Reading Nedjma

I was walking with my friends in central Baghdad, we passed by a Falcon for sale. He is tied by his legs to the cage. He seemed confused of his surroundings.  

 Looking at his constraints every now and then.

We went walking and reached some old quarter in which the shops were closed, and it was so neglected.

Now I am having a rest after a long sieste that left me with that lovable cloud-like feeling in your head. It is that effect that comes when the headache goes by, leaving that emptiness, that desert, those mountainous areas where wind alone travels. I am drinking a mug of black tea and have just turned the T.V. TV5Monde shows a documentary on Liban Civil War. La classe !!

 An old footage from that era shows a warrior presenting his colleagues, he was asking them each about his job or his diplomas: a doctor, an engineer, a civil engineer, an orthopedic, a lawyer, a technician, a doctor, etc...

I think the idea was to show that these are not ignorant people, and that the cause of their holding guns was justified.

My black tea mug is about to be empty again, so, I will end this evening by reading Nedjma, that Algerian novel written by Kateb Yacine. A friend of mine had found me two translated versions and he burrowed me the two of them.

 The family tree of the protagonists is so complex. You do know easily who is the father of who, and that was made deliberately by Yacine. Nedjma herself seems to be the daughter of  French woman who was raped by an two Algerian men in a mountain. On of the men then killed the other. Seems so ... so ...

Violence and Sex... it seems that Freud was (a little) right.

My clinic in Kerbala is closed since months and I have plenty of empty prescription papers. I use my prescription unused papers to write some notes from Nedjma.

... and I think about the cause of life. The aim. The way of life.

A French Kiss.. to my Wife

I came today to home after three days at work. At the site of the work I have to spend nights at a hotel, because the logement in the University is not enough for all the staff. So, I came back today and was on my way to the market in my quarter to buy a kilo of oranges when I saw one my neighbours who started asking me thinks like:

"How many days are you spending there in your work? Are you spending your days good there?"

And then soon followed:

"Why don't you marry? You need to marry soon. This is important."

If he would repeat these silly remarks I would ask him:

"Did I bring prostitutes to the neighbourhood and worried you? Did I looked at your wife? At your daughter? If the answer is no, then please do not ask me again why I don't marry, this is my business."


I was thinking about that when in the T.V. they said that in Lebanon there is a movement towards the support of Civil Marriage. And I liked that much !!!

I really love Lebanon..




And France.

What I am doing here in Iraq???

Stick in the Mud

"You know how everyone's always saying seize the moment? I don't know, I'm kind of thinking it's the other way around, you know, like the moment seizes us."

To be efficient in a language one needs to practice it. Comprehension is much easier than production, thus when a child grows up he understands many words before he can produce a single one. Although the child at the age of one year can say about three words, usually: Mama, Baba, Dada, he usually can understand about a hundred words. 

I was watching the movie BOYHOOD when I heard that idiom: STICK IN THE MUD. It was Samantha saying to her brother ehh, what was his name? Marion? Not Malcolm. I will check in the net wait.

Mason ! 

Do you forget names this fast like me? I just saw the movie before minutes!!

So it was Samantha, didn't forgot her name because he mother used to call her Sam!!, asking Mason why he is always a stick in the mud. I liked that idiom and I thought, before I could be sure of its meaning, that I am also a stick in the mud. So I looked in my mobile English-Arabic dictionary which says that this idiom means being ashamed. I knew there was something wrong with that translation so I stopped the movie and searched the google to find better dictionaries explaining the idiom: being old fashioned, slow, unprogressive  !!

Yeah, I am kind of that. ... Maybe..

I started thinking about my current situation because when I saw how life in America look like, I always compare to how I am spending my time here in Iraq.

I am not doing much to change my situation. I am just living a tasteless life. Not thinking about getting married here, because I see that life is not worthy to start a family in it. But what if I find a girl like this one that Mason had found?













She told him:

"You know how everyone's always saying seize the moment? I don't know, I'm kind of thinking it's the other way around, you know, like the moment seizes us."


I am afraid that the movie will end while I,
Am stick in the Mud