Monthly Archives: June 2013

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Poetry , Politics & Bangladesh by Afsan Chaudhry

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A worth reading article about Faiz Ahmed Faiz, his Ghazal after his return from Dhakka,  beautifully sung by Nayyara Noor, especially:

Un se jo kehne gaye thhe Faiz, jaa sadqa kiye
Ankahi hi reh gayi vo baat, sab baatoon ke baad
 
Faiz, that one thing which I went there to say with all my heart
That very thing was left unsaid, after so much had been spoken

Excerpts from article, links to Video by Nayyara Noor and Article;(F.Sheikh)

“Faiz Ahmed Faiz remains one of the great unsolved enigmas of Southasian literature. Where does Faiz the poet end and Faiz the politician begin? Where does the pan-Southasian Marxist end and the Pakistani begin? His engagement with these contradictory identities constitutes a painful puzzle for his admirers. This becomes all the more complex because Faiz never seemed to have belonged fully to any one land – the boundaries of his literary, political and cultural life are fluid, flowing  and overlapping.
 The issue becomes even more complex for a Bangladeshi admirer such as this writer, who was born in the 1950s and to whom Faiz offers a complex identity and a bonding to great ideals crossing all borders. He is one Pakistani whom Bangladeshis have looked upon with the greatest possible admiration and affection. Yet what challenges this bond is the Faiz of during and immediately after 1971. During those terrible days, Bangladeshis who knew about or of him would ask each other, What is Faiz saying about all this? He had become the ‘Good Pakistani’ in the eyes of those in the East. Yet, was Faiz ever a person who represented more than Pakistan? Was it possible for him to escape being a Pakistani and have a wider identity encompassing all the admiring nations of Southasia and beyond? 
Faiz did visit Bangladesh in 1974, as part of an official delegation as an advisor on culture. He met with his friends but the closest ones like Shahidullah Kaiser, Munir Chowdhury, Zahir Raihan, all writers and CP activists, had disappeared. Others were uneasy with Faiz as memories, unshared history and the reality of two distant states came between friends. He clearly missed the warmth of their friendship. In one of his most painful and beautiful poems, ‘Hum ke thehre ajnabi’ (We who have been rendered strangers), Faiz summed up his personal agony – and that of many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis whose friendship had been torn asunder by the war. The final lines are:
Un se jo kehne gaye thhe Faiz, jaa sadqa kiye
Ankahi hi reh gayi vo baat, sab baatoon ke baad
 
Faiz, that one thing which I went there to say with all my heart
That very thing was left unsaid, after so much had been spoken
Click link to listen this Ghazal by Nayyara Noor
Click link below to read full article;

World War II-Eroticized war; Sex and GI in WW II France

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Sexual exploitation, violation and victimization of women is an evil that comes with every war and it spares no army or land, and whether it is friend or foe’s territory. It is worth reading interview what took place in France during WWII. Current news of sexual harassment of women in our army should not be a surprise. ( F. Sheikh )

Some excerpts;

Americans often think of World War II as the “good war,” but historian Mary Louise Roberts says her new book might make our understanding of that conflict “more truthful and more complex.” The book, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, tells the story of relations between American men and French women in Normandy and elsewhere.

The Americans were liberators; the French were liberated. But sex created tensions and resentments that were serious, yet were utterly absent from contemporary accounts for American audiences back home. Roberts, who is professor of European history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suggests that the tensions weren’t entirely accidental: “Sex was fundamental to how the U.S. military framed, fought and won the war in Europe,” she writes in her book.

Roberts joins NPR’s Robert Siegel to talk about prostitutes in parks and cemeteries, pinups on planes and how the U.S. Army responded to rape accusations with rapid, racially charged trials.

“Then you report complaints by, say, the mayor of Le Havre who’s complaining about American GIs having sex in public with French prostitutes so much so that a family can’t take children out for a walk anymore.”

“They( soldiers) were consumed by guilt. So they took to whoring with French women as a way to keep away the demons, at least for a while. And without a proper or regulated system of brothels, they instead took to the streets, abandoned buildings, parks and cemeteries having sex.”

“Photojournalism in particular was used to portray the French woman as ready to be rescued, ready to greet the American soldier and ready to congratulate and thank him through a kiss or even more.”

SIEGEL: The other issue you address is rape. In the summer of 1944, you write, there was in Normandy a wave or rape accusations by French women against American soldiers. And the U.S. Army’s response, as you recount it, was to frame it essentially as a race problem. I want you to describe what happened.

ROBERTS: What happened was the American Army and the juridical system attached to the Army, the JAG office, disproportionately blamed African-American soldiers. Seventy-seven percent of the court-martial prosecutions in the European theater were for African-Americans. They were only 10 percent of the troops.

Read full interview by clicking on link below;

http://www.nhpr.org/post/sex-overseas-what-soldiers-do-complicates-wwii-history