Why Does the Sea Laugh?

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

(A male pronoun talking:)

Between me and you wall after wall

And I am neither a giant nor a bird

In my hands there is a Nay*

And this flute is broken

And I became a proverb of love

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

And why the sea is laughing while,

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

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

The sea is angry and is not laughing

For the story is not for laughing

The sea wound never withers

And our wound had never ever withered

And why the sea is laughing

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

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

Our jars' pottery is GNAWI ***

Saying stories and songs

Oh jar of lowness I am intending

To not drink even if the water contains honey

And why the sea is laughing

While I am going down revealing flirtatiously filling the jars

* (A kind of flute made from reed).

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

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

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

The Poor Man's Son

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

El Watan, my Friend

MORE FRIGHTENED THAN CATS, OUTSIDE MY PLANT

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

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

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

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

POLITICS AND A PSYCHIATRIST

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

ISSIAKHEM, PLANTS, AND PHOENIX

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

MORE HISTORY

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

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

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

And of course, Emir Abd El-Kader.

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

Lautrec, as a Hunter

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

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


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

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

My Father's Colors

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




















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

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

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

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

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

My father's painting

The original painting by Serwan Baran Aarif

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

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

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

To Freedom with Brooms

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

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virginia's Big Black Eyes

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

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

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

Soon the moon will rise

And in this stony night

I have to see your face

See the lines that make you old

Stony silence, touched by gold

Everything's too late

Too late for love, and suddenly

Too late for hate

There's only one thing left to do

I have to face this other you

Lyrics: Half in Love Half in Hate, Harket Morten

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

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

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

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

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

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

He finally killed Pluto.

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

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

Another cat is introduced to the short story.

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

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

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

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

A Bit of Sugar by: Mohammed Munir

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

Wind of Change

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

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

And here he goes with his poem:


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

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

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

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

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

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

Socks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"and a teeth made of gold"

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

".. and anything that you like".

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

Dreaming Soul

1980s

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





2010

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

Trees are deepening their green.

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

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

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

a la recherche du temps Bou Saadi perdu

في البحث عن زمن بوسعادة المفقود

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

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

آآه يا ساعة رملي

لو فقط استطيع ان اجدك

سوف اجعلك تركضين بسرعة

أو أهزك

واقلب عاليك أسفلك

O my sand clock,

if only I can find you,

I would make you run faster

Or shake you,

and turn you upside down.

How many white sheep have been slain?

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

For the melting Dali clocks.

كم خروفا أبيض دبحنا

ليعود للحياة مجددا ويقول ميـــع طويلة للزمن

لساعات دالي المائعة

Let Cinderella die, with her time urgency

Long live the pumpkin, our store of stories.

لتموت سندريلا، هي واستعاجالها للزمن

لتعش اليقطينة خزانة الحكايات

Renault 4 got 7 souls.

Like cats they are leaving one after the other

The toothless demented gypsy,

is kicked out of France,

sitting in the side way of poverty and,

is waving her goodbyes.

للرينو أربعة سبعة أرواح

يتركونها تباعا كالقطط

والغجرية المخرفة الدرداء

ركلت خارج فرنسا

جلست على رصيف الفقر و

لوحت باي باي

Everybody is looking for his pomegranate,

to chew its beads before loosing teeth.

The pear tastes sweater, and doesn’t wait,

for its time is faster.

كل يبحث عن رمانته

ليقرط حباتها قبل فقدان الأسنان

العرموطة أحلى، ولا تنتظر

لأن وقتها أسرع

For the pear’s sweetness, the seasons change,

and the clothes fly away,

and the clouds offer more stories,

about Vienna and Wars.

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

Dlovan Berwari an article by Jamal Ameadi

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

Dlovan Berwari

by
Jamal Ameadi

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

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

With my tears I suffocate, and read:

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

Lawyers:

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

The Iraqi people, Dlovan?

Yes, the Iraqi people, Jamal.

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

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

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

I asked her: Why?

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

Why Hilla?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamal Ameadi

Journies, Journals, and Jardins

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

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

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

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

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

21st Oct 2010

21st Oct 2010 NOSTALGERIE


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

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

Human Rights, public eaters in Ramadan, and El Watan

23th Oct 2010 more cartoons on the issue

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

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

With Love.

An old dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"uncle, when you will go?"

"why uncle?"

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

"………….."

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



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

A Late Notice of a Nightmare

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

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

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




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

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

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





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


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

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

Bringing History Alive

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

About Parents and Love

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

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



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

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

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

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

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