I Will Never Understand You
When I came online this morning, I got a big shock. Yesterday, I had the highest reader count ever in the history of the blog. I can usually count on Saturdays being a very low day for readership, and Sundays are usually a little better, so I am totally at a loss as to why yesterday would have attracted so many readers.
I posted book reviews. You never read my book reviews! I do it for the few readers out there like me, addicted to really good books, really good authors, and then we talk about books BEHIND YOUR BACK! You never even see the really good book discussions, or us getting together and furtively exchanging our books!
The last time I had so many readers was back in December, when I posted Mom’s Fruit Cake and the Divinity Candy recipes. Overall, that Divinity Candy keeps going and going. Go figure! I had only been blogging 3 months at the time, and oh, what a thrill it was to see that spike for December, but it left me desolate as your attentions shifted elsewhere and I couldn’t figure out how to get you back.
But Go Figure is my constant refrain. You are a fickle audience. I can’t help but be intrigued. I will never know what you are thinking; maybe 1% of my daily visitors comment. The rest of you drop in and snorkel around a little, and then leave, a swirl trailing behind you but no tangible evidence of your visit, other than the little tick in the stats that show you were here.
All I can deduce is that the best bet for blogging is to be content to start small and build slowly. Don’t worry about statistics. (And don’t worry if you ARE worried about statistics, as you can tell from the content of this post, we all are aware of our statistics, that was a purely hypocritical word of advice on my part.)
Honestly, I have come to the conclusion that my very safest bet is to blog for myself, and that is what I do. I blog about what catches my eye, what strikes my funny bone, what grabs my intellect, what inflames my heart, and I blog about the trivialities of my daily life. I love your visits, and I love hearing your point of view, even if it doesn’t agree with my own. I ask only that you watch your language, as my Mother reads this blog, and that while you are passionate, you steer clear of hate language toward any race, gender or nationality. Bureaucracy is fair game.
I am happy you came by, sorry if I was sleeping!
Nemirovsky: Suite Francaise
Within five seconds of starting this book, you are in Paris, flurrying with the Parisians. It’s hot, it’s June, it’s 1940 and the Germans are coming, it is time to get out of town. We are in the middle of preparations to evacuate, with several families, couples and individuals as they make their preparations.
Have you ever been evacuated from a house or hotel due to sudden fire? Have you ever wondered why, in the seconds you had to prepare to leave, you made the choices you did? I groaned as I lived with people carefully packing their linen tablecloths and bird cages; but it’s different when it is not YOU. What I admire so much about Irene Nemirovsky’s book is that you are THERE, you feel so much a part of it. I can tell you what it was like, the desperation as “we” evacuated Paris, and later, as we lived with the enemy using our house for billeting.
The Suite Francaise is two parts, Storm and Dolce. As you reach the end of Dolce, you have a strong feeling that there should be more, and indeed, as you read, seeking satisfaction, the appendices, you discover the book was intended to have four or five sections. The interpreter who put the manuscript together, filling in from Nemirovsky’s notes, has done a masterful job on the two sections that were somewhat complete, but, unfortunately, Nemirovsky, a Catholic, had a Jewish parent, and that was enough to get her arrested, transported to a concentration camp and executed, all within a very short time. The correspondence between her husband had the authorities, in the short time between her arrest and death, is desperate, and chilling.
You can’t help but be heartsick at the loss to this world of such great talent. You can’t help but wonder what this book, as good at it is, might have been as a larger whole?
Nemirovsky, above all, has an acute eye for French thinking, French manners, French mannerisms, and above all, for French class distinctions. The dialogues are SO perfectly believable, as are the depictions of the manner in which people under the worst kind of stress can behave with both inhuman kindness and insensitive cruelty toward one another.
You know how I am always wondering what my cat is thinking. . . I share an excerpt of the book with you. I believe Nemirovsky knows what a cat is thinking!
The cat poked his nose through the fringes of the armchair and studied the scene with a dreamy expression. He was a very young cat who had only ever lived in the city, where the scent of such June nights was far away. Occasionally he had caught a whiff of something warm and intoxicating, but nothing like here, where the smell rose up to his whiskers and took hold of him, making his head spin. Eyes half closed, he could feel waves of powerful, sweet perfume running through him: the pungent smell of the last lilacs, the sap running through the trees, the cool, dark earth, the animals, birds, moles, mice, all the prey, the musky scent of fur, or skin, the smell of blood . . . His mouth gaping with longing, he jumped on to the window sill and walked slowly along the drainpipe. This was where a strong hand had grabbed him the night before and thrown him back . . . but he would not allow himself to be caught tonight.
He eyed the distance from the drainpipe to the ground. It was an easy jump, but he appeared to want to flatter himself by exaggerating the difficulty of the leap. He balanced his hindquarters, looking fierce and confident, swept his long black tail across the drainpipe and, ears pulled back, leapt forward, landing on the freshly tilled earth. He hesitated for a moment, then buried his muzzle in the ground. Now he was in the very black of night, at the heart of it, at the darkest point. He needed to sniff the earth: here, between the roots and the pebbles, were smells untainted by the scent of humans, smells that had yet to waft into the air and vanish. They were warm, secretive, eloquent. Alive. Each and every scent meant there was some small living creature, hiding, happy, edible . . . June bugs, field mice, crickets and that small toad whose voice seemed full of crystallized tears . . . The cat’s long ears – pink triangles tinged with silver, pointed and delicately curly inside like the flower on bindweed – suddenly shot up. He was listening to faint noises in the shadows, so delicate, so mysterious, but, to him alone, so clear: the rustling wisps of straw in nests where birds watch over their young, the flutter of feathers, the sound of pecking on bark, the beating of insect wings, the patter of mice gently scratching the ground, even the faint bursting of seeds opening. Golden eyes flashed by in the darkness. There were sparrows sleeping under the leaves, fat blackbirds, nightingales; the male nightingales were already awake, singing to one another in the forest and along the river banks.
And I imagine that the above all took place in the space of about 15 – 30 seconds!
If Nemirovsky can capture a cat’s thoughts so eloquently, just imagine what she can do with the French!
The second part of the Suite, Dolce, takes place in a small farming village and ties many of the evacuees from Storm loosely with the village and subsequent events. In Dolce, we live with a young married Frenchwoman in the home of her mother-in-law who blames her for enjoying life while her own son, the young woman’s husband, is a prisoner of war in Germany. If that weren’t bad enough, soon a young German officer is sent to live with them.
We have lived among the evacuating Parisians, in Storm, and now, in Dolce, we are living in the provinces, with it’s stultifying conventions. There are whole passages where the restrictions of polite French countryside society make it so suffocating, you almost have trouble breathing. And yet, as they do in every society, the young find ways around the conventions, risk their lives, risk their reputations, and live thinking that no-one sees what they are doing, while the elders bite their lips in horror. Fascinating reading. Nemirovsky’s genius to to make you feel you really are THERE.
Donna Leon: Death in a Strange Country
Recently I discovered, to my disgust, that I have purchased two Donna Leon books I have already read. I bought them from England, and now they have been published in the US under different titles. Aaaarrrgh! I hate it when that happens.
I have a good friend I want to pass these books along to, an amazing woman who has no idea how amazing she is. When she talks about her early years as a private detective, she refers to herself, with a perfectly straight face, as a “Dickless Dick.”
After I read this book, I passed it along to Adventure Man, who loved it. He aloud to me from it late at night, and we both laughed. Here is the the excerpt he liked, he could identify with it:
In their bedroom, he saw that she had placed a long red dress across the bed. He didn’t remember the dress, but he seldom did remember them and he thought it best not to mention it. If it turned out to be a new dress and he remarked on it, he would sound like he thought she was buying too many clothes, and if it was something she had worn before, he would sound like he paid no attention to her and hadn’t bothered to notice it before. He sighed at the eternal inequality of marriage, opened the closed, and decided that the grey suit would be better.
He, of course, is Commissario Guido Brunetti, Donna Leon’s chief investigator, consumately Venetian, very married, and fighting a lonely battle against the louche corruption of the Italian bureaucracy.
And this book is about the death of an American military man in Venice, except that of course, it turns out to be about something much much bigger. Leon has several axes grinding in this one, but the biggest is illegal dumping, and the arrogance of countries who dump their toxic wastes on smaller countries, eyes wide open, knowing full well that horrorific consequences may result – and not caring.
My favorite part is when Commissario Brunetti visits the American base outside of Venice for the first time:
He left the place and went to stand outside, content to get a sense of the post while waiting for his driver to return. He sat on a bench in front of the shops and watched the people walking past.
A few glanced at him as he sat there, dressed in suit and tie and clearly out of place among them. Many of the people who walked past him, men and women alike, wore uniform. Most of the others wore shorts and tennis shoes, and many of the women, too often those who shouldn’t have, wore halter tops. They appeared to be dressed either for war or for the beach. Many of the men were fit and powerful; many of the women were enormously, terrifyingly fat.
Cars drove by slowly, their drivers searching for parking spaces: big cars, Japanese cars, cars with that same AFI number plate. Most had the windows raised, while from the air-conditioned interiors blared rock music in varying degrees of loudness.
They strolled by, amiable and friendly, greeting one another and exchanging pleasant words, thoroughly at home in their little American village here in Italy.
Donna Leon has a sharp eye for detail, doesn’t she? Don’t you feel like you were sitting there on the bench with Commissario Brunetti, seeing through his eyes?
Reading Donna Leon transports you to another world, Venice, and the joy of reading has less to do with solving the crime than being able, for a short time, to stop and drink coffee while tracking down a criminal, eating a meal or two with Brunetti and his family, experiencing the frustrations of the Venetian bureaucracy in all its radiant corruption, walking along the canals so early in the morning that the delivery men haven’t even begun yet making their deliveries . . .
And yet the problems addressed in the Leon books are part of a greater world picture, and Leon has an enormous capability to draw blurry lines with increasing clarity as we watch how international corruption works hand in hand blindly taking profits while dribble by dribble degrading the world for future inhabitants.
Ramadan Supplies
Oh! It’s a perfect day to be out shopping. Stores are putting out all the special Ramadan things – and now is the time you can find all the things that have been missing all summer. It’s a lush, wealthy time, anticipating the joys of the coming month of Ramadan.
And look what I found! Straight from the Street of Lanterns?
No! Made in China!
Kuwait For Kuwaitis
Today, two Indian gentlemen passed me on the Gulf Road and ended up in front of me at the next stoplight. They gave me a good laugh:
Pastor “apologizes”
This story is from yesterday’s Arab Times. I am putting in the whole thing because of what is missing:
A US pastor accused of beating his televangelist wife Joanita Bynum has apologized to all Christians over a case that could see him imprisoned for up to 27 years.
In a statement issued through his lawyers Wednesday, Thomas W. Weeks III, 40, apologized to Christians, his church family and others “having to endure this ordeal.”
Weeks, known to his followers as Bishop Weeks, is accused of beating, stomping, choking and threatening to kill his gospel singer wife during an August 21 argument outside a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been indicted on felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from the alleged attack.
“Because of the method in which this was handled just hours following the situation, it has not only hurt me, but has damaged the reputation of Christians around the world,” Weeks said.
“It is for this reason that I continue to trust in God while the storm would try to engulf me. Finally, I’m asking every Christian to pray that God’s will be done.”
In his statement, Weeks, the pastor and co-founder of Global Destiny Ministries, also cautioned against rushing to judgement in the case, and said he would give his side of what happened at the appropriate time.
This article makes my blood boil.
He apologizes to everyone – EXCEPT to his wife, whom he beat, stomped, choked and threatened to kill.
This is typical of the cowardly kind of bully who beats up on those smaller than he is and tries to make them believe that it is THEIR FAULT, that they drive him to these vicious rages by . . . oh who knows . . . a tone of voice, a step too loud, one of the kids gets a bad grade. It is always everyone else’s fault, and he is quick to kick the nearest victim, usually his wife. And the saddest thing of all, is that the wife, and sometimes the kids, buy into this jerk’s reasoning. “You made me do it.”
“You made me blacken your eye. You made me break your arm. You made me push you down the stairs. You made me drink. You enraged me. It’s all YOUR fault.”
If you are one of those cowardly, contemptible bullies reading this, I have nothing but scorn for you.
I hope this guys wife leaves him and never looks back. Of course, the problem is, he is one of those self-absorbed imbeciles who might feel she is his property, and might decide to kill her for leaving him. Still, even a moment’s freedom from this abusive lout’s controlling rages is better than another minute in his presence.
In the last line, he says he will give his side in time – yeh, when he can figure out how to present it so that HE is the victim, and his beaten wife the bad guy. I am not going to hold my breath.
Get an Early Lead and Hold It
The title line is from an old joke: a high school football coach tells his team the secret of winning – Get an early lead and hold it.
Many of you have asked about why it even matters to me what the Yemeni Star is all about. So I am going to tell you a secret from my childhood, a secret that got me through school with good grades.
It’s in two parts. The first is about getting an early lead – it’s called The Halo Effect and it is like getting an early lead and holding it. You work really hard and get good grades when you are young, and those early grades influence the later graders to give you the benefit of the doubt as you move up the grades. It doesn’t always work, but often enough that it has been given it’s own name.
The second secret is to develop an area of interest to YOU. For me, it was the stars. I loved (and still love!) stars, constellations, comets, heavenly rhythms, music of the planets, etc. For me it is God’s hand on this vast, cosmic scale. So I first started writing early reports on stars, constellations, etc. You know, how you have to write science projects?
From the constellations, I branched out into mythology – what a great study. So many references in daily life and literature refer to mythical beings and happenings, and if you don’t have a clue, you miss a whole level of richness. Like if someone refers to a Sisyphusian endeavor, you don’t have to run go look it up, you know they are referring to an almost impossible task. Between astronomy and mythology, there was enough material that I could take previous reports every year and ramp ’em up for the next year. I usually learned something, but the most important thing I learned was that I could succeed without having to re-invent the wheel every year.
If you can develop a particular field that interests you, your school life can be a lot more interesting. And believe me, we all know how deadening the school experience can be, unless you have really good teachers who can make it come alive for you. You have the most amazing tools available to you – a world of information, via the ‘net, and GoogleEarth – GoogleSky,, Wikipedia, and all kinds of illustrations available to add depth to your papers and reports. You are truly a generation who can have a lot of fun learning, if you take responsibility for your own education.
(Big hurrahs and shouts out here for Elijah, Swair, Magical Droplets,, MacoholicQ8, and all my other teaching friends, my classroom-warriors friends, heading back to do battle with and enlighten reluctant minds; you are my heroes!)
Rape in Kuwait (2)
There seem to be some misconceptions running around about rape in Kuwait. One misconception is that Kuwaitis commit a lot of rape. If you read the newspapers, however, you will discover that a lot of the rapes committed are nationality on nationality, for example, one senior Phillipina lady will befriend an unhappy domestic worker, will “help” her get away, and the domestic finds herself abducted, gang raped and in sexual slavery. That’s one common story.
Domestics of all nationalities are abducted off the streets, taken to apartments or villas, raped repeatedly by two or more men, and then dropped off on the street (or dropped off a balcony). People don’t seem to be very concerned about domestic servants being people here, having the right NOT to be raped, it sort of seems like business as usual, no matter who is raped or doing the raping. I have yet to read of one single case being prosecuted or sentenced in the Kuwait newspapers, but maybe I missed a day or two.
Another common story is Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani on Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani, and that can be men abducting/raping men, or men abducting/raping women. Some of these women are also recruited into prostitution, and are found when the police raid the dens of iniquity, catching the men and men or men and women in “uncompromising” positions, or, even better – RED HANDED!
There is a whole catagory of abductions – Kuwaiti, Bedoun or other Gulf or Arab nationality where a man or woman, or men or women, is/are abducted and taken to camps in the desert and raped multiple times. Sometimes they are left naked by the side of the road. Sometimes their dead bodies are found, and occasionally enough clues to guess at the identity of the abductors/rapists.
Then there are the men that rape children. It can be within a family. It can be within a building. It can be within a neighborhood. Many times the child knows the rapist, and is told that if they say anything, the rapist will kill or harm the child’s parents. There was an epidemic of child rape in Hawali, and although the man arrested cries “I didn’t do it!” the fact is that the epidemic of rape in Hawali has stopped. That doesn’t mean that children aren’t being raped, it just means that the Hawali Monster seems to be off the streets of Hawali.
Objectively, if there can be said to be a “good” thing about rape in Kuwait, it is that so few of them are fatal.
What can, accurately, be said about Kuwait is that there seems to be a lot of rape. If you think I exaggerate, I challenge you to read the Kuwait papers every day for a month.
When there is a lot of rape, it means there is a social, legal and political climate that tolerates rape. It means that rape cases are not handled with a lot of attention to gathering evidence. It means that men and women are not encouraged to persue rape charges. It means that the police are not very interested in investigating accusations of rape. It means that the legal system is not very interested in prosecuting rape. It means that the rape victims are not valued highly enough to deserve not to be raped.
Rape happens everywhere. Rape happens in wars, rape happens on the streets. In most places, we are taught, rape isn’t about sex as much as it is about power. Here, in Kuwait, I am inclined to think it may be a little bit of both.
I’ve worked with rape victims in several different locations. Working with the victims gives you so much admiration for women, what they endure, what they survive, and their deeply ingrained sense of priorities and self. You’d think the experience would be devastating, but the women who have experienced rape and overcome it have been anything but devastated – many of them become truly awesome individuals, literally, awe-inspiring. They refuse to be victims. They carry on with their lives. They accomplish. They let their anger fuel and energize them to become incredibly accomplished individuals. It isn’t surprising – wealth and accomplishment also give you additional protection against it ever happening again.
There is another tragedy in Kuwait – male rapes. When men rape another men, like in prison, it is very much a power thing. Me big – you little. Me do what I want with you. Most of the victims I have met, or heard about are young teens. Being raped by a bigger, older male really skews their lives. They begin to question what it was about themself that got them raped, they question whether maybe they are gay and don’t know it, they ask, over and over – Why ME? Young men who were good at school start getting bad grades, they can’t concentrate, they often turn to drugs.
Being forced to have sex, whether you are man, woman, or child, is wrong. And doing nothing to stop this epidemic is also wrong. To look the other way is wrong. To say it isn’t happening is wrong. To become so used to it that your heart becomes calloused is just plain wrong.
I know most of the time my blog is a nice place to visit, and these entries make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable. I myself am so uncomfortable that, as Martin Luther said (only he said it in German) “I cannot other. God help me.”
One Year Today
(Photo above from a very cool website called Coolest Birthday Cakes.Com. Oops, no, it is not the 50th anniversary of this blog, only the 1st, but I love the cake!)
One year ago today, I gathered up every fragment of courage I could find and joined the blogging world. You can’t imagine how nervous I was. I had a lot to learn about WordPress to start, it was a steep learning curve.
I had done my homework. When moving to Kuwait, I discovered the information-rich world of blogs, and while trying to figure out what life in Kuwait might be like, also discovered several women bloggers I really liked: The Queen of Kuwaiti Bloggers Jewaira, a highly literate and often cleverly funny Alflaila / Zin / 1001 Nights, and a bravly funny MiYaFuSHi. Ladies, what I liked the very best about your blogs was that when I would go to the comments sections, I would learn all kinds of things, things I didn’t even know I didn’t know!
And the men – Don Veto(he has a sharp eye for inconsistencies), Hilaliya a Third Culture Kid with an entertainment/political/social issues blog, Skunk who talks about money and culture with irreverance and wit and enormous insight, and of course Purg whom I found scarily intimidating until I found out he was a sweetie-pie. There was also Gastronomica / the Equalizer who used to write lyrical and beautiful posts, but who opened his own restaurant and doesn’t seem to blog anymore.
Thank you all – you inspired me and helped me have the courage to jump in.
Zin, you most of all. I remember a post where you asked if you should even continue, that you knew there were a lot of viewers, but few responses, and boom! you got all kinds of responses! When you blog, you kind of put yourself out there, and that can be a little scary. You were an inspiration to me.
Thank you all, old friends and new, for making me so welcome. One year later, I feel like I have a whole new world of virtual friends. 🙂
When I started blogging, my niece, Little Diamond, was a frequent visitor, and just one short month later, she also started blogging. Then my nephew Earthling blogged for a while on the Google campus and the food there. My sister, Sparkle also blogs sporadically. And, just so you know, my Mom reads the blog, so I am very careful about language!
I hope you are having as much fun with Here, There and Everywhere as I am. I love the times you jump in and give me the information I need to answer those useless questions that buzz around in my head, like with the Yemeni Star. Now I know something new! I love it!
The only bad surprises I have had were the occasional nasty comment and the garbage bins full of spam. I have to go through the spam, and I try to do it quickly, to make sure good comments don’t get lost, but oh, what horrid stuff there is out there, and I am offended they would want to put it on MY blog. It makes my skin crawl!
As for the occasional nasty or aggressive comment – mostly, I let them stand. I figure it tells you more about the mentality of the commenter than anything about my blog. Some people just carry a lot of baggage, more to be pitied than condemned.
Thank you. My time here in Kuwait is so much richer for knowing you through your blogs, and for the good and bad times we share.
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