tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86487094596965212012024-03-05T22:30:40.645-08:00Drinking from the Nilefragments of a life in EgyptLucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-29306121467835281182017-12-16T10:05:00.001-08:002017-12-16T10:06:40.965-08:00The Handmaid's Tale <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Rare is it to watch television so
searing as to elicit a visceral and almost continuous feeling of tension and
slow-creeping fear. But try, as a woman, to watch The Handmaid’s Tale and not
feel that parts of you have been bruised, others ripped open. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The vivid brutality of the world evoked
by this series is breathtaking, its power the result of economy. Not all violence
comes in technicolour. Disenfranchised women, offered an outlet for their rage,
savage a man to death with their bare hands. A newborn baby is wrenched from
its mother, as she cries out in soundless agony. A man lasciviously licks the
stump of a woman kept alive only to pleasure him and others like him - because
in this society, all female body parts except the reproductive organs are
dispensable. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The basic premise might once have
been termed the stuff of Orwellian nightmares. Now it feels more like eerie
prescience. In an America beset by environmental and social problems, with catastrophically
declining fertility levels, social restructuring has been orchestrated by an
elite that wields its power mercilessly. Still-fertile women are subjected to ritualistic
rape for the purpose of procreation, its baseness in no way disguised by a
veneer of religious ceremony. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
As with all good totalitarian
regimes, the new state is peopled by an extensive spy network and designed to
subjugate any attempts at free thought. Academics have been sent to a toxic
wasteland or brutally murdered; books have been burned, museums and churches destroyed,
games outlawed. The sterility of sanctioned interactions is embodied by the accepted
phrases and greetings used: joyless <i>praise
bes</i> and <i>blessed days</i> pepper this social
wasteland, where, we are told, carbon emissions have reduced dramatically,
crops grow and children are born. Only the ominous <i>under his eye</i> carries with it a deeper meaning – a reminder to
watch others as you are watched, that privacy has been abolished, that your eye
can be plucked out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But this series made me recall
recent – unrelated – conversations with two female friends who, by coincidence,
each said the same thing: still so much about conception is a mystery. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So too parenthood, so too sexuality,
so too human connection. Life finds a way. A defiant sentence etched into a
wall can penetrate a person’s psyche. Trying to reduce a group of women to
bland uniformity, to erase individual identity, may instead create a solidarity
so powerful as to give birth to resistance. As two people find each other after
long separation, they are reminded that familial bonds are not always of blood,
but they cannot be artificially created. Women who have been robbed of their
agency in every possible respect wield what weapons they have to fight back:
they speak their own names, they tell their stories, they insist on being
remembered. One steals a car and deliberately, with exhilaration, runs over one
of the faceless men who has served as a warden in her open-air prison. The
viewer shares in mixed fear and triumph at the bloody mess she leaves, knowing a
worse fate awaits her, encased in walls of clinical white. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The Handmaid’s Tale is a glorious
celebration of humanity’s enduring ability to give the finger to forces that
would have us cower, even as it is a warning against the growth of the
totalitarian regime in sheep’s clothing. Its female characters are not only
real and vivid; they, in particular, resist easy characterisation and are
accorded a depth and complexity equalled by no male character. Two of the women
who in some ways govern, were part of creating or at least perpetuate the
system are shown, as the series progresses, to be compassionate as well as
bitter and petty, to wish to protect and nurture even while they continue to
bully and torment. You see flashes of their anguish and remorse, and you see
how these feelings fuel their fury. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In close-up shots exposing both wrinkles
and inner thoughts – each one perhaps equally dangerous for women in this
society – steely resolve can crumple to vulnerability, smug complacency can
turn to confusion and revulsion can be painfully pushed to one side to make
room for mock-flirtatiousness. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The ultimate success of this
series, for me, is that you are never invited to judge the protagonist. She is
sympathetic but refuses to be saintly. She swears and rails against the
unfairness of her situation but she seizes her chance to seek pleasure for its
own sake and she won’t apologise for it. You feel every violation of her body,
whether it is the crack of a whip on her feet or the slithering of an unwanted
finger running down her arm. You feel the potency of her barely-contained rage
and you find yourself waiting, breathless, until the moment when it will
finally explode into life. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-6286892721500880882017-10-16T09:03:00.000-07:002018-01-16T09:13:40.812-08:00#MeToo<br /><br />Aged 10. On holiday in southern France, you see that your mother doesn’t want to leave you waiting outside a restaurant in the street on your own. She is all fierce and protective Mama-bear. When you ask why, she tells you it’s because of the way men are looking at you. Confused, you protest: but I’m ten.<br /><br />It makes no difference, she answers. For them you have a woman’s body. You’re fair game.<br /><br />You feel dirty and stop wearing shorts for the rest of the trip.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Aged 13. It’s common knowledge at school that one fifty year old maths teacher twangs the bras of his students. He does it and then he laughs. You have always been grateful that he was never your teacher and you wonder why the girls who have been harassed by him don’t complain to someone.<br /><br />But he’s not the teacher who one day comments on your breasts casually in a passing conversation. And when this happens you wonder if it was somehow your fault. And you don’t complain either.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Aged 17. You go to a friend’s house party and a 24 year old army soldier that your friend met that day and invited home tells you that you’re pretty. You don’t know anyone except your friend, who has gone to bed, and the only place for you to sleep is the floor. When he tries to kiss you and you say no, he starts shouting. The only way you can get him to stop is by agreeing to sleep beside him on the floor. He whispers in your ear "at least now you know you have someone who really cares about you". Every part of you is filled with revulsion but you are scared of what might happen if you tell him to leave you alone, or if he gets angry again.<br /><br />You want to call your parents to come and pick you up but don’t want to seem like a child, or make them worry, or be told you can’t go to parties any more.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Aged 21. You go for dinner in Thailand with a New Zealand acquaintance who works at a local guesthouse. You don’t realise until you arrive at the restaurant on his motorbike, miles from anywhere, that he believes you’re on a date. He starts telling stories about all the women he has slept with, in detail. You panic internally.<br /><br />You keep trying to steer the conversation away from sex. He keeps dragging it back. You tell him how conservative you are, tell him the story about the person back home you have feelings for, tell him point blank that you don’t want to have sex with him.<br /><br />He tells you he is a reiki practitioner and that, if he can’t have sex with you, he’ll settle for lying naked in the dark, “exchanging energy”.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Aged 25. Standing on a metro platform in Paris, a leering 50-something year old man with a giant, protruding hernia makes an obscene gesture and remark to your beautiful 23 year old sister. You are filled with rage. You have vivid fantasies about punching his hernia, seeing him doubled over in pain for even looking at her that way. But the crowds come between you and you wonder if the situation had escalated whether anyone would have stopped to help you anyway.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Aged 28. Cairo, during the Friday prayer, in the middle of Ramadan. A man follows you home from grocery shopping without you realising he is there and squeezes your ass as you wait for the lift in the entrance hall to your building. You are furious but before you can even react he is running to his car. You think to cry out, but your doorman is immersed in prayer beside you and has noticed nothing, and what good could it do anyway? The man is already driving away.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Aged 31. The man who you are used to thinking of as your best friend regularly tells you no one will ever love you the way he does, that all your relationship choices have been terrible, that he is the only person who really sees how beautiful you are. He is angry that you don’t love him. He tells you how selfish you are and you feel guilty, and then he tells you that you are the most wonderful woman in the world and he can’t bear to lose you, and you feel guiltier.<br /><br />Friends tell you to cut him out but it takes four years for you to finally understand that this is a toxic relationship you don’t have to be part of and to tell him not to contact you anymore. The feeling of relief is instantaneous.<br /><br />---<br /><br />If the point of the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/metoo?source=feed_text&story_id=10102274237247489">#MeToo</a> stories is to show how widespread sexual harassment and assault are, I think we also have to recognise their insidiousness. I don’t believe there is a woman alive who has not experienced them in one capacity or another, only to find that there is little or no recourse for complaint or help.<br /><br />Many male friends have expressed shock and disgust at the fact that women from all over the world, from all walks of life, are posting #MeToo today. We have not all experienced the most brutal and degrading forms of harassment and assault – and my heart aches for all those who have, female and male.<br /><br />But we all have stories of insidious incidents of objectification and the abuse of power. It’s not limited to certain parts of the world. It doesn’t only affect certain women. It has nothing to do with how pretty you are or what you wear. It’s the systematic abuse of power, plain and simple, which thrives in a festering climate where it is tacitly accepted that those who have more power (strength, influence, money…whatever) can do whatever they want with those who have less.Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-14146171706510864832017-06-29T09:00:00.000-07:002018-01-16T09:01:10.199-08:00The Poet<div class="MsoNormal">
The poet asked me to support his work on a summer evening.
We knew each other only by name but he spoke as a friend. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is a philosopher and a weaver of ideas. His job is to
lift the gossamer curtain that hides the beauty of everyday interactions, of
the mundane. A strange alchemy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I thought of connections that spread like giant spiders’
webs. Their tenuousness and their tenacity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of those who have never met in person but are moved by the
same words.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of the people you never believe you will lose, until one day
they are gone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of the ones who come back to you. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the half-light of dusk was luminous, and the wind
carried the stillness of a city breaking its fast. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And all was balm for my poor cluttered mind. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-78708385337639787262017-06-05T09:09:00.000-07:002018-01-16T09:16:29.941-08:00Terror and the price of fear Manchester – Minya – Baghdad – Kabul – London<br />
<br />
In less than two weeks.<br />
<br />
News of yet another terror attack in both my home country, Britain, and my adopted country, Egypt. Every time this happens, it strikes fear and sorrow in my heart. And in the echo chamber of Facebook, I see my pain and fear reflected in many people I know and love.<br />
<br />
There is nothing original in saying that the only possible goal of such attacks is to keep people the world over living in ever-greater fear. Fearful people are easy to manipulate. It’s so much easier to perpetuate an “us vs. them” narrative when people are afraid of what a frightening place the world has become, when we have become accustomed to seeing danger around every corner.<br />
<br />
I do believe the world has become a more frightening place. And the frequency of attacks designed to provoke chaos, and that blind, visceral jolt that is the essence of the word terror is part of that, of course. Each person who died or has been injured in such attacks will have or have had loved ones, and plans, and a life ahead of them. Each one of them could be any of us. The idea that this raw violence can penetrate even our safe spaces — whether these be pop concerts for teenagers or ice-cream shops for children celebrating Ramadan — cuts to the quick. It makes our stomachs contract and our hearts beat painfully faster.<br />
<br />
And that’s the point.<br />
<br />
But the slow drip of fear that grips us in our daily lives as a result of the narratives fuelling these attacks is more insidious. Hate crimes, incendiary speech, racism, isolation, insularity — the greater the fear, the more readily narrow worldviews and vicious, divisive rhetoric spread and become normalized.<br />
<br />
The world has become a more frightening place, not because startling inequality and monstrously unbalanced power dynamics exist now where they did not before, but because the fear that we are living with every single day makes it harder and harder to see beyond our own perspective.<br />
<br />
And meanwhile, slow-moving tragedies are unfolding under our noses. Climate change will make large parts of the planet uninhabitable within our lifetimes; Syria and Yemen are burning; brave people get stabbed on trains because they challenge the xenophobia that is becoming louder and louder in communities and in countries that have long prided themselves on holding values of diversity and tolerance paramount.<br />
<br />
I don’t believe it has to be this way. Even within my circles, I am remotely connected with people who offer extraordinary examples of how it is possible to remain clear-headed and compassionate and to fight fiercely for the values of a decent society, against this climate of fear. Brendan Cox, husband of murdered British MP Jo Cox, is one example of someone speaking out against division and vitriol with immense strength and dignity. Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour is a lioness, battling bigotry in multiple forms. Egyptian writer and activist Ahdaf Soueif fights to ensure the stories of people imprisoned and marginalised are heard, illuminating our common humanity even as she protests injustice. These people speak with intelligence, nuance and compassion; I wish their voices, and others like them, were amplified in the English-speaking media.<br />
<br />
Britain goes to the polls on Thursday. A surprise General Election called by Prime Minister Theresa May sees her ruling Conservative party pitted against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition. Two radically different leaders, both polarising; two utterly different visions for which direction the country should move in. A lead that seems to be shrinking by the day. And dominating the campaign of each, existential issues that will fundamentally alter our identity as a nation: Brexit, the future of the NHS, state surveillance, Scottish independence.<br />
<br />
The stakes are as high as our emotions. And again, that is the point. We will be voting on what we want our country to become. <br />
<br />
Nothing I am saying here is new, but I feel compelled to utter something more than my usual generic, if heartfelt, expressions of sorrow and increasing despair.<br />
<br />
Because one way or another, we have to change the narrative. We have to find a way to not let fear be the lens through which we view the world and our place within it in relation to others — whether those others are sitting beside us on the bus, living somewhere on the other side of the world or just images we see through a computer screen.<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
Published on Mada Masr: <br />
<br />
https://www.madamasr.com/en/2017/06/05/.../u/blog-terror-and-the-price-of-fear/Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-79824729138477050862017-01-27T09:21:00.003-08:002017-01-27T09:24:58.776-08:0027/01/17Holocaust Memorial Day.<br />
<br />
My paternal grandfather was born Fritz Rudolph Marx. He was German, of Jewish ancestry. Fortunate enough to be born into privileged circumstances, he and his immediate family left Germany before the country was fully entrenched in the ugly grip of fascism. He was lucky that his uncle, already settled in the UK, had had the prescience to tell my great-grandfather to get his family out while he could. <br />
<br />
When the Second World War broke out, my grandfather fought with the British army against the Nazis. He faced dangerous situations and was awarded the Military Cross for valour. After the war ended, he became a naturalised British citizen and changed his name to Frank Ralph. He kept the name Marx. <br />
<br />
All his friends knew him as Ralph and even with family he never spoke about the things he had seen and experienced. He never spoke German with his children. When I was about nine years old, I found some pictures in an old desk in his study which must have been taken when he was involved in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I will never forget those pictures, or the fact that my grandfather must have been thinking as he took them of his own family members who were not able to leave Germany as he had done. <br />
<br />
Living in Britain, my grandfather adopted a conservative stance towards issues of national policy, particularly economic ones. Though he died when I was 17 and we never discussed politics or identity, I think more and more of him as I get older. <br />
<br />
I’m sure there are many things we would have disagreed about but he was a deeply principled man, who was never afraid to put himself on the line for what he believed to be right. Probably the most important thing he ever taught me is that you should always stand up to bullies.<br />
<br />
Now I look at the world we’re living in and I vacillate between anger and despair at the wave of popular support for demagogues, riding on ugly prejudice and ignorance, and total humility in the face of people risking their comfort and safety to resist in the ways they can. <br />
<br />
I know the world has been witness to genocides for almost as long as human civilisation as we know it has existed. The horrors of the Holocaust should not eclipse what happened in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, or what is happening today in the Central African Republic, Myanmar and I imagine many other places that are not even on my radar. The genocide of Jews in Germany and throughout Europe is not a greater horror than the genocide of any of these peoples, but it does have particular resonance for me.<br />
<br />
I feel these days as though everywhere I look the bullies are winning – whether it’s on a huge scale in Syria, Yemen, Occupied Palestine, where the injustice is so brutally obvious as to take the breath away, whether it’s tacitly acknowledged but not talked about, as in countries not facing outright war but existing in a vacuum of minimal social and political freedoms and human rights, or whether it’s in a country like Britain, which I believe has long basked in pride at having been on “the right side of history” in 1939-1945 but which is clearly in no way resistant to the current sweeping wave of right-wing nationalism that demonises minorities and lives off stereotypes and fear.<br />
<br />
Clearly what is happening in the US at the moment throws everything into sharp relief, and I stand on the brink of being completely overwhelmed by what a Trump presidency means for the world as a whole – on everything ranging from climate change, to reproductive rights, to press freedom, to large-scale corruption and the threat of nuclear war. <br />
<br />
But today, Holocaust Memorial Day, I am entirely consumed by revulsion at what Trump and his supporters are trying to do with their so-called Muslim registry. I am raging internally at their blatant pushing of a white supremacist agenda, their demonization of refugees, immigrants, citizens of colour, Black Lives Matter supporters, members of the LGBTQ community and anyone who does not fit their narrow, spineless, small-minded definition of being worthy to be accorded full human rights, compassion, security and support. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
And I am disgusted beyond belief to see the British Prime Minister simpering and fawning as she tries to secure a trade deal with Trump to limit the disastrous fallout from Brexit by waxing lyrical over the fucking “Special Relationship”. Next thing you know she’ll be weaving friendship bracelets or engraving T loves D 4 eva into Westminster Abbey.</div>
<br />
I don’t know what to do with all this anger but I have to do something. <br />
<br />
I can’t look at this day and what it symbolises for me on a personal level without wanting to do more than show solidarity with people forced to live in fear, everyone being targeted directly or indirectly by an orange lunatic with delusions of grandeur. Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-13162963315266992262017-01-23T16:43:00.000-08:002017-01-23T16:44:24.368-08:00A Present from the Past<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I had heard wonderful things
about <i>A Present from the Past</i>. So
much so that I hesitated in going to see it, fearing disappointment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The premise is universally relatable,
even if the tale carries a touch of the extraordinary in the way it unfolds. A
daughter buys her father, and herself, plane tickets to Italy from Egypt to
celebrate his 75<sup>th</sup> birthday. Having studied there in his youth, he
returned to Egypt leaving behind an Italian woman who he promised to go back
and marry. He never did, and the love of his youth coalesced into a
romanticised story about the one who got away. Now the daughter, walking in her
father’s footsteps as a filmmaker, suggests a trip to revisit the scene of a
story she has grown up hearing, and maybe find the woman he hasn’t seen for 33
years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Filming almost entirely surreptitiously
on an iPhone, Kawthar has captured the flickers of detail that make up intimate
knowledge of another person. She shows her father in lovingly prosaic attitudes:
lying in bed with his feet next to the camera, crooning old love songs,
vulnerable in sleep. Her tenderness towards him is striking from the first
frame and she revels in the quirks of his character without ever offering an
opportunity for him to be mocked. Careful crafting shows a character who
pretends to shoot koshary sellers from a passing car, chuckling triumphantly,
who hoards mangoes like a mischievous child, who claims that his eagerness to
see Patrizia is mostly so that he not “disrespect all Egyptians”, by giving the
impression that Egyptian men break women’s hearts without explanation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So much more interesting than the
Mokhtar-Patrizia relationship, which you suspect remains well confined to the past,
is the film’s dusting of emotion over the fragility of old age and the importance
of memory. Mokhtar battles contradictory impulses as he contemplates the probability
that this long dreamed-of meeting will actually take place. He wants Patrizia
to remember him as the “prince” she once saw him as, resplendent in the abaya
he has resurrected for the occasion. The prospect of a meeting is full of
romance and significance. He will understand, he tells his daughter, if she has
been with other men in the years since they met. After all, he never contacted
her. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Delicately, with deliberation, he
examines his memories. A letter in which she referred to him as the man of the
house is recalled with pride, the recollection that she never wore earrings disclosed
as you would something infinitely precious and cherished. He will invite her to
come to Egypt, he muses in his hotel room; she may be tired of life in Italy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Woven throughout the narrative is
the yearning of a man who is preoccupied with aging to remain relevant, to have
something tangible to offer the world. He has devoted his life to children’s
education and speaks dismissively of people who try to communicate with youth in
a didactic or patronising way. Periodically he rails against his daughter for
taking control of the trip and their itinerary. A palpable fear of redundancy
is evident in his calls home to his capable wife, asking her if she is scared
to be in the house without him. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Equal in stubbornness, father and
daughter fight. And then sleep, heads on one another’s shoulders. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The film is multi-layered and an understated,
moving testament to love in its different forms. Kawthar, fearing that she has
raised her father’s hopes for nothing, pleads with a bemused Italian hotel
worker to help her find a trace of Patrizia online. Gone is her habitual tone
of impish teasing, gone too the simmering frustration you hear at other
junctures; tearfully she explains that she just wants to stop his sadness, and
she suddenly sounds very young. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Mokhtar’s paternal pride is
exhibited less directly. It is transmitted through the prism of an Egyptian-Italian
they meet and befriend on arrival in Rome, who shrewdly observes the alchemic
potency of the trip, the way that Kawthar’s presence gives her father back his
youth. It is evident as they check into their hotel, with his loud declaration “father
and daughter!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If the film is a reminder to
cherish those we live side by side with, it is one that is issued in the
gentlest way. Unlike the countless evolving intimacies of daily life, memory is
shown to be both enduring and malleable. We may never know why a story ends,
but the ending we give ourselves may not be that of the person who lived the
story with us. When it has been all this time, how could I not have loved you? How
many people must have asked this question in the middle of a one-sided imaginary
conversation with no end.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We may never know how our lovers
remember us. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
At the end of the film, like
mirages stepping from the screen, father and daughter appeared to answer
questions, so guilelessly like their film selves as to be almost disconcerting.
Basking as the visible hero of a story now firmly embedded in the collective
imagination of filmgoers within and beyond Egypt, Mokhtar looked younger than
his film self. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Immortalised by his daughter, his
legacy is enshrined in the love story of his youth. What a tremendous gift. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-540268072200025482017-01-20T16:07:00.000-08:002017-01-20T16:09:43.187-08:00On the awful sterility of things having to make sense<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
M has a particular look she gives
me whenever I use the expression <i>I don’t
know if I did the right thing</i>. We both realise that she doesn’t have to say
a word for me to understand what this signifies. There is no right decision, only
decisions. You will hurt people, and you have to get over it. Your boundaries are
yours to choose and others may not understand them. It is intention that
matters most. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Allowing space for my own
complexities doesn’t come naturally. Letting go of the compulsion to explain,
taking the risk of not being understood or being thought badly of, are gut-wrenching
prospects. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But devoting time to things I don’t
believe to be worthwhile is killing my compassion. And the awful backdrop of
the Brave New World we find ourselves in today kindles defiance in me as much
as it breathes melancholy. I feel that we are inclining more and more towards reductionism
and its manifestations are everywhere. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I see it in myself at a personal
level when I try to bridge divides that in truth are great chasms in
understanding and viewpoint. When I pretend to myself that I can understand
someone whose words or actions nevertheless trigger a sense of something deeply
wrong, for the sake of being open-minded, for the sake of wanting the world
around me to make sense. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Denying my need to let go when
there are insurmountable barriers to understanding has created a rage that I have
swept aside for so much of my life. Wanting to be likeable, warm-hearted,
generous, I have pretended there wasn’t something much fiercer churning away
inside me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But the only way I stand a chance
of understanding anyone is by not trying to be understood by everyone. It seems
that the stakes are so much higher these days, with what feels like a world
spinning faster and faster out of control. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So I have made myself a promise,
because I only have so much space and so much time. I will let go of what I have
tried, and failed, to understand or connect with. I will allow myself to rage
against injustice and lack of respect in all the forms I encounter them, and I will
struggle against my own inclinations to be peaceable and accommodating to
people who demonstrate them when I know I am doing it for the sake of social convention, or my belief
that things have to be in order or make sense.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But I will keep looking for meaning,
nuance and new ways to understand this world that overwhelms me with its
complexity and its inconsistency. I will seek out art that disconcerts and
unsettles me. I will see the beauty and the brutality in people, but I will not
interact meaningfully with them out of a sense of obligation; the ones who get
real space are those who spark joy or passion. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I will accept that I may hurt
people and that the alternative to doing so is living in a world of bland
sterility, where I am afraid to say what I believe to be true. I will stop
expecting everything to make sense. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-67813298735352546392017-01-14T15:50:00.000-08:002017-01-20T15:52:40.134-08:00AirportsAlways when I’m sitting in airports, I think about goodbyes.<br />
<br />
I imagine us all as atoms – propelled like restless spirits in an endless dance of meeting and departure, scattering little pieces of our hearts.Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-71421031001584653032016-08-07T10:03:00.000-07:002016-08-14T14:09:10.965-07:00The Taxi Driver Chronicles <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Riding a taxi in Egypt. Given
that this is an experience that I essentially undertake every day, it’s amazing
how hit and miss it is as a process. So many variables affect whether your
daily journey will be tolerable, even enjoyable, or whether it will make you
want to tear out your own eyebrows, shout at the drivers of all other cars on
the road and stamp your feet like a four year old. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It is the perfect metaphorical
equivalent of Cairo’s traffic, where there is literally no way of predicting on
any given day whether you will find yourself sailing triumphantly over the Nile
with a feeling of soaring freedom or stuck, sweaty and miserable, in gridlocked
traffic, the bus in front of you belching clouds of black smoke, and the taxi
jolting you back and forth as it inches its way forward with desperate, painful
slowness. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
One key variable amongst many is
the friendliness and attitude of your taxi driver. I’m sure to some extent this
is true of taxi drivers anywhere, but really never in any taxi I have taken
anywhere else in the world has the driver been so much of a <i>presence</i>, his interests, musical taste,
curiosity, mood, sense of humour creating a palpable atmosphere that stays with
you long after your journey has ended. No London black taxi cabbies are these,
affable and casually knowledgeable about their city. There is no sleek
coolness, no stealthy silent manoeuvring across districts and down roads. Taxi
drivers here are like the salt, herbs and spices of Egypt itself; they add
distinct flavour. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Recognising this, Egyptian author
Khaled al-Khameesi wrote a book of short vignettes entitled <i><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/01/taxi-khaled-alkhamissi-review">Taxi</a></i>,
published just before I moved here. Each story recounts an experience with, or
a tale told from the point of view of, a taxi driver – and if you want an
insight into the social fabric of Egypt and the issues weaved throughout the
country, I would highly recommend reading it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
My plan is not to poorly imitate
what someone else has done so well, but really some of the taxi driver
encounters I have are too good not to document here. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Take this morning. Personal information
and the domains of the curious being generally regarded as public property in an
environment where community is so important, there is nothing at all unusual in
your taxi driver believing it is his right and his business to ask about your
marital status, your plans for having children and whether you are seeking an
Egyptian husband. It is one of many notable facets of a country in perpetual
contradictory flux, where a taxi driver asks you why you aren’t married yet,
but a male pharmacist gets flustered if you ask where the supply of <i>Always</i> is kept. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Anyway, all of this was covered
within two minutes of me entering the taxi, along with the questions of my
nationality and the length of my stay in Egypt to date. All standard questions
that anyone living here will have encountered on a regular basis. Then things
got interesting. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A little old lady asked to share
the taxi and clambered, frail but animated, into the front seat. She immediately
started asking the driver if I was annoyed at him accepting her as a passenger.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
No no, he assures her, don’t
worry. She’s British but<i> dummha khafeefa</i>
(she’s easygoing). She’s been here seven years he adds, with the proprietorial
authority of someone who has known me for a whole three minutes. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Several iterations of this
statement are needed on both sides before it is accepted as fact by both,
during which time I keep quiet in the hope that the conversation will move on
to other topics. No such luck. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Gliding through traffic, the taxi
driver cranes his head to look backwards. <i>Ya
anissa, ya anissa</i>, are there Muslims in Britain or only Christians?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We have many Muslims in Britain,
I answer. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And you? Are you Muslim? You’re
working here but not married. Did you come here because you’re Muslim?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I just came here because I’m
interested in the country seemed like the best response to balance truth with
brevity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Aha! His eyes sparkle. But would
you think about becoming a Muslim? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Before I can even answer, the old
lady jumps in, indignant and admonishing. What are you talking about? We’re all
brothers and sisters in the eyes of God! Some of the best people I know are
Christian. My doctor is Christian. My pharmacist is Christian. My neighbour is
Christian. My grandson’s teacher is Christian. I have…two, four, six….at least
six close friends who are Christian! She counts them on her fingers to give the
statement an air of incontrovertible finality. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Yes, yes – we are all brothers,
the taxi driver agrees hastily. But you know, when she has children… he adds in
a low voice. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
If she marries a Muslim man her
children will be Muslim anyway, the woman counters, entirely without irony. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Yes, and she really should marry
a good Muslim man! The taxi driver has regained his enthusiasm for the cause.
She is respectful and beautiful…and not married yet! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The old lady pauses, perhaps to
let the shock of this powerful statement sink in. I shuffle further down in my
seat, intently looking at my phone, praying for light traffic and a speedy
arrival at the office, trying to be invisible. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
You know… the old lady muses,
half-lost in thought, I do want my son to get married. He’s 35 and an engineer.
He’s a good man and I do want to find him a wife. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Aywa</i>! The taxi driver’s enthusiasm, unbelievably, still has room to
grow. This is perfect! This girl is nice and respectful. She’s lived here seven
years, so she obviously loves Egypt.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
(Has it been only seven years?
Surely this conversation and the taxi ride alone have lasted seven years.) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And look, she’s <i>amoura</i> (she’s lovely). Simultaneously,
they both turn around to look at me. I wipe the back of a sweaty palm across my
upper lip and try not to look too much like a cornered animal. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Yes yes, very nice, the woman
allows. Well I have to think really. He’s an engineer, and a good boy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Take her phone number! If I was
younger, I’d marry her myself. He beams at me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Hmmm, I suppose I could. The old
lady is undecided. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Yalla </i>– take her phone number, the taxi driver urges. You can call
her up, arrange for her to speak to your son. Everything will be easy! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Is now the time to tell them I literally
never answer my phone, I wonder. Do I finally risk causing offence by telling
them I am simply not interested in being fixed up with the old lady’s son – or,
indeed, anybody? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Finding myself having the most
typically British of internal debates brought with it an irony that was not
lost on me. Drenched in social awkwardness, the fear of offending these two
very nice, well-meaning, solicitous people, as they busily and happily agreed
on my future plans and prospects, blithely unaware of or unconcerned by my
intense discomfort at the situation, outweighed said discomfort in a way that
surely anyone but a Brit would have found completely ridiculous. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Fortunately, timing was on my
side. Arriving at work, I was able to utter a quick goodbye before scuttling to
the office like a crab competing for some kind of special Olympics. I breathed
a sigh of relief and thought wryly of how we had all conformed so beautifully
to national stereotype. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And within minutes of exiting the
taxi, with the whole encounter having attained the crystallised sheen of
something that has passed, I found myself recounting the story to colleagues,
Egyptian and non-Egyptian. And we always laugh in such situations because they
seem so improbable on paper, and yet they are an absolute part of many lives
here. And though awkward and infuriating at the time, these are things I will one
day miss. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-18627553094786762372016-07-14T02:21:00.000-07:002016-07-14T02:21:57.573-07:00Blue is the colour<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
Of all colours none has been so recognized and celebrated throughout art
and writing for its many depths and hues, its mysterious timbres, as blue. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
This awareness forms the backdrop to the first of Kieslowski’s Three
Colours trilogy: Blue. Throughout this sombre, lovely film, blue in its various
shades accompanies the protagonist, a grieving Juliette Binoche, as would a
latter-day Greek chorus, illuminating her actions, giving emphasis to moments
of understated emotion or dramatic tension. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
Images or ideas reverberate throughout the film. The flood of light
permeating a family room bereft of all contents bar a lampshade made of
exquisite blue glass is later echoed by the image of a sugar cube being slowly
saturated by liquid as it is gradually lowered into a cup of coffee. The
implications are hinted at, rather than spelled out. So does blood seep into
clothes after a wound; so can sorrow subsume the human heart. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
Binoche’s emotions, as she tries to navigate a world she doesn’t want to
engage with for fear of further pain and loss, play across her face like
musical notes within a symphony – neither discordant nor quite harmonizing. The
sensuality as she swims alone in a pool of almost electric colour forms an
uncomfortable juxtaposition to the sight of the baby rats she cannot bring
herself to kill, the sheen of blue only just visible on their translucent skin.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
Throughout the film there is interplay between emotion and physical
sensation, as gradual revelations of her husband’s secrets emerge, as she
starts to rediscover the ability to connect with others. The friendship Binoche
establishes with the prostitute who so revels in her work and her sexuality is
characterized primarily by tenderness. The casual brutality she initially shows
to the man who loves her, in a deliberate reduction of his feelings to mere
lust, later gives way to the realization that he, unlike her much-lauded dead
husband, wants nothing more deeply than for her talent to be fully acknowledged
– paving the way for the possibility of a more profound connection growing
between them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
It would be too simplistic to say that blue within this context represents
melancholy; the film is both more subtle and more substantial than this. Rather
it is interwoven in the narrative through images that are both light and
visually arresting. A flash of blue jeans, the light of early morning;
Kieslowski’s blue is by turns prosaic and diffident, vibrant and luminous. It
is emblematic of having lost what you love, the depth of the loss being
uncontainable because it is inescapable. Turn around at the wrong moment and an
ordinary object sparks a memory. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
But it is also a symbol of the shimmering, ever-changing nature of both
love and grief, their encompassing of rage and jealousy, cruelty, kindness,
desire and finally a weary, hopeful compassion. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: kashida; text-kashida: 0%;">
<br /></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-25226954777440300072016-06-06T03:50:00.002-07:002016-06-06T03:50:49.570-07:00Ramadan <br />My mother forgets to feed her animals<br />because it's only fair.<br />She rushes to them when<br />she hears hoarse roosters crowing<br />and billy goats butting<br />over a last straw.<br /><br />This month the moon becomes a princess.<br />The stars fan her,<br />Jupiter pours cups of wine,<br />Mars sings melancholy mawals.<br />Bearded men holding prayer beads<br />and yellow booklets stare at her<br />and point aching fingers at her waist.<br /><br />In our house we break a fast<br />with dates from Huun<br />and glasses of buttermilk.<br />Then on to bowls of lamb soup<br />flavored with mint, trays<br />of stuffed grape leaves,<br />spiced fava beans drenched<br />in olive oil and lemon juice.<br />And that is only the beginning.<br /><br />The spirits of Johnny Walker and gin<br />hide in the trunks of white Peugeots.<br />In the nightclubs of my city, waiters<br />serve only non-alcoholic beer<br />and belly dancers cover themselves.<br /><br />Father of sixteen children, our neighbor<br />visits bringing two kilos of baklava.<br />He washes them down with a dozen<br />demitasses of sweet sage tea.<br />Before dawn he runs to one<br />of his two wives, both named Salma,<br />and loves her hurriedly,<br />his hands barely touching a breast.<br /><br /><br />Khaled Mattawa<br /><br /><br /><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGvrSXTgWv_tcdCxhtijQKtl63fO4CVyCOn1QOcHbmifzrp3-xvqi5OZ89k39iuudBADw5eewDNrmAujYybWyT-GB8q09J1adyvIRr1PFK3hiK6Ez7V0FbGDpgVEvcxoUEIySoYIk8MAw/s400/Ramadan2.jpg" /><br />Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-17513482336872365012016-06-05T10:57:00.002-07:002016-06-05T10:57:32.930-07:00My only weapon was the word<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The beautiful short film <i>Good Night Sarajevo </i>explores the slices
of an individual’s humanity that are jeopardised, but also that which is
retained and preserved, in times of war and conflict. Woven through the story
of one man’s life and wartime experience are both explicit and oblique
questions of what it means to tell stories, as an affirmation of what is
meaningful in life, rendering the whole film a paean to verbal communication. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Indeed, in one of the most
memorable lines of the film, its protagonist, Boban Minic, reveals his creed with
the solemnity of an incantation: <i>mi única
arma era la palabra</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
My only weapon was the word. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Such weapons, it is clear in this
context, seek not to wound but to heal. Minic’s relationship with the city he
loved and eventually had to leave is threaded with stories of personal loss along
with recollections of the social and cultural ties that bound together a place
that he describes as having once been a bastion of diversity, replete with art
and beauty. He risked his own health and safety to preserve a little of that through
his radio program, where talk of the arts, an imagined future and news of
estranged families floated on the air, throughout and beyond the city, even as
snipers lurked high above its streets. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Director Edu Marín takes pains to
emphasise that the story he wanted to tell was not the story of the Balkan wars
in any definitive sense, repeating that such a story was not his to tell.
Rather, this is the tale of the storyteller himself, of a man who has lived his
life according to the maxim that giving a voice to humanity’s highest
aspirations helps to free humans from the prisons of our own minds, especially
in times of great cruelty and suffering. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Watching this film for the second
time with a Serbian friend who lived through the wars, I was struck by her
immediate response after it had finished. While Sarajevo as a physical space
was completely unknown to her, so much in terms of the common language, songs
playing in the background as people talked, short film clips, exerted a
nostalgic pull over her senses. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And there is the essence of
storytelling if it is done well. In hearing another’s story, we feel a tug at
our own memories and perhaps, if we can allow ourselves, our own hopes. To imagine
that we humans will ever forget all of the differences that proliferate to
create such bitter disputes among us seems naïve, in this era more than ever. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But it is so good to be reminded
that everyone has their story to tell. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
---</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The trailer for <i>Good Night Sarajevo</i>:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82p7GXLFsYA<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-37391043324563259232016-05-31T12:39:00.002-07:002016-05-31T12:39:55.153-07:00Choices<div class="MsoNormal">
In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
Stephen Covey describes a moment where, in encouraging his daughter to share a
toy, he inadvertently robs her of her agency and her right to choose. He makes
the point that, to really share something, one must first have a full sense of
possessing it, of it being ours to give. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is similar with me and choices. For me to fully live my
choices and be at peace with their consequences, I must feel that they are mine
to make. I don’t think I realised until tonight how important it is to me to
feel that my choices are my own, and how much the feeling of doing something
because it is expected of me makes me feel like a hollow shell of a person. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Choosing what I want to do and then acting on that choice
feels like the most empowering thing I could possibly do, even if the choice
has really terrible consequences. I wonder if it is possible now to reframe my
choices, and reframe the narrative of my life that plays in my own head, to
remind myself more frequently, and more clearly, that everything I have done in
life has been a choice. That even if I didn’t feel that much of what I have
done in the past was of my own choosing, that the very process of declining to
choose or evading choice is in itself a decision (just not one that I should be
very proud of). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
And most of all, in reframing those past choices and
understanding my reasons for making them, perhaps I can reinforce to myself the
message that every moment I find myself in constitutes a choice, that
situations can always be altered, that my fear of being trapped or stagnating
is a misplaced one. That moment to moment, situations can be altered and
different choices made in the future than in the past. Meaning not that bad
decisions are reversible, but just that better ones can be made in the future. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-45264031915556617262016-05-27T07:45:00.000-07:002016-05-27T07:45:31.108-07:00After Eight<br /><br />I am dancing, one of a mass of rhythmic gyrators in a Downtown bar that calls to mind early illicit house parties. Everyone is drinking (now not-so cheap) beer. We are soaked in sweat and smoke but we smile beatifically at one another.<br /><br /> A wiry man with abundant hair moves across the dance floor, through the pulsing mass of bodies. The track changes to a popular sh3bi song and I start to shimmy, as the music seems to demand it. He looks at me and throws his head back, smiling at the ceiling, raises his arms and shimmies with utter abandon. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Returning from his moment of solitary communion, the smallest of nods accompanies an impish smile, as if to say to me “Your shimmy wasn’t so bad really”.</div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-57995920463354532162016-03-27T13:13:00.000-07:002016-03-27T13:39:25.622-07:00Hemingway <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Write hard and clear about what hurts
is the injunction and I touch the pain with tentative, inquisitive fingers. Like
all living things, it breathes. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And it tells me dark things. Whispering
my inadequacies; tempting me with half-suppressed desires; taunting me with
images of the ideal, of the person I cannot be. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There is no escape. This blade
will cut my eyes so I can see clearly, and I will embrace it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Confronting the paralysing fear
of an empty screen or hackneyed, clichéd words. Speaking in half-truths has
become second nature to me and my candour assails people as I hold it out as a
last desperate weapon. You never used to speak like this, their eyes tell me, you’ve
changed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But my internal voice equivocates,
trying to chart a course through tumultuous waters. Some days I am consumed by
all the things I cannot alter, the raw unfairness of a world where the colour
of your passport matters more than the size of your intellect, where worth is
measured by Facebook likes and children die in their beds. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And passion flickers, elusive and
intermittent and inconstant as a moth. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Intoxicated, I crave the heady rush
of seeking out my fears and I revel in their sharpness. For the first time, I understand
people who find pleasure in pain. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A series of thoughts cycle
through my churning, restless mind. Times I have let people down, not been what
they needed me to be, not been able to give them what they deserved. The stupid
decisions, and the brave ones. Words spilled in a reckless, overthought torrent
of feeling. Moments of silence, when words should have been spoken. The wrench
of intimacy, like ripping off a layer of skin. The person whose touch made me
tremble. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
There is no reasoning away the contradictions or the
conflicting impulses. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And the pain is clear, and cold,
and sweet. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-82578505073363244562015-03-09T15:57:00.002-07:002015-03-09T16:02:28.994-07:00Only Connect<div class="MsoNormal">
A beam of white light touches a prism and suddenly both are
transformed by a flood of colour.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Connection is fear and longing. It leaves me shaken but
nourished. How could you ever predict who will utter a word of the language spoken
in the deepest recesses of your mind? An ordinary person touches the pressure
point unlocking a place you keep hidden and when you look up they are ordinary
no more. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And you are soothed in wounded places. And you scratch at
them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Weight of the most powerful life force. They taught me that <i>Namaste</i> was the way of saying “I greet
the part in you where we are one”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And you talk for six hours. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And as you dance the music enters two bodies like a breath.
You are suspended in time and space.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And a stranger speaking in a crowded room fills you with
such emotion that you don’t trust yourself to reply. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So you rub desperately at the rawness inside you - as if a visceral
reaction, any more than an overplayed thought, could possibly offer protection
from the corrosive nature of your own self-doubt.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
---<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>A hand shifts our
birdcages around. Some are brought closer. Some move apart. Do not try to
reason it out. Be conscious of who draws you, and who not.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-69869698249487157472015-03-08T08:05:00.000-07:002015-03-08T08:05:21.208-07:00International Women's Day<div class="MsoNormal">
I wish that there did not have to be an International Women’s
Day, because the very premise of equality should be that no one group is
singled out for special treatment. I wish that a truth which should be
self-evident – that we are all equal in our value, regardless of gender,
nationality, sexual preference, political persuasion or who our favourite
Beatle is – was manifest in the world we live in. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To me, equality is not about trying to make everyone the
same – it is about respecting pluralism and giving people the right to have
choice and agency in their own lives. And tragically, so many people around the
world are still denied this. Why focus on empowering women above other
marginalized groups?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Firstly because gender inequality is so pervasive. Women are
subject to judgement, scrutiny and a lack of equal opportunities everywhere
from the boardrooms of the wealthiest companies to the homes of the most
poverty-stricken villages, from government offices around the world to the shops,
restaurants and streets of every country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Secondly because this gender inequality has a negative
impact on every other crisis we are facing globally. Undermining the choices and
rights of women is not only unethical – it is helping to compound and worsen
every problem faced by humanity. Empowering women helps economic growth,
improves the health of communities, reduces violence, helps to stabilize
population growth and helps with resource allocation (feeding hungry mouths,
etc). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every person should be able to make choices about their own
body, who they marry and when. Everyone should be given the chance to receive a
good education and to choose what they want to do with it – whether this means
working and generating an independent income, using the benefits of that
education to raise a healthy, well educated family or both. Nobody should have
to live in fear of violence or discrimination – especially not for wanting to
live in a world where they have autonomy and agency in their own lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Too many people are not given these opportunities. Too many
women especially. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So for as long as there needs to be an International Women’s
Day – and a Women’s History Month – for us to draw attention to these issues
and speak out about them, it makes me hopeful to see how many people have their
eyes facing forward, on all the things we still have to work on, but also how
many are taking the time to celebrate the strong women in their lives – and the
strong men who are not threatened by strong women, but want to work together to
build a world where every person has the ability to freely choose how they want
to live. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I celebrate all the indomitable women I know and have known.
My adventurous mother, who travelled to the UK from New Zealand in her twenties
and made a life for herself in an unknown country, little knowing she would one
day inspire a daughter to do the same. My beautiful and fierce sister, who has
been scaring people who tried to give her crap since she was three years old
(and has only got better at it with time). My two grandmothers, whose lives have
been so different, but who have handed down to me directly and through my
parents the values of hard work, treating people fairly, being part of a
community, appreciating what you have and never, ever giving up. My boss, whose
great passion in life is women’s empowerment and who earlier today held a
conference room full of people completely attentive, rendering them virtually
speechless, when talking about it. Um Abdallah: she can electrocute rats,
undergo an operation, work nine hours, manage her family and still find time to
joke around with me – all in a day’s work. The many smart, creative,
unconventional, funny, irreverent, soulful, questioning, compassionate women I know
– often deeply stressed and not sure if they’re getting it completely right
(who is?) but still so full of inner power. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also celebrate the many men I am lucky enough to know who
support equality in all its forms by supporting the rights of women and being
our advocates and partners. My father, who has always supported every (seemingly
crazy) career decision I’ve ever made and the change of country it has entailed
– even if he didn’t agree with them. An old and dear friend who was the first
man I’d ever met to openly proclaim he was a feminist. The incredible guys of Dignity
Without Borders, Tahrir Bodyguard, Shoft Ta7arosh, OpAntiSH and others who
risked their safety to help ensure that Egyptian women had the same
opportunities to have their voices heard as their male counterparts. Men who support
the women in their lives to make their own decisions about their education and
career prospects and who proudly celebrate their successes. Men who are not
afraid to question established beliefs about gender roles and enter into
discussions about equal opportunities – even when they know they might receive
a tirade from frustrated feminists. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can’t wait for the day when International Women’s Day isn’t
needed because equality for all is enshrined in our institutions, our ideology
and our behaviour – but until that day comes, happy International Women’s Day
everyone. </div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-78515738830613626582015-02-24T12:36:00.003-08:002015-02-24T12:36:46.469-08:00Detox: all about the juice<div class="MsoNormal">
They don’t call me Juicy Lucy for nothing. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last five days have consisted of purely liquid lunches
(and breakfasts, and dinners) – and not the decadent, can’t-walk-in-a-straight-line-once-you’ve-finished-them
kind. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The cleanse part of the program involves consuming five “meals”
a day: vegetable juice for breakfast and mid-morning; soup at lunch and dinner;
and a smoothie mid-afternoon. All are made by Anni and hand delivered to your
door. Along with this, you drink warm lemon water first thing in the morning, a
lot of herbal tea and at least two litres of water. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of all this, the soups in particular have been a revelation:
thick, spicy, flavoursome. I love soup anyway and this has given me great ideas
for flavour combinations. Because the idea is to cut out salt, the flavour
comes from herbs and spices; and the taste of ginger, cumin or coriander only
enhances the flavour of the tomato, beetroot, carrot, pepper and other base
ingredients. The soups change daily and this, along with the fact that I’m
allowed to heat them, has made them the uncontested food highlight of each of
the five days. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And by “food highlight” I do of course mean “overall
highlight” because something that has really been hammered home to me
throughout this whole process is quite what an important place good food has in
my life. Not only is the relationship between food, physical energy levels,
sleeping patterns, focus and mood much stronger than I had really realised
previously, the psychological impact of eating food I enjoy is huge for me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Food and sleep have become my drugs of choice. I am so rock
n’roll.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Without wanting to sound too evangelical (and please don’t
call me Gwyneth), I am really amazed by how much better I feel since I’ve
started doing this. My skin is softer; my eyes are brighter and less puffy; I
wake up more easily and can go an entire day without yawning. My mind is
sharper; and now that the period of turbulent emotions seems to have passed I am
making better decisions, focusing more easily, less troubled and preoccupied
than usual. I feel lighter, more playful; I have more appetite. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which is good because tomorrow I’m back on solid foods and
the prospect of eating avocado and nuts in my salad is the source of great
anticipation. I’ll probably pass out the day I’m finally allowed a burger. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-48968527090187229762015-02-19T14:10:00.000-08:002015-02-23T14:11:38.264-08:00Detox: the fluctuations<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Pre-tox (aka the period of blissful ignorance)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the gradual weaning-off period, where over the
course of four days you try to prepare your body for the barrage of nutrients
it’s going to be ingesting – and more importantly for the absence of all the
crap it’s used to. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Day 1 saw me drink my last cup of coffee with ceremonial
deliberation and hold a kind of impromptu hen party with Rasha (a lot of beer; no
male strippers) to say goodbye to my old habits. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Days 2-4 involved a gradual reduction of all the food and
drink that needed to be cut during the detox, which I undertook with all the nonchalance
of one destined to be felled by hubris. Thai beef curry …who needs you? Bread
and peanut butter? I laugh in your face. Chorizo and batata? I could give you
up anytime. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am now seeing so many batata carts as I walk around the
city, I suspect they might be a mirage. Meanwhile my poor bemused colleagues
have got used to my plaintive face as I ask to inhale their open jars of peanut
butter and steaming cups of coffee, treating me with the cautious sympathy you
would reserve for someone who’s just on the brink of losing the plot.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Days 1-4 (aka the period where pride comes before a fall)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first day of the proper detox program I admit felt easy.
The way the program is structured means that you eat regularly, so unlike a lot
of dieting or even fasting, hunger pangs are not really part of your
experience. Breakfast is a mixture of fruit supplemented by vegetable juice
(prepared by Anni and delivered to your door); you snack mid-morning – fruit or
nuts; lunch (also with vegetable juice) is a salad with some protein;
mid-afternoon you drink another juice, this time sweet; dinner is another
salad. You are encouraged to vary the fruit and veg you consume, as you will be
getting different vitamins from each item. You are also advised to eat organic
food, as an essential part of the detox is eliminating any chemical residue
from pesticides. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All went well until the evening, when I decided to go for a
walk. In 30 minutes of meandering through Cairo’s streets, you would imagine I would
have encountered enough to keep my mind off food. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You would be wrong. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I walked past the Yemeni restaurant, Hardees, Pizza Hut,
shops selling nuts, shops selling sweets. They might as well have been calling
me by name. Before long, I had Yemeni bread, curly fries and pieces of baklawa
dancing along the street next to me. I’m telling you, those carbohydrates know
how to move. They are funky. Were they real? I was certainly in no position to
judge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After that low point, things stabilised. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are definitely worse things to be eating every day
than fresh fruit and vegetables. And once you know that salad is basically all
you’ll be eating for three weeks, it turns out you become a lot more creative
about what you put into it. You discover combinations you had never realised
would be so delicious – like strawberries and basil, delectable when eaten
together. You also learn weird and wonderful facts with which to dazzle others in
the future (ahem). Whoever knew for example there were so many different kinds
of lettuce, and that some of them could be almost creamy in texture or have
bright red stalks?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most immediate, and most welcome, surprise was how much
and how well I started sleeping. Having struggled to fall asleep unless
absolutely exhausted for all of my adult life, I suddenly found myself sleeping
easily and deeply – and for long, long periods. It was almost as though a
switch had been flipped in my body, telling it that now was the time to catch
up on the 15-year sleep debt it’s been walking around with. And now my body
just wants to sleep all the time – although when I’m awake I feel
more alert than I have in ages. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Days 4-8 (aka the period where I just don’t know what’s
going on)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After a few days of essentially hibernating at home, it
became necessary to interact with the real world – and not just by going to
work. There were birthday parties to go to, friends to see, things I needed to take
part in. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I rarely think of myself as having a will of iron, but
really after this period they will have to name a new house after me in Game of
Thrones. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Test number one – work event at the GrEEK Campus, hosted by
Abraaj. Voya and I enter a room in which there are probably more glasses of
wine and juice than there are people. “Mmmm, imported beer” Voya effuses, while
I sip my water and try not to look like Scrooge. Later as we leave, Voya
eschewing the free food in a gesture of solidarity, the manager of the GrEEK
Campus comes running after us to ask why we are leaving before we’ve eaten. I
growl inwardly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Test number two – Rasha’s (first) birthday party, at her
house. I arrive with my large salad and start munching it while we await the
birthday girl and everyone else awaits pizza. People keep asking me,
innocently, why I’m dieting and I keep trying to explain that it’s a detox
intended to increase energy. I sense that my constant yawning is not helping my
cause. My friends are kind people but they can’t resist waving pizza, luxury
chocolate cake and beer under my nose gleefully. “Trust me – I’m a doctor” Wael
says, eyes gleaming. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Test number three – Rasha’s (second) birthday party, a salsa
night. This night is essentially a blur of faces and hugs, the occasional drink
being waved at me in friendly deliberate provocation. I start crying for no
discernible reason as I’m getting ready to leave. Strange times. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The see-sawing emotions and the craving for sleep as if it’s
an incredible drug continue for days, accompanied by vivid, perplexing dreams.
I honestly can’t remember my sleep being this refreshing and restorative since
I was a child and when awake I find I’m much more capable of focusing and
remembering information than usual. Whatever is going on in my head, it’s clear
that there is some deep processing taking place, as my mind and emotions try to
sort out my feelings about incidents old and new. <o:p></o:p></div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-48074014486144743922015-02-14T10:53:00.000-08:002015-02-23T10:58:58.813-08:00Detox: the decision I’ve decided to go on a detox.<br />
<br />
I like to think of my relationship with food as a love affair. There is passion, yearning when I am deprived of a food I’m craving, intense satisfaction when the desire is fulfilled, the occasional bad experience that shakes me to my core, making me wonder if I’ll ever enjoy food again…and then before I know it I’m back in the saddle, feasting once more.<br />
<br />
But lately, the relationship has been turning sour. I first noticed it during Ramadan, when daily fasting plays havoc with my body anyway. It got me thinking about how much what we do (or don’t) feed ourselves affects our every waking moment. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I felt truly energised, nor could I shake the feeling that a general inertia, or sluggishness, interspersed with occasional mania, was the normal state of being not just for me but for many of the people I know. The feeling that every activity was an effort to be psyched up for, physically and mentally, and that a nap would always be welcome. A feeling that I’m certain I’m not supposed to be experiencing with such regularity this side of fifty.<br />
<br />
Like many people, I consider myself healthy. Healthy enough, anyway. I eat vegetables. I go to the gym. I dance. I don’t binge eat Lindt chocolate bunnies (except at Easter).<br />
<br />
But I hardly ever get enough sleep. 2am on a weeknight is not a rarity for me, or anyone in Cairo – truly the city that never sleeps. My days and nights are constantly crammed with activities. My time is badly organised. Otlob (Egypt’s online food delivery service) is both my best friend and my worst enemy; I order from it every day. I consume a lot of caffeine – sometimes more than six cups of tea and coffee in a day. Finally able to shake the shisha addiction I acquired shortly after arriving here five years ago, I started smoking the occasional cigarette as a substitute. So nights spent with friends who smoke (many – this is also the city that never breathes clean air) quickly turned into beer and cigarettes for all.<br />
<br />
This feels like Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Lucy, and I am <i>not as healthy as I think I am</i>.<br />
<br />
So, I decided to detox. I felt that I needed to do something radical, to shake myself out of at least some of the bad habits, or at least reduce the impact they were having on my life. I’m sick of feeling tired all the time, of catching colds that last for a month and of feeling that many of the things I most want to be doing (writing, new ideas for work projects, further education, conversations) have to be put off to some indefinite time in the future when I have enough energy to tackle them. I have had enough of feeling as though I am sleepwalking through my life.<br />
<br />
And there are more tangible health worries. Watching friends who have faced cancer scares, some very serious. The fear of aging. The realisation that despite growing up in the English countryside, surrounded by cats and horses, I have somehow in the last few years developed an allergy to both. Noticing that the hayfever I’ve had since I was a child now causes me to wheeze when the pollen count is really high.<br />
<br />
Knowing that I stood no chance of sticking to the detox plan if I embarked on it alone, and wanting the guidance of someone I could trust, I contacted Anni, the founder of Pure Scandic, who I had met socially and who I knew offered tailored juice cleanses and detox programs. She recommended a 19 day program: seven days of a raw fruit and vegetable diet either side of a five day juice cleanse. Cramming my body to capacity with nutrients and eliminating all the bad (but delicious) things. Supplementing all the fruit and veg with some protein, but eliminating all meat, alcohol, caffeine, processed carbohydrates, added salt and sugar.<br />
<br />
So this is what lies ahead of me for the next (nearly) three weeks. It’s quite a feat for a girl who would happily live on sticky rice and koshary if left to her own devices. Let’s see how this goes!Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-80771183584764289452014-11-19T14:32:00.000-08:002016-08-14T14:38:29.714-07:00Hurghada<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQaH_x9zFviB9S8XpxtOedylhFfIzG1OjfmTdDw9mXButb3VmOIJ22SwERq9t5pM00ZEV9b-ewD21KQ1ql7HBaC5Cd8zNy3V_Tmj9yqPnlV51OFdk6CIAVxOTnzlmoqPlMth7pfD9Dmg/s1600/DSC_0162.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQaH_x9zFviB9S8XpxtOedylhFfIzG1OjfmTdDw9mXButb3VmOIJ22SwERq9t5pM00ZEV9b-ewD21KQ1ql7HBaC5Cd8zNy3V_Tmj9yqPnlV51OFdk6CIAVxOTnzlmoqPlMth7pfD9Dmg/s320/DSC_0162.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
"Welcome to Hurghada. I can do anything to help you. You are simple girl. I like that."<br />
<div>
<br />
"Hello? You need cigarettes? Watches? Scarves? Washing machine?? Fridge?! Air-conditioned donkey?!!"<br />
<br />
Hurghada...where chat-up lines & sales pitches merge seamlessly into one.</div>
Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-21199167367412616982014-10-27T14:19:00.000-07:002016-08-15T08:20:13.821-07:00Woman versus rat <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The following morning dawned
bright and clear. The only thing occupying my mind was the desperate knowledge that
I had to do whatever needed to be done to rid my house of the scourge of
Kamikaze Rat. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So I went to speak to my bewaabs,
to ask if they could call an extermination company to come over, remove
Kamikaze Rat and make sure there were no other unwelcome guests lurking in the
house. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
They were perplexed, to say the
least. Apparently the normal way of dealing with rats is <i>not</i> to demand exterminators come and spray poison around your
house. It’s possible – possible – that I was a little hard to reason with at
the time. I do remember being very shrill. But then I did have a rat hiding in
my kitchen. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The exterminators arrived,
carrying a container of innocuous-looking liquid poison to spray around the
house and poisonous food to place in strategic locations. They assured me that
any creature that imbibed these would be dead within a day. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It wouldn’t die in my walls I
asked, concerned. The last thing I wanted was Kamikaze Rat exacting brutal
revenge by dying in some hard-to-reach place, effectively taking us all down
with him at the moment of his demise. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
No no, they laughed. He’ll die in
an open space. If he’s still here, you’ll stumble across him on the floor
tomorrow morning. And we’ll come back and remove him, at no extra charge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Wonderful. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
They then presented me with the
bill. An extortionate 6000LE. My eyes literally boggled. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Now at this point you’re probably
sighing in exasperation at how someone could possibly be so gullible as to
believe that this bill could actually be accurate. You have every right to do
this; I admit to being an idiot. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In my defence, my fitful sleep
the night before had been punctuated by rat-filled dreams. I was seeing rats
everywhere I looked. Every time I heard a noise, I jumped, expecting to see
Kamikaze Rat flying towards me as he had the previous night. So it’s fair to
say I was not at my strongest or my sharpest. Clearly the exterminators could
see this and had decided to take full advantage of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
What could I do? I didn’t have
that kind of money on me. The most my bank would allow me to withdraw in a
single day was 4000LE. I explained this to the exterminators, who I still had
not worked out were crooks. I told them I could withdraw 4000LE then and they
would have to come back and collect the rest from my bewaab on another day. They,
obviously sensing a flaw in their plan, were reluctant to do this.
Nevertheless, we all descended to the building’s entrance. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
3m Mohamed, our head bewaab, is a
benign and grandfatherly man if you are on his good side; a proper force to be
reckoned with if you are not. I had seen him get angry with people before
(namely young guys harassing me in the streets) and he’s really not someone you
want to cross. I could see his face set into barely-contained anger when I told
him the situation with the exterminators and what they were charging me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Torn I suppose between the desire
to protect me and the desire to not contradict me in front of the men, he waved
at me to go and withdraw my money, standing between me and the exterminators so
they couldn’t follow me. By the time I returned he was yelling down the phone
at their supervisor, calling them thieves and criminals, deploring the fact
that they would pull what was now quite clearly (even to me) a total scam. Calling
me over, he said that because I had already agreed to pay 4000LE, there was
nothing he could do to reduce that sum but that I was under no circumstances to
pay anything more. He passed the money to the two men with a gesture of utter
contempt, motioning for them to leave and never come back. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So all that was left for me to do
now was start cleaning the parts of my house that were definitely rat-free and
wait for Kamikaze Rat to show up like the protagonist of an Agatha Christie
whodunit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I went off and stocked up on
cleaning materials as if there was an imminent mass Dettol shortage, as if I
was planning to clean an entire school single-handedly, as if the zombie
apocalypse was coming, as if….well, as if I was expecting to come across a dead
rat in my house. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCQ0nrTWrOVgPx8aHb8QrYC7__o-L9DkC-5EHLE-D9zm86tPKDIEURObmgpU0CkiuJ8H_l0zns8K2tqXoqmvL3dCXskXH2B1nkOFZjFWyY89QSDAfXtNreLeH9vE_ygKmqVfA2lL56brc/s1600/DSC_0501.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCQ0nrTWrOVgPx8aHb8QrYC7__o-L9DkC-5EHLE-D9zm86tPKDIEURObmgpU0CkiuJ8H_l0zns8K2tqXoqmvL3dCXskXH2B1nkOFZjFWyY89QSDAfXtNreLeH9vE_ygKmqVfA2lL56brc/s320/DSC_0501.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And for a solid three days, I
cleaned feverishly. I slept on the sofa (rats dancing in my dreams), went to
work, came home and cleaned until 4am every day for three days. Every morning
and evening, miserable and exhausted, I entered my kitchen with trepidation,
expecting to find Kamikaze Rat spread-eagled on the floor. Every time I felt
the mixed relief and sense of impending doom at him not being there. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Relief because, really, who among
us is strong enough to deal with the prospect of a dead rat in their kitchen
with equanimity? Sense of impending doom because, by the morning of day 3, a
really very bad smell had started to emanate from somewhere within the kitchen
and curdle in the air. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Merde merde merde. Not only
crooks but liars. Kamikaze Rat was clearly dead in a hidden part of my kitchen.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
So I asked 3m Mohamed whether, if
I called the exterminators to come back and remove the rat that evening, as
they had promised, he would be around to make sure there were no further
problems with them. He was with me, he said immediately, sitting up a little
straighter in his chair and putting his hand over his heart in a gesture of
solidarity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I called the exterminators who,
surprisingly, sounded delighted to hear from me. Of course they would be more
than happy to come back and remove the rat, they said obsequiously… and collect
the other 2000LE I owed them. One short, violent reply from me and the
conversation was over. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
That evening I limped into my
building, wan and pale in appearance, bedraggled in spirit. I was having
problems remembering the last time I had eaten or slept properly. I could feel
I was starting to resemble the man from the Pink Panther films that everyone
believes has gone mad, hallucinating rats everywhere I looked. I had scrubbed
my house so thoroughly with Dettol that you could smell it as soon as you
exited the lift three floors down from my flat. Everywhere except the dreaded
kitchen. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Please, I asked the bewaab on
duty, please send someone upstairs with me. If I had to start hunting on my own
for a dead rat in my kitchen, I would lose my mind. One look in my eyes must
have told him I wasn’t exaggerating. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The two younger men he sent
upstairs with me were teasing, jovial. They could not stop laughing for the whole
time it took us to get to my flat – expansive laughter that made their bellies
shake. 3m Mohamed, in outrage, had told people the story of the dishonest
exterminators and now the whole building knew about it, united in anger (at the
code of Egyptian hospitality having been broken; in the eyes of most of the
people I meet in my building, I am effectively their guest) and, certainly in
the case of these men, amusement at me having subjected myself to all this
drama and expense. For a rat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
“If you want to spend 4000LE on a
rat, I’ll bring you a rat”, one of them joked. “I’ll bring it, I’ll take it
away and you can give me 4000LE”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Inside, they plunged into the
rancid stench of the kitchen and, a few minutes later, emerged. The dead body
of Kamikaze Rat was wrapped in a black plastic bag, as they held him with a
kind of solemnity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Forget Agatha Christie; this was
pure CSI. This was the rat who had aimed too high in his pursuit of glory. He
had aimed to be Splinter, sensei to the geckoes perhaps. Or maybe he had had lofty
ambitions of living in my kitchen and cooking delicious meals, like the rat
from Ratatouille. Either way, like an aspiring actress whose dreams are
corrupted by the sordid realities of life, he had sipped from the poisoned
chalice of the con-artist exterminators and all his plans had turned to dust. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Unable to resist one parting
rejoinder, the more talkative of the two men turned to me as they were leaving.
Waving the corpse of Kamikaze Rat in front of me with obvious glee he murmured “You
know, if you were in the army….you would be eating him for dinner!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEfZCxnlERKC0QzozbuNoxEfmzRLwDPK4s9rOb42d9lfkoGmHk7qJxrBZYo1KR1ir0x5iL4BVLg4iwfkJZls_-FRY1J1vCjGKbnzXYE0zLxYXVOrC1WSVaby0fM1d1tIrGgaKVdFfaUm4/s1600/DSC_0504.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEfZCxnlERKC0QzozbuNoxEfmzRLwDPK4s9rOb42d9lfkoGmHk7qJxrBZYo1KR1ir0x5iL4BVLg4iwfkJZls_-FRY1J1vCjGKbnzXYE0zLxYXVOrC1WSVaby0fM1d1tIrGgaKVdFfaUm4/s320/DSC_0504.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Morals of this story:<br />
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;">1) A
nice bewaab is worth his weight in gold.</span><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><br />
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;">2) A
gecko cannot eat half a potato.</span></div>
<div style="text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="text-indent: -18pt;">3) Keep your friends close. You never know when you might need
them to come and battle ninja rats with you. </span></div>
</div>
<br />
<o:p></o:p>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-57238384026628049312014-10-25T14:08:00.000-07:002016-08-15T02:39:40.428-07:00Ratgate <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
“Lucy, you don’t think a gecko
could eat all this, do you?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It was a fairly innocuous
question posed to me by my flatmate R one morning, as he proffered a
half-eaten potato. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It was a question I had little
trouble answering with a resounding negative, even halfway out the door on the
way to work. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We were familiar with our house
gecko, comfortable with him. He made occasional appearances, chilling in the
bathroom sink, scooting across the floor in a flash if you returned home
unexpectedly. Occasionally, late at night, you would look up to see him
brooding on the ceiling. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
He was an utterly familiar part
of our day-to-day life, a known entity. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But, gazing on this potato, I
knew immediately that we were dealing with something unknown and sinister. A
force to be reckoned with. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I had, at this point, no idea of
the extent to which my feelings of foreboding would be borne out by actual
events. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
A brief conversation confirmed
that the culprit of this potato-theft must be either a cat or a rat. We live on
the top floor of a 13-storey building - so our house attracts the heat - and
R, a freelance journalist, often preferred to leave windows and doors open
to cool everything down at night. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We prayed that our hungry visitor
was a stray cat prowling around the rooftops in search of rogue potatoes to
munch on. I recollect making a vague promise to myself that if <i>any</i> stray creatures turned up, I would
find an alternative place to stay until they had been dealt with. R was
going to Turkey for ten days; I couldn’t afford to take any chances. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Or so I thought. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
R departed, and I spent
Thursday evening at a friend’s house, returning to the flat on Friday
late-afternoon. As I walked into the flat, I noticed out of the corner of my
eye that the cupboard to the immediate right of our front door, filled with
odds and ends that do not belong to us, was ajar. I thought little of it, and went
to sit down in the large, open sitting/dining room which is the focal point and
heart of our flat. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I took off my glasses, without
which I am as good as blind. Lost in thought, I noticed a creature of
indeterminate (but significant) size and shape run down the stairs to my left
and jump into the cupboard, with its door standing ever so slightly ajar. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Merde. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Blind or not, I could see that
our culprit bore the gait of either a rat or a ferret. It was larger than a
mouse but smaller than a cat. It was brown. It was agile. It was <i>here with me in the house while my flatmate
was in Turkey for ten days</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Merde. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Panic stricken, I called a friend, Crazy Salsa Dancer. My high pitched voice no doubt said it all. “Whatever
you’re doing, please, you need to drop it and come and help me right now.
There’s a creature in my house!” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
For 45 minutes, I sat
immobilized, my eyes glued to this cupboard. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
To his credit, Crazy Salsa
Dancer not only turned up but brought a friend. Together, the three of us
circled the cupboard like reticent hyenas. Opening the door, the two of them
started poking at a pile of sheets and towels with the long stick they had
brought as a weapon. No response. They began berating me; clearly the creature
had run away. I was adamant – I would not rest until I had searched through the
whole cupboard to make sure there was nothing inside. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsCMsn9dUYgwsBzxNXmZbadh07t6-o2dpygeEgKBI4_p1tbw9eM_Zsrs1edPIPxsHaquy8skjwS3loZauZrVgZoQr46q7sA39IXmW6S0e6QgPn8svwpBOFzL9c7weO6El5MFWFIkaSyI/s1600/Rat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsCMsn9dUYgwsBzxNXmZbadh07t6-o2dpygeEgKBI4_p1tbw9eM_Zsrs1edPIPxsHaquy8skjwS3loZauZrVgZoQr46q7sA39IXmW6S0e6QgPn8svwpBOFzL9c7weO6El5MFWFIkaSyI/s320/Rat.jpg" width="180" /></a>So we erected a barrier, consisting
of an old mattress, outside the cupboard. We started removing old sheets and
towels from inside. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
One sheet …nothing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Two sheets ….nothing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Three sheets ….out jumped a
kamikaze rat, teeth bared, eyes flashing fire. It’s hard to tell whether he was
actually a black belt in karate or whether I just imagined it, but in any case
he expertly ricocheted off the mattress and ran into the kitchen – while I, as
if burned by fire, ran squealing into the hallway. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
It took ten minutes to calm me
down, by which point Kamikaze Rat was trapped in my kitchen. A fruitless search
by the boys, with the long stick, proved that he had either escaped through a
hole in the mosquito netting covering the kitchen window, or was still in
hiding. They had to go. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
We barricaded the kitchen door
like the poor veterans of the First World War barricaded the trenches.
Cushions, chairs, towels – everything you could think of to prevent a Rat
Escape. And, it being now 10pm, I could think of nothing more productive to do
than go out, get drunk and sleep on the sofa. So this is what I did. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<o:p></o:p>Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-67811274095056988542014-07-16T05:28:00.000-07:002016-08-10T05:30:12.336-07:00GeckoThe gecko and I<br /> live harmoniously together<br /> except when he jumps out of the rubbish bin<br /> and scuttles across the floor<br /> like a small<br /> translucent<br /> crocodileLucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8648709459696521201.post-32547991426407259802014-02-26T14:31:00.000-08:002016-08-14T14:31:54.816-07:00Don't mess with Um Abdallah<br />A quiet Wednesday at work. I receive a series of phone calls from an unknown creepy caller.<br /><br />My colleagues Hamdy and Mohamed talk politely with the caller, listening to his excuses for calling eight times in five minutes – I was sure this was my cousin’s number, etc – before telling him firmly not to call again.<br /><br />Um Abdullah, in the background: “Hua kaddab! Hua ibn al k***! Hua 3ayez aih??!” ("He's a liar! He's a bastard! What does he want??!")<br /><br />No question who I’m asking to answer the phone the next time I receive one of those calls.Lucyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16859236702108383915noreply@blogger.com0