Sandstone Press

The year’s books 2007

Posted by RLD on 29th November 2009

A couple of years ago Roger Hutchinson of the West Highland Free Press asked me to write something on my favourite books of the year. At the time I was on fire after Sandstone’s publication of Shadow Behind The Sun by Remzije Sherifi and far exceeded my brief with this medium length essay. The fire has not so much died down as been joined by other fires. My concern for events and directions in European affairs is no less now and probably greater.

The essay was circulated privately and I suspect that now is a reasonable time to put it into the public field. It will not be long before we hear more from Putin’s Russia. Public attention for the moment is mostly and unsurprisingly on Iraq and Afghanistan but the greater threat will come from Eastern and Central Europe when divisions that go back many centuries once again assert themselves. If linkage is made, more likely through Iran than Iraq but directly with Afghanistan, the consequences will be devastating. Lessons from a long history of tragic associations should be warning enough.

The views below are entirely mine. After being let down so badly in 2007 Roger generously invited my contribution again in 2008 and received the appropriately sized paragraph he sought. I note that my prediction in Paragraph Six has been fulfilled in Georgia. Which country will be next is a moot question, Estonia has probably suffered the most overt attacks. Ukraine is controlled economically with at least one of the Orange Revolution leaders, it seems, having sold out. Eastern Germany and Poland await their turn. What will we do if they are invaded?
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In 1999 Remzije Sherifi stepped onto British soil for the first time.  Her immediate family was with her and more or less safe although weakened by hunger, illness and fear. In Kosova their home had been destroyed in a grenade and tank attack, neighbours had been killed. All their savings were long since dissipated. She had a deep anxiety about loved ones left behind, especially her parents who had insisted on staying – on not slowing their children and grandchildren’s escape. She was suffering from cancer, had no English and could visualise no future. Today she is one of the most loved and respected figures in the Integration Movement and, two days before my time of writing, has been honoured by the Saltire Society in that her book, Shadow Behind the Sun, was short listed for the Best First Book Award of 2007. Working on the text with her has been one of the great privileges of my life.

On my bookshelves there are 370mm of spine width on the Balkans that was necessary to inform the work. I know because I just took a tape measure to it. With this book we have added another 20mm of narrative and thought that extends into the parallel fields of flight and refuge, developing into integration. Let me make an aside here.

The organisation Mrs Sherifi works with is the Maryhill Integration Network, which I understand is the most advanced such organisation in Britain. It is not the Maryhill Tolerance Network, common decency takes care of that. Nor is it the Maryhill Assimilation Network, day to day practicalities do that work. The word is ‘integration’ which, as all mathematicians know, is a process of iteration that brings different elements closer until the difference makes no difference. This means the group I will term ‘us’ has to shift, although not so much as ‘them’ because the first group is larger. This projects into a new ‘us’, slightly different than we would otherwise be. Personally I welcome this because I think we could use more colour around, invigoration of our culture, even a slight recalibration of our moral compass.

Adding to those 370mm there are another 300 or so of associated reading which has extended out of the original necessity. Because of all this and also the reading that goes with editing books on the environment (White River, out now), on Shetland and Sudan (on the way), work on adult literacy and more, there has been very little time for reading as pure pleasure. Therefore it is to the 300mm I turn for my recommendation.

Before beginning with Mrs Sherifi I entered the mind of Edward Said through his book Power, Politics and Culture. It wasn’t an easy start but I am glad I made it. Later, during our work on the Balkans, Noam Chomsky began to unravel for me and, in some ways, Said took his place. There is truth and what we do with it. All of Chomsky points to America’s unique culpability in world violence. In what I have read of his thinking I find little room for responsibility elsewhere. All that is wrong is of America’s doing, and if not of then by or allowed. The Left in this country, of which I might be considered a small part, has for years accepted and amplified whatever has been handed down by Noam Chomsky and his disciples as if it arrived with an unassailable authority. This illusion can only last so long.

In Europe we now have a new Nazi state in development, allowing that it is not yet, perhaps, complete. In Russia notions of national purity are widely accepted, there is at least one extreme national youth movement, internal immigrants are routinely beaten, there is censorship, democratic processes are subverted, peripheral wars are waged, the KGB, reborn as the FSB, controls most things if not everything. Investigative journalists are murdered and I here pause to remember Anna Politkovskaya dead in her lift and Alexander Litvinenko in his hospital bed. Meanwhile our Left points correctly, but only, at America, and especially at the tragedy of the Middle East where war creates not only more volunteers for the organisations that would destroy us but also large scale allies for Putin and United Russia.

This country went to war with Germany in 1939 after the invasion of Poland. That was by no means the first such aggression. Czechoslovakia was invaded earlier.  What would it take now? There have been poisonings in Ukraine, electronic aggression in Estonia, terrorist activity in Georgia, war in Chechnya, and of course there is former Yugoslavia. Russian enclaves are stirred to violence and in turn provoke violence, as is the intent. Eventually, probably soon, there will be expansion by military means. I wonder if Peace is a myth I have been living in for most of my life. Perhaps it is a relative condition subject to wild fluctuation.

At the same ceremony we learned that the ‘Saltire Society Book of the Year for 2007’ is Day by Alison Kennedy. I have not read this book yet but I certainly will. I have long been an admirer of the author as a technically accomplished writer with a humane if slightly martyred standpoint. I read all she publishes, but am not at one with her pacifist stance. We are endangered and we should not disarm.

Edward Said died in 2003 while bringing his final three books to their conclusions. From Oslo to Iraq and the Roadmap, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, and On Late Style are my recommendations for the year. Together they show what intelligence in the service of understanding can achieve.  All are available now and their accomplishment is tremendous.  What stands out most, for me, is how great commitment to his own people, the Palestinians, and great outrage with his country, the United States, can live comfortably with love for those who might be thought of as the enemy. Let me be specific here, I mean Jews; Israeli Jews, European Jews and the Jews of America.

Although he was by family tradition a Christian, and by thoughtful decision a Humanist, Said saw no essential difference between them and him. He wrote as follows, ‘No culture or civilisation exists by itself; none is made up of things like individuality and enlightenment that are completely exclusive to it; and none exists without the basic human attributes of community, love, value for life, and all the others.’ Sometimes love is a burden but I understand he carried it to the end.

Many times in the course of writing Shadow Behind the Sun Mrs Sherifi said to me that she wishes her book to be a bridge.  I think you will see the word ‘integration’ has appeared again, albeit in disguised form. It has means that will work themselves out in time but, for the present, we can do little more than put down the foundations and erect the support pillars and make sure that they are strong.

There are a few, special, people I wish to thank for accepting me temporarily into their world.  Of course they will have forgotten me, as is natural and right with children. David is learning to play the guitar and every day becomes more skilled. Little Selina who looked so bewildered at Kelvingrove, her father has since died of cancer. Gabriel is named after Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Mohamed has been chosen as one of the new faces of Scotland and the photograph of him with a Saltire across his shoulders is becoming quite famous. Artur has inherited his mother’s talent and will one day skate for Scotland. Know their names and aspirations and they become people, not concepts. At the beginning of ‘To Scotland with Love’ Arzu, already a commanding performer, asks a great invisible mother figure situated more or less where the audience is, ‘Am I Scottish?’, and at the end proclaims, ‘I am Scottish!’.

They all are – as Scottish as you or I.  That’s the point and, yes, she might as easily have said British or European. This Christmas I have no star to point towards and no crib, only our mighty obligation to protect the children and the following duty of nurture.

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Roger Hutchinson is the author of The Soap Man http://bit.ly/5MLjiy Calum’s Road (his classic work) http://bit.ly/76DuWg and Walking to America http://bit.ly/8TAkuB

Remzije Sherifi’s Shadow Behind The Sun can still be purchased here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shadow-Behind-Sun-Flight-Non-Fiction/dp/1905207131/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259491957&sr=1-1

Edward Said’s Power, Politics and Culture can be found here http://bit.ly/67e2Sb and Anna Politkovskaya’s Putin’s Russia here http://bit.ly/4ONkVw