An American journalist describes the refugee camps she has seen in 'Witness to War' on CNN (a programme whose short trailer that appears every five minutes contains three mosques in Istanbul interspersed with ruined Afghan monuments. Sloppy journalism? Hey, here are some pictures of nice mosques, let's use them!) She describes "acres and acres of makeshifT tents with children crying and having no one to turn to..." (and even some more melodramatic jargon I can't remember now) to the accompaniment of pictures of children scrambling for food.
Here's what Jean Rhys has to say about it all:
"Let’s say that you have this mystical right to cut my legs off. But the right to ridicule me afterwards because I am a cripple – no, that I think you haven’t got. And that’s the right you hold most dearly, isn’t it? You must be able to despise the people you exploit. "
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Deformation Professionelle
"The protagonist herself does not know where to place her own body in the social order so that it may have meaning. She starts to perceive herself through the eyes of the others as '(re)presenting a problem', is forced to relinquish her status as a legitimate subject and perceives herself as an object"
ooops! this is supposed to be chapter 3 of my thesis, not a diary
ooops! this is supposed to be chapter 3 of my thesis, not a diary
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Afghanistan and Englishmen
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."
- Rudyard Kipling, extract from the poem "A Young British Soldier" published in "Barrack Room Ballads", 1892.
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."
- Rudyard Kipling, extract from the poem "A Young British Soldier" published in "Barrack Room Ballads", 1892.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Cambridge
I was thoroughly ill. It must have been the same year as Chawton, I can't even begin to calculate the year. I arrived in the town in mist, the conference was a bit of a blur, and then the clearest moment of the whole day was actually the evening meal at the I believe Thai restaurant. There was an Irish prof trying to chat up an Austrian postdoc. There was a lovely elegant Southafrican professor who was telling me about Muslims in Johannesburg. And then my concoction arrived. I had never, nor ever have later, tasted such scorchingly bitter ginger tea before. I am sure it did me a world of good. And then to catch the train (was I really returning to Bromley? Good Grief!) I had the people at the reception call a taxi for me. I don't remember whether the taxi arrived at all. But I remember getting out of the restaurant and being hit by the cold winter night, huddled in my wool scarf, I remember making my way through narrow streets with tunnels of car lights darting this way and that. And I remember the sense of utter lostness- I was just going the direction most people seemed to be going and some compass in me seemed to be saying this was the general direction towards the station. I do not know what made me so reckless. But I seem to have picture of myself from the outside, keeping close to a stone wall as I am half illuminated by a passing car, my head bowed in what seems to be a still from some black and white comic book. Strange tricks of memory.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Ode to the Swivel Chair, a-la-Nicholson Baker
After my mid-morning walk I was thinking of writing an ode to the horse chestnut tree as they are now in full beautiful bloom in Etiler (and many was the day when we used the horse chestnuts as ammunition or tennis balls as dictated by our fancy) but here's an ode to the swivel chair.
A screw has, yet again, come undone, this time from the side facing the table. Now Baker would have calculated the number of hours spent on the chair, which side one was more likely to shift one's weight more, whether the position towards the table or the window would be more susceptible to coming undone.
I have already lost one of the screws, so the chair is surviving on three, I am guessing two is also managable, but when it is one, the chair is probably non-useable.
So goes Baker's Mezzanine, which is a very clever book, but which also takes forever to read, do not be misled by the slender volume. I have interspersed it with Zizek, Asad, Soueif and what not, and the last 30 pages are still quite resistant. I have already embarked on Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate.
A screw has, yet again, come undone, this time from the side facing the table. Now Baker would have calculated the number of hours spent on the chair, which side one was more likely to shift one's weight more, whether the position towards the table or the window would be more susceptible to coming undone.
I have already lost one of the screws, so the chair is surviving on three, I am guessing two is also managable, but when it is one, the chair is probably non-useable.
So goes Baker's Mezzanine, which is a very clever book, but which also takes forever to read, do not be misled by the slender volume. I have interspersed it with Zizek, Asad, Soueif and what not, and the last 30 pages are still quite resistant. I have already embarked on Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Vereschagin - Russia and The East
Delivering a paper on Russia and the East, I did not even know about the existence of Vereschagin, whose painting you see above has little to do with his eastern themes, except for the tromp d'oeil effect he likes to go for. In the Tretyakov Gallery I realized only after listening to the commentary that on the painting that stands to the right of this one, the Tashkent scene he depicts has a number of severed heads stuck on poles as a 'mullah' is giving a speech surrounded by them. The hand itches for another paper!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
German Faces, Russian Faces
"There are genocides happening today, and they are being shot off the front pages by Nazi cows - Nazi cows! - and interviews with Mortensen talking about playing a depressed Nazi: "I spent a lot of time in Germany just looking at people." Really? Five million have died in the Congo in the last 10 years, in a war for the minerals that we use. And Heil Honey I'm Home! has nothing to say about that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/23/nazi-culture-film-hitler
what an oppurtune article that speaks to my disparate observations in Moscow.
Mortensen- I was talking about his Eastern Promises at the conference, and as I was listening to another participant giving his paper about how Russian nationalism fared in the face of the Russian adoration of all things French, he seemed strangely familiar to me (and I know no Russians) and then I realized some of his facial gestures were exactly like the Mortensen character I'd been talking about. I'm guessing Mortensen also spent a lot of time in Russia just looking at people. Hats off! Now I'll have to go an see his depressed Nazi.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/23/nazi-culture-film-hitler
what an oppurtune article that speaks to my disparate observations in Moscow.
Mortensen- I was talking about his Eastern Promises at the conference, and as I was listening to another participant giving his paper about how Russian nationalism fared in the face of the Russian adoration of all things French, he seemed strangely familiar to me (and I know no Russians) and then I realized some of his facial gestures were exactly like the Mortensen character I'd been talking about. I'm guessing Mortensen also spent a lot of time in Russia just looking at people. Hats off! Now I'll have to go an see his depressed Nazi.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
THE Embittered Marxist
On the sunniest day of my visit to Moscow I was at a conference where I could follow only half of what was going on. But I could follow the man in the picture alright, with rebuttals in Russian and English to everyone who spoke. His remark to my paper about 'everyone having their own East' was "I think the Muslims and the Orthodox are no where comparable, I don't think you'll find our youth, Orthodox youth protesting on the streets of Paris even twenty years from now". But the Marxist in him came out when I picked one of the above seen bottles of water to fill out a glass. He said I should take the whole bottle, and I said one glass was enough to which he retorted "Oh please, take the whole bottle by all means (he did have occasional English mannerisms), now if it was our American friend who needed the water, he would have taken the whole bottle without asking." The American, one of the three people who gave their papers in English, simply smiled. I could only say "Do you mean to say that I have also failed in etiquette by not properly asking you? (which I really hadn't)" to at least try to make myself as culpable as the American (Moscow makes strange bedfellows) But then the silly conversation stopped, and when it was his time to give his paper, a number of younger Russian students challenged him, which my lovely translator summarized at the end as "They have just had a very interesting discussion about nationalism" Excellent. Now I know what I missed.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
An Unexpected Find
A Russian dissident sits across from me in the park.
He must be a dissident because
he's Russian, and he's
here
in New York City.
Does he know that Central Park
is
muggers only
after dark?
(Ahdaf Soueif)
He must be a dissident because
he's Russian, and he's
here
in New York City.
Does he know that Central Park
is
muggers only
after dark?
(Ahdaf Soueif)
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
A Boston Encounter
Ecce Polis! We are riding a tram, huddled into a wintercoats, and we're returning from seeing a nice play in a nice university town. There are a group of girls frolicking at the back, singing, dancing and my companion asks me whether I remember a time being so carefree and doing such things. "Well, a couple of weeks ago when I was in London..." I start to tell her. She is an established psychologist and has been telling me about her patients half of whom happen to be musicians - professional or amateur. She sees one of them at the metro station now and then. By this time the girls have turned up their volume and the Rabindranath Marx looking guy sitting in front of me who has been listening to our conversation revolving around the play (Beckett's End Game) since we got on the tram with eager interest now starts to make eyes at me. No, of course not that way, he's got his girlfriend by his side but Rabindranath, let's call him Ed, with his Marxist beard and grey tweed coat suggesting the 1930's thinks me, for some reason, equally inconvenienced as he is by the girls. He probably has guessed that I have been sending Embittered Marxists left and right on facebook and wants to capitalize on this familiarity.
Then the girls leave. He takes a theatrical sigh of relief, clasps his master of the revels hands together and announces, bass "Now, our next act..."
"Yourself maybe" I venture.
At the next stop, taking a half bow, he gets off the tram.
Then the girls leave. He takes a theatrical sigh of relief, clasps his master of the revels hands together and announces, bass "Now, our next act..."
"Yourself maybe" I venture.
At the next stop, taking a half bow, he gets off the tram.
An Atlanta Encounter
Since there is not much to be seen in Atlanta (except for Stone Mountain of course where we went to encounter a plantation but managed only to see the back seat of an American police car, more of that maybe later) I spent most of my time socializing, almost Oxford-style, bench hopping and trying to raise my voice above the din. At one dinner party with a German-language poster like Democles's sword over us, we ate, we discussed Iraq, Vietnam and Israel. And right after everyone had managed to upset everyone else, a number of us took their leave and one among us with a decidedly public school education (no matter which or where) and one that had tried to calm everyone during the debate retired to a darker corner of the room and asked the gentleman of the house "We shall smoke?" We had not quite realized that the event was black tie.
I met the same public school graduate, whom we shall call Snap's Master, at another party whose themes this time ranged from food-poisoning death to whether as a child one had been oiled and massaged. Love, too, came up, and as one of those present was sort of lamenting that his brother was in love with a Pakistani girl Snap's Master asked like nothing "Is she brown?" and then told us about the various nannies he had had, named after various fruits and flowers.
I met the same public school graduate, whom we shall call Snap's Master, at another party whose themes this time ranged from food-poisoning death to whether as a child one had been oiled and massaged. Love, too, came up, and as one of those present was sort of lamenting that his brother was in love with a Pakistani girl Snap's Master asked like nothing "Is she brown?" and then told us about the various nannies he had had, named after various fruits and flowers.
A New York Encounter
What better way to spend the one Sunday you have in New York than to buy yourself a camera which should enable you to shoot your own news reports, thought my cousin. She had thought the same about the Saturday, but she had been recommended to go and shop at the B&H which, she found out later, was run by orthodox Jews and so no luck on Saturday. And so I come in fresh from Atlanta and so it is Sunday morning with us and a shop full of kippa wearing salesmen- men, of course. There's also a Metropolis like pulley and train system right above our heads, carrying I don't know what I don't know where.
So we munch on our kosher sweets, and two of the salesmen are very keen to get my cousin the best deal, when the sickly looking one disappers, we get into a convo with the healthy looking one, he asks where we are from and says 'So, reporting live from Turkey, eh?" "Eh" my cousin concurs. "Reporting more, like, from New York, from a shop that closes on Saturdays" I say. He laughs and adds "Well, you know, not only is the shop closed on Saturdays, but the website is down as well". Hats, kippas, headscarves off. The Spanish tourists are watching our conversation with hidden glee. Then the sickly salesman appears. He wants in on the conversation. "So where are you from?" he asks.
This time we want to play it. "Guess" we tell him. First he smiles signifying impossibility. My cousin says the inevitable cliche "Somewhere between the East and the West". He smiles impossibility for one more second, but then the cliché has worked and he says "Turkey?" We are now in a full-blown conversation. We want to take it somewhere but we don't know where. I venture "So where are you from?" "New York" he says. I try to push it a little to find some common ground and ask "And your people?" . "New York" he says again. In the sociality of the moment I loose grip of the situation and ask as I do any American "How about in Europe? Where are they from in Europe?" His look tells me before he says anything that I am touché. "Germany and Poland".
Silence.
"Interesting, I spent two years in Heidelberg" is not going to cut it this time.
So we munch on our kosher sweets, and two of the salesmen are very keen to get my cousin the best deal, when the sickly looking one disappers, we get into a convo with the healthy looking one, he asks where we are from and says 'So, reporting live from Turkey, eh?" "Eh" my cousin concurs. "Reporting more, like, from New York, from a shop that closes on Saturdays" I say. He laughs and adds "Well, you know, not only is the shop closed on Saturdays, but the website is down as well". Hats, kippas, headscarves off. The Spanish tourists are watching our conversation with hidden glee. Then the sickly salesman appears. He wants in on the conversation. "So where are you from?" he asks.
This time we want to play it. "Guess" we tell him. First he smiles signifying impossibility. My cousin says the inevitable cliche "Somewhere between the East and the West". He smiles impossibility for one more second, but then the cliché has worked and he says "Turkey?" We are now in a full-blown conversation. We want to take it somewhere but we don't know where. I venture "So where are you from?" "New York" he says. I try to push it a little to find some common ground and ask "And your people?" . "New York" he says again. In the sociality of the moment I loose grip of the situation and ask as I do any American "How about in Europe? Where are they from in Europe?" His look tells me before he says anything that I am touché. "Germany and Poland".
Silence.
"Interesting, I spent two years in Heidelberg" is not going to cut it this time.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
An Exegesis of Shoe Throwing
Yesterday a secular crowd gathered in Taksim to bid farewell to Bush. Turkish Communist Party among them. They had pictures of Bush and they were throwing their shoes at his likeness.
Now this makes me think of a recent debate on Turkish television. You have to know that Turks are religion obsessed. Some spend their life fearing it. Some spend their life defending it. But most spend their life asking incredibly creative questions like "So if I chew gum with no flavour when I fast, do I have to re-fast one day after Ramadan?". The latest debate revolved around the question of whether the ritual of 'throwing stones' at the 'likeness of the devil' (which happens to be a stone wall) was an essential part of the Hajj. The reformists were saying No, the traditionalists were saying Yes.
I think last night's scene provides argument for the Yea-sayers, secular or religious, throwing things at something you don't like seems to be a genetic tendency in human kind, and its therapeutic effects cannot be underestimated.
Now this makes me think of a recent debate on Turkish television. You have to know that Turks are religion obsessed. Some spend their life fearing it. Some spend their life defending it. But most spend their life asking incredibly creative questions like "So if I chew gum with no flavour when I fast, do I have to re-fast one day after Ramadan?". The latest debate revolved around the question of whether the ritual of 'throwing stones' at the 'likeness of the devil' (which happens to be a stone wall) was an essential part of the Hajj. The reformists were saying No, the traditionalists were saying Yes.
I think last night's scene provides argument for the Yea-sayers, secular or religious, throwing things at something you don't like seems to be a genetic tendency in human kind, and its therapeutic effects cannot be underestimated.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Fight Against Terrorism, The Fight Against Wind Mills
As Cervantes would've said, this story is not mine. So there will be similar errors and subfuscations in my telling. A friend just came back from a 'Gulf State' where they had a meeting of sorts for muslims, of sorts. A group wanted to add a paragraph about condemning Israel's actions in Gaza to the final declaration, but they were told, by the American (of sorts - Muslim) organizing committee that the meeting - a meeting that had the title ''Is political Islam a threat to the West?" for one of its panels - was NOT a political gathering and so it wasn't appropriate to speak about Palestine. There was much food and drink, the whole thing was a great Hollywood production of exquisite script followed to the letter, one that could put Obama's inauguration in the shade (bear with me). She also met a certain American Abraham (religious persuasion insignificant) who ended up in the same plane with her heading, let's say, to the most beautiful city in the world (yes, you can read into my partiality).
This Abraham had 5 hours to spend in the most beautiful city in the world before he took another plane to the US and asked my friend whether she had time to show him around. My friend did not, and her refusal probably set the tone for the rest of the day's events. We will never know what happened to Abe in those 5 hours. But by the time he got to the airport he was very tense, so tense that once he boarded the plane he decided he didn't like the look of one passanger. Later in the police station his excuse was that this particular man had a coat on - oh horror of horrors!- although the weather was warm. He insisted on getting off the plane. The plane was searched and nothing found. The flight was delayed for two hours.
In the greater scheme of things, I think Abe, corresponds to the Harlequin in The Heart of Darkness, flailing his arms about, his mind 'enlarged' by all the conferences he attends about political Islam that are not political.
This Abraham had 5 hours to spend in the most beautiful city in the world before he took another plane to the US and asked my friend whether she had time to show him around. My friend did not, and her refusal probably set the tone for the rest of the day's events. We will never know what happened to Abe in those 5 hours. But by the time he got to the airport he was very tense, so tense that once he boarded the plane he decided he didn't like the look of one passanger. Later in the police station his excuse was that this particular man had a coat on - oh horror of horrors!- although the weather was warm. He insisted on getting off the plane. The plane was searched and nothing found. The flight was delayed for two hours.
In the greater scheme of things, I think Abe, corresponds to the Harlequin in The Heart of Darkness, flailing his arms about, his mind 'enlarged' by all the conferences he attends about political Islam that are not political.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Heart of Israel
A former Israeli minister says that unlike Hamas, Israel is 'not trying to target civilians'. It is the 'idea' that counts, he tells us, not the actual 900 people dead.
What redeems it is the idea only.
Mistah Kurtz, he not dead
a penny for the old guy
What redeems it is the idea only.
Mistah Kurtz, he not dead
a penny for the old guy
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
La Question Humaine (or please leave Europe to its own demons)
A nostalgic film about how all evil in Europe can be neatly traced back to the Nazis. One of the comments on the imdb website says that the viewer has understood 'why EU was launched and why we need it now more than ever'. So that executives from good European families can come together to form their own orchestras to play Schubert? Capital reason! And also so that black illegal workers can be efficiently picked up from Turkish bistros (interesting detaille) and put into custody so that intellectuals have enough space to do the serious business of gestating over the second world war. Another bout of psychose europeenne.
Joyeux Noel!
Joyeux Noel!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sarajevo-Skopje-Belgrade
Tesko Je Biti Fin
The film set the tone for my foray into ex-Yugoslav cinema, with its concerns about genealogies, cars and the nouveau riches. Beautiful nostalgic views of Sarajevo with its impossible minarets, and the melodrama of one family that verges on tragedy but swerves from it the last minute. (Spoiler coming!) The chance discovery of the man's impotence suggests dark thoughts about the baby's father, especially when the woman in Bosnian (maybe especially for a Turkish audience who's been fed news about 'war bastards') My favourite scene is when, as their taxi driver, he speaks to the Japanese war tourists after they have just been assaulted by a gun man whether they want to continue the excursion or go back to the hotel with the dexterity of a carpet seller in Sultanahmet 'Go home? Go go?'. And of course the endless discussions they have abıut the nes taxi-car he buys. There are also references to the Europe-wide ex-Yugoslav mafia that now organizes heists as far as Hamburg.
Senki (Shadows)- Manchevski
A disappointment after his Before the Rain, I have not been able to see Dust yet, I hear it's racist and antiTurk, sounds rather interesting! Senki is about ghosts that haunt a Macedonian doctor, it turns out they are the souls of the people whose bones they have been using as teaching material. There is an abandoned house. There is a tomato grove. The sign of the newer times is the scene when he enters a fist fight with his mother for the jeep, she cries 'I won't let you take my jeep', which he does of course, with force. Most significant scene of the film. I am also intrigued by one of the ghosts whose national affiliations were translated as 'Aegean' in the Turkish subtitles. She did look kinda Greek.
Klopka (The Trap)
Set in Belgrade about a middleclass couple whose son is diagnosed with a heart disease and who can be operated on only in Germany, for which they need 26000 euros. A mafia guy tries to exploit this by offering the father money for shooting dead some mafia head. Class crops up everywhere in the film nicely, the mother's students using their mobiles in class, trying to buy their grades, and the father's car stopped and cleaned by street children. Of course there is a lot of emphasis on the jeep once again. And the fragility of family ties.
and two related films on the side
Fraulein
about a totally unbelievable Bosnian character who is supposed to be very ill and working somewhere in Switzerland at a restaurant run by Serbs. The owner of the restaurant recaptures her love for life with the help of the sick Bosnian girl, who, having brought the woman back to life, disappears. There are scenes where we are supposed to ooh and aaah about how they are like a mother and daughter who are reunited.
The Banishment
much better Russian film Tarkovski style opening with trees and long landscapes and big sheep herds walking in the distance. You just have to take it all in as the background for the drama that unfolds, again about genealogy and husbands who learn they've been fathering children not their own- possibly. An abandoned house once again finds its inhabitants, however, the man has been away too long working and the family he comes back to is different. Half way through the film bitter truths are revealed to the audience in flashbacks. I later learnt that the script is based on a William Saroyan story, hats off! Will go see his exhibition in Tophane ASAP.
The film set the tone for my foray into ex-Yugoslav cinema, with its concerns about genealogies, cars and the nouveau riches. Beautiful nostalgic views of Sarajevo with its impossible minarets, and the melodrama of one family that verges on tragedy but swerves from it the last minute. (Spoiler coming!) The chance discovery of the man's impotence suggests dark thoughts about the baby's father, especially when the woman in Bosnian (maybe especially for a Turkish audience who's been fed news about 'war bastards') My favourite scene is when, as their taxi driver, he speaks to the Japanese war tourists after they have just been assaulted by a gun man whether they want to continue the excursion or go back to the hotel with the dexterity of a carpet seller in Sultanahmet 'Go home? Go go?'. And of course the endless discussions they have abıut the nes taxi-car he buys. There are also references to the Europe-wide ex-Yugoslav mafia that now organizes heists as far as Hamburg.
Senki (Shadows)- Manchevski
A disappointment after his Before the Rain, I have not been able to see Dust yet, I hear it's racist and antiTurk, sounds rather interesting! Senki is about ghosts that haunt a Macedonian doctor, it turns out they are the souls of the people whose bones they have been using as teaching material. There is an abandoned house. There is a tomato grove. The sign of the newer times is the scene when he enters a fist fight with his mother for the jeep, she cries 'I won't let you take my jeep', which he does of course, with force. Most significant scene of the film. I am also intrigued by one of the ghosts whose national affiliations were translated as 'Aegean' in the Turkish subtitles. She did look kinda Greek.
Klopka (The Trap)
Set in Belgrade about a middleclass couple whose son is diagnosed with a heart disease and who can be operated on only in Germany, for which they need 26000 euros. A mafia guy tries to exploit this by offering the father money for shooting dead some mafia head. Class crops up everywhere in the film nicely, the mother's students using their mobiles in class, trying to buy their grades, and the father's car stopped and cleaned by street children. Of course there is a lot of emphasis on the jeep once again. And the fragility of family ties.
and two related films on the side
Fraulein
about a totally unbelievable Bosnian character who is supposed to be very ill and working somewhere in Switzerland at a restaurant run by Serbs. The owner of the restaurant recaptures her love for life with the help of the sick Bosnian girl, who, having brought the woman back to life, disappears. There are scenes where we are supposed to ooh and aaah about how they are like a mother and daughter who are reunited.
The Banishment
much better Russian film Tarkovski style opening with trees and long landscapes and big sheep herds walking in the distance. You just have to take it all in as the background for the drama that unfolds, again about genealogy and husbands who learn they've been fathering children not their own- possibly. An abandoned house once again finds its inhabitants, however, the man has been away too long working and the family he comes back to is different. Half way through the film bitter truths are revealed to the audience in flashbacks. I later learnt that the script is based on a William Saroyan story, hats off! Will go see his exhibition in Tophane ASAP.
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