Apology is due for the readership that has been quite patient with me after the improper interruption in the life cycle of this box. I found it difficult to write something “appropriate” and cohesive with my last post, and therefore I decided to go to Syria for one day. The two things are not really logically connected but the brief visit was a joy.
And this place is up and running again: expect pictures and an account of events, soon.
Dear Amto,
Its been three long years since I last saw you or spoke to you. This time has been the hardest because you were not here; I know you know that very well but I know it wasnt your choice to leave this world. It was too sudden, dont you think?
Because this is a special day, I decided to write you a letter. You are probably not expecting this, maybe you want me to visit your grave on this anniversary but that is too hard, it hurts too bad Amto, so please accept this letter and give me some time to get accustomed to the idea of your humble abode.
Do you remember our last phone call? I have to tell you I was not going to answer. I knew you dialed my number by mistake, as you used to, but maybe it was divine providence that wanted us to have a final chat that morning, and I answered. Sometimes I think of the way I would have felt if I hadnt answered your call, and later on in the day knew you ceased to be in this physical world. That wouldve been so horrible, I wouldve never forgiven myself for it.
And then that night I was up and I got another call telling me you died.
Maybe I sound really shallow when I say this but I still expect to see you here. That night I didnt cry, I helped mom reach dad because he was away. It was such a grave shock that I was numb and I was going about talking and doing things just like I used to, it hadnt sunk in yet.
Someone has your fridge magnets now, but its someone you love so shes taking care of them. I remember how much fun I would have teasing you by playing with them, and we all remember how much you hated it when someone touched your fridge magnets. Now theyre safe, I dont play with them anymore.
I never really intended for this letter to be so sad but I guess thats not something I can control. I have another bit of news for you, but I know you wont like it. I dont go to your home anymore. Ever since you passed away all things in that city, all the streets we used to walk, the shops we used to visit, the neighbors, and your house; theyre all too gray for me. Your house is empty now, all the tons of souvenirs you had are gone, the furniture is not there anymore, and the plants are dead. They died Amto; I think they missed you too much.
This may sound too hallmark-like to you but I remember you in everything I do. I sometimes even talk like you, and repeat your trademark words; they make me laugh. The days when I would wake up at 2 AM and find myself in tears dont happen that often anymore, I stopped asking my family to bring you back, but sometimes I have the oddest most vivid dreams about you. I dream you were away in another country, and it is so real Amto I cant tell you how real it is, and you come back and live like you used to. I never dream and know it, but the dreams involving you I never forget. Its funny and a little scary to think I really tried calling you after you died, I really did. I guess I really wasnt buying it; maybe this whole thing is a farce anyway, right?
But leave all those things aside. How are you? I know you are in a better place because I know you deserved heaven right here on earth, but never got it. Its natural for me to ask how you are although youre dead to people, youre never dead to me. I dont want you to think I dont love you because I dont visit your house. I dont visit it because it is not your house any longer, it is not the same place you lived in and it is so void without you. I loved all your things because they were related to you, and now that youre gone they have lost their appeal. Dont think I need only this date to remind me of you. I have your picture next to my bed, but not in my purse because it might get stolen and then I would feel so bad. Isnt that the most childish thing youve ever heard of?
There is so much I want to say to you but I will leave it for later, you can read it in my diary, all of it. I want you to know, and I know you do, that I love you more than anything and that I will try not to let you down. Youve always wanted a daughter and considered me your own, and there hasnt been a time that Ive been your daughter more than I am today. It never sunk in, Amto.
Love,
Tololy
“There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless”
So said Jorge Luis Borges, for whom I have been reading these past weeks. The book, Fictions, holds a collection of the author’s works; including short stories and commentaries on imaginary books.
The style of writing, or the translated version of the original writing with what faith it keeps (Translated by Andrew Hurley) , is like nothing I have ever read before. The sheer power of imagination in this collection is overwhelming, in it you live myths, fantastic happenings, metaphysical encounters, and you are almost sure, after a story or two, that there will always be a twist at the end of the account.
A must read for any passionate, this collection is exquisite. I am, for many a great other thing, forever unable to repay the person who gave me this book as a gift. Grazie mille.
The experience of reading this book is physically original. When I started out, the uncanny events thrown my way in every line were a bit too much for my initial taste. The oddity lay in the fact that Borges, brilliant Borges, was relating things that were so supernatural, and he would tell them in such a matter-of-fact way that is quite confusing. Here lies the magic in this book; this is where you meet the man who forgets nothing, the poet who recreated Don Quixote word for word, the lottery in Babylon, and the library that holds all the volumes in the universe.
An ongoing obsession with mirrors, labyrinths, fantasy, and a living play on words and minds; Fictions. One of my favorite excerpts from Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is on the issue of time, and debates on time in the mysterious planet of Tln:
“One of the schools of philosophy on Tln goes so far as to deny the existence of time; it argues that the present is undefined and indefinite, the future has no reality except as present hope, and the past has no reality except as present recollection.
Another school posits that all time has already passed, so that our life is but the crepuscular memory, or crepuscular reflection, doubtlessly distorted and mutilated, of an irrecoverable process. Yet another claims that the history of the universe- and in it, our lives and every faintest detail of our lives- is the handwriting of a subordinate god trying to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe might be compared to those cryptograms in which not all the symbols count, and only what happens every three hundred nights is actually real. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake somewhere else, so that every man is in fact two men. “
Visual: Detail of central panel of The Temptation of St Antony by Bosch, Museu Nacional, Lisbon - Link.
I call for my right not to be considered less open-minded, less sophisticated, and less beautiful because I wear the Hijab (veil).
Despite my frequent warnings, my employers seem to refuse to pay heed to the fact that if they leave me alone in the office, odd things will happen. I did not have orange juice this morning, only apple juice, and naturally this latter substance has little or no effect on me. Therefore, I only set up my camera in different corners of the office and had it take pictures of me and my surroundings. I made “interesting” photocopies, too. To uphold dignity, I can only share this decent picture.
This was presented on November 20th, 2005 as a Creative Writing assignment. The goal of the prompt was to expose traits of a character, set up in an imaginary situation such as a party, a dinner, or any public gathering. Dialogue was not a demand, and it remained for the actions and physical appearance of the character, taken in a snap shot, to reveal its characteristics. It had to be a famous individual.
He sat in a humble fashion, looking at the food that has been so liberally spread before him. His narrow frame and his bones almost portruding from it, all those just sat silently and looked at the food for quite some time.
Much to my amazement, he reached out and grabbed a small piece of bread. He turned it in his hands, cut it up into yet smaller pieces, and then proceeded to putting it between his thin lips. From there the crumb moved downwards to his throat in a most visible manner.
The Mahatma then fixed his eyes on the ground and sat quietly for a while. Then he started chanting in a low voice, and never in English.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time–
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You–
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two–
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
Essendo stata una studentessa alla facolt d’arte nell’Universit di Giordania, specializzazione di Lingua e Letteratura Italiana e Inglese, sono stata colpita dalla notizia che mi arrivata che tutti gli studenti delle doppie specializzazioni (Lingua italiana, spagnola, tedesca- pi inglese) non possono seguire la loro isturzione superiore in inglese in quella universit.
Se accettiamo il fatto che non c’ nessun programma o corso di istruzione superiore in tutta la Giordania nella lingua italiana, non credo che reusciamo ad accettare che noi, che abbiamo studiato la bellissima lingua italiana nel corso di tre or quattro anni, abbiamo gettatto il nostro tempo via, e non possiamo neanche continuare a studiare in inglese.
Non un problema semplice questo, perch ci sono tanti ostacoli nella via di quelli che studiano una lingua straniera, ad eccezione dell’inglese o il francese. Quello che ho citato uno dei problemi, e per me, il pi significativo.
Another issue of Greenpeace Activist News arrived in my inbox on March 2nd, 2006. The issue does not mention the Ocean Defenders campaign but sheds light on the very significant case of nuclear weapons. Interestingly, this comes at a time when the world is overlooking the skeletons in the closet and acting saint-like. It is unfortunate that I cannot re-produce the images in Volume 2, but you can always refer to www.greenpeace.org for further details on activities and campaigns.
For readers in Jordan who are informed about the latest legal proposal to empower corporations to cut down what little trees we have, it would be beneficial to read the last passage carefully. That story was handled under “Annex 1: The trees need your help” , here in Arabic and under
“Baby steps: Second rejection for the kill-the-trees law”.
Following are the main points in Volume 2:
No more Chernobyls
Meet Annya. She is a fifteen year old girl from Belarus, but was unfortunate enough to be born in the fall out zone from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.Annya was born in 1990 in a village highly contaminated by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. A cancerous brain tumour at the age of four marked the end of Annya’s childhood and the beginning of a life of pain and illness.
Annya has spent her life in and out of hospital, every 15 minutes of every night; she must be turned in order to prevent further pain and bedsores.Twenty years after the disaster, Annya, and her parents battle everyday with the cruel and personal legacy of Chernobyl.
For Annya and for the thousands of children like her, you need to speak out and say NO more nuclear, NO more Chernobyls. If you don’t, who will? Call on the UN to stop its promotion of a dirty, dangerous industry and focus its resources exclusively on its critical mission of disarmament and world peace.
Latest successes
After 10 years of difficult, dangerous work, and action by thousands of activists one of the world’s great world’s treasures, the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada has been saved from destruction.
In December and January we opposed France dumping the Clemenceau warship, laden with hazardous waste, in India. After we boarded the ship twice and thousands of people emailed French President Chirac, he abandoned the plan to dump France’s toxic waste in India.
There was more good news for the forests when Brazil announced the protection of 6.4 million hectare (around 16 million acres) conservation area. This is a great victory for the people of the Amazon battling land grabbers, cattle ranchers and loggers.
