رجالي - كتاب لملكة مقدم

بدأت أقرأ كتاب لكاتبة جزائرية الأصل ولكن تكتب بالفرنسية وتُترجم كتبها الى العربية، مثل ”رجالي”. هذا الكتاب سيرة ذاتية ويظهر أن اتجاهها هو عكس اتجاهي في الحياة في كثير من المواضيع (مع أن في أشياء اخرى أنا موافقة تماما) وحتى أن ما تكتبه هو ما قد أكتبها 

  :مع تبديل كلمة واحدة - في المقطع التالي مثلا اذا أبدل الكلمة ”جزائرية” مع ”فرنسية” كأن كتبته لتصف سيرتي 

 الآن بت مقتنعة أن وحدهم الرجال القادمين من بعيد، من أرض أخرى، بوسعهم أن يساعدوني على التحرر نهائيا من البلبلة الجزائرية. ولا علاقة لذلك إطلاقا بتوق إلى الإكزوتيكية، لا بل إنها، قبل كل شيء، حاجة للهروب من الاستنطاق والقسوة والتمييز والغباء والقمع الذي يمارسه المألوف، وفك التصاقي بالعادات، ومحاكاة الجماعة، والمرور بالغريب كما بنخرط المرء في المقاومة السرية، لإنقاذ نفسي، للاهتداء إلى سبيلي. 

رجالي” - ملكة مقدم"  

 وذلك قطعة أخرى وجدتها جميلة، خاصة الجملة الأخيرة الذي لا كنت سأقولها بشكل أفضل : 

 ”لقد انتصرت القوى الاستبدادية لتقاليدنا على هذا الحب، ولكنها رسخت ادي يقينا: حاجتي إلى رجل حر.” 

Sick sad world for too many women

     I just read about the lastest cases of so-called «honour» crimes in Jordan. It just scares me out my mind that the human being can become so vile, so in-human. And how laws in that country aren't changed when they're obviously totally stupid, and so contrary to any culture's logic ... 

     What frightens me too is that when it come to arab countries, the vast majority of people think this sort of horror is inherent and part of the arab culture (most westerners think that way, but some arabs too - when the western soft-power have done a good job of brain-washing). It's as stupid as the said laws : if violence, rape and discrimination against women were part of the arab culture, then how come you find violence, rape and discrimination against women about everywhere on the damned planet ? And more often than not, in incredible high proportions ? It's a bit like saying genocide is part of the german mind ... Stupid, and it certainly doesn't help the women concerned by that violence. 

   We should first stop thinking in this way, and help all the people who want to help these women, whether these people are arab or not, religious or atheist or whatever ... It's not a matter of culture, it's a matter of letting the human being become inhumane. «You're not born human, you become one» said Erasmus. And the despicable men comitting these crimes obvisously never learned how to become one. We should focus on children's education and law reform, instead of stupidly dismissing it as a «cultural norm» in any given society. Even though a good education and good enough laws in France don't prevent the killing of one women by her husband/boyfriend every two days ... But it helps. So I hope some people in Jordan, men and women, will have the courage to stand up and suppress some of these insane laws ... And as the original article says, the biggest problem right now is the silence. 

    This defeaning silence you find everywhere : for example we heard of a case a few weeks back, in France, of a mother who had to kill her husband in self-defense because after years of violence and forced prostitution imposed on her by him, and after having gone to the police a great many times to file a complaint and getting nothing more than a "oh well, go back to your house and talk to him and you'll see, things will get better", she had no choice left but kill him or getting killed ... Mentalities are hard to change, and the silence is killing every effort. She had to kill him to be heard. And yet, some people thought she should be put in prison for life because of this act of self defense ! And that's in a country supposedly advanced on women issues.

PS : I just learned that one week ago, the law against sexual harassment has been purely and simply suppressed. You can't go and file a complaint against a sexual agressor anymore ( unless you're actually "properly" raped ). And that's in France too. The only argument they found to justify that measure is "the texts are not clear enough, so we'll suppress the law for now, we'll see later".
     The next person I hear telling me that we french are a civilized people as compared to the rest of the world, I might just punch him/her.

On Hanif Kureishi's works, follow-up

I finally read (and watched) other works by Hanif Kureishi which I find much more interesting than what I've been reading so far : The Black Album (book) and My Son The Fanatic (movie, adaptated from one of his short stories). It's essentially about the same subjects : a young student coming from an sub-continental family living in England, muslim «but open-minded and well integrated», experiencing a great sense of bewilderment, lost betwen two worlds (the religious one, typically made up from young adults looking for their «roots» as a reaction to the racism they're subject to, and the liberal world made up by «white» english people with «loose morals», intellectuals and revolutionaries ranging from the drug dealers to the university professors). The book is more about the point of view of the son, whereas the movie is more about the father's point of view, watching his son turning from a «average» boy to a «fanatic». The son in the book ends up choosing the liberal world while the son in the movie goes definitely fanatic and leaves the house (as do the mother, leaving the father alone with his english girlfriend). Though I'm not entirely convinced of both works, the characters are convincing, real-looking. The only bad critic I would make is about the plots themselves, which do not allow any space to the majority «in between» worlds, theses worlds where english people might be white but conservative on many things, where immigrants and their children might be both midly religious and liberal on many things, all these «in between» reflecting the negociation ground in the life of so many people who have not and don't want to choose either of the «absolute» worlds he describes (the totally liberal one and the fanatic one). It's as if these middle grounds don't exist in his fictions, when anyone's day to day experience shows that they concern the majority of people ...  But then I guess they were works of their times, following the Rushdie Episode and all this, and above all knowing that a plot evolving between fanatics and liberals is much more appealing to audiences. But that doesn't mean these work don't represent some realities (otherwise the characters wouldn't be convincing), it is just only showing a very small part of the reality ...

51,7%

Ouf !

Memories (2) - Egypt again

     Of the group of tourists we were part of I was the only one to be fully clothed. For several reasons I didn't want to wear anything else than a long skirt and long sleeved top, when everyone else was in T-shirt or less, shorts and the like, making the most of the springtime sun and looking like real tourists. I didn't care a bit about the sun, especially since I discovered that my stupid white skin was the sort to get burned but never tanned (first reason). So I didn't bother with the sun, and I always prefered wearing long clothes, more graceful to my eyes than all these dreadful tight little clothes everybody else was wearing but fitting noone (second reason). 

      I had only the slightest consciousness that wearing full lenght skirt might be a good idea to help me cross the cultural divide between me, tourist, and the local population, always covered up, men and women alike. So it was not the main reason since I was barely conscious of ir, but I just liked it best, even back home. But none the less it made me stand apart both inside the tourist group and outside among the locals, which I think was the third reason, not wanting to be seen as another of "those tourists". I attracted the "locals"' attention much more than my cousin, though she was the prettiest, and that you could see much more of her than me. I didn't understand why and didn't care much, I was too busy eating the good food all around us on display at all times. That's when I discovered the marvelous stuff called fresh dates (I loved the sugary dry ones you can find anywhere in the world, and never knew you could eat it fresh). It was one of the best things I ever ate, and never managed to found the same again.  

     Anyway, the really funny part came when we were visiting around Cairo, or maybe Karnak, we were looking at temple ruins, along with japanese people, when suddenly a couple of them saw me, and insisted on taking a picture of me in front of the ruins. One alone by myself and another one with them. 

     To this day, I know I'm in the picture of a japanese couple in Egypt, and I still haven't the slightest idea why. Did they manage to find out I was french and found that great (as happened to me later in Australia)? Or did they just thought, for some unkown reason, that I was egyptian and looked local enough to look good on the picture (as happened to me even later in the West Bank ?). I don't know why people think french is cool, and even less why they should think I look egyptian, but long skirts can have a funny effect on random people.

"Le malheur de chacun coûte plus cher que le bonheur de tous" ... ( devinez lequel a eu cette jolie phrase dans un de ses clips de campagne ).

Il faudra bien aller voter, dimanche, même si on sait que le vrai pouvoir est à la bourse, et non pas à l'Elysée ... Ha, si on pouvait élire les traders et les patrons de banques et de sociétés de finances !

En attendant, une chose que les politiques auraient le pouvoir de faire pour de vrai serait de comptabiliser les votes blancs comme distincts des abstentions ...

Friday's links :

On strangers ...

" I love strangers who smile at you when you accidentally catch their gaze. Especially the ones who let you into their life for that fraction of a second. It’s just something about the levels of “genuine” that you can catch in their smile. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but you smiled at me like we were old buddies, and I love you for that. "
Continued here.

On homesickness ...

" I stared at that photo and I felt homesick. I longed for Harvard Square. I missed the familiar feeling of it. I missed the people around me reading books. How those people have many different thoughts and perspectives and how it is often possible to sense that those people accept the differences among them.  I missed it being a place where I could go and disappear."
Continued here.