Skies

Contemporary Buses in Baghdad

2012-02-12T05:07:00.000-08:00

Before 1991 there were buses in Baghdad that got numbers. Theygot fixed hours and destinations. Nowadays, we don't have buses, we gotminibuses. We got minibuses with no numbers nor fixed anything. The minibuseshave no mark nor name. You must ask the driver with a loud voice: "Whereto?" and he will answer you with a shout the destination he is heading to.

Yesterday the mini-bus was empty and the driver was standingfar shouting the name of the quarter. The wind was cold and dry.

In the Search of an Individuality

2012-01-09T08:06:00.000-08:00

What I have learned from reading a dossier about Najeeb Mahfouz is that he used to say: "I have to work now" when he wants tospend time alone with his-self. With his-self, there were almost always papers,to read, or to write. But sometimes, the logic says, there were no papers, yetstill, he was working.

The privacy is something not that respected in our part ofthe world. I remember Orhan Pamuk's novel "Snow" when the journalistKa who came from Frankfort, found it shocking how women lack privacy in thatTurkish village, even when they had committed suicide.

Fawzi Kareem is an Iraqi poet writing a weekly column inAl-Mada Newspaper, my favorite newspaper. His column is entitled: "Fromthe Ivory Tower". He lives in Europe. He wrote one of the most beautifulintegrated books about classical European music. The poly-harmonic Europeanclassical music didn't appeal to our side of the earth. Our Arabic music ismono-harmonic, simple, and repetitive. Does this mean that we don't likediversity? Does this mean that we fear from strangers?

Let us go back to Fawzi Kareem and his Ivory Tower in whichhe wrote about how one of the paintings of John Martin entered to the unconsciousof Berlioz as Berlioz relate his dream in his diary. Or about Ezra Poundletters to his parents. Or why does Goya was the subject of many films andoperas. Of course you must imagine an Iraqi, a simple Iraqi living incontemporary Iraq with all its problems reading this in a bus, a café, or latein the evening after his siesta sitting with a cup of tea in his humblelodgment. Does that seem satirical?

Fawzi Kareem had visited Iraq lately and started writingfrom inside, from within. "Lord had deposited me a moon in Baghdad"is the title of his articles written from within and today was article no. 3. Intoday article he wrote about how talking about explosions is matter discussed asa daily routine while also discussing what to eat as a lunch that same day. Theelectricity problem is that background of course. I will go back to "Lordhad deposited me a moon in Baghdad part 1" and share with you thefollowing lines:

"We must not trust our talent, our conscious, ourculture, our spiritual upbringing. How can we trust, we that were born andgrown up and started writing in a tunnel of an era that is very dim, verydelusional, and very harsh in crushing the human individualism. The despoticstate wants to define the "good citizen" as it likes. The despoticstate doesn't want a single human being to enjoy his individualism. The poetcomes out form this individualism"

Latifa Al-Dulaimi had written one of those past days aboutthe opening of the first school in Basra in 1904-1909. She wrote about that managerwhose name was given later to the school who was so happy at the day of itsopening which had been postponed for some time back then. He brought 2000 nightingalesin cages on that same day of the opening and set them free from the school'ssquare. They distributed on the nearby orchards. She compares that way ofcelebrating an event with today's Iraqi methods of celebrating importantevents.

Daizi Al-Ameer used to write about daily trivial things inlovable short stories. I remember reading for her a story about packing a bagfor travelling and the ideas that came in the mind at that particular time. In today's issue of Al-Mada Newspaper a writernamed: Ali Hassan Fawaz wrote about her, or more correctly, about forgettingher, because she is really forgotten. He questions why did we forget her, andher writings, she, the Iraqi lady who wrote since the 60s of the previouscentury. He thinks that we forgot her because we are taken by ideologies. Trivialhuman things are not our business. He said in a line that I most like that:"the old overcoat had stopped emitting birds and fairies."

He had put the word overcoat between brackets, in anallusion to Gogol's short story from which, Dostoevsky claimed once, that allthe Russian short stories, and their writers, came.

(" Are you aware who you're talking to? Do you realizewho is standing before you? I'm asking you a question: do you hear me?" atthis point he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a pitch thatanyone, not only Akaky Akakievich, would have been quite terrified. AkakyAkakievich was paralyzed with terror, and lurched backwards, shaking from headto toe, quite unable to remain on his feet: if two attendants had not run up atthat point and supported him he would have fallen flat on his face. He wascarried out almost unconscious. The important personage, delighted with theeffect of his words, which had surpassed his expectations, and quiteintoxicated with the thought that his word alone could brighten a person out ofhis senses. Gave his friend a sideway look to see how this was being received andnoted not without gratification that his friend was in a most precarious stateand was even beginning himself to show signs of fear.")

Akaky Akakievich just came to this important personage toask him to help him find his lost overcoat in the cold winter of St. Petersburg.Akaky Akakievich is an example of an individual in front of … in front of…. what?… the harsh superego?...

He told me that I should read Dostoevsky. He repeated thatfew times. Today, he showed me a book about "Psychoanalysis ofLiterature" and as I opened it I read Freud quoted about Dostoevsky'sfather being killed, and about one of Dostoevsky's stories "The BrothersKaramazov" when one of the brothers kill their father. Freud wrote aboutDostoevsky's fainting attacks (epilepsy?).

Going back to a reminder of the Russian literature hadfitted-in in these cold days here in Baghdad. Gogol's overcoat reminded me ofthe 90s of the previous century when I was growing upward, and my family didn'thave the money to buy me a new trousers each year. I remember that Jeans that Iused to tilt down my waist every time I encounter a person in the street sothat to hide my socks. I now remember, smilingly, that I had yellow socks whichwere phosphorous. I suspect that two girls, in my college, used to laugh at thecolor of my socks.

The Exact Distance of a Tank, Shooting at You

2011-12-26T12:44:00.000-08:00

Street shepherds and butchers are gathering in the sidewaysince months. I don't know if there are still slaughterhouses in modern Iraq. Slayingsheep occur as a daily routine in the sideway in our neighborhood.

There is a campaign of making Baghdad beautiful by buildingfountains and making gardens in some sideways. Yesterday, a new work of GhaniHiqmat, the deceased, has been accomplished in the center of Baghdad entitled:the magical lantern, which relates to a story from "A Thousand Nights anda Night".

As far as I know, no driving license has been issued since2003 in Iraq. Today I was in a bus reading about "Nairn TransportCo." when a passenger in our bus asked the bus driver to stop just at thestart of a bridge in a highway. The bus driver hit the break with his feet asif pressing on a cockroach and we stop just few centimeters from a taxi driverwho was out of his car for unclear reason at the mouth of the bridge. "Youwas about to hit me idiot" the taxi driver yelled. "Learn to chooseyour words," murmured our bus driver with anger. The taxi driver wentinside his taxi and yelled: "ZMAL (=jackass)" and hit the benzenepedal with his feet as if killing a roach.

I read from my newspaper that Nairn Transport Co worked inIraq from 1920 till 1960. They were taking passengers between Baghdad,Damascus, Beyrouth and Haifa. Because of the Bedouins that were attacking thebuses frequently every traveler need to know that his "LIFE ASSURANCE ISCANCELLED" during his trip with the Co.

Agatha Christie had travelled in that same Co. when was inour area for some period.

I then read about Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, the Iraqi poet. EveryIraqi knew that Al-Sayyab spent the last days of his life diseased in ahospital in Kuwait. Today I read why he ended in Kuwait. A poet from Kuwait hadcome to Iraq to visit his friend, Al-Sayyab. That poet who came from Kuwait wassurprised by the ignorance and the dirtiness of the Iraqi hospital. He managedto transfer Al-Sayyab to a Kuwaiti hospital with the agreement of the Kuwaiti governmentto help him. That was in 1964.

In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait. I still remember the nearbycarpenter who brought a box full of video cassettes from Kuwait. I know aperson who filled his garden with air-conditioners brought from Kuwait. Myfather managed to buy us a video recorder. We burrowed some of the video tapesfrom the carpenter. All were Indian movies. There was no subtitle. We understandnothing from the films yet, we bought a half-dozen of video tapes. My fatherwas very anxious that a movie might contain a romantic scene that reveals somepart of a female body. I managed to find some minutes of romance in one of themovies which were a big addition to my romantic experience and an enrichment tomy fantasies.

I reached my destination, went out of the bus, and knew thatI had to wait for a while. I managed to find a place where I can wait. A manjoined me. We talked for few minutes then there was a silence. Suddenly hesmiled and asked: "How can you calculate the distance between yourself anda tank in front of you in a battle field?"

You might think that there was a context that brought thatquestion. Well, if there is a context then I don't know it. We didn't talkabout tank, bombs, nor anything related to war before that man asked me thequestion. I drew a smile of surprise on my face, a smile that I wanted it tosay: "how much you are informed man. I wanna know. I wanna know how tocalculate the exact distance between me and the tank that is shooting meplease!!!". I asked the man: "How can I know the distance?".With a glorious smile the man drew his left sleeve up and held his watch in hisright hand and said: "you keep looking that the tank. The minute you seeit firing you start counting seconds till you hear the sound of the firing. Thenyou multiply the number of seconds by ### (I forgot the number). It will beexactly the distance in meters between you and the tank in front of you."

Exceptionally Difficult Days for Ordinary Simple People

2011-12-25T15:59:00.000-08:00

Our days in Baghdad are difficult. Here is a diary of me, with my neighbors and friends, in the last few days:

21^stDecember 2011, Wednesday night, Baghdad

Ijust reached home in the evening after three days at the working place. I gotno electricity. With the help of the hand light I saw that I got bread, and ahalf cabbage that had lost its water. I empathized with the cabbage.

22^ndDecember 2011, Thursday, Baghdad
I wanted the last day newspaper but the sellerdidn't have it. My neighbor heard me as he was standing near. He is a historyteacher and a friend of my father. He had that last day's issue deep in his bigbag which is full of papers. He gave it to me along with its supplement. Thesupplement was about Isabelle Ellindi. I promised to bring him back thenewspaper that same evening. I knew about the explosions in the bus while goingback to home. The road to our area was blocked. I concluded that the explosionswere so severe and multiple that they started blocking roads. A car ban mightoccur. I completed the way to my home walking.

Ididn't like to go inside immediately. A neighbor who had witnessed the periodwhen Iraq was a kingdom was there. He approached me and started one of hisstories:

"Godknows I am frank my son. One day – he took a deep breath, eyes fixed at acorner in our neighborhood- one day my son I went out of my home and saw goldenbracelet. I saw it there – he pointed at that same spot he is fixing his eyeson-. I took it, felt how heavy it was. I looked around. Nobody was there and Istarted to sweat and tremble. I wanted to go back inside home but I found it sodifficult. My thighs didn't carry me and I run short of breath. I finally wentin and hide it in my room. I didn't tell my wife. I brought a piece of paperand wrote a confession of what happened and registered the date and signed. Iwaited for days to hear if any neighbor had lost something but no news wasthere. My wife started question the cause of my lack of speech. She was a goodwoman and didn't have the habit of insisting. I got a friend who was a bigsoldier in the army so I headed to his working place and confessed to him. He advisedme to visit another friend of ours who is a goldsmith. Trembling I confessed tomy wife, took the bracelet and headed to my friend. When the heavy bracelet wasin my pocket, I felt guilty, like everyone sees me as guilty, I felt as ifcarrying a rocket in my pocket and that that rocket might shoot itself at anyminute. I reached my friend the goldsmith and told him a lie: "friend, a relative of mine is a widow,she got this golden piece, she want to mortgage it for me for 50,000 ID, I cameto seek your advice." My friend the goldsmith smiled as he took the piecein his hands and showed me that it is not gold. He proved that to me byapplying it to fire. By applying it to fire it becomes black. I am telling youthis story my son to tell you how much frightened and confused I was. How muchguilty I was. I am asking you and myself, how come a man can put bombs in aschool of children, or in any civilian place and explode it to kill us? How canhis thighs carry him? How can he withstand guilt? I don't understand."

The old man left, I opened the newspaper andread about years of war and violence in Chili related by one of its giftedladies.

23^rd December 2011, Friday, Baghdad

My friend and neighbor called me early in themorning and offered me to accompany him in a tour in central Baghdad. Hereassured my worries about block road or car bans. I like my neighbor, I likecentral Baghdad, and logically, all of our days in Baghdad are dangerous so, nothingis special about a day after explosion. I agreed.

In the bus he told me this story: "WhenI was a college, I had a strange friend. He got many ideas, beautiful ideasthat sometimes seem strange. We ended friends and I respected the way of histhinking although I didn't understand it all the times. He came one day with anobvious small swelling in his pocket. That particular day his movements wererefined paying attention not to move a rough movement. I asked him, since I amhis friend, about what is in his pocket. He took it out: it was an egg!!! ANEGG!!! Feeling confused I asked him: but what it is for? He answered: I want toknow whether I can take care of a delicate thing in my pocket not to be brokenfor a whole long day of studying in the college. "

I like my neighbor a lot. He teaches me to cooksometimes. He had taught me many things. He was a soldier in the Iraqi army inthe 1980s war and he got many memories. We were walking today in centralBaghdad when he was happily surprised to see a DVD copy of a movie of SofiaLoren.

"SUNFLOWER, what amemory," he started to tell me the story while the DVD was now in hishands, "in 1980, and for few days before the Iraq-Iran war had started, inCinema Al-Khayam, they started to show this film. I saw it. It is about howSofia Loren married that guy, then after just few days the World-War started.She asked him to play the role of a madman so that the Italian army doesn'ttake him from her. They made a scene in the center of their city, her husbandrunning after her with a knife. They took him in an asylum and monitored him,while she was visiting him, though an opening in the door, and they saw themmaking love. The psychiatrist decided that he is sound and sane and they tookhim to fight. She gave him a coat. A thick one for he was going to fight theRussians in Russia. He went. In Russia, the Italian army failed. They were deadbut he was saved by a lady, a Russian lady that dragged him to her lodgmentfrom his feet. He married that Russian. Sofia Loren kept waiting for him. Thenshe went to Russian and found out his wife and his daughter. She came back toItaly. He, while under the Communist regime, was banned from travelling outsideRussia. He started to ask the governmental institutes to let him go away. Itwas a film about war. The film was banned to be shown in Iraq just after thevery first days of Iraq-Iran war. It is just today that I see it in a CD. Whata coincident. The film got wonderful music that you must here."

We bought black partridge since hepromised to show me how to roast it. After the lunch we heard together themusic of the introduction of the film. An Iraqi poet had said once: "inIraq, death is the rule, life is the exception." I had put that poet'ssaying in my memory. My neighbors' experiences and memories were alsointegrated in me.

26December 2011 00:32

I reached Iraq before 2-3 months Iain't sure since I didn't count them. I received my first salary before days.When I reached home, I headed to the local electricity supplier and asked himto register me. He asked me to bring him a 150 meters wire of 2.5 width. Aftersome expected obstacles, electricity reached my home. When it was night andsleep didn't come easily I remembered that I got a copy of a movie in mycomputer. A friend in Kerbala gave me a downloaded copy of the 1998 movie"Patch Adams" which is based on a true story. The movie starts with a sky view of a forestin the winter. A piano is being played wisely slow and simple. The followingwords by the sound of Robin Williams (Patch Adams) are uttered calmly:

"All of life is a cominghome. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all ofus. All the restless hearts in the world, all are trying to find a way home. Itis hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days ina driving snow, you don't know if you are walking in circles. The heaviness ofyour legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small youcan feel, and how far away home can be. Home. The dictionary defines it as botha place of origin and a goal or a destination. "

After all, I am writing all this,with the tension in the Iraqi political scene in my preconsious, linked to the lastThursday explosions. If I don't like to state that "I am notfrightened", then let me put it as "I don't feel enough secure."Still, I got a generous friend in Kerbala who gives me treasures like"Patch Adams" movie. I got Isabelle Ellendi telling me about how itwas difficult in Chili. I got my neighbors and their memories: one about theIraqi Kingdom, and the other neighbor who had survived the battle field of an 8years war. I got dry half-cabbages to empathize with, and I got more cookinglessons to learn.

Identity and Privacy

2011-12-05T01:26:00.000-08:00

I am reading these days L'Interdite (The Forbedden Woman) by Malika Mokeddem. While her protagonist came from France to Algeria to face the different understanding and approach to the concepts of "Identity" and "Privacy", I feel empathized with her in my position as someone who came back from Algeria to Iraq. Identity and Privacy:

"I didn't forget anything. Didn't forget that lashing nosiness. Didn't forget that interference which alleges to have all the rights. When arbitrary inspection is regarded courtesy, the questions become orders, and being silent is regarded a scandal"

"The women: (Oh sister, like somebody is hitting me with a dagger here and here, and there, and also here). She points to all the abdomen, the chest, the back, the head, the legs, the arms...at the same time. (God kept you from all the diseases, when it comes, my head turns around, I sweat, I vomit, I feel by joints cracking, after that, I feel myself fatigued, so I don't sleep, dont eat, and I have no desire to lie in bed. Please sister, treat me!). All this in Algerian slang language, everything hurts me, it is everythingitis, endemic in womens here, and well known. Everythingitis are the symptoms of the females' earthquakes and tightness."I bandage. I suture. I plaster. I examine and hear the long complaints. And when I put my nose to write the prescription, the women regain the eye of the eagle and the vigor of the beak. She contemplates me, measures me, analyzes me before she dares to: (Do you have children?). The danger alarm rings in my head. If the answer will be no then come the avalanche of whys, the luster of the look of disgrace, or of compassion. I will not safe myself this interrogation easily. To avoid that, I said, using a proverb: "here, it is me to ask the questions, don't flip the roles!" Attenuated by a dosed laugh. Sighs of relief. Smiles."

"- She said that our ancestors are all Blacks that came from the other side of the desert. Yacine said that his grandfather, no, his ancestors were Jews, for that many Kabyles were in that state. Do you think that there are people who are the real sons of a real origin?

-I think that there is no real but the mixture. Everything else is either hypocrisy or ignorance."

When the Sun Scattered my Watch

2011-12-05T01:21:00.000-08:00

Memory

2011-12-05T01:18:00.000-08:00

Inferiority Hunted

2011-11-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

When I am an Eskimo
Waiting at my fishing hole
Adler surfaced and burbled
Things about complexes
I took a complex back to my cold wife
She baked it in her oven
She gave birth to a child
We called him: Alexander the Great.

12th Oct. 2011. Istiklal Cadeci. Lost in translation inside the libraries. No Turkish writer is known to the mind. The artistic covers, the type of papers and the libraries decoration intensifies the feelings of ignorance. When the eyes caught the Latin alphabet they jumped to the conclusion that all book were in English, to be shocked later that most, if not all, were in Turkish. Forgotten was Turkey's use of Latin alphabet. The mission, the boring mission, was to differentiate the name of the writer from the title of the book. It was easy. The titles were not understood, while the authors' names were more close to the heart especially with their Easterners' sounds. And finally the eye falls on a known name. Orhan Pamuk. Orhan Pamuk? "I know that!!" A smile force itself into the silly face.
Most of Orhan Pamuk's novels were there. Among them are the translated ones. "Snow" was chosen because it is translated to English and its back cover tells about a suicide epidemic in an isolated rural area in Turkey. That goes well with the …. with the…. mood? No, not with the mood but…. with something… anyway.
For about a month, different English dictionaries were used: the Oxford, the Penguin, and Al-Sakhar electronic bilingual Arabic-English dictionary. The final conclusion was that not only Turkish language is covered by the cloud of ignorance but also, the English!
The about 400 pages novel deals with the epidemic of suicide in, let us say, 20 pages. About 5 per cent. A post about that part might follow in the future since this novel will not be forgotten easily. Between the events, between the lines, there was the description of the village of Kars, and of its people and their life. Rediscovering the self in Orhan Pamuk's words. Rediscovering the self, under the lights that somebody sheds for you at your dim part, is not always an easy-going experience.

When I was a shrilled-voiced Kurd
In front of Notre-Dame de Paris
My melody was shy and naïve
But when Quasimodo added percussion
La Esmeralda danced
The crowd started to love it
They filled our hats with shillings.

While there was a bloody coup d'état, Orhan Pamuk didn't forget to shed light on people's psyche. First, the reader was little annoyed by the writer's tendency towards delaying the description of the bloody killing for the sake of describing, what was called by the reader as, "silly things", by then. After sometime, the reader finally decided: even at war, our most deep instincts and drives, master us. Wouldn't it be more close to the truth to state: sometimes, our deep drives, come to the surface, especially at the time of war?
When it come to the surface, like a fish for an Eskimo fishing through a hole in the ice, it is better to be hunted, and quickly.

For how long that shrilled-voiced young Kurd dream will stay in the mind? That young Kurd who saw once, before four years from the date of his speech, a Western woman who came for tourism in his village, to visit the Armenian Church. He, who saw that Western woman, for the very few seconds that were enough for her to go down the tourist's bus, kept dreaming about her. He remembers the details. He says: "She was wearing a blue dress that revealed her shoulders." P.288 In the dream, which is already being forgotten to a degree by the reader's "resistance" curtain, he was in front of a screen. Big screen. That same woman was on the screen. He joined her there. She liked him. She even passed her hands kindly and gently upon his cheeks (was it upon his hair? The reader cannot remember exactly). He felt so happy. But then he discovered that he was a child, in that scene, and that she passed her hands, kindly, on him, just because he was a child.

I can still remember how I was annoyed when the adults belittle me. Just before few weeks I was in a visit to my parents, and now that I am 33, I am still in rage when there is a tiny allusion for my "weaknesses" or "immaturity". I even had imagined threatening allusions in love-driven innocent approaches. And like it is the case for the shrilled voice Kurd, the West is another opponent, for the child inside of me.

I think I should read Alfred Adler.

Thanks Orhan Pamuk for such a work. A work that is intermingled inside the psyche of the reader shedding light on the dim corners. Such a rare work. Such a rare effect.

The Man who Stares at Flies

2011-11-28T07:42:00.000-08:00

Another morning. Still functioning in the waiting mode. Waiting the answer to my job application. The coffee types in Iraq are not the same to those in Algeria. I miss Algeria. Is that evident?

Putting the coffee down I held the novel: The Men who Stare at Goats. I spent the last night with my dictionary reading it. It is so funny. But, reading in the morning is more difficult since, the weather is warm, and the flies are active.

I put the novel down. Put a drop of my coffee on the cover and ordered one of the flies with few clear words: Land, Drink, Coffee. And you know what? She obeyed!!!

To confirm my abilities I ordered again: Enough, Leave!!!

She subdued quitely and sadly.

I think I got super psychic powers.

My neighbour brought me broccoli. I fried the broccoli and grilled an eggplant. I enjoyed the rest of the day.

Friday's Rendez-vous

2011-11-20T07:01:00.000-08:00

It was another Friday in Al-Mada Publication House in Al-Mutanabbee Street.

A middle aged woman with short hair, beautiful face with no makeup, comfortable clothes that doesn't reveal her body, came and distributed a short-story collection to us. The cover was a colored painting resembling Van Gogh paintings signed by the name: Hayat (=literally this female name can be translated to: Life). The author of the short-story collection is named: Safira Jameel Hafudh (Safira is a female name that can be translated to: Unveiled). I merely had the ability to thank that lady with a faint smile surprised by the initiative, since I never had received such a beautiful colorful present, from a lady, that I didn't know, and that had such a beautiful name.

When the conference had started that morning in Al-Mada Institute in Al-Mutanabbee Street, a conference about the deceased pioneer Iraqi painter: Hafudh Al-Duroobi, an old woman with cotton-white hair, had surmounted the platform. The old man sitting next to me, who had sat next to me without any word, just a glimpse of a tired sight, talked to me without any introduction saying with a smile: Son! That is Safira Jameel Hafudh.

My mouth and eyes opened and I swayed my head from the north to the west, scanning for a better view of the lady in the platform, avoiding the heads of the people sitting in front of me, since we were sitting little far in the back. Back with my eyes opened to send a look at the old man sitting next to me I was asking myself: How did he know that I didn't know who is Safira Jameel Hafudh? Did he even know that I identified her wrongly in that middle-aged woman who distributed the book by her hands?

I was looking at him in that same fraction of the second in which he sensed my look and started to nod his head just slightly up & down while his eyes were fixed at Safira as if answering me: I know son, you didn't know who is who, you are trying to discover your ancestors, good for you.

Safira Jameel Hafudh had started talking telling us about Hafudh Al-Duroobi coming back from Europe to Iraq and wondering what to do with his degree in painting in this land. The idea was to open a studio for painting in Baghdad University (there was still no College of Beaux-Art in the middle of the 20th century in Iraq). They gave him a bath (or a W.C. I am not sure) that seems to be not strongly needed. He started the work by his own hands on that bath to change it to a studio. Few enthusiastic students joined him; most of them became later his students, and known artists (like Hayat, Safeera's sister, whose painting was on the cover of our present).

Another student of Hafudh Al-Duroobi, named Khaldoon Al Bassam, attended the platform and told us about his memories in that studio. He told us that the company of the students and their mentor was wonderful and that even the cleaner who was in charge of the studio started painting with them.

Another student named, Sami Al-Ruba'ai, told us some lovable personal details like about the type of cigarettes their mentor was smoking, it was called THREE FIVE. He told us laughing that he was, sometimes, in charge of preparing the Mezzah (Mezzah is the different types of salad that is eaten by the Easterners when they drink Alcoholic beverages) for the company.

Thanks again for Al-Mada House for these activities which introduce my ancestors to me.

Another Journey (Passing Through Turkey)

2011-11-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

"The silence of the snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus-driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called what he felt inside him "the silence of the snow". P.3

Accompanied me in my travelling seat. Accompanied me in my bed while diseased. For more than 20 days, I was walking like an Arabic ant in this foreign language 436 snowy mountain of words, my dictionary was my provision. I remember that sometimes I felt bored from it, and asked it to let me free, but now that I am about to end it, I am already missing it. Snow is such a non-forgettable novel.

"He was more at peace than he ever had been before." P.312

I was feeling strange about Ka's ability to feel peace and his ability to write poems in the middle of that ridiculous coup d'état and the killing that struck out between the PKK, Islamists, Communists, Kemalists (pro-Kemal Ataturk fighters), and the military of the Turkish government, each killing the other, all are enemies to each others, while Ka is feeling at peace and is in love with Ipek and is writing a poems collection.

"Kadife will appear on the stage wearing a headscarf. Then, in defiance of the ludicrous customs that have given rise to the blood feud, she'll bare her head for all to see." P.314

Standing in that crossroad between the west and the east, standing in Turkey I imagine Orhan Pamuk trying to tell us through his novel that we, the Easterners, are:

1. Theatrical,
2. Violent,
3. Concentrating on the wrong detail of trivial things.

Putting those characteristic in an example I would say: we, the Easterners, can react theatrically violent to the degree of killing in the sake of silly trivial superficial causes. I might be wrong but that was the conclusion I found myself in.

"I don't want to turn myself into a target for the Islamists. When they see her bare her head, those students will think I'm the atheist who arranged the performance. And even if I can manage to escape to Germany, they'll track me down- I'll be walking down a street late one night and someone will shoot me." P.315

An Iraqi poet living in Tunis said after an Islamist Political Party won the elections in Tunis that: "fear from the Islamists is permissible according to the Sharia." Since last Saturday and we are in a holyday in Iraq which will continue till next Sunday. This also means that we have no journals during those days. I fell nostalgic to Algerian journals that appear in the market everyday even at Fridays. A used the internet to read some of the Algerian journals and found Dilem cartooning about Tunis election results in Liberte:

"… in a brutal country like ours, where human life is "cheap", it's stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideals? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries." P. 320

Kadhim Jihad was asked one day: "if one would ask, how far is the present of Iraq, or of Arabs, from the present of this city you are living in (Paris)?"
He answered a long answer which can be summarized by that he believes in diversity and does not believe in the accumulative classification of cultures and he gave the following direct sentences: "I don't believe that the French culture is richer than the Arabic culture, at least on the aspect of fiction in literature." He admitted later that in the west there are huge advances in the analytic fields, like philosophy, humanistic specialties, or literature criticism but still, the Arabic literature according to him is not that behind.

He added that the difference is clear in the systems of living and the political dealing with each other. He added finally that in the west: "... The human is not anymore fearful about his self when he say a protesting contradictory opinion. This is the difference, it is the ability to talk and to express your ideas and to try to change without risking the life of the person, this is the essential difference, and this can be summarized in one word: democracy."
I got the last chapter unfinished. I am feeling like I am having a treasure. I will read it and try to sleep. I will dream about democracy.

Thawra (=Revolution), now Sadr, City

2011-11-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

Was an agricultural territory belonging to Al-Attar family (an old Baghdadi family.) There were many swamps there and many illegal houses built from simple materials that don't shelter from coldness in winter nor hotness in summer. Those illegal lodgments were belonging to those who ran away from the feudalism in the south. They prefer to be near Baghdad to work in this big city. That was when Iraq was a kingdom. At the start of the Republican era of Iraq, Abdul-Kareem Kasim had ordered to build houses in that land and to put them into the possession of its inhabitants.
"I will put an end to shanties." said Abdul-Kareem Kasim.

The ministry of municipalities, ministered by then (1959) by the first Arab female minister Dr. Nazeeha Al-Dulaimy, was the ministry which planned and execute the plan.

In 1960, the building started. The Army canal was its west boundary. It lies to the east of Baghdad and thus why Baghdadis used to name those people living in it as Shroogies (Easterners). It was belonging administratively to Al-A'athameya, and was divided into many quarters: Seville, The Kurds (majority of Kurds lived there), and Jameela (after Jameela Bou Herd the Algerian female fighter who visited Iraq and asked Abdul-Kareem Karsim who was renting a simple house for his own lodgment by then why he don't have his own lodgment so he took her to this city and told her that he will manage to have his own lodgment when those people can have theirs, and since then that particular place was named Jameela).

The name of this big city was at first, Al-Thaora (=The Revolution). It was named by Abdul-Kareem Kasim himself who was loved to a great degree and if you use your attention you will find that many of the newborns in Iraq between 1958 and 1963 were named Kareem for males and Kareema for females.

When Abdul-Salam Aarif succeeded in his coup d'état against Abdul-Kareem Kasim he changed the city name to Al-Rafidain (the two rivers, referring to Mesopotamia).
When Saddam came to the regime the city name was changed to Saddam's city.
After 2003 the city started to be named Al-Sadr city.

The city surface area is about 30 km cubic. Its population is approximately 3 million living in 144 cubic meter houses. Some of those houses were divided into two when the family enlarged (e.g. after the marriage of the elder son) to two 72 cubic meter houses. Some of the original 144 cubic meter houses lodge 3 to 4 families.

Dr. Muthaffa As'ad

Opened his private clinic at 1963 and was taking 250 Fils for a patient (A Dinar contains 1000 Fils). Dr. Muthafar specified a day in the week in which he saw patients for free. He was much loved and respected and till now the crossroad where his private clinic was is named Muthafar's Square.

Mreadi Market

Mreadi was born at 1930 in Al-Umara. He was from Al-Fartous family. He volunterred in the Iraqi army and participated in the 1948 war in Palestine. After retiring from the army he started to sell vegetables and fruits (greengrocery) then had a kiosk selling nuts and gasious fluids.

The lovable book contains valuable information about the history of sport and art in the city too. Contains some poems written on the city. It is a book that has no reference to the publication house, with bad quality of paper and pictures, sill it has in its back cover the number of registration of the book in "Documents and Books House" in Baghdad in 2008. Much more important it contains the love to this city which is easily felt with every single line Hasan Abdul-Aba Al-Waheali wrote.

The forgetful Misconi and our heritage

2011-11-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

Al-Mada newspaper supplements were heartily missed. From Algeria there was a non-humanized possibility of reading them PDFed. In their paper-form, non-electrified (I live most of my days without electricity using chargeable lights), smelled and humanized goes the reading of the Thursday supplement, Iraqis, from the Blazing Era, issue no. 2290 entitled: "Yusuf Misconi".

A friend of him asked him to help him marry that girl. Yusuf Misconi agreed to help. He went to talk to the girl's family about his friend intensions. He saw the girl. He forgot that he was supposed to talk about his friend's intensions. Instead, he asked for the girl's hand for himself.

From his wife, he got seven sons and a girl. From his sons there are now the doctor and the astrologist among other scientists. His house was open weekly for a cultural meeting. He was the translator of one of Dorothy McKay books about Iraqi old cities. He translated other books and wrote some like: "The Aramic and Western Melodies and Recitations in the Eastern Arabic Churchs" Published in Beirout 1965, and "Quhramanat El-Muqtadir" about that historical woman. He got some other works in history, literature and linguistics. He wrote some books with Mostafa Jawad (especially in Linguistics).

In the left, Misconi reading from a book with the cover picturing A'nistas Mari Krimli

An article by Dr. Ali Kamal (psychiatrist) about his personal memories with Misconi

Misconi pictured with Massinon, the french orientalist, when he visited Baghdad

Misconi and his family with my lighter's light

Misconi and his wife in the last page of the suppliment

Back to Al-Mutanabbee Street

2011-11-04T05:59:00.000-07:00

For the first Friday since more than a year a visit to Al-Mutanabbe Street was feasible. The aim yas specifically to attend the meeting held in Al-Mada Library House to discuss the works Yousuf (=Josef) Ya'akoob (=Jacob) Miskouni had left us. Salim Al-Alousi was talking about his personal memories with Yosuf Yaqoub Miskouni. He told us about Miskouni's interest in Henry Field's works in Iraq and the opening of the Iraqi museum by Miss Bell.

Salim Al-Alousi lecturing in Al-Mada House about Miskouni

Other lecturers told us about Shamoon Al-Safa school in Mosul which was attended by Miskouni, a school that gave Iraq many of the pioneers in different specializations.
We were told about Miskouni being an orphan early in his life and coming to Baghdad to accomplish studies and his lifelong friendship with Mustafa Jawad and Georges Awwad, and about being a student to father A'nstas Mari Alkrmli.

Tariq Harb lecturing in Al Mada-House about Miskouni

Tariq Harb came. He told us about the love of Yosuf Ya'aqob Miskouni to his last name Miskouni which is very old in history back to the Babylonian era and means in Chaldean language: The Poor. Being a judge, Tarik Harb told us that one of the Miskouni family had taught them in the university: "The History of Law".
Taking my influenza and Snow with me I went back home.

On my way home I went to buy vegetables and fruits. Eating an orange before lunch gave me some energy to make a quick lunch. Eating another orange after lunch encouraged me to write this. I may make some coffee and then take Paracetamol and Allermine and go to sleep so early today. Visiting old Baghdad, reading few papers of Snow, knowing about Miskouni, taking Allermine after drinking a coffee, seems so relaxing. Hope I will remember my dream tomorrow morning when I wake up.

Dora, Dona Maar, La mer Méditerranée

2011-11-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

I have entered Iraq exactly before 20 days. No single day I was free. Cleaning lodgment and winter clothes, dealing with water and electricity shortage, travelling back and forth to Karbala to arrange my new job application's papers, and going to that "poop" department for the sake of my family who still abroad since years.

My "TO DO" list also contained some pleasure activities classified as duties: visiting a family member or a friend, or reading a novel.

Yesterday, I came back from Karbala after giving that "Competence Lecture" that I must succeed at to continue my application for the new job. It was about Conversion Disorder and especially about the development of the concept with references to Anna O, and the case of Dora. Before the lecture was to start I was advised by a friend who loves and respects me to not use my surname when introducing myself and to use instead my tripartite name (my name followed by the name of my father followed by the name of my paternal grandfather). I felt estranged but thankful to my friend for reminding me of that. The second thing that shocked me was when I ended my lecture, a long beard professor asked me in a tone that I felt as if blaming: "Do you read Koran?"

I answered "Yes!" He said: "Read some". From the waiting that followed I knew that I was supposed to read some. So I said just to be sure: "Now? Here?" I got the sense that that question was entitled to me especially. But when he pointed to a nearby Koran and said: "Open that Koran and chose from it". The idea of the presence of a Koran in the lecturer's table told me that that question was entitled to all who came to pass this test. I said to myself that they might want to hear how I can spell Arabic letters, or if I have an extremist view against Koran, and our culture. So I was about to pick the Koran when somebody said: "Just read us something from your memory". Another man said: "Yes please just chose a verse from your memory and read it to us". I put the Koran back and started reading that verse that says there is only one God, and he was not born, nor will give birth to anybody.

I went back home. Turned off my mobile phone and had a dinner. At 8 P.M. I went to bed and fall into deep long sleep. I woke up before two hours (8 A.M.). I have influenza. The skies are gray. I am thinking about my mom. Next to my pillow lies "Snow", and my hand writing of a part of it from page 269:
"I'm remembering how we were standing at the window one winter night, looking out at the snow, and she ran her hands through my hair."

I headed to the kitchen and found that I have no more coffee. I headed to the hall and found Dona Maar beautiful face. They say that this face is supposed to be sad. I don't find it sad at all. I went after some sneezing to clear my nose. I felt so relaxed and at home. I went back to Dona Maar. I thought of my mom. She got a beautiful face like a fruit, a pomegranate or a pear or both. I wondered whether I was dreaming about my mom, or about the Mediterranean sea. My eyes keep relaxing on contemplating Dona Maar.

I will rip my TO DO list that says that I must have a bath, wash clothes, clean lodgment, and so on. After writing this I will still have the ability to head to Al-Mutanabbee street.

Nose Compass

2011-10-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

Ka was investigated by Kadife, the sister of the woman he is foolishly in love with. She drew a pistol and asked him to take off his clothes, piece by piece, and she searched his clothes with her "delicate hands". She was searching for microphones and wires. Her apologies followed. Then it was time to take Ka to meet Blue. Blue hides in a secret place, so their trip to Blue secret lodgment would be highly secretive. I was reading that on my way to arrange some papers in a governmental department in central Baghdad. I was already searched for holding an explosive belt in the entrance to the bus station. As we have learned since 2003 we would stop crucified in front of the guards who usually pass their hands fast on the contour of your body and concentrating on the back of our body, for it seems that the explosive belt can be caught from sensing that sight. On the first days after 2003 war I was feeling so estranged in front of such searching and I used to feel tickled by their hands. I'd even raised some suspicions when, few times, since years, I took a step back when the guard was about just to start the body search. The tickling didn't continue since I grew fatter and less sensitive.

I was body searched again, with the same mechanism, at the gate of the governmental department. When I entered that department that I had visited for the last time about 2 years ago, I was glad to see that it was renewed, with now many new benches and seats for the waiting citizens, many fans for the ventilation, and the more white walls. I went to the same window that I used to find my dossier in, and find it less crowded than ever. I was glad. Since I was talking to the clerk I started to feel strange. The clerk, a young slim girl who must be in her 20s and was non-veiled and reasonably made-up, told me to wait few seconds. While waiting I wondered why do I feel strange and caught the detail that that strange feeling was due to smelling a strange strong scent. My nose compass led me to the source after about a half minute of dizziness. The smell comes just next to my right feet. Poop. Yay. In the spot.

In today's Al-Mada newspaper there was a short story written by Nazar Abdul-Sattar. It was entitled: "He Loves that Odour". It fixed my day complexion. It started with that cleaner leaving her job in a non-specified governmental department. As usual, she must be body searched before leaving to prevent her stealing things from the department. The police woman who used to body search her hates her and that is said frankly in their daily conversation. The police woman hates that cleaner and always reminds her that she is found often sleeping with other male cleaners. And reminds her often of how many times she was found to smuggle tea-bags in her bra. The police woman is irritated also by that man, who used to wait the cleaner in the gate of the department, a man, who is neither husband nor relative. Today the police woman was about to search the cleaner's bra when a black bag caught her attention. The cleaner was so shy to reveal what was in there. The police woman said triumphed: "A panty!". The police woman started interrogating our poor cleaner asking whether she is now going outside wearing no panty. She even tried to pass her hands under our poor cleaner's skirt. The cleaner was about to cry when finally revealed that that man who used to wait for her is her lover and that they did it yesterday on phone and he asked her to give her panty as a souvenir, because he likes its odour. Our cleaner added that she is now wearing another clean panty.
The short story's narration is clever and perfect. I would understand its core idea as the privacy invasion in our eastern society where the concept of personal space is not maturely developed. The cleaner's innocence and weakness is so evident and sad. She is especially weak in front of the police. She doesn't know her rights. The writer's insight is trust worthy enough that I will read anything he will write in the future. His name need to be remembered: Nazar Abdul-Sattar. Nazar Abdul-Sattar's boldness reminded me of psychological books, and I don't know really why (how much I wish the story is translated to English so that you can read it). The dialogue between the two women is a kind of dialogue that we, men, don't hear. Since our society is highly sexually divided with many walls and taboos between the two sexes, I wondered how it was difficult for a male writer, from Iraq, to write such a dialogue and wondered how fictional vs. realistic it was.
Fictional it was or realistic, I found my daily life more vivid and complex than my days in the last year in Algeria. I am back to Iraq where I can think easily and can find things that provoke thinking and writing in me. I have even started again to cook and to enhance my cooking abilities. Broccoli soup was delicious today. It is September and I buy pomegranates daily. I don't know what is in common between the pomegranate smell and the smell of coffee, but I can be sure that I like to eat pomegranate slowly when I wake up from my long siesta (in Baghdad I regained that habit of sleeping more than an hour at noon because of the noisy streets in the morning) while coffee is being prepared and their aromas (pomegranate and coffee) mixes.

What about Snow? As you remember Ka had to meet Blue. He must not be seen heading to his secret lodgment. A horse-drawn carriage came. Ka was told to hide under the canmvas that is usually used to cover the goods the carriage delivers. He didn't know that he would lie next to Kadife:

"Without a word, he lay down next to Kadife among the empty propane canisters.
The journey, which he knew at once he would never forget, lasted only eight minutes, but to Ka it seemed much longer. As he wondered where in the city they were, he listened to the people of Kars commenting on the creaking carriage moving past them, and he listened to Kadife's steady breathing as she lay quietly next to him. A gang of boys caught the tail of the carriage and were pulled along with them for a while. He liked the sweet smile Kadife gave him; it made him as happy as those boys." P.230

Paranoid Pyramid

2011-10-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a friend invited me to a night tour in Baghdad and to spend some minutes in a new café that you will be served by females. In Baghdad, cafés are still a man zone. Since ages, no female is allowed in Baghdad to sit in a café. So, being in a café that some of the workers are females seems enough privileged to pay it a visit at night and drink a cappuccino even if the price would hit nearly 4 US dollars a cup. My friend told me about a new DVD series that gaining fame in Baghdad, named "The Arrivals". The series is a documentary about how every disaster that occurred to us is programmed by some evil willed secret persons. One of the detail of this long series is about 9 September, and how it was programmed by those devil worshipers who they supposed to give this message: God's number is 10, so when we reach 9 we jump to 11, and you got to call 119, to ask to be rescued, but not form God.

I thought of what is left for the poor paranoid schizophrenics to believe in, and how large is the "culturally accepted" ideas that I must know so that I don't jump to diagnose a delusion, in the near future, hoping that I may go back to work.

The weather was great at night in Baghdad, and I went to sleep refreshed after that delicious cappuccino. I woke up the next morning and took Orhan Pamuk's Snow and headed to regulate some of my father's retirement papers. In the almost exactly two hours journey (the same time that took me before days to reach Karbala) I read about that granny sherbet conspiracy theory in Kars. Before two years, a couple of Turkish Army soldiers had strange symptoms that were diagnosed in Kars hospital as cases of food poisoning. Investigations revealed that they all drank that day from that granny sherbet café. For the past two years, and the secret agents of the Turkish Security were following that granny café, and following the drinkers of the sherbet for some time to see whether they were poisoned or not, so that, if some were poisoned selectively, another investigation might start on the goals of the deliberate poisoning of the sherbet. One had noted that all those who were poisoned were Turkish, not Kurdish but this note wasn't taken seriously for the simple cause that the Kurds and Turks are very alike to a degree that the granny would fail to discriminate between them and selectively poison the Turks deliberately.

After I went out the retirement ugly building, and set off to Al Mutanabbee street, I bought Al-Mada journal. Searched for "Studies on Hysteria" by Freud and Breuer for about 2 hours in vain, I ended standing near the Turkish Restaurant in Al Tahrir Sequare. Took the bus back home, held the journal, and red Ali Abdul-Ameer Ijam's column. He wrote about the political history of Iraq from 1948 till now and its very striking character of being always frightened form "conspiracies" of "enemies". The column was entitled: "Iraq Fascinated by Conspiracies". He gave many examples and ended saying "Iraq is not fascinated with life".

I reached home, ate the pomegranate my mom had advised me to eat to help curing my diarrhea, ate coffee and wondered how much it goes well coffee after pomegranate. I even thought about putting some few drops of pomegranate juice to the coffee. I re-held the novel and the journal. I re-read and contemplate. At last, I have this silence again inside me, as if snowflakes are falling slowly and calmly from my skies to improve whiteness and silence.

İstiklâl Caddesi

2011-10-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

Rootless Origins

2011-10-28T05:01:00.000-07:00

Sprinkled are my origins, as I prefer to imagine, and scattered aromatically among the pine tree spiny leafs. Somewhere in Bou Saada, somewhere in every lost civilization. In every Diaspora, in every minority, sprankled are my origins, for the love of the poor, and the white hearted.

"The last [bullet] struck two meters over the projection booth, hitting the face of the clock, which, having stopped working sixty years earlier, was now covered with dust and cobwebs." P 161

I read those lines from the novel and put my head back on the pillow. As the electricity power was lost, and I shut my eyes, I remembered him with his yellow umbrella.

When I marched so fast on that moving forward ground I reached Aksaray so fast in that rainy black night in Aksaray-Istanbul. I threw my heavy bag in Uzbek hotel. Took a quick tasteless snatch of a sandwich. Sat next to rain when he approached. An elderly in 80s. or might be in 90s. or even more. He got many lost teeth as evident from his giggle.His yellow childish umbrella is so specific. And he used to say things like:

The Mediterranean didn't contain me,
Nor did the Red,
In the Atlas I got a wrecked ship,
In Uzbek a bed.

My Danube joins the Caspian to the Black,
I'm Armenian in Diaspora,

My duduk is my identity.

I'm the Kurd, the Chaldean, the Amazeigh,
The Assyrian out of Nineveh.
The Yezidi, the Mandaean,
I am the rootless origin.

I had walked after Saint Augustin
From Thagast but didn't reach Rome,
I've ended in Efes,
Making a soup out of mushroom.

I remember how he used to come and disappear. He still remember how estranged I was with his line "I am the rootless origin". I remembered Amin Maalouf book "Origins" in which he said that he prefer the term "Origins" to the term "Roots" cause we are not tress. We are not fixed, unmovable. I remembered also Shakir L'Aibi poems collection entitled "Roots and Wings", a collection that I didn't read it per se, but read an interview with the poet about it, about roots, wings, and travels. I decided that I need to travel so a lot. I went to sleep that night and woke the next morning to find the old man waiting for me in a café. He was nodding his head as if saying: yes, you need to travel a lot dear. Speechless, he offered me a sea food dish. The seagulls were quaking above our heads. White we are, snow our novel is, frightened our scary hiding dreams, yet in the day, we find some peace to meet and exchange some silent ideas.

Iraqi Architecture

2011-10-28T04:23:00.000-07:00

Typical Iraqi modern quarter and houses from Kirkuk.

Ankara-Kerkuk

2011-10-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

In Ankara the skies were grey. A white derwish was turning around his heart over a clock. There was a brige too. White and grey, were the colors.

Hours after travel I succeded to fall asleep. Woke up to see a face of an owl. A symbol for wisdom according to the westerners, a symbol of bad luck according to us. I remembered that brige in Ankara. Remebered Ataturk. A brige between East and West. I am already longing to go out of Iraq.

Here is Kerkuk.

Bou Saadi Last Moments

2011-10-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

In my last days in Bou Saada, I started to spend some considerable time sitting on the bench of our door smoking.

The very last 24 hours I visited one of the oldest cafes in Bou Saada. I somtimes sit here and watch the stork couple who got their nest in the front tower (not shown in photos).

Pine tree aroma is now linked in my mind to Algeria since it was here that I mostly smelled it summer and winter, under sun and under rain.

Took a hair cut, put a headphone, and go Tracy Chapman.

Wondering what the clouds may offer from shapes. I didn't want to believe that they may offer a map of Iraq.

Contemplating one of my favourite dad's painting of the Espresso machine.

Dad came with me at dawn to the airport. My dad offered me my last Espresso drink. I took an Espresso maching with me to Iraq but the coffee beans' types are different from Algeria to Iraq. I failed to got that same flavour I used to love in Algeria.

Kissing goodbyes. Viva Turkish Airlines.

La Nuit des Origins

2011-10-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

Our ancestors live in El Alleig, a village about 10 km south to Bou Saada. El Alleig literally means Blackberry. It has a natural water source. It is older than Bou Saada. We headed to El Alleig that evening to bring some water from its source. All El Alleig inhabitants are our relative. There was a wedding and we were invited. When we asked to leave an hour after that we weren't allowed to do so because the bride was expected to arrive few minutes later and we were told that we should stay to witness the entrance of the bride. We were invited to dinner. After dinner, Ouled Naïl percussions and that special flute named Ghaita started to play. Ouled Naïl dancing started. It was a night of going back to origins.

Pear Morning

2011-10-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

A Peaceful Friday Morning in Bou Saada

2011-10-07T10:18:00.000-07:00

Is it already a month since I have started giving English lessons? Since our first day I told them that this may not continue, and we are in a trial, that can succeed into more serious and regular paid lessons. Our verbal agreement include that each one of us is free to stop the lessons on his side. Few students dropped during the month, others new ones joined us, but I was attached the most to those who accompanied me from the first, to the last, lesson.

How are you? I asked. They answered in one voice: Fine thank you and you? One of them, who always makes jokes, and is the fastest to learn, added in Arabic: here you are giving us a lesson! Aissa (=Jesus), Raid (=pioneer), Aimen (=the right handed), and a relative of them joined me from our center to the nearby hill to take photos.

I headed to the center of the city where a couple of storks had made a nest above the telephone tower. The storks were not there. To the left there was the martyr's monument.

From between the two buildings of the municipality I found my way to an old café usually attended by old men. I like its peaceful slowness and calm and found it an opportunity to take photos, especially to old men, and to the machine of the Espresso that we don't have in Iraq.

Espresso Machine

Mille Feuilles et une Feuille

2011-10-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

Thirsday. No work. Just another day. To spend. To spend? To the left my friend. What for? For buying journals. You forgot that? El-Watan, and… where is Le Soir D'Algerie? Didn't come yet? Okay let us take…. mmmm… Liberte… To the café my friend… and here is a new mille feuilles…. And your Espresso… and three L&M cigarettes.

You eat by big bites as if time is running out of you. You know that your time is a Saharian one these days. Lessons of patience are giving to you while you have some right loin pain. Hmmm? Are you enjoying that? I am a little astonished by your anarchic way of learning French. You seem to take learning new things as fighting. As if you are fighting. A son of rat becomes a digger! Why you are looking at me like that? Do you want to speak. Speak!

No I don't want to speak but I found your proverb strange. A rat and a digger!! Here look at those cartoons. Astonishing. Algerian journals got talented cartoonists. That was a discovery for me you know. We don't use to have good cartoonists in our area of the world. They express themselves cleverly. Not like you! A rat and a digger! Huh!

Lettres de Mon Moulin Bou Saadien

2011-10-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

"Lettres de Mon Moulin" are short stories from the villages of France by Alphonse Daudet. Yesterday night I read "Le Secret de Maitre Cornille" which is about that old Mr. Cornille who refused to accept the fact that they don't need his windmill to grind the wheat anymore since the newly built steam-driven mills in the area. He locked the door of his windmill in the face of the people. Every day he went out from his windmill carrying a full bag on his donkey. He says that it is grinded wheat. That was his secret. One day, somebody entered inside the windmill, and discovered that its walls are falling from the inside, and the bags that Mr. Cornille takes out every morning are full of nothing but the debris of his old windmill.

Yesterday was the first time in my life to see a red tuna. In Iraq we used to have them canned. But the surprise didn't stop at that. When we opened the tuna, we found a sardine inside it. That was so strange to me. I was happy to a degree that I went for a walk at night. I took with me my copy of bilingual (French – Arabic): Lettres de Mon Moulin of Alphonse Daudet, thinking that I may found some time to read outside.

I woke up this morning, drank my Espresso. Then was surprised again by my family, who saw how much happy I was yesterday by the red tuna. Today they surprised me by another kind of fish that I never saw before: Anguille!!!

I have nothing to do in Wednesday (as most of the week days), so I took a nap, then woke up and head to a café to have an Espresso and a cigarette (I only drink a cigarette in cafés these days. I buy single cigarettes, i.e. one by one and not by packets, in a trial to limit its availability).

In our unpaved neighbourhood, the sun is no strong, and I was still sleepy.

The table is not so clean, and tatooed by: Tanga!

From that Kiosk, if you may call it kiosk, which lies under the umbrella, I buy my solitary cigarettes which can have different markes in different days.

This is the picture that I like the most.

With my shadow, Le Soir D'Alger on my hand, I went back to my windmill.

Just another morning in Bou Saada

2011-10-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

Good Morning. It is a new morning. Come with me in a walk in Bou Saada. I offer you an Espresso with Croissant. Wait, what is this? He did it! We adviced him not to cut this painting but he kept saying that he liked the face of the old man, and the rest of the painting was a failure. Anyway.

Look at this side; this is where he puts his colors, papers, and almost everything. I like this shelf particularly because it is chaotically beautiful. I don't like orders you know.

Let me shot the door please, it is an iron door as you see and it makes noise in the morning. I don't like it. Anyway. Our street is still unpaved. This quarter is relatively new in Bou Saada. It started in the 80s. Few houses separated by empty spaces. Now, it is crowded. And noisy. Many cars. I hate cars. Anyway.

You see that mountain in front of us? That is called mountain Iz-El-Deen. Iz-El-Deen can be a name of a person. Literally it means: "The Glory of Religion"! Sounds strange maybe to you. Religion is present vividly in our daily life here. In my last trip to the capital, we were speaking of Prophet Mohammed in the taxi that took us from Bou Saada. I a bus in central Alger, the capital, a young man next to me started talking to me comparing Mohammed and Jesus. He seemed to me an Evangelist. In the taxi that was taking me back to Bou Saada a man started telling us about the detailed life of Moses. We are exaggerating? May be you can say that we exaggerate in everything. Who are we? That is beyond my.... my... anyway.

Let us go just few meters to the right to buy journals and then head up to the café. I like El-Watan cartoons. I like to read any French journal. I am practicing you know. I'm thinking about getting a degree in languages, or literature. French language maybe, or Spanish. I am teaching English these days you know, and a student told me last Friday that she had saw me before in the Iraqi T.V. channel. Being Iraqi is a privilege here. Well, to a degree, I mean. I asked her what I was doing in the T.V. and she said that I was wearing a yellow T-Shirt and trousers. Her friend asked her: really? You saw him? She answered: yes, I saw him.

Look at the colors of our females' dresses. Anyway.

I come to this café when I want to see people cause it is near the garage where taxis take you to the surrounding villages. Another bigger garage that lies far from here is specialized to taxis which can take you to other governorates and big cities. This garage is for villages.

Yeah I know the coffee is little strong. Little bitter. Anyway.

Elie Mitri's Hair Cut

2011-09-12T12:40:00.000-07:00

Night is my preferred time in the 24 hours. From my space ship, or, in other more earthy term, from my bed, I watch some T.V. Then I join my theatre, my now more dimly litted bed, to play a scenic reading of some novels. Novels, finnished, and unfinnished, take the roles chaoticly, moodly. I read "Je t'Offrirai une Gazelle" of Malek Haddad once in Arabic, and twice in French. Yet, I sometimes read some of its lines again before I sleep. The novel is about an Algerian novelist and his manuscript of a novel that he refused to put his name on it. He said, trying to explain, that " the benefactors to dreams travel incognito".

As far as I can remember, no novel had entered into my dreams. Yet, I have dreamt before two days of a Lebanese singer named Sabah. I saw Sabah the day before the dream in the T.V. talking frankly about her life including the strange accedent of her brother killing her mother and her mother's lover. Anyway, in my dream, I was with Sabah in a trip somewhere in my Iraqi neighbourhood, in a place that kept being mysterious to me since it is covered by rich trees. Young lovers in our neighbourhood used to go to that site to meet. In the dream we discovered a secret site where Inas (an Iraqi actrice that played the role of Affifa Iskander in an Iraqi series) was hiding.

That dream passed away without much revelance to me. But yesterday's dream was funny. And because of it here I am writing to you.

I dreamt I was with some resident doctors I knew from Hilla in a balcony. Our enemy was on the other side of a river. It was night. It was me who dared to start shooting on them. I was very accurate and professional. That passed as if a scene from a video game. The balcony was empty, or almost empty few seconds after that. I went walking in a beautiful place which is unknown to me but it seemed to me, in the dream, that I was in this same place in an other old dream of mine, and I remembered that old dream while I was dreaming. Anyway, let us go to the funny scene.

The funny scene started when Elie Mitri came to fight a man he thought he can win. Another man joined the fight and Elie Mitri fell on the ground. The men kept fighting each other while Elie Mitri stood hardly. Bullets came from the side of the scene and passed through Elie Mitri's hair cutting it fastly and sharply. Stunned he came walking to me and said: "And here I got a new hair cut!". His hair was cut beautifully actually. That was very funny that I can still giggle when I remember it.

Till The Camel Reaches the Sea

2011-09-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

The scene is not strange to my eyes anymore. The scene kept repeating since years. Still there is that particular strange day that puzzled me. He keeps promising that we will reach the sea. I am still hoping to see the sea, although I realized from the very first day that he took me from the oasis that we are walking in circles. He takes his watch for a compass. Anyway, what can we expect more, from a man, with a big hole in his marine hat through which a boucle of tortuous hair dances to this desert wind funnily. I was just weaned from my mother when he chose me to accompany his journey. He calls me a "ship". I am still waiting to see the sea he promised me so that I can see other kind of "ships" as he said to me once. He told me many things during those passed years. He told me once about somebody named "Freud", and kept talking about an "Iceberg" and an "Unconscious". An "Id". Well, in English they call us, Camels and all other animals, by "It". And I can assure you to a degree that we, Camels at least, have nothing but an "Id", and we have nothing called "memory" cause, all what is in our brain is, memory. Future doesn't worry us much, cause we got no "Great Expectations". In our memory, nothing erased, nothing forgotten, we live as we dream, we dream our life. So the scene that kept repeating every night, that scene that the owl told me later it is called "The Captain's Memory", is not strange to me at all but, but that don't means that I understand it. Repetition doesn't merit understanding.

Why should his memory be so strange? And why that particular night he woke up shouting at the owl with those meaningless words? Well, here is the story to you, and to me too, hoping in the future we can decode those symbols of this vast desert, until we reach sea.

The scene begins every night, when the captain decides that we sleep, to complete our journey the coming day. Just as he take off his pierced naval hat, the anchor that is embroidered in the front of the hat, starts to separate, getting bigger and bigger floating in the air, and "DOOM!", it falls deep into the sand. The captain starts at that particular moment to snore very strangely and funnily. An owl wakes up from his head and fly to a nearby hill. Then an anvil, a hammer, and plenty of nails appear. The nails, one by one, stand on the anvil, the hammer falls on them. Crooked, the unfortunate nails fall on the ground. A tortoise then appears from his head always yawning and complaining from the useless clamor of the "iron tools" as she seems to call the anvil, hammer, and nails. I don't know if she includes the anchor in her term. She never speaks to me. The tortoise always walks slowly to a deep green lettuce head that I always miss finding it before the tortoise head to it. It seems that the lettuce head appears as the tortoise head to it and starts biting it slowly and chewing. I like the calming sound which almost declares the end of the scene. The end of the scene for me, at least, cause I usually fall asleep on that calming sound of the tortoise eating the lettuce head.

But the problem was that particular day when I woke up at the captain's sound yelling at the owl in the middle of the night: "Fly and catch those Rats!! Fly and get me rid of those Rats!!" It was the middle of the night and it wasn't the time for the owl to go back into the captain's head so she started to fly anxiously not knowing which way she must go. I failed to see any rats nearby. The hammer stopped in the middle of its work opening his mouth astonishingly. The tortoise turned her face from the lettuce head and was gazing the captain calmly but still chewing slowly. The captain yelled at them all: "Why you are playing Seek-And-Hide with me? Why?"

To my surprise he fell asleep again. When the morning was about to come, they all, except the crooked nails, went again into his head. He woke up. And we started our journey again. The crooked nails always stay surrounding us in the morning but the captain never cares. It is me, after all, who got to step on them, with the captain above my hump.

The scene repeats itself, without the captain's midnight turmoil and yelling. But I am little more confused that I used to be in my oasis where I was born. I started to have a future to care about, a great expectation to see the sea. I started to think about that "Freud" the captain told me once about. I started to think about what happens when I fall asleep. What can get out from my camel head? Do I have an ID? A Camel's ID? Do my memory plays Seek-And-Hide with me and erase my dreams?

Hoping to find some answers, meanwhile, I'm still hoping that we reach the sea, someday.

Cabaretian Politics

2011-08-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

It was very long ago since I followed a T.V. series. Ramadan is usually known for its special quality of series in Arabic channels. They try to show their best. This Ramadan I followed 4 series. Three of them are Iraqi, and one of them is about the Palestinian poet Mahmood Derwish.
I will chose today one of the Iraqi series to write about, and this series is "Baghdad Beauty" which is about the life of Affifa Iskandar, one of the first Iraqi singers which started to gain her fame in the 50s of the last century. The series is exclusively shown in Al Sharqia Iraqi satellite channel. I liked you to see with me those pictures hoping to transfer to you some of the spirit of the series.

The real Afifa Iskander

Afifa Iskander in the series

She sang in the same cabaret in which her father, Iskancer, plays the violin. Known personalities attend to the cabaret to listen to her. Among them, Naseem, the British, who represent what the UK wants from Iraq, Bakir Sidqi, an Iraqi Army leader, and lately a Nazi German, who offers his country as a new ally to Iraq.

The real Baki Sidqi

The real Bakir Sidqi, see his moustache

Bakir Sidqi in the series

Bakir Sidqi's car in front of the cabaret

Bakir Sidki started to love Affifa. Naseem wanted from Affifa to reveal to him what Bakir says, especially about the Iraqi Army, and what they are planning.

Naseem, in the series, reading the famous journal, Al Bilad

Naseem asking Afifa to reveal secrets

Afifa and Bakir

Affifa reveals to Bakir Naseem's intentions

The Nazis in Baghdad

King Faisal died in today's episode.

After hearing the news of King Faisal the first's death

After hearing about the king's death

Haddad, one of Affifa's neighbours, working as a journalist is also in love with Affifa.

Haddad

Haddad wrote an article that put him in jail.

Haddad's mother, to the right, complaining to Affifa's family about her son not coming home as usual

Knowing the Hadad is imprisoned, Mariam (Affifa's mother) is empathizing with his family at their home in a visit at night

Haddad's father, Ya'aqoub (Jacob) visiting his son in prison

Affifa asked Bakir to intervene and free him, and he did in few hours.

Haddad in his working place

Haddad, after knowing what happened, being jealous from Affifa's relation to Bakir went into rage.

Haddad. Behind him is a picture of king Faisal the first

I don't know if really this series is made well or I am just seeing it wonderful because I am longing to Iraq.

Sorry about not including the actors names cause I really don't know them but will do soon.

Louiza

2011-07-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

Louiza, I don't understand your language but I like you so much Louiza. God knows how much I dreamt about you. About being your friend. About spending happy time next to you. Next to you there above that violet mountain next to the sea. To receive the unstopped winter rain, to smell the spring blossom, to swim in your summer sea, and singing a song about time in Autumn Louiza. Louiza

Diary of a Worried Mind

2011-07-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

Nature around you flourishs,
People go to the sea,
You go to your bed,
And navigate to sleep.

You nourish your worries with smoke,
You drink coffee,
You like the smell of Camembert cheese,
You go for a walk,
Got pain in knees,
Enter into a cafe,
Ordered tea,
Lit a cigarette,
To encircle your worries,
You meet your nephew:
"I want to go to the sea!"
He said okay,
He knew how sad you are,
He promised to take an off from work,
And go with you to the sea.

You swallow your dinner,
It started raining outside,
You let your clothes spread out on the rope,
You turn off the light,
Sat on the ground,
You drink apple juice,
Do your smoke ritual,
Play with your growing beard,
Thinking about returning to Iraq,
You run out of sleep,
Surrounded by smoke,
Nothing to do but to take steps ahead,
Even if it's gloomy and painful,
Life is offering you this after all,
You got to adjust your needs,
You got to keep the ember red,
Till it finally sleeps.

Un Amor

2011-04-28T02:50:00.000-07:00

Un amor
Un amor vivi
llorando
Y mi decía
Las palabras de Dios
Llorando por ti
Es con amor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A71p0RMRP3Y

A card of identity is produced as fast as possible to the newborn. In Iraq, they used to write our beliefs in our cards too. Some, got their real identity stable as the stability of the card information. Some, wanders around.
Esmeralda had no card of identity. Her identity is her multicolored skirt, which waves to the wind. And every time I reach in my wandering in front of her, next to Notre Dame de Paris, she repeats her question to me: who are really you?
Puzzled and enchanted I usually don't find an answer. All I can read in my identity is one love. Un amor.

Un amor vivi
Llorando ya tormentado
Las palabras de Dios
Llorando por ti
Es con amor

Dehbia is her name, and she is Christian. And a Berber. Orphan. Very poor. Spending her life between two small villages, with Amazigh names that are difficult to remember. Difficult to remember, difficult to reach, but cannot be imagined but to be between mountains, and having no road paved to. Dehbia, is so white, pale white. And she wears the same dark colored clothes. And is serious. So, is there anyone but Amer, the atheist, the communist, who has just come from France, to fall in love with?
And to add the last flavor, Amer is like the majority, muslim, a religion that was not chosen, but inherited.

Yo quisiera
Para entenderlo, un amor y saber
Que me quería ya tormentado
Las palabras de Dios
Llorando por ti
Es con amor

It is the 68th page, from this 204 pages novel and still, we are no more advanced in information from the first page, the day Amer was killed. The 68 pages, so far, is a retrograde remembering. It is Dehbia's flow of thoughts while she is lying silently in the darkness alone. Her mother, Nana Malha, is frightened from what may happen next. Yes, her mother, Nana Malha. There is only her mother Nana Malha, from whom Dehbia, must have, taken her sense of pride. A pride, of the poor, and of the minority.

Hay para ya vivir acunto a ti

Me enamoré allá de ti

Ya sin tus besos yo no puedo

Vivir y recordar

Mouloud Feraoun's novel, "Les chemins qui montent" is a novel about love, and identity. Not only the identity of individuals, but also, of mountains.
Like Amer, Mouloud Feraoun, the novelist, was killed. Yet, the novel is still unfinished.
My Esmeralda, would you accept me as a Quasimodo? As the one who saves you from the priest?

Waiting for my Esmeralda to reply, many crossroads has been crossed and still, the love, is Un Amor.

Ay-lo-lai-lo-lai-lo-lai...

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/Un-amor-Un-amor.html

Why Does the Sea Laugh?

2011-04-12T04:32:00.000-07:00

They say translation is treason. A betrayal. And this is special when the case is a poem. But let us leave the word-for-word translation to dictionaries and sit together little bewildered in front of symbols. Symbols sometimes reach the shore of abstract. The words are symbols, for they are concrete, and in whatever combination they are, they would be still, codes, or in another word, symbols. But music is abstract. Words and music meet in a song.

(A male pronoun talking:)

Between me and you wall after wall

And I am neither a giant nor a bird

In my hands there is a Nay*

And this flute is broken

And I became a proverb of love

(The two lines Refrain is in a female prnoun – i.e. a female is talking:)

And why the sea is laughing while,

While I am going down unveiling flirtatiously filling the jars **

I came to Algeria with two Ph.D.s of psychiatry and an M.B.Ch.B. of medicine and surgery and that was 8 months ago and still, they don't answer me if my diplomas are equivalent. They are studying my case, they say, and "it is a difficult case" they add. Meanwhile, I cannot practice. I have worked as a seller in a pharmacy for two months and few days, and then worked with a relative as a repairer of different kinds of motors for another two months and few days. I have self-studied French, and read few Algerian history books and novels. Still the sea is laughing and I don't know why.

The sea is angry and is not laughing

For the story is not for laughing

The sea wound never withers

And our wound had never ever withered

And why the sea is laughing

While I am going down revealing my body childishly filling the jars

Wounds, the lyrics is talking about. Wounds, from them I got many. Ignorance, in me, and in my surroundings, keeps some wounds open. And in the sea, wounds hurt more, because they are sensitive to the salt in the sea. The sea might clean them, or heal them; I am still ignorant of these possibilities. After all it is life, a long lesson, and some lessons are not an enjoyment you know. I promise you that I will give myself a vacation as soon as I can and go out of the narrow classroom to promenade in beautiful Algeria. I will take pictures and share it with you. But for God's sake why the sea is laughing?

Our jars' pottery is GNAWI ***

Saying stories and songs

Oh jar of lowness I am intending

To not drink even if the water contains honey

And why the sea is laughing

While I am going down revealing flirtatiously filling the jars

* (A kind of flute made from reed).

** (This line of the Refrain is translated in a new way each time it is repeated hoping to convey the meaning better).

*** ( I have failed to find the meaning of the word GNAWI as an adjective to a type of jars but it can be used as an adjective to a type of music special to the Amazigh tribes in north African desert).

The song is originally of Sayyed Derwish. Here performed by Mohammed Munir.

The Poor Man's Son

2011-04-04T04:10:00.000-07:00

"The Poor Man's Son", the title of the novel, has two declarations, a declaration of sonship, and a declaration of poverty. The protagonist is born the same year the writer has been born, and in the same village, in 1912 in Tizi-Hibel high in there in the mountains. Both of them became, a teacher.

The declaration of sonship in the title makes us understand simply that the writer is in psychological peace with his father. His father the farmer there up in the mountains between the fig and olive trees.

From the first page he tells is in realism: "what is present in the areas of the Kabylie is almost present in everywhere", abandoning making his novel a myth, blowing it with heroism, drawing a magical halo around the mountain tip up there where the village is. Here is another two lines:

"We, the Kabylies, understand those who praise our area and like to hide its insipidity under the description of the praise yet we realize exactly the vile impression which our poor villages leave even on the sympathetic visitor." Page2

"But I admit that my aunt, Khalti, taught me who to dream and who to love to build a suitable world for me, a fabulous world that nobody but me can have access to." Page 70

Talantikit Edtions of the novel in the original text (French) and its translation to Arabic by Sid Ahmed Trabulsi

One of his aunts, Nana, dies while she was trying to give birth to her first child. Her baby dies with her. She drags her baby with her to the cemetery in melancholy and mourning. His other aunt, the one who taught him dreaming, started to have a mental illness. A kind of psychosis. They were obliged to tie her in a room. She runs away. Force her back. Laughs and sings. Her eyes are lost in the no-place and the no-time when she is quite. Runs away again, but this time they don't ding her. They started to search the cadavers which go down from the tip of the mountain in the small stream, but no trace. They put an end to their search by the belief that she is dead and they practice lesser sadness.

"Childhood memories lack fineness and binding: we hold few valid images that the heart can always gather, one after the other when he remembers them,…."

The protagonist, Fouroulou Minrad, finished the primary school with success. There was no secondary school in the village nor near it. He won a grant to study in Tizi-Ouzou, exactly how is the case with the writer, Mouloud Feraoun. Still he was facing the problem of lodgment. Azir came to him, another poor student, and offer the solution: to live with him the coming four years in the Protestants missionary that lies in front of their school. This missionary was accepting the students who were coming from the mountains and provide them with electrified room, with a bed, a chair, and a table, and coffee and bread in the morning, and all for free. The students were gathered in the evening to be told about religion. They were "Les Peres Blanc". They didn't oblige the students to do anything special. Fouroulou and Azir were going to the meetings regularly, read a verse from the Torah like everybody, sing a recitation with diligence, hear the explanations, then go back to their room to resume their work without hesitation. The writer tells us that his protagonist had an inferiority complex at the beginning form other students in the missionary and in the school, and from the teachers too, but after relatively a short time he: "gave up his inferiority complex". Nobody saw them asking for explanations, about his point or that, regarding religion, nor they did ask the monk to say a prayer or an invocation for their sake. They slipped away.

What? I spoiled the chance of you enjoying reading the novel? But is that possible! Did I tell you about the rituals of harvesting and gathering figs and olives? Did I tell you about the secrets of making dishes and jars from mud? The traditions of marriage? The traditional therapies? The décor of the interior of their houses? The wool weaving? Or traditional childhood plays?

In this novel there are, if you may, exploits and tunes, the exploits and fig and olive, the melodies of mud and wool, and fissured hands from the excess of manual working, hands which time had didn't pass on without leaving a trace, hands closer to the nature, to the fig and olive there up in the mountain, hands nearer to the mud and wool.

Oh Mouloud Feraoun, how beautiful is your reciting, for it seems that your aunt who taught you how to dream then she was swallowed by her own dreams depth, had and will stay reciting an original Kabyle Amazigh melody, as old as the mountain, up there in the highs.

El Watan, my Friend

2011-03-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

MORE FRIGHTENED THAN CATS, OUTSIDE MY PLANT

Four years of living alone in Iraq, three years and three months in Baghdad, and eight months in Mosul, had left its effect in me that’s for sure. Reached Algeria in last august I was, and still to a degree, highly cautious, and a little bit paranoid. I noticed that cats are not afraid in Algeria in big big contrast to the case in Iraq where cats run away terrified from any human being figure. Here, they march relaxed, and even be friendly to you. I was more fearful from cats God damn it. Feeling so alone and helpless walking in a street "Le Petit Prince" cartoon of Le Hic, in El-Watan journal caught my attention. I bought that issue of El-Watan and managed to read it with the help of the aid of a pocket French-Arabic dictionary. "Dessine-moi un couteau" would be translated to "draw me a knife". A sheep in the planet with the prince, and this cartoon appeared in the first day of Aid El Adha. I wondered if solving the symbol is this easy to the other readers cause I didn't understand the whole symbol. In book stores I usually find few books but "Le Petit Prince" is commonly there in many editions and publications. I read the novel and understood the cartoon.

The music is of the Algerian musician Mohamed Rouane, the piece is entitled "Sebrinel" from the Album "Reve". All the picture are for El-Watan papers (except the one about the paramedical intersyndicates which was from Algerie-News, anther good newspaper, Emir Abd El-Kader from Liberte, a good journal also, while Kateb Yacine's and Setif picture taken from various sites form the net, and of course the two pictures of the cover of my copybook, one in the beginning, the third picture in the film, and the last picture in the film at the end.

I kept buying El-Watan to find in one issue that Saint-Exupery had written part of his masterpiece in Alger. I took El-Watan more seriously and bought a big copybook and started my El-Watan encyclopedia.

Lessons of Algerian history, art, and literature were given to me most elegantly and cleverly. El-Watan is a journal that respect its reader.
Wikileaks started, Le Hic clever cartoons was an amusement. It shocked me how franc the cartoons were, how clever.

POLITICS AND A PSYCHIATRIST

One day I knew about an Algerian psychiatrist named Said Sadi who lead a party that is not so popular, and that it called for a peaceful march every Saturday in Algeria calling for some changes. The psychiatrist mounted over the roof of a police car. Le Hic came again with that clever cartoon in which Said Sadi is saying: "No person can reach above my ankle".
Rachid Boudjedra, whose writing I adore, adviced against the demonstrations and explained why in a long clear article. A cartoonist named Saad came with a cartoon against the governmental inhibition of the march in Alger the capital in which the protester is jumping holding the tablet in which he wrote: "je ne marche pas, je saute" (="I do not march, I jump").
Le Hic is always a master in cartooning so, just see his cartoon. Students made some kind of association, paramedical workers united in one syndicate, still, El-Watan, the realistic and the respecting to its readers, made a file on Setif Hospital, but it was gloomy.

ISSIAKHEM, PLANTS, AND PHOENIX

Lessons of history and art continued. Issiakhem, the painter, and his loss of one of his arms in childhood, and his ambiguous relation to his mother came in a wonderful rich deep dossier.
Pierre Rabhi, a specialist in botany, talks in a book about the disadvantages of "Propaganda" in its invention for the human kind new needs that we don't really need, and about our neglection to plants. He tour around the world and talk about his ideas. Such a nice subject to read.
Phoenicians, and their relation to Algeria, and their how they found that sand, under the fire, is crystallizing over time, and hence discovered glass.

MORE HISTORY

Freres Lumiere and the first cinema show in Alger and Oran in 1896.
El-Watan articles, were getting more easy and wonderful to read as my French language was getting better and better, Alger history, Sahara, Skikda and the bowing tress, Tipaza and its roman heritage.

Beauty over beauty I discovered more and more with another cartoonist named Zino and the cartoon about Chibanis (old north African men) and their life between France and Algeria, one Chibani says to the other: "if I stay in France my retirement salary will not be enough to buy my cigarettes, if I stay in Algeria more than a month they cut my retirement here", what a dilemma.
Notre Dame D'Afrique history in Alger, then another day a dossier on authorized brothels in Algeria and their history, with the history of a famous prostitute.

Farhat Abbas and why he was against the timing of the Algerian revolution and its methods, but finally he aided in it.

And of course, Emir Abd El-Kader.

Seven months already in Algeria, jobless and friendless but, El-Watan has found its place in my heart, and the copybook will be always open to receive these Algerian treasures.

Lautrec, as a Hunter

2011-03-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

"I knew that you would not miss the pleasure of hunting"
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec parents were divorced in his childhood. He lived with his mother. He got an inborn disease that made his bones fragile causing him bilateral femoral fracture when he was around the age of ten, a thing that hindered his growth. His father loved hunting. While Lautrec was 37, his already devastated body by alcoholism was reaching an advanced degree of syphilis, and in his bed, a night before he died, he wrote this simple line to his father:
"I knew that you would not miss the pleasure of hunting".

I am not in position to talk about Lautrec's Oedipal wounds, but, at least, about hunting. A hunter needs a trained horse and a trained dog. Tamed horse and dog. Systematically trained to follow the orders to aid in the hunting of free birds and gazelles, among other "beasts". The hunters stop for sometimes motionless to focus on the target and then shot their bullets into the birds' and gazelles' bodies declaring their death with the proud of human superiority over animals. A human that knows how to draw strait lines to tam animals, and knows how to shot accurately to kill "beasts".
There is another kind of animal hunter, the photographer who also search for animals, and in their presence, like a hunter, he keeps quite, sometimes breathless, he slowly draw his camera and took his shot. He let the animals to behave freely and learn the lessons of instinct. He can show us those lessons on National Geographic.
There are other types of hunters. The poet who hunts for words, and the painter who hunts colors and shadows.

Lautrec wasn't lucky enough to have a colored camera, and his bones didn't help him to go to the jungle, although he did paint few paintings about horses and hunters, instead, he headed for another jungle, the city night life in cabarets, bars, and brothels. He took his colors and draws for history and time what lies behind the scene, in the coulisses, where the dancer is changing clothes, the clown is without makeup, and the whore is tiredly lying speechlessly.
Lautrec, you who's body was hunted by bone fragility, syphilis, and alcohol addiction, had hunted for us those moments at the end of the 19th century, so thanks a lot for letting us share you those moments.

My Father's Colors

2011-03-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

Life is a path. It has a beginning and an ending. Actually they are a moment of beginning and a moment of ending. A starting point and an ending point. A womb, then a tomb. Two black wells. Between any two points there can be a straight line or a tortuous one. A narrow passage or a wide one, a wide one that is open to the sky, to the different skies.

Some, sees this path as a racetrack; others, sees it as an exam. Some sees it as a pleasure; others see it as a suffering and question why they were put in this path, why they were born? And for what reason life had been given to them, and then, someday, will be taken?

{O thou man! Verily thou art ever toiling on towards thy Lord – painfully toiling – but thou shalt meet Him}
The Holy Quran, The Chapter of: "The Rending Asunder" (Al-Inshiqaq), the 6th verse.

A path with a starting point and an ending one. A white dot, then a black one. Sufis think that the right path goes in circles. They wear white inner dress symbolizing a shroud, a black jacket symbolizing the tomb, they put their hand on their heart where God they believe is residing, and they goes dancing in circles on the tone of their spiritual music.

{I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart and said: "Who are you?" He answered: "Yourself."}
Mansur Al-Hallaj

Between my white dot, and my black one, my path was going in gray most of the time lately. Late on that day I chose to go upstairs when suddenly I saw some colors up there. It was one of my father's paintings. It was a trial to copy the original painting by Serwan Baran Aarif. When I asked my father someday why he paints he said: "just for the pleasure of doing so, and to discover new kinds of beauty".

My father's painting

The original painting by Serwan Baran Aarif

The shoemaker in the painting gave me an advice: "I made shoes for your naked feet but, do not ever forget to walk barefoot from time to time." He didn't add an explanation, for his words will find their explanation with every new path feet may step on.

{Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far…}
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Two wells. Two holes in time. A womb then a tomb. A laugh then a tear. A reunion then a farewell. A white and a black and we got to add the colors. Thank you my dad for adding those colors to our life, in our long and uneasy journey.

To Freedom with Brooms

2011-02-17T18:20:00.000-08:00

Books unfinished, plants unwatered, clothes unwashed, the house was left for a hopeful return. Friends weren't goodbyed for the plane ticket was two-way.

Half a year already passed and no plant had been watered yet, nor book being touched.

Not long after the departure, alcohol sellers were attacked in the same land that fermented barley into beer for the first time in history, Babylon festival which deals with folklore was cancelled because it contain music, songs, and dances, things that are "not accepted by people of Babylon" they have said, then Baghdad's Fine Art Institute threatened to lose its statues, and its music department to be cancelled.

Tunisia came to the news scene suddenly then Egypt took the lead.

A new Iraqi facebook group that deals with the deteriorating Baghdad services in a very funny way had started before a day or two, they concentrate the jokes and comments around Sabir Al Eesawi, the governor of Baghdad since long. The group is in Arabic and its title might be translated to: "The Nexus of Saber Al-Eesawi Lovers…. from one side".
After a good deal of laughing on the jokes and comments the following words came to the notice:

"Members of Iraqi youth will hurl tomorrow morning, the Friday, at 10 a.m., in groups, from Al Mutanabbee street toward Al Tahrir (Freedom) square. They will be carrying brooms and plastic bags to clean the centre of Baghdad".

How much I wish that I got a witch broom to fly tonight to Al Mutanabbee street.

The song is "We Weren't Born To Follow" by Bon Jovi

Love, as Always, as a Need, Even if, for a Reed

2011-01-19T03:12:00.000-08:00

" his friends had gone away to Egypt 6 weeks before but he had stayed behind for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed."

So, Oscar Wilde's Swallow, chose to love a slender Reed who was attached to her home, in contrast to the Swallow, who loved travelling.
But why the Swallow had loved a Reed and not a Swallow? Was that because no Swallow had loved him before, leading him to search for love elsewhere?
Elsewhere where it was not directed to a Swallow, not directed rightly, diverted, if not perverted, to a Reed, because love was a need, even if Abraham Maslow had classified it as a secondary need, not a basic one.

The Swallow, after the negative response of the Reed to his courtship advances, went flying in the aim of reaching his friends who were heading to Egypt since 6 weeks, an aim as dreamy as his first deed, making love with a Reed!

As a child, the happy prince spent his time in the palace, and around, in the garden, never going out of the high walls of the palace. As he died they made him a statue:

"High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt."

Seeing the city from above he saw the poor and their suffering and wanted to help them. He made friendship with the lost Swallow and asked him to take, at first, the ruby of the sword, to one of the poor, then one of his eyes' sapphires, then the other, then, not being able to see, the Swallow started to tell him about what he sees, and they chose a poor and give him one of the leaves of fine gold which were gilding him all over, till finally the Swallow dies from the cold winter, and "they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince as he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful".

While Edgar Allan Poe's black cat had lost her eyes for inability of love and chronic bitterness and ill-humor of the protagonist, Oscar Wilde's prince's eyes were given for love which was not understandable by others, little late, but still, fruitful.

Virginia's Big Black Eyes

2011-01-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

A Trial to Analyze Poe's: "The Black Cat"

Receiving love from the mother in early childhood, and being securely attached is essential to develop the capability of loving, loving the self, and the others. Depression, and other personality development problems, have been linked to disturbed early relationships.

Born in 1809. Father died in 1810. Mother died in 1811. Brother died young. Sister became insane later. That was his first nuclear family, poor Edgar Allan Poe. At 27 years of old he got married to his cousin Virginia Clemm, who was 13. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife in that they might have never consummated their marriage. Virginia died in January 1847 at the age of 24 (they say of tuberculosis). After two years, in 1849, he returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of "acute congestion of the brain" (They suspected suicide especially Poe was an alcohol addict).

Soon the moon will rise

And in this stony night

I have to see your face

See the lines that make you old

Stony silence, touched by gold

Everything's too late

Too late for love, and suddenly

Too late for hate

There's only one thing left to do

I have to face this other you

Lyrics: Half in Love Half in Hate, Harket Morten

Film made by me, collecting photos from the net, adding the music, using Windows Movie Maker.

This is a trial to analyze Edgar Allan Poe's short story: "The Black Cat":

Pluto, the narrator's favorable pet, a black cat, started gradually to be the target of hatred, a hatred that is intense to a degree that it might be convincing to think that it is a "displaced" hatred. Pluto's love toward the narrator was triggering feelings of "loathing" in the narrator's heart.

Pluto was "covering me with its loathsome caresses."
The narrator usually" flee silently from its odious presence as from a breath of a pestilence".
But, "it followed my footsteps with pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend."
(Note: not receiving love at childhood renders the person, theoretically, as unable to receive, nor give, love to others – thinking about Poe's childhood - ).

The narrator describes his living in his house as living in a "felon's cell".
(Note: The narrator admits that he is a felon. He feels guilt for his inability to love. He doen't hate others only, he hates his-own-self).

An "unutterable loathing" that led the narrator once to "cut one of its eyes out of the pocket" because he "fancied that the cat avoided – his – presence".
(Note: Virginia, Poe's wife, was described for her beautiful big black eyes:
"Mrs. Poe looked very young; she had large black eyes, and a pearly whiteness of complexion, which was a perfect pallor. Her pale face, her brilliant eyes, and her raven hair gave her an unearthly look.")

He finally killed Pluto.

Yet, targeting the wrong target will never satisfy the original desire, and it was just a matter of few hours when that "figure of a gigantic cat" appears in the wall to disturb the husband.
(Note: in the short story, the wife never was mentioned to react to the bizarre way behavior of her husband toward Pluto. Was she passive-aggressive? And she was not mentioned at all when that figure of a gigantic cat appeared in the wall, leading to the conclusion, that she was the one whom the husband tried to kill, but she reappeared in the second morning, as passive as a shadow in the wall).

So, Poe, invented another cat, another black cat, to keep targeting.

Another cat is introduced to the short story.

His wife was brave finally, with her innate feminine emotional intelligence, to stop in the process of the continuous "displacement" hence while going all together to the cellar (cellar = Id, unconscious) of their house and while he, with the axe in his hand, tried to hit the cat, his wife, seized his arm, corrected the path of his displaced emotion, to receive the axe herself, directly to her own head. "She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan", says Poe!

Notice the disappearance of the black cat after the wife's death, and the "tranquil sleep" and the "secured future felicity" which appears thereafter.

At the first page, Poe wrote: "My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events."

So, it was all, mere household events, poor Virginia!

A Bit of Sugar by: Mohammed Munir

2011-01-01T19:36:00.000-08:00

A bit a sugar in the cup
Uttered the mercy from the merciful
When I melt because of love in his light
My soul satisfies any hungry person
Ya Ya Ya Allah

Wind of Change

2011-01-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

In 2010, Scorpions had retired, Dilma had won, and Doggy is still searching for a job

Since few minutes and Doggy seems having something to declare but hesitating. Encouraged intensely and repeatedly he declared timidly that he wrote a poem and wants to say it. We agreed. Doggy jumped over the closet and brought the fan that he ADORES running it on the fast mode and goes AaAaAaAaAa, vocalizing whatever in front of it.

And here he goes with his poem:

"Follow the hotdog,
In a street of fog,
Listening to the wind of change….
Hunger at midnight,
Don't merit a fight,
Listening to the wind, of change…."

"The fridge is closing in,
Did you ever think,
That hotdogs in the frost,
Our brothers,
The smell's in the air,
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing in the wind of change"

Doggy stopped uttering his golden words and headed to the lavatory and blew his nose hard several times in the warm water emitting a lovable gurgling sound and came walking back slow and calm, like a widower king, to the bed room where the effervescent Vitamin C capsule is still bubbling in his cold glass of water while the ex-communist is still wearing red in the CNN, but now, more modern and beautiful than she was in the 1970s:

They say she like the poor, the dogs, and Proust. Doggy had already dealt with poverty but Proust? What for? For the search for the time, that is lost? Anyway. We managed to convince Doggy to get rid of the fan idea and complete his poem without it especially after the running nose incident:

"Walking down the street
Distant memories,
How much I have pissed,
On this tree
Follow me to that park
Where I can ran and bark,
Listening to the wind of change".

While Dilma is promising to manage poverty in Brazil, we managed to find something, in this cold white fridge, for the doggy to eat, temporarily. The gurgling and the bubbling symphony started. He raised his head and said: "complete the original poem from the scorpions" he took another bite from his dish and added: "as they have already retired from biting":

Socks

2010-12-31T22:39:00.000-08:00

Its morning. The first in 2011 and the birds are chirping. The little boy found a piece of paper in his hanged sock stating:

Snow White had lost her teeth,
She cannot bite poisoned apples anymore.

Bewildered, he took his heavy coat and head cover and headed to the job place. It was locked. A bare foot lady stands there. Her blue toes show their heads from her black rotten wet socks. She left another piece of paper for him and went shuffling her feet. The wet paper reads:

Esmeralda is demented,
believing she is a nun,
Is praying at night for her God,
Whom she calls: Bob Dylan:

"In The Name of My Bob,
Quasimodo of the top,
Had, at all (shakes her head), no job,
But ringing Bells.
Ballerinas and oranges,
For all those rapers,
Gathering on earth,
Eating hotdogs."

As she stands up, she suddenly goes back on her knees resisting a laugh:

"Show me mercy my Bob,
For I always forgot,
The ketchup and the salt,
For that man with the shining bald".

She stood up, she turned fast again to that corner and added:

"and a teeth made of gold"

She rolled her veil on her wrist and turned, now that she is at the door out:

".. and anything that you like".

Murmuring "just leave in peace" she headed for the kitchen and turned on "BLOWING IN THE WIND" on her dusty gramophone. Took a hotdog, cut it into 78 pieces, throw it in the trash bin and spat on it bitterly. Took a tomato up in her fist above her chin and squeezed it into drops down on her.

Dreaming Soul

2010-12-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

1980s

Primary school. The teacher says: "When we sleep, at night, our souls leave our bodies. Our souls go to where ever they like. That is why we see dreams." The first idea came to the mind was to meet the soul of that girl in a coming dream.

2010

Chrystal balls carrying the destinies are going down the road, emitting some annoying sound of glass gliding on the wet pebbles of the street in that foggy night. Thunder. Lightening. Wind. Started raining. The sound is now of a wishshshsh.... a sound of a wish. The black Chrysler is sadly empty. The maroon Ford is cold and far. Cats are sleepy for dogs are calm. Rats, as opportunistic as they always are, find their chance to change lodgment.

Trees are deepening their green.

Dreams are growing in circles of yawning which are going round and round while the blanket is rolling around, and in between, the legs.

As the morning is approaching, the more calm and reassuring MEAAAA of that white peaceful sheep is replacing the annoying sharp cock cry and dreams are starting to go behind the deep purple curtain.

Coffee is fragrant. Croissant is sweet. Seal is singing soul with his scar in his cheek. Soul is returning to the body.

a la recherche du temps Bou Saadi perdu

2010-11-08T02:39:00.000-08:00

في البحث عن زمن بوسعادة المفقود

pictures are taken in Bou Saada in Sept. August, and November. The song is of Tracy Chapman "Dont Dwell" from her last album

الصور لمدينة بوسعادة في آب،أيلول، تشرين الأول والاغنية لترايسي شوبمان من ألبومها الأخير ومعنى عنوانها: لا تقبع في الماضي

آآه يا ساعة رملي

لو فقط استطيع ان اجدك

سوف اجعلك تركضين بسرعة

أو أهزك

واقلب عاليك أسفلك

O my sand clock,

if only I can find you,

I would make you run faster

Or shake you,

and turn you upside down.

How many white sheep have been slain?

To come back to life again and say a long “Meeeeeaaaaa” to time

For the melting Dali clocks.

كم خروفا أبيض دبحنا

ليعود للحياة مجددا ويقول ميـــع طويلة للزمن

لساعات دالي المائعة

Let Cinderella die, with her time urgency

Long live the pumpkin, our store of stories.

لتموت سندريلا، هي واستعاجالها للزمن

لتعش اليقطينة خزانة الحكايات

Renault 4 got 7 souls.

Like cats they are leaving one after the other

The toothless demented gypsy,

is kicked out of France,

sitting in the side way of poverty and,

is waving her goodbyes.

للرينو أربعة سبعة أرواح

يتركونها تباعا كالقطط

والغجرية المخرفة الدرداء

ركلت خارج فرنسا

جلست على رصيف الفقر و

لوحت باي باي

Everybody is looking for his pomegranate,

to chew its beads before loosing teeth.

The pear tastes sweater, and doesn’t wait,

for its time is faster.

كل يبحث عن رمانته

ليقرط حباتها قبل فقدان الأسنان

العرموطة أحلى، ولا تنتظر

لأن وقتها أسرع

For the pear’s sweetness, the seasons change,

and the clothes fly away,

and the clouds offer more stories,

about Vienna and Wars.

لحلاة العرموطة، تتعاقب الفصول
وتطير الملابس
وتعرض الغيوم قصص أكثر
عن فيننا والحروب

Dlovan Berwari an article by Jamal Ameadi

2010-10-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

Lately, Al-Aalem Newspaper, is having some troubles in Iraq. Yesterday, there was an article about the trouble, but it was so sweet, for it has the taste of Hilla in it. Here is a non-professional translation to it. The original text is in arabic http://www.alaalem.com/index.php?aa=news&id22=19247

Dlovan Berwari

by
Jamal Ameadi

I visit the Page of my friend in Sarmad Altaee in (Facebook), to read what friends write on its wall, it catches my attention that campaign launched by the dear lawyers of the territory of Kurdistan and Mosul, to support the newspaper "Al Aalem (=the world)".

A campaign signed by the lawyer Dlovan Berwari, and 14 lawyers of his colleagues.

With my tears I suffocate, and read:

A campaign gathered the largest number of Iraqi lawyers to defend the newspaper "Al Aalem", in the case of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The campaign was launched by a group of lawyers in the provinces of Kurdistan and Mosul, and invite is opened to each lawyer who is committed to the profession, and finds himself a defender of freedom of opinion and expression, and supporting and defending the general interest of the Iraqi people.

Lawyers:

1 - Dlovan Berwari. 2 - Shawkat Al-Bayati. 3 - Evin Khaddidp. 4 - pilot Ziad Hussein. 5 - in favor of charitable erased. 6 - Haggai Hvnd Elias. 7 - Karwan Mohammed Naguib. 8 - Bahgat Brocki tremors. 9 - Said Salim chemo. 10 - Omar Dawood Barakat. 11 - Qasim Khalaf Abdullah. 12 - Muhammad Hassan good. 13 - Derok nevus. 14 - Nadia Younes. 15 - Hassan Hermani.

The Iraqi people, Dlovan?

Yes, the Iraqi people, Jamal.

Why should I not find that strange, under bombardment by the media and international levels, which insists on our division to rival ethnic groups; nationalities, religions and doctrines?

The answer is that I experienced a special friendship with the Kurds, back to the eighties and nineties of the last century, made me know them very well.

In the sixth class of the primary school, I shared the classroom desk with a girl from Al-Sulaimaniya, innocently she started talking to me, the second day, to tell me in a low voice: "We came at night from Al-Sulaimaniya."

I asked her: Why?

"I do not know, my father surprised us one day, that we must move on to Hilla," she replied.

Why Hilla?

"Because my father said that its people are good, and there are many Kurds," replied the new girlfriend.

I do not know whether Iraq's provinces contain districts called on behalf of the nationalities or cities, but in Hilla, a neighborhood named “Hay Al Akrad (=neighborhood of the Kurds)”, and there is also a neighborhood Al-Heitaoyen (relative to the city of Hit in Anbar province). There is a church in Hilla, and the gold market is packed with Mandaeans, and there are quite a number of Turkmen families. On your way to the main market of Al-Musagaf (The market with the ceiling. It is called that way cause usually all the markets are in the open air) in the city center, across the district of Mahdia, you can see what remains of the houses of Iraqi Jews, with its special short doors.

Al-Hilla, is also a mini-Iraq... Perhaps because "people are good," as my friend’s father had said. I do not know!

At the University of Baghdad, I knew a large number of Kurds, shared my beautiful journey of study, in spite of its cruelty. But the horrible nineties; years of the miserable awareness, had witnessed the peak of my friendships with the Kurds, particularly in the “Shaea Al-Sinaa (Industry Street)’, where I worked in an office of computer services, owned by my cousin Ali.

Kaka Ako; a genius computer engineer, was the most prominent of these friends. He was studying PHD, full of goodness, honest and tolerant, and glistening with intelligence, knowledge and a desire for the new.

Where are you now, my Kaka Ako? God bless and guide your steps, wherever you are!

Ako sits on the throne of the long list of Kurdish friends, a list that was good and clear. The office was run by a number of smart engineers, all were from Hilla, yet their friends and girlfriends were not limited to a province without the other, or to a religion, to a doctrine, or to a nationality; Iraq is the area of our friendship, and from the sun we proceed to distribute the light.

These relationships, which I shared with my friends the Kurds, in Baghdad and Hilla, made me burst into angry whenever someone generalizes an unfair accusation on them, accusations that does not differentiate between people's convictions and options of the political game, governed by its special law, in any case.

Who know me know that my love of the Kurds, did not stop me days of criticizing politicians, when "I think" they do not work for Iraq, as I criticize other Iraqi politicians, whatever their national, religious, sectarian or political direction for the love of Iraq is not proceeded by any other love.

But this criticism does not stem from hatred, but from ample love. For being an Iraqi, means that you should protect yourself from my hate, my grudges, and my malevolence. Didn’t this compassionated nation’s Prophet accept the phrase "Support your brother right or wrong", after he added to it "religion is giving advice"?

Give the Iraqis a real issue, innocent and white; and unequivocally clear, and you'll see that there is no force that can break their unity!

Dlovan and his colleagues stand, on the issue of "the world", is just a simple example.

Jamal Ameadi

Journies, Journals, and Jardins

2010-10-24T03:46:00.000-07:00

So, Mani was born in "The Gardens of Light", writes Amin Maalouf. Tigris, Babel, Nebuchadnezzar, Ishtar, Gods and Godesses, Aramic language and Mesopotamia are all there, but still, Mani is regarded as an "Iranian" prophet! And Manichaeism is one of the "Iranian" religions! No reference mentions Iraq. Nor Irak.

6th Oct 2010 El Watan publishes this cartoon which declares the release of the 2 non-faster (eat publicly in Ramadan) who were imprisonned in Ramadan and release after its end for the lack of spicific law against a "non-faster" in the Algerian Law.

Reporters Sans Frontiere (RSF) has published their 2010 classification of the press liberty status of 178 countries. Iran, Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eretria are the most repressive among the 178 countries listed. Iraq has jumped 15 places up to the 130th rank.

16th Oct 2010, El Watan published articles about the events of 17th Oct 1961 in Paris.

17 Oct 2010 El Watan continues publishing about the "War of Memories"

21st Oct 2010

21st Oct 2010 NOSTALGERIE

Al Aalem (The World) Journal, that Iraqi desert rose, seems encountering some problems. Some lawsuits. The Iraqi politicians who might succeed to enter the name of Iraq, for the first time maybe, in the Guinness Book of world records for the delay in naming of the prime minister in history, might also succeed to hurt Al Aalem Newspaper, that desert rose that is brave enough to respect itself, and others.

21st Oct 2010, another non-faster, public eater in Ramadan, will be imprisoned for 2 years

Human Rights, public eaters in Ramadan, and El Watan

23th Oct 2010 more cartoons on the issue

23th Oct El Watan continue to pulish Des sujets tabous (Taboo subjects)
El Watan Journal is celebrating its 20s anniversary. Algeria has jumped 8 places up in the RSF classification to the 133th rank. Reading El Watan in the garden of the main mosque is fairly good experience. The garden is more resembling to a public park, opened all the days. El Watan published today the answer of the court of Oum El Bouaghi on the 2 year imprisonment for the young man who was eating his lunch publicly in last Ramadan, the court says that the man had hit the policemen and broke a window in the police station and that was the reason of the imprisonment, not the public non-fasting. El Watan tells us today about the publishing of a new book by Djamila Benhabib entitled: "Ma Vie A Contre-Coran".

And Lastly, I think it is Jasmin, not sure of, but it is fragrant and relaxing.

With Love.

An old dream

2010-10-08T08:03:00.001-07:00

Translated from Arabic, an article written by Mohammed Ghazi Al-Akhras and published by the daily Iraqi newspaper Al Aalem (The World), in the last Wednesday issue, 6th October 2010 http://www.alaalem.com/index.php?aa=news&id22=18167:

My dreams and I are companions of a long way, too long, at every turning in my life there is a dream that might summarize what happened or what will happen to me, that is the way I see it and I am free to see it the way I like:

After coming from the war front in 1985, and after I survived the Iranian attack, for example, soon I saw something very strange in a dream: I'm in the midst of a fierce battle trying to find a lifeline or a place where I can hide in, did not find any near me but a deep hole that lies far away somewhat from the details of the battle.

I go down in the hole where I find a lantern and a number of books. I try to spend time reading while hearing the screams of people dying in the vicinity. After I get bored from reading I go out of the hole to see what happened to the fighting people to see what gave me gooseflesh: cadavers hanging on the electricity pylons and other cadavers put together in carefully in some kind of an order, every five bodies lying together. And in among these cadavers there were some military officers (discipline officers*) searching for survivors to execute them.

And instead of going inside the hole I find myself going out in calm, the officer sees me, then I start to run the fastest way I can taking care not to step on a cadaver. Then I keep running out of breath till I reach a house of a friend of mine, I kick its door by my feet and enter. When I reach the corridor I got surprised by two things: the first is that I entered with one of a pair of my shoes leaving the other one of the pair outside, the other thing is that there is a butcher engaged in stripping off the skin of a sheep in the corridor.

When I told my dream to "Um Wa'ad", our neighbor, she said that I will survive the war and that I will be kept concealed from its hazards in the school (the hole) till it ends and when I asked her about the one pair of the shoe that fell from me in the street she said: I don't know… it might be your brother, God only knows!

Her interpretation was antecedent since after three years the one pair of the shoe had fallen in the death valley where my brother had been lost while I survived the war by remaining in the hole of "the classroom" failing twice to pass the final exams of the year deliberately so that I delay my stay in my refuge.
Meanwhile, the dreams or nightmares were not forgetting to visit me between a night and another and it was always that same old dream environment and its parts, the most obvious among them are the presence of the killed bodies and the going inside holes that resemble the mass graves, and also the run away from the "discipline officer*" to escape a particular impasse.

The origin of those dreams, I think, goes back to the atmosphere that I found myself surrounded by them during the terrible attack launched by the Iranians in 1985.

The attack began at two A.M. coming from the direction of (Al-Uzayr) and we were in one of (Al-Qurna) villages facing the marches of (Al – Haweeja). Would I forget that night ever?

I can assure you I will not forget. How can that be when the planes were closer to our souls than the pulse of our hearts? Or how I forget that night and the hum of Iranians' bullets came close to scratch our heads by its fire while the cannons were plowing the earth like oxen in rage?
I remember when the attack ended and I returned to the my position I was surprised by one of the Iranians who have been killed on my sponge made bed after he used it outside its position. The young man lying on the bed sheltered by a wall of dirt bags in front of him, he slept on a pool of blood with a rather long rifle.

At morning we received a command to bury dozens of bodies on the edge of the marches after taking photographs to the cadavers by the cameras of the political recommendations (a kind of press controlled for political reasons). I remember now the cheap adulation of some of the soldiers and who their claimed the championship in front of the cameras to the extent that one of them stepped on the body of an Iranian and started to shout in front of the camera, a noble Iraqi soldier shouted at him: what are you doing you fool, if he was alive would you put your feet on him!
The soldiers were taking out the peanut from the backpacks of the Iranian cadavers then they put them in mass graves. Some good soldiers were reading on the souls of those poor a sura (a chapter) from the Holy Quran.

In my subsequent dream the dead lined up in groups of five, while others cadavers were hanged on the electricity poles. The final image of the stocks may comes from the social reservoir that fill our memories like embers boiling in a head of a "narjeela (water pipe)".

In my subsequent dream there is also a hole in which there are the lantern, books, and boy hiding from "military discipline" soldiers. These elements may each need to special pause but nor the place, nor the time give me the opportunity to do this now.

I remember an anecdote about the discipline soldiers, the hero of which is a friend of mine kept escaping the joining of the army for years. And this friend used to come to me every evening and went back after an hour or two. And as usual I was taking him to his home which is not too far from ours.

In one of the evenings we went as usual but there was a group of "discipline soldiers" standing in the street so we turned back and headed to my home. After more than an hour we went again we saw that the group is still standing. Annoyed, my friend Mohammed Naheer, a fugitive from the army, and suggested sarcastically to wait half an hour and then to send my sister's son Emad who was 5 years old to the commander of the discipline soldiers group. And there this dialogue can occur between Ammoudy (nick name of Imad) and the soldier:

"uncle, when you will go?"

"why uncle?"

"we got a fugitive want to go to his home and is waiting for you to go"

"………….."

Was that a dream or a nightmare…. Or was it this and that!

· Discipline soldiers are type of Iraqi soldiers whose job was to "care" for those Iraqi civilians who run away from the obligatory military service.

A Late Notice of a Nightmare

2010-10-02T03:36:00.000-07:00

I got to confess that I didn't know about Halabja before 2003. I didn't know about the mass graves in my land. My land?

Before 2003 I was a bundle of nerves and bones tight together in a mess, or maybe a in a mass, a mass of ignorance and bitterness. In my Baghdad of the 90s the air was full of ashes, the skies were full of ashes, and the black rain had blackened my face and blinded me in silence. Most of us, who lived in Baghdad, lived?, in the 90s, were unable to notice the silent blindness of ours. But for him, that Tahar ben Jelloun, "The Rising of Ashes" was as clear as a vivid nightmare.

"...
Dans leur chute
les etoiles perdent la lumiere
elles s'ecrasent dans ce desert sans faire de bruite.

Il est tard pour notre Destin.
Nous arrivons toujours en retard pour vivre
mais pour mourir ils disent que nous somme prets."

… I was with my friend who shared me the interest of taking photos to Baghdad when the shooting started. We started to run. The pedestrian bridge was narrow. There were much people than the bridge can hundle. When we reached the stairs which would take us down the bridge I fell. People fell over me and we started rolling together in a messy mass down the stairs. The shooting continued. I started to hear the voice of the reporter who seemed to report our death to the T.V. His voice was describing what was happening. While his voice was explaining what was happening, my body came to fall next to a window. Its glass was not so clean. I knew that if I succeed to break the glass I would survive. I gathered my will in my fist and stroke the glass of the window with a blow. But the blow was so feeble. It was time to shut my eyes. As I shut my eyes in my dream I woke up in the dim room. I went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water.

" .....
mais pour mourir ils disent que nous sommes prets.
Nos enfant aussi. Legers comme des papillons ils sautent en chantant,
ils sautent sur des mines et leurs corps s'eparpillent en fummee et en cendre.
Il pleut des cendres sur nos vies."

".....
Ils pleut des cendre sur nos vies.
Quelles vies?
Un peu de soleil dans l'abime
corps nubiles
cerfs-volants
visages blemes et regards suspendus
dans ce bol de cendres melees." p. 24 from La Remontee des Cendres

Tahar Ben Jelloun, had not only saw that ashes, the mass graves, and Halabja. He had also knew about my nightmares. He wrote it in a long poem in the 1991, and it took me 19 years to hear about it, to find it by accident in Alger, a book waited for me since long time, and a writer who is existent and responsible, and an example to follow.

The photos in the movie were the last 4 photos I got to Baghdad before I left. The first photo and the third were taken by my friend seen in the dream. The song is of Tracy Chapman named "Bridges".

Bringing History Alive

2010-09-10T10:52:00.000-07:00

I remember that Algerian woman in one of Rachid Boudjidra's novels who asks the Communist Algerian elder who used to tell her about the liberation revolution in precise dates. He remembers the days. But she used to have a strange kind of lust to know more about the personal characters of the men of history. She would ask: what he was like, how he was dressing, does he have some habits? What kind of sport he liked?

Shua'ayb was the boy who shared me my desk in the 3rd grade in secondary school. And our desk was full of dates. Dates we used to write down before the history lesson starts so that we remember the dates of our different revolutions. Dates and numbers and wars. That was our history lesson given to us by that angry teacher who didn't like us. We weren't parrots and hence we were hated and rejected by her. It was then when I started to learn to smoke more cigarettes and to hate being polite.

Ali Bader's novel title "the naked feast" is about that day in 1917, that day in the life of the guardian of Al Qushla, Mahmood Baig. A day before the UK forces enter Baghdad and defeat the Ottoman empire army. The language of the government by then was Turkish. Mahmood Baig still remembers that day when he wanted to play with Ara, the Christian child, Ara said: "go wash your face you dirty". Mahmood kept washing his face but he didn't become white like Ara. His inferiority complex was clear in front of Beatrice the Armenian who smells like soap. His inferiority complex was evident in front of every Christian.

Mahmood was fearful from whiteness and cleanness. Whiteness and cleanness was united in the body of each Armenian woman. In all chrestian women bodies. The body that smells like soap, the smell that he likes, desire, and fear.

In that contest, Ali Bader, started telling us history. He gave us a lesson of history in his novel. He gave life to Baghdad of 1917 when Al Zahawi who believed with all of his emotions in Darwin's origin of species and started talking about it in Al Shabender café surrounded by his audience. The Imam who declare Al Zahawi as an atheist and the problems thereafter.
The Ottoman empire as representatives of Islam, and the UK as representative of Christianity, and how the Germans stood with the side of the Ottomans, hence made the people awaken from their naivety and making fun of how the king of Germany declared his Islam and Abbas Merza volunteered to circumscribe him for free!!
Told us about the government when don't give the salaries to the soldiers and how they would break into the market and steal from the merchandise. How the Ottoman Empire used to take Baghdadis for wars in Russia in the name of Jihad for Islam. About how the Ottoman army used to steal from the people's houses in those horrible "Farhoods".

When we love, we exaggerate. That was obvious in the way I see Baghdad. As a reaction to its current ugliness, I tended to search in its past for spots of beauty and exaggerated them, so as to say, that I got a country that worth my living in it. A living that carries its risks of death daily. But the real Baghdad is not that beautiful, nor that special. Take this trial of translation by me for one of the pages of Ali Bader's novel as an example:

"No doubt that the real Baghdad was not to Maud, Thompson and to Hooker nor to any other English soldier the golden dust described by Richard Burton's translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night, and it was not to the Indian Muslims who came with the occupation army the capital of the Muslims, which had long dreamed of seeing through the writings of Sayyid Ahmad Khan in his book (The Surprise of People in Knowledge of Baghdad), which was printed in Calcutta in the eighteenth century, but it was another city, a city ravaged by gendarmerie's mules, and cannons of the occupiers, and epidemics, wars, floods, it must be that they recognized how lucky this city which built its legends, a city manufactured by delusions, dreams and myths, its image is closer to myth than its reality, the reality of its water turbidity, and poor populations, and poisoned air, scanty food, and filth, and dirtiness, and blackness, and decay…." P.282

About Parents and Love

2010-08-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

J'ai de l'amour plein la tete un coeur d'amitie
Je ne pense qu'a faire la fete et m'amuser
Moi vous pouvez tout me prendre je suis comme ca
Ne cherchez pas a comprendre ecoutez-moi
Dans toute la ville on m'appelle le mendiant de l'amour
Moi je chante pour ceux qui m'aime et je serai toujours le meme
Il n'y a pas de honte a etre un mendiant de l'amour
Moi je chante sous vos fenetres chaque jour

We were in our Passat near Al Baya'a when I said: "I hate him!". My father answered: "Do not hate Sami, don't use this word, use another". I was in my primary school and I cannot remember exactly how the discussion went. "Do not hate" was not that clear to me, "how can I control my emotions?" I must have asked. But the answer came with years passing by, and love prevailing.

Donnez moi de la tendresse surtout pas d'argent
Gardez toutes vos richesses car maintenant
Le bonheur n'est plus a vendre le soleil est roi
Asseyez vous a ma table, ecoutez-moi
On est tous sur cette terre des mendiants de l'amour
Qu'on soit pauvre ou milliardaire, on restera toujours les memes
Ces Hommes extraordinaires ces mendiants de l'amour
Moi j'ai besoin de tendresse chaque jour

The 90s were tough years. Poverty struck Iraqis and hunger was usual. In most homes, there was one main meal, a lunch, but the breakfast and dinner was not always there. While the family eats together, a member would give from his dish a present to the one s/he loves. My parents must have felt that we are not getting enough food. We, the children, were eating so fast, finishing before parents who find themselves giving us a present from their dish. When they sometimes don't do that I can still remember how angry I used to feel. On the other hand my parents wanted me to continue the piano lessons but it was not for free and I lost some of my interest. I started to love hard rock and guitars. Father took me to Al Nithal street to buy me a guitar. After few days I played my first piece, a Fairoz song, surrounded by my family's applauding. Those years will not be forgotten, the years when we were united by hunger and love.

Alors laissez-moi vous dire la generosite
C'est une larme de sourire a partager
Je n'ai pas envie d'apprendre pour qui et pourquoi
Je n'ai pas de compte a rendre, ecoutez-moi
Dans toute la ville on m'appelle le mendiant de l'amour
Moi je chante pour ceux qui m'aime et je serai toujours le meme
Il n'y a pas de honte a etre un mendiant de l'amour
Moi je chante sous vos fenetres chaque jour

In my teenage years I've been too rough on my parents. Now that I remember those days I feel so impressed by their patience and calm. In my 20s I started to criticize their upbringing by comparing that to psychological theories of the right upbringing. I told them some of my thoughts in bursts of anger. Yet, they kept being calm. Father used to bring me coffee to my room when I study, my Mom made me orange juice. Now that I've not seen them for the last few years I miss them so much. And I hope they know that I got the lesson of love they gave me.

Donnez donnez dodo-onnez
Donnez donnez moi
Donnez donnez dodo-onnez
Dieu vous le rendra

To Be or not to Be, it is a Matter of Love

2010-07-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

From a loving mother he learns how to love himself, he identifies with his loving father. They love him for what he is, and do not push him to their "Great Expectations". His ideal self is not that difficult to achieve, hence he got no narcissistic injury. He knows what he must do, and knows what he can. He doesn't blame his self harshly like those who got harsh superegos. He loves him self and he loves the world. But what that child whose parents are unloving?

Pic.1 Hassan Al-Alawi

Hassan Al Allawi attributes Saddam's cruelty to his harsh childhood and absence of love. Saddam suffered a narcissistic injury. Saddam came up to a conclusion that he cannot be loved really. He couldn't trust people. Saddam's school was few kilometers away from his home in his rural area, Al Auja. He used to hold an iron stick in his way to defend his self from the attacks of wild dogs and to remove the thorns from his way. In the school, and at the city, he felt no one defending him, no one loved him, he whose father is dead, and his mother is married to another man, a thing not easily accepted in his society. The only thing that defended him was his iron stick even when he ruled Iraq. Saddam didn't believe in peace because he was not in peace with his self, as Hassan Al Alawi wrote once.

Pic 2. The Great Expectations 1946 movie's cover

Mr. Pip the protagonist of Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations". He was an orphan. His older sister was so cruel and unloving. His environment was harsh as we see when he went visiting his parent's tomb in the graveyard and how he was frightened by that prisoner. He used to work with his sister's husband as a blacksmith. He was chosen by that wealthy bizarre old lady to spend some time with her and with Estella, that beautiful wealthy girl who used to torture Pip in an unusual way by uttering comments in his ears like: "Common boy"… "I hate you"…"stupid clumsy laboring boy"…"look at his hands (referring to their dirtiness)" … "look at his boots (in referring to how much they are old and sheared" … but she then feel some need to show her charm to him and to offer him a kiss when she likes, to continue then her harsh comments. Such sadism that was enough to cause Pip ambivalent feelings and narcissistic injury and an abnormal superego development that might give a space to a psychopathic personality to flourish and to create crimes. But he didn't. That prisoner became wealthy and adopted him and gave him love, a scarce bit of love. He grew older, studied, became a gentleman, then got some happy ending with Estella, and with his superego.

That was because somebody loved him and wanted him to be. Is it by chance that Dickens chose a prisoner "a criminal?" to give Pip love, and to rescue him from being a criminal? To reverse the equation. The prisoner blocked the bad way in front of Pips and showed him the way of good.

Pic 3. A love card taken from the site www.mopo.ca

I remembered that when I was reading the autobiography of Salim Matar. His feelings of inferiority, his chronic feelings of guilt and unworthiness, his harsh superego that don't get satisfied only when Salim is suffering, all that, what could made out of him?

Many Iraqis share the same story of harsh fathering and neglecting mothering because of the chronic problems of poverty and recurrent wars.

Selim Matar, as an example of an Iraqi, came up with a psychological autobiography with good insight and bunch of articles, books, and magazines about the Iraqi identity issues. He writes in his biography about his discovery of "love" during his experience of laryngeal cancer, and the need to love his own self so that he can love others. It was in Switzerland when he found love, and while having carcinoma. He talks about his former hatred and grudge for almost everything including God. And here we find a kind of atheism with strong hatred to God (as a father figure maybe). When his grudge melted in Switzerland, by the effect of power of love, when his grudge fires were set off by love, he found God again, and he found his spirit. What was the role of laryngeal carcinoma in Selim's finding of love?

It seems that growing up unloved as a child have its catastrophic effect on personality and it needs such extraordinary experiences like that happened to Mr. Pip, and to Salim Matar so that they find again love, and finally be.

Iraqi Autobiography

2010-07-21T14:53:00.000-07:00

Cover of "Confessions of an Unashamed Mam"

An old flask moved through 2000 years from fathers to sons, sometimes after the father's death, but sometimes the son steals it, and during the final decades it left its homeland, Iraq, to a more modern country, Switzerland. He who owns the flask owns what is inside, Hajir, a naked woman who gives pleasure usually by sex, but sometimes by telling stories, and sometimes her man chose to talk to her or cry on her chest. Adam was the one who took the flask to Switzerland not knowing about Hajir. Adam that Iraqi who is married to Marlin, the Swiss, after discovering Hajir, started to take his flask to cheap hotels in rural areas to spend some time with Hajir. His lust for sex started to be accompanies with a lust to alcohol and marijuana.

The whole issue seems not that of a novel, more of a short story, a forgettable one, with bad use of symbols.

Generations in any stable country differ from each other and there are conflicts on some issues, but what about Iraqi generations. The differences are huge since the changes were huge and radical in Iraq history at least in the last 100 years:

1. Those who were born at the end of the 19th century and lived in the beginning of 20th century lived under the Othman empire rule and saw the English invasion and the start of Iraqi Kingdom. Don't know if anyone from this generation is still living but he is still living in the mind of his sons. They are our grandparents.

2. Those who were born under the Iraqi Kingdom lived to see its fall by that revolution of Abdul Kareem Qasim, the Ba'athist- Communist conflict and killing, 1963's killing of Qasim and the start of Ba'ath regime. The relatively calm 70s and the flourishing of art, the Iraq-Iran 8 years war (those who participate in this war are a generation by themselves for what they saw in this war had changed their values uniquely), the 1991 war and the starvation years of the embargo.

3. The generation of the 2003 war.

We, Iraqis of different ages, differ markedly in the core, in the beliefs and attitudes, in social norms and rules, in the understanding of history, and in things beyond my understanding and the scope of this post.

This is why it is important to read a novel, or an autobiography written by a fellow Iraqi from a different generation, from a different experience of Iraq.

Salim Matter is a name that you cannot ignore. That "Mesopotamia" journal which deals with the Iraqi identity crisis and stability was edited by him, with few other books about the Iraqi identity that is available in the Iraqi book market.

Photo 2. Mesopotamia Magazine issues

"The Woman of the Flask" is a novel of his. It doesn't worth much like his "Confessions of an Unashamed Man", his "psychological" autobiography as he calls it. He told us about his childhood in that poor quarter of Baghdad "Al Shakeryia", and how they go walking bare-foot in the summer to the river crossing in their way that rich quarter "Karradat Mariam" with its beautiful Armenian Church and how he wished that his parents were like these people in this quarter, clean and well dressed. He told us that he and his friends were crossing that quarter with caution and fear, but didn't explain more.They reach the river, under the Bridge of the Republic (Al Jamhoureya Bridge) and start to swim in Dijla.

He tell us about his emotional father with his mood swings between extreme violence against Salim, and then the extreme warmth and telling stories, and about his mother with her 13 pregnancies, (5 babiess died, 8 left including Salim) that didn't give her time for each of her sons and daughters individually. His father used to tell him stories about the prophets, mainly about Jesus, Moses and Ibrahim. Salim like Ibrahim especially. At the age of 5 he started to believe that God will send him an angel so that he becomes a prophet. Later, when he knew about Superman who came from a very far planet he started to train his physical abilities hoping that he one day can become a superman. His family helped his feelings of non-belongingness by making fun of him telling him that they found him when he was a baby in the nearby farm, and they took him and grew him up. Since childhood he worked with his father in the father's simple kiosk in Bab El Sharki where they sell sandwiches and drinks to the police men of the nearby jail and also to the families of the imprisoned who came to visit their sons and daughters. He loved the nearby living wealthy family's girl, Eman, and he liked their big house and dreamt that he is their son. His father was harsh on him sometimes and very violent. His rebellion on his father tuned to be a rebellion against God and later, this non-belonged man who always felt as a stranger as he says, joined the Communist party to belong to its big family. At the 1979 he left Iraq. The autobiography continues to tell us about his second part of life, and briefly about his return for a visit to Iraq after the 2003 war.

His "Confessions" tells about the contradictory messages his father used to give him, and about his ambivalent feelings toward his mother whom he thinks contributed to the development of his chronic guilty feelings. For a long time he was feeling guilty if he feels happy, he tells us about the "Guilty form Happiness" that he got, as if he must not be happy.

He hated his teachers at school, hence he joined his friends in running away from the school to the nearby cinemas where he loved to watch emotional Indian movies. Later, when became a communist, he started to deal with cinema more seriously.

Selim Matar publishes a film of his "Confessions" on his site:
http://www.salim.mesopot.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49:2010-06-29-12-26-58&catid=35

While "the Woman of the Flask" is a boring novel, Salim's Confessions is such an original work written with good insight, and after reading the confessions you might got some empathy to his earlier novel. Thank you Salim Matar for all what you have done. Your works helps to make the Iraqi identity more understandable.

Islam, According to Al-Jibran's Heart

2010-07-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Abdul-Razzaq Al-Jubran starts his book entitled "Prophet's Republic: An Existential Return" and a secondary title "Muddling Soil" by dedicating it to the deceived by the current copy of Islam, and to Ali Sharee'ati, to Soren Kierkegaard, to his brother, and a female who taught him rebellion.

"I divorced Muslims, hence I found Islam"

“The path of reform in Islam is Kierkegaardian.” P. 86

“Faith is not a must for beauty” p. 87

A book that had been published in 2007 by a Lebanese publication house named "Insan (=Human)", reached Iraq and, as usual, illegally photocopied and sold around Baghdad. According to our local book seller it is one of the most sold books during the previous years.

Who are the prophets according to Al Jubran?

“Prophets are not those who shook hand with Gabriel, but those who slapped darkness” p.113

Al Jubran proceeds to remind us of the non-belonged, of the strangers in history. All the prophets were strangers to their society rules. They felt estranged. Also did Ghandi, Jbran Khalil Jubran, Imam Ali, Abo Thar Al Ghafari, and others.

About the most widely spread version of Islamic history he writes:

“Most historians, were the court’s historians…(according to Al-Jibran, those court historians wrote a mutated version of history so that they gain the court's approval and support), while the true page of history, or let us say that true history of Islam is the history of the opposition and not any other… history of revolutions, history of the suppressed, and the crazy… the unwritten oral history” p.101

“Prophets are always buried by books and not by soil” p. 112

Al-Jubran proceeds to contrast the behavior of jurisprudents in history against the prophets' behavior and found great differences.

"God pours prophets and people drink jurisprudents"

Social-class and Islam

“The prophet came to stand for Bilal, and not to stand for God” p.159
Bilal was a black slave owned by a very wealthy man in Mecca who turned to be one of the most furious enemy of the prophet Mohammed because the prophet tried to free Bilal and to makes him equal to the wealthy man. Al Jubran thinks that feelings of strong rejection to the prophet by as such wealthy men of Mecca were not because of the new religion per se, but because of social-class problems.

Forced Faked Faith

Al Jubran reminds us of one of the prophet's quotations in which Mohammed the Prophets disapprove the behavior of those people who want to drag other people to heaven in chains. Al Jibran reminds us that the Prophet's problem were not with those who just didn't believe in him, but mainly with the injustice. Al Jubran concludes:

"God is concerned mainly with injustice and not with unbelief."

Communists

Al Jubran is an Iraqi. He might have some respect to Iraqi Communists. He declares in a short quote that: "Communists are closer to God". Since communists usually don't steal in Iraq, then you will find them poor here, and hence they haven't the capability to leave the country to a safer and secure one. And since many Iraqi communists are known for their love for alcohol, Al Jubran quoted:

"If the communists are drinking wine in the bar, then the Islamists (=political Islam) are drinking money in the mosques, and God's problem is not the drunk, but the poor!"

Old Temple New Temple

"The first thing the prophet had destroyed was a temple" p.126

"the problem of the people here is that they cannot find a door to the prophets but the jurisprudents and this what makes them enter to this cave they call a mosque in spite of its darkness"

Al Jubran thinks that Islam was simple at first, simple and lovable. Islamic jurisprudents had turned it into a complex and hated one, according to Al Jibran who put the Danimark cartoon drawings of the prophet as an example of how much hated we are, and how it is important to "rescue the prophet from Islam, since rescuing Islam is difficult" as Al Jubra Says. He adds:

"The jurisprudents had inserted their noses in what the Quran had chose to be silent about, and they talked more than the prophets did"

"The jurisprudents of Islam had elongated the path to God" p 120

"The religion of the prophet is the religion of heart, simply"

Al-Jubran reminds us of the prophet's advice to consult our hearts when we are confused about the right way and to be humanistic:

"It was not the prophet's aim to cultivate barbs, veils, and mosques so that they point to God, but his aim was to cultivate the hearts so that they point to mankind… because the problem of existence is not God, it is mankind".

"Religiousness in prophet's consciousness, is how you become humanistic in the street, not a priestly in the temple"

Pyramids of Love

In the Islamic belief, human were made by God from mud. Al-Jubran tells us about how some Sufis believe that it was a step in our making that we were made from mud, and our responsibility is to turn our mud into something else, like when Mohammad Iqbal, the Sufi who liked Jalal Al Deen Al Rumi's wisdom, said once: "Al Rumi, turned my mud into crystal (taking in mind that the word crystal in Arabic also means "core")". Al Jubran tells us then about the slaves who die while building the pyramids from mud. And advices us to build pyramids from the mud we are made from, the humanistic mud. i.e. to build pyramids of love inside of us, inside our hearts.

The Obstinacy of Love in Baghdada

2010-06-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

According to Elliot, when the Hollow Men feel a desire to kiss someone, they are unable to. Instead, they say prayers to broken stones.

Hassan Mutlak wrote in the introduction of his novel: “there is an old memory, since I was a student in the second grade in primary school; I witnessed a man who found a beautiful alabaster box and sold it to an English man for 4 dinars. At that moment I suffered.. and I am still suffering”.

“I dream of a magic wand
Which turns my kisses into stars
So that, at night, you can
Stare at them
To know that they are countless”

Those were Dunya Mikhail’s verses, said in a prayer of love.

Hassan Mutlak, and before being executed by Saddam regime, had signed a copy of his novels to Dunya Michail who kept asking about him when he dissapeared. So let me tell you about Dyam, the protagonist in Hassan Mutlak’s novel “The Power of Laughter in Ura”:

Oliver came to Nineveh to look for the Assyrian treasures. Dyam was a local boy aiding him. Oliver gave his hat as a present to Dyam, but as Dyam took-on the hat, he could not anymore see the skies, because of the hat borders, and not that only, but he started to hear about the Hollow Men of Eliot.

Dyam had seen the Assyrian tressures deep into that dark well, but he lied to Oliver saying that there is nothing in that well. Oliver was frightened to go and check by himself because of the extraordinary creatures living deep in the darkness of the well.

It was raining and Oliver offered Dyam a ride in the car but Dyam answered: “why would I came inside the car and the rain has started?” Dyam went walking “receiving the wide drops like kisses” as the novel says.

Dyam who wished to “die in a moment of a kiss” kept talking about his coming death. As if Hassan Mutlak knew that they will kill him. Dunya Mikhail kept asking people about him while people's faces were turning yellow from fear, and she was asked finally not to mention his name again publicly.

Hassan Mutlak knew about the Styx River which marks the borders between life and death, but he refused to join the Elliot’s Hollow Men in their scarecrow show as he tells us symbolically throw Dyam.

Hassan Mutlak's brother, Mihsin al-Ramli, told us in an article about their mother and her night stories and especially that story of the illiterate man who invented his own prayer and how funny and sincere it was.

Hassan Mutlak prayers were published openly in Iraq after the 2003 and I received them lately while I was making my own version to Baghdad, picturing those drowned boats, those poor people, this burned-out court of justice, and this demented river.

Baghdad, we love you obstinately.

Lag3ud bi tali el leal (= I swear I’ll wake up late at night)
Ya 3nayid ya yaba (=o you little stubborn)
Wallah wathkur waleefy (= to remember my lover)
Wib 7igat el 7alman (=and on the excuse of dreaming)
Ya 3naid ya yaba (=o you little stubborn)
Ana lamshi 3a keafi (=I will sleep-walk to wherever I want)
3eani w dhay 3eani (=my eye, and the light of my eye)
Ya 3naid ya yaba (=o you little stubborn)
Tiswa hali w kul lil garaba (=you’re equal to my kin and all my relatives; means you are more important to me that them all collectively)
Ya 3nayid ya yaba (=o you little stubborn)

Thanks to my friend who provided me with the burned-out court photo. The song lyrics and music is said by most to be made by Hudairy Abu Aziz. But some regards it as a Jordanian Folklore. Muhsin al-Ramli article about his mother is published in the Iraqi journal “Mesopotamia” in its Issue 2 December 2004. “The Power of Laughter in Ura” novel which was written in 1984 is published by the Arab Scientific Publishers after 2003 and available in the net on http://www.neelwafurat.com/. Baghdad was written as "Baghdada" or "Baghdado" in the writtings from the Keesh era, 1500-1117 B.C. and it was the oldest mention of Baghdad according to Taha Baqir.

Hearts Splitting Apart

2010-06-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

They are building some huge thing in Bab Al Mua’atham, but nobody is sure what it is. We got to walk a long distance till we get our bus to go back home. I passed near the Uzbek Mosque and wondered about what is happening in Kyrgyzstan. I thought about taking a photo to the mosque but it lies inside the ministry of defense and the guards are everywhere. They would ask me why I need that photo. And it will be hard to explain. I thought that I can find its picture in the internet when I will be at home but I was wrong, no picture for the mosque but a Google Earth view which has no artistic value.

Today it was very hot and dusty. The bus driver told me that he wish rain would fall. Baghdad turned her face to me and said: “me too… I wait rain… since long…” as I was searching for an answer, she turned her face and went walking, but to where? “Where are you going?” I shouted. “She’s deaf” the bus driver said with laughter!

Et comme toi j'attends la pluie
Pour lui dire toutes mes peines
Tout comme toi, je lui souris
Quand elle tombe sur la plaine
Quand elle tombe sur la plaine

وإنني مثلكِ أنتظر المطر
لكي احكي له كل أوجاعي
ومثلكِ تماماً سوف ابتسم له
حينما يتساقط على الأرض
حينما يتساقط على الأرض

Once upon a time in history, centuries ago, some Uzbeks didn’t find shelter for them but to live in Baghdad. They immigrated here and found it a good place to install their life in. They knew that the place in enough good to start their manual works. Then they needed a mosque, and they built one near the gate. The Iraqi historian Abdul-Razzaq Al Hasany says that Baghdad was just a small city which extends from Bab el Mua’atham, to Al Sinaq, surrounded by a tall wall. The only functioning gate of Baghdad just before the British army entered Baghdad early in the 20th century was a gate called Bab Al Mua’atham, and when you just enter through the gate, you would see the Uzbek mosque to your side. I wondered about that time when Baghdad was receiving immigrants who seek stability. There is no Baghdad that receives immigrants these days anymore, but there is one that expels her sons out.

Uzbeks and Kyrgyz people, you got some huge mountains and wonderful music, so why don’t you play some music for the world and show them how diverse and rich this world is?

Trop de souvenirs gravés
De cours d'écoles et d'étés
Trop d'amour pour oublier
Que c'est ici que je suis né
Trop de temps abandonné
Sur les bancs de ma cité
Trop d'amis pour oublier
Que c'est ici que je suis né
Que c'est ici que je suis né

كثير من الذكريات المحفورة
دروس مدرسة وأصياف (جمع صيف)
كثير من الحب للنسيان
هذا لأنه إنني وُلِدْتُ هنا
كثير من الأوقات المهجورة
فوق مصطبات مدينتي
كثير من الأصدقاء للنسيان
هذا لأنه إنني وُلـِدْتُ هنا
هذا لأنه إنني وُلـِدتُ هنا

Picture taken today from Bab El Mua’adam bridge. Part of Faudel’s Mon Pays song in which he sings his confusion of belonging to France Vs. Algeria from his album Mundila Corrida and film made by Windows Movie Maker.

PARFUMS D'ENFANCE À SANATE

2010-06-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

Un village chrétien au Kurdistan Irakien,
By: Ephrem-Isa Yousif

After the First World War, the borders between Iraq and Turkey had been drawn and specified. With a line, Herbool started to belong to Turkey, and Sanate to Iraq. His mother Yorina was from Herbool, while his father was from Sanate. He is Esho, the Chaldean-Assyrian, talking to us about his childhood in Sanate till he left Sanate in 1956 after graduating from its primary school, he left it at that time to Mosul to complete his studies, and since then he misses it. He misses the fresh air coming from the mountains, the Gods of Nineveh embodied in nature, misses the freedom, and the perfumes of Sanate in an elegant 117 pages book, which misses, unfortunately, 17 pages in Dar Al Zaman publication edition which I got (from 48-65).

Da3ouni ajoodu beel buka’a (=Let me give generously with weeping)
3ala wa7eedie wa7die ( upon my only son by myself)
Fanhameri ya dumu3 3ayni (=So pour down, oh tears of my eyes, )
Wa athri fi kabadi (=and reach my heart (literally: my liver))

Foa’adi enkawa (=My soul (literally: my heart) was seared)
3ala el 7abeeb (= on my most beloved (meaning: "my heart was injured badly because of what happened to my beloved"))
wa khananie jaladie (=And my patience betrayed me (meaning: "and I couldn't take it" or "my patience didn't hold up"))

His father Yusuf was a farmer. He used to implant tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peas, and did not forget to implant and harvest Tobacco which he was addicted on, in spite of the recurrent objections of his wife, Esho’s mother, Yorina.
They got 50 goats that were used to graze in the mountains. Esho’s grandma, Kitro, and his mother, Yorina, used to care for the 50 goats milk, making various products from it, but mainly cheese which was a main meal.
They got a donkey named Kindo, and a Mule named Ferdo. Esho loved to accompany his father in their rides around the area and sometimes to Zaxo to buy some merchandise for their village. Such trips were not out of danger, for the Bandits were numerous and they would not hesitate to kill if the others would not give them what they want. Even gangs from Turkey sometimes invade the village at night and steal sheeps and things alike. But they couldn’t steal the beauty of the mountains with the various trees it got: the poplar, willow, fig trees, pomegranate trees, peach trees, apricot trees and others.
He tells us about the special days, and holy days they got in their Sanate. I liked the most that specific day of the year, which seems not to have a special name, when everyone between 6 and 16 years old should go in 4 groups to the wild and live a whole day without the men and women form other ages. The girls would play the role of mothers, and the boys would play the role of men. Such a great idea.
I liked also that public bath in the nature for women and children every Sunday. All the villages’ mothers would go with their children, about 500 one, to a valley in an area named Bahwari where there is a river, and they would take a bath, all naked. When male children get over 11 years of age, they are no longer taken in this common bath; rather, they can go together to another place and swim together.
Esho tells us about many incidents that reflects the social rules and values. Most of the stories he remember were sad. Like the story of Nano Kore the blind poor girl who got pregnant without marriage form a teacher, then get killed by her brothers. Or the story of Hinny and her elder husband who kept believing that she was unfaithful to him till he one day cut her nose by a knife. Or Khatoon who was married against her will to a man with paralysis, to fall in love later with amn from another religion and escaped from the village with her lover.
He told us about the names of the tribe was living in Senate at his time: Al Bou Isac, Al Bou Zaya, Al Bou Kimya, Al Bou Kinno, Al Bou Kara, Al Bou Nisan, Beshman, Al Bou Shalmoon, Al Bou Mangana, Al Bou Koureah, and Al Bou Tshina.

In 1956 Esho graduated from the primary school of his village. His father wanted him to continue his studies in Mosul. He took him to Zaxo and at the borders of Zaxo he saw a thing that frightened him. A thing moving, but was neither a human nor an animal. It was a car. He took the bus to Mosul in which he kept missing his village life, the freedom and the air and the Gods of Nineveh.

The picture in the video is for the cover of the book and you can see the walls of Al Umawie Mosque behind it. The mosque itself was a church before Islam. The Hymn “Let me cry generously” is believed to be sung by the Virgin after the crucifixion before more than 2000 years from now and is sung on the eve of Good Friday in Eastern Churches. Here it is performed by Lena Chamamian, a Syrian-Armenian singer.

The translation of the Hymn is taken and modified from the following link
http://www.arabicmusictranslation.com/2008/07/lena-shamamian-let-me-give-generously.html

My Poor Baghdad.... I Love You

2010-06-06T10:10:00.000-07:00

بغداد، يا أُمّاُ مخرفة لم تتعرف على أولادها
بغداد، يا ممحيّةً دعيني أقراكِ
أحب فقرك المدقع
فثرائك الفارغ كافر

Baghdad, you demented mother, who didn’t identify her children
Baghdad, you who is erased, let me read you
I love your poverty
For your empty luxury is blasphemous

أحن الى رائحة صابون الرقي في فوطة بيبي
ورائحة عرق أبو موزة الحدايقجي بعد العمل حين تصب له بيبي الغداء
أحب أن أشم رائحة أولادك الكادحين
رائحة تلك العجوز حين تتكوّم بعظامها البارزة تحت تلك التُكيّة
تعطيها بيبي بعض الكيلوات من التمن والعدس
واجلب لها الماء بارداً والشاي حارّاً كما يجب
كما علّمتني بيبي

I long for Grandma Foota’s (= type of veil for elder women) smell
A smell of Saboon Raggi (type of locally made soap)
I love the smell of sweating of Abu Moza the gardener after finishing his work and eating the lunch my Grandma made for him
I love the smell of sweat in your working sons
The smell of that elder woman who was sitting tired with her bony face under the huge blackberry tree
My Grandma would give her her kilos of rice and lentil
And I brought her the cold water and the hot tea as it should be
As my Grandma taught me

بغداد، اكره عطورك المزيفة الحديثة
أعشق أكل الروبيان من يديّ عجوز بصراويّة أًميّة
أكره وجباتك الجديدة المفبركة
في مطاعم الإجرام

Baghdad, I hate your high priced cheated modern perfumes
I love to eat shrimp cooked by the hands of a Basrawi illiterate elder
I hate your newly faked dishes
In the restaurants of crime

بغداد، اريد ان امتطي حصاناً يعبّ الخبب
وأن أصيح ديـــــــــــــــخ
وأن أسبح في نهر دجلة مع أخوانٍٍ لم تلدهم أمّي
أن أشرب الشاي مع متسوّل
واهديه حذائي لأبقى حافياً
يلسع الكًير الحار قدميّ فأُغني أُغنية لصلاح البحر
"لله يا صاحبي... ترحل وتنساني"
ثم أتلوها بـــ
"جايني وشسّوي جاي"

Baghdad, I’d like to ride a stylishly running horse
And to yell Deeeeekh (a word usually said to the horse to run fast)
And to swim in Dijla with my brothers whom my mother didn’t born
I’d like to drink tea with a vagabond
And to give my shoes to him and stay bare-food
Ground burns by feet so I started singing one of Salah Al Bahar's songs:
“For the sake of God my companion, you leave and forget me?”
Then follow it by
“you’re are coming back to me? What for?”
(Salah Al Bahar is well known Iraqi singer and composer of some songs, and the two songs between brackets are his own)

بغداد اريدك حرة كالطير
أمينة كحمامة بيضاء
صبورة كالجمل
ووفية ككلب اسود مكتئب
ينتظر قدوم صاحبه في المطرالحزين
حكمة البومة وسكرة البلبل بنبيذ التين

Baghdad, I’d like you to be free as a bird
Safe as a white pigeon
Patient as a camel
And loyal as a black dog with depression
Waiting for the coming back of his companion under the sad rain
Owl’s wisdom and the drunkenness of a nightingale by the fig wine

اريدك ان تزهي بجمالك وترقصي
اريد المطر ان يبدأ ولاينتهي
اريد ان ارى نوح مرة اخرى يبني سفينة
لنا نحن الذين نحبك يا بغداد

I’d like you to reveal your beauty and dance
I’d like rain to start some day and never stop
I’d like to see Noah again building his ship for us
We, that we love you oooh Baghdad

أمي
عبائتك السوداء هي بساط صلاتي
شعرك الأسود هو ليلي
صوتك الحلو ترنيمة نومي
حين تغنين لي آودللو
فيما أبي في قهوة عزاوي يستمع الى الجالغي

My mother
Your Abaya is the carpet I will pray on
Your black hair is my night
You sweet voice is my lullaby
As you sing Oooh Delello (= a well known song to sleep the baby in Iraq)
While my dad is in Azzawie café listening to Chalghie (Azzawie café is well known café in bgahdad, and Chalghi is a style of singing and playing music especial for Baghdad)

ابنتي
لا تنسين ما كتب الأسلاف
لا تنسي إينوما إيليش
لا تنسي أُوتونا بشتم
لا تسني مكتبة بانيبال
ولا تسني أغاني جدّاتنا

My daughter,
Never forget what our ancestors wrote
Do not forget Enoma Elkish
Do not forget Utanabishtim
Do not forget Banipal’s library
And do not forget our grandma’s songs

بغداد الفقيرة احبك
بملابس غير مكويّة
بسلال خوص النخيل المليانة بهدايا عمتي
بشربت قمر الدين الذي ربّى بقلبي حصرة
بالنومي بصرة

Baghdad I love you, you the poor
With old non-ironed clothes
With palm leaf made bags filled with presents from my aunt
With Qamr El Deen juice which grew an opression in my chest
With Noomi Basra (dried lemons of a very special kind)

شاي أسود حرقته "هيلة" الجايجيّة بعد أن نسته على النار
محروقٌ ومرّ
جكَارة سومر قد تفيد بعض الذكريات من دخانها
لكن
قد لا يكون "شاكر" هناك

With black tea, burned because “Hela” the “Chaicheyia (=tea maker)” had forgotten it on fire
Burned and bitter
“Sumer” cigarette may had a memory in its smoke but
“Shakir” might not be there

بغداد.... قد رحل إيشو القادم من سانات
حاملا على ظهره نبيذاً صنعوه في بيوت بعشيقة
وقد رحل حسين مردان آتياً من بعقوبة
جالبا لنا عرقٌ خمّروه في هبهب
وها هو تائهٌ ذاك الذي يحبك
بين يديكِ
فدلّية على الطريق الصحيح
واعذريه إن رحل

Baghdad…Esho who came from Sanate had departed
Carrying in his back home made wine from Ba’ashika
And Hussein Mardan who came from Baquba
Who was bringing us Arak made in Hibhib
Had departed too
And that is your lost man who loves you
Between your arms
So show him the right way
And pardon him if he departs

بغدادي الفقيرة ... احبك
My poor Baghdad, I love you

ملاحظات
هيلة وشاكر عاملان بسيطان كادحان تعرفت عليهما في الحلة و أحبهما بشدة
الموسيقى المصاحبة للصور التي التقطتها البارحة هي موسيقى ارمنية لفنان ارمني اسمه أرتو تونكوياسيان واسم المعزوفة هي "زيتوني زار" وقد استخدم كموسيقى مصاحبة لفلم "رحلة في أرمينية" فطوبا لهم هذه الروحية

Notes:

“Hela” and “Shakir” are poor workers from Hilla and I love them severely.

The music in the film I made with my photos taken yesterday from central Baghdad is an Armanie music by Arto Tuncoyaciayan and the name of the piece is Zetuni Zar and was used as a sound track in the film “Le Voyage en Armenie”

Love'N Remorse

2010-05-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

I regard myself as a dot… as a black unimportant dot in a forgotten road of Baghdad. As I imagine the size of the world now I know how much small I am. After hearing about the rambling incidents of the world around I know how miserable my life in Baghdad is.

The electricity is still a “something” that is regarded as very modern and non-reachable easily. Visas are not given to me cause I am Iraqi. I am frightened most of the time. Cause I am Iraqi.

Some lucky friends had left this country and got new nationalities. Most are Americans now. Some are British. And my dear friend with whom I spent some of the most important part of my life is turning to be a Canadian.

Do I have an Australian friend? Yes. He was my neighbor.

Well, I don’t need much from the world.

I don’t want luxury. Actually I was taught to hate luxury.

I want to stay an Iraqi living over this hot ground that burns your feet when you go walking bare-foot in summer as I did once before years and that unforgettable.

From the soil of this homeland came up those people that I most adore for their patience, wisdom and warm.

Here are pictures from Al Mahmoodiya, a quarter from Baghdad, with a song about how love can cause remorse. I hope that there will not come a day that an Iraqi would blame himself for not leaving this land, for loving this land, which had suffered a lot. See by your eyes, hear by your ears, here is Iraq, feel it.

Bisnoonha ( =By her teeth)
3adhat shafayifha nadam (She bit her lips because of remorse)
Tirjif khajal (=shivering because of her shyness)
Min rasha l 7ad jidam (= from her head to her feet)
Sa3ar tighamth 3younha (=one moment she closes her eyes)
Sa3a etabaddal loonha (= one moment her color changes)
Amoot ana bi3younha (= I die on her eyes = I love her eyes to death)
Wsa3a etighayer loonha (= and other moment her color changes)
Shifti el 3ishig shisawi a yeflana (=did you see what love can do?)

Caricactus

2010-05-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

Today’s temperature at the afternoon was 41 Centigrade (=105.8 F) in Baghdad. Many got to walk for a distance before reaching where they can take a bus back to their home. At the main cross roads in Baghdad they are building either tunnels or bridges. Soil and dust is everywhere. Most go out from work somewhere between 2:30 pm and 3:00 pm. Most are hungry, got a headache, and feeling hot, and got to walk across those cross roads to reach where they can find busses which have no air-conditioning.

I was so hungry so I went to the nearby old Baghdadi quarter to have my lunch in a simple public restaurant. Went for a walk and felt so tired again and found that café. Cold water and a cup of tea were great to refresh me. I asked for another cup of tea and opened my newspaper (Al Mada, =the horizon http://www.almadapaper.net/) to find this caricature (by Adel Sabri)

To the left stands a man representing the “hot summer” and to the right a man representing the “electricity crisis” and the poor Iraqi citizen is wrapped in the stick they hold him in, above that fire.

I found a friend and we went to reach home together. I wondered about other papers caricatures and searched for them in the google. Yesterdays issue of Al Esbouya (the weekly) http://www.alesbuyia.com journal has a symbolic cover. The British election Vs Iraqi election, flowers Vs Cactus.

Cactus appear again in Al Alam (the world) newspaper http://www.alaalem.com/ issue of today put in a long table and empty two chairs and man waiting at the door for the proposed meeting of the “opponents” as the newspaper states.

Al Zaman (the time) www.azzaman.com/ wrote above its caricature: all in the government and the others are opposition forces. Making the note that all want to be in the executive part of the government and no one like to be as a member of the opposition forces in the parliament.

Al Sabah (= the morning) www.alsabaah.com/ caricature of today:

liked another caricature from Al Sabah published before days and it needs no words.

Sorry for not mentioning the names of other cartoonists but it is not clearly written in Arabic, only of Al Sabah which might be read as Abdul-Raheem.

Green Love

2010-05-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

Friday it is and Baghdad is calm again. The streets are almost empty from the ugly cars and no irritating horns are heard for a while.

Next to Dijla those men are succeeding in remembering us of our identity, of our smell and existence. All ages gather to hear the sound of wisdom. Hand in hand, Kullita and Ninatta (Goddesses of music) came out of Dijla and started dancing for us.

Ahmed Khalaf was talking about Fuad Al Tikarly and about the behavior of the novelist and the relation between behavior and writing. I remembered that Hussain Sarmak, the Iraqi psychiatrist, had written a text about Ahemd Khalaf novels. I started searching for the novels.

Tarek Harb started talking about the novelists who were lawyers since Fuad Al Tikerly was a lawyer. He mentioned Kazantzakis, who was a lawyer as he said, and started talking about the lawyer in merchant of Venice and the trial stating that Shakespeare had broke a rule in courts because he wasn’t a lawyer, since the flesh got blood in it, then the final rule of the judge was wrong, according to Tarek Harb.

It was a hot dusty afternoon but after I was heading to my home, Baghdad had drawn me a childish green heart on her ugly walls. Well Baghdad, me and my friends, love you.