Writers reflect on attacks’ effects

Monday, Oct. 29, 2001 | 9:34 a.m.

Before landing in Las Vegas last year, African writers Wole Soyinka and Syl Cheney-Coker had traveled the world for decades, fleeing the same sort of terrorism and violence in their home countries that Americans are facing for the first time.

"Sadly, tragically, Americans are now dealing with what we've been dealing with in Africa for years -- the effects of terrorism on innocent people," Cheney-Coker said in a recent interview.

Cheney-Coker, who left his native Sierra Leone to escape a civil war in 1997, was the first writer to participate in the City of Asylum program in Las Vegas, which provides a safe place for writers who face persecution in their countries.

Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. He now holds the new Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He also has held positions at Yale, Cornell and Harvard universities.

The two have more than 20 books published between them: Soyinka in drama, essays and poetry, and Cheney-Coker in fiction and poetry.

Soyinka has just returned from a visit to his native Nigeria, where Muslim extremists had slaughtered hundreds in an uprising sparked by a protest against the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.

"The World Trade Center attack has fueled a conflict that was already growing during the last year or so between Islamic religious fanatics in Nigeria and everybody else," said Soyinka, who fled Nigeria in 1994 to escape house arrest from Gen. Sani Abacha's military government.

Soyinka said that what is happening in Nigeria should serve as a caution to the United States and the rest of the world.

"We must not underestimate the power of fanaticism," he said.

"Religious fundamentalism and its terrorism are spreading. There is a minority who feel that they are the chosen people and have no basic respect for the rest of humanity. And many nations are seeing this more than the U.S."

Cheney-Coker cautioned that the response to terrorism should be precise and well organized.

"Throughout the Arab world, there will be a lot of uneasiness among extremists if they feel that America is a blind giant lashing out because it feels humiliated," he said.

"We cannot predict the response of these people, and this could come back to haunt America afterward," Cheney-Coker said.

"The ironic thing is that many innocent people died in unspeakable acts of terror throughout the Third World during the Cold War, all because of a conflict between Washington and Moscow. This includes the war in El Salvador and the Pinochet years in Chile. American people never felt the effects of this.

"Now, though the monsters who did what happened back East must be punished, we must also be careful not to attack innocent people."

Soyinka said that one way of combating religious fundamentalism is through dialogue -- not between governments, but between the people of different countries.

"Conflict is due to a lack of empathy and understanding. This can be addressed by having people of culture from different parts of the world that are in conflict meet and confront one another," he said.

The Nigerian writer noted that a gathering of American and Arab poets was canceled at Columbia University after the attacks.

"This was an unfortunate decision, since this meeting could have been very important for the people of both cultures to understand each other better -- especially on American soil."

When asked about President Bush's surprise at anti-U.S. feelings in the Arab world, Soyinka said, "Americans just do not know the world. It is not just the president. It is the people in general."

The Nobel laureate said he was pleased by the Bush administration's treatment of Arab-Americans after Sept. 11.

"There is an obvious conscious effort to stamp out hate crimes and to assure all Americans that this not an attack on a particular religion or people. This is very positive."

Cheney-Coker is finishing a novel and a collection of poetry during his stay in Las Vegas under the umbrella of the Paris-based International Parliament of Writers. He said that Americans may find new importance in poetry after the attacks.

"Next to religion, poetry expresses how real and vulnerable the human psyche is," he said. "This may be very useful to the American people right now -- even in Las Vegas."