One of  the project’s associates, who had been dangerously uncooperative had miraculously become dangerously cooperative… he dropped in to pay us an unseasonable visit. I was extremely busy preparing for an event…

 When he realized , he was not going to get the required social pleasantries form me, he rose to leave…  one of the neighbors’ children was scanning the dictionary ( I still don’t understand which part of the dictionary this child derives pleasure from, given the fact that he still can’t read and the dictionary is pictures barren)

 As the door closed behind him (I am at least grateful the child waited for that), the kid rose his beautiful eyes and said seriously

“What a dirty man! His mother should spank him!”

The guy was smoking a cigarette, even though the office culture forbids smoking….and when he finished, he simply left it to die off on the side of my lovely couch!!

 

I won’t say where she wipes the off, the book is a lovely read and would, for sure, provide all the answers…So maybe it is my fault for not providing ashtrays? but what kind of message would i give my visitors when they see ashtrays?

True to my expectations, it was simply standing there… by the way the shooting did not take place in the real building it took place in a neighbouring building…it looked better in front of the cameras.
 

Number of books I own: ufft, it never occured to me to count! some of my books are in Amman, some are here with me… they have doubled in the last 5 years… I guess maybe around 400-500.. Waaaal how much money I waste on this books thing!!

Last book I bought: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by one good writer called Julia Alvarez. In the Spirit of my South American interest, i bought this book. It is about four immigrant girls who rebel against their parents while trying to adapt in life in America after having to run away from the Dominican island! She is really good, and i am looking forward to starting it!

Last book I read: Ali and Nino Absolutely brilliant!

Five books that mean a lot to me:
1- Leviathan by Paul Auster, I was amazed at the way Paul deconstructs the human behaviour! i drive people around me crazy with my tendency to do the same… This book was given to me by a very special friend few years ago, in a phase where i was struggeling with my own identity. This was this friend’s way of telling me how the dynamics of our friendship were going to change… and of course il a eu raison!

2- in the eye of the sun by Ahdaf Soueif, now this book did change my life! reading this book was like looking at your life story in a movie! of course the details are different… but the way she is, the way she reacts, he relationships with herself and people around her…my God!

3- THE TIME TRAVELERS WIFE by Audrey Niffenegger… this book gave me hope back!!! I wont explain more…

4- women and gender in Islam By Laila Ahmad, was handed to me my my cousin Fouad…it changed my whole perspective about women in Islam…

5- les miserables by victor Hugo… was the very first book, I picked up on my own and decided to read… I think I was in fifth grade! I am not sure… this books is very special, i read it over and over again in 3 different languages… it is like watching a movie you always like to watch in my case it is scent of a woman!

The book I am reading since long but could not finish: I think it is 11 minutes by Paulo Coelho… ufft halakni! I wont tag anyone! i will leave you to enjoy your peace on a Saturday evening!

I have never heard of this book before, I picked it out when I was in Saudi among several other books I used to buy a bunch of English books, whenever they were available, simply because most of the good Arabic books were not there and there was no specific system to what you can find or when you can find it, actually I will never forget the dirty look I got when I asked the guy at Jarir book store for Ahlam Mustaghanemy books! Ifft he looked at me with so much disgust, telling me coldly that her books are banned! Looking at me from head to toe! and since my hair was not covered, i just wished i could disappear! before they call some mutawe3!

Anyway.. I found it recently among my unread books… I did not have high expectation from this book, but was totally and very pleasantly surprised. Once I started looking in the internet, I realized it is a an enchanting cross-cultural romance set just before the Russian Revolution in Baku, Azerbaijan, a city on the edge of the Caspian Sea. Ali Khan Shirvanshir, a Muslim desert boy from an aristocratic family, has fallen in love with the beautiful and enigmatic Nino Kipiani, a Christian girl with distinctly European background. To be together, they had to fight scandals and blood feud…. Only to prove that true love can win at the end… I guess our dear Roba once discussed mixed marriages in one of her, and this is an idea of how a mixed marriage looks like. Another example of how mixed marriages look like could be found in the map of love by Ahdaf Soueif, which I did not appreciate as much as I have her other book in the eye of the sun which i feel has changed my life! and recommended it to Natasha with the same note she wrote me once if I believe books can change lives i should read the unbearable lightness of being …Of course these are not real people, but I do have examples of real people who live blissfully in a mexed marriage… only no one would find them interesting, because you do not know them!

What is even more interesting about this book is the confused background of the writer, an interesting man of several identities Kurban Said, Assad Bei and Lev Nussimbaum… who was born Jew, converted to Islam at 17 years and spent the next 15 years in Christian Europe! Lived his life fearless, and wrote what his passions dictated… And whose early death was considered a cultural loss….

The book: Kite runner.

Whenever i have been into a book store, i saw it in the best seller section. I kept avoiding it till i could not avoid it anymore( i was not in the mood for a depressing reading), so i bought it… Now, after i am done with it, I am seeing flashes of scenes in this book, and i honestly believe it is a very good book. I am not going to give information to ruin the pleasure to those who still want to read it… but i will talk about some scenes… One of the scenes i found so powerful, was the confrontation between Aseef and Amir… he is being beaten in a life and death situation and he is laughing! laughing because he is finally free… the other one was the confrontation between the boy and Aseef… I laughed from the bottom of my heart thinking “Hallelujah God exists!” The third scene was at the ends when he says for you a thousand times… it was the best ending that could possibly be for this book…
This book made me feel what one of my good friends keeps saying on situations where whatever you are running away from finally catches up with you ” life works in myseterious ways”… it is true… it is better if we face our fears from the beginning, because no matter how hard we try, we will have to confront them eventually.

The store: an Afghani store in Germany called the “Schwartz Elefant” or the Black Elephant. This store has a very interesting business idea. They have furniture and home decoration items.. all antiques, and if not they were very good imitation of antiques… beautiful stuff, leather chairs, dark wood, wooden figures, animals, Buddhas… colorful fabrics…cultural items… absolutely gorgeous. Their business idea was to locate temporary storage spaces, and keep moving their stuff from one location to the other, the same city, in different cities, and sell whatever they have at the famous sentence ” we are moving, everything is on sale”… and people would buy…i dont know how ethical this is, or if they actually make money at all… but i suppose they do, because they have survived all the three years i have been there.

The movie: a movie called Osama, it is set in the Taliban cruel phase, where women were not allowed to work or go out. The story is about a woman and her daughter who are on the brink of starvation because they dont have an male relatives to work for them,( if they do, they are starving themselves, and can not feed other people) so the mother disguises the little girl as a boy, and has her work to save their both lives… the girl goes into the world, confused by the cruelty, and trying hard not to get caught…. a powerful movie, and a good one…

I decided to look into our supposedly rich culture and startt a drive to promote Arabic culture! I have to admit from the first look I felt very frustrated reading Arabic, as I found Arab writers very negative and all heading in one direction, I was thinking that I wish to find one modern Arab writer who does not speak in riddles, or who addresses our issues in a light amusing way.

From a second look, I started changing my mind, I chose 6 writers today, all of them are very known, I chose them because I found their books extremely interesting:

Ahdaf Soueif:
Map of Love: In this novel the landscape of Egypt is beautifully brought alive when an English lady not only falls in love with her colonial country, but learns so much of its people.
In the eye of the sun: My absolutely favorite, a very powerful modern Arab book, the relationships and experiences of characters that Asia meets studying between Egypt and Britain, are interwoven to create a surprisingly sexy novel, full of wit, passion and grief.

Tayeb Saleh
Season of immigration to the north: is one of the most passionate books I have ever read, and I am not talking about a cheap love story, it is strong, mysterious, delicious and absolutely marvelous. Way to go Mr. Saleh.

Ahlam Mustaghnemi
I really wanted to read her, when I asked a the library man in Saudi if they hold her and he started scolding me, telling me that this is the beginning of the fall of our culture! When young ladies read whores like Ahlam! So naturally I think she is great! These books are recommended.
The Memory of the Body
The Chaos of the Senses

Mahmoud Taymour
He is an older writer, his books are generally good but there is one book I thought was very nice it is called shamroukh, it is talking about the life of one prince from the gulf, very sweet book.

Abdel Rahman Munif
one of the best writers, you could read in any culture, his masterpieace is 5 books called Cities of Salt where he gives a detailed history of Saudi in a very good fiction novel.

Hanan al sheikh
She is one of the most straight forward Arab writers. She says the truth bluntly, so that is one thing i appreciate in her writings.

The difference between the before and after was that before, every single muscle that was the center of attention has “twitched” and after, I barely could keep myself from falling asleep! I was RELAXED. It was so cool to think of my body as independent parts, and give each one of the pieces my undivided attention.

I went home and picked a book called Memnoch the devil, an older book by Anne rice. Vampires stories are not my cup of tea, but since I have no other books at the moment, I thought what the heck. As I read the fist paragraph, I was captured! The sentence “ I saw him when he came through the front doors. Tall, solidly built, dark brown hair and eyes, skin still fairly dark because it had been dark when I’d made him a vampire. Walking a little too fast, but basically passing for a human being. My beloved David” took my breath away.

It triggered a restless feeling in my subconscious that haunted me through the night. I still don’t know where it came from, or why a vampirebook would create. Yoga escorted with a passionate and fervent love story was a startling combination for a night of bizarre dreams, with so much smoke and tribal music, vampires, weird costumes and people and events I don’t think about usually… I could not wait to wake up wanting to suck the information out of that book hoping to understand why.