madny

The end of Madny

2007-12-16T11:09:00.001Z

Raouf and I have gone our separate ways (we argued. stupidly) and so it is only right that Madny comes to an end, as I can't make it mine alone.

It was a project of sorts during an unsettled period for me, and for Raouf it was a virtual outlet for his fantasies and opinions. I hope to post new blog addresses for both of us soon.

Love, Elly

The end of The Family Drama

2007-12-16T09:31:00.000Z

My friend's family is worse than my family, I know. Her mother says things to her like: 'You'll never have children'. I don't understand how she puts up with it; bluntness and rudeness is not my family's thing. My family are polite and helpful to the last.

My mother has never said anything nasty to me. When we looked after my beloved niece Safiya together last weekend, she brought a newspaper clipping with her: a Sunday Telegraph article about exclusive dating agencies in which couples gave evidence of laying out 1000s to find a partner relatively inoffensive to their material sensibilities. It won't work for me as I don't care that much for men, money or mating right now.

It was the pre-Christmas one-side-of-the-family dinner yesterday and I had considered my preparations for it with Maria, my therapist. I said that I was less vulnerable this time, as one side of my fortress was up and I would try and manoeuvre it to face down any questions. My sisters' fortresses were almost impenetrable: job; house; children; marriage. I had 'Job' and that gave the family some sense of relief; I would be able to fend off an attack from the west. let's say. There was a moment where I wished I were twelve and could righteously have a tantrum . My aunt who I haven't seen since my younger sister's wedding, greeted me with, 'I hear you've got a job!'. I don't know whether my expression visibly hardened and my face distorted in rage, but I did reply, 'Well I have always been working of course, but yes, this is a new job.' I then stomped upstairs to find Charlie and Danny changing Safiya's nappy, and I raged freely about how who-cares-about-this-stupid-new-job-just-because-I'm-getting-paid-properly-doesn't-mean-it's-any more-important-than-all-the-other-work-I've-done-virtually-for-free. In fact I declared, somewhat disingenuously, I work far less hard here than I did in all my freelance work, and am making far less impact on humanity, etc.

It is my father's fault I know; I don't blame my aunt. My father has long been fending off questions on his middle-daughter's career as it was rather messy and unclear to say the least. But I DO expect more of him: a little damn imagination, a suspension of disbelief. When I was in Cairo working as a staff writer on a new journal, he came over to visit and sulked and pleaded me to train as a teacher so I could have a proper career. When I told him about my voluntary and consultancy work with the women's rights organisation, he just ignored me, right out ignored me; he simply couldn't fathom it - he didn't have the imagination. I expect this from my family and friends: a suspension of disbelief, a suspension of anxious judgement; a suspension of contempt. But family especially are caught up in the fictitious drama that is said to be 'the family'.

The family is not a single drama, at one moment in space and time. A drama demands a set of characters each playing out their fateful roles, some accepting of their banal fate, others see-sawing vertiginously between triumph and tragedy, as every other one looks on in despair, relief or glee.

The lives of members of a single family are no longer closely intertwined. My life and that of a cousin is unknown, even unbelievable, to another member. We are each caught up in myriad, ever-multiplying 'dramas' that stretch across space and time. My fate may well impact little upon my cousin's and my tragedy would not be his, and that, my friends, is no tragedy.

Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman

2007-11-25T09:59:00.000Z

The first of several half-thoughts.

It is a maturing process I am going through. Finally at the age of 33 it no longer appeals to me to be 'girly'(not in the sexist, derogative sense obviously - why is there not 'boyye'?). Someone once told me wisely to 'pick your battles' and now I have decided to pick my compromises. Some things are non-negotiable, as I told the PA at work after her tardiness made me late for my therapist's appointment: I leave the office every Friday at 1.50pm and no questions asked; I do what I have to do. I told her politely and genuinely to have a good time in Istanbul this weekend, but I did not say 'don't worry about being late'. Worry about it I say!

I did not battle with her - she is harmless and it would be pointless, but I did battle with another friend this week. There is a good phrase, if used fairly: "The intolerance of tolerance". I came up against it and recognised it this time. I was judged and found guilty for not being sexually liberal/available enough. One friend's sexually progressive or 'tolerant' ideas became a stick to beat me with.

I have a theory about people being right about something; that is, people having right-thinking, liberal or sensible ideas. It is all about how they deliver them to others that shows whether these 'correct' ideas are born out of a belief in justice or principally out of contempt for others. One 'correct and liberal' idea might give someone licence to feel contempt for a group of people who do not explicitly share those particular expressions of those ideas, so the very term 'liberal' or 'tolerant' comes into question.

As for general intolerance of what may objectively actually be stupid and therefore apparently deserving of punishment, I encountered a form of it in my life from my loving older sister: she is an exceedingly bright person who hates it when people around her do what she believes are indefensibly stupid things - in my case that would be getting too drunk and sleeping with a 45 year old married man, at age 23, in a distant city whilst her guest. She thought me extremely foolish and selfish and threw my things out of her apartment including my passport. I begged and pleaded and said sorry and she let me back in. She was right that I was stupid, but her reaction showed contempt for me. On Thursday night my friend of over 10 years came to stay with me in London from Nottingham. I say 'stay with me', although she arrived at 6.30am, and that is only because I persuaded her to get out of the hotel NOW and make her way to my house somehow or another, regardless of her stinking headache and the fact that I had to get up to go to work in an hour. By midnight the previous night I had begun to feel annoyed with her: she was supposed to have met me at 9.30pm and she had her phone switched off the entire night and I was considering calling the police. When I got an SMS just after midnight telling me she had got drunk and lost and she would call me in the morning, I concluded she had found another friend to stay with. Her message at 4.45am woke me up: She had awoken in a hotel alone, hungover and full of regret, wondering at what age she would grow out of this kind of mistake. My feeling was total love for her and that she must get here as soon as she could to be safe and with a friend. I understood only at that moment her loneliness. And knew it because I had been and was still her, but in my own way. And when my sister threw out my stuff ten years ago, her contempt for and frustration with a younger sibling at that moment obscured her knowledge of the loneliness that makes us all stupid. We have to pick our judgements carefully as well as our battles and our compromises.

For my mother's 65th birthday I bought her make-up and a book: my two favourite things! The book is a translation from the German - a collection of two novellas by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, called Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman. Zweig was considered an important writer in the 20s and 30s in Vienna. And he was yet middle-aged when he and his lover killed themselves. The book is a compelling meditation by a male author on the one impetuous, rash, passionate act that can change a woman's life irrevocably. The narrator - a bachelor - is staying in a hotel on the Riviera, and dines each day with the same collection of people - two couples and an elderly English woman. There are few guests at the hotel, so each watches the movements of the other and when an attractive young French man arrives and charms individually each member of the group, they can talk about nothing else over dinner. And then one morning he has gone, and later that evening there is a commotion in the complex. The paunchy middle-aged Monsieur, a married industrialist with two teenage daughters cannot find his wife. She is feared drowned or the victim of an accident. A little while later he emerges from their hotel apartment with a letter in his hand, and with great dignity calls off the search: his wife has left him he announces. Then he sits in a chair and begins to sob for perhaps the first time in his life, the narrator remarks. It is the maid who lets slip that Madame Henrietta's letter revealed that, at the age of 33, she had run off with the charming French man.

At dinner that evening the narrator's table is in uproar. The two German couples - in particular the husbands - declare themselves to be horrified and outraged that a married woman with two children could forsake her family to foolishly run off with a much younger man. They surmise that the elopement must have, cynically, been planned well in advance. The narrator disagrees: he finds himself defending Madame Henrietta - even in excess of what he feels - not only for her impetuous act but also against the idea that it was planned; it was the fruit of a coup de foudre (love at first sight) he insists. It was surely the first time she had felt love and for that he admired her act. The argument at table threatens to degenerate into full-scale and personal recriminations were it not at this point for the intercession of the elderly English woman who has remained quiet up until this moment. Calmly and politely she directs her words to the narrator solely; she challenges his bold defence of the act committed in the heat of passion on the grounds that if one takes this defence to its logical extreme one would be defending le crime passionnel - the violent murder of a spouse. The narrator, whilst continuing to stick by his original defence admires the English woman's mind and dignity. Over the next few days he finds that this hitherto very reserved lady seeks out his company and they exchange several intellectual ideas. He wonders that, were the age difference not so great, people would begin to suspect a sexual relationship between them! One day he receives a short letter from her, asking him to come to her room, as after much agonising she has decided that she would like to narrate to him an episode of her life that she has never shared with anyone before. He arrives at the appointed time and finds her agitated and vaguely distressed; after some hesitation she begins her story of the 24 hours that changed her life twenty years ago when at the age of 42 she 'saves' a young man from self-destruction...

Desire and intimacy in Art

2007-11-05T19:46:00.000Z

There was a moment during the hour I spent at the Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now exhibition at the Barbican that I realised I was enjoying pornography with a group of other fully-clothed and silent strangers. Crouched down in a small darkened space screened off for privacy within the gallery, I entered in the middle of the show, as you do, and was amazed ("pretend nonchalance") to see a film of a series of photographs of couples in the act of heterosexual and homosexual sex in a variety of carefully catalogued positions. These were the original photos that accompanied the Kinsey report and are old-fashioned looking enough and black and white so that the viewer/voyeur can maintain a dignified and scholarly distance from them. I particularly warmed to the images of women in nothing but smart hats and shoes, that you might have worn to Sunday mass in the 1940s, having it off with dastardly looking moustachioed gentlemen. And then there were the homo images which I have a thing for. I know that it is commonplace for men to snigger about how they would like to see to girls pleasuring each other - for their own greater pleasure -, but the spectacle of male gay sex has a strange effect on me: I feel at once excited and sad: I am excited to see this other pleasure, this pleasure that still seems daring to me, and sad because they don't need me. It is like watching two friends entirely engrossed in each other who cease to notice your presence and the feeling of loneliness, humiliation and distress at that moment of realisation is acute . When I grow up I want to be a gay man; I don't want to be left out any longer.

There were two very long, self-important Andy Warhol films of two men kissing or a James Dean look-alike climaxing whilst being given an invisible blow-job. I'm just glad it wasn't me giving him the BJ as it took him 50 minutes. There was also a disproportionate amount of beautiful Japanese erotic prints that made me marvel at the sophistication of Japanese culture in pre-modern times. We in Europe were a long way from elegant depictions of sex until the late 19th century, before which we went unwashed for months and sloshed about in our own filth, teeth rotting and narrowly missing all dying of the plague.

Growing bored and a little aroused with no eligible male in sight, I wandered into another darkened, screened off room and sat on a bench, while others loitered near the exit, to witness a slide show of the intimate life of couples - the most moving collection of images on the subject that I have ever come across in my adult life. Nan Goldin's exhibit Heartbeat is a work of art that most artists would only dream of creating, and for the non-artist it is almost impossible to imagine how the artist can gain entry into these truly intimate moments in a couple or a family's life. One very young couple is Goldin's nephew Simon and his girlfriend Jessica; I was devastated by her portrayal of first love - the kind of tenderness and compassion and closeness that I know I will never experience now: the moment as teenagers when you feel you are really alone in your world of love and pain. Goldin's subjects inevitably have a different attitude to nudity and every body in these photos became familiar and loved - each body was your mother's, your father's, your friend's - not merely an object of beauty, but a physical necessity, a wonderful fragile giving being that could never be subject to the crude judgements we are daily coerced into making upon ourselves and others.

Westernisation

2007-11-05T10:13:00.000Z

Westernisation or the adjective, 'westernised' is a word that is I've come across a lot lately in my reading and at political haranguing matches - otherwise known as the dinner party. And it makes me nervous; the way this emotionally charged term is exalted or abused seems to leave me little choice but to sit on the sidelines dumb and increasingly numb. I begin to wonder really whether it is just an outdated word - and obsolete unless referring to phenomena at least a century old.

Part 1
Let's start with the informal dinner party. On the face of it I share political and social convictions with all those who were present; they are a group of right-thinking, left-leaning women concerned about all the big injustices and occupations. And I'm not making light of this as I don't know anyone who can afford to.

The divisions arise when we come to talk of the recent controversy over the filming of Monica Ali's novel, Brick Lane. I haven't read either the book or seen the film and it seems I'm not alone there. The reference point is a leader article in the Guardian and a 'Comment is Free' piece by Monica Ali. The leader suggested that Ali should take some responsibility for the anger and sensitivities of a group of protesters from Brick Lane's Bangladeshi 'community' that was provoked by her portrayal of gender conflict in her novel. Since the marketing of the novel explicitly promoted Ali as a member of the Bangladeshi community giving an insight into a 'hidden world', and Ali is in fact only half Bangladeshi and didn't grow up in the East London's alongside these particular Bangladeshi residents, then she had misled the public into believing hers was the authentic voice of this 'community'. Ali responded by saying that there were always going to be people offended by something and her novel is a work of art and not the representative piece on one community.

One of the women present said that what riled her most is the patronising tone of Ali that suggested the largely working-class residents of Brick Lane could not appreciate Art for Art's sake, while several people said that Ali should not have allowed her publishers to use Orientalist terms such as 'hidden world' about a Muslim, Eastern residential area. Of course it wasn't long before Ali was discredited with the insult, westernised'. Ali is too westernised for these people's liking.

I had little problem dealing with their initial charges: it is unlikely that Ali as a new writer had much say in the marketing of her book and it would be extraordinarily difficult for her to get onto the bestseller's list without her Indian sub-continent origins - and thus her work - being exoticised for a British public bored of their apparently colourless society. Where there is a demand, the booksellers will comply. As for Ali's assertion that she never intended to be a representative of a community and this is Art and people will always be offended, I think that broadly I agree, not least because it is rare for good writing (I still don't know how good her writing is though) not to be provocative on some level, and because novel writing should never be required to dumb down, as have the political debates we are subjected to, just for fear of not being absolutely clear with whom they stand on absolutely every issue, never mind how problematic. I would feel sick to my stomach if Ali were bullied into coming out onto some sort of public platform and declaring her love, loyalty and sympathy with the 'Bangladeshi community' and apologising for offending some of them. It is still unclear how many people who live in the vicinity of Brick Lane were actually offended - some were surely indifferent and others may even have been fans of Ali's.

But as the informal post-dinner debate progressed what became clear was that many present hated Ali. They just hated her; for them she had become emblematic of all they despised in this imperialistic world. She simply wasn't a good enough Bangladeshi person - she was irresponsible, she was insensitive, she was conceited. And she was Westernised.

I remember showing some copies of the English language magazine I had worked on in Egypt to a curious friend and she had glanced over them - been surprised at how contemporary and pretentious it looked and with one word had declared the magazine null and void as far as its Egyptian credentials: the magazine was Westernised - she could therefore learn nothing about Egypt and Egypt's youth from it.

There is always one woman that turns the debate into the political haranguing match and this occasion was no different. Her coup de grace that struck me finally dumb with incomprehension was during a discussion on whether British publishers were deliberately blocking positive portrayals of Eastern or Muslim communities. A few of us thought that on the whole writers were critiques of their own societies and the sinister and disheartening aspects of their cultures and governmental systems were what prompted them to write as well as a very human feeling of disquiet, and of compassion for those that fell through the gaps. I said that I had studied Arab literature and saw many so-called 'negative portrayals' of Egyptian society, for example. After all a 'community' is not an entirely healthy or natural organism. She accused me of pathologising non-white, non-Western communities and then said that anyway the publishing sector in Egypt was controlled and funded by the Americans and that is why the books are not all positive portrayals of peaceable and integrated indigenous communities.

I felt sad

The Black Madonna

2007-10-31T11:30:00.000Z

When I was living and studying in Poland I saw an icon of the virgin Mary . It is called The black Madonna ,and " she" is the protective saint of Warsaw.
I asked about it and never get a satisfying answer : one was " the church which the icon was there , had been burned to earth , the icon was damaged ..and that is reason of the black color.
Years after I went to Ethiopia, and toured the country , that when the military regime was still in power. Every where there were paintings of Carl Marx and Lenin. The were in black . I liked the idea of coloring them with the skin of the Ethiopians!.
In the eastern orthodox churches; Jesus and Mary are always having a fair skin . when I see eastern Jews with their brownish skins , I wonder from where the colors of the icons in our churches came?!
So the Ethiopians had ethoipnised their gods , so not to alienate from them !
Raouf

P: Walking around this captivating place, I was approached by a team of journalists from Addis who were doing a short TV segment on tourism in Ethiopia. They asked to interview me and I protested, not knowing anything about tourism in Ethiopia. My guide, Mesfin, gave me a stern look and I caved, smiling for the camera and saying all sorts of ridiculous things. "Is St. George better than Petra?" they asked. "Yes, it's better than Petra because it's completely free-standing." Mesfin nodded with approval at my fumbling speech. "Is Ethiopia better than other places you've visited?" they continued. "Well, better than many places, I suppose." Mesfin nodded again, egging me on. "Yes," I said. "It's the best."

A film about 'us'

2007-10-28T08:31:00.000Z

Salata Baladi - a film by Nadia Kamel
for list of upcoming screenings in France, Egypt, USA and the Netherlands see schedule below مواعيد العروض القادمة في فرنسا وأمريكا وهولندا تجدونها أسفل الصفحة

الهوية هي مانورث لا ما نرث، ما نخترع لاما نتذكر - محمود درويش
"Identity is what we leave behind, not what we inherit. What we invent, not what we remember." - Mahmoud Darwish
The Director: Nadia Kamel

المخرجة نادية كامل
ولدت نادية كامل المخرجة المصرية، في القاهرة سنة 1961 حيث تواصل حياتها وعملها. وهي ابنة والدين عملا بالصحافة ولهما تاريخ طويل من العمل السياسي، فنشأت نادية كامل في بيت منغمس في السياسات التقدمية وشغوف بالفنون والثقافة الشعبية. وقد درست في مجال الكيمياء والميكروبيولوجي قبل ان تتمكن من توجيه كل طاقتها إلى عشقها الدائم لفن السينما في عام 1990. ومن خلال عملها كمساعدة إخراج لرواد في صناعة الأفلام المستقلة في مصر المعاصرة، ومنهم عطيات الأبنودي ويوسف شاهين ويسري نصرالله، حصلت نادية كامل على قدر كبير من الخبرة والتجربة في صناعة كل من الأفلام التسجيلية والروائية. وعندما بدأت في العمل على أولى مشروعاتها في عام 2000، ايقنت نادية كامل أن ساحة الإنتاج المصرية متشبعة وليس بها الا سوى هامش لا يذكر للمخرجات والمخرجين الجدد وللموضوعات غير التقليدية. فتوصلت إلى أن تناول الموضوعات الجريئة التي تتطرق الى الطابوهات والمحرمات، يقتصر وجودها على هوامش الخطاب المصري التقليدي وهي الموضوعات بذاتها التي كانت تأمل نادية كامل أن تناقشها ي مشروعاتها. فالمسألة اذا تتطلب منها المجازفة بإنتاج أفلام خاصة بها محدودة الميزانية. وقد تم إنتاج فيلمها الأول، سلطة بلدي، من هذا المنطلق وبروح الاستقلال التام. وبعد مرور خمسة أعوام من العمل المنفرد، انضمت إليها شركتان مشاركتان ("لي فيلم ديسي"، و"ڤينتورا فيلم") في استكمال انتاج هذه الحكاية العائلية التي تحتفي وتتمسك بقرن من التفتح على الثقافات والتعددية المصرية.

Salata Baladi Directed
by Nadia Kamel
Egypt, 2007 , 105 minutes
Description: A multilingual, multiethnic documentary about director Nadia Kamel's complex family background। Twenty-first century Egypt, spurred by the rallying cries of a global clash of civilizations, risks drowning in a nationalistic frenzy। Mary Kamel, Nadia's mother, was born in Cairo to a Jewish father and an Italian Catholic mother। She converted to Islam when she married her Egyptian husband Sa'ad. Mary and Nadia join forces to give Mary's grandson, Nabeel, a glimpse into possible alternatives: the family's century-old history of mixed marriages. Like many Egyptians, after a hundred years sprinkled with multiple immigrations, a few conversions and a few mixed marriages, Nabeel is a mix of Egyptian, Italian, Palestinian and Lebanese with some Russian, Caucasian, Turk and Spanish blood as well. From his Muslim, Christian and Jewish descendants, he inherits a track record embracing socialism, fascism, communism, nationalism, feminism and pacifism. But as Mary weaves her way through the family tales, she bumps into her own fears and the continued silence shrouding one branch of the family grows distressingly louder. Mary has been boycotting her Egyptian Jewish family in Israel for 55 long years. Inspired by the fresh perspectives of her 10-year-old grandson, the family breaks arguably one of the most vicious taboos in modern Egypt. Language: Arabic, English, Italian, French, Hebrew (English Subtitles)
Nadia Kamel worked as an assistant director for over ten years before her debut feature documentary Salata Baladi. The daughter of journalist parents with a long history of political activism, Kamel grew up in a home steeped in progressive politics and a passion for the arts and popular culture. Born in 1961 in Cairo, Kamel studied microbiology and chemistry at the University of Cairo prior to pursuing a career in film. When Kamel first began to work on her own projects in 2000, she realized that she would need to take the risk of producing her own low-budget films. After nearly five years of working solo, she was joined by co-producers Films d'Ici and Ventura Films in the post-production of this family tale.

The twitching uterus

2007-10-26T15:28:00.000+01:00

I am hungry and it shows.
Not just for marble cake.
I am baby/man/sex/love hungry.
My appetite is voracious and terrifying I begin to see. It is the appetite of a thinking thirty-something with no clue what to think, and liable to throw herself in the path of any fertile loin that points itself casually in her direction - desirous of death by impaling - not for her any more the anxious, half-arsed adolescent fumbling of her entire twenties.
In that hellish poor-woman's emporium, Zara, I hear a baby voice that makes me think of Safiya and as my friend Andrea once memorably said, "my uterus twitches".
I am pursued for a date by a man that I am not drawn to - who thinking me beautiful and aloof (and posh) asks me out; by the second date I have seduced and 'drained' him as he says and I think he is scared and can now just smell the woman - the woman who wants to mate - and mate and mate - until the death.
In work I feel unloved... 'Unloved' I ask- is that what work was ever for? Why do I continue to search for love in all the hardest places - love from the shiny women at the make-up counter; love from the friendly greengrocer; love from my cold flatmate; love from my laptop; love from the street cat-whore. These are all hard surfaces that will not yield and embrace me, however much I radiate desire.

Feeding wild hyenas (and a spelling lesson for Raouf!)

2007-10-25T09:47:00.000+01:00

(The 'tow'/two spelling colour codes: red is what I have added; the blue is what must be taken away)

Raouf: Man and Hyena
Fascinating! This man hugs his hyena and feeds her. We are accustomed to a sort of ‎seconded hand information on hyenas (how they are vicious!) but when I saw this photo I ‎checked the internet hooping to fiend something about this ritual habit. I did not find anything. Only ‎some photos and short videos on feeding them for the tourists' delights .‎
How little we know and how big is our ignorance about our world‎- Raouf

Persephone :
There are two men in Harar who feed the wild hyenas outside the city gates. When the hyenas emerge from the brush every night, the man calls them by name, and they approach him gingerly to snatch the donkey meat from his stick. In the darkness, only their eyes are visible – strange, otherworldly eyes that flash like fireflies. It is a mysterious and wonderful ritual, part of Harar's relationship with the hyenas that spans 500 years. Though they roam freely at night, sometimes within the city walls, the hyenas have never harmed a soul.

Elly at her best!‎

2007-10-24T10:48:00.000+01:00

‎
When Elly moves from her deep sleep, she is like the whale in the ‎Sindbad story. When the poor Sindbad had swum from his broken ship, ‎landed on a small island trembling from cold, and began to kindle ‎some fire, he realised it was not an island... it was a great sleeping whale!‎
Therefore, we have to imagine the reaction of both of them when the ‎fire began to burn over the back of the whale.‎
Elly the great white whale has decided to move.‎
The Blog now looks better (I think) and more elegant, and it gives the ‎impression that it has a purpose… sort of!‎
I am glad that I can deal (till now because I am also unpredictable) with two unpredictable, intelligent, stunning ‎girls: The Elly and the PERSEPHONE to whom I gave the title i usually give to certain characters to signal them apart from the herd!‎

BOTH OF THEM GAVE ME SOME INTERESTING GIFTS. E'S IDEA TO ‎CREATE MADNY AND P'S AGREEMENT TO PLAY WITH ME IN HER ‎ETHIOPIAN PHOTOS ‎
‎ ‎
‎ ‎

2007-10-23T19:46:00.000+01:00

will i ever get any space

i wonder

And they told the demon, "Be gone!"

2007-10-22T15:55:00.000+01:00

This I overheard from a man in one of those phone booths in an Internet cafe. I stopped and tried to listen further, but it was a muddled monologue of 'they told me this and we have to do that'. The man looked wretched and was ever-polite. I felt wretched and was prepared to be rude to the children kicking the partition separating our computers. I didn't - I felt to weak. Flu is my demon. Further demons sit on my left shoulder. The Programme Assistant at work is a bureaucrat/a paper-pusher/a jobsworth and she drives me to long fruitless distraction with her busy-body, petty officialdom and love of hierarchies. The truth is I could crush her - personally that is. I hesitate to do so not only because I fear for my job but because I know she is not wicked just mediocre. I on the other hand am capable of a polished and ruthless verbal meanness and to exert my greater powers of intellect upon the poor whining creature would be a form of bullying. And it is silly to give in to the demon of contempt; the girl needs occasional flattery and what will that really cost a good Christian like myself? My mother recounted her parable: In Lourdes as a young volunteer, she was assigned to work in one of the bathhouses by an officious and rude older woman who riled everyone with her uncharitable manner. My mother decided that the only course of action was to flatter the woman until she calmed down, remembering why they were there - to help the terminally and gravely ill pilgrims take a dignified bath at this site of the Virgin's apparition. My mother is wise first and a Catholic second I think.

Raouf by virtue of you judging me, I know not to judge others.

She is not shy!

2007-10-22T15:14:00.000+01:00

"This girl from Harar watched me with curiosity as I snapped pictures of the butcher and his wife. As she lingered behind me with a gaggle of friends, I imagined her saying, "Why on earth would you take pictures of goat carcasses covered in flies, when there are beautiful girls waiting to be captured?" When I turned around to greet her, she surprised me by stepping forward and boldly asking to be photographed. Her face was such a wonderful mix of wit and sauciness – and the gold tooth was just too fabulous for words."

Raouf: she is not that shy! She is proud of her golden tooth, glittering, when she moves ‎her sensual lips into a smile.‎
She is full of colours: her brown face, her bit darker shadier lips, her greenish- ‎bluish "tarha" around the pretty face over part of the head.‎
I could imagine certain boys - where she lives -had experienced kissing her ‎golden tooth! What a sensation, for them and for her!‎
How did the photographer catch the tooth in the middle of all the colors ‎surrounding her and the girl? ‎
THIS PHOTO IS FROM PERSEPHONE's COLLECTION FROM HER ‎TRIP IN ETHIOPIA
I AM HOPING TO DO A NEW ADVENTURE OF WRITING that I comment on her photo and she adds a comment!!
P TOOK ‎THE PHOTO AND I TOLD HER THAT I LIKE THEM AND WOULD LIKE ‎TO COMMENT. SHE IS GENEROUS AND ADVENTUROUS ALSO!‎
TWO EYES, TWO CULTURES, ONE PHOTO! ‎

The Elly

2007-10-20T17:12:00.000+01:00

To Elly ‎
wish you more IN :‎
‎- practical steps towards interesting creative work‎
‎-deep analysis of what is happening around you ‎
‎-peace with others, accepting them as they are or ‎abounding them completely
‎-more chances in coping with your emotional needs ‎
‎ Wish you less IN : ‎
‎-rushing to judgment ‎
‎- changing moods ‎
‎- interest in useless assholes‎
I am writing this because she - in her Elly ways- surprised me by announcing her birthday after it passed!
ma'lesh
‎ So on this rare occasion, when The Elly becomes An ‎Elly in one of her many Ellys waiting for her coming birthdays weeks (we ‎are not interested in the past) ‎
Raouf ‎
‎ About this photo: it is from Persephone's collection from her ‎visit to Ethiopia. She was generous enough to allow me ‎some comments on them. Some of them, like ‎
her comment on this one catches the eye "The Archangel ‎Mikael fought a tremendous battle against a lioness. Finally, he hurled her against ‎this rock - the impact created this impression. The legend is undoubtedly more ‎interesting than the truth.‎ I think this comment is very human in dealing with fantasies... I titled it ‎‎"separate reality" It is a title of a book by Carlos Castaneda; ‎reading him affected my life in a better way .‎

I do not know!

2007-10-19T11:56:00.000+01:00

Really I do not know how to describe this photo. It reflects a feeling of waste and sadness. In the beginning I thought I would call it 'Junk'. But No! It is more than that; its emptiness resembles some of the human beings we meet in life... they seem promising and real, yet when you come nearer you will discover their desolation.

Disappointments have no gender!‎

2007-10-19T11:48:00.000+01:00

I did not invent the expression 'phantom pregnancy'; Lenin used it to show his frustration at the way a political movement came to ‎nothing. There is no gender here... there are people ‎ya Elly who give you wrong, false impressions about themselves, and trap you into their web by your misjudgments of them. ‎'Phantom pregnancy' is something we meet in our daily activity, even ‎within ourselves... You know that from your experiences.

My birthweek

2007-10-19T09:47:00.000+01:00

By maternal decree, this is my birthweek; not because the poor woman was in labour for that long but because the very great woman loves her daughters to distraction and thinks one birth day is not enough to celebrate their (traumatic) ejection from her womb and into her arms.
Yesterday was my birthday and I recorded some nice things from that day:

I made tea for Amir and myself and took it into his bedroom, sitting on the floor with my back against his bed. As we woke up slowly sipping the hot black, vaguely filmy, liquid, we talked about some things - how this new girl Lucy he met at a wedding is 35 and has only ever studied and travelled; he is hopeful as she sent him a flirtatious message on facebook. I talked about Paul who gave me my first birthday card and took me out to dinner and is so different from me and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. Ma called and Bee and Charlie sent messages, so did Maira and Paul and I have several messages on facebook from people I have not spoken to for ages, and emails from Waleed and Carl and Atef and Ben and Doug. I saw a cat sitting on a high wall and I stopped to miaow at it and it look annoyed and turned back to stare at the tree above it; I too looked at the tree and back at the cat and back at the tree but could see nothing of interest; again I searched hard amongst the autumn leaves and this time I saw a tiny squirrel cowering on one of the far branches. I said good bye to the cat and walked down Victoria Road, passing the Lebanese grocers, Gebel az Zaytoon; I waved through the window and it was not the handsome shop assistant I know, but another which is not important. On the tube to Piccadilly Circus a young girl behind a hand mirror applied powder roughly over and over to her face, then she used a teaspoon to curl her lashes and with harsh brushstrokes added blusher, and a cheap mascara; when she packed up her mirror I saw how fresh she looked. I sat in the sunshine in the courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts at the foot of the giant bronze sculpture of the three-legged Buddha. Bee came late looking tired, pushing her pram hurriedly - I shouted "Bee!" happily and jumped up to hug her; her baby, Hettie or 'the boodle' was screaming; she lifted her out and I made faces and the boodle opened her eyes wide at her strange auntie. In the Members' Cafe, I queued to get a flapjack while Bee fed boodle. Behind me two old men wondered aloud what a marble cake was; I said, a marble cake is made with two pastes - a cocoa and vanilla paste swirled together to resemble marble - I know that because it was my favourite cake when I was younger. The men look at me mesmerised and smiling and thanked me and one of them said, can I buy you a piece and I said no there was no need, and that was kind of them, and they continued to joke and flirt with me. When it was my turn, I asked for the biggest piece of flapjack they had, and a woman behind me laughed and said she loved my forthrightness and I said well, I would hate it if they gave me just a small crumbled piece. Bee and the boodle and I walked round the gallery looking at Georg Baselitz's upside down, fractured paintings and the boodle tightly held against her mother's chest in the 'carry-me' pooed loudly in front of her favourite scratchy, swirly painting. We walked through St James' park and then Hyde park and I approached large geese with trepidation while Bee pushed the boodle round in circles to ensure she kept asleep in her swaddling. I put Bee and the boodle in a taxi home and I wandered down Queensway and along Westbourne Grove and found nothing to buy in Oxfam and, tired, took the 31 bus home.

The sirens

2007-10-19T09:40:00.000+01:00

You gender the one who deceives and betrays exclusively as a woman, Raouf. So are you presenting us again with an Eve or with the Sirens or a Lady Macbeth? Poor great man to be led astray by fickle humans (who themselves have been corrupted by their beautiful women) - what is left for him but to crucify himself (or sulk)?!
I hope you are not turning into a mysoginist, young man!

Phantom pregnancy

2007-10-17T14:37:00.000+01:00

‎‎In Arabic is called 'a lying pregnancy'...‎
I prefer 'a wishful pregnancy', because I want to write about disappointments with human beings and their relationships.‎
When I was in Egypt last winter I met some people who everybody ‎claimed were great and fantastic. Usually I am a skeptic and suspicious, but usually also I fall into the trap, mainly because I scold my self for being ‎suspicious!‎
Things which attract me to such people are my wishful thinking that they ‎are different than other "normal" people and that I could have a rapport with ‎them.‎
I used to blame myself until lately - some days ago - I came by this ‎fantastic idea (discovery) on phantom pregnancy. Remembering a great ‎unknown African (dead) writer Emos Totola who wrote The palm wine ‎drinker and the woman of the Jungle... gave me some compensation for my ‎misjudments. He wrote such a fantastic opening to a chapter entitled "the ‎gentle man should not be blamed if he is deceived by the beautiful woman". He described the "gentle man" ‎wandering in the market place till his eyes settled on the pretty woman ‎who told him to "follow me" so he did. She led him to the jungle and ‎began disintegrating on the way: first her hands disappeared, then her legs till she ‎became just a moving torso. ‎
‎I told myself: I am not going to blame my self because I believed in the ‎'lying pregnancy' or I blocked my doubts…‎
Those people had been discovered by my favourite writer…‎
The difference between the woman of the jungle and the other people is ‎that "they" did not disintegrate in front of my eyes; I had to follow them till ‎the end!‎ ‎

'Sex and joy'

2007-10-17T11:58:00.000+01:00

The art exhibition, 'Sex and joy'

He says putting the exhibition together has taught him "how similar we are in terms of images of sex and joy, but also about the unease in the representation of this private act".

"There's no civilisation which hasn't had problems with it," he adds.

The curators have made a point of only including works which show sex between consenting adults. There is nothing which suggests violence or sex with children.
While many of the works can be seen at any major gallery on permanent exhibition, this collection bans under-18s from attending.

Certainly when a work is old it appears to us as more acceptable as art rather than pornography.

Professor Kemp says art is also more complicated than porn, arousing a mixture of emotions. The other big difference is the quality.

"It became clear where pornography stops and art starts," he explains.

"If you look at the frescoes from Herculaneum, they employed major artists.

"If you went to Soho to a brothel today, you don't expect major artists to be deployed.

Destroyed

"If you take the Japanese works, they are very explicit, more so than in the West.

"But the levels of artistry are high, they are sumptuous, beautiful, delicate and refined."

The Japanese prints were made by leading masters including Hokusai. The woodblock prints show men and women in elaborate clothes and equally elaborate poses and were intended for use in brothels and private homes.
There are also Chinese works showing beautiful scenes of gentle love-making in quiet gardens. Chinese erotic art is a little known tradition because so much was destroyed in the Mao era.

The exhibition throws light on how different cultures at different times have viewed sex.

What it reveals above all is how styles of art have changed over the centuries, while human beings and their desires have essentially stayed the same.

Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now runs until 27 January 2008 .

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/7045772.stm

Published: 2007/10/16 11:03:34 GMT

© BBC

Sisters

2007-10-15T11:33:00.001+01:00

Sisters!‎

‎Do you remember this great face and the fantastic girl... I commented ‎on her at the very beginning?‎
She is an elder sister to this little one. The elder sister in Egypt,in the middle ‎and working classes, gets the title "ABLLA"; it is the same title kids call their ‎woman teacher!‎
The elder sister is important in the family: she plays the role of the mother ‎even when the mother is alive, and when the father dies, she takes responsibility for her younger brothers and sisters.‎
Elder sisters even as young as this one takes her younger sister with her, ‎holding her hand, protecting, even punishing her… she is responsible for her from such an early age!

El Balakounah!

2007-10-11T14:32:00.000+01:00

El Balakounah! It is an Italian word we use – as with many other words in our daily dialect: terso, secondo, robabieka (old junk) premos, prema, and so on…
Sometimes the family convert it into a room, or use it as a storing place, because Egyptians are not used to throwing out old things. It is also a place where you can have fun observing what is happening underneath in the street. or alternatively, you talk with the neighbors, gossiping and plotting or just exchanging information!
Before the widespread ownership of refrigerators, it was very common and elegant also to buy mud pots for water: a “Qullah” to cool the water especially in the summer by putting it in the Balakounah and covering it after putting inside ne’na (mint) or lemon so the water has a refreshing taste!
This chair - did somebody put it there as a secret sign!? Or did somebody clean the floor and forget to put it back?!
Never the less it is typical scene from an Egyptian Balakounah!

time to relax

2007-10-11T13:58:00.000+01:00

This is her time to relax:
With a cup tea! In addition, maybe a shisha!
Look at this woman. She is in her house, in her daily house clothes. She has tied around her head - and hair – the mandeel mahalawy, as it is called. It has nothing to do with Islam; my aunts used to do the same and my mother, maybe because of the dust in the house when they were moving around doing their routine cleaning. They also tied it firmly over their heads when they had a headache, sometimes they tied a big copper key with it as it is believed to be a cure for headaches.
They drink tea many times a day with a lot of sugar: morning, noon, after meals, and after noon and night.
Such a cheap relaxation!

The little lost one, lost for good

2007-10-10T15:01:00.001+01:00

I woke myself with a high-pitched miaow. It was me - as Perdita - dying.

She was very bony to the touch at the end; stroking her felt like running my hand over dislocated bones, but she still purred and looked at me with her uncertain face – unsure whether to succumb or flee. On Monday night Ma and I walked around the garden in the dark, shouting “Perdita, wuss, puss” and whistling Ma’s special cat whistle.

That evening on the phone to Jean in France Ma recalled with pride how Perdita’s pitiful miaow had answered her, as the cat limped out from behind the shed. I had run in and grabbed the tiny torch, and there she squatted, immobile. I walked through the flower-bed and picked her up – she was light as air, and she let me carry her upstairs to her bed. Perdita would never let anyone carry her – she would struggle and scratch and jump free. We brought her plate of food and water bowl up onto the bed and she ate something but mostly had a voracious thirst. She didn’t move around the bed, pawing and nesting; rather she turned gingerly on an axis and settled hunched on her paws, careful not to put pressure on her jutting, swollen paw.

It was after letting out her high-pitched miaow that she died on her bed with Ma and Charlie watching. Charlie wept, Ma told me. This morning, with spades, Ma and I tried to dig a hole, but we struck rock and Charlie was afraid the foxes would tear apart her little body.

Now Ma and Charlie have taken her to the crematorium, and in the shallow grave near her shed we will lay Perdita, “the little lost one”, in a pot.

Best cats!

2007-10-10T10:53:00.000+01:00

We call cats “best!” … the ancient Egyptian 'Cat-God' is called BEST... There was a recent discovery in the Delta of mass graves of mummified cats in a place called “Tell Basta” .. (It is also the name of my grandfather!)
Egyptians do not keep domestic pets, but they treat cats with respect. They believe they have secret powers so they do not harm them!

the boy, the bread, the smile

2007-10-10T10:31:00.000+01:00

Because of the shortage of baking places to bake bread, and because of the bad quality of the bread baked enmass, lot of individuals took up making bread at home and selling it. Usually young kids would set up their mobile 'shops' anywhere. It is easy to snatch the 'shop' and run away when the police come raiding.
I wonder – when I see such energy – to hold onto life with dignity, how that energy, or the dignity will survive the hardship of poverty.
The boy is smiling, a sweet one, for the time being!

faces to backs

2007-10-09T18:52:00.000+01:00

Two photos with astonishing meanings: Girls are sitting with their back to what is happening behind them. Boys are looking straight forward, even smiling a bit!

I am not sure why the girls are turning their backs: are they not willing to be identified? Ya, most probably; I think they left their houses claiming to their parents that they were going to study with each other in one of the girl's houses and took the opportunity to escape and have some fresh air on the Corniche.

The boys, just leave without any explanation to their parents and meet, making plans, sitting on the same seaside. Both parties have no money to meet in cafés. Even if the girls had some money, they would not dare to go to café houses.

Relief

2007-10-09T11:45:00.000+01:00

It was a terrible moment to receive a letter (not a love letter) from the one I love, and such relief to allow myself to love again for a bit.

Old men with tea and cotton

2007-10-09T10:57:00.000+01:00

Sitting in front of their shop, the old men show their profession: they make things from cotton: mattresses, cushions and usually for the new bedroom for the newly wed couples.
It is still a great profession, and in demand, in spite of the spread of non-cotton materials, and is cheap.
You can ask the "menajed" (the man who makes the mattresses) to come to your home with his tools and make whatever you want. Hospitality rules demand that the client offer unlimited supply of tea and coffee and of course one meal from the table of the house.
All the neighbors would come, comment, and say Mabrouk
It is a small feast!

The young shoeseller

2007-10-08T19:52:00.001+01:00

What age do some people begin working? Who stole from them the joy of a slow and normal growing up?
He is selling some secondhand shoes. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, learning to deal with corrupt the policeman who would leave him and his shoes in peace if he gives him part of his earnings. And the hassling of the clients: Poor and annoyed like him from the way life disappoints them.

internet hunting

2007-10-08T14:58:00.000+01:00

The Elly is getting wild!waoo
She is not anymore "Elly" she became in a rare of metamorphism: The Elly and I think that happened during certain time, in certain day in the way to Lisbon or out from it.
The internet dating which I red today is a great proof of my doubts!
Some time I look at "Charmed" in TV trying to follow the dark places inside my children brains. The idea impresses me, how it is so easy, that a person can pass certain transformation from a "normal" human being to something different, scary and harmful.
That if we can be safe saying "normal" human being.
So , the Elly hates and despise men, but she would not leave them in their situation what ever it is, but chasing them through the internet to have her revenge from them , reduce, and laughing at them.
To my knowledge from certain films that a woman who had been raped is getting hare revenge from the rapist and men who had fallen in her hand by humiliating or killing them . For me that is fair enough.
But the elly as it seems decided that all the misfortunate "affairs" are the result of encounter those "bad" men.
I wonder: are there special places where "bad" men and women gather so could be avoided? 9 of course beside garbage cans where certain cats (and people) like to collect their food and "lovers" from there!
I know it is tiring debate who is bad and how much a person could be as bad as a rapist, Aim not going to be part of it , because of my basic believes in life that" we" are the creators of our happiness or misery , not the others ,but through them.
Elly, before her new "changes" was such a sweet sensitive pretty woman who was looking for things she knows from her experience are not exist in mass production such as love!
Alternatively, I was having my own dreaming about her. My be she is a Dracula in hidden?

A film about a village

2007-10-08T11:49:00.000+01:00

http://www.sonsofeilaboun.com/links

I got this link in my mail. It is short but very moving... you will discover why.

Here is a Palestinian film about a normal people to continue the debate on the other film
raouf!

School Photograph

2007-10-07T16:54:00.001+01:00

Shock and awe, part 1

2007-10-07T16:32:00.001+01:00

I can't stop insulting men.
Nice men - I am sure they are nice men, but I hate them and I haven't even met them.
I joined an Internet dating site to be adored and to abuse, I now realise, and that makes me a little worried. Persephone calls it my shock and awe tactic or hook 'em and sink 'em.
I have begun correspondence with complete strangers by ripping their profiles to shreds, and continued in a mocking, if flirtatious tone.
That is except for Stefano, the Italian whose utter sincerity and modesty in his profile made me take him for a sweet, vulnerable child in need of gentle encouragement and nurturing - so to him only have I been kind and patient.
I am an odd sort of Internet dater. I want but I don't want. I am femme fatale or mother, bitch or older sister. Who would want such a crazy creature?

On Home and a film

2007-10-05T12:45:00.000+01:00

The post Elly wrote about Munich made me feel a bit uneasy about my feelings towards "home", whatever it is: the motherland or fatherland or homeland.
A long time ago, I discovered I had no sentimental emotions regarding "home".

My first long voyage far from Egypt took me twelve years without feeling the slightest 'homesickness' for Egypt. Truly. I missed certain places such as a coffeehouse, a part of the river Nile, certain hours of the day, some streets and very few people. In the beginning I was worried about my 'patriotic' feelings, but gradually and secretly I was feeling relief that I had no emotional ties to many things and people I mentioned above.

That is why I was feeling uneasy about Elly's post, inspite of liking it, because she connected her feelings with an interpretation of the film, Munich
Elly wrote: "I need to know that home is there. And you may believe you are criticizing Israel in Munich, but really you are merely chastising it and underlining over and over again the reality of the homeland. It is there and you have the luxury of choosing at whim whether you like it or not. And what inexpressible relief as well as agony that gives to you!
So what about the relief of the Palestinians - will they ever have any damn relief?"

But I never had this urge or feeling that I want to return 'home'. I created two homes for myself: a simple house in Amsterdam where I do not share anything with the Dutch population... No history, no schools or playgrounds, no streets which witnessed my first kiss with a girl... In addition, I have another small flat in October city, which it is a new city and has no character or even history by itself! I lived in Warsaw for five years, Baghdad four years, Beirut four years. In addition, so many years in Sudan. Some of these places I like and miss, and that is it - nothing more.

I saw the film, Munich, in Amsterdam about a year and half ago. I liked it because I felt Spielberg tried hard to be objective and say something that would not agree totally with the Jewish mainstream thinking about 'Home'. I saw the Palestinian camps in Lebanon and in Gaza; all my life I have known all sort of Palestinians - rich and poor, fighters and politicians. I saw them leaving Beirut in one of their big and contentious exoduses.

The film also gave me uneasy feeling, a sort of frustration and hopelessness.
I did not feel sorry for Avner, because he is a killer. The Black September fedayeen had a cause. They had been betrayed by the Arabs in the massacre in Jordan, and by the world since 1948, so they decided to take things into their own hands. The Israelite hajanah had killed so many Arabs before, so what Avner was doing was to continue what his culture and religion demand from him.

That is the main difference between the two sides in the film, which the director could not or would not grasp. I was looking in the film for justice, not justification. I was not looking for home or homeland because I know that both politicians and killers do not believe in them in spite of what they claim.

Still the film is a daring step. I do not believe there were innocent people in the film; they all shared certain dogmatic ideas about being righteous, and that the "others" are wrong, and that according to my book would put them in a grey area. I had a feeling the director was aiming the message of the film towards those people!

Raouf, this is the story of another Raouf

2007-10-04T18:45:00.000+01:00

From the blog, An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle

This is " Iraq al Jadeed ", the New Iraq of the sectarian Iranian Government, with its militias and thugs and "Islamic" revolutionary Guards...who landed with the Occupation

This is the New Iraq of the "Islamic" fundamentalists, the pious ones, the " God fearing ones." ...who arrived with the Occupation.

This is the New Iraq that America brought to us. This is American Freedom and Democracy. This is American Liberation.

This is my Dear Raouf. This is the gentle, kind, Raouf.
This is his body. These are the marks of the New Iraq. These are the hands and arms that embrace us daily in the New Iraq...

Skirting a life

2007-10-03T21:45:00.000+01:00

It is impossible to explain quiet agitation and mental suffocation.
I am expanding and the space is getting tighter, strangling me here, flattening me there.
I can't bang and slam up against anything and I start to move oddly, skimming the ground and brushing along walls.
It is agony this painless anger and uncertainty. I am light enough to evaporate and heavy enough to sink to the bottom.

A blue house for Maryam's blue doors

2007-10-03T16:51:00.000+01:00

Siwan house for the Moroccan door, (see My Marrakesh)

el bent el Eskandraniea

2007-10-03T09:28:00.000+01:00

Some time (years) ago I was thinking about taking some photos of Egypt and writing comments: a lot of photos and short comments.
I tried to do it myself, but it did not work. I am simply not a photographer.
Once I told Elly when she was in Egypt about my idea; at the time I was in Amsterdam and she sent me some photos she had shot, and I liked them. However, I thought that photos in black and white were more impressive, with the advance of technology they have disappeared even from Egypt!

Elly published some of her photos in Madny. They are from Alexandria, a city I like more than Cairo, because of its cosmopolitanism and the sea.
It is the city where I went after getting my freedom from the desert prison in Wahat Gargha. So you can imagine after more than two years in the desert how I felt!

This Girl from Alex I had put her yesterday in my msn photo. She is haunting me with her uncertain smile, and what she tries to hide in her eyes.

My old ideas was: "Egyptians: birth, life and death"
So! Now I have done it!!
At least part from it. A thousand miles begins with one step.

Fear literalists of all faiths

2007-10-01T09:42:00.000+01:00

Lately one can clearly notice a general increase in islamophobia driven by personal prejudices or political ideologies, previously monopolised by the Somali Mrs. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but now inherited by some weak Dutch politicians such as Welders whose party counts barely nine seats in the Dutch parliament, or the unknown Ihsan Jamy who created what he called the association of ex-Muslims. Both Welders and Ihsan Jamy are merely searching for a role to play in order to draw attention to themselves, and the best way for them to do so, is to launch a scathing criticism of Islam and promote a rejection of Muslim holy signs such as the Qur'an.

The silly idea Welders has proposed is to prohibit the Qur'an's use for non-academic people arguing that it is a book that drives people to hate each other. This is a spectacularly stupid idea, because he clearly ignores the texts in the Torah and the Bible that literally encourage people to judge others.

The Bible states regularly and repetitively that God has chosen Jews to be his "chosen people" without considering non-Jews. Moreover, God is often referred to as the "soldiers' God", a God who gives the Jewish soldiers orders to win over other people and tribes:
When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession" Deuteronomy (Chap7)

In another part in the Torah, we find a text about the attitude towards inhabitants whose lands get seized by the people of Israel where their God tells them:
You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young. The LORD will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you" (Deuteronomy-7)

And we find that prophet Moses orders the killing of the prisoners “…Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.
"Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Deuteronomy 31)

As for the Bible, we can find in Saint Paul’s book And if we want to take a position against puritans/literalists, let us read what Saint Paul wrote: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders. (1 Corinthians 6).
In other words, none of these will enter paradise.

Mr. Jamy argues that Islam punishes people who leave Islam; he should definitely listen to what Sheikh Jam’a, the mufti of Egypt, did: he acknowledged the right for Christians who converted to Islam to return to their original religion. Or he should also read Saint Paul’s opinion on those leave Christianity; in the chapter about abandoning faith he says:
“… it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, 6if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because,to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.
Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. 8But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. (Hebrews 6)

Jesus also showed a certain attitude towards non Jewish people. In Mathieu’s book we find the story of a Canaanite woman who begged Jesus to cure her child from the devil “…Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour. ( Matthew 15). And finally Jesus cured her daughter although he considered the Canaanites to be less valuable in comparison to the Jews.

And have we forgotten the official position the Vatican took until recently: the church used to blame today’s Jews because it considered them to be descendants of Jesus’ killers, using for this the same sentence Jews used to ask the roman’s authority to crucify him:
“he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"
All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 15)!"

We do not want a debate on religions here, we simply want to point out that “if you live in a glass house, then don't throw stones”. We should look at the holy books from a historical point of view, where and when they were written, and as “enlightened Muslim analysts” suggests, the reasons they were written.

All holy Jewish, Christian and Muslim books present some common attitudes regarding women, abortion and adultery: Jewish religion invented stoning persons who committed adultery , and the Christian church burned women who were using magic and established courts to judge people relying on only religious texts.

Western Christian countries impose civil law on their citizens even though texts related to religious judgment are still present in the holy Bible or intolerant ideas are still present in the old Testament, but we could not find any politician or even a Muslim who wants to prohibit the reading of the Bible or the Torah. This is because the Qur'an respects Jesus and Mary and considers Jesus to be God’s word and spirit!

We Arab Christians refuse any aggression to Muslims and Islam the same way we severely condemn any aggression from a Muslim to non Muslims. For me and many Arab Christians like me, we consider the Qur'an as a fundamental part of our civilization and culture and we respect it and read it. Did we forget that the book, the Elders of Zion was written by western Christians in which they wrote that Jewish priests kidnapped Christian children and killed them and used their blood for sacrifice?

The majority of Muslims in Muslim countries have never thought of forbidding the reading of the Bible, so please do not try to draw people’s attention to yourself by shedding darkness on others.

Raouf.
Translated from the Arabic by Evy

Is this home?

2007-09-30T14:43:00.000+01:00

Home is what I ache for when I feel a despised stranger elsewhere - my home becomes a mythical Somerset idyll and the warmth and safety of my mother's womb from which I was ejected 32 years ago.

When at home I eat my mother's bread, and sit next to the radiator and behave badly often; it is my home, I'll behave as I want I think. At home I reconnect with friends and forget to make new ones, or hide from old, long gone ones.

The desire to be at home is one of the most natural and disheartening of human desires. I leave home for good reasons - there is nothing for me there any more, it bores me and keeps me infantile, yet I keep going back.

There is only one explanation of Spielberg's film, Munich - it is his personal exploration of what home and family is. (For a good critical review see Angry Arab)

If Golda Meir is the grandmother whose racist tales you listen to in respectful silence, and the 'hero's' mother is Lady Macbeth egging him on, then his wife is Mary Magdalene crying at the foot of the cross over the beautiful man who has sacrificed his life for the sins of his people. Avner believes he is protecting his people, but of course they are using him and eventually offer him up - a Jew nonetheless - for crucifixion.

The film's 'hero', Avner, we are told, did all he did - hunting down innocent men and murdering them in cold-blood - for home and family. And in the end he is symbolically homeless and broken, estranged from his own father, disgusted by his mother and at best the adoptive son of a mafia boss.
A parable of sorts, but an ambivalent one.
After all Avner is not really an exile. At worst he is the prodigal son; if he chooses to return to his homeland Israel, he will be welcomed even by those who despise him. And one senses that the pull of home and family is too strong for a man such as Avner to resist. He may have sinned at the behest of his people, but he is doing penance (in Brooklyn of all places) and anyway, time heals...

It is interesting that the sympathetic Arab villains (I know that seems not to make sense, but think about it - the one does not cancel out the other for the well-trained film audience as Spielberg knows) who Avner tracks down are scattered all over Europe and beyond. Of course we should know that is because they DO NOT have a homeland to return to, and in this context their adamant refrain that 'one day we will return to our olive trees' seems laughable.
The problem is that because of the genre of the film: fast-paced international action thriller led by soul-searching hero - the fact that the targets live in foreign metropolises is to be expected.
Are we, therefore, asked to worry about them not having homes? No, because they are little more than classic criminals in hiding, escorted by KGB or CIA agents, for whom a hotel room and a personal driver is a way of life.

Avner does have a home and he rejects it - at least for the moment - as a matter of principle. The Palestinian men and their families living in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, New York and Beirut are homeless.
As Spielberg and I have cleverly established - the idyll of home and family is more often than not a stupid fantasy. Yes, yes Mr. Spielberg, we agree on that, but the material fact of that home that haunts us is the big elephant in the room. It must be there, even for one to leave it voluntarily, and then dream about it.

I need to know that home is there. And you may believe you are criticising Israel in Munich, but really you are merely chastising it and underlining over and over again the reality of the homeland. It is there and you have the luxury of choosing at whim whether you like it or not. And what inexpressible relief as well as agony that gives to you!
So what about the relief of the Palestinians - will they ever have any damn relief?

the return of The Elly

2007-09-29T15:03:00.001+01:00

Speaking about Catholicism, let me say as the father in the bible had welcomed the return of his lost son: "ahlan wa sahlan ya Ebny"..
I am sure he was speaking in Arabic(!)

The father in the bible had ordered a big feast in honour of the return of the lost son.
When I look -now- again at this story, I think the son was very daring, because he wants to take his heritage and leave the house. He wanted to try his luck in the world, far from his father.
Elly wanted time to think about a "lot of shit"; she found herself dealing with it, in spite of being fussy about other things!
The only direct way to deal with shit- ya Elly - is to throw it in its "normal" place and pull the water over it and forget about it !
You know how you feel after you do that every morning!

Girls at rest and play

2007-09-28T22:00:00.001+01:00

Girls in courtyard

Roar

Girls in club

Girl with fag

Girls at dinner

Girls on river

Girl in bar

Waiter's phone number

Drunk girls

Girls in spain

2007-09-28T21:41:00.000+01:00

Girl with hay

Girl with waiter

Girls on picnic

Girls on steps

Girl with hat

Girl with book

There is nothing like love to make you hate

2007-09-28T20:46:00.000+01:00

A love letter in my inbox:

"It is so long since we last saw each other. I never
imagined that you will be so cruel to me.
Understanding as I am of your situation, I did not
expect this agony from you. It seemed sadly that I
have fallen in love with you, that whenever I remember
you, I become wrenchingly tearful. You have become
used and probably bored of me mentioning tears and
cries, but my tears are precious, like anyone else! So
now, you, quite cowardly, have concealed yourself, God
knows where, from me, and you make me suffer. It must
be very gratifying for you to learn that somebody is
crying over you. We were born to wreck each other.

I never imagined that I would fall in love with you,
but it seems that I did. Why would I cry, quite
seriously and poignantly really, had it not been for
real and deadly attachment? So a poem for you or
something along that line, my 'love' Elly!

If I were Muhammad, I would have asked my followers to
direct their faces towards you instead of Mecca

Go to hill Elly. I hate you as much as I love you. You
even deprive me of your image. I do not know what is
spinning in your head that you do not want even to
reply to my emails and calls. Have you been saturated
by my incessant correspondences? It is not attention
that I want from you. I am self-pitying now, but it
is. We mean the opposite of what we proclaim, most of
the time. But I thought you are not that person who
easily withdrew from his friends and even lovers!

After you, I do not know, who would be worthy of my
love? But I will be looking for another absolute whom
I can cry over and bemoan my bad fortunes. I do not
know why I have to say ‘I’ anymore, because it is of
no relevance really. ‘I’ is a convenient pronoun to
allow us to make sense of certain things, especially
those involving allegedly personal or freewill of some
sort. But in actual reality, ‘I’ should be dead by
now, buried under the broken promises, unmeant-meant
statements. The problem, I am thinking to love again.
Like Ka in the brilliant novel of Orhan Pamuk, Snow,
his death is enshrouded in a mystery of love
apparently for the ruthless Ipek, the daughter of
Turgut Bey. Some people do not deserve love, yet we
fall in love with them. I am one of those who fall in
love with the wrong people, like you. Totally
ruthless. Take me to court, if you want. I met you at
SOAS and have known you for four years. If I angered
you, I would have the chance of at least getting you
to take me to court, so that we can see each other. I
hope that you do not have enough money to pay for an
agent to represent you in court! But if you send some
gangs to hurt me, that I cannot help.

Do you have a boyfriend Elly? If not, I can marry
you. I have some money! We can manage. I do not mind
marrying a girl older than me by six years or so! I
can share a baby with you. We can call him Muhammad.
If we get a girl, we name her after my mother, who
died 10 years ago, Sabha. It conveys lightness and
morning, like in good-morning.

Apparently madly in love with you. Ah Elly, thinking
of you really brings my soul to a near halt! If you
have any sense of mercy Elly, come and find me in
Kensington or SOAS! We will just be friends! Do not
tell your friends about this… it is excessive and I do
not know what I mean by it, but I mean it… ‘I’, 'I'...
I am going to send it...yalla… one day before Ramdan
starts…I am afraid, but I send it...yes..
worthwhile... I am in love with my words, ruthless as
they are... a lady is walking and carrying a mobile
phone and talking to somebody, she seems to be working
in a big office. In one hand, she is having a file
with a lot of papers in and on the other, she is
carrying her mobile... the day is beautiful, perfect
for kissing... some suicidal thoughts... I wish I am a
Hamas fighter in Gaza... it is easier…Elly, I like
you… I did not mean it… but I wrote this and it has to
be sent…I like you very much…very much…more than I
could or should… click

May God strike me down for not getting that perfect fucking job...!

2007-09-28T20:14:00.000+01:00

I made a sort of breakthrough today. I often make mental breakthroughs but they rarely translate into emotional ones. I say something clever and noble about my situation and others', feel buoyant and wise, and go home and immediately begin sulking again.

Today I considered how I might NOT have fucked up my life; I thought briefly that the decisions I made may not have been the worse ones, but the only possible ones for me at the time. But it didn't really stick - that feeling that I'm all right, that my life has been interesting and I'm a resourceful person passed into abstraction and the habitual and dangerously unnoticeable heavy feeling of shame peculiar to the liberal middle classes who expect more and sometimes the impossible for themselves whilst defending the lower classes for their poor choices and bad luck, returned.

I discussed with Persephone this theory I have: that whilst we - the masses of liberal Europe - no longer fear moral condemnation of our sexuality, modes of dress and faith or lack of, the idea of moral judgement itself has not disappeared for some of us - it has been transferred to the far more mundane facts of our lives: the wrong job is a moral failure, the wrong choice of food, and schools for our kids is fraught with moral pitfalls. We see stern disapproval and scorn everywhere, usually where it doesn't exist. People are minding their own business and nursing their own wounds.

I blame Catholicism. That is too easy. I blame myself for wholeheartedly subscribing to these moralising terms of reference myself: "that mother who drives her ugly big gas guzzler is an evil woman and deserves punishment", and so on...

In the shit

2007-09-28T17:18:00.000+01:00

My cat, Perdita ('little lost one') always chooses the Persian carpet I brought back for my sister from Syria to shit on.
I cleaned up the shit.
As I did so, I thought about what it was that I would do wrong to make me get in the shit with my sister: it would be the manner that I disposed of the shit, the way I cleaned it, the place I cleaned it, the cloth I used...
I was right. I just forgot one further think about the cat's shit that would me me in shit with my sister: I didn't call her immediately to involve her in making decisions about the shit.
She accused me of making a shit decision.
What began with the sick cat being left alone in the house and innocently shitting on the carpet, ends with me defending my manner of dealing with the shit.

Family are not always good at dealing with shit. One of my favourite films, called Solas or 'Alone' involves compassionate cleaning of others' shit. It is a very moving film about shit and families and loneliness and love.
My mother was once sick and I had to clean her shit. I felt a huge wave of mercy wash over me and I knew that is one of the highest things one human can do for another.

But the cat? She is sick, and she shits and feels no guilt. That is her natural way.

كمال الجزولي - اتحاد كتاب السودان

2007-09-28T10:24:00.000+01:00

أمين اتحاد الكتاب السودانيين كمال الجزولي:
صفقة رخيصة حرمتنا من مقعدنا باتحاد الكتاب العرب!

كمال الجزولي
ضمن فعاليات الجمعية العمومية لاتحاد الكتاب السودانيين التي انعقدت يوم الخميس 20من الشهر الجاري، وفيما كان الامين العام للمكتب التنفيذي السابق (2006.2007) الشاعر كمال الجزولي يقدم خطاب الدورة المنقضية اشار في باب علاقات الاتحاد بالكيانات الثقافية في العالم الافريقي والعربي الي انهم اصطدموا بالواقع المزري لهذه الكيانات حيث أنها إما غائبة تماماً، كما هو الحال في الكثير من البلدان الافريقية، أو أن معظمها، كما في المنطقة العربية خصوصاً، تعيش تحت رحمة أنظمتها السياسية. وبالنتيجة فهي خاضعة لإملاءاتها، وتقيم علاقاتها الخارجية مع الكيانات الداجنة مثلها في البلدان الأخرى، وليس من بينها اتحادنا بطبيعة الحال!

أما القلة القليلة التي تتسم بقدر معقول من الاستقلالية فهي، كالعادة، تعاني، مثلنا تماماً، من شح الامكانيات التي تحتاجها لإقامة وتسيير علاقات خارجية نشطة.

واشار الامين العام للاتحاد الي انهم مع ذلك حاولوا التعاطي مع بعض هذه الكيانات ولو بالحد الأدنى! فشرعوا في تأسيس علاقات تعاون مع اتحاد الكتاب المصريين، غير أنهم سرعان ما اصطدموا، حتى في هذا المستوى المتواضع، بميل قيادة هذا الاتحاد للتعامل مع اتحاد آخر في بلادنا وقال:

"رغم علمنا اليقيني بأنهم يدركون تماماً أنه مجرد اتحاد صوري! ولولا إصرارنا على التمسك بمبادئ أخلاقية نرى وجوب أن تبقى هادية في علاقات الاطراف مهما تنكر لها الآخرون وداسوا عليها بأحذيتهم، لكشفنا مصدر (علمنا اليقيني) هذا على رءوس الاشهاد!.".

واشار الجزولي الي ان العلاقة غير السوية مع اتحاد الكتاب بمصر اثرت سلباً علي الجهود التي بذلت من قبلهم لاقامة علاقة جيدة مع اتحاد الادباء والكتاب العرب وذلك، كما أفاد، حدث علي النحو التالي :

"عندما قرر هذا الاتحاد عقد الدورة رقم/23 لمؤتمره بالقاهرة خلال الفترة من 21 إلى 26 نوفمبر عام 2006، قمنا بتفويض عضو اتحادنا الأستاذ الشاعر/ الياس فتح الرحمن لتمثيلنا في إجراء الاتصالات اللازمة لضمان اعتماد عضويتنا في هذا الاتحاد، خاصة وأن كل اتصالاتنا السابقة، وبالذات مع اتحادي الكتاب المصريين والمغاربة، كانت ترجح نيلنا لهذا الحق الأصيل من حقوقنا.

ب/ غير أن التقرير الضافي الذي وصلنا من الاستاذ الياس بتاريخ 6/12/2006م كشف بجلاء كيف تدخلت الاجندات الخاصة، للأسف، لتلعب دورها في حرماننا من هذه العضوية لصالح الاتحاد الحكومي الصوري، تماماً مثلما كانت ذات هذه الاجندات قد تدخلت قبل عشرين سنة للعب نفس الدور إبان وجود الأمانة العامة لاتحاد الكتاب والادباء العرب ببغداد، وتوليها في تلك الفترة من قبل الشاعر العراقي حميد سعيد، رغم القرار الذي سبق أن اتخذه هذا الاتحاد العربي أواخر سبعينات القرن المنصرم بتجميد عضوية السودان حتى ينشأ فيه اتحاد مستقل يمثل كتاب وأدباء السودان تمثيلاً حقيقياً فيتولى المقعد!

ج/ ولكي نفهم تلك الملابسات بوضوح نذكر أن اتحاد الكتاب المصريين واتحاد أدباء السودان، أحد روافد الاتحاد الاشتراكي الحاكم وقتها، كانا قد طردا من الاتحاد العربي عام 1979، لتأييدهما زيارة السادات لإسرائيل واتفاقية كامب ديفيد، كما تم سحب الرئاسة من (دولة المقر) وهي مصر. لكن، على الرغم من تأسيس اتحادنا بشكل ديموقراطي حر ومستقل عقب الانتفاضة الشعبية التي أطاحت بدولة الفرد واتحادها الاشتراكي وكل روافده، فإن الأجندات السياسية العراقية تدخلت، آنذاك، نتيجة وشاية رخيصة وكاذبة من داخل السودان، لتحول، منذ ذلك الوقت، دون تولينا مقعد السودان في الاتحاد العربي بفرية تبعيتنا للحزب الشيوعي السوداني!

د/ والآن، وبعدما أضحى قرار استبعاد مصر وسحب المقر منها بلا معنى، في مناخات التراجع والانكسار العام الذي يسم النظام العربي الرسمي بأسره، أصدر الاتحاد العربي، عام 1997م، قراره بعودة مصر للاتحاد. وتطورت الامور إلى أن قام الاتحاد المصري باستضافة مؤتمر الاتحاد العربي، تمهيداً لاستعادة أمانته العامة إلى مصر من سوريا التي تولاها اتحادها لثلاث دورات متتالية عن طريق رئيسه الأستاذ علي عقلة عرسان.

هـ/ في تلك الأثناء أعيد تأسيس الاتحاد الحكومي في السودان، فتمكن من تولي المقعد مجدداً في الاتحاد العربي قبل استعادة اتحادنا لوضعيته القانونية في (ميلاده الثاني) عقب إبرام اتفاقية السلام الشامل وإصدار الدستور الانتقالي لسنة 2005م. وسارع الاتحاد المصري لتوثيق علاقاته مع ذلك الاتحاد الحكومي رغم علمه بأنه لا يمثل الكتاب والأدباء السودانيين! وفي الواقع فإن كل ما كان يهم الاتحاد المصري هو ضمان صوت السودان إلى جانبه في ما يهدف إليه من استعادة وضعيته السابقة في الاتحاد العربي، الأمر الذي ارتأى إمكانية تحققه بشكل أسهل عن طريق العلاقة بين النظامين السياسيين في البلدين، خاصة وأن المؤتمر نفسه قد انعقد برعاية تامة من الحكومة المصرية! ولأن "جرادة في الكف"، كما يقولون، "خير من ألف أخرى طائرة"، فإن الاتحاد المصري حسبها هكذا، وبالتالي لم تكن لديه مصلحة في مؤازرة اتحادنا في ما يتصل بأحقيته في تولي مقعد السودان، رغم أن قيادة اتحاد مصر سبق أن أبدت تفهمها لقضيتنا العادلة، ووعدت بمؤازرتها في المؤتمر، ورغم أن الأستاذ على عقلة عرسان أقر لرئيس الاتحاد المصري بالظلم الفادح الذي كان قد وقع على اتحادنا في هذا الشأن، وذلك في الاجتماع الذي عقده مندوبنا معهما قبيل افتتاح المؤتمر! ما حدث بعد ذلك هو أن مندوبنا وزع رسالة من الأمين العام لاتحادنا على أعضاء المؤتمر من ممثلي الاتحادات العربية، وكذلك على الكثير من كتاب وأدباء مصر الشرفاء الذين أبدوا تعاطفاً مع قضيتنا.

و/ ونرى أن على اللجنة القادمة موالاة هذه القضية العادلة بالاتصالات والتصعيد لفضح الصفقة التي حرمنا بسببها من حقنا المستحق في تولي مقعد السودان في الاتحاد العربي )

يجدر ذكره ان الدورة المنقضية للمكتب التنفيذي لاتحاد الكتاب السودانيين، التي تولت ادارته في ما سمي بالميلاد الثاني له، حيث كانت حكومة الانقاذ قد قامت بحله ومصادرة داره في 1989، ليعاود نشاطه عقب اتفاق السلام الذي تم بين الحركة الشعبية بقيادة الراحل جون قرنق، الحزب الحاكم المؤتمر الوطني، هذه الدورة المنقضية انجزت العديد من الفعاليات الثقافية، توجت بالاخير بجائزة الامير كلاوس التي منحت للاتحاد لوقفته الصلبة في اتجاه ارساء قيم الحرية والديمقراطية.

لمزيد من المعلومات

essamgaseem@yahoo.com

المصدر كيكا

2007 Prince Claus Award

2007-09-28T10:05:00.000+01:00

Sudanese Writers Union, Sudan
One of the few platforms for intellectual debate in the country, the Sudanese Writers Union works through culture to promote dialogue and seek solutions to conflicts. Emphasising Sudan’s multi-cultural identity and rigorously promoting the right of all people to express their culture and beliefs, it brings together writers of different disciplines, intellectual orientations, regional backgrounds, genders and ethnicities.

Founded on the restoration of democracy in 1985, the union quickly became an important space for informed discussion. Two days after the military coup in 1989, it was banned and its members subjected to harassment, torture and detention. Re-emerging on the signing of the peace agreement in 2006, it currently has about 50 members. Regular meetings attract 200 participants for candid debate on controversial issues such as Darfur, rape, Muslim identity and government corruption. Through frequent publication in daily newspapers, including articles by members living in exile, the union spreads informed opinion. It hosts international intellectuals, participates in international conferences and engages with international issues.

The Sudanese Writers Union is honoured for its combination of intellectualism and activism, for providing a platform for freedom of expression, cultural diversity and social justice, and for its courageous use of the word in its struggle against tyranny.

Sudanese Writers Union
Kamal El Gizouli, president of the Sudanese Writers Union
More information
Curriculum Vitae of Kamal El Gizouli and Sudanese Writers Union

my comment: Fantastic!

a writer from Aswan

2007-09-22T11:20:00.000+01:00

Ahmed Abu Khnejer (the man with little dagger!)is a writer from Aswan. He is from Abbda tribe. He has a special "voice " in his creative writing: short stories and novels.
Madny asked Abu Khmejer to contribute by writing "something", so he gave us his feeling on seeing Naghuib Mahfouz the first time on a Cairo street: The Guru and the student

* أحمد أبوخنيجر

* أطياف من نجيب محفوظ.
طيف 1986
خلال الإجازة من العام الدراسي الجامعي، كنت آتي للقاهرة مدفوعا بحاجتي للعمل، و قد كان أن عملت بإحدى شركات إنتاج و توزيع الفيديو- الذي كان رائجا أيامها- و ذلك عن طريق قريب لي، كان المكتب يقع بالعجوزة، آتي في الصباح و أنصرف عند العاشرة مساءً.
في هذا الصباح نزلت من الأتوبيس، و قبل أن أعبر الطريق، رميت عيني، بالعادة، إلي الضفة الأخرى من الشارع، و جمدت تماما، كان نجيب محفوظ يسير متوكئا على عصاه، بهمة شيخ تليق به و يليق بها؛ كان جلالا و هالةً من سحر، و عدم توقع أن تمر هذه اللحظة بي، و هتفت بي روحي: أنه هو، حقا و يقينا. و ما كنت قادرا على تصديقها، و كأي مبتدئ، لم تلوثه الثقافة بعد، فقط كانت القراءة، الغارق فيها، و التي تعلى من شأن الكتاب، و تجعلهم في نظري: الرجال العظام. و كان نجيب محفوظ واحدا منهم بلا شك.
وجدت روحي تدفعني لعبور الشارع، و اللحاق بالشيخ، و إلقاء التحية عليه، فقط رمى السلام من قريب، و ربما أمكن- طمعا- مصافحته، و الشارع مزدحم بالعربات المنطلقة بسرعة شديدة في الاتجاهين.
كان الشيخ يبتعد، و هبط سكون فوري على الوجود من حولي، لم يكن يتحرك شيء، سوى الرجل المتعكز على عصاه و المبتعد في الناحية الأخرى من الشارع، و أنا الواقف عاجزا عن عبور الشارع إليه، لكن الصمت الذي ترسخ، أبعد كل شيء، و أخلى الطريق تماما، و كانت فرصتي المثالية للعبور، كنت متلهفا و متعجلا، فخطوت مسرعاً، غير أن يدا قوية ردتني للخلف، مبعدةً إياي عن نهر الشارع، فيما صوت عجلات تصرخ اثر استخدام الكوابح فجأة، و شتائم قاسية و مرة تنطلق من فم السائق؛ رويدا بدأ الوجود يستعيد نشاطه و حميته المستعرة، فنظرت و أنا أحاول أن أتمالك نفسي في وقفتي، كي لا أسقط، و رأيته هناك... بعيدا... يسير بين جموع الناس المسرعين للحاق بأعمالهم.

طيف 1994
كانت عمتي قد أدمنت شراب النوفالجين و سماع الراديو، و كانت وحيدة، و كنت كلما أذهب إلي البلدة أقيم عندها، كنت أجد الراديو دائرا طوال النهار، تقلب بين محطاته، ما أن تجد أغنية تحبها، أو مسلسل، أو حلقة درامية، حتى ترفع يدها عن المؤشر، و عندما يقترب موعد نومها تدير المؤشر تجاه القرآن الكريم، و ما كنت لأتذمر.
في هذا اليوم، رجعت في المساء، عقب يوم طويل قضيته و بعض الأصدقاء في رحلة للجبل الواقع خلف البلدة، كنت متعبا، و عارفا بأنها سوف تبدأ موالا طويلا من العتاب، و أسئلة عن الأكل و الشراب، و أين كنت؟ لكن شيئا من هذا لم يحدث، رميت السلام عليها و أنا أتحسب لاندفاعها، لكنها ردت علىّ بصوت محزون ، أدركت أن هناك خبرا قاسيا علىّ أن استعد لسماعه و احتمال مصابه.
جلست على طرف الدكة متحفزا، قلت: خير يا عمة. فأجابتني بحدتها المعهودة في تلك الفترة: و منين يجى الخير. أيقنت أن المصيبة كبيرة، و تنبهت إلي القرآن المنبعث من الراديو في غير أوانه، و قلت في نفسي: ربنا يستر. فهذه طريقتها في الإخبار عن المصائب، و التي ينوبها فيها جزء و لو يسير؛ لذت بالصمت رغبة في هدوئها، حتى أتمكن فهم ما جرى بدقة، قالت و هي تنتفض واقفة من سريرها: الراجل الطيب.. يعملوا فيه كدا.. و بالطبع لم أفهم من هو الجل الطيب الذي تقصده و تكرمت عليه بهذا الوصف، أكملت بنفس الحدة: عمل لهم إيه.. و كان فضولي قد اشتعل، فسألت: راجل مين؟ لكنها لم تلتفت لقولي، و تابعت: يضربوه بالسكين في رقبته. وقفت فزعا: مين يا عمة؟! قالت و هي تشيح بوجهها عني: الراجل اللي بيعمل لنا التمسيليات الحلوة. و حيرتي تضرب في بحر متلاطم من ألغاز و أنصاف كلام: راجل طيب.. تمثيليات. قلت بوضوح تام: مين؟ قالت: الراجل اللي أنت بتقعد تقرى كتبه طول الليل. قلت بتوجس: نجيب محفوظ.
كانت عمتي كثيرا ما تلومني على السهر الطويل، و أنا ممسك بكتاب، و لما كنت أعرف حبها لمسلسلات الراديو، و الذي كان يذيع في ذلك الوقت مسلسل: الحرافيش. فقلت لها في محاولة لترضيتها أنني أقرأ ما تسمعه في الراديو. و بالمصادفة كانت معي رواية لنجيب محفوظ، لا أذكر اسمها، أخذت الكتاب مني، و راحت تتأمله بإكبار شديد، ثم راحت تقص علىّ عدداً عير قليل من المسلسلات المأخوذة عن كتب له، و حين سألتها عن رأيها فيها، قالت: حلوة.. أحسن واحد بيعمل تمسيليات. ثم أضافت بتحسر واضح: بس معملش تمسيلية عن الصعيد. ضحكت و قلت لها: يمكن يعمل.
أيوه.. هوه. قالت عمتي، و قبل أن يسيطر الاضطراب علىّ جريت للراديو، أقلب محطاته، كي أتبين الخبر اليقين.
طيف2006
كنت مدعوا لحضور مؤتمر المسرح المصري في الأقاليم، و المنعقد بمدينة القناطر، و في صباح الأربعاء عرفنا بالخبر، و كانت الجنازة الخميس، فقررت حضورها، طوال يوم الأربعاء و أنا أتلقى اتصالات هاتفية من بعض أقاربي و أصدقائي، كانوا يعزونني، و فكرت بأنني لو كنت بأسوان، فكان يتوجب علىّ أن أفتح الخيمة، و أجلس لتلقى العزاء، و ذلك بوصف نجيب محفوظ هو الجد، و رب البيت الكبير، و يكفى ورود خبر وفاته، كي يقوم الأحفاد و من قبلهم الآباء، بفتح سرادقات العزاء في كافة أنحاء البلاد، لكنني هنا، و قريب من القاهرة، و علىّ حضور الجنازة.
في الصباح الباكر غادرت متوجها نحو الحسين، فحسب وصيته: أن تخرج الجنازة من مسجد الحسين. لكن بسبب المواصلات، و انسداد الشارع، و الحزن الكظيم وصلت متأخراً.
لم استطع دخول ميدان الحسين، كان الطوق الأمني كثيفا و شديدا، و الناس تحاول النفاد، و حين لا يقدرون، يتابعون سيرهم و حزن نبيل يسيطر على ملامحهم، وقفت و جمع من الناس نرقب المشهد، كان البعض ساخطا، و البعض يسخر من رجال الأمن و أوضاع البلد، سيدة كانت تشهق بنشيج مسموع، و أخرى تتمتم بأبيات من العديد غير واضحة المخارج، دموع صامتة تنزل على الوجوه، و الأغلبية واجمة.
خرج النعش من المسجد، و خلفه بعض الرجال و المشايخ، و سرعان ما اختفى في جوف العربة المعدة سلفا، و التي انطلقت على الفور، ذهول عظيم حط على الناس، فمعظمنا كان يتوقع مسيرة طويلة تطوف بالميدان و الشوارع القريبة، لكن الخبر سرى: الجنازة العسكرية.
وقف الناس يضربون كفا بكف، هتف واحد: أنهم يسرقوه. لفترة بقينا نتأمل حسرتنا و خواء يدنا من النعش، و عدم قدرتنا على اللحاق به، بعض الناس تذكر جنازات: عبد الناصر، أم كلثوم، عبد الحليم، الشعراوي، و أخيرا: أحمد زكي. و بحزن انفرط عقد الناس.
عدت غاضباً و منفعلا، و لما سألني بعض الحاضرين عن الجنازة، رددت بكل الغل المكبوت داخلي، و سردت ما جرى و وقع، واحد علق ساخرا: و أنت منفعل ليه. لم أعرف كيف أرد، و لمحت نبرة الهزء و التندر من الجالسين بأروقة مؤتمر المسرح المصري في الأقاليم علىّ و على حدتي غير المبررة، كنت متحيرا و غير قادر على التفريق بين التريقة و الكلام الصادق، و حين قال واحد: هو يعنى نجيب محفوظ بتاعك دا.. كان علَّم مين.. و لاَّ ربَّى مين.. و لم أعد أحتمل، و تساءلت في داخلي: أهولاء هم المثقفون و الكتاب.. أحفاد هذا الرجل.. أم أنهم أباء و إخوة ذلك الشاب الذي طعن الرجل - ذات مغرب- في رقبته!!. و قمت منصرفاً قبل أن تنفجر البذاءة.
تعليق
أحمد ابة خنيجر كاتب من اسوان وهو من قبيلة العبابدة ( ان لم اكن مخطئا!) له صوته المميز الذي يبدو واضحا في قصصه القصيرة ورواياته . تتميز اعماله بجو مختلف عن الكتابات التقليدية المصرية أذ انها لصيقة بالبيئة الصحراوية الجبلية في جنوب الوادي. يكتب نثرا قريبا من الشعر في رقته وفي حدته ايضا . شخوصه سحرة وكائنات تبدو كأنها خرافية وخيالية لكننا نعرفها ونحلم بها وتأتي الينا في مهاجعنا وكوابيسنا.

the senawy ( meaning a person from Saiena!)

2007-09-19T09:57:00.000+01:00

تسثضيف مدني كاتبا من حين لآخر ليكتب ما يريد بدون رقابة من مدني التي نؤمن بأنها تعبر عن رأي هؤلاء الكتاب وتتحمل المسؤالية كاملة( اقرأ تعليقي في آخر المقال )
رءوف
في حياتي لم اعش وهم كوني كاتبا، "تايه" هذا هو الإحساس الأقرب إليّ، ولكن هل صرت مشغولا بتصنيف نفسي؟.. في الحقيقة ربما نعم أحيانا.. أحيانا لأ... فقط هذه الأيام صرت اعتبر نفسي احد الذين يطرقون على الجدران، وللطرق على الجدران رواية، هي رجال في الشمس لغسان كنفاني، هذه الرواية من الروايات التي زلزلتني، ليس لقربي الجغرافي والنفسي من الهم الفلسطيني فحسب، بل لان المشهد الأخير، مشهد الفلسطينيين، المهربون من العراق إلى الكويت، وهم يختنقون في خزان سيارة نقل الوقود، هو مشهد قريب جدا مني. فقد كان الشباب يبحثون عن فرصة عمل، أغراهم احد الأشخاص بان يدخلهم إلى الكويت في خزان الوقود، ولكنهم عوضا عن دخول الكويت سيختنقون في الخزان، وسيفتح عليهم سائق السيارة الخزان، وحين يجدهم ميتون (او ميتين) سيصرخ: يا هوه.. لماذا لم تطرقوا الجدران؟علاقتي برواية رجال في الشمس علاقة مركبة، أبي الذي وصفه الأستاذ روؤف بأنه شخصية أسطورية مثل البدو المتميزين، بدا حياته بالتهريب، تهريب الراديوهات والزنانيب (نوع من الشباشب) من غزة الى مصر في الستينيات من القرن الماضي، مأساة بدو سيناء أعمق من مأساة الفلسطينيين، الفلسطيني يعرف خصمه تماما، بل والعالم كله يعرف هذا الخصم، ويعرف تاريخ هذا الصراع، انا ايضا اعرف خصمي، ولكن العالم لا يعرف، ويتعبني وانا ابذل مجهودا هائلا لكي اشرح له. اذا خرجنا في مظاهرة، واستشهد منا فتى، في الخامسة عشرة من عمره، هو عودة ابو عرفات، كما حدث يوم 30/7/2007 (استشهد الفتي وهو يقاتل بحجر وكان لحظة استشهاده يحاول فتح باب المصفحة على الضابط المختبىء داخلها، فاخرج ذلك الضابط مسدسه وأطلق على رئة عودة النار). وحين تكلمت وسائل الأعلام عن استشهاد فتانا كان الخبر الاخير في كل نشرات الأخبار، بينما لو قتل ذلك الفتى في فلسطين لكان الخبر الاول في النشرة (هل اشعر بالغيرة.. ربما اشعر بالغيرة)..اذن انا اطرق الجدران، جدران هذا العالم الصماء، ان بدو سيناء هم اخر بدو في العالم، هذه قناعتي، وقد اوقعتهم تعقيدات الشرق الاوسط تحت حكم الفرعون، وهذه التعقيدات تمت لمصالح عالمية وليست مصالح شرق اوسطية فحسب، مما يعني ان ظلم البدو في سيناء، هو ظلم اشترك العالم في صياغته، وعلى هذا العالم اليوم ان يتدخل ليفك رقبة البدو من بين اصابع الفرعون المتورمة... هذا ما احدث نفسي به احيانا.. ولكن ما انا متاكد منه ان سيناء فيها اعلى تواجد امني في العالم (رجل امن لكل خمسة من البدو).. احيانا اكتب.. في الغالب العب مع اجهزة الامن لعبة القط والفار .. خاصة وقد وصلت يد الامن الى مكان عملي..(ربما قريبا اجد نفسي مطرودا من عملي اكرتن.. والكرتنة مصطلح بدوي مشتق من كرتونة.. والكرتنة تعني تهريب المعسل، من فوق الحدود طبعا، إلى إسرائيل.. اما المكرتن فهو الذي يقوم بتهريب كراتين المعسل..)مساء 6/9/2007 وقد كنت في طريقي إلى رفح لحضور أمسية تأبين الشهيد عودة أبو عرفات، وعلى الكمين (ولكن هل يشبه الكمين المصري نظيره المحسوم الإسرائيلي؟.. اعتقد لأ.. فأنت حين تمر على الكمين تحتاج كبشة من عشرات وخمسات الجنيهات، تلفها جيدا وتدسها في يد المخبرين وأمناء الشرطة الذين يحرسون الكمين، والمحسوم الإسرائيلي، حسب خبراتي الشخصية معه، لن تجد عليه مثل هؤلاء ..) على الكمين اصطادني رجال الأمن، بوضوح انحنى المخبر على نمرة السيارة، وكشط منها ثلاثة ارقام، ونسى قطعة الزجاج التي استخدمها في عملية الكشط بين النمرة والصدام، وظلت في مكانها حتى هذه اللحظة، تنتظر قضاء عادلا يحقق، ولكن لا قضاء..سواء كان عادلا او حتى غير عادل.. يبقى السؤال: لماذا اختارني روؤف مسعد لمدونته.. ربما لتشابه في الأسماء.. وربما لتشابه في أشياء أخرى.. يبقى اعتزازي وفرحي بهذا الاختيار.. وفي الأخير تبقى "ربما" لتريحنا من عناء الإجابات..

مسعد ابو فجر

اخترت مسعد ابو فجر لكي استضيفه هنا في المدونة ،لأنه يعيش حياة غير اعتيادية.ينام على الآرض في بيته الأنيق كما حدث حينما ذهبت لزيارته في المدينة الساحلية حيث يعمل ويعيش مع زوجته وابنته؛واعطاني غرفة نومه.يريد ان يعبر عن اهله السيناويين وحياتهم وازماتهم مع حكومة الوادي ؛ وفي الوقت ذاته، يصطدم بهذه السلطة القمعية كما نرى في المقال المرفق.
روايته طلعة البدن تحكي عن كل هذا واكثر. تعرف على المخرج السينمائي فؤاد التهامي وعزمه واياي على الذهاب الى سيناء وقدم لنا امكانيات كبيرة للحياة والحركة هناك وعرفنا بشخصيات كأنها خارجة من روايات لم يكتبها بعد!
اتمنى ان يأخذ مسافة من السياسة حتى يستطيع الكتابة المبدعة .. لكن كل نفس مُسيرة لما ُقدّر لها. وقد اخترت العنوان الجانبي هنا " الكاتب في عزلته "بالرغم من انه يبدو بعيدا عن وضع مسعد ابو فجر إلا انه ككاتب سوف يبقى دائمافي عزلة .. عزلته الخاصة !

مقال عدنان احمد حسين عن ايثاكا في القدس العربي

2007-09-05T17:00:00.000+01:00

ينطوي ميثاق السيرة الذاتية الأصيلة علي عَقْدٍ حقيقي بين الكاتب والقارئ مفادهُ الوعد بالكشف عن الذات بكل دهاليزها ومنعرجاتها ومناطقها السرّية المُعاشة، فكيف إذا كانت هذه السيرة سيرة ذاتية- روائية تجمع بين الواقع والخيال، والحقيقة والافتراض، والسرد القصصي والتكثيف الشعري، إضافة الي عناصر معروفة في البناء السيري الروائي كالاسترسال في البوح، وعدم قمع الكائن السيري لكي يقول ما لا يُقال، ويفكر في اللامُفكَّر فيه، ويعرِّي المحجوب، ويُفصح عن المسكوت عنه. وعلي الرغم من أن الكاتب رؤوف مسعد قد دمغَ نصه الإبداعي الجديد إيثاكا بأنه رواية، وليس سيرة ذاتية - روائية خلافاً لواقع الحال فإنني أضع هذا التصنيف في إطار الخطأ التجنيسي الذي يقع فيه كثير من الكُتاب و النُقاد العرب. فهذا الكتاب هو أنموذج للسيرة الذاتية- الروائية التي تتمحور حول شخصية الكائن السيري الذي يستعين ببعض الشخصيات الأُخري التي جرّدها عمداً من الأسماء مثل المُرمِّم شين و الطبيبة النفسانية و الطبيب النفساني و الخواجة اليوناني و فتاة الكورنيش و صاحب البنسيون وزوجته و المعلِّمة السويسرية إضافة الي شخصيات حقيقية أو تحمل أسماء علم مثل سعاد حسني، وناتاشا، وإيروسا، وعشتار، وإيزيس وأخريات. ولعل من المفيد هنا الإشارة الي أن تقنية استدعاء سعاد حسني بوصفها حافظة أمينة لأسماء الشهداء و القَتَلَة قد غيّرت مسار النص، وأضفت عليه طابعاً سحرياً وفنتازياً، ولولا هذه التقنية الغرائبية لما استطاع رؤوف مسعد أن ينقلنا الي العالم الآخر، اللامرئي، الغامض. وبفضل سعاد حسني، الحاضرة الغائبة، التي لقّنته الأسماء، جهَّز الراوي قاربه، وعقد العزم علي مواصلة رحلة العودة الي إيثاكا بعد أن أيقظ الدبابير الهاجعة في أعشاشها، لتطير بشكل غوغائي وتلسع الجميع من دون استثناء.
ظل رؤوف مسعد وفياً لمفهوم الكتابة الجديدة الذي صاغه مع نخبة من جيله الستيني. وكان الأجرأ في كسر الأطر التقليدية المتعارف عليها في بناء الرواية الكلاسيكية التي تتوفر علي زمان ومكان وحدث، وبداية ووسط ونهاية، مع مراعاة الشرط الأرسطي القائم علي السبب والنتيجة، وما ينجم عنهما من إقصاء للقارئ العضوي المندمج في الحدث، والمشارك في صناعته. لا أستغرب شخصياً إن قال رؤوف مسعد إنه كاتب حالات، وليس كاتب حواديت فـ الحدوتة تقيّده بمساحة ضيقة لا يستطيع فيها أن يلتقط أنفاسه، أما الكتابة عن حالات معينة فانها تقوده الي مساحات حرة مفتوحة كما فعل في سيرتيه الذاتية- الروائية إيثاكا حيث تناول فيها مجمل الحالات الإشكالية التي تنتابه وتؤرقه ليل نهار مثل المثلية الجنسية، والسادية، والمازوشية، والاستعراضية، والبايسكشول، والافتراس، والفيتيشيزم، أي التعلّق بالأعضاء غير الجنسية، مثل التولّه بالأقدام، والجنس الجمعي وما الي ذلك. وهو لا يري في هذه الحالات، علي مدار النص، انحرافاتٍ أو شذوذاً أو أمراضاً، وإنما محاولات لتحقيق اللذة المتسامقة، كما أنه لا يجد ضيراً في أن تستفيق الأثني الكامنة في داخله، وتبحث عن تحقيق ملذاتها الجسدية والروحية والذهنية. فالإيروتيك من وجهة نظره ليس فعلاً في الجسد، ولكنه فعل في العقل أيضاً .
يعوِّل رؤوف مسعد كثيراً علي تقنية الاستعادة الذهنية التي تعتمد علي قطع الحدث ثم المعاودة إليه لاحقاً، وليس صحيحاً أنه ينتقل بلا قواعد بين الأزمنة والأمكنة لأنه لا يُحسن كتابة نص روائي متماسك محبوك قائم علي الزمان والمكان والحدث والشخصيات وسواها من شروط وعناصر اللعبة الروائية. ولعل سيرته الذاتية- الروائية إيثاكا هي خير مثال لما نذهب إليه. فعلي الرغم من محاولاته المستميتة لتقويض الجدران التي تقوم عليها البنية السيرية الروائية إلا أن القارئ الحصيف يستطيع أن يتتبع المسارات والخيوط الخفية التي تربط أحداث النص، وتكشف عن شبكة علاقاته الداخلية التي تتأسس علي استهلال وذروة وخاتمة منطقية للنص. فمثلما نري الصبي الصغير الذي يقْلب كفه للحافة الحادة لمسطرة المعلمة من دون أن يستعطفها أو يبكي أمامها، نراه في خاتمة النص، وهو يفرد يده، ويكز علي أسنانه كي يكتم ألمه الحاد وهو يري صورة غائمة تتجلي رويداً رويداً لوجه مبتسم تزيّنه غمّازة في الخد. وبين ظهور سعاد حسني الأول واختفائها بعد الظهور الأخير تمتد رحلة الراوي الي إيثاكا ، وخلال سنوات الرحيل يكشف لنا هذا الكائن السيري عن أهم الأحداث الصادمة، والوقائع المتفردة التي شكلت تاريخه الشخصي. وللمناسبة فالوصول الي إيثاكا ليس مهماً. المهم هو الرحلة ذاتها، وما تنطوي عليه من مفاجآت مدهشة، وأحداث تُغْني تجربته الشخصية، وترفعه الي مصاف الحكماء.
تكشف الصفحات الأُوَل من إيثاكا بأن الراوي يتحدث عن تلميذ صغير يخرج عن السطر دائماً، ولا يمشي عليه رغم العقوبات المتتالية التي تنهال عليه من معلمته، قاسية القلب ولا شك في أن المعني المجازي للخروج عن السطر واضح لأنه يحمل في طياته معني التمرد السياسي والديني والأخلاقي. وربما يكون هذا التمرّد هو البذرة المناسبة التي ستتفتق عنها الحالات التي يتعاطي معها الراوي أو الكائن السيري مستعيناً ببعض الشخصيات المقربة منه، والحميمة الي قلبه وروحه وذاكرته المتوهجة. فلا غرابة أن يستدعي سعاد حسني التي طيّروها قبل أوانها، ولكنهم لم يعرفوا بأنها لم تختفِ نهائياً، فها هي تستجيب كلما استدعاها الراوي الذي يتمتع بميزات عديدة أبرزها قدرته علي التنبؤ واستدعاء الغائبين. أما خصاله الأخري فهي عديدة أيضاً لعل أبرزها البحث عن الملذات المستحيلة عبر الشطح والخيال، أو الافتراس عن طريق ثنائية الصياد والضحية. وهناك سمات أخري ستتضح من خلال متابعتنا لمسار هذه الشخصية الإشكالية، والمثيرة للجدل، خصوصاً إذا ما عرفنا بأن الراوي هو الكاتب نفسه، وأن الكثير من شخصيات النص الأدبي هي شخصيات حقيقية موجودة علي أرض الواقع مثل الراحلة سعاد حسني، والفريق أول هلال عبد الله هلال الذي ترأس محاكمة الشيوعيين المصريين وأصدر عليهم احكاماً قاسية بالسجن، ومن بينهم الروائي رؤوف مسعد، ثم هرب هذا الفريق لاحقاً في سيناء وترك جنوده يواجهون مصائرهم المحتومة، لكنه لم يفلت هو أيضاً من المحاكمة والعقاب.
يعرّي النص السيري كل أشكال القمع الذي تعرَّض له المثقفون والمفكرون والسياسيون المصريون والعرب منذ الستينات من القرن الماضي وحتي يومنا هذا، ويكفي أن نشير هنا الي سليمان الحلبي، وعمر مكرّم، وشهدي عطية، والشيخ ياسين، ومحمود محمد طه، وعبد الخالق محجوب، وفرج الله الحلو، وفهد العراقي، واميل حبيبي، وشبل الطنطاوي، وسيد قطب، وسمير قصير، وجورج حاوي، وقائمة طويلة من الضحايا والمغيبين والشهداء الذين تحتفظ بهم السيدة المغدورة سعاد حسني التي طيَّرها قبل أوانها المقبور صلاح نصر. لم يتوقف رؤوف مسعد عند الجانب السياسي وما يتخلله من وحشية وقسوة وعنف، بل تعداه الي ملف الحريات الشخصية، وحقوق الإنسان، وبالذات فيما يتعلق بحادثة كوين بوت و المثليين الذين أُطلق عليهم في مصر لقب الشاذين جنسياً و عبدة الشيطان وتسميات أخري تنطوي علي معاني الازدراء، والاحتقار، والحط من الكرامة الإنسانية لاعتيادهم علي ممارسة الفجور .
لم تهدأ تداعيات هذه الحادثة حتي الآن، فالمؤلف يري أن السلطات المصرية تمارس نوعاً مخيفاً من الكذب والمداهنة والتضليل وإخفاء الحقائق حيث تدعي أن قانونها لا يوجد فيه أي نص يحرِّم الشذوذ الجنسي بينما قال رئيس مجلس الشعب المصري أمام البرلمان الأوروبي إن القانون الجنائي المصري لا يتضمن أي عقاب للمثليين، حيث أن قانون البلد لا يتدخل بأي شكل في شؤون الأفراد الخاصة . (ص219، إيثاكا) بينما يكشف تقرير هيومان رايتس ووتش كذب هذه المزاعم والادعاءات التي استقاها المؤلف من المدوّنات المصرية وأهمها مدوَّنة منال وعلاء ومن الاعترافات الخاصة التي أدلي بها بعض الضحايا الذين تمكنوا من الوصول الي هولندا، وكشفوا عن الأساليب الوحشية المروّعة التي استعملتها أجهزة الامن والشرطة المصرية أثناء التحقيق مع الضحايا. ولو وضعنا جانباً كل ما يتعلق بالجانب السياسي، وحقوق الإنسان، والمدوَّنات المصرية التي أتاحت للمختلفين أو الذين يغرِّدون خارج السرب أن يعبِّروا عن آرائهم وهمومهم وتطلعاتهم الشخصية بحرية كبيرة غير مسبوقة من قبل، فإن النص السيري يتضمن إشكاليات كثيرة لا يمكن تغطيتها في مقال واحد ذي مساحة محدودة.
تشكِّل المثلية الجنسية واحداً من الأعصاب النابضة في سياق المتن السردي. فالكائن السيري يري فيها حقاً شخصياً ولا يجوز حرمان الشخص المثلي من التمتع بهذا الحق الذي كفلته الدساتير الأوروبية. وفي السيرة الذاتية- الروائية نصادف العديد من الشخصيات المثلية كالراوي والمرمم شين والنفساني وعدد آخر من الشخصيات التي نلتقيها في الحفلات الافتراسية أو نوادي ممارسة الجنس الجمعي، ولا غرابة في أن يبحث المثلي عن الأنوثة الكامنة فيه، أو المقموعة بداخله بفعل العوامل الدينية والاجتماعية والأخلاقية وهو ما يطلق عليها غريزة الصياد والفريسة أو التحوّلات بين الذكورة والأنوثة، ويعلل هذه التقلبات بأن إيروسا السوداء هي نصفه الانثوي وأنه نصفها الذكري. وعندما نقطع الشك باليقين بأن الراوي مثلي ويجد لذته في ثنائية الصياد والفريسة فإن الصدمة الثانية التي يكشفها لنا هي ممارسته للجنس الجمعي. فبعد وفاة والديه اصطحبه أحد الرجال الذين يسكنون أطراف المدينة لكي يعمل في البنسيون، ويساعد زوجته الشابة في أعمال المنزل. ولم يمضِ وقت طويل حتي تتكشف لنا حقيقة ممارستهم للجنس الجمعي، إذ تقاسم مع الرجل فراش زوجته ثلاثة أيام في الأسبوع علي أن تحدد الزوجة مع منْ تنام في اليوم السابع. ثم نكتشف بأنه بايسكشويل لكن ليس بمعني الخنثي ولكن بمعني الرجل الذي تكمن في داخله أنثي مقموعة، لذلك فهو يحتاج الي دور المثلي السلبي ليحقق نوعاً آخر من المتعة المفقودة. ولذلك فقد قطع الرواي شوطاً طويلاً وهو يضع قناعاً نسوياً، ويرتدي ملابس نسائية، بينما كانت صديقته تضع قناعاً رجالياً، وترتدي ملابس رجالية بحجة إقناع الشخصيتين الذكورية والأنثوية القابعة في أعماق كل منهما علي حدة. وقد اعترف الراوي لطبيبته النفسانية بأنه شعر بالرقة والأنوثة والتفوق حينما تقمص دور الأنثي، مما دفعه لأن يخلع القناع، ويضع مكياجاً كاملاً، ويرتدي شعراً مستعاراً، لكنه مع صعوده السلّم الاجتماعي حرق الأقنعة والشعر المستعار وأدوات الزينة، وقرر أن يأكل ما يعجبه، ويلبس ما يعجب الناس .
لا تخلو شخصية الراوي أو الكائن السيري من النزعتين السادية والمازوشية أو الأس أَميّة كما يحلو له أن يسمّيها، فقد كان يسوط صديقته بحزام جلدي علي بعض المناطق الحساسة التي تستجلب اللذة عن طريق الألم. وإذا كانت هي تضربه ضربات خفيفة علي فخذيه فإنه كان يضربها، نزولاً عند رغبتها، بقوة علي أي جزء من مساحة جسدها المثير. الشيء الوحيد الذي كانت تعترض عليه صديقته هو الصفع علي الوجه، لأن الصفعة تعبير عن الازدراء والمهانة. حينما سافر الراوي الي أوروبا، واستقر به المقام في سويسرا تعرف علي راقصة في بار، وتبين له أنها مثله فيتيشية مولعة بالأقدام، ثم تعرَّف علي معلمة الرياضيات التي تحدث لها عن الجنس الجمعي مع صاحب البنسيون وزوجته الشابة، فلم تجد هذه المعلمة السويسرية ضيراً في أن تمارس معه الجنس وتُشرك معهما صديقتها الجميلة التي جلبت زوجها لاحقاً لحفل المتعة الجماعية. ولا بد من الإشارة الي أهمية فتاة الكورنيش التي استجابت له الي الدرجة التي استطاع من خلالها أن يحرر قدمها من اسار الجسد! كان الراوي يستذكر التدقير وهو الالتصاق بالنساء من الخلف في الباصات والترامات المكتظة. وكان يعرف جيداً هذا النمط من النساء اللواتي يستجبن للتحسس في الأماكن المزدحمة. وكان يقضي وطره في اللحظات السريعة التي يكون في المكان في أوج اكتظاظه.
يهيمن الموت علي مساحة غير قليلة من السيرة الذاتية-الروائية، ومع ذلك فإن الراوي يصفه بـ هادم الانتصابات ومفرّق الأجساد وربما يتحامل هذا الراوي المسيحي البروتستانتي علي الأديان كلها، فهو لم يمارس مسيحيته إلا تحت الوعيد والتهديد، ولم يذهب الي مدرسة الأحد مُخَيراً وإنما ذهب إليها مُجبراً. لم يحب الراوي سليمان الحكيم لأنه قال ذات مرة أدِّب ابنك بقضيب من حديد لكنه أحبَّ نشيد الإنشاد لما يتوفر عليه من صور حسيّة.
يعتقد الراوي أن الروح تستمر في حيوات وأجساد المحظوظين الجريئين القادرين علي البوح الذين لا يمشون علي السطر. وهؤلاء غالباً يتم اصطفاؤهم من هــــــذه النخبة المحظوظة التي لا تقيّد نفسها، ولا تقمع الآخرين.
لم يحب مدرسة الأحد لأنها كانت تهيئهم للموت كل ليلة، كما أنها كانت تلقنهم الآيات المُحرضة علي ترك غوايات الجسد عن طريق التبتل الممل، فيما تشكل هذه الغوايات الجزء الأكبر من ولعه واهتماماته السرية والعلنية.
ينتهي النص حينما تقوده إيروسا الي الكوخ حيث تظهر له سعاد، وتطلب منه أن يحكي لها حكاية ما، فسرد لها قصة الصبي الذي كان يخرج عن السطر فتضربه المعلمة بحافة المسطرة. ثم حكي لها عن هواجس الولد الذي صار كهلاً ومع ذلك لم تتحقق كل رغباته. حكي لها عن إيروسا وناتاشا والمعبد البديل وقصة كوين بوت وما جري في أقسام الأمن وشرطة الآداب، ثم التمس منها أن يلقي نظرة علي المنتظرين الذين لم تصل ملفاتهم بعد حتي هذه اللحظة. وطلب أن يري صديقه المرمم الذي طيّروه كما طيّروا سعاد من الشرفة الغارقة في ليلها اللندني، لكي يسأله عن طبيعة حياتهم في ظل الانتظار الطويل، ويرجوه أن يحجز له مكاناً ما بين المنتظرِين غير أن صديقه المرمم الذي كان يرمم الحكايات الناقصة ذكره بإيثاكا، وقال له بأن الوصول إليها هو قدرك ونصيبك، فلا تنتظر منها شيئاً سوي الرحلة المدهشة المليئة بالمفاجآت.
لم أستطع الوقوف عند كل التفاصيل الإشكالية الدقيقة التي تتعلق بغوايات الجسد التي وردت في متن النص لكي لا أستفز بعض القرّاء الكرام الذين يجدون في هذا الكلام خدشاً للذائقة العامة أو خروجاً علي بعض الثوابت الدينية والأخلاقية مع أن واجبي النقدي يقتضي أن ألامس المناطق المحظورة وأتصدي لها بعين نقدية لا تجد في هذه الأمور حرجاً. ومع ذلك فأنا أدعو القارئ الكريم لقراءة هذا النمط من الكتابة الإيروتيكة لكي يكتشفها بنفسه، ويحكم عليها وفقا لذائقته النقدية والأدبية. وأنا موقن تماماً بأن الأذواق مختلفة، ولا يمكن لها أن تتطابق، فـ لو تطابقت الأذواق لبارت السلع .
تحرّض إيثاكا قارئها علي الدخول في غابة الأسئلة الفلسفية المحيِّرة علي الرغم من أن هذه الأسئلة قد ترد علي لسان طفل يحلو له أن يعرف الفرق بين جَنَّة المسلمين المزدانة بالفواكه والحور العين و فردوس المسيحيين التي تضج بالمرتلين والمُنشدين كما تقول معلمة مدرسة الأحد طبعاً! حاول الراوي مذ كان طفلاً أن يعرف كُنْه الموت، وأين تذهب الأرواح الخالدة بعد أن تتفتت الأجساد الفانية؟ ولماذا تطير هذه الأرواح الي السماء، وليس الي مكان آخر؟ يتذمر رؤوف مسعد أحياناً حينما يصفه بعض النقاد بأنه كاتب ايروتيكي، وهو كذلك لأن هذه المنطقة هي مدار اهتمامه الرئيسي، وقد كرّس أربع أعمال أدبية سيرية لهذا الجانب وهي بيضة النعامة ، مزاج التماسيح ، غواية الوصال و إيثاكا . فلا أجده مُحقاً حينما يقول إنني لست كاتباً إيروتيكياً ممسوساً بالجنس. أنا ممسوس بهواجس أخري كالحياة والموت والظلم والأقليات والمُهمَّشين ولا يستطع أحد أن يجرّد أعمال مسعد الأدبية من المحاور الفلسفية والفكرية والثقافية والاجتماعية، ولا ينكر عليه اهتماماته وهواجسه الأخري، وخصوصاً تلك التي تتعلق بثقافة الأقليات العرقية والدينية التي أجبرته في مزاج التماسيح أن يدمج عملين أدبيين في كتاب واحد انطوي علي الكثير من اللبس والتشويش والارتباك بسبب خشيته من القمع الذي تمارسه السلطة في رابعة النهار.
يعقد رؤوف مسعد مقارنة ظريفة علي صفحات إيثاكا بين اختزال الأديان السماوية في فكرة النهر أو التعميد أو التطهير ولا يلقي هذا الاختزال رفضاً أو اعتراضاً، بينما يعترضون علي فكرته في اختصار الجنس واختزاله في جزء محدد من الجسد كأن يكون الكف أو القدم أو بطة الساق.
وفي ختام هذه القراءة النقدية أستعير من كوليرج فكرته الثاقبة التي تقول إن حياة الإنسان مهما كانت تافهة، ستكون مُمتعة إذا رُويت بصدق وأجزم بأن السمة الأساسية في أعمال رؤوف مسعد هي الصدق والصراحة والجرأة الخارجة عن المألوف.
كاتب من العراق
اسم الكتاب: إيثاكا
المؤلف: رؤوف مسعد
دار النشر: ميريت، القاهرة
الطبعة الأولي 2007

on writing about my characters

2007-09-05T16:56:00.000+01:00

عن الشخصيات -1-
في محاولة مستميتة للابتعاد عن التسيس في الكتابة، والاقتراب أكثر من كتابة لا سياسية حتى لو تم اتهامها بالبرجية العاجية، بعد أن اصبح الصيّع وشذاذ الآفاق قادة وأبطال وطنيين وقومجيين واستقلاليين ومهلباتية وغير ذلك وبالإضافة الى ذلك حيث اولاد الحرام ما خلوش لأولاد الحلال حاجة. قررت ان ادخل عالم المدونات بشكل محدد وهو ان الناس تعتبرني كاتبا طوال الوقت ، واعتبر نفسي كاتبا بعض الوقت . طيب والوقت الباقي بين افتراضي وافتراضهم ، أعمل ايه فيه ؟ لذا قررت ان ادون بعض الأفكار التي اعتقد انها غير سطحية وقد تكون هامة احيانا . افكار حول الكتابة بشكل عام ؛ كتاباتي وكتابات الآخرين . خباصة اني هذه الأيام ادخل نفسي في تجربة كتابية جديدة بدأتها قبل سنوات بشكل خجول في " غواية الوصال " حينما طلبت من شخصيتين نسائيتين تعرفت عليهما ان تساعدانني في الكتابة عنهما. وقد وافقتا، وسجلت ما كتبتاه بعد تغيير بعض الأصل حفاظا - بقدر الإمكان - على خصوصيتهما في عالم شرق اوسطي نمام يتغذى معظم ادعياء الثقافة فيه على جثث الآخرين. ينطبق عليهم قول فؤاد حداد : اكلت حبيبك ؟ قال اكلته يا حج. ويا حبيبي كان لحمك فج!
لكن الكتابة عن الشخصيات وهي ما تزال حية ؛ معضلة حساسة . فأين اقف من التدخل الشخصي في تحليلي للشخصية وبين حقيقة الشخصية . فمثلا بدأت بشخصية ايروسا في " ايثاكا" وهي مزيج معقد لثلاث شخصيات. فبعد ان نشرت الكتاب وجاءتني فكرة الكتابة عن ايروسا،بعثت للشخصيات الثلاث بمسودة صغيرة بعنوان " كنت اضحك في احلامي ". شرحت لهن الفكرة ؛ علما اني احطتهن علما مسبقا بأني ممتن لهن لأنه قمن بمساعدة لم يقصدنها في الكتابة عن ايروسا.شخصية منهن لم ترد على الميل . الشخصية الثانية ردت بأنها سعيدة . في الوقت ذاته قامت بتصحيح رؤيتي عن الشخصية وفقا لرؤيتها هي نفسها عن نفسها. الشخصية الثالثة طالبت بمزيد من الكتابة عن الشخصيات الثلاث ومزيد من الابتعاد عن الخصوصية والاقتراب اكثر من كشف الشخصية الحقيقية.
في خلال كتابة " كنت اضحك ..ط تعرفت على شخصية نسائية وكتبت عنها فصلا صغيرا ارسلته لها. كان فصلا صادقا عن حالة ايروتيكية تلبستنا كلينا ذات ليلة ورفضت هي بعد ذلك تكرارها بحجج مختلفة. حينما ارسلت لها ما كتبته عنها بعد ان ترجمته الى الإنجليزية ؛ سعدت به ، لكنها عادت فتراجعت عن احساسها الأول وأعلنت انها غير سعيدة بما تصورته انا عن الشخصية بل وغير متحمسة للعمل كله على حد قولها . كانت قد وافقت حينما طلبت منها في لقاء مباشر ان تكتب لي عن نفسها. عن هواجسها وحياتها واحباطاتها. عادت فتراجعت وأعلنت انسحابها النهائي من المشروع كله بدعوى انها غير معتمة اساس بفكرة الإيروتيكية.
لكني اعلم ان للكاتب الحق المقدس في كتابة ما يريد حتى لو اغضب هذا شخصياته. بشرط ان لا ينتهك خصوصية الشخصية ويعرضها ؛ لأكلي لحوم البشر.
هذه مقدمة لتبيان وجهة نظري في الدخول الى منطقة شبه محظورة في الكتابة بشكل عام ( عدا كتابة السيرة الذاتية _ هذا ان صدقت !-)
فالكتاب الذين يدعون انهم " خلقوا" شخصياتهم من العدم ، انظر اليهم بشك كثير. فليست هناك شخصيات تأتي من العدم المطلق ، او الإلهام او كل هذا اللغو. هؤلاء الكتاب ، يلتحفون بهذه الفرضية المبهمة حتى ينأوا بأنفسهم عن اتهامهم بسرقة شخصياتهم من اعمال سابقة، وخوفا من مسائلة شخصيات حقيقية لهم استخدموها دون حتى اشارة شكر وامتنان.

A week in the country, Part 2: La Famille

2007-09-04T11:01:00.000+01:00

There are three Madam Mayfreys in the village with a population of 31. The elder Madam Mayfrey had a son, Marcel who married Colette and so Colette became Madam Mayfrey. Marcel and Colette had one son, Eric who married Corrine, so Corrine became Madam Mayfrey; they have a daughter, Aileen. Four generations in one village my father repeats wistfully when describing his second home.

Aileen who is twelve believes me to be her best friend and has taken to hugging me whenever she sees me, instead of the compulsory two kisses that little children who pop up from under tables and from behind chairs, plant on one's cheeks en politesse. It is meaningless, but it is form. I am now twenty years older than Aileen. Of course I have always been that much older than her. When she was 5, I was 25 and I was a young woman fawning on a sweet child. The sweet child now has a mono brow and little breasts and, I noted in excitement, almost hips. She's too old for toys and so am I, and I grow fatter and lazier with each summer in France, so that my three main areas of activity have been reduced to: eating Delice soft cheese, drinking full-bodied wine and sleeping till midday.

There are no children Aileen's age in the village and she often pops round to see if I want to play. I devised a new game that could be played from the sofa - I styled her hair and applied bronzer and lip gloss to her face before sending her home. She is the most determinedly cheerful and optimistic girl I know, and yet her mother, Corrine, is quite mean to her, and sometimes I think she hates her. Corrine - the younger Madam Mayfrey looks genuinely miserable and is absolutely stuck in that village. And a village really is a stranger place that I at first understood. It isn't just the grim facts of depression, suicide and alcohol abuse so parodied in the media and arts; it is that in a tiny space with a scattering of house on one central axis, people can go weeks without talking to each other. The only communal activity is quatorze juillet - Bastille day - when they roast a pig on a spit and everyone takes part in the egg and spoon race.

There is no old wealth in that village and only a little noveaux wealth as evidenced by the two new yellow brick houses on the road to Bussy Las Pesle. The eldest generation - those that are on their way to dying - in their eighties and nineties have an air of calm about them and I cycle past them tending to their gardens every day. They were les jeunes through the second world war, and recount working in the sodden fields with no money for shoes and waiting only for the party after bringing in the harvest; they remember le mauvaise resistance as well as the good. The next generation in their sixties are a restless bunch, stuck and afflicted by ressentiment. Marcel Mayfrey was one of my objects of pity, having suffered a stroke a few years ago. It was the reliable village gossip, Annie, who told me this time that he used to drink a lot, and that Madam Mayfrey who I adore in her housecoat, wellington boats and with her toothless grin, had a hard life with Marcel; she worked on the farm and then when they had to sell the last of their cows she was left only with looking after her family - husband, mother-in-law, son, daughter-in-law, granddaughter.

Family can truly become everything and it is suffocating. I lose sight of myself in my family's company. I become a lack; I am each of them, minus this and that, and plus instances and traits of madness, which they may yet disavow. I love my family and I have to keep trying to draw close to them whilst remembering to leave them alone and to get away from them. A contemporary village is family apart in the same place.

A week in the country, Part 1: L'enterrement

2007-09-02T19:57:00.000+01:00

It was when I was ordering two pain a l'ancienne from the mobile bakery that arrives hooting through the village, that I heard of the death of Monsieur Didier. With one of my floured pains resting on the counter, the boulanger froze mid action as an elderly villageoise told of her neighbour's body only being discovered cold the following day. I stood there gasping and shaking my head, and feared the slender boulanger would cry. Every time there was pause in the neighbour's narration, the boulanger interjected that she had thought how very odd it was that she had received no answer when she had laid the pain on his doorstep as usual the previous Friday. Indeed. He was dead. Quel horreur.

I hung around long enough to gather as much information as possible and noted the time of the funeral the next day, before skipping back home in my flip-flops, but with a curiously heavy heart, to tell Bee and Dave and baby Hettie the news. They thought how sad it was but were less affected than I was. For me this death represented a mini-tragedy because Monsieur Didier's life had been such a pathetic one; death was not the culmination of a live lived, but of a life passed mostly indoors.

On the day of the funeral I saw a fit, white-haired man in a blue polo shirt cycle past our kitchen window and thought him a tourist. Hearing the sounds of movement in our normally still village, I wandered early down the hill to the church and saw a as yet small crowd of mourners. Alone and rather awkward I headed towards the only one I recognised: the young mayor and school-master Serge in a blue and red checked shirt. Not exactly sombre, but then I was still with my flip-flops. I fought against the idea of seeming foolish and courageously hung about looking uncertain what to do. Seeing a book of condolences to sign, I jumped at the opportunity for action, then headed into the little church and ended up in a pew rather near the front with the family, feeling how tight my pants were and how my pink knickers might show above if I had to kneel. The white-haired man who had sailed past our window was now at the front of the church morphing into the priest before our very eyes - pulling his cassock over his head as village women in pink or orange anoraks busied around him preparing the alter and his microphone.

There wasn't one elegantly dressed person in the church. The oldest generation are former farmers, their sons are technicians of one sort or another, and their children wear gold chains over sportswear. The pink anoraked lady first spoke: Andre Didier was born in 1933, and like his siblings worked on the land. The accidental death of his father when Andre was 16 déclenché sa maladie - literally set off his illness - a genetic skin disease that left his face disfigured. The woman added that this was hard for a teenager. (I thought - this was terrible, awful.) Nevertheless, she continued, he joined up and went to fight in Algeria in the late fifties before its independence from the French in '62. This explained his coffin draped in the French drapeau and adorned with three medals of honour. When Andre returned he worked on the railways for a number of years. First his mother, then aunt died and eventually he was alone in the house - his life lived in a painful solitude.

There was some hymn-singing and as usual I couldn't find where in the hymn book the hymn was as it was not in the damn book. So why do they place them on the bench? Then his niece went to the front and delivered a barely comprehensible eulogy to her departed uncle, Monsieur Didier. Through sobs she told of how he liked to give sweets to the children and how much he enjoyed chocolate and how he looked forward to decorating the tree every year.

IS THIS A LIFE?

Overwhelmingly I just felt there was something a bit shameful and hypocritical about the celebration of a rather wretched life. The church was full to bursting with sad people and yet he had virtually no visitors during the last 20 years of his life. It was the sobbing niece who had looked after him at the weekends.

Thank God for Annie Massenot who is the village gossip and whose opinions on everything from Sarkozy to crème de cassis I take very seriously... Over dinner two nights later Annie painted her own picture of the man, Andre Didier. He was mean. Quite simply he hated to spend his money and chose to ride a mobilette to work every day although he could well afford a car, and always turned down the chance to have a drink with his work mates every weekday evening, preferring to return straight home at 5.30pm just to save his wages. Imagine the absurdity of that, Annie asked me. I ventured that the poor man was too ashamed to show his deformed face in public. No, why should he be! she replied: he worked with these people all day. He could even have got married but he had said (or surely she made this up) that women were too expensive and used up all a man's salary.

I thank Annie for her gossip, for as unbalanced as it is, the image she proffers of a man too in love with his money to part with any of it, is still more spirited than the man who liked to give children chocolate. The man may have been disabled, but this is his life - so let him pass it as he pleases: riding his crappy mobilette to work, coming home to eat from his mother's table and counting his money, as well as succumbing to occasional acts of kindness. Whatever the degree of victimhood and downtrodden-ness, it seems that most humans can always be counted on to mistrust others and revere money!

مدني أن تكون أو لاتكون!

2007-09-02T11:16:00.000+01:00

مدني.. ان تكون او لا تكون!
حينما اقرأ البلوجات المختلفة، فإني اشعر بالتقزز والقرف في معظم الأوقات. أتسائل ما الذي يحدو ب"كاتب " المدونة الى كتابتها والإستمرار فيها وهي لا تقدم لي سببا ةواحدا مقنعا لتواجدها. يتكرر هذا الشعور مع الميديا العالمية والويبسايتات والمعلومات الانترنتية.
لماذا اشعر بإحساس مهذا .
الاجابة هو ايماني بما يُطلق عليه " سبب التواجد " او سبب الوجود.
أنا أؤمن ان الطبيعة احكم الكائنات. الطبيعة لا تقدم لنا كائناتها من حيوان ونبات وجماد بدون اسبب لوجودها. فكل كائن له حكمة وجود خاصة به في العملية الكبرى المتواصلة بهدوء داخل الطبيعة؛ حياة وموت واعادة مرة اخرى للحياة.
فمنذ الآسبوع الماضي اقوم بتنظيف مكتبي وغرفتي من الأوراق والصور الفوتغرافية والملفات التي تجمعت عندي على مر الزمن خلال رحلة حياتي. هذه " الأشياء " التي كنت اعتبرها ضرورية وهامة، لكني القي بها في الاركان المظلمة. حيث أمل يوما ان استفيد بها بعد ان انفض عنها غبارها.
أفعل هذا ألان مع الناس من اصدقاء وأهل، الذين يسحبونني الى مستنقعات حياتهم اللا- مجدية ، المنتفخة برثائهم لأنفسهم ، وبعدم قدرتهم واحيانا كثيرة ، برفضهم لتعيير حياتهم بعد ان فقدوا اسباب تواجدهم على الأرض. مثل العضلات، والأعضاء التي لا تُستخدم؛ تذبل وتذوى، وتصبح عالة على صاحبها.
أفكر في " مدني " بهذا المستوى : هل هي مجدية ام ستذوى وتصبح عالة عليّ؟
أفكر في تغيير جلدها لتصبح بالفعل مفيدة ؛ اكتب فيها بعض قناعاتي التي لا استطيع نشرها في مكان آخر. احساسي بكتاب ما قرأته او مخطوط بعث لي به صديق يطلب رأي .
اريدها حارة ومختلفة ومعبرة وقاسية وحقيقية وصادقة.
حانشوف !

Madny: To be or not to be!

2007-09-02T11:08:00.000+01:00

When I open other Blogs, most of the times I feel disgusted, wondering why the "writer" of this Blog is bothering ME!
It is the same with certain websites and most of the newspapers and nighty percent of the international media.
-What is the problem here?
-It is the my feeling of the need to for a 'raison d'etre'.
The same felling I have when I observe certain human beings, wandering around in life and losing their raison d'etre.
I am still looking critically at Madny: is there a reason for "her" or did "she" come to life as a result of a whim, a toy that is going to be shelved in a dark corner with our unfinished projects?
I had already began - since last week - to clean and clear my papers and photos which I stored and forgot in the dark corners in my room and in my life... to make space for useful things which were crowded and squeezed by creeping plants, as I notice in my little garden.
Not only papers and photos, but also people who suck my energy, friends and family who leave me without energy after they drag me to get involved in their self pity and self destruction.
At least I still have a certain pleasure and pride opening Madny every day and writing something, which justifys its being.
How long till its raison d'etre going to confront me?
Soon I think!

عن محاربة التطرف بأنواعه

2007-08-31T11:08:00.000+01:00

هل تنجح الخطة الحكومية لمحاربة التطرف في هولندا؟
هذه هو عنوان مقال في " راديو نيزلاند وورلد وايد " والتطرف المقصود هو بالطبع التطرف الإسلامي. لكن - مع الاعتراف بوجود تطرف اسلامي - علينا ان نكون منصفين ونعترف أيضا بوجود تطرف ديني وعرقي مسيحي وابيض في هولندا. نقول هذا استنادا على تقارير هولندية رسمية؛ اصدرتها مراكز الأبحاث هنا في هولندا.
والتطرف اصطلاح مطاط وغامض، ظهر في القواميس السياسية،في العقود الأخيرة ، ليعبر بشكل ما عن "تعصب ديني وعرقي "ورفض للآخر المخالف والمختلف سياسيا او ودينيا او وعرقيا. رفض يستند غالبا على نصوص دينية وعلى نوازع قومية واثنية تنادي بامتياز وتفوق وخصوصية عرق على آخر وشعب على شعوب أخرى ولون على بقية الألوان ودين على بقية الأديان.
التطرف ضد التسامح وضد حقوق الإنسان وضد بعض نصوص موجودة في كل الأديان...ايضا!
لذا من الضروري حينما نبدأ بمناقشة التطرف في الدين الإسلامي علينا لكي نكون منصفين وموضوعيين ان نناقش التطرف في بقية الأديان؛ من خلال نصوصها المقدسة؛ تلك المعمول بها، او تلك المهملة.
هذا هو مفتتح لمناقشة التطرف تمهيدا لرصد اسبابه.
ونبدأ بالتهم المرسلة ( وبعضها حقيقي) ضد الشباب المسلم المقيم في هولندا والذي ينتمي لأصول مغربية مغربية على وجه الخصوص وعربية بشكل عام.
أثبتت الدراسات والأبحاث الرسمية الأكاديمية في هولندا حالة التمزق التي يعيشها هؤلاء الشباب. فهم يقيمون داخل كانتونات شبه مغلقة. فالبرغم من التحاقهم بنظام التعليم الهولندي الإجباري حتى عمر معين؛ وبالرغم من إجادتهم للغة الهولندية وحصول معظمهم على شهادات إتمام التعليم المتوسط ( نسبة ضئيلة منهم تواصل التعليم العالي والجامعي) فإنهم لا يجدون عملا بسهولة في سوق العمل الهولندي اسوة بزملاء دراستهم الهولنديين البيض ( المسيحيين ) والأسباب المعلنة تقول " عدم ملاءمتهم اجتماعيا " وهي اسباب مطاطة وغامضة في مجتمع رأسمالي يعتمد بالأساس على المهارات الفردية وعلى مبدأ التنافس. لكن السبب الحقيقي غير المعلن هو إحجام ارباب العمل الهولنديين من رأسمال خاص او رأسمال الدولة او في المناصب الحكومية والبلدية عن تعيين هؤلاء الشباب لأسباب عرقية بحتة لكنها مستترة. فالمجتمع الهولندي المدني ينكر بشدة وجود نوازع عرقية تتحكم فيه. هذا بالرغم من ان الدراسات الرسمية الحديثة بدأت تؤكد تواجد النوازع العرقية في المجتمع الهولندي الذي كان مشهورا في السابق بالتسامح.
تقلص التسامح في العالم بشكل عام وفي الغرب بشكل خاص له اسبابه المختلفة؛ لكن الشواهد على ذلك واضحة وأهمها؛ صعود اليمين السياسي- الديني متمثلا في أحزاب سياسية -دينية ترضي مشاعر الطبقات الوسطى والصغيرة في المجتمعات الغربية التي تخلصت من كابوس الحرب الباردة مؤخرا ومن مخاطر الغزو الأيديولوجي الماركسي، لتركز مخاوفها في الصراع الديني والثقافي بين الغرب المسيحي والشرقين العربي والآسيوي الإسلاميين.
ينظر لهذا الصراع منظرون غربيين اكاديميون ويحذو حذوهم منظرون شرقيين دينيون؛ تربط بينهم جميعا؛ مخاوف متعلقة بنظرية المؤامرة.
فالغرب يعلن تخوفه من سيطرة الأفكار الإسلامية على ما يطلق عليه "نمط الحياة الغربية " والشرق الإسلامي يعلن مخاوفه من مؤامرة الغرب المسيحي على ثقافته وعلى مقدراته الاقتصادية.
مخاوف متبادلة بعضها صحيح وأغلبها مختلق!
لكن بالنظر أيضا إلى مبدأ التعصب الديني في بلد واحد يدين اهله بالإسلام والمسيحية مثل مصر. نجد ان ثمة كراهية واضحة متبادلة " للآخر" الذي يتكلم اللغو نفسها وينخرط اجباريا في الجيش ويدرس في ذات المدارس والجامعات.
إذن فمن السخف ان نقول ان احد اهم اسباب التعصب هو جهل بثقافة الآخر او بنمط حياته او لعدم اتقانه اللغة الرسمية السائدة، او لتخلفه العلمي او لعدم موائمته اجتماعيا.
فالأقلية الدينية المسيحية في مصر تشكو من عدم تطبيق مباديء المساواة في العمل، تلك التي ينص عليها الدستور والقانون ومباديء حق التعيين في المناصب الحساسة في الدولة من جيش وشرطة وحكم.
ان حجة عدم الموائمة اجتماعيا، تلك المستخدمة في هولندا ثبت عدم دقتها في حال " محمد بويري " قاتل المخرج الهولندي فان خوخ، في القضية الشهيرة المتعلقة بإخراج فان خوخ فيلما اعتبره بويري وآخرون مسيئا للإسلام.
ان بويري هو النموذج الأكمل لحالة الشباب المغربي في هولندا: فهو يجيد اللغة الهولندية كتابة وقراءة، نثرا وشعرا . درس مباديء الصحافة وفشل في الحصول على عمل يناسب مؤهلاته. ارتكب بعض المخالفات الصغيرة التي ادت الى حبسه مددا قصيرة.في السجن تعرف على اصوليين إسلاميين وانتمى (او اسس ) خلية اصولية.
وبقية الحالة معروفة!
سوء الفهم والعنف المتعمد هنا موجود في الجانبين: المخرج والقاتل .
فما الذي يحدو بمخرج غير معروف على النطاق المحلي ان يفكر، ثم يعد ، ثم يخرج فيلما يهاجم به الدين الإسلامي ؟ ما الذي كان يهدف او يرجو تحقيقه؟
اليس عملا كهذا يعتبر عنفا موجها ضد جماعة دينية تنتمي عرقيا الى دين وعرق مختلف؟
هذه الجماعة الدينية العرقية تعيش - أيضا- في مشاكل هامة مختلفة؛ اهمها عدم قدرة اعضائها على تحقيق طموحاتهم المشروعة في الحصول على أعمال تتناسب ومؤهلاتهم المختلفة. احساسهم بتهميش متزايد في مجتمع ينتمون اليه بحكم الميلاد واللغة والتعليم.
وإذا كان الادعاء الهولندي ان مسلمي هولندا العرب لا يعرفون شيئا كثيرا او قليلا عن الهولنديين؛ فهل يعرف الهولنديون كثيرا او قليلا عن حياة مسلمي هولندا العرب سوى ما تمدهم به احهزة الأعلام التي لا تختلف كثيرا في جهلها وضحالتها عن جهل وضحالة المواطن الهولندي بشكل خاص واغربي بشكل عام عن الإسلام والمسلمين وعن العرب ؟!
رفض مبدأ الحوار والتفهم والتقبل والتسامح ليس مقصورا على " البويريين " فحسب ، انه المبدا السائد الآن في الثقافة الغربية.
وسيظل الباحثون والسياسيون يبحثون عن مخارج مختلفة تبدو لي مثل الأبواب الزائفة في المقابر الفرعونية ، تلك التي لا تقود إلى مخرج من المقبرة او لا تأخذك الى كنوزها.
سيظل الوضع هكذا طالما يتجاهل الغرب ؛ البدء بإصلاح موقفه من الأقليات الدينية - العرقية التي تعيش ؛ وستواصل العيش ، في الغرب .
هذا الموقف المستهجن والمتعالي والجاهل والرافض لكل ما تمثله ثقافات وديانات هذه الأقليات. ان ما حدث ويحدث في المملكة المتحدة من الجيل الثاني من المهاجرين الباكستانيين هل تنجح المسلمين؛ من رفض لأسلوب حياة وسياسة المملكة المتحدة ونتائج هذا المتمثلة في مذبحة مترو الأنفاق في لندن شهر يوليو منذ عامين، هو مثال من المؤكد تكراره في اماكن مختلفة في الغرب ، نتيجة لسوء الفهم والتربص المتبادل من الجانبين.

Madny in Arabic

2007-08-31T09:08:00.000+01:00

Beginning of this month (September) our few readers in English will be fewer, because Elly our main English editor and co-founder is giving herself a long extending pause to reflect on other things (she's on holiday in France then Spain).
Arabic writings will be seen more frequently due to those changes.
Raouf

PERSEPHONE!!

2007-08-28T09:47:00.000+01:00

...And Mother
When I was introduced to "what possessed me" through Elly I liked the Blog immediately because of its obsessions… and the way its writer presents her self witty and wicked talented lost Realistic orientlists (which she hates to be!)
I like and respect people who have obsessions...And I love them when they admit it : not as a sin but a virtue.
Then she decided to show another side of her obsessions : her thinking about her seventy years old Mum, her way to tell her - in front of every body- how she wants to be like her.
We all grow up trying to ignore our parents ,believing that we had the bad luck to be borne by such people , and how it would be better , that the moment we came to life that they should disappear , and not following us around , causing shame and anger.
Or… we would be tighten tongs in expressing to them face to face our rare nice feelings about them.
But Persephone , alias, Poulakie, decided to break the eternal role between parents and children and announce her NICE FEELINGS to her mother even she is still alive!
Ya Benty you are too good to be true.
i wish i had done the same. But it is too late now
raouf

Alhurra on Erotism !!

2007-08-27T19:49:00.000+01:00

Alhurra
this is where i will have my debate next weekon Arabic Erotic Novel
Raouf

About Madny

2007-08-25T11:00:00.000+01:00

About Madny
Without Elly there would be no Madny. She initiated the idea and has - and still - does the main work on it: correcting my English and guiding me to post my posts.
She gives Madny its taste and character: a mix in between many worlds, East and West. Politics and fun!
Shoukan ya Elly ya benty!
Raouf

My black Eros

2007-08-25T10:43:00.000+01:00

My black Eros…-1-
Some days ago, I was writing something I do not know how to call yet but "night's situations" where I begin it by "I was laughing in my dream"
My idea is to let "my characters" to share the "situations" with me …
I spoke with "ET" and she agreed to read my drafts and to suggest and advise,
I send a draft to a main character in my last novel "Ithaca" which I published in Cairo last winter she is "Ierosa" in the book… a high priestess in former life, which initiates young boys and girls to their sexual life.
She reacted in nice and delicate way as her normal habits, in trying to let others understand what is talking about.
I was looking at my unorganized papers in my unorganized desk when I find an old letter from her to me, answering a letter from me telling her how much I owe her finding a solution for Ithaca, through finding her. She wrote that she is " very glad with her new name: "BLACK IEROSA" in your book and happy that I came one of your characters, which means, that I will follow you where ever you go"
What a writer wants more from a real person, who gave him special and happy moments in life and in writing?

ET in " laughing" responds in on other way: reserved but curios!the difference between the tow is large and Important : Ierosa is an African priestess and ET is European post graduate scholar!

Khamsa we Khmesa

2007-08-24T09:38:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine told me about an advertisement that was looking for "active Arab people" - or something like this!
So I phoned them and said, "I am an active Arab person!"
Then I was - and still intrigued.
There is an origination called Mediamatic
It is interested in creating an Arab version of a big Dutch chain called "Hema"
And I went to see what is up.
I liked what I saw: young group of Lebanese and Arab boys and girls who are working in "Arabic Calligraphy", doing designs on Arabic alpha-batiks and a lot of other interesting things by other interesting people including henna and Arabic dance for men...
Is this a movement to bring the Dutch and Arabs together in dialogue even it has a commercial interest? why not!

Mediamatic.net - Photo by Marieke Bijster.

2007-08-24T09:18:00.000+01:00

Mediamatic.net - Photo by Marieke Bijster.
It is interesting to look at this side
raouf

raouf

2007-08-24T09:01:00.000+01:00

look at me!!

to Evy

2007-08-22T11:16:00.000+01:00

A comment on a Comment
Anonymous said...
I am an Arab christian and I totally agree with Raouf.
As for those who posted comments, the idea is not to debate on religions;
it is simply to suggest that all 3 holy books could have similar backward statements,
no matter what the interpretation is, and therefore it is not logical to criticize
one religion and pretend that others are more "civilized" ones.
Raouf, you're my hero!
Can I translate your passage so I can send it to non English-speaking persons?
Evy
Raouf comments
Yes Evy!
I like the way you describe yourself as "An Arab Christian"... It took me some years to combine Arabism with Christianity. First I consider myself an Egyptian atheist... Then commoner, then social justice fighter!
I think - though I am not very sure - that I am still a social justice fighter (if there is something like that) and proud also of my roots which are mainly in cultures descending from the ancient Egyptians, to Hellenism to Coptic, to Islam and Arabism. Now I like to think of myself as a pot of identities: born in Sudan and still keeping deep and pleasant memories about the places and peoples... And I have travalled and walked in Sudan so many times lately. And in three of my books Sudan is in the background. I wrote an in depth 16-article story about Sudan published in "El Quds" (London -November 2000)
Most probably, you are feeling the same about your identities.
I would like to read more about this and about you.
Why you do not begin now?!

Back to Lebanon

2007-08-22T08:54:00.000+01:00

Monday was a day of nice surprises.
I received a call on my mobile from an unknown number. I answered. A voice far away asked if am Oustaz Raouf. I said yes... he gave his name and said he is working for El Houra TV In Lebanon. I said Ahlan Wasahlan, what can I do for you?
The TV is holding a debate on the Erotic Arabic novel and writing; would I like to participate?
I agreed willingly and in my mind it would be over the phone, but he told me "no! We would like you to come to Beirut" I became suspicious, "Are you going to pay my ticket?" "Sure, and the hotel also, of course". "In that case" I answered happily "I will come".
I told my wife the good news. We both have a weak spot for Lebanon. We worked there before we met, or knew each other. We went together again almost 17 years ago when she was pregnant with Didi and our daughter Yara was three!. Still we both have friends there and keep in touch with them by phone and e-mail.
I felt good... feeling this urge to move, traval and debate on a topic I like, 'Erotic writings'.
Funny, that day I began writing the second part of the erotic story "I was laughing in my dream" from the point of view of "the Girl ET" (the main character) to whom I had sent the first part and she liked what I wrote. I contacted her and asked her if she could help me write the second part; she accepted and I told her about my plan. I will send her some questions and - also - some thoughts and short chapters, and she will comment on them .
I know it will not be easy for her because it should be as honest as much as possible. But she seems to like the idea. We already began speaking about ET in the third person.
It will be fun. I am sure!
Also going back To Lebanon!

The pen is mightier in Mutannabi Street, Baghdad

2007-08-19T22:57:00.000+01:00

By Nabeel Yasin
Published in the FT Weekend: August 18 2007 00:19 Last updated: August 18 2007 00:19

On the first Monday morning of March this year a suicide car-bomber forced his way through the crowds on the meandering alleyway of Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad and parked outside a row of bookshops and street cafes. Minutes later he detonated his cargo of gas cylinders. Twenty-six people, including the driver, were killed and many were injured as shops, stalls, printers and the famous al-Shabender coffeehouse were destroyed. In the aftermath of the bomb, shreds of paper from thousands of books, magazines and journals came to rest amid the body parts scattered across the smoking waste.

This was not Mutanabbi Street’s first bomb. A package left in a bookshop exploded during the summer of 2005. In both cases, booksellers were back in business within days, their eclectic wares on display outside the shops. The brave browser can buy almost any book here - I have seen works by communist poets, martyred clerics and Lebanese astrologers alongside a selection of Haynes repair manuals.

The booksellers’ decision to stay open despite the attacks has been inspirational to many Baghdadis. But strikes on the “thinking quarter”, the alleyway named after the Iraqi poet al-Mutanabbi, have sent a message to Iraqi intellectuals: free-thinking liberalism will not be tolerated. This literary and intellectual haven is no longer safe.

This anger doesn’t spring from the sectarianism of modern Iraq, but from a much older tradition, a slavish adherence to a highly evolved Iraqi ideology of violence. This credo has long been at the heart of political life. After four decades of coups, counter-coups and dictatorships, people understand violence as the pre-eminent means of change. It is the only force that is universally proven to work.

The current precarious situation in Iraq at first appears to be the result of post-invasion insurgency and a revival in sectarianism. But the Iraqi belief that violence is the only response to the presence of US and other allied forces is simply how people there feel the culture should respond to any invasion. The occupying forces are being destabilised, but so is any Iraqi living in the name of peace, openness and freedom.

The origins of this allegiance to violence go back thousands of years. The history of the land of Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris, is peppered with tales of invaders and conquerors. When the region became home to the three great monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, their disputed sacred heritage made the place a permanent battlefield.

In the second half of the 20th century, the ideology of violence gathered a cultish momentum, becoming a doctrine that drove political change. In the late 1950s, Iraqi politics split out into Ba’ath, communist and nationalist factions, and violence erupted into the mainstream.

Violence was part of every young Iraqi’s experience. When I was nine years old, in 1959, I went with my brothers to join in the celebrations marking the first anniversary of the People’s Revolution when the monarchy was overthrown. For the first time I saw people dragged into the streets and stoned. My brothers and I were attacked with bullets and knives as we tried to escape.

Michel Aflaq, the founder of Ba’athism, wrote that to be a true Ba’athist a person should “be ready to annihilate his [enemies’] physical form”. Iraqi Ba’athists took this message to heart, and after a failed attempt to assassinate General Kassim in 1959, a successful 1963 coup led to lawless carnage across the country.

Untrained National Guard squads raided houses with machine guns and within weeks so many people had been rounded up that the new international sports stadium became a concentration camp. My brother was detained and tortured there.

The Ba’ath party made violence legal. Thousands were killed, and every Ba’athist leader was authorised to pursue power by any means. Saddam Hussein’s reputation as a remorseless torturer propelled him through the ranks of the party.

Once he was in charge, the leadership showed their loyalty by executing enemies (and filming it). State television then broadcast the beheadings, hangings and torture. It sent the message that if you were not with the Ba’athists, you were against them and a violent end was your natural reward. Two generations of Iraqis, some 60 per cent of the population, have been raised in the shadow of war, sanctions and the fervent belief that violent action is the only way to change the status quo.

Iraqis also see the carnage in their country as a direct continuation of the ancient traditions of hardship, war and martyrdom. The murderous vocabulary of thousands of martial poems, short stories, novels and speeches published during Hussein’s quarter-century in power still dominate thinking and – crucially – the wider artistic sphere. And little wonder. Forty years ago Iraqi students were free to read Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Shakespeare, travel to art galleries and exchange cultural ideas with the rest of the world.

One of Hussein’s first acts was to draft a cultural blacklist. Thousands of writers were banned, Arab poets such as al-Jawahiri and myself as well as western works including Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Agatha Christie and Tin Tin.

Today’s insurgents have mixed the nationalist elements of old with those verses from the Koran that speak about the jihad. What’s missing is the culture and history that have been purged from mainstream Iraqi life.

Recently in Baghdad I met three survivors of the bookshop bombings who continue to ply their trade among the tobacco and tea stores still left. One of them said to me: “We have always respected the book’s power and we know it is a challenge to bring culture [to Iraq]. But literature must live to be a tool against terrorism and extremism.” It is hard to fault their vision, though their victories remain small. Many in Iraq are unaware there is another way to live. You can buy books, but the security situation means that most people don’t dare browse in bookshops or share opinions in cafes. Theatres, cinemas and playhouses are darkened and coffee shop culture has been almost killed off by curfews.

Many now use the internet to share ideas and discoveries, but even this lively forum for young Iraqis who don’t dare go out of their homes can only happen when the haphazard power supplies are running.

Online chat promises anonymity, but what really makes artistic communities viable and worthwhile is the buzzing, face-to-face artistic exchange that is so much a part of Baghdadi heritage. Iraqis can preserve and expand the rich culture of Mutanabbi Street. We have already seen this happen - the area experienced a brief renaissance after the fall of the Ba’athist regime (the booksellers had survived during the Hussein years by trading in approved pulp-military literature).

A revived booksellers quarter will give people a centre from which to debate philosophies, books, films and music in safety, knowing others are doing it too. If this happens I believe a new sense of culture and government will emerge.

Iraq needs help from the west, but Iraqi poets, writers and artists need to ignite a new set of cultural aspirations among the young. The older generation of (mostly exiled) writers needs to show faith in young Iraqis. I am organising a conference that will bring these groups together. From this conference we need to offer new artists public exposure; we need to publish, exhibit and stage their work.

I really believe that artistic endeavour, and the personal satisfaction it brings, offers genuine hope for a changed outlook. The act of creation harnesses the same passion that makes people chase a cause – even one of violence.

Nabeel Yasin is an acclaimed Iraqi poet who fled the country in 1979 with his family. He lives in the UK but has made frequent trips back to his homeland. ‘Nabeel’s Song’, by Jo Tatchell (Sceptre £7.99) is the story of his life.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

How to live with other people and respect their different rhythm?

2007-08-19T12:11:00.000+01:00

Petty battles are indeed stupid, but if a person finds themselves unwittingly engaged in some through their own stubbornness or that of the other, perhaps if they resolved these battles they would not have to just ignore and eventually dismiss as 'stupid' the other person.

Indeed that person might learn to live with the other who does not follow the same rhythm in everything as they do.

Art of Living

2007-08-19T11:25:00.001+01:00

Very recently I discovered what is a Blog. Rather recently I know how to deal with the Internet.
When I was almost 46 years old in 1983 I had my first car (old second hand Opel two doors!) bought in Cairo before I learned driving.
When I was in my mid-fifties I had learned for the first time to write and to learn how to deal with my computer which I wrote my first important book which gave me some fame!
In my sixty birth day my friends bought for me my first laptop!
Now am afraid of driving, my laptop is broke, lost some friends to death and/or to mutual arrogance and stupidity.
Moving by bicycle, writing in a second hand computer which some times refused to work and having three minor heart attacks... and being seventy and still writing and arguing, provoking and been provoked in important issues but run out from small battles which drain my energy:wants to continue doing so till the time of leaving.
Am trying to be patient and tolerant with people I like. People I do not like I ignore them.
I do not have time for small arguments and petty battles!

المسيحيون العرب في هولندا ضد الاسلاموفوبيا - اذاع

2007-08-19T11:04:00.000+01:00

المسيحيون العرب في هولندا ضد الاسلاموفوبيا - اذاع
Hi Evy
this is the link
Raouf

Islam for my Son

2007-08-18T13:24:00.000+01:00

About four years ago my son Didi who had at that time a Moroccan friend called Housni, said he would like to "make" Ramadan (that was his expression) so me and his mother said "ok why not". After some days we asked him why he is "making" Ramadan and he said "because papa is Moslem" so - again - we had to tell him the truth about 'papa': that he is not Moslem.
He was confused: "Can I continue to makes Ramadan?" and we - of course - said "sure"
We know then we had confused our children because we never brought them to church for the simple reason we are not believers.
We also did not explain to them who we are.
Then it hit me: Yes we are not believers but why our children be like us?! Then I decided to write a simple book about Islam and other religions for my son and for the kids like my children.
At that time I used to know professor Naser Hamed Abouzied, whom I followed his crises in Egypt and went with Dutch TV crew once to make a short "in depth" reportage about him and his wife.
He was living in Layden. I contacted him and explained what I wanted: a book, simple and easy to read on Islam mainly, but also on Judaism and Christianity in certain topics as "not accepting the others" and the punishment code in the three religious.
We worked about 8 months on the book which was called "Islam for my Son" but I had problems with the Dutch translator and the publisher because it was supposed to be published both in Dutch and Arabic. Also some problems with Abuozied who withdrew his previous agreement on the constriction of the book. It stayed two years in my drawer till last year I gave it to the publisher (in Morocco).
Why am writing I this? Because I got involved in this debate about the forbidding of reading the Qur'an in Holland by this silly local politician.
There is also a case in Egypt lately about a Christian who was converted to Islam and wants his children to be Moslems also... but they refused! And now it is a big debate in the media.
This debate shows how both sides cannot accept the idea of "choosing". This choice is related to the relationship between the individual and "his god"... and still every person wants to interfere!
The other mysterious question which is connected to what I wrote is: why do people want to do that?!

We are not All Africans

2007-08-18T10:17:00.000+01:00

I had an impassioned argument with a friend in an Iranian restaurant, across from a table of Arabic-speaking men, who watched us in amusement before leaving while the two of us tediously continued as neither would back down.

We were arguing about prejudices and noble as the topic was, my take on it was not particularly so. Ever confrontational, I decided to provoke my friend's right-on-ness by just coming out with this: "You're anti-Jew", followed quickly by, "You're anti-Israeli." The first is clearly slander, the second is for some a compliment.

Either way I was trying stupidly perhaps to provoke him - piqued as I was by his dismissive attitude to all things and people Israeli. I don't need to reiterate here that the Israeli nation is a vicious cunt. Fine, understood. My point rather was two-fold and as follows: that as deeply flawed as the Israeli justice system was, it was the only one in operation in a state that has obligations to its Arab citizens and prisoners as much to its Jewish ones, so sometimes human rights lawyers have to work with it, and remind it of its obligations under international law, re. for example, the legality or not of 'targeted assassinations'. It is therefore tiresome, to listen to dismissive snorts about the Israeli Supreme court and how wicked and useless it is, when for some that is still their only chance for some kind of justice.

The other point is just about how individual prejudice is a slippery thing and once you have told yourself that you are not racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-West or whatever, you can be sure that your prejudice starts to slip out of your grip and slither in and out of your opinions without your awareness of it. So to not be prejudiced you have to start with this: I AM racist, I am anti-this or that, then keep a grip on it, think about the nature of your prejudice, why it is so pervasive, so tough to dislodge in a moment of anger or fear.

I sat on the bus yesterday and stared at three young black men, and thought how their blackness literally coloured all my ideas on them, how the absolute blackness one of them made him alien to me. I strained my ears to their conversation and tried to listen to what they were interested in. This is not only about race of course, this is about class. I'm sitting there alone with a copy of the New Yorker, and they are in a huddle and one of them says how schoolgirls these days will open their legs all day and all night... Cue my sense of outrage. And confusion. I don't like what they are saying, but I was actively listening to their conversation - observing them like some desperate anthropologist, trying to get a grip of another people. I feel like I don't know, but should, what gets these young working class black North London men out of bed each morning - is it like me, the need for the toilet/ the shock of another day where I must 'prove' myself (to who and why?)/ the fear of wasting time/ the need to 'get on'? When I tried to explain my instinctive reactions to my therapist, I thought I saw even she bristle at the implications of my comments: that I am 'a racist'. There are not only 'racists', there is racism and it is everywhere. Not purely as a source of white guilt, but as a real and divisive power dynamic that confounds and belittles our so-called best intentions.

The worse thing that can happen is that an intelligent white person can talk about how bad racism is, but react to a black person like they do to a grieving friend or colleague - they stay away for fear of saying the wrong thing, not wanting to deal with a potentially awkward and tiresome situation where their wit and interests might suddenly seem inappropriate. But racial division/mistrust, like death, is not just poetically tragic, it is ugly and messy and can bring out a lifetime of rage; it would be better to be there and get it wrong and offend each other and scream and cry if we are to make sense of it and be of any support to the other.

In the very same issue of the New Yorker there is a great review by Hilton Als of Amiri Baraka's 1963 play, Dutchman, set entirely in a subway carriage - a dance of desire and hatred between a black man and a white woman:

"Reading Baraka's script today is like watching an expert butcher at his bloody chopping block [...] take, for instance, Lula's characterisation of Clay, shortly after they meet: 'You look like you been trying to grow a beard. That's exactly what you look like. You look like you live in New Jersey with your parents and are trying to grow a beard. That's what. You look like you've been reading Chinese poetry and drinking lukewarm sugarless tea. (Laughs, uncrossing and recrossing her legs) You look like death eating a soda cracker.' Her analysis of Clay's pretensions is actually solicited by Clay: half-jokingly, he asks her to describe him as she sees him. Clay is complicit in his sparring partner's disgust. Would she express her contempt so gleefully if it weren't obvious to her - she is an animal who can instantly sniff out fear - that her whiteness and femininity matter more to Clay than his own 'lukewarm' manhood? ... Lula can claim her desire, but Clay cannot acknowledge his [because of the fear of the historically murderous response to miscegenation]. Lula has whiteness - which is to say, power - on her side... Still Hill [the director] overplays Clay's 'niceness', which does the role a disservice - or, more precisely, undermines what it could be... so that when, near the end of the show, he finally explodes at Lula ('I'll rip your lousy breasts off!) it feels more like am apologetic coda... than what Baraka intended: the outpouring of a soul filled with a rage that is too great to express or expel... Lula's performance is so profound an evocation of worldly disgust and self-disgust that one feels as if Hill were there, merely to feed her the lines. Whether she's eating an apple or taunting Clay or mocking his aspirations with bile and knowing ('You're an escaped nigger... you crawled through the wire and made tracks to my side') Lula tears into Baraka's blight, into the poetry he finds in the nightmare of being."

What Baraka chose to play not-so-nicely with in his prose, twisting the knife into his complacent audience, are the taboos of power, class, sexuality and human disgust, which is surely the only perspective from which we can seriously approach race. The writers who simply want to say, 'we' screwed over the blacks who we now find to be gentle, spiritual people, and we're sorry and must seek forgiveness and make amends is fucking us all over for a second time. That is not because the penitent stance of the 'we' is not felt to be genuine, but because it is not simply about confession of guilt and forgiveness and embracing the poor, it is about considering the profoundly reeking legacy of mistrust, contempt and resentment of the other. If we now say, but they are nicer people than us in the end it seems, then the long-standing resentment could finally be exposed as a form of cultural/racial envy - the flipside of superiority.

See July's Issue of Vanity Fair to get an idea of how Africans are now officially glamourous and soulful as well as starving and diseased. Thank God! Now we can place them, guilt-free, alongside Brangelina and adverts for anti-women's aging cream at $90 a 50ml pot. As two very good articles sent by our friend, Evy, make clear, the salvation of the white man or woman does not lie in the black people, nor does the 'black African' want to be saved by the self-consciously tough-speaking French president who declares he is no longer 'hung up' about the colonial past. This is yet another form of condescension.

From Uzodinma Iweala's essay, Stop trying to 'Save' Africa: "There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems."

I know that some might respond with, "Well what the hell do we do then?!", the response is: talk like adults - trade insults and fears, fantasies and knowledge and expertise, then we can begin to see where we stand all of us in relation to the 'other'.

اسلاموفوبيا

2007-08-17T09:13:00.000+01:00

رءوف مسعد - كاتب مصري يقيم في هولندا

تعليقا على طلب منع تداول القرآن في هولندا: مقال نشرته في الويب سايت لإذاعة هولندا بتتكلم عربي
13-08-2007

من الملاحظ في الآونة الأخيرة ولأسباب شخصية ولحسابات سياسية وحزبية ضيقة؛ تزايد وتيرة الاسلاموفوبيا التي كانت تحتكرها الصومالية السيدة إيان هيرسي علي، وورثتها بعض الشخصيات الهولندية الضعيفة سياسيا وحزبيا مثل خيرت فيلدرز الذي يملك حزبه تسعة مقاعد فقط في البرلمان الهولندي أو السيد المجهول للجميع احسان جامي مؤسس ما اسماه لجنة المسلمين السابقين .. وكلاهما يبحثان كما يبدو عن دور يقرباهما من الأضواء .. وليس هناك بالنسبة لهما من فرصة افضل من الإساءة المتكررة إلى الإسلام وتصعيد لهجة العداء لرموز الإسلام المقدسة مثل القرآن .

الفكرة السخيفة التي أصدرها فيلدرز بتحريم تداول القرآن إلا للأكاديميين باعتباره نصا يحض على الكراهية؛ هي فكرة حمقاء لأن فيلدرز تجاهل التوراة والأناجيل وهي أيضا تحض على كراهية الآخر هذا إذا ما تعاملنا مع الكتب المقدسة بحرفية النص .

فالتوراة تعلن مرارا وتكررا أن الله اصطفى اليهود ليكونوا شعبه المختار من دون بقية الشعوب بل ان اللقب الرسمي لله سبحانه وتعالى في التوراة هو " رب الجنود " أي جنود بني اسرائيل الذي يأمرهم قائدهم الإلهي حينما ينتصرون على شعوب وقبائل أخرى " لا تقطعوا معهم عهدا ولا تتحنوا عليهم ولا تصاهروهم ..بل ها ما تفعلون به تهدمون مذابحهم ،وتحطمون أصنامهم فأنتم شعب مقدس للرب إلهكم الذي اختاركم من بين جميع الشعوب التي على وجه الأرض " ( سفر التثنية - الإصحاح السابع - من الآيات رقم 2 وحتى رقم 7)

وفي موقع آخر في التوراة نجد موقفا تفصيليا من السكان الذين يستولي بني اسرائيل على أراضيهم حيث يخاطبهم الرب " وتكون مباركا فوق جميع الشعوب ويرد الرب عنك جميع الأمراض وكل داء خبيث بل يصيب به مبغضيك وتقضي على جميع الشعوب الذين يسلمهم الرب أليك الرب الهمك. لا تشفق عليهم "( التثنية الإصحاح 7 الآيات 14 حتى 16 ) ونجد أن النبي موسى يأمر بقتل " كل ذكر من الأطفال ( من السبايا ) وكل امرأة ضاجعت رجلا وأما الإناث من الأطفال والنساء العذارى فاستبقوهن لكم " وكان هذا الأمر خاص بسبايا قبائل مديان التي لم يقتلهم الإسرائيليون ( العدد - اصحاح 31 - آيات 13 حتى 19 )

أما في الإنجيل فنقرأ للقديس بولس " فلتصمت نساؤكم في الكنائس فلا يجوز لهن التكلم وعليهن ان يخضعن كما تقول الشريعة .فإن أردن ان يتعلمن شيئا فليسألن أزواجهن لأنه عيب على المرأة أن تتكلم في الكنيسة " ( الرسالة الى كورونثوس الأولى - الإصحاح 14 - الآيات من 34 حتى 36 ) وكذا " ايتها النساء اخضعن لأزواجكن كما تخضعن للرب " ( الرسالة الى افسس - إصحاح 5 الآيات 21 حتى 23)

وإذا كنا نتحيز ضد بعض الأئمة الذين يعادون المثليين الجنسيين فتعالوا نقرأ ما يقوله القديس بولس " فلا الزناة ولا عباد الأوثان ولا الفاسقون ولا المبتلون بالشذوذ الجنسي ولا السارقون ولا الجار ولا السكيرون يرثون ملكوت الله " ( المصدر السابق - الإصحاح الخمس - الآيات من رقم 9 حتى 11) أي ان كل هؤلاء لن يدخلوا الجنة.

السيد جامي يتحجج بأن الإسلام يعاقب المرتد، فعليه أن يقرأ ما أفتي به الشيخ جمعة مفتي مصر بأنه اعطي الحق للمسيحيين الذين أسلموا في الرجوع مرة اخرى الى ديانتهم السابقة. أو يقرأ في موقف القديس بولس من المرتدين المسيحيين ففي فصل بعنوان الارتداد عن الإيمان يقول " فالذين ُأنيروا مرة وذاقوا الهبة السماوية وصاروا مشاركين في الروح القدس ثم سقطوا يستحيل تجديدهم وإعادتهم الى التوبة .. فكل ارض شربت ما نزل عليها من المطر واطلعت نباتا صالحا للذين فُتحت من اجلهم نالت بركة من الله ولكنها إذا أخرجت شوكا وعشبا صارت مرفوضة تهددها اللعنة وتكون عاقبتها الحريق " ( الرسالة الى العبرانيين - الإصحاح الخامس والسدس الآيات من4 - 7 )

السيد المسيح له موقف من الآخرين غير اليهود ففي انجيل متى نجد حكاية المرأة الكنعانية التي توسلت إلى السيد المسيح ان يشفي ابنتها من الشيطان الذي تلبسها " أرحمني يا سيدي.. ابنتي فيها شيطان ويعذبها كثيرا " أما تلاميذه فقالوا له " اصرفها عنا " وأجاب يسوع " ما أرسلني الله إلا للخراف الضالة من بني إسرائيل " لكن المرأة واصلت توسلها " وسجدت له وقالت "ساعدني يا سيدي " اجابها " لا يجوز ان يؤخذ خبز البنين ويرمى الى الكلاب " فقالت المرأة " نعم يا سيدي ، وحتى الكلاب تأكل من الفتات الذي يتساقط من موائد أصحابها " ثم شفاها السيد المسيح ( انجيل متى الإصحاح الخامس عشر - الآيات من 21 حتى 28) باعتبار ان الكنعانيين اقل في القيمة الإنسانية من اليهود!

وهل نسينا الموقف الرسمي للفاتيكان حتى سنوات قليلة حينما كان يحمّل يهود اليوم ذنب يهود الأمس باعتبارهم سلالة قتلة المسيح مستخدما حرفية العبارة التي اطلقها اليهود وهم يطالبون الحكم الروماني بصلبه " دمه علينا وعلى أولادنا " انجيل متى الإصحاح 27 ألآية رقم 25)

نحن هنا لا نريد ان ندخل في جدل لاهوتي فليس هذا مكانه لكننا نريد ان نقول " إذا كان بيتك من زجاج فلا تقذف بيوت الآخرين بالحجارة "

يجب ان يُنظر إلى الكتب المقدسة جميعها في تاريخيتها أي برؤية تاريخية لمواقيت نزولها على البشر او كما يقول المفسرون المستنيرون الإسلاميون " اسباب النزول ".

تشترك الكتب المقدسة لليهودية و المسيحية والقرآن في مواقف معينة من المرأة والإجهاض والزنى: اليهودية هي من ابتدعت رجم الزانية والزاني ( التثنية اصحاح 22 من الآية 13 حتى 22 ) والمسيحية قامت بحرق الساحرات ولإنشاء محاكم التفتيش تطبيقا لنصوص دينية تعاملت معها الكنيسة بحرفيتها.

بالرغم من أن الدول المسيحية الغربية تطبق على مواطنيها القانون المدني إلا ان الآيات المتعلقة بالعقوبات الدينية ما تزال موجودة في الكتاب المقدس وآيات الكراهية ما تزال موجودة في العهد القديم .. لكنا لن نجد سياسيا مسيحيا او حتى مسلما ينادي بتحريم قراءة الكتاب المقدس او التوراة !

فالقرآن يحترم السيد المسيح والسيدة مريم العذراء ويعتبر المسيح " كلمة الله وروحه " !

اما بالنسبة للسيد احسان جامي وجمعيته اقول له : اقرأ الصحف العربية الصادرة اخيرا وتعّلم : فالمحاكم المصرية اصدرت احكاما جديدة تسمح للمصريين الذين كانوا مسيحيين وأسلموا ويرغبون مرة اخرى في ترك الإسلام الحق اذا رغبوا في العودة مرة اخرى الى المسيحية. اقول للسيد جامي : جمعيتك فاقدة المعنى والهدف خاصة هنا في هولندا وأوربا بشكل عام فلا أحد يهتم بمسلم تحول الى المسيحية او مسيحي يتحول على الإسلام اللهم الا اذا اراد ان يحصل على مكسب مادي او سياسي او شهرة ضيقة

اقول للسيد فيلدرز : نحن العرب المسيحيين نرفض بشدة اية اهانة للمسلمين والإسلام كما ندين أيضا بنفس الشدة أي اعتداء يحدث من مسلمين على غير مسلمين بسبب دينهم او او اية ممارسات أخرى .فأنا وغيري من المسيحيين العرب نعتبر القرآن جزءا أساسيا وهاما من تراثنا الثقافي والحضاري ونحترمه ونقرأه .وهل نسينا أن كتاب حكماء صهيون أصدره المسيحيون الغربيين الذين كتبوا فيه بان كهنة اليهود يخطفون أطفال المسيحيين ويذبحونه ويخلطون دمائهم بالقرابين ؟!

أقول للسيدين

إن الغالبية المسلمة في البلاد الإسلامية لم تفكر في تحريم تداول الكتاب المقدس المسيحي.. رجاء لا تبحثا عن الأضواء لكما من خلال إسدال الظلام على الآخرين !

كاتب مصري يعيش في هولندا

مصري مسيحي, 14-08-2007 -

اتق الله يا اخي ماذا تقول اذا كنت فعلا كاتب عريق كذلك اعتقد انة يجب عليك ان تاتي بالتفسيرات التي تويد ماذا تقول و اعتقد ان تفسيرات الكتاب المقدس كثيرة جداااا فاتي بالتفسيرات الصحيحة و ليس التي علي اهوائك الشخصية

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

مصري مسيحي ولست عربي, 14-08-2007 -

الاستاذ اعتقد انك لست مسيحي واذا كنت مسيحي فانك عار علي المسيحين كيف تقول يا اخ انك عربي مسيحي هل تعني تلك العبارة ان كلمة العربية التي تتحدث عنها لست للمسيحين هل تعلم لماذا؟ لاننا قد فرضنا علي التحدث بالعربية والا القتل و قطع الالسنة

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

رءوف مسعد, 14-08-2007 - هولاندا

السعودية مسموح لها يا سيدي في بناء المساجد في اركان العالم المسيحي الغربيكما ان القرىن الذي ت بعه السعودية بالملايين من النسخ يوزع مجانا في قنصليات اسعودية ومراكزها الثقافية . ثم سؤال لحضرتك وانت لم تنشر اسمك : هل انت مع منع تداول القرآن حسنا وماذا عن تداول التوراة التي تنادي بخصوصية الشعب اليعهودي بالنسبة لل× الذي يتهمني بالأسلمة فانا لا اتبرأ من الاسلمة لأن الاسلام جزء من تراثي الثقافي . ولعلك تتجاهل ما فعله الرهبان المصريون من تدمير لمعابد الديانة الفرعونية .. التي اصبحت معام سياحية يأكل منها اكثر من خمسين من ابناء الشعب المصري عيشهم. كلامك عن بني اسرائيل غير دقيق . اقرأ التوراة جيدا فأرض فلسطين ليست ارضهم بل اغتصبوها بقوة السلاح من شعوب اخرى

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

قبطى ....ولست عربى مسيحى... فانا مسيحى فقط ..انت عربى مسـ...., 13-08-2007 - Nederland

الأستاذ كاتب المقال . هل لك تبريرأو تفسير لمنع دخول أو تداول الانجيل بالمملكة العربية السعودية? تقول فى مقالك ......اقول للسيد فيلدرز : نحن العرب المسيحيين نرفض بشدة اية اهانة للمسلمين والإسلام ......انا لااعتقد انك مسيحى فاذا كنت اسما مسيحى فالرجاء التعبير عن نفسك فانا أرى انك متاسلم متلك مثل جمال أسعد.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

قارئ, 13-08-2007 - مصر

الأستاذ كاتب المقال خانك التعبير فى عديد من الملاحظات لا مجال فى التعليق لشرحها مطولا لذلك سأوجز 1- كل ما أتيت به من أيات لم تضع له مصدر تفسير واحد بل تفسر حسب هواك، بينما كل ما يقال عن الإسلام يكون موضوع دليله من أية أو حديث ومعها التفسير الإسلامي المعتمد لديها 2- حديثك عن حروب اليهود لا يقارن بالإسلام، لأن اليهود لا يخرجون عن نطاق الأرض التى لهم، بينما المسلمون يستهدفون العالم أجمع 3- الأيات التى ذكرتها عن الردة فى المسيحية خاطئة، فالرسول بولس يضرب مثالا بالأرض، وليس معنى ذلك حرق المرتد، أو لتثبت حديثك بأن ترينا الشخص الذى يتظلم الأن من إقامة حد الحرق عليه لأنه إرتد عن المسيحية 4- إستشهادك لما قاله فضيلة المفتى عن الردة فى غير محله، فدار الإفتاء كذبت فتواه، ويمكنك الإطلاع على هذا الرابط لتشاهد هذا الحوار التلفزيونى لتفهم ما هو حد الردة فى الإسلام http://www.copts.com/arabic/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1103&Itemid=1 أعلم أنى لا أستطيع الإطالة فى التعليق أكثر من ذلك، لكن نصيحة منى أن تقرأ كتب التفسير المسيحية قبل الإستشهاد بأيات من الكتاب المقدس وشكرا

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

London - Father, Didi & Elly

2007-08-17T08:46:00.000+01:00

London with Didi & Elly.

His name is Diedriek: an old Dutch name but every person calls him Didi. I also call him the Kind Giant; he is 17 years old and 185 centimeter (I am 167cm almost!).
When he was 13 he came alone without his mother or sister to stay two weeks with me in Egypt...
This is our second trip together: father and son. I want to introduce him to a different group of my friends. We stayed at the "Hossam and Madieha" mansion in Wimbledon. Both are Egyptian doctors; I know them since 30 years ago
And to Elly whom I know 2 years ago.
Elly gave us her time and energy when we were hitting London. We are Amsterdamians - meaning we come from small city has two lines of underground, has two centers, we use our bicycles in moving around a city which has less than one million moving in and around it!
So we were not at ease in London plus Didi and myself cannot read maps and it was very difficult for us to understand what people are saying with their different English(s)
I gave him a reasonable summary of my friends. The first trip in the tube between Heathrow and Wimbledon was absurd but we arrived in one piece. Then we went to see Elly.
In London it was the first time for me and Didi to have a "drink" together. and for Elly and myself to have time talking face to face since we met very quickly in Cairo almost two years ago.
Three generations, trying to connect with each other. Elly and me were doing the big part. Didi was sitting listening, smiling and commenting from time to time... I am used to his silence (girls think he is cool!)
Father and son were moving between cultures (British museum, of course) Egyptian friends who speak English and Arabic, Elly who speaks English and worries about the state and future of the world, and British girls whom Didi thinks are more arrogant than Dutch girls.
Last night he began to loosen up and tease Elly! I was sitting back and enjoying both of them joking and relaxing.
When father and son were alone we talked about many things we did not have time to talk about in Amsterdam... he also took care of me helping me around (he used to ignore that before) and showing me the way around the Tube!
I thought I am a better father than my Father whom I loved but never had the opportunity to talk to him!
I also discovered some interesting qualities in Elly: her sense of hummer, her kindness and her willingness to give her time and energy to amuse and entertain others!
When we were at Heathrow again we did not mind the crazy security who ordered us to take our shoes off (as a lot of people were ordered too)... we even joked about it.
We were a happy bunch going to a small city which we can move around in with our bicycles!
I made Elly promise to come to Amsterdam, and ride a bicycle with me and Didi
Raouf

All about Didi

2007-08-16T22:01:00.000+01:00

I keep hoping that I will open Madny and see a new post by Raouf.

Then I remember that he and his beautiful son, Didi, have spent most of the last five days with me in London sitting in overpriced cafes, pubs, bars, shisha joints and anywhere where we can recline and people-watch and laugh about the time Raouf got trapped in a car with a manic American woman in October city, Cairo, or bitch about the world and people less discriminating than us.

For the first few days Didi was silent and I had no idea what the hell to say to a 17 year old - let alone a good-looking, sweet, shy one. We admired his funky t-shirts that he purchased on Oxford st, and in Camden Market, and plied him with pints that seemed to make no difference to his absolute stillness and quietness. It was only on the last night - after having dragged the pair from cafe to restaurant to pub in the torrential summer rain - that we started to tease Didi - about his flashy watch he'd bought off some 'crook' in Camden Town, and what kind of girls he liked - as Raouf reminded me that not unlike one female friend of his, I am a cat that roots around in the garbage for my men. Five beers on Didi was laughing and as we ran through the rain to find their ride home, he shouted to me proudly how he was a great basket-ball player.

I was a horrible teenager - at least that is what I believe - maybe I was as sweet as Didi?

The prisons of Libya

2007-08-10T09:44:00.000+01:00

Son of Libyan leader admits medics were tortured
Tripoli - The son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has admitted that the confessions of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting hundreds of children with the HIV-virus were obtained through torture. Said al-Islam Gaddafi says they were tortured with electric shocks and told something would happen to their families if they did not confess.

comment: sure!
I advise the American administration to send the prisoners in Guantanamo to the prisons in Libya
Raouf

Code of Punishment for Adultery in Iran

2007-08-08T09:48:00.000+01:00

From the WLUML website
Adultery is a capital offense in the Islamic Republic of Iran and punishable by flogging, hanging, and stoning. The following is a translation of the articles of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran that pertain to the legal punishments for adultery. (Meydaan)

Translated by: Dr. Soheila Vahdati / Compared with the original text by: Gholam Hossein Raeesi, Attorney at Law

The Islamic Penal Code

Book II – Hodoud (Shari’a-based Punishments)

Section I – Shari’a-based Punishment for Adultery

Chapter 1- Definition and Reasons for Adultery Punishment

Article 63 – Adultery is defined as the intercourse between a man and a woman whose intercourse is inherently forbidden “haraam”, even if it is from behind, other than those cases where the person has had a doubt [i.e., mistaken identity].

Article 64 – Adultery is punished when the adulterer is mature*, sane, and acting by free will and is also aware of the offence and its punishment.

Article 65 – If a man or a woman is aware that the intercourse with the other party is forbidden, and the other party is not aware, thinking that the intercourse is legitimate, then only the party who has been aware that the intercourse is forbidden shall be sentenced to the punishment.

Article 66 – If a man or a woman who have had intercourse together claim mistake and unawareness, then in the case that the claimant deems honest, then the claim is accepted without oath and witness and the punishment is annulled.

Article 67 – If an adulterer claims that s/he has committed adultery under duress, her/his claim is accepted if the contrary is not believed to be true.

Chapter 2- Methods of Proving Adultery in Court

Article 68 – If a man or woman confesses to adultery four times before the judge, s/he will be sentenced to the adultery punishment and if they confess less than four times, then s/he will be punished by Tazeer. [Tazeer refers to the punishments that are not defined by Sharia’ and it is left to the Sharia’ Judge to specify it by sentence to imprisonment, cash fine, or flogging in which case the number of lashes must be less than Hodoud.]

Article 69 – The confession is valid when the confessor has the virtues of maturity*, sanity, willingness, and liberty.

Article 70 – The confession must be explicit or appear to be not inconsistent with the case.

Article 71 – If a person confesses to adultery and then denies it, if the adultery is to be punished by killing or stoning**, then the denial annuls the punishment of killing and stoning. Otherwise, with the denial after the confession the punishment is not annulled.

Article 72 – If a person confesses to the type of adultery that is punishable and then repents, the judge can either ask the Head of Judiciary for clemency or carry out the punishment.

Article 73 – A woman who does not have a husband, shall not be punished for becoming pregnant unless her adultery is proven by one of the methods mentioned in this law.

Article 74 – Adultery, when punishable by either flogging or stoning, can be proven by the testimony of either four just men, or three just men and two just women.

Article 75 – If adultery is punishable by flogging, then it could also be proven by the testimony of two just men and four just women.

Article 76 – The testimony by women alone or along with the testimony of a just man does not prove adultery but the witnesses will be subject to the punishment for false accusation (Qazf) as specified by the law. [Qazf: is defined as accusing a person of adultery or anal sex. It is punishable by 80 lashes. (Article 139)]

Article 77 – The testimony of the witnesses must be clear and without ambiguity and based on observation and testimony based on conjectures is not credible.

Article 78 – If the witnesses describe the specifics of the subject of testimony, there should be no discrepancy in their descriptions in terms of the time, place, and such. In case of discrepancy among witnesses’ testimonies, then not only the adultery is not proven but the witnesses will be sentenced to punishment for false accusation (Qazf).

Article 79 – The witnesses must testify one after another without any lapse of time. If some of the witnesses testify and then some other witnesses are not immediately present to testify or do not testify, then adultery is not proven. In this case, the witness will be subject to punishment for false accusation (Qazf).

Article 80 – The adultery punishment shall be executed immediately except for the cases described in the later articles.

Article 81 – If the adulterer repents prior to the testimony, then the punishment is annulled and if s/he repents after the testimony, then the punishment is not annulled.

Chapter 3 – Types of Adultery Punishment

Article 82 – The punishment for adultery in the following cases is killing and there is no difference between young and not-young and marriage-bound and not marriage-bound.
a. Adultery with “mahaarim” [“Mahaarim” of a person are the relatives by blood or marriage who are within the prohibited degree of marriage such as one’s siblings, parents, and in-laws.]
b. Adultery with step-mother which shall constitute the killing of the adulterer.
c. Adultery of a non-Muslim with a Muslim woman which will constitute the killing of the adulterer.
d. Adultery by force and duress that will constitute the killing of the forcing adulterer.

Article 83 – The punishment for adultery in the following cases is stoning.
a. Adultery of a marriage-bound man that is defined as a man who has a permanent wife and has had intercourse with her while being sane and can have intercourse with her whenever he so wishes.
b. Adultery of a marriage-bound woman with an adult man, a marriage-bound woman is a woman who has a permanent husband and the husband has had intercourse with the woman when she was sane and has had the opportunity to have intercourse with the husband, too.
c. Adultery of a marriage-bound woman with a minor constitutes flogging.

Article 84 – An old adulterer or an old adulteress who qualifies as marriage-bound shall be subject to flogging punishment prior to stoning.

Article 85 – Revocable divorce, prior to the end of the possible revoking period, does not disqualify a man or woman from being marriage-bound, but irrevocable divorce disqualifies them from being marriage-bound.

Article 86 – Adultery by a man or a woman when each has a permanent spouse but has no access to the spouse due to travel or imprisonment or similar reasonable excuses, shall not constitute stoning.

Article 87 – A married man who before penetration [into his wife] commits adultery shall be sentenced to flogging, having his head shaven, and one year of exile.

Article 88 – The adultery punishment for a man or woman who does not meet the marriage-bound conditions is one hundred lashes.

Article 89 – Repetition of adultery prior to executing the adultery punishment will not constitute repetition of the punishment if the punishments are the same, but if the punishments are of different types, like some constitute flogging and other constitute stoning, then flogging punishment shall be executed prior to stoning.

Article 90 – If a man or woman commits adultery several times and at each instance is punished, then will be killed upon the fourth instance.

Article 91 – During pregnancy and parturition bleeding the woman shall not be subjected to murder or stoning. Also after the childbirth if the infant has no guardian and there is a concern that the infant might die, the punishment will not be carried out, but if a guardian is found for the infant then the punishment shall be executed.

Article 92 – When a pregnant or breastfeeding woman is to be punished by flogging and there is concern for possible harm to the pregnancy or the breastfeeding infant, then the punishment will be delayed until the time that the punishment causes no such harm.

Article 93 – If a sick person or menstruating woman is sentenced to be murdered or stoned, the punishment shall be carried out but if sentenced to flogging then the punishment will be delayed until the sickness and menstruation is over.

Article 94 – If there is no hope for recovery of a sick person, or the Shari’a judge (hakeme shar’) deems appropriate that the punishment be executed during the sickness, then a bunch of one hundred lashes or whips will be inflicted once even if not all of them touch the body of the convict.

Article 95 – If the convict sentenced to punishment becomes insane or converts, the punishment shall not be annulled.

Article 96 – The flogging shall not be carried out in too cold or too hot weather.

Article 97 – The punishment cannot be executed in the land of the enemies of Islam.

Chapter 4 – How to Execute the Punishment

Article 98 – When a person is sentenced to multiple punishments, the order of carrying out the sentences must be such that none of them prevents another, therefore if someone is sentenced to flogging and stoning, first flogging and then stoning shall be carried out.

Article 99 – If adultery by a person, who meets the marriage-bound conditions, is proven by his/her confession, then at the time of stoning the first stone will be thrown by the Shari’a judge and then by others, and if the adultery is proven by the testimony of witnesses, then first the witnesses will throw stones, then the Shari’a judge, and then others.
Note – Absence or lack of action of the judge and witnesses in throwing the first stone shall not prevent carrying out the sentence and in any case the punishment must be executed.

Article 100 – The flogging punishment for an adulterer man shall be carried out as he is standing and wearing no clothing except to cover his genitals. Lashes must forcefully inflict his entire body except for his head, face, and genitals. An adulterer woman shall be flogged in a sitting position with her clothes bound to her body.

Article 101 – It is appropriate that the judge informs the public of the time of the punishment and it is necessary that a group of believers, not less than three people, be present when the punishment is carried out.

Article 102 – An adulterer man shall be buried in a ditch up to near his waist and an adulterer woman up to near her chest and then stoned to death.

Article 103 – In case the person sentenced to stoning escapes the ditch in which they are buried, then if the adultery is proven by testimony then they will be returned for the punishment but if it is proven by their own confession then they will not be returned.
Note – If the person sentenced to flogging escapes they shall be returned in any case.

Article 104 – The size of the stone used in stoning shall not be too large to kill the convict by one or two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone.

Article 105 – The Shari’a Judge can act upon his own knowledge in the cases of [defending] the God’s Rights (Haghollah) and People’s Rights (Haghonnas) and carry out the punishment constituted by the God and it is necessary that he documents his knowledge. The execution of the punishment in case of God’s Rights (Haghollah) is not contingent upon anyone’s request but in case of People’s Rights (Haghonnas) is contingent on the owner of the right.

Article 106 – Adultery during the holy times such as religious festivities and Ramadan and Friday and at holy places such as mosques will constitute flogging in addition to the regular punishment.

Article 107 – The presence of the witnesses is necessary when stoning punishment is carried out but the punishment shall not be annulled due to their absence but it shall be annulled with their escape.

*Note by translator: A man is mature at the age of 15 lunar years, and a woman is mature at the age of 9 lunar years, given that the physical maturity is visible, too.

** Note by translator: Stoning in the Islamic Penal Code of Iran refers to stoning to death.

Source of the Original Code in Farsi (Persian): http://www.hoqouq.com/law/article363.html

Bedstemor and the Arabs

2007-08-07T10:11:00.000+01:00

The story of the disappearance of four-year old Madeleine McCann in Portugal has dominated the front pages of newspapers for three months. Now, belatedly they have found traces of blood on the walls of her apartment bedroom.

Bedstemor (grandmother in Danish) has her own theory, however: they sold her to the Arabs.

By 'they', she means a half-Portuguese man, and by 'Arabs', she means the Bedouin types that she as a girl was cautioned to avoid as they stole young blond girls and kept them in a large tent-harem.

If she proves to be right, I will be humbled before her superior detective skills, if not, I will have to inform her that a number of blond-haired females now go willingly to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf for work of one sort or another, so less Westerner-snatching goes on these days.

Bedstemor has no balance. This means that she navigates her house with a sort of trolley in which she keeps a thermos of tea and Highland shortbread. In the kitchen she has a whole system that one deviates from at one's peril. Sitting on her chair she can simultaneously put on toast and wash up her bowl. Yesterday she taught me how to open a tin, throw away the top of the tin in the bin, empty the contents into a bowl, put it in the microwave, and punch in one and a half minutes. In that order. I foolishly tried to empty the creamed rice-pudding into the bowl before disposing of the tin and she started to flap slightly. I am now fully house trained and ready for marriage.

My grandmother was herself snatched by a handsome British Navy captain during the war in Copenhagen and brought back to England at the age of 19. We are told that as a child she played alongside Danish princes and princesses in the royal nursery, and her mother was a great beauty and well-known socialite, whose early death from a painful stomach cancer, sent her husband mad with grief and he ended his days gambling on the French Riviera. Bedstemor is ending her days in Hampshire playing Bridge and cared for by my mother. This weekend though, it was my mother who became ill and so one loving daughter looked after another dutiful daughter presided over by the grandest mother. It was an unnatural trio, as in many ways Bedstemor has never looked after her daughter, my mother, and my grandmother is not the cuddly sort. Mummy was brought up by a succession of nannies in European capitals and ate in the kitchen so as not to disturb the adults. These days my sisters eat quiety so as not to disturb their sleeping princesses.

The worst moments, when I had to contain my 'reactive' behaviour, were during phone calls from my concerned uncle, James. My mother's younger brother was not concerned about his sister but that his mother was being inconvenienced by his daughter's stay. My grandmother was persuaded to let mummy sleep in her house by my mother's French boyfriend jean who called from Nice, and insisted she should not be left alone in her new house which has yet to have a kitchen installed. It was inhaling wood preserver than poisoned my mother in the first place. Of course Bedstemor got it wrong on the phone to James and said loudly, "Victoria inhaled paint fumes". Mummy fumed in bed.

The opportunist Orientlists

2007-08-06T10:31:00.000+01:00

Elly had put it very clear and correctly her understanding of the complicated relations between the Orientlists and "their subjects"
I tell you a real experience : a Dutch young student of Arabic language who came to Egypt to speak the language and learn in practice about the life and couture of the land .. he met some young poor Egyptians who are living in the slums of Emababa and studying in the university .. the took him to their homes and introduced him to their families and their life. He stayed with them . eat their food and learned to speak fluently. Returned back to Holland , got his master degree and wrote a best seller book in Dutch by the title: " good husbands in Egypt beat their wives twice a day " returned to Cairo as a correspondent of a wide spread news paper , lived in the tower in Boulaq looking over the Nile ..he is hiding his wickedness and opportunism in pretending generosity opening his flat for his ex Egyptians friend exposing them to his western colleges as his " subject"

Thy never know what he wrote about their fathers and mothers
He is consider here in Holland an expert in middle -east life and politics and have a weekly program in the TV!!
I Understand quite well your reluctant ( and PERSEPHONE) to be taken for grunted as " orientlists " and you and her and others prefer to do silly jobs far from your studies and leaving opportunists as the one I mentioned take over
That is also part of the problems of orientlists
Raouf

Bullet proof city-dwelling

2007-08-05T16:42:00.000+01:00

Copan (São Paulo)
by Andreas Gursky, born 1955, Germany

Next weekend Raouf is coming to London and I will take him to the Global Cities exhibition at Tate Modern, London. Insha'allah.

I went today and I must go back. At first I believed it would not tell me anything I don't know: Cairo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world (36,500 inhabitants per km2); one-third of the planet's urban dwellers live in slums... and video installations are mostly shit. Then into the little dark rooms to sit on the bench with the other uncertain exhibition-goers to watch the screenings - possibly with no beginning or end - always starting from the middle.

I was humbled before a piece by Egyptian artist Hala Elkoussy: Peripheral Stories, 2005. Hala is a bit of a joker, and this keeps her work from being subsumed by its own pretentious overtones. Hala's is a serious message, but it springs from and plays with the surreal experience of living in modern-day Cairo, and its peripheral settlements - some exclusive and dull with their monochrome villas, and others with no rubbish collection and unsteady foundations. A series of narratives overlay the visual episodes: a boy strides in the dust swinging his bandaged arm that he wraps and unwraps as we are told the story of the boy who who fell from the microbus as it swerved over a bridge; the driver did not stop to pick him up because it was illegal for microbuses to be on that bridge; A succession of women - their heads bent backwards into the basin - eyes closed in willing submission - have shampoo massaged into their hair by a mustachioed male hairdresser; we hear that the president's wife interceded to stop the implementation of a religious decree that maintained it was 'haram', sinful for women to go to a male hairdresser. After all "only a man knows how to make a woman beautiful", the voice over tells us. The daily experience of the Cairene is far from culturally rich as the leaders put all their energy into making a mockery of the city people and none into providing them with the resources and recourses for a dignified life. The individual is culturally atrophied. Dizzy from the meaningless daily dance, he or she watches as the desert and piles of rubbish push at their door. And the army is always at the gates; snoozing perhaps, but they are there.

I wandered past the Mumbai screening, and popped my head around the door of the Sao Paulo video screening, and stayed, and stayed, although I had to leave to join my friends before the end of the 58 minutes. The Italian artist Francisco Jodice produced the documentary film, São Paulo - Citytellers during a residency in São Paulo, Brazil. It is the usual story in some respects: prosperity barricades itself against poverty; yet the details are compelling and horrible as they should be: so violent is street crime and so congested with traffic are the roads that the wealthy have built helicopter pads on top of high-rise buildings and there are more than 1,000 private helicopters that ferry businessmen and rich sorts to their appointments on the other side of the city, or for weekend jaunts to the coast. When not flying about, they move in bullet-proof cars.

This way problems are not solved, but people are divided absolutely.

Learning to love the banality of the other

2007-08-05T15:48:00.000+01:00

I think I understand what you are saying Raouf. A few thoughts in answer to yours: the first answer is easy - learning a language for a few years and even living and studying the same number of years in one or several Arab countries does not make one an Arab expert, in the same way that I wouldn't consider myself an expert on Spain, although I learnt the language and lived, studied and worked there.

That is perhaps because when it comes to a Western country, one allows for greater complexity; how could I imagine that I would 'get' Spain and its people, even if I have Spanish cousins, and I like the food: I might study the history, the Catholic religion, the political system and chart the socio-demographic of the country - I might even live with an 'authentic' Spanish family, and still find myself far from qualified to speak at conferences on the 'Spanish mind' and the best way to deal with Basque Separatists. Then I might spend some months in Damascus or Cairo and find myself answering the following question from my well-meaning father:
What is the difference between Syrian women and Egyptian women?
Answer: The Syrian women wear tighter jeans.

My dad would be unlikely to ask me what the difference is between French and Spanish women, because a) they are not considered to be particularly downtrodden anymore, b) they are far too commonplace, and c) they are European so are likely to be annoyingly complicated, and anyway it depends if they are from Paris or a small Burgundian village, and if they are the doctor or a farmer's wife, and if they go to church regularly or attend private sex-orgies (this is big in Paris - according to Catherine M., but I never got invited). As for the difference between English and Scottish women; who cares?

Now I come to your second point, Raouf: let's entitle my answer: When the Arab lover turns Arab hater. It is about the nature of expectations and disappointment; because I think we must imagine that Bernard Lewis began his career as a young scholar, enamoured of all things Arab, Arabic and Islamic, and ends it embittered and hardened against them - determined to prove that the Arabs are all scoundrels.

It is no good going around saying that Arabs are all terrorists, but nor is it much good going around saying that Islam is a wonderful religion and Arabs are the kindest people on earth, for when you land in Cairo or Riyadh or even the home of the most perfect Arab 'victim', Gaza, you might find yourself confronted not only by the sweet and generous and dignified, but by the foolish, selfish hoards of humanity, lacking perhaps irony and taste and letting you down 'heartlessly' in small but significant ways, and little by little the love turns to resentment and mistrust.

The Westerner should never expect more of those 'others' - who unbeknown to them - we have desperately set aside to tend to our spiritual, cultural, and sexual salvation. Many travellers speak of the kindness they are met and treated with - a kindness that is so selfless and excessive that is can literally OVERWHELM. And yet there is precious little salvation outside of oneself, and where there is degradation and despair and poverty. We must carry with us our own reserves of joy or we will find ourselves yet more alone and bereft in an incomprehensible system that must be, we sadly conclude, stupid and evil.

The trouble with Orientalists

2007-08-05T13:26:00.000+01:00

Commenting on what P wrote on Orientalism and Edward Said
I think Edward Said has a problem with the "others" and within himself. He seems to be a person with fixed ideas and that scares me a lot
He had his fixed ideas on orientalism which I think was mixed with a lot of unripe political ideas and theories of misunderstanding of his opposition to be "mo'alem" in the old meaning of the word and a political Guru.
His obsession with anti-Arafat policies especially after Camp David was an example of his misunderstanding of the movement of Palestinian politics and it's pragmatic way of people who live day by day under constant threat from Arabs and Israelis.
There is more than one issue - in my view of the mental concept and the understanding of scholars and amateurs who are interested in Arabs and the Orient.
All of them have a sort of Christian background (they are westerners) so they have these aggressive hostile ideas about Islam, like Bernard Lewis, and others, who think Islam is so fanatical and the Muslims are to be blamed for not being able to understand it!
This is the background and it is misleading, because Islam is not a religion - only - but a way of life: five times a day the Mo'azen would call for prayers, Ramadan and the craziness of it, all the Eids, the laziness, the siestas, the Insah'allhs, the Boukaras, and so on
Other 'young, inexperienced' orientalists are sensitive to how the Arabs are looking at and receiving them, because when they come face to face the first time with the language and the people they are disappointed, because they are rejected and scorned!
They come with the same ideas of the tradesman-missionary: Humble and pretending to want to learn from the natives, but at the same time they belive they are doing them a great favour by coming to them and living like they live.
I was astonished what P wrote about her knowledge of some sentences in Arabic: the insults.
I have followed some sad and frustrating experiences of young "orientalists"; how they exchange bad vibrations with the "natives" and return home empty handed except for bitterness and a feeling of emptiness.
Some Egyptian scholar - I think it was Hasan Hanfy - tried half seriously to invent the expression "westernalist el moustagrebon or El Estegrab, but it did not work, because the West is not only colonialism and imperialism and the hamburger .. it is more than that: it is music and its history connected with the church and the aristocratic classes and all the other things such as paintings, sculpture architecture and hundreds of big and small details.
Let me ask this aggressive question:
The Bush administration's ideas about 'democracy' - and enforcing it on the Arabs - as he understands is from his bible: and the secret hidden ideas of a lot of young people who spent years trying to study Arabic and THE ARABS; How much difference is there between them and Bush's ideas?!
I do not consider myself an "expert" on the West because I know some English which helps me to read and write, and I have lived many years in the West but cannot and do not want to claim any special knowledge about it (though my wife is from the west and my kids were borne in the west).
Does any Arab who masters the Arabic language become a reference on the Arabic culture or its people? no!!
So what is the problem then !
Can any person answer me ? Raouf

UNSPOKEN LOVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

2007-08-04T09:33:00.001+01:00

Brain Whitaker, Guardian newspaper reporter in Lebanon, wrote a book about "unspoken love"
Love as a subject deserves this meditation; The Middle East does not stop talking about love; There is no word in Arabic for the word like ..

Love is the dominant terminology used. Love food, love the weather and the love of God and love the homeland. All songs are about love. What then is this love that dare not be announced that is written about by the Guardian correspondent that decided to make it public?
IT'S HOMOSEXUALITY!!
The term "Habib" IS masculine which is in most songs.
SO ...The seriousness of this book is because it declares what is known of Love and hidden in the Middle East,
the State represented by the police, overtaking gatherings of homosexuals and detaining them to bring them to trial on charges of "contempt of religion", and sentencing them with the harshest penalties amid applause by the community and the press, because homosexuality is considered a conspiracy of Western imperialism and Zionism.

The publishing house is the Arab "EL SAQI": headquarters in London. The book is subtitled (GAY AND LESBIAN LIFE IN THE MIDDLE EAST).

Homosexuality is a great Taboo!
Why? It affects the backbone of social relations in the Middle East: honour and the views of others according to this attitude.
Impunity in crimes related to the theme of honour are watched by everyone in all Arab societies with enthusiasm and interest. The lighter penalties are given for the killings on defending honour... Sometimes one year in Jordan, a few years in Egypt; Although the "normal" punishment for murder can be up to more than ten years.
Not only does the writer bring examples from Egypt and Lebanon; he provides examples on what happens in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and incidents of brutality by moral police in Iran and how the "Promotion of Virtue" guards in Saudi Arabia concentrate on homosexuals .

The writer mentions the special relationship between Muslim extremists living in the West, and the Christian hardliners in the "common struggle" against sexual relationships that deny interpretations of Islamic fundamentalism, such as "homosexual and abortion."

He gives the example of the statement on "Islam Online" of the opinion given by Sheikh Faisal Mawlawi, Deputy Chairman of the European Council for opinions and research that is in cooperation with non-Muslim issues outlawed by Islamic religion, sharing them with Westerners. Published on "Islam Online" is a fatwa from Sheikh Ahmed Alkotai that gives the possibility of cooperation with hardline Christians to "cleanse" the streets of homosexuals as a religious duty. He said: "We should not hesitate to cooperate with our neighbours who are non-Muslims, to make the streets safe from drugs, alcohol, prostitution and homosexuals. "

Raouf

Rencontre de la Communauté gay et lesbienne du Maroc

2007-08-04T08:58:00.000+01:00

شَبكة تجمّع مِثليّ المَغرب

Rencontre de la Communauté gay et lesbienne du Maroc

I find this site and I like to put it in Madny Blog!
Raouf

وصف استجوابات الإخوان المسلمين في البرلمان بأنها "جنسية"
روائي مصري يدافع عن "الشذوذ" ويقول إنها "تهمة" لا تزعجه

القاهرة - السيد زايد

من المتوقع أن تثير عودة الروائي المصري رءوف مسعد إلى القاهرة الأسبوع الماضي بعد غياب ردود فعل جديدة في الأوساط الأدبية والفكرية والأزهرية تماثل تلك التي هاجر بسببها إلى هولندا قبل عدة سنوات، إذ أعلن أن سبب عودته هو تدشين روايته الجديدة "إيثاكا" التي يدافع فيها بحسب كلامه عن "النشاط الجنسي" لمن أسماهم "ضحايا الباخرة المصرية (كوين بوت) عام 2004". واعتبر مسعد في ذلك الوقت أن محاكمتهم غير قانونية لأنهم "لم يمارسوا الجنس مقابل المال" مساويا بذلك بين الشذوذ (المثلية) والجنس الطبيعي حيث أن السلطات الأمنية المصرية ألقت القبض آنذاك على ركاب تلك الباخرة النيلية العائمة في أوضاع شذوذ، وصدرت ضدهم أحكام قضائية بالسجن بعد محاكمة استمرت عدة شهور، ثم تم الإفراج عنهم إثر ضجة كبيرة أثارتها جمعيات مثليين في العالم، وبعض منظمات حقوق الإنسان.

انتقد مسعد ما أسماه بـ "النشاط الجنسي" لنواب الإخوان المسلمين في البرلمان المصري (88 عضواً)، قائلاً:إن المتتبع لأسئلتهم واستجواباتهم يجد أن نصفها على الأقل تنصب في موضوع الجنس. كان مسعد المولود في السودان عام 1937 والمقيم في أمستردام بهولندا منذ العام 1990، قد زار إسرائيل في تسعينيات القرن الماضي، وتم نشر آخر روايتين له في مصر بعنوان "بيضة النعامة" وهي جزء من سيرته الذاتية و"إيثاكا" عالج فيها قضايا لمثليين جنسيين. ومن مؤلفاته الأخرى "انتظار المخلص رحلة إلى الأرض المحرمة " و"يا ليل يا عين" و"مزاج التماسيح"، وكان مسعد واحداً من الناشطين السياسيين في الستينيات وتعرض للاعتقال والسجن منذ العام 60 وحتى 64 بتهمة الشيوعية، وعمل بالصحافة في مصر وبيروت قبل هجرته إلى هولندا. ويرى النقاد إن روايات مسعد هي نموذج لما يسمى بـ "الأيروتيكية العربية"، وهو نمط جديد في الأدب العربي المعني بالجسد والجنس إلا أنه مسعد يعمد فيها إلى كسر "تابو" الدين والجنس بجرأة بالغة.

حول الدافع الذي جعل الروائي رءوف مسعد يعتنق مزاج الكتابة المشغولة بالجسد يقول في حواره مع "العربية.نت" إن مهمتي ككاتب أن ابحث عن "الاختراقات" لعالم يبدو مجهولا وهو في الحقيقة غير ذلك، لكنه مسكوت عنه ولا يريد أي كاتب الاقتراب منه لأنه خطر ولأن من يقترب منه سوف يوصم بأنه من هذا العالم. ويضيف "إنني استخدم الجسد "كوسيط" لكي أناقش كل القضايا فالأعمال الأدبية عادة لا تخاطب العقل، لكنها تتعامل مع الخيال والفانتازيا". ويري مسعد إن الثقافة الشرق أوسطية هي ثقافة المخاتلة والرياء والمداهنة وإخفاء الحقائق والتظاهر بعكس ما تبطن، مؤكدا أن هناك مناطق كثيرة في مصر والدول العربية تمارس الجنس المثلي على نطاق واسع سواء بين الذكور أو الإناث، وتبرز بين وقت وآخر جرائم انتهاكات جنسية للصبيان في المدارس. ويضيف "إنها ثقافة تعتمد على السب من خلال الجنس و"إهانة" الذكر بأنه "امرأة" وإهانة الناس بأنهم يمارسون الجنس.
وحول رأيه في علاء الأسواني ورواية يعقوبيان يقول: شاركت في مؤتمر في باريس أبريل/نيسان الماضي تحت عنوان سلطة الرواية بورقة بعنوان "كاتب قمعي ومجتمع قمعي": قلت فيه إن الأسواني كاتب قمعي ويقمع شخصياته، وقد التقيت مترجم يعقوبيان للإنجليزية وقال لي أنه ترجم الرواية لكي يقول للعالم الخارجي أن هذه مصر. من ناحية أخري يقول مسعد عن علاقة الأدب بالأخلاق "أنا ضد الكتابة الأخلاقية لأن الأخلاق اختراع إنساني براجماتي، متسائلاً " ألم تتغير "أخلاق" العرب والمصريين خلال الربع قرن الأخير؟ هل من “الأخلاق" الحميدة تزييف الانتخابات المصرية مثلا؟.

سألته عن المخاوف التي تطارده خشية اتهامه بالشذوذ بعد كتاباته وزياراته وتردده على أندية المثليين الجنسيين في الغرب، فأجاب "لم تعد الاتهامات تهمني فحتى ما تطلق عليه أنت اصطلاح "الشذوذ" لا اعتبره تهمة ولست في معرض نفيه وإنكاره أو تأكيده، فالسلوك الشخصي للإنسان ونشاطه الجنسي هو أمر بالغ الخصوصية لا يحق للآخرين التدخل فيه. ويتساءل مسعد "هل تستطيع أن تقول لي ما هو الأذى الذي يسببه النشاط الجنسي للمثليين؟. في السياق ذاته يقول مدافعاً عن سلوك المثليين "إن السلوك المثلي أسلوب لحياة جزء من المجتمع حتى لو كان صغيرا، أليس النشاط الجنسي لضحايا الباخرة المصرية "كوين بوت" عام 2004، هو شيئا يخصهم، فلماذا إذا يحاكمهم القانون بتهمة اعتياد الفجور طبقا للمادة القانونية التي قدمتهم بها النيابة العامة للمحاكمة وهم في الوقت نفسه وطبقا للمحاضر الحقيقة للشرطة لم يتعاطوا الجنس مقابل المال.

وجهت إليه سؤالاً مضمونه، ألم تجد غير المثليين بصفتهم فئة مضطهدة للدفاع عنهم في وطن مليء بالمظلومين والمقهورين من فقراء ومعدمين ومهضومي الحقوق؟، فقال: دعني أوجه لك سؤالاً: ألم يجد المسلمون شيئا أكثر أهمية من الجنس يبذلون جهدهم في تقنينه، والمثال الواضح هو النشاط "الجنسي" لنواب الإخوان المسلمين في مجلس الشعب، فالمتتبع لأسئلتهم واستجواباتهم سيجد أن نصفها على الأقل تنصب في موضوع الجنس، الحجاب مثلا والزوبعة التافهة حوله، رواية وليمة لأعشاب البحر، أفيشات بعض الأفلام..الخ. ويضيف: إن الإسلاميين أسسوا تجارة رابحة وكبيرة حول "الممنوعات الجنسية والثياب الحلال".

وأنهي مسعد حديثه لـ"العربية.نت" مؤكدا أنه حينما ذهب لإسرائيل في تسعينيات القرن الماضي كان مقتنعا بما يقوم به وأنه لم يذهب من أجل التطبيع ولكن من أجل رؤية الآخر على طبيعته، مؤكداً أن الكثير من الناس أصبحوا يتقبلون التطبيع مع إسرائيل في السنوات الأخيرة بعدما خف التوتر العام حول القضية. وفي معرض حديثه عن المبدعين العرب الشباب قال إن الرواية العربية ستصبح رواية الانترنت والكمبيوتر والجنس والأكلات السريعة والعلاقات المتغيرة داخل الأسرة حيث تعددت مصادر الكسب وتنوعت. وعن الهواجس التي تؤرقه قال "اتفقت أنا وزوجتي علي أخذ حبة الموت الرحيم إذا تدهورت حالتينا الصحية وعجزت أجهزتنا الحيوية عن ممارسة وظائفها، أرغب في الموت بشكل لطيف وبكرامة، وحينما أحس أن وظائفي الحيوية توقفت عن العمل فمن الأفضل أن أرحل".
قناة العربية © 2006

chez moi & toi

2007-08-03T13:42:00.000+01:00

Commenting on Elly's post about my post and on Persephone on Elly's cry about the injustice in her work which she is doing for free... I want to say:
I like and agree completely with what Persephone wrote about quitting silly work and working for yourself. I remember meeting Dutch people at parties in my early days in Holland when they asked me "where do you work or what do you do? and how I shocked them by saying "I work chez moi" or "work? I do not work... My wife supports me"
They left me immediately... I am dangerous
We need to be dangerous and scaring assholes people!

the crazy Qaddafi

2007-08-03T11:14:00.000+01:00

The dramatic story of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor could only happen in Libya and it could only be done by a crazy officer from a lower rank such as Qaddafi of Libya
Let us Imagine the situation: dirty Libyan hospitals; suspicious unclean equipments; and blood...
Libyan children get sick with AIDS!
So who is the scapegoat? Some poor nurses from Eastern Europe and a doctor without a country!
Qaddafi, who is well known for his crimes (Lockerby and others), took the poor nurses and the doctor HOSTAGE and began a long process of alongside other rulers of the respected countries (!?) or they are like him: arseholes?
Raouf

Illegitimacy

2007-08-01T22:38:00.000+01:00

I met my deadline and I feel miserable

I produced a good looking newsletter and I feel like shit.

I did what I had to do. And on time. Yet I feel worse than before.

Work is a terrible curse. Not least when like a fool you work hard, and as part of the team, but unlike others in the office - you are doing it for no pay. I am working for this organisation because 'I believe in it' and they have no jobs and I'm a martyr to a cause...

I walked home and found myself incensed and wretched. As I opened the front door to my sister's home, I began to cry. It was 9.30pm and I had been in the office since 10am. I had not stopped for lunch; I had eaten my chewy pork pieces and pasta at my desk like the heathen I am.

I produced the newsletter, and I get a special thank you in the Editorial, but my name does not come in the list of the ICO team, but with the other volunteers. And it hits me: of course, I am not actually 'part of the team' because I am not getting paid.

What an idiot I am; what a sucker. Always working, but with NO legitimacy.

And legitimacy is everything: the paper contract and the pay slip and the mortgage and the rental agreement and the marriage certificate.

I am illegitimate. Only my mother knows I have a birth certificate.

writing

2007-08-01T11:31:00.000+01:00

Aim a writer but I think Aim also dyslectic! Funny isn’t it? Sure
All my life I have problem in READING... I read very quickly.. then I get stocked because I mixed lines together or I mixed letters ..but that did not stop me reading and enjoying what I read
For a dyslectic person wanted to be a writer is something beyond normal courage and beyond "normal talent"
To gather my courage EVERY day ,to write is a challenge: having questions as :is there any person wants or needs to read what I write? is what I write going to change any thing?and so on.
Writing in Arabic is still a problem for me (less now than before) because Arabic grammar is difficult at least for me... so I invented a new way of writing to avoid falling in mistakes : using simple style mixing it with "ammiea- local speaking " and readers like it !! but still make mistakes in spilling because of my eyes problems and the dyslectic thing. Elly is not happy with my English. She is right .She has the right to protect her language from deforming it by invaders like me

In addition, I have the right to write in any way I want, correct or wrong: because the most important thing -in my opinion- is do, I succeed to reach the reader or not?she corects my posts, and i drive her crazy(her experission)
I forget to say that I used to stutter until my thirties!
HA HA!!
Raouf

Good morning to the land of?!

2007-07-31T11:03:00.000+01:00

I find an old photo of my father in its old brownish color... he is putting a Tarboush on his head at a slight angle to his left and in a suit difficult to say which color, but very obvious is his white (yes white!) belt over his slightly big belly

He looks clean shaven with a small moustache, black tie over a white shirt. His left hand is closed tightly (nervously?) and his right one is hidden behind him. The background is not clear but it seems to be a sort of office or a room.
He looks in his late forties: about 25 years or so before his death. Maybe I was just around.

It is difficult to describe the look on his face... He seems rather embarrassed or shy or scared or all those things together.
I do not even know the time or the land where the photo was taken, but I prefer it to be in the Sudan because there he was healthy and happy. He was not in Egypt when he resettled there.

I look at the photo and him, thinking: most probably there are places and lands where we human beings are at our best... also there must be places which reflect on us sadness and sickness and unhappiness!
So many years have passed sincean unknown photographer took this photo, but there is or are things hanged strongly over it and over him...
I think sometimes when I look at the photo, I can smell him... with his particular smell... the smell of a father!
raouf

Working for free after turning 70!!

2007-07-31T10:44:00.000+01:00

I got an interesting mail from a TV station, and I answered them and they responded...

CZECH TV: Thursday 2 or Friday 3/08

Dear Mr Moussad,

For CZECH Television I'm preparing a news reportage on the increased violence against homosexuals in some Amsterdam area's. As I read that you are an expert on the gay issues and an authority on the Amsterdam Arab gay scene, I was wandering if you would be available for an interview on this subject. Our journalist Barbora Samalova will be in Amsterdam on Thursday August 2 or on Friday August 3. The Interview would take about 20 minutes.

If you would need any more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Many thanks in advance,
Best regards,

Débora Votquenne
TV-News Research & Production

Headline News Facilities
Av. du Diamant 95
BE-1030 Brussels
tel: +32 2 732 41 40
fax: +32 2 732 46 03
www.headline.be

Dear Debora
Thanks for your message and your proposal for me to speak on CZECH TV
I would like to explain 2 things here:
1) I am not THAT much of an EXPERT on gays issues and/or the Arab gays in Amsterdam. I am a writer and am interested in "marginal" groups in society. I volunteered to work in the Arab gay organization in Amsterdam helping in the cultural program. I wrote a novel in Arabic last year about the "Queen Boat people" in Egypt - the incident that attracted international support for Egyptian Gays.

2)I take a standard fee for my interviews on TV

You can look at: Ra'ouf Mus'ad - Wikipedia,
and http://madny.blogspot.com
phone 0031-0618172072

See youraouf
- -
Dear Raouf,

Many thanks for your reply.
Unfortunately, we are not allowed to pay for interviews.

Best Regards,
Débora

To Hans from Canada who responded to my interview on Radio Netherlands on Homos

2007-07-30T12:55:00.000+01:00

Let us deal with facts
1- I'm not Muslim so I am sure that my arguments on Islam and Islamic fundamentalists are more objective than yours.
And I have - and continue to - write about and criticize fundamentalists – not only Muslims – but Christians and Jews.
2- It is not necessary to be a fundamentalist to be a terrorist. But a terrorist could be a nationalist or in the resistance also !
3- History tells us that the first “religious terrorist" army was the crusades; the crusaders put crosses on their weapons and killed Arabs Muslims and Christians under a religious claim.
4- The spearhead of the western colonialist armies were the “missions" in Africa, Asia and Latin America
5- All religions do not accept the other religions. That is the reasons they all still exist or it would be one religion in the world!
6- Till recently - and still in some places in the West - gays are attacked no matter the colour of their skin, by groups of white youth and skinheads.
7- What do you think was - or still is - the KKK if not a group of white Christian terrorists?
8- When did the first Palestinian suicide bomber appeare? Less than 20 years ago. It means they were trying to find other ways. And I am very much against suicide bombers but also I'm very much against settlers and the killing of innocent Palestinians by Israeli soldiers
9- I am against the murder ofTheo van Gogh but am against his silly, provocative film and his partner Ayaan Hirsi Ali
So that is me and those are the facts which you are willing to ignore!
Raouf

Security, security, security. Stupidity, Scheming, Spite. So much for shalom, salaam

2007-07-29T14:51:00.000+01:00

Raouf forbade me from posting bad world news. And yet, here is some more, as humans Insaan are forgetful. For an excellent full-length documentary on the destruction wrought in the West Bank in the name of security for settlers, see the Iron Wall my Mohammed Alatar

Undercover in Brixton

2007-07-29T14:02:00.000+01:00

I like to think of myself as North London girl. Why, I not sure. After all I only moved back from Cairo 6 months ago and before that I was a anywhere-there-is-a-spare-room-in-greater-London girl. At some point my sister will come back from her holidays and throw me out. I say 'at some point' whilst knowing very well the exact date and time, and closing my ears to it, even though it is inside my very own head. Then I must choose where to live. For a Libran and an Elly, choice is very over-rated. Frankly I don't like it too much. In the past I just got to hear of a place that happened to be somewhere and I said yes before seeing it, and that was that - no agonising over whether it has good transport links or a good scene or is a murder hot-spot. Soon I will have to choose and maybe, just maybe I'll head south of the river... that is where I ended up last night - standing outside Brixton tube in my raincoat, waiting in a kind of hangover stupor to be picked up by my friend, and staring at everyone else waiting for whatever.

I'm a big starer - I just have to stare at people's faces and hands and clothes and the way they open their mouth, imagining everything about their absurd lives - absurd because it is not my life so is incomprehensible in its rhythm and purpose. A young girl ran across the road exaggeratedly grimacing in the rain, and a dark, handsome guy stood behind me and I couldn't look at him. Patrolling the entrance was a kind of motley crew of broken-nosed, toothless used day-travel-card touts. I gawped and scrutinised their interactions with each other and passing human traffic. I imagined how they might think me an undercover police-officer and that excited me so I gawped more intensely and smiled knowingly to myself, planning the write-up I would do back at the station. I wondered if they loved and looked after each other or if they were too paranoid and fucked-over to have friendships as I understand them. One white guy looked like he had arrived full of some hope from Latin America 20 years ago and been forgotten and beaten up here and just stayed. The two black men were a bit less unsightly but their stories looked bad.

Brixton rocks - it moves -it pulsates with life and longing and I love the bling - there is no bling in Golder's Green (GG). I think GG would think that is some achievement but it is a bit dreary - I like slutty-looking girls and church-going women and smelly students all kind of mixed up together. GG station entrance always has some rattled looking tourists and innocent Eastern European couples. And of course Brixton is black. Absolutely black. It might seem glib, but when you go from white North London to black South London, you begin to see how skewered your perspective is. It just stops making sense- any of the rationales; rather your own messiness makes sense again. The underground train that pulls out of Brixton tube station is black and when it arrives in GG it is white.

This is London. No, London is this and that and something else and keep guessing.

Officer Lust?

2007-07-29T13:36:00.000+01:00

Raouf, your interview with Radio Netherlands was excellent - not least because it was interspersed with comments by Officer Elly Lust. Am I hallucinating- surely they made that up?! I have now to quote the response to the article that you got online by a certain Hans from Canada:

"Not the Devil, but Hirsi Ali made me do it!" - Rauf Moussad is willfully confusing cause and effect here, I think. Sad to see that, as an intellectual, Moussad is following the usual Muslim/Leftist tactic of blaming problems of Islamic cultures on those outside it, never accepting their own responsibility. His remarks make the usual appeal to the reflex of self-hate of "evil colonialist racist" Liberal Western societies, who can easily be made to feel guilty about anything. Maybe those kids at the supermarket just didn't finish school. Maybe their segregated upbringing (secured and encouraged by Multiculturalism) didn't prepare them for life in modern society, but instead indoctrinated them to see the Dutch as enemies. Self-exclusion better describes it than victimhood. Historian Efraim Karsh wrote (in "Islamic Imperialism") that Muslim societies' problems can only be started to be addressed when their own inner dynamics are given more importance, instead of assuming they are mostly defined by the West's actions. After all, it's not only Islam's relation to the West that are troubled..."

Now surely you have an answer to this, Raouf habibi? The thing about Hans' comment is its tone of smugness and the scorn for 'Muslim communities' inner problems that is veiled in the neo-imperialist language of so-called tough love and realism; it goes something like this: 'We' here in the Western world have magnanimously and humbly - and for too long - admitted guilt over our rather embarrassing colonialist past, but enough is enough - accept that we are sorry and accept that it is the past and we can't do anything about it, so stop whining and start putting your own houses in order - I mean look at the mess you are making - all that tribalism and factional fighting and burning of your women - at least 'we' don't do that anymore - we have been to school and learnt good, modern values whilst 'you people' insist on staying in your neighbourhoods and resenting our good fortune and freedom and insisting on your backwards ways. Well, frankly we've had enough - either you adapt and shut up or you can go home...

Thank you Hans' for your generous words of understanding.

المثليون الهولنديون من أصول عربية يتعرضون للعنف

2007-07-29T11:44:00.000+01:00

ملحوظة : هذا الحوار مترجم الى العربية من النص الإنجليزي

المثليون الهولنديون من أصول عربية يتعرضون للعنف

نيكولين دن بور- إذاعة هولندا العالمية

ترجمة: حميد حداد

يتصاعد العنف ضد المثليين في أمستردام على ما يبدو. ليست هناك أرقام دقيقة، لكن من الثابت أن البلاغات لدى الشرطة في تزايد. منفذو الاعتداءات هم غالباً من الفتيان ذوي الأصول المغربية. لكن المثليين العرب هم أيضاً من ضحايا تلك الاعتداءات في الغالب. هذا ما يقوله الكاتب المصري المقيم في هولندا، والمهتم بشؤون المثليين رؤوف مسعد وهو زائر دائم لجمعية المثليين العرب في أمستردام.

يتردد الكاتب رؤوف مسعد على مقهى المثليين في العاصمة أمستردام "حبيبي أنا" حيث يتواجد الكثير من المثليين العرب. يسمع الكثير من قصص العنف التي هم ضحاياها. مساء الأمس أيضا وفي تجمع لهم في قاعة "براديسو" للحفلات في أمستردام كان ثمة خوف لدى الحاضرين.

"أنا الآن أكثر حذرا من السابق عندما اذهب إلى "حبيبي أنا" إذ أن الحالة أصبحت أكثر خطرا من السابق". وتحذرني زوجتي أيضا من الذهاب إلى هناك.

"أمستردام كانت لفترة طويلة عاصمة المثليين في العالم، لكن ذلك بدأ بالتغير. وهذا ما لا نريد له أن يحدث في أمستردام".

لكن مسعد يتساءل، لماذا ارتفع عدد تلك الاعتداءات ضد المثليين في السنوات الأخيرة تحديداً، بالرغم من أن التنوع ليس بالأمر الجديد في هولندا. ويرى أن ذلك بدأ بالتزامن مع صعود خطاب معادٍ للإسلام من قبل بعض الأحزاب اليمينية، بدأته السياسية من اصل صومالي ايان هيرسي علي. إضافة إلى شعور عام لدى كثير من الشباب المغربي بالعزلة والإحباط.

"أنهم يتحدثون الهولندية ودرسوا هنا لكنهم ليسوا جزءا من المجتمع الهولندي. نعم، فهم يعملون في الأسواق والمحلات كبائعين، مع الاحترام لكل الأعمال. لكن الإعلام الهولندي "أبيض"، وكل الوظائف المغرية والبراقة محتكرة من قبل الهولنديين الأصليين. لذلك يبحث هؤلاء عن خلاصهم في الدين، يذهبون إلى الجامع حيث يتم الحديث أحيانا عن المثليين بكراهية" يقول مسعد.

تنمو الكراهية لدى هؤلاء الفتيان ضد المجتمع الهولندي و كذلك ضد كل قيم المجتمع كالتسامح اتجاه المثليين.

يمارسون العنف الآن ضد المثليين العرب، وهو ما يمكن تفسيره بسهولة، يقول مسعد. فالمثليون العرب يمثلون حقا القيم الغربية. علاوة على ذلك فهم ليسوا أقوياء، فهم يخفون ميولهم عن عائلاتهم. لهذا ما زالوا لا يجؤون على التقدم ببلاغ حين يتعرضون لاعتداء أومضايقة.

ليس من المعروف بعد عدد المثليين العرب الذين تقدموا ببلاغات لدى مركز البلاغات الخاص التابع لشرطة أمستردام. ووفقا لايلي لوست فإن الدخول إلى مركز الشرطة يظل أمراً يحتاج إلى شيء من الجرأة، حتى لدى المواطنين الأصليين من غير المثليين. لهذا فقد تأسست مؤخراً وحدة شرطة خاصة تسمى "وردي بالأزرق" -اللون الوردي هو شعار المثليين، والأزرق زيّ الشرطة الهولندية- ويعمل فيها شرطة ذوو ميول مثلية. تعمل هذه الوحدة في مككز البلاغات التلفونية، كما يقوم أفرادها بدوريات في شوارع العاصمة أمستردام اثناء كرنفال المثليين الذي سيبدأ هذا العام في الرابع من اغسطس القادم.

The language of the mystics... the language of love

2007-07-29T10:33:00.000+01:00

Ibn al Farid lived a solitary life in Cairo and Hijaz, and his Arabic odes, small in number "resemble the choicest and finest jewel -work of a fastidious artist rather than the first fruit of a Divine inspiration " to quote one of his interpreters, Reynold A. Nicholson

"Ice cool are his deep-red lips, and sweet his mouth to kissing in the morning,
yea, even before the toothpick's cleansing excelling the musk in fragrance
and investing it with its own perfume
of his mouth and his glances cometh my intoxication: nay, but see a vintner
in his every limp.
When the silence of the rings upon his fingers vexed him,
then the girdles about his waist speak forth to the uttermost of his desire:
Delicate are those girdles,and fine that waist, the former is akin to my love-song
and the latter draweth out of excellence of its meaning
so that it vies with it Therine
like the bough of the tree
he is in stature,
and like dawn in beauty
his hair is dark as night
reaching down even to the middle of his back .."

Arab homos in Amsterdam

2007-07-28T12:53:00.000+01:00

Gays in Amsterdam
Some years ago I was looking at the gay pride (not parade) in Amsterdam which takes place every year through the canals by boats .. I heard Arabic music and then saw what looked like Arabs men dancing badly.
I followed them and got their name Habibi Ana a bar for Arab homos
That is beginning of my knowing them and I go almost every week to have drink in the bar and sometimes I take my wife or my lady friends... and they have accepted me and I them. I volunteered for a year to do some cultural activities for them (without great results )
Lately there were some bad incidents against Arab gays who have been targeted by Moroccans boys; or that is what the media said
I know about that and I was worried about my own safety
Some Dutch radio contacted me asking what I think about this new phenomena... and why is it escalating now?

Homophobic attacks in Amsterdam: my interview

2007-07-28T12:51:00.000+01:00

Homophobic attacks in Amsterdam: the perpetrators - Radio Netherlands Worldwide - Independent thinking, independent voice - English
this is my interview
raouf