A Note on Freedom of Speech

Following is a note that I wrote to myself in 1995, not long after returning to the States after decades of living abroad. —

This morning I was engaged in a conversation that left me considerably disturbed. I had called a new friend and her husband, Johnny, answered the phone. He and I get along okay. I find him well informed and open minded. As usual, we chatted. He told me about their plans for Christmas and I told him that we had invited an Irani couple to have Christmas dinner with us.

This led Johnny into a story from 1979 about an Irani student, Mohammed, who was studying engineering at the university and working part-time as a bartender. Johnny liked to sit at the bar over a beer and talk politics with other regulars, with Mohammed mostly listening. When the Shah was in the news for leaving Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini was on television, shown leaving France to become the country’s Supreme Leader, Mohammed did not add much to the back and forth talk about what was happening in Iran. However, in November, when Islamist students took over the American Embassy in Tehran, he suddenly burst forth. Johnny sat fascinated and amazed, listening to Mohammed fully support Khomeini and the Muslim revolutionaries, speak vehemently against American foreign policy in the Middle East and against American cultural imperialism. Mohammed believed Iran should be ruled by men who would return the country to its traditional values.

The bar was a student hangout. Johnny watched a group of boys listening to Mohammed, barely able to contain their irritation with what he was saying. Scenes on the television above the bar showing young hotheads in Tehran holding Americans hostage in the Embassy had the boys virtually apoplectic in their anger. Mohammed, as he poured drinks and served customers, continued declaring his admiration for Khomeini. He did not notice the boys; he was telling Johnny what he believed. He could not bring himself to make apologies for what was happening to Americans in his country.

Twice the boys caught Mohammed outside and beat him. They beat on his car with a baseball bat and broke a window. They defecated on his front porch.

Johnny recounted all this as if what happened to Mohammed were a natural outcome of what he was saying.

I protested, “The boys acted like Nazis! How terrible!”
“Well, Mohammed was saying terrible things.”
“But he was only talking. He was throwing words, not knives. In this country we believe in free speech.”
“… and his foreigner friends say America is imperialistic.”

Johnny went on to justify limiting Mohammed’s speech. He used the example of someone falsely shouting “Fire” in a theatre full of people. That, I said, constitutes a threat to public safety, a clear and present danger, and is not an example of exercising the right of free speech. Mohammed was talking, not taking action of any sort. We have the First Amendment to our Constitution to protect his rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” If Mohammed were to take hostile action, the police, not a bunch of thugs, should go after him.

Johnny was surprised by my response. He thought about it and said he guessed I was probably right.

In much of the world what those boys did would be acceptable. How many societies legally protect the right of protest, of expressing politically incorrect opinions? My daughter reminded me that the United Nations adopted our Bill of Rights into its basic charter. That gave me a small sense of comfort.

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The Turkish House

In the epistolary, A House and Its Gardens From the Time of Atatürk, here here here and here Ülkü describes her childhood house but she has no photo of it and none of the traditional Turkish houses, like those on the stamps, are at all similar to her house.

They are in the Ottoman style and would have been found in the original Ankara, inside or around the walls of the ancient city, in a neighborhood called Ulus, not in the mahalle, the neighborhood, where Ülkü lived as a child. That was in the new part of town, in Cebeci, built in the 1920s, when her parents were children, during the time when the Republic of Turkey was newly established. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the military commander who led the war for independence, had chosen Ankara, an historic city in central Anatolia, the heartland, rather than Istanbul, as the nation’s capital. In 1923, he became the Republic’s first President and subsequently introduced many and varied radical reforms. He initiated the institutions of a secular state with a parliamentary form of government, a modern court system and a modern educational system for girls as well as boys. To mention only two of the changes that affected everyone’s lives immediately — he decreed that the Roman alphabet replace the Persian alphabet of previous regimes and that all citizens must, by law, adopt a family surname and personal given name instead of using the traditional patronymic naming system. In 1934, The Parliament bestowed the title Atatürk, Father of the Turks, on Mustafa Kemal.

Ülkü’s family contributed to the success of the new Turkish Republic. As we see in the account of her childhood house and gardens, her mother’s family belonged to Ankara’s landed elite. I remember her mother as a gracious, elegant lady. Her father’s family had been Ottoman nobility, from a lineage with the right to present a special belt to the Sultan in the royal ceremony of his receiving the crown. Her father’s father and his father were highly ranked Kadi, judges in the Ottoman courts, and her father himself was the first Chief Public Prosecutor of Turkey and President of the Cassation Court, our Supreme Court. He also served as the Minister of Justice. He is a major figure in Turkish legal history. I remember him as a distinguished gentleman. I am impressed, as well, with the fact that Ülkü, a daughter, was the fourth generation in a long line of exceptional lawyers, legal experts and civil servants. As a side note, having lived in Turkey, I came to believe that one of the strengths of the culture is its tradition of the court and respect for law.

In the spirit of the new Republic, of change and modernity, Turkish architects, influenced by European architects, notably by Corbusier, imagined a modern Turkish house. The Ottoman house had evolved through the centuries to accommodate a joint household of three generations, of parents, unmarried daughters, sons and their wives and children, plus any number of relatives. The ground floor served as a storage and service area. The main floor had at its center a large hall with private rooms opening on to it. Along the walls were shelves and niches for items such as lamps and clocks. The house was built of wood, had rows of wood framed windows, overhanging eaves and the cumba, supported by wooden brackets, a projecting interior space for catching the breezes and expanding the view. The house of the 1920s and ’30s, in contrast, was designed by young architects and meant for a modern lifestyle, for the new middle classes and a nuclear family without in-laws or live-in servants. The woman was seen as educated, possibly working professionally outside the home, or better yet, devoting herself to her one or two children, taking them to public parks, introducing them to civic life in the mode of a European middle-class housewife. Her house would be a single story, smaller, open, built of concrete and have lots of big windows.

Ülkü’s childhood house fits neither of these modes. It was large, with three generations and live-in help, but as you will read in her descriptions, modern in its design and furnishings. And, I might add, modern in the family’s thinking and vision. Perhaps I will be able to discover when the house was built and the name of the architect who designed it. However, in the meantime, after seeing this image of Atatürk’s house in Çankaya, sitting high on a hill at the then edge of town, I have an idea of what Ülkü’s house might have been. It was the era of her grandparents and parents, leading families in the Ankara of the time. Some years ago, she told me that her house, although much deteriorated, was still standing, serving as a warehouse. Let us hope that someone has recognized its worth, as has happened with many of the grand old buildings in that part of Ankara, has renovated it and is using it well.

Kavaklıdere 1968

As an adult, a lawyer and wife and mother, Ülkü lived in Kavaklıdere, a yet newer area of Ankara. Very few of the young architects from the Republic era succeeded in building and selling their new-style residences. Instead, Ankara became well supplied with four or five stories cement block apartment buildings, with lots of windows. Most of the apartments were for a couple and their one, two or three children. Ülkü was a young woman with a husband and an adorable little girl when she and I met, neighbors on the same floor of such a building. It was 1968. She spoke English. My husband, children and I had recently arrived in Ankara, knowing nothing about Turkey, having never before heard Turkish. She helped me adjust and adapt and we became friends.

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A Friendship in Mogadiscio

Iris in 1966

I’ve kept this picture of Amina, from 1966, and whenever I come across it while rummaging through our family photos I smile. She was such a delightful young woman. It’s nice to remember the brief few months when she and I were together in our unlikely friendship. The age difference between us, some sixteen years, was too small for me to play a motherly role, too large for us to be buddies and our being older and younger sisters could not happen when we were from such entirely different backgrounds. Yet, we liked one another and enjoyed spending time together.

Amina was nineteen or twenty at the time. She had returned from two years of school in London and was fluent in English. Perhaps more importantly for our friendship, she had experienced modern urban living and was fairly familiar with my lifestyle, my culture. As an anthropologist, I was learning about her culture but not studying it; she was from a pastoral nomadic background and my direct interest was in the urban Somali community, Hamar Wein, the casbah of Mogadiscio. Her grandparents would have been pastoralists living in the countryside with their herds of camels and flocks of sheep and goats, but she had grown up in Mogadiscio, where her father was with the new Somali government. I knew him slightly and my husband, Ravi, talked politics with him, in English. Of course, Ravi and most Somali men were always talking politics in Somali, Italian and/or English. Amina’s mother was more traditional and spoke only Somali. Her brothers were much younger than she, still children, and I recall no mention of sisters.

I try from this distance in time to imagine why Amina liked me. I doubt that coming to my home was an adventure for her; she was not satisfying curiosity about how foreigners live, as were some of the young Somalis who came by to visit with me. Perhaps she wanted to practice her English. Perhaps my way of thinking, my continual questioning and analyzing of ordinary events, appealed to her. She was, after all, a Somali, from a culture where the sort of conversation I loved was considered normal and valued and the reason why I felt so comfortable with Somalis in Mogadiscio.

I enjoyed Amina’s open mind and quick intelligence. She also gave me something I had been wanting: she introduced me to her mother and the traditional women to whom I had no other access. As I wrote in Tales of Mogadiscio –

“In Mogadiscio I had no friendships and far too few contacts with Somali women, largely because of the language barrier. Few Somali women spoke Italian or English. I had picked up Italian but little of the very difficult Somali. A number of young men served informally as my interpreters. I helped them improve their English, and they helped me carry on conversations with a wide variety of people, mostly men. Not one Somali man I knew would have sat with me and a group of women discussing women’s work or, especially, patiently translating the questions I would have posed. It would have been beneath his dignity.

“For some reason I had not become friends with the three very attractive bilingual Somali women I occasionally met in Mogadiscio and with whom I could speak directly. I do not know why I saw so little of them. Perhaps it was because they were engaged in activities with the American Embassy wives and I was not part of that social set. More likely it was because Ravi focused on politics, both Somali and international, and I found myself caught up in Hamar Wein with matters dominated by the male side of society.”

Amina introduced me to her mother and other women of my generation. She translated and we talked about what was on our minds at the time, about adjusting from our previous lives to the complexities of life in the new multinational, multicultural Mogadiscio. Unfortunately, we met only twice; Ravi had completed his work in Somalia and I had to pack up our household and be with my children in their moving from this set of friends and this school to life back home. I learned enough, though, to be, and remain, full of admiration for the skill and courage of these Somali women. Later, in Paris, as I wrote in my book, a Somali woman friend helped me meet and talk with other Somali women.

I had no contact with Amina after leaving Mogadiscio but remember her fondly. She was so alive, so lovely, as this photograph clearly shows.

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The Expatriate Wife Expressed in a Painting

Iris in 1985

In the summer of 1985 Ravi and I drove from Paris to Cannes to meet with American friends who were vacationing there. Besides seeing our friends, the best part of the trip was a day spent in St.Paul de Vence and another visiting the Galerie Maight. My one memory from Cannes itself is of a painting in a gallery. I wanted very much to take the painting home with me but Ravi thought it far too expensive, and reluctantly, I agreed with him. Our friends had their camera out and had been taking pictures of us, so on an impulse I asked them to take this one. If I could not have the painting, this at least, would help me remember it. The photo shows me at fifty-five, without my glasses; I was wearing sunglasses and had taken them off.

I liked the painting as such, as art, but it was the central image that caught and held me. The painting is of a woman in traditional dress, probably African, moving into a fractured space. In another painting she is running, running as if to keep her balance. She will fall if she stops moving. I identified with the woman. Because of the colors that surround her, I sensed she is not afraid; she is alive, questioning, searching – for what? For herself as an individual? For her identity? The columns of color are marvelous – complex and subtle, with a true yellow in the foreground. I wish I could return to them and to her.

I looked in all the Paris galleries I thought might carry this artist’s paintings, but found none. I have forgotten his name. This photo is all I have.

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A Cicerone in Mogadiscio

Hamar Wein in 1980

A friend emailed to ask me why I was writing about beer in “Tales of Mogadiscio”. I had no idea what he meant. He replied that I use the word cicerone, which was new to him, so he queried his iPhone and found references to beer. We sorted through the confusion and I learned a lesson. Words change in meaning through time and between countries. Since I tend to like archaic words I should be careful to check in the latest dictionary, and especially on the internet.

In “Tales of Mogadiscio”, my friend had read on page 81 in the chapter “The Streets of Hamar Wein”:

“Sharif had been waiting patiently for Katherine. She greeted him with “Ah, my cicerone.”
He laughed. “You use many words I do not know, but that is all right. You help me so I do not lose my English. Come. I want you to meet my friend.”
They had walked into the alley-like streets of Hamar Wein, … …”

Hamar Wein was the original Mogadiscio, an ancient coastal city-state based on trade that in the twentieth century became a casbah to the Italian rebuilt colonial Mogadiscio. I loved both Hamar Wein, a small urban community, and the modern Mogadiscio that had been transformed into newly independent Somalia’s capital city. Both are now totally destroyed and I mourn for the suffering of the people and the loss of a wonderful, vibrant city with a rich history and delightful architecture. The stories I tell in “Tales of Mogadiscio” are accounts drawn from my own experience and based on individuals I knew.

Sharif and I taught in the Indian community madressa in Hamar Wein in the early 1960s. He was a qualified primary school teacher and had studied for a year in England, on scholarship. He and his wife and children lived in Hamar Wein, and being from Brava, another Somali coastal city, they felt at home there. He took me to traditional schools, the duqsi, and introduced me to people. He was an important guide in broadening my understanding of this world that was new to me.

For future readers of the “Tales of Mogadiscio”, please note:
The definition of cicerone involving beer has to do with a contemporary American organization that provides professional credentials for someone selling and serving beer.
For centuries cicerone has meant a guide or a tutor. In recent times a cicerone is a person who is knowledgeable about archeology, art and history and guides visitors in museums and galleries.

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