Invisible women

AlJazeera.com's Afghanistan Live Blog is a wonderful resource, but then one realizes the posts, at least recent ones, largely overlook women.

So we can only imagine their experience ... and that is the source for Fear of Beauty. Imagination. 

Afghanistan is not alone. Every society has its invisible people. And they can have fascinating stories.

Screenshot courtesy of AlJazeera.com.

Islamic fiction

Demand is high for Islamic fiction in the English-speaking world.

"Storytelling is a traditional Islamic art and the novel brings this art right into the home. Muslims of all ages need the contemporary Muslim story as a vehicle for interpreting the world in an Islamic light. Non-Muslims might also appreciate an insight into the diversity and unity of the Muslim way of life that the art of storytelling can provide," writes Yafiah Katherine Randall for Islamic Fiction Books.

Well, Fear of Beauty is about a woman in rural Afghanistan who struggles to learn to read with only the help of the Koran.

So is the book Islamic fiction if the author is not Muslim herself?  You decide. It would be nice to think of the novel as one that bridges cultures as some do ... and not offend as did the opening song to Arabian Nights.

"Alf layla wa layla (known in English as A Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights) changed the world on a scale unrivalled by any other literary text," explain Saree Makdisi and Felicity Nussbaum in The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: East and West on Oxford Scholarship Online.  "Inspired by a 14th-century Syrian manuscript, the appearance of Antoine Galland's twelve-volume Mille et Une Nuits in English translation (1704-1717), closely followed by the Grub Street English edition, drew the text into European circulation. Over the following three hundred years, a widely heterogeneous series of editions, compilations, translations, and variations circled the globe to reveal the absorption of The Arabian Nights into English, continental, and global literatures, and its transformative return to modern Arabic literature, where it now enjoys a degree of prominence that it had never attained during the classical period."

Still, those banned books are good. 



And don't forget to sign up for the Goodreads Giveaway of Fear of Beauty. 

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and The Arabian Nights. 

Power of literacy

UNESCO provides statistics on global literacy efforts: More than one out of six of the world's adults are illiterate, two thirds of them women. Those who are illiterate and their children are likely to encounter a bleak future with limited opportunities. Among the 122 million who are illiterate worldwide, 60 percent are women.

The statistics are stark in Afghanistan, where going to school can be a dangerous venture. So about 40 percent of the men and 12 percent of the women were literate in 2000, according to The World Factbook of the CIA. UNESCO monitors populations, but of course, there is a lack of reliable cross-national data on literacy.  And lands with high rates of illiteracy are often too dangerous to monitor.

"Literacy contributes to peace as it brings people closer to attaining individual freedoms and better understanding the world, as well as preventing or resolving conflict," explained UNESCO on Literacy Day this year. "The connection between literacy and peace can be seen by the fact that in unstable democracies or in conflict-affected countries it is harder to establish or sustain a literate environment."

Fear of Beauty is about a rural Afghan woman who always wanted to read, but becomes desperate after her son dies in a fall and she finds a paper nearby. She begins by picking out words in her family's Koran, but soon realizes the process will go much more quickly with a teacher. And yes, literacy empowers her.

Photo of Kabul book press in 2002, courtesy of US Department of State and Wikimedia Commons.

Amazing GIS

GIS software is useful for any industry, allowing police, public health workers, journalists, weather forecasters, educators, researchers and planners of all types to pinpoint details on a map and show areas of need. The software can take thousands, millions of data points, rendering them instantly understandable with one glance.

The US Army Geospatial Center, US Army Corps of Engineers,  maps out terrorist incidents in Afghanistan. "The map examines civilian casualties due to acts of terrorism in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009." Unfortunately, we noticed that the beautiful map has since been removed, but its creator relied on the style of maps from the 1930s and 1940s, found in the US Library of Congress, depicting a contemporary conflict with the most modern of technology.

The uses of ArcGIS are many. For example: "The World Bank sees GIS as vital for addressing poverty and climate change," notes the website for Esri, the company that makes ArcGIS.

"The World Bank Institute's Innovation Team has geocoded and mapped more than 30,000 geographic locations for more than 2,500 bank-financed projects worldwide under its Mapping for Results initiative," writes Rachel Kyte, vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank. "All new World Bank projects are now georeferenced to ensure that development planners can track and deliver resources more efficiently and effectively and avoid work duplication."

GIS maps come in all colors and styles.  And just as there is a Peace Corps, there is also a GISCorps. GIS changes how we see our world, and of course it had to make an appearance in Fear of Beauty.

Partial GIS map, showing coal resources in north Afghanistan, courtesy of the US Geological Survey.

　

Goodreads

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Power

During the US presidential debate, in addressing questions on the Middle East, President Barack Obama mentioned three times that religious minorities must be protected. Understanding the nuances in the region is essential. Sometimes minorities abuse power over majority populations, as is the case in Syria. Sometimes majorities abuse power over minority populations.

"Understanding the sects and their tensions is crucial in crafting any foreign policy for the region," I wrote for The Washington Post's On Faith blog. 

Tolerance of others' beliefs,  provides security. Extending respect for those not in power provides security. As James Madison noted, "In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority." He also warned that tyranny and oppression arrive in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Good advice for any country.

The power that comes with example, culture, trade, education, diplomacy and more, can influence more than military power. Sadly, one of the great resources of the US State Department, its Background Notes and Country Profiles, are no more. What a loss ...

Examining the State Department's notes on percentages of Shia and Sunnis in the region - 35 percent Sunni and 62 percent Shia in Iraq; 9 percent Sunni and 89 percent Shia in Iran - along with a glance at a map, makes one wonder what the Bush administration was thinking when it decided to invade Iraq in March 2003. 

Map courtesy of Google.

Divide

Can a divided US and a divided Iran come to agreement over casting transparency on Iran's nuclear program - allowing inspectors inside Iranian research facilities to determine if the program is related to weapons capability? 

The two nations agree on one point: There are no plans for post-election talks to end the stalemate.

"The United States has been working with the P5+1 to pressure Iran on its nuclear program, but with few results," reports Yeganah Torbati for Reuters. "The United States and other Western powers allege that the program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, but Tehran says it is purely peaceful."

Expect the reports on secret plans talks to spark rancorous exchange during the third and final presidential debate in the US.