\ Iman’s constant cravings… » 2008 » August

Which reminds me…

Under: Memories, Ugh!, Uncategorized, hahaha @ 1:31 pm on Friday, 08.29.08

In the West Bank city of Nablus, civil servant Mohammed Daraghmeh said he had MBC blocked at home so his kids couldn’t watch, but the family vowed to watch it at an uncle’s house and he backed down.

I laughed out loud reading this just now … It reminded me of that one evening when I was visiting my parents back home this summer … We had guests over (thats always so much fun, I tell you! Especially guests who over stay their welcome.) and I guess it was time for Noor to come on, but they wouldn’t have been able to make it back to their homes in time so they asked if we can turn to MBC.

My father said we don’t have MBC, that he discontinued this channel. All puzzled, I looked at him and said: No, we have it. I had it turned on earlier in the day. He looked at me and said: No Iman, we don’t have it. I discontinued it the other day. Still not realizing why he was saying that, I said: No, really we have it…here, if you give me the remote, I’ll show you…and so I got up to grab the remote from him…that’s when he gave me his infamous look that has this utterly unique ability to make me pee in my pants. That’s when I understood that he simply did not want to turn to MBC because he does not want to have to sit their and endure watching stupid Noor! But his reasons have nothing to do with not wanting kids watching it!

—

Re-thinking what/who we look up to!

Under: Around The World, How Outrageous, Interesting, OMG!, Palestine, hahaha @ 1:19 pm on Friday, 08.29.08

…and in Hebron, the West Bank’s most conservative city, maternity wards report a rise in babies named Noor and Mohannad.

A West Bank poster vendor has ditched Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein for Noor and Mohannad. [More]

Ridiculously outrageous, so I think!

Note to self

Under: Random Thoughts, Uncategorized @ 11:56 am on Wednesday, 08.27.08

Why have you been eating like a cow lately?
soon you’d look like one …

But food is, like, an ever growing passion of mine …

11

Under: Question of the Day, Ugh!, Uncategorized @ 4:00 pm on Wednesday, 08.20.08

Isn’t there a particular month out of the year that you just abhor, despise and just completely hate? that you wish never existed? that you wish you can completely eliminate? If you can get rid of one month out of the 12, which one would you choose …and why?

In Eleven Planets

Under: Art & Culture, Memories, Palestine, Uncategorized, What I Love @ 2:50 pm on Wednesday, 08.20.08

In this collection I had to defend a forgotten history; or to put it more clearly, I’d say I had to defend the land of the past and the past of the land, the land of language and the language of the land. I believe that the unwavering commitment to resistance and defense is not some sort of nostalgia, but the saturation of the present and the future with the past, without which neither present nor future will come to be. For that reason, I feel that the past is subject to plunder, and have always said that it should be the arbiter of the conflict. The past is more ambiguous than the future. - Mahmoud Darwish

Remembering Mahmoud Darwish (Part 1 of ?)

Under: Art & Culture, Memories, Palestine, Personalities, Uncategorized, What I Love @ 2:14 pm on Friday, 08.15.08


This is part of a large photo of Mahmoud Darwish near his grave site on a hill next to Ramallah’s Cultural Palace - where he had his final poetry reading in June.

—-

Truth has two faces. We’ve listened to the Greek mythology, and at times we’ve heard the Trojan victim speak through the mouth of the Greek Euripides. As for me, I’m looking for the poet of Troy, because Troy didn’t tell its story. And I wonder, does a land that has great poets have the right to control a people that has no poets? And is the lack of poetry amongst a people enough reason to justify its defeat? Is poetry a sign, or is it an instrument of power? Can a people be strong without having its own poetry?

I was a child of a people that had not been recognized until then. And I wanted to speak in the name of the absentee, in the name of the Trojan poet. There’s more inspiration and humanity in defeat than there is in victory. If I belonged to the victor’s camp, I’d demonstrate my support for the victims.

Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? Because you are our enemy. The interest in us stems from the interest in the Jewish issue. The interest is in you, not in me. So we have the misfortune of having Israel as an enemy, because it enjoys unlimited support. And we have the good fortune of having Israel as our enemy, because the Jews are the center of attention. You’ve brought us defeat and renown.
–Excerpt of Darwish’s conversation with an Israeli journalist from the 2004 film, Notre Musique, by French director Jean-Luc Godard.

To Life I say: Go slow, wait for me until the drunkenness dries in my glass
I have no role in what I was or who I will be
It is chance and chance has no name
I call the doctor 10 minutes before the death, 10 minutes are sufficient to live by chance.

Time has passed us,
Our fate is an exception to the rule
Here lie a murderer and the murdered, sleeping in one hole
And it remains for another poet to take this scenario to its end!
–Excerpts from Darwish’s last work, The Dice Thrower

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.

I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother,
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood,
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up,
To make a single word: Homeland….
–Mahmoud Darwish, I Come From There

Between the luminescence of words and the darkness of times …lived Mahmud Darwish.
–Adonis

Mahmoud Darwish left no children to whom we can address our condolences. Instead, it is the Palestinian people as a whole who must receive our commiseration for the loss of their most vibrant voice at a time when so much else is being lost to them.
–Raymond Deane

Love After Love

Under: Uncategorized, What I Love @ 11:23 am on Friday, 08.15.08

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
-Derek Wolcott

Goodbye

Under: Around The World, Art & Culture, Memories, Palestine, People & Places, Uncategorized @ 10:40 am on Wednesday, 08.13.08

Mahmoud Darwish's mother at his funeral in Ramallah

Thousands of Palestinians gather around the cortege carrying the coffin

Thousands of Palestinians gather around the convoy carrying the coffin of Darwish

Marcel Khalife places a white rose of Darwish's coffin

Marcel Khalife kisses the coffin of Mahmoud Darwish

Palestinian women wave to the coffin of late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish at Amman airport

Jordanian women waving goodbye to the plane that carried the coffin of late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish at Amman airport

Palestinian honour guards carry the coffin of late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish during his funeral

Palestinians mourn at the grave of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who gave a voice to the Palestinians' longing for independence, during his funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah,

Mahmoud Darwish is carried during his funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah

waves to the coffin of late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish at Amman airport

Your sleepiness is stronger than fear. A wilderness of your beauty dozes off, and a moon out of your shadows wakes to guard its trees.

—-

Our cups of coffee. Birds green trees
In the blue shade, the sun gambols from one wall
To another like a gazelle
The water in the clouds has the unlimited shape of what is left to us
Of the sky. And other things of suspended memories
Reveal that this morning is powerful and splendid,
And that we are the guests of eternity. ~Mahmoud Darwish
May your soul rest in peace.

RIP Mahmoud Darwish. (1942-2008)

Under: Around The World, Art & Culture, Memories, Palestine, Personalities, Uncategorized @ 3:17 pm on Saturday, 08.9.08

August 9, 2008, a very sad day for Palestine. Today Palestine loses one of its most powerful voices - if not the most powerful voice. Today Palestine loses one of its strongest cultural and (its strongest) literary icons. Today humanity loses one of its most precious gifts. I had the most amazing experience of watching Mahmoud Darwish live in what was to be his last Poetry Reading in Ramallah’s Cultural Palace back in June. I echo Hanan Ashrawi’s sentiments here: “He started out as a poet of resistance and then he became a poet of conscience. He embodied the best in Palestinians … even though he became iconic he never lost his sense of humanity. We have lost part of our essence, the essence of the Palestinian being.

I leave you with Mahmoud Dawrish’s Remainder of a Life:

If I were told:

By evening you will die,

so what will you do until then?

I would look at my wristwatch,

I’d drink a glass of juice,

bite an apple,

contemplate at length an ant that has found its food,

then look at my wristwatch.

There’d be time left to shave my beard

and dive in a bath, obsess:

“There must be an adornment for writing,

so let it be a blue garment.”

I’d sit until noon alive at my desk

but wouldn’t see the trace of color in the words,

white, white, white . . .

I’d prepare my last lunch,

pour wine in two glasses: one for me

and one for the one who will come without appointment,

then I’d take a nap between two dreams.

But my snoring would wake me . . .

so I’d look at my wristwatch:

and there’d be time left for reading.

I’d read a chapter in Dante and half of a mu’allaqah

and see how my life goes from me

to the others, but I wouldn’t ask who

would fill what’s missing in it.

That’s it, then?

That’s it, that’s it.

Then what?

Then I’d comb my hair and throw away the poem . . .

this poem, in the trash,

and put on the latest fashion in Italian shirts,

parade myself in an entourage of Spanish violins,

and walk to the grave!

Feelings

Under: Palestine, Random Thoughts, Uncategorized, What I Love @ 1:42 pm on Thursday, 08.7.08

My love for Palestine is much stronger when I’m away from it …