HabibiCulture

Habibi Gets Picked Up By The NY Times Metro Section !

2011-01-21T21:45:00.000-05:00

JANUARY 13, 2011, 3:56 PM

For Gay Arabs, a Place to Dance, and Break Down Walls

By CHADWICK MOORE

Joshua Bright for The New York Times The Habibi dance party at Club Rush in Manhattan in November.

Around midnight, upstairs in a small club on Avenue of the Americas, the pitch-black dance floor resounded with the rapid stomps and warbling, high-energy cries of the dabke, an Arab folk dance performed at weddings and other celebrations.

When the strobe lights flashed, they revealed a sea of raised hands. A man in the crowd removed his kaffiyeh, the traditional headdress worn by some Arab and Kurdish men, and whipped it around in the air.

“I can understand so many conversations going on right now,” a Fashion Institute of Technology student shouted over the music, coiling his wrists and shakinghis hips to the belly-dance beat. “But you wouldn’t want me to translate. It’s all dirty. Dirty Arabic.”

This was a recent Saturday night at Habibi, a floating monthly dance party of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Arabs in New York. In a city that seems to offer activities for every conceivable gay subculture — one 700-entry directory lists support groups for, among others, gay vegans, pilots and sailing enthusiasts, along with 62 religion-based groups — Habibi is perhaps the only opportunity in New York for gay people of Middle Eastern descent to interact openly in an organized setting.

“In New York there’s nowhere I can come to and cry, so to speak,” said Amir, 27, a registered nurse from Saudi Arabia who lives in Brooklyn and has been coming to the party for six years. “Habibi is a welcoming community.”

In its nomadic nine-year history, Habibi, which rests only during the holy month of Ramadan, has inhabited straight and gay clubs and hookah bars all over Manhattan — Flamingo, Boom, the China Club, Club Duvet, Moomia — and outlived many of them. Lately, Habibi has made its home at Club Rush in Chelsea. Habibi’s downstairs neighbor there is one of the city’s few “twink” parties; the word describes particularly boyish-looking men. Throughout the night, shy, lithe, silken-haired young men trickled upstairs to ogle the mob of Arab men dancing to Middle Eastern pop, spun by the party’s founder, a practicing Muslim named Abraham.

Habibi, the Arabic word for “my beloved”, is a sort of stepchild of a more serious-minded
group called the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society. Abraham, a former accountant in his 40s with a shaved head, steady gaze and smoky accent, was one of the society’s co-founders. Through the 1990s, the group met at the LGBT Center in the West Village.

“It got big, which is not always a good thing, because you have all nationalities of the Middle East,” said Abraham, who is of Syrian and Palestinian descent, grew up in Kuwait and now lives in Astoria, Queens. Like others interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition that his last name not be used.

“The Egyptians want to hang out with the Egyptians, the Moroccans want to hang out with the Moroccans, et cetera,” he said. “This is always a problem you have with Arabs.”

The cookies-and-tea meetings, Abraham said, “got a little boring.” The first Habibi party, in early 2002, was a fund-raiser for the society, held in an Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side. “I thought what was natural was to do something fun, have people dance, have fun,” Abraham said.

Though the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society tended toward balkanization, Abraham said: “Habibi blends everybody. It breaks down as many walls as possible. You have everyone in the same room dancing.”

The society’s ranks, meanwhile, continued to thin. By the end, only a handful of people would show up for meetings. “I think around 2004, it was the Internet that really did it,” said Nadeem, an Iraqi Christian
who served as the society’s president from 2000 to 2004, when it stopped meeting — though its Web site remains active. “There wasn’t a need to go to meetings; people could just meet up online. Habibi is so successful, one, because it’s a business and Abraham really treats it like one, and two, the idea of a party entices people more.”

Gay Muslims, at least as much as adherents of other faiths, face hurdles reconciling their religion with their sexuality. At the city’s biggest mosque and one of its more progressive, the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, the imam, Mohammad Shamsi Ali, laid out what amounted to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“Homosexuality is grouped with adultery, fornication, all of them very severe sins, but you don’t need to talk about it,” Mr. Ali said. “It is between you and the creator.” He said gays and lesbians were welcome at his mosque, even to bring their partners. “But we don’t need to know about their sex lives,” he said.

As the only game in town, Habibi, which has attracted as many as 300 guests, brings together Arabs of all social stripes — at once a blessing and a source of its own brand of discrimination. “In Dubai, everyone is bisexual,” a 22-year-old Columbia University accounting student said at the party in November.

“But it’s such a different scene there.” Calling Habibi “kind of trashy compared to what most Arabs, at least in Dubai, are used to,” he said: “I mean, there are street vendors here.” Nodding in the direction of a man standing in the shadows nearby, the student said: “You can spot the ones who sell kebabs on the street. It’s not difficult.”

In the D.J.’s booth, Abraham kept the hits coming — mainly from Egypt and Lebanon, but also some South Asian and Indian pop. “Anything with a belly dance beat,” he said. “Keeping people on the dance floor is a natural high for me.” The dancers included plenty of non-Arab men, many of whom Abraham said were regulars. “Hummus queens,” a 24-year-old grocery clerk from Queens named Hilal joked at one of the parties. “That’s what you call white guys who go for Arabs.”

Some of the guests yearned for something more than just a good time. “There’s a lot of post-9/11 baggage that people want to deal with,” Hilal said during another party. “But the only option they have is to go out to a club and dance?” Still, Hilal, wearing a “Hummus Is Yummus” T-shirt and a Mohawk haircut, took his place on the dance floor, too.

And around 1 a.m., three female belly dancers took to the stage, dressed in pink sequined burqas. The crowd tightly gathered around the dancers and cheered as the women, piece by piece, stripped their burqas to a crooning love song.

The next Habibi is this Sunday, Jan. 16 at La Pomme, 37 West 26th Street in Chelsea. More information is available from habibi@habibinyc.com Habibi e-mail address or the party’s Web site; its Myspace page or its Facebook page. There is a $10 admission charge.

Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company
NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018

Slingshot Hip Hop

2010-08-17T15:26:00.000-04:00

Slingshot Hip Hop is a 2008 documentary film directed by Jackie Reem Salloum which traces the history and development of Palestinian hip hop, in Palestine from the time DAM pioneered the art form in the late 1990s. DAM, Palestinian Rapperz, Mahmoud Shalabi, and female artists Arapeyat and Sabreena Da Witch (Abeer).

Slingshot Hip Hop braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.

The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and screened at the 2008 Chicago Palestine Film Festival. It was also shown in the 12th Annual 2008 Arab Film Festival, where both the filmmaker Jackie Reem Salloum as well as the Palestinian rap trio DAM were present for the screenings. It was the opening night film at the 2008 Boston Palestine Film Festival,and also screened at the 2010 Palestine Film Festival Cyprus.

WHY?

Jackie Reem Salloum, a film director and activist, has been one of the key players in the movement to increase global interest in Palestinian art.

Born to Palestinian and Syrian parents in Dearborn, Michigan, her artwork was influenced by her experiences as a young woman in the Arab Diaspora.

During her late teens, she studied at the renowned Steinhardt art school at New York University, where she learned to reinterpret traditional American cultural symbols like gum ball machines to include references to revolutionary figures like Musa Kazim Pasha al-Husseini, a mayor of Jerusalem who was ousted in the 1920s for his opposition to British pro-Jewish policies.

In 2005, Salloum presented Planet of the Arabs, a nine-minute film about how Arabs are portrayed in the media, at the Sundance Film Festival.

However, Salloum would not find critical acclaim until her latest film, Slingshot Hip Hop, which was recently shown at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival.

In the 80-minute documentary, Salloum profiles the lives and art of Palestinian hip-hop artists living under Israeli occupation. Groups like DAM from the impoverished ghettoes of Lyd within Israel and P.R. from Gaza infuse energy into cultural resistance.

Al Jazeera recently caught up with Salloum in Toronto where she discussed her art and film and some of the obstacles she has encountered over the years.

Al Jazeera: Why do you consider your film to be a form of resistance?

Salloum: Any Arab who is putting out work that challenges stereotypes and state/foreign policies or creates work that reflects our culture and history is enacting resistance.

The film continues to show in festivals around the world, where many people are seeing images of Palestine and Palestinians for the first time.

The rappers featured in the film are opening a window into Palestinian life in their own way. The film is also an educational tool. It is used in the curriculums of many high schools and colleges across America.

Students from areas like Brooklyn, who are predominantly Black, Latino and Chicano, are being inspired by the struggle of the Palestinians.

They are finding connections between their own struggles, and the stories told about life in occupied Palestine and Apartheid Israel in the lyrics of Palestinian rappers.

Students from America have even written hip-hop songs honouring the rappers in Palestine using a mix of Arabic and American music. Those are some of the ways in which the film works as a form of resistance.

What obstacles did you face?

When I was trying to raise money for the project, I would always have to reassert the fact that the film is about the Palestinian hip-hop movement.

Most people would assume that my film was about Israelis and Palestinians coming together through hip-hop, and when they realised that it was just about the Palestinians, they would lose interest.

Eventually, I ran out of money and had to move back home with my parents, and work at the family ice cream store. I would scoop during the day, edit at night, and take all the profit from the ice cream parlour.

That is why, in the end of the film, you will read "Fresh Booza (ice cream in Arabic) Productions," in homage to them.

Without them and support from the community and other artists, there would have been no funding for the film.

I also faced barriers shooting the film in Israel. As an Arab-American, going through Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is always a challenging experience and getting into Gaza is even more difficult.

This is especially true when they know that your background is Palestinian. I was always stopped and interrogated, some times for more than seven hours.

The stress came from not knowing if you would be allowed in; I have many Arab friends who were denied entry. Once, the Israeli authorities broke my camera before returning it to me, and since then, I don't carry any of my tapes or equipment with me when I travel.

I don't think they're afraid of me. They just don't want their image tarnished. In that sense, Israel sees every camera as a threat. In the US, for example, the image of Israel is very controlled.

We never hear any criticism whatsoever of Israeli policies. Even when American civilians like Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer, Israel's actions are justified in the media as part of their fight against so-called terrorists in Gaza.

What is the relationship between Palestinian and Israeli rappers?

I didn't want to make a film about Israelis and Palestinians coming together through rap because that wasn't the reality of the hip-hop scene there.

There isn't much collaboration between Palestinian and Israel rappers. The most popular Israeli hip-hop artist is a right-wing Zionist whose audience calls for death to Arabs at his shows.

Palestinian rappers and their audiences never advocate the killing of Israelis or Jews.

There are some Israeli rappers that are progressive and supportive of Palestinian hip- hop, working on collaborative projects with DAM and some other Arab-Israeli rappers.

However, that is not reflective of the mainstream Israeli hip-hop scene.

You have called on Arab women to be more involved in the arts?

It is always important to have women's voices heard everywhere.

It is already difficult for most young Arabs, whether they are men or women, to tell their families that they want to get into the arts.

This reality is more compounded for women, who have to challenge ideas that want to keep them at home to cook and clean. When I told my parents I wanted to major in art they said "no be a pharmacist or a librarian".

So I compromised a bit for them by majoring in graphic design, and they supported it. But I continued to make art and when they actually saw the effects it had and the media coverage they became very supportive and try to convince other Arab parents to tell their kids to become artists, filmmakers, and musicians.

Abeer, a Palestinian artist featured in the film, had to fight against threats from her cousins in order to get up on stage and sing. She had to do most of it in secrecy.

Despite that, she kept doing what she loved to do the most, which is making music.

Since the film's screening in Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, and even America, young women have flooded Abeer with emails showing their support and appreciation for the work that she is doing.

Many of them said that they were facing similar obstacles at home. Abeer has also received a lot of support from male Palestinian rappers who have refused to cut her out of their work, and have been critical of Arab societies for their treatment of women.

I want people in the Arab world to see young women like Abeer and the band Arapeyat and to realize that hip-hop isn't like the candy-coated pop music that is predominantly coming out of America and the Arab world.

What are some of the most striking discoveries that you made about Palestine during the film?

For me, I have always had family that has lived in the West Bank, so I'm very familiar with life under occupation.

My only interaction with Israelis had been at checkpoints and airports, or when they are in their tanks or sniper towers. The film, however, introduced me to Palestinians living within lands occupied by Israel since 1948, or Israel.

I was immediately shocked with the amount of discrimination and oppression that these people faced living in Israel, despite having Israeli citizenship.

In particular, I was taken aback by the level of assimilation that Palestinians were subjected to. Some of the younger people I met were confused about their Palestinian identity, and would not know how to identify themselves.

This all serves to drive a wedge between an occupied people. It was difficult to see Palestinians who lived in the West Bank, Israel and Gaza not be able to actually go and visit each other.

Hip-hop served as a point of coming together for these Palestinian youth.

Mohamed Hamaki

2010-08-13T17:57:00.002-04:00

Mohammad Hamaki is an Egyptian singer.

Hamaki stayed nearly 2 years after the release of his first album that is produced by DeltaSound - that was a great success - not releasing any new songs until he released his single "Yana Yanta" (Either Me or You!) and shot it. After that it was reported that he decided to break up with audio producer Tarek Madkour and working on his own without him and with his same producer Nassif Kauzman the owner of DeltaSound because Madkour has been always busy working on songs for other famous singers. However, these rumors have been denied as Madkour stated on his official site that he will recooperate with Hamaki in his new album.

Months later, he released his second album "Kheles El Kalam" (All The Words Have Finished!) in 2006 and was awarded with the Platinum CD for being the best selling middle eastern artist for year 2006. Hamaki worked mainly in this album with his friend Hatem Abdel-Aziz or "Tooma" as he used to be called, who replaced Madkour's leading role in Hamaki's work under the umbrella of DeltaSound.

The song "Wahda Wahda" (One By One) which was included in the album and was the soundtrack song of the movie "Ga'alatny Mogreman" was shot featuring the movie star Ahmed Helmi and aired on TV as soon as the album was released. It achieved a great success and wide popularity among different audiences. The song "Ahla Haga Feki" (Best Thing About You) was remixed by DJ.Idriss and shot some time after the album release. In the clip, the Rapper Perry Mystique was there with Hamaki. The clip is also produced by DeltaSound and was shot in Dubai, UAE.

Hamaki released his newest album 18th July 2010 , Haga Mosh Tabe3eya . This album included 11songs

Discography

*Laeqa2 El Nogoom - 1996

* 5allena N3eesh - 2003

* 5eles El Kalam - 2006

* Ba7ebak Kol Youm Aktar - 2008

* Naweeha - 2008

* Haga Mosh Tabe3eya - 2010

(go to)

Football can be Middle East's common language

2010-06-01T08:54:00.002-04:00

Ever since German and British soldiers played a match in no man's land at Christmas in 1914, football has been recognised as a means of bringing peace in times of conflict.

But can the Beautiful Game help to resolve the most intractable conflicts of the present day, those to be found in the Middle East?

James Montague decided to find out, and three years of travel in the region provided the raw material for When Friday Comes – Football in the War Zone his first book, and a courageous, amusing and informative work.

The author is the first to admit that football cannot be a "silver bullet" for a fractious region: his book, he admits at the start, will not have a happy ending. That would be too much to expect. But there are many happy episodes on Montague's travels.

Simply by collecting passport stamps from Israel and the Arab nations, he achieves something that has defeated many. And by talking about football with Israelis and Palestinians, Iranians and Iraqis, he performs a subtle form of shuttle diplomacy, with the game as the common language.

His passion for the sport is a sort of passport in itself, a secret weapon for disarming (alas, only in a figurative sense) border guards and policemen. It also sustains him when obstacles are placed in his way that would have dissuaded others: a lack of buses in the middle of the night on the West Bank, for example.

But the game is more than a common topic for international discussions: it also provides a useful lens for the examination of attitudes and culture within individual nations: in Israel, for instance, where club loyalties reflect political persuasions and football-related violence is commonplace; or in Saudi Arabia, where some senior clerics are powerfully opposed to the sport and have tried to ban physical contact in goal celebrations, but where the national team is one of the most successful in the region. Neither of these nations suffers the debilitating handicap of Yemen, where most of nation's footballers – and a sizeable proportion of the adult male population – are addicted to khat, a legal drug chewed in leaf form which produces euphoria rapidly followed by lethargy, and does nothing whatsoever to improve the football.

As a travel writer should, Montague samples the local intoxicant and, as a sports writer should, he does so in the company of the local FA. Under the influence of the khat, the author and the officials come up with increasingly ambitious ways of revolutionising Yemeni football. Eventually the Englishman proposes "Allow women into the stadium!" His companions fall silent. No, they say. This would not work.

Potter's tale in the right mould

Another fine football-related debut book is Tie Me To The Mast...The Football Season Has Begun, by David Johnson (Sports Books, £7.99).

This covers a more limited canvas than the Middle East: Stoke, actually. The author needed an excuse to go along to Stoke City’s opening game of the season, leaving his wife and baby son at home.

So he told his spouse that he had to go to the match because he was going to write a book about the season; and in order to gain further exeats he had to complete the task.

The end result does not read like an obligation: the book is funny, sharp, sometimes startlingly personal, and deserves an audience far beyond the Potteries.

Stoke, of course, get promoted in the end: Johnson should be at work on a sequel.

Dabkeh...60 Years of Dance

2010-05-28T17:19:00.001-04:00

Dabke (Arabic: دبكة; also transliterated dabka, and dabkeh) is the most popular Arab folk dance in Palestine, Jordan,Lebanon, and Syria.^[1] It is also danced in parts of Egypt,^[2]^[3] Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. A line dance, it is widely performed at weddings and joyous occasions. The leader of the dabke heads the line, alternating between facing the audience and the other dancers.

Dabke in Arabic is literally "stamping of the feet."^[1] The leader, called raas ("head") or lawweeh ("waver"), is allowed to improvise on the type of dabke. The leader twirls a handkerchief or string of beads known as a masbha (similar to a rosary), while the rest of the dancers keep the rhythm. The dancers also use vocalizations to show energy and keep up the beat. Thedabke leader is supposed to be like a tree, with arms in the air, a proud and upright trunk, and feet that stomp the ground in rhythm. At weddings, the singer begins with a mawwal. The raas or lawweeh takes the lead. Everyone does a basic 1-2-3 step before the song kicks in. At weddings, the dance is sometimes performed by a professional troupe dressed in costume.

The dabke was popularized in the 20th century by the Lebanese composers Assi and Mansour Rahbani and singers like Zaki Nassif, Fairuz, Wadih el Safi, and Nasri Shamseddine. Lebanon's most famous dabke troupe was the Firkat el Arz. Other troupes today include Ibdaa, Sareyyet Ramallah, and El-Funoun

60 Years of the Tradition

1. MARTIN DENNY

The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish

from the album Exotic Percussion, 1961

2. GUS VALI & HIS ORCHESTRA

Medley Number Three: Sala Sala/Ahlaw Sahla/Gamel Gamel/Ala Dole/Aghvoor Aghcheeg/Yaba Hei'Ya/Ala Mesbo Daog' Albee/Mimak/Tamara

from the album Belly Dancer Favorites, 1973

3. CLAUDE CIARI

Sa'Alouni Annass

from the album Habbeytak Bessayf, 1974

4. A. AZIZ

Rouayah El Djanna

from the album Chants et Musique D'Algerie, no date given

5. DIMITRI & HIS ENSEMBLE

Magic Nights (Nihtes Magikes)

from the album Greece, no date given

6. EDDIE "THE SHEIK" KOCHAK WITH FRED ELIAS & THE EL-MECCA ENSEMBLE

Belly Dancer (vocalist: Eddie)

from the album Ya Salaam - The New Amer-Abic Sound of the Middle East, no date given

7. HESSEIN FADEL (ET. AL.)

Flirtation in 10/4 time (Sabah - Nye)

from the album "Takseem" ("Improvisation") - Authentic Instrumental Music by the Most Famous Arab Artists, 1967

8. TAT' OUL AL'TOUN MIDDLE EASTERN ENSEMBLE

The Nile

from the album Exotic Belly Dancers, no date given

9. THE STEVO TEODOSIEVSKI ENSEMBLE

Nino, Nino

from the album Turkish Delight - New Sounds From the Near East, no date given

10. ARMANDO TROVAJOLI

Dancing For You (from the film Dimmi Che Fai Tutto Per Me [Tell Me You Will Do Everything For Me], 1975)

compiled on the CD Easy Tempo Volume 9, 1999

11. YOUSSEF KASSAB WITH HAMOUDA ALI

Full length dance routine: Nay Solo * Elsamer * Rumba * Hebbina * Nay Takasim * Dalal * Accordion (balady) * Drum Solo * Finale

from the album Belly Dance - A Gift From Cairo!, 1980

12. SERENA & THE SERENA ENSEMBLE

Petrified Snake (Serena's Cane Dance)

from the album Serena - Concert In Woodstock, 1976

13. THE SULTANS MIDDLE EASTERN BAND

Baglama Taksim (Improvisation)/Linda Linda (4/4 Beledi)

from the album String Wind And Percussion Volume 2, 1982

Direct download: Program_60.mp3

The Glorious Shisha for beginners....

2010-05-10T14:38:00.000-04:00

What makes hookah smoking such a delight?

The tobacco made available for hookah smoking comes in a variety of flavors. Traditionally, it is long pieces of tobacco mixed with a sugar-based syrup mixture and fruit bits or extract. The fruit flavors really come out in the smoke, and the cooling action of the hookah provides added smoothness. Usually hookah lounges add ice to the hookah water. Flavors include apple, peach, raspberry, mixed fruit, orange, and MANY more. Combining flavors makes for a unique experience. The tobacco isn't burned to complete ash, but rather it is cooked by the coals that sit on top of the hookah.

The flavor and method of the hookah is the most eloquent and exotic in the world. It provides the maximum smoking pleasure and the highest conviviality. Traditionally in many parts of the world, smoking a hookah with someone expressed a gesture of trust and bonding. The ceremonial gesture has translated to our society in that the elevated status of smoking a hookah has been preserved, and that people who smoke one are above and beyond the norm of society. It is a complete experience.

By being aware of this, you may have confidence to travel anywhere in the world and use a hookah

Not all shisha providers are resteraunts Some are coffee shops or restaurants with Middle Eastern cuisine and flair, and supply shishas as an aside. They cater to Middle Eastern clientele and are as intimate as a livingroom with a group of regulars, and YOU, as a newcomer, are expected to be on your best behavior. Respect the culture. You know a place is good when you see Middle Eastern people present, don't drive them away. Many establishments rely on regulars and have close ties with them. As a side note, don't let your thoughts of current world events be translated to other customers. It is best to avoid this topic. We all wish the best for the future.

In general, many hookah lounges are very classy and plush places with unique decor.
Keep with the vibe, dress nicely, be respectful and don't be a loudmouth.

Dress nice. Or semi-nice. Since this phenomenon is still rather young, we still have a chance at shaping its destiny. The media is already trying to pigeon-hole the hookah lounge clientele, so let's perpetuate the favorable reputation and do it RIGHT.

Be gracious and dress like one after we help to show you how to ACT like one. Part of what makes shisha smoking so cool is the mastery of the people involved. Don't dilute the coolness factor.

Hookahs belong on the floor and not on the table, because it is an object of service. Imagine the notion of "putting someone on a pedestal." This is along the same idea, and the shisha is an item of much lower rank, if you will. Traditional establishments will still adhere to this rule, while some hookah lounges are placing the hookah on the table for everyone to enjoy. Not very authentic, but it does celebrate the hookah.

In the Arab world, people smoke it as part of their culture and traditions. Social smoking is done with a single or double hose, and sometimes even more numerous such as a triple or quadruple hose in the forms of parties or small get-togethers. When the smoker is finished, either the hose is placed back on the table signifying that it is available, or it is handed from one user to the next, folded back on itself so that the mouthpiece is not pointing at the recipient. It has been recorded that the Arabs are the biggest shisha smokers in the World and have the most shisha Cafes

Components

Excluding grommets, a hookah consists of a number of components, four of which are essential for its operation.

Bowl

Also known as the head of the hookah, the bowl is a container, usually made out of clay or marble, that holds the coal and tobacco during the smoking session. The bowl is loaded with tobacco then covered in a small piece of perforated aluminum foil or a glass or metal screen. Lit coals are then placed on top, which allows the tobacco to heat to the proper temperature.

There is also a variation of the head which employs a fruit rather than the traditional clay bowl. The fruit is hollowed out and perforated in order to achieve the same shape and system a clay bowl has, then it is loaded and used in the same manner.

Bowls have evolved over the past two years to incorporate new designs that preserve the juices inside the tobacco. The Tangiers Phunnel Bowl and Sahara Vortex Bowl are two examples of modified hookah bowls.

Windscreen (optional)

A Hookah Cover windscreen is a cover which sits over the bowl area, with some form of air holes. This prevents wind from increasing the burn rate and temperature of the coal, and prevents ash and burning embers from being blown onto the surrounding environment. This may also offer some limited protection from fire as it may prevent the coal from being ejected if the hookah is bumped.

Technically if the pipe has a hose it is not "hookah"—the term historically referred to a straight-neck tube. Today the hose (one or more) is a slender flexible tube that allows the smoke to be drawn for a distance, cooling down before inhalation. The end is typically fitted with a metal, wooden, or plastic mouthpiece of various shape, size, color or material type.

Body and gaskets

The body of the hookah is a hollow tube. The bowl is attached to the top. Sometimes an ice bucket is attached between the body and the bowl to cool the smoke. At the bottom is a thin tube (the downstem) that is submerged in water. The point where the body meets the water jar is sealed with a gasket. Near there are at least two holes that open into the space above the water. One or more may accept a hose.

Purge valve (optional)

Many hookah are equipped with a purge valve connected to the airspace in the water jar to purge stale smoke which has been sitting unused in the jar for too long. This one-way valve is typically a simple ball bearing sitting over a port which seals the port by gravity alone and will open if positive pressure is created by blowing into the hose. The bearing will be held captive with a screw-on cover. The cover should be opened and the bearing and seat cleaned of residue and corrosion regularly to ensure proper sealing.

Water jar

Damascene woodworkers creating wood for hookahs, 19th century.

The body of the hookah sits on top of the water jar. The downstem hangs down below the level of the water in the jar. Smoke passes through the body and out the downstem where it bubbles through the water. This cools and humidifies the smoke. Liquids such as fruit juice may be added to the water or used in substitution. Pieces of fruit, mint leaves, and crushed ice may be added.

]Plate

A plate or ashtray sits just below the bowl to catch ashes falling off the coals.

Grommets

Grommets in a hookah are usually placed between the bowl and the body, the body's gasket and the water jar and between the body and the hose. The reason for the usage of grommets although not essential (the use of paper or tape has become common) will help to seal the joints between the parts, therefore decreasing the amount of air coming in and maximizing the smoke breathed in.

Diffuser (optional)

A diffusser is a small perforated plastic device which connects to the end of the stem. Submerged in the water-filled base, it works to break up the bubbles produced from the smoke-filtering process, creating a cleaner smoke and a subdued noise. It is used as a luxury item for a premium smoking experience and is not a required component.

]Operation

Hookah cross-section view

The jar at the bottom of the hookah is filled with water sufficient to submerge a few centimetres of the body tube, which is sealed tightly to it. Deeper water will only increase the inhalation force needed to use it. Tobacco is placed inside the bowl at the top of the hookah and a burning charcoal is placed on top of the tobacco. Some cultures cover the bowl with perforated tin foil or a metal screen to separate the coal and the tobacco, which minimizes inhalation of coal ash with the smoke. This may also reduce the temperature the tobacco is exposed to, in order to prevent burning the tobacco directly.

When one inhales via the hose, air is pulled through the charcoal and into the bowl holding the tobacco. The hot air, heated by the charcoal evaporates (not burns) the tobacco, thus producing smoke, which is passed down through the body tube that extends into the water in the jar. It bubbles up through the water, losing heat, and fills the top part of the jar, to which the hose is attached. When a smoker inhales from the hose, smoke passes into the lungs, and the change in pressure in the jar pulls more air through the charcoal, continuing the process.

If the hookah has been lit and smoked but has not been inhaled for an extended period, the smoke inside the water jar may be regarded as "stale" and undesirable. Stale smoke may be exhausted through the purge valve, if present. This one-way valve is opened by the positive pressure created from gently blowing into the hose. It will not function on a multiple-hose hookah unless all other hoses are plugged. Sometimes one-way valves are put in the hose sockets to avoid the need to manually plug hoses. (more to come)...

2010-05-03T18:30:00.000-04:00

Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker

2010-04-28T18:21:00.000-04:00

By Robert Avila

As a filmmaking icon as well as a filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami occupies two prominent positions: a central figure in Iran’s celebrated and multigenerational cinema movement, and one of a handful of supreme masters in that more rarefied, rootless milieu called “world cinema” (where he invariably falls in alongside Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray). This straddling, dual status is not all that arbitrary: while Kiarostami’s aesthetic is heavily indebted to indigenous influences (perhaps Persian modernist poetry and the groundbreaking work of his late contemporary Sohrab Shahid-Saless in particular), he’s also famously influenced (like other Iranian filmmakers) by Italian neorealism and France’s nouvelle vague.

Neither cultural exoticism nor the continuation of a stylistic tradition in European art film, however, goes very far in explaining the powerful appeal of the films on display in the Pacific Film Archive’s retrospective, “Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker,” a wide-ranging and altogether impressive series co-presented by New York’s Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in collaboration with the Iranian Art Foundation, which includes a concurrent exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum of Kiarostami’s striking photographic work.

Kiarostami, whose career stretches back to Iran’s pre-revolutionary “new wave” and whose post-revolutionary work has contributed so much to the aesthetics of the New Iranian Cinema, reaches those of us outside the Iranian context at a primal level by drawing attention to the ways cinema makes us see ourselves and the world. His attention to such fundamentals is part of what gives his films their freshness and sense of possibility, as well as a deceptive air of naïve realism that is often the basis for playful irony on the part of this highly informed cinematic sensibility.

While largely devoid of overt political content — something that has gotten his films dismissed by some as escapist, and even less charitably as pandering to the timidities and artistic pretensions of the festival circuit — Kiarostami’s work remains rigorously at play with the tension between reality and fantasy in cinema. His boldly innovative blending of fictional and documentary modes of storytelling (never more brilliantly or stimulatingly realized than in 1990’s amazing cinematic intervention, “Close-Up”) charges cinema itself with a self-conscious power, not only to reflect or record but to re-make and re-order the world after its own fashion. As an aesthetic practice and creed, perhaps little can be more radical, or political, than that.

[In this context, it’s worth noting that one of Iran’s most overtly and uncompromisingly political filmmakers, Jafar Panahi, served as Kiarostami’s assistant director before making his own first feature for cinematic release — and the elder filmmaker’s imprint, while not a consistent or exclusive influence, is unmistakable in Panahi’s narratives, from 1995’s “White Balloon” through his most recent “Offside.” Moreover, Kiarostami’s “Ten” (2002), which defies the strictures of the Islamic Republic by openly exploring (in the fluid privacy of a car traversing the public streets of Tehran) the personal lives of several modern urban women, including a prostitute, belies the stereotype of a determinedly apolitical filmmaker (and may even be seen as a kind of response to Panahi’s blazing indictment of female persecution under the current regime in Iran, “The Circle” (2000)).]

Whether or not the subject matter appears politically charged, the surface simplicity of these films is always deceptive. Like the zigzagging trail up the hillside repeatedly traversed by the boy protagonist in the much admired “Where Is the Friend’s Home?” (1987), or the last-minute idea that finally gets another boy safely by his menacing canine adversary in the brilliant early short “Bread and Alley” (1970), Kiarostami’s films have a way of demonstrating how the most direct, most humane and revelatory distance between two points is not necessarily a straight line.

Think too of the man in “Solution No. 1” (short, 1978), along the roadside with his flat tire. When one car after another fails to stop for him, he finally starts rolling his tire down the road himself, through what turns out to be a magnificent landscape and (for us as for him) an exuberant experience. That fairly early short can stand for so much of what follows, not merely in the seemingly straightforward moral of its bone-simple story, or its gentle, poetic epiphany, but in the way the camera’s eye and the viewer’s journey tend to bypass cultural or cinematic baggage, leaving it all behind, as it were, in the useless car.

Culture and cinema are always part of the equation, of course. But perhaps the perspective from the car (so appealing to Kiarostami in his later films), like the perspective of children from the very beginning of his career (which began at the state’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults), serves him so well because it is one still not entirely determined, always somewhat detached, and providing thereby a distinctly “present” attendance on the landscape and on life that is not yet fully mediated by culture, cinematic convention, or the mind of the adult world. It’s an itinerant perspective that allows for seeing the familiar as strange, the strange as familiar: the father and son excursion into the earthquake ravaged countryside in “And Life Goes On” (1992); the wandering city driver in “Ten” (2002); the desolate but far from lifeless road followed by the would-be suicide in “Taste of Cherry” (1997); or the city-slicker’s spree through the countryside aback a wise man’s motorbike in “The Wind Will Carry Us” (1999) — these journeys take the viewer back, as it were, to a point where the subject sees reality afresh, and where seeing is in some sense the subject.

These filmic journeys also anticipate the photography on display at the Berkeley Art Museum: four series of sparsely peopled but highly evocative photographs in color and black-and-white, two of which are exhibited for the first time on the West Coast. A serious still photographer for many years, Kiarostami’s sensibility in these photographs unmistakably relates to his cinematic work (in fact, some of them reportedly came about during location scouting.) But although the contemplative landscapes and car-bound perspectives are highly reminiscent, these are far from mere movie stills.

In the color series “Rain” (2006), proffered landscapes and clusters of trees are glimpsed among darkly cloud-laden skies through a storm-spattered car window. The collected raindrops and deep, dark hues in the clouds, trees, road, and greenery convey both turbulence and a comforting soulfulness from our position on the dry side of the glass, safely rushing on to some homey destination. Such an alert but passive vantage becomes more tangible still in “Summer Afternoon” (2006), a film installation with electric fan that places the viewer before a curtained window as shadows move across it.

For all the mediation of car windows, manicured landscapes, and the camera’s own framing, the natural world has a visceral presence throughout. Kiarostami’s trees, for instance, beautifully beheld in the vivid color series entitled “Trees and Crows” (2006), produce unexpected and almost anthropomorphizing impressions. In one, a small bright green leaf pops comically out of the center of an overlapping line of mottled birch trunks like a three-fingered hand waving hello. In another, horizontal bands of shadow cast by trees situated beyond the frame dip slightly toward the center of a large field of grass, as if cradling some invisible burden, an illusion expressing both weight and weightlessness together, as the seeming permanence of nearby trees turns to insubstantial arms bearing an unseen load.

If trees in their majestic rootedness tend toward metaphors of stability, those pictured here — groups of beautifully lined and intricately patterned trunks massing together, queuing up in twos, leaning into one another conspiratorially, or standing stoically alone (bearing the stump of a sheered-off secondary limb) — seem charged with activity, consciousness, or endurance.

Several do feature a crow (a potent presence in much Iranian poetry and literature). In one, the bird looks off in profile on a swath of lawn and an undulating plane of shadow, a lone trunk just visible in the top right corner. Another has a crow in dappled light facing a line of trunks that almost seem to be staring back, leaning ever so slightly in the bird’s direction. Still another centers on a silhouette of a bird in a strip of warm late afternoon light flanked on either side by impenetrable bands of shadow from several trees situated outside the frame.

“Roads and Trees” (1978-2003) includes two black-and-white images of roads through austere terrain. One road passes through a mountain hewed away into two complimentary halves and leads out into a cloudbank. In another, an unpaved road runs from the bottom of the frame, snaking right and left as it disappears into a gently rolling, lifeless landscape skirted by decrepit fence posts and in the distance a line of electric wires that further betray the ever-present human hand at work.

The dialectic between human and natural design at work in the world — a central Kiarostami theme — attains a certain low-key apotheosis in the exquisite black-and-white series of winter landscapes entitled “Snow White” (1978-2003), which includes a photograph of four slender trunks evenly planted in snow-covered ground, the beginning of a thicket of branches just showing at the top of the frame. With their clusters of leaves, like delicate miniature lanterns, the network of branches cast intricate shadows on the snow vaguely reminiscent of the patterning in a classic Persian rug. It’s as if the balance of human imagination and a larger natural order found a further echo in a suggestive, readymade allusion to the organic basis of the aesthetic.

topics: arab cinema, exhibitions, filmmakers

08.02.2007

NASSER HALAHLIH (Music)

2010-04-28T17:42:00.000-04:00

This exceptional piece of progressive music is made by Nasser Halahlih who is one of Iono Music’s most recognized artists. Nasser has been producing Progressive dance music for many years now and his tracks have been released on top labels such as Medium, Iboga, Blue Tunes, Flow, Vertikal and Iono Music. After some years of studio work, Nasser now presents his first album project. Checkpoint comes along as mature music creation, stuffed with gentle, deep and melodic sounds. Nasser knows how to build a baseline, his sound is hypnotic and original, warm and soulful melodies reflect his Palestinian roots and mentality. So each track on this long waited debut album is a story for itself – declaimed by a gifted musician, who wishes to express the digestion of his life in a segregated rural Arabic enclave in Israel, far from the urban Israeli trance spots. Nasser tells you the story of his life, not far from the checkpoint between Israel and Palestine. And you, the audience is very welcome to listen.