North Carolina: Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye

So I am stranded in the south because the north is getting a lot of snow. It's plantation houses and biscuits here and I am staying at a renovated mansion that could be the setting of Kara Walker's nightmares. Or certain people's dream weddings. I spend days in the luxury and wallowness of a southern belle of a hundred years. They have prints of natives and ducks all over the walls. The silverware is quite exquisite.

Today, I ventured out into the world, and spent the better half of my time at a cafe working on my translations. I thought of Aschenbach. I contemplated on certain aspects of walking, picking up things and opening doors. A phenomenology, if you will. I bought a secondhand skirt from a very pretty boy, something out of a sad American road movie. He asked me the name of the author I gave a talk on. Then, responding to nature's call I entered a chinese. I bought fried rice, which in the hotel room turned out to be a good American portion that could feed a family of four. Walking down to my plantation residence I saw two dark SUV's, they had words painted with whitewash on them. Duke Fuck UNC. Duke > UNC, beautifully and academically economical. There were tents set up in the middle of the oxonianity of Duke, under the rain yesterday, people waiting to get tickets for the basketball game. I bought a Carolina t-shirt to commemorate the game, my groundedness and the phenomenology of the cafe (there was a guy with an Exeter College hoodie sitting behind me). Reclining on couches in happiness, with companions pure, most beautiful of eye.

Arendt, Snow, Railtracks

In preparation for a 'chance' meeting with a professor I read Arendt, having taken refuge in the carpet-floored inner-sanctum of my apartment which is the bedroom. My eye waters uncontrollably (I think the night cream seeped into it) and to the kitchen I go to pick a tissue. I see it snow as in fairy tales, in abundance, and the flakes are seeable only because of the light of the locomotive that is parked a few meters away from the window which covers the whole of the north facade of the apartment. The flakes fall down onto the railtracks, and the locomotive bides its time. It will be a white morning tomorrow.

A Tale of Two Bookshops

This time around I ventured into Daunt Books, which had caught my attention on an early stroll towards the Wallace Collection. Inside the 'olde worlde' bookshop the first thing I noticed were the new Nabokovs neatly placed on the counter, giving me ample opportunity to leaf through it before the event in the evening. Downstairs they had a good travel section which featured no Daniel Metcalfe but the magazine which featured an article by Bijan Omrani and one by Alexander Morrison. I thought I'd discovered something rather extraordinary but when I opened the door to Alice's place, the issue was staring at me from the armchair- she'd placed it there, she said later, thinking I would enjoy seeing it. I am an open book! Daunt also had what looked like locals with their travel cases on wheels, doing their last minute book-shopping. There was no Nicholas Coleridge to be had.

At the Hatchard's next day I first asked for the Nabokov with renewed interest and all the staff lifted up their heads to look at me like meerkats and said sadly that it had not yet come in. I resolved to buy some Bennett and indeed, another lady was asking for him at the counter. There were a good number of signed copies of books- including Coleridge's Deadly Sins (which I bought) and William Dalrymple (which I thought was too expensive at 20 pounds). Downstairs Adam Thirlwell's Politics was there where I'd left it summer 2008, and there were two ladies talking about the wretched estate agents that harassed them about their 'houses'. One of them was going to some (important) one's house and said proudly that she was 'dining there on 5th December'. Upstairs I sat and read Rory's introduction to Arabian Sands in which he says that only as an Etonian can he understand what Thesiger says when he says 'First Field Colours'. There were also some copies of Metcalfe's book.

Oh my prophetic soul!

A much belated introduction to Robert Byron after my summer 'travel-reading'. Here's an excerpt from his First Russia, Then Tibet, from the first chapter ''The New Jerusalem'

"Should any echo of the laughter provoked by my journeys reach the ears of my Russian friends, they will be able to ignore, or at best pity, such irreverence. Levity is the music that accompanies the European's whoring after false gods, gods which, in fact- and all fact is Marxist- do not exist."

The Spectre of England

The Spectre of England (apres Walcott)

Down the Abrahamic stones of the distant past,
by the mulberry trees that shade the graves that hardly ask for it,
to the sound of thunder that comes from across the border,
he waits, for the sepoy to say something, to divulge
and looks lost into the distance, thinking, building an empire here
destroying one there, vertical like one of the seven pillars
of that proverbial wisdom
(ah, that room above the arch, the arch, the arch, the quad)
fearing he may let pass a word that could
heal.
He passes zebra crossings, watches the traffic lights
until he has come to a table where he can order
strong coffee, mineral water
with a view of a train station long abandoned
in this town of past wrongs beyond repair.
I almost missed him, but there he is
his hand with the up and down motion
of sipping coffe, and in the background
the noise of a hesitant rush hour
his dark blue suit and inner jumper
sensing rain with the coming gale, he stands up to go
this young looking old old man.
II
Walking the washed out walk ways, holding something precious in his breast pocket,
unreachable in his silence
he does not care about the carnage,
his travel companions are talking about. This figure
not quite a man, but this walking stick, this tall straight-line
this tower
from his city of sleeping spires.
The mist is his master, within which
he grew to like, to dislike, to keep silent
- the mist that nurtured him to be vague, in all appearance
and yet be true to his colours.
He enters a church that is blackened with the soot of candles,
and wonders how many said their prayers there.
III
The locals are dark and merry, the library is
in disrepair, his need to read is something palpable, and in the heat
he rushes to the market to find a second-hand shop
that soothes his nerves.
He grabs Anna Karenina in Russian and walks to a cafe
The youths are smiling under their brilliantined hair, the girls are dressed to the nines
The waiters are listless as they offer delicacies, the policemen stroll about
He sits there and shuts out everything,
indifferent to a world that tries to impress.
His postcards home are one-liners
as they have taught him not to care,
not to take to heart much what one sees
On his way to his rooms
he watches the traffic revolving around the opera house
and thinks he hears a familiar note
reaching him from within the closed shutters
His is an innate music of the mind that needs no strings.
Entering his room he sees the poster he bought in London sometime ago
Thinking it perfect for his kind of digs
His paper kinsmen stare at him from across the room
All is well with the world.
Think of the worlds torn apart, burnt, destroyed
Think of the splatters of blood, ash caused
By all this well-ness that fills your room
With the power he no longer has he looks at me askance
“Really N! I am not the beast you make me out to be”
IV
His forehead creased and be-freckled
He envisions the gorge, the river bed
The poplars bending over it, the little caravan
swifts flying overhead in concert.
The old Greek temple stands, full of tourist
And forever, that girl with the flower-tiara
It is as it should be, girls, hair and flowers
All this he sees in his mind’s eye
And now it comes to him as an aftermath, an afterthought
of the pillage, of the spoils of his silent war.
He picks and chooses
The figures that decorate his memory
And himself, vertical, on a straight path, not wavering
one wee bit.
The forehead creases- it is sometimes to much of a strain
To record images without a word to tag
To turn into some kind of story.
A vast sea of unseen sights stretch before him
As he plans his next foray into the wild
Silently, swiftly, he builds another frame, another altar
To his unfathomable gods.

Good Old Muscle Power

So, a friend of mine has returned to university after she'd abandoned it ten years ago because of the headscarf ban- in the interim she married and had two children. Now, the ban is still in place in some universities, sometimes only in some buildings of some universities- evidence of the arbitrary nature of the whole thing. So my friend takes a couple of exams and yesterday as she is about to sit another, the janitor stands in her way with a no pasaran. She tells him he has no authority to stop her as he is not of administrative stock. But he is keen to make his citizen's arrest. Luckily, my friend's husband is with her and he physically pushes the janitor aside. The janitor can't now do aught and my friend sits the exam. I am now thinking taekwando can largely improve the educational lives of Turkish Muslim girls.

Confederacy of Asses- or the Cult of the Communicative Bums- or Ode to Pitless Bottoms

From Baburname:
"On reaching Khwaja Sih-yaran there was a wine-party. Today orders were written and despatched by Kich-kina, the night watch, to the Begs North of the Hindu Kush. Giving them a rendezvous and saying 'An army is being got to horse, take thought, and come to the rendezvous fixed"

When all else fails, blame the Germans

The Coalition Forces (or is that the name they assume in Iraq?) have massacred 70 Afghans in Kunduz. The BBC has been running the news with pictures of American military personnel visiting the wounded in the hospital, all the while re-iterating that it was the Germans who gave the order to 'exterminate'. Oh what a lovely war!

Vereschagin- Samarqand

almost looks Art Nouveau

Journeying in Arabian Deserts

The ides of August finds me translating a chapter on Prophet Muhammad's (p.b.u.h.) hijrat - journey from Mecca to Madina- and reading Thesiger's travels in the 'empty quarter'. It is very interesting to read similar descriptions- waterskins covered with cloth, milking strangers' camels or goats, and again strangers appearing from nowhere to inform you about the road or your enemy's movements.
Not long before Ramadan now.

Here's a fresh look on Rory

This is on his Places in Between. The arguments may come in handy if for some reason I start disliking him at one point:

The argument of this book is that the people of Afghanistan are aggressive, primitive savages, something less than real people, animals who need the civilising hand of foreign domination to bring them to the promised land - which seems to amount to something like the mid-Victorian British empire.

Stewart travels to 'unknown' places that writers have been describing for decades, and produces cliches in ranks - they only appear fresh to us because the writing style he copies is itself so dated that nobody else writes like that any more.

Cricket

It was always difficult to get another women's team to play and that day our luck had turned- almost. The other college's team was a woman short and so we had technically won, but there was going to be a friendly anyway. So our captain looked through the ranks to, possibly, give the other one what she considered a liability. The least sporty of the team were me and a girl with an Irish accent 'Nagihan can bowl pretty well, she should go for it' she said all of a sudden. I was rather happy to be playing at all, and so I went over to the other team.

As it is, what the girl was saying turned out to be true- sort of. When it was my turn to bowl I gave it my all and yet when the ball hit the ground, it had no life left in it, and it sort of sauntered towards the wicket and I wondered whether it would even make it to the line. But then, taken unawares by this slow progress the batswoman lost sight of it and pop it went to the wicket under her very nose and hit it! The other college's team couldn't quite believe their luck and they all came to me and did the whole cricket tap on the shoulder, 'Good show' sort of thing. I protested that I wasn't good at all and that it was a freak incident, the ball hadn't even bounced. The captain of the team said assuredly "Bouncing is overrated".

Then my 'trick' repeated itself a number of times, because really, I had no armpower whatsoever. After securing the team's 'friendly' victory I was out and I approached the boys who were keeping the score. All our coaches (who were all male) had gathered together on this day- I had never seen them so all together and they were quite a sight with their public school boy
(h)airs and cricket sweaters. They had enormous smirks on their faces and were laughing totally absorbed with themselves. They had not seen me coming. When I approached them in order to get into the pavillion for water I heard one of them say sarcastically "Whatever you say, cricket's the winner". Then he lifted his head up from the score log where he was scribbling beside my name and saw me and for a moment his face froze with guilt. The others first looked at him and then at me. I smiled and said 'I should say it is'.

Past Imperfect

Reading about Fellowes' account of his characters' infamous night somewhere between Estoril and Cascais, I felt the obligation to write down my own not so scandalous but memorable evening on the very same shores. Nostalgia is a terribly contagious thing.

It was, naturally, another conference, my very first in fact. As is the tradition with conferences that run a week long there is a climax that usually comes midweek- an outing, a dinner that the hosts provide. Our Portuguese hosts had thought that this should be a dinner at the Estoril Casino. We took the slow train from Cascais - on the way back we'd realized it was quite within walking distance- and got off at Estoril, and the casino was quite unmissable, at the end of a park that sprawled all the way to the rail tracks which were right by the rocky shore. We took photographs in the fading light as everyone had dressed up more or less and we wanted to have documents to prove it later I suppose. As we approached the grand entrance I felt upbeat and said something to the effect of 'It could be interesting. We could see someone famous or something.' 'The Devil?' J interjected gleefully as he always liked to check how much the ways of European heathens gave me discomfort. As usual, I only smiled.

Passing the ever so sorry looking slot machines we moved into the great salon and were seated in some sort of balcony. It was pretty dark as the first course arrived- some kind of onion soup. We had contrived to sit across a very funny English academic and were trying our best to bring the 'absent-minded professor' in him. Then there was light on the stage and a boring array of men and women appeared dressed as tropical fruits. In the din, there was no way I could ask the waiter whether they had a vegetarian option and with the English prof's performance rather dull this evening I considered making an early exit, though I had no idea how I would go back to Cascais on my own at that hour. I looked at the slobs of meat the others were eating and then turned right to see that the female dancers were taking their tops off. I took this to be my exit cue and excused myself promptly and when I turned my back to the table to go J was trying to shout from behind 'But how are you going to....' Indeed, I did not know, but it was nice to get out into the fresh air. I loitered a bit in the park, and then decided I should brave the walk to Cascais. Once I had taken that decision I saw another group leaving the place and a rather worried J said 'We looked everywhere for you!' and another one of them added 'Yes, well, there was mass exodus after the second course, I don't think the entertainment helped'.
And so we all merrily walked back to our hotel in Cascais.

The Empire Does NOT Stop Here

So I have been spending quite a bit of time on amazon lately and it keeps throwing writers at me, and this evening it's Philip Parker. I google to get to know him better and there's a guardian podcast. Excellent. The startled interviewer asks 'I did not know, for instance, that Romania was part of the Roman Empire' (come off it whatever substance it is you are on- look at the name woman!) Anyhow, she has presence enough to ask the million dollar question 'Could you compare the Roman Empire with any examples we know of today?' Philip toys with the idea of China when it comes to population but then concedes: 'The British Empire at its height would be something comparable". And on that note the podcast ends. Gimme a break.
Bring on the Gibbon.

Reporting from Antandrus, the Aegean Coast

Having recently read in the Tatler that when it comes to beachwear you cannot beat the triangular bikini (market research I was carrying out for a friend of a friend) I headed down to the Aegean with my family who had packed up my beach-bag for me because I was otherwise engaged in northern climes. This is our first experience at a mixed-beach, and strangely one that caters to practicing Muslims. Which means there are a lot of what has been named 'burqinis' on the ground.
What my mother chose to buy for me is a very orange affair that no doubt would qualify me for the national Indian hijabi swimming team. Baggy trousers and a loose long sleeved top with a zipper that looks like a footballer's training suit- which, it turns out, is very last year, or very last decade as I discovered on the beach when I saw all manner of burquinis, from the very sporty looking to the dandy.

The Horror, The Horror

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. "

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

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.

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.

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.