Do not pity the fuul

An Arab Foodie blog? Why didn't I think of that?

One of the newest Middle Eastern blogs, from blog-mad Egypt, is called al-Masri al-Yum (a play on the Arabic al-Masri al-Youm, a popular Egyptian newspaper whose name translates as Egypt Today). The site offers recipes, reviews, snarky critiques of Egyptian food culture, and plenty of steaming hot puns.

Its authors give the following reasons for starting the blog:

"First, complaining about Egyptian food is a hardy perennial Cairo whine amongst khawagat and others. As an alternative to whining, we’re suggesting a more constructive activity: Learning to cook.

"Second, while we enjoy the restaurant reviews in some of our favorite local publications, we often find them a bit milquetoast for our tastes, sometimes reading like glorified press releases.

"Third, we love food, and it is sometimes very difficult to write about it, so we’ll try to sharpen our skills."

Check out the site here. Without further ado, here is al-Masri al-Yum's recipe for that most basic and delicious of Egyptian dishes, fuul:

Umm Lady HaSha’s Fuul
The recipe as written will feed a brunch full of hungry people. Feel free to scale up or down as you wish.

• 2 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
• 4 chopped onions
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped fine
• 1 green pepper, coarse chopped
• 3 tomatoes, diced or 1 can diced tomatoes
• .5 tsp of salt, pepper and cumin
• 4 cans of fuul (not the mashed beans, the cans with the whole beans. They are called “fuul medammis bil-khalta al-misriyya”)
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• Juice of 1 lime

Saute the onions in oil on low heat. Add garlic and pepper. Add tomatoes and spices. Add fuul and tomato paste. Stir occasionally, maintaining low heat throughout. Add lime juice. Taste it. Add more spices or lime to taste. Serve immediately.

Egypt seeks return of hieroglyphic monolith

What's mine is thine, unless of course you don't give it back.

For more than two hundred years the Rosetta Stone--a seven-square-foot block of granodiorite whose carvings are comprised of the only translations from hieroglyphs to ancient Greek the world has ever known, without which the writing of ancient Egypt might still be a mystery--has sat in London, far from its home in a place called Al-Rashid, Egypt, where it was discovered in 1799 by soldiers of Napoleon's army.

Upon Napoleon's defeat the stone passed to the victorious British, who took the stone as well as thousands of other artifacts of antiquity from the sand and soil of Egypt during the colonial period. Now Egypt wants its treasure back.

Egypt's Pharaoh of Antiquities (and here we're using the world 'pharaoh' in the way that Americans use the word 'czar'), an influential and dedicated gentleman called Zahi Hawass, has said he is prepared to launch a fight in both judicial and public-opinion courts to retrieve the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum.

(Readers of Harper's Magazine may recall Zahi Hawass's cameo in the January '08 issue in a fantastic article called "The Mummy's Curse" about a group of old Egyptologists fighting in the desert. And this week he is profiled in a New Yorker article dubbing him, naturally, "The Pharaoh.")

Mr. Hawass, on behalf of Egyptians, wants the famous stone to reside (at least temporarily) in the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, a multigazillion-dollar project being constructed at the base of the Great Pyramids slated for completion in 2013. His trump card, for now, is a pledge to drop (at least temporarily) Egyptian demands for a permanent resettlement of the stone if it is returned on loan for three months or so.

The British authorities seem concerned that, should they lend the stone to they who claim right to it, there is little doubt of its permanent abduction.

Oh, the irony would be worthy of celebration were it not steeped in haughtiness, if not outright prejudice.

Suez Canal marks sesquicentennial with excuse to use the word 'sesquicentennial'

Egypt's Suez Canal is celebrating its 150th birthday this year, or more accurately its 150th conception day (since construction began in 1859 but the famous canal was not finished until 1869, meaning we'll probably have another sesquicentennial in 2019). Nevertheless, congratulations old friend, may you live to see 150 more.

Great moments in the history of the Suez Canal: 1869 BCE, when Pharaoh Senusret first came up with the idea to build the canal; 1869 CE, when Egyptian forced laborers under British command completed the 192-km waterway and the first boat completed the journey; 1956, when Egyptian revolutionary Gamal Abd al-Nasser nationalized the canal leading to a war of Britain, France and Israel versus Egypt; and 1973, when Egyptian military engineeers, during another war with Israel, displaced occupying Israeli soldiers on the east bank of the canal by shooting water at them via cannons feeding from the canal.

Also celebrating a sesquicentennial in 2009: Oregon, A Tale of Two Cities, Big Ben, Queensland, the Titusville oil well, The Origin of Species, Billy the Kid, the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Company, and the Pig War (which ended in 1871, but not necessarily to everyone's satisfaction).

Egypt-Algeria III: Balls of Fury

Bitter and literally bloodied rivals Egypt and Algeria meet Wednesday for a one-game playoff in Khartoum to decide which national soccer team will advance to the World Cup finals. The two teams finished level in their qualifying group after Egypt's miracle win on Saturday in Cairo. (Algeria won the first match in Algiers.)

[UPDATE NOV 18: Algeria defeated Egypt 1-0 in the playoff, and will advance to the World Cup for the first time since 1986.]

The love between these two teams? Colder than a camel in the arctic.

Check out this incredible video of the Algerian team's bus being attacked by Egyptian fans as it travels from the airport to the hotel in Cairo last Friday. Algerian players emerge from the bus bloodied by the rocks thrown through the windows.

Then there's this video, of the shocked Algerian players as they're being treated by medics at the hotel:

Equipe d'Algeire caillaissée
by DZfootCom

That was before the game. Rioting continued afterward, as delirious Egyptian fans clashed with distraught Algerian supporters well into the night, and the Little Algeria 'hood of Cairo was laid waste.

And that incident will not go down as the worst between these two teams. As reported in The New York Times Lede blog:

"The last time the national soccer teams of Egypt and Algeria met in Cairo for a game to decide which nation would qualify for the World Cup, in 1989, the conflict on and off the pitch was so violent that it ended with an Egyptian supporter losing an eye and an Interpol arrest warrant being issued for an Algerian player.

"The already tense atmosphere that day got worse when the Algerian team concluded that Egypt’s winning goal was scored by a player in an offside position (although video of the goal available on the Internet today seems to show that it was correctly allowed). After the match, the Algerians surrounded and harassed the referee and then fought with Egyptian supporters — one of whom was blinded by broken glass."

Is another such incident looming for the playoff? Sudan officials did not not confirm that janjaweed militias were being redirected to the capital to provide security.

"We are the Swine Flu" tops Egyptian charts

Egyptian singer Sha'ban Abdul Rahim, also known by the diminutive Sha'bula, has written a pork-mongering song about the Swine Flu panic in Egypt, in which the government conducted a nationwide massacre of pigs.

Sha'bula, who dresses like the Egyptian version of Elton John, with a bowlcut to match, is known for his political songs but not necessarily for his political acumen. This new ditty is, well, uncomplicated...

The Swine Flu, by Sha'bula
We have yet another disaster,
The situation is dangerous,
That's all we needed,
Swine Flu.

It's an illness that threatens humanity,
I'm warning you,
It's spread to two countries already,
America and Mexico.
The flu has spread and become a dangerous disease,
It's not just birds anymore, it's pigs, too,
If you come across a pig or a sow,
You need to get the hell out of there.

In every port and airport we need to write,
In big letters,
You're not allowed to enter Egypt with a pig.

Pigs, birds and who knows what else,
People are scared,
May Allah protect us from cats and dogs, too.
I tell you loud and clear,
We don't want to be quiet,
It's a shame people are dying because of pigs and chickens,
So what if a few pigs die,
It's better than wearing masks over our mouth and nose.

We closed down many farms, killed many birds,
Now we want the go-ahead to kill all the pigs.
If we let the pigs live, we'll sacrifice many people,
It's better for people to be healthy,
So to hell with the pigs.
I hope they kill them, so people can be safe,
Without police intervention, without strikes.

We have yet another disaster,
The situation is dangerous,
That's all we needed,
Swine Flu.

Here's a clip of Sha'bula singing the song on an Egyptian talk show, with subtitles provided by MEMRI.*

In the subsequent (unintentionally hilarious) interview, Sha'abula admits he hadn't even heard of the swine flu when his producers called, asking him to put together a song about it.

* You can probably guess by the title of the clip on their website--"Egyptian singer Sha'aban Abd Al-Rahim sings about Swine Flu, calls for killing pigs, and declares: I am crazy about my dogs but will be willing to kill them for compensation"--that MEMRI is not an Arabophiliac organization.

Egypt launches preemptive sandwich at Swine Flu scare

Presently the Tuque Souq global headquarters is guarded by three score and twelve elite fighting boars from the 101st special forces regiment, raised from birth on nothing but habanero salsa and anabolic steroids, trained in forty-seven different forms of martial arts and close-quarter combat, outfitted with fully automatic antiviral laser tusks, and who meditate in alternating twelve-hour shifts to endlessly looped Kurosawa films overlaid with high-volume Rage Against the Machine tracks.

We thought we were safe from the Swine Flu.

But Egypt is going one or two thousand steps further: killing the country's entire population of swine.

There are an estimated 250,000-400,000 pigs in Egypt, raised mainly by the country's Coptic Christian minority. Though there hasn't yet been a case of the latest Swine Flu reported in Egypt, and though the World Health Organization (WHO) begged Egypt not to overreact, the Egyptian government passed emergency legislation to begin slaughtering every last piggy in the land, even calling on the army to help.

WHO is flabbergasted. “We don’t see any evidence that anyone is getting infected from pigs,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s assistant director general. “This appears to be a virus which is moving from person to person.”

WHO refused to comment on the likelihood that the Egyptian state is using the viral scare to nationalize the swine industry in Egypt, taking the business away from Coptic herders and selling the slaughtered meat back to the public in the form of new state-controlled BLF (Bacon-Lettuce-Falafel) sandwiches.

Even Egypt's health ministry sees through its own government's thinly veiled tactic to rid the country of free-range pork. “We're at stage five [of the pandemic], the matter is now human not animal,” said Egyptian health ministry spokesman Abdelrahman Shahine. “The authorities took advantage of the situation to resolve the question of disorderly pig rearing in Egypt.”

Mr. Shahine then fled the press conference for the nearest all-day breakfast diner, possibly hoping for one last helping of peameal before the ghastly cull is complete.

Alas, this terrible tragedy could've been averted with a little clear thinking, common sense, and seventy-two well-trained defence boars.

The Dregs of Journalism? Toronto Star serves hot cup of prejudice

At the Tuque Souq, we are obviously very forgiving when it comes to using bad puns in headlines. But we draw the line when bad journalism follows bad pun.

Take Oakland Ross's column from Saturday's Toronto Star: "Logo lands Starbucks in Middle East brew-haha." Mr. Ross picks up on a story that has been around the Middle East blogosphere for weeks and decides to write it with an egregious, if subtle, anti-Arab bias.

At the heart of the matter is Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi delivering a tirade against the U.S. coffee chain because he thinks its logo resembles the biblical Jewish queen Esther, which obviously--to Higazi--makes Starbucks part of some amorphous Zionist conspiracy.

If the lunacy of this may be self-evident to you, think of how your average Middle Eastern coffee drinker feels about it. The problem is, Oakland Ross didn't bother to find out. It appears he didn't attempt to seek out anyone else authoritative in the Arab world to provide a rational counterclaim to Higazi's remarks.

If Ross were in America capturing conservative televangelist Pat Robertson likening the Starbucks logo to a Jewish conspiracy, do you think he'd be able to publish an article without first seeking out some other Christian leader to remind us that Pat Robertson is a loony.

It is a subtle generalization like Ross's about the Arab world that feeds a greater mischaracterization about Arabs (maybe Israelis too) as twitchy, reactionary, unable to think rationally (and no, I don't think Ross or the Toronto Star are being ironic*).

Take the opening line of the article:

"Sometimes it seems a person can't have a simple cup of coffee in the Middle East without making a political statement."

What this says to a reader is: "Read me, I'm another quirky article about those wacky Arabs always making a fuss over something. And don't worry, I'm not burdened with investigative reporting or journalistic nuance. Instead, I've got a link to YouTube."

Then, he finishes with a tidy insult to the Arabs: your resistance to economic exploitation is futile.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Canadian media! We have a new guest in the Tuque Souq doghouse.

[Thanks for the link, Quinn.]

*Editor's mitigation: The Toronto Star is not a bad paper. It's not a tabloid. It has a circulation of over 440,000, largest in Canada. It wins awards for Investigative Reporting (see: Cribb, Robert). Which is why this piece of claptrap from Ross is all the more vexing.


Blast from the Tuque Souq past: The last time the Toronto Star ran afoul of the Tuque Souq, it was over a terrible crossword-puzzle clue. Read more.

Egypt suspends Poetic License

The Egyptian literary monthly magazine Ibdaa has been suspended over a poem it printed more than 2 years ago, which an Egyptian court deemed blasphemous.

In 2007 the well-known Egyptian poet Helmi Salem (pictured) published a poem called "On the Balcony of Layla Murad" in Ibdaa (Arabic for 'creativity') in which he compares God to a peasant. Apparently after some lengthy deliberation, an Egyptian judge recently declared it both "presumptuous drivel" and "blasphemy" and shut down the magazine.

According to one source the offending verse was: "God is not a policeman, who catches criminals from the back of their neck. He is a villager who feeds the ducks and feels the cow's udders and squeezes them with his fingers and yells: 'Plenty of milk.'"

[Note: this is a translation; I've not been able to find the Arabic to investigate the original parlance.]

What, so the imagery of Allah fondling bovine breasts crosses the line of permissible poetic license?

Sure, standard interpretations of Islamic law frown on any visual representations of God. But why wait two years to act?

Pharaohs were gay, says Sadat widow

Okay, she didn't really say that exactly. But former Egyptian First Lady Jehan al-Sadat has had a few bizarre statements come out of her mouth during her publicity stints while promoting her new book.

First, there was this odd NYT interview, in which Jehan was asked why Islam is so hard on gays (pun apparently not intended). She responded:
"Homosexuality is against Islam. Here in Egypt, there are not many homosexuals, not like the United States. There are some. We’ve had them since the Pharaohs."

To which the NYT's obvious follow-up question was, "You mean the Pharaohs were gay??"

She denied this, although really, it's not like the Pharaohs were Muslim, so she could attribute homosexuality to the Pharaohs (which, I mean, come on: what about that phallic beard) and not run afoul of the Islamic establishment.

Hey, speaking of sweeping generalizations, the NYT also asked Jehan if Palestinians are as smart as Israelis. Stupid question, but she answered it anyway:
"Believe me, they [the Palestinians] are more like the Jews than us. Most of the Palestinians are very well educated. Because they are a minority, they are like the Jews. They are intellectuals."

Uh-huh. So by deduced, logical, inductive reduction, Egyptians are not as smart?

But Egyptians don't take shit from those smarty-pants Palestinians. Asked her thoughts on how desperate Gazans tried to flee into Egypt before and during the recent Israeli attacks, she said:
"When you want to cross into Egypt, there are rules. But the Palestinians want to come without anything, just like that. There were thousands and thousands and thousands who wanted to cross, which is not legal."

Boo-yah! Who's smart now!?

Okay, more likely our readers saw Jehan show up on the Daily Show with John Stewart this past week, which obviously proves the 75-year-old is much more interested in selling books to the stoned, hyper-educated news junkies who watch Stewart than she is in appealing to the hyper-educated stoners who read the NYT.*

A deferential John Stewart asked Jehan al-Sadat if any Arab leader today might be as brave as her late husband. [Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated in 1981 after concluding a peace treaty with Israel, a landmark in the history of the modern Middle East but also a big eff-you to the Palestinians who were hoping for a more comprehensive agreement.]

"Believe me, John. All Arabs want peace. All Israelis want peace. The problem is with the leaders."

Oh, so what about your leader, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak? Hmm, no mention there.

Then Stewart asked if Arab leaders use the Palestinian conflict as an excuse to keep their own populations disinterested in domestic issues.

"Yes."

Zing!

Well there you have it. Gay pharaohs, a stupid disinterested populace, a cowardly president: Jehan calls Egypt what it is, I guess.

[Thanks, Arabist.]

* Wait, at the Tuque Souq, we watch the Daily Show daily and read the NYT obsessively, yet we dispute the correlation between these two activities and smoking weed. We apologize for insinuating our own use of what is still an illegal drug. Kids, don't do drugs (until they are legal or you are 19).

Israel constructs giant hands to defend Gaza borders

This wildly popular YouTube video--produced by Gisha, an Israeli organization that advocates freedom of movement for Palestinian civilians in Gaza--depicts a Gazan boy running around trying to get out of Gaza, only to be blocked at each turn by a giant hand.

[Note the sleeve above the hand that blocks him at the Rafah border is striped like the Egyptian flag. I suppose we are to believe that all the other giant hands are Israelis because they are sleeveless and hairy.]

Egyptian secret police take blogger on joyride

When Egyptian activist and blogger Philip Rizk went to a demonstration to protest the Gaza war, he had no idea that the Egyptian mukhabarat - secret police - were planning to give him a 4-day vacation in jail.

He certainly didn't have a clue that he'd be treated to a high-speed getaway on his way to his incarceration.

But that's what happened. According to a posting on the blog of one of Philip's friends who witnessed these events, the mukhabarat took Philip and his lawyers into a local police station--after he was arrested at the demonstration--while his friends were asked to wait outside. Then:

All hell broke out at 11 p.m. The lawyers rang down to say that Philip had been kidnapped: state security officers had told him that they wanted him for questioning without the lawyers in a room next door. They took him downstairs and put him in a Suzuki microbus which, when it appeared at the police station's exit, we attempted to prevent moving by blocking its path. It forced its way through while state security officers frenziedly threw us out of the way.

Moftases meanwhile had started his car. Droubi and I got in it, Moftases put his foot down and the police attempted to stop us moving by standing in front of it. Moftases drove anyway.

There then followed a car chase, Moftases establishing that if he ever tires of Psychiatry he should consider a second career as a rally-driver. The microbus – whose rear number plate had been obscured by a piece of cloth – moved at great speed through the busy main street before suddenly veering off into a neighbourhood of narrow alleys where it attempted to lose us. They hadn't reckoned on Moftases.

Philip was sitting at the back of the microbus, with roughly four or five men including the driver in front. At one point he turned around, saw us, and smiled. I hope we provided some comfort, however fleeting.

This – extreme speed, dangerous overtaking, sharp turns - went on for about 45 minutes. I don't mean to make it sound exciting. It wasn't. It was sickeningly absurd and unglamorous (a Suzuki microbus for God's sake), frightening, dangerous, and I needed the toilet throughout.

After about half an hour it turned around and went back the way it came. Playing with us, we thought.

It turned out that they had been waiting for a police general who had been at the police station to get himself and his assistants to a police checkpoint building where they extended barriers across the road. We were done for: the microbus – and Philip – disappeared into the night.

Philip was held in jail, blindfolded, without charge for more than 4 days before he was quietly released. He says he was not tortured, only interrogated repeatedly. He was accused of being both a Hamas spy and an Israeli spy.

While he was in detention, the mukhabarat broke into his home and seized his personal documents, cameras, computers, even the passwords to his blog and email accounts.

He denies enjoying the high-speed chase.

POSTSCRIPT
There are more than 18,000 political prisoners in Egypt, including many young activists/bloggers. One is Dia Eddin Gad, who was also swept away by the mukhabarat while protesting the assault on Gaza. His whereabouts are unknown. His blog - Sawt ghadeb ("Angry Voice") - has not been updated since before he was kidnapped.

Camels jockey for position to annoy tourists in Egypt

There's something spectacularly amusing about spending a cold Friday afternoon in Toronto reading the user-generated reviews of the Great Pyramids of Giza on the popular travel website TripAdvisor.com.

Chortling over these reviews, it seems to this blogger that everyone loves Egypt and loathes Egyptians; travellers seem especially annoyed with the timeless art of haggling for camel rides.

"The camel drivers and hawkers are annoying, but just tell then you are albanian and they leave you alone."

"They use intimidation and threats to extort money out of you."

"...they tried to get us for about $50 each."

Ah, the travellers travelled to meet the untravelled in well-travelled lands, but the untravelled weren't what the travellers had travelled so far to see.

Rhetoric, please: What is a great pyramid without a camel haggler?

Feeling Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, it seems that when the traveller preconceives an egoistical experience of travelling that is equidistant from pure fantasy and reality, he is the blindest of all humans, for he neither imagines nor sees his travelled place for what it really is.

With the stout capabilities of my imagination I could visit the pyramids in my mind's eye as I sit next to a snow-covered window. Or with the blessings of our era I could hop on a plane to Egypt and visit the pyramids with my own true senses. But I wouldn't expect them to be the same trip.

Besides, why travel halfway around the world to let yourself be annoyed by the same species that lives on your street?

What could 20 million Egyptians do?

We're not sure, but whatever it is, there would be 55 million Egyptians left over to watch them.

Making the rounds in the massive Egyptian blogosphere is pride in and praise for this tear-jerking feel-good commercial by the Egyptian telecom giant Mobinil.



In translation, here's what 20 million Egyptians* could do:
Build a thousand pyramids,
Clean up the streets of Cairo in minutes,
Make each others day by smiling,
Help make the world a better place.

So according to Mobinil, Egypt's most pressing needs are more pyramids, cleaner streets, and more grins. And we thought it was more taxis.

* We gather 20 million is the number of Mobinil subscribers in Egypt, and not that Mobinil is proposing to expel the other 55 million Egyptians.

Somali Piracy Watch: Egypt's déjà vu in the Arabian Sea

Reuters posted an excellent article by historically minded journalist Jonathan Wright that compares the current piracy crisis in the Arabian Sea - and Egypt's lacklustre response to the international brouhaha in its backyard - with the 16th century Mamluk Empire's vanilla approach to marauding Portuguese privateers, who appeared asudden around 1510 and molested Egypt's near-monopoly on western Arabian Sea trade:

"Marauding seamen infest the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, extracting tolls from shipping and disrupting an ancient trade route between Asia and Europe.

Egypt, one of the main direct beneficiaries of the transit trade, takes time to react. The government is in the hands of an aging leader, who looks to outside powers for help.

That was the challenge that Mamluk ruler Qansuh al-Ghouri faced in the early 16th century, when Portuguese ships appeared unexpectedly east of Suez and started to harass Egypt-bound shipping in the Red Sea and its approaches.

After centuries of peaceful trading, Egypt had no Red Sea fleet capable of countering the Portuguese menace."

The article goes on to describe how current Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak has been a wee bit insouciant about the piracy affair: "This problem could come to an end if merchant ships arm themselves with heavy artillery to deal with the pirates," Mubarak was quoted in al-Gomhuria.

As an aside, Qansuh al-Ghuri later had his head cut off and sent as a prize to Istanbul after losing a battle against the Ottoman Turks.

[Thanks to our friends at the Arabist blog for alerting us to this story.]

Great moments in the History of Flags: the 1958 Jordan-Iraq Federation

2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the short-lived Jordanian-Iraqi union, known as the Arab Federation. On February 14, 1958 the kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq, whose kings were first cousins, merged to become a single country.

That's the flag of the Arab Federation above. It was flown alongside each country's individual flags for the 5 months that the Federation lasted. An identical design was previously the flag of Iraq from 1920-1924.

So many questions? Why did Jordan and Iraq merge? Why did the Federation last only 5 months? Why that flag? Doesn't that flag look like the nearly identical twin of the modern Palestinian flag? And wasn't the new federated country, as short as it lasted, the most bizarrely shaped entity on the world map?

Two weeks before the monarchies of Iraq and Jordan agreed to merge into a federated state, the Arab Republics of Egypt and Syria also merged into a single state, the United Arab Republic. The UAR's flag (left) was created based on Egyptian colours, with 2 stars representing the 2 republics. After the breakup of the union, Egypt returned to its older flag, while Syria kept this one. (More on UAR flags here.)

The UAR was envisioned to be the first step on a path to a single, united, pan-Arab (presumably headquartered in Cairo) country stretching from the Atlantic Ocean (Morocco) to the Arabian Gulf (Oman). But the idea - the brainchild of Egyptian President Gamal 'abd al-Nasser - never took root. Yemen also nominally joined the UAR, but that was it.

It only took 2 weeks, back in 1958, for Egypt's main rival at the time, Iraq, to create a bipolar pan-Arab world by hooking up with Syria's main rival, Jordan, to form the AF.

The Federation came to an abrupt end when King Faisal II of Iraq was deposed in a bloody nationalist coup on July 14, 1958. The UAR merger managed to last until 1961, until a coup in Syria ended the formal union with Egypt.

Interestingly, the leader of the Iraqi coup, Abdel Karim Qassim, later wished to join the UAR in 1961 (before the coup in Syria), and what became the new flag of Iraq (left) was the UAR flag, but with 3 stars (representing Iraq with Syria and Egypt). In 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War when most of the Arab World allied against Iraq, Saddam Hussein changed the Iraqi flag, adding in between the 3 stars the Arabic - الله اكبر - allahu akbar, or "God is great."

This flag, with the 3 stars deleted, was adopted earlier this year as the new flag of Iraq.

The AF's flag, meanwhile, was based on the Jordanian flag (left), simply with the seven-pointed star removed from the triangular red field. What had been the Iraqi flag until the merger was a similar design, with 2 stars instead of one.

The seven-pointed star, which was removed from Jordan's flag to create the Arab Federation's flag, is said to represent the first surah of the Qur'an, which has seven verses. The star found its way on to the new flag of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1917 and later the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq around 1924, so it is often thought to be the symbol of the Hashemite clan (the kings of Jordan and Iraq at the time were brothers). But in fact, the red triangle itself is the representative symbol of the Hashemites, and has a much older history in the Arab world.

Which brings us to the Palestinian flag (left), which resembles the flag of the Arab Federation, excepting the different proportions of the triangle. To make a long story short, the Palestinian flag is, like many of these flags, based on the flag of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks during WWI. The revolt's leader was Sharif Hussein of the al-Hashemi (Hashemite) family of Mecca (hence the red triangle).

As for the black, white and green bars, which have been repeated throughout many of the flags in this article, they are the symbol of modern Arab unity. These "pan-Arab" colours, envisioned during the nascent era of pan-Arab nationalism just prior to the First World War, represent the 3 eras of medieval Arab caliphates: the Umayyads (660-750 C.E., based in Damascus) carried a white standard; the Abbasids (750-1258 C.E. based in Baghdad) had a black flag; and the Fatimids of Egypt (909-1171 C.E.) preferred green. In addition to being the colour of the Hashemites, red was the colour of the Arab rulers in Andalucia from the 8th-14th centuries C.E., and also of the Khawarji, who led a rebellion against the Abbasids in North Africa.

The Palestinan flag was formally adopted after 1948, based on the Jordanian flag (Jordan controlled the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem at the time), minus the star, and with a right triangle instead of an isosceles triangle. Why the triangle change? I don't know. If someone out there knows, please tell me.

Finally, we turn to the geography of the Arab Federation on the map. Jordan already looks funky, with its eastward-jutting panhandle the result of creative British cartography which wanted, after World War I, to connect the British mandates of Transjordan and Iraq and disallow French-controlled Syria from bordering Arabia. Back in the 1950s, Jordan also had a westward pimple on its map, what we now know as the West Bank.

The formal federation of Jordan and Iraq created this geographical ink blot (above), which resembles a coffee pot (Jordan) with a handle (West Bank); the coffee pot is emitting some sort of sprayed cloud (Iraq) towards Iran. If you imagine Israel holding the handle, we have perhaps a prescient metaphor for today's Middle East conflict.

Or, if you rotate the map 90 degrees clockwise, you get what appears to be a giraffe lunging its neck upwards above a low tree top.

A curious giraffe: the legacy of the Arab Federation.

(If you read Arabic, here's a whole lot more reading you could do on the evolution of Arab flags.)

"Historic" Egypt appoints first woman mayor

With that most overused and underwhelming of clichés, al-Arabiya reported that Eva Habil Kerolos has "made history" by becoming the first woman mayor in Egypt.

Ms. Kerolos, a Coptic Christian, was appointed mayor of the village of Kambuha, located along the Nile in central Egypt near the city of Asyut. Her father was once mayor, too - for 40 years.

A member of Egypt's ruling al-Watani party and long an advocate of women's issues, especially literacy, she has pledged to improve her village's infrastructure and the environment of the countryside.

It's a historic moment for Egypt, but Ms. Kerolos is not the first female executive in the modern Arab Middle East. Palestine has two. Fathiya Barghouti Rheime was the first woman mayor of a Palestinian municipality, chosen mayor of the village of Beit Rima in January 2005. Her win helped pave the way for Janet Mikhail, elected mayor of Ramallah later that same year. Ms. Mikhail is the first woman mayor of a major city in the Middle East. Lebanon has three woman mayors, and Jordan one.

Tuque Souq book alert: "L'art arabe"

The book L'Art arabe d'après les monuments du Kaire depuis le VIIe siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe is a collection of extremely rare engravings, plates and lithographs that were collected by the 19th century French historian Prisse d'Avennes.

It is well worth a look for anyone interested in one of the most unusual collections of images from the Arab world. It seems Napoleon Bonaparte brought along 60 or so artists with him in his campaigns in Egypt and the Middle East. Those artists rendered hundreds of images over the years to follow, even staying long after Napoleon was through with the region. They were charged with illuminating the treasures of Arabic art from the seventh century onward.

It took the historian d'Avennes two decades to collect the works of these artists and transform them onto plates and other media for preservation in the volumes of his book.

To see many of the images online, visit the digital archive of the New York Public Library for a show. You won't be disappointed.

3 Canadian torture victims get hosed by Iacobucci Report

Three Canadian citizens - Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin - were tortured by foreign intelligence officials in Syria and Egypt on suspicion of ties to international terrorism.

The three were deemed "imminent threats" by the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which transferred questionable intelligence on the 3 men to American and Middle Eastern agencies, who in turn facilitated the torture of the men. Unlike the Maher Arar case, in which Arar was "renditioned" to Syria for torture, Almalki, El Maati and Nureddin all travelled to the Middle East on their own and were then detained at the request of Canadian officials.

In the case of El Maati, after he was tortured by the Syrians and the Egyptians, and just as the Egyptians were set to release him - having either beaten satisfactory confessions out of him or become satisfied that he wasn't actually a terrorist - Canadian officials sent word to Egypt to delay his release.

In an investigation whose report was just released, former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci reprimanded Canadian authorities for lax attention to protocol and law, and deemed the "imminent threat" charge to have been a serious overstatement. But Iacobucci's report stopped way short of blaming anyone in the RCMP, CSIS or the Canadian government for this ordeal, said that margin for error in "imminent threat" cases was so thin that authorities had to err on the side of caution, and refused to demand an official government apology.

Iacobucci says the government and its agencies must do a better job of protecting civil and human rights of its citizens, no matter what they are alleged to have done. He repeatedly used the term "deficiencies" to describe the murky state of our counter-terrorism efforts.

But no intelligence or government official is going to read Iacobucci's report and start shaking in his boots. Nobody is staring down a pointed finger, and no one will sit before a tribunal and have to explain his actions that led to the torture of innocent men. The government will not issue an apology while the 3 men pursue civil suits for their mistreatment, which means we won't hear a peep for years to come. Iacobucci's recommendations for a "better job" seem to suggest only that these officials not do this again. Nobody seems terribly startled that erring on the side of caution equals erring on the side of torture.

Read the full report - oh wait, I mean 80% of the full report, as 20% was stricken by the Federal Government for national security reasons [PDF].

This posting has been brought to you by the "Right Now Our Government Is Doing Things We Think Only Other Governments Do" department.

The Yemeni Jewish orphan who became President - of Yemen

A Yemeni Jewish orphan who grew up to be President - of Yemen. An Israeli family that lost part of its history. A brutal war that saw Egypt gas its fellow Arabs. A poverty-stricken country divided by the political ideologies of the Cold-War Middle East.

If it sounds like a helluva story, that's because it is. Unfortunately you have to be in Israel to read all of it. The Hebrew-language monthly - Mishpaha - that published it doesn't have much of an online presence. But happily a good portion of it was re-published in English in Ha'aretz.

Egyptian editor sentenced, then pardoned, after questioning Mubarak's health

Egyptian president-for-life (in sickness and in health, till death do us part) Hosni Mubarak has pardoned the editor-in-chief of one of the country's main opposition newspapers after he was arrested for questioning Mubarak's state of health.

Ibrahim Issa [pictured], head of the al-Dustour daily newspaper and a well-known critic of the government, was incarcerated in 2007 and recently sentenced to 2 years in prison after publishing an editorial [ARABIC] that criticized the Mubarak regime for concealing from all Egyptian citizens the leader's health.

Mr. Issa wrote: "The president in Egypt is a god and gods don’t get sick. Thus, President Mubarak, those surrounding him, and the hypocrites hide his illness and leave the country prey to rumors. It is not a serious illness. It’s just old age. But the Egyptian people are entitled to know if the president is down with something as minor as the flu."

He continued, again with some sarcasm: "The [Egyptian] state wants to present him as a sacred person who never errs, with whom nobody competes. So he definitely cannot fall ill. And nobody should even dare to think he can die like other human beings! The issue now, however, involves the country’s present and future. As everyone knows, the president’s family and Mrs. Mubarak have been pushing for the president to give up power—during his lifetime—and pass it to his son Gamal. The president is the only member of the family who resists this idea either because he wishes to stay in power or because he’s worried about antagonizing the Egyptian people and some important army generals."

[Read the full translation of Mr. Issa's article.]

According to the BBC, the Egyptian authorities originally justified the arrest of Mr. Issa by citing national security issues, saying that his editorial "fuelled malicious rumours and scared away foreign investors."

Mubarak's pardon of Issa came on October 6, an Egyptian national holiday commemorating the 1973 war against Israel, now a date on which the president traditionally grants clemency.

Egypt has an infamous record of harassing and jailing journalists and bloggers, and almost all of its major news outlets are state-controlled. Normally the Mubarak government's suppression of media is concerned with the Muslim Brotherhood. But no government critic - not even in the blogosphere - is safe in Egypt.

Reporters Without Borders has Egypt on its list of "Internet Enemies" especially for targeting bloggers. In one of the most famous incidents of state crackdown, Mubarak's government set up a sting to entrap and arrest homosexuals in Egypt, who communicate via blogs because of strict laws against homosexuality.

The health of Mubarak, now 80 years old, has long been kept in secrecy. His son, Gamal, is tapped to succeed him, not necessarily democratically.

[UPDATE: Right about the time this post went live, the New York Times ran a front-page story about how the U.S. presidential hopefuls have been less than forthcoming about their medical/health status.]