How will Trump respond to the conflict in Syria and neighboring countries: through confrontation or containment? If the latter, the way forward will be through a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict—one that would have to include not only Russia but also Iran and, the Syrian regime itself, and, on the other side, Turkey and Syrian insurgents. At the same time, the US and its allies would need to persuade Turkey and the PKK to resume peace talks. Both these goals seem distressingly far-off. But if Trump instead decides on confrontation, then the region is likely to lose what little stability it has left.
bookreview
Moon Over Miami
Moonlight is a love story in a place where we don’t usually find a gay one and at the same time it’s very different from other black films set in the ’hood, mostly because of what it doesn’t focus on. We don’t hear gunfire and there is no pounding soundtrack, just as it has no bohemian artists or middle-class triumphalism about family. It’s about a homo thug from that street world of the fatherless where masculine pride is supposedly all and tests of manhood are brutal. But Moonlight isn’t trying to be realistic about anything, even as it confounds what we expect from stories about young black men, starting with the film’s texture, its intricate soundtrack, tantric pace, and beauty frame by frame.
Kenya in Another Tongue
On December 30, 1977, the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was arrested. If the coarse toilet paper at Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison in Nairobi was meant to be punishing, “what was bad for the body was good for the pen.” Ngũgĩ wrote the notes that became Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary on that toilet paper. He also wrote the classic novel Devil on the Cross, which has been published in a new edition by Penguin.
Poetry in the Courtroom
On Friday, April 7, Judge Andre Davis of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit resorted to a poem by the Palestinian-American writer Naomi Shihab Nye, in an extraordinary opinion praising a young man who fought for his rights—and lost. Judge Davis’s opinion attests to the courage of Gavin Grimm for standing up for his rights, even as the court denied his request for vindication of those rights.
Bomb First
For an American president, bombing is easier than thinking. For an American lawmaker or opinion-maker, it costs nothing to celebrate the resolve of a president who bombs. What conclusion will be drawn by the mind of Donald Trump when, after firing missiles at a Syrian government airfield, he is now being promoted to the ranks of the sane and responsible by the people who once characterized him as dangerously unstable?
Lessons from Hitler’s Rise
Even if there are many significant differences between Hitler and Trump and their respective historical circumstances, what conclusions can the reader of Volker Ullrich’s new biography reach that offer insight into our current situation?
Caught Between Worlds
There is a particular kind of gnawing at the soul that happens when you live in a city under political duress. The sort of place that dictates how you act and who you get to be. A city that forces you to curb or conceal desires, swallow and suppress ideas, hide beliefs, stand in the shadow of who, elsewhere, you might be. It is a matter of survival, fitting in. In these cities, such as Cairo or Lahore, the desire to leave is constant. Imagining a life elsewhere occupies you, even as you know, if only from literature, that exile will be equally fraught.
Howard Hodgkin: Paintings That Shout
Two weeks before the current exhibition of Howard Hodgkin’s portraits, “Absent Friends,” opened at London’s National Portrait Gallery, Hodgkin died. The labels for the exhibition were put up before he did. It tugged at my heart to read that “now eight-four years old, the artist continues to paint.” But while these pictures remain so vibrantly, splendidly present, I think he does.
A Doctor in Syria
Witnessing this week’s chemical attack on the Syrian town of Khan Shaykhun, I was reminded of some thoughts I wrote down last summer, on the anniversary of the August 21, 2013 chemical attack in eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus countryside. I have given hundreds of interviews about it. What we need is a real change, which means accountability. American strikes will not do this.
‘Sex and the City’ in Hell
What are we meant to conclude about the sexual experiences of women when we realize that two out of four of the smart, beautiful women in the HBO series Big Little Lies have been—or are being—abused? Perhaps it’s a sign of the times in which we live, that something intended to be a frothy, sexy Sunday night entertainment (it has been described as “darkly comic”) should turn out to conceal a message about the prevalence of overt and hidden violence against women.
Sig Nordal 