I shiver
when the oblique rays of the occidental sunshine
fall a warm memory after
like an ephemeral mystery as arabesque as a butterfly
flitting from inside a wireless wagon to a harmonious whole
then I remember
I travelled the distance and the space before
longed for the absence, the desire to no avail!
Hardly a day passes without some mention of the conflict between ‘the only democratic country’ in the middle east, in other words Israel, and its hostile neighbours. In many and ironical ways this is curious, at least for anyone who hears the combination of the words ‘Israel and the Promised Land and Palestine and Hamas the terrorists’ but does not have a freaking idea of how these can end up in the same news context with so many images popping up and lack of historical background carving for recovery in the mind.
And the conflict is not so easy to be diverted with venal resolutions of the big big big international organisations. So what is it really? An extension of the historic enmity since the biblical times? A divine war between the followers of Judaism and Islam whose supporters are suspicious and hostile of each other’s divinity in the context of authenticity? An ethnic war, reflecting the most awkward pattern in the light of demographic changes? A territorial war of a country trying to expand and secure its borders at the expense of its neighbours? A war of self-defence of a newly established country trying to maintain the welfare of its citizens against the threats of its venomous neighbours? A war of liberation from not only a nationalist and racist state but also from an imperial war reflecting the rivalries and tugs of war of big big imperially disappointed countries? A part of a big plan in the heart of a region endowed by nature with the most precious beauty, i.e. oil? Or lastly and simply, a series of connected and meaningful events that have had real, tragic and unforeseen consequences for a people living in an area which is only tiny, minuscule in world terms?
All these elements might be present in the conflict, however, what matters is the last, for me at least. Having recently seen the documentary by Bianca Zammit on Gaza’s farmers and just watched the Netanyahu’s showdown in the U.N. meeting yesterday, I have made up my mind now: Palestine is the homeland of any humanbeing who can separate the reality of past events from the rhetoric designed by politicians to create a viable and legitimizing past that has invariably discriminated against and killed people not only with propaganda and guns but with ‘phosphorus bombs’. Legitimizing one’s position by favourable self-images and despicable other-images is an old trick in any conflict of today’s politics. Netanyahu’s attempts yesterday was no distinction yet he has a special place in my heart now that he used that term: ‘the insatiable crocodile of Islam’. If I might use the mirror stage theory, with the permission of Lacan his excellency, to explain big big Netanyahu’s psyche, the guy sees himself in the image of ‘Crocodile Dundee’. And of course a little bit of Said would complete the scene: a handsome European adventurer fighting against the monsters, mummies and crocodiles of the Orient.
P.S. Bianca Zammit’s documentary was shown in Lancaster at the Gregson Art Centre http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index9b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=4&l2_id=99&Content_ID=2122
and in reference to the beauty of nature metaphor, i.e. oil, it is worth translating an old Turkish song by Ajda Pekkan:
Petrol
It was twilight before you arrived
The world was a desert, dead-calm, I dont know why?
I looked for a sweet light everywhere
A fire to warm up my heart
When you came up, it was as if sun set
Bright my day and night, how beautiful life!
As if everything turned into something-else
Now I understand
How hard and dire was life before you came…
the Israeli Political Machine
I am not so much worried as betrayed by language when I hear a new vocabulary being invented or recontextualised by politicians and journalists. The most recent history of ‘killing words’ dates back to 9/11. Indeed, an ancient historian said “what people say about what happened in the past hurts people more than what really happened”.
It was a decade ago when President Bush invented his new vocabulary, the gist of which is ‘global war on terrorism’. And, of course, the word ‘terrorism’ referred to ‘Jihadist Islamic terrorism’ which was later on defined and elaborated on in the post 9/11 reports, news articles and statements. Then we lived in a decade of linguistic havoc where words like ‘terror’, ‘fundamentalism’, and ‘extremism’ first became concepts, varying in meaning from powerful to less powerful, then vanished, at least for me after this year’s ‘mass killing’, but not ‘terrorism’, in Oslo. Alas Mr Bush, I had almost been convinced of the omnipotence of your “Al Qida”!
Now, as of today, thanks to the UN report on the 2010 flotilla raid, I have been semantically paralysed once more again. ‘Excessive power’ and ‘security’ are my new assassins. The latter, in the sense Israel and the super super super powers are using, has already been debunked and deconstructed (Thanks God, I have used this word eventually in a sentence) by many nerds. Yet, the former, that former is what has devastated me (as we say in Turkish).
States are no better than gangsters, believe me or not. They have their own gangs, and their own language. They kill people and think they can get away with it, just like that, linguistically!
The Greeks would call them kakistocracies, which means, in my vocabulary ‘states led by animals with brain’.
Definition:
kak-is-toc-ra-cy
–noun, plural -cies. government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power
They say the strongest weapon of a Muslim is ‘prayer’ which comes to mean the request or a complaint of a faithful in this context.
Behold Brothers and Sisters and Children, prepare your weapons, pull your words and shut them down!
(Thanks God, He has created metaphor).
Scene I
(Outside the timeless lemon cafe, a young girl, Sarah, and a teenager, Ian, sitting aside on the wrought metal bank to let the flowers stand in between, a dull moment, the girl stares at the boy deadly and says:)
Sarah: My soul does not believe you!
Ian: But how do you know?
S: how do I know if I have a soul or what my soul believes in?
I: both…
S: what is more lively to you than your heart?
I: well I guess the energy that…
S:…gives you life, right?
I: in a way, and the inner…
S: you are so afraid to name it!
I: No, I mean…
S: your mind?
I: Nay, it is an illusion; there is no incorporeal self within us; our mental expressions, including consciousness, awareness of self and thinking are only physiological events taking place in the nervous system in response to a stimuli…
S: like in animals?
I: no there is something else, in addition…
like psyche, psychology I mean…
S: Oh yeah, a string of raw facts, and a little gossip, a little classification and generalisation, a strong prejudice that you have states of mind and that your brain conditions them but not a single law from which any consequences can causally be deduced!
I: Well, I agree that science relies on hypotheses, not merely on truth and the scientific hypotheses may eventually be proven to be false, but soul relates to…faith?
S: unconditional faith!
I:so you say, you know what your soul believes in?
S: not as much as what she WHISPERS
I: what does she whisper?
I: BELIEVE THIS MAN!
: So, your soul tells you to believe me?
S: WHISPERS!
I: I do not understand you….
…
I: Will you marry me?
S: Are these daisies?
…
