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.
 

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…

The idea of the movie is a classic story of Turks in Germany who are struggling for sense of belonging. The story however is everything but classic….A spirited girl who wants to break free from the imposing repression of culture represented by her religious family who tries hard to maintain their integrity in a society that is so different. A 40-something Turk whose heritage brings him so much pain and who does not know how to deal with his own demons. They meet in a mental institution following suicide attempts Cahit (Birol Unel) is in his 40s, driven by grief…he finally tried to end it all by driving his car into a wall.. Hence the name of the movie (gegen die wand or into the wall). Sibel ( Sibel Kekilli ) is a beautiful but somewhat unbalanced woman in her 20s who is there after trying to slit her wrist. Once she finds out he is a Turk, she proposes and uses very unconventional methods to convince him….They get married only to realize the meaning of true and unconditional love.

What is different about this movie is the love story itself… it captures the beauty of pure human feelings, true passion that is infused with fear, joy, desperation, happiness, in a mould of self destruction, alcohol, drugs, unattached sex. … The passion in that movie can not be ignored….

I can’t stop thinking about the ending. I can see how it makes sense from an artistic integrity point of view Fatih Akin didn’t want a Hollywood ending… but…it’s just too unsettling…. in particular I think Sibel looks like a shadow of her former self, it’s not just the short hair, no make up and the plain clothes, but she just looks so resigned ….and Cahit ….well he is still have not reached the hoped for peace… I am not going to say more. It is better to watch the movie!