Everyone around me is busy preparing for the New Year. Homes are getting cleaned, hairs are being done, nails are being polished, clothes are being picked out from wardrobes, food is being prepared, a musical repertoire is being chosen...all in preparation for the upcoming year, which by the will of Allah, unless some major catastrophic event occurs beforehand, will take place in a matter of hours...
Armed with hope and positive belief, everyone hopes that 2010 will be better than the previous years...
You hear all the time - 2009 was a terrible year, but am positive that 2010 will be better...
This is some kind of personal new year resolution one holds onto with the belief --It will be better.
Each year, the same mantra is repeated - It will be, get better...and I suppose this has been going on for centuries...
And while everyone else is rushing to meet this new year with high hopes and wishful thinking -- I, on the other hand woke up, thinking about the Age of Ignorance.
The Age of Ignorance in Islam is called the Jahiliya.
Each people have a time of "before" which they consider to be their age of Ignorance. In each history book you come across, there will always be a reference to a "dark period" -- i.e to an age of Ignorance.
Today, I thought deeply about this age of Ignorance - this Jahiliya.
In the history of Islam, Jahaliya was characterized by several things : the worshiping of false gods, injustices, greed, oppression, exploitation, corruption, the wrongful spilling of blood, superstitions, prostitution, the sacrifice of females - i.e the Feminine... to name but a few...
I am sure that in other cultures and religious systems, they also have this dark period characterized by all the wrong doings of man.
But today in 2009, we all like to believe that the age of Ignorance is no longer. That it is a thing of the past, that we have overcome all those dark forces because the truth has been revealed to us, either through a particular religion, a system of belief or through some Guru who acts as our intercessor and guides in the field of Truth...or through the sciences, a particular ideology or a political model holding promises of freedom from Ignorance.
We like to believe that the Age of Ignorance does not apply to us, personally, individually, and we consider it to be simply a historical period involving a collectivity somewhere, somewhere else, far back or far ago...
On the surface of things, there might some truth in that, considering the evolution and development of our societies, the scientific and technological breakthroughs, the refinement of the arts and cultures, the development of learning institutions, the seeming establishment of international laws and protocols...and the rest...
But are we really past the age of Ignorance ? I am not sure about that, despite all the outward appearances of it being so, despite the outward illusions of it being so...
Today I woke up with a new level of understanding of what the age of Ignorance means...
People are too focused on out there...other people, society, government, information coming from the external world - through teachers and books - the printed word, in all its forms....and they convince themselves that they have finally managed to have it figured out somehow...or at least partially figured out.
But I woke up with a different level of understanding, and inspiring myself from religious concepts and allegories, I have come to realize that the age of Ignorance - ie. the Jahiliya lives in everyone of us, inside of ourselves...
The period of idol worshiping, lies, corruption, injustices, oppression, exploitation, superstitions, and the sacrifice of the Feminine is an inside - inner age. It is not only a historical period back then, out there...no, it is a period inside, right here, right now...
And concomitantly, other stories, myths and allegories derived from religious texts visited me, and the 40 years of exodus, wandering in the desert, is also an inside job, an inner path...
Historically, all prophets were born in times of Ignorance and wandered alone for many years, in exile, in search of the "promised land"...
And in their struggles, sacrifices, solitude and exile, they understood that this "promised land" can only be achieved by doing away with the age of Ignorance and all of its manifestations i.e wandering in the darkness of the soul, like in a desert, so the promised land can be finally reached (and that seems to be a Divine promise) and thereafter laboring it so it can bloom...
The Ayat from the Koran that said " God will not change a people (their condition) unless the people change in themselves " is the Truth.
My wish for you for 2010, is to do away with your own age of ignorance and find your own, new promised land and labor it until it blooms...
Happy New Year.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Friday, 25 December 2009
Lies, Bloody Lies...
This post may earn me more wrath, and frankly I don't give a shit. It is after all MY uncensored blog and am not exactly known for my political correctness either...
I want to write about lies today...lies bloody lies...
I have noticed that lying is the world no.1 epidemic. Worse than swine flu, worse than HIV, worse than the bubonic plague...lying is known to kill indiscriminately, and you need not go too far to see the effects of lying on nations, be it in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan...
Lies are the most potent of weapons for the WEAK. Be sure of that.
But I do not wish to write about politics here, even though, I leave the reader to indulge in a bit of thinking - if it's not too much to ask.....
I have noticed that lying is not only endemic, but it is also encouraged as a way of life...yes, a way of life..
Lying permeates EVERYTHING - Families, intimate relationships, social relationships, governments, the economy, businesses, institutions, clergy, media, academia, politics, even the sciences including the medical field are not spared lies...the virtual world, the real world, and even outer space discoveries are built on lies...
It's fucking amazing, is it not ? I think it is...It's definitely fucking amazing.
And since the subject of Lies and Lying is such a vast field, branching out to literally all aspects of Life, it would require not 1 but 2, 3, 4 Doctoral theses to cover - the origins, development, the biological, psycho-social, political, religious, spiritual,causes and consequences of Lies.. and while at it, cover the history of Lies and how Lies in History have made and broken up nations and empires....of course, this is something I have absolutely no intention of engaging in...
Suffice to say that in my opinion and based upon long and painful observations and experiences, I can safely say that LIES and its corollaries, i.e DECEIT, DENIAL, FABRICATION,...etc..in short, the occultation of TRUTH, starts with a very simple personal, self decision - and that personal decision is called an INTENTION. Lies are always preceded by an intention to cover the Truth and for many reasons...it can be cowardice, fear, self protection, gaining of approval, gaining interests, achieving a specific goal, covering up one's tracks because of wrong behavior, justifying the inexcusable...you name it...
But whichever way I look at it, behind the LIE there is always PROFIT. And who says profit always means gain and loss.
And even though there are different types of lies and several levels of lying...ranging from the seemingly "innocuous" lie to the compulsive, pathological liar (and by the way, the male gender is quite proficient at the compulsive lying business and the female gender at the manipulation business- which for me amounts to roughly the same, really), so leaving typifications, classifications and scales aside, for me Lying is Lying. Full stop.
A big lie, a small lie, a good lie, a bad lie, a white lie, a black lie, a purple lie, a red lie, a green lie, a yellow lie --- for me it's all a fucking lie.
Now where is the political incorrectness in all of this? Wait, am getting there...
Today I had nothing to do, actually I have a lot to do, but I can't be bothered to do it...so I amused myself classifying countries according to their levels of lying...
First I broke it down in continents and revised my impressions from my numerous travels, readings, dealings and experiences with different peoples and races...and this is what I came up with...
In the Middle East and the Arab world... and this is where I shall begin, because this is the area I know best. I shall not cover every single country and remember am not talking politically here, because if I am to include politics then ISRAEL and IRAN would top the list. So let me stick to what I really want to write about...
So getting back to the subject matter...
The worst liars in the Arab world are to be found in Egypt. Lying in Egypt should be made part of the national anthem...In Egypt everyone lies to everyone else...literally.
Liars in Egypt are the norm, and a truthful person is considered weird and worse, a liar.
Lies in Egypt are about everything -- I am not exaggerating, everything. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING is lied about in Egypt. And yes, it's THAT bad. There, you can safely consider the motto - they lie as they breath - to be an applied, empirically tested, proven, Truth.
Egypt is followed by Ze Lebanon...Ze Lebanese like to think themselves crafty and pride themselves in being good entrepreneurs...In Ze Lebanon, the definition of a good entrepreneur is someone who can gain the maximum of profit with the maximum of lies. Entrepreneur is not to be taken as business only, entrepreneurship in Ze Lebanon applies to EVERYTHING and to ALL social and personal relationships...
As I said before, I cannot go through each single country, but it is safe to say that in the ARAB world lying is part and parcel of the "national heritage".
Since am on the subject of this culturally schizophrenic entity called the Arab world, let me say a few things about today's Iraq. Iraqis had the reputation of being the Prussians/Germans of the Middle East.
I know some of you wankers out there would nod their heads and say "yes of course, they were ruled by the Nazis". Not so, idiots. A liar in Iraq would get a kundara , a shoe on his head...usually accompanied with the following sentence : " Chathab, kalb ibn kalb - Liar, dog, son of a dog. " This does not mean they were ALL truthful, righteous Iraqis, not so at all. It just means that before, lying was NOT part of the culture, so to speak...yes, dictatorships do that to you. Today, Iraqis are the most corrupt in the Arab world, they beat Egypt and Ze Lebanon combined...
OK, I think am done with the Arab garbage, let me move on to another pile now...
A short note here, I don't want Indians and Pakistanis who read the above, rub their hands gleefully and say "see, we told you Arabs are liars.!"
Oh no, because Indians and Pakistanis beat Arabs in the field of Lying...they have elevated it to an art form, Bollywood style, all flowery colors, like the tacky artificial flowers found in curry restaurants. So shut up and go tend your own backyard and get rid of those plastic flowers...and the sly smiles and head shaking nods.
Since am on the subject of the Indian subcontinent, let me add that Sri Lankans do not fare better than their Indian and Pakistani counterparts. And in this whole bloody lot, the least dishonest I have met where the Afghans, I think it must a tribal thing...well not anymore..
OK am done with the Indian subcontinent. let me move on to Asia.
The least liars I have come across were the Chinese, and the worst were the Filipinos. If you like, the Philippines is the Egypt of Asia. There too, lying for them is a cultural thing, they inhale and exhale it daily...
OK, move on to Africa...I don't have much experience with Africa and Africans. I had met a few Senegalese whom I really liked and had nothing to complain about, but I also did meet some Nigerians and the little I know about them, is that they were bad lying motherfuckers...Judging from the amount of scam, fraudulent emails I get from Nigeria, I guess you get my point.
Moving on to Europe...the worst were the Albanians-Kosovars...and the least in lying were the Germans and the Scandinavians. Will dedicate a special post to Denmark as I found the great Danes to be the most unpleasant people to be around with and the most racist and arrogant in Northern Europe followed by the Finns.
OK time to move to the Americas. Grosso modo, Latin Americans do not fare better than the Arabs in their lying sprees. The worst I came across were the Brazilians, many of whom I found to be full of shit, but Latinos also make lying a "cultural" trait...
Since am on the subject of the Americas, let me conclude with my "all time favorite" -- America, the USA.
Contrary to the prevalent belief that Americans are an honest people, I found the Americans to be the most dumb liars around. One characteristic that particularly struck me in the American personality (that includes Arab Americans, by the way) is their enormous propensity for BULLSHIT. You can safely say that Americans are FULL OF SHIT when it comes to the Truth.
Americans pretend all the time, and fake it. Fake smiles, fake "hi how's it going", fake friendliness, fake political correctness, fake everything... and I have NEVER, EVER met a people in my life who are capable of so many lies, primarily to themselves and in second lieu to the world.
Their lies are the most dangerous ones of all...Their lies are institutionalized at the highest levels, in their families, in their schools, in their universities, in their government, in their army, in their economy, in their businesses, in their churches, in their media, in their films.. they are indeed the people of the lie, the most dangerous ones around...
They are the Mother of all Liars, the Mother of all Lies. And their lies are bloody, bloody, lies...
I want to write about lies today...lies bloody lies...
I have noticed that lying is the world no.1 epidemic. Worse than swine flu, worse than HIV, worse than the bubonic plague...lying is known to kill indiscriminately, and you need not go too far to see the effects of lying on nations, be it in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan...
Lies are the most potent of weapons for the WEAK. Be sure of that.
But I do not wish to write about politics here, even though, I leave the reader to indulge in a bit of thinking - if it's not too much to ask.....
I have noticed that lying is not only endemic, but it is also encouraged as a way of life...yes, a way of life..
Lying permeates EVERYTHING - Families, intimate relationships, social relationships, governments, the economy, businesses, institutions, clergy, media, academia, politics, even the sciences including the medical field are not spared lies...the virtual world, the real world, and even outer space discoveries are built on lies...
It's fucking amazing, is it not ? I think it is...It's definitely fucking amazing.
And since the subject of Lies and Lying is such a vast field, branching out to literally all aspects of Life, it would require not 1 but 2, 3, 4 Doctoral theses to cover - the origins, development, the biological, psycho-social, political, religious, spiritual,causes and consequences of Lies.. and while at it, cover the history of Lies and how Lies in History have made and broken up nations and empires....of course, this is something I have absolutely no intention of engaging in...
Suffice to say that in my opinion and based upon long and painful observations and experiences, I can safely say that LIES and its corollaries, i.e DECEIT, DENIAL, FABRICATION,...etc..in short, the occultation of TRUTH, starts with a very simple personal, self decision - and that personal decision is called an INTENTION. Lies are always preceded by an intention to cover the Truth and for many reasons...it can be cowardice, fear, self protection, gaining of approval, gaining interests, achieving a specific goal, covering up one's tracks because of wrong behavior, justifying the inexcusable...you name it...
But whichever way I look at it, behind the LIE there is always PROFIT. And who says profit always means gain and loss.
And even though there are different types of lies and several levels of lying...ranging from the seemingly "innocuous" lie to the compulsive, pathological liar (and by the way, the male gender is quite proficient at the compulsive lying business and the female gender at the manipulation business- which for me amounts to roughly the same, really), so leaving typifications, classifications and scales aside, for me Lying is Lying. Full stop.
A big lie, a small lie, a good lie, a bad lie, a white lie, a black lie, a purple lie, a red lie, a green lie, a yellow lie --- for me it's all a fucking lie.
Now where is the political incorrectness in all of this? Wait, am getting there...
Today I had nothing to do, actually I have a lot to do, but I can't be bothered to do it...so I amused myself classifying countries according to their levels of lying...
First I broke it down in continents and revised my impressions from my numerous travels, readings, dealings and experiences with different peoples and races...and this is what I came up with...
In the Middle East and the Arab world... and this is where I shall begin, because this is the area I know best. I shall not cover every single country and remember am not talking politically here, because if I am to include politics then ISRAEL and IRAN would top the list. So let me stick to what I really want to write about...
So getting back to the subject matter...
The worst liars in the Arab world are to be found in Egypt. Lying in Egypt should be made part of the national anthem...In Egypt everyone lies to everyone else...literally.
Liars in Egypt are the norm, and a truthful person is considered weird and worse, a liar.
Lies in Egypt are about everything -- I am not exaggerating, everything. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING is lied about in Egypt. And yes, it's THAT bad. There, you can safely consider the motto - they lie as they breath - to be an applied, empirically tested, proven, Truth.
Egypt is followed by Ze Lebanon...Ze Lebanese like to think themselves crafty and pride themselves in being good entrepreneurs...In Ze Lebanon, the definition of a good entrepreneur is someone who can gain the maximum of profit with the maximum of lies. Entrepreneur is not to be taken as business only, entrepreneurship in Ze Lebanon applies to EVERYTHING and to ALL social and personal relationships...
As I said before, I cannot go through each single country, but it is safe to say that in the ARAB world lying is part and parcel of the "national heritage".
Since am on the subject of this culturally schizophrenic entity called the Arab world, let me say a few things about today's Iraq. Iraqis had the reputation of being the Prussians/Germans of the Middle East.
I know some of you wankers out there would nod their heads and say "yes of course, they were ruled by the Nazis". Not so, idiots. A liar in Iraq would get a kundara , a shoe on his head...usually accompanied with the following sentence : " Chathab, kalb ibn kalb - Liar, dog, son of a dog. " This does not mean they were ALL truthful, righteous Iraqis, not so at all. It just means that before, lying was NOT part of the culture, so to speak...yes, dictatorships do that to you. Today, Iraqis are the most corrupt in the Arab world, they beat Egypt and Ze Lebanon combined...
OK, I think am done with the Arab garbage, let me move on to another pile now...
A short note here, I don't want Indians and Pakistanis who read the above, rub their hands gleefully and say "see, we told you Arabs are liars.!"
Oh no, because Indians and Pakistanis beat Arabs in the field of Lying...they have elevated it to an art form, Bollywood style, all flowery colors, like the tacky artificial flowers found in curry restaurants. So shut up and go tend your own backyard and get rid of those plastic flowers...and the sly smiles and head shaking nods.
Since am on the subject of the Indian subcontinent, let me add that Sri Lankans do not fare better than their Indian and Pakistani counterparts. And in this whole bloody lot, the least dishonest I have met where the Afghans, I think it must a tribal thing...well not anymore..
OK am done with the Indian subcontinent. let me move on to Asia.
The least liars I have come across were the Chinese, and the worst were the Filipinos. If you like, the Philippines is the Egypt of Asia. There too, lying for them is a cultural thing, they inhale and exhale it daily...
OK, move on to Africa...I don't have much experience with Africa and Africans. I had met a few Senegalese whom I really liked and had nothing to complain about, but I also did meet some Nigerians and the little I know about them, is that they were bad lying motherfuckers...Judging from the amount of scam, fraudulent emails I get from Nigeria, I guess you get my point.
Moving on to Europe...the worst were the Albanians-Kosovars...and the least in lying were the Germans and the Scandinavians. Will dedicate a special post to Denmark as I found the great Danes to be the most unpleasant people to be around with and the most racist and arrogant in Northern Europe followed by the Finns.
OK time to move to the Americas. Grosso modo, Latin Americans do not fare better than the Arabs in their lying sprees. The worst I came across were the Brazilians, many of whom I found to be full of shit, but Latinos also make lying a "cultural" trait...
Since am on the subject of the Americas, let me conclude with my "all time favorite" -- America, the USA.
Contrary to the prevalent belief that Americans are an honest people, I found the Americans to be the most dumb liars around. One characteristic that particularly struck me in the American personality (that includes Arab Americans, by the way) is their enormous propensity for BULLSHIT. You can safely say that Americans are FULL OF SHIT when it comes to the Truth.
Americans pretend all the time, and fake it. Fake smiles, fake "hi how's it going", fake friendliness, fake political correctness, fake everything... and I have NEVER, EVER met a people in my life who are capable of so many lies, primarily to themselves and in second lieu to the world.
Their lies are the most dangerous ones of all...Their lies are institutionalized at the highest levels, in their families, in their schools, in their universities, in their government, in their army, in their economy, in their businesses, in their churches, in their media, in their films.. they are indeed the people of the lie, the most dangerous ones around...
They are the Mother of all Liars, the Mother of all Lies. And their lies are bloody, bloody, lies...
Monday, 21 December 2009
The Right Question...
I don't want to sound elitist or anything like that...but sorry to tell you -- most people are stupid.
Stupidity does not come from giving the wrong answers, Stupidity stems from asking the wrong questions.
I spent parts of this afternoon with a sweet, I mean really sweet friend, who has just been diagnosed with Cancer.
When you meet her and get to know her, you will ask yourself, how on earth can that innocent, really sweet, deeply kind being, suffer such an ordeal ?
I don't have the answers...I wish I did...It flabbergasts me, eludes me, and leaves me with one huge interrogation mark, one after another...
After my visit, I was left with the all too common question WHY ?
This sweet soul, did not smoke, did not drink, did not engage in any "illicit" behavior, was careful about her diet, yet she found herself alone with her tumors...WHY ?
I don't know why. The most advanced medical scientist does not why...no one knows why.
But maybe I just asked the wrong question. I asked why and not HOW come ?
How come someone who has a relatively healthy life style develop tumors all of a sudden -- was the question I should have asked myself...
How come ?
Probing a little, I found out that X. kept her sorrows to herself : her losses, her grief, her loneliness, her sadness, her pain...
Could it be that they were screaming out to her ? I can't tell for sure...but they could well be...
Could it be that the customary " Al Hamdu'lillah am fine " (thanks to God, am fine) is a lie ? A lie we keep repeating to ourselves when our world is crumbling around us ? Yes possibly so, it could very well be.
Are tumors a symptom of a tired, fatigued mode of survival ? When we keep going and everything inside nudges us in the opposite direction ? Yes possibly so...
Are tumors a sign that we have failed to revere our pain and so it manifests itself "outside" of us, crossing the barrier from our soul to our bodies ? Yes it is possible...
Could it be that the physical pain is more bearable in the long run than the pain of the soul ? Yes I think so too...
So what is the balm ? What is the remedy ?
What is the remedy for loss and abandonment ? What is the remedy for grief and aloneness ? What is the remedy for a soul crying out in the wilderness...in the wilderness of scientific non achievements, in the wilderness of half baked religious answers, in the wilderness of the huge interrogation mark ?
What is it crying out for ? Really crying out for ?
It is crying out for LIFE....
It says I want to TRULY live now... or else,
let me die...
Stupidity does not come from giving the wrong answers, Stupidity stems from asking the wrong questions.
I spent parts of this afternoon with a sweet, I mean really sweet friend, who has just been diagnosed with Cancer.
When you meet her and get to know her, you will ask yourself, how on earth can that innocent, really sweet, deeply kind being, suffer such an ordeal ?
I don't have the answers...I wish I did...It flabbergasts me, eludes me, and leaves me with one huge interrogation mark, one after another...
After my visit, I was left with the all too common question WHY ?
This sweet soul, did not smoke, did not drink, did not engage in any "illicit" behavior, was careful about her diet, yet she found herself alone with her tumors...WHY ?
I don't know why. The most advanced medical scientist does not why...no one knows why.
But maybe I just asked the wrong question. I asked why and not HOW come ?
How come someone who has a relatively healthy life style develop tumors all of a sudden -- was the question I should have asked myself...
How come ?
Probing a little, I found out that X. kept her sorrows to herself : her losses, her grief, her loneliness, her sadness, her pain...
Could it be that they were screaming out to her ? I can't tell for sure...but they could well be...
Could it be that the customary " Al Hamdu'lillah am fine " (thanks to God, am fine) is a lie ? A lie we keep repeating to ourselves when our world is crumbling around us ? Yes possibly so, it could very well be.
Are tumors a symptom of a tired, fatigued mode of survival ? When we keep going and everything inside nudges us in the opposite direction ? Yes possibly so...
Are tumors a sign that we have failed to revere our pain and so it manifests itself "outside" of us, crossing the barrier from our soul to our bodies ? Yes it is possible...
Could it be that the physical pain is more bearable in the long run than the pain of the soul ? Yes I think so too...
So what is the balm ? What is the remedy ?
What is the remedy for loss and abandonment ? What is the remedy for grief and aloneness ? What is the remedy for a soul crying out in the wilderness...in the wilderness of scientific non achievements, in the wilderness of half baked religious answers, in the wilderness of the huge interrogation mark ?
What is it crying out for ? Really crying out for ?
It is crying out for LIFE....
It says I want to TRULY live now... or else,
let me die...
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Thoughts on Polygamy - 3
So where did I leave off yesterday ? Ah, yes, I stopped at the 1% of polyandrous females in the animal kingdom, but not only...
The only living example I know of a polyandrous female is that of a highly accomplished pianist and a sharp intellectual, who married 4 men. I am not too sure by which law and with which ritual she did so, but I know that she did. She did not go around advertising it, but a friend who knows here well told me that the 4 guys are indeed her monogamous husbands.
When I heard the story, I was not shocked at all. It actually did not bother me one bit either...
I can fully understand one woman being 4 in 1. And hence I can understand one woman needing more than one husband. I did not think about how she managed sexually at the time...sex did not cross my mind, but what did cross my mind is that knowing she has a high intellectual acumen, she probably needed more than one man to complete her multi-faceted personality.
The Sufis interpret the Surat of the Koran regarding 1 man and 4 women as man being the center and the 4 women, symbolizing the 4 cardinal points, in the geometry-cosmology of life.
So I understood that this woman with 4 husbands may have been the center and her 4 men the cardinal points.
I admit, she may be an exception to the rule, but every rule has an exception.
Maybe she felt that not one man could fulfill her intellectual needs. And I certainly can understand that. And here I will introduce a short paragraph on the subject of intellectual women, as I believe it is quite important.
Overall, men are allergic to intellectual women. This is a fact they care not admit but ask any intellectual woman and she will tell you what she knows...
I suppose intellect has always been traditionally associated with the masculine, and an intellectual woman runs against this stereotype. Notice I am not talking about educated women, I am talking about intellectual women. There is a difference here.
Men in general and Eastern men and Arab men in particular are not too crazy about educated women who are intellectuals, specially if she happens to be an Arab woman.
Firstly because they feel insecure with such a woman, and secondly because they feel their own lack on that front when with her and thirdly because she does not fit the model of femininity they hold in their "heads" and fourthly they find themselves competing with her for some reason, that only they can divulge to you and if they are unable to compete with her, they will put her down as well as any of her accomplishments. In fact they are jealous of her, believe it or not.
I personally remember being the recipient of similar put down comments from males, and they went along these lines and started with the opening sentence of "your problem is..."
"your problem with marriage is - you have read too much..."
"your problem is you think, know, analyze too much..."
"your problem is you have too many books.."
"your problem is you are too intellectual..."
"your problem is that you are interested in too many things..."
Your problem, your problem, your problem...
My problem is that you men who crossed my life turned out to be 1st class, shallow, empty, mediocre, soulless, LOSERS. This is my problem. And beside this problem, I have none other. Or maybe I do have a problem after all. I KNOW this type of garbage men all too well. And alas there are too many of them around...
So yes, I do understand this woman with 4 husbands and why she needed more than one...since a lot of men lack many of what I consider the essentials, she had to find a 1/4 of each essential in one and thus make a whole 1 with 4 quarters. Makes sense to me...totally.
Forget the lip service men pay, you need to see them in action in their personal relationships...forget the outer facade they put, you need to scratch beyond the polished surface....Oh yeah.
So getting back to the article which caused such a stir, and which I mentioned in my post on Polygamy no.1. In it, the daring Saudi female author asks : why men have the right to get bored of being with one woman and therefore have the right to marry another three, while women do not.
“A man would say, I am bored. She has become like a sister to me. I am no longer sexually attracted to her’… Here's what I call cheating begins since traditions and the clerics provide men with the remedy to the ailment of boredom,”
Now am opening another paragraph on boredom.
All couples eventually go through a boredom phase...boredom is a personal problem not a problem of couples. As one wise man once told me, he said " of course I get bored with my wife, I get bored alone too..." Boredom is inevitable at some point in a couple's life . Just as boredom is sometimes inevitable when one is alone.
But "our dear" men take that as an excuse for philandering...and here am talking about ALL men not just a specific race...
I once heard a vulgar Egyptian man referring to his wife as a plate of Molokhia (a kind of cooked spinach). He said in public, "eating Molokhia every day, am fed up".
His wife was not present to respond... But seeing what a dork he is, I asked him if his wife was happy eating hummus daily - hummus is a flatulence producing grain also known as chickpeas and it is not exactly my idea of romance, either...
Men use this excuse of boredom to have affairs, or in the case of Muslim men to get a second wife.
I did briefly explain the context in which having a second wife is permitted, but Muslim men and non Muslim men alike ABUSE, and abuse greatly whatever power is given to them and find lame excuses to justify their filthy acts. Filthy acts because based on lies and manipulations.
I have to say at least in Islam though, a man cannot just go and sleep around irresponsibly. Islam tells him you want to fuck around ? Sure thing, you marry the woman and be responsible for her. And damn right too.
How many women in the West, end up as mistresses for married men and remain so for many years, wasting their lives away, hoping that he will eventually divorce his wife and come to her. They can keep on dreaming...
So getting back to boredom, and it is possible that some women are very boring and I need to remind the men who married them that they chose boring women to start with...but trust me when I tell you that men can be very, very, very boring as well...so this boredom door swings both ways...most definitely so.
Having a man talk about nothing but his job day in day out, about his adventures day in a day out, about his favorite sports teams, about stock market fluctuations and the latest car model of his dreams on and on -- this kind of man beats Valium and the most potent sleeping pill.
Men who keep interrupting, men who can't listen, men who talk endlessly about themselves are as boring as hell...They are boredom itself.
And the boredom is not limited to communication skills or lack thereof, it extends to bed. But that needs a whole chapter by itself...
Just to say that women also get VERY bored with the men in their lives...and they don't only get bored, they get frustrated and angry by the men in their lives...
Because if it only stopped at boredom, it would be a blessing. Oh no, there is also abuse, violence, nasty vile, deranged, egomaniacs that poison women's lives daily...
Boredom is the tip of the iceberg "dear men". The Truth is that you fucked up and fucked up big time...violence, wars, market collapses, pollution and ecological disasters, death industries, gang crimes, prison systems, rape and the rest...
YES all of these are fruits of your labor...your "hard work" of many centuries...
You have failed - FAILED - and failed big time. You have failed as human beings and failed as MEN.
You have cheated, lied, abused, oppressed, raped, stolen, exploited, killed...most acts of crime are committed by you, acts of war are committed by you, violence is committed by you and rape is committed by you...
Of course, some women cheer you in your crimes and abuse, and some women, some stupid, empty, soulless desperate women, follow you like sheep...and they sit and cry wolf later...but bottom line you are the ones who are ultimately RESPONSIBLE for the mess we have found ourselves in, you are ultimately responsible for the dire state of affairs the planet finds itself in...
When I look at all the damage, I can't help wonder what kind of parents you had, what kind of fathers and more importantly what kind of mothers gave birth to such ugliness like yourselves. You have indeed turned this place into a very ugly one.
And the day you own up to your acts and make serious amends is the day that salvation is possible but not before...
So getting back to female polygamy, compared to all the crimes you men have committed, and are committing daily, crimes against planet Earth, crimes against women and children, crimes against your fellow men, is it such a big deal if in the face of all of this, a woman demands the right to have a second husband ? I think not.
Personally I would not want to run the risk of ending up with a first dickhead, let alone a second one.
And I guess that sums it all up.
The only living example I know of a polyandrous female is that of a highly accomplished pianist and a sharp intellectual, who married 4 men. I am not too sure by which law and with which ritual she did so, but I know that she did. She did not go around advertising it, but a friend who knows here well told me that the 4 guys are indeed her monogamous husbands.
When I heard the story, I was not shocked at all. It actually did not bother me one bit either...
I can fully understand one woman being 4 in 1. And hence I can understand one woman needing more than one husband. I did not think about how she managed sexually at the time...sex did not cross my mind, but what did cross my mind is that knowing she has a high intellectual acumen, she probably needed more than one man to complete her multi-faceted personality.
The Sufis interpret the Surat of the Koran regarding 1 man and 4 women as man being the center and the 4 women, symbolizing the 4 cardinal points, in the geometry-cosmology of life.
So I understood that this woman with 4 husbands may have been the center and her 4 men the cardinal points.
I admit, she may be an exception to the rule, but every rule has an exception.
Maybe she felt that not one man could fulfill her intellectual needs. And I certainly can understand that. And here I will introduce a short paragraph on the subject of intellectual women, as I believe it is quite important.
Overall, men are allergic to intellectual women. This is a fact they care not admit but ask any intellectual woman and she will tell you what she knows...
I suppose intellect has always been traditionally associated with the masculine, and an intellectual woman runs against this stereotype. Notice I am not talking about educated women, I am talking about intellectual women. There is a difference here.
Men in general and Eastern men and Arab men in particular are not too crazy about educated women who are intellectuals, specially if she happens to be an Arab woman.
Firstly because they feel insecure with such a woman, and secondly because they feel their own lack on that front when with her and thirdly because she does not fit the model of femininity they hold in their "heads" and fourthly they find themselves competing with her for some reason, that only they can divulge to you and if they are unable to compete with her, they will put her down as well as any of her accomplishments. In fact they are jealous of her, believe it or not.
I personally remember being the recipient of similar put down comments from males, and they went along these lines and started with the opening sentence of "your problem is..."
"your problem with marriage is - you have read too much..."
"your problem is you think, know, analyze too much..."
"your problem is you have too many books.."
"your problem is you are too intellectual..."
"your problem is that you are interested in too many things..."
Your problem, your problem, your problem...
My problem is that you men who crossed my life turned out to be 1st class, shallow, empty, mediocre, soulless, LOSERS. This is my problem. And beside this problem, I have none other. Or maybe I do have a problem after all. I KNOW this type of garbage men all too well. And alas there are too many of them around...
So yes, I do understand this woman with 4 husbands and why she needed more than one...since a lot of men lack many of what I consider the essentials, she had to find a 1/4 of each essential in one and thus make a whole 1 with 4 quarters. Makes sense to me...totally.
Forget the lip service men pay, you need to see them in action in their personal relationships...forget the outer facade they put, you need to scratch beyond the polished surface....Oh yeah.
So getting back to the article which caused such a stir, and which I mentioned in my post on Polygamy no.1. In it, the daring Saudi female author asks : why men have the right to get bored of being with one woman and therefore have the right to marry another three, while women do not.
“A man would say, I am bored. She has become like a sister to me. I am no longer sexually attracted to her’… Here's what I call cheating begins since traditions and the clerics provide men with the remedy to the ailment of boredom,”
Now am opening another paragraph on boredom.
All couples eventually go through a boredom phase...boredom is a personal problem not a problem of couples. As one wise man once told me, he said " of course I get bored with my wife, I get bored alone too..." Boredom is inevitable at some point in a couple's life . Just as boredom is sometimes inevitable when one is alone.
But "our dear" men take that as an excuse for philandering...and here am talking about ALL men not just a specific race...
I once heard a vulgar Egyptian man referring to his wife as a plate of Molokhia (a kind of cooked spinach). He said in public, "eating Molokhia every day, am fed up".
His wife was not present to respond... But seeing what a dork he is, I asked him if his wife was happy eating hummus daily - hummus is a flatulence producing grain also known as chickpeas and it is not exactly my idea of romance, either...
Men use this excuse of boredom to have affairs, or in the case of Muslim men to get a second wife.
I did briefly explain the context in which having a second wife is permitted, but Muslim men and non Muslim men alike ABUSE, and abuse greatly whatever power is given to them and find lame excuses to justify their filthy acts. Filthy acts because based on lies and manipulations.
I have to say at least in Islam though, a man cannot just go and sleep around irresponsibly. Islam tells him you want to fuck around ? Sure thing, you marry the woman and be responsible for her. And damn right too.
How many women in the West, end up as mistresses for married men and remain so for many years, wasting their lives away, hoping that he will eventually divorce his wife and come to her. They can keep on dreaming...
So getting back to boredom, and it is possible that some women are very boring and I need to remind the men who married them that they chose boring women to start with...but trust me when I tell you that men can be very, very, very boring as well...so this boredom door swings both ways...most definitely so.
Having a man talk about nothing but his job day in day out, about his adventures day in a day out, about his favorite sports teams, about stock market fluctuations and the latest car model of his dreams on and on -- this kind of man beats Valium and the most potent sleeping pill.
Men who keep interrupting, men who can't listen, men who talk endlessly about themselves are as boring as hell...They are boredom itself.
And the boredom is not limited to communication skills or lack thereof, it extends to bed. But that needs a whole chapter by itself...
Just to say that women also get VERY bored with the men in their lives...and they don't only get bored, they get frustrated and angry by the men in their lives...
Because if it only stopped at boredom, it would be a blessing. Oh no, there is also abuse, violence, nasty vile, deranged, egomaniacs that poison women's lives daily...
On male violence you must know that among women aged between 15 - 44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents & war combined.
Boredom is the tip of the iceberg "dear men". The Truth is that you fucked up and fucked up big time...violence, wars, market collapses, pollution and ecological disasters, death industries, gang crimes, prison systems, rape and the rest...
YES all of these are fruits of your labor...your "hard work" of many centuries...
You have failed - FAILED - and failed big time. You have failed as human beings and failed as MEN.
You have cheated, lied, abused, oppressed, raped, stolen, exploited, killed...most acts of crime are committed by you, acts of war are committed by you, violence is committed by you and rape is committed by you...
Of course, some women cheer you in your crimes and abuse, and some women, some stupid, empty, soulless desperate women, follow you like sheep...and they sit and cry wolf later...but bottom line you are the ones who are ultimately RESPONSIBLE for the mess we have found ourselves in, you are ultimately responsible for the dire state of affairs the planet finds itself in...
When I look at all the damage, I can't help wonder what kind of parents you had, what kind of fathers and more importantly what kind of mothers gave birth to such ugliness like yourselves. You have indeed turned this place into a very ugly one.
And the day you own up to your acts and make serious amends is the day that salvation is possible but not before...
So getting back to female polygamy, compared to all the crimes you men have committed, and are committing daily, crimes against planet Earth, crimes against women and children, crimes against your fellow men, is it such a big deal if in the face of all of this, a woman demands the right to have a second husband ? I think not.
Personally I would not want to run the risk of ending up with a first dickhead, let alone a second one.
And I guess that sums it all up.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Thoughts on Polygamy - 2
I will try to pick up where I left off...again, I reiterate that the subject matter is a difficult one, bearing in mind that it is a woman writing about it.
Had it been a male, I am 100% sure, he would not need to dig deep into finding the "objective" pros and cons.
Anyways, let me continue...even though I cannot guarantee beforehand an all final conclusion on the subject matter. After all, I did say I am rambling and you have the choice to either trip with me or to back out...
Historically or should I say anthropologically, well at least as far as my knowledge goes, the polyandrous societies that I recall reading about were two. One of them, and am not sure they still exist, was in the Tibet, where one woman would be shared by several men -- husband, brother in law, and others... and according to some historical reading I still have recollections of, in the pre-Islamic era, in the Southern tip of the Arabian peninsula now called Saudi Arabia, similar polyandrous structures existed, whereby a woman would have up to 10 husbands. More than 10 would be considered prostitution.
And according to some historical narratives, if the woman kept the door of her tent down, it would signal to one of the husbands, that she is busy with another one.,.
Some would argue that the polyandrous woman had no choice. That she was shared amongst the men of the tribe/clan like an object.
There might be some truth in that. When reading about polyandrous societies in the Tibet, for instance, I do remember that the polygamous women there HAD to accept the husband's brother and even being given away as a "present" to a male visitor.
I remember reading similar stories amongst the Inuits/Eskimo females, by which a woman would be given off as a "present" to a visitor...
Of course this leads me to question if in these polyandrous systems, women were actually free to choose, to start with...and it leads me to question if women were truly the matriarchs there or if the structure of polyandry was imposed upon them by the men, all the way...
Which of course, leads me to conclude that "male possessiveness" is not necessarily an "innate", biologically, predetermined one, but can also very well be a societal, structurally, culturally, induced trait depending on context.
If we hypothetically assume that these polyandrous females were not forced into this societal construct by the men, at that particular time (of course no one bothered to ask them if they were happy having up to 10 men at a time), then one might conclude that it is fairly possible that these polyandrous women were truly polygamous and acted out of CHOICE.
Even though I very much doubt the above proposition, seeing that men are overall a bunch of assholes and that one male is more than enough, but for assumption's sake I will take that female polyandry was a "free choice" by the women and that there truly existed some matriarchal form of power that translated itself into polyandrous structures...
And at that point, I am going to get quite personal...after all who would want to fuck the husband, and the brother of the husband and the uncle of the husband and the visitor of the husband...and God knows who else ...
I mean, one is more than enough...so said Eve as she fell and tumbled down with Mr. Adam...
On that subject, there is an Arabic joke in which Adam, with a pouting face asks Eve: " Do you love me darling? " And Eve replies : " Why is there anyone else around here but you!"
I suppose Eve and all the others did not have much choice to start with, they were stuck with one Adam.
Except for the 1%...
Had it been a male, I am 100% sure, he would not need to dig deep into finding the "objective" pros and cons.
Anyways, let me continue...even though I cannot guarantee beforehand an all final conclusion on the subject matter. After all, I did say I am rambling and you have the choice to either trip with me or to back out...
Historically or should I say anthropologically, well at least as far as my knowledge goes, the polyandrous societies that I recall reading about were two. One of them, and am not sure they still exist, was in the Tibet, where one woman would be shared by several men -- husband, brother in law, and others... and according to some historical reading I still have recollections of, in the pre-Islamic era, in the Southern tip of the Arabian peninsula now called Saudi Arabia, similar polyandrous structures existed, whereby a woman would have up to 10 husbands. More than 10 would be considered prostitution.
And according to some historical narratives, if the woman kept the door of her tent down, it would signal to one of the husbands, that she is busy with another one.,.
Some would argue that the polyandrous woman had no choice. That she was shared amongst the men of the tribe/clan like an object.
There might be some truth in that. When reading about polyandrous societies in the Tibet, for instance, I do remember that the polygamous women there HAD to accept the husband's brother and even being given away as a "present" to a male visitor.
I remember reading similar stories amongst the Inuits/Eskimo females, by which a woman would be given off as a "present" to a visitor...
Of course this leads me to question if in these polyandrous systems, women were actually free to choose, to start with...and it leads me to question if women were truly the matriarchs there or if the structure of polyandry was imposed upon them by the men, all the way...
Which of course, leads me to conclude that "male possessiveness" is not necessarily an "innate", biologically, predetermined one, but can also very well be a societal, structurally, culturally, induced trait depending on context.
If we hypothetically assume that these polyandrous females were not forced into this societal construct by the men, at that particular time (of course no one bothered to ask them if they were happy having up to 10 men at a time), then one might conclude that it is fairly possible that these polyandrous women were truly polygamous and acted out of CHOICE.
Even though I very much doubt the above proposition, seeing that men are overall a bunch of assholes and that one male is more than enough, but for assumption's sake I will take that female polyandry was a "free choice" by the women and that there truly existed some matriarchal form of power that translated itself into polyandrous structures...
And at that point, I am going to get quite personal...after all who would want to fuck the husband, and the brother of the husband and the uncle of the husband and the visitor of the husband...and God knows who else ...
I mean, one is more than enough...so said Eve as she fell and tumbled down with Mr. Adam...
On that subject, there is an Arabic joke in which Adam, with a pouting face asks Eve: " Do you love me darling? " And Eve replies : " Why is there anyone else around here but you!"
I suppose Eve and all the others did not have much choice to start with, they were stuck with one Adam.
Except for the 1%...
Thoughts on Polygamy - 1
The recent outbursts of some fairly violent reactions regarding a comment I left on Al'Arabiya website concerning Female Polygamy, led me to delve into the subject matter deeper...
I left a comment following an article by a daring Saudi female journalist who argued that women too, have the right to marry more than one man as part of gender equality.
And I shall reprint some parts of it below.
The author asks : " why men have the right to get bored of being with one woman and therefore have the right to marry another three, while women do not.
" But a woman does not cheat, not because she is not bored. In fact, she might have not felt one ounce of pleasure since the very first night of this arranged marriage. But traditions and the clerics force her to stay at home and shut up "
“A man would say, ‘I am bored. She has become like a sister to me. I am no longer sexually attracted to her.’… Here's what I call cheating begins since traditions and the clerics provide men with the remedy to the ailment of boredom,” the article reads.
Bedair then asks what happens when the woman gets bored as well or rather if she has not been enjoying her marital life from the very beginning
She then concludes the article by proposing that either polygamy be sanctioned for men and women alike or a new map for marriage be drawn to defeat men’s "lame" excuses.
“Until then, the question remains: What happens when I am bored of him or if I feel he is like a brother to me?”
Needless to say lawsuits have started falling on the newspaper that published this article and the BBC picked up the story as well. A sign that the shit hit the fan.
I find all of this quite amusing....
This is indeed a vast subject and an non exhaustive one...and by coincidence I fell on an article today as I was flipping through some magazine at my friend's place, and the article was on polygamy.
It heavily relied on zoological observations, meaning on behavior of animals, probably derived from some Darwinian background, where it was argued that this whole polygamy business is Nature's way to ensure the reproduction of species, and by which not one female mammal/primate is left out from the reproductive cycle.
That article then gave a few figures, and it seems that 82% of male animals are polygamous and 1% only of female animals are polyandrous (polyandry is female polygamy).
Unfortunately I could not finish the article as my friend barged in from the kitchen with a tray of goodies and as I picked the delicacies and stared into his eyes, I wondered if he was part of the 82% ...and of course that got me thinking if I was part of the 1%...
However, I do remember quickly reading through the conclusion that stated that monogamy was an unnatural state of affairs. The magazine by the way was a European one.
I had to remind myself that neither he nor I were primates...but who's to tell ?
Just to tell you that this is a complex subject and am not even sure why I started it...and it may very well be that this post will be totally incoherent as thoughts are racing through my mind...
So if you can bear the incoherence read on and if you can't, leave me to ramble by myself...
It is a complex subject for many reasons...
It touches at the core of gender relations (East and West), it touches on religion, culture, biology, socialization and the big S, the taboo word -- SEX.
In one of my posts on Iraqi widows, I advocated for a return of male polygamy -- not that it ever left...
In re-reading the surat Al -Nisa from the Holy Koran, and the ayat/paragraph dealing with the issue of 4 wives, I can't help but notice that this particular paragraph starts with "the Orphans"
Orphans here can mean orphaned children with a widow for a mother or it may also mean an orphaned woman. In the Semitic world view, a woman who has no male supporter is considered an orphan as well. The ayat then concludes-- if you fear you cannot treat the women equally,with justice, then only one woman is allowed.
Treat the women equally is a very important sentence. Some interpret that as the man should provide equally to the 2, 3, or 4 women. This presupposes that the man has the means to do so. But then treating equally or with justice is not only about material provisions, that would be a very literal reading of the ayat.
So a further interpretation would mean -- there must be an equal sexual treatment too. Meaning that none of the women are to be neglected sexually. In other words, the man has to have sex with the women in turn. No favoring one over the other. This again presupposes that the man is physically and sexually fit.
To treat equally may also mean to love and care for equally and this is where it gets really tricky, because this is an almost impossibility.
I would personally favor the interpretation that deals with widows and orphans and as I have argued in my post on Iraqi widows, these women have the RIGHT to a partner. And at times of war, and God knows that the Arab world has known many, it is a FACT that women outnumber men. It is also a fact that women outnumber men worldwide...These left out women have the RIGHT to partners and to sex as well. (Now this is what I call true "sisterhood")
Moreover in the Sharia, the body of Islamic Jurisprudence, the first wife needs to give her consent for a second marriage first. Moreover, a woman can stipulate in her marriage contract that if the man marries another woman she can divorce him. In other words she can stipulate her right to repudiate and divorce him.
On the subject of consent, it is interesting to note that in Osama Bin Laden wife's memoirs, she states that Osama asked her permission before marrying a second wife and she even went so far as to find him a suitable second wife.
Furthermore in Islamic law, if a man repudiates his wife 3 times, and then the couple wants to get back together again, the woman MUST marry another man before returning to her husband- it is called "tajheesh". And in tajheesh, sex must take place...
This is a punitive action against the husband for usurping his repudiation rights. What currently happens though is that tajheesh does take place without the sex. In other words, a loophole is found in the law, to protect the former husband from an extreme bout of possessive jealousy. But in any event, the former husband has to wait the 40 days Idda period before re-marrying his former wife, to ensure that she is not pregnant from the other man.
This is all to show that men cannot do as they please with the women they chose as partners.
But since I do not wish to ramify the subject too much, I will stick to polygamy for the moment, both male and female.
So as I argued or tried to argue, male polygamy in Islam is condoned with the intention of keeping the social order, particularly at times of war. I gave Iraq as an example. And in that sense, I find that "clause" quite merciful towards the women who no longer have a man in their lives.
And before I go for the jugular, I must also say that I noticed something quite positive in conservative traditional Saudi Arabia - namely that "toutes les femmes y passent " meaning that all women there get to get married (bear in mind that sex outside of marriage is prohibited in Islam), older women with younger men, older men with younger women --- all women there get married...Something that you do not see in the rest of the Middle East, or the "Levant" as they call it, where people have more hang ups about marriage if the man or the woman does not fit the right "profile"...
I left a comment following an article by a daring Saudi female journalist who argued that women too, have the right to marry more than one man as part of gender equality.
And I shall reprint some parts of it below.
The author asks : " why men have the right to get bored of being with one woman and therefore have the right to marry another three, while women do not.
" But a woman does not cheat, not because she is not bored. In fact, she might have not felt one ounce of pleasure since the very first night of this arranged marriage. But traditions and the clerics force her to stay at home and shut up "
“A man would say, ‘I am bored. She has become like a sister to me. I am no longer sexually attracted to her.’… Here's what I call cheating begins since traditions and the clerics provide men with the remedy to the ailment of boredom,” the article reads.
Bedair then asks what happens when the woman gets bored as well or rather if she has not been enjoying her marital life from the very beginning
She then concludes the article by proposing that either polygamy be sanctioned for men and women alike or a new map for marriage be drawn to defeat men’s "lame" excuses.
“Until then, the question remains: What happens when I am bored of him or if I feel he is like a brother to me?”
Needless to say lawsuits have started falling on the newspaper that published this article and the BBC picked up the story as well. A sign that the shit hit the fan.
I find all of this quite amusing....
This is indeed a vast subject and an non exhaustive one...and by coincidence I fell on an article today as I was flipping through some magazine at my friend's place, and the article was on polygamy.
It heavily relied on zoological observations, meaning on behavior of animals, probably derived from some Darwinian background, where it was argued that this whole polygamy business is Nature's way to ensure the reproduction of species, and by which not one female mammal/primate is left out from the reproductive cycle.
That article then gave a few figures, and it seems that 82% of male animals are polygamous and 1% only of female animals are polyandrous (polyandry is female polygamy).
Unfortunately I could not finish the article as my friend barged in from the kitchen with a tray of goodies and as I picked the delicacies and stared into his eyes, I wondered if he was part of the 82% ...and of course that got me thinking if I was part of the 1%...
However, I do remember quickly reading through the conclusion that stated that monogamy was an unnatural state of affairs. The magazine by the way was a European one.
I had to remind myself that neither he nor I were primates...but who's to tell ?
Just to tell you that this is a complex subject and am not even sure why I started it...and it may very well be that this post will be totally incoherent as thoughts are racing through my mind...
So if you can bear the incoherence read on and if you can't, leave me to ramble by myself...
It is a complex subject for many reasons...
It touches at the core of gender relations (East and West), it touches on religion, culture, biology, socialization and the big S, the taboo word -- SEX.
In one of my posts on Iraqi widows, I advocated for a return of male polygamy -- not that it ever left...
In re-reading the surat Al -Nisa from the Holy Koran, and the ayat/paragraph dealing with the issue of 4 wives, I can't help but notice that this particular paragraph starts with "the Orphans"
Orphans here can mean orphaned children with a widow for a mother or it may also mean an orphaned woman. In the Semitic world view, a woman who has no male supporter is considered an orphan as well. The ayat then concludes-- if you fear you cannot treat the women equally,with justice, then only one woman is allowed.
Treat the women equally is a very important sentence. Some interpret that as the man should provide equally to the 2, 3, or 4 women. This presupposes that the man has the means to do so. But then treating equally or with justice is not only about material provisions, that would be a very literal reading of the ayat.
So a further interpretation would mean -- there must be an equal sexual treatment too. Meaning that none of the women are to be neglected sexually. In other words, the man has to have sex with the women in turn. No favoring one over the other. This again presupposes that the man is physically and sexually fit.
To treat equally may also mean to love and care for equally and this is where it gets really tricky, because this is an almost impossibility.
I would personally favor the interpretation that deals with widows and orphans and as I have argued in my post on Iraqi widows, these women have the RIGHT to a partner. And at times of war, and God knows that the Arab world has known many, it is a FACT that women outnumber men. It is also a fact that women outnumber men worldwide...These left out women have the RIGHT to partners and to sex as well. (Now this is what I call true "sisterhood")
Moreover in the Sharia, the body of Islamic Jurisprudence, the first wife needs to give her consent for a second marriage first. Moreover, a woman can stipulate in her marriage contract that if the man marries another woman she can divorce him. In other words she can stipulate her right to repudiate and divorce him.
On the subject of consent, it is interesting to note that in Osama Bin Laden wife's memoirs, she states that Osama asked her permission before marrying a second wife and she even went so far as to find him a suitable second wife.
Furthermore in Islamic law, if a man repudiates his wife 3 times, and then the couple wants to get back together again, the woman MUST marry another man before returning to her husband- it is called "tajheesh". And in tajheesh, sex must take place...
This is a punitive action against the husband for usurping his repudiation rights. What currently happens though is that tajheesh does take place without the sex. In other words, a loophole is found in the law, to protect the former husband from an extreme bout of possessive jealousy. But in any event, the former husband has to wait the 40 days Idda period before re-marrying his former wife, to ensure that she is not pregnant from the other man.
This is all to show that men cannot do as they please with the women they chose as partners.
But since I do not wish to ramify the subject too much, I will stick to polygamy for the moment, both male and female.
So as I argued or tried to argue, male polygamy in Islam is condoned with the intention of keeping the social order, particularly at times of war. I gave Iraq as an example. And in that sense, I find that "clause" quite merciful towards the women who no longer have a man in their lives.
And before I go for the jugular, I must also say that I noticed something quite positive in conservative traditional Saudi Arabia - namely that "toutes les femmes y passent " meaning that all women there get to get married (bear in mind that sex outside of marriage is prohibited in Islam), older women with younger men, older men with younger women --- all women there get married...Something that you do not see in the rest of the Middle East, or the "Levant" as they call it, where people have more hang ups about marriage if the man or the woman does not fit the right "profile"...
Monday, 14 December 2009
Earth and the Spirit of Resistance.
I need to keep writing...I let the emotions engulf me, like a swimmer facing high waves...I just go with them, go with the tide...and trust that they will lead me to the shore, to some shore...their depths is a shore too...their shore.
I noticed even in the depths, there is ground, there is land, there is Earth. Even in the abyss, there is ground, there is land, there is Earth.
One always falls onto something...Even high flying birds fall and crash on Earth...
Earth is powerful. It's a demanding Mother, forcing all to return to Her.
You belong to me, she ordains...and all follow, sooner or later...they all follow.
Earth, the great womb and the great graveyard. Amazing is it not ? It gives birth and then swallows up...
It sustains and if you mess around with Her, she messes with you. Earth is no joke.
All come back to Her, eventually...No wonder she is called Mother Earth.
Earth is the face of the Divine. You pollute it, you pollute your own self. You dirty it, you dirty your own self, you strangle it, you strangle your own self...
And from Her, power is absorbed...She infuses you with it, provided that you approach Her with reverence, with awe and with respect...She is generous, very generous.
And from Her, the spirit of Attachment emanates...like an umbilical cord...She is the Mother of Attachment. And with Attachment comes Love...and Sacrifice...
And with Attachment and Love comes Resistance...Resistance is all Earth...in its most noble form.
Resistance is not only about arms and fighting...oh no. Resistance IS Resilience.
It's the Spirit.
It really boils down to something very simple...And how I love simple things.
Resistance is Mother Earth calling you...to mold you, forge you in her womb and teach you. Teach you the highest spiritual lessons. You don't need no Guru for that.
If you keep your earthly senses open, you will learn all you need to learn.
I noticed even in the depths, there is ground, there is land, there is Earth. Even in the abyss, there is ground, there is land, there is Earth.
One always falls onto something...Even high flying birds fall and crash on Earth...
Earth is powerful. It's a demanding Mother, forcing all to return to Her.
You belong to me, she ordains...and all follow, sooner or later...they all follow.
Earth, the great womb and the great graveyard. Amazing is it not ? It gives birth and then swallows up...
It sustains and if you mess around with Her, she messes with you. Earth is no joke.
All come back to Her, eventually...No wonder she is called Mother Earth.
Earth is the face of the Divine. You pollute it, you pollute your own self. You dirty it, you dirty your own self, you strangle it, you strangle your own self...
And from Her, power is absorbed...She infuses you with it, provided that you approach Her with reverence, with awe and with respect...She is generous, very generous.
And from Her, the spirit of Attachment emanates...like an umbilical cord...She is the Mother of Attachment. And with Attachment comes Love...and Sacrifice...
And with Attachment and Love comes Resistance...Resistance is all Earth...in its most noble form.
Resistance is not only about arms and fighting...oh no. Resistance IS Resilience.
It's the Spirit.
It really boils down to something very simple...And how I love simple things.
Resistance is Mother Earth calling you...to mold you, forge you in her womb and teach you. Teach you the highest spiritual lessons. You don't need no Guru for that.
If you keep your earthly senses open, you will learn all you need to learn.
On Morality...
I need to keep writing...change subjects, or go to the core of the Subject. I want to write about Morality.
I am aware that Morality has a bad reputation these days. People are more concerned about being politically correct than about being morally correct. And the two don't necessarily go together.
People equate morality with all sorts of things : Puritanism, strict upbringing, a perverted religious education, conservatism, old traditions, antiquated beliefs...etc.
And am sure each one has their own reason as to why they may be allergic to the word Morality.
Some people equate Morality with following religious scriptures and some equate Morality with politeness, and some equate Morality with abstaining from sinful behavior...
For me these are all outward manifestations of one form of Morality...a skin deep one. Necessary but limited.
I personally believe in a deeper Morality. And the way to access this deeper Morality is to ask ONESELF a very simple question - Is this (deed, act, belief...) morally correct ?
I believe the minute this question is posed to the Self, the reply is immediate.
It requires no text book, no manual and no law.
I am aware that Morality has a bad reputation these days. People are more concerned about being politically correct than about being morally correct. And the two don't necessarily go together.
People equate morality with all sorts of things : Puritanism, strict upbringing, a perverted religious education, conservatism, old traditions, antiquated beliefs...etc.
And am sure each one has their own reason as to why they may be allergic to the word Morality.
Some people equate Morality with following religious scriptures and some equate Morality with politeness, and some equate Morality with abstaining from sinful behavior...
For me these are all outward manifestations of one form of Morality...a skin deep one. Necessary but limited.
I personally believe in a deeper Morality. And the way to access this deeper Morality is to ask ONESELF a very simple question - Is this (deed, act, belief...) morally correct ?
I believe the minute this question is posed to the Self, the reply is immediate.
It requires no text book, no manual and no law.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Garbage People...
I am in misanthropic frame of mind, not that it ever left me, as a matter of fact, it is getting worse...or maybe getting better. I will not judge.
I am sick and tired of garbage people. Garbage people with garbage minds and garbage souls and garbage behavior and garbage attitudes and garbage mentality and garbage beliefs and garbage acts...Garbage, plain garbage.
I am sick and tired of people trying to play smart and swindle, lie, cheat, fabricate stories and pollute me with their souls vices and sicknesses. Pollute me because in every interaction you give and you receive and receiving garbage from people is common in this part of the world.
Contracts are never fulfilled as per the letter, promises are never kept, deals are always broken, everyone pays lip service to so called ideals but it remains just that, lip service...One can't expect garbage people to deliver the goods, how can it be ?
Everything is done in a half ass way, incomplete, lousy, bad quality, and they will find one thousand excuses --all lies why it could not have been done better or up to standard. It can be anything really...it's as if they have signed a pact with incompetence itself.
And the lies, bloody hell the lies, the lame excuses, the justifications, the rationalizations...it's really awful to live with, daily.
That is why I try my best to keep my dealings to a strict minimum. I really can't take the garbage anymore.
Everyone wants to make a quick buck by whatever means, even with badly done jobs, with lousy standards, and you pay exorbitant prices for NOTHING. And the mentality, fuck that mentality of tribes. They are quick to accept money from a woman but God forbid that this same woman should give orders for a job well done.
Take this example. I had to have some plumbing works done because the sewage system is so fucking obsolete and I always have problems with leaks. One day it's the toilet, one day it's the sink, one day it's the shower...and in the space of 2 weeks I called on the plumbing company 5 times to fix things they mess up. And every time they send me someone to fix something, he breaks something else in the process. So I end up calling them again and they send me someone else to fix that other thing that got messed up in the process of fixing that initial thing that was broken...so on and so forth.
And each time I have to pay and it's not cheap labour either. And they are quick to take the money from a woman but if I say to any of these morons - maybe you need to look into that instead of this - oh boy does he get offended. Because a woman is giving him orders, in that fucked up tribal garbage mentality of his. After all it is my fucking bathroom/kitchen and am paying and I want a job well done! But oh no, can't be that way with these fucking retards called men.
Even the plumber has an ego greater than the God he supposedly worships. Oh man, am so fucking fed up with this shit.
And it's not just the plumber, it's the same across the board. Be it a director, a manager, a salesman, a waiter, a grocer... they all give you garbage excuses but are quick to take the money but get really offended if you the payer tell them what they delivered is not good enough.
Take for instance another example...I bought a do it yourself piece of furniture that needs some screws/nails fitted in. I call on a carpenter to help me. There is an instruction manual. I suggest we look at it to make sure where the screws go. Oh but no, the carpenter is a fucking Einstein and refuses to look at the one page manual, that even a 5 year old can figure out, because mister's shit ego does not need instructions, he knows it all ! End result, he pierced my piece furniture with a fucking drill when all he had to do is just put the screws in the fucking designated holes. And I had to pay him shit loads of money for a one hour job, that ruined my wood. When I mentioned to him that he massacred my piece of furniture, mister dickhead got sooo offended. How dare I, a woman, who cannot use a drill tell him that what he did was totally wrong and totally stupid ?! I felt like drilling that pea brain of his.
And it's the same in every area -- plumbers, carpenters, electricians, phone company, computer store, technicians, administration...every area suffers from the same incompetence and mediocrity and there is no room for improvement because that fucking tribal male ego (and female ego by osmosis) cannot take any criticism whatsoever. But when it comes to paying, they are quick to suck up your money and you get zilch in return. Oh no, you do get something in return - GARBAGE !
I am sick and tired of garbage people. Garbage people with garbage minds and garbage souls and garbage behavior and garbage attitudes and garbage mentality and garbage beliefs and garbage acts...Garbage, plain garbage.
I am sick and tired of people trying to play smart and swindle, lie, cheat, fabricate stories and pollute me with their souls vices and sicknesses. Pollute me because in every interaction you give and you receive and receiving garbage from people is common in this part of the world.
Contracts are never fulfilled as per the letter, promises are never kept, deals are always broken, everyone pays lip service to so called ideals but it remains just that, lip service...One can't expect garbage people to deliver the goods, how can it be ?
Everything is done in a half ass way, incomplete, lousy, bad quality, and they will find one thousand excuses --all lies why it could not have been done better or up to standard. It can be anything really...it's as if they have signed a pact with incompetence itself.
And the lies, bloody hell the lies, the lame excuses, the justifications, the rationalizations...it's really awful to live with, daily.
That is why I try my best to keep my dealings to a strict minimum. I really can't take the garbage anymore.
Everyone wants to make a quick buck by whatever means, even with badly done jobs, with lousy standards, and you pay exorbitant prices for NOTHING. And the mentality, fuck that mentality of tribes. They are quick to accept money from a woman but God forbid that this same woman should give orders for a job well done.
Take this example. I had to have some plumbing works done because the sewage system is so fucking obsolete and I always have problems with leaks. One day it's the toilet, one day it's the sink, one day it's the shower...and in the space of 2 weeks I called on the plumbing company 5 times to fix things they mess up. And every time they send me someone to fix something, he breaks something else in the process. So I end up calling them again and they send me someone else to fix that other thing that got messed up in the process of fixing that initial thing that was broken...so on and so forth.
And each time I have to pay and it's not cheap labour either. And they are quick to take the money from a woman but if I say to any of these morons - maybe you need to look into that instead of this - oh boy does he get offended. Because a woman is giving him orders, in that fucked up tribal garbage mentality of his. After all it is my fucking bathroom/kitchen and am paying and I want a job well done! But oh no, can't be that way with these fucking retards called men.
Even the plumber has an ego greater than the God he supposedly worships. Oh man, am so fucking fed up with this shit.
And it's not just the plumber, it's the same across the board. Be it a director, a manager, a salesman, a waiter, a grocer... they all give you garbage excuses but are quick to take the money but get really offended if you the payer tell them what they delivered is not good enough.
Take for instance another example...I bought a do it yourself piece of furniture that needs some screws/nails fitted in. I call on a carpenter to help me. There is an instruction manual. I suggest we look at it to make sure where the screws go. Oh but no, the carpenter is a fucking Einstein and refuses to look at the one page manual, that even a 5 year old can figure out, because mister's shit ego does not need instructions, he knows it all ! End result, he pierced my piece furniture with a fucking drill when all he had to do is just put the screws in the fucking designated holes. And I had to pay him shit loads of money for a one hour job, that ruined my wood. When I mentioned to him that he massacred my piece of furniture, mister dickhead got sooo offended. How dare I, a woman, who cannot use a drill tell him that what he did was totally wrong and totally stupid ?! I felt like drilling that pea brain of his.
And it's the same in every area -- plumbers, carpenters, electricians, phone company, computer store, technicians, administration...every area suffers from the same incompetence and mediocrity and there is no room for improvement because that fucking tribal male ego (and female ego by osmosis) cannot take any criticism whatsoever. But when it comes to paying, they are quick to suck up your money and you get zilch in return. Oh no, you do get something in return - GARBAGE !
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Women and Power...
Men are terribly intimidated by powerful women and resent it deep down, because in their pea brains power is associated with the masculine alone. Faced with a powerful woman, a man always feels less of a man. This is not the woman's problem, this is his problem. If his insecurities resurface when faced with a powerful woman, again this is not her problem, it is his. You are what you are...no need to amputate yourself.
Women have always been powerful, but they have amputated their powers...to seek the approval of men and to please them. The results have been disastrous on both a personal and collective level.
I frankly don't understand why women need the approval of men so much. What is about a guy's approval that will bless or curse you ? Fuck them. You are what you are, if he likes it fine, if he does not like it, he can go and find an idiot like himself, who will play the game...
The question is do you want to be authentic or do you want to keep on playing games, hoping to win a nod of approval? Only you can decide that.
I get very irritated with female emotional dependency. He doesn't fancy me, he doesn't like me, he stopped loving me, he's not into me...Fuck that shit.
Do you fancy him, do you love him, is he worthy of it, do you like him ...?
These are the questions you need to ask yourselves...not the other way round.
I am a Muslim, and am taught there is no God but Allah. I will not bow and prostrate to any except Allah. I will not seek the approval of any except that of Allah. I don't need the blessings except from Allah....Don't turn men into your gods.
I do realize that women have been socialized through years of bullshit that men are the center of their universe, the center of the THE universe. This is a myth. This is how power was taken away from you. You believed a lie and you perpetuate the lie daily...by your behavior, your attitude, your attire, your despondency...
End result, you become the first victims. The first victims of male power. Be it in war or in peace...but specially in war. Ask any Iraqi woman and she will tell you all about male "power" gone insane...
There are different types of power and different levels of power...but this is a blog not a thesis...I am hoping that anyone who reads this will understand subtleties and nuances...and not take words and definitions literally.
I am a firm believer in the theorem that things start on the inside...true power comes from within first, at a deep self, soul level...and then extends outwards...
As I said there are different types of power and different levels of power...
Power that seeks to destroy is not power, it is masked weakness. Power that seeks to demean, is not power, it is cowardice...power that seeks to inflict harm is not power...it is force.
Power is one thing and force is another. Men are not powerful, they are forceful.
Force is primarily physical and it stops there. Hence women as victims of force, what ever that force is (physical force, weapons etc...) their victimization is almost always related on a first level i.e the body. This is where men exercise force...but not power.
Cumulative, unquestioned force becomes power, a low level quality of power...it's like you have lead and gold. Lead is a low quality metal, gold is not. Get it ?
Male force manifests itself in its negative aspect as physical/sexual harassment, battering, rape...
A teacher friend of mine, is adamant at the beginning of every school year to firmly encourage female students to protect themselves physically by following self defense classes. I am all for it myself.
Brute force needs to be reckoned with brute but well directed, well channeled force. So am all for martial arts for women. I have myself taken several classes in martial arts and if you see me, you would never guess it.
Women need to defend and protect themselves....on a physical level, from men, be it fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers, or a stranger on the street.
That is one level. The basic level.
Once that is under the belt, so to speak, there is nothing more to fear...I have to distinguish here between times of war and times of peace. Obviously am talking of times of "peace"
What am trying to say is don't depend on the man to protect you, because that same man who is capable of protecting you, is also capable of using force against you.
Not terribly romantic I know, but then life is not romantic...if it were, you would not have books and songs revolving around romance. People would LIVE romance instead of writing or singing about it.
Getting back to power...
I have news for you women, you don't need to be empowered, a fashionable term these days...empowering women...you are ALREADY powerful, and you have forgotten all about it.
Tap into it...make the EFFORT to do so....tap into your own power reservoir and use it wisely...very wisely.
Your lives will turn around, I promise you that.
Painting : Iraqi female artist, Betool Fekaiki
Monday, 16 November 2009
Drained...
I am not sure I want to keep the uncensored blog open to the public anymore. I really need a private space for me alone and I feel some are prying a wee bit too much into it...this is is the distinct impression am getting. I'll give it a couple more days and will take a final decision. I've deleted all the followers of this blog. Sorry folks - I'm in a hermit, seclusive, hibernating mode.
My instinct tells me it should be closed down to the public and I think this is exactly what I am going to do.
Apart from that, I am feeling quite drained. Jumping from one tragedy to another - plight of Iraqi children, then Iraqi deformed babies, now the execution of 126 women and in between documenting stories about the theft of Iraq's antiquities, plus translating articles into English, plus reading articles in Arabic regarding Iraq and having to sift through them and sift through the information, plus following Iraqi sat TVs for fresh news, plus following news on Twitter and re-tweeting, not to mention responding to pending emails and direct messages, plus writing posts...
Am a Reuters all by myself and am fucking exhausted !!!
Then I ask myself, who gives a damn anyways. I can publish 1000 stories and people may or may not read...some will get excited, will get a buzz and it will all fizzle out in the end...until the next post...
In the process, I've been terribly neglecting my family, my social life and my love life. Z's patience has run out and he is furious. I don't really blame him. I would be too, if I were him. My family is getting quite impatient with me too, since am hardly ever available. As for my friends (none virtual ones), well they gave up on me. Whenever anyone of them calls, I start the conversation with - I know, I know, you are absolutely right, am a horrible, aloof, anti-social woman. That sorts of shuts them up from the word go.
But really, am drained...totally drained.
My instinct tells me it should be closed down to the public and I think this is exactly what I am going to do.
Apart from that, I am feeling quite drained. Jumping from one tragedy to another - plight of Iraqi children, then Iraqi deformed babies, now the execution of 126 women and in between documenting stories about the theft of Iraq's antiquities, plus translating articles into English, plus reading articles in Arabic regarding Iraq and having to sift through them and sift through the information, plus following Iraqi sat TVs for fresh news, plus following news on Twitter and re-tweeting, not to mention responding to pending emails and direct messages, plus writing posts...
Am a Reuters all by myself and am fucking exhausted !!!
Then I ask myself, who gives a damn anyways. I can publish 1000 stories and people may or may not read...some will get excited, will get a buzz and it will all fizzle out in the end...until the next post...
In the process, I've been terribly neglecting my family, my social life and my love life. Z's patience has run out and he is furious. I don't really blame him. I would be too, if I were him. My family is getting quite impatient with me too, since am hardly ever available. As for my friends (none virtual ones), well they gave up on me. Whenever anyone of them calls, I start the conversation with - I know, I know, you are absolutely right, am a horrible, aloof, anti-social woman. That sorts of shuts them up from the word go.
But really, am drained...totally drained.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Psychopaths, Stalkers & Trolls...
The internet is not that different from "real" life.
I've had my share of online psychotic, paranoid schizophrenic, psychopathic, sexual harassers, threatening rapists,killers and stalkers...some have even threatened to produce porn video of me when they haven't even seen or heard me...Some I know for a fact, work for the enemy. Some are Arabs and some are not. Some are men and a few are women...I've been putting up with this shit for over 3 years now.
What will they not do to discredit me.
But Iraq, She keeps me going...I must be doing something right.
Next time I receive one more threat, all the names and related info will go online...for all to see. And it will not stop there either...
I've had my share of online psychotic, paranoid schizophrenic, psychopathic, sexual harassers, threatening rapists,killers and stalkers...some have even threatened to produce porn video of me when they haven't even seen or heard me...Some I know for a fact, work for the enemy. Some are Arabs and some are not. Some are men and a few are women...I've been putting up with this shit for over 3 years now.
What will they not do to discredit me.
But Iraq, She keeps me going...I must be doing something right.
Next time I receive one more threat, all the names and related info will go online...for all to see. And it will not stop there either...
Friday, 6 November 2009
Corrupt...
Corruption for me is like the state of Rot. Being corrupt is being rotten. Rot starts slowly, and then erodes the whole self...I've come face to face with Corruption and Corrupt people...there are plenty of them around. Maybe they don't even realize how corrupt they are. How spiritually bankrupt they've become. Or maybe they do...I will never find out. I just see their Corruption staring me in the face.
From the grocery store to the director general...
The rot starts with a lie, with the intention of deceptiveness...and it grows, and takes on a life by itself...
It starts small, a white lie, a "clever" move to outsmart and acquire a small gain, probably something most pathetic...and it grows and grows...and overtakes the whole person...
The facade, the outer veneer is kept well polished...with the culture of Piety...religion has not touched beyond the first layer of the skin. It has remained on the epidermis...and will remain that way, until each and everyone starts getting honest with themselves.
But being so far down the tunnel of Corruption...I don't see how this can ever happen.
From the grocery store to the director general...
The rot starts with a lie, with the intention of deceptiveness...and it grows, and takes on a life by itself...
It starts small, a white lie, a "clever" move to outsmart and acquire a small gain, probably something most pathetic...and it grows and grows...and overtakes the whole person...
The facade, the outer veneer is kept well polished...with the culture of Piety...religion has not touched beyond the first layer of the skin. It has remained on the epidermis...and will remain that way, until each and everyone starts getting honest with themselves.
But being so far down the tunnel of Corruption...I don't see how this can ever happen.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Abu Ali's Blues...
Abu Ali...who doesn't know Abu Ali, that old smelly rotten pub in the basement of a building owned by an Armenian Lebanese.
Abu Ali...
Pictures of revolutionaries decorate the place...a yellowed black and white, and heads bow with tinkling glasses filled with alcohol, to the memory of Che, Castro and the good old days...
Ah, the good old days, of the Arab leftists... the "adiyeh" or "qadiyeh" - cause in English, whichever way you wish to spell it.
Abu Ali...
The notorious Abu Ali, whose toilets are playgrounds for revolutionary test and go...
In other words, and please don't mind my bluntness...his toilets are mini whorehouses...where our revolutionaries can finally pull the ultimate plug/flush ...on the decadent, bourgeois, sexist, reactionary environment in which they are oh so trapped...by fucking any woman under the influence of the "adiyeh" - or cause in English...
To be fair, they are not the only ones. Heard the same line amongst the western "revolutionaries", in the name of Spartacus and Engels...and they all ended up bonking in the name of " Oh God, Jesus Christ !"
But Abu Ali is something else...it's an exotic version of the Spartacus fuck...
Because amidst the dialogue, the dialectical dialogue over glasses of Black Label, or J&B, depending on your revolutionary budget, the agenda was different...
The more bourgeois the woman looked, the greater the resistance, and the greater the "revolution"...ending up in the old insalubrious toilets of Abu Ali, visited by a thousand roaches...
You see, that's the nasty thing about having a middle aged woman spilling the beans...she has no more illusions left. She gives them to you uncooked and hard to chew and digest...And she loves it that way - Al Dente.
Of course, knowing the mentality of the average "revolutionary" and non-revolutionary Arab male, alike, the question that he will try to corner you with and which has become a classic, by now is : - And how do you know...unless....
I know because I've been around asshole. I know because you're still squeezing your zits in front of the picture of some Nasrallah and Guevara, thinking they are one and the same...I know because I have enough patience to listen and observe and hold judgment until I get all my facts...This is how I know.
And I know so well, that I have even predicted your fucked up reaction to all the above...
To be fair and impartial, using the Western press terminology that has led to lots of beefing and sexing up of Iraq's invasion...makes you wonder if they don't have some English Abu Ali's version hidden somewhere in some London/American toilet...because to be fair to Ze Lebanese, they are not the only ones...
So many Iraqis, from the communist party (both branches) because there were two of them then..maybe today there is only one - the Sadrist party of the Chief driller of Muqtada Al-Sadr or maybe they are all affiliated to Dawlat Al Qanun, the Dawa Branch of Al-Maliki.
You see, the Iraqi leftists, who sought exile and wrote poetry for McDonalds and Martin Luther King, hoping...you see the Iraqi leftists who sang " Free Kurdistan", you see the Iraqi leftists who made themselves a name fighting Saddam Hussein...are all Abu Ali's partisans.
Today, and since 2003, they voted for their sects...Today and since 2003, they joined the Drilling party of Muqtada Al-Sadr. Today and since 2003, they hailed the Butcher of Falluja - Allawi...Today and since 2003, they welcomed the invasion but with the usual "anti-imperialist" jargon...Today and since 2003, they are so called atheist but love the regime of the Mullahs...
These Abu Ali's as well as their Lebanese and I must add their Palestinian counterparts must have all fucked the "bourgeois" "Sunni" "decadent" woman in some Abu Ali's seedy bar, after reciting some Pablo Neruda poetry, after some Engels or Marx quote, after some "Qadiyeh" or "Adiyeh" punchline - (cause in Arabic).
To be fair, it is not only Ze Lebanese in Abu Ali's kingdom who are guilty...even though I find Ze Lebanese to the most pathetic people around, in particular their so called "revolutionaries".
But do say hello to Abu Ali and tell him that I know...
Abu Ali...
Pictures of revolutionaries decorate the place...a yellowed black and white, and heads bow with tinkling glasses filled with alcohol, to the memory of Che, Castro and the good old days...
Ah, the good old days, of the Arab leftists... the "adiyeh" or "qadiyeh" - cause in English, whichever way you wish to spell it.
Abu Ali...
The notorious Abu Ali, whose toilets are playgrounds for revolutionary test and go...
In other words, and please don't mind my bluntness...his toilets are mini whorehouses...where our revolutionaries can finally pull the ultimate plug/flush ...on the decadent, bourgeois, sexist, reactionary environment in which they are oh so trapped...by fucking any woman under the influence of the "adiyeh" - or cause in English...
To be fair, they are not the only ones. Heard the same line amongst the western "revolutionaries", in the name of Spartacus and Engels...and they all ended up bonking in the name of " Oh God, Jesus Christ !"
But Abu Ali is something else...it's an exotic version of the Spartacus fuck...
Because amidst the dialogue, the dialectical dialogue over glasses of Black Label, or J&B, depending on your revolutionary budget, the agenda was different...
The more bourgeois the woman looked, the greater the resistance, and the greater the "revolution"...ending up in the old insalubrious toilets of Abu Ali, visited by a thousand roaches...
You see, that's the nasty thing about having a middle aged woman spilling the beans...she has no more illusions left. She gives them to you uncooked and hard to chew and digest...And she loves it that way - Al Dente.
Of course, knowing the mentality of the average "revolutionary" and non-revolutionary Arab male, alike, the question that he will try to corner you with and which has become a classic, by now is : - And how do you know...unless....
I know because I've been around asshole. I know because you're still squeezing your zits in front of the picture of some Nasrallah and Guevara, thinking they are one and the same...I know because I have enough patience to listen and observe and hold judgment until I get all my facts...This is how I know.
And I know so well, that I have even predicted your fucked up reaction to all the above...
To be fair and impartial, using the Western press terminology that has led to lots of beefing and sexing up of Iraq's invasion...makes you wonder if they don't have some English Abu Ali's version hidden somewhere in some London/American toilet...because to be fair to Ze Lebanese, they are not the only ones...
So many Iraqis, from the communist party (both branches) because there were two of them then..maybe today there is only one - the Sadrist party of the Chief driller of Muqtada Al-Sadr or maybe they are all affiliated to Dawlat Al Qanun, the Dawa Branch of Al-Maliki.
You see, the Iraqi leftists, who sought exile and wrote poetry for McDonalds and Martin Luther King, hoping...you see the Iraqi leftists who sang " Free Kurdistan", you see the Iraqi leftists who made themselves a name fighting Saddam Hussein...are all Abu Ali's partisans.
Today, and since 2003, they voted for their sects...Today and since 2003, they joined the Drilling party of Muqtada Al-Sadr. Today and since 2003, they hailed the Butcher of Falluja - Allawi...Today and since 2003, they welcomed the invasion but with the usual "anti-imperialist" jargon...Today and since 2003, they are so called atheist but love the regime of the Mullahs...
These Abu Ali's as well as their Lebanese and I must add their Palestinian counterparts must have all fucked the "bourgeois" "Sunni" "decadent" woman in some Abu Ali's seedy bar, after reciting some Pablo Neruda poetry, after some Engels or Marx quote, after some "Qadiyeh" or "Adiyeh" punchline - (cause in Arabic).
To be fair, it is not only Ze Lebanese in Abu Ali's kingdom who are guilty...even though I find Ze Lebanese to the most pathetic people around, in particular their so called "revolutionaries".
But do say hello to Abu Ali and tell him that I know...
Friday, 23 October 2009
POLLUTION...
I'm in an absolutely foul mood. I, honest to God can't take the pollution here anymore...Pollution on all levels.
From garbage pollution, to noise pollution to people and their lousy attitude and lack of awareness pollution, I really can't take it anymore...
For the moment the worst is the noise pollution. It is driving me totally insane. I am trying to drown the garbage noise around me, the 10000 decibels of garbage noise from construction sites, from kids on roller blades or playing basket ball inside apartments, from shallow stupid women with their 3 meters pointed high heels pounding over my head, from the honking of cars for a nothing...even at the red traffic light they honk...
I am drowning all of this garbage, in an even greater noise of classical music, my weapon against incivility hoping that classical music will make them shut up, a foreign sound to the usual whorish songs blasting, throughout the day, Haifa Wehbe, style. All to no avail. My desk is trembling, shaking like an earthquake as I am typing to the sound of Bach, a truck and more drilling from construction works have started again...drowning Bach and I.
Oh good God, I can't take it anymore... It is Friday, it is a day off...but there is no respite. None whatsoever. It starts at 5.30 am till 5.30 am. When it's not construction works, it's the barbarian neighbors. The other day, one of them was shoveling gravel on his balcony at 3.00 am and the other was moving furniture at 2.30 am...and so on and so forth. No respite.
I called the police, I was crying over the phone...tears of total frustration of having my poor traumatized ears endlessly under attack. He did not think much of it. I said, listen even God rested on the 7th day. Give us a bit of respite for God's sake. There are laws, apply, enforce the damn laws...
He thought I was talking Chinese or something. What amazes me most, is the people around me. I can't possibly be the only one who can no longer take being subjected to so much noise pollution. But they don't do anything. It's like they are living on mega doses of Valium or something. Even Valium is no longer working in my case.
Sometimes I try to escape to some cafe, and am faced with another level of noise pollution, loud techno or rap shit music and the sounds of gurgling Sheeshas...
I really can't take it anymore.
I miss our home, our garden, the birds chirping in the early morning hours...but that has now become a far away dream...
I just need a bit of quiet Peace...
From garbage pollution, to noise pollution to people and their lousy attitude and lack of awareness pollution, I really can't take it anymore...
For the moment the worst is the noise pollution. It is driving me totally insane. I am trying to drown the garbage noise around me, the 10000 decibels of garbage noise from construction sites, from kids on roller blades or playing basket ball inside apartments, from shallow stupid women with their 3 meters pointed high heels pounding over my head, from the honking of cars for a nothing...even at the red traffic light they honk...
I am drowning all of this garbage, in an even greater noise of classical music, my weapon against incivility hoping that classical music will make them shut up, a foreign sound to the usual whorish songs blasting, throughout the day, Haifa Wehbe, style. All to no avail. My desk is trembling, shaking like an earthquake as I am typing to the sound of Bach, a truck and more drilling from construction works have started again...drowning Bach and I.
Oh good God, I can't take it anymore... It is Friday, it is a day off...but there is no respite. None whatsoever. It starts at 5.30 am till 5.30 am. When it's not construction works, it's the barbarian neighbors. The other day, one of them was shoveling gravel on his balcony at 3.00 am and the other was moving furniture at 2.30 am...and so on and so forth. No respite.
I called the police, I was crying over the phone...tears of total frustration of having my poor traumatized ears endlessly under attack. He did not think much of it. I said, listen even God rested on the 7th day. Give us a bit of respite for God's sake. There are laws, apply, enforce the damn laws...
He thought I was talking Chinese or something. What amazes me most, is the people around me. I can't possibly be the only one who can no longer take being subjected to so much noise pollution. But they don't do anything. It's like they are living on mega doses of Valium or something. Even Valium is no longer working in my case.
Sometimes I try to escape to some cafe, and am faced with another level of noise pollution, loud techno or rap shit music and the sounds of gurgling Sheeshas...
I really can't take it anymore.
I miss our home, our garden, the birds chirping in the early morning hours...but that has now become a far away dream...
I just need a bit of quiet Peace...
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
A Dividing Gap...
I have not felt so cut off from the rest as much as today...
Today, yesterday, six years ago...The rift is getting wider and wider, larger and larger...there used to be a bridge, but not anymore. The bridge turned into one of those tight ropes...and it finally snapped.
Nothing ties me on any level to the American people. Nothing at all. Not even "humanity". As sad as this may sound, it is true. America and its people have actually managed to cut that human tie...Amazing is it not ?
Not really...it's not.
Here is a people, the Iraqis who have done absolutely nothing to America and its "people", yet America and its people have done everything possible, everything imaginable to Iraq and her people.
Anyone who fails to understand that, will never understand anything.
I have promised myself not to write for anyone but me on this blog. And I intend to keep it that way. I will not tow the line, the expected line of me...the building bridges line...there are no bridges left. You fucking bombed all of them, both literally and metaphorically.
Why am I expected to differentiate between what a country does and what its people do, think and believe ?
They say - hey its our government. There is no such thing out there called government. When you go looking for government, you will not find something called government. There are people who form governments. Just like people form societies. Just like people form institutions and systems... PEOPLE.
Your government is made of people who represent you. And you chose them to represent you. In your case you kept choosing war criminals to represent you, as you have done in the past...because the problem is not your government, the problem is not the society out there, the problem is not the institutions and the system, some abstract entity, the problem is YOU. Yes you. You make up all of the above, from government to institution to system to society. And I tell you, it's rotten to the core.
I am on the other side of the divide, that huge divide and it shall remain so...for as long as Iraq is occupied by you and your filth, and by the Iranian filth which you brought with you.
I am on the other side of the divide and for 19 years and we are moving into our 20th year now...since 1991 till this very day, you as a people have done NOTHING concrete, tangible, effective, to stop the genocide of Iraq. NOTHING.
13 years of embargo where thousands of us died like animals, where our graveyards overflowed with babies not even allowed to see the light of day, where our cancer patients were given expired aspirin for their agony, where we sat by candle light for nights on end, where we sold our furniture, clothes, books, to survive, to survive your silence, indifference, apathy and cruelty....and here am addressing you the American shits calling yourself a people.
But that was not enough...for the subhumans that you are...that was not enough...
Just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not enough for you, blood thirsty depraved people...just like Vietnam was not enough for you, monsters of this world.
But we lasted longer than Vietnam and we "failed to capture the imagination of the American people" as in the words of some fucked up journalist of yours, from the left, from your anti-war shits, who are even more corrupt than your governments.
We failed to capture your imagination...
Because you think you have an imagination ? Because you think you are creative in anything of substance ? Because you believe you are something apart with your genius?
You have only one imagination, and its not even an imagination, its pure bestial instincts running wild, clothed in civilian dress...and when you are not too busy killing people, you sit and gaze at your navel, deluding yourselves with promises of great accomplishments.
13 years passed and then another Hiroshima...Iraq. Nay, worse than a Hiroshima.
But you are a people who despite your crap books about "taking an eagle's view" of situations, are incapable of seeing further than your stupid noses...
Because an eagle view is exactly what you need. But eagles fly and you are nothing but worms crawling with illusions of grandeur...
I will give you an eagle's view...
This is your eagle's view
You have destroyed EVERYTHING in Iraq. Every aspect, every home, every neighborhood, every school, every library, every bridge, every building, every worship place, every hospital, every museum, every market, every fiber...
But being the stupid dumb people that you are, you immediately think, about concrete and matter...you can't even think deeper than matter...being the sick fucks that you are.
I repeat - You have destroyed EVERYTHING in Iraq.
Gee, what does destroy mean ? yes, go ahead scratch your heads...and wonder what destroy means...
Yes, Iraq worse than a Hiroshima...Worse than a Hiroshima where our women today are too scared to get pregnant from fear of giving birth to deformed babies looking like monsters...and this is for GENERATIONS TO COME. But you like it that way...you like it when we don't reproduce...you like it when our women are childless like yours...you like it when our families are destroyed like yours...you like it when our children don't have parental care like yours...you like it when our society crumbles into immorality, drugs, crime, prostitution, like yours...yes you like it that way...you can finally find your familiar territory, you can finally find yourselves.
You have destroyed Iraq because deep down you are a deeply racist, chauvinistic, brutal, immoral people...You have destroyed Iraq because you are deep down an envious, covetous, jealous, rootless, ruthless people...You have destroyed Iraq, not just for its oil, not just for its wealth, not just for its resources, not just for its strategic location, not just because of its regime that you hated...oh no, these are only the outer excuses...that your anti-war leftist pieces of garbage like to believe...
You have destroyed Iraq because you HATE ARABS, because you HATE MUSLIMS and because you cannot bear anyone, who refuses not only to bow to you but anyone who despite your years of murderous sanctions, stood still with dignity and honor. And this you cannot take. You cannot take because you have neither. You have no dignity and you have no honor. What you have is false bravado and false pride. And that's it!
And despite all your great proclamations of faith, you are indeed a Godless people.
It no longer matters how many figures in the millions one gives to you and puts in front of your shameless faces...it no longer matters data and statistics...it no longer matters any evidential proof...it no longer matters...because it never mattered to you to start with.
Oh but I wrote to my rep, Oh but I did not vote for so and so, Oh but you need to understand that our government is corrupt and hijacked, oh but you have to know that our media controls us, oh but, oh but, oh but...
Oh, but no...Oh, but no.
20 fucking years listening to your lame shameless excuses...20 years giving you the benefit of the doubt...
Oh but you think we are a real democracy ? This Layla Anwar really believes we can change things around...
Oh yeah ? Well if you managed to change my country into a mass of rubble, am sure you can manage to change things around in your own backyard.
You voted for Bush TWICE, you voted for Obooma, your filthy boys voluntarily join the army, for God's sake even your anti war shits support the war in Afghanistan, and not only that, support the other occupier of Iraq - Iran.
Amazing, truly amazing...
You could have chosen another path from the very beginning..but you did not. Because you did NOT WANT TO...And you did not want because you are a deeply hateful, ignorant, envious, jealous, people who are too lazy to think.
You stopped Vietnam, ok granted it took you some time...but wait it was not you who stopped Vietnam, it was the body bags that did. Seems that violence is the only language you really pay attention to...because you are inherently violent yourselves.
Violent, aggressive, bigoted, haughty, arrogant...
And you expect me to consider the exceptions ? After 20 fucking years ?
You must be kidding...
This dividing gap is a done deal.
And you asked for it.
Today, yesterday, six years ago...The rift is getting wider and wider, larger and larger...there used to be a bridge, but not anymore. The bridge turned into one of those tight ropes...and it finally snapped.
Nothing ties me on any level to the American people. Nothing at all. Not even "humanity". As sad as this may sound, it is true. America and its people have actually managed to cut that human tie...Amazing is it not ?
Not really...it's not.
Here is a people, the Iraqis who have done absolutely nothing to America and its "people", yet America and its people have done everything possible, everything imaginable to Iraq and her people.
Anyone who fails to understand that, will never understand anything.
I have promised myself not to write for anyone but me on this blog. And I intend to keep it that way. I will not tow the line, the expected line of me...the building bridges line...there are no bridges left. You fucking bombed all of them, both literally and metaphorically.
Why am I expected to differentiate between what a country does and what its people do, think and believe ?
They say - hey its our government. There is no such thing out there called government. When you go looking for government, you will not find something called government. There are people who form governments. Just like people form societies. Just like people form institutions and systems... PEOPLE.
Your government is made of people who represent you. And you chose them to represent you. In your case you kept choosing war criminals to represent you, as you have done in the past...because the problem is not your government, the problem is not the society out there, the problem is not the institutions and the system, some abstract entity, the problem is YOU. Yes you. You make up all of the above, from government to institution to system to society. And I tell you, it's rotten to the core.
I am on the other side of the divide, that huge divide and it shall remain so...for as long as Iraq is occupied by you and your filth, and by the Iranian filth which you brought with you.
I am on the other side of the divide and for 19 years and we are moving into our 20th year now...since 1991 till this very day, you as a people have done NOTHING concrete, tangible, effective, to stop the genocide of Iraq. NOTHING.
13 years of embargo where thousands of us died like animals, where our graveyards overflowed with babies not even allowed to see the light of day, where our cancer patients were given expired aspirin for their agony, where we sat by candle light for nights on end, where we sold our furniture, clothes, books, to survive, to survive your silence, indifference, apathy and cruelty....and here am addressing you the American shits calling yourself a people.
But that was not enough...for the subhumans that you are...that was not enough...
Just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not enough for you, blood thirsty depraved people...just like Vietnam was not enough for you, monsters of this world.
But we lasted longer than Vietnam and we "failed to capture the imagination of the American people" as in the words of some fucked up journalist of yours, from the left, from your anti-war shits, who are even more corrupt than your governments.
We failed to capture your imagination...
Because you think you have an imagination ? Because you think you are creative in anything of substance ? Because you believe you are something apart with your genius?
You have only one imagination, and its not even an imagination, its pure bestial instincts running wild, clothed in civilian dress...and when you are not too busy killing people, you sit and gaze at your navel, deluding yourselves with promises of great accomplishments.
13 years passed and then another Hiroshima...Iraq. Nay, worse than a Hiroshima.
But you are a people who despite your crap books about "taking an eagle's view" of situations, are incapable of seeing further than your stupid noses...
Because an eagle view is exactly what you need. But eagles fly and you are nothing but worms crawling with illusions of grandeur...
I will give you an eagle's view...
This is your eagle's view
You have destroyed EVERYTHING in Iraq. Every aspect, every home, every neighborhood, every school, every library, every bridge, every building, every worship place, every hospital, every museum, every market, every fiber...
But being the stupid dumb people that you are, you immediately think, about concrete and matter...you can't even think deeper than matter...being the sick fucks that you are.
I repeat - You have destroyed EVERYTHING in Iraq.
Gee, what does destroy mean ? yes, go ahead scratch your heads...and wonder what destroy means...
Yes, Iraq worse than a Hiroshima...Worse than a Hiroshima where our women today are too scared to get pregnant from fear of giving birth to deformed babies looking like monsters...and this is for GENERATIONS TO COME. But you like it that way...you like it when we don't reproduce...you like it when our women are childless like yours...you like it when our families are destroyed like yours...you like it when our children don't have parental care like yours...you like it when our society crumbles into immorality, drugs, crime, prostitution, like yours...yes you like it that way...you can finally find your familiar territory, you can finally find yourselves.
You have destroyed Iraq because deep down you are a deeply racist, chauvinistic, brutal, immoral people...You have destroyed Iraq because you are deep down an envious, covetous, jealous, rootless, ruthless people...You have destroyed Iraq, not just for its oil, not just for its wealth, not just for its resources, not just for its strategic location, not just because of its regime that you hated...oh no, these are only the outer excuses...that your anti-war leftist pieces of garbage like to believe...
You have destroyed Iraq because you HATE ARABS, because you HATE MUSLIMS and because you cannot bear anyone, who refuses not only to bow to you but anyone who despite your years of murderous sanctions, stood still with dignity and honor. And this you cannot take. You cannot take because you have neither. You have no dignity and you have no honor. What you have is false bravado and false pride. And that's it!
And despite all your great proclamations of faith, you are indeed a Godless people.
It no longer matters how many figures in the millions one gives to you and puts in front of your shameless faces...it no longer matters data and statistics...it no longer matters any evidential proof...it no longer matters...because it never mattered to you to start with.
Oh but I wrote to my rep, Oh but I did not vote for so and so, Oh but you need to understand that our government is corrupt and hijacked, oh but you have to know that our media controls us, oh but, oh but, oh but...
Oh, but no...Oh, but no.
20 fucking years listening to your lame shameless excuses...20 years giving you the benefit of the doubt...
Oh but you think we are a real democracy ? This Layla Anwar really believes we can change things around...
Oh yeah ? Well if you managed to change my country into a mass of rubble, am sure you can manage to change things around in your own backyard.
You voted for Bush TWICE, you voted for Obooma, your filthy boys voluntarily join the army, for God's sake even your anti war shits support the war in Afghanistan, and not only that, support the other occupier of Iraq - Iran.
Amazing, truly amazing...
You could have chosen another path from the very beginning..but you did not. Because you did NOT WANT TO...And you did not want because you are a deeply hateful, ignorant, envious, jealous, people who are too lazy to think.
You stopped Vietnam, ok granted it took you some time...but wait it was not you who stopped Vietnam, it was the body bags that did. Seems that violence is the only language you really pay attention to...because you are inherently violent yourselves.
Violent, aggressive, bigoted, haughty, arrogant...
And you expect me to consider the exceptions ? After 20 fucking years ?
You must be kidding...
This dividing gap is a done deal.
And you asked for it.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Endless Ramblings no.5: Time & Agendas.
I haven't rambled on in quite some time. Of course some may disagree and would state that I do nothing but ramble...I beg to differ here. Anyways, who cares what you think or don't think...am well past that stage.
I am terribly bored tonight, which is quite unlike me, because I hardly ever get bored. So am going to ramble on...It's a bit like when I get into a car and drive to nowhere...or walk for hours with no itinerary in mind...I like that. I like the no plan state of mind. It suits me fine. Being an Arab, we are kind of allergic to planning in advance. A mixture of fatalism, superstition, survival in endless wars, and a non-linear conception of Time. That really infuriates Westerners here. I noticed it. It makes them fume...
It really infuriates them because they want everything done NOW. Tayyeb why now ? why not later? What's the urgency of NOW ? Is it a matter of Life and Death ? Of course not.
So they say - but you don't understand, Time is money. We don't have time to waste like you folks. We have to do get things done NOW. That's another favorite word of theirs next to money, doing...They are always doing. But what are they REALLY doing ? Produce, produce, consume, consume, more and more...
What for ?
Do you need all that junk ? Do you need all that rubbish ? Do you need all that pollution ? Do you need a thousand brands of basically the same product ?
Of course you don't. Oh but no, they need to have it done and done NOW.
You see they have an agenda. A political, a business agenda for you. They call it "development".
Tayyeb, another question. If you are so developed, why are you so fucking miserable ?
If you are so developed, why don't you enjoy what you already have instead of greedily coveting more from others ?
If you are so developed, why are you so pressed like slaves ?
You see, for a backward Oriental Arab like myself, all this doesn't make sense.
Even in leisure. They rush. They rush to the gym, they rush for a walk, they rush to the restaurant, they rush to the movies, they rush to their shrink's office. And the most ironical one, is they rush to Meditation and Yoga classes.
Yabba' it's the rush that's driving you crazy...trust me.
The money rush, the gold rush, the adrenaline rush, the instant coffee rush, the one minute enlightenment rush...This is what is driving you insane. And insane people commit insane acts. It's really very simple.
I see them here as tourists. They come for 2.5 days and they want to see the whole country in 48 hours. Every village, every castle, every monument, every souk, every museum, every hot spot...They wake up at the crack of down and rush through the map...rush...till midnight and by the time they reach their hotels, they are so exhausted from too much sightseeing...
It always makes me wonder what did they really learn from their "holiday" ? Nothing.
They will land back home and show digital pictures to the rest of the family and they would go "Oh it was ever so pretty, but we were too knackered to enjoy any of it" Well am not surprised. Of course you would be...your approach is faulty to start with. It sucks.
So they have a agenda with next hour, next day, next week, next month, next year and next 5 years...a whole planned out schedule...
I am curious as to how can they be so sure they are going to be around in the next hour, next day, next week, next month, next year...?
Since there are no guarantees, why plan ?
Everything is so methodical and predictable...until the unpredictable hits. That twist of destiny, fate, coincidence, call it what you like and all your plans are gone, vanished...
I stopped planning.
I live hour to hour, day to day...If I'm hungry I eat. If I'm sleepy, I sleep. If I feel like leaving my pile of laundry to reach the ceiling, I leave it. If I feel like meeting with people, I meet, otherwise am totally unreachable. If I feel like dancing in the middle of my living room for no reason at all, I dance...
I don't have an agenda neither in friendship nor in love. I have no personal stratagems and no personal interests...I suppose that is why I am lousy at kissing ass. Some people excel in it, they've elevated it - kissing ass that is, to an art form. I can't do it. It's not because am morally superior or anything like that, but I simply have not learned the secrets of that particular trade.
Of course, today they have a polite word for that - they call it "networking" or "gaining friends and influencing people"...but really it's all about kissing ass. And it does come in quite handy with profitable pay offs, especially when dealing with the Westerners who carry their particular "development" agendas, all for your benefit - you backward Oriental Arab.
My agenda is not complicated and is quite simple - I don't have one.
I am terribly bored tonight, which is quite unlike me, because I hardly ever get bored. So am going to ramble on...It's a bit like when I get into a car and drive to nowhere...or walk for hours with no itinerary in mind...I like that. I like the no plan state of mind. It suits me fine. Being an Arab, we are kind of allergic to planning in advance. A mixture of fatalism, superstition, survival in endless wars, and a non-linear conception of Time. That really infuriates Westerners here. I noticed it. It makes them fume...
It really infuriates them because they want everything done NOW. Tayyeb why now ? why not later? What's the urgency of NOW ? Is it a matter of Life and Death ? Of course not.
So they say - but you don't understand, Time is money. We don't have time to waste like you folks. We have to do get things done NOW. That's another favorite word of theirs next to money, doing...They are always doing. But what are they REALLY doing ? Produce, produce, consume, consume, more and more...
What for ?
Do you need all that junk ? Do you need all that rubbish ? Do you need all that pollution ? Do you need a thousand brands of basically the same product ?
Of course you don't. Oh but no, they need to have it done and done NOW.
You see they have an agenda. A political, a business agenda for you. They call it "development".
Tayyeb, another question. If you are so developed, why are you so fucking miserable ?
If you are so developed, why don't you enjoy what you already have instead of greedily coveting more from others ?
If you are so developed, why are you so pressed like slaves ?
You see, for a backward Oriental Arab like myself, all this doesn't make sense.
Even in leisure. They rush. They rush to the gym, they rush for a walk, they rush to the restaurant, they rush to the movies, they rush to their shrink's office. And the most ironical one, is they rush to Meditation and Yoga classes.
Yabba' it's the rush that's driving you crazy...trust me.
The money rush, the gold rush, the adrenaline rush, the instant coffee rush, the one minute enlightenment rush...This is what is driving you insane. And insane people commit insane acts. It's really very simple.
I see them here as tourists. They come for 2.5 days and they want to see the whole country in 48 hours. Every village, every castle, every monument, every souk, every museum, every hot spot...They wake up at the crack of down and rush through the map...rush...till midnight and by the time they reach their hotels, they are so exhausted from too much sightseeing...
It always makes me wonder what did they really learn from their "holiday" ? Nothing.
They will land back home and show digital pictures to the rest of the family and they would go "Oh it was ever so pretty, but we were too knackered to enjoy any of it" Well am not surprised. Of course you would be...your approach is faulty to start with. It sucks.
So they have a agenda with next hour, next day, next week, next month, next year and next 5 years...a whole planned out schedule...
I am curious as to how can they be so sure they are going to be around in the next hour, next day, next week, next month, next year...?
Since there are no guarantees, why plan ?
Everything is so methodical and predictable...until the unpredictable hits. That twist of destiny, fate, coincidence, call it what you like and all your plans are gone, vanished...
I stopped planning.
I live hour to hour, day to day...If I'm hungry I eat. If I'm sleepy, I sleep. If I feel like leaving my pile of laundry to reach the ceiling, I leave it. If I feel like meeting with people, I meet, otherwise am totally unreachable. If I feel like dancing in the middle of my living room for no reason at all, I dance...
I don't have an agenda neither in friendship nor in love. I have no personal stratagems and no personal interests...I suppose that is why I am lousy at kissing ass. Some people excel in it, they've elevated it - kissing ass that is, to an art form. I can't do it. It's not because am morally superior or anything like that, but I simply have not learned the secrets of that particular trade.
Of course, today they have a polite word for that - they call it "networking" or "gaining friends and influencing people"...but really it's all about kissing ass. And it does come in quite handy with profitable pay offs, especially when dealing with the Westerners who carry their particular "development" agendas, all for your benefit - you backward Oriental Arab.
My agenda is not complicated and is quite simple - I don't have one.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Intoxicated...
How can one not be intoxicated when listening to Um Kulthum ? You don't need alcohol, hashish, uppers or downers...just listen to her voice.
How can one not hold onto intoxication, when everything around you is being banned ?
In Iraq, they have banned alcohol, in the South, and in Baghdad except in the Green Zone. You need to keep the pimps and whores happy there.
You see, the problem with banning alcohol is that every Iraqi will tell you, that not only we were the first to press dates to make Arak or Raki, and that we were the first to invent beer, from Sumerian times...but that all the poets and thinkers from Abbasid times until the new Safavids landed, used to enjoy a drink or two. How do you think Poetry flourished ?
(notice how the word Uruk and Arak, Iraqi and Raki are closely related)
And there is an added problem here...that those who are doing the banning, the Shiite Mullahs from Iran and their Iraqi followers, are known to be the heaviest drinkers...
It is a known fact that the whiskey and Arak bottles appear after the last prayer of the day, the evening prayer...Ya'nee they finish their sermons and the drinking starts.
But you see, now, with the new morality of the new Iraq, this is forbidden in public...I say in public because trust me, a good deal of those motherfucker hypocrites still drink...
And those who don't drink, have substituted opium instead. Like the Jaysh Al-Mahdi of Muqtada Al-Sadr. That too is a well known fact -- those thugs were/are under the effect.
The new morality of the new Iraq encourages Opium trading with Iran at the highest echelons, but forbids alcohol. I wrote a post about that on my other blog.
The new morality of the new Iraq forbids and murders women who go out without a veil and wear a little make up, but encourages prostitutes in the Green Zone.
The new morality of the new Iraq forbids and murders gays but allows paedophile trafficking rings that trade in Iraqi children.
The new morality of the new Iraq is strict on adultery with honor killings on the rise, but leaves rapists on the loose...
The new morality of the new Iraq is the morality of criminals, of the corrupt and the depraved, the morality of the hypocrites...
The new morality of the new Iraq is a carbon copy of the "morality" of Iran and America.
As for me, I shall continue in my intoxication...with Umm Kulthum, before they ban her too.
Intoxication is my new form of Resistance.
Yalla, come and get intoxicated with me...
A short piece from a long song. Al Atlal - The Ruins.
The Ruins, how appropriate.
I will copy the translation for this bit only as sung. The rest of the poem can be read HERE.
Had love seen two as intoxicated as us?
So much hope we had built up around us
And we walked in the moonlit path, joy skipping along ahead of us
And we laughed like two children together
And we ran and raced our shadows
And we became aware after the euphoria and woke up
If only we did not awaken...
If only we did not awaken...Indeed.
For those who have mastered the art of Sama'a , the art of listening, you will see how each word is enacted by her magical voice, you will see how she has mastered and lives the art...the art of intoxication.
Youtube : Robert Dominkovic, november 2008.
How can one not hold onto intoxication, when everything around you is being banned ?
In Iraq, they have banned alcohol, in the South, and in Baghdad except in the Green Zone. You need to keep the pimps and whores happy there.
You see, the problem with banning alcohol is that every Iraqi will tell you, that not only we were the first to press dates to make Arak or Raki, and that we were the first to invent beer, from Sumerian times...but that all the poets and thinkers from Abbasid times until the new Safavids landed, used to enjoy a drink or two. How do you think Poetry flourished ?
(notice how the word Uruk and Arak, Iraqi and Raki are closely related)
And there is an added problem here...that those who are doing the banning, the Shiite Mullahs from Iran and their Iraqi followers, are known to be the heaviest drinkers...
It is a known fact that the whiskey and Arak bottles appear after the last prayer of the day, the evening prayer...Ya'nee they finish their sermons and the drinking starts.
But you see, now, with the new morality of the new Iraq, this is forbidden in public...I say in public because trust me, a good deal of those motherfucker hypocrites still drink...
And those who don't drink, have substituted opium instead. Like the Jaysh Al-Mahdi of Muqtada Al-Sadr. That too is a well known fact -- those thugs were/are under the effect.
The new morality of the new Iraq encourages Opium trading with Iran at the highest echelons, but forbids alcohol. I wrote a post about that on my other blog.
The new morality of the new Iraq forbids and murders women who go out without a veil and wear a little make up, but encourages prostitutes in the Green Zone.
The new morality of the new Iraq forbids and murders gays but allows paedophile trafficking rings that trade in Iraqi children.
The new morality of the new Iraq is strict on adultery with honor killings on the rise, but leaves rapists on the loose...
The new morality of the new Iraq is the morality of criminals, of the corrupt and the depraved, the morality of the hypocrites...
The new morality of the new Iraq is a carbon copy of the "morality" of Iran and America.
As for me, I shall continue in my intoxication...with Umm Kulthum, before they ban her too.
Intoxication is my new form of Resistance.
Yalla, come and get intoxicated with me...
A short piece from a long song. Al Atlal - The Ruins.
The Ruins, how appropriate.
I will copy the translation for this bit only as sung. The rest of the poem can be read HERE.
Had love seen two as intoxicated as us?
So much hope we had built up around us
And we walked in the moonlit path, joy skipping along ahead of us
And we laughed like two children together
And we ran and raced our shadows
And we became aware after the euphoria and woke up
If only we did not awaken...
If only we did not awaken...Indeed.
For those who have mastered the art of Sama'a , the art of listening, you will see how each word is enacted by her magical voice, you will see how she has mastered and lives the art...the art of intoxication.
Youtube : Robert Dominkovic, november 2008.
Monday, 5 October 2009
Her Words Bring Me To Life Again.
This Sufi song based on the writings of Ibn Arabi is too beautiful not to upload.
I will translate later, but cannot promise. Will do my best.
And some of you may know that in some instances, translations are not important.
Ensemble Ibn Arabi - Her words bring me to Life again.
youtube : amoureux de vivre, June 2009.
I will translate later, but cannot promise. Will do my best.
And some of you may know that in some instances, translations are not important.
Ensemble Ibn Arabi - Her words bring me to Life again.
youtube : amoureux de vivre, June 2009.
Only Ask of God.
The wonderful Mercedes Sosa passed away. She, amongst others, forged me with her songs.
Rest in peace, wonderful Mercedes. Rest in peaceful songs and melodies away from human indifference and injustice.
You gave it all.
Rest in peace, wonderful Mercedes. Rest in peaceful songs and melodies away from human indifference and injustice.
You gave it all.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Rape - The Final Frontier.
I feel very disturbed. All the positive energy I have harnessed during the day is now gone, evaporated within seconds, pushed away, pushed down to the floor, beaten and kicked out of me...
This happens often. It happens every time I hear or read about another rape story. And since 2003, I have heard hundreds of them, literally.
One never gets used to it. NEVER. Each and every single time, the rage that wells up inside of me is even greater than the previous one...and so is my hatred, a raw hatred.
During the "tyrannical rule of the Dictator", rapists in Iraq were executed. A good deterrent don't you think ? I think so too.
Today, I wish for every single rapist in Iraq to be not executed, but castrated. Yes, castrated and preferably by the woman he raped.
Rabid animals need to be put down, and in the case of rapist men, be put down slowly...I think castration is a nice slow death, am all in favor of. Yes, no mercy.
I have met, spoken to, listened to, read about hundreds of cases of Iraqi women raped since "their liberation". Raped by militias, raped by the police, raped by American soldiers, raped by contractors, raped by neighbors, raped by strangers...
This physical, sexual, moral, spiritual assault on the Feminine is ongoing in Iraq...
It has not stopped. And will not stop because rape is encouraged. Yes you read me right. It is encouraged.
When a rapist(s) is not arrested and not tried, a message is sent out, a clear and loud message saying - the feminine body is public property for you to possess and enjoy.
The invasion and the occupation of the Iraqi woman is a DIRECT consequence of the invasion and occupation of her country. The two go together, hand in hand.
The Occupation of Iraq has set free the perverse demons of a deviant Patriarchy, that were chained by authority, an authority that respected and protected women, and are now set free to do as they please with our bodies...
Our bodies have become the final frontier for the final weapon at the disposal of the invader whoever he may be - the final weapon being his dick, forced upon our bodies, forcefully penetrating us, just the way the occupier did when he set foot in 2003. This is a continuum on the same line...
I can tell you of tens of cases I personally know of, tens of female lives who have been totally destroyed because of rape with very severe consequences, some of which were suicide or attempts at suicide.
Iraqi women victims of rape have NO SUPPORT network to turn to. They cannot report a rape case because the puppet police themselves are rapists. They cannot speak about it because of the stigma attached. They cannot openly share it with other women because of the shame they feel. They have no hot line, no counselor, no refuge...they have nobody.
Their body also becomes a no body. It is no longer their body but their body. The public body. They are no longer owners of it, but the public is. The male public to be precise. The male collectivity who lets the crime of rape go by...and laughs it off.
Yes laughs it off, secretly and sometimes not so secretly.
You know why ?
Because every single male is a potential rapist.
The rape of the female body is the final frontier...and there are so many other ways to rape a woman...no wonder they laugh it off...each single one of them has done it one way or another...
Ask any woman and she will tell you that the fear of rape is always lurking in her mind...because somewhere on a collective unconscious level, all women have experienced it either directly, or indirectly....
I am always shocked by the laxity and flippancy with which rape is dealt with. That in itself is the ultimate assault.
Rape is the only area, where the male object can prove himself to be a subject, where the penis becomes power personified. I say male object because men are slaves of their desires and a slave is an object.
I know you will jump to the defense and say not all men. I don't give a fuck how you argue around it...
In times of peace you are like dogs kept on a leash and in times of war, you are nothing but unbridled beasts let loose. And for most women, nay all women, it is a time of war, because there is a war going on, a silent war against women, against us.
And women, Iraqi women in particular, know what am talking about. And you don't.
Another story has added itself to the pile that I carry with me...has added itself to the anonymous list of names...to the unknown, faceless initials and forgotten bodies...
Another fictitious name, Hoda. Hoda, a mother, a wife...Hoda a woman, a person...
Hoda fled to Syria, July this year. This year when security in Iraq is supposedly so wonderful. She fled after she was abducted along with her son for a ransom.
For 13 days, she was repeatedly raped by a gang of 10 men, daily.
Don't just read that sentence like idiots. Read it slowly until it sinks into your heads...Close your eyes and imagine it. Feel it happening to you, to your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife, your lover...
I know that some of you perverted shits out there would probably get a hard on reading this. And I would not be surprised either. This is the sickness of your psyche and nature. And it needs to be treated in a radical fashion, as I said earlier on.
There a hundreds of cases like Hoda. Ranging from Abu Ghraib victims to victims of Shiite militias, to men in uniforms...to men, to rabid animals not even fit to be caged in a zoo.
I draw a lesson here and I hope, even though am not holding my breath, that you do too.
It is high time that male objects,(which is what you are) start a new chapter in their lives.
Take the Iraqi example as a lesson for yourselves. Use it. Use it to go within yourselves for a change, instead of acting out your deep soul sickness...
Use it to look inside...use it as an opportunity to become less of a stranger with who you are...use it to face your own monsters, those monsters that have created havoc in the world ever since you took power. Use it to face your own shadows, your own demons, your own perversions, your own twisted minds...use it.
Use it, so all of us Iraqi women out there - so all of our crying wounds and stubborn scars would not be in vain...
Use it to regain a semblance of humanity.
Use it to regain your true selves.
Use it as the final frontier to re-connect with what you were initially created for,
Use it to re-connect with Life.
Painting : Iraqi female artist, Betool Fekaiki.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Muzungu : White Man, Black Soul...
Some time ago, I wrote on this blog, that If I ever had some money, one of the things I'd do, is visit Kenya, as the coasts of Mombassa always attracted me.
Well not anymore. Not what after I've read tonight.
It is really late here, but I cannot and will not go to sleep before telling you what happens on the coasts of Mombassa.
According to a UNICEF study, over 30% of Kenyan children, especially in coastal cities are into some form of sex work. When I say children, I mean children between the ages of 12 and 16, and some as young as 3.
We say in Arabic, "Al Jo' ma yerham" - Hunger has no mercy. These children are hungry.
So who preys on their hunger but...but the white man, who devours their hungry flesh as well as their innocence and childhood, away...
This is a subject that never fails to make me so enraged that I feel am choking. And when am choking the way I am right now, I can't write...Not wanting to immerse you in expletives, I will copy and paste the whole article as well as the video.
I personally have no more words.
Kenya’s beaches are the stuff holiday brochures are made of – mile after mile of glistening white sand, kissed by equatorial sun. Tourism is a major money spinner for one of the world’s poorest countries, but Kenya’s tropical paradise hides a dark secret.
We have been on a harrowing journey – from nightclubs where European men pick up 12-year-old Kenyan girls; to an orphanage where children as young as six have found sanctuary after sexual abuse by foreign tourists.
A journey into a world of cruelty and desperation, a world we could scarcely have imagined. And both talking and filming with children brutalised and traumatised by their experiences has not been easy.
Our journey began in the nightclubs on the outskirts of Mombasa. Visit the Mtwapa suburb after midnight, and white male European tourists are busy ogling and fondling teenage girls.
The teenagers wear high heels, or pay a bribe at the club door to get in. The ultimate prize is a “muzungu ” or white man, who will pay for sex five times what a Kenyan labourer can earn in a day.
But the price these girls are paying is nothing less than a stolen childhood.
Anastasia says she’s 13 now, and has been prostituting herself since she slept with a British tourist at the age of ten, a crime which in Britain would be classed as rape.
Her parents couldn’t even afford school shoes, so she set out for a better life amid the bright lights of Mombasa. That life is sharing a flat with a fellow prostitute, Leyla, who is 14. And both girls say the number of children involved is growing.
“When I started at the age of 12, I could go into a nightclub, and maybe I can get 10 or 20 girls,” Leyla told me.
“At least you could count and say, ‘that one and that one, they are prostitutes’. But now there are many, all over the place. Sometimes I get stressed. I ask myself, or God, what I have done wrong? I am still a child and I am doing this.”
At that point in our interview, Leyla dropped her head in shame. Anastasia was crying. Three years ago, a study by the UN children’s agency UNICEF warned that there were thousands of girls like Leyla.
But that was before Kenya was plunged into political violence and an economic crisis and a drought which has left 10 million Kenyans without enough food to eat. So the author of the UNICEF study, Sarah Jones, now reckons her findings are an underestimate.
“We are talking about fifteen to twenty thousand children, and maybe more now, because the population has grown in that time,” Sarah told me.
“The researchers I worked with when I conducted the study all tell me now that they have a lot of visual evidence of increasing numbers of younger and younger children.”
Just two miles from Mombasa’s beachfront hotels and you are a world away. We found local tribesmen dancing in memory of a dead friend.
Hardly anyone has a job in Bamburi village. And local elders like Richard Chisima say they are battling to stop their children from heading off to the tourist resorts, in search of a white man with wads of cash.
We had heard that resorts north of Mombasa were the centre of the underage sex trade, so we drove for about an hour to a village near the town of Malindi.
And the scale of what we found left us profoundly shocked. Teenagers shelling maize told us it was normal for young children to sleep with African men in the low season to prepare for rich foreigners later.
The village elder was so concerned about his village’s children, that he sent several families with their 12 and 13 year girls and boys to talk to us. All the children we spoke to had the permission of their parents or guardians, where they existed.
Four of the ten children put up their hands when I asked them if they had slept with foreigners from the beach. Among them was Fatuma, now 13, and of all the people I interviewed for this film, her story haunts me like no other.
She told me she was driven by hunger to sell herself to two Italian tourists, named Andre and Thomas, at the age of 11.
One man gave her less than £5, the other less than £10. “I’m very sad, because my body is the temple of God “, she said.
With her mother’s permission, Fatuma showed me the beach where she sold her body to the two white men. She told me about her routine on Sundays. In the morning, she goes to church, in the afternoon her family’s poverty forces her to look for more foreigners. And her mother, Philomena, claims she’s powerless to stop her.
“Fatuma goes everywhere because I have no food at home and no money to support her”, she said. “I don’t like her going backwards. I would like the child to continue at school and the white men to be prosecuted.”
I gave Fatuma what I gave many of the children I interviewed – one of several tubs of sweets I’d picked up at Heathrow airport before my flight. It was hopelessly inadequate.
All Fatuma wants – and all that she deserves – is to go to school. She is clever and funny and I try not to think about her too often, because when I do, my eyes fill with tears.
There are pockets of resistance, including a football club set up by “Frifonet”, a Kenyan charity. It’s motto: “To think in terms of my God is my strength, not my white man”
Its mission? “To reduce the number of beach boys and girls”.
But many of the children play barefoot because they can’t afford football boots, and the schoolteacher in charge, Mary Rukungi, admits that 16 of the 35 girls she trained last year are now back on the beaches, selling themselves.
“They take the child of Kenya, just because we are poor ” she told me angrily. “They misuse the child. Personally, it hurts me. I feel pain.
“Any foreigner found sleeping with a Kenyan child should be taken back to his country, and never be allowed to come to our country again.”
All along the coast we’d heard that children abused by tourists are now younger then ever. But we wanted evidence. So we went to Mombasa’s Coast General Hospital, which is home to the region’s only public clinic specialising in sexual violence. Cameras have never been allowed inside to witness the terrible suffering within.
We recorded the sound of a six-year-old boy crying out after being raped by a neighbour. Stark proof that child sex abuse is not just a tourist problem. Crimes against children are committed by Kenyans as well – some apparently believing that sex with a virgin child will cure them of HIV. The clinic is unique in confronting a scandal many would rather ignore and its admissions book reads like an astonishing chronicle of cruelty.
Over a thousand children have been treated here in the last two years – 138 of them aged five or under – and Dr Catherine Maternowska of California University, who is analysing the daily rollcall of new arrivals, says their ages are falling, with more and more sold for sex.
“The national estimate, based on a report by UNICEF, is that approximately 40 per cent to 50 per cent – it’s a hard number to calculate – are committed by tourists from abroad” she said.
On busy days an abused child can wait eight hours to see a doctor. The hospital is desperately in need of more money to continue its pioneering work – when I tell you that mothers admitted for Caesarean births have to pay for their own saline fluid, you may get a picture of the extent of need.
The families of abused children have to take their own forensic swabs to a government lab – a procedural failure which means that this vital evidence may be considered tampered with, and therefore inadmissible in court. And of course the doctors wonder how many child sex abuse cases never get reported at all.
“We don’t know what the situation is outside, but we are sure that what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg ” Dr Essam Hamed told me.
“Judging on our judicial system, the various loopholes we are currently having with evidence collection – we don’t even have evidence collection kits – I’d say it’s very rare for a perpetrator to be jailed. Very, very rare. ”
Kenyans are so angry that some have begun taking the law into their own hands. In June, villagers hacked down a string of beach huts after they had heard that a European tourist had been molesting nine-year- olds inside. A local campaigner told me that even if the tourist was caught, he could bribe the police to drop the case.
Ours was a journey of painful contrasts – the tropical beauty of the holiday resorts, lined with flowering bougainvillea, jarring with the desperation of the children nearby. And as we continued our investigation, those contrasts became ever more disturbing.
We found Henry, a seven-year-old molested by a white man in exchange for pocket money, new clothes and a bag of flour. His father wants the police to bring charges – but the police have told the parents the tourist has fled to Europe and may never return. We filmed the mother’s proud face, and in it we saw a family struggling to keep its dignity.
“We have to wait until the white man comes back” the boy’s father told me. “But now that he has committed a crime, I do not think he will come.
“I am afraid our government only listens to those who have money – and the case is not being taken seriously, because I have nothing.”
The authorities know there’s a problem – billboards up and down the main coastal road warn tourists against exploiting Kenya’s children. The government hopes a new tourist police force will be patrolling the beaches by the end of this year.
Major hotels have signed up to a “code of conduct”, which has raised hotel staff awareness that tourists bringing children back to their rooms is unacceptable. But this is a country which fears that any attack on its reputation, any labelling of Kenya as the “new Thailand” for sun, sea and underage sex – and then innocent tourists, the vast majority, could be driven away.
“We are going to take strict action on defaulters, or criminals, who are taking advantage of young children” Najib Balala, who is Kenya’s Tourism Minister, assured me.
“As a parent, as well as a country, we cannot afford abuse of our children. At the same time, if it is publicised, blown out of proportion, it will destroy the same effort of eradication of poverty by destroying tourism. ”
Coffee, tea and tourism – Kenya’s sources of foreign revenue are few and far between. But Kenyan parents and charities say the time has come for the truth to be told.
In a church orphanage, we found a six-year-old girl, who has told her carers about her visits to hotel rooms and being filmed for pornographic videos.
And the charity worker who rescued her says that, based on a medical examination, the abuse probably began at the age of three.
“The doctor said she had some whip-like lashes on her back ” said Eve Ngoroge of the Women’s Resource Network. “And she had a vaginal injury as well, and there was some sodomy as well.
She says it was “muzungus” – white men.
This little girl is now safe. No longer refusing to eat, no longer expecting to stay up all night. But up and down this 300 mile coastline, Kenyan children are suffering – their stories still untold. (source)
Well not anymore. Not what after I've read tonight.
It is really late here, but I cannot and will not go to sleep before telling you what happens on the coasts of Mombassa.
According to a UNICEF study, over 30% of Kenyan children, especially in coastal cities are into some form of sex work. When I say children, I mean children between the ages of 12 and 16, and some as young as 3.
We say in Arabic, "Al Jo' ma yerham" - Hunger has no mercy. These children are hungry.
So who preys on their hunger but...but the white man, who devours their hungry flesh as well as their innocence and childhood, away...
This is a subject that never fails to make me so enraged that I feel am choking. And when am choking the way I am right now, I can't write...Not wanting to immerse you in expletives, I will copy and paste the whole article as well as the video.
I personally have no more words.
Kenya’s beaches are the stuff holiday brochures are made of – mile after mile of glistening white sand, kissed by equatorial sun. Tourism is a major money spinner for one of the world’s poorest countries, but Kenya’s tropical paradise hides a dark secret.
We have been on a harrowing journey – from nightclubs where European men pick up 12-year-old Kenyan girls; to an orphanage where children as young as six have found sanctuary after sexual abuse by foreign tourists.
A journey into a world of cruelty and desperation, a world we could scarcely have imagined. And both talking and filming with children brutalised and traumatised by their experiences has not been easy.
Our journey began in the nightclubs on the outskirts of Mombasa. Visit the Mtwapa suburb after midnight, and white male European tourists are busy ogling and fondling teenage girls.
The teenagers wear high heels, or pay a bribe at the club door to get in. The ultimate prize is a “muzungu ” or white man, who will pay for sex five times what a Kenyan labourer can earn in a day.
But the price these girls are paying is nothing less than a stolen childhood.
Anastasia says she’s 13 now, and has been prostituting herself since she slept with a British tourist at the age of ten, a crime which in Britain would be classed as rape.
Her parents couldn’t even afford school shoes, so she set out for a better life amid the bright lights of Mombasa. That life is sharing a flat with a fellow prostitute, Leyla, who is 14. And both girls say the number of children involved is growing.
“When I started at the age of 12, I could go into a nightclub, and maybe I can get 10 or 20 girls,” Leyla told me.
“At least you could count and say, ‘that one and that one, they are prostitutes’. But now there are many, all over the place. Sometimes I get stressed. I ask myself, or God, what I have done wrong? I am still a child and I am doing this.”
At that point in our interview, Leyla dropped her head in shame. Anastasia was crying. Three years ago, a study by the UN children’s agency UNICEF warned that there were thousands of girls like Leyla.
But that was before Kenya was plunged into political violence and an economic crisis and a drought which has left 10 million Kenyans without enough food to eat. So the author of the UNICEF study, Sarah Jones, now reckons her findings are an underestimate.
“We are talking about fifteen to twenty thousand children, and maybe more now, because the population has grown in that time,” Sarah told me.
“The researchers I worked with when I conducted the study all tell me now that they have a lot of visual evidence of increasing numbers of younger and younger children.”
Just two miles from Mombasa’s beachfront hotels and you are a world away. We found local tribesmen dancing in memory of a dead friend.
Hardly anyone has a job in Bamburi village. And local elders like Richard Chisima say they are battling to stop their children from heading off to the tourist resorts, in search of a white man with wads of cash.
We had heard that resorts north of Mombasa were the centre of the underage sex trade, so we drove for about an hour to a village near the town of Malindi.
And the scale of what we found left us profoundly shocked. Teenagers shelling maize told us it was normal for young children to sleep with African men in the low season to prepare for rich foreigners later.
The village elder was so concerned about his village’s children, that he sent several families with their 12 and 13 year girls and boys to talk to us. All the children we spoke to had the permission of their parents or guardians, where they existed.
Four of the ten children put up their hands when I asked them if they had slept with foreigners from the beach. Among them was Fatuma, now 13, and of all the people I interviewed for this film, her story haunts me like no other.
She told me she was driven by hunger to sell herself to two Italian tourists, named Andre and Thomas, at the age of 11.
One man gave her less than £5, the other less than £10. “I’m very sad, because my body is the temple of God “, she said.
With her mother’s permission, Fatuma showed me the beach where she sold her body to the two white men. She told me about her routine on Sundays. In the morning, she goes to church, in the afternoon her family’s poverty forces her to look for more foreigners. And her mother, Philomena, claims she’s powerless to stop her.
“Fatuma goes everywhere because I have no food at home and no money to support her”, she said. “I don’t like her going backwards. I would like the child to continue at school and the white men to be prosecuted.”
I gave Fatuma what I gave many of the children I interviewed – one of several tubs of sweets I’d picked up at Heathrow airport before my flight. It was hopelessly inadequate.
All Fatuma wants – and all that she deserves – is to go to school. She is clever and funny and I try not to think about her too often, because when I do, my eyes fill with tears.
There are pockets of resistance, including a football club set up by “Frifonet”, a Kenyan charity. It’s motto: “To think in terms of my God is my strength, not my white man”
Its mission? “To reduce the number of beach boys and girls”.
But many of the children play barefoot because they can’t afford football boots, and the schoolteacher in charge, Mary Rukungi, admits that 16 of the 35 girls she trained last year are now back on the beaches, selling themselves.
“They take the child of Kenya, just because we are poor ” she told me angrily. “They misuse the child. Personally, it hurts me. I feel pain.
“Any foreigner found sleeping with a Kenyan child should be taken back to his country, and never be allowed to come to our country again.”
All along the coast we’d heard that children abused by tourists are now younger then ever. But we wanted evidence. So we went to Mombasa’s Coast General Hospital, which is home to the region’s only public clinic specialising in sexual violence. Cameras have never been allowed inside to witness the terrible suffering within.
We recorded the sound of a six-year-old boy crying out after being raped by a neighbour. Stark proof that child sex abuse is not just a tourist problem. Crimes against children are committed by Kenyans as well – some apparently believing that sex with a virgin child will cure them of HIV. The clinic is unique in confronting a scandal many would rather ignore and its admissions book reads like an astonishing chronicle of cruelty.
Over a thousand children have been treated here in the last two years – 138 of them aged five or under – and Dr Catherine Maternowska of California University, who is analysing the daily rollcall of new arrivals, says their ages are falling, with more and more sold for sex.
“The national estimate, based on a report by UNICEF, is that approximately 40 per cent to 50 per cent – it’s a hard number to calculate – are committed by tourists from abroad” she said.
On busy days an abused child can wait eight hours to see a doctor. The hospital is desperately in need of more money to continue its pioneering work – when I tell you that mothers admitted for Caesarean births have to pay for their own saline fluid, you may get a picture of the extent of need.
The families of abused children have to take their own forensic swabs to a government lab – a procedural failure which means that this vital evidence may be considered tampered with, and therefore inadmissible in court. And of course the doctors wonder how many child sex abuse cases never get reported at all.
“We don’t know what the situation is outside, but we are sure that what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg ” Dr Essam Hamed told me.
“Judging on our judicial system, the various loopholes we are currently having with evidence collection – we don’t even have evidence collection kits – I’d say it’s very rare for a perpetrator to be jailed. Very, very rare. ”
Kenyans are so angry that some have begun taking the law into their own hands. In June, villagers hacked down a string of beach huts after they had heard that a European tourist had been molesting nine-year- olds inside. A local campaigner told me that even if the tourist was caught, he could bribe the police to drop the case.
Ours was a journey of painful contrasts – the tropical beauty of the holiday resorts, lined with flowering bougainvillea, jarring with the desperation of the children nearby. And as we continued our investigation, those contrasts became ever more disturbing.
We found Henry, a seven-year-old molested by a white man in exchange for pocket money, new clothes and a bag of flour. His father wants the police to bring charges – but the police have told the parents the tourist has fled to Europe and may never return. We filmed the mother’s proud face, and in it we saw a family struggling to keep its dignity.
“We have to wait until the white man comes back” the boy’s father told me. “But now that he has committed a crime, I do not think he will come.
“I am afraid our government only listens to those who have money – and the case is not being taken seriously, because I have nothing.”
The authorities know there’s a problem – billboards up and down the main coastal road warn tourists against exploiting Kenya’s children. The government hopes a new tourist police force will be patrolling the beaches by the end of this year.
Major hotels have signed up to a “code of conduct”, which has raised hotel staff awareness that tourists bringing children back to their rooms is unacceptable. But this is a country which fears that any attack on its reputation, any labelling of Kenya as the “new Thailand” for sun, sea and underage sex – and then innocent tourists, the vast majority, could be driven away.
“We are going to take strict action on defaulters, or criminals, who are taking advantage of young children” Najib Balala, who is Kenya’s Tourism Minister, assured me.
“As a parent, as well as a country, we cannot afford abuse of our children. At the same time, if it is publicised, blown out of proportion, it will destroy the same effort of eradication of poverty by destroying tourism. ”
Coffee, tea and tourism – Kenya’s sources of foreign revenue are few and far between. But Kenyan parents and charities say the time has come for the truth to be told.
In a church orphanage, we found a six-year-old girl, who has told her carers about her visits to hotel rooms and being filmed for pornographic videos.
And the charity worker who rescued her says that, based on a medical examination, the abuse probably began at the age of three.
“The doctor said she had some whip-like lashes on her back ” said Eve Ngoroge of the Women’s Resource Network. “And she had a vaginal injury as well, and there was some sodomy as well.
She says it was “muzungus” – white men.
This little girl is now safe. No longer refusing to eat, no longer expecting to stay up all night. But up and down this 300 mile coastline, Kenyan children are suffering – their stories still untold. (source)
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