a letter of love to psychiatry

Students of medical college asked me early this morning about why "I" consider anxiety as a disease. It took me some time to talk about the concept of disease, disorder, illness, pathology, suffering, cost-benefit balance of treatment, and quality of life. I asked them if they consider a "fracture in the leg due to car accident" as a disease. I asked them whether they think "pregnancy" is a disease. Should we call a man with a fractured leg as "patient"? Should we call a pregnant lady a "patient"? And what is disease after all? Can you define it?

Anyway I am sensitive these days from those who are skeptical about psychiatry. I don't feel respected in my daily life. I saw a specialist in ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) from Hilla today and I like him very much. He likes me very much too. We kissed each others like we usually do in Iraq and started talking about some shared memories. He asked me before we departed:

- Are you STILL with psychiatry?
- …..? with?
- Didn't change … I mean…. Still sure that you want to be a psychiatrist?
- Well, what to do else? I like it.
- God may help you my friend and make success in your way always.
- Thank you dear, same for you. Byebye.
- Byebye.

Soooo he is kind but, like them, what is wrong?

In that small room he said to his companion with a loud voice as if trying to see what would be my comment: "our thesis in psychiatry is just nonsense, do you believe that someone can really work and do a thesis? Just lies". They laughed anxiously while looking at me. I smiled to them and went out to the outpatient clinic.

A teenage with obsessive compulsive disorder was waiting me in the outpatient clinic. He astonished me by his knowledge of his disorder and he told me that he chat online with a psychiatrist from the USA. He told me that he reads websites talking about obsessive compulsive disorder. Dealing with him made me realize that I am not in a world of ignorant.

After him came three clients, one after the other, all having social phobia, all were university graduates and very clever.

Then a lady from a rural area, no schooling, with marked psychomotor retardation, anhedonia, insomnia, early morning awakening and history of resistant depression came alone. She was enough insightful to say: "I really don't want to come to you doctor, but I got to force myself, cause when the episode will go away I would think this is what I should have been done, coming to you". I asked her about whether she finds life worthy. She told me about her suicidal attempts and showed me her previous wrist and neck wounds. I told her she must be treated inside hospital for few days maybe. She asked me to consult her family and that she will come on the next days.

A lady with a card written on it: "paranoid schizophrenia on zyprexa 10mg/day" came to ask me about zyprexa. She said: "I don't want to go back thinking those strange ideas doctor, I have hurt my daughters enough on the last episode, I want to continue on zyprexa, is this dangerous? Is zyprexa addictive?"

The last client was a small family. Father, mother and her, the most beautiful princess with hearing difficulty and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She turned the room upside down on our heads. She wrote me a letter and drew me a painting.

When they went I felt I am much better and that I like my profession no matter what. Those people I saw today in the outpatient clinic know about psychiatry more, and respect psychiatry more than medical students, ENT specialist, and some other doctors. It is for their sake, and for my sake, that I will continue enjoying studying and practicing psychiatry. Those ideas were coming in my head while I was preparing to go out of the outpatient clinic. The king, father of the princess came to me with the princess who was frowning at her father who said: "please doctor, can you write something for her, I mean anything in a white paper, I am sorry but she wants to take the prescription paper you already wrote and she might tear it, can you just give her a paper with anything written on so that she stop her temper?".
"sure" I said and took a white paper and wrote something like her lines on it and gave it to her. She smiled and hold it up in the sky and yelled at her father: "hay hay!!". Her father kept saying "sorry doctor" and I kept saying "it is ok" we smiled to each other and went out.

Ya Zina (=Hey Beauty)

يا زينة ديري لا تاي
ديري لا تاي ومنل قابسة للبراد
يا زينة ريبي للواد
ريبي للواد وجيبي نعناع جديد

Ya Zina make the tea
Make the tea, from the sauce pan to the tea pot
Ya zina go to the river
Go to the river, and bring fresh menthol






I have finished my thesis yesterday and spent the rest of the night watching a film of Maryl Streep and Clint Eastwood named "Bridges of Madison County". This evening I decided that I should take a rest. I opened the youtube and found myself typing "Raina Rai Ya Zina" and hearing that song from the 80s of Algeria.

يا زينة مانيش عليك
مانيش عليك لاخرودوني عينيك
يا زينة كولي واه
ولا لالا ولا تكطيني للياس

Ya zina am not speaking on you
Speaking 'bout you, your eyes have perturbed me
Ya zina tell me yes
Or no no, or cut my hope

Algerian coast in the 80s witnessed one of my earliest discoveries of my body. I saw my extended family for the first time in swimming dresses making some conversation with the sea. I preferred to run like a young wild horse till the sun said goodbye. "Bronzage", said in a French accent, made my old uncle saying: "your color now is so beautiful my boy". It was very rare that he talk to me. His compliment made me feel so happy. One month of happiness ended heralding the return to Baghdad while my mom's tears are in her cheeks while the taxi driver was driving fast next to the sea taking us to the airport. My eyes, not used to see my mother's tears, started pleasing them to stop that silent crying.


يا زينة عينيك كبار
عينيك كبار يدخلو المحنة للدار
يا زينة والزين الزين
والزين الزين وساكن سيدي ياسين

Ya zina your eyes are big
Your eyes are big bringing the ordeal to the home
Ya zina the beauty the beauty
And the beauty the beauty living in Sidi Yaseen

يا زينة والفن والراي
والفن والراي وخارج من بلعباس
يا زينة راني مهموم
راني مهموم منك ماجاني نوم

Ya zina & art & rai
And art and rai coming from Bil Abbas
Ya zina I am concerned
I am concerned, because of you no sleep came to me

Sahara treated my insomnia (March 2005)
Insomnia attacked me on Algeria in 2005 while I was searching for a job and not finding any. I thought I am a tuff guy till I chose one day to visit a psychiatrist. She was a lady psychiatrist. I cried a lot like I never did since long years. She was very helpful. After visiting her I took my Amytriptiline and went to Bou Sa'ada to start searching for a job there. Bou Sa'ada is also called the gate of Sahara because it lies at the start of Sahara. I started sleeping so well there but I found no job during a period of one month. On the night I chose to return to Iraq a Bou Sa'adian family invited me for dinner.
Before we started to eat an old lady entered the room where we were sitting. She stretched her hand to me. She seemed she wanted to shake hands. I put my hand in her hand. She started to take my hand toward her mouth…. And then… I wanted to take my hands back but I thought it would be in appropriate… she kissed my hand… !!! God what to do. I thought for a long second then decided that I should kiss her hand… I took her hand to my lips and kissed them. You know what she did? She took my hand again and kissed it!!!! I took again her hand and kissed it. I am not sure now that we did that a third time but I am sure that the people around us were surprised by this strange greeting of our invention, me and the old lady whom I didn't see before. We were smiling wide to each other when she went inside the house. People decided not to comment on this perplexing incident while I was really feeling more relaxed and more secure. We ate that Bou Sa'adian dish with resonant gusto.

يا زينة كولي لباك
كولي لباك راه القلب رضاك
يا زينة كولي ليماك
كولي ليماك وراه الحب براك

Ya zina tell your dad
Tell your dad that the heart is willing for you
Ya zina tell your mom
Tell your mom that love had healed you

يا زينة ما نيش عليك
ما نيش عليك وراني عل روميات
يا زينة كوليلي واه
ولة لالا ولة تكطعيني لليآس

Ya zina I am not speaking on you
'bout you, I am about the western women
Ya zina tell me yes
Or no no or put an end to my hope

To Baghdad with her tears on my cheeks (April 2005)
I reached Alger. I went to tell my mom that I will go back. I could not bear the weight of her tears. I went out to central Alger. I bought 2 books of Rachid Bou Jidra. I walked in Didoush Murad street. I walked in Bab El Wad. I bought a ticket to Amman/Jordan from the Algerian Airway. I took a taxi late in the evening back home. I took my Amitriptyline and Bromazepam prescribed by that Algerian female psychiatrist two months ago. I slept like statues do. I woke up. I went to kiss her goodbye. She was in her bed, under her blanket silently crying. While her tears were on my cheeks I went back to Iraq.


كي راني ولة مهموم
في هذي كحلة لعيون
نجمة النجوم
كي راني لة مغروم
يا زينة

I am concerned
In this black eyed woman
Star of the stars
I am in love
Ya zina

The Ruins

"My heart, don't ask where the love has gone
It was a citadel of my imagination that has collapsed
Water me and let me drink of its ruins
And tell the story on my behalf as long as the tears flow
Tell how that love became past news
And became a matter of the subject of pain"


Um Kalthum. You know her? You should my friend. Here she is.

"I haven't forgotten you And you seduced me
with a sweetly-calling and tender tongue
And a hand extending towards me
like a hand stretched out through the waves
to a drowning person
And a light searching for a wanderer

But where is that light in your eyes?"

She is Egyptian. She sings in an Egyptian Arabic accent. She refused to sing in any other accent when visiting Arab countries like other singers do. She only sang in Egyptian accent. She never sang a song of somebody else. She only sang her songs. She made an exception. Only one exception as far as I know, and that was in the 1930s when she visited Baghdad. She heard Salima Murad singing "your heart is a boulder rock" in Al Hilal (=crescent) cabaret. Um Kalthum sang Salima Murad's song on the next night in that same cabaret. Salima Basha went angry, while Ma'arouf Al Rusafi calmed down her saying: "you give us your song like serving a fatty ox meat meal, while Um Kalthoum presents it like a Gazelle meat dish, don't worry my dear". I don't know if Salima Basha liked what Al Rusafi said, but it seems it calmed her down a little.

"My darling, I visited your nest one day
bird of desire singing my pain
You've become self-important, spoiled and capricious
And you inflict harm like a powerful tyrant
And my longing for you cauterized my ribs (soul or insides)
And the moments were embers in my blood"

Salima Murad was born in Baghdad in 1905. She was a famous singer and she was the protagonist in the Iraqi film "Alia and Isam" in 1946. In spite of being a Jew, Salima Murad Basha stayed living in Baghdad till she died in the first of January 1974. She was very respectful. She brought respect to female singers. Females singers were seen, and still seen, in Arabic countries as prostitutes in disguise. Salima Murad, Um Kalthoum, Fairouz, and few others brought respect to Arabic female singers and stood tall in theatres all over the Arabic countries.

"Give me my freedom, release my hands
I've given you and did not try to retain anything
Ah, your chains have bloodied my wrists
Why are they still there when I no longer affect you
Why do I keep promises that you do not honor?
I've had it with this prison now that the world is mine"

I was in the minibus when the driver asked me before we go: "this is a novel?".
- Yes, it is about the life of Salima Murad
- Wow, seems interesting.
- Yes, sure it is.
- Naim Kattan?
- Yes he is the writer; he is an Iraqi Jew living in Canada.
- Do you write?
- Not really.
- I write poems, and I study literature in the evening.
- This is great, hope all the success to you.
- Thanks. I like Jerji Zidan. He is Christian. Some consider him as orientalist. Maybe the author of your novel is an orientalist!
- …….
- No, I don't think so. Iraqi Jewish likes Iraq. They are Iraqi. True Iraqis.
- ….. (I smiled)
- …..(he smiled)

When I went out of the bus, he kept looking at me waiting that I greet him. I saluted him. He saluted me smiling. I put my hand on my heart.

"He is far away, my enchanting love

Full of pride, majesty and delicacy

Sure-footed walking like a king
Oppressive beauty and rapacious glory

Redolent of charm like the breeze of the valleys

Pleasant to experience like the night's dreams
I've lost forever the charm of your company that radiated brilliantly

I, wandering in love, a bewildered butterfly, approached you

And between us, desire was a messenger and drinking companion that presented the cup to us"

The novel of "Farida" is said to be about the life of Salima Murad. Her picture is in the cover of the novel. I knew that Nathum Al Ghazalli did marry Salima Basha but this was not clear in the novel. The novel ends in the late 40s while Salima Basha is losing her lover and companion Salim who decided to go to Israel. Novel ends while Salima Basha Murad is alone, totally alone, having a big house, a cabaret, and will have a car and a driver. She was alone, didn't need anyone, but was not sure that she was happy.



"I have had a chance to visit ruins. The first were the ruins of Babylon. As I child, I felt them rarely, it was only later that I realised that they had become an inseparable part of my past, like historical memory, and when I had a chance to see again, in the Berlin Museum, the reconstructed temple to the goddess Ishtar and especially a vase with an inscription in Hebrew, I had a feeling that I was reliving history in the present moment and that my birth was becoming lost in time and that it no longer belonged to me."

From the Speech by Mr Naïm Kattan on the Occasion of the Award of his Honorary Doctorate from the University of Novi Sad

"Had love seen two as intoxicated as us?

So much hope we had built up around us

And we walked in the moonlit path, joy skipping along ahead of us

And we laughed like two children together

And we ran and raced our shadows"

Naïm Kattan was born in 1928 in Baghdad, in Iraq where he completed his elementary and secondary education and where he studied Law. In 1947 he received a scholarship from the French Government to study French Language and Literature at the Sorbonne. He received a doctorate in French Literature. Following that, in 1954, he immigrated to Canada to be one of the most famous writers of Canada and one of its most distinguished professors of literature.

"And we became aware after the euphoria and woke up

If only we did not awaken

Wakefulness ruined the dreams of slumber

The night came and the night became my only friend

And then the light was an omen of the sunrise
And the dawn was towering over like a conflagration

And then the world was as we know it,
with each lover in their own path"

I keep asking myself if there is still a hope that people like Naim Kattan can go back someday to Iraq. For a visit at least. His novel "Farida" reached Baghdad which embraced it and newspapers started to write about it. The welcoming of the novel is not that warm. Many are not finding time to read a novel. But most will listen if you talk to them about this novel. About Salima Murad. About old cabarets of Baghdad.

"Oh sleepless one who slumbers and remembers the promise when you wake up

Know that if a wound begins to recover another wound crops up with the memory

So learn to forget and learn to erase it"

In his speech while receiving the honorary doctorate, Naim Kattan mentioned Um Kalthum's song "Al Atlal (=the Ruins)". And linked it to his memories of his old places. Of Iraq. I went to my neighbor and asked him about this song. He gave it to me after a search that lasted about half an hour. I kept saying: "please don't bother yourself". But he said: "you never asked of Um Kalthum before, I was surprised you ask about her today, I must find her for you".

- Do you know where "Al Hilal Cabaret" was?
- I think in Al Midan sequare in Bab Al Muathem. I got a picture of an old cabaret in Al Midan.
- Is it still working
- Ha ha ha, you make me laugh Sami. Of course not. Look at it. It is forgotten.
-

"My darling everything is fated

It is not by our hands that we make our misfortune
Perhaps one day our fates will cross when our desire to meet is strong enough
For if one friend denies the other and we meet as strangers
And if each of us follows his or her own way
Don't say it was by our own will

But rather, the will of fate"

He found the song for me at last and I am listening to it since about 5 hours. It is 40 minutes long. Its lyrics were written by a poet called Ibrahim Naji. He was a doctor as far as I know. The lyrics are in the rosy italic font.
At last let us dream that peace will come and stay in Baghdad, in all Iraq, and all people can visit our country, their country, which will regain its charm.

The translation of Um Kalthum's song is taken from this site:
http://www.allthelyrics.com/forum/arabic-lyrics-translation/58223-oum-kalthoum-al-atlal.html

Return of the Violet Fingers

Like the previous voting, I and he were not sure that we will vote till the day of voting. In the previous voting we met at the door of the voting buildings. I didn't know that this will happen again. Now that it is night and I am making my dinner I turned on my laptop to see my desktop with this Berber Algerian woman with her hand colored by holy Henna. I raised my index finger to check its color. It looks like holy Henna.

"I don't know" was the usual answer he was answering my question about whether he will vote. I was also "don't know". I have finished yesterday at 11:30 pm the eighteen tables of my thesis and sent them via email to a specialist in biostatistics. I felt so sleepy, took a novel and an orange and went to bed. I ate the orange; put the novel next to my pillow and passed quickly into deep sleep. It is a national recess from work and I need not to wake up early. I woke up this morning very early. I didn't look at the clock, I just passed into deep sleep again. I woke up at 11:00 am. Woooow. It feels so good. I will be as lazy as I want today. I started some slow cleaning in the kitchen. I took the garbage out. I asked my Assyrian neighbor: "where can we vote?"

At home I started drinking coffee while I opened the TV and I saw Maisoon Al Damalouji. I love and respect this woman. Her face reminds me that I love Iraq. Her speech makes me proud of being an Iraqi. I finished my coffee and took my clothes and went to vote. My name was not in the first school, nor in the second. They told me to check a third school which was little far. I went sadly and frightened that I won't find it but I found it and said with a loud voice: "Here it is!"

In the voting room I saw very beautiful women. They were all smiling. They were very very kind as if from heaven. I voted. They said: "Thank you". I said: "thank you" with a smile and went walking. I saw many families walking happy. The father's and mother's index fingers are colored by that ink. I saw him coming. We greeted each other with kisses like Iraqis usually do. I went back with him waiting while he voted. He didn't ask me for whom I voted. Nor I did ask him. We are Iraqis with different views and this is our way to show respect to each other. We went back walking slowly and talking about memories of how our quarter was so beautiful before hoping that it will regain its charm while we were proud of our violet fingers.

Hajanjalie Bajanjalie

Was it Melanie Klien who said once that children are psychotic?

7 up
Knocked the door
Pepsi show itself
And the Krash (Krash= an old gaseous beverage in Baghdad)
Is in the bed
Crying yes he is

They told me to wait till they call my name. There was something wrong with my papers. They were so slow. I became irritable. My bladder was full of the 2 Coffee cups I drunk early that morning. My mouth was bitter. I was pacing round and round till I finally asked the soldier: "please my brother, I need a W.C.". He smiled hiding his innocent shyness and showed me the way to a far small building.
When I came back I was walking slowly. I was relieved. I noticed her. She is a princess dreaming of her castle and her courageous prince. She talks phantoms. She laughs. She cries then shakes her head. Makes some gestures, then plays in the soil creating stories. It is the kingdom of childhood that finally made me smile in this ugly day.

Hajanjalie bajanjalie (two words with no meaning just to go with the rhyme, in Arabic)
I climbed up to the mountain
I found one dome, 2 domes
I yelled: "hey you, uncle Husain"
This is the Sultan's Makam (Makam= the place a famous dead person visited once)
Hold up your legs you Umran (Umran is a male Arabic first name)

I am making the final part of my thesis. The tables and biostatistics of the data is really annoying. I am not enjoying it lately. Actually it started to annoy me. I want just to end it and get rid of it. I got to end it in few days to keep the chance of entering the final examination this October. I was stressed lately and become little irritable. I started to prefer avoiding people again. I thought I should take a walk. I suspected that I will feel better. I drunk Pepsi and my bladder became full again. oh God. I felt thirsty again but my bladder is full. I stopped next to a man who sell Pepsi and said: "I would buy Pepsi from you if you show me a nearby W.C.". He laughed and showed me an old building. When I came back to him, took my Pepsi, I took a picture to the ceiling above him. He looked at the ceiling thinking there is something strange. He looked at me. I looked at him. His eyes said: "you are crazy don't you?". I went walking felling much better. I saw a child on the bridge. He was throwing bread to those beautiful white sea gulls with ugly voices. Their ugly voices made me smile. Oh child you are the only one this day that I felt I can talk to really. I am just afraid you might get afraid from me. I asked him if I can take a picture for him while he through bread and he yelled while throwing more happily: "Surrrrrrrrrrrrre!".

Then he looked at me and said:
- You like pictures?
- VERY MUCH INDEED!
- Want to take a picture for you with the birds?
- Surrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!

The words in rosy colour are my trial to translate two of the most common childhood songs in Iraq. They are really loosening of association that I most like.

These Days

"I was walking around, just a face in the crowd
Trying to keep myself out of the rain
Saw a vagabond king wear a styrofoam crown
Wondered if I might end up the same
There's a man out on the corner
Singing old songs about change
Everybody got their cross to bare, these days"


I reach my job after 2 hours in cars crowds. It annoys me. The psychiatry ward is in the 10th floor. I don't like the oppression in the elevator. It is good to have some sport after all that smoking. Patients are going down in stairs. A man with a urine bag. A woman with a syringe filled with blood. A young man holding many blankets. The cleaner who wears that ugly cleaners' uniform is sitting at the ladder next to his broom smoking.


"She came looking for some shelter with a suitcase full of dreams
To a motel room on the boulevard
Guess she's trying to be james dean
She's seen all the disciples and all the wanna bes
No one wants to be themselves these days
Still there's nothing to hold on to but these days"


Her face contains two deep longitudinal furrows above her Caucasian nose. She is white and slim with a tint of hidden sorrow and untold stories. Her beauty made her cleaners' uniform holy beautiful in my single eyes. She remembers I was giving her long eye contacts before 2 years. When she saw me after this long time she gave a smile. I gave her a smile while my fingers invaded my hair. Three white hairs appeared in my head since some time. I should stop running Fromm freedom since I have passed 30 years by some days.

"Jimmy shoes busted both his legs, trying to learn to fly
From a second story window, he just jumped and closed his eyes
His momma said he was crazy - he said momma I've got to try
Don't you know that all my heroes died
And I guess I'd rather die than fade away"


Today I was walking across the bridge when I saw the fence was broken from a side. "an invitation to suicide?". At ward my colleague said: "90% of those who commit suicide got mental illness". I kept thinking about the 10%. Existence is a stranger at some Algerian sea next to Camus. Existence is sometimes a Saterian nausea. While Hemingway said Farwell to arms.


"These days - the stars seem out of reach
But these days - there ain't a ladder on these streets
These days are fast, love don't lasts-in this graceless age
Even innocence has caught the midnight train
And there ain't nobody left but us these days"


The words between brackets are the lyrics of Bon Jovi song "These Days".

While Hilla is Water

When Hilla is a word
It is a vibrating tone
Echoes of which are floating
With heavenly river waves
Fresh cold warm waves touching my naked feet and say:
Hilla

I went to Hilla before few days. In the road I saw those magical palm orchards that I always dream I can go inside one day. I saw small villages that I feel myself belonging to. I always think of myself as a person from a village. I hate cities. I hate car crowds. I hate huge buildings. I like those old brick factories which make bricks from mud. I like those factories even if they emit smoke. The pollution they cause is much less than that caused by cities. There smoke will be cleaned by the holy water, water of Hilla.

When Hilla is a river
The shores of my mind
The boats of my happiness
The moons of my night
Are colored in blue love and uttering:
Hilla

I finally reached al Hilla. I found her (the word "city" is feminine in Arabic) preparing for the day of Ashoura'a. The day which remembers us of the martyrdom of Imam Al Hussein. It is a sad day where people put black flags and some other symbols. A sadness that I found oppressing during my first days in Hilla in 2003, but a quiet sadness that I loved profoundly later. A quietness that I missed, kindness that I submit to, and music that made me surrender.

When Hilla is a lady
The road to her is my lullaby
The walk with her streets is my dream
Her lovely voice mesmerizes me
When she says her name:
Hilla

I went deliberately to the area where one of the most violent explosions occurred in Hilla in 2004. It is a crowded market. Market of street of doctors. My friend had cried that day. A lady from Hilla told the police that her husband had gave shelter to the man who exploded himself. The man who exploded himself was not Iraqi. The police took the ladies husband. I never felt being one day afraid from Hilla. On the reverse I am so afraid from Baghdad. In each street I walk in Baghdad, each car I look at in a crowd, I feel there is a hidden possibility of an explosion. In Hilla I forget about war, loud whistles from ambulances and police cars, and explosions. In Hilla I only find peace and security. A slow walk in this lovely market only makes me more quite and slow. And if I may die once my God, let it be here.

In the market, different odors will touch your nose. You will hear from now and then a man shouting behind you "Balak Balak…..Balak Balak" (=be aware be aware….). they are the men who push merchandise in some old wagon. I never felt I dislike this crowd. This crowd is something holy for me.

I asked a man if I can reach the market of the ceiling (Souk Al Musaggaf) from between the houses on the side. He stood and with big care started to told me to pass right, then right, then left, then I forgot… I went to Al Mahdya quarter walking remembering my stylish friend Maithem who took me once for a walk here. He was so stylish in dress. He was so proud of this old quarter of Al Hilla. It was new for me to see a young man being proud of an old quarter. I learned that from him. Now I am proud of this too. I love these buildings. I adore those people.

I lose my way in Al Mahdya. I went left, right, left, right, right, then I was again the old market I was. I went to a library in this market. Market of Sharaa Al Atibaa (=street of doctors). I found books about everything. Books about religion, atheism, cooking, psychology, computer systems, history of Hilla, poetry, politics, jokes, and others. I found a book written by a Tunisian psychiatrist trying to psychoanalyze the personality of the prophet Mohammed, prophet of Islam. Isn't this great? They are really open minded those people. When I asked the library man why the book price is so high in spite of being a used book, he told me that it is a rare book. So he knows this book.

I bought the book which accompanied me during me way back to Baghdad feeling refreshed and filled with passion while I was from time to time meditate in the traditional clothes of the old man who sat in front of me in the bus.

I am a thirsty camel
Desert filled my eyes with dust
My feet went dry and scaly
While water is called
Hilla

Algerian rain

In Iraq, we call the umbrella as Shamsya (=protector from sun). I have never been in a rainy city like I was in 2005 in Alger, the capital of Algeria. Every day I was going back home wet. One day I noticed all people are carrying Shamsyas except me and few eccentric people. I went running to a shop and asked him:

- Please, do you sell Shamsyas?
- What?
- Shamsya?
- …..?????
- ….this one I mean (I pointed to an umbrella).
- Uhh!! You mean Matarya (=protect from rain).



An Algerian poet said once: "the long distance between Algeria and Iraq is a geographical error".

Maybe it was because of the geographical error I wasn't able to follow the loosening of association of the first part of the novel. Some Algerian symbols were not clear due to the eastern dust in my Iraqi eyes. After the first 60 pages I passed, an Algerian rain cleared my eyes heralding the completion of a circle of understanding.

I was once watching the agerian satellite channel when I saw a delicate man talking with a warm voice about something that I forgot. He cause my attention. I knew after few minutes of watching that he is Wasini Al Araj.

When I saw his novel in Al Kamle publications in Bab Al Muaatham in Baghdad, the first thing to attract my attention was the picture of the cover. How can somebody see such a cover and don't think about buying the novel?

That child in the cover took me to trip in Algeria. The child was talking to me in an Algerian accent that I failed to follow at first. The child was sad. He left me alone and went murmuring things I failed to understand.
When I was alone, the sky started to rain on me. I felt afraid at first but after the second half of the novel I could form a circle of clouds of understanding. Wasini started to talk with his lovely voice to my cold frightened ears.

He told me about the hero of his novel, the journalist. He was a regular writer in an Algerian newspaper. His regular line is entitled: "from the archive". He was well till he started to believe that he is meeting one of the martyrs of the Algerian revolution. The martyr was his father. He knew that there would come a solar eclipse on Algeria that will last for some long time. If children and farmers would look at the sun they would become blind. The journalist started to be obsessed with that hospital of plastic surgery where they cut the noses of individuals. They also change the eyes and brain. They make all people look the same. They tried to inhibit him from continuing his research and his writings but he insisted till he was fired. His regular line was changed to a line written by somebody else entitled: "come with me".

The journalist was named after his mother, a thing that is rare, if possible, in the Arab world these days. He was called as the son of Aicha Limnaoura (=lighted life).
The novel was written in the 1980s. It seems that Wassini felt that an eclipse will come to Algeria. the title of his novel is something really complex. It got 2 titles. The second, the long one is easy, it means "the last witness on the assassination of the sea cities". The first title is something that I cannot translate easily. It means maybe: "the conscience of the absent".
After all, I hope that in 2009 Algeria is much better. I hope I can meet that child again. I hope I will see him happy and that we will dance together under the Algerian rain.

Happy Poetic Hair Cut

I went for my hair cut in Al Rasheed street. From all the barber shops in Baghdad I chose a classic one. It was the barber shop of the Beatles fans in the 70s as one colleague said to me one day in 2006. I went there once and found 4 men above 50 running the shop. They are calm, slow, and silent. There are always some old Arabic songs played on their TV screen. Um Kalthum songs are the most common. I cannot change them now. All of them had cut my hair at least once. But sooner me and him, the third chair one, knew that I should always come and sit in his chair cause he will know what I want without talking. The other three men know that I will wait my turn to have a hair cut in that third chair. The price of the hair cut is the lowest in Baghdad in their wonderful shop. They don't start talking at all, but if you talk they would talk with you for a while seriously and kindly. Then they will go back to their silence waiting for you if wanna talk again. Sometimes they are visited by a friend of them when they will start talking spontaneously with him a little. Their friends always don't stay too long.







I always feel great after I went out from my hair cut. I went to Al Mutanabbee street to find it paved and clean. This street had suffered a wild explosion since about 2 years. I didn't know that it is fixed. I knew they were working on it but I forgot that. Wow it is nice and some new things are added here. Oh yes it is time when I feel I like my Baghdad. I found 2 new novels of Taher Bin Jalloun, and 2 books on Iraq, one of Khalid Al Kishtainy and the other by Rasheed Khayoun. I bought them and went back walking slowly over the bridge of martyrs above Tigris smiling widely to Baghdad.

Shape of my Heart

"He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He doesn't play for respect
He deals the crads to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden loaw of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance"


I reached Mosul at one of April's rainy evenings. It was 2007 and I had just survived the dark gloomy nights of Baghdad that I hated. I held my bag containing all my clothes and a sum of money and my new mobile phone was in my pocket. It rained on me while I was lost between the surgical, gynecological and forensic buildings. I entered the surgical house of doctors to know that the internal medicine building is little far. I don't belong to surgery. I went out after I felt I was not welcomed in the surgical part of …. Of what?....
I went walking again in the rain till I saw a huge building out there. The road was going up a little, then going down and down more and more till that building is standing near the river. I asked a police man about the house of doctors. He asked me many questions. Some were personal. He was asking me those questions while walking slowly and I was walking with him. I thought he was taking me to the house of doctors. But he finally told me that the house of doctors lies THERE!! And he pointed to the other side. He was walking away from the house of doctors. He made my road longer. I thanked him but I never greeted him during the next months. I let him feel that I don't like him. He kept wanting to greet me, or just to have an eye contact, but he fail. Ohh yes he failed.


"He may play the jack of diamonds
He may lay the queen of spades
He may conceal a king in his hand
While the memory of it fades"


I diagnosed her easily with histrionic personality disorder with panic attacks. The female rotator whom I thought was arrogant and looking at psychiatry and psychiatrist with a small eye asked me: "how did you reached that diagnosis doctor? May I ask?" I looked in her eyes while thinking that she was making fun of me. She added after a while: "I want to learn". Well, she may be was trying to make fun of me, but her late eye contact revealed a childish frightening from my WISE EXPERIENCED psychiatrist eye deepening contact. She felt I may analyze her with my eyes. I make take her clothes off. So she took a step back and added "I want to learn". She must have remembered how her father did spank her on her ass when she tried to make fun of him. so….
I started listing the histrionic personality disorder DSM IV criteria one after the other while her eyes were getting wider and wider, bigger and bigger, astonished by my strict English accent and psychiatric terms fluency which ended in something like "….and lastly her theatrical display of emotions made her nearer to a histrionic personality disorder diagnosis than any other".

The rotator commented: "she got all that and I didn't know!!"

I liked how she was trying to make fun of me. I must have been silly. She helped me to be more aware of myself and my childish theatrical display of my little knowledge in psychiatry. I felt that this rotator was older than me. So when that lady came with her beige stylish costume and her short hair cut I asked the rotator in a heard voice: "who is this lady?" the lady heard me. Everybody heard me. I wanted to be as theatrical as could be. As silly as it could be. The rotator smiled and delayed her answer till the lady saluted the two other doctors and she even shake hands with them, a thing that doesn't happen in modern Iraq very often, and she never looked at me and went away. The rotator then told me that this lady is a nurse.
I said with a hearable sound and a theatrical facial expression: "she is a nurse??"
"yes, she is a nurse" the rotator answered and left me alone and never did talk to me really during the last week she had to work in our unit.


"And if I told you that I loved you
You'd maybe think there's something wrong
I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one"


When I bought my new mobile phone my friend installed oxford dictionary for me in it. He added a song entitled "the shape of my heart" performed by Sting in it. He never knew that this song would be my morning alert tone for all some long time in Mosul. I woke up everyday thinking about that nurse. She always neglects me. Never greeted me. I sat next to her one day while she was talking to another nurse. She turned away giving me her back. I looked at her legs and saw some varicose veins. I thought of those varicose veins for long time. I wanted to be a varicose vein in her legs but in vain. In vian. She kept neglecting me while I was hearing "the shape of my heart" every morning.


"Those who speak know nothing
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear are lost"


One day one psychiatrist from Duhok started talking to me about how beautiful is the city of Ba'ashika. I asked him if he can take me there. He said the road is not safe anymore after the problems in with the Izidi cities. I asked him to bring me something from Ba'ashika. I thought he can bring me some photos or something symbolic. He brought me 6 bottles of beer. We locked the door that night. He started reading form a textbook of psychiatry while I opened my diary and started writing some lines which were going more and more primitive till I get naked in one of the poems and started playing percussions on African drums.


"I know that the spades are swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart"


The next day he told her that I love her. She started smiling to me very often. I stopped loving her. I changed the morning alert tone. I went walking outside the hospital for some long distance till I found a huge trash bin into which I threw the black nylon bag I was holding containing my ripped diaries with 6 empty cans of beer. When I came back I saluted the police man.

Words between brackets are the lyric of the song "shape of my heart" of Sting

Jack Abboud Shabi

I asked many about him. Nobody saw him but one of my neighbors. My neighbor worked in the 50s-80s as a manual worker in plants arboretum in Karrada in Baghdad. He told me that Jack Abboud Shabi was a regular customer of their arboretum. And that he was not tall. Did that mean he was short? I don't know really. Our neighbor added that he was average in shape and "nothing remarkable" as he said. Maybe my neighbor thought that I was expecting that Jack Abboud Shabi was a very strange looking man. Actually I thought he got something remarkable, like for example, a long uncombed hair. My neighbor understood my widely opened eyes and wanted them to look more normal at our history. Let us forget the cinema and surprise and look at books. I was with my friend taking a walk before few days when I saw this book.

Its title means "Jewish Celebrities in modern Iraq" written by a writer named Meer Basri. I saw it with other books being sold at the street. A man standing and below his feet are some books. I turned it on the index to find easily Jack Abboud Shabi waiting for me. From 206 to 207, for allover a who page, I read while at the street and my bored friend next to me saying something in his mind like: "I failed to change this guy, he will stay as possessed as ever, no matter how I learn him to dress like other people he will stay behaving strangely".
The strange thing I was doing is that I was trying to have that paper in memory because the book is of a high price relatively and I don't need it. I need this paper only. I kept repeating it but finally I bought the book.

And at night, when everything was calm, I read it again:

Jack Abboud Shabi was born in Basra in 1908. It was in Baghdad where he studied in secondary school. After he graduated from this school in October 1926, he was assigned as a teacher. The next year, in 1927, the Royal Medical College was instituted, and Jack Aboudi Shabi was among the first who joined this college to graduate from it in 1932.
He was sent to London to study psychiatry. He came back to Baghdad in august 1933 to work as a doctor in the Royal Hospital.
He worked as a lecturer in medical college in 1939. And in October 1948 he was chosen to be the director of the hospital of mental illnesses (didn't specify which one, was it Al Shamayea?).
He stopped working for the governmental institutes in 1950, after he had opened a private clinic and a private hospital (was he forced to leave the work for the government? Any information about his private hospital? where it was? Was is having a name?)
After the world war II, an Austrian psychiatrist came to live in Baghdad. His name was Prof. Dr. Hans Hoff. Dr. Jack Aboud Shabi was known to accompany Prof. Dr. Hans Hoff and to profit from his experience.
Dr. Jack Aboud Shabi was known to have many studies and researchs in Arabic and in English that were published in the medical association journal and other journals. (I never heard of this Medical Association, let alone its journal).
He left Iraq in 1971 and went to London to work as a doctor for the prison institutions.
He died in London in the 18th of july 1980.

Tobacco Keeper

I didn't make it deliberately. I just bought another novel. Ali Badr is one of those writers whom the Iraqis treat with respect. Everybody knows that Ali Badr is the writer of that novel, "Baba Sartre". Even those who didn't read the novel, like me, would tell you that while tilting the head little down, opening the eyes wide, hanging the eyebrows up and making the sound more deep and slow and say it: "he is the writer of BABA SARTRE!!!". Which should means that he is a great writer and you should have known that. So I found a new novel of his entitled "Tobacco Keeper" and published this year, 2008. So I didn't buy it deliberately because it is about an Iraqi Jew!!!

Why Iraqi Jews are attracting our fantasies this much?

The novel was a magnet to my eyes. Since the first lines and I couldn't leave it. Look, it is about an Iraqi male violin player, married and having one son, Maier. After the 1948 he and his family were forced to leave Iraq because they are Jewish. He loves Iraq and wanted to go back. He left Israel and came to Iran where he changed his name and card of identity and married from an Iranian Muslim Shiite woman. They entered Iraq to have a son, Hussein, there. But they were forced to leave Iraq after some years because they are of "Iranian origins". He went to Syria, to have a new name and new card of identity and married to a Muslim Sunni woman and came back to Iraq to have his third son, Omar.
After 2003, his son Maier came with the US troops (Maier left Israel to the US and had the nationality there). His second son Hussein came from Iran having in his mind the ideologies of Shiite Islam and how should Iraq be ruled. His third son Omar represents the Sunni part of the equation.
When they came all together like that I laughed and thought I should tell you about them.

By the Rivers of Babylone

It is a novel about a male gynecologist who had a severe mental illness after aiding to terminate an illegal pregnancy under threatening. Sounds silly? But wait, Khalid Kishtainy is always choosing an indirect way to tell us many other things in one blow. Khalid Kishtainy's essays in Al Sharq Al Awsat (=Middle East) newspaper were my favorite after I discovered that newspaper as a special one among the 200 newspapers which entered Baghdad after 2003 with their vivid colors and attractive images.

His articles were brief but with multiple wise wide brush blows on those paintings. Paintings, from which, you can smell old Baghdad. Articles that you can live Ayam El Khair (=The Good Days) again with. Ayam El Khair is a radio weekly episode that lasts 5 to 10 minutes in Al Iraq Al Hurr (=Free Iraq) radio channel. It is an Iraqi radio channel that belongs to the Iraqi communist party, and was banned before 2003. When I was preparing for my first year exam in 2005, his program did give me hope to continue in spite of the deteriorating situation back then in Baghdad. Hearing his harsh alto voice, talking quietly about the good days of Baghdad, were one of the causes why I stayed believing in Baghdad.

So what about this gynecologist?

He is an Iraqi Jew. And Ooops the novel is not silly anymore! The novel is about his life in the 40s and the 50s in Iraq and then Israel. He developed mental illness after aborting a pregnant under the threat of her brothers to do so. The novel is now attracting me more and more! Her brothers wanted him to kill her. He said he did. He showed them the dead baby. They asked him to bury the woman (their sister), whom they call a sinner. She was not married and she became pregnant after a love story.

The gynecologist, Abdul Salam, developed a mental illness. His wife took him to Al Kifl in Babylon where the prophet Thu Il Kifl (=Ezekiel) grave is. Babylon in the novel? I adore it.

They had visited the old Babylon by their way of return to Baghdad.

The doctor's condition improved a little to deteriorate before they enter Baghdad. At the borders of Baghdad they saw people making a rally and shouting "death to the Zionists, death to the Jews, and death to all Jews".
At Baghdad he was taken to Jacky Shabi Abboud, the first psychiatrist in Iraq, and then admitted to Al Shamaya Hospital (=al rashad hospital). Al Shamaya is there too? God I love this novel. Inpatients there thought that he was a spy working for the Zionist and would document their secrets to Israel. They start to through trash on him. His wife was advised to take him out. She took him out and went to the marches, to pass to Iran illegally, and then to Israel.

In Israel the story continues but I won't tell you how.

I didn't tell you about Hassoon and Samera, nor about Baghdad college and Romeo and Juliet. To leave you with a little hope that you read the novel.

The novel contains brilliant descriptions to Iraq in the 40s and 50s. Contents of a typical Baghdad house, peoples' costumes, peoples' favorable themes to talk about, Baghdadi proverbs, Songs, Al Rasheed street, Al Sadoon street, Al Sufafeer market, King Faisal's square, Ezekiel's grave, Ezra's grave, Babylon, and many other things.
I read the novel while I was going to my job. In the minibus. It never made me feel tired from reading. It is a very clever brilliant novel. Thank you Khaled Kishtainy.

You can find in this link an article about the novel:

http://thetanjara.blogspot.com/2008/05/khalid-kishtainys-new-novel-by-rivers.html

and Kaled Al kishtainy blog title is

http://kishtainiat.blogspot.com

Giggling

"Mechanic and Volkart (1961) define 'illness behaviour' as 'the way in which symptoms are perceived, evaluated and acted upon by a person who recognizes some pain, discomfort or other signal organic malfunction'."

"In a pioneering study conducted in New York, Zborowski (1952) found that patients of Old-American or Irish origin displayed a stoical, matter-of-fact attitude towards pain and, if it was intense, a tendency to withdraw from the company of others. In contrast, patients of Italian or Jewish background were more demanding and dependent and tended to seek, rather than shun, public sympathy."

Donald L. Patrick & Graham Scambler. (1982) Sociology as Applied to Medicine. London: Bailliere Tindall.


I felt I should go home after I ended my work late that afternoon but I thought about having a rest for few minutes in the hospital's garden. Patients took their rest either in the television hall where they usually keep silent, or in this garden. I like to see how they act in the garden. I was shocked many times before of how some patients look very different in the garden than in the examination room. What I liked the most in the garden is that they don't care about my existence and act the way they like.

That day I found an old lady burping frequently. She drew my attention with her frequent loud widely opened mouth burps. She was sitting on the ground with a bottle of something next to her. When I sat I tried to know what the bottle contains. It is something brownish. Is it soil and water? I asked myself, couldn't be! I answered myself. The woman took the bottle and drank from it. After that she vomited many times. I looked around and saw her family, a man and three young women sitting just on the other side of the garden and asking her to join them, but she was not answering. One of the young women went and sat next to the old lady who continued to do the same. She must be psychotic, I said to myself. And that must be a bottle of soil mixed with water. God help me.

They did not stop her from drinking from her bottle. Instead, one of three women was giggling while looking at me. That giggling woman, maybe her daughter as I supposed, is knowing what is going in my mind and laughing at my panic wide opened eyes. This giggling woman seemed the only one who understood that this is wrong. Maybe she knows that it is better not to interfere. She is maybe the only educated woman in her family. She may be tried to change their way of behaving before but in vain. Now she giggles at my surprise of her family dynamics she may be aware of.

I felt annoyed. We are in a hospital and we should not allow this to happen.

Something told me to be cautious. The giggling woman seems examining what I would do.

Something told me that this maybe a traditional healing method. So I should show them some respect while asking them to take the bottle from her. I decided to go to her first and have some talking to see how she would respond.

- My stomach, doctor. Or wait, you call it something, ehhh colon? (she said while putting her hands on her upper abdomen area)
- Yes, colon. (I said while I was now sitting in a chair near her).
- Yes, colon. Food poisoning. I am a case of food poisoning.

Her reaction to me was very normal. Her reaction was a mixture of being surprised about me asking about her health, showing respect to a young inexperienced doctor (or is he a student? Or a nurse? Or what? He'd better be a doctor or I would burp in his face), silence and waiting to see what will come next.

Totally normal.

She didn't feel shy from her burping, vomiting, her bottle, or sitting on the ground. She is not shy either because she is ill and do not have space in her mind to shyness at time being, or because she is just behaving culturally normal. Well it is a little mixture of both.

Being poisoned by food to any naïve psychiatrist would mean the patient may have persecutory delusions. But I felt this lady is not psychotic.

- What is this? I asked.

- It is soil taken from near Imam Al Hussain grave dissolved in water. (she said that while her eye contact was lost. She is now looking at her feet. Moving her toes. She was saying to me something like "you'd better go now young man, I am little ill for this conversation" but maybe I was wrong cause she looked at me again and added): people say it helps to heal many diseases (a shadow of a smile around her eyes).

And oops, the old woman's behavior seems to be clearer now. But to be sure I asked her if she is an inpatient. She said that she is a mother of a new patient that had just entered the women ward. I looked at the three women. That woman is still giggling. Still looking at me. From a small opening in her Abaya (= a traditional woman dress) I saw her holding red, purple, and yellow pieces of clothes which seemed to be woman's underwear. He father was examining me. His eyes were far but I knew how sad he was. The giggling continued.

- Do you want me to bring you any medications Youm? (Youm= Mom).
- No, son thank you for your care, I will be ok in few minutes. (She nodded her head with a slow and clear up and down movement which means "we are grateful").
- Ok mom, sorry to disturb you, just try not to drink much from this bottle now, I think you drank too much till now, anyway…. (I stood, took a breath)… it is up to you…you know….
- Yes….I understand (Her smile is clearer now, still a bitter smile).

I went walking slowly to my previous place while the daughter whom I thought was the only mindful aware woman in the family was giggling while looking at me.

shaking hands

"In Italy, expressive movements of the hands are a natural accompaniment of speech and certain standard verbal expressions are accompanied with gestures…."

"In English, on the other hand, the use of the hands in speech is considered to be vulgar…"

"The wide expansive gestures and cheerful mien of the mildly happy Neapolitan would be indicative of mania if seen in an English public-school 'man', who may allow a flicker of a smile on his lips if pleased".

Fish (1985) Clinical Psychopathology. Bristol: Jon Wright

He put his right hand on his chest after we shake hands. That was strange for me. I didn't like the movement. I thought he should stop doing that. We are in Baghdad and not in his city. He should follow our ways of behaving. Why is he insisting on that? I never put my hand on my chest for all the first year we knew each other in 1996 while we were students in the first year in college. He, on the other side, kept spreading his long fingered hands on his chest after we shake our hands with smile on his face that seemed to me that it was getting wider and wider while my anger on this gesture was getting darker and darker. After all he was the one that I chose to befriend. We decided that we meet before our second year in the college would start. He offered that we go to Al Najaf to visit Imam Ali grave. I accepted happily. We went to find his friends waiting for us. The Imam was so crowded to a degree that I felt hemmed in. I went out fast. To my surprise they all came to me worried about me and asked what was wrong. I told them it is so crowded. They said they are sorry they brought me in this crowded hour, and that they should knew this before. I was shocked by their kindness. I didn't expect that from them. They are religious. I expected them to be mad on me. To be angry on me. But they started to go outside offering to go and have lunch. I stopped stunned and asked them to go and do their prayers. I told them I like to wait outside looking at the golden shrine from outside. They said that I am a guest and they should not leave me. So we went to have lunch in one of my friend's friends' houses. Before lunch was complete they wanted to pray together. They asked me if I want to pray. I said: "yes!" and you know what? They asked me to be their imam in the prayer. That means I stood in front of them and do the prayer in loud voice and slow movements and they follow my movements while hearing my prayer. I said no way. They said that I am their guest. My friend told me that if I don't want to pray I can just say that and they would pray without me, but if I want to pray, I should be the Imam. I agreed. I start doing the prayer in front of them and they follow my movement and the slow modulation of the Holy Quran. I ended it, looked at them, I felt there was something wrong. They didn't speak. At lunch, my friend said: "Sami, when you are in a journey and want to do a prayer, you prostrate only twice".
I stopped eating looking widely into their faces. I thought they would be so angry on me. But they were suffering to hide a laughter. But my friend, the religious, added with a serious tone: "you did four prostrations."
"I am not in a travel", I said and added: "I am in my home with these lovely friends".
They did not welcome this remark. They just acted as if nothing happened. They started to speak to me about other things but religion. They knew that I am a good person, just not that religious. Their kindness was strange for me. I thought that my behavior would make them angry on me. But they were wiser than to be angry on me. I felt they were older than me. They were calmer and seemed more experienced than me and my Baghdadi friends. When me and my friend were leaving they all shake hands with us. They put their hands on their chest. And for the first time in my life, I put my hand on my chest after shaking hands. while we were on our way home, while over the Euphrates river which I saw for the first time and see that it is more calm than Tigris in Baghdad, I asked my friend why some put their hands on their chest?
"Not on the chest" he said, "it is mainly on the heart. It means you are in my heart".
Since then and I love to put my hands on my chest after I shake hands.

Allah Bil Khair

Culture is learned ways of acting and thinking, which are transmitted by group members to other group members and which provide for each individual ready made and tested solutions for vital life problem (walter,1952)
(Cox J.L.(1977). Aspects of transcultural psychiatry. British Journal of Psychiatry. 130,211-212)

Allah Bil Khair means literally "God with good". It is the commonly used short version of the original version which means "May God makes your evening full with good". It is the used greeting in traditional cafes and other man social gathering in Iraq. Used by men more often. I have never heard a woman saying "Allah Bil Khair" only when trying to use it its other meaning. Its other use is to mean "are you with me?" so if somebody talks to you and you seem not listening s/he may say: "Allah Bil Khair!?"

My father told me once his story with "Allah Bil Khair". He didn't like it, he said. He liked to say "good evening". It is short, nice, informative, understood, with no religious flavor. Why should God be inserted into our daily life, into our greeting? My father explained. But as my father graduated from university he had to work in a village named "Khirnabat". The road to Khirnabat was unpaved by then. The village was full of scorpions as they told my father by then. It was my father's first trip away from home. He was advised to sleep in a bed with long feet and to put rat poison around the bed feet so that no scorpion would go up to him. He worked for few hours in the morning, but he spent all the other time in his room, as he told me. One day, he felt hemmed in. He needed to go out. He went walking, found a café, went and sat down between the men of the village. The men went silent for some moments. My father felt frightened as he said. The silence became so intense that he felt he is unwelcomed till somebody raised his right hand in the air, looked at my father, raised his body from the chair a little and said: "Allah Bil Khair". My father raised his right hand, raised his body a little from the chair and said with a wide smile: "Alla Bil Khair Akhouya (=brother)". Other men started saying "Allah Bil Khair" to my father after that welcoming him among them. The silence did break into an atmosphere of warm welcoming. My father said to me: "It was only by then that I finally understood what Allah Bil Khair means!"Since then and I love Allah Bil Khair.

The first picture above "a man with a narjela" is one of my father's paintings. The second is taken from the web as a picture representing an old Baghdadi cafe named "Khan Jkhan".

Rain

"Your eyes are two palm tree forests in early light,

Or two balconies from which the moonlight recedes

When they smile, your eyes, the vines put forth their leaves,

And lights dance . . . like moons in a river

Rippled by the blade of an oar at break of day;

As if stars were throbbing in the depths of them . . ."

It was so dry. I have never lived in such an environment. Iraq is changing in its weather for sure. Dust storms were very frequent last summer. And it was a matter of discussion between Iraqis everywhere. Many have proposed some theories about it. Those who are satellite dish addicts always propose global warming as a cause. Some would add to the global warming more CO2 excreted from the old cars and electricity generators which all entered Baghdad in increasing amounts after 2003. Those who are less satellite dish oriented would often raise the possibility of the deterioration of agriculture in Iraq as a cause of leaving the land uncovered with plants, hence wind will easily take the unsupported soil and make a dust storm with it.


"And they drown in a mist of sorrow translucent

Like the sea stroked by the hand of nightfall;"

I quit cleaning some parts of my house. Especially those not that frequently used. But a little by little the neglect extended his dirty hand over most of my house. Water shortage encouraged me to leave things take the shape they want to be. And on the last few days I started to neglect my shape. My hair is always the first thing to be neglected. My clothes come next.

"The warmth of winter is in it, the shudder of autumn,

And death and birth, darkness and light;

A sobbing flares up to tremble in my soul

And a savage elation embracing the sky,

Frenzy of a child frightened by the moon."

If you type "rain in Baghdad" in the google search you will have the first results talking about "bombs rain in Baghdad" or "rockets rain in Baghdad". How ugly!
If somebody knows that bombs had rained in Baghdad, then he should know that badr shakir al sayab had wrote "the rain chant" or "rain song", one of the most famous pioneer poems of the new school in Arabic poetry. A school named "the free association school" of poets, where the lines can go with no rhymes. Lines with some musical rhythm.

"It is as if archways of mist drank the clouds

And drop by drop dissolved in the rain . . .

As if children snickered in the vineyard bowers,

The song of the rain

Rippled the silence of birds in the trees . . .Drop, drop, the rain

Drip

Drop the rain"

Today it rained generously. I felt energetic. I could not resist the idea of going outside. I watched the rain silently. It washed the depression dust away offering me a new day. I will go clean my house now.


The poet in italic fonts is part of badr shakr al sayad's "rain song" translated by Lena jayyusi and Christopher Middleton and published completely at the web site: http://www.jehat.com/ar/sayab/sub6e.htm

In search for my Rosalie

He left his North African home in search for a better life in Europe. He got older and knew that he is in love with Rosalie. Rosalie, that lady living in that Mediterranean city lying between the west and east, between north and south. When he reached that city he found that there is no such a woman. All those who he thought they knew her once upon a time denied knowing a woman with that name. He kept searching till, little by little, started being paranoid. A delusion started to be formed.
Writing about a delusion, while being formed, is really difficult. Reading about that is frightening.


"I suspected her long eye contacts. Her eye brows contain white hairs. Her blinking is so frequent when our eyes met and a slowly developing smile always draws my attention to her lips. Her calm is the rule. She can calm me just by her slow walking. She was the only one to tell me: You are not well these days! She didn't ask why. I knew she didn't want me to comment. A smile was a defense against a threatening tear. The silence was so long. She is wise enough to know how silence can intense our feelings. She may say something and then feel guilty. I may say something bad enough. So she broke the silence and said in a whisper : if you like I got a new white coat, I will borrow it for you today so that you can continue your work, you give me your white coat I will clean it for you if you like!"


Hasouna Musbahi's novel "Adieu Rosalie" is boring at the beginning. You feel that he just writes everything. Things are not going into any order. No clear aim. No clear message, but a tasty flow of memories. You will feel there a man from North Africa telling you about his memories. You would listen, don't you? But he is not that man that I can like. He disappointed his family. I was going to my job one morning when I reached the lines talking about his father's death and how he visited his family. I was going to job carrying my headache over my head, while the nostalgia to my family rests so wide in my heart, and Hasouna Musbahi's novel in my hands. He told me about that day he visited his family after a long period out of home. He made me angry that day on his irresponsibility. He likes Albert Camus's novel "the stranger" and thinks that he learned to be cold and unreactive, a way he took it as model to follow. What can we learn in our era from Albert Camus? To believe the world is meaningless? Absurd? And then?


"she avoids my eye contacts. Her eye brows are so slim and small. Sometimes I suspect she has any. When we meet our voices deepen. We can feel each other having shortness of breath. She is not calm as she wants us to think of her. She is hiding untold stories God only knows since her husband had been a martyr of his ideas. When we met finally after those years she asked me: Is there any thing new?"


Some writers want to write "naked truth". Being "true" to a degree that is "naked" is not that good. It destroys our defense mechanisms. It can help some people sometimes in their life, but it seems stupid to take it as a model to follow through one's life.
So was Hasouna Musbahi's novel talking about meaninglessness and absurdity? Yes, in some of its lines. So what did I like in it? And why did I keep taking it with me in the minibus to my work for five consecutive days?
In its first part I liked his memories about his homeland (Tunisia?) mixed with his anxious diaries in his second home? (Germany?). No strong sense of identity of the main character Mr. Meloud can be felt in the novel. His emotions are continuously burning and in many times is theatrical. He fell in his great love stories from the first sight.


"The first thing to attract your attention to her is her long blond hair. Her nose is a God's masterpiece. Her lips were telling me something. She told me about him. She complained about him. He took her breath away she said. I didn't think I would be so silly to fall in love via yahoo chatting. So silly to fall in love again. I thought I can control it by reading what Ellis had said about love. He said it is deliberate. Then let us stop deliberating. Love from a first sight is a big lie. Let us be mature I said before I sleep. But when at 4 a.m. a table lamp fall on my forehead, I woke up and asked her: Why?"


I wasn't in the mood maybe to welcome Mr. Meloud's personality which was talking to me daily in the morning while I take the minibus in my one to one a half hour journey from my home to work. My sleep is not that good these days. My mood is not that clear. My behaviors is not that social. And Mr. Meloud is accompanying me in the minibus while a go to my work each morning. Did I like Mr. Meloud? Am I denying some shared characters between me and him? I don't think so.


"I got a great respect to women with depression. And if they hide it with a smile, if they struggle to hide the tear, I will easily fall in love"


The second part of the novel starts with that journey to the south of the Mediterranean searching for Rosalie and her Motel. Psychic suffering started to be expressed in immature defenses like projection and denial to end up in delusions and disturbed behavior. I felt finally that Hasouna Musbahi is a professional? writer because he was talking to me with the mouth of Mr. Meloud who lost his insight writing his diaries in a disorganized manner that let me feel indirectly, and a little late, that he is psychotic.


"She had psychosis when I was just a teenager. I thought I can understand. I thought I can help. I don't know what happened. All I know is I was way too much wrong."

There is no such a woman named Rosalie, nor anybody did hear of her motel. And Mr. Meloud is thinking that everybody is in a conspiracy against him to hide Rosalie from him. A novel that I hated to a degree that is strange.

strawberrian shadow

I never wanted to publish a name of a person without telling him/her in advance. But how can I meet her now? What life had done to her? Where is she now? Is her huge crowded family house still there? Is that Grindeizer big poster still hanged at the back of one of her many brothers room door. Were all those children in that house her sisters and brothers? They were all welcoming her back with great happiness. When we took her to her home I felt that her sisters, brothers and parents were waiting us to go so that they can really welcome her, embrace her, and ask her about the days she spent in our house.
We were taking her to her home every two weeks as far as I can remember. She spent few days there, less than 3. And we go back there to bring her. Was she going sometimes to her home on her own? Did she comeback someday on her own? I cannot remember. I was just a child below 6 years. Wasn't at school yet. My parents had to go to their work. She must come to take care of me and my young sister in their absence. She used to take care of my baby sister but I was treated differently. I knew that she was not a physical beauty since I first met her. I remember that my female cousin did not like her. I was treating my cousin as my older sister.
One day we were examining our stamps together. There was a series of stamps telling the story of Jesus. They were stamps from the United Arab Emirates. I asked:
- Who is this?
She started to tell me about him. She wanted to say more and more but wasn't encouraged by some as I can remember faintly.
So when the other day my cousin invented that rhyme and told me to sing it to her I felt so happy to annoy her. A wicked evil smile draws itself in our faces, me and my cousin.
I still remember how she just came inside smiling when I, in the existence of my silent cousin, stood and sang: "Mariam Al Athraa, tateer fil sahraa" (mean: the Virgin Mary, is flying in the desert). I felt while I said that that my cousin, who was behind me, went to the kitchen down casting her head hiding a smile , while her….she looked at me with a wounded look, turned as fast as she can, my smile faded in my childish stupidity, she walked, she run out of the door she just came in from, my heart sank in a newly discovered sorrow, I could see her face crying, my eyes opened wide in a stunted feeling of guilt, fear, sadness, and anger mixed all together in my growing brain.
I asked her for forgiveness. She accepted to forgive me after just saw how I looked so sorry. I loved that Christian girl, I discovered for the first time that my cousin can make terrible mistakes; I knew that I can take another point of view different from my cousin's.
I even stopped telling my cousin about what happens between her and our boy neighbor who loved to talk to her under that huge strawberry tree shadows. And we started to have some secrets. I was against her frequent increasing meetings with that boy. She felt annoyed because I was so alert on her. My cousin was asking me more and more intensely about those meetings under that tree. I was becoming more silent and angrier on her when she went to meet him. She used to wait for him sometimes behind the nearby fence. I used to become irritable and start making some actions to annoy her. She told me then about that "STAR WAR" thing. She claimed that a war will happen between the stars and that the whole universe will explode and all of we will die. She knew how afraid I felt. She kept telling me that till her boy came. And since then, every time I tried to annoy her when she waits for him she would start talking about that STAR WAR.
Our alliance started to be threatened by the continuous interrogations done by my cousin with me, trying to make me confess. Till one day something happened and those meetings were stopped by themselves. I confess to my lady about the secret talking between my parents about her. They were not happy about the way she acts. I did feel how sad she felt. It was Iraq-Iran war, the weather was gloomy, and lights in our silent small house were faint. I took the stamps and told her to tell me the story again….
One day she told me:
- Oh I miss Sami.
- Sami? (I said smilingly confused).
- Yes, I love him.
- Who is he? (I asked annoyed).
- Sami our neighbor.
- …….(if I was sitting, then I think I stood up).
- He got huge muscles, his biceps is the biggest I ever seen.
- I got muscles too, see!!!
- Naaa, his muscles are of a man, you are still a kid (she said that and laughed as far as I can remember).
She didn't repeat that "Sami" story very often. A fact that made me hope that this was a faked story.
- We had taken you many times to your home.
- Yes, how much I miss my home.
- And I can remember that poster of "I am a disco dancer".
- Yeah, how much I like this film, Indian films are really romantic.
- I can remember I saw the hero wearing a red clothes in his head.
- Yeah.
- I can remember the picture of Grindizer in your brothers' room door, and I can remember your brothers' names.
- And sister?
- And sisters' names too. But there is something I cannot remember.
- Which is? You big rememberer?
- I cannot remember a man named Sami in your neighborhood.
She felt sad. I felt great. After a while I was sad too. I asked my father to accept that we play that cassette in his huge JVC recorder. He agreed. "I am a disco dancer" started its dancing rhythm and she agreed to dance with me again that day.