Features

Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities
Anaheed Al Hardan
New York: Columbia University Press, 2016
Pp. 245 

Anaheed Al Hardan, assistant professor of sociology at the American University in Beirut, lived in Yarmouk Camp for six months in 2008, and visited other camps in Syria, where she interviewed scores of Palestinian refugees. Her intent was to explore the function of memories of the Nakba in these communities — who related these memories, what meanings were attached to them and how they contributed to Palestinians’ identity and sense of purpose.

Identifying herself as a granddaughter of the Nakba, Hardan gives voice to the people of Yarmouk, Jaramana, Khan Danoun, Khan Eshieh, Al Sayida Zaynab and Sbeineh camps, so that they can reassert that they hail from Tiberius, Safad, Lubya, Tantura, Galilee and other places in historical Palestine.

The research for this book predates the Syrian war, giving it crucial added importance. Today, after the destruction of Yarmouk and other camps in Syria, and the dispersal of their inhabitants, it is a major documentation of a world that is no more. Tragically, the events of recent years confirm all too graphically Hardan’s view of the Nakba as not ending in 1948: “The Nakba is no longer only about a distant event in the past that continues to manifest itself through an ongoing statelessness. It is also a catastrophe taking place in the present through the destruction of Palestinian communities yet again.” (p. 3)

“Palestinians in Syria” opens by reviewing ways of thinking about the Nakba over the years, beginning with pan-Arab nationalists who saw it as a catastrophe for their goals of unity and progress. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, preoccupation with the Nakba gave way to focus on the new occupation and the Palestinian liberation movement, but by the 1980s, there was renewed Palestinian interest in memories of the Nakba. After the Oslo accords, which refugees perceived as jeopardising their right of return, interest in these memories escalated. The Right of Return Movement emerged and mobilised actively among Palestinians in Syria, stressing the imperative to remember in order to return. 

A whole chapter is devoted to how the Palestinian refugee community was formed in Syria — how and when they came, the original tent camps and where they later settled, their social and political experience, and interaction with UNRWA, Syrian state bodies and the Palestinian national movement. The author contends that the Palestinians’ experience in Syria “has been as important as Palestine and the Palestinian past in their recalling of memories of a shared past in a shared present”. (p. 51)

The heart of the book is an analysis of Nakba memories and the discourse they have generated, based on Hardan’s interviews with three generations of Palestinian refugees in camps in the vicinity of Damascus. (The author explains her geographic focus by the fact that before the current war, four-fifths of the 560,000 UNRWA-registered Palestinian refugees in Syria lived in this area.) The main questions addressed are “what, how, and why people choose to remember, imagine, or mobilise memories of the Nakba as they do”. (p. 22)

Memories of the generation of Palestine, those who actually lived the 1948 Nakba, were accorded a special status in the community, transforming these elderly persons from “the generation of defeat” into “guardians of memory”. (p. 97)

In contrast, the stories told by second and third generation refugees are not really memories, but narratives based on their elders’ memories and how these have been absorbed into Palestinian discourse. The typical setting for relating these memories was a family gathering where a grandmother or grandfather told their stories of what they remembered about 1948, though activists also arranged public meetings where memories were related and discussed. 

One of the author’s most striking observations is that the Palestine generation’s stories did not usually focus on the violent events of the Nakba. “Rather, the object of this narration and transmission is the generation of Palestine’s memories of loss — their homes, lands, lives, and communities at large… as well as [their] own structures of attachment to this loss. This is primarily the refusal to accept it.”  (p. 98)

“Palestinians in Syria” is not an oral history of the Nakba, but it develops a useful perspective for understanding oral history and its political and social repercussions. The book’s greatest value, however, lies in its being a semi-comprehensive history of the Palestinians in Syria, about whom less has been written than about other major Palestinian communities. Especially in view of the impossibility of doing comparable research today, this book will be a valuable reference for years to come.

Parents may have a lot to do with how children react to scary things, but a new study suggests kids’ response to fear may also be heavily influenced by their friends.

In an experiment, researchers gave kids 7 to 10 years old information about scary-looking animals. They assessed how children felt on their own, and again after kids discussed their perceptions with friends. 

After speaking to friends, children tended to shift their opinions to match how their friends felt about the animals, the study found. 

“Studies show that children tend to choose friends who have similar attributes to themselves and that they can also become more similar through their interactions,” said lead study author Jinnie Ooi, a psychology researcher at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

“In our study, there was some evidence that the friends had similar levels of anxiety symptoms and fear responses even before they had their discussion, and that they became more similar in their fears after the discussion,” Ooi added by e-mail. 

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses, affecting almost one in five adults at some point, according to the US National Institutes of Health. Symptoms often emerge in childhood. 

For the current study, 106 boys and 136 girls completed age-appropriate questionnaires to measure anxiety and beliefs about fear. 

Then, participants were show pictures of two animals that would be unfamiliar to them — the cuscus and the quoll — Australian marsupials. Researchers read two versions of information about the animals — one that was neutral and one that described the creatures as dangerous. 

Researchers assessed how kids felt about each animal on their own, then asked kids to discuss the creatures with close friends. 

To see how kids felt after these discussions, researchers gave them maps showing animals on a path and asked kids to mark the spot they would like to be in the image. Kids who put themselves far away from the animals show they are trying to avoid the creatures, an indication of fear. 

After speaking to friends, children tended to have fear responses similar to their friends, researchers report in Behaviour Research and Therapy. 

There were some gender differences, however. 

When pairs of boys discussed the animals, they tended to show a significant increase in fear after they talked. 

Pairs of girls, however, showed a significant decrease in their fear beliefs when they had seen threatening information. 

Children’s fear-related thoughts did not necessarily become more negative when they discuss their fears with close friends who are more anxious. 

The study is small and does not prove how much peers influence fear relative to other factors such as family or genetics. 

But the results suggest that anxious children who become friends with kids who are also anxious may contribute to each other’s fearfulness. Therapy might help reduce anxiety in these children by helping pairs of friends learn to discuss and resolve their fears in a more positive manner that helps to diffuse anxiety, the authors say. 

“Childhood anxiety disorders are the most common psychological disorders in preadolescent children,” Ooi said. “This work has the potential to contribute to the prevention of problems with anxiety, for example through work in schools, and also to inform treatment interventions in a clinical setting for childhood anxiety disorders.”

Seniors with memory problems and related attention and decision-making issues may struggle with driving tasks, according to a Canadian study.

Not all patients with mild cognitive impairment, the early stage of memory loss, have issues with driving, the researchers write in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

However, patients with added impairments, such as difficulty with multi-tasking or making quick decisions, are particularly likely to have trouble with tasks like staying in lanes and making left turns in traffic, the researchers write.

“Driving is a highly complex task that requires the integration of multiple cognitive functions, such as attention, memory, and visuospatial ability, all of which can be affected by mild cognitive impairment,” said senior author Tom Schweizer, director of the neuroscience research programme at St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

“Despite this, there are no validated tools or guidelines to help assess the driving safety of patients with mild cognitive impairment,” Schweizer told Reuters Health by e-mail.

To study how mild cognitive impairment affects driving ability, Schweizer and colleagues recruited 24 patients with memory loss. They divided participants into two groups: one group with only memory problems, and another group with other cognitive problems too, such as issues with attention, reasoning/planning, or visual perception.

Twenty cognitively healthy participants in the same age range acted as a comparison group.

The participants underwent cognitive testing as well as a driving simulation that tested their ability to perform a range of tasks such as driving straight, making turns, and making left turns with oncoming traffic.

Overall, patients with mild cognitive impairment committed more than twice as many driving errors as the cognitively healthy drivers.

Memory impaired patients were more likely to cross the centre line of the road and stray out of the legal driving lane than healthy drivers. 

They were also more likely to make mistakes turning left with oncoming traffic, but they had no issues with turning right, or turning left with no traffic. 

When researchers analysed data on the two groups separately, however, they found that seniors with only memory issues were not more likely than healthy drivers to make errors. 

Patients with multiple cognitive impairments, however, were at much greater risk of errors, including crossing the centre line, missing stop signs, and straying out of the driving lane. These individuals were also much more likely to make errors during left turns.

A diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment alone “does not mean that someone should stop driving, but it is important to monitor for declines”, said Jennifer Davis, a clinical neuropsychologist at Rhode Island Hospital who studies cognitive issues and driving.

Mild impairment is often a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease and is likely to get worse over time, “so it is also important to help patients and families identify when it might be time to stop driving”, Davis, who was not involved in the study, noted by e-mail.

“Families are encouraged to monitor driving by riding with their family member as a passenger,” Davis advised.

“Where on Earth does my data really go once it is stored in the cloud?” This is a common question that those who are not particularly technically minded ask; and surely they cannot be blamed for that.

If some do realise that it simply flies over the network to go to a server computer and then is stored on the machines’ hard disk, the excruciating, the virtually existential question still remains “where is that server located?”

With the profusion of cloud services now available in the world, it is sometime impossible to answer. You could subscribe to the service with, for example, a US-based company with headquarters and management in Arizona, and the very server on which your data will be stored by the said company would be in India, perhaps for economic reasons. Naturally the same goes for website hosting, e-mail contents, social networking profile details and so forth.

Does it really matter where your data is kept, as long as it is well kept and someone is taking good care of it, providing you with a fast, smooth and reliable service, and charging you reasonable rates? Well yes, it could matter!

For many years Jordan has been known and acknowledged as a key IT player in the Middle East, frequently supplying the entire region with highly qualified IT manpower, and with advanced, up-to-date technological know-how. It was, therefore, only natural to see the country now offering cloud services that are hosted by local companies, with data stored and processed on servers computers physically installed here in Jordan — machines that you can see and touch if you really insist.

Orange, Damamax, Zain and other service providers have data centres that are large enough and sophisticated enough to sustain fair comparison with similar set-ups in the USA, South Korea, Canada or Western Europe. The structures standards are very high and the sight of all the server computers sitting in countless rows of floor-standing cabinets is nothing less than impressive, conjuring up vision of science fiction movies. This is real and this is available and operating in Jordan today.

Wishing to build on and to put to good use these structures, Jordanian company STS (Specialised Technical Services), already a major provider of IT technology in the country (of Dell computers, in particular), is now offering cloud services on a par with the best that can be found anywhere in the world. The advantage of being able to deal directly with people you can meet and talk to, in the flesh, for your business, instead of going through a “virtual” communication channel, is priceless and comes with tangible benefits. STS Cloud Services focus on advanced cloud data back up, a product that is in steadily increasingly demand.

The pristine quality of the local data centres, the proven track record of a pioneering company like STS, the comforting feeling of knowing exactly “where on Earth” your data is stored (in Amman for that matter), these are elements that blend and combine to make you trust the cloud more than ever.

With such services now available in Jordan, local patrons no longer have to ask “where did my data really go?”

Young children, who receive cognitive behaviour therapy to help them cope with night terrors, may have fewer behaviour problems tied to poor sleep than kids who receive therapy that does not include advice on how to manage symptoms, a recent study suggests. 

The study focused on 90 children, ages 4 to 6, with severe and persistent fears that interfere with normal functioning and cause considerable stress for kids and their families. 

These night terrors affect about 10 per cent of children, and are much more debilitating than the occasional nightmares that wake kids every so often. 

Researchers randomly assigned the children into two groups. One group received cognitive behaviour therapy involving structured play with their parents designed to build coping skills. The other group received non-directive therapy involving playtime with parents, but no guidance on how to manage the sleep issues.

Four weeks after treatment, all of the children had significantly fewer nighttime fears and sleep disruptions. With cognitive therapy, however, parents reported more improvements in sleep and behaviour. 

This suggests that cognitive behaviour therapy, an established treatment for older kids with sleep problems, may also work with young children when a play component is added, said lead study author Michael Kahn of Tel Aviv University in Israel.

“The take-home message for parents is that sleep problems in the preschool age can be successfully treated with very brief interventions,” Kahn said by e-mail. 

“Parents could try addressing the problem on their own by being aware of their own cognitions and knowledge regarding sleep [for example, understanding the importance of regular bedtime routines[, by speaking to their child about it and trying to find creative solutions that would help him or her to spend the night in their own bed [e.g., using a stuffed animal, a flashlight, placing a picture of the family near the child’s bed, etc.], and by limiting the extent of their accommodation to the child’s attempts to avoid falling and staying asleep in his own bed,” Kahn added. 

For kids receiving cognitive behaviour therapy in the study, researchers encouraged parents and kids to role play with dolls in a doll house bedroom to practice bedtime routines. Children would act out going to sleep and parents would gradually play smaller and smaller parts at bedtime and during the night to model the independent sleep habits they wanted kids to develop. 

During these games, kids could earn rewards like stickers after successfully completing sleep exercises. 

Children assigned to the control group did not get guidance on how to practice a good bedtime routine or cope with nighttime awakenings during the playtime with parents. 

Researchers measured sleep using devices that track sleep, called actigraphs, and by asking parents how well children slept. 

The actigraph measurements did not show more sleep improvement with cognitive behaviour therapy, but parents in this group reported greater reductions in kids’ sleep problems and co-sleeping, researchers report in Sleep Medicine. 

The researchers admit that because they used a variety of different therapy approaches, it is difficult to pinpoint how each treatment component may have influenced how well kids managed to sleep through the night in their own beds. 

The study may also have been too small to determine statistically meaningful differences in some of the interventions tested. 

Even so, the findings add to a large body of evidence suggesting behaviour therapy helps reduce bedtime problems and nighttime awakenings, said Jocelyn Thomas, a psychology researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia who was not involved in the study. 

“This treatment is based on the theory of learned behaviour and involves teaching the parent to manage the child’s behaviour,” Thomas said by e-mail. 

Unusual names do not impress me but I am definitely charmed by the meaning of some exceptional ones that I come across occasionally. Take Kenji, for instance. It is a Japanese name that means “intelligent second son who is strong and vigorous”. Or Keanu, which means “cool breeze over the mountains”, in Hawaiian. Or Undine that means “little mother” in Egyptian. Or even Aashrita, which is a Sanskrit name that means “somebody who gives shelter”.

Strange as it may sound, I always manage to remember the uncommonly named people after meeting them, despite my failing memory. How I accomplish that remains a complete mystery to me. It is only a “Tom, John, Ann or Jane” that I mix up but introduce me to a, say, “Ebenezer, Chitrangada or Atsumori’,” and watch me recall their names in a flash, when I meet them next. 

This year I took so long to open my birthday gift that our daughter threatened to unwrap the present that she had wrapped so carefully for me. Giving in to her constant requests, I tore the packaging and uncovered the latest iPhone that she had very generously gifted me with. Tables were turned for the next few days, as she became my tutor and I her pupil, and she mentored me in the various facets of this new technologically enhanced device.  

I went through the motions of trying to understand it all, but in fact became attentive only when she familiarised me with Siri, which was an acronym that stood for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface” for iPhone Operating Systems. According to Dag Kittlaus, the co-founder of Siri, the name was of Scandinavian origin that meant “beautiful victory”. He wanted to call his daughter Siri but when his son was born instead, he decided to switch it to his company, which he owned at the time. 

This computer programme that worked as an intelligent personal assistant was an inbuilt feature in my phone. It used a natural language user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of web services.

Our daughter asked me if I wanted Siri to have a male or a female voice. Now though I liked the idea of a male assistant answering all my questions, the meaning of the name did not quite fit, because anything that was described as “beautiful victory” had to be feminine. She then prompted me to ask Siri what it meant. The name, that is. I agreed, and did just that. 

“It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma, tied with a pretty ribbon of obfuscation,” answered Siri in a disembodied voice. 

The reply got me hooked instantly. I mean, look at that sentence, read it aloud, and notice the choice of words and how they are strung together. Riddle, enigma and obfuscation basically signify the same thing but the manner in which Siri presented it, to define the name, convinced me further that Siri had to sound like a woman. A man’s voice would simply not be as effective or authoritative. Not at all!

Soon, after having some conversations with Siri about weather predictions, I became more curious.

“Is there a heaven?” I asked Siri

“It’s all a mystery to me,” she retorted. 

“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try,” I sang. 

“Who me? Or John Lennon?” she drawled. 

“Is John Lennon in heaven then?” I counter questioned. 

“I eschew theological disquisition,” Siri announced conclusively.

PARIS — Swedish researchers said Tuesday acupuncture “appears to reduce crying” in babies suffering from colic.

But their work was criticised by colleagues in the medical field, with one calling the study methodology “appalling”.

A duo from the Lund University’s medicine faculty tested the traditional Chinese needle-piercing remedy in a trial involving nearly 150 babies between two and eight weeks old.

They reported their results in the journal Acupuncture in Medicine, published by the BMJ — formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

Compared to babies who did not undergo the needle treatment, infants who received acupuncture over two weeks exhibited “a significant relative reduction” in crying, the team found.

Such research can be controversial. Acupuncture is invasive, potentially painful, and its benefits are not universally accepted.

Organisations such as the British Medical Acupuncture Society says it is used to treat muscle and postoperative pain, as well as nausea. 

But some think acupuncture’s effects are that of a placebo, meaning people feel better because they believe it works. The National Institutes of Health, the main UN research agency, says there is “considerable controversy” around its value.

Colic affects as many as one in five families, and is diagnosed when a baby cries for more than three hours per day on more than three days per week.

Why it occurs is not well understood. Indigestion, trapped wind and intolerance to cows’ milk have been identified as possible causes.

For the study, colicky babies were divided into three groups of 49. 

One received “minimal” acupuncture treatment, while another was given up to five, 30-second needlings per session. The third group was not given any needle treatment.

“Significantly fewer infants who received acupuncture continued to cry/fuss excessively”, the researchers concluded.

This suggested “acupuncture may be an effective treatment option” for babies crying more than three hours a day.

‘Sounds bizarre’

Criticism of the study was harsh.

David Colquhoun, a professor of pharmacology at University College London, described the researchers’ analysis of data as “incompetent” and “appalling”.

The study “certainly doesn’t show that it [acupuncture] works”, he told the Science Media Centre.

“What parent would think that sticking needles into their baby would stop it crying? The idea sounds bizarre. It is.”

Edzard Ernst from the University of Exeter said the study showed “almost the opposite of what the authors conclude”.

“We know that colicky babies respond even to minimal attention, and this trial confirms that a little additional TLC” — Tender Loving Care — “will generate an effect”.

A total of 388 acupuncture treatments were performed on the babies, the authors reported.

On 200 occasions the infant did not cry at all after being pierced, 157 times they cried for up to a minute, and 31 times for more than that.

“The acupuncturists reported bleeding [a single drop of blood] on 15 occasions,” the authors said.

The treatment “may be considered ethically acceptable” if it managed to reduce excessive crying in the longer term, they added.

The report did not indicate what acupuncture points were used.

Longer, aesthetically revamped and better equipped than ever for 2016, the Infiniti QX50 was first launched in 2007 as the EX model line and rebranded as the QX50 by 2013 as part of the sporty premium Japanese brand’s revised nomenclature and model line-up. An early inductee into the increasingly popular compact premium crossover (CUV) segment, the updated QX50 retaining a longer version of the same platform and driveline as the outgoing model but also remains among the most rewarding and engaging drives in its class, even among more recently developed competitors.

Swooping silhouette

A rare and authentically sporting vehicle in the crossover segment, the QX50’s sports saloon derived credentials in this regard include its powerful high revving naturally aspirated engine, balanced front-mid engine position and rear drive based four-wheel drive and sophisticated double wishbone front and multilink rear suspension. Coupe inspired in design with long swooping bonnet, short front overhang, rearwards cabin position, descending roofline, wavy design lines and urgent, pouncing and alert silhouette, the QX50 well complements the brand’s shark like QX70 — formerly the trendsetting FX — sports SUV and has been revised to better integrate with Infiniti’s sharper and more assertive contemporary familial styling.

If not as dramatically moody and menacing as its larger QX70 stablemate, the revised QX50 is, however, now more assertive and notably features Infiniti’s new doublearch grille frame with weaving design, and a restyled front bumper with bigger, deeper and hungrier intake. Sitting slightly higher off the ground, it also receives new sills, rear bumper and fascia, side mirrors with integrated indicator lights and 19-inch alloy wheels with 245/45R19 tyres. Distinctively sporty with rear window kink and L-shaped headlights with LED running lights, the QX50 also features a tailgate spoiler and dual chrome tailpipes.

Intuitively incremental

Velvety smooth, long legged, eager and willing, the QX50’s fondly familiar and well regarded VQ-series 3.7 litre naturally aspirated V6 is the sort of engine that is becoming ever rarer in a landscape becoming dominated by smaller displacement turbocharged units. Sweeping through towards its 7,500rpm rev limit with progressive fluency, it unleashes its impressive output in precise increments and with pin point throttle control accuracy, to allow one to dial in exact amount of torque and power to not overpower tyre grip or unnecessarily set off electronic stability control intervention. Its accuracy and progressive character lend themselves to more fluent and intuitive driving and handling.

Responsive and willing from tick over, the QX50 pulls confident and hard from low-end with good versatility throughout. Building urgently, it develops its maximum 266lb/ft torque by 5,200rpm and its full 326BHP by a haughty 7,000rpm. Peaky and precise, the QX50’s sublime engine sends power through a smooth, slick and swift shifting 7-speed automatic gearbox with manual mode shifting available and downshift rev matching automatically blipping the throttle for more fluent driving. Refined and quiet at low rev and load, the QX50’s engine note develops from thrusting, whirring and whining and hardens to a more intense and urgent wailing as revs rise.

Eager and fluent

Capable of 0-100km/h in 6.4 seconds or less, and of a 240km/h maximum, the QX50’s fuel consumption is moderate when driven so, but rises somewhat when one succumbs to the temptations of its high rev thrills. Power is normally sent to the rear wheels, with up to 50 per cent redirected to the front wheels as and when added traction and grip are necessary. Through narrow winding hill climbs, the QX50’s traction control can be disabled for more driving fluency, and at which point one can feel the four-wheel drive system actively clawing back traction when oversteering, to make brisk, fluid and intuitive progress.

With rear-wheel drive instincts and four-wheel drive security mated to a balanced and sophisticated chassis and natural and quick hydraulic assisted steering with better feel than most electric systems, the QX50 drives as close to a sports car as a high riding and somewhat heavy 1,873kg crossovers can. Agile, tidy and eager into corners, the QX50’s firm front grip give way to slight understeer at the limit. One can, however, correct this by pivoting weight rearwards for slight oversteer, which is corrected by its four-wheel drive as it digs into the tarmac and launches out onto a straight.

Smooth and sophisticated

Adept and agile through switchbacks, the QX50’s weight is evident, but body lean is for the most part very well suppressed. Riding firm and smooth but uncomfortable, the QX50 fluently processes most road texture imperfections. Pitching slightly on crests, the QX50 is, however, buttoned down and confidently settled on rebound, while at speed is reassuringly committed, stable and refined. Thoroughly impressive during test drive on Jordanian roads, one considered whether firmer damping would further enhance the QX50’s vertical control, body lean and keep tyres yet more firmly pressed down. Meanwhile, perhaps more forgiving tyres and smaller alloys would further improve ride suppleness.

Classy and with a welcoming ambiance inside — especially with darker tones — the QX50’ cabin has quality feel to it in terms of construction, materials and textures. Highly adjustable seating is comfortable and supportive for long hours on end, while driving visibility is good for the most part, but is assisted by bird’s eye and reversing view monitors. Rear leg and headroom was, however, surprisingly generous even for larger passengers, while boot space is also accommodating. Well equipped, the QX50 features numerous safety, convenience, infotainment and driver assistance systems.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 3.7-litre, in-line V6 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 95.5x86mm

Compression ratio: 11.1:1

Valve-train: 24-valve, DOHC, variable timing

Gearbox: 7-speed automatic, four-wheel drive

Ratios: 1st 4.923 2nd 3.193 3rd 2.042 4th 1.411 5th 1.0 6th 0.862 7th 0.771

Reverse/final drive ratio: 3.972/3.133

0-100km/h: 6.4 seconds

Maximum speed: 240km/h

Rev limit: 7,500rpm

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 326 (330) [243] @7,000rpm

Specific power: 88.2BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 177.4BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 266 (361) @5,200rpm

Specific torque: 97.67Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 192.73Nm/tonne

Fuel consumption, combined: 10.6 litres/100km

Fuel tank: 80 litres

Track, F/R: 1,535/1,550mm

Approach/break-over/ departure angles: 17.9°/16°/20.8°

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.33

Minimum boot capacity: 526 litres

Kerb weight: 1,873kg

Weight distribution, F/R: 54/46 per cent

Steering: Variable-assisted, rack and pinion

Lock-to-lock: 2.85 turns

Turning circle: 11.9 metres

Suspension: Double wishbone/multi-link, anti-roll bars

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs, 330mm/308mm

Tyres: 245/45R19

Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016
Pp. 305 

Spanning two continents and nine generations, Yaa Gyasi unfolds a family saga that is by turns thrilling, heartbreaking and inspiring. This is no ordinary family but one divided by the vicissitudes of colonialism and slavery. While one branch of the family remains in Africa, the other is transported into slavery in the United States.

“Homegoing” is a historical novel, but more than simply illustrating slavery’s long-term effects on Africans and African-Americans, Gyasi makes one feel the experience with her vibrant prose, a set of unforgettable characters, and her recreation of African culture and how it morphed into African-American culture. 

In an Asante village, Maame, the family matriarch, tells her daughter, Esi: “Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves”. (p. 38)

Obviously, this wisdom is ignored by colonialism, but with Britain’s penetration of what is today Ghana, Fante and Asante chieftains seem to forget it as well. Faced with an unknown enemy and lured by the chance to enrich themselves, they begin selling their fellow Africans to British slave traders. While the British stay safely ensconced in the Castle on the coast, the chieftains compete for their favours, weakening the fibre of their own society.

It all starts with a greedy, superstitious mother who marries Effia off to a British slave trader in a ceremony where the girl must “repeat words she didn’t mean in a language she didn’t understand”. (p. 16)

This keeps Effia in Africa, but irrevocably sunders her from her own people. She is also in for some terrible shocks. Living in the castle, she hears the moans of slaves kept in the dungeons below, but little does she know that one of them, Esi, is her sister — Maame, not the woman who married her off, being her real mother. Esi’s transport to America marks the family’s definitive division. From then on, the stories of the two branches are told in alternating chapters, generation after generation.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the members of the family experience tragedies and alienation from their original culture. While the fate of those sold into slavery is most horrible, those who remain in Africa suffer from escalated tribal wars incited to provide more captives to be sold.

But successive generations produce brave souls ready to defy their fate. Esi’s daughter, a slave on a cotton plantation in Alabama, sacrifices herself to procure her son’s freedom. Effia’s grandson leaves an arranged marriage and crosses the tribal divide to marry an Asante woman who is also eager to break out of the mould. Having lost her brothers in tribal wars, she declares, “I will be my own nation.” (p. 99)

The next generations in America discover that freedom is contingent. The son who escaped to the North has his life turned upside down by a new law allowing the recapture of escaped slaves. Even after slaves are emancipated, his son is arrested on false pretexts and sold to work as convict labour in the coalmines. He “could hardly remember being free, and he could not tell if what he missed was the freedom itself or the capacity for memory” (p. 162).

By now, memories of Africa have faded, and the next generations struggle to make a life despite racial discrimination, enforced poverty, lack of jobs, availability of drugs and the unjust criminal justice system — conditions which still prevail, making Gyasi’s story of more than historical relevance. 

Meanwhile, back in Africa, young women are also seeking freedom but discover the difficulties of defying tradition. One is caught between savouring Gyasi’s poignant prose and compulsively reading ahead to see if any of them reach fulfilment and if the two branches of the family will meet.

Marjorie, the last of the African line, is a voracious reader who spends three years searching for a book “that she can feel inside her”. (p. 270) 

“Homegoing” is such a book, for Gyasi is a gifted storyteller, adept at describing the world from unexpected angles to create a you-are-there effect and make one think about things in a new way. With so many characters, one might expect each to be sketchy, but for all the expansiveness of her plot, Gyasi never sacrifices depth. Each major character is full-blown and their environment is described in concrete detail, whether it is an African village, a southern plantation or New York City. Knowing that the author was born in Ghana and raised in Alabama may partially explain how she so deftly captures the landscapes and cultures of both Africa and America. 

While most of the characters are victimised in one way or another, they are so much more than victims. There are great talents and strengths on both sides of the Atlantic, and great loves — between man and woman, parent and child, and between kindred spirits who may not be related, for despite the focus on family, Gyasi’s subtext is that it is not blood lineage but how one leads one’s life that matters.

WILLISTON, Vermont — At Tomorrow’s Harvest farm, you won’t find acres of land on which animals graze, or rows of corn, or bales of hay. Just stacks of boxes in a basement and the summery song of thousands of chirping crickets.

It’s one of a growing number of operations raising crickets for human consumption that these farmers say is more ecologically sound than meat, but acknowledge is sure to bug some people out.

Once consumers get beyond the ick factor, they say, there are a lot of benefits to consuming bugs.

“We don’t need everybody to eat insects,” said Robert Nathan Allen, founder and director of Little Herds, an educational nonprofit in Austin, Texas, that promotes the use of insects for human food and animal feed. “The point we really like to highlight with the education is that if only a small per cent of people add this to their diet, there’s a huge environmental impact.”

Cricket fans say if only 1 per cent of the US population substituted even just 1 per cent of their meat consumption with insects, millions of gallons of water in drinking and irrigation would be saved, along with thousands of metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions from machinery and animals.

At least one study finds the claims overstated that crickets are a viable protein source to supplement or replace meat, but bottom line, it generally takes fewer resources to raise and harvest crickets than, say, cattle.

Interest in entomophagy — the consumption of insects — was fuelled in part by a 2013 report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations on the viability of edible insects to help curb world hunger.

Since then, the number of producers of food containing crickets, from protein bars to chip, has jumped from zero to about 20, and cricket farms for human food have grown to about half a dozen in the United States, Allen said.

The protein-packed food can be ground into powder and added to other foods or eaten whole, dried, sauteed and spiced. Crickets have a nutty or earthy flavour that’s masked by other flavours in protein bars.

Self-described adventurous eater Matthew Monroe, 53, of Portland, Oregon, said he’s fond of blueberry-vanilla Exo bars containing cricket flour and dines on them when he gets that “protein bar jonesing feeling”. They also taste better than other protein bars, he said.

There’s no problem selling crickets as long as manufacturers ensure the food they produce for the US market is safe, and complies with all relevant laws and Food and Drug Administration regulations, including proper labeling.

Raising crickets doesn’t take much space, but there are complexities.

Stephen Swanson, proprietor of Tomorrow’s Harvest, said he constantly checks conditions — water, food, temperature, air flow and humidity — in the basement where he’s raising roughly half-a-million crickets.

Swanson, who just started selling cricket protein powder online, hopes to get into a warehouse where some of the work could be automated.

“The sky’s the limit. This is the stone age right now as far as insect farming,” he said. “So we have nowhere to go but up.”

Kevin Bachhuber knows that firsthand. He started the first US cricket farm for human food in the Youngstown, Ohio, area, according to Allen. It operated until lead in his water supply prompted him to close it, Bachhuber said.

Now, Bachhuber said, he is helping new cricket farmers get started or existing farms that raise crickets for reptile feed and fish bait get up to food grade standards.

“For the first couple years, you know, we always struggled with having enough supply. Now that we’re starting to be able to add some of these older farmers into our supply chain. ... It’s not quite so heavy pressure,” Bachhuber said.

The first US academic conference devoted to insects for food and feed was held in Detroit in May. Now the young industry is forming The North American Edible Insect Coalition , a trade group, with the priorities being research and public education.

“Half the battle if not more is educating people why. You can’t just say, ‘Eat crickets, please.’ You have to tell them why,” Swanson said.