I communicate, share, even laugh. I’ve always loved words and how they connect people, but now they are much richer. I can’t even remember what it felt to live with a singular language housed in my brain. Language connects, but it also separates, sometimes even isolates.
In the past, this picture would not have made me laugh. Aside from the fact that I probably have developed a worse sense of humor than I had at nine, there’s also the fact that I have changed in a way that is not quantifiable. In a way, it’s just like a joke–when you explain it, it becomes less funny, less potent, less correct. The exact combination of words always slides out of your grip.
Even so, I try.
The translation here is funny because the Chinese isn’t meant to indicate direction. Many Chinese sentences, such as this one, end with a word that roughly means “to” in order to indicate movement or purpose. English has no equivalent.
When I first saw this sign, I laughed and snapped a picture. I barely thought about it. The thought process had become part of me. There was no purpose in that, no movement of thought. I saw the words and they clicked.
Occasionally, I remember who I used to be. A little kid who was scared of anything foreign, unwilling to assimilate into the unfamiliar world around me. A little kid who didn’t find my thoughts reflected in the new language I was learning. But I don’t think about that so much anymore.
There is a thoughtlessness in languages. In jokes. And that is part of what makes them elegant and beautiful.
Of course, that’s just part of the story.
Xiaoxiao Meng ’19 is a Comparative Literature major and a Translation Studies Concentrator. She has spent half her life in the United States and the other half in China. This makes for a lot of terrible self-reflection on identity, culture, and the difficulty of explaining how good real soup dumplings are to American friends.
When my language course at Goethe Institute in Germany first started, I felt bewildered by the fact that I could no longer easily bring my coffee to class because the cafe downstairs only provided coffee in porcelain cups that had to be returned to the self-help desk — unless I crossed the street and went to the nearest Starbucks. And after school when I went to supermarkets, I realized plastic bags were not an option in most shops — not even for purchase. I had to bring one of my own, or spend on a relatively expensive cloth bag at the store. And I was surprised to see everyone actually bring a cloth bag with them everywhere. Such an inconvenience! Why do they do that, I wondered ?
In my host family, I was asked to separate plastics from the other garbage, and to make sure that I switched off all the lights when leaving each room and shut off water when shampooing my hair or brushing my teeth. The wash machine and even the dishwasher were used only once a week when both were completely filled up. There was no dryer and the laundry could only be put up on racks to air-dry. The refrigerator was painfully small partly to save energy. At the university, most buildings had no air-conditioning and our teacher was required to open the windows to let the fresh — and freezing — air in every 60 minutes.
The feeling of inconvenience arose due to many small things, but for people living in Hamburg, where I was now spending a year, it is part of their daily life, and these are their habits — eco-friendly habits. The green movements starting in the early 1980s most likely contributed to the adoption of these habits. And the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 triggered an awareness that then further encouraged a movement calling for an environmentally friendly style of life. Twenty years later, an entire generation in Germany and many other places in the Europe have grown up with an awareness of how interconnected and fragile our environment is.
Good policies that provide incentives for energy conservation and innovation as well as more practical reasons like high electricity price can all help explain why Germany leads the world in energy efficiency. But it was still striking and also illuminating to witness and experience how big a role resource-conscious habits play in this country. There are many things that we can see: for example, how friendly this city is to cyclists with the orderly arranged bike lanes all over the town. And there are also many energy-saving attempts that are hidden from our eyes, such as low- or zero-energy buildings, energy-saving home appliances, and organic food supplies. What is most important is that everyone seems to seriously care about the energy usage, and energy conservation is an indispensable part in everyone’s daily life instead of an empty talk of some “elite environmentalists,” or worse, a “hoax” made up by competing nations.
The aggregation of common personal habits reflects values of a nation’s culture. “Grab a drink and run,” for example, is so common in the U.S. that many people walk around a city or a street with plastic cups and straws in their hands, although it is totally unnecessary to keep hydrated all along the way. A reusable water bottle can reduce so much waste. In Starbucks in Germany, ordering a drink “for here” means, by default, receiving your coffee in a china cup. Even baby steps toward the goal of ecological sustainability are worth praising, such as the Grab-and-Go 2.0 project at Smith. To be sure, there is still plenty of space for further progress and remedies, and the public education of environmental awareness must be coupled with right incentives and pragmatic considerations, in order to realize the desirable and far-reaching effect among people across different areas.
It is always easy to label oneself as environmentally friendly while it is not so simple to change the small habits rooted in one’s life.We adapt to the environment while the environment cultivates our habits. Habits and the continuous practice of them make lives easier and this is how the so-called comfort zone starts to build up. The exchange semester in Living in Germany forced drastic changes in my own comfort zone. The habits that I was not even conscious of manifested themselves when discomfort caused by the loss of them began to disturb me. I suddenly understood that the grocery stores in the US that kindly double-stacked my plastic bags and the restaurants or cafeterias that offered disposable utensils were in fact indulging my natural tendency to over-consume, to waste and to be blind to the near future of ultimate depletion. It took a year living in Germany for me to observe the habits of people in another culture, to feel annoyed at the inconvenience of having to change my “comfortable” ways, and then to adopt new habits wholeheartedly.
Tianhua Zhu ’18 is currently a Senior, majoring in both Government and Linguistics. Looking at the intersection between the two majors, she is interested in the politics of language and seeks to understand the language of politics. She participated in the Smith Program in Hamburg in Spring 2017 and took advantage of the great opportunity to travel around several countries in Europe. Originally coming from Shanghai, China, she would like to accumulate more international experiences and bring together distinct perspectives echoing through the East and the West.
Our world today is saturated with images, especially photographs, to the point where it is easy to find a place familiar without ever traveling there. There is an image of Sydney that most tourists will picture before even arriving: the bustling boatyard of the Harbor, the distinctive white peaks of the Sydney Opera House, and the great arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. When I was preparing to travel to Australia, I came to realize how little I knew about Sydney beyond its landmarks. Studying art history at the University of Melbourne introduced me to a unique and complicated tradition of art in Australia that I had rarely thought about, having learned art history primarily within the Western art canon. When the time came for me to visit Sydney for the first time, I was primed to think critically about the city’s history, artistic traditions, distinctive architecture, and popular landmarks through a more informed lens.
My sister flew to Australia to spend ten days with me over Easter Break, and we embarked on a road trip from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. Our first stop was spending 24 hours in Sydney. Having studied the city through an artistic lens I was eager to explore both the city itself and the artwork the city houses in its distinguished museums. My first impression was like stepping into a living postcard. The historic harbor-side part of town, The Rocks, is within walking distance to all the aforementioned icons of the city.
Grace Cossington Smith, “The Bridge in-curve,” 1930, Tempera on Cardboard. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. No. 1765-5.
Visiting the Sydney Harbour Bridge made me think about many discussions I had been having in my classes at the University of Melbourne. In my Australian Art class I had been learning about artists in Sydney depicting the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the 1920s and 1930s. The paintings of both Dorrit Black and Grace Cossington Smith capture the bridge’s construction in an idealistic light. The construction and the bridge itself was largely portrayed as a gleaming beacon of modern technology and innovation, even in its unfinished state – or perhaps especially in its unfinished state. It represented the future, the modern age, and the possibilities of technology. I don’t pretend to know an extensive amount about the bridge itself, but I remember thinking about these paintings as I approached the bridge in person. I thought about what it meant as a national symbol at the time, and how it continues to define Sydney’s landscape.
A popular tourist activity is climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. You pay a fee to be harnessed into a track along a stairway, then spend hours walking on top of the curved arch of the bridge to reach the peak. Having seen photos from this vantage point on the internet, I know the view is breathtaking and I suspect the experience of being on the bridge is unimaginable. My sister and I chose not to climb the bridge and instead walked along the bridge’s busy highway at road level until we decided to turn around.
My sister Adrienne and I making an effort to pose with the Opera House despite the narrow window on the bridge barriers.
This allowed us to read the dedication plaques, admire the architecture from below, and see the city from over the harbor. It was still a breathtaking scene, but marred by the unavoidable fence blocking the view. Parts of the fence provide about a 6-inch gap between the stone of the bridge and the metal of the barrier, so this was our primary viewing window.
At the University of Melbourne I was taking a class on Street Art which brought up numerous questions of how people occupy, perceive, and interact with spaces. When walking across the Sydney Harbor Bridge with its massive stone masonry, imposing archways, and intricate metalwork, I was distracted by the small tags and names written in marker directly on the rusting metal, and a few locks attached to the grate with initials. This is the evidence of the human impulse to mark one’s presence in the space, leave proof of their interaction with the metal, and with the bridge. While an austere metal gate may seem unimpressive and commonplace, it was built along a major landmark whose image has become synonymous with the landscape and character of Sydney and even the country as a whole. To leave one’s mark on such a national symbol is no small act.
When I took the photograph looking through a padlocked square hinged window within the barrier on the Harbor Bridge, I was thinking about the graffiti tags and inscriptions as the residue of human interaction. I was thinking about the bridge as a national symbol and an emblem of modernity. I was also thinking about the multiplicity of perspectives and how postcard photographs can do little to capture the true experience of a place. Rather than constantly trying to avoid photographing the barrier, I used it to frame the bridge itself and the city beyond. The barrier could be read as being a visual obstacle in the photo, denying the viewer the satisfaction of a beautiful, unflawed depiction of the bridge – or from the bridge. However, the barrier too shows human connection to place, and how barriers on bridges can themselves be made into bridges between people. While I have no way of knowing the individuals whose names I read on the bridge, I knew that they had stood in the same place I was standing, seen the same view, and are a part of their own story. Despite their corporeal absence, it felt as if all our paths had crossed.
Bibliography
“The Bridge In-curve.” National Gallery of Victoria Collection Online. National Gallery of Victoria, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2017.
“Sydney Harbour Bridge.” Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Digital Transformation Agency, 30 Mar. 2015. Web. 02 Feb. 2017.
Claire is a senior Studio Art major from Appleton, Maine. Concentrating in both photography and painting, her artwork gravitates towards using photography along with other media. She studied abroad in Melbourne, Australia for one semester in Spring of 2016. While abroad, Claire enriched her artistic practice with perspectives in Australian art, printing and collage techniques, and Melbourne’s street art scene. Claire enjoys knitting, dancing, antiquing, and nordic skiing.
One year ago, I led a small group of nonprofit professionals to Tunisia to learn about the local NGO sector. The epicenter of the Arab Spring in 2011, Tunis at the beginning of 2016 was still feeling occasional rumbles of political instability. Widely publicized attacks on tourists at the Bardo Museum and at a beach resort in Sousse made waves through the international community, and it was with some trepidation that my group of American experts in women’s rights and disability rights traveled to Tunisia’s capital.
Tunis, we learned when we arrived, is really comprised of several historical cities that lie adjacent to one another. The medieval walled city, called the medina, was the heart of Tunis for hundreds of years. Its narrow, winding streets lead in circuitous routes in which travelers can easily lose themselves for hours. During the day, the medina is vibrant and full of life. At night, the medina is eerily silent. In this photo, taken in the late afternoon, the side streets of the medina are already starting to empty of passers-by.
Just prior to our visit at the beginning of 2016, the city of Tunis was under a curfew from sundown to sunrise due to political unrest. Though the curfew was officially lifted the day before our arrival, the habit of not being out late clearly still held among the local population. On our first night in the city, my group walked quickly through the narrow streets with guides who held lanterns and doubled as bodyguards to accompany us through the medina after dark. Though the walk was stressful, it ended with our arrival at a beautiful traditional Tunisian home where we had a lavish welcome dinner hosted by a local partner NGO. Hospitality is a major part of Tunisian culture, and our local hosts provided an incredible feast in a beautiful setting completely at odds with the tense environment outside.
Many of the traditional houses of the medina, like the one above, are beautifully decorated indoors in a way that one would never expect based on the drab outer walls seen from the street. The elites of medieval Tunis spared no expense in incorporating intricate tile and stucco work in the central courtyards of their homes. As fortunes changed over the course of colonial rule and modernization, many of the old houses became too difficult for their owners to keep simply as homes. Many were converted into restaurants like the one where we had our welcome dinner, or into guesthouses for international travelers. The historic house pictured above is now a museum of Tunisian art and architecture and the seat of the Association for the Safeguard of the Medina—an organization trying to preserve Tunisia’s unique architectural heritage for future generations.
Outside of the medina, in the adjacent French Colonial part of the city, the streets still held some life after dark. Families and couples strolled along the wide, tree-lined boulevard modeled on the Champs-Elysées or enjoyed snacks and non-alcoholic drinks in the many cafes. Alcohol is seen as a foreign luxury/vice, and is typically expensive and can be difficult to find. Our group of Americans found one of the few bars serving alcohol on the roof of a nearby hotel with a view of the opera house. Like other historic buildings, the façade of opera house was lit to showcase the beauty of its Art Deco architecture. But appearances can be deceiving; the beautiful opera house was closed indefinitely for renovations. Just down the street from this seemingly idyllic picture, foreign embassies were guarded with tanks and barbed wire.
Just to the north of Tunis, a world away in atmosphere from both the medina and the French Colonial quarter lies an older history, a history of which many Tunisians are extremely proud. The massive ruins of ancient Carthage, a city that was once a major political, military, and economic force in the Mediterranean, shows that Tunis was once one of the most important places in the world. Ruins of a massive ancient bathhouse and amphitheater speak to a thriving ancient civilization which many locals see as the direct antecedent to their own. As foreigners in Tunis, we were told by everyone we met that we must absolutely see Carthage, that we would not understand Tunis today if we did not understand its ancient past. With all of the uncertainties facing Tunisia in the present, the ruins of Carthage are an anchor to a time when Tunis was one of the greatest cities in the ancient world.
During our visit, the future of Tunisia seemed uncertain. The nonprofit leaders that we met with spoke of the difficulties of creating a truly representative government, providing services for marginalized communities, addressing youth unemployment, dealing with influxes of refugees from neighboring Libya…the list of challenges was long. Despite these challenges, however, our group was warmly welcomed wherever we went throughout the city. The trepidation that we felt at the beginning of our trip was unfounded, and as a group of Americans, we never once felt truly unsafe. The empty streets of the medina after dark and the barbed wire around the embassies were only tiny blemishes in an otherwise beautiful place. In every part of the city, at every meeting with local nonprofit leaders, our group found incredible warmth and hospitality, and a very profound sense of hope.
Laura Carroll ’06 works in international development in Washington, DC. She writes and travels as often as she can possibly manage.
By 2015, according to the Institute of International Education, there were more than 300,000 Chinese students in universities and colleges all over US, while a decade ago in 2005 there were only around 60,000. Even at Smith College, a small all-women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts, there are more than 120 Chinese students studying and living in the community, constituting the largest international student group on campus. As a member of this group, I decided during my last semester in college to take my camera and to reflect upon how my friends and I transformed during four years and how we struggled with our identities.
My initial intention was to address the various stereotypes we encountered in U.S and back home. I’ve repeatedly heard people commenting, with negative connotations, how Chinese students always stuck together. These observations are partially true, as shown in the opening scene of my film, but I’m more interested in the mentalities and reasoning behind the phenomenon. I still remembered how my mother encouraged me to make “American friends” and I indeed went through a period of time when I tried to alienate my Chinese friends. However, I eventually understood that making friends should be a more natural process and I didn’t need to feel pressured. Ruki, featured in my film, mentioned similar feeling how she felt like she should be able to choose friends based on mutual interests or experiences. As for why it was usually easier for Chinese students to develop a friendship within the group, another character in my film, Jojo offered a more scientific explanation. She commented that she had two different identities when speaking two languages and the Chinese identity made her feel more relaxed.
On the one hand, in China, students who study abroad are often considered as “rich, spoiled kids who can’t get into a good Chinese University.” News about Chinese students’ misbehaviors in the United States, in particular, has added to the impressions. Even in cases where Chinese students were murdered, people criticize these students and their family on social media for being corrupted and rich to send their kids away. I strived to demonstrate a different life of our group. We are definitely privileged but we don’t live in an exaggeratedly luxurious world. At Smith, we worked really hard to achieve our academic goals and to fulfill our passions. Even till now, I remain deeply touched by how my ambitious Chinese friends persist to do what they truly love – no matter working in finance or pursing a PHD in engineering; these hard-working young women inspired me to always challenge myself beyond my capabilities.
In the process of filming and interviewing, I started to realize a theme that appeared again and again in our conversations was our relationships with China and US. I never fully identified with American culture, but it was also hard for me to claim that I identified myself as a Chinese. Studying East Asian Studies, I gradually developed a more critical perspective towards my country. My own ideological struggle was further reflected through my friends and their stories. Like Ruki and Izzy, I don’t feel a sense of belonging to China or to US: when I went back home, I missed the convenience and freedom of my life in US; when I came back to school, however, I got homesick and remembered how things were different in China. Jojo, on the other hand, shed a more positive light on such struggles: equipped with American ideas, she believed that she would make changes back in China. The decision to stay or to go back home was a complicated one. It was especially painful for me when I made the decision to stay. I always knew I wanted to make documentary about China, so the most logical decision was to go back home where I would have more resources and connections. Choosing to stay, I’ll have to make a living and possibly give up my dream. However, I still decided to stay since I wanted to have an independent space to reflect on my passion and my future. The struggle never stops and I’m still questioning my decision on a daily basis. Making the film was a self-discovery and self-questioning process and I eventually learned to reconcile with myself.
Amie Song ’16 is a documentary filmmaker living and working in New York City. A recent graduate from Smith College, she has experience in pre-production research, videography, and post-production editing. Originally from China, she is committed to exploring China’s contemporary social development as well as traditional cultural heritage through visual language. What interests her most about documentary production is the experience bringing out untold stories and unknown narratives. She has interned for various media organizations, including Ken Burns’ Florentine Films, VICE Media, KCETLink and Blog Weekly (博客天下). Her first short documentary In-Between is an intimate look into the experience of three Chinese students studying in the U.S. She is currently working at Effie Worldwide as an international program assistant.
In anticipation of holding our annual Global Encounters photography contest and exhibit this year, we invited faculty from the Art Department and the Smith College Museum to address some of the ethical issues that come up when taking photographs. Fraser Stables, Associate Professor of Art; Alex Seggerman, Post-Doc in Islamic Art and Architecture; Anna Lee, Postdoctoral Fellow & Lecturer in the History of Photography; and Charlene Shang Miller, Associate Educator for Academic Programs, Smith College Museum of Art came together at the Lewis Global Studies in October to discuss some of the fraught questions that today’s photographer–professional and amateur–must contend with, and to give some guidance to student photographers.
Anna: Coming from a historical perspective I was thinking about the 19th century, and as I mentioned in my vernacular photography class, there was a campaign about whether amateurs could take pictures at the 1893 World’s Fair fair in Chicago. The souvenir photographs that you could get from the fair were taken by professional photographers. But amateurs waived this incredibly ferocious campaign to be able to bring their own cameras into the fair. And this effort by amateur photographers raises a question for us now: Why did they want to take their own photos? What did they want to depict? What was valuable about them having their own views represented?
As you take photos now I would encourage you all to think about different ways of taking pictures. You might want to think about your aperture setting or shutter speed, and when you roam through a busy street, you might want to think about yourself in a public space. There’s not only one way to take pictures. The more thoughtful, slow deliberate sensitivity is being lost a little bit, though it is something you can do with your phone also. You can kind of hybridize the mentality that your photographic ancestors have fought to allow you to do.
Charlene: It’s interesting what you are saying about digital photography, because you do not require a camera; you can take very good pictures with your iPhone. I was looking at Instagram before coming here and looking for travel photography hashtags; there were 17 million images tagged as street photography. To me, it’s about asking yourself questions: What is your motivation for taking the photo? Where is that intentionality? What is compelling about just capturing the moment? There’s a quote (and I’m not remembering the source) that taking a photo is not the same as publishing a photo. For this photography contest you all have the ability to caption your photos, so you are able to share your intention with the viewer. Remember that there are many different ways that people may and will interpret your images and they may have other meanings you did not initially consider.
Alex Seggerman: I focus on the Middle East and photography, especially in the 19th century. So I will say a few words about the origins of photography and about the relationship between political and military power and image making. As American students abroad, there is always a political implication of us going into another culture, especially when it’s not Western Europe.
Right after the invention of photography in 1839, people started going to Egypt. As soon as you have the invention of photography, you have photographic studios being set up because there is a real insatiable desire by Westerners for images of Egypt.
Francis Frith took many photos in Egypt in the 1850s and published enormous books with beautiful, large photographs. He had to carry glass negatives on his back to take these photos.
Here is the sphinx with the pyramids of Giza, still a popular tourist spot. He is composing these views in a particular way; you don’t get a sense of who he is nor of his objective. But he was an interesting person. Below he is dressed in a “Turkish summer costume”.
These are posed architectural photos from the early years. These images of architecture soon gave way to highly crafted images of people in particular types, as in the following image of an Egyptian peasant woman. But it’s taken in a studio with a painted backdrop.
Hippolyte Arnoux, Egyptian Woman, c. 1870 Smith College Museum of Art But, it’s taken in a studio, so the backdrop is painted.
Francis Frith was creating the world as a picture and trying to encapsulate this other culture in a very nicely framed picture. And through that, the images were grabbing things from this other culture to make it their own. Photography was used in place of colonialism — actually grabbing other cultures. Photographers were going all over the world to take pictures of people being consumed by Western audiences. When one goes out into the world today to take photographs, it’s important to remember this history of photography and how images were crafted and how the composition of images was used to assert power.
Can one take pictures of local people going about their everyday lives in a slightly less colonial way?
In one sense there is the tourist gaining control over the tourist sites and in another sense it’s the people of the culture. In these travel photos taken from a Google image search of tourists in Egypt, we don’t see the interaction between the visitor and the local.
You might want to think about your role behind the camera and how you compose the image to make sure you are implicated in that image and that your experience is part of the image itself.
Fraser Stables: There are contemporary artists who use Google Street View as a database of photographs from which to retract images that have strange moments of theatre or trauma.
Jon Rafman, from the series “9 eyes”
This prompts questions such as: what does it mean to produce an image, what is the role of technology, and in what way is the subject mediated? Photography can be a way to think about our role and responsibility in society. The use of technology complicates this, and I would encourage you to think about how technology can be used to create images that wouldn’t otherwise have existed. Regarding the relationship between photographer and subject, an interesting example is The Neighbors by Arne Svenson. These photographs are taken from the photographer’s apartment in NYC, and show domestic life through the windows of other people’s apartments.
Arne Svenson, The Neighbors
Unsurprisingly, he was sued by several of his subjects for invasion of privacy. These photos raise questions about what rights we have to our own image and what idea of privacy we can expect. In the case of these apartments with large glass windows, the court ruled that there is no reasonable assumption of privacy and the lawsuit wasn’t successful.
When taking photographs, some questions are legal, some are ethical, and sometimes they overlap. Was it right to do that? Is it allowed to do that? Sometimes you have to figure it out on the fly or you figure it out afterwards. In every situation there are thousands of ways to behave and make an image. In some instances you put yourself on the line. In others, you put the subject on the line.
Another example is a project by Shizuka Yokimizo, who sent letters to people in buildings asking them to stand at their window at a certain time if they were willing to be photographed. If they didn’t want to participate they could draw their curtains or not be present.
Shizuka Yokimizo
The photograph is a result of communication and an acknowledgement of the transaction. Yokimizo sent copies of the photographs to those who participated and if they didn’t want it to be exhibited they could contact her gallery.
Joanna Lowry addressed some of these issues in an essay that defined photography as being monological or dialogical. She defined studio photography as monological: I tell you where to stand, what to do. Photography outside the studio is described as being more dialogical, since it involves more negotiation between the subject and photographer. I would suggest that as you are photographing you ask yourself if there are ways to make your photos more dialogical.
In this last project, the photographer Gabriel Orozco invited people in this building to put oranges in the their windowsills. Without showing the human subjects, the photograph stands as a record of participation.
Gabriel Orozco
Each of these projects invites questions about how we physically and politically occupy space, and the relationship between photographer and subject, even if they don’t meet or the subject is behind glass. I would suggest that it is important to think empathetically about your own subjects. And if you are taking a photograph, reflect on how are you “using” the subject.
Your own ethical compass has to guide you. Things we value in our culture are not always in sync with our ethical values. We can do the “right” thing, but sometimes, the most interesting artifacts we have in our culture come from someone having been unethical. And how do we resolve that?
Anna: For a working photographer, it’s important to build trust. I think there is a long standing feeling that the best photos are taken surreptitiously.
Charlene: It is interesting to think about the interaction between subject and photographer and respect. And the acknowledgement that there is a transaction between these two people. I’m taken with what you’re saying about what we know of this interaction, and our interpretation of that. What you end up having to do is rely on your own set of values and recognize what they are. If it does not feel right it probably is not right.
Mbandaka, Democratic Republic of the Congo | September 30, 2016 Where are you from? Ah, America. And who are you voting for? But why? Donald Trump is a very rich man! A billion dollars? In one year? Well, I don’t know about that, but he has many businesses around the world and makes a lot of money. I suppose, but she is a criminal? Who? Bernie Sanders? I’ve never heard of him.
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo | October 2, 2016 I don’t know about this man, this Trump fellow. He does not seem to be that smart, and he is not even a Christian! He has lost a lot of money, and he doesn’t treat his employees very well. Things are not seeming well here. The price of gas has doubled last week—doubled! Haven’t had a customer since you were here in August, no one is coming to invest. See there? That’s where the tires burned. An email from the US Embassy? They evacuated the families. The president has stopped paying his guards, they come to my neighborhood at night. I have to be home early! We will hope for the best!
Marrakesh, Morocco | November 9, 2016 Is this the end of the US’s transition away from fossil fuels? What does this mean for NASA’s work in the climate sector? What will we do if we lose our funding? How long do we have before the funding is cut? How long are their funding cycles? Here’s my card. Will I need to leave the US? Will my visa be revoked? Will I lose my job? What about conservation funding? I’ll email you. What about development funding? How much of your funding comes from the government? 50%? Oh man. Sorry. Did you see that woman crying in her coffee cup? Did you see me crying in my coffee cup?
Paris, France | November 25th, 2016 And look what has happened in the US, with Trump! He says nothing! Rien! Just look where we have found ourselves. Just look! Where are the leaders of the left? Where are the moderates? Where is rational thought?!
Brest, France | December 16th, 2016 And what has happened over there in the US, with Trump?! Wasn’t the electoral system designed specifically for situations like this? Why hasn’t he released his tax returns? He would go to jail in France. Shouldn’t he be in jail? Or at least be on trial? And he’s getting divorced! You didn’t hear? I saw it on the news this morning. Where? I’m not sure, let me check. Ah! Found it. Fake? Really? No I just read the headline! Well, they tricked me!
Marseille, France | December 31st, 2016 I’ve never left Britain before. You could say I’m “Brexiting”—in my own sense. Next I’m going to Mexico and then we’ll hop the wall to Burning Man. And then we’ll go on a road trip. Where? Well, I’d like to visit all of the states in which marijuana is legal. Have you ever been to Arches? To Zion? Colorado?
Aix-en-Provence, France | January 6th, 2017 You know, now that it has happened I’m not shocked. I have been expecting it all my life. And you know, my father, he was born a Polish Jew, and died a Communist. Forever a Communist! He always said, “Ça va recommencer un jour”. It will start again one day. And you know, when we were young—it was the 70’s! We didn’t want to hear that. We wanted to move forward—we believed in the progression of society. But now, it has started to return. He was right. Ça recommence !
Aix-en-Provence, France | January 20th, 2017 She won by three million votes? What? That doesn’t sound like a democracy. Re-districting? That’s crazy. Totally crazy. But it’s not the majority! Three million? That’s not a small number. How many people are in the United States? More than 300 million? And how many people voted? Half! But why don’t more people vote? America First! What does that mean? The world is too small for that now. We need each other!
Eva McNamara ’13 is a Cape Cod native. She has an MSc in Food Security and
Development from the University of Reading in addition to her BA from
Smith. In her spare time, she enjoys taking photos, going outside,
gardening, and cooking dinner with her husband.
Once viewed as a hero and protector of democracy, the reputation of the United States is experiencing a shift in Europe as EU-member states consider how they can emancipate themselves. Trump’s rise to power is not yet compared to Hitler in Germany, but the parallels are obvious. The country of unlimited possibilities is quickly morphing into a country of limitless preposterous posturing.
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The room resounded with laughter, accompanied by the clinking of forks and knives. The Network for English-Speaking Women in Freiburg was about to commence its final dinner meeting of the year. Although not a member, I was intrigued by the speaker’s topic on medical care for the refugees in our area. Seated next to a delightful woman who grew up in California, I asked her what she thought about the recent U.S. election results.
The entire table froze. I thought perhaps I had entered a war zone with a single question, but anxiety and sleep deprivation from watching the results tip in Trump’s favor throughout the night, along with my increasingly frayed nerves, clouded my perception. Their silence showed solidarity. One woman at the table smiled.
“I am from New Jersey, but have lived in Europe for over ten years. I am the only one in my family who doesn’t support Trump. I feel miserable.”
Other women from Ireland, Germany and elsewhere chimed in.
“We’re in for a very bumpy ride.”
The consensus was a mixture of emotions: fear, despondence, frustration, disbelief, anger and anxiety.
As a long-time expat living in Germany, I have witnessed America’s reputation in Europe during the 1980s go from hero to zero by the late 1990s. Many post-World War II Germans stood in awe at the greatness of the United States. It was a country viewed as protector, upholder of principles, lighthouse to the world. As the US waged war against Iraq in 1991, I experienced my first confrontation by a disenchanted German who thought the U.S. was a terrible warmonger and an easy target for hatred. The country’s reputation received a bump when the Twin Towers tumbled a decade later. Europe stood united against the pain of the 9/11 aftermath. But every time I would visit my family in the U.S., I could feel a growing unrest there, a swell of anger seething just beneath the surface of things. People in the United States seemed edgier, less trusting, less kind.
Then Obama took office and even my children, who were then only 7 and 9 years old, cried with me. That election night was a very different one for us back then. We clung to the threads of possibility that had woven the tapestry of our country. We thought the United States had finally embraced positive change and resilience after years of entrenched victimhood. We applauded as they attempted to implement affordable healthcare, a benefit most Europeans have grown to believe is a fundamental human right.
Eight years later the world looks at the United States very differently. The narrative has shifted from possibility to preposterous posturing. In fact, instead of relying on generous US support, EU-member states are considering ways in which they can emancipate themselves to take on more responsibility.
Trump tapped into the seething anger of the disenfranchised, manipulated the masses, made false promises, lied. It is a mystery to many of us not living in the United States how anyone could believe that the very person responsible for corrupt business practices could ever save those victimized by it. Any progressive, forward-thinking person can see the ridiculousness of his claims as plain as day. Even political conservatives cannot deny that he is a madman. Germans have yet to compare him to Hitler while many in the United States already have. The parallels between the two are clear.
As the election prognosis solidified into truth in the early morning hours on November 9th Central European Time, I watched as the exhausted German television show host ended the program with a visible look of disgust. The audience sat in stunned silence, pools of saliva forming from all the jaws dropped in the room.
In all my conversations with my European friends, I have not met a single person who felt Trump had anyone’s best interest at heart other than his own.
Perhaps the tenor in Europe can be summarized in a simple interaction I recently had. A young German man I met at an open-air market said, “I always thought I would visit the U.S. one day. But now…” he paused for a moment, and I swear I could almost hear his hopes shatter into a thousand pieces. “Now I don’t think I want to go there anymore.”
As the author of multiple self-help books, including The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World, Christine Louise Hohlbaum provides ways for people to learn how to go slow in order to be more productive, how to create boundaries by saying no more often and how to make the construct called time work for, not against, you. A recovering speedaholic herself, Christine understands the constraints within which many people lead their lives. Her work focuses on busting how of the fast lane’s corset to a saner, more self-directed pace of life.
Editors’ note: The following are the final scenes of Afreen Seher Gandhi’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, set in modern-day Islamic India, which she presented as her honors thesis in the Theatre Department. The play recounts how eight years ago, Maha borrowed money from and signed a promissory note with Khizir, a friend and rival of her husband’s, forging her dying father’s signature, to pay for an operation to save her husband’s eyesight. Maha’s loving but overprotective and conservative husband, Ali, believes that the money was a gift from Maha’s father.
Characters
Ali – 30 years old
Maha – 26 years old
Asha Baji – Maha’s longtime servant
Noor – Maha’s and Ali’s young daughter
SCENE 18 – The Big Reveal
Ali storms in the living room from the main door and puts his letters away in the bureau. Maha enters behind him. They have just returned from the Eid party.
Ali: You shouldn’t have danced at the party with Dr. Sharma.
Maha: How could I have refused, Ali? It would have looked so rude.
Ali: I don’t care. Don’t give me your silly excuses.
Maha: So I should have said no? Told him to get away from me? Ali, he is such a close family friend. How would he feel?
Ali: He is still na-mehram for you, and you should not be seen in the arms of another man, let alone in public! So what if he’d feel bad?
Maha: He and Sara are the only dependable friends we have in Mumbai and so I am concerned about how he feels.
Ali: And since when have Doctor Sharma’s feelings become so important to you?
Maha: Now you are just being ridiculous, Ali. (Waves hand in denial.)
Ali: Ridiculous? Don’t forget that Allah has made me your protector, and, so, I have every right to stop you from making a fool of yourself and shaming me. If anything unfortunate were to happen to you, I’m the one who will be affected the most!
Maha: Ali, it was just a five minute dance. Why are you getting so insecure?
Ali: Insecure? (Scoffs.) Everyone was looking at me as if I was the most senseless husband ever! For God’s sake, Maha, (grips her) I didn’t think you were so immature. Did you once think about my honor and image in society?
Maha pulls away from him.
Ali: Stop pulling away from me! Look at me when I’m talking to you.
Maha tries to leave.
Ali: Stay here and finish this with me–
Maha: Ali, I’m not feeling too well.
Ali: (Calms down a bit.) Maha, are you expecting again?
Maha: (Irritated.) No, Ali, please let go, I’m really tired.
Ali: (Sarcastically.) Yes, the dance must have been really, really tiring.
Maha: Don’t forget to read your letters.
Maha exits towards her bedroom. Ali sits on the sofa and tears open the first letter. The letter paper is colored light blue. He reads it twice to believe what is written.
Ali: Maha! Maha!
Maha hurries in, a red shawl wrapped around her (the one gifted by Ali).
Ali: Maha! Is this true?
Maha: Yes.
Ali is shocked. Beat.
Maha: It’s true that I have loved you more than anything else in the world.
Ali: Rubbish!
Maha: It’s alright, Ali. You won’t have to save me! I’ll take the blame!
Ali: Oh, you’ll take the blame?! Oh, oh, then what am I worried about?! (With fake delight.) Everything will be just fine! My God, you’re just like a child – you have no i-dee-a what you’ve done!
Maha: Yes, I do.
Ali: No you don’t! You couldn’t! Eight years of our Nikaah – you who were my pride, izzat, my joy – now a hypocrite – liar – and worse! A criminal! Ugh! I can’t bear to think how you will rot in hell after what you’ve done, and you are acting like you broke a dish. (Beat.) I should have seen this coming. (Beat.) You’re just like your father – no morals, religion, or sense of duty! And this is how you reward me for protecting you all these years?
Maha: You? Protected me?
Ali: Don’t change the subject! You’ve ruined my future! Khizir can do whatever he pleases with me, and I will have to take it – all because of you! Our family has been shamed because of a ruthless, senseless woman.
Maha: When I am no longer in your life, you will be free.
Ali: Oh, more of your fine phrases. What good would it do to me if you were gone? Khizir can publish your story all over if he pleases. I might even be suspected of corruption! People will think that Ali Omar Shah was behind all of this and used you as a scapegoat! All thanks to you – you whom I have done nothing but pet and spoil all our married life! But of course (mocking) when you are no longer in my life, I will be free! Really, Maha, show yourself to a doctor!
Long moment of silence. Maha stares at Ali and he notices something new about her.
Ali: Take this shawl off! You don’t deserve it. Take it off! (Snatches it from her.) I didn’t buy this priceless gift for someone like you. I must make things right with Khizir. One way or the other, this must be kept a secret. As for us, we must live as we have always, but of course only in the eyes of the world. You can live here, in some corner of the house, but Noor will be kept far away from you. You are no longer fit to raise my child. I do not trust you anymore.
The doorbell rings.
Ali: Hide yourself Maha, perhaps it is Khizir. I don’t want him to see you.
Maha wipes a single tear.
Maha: Asha Baji! Asha Baji!
Asha Baji enters and Maha whispers something to her. Ali receives another letter at the door and tears it open.
Ali: (With fake delight.) Oh look, another love letter from Khizir! How wonderful! Maha, just leave my sight. I do not want to open this letter in front of you.
Maha exits towards the bedroom upstairs and Asha follows. Ali reads the second letter that he has just received from Khizir. He is happily relieved at the end of it.
Ali: Maha! Maha! Look what Khizir wrote! I’m saved!
Maha enters. She is shabbily dressed: with no make:up, and wearing a plain nightgown.
Ali: Maha, look! Khizir writes that he will not tell our secret to anyone; he regrets and apologizes for everything, and he even returned this wretched promissory note with the forged signature on it! Let’s just get rid of it first! (Tears the note.) There! Nothing can harm me now, I mean, nothing can harm the both of us now!
Maha: I’ve been fighting a hard fight these past few days.
Ali: Don’t get stuck on the negative Maha? It’s over, it’s all over! Our miseries have come to an end! Why that harsh look on your face? I have forgiven you. And I understand now that you did everything out of love for me and to protect me.
Ali tries to hug her tightly, but she does not return it.
Maha: Oh? You realize that now?
Ali: Yes! You loved me like a dutiful wife. You just took the wrong path to save me. But now I will counsel and guide you at all times. I’ve forgiven you, Maha, I really have!
Maha: I thank you for your forgiveness; that’s indeed very generous of you.
Maha tries to exit right. Ali holds her back.
Ali: Where are you going, Maha? Oh. You are upset because I asked you to take off the shawl, (Picks up shawl and hands it to her.) isn’t it?
Maha: (Refusing to take it.) Oh, Ali… Let’s just forget about this? I’m going to bed now. We can talk about this tomorrow.
Maha exits into the bedroom. Ali follows.
Scene 20 Nikaah
The next morning. Ali waltzes in the dining room happy and relieved. He sits on the table to read the morning news paper. There are two bags packed and kept in the living room area.
Ali: Maha! Maha! Please bring me some chai! I’ll get late for work.
Maha enters. She is dressed in her nightgown. She hasn’t slept all night.
Maha: When I was at my Abba’s place, he would impose his opinions on me all the time. About everything! Even if I disagreed with him, I hid my feelings, because he’d get very upset.
Ali: (Busy reading newspaper.) …hmmmmm… (Looks up.) Good morning. Let’s have chai, please?
Maha: He used to call me his songbird. It’s so funny… but I realized that I’m still just a songbird. But now I’m your songbird instead of Abba’s.
Ali: What…what are you talking about, Maha?
Maha: You always keep telling me that I’m like my father, but guess what? You’re the one who is just like my father. You decide everything for me, and I am forced to go along with it. When I look back at all these years of our marriage, I realized I’ve been living like a beggar, and I lived by performing tricks for you, Ali!
Ali: (Stands.) What nonsense, Maha? Aren’t you happy here?
Maha: No. I thought I was, but I’ve been lying to myself.
Ali: You’re not happy? (Scoffs.)
Maha: No, I just deceived myself into believing that I was content and happy with whatever made you happy and that you have always been so kind to me. But our house, it was nothing more than a cage. And I was the little birdie that you and Abba played with. At home, I was Abba’s songbird and here I was your little Koel. And as a result, our daughter has become my songbird. This has been our marriage, Ali.
Ali: Well maybe there might be some truth to this, but now it will be completely different. Play time is over, Maha, and now comes the time for education.
Maha: Whose education? Mine or Noor’s?
Ali: Both, Maha.
Maha: Oh, Ali, you cannot teach me how to be a fit wife to you.
Ali: And why do you say that?
Maha: Am I even fit to educate our daughter?
Ali: Maha —
Maha: Did you not say two minutes ago that you don’t trust me at all? I am not even fit to raise Noor!
Ali: I just said that in that heated moment. Why are you harping upon that one sentence?
Maha: Well, because you were wrong! The problem is not that I am not a good wife or mother, the problem is that I still need to be liberated. I need to open my eyes and enlighten myself. I realize that you are not the man who will help me solve this problem. I must set out to do this alone. And that is why—
Ali: That is why what, Maha, what?
Maha: That is why, Ali, we must separate. Our marriage must end for now. We can no longer stay under the same roof. AshaBaaji,AshaBaaji! Please bring all the stuff that I asked you to pack.
Ali: You’ve gone mad, Maha! You’ve lost your mind!
Maha: I have just come to my senses, Ali.
Ali: You mean to say that you are leaving me?
Maha: Yes.
Asha Baji brings a duffle bag and a carry-on and lays it next to the two bags near Ali.
Ali: You are leaving me, this house, and our daughter?
Maha: No, who said I was going to do abandon my house and child? I would never do that, not in a million years.
Ali: Oh, thank God, Maha, I am so relieved to hear that.
Maha: This doesn’t mean are marriage is still going to continue.
Ali: What? What do you mean Maha–
Maha: If someone will leave this house and Noor – it will have to be you, Ali. You, not me.
Ali: What?
Maha: Yes. Have you forgotten that father willed this house to me? Ali, this property is under my name. It is I who has been sheltering you, protecting you all this while.
Ali: You can’t be serious when you say that, Maha! I am proud of who I am- I am the bread winner of this house. I am a self-made man who has never turned to corrupt means to make a living.
Maha: (Gently) Ali, you would have no vision if it weren’t for me who scraped the money and had you operated on in time! (Beat) Yes, can you imagine your self-made self blind and miserable? Not being able to see Noor’s face when you hold her in your arms?
Ali: So, so, so you are ending this marriage because you think I was unfit for the sacrifice you made? Because I couldn’t repay you in the same way?
Maha: All I am saying is that this marriage isn’t going to work. I can’t live with you under the same roof anymore.
Ali: Maha, what are you saying? You’re turning me out of my own house? Have you forgotten the laws of our religion? Is this what Islam teaches women? To treat their husbands like shit and throw them out of the house after a small fight?
Maha: This is not one of our small fights, Ali, it just my sacred duty towards myself.
Ali: What rubbish? What duties are you talking about?
Maha: Am I not a human being, Ali, just as much you are? Don’t I have a will of my own? I know that your version of Islam is just what you think is right and proper and suits your needs. But from now on I shall not be satisfied with what you think, say, and believe. I will think things out for myself and try to be clear about them.
Ali: Are you not clear about your position in your own home? Do you not fear Allah? Have you no insight as to what your religion bids and forbids you to do?
Maha: Without you, I will look into all this as well. For now, my thoughts and beliefs have been clouded by your words. I will see if our religion is true for me, and what rights Islam gives women.
Ali: Maha, even if you fail to believe in our religion, let me appeal to your conscience- for I do suppose the woman I have been married to for eight years has some moral feelings, some ethics? Or answer me- do you have none?
Maha: It’s very easy for you to say these things now, Ali, according to you a moment ago, a woman had no right to spare her dying father or save her husband’s life. I don’t believe you anymore.
Ali: Maha, you’re talking like a child! Don’t you understand our society?
Maha: No, I don’t! But I shall try to, and make up my mind – which is right, society, religion or me. Leave, Ali, just go.
Lights fade as Ali picks up his bags and walks out of the door. Noor enters the room with Asha, and Maha (center-stage) lovingly picks her up in her arms.
Fade Out.
Glossary
Nikaah: The Islamic Marriage contract
koyal: a member of the cuckoo order of birds
haraam: an act forbidden by Islamic law
chai: tea made with milk, sugar and cardamom
nikah: a Muslim marriage
izzat: honor
Cast of the play
Afreen Seher Gandhi is a theater major with a South Asia Concentration who is focusing on Directing and Playwriting. Afreen has acted in and directed plays in India, and this is her seventh direction piece at Smith. She wrote and directed Smith’s first South Asian play, ‘Family Duty,’ based on a short story by Nighat M. Gandhi. Her work also includes her direction of the first Indian main stage play for the theater department in Spring 2014 and her adaptation of Vijay Tendulkar’s ‘Kamala,’ based on journalism and human trafficking in 20th century India. Afreen would like to pursue an MFA in directing after Smith.
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Battles with police continued. Millions of workers hung up their uniforms and declared a strike. A week later, France was essentially closed down by the threat of revolution.
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Xiaoxiao Meng ’19 is a Comparative Literature major and a Translation Studies Concentrator. She has spent half her life in the United States and the other half in China. This makes for a lot of terrible self-reflection on identity, culture, and the difficulty of explaining how good real soup dumplings are to American friends.
Tianhua Zhu ’18 is currently a Senior, majoring in both Government and Linguistics. Looking at the intersection between the two majors, she is interested in the politics of language and seeks to understand the language of politics. She participated in the Smith Program in Hamburg in Spring 2017 and took advantage of the great opportunity to travel around several countries in Europe. Originally coming from Shanghai, China, she would like to accumulate more international experiences and bring together distinct perspectives echoing through the East and the West.
Many of the traditional houses of the medina, like the one above, are beautifully decorated indoors in a way that one would never expect based on the drab outer walls seen from the street. The elites of medieval Tunis spared no expense in incorporating intricate tile and stucco work in the central courtyards of their homes. As fortunes changed over the course of colonial rule and modernization, many of the old houses became too difficult for their owners to keep simply as homes. Many were converted into restaurants like the one where we had our welcome dinner, or into guesthouses for international travelers. The historic house pictured above is now a museum of Tunisian art and architecture and the seat of the Association for the Safeguard of the Medina—an organization trying to preserve Tunisia’s unique architectural heritage for future generations. 
Like other historic buildings, the façade of opera house was lit to showcase the beauty of its Art Deco architecture. But appearances can be deceiving; the beautiful opera house was closed indefinitely for renovations. Just down the street from this seemingly idyllic picture, foreign embassies were guarded with tanks and barbed wire. 
As foreigners in Tunis, we were told by everyone we met that we must absolutely see Carthage, that we would not understand Tunis today if we did not understand its ancient past. With all of the uncertainties facing Tunisia in the present, the ruins of Carthage are an anchor to a time when Tunis was one of the greatest cities in the ancient world. 
Laura Carroll ’06 works in international development in Washington, DC. She writes and travels as often as she can possibly manage.
Here is the sphinx with the pyramids of Giza, still a popular tourist spot. He is composing these views in a particular way; you don’t get a sense of who he is nor of his objective. But he was an interesting person. Below he is dressed in a “Turkish summer costume”.
