Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish is dead at 67

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/10/news/Obit-Darwish.php

From: Beirut in Modern Arabic Poetry, an Anthology

An apple for the sea, marble narcissus flower
Stone butterfly, Beirut
Shape of the soul in a mirror
Description of the first woman, smell of early mist
Beirut is built of gold and fatigue
Of Andalusia and Damascus
Silver, seafoam, bequests of earth in the plumage of doves
Death of a cornstalk
Vagrancy of a fugitive star between my love and me
Beirut--I did not hear my blood before I uttered
The name of a mistress
Who sleeps across my blood, who sleeps

*******

Captives we are in this flabby age
Invaders have delivered us up to our kin
No sooner had we gripped the earth than our protector
Pounced on our weedings and memory
So we distributed our songs among the sentries
We found nothing to indicate our identity
Except our blood that climbs the walls and in secret
We sing:

Beirut our tent
Beirut our star

...Beirut the shape of shade...
She tempts us with a thousand overtures
And with new alphabets

Beirut our only tent
Beirut our only star

******

A grey horizon scatters in the distance
Circle paths of mother-of-pearl, not roads
And from Hell to the Atlantic
From the Gulf to Hell right left and center
I saw nothing but a scaffold
With one single rope for two million necks
I see armed cities of paper that bristle
With kings and khaki

******

I see cities crowning their conquereors
And the East sometimes is the opposite of the West
Sometimes the East of the West
Its image and commodity
I see cities crowning their conquerors
Exporting martyrs in order to import whiskey
And the latest thing in sex and torture

******

I see cities that hang their lovers over branches of iron
And drive away the names at dawn

At dawn the guardian of the only idol comes
With a million keys and one scaffold
What are we leaving if not a prison
What have the prisoners got to lose?
We walk toward a distant song
A first freedom
We sense the world's enchantment for the first time
The dawn is blue
And the air can be seen and eaten like figs

Is Beirut a mirror that we can break
To enter into the fragments
Or are we mirrors for the drizzle to shatter?

Beirut, markets hung over the sea
An economy that destroys production
To build hotels and restaurants
A government in a street or an apartment
A coffee bar that turns like the sunflower to the sun
Description of departure and free beauty
Paradise of documents
A seat in the plumage of a bird
Mountains that bow to the sea
A sea that ascends to the mountains
A deer slain by the wings of a sparrow
And a people that do not like the shade

*****

We burned our boats and hung our stars over the outer walls
We did not search for our ancestors in the family trees
We did not travel further than pure bread and our clothes of mud
To the mother-of-pearl of ancient lakes we sent no pictures of our fathers
We were not born asking...
We were born every which way
Spread like ants over a mat of straw
Then we became horses that pull carriages

We who stand in the line of fire
We have burned our boats and embraced our rifles
We shall awaken this land that rested on our blood
And extract our fallen victims from its cells
We shall wash their hair clean with our white tears
Pour over their hands the milk of the soul

******

We who stand in the line of fire declare:

Until the night shall pass We are in the trenches
Beirut eternal we gaze upon the sands

In the beginning we were not created
In the beginning was the word
And now in the trenches
A birth is being prepared

******

A moon shattered over the bench of darkness
Beirut is a lily of rubble
A first kiss
Eulogy of the Zanzalakht tree
Cloaks for the sea and the slain
Roofs for the stars and the tents
Stone poem
Collision between two nightingales hidden in the heart
A bereft sky
Thinking on a stone
A rose that can be heard, Beirut
A voice that separates the victim from the sword
A little boy who flung away the regulations and commands
And the mirrors---
Then fell asleep

Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Christopher Middleton

A Palimpsest in the Making

"The creature has always been out there, and it's out there still," says Sonam Dorji, 77, sitting on the pockmarked wooden floor of his small farmhouse. It's a cold Himalayan morning, and he warms himself beside a wood stove. The smell of burning pine fills the room. "If you travel the ancient trails, even today, there's a good chance you'll meet him."

Ah....yes....I met the Yeti once.

"Mountaineers brought back many of the stories, telling of strange footprints in the snow, of mysterious animals spotted walking on two legs, of tales their porters told around campfires."

"The great Italian climber Reinhold Messner spent years tracking yeti stories across the Himalayas and even caught a glimpse of it a couple times. But in the end, the truth was obvious to him. "All evidence," he wrote at the end of his travels, "points to a nocturnal species of brown bear.""

"So the yeti hunt was on. In 1954, Britain's Daily Mail newspaper sent out a search party. In 1957, a Texas oilman took up the chase. Three years later, Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary searched along the Nepal-Tibet border. In their wake came Soviet expeditions, TV crews, scientists and hucksters."

I cannot remember however....any of the climbers with which I climbed. What some do not realize is this. It isn't the Yeti that is forgotten. It is those who fail in the climb or haven't attempted it that don't see it. We the "partisans" often joke about those types who have not yet found him and say, "Not Yeti! Maybe later!"

The Ascent of a Sherpa


He was common, ordinary so to speak nothing special about him, the usual clothing worn by Sherpawarm, useful.Not thin coated. Engaged as he was in public debate he found it difficult to make a decision,whether to lead or to follow. It came down, in the end, to the need for enough diesel fuel for winter to pour into a certain kind of heater that escapes description universally.Twelve Nepalese were killed in Baghdad today, someone whispers to me. Not that it matters. So he put together some things: bread, cheese, Sherpa Foods, the usual fare and set out to rendezvous with the ten or so moralistically staunch climbers engaging him. Moralistic in that they insisted on the unusual. Very moral. We should say ethical but that is just not physical enough. They met and he collected the agreed upon Sherpa coin. No one knows what it looks like. It might be Chinese or in this case, Ben Franklin-like because of the universality of Empirialistic trade, so it goes in the impoverished world. Doesn't matter to us or to the Sherpa who Ascends. He turned to the leader of the group who had learned Sherpa Language easily enough, certain tough families of words useful to climbing: torch, fire, food, oxygen,death, liquor, book, socks, cold, die-ing (being a progressive form of the former), pain, mother, father, and of course, candy...he said, "I'll have to stay ahead of you all, I'm uncomfortable in the company of others." The leader was puzzled but agreed to this stipulation all the same. It must be some sort of standard in Nepal he thought, some sort of requirement."How will we follow then?"

"I'll leave my footprints in the snow of course." "Oh," the leader said, chastened at his own stupidity. The trek began the next morning which happens pretty early up there, finishes pretty late, with the Sherpa starting off at night, slipping out as fast as he could go, like an angel in the moon's glow, one mustn't dally on a short night.The moralistically inclined group set out, pleased to see the tracks well defined, deep and the weather pleasant, the mountaintopin view, achievable. Very optimistic,if you will. Occasionally they caught sight of the Sherpa, his head bobbing up and downin the distance, disappearing behind rocks, reappearing. The tracks were still quite good. The second day was much the same only the Sherpa was no longer in sight, the tracks slightly obscured by the light snows. Some of the tracks looked a bit altered, a yeti paw here or a goat print there, but that was expected. No one bristled yet. The climber at the end of the rope disappeared yet no one noticed, each of them caught in their own meanings, their own cold. By the third day however, the bristling was looking more like a forest fire, the cold was like a burning heat, the sun was no longer just the sun but an actual star, the sky was no longer so far away, the shells of gas, the rings of Jupiter, all of them somehow related.The tracks had completely disappeared and were replaced by paw prints: first a snow leopard then some kind of bird, a Wolf and finally, a palimpsest. The party finally noticed one after the other,the disappearances of the others until they were all gone and the final moralistic climber was left to himself and felt the Sherpa beside him, pulling him strenuously, dragging him, whipping him with a leather strap, the Sherpa's nails digging into his frozen flesh. He'd been there all along and had dismissed the members one at a time, disguised as a snow leopard, a yeti, a Wolf until he decided which one he could keep company with.

"Here we are." he said, peaceful and not very excited,he'd been to the spot how many times now,"How do you like it?"

"Die-ing," he replaced the form deliberately. The Sherpa deliberately replied, "Death."

About the Graveyard

The story of sin is written on the left hand. Sin is a great tale to tell if one has a proclivity for that sort of thing and a harrowing one if told by the victims. The greatest perpetrators tend to embellish their stories while the others simply tell it like it is. No falsification or intensification is necessary.

No telling what that makes the storyteller. A kind of accomplice perhaps or maybe it is the necessity of the social order and all of its requirements, the limitss of transparency that demand that there be writers in the world to tell the living about the dead.

She left them at about one in the afternoon in the middle of June. There was a note upon which was written "Don't worry, just left." And that is the last they saw of her. No one saw it coming except for her mother who always knew when those types of things were about to happen. An objective analysis of that would be that Mrs. Quaid had had something to do with the disappearance and she knew it. And Mrs. Quaid was careful about that when she finally reported it to the police two days later. She thought to herself, "What if she turns up dead? Will they interrogate me?"

The detective (in this case, one Madelaine Swan) would discover a great many things. Detective Swan had met the Quaid family once before when one of them had dialed the police during one of their outrageous scenes which were many but no one knew about any of the other scenes, there were no documentations or accounts except in the hearts of the Quaid family. The neighbors heard things but tended not to notice as all good neighbors do and anyway, no one seemed to be hurt after the noises died down. These things tend to happen nowadays.

There were stories alright. The Quaid family was normal in that respect or at least they thought they were happy in their own particular way. This is how they thought until they received the brutal little note from their middle child. It seemed to Mrs. Quaid that the darkness of it would never lift. One day she was a moderately happy, moderately successful working mother and the next, she was as dark as the skies on any page of a Russian novel, the type she used to read when she was just a girl.

Detective Swan wasn't really interested in the personal issues. She was kind but not the type of kind that needs to know about the sins involved. Superficial explanations were good enough for her and afterall, it isn't a crime to leave home at the age of nineteen. Mrs. Quaid envied the detective who must have been privy to some terribly useful data about the world, even though to her, the world was a small town with a population of only four thousand and ninety three.

Mrs. Quaid continued to suffer day after day under her own dark skies until finally she came to me and asked for a formal interview so that she could document the entire drama and make sure to herself that indeed it had happened the way she imagined it had. She requested that I keep it short and to the point but it has become difficult to tell the tale in straightforward terms. The convolution of it simply does not lend itself to the simplicity she hoped for.

The first thing she related to me was concerning a troubling phone call she had received moments before leaving her home on Garden Avenue to meet me for this interview. It appeared to be a normal solicitation from a man named "Dave". Dave was quite convincing until he said the word "corporation" and in that instant, Mrs. Quaid told him in no uncertain terms that she was looking for her daughter and that his phone call was unappreciated.

Mrs. Quaid was incredibly emphatic about including that detail in the interview. I asked her what it had to do with anything and she looked past me and out the window and said, "It all matters, every single detail. Please don't leave anything out."

She added that after she hung up on Dave, she went out into the back yard and heard a man calling out from one of houses on the hill, Tommy, Tommmy, Tommmmy.

"Perhaps you can make sense of it Ms. Rice." Her tone seemed almost desperate and I replied out of pity for her that I would do the best I could to help her find her daughter or at least, to understand it in some logical way.

"Logical? Logical! There is nothing logical about a daughter leaving home Ms. Rice. I assure you, nothing logical about abandoning safety."

She took off her sweater and picked up the cup of steaming coffee and sat down opposite me, a bit too close for comfort. I noticed a few scars on her wrist but before I could turn away she said, "Yes, I did that. I tried to kill myself in a Parisian hotel room many years ago. It's kind of funny you know. We were on vacation and the next day in one of the museums, we had to walk through an exhibit that was lit with black lights. The infection glowed and I showed it to the kids as if it would be an important lesson in the natural sciences."

I bent my head down a bit in order to conceal whatever look must have played across my face but it was of no use. She said it didn't hurt her feelings at all for me to react to such things. She knew by now that trying to show one's children matter of fact things like that isn't only unwise but completely out of whack.

"Why did you do it?" I felt emboldened by her candor and at that point my pencil was jotting down notes so quickly that they were difficult to read later. It didn't matter because this type of story doesn't come along everyday. People don't make up this stuff and it is quite easy to commit such things to one's memory. Perhaps as lessons or in fact, as parables.

"My husband wanted a divorce. I was completely unprepared for his announcement. Afterall, we were supposed to be on a family vacation. I took a few bottles of hard liquor out of the hotel minibar and locked myself into one of the bathrooms of the adjoining rooms. Inside there was a bottle of Nina Ricci and I smashed it and began drinking vodka and slicing. I tried very hard to succeed but I guess I'm just not the type to be successful at that sort of thing. Well, not then at least."

"What do you mean Mrs. Quaid? Did you try again?"

"Oh yes, but it was completely unpremeditated that time. I almost succeeded but was saved."

"Saved? By what exactly?"

"Well," she turned her face slightly away, "it's a very long story."

"But you said you wanted to tell me everything and that sounds like an important part Mrs. Quaid. I'm not being nosey you know. You want this don't you?"

"Well, yes. I do but I have told the story so many times to so many people that I hate to do it again. It is almost as if it didn't happen anymore. It is that far away. It's become mythological."

"To you at least. But maybe not your daughter."

"Hmm. Yes. It bothered her very much at the time and for many years after. She never even told me about it until she was almost thirteen. Apparently, I forgot to tell the children that their father had changed his mind and there would be no divorce. We went from France to New York and back and the whole time they were on pins and needles. I felt awful about that and I still do. To some extent anyway, as much as a person can regret such accidents."

She went on, "On our way back home from New York we passed through Paris once again. Our flight was delayed and they booked us into a horrible little suite outside of Paris. We made the best of it though, my husband and I. We were once again close and mindful of each other. We bought a bottle of white wine and then took a walk in a graveyard near our small hotel. We left the kids alone. She must have been horribly upset thinking that her parents were about to divorce and the three of them were left all alone in a place that was quite foreign to them."

"You seem to feel very guilty about that," I queried, not knowing really if she did. Something in her eyes however didn't match what she was saying.

"No. It isn't guilt Ms. Rice. Guilt isn't the word for it. The word for it might be prophecy."

"Prophecy?" I couldn't contain my curiosity. "Did you feel as though it was foreshadowing of some type?"

"Ah. So you know about my work Ms. Rice. I haven't written anything in years. I don't want to anymore, it is all too serious for mere poetry or story telling you know. For that matter, the word foreshadowing is a massive understatement for the real world and how it plays upon the mind of the writer, let alone the reader. It is a conspicuous crime if you ask me."

"What do you mean?" I felt a bit of guilt creeping into my voice.

"You know exactly what I mean. Please, don't feel bad about it. I've given you permission to talk about it, to write about it and to embellish it if you need to but I don't think you will. You are the first person and the last person I have ever told. I just do not want to take it with me into another graveyard you know."

Rain was beginning to fall against the window panes and Mrs. Quaid turned her head away slightly. I thought I saw a tear begin to course down her cheek but I couldn't be sure.

"Go on then."

"Well, I think she liked the matter of our divorce."

"What? You mean that? I can't imagine a child wanting something like that."

Mrs. Quaid tipped her head a bit and peered over her out of date glasses as if to say, quit bullshitting me sister. Just quit bullshitting me.

"Oh, I have proof. She was quite disappointed many a time when Ahmed and I would have a tiff. I'd threaten, he'd leave for a few hours and I'd exploit my children's sympathies in the worst ways. I didn't mean to but desperation is never easy to manage successfully. You try to play both parts but end up playing only one, no matter how hard you try Ms. Rice. No matter how hard you try you end up spinning a tenacious little web of deceit all around you and everything gets stuck in it. Just like this. There tends to be casualties. It can be quite unpredictable."

"May I say something Mrs. Quaid?"

"Certainly. I wish you would."

"Okay. You sound ambivalent to me. Very, very ambivalent."

"I guess I am. There's nothing wrong with being ambivalent if your heart is in the right place. I believe mine is. Or at least, I still want it to be."

"I get it. You mean..."

"No. Probably not. No one can know another Ms. Rice. Not at least in the way you are hoping. How can you know me if I don't even understand? Only Allah understands us Ms. Rice."

Bam. "Whoa. Are you muslim Mrs. Quaid?"

"Al'ham'dulliah. I am. We all are Ms. Rice."

I unconsciously began shaking my head. I didn't think it was noticeable but Mrs. Quaid took my hand and held it between her two. Her skin was rough and her nails were bitten right down to the quick. It was obvious she didn't care much about her looks anymore. I suddenly noticed that her sandals were quite worn out. I wondered how many miles she had walked in those shoes.

"Ten years Ms. Rice. I bought them for two dollars at a small store in my husband's village."

I tried to conceal my reaction once again but realized it was completely impossible. I felt as if I'd become her victim or a ghost as transparent as those in photographs.

"It's okay Ms. Rice. You are very young. You are also easy to read. Why do you think I chose you to write down this letter. You are an honest one."

"A letter? What do you mean, a letter? Who is it to?"

"It's to her Ms. Rice. It's to her."

The Quaid family moved out of town a week later. I don't know where they went. As far as I know, her daughter will never read this hard little tale but just as Mrs. Quaid was about to leave she said in a low voice, "We are all just waiting Ms. Rice. We all return someday. So will she. So will she and I know she'll be alright. A beggar told me so. I want people to know that, to remember it after I"m gone. It might be useful to some poor soul like me who is impatient. Or simply worn out from the length of the days and the trials."

Two or Three Wild and Crazy Sikhs

The Threat To National Security
or rather, insecurity.

"Everyone gets what they deserve." -my daughter Fatima

The first thing I made note of as I drove into South Lebanon for the first time after the Israeli Agression of 2006 was a billboard. It depicted in sillouhette, a man, a woman and a child. The woman was hijabi or "covered" from head to toe so her shape was recognizable. She was muslim. Not Christian, not Druze. Most definitely she and her family were muslim. The man was walking with crutches and was missing a leg. The words on the billboard said in Arabic, "Life Goes On".

It sure does.

We had to return to Lebanon in 2007 in order to say goodbye to our family in the proper way. We hadn't been allowed the opportunity when we evacuated aboard the USS Trent the year before. We had to see what happened up close.

Many people thought we were a tad bit crazy to enter such a dangerous area of the world where Israeli land mines were still lying in wait in the fallow fields and yards of South Lebanon. As a matter of fact, when we arrived at Heathrow airport news was breaking about the beginnings of a new conflict in North Lebanon in a place called Nahar Bared or "Cold River". What can I say...the last time we passed through Heathrow, it exploded the next day. Ah heck, it's always exploding. I thought to myself as I stood under the television monitor near our usual old boarding gate at Heathrow, well, isn't that nice, another boneheaded US-Israeli Saudi-backed plan to destablilize little old defenseless Lebanon. Will they ever learn?

I also thought about the risk of returning and how there is no way in life to bargain with the fates. How that must appear to people who believe they are "safe" from terrorism or safe from salmonella or safe with their bicycle safety helmets on. How people in the Non Islamic provinces on the planet bank on things like FDIC guarantees. How they sue when someone dies in a plane accident. How they end up with OCD which is a newly discovered problem. Or rather, a newly invented problem that aims to explain away the anxiety people develop over time when they lack faith in the Creator, his creation and the knowledge that Allah already knows all about everything already because Allah exists outside the spectrum of events we call Time.

And what exactly is anxiety composed of? What does it mean and what does it have to do with the ancient word risk?

Anxiety can be understood by knowing what is missing rather than trying to understand what constitutes anxiety itself. Afterall, a person with math-related anxiety doesn't necessarily have OCD and everyone can have a bit of anxiety or alot of anxiety which is related to any number of ordinary to extraordinary human events. Apparently there are a range of functions of the human mind that exist to produce feelings of total safety and the complete absence of safety. Anxiety then is the absence of a feeling of security relating to something perceived to be outside of oneself.

Let's take a look at the word risk. According to my favorite on-line etymology dictionary, the word risk was Anglicized in the late 17th century:

risk (n.)
1661, risque, from Fr. risque, from It. risco, riscio (modern rischio), from riscare "run into danger," of uncertain origin. The Anglicized spelling first recorded 1728. Sp. riesgo and Ger. Risiko are It. loan-words. The verb is from 1687; risky first recorded 1826

But where on earth did it originate before that? I mean, it must have come from somewhere because the lack of safety in human lives and the need or desire to challenge that threat to national/personal security must have existed since the beginning of human self awareness.

What many people do not know is that the word risk actually comes from the ancient language which is still in use today (and by a growing number of people) called Arabic. The pronounciation of it is slightly more emphatic: ri's(eh)k. Like all Arabic words, it is composed of three consonants that can be altered via the use of vowel vocalizations that can vary from the deep gutteral to the nasally inspired. The literal meaning most widely used for the word risek in Arabic is "one's due bounty".

A good way to understand the concept of risek in Arabic is the story of a thief. The thief enters a house and takes away two hundred dollars in cash and valuables. It can be said that the thief "took his risk" by entering that house. The risk being that he would be discovered, arrested or even shot by the occupants. If the thief had waited, had he enough faith and security in the future which is completely unknowable to anyone, he would have realized that the two hundred dollars would have come to him in another way...perhaps through gainful employment or even a charitable donation. Or maybe it wasn't even his risek in the first place to have two hundred dollars. Maybe he was going to get a job and walk into the men's room and discover a bag with five hundred dollars which no one ever claims. He'll never know though will he? He'll never know because he "took" a risk which he shouldn't have taken. Hence the origin of the idea of "not taking risks".

Perhaps the greatest risk one takes is when one takes their own life in response to the uncertainties and unpleasantries of life or because their "OCD", that newly discovered "disease" becomes simply intolerable in their heart and mind. When someone places too much emphasis on the risk of falling off their bike and croaking the way non muslim people do, it is the case that they are simply too materialistic to understand the idea that tomorrow is always unknown. And even when people plan for something there are no guarantees that it will turn out the way that they expected. Like Iraq, like the Super Bowl, like a big mouthful of ham sandwiches like the kind Momma Cass Elliot was eating when she choked to death.

So there I was in Heathrow saying Why Me? And then saying, Why Not Me? It is absolutely me. Hope is all there is and risek too. It doesn't bother me much at all to be in a war zone. Lightning is a bit of a problem but bombs are just bombs.

Life goes on......or maybe not!

"And when those who disbelieved devised plans against you that they might confine you or slay you or drive you away; and they devised plans and Allah too had arranged a plan; and Allah is the best of planners." - The Ways of Ascent, The Glorious Quran


A post to Lanny Muss, my dear old friend from Cloud's Hill dated April 2007, one month before the Heathrow:

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2007/04/with-apologies-to-lanny-ah-there-you.html

Days or weeks can go by you know without one shred of
evidence...then I find a woman who wants to be a Sufi.
Her door is graced with a tin replica of St. Francis
of Assisi. For whatever reason, my sister rescues
cats and wants to give them away, then posts her
persuit on International "Speak Like a Pirate Day".
What about that? It is interesting to note that the
day when I brought this lovely dog home whom we began
calling Zero and then settled on just Pooch...my
sister brought to me a cat which was later named Davey
Jones. Pooch wouldn't have it or rather, Pooch would
like to have it for his dinner..his former master must
have taught him that kitty tastes good. So I had to
turn old Davey Jones the beautiful gray kitten away.
Who ended up with my kitten? The same woman with St.
Francis, the sufi hopeful. I told her this but she
didn't grasp the importance of my speeches or what it
is I know about these kinds of signs that tend to go
unnoticed. All these things coming together in a
triangle of fate. So I said to my student of "sufism"
(seems that is what most people like to call Islam
nowdays in order to avoid the orneriness of the fine
print)...there is your sign..."YOU have my cat"..what
else is it that you require and how will I present it
to you? What about this Zionist thing and what would
that do to the finer details of this acceptance one
must abide by?

Why me?


What About Mars?
May 11, 2006

No more problems says the package
the cure came in, no more
warning labels and the price tag
no longer legible. It began
with flashy children and fast cars
then people started talking
about the leftover stuff
after the move out,
wondered what would happen
to the crystal ball and Japanese flag.
Where to put Mars now?
Whose house next?


Yesterday it was exactly two years ago that I began my exile in my own hometown. The irony of that nearly drove me mad during that bit of winter. I used to cry alot. I mean, alot. Hardly ever in front of anyone though. One day I was crying in the usual old place (the shower) and the kids came into the bathroom and asked if I was okay. They had no idea I used the shower for crying. I cried when I prayed too.

To be honest, I'm not really sure what I was crying about. I believe I was crying about injustice as well as my inability to absorb the new details of our life.

We didn't have anything really. My sister and her friends collected boxes of necessities so that we could have something to call our own. She bought me an extraordinary number of things because I found myself completely unable to tolerate a department store for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. My kids felt the same way about Americans and their shopping habits, the way they move about like automatons. It took me over a year to actually be able to purchase something just because I wanted it. I still have trouble purchasing things. I do it but everytime I do I feel something akin to morning sickness. I don't ever actually throw up but I feel as though I might.

I took very long walks that winter. My new dog Pooch and I would roam up and down the streets and alleys of Warren. It was extremely cold that year, the kind of cold that I remember from my childhood. It snowed alot and that exacerbated the loneliness I felt for my old neighborhood and the people who knew me well without any explanations. It was Christmas and I glided through the festive lights of the new neighborhoods. There was so much sadness that year. No one was really very happy in America. They still aren't but they decorate their lives with trinkets all the same. If it frightens me I have to wonder what it does to them. There is no denial of the massive sense of depression in the American psyche. They have no idea about the suffering of others, the reality of it. It is all a part of reality TV. Real but not real. Nothing is ever real until you've done it yourself and thus far, Americans have suffered very, very little.

Allah had blessed me with this new dog named Pooch. It took forever for us to name him and he was just as much of an exile as we were. He was two years old and must have had a name and try as we might, we couldn't discover it. We tried Bingo, Fido and King. We tried Pancho during Thanksgiving at the beach in Bahia Kino Mexico. His name was Zero for a while but that was more about how we felt than it was about his recent castration. "A name for a dog with no name and no nuts." He and I remain inseparable. I hope I die before he does and I've little doubt he hopes for the same. Fact of the matter is, Allah replaced my old dog that I left behind with a much more sage animal. I just talked to my brother-in-law in Lebanon and he told me all about how Bijou is faring nowdays. He said she finally got herself knocked up but ended up eating two of the three pups who were born terribly disfigured. She lives indoors now with a Nepalese doctor and his wife who work for the United Nations and they treat her very, very well.

At home we (my kids and I) agreed to just not talk at all. And we didn't. We kept peace with ourselves. There was no point in discussing what had happened to us. No point at all. And anyway, we had to discuss it over and over again in public places, at pot lucks, at school and poetry readings. We all agreed that we were tired of our very own story but knew people had a right to know what it was. By January of 2007 I realized I had descended into a very deep depression.

Muslim depression doesn't resemble ordinary depression except for the physical characteristics that define the state of "depression". Poor appetite, inability to concentrate, failure to thrive are only external signs. Internally, it cannot be said that depression actually exists in the heart or mind of a real submitting muslim. There simply isn't such a thing that exists that can in some way be used to excuse any type of behavior that results from the physical effects of shock, trauma, loss, grief, anger. Why is that?

Because suffering is expected. It isn't an "if" but a "when". The story of this world according to Allah, his apostle and his Ahl Bayt is thus far been proved to be true. Most Americans don't know about it and their suffering is the type of suffering one must endure when a diagnosis isn't known yet but only suspected. The prognosis is dire. I'm here to tell you though, the suffering of non-muslims isn't pleasant to muslims. Not at all. It only increases ours ten fold because we know not only the diagnosis and prognosis, but we know the cure. They just don't like the taste of that medicine. They are submitting to Islam unwillingly, suffering consequences although most of them believe they've committed no crime.

So I started to garden and I haven't stopped since. I don't think about any of it there. I just dig and pull and plant and start all over again. I can't get over how Allah puts a whole tree into a seed or how Allah knew that I would need Islam. How on earth did Allah get in touch with me in Arizona so very long ago? "Why me?" Well, why not me. And al'ham'dullila it is me. I'd not trade it for all the wealth in the world.

I feel so sorry for those who don't have it. I really, really do. They must truly be suffering more than I can understand. They suffer more starvation than the most hungry child in the most desperate war zone. It is said that a muslim eats with one intestine and a kafr eats with seven.
Their obesity is their sign. Their drunkeness is a sign. Their genital diseases are their sign. Their arrogance is their sign. Their attachment to material possessions is their sign. To mistake those for something else is simply a lie.

[7.198] And if you invite them to guidance, they do not hear; and you see them looking towards you, yet they do not see.

[5.83] And when they hear what has been revealed to the apostle you will see their eyes overflowing with tears on account of the truth that they recognize; they say: Our Lord! we believe, so write us down with the witnesses (of truth).

Batman, the Jihadist

The "famous" Ron Silliman drones on and on about action films here. Personally, I prefer the crit of a Joseph Campbell doing a bit on Luke Skywalker to be honest because when reviewing a film, it behooves a reviewer to know just a teeny little bit about something other than his own frame of reference and culture. When....in the end...the mask that the Hero wears changes, the parable remains the same.

Some parables are fables and some parables are real. Those over time turn into legends. Myths occur when legends lose all the actual context of the reality in which real human heroes existed (or as the case may be, heroes who were reputed to have existed). The muslim heroes of our time are villified (Khomeini, Nasrallah, Fadhallah, Musa Sadr). People like Ron Silliman would feel foolish even mentioning them. People like him fear the mocking I suppose or worse yet, they are arrogant to such things that are evident in newspapers all around the world.

Anyway, I suppose we all have to watch SOMETHING while we are waiting for the retrospective Iraq War movies to be made by those in "Hollywood".

Personally, I'll just stick to watching Legally Blond a few more times if you don't mind. Or say, the wonderful protagonist known as V. V is half Phantom of the Opera and the rest, Mistah Kurtz. Better yet, I have this great DVD which describes the process of the seed in great detail using Quranic references. I mean, we get whole big apple trees from a packet of DNA inserted into Allah's masterpiece called the world!

The banned book in V is for Vendetta is none other than the Glorious Quran. Imagine that! No one would dismiss V is for Vendetta just because the Quran is given a starring role? Of course not! Yet they miss the real life heroes in their midst by failing to address their actual hero status and mission on this planet. Why? Because they are told such things are foolish. Batman is real!

And of course, some of us including Ron Silliman know the pedigree of Batman is Jewish. Why, Bruce Wayne (listed on Forbes 500 at a value of 6.5 billion USD) practices what we Shia are ordered to do by the much more successful hero Ali Mu'mineen and is called Taqiyya, or in gringo terms dissimulation. He does this by hiding his identy and pretending to be just like everyone else.

Maybe you are just tired of fairy tales Ron Silliman. Maybe everyone is tired of them.

There are real heroes in the world and oddly enough, you never mention them. That's because you've been trained not to. Why you even have George Bush trying to smoke these fellows out of their lairs! It couldn't be more obvious you know.

Long live the real jihadists. And you can bet your bottom dollar, Batman is on a Jihad.

You just haven't learned how to read things in other ways.

Peace on you anyways. Long live Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah complete with a pedigree all the way back to the ancients. Al'ham'du'lillah.

"But whoever disputes with you in this matter after what has come to you of knowledge, then say: 'Come let us call our sons and your sons and our women and your women and our near people and your near people, then let us be earnest in prayer, and pray for the curse of Allah on the liars' (3:61)."

Ulysses

Where was I? Oh, yes. The Flood. It was way back in late July or early August 2006 that my family found itself washed up on the banks of the mighty Zacatacas creek-bed. The Arizona monsoon had turned this old town into a river. The mighty, mighty Liffy of my imagination. Good ole James Joyce had a way with words didn't he?

On our way back to this melting town where only the pooches know the proper names, we passed through Ramstein Air Force base in Germany. By that time we had already spent a couple days either on boats or in shelters. I had only slept once since our departure nearly four days before. The story View From 16th is a short masterpiece if anyone is truly interested in the short story form or interested at all in the way butterflies manage to migrate.

In Ramstein, I slept once again. Military families had prepared a magnificent meatloaf for the refugees and I cannot commend their kindness well enough here. If meatloaf defines generosity then they truly made us wealthy, themselves poor and I can never eat another meatloaf again. It would ruin my memory of that delicious thing for all eternity.

Not to mention the sailors aboard the USS Trent. Those fellows worked tirelessly day and night to prepare meals for their boatload of refugees. The USS Trent was meant to carry around 600 troops but for us she opened her doors to more than 1800.

There were babies in bunks, women asleep on helipads and I noticed one sailor reaching down to peel a discarded piece of tissue off the bottom of my daughter's shoe as we were filing by in a long line to get something to eat on the mess deck. I said, "You don't have to do that." He replied that he was just so happy to be of service to someone in distress. A fine older man with a paunch. I wish I could honor him by remembering his name but I can't. I can see him as clearly as I see the young African American air force pilot who walked with me onto the tarmac as we got ready to board a C-130 for the second time in our lives. He shook my hand and asked me what the name of my book was so that he could buy it. He apparently was impressed with some of my views about the Israeli aggression and understood that I dreamed of being an author or a poet or some other recognizable person in this world.

It called to my mind the idea of being famous and how famous I already was for merely being a muslim. I had to wonder about our famous friend LeBron whom we had met somewhere between Beirut and Larnaca. I wondered yet again about the chances of touching the Dalai Lama. I wondered if Nelson Felix LeBron would remember that he met me as I remembered his wonderful line, "If you spin the Leatherman you can travel through time." I contemplated the messengers who had contacted me when I was just a child and as well, the man who had arrived ala Jorge Luis Borges in my flat in Riyadh to tell me about his very own death or maybe he meant my own. That guy knew information that no one could possibly know about me. He knew my deepest fears and those that accompany readers throughout so many strange Borgian tales. That silly bar of soap! The Zohar. The Shield in the lotus-eating world. How the sea looked from the deck of the vessel, turbulent and oily green. I know now. I know all kinds of things and to tell the truth, it hasn't eased the suffering but a bit. Hope is all there is.

These days I wonder so much less. It is all very clear and more certain every day. Allah chooses whom he wills. He chooses Nasrallah to lead the fight against the oppressors in this era, he chooses Bush to lead the oppressors to defeat. He chooses some of us to understand a few details and some of us a great deal more. Allah is the Best Knower after all.

and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. -Joyce

To The Israeli Soldiers Who Shat In My House And Left It

Ah, if only I could be
a dam I'd ask the water
how do you break me
or a rock, you move me
the bottom of the sea
you fill me a cloud
release me, a river
guide me or a storm
begin and end me
a flood. If only
the droughts weren't so long
such frozen lakes
parables of motion
persistent as flies,
thine aid do we seek,
flee then seek again.
The forgotten Jews,
the twelve springs of Abraham,
those Mary tears.
Birth waters preceed every soul.
The lacking planets dry as fists
arranged silently in rows
study it all in dreams,
these illusions are invitations
when moths gather light
among the particles of night.

In Zacatacas the floods
are very old and carry
the mountains away as if
to card seeds from wool,
the vibrations of thunder
asssistants of demise,
incalculable lines of light
choose, they choose
certain walkers and runners
and promise so many
such bitter escapes.
The furthest destinations
where miracles are light weight
passengers as feathery
as seeds, graceful, determined.
They don't look back.
They never return home and know
where they are going -
to that end in another country's grave.
Bint Jubail buries her shops
in mortars and C'naa remembers
the people twice, poor people
wearing plastic slippers,
not well-dressed and familiar with the rain.

Israeli soldier shoots blindfolded, unarmed youth. Inexcusable.



Israeli kid in training to murder Palestinian women and children:



Israeli army commits deplorable acts against EVERYONE, not just these 40+ "bystanders":

The Departure
July 21, 2006

The last day in our apartment in Beirut was harrowing to say the least. My very large extended family were all still trapped in the South and under heavy, heavy bombardment. Al'ham'dullilah for cell phones and Libancell who managed to keep the system working throughout the entire ordeal or we would have not known anything about them. My husband's sister Ghada was with me and my three children in our apartment in Khaldeh. Her husband (a member of the Shia Amal militia) was assigned the duty of traversing the abandoned streets of Beirut in order to bring us whatever we needed. Our neighborhood had mostly escaped the devastation that so many in the southern suburbs of Beirut had thus far endured. Dahyeh was already rubble and just that morning an incredibly large shell had hit Chamoun which was just above us, not more than a half mile away. An evening or two before, my son and I had gone up to the roof of our four story building to watch the tracers and to listen to the sound of the Israeli jets in the night skies of Beirut. We noticed several bright objects floating down in the air above the southern end of the Hariri International tarmac. I thought they were remnants of fireworks. The Lebanese are odd people and manage to maintain a sense of celebration even through the darkest of tribulations. My son and I laughed a bit.

They weren't fireworks however. Not at all. There were twenty or twenty five Israeli mortars, the type that float (with little parachutes) slowly to the ground. They landed inside of their target. Their target was the airport jet fuel depot tanks. As they landed the explosion rocked the entire building and then, it just kept exploding and exploding and exploding. Huge plumes of smoke were visible for thousands of meters into the sky. It was simply unbelievable. My son asked me about death and if he would go to paradise. He was afraid that he wouldn't because he didn't know how to pray to Allah in the proper fashion. He thought he had committed sins in his past that he would be punished for. I asked him what those things might be and I had to laugh at his pure innocence of the sins that people commit that actually get them into Hell. Not turning in one's homework isn't one of them.

The night before we were to begin our journey across Beirut to camp at the house of a friend before we would make the early morning dash to the port in East Beirut, I had finally managed to fall asleep for an hour or two when suddenly at dawn my bedroom lit up like a roman candle. The sound of that shell was enormous, deafening. I shot up in bed and it was the last sleep I had. The next four days I'd not sleep a wink because I had accepted the decision of my husband's mother who wanted us to evacuate. I realized that if I stayed in Lebanon she would have the added burden of worrying about her American daughter-in-law....besides her usual role of Commander in Chief of the rest of the Sweid clan. Although she was under the heaviest bombardment the South has ever known, she managed to keep things in order down there but just barely. Our home there had already been without any electricity for several days and there was no way to extract water from our internal well. She was managing a household full of her son's wives and their children, a total of around 30 people in all. I could tell by the strain in her voice when she said to me, "If I fall apart then everyone will." I knew that I just could not add to her numerous concerns and I'd have to leave. It would give her some peace of mind.

This is the last post from my home in Khaldeh and I am including the comments made by an Israeli soldier. The statistics regarding the support of the Israeli people for this War Crime were taken directly from the Jerusalem Post that day:


This is where this story ends for now. I hope all who get a chance to really read through some of the essays here will understand some of the big picture of Islam now. That it was never ever about Osama. You were just ignorant of it...too busy with the vanities in life to take the time to read what it says and connect the dots to history and the books of other religions. My work here is really all I have now save for a few bits and bobs.

Nevermind....poetry is temporary. This life is only a vanity.

What is more important is that I am now separated from my truly wonderful family in south Lebanon who are only a km or less away from the battles (in Bint Jubail). All of them TRAPPED in a house...thirty or forty of them, mostly children with no escape. Israel occupied our home for two years in 1982 but things were different then. There were still a few REAL believing Jews in their armies. What they now have in Israel as reported in the newspapers today is this:

85% Israelis AGREE WITH THIS ACTION
15% JUST SORT OF DISLIKE IT.

Wow. You've got to wonder what that old Jewish tradition is and what is WAS and what it is supposed to be. I'm relatively sure it isn't to murder and maim people who are simply fighting for their lives, their fellow muslims and truth.

Well, when I am asked about my bitter battles with the Silliman racist blog and with my own good friends who failed to be able to look up a word or two on their own (ZIONISM) by Allah...then this will be documented as well.

85% of all Israelis believe in SERIAL KILLING.

Posted by Meg at 3:17 AM

2 comments:
y360 said...

I'm an Israeli soldier. You obviously posses intellect (and beauty if I may say so) but your hatred is frightning.
I'd like to remind you that we have left Lebanon in 2000, never to return.
We are not willing to have rockets massed against us and fired at our cities.
We are not willing to be attacked and destroyed, have our existence questioned by Iran or Syria or anyone else here.
I'm sorry for the loss of innocent life, it is not our intent. It is clearly the intent of those firing rockets in our cities.
What 85% of the Israeli public say to you is that any Arab organization that attacks our country will pay a dear price.
Maybe in the end you will learn to accept us in the Middle East.
Maybe you will be able to see us as fellow humans who deserve to have our own independent nation state in this region.
If not, suffering is our shared destiny on both sides of the border.

4:12 AM
Lady Jane said...

Like I said, 85% of Israelis believe in the brutal torture of those whose only crime is to cry FOUL. Here, we have an example of one who is not only wearing the uniform of the murderer but telling me I haven't the right to even cry FOUL.

Well, let me tell you this....everyone and everything returns to the creator. You too and now you've gone on record as agreeing with war crimes.

Good luck on Judgement Day. You'll need it.

I refer you to Sura 109 which will inform you of my feelings. Go your way and I go mine. You've got your beliefs and I've got mine and clearly, they are not the same. I'm willing to be accountable for my thoughts and accusals and you should be too.

And remember pal, no one touched you especially me. You just feel guilty. I know how it is...I'd feel pretty bad too if I was backing a holocaust.

BTW, when they eradicated 6 million Jews in that holocaust, they basically got rid of the best ones leaving few behind who actually follow the Torah. I'd wager you don't follow it nor have you read it. That much I'm certain of and am also certain that the Torah does not condone disproportionate violence. Eye for an eye....remember that one?

We all know it.

Peace on those that deserve it.

I have to wonder where that guy is now?

I know where I am. I remain with the success and the successful.

The Israeli Aggression, July 16, 2006
Hezbollah Victory, July 16, 2008

photo of Bint Jubail in South Lebanon

Dear One and All:

Well redacted is already registered with the US State Department today. My friend, well, haha my friend is the warden for the south and she has no news about evactuations. Although I do not want to go out I guess I have to if the opportunity presents itself...to get Lyn's kids out (maybe) and my own.

(Redacted) is happy now that I have agreed to go so that much is good. If I die tonight then at least he would have won his last battle. :)

Thank you for doing this for us...no one has a sister like you :)

Right now they are threatening all the villages in the south. No roads to leave on so I guess they think they want people to walk out in the dead of night while they shoot them in the back. Just like they did to the Palestinians when they were stealing Palestine. They destroyed and exiled over 400 villages to create their "utopia". You know, the literal meaning of Zion is Utopia. Wow.

I think they have flown a team in to 'work' on the evacuation of over 25,000 citizens trapped here...many of them actually Lebanese US citizens so does that tell you anything about the rush they are in to do this? Oh sure, there are a few crackers like me but not 25,000. :) So don't hold your breath and I've been in line with Lebanese at the bank and know that I'll probably wait until the closing credits to hop aboard the "air bridge" they are supposedly building. Meanwhile, the Aussies and French and Italians ALREADY EVACUATED. Oh funny isn't it?

I'm laughing sort of.

Redacted's sister finally took me up on the offer and now she is with me with her two daughters. The neighborhoods around her are pretty much leveled. The Ouzai was hit this afternoon and on the tellie here they were dragging small children out of the debris. So the body count is very inaccurate right now.

This is another Jenin lie in the making you know. Israel twisting all the rhetoric and trying to brainwash people into believing they are the good guys here.

Go to hell all of them and all who support their vile deeds against humanity. Send this letter to everyone and let them send it on and on and on.

All my love

Salaam wa alaikum and hope to write to you again in the a.m.

Addendum: Those were bleak moments for sure. The road to victory is arduous you know. As it turned out, the Israelis basically bombed their way in and destroyed their own roads to retreat. Literally, painted themselves into a corner.

Yesterday, Hezbollah claimed the final defeat of the Zionist Oppressors in the most important prisoner swap in written history.

"When we freed most Lebanese prisoners in 2004, we told the Israelis that you will regret keeping Kontar and today they are regretting it."

"Had their fates been revealed in a tactical error, the negotiations would have taken a different course," he said.

Nasrallah said that main factor that had helped Hizbullah achieve the prisoner swap was the "victory of 2006 and the effects that if left on Israel," referring to the 34-day conflict with Israel in July-August 2006.

"Had we lost the war, Samir and his comrades would not have returned to us," he said, in reference to Samir Kontar, who along with four Hizbullah fighters was freed as part of the swap.


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=94210

Well...I was whining alot during the aggression you know. Pitiful creature but I wasn't whining about the things people usually whine about "over here". I was whining about INJUSTICE. Real injustice not the fake kind that makes people say stupid things that lead me to believe that the average American human being thinks that the resources of other people belong to them! Or the notion that they support the idea that Iran doesn't have the right to produce their own nuclear fuel to combat not only global climate change but the upcoming shortages of fuel especially to developing nations. Developing nations which are ideologically "beholden" to foreign powers.

America doesn't control the world and neither does Israel. Neither does Hezbollah for that matter.

Allah has power over all things, large and small. All these victories belong to Allah and they are indeed, Divine and yes....George Bush WAS selected by Allah himself to lead a false nation into ruin and hopefully one day, redemption.

Is America a Nation of Whiners?

War, July 15, 2006
Beirut, Lebanon
Three days into the Aggression:

Well, war is weird. Second time around is even more weird. You somehow think you never will do "that again" but there you go again. Bound to Happen is a poem about exactly that sort of thing and it can be found on this blog. Shadenfreude in the City is also here on this blog as are many of the all time greatest hits of my little war zone.

I was up at the store a little while ago, listening as I walked with my great big beautiful speckled German pointer dog, to Joni Mitchell's California on my wonderful little iPod that is quite useful to filter out the sounds of pounding Israeli missiles. And let's get this straight, Israel doesn't give a rat's arse about those two POWs we have. As is their usual, they were looking for an opportunity and baiting all the time. Over the past several months they have killed innocent people in the south who were out in their fields culling tobacco and recently abducted a Lebanese citizen. This has been going on for an ever you know (besides the CONSTANT violations of our airspace) but because you don't see pictures of Lebanese children laying in nicely appointed bomb shelters (like the ones you are seeing hopefully on CNN depicting the poor Israelis who are just "quaking" in their little boots) YOU just don't pay attention! The reason you don't see that is because the Lebanese are too poor to build bomb shelters. Their country is literally too poor to clean up its trash properly. Children here are often barefoot and hungry. While Israeli girls and boys sleep.

You people just don't care. That is obvious. America is one sad place if you ask me. New Orleans...to think I wanted to DONATE money to that disaster. And exactly what has New Orleans done for us over here?***

Anyway, just rambling and thinking I best roll down the aluminum covers on the windows so they don't shatter. They've been pummelling the hell out of us this afternoon. Everything is on fire and the whole city smells as if it were a burnt match. So I went up to the store and saw this man that sells us "power" in the form of 10 amps/$50/month. It was so nice to have his services a few weeks back when the fourth motor I've had in a year bit the dust. I was SO relieved. He was just standing there at the little dekhena (tienda en espanol) and leaning on something, looking very Bogart like.

After he left, the shop keeper looked at me with her weary old eyes and said "50!" And I said, "Yes, and it will 'go up'" (of course I used the word 'itla' which is 'go up' instead of inflation since I don't know the word for inflation or the word for the black markets of war).

I just wanted to keep this as a note to remind myself to write his story and of listening to California....all the streets are filled with strangers....la dee da dee da...boom boom boom.

Israel. Horrible people who live there, work there and sleep there all nervous about the things they've done to others.

I hardly blame them.

***I really regretted that comment about the victims of Katrina. After having lived in the United States of America for almost two years now, I realize that those people in Louisiana are as much victims of the "West" and "Israel" as are the muslims who live "over there". But I also know for a fact that Americans have no real idea how suffering really works. This week the buzz is all about a Nation of Whiners and here is the blog called The Nation of Whiners Debating Society.




Former US Ambassador on effect of Hezbollah's Divine Victory against Israel.



Want to get Rich? Here is my advice and it comes from a very high place where advice is Golden.

Economy getting you down? No it isn't! This is the Great American Buyback. Form collectives in your towns and cities. BUY STOCK NOW. This is the time in which Civilization turns a complete 180 degrees and allows the Oppressed to get together and demand their rights back from their rich oppressors. Yup.

Are you poor and out of work? Save a dollar and get with someone else who has saved a dollar. Buy ONE stock. Sell that stock and buy another and another. Whole towns need to do this. Their city councils need to put their resources together.

Want to get out of debt quick? Well..forget it. But you can get out of this hole by retrieving what was stolen from you and preventing those who stole from you from doing it again.

My best advice and although I do not gamble in the stock market, it is the case that ownership of land, finite resources and the means of production is all very halal. Very halal indeed.

Blog of Note posted from Bint Jubeil, South Lebanon.

http://jnoubiyeh.blogspot.com/

It is the two year anniversary of the beginning of the Israeli Agression against the people of South Lebanon. Time flies on the way to victory you know. Time just flies.

On 12 September, former defense minister Moshe Arens spoke of "the defeat of Israel" in calling for a state committee of inquiry. He said that Israel had lost "to a very small group of people, 5000 Hezbollah fighters, which should have been no match at all for the IDF". Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah

Qul hajar o hadeeda!

Yep. Everything fossilizes and deteriorates into iron compounds eventually. And yes, the Quran says so.

"Qul hajar o hadeeda" means literally: Become stones or iron. It was stated in the Sura known as Israel and in reference to the fact that Allah will resurrect folks no matter how long they've been in the ground i.e. even if they are merely fossilized carbon atoms or those which have finally turned into iron compounds.

A great article about the role of iron in carbon dating:

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM...Cook-0305.html

The present paper deals with an issue of great interest to materials scientists and archeologists—the dating of iron-based materials that contain carbon. The phrase “iron-based materials” is used to cover the three common groups of irons and steels: wrought irons, which are typically low carbon (e.g., less than about 0.05% carbon), steels (up to 2.1% carbon), and cast irons (over 2.1% carbon). In addition, however, the corrosion products or rust from these materials is included since they can also be used for dating in some cases. For the case of iron-based materials, the time span of interest is from the start of the Iron Age in the regions of interest (about 2000 B.C. or earlier) to several hundred years ago. The most appropriate method for this time span and group of materials is 14C dating. It is key to point out that the usefulness of the method of dating carbon in iron-based materials relies on the source of the carbon found in the materials.

A second interesting area concerns the use of rust for dating. If rust can be dated reliably, it opens up a large number of possibilities for dating iron artifacts. Investigators will not need to cut into valuable artifacts for clean metal, but will be able to use surface corrosion products. This potentially opens the way for dating precious samples such as the iron plate found in the Great Pyramid at Gizeh,10,11 now at the British Museum. It may also be possible to date completely rusted artifacts, commonly found in waterlogged early Iron-Age sites in Europe and in underwater shipwrecks. Previous investigators had been careful to remove rust from iron prior to dating for fear that it adds contamination. A key issue though, is whether any of the original carbon remains within the matrix of rust and other corrosion products. If not, rust and similar materials are clearly of no interest for radiocarbon dating and should probably be removed since, at best, they can do no good. However, if original carbon is present, the corrosion products themselves may be appropriate targets for dating, subject to solving the potential contamination problems.

New findings solve human origins mystery
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/plos-nfs100907.php

The Expansion

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

Have We not expanded for you your breast, And taken off from you your burden Which pressed heavily upon your back, And exalted for you your self esteem?Surely with difficulty is ease. With difficulty is surely ease.So when you are free, nominate. And make your Lord your exclusive object. Sura 94, The Glorious Quran

Los Angeles, California – An extraordinary advance in human origins research reveals evidence of the emergence of the upright human body plan over 15 million years earlier than most experts have believed. More dramatically, the study confirms preliminary evidence that many early hominoid apes were most likely upright bipedal walkers sharing the basic body form of modern humans. On October 10th, online, open-access journal PLoS ONE will publish the report based on research from Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and from the Cedars Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders that connects several recent fossil discoveries to older fossils finds that have eluded adequate explanation in the past.

Recent advances in the field of homeotic genetics together with a series of discoveries of hominoid fossils vertebrae now strongly suggest that a specific genetic change that generated the upright bipedal human body form may soon be identified. The various upright “hominiform” hominoids appear to share this morphogenetic innovation with modern humans. Homeotics concerns the embryological assembly program for midline repeating structures such as the human vertebral column and the insect body segments.

The report analyses changes in homeotic embryological assembly of the spine in more than 200 mammalian species across a 250 million year time scale. It identifies a series of modular changes in genetic assembly program that have taken place at the origin point of several major groups of mammals including the newly designated ‘hominiform’ hominoids that share the modern human body plan.

The critical event involves a dramatic embryological change unique to the human lineage that was not previously understood because the unusual human condition was viewed as “normal.”

“From an embryological point of view, what took place is literally breathtaking,” says Dr. Aaron Filler, a Harvard trained evolutionary biologist and a medical director at Cedars Sinai Medical Center’s Institute for Spinal Disorders. Dr. Filler is an expert in spinal biology and the author of three books about the spine – “Axial Character Seriation in Mammals” (BrownWalker 2007), “The Upright Ape” (New Page Books 2007), and “Do You Really Need Back Surgery” (Oxford University Press 2007).

In most vertebrates (including most mammals), he explains, the dividing plane between the front (ventral) part of the body and the back (dorsal) part is a “horizontal septum” that runs in front of the spinal canal. This is a fundamental aspect of animal architecture. A bizarre birth defect in what may have been the first direct human ancestor led to the “transposition” of the septum to a position behind the spinal cord in the lumbar region. Oddly enough, this configuration is more typical of invertebrates.

The mechanical effect of the transposition was to make horizontal or quadrupedal stance inefficient. “Any mammal with this set of changes would only be comfortable standing upright. I would envision this malformed young hominiform – the first true ancestral human – as standing upright from a young age while its siblings walked around on all fours.”

The earliest example of the transformed hominiform type of lumbar spine is found in Morotopithecus bishopi an extinct hominoid species that lived in Uganda more than 21 million years ago. “From a number of points of view,” Filler says, “humanity can be redefined as having its origin with Morotopithecus. This greatly demotes the importance of the bipedalism of Australopithecus species such as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) since we now know of four upright bipedal species that precede her, found from various time periods on out to Morotopithecus in the Early Miocene.”

Time to Donate to Smile Train. Walter Cronkite video:



TO DONATE:

http://www.smiletrain.org/site/PageServer?pagename=donate_splash

Smile Train co founder in Afghanistan. Smile Train is not affiliated with any religious organization and treats children of all races, religious affiliations and gender around the world.

Evolution in the Quran



The Expansion


In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.Have We not expanded for you your breast, And taken off from you your burden,Which pressed heavily upon your back,And exalted for you your esteem?Surely with difficulty is ease. With difficulty is surely ease.So when you are free, nominate.And make your Lord your exclusive object.

Fetal Circulation/Expansion of Lung Capacity as it relates to Establishing Oxygen exchange in the Newborn

"Since oxygen is supplied by the mother, the fetus does not use lungs to breathe. Only a small amount of blood flows to the fetus's lungs. After birth, blood must flow to the baby's lungs. The mother's liver removes waste products for the fetus before birth; therefore, less blood flows through the fetus's liver. Blood flows around the fetus's lungs and liver by going through an opening in the heart and through two extra blood vessels. This opening and the extra blood vessels normally close after birth."



http://www.uprightape.net/Homeotic_Evolution.pdf

(1)–quantitative changes of primary segmental identity
pattern that appeared at the origin of the tetrapods ;

(2)–frame shift relation of costal and vertebral identity which diversifies
from the time of amniote origins;

(3)–duplication, mirroring, splitting and diversification of the neomorphic laminar process
first commencing at the dawn of mammals;

(4)–emergence of homologically variable lumbar lateral processes upon
commencement of the radiation of therian mammals and ;

(5)–inflexions and transpositions of the relative position of the
horizontal septum of the body and the neuraxis at the emergence of various orders of therian mammals. Convergent functional changes under homeotic control include laminar articular engagement with septo-neural transposition and ventrally arrayed lumbar transverse process support systems.

All About My Pious

If you could see what has been seen by those of you who have died, you would be puzzled and troubled. Then you would have listened and obeyed; but what they have seen is yet curtained off from you. Shortly, the curtain would be thrown off. You have been shown, provided you see and you have been made to listen provided you listen, and you have been guided if you accept guidance. I spoke unto you with truth. You have been called aloud by examples and warned through items full of warnings. After the heavenly messengers , only man can convey message from Allah. - Emir Ali ibn Abi Taleb, Commander of the Faithful, Lion of Allah, May Allah be pleased with his Ahl Bayt.

If a prayer could bring
you back to me, it
would be that one
you know, yes.
The empty cups for tea,
at least some sugar
for the flies,
the ones familiar
with it all.
Let's go back
in the shade,
to the peasants
who turn pots of wheat,
try something on.
What kind of novelty
is this ornery tale?

Blessed be the wars.

Your Amo Sol would mix
tree sap to catch
a thousand birds, Jafar
would break his arm

for you, as would
several believing men.

Amti Lena would sell
all of her dishes
and your grandmother
if she knew
would tear her heart
out, split and lay it
inside your high-heeled shoes.

How to Exchange Lies With Falsehoods
...the law of non contradiction (Aristotlean dynamics)

http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2005/01/jesus_and_the_l.html?cid=121373642#comment-121373642

This fellow known as the Jolly Blogger asks the important question, Does Allah violate his own Laws?

Well of course not.

But human beings are busy at work falsifying September 11th in elementary schools by fashioning a "version" of it after a well known model for indoctrination in New Jersey schools for a curriculum on the Holocaust. Hmm.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1214973442150410.xml&coll=1

The ultimate report will be modeled off New Jersey's successful Holocaust curriculum*, which is not specifically mandated by the state but has provided background and lesson plans for teachers.

*Heh, and not specifically true either! The six million theory was first mentioned before WWII was even half over in an article in the Reader's Digest which was written by a Jewish script writer.

If only the Jolly Blogger knew what muslims know and that is, Allah says Be! and it is and Allah does what he pleases:

[3.129] And whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is Allah's; He forgives whom He pleases and chastises whom He pleases; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

It is literally part of the law and perhaps the part of the law that many people like the least. Why do they not like it?

Because they like the lie better.

You know sister, I just cannot bring myself to take down that mighty, mighty picture of the Passiflora Incarnata. It is mesmerizing me, dammit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_flower

Allahu'ahkbar. Allah is the Mighty, the Wise.