Book Review: A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron

If you are a dog-lover looking for a light summer read while your pup snoozes beside you, then pick up W. Bruce Cameron's book A Dog's Purpose. If you don't believe in reincarnation, you'll have to suspend your disbelief, but really, it's not that long. I think you can do it.

This is a book written from a dog's eyes - or at least what we humans perceive a dog is thinking. The canine narrator takes us through several reincarnations as he seeks to find his purpose in the lives of his humans. During each life he learns new things about being a dog and eventually all of this will be important in reaching his "nirvana" - that place where he feels he's fulfilled his ultimate purpose as a dog.

What I enjoyed about this book is that it really takes you through many different dog experiences - stray dog, best friend, working dog, hero dog - the list goes on. This particular dog can remember his previous lives and do some comparisons, but this doesn't give him the kind of angst it would give us humans. Generally, he find himself pretty content once he's figured out what his humans want him to do and how he can make their lives better.

Ultimately, isn't that a dog's purpose? To make our lives a little better. They do that is so many ways. Some perform heroic tasks like finding bombs or lost children. Others provide a shoulder to cry on, a friend during those nasty adolescent years, and a friendly lick to come home to.

In short, if you're not a dog person, don't read this book. You won't get it. If you are a dog-lover, it's a nice little light read that will leave you feeling warm and fuzzy inside - and outside too if you take my advice and read it while snuggling your favorite canine!

Book Review: Growing Up Bin Laden by Najwa Bin Laden, Omar Bin Laden, and Jean Sasson

When Osama Bin Ladin was killed in May of 2011 he left behind four wives and dozens of children and grandchildren. We have not heard much about their story since, and to my knowledge, Growing Up Bin Ladin is the only inside account of the Bin Ladin family life before the attacks.

The book is a disturbing memoir of a wife and son who watch the man they love descend deeper and deeper into radicalism. The chapters alternate between those authored by Najwa, Bin Ladin's first wife, and her and Osama's fourth son Omar. The book opens with Najwa, young, innocent, and marrying her deeply religious cousin. He is from the well-to-do Bin Ladin family and offers her a life of comfort and safety in Saudi Arabia. Najwa leaves her home in Syria to join the Bin Ladin clan in Saudi Arabia, were she dons the hijab and remains virtually secluded within the confines of the family home. But all of these things are perfectly acceptable for a Middle Eastern woman from a traditional Muslim family. Her husband, not yet a religious extremist, treats her well, provides for her, though urges her to live simply, and rejoices with her at the birth of their sons.

This is the life that Najwa, and many other Muslim women, yearned for. For a few brief years it was the life she had. But her husband, always the devout Muslim, began taking his religion more and more seriously. He spent longer time periods away from home, fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Eventually that war ended, but the fuel for Jihad had been ignited in Osama's heart. He asked her if he could take another wife to produce more sons for Islam . These sons would be raised in the service of Allah. Many would later serve their father's nefarious purposes. Osama eventually took four wives, the maximum number dictated by Muhammad the Prophet. He spent equal time with each of them, alternating the nights that he stayed in each wife's quarters. The wives became friends. Truly, they had to. They had no one else. As Osama's activities became more radical he was exiled from Saudi Arabia, and they moved to Sudan where the women and children lived in seclusion, with only occasional trips to the family farm outside Khartoum.

Omar, a young child when his family left Saudi Arabia, mourns the loss of the horses on his families horse farm in that country. Growing up, Omar became an avid animal lover. He loved dogs, a species deemed unclean by Islam. He was an avid horseman like his father. He seemed to understand animals better than he understood the people in his world. Better, certainly, than he could understand his father who grew increasingly distant and radical during their days in Khartoum. Osama once trekked his entire family, wives and sons included, into the desert to sleep with no provisions, in order to train them to survive in harsh circumstances. The day would come, his father claimed, when the comforts of their home will be no more.

These words were darkly prophetic. Osama's actions became more radical, his rhetoric more virulent, and his was kicked out of Sudan, taking his son Omar with him to Afghanistan. The Taliban offers him refuge and a home in the city, and a mountain in Tora Bora. At this point Osama's radicalism had brought him to shun modern conveniences, so he moved his family, and his growing troop of followers all to the primitive outpost at Tora Bora.  Omar is forced into his father's militant movement. Najwa continues bearing children, uncomplaining, yet unhappy. Omar begins questioning his father actions, he begins to consider escape.

Omar and Najwa were not living in the house in Abbottabad, Pakistan on the night that the rest of the family was killed/captured. In fact, this book was written a few years before the raid. They had left the clutches of religious fundamentalism. They were the lucky ones.

Osama Bin Laden has been the villian of our nation's story since September 11th, 2001. Yet, he was not the villian of this story - at least, not for Najwa. Perhaps he became a villain for Omar, yet deep at the heart of Omar's story is a boy just longing for his father's love and approval. Najwa's story is far more stoic. She is a woman telling the facts. She and Osama never divorced, she was still his wife, living in Syria on the day he died in Pakistan. She knew little of his political activity and judged him solely on how he treated his wives and children. He was, in her world, a very good Muslim. He took his devout nature to extremes later in their marriage, and yes, it resulted in much inconvenience for the family, but she remained with him, uncomplaining. She had to be essentially prodded away by her son, who warned her that something big was going to happen -something that would endanger her and her children's lives. I cannot understand this woman. How can you watch docilely as your husband takes another wife, and then another, and then another? How can you become friends with those wives?

Omar was a character that was easier to get. He was the one that rebelled against his father's extremism. Teenage rebellion is not something difficult for us to comprehend, and it's even easier when you're rebelling against the world's #1 terrorist. But through Omar's eyes we saw a man who was not a terrorist. He was a father. Not a very good father, but a father nonetheless. He did not love America, nor did he wish to throw away his religion. He just wanted a normal, Muslim life.

After finishing this book I went back and read the news reports from that fateful day two years ago. However, I read them with a different perspective. In those reports I read the stories of the women and children sequestered in that house, and indeed, in that mentality. They, like so many others in the fundamentalist community, are imprisoned in a world without education, without access to the outside, and with few avenues to change their situation. Nawja did not know what her husband was doing. She trusted that it was in the name of Allah and it was for the good of the Muslim world. But why can't Najwa and other women make that decision on their own?

Sadly, extremist Islam is growing. Though Osama Bin Laden's death caused a major setback for the Al Qaeda organization, extremist enclaves are expanding throughout Africa. We need to fight this battle, but let's do it with less drones and more books. Who's giving these kids education? Who's providing the resources? Who's getting them? Just boys? Or are girls allowed to go to school too? Are girls allowed to choose their path? If they are educated and given the chance to choose, my bets are that they are not going to choose a life of baby-making for jihad.

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild

I just finished a rather harrowing journey back in time to the Belgian Congo via Adam Hochschild's book King Leopold's Ghost. In this non-fiction work Hochschild pummels the reader with a barrage of information from government records, personal accounts, and news articles that leave your head spinning and your mind envisioning severed hands, starvation and disease, and whips made of hippopotamus hide juxtaposed next to overwhelming opulence. King Leopold, the Belgian king who, along with his young country, was late into the Scramble for Africa, ended up with  the interior - or the Congo River basin. But he made the best of it. Proclaiming himself to be a grand humanitarian, ridding Africa of those evil Arab slave traders, he put the native to work, first in bringing ivory and then in wild rubber harvesting. Of course, Leopold never went there directly. He obsessed about the Congo from home and had officials go there to explore and set up camp and force the "lazy natives" to bring in their quotas. In the meantime, the profits from their labor went into building and expanding Leopold's grandiose residences and lavishly providing for his very young mistress.

Leopold was quite the con-man, a talented manipulator. When negative press exposed his violent control of the Congo, he was able to weasel and bribe his way out.  Though this is first and foremost a work of historical non-fiction,  Hochschild's vivid characterization of King Leopold gives it a bit of the flair of a novel. You also meet several other notable figures. For example the explorer H.M. Stanley, African-American missionary William Sheppard, and the reformers who seek to expose Leopold: Roger Casement and journalist E.D. Morel. The author holds these latter two in high esteem as the first human rights reformers of the 20th century. They laid the groundwork for Amnesty International and a host of other organizations that seek to expose and correct human rights abuses.

I'm very glad I read the Afterword, because the author makes some excellent points by providing some insightful historical perspective. First, the Congo was by no means unique.  Hochschild references the German genocide of the Harero people in Namibia, and the Portuguese abuses of forced laborers harvest cocoa beans (whose chocolate was purchased by Congo reformer and Quaker, William Cadbury.) However,  the story of colonialism in the Congo provides enough fodder for a 306 page book, so he doesn't go into great detail about the other European colonies. Secondly, I like his point that Africa's problems today should not be fully blamed on European colonialism. Yes, that did have a share, and a very significant one. However, as Hochschild points out, other countries like South Korea and Ireland have come out from under colonialism to "build reasonably just, prosperous, and democratic societies." (pg 318) So what's the difference? What makes Africa so ill-suited to this end? Well, first, according to Hochschild, Africa's long history of chauvinism. Subjugating women generally has negative effects on society as a whole. By keeping women down, he argues, governments keep themselves down. I couldn't agree more. True, some societies are prosperous and chauvinistic (i.e. Saudia Arabia) but they are unique examples, often attaining their wealth by cornering a certain market (a.k.a OIL) and in the end, they are not really very nice societies to live in (unless you're really into high-end shopping, and not so much into human rights). Another reason for Africa's developmental crisis is the legacy of slavery. It's not just European slavery we're talking about here. Africans enslaved each other well before we started enslaving them. While the West was swept with abolitionism in the 19th century, Africa never had an abolitionist movement. Now that sounds a little paradoxical. Why would AFRICA need an abolition movement? I would argue that they do. The abolitionists fought for human rights, for the value of human life. It said that ALL people, regardless of race, class or national origin should be treated equal. Most of us Westerners have bought in to this ideal (although I'd argue we're secretly all a little racist in our own way - but that's a discussion for another time). Africans, for the most part have never had a movement that says "Hey! People have inherent value and rights and you should stop treating them like CRAP!" So, there you have it -  child soldiers, blood diamonds, gang-rapes, tribal violence - all legacies of a mentality that says some people are just inferior. True, Europeans certainly made it worse, but I am going to go out on a politically incorrect limb nonetheless and suggest that Africa needs to take some responsibility for its troubles.