Beyond Basic Instinct

Mak Dizdar (1917-1971)

Months go by, and then years go by, and you still feel disconnected from the place that gave birth to you, that made you.  Bosnia is a place for me, whose temporality and physicality I see, but it is always out of reach.  Reasons are firstly practical.  It takes time and money to fly from America to Bosnia.  And it takes time to save up that money, which you need in the first place.

Another reason is a lack of purposeful connection.  What I mean is something more than visiting family, which is naturally important.  But every time you visit, you feel like an outsider, a stranger in your own country.  And you experience another displacement.  The grounding which you thought you had is not there.

But language of the country – whether literally a language, or language of the landscape, war, peace, childhood – taps at your shoulder.  Do not forget.  Remember me every day.  And every day you wake up with the remembrance and it makes you feel like someone has placed an entire burden of being and humanity into your stomach and you are meant to carry it. 

During the day, you busy yourself with tasks, and jobs, and paying bills, and watching awful news, and television.  You know exactly which show is on which night and you look forward to it even though you are convinced that the cast is ok and that the writing is worse than mediocre.  But you settle for it.

But the yearning for the country is still there.  You want to feel some semblance of being whole, or at least having certainty that those parts from the past are still in you.  You look for news and cultural and artistic aspects of Bosnia which you want to connect to, and you settle for whatever is offered.  I usually watch recent films that find their way into the American market.  And I’ve settled for it, but I don’t think I can do it anymore. 

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good films out there but they always remain on the surface of human condition.  Most new Bosnian films in some way deal with the war, which is perfectly fine.  War is on my mind all the time.  But almost always (as if with inevitability) it takes a form of some kind of crudeness. 

I began watching one of the films, and 10 minutes into it, I thought, I am turning this off.  It was taking place in a small town somewhere in Bosnia.  The narrator begins by talking about a friend of his, with whom is sharing a house, reason being that his friend lost both arms when he tried to de-mine his own house after the war was over.

These are unfortunate realities even after the war officially ended (whatever that means).  Men, like our narrator, are quite depressed and have devolved into a life of drinking and fucking.  It has become a reflex for them. 

As he and his armless friend sit at the table, recovering from a drunken stupor the night before and are forcing themselves to have breakfast, another man comes in.  He is familiar with them, and he makes himself at home, despite the fact that he does not live there.  “What’s up, faggots?  Did you get any pussy last night?”

I sighed.  I was not angry, and I have recognized a reality of such human beings, who do exist.  I have even recognized the humanity and suffering, which perhaps goes on in their minds and hearts.  But I chose not to continue to watch it.  Maybe that was unfair of me.  Maybe the film changed its tone, who knows.  Maybe I should have given it another chance.  But I couldn’t.  By that point, I was tired of hearing one more comment about “tits,” and “ass,” and “pussy.”  And you understand, not for feminist reasons.  I was not offended as a woman.  Actually, I was not offended at all.  And not for moral reasons either.  I can’t stand moralists.  I was just fatigued by the emphasis on the most basic of instincts, which of course, all of us have.  Bosnians have never had problems with body and sex, and I am very happy about that.  But the lack of any philosophical perspective in art is making me depressed.

Mesa Selimovic (1910-1982)

Could it be that the existentialism of Meša Selimović, or the poetic theology of Mak Dizdar, or the Sephardic musings on the peasants of Isak Samokovlija are part of the past never to be renewed?  These are the markings of my culture, which I admire so much and which bring me closer to the embodiment of my very self. 

Isak Samokovlija (1889-1955)

Well, I’m not going to sit idly and lament.  I have a voice, I have a sensitivity for reality of what human beings are, whether they are peasants, intellectuals, children, men, women, and yes, even those obsessed with a great pair of “tits.”  We need to move beyond basic instinct and into the interiority and complexity of a suffering soul.  We need to see the other’s face.  Perhaps this is true of the entire world, not just in relation to Bosnian art forms currently created. 

My eyes hurt.  My body is tired and it needs something, which moves in the in-between-ness of the sacred and profane.  I suppose, the simplest way to say it is: I am desiring beauty.  I must find a way to create it because I will grow more and more tired and the possibility of creation will become smaller and smaller.  But as long as there is life, there is a possibility too.

{Below are links for books by the writers I mention that are in translation} 

Selimovic - Death and the Dervish (1966)
Dizdar - Stone Sleeper (1966-71)
Samokovlija - Tales of Old Sarajevo (1949)

Yey for Hermeneutics! (Some Reflections on my Intellectual History)

A page from Sarajevo Haggadah.

A few years ago, when I was still taking classes at the Seminary, I registered for a course in Synoptic Gospels.  It was part of the requirement for the MA in Theology.  At that point in my academic career, and specifically in relation to theology, I was more intrigued by Systematic theology, as well as Christian spirituality. 

In any case, I registered for the course, and I was talking to my husband about it.  I proclaimed in a voice, which may have been slightly nerdy: “I get to write an exegetical paper in Synoptics!”  I was very excited.  My husband lovingly poked fun at me, quoting me on it, slightly exaggerating my nerdy voice, and pushing the imaginary glasses up his nose.  It’s one of those things, which has remained a constant joke in our household every time I get excited about some intellectual work, particularly textual analysis.

Here I am, working on my PhD in Comparative Literature, and God willing, if it all goes well, this will be my fifth degree.  I’m not going to go through the list of my degrees – see the bio to the right. 

I had wondered over the years whether I have made the right moves by getting all these degrees.  Have I steered in the wrong direction?  Why in the world have I been working on so many degrees?  Shouldn’t I have just quite after the first MA?  And all these disciplines – are they even interlinked? 

It does not help either that one has moments of absolute self-loathing.  Given this, you end up dismissing work which you have done.  “Oh, it was easy!  There’s nothing to it.  And now, it’s all useless!  What can someone possibly do with this in real life with all this accumulated knowledge?”  And on and on and on…

Lately, however, I have been taking a more loving approach to myself and my studies.  My husband has repeatedly told me that self-loathing will get you nowhere, particularly when you have so many intellectual and personal gifts.  He has been my supporter all these years.  But you also have to get to that point where you, yourself, begin to see who you are, what is emerging, what kind of person is being formed, and more than anything – that the person you are is really not a bad person!

Yesterday, I found myself at the Seminary library, working on my thesis, getting closer to finishing it.  I was looking for primary sources of Biblical commentaries and letters by Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux.  There they were – Opera omnia (doesn’t that just sound so good and exciting?!), and I began sifting through them to find paragraphs in Latin, which corresponded to the English translations.  It certainly helped to know enough Latin!

It was like being part of some dig – unearthing history, which will always be part of us, no matter how much time passes.  Now, I know that probably for most people, these linguistic comparisons don’t mean much.  But being part of history in such a way, as I touched volumes and volumes of commentaries, I felt happiness.  Real happiness that I am engaging myself with these sources and trying to make sense of it and trying to make a small contribution to the interpretation of these wondrous texts.

I have always loved languages and learning new languages always came easy to me.  For my doctorate, I will be working on the Song of Songs, and soon, I will be learning Hebrew.  In plans also is to learn Arabic and expand my knowledge of Qur’anic exegesis.  At some point, I looked at copy of a medieval Jewish commentary on the Song of Songs.  The book itself also had a list of commentaries that were written over the ages.  I always knew that the Song is sacred but something more happened when I looked at the list.  I thought, I am in the presence of something far bigger than me – this Song of Songs is as elusive and ineffable as God himself, and the text cannot be violated (not that I ever intended that, but you get my point). 

Just when I thought that things are falling apart and that I have made huge mistakes in obtaining all these degrees, something happened, something clicked in your mind and heart and you know, without having an ability to explain it properly, that what you are doing is right.  Look at all these strands connecting, you think to yourself.  All of my academic career, I have been concerned with dialogism in texts, and by association, dialogism among peoples. 

For me, this is not just about quiet scholarly work, however important that is.  This is about a creation of a far more important dialogue – one, which acknowledges our differences and yet brings us closer to one another.  It is a creation of dialogue through language and through the metaphysics of text. 

And so, I realize that is not just about academic “career.”  This is about life itself.  It’s not about “usefulness” or “uselessness” of intellectual efforts.  The efforts have to be grounded in the reality of human relations, always!  Books are ways for us to discuss, agree, or disagree but most of all, to be on the path of an encounter. The reason hours I spent at the library brought me happiness was not because I was just trying to solve some textual mystery but that I am connecting and synthesizing texts that come from many different traditions – and let us not forget, traditions are not simply concepts.  They are visible in the human face.

Best Thing You Can Do Is Laugh at the Devil

Flannery O'Connor

Becoming and being a writer, I would imagine, is assuming and accepting some kind of “habit of being” in the words of Flannery O’Connor.  What I always liked (and still do) about O’Connor’s work is that she took it seriously but not so seriously that she neglected the reality of life.  After all, it was precisely that reality which informed her fiction.

Another thing which informed her fiction was her Catholic faith.  As I’ve written in other blog entries here, I am not Catholic, but no matter – I still find O’Connor’s relationship to God and her vocation as a writer quite intriguing.

When I was teaching religion for a brief period of time in a Catholic school for boys, I had a quick exchange with an assistant principle about teaching.  I assured them that despite the fact that I am Muslim, I have no problem teaching Catholic theology and looking at it objectively as I do with any intellectual endeavor.  The assistant principle said to me that Catholicism is an ideology just like any other ideology and I should teach it as such.  Of course, I disagreed with him on this greatly.  If he said “dogmatic,” then maybe I would have even slightly nodded (which in itself is a complex matter), but ideological?  Absolutely not.

This brings me back to O’Connor.  I never thought that she wrote “Catholic books.”  (I certainly wouldn’t find her as interesting as I do if she did.  I read my share of fiction books, whose sole purpose was to convert the reader, and God, there is nothing more anti-literature, or anti-art than that).  O’Connor’s faith was that “habit of being,” and as such it was an inevitable part of her being as a writer.  But she did not set out to preach the Gospel in her fiction, even if she was open to it. 

My objective here in this blog entry is not get into the notion of “Catholic fiction,” whatever that may be.  What I am trying to say, by using O’Connor as an example of “dialogic writer,” is that she was not driven by ideology or some simplistic, emotionalist Catholic-ism.  She had some attitude, which worked in her favor in her courage to write, but as she noted many times, it worked against her in some interpersonal relationships.  She was not the nicest of people.   She admitted it, and she tried to apologize to those she hurt or offended.

What does it mean to be a writer?  I think I am one, and because of that I wonder about it.  It isn’t just putting words together (I certainly hope not because my strength is not in wordsmithing, that’s for sure!).  The product, namely a book, has to be an extension of writer’s personality.  But even more than that, a mirror image (albeit imperfect) of writer’s being – all the stuff he or she is made of: the past, the present, pain, happiness, vision. 

Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land (2001)

And so, I find myself conflicted.  It didn’t occur to me until now but one of the reasons why I oscillate between one voice and then another is because I feel that there are these two beings at odds.  On one hand, I have my experiences of war.  I am fully committed to the remembrance of war and the dead.  Evil exists.  Genocide happens and we are never safe.  Words like “never again” have no meaning.  We are fully capable of such acts again and again and again. 

On the other hand, I find myself to be mischievous and attracted to humor and have a tendency for “imaginative cynicism,” if you will.  I am hardly Ms. Serious.  In fact, I couldn’t possibly spend one day without laughter. 

So, if these two parts of myself are parts of my being, and if writing is directly and inevitably linked to the being, then I ask myself how in the world can these two parts be reconciled?  Should they be reconciled?  Am I making a problem out of something, which is not a problem at all?

In my daily interactions of people, I am fully aware of nuances of their interior conditions.  I know perfectly well when one laughs and when one is in compassionate silence with a fellow human being.  I would hope that what I’ve been writing thus far reflects that.  I would never ever say to myself that I need to change in my encounters with people.  I would never say that one part of me must be vanquished in order for the other to live, particularly when neither one of the parts is destructive.  So why would I deny such gifts in my writing?

Mel Brooks' The Producers (1968)

But you must admit, dear reader, that there is certainly some tension between evil and humor.  Can we really talk about evil in a humorous way?  Yes, I think we can.  As long as we are completely aware of the edge of the cliff or a line which cannot be crossed, I think we are in good shape.

There is this wonderful scene in a Bosnian film by Danis Tanovic, No Man’s Land (2001), which takes place during the Bosnian war.  The primary motif in the film is UN’s neglect and mishandling of the war.  In any case, in the scene, a group of Muslim soldiers is in the midst of fighting.  One of them is reading a newspaper and remarks: Have you read this, man?  There’s some bad stuff going on in Rwanda - genocide.  His fellow soldiers are not as amused as he is, for obvious reasons.  The absurdity of war.

Mel Brooks said something so profound in relation to the making of his film The Producers (1968).  “I was never crazy about Hitler,” he said.  “If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with with a dictator you never win…that’s what they do so well: they seduce people.  But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can’t win.  You show how crazy they are.”