JOUMANA Haddad, the Lebanese poet, author and critic, recently had a tattoo of a tulip imprinted on the lowest section of her back. She pulls down her waistband to indicate the area in question. ''My kids and my partner, they are not shocked that I have a tattoo, but by the fact that the guy tattooed my arse.'' She roars with laughter. Controversy is not something Haddad is afraid of.
She is a figure of some repute in Lebanon, through her own writing as well as her roles as the cultural editor of An-Nahar, the main newspaper in Beirut, and the head of IPAF, the Arabic equivalent of the Booker prize. And now she has launched a magazine called The Body. Its subject matter - serious articles on masturbation, transsexuality and battered women, as well as riffs on ''my first time'' - has caused not just eyebrows but hackles to rise.
Haddad's website has been hacked into on numerous occasions and she receives regular hate mail. Hezbollah tried to close her stand at the Beirut Book Fair, and the head of the Lebanese Council of Women has called for the magazine, which is sold in sealed plastic in Lebanon and by mail order in other parts of the Arab world, to be banned.
It is this last denouncement that angers and upsets her most. ''Obviously, I acknowledge that some people are not going to like it. But that intellectuals have attacked me - and a women's association at that - I find that stupid and insulting. I launched the magazine because I felt that the body is a long-neglected, crucial part of the Arabic unconscious that needs to be re-explored. I felt it was unfair that the Arabic language had become castrated of an important part of its vocabulary - that the physical has become taboo,'' she says.
''Some of the things written in Arabic a long time ago would make the Marquis de Sade blush.
Now even the word 'breast' in Arabic would be shocking in certain circles. It is your right to approve of that if you want to and, if you do, don't buy the magazine. Ignore it. But, equally, it is my right to publish it, just as it is my right to walk naked if I want to.''
She shakes her cascading hair in a gesture that conveys both sensuality and determination. ''It is this crazy society. In Beirut you will see a woman with a skirt so short you can see her pants, walking beside a woman whose eyes are the only things you can see. That is Beirut. So long as the woman in the short skirt respects the other woman's right and the woman in the veil respects her, it's good. But it is not like that. The woman in the miniskirt feels claustrophobic and the other woman is appalled.
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It is hard to be objective. Our country is a puzzle.''
Haddad, 39, is herself a bit of a puzzle. To watch she is kittenish, flirtatious, her dark-rimmed hazel eyes beneath their extraordinarily long lashes coy one minute, direct the next. She moves her hands all the time - flashing turquoise stones, jangling gold. Her words tumble over themselves - her musings on politics and her candid personal disclosures competing for space.
She says she believes in ''the art of the schizophrenic''; that this is how she survived the suicide of her beloved maternal grandmother, life in a city at war, the personal criticisms levelled at her. She is an incredibly busy woman, combining her myriad commitments with her studies for a PhD in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.
And she's incredibly accomplished. She speaks seven languages and claims that each one brings out another personality. ''All these people inside of me are different Joumanas,'' she says. (In Armenian she feels close to her grandmother; in Arabic, the language in which she writes, a poet; in English she is ''cooler, more relaxed''.)
HADDAD repeatedly refers to herself as if she were someone else, a habit that denotes a certain self-confidence. ''I have an image of Joumana as a child, climbing in her father's library, to reach the forbidden books: Kafka, the Marquis de Sade.''
She lives in Beirut, by the sea, which is important to her not as a place to swim, but as a horizon. ''It is a very important part of my identity. It represents Joumana. All this unknown, outgoing, the need to see the other side.''
Haddad was brought up a strict Catholic by protective parents. ''I couldn't even go to the movies without my brother, or to a friend's house without my mother waiting there for me - even when I was 17.'' Top of the class at her convent, she was encouraged by her father to be highly competitive - ''I am never satisfied'' - and went to university at 16, two years early.
''In Lebanon, if you are clever, you become one of two things, a doctor or an engineer, so I went to medical school, even though I wanted to write.''
She wasn't happy and after two years found a way to establish her own independence. ''I got married. It wasn't a passionate act. It was my only way out.'' She transmuted her medical training into a degree in biology, then worked for a lingerie company to support her husband, who was still a student.
''Freedom for me happened like this: my head was liberated through books as a child, then expression through writing, and then physically through marriage.''
The marriage lasted 10 years; in that time Haddad gave birth to two children, learnt more languages (Italian, Spanish, German) and found work as a translator for An-Nahar newspaper. In 2005 she became the head of the cultural section. The editor is sympathetic to her other commitments.
''When I am travelling I edit the page in my hotel room in the morning; my laptop is my office.'' Her drive to succeed is exhausting, she admits. ''Because it is your nature, you cannot turn it off. It becomes something that is eating you.'' She is writing a book on Arab women, and the cliches that surround them, and would like to expand The Body, which has sold well, into other areas, namely ''a physical space: a small art gallery, a library, a coffee shop. But I don't dream. I usually plan.''
Her sons, Mounir, 17, and Ounsi, 11, are looked after by Haddad's mother, who lives nearby. ''I am an awful practical mother. I am just there for love.'' Her father is also supportive. ''I always say if my father had imagined when I was a child that I was going to write these things and do these things maybe he would have killed himself. But now he is proud. You do change your parents as well.''
Also part of Haddad's daily life is her ''life partner'', the French Lebanese poet Akl Awit, whom she met at the newspaper in 1998. They married three years ago, for technical reasons, and see each other every day, but sleep in separate houses. ''We like our spaces.'' With Awit, Haddad has found another form of freedom.
''It has been a journey with my own body on many levels. As an adolescent I used to love eating, but my mother used to forbid me, so I ate in secret. I hated my body. It all stopped when I got married. I found an inner equilibrium. But on the sexual level, I was a virgin when I was married, and it wasn't very satisfactory with my first husband. I was a late bloomer. But now, apart from the wrinkles, which I am starting to think about, I feel so good about myself. I mean, if I had to choose it would be the best time for me. From 35 until now!''
Did Awit back her plans for The Body? ''I mentioned it to him and he said I was crazy. He said: 'It isn't the time; it isn't the place.' Hell, I said, we have to invent the time. Invent the place."
''People often ask me why I still live in Beirut, why I have lived here through the war and why I have never written about it. I say, Why do you look for the knife? Look for the scars.
''The scars are this woman who is writing this stuff, doing these things. The war has given me a great deal of power. To survive in a city like Beirut, in this world, you have to keep on fighting.''
More at The Age
It is hard to be objective. Our country is a puzzle.''
Haddad, 39, is herself a bit of a puzzle. To watch she is kittenish, flirtatious, her dark-rimmed hazel eyes beneath their extraordinarily long lashes coy one minute, direct the next. She moves her hands all the time - flashing turquoise stones, jangling gold. Her words tumble over themselves - her musings on politics and her candid personal disclosures competing for space.
She says she believes in ''the art of the schizophrenic''; that this is how she survived the suicide of her beloved maternal grandmother, life in a city at war, the personal criticisms levelled at her. She is an incredibly busy woman, combining her myriad commitments with her studies for a PhD in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.
And she's incredibly accomplished. She speaks seven languages and claims that each one brings out another personality. ''All these people inside of me are different Joumanas,'' she says. (In Armenian she feels close to her grandmother; in Arabic, the language in which she writes, a poet; in English she is ''cooler, more relaxed''.)
HADDAD repeatedly refers to herself as if she were someone else, a habit that denotes a certain self-confidence. ''I have an image of Joumana as a child, climbing in her father's library, to reach the forbidden books: Kafka, the Marquis de Sade.''
She lives in Beirut, by the sea, which is important to her not as a place to swim, but as a horizon. ''It is a very important part of my identity. It represents Joumana. All this unknown, outgoing, the need to see the other side.''
Haddad was brought up a strict Catholic by protective parents. ''I couldn't even go to the movies without my brother, or to a friend's house without my mother waiting there for me - even when I was 17.'' Top of the class at her convent, she was encouraged by her father to be highly competitive - ''I am never satisfied'' - and went to university at 16, two years early.
''In Lebanon, if you are clever, you become one of two things, a doctor or an engineer, so I went to medical school, even though I wanted to write.''
She wasn't happy and after two years found a way to establish her own independence. ''I got married. It wasn't a passionate act. It was my only way out.'' She transmuted her medical training into a degree in biology, then worked for a lingerie company to support her husband, who was still a student.
''Freedom for me happened like this: my head was liberated through books as a child, then expression through writing, and then physically through marriage.''
The marriage lasted 10 years; in that time Haddad gave birth to two children, learnt more languages (Italian, Spanish, German) and found work as a translator for An-Nahar newspaper. In 2005 she became the head of the cultural section. The editor is sympathetic to her other commitments.
''When I am travelling I edit the page in my hotel room in the morning; my laptop is my office.'' Her drive to succeed is exhausting, she admits. ''Because it is your nature, you cannot turn it off. It becomes something that is eating you.'' She is writing a book on Arab women, and the cliches that surround them, and would like to expand The Body, which has sold well, into other areas, namely ''a physical space: a small art gallery, a library, a coffee shop. But I don't dream. I usually plan.''
Her sons, Mounir, 17, and Ounsi, 11, are looked after by Haddad's mother, who lives nearby. ''I am an awful practical mother. I am just there for love.'' Her father is also supportive. ''I always say if my father had imagined when I was a child that I was going to write these things and do these things maybe he would have killed himself. But now he is proud. You do change your parents as well.''
Also part of Haddad's daily life is her ''life partner'', the French Lebanese poet Akl Awit, whom she met at the newspaper in 1998. They married three years ago, for technical reasons, and see each other every day, but sleep in separate houses. ''We like our spaces.'' With Awit, Haddad has found another form of freedom.
''It has been a journey with my own body on many levels. As an adolescent I used to love eating, but my mother used to forbid me, so I ate in secret. I hated my body. It all stopped when I got married. I found an inner equilibrium. But on the sexual level, I was a virgin when I was married, and it wasn't very satisfactory with my first husband. I was a late bloomer. But now, apart from the wrinkles, which I am starting to think about, I feel so good about myself. I mean, if I had to choose it would be the best time for me. From 35 until now!''
Did Awit back her plans for The Body? ''I mentioned it to him and he said I was crazy. He said: 'It isn't the time; it isn't the place.' Hell, I said, we have to invent the time. Invent the place."
''People often ask me why I still live in Beirut, why I have lived here through the war and why I have never written about it. I say, Why do you look for the knife? Look for the scars.
''The scars are this woman who is writing this stuff, doing these things. The war has given me a great deal of power. To survive in a city like Beirut, in this world, you have to keep on fighting.''
More at The Age
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