Watching Friends in Gaza A Culture Clash New York Times

Skip to article Get Home Delivery Log In Register Now Home Page My Times Today s Paper Video Most Popular Times Topics Search All NYTimes.com Middle East World Africa Americas Asia Pacific Europe Middle East U.S. N.Y. Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos Advertise on NYTimes.com Abroad Watching Friends in Gaza A Culture Clash Ali Ali for The New York Times POP STARS AND PARTY LEADERS At a record shop CDs of singers and Yasir Arafat sit next to one another. Though a store was bombed by extremists for selling pop music Gazan youth embrace some Western bands. Sign In to E Mail or Save This Print Single Page Reprints By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN Published September GAZA In a dingy storefront on a noisy block in the middle of Gaza City metal shelves bulge with dusty audiotapes extolling Hamas Fatah and Islamic Jihad . Alongside them a pouty Jennifer Lopez beckons from the cover of a CD. DVDs are also on offer of not yet officia! lly released movies like Wanted Hancock and You Don t Mess With the Zohan the Adam Sandler comedy about a Mossad agent turned hairdresser in a New York City salon run by a Palestinian woman. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Ali Ali for The New York Times FORBIDDEN SOAP Patrons of the Gaza City restaurant Roots watch Friends before the soap opera Noor about a well to do Turkish family. Imams have issued fatwas against Noor fans but few Gazans care. Amer Kihail a slender man with an elastic hangdog face runs the store called New Sound. Do Gazans living under Hamas buy much Western music or many Western movies Mr. Kihail looked baffled and maybe even a little annoyed by the question. Of course he said. Ruled by Hamas penned in by Israel grappling with daily shortages of food and supplies Gazans need an escape. Culture turns out to be not just an afterthought but many say essential to surviving here. Especially for young Gazans what s on satellite television and the In! ternet on tapes and compact discs is a window to the world beyond the armored checkpoints and a link to Arab society elsewhere and crucially to the West. And in what is clearly an emerging struggle within Hamas between political pragmatists trying to consolidate their new authority and extremists who have begun pressing a more fundamentalist agenda culture is a central battleground for control of Gaza. A release from confinement and hardship even mundane television becomes freighted in this context. As much as the Pakistan Afghan frontier this is a front line in the so called global war on terror in which anti Western strains of Islam rub up against the social and cultural proclivities of many perhaps most Muslims. How the West fares improbable as it might seem may depend as much on whether people in this forsaken strip of land and elsewhere in this part of the world are watching Zohan and Dr. Phil as on skirmishes in the mountains south of Kabul. What s happening in a humble Gazan music store it turns out has repercussions across the region a! nd beyond. Gaza isn t what you might imagine culturally speaking. Like the West Bank it occupies a special place in the Middle East Gazans may loathe Israel but have worked there or spent years in Israeli prisons and while they haven t taken up Jewish culture they ve experienced Western life as many other Arabs haven t. This has encouraged a sensibility that until lately anyway had a moderating effect on religion and society. Not far from New Sound booksellers in this city s ancient market hawk sex instruction manuals alongside yellowing paperbacks from Egypt interpreting the Koran. Arabic translations of old Harlequin romances are laid out on folding tables cheek by jowl with joke books in which Muslim characters do borscht belt shtick. Wife at a psychiatrist s office My husband talks when he s sleeping. What should I do Psychiatrist Can you give him a chance to talk when he s awake A skinny boy with bad teeth manning the book tables the other morning grinned when a woman ! came by and thumbed through What to Do if You Have Weaknesses in Sex. Pointing to the religious books she asked Do many people buy those Sure the boy said. These too she asked gesturing toward a stack of flimsy softcovers with a picture of the young Cheryl Tiegs on the front. Oh yes he said. That evening in the garden of a family restaurant called Roots No Weapon Please a sign said on the front door patrons munched salads and gazed at Friends on a big screen. Everybody was waiting for Noor. As they do throughout much of the Arab world these days the streets here clear each night when Noor comes on. A Turkish Dallas centered around the title character and her rich Muslim family enduring the usual soap opera imbroglios the show has become so wildly popular that imams in Saudi Arabia and Gaza have lately issued fatwas against anyone who watches it. Naturally nobody pays attention. Even Hamas tunes in. Imad Alifranji is helping to start up Alquds a new Islamic television station Gaza s second after Al Aqsa Hamas s station which recently devoted th! ree full days of programming to stories about promising Gazan high school students. Mr. Alifranji is wrestling with what might attract just a few more viewers. Next Page x bb More Articles in World x bb A version of this article appeared in print on September on page A of the New York edition. 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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/world/middleeast/07gaza.html?em


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