untitled

the words are stuck
in my throat, my fingertips, my soul
but i need you to know, to understand
i need to share
so i will you to recognize
the thoughts clogging my pores
i will so hard that tears spill over

the warm trail on my face feels good
like a lance, a cleansing
but i am not so easily misled
no matter how many tears are spent
i will never feel clean, never feel new enough
that burden will always be there
it will always haunt me

i can play, pretend
i can submerge myself in ideas and images
surround myself with laughter and music
but when i go home
i will be alone with that weight
and it will stare me in the face
it will remind me that no matter how far i go,
at some time, i must return

there is no escape

the politics of language

a guest speaker in my chinese foreign policy class yesterday pointed out a small, subtle and yet significant fact:
english language publications use the term ASEAN+1 or ASEAN+3,
while chinese language publicaions use the term 10+1 or 10+3

ASEAN+1 = ASEAN centric
10+3 = 13 states sitting around a table, which is how china would prefer to think of the grouping

how many nuances (and more) i must be missing by only reading material in one language..

the point is...

as i read the 2006 man booker shorlist (the winner being kiran desai for the inheritance of loss; nice title) and filed away new names to check out at leisure; as echoes of birdsong by sebastian faulks-which i recently finished-still resonate; and while cloud atlas by david mitchell is promising to be an amazing read, i recall my sister-in-law's question of many months ago: what is the point of reading a novel? (or writing one for that matter.)

she asked this in all seriousness, while enrolled in a course that required her to write a number of book reviews. she didn't seem to enjoy reading any of the books, which made it rather difficult to review them. it wasn't that she disliked the books, but more that she was indifferent to them.

reading fiction, for me, is about experiencing different worlds, different perspectives. it is about making new friends, exploring new places, understanding new professions. and it is about appreciating the fantastic use of language to create all of the above. cloud atlas is a great example: its chapters (so far, at least) consist of narratives of different characters at different historical times. each narrative is so real; not just in historical authenticity, but also in personal characterization. i am, yet again, in awe. it is a wonderful feeling.

and this is true for not just literature, but other art, music, film. how many worlds there are then, to explore!

(an aside- i found cloud atlas randomly at the hku library, while picking up a tom robbins novel :)

old friends

immanuel wallerstein, robert keohane, joseph nye, stephen krasner, susan strange, adam smith, friederich list, robert gilpin, david ricardo.

too bad mufaddal, noura and wafeya are not around (and dr salter too).

last night many of my classmates were complaining at the theoretical nature of the material covered. awww, theory is FUN. not very useful maybe, but still fun..

a whole new library

i am pleasantly surprised by the hku library's stock of fiction. they even have a section called 'leisure reading'. i have so far found novels i have been wanting to read by tom robbins, douglas coupland and even sharon maas (and yes, they do indeed have more than one copy). for the past three years i have been surviving with what i can find in the public libraries (which is not a bad collection, but not great either) so i now feel like i am in heaven :p

my pleasant surprise must also be attributed to the auc's almost non existent collection of fiction. you can imagine my horror when i first realized my reading choice was limited to the classics, or a few titles such as 'australian love stories'. when i enquired about this poor choice, i was told that university libraries do not keep 'fiction', while literature is a different matter altogether. thankfully cairo had many cheap or secondhand bookstores!

i am still not sure whether most university libraries stock such a large collection of contemporary fiction (including romance and chick lit), but i am very glad that hku does. that i couldn't find the intuitionist or the years of rice and salt will not dampen my enthusiasm..

kids

i was sitting on my masalla at namaz tonight, sharing my munajat with a new mom. while reading, her eyes kept moving towards her baby daughter at the other end of the suf. literally every ten seconds, her gaze would slide away from the paper at hand, even while her voice strived to remain in accord with the rest of us. my reactions were multiple: amazement that she was managing to follow at all, relief that i had nothing (or no one) to thus occupy my attention, mild annoyance at her constant shifting gaze, bewilderment as to why anyone would choose to take such a burden upon themselves.

the last few days at markaz has seen a small explosion of children. they cry, scream and stumble over everyone's masallas (i am always terrified my specs will meet a dire fate), their mothers are constantly running after them or shushing them and they go extra nuts during dinner.

honestly, why??

this world has enough children. together with less than satisfactory parents. i don't want to join that group. i think i am too selfish; i value my time, privacy and energy too much to want to share. it is not that i dislike kids, or never wish that i too had a cute cuddly bundle. the new mom sitting next to me tonight, when her wandering daughter returned, and started playing with me, for the next few moments she was the cutest kid in the world, and all i wanted was to make her smile. but those are mere moments, whereas these kids are around for life.

thai military coup --not benign

i was telling a thai friend yesterday that i was confused by some of the media reports regarding the coup. thanks nc, for articulating that confusion.

THAILAND: MILITARY COUP--What is benign?

The September 19 military coup has been described by some persons as benign. Their reasoning goes that the government of Thaksin Shinawatra was bad and intransigent. Whatever way it could be removed was good. Even normally well-informed news media have evoked images of a quiet and non-violent coup that is expected to just "slip in and slip out", in the words of one BBC correspondent.

The Asian Human Rights Commission rejects these arguments as naive and confused.

The Thaksin government was a civilian autocracy. It did not respect human rights, the rule of law or democratic principles. It manipulated the media, intimidated its opponents, and played with legislation and public institutions for its own advantage. It exacerbated violence, from wanton extrajudicial killings of supposed drug dealers across Thailand to the conflict in the south. It enormously expanded the power and influence of the police. It fixed an election and allegedly extorted vast sums of money.

But a military autocracy is worse than a civilian autocracy. Within hours of taking power, the army abrogated the constitution, banned political assemblies, commenced extralegal arrests, and authorised censorship. The Thaksin government sought to undermine the constitution, harass gatherings of political opponents, and control the media through advertising revenue and criminal defamation. But by its very nature, it did not have the audacity to abandon the country's supreme law and ban civil rights. By contrast, and by its very nature, the army has already done so.

Today Thailand is without a parliament and a constitution. Its executive is under control of the army. Its judiciary is hobbled. Its media is threatened. It is in a very dangerous moment.

The argument in favour of a military coup is akin to the argument used by proponents of torture. Torture, they say, is sometimes a regrettable necessity. Where the lives of many are at stake, the physical integrity of one may be violated. Likewise, a coup is sometimes described as a regrettable necessity. Where a country is at stake, a government's integrity can be violated.

Both arguments boil down to the same wrong-headed notion: that a coup, like torture, can be started and stopped with convenience. It cannot. Torture, once it is introduced into a system of investigation, mutates and spreads. It affects not only the victim but the persons who use it, their institutions and the perceptions of society about what is permitted and what is not. Likewise, a military that obtains power through a coup infiltrates and distorts all areas of governance, as well as public attitudes and expectations. Once admitted, it is not easily removed. Its presence is felt long after it is physically gone…

There is a saying that runs, "Afraid of the tiger, one invokes a tutelary, but the tutelary turns out to be worse than the tiger." Today, Thailand has replaced a tiger with a tutelary. Happy that the tiger is gone, the terrible implications of how and by whom it was removed are not yet understood. But there is one certainty: no military coup just "slips in and out". By nature, military rulers leave things behind to ensure that their interests endure. And by nature, those interests are contrary to the rule of law, human rights and genuine democracy. Proof of this can be found today in Pakistan and Burma, and in the leftovers of military dictatorships in virtually every country of South and Southeast Asia.

The question is not whether the coup is benign or malign. The question is, how much damage has it already caused, and how can it be mitigated?

The Asian Human Rights Commission reiterates its call to the Royal Thai Army for an immediate return to civilian control and restoration of the constitution, without any amendment other than that to pave the way for prompt and fair elections. It reiterates its call for continued strong international condemnation of the takeover, including from the United Nations. And it makes a special call to the international news media not to misunderstand and misrepresent the coup in Thailand through glib summations from casual observations: study the real consequences of the coup before reporting on it.