FREELANCE 

" Faith and reason" are the slippery catch words at PEN American Center's Festival of International Literature this week. More than sixty staged discussions – about exile, translation, religion, the internet - are to take place around New York. The main event of the week is a reading at Town Hall by some of the festival's more recognizable participants. More than a thousand spectators have packed into the hall. As they step on to the stage, the writers are greeted like populists at a union rally. PEN'S efforts to ease the plight of government- silenced writers might explain the crowd's congratulatory mood. We want to cheer world literature, and we are immediately obliged.
   "Thank God I'm an atheist", declares Nadine Gordimer in a written message delivered by Salman Rushdie, the driving force behind the festival. Toni Morrison, reading a preacher's sermon from her novel Paradise, instructs us that "love is God". The Nicaraguan writer, Gioconda Belli has the audience chuckling at the foolishness of the faithful with a quaint story about a "sweating clay Virgin" in Managua. Recalling his visits with ultra Orthodox Jewish settlers in the West Bank in the 1980s, the Israeli novelist David Grossman worries that while we "debate and doubt", the fanatics will overtake us. Then the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury takes his place on the podium and announces that he is pulling out of a forthcoming event with Grossman because the Israeli government is listed as a co-sponsor. "To preserve my integrity as a writer, I cannot participate in events sponsored by any government."
  This is greeted with thunderous applause, spiced with whistles and hoots of approval. As usual with matters pertaining to Israelis and Arabs, I am thrown queasily back to the Book of Judges with its tales of routs and massacres that, stammering in Hebrew, I used to repeat to my Holocaust-ravaged teachers in Brooklyn. A strange paralysis comes over me. If I refrain from applauding, I imagine, I'll appear to be on the side of those who support Israel no matter what. If I do applaud, who knows what vindictive forces I'll be joining. Maybe the cheers are no more than a naive wish by the audience to feel that literature and the cause of the dispossessed are the same. Yet why so much glee for what, at the very least, is a setback for a festival that seeks to promote international fellowship?
A more reasonable response would be one of disappointment. Khoury's novel Gate of the Sun (reviewed in the TLS of March 17) is about the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel in 1948 and takes place in a refugee camp. "A Dialogue on Literature and Peace" is the name of the event from which he has excused himself. Leaving the stage, he seems more sad than triumphant.
   After the reading, I have coffee with Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian participant in the festival, whom I have befriended. "My mother is an actress", he tells me. "My father was a movie director. We had a bohemian life in Damascus, completely non-religious." When Ammar came to the US as a student in the late 1980s, he joined a mosque, memorized the Koran and dropped out of college. "I became a fundamentalist. It was more psychological than political for me, a way out of depression. You snatch from reality an instant sense of belonging. It's like a package deal - history, tradition and authenticity, all for the price of one."

  In 1989 he joined in the denunciations of  The Satanic Verses, but broke with his co- religionists by insisting that the fatwa on  Rushdie took the insult too far. Now Ammar describes himself as a "liberal reformist". He  lives in Washington, DC, having been granted asylum after publishing an article that was critical of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Among his American ventures is a publishing company that translates Western classical writers, such as John Locke, into Arabic. "In Damascus people think I work for the CIA."
   I wonder aloud if Khoury's announcement was an act of self-protection from those who might brand him a traitor or worse for consorting with the enemy. Ammar seems to think this is the case. ."Strictly speaking, it's illegal for a Lebanese to socialize with an Israeli." Often the law is overlooked. "But the involvement of the Israeli government pushed it into an impossible realm for Khoury. No Arab intellectual would defend him. He would be completely trashed."
   The following day, I reach Khoury by phone. He is indignant at PEN for failing to advise him of "the situation" sooner. "I asked them to remove Israel's name from the event. They assured me they would, but then informed me that it was too late. I felt as if I'd been trapped." Would appearing with Grossman place him in physical danger? "No. This is a personal position." He repeats his policy of refusing sponsor-ship from any government. I point out that seven countries, aside from Israel, are listed as financial supporters of the festival (Norway, Sweden, Britain, Australia, Hungary, the Netherlands and Canada). Surely their contributions helped to pay for the event at Town Hall, which he took part in. "I'm amazed PEN accepts money from them", says Khoury. He adds: "Mr. Grossman's entire trip has been paid for by Israel. You should ask him why he takes money from a government he criticizes".
    A few hours later I learn that the writer Andre Aciman, in protest against Khoury's  withdrawal, has himself pulled out of an entirely different event - one in which Khoury was set to take part. An Alexandrian-born Jew, Aciman and his family were expelled from Egypt in 1965. He too is furious with PEN - for not distancing itself from Khoury's position and not standing up for its "so-called multicultural" principles. "This festival is supposed to be like the Olympic Games", Aciman says.
 "Differences are set aside for a week, men of letters agree to an unofficial truce. Khoury is perfectly within his rights not to want to have the word Israel associated with his name. But if he feared repercussions from participating in the event, he could have declined to show up. For PEN to allow itself to be used for this kind of publicity, with cameras rolling... it's a manipulation of the stage PEN offers".
   Finally, it is time for the declared event",' renamed "A Conversation with David Grossman". Arriving at the Center for Jewish History on West 16th Street, I am obliged to empty my pockets and pass through a metal detector as if preparing to board a plane. The interviewer is mild. There is no danger of disagreement. There are about fifty people in the audience, and none of them seems aware of the dust-up that preceded the evening.

       MICHAEL GREENBERG