São Paulo – A team of women has been standing out in Brazil when it comes to matters of the Arab world. Especially Arab culture. Over the last few months, as the Arab Spring brought the region’s issues into Brazilian debate venues, they were seen behind microphones, giving interviews, lectures, and classes, speaking authoritatively on the Arab countries, their history, their law, their language. They are women such as Arlene Clemesha, who is sure to be there whenever the discussion involves Arab history, Soraia Smaili, always organizing events on Arab culture and immigration, or Samantha Maranhão, who specializes in Arabism.
In Brazil, where it is common for women to express themselves and even occupy leadership positions – for example president Dilma Rousseff and her women ministers –, it is not a problem for a less-than-coarse voice to give its two cents’ worth. Not even if the world they discuss is known worldwide for its predominantly male culture, as is the case with the Arab countries. But they do feel welcome both here and there. “The receptiveness is great,” says Clemesha, who gives lectures in Brazil and abroad.
Clemesha, by the way, is one of the finest among these women intellectuals specializing in the Arab world. The director of the Centre for Arab Studies at the University of São Paulo (USP), she teaches graduate and postgraduate classes on general Arab history at the institution. Contents range from the pre-Islamic era until the 20th century. Ask her about migrations to the Arab Peninsula in the third millennium before Christ and she will tell you. Ask her about the formation of the Ottoman Empire in the region, and she knows.
But Clemesha does more than teach classes and direct the USP department. Also at the university, she organizes Arab film exhibits, is organizing a book with postgraduate student articles on orientalism throughout history, and has participated very actively in the Institute of Arab Culture (Icarabe), along with some of the best intellectuals of the Arab cause in São Paulo, such as Soraia Smaili. In March, Clemesha travelled to the American University in Cairo. And to give a lecture on what? The Revolution of 1119 in Egypt.
As her name indicates, Clemesha, born São José dos Campos, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, is not of Arab descent. The Arab-Israeli conflict, however, caught her attention and led her to study Arab history. “It is an important issue for world peace,” says the historian, who is also attracted to the study of Marxist thinking. Karl Marx was of Jewish origin. The first book published by Clemesha was a result of her master’s thesis on Marxism and Judaism religion. Her doctorate was on the British mandate in Palestine.
In Piauí
In the state of Piauí, the name of Samantha Maranhão springs to mind whenever the topic is Arab world. Unlike Clemesha, who deals mostly with history and politics, however, Maranhão’s matter is philology. But not just any philology: Arab-Romanesque philology. This science studies a language, a literature, a culture or even a civilization based on historical views and documentation. And it was precisely the Arabic heritage in the Medical and Pharmaceutical vocabulary that Maranhão chose to study and research.
She also did research on the influence of Arabic language on the terminology used by Afro-Brazilians, and is currently investigating entries of Arabic origin in Brazilian dictionaries. Maranhão can be seen discussing these and other Arab-related topics throughout Piauí, in classes, interviews, lectures. She also speaks on local women’s issues which interest her.
The scholar is not of Arab origin and was born in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. She lived in Porto Alegre until age 12 and then moved to Bahia with her family. Since 2004, she has lived in Piauí, to where she moved after passing a civil service exam to teach at the Federal University of Piauí (Ufpi).
In Rio
In Rio de Janeiro, another intellectual stands out when she starts to speak on the Arab world. In the past, Cristina Ayoub Riche, ombudswoman of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Ufrj), taught Arabic literature as her main activity, after specializing in Arab language and literature, and a few years later she taught Islamic law, when she chose her second career and graduated in Law.
Now, Riche acts as a spokesperson for ombudsman offices to function as tools for participative democracy, but still speaks authoritatively on the Lebanese philosopher and writer Gibran Khalil Gibran, the Brazilian writer of Arab origin Salim Miguel, the One Thousand and One Nights, the divine connotation of the Arabic language, marriage in Islamic law, and other themes related to the region. “I wanted to learn the language of secrecy, of codes,” she says of the Arabic language, which she wound up studying and which she used to hear, as child, as her grandmother spoke with her siblings who remained in Lebanon.
She also claims that her opting for Law School was due to her ancestors, who were her role models in “defending people’s dignity.” Currently, Riche is planning a project in children’s literacy, in partnership with former students of hers in the Arabic/Portuguese Language course, in which she intends to use Arab fables. Passing on the culture of her region, by the way, is among the favourite activities of the researcher. As well as of other orientalists who bring us closer to the Arab world with their talent and dedication.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum