An Armenian, A Hikmah

An Armenian character appeared towards the last pages of 'Cities of Salt' which had become a drag to read. The character is a driver named Akoub, and I realized this was the short version of 'Yacoub' when they laid his gravestone. An Armenian whose family ends up in Aleppo like so many others after the deportations. It is interesting that the Armenian name in an Arabic context is once again 'Yacoub' as in the Yacoubian Building.
The hikmah, in the spirit of Ramadan, is the following. The Prophet always recommended that people finish their plate to the last bit. He said that any given 'gift' from God contained benefit, but you never know in which part of the gift the 'benefit' is hidden. It might be in the last grain of rice on your plate, so eat up. So even when the book gets boring, read up, an interesting bit of information (that can be recognized only by you- it has your name on it, so to speak) might be hidden in the last page.
Such proved to be the case with my perseverance of A Dance to the Music of Time as well.
Amen(na).

A Kabul-based Fuel Trader

Matthew Leeming, a Kabul-based fuel trader, told the newspaper that it had become increasingly difficult to get convoys of essential goods through to more distant bases.
“The Taliban’s new tactics of blowing bridges between Kabul and Kandahar, forcing convoys to slow down and become softer targets, is causing severe problems to companies trying to supply Kandahar from Kabul,” he said.

http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48604&Itemid=39

Oda Tiyatrosu

My good cousin tells me our lives have become like a piece from the theatre of the absurd, or maybe an Oscar Wilde play. Enter X. Enter Y. Exit X. Enter Z. und so weiter... the scene is us sitting on the couch watching, possibly, In the Thick of It, while these characters enter and exit. We have such little dealings with them as we laugh away at the show. They plot, scheme, war and make peace among themselves. Sometimes they fill our cups of tea. Some make grand entrances, others quiet exits. They leave. They come back. The cycle repeats itself.

Second Sighting of Valley of the Wolves T-Shirt

Watching the news item about the newly restored Muradiye Mosque in Filibe/Plovdiv, I saw an eight year old in the mosque wearing a Valley of the Wolves t-shirt, with the faces of various characters from the series imprinted on the shirt. I had not quite believed it when Tom had said that he'd seen one in Yerevan, but there's now proof. It also says something about macho tendencies in post-communist countries, any dark man with a frown and a gun is legit for streetwear. (even in Yerevan and the dark man is a Turkish ultra-nationalist!)

Ben Abdülhamid

Ben Abdülhamid
sızlıyor her yanım
Almanlarla dostluklarım
zihnimde İngiliz kelimeler

Kudüs- kitlesem kapıları
deliklerden giriyor tefeciler, tüccarlar
Çeteleri besliyor Selanik
Ağrı'nın kar-pak zirvesi
uykularımı bölüyor her gece
anılarım, ve açılacak yaralarım

ben Abdülhamid,
sızlıyor her yanım

Al Quds- media contingencies

I have been watching the ad for the documentary on genetics on MBC since I got to Amman "leke en tetehayyel maza yumkin en yahdus...." and today was the first time I got to watch it. An Anglosaxon production that is dubbed into Arabic.
Apart from very disturbing pictures concerning obsessive compulsive behaviour, we were also transported to Quds, where the Israelis were conducting research on genes that regulated a person's need for change. So we were shown pictures of an English/Israeli moving into his house in a settlement, the voice over saying that this was his nth move in so many months, and that he had the urge to buy any new electronic equipment, etc. His need for change was a "genetic condition", the documentary suggested.
All the objection that the Arabic translation could offer was calling Jerusalem "al Quds al muhtalla".

What Hamid Ismailov's "The Railway" makes me think

as I record the number and patterns of the bedouin tents that have camped up the hill these past two months

way too many lands, way too many books to go looking for the beloved-

Palimpsest III

This purple-blue-yellow evening finds me trying to decipher a Kabbani poem with the help of Hans Wehr, and I am transported to more than a decade ago, when I had not heard of the name Kabbani or Wehr, and when, in a dark and dingy cafe in Istanbul someone passes me 'To Beirut'.

Nothing is over, ever

This purple-blue-yellow Amman evening finds me running from one Abraham to another. Yet again.

Palimpsest II

Qasr Azraq, Front Quad, if you please

Arabs, Turks and Englishmen, and stories told late into the night

Turks, Armenians, Palestinians

I discovered the Fishawi of Amman the other day with a large group of Turks. There was Turkish coffee, excellent lemon and mint and cocktails, backgammon, the whole thing. There was also a book room, a photograph of Mourid Bargouthi and a burnt on wood portrait of Ghassan Kanafani. Obviously, the place to be. Oh, and then live oud music.

When the girl at the next table warned me about her nargileh we striked up a conversation in Arabic, she asking where we were from and then quite unexpectedly saying that we all looked very Armenian. Of course, I said, we're from the same part of the world, but you'll hardly find Armenians wearing hijab (she herself was a non-hijabi). Yes, she said, they're Christians, aren't they? Anyway, it gives you a warm feeling inside to see that despite the obvious difference, they still recognize Armenians on Turks' face. She, for her part, it turned out, was a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, from Nablus.

Germans, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, Turks

We went to a concert of the Jerusalem Youth Orchestra in Amman this evening. The very many yellow heads we saw before the concert started turned out to be members of the University of Bonn Orchestra (whom I had listened to in Bonn- and that is another long story. Memories of fleeing Giessen and the train diverted through Mainz while I was reading a thriller with Mahler as the protagonist, in German, mind you) They played Khachaturian operatic pieces concerning the Kurdish Ayesha and Armen. Then there was a very sad Palestinian song with the refrain Sara, Sarai.
The Turkish presence was not limited to me and my friend- I had spoken to H of my suspicions that the kanun and ney music soundtrack of the opening audiovisual was Turkish, and the suspicions were verified when we saw the contents of the CD's they were selling outside with piece names such as Hicaz Longa, and the names of two Turkish musicians. I am pleasantly surprised. There isn't half enough cultural bridges between the two countries.

Turks, Jordanians, Circassians, Armenians

Having listened to an Armenian soprano singing the 'Room With a View' arya last night at the Roman theatre in Amman and having decided that the red haired violinist was of Circassian descent, here's a note on Armenian connections.
Firstly, Tariq Ali suggests that Salahaddin's family is from a village in Armenia though they themselves are Kurds. (note: visit to Ajloun castle is called for) And then I find out about Janset Berkok Shami, an Amman based writer, Jordanian, raised in Istanbul in the early days of the republic and then she finds out about her Armenian heritage.
The Circassians are still elusive, I will have to phone their center. Chechens, however, are accesible in Azraq.

The Art of Losing

(To the tune of Wish You Were Here)

First
I lost my Baedeker
then, my Herge

But you Harriet,
shall always remain here

The Secret Sharer

I see men going into battle
in their flying colours
waving their apologetic goodbyes

their battles for fame
their battles for love
and their battles for territory

and I
pin little flags
on my map of invasions
here a country, there a temple
here a river, there a gorge

and long after the battle is done
I am called to sift through the ruins
as they tell me their stories of conquest
and surrender

I, like Harriet, watch the men go by.

Dark Essences

(after Zeki Müren)

What if there'll be separation in our fates
tomorrow
do not think that the story of those trembling branches
finishes with the fallen leaf
it is the finality of black earth
that will house this love for ever.

Do not cry
Do not be sad
face tomorrow with a smiling face
do not think
your beauty will fade away (for it did not belong to you to begin with)
with the white that has fallen
upon your silken hair

it is the finality of black earth
that will house this love for ever.

Valley of the Wolves- a Zizek moment

On my latest to trip to Thessaloniki (on my way to Korça) across from the aisle where I sat, there was a man of quite some stature, bald head, quiet manners, presence. I was thinking it must be in the image of this sort of man that the director of Valley of the Wolves must have painted the various characters in his ultra-nationalist drama series, and I was thinking, there is no shortage of such men to be drawn upon on the streets of Istanbul. The puny extent of my knowledge of the series was revealed (puny, but knowledge it was!) when during the break a group of Turkish/Greek students (we need some qualification here, Turks from Thrace who are citizens of Greece) who studied in Istanbul who were going home for holidays surrounded the man and asked him whether he was a particular character in the series. Of course he was! So what I thought was the signified, was in fact the signifier! That was the cause of his presence.

Here we have the dangers of passive TV watching, much much worse than the active one.

The Good, The Bad, The Undead

I do not remember what it was that had made me so upset. This was pre-Wadham. It was still Lincoln times. I had found myself sitting on a bench across from Christ Church, admiring the ivy clinging to the façade, trying to imagine the lives of the students inside. I was also feeling very small and sorry for myself. Then a woman approached me out of nowhere and asked me if I was feeling alright. When I lifted up my face she was startled and said "Sorry, I thought you were someone else" and then shared with me the story of the very clever British Asian kid who'd fled home, and how from afar I looked like her. I must've looked very small indeed. I had heard of the story alright and this case of mistaken identity cheered me a bit. The girl was dis/recovered, so far as I remember, a couple of days later.

That, is the first memory in the palimpsest.

Khor Virap Catechism

Nothing's over, ever (Jamaica Kincaid)

Doppelgaenger to Doğu Beyazıd, doppelgaenger to the Soviet, doppelgaenger to the North Parade, doppelgaenger to Hrdlika, doppelgaenger to...

a place for sacrificial lambs, my guide tells me
I'm going up the stairs alright, going up the stairs...

A Song for My Mother

Salonique: La Princessa ye el Caballero
Constantinople; Francoise Atlan (voice)
Taken from the album Terres Turquoises
Atma Classique ACD 2 2314

Pass the port Stephen, here's to Boris!

"One could say that Islamic worship, education, and even legal codes were 'left alone' more than were those of any other religious systems in the colonial world. One consequence in some places was that by the time of independence, Muslim-majority regions lagged substantially behind others in the numbers of Western-educated, widely travelled, or highly qualified personnel they could command [...] Access to certain key skills and oppurtunities, one could almost say certain key aspects of transnational modernity, was greater, earlier for Hindus (especially West Bengali ones) in the former, members of Christian minorities in the latter, than among Muslims."
(my emphasis p. 102)
and rightly is our right and honourable friend Stephen puzzled by the following:
"It has also been argued that there existed in the West an especially intense prejudice against the Islamic world, different in kind and greater in virulence than that against other non-Europeans, operating across a broad historical period but persisting into the present. The problem with such a claim is the lack of comparative analysis which might test or validate the claim, measuring Western anti-Islamism against any other kind of prejudice, any other discourse of discrimination, hierarchy, stereotyping, or demonization. For that matter, it is hard to see just how one could quantify different kinds of colonial prejudice in that way, or assign them to a ranking order." (p. 103)

This is the end of Stephen Howe's chapter on Empire by Sea, in his OUP Very Short Introduction to Empire.
It sort of reminds me of the Monty-Python skit in which one of the actors dressed as a Tory MP says he will first make some general posh noises and then fall over backwards foaming at the mouth, which he does.