A Blogger about to be born
You have to check out this teacher, she has great potenials, her isster is a blogger but she isn't (and why not?!). I just wish she starts blogging, we need more Arabian Bloggers like her.
Anyhow, I’ll leave you with her letter with the title ( Out of place, out of time):
Thirty seven degrees and a half was a temperature high enough to make me DREAM of an ice cream. How full of calories it was and how fat I’d feel after presumably having eaten it didn’t quite matter! I was ready to devour the biggest cone of ice cream I could lay my hands on. But where to get anything cold in AbuDees, let alone some decent ice cream. It was so hot that the water evaporated from my eyes and my throat felt the desert of Gobi. One of my 4th year students must have seen the camels in my eyes and gave me a bottle of water he had bought for himself.
“Shukran!”After that and after all students and patients were “checked- in”, a girl student from 4th year approached me and asked if she could talk to me. So we sat down. Shaking, she asks me what I think of her postponing this semester. I ask why. She says she’s doing very poorly at most exams; her requirements are all half fulfilled (so far I thought that this was VERY normal of a dental student!). Then she added, I’ve been diagnosed with OCD. I wasn’t shy to ask what that was. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She feels out of time, like she’s watching herself, and the one doing what she’s doing is not her, but rather another person. She can’t find herself, and everything seems senseless. Everyday she has the feeling that she’s been through the daily incidences once before,”deja-vu”, the other day she had an exam and she knew the answers right away, because she had done this exam once before. Or the other person she sees living her life did the exam. She feels out of place.
I almost want to joke and say: join the club sweetie! Instead, I try to find the best words for such a young broken soul.Out of place… out of time… left behind… stuck… this is how i feel everday when i leave my house in the morning. I wash in the morning with minimal water, as the Israelis have taken most of the Palestinian reservoir of water. We get into our car; we drive along horribly run down roads. These roads are SO neglected because they belong to the municipality of Jerusalem, but since the building of the wall this part was simply discarded. Dumped. It belongs to no municipality now. The garbage is not collected. Things are not maintained. BUT the inhabitants of that area pay their yearly taxes to Israel as if they were citizens of Jerusalem and were receiving all the basic services. Their phone lines have Jerusalem numbers. That no-man’s land is called Kalandia & Kufr Akab.
Outside Kalandia two army check points await us. Just 800 m apart. Its 8:15 and already 27 degrees. We wither in the heat. Nobody cares about us, we can rot in hell and no one would care, our time is worthless. Our lives can just as much be dust… we can wait at check points. And we should say thank you Israel for delaying us. We should acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. It’s right to suck the very last drop of life and joy out of our veins.
Everyday we drive past The Wall on our way to work. The Wall is like the gallows’ blade. I look at it and I feel a void inside my heart. There… behind these walls will be “the forbidden city” where only those who deserve it enter its gates. The rest are trash… hawiyyet daffeh… the ‘green ID’: no entrance from Atarot highway even with official permits from the police. The green IDs are permitted to enter only from the Dahye entrance. Dust and dirt. And very very long lanes of people try to get to their work.
As we drive back home, I see another settlement being enlarged, at least 20 new houses. I feel out of place… out of time… like it can’t be true that this is happening in the 21st century… I recall the feeling I had last week. We drove to Nablus after work last Thursday. It became dark as we left Ramallah. All along the way to Nablus there were the lights of Israeli colonies on the tips of the hills, here and there orange lights indicating settlement roads, and there another set of orange lights.. Hundreds of little settlements of 100 houses or more… all well lit with good roads. It felt as if a dragon were perching on those hill-tips snorting its ash-laden breath down our backs… not yet spitting fire, but ready to do so at any moment.As we approach our neighborhood we notice a HUGE cloud of smoke rising from downtown Ramallah. We call our secretary to ask what was going on. We can’t hear her on the phone… the shooting in the background is too loud. As soon as we enter the house we glue ourselves at the TV. Aljazeera is broadcasting live. The sky is raining stones. I do not know where from. But the stones are just drizzling. As one vehicle withdraws, a wave of young boys and men sweeps the street and keeps throwing stones. Shots are heard. A boy collapses. My heart stops. No no no… Please, don’t die!
Head injury. Dumdum shot in his eye.
Ten minutes later Guevara Budairy gets us the news from the Hospital. 4 are already dead.
Four mothers will be weeping tonight.
Four families will be stroking framed photos whilst wiping a tear next year like today.
Four souls have been plucked today.
I don’t even know their names. What was their favorite color? Were they nice to their sisters? What was their favorite food? This all seems so shallow now… but these shallow things are what make us human. These little details that are overlooked by the world media, portraying us as blood-thirsty terrorists.
As the Jazeera camera sweeps the hospital scene a young man runs inside… the camera catches his hand… it is dangling by merely skin from the arm… his right hand… dumdum.. I want to tell my student that the world is not a place that wants to make sense.My Iraqi friend sent me the other day an email, the subject said: “a gift for you”. I read it eagerly. I read it again just to make sure my eyes were not fooling me.
It was a caption of an article written by another Iraqi person. He was commenting on the news article “alqaeda now founded a base in Gaza”. I quote: [now oh Palestinians you can taste a bit of what Iraq has suffered. this will teach you how to cheer for saddam. You deserve a person like Sharon, and now Alqaeda will give you a taste of hell just to teach you a lesson how to support saddam so this is how low Arabs have scooped.
I mourn the friend I lost, and draw the curtain on memories of a friendship that seems now so distant.I want to hug my student, and gently break the news to her: the world is theatre of puppets. Strings pull our limbs, so we move. Orders are given so our lives are spared. Orders are given, so we are allowed to keep our heartbeat. Then orders are given to press the button, and Albright simply says: it was worth it. Iraq.
Sudan.
Somalia.
Afghanistan.
Guantanamo prison.
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Hiroshima.
Dresden.
Don’t you all feel out of place when you think about these places/people? Don’t you feel it’s almost unreal?
We are in the 21st century and are living in barbaric times.
Is my student the one who’s odd? Or is us who have a psychotic disorder? A disorder called “dead feelings”?
Correction: I’d rather called it “strong feelings unattached to basic action”-disorder
Source
Anyhow, I’ll leave you with her letter with the title ( Out of place, out of time):
Thirty seven degrees and a half was a temperature high enough to make me DREAM of an ice cream. How full of calories it was and how fat I’d feel after presumably having eaten it didn’t quite matter! I was ready to devour the biggest cone of ice cream I could lay my hands on. But where to get anything cold in AbuDees, let alone some decent ice cream. It was so hot that the water evaporated from my eyes and my throat felt the desert of Gobi. One of my 4th year students must have seen the camels in my eyes and gave me a bottle of water he had bought for himself.
“Shukran!”After that and after all students and patients were “checked- in”, a girl student from 4th year approached me and asked if she could talk to me. So we sat down. Shaking, she asks me what I think of her postponing this semester. I ask why. She says she’s doing very poorly at most exams; her requirements are all half fulfilled (so far I thought that this was VERY normal of a dental student!). Then she added, I’ve been diagnosed with OCD. I wasn’t shy to ask what that was. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. She feels out of time, like she’s watching herself, and the one doing what she’s doing is not her, but rather another person. She can’t find herself, and everything seems senseless. Everyday she has the feeling that she’s been through the daily incidences once before,”deja-vu”, the other day she had an exam and she knew the answers right away, because she had done this exam once before. Or the other person she sees living her life did the exam. She feels out of place.
I almost want to joke and say: join the club sweetie! Instead, I try to find the best words for such a young broken soul.Out of place… out of time… left behind… stuck… this is how i feel everday when i leave my house in the morning. I wash in the morning with minimal water, as the Israelis have taken most of the Palestinian reservoir of water. We get into our car; we drive along horribly run down roads. These roads are SO neglected because they belong to the municipality of Jerusalem, but since the building of the wall this part was simply discarded. Dumped. It belongs to no municipality now. The garbage is not collected. Things are not maintained. BUT the inhabitants of that area pay their yearly taxes to Israel as if they were citizens of Jerusalem and were receiving all the basic services. Their phone lines have Jerusalem numbers. That no-man’s land is called Kalandia & Kufr Akab.
Outside Kalandia two army check points await us. Just 800 m apart. Its 8:15 and already 27 degrees. We wither in the heat. Nobody cares about us, we can rot in hell and no one would care, our time is worthless. Our lives can just as much be dust… we can wait at check points. And we should say thank you Israel for delaying us. We should acknowledge the right of Israel to exist. It’s right to suck the very last drop of life and joy out of our veins.
Everyday we drive past The Wall on our way to work. The Wall is like the gallows’ blade. I look at it and I feel a void inside my heart. There… behind these walls will be “the forbidden city” where only those who deserve it enter its gates. The rest are trash… hawiyyet daffeh… the ‘green ID’: no entrance from Atarot highway even with official permits from the police. The green IDs are permitted to enter only from the Dahye entrance. Dust and dirt. And very very long lanes of people try to get to their work.
As we drive back home, I see another settlement being enlarged, at least 20 new houses. I feel out of place… out of time… like it can’t be true that this is happening in the 21st century… I recall the feeling I had last week. We drove to Nablus after work last Thursday. It became dark as we left Ramallah. All along the way to Nablus there were the lights of Israeli colonies on the tips of the hills, here and there orange lights indicating settlement roads, and there another set of orange lights.. Hundreds of little settlements of 100 houses or more… all well lit with good roads. It felt as if a dragon were perching on those hill-tips snorting its ash-laden breath down our backs… not yet spitting fire, but ready to do so at any moment.As we approach our neighborhood we notice a HUGE cloud of smoke rising from downtown Ramallah. We call our secretary to ask what was going on. We can’t hear her on the phone… the shooting in the background is too loud. As soon as we enter the house we glue ourselves at the TV. Aljazeera is broadcasting live. The sky is raining stones. I do not know where from. But the stones are just drizzling. As one vehicle withdraws, a wave of young boys and men sweeps the street and keeps throwing stones. Shots are heard. A boy collapses. My heart stops. No no no… Please, don’t die!
Head injury. Dumdum shot in his eye.
Ten minutes later Guevara Budairy gets us the news from the Hospital. 4 are already dead.
Four mothers will be weeping tonight.
Four families will be stroking framed photos whilst wiping a tear next year like today.
Four souls have been plucked today.
I don’t even know their names. What was their favorite color? Were they nice to their sisters? What was their favorite food? This all seems so shallow now… but these shallow things are what make us human. These little details that are overlooked by the world media, portraying us as blood-thirsty terrorists.
As the Jazeera camera sweeps the hospital scene a young man runs inside… the camera catches his hand… it is dangling by merely skin from the arm… his right hand… dumdum.. I want to tell my student that the world is not a place that wants to make sense.My Iraqi friend sent me the other day an email, the subject said: “a gift for you”. I read it eagerly. I read it again just to make sure my eyes were not fooling me.
It was a caption of an article written by another Iraqi person. He was commenting on the news article “alqaeda now founded a base in Gaza”. I quote: [now oh Palestinians you can taste a bit of what Iraq has suffered. this will teach you how to cheer for saddam. You deserve a person like Sharon, and now Alqaeda will give you a taste of hell just to teach you a lesson how to support saddam so this is how low Arabs have scooped.
I mourn the friend I lost, and draw the curtain on memories of a friendship that seems now so distant.I want to hug my student, and gently break the news to her: the world is theatre of puppets. Strings pull our limbs, so we move. Orders are given so our lives are spared. Orders are given, so we are allowed to keep our heartbeat. Then orders are given to press the button, and Albright simply says: it was worth it. Iraq.
Sudan.
Somalia.
Afghanistan.
Guantanamo prison.
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Hiroshima.
Dresden.
Don’t you all feel out of place when you think about these places/people? Don’t you feel it’s almost unreal?
We are in the 21st century and are living in barbaric times.
Is my student the one who’s odd? Or is us who have a psychotic disorder? A disorder called “dead feelings”?
Correction: I’d rather called it “strong feelings unattached to basic action”-disorder
Source
posted by Arabian Anon at 2:57 PM
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