Reconsidering Khudair Mery

‘To write is certainly not to impose a form (of expression) on the matter of lived experience…Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any liveable or lived experience. Writing is inseparable from becoming: in writing, one becomes-woman, becomes-animal or vegetable, becomes-molecule to the point of becoming-imperceptible.’ (Gilles Deleuze, ‘Literature and Life’)

With this quote of Deleuze today's Khudair Mery article in Al-Sabah newspaper started. Mery is writing about writing. I must declare here that I never had read anything about Gilles Deleuze before today. Thank you Khudair Mery for this clever article. For this philosophy that we need in our daily life. Because of you I will start buying Al-Sabah more and more. 

Another article tells about Khudair Mery trial to direct a theatrical piece of Jean Genet.

Today's Al-Sabah issue was remarkably mentioning the name "psychiatry" here and there. 

Labua Arab (Labua means literally: Lioness; and Arab means Arab), a new Iraqi actress was stating that: "Art had stolen me from psychiatry!"

In the article she declared her early dream to be a psychiatrist so that she can understand people. 

An article entitled: "declarations of a mentally ill" written by Ali Daneef Hasan, talks about people gathering one morning in Iraq outside a governmental department for some papers to fix, and as they were waiting a man among them declared that he is a mentally ill patient and that one must admit this and not be shy of it. Not only that but he said that he thinks that all of the Iraqis are mentally ill and most admit this to feel more secure and healthy. He added that when he started declaring his mental illness in public he started to feel much better and balanced. He said pointing to a clerk in that governmental department: "That clerk had screamed in my face and threw my papers in my face but I forgive him because I know that he is a mentally ill patient."

The article was cute and clever.

Next to the article is a picture of a Chinese man standing on his head, on a nail!

 Ali Shaye wrote an article entitled: "Psychological Needs" and is talking about those patients whose families leave them at the gates of one of Baghdad mental hospitals. Their family disappear after leaving them. Next to the article is a caricature by Khudair Al-Himyari showing a "punishment" coming to the only working clerk among the other sleeping clerks, a thing that is real and repetitive in governmental departments.
 

 Donald Rumsfeld's "Known and Unknown: A Memoir" is being translated in a series of articles since some time in Al-Sabah. Today was talking about the 1^st of May 2003, the day of the end of the military operation in Iraq.

 There were many other interesting articles like the one about sculptures made from the previous wars' waste products. 

 Those were interesting but of course not.... cute!