We Do Not Have Homosexuals in Iran
I found this clip through Global Voices Kuwait who got it from somewhere else, too! Isn’t the net great?
Mahmud Ahmadinejad,Iranian president,said,in Columbia University,”we do not have homosexuals in Iran like you do in your country.” He brought the house down. Most just laughed, a few boo-ed.
The Columbia University president has taken a lot of criticism for his decision to have Ahmadinejad speak. He stuck to his guns.
You can see the film clip for yourself here: We Do Not have Homosexuals in Iran.
Ramadan Futoor
I was invited to a friend’s for Iftar the other day. We played, and as the day lengthened, she napped while I read. Her husband came down yelling “get up! get up! It’s almost time!” and had the radio on so we could hear the sound of the cannon, announcing the end of the day’s fasting.
We had water and dates, and then soup. Because these are dear friends, and because they love me, we also had Kuwaiti fish!
It was stuffed with parsley, onions and garlic, oh WOW. It was delicious.
As we ate, they were telling me about the thin thin pancakes you can buy at this time of the year to make a special stew. They are made on a dome shaped pan, with a very liquid dough, and evidently you can buy them at the co-op or along the side of the road (I have got to find one of these women!) because the thin pancake you can get during Ramadan is very close, I think, to the brik skin that you use for the Tuna Tunisienne which, hmmmmmm, could also be made with just about any leftover fish.
You have to be quick, because the dough is so fragile. While the photo shows all the ends tucked in, I was never that good, and neither are most Tunisiens – most of the brik I ate in Tunisia were all just folded over and fried in olive oil. So you have to have the oil hot before you put the brik in, and it sizzles, but it can’t be too hot because it has to cook long enough to cook the egg (if you add egg) or to heat the tuna through. Ohhhh, yummmm!
I was also asking about Swair’s Ramadan Soft Dumplings / Lgaimat and they were laughing and telling me how hard they are to make well, and that you have to eat them all the same day they are made, they are so fragile.
Later in the meal, as they were showing me low to roll the rice and fish into a ball together and pop it into your mouth in the old gulf way, my host mentioned the act of making that ball is called “ligma” and – – – ta da! it is the same root as Swair’s lgaimat!
I don’t know about you, but making a connection like that is like having a big light go on in my head. I love it. I can’t always remember words correctly unless I write them down, but this one – making balls to pop in your mouth/ making sweet dumplings balls – don’tcha just love it when things come together like that?
(I am posting this early in the day because you won’t feel hungry for fish this early if you are fasting – I hope – and it might give you a good idea for tonight’s Futoor!) Ramadan kareem!
Kuwait Infant Mortality Rate
This very sad little item is from last week’s Kuwait Times:
Officials at the Ministry of Health disclosed that deaths among newborn infants were increasing at an alarming rate in Kuwait due to premature births and delayed deliveries over the past couple of years. The rate they said, touched 17.9 per thousand during the year 2006, in addition to the drastic decline in the quality of healthcare accorded to newborn infants. They called for urgent decisions to be taken to improve the healthcare for newborn infants.
Deaths among infants increased from 8.4 per thousand in the year 2005 to 9.1 per thousand during 2006.
The Jahra Governorate reported the highest rate of deaths among infants. Statistics indicated that 28.9 percent of the infants’ deaths were caused due to the short pregnancy period and inadequate weight of the infants when born and 17.2 percent were caused by various congenital deficiencies.
Jimmie Rodgers Follow Up
A commenter, Thomas, responded yesterday to an article about Jimmie Rodgers that appeared several months ago (You can read the first article by clicking the blue type above) with a reference to a radio interview with Jimmie. It is a total hoot – when the interviewer calls, you can hear all his dogs in the background, and he asks the interviewer to give him a minute to get all the dogs out of the room – evidence enough for me that he is up and about, and capable of living a full life once again.
If you’ll remember, Jimmie Rodgers was a popular singer who, after a bad accident, had a metal plate put in his head. Years later, he was having it removed, and it was a highly risky operation. His family asked for the prayers of the people – and by a miracle, the operation was far easier than expected, and a total success.
You can hear the entire radio interview for yourself by clicking Jimmie Rodgers Radio Interview.
Many thanks, Thomas.
Ayb! Ayb!* Parking Hall of Shame
I am not outraged just because I passed up these two spots, both empty, once I saw the sign, which you will notice is in Arabic, English and just in case you can’t read, also in sign language. NO PARKING!
I am not outraged just because only about 20 feet from these two spots are also parking spots, it just means walking a few more feet in the hot sun, no, not rock star parking, but not like walking a couple hundred meters, either.
I am outraged because these were WOMEN. WOMEN! We know better! We have aging mothers and children, we sometimes NEED special treatment, but these women who parked here were both ample and able. Actually, in the first photo, I was so angry, I had the women as they got out of their cars, but I took a deep breath, and decided that would NOT be a good idea in case I ever want to go here again. They might beat me up! They might arrest me for insulting them!
But I am insulted. This is Ramadan, people are fasting, and it is hot hot hot, even though it is cooling down a little. Women faint, men get electrolyte imbalances, and people need ambulances. THIS is AMBULANCE PARKING.
There is something in each of us that believes in variations of Locard’s Exchange Principal where anytime two people come into contact they exchange some physical matter, no matter how small. On some level, when we say “what goes around comes around” we are applying the same physical properties to the spiritual world, and why not? Are we not taught that we are to treat our neighbors as we would want to be treated?
So my fear for these women who would park in an ambulance spot is that one day they would need an ambulance, and find that the ambulance cannot park because someone is parked in the ambulance spot. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
*Shame! Shame!
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Once I picked up Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, I barely put it down again until I was finished. I found myself thoroughly involved in the lives of Mariam and Leila, unwilling even to stop to fix dinner! The author of Kiterunner has hit another home run.
There was a time when we would listen to older state department types talk – with enormous longing – about their tours of duty in Afghanistan, pre-Soviet invasion, pre-Taliban, pre-American occupation. Have you ever read James Michener’s Caravan? There are two countries I long to vist, but the countries they are now are not the countries I heard people talk about – Afghanistan and Ethiopia. Our friends loved their times in these two countries.
A Thousand Splendid Suns opens in a small village outside Herat, and then takes us to Kabul. Mariam is born harami, a bastard, of a village cleaning woman in the house of a very wealthy man. Her father builds a small hut for her mother and herself in a remote part of the small village, and visits Mariam every week. Life is simple, and difficult, but also full of kind people who visit and who are concerned with Mariam’s welfare.
After marrying, Mariam goes to Kabul and learns a new way of life with her husband, Rasheed. What fascinates me with Hosseini is that while Rashid is one of the villians of this novel, he is just a man, doing the best he can given his own upbringing and limitations. In a sense, he is “everyman”, the strutting, domineering, sometimes brutal and abusive husband we find in every culture. But Hosseini also gives him transient bouts of kindness which blow through a little less often than the transient bouts of cruelty.
He also gives us good men, in this book, in the person of Jalil, the father of Mariam, who steps up to the plate in acknowledging Mariam and supporting her and her mother, but fails to nurture in the very real way women need nurturing from their fathers in order to reach their full potential in life. Hosseini also gives us a very strong man in the book, Tariq, who, although he has only one leg, is more wholly a man than any other man in the book. I imagine that this is not unintentional. (How Kissingerian is that for a double negative?!)
Written almost entirely in the Afghan world of women, we see through the eyes of Mariam, and later Leila, the transitions in Afghanistan and their impacts on daily life. We experience happiness with them, and peaceful scenes in quiet moments, raising the children, stepping outside into the garden at night to share a cup of tea and a shared bowl of halwa.
Between the moments of peacefulness, we also experience incoming morter rounds, explosions, marauding bands of warlords, and starvation. We go into a women’s hospital under Taliban control, where there are no medications, no running water, no instruments, and an Afghani female doctor does a C-section with no anaesthesia and is required to keep her burqa on. We watch a mother abandon her role and take to her bed when her two sons are killed fighting the Soviets, we experience betrayal and we experience helplessness, and we experience a Kabul women’s prison. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a rich feast of experiences, juxtaposing the everyday chores of women around the world – cooking, raising children, laundry – with events on the world stage.
(Available from Amazon for $14.27 plus shipping.)
OJ Simpson Charged Again
And speaking of idiots, if you’ve committed a double murder and gotten away with it, why would you be so arrogant as to keep having run-ins with the cops? No matter how good the lawyers are that you hire, one day your luck runs out. With all my heart, I am hoping that this is the day for OJ Simpson.
God willing, your criminal arrogance will trip you.
The following is from CNN News, where you can read the entire story.
LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) — Prosecutors on Tuesday filed numerous criminal charges against former NFL star O.J. Simpson and three other men in connection with an alleged armed robbery at a Las Vegas hotel last week.
The 11 charges include two counts of first-degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon; two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon; and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon.
Prosecutors say Simpson and his co-defendants — Walter Alexander, Clarence Stewart and Michael McClinton — committed kidnapping because they intended to hold or detain the two alleged victims using a weapon.
Not Too Bright
In yesterday’s Kuwait Times was a very dramatic telling of a drug bust. Police had sighted someone suspicious in a car, upon approaching, the suspect ran, the police chased. Now, it becomes very cinematic, as the police chase, the man runs up into a building and jumps off a second floor balcony, and the policeman follows him, injuring himself. Another policeman picks up the chase and eventually the suspect is captured, only to slip right through the fingers of the police.
Pretty exciting so far, huh?
In today’s Kuwait Times, the saga continues:
Escaped Drug Dealer Chats into Custody
Following up yesterday’s on foot chase of a drug dealer in Salwa where Lt. Hamad Al-Zuwayyed was injured when he jumped off a second floor balcony to catch up with the suspect, Al-Zuwayyed never thought that the second accomplice who managed to escape arrest would be his hospital roommate. Security sources explained that while receiving treatment at Adan hospital, another patient arrived and was placed in the bed next to Al-Zuwayyed’s. Then, on chatting at night to kill time, the man told Al-Zuwayyed that he was hit by a car while being chased by a policeman in Salwa. Al-Zuwwayed immediately called the police who raided the hospital and arrested the suspect.
Don’tcha just love it???
Mosque 1, Crane 0
This is a photo for Little Diamond/Dr. Diamond who was with me coming back from Al Kout, in Fehaheel, when we saw one of the funniest things I have ever seen.
An old mosque along the side of Gulf Road was being torn down for renovations. A crane had been hired to knock down the old minaret, but as it swung the wrecking ball to hit the minaret, the ball somehow tangled or something, and the crane fell over. It stayed there for quite a while as they figured out what to do next. I wish I had a photo. We always called it Mosque 1, Crane 0.
So Little Diamond, this is for you, a photo of the new minarets going up in place of the one that bravely beat the first crane:
Kuwait Blue Sky
Friday, for the first time, the really blue sky was back! There must have been a subtle shift in the wind, as all we have seen all summer has been haze, and at best, a slight lightening of the haze.
My public art for this week:
A Salmiyya power station
A giant sized rosewater bottle on 303 (Look at the sky!)
Last, but not least, I spotted another of those Palm Tree Antennas in front of the old Regency Palace Hotel. I can’t remember seeing it before, so maybe it is new. Where have YOU seen other Palm Tree Antennas?
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