Sewage and Ahmed's refrigerator ...

Frustration was palpable Sunday among participants in the lone L.A. Times Festival of Books panel discussion specifically aimed at the Middle East. The occupation of Iraq, the now 60-year-old conflict between Israel and dispossessed Palestinians, as well as the vilification of Islam and Muslims in the West -- all have made the region more combustible than ever and our own U.S. democracy that much more tenuous.

"We are one or two terrorist attacks away from a police state in this country," journalist and writer Chris Hedges told more than 200 people in a packed UCLA auditorium Sunday for the panel, "Contentious Ground: The Middle East."

Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent who has covered the wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia and El Salvador, decried the "gross mischaracterization of Islam as a religion of violence," which has skewed the U.S. public's perceptions about Muslims, the Arab world and the real sources of instability in the Middle East. Citing his experiences while covering the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s as just one example, he said, "Bosnian Muslims were the only peaceful ones in the conflict."

But what does that have to do with sewage, or a refrigerator?

Bookstore finds in Istanbul

Here in this sprawling Turkish city on the Bosphorus Strait is a wide hilltop boulevard full of pedestrians and trams and lined with bright shops, both local and international. Between the fashion and the food found along this street, Istiklal Caddesi, there are also many bookstores. They sell Turkish- and English-language books, and even Turkish translations of literary classics.

Turkey doesn't have a tradition of public libraries, so bookstores have a greater social role to fill. A wonderful example of such an oasis of erudition is Homer Kitabevi ("kitabevi" means "bookstore" in Turkish), just off Istiklal on Yeni Çarşi Cadessi, a steep, narrow street often crammed with taxis heading uphill.

Homer's owner, Ayşen Boylu, is a former urban archeologist who opened the bookstore 13 years ago; she was working on her PhD and found a dearth of the kind of books she needed. Today, Homer is packed with smart books on history and criticism, architecture and art, literature and religion. Most popular, Boylu says, are books on archeology, history, philosophy and photography. The store's runaway hit? Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." You can see Boylu in her store, and pics of more bookstores in Istanbul, after the jump.

Talking about Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul

I'm staying in Istanbul with my American friend Gloria Fisk, a literature professor who is working on a book about the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and his reception at home and abroad. Last year she explored the ways her college students read the Nobel Prize-winning novelist in an article for n+1 magazine. Here we talk about her perceptions so far:

Q: How has Orhan Pamuk’s work shaped your ideas about Turkey?
Gloria Fisk: I read "The Black Book" years ago, and it created this really vivid image of the city that I always wanted to come visit. I started paying attention to Turkish culture and politics.... [Pamuk's 1994 novel] had these really beautiful images of the city and the characters were really lively. To me it was ... evocative and real. But now I realize that most Turkish readers hate that book and think that that was the beginning of his downfall, and consider readers like me who got sucked into it Orientalist dupes.

Q: In Turkey, Pamuk is not universally adored?
GF: He’s universally hated.

Q: Really?
GF: I’m being a little flip. That’s an exaggeration, but he alienates most Turkish readers, for one reason or another.

Q: Pamuk made people angry by making public comments about the Armenian genocide of 1915-1918, right?
GF: He alienated the ultra-nationalists with that. What didn’t happen was the sort of rallying around him that you might expect from intellectuals and progressives.

Q: Or the secularists?
GF: Definitely not. Many of the most extreme nationalists are also secularists. Because the Turkish republic has secularist foundations, any threat to the nation is perceived as a threat to secularism, too. And any recognition of the Armenian genocide can be understood as a threat to the nation. Pamuk alienated hardline secularists by speaking to a foreign journalist about this shameful event that happened during the formative years of the republic.

Boycotting the Paris book fair over Israel?

A decision to make Israel the guest of honor at the upcoming Paris book fair has angered Muslim countries around the world. On Saturday, Iranian authorities announced that they would boycott the five-day book fair.

Iran wasn't the first country to opt out of the fair. It may not be the last.

The Salon du Livre is a huge event in France and on the international book publishing circuit. The festival, which begins March 14, draws thousands of authors from around the world. (Full disclosure: My wife will be promoting her book at the fair.) This year, about 39 writers from Israel will be honored on the occasion of the Jewish state's 60th anniversary.

"Iran was a regular participant of Paris book fair each year but this time it has refused to take part in the event protesting at the presence of the Zionist regime," Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali Ali-Pour told the Islamic Republic News Agency.

But vehemently anti-Israeli Iran is merely jumping on the bandwagon as far as boycotting the bookworm fete. Lebanon announced Wednesday that it would stay away from the confab. 

"Lebanon will not participate this year in protest at the cultural event's organizers' decision to select Israel as guest of honor," Culture Minister Tarek Mitri announced.

That was a big blow for France, which considers francophilic Lebanon its cultural backyard. On Tuesday, the 50-nation Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization called on all Islamic states to boycott the event.

"The crimes against humanity that Israel is perpetrating in the Palestinian territories ... constitute, in themselves, a strong condemnation of Israel, making it unworthy of being welcomed as a guest of honor at an international book fair," the group said.