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On Czech journalism's front lines

Cyril Bumbálek fuses reporting with scholarship on the Middle East

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Iran expert Cyril Bumbálek explored the liberal student underground of Tehran over the course of six months.
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COURTESY PHOTO
Shiite mullahs beat the traffic on a motorcycle in Qom, one of Iran's holiest cities.
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The Bumbálek file

Born: Jan. 29, 1980, in Prague
Positions held: Since September 2006: World news editor, Deníky.
Since 2004: Member and research fellow, Association for International Affairs. In 2006: Responsible for international migration issues at the Interior Ministry. Ongoing: Contributor to Czech BBC, Czech radio, Czech TV
Education: Ph.D. anticipated in History and Cultures of Asian and African Countries; master's degree in law, Charles University; master's degree in Arabic, and in History and Cultures of Islamic Countries
Languages: English and Czech; some German, Farsi and Arabic

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, a floodgate opened in academia.
Classrooms across the world heaved with students attempting to understand the events playing out on television screens from Brno to Bangkok. With Middle Eastern studies programs stretched to capacity, a new generation of scholars in the field was born.
Cyril Bumbálek, 27, stands on the front lines of this generation. On the cusp of receiving his doctorate from Charles University, he is one of the country’s few experts in the Middle East, especially contemporary Iran. His specialized knowledge is now in high demand as the government mulls hosting a U.S. radar base intended to counter potential threats from nuclear powers in the region.
Bumbálek is acutely aware of his role, not only as an academic, but as a person uniquely positioned to share knowledge of a part of the world remote from the spires of Prague.
In addition to research and teaching, he works as a journalist for the Deníky newspapers in the Czech Republic and may soon report solely on the Middle East — a position afforded to few journalists here.
“It’s a big privilege in the Czech Republic,”  says Bumbálek, a spirited and articulate storyteller who discusses his experiences in an Old Town café. “To be academic is to be an ascetic. ... For me it’s not acceptable.”
“If I’m an expert on Iran, or if someone sees me as an expert on Iran, it’s my obligation to help explain what’s going on there, not just in scientific journals,” he says.
Bumbálek trained his sights on the Middle East long before 2001. At the age of 15, he began studying Arabic at the state language school after traveling to Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia. These places offered a glimpse into cultures far different from Prague, where his family has been rooted for generations.
After moving from Arabic to Farsi, a “far easier” language to learn, Bumbálek flew to Iran in 2004 to spend two terms at the University of Tehran, where he first experienced daily life in the capital.
For the first several months, he slept in the guest room of a liberal “near atheist” family in the north of the city. All but one of the family’s six children lived abroad. This modern family stood in contrast to neighbors practicing a very different lifestyle, a comparison attesting to the varied “colorful culture” of today’s Iran.
One neighbor married one wife, then married his secretary, Bumbálek says. The arrangement is only legal when there’s an agreement in the first marriage contract, he says. The wives fought bitterly each night, their voices carrying through the walls.
During the second half of his stay, Bumbálek traded conventional domestic life for student apartments on campus, one of the few places where friends can congregate in public.
“People are very suspicious, so it’s hard to start a conversation about politics on the street or in a restaurant,” he says.  In the courtyard of the dormitories, a chance meeting with a whiskered iconoclast introduced him to the music underground.
“Once I saw a student with long hair and a big beard. I went to talk to him,” Bumbálek says. “He offered for me to visit some friends; they were trying to have a rock band. His favorite band was Led Zeppelin.” Music of all kinds is easy enough to access in Iran, Bumbálek says, despite Western music being forbidden.
He never did hear them play. Concertgoers can face penalties under Sharia law. In early August this year, for instance, police near Tehran reportedly detained more than 200 so-called Satanists, including rock and rap performers, at an illegal rave organized over the Internet.
Bumbálek, who has returned to Iran repeatedly since he left in 2005, has watched the culture shed some conservatism. Young women’s headscarves are moving further up their scalps. Couples hold hands in public. Bands like Led Zeppelin garner appreciation, though most people still have images of the West skewed by satellite broadcasts.
Bumbálek once was invited to a family dinner, where, to make him more comfortable, they put on what they thought typified Western programming.
“They switched on a porno channel,” he says, laughing. “They think it’s our culture.”
Treading dangerous ground
Like many of his peers, Bumbálek laments the dearth of in-depth international reporting in Czech media.
“If there are Czech people connected to some event, there’s a reason to write about it,” he says. Otherwise, it can be difficult to find subjects in places of international interest. In an effort to help remedy this, Bumbálek recently traveled to Afghanistan to meet Czech officials and nongovernmental workers over a two-week period in October.
“It’s important to see this atmosphere, the life of people, to see the prospects of the country. What are the basic needs of people? What do they think about the soldiers?” he asks.
Bumbálek first glimpsed Kabul from the windows of a heavily armored vehicle driven by bodyguards from the Czech Embassy. The men, whom he had met while they played volleyball at a NATO field hospital near Kabul airport, pointed their guns from inside the vehicle as they crept into the darkened city.
“The weather was like a sandstorm,” Bumbálek says. “Most of the city was in ruins. It was strange to see the dust sinking into darkness without electricity. People were shadows in the street.”
He left his Kabul hotel shortly thereafter, braving the chaos and tension surrounding a square packed with minibuses that would take him outside the city. Such intersections were prime target for bombers, contributing to a constant feeling of danger.
That feeling followed him onto the minibus.
“I was with one passenger who said he was an ex-Taliban supporter. He said after the invasion [of allied forces] the people from the village expelled him because he was from the Taliban.”
The man told him that he had then gone to a Quranic school in Pakistan, and was finally returning home. Then he gestured to nondescript brush outside the bus window.
“I need to show you this place where we murdered these two journalists!” the man said with a hint of mischief. Two Germans were killed in the region in early October.
“It’s a good thing you’re not a journalist.”
Crazy presidents
In his work as both a journalist and academic, Bumbálek speaks with an authority borne of such experiences. He is enthusiastic and outspoken.
“[Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is a crazy president,” he says plainly. People in the West make fun of Ahmadinejad, calling him a chimpanzee — in Iran, Bumbálek says, people do the same.
“He’s finished. He’s extremely unpopular abroad and also in Iran.”
The president’s platform of economic reforms has already fallen flat, Bumbálek says. “Now everyone knows he is a liar.”
He also questions the prospect of a nuclear threat from Iran. “According to my view, it’s not imminent. It’s not realistic.”
Regardless, Bumbálek says he would “strongly support” the radar base, given some conditions — like the United States supporting villages in the region, instead of the Czech government.
“We have to stay with the West, with the United States. The Middle East policy of George Bush is very bad, but he’s not the only American politician,” he says.
As for Bumbálek himself, he too remains firmly grounded in the West.
“Some [scholars] study Arabic and become Arabs. It’s not the case with me,” he says. “The more I study, the more European I feel. European values are what I want.”

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com


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