[Pen-l] from Juan Cole: Sayyid Najm

["Jim Devine" <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

From: Juan Cole <jricole@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 11:13 PM

Aljazeera Arabic this evening interviewed Sayyid Najm, an Egyptian
novelist and literature specialist on war in literature. He is author
of, among other things, Ayyam Yusuf Mansi (Cairo: Zahran, 1990). He
made some interesting points about the structure of war novels, and
the way the pacing has to be picked up during the battles. The
interviewer then asked about the current fighting.

Q. In light of your experience with war in literature, what do you
have to say about Gaza today?

Sayyid Najm: If were were to speak about the literature of war with
regard to today, I'd have to say that there is no war in Gaza. In Gaza
today, all that we have experienced and lived through and dealt with
the meaning of, tells us that a war is a conventional army fighting
another conventional army. But here the tanks are going against flesh
and human beings; bullets and bombs and fighter jets against bodies
and eyes, children and women; death before blood and earth. This is no
war. What is going on in Gaza, if we are to express it correctly, is
state terror.

-- 
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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