Che's monument in La Higuera

Ever since I read Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diaries in 1970, I had always wondered about that remote region where he fought, died, was buried, and his corpse was finally unearthed. When I was recently asked to translate a book by Argentine painter Ciro Bustos dealing with some of the events surrounding Che’s guerrilla movement in Bolivia, I thought ‘here’s my chance.’ I persuaded myself I needed to research the vegetation, terrain, topography in order to describe it better in the book.

First stop, though, was La Paz, the capital of Bolivia high in the Andes at 3,500 metres, far from the low agricultural region where Che fought but where I’d have a chance to talk to Bolivians whose lives were affected by the tragic episode four decades ago. When I recovered from two days laid low by the ‘mal de soroche’ (altitude sickness), I met Loyola Guzman who acted as liaison between Che’s guerrilla’s and the Bolivian Communist Party, then Antonio Peredo a well known journalist whose two brothers ‘Inti’ and ‘Coco’ fought with Che, and finally Carlos Soria another journalist who has spent a life-time studying the whys and wherefores of Che’s defeat and is one of the few people to have actually seen Che’s original diary kept in Bolivia’s central bank. In a field were so many people have so many different versions of events, his website gives as fair a rundown as possible.  www.chebolivia.com

(I also took the opportunity of a side trip to Lake Titicaca and in it the Island of the Sun where the Inca God/King Viracocha apparently appeared. It is the highest large expanse of water in the world, a bright blue surrounded in the distance by the white capped mountains of the Andes; magical on a sunny day.)

Identity politics and the conditions of production:
Reflections on writing Short Stories

A paper presented by M Y Alam at the 11th International Conference
on the Short Story in English, Toronto June 2010.

This article as a PDF.

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This paper is based on elements of my own professional, and to a large extent, personal and political identity. As such, it’s drawn from my practice as a writer and teacher of creative fiction as well as research and teaching endeavours which are grounded in the world of sociology and social policy.

I’ll start with something of a preamble as a means of situating the short story as an efficient and effective means of communicating every day life, including experiences and voices that may otherwise go unnoticed, hidden, or, as the literature would have it, remain marginal and perhaps marginalized. Of course, we all know that the short story presents writers with an opportunity to be heard, to leave a calling card that may elicit further engagement with their work; for some, a short story is more than an advert but the fact remains, it can serve as an invitation for our reader to discover more of the authorial same. Additionally, the shape, duration and, of course, the nature of the stories themselves – including questions of theme, genre and the audiences they aim to serve – are all part of the larger equation of what a short story is. As Susan Lohafer notes:

‘Whatever a story is, how it behaves, the important thing is what it reveals. It’s a magnifying glass for examining the techniques of impressionism, say, or the assumptions of postmodernism, or the social data caught in its prism. Famously associated with “submerged populations” and the “lonely voice” of the individual, the short story is the window on marginalized identities.’ (Lohafer, 2003: 1-2)

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Journal One – 23 August 2009

Ann plays witness to the continued Israeli settlement and the subsequent evictions of Palestinian families, plus she describes the conditions at the Qalandya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem where 2500 Palestinians make their way through turnstiles and holding-pens each morning trying to get to work on time.

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Journal Two – 22 September 2009

Ann just misses Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson’s visit to a street camp, witnesses more evictions and demolitions and monitors the chaos at a separation barrier as Palestinians try and make it to Al Aqsa mosque for Friday prayers during Ramadan.

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Journal Three – October 2009

Ann reports on visit to Sderot, the town in southern Israel that bore the brunt of the Hamas’ Qassam rocket attacks in the six months leading up to the recent Israeli assault on Gaza. She chats with Israeli solidier, makes a trip to Haifa, visits Nazareth and samples beer at the Taybeh brewery.S a conversation she has with a soldier at the vehicle only Wadi Nar checkpoint, as an almost-encounter with the secret visit of British Chief of Staff Sir David Richard, visits Israeli settlements, canvassing Israeli views, and takes a road tour, including a visit to Nazareth and Sderot, the town in southern Israel that bore the brunt of the Hamas’ Qassam rocket attacks in the six months leading up tothe recent Israeli assault on Gaza..

Journal Four – October 2009

Ann travels to Yanoun for olive picking, a small farming community that was violently emptied of its inhabitants in October 2002. Back in Jerusalem she witnessess the bulldozing of a house and reports on the difficulties Palestinians face aquiring visas for foreign travel, illustrated by the refusal of her friend Abdul Karim Sa’adi’s visa for a series of talks in the UK. She also reports of being stripped searched at a checkpoint at Zaytoun as punishment for helping a group of Palestinians recover their confiscated documents.

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Ann Wright is an active human rights worker and lectures on the theory and practice of civilian protection. She has translated fourteen books from Spanish and French including Motorcycle Diaries, The Train of Ice and Fire and I, Rigoberta Menchu. Ann was previously in Palestine in 2005, to see her journals from that time visit – www.palestinejournals.co.uk

Former Route DJ and music writer Pedro ‘DJ Mestizo’ González mourns the passing of Charlie Gillett, a great populariser of the music of the world across Anglo-Saxon dominated airwaves.

World music broacaster and writer Charlie Gillett died yesterday. In his sixty eight year, he never lost his excitement for pop music, he just extended the territory of where to find it.

He was also a great connoisseur of the origins of the music that went to revolutionize the world. His essential book for anyone with a keen interest in rock music, The Sound of the City: the Rise of Rock and Roll was an informative book of how this music was formed, the protagonists and how the music industry worked in those early years.  He went on to become manager of the Kilburn & the High Roads (the former band of Ian Dury), and created his own record label, Oval.

For me, it was as radio broadcaster where his role was outstanding; he was a catalyst of a music scene and a pivotal figure in the promotion of popular music around the world. He is frequently mentioned as the man who gave the world the Dire Straits, which by now is, maybe, not something to be proud of. His music programming on Radio London under the name Honky Tonk included the airing of demos by new artists. One of them was ‘Sultans of Swing’ and the rest is history. Honky Tonk was one of the music programmes which united many musicians and served as a revulsive for a music scene against the pretentiousness of the progressive music of the time. Then he went to discover African music and with that a new horizon of music without frontiers started to reach his audience.

I was a keen listener to his BBC World series. Sometimes the music was far beyond my taste, but wasn’t indifferent. Never compare two great men but, if you let me pass this, I think Charlie was for world music what John Peel was for the indie scene. I remember when Ojos de Brujo came to tour in London for the first time, he brought DJ Panko to the studio to play some of the music that this band was influenced by. As I listened I objected to some comments made by Panko about the gypsy connection to the flamenco being the only one with real significance. My thoughts were that this music was not a question of race and, afterwards, I sent an email to Charlie, lecturing him about flamenco origins. He replied to me shortly and precisely quoting the origins of American popular music. Yes, he was right.

You can see that many times in music – as in other arts expressions – the underdogs are sometimes the people who open new forms of expression and, in this case, stretch the music wider. I will miss his programmes.

John Siddique on how fiction merged with fact can re-create and allow love to exist where previously he had been told there hadn’t been any.

I don’t know how it is for you, but for me a soon as I left the town I grew up in I never wanted to return. When I was asked to write what was originally called ‘The Father Story’ it soon became clear that it would involve going back. As I had no idea of what I wanted to write about my father, whether it would be biographic or fiction I really didn’t know. I thought going to the town might give me a sense of purpose and perhaps let me see some strands that I could begin working with.

I arranged my schedule to go over for a day and just look around all the houses and streets where we used to live, I thought that one trip would probably be enough. In the run up to my visit, I started looking at the only photos of my dad that I had, which are in my parents wedding album. Mother had thrown the album out after she had divorced my dad by a network of remote lawyers many years ago, as she was here in the UK and my father was overseas. I rescued the album from the rubbish, I wanted to hang on to these younger images of them both. As I looked again at the album I was reminded of a photo of my dad taken on a picnic where Mum had chopped Dad’s head off by not being able to frame the shot well. Mum keeps all her photos in a scrunched up carrier bag in her china cabinet. My dad has always been headless, and somehow almost faceless to me, without the wedding album I really wouldn’t have much of a picture of him. The other important thing about the album was the guests, there were so few of them, but there is a picture of my dad and his best man Peter Aspinall. I scanned the picture and pasted it into my notebook so I could reflect on it whenever I needed to. I thought about their friendship, though I knew nothing about it, and it was then I knew what the story was. It was going to simply be the story of these two friends, of my dad going to work and asking Peter to be his best man. My father must have asked Peter to be his best man at some point. The scenario that then followed is fiction but it is also true. The other possible fiction which arose was my dad and mum’s love for each other, or rather his love for her.

When Tom Palmer asked me if I’d be interested in writing something about my relationship with my father I jumped at the chance. I had written about father/son relationships in several of my short stories and, again, that relationship was at the heart of my first novel. At times I was trying to explore and identify exactly what had gone on between my father and me, at other times I was using fiction to imagine how things might have been if circumstances had been a little different.

He was a very colourful figure, straight out of Craggy Island. My friends at school would not believe the stories I told about him, and would always want to come to the house and check out the evidence for themselves. I, on the other hand, was reluctant to invite them, as every time I did I would be painfully aware of the astonished expressions on their faces, which was usually followed by failed attempts to stifle helpless laughter. There’s something acutely painful about people pissing themselves at your dad’s antics. When they laughed, my dad would simply laugh along with them, thinking it was all great craic, never suspecting for a minute that it was his behaviour that was provoking the hysteria. Jayzus, he was happy fella he’d say after they’d gone, You must invite him again.

Tracey
Sitting on a train from Leeds to London that had broken down (no surprise there), it was raining outside (again…repeat no surprise there either!) contemplating what on earth I was going to do with my life. Only a few months earlier I had what felt like my heart ripped out of my chest…painful break up…self esteem came crashing down around my ears…etc etc when I noticed the advert in The Leeds Guide for volunteers for NAKED models!!!

Well, I decided to investigate! I imagined being part of a mass photographic experience which would sound incredibly exciting in principle, but probably not something I would have the guts to go ahead with, once ‘the chips were down’ !! However, after a brief chat with Route, I found myself saying ‘Why not!’ and before I knew it I had already agreed to do the smoking scene!

Apart from meeting some very nice people, there was a whole host of things I felt I got out of the experience by taking part. I proved to myself that I was much braver than I thought, a bit crazier than I thought and certainly not as much of a prude!  But most of all it re-enforced my feeling that that once you take away peoples designer clothes, flash cars, money and all the other material possessions that many people hold dear, that’s it isn’t it? What you see is definitely what you get!