When in 1946 Gertrude Stein, the expat American poet, playwright and novelist (she behind the quotable quote, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”) lay dying of stomach cancer at age 72 in her Paris apartment, she was surrounded by a group of her friends, all leading figures of modernism in literature and art. One of those friends, hoping to elicit some profundity or other from the famous belle lettriste before she passed away, asked: “So, what’s the answer?” Stein, reportedly with no hint at repartee, responded: “What’s the question?”
I have a question to ask about our part of the world. The question? We’ll get around to that momentarily.
I lived in that world (and I I remain from it and of it to this day) in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Arabs had a dream to dream, when they struggled for the emergence of the “Arab nation” (remember that quaint term coined by the era?), a vision imbued with moral optimism, defined by a zestful, muscular movement called pan-Arabism, whose goal was to unite the peoples of the region by one ideology within a single territorial homeland.
Today, well over half a century after independence, much of that world, from Yemen to Libya, Syria to Palestine, is broken in body and spirit, having failed to meet the challenges of modernity. And if you harbour doubts about the veracity of that observation, take Syria as a case in point. In that sad, tormented land, from whence at the time countless intellectuals, theoreticians and ideologues penned their reflections on our collective future, and whose capital was then known as the “heart of Arabism,” 500,000 civilians have been killed, 6 million are now displaced internally and 5 million others are refugees abroad. The country’s ancient cities have been transformed into rubble and its priceless antiquities to forgotten dust.
The question I want to ask is this: Why have we failed those challenges of modernity and been reduced to depending on — at times pleading with — big powers to solve our problems? Why have we made all those bad decisions that got us from there to here? To be sure, we all make bad decisions in our lives. Bad group decisions made by whole societies, as Jared Diamond reminded us, are similar to bad decisions made by individuals (we enter bad marriages, we put our money in a bad investment, we embark on bad career choices), but not on the scale we see in our political culture today.
We have been reduced, I say, to becoming passive observers of, rather active participants in the forward march of our own history.
Look, I for one was gratified to see that the US, most recently, has taken a bold stand on Syria, not only by accusing Russia of engaging in a cover-up of the Syrian government’s role in that dreadful chemical weapons attack on Idlib last week, but by striking at the Assad regime — a pinprick prick of a strike though it was, meant more to send it a message rather than cripple it — which may augur a shift from coziness to confrontation with Moscow on the moral issues in the Syrian conflict.
That’s all well and good, and I’m gratified, yes, but also ashamed. For at a seminal level of relating to that conflict, a proud Arab has to wonder what decisive role have his equally proud fellow Arabs played, are playing and will play in its resolution. When we have to rely on rulers in foreign capitals to solve our problems, say, to stop Bashar al-Assad from dropping poison gas and barrel bombs — those indiscriminate explosive devices with huge destructive impact — on his people, then clearly that implies that in our own Arab world, at this juncture in our own history, we remain not only unable to control of our own destiny, but helpless supplicants appealing to an inscrutable Vladimir Putin or an impulsive Donald Trump, both of whom Arabs know but of course do not know.
So the question, if you again ask me what it is, is this: Why have Arabs, despite their rich cultural heritage, abundant natural resources and earnestly idealistic youth, continued to flounder? Surely, it’s not because they are born with a germ of pre-ordained failure. It’s not because they lack talent or because they suffer from an innate antipathy, as some racists in the West aver, to democratic rule or social order in their polities. Clearly not. Then why?
Well, the answer, my friend, is not blowing anywhere. It is all there in the five Arab Human Development Reports, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme, released between 2002 and 2009, that focused on challenges and opportunities for human development — note the emphasis here is on “human” development, which precedes and ultimately determines political, economic and social development — in the region. And lest we forget, the reports were carried out by an independent team of leading Arab academics, researchers and social critics.
The thrust of these folks’ findings? So long as we continue to socialise young Arabs on an ethic fear — fear of authority, fear of innovation, fear of spontaneity, fear of originality, fear of life itself — so long, that is, as Arabs are afraid to ask questions and freely look for answers, no progress will ensue.
Those countries in the Arab world that have followed the advice in the reports have prospered. Those that have continued to cling to their neo-patriarchal ways, have languished. Once clear questions and answers, asked and given with no furtive glances over one’s shoulder, interact nose to nose, they always regroup each other in a suggestion of new meaning. Arabs are tired, and yes, ashamed, of having to stand there, as if with hat in hand, waiting for foreign rulers to tell them where, how and when their problems will be solved.
