Jishnu Prasad

Trajectories of Arab Spring: The politics of Persecution in Benyamin’s Twin novels Al Arabian Novel Factory and Jasmine days.

Jishnu Prasad

Abstract

This paper attempts to find the ways in which the authoritarian regimes oppress its citizens. In the backdrop of Arab spring these novels portrays the rise and fall of a popular uprising in an unnamed Arab country. The paper also analyzes how manipulative is the regime when it comes to safeguard its power structure and how religion, gender and other sectarian divisions play a major role in oppressing the citizens.

Keywords: Trajectory, Politics, Oppression, Religion, Gender, Regime

The term Arab (Arabic) for the most part alludes to those persons who communicate in Arabic as their native tongue. There are 22 nations holding membership in the Arab League and to be more than 300 million individuals living in the Arab world. The Arab World and the Middle East is constantly utilized as in a stirred up structure and is befuddling. The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia, Turkey and Egypt. The idea of the Middle East as a geographical entity was put forward by the British in the colonial era. It additionally incorporates the Non- Arab nations, for example, Israel, Iran and Turkey. Their essential dialects are Hebrew, Farsi and Turkish respectively. Most of the nations in Middle East and North Africa were the colonies of Britain and France. They got freedom after World War II. In those days people demanded freedom from foreign rulers and now the citizens in these countries are protesting against their rulers. Arabs are also the largest ethnic group in the world. Three significant world religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam found its origin within the Middle East region. World‘s antiquated human advancements like Egyptian civilization and Mesopotamian also flourished in this region.

Arab Spring

The Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests, riots and civil wars in the Arab world that started in 2010 in Tunisia with the Jasmine Revolution. Tunisian

revolution got its name from the national flower of the country. The triggering force of the

Tunisian revolution was the life sacrifice by Mohammad Buazizi. He was an educated 26year-old man from the Sisi Bouzid, central Tunisia. He was unemployed and to support his family he started to sell vegetables in the streets. He had no license and the corrupt police officers asked him for bribe but he had no money left. The officials appropriated his possessions and when he fights they mortify him and one woman police officer spits on his face. He went to the mayor to enlist a grievance but no one gives any importance to his words. Dejected and humiliated he set himself ablaze before the municipal office on 17th December 2010. Somebody took the video and uploaded it on you tube. It was later shared to Face book and it ignited the minds of the common people and they fled to the avenues demanding the removal of the corrupt regime. After 28 days on January 14, 2011, President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali left the country. The movement then spread to almost every nation in the Middle East and North Africa, forcing four authoritative leaders out of their power. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen are those four nations. In Syria, Basher Al-Assad tried to protect his regime with the assistance of Russia amid civil wars.

Every one of these nations usurped for their privileges. The regimes were so much corrupt and never cared for the ordinary people. High unemployment, poverty and political repression were common in these states. Protest in Bahrain was crushed down by the Peninsular Shield Force. People in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have been given concessions and silenced.

Benyamin

One of the most celebrated contemporary Malayalam author most famous for his magnum opus Aadujeevitham (Goat Days). Jasmine Days originally written in Malayalam in the name Mullapoo Niramulla pakalukal grabbed the first JCB prize of rupees 25 lakhs is the biggest literary prize money literature in India. Shahnaz Habib is the translator. Al Arabian Novel Factory is the second book from the novel duo. As an expatriate Indian, he worked in Bahrain for almost 21 years. The unnamed city where the revolution happens is Bahrain itself. His first-hand experience and intimacy with the city are visible in the narrative. Bahrain got independence from Britain in 1971. In 1981 the country joined the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is a Shia populated country (70%). But the ruling Al Khalifa family belongs to the Sunni minority in the country.

The Politics of Persecution

Throughout the work, the writer exploits the intentions behind the regime to create the ‗other‘ in society. They manipulate the sectarian differences in the state and create a rift in the protest. His majesty uses divine right theory to protect his authority. ―He often declares that Allah appointed him the ruler of his people and so it was not necessary to ask for the people‘s will‖ (104). Many superstitions about His Majesty are prevalent in the city. ―Even bullets cannot penetrate him‖ (105). The protest which started against His Majesty as a common need of ordinary people, but later it changed into Shia protest to overthrow the Sunni regime.

Through Ali, the novelist shed light upon the lives of Shias. They are considered as the second class citizens who are devoid of any rights which the first-class citizens the Sunni enjoy. They claim that the Shias came from Iran and they don‘t have any right in this land. They also accuse that the second class citizens practice many non-Islamic rituals. They don‘t even have a passport and are not allowed to leave the country. Many jobs are denied to these people. Faisal a second class citizen, who participated in the protest, was shot by a rubber bullet on his shoulder. If he went for treatment in any hospital or tried to remove the bullet the police would arrest him. So he had no option other than bear the pain and keeps the bullet within his body. Through the making of the second class citizens and exploiting the ethnic and sectarian divide the regime deliberately partition the residents and annihilate the probability of unity.

The cooli soldiers in the city are migrants from other countries. These soldiers are not meant to defend the state from any outside enemies but against their people. ―Which country is His Majesty defending himself from? His own country. The rented soldiers are here to defeat his people‖ (91). Most of the soldiers are forced to work under so much pressure and tensions. They are part of the regime so the people don‘t like them. They have no weapons to defend themselves. As part of the duty, they have to stay days in some remote villages where common people curse and spit on them, even hit them with poles. His majesty uses these people as a stress relief mechanism for his citizens. The anger of the ordinary people will be directed towards, these expatriates instead of His Majesty.

Social Medias like Face book, Twitter and YouTube helped the revolution. But the regime cut down the internet and through government-aided channels they propagate the viewpoints of

the state. In the Taya ghar, the womenfolk are denied the right to use Face book. It is considered evil. They say it is ―the train to hell‖. But the men have the authority to use FB and enjoy the ride to ―hell‖. In such a case, the ladies making counterfeit ids observe cautiously what is going on there. Once in a while, His Majesty invites his trusted generals and commanders for a big banquet. While everyone was eating he would say ―There is a traitor among you and I have poisoned his food‖. He will look for the change in the faces and he will persecute the one whom he had any suspicion without any solid proof. His Majesty who is a pedophiliac uses his power to hide the killings of many children. The women who were in charge of his health care reveal that ―Do you know what my job was? Reconstructive work on the vaginas and anuses of boys and girls who had been subjected to his outlandish sexual assaults‖ (263).He is a pervert and does all the sexual wrongs to the children and women. The bodies of such victims are buried in the desert. Those who survived are sent home with an

envelope of money and a single bullet. The bullet is an open threat. Those who fail to hide the secrets of His Majesty should have to shoot themselves otherwise he will destroy the entire family.

A Spring without Fragrance a book written by Sameera Parveen contains some descriptions about the event took place during the protest. The CIDs in the country hunt down those people who are related to this book. Many are arrested, interrogated and humiliated in the search of the book. Even the copies sent for the proofreading is destroyed. Their rationale to destroy such books is intriguing. ―If a book contains a falsehood, we have to assume it is satanic. It is the duty of everyone who loves truth to destroy such a book‖(231). The CID office is the most hated office in the country many people lost their lives in that office. It is the master brain behind the missing cases in the country. They do all the physical and mental torture on everyone they find suspicious. This we know is a common practice every authoritative regime follows and sometimes they even issued fatwas as a life threat. From Salman Rushdie to D.H. Lawrence, V.S Naipaul to Taslima Nasreen has undergone this trauma.

A young girl Ayat who wrote a poem against His Majesty during the protest was arrested and persecuted in such a way that she lost her memory and failed to write any poetry when she was finally come out from imprisonment.

She concluded that poetry was a disease. ―I guess they have fixed the poetry disease forever‖

(91). Yasin a friend of Sameera was released only after wiping out every memory related to her novel. The police forceful give him medicines and he was kept in a mental asylum. The regime erases each memory identified with disobedience. They even boycott the coin which shows the Squares of Pearls, where the unrest began. Human rights activists are captured and experience each conceivable torment one can hold up under. The state-supported bomb blast occurred in the city boulevards much of the time. At that time they proliferate that the nonconformists are behind the turmoil.

Like Jeremy Bentham‘s panoptic surveillance the citizens are in the fear of being watched by the authorities. The sate promotes fear in the citizens through various means to oppress the quest for democratic governance. They need submissive slaves not citizens with equal rights in a democratic society. Jasmine days is dedicated ‗to those who are defeated, in life and revolution‘. So it is not always that important to be victorious in every revolution but we should stand up for democratic rights and should show our dissent against the authoritative inhuman ways of the government.

Bibliography

 Abrams, M. H, Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Delhi: Cengage

Learning India, 2012.  Adamson, Peter. Philosophy In The Islamic World. OUP, United Kingdom,2016  Agarwal, Rajeev. ―Arab Spring and Democracy: Possibility or an Elusive idea‖. Indian

Foreign Journal, Vol. 8, 2013, pp 372-386.  Benyamin. Al Arabian Novel Factory. Trans. Shahnaz Habib, Juggermart Books, 2019.  Benyamin. Jasmine Days. Trans. Shahnaz Habib, Juggernart Books, 2018, pp 1-264.  Danahar, Paul. The New Middle East. Bloomsburry, UK, 2015.  Dietl, Gulshan. ―The Spring has had a Contagious Effect Much Beyond‖. Indian Foreign

Journal, Vol. 8, 2013, pp 129-133.  Kurlantzick, Joshua. State Capitalism: How The Return of Statism is Transforming The

World, OUP USA,2016

 Surendran, C.P. ―Jasmine Days: Spoilt by a Preponderance of Politics‖. The Hindu, 14

Sept. 2018.