Delta Fourth and Marwan Muasher on democracy and gangsters in the Arab world

Marwan Muasher's The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism has much to say about the necessity of expanding the breadth and inclusiveness of politics in the Middle East.  The Murder of Yasser Arafat, by "Delta Fourth" (Matthew Kalman and Matt Rees) suggests what can happen when the possibility of dissent is squelched.

Muasher, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Jordanian diplomat and government minister, offers a number of bracing assertions and recommendations.

One is that revolution, reform, and rebuilding take time. Observers should not be too quick to write off the so-called Arab Spring. Opening Arab politics will take decades, Muasher says. Another is that uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere since 2011 have already shattered several myths, among them "that food must be put on the table before political reform can move forward." Muasher's target is economic liberalization unaccompanied by democratization in the Arab world, but I can't help recalling voices here in the United States that used to blandly insist that political reform would inevitably follow loosening of economic strictures. Such a stance is no doubt good for corporate profits, but somehow one does not hear those voices much anymore, and if China has become democratic, I missed it.

The Murder of Yasser Arafat suggests what can happen when gangsters run a government, or an organization that ostensibly aspires to government. Palestinians, especially capable members of the PLO leadership kept from the highest-level jobs by Arafat's jealousy, knew the Old Man salted away millions and was an obstacle to their personal and professional aspirations. The result is apparent in the book's title. And who is the real villain? A hint: It's not Israel.

Rees and Kalman have made their short book into a mix of inquiry and hard-boiled crime. But at least one bit sounds as if it could have come from Marwan Muasher's pen::

"When the gunmen killed someone like Adnan Shahine, it looked as though they were upholding the morals of the struggle against Israel. But there was something stronger at work: the lack of democracy and due process that eventually turned everyone against the Authority, including Arafat’s own ministers."

***

Rees is also a novelist whose work includes the Omar Yussef novels, set in the Palestinian world. He says he and Kalman wrote The Murder of Yasser Arafat as hard-boiled crime. Here is my favorite such example, a nice evocation of the book's morally shadowy world:

"Muhammad Dahlan ... is officially a man without a job or any visible means of support. But he glides through the West Bank in a bulletproof black Chevrolet Suburban supplied by his friends at the CIA bearing the official red and white license plates of the Palestinian Authority. Everywhere he goes, a phalanx of armed bodyguards surrounds him, sealing off the floor of his Ramallah Hotel and waiting on him with food and drink. The source of their salaries is unclear. Their loyalty is unquestioned.

"Dahlan is on a break from an extended visit to Cambridge, where he is perfecting his English, courtesy of the British taxpayer."

© Peter Rozovsky 2014

A Hitch in crime (or why you should read crime fiction and not the news)

I inadvertently left at home the crime novel I'd intended to read on my dinner break yesterday, but the substitute was more than acceptable, and it dovetailed neatly with some recent Detectives Beyond Borders posts.

The author is Christopher Hitchens, the book is his essay collection Arguably, and the passage I have in mind is from the book's introduction, in which Hitchens recounts his support and admiration for real revolutionaries in the Middle East and contrasts these with, among others, "the baroque corruption of the `Palestinian Authority.'”

 "It was clear," Hitchens writes, "that a good number of the audience (including, I regret to say, most of the Americans) regarded me as some kind of stooge. For them, revolutionary authenticity belonged to groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, resolute opponents of the global colossus and tireless fighters against Zionism."

Last week I wrote about my eye-opening chat in Tel Aviv about crime fiction in Israel. My informant was decidedly a man of the left, forthright and rueful about, among other things, the Israeli army's bulldozing of houses in Hebron. Yet he was equally forthright about calling Hamas terrorists. And he recounted a naval patrol from his own military service, when he marveled at the white sand beaches of Gaza and at the equally white luxury villas belonging to the Palestinian Authority elite that loomed above, built, presumably, with PA money that did not find its way into Swiss bank accounts.

Like the Israeli Arab driver who shuttled me to Hebron and Bethlehem on the same trip, that informant offered a more nuanced view of Israeli and Palestinian affairs than one is likely to get in America, where Palestinians are good and Israelis bad, or vice versa. And this, in turn, reminded me of Matt Rees' decision to turn to crime writing when he found a story "too good for Time magazine," and of the corruption of Palestinian officialdom that forms an important subtext in his novels but not of media and popular discussion of the Middle East, at least not in the United States.

And what about the Algerian novelist Yasmina Khadra, who once told an interviewer

"Algerian readers like me a lot. They read me in French because I am not translated into Arabic. I am translated into Indonesian, Japanese, Malayalam, in the majority of the languages, except in Arabic. But that has nothing to do with the Arab peoples. It is the leaders who seek, as always, to dissociate the people from the elites so they can continue to reign and cultivate clanism and mediocrity."

There's another sentiment you'll likely not read in the American media, unless the reporters make themselves hip by affixing to it a fatuous social-media-related tag.

And now, readers, a question: "Crime stories reflect reality better than do the media." Do you agree? Disagree? Discuss.

 © Peter Rozovsky 2012

He walked, I rode

(Confused ass on the road to Jerusalem)

Rented a bicycle, rode along the Sea of Galilee in Tiberias, and fell off just once, in the mud at a Roman archaeological site that will be something to see if Israel ever makes it accessible.

And, in another experience that reminded me of Matt Rees' crime novels,  my driver to Hebron and Bethlehem, asked why rich Arab governments don't pour money into the Palestinian territories the way Jewish benefactors do into Israel, said: "They did. It all wound up in Swiss (bank accounts)."

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Bless your hands!

(Magnificent, Solly)

Matt Rees, who has written four crime novels featuring a Palestinian teacher named Omar Yussef, once explained why he translated certain  greetings rather than giving transliterated versions of the original Arabic:

"I translated them, rather than just putting the original Arabic phrase in italics, because I wanted readers to get the poetry of everyday speech. ... When someone gives them a cup of coffee, they tell them `May Allah bless your hands.' Isn't that beautiful?"

Struck by that everyday poetry, I decided to try it myself this morning, and I wished the waiter who served me breakfast يسلم يدك ("Yislamu eedayk."). From the smile and the profusion of words that followed, I suspected I had said the right thing, but who knows? The man could have had a sense of humor and been calling me a dog and the son of unworthy parents.

But he also placed his right palm on his chest, which was the clincher, because

"Placing the palm of the right hand on the chest immediately after shaking hands with another man shows respect or thanks. A very slight bow of the head may also be added."

and

"Placing the palm of the right hand on the chest, bowing the head a little and closing one’s eyes connotes `Thank You' (in the name of Allah)."

This was the greatest and most gratifying effusion of good feeling I had received since I wished the locals "Eid Mubarak" in Tunisia.  So who says crime fiction can't be educational? Thanks, Matt.

(Learn about Arabic gestures including the ones described here at a Web site that bears the evocative name www.bellydanceuk.co.uk.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Detectives Beyond Borders on the radio — again

My 2009 appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth program will be rebroadcast today at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Dig that nifty opening theme, and find out what kind of voices the show's host, Jean Feraca, likes! In honor of WPR's rebroadcast, I'm bringing back a blog post I made after the show first aired.

Here's a summary of  what we talked about and what I would have liked to talk about had we had more time. (If you're just tuning in now, the Here on Earth link should still allow you listen to the archived program.)

=====================

I'm back from talking international crime fiction on the Here on Earth radio program, and how about a huzzah for Wisconsin Public Radio for hosting a show on that entertaining, enlightening topic? The broadcast is available for listening or downloading here or here.

I learned that radio is an astonishingly compressed medium. I was worried we'd run out of things to discuss, but we got to barely a tenth of the authors and subjects I'd prepared. So in the coming days, I'll post a series of outtakes, things I'd have discussed had there been time.

I did get to tout Ireland as a hotbed of crime fiction, to offer my definition of noir and to talk about Yasmina Khadra, Seicho Matsumoto, Henning Mankell, Patricia Highsmith, David Goodis, Ian Rankin, Matt Rees, Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor and Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole. My fellow guest and I both like Jean-Claude Izzo, so we talked about him awhile. (That fellow guest was Hirsh Sawhney, editor of Akashic Books' Delhi Noir, about which he made some interesting remarks.)

But, oh, the things I didn't get to: Corporate villains. Humorous Swedes. Canadian borders. Northern Ireland. Irish odysseys. Hard-boiled crime as America's gift to the world. Translation. Miscellaneous exotica. The world of publishing.

More to come. Oh, and the show's host, Jean Feraca, with whom I had never spoken before, said on air that I had a "nice voice." Bless you, Ms. Feraca.

==================

P.S.: Feraca gave me credit for a statement that I was only quoting. It was the Edgar Allan Poe scholar Shelley Costa Bloomfield who suggested that the French were ready and waiting for what Poe had to offer before Americans were: "Maybe it takes an older civilization to feel comfortable with the dark side and be able to enjoy it." I wish I'd said that, but Costa Bloomfield said it first.

P.P.S: Before anyone can point this out to me, I realize that I said, "If you will" once on the air. I shall suffer the consequences in the next life.

P.P.P.S. Finally, I think I got Seicho Matsumoto's death date wrong. That fine Japanese crime writer died in 1992. I think I killed him off twelve years prematurely.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009, 2011

When does the Arabic crime-fiction boom start?

(Blogger's paragraph formatting is malfunctioning yet again. I hope what follows is readable.)

Matt Rees, who sets his crime novels amid the corruption and violence of the Palestinian world, suggests that the current unrest throughout the Arab world will give rise to crime fiction, if not now, then later. "One of the offshoots of the downfall of Arab dictators," he writes, "is sure to be an explosion of thrillers and mysteries." Why?

"I believe Arabs have eschewed crime writing because it’s a democratic genre. One man wants to find out something that a big organization – the CIA, the mafia, the government – wants to keep secret. ... For people who live in democracies, it’s easy to find fiction credible that suggests a man can investigate – and once he fingers the bad guy, the bad guy will be punished."

I wonder when such an explosion of thrillers and mysteries will begin (if it has not done so already) and how we will know about it in today's atomized publishing world.

Much short crime fiction in English is published on the Internet these days, particularly on the darker, more violent end of the spectrum. I suspect that little of this work is translated into other languages. Will such be the case with any future boom in Arabic crime fiction? Will the boom happen on the Web, in Arabic, untranslated and under the noses of the outside crime fiction world? Has it started already? Is someone sitting in Tahrir Square or Benghazi at this moment typing and circulating dark tales of crime, justice and corruption?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Matt Rees' latest, plus a question about outsiders in America

(Apologies for the possibly unsightly paragraphing. Thanks, Blogger.)

Matt Rees said at a reading a few years ago that his novels offered a tour of the Palestinian world. The first three were set in Bethlehem, Gaza and Nablus; next up, he said, were Beirut and Brooklyn.

Turns out he was joking — about Beirut. He set The Fourth Assassin, his fourth novel about a Palestinian schoolteacher named Omar Yussef, largely in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge section, with detours to the United Nations.

The book only slowly works its way to the central mystery: Who killed a friend of Omar's son, and how will Omar get his son off the hook?

In the meantime, Rees, a Welshman who lives in Jerusalem writing about a Palestinian in New York, offers a hundred pictures of the city through unfamiliar eyes: "the slippery, unwelcoming seats" of the N train, the Palestinian Americans, one a police officer, whom Rees uses as mouthpieces for any number of equivocal opinions about the old country and the new one, and my favorite of the bunch:

"Outside a store selling greeting cards and bumper stickers, Khamis Zeydan stopped to read aloud: `"Hatred is not a family value–Koran 49:13." The Koran says that?'

"`In that verse, Allah says he "made you into nations and tribes, so that you might get to know each other,"' Omar Yussef said.

"`So this is the dumb American version?'

"`What do you want from them? It's only a bumper sticker.'"

***

Read the Detectives Beyond Borders interview with Matt Rees. Then think about this:

Who are your favorite outsider protagonists and why? What are the attractions for a reader of a story about a stranger in a strange land? What are the attractions for an author?

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A new blog about international crime fiction from folks who write the stuff

It's International Crime Authors Reality Check, a cooperative effort from Christopher G. Moore, Colin Cotterill, Matt Beynon Reese and Barbara Nadel, each of whom plans one post a week.

The opening lineup includes How the Devil Lost its Vagina from Cotterill, Quick, woman, go and get the Koran! from Rees, The Elements of Crime Fiction in Foreign Settings from Moore, and a modest greeting from Nadel.

The site also includes short biographies, information about the authors' books, and news links. I've written about three of the authors here on Detectives Beyond Borders, most recently about Cotterill's Curse of the Pogo Stick last week, and I'll look forward to adding Nadel to the list.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Authors in the blogosphere

A couple of authors mentioned occasionally in this space have taken to the blogosphere. First up is Scott Philips (right), whose odd new collection of items bears the marvelous title Pocketful of Ginch. I don't know what ginch is, but the blog looks like fun.

Matt Rees has had a blog for a while, but he's picked up the pace lately. One post that might have readers howling for his head is a scathing discussion of Stieg Larsson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I don't expect the book's partisans will enjoy what Rees has to say, but he more fully articulates than do most critics one fault that even some of the book's fans acknowledge, and he has some fun with another aspect that I had not seen discussed previously.

Question to readers: What's ginch?

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Matt Rees in the Philadelphia Inquirer

My review of Matt Beynon Rees' third Omar Youssef mystery, The Samaritan's Secret, appears in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

The book mines an ancient but little-known corner of history for its mystery, and it involves both secrets and some not so good Samaritans. Read the Detectives Beyond Borders interview with Matt Rees here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Fiction and real life

Matt Rees links to "The Fiction Writer's Gaza," an article he wrote about the differences between the journalists' Gaza and the one he portrays in his novel A Grave in Gaza (The Saladin Murders in the U.K.). "A Grave in Gaza," Rees writes, "traces many of the same troubles that we're witnessing today in the Gaza Strip — except that I hope it's more entertaining."

Rees discusses his third Omar Yussef novel, The Samaritan's Secret, in a video interview here. He talks about the difficulties of his previous career as a journalist in the Middle East, moving back and forth between two societies: "Each of them, when you're among them, is very convincing. ... As a journalist, I feel like you visit, but as a novelist you have to live with someone. Your novel has to take people inside the society."

Click here for Rees' promotional video, which gives enough history of the Samaritans to make the book a compelling prospect. Read my 2008 interview with Rees here.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Garbhan Downey's scoop on journalism and crime fiction

Garbhan Downey, a subject of discussion here in recent days, weighs in on journalism, fiction, the constraints of the first, and the freedoms of the second:

"I think you've a good point about fiction being the second draft of history. I worked as a reporter and newspaper editor for 15 years, and the main reason I started writing fiction was to tell the stories (and voice opinion) I could never print as a working hack. All heavily disguised, he added (not entirely truthfully). About 70 percent of my short-story collection Off Broadway derived from unprintable stories I'd garnered as a hack — as did the central plot of my latest, Yours Confidentially — though in fairness, I made my land developers a lot more crooked and murderous.

"Also, I don't think the public have any idea how scared and over-regulated journalism has become — so much so that the editor is now de-facto third in line in dictating newspaper content, after the lawyers and the advertisers.”

I’d referred Downey to my interview with Matt Rees, who had similar thoughts about the freedom fiction gave him to tell stories he could not tell as a reporter. Here’s Downey on that subject:

“I identify a lot with what he said. One of the worst things about being a journalist covering atrocities is that often you feel your reportage is cheapening the pain of the people affected. That you are pandering to your public and/or your employer by capitalising on someone else's misery. A large part of that is because of the unspoken strictures that media owners place on you as a witness. You are expected to sanitise brutality into handy clichés, and categorise and quantify pain to such a degree that the extinguishing of life fits into a five-word headline or a five-second soundbite. (No blame on the copy-editors!) Anybody who's ever had to doorstep a grieving relative and ask them to describe what their loss means, into a mike, knows what I mean. (Could you give me your name and title till I test the sound levels ... ?)

"Peculiarly, and I don't know if Matt Rees finds this, there are even two or three incidents I was unlucky enough to come across regarding the unearthing and murdering of informers in the North that I could never talk about in fiction, even now, because I wouldn't want to dishonour the dead or their families. These stories/events tend to be so sordid, sad and personal that to re-tell them for any form of profit — even critical approval — would seem like a betrayal. If it allows families to salvage a tiny bit of dignity, then what harm that a big-shot reporter keeps his mouth shut about a few dirty little secrets? There were days, honest to God, that I had to go home and shower at lunchtime just to get the grime off me.

"The late eighties and early nineties were not pleasant in the North.

"Any wonder I packed in the day job and started writing comedy?"

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Matt Rees reads on the radio

Matt Rees is the guest and subject on an installment of National Public Radio's Crime in the City series. Host Eric Westervelt walks with Rees through Nablus, site of Rees' upcoming third Omar Yussef mystery, The Samaritan's Secret. The segment suffers that annoying trait of so many radio features — excessive talk from a host who thinks he's painting vivid word pictures — and Westervelt misuses the word ply.

But Rees is a compelling guide, and he has an apparent love for his setting. Click here to listen to the segment and to read a transcript. You'll also find links to Rees reading from The Samaritan's Secret and to an excerpt from Rees' first novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem (called The Bethlehem Murders in the U.K.).

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Interviews with CWA shortlist picks

The U.K.'s Crime Writers Association has announced the shortlists for its Dagger awards, which are to be presented in London next month.

The lists include two subjects of 2008 Detectives Beyond Borders interviews: Sian Reynolds, nominated with Fred Vargas for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger for her translation of Vargas' This Night's Foul Work, and Matt Rees, up for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger for The Bethlehem Murders (The Collaborator of Bethlehem in the U.S.).

Other shortlistees include Colin Cotterill, Duncan Lawrie Dagger for The Coroner's Lunch; Andrea Camilleri and translator Stephen Sartarelli, Duncan Lawrie International Dagger for The Patience of the Spider, and Martin Edwards, Short Story Dagger for ‘The Bookbinder’s Apprentice.’

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

Matt Rees and reality

Matt Rees, author of The Collaborator of Bethlehem (Bethlehem Murders in the U.K.) and A Grave in Gaza (The Saladin Murders) and subject of a Detectives Beyond Borders interview, has some interesting things to say in a new review/interview about the latter book in the Jerusalem Post. So does his reviewer/interviewer.

The novel's General Moussa Husseini, reviewer Avi Hoffmann writes, appears to be based on Yasser Arafat's cousin, the security chief Moussa Arafat, who met an end in 2005 like the one Husseini meets in A Grave in Gaza's most chilling and violent scene.

Back in the fictional word, Hoffmann cites a blurb that invoked Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse and Ian Rankin's Rebus alongside Rees' protagonist, Omar Yussef. Hoffmann says he finds the comparison strained, and he offers interesting reasons for doing so. He nominates his own candidate for a closer Yussef parallel, a choice I agree with: Yasmina Khadra's Brahim Llob.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Who will be the next Samir Spade? Or the first one? (Crime fiction in the Arab world)

An article earlier this month from the London Book Fair (hat tip to Sarah Weinman) touched on issues that crop up from time to time at Detectives Beyond Borders. The subject was a speech by Amr Moussa, secretary general of the League of Arab States, on the "immense challenges" facing the Arab books world.

"The Arab League recognizes the shortcomings of education in the Arab world," he said, highlighting issues that included the inability of many would-be readers to afford books. But all was not negative. Moussa cited positive signs, including what he said was a decline in censorship, and more translation abroad.

Both the positive and the negative judgments dovetail with matters that have arisen on this blog. One of my early posts concerned a trip to Tunisia, where I found no crime fiction. Our local guide suggested an explanation that tallies with one of Mussa’s: that many Tunisians simply earned too little money to afford books.

Some time later, the questions of poverty and censorship arose in an exchange of e-mails with Matt Rees, who sets his novels in the Palestinian territories. Though the subject was crime fiction, the discussion touched on subjects Moussa raised in connection with Arabic literature in general.

“There are two separate issues,” Rees wrote. “One is that the book market is very small … My theory is that the Arab world is very prone to conspiracy theories, but the uncovering of the truth is generally not encouraged by governments or religious establishments – in political terms. Though the detective novel grows out of situations of corruption (Hammett's San Francisco or Chandler's Santa Monica), it also depends on a conception that when right is uncovered, it can also be carried through. Unfortunately the Arab world suffers from a lack of that freedom."

Rees also said crime fiction was virtually unknown in the Arab world, in part for reasons outlined above. What does this all mean? Perhaps that if Amr Moussa is right, and if a measure of liberalization does come to Arabic culture in general and publishing in particular, a new Arabic crime fiction might result.

There might be a way to go, though, at least in some Arab lands. The Algerian novelist Yasmina Khadra, author of the searing Brahim Llob crime novels, writes in French because "I wanted to write. In Russian, Chinese, Arabic. But to write! At the beginning, I wrote in Arabic. My Arabic teacher ridiculed me, whereas my French teacher encouragd me." And Khadra, who lives in voluntary exile in France, once told an interviewer that:

"Algerian readers like me a lot. They read me in French because I am not translated into Arabic. I am translated into Indonesian, Japanese, Malayalam, in the majority of the languages, except in Arabic. But that has nothing to do with the Arab peoples. It is the leaders who seek, as always, to dissociate the people from the elites so they can continue to reign and cultivate clanism and mediocrity."

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Politically disillusioned crime-fiction good guys

A humorous passage in Thirty-Three Teeth plus a comment from Matt Rees in an interview here last week got me thinking about disillusioned crime-fiction characters whose disillusionement is political. Here’s the passage:

“`All right, then. Let's see if we can get any information from the information department.' ...

"[Siri] was a remarkably patient man, but he had no time for incompetence in the government sector. He and Boua had fought for most of their lives to end corrupt systems and he had no intention of being part of one. In his most officious voice, he belted out: `Good god, man! What do you think you're doing? This is a government department, not a rest home. What if there was some sporting emergency or something?'"

Here's the comment, about a character named Khamis Zeydan, police chief of Bethlehem:

"He's typical of high-level Palestinian military men – though not those with the absolute top jobs. Most of them are very disillusioned. They thought they'd come back from exile to be policemen, and suddenly young gunmen took over the streets and they weren't allowed to do anything about it. Khamis Zeydan is based on a friend of mine who introduced me to many of his colleagues in this discontented echelon of the Palestinian military."

The characters, one a protagonist, the other a protagonist's dangerous friend, are both disillusioned revolutionaries who have not let their disillusionment carry them over to the dark side, at least not entirely. That old formula about walking the mean streets who are not themselves mean proves adaptable to cultural and political circumstances different from Raymond Chandler's.

That's two disillusioned revolutionaries who nonetheless stayed on the good side. Can you think of any more crime-fiction heroes or helpers whose disillusionment was political?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Love, war, crime fiction, and a question for readers

I posted more than a year ago about the chilling opening chapter of Yasmina Khadra's Morituri, in which the ravages of fighting in Algeria have sapped the protagonist even of the consolation of sexual desire:

"Today my wife, my poor beast of burden, has regressed – she holds no more attraction than a trailer lying across the road, but at least she's there when I am afraid of the dark."

The next day, I found a discussion of Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida that said: "Chaucer was creating a work that could help bring a declining society back to a state of health. The whole perpetual love theme in Chaucer relates to this, because love is one of the first relations to go awry in an unhealthy society."

In A Grave in Gaza, Matt Rees' protagonist is haunted by deaths he has witnessed:

"Omar Yussef dreamed of death ... Death wasn't following him anymore. It was sharing his bed, not like a wife, but like an illicit lover, jealous and angry, giving him no sleep."

Once again, war is a destroyer of love (though only in his dreams for the eminently well-adjusted, decidely non-screwed-up, warped, embittered, cowed or otherwise damaged Omar Yussef). What other modern crime stories use this ancient theme?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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An interview with Matt Rees

Matt Rees spent a decade as a reporter in the Palestinian territories and wrote a nonfiction book, Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East, before deciding he needed another, richer way to tell the stories he found there. His two crime novels, The Collaborator of Bethlehem (The Bethlehem Murders in the U.K.) and A Grave in Gaza (a.k.a. The Saladin Murders) portray a harsh world, populated by villains as callous, venal and brutal as any in crime fiction. But Rees finds beauty in that world, too. He wrote last year in Mystery Readers Journal that:

"By learning [Arabic], I was able to give my characters some of the formalized greetings and blessings that are an important part of Palestinian speech. I translated them, rather than just putting the original Arabic phrase in italics, because I wanted readers to get the poetry of everyday speech. For example, to wish someone good morning my characters say `Morning of joy,' and the response is `Morning of light.' When someone gives them a cup of coffee, they tell them `May Allah bless your hands.' Isn't that beautiful?"

In a new interview with Detectives Beyond Borders, Rees talks about his immensely appealing protagonist, Omar Yussef; the models for his characters and stories; and his own favorite crime-fiction writers. One of the latter may surprise you. He also offers good news about the third Omar Yussef mystery. If you're within travelling distance of New York, you can hear Matt Rees read and discuss A Grave in Gaza on Tuesday, Feb. 12 at Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers in Greenwich Village.
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Omar Yussef is a high school history teacher. Why a teacher? And why history?

People are always suggesting to me that Palestinians are stuck in the past. Of course many are, but I've found a lot of Palestinians to be far more forward-looking than that. I wanted Omar Yussef to be a Palestinian who understood the past – a historian – but whose focus was on the future, the next generation – a teacher.

You write that the crimes in your novels are based on real events. What event or events made you decide, "Aha, I'm going to write a novel"?

When I was Time magazine's Jerusalem bureau chief, I was in a cabbage field near Bethlehem in 2003, interviewing the mother and wife of a Palestinian gunman who'd been killed by Israeli snipers as he crept home to break the Ramadan fast with his family. They talked about discovering his body in the moonlight and touching his blood to their faces, but they also told me in very profound emotional terms what it had been like to go through such an extreme experience. I remember thinking: "This is too good for Time magazine." That death formed the basis for the first killing in The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the first of my novels.

Why are the Palestinian territories, Bethlehem in the first book, Gaza in the second, ripe settings for crime stories?

Particularly during the intifada, there was no law and order for Palestinians. Gunmen ruled the towns and refugee camps as gangsters. If they occasionally shot at an Israeli, they could operate their rackets freely, and of course Palestinians were the victims. In the lawlessness and the corruption of the police force – which is often involved with the gangs – I see many parallels with the San Francisco and Los Angeles of Hammett and Chandler. Unfortunately for the Palestinians they have very real bad guys, too, many of whom I've met.

In your first novel, Omar Yussef uncovers truth but does not achieve justice. What does this say about life in the territories? About your own conception of what a crime story can and should do?

Mainly it says that I'm not an idealist, but that I am an optimist.

What is your take on the breach of the Rafah border crossing? Hamas emerges having appeared to face down both Israel and Egypt. Will this enhance its standing among ordinary Palestinians, or will people regard it as a cynical power play against Fatah? More to the point, how might it influence your planning for possible future Omar Yussef stories?

Ordinary Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, are sick of Hamas. They elected them to punish Fatah, which was corrupt. They didn't elect them because they believe in an Islamic state. They expected Hamas to negotiate with Israel, but to do so more toughly than Fatah. Instead Hamas allowed itself to be pushed into a corner and continued to behave like an opposition militia. Palestinians want Hamas to behave like a government, and governments don't blow up border fences. As for how this affects Omar Yussef, the book I'm finishing now, in which Omar goes to Nablus, involves Hamas and the kind of tribal/neighborhood conflict that never seems to make it into the newspapers.

The character Khamis Zeydan is a police officer with a dangerous past, yet one who knows his way around the hazards of the territories and is conscious of the corruption around him. How typical a figure is he? What role do men like him play in the territories today? What role will they play in any future Palestinian government?

He's typical of high-level Palestinian military men – though not those with the absolute top jobs. Most of them are very disillusioned. They thought they'd come back from exile to be policemen, and suddenly young gunmen took over the streets and they weren't allowed to do anything about it. Khamis Zeydan is based on a friend of mine who introduced me to many of his colleagues in this discontented echelon of the Palestinian military.

One reviewer invoked Batya Gur's name in discussing your first novel, but I'd call your work a distant cousin of Yasmina Khadra's Brahim Llob novels as well. His writing is far bleaker than yours, but the two of you share the theme that when factions fight, ordinary people get it in the neck. Have you read his work? What crime novelists have made a particularly strong impression on you?

I'm glad you find him bleaker than me, because one American journalist said my books were the bleakest mysteries she'd ever read. I told her I thought they were quite optimistic. I don't know Khadra's books, though I shall pick them up. My primary interests in specifically detective writers are Chandler and Hammett, while I love all of Graham Greene's books, including his mysteries. I'm also a fan of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano, which proves that I'm not bleak and am in fact rather a breezy sort of guy. Well, maybe not – I also love Inspector Morse.

In the video you made to promote your second novel, you fling aside a copy of Time magazine. Was that just a bit of whimsy at a former employer's expense, or are you commenting on the inability of media accounts to portray the reality of life in the territories?

We originally intended to have a voice-over for the video where I would, at that point, say "You won't find the reality of Palestine in a newspaper or a magazine. For that, you have to read my books and imagine you're looking down the barrel of one of these." Then I lift a gun to the camera. In the end, we liked the music so much that we kept the talking to an absolute minimum, but you can see why I tossed Time. Of course it was also a bit of revenge for all those nights I had to watch my stories being gutted.

A piece in a French newspaper said your work had a "typically colonialist perspective." The writer cited your caustic comments in the first book about the Arab revolts of 1936. How do you answer such criticism? More broadly, what does it feel like to be a crime novelist who is probably questioned more often about politics than about crime writing?

The comments you're referring to were that during the Arab Revolt the "freedom fighters" degenerated quickly into gangs and ended up killing more Arabs than British soldiers or Jewish immigrants. So I would answer that particular French journalist by saying that (a) the numbers don't lie and (b) that's also what Palestinian historians of the period say. And (c) I'd say that if a character says something in a novel that sounds colonialist, that makes that character a colonialist (maybe), but not necessarily the author. Which leads me to the next part of your question: essentially that people look at my novels as non-fiction dressed up as fiction. I wrote these novels to escape politics. When people ask me about politics, I use it as an opportunity to demonstrate that my novels aren't actually political and that the realms of Middle Eastern diplomacy and politics are far closer to fantasy than the fiction I write.

Early in the second novel, after Omar has arrived in Gaza, he asks Khamis Zeydan: "Why are you killing each other?" Is there some significance to that you? Does the Bethlehemite Omar Yussef regard Gaza and Gazans as a place and people apart?

No, he means the senior Fatah people like Khamis Zeydan are killing each other. As they indeed continue to do rather spectacularly throughout the novel. The infighting among the people who were supposed to govern the Palestinians and lead them toward statehood and peace with Israel is one of the main subjects of A Grave in Gaza, my second novel.

Can readers look forward to future Omar Yussef novels?

In a year, Omar Yussef Book III will be out. It's being edited now. It'll be called The Samaritan's Secret and its set in Nablus, mainly in the old casbah.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Matt Beynon Rees
Matt Rees

Matt Rees' Palestine film noir, plus a question on the universality of crime stories

Matt Rees, author of The Collaborator of Bethlehem (The Bethlehem Murders in the UK) and A Grave in Gaza (a.k.a. The Saladin Murders), has joined the ranks of authors using video to promote their work. Rees writes on his blog that: "I was the first to bring detective fiction to Palestine – I'm pretty sure I'm now the first to bring film noir to the Holy Land."

That claim about detective fiction is one to which Rees has given some thought. I told him I'd failed to find any crime fiction on a trip to Tunisia, to which Rees replied:

"Interesting you mention the lack of crime fiction in the Arab world. There are two separate issues: One is that the book market is very small; second, the genre is virtually unknown to Arab literature. My first novel was reviewed in Al-Ayyam, a Ramallah newspaper, a few months ago, and the review was essentially an introduction to detective novels (`So the detective must discover who is really responsible for the crime ...')

"My theory is that the Arab world is very prone to conspiracy theories, but the uncovering of the truth is generally not encouraged by governments or religious establishments – in political terms. Though the detective novel grows out of situations of corruption (Hammett's San Francisco or Chandler's Santa Monica), it also depends on a conception that when right is uncovered it can also be carried through. Unfortunately the Arab world suffers from a lack of that freedom."

And that leads to a difficult but endlessly interesting question: The detective story, essentially an Anglo-French-American creation, has taken up residence in many other cultures and countries. What makes it so adaptable? What adjustments have authors made when introducing it into new countries? And could crime stories potentially find a home in any country?

The video is a noirish trip, with terrific music and perhaps a bit more whimsy than the novel it promotes. And you'll never guess how it ends.



© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Matt Beynon Rees
Matt Rees