Morning on the River: Squawking into the New Year
Dear Friends,
Welcome to January’s Substack.
I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s blog Morning on the River: Squawking into the New Year.
The audio version is available by clicking the link in the blog itself or clicking the link here for all podcasts. https://joanneleedomackerman.substack.com/podcast
Book News this month shares brief news and interviews.
The Writers at Risk section focuses on the case of journalist, publisher and entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, a British citizen who has already served four years in prison in Hong Kong and faces a life sentence.
The Books to Check Out section features Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West by Ambassador John J. Sullivan and The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela.
In the Scene section you’ll find photos along with text from The Far Side of the Desert.
Thank you to friends and new readers who’ve come to bookstores, libraries, book clubs and online to share my new novels Burning Distance and The Far Side of the Desert, which comes out in paperback in April. If you’re interested in having me speak at a venue or with a book club, you can click here. I look forward to staying in touch and also meeting new readers. Thank you for sharing my books with friends, for leaving reviews with online booksellers and for reading and sharing this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road.
Morning on the River: Squawking into the New Year
And Then They Said…
Ducks and geese are on the river this morning swimming south to north, squawking and talking to each other all at the same time and to their friends across the water. It is cold, though not quite freezing. I wonder why they haven’t yet taken off for warmer climes. By the time I share this blog in early January, they may have left, though some will stay all winter and consider the Eastern Shore of Maryland their seasonal south.
When spring comes, the ducks and geese will fly north to spend summer months in Canada or wherever they go. But it is reassuring that they are still here so that when I wake before dawn, bundle up and sit outside to watch the sun rise, I can also watch them swim by. As light slowly lifts the darkness, before the sun ascends between the trees across the river, the geese and ducks begin their conversations.
I wonder what they say. I am certain they are not talking about my country’s politics either mournfully, exultantly, or resignedly. The President and cabinet of the U.S. government has no meaning or reference to them any more than the emphatic cause of their noisy conversation does to me though we exist together on this cold and beautiful morning. But I do learn from them and pause to watch and listen. I learn, or re-learn, that the universe is broad and complex, that there are points of view I don’t comprehend, that the governing power of us all is far greater than national politics and, I believe, more benign than we comprehend, distracted as we get by our insistent points of view.
I long for, and acknowledge a bit of a utopian point of view, that we might recognize the best in each other and allow that to develop without battle and retribution. I also acknowledge that this is not the way the human species always behaves, at least at this moment.
Yet it is worth taking a moment at the start of the new year to lift the gaze, appreciate the rising sun, the course of ducks and geese and other creatures we share this planet with, to listen in that moment in order to see and hear a larger wisdom which can inspire. Whether that inspiration dawns today or another, I feel certain that it is there and that the world around us will proceed. The sun will rise and set. The river will flow out to sea and the ducks and geese will keep talking.
Suddenly there is a stir, a burst of noise moving closer, almost like a giant machine approaching. At least a hundred geese fly towards the shoreline squawking and talking and settling on the water right in front of my house, almost as if they know I am writing about them and they have more to say, or perhaps they have figured out that here is a safe place because hunters aren’t allowed, and hunting season has begun. In James Michener’s novel Chesapeake he noted that the ducks and geese learn over time where the safe places are and communicate with each other…perhaps a “kinship with all life” and go there. In any case, the finale to these morning thoughts is a cacophony (or is it a symphony?) of geese and ducks on the river in front of me, though if they venture up on the lawn, my fearless small dog will bark and chase them back into the water. That is her conversation and contribution. They will squawk at her, but they will flutter and cede the lawn and return to the river.
Without preconception or planning or hidden meaning this final scene turns out to be the denouement to my morning thoughts.
Thank you to HastyBookList for featuring Burning Distance on their recommended list of books set in London.
Thank you to Book Notions for their recommendation of The Far Side of the Desert in their 2024 list of fiction.
And thank you to all who have come together and shared readings and conversations around my novels in 2024.
Below are some selected recordings of events and interviews:
Book Launch for Akram Aylisli's People and Trees with Plamen Press
Why Baldwin Matters Series, The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
“The Far Side of the Desert is a riveting thriller with richly nuanced characters and fast-paced action. The plot imaginatively taps into recent history to illustrate the human dimensions of terrorism—both the complex psyche of the perpetrators and the gnawing questions among those sucked into their vortex. I binged until the end.”
—Robin Wright, best-selling author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World and Sacred Rage.
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and paperback in 2024) was honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
"Burning Distance is a double helix of a book, carefully plotted and beautifully told. It’s a spy story interwoven with a love story, and the strands fit together in a way that moves the reader effortlessly from chapter to chapter. While fiction, its narrative of the CIA and the Middle East arms trade are very close to fact. Joanne Leedom-Ackerman observes the world of American spies and Arab fixers through the eyes of a young woman who keeps asking questions about her mysterious past until she gets all the revelatory answers. A subtle and satisfying novel.”
—David Ignatius, New York Times best-selling author, Washington Post columnist and novelist Phantom Orbit, The Director
Jimmy Lai (Hong Kong)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN Canada, English PEN, Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty, and BBC)
Though highly celebrated internationally as a courageous publisher and journalist and champion for freedom of expression, British citizen Jimmy Lai has spent the last four years in prison, much of the time in solitary confinement. He potentially faces a life sentence for his peaceful advocacy of democracy and freedom of expression in Hong Kong. He has been denied bail and denied his choice of attorneys.
Founder of New Digital Limited and the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper along with other businesses, Jimmy Lai was arrested December 2020 during the crackdown on Hong Kong’s widespread nonviolent protests for the freedoms that the citizens had long enjoyed before the handover of Hong Kong’s government to mainland China.
Under a new National Security Law, the mainland government charged Jimmy Lai with “conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign countries or external elements” because of articles published in his newspaper and his meetings with U.S. politicians and foreign media. Over a thousand protesters, including journalist Fung Wai-kong, six of Lai’s senior colleagues, several executives of the now-defunct Apple Daily as well as a commentator at the independent internet radio channel D100 and other Hong Kong journalists were also arrested and are in prison.
“The very rights of journalists are being taken away,” Lai told the Committee to Protect Journalists in a 2019 interview. “We were birds in the forest and now we are being taken into a cage.”
An estimated 100,000 Hong Kong citizens, including journalists and media workers have since fled Hong Kong. Newspapers have closed, and the Chinese government continues to attempt to silence citizens around the world who criticize the government.
In December Jimmy Lai’s defense on the latest charges of collusion was finally heard in court. At this writing a verdict is still awaited. Hong Kong courts have already convicted Lai on four separate cases for “unauthorized assemblies” and sentenced him to over seven years.
Human rights organizations, including PEN International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Amnesty and others call on Hong Kong’s administration to respect freedom of expression as enshrined in the nation’s constitution, to allow all journalists to work without fear of arrest or reprisal, and to drop all charges against Jimmy Lai and all journalists facing prosecution for their work.
To Take Action for Jimmy Lai:
Please send appeals to the authorities of China, urging:
Immediate and unconditional release of Jimmy Lai and guarantee of his safety, wellbeing and human rights, including the right to freedom of expression.
Adequate health treatment
Send your appeals to:
Chief Executive of Hong Kong
Mr. John Lee
E-mail: ceo@ceo.gov.hk
Tel: (852) 2878 3300
Fax: (852) 2509 0580
Address: Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China
Chief Executive’s Office
Tamar, Hong Kong
Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong
Mr. Paul Lam
Office Tel: 3918 4111
Email: sjo@doj.gov.hk
Office Address:
5th floor, Main Wing, Justice Place, 18 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong
Send appeals to the Chinese Embassy in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://www.embassy-worldwide.com/country/china/
Write a message of hope to Jimmy Lai:
This solidarity action is in collaboration with English PEN’s PENWrites campaign. All letters will be subject to screening as a safety precaution.
PENWrites is English PEN’s international letter-writing campaign in solidarity with writers in prison and at risk around the world.
Please take a few moments to write a message of solidarity and support to Jimmy Lai
Social Media:
Raise awareness about Jimmy Lai’s case on social media, using the hashtag #FreeJimmyLai and tagging @pen_int and @SupportJimmyLai
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
For this Books To Check Out column, I try to pair books that in one way or another complement each other. This month I’m sharing a recently published memoir Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West by Ambassador John J. Sullivan whom I recently met and a novel first published in England in 2015 The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela whom I have never met, but whom I hope to meet one day. I don’t remember when or why I bought this novel, but I’m grateful to whatever prompt or review led me to it. It is a truly memorable novel.
Ambassador John J. Sullivan’s Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West unwraps the contentious and complex relationship of the United States and Russia, especially during the fraught times of the pandemic and the war with Ukraine. It takes the reader into the dedicated world of the foreign service, the world of embassy life with those who serve the U.S. government through the State Department, representing American interests and policy abroad and the toll the work can take on personal life.
With a knowledgeable and engaging voice, Ambassador Sullivan brings the reader behind the scenes and shows how foreign policy is shaped and executed and how he and his staff had to work with and negotiate with adversaries who had a very different view of the world and of themselves.
Having grown up with the traditions of George Kennan and others from the Second World War to the present, Sullivan arrived in Moscow as the American Ambassador in the first Trump Administration then continued during the Biden administration. He arrived just before the global pandemic and served during the build-up and ultimate invasion of Russia into the Ukraine.
Because of these two events, his beloved wife Grace, who was herself a lawyer, returned to the U.S. where she spent most of his tenure with their family. The sad thread that lightly touches the narrative is their separation and Grace’s unexpected death just as Ambassador Sullivan was about to retire and come home for good.
Midnight in Moscow is full of insights into foreign policy debates, into the challenges of serving in a country whose head—Vladimir Putin—and his colleagues don’t operate by the same rules. “I was reminded of George Kennan’s warnings from the past about Russian ‘duplicity’ and ‘disrespect of Russians for objective truth—indeed, their disbelief in its existence’—which ‘leads them to view all state facts as instruments for furtherance of’ the interests of the state,” Sullivan writes.
Ambassador Sullivan expresses warmth towards the Russian people, especially the hockey players he got to know, but he left with a deep distrust and contempt for the current government that he concluded didn’t care very much about its own citizens or the existing world order.
From Midnight in Moscow:
We needed to stop digging the hole that we were in. That was a common talking point for both American and Russian officials to use in describing our relationship….
By the time I arrived at Embassy Moscow (December 2019) the pace of deeply disturbing events was nonstop, particularly the sweeping crackdown on any political opposition to Putin, on civil society generally, and on what was left of the few independent media organizations in Russia….
When it began, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine completely upended the relationship between the United States and Russia. The war blasted through the bottom of the hole that our two countries had been digging and we plunged to new depths….
How could the Russian military not have been prepared for the radiation hazard of Chernobyl? Just as fighting a war in Ukraine in February required cold weather gear, so too fighting a war in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone required caution and special gear and should have been avoided in the first place. The only conceivable explanation was that the military’s leadership was unconcerned about debilitating frostbite and radiation sickness among its personnel…the Russian government was much more concerned with public relations than with public health. Except now, Russian lives were being traded for Ukrainian turf.
In almost six years as deputy secretary of state and U.S. ambassador in Moscow, I observed four important features of “the Russian situation” that are most relevant to understanding and crafting a strategy to address Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine. First, Russia is not merely an adversary of the United States. Putin’s government in the Kremlin is a self-declared enemy of the United States….Second, the Russian government cannot be trusted in any context. Putin and the Kremlin are completely untethered from the truth and facts—yet another reason that nothing is ever easy in dealing with them….Trust is impossible….Third, no matter what he or any other Russian leader might say, Putin’s Russia will never surrender the goal of the “special military operation” to subjugate Ukraine. Never….Fourth, although my assessments of Putin and his plans for Ukraine are grim, his removal is not necessarily the answer. And it is certainly not within the remit of the United States to decide what type of government or leader Russia should have—or to try to influence regime change in Moscow. Winston Churchill once said, during the Russian Civil War in 1919 that “if Russia is to be saved as I pray she may be saved, she must be saved by Russians.”
The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela takes the reader on a journey of past and present in a novel of complex themes with fascinating characters from history and troubled characters in the present who are living some of the consequences of that history a century and a half later and thousands of miles away. In a structure that works, she subtly plays the stories off each other of contemporary Sudanese-Russian history professor Natasha (Hussein) Wilson teaching at a Scottish university, her favorite Muslim student Oz (Osama) Raja and his actress mother with the history she is researching of the legendary warrior and leader Imam Shamil.
Winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Leila Aboulela shares extensive research on the nineteenth century war in the Caucuses between resistance leader Imam Shamil and the Russian imperial forces who were fighting to tame and claim the mountain territories of Chechnya, Dagestan, etc. at the same time Russia was battling in the Crimean War with the Ottoman Empire, France, and England.
The historical narratives include the kidnapping of a Georgian princess by Shamil and the insistence by the Russians that Shamil’s oldest son Jamaleldin, still a boy, be handed over to them during peace negotiations. Peace never materialized, however, and Shamil’s son was not returned for a decade. Leila Aboulela brings to life this complex period through well-developed characters as she weaves the historical battles into her text and balances these with the fraught political climate of post 9/11, post 7/7 in Great Brittian. Each of the characters, uprooted from their home and culture, are treated with a measure of kindness and learn the culture and the humanity of the other.
How the past is translated into the present story is the journey of Natasha Hussein Wilson who is searching for her own roots as a Muslim and Russian and UK citizen in Khartoum and in Scotland. The Kindness of Enemies is a hard-fought journey for its narrator. It resists sentimental conclusions and wrestles with the need for a more spiritual enlightenment to come to terms with seemingly impossible questions. The Kindness of Enemies is well worth the journey for the reader.
From The Kindness of Enemies:
I said to Malak, “Did you know that Queen Victoria supported Imam Shamil? His picture was on the front page of the London Times with a call for the English to be,” I made quotation marks with my fingers, “the generous defenders of liberty against the brutal forces of the Russian Empire.”
Malak made a face at her son. “Queen Victoria championed a jihad.”
Oz sat down. “Don’t be naive, Malak. If Russia took over the Caucasus, it would have threatened India. Besides, the word ‘jihad’ then didn’t have the same connotation it has now.”
“Ever since 9/11, jihad has become synonymous with terrorism,” she said. “I blame the Wahabis and Salafists for this. Jihad is an internal and spiritual struggle.”….
I was looking at the empty space on the wall where the sword had been, when she joined me. “My great grandfather said that he got it back from the Russians. This is the sword Shamil wanted to fight with until it was shattered into pieces. The fact that it is whole represents the sacrifice he made. The other day when Oz was playing with it in the snow, he wasn’t respecting it enough. He has – as I have – a heritage which is moral and thoughtful and merciful. Did he honour it? Or did he choose to go along with those who claim they’re acting in the name of Islam and at the same time don’t follow the principles of submission and restraint?”….
“Nothing has caused me so much pain as treachery. If the Russians would fight me honourably, I would not mind living the rest of my life in a state of war. But they tricked me; in Akhulgo they treated me like a criminal, not a warrior, and they sent my son far away to St Petersburg.”
“My grandfather, George the twelfth, did not want to go to war. He did not want his children to live in a state of war. This is why he bequeathed Georgia to the tsar.”
Sharing here images and passage of text from The Far Side of the Desert:
The cable car drew to a stop at the summit. Outside, a cluster of monkeys waited, anticipating peanuts and bits of food even though signs warned: Do Not Feed the Monkeys. These tailless Barbary Macaques had inhabited the Upper Rock for centuries, ever since the time when the Moors occupied southern Spain in the 8th century, the signs said. No matter what politics or wars played out in the world and on this Rock, the Barbary Macaques endured, fed and taken care of now by the government. Legend was that they came to Gibraltar via underground tunnels and caves that ran beneath the sea connecting Europe and Africa over 1000 years ago.
(Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius)
Sechel
/sek khl/
Part of speech: noun
1. common sense, intelligence
Examples:
“She should use her sechel for such an important decision.”
“This time, we are not dealing with a rasha (an evil person) but a person who lacks sechel.”
“The car won't start? Well, don't keep on pumping it. Use a bit of sechel.”
Sclerotic
/skləˈrädik/
Part of speech: adjective
1. Becoming rigid & unable to adapt
2. Hardening (of cell walls)
Examples:
“Restructuring doesn't automatically turn a sclerotic organization into a flexible one.”
”The coronary arteries were sclerotic and diffusely narrowed throughout their courses.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
