Top Ten Brands to Boycott this Christmas

"Top Ten Brands to Boycott this Christmas"
Posted by Right Of Return Coalition on Thu, 12/03/2009 - 13:05

USCBI (U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel)


While there are many Israeli and multinational companies that benefit from apartheid, we put together this list to highlight ten specific companies to target.
Many of these produce goods in such a way that directly harms Palestinians — exploiting labor, developing technology for military operations, or supplying equipment for illegal settlements. Many are also the targets of boycotts for other reasons, like harming the environment and labor violations.


1. AHAVA



This brand’s cosmetics are produced using salt, minerals, and mud from the Dead Sea — natural resources that are excavated from the occupied West Bank. The products themselves are manufactured in the illegal Israeli settlement Mitzpe Shalem. AHAVA is the target of CODEPINK’s “Stolen Beauty” campaign.



2. Delta Galil Industries






Israel’s largest textiles manufacturer provides clothing and underwear for such popular brands as Gap, J-Crew, J.C. Penny, Calvin Klein, Playtex, Victoria’s Secret (see #10) and many others. Its founder and chairman Dov Lautman is a close associate of former Israeli President Ehud Barak. It has also been condemned by Sweatshop Watch for its exploitation of labor in other countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.



3. Motorola



While many of us know this brand for its stylish cellphones, did you know that it also develops and manufactures bomb fuses and missile guidance systems? Motorola components are also used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”) and in communications and surveillance systems used in settlements, checkpoints, and along the 490 mile apartheid wall. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has launched the “Hang Up on Motorola” campaign.



4. L’Oreal / The Body Shop




This cosmetics and perfume company is known for its investments and manufacturing activities in Israel, including production in Migdal Haemek, the “Silicon Valley” of Israel built on the land of Palestinian village Al-Mujaydil, which was ethnically cleansed in 1948. In 1998, a representative of L’Oreal was given the Jubilee Award by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for strengthening the Israeli economy.





5. Dorot Garlic and Herbs



These frozen herbs that are sold at Trader Joe’s are shipped halfway around the world when they could easily be purchased locally. Trader Joe’s also sells Israeli Cous Cous and Pastures of Eden feta cheese that are made in Israel. QUIT, South Bay Mobilization, and other groups have targeted Trader Joe’s with a “Don’t Buy into Apartheid” campaign.



6. Estee Lauder




This company’s chairman Ronald Lauder is also the chairman of the Jewish National Fund, a quasi-governmental organization that was established in 1901 to acquire Palestinian land and is connected to the continued building of illegal settlements. Estee Lauder’s popular brands include Clinique, MAC, Origins, Bumble & Bumble, Aveda, fragrance lines for top designers, and many others. They have been the target of QUIT’s “Estee Slaughter Killer Products” campaign.



7. Intel



This technology company that manufactures computer processors and other hardware components employs thousands of Israelis and has exports from Israel totaling over $1 billion per year. They are one of Israel’s oldest foreign supporters, having established their first development center outside of the US in 1974 in Haifa. Al-Awda (the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition) has urged action against Intel for building a facility on the land of former village Iraq Al Manshiya, which was cleansed in 1949.



8. Sabra



This brand of hummus, baba ghanoush and other foods is co-owned by Israel’s second-largest food company The Strauss Group and Pepsico. On the “Corporate Responsibility” section of its website, The Strauss Group boasts of its relationship to the Israeli Army, offering food products and political support.



9. Sara Lee



Sara Lee holds a 30% stake in Delta Galil (see #2) and is the world’s largest clothing manufacturer, which owns or is affiliated with such brands as Hanes, Playtex, Champion, Leggs, Sara Lee Bakery, Ball Park hotdogs, Wonderbra, and many others. Similar to L’Oreal (see #4), a representative of Sara Lee received the Jubilee Award from Netanyahu for its commitment to business with Israel.





10. Victoria’s Secret



Most of Victoria’s Secret’s bras are produced by Delta Galil (see #2), and much of the cotton is also grown in Israel on confiscated Palestinian land. Victoria’s Secret has also been the target of labor rights’ groups for sourcing products from companies with labor violations, and by environmental groups for their unsustainable use of paper in producing their catalogues. That’s not sexy!



Remember, it’s also important to let these companies — and the stores that sell them — know that we will not support them as long as they support Israeli apartheid!

What is Jerusalem?

What is Jerusalem ?

Ibrahim Alloush

The Star, Monday, Dec. 7, 2009

http://www.star. com.jo/main/ index.php? option=com_ content&view=article&id=16706&catid=17:op- ed&Itemid=111


While in the U.S.A, an Arab or a Muslim may hear many an American protest: "but the Christians have the Vatican , and the Muslims have Mecca . So why can't the Jews have Jerusalem ?!" The implied condemnation in that rhetorical question naturally turns Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and supporters of the Palestinian cause everywhere into contemptible fanatic poachers, "anti-semitic" to be sure, who are conspiring with the rest of the world to deny Judaism a holy center of faith of its own!

By extension, the following question is also frequently posed: why are Arabs and Muslims so incensed that the Jews are digging for the Temple of Solomon beneath Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock?! Read: what do you have to hide? Are you afraid that the Temple of Solomon would be found, practically proving that those Arab Islamic and Christian holy places were built on stolen Jewish property by “an Arab occupation? Let them dig for their long-lost temple for goodness sake, and if they find nothing, what do you have to lose?!

Mind you, the excavation has delved so deeply and extensively underneath Al Aqsa Mosque, reaching the pre-Hebrew Canaanite Epoch, dating back several millennia, still without hitting any Temple of Solomon or even a shred of Jewishness!

More importantly, the earth beneath the structure of Al Aqsa Mosque has been so disemboweled, which made the grounds beneath it so shaky, a somewhat powerful underground explosion or an earthquake would probably bring the Holy Muslim edifice down altogether like a crumbling house of cards.

Thus, there is no longer any doubt in the minds of concerned people everywhere what the real purpose of the digging is. The massive underground network of tunnels, inroads, and state-sponsored synagogues is simply meant to physically undermine Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock; that is, it is meant to usurp the Arab identity of Jerusalem , and to make Jewish history out of nothing at all!

Consequently, contrary to what may seem at the surface, those issues are not purely about religion as much as they are about the identity of the land and whether it's Arab or not. For archaeological and religious issues here are nothing but thin veneer for a vexing contemporary and worldly question: is Jerusalem , and by extension Palestine , Arab or Jewish? Whose birthright is it? And, hence, who gets to keep it and rule over it? THAT is the crux of the matter that secularly-minded individuals in the West and the East gloss over when they gloat or grumble about fanatics on both sides killing each other over slabs of earth and stone.

For example, in the movie The Kingdom of Heaven (2005) by Ridley Scott, that many mistook for an atypically pro-Arab picture, the hero Balian of Ibelin (Actor Orlando Bloom) wonders before the invader community of Crusaders in Jerusalem as it braces for the impending Arab attack: What is Jerusalem ? Your holy places lie over the Jewish temple that the Romans pulled down. The Muslim places of worship lie over yours. Which is more holy?... The wall? The Mosque? The Sepulchre? Who has claim? No one has claim! All have claim!

So, if no one has claim, certainly the Arabs don't! And if all have claim, certainly the Arabs can't claim that Jerusalem is Arab, can they? In the end, we're talking about the question of who wields political power here, and about the need to justify the presence of invaders in Palestine , as rulers, not as pilgrims passing through for example. Certainly we are not talking about freedom of worship here (which was guaranteed under Muslim rule in the life of Jerusalem more than any other). We are talking about falsifying history to rationalize foreign occupations. If Arabs are an occupation, then they shouldn't complain about another which replaced them, especially if it allegedly predated them.

But after more than six decades of Zionist occupation, no Jewish Temple was ever found, and if there ever was one in Palestine, who is to say it used to lie exactly where Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are today?! Never mind that alleged Jewish archaeological remnants in the land have been extremely scarce and suspect. Never mind that even according to the Torah the Canaanites existed in Palestine long before, during, and after the Hebrews allegedly came through. Never mind the fact that the Canaanites descended upon the land from the Arabian Peninsula and that their tongue is an ancient Arabic one. After all, this is not some abstruse academic debate on history.

Yet when some claim that Palestine belongs to no one, we have to insist that it has been Arab since time immemorial, in the face of all transient foreign occupations, and that we have the historical and cultural ties to prove it, including Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Palestine is not a land without an identity any more than it is a land without a people. Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians and Palestine belongs to the Arabs just like Le Seine belongs to the French and Shanghai to the Chinese. Furthermore, when those who tell us that Jerusalem belongs to no one and to all declare their own countries as belonging to no one and to all, we promise to solemnly consider their propositions for Jerusalem seriously.

Setting questions of history and identity aside, the point remains that Jerusalem in modern times has become the locus of festering political contradictions at many levels. For the Arabs, Jerusalem stands as a symbol of Arab defeat before Western colonialism. For Palestinians under occupation and in the diaspora, Jerusalem represents the essence of the conflict with the Zionist movement over the right of ownership to the land here and now. For the Islamic World, Jerusalem signifies another crusader incursion at the cultural and religious levels. Finally, for anti-imperialists worldwide, Jerusalem pertains to the liberation struggle against Zionism and imperialism on the very front where that two-headed monster has thrown all of its colossal might. Although Jerusalem might mean more of this and less of that to different people, there is no question whatsoever that the demise of Israel and the liberation of Palestine will mark a watershed in human history, as it will help spell the end of the imperialist order everywhere.

Surely, Jerusalem is not a substitute for Palestine . It's just the mascot of the cause of Palestinian liberation. Neither are Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock a substitute for Jerusalem . They are but its crowing jewels along with all the other Arab Muslim and Christian Holy places in the city. The southwestern wall of Al Aqsa Mosque, the alleged "wailing wall", what we call in Arabic the wall of the "˜buraqâ", is definitely not a substitute for Al Aqsa Mosque either. Therefore, it's no wonder on the eve of the 1967 occupation of the eastern sector of the city, where Al Aqsa Mosque is located, that Moshe Dayan, an overtly a-religious former Israeli Minister of Defense, led a bunch of Rabbis to pray at the Wall of the Buraq. He understood the significance of that wall to be more than religious, for it condenses the fragments of the Arab-Zionist struggle into one bloc, literally.

To highlight the connection delineated above, it should be pointed out that the whole of Jerusalem and vicinity today, not only Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is being subjected to a process of forced Judaization. The infamous "Wall of Separation" meandering through the West Bank has actually separated Jerusalem from the West Bank and subdivided Arabs within the city into three semi-isolated cantons. The Wall has severed the city from Arab villages in its vicinity, and has cut off Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem from the Old Town where Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock lie. In the meantime, hundreds of Jerusalemites get their identity cards withdrawn by Zionist occupation authorities every year. Dozens of Arab houses are either confiscated or demolished, while locations are given Hebrew names instead of Arab ones, for example "Har Homa" for Mount Abu Ghnaim.

In the meantime, Zionist settlement and construction in the city continues to expand and grow at the expense of the Arabs, as it has since the first half of the Twentieth Century. As a result, Arab Christians have effectively been evacuated from Jerusalem , with only a few thousand left. Now the Zionists are working on thinning out Arab Muslims. This is why preserving the Arab identity of the city requires all concerned to support Jerusalemites remain steadfast in their city, at least until liberation comes.


The Free Arab Voice www.freearabvoice. org

Beauty and Apartheid in East Jerusalem

A friend of mine posted this same article on her blog so I'm doing the same.
I credit her with the title of this post.

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=5299

David Shulman
Taayush
July 2, 2005

Ankle-deep in the pungent, turbid water of Silwan, we stand in the old, ruined aqueduct, hoes and pick-axes in our hands. It is 9:30 in the morning and already hot. We have come to clean the aqueduct and make it functional again; so we scrape away at its muddy bed, filling buckets with sandy clay and rocks to be emptied out on the hill below, where a new terrace is being built by our Palestinian friends. The task is Sisyphean; the Palestinian locals keep reassuring us that we will hit bottom after 15 centimetres or so, but as the day progresses the channel becomes deeper and deeper, with no bottom in sight. The water flows downhill from an ancient spring somewhere up-mountain—so we are told—a spring older than King David, who lived here in Silwan, older even than the Jebusites from whom he captured the city 3000 years ago. The Silwanis think the spring was here from the beginning of time.

In the old days, the aqueduct carried this clean spring-water in a carved stone channel just under the wall of heavy stones that lines the road; in this way water reached down into the village for drinking, washing, irrigation. At some point in the last years, the Jerusalem municipality blocked it at one end and built a large concrete cess-pool just below it. So now the water still emerging from the ancient spring mostly stands stagnant in the aqueduct, evaporating in the hot sun of the Jerusalem summer. The people of al-Bustan have long wanted to unblock the channel, to clean it and let water flow back toward their neighborhood; but they have been afraid to do this on their own, knowing very well that the police or the Border Guards would almost certainly intervene to prevent them. Only our presence here today, some 100 volunteers from Ta’ayush, Bat Shalom, Machsom Watch, and the Committee against House Demolitions, has given them the freedom to put their ready plans into operation.

We are here, however, not just for the water and the terrace but mainly because of the Municipality’s plans to demolish 88 houses in al-Bustan—in fact, to wipe out the neighborhood altogether, ostensibly in order to create an “archaeological park” in the heart of Silwan. In fact, the intention is very different and altogether transparent: al-Bustan will fall victim to the latest attempt to Judaize east Jerusalem, pursuant to the settlers’ stated goal and the government’s clear policy of making the lives of Palestinian Jerusalemites as miserable as possible. The sheer scale of the current attempt—some 1000 people will be rendered homeless—has sparked considerable protest as well as this collaborative venture between Israeli peace-groups and the local committee. We have come in the hope of drawing international attention to what Israel is planning, and thus of forcing the government to back down. We have come in solidarity with innocent victims. And we have come to work.

There is a lot of press, including a Korean TV journalist making a film about life in Israel-Palestine, a reporter from the Berliner Zeitung, and a Chinese crew; if they manage to get a few seconds on the evening news in China, possibly many millions will see this happy moment. Several video crews are filming continuously, and indeed the hillside looks, to my eyes, strikingly photogenic. There are teams of volunteers cleaning up the debris of decades—rusted spikes wrapped in barb-wire, blocks of concrete, huge broken branches, and moldy piles of tin and plastic; others are breaking up the caked top-layer of soil just down from the aqueduct, readying it for the grassy terrace it will soon become; some are filling buckets with rocks and earth and pouring them out on the hill below to build up the emerging terrace. The whole hillside is alive with color and movement; young men from the village, and some children, work side-by-side with the Israelis, and the site is changing rapidly, minute by minute, the long neglect over at last. Amnon, only recently recovered from a broken shoulder, is working heroically with his one uninjured arm, hoeing and raking and carrying buckets and branches and heavy stones.

I am not alone; three Sanskritists from our group at the Institute for Advanced Studies have joined me, along with R., my Tamilist friend and colleague from New Zealand; also P.—my closest friend in the world—is with us for the first time. Thirty years ago we were in the army together; an irrevocable bond. He is working—hard-- on the Sabbath; he rode the bus down to the village with the rest of us; he is an observant Jew. How does it feel, I ask him? “Like Shabbat Bereshit,” he says: the Torah reading about the creation of the world.

From the start, the police are also with us, seeming, on the surface, rather benign—at first two blue jeeps, reinforced later by a detachment of Border Guards. They have promised that we would not be stopped on our way down into the village, and they do not appear to be unduly troubled by the notion of this work-day. It is not, after all, a demonstration. But around 11:00 a settler appears, dressed in his white Shabbat clothes, with conspicuous skull-cap and fringes and a well-fed belly. He looks scornfully at the Jews working beside Palestinian Arabs. He lives in a house seized from one of the Silwanis, overlooking this hillside. He stops for a word with the police commander. It is not allowed, he claims—and, as usual, the settler calls the shots—to pour earth to make a terrace, or to plant a tree, or to repair a stone wall, without specific permits. We are intending to do all of the above, but now the officer informs us, bowing to the settler’s mysterious authority, that we can go on working so long as we refrain from these clearly criminal acts. They will stay here to make sure we keep within bounds.

The man working beside me says to me in Arabic: “He—the settler—is living in my house. He took my house.” He is, of course, enraged. “All the problems,” he says, “come from them; only from them. They won’t let us live. They won’t let us breathe.” Another Silwani bursts out in a torrent of curses, and for a moment the rhythm of our hoes and buckets is rent by the pulsations of rage. The moment passes. We will wait a while before deciding about the tree.

Amiel has brought it, a huge mulberry, tut in Arabic and Hebrew; he and Ezra scoured the nurseries of Jerusalem looking for it, because this place was years ago known as “Tut Junction”, after a famous, ancient mulberry tree. That tree is gone, and we intend to replace it today, also to restore the street signs with the original names. Ezra, meanwhile, has been imprisoned by the army for visiting our friends in the south Hebron caves; tonight he will be brought before a Jerusalem court for an extension of his remand. They seem, this time, intent on punishing him. Nothing, truly nothing, threatens the army more than a man of peace.

From my position inside the aqueduct, I wonder out loud with P. at the hate that has risen up within me at the sight and sound of the arrogant settler. I can’t deny its existence. I can call up not even an iota of empathy, and I refuse to try to imagine his warped inner world. Hate, I say to P., is a part of us; like love. Better to acknowledge it. Is that why you are here? he asks me. Is that why you act? Of course, he agrees, this settler is hateful: look at his swagger, look at the stolen house, look at the hate coursing through him. Who, after all, would try to stop a man from planting a tree in his own garden? But is that a reason to act? No, I answer. I mostly seem to act from some other, obscure place. Maybe it is a need to be outside, away from my professor’s desk. Maybe it is a hunger for the intense connectedness of days like this, days of crossing the borders, one by one. Maybe it is love—for these people working beside me. Maybe, very likely, it is pure, uncontainable outrage at the immense injustice inflicted on them, day by day, and a refusal to let the Jews, or anyone else, perpetrate it without protest: being Jewish, so I thought, was mostly about just such a refusal. The prophets who lived here in Silwan, when David was king, sang mostly about that. If we had been alive in those days, I tell P., I would have been a ragged street urchin, mad with poetry, and you would have been one of those prophets. That is why you are here today.

Never before have I been so needed as a medic: there is a host of minor cuts and wounds which require cleaning and bandaging. I almost exhaust the medical supplies I brought with me; it is time to refresh my medic’s pouch. By now I am covered in mud and reeking of the stagnant water; will the stench ever leave my shoes, my jeans? I am also very thirsty, as the day wears on, an endless and relentless thirst no liquid can quench.

After lunch I climb with P. into the Roman antiquities farther up hill—a bath-house in the shadow of an overhanging cliff. Ta’ayush, P. says, reminds him of our days in the army; there is the same stark, unfamiliar eros of body and sun and smell, of the group living its life as a collective, of the simplicity of eating and working and using your hands. Yes, I say—suddenly memory cascades back to Shomron and basic training, I can smell it again—but there we were slaves, and here we are free.

They ask us to climb up into the cemetery above the road for a few photos, for the Arabic newspaper Al-Quds. Only men—women should not go into this space. We somewhat comically, artificially play at cleaning the grave-stones, mostly marked as children’s graves, for the sake of the picture. Why didn’t they photograph us working furiously downhill? Perhaps the sight of Israelis cleaning Muslim tombstones will have some power. Pictures over, we go back to work. A little later someone climbs the tall electricity pole and ties a newly painted signpost on it, in Arabic and English, another fruit of today’s labors: maqbarat al-atfal above, and below, an unconscious touch of poetry: “Children’s Symmetry.”

By now it is 3:00, the day begins to wane. Time to wind down: and time for the tree, come what may. Amiel carries it into the newly hoed plot. It is a splendid specimen, and within minutes it stands embedded in the soil, lightly tied to an iron stake; wrapped around the stake, covered in plastic, is a huge enlargement of an aerial photograph of the village, with a bright circle tracing the boundaries of this neighborhood threatened with extinction.. We pour buckets of water over the base of the tree, and a cheer goes up: “Silwan! Silwan!” People clap and sing and shout. But now the police wake up, since we have at last broken the law. They march back and forth on the road, barking into their cell-phones. The Border Guards look restless, or agitated, as well, and for a few moments I wonder if at this final moment we will have to face a fracas, a police charge, or the arrest of some of our friends. In a way, I don’t much care. There is something about planting a tree that stands outside and beyond all other categories. It is always and ever auto-telic: its own intrinsic justification. I am glad we have planted this mulberry tree here, glad to have been part of it, glad also for the defiance. And now, as the policemen look on with anger, apparently hesitant to move, the Silwani spokesmen rise to speak through the loudspeaker to all of us who have worked here today.

“This is the day of Silwan,” says M., in Arabic, “a famous day, a day of peace. I thank you on behalf of the people of Silwan. You have come from all over, even from distant countries, to help us, who have been targeted by the Israeli authorities—one thousand men, women, and children from al-Bustan. I thank you for the sake of peace. Let all people know. In Silwan we are not free. We want our liberty, we want our livelihood, we want an end to our agony. Make sure that the Israeli government knows, and the Jerusalem municipality knows: we will never give up our homes. Make sure for the sake of peace, the peace we all want.”

Again the cries: “Silwan! Silwan!” Mixed in with them is another shout, almost a rhyme: “Salaam!” Now Khulood speaks for Ta’ayush in a swift, crystalline Arabic, every syllable a promise of human hope. “We are not afraid,” she says, “not afraid of the Border Guards or the Police or the soldiers, not afraid of anyone. We came here to stand beside you, and we will never abandon this struggle. Your struggle is ours.” Someone suddenly thrusts the loudspeaker at me, I try to escape it, try to push it back at Amnon, at anyone, but they insist and I can see there is no choice. They want someone to say something in Hebrew, and it will have to be me. I have no idea what to say, but I press the button and start, without thinking. “We had the honor, and the pleasure, of working here today as your guests. Thank you for inviting us. We loved this day, as we love and honor peace. We want you to know that we are with you and that we will never allow anyone to destroy your houses. We will come whenever you need us, whenever you invite us here, as your friends.”

I stop, the loudspeaker mercifully passes on to another, but one of the young Silwanis hurries over to me, takes my arm. “You don’t need an invitation,” he says to me, speaking of all of us, his eyes full of light. “Silwan is your home.”

The Next Installment of Life in the Middle-East

I’ve spent some time in Jerusalem lately and I have to say that I love that city. The Old City is so intriguing and magical with its small streets and shops. There is so much flavour to that city. And it’s really fascinating to think about all the people who may have walked the very paths I myself wander upon. Then there is West Jerusalem which has an amazing market called Machane Yehuda and sells pretty much everything and anything you could want. I’m definitely going to hit it up next week and get some delicious breads and halwa!

When I was in Jerusalem last week I encountered some interesting people. I walked halfway across the city to get to an Indian restaurant where I had a pretty good buffet lunch (nothing even close to the deliciousness of Spices of Punjab - to everyone who knows my love for that place!) and paid through the nose for it. Oh well – a month without curry is way too long! I was practically the only patron in the restaurant which meant the waiter stood next to my table and made conversation throughout my meal. I didn’t mind except that it was a little awkward when the conversation died and he just stood there watching me eat. When he found out I was living in Ramallah he gave me the name and phone number of his friend who I should “definitely call because they’ll help [me] out a lot.”

Having random people give me their phone number "just in case" happens quite regularly here. Even my bank teller, Mohammed, gave me his number - fortunately he was a good-looking guy and not an old married man. So as a matter of fact we went out for a beer!

But back to Jerusalem...Prior to heading over to West Jerusalem (the Jewish area), I bought an Arabic language book in East Jerusalem. Upon entering one shop in Machane Yehuda, the shopkeeper could hardly take her eyes off the glaring script that read “Lets Speak Arabic!” I think she was a little put off that I was wandering around the "Jewish area" of the city boasting a bright purple book that promoted learning Arabic. (The book I bought is really wonderful - I'm learning Arabic, slowly but surely!)

On my way back to the Old City, I stopped to looking at an interesting mural and was approached by a young man asking if I understood what I was looking at. I summarized the little plaque next to the mural. He asked how I knew all that and I told him that I was really just reading the description. He then launched into a convoluted explanation of some additional meanings of the mural. I tried to make a polite exit at one point but he said “Wait I’m just getting started! What’s your name – tell me about yourself!” So I stayed a little bit longer and found out that this guy was John from Denmark and he had been in Israel for about four years. Finally I was able to make my leave after John gave me his email address to stay in touch. Do I have any intention of emailing John? Not really…Sorry, buddy. “A” for effort, though!

As I was walking towards Jaffa gate a man stopped me and asked me if I spoke English. When I replied that I did, he told me that he would be available to give me a tour to Hebron or Bethlehem or a few other neighbouring cities. I told him I would be working for the rest of the week. He asked where I worked, and when I told him it was in Ramallah, he simply said “Have a nice time” and walked away. It definitely made me laugh. Further on the same path I was pleasantly surprised when a young Hasidic Jew smiled at me – most of the young Jewish men I walk past in Jerusalem give me a rather spiteful look, and I make sure that I’m pretty covered up in Jerusalem since I’m more likely to be frequenting religious sites.

(On a side point - since I was admonished more than once in the replies to my last email to watch what I wear (including from my older brother saying he didn't really feel like flying across the world to avenge my honour), I have started wearing pants longer than my knees and shirts that cover my shoulders. Fortunately the weather has cooled off slightly, but to get to work from my *new* apartment I have to walk up a 70 degree-incline hill and then two gigantic sets of stairs which means I'm pretty hot and sweaty when I get to work, especially in jeans and a T-shirt...And interestingly enough it really doesn't matter what I'm wearing - people stare anyway. I could be wearing the least-flattering outfit and look like a disaster and I will still turn heads...welcome to being a foreigner in the middle-east apparently...)

Anyway, back in the Old City of Jerusalem, as I was walking around I encountered several large church groups including one that was carrying a giant wooden cross! It was pretty intense to witness such a display of…of I don’t even know what to call it, to be honest. A few minutes later I came across the filming of a movie. I have to say the acting looked pretty bad. I wanted to stay a bit longer and watch what was going on but the film crew was sort of pushing people out of the way.

When I found a public washroom I walked into the female section and saw a man in there. I backed out and checked the sign again. He called to me and said he knew it was a female washroom. So he left and when I came out of the stall I saw he was cleaning. I must have looked a little tired because as I was washing my hands he asked me if I was alright. Then he asked me if I was Arabic. I told him my mother was part-Lebanese. He said he could tell from my face that I was an Arab. Then he said I was “very nice”. I have had quite a few people tell me that I have an "Arabic face" - I guess I am back in my homeland haha.

I’ve been trying to do some more reading up on the situation here so that I don’t sound like a complete dunce when the conversation turns towards that subject, which it inevitably does. In my humble opinion, the way Israel was created was...well, to be blunt it's a little ridiculous. But due to my Jewish studies, I have to admit that I can still understand why it was created. Although in a way it's pointless to discuss the circumstances of Israel's creation because it was created and it exists today - that is a fact. What is most pressing is how to deal with the situation!

As I was reminded, there are always two sides to every story and so for the past few weeks I tried to see the situation from both perspectives: Israeli and Palestinian. But to be quite frank, the conflict here is entirely reminiscent of an apartheid. The fact that the majority of Palestinians are not allowed to go to Jerusalem merely because they are Palestinian is truly racist and discriminatory. I sincerely do not know another way to describe it. The worst part is that the Palestinians are essentially at the mercy of the Israelis in so many ways.

As an example: One of my best friends here received permission to go to Jerusalem for a few days and he is completely thrilled about it. He has not set foot in Jerusalem for 5 years. I have to say that I was almost as happy about it as him – just to witness his joy at being able to travel 27 km is a pretty inspiring thing! So we did a gig together on Sunday night, the first day he was allowed back. He was visibly nervous about going through Qalandia checkpoint since a bad day for an Israeli guard means any Palestinian can be denied entry. Fortunately my friend made it through and when I congratulated him on it he said "Congratulations - bullshit. This is my home." It honestly made me want to cry because it's true - you don't congratulate someone for returning to the city they used to live in.

When you go to Jerusalem by bus you aren't given a very good chance to check out the wall that encircles the city. You can see some of the (amazing) graffiti painted on the Ramallah side, but not the full effect. When my colleagues and I returned from Jerusalem after our gig, we were taken by one of the drivers of the Conservatory. In a car you are really given the full effect of the prison-like setting that the wall creates, especially at night. There are watchtowers set up with guns in small windows - fully adorned with the Israeli flag, I might add. The wall - a good 20 ft. high - is topped with another metre of barbed wire. There are soldiers and military units parked all over the place. Honestly it's a little...unsettling.

Anyway - those are some of the thoughts that have been going through my head as of late.

November 11th is the anniversary of Yassar Arafat's and as such there was a huge parade and some demonstrations that happened in Ramallah. The city was PACKED with people from all over the country. As interesting as it would have been to stay and experience the fervour, I had to teach in Nablus so I missed out on all the action. Included in the attached pictures is one from the parade. The others are the Dome of the Rock, Abu Qash (I think), me with an olive tree, and the last one is the city of Nablus.

Inshallah everyone is doing well! I miss you all and urge you to reply - even if you think I might not want to hear from you, think again!! I want to know about all the little things going on back home. As normal as it feels to be living here and working as a teacher, I like to be reminded of all the interesting things from Canada.

I still miss Canadian beer (someone have a Keith's Red in my honour, please), pizza, Indian food, CFL/NFL (big congrats to the Roughriders for snagging the top spot in the West!), traffic laws, Cold FX, and the crisp air of Canadian fall.

Life in Ramallah

This is the original mass email I sent out when I first moved to Ramallah in October, 2009:

So for those of you who do not know, I moved to Ramallah, Palestine on October 4th to teach music at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. I've been here for 2.5 weeks and I have to say that I really love being here. I'm teaching Viola and Violin to students in Ramallah and Nablus, and this month I'm doing a bit of teaching in Jerusalem as well.

I was definitely nervous to come here, no lies there! My biggest concern was getting through passport control in Tel Aviv. After all, I was supposed to tell them I was volunteering in Jerusalem, as opposed to working in Ramallah. Unfortunately my charm did not win over the passport guard and I was told to wait in a small room for interrogating. A lady came and asked me all kinds of questions: what I was doing, where I was staying, what my father’s name is, where my parents were born, what my religion was, what my parent’s religion was (she thought I might be Jewish), do I know anyone in Israel, how long will I be staying, will I be working with the Palestinians, why am I working in East Jerusalem (the Arabic area of the city).

It was a little nerve-wracking but I guess I did a good-enough job because they let me into the country! Unfortunately they ended up stamping my passport. I was hoping they would just give me my visa stamp on a separate piece of paper (well, they did that too, actually) because then I could have a clean passport to visit other Arabic countries. As it is now, if I want to go to Lebanon or Syria (or Iran or Saudi Arabia I guess) I will have to get a second passport since those Arabic countries do not recognize Israel and won't let you in if there is proof you have been there.

So Ramallah is a beautiful city. The streets are narrow and full of shops. It actually reminds me of Africa, and Italy too, come to think of it – the multitude of random stores selling colourful items, supermarkets on every corner, garbage piling up in alleyways, no traffic laws. Practically every five steps you take you come across a falafel stand or a juice store or a cart selling kahk (basically these giant sesame-topped bagels).

These past few weeks have been incredibly hot! The days get up to around 35 degrees and the nights cool down to maybe 29 degrees. I continue to wear what I would usually wear in Canada: shorts and tanktops, while everyone else is generally much more covered up. In fact I have never ever seen another pair of bare legs in the entire time I have been here. As such I provoke stares from just about everyone I cross pathes with when I walk to work. Generally this doesn't bother me. I either smile at people or look straight ahead and ignore the looks. Honestly it's just way too hot! Thankfully it has started to cool down over the last few days.

Some of my experiences in the city so far include: shopping at the insane fruit market where I was given nearly everything for free (!), playing my ipod for a random taxi driver who was so excited he had to call his friend right then and there to tell him about it, practically OD-ing on Knafeh (Middle-Eastern sweet consisting of sweet cheese topped with cornmeal and syrup), enjoying a concert of traditional Arabic music and being endlessly fascinated with what I was hearing, hearing a girl in a hijab say "It's so hot, why can't I wear that?" in reference to my shorts and my response to her "You can!", hitching a ride with a gravel truck driver one Friday when I was late getting to work, going out to the Conservatory branch at Bir Zeit where we sang songs under the stars and ate pomegranates, joining an impromptu street hockey game while waiting for a taxi home, singing along with my ipod to a bunch of guys watching me walk by, spending a few hours walking around the Old City in Jerusalem and praying at the Western Wall, seeing my students improve in only a few weeks, and (possibly the best thing I've done here so far) spending a day in the countryside harvesting olives with an entire Palestinian family - this was such a special experience for me, to get in touch with the "real" Palestine, not the garbage you see on the news, but the generous, funny, and kind people who work this land and who do not deserve having it taken out of their grasp more and more.

The garbage situation here is quite bothersome to me. There is no real system for garbage disposal except to occasionally throw things in the bin where it is taken to be burned somewhere. The streets are littered with garbage and the fields are full of plastic bottles - it's really quite heartbreaking! Unfortunately, getting a recycling plant into Palestine is incredibly difficult since transporting large machinery from Israel is a big problem.

The truth is that Palestine is an occupied country. They are surrounded by another territory that is entirely hostile to them. Many residents of Ramallah are not allowed to travel to Jerusalem, only 6 km away. Many of these same residents grew up in Jerusalem and had their homes taken from them by the Israelis. *sigh* As much as I would have preferred to avoid the political situation here, it's near-to impossible and the more I try to avoid it, the more I feel a bit idiotic. Because honestly, the situation is ridiculous - that so many people have had their land taken from them and are under such restrictions! Of course I don't have the answer to this problem but I sure hope that one day it gets figured out...

Anyway, that's sort of my preliminary thoughts on being here over the last 2.5 weeks.

The weather has finally cooled off - believe it or not, I truly miss the changing seasons! I also miss my family and friends, pizza, Canadian beer, East Indian/Vietnamese/Thai food, and organic nut butters.

Uganda

Well I'm back in Canada after spending 3 weeks in Uganda! I have some pretty interesting stories to tell as well as my observations on this amazing country.

I was traveling with my sister, my mom, and our friend who is from Uganda. We were going for our friend's brother's wedding. We left Canada on the evening of May 22nd. We were flying Emirates so we connected in Dubai. The really great thing about Emirates is that if your layover in Dubai is longer than 8 hours, they put you up in a hotel and pay for your meals. Our layover happened to be about 14 hours. We arrived in Dubai at around 6 p.m. so it gave us a chance to look around.

We went to the Gold Souk, which has all these gold shops with amazing (and expensive) jewelry. My friend was really interested in looking around at the gold but I ventured off to check out some clothes. Everywhere there are shopkeepers beckoning you into their stores because they have "best price for you!" Their best price is usually something completely ridiculous. One man asked me for $120 US for a simple scarf. Eventually I got him down to $10 US but I didn't buy it because I really didn't even want it!

Dubai is also ridiculously hot. I had a tanktop on with a scarf around my neck, but my mom told me to cover my shoulders because I was getting strange looks. I did, unfortunately - it was incredibly humid so any extra piece of clothing made you sweat like crazy. On the way home, we arrived in Dubai at 1 a.m. and it was still 37 degrees Celsius! When we left the airport it was like walking into a wall of water, the air was so thick. Immediately my glasses fogged up haha.

So we got to Uganda on May 24th at around 4 in the afternoon. The airport is about an hour away from Kamapala, even though it's only 30 km. The roads are very twisty and it's not really a highway. There are constantly people walking or biking on the roads so you have to constantly be slowing down. I totally passed out in the car, though, so I missed the drive in to the city.

Well Uganda is a totally crazy place...the streets have giant holes in them from...honestly I don't know what. You'll be driving along and all of a sudden you have to slam on the brakes or swerve out of the way to avoid this crater in the street. Plus there's no speed limit so the city has put up all these speed bumps which are just incredibly annoying. But they have to do something, otherwise people would just be driving at maniacal speeds all the time. There's also not very many lights or lanes, so when you drive you have to constantly be on the watch for people who might be randomly darting into your path, at times driving right towards you!

I eventually got so sick of the driving. The cars in incredibly poor disrepair so they're always spewing out this thick stream of stinky diesel smoke that makes you sick to your stomach to breathe it in. Plus there's the endless lines of traffic. And it might not all be so bad, but then it's really hot too, so it makes your patience give up a lot faster.

Then there were the buses. They looked like Volkswagon vans. I can't remember what make and model they actually were, though. Anyway, they were hot and usually quite crowded. But they were so cheap - about $.50 to get into the city from where we were staying. There aren't really bus stops - well, there are places where you can go to definitely catch a bus. But if you're just walking on the street and you want to get on, you just wave at them. The bus has a guy who is always waving his arm out the window at people to try and get them on the bus.

The other form of "public transportation" are boda bodas: motorcycles you can ride on. I took one in the last week of being in Uganda and it was so fun, I wish I'd taken one sooner. It felt very safe and it was great to feel the air through your hair and on your skin. You felt so much closer to everything you drove past: all the amazing scenery, the goats, the bicyclists, the people walking. You do have to be careful, though, because some boda bodas are dangerous if the driver likes to weave in and out of traffic without checking properly.

Being white in Uganda makes you an automatic celebrity. There you are called "mzungu" which basically means "white person", but not in a derogatory racial slur kinda way, just as fact. There really weren't many "mzungu" in the area where we were staying so the kids would totally freak out when you walked by. Some would seriously shriek and laugh and cry out "mzungu mzungu!" They would LOVE it if you said "Oli otya" (hi, how are you?) to them. They just can't believe that a mzungu would know something in Lugandan.

Even with the adults (especially the men), they will be totally impressed if you say anything in their language. And they all want to talk to you, because to say "hello" to a mzungu and have you acknowledge it makes them feel pretty special.

It's so interesting that being white gets you treated that way, because in Canada you would never freak out in amazement when you see a black person walk down the street. It would be pretty ridiculous, in fact, to see a white person saying "Oh my god, it's a black person WOW!!" here in North America haha.

There is some badly needed infrastructure in Kampala. The roads are in poor condition; there is no real garbage disposal system so people just burn the garbage, including plastics; the hospitals are understaffed and underfunded; there is no minimum wage and thus no assurance of any kind of expected salary for most people; no proper drainage system so when it pours rain, the water just eats up the streets. It's sad to see the condition in which most people live. There are a lot of slums consisting of one-room houses with a dirty yard full of flea-ridden stray dogs.

Despite all this, the people are so happy all the time! People are always sitting around and talking and laughing. They live such a slow pace of life, never rushing around and hurrying - just taking their time to get done what they need to do. I would often see men just sitting underneath a tree, not doing anything. I asked our friends what all these people were doing, just hanging out - they said they were thinking or working haha. Interesting...

Then we took a side trip to Zanzibar. Well actually, we were supposed to go on a safari in Tanzania but...Okay so it started out by flying to Nairobi. Our friend's friend picked us up from the airport and took us downtown. Before we left the car, she took off all her gold jewelry and locked it up. Apparently people in Nairobi will just come up to you and try to grab it off your neck!

Anyway, then we got on this shuttle bus that was taking us to Arusha, Tanzania. It was supposed to be a 4 hr. drive on a normal highway...unfortunately that highway was under construction and we had to take a diverted road which was worse than any gravel road I've ever been on in my life. Plus this bus had no suspension to speak of. Plus I was at the very back. And last but not least there was no air-conditioning so we had to open the windows which meant by the end of the EIGHT HOUR trip, I had about two inches of dust covering my entire body. Not fun.

Then we were arranging our safari with this guy (Basil) who supposedly knew our friend's brother. Well, Basil wanted us to pay him the full amount before we even left. That was pretty sketchy and we refused. Then we found out that it was only going to be us four girls in a private car with a different driver. We figured that it was just too dangerous for four girls to go off with some random guy into the middle of a game park full of wild animals. So we canceled and booked air tickets to Zanzibar!

So we took off to Zanzibar, which is a beautiful and incredibly interesting place. The streets are very narrow, even more so than European streets. There are tons of little shops selling crafts, scarves, clothes, and food. We hired a guide when we got there, a guy named Ali who was really cute. We ended up hanging out a lot more over the next few days and...well that's all I'm going to say about that haha.

Apparently a huge boat had recently sunk just off the coast of Zanzibar...and I mean just off the coast - it was trying to dock and it sunk! This happened just a few days before we arrived. Apparently there were people who were still alive on the boat, somehow trapped in an air bubble in the boat, below the surface. You would never know that this catastrophe had taken place, though - there were hardly any police or emergency crew around the docks. If this was North America, the place would have been crawling with people! It was terribly tragic and 7 people died as a result of the laxity of others...

Zanzibar is beautiful, though. The Ocean is very calm and the beaches are amazing. We went on a spice tour where we saw all kinds of different spices including nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, cloves, cardamom and all kinds of fruit including jackfruit, dorian, mangos, bananas, etc. We had a traditional lunch of creamed spinach, rice, chapattis, and curried bananas and potatoes in a creamy coconut sauce. We also swam in the Ocean at a private beach.

I didn't want to leave Zanzibar - it was my favourite place, and kind of a magical little side excursion. But we had to get back for the wedding, so leave we did :( It was nice to get back with our friends though. And some more family members had arrived that we had never met yet so it was fun getting to know them.

The wedding was massive. About 600 people were invited. The ceremony started at 1:00 p.m. and was a full Catholic Mass so it took about an hour and a half. People were still showing up to the ceremony at around 2:15 p.m. And then the priest went WAY over time even though there was another wedding ceremony immediately after this one.

It was pretty much like your typical Western wedding. The only major difference was the fact that the speeches went on FOREVER. In total I think we had about 4 hours of speeches. I think that was probably a little (aka a lot) excessive. But I guess it's a very special day and everyone wants to have their say!

Anyway, the trip was totally amazing and there are definitely things I miss about Africa: the heat; Fanta Orange; the greenery; the food. I also like how people are pretty chilled out, but that is also one thing I don't miss at the same time. People are frequently late for things, especially meals. We went for lunch at one guy's house. We arrived late, at around 12:45/1:00 p.m. I thought we would eat fairly soon after that...nope. We didn't eat until about 3:00 p.m., by which time I was absolutely starving. Strange.

I'm so fortunate that I get to return to Africa. It's easy to put aside your experiences over there now that I've returned. But the fact I get to go back and reinforce in my mind everything that I think and love and dislike about Africa is pretty special!

I can't wait!

Three Cups of Tea

So I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. This book details the life of Greg Mortenson who, in the past 20-odd years, has constructed over 40 schools in rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

I am completely blown away by this book. I can hardly believe that the accounts I was reading were actually real. The fact that this man rallied for years and years to raise funds for promoting education (especially the education of girls) in one of the harshest regions of the world is one of the most heroic things I have ever heard.

One of the main tenets that Mortenson advocates is that education is the key to ending terrorism. This is so incredibly true. The children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, living in severe poverty, are led to madrassas, Taliban-funded schools where they learn an extremist form of Islam that promotes hatred towards Westerners. When students graduate from these schools, they are offered a paltry sum and the chance to join the Taliban. Faced with few or no other options, these students join this terrorist group.

Mortenson states that "More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments." How completely heart-breaking that in this day and age, where in so many parts of the world tons of information can be called upon with the click of a button, there are children who do not know how to read or how to write, and perhaps they never will.

It's even more astounding when you consider that the second of the 8 Millenium Development Goals (set in 2001 as targets for the UN member states) reads as such:
Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

In Stephen Lewis' book Race Against Time, he notes that in so many of his encounters to African countries, the overwhelming desire of children is that of an education! And yet later on in the same book he states that "In 2005, the world will pass the trillion-dollar mark in the expenditure, annually, in arms. We're fighting for $50 billion annually for foreign aid for Africa: the military totally outstrips human need by 20 to 1. Can someone please explain to me our contemporary balance of values?"

And Mortenson confirms this when he says "I'm no military expert...And these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"

As I mentioned earlier, the children of Central Asia are being educated in madrassas funded by leaders from Saudi Arabia. Mortenson describes how they land in Pakistan with suitcases full of money for the purpose of building these schools. The United States decision to fund an army to blow other countries to bits (inflicting major casualties on civilians, too, by the way!) will not solve anything in the long run. The people of Central Asia do not hate all Americans, and Three Cups of Tea is a clear testament to that!

But for everyone who still believes that the war on terror will be won by blasting as many holes into Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. as possible, then you simply must read Three Cups of Tea and Race Against Time. These two books are truly an eye-opener into the reality that education can provide the way to an incredibly brighter future - much brighter than the fading glow of a Tomahawk missile explosion against the dark night sky of Central Asia.

What to Say?!

I have been dying to write a blog for such a long time. As mentioned previously, I have so many topics to cover...there is just not enough time in the day. I'm so incredibly busy learning a ton of music for various things that I don't have time for sitting and musing much.

Well actually, that's not entirely true. I muse a lot at work because I basically do nothing there. It's kind of sweet actually. I mean, it's nice to get paid to sit around, but when I think about all the stuff that I really should be doing, it gets very frustrating to know that I'm sort of wasting my time at this damn job just because I need to make some cash.

Let me tell you a little something about working with the general public though - people smell. And they smell bad. I'm a receptionist and when people come up to my desk, I can notice right away when they are stinky. I don't know how many times I have had to bite my tongue so I don't blurt out "Did you take a bath in cigarette butts before coming here?" The smell of stale cigarettes is so incredibly disgusting. Then there's B.O., must, dust, mothballs, old-apartment-smell...the list goes on and on.

I'm not trying to be mean...this is a simple observation...sorry if I offended those who are prone to smelling bad. It happens...I understand.

Now for some exciting news - I'm going to Africa this summer...TWICE!!

I'm going to Uganda for 3 weeks with my mom, my sis, and our friend who is from Uganda. Her brother is getting married and she invited us along. It'll be really great to go there with someone who is from there and has family and friends there - much easier to get around and see things etc. I do want to spend some time on my own, though, just exploring and taking in things all by myself - have an adventure!

Then, a week after I get back from Uganda, I'm off to South Africa for a month to plant trees and do presentations on AIDS awareness. I'm pretty stoked about this, seeing as it ties in to my life philosophy to make the world a better place. But I have to admit, I'm really nervous about it because I have no idea what to expect. The other thing is that I'm absolutely terrified that this trip will fall through like my India trip fell through...and then I will have to consider myself one big failure at getting by butt out of Canada to opportunistic destinations on the other side of the world.

I do have to fundraise a nice chunk of change for this trip, though, so if anyone is willing to help me out and give me a donation, let me know via posting to this blog and I'll get you more details on how to go about doing that. Thanks in advance :)

What else? Well, I'm single. Not entirely freshly single though...it's been 4 months since my relationship ended with what I thought was a great guy. That illusion ended when Mr.Not-So-Wonderful came back from India engaged to a girl he'd known for a total of about 72 hours. This happened 3 days before my ex was due to come home to his ever-faithful and dutiful girlfriend (aka me). So he held off the family pressure for 5 weeks and caved at the last minute. Well if he agreed to an arranged marriage with a girl he doesn't know and who hardly speaks English, she's got to be something special - by that, I mean she's probably a looker with a nice rack.

I have to admit that I'm basically over this. I mean, it was really sad when it happened, especially because I found out from someone else, my ex being way too much of a coward to do the right thing and tell me to my face. But fortunately I have a logical pattern of thought that pulled myself together and said - Forget about this douchebag, gather yourself, stay strong because it's his loss and he knows it (and he does).

I remain optimistic that there are still good men out there who have the ability to be loyal and have the strength to say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said. It's a big world out there after all.

Also - nothing like watching the first 4 seasons of The Office post-breakup to really get you laughing again. That got me through the first bad weeks.

So to anyone going through the extremely unfortunate circumstance of heart-break, just know that there are other people who have gone through some ridiculous blows to the ego and made it through to the other side more-or-less unscathed. And actually, I have met some really great guys in the last little while - guys who are laid-back, whose company I enjoy, and who are smart, polite, and extremely personable.

Okay that's all for now.

Make sure you get your taxes done - only a few weeks til the end of April :)

Peace.

M,I.A.

Okay so I realize that I have been M.I.A. for quite some time now. My apologies to those of you who actually read this thing. Anyway, I did actually become really busy and then went away on vacation blah blah blah. But I want to be fairly dedicated to my blog so I'm going to lay down some thoughts.

There are actually a variety of topics that I have been meaning to write about lately: Barack Obama; breast cancer; breaking up; honesty; change; and true friends. Unfortunately, I don't really have all my thoughts collected enough to write a coherent statement on any of those topics. So for now, all you get is a retraction...and a demi-retraction at best.

In a previous post, I decried Rich Terfry's musical selections for this program on CBC Radio Two. As it would happen, I ended up listening to nearly the entire show on a trip home in January. And as it would happen, I ended up thoroughly enjoying many (if not all) of the musical selections that I heard on that program.

So while I do not enjoy all of the music that Mr.Terfry plays on his show, I have to admit that he does showcase some extremely unique, talented, and exceptional artists that would otherwise not receive the attention they so deserve.

There. Happy now?

The Enchantress of Florence

So I just finished reading The Enchantress of Florence, the latest work by renowned author Salman Rushdie. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this novel. I had previously read a few of Rushdie's novels: Shalimar the Clown, to which I became immediately enthralled; Fury, a good novel, but definitely a little strange; and The Satanic Verses, which I found highly overrated and way too long. I started reading The Ground Beneath Her Feet, but couldn't get into it.

I figured The Enchantress of Florence could go either way, based on my prior attempts with Rushdie. Still, I found the synopsis interesting and of course no harm done if I liked it or if I didn't - it's only a book, after all.

The novel concerns a young European traveller - 'Mogor dell'Amore' - who arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar claiming to be the son of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Koz, a woman so beautiful she is believed to have powers of enchantment. The story covers the history of Qara Koz and how she came to arrive in Florence, following captivity by an Uzbeg warlord and then a Persian Shah. The narrator alternates between the Mughal city of Sikri and the city of Florence. The book jacket asks the question: "But is the Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?"

An intriguing story!! Would I be as captivated with the story as Emperor Akbar? And the verdict: I LOVED IT! You know you're going to love a book when the opening line strikes you: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold."

There were a few things that I found so remarkable about this book:

1) Unlike so many books today that lament how miserable everyone's life is (no really, it's true!), this book had a captivating tale that was almost like a children's story. You had kingdoms and enchantments and battles and ghosts, plus some sex and profanity. Not since Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings have I thought a story has held me in its attention so well.

2) The way in which Salman Rushdie continues to question religion. That he does so in his controversial novel The Satanic Verses is fairly obvious (though I did not find it nearly as offensive as I thought it was going to be). In The Enchantress he uses Emperor Akbar as a scapegoat in which to convey philosophical musings on whether or not humans really need God.

Consider the following quotes as examples:

p.83 “He wanted, for example, to investigate why one should hold fast to a religion not because it was true but because it was the faith of one’s fathers. Was faith not faith but simple family habit? Maybe there was no true religion but only this eternal handing down. And error could be handed down as easily as virtue. Was faith no more than an error of our ancestors? Maybe there was no true religion. Yes, he had allowed himself to think this. He wanted to be able to tell someone of his suspicion that men had made their gods and not the other way around. He wanted to be able to say, it is man at the centre of things, not God. It is man at the heart and the bottom and the top, man at the front and the back and the side, man the angel and the devil, the miracle and the sin, man and always man, and let us henceforth have no other temples but those dedicated to mankind.”

p. 83 “If man had created god then man could uncreate him too. Or was it possible for a creation to escape the power of the creator? Could a god, once created, become impossible to destroy? Did such fictions require an autonomy of the will that made them immortal?”

p. 310 “If there had never been a God…it might have been easier to work out what goodness was. This business of worship, of the abnegation of self in the fact of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail. Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.”

However, in perhaps a contradictory statement, the Emperor reasons:

“The past was a light that if properly directed could illumine the present more brightly than any contemporary lamp…Understanding was another such flame. Knowledge was never simply born in the human mind; it was always reborn. The relaying of wisdom from one age to the next, this cycle of rebirths: this was wisdom. All else was barbarity.”

This may seem contradictory in lieu of the Emperor's comment regarding why one must follow the faith passed down by one's forefathers. Is it not the case that in religious families, parents feel the best knowledge they can pass on to their children is that of a religious nature: how to please God. I know this is certainly true in the families of many people I know. Who is to say what can be deemed as "knowledge" from the past, and what can be deemed as "a distraction, a false trail"? I don't have the answer to these questions, and merely pose them for interests' sake.

3) The power of women. Subtitled: the power women have over men/how easily men are swayed/the weakness of men. Rushdie describes many times over how the book's main woman, Qara Koz, is so beautiful that she can put a spell over people - usually men. However, we see that both men and women do her bidding. And not that she is evil in the use of her powers, but rather she uses her sorcery for harmony and contentment.

In one interesting passage, Rushdie alludes to the fact that men behave in such a way that they believe they are invincible. Granted, he is talking about soldiers. However, one could suggest that at some point in any person's life, the invicibility factor wears off and one is left with the cold reality that they will die. And in that moment, where do we turn?

p.214-215 “There is a weakness that comes over men at the battle’s end, when they become aware of the fragility of life, they clutch it to their bosoms like a crystal bowl they almost dropped, and the treasure of life scares away their courage. At such a time all men are cowards, and can think of nothing but women’s embraces, nothing but the healing words only women can whisper, nothing but the joy of losing themselves in the fatal labyrinths of love. In the grip of this weakness a man will do things which unravel his best-laid plans, he can make promises which change his future.”

p.215 “The need for a woman to cure the loneliness of murder…To wipe away the guilt of victory of the vainglory of defeat. To still the tremble in the bones. To dry the hot tears of relief and shame. To hold you while you feel the ebbing tide of your hatred and its replacement by a form of higher embarrassment. To sprinkle you with lavender to hide the scent of blood on the fingertips and the gore stinking in the beard. The need for a woman to tell you that you are hers and to turn your mind away from death. To quell your curiosity about how it might be to stand at the Judgement Seat, to take away your envy of those who have gone before you to see the Almighty plain, and to soothe the doubts twisting in your stomach, about the existence of the afterlife and even of God himself, because the slain are so utterly dead, and no higher purpose seems to exist at all.”

On another point, and not that I am advocating using sexual favours as a means to achieve, well, anything (!), but Rushdie's book certainly uses this form of coercion on several occaisions. I would merely like to take this opportunity to illustrate that so often there is only one thing on the minds of men, and they will do many things to get it.

Of course this is certainly not the only way in which women are strong. I highly enjoyed this quote:

p.51 “Women think less about men in general than the generality of men can imagine. Women think about their own men less often than their men like to believe. All women need all men less than all men need them. That is why it is so important to keep a good woman down. If you do not keep her down she will surely get away.”

Well, I'm not so sure if I liked the part about keeping a good woman down...though I suppose it is true: A good woman should try and get away if you don't give her a reason to stay!

Then there is the loyalty shown between women is much higher than the loyalty between men and women:

p.204 “Women have always moaned about men…because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex – loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love..."

And what I really enjoyed about Rushdie's painting of Qara Koz was, to be honest, the way she resembled a man in her actions. Her swiftness in choosing a new lover/transferring her loyalty. Her surprise at finding herself in love and actually having feelings for a man. And despite this, her strength and conviction that she would rise above anything and continue on, with or without a man by her side:

p.259 “But if she lost him, she would grieve wildly, she would be inconsolable, and then she would do what she had to do. She would find her way. Whatever happened today, she would make her journey to the palace soon enough. She was meant for palaces and kings.”

That last quote reminds me of myself in a way (although the circumstances were different than those of Qara Koz in this instance). I had a recent break-up and yes, I was sad. I wouldn't say I was inconsolable or wild with grief, but I certainly cried and felt like shit. However I gathered my resolve and moved on, because I'm better than some boy - I was meant for palaces and kings :)

4) Magic/Religion vs. Magic.

I don't really believe in magic. I know there are things that may not be able to be explained. But I'm not sure if I could ever agree to label them as "magic". So it's always fun to read a book where there are spells or enchantments or ghosts. It almost makes us yearn for that ability to cure everything with a simple potion. Alas, such is not the way of real life. And I guess that's why we have books - to enter a different world for a while and live vicariously through the characters who have the powers to change their circumstances without necessarily working through them the way we regular humans do.

But in a way, wouldn't magic just be a kind of religion? Some things today that people call "miracles" might be called "magic" to another person. I thought that this quote was funny in that way:

p.318 “It was important not to offend against the laws of magic. If a woman left you it was because you did not cast the right spell over her, or else because someone else cast a stronger enchantment than yours, or else because your marriage was cursed in such a way that it cut the ties of love between husband and wife. Why did So-and-so rather than Such-and-such enjoy success in his businesses? Because he visited the right enchanter. There was a thing in the emperor that rebelled against all this flummery, for was it not a kind of infantilization of the self to give up one’s power of agency and believe that such power resided outside oneself rather than within? This was also his objection to God, that his existence deprived human beings of the right to form ethical structures by themselves. But magic was all around and would not be denied, and it would be a rash ruler who pooh-poohed it. Religion could be rethought, re-examined, remade, perhaps even discarded; magic was impervious to such assaults.”

Because really, a lot of people attribute their success in work, marriage, and life to their faith in God. I do agree that people shouldn't so blindly grant their successes (or failures) in some outside power. And I also agree with the suggestions of what can be done to religion. But I don't think that "magic" deserves the kind of adoration or responsibility that is most commonly reserved for religion. We are the ones accountable for our successes and failures. Still, our world is not necessarily devoid of all magic. The magic that is in our world is the magic we create in our relationships with people; the stories we tell; the music we make. The world can be a magical place, of our own making!!

Of course, Rushdie is telling a story in a different time, so this must be taken into account as well. But really it was said best this way:

p.75 “…witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.”

Which, of course, brings me full circle as to why I fully enjoyed this book: it was truly enchanting. I was held by the story; involved in the lives of the characters; excited at what was to come next - all tell-tale signs of a great novel!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. And I really hope that this post hasn't given away too much of the novel. Although I can say for a certainty that it hasn't! I don't think any of the quotes I used served to indicate the turns that are taken in the story...I merely used them to point out some of the interesting themes I thought were explored in the book. But I am sorry if I ended up ruining it for anyone...The essay-writer in me really came out tonight I guess ;)

But please, read the book if you get the chance because: “…the world is still mysterious…and the strangest story may turn out to be true.” (p.104)

Peace.