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files.
Daily I scan 4 or 5 papers, NY Times, Washington Post, Ha'aretz, J Post, Daily Star, the GOOD al Jazeera. Sometimes I don't have time to do them all. Every day I read BBC online.
I read a lot in the encyclopedia. I have been reading the books Coastie has recommended on the oil industry. "House of Bush, House of Saud" I just finished.
I've been reading Bat Ye'or, Benny Morris, Joseph Massad. I've read some of Said. I read Bernard Lewis. I also talk to people, including an old friend of mine who is a professor of history and economics. If I have questions about a particular event in history I pick up the phone and call an expert. I have relationships with active as well as retired professors. Much of the history of the Islamic world I've picked up over 30 years of working directly with the arts and culture of the region. It's so rich, so complex, one could study forever.
I wrote an article ages ago, a review of some Macedonian jewelry at the Art Institute. This spun off into an interest in Hellenistic art, carried by Alexander deep into Asia. Much of what I've read about "The Great Game" stems from that interest: two empires, Alexander's and the British, flow together in this ancient place. Great Buddhas smile sweetly, curvacious stone dancers beam the Macedonian smile of blood and milk. Hind helicopters litter the valleys; refugee weavers in Pakistan immortalize them in wool.
***
I ran across a website called "Irastine" the other day, I believe it's sponsored by Ghaddafi. He proposes that the suffering of the Jews is God's will. I've read information from MEMRI and other Middle Eastern research sites. These have yielded documents of all kinds, including an interesting piece recently about the various translations - interpretations would be a better word - of the Koran throughout history, and the difficulties obtained by a non-Arabic speaker in really understanding the subtleties. The article also mentioned how the footnotes and thus, the impact of certain suras and hadiths, have changed throughout history and in given places. Much of the article focused on the changing viewpoint toward Jews, within those footnotes.
I've read Anita Shapira, Tom Segev, Sheik Pallazzi. I've been reading case histories of the Jewish communities involved in WWII (North Africa) and documents by Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews, including Iraqis.
If there is a particular question or topic in I/P that I'm interested in, I hit GOOGLE.
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I continue my long-term studies of Central Asia. I read an article just yesterday about how music is helping heal the rifts along the Pakistan/Afghan border regions. People get together and play traditional Pasto music, reaching across rifts torn by war.
I have been studying Middle Eastern and Central Asian music as long as I've been performing the dances, which means 32 years. Every day, as I paint, I listen to the music of Greece, North Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Israel, Turkey, Persia/Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. I practice the dances and invent new ones. This is mostly just for myself now; I'm 55. I hope to be able to return to teaching, maybe even performing - insh'allah:) I do this when I get stuck with a painting, which is frequently.
I work on my textile collection, mostly trying to keep moths from eating it:) I study, write about, lecture on, deal in and collect textiles from North Africa, Iran, the Sinai and Israeli Bedouin, the Iranian and Caucasian tribes, Anatolia, the Turkmen and Uzbek tribes. I'm particularly interested recently in embroideries of the Lakai and the Kaitag. They're silk and linen and therefore mothproof:)
As I read about them and touch, smell, taste their work, I learn about the tribal people who created them, their history, the histories of the dominant empires that rose and fell as they passed their patterns from mother to daughter, tribe to tribe, generation after generation after generation.
A pattern may begin as a cloudband motif in China and wind up on a rug in Anatolia. The Chinese phoenix and dragon, geometricized and simplied, fly in tandem on a Seljuk hanging. The dance together, many centuries later, on a Kurdish bag.
These women had no written languages. They made poetry in wool and silk, from animals they raised, with dyes made from local plants or precious indigo from the South. The history of the modern world is reflected in the aniline dyes made from coal tar derivatives, that entered their world in the mid-19th century and were so fugitive they nearly destroyed the industry.
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All of this is part of the backdrop of the modern Middle East. It's a type of history, a saturation in culture, that can't be read in a book. Jews lived here, Christians, animists, Gypsies, Kurds, Turks, Persians, the innumerable tribes of Iran, the Arabs. All are important to the story of the Middle East.
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Many of these tribes are horribly stressed now, their way of life and their animals slaughtered by war. They confront head-on the pressure of modern times, pressure to change, to become proletarians, industrialized, sedentary. Arabization and extreme Islam are also threats, especially to the matriarchies in Africa.
Yet others, in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tehran and Kabul, have hooked up on the Internet and sell their stuff on Ebay. People living in the Gobi desert know the price of cashmere in New York, via the 'net.
Jews have lived here for ages, all along the Silk Road, even in China. People today move to Israel from Uzbekistan, bringing precious old textiles with them. They're a link to the past, to the rich, complex, multicultural worlds of Bukhara and Herat. Similarly, the people who came to Israel from all over the Middle East, brought with them the histories of their ancient communities.
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I study their relationship with urban people, their complex religious history: Islam, usually, layered over Animism - but also Armenian Christian. The silk merchants and dye experts were traditionally Jewish.
I listen to the music of the Egyptian singer and belly dancer Natascha Atlas, and to the Israeli singer Ofra Haza. She walked to Israel from Yemen with her family.
She sang in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic. Listen to her album "50 Gates of Wisdom." The words are centuries old, written by a rabbi. This is music to be danced to, yet it is sacred poetry, poetry of love, sorrow and joy, of longing for the wisdom and perfection of Ha Shem.
She sings in her more modern albums, of the long-sought Holy Land, her fields full of tears.
THIS IS MY WORLD.
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