Abeer Mishkhas – We’ll Always Have Haifa: Interview

Arab News is the first English daily Newspaper in Saudi Arabia published simultaneously from Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhahran.

In 1975 Saudi Research & Publishing Co. (SRPC) launched the first Saudi English-language daily newspaper, the Arab News. For more than a quarter of a century now, the Arab News has been breaking cultural barriers across the Arab and Muslim world, providing local news, business news, sports and features, in-depth regional information and forum for readers.

Arab News is distributed in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Near East, North Africa, Europe and USA.

An open talk with Arab news journalist and columnist Abber Mishkas,

Q: Is being a journalist and columnist your dream come true?

Abber: Actually, my dream when I was at school, was to become a teacher, and I did try to teach briefly but I found out that it was not what I wanted. It was after sometime that I started working in journalism when I learned that Arab News has job openings for women, and from that time, I realized that I am in my natural place.

Q: How it is like to work for Arab News, which fields/topics do your cover and how do you select them?

Abber: I write mostly about social issues and women rights in Saudi Arabia, but I also like to cover cultural issues as well and rarely politics.

Q: Which geographical area covers the Arab News, who are your readers?

Abber: The readers are mostly the expatriates in Saudi and they come from around the world. Lately Saudis have started showing interest in the newspaper which maintains high standard of reporting and offers a candid coverage of Saudi issues.

Q: Do you receive many responses and from whom?

Abber: I do, I enjoy reading every response I get even if it is critical, .I get responses from inside the Kingdom and from outside (Europe or USA and India)

Q: Do you enjoy go public with the issues? What response did you receive after your fist column?

Abber: There is always this urge to share with readers, so when I feel passionate about something I write it right away with eh feeling that writing about an issue will bring it more to people's attention and that way we start discussing it even more.

My first column was on The abaya (black cloak Saudi women wear) and I was debating the rules of public dress in that column. To discuss that issue was and still is very sensitive in Saudi Arabia, but I was happy to receive responses from readers on that column which confirmed to me that we do need to start talking about all the things that are sensitive and untouchable.

Q: Have you read the book "Girls of Riyadh"?

Abber: Unfortunately no.

Q: Do you have a personal plan as to what subjects do you plan to cover during the coming six months, or do subjects just crop us?

Abber: I prefer to follow what is happening in Society and observe the changes we go through and write about things as they come up.

Q: In your recent column "They will always have Paris and we our Haifa", what message you wanted to convey?

Abber: It is about the celebrity worship culture that is spreading so fast in the media. I do not mind reading or reporting about celebrities when there is anything to report, but these days we have become consumed by the trivial news of what celebrities and half celebrities do. It has become such an engulfing trend which is obscuring all other worthy objects in its shadow, and it might be used as an escape from the real news.

Q: How would you like the media to report about celebrities?

Responsibly, there is always a balance which we should maintain, the media goes by the saying "give people what they want. The thing is, you can do that and still keep responsible attitude towards the audience.

Q: What role play the "celebrities", if any, in the Arab/Muslim world?

Abber: As I said in the column, we have our own celebrities, we have publications that concentrate on gossip news, the problem lately is that those tabloids have become the norm,

Q: How do you see the position of media in the Arab world/Muslim ?

Abber: Media should seriously focus on the all the problems engulfing the Muslim world, and by that I am not saying not to cover entertainment. But we need to be more serious about our societies. One look at the mushrooming Satellite TV channels will show us that all of them are concentrating on music clips and movies, fine you want to do entertainment, why not also include theatre and art as well.

Instead, what we get is an avalanche of the same thing, the stuff that sells!

Q: What are the most pressuring issues facing the Arab World today?

Abber: Fanaticism and terrorism are major issues that seem to threaten not only the Arab world but also the whole world. There is also the need for more freedom o expression, which if available will enable us to address the major problems that we face on a daily basis

Q: If you would be in the position of power, what would you change or do differently?

Q: Making people feel they are part of the government, that their views count and that they can decide for themselves what works and does not work. Raising social and political awareness is necessary if we want our societies to develop

Q: More than half of Arab world is young. What are their urgent issues, what do you have to say?

Abber: Education needs a major reshuffle, then there is the issue of fanaticism, religion is such a major part of our lives but we have to be careful that our youth are sometimes influenced by fanatical views and that leads into all other problems.

Q: Do people recognize you when you do your shopping in the supermarket?

Abber: Sometimes they do, and it feels strange actually to be recognized, but it is also a very gratifying feeling.

Q: Do you travel, which are your favorite places and which would you like to visit?

Abber: I do actually, there is a long list of places I'd like to visit which includes Granada, Tuscany and Venice.

Q: Your favorite food, books, music, films?

Abber: Favorite food category has many dishes from around the world, but I have soft spot for Saudi dishes.

My favorite books are: Cities of Salt by Abdulrahman Munif, Leo the African by Amin Maalouf and most of Naguib Mahfouz's work.

Music: classical music and jazz

Films: Amadeus, Chocola, Sense and Sensibility and lots of other films

Q: Much has been said about hijab in the West. How do you feel about the issue?

Abber: This issue has many sides to it. In some countries hijab is not tolerated, which I think is unfair, because in Europe and America, there is near total freedom in what people wear, so to discriminate against some who wish to wear scarves or cover their faces does not make sense.

Having said that, I think that women who like to cover should also adhere by the laws of the countries they live in - as in many cases in England lately, where women were asked not to cover their faces while working, for security and professional reasons. At this point, I don’t see that Muslims should complain, I expect people to adhere to our laws and rules and when it come to other countries, it is only fair and logical that we follow their laws.

Q: How do you like to spend your time when not writing for Arab News?

Abber: Reading, watching movies and family and friends' get together

Q: For many life is a dream, what is yours, what are you hoping for?

Abber: To live peacefully doing what I like to do best, writing, and to be able to be part of the development process in Saudi and have my family safe and sound around me.

Abeer Mishkhas it has been pleasure talking to you.

Excerpts from writings by Abeer:

THEY WILL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS AND WE OUR HAIFA:

For people working in the news business, it seems there is no escape from celebrity stories. Whether they like it or not, they are stuck with them and if anyone of them dares to complain, the stock answers is: This is what people want, or that’s what sells. And with this logic, readers are fed a diet of Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, to mention the most covered ones in the news.

To go back to Brzezinski, she refused to read the news about Paris. In fact she got angry and tried to burn the script and when her producer replaced it, she put it in the shredder saying: I hate it and I don’t think it should be our lead". The Brzezinski moment was posted on YouTube website and was viewed over 250.000 times that day. …

Now there is difference between reporting the news of famous people, which is admittedly a good read, and overdoing that and actually turning it into an obsession. Some people might say that this sort of saturated coverage of celebrities, real and fake, is limited to the Western media. It is not, local Saudi papers too devoted much space to Hilton’s news. And to be fair, we have our on Paris Hiltons whom we keep in the spotlight all the time.

The other day in a conversation with some colleagues, one of them – an Iraqi who fled his country to escape Sadam’s reign – asked me, Who is Haifa?" I stood there thinking about my friend’s child who heard about the bombing of Haifa during the Lebanon war and asked her mother innocently, "Why are they bombing Haifa, what did she do to them?" Of course, my friend’s daughter was talking about the Lebanese singer Haifa Wahbi and not the city.

I realized then that his inquiry about Haifa was sarcastic. He went on "I just don’t get it, that is not an item (about the singer Haifa WAhbi) that gets reported in a news bulletin. We have wars going on and people are dying every hour of the day.

I could not think of an answer to his remark except to say that "they’ll always have Paris and we’ll always have Haifa".

*
OF THOSE WHO DON`T FIND A PLACE IN THE SUN:
In the world of Khaled Hossein, the Afghani novelist who first host to fame with "The Kite Runner", oppression is dominant, but it is women and children who lead the ranks of the oppressed and downtrodden in his book.

Khaled tells the story of two women, who grew up facing war, male oppression and war… quite a combination, I say. Of course although his heroines are fictional they do resemble millions of women in the Islamic world. It we take away the surrounding culture, we’ll see a women whose fault in life is her sex. She is treated as a slave by her father or her husband, and is subject to all sorts of oppression and the mere fact that she is a woman is the main charge leveled against her.

Reading "A Thousand Splendid Suns", I found myself comparing and contrasting stories in my head and no matter where I looked I still found a common thread running through Marima and Laila (Hosseini’s heroines) and millions of women in our midst. Those similarities are not superficial: they reflect a line of thought that males in Eastern societies have adopted and lived with.

So here we go from the world of fiction to another miles away from wars and Taleban, but the maladies, it seems, are the same, and the women have to bear the brunt of it. In our part of the world, we are still dealing with those who think women should always follow men in everything. If they happen to have an independent mind or thought then that makes them an enemy who has to be crushed…

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