Mille Feuilles et une Feuille

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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.