Ragtime

In a syntactic recess, stands
Vespered momentarily by the shadow–clock
Of my stolen equinoctial hour
Precious
Untempored by season, speed or even greed
My quest
From an Almagest


To touch the skivered spine
Of lime-washed butchered hide
Is to trowel a chard from ancient Persian mound
A wind rose
Liberated mind by ragtime rind
The bequest
From the Almagest

Far above Babel’s floor, silence
Seven climates traveled with Claudius
And the sages of Gilgamesh
Gnosis
The lapis lazuli gems of impassive Chinamen
Brief rest
From my Almagest


A Note on the Poem Ragtime:
My recent accounts of buying books in the Time Traveller's Bookshop in West Cork reminded me of this poem I wrote a few years ago to celebrate Kenny's Bookshop in Galway, a place I could linger in forever. Unfortunately the actual city centre shop closed soon after and the book selling has moved into the 'online' economy instead and from a warehouse outlet a little outside the centre. Not quite the same 'feel' to the place. (www.kennys.ie)

Layabouts and Marabouts

President Barack Obama and his family – code-named renegade, renaissance, radiance and rosebud by their secret service minders – recently flew to Florida’s Gulf of Mexico shoreline for their holidays. Here they will have lain about on recently sanitised sands, working on their tans and possibly utilising Factor 0 from the ‘D’Arcy Exploration Suntan Oil’ range (For more on D'Arcy see Blog of Dec 7, 2009)! Before he departed south Obama took a very calculated risk and, in a speech to mark the month of Ramadan, and took the opportunity to throw his political weight into the controversy surrounding the Cordoba Initiative’s plan to establish a new ‘mosque’ about two blocks from ‘Ground Zero’.

Obama forcefully endorsed the right of Muslims – and any religious group – to practice their religion. He said that this right,

“…includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances."

He concluded by stating emphatically, "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

I think that the speech was a very calculated gamble, but parking political cynicism to one side, it was also a very brave and necessary gamble.

The notion of a ‘mosque’ being sited at Ground Zero appears to be the most emotive and divisive issue. This is unfortunate particularly as the planned building by the Cordoba Initiative is more of a community centre and ‘lodge’ (tekke in Turkish, khanqah in Farsi, zawiya in Arabic) for the Khalwati Jarrahi Sufi Order whose Shayk is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Khalwati derives from khalwa which means a ‘spiritual retreat’ and this is essentially what is planned for the top two floors – above the swimming pool – of the building rather than a formalized mosque.

Throughout their history Sufi Orders have depended on travelling missionaries or guides to bring their message of a more personal and mystical Islam to the world. Throughout history also the founder’s lodges have served as a ‘spiritual retreat’ for these itinerant marabouts. Somewhere to return to.

Where the controversy over the Ground Zero 'mosque' is concerned President Obama now needs an ‘Agarabe’.

Agarabe, in the Tamasheq language of the Tuareg people, is the descriptive term of the court-appointed position of Envoy to the Itinerant Marabouts, in the Court of the Sultanate of Aïr, in the Agadez region of Niger, on the southern margins of the Sahara Desert. 

Established about 1400 C.E. by a confederation of three Tuareq clans – the Kel Owi, Kel Ferwan and Itesen – the Sultanate of Aïr has survived the Malian, Songhai and French empires (the current Sultan is the 126th) to still control the lives and welfare of the people of this part of Niger.

Sufi marabouts or igurramen (in Berber) are individuals or families of ‘saints’ who can trace their lineage to Hasan Bin Ali, the Prophet Muhammed’s grandson and 5th Caliph. Marabout derives from murabit or ‘man of the ribat’, the Almoavid ‘holy warriors’ who were established in Sahara frontier outposts in the eighth and ninth centuries. Murabits were originally ‘holy men’ who lived as hermits but during the 12th century Sufism created ‘lodges’ or communities of these holy men where the way or tariqas to the knowledge and experience of God could be taught.

The Catalan Atlas of 1375 showing North African 

Kingdoms along lower border.

Later, originating in zawiya lodges of Morocco itinerant marabouts became a very important part of the North African pastoralist Tuareq society. Versed in the Koran, Islamic law and mystical practices they served not only as visiting judges and preachers but with a knowledge of Arabic and or Turkish could liase on behalf of the Tuareq people with the Arab coastal and Ottoman overlords. What all marabouts had in common, in the Tuareq language, was that the baraka or blessing of God was with them.

By appointing a special envoy, the Agarabe, to liase with these itinerant marabouts the Sultanate of Aïr was also visibly demonstrating the desire of the Tuareq clans to defend themselves against any accusation of laxity in spiritual observance.

The notion of wayside hospitality in the zawiyas of the marabouts of Aïr was a fundamental aspect of their existence. I suspect that the current American embodiment of what an Itinerant Marabout once did for the Tuareq, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, will maintain the hospitality tradition in the proposed building near ground zero. Hence its community focus.

I genuinely believe that this Sufi establishment  is not a development to be feared and should be embraced. Embraced not because the zawiya (or niche) presents an 'acceptable', inclusive and moderate promotion of Islam in contrast to the exclusive, fundamentalist and terrorizing aspect but because it will encourage dialogue between the faiths rather than deny it.

The new Sultan of Dare, Barack Obama should now continue to be pro-active and appoint his own Agarabe to accelerate the process.

Further Info:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200301/agadez-sultanate.of.the.sahara.htm

The iAmerican – A Baedeker Guide

I mentioned in a recent blog entry about the happenstance of discovery of a new bookshop in Skibbereen, Co. Cork called The Time Travellers Bookshop. Having spent an hour perusing the shelves and making one purchase, Ernest Hemmingway’s Men Without Women for my father, I was about to leave when the owner, a German, asked me what type of books I might be looking for in particular. My book-buying forays in general are fairly catholic in outcome. Sometimes it is a title, sometimes an author, sometimes it is a tactile impulse generated by running my index finger along a book’s spine, sometimes it is the design, sometimes I have no idea why I bought a particular book. But a constant, particularly in shops that deal in antique books, are Baedekers guides.

The printing company behind Baedekers was founded in Koblenz by Karl Baedeker in 1827 and produced its first guide in the English language – on the Rhine – in 1861. Some of the first editions are quite collectable and in my own small collection of old guide books (Baedekers, Muirheads, Cooks, Guide Bleu) I have a first English edition (not unfortunately in its original cover) of Syria and Palestine (1876) and a particular favourite, an only edition of the Handbook to the Mediterranean (1911). I am always on the lookout for more …at a reasonable price of course!

I told the German bookseller of my interest in Baedekers and this suddenly sparked a flurry of activity.

‘I have just come in …somewhere if I find it, a United States, a second edition. Do you have one of those?’

‘No,’ I replied.

‘It is special,’ he continued, while searching random boxes. ‘The provenance is interesting.’

And expensive, I thought, but perhaps not as expensive as the 1904 3rd edition if it had the 9pp supplement celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

Eventually we found the book with difficulty. Its sienna-coloured cover, different from the normal red, had camouflaged its position. On opening the front the provenance was plain to see. This particular guide had once belonged to Arthur Meier Schlesinger (1885-1967), the very able American social historian – before he added Sr to his name in deference to his famous son Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, John F Kennedy’s advisor and historiographer – and Harvard professor. We agreed on a price and happy with the purchase I brought it away to a new home.

Later I had a chance to study Schlesinger’s library identifying-sticker more. It contained everything that Schlesinger believed had become the American dream – or illusion – the ascent of the city. His very specific commissioned design documents in the foreground the arrival of immigrants into rural America, the availability of education, the subsequent movement uphill in wagon trains not to the empty wilderness of romantic western notions but to a small town, then further upwards to an industrial town and finally at the apex into the embodiment of all that he believed America to truly be, the city.

In a Presidential address to the American Historical Association in December 1940 Schlesinger introduced his speech by giving a visitor’s composite appraisal of the American character. He stated that

‘The attributes most frequently noted are a belief in the universal obligation to work; the urge to move about; a high standard of comfort for the average man; faith in progress; the eternal pursuit of material gain; an absence of permanent class barriers; the neglect of abstract thinking and of the aesthetic side of life; boastfulness; a deference for women; the blight of spoiled children; the general restlessness and hurry of life, always illustrated by the practice of fast eating; and certain miscellaneous traits such as overheated houses, the habit of spitting, and the passion for rocking chairs and ice water.’

In two later astute observations he noted that the American love of cars and hyper-mobility had resulted in ‘The pursuit of happiness’ being ‘transformed into the happiness of pursuit” and that ‘the passion for associational activity’ had become ‘a sovereign principle of life.’

It was the city that continued to fascinate him however. The city was where as he put it, ‘the ancient (rural) prejudice against “useless” accomplishments could not long withstand the compelling opportunities offered’. This construct was as Graeco-Roman a revival as you could possibly imagine, save perhaps for the accelerated pace it occurred at in America.

And this is where I believe Schlesinger Sr, rather than his son, becomes the prophet of the iAmerican generation. The i standing for both the iPodded and iPadded individual and  collective imperium. The iAmerica of now where citizens and government would rather expose their lives, their Facebooked lives, to the television intrusion of Judge Judy rather than expose themselves to the censure of the International Criminal Court. Where the ‘passion for associational activity’ has created in the iAmerican character a fault line of amoral fraternities, biker-gangs, internet paedophile rings, messianic end-of-world groups, terrorist cells, CIA torture squads, and businesses all founded on ‘a profound conviction that nothing in the world is beyond its power to accomplish’ added to a Rumsfeldian ‘hyperbolic’ rationalisation.

All is not lost however. In a small hand-written note left within the book, identifying the Baedeker guidebook for his collection, Schlesinger had written on the reverse the names of restaurants in New Orleans: Moreau, Mme Venn’s, Flêcher, Victors. I was glad it was  New Orleans, the least iAmerican city I have visited.

Further Info: http://www.historians.org/info/aha_history/amschlesinger.htm

Men Without Women

There is absolutely no connection – that at a conscious level I can think of – between this blog entry and my July 29 posting concerning the new UN Women organisation. The title refers to a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1927. I recently happened upon a 1946 edition of it in a new bookshop in Skibereen, Co. Cork called The Time Travellers Bookshop.

What a wonderful name and caught in its 'timewarp' I spent a good hour trawling its shelves.

I bought the book for my father –  at 85 he has been a widower for nearly ten years and whom I was due to see the following day – for two reasons.

Firstly with my father in mind the title intrigued me. After the death of my mother he had established a new social pattern of taking out to lunch, on a reasonably regular basis, the widows of his deceased friends. This became a very important aspect of his life and something fully savoured. Unfortunately in recent times most of those women friends have either died or become too infirm to participate and once again he is a man without women in his life.

Secondly in the years after the Second World War my father moved to live in Barcelona for six months (the poor man’s Switzerland) hoping the dry atmosphere would help speed his recovery from pulmonary tuberculosis. He is somewhat reluctant to talk about his time there and in the silence it often strikes me that thoroughly scared by the prospect of dying from the disease he had also gone there to hide away, to die. Thankfully the climate had its effect – but also I suspect his enormous personal religious faith – and he described his sense of returning home to Ireland as having returned ‘undefeated’.

‘Undefeated’ happens also to be the title of the first short story in the Men Without Women collection. The story was an expansion of Hemingway’s fascination with the art, terror and brutality of bullfighting first seen in his 1926 book, The Sun Also Rises and which was to achieve its full expression in his 1932 book, Death in the Afternoon.

The recent vote in the Catalan parliament – in the Barcelona of my father – to ban bullfighting has inflamed enormous divisions particularly in the Pamplona of Hemingway. I have walked those streets of Pamplona along the route of the daily bullrun but only ever once went to a bullfight. I found it fascinating, terrorising, sensuous and barbaric all at once. I agree wholeheartedly with its suppression but understand equally its hold for the aficionados.

In 'Undefeated' the once-marvellous but now aged matador Manuel discharges himself from hospital and accepts a piffling amount to fight a ‘nocturnal’. It is all he knows what to do and he must express himself. The chosen bull is good and the reader is drawn into the contest. You will him to withdraw but he does not and although Manuel eventually succeeds in killing the bull he is gored badly. The story leaves off at that point, as Manuel is being placed on the operating table, his fate uncertain. His only concern was that they would cut off his ‘coleta’ or matador’s pony-tail: a sign of final retirement.

I gave my father the book and he remembered that he once had a copy, which he had lost many years ago. I looked at him, head down, leafing through it and in a strange way imagined his once jet black hair in a ‘coleta’. My father has survived pulmonary tuberculosis, diptheria, bladder cancer, cardiac by-pass surgery, and prostate cancer with his brain – and very personal faith – intact.

A man without women yes; but definitely undefeated.

To read Men without Women go to:

http://danworks.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/ernest-hemingway-men-without-women.pdf

The Time Travellers Bookshop is at Worldwidebookshop.com 

Pat Bracken (1951-2010)

Hands Prematurely Still

I was away from Galway when Pat Bracken, puppeteer, stonemason and ceramicist suddenly died and only got to know of his death when I read his obituary in the Irish Times on last Saturday. I am really sorry I missed his funeral in St Nicholas' Collegiate Church.

I knew Pat reasonably well, and yet not well enough. My first encounter with him, with his art, was on Saturday mornings in Galway in 1992 when I would take my children in ( but mainly myself) to see his puppetry performance on Shop Street. He was fantastic and particularly in the way he controlled ( if he ever did control them) his character puppets in those brief moments as they retreated from the interaction with the crowd. There was such rawness to those receding gestures, such a nakedness of soul, that they captured the essence of Pat himself.

Sometime later the very first book I published under the Wynkin deWorde imprint was a work by Galway-based playwright Max Hafler. The book was called Waking the Woodboy and its central character, in a very adult book, was an angry malevolent puppet. Although Max would never admit to basing much of the book on Pat ( and I did not press him on this), I felt it had to have been. To such an extent that when I was designing the book cover in order to assuage possible legal threats I asked Pat for the loan of one of his puppets for the photograph. I gave him a copy of the book to read and if he did have any reservations he never expressed them to me. He would have never stood in the way of what he considered a worthy artistic venture. The fee was agreed and a pint bought. I collected and brought back that puppet as if it were a Rodin.

Pat had an old world politeness and grace about him. Part of this politeness stemmed from being a third generational artisan, and the mutual recognition that that the relationship between patron and artist is always a delicate balancing act between admiration and utility. But more than that whenever we met accidently for a drink and he talked about his love for his son and his love of going back to college to study ceramics his gentleness and spirit nestled in the palm of care-worn and stone-battered hands.

Those hands are now prematurely still and the tools that he inherited from his father lie idle. I hope they will find a good home. They carry an enormous legacy.

See: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0803/1224276088879.html

UN Women – A Callipygian Leadership Quest

On July 2, 2010 the 104th meeting of the 64th General Assembly of the UN voted unanimously to adopt a Resolution on System-Wide Coherence within the UN (UN Doc. A/64/L.56). Contained within this Resolution was the decision to establish a new ‘composite entity’ in the UN – to be called UN Women – by consolidating and transferring to the new entity the existing mandates and functions of the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, and the Division for the Advancement of Women of the Secretariat, as well as those of the United Nations Development Fund for Women and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women.

UN Women in an early mission statement have declared:

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the UN Charter, UN Women will work for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls, the empowerment of women, and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

As a gynaecologist and as a male I have to be a little careful as to how I address some of the issues that are already being aired concerning the most recent and very significant evolution of the United Nations.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the decision as ‘historic’, and declared: ‘It will now be much more difficult for the world to ignore the challenges facing women and girls — or to fail to take the necessary action’. 

And it is historic, from both a legal and a financial perspective, as the new entity has been granted normative powers (the power to establish rules and regulations that automatically become part of international human rights and humanitarian law) and a budget of about $500million.

As an entity therefore with a very specific ‘genderised’ mandate, even if the impact of the ‘new entity’ for the impoverished Third World woman, the marginalized political woman in traditional societies, the woman victim of war, violence, sex-trafficing etc has yet to be felt on the ground, the western media has already sensed the new power that it gives to the UN female diplomat.

The picture below is from a recent Marie Claire article: 

"The Diplomatic Woman"

"POWER SHIFT: 

All-female ambassadors stage a march of progress past portraits of former Secretary-Generals; 

including a partially obscured U Thant and Kurt Waldheim." 

"Far Left: Jacket, $990, pants, $625, Y and Kei; pumps, $895, bag, $2495, Michael Kors; earrings, $1010, Tenthousandthings; ring, $3740, Kara Ross. Center left: Jacket, $1920, skirt, $875, Peter Som; shoes, price upon request, Dior by John Galliano; earrings, $4180, Kara Ross. Center right: Jacket, $4260, skirt, $720, Dior by John Galliano; shoes, $495, Giuseppe Zanotti Design; earrings, $465, NAG. Right: Dress, $395, Tory Burch; shoes, $645, Sergio Rossi."

(see http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/trends/articles/fashion-un)

The leadership of UN Women, as a position, has therefore the significant potential to exercise very serious political clout, an empowerment enshrined in Resolution A/64/L.56, which determined that the new Under-Secretary-General/head of UN Women shall report (directly) to the Secretary-General and shall be a full member of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination. The Secretary-General is mandated to have the person appointed by the opening of the 65th session of the General Assembly on September 14, 2010 at 3pm.

The Callipygian Venus (Louvre)

Callipygian: Function: adjective 

Etymology: Greek kallipygos, from kalli- + pygē buttocks : having shapely buttocks

This is a 'seat' at the big table! And already it is quite apparent that the ‘beauty’ contest bickering has begun over the choosing of a Under-Secretary-General (or even Ovary-Secretary-General!!) to head up the 'entity'.

In an interview on Voice of America Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-FREE World and former regional AIDS advisor for UNICEF, said she was concerned about the selection process. She stated that the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon and others had promised the selected process would be fair, open and transparent. 

(http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/europe/decapua-un-women-7jul10-97935934.html)

Donovan continued,

'They’ve now changed that to open, rigorous and transparent. 

 And somehow fairness has slipped off of the agenda.’

Donovan said that many qualified women (and from reading various articles I suspect that it is very unlikely that a ‘man’ will be chosen for the position!) might be passed over for consideration and that women outside of the U.N. structure or not a favored choice of a head of state ‘have absolutely no information about how they can apply, what the qualifications are. And I haven’t seen anything that resembles fairness or openness and certainly not transparency.’

Ouch. Let the games begin.

Counter-Narratives and the Col du Tourmalet

Counter-Narratives in the Tour de France

This afternoon, home early from work, I watched the last 11km of the 174km 17th stage of the 2010 Tour de France from Pau to the Col du Tourmalet. The Col at 2119m is the highest road pass in the central Pyrenees and the gradient for the cyclists nearing the summit is 10%. At about 10km from the summit the Luxemburger Andy Schleck – wearer of the white jersey denoting best young rider of the Tour – made a determined effort to shake off the wearer of the yellow jersey, and a two-time previous winner of the Tour, Alberto Contador. In the overall classification Contador has an 8 second advantage over Schleck and if he could stay with the younger man on the vicious climb then he would be expected to win the Tour, as he is a better time trialist, on Saturdays time trial stage.

The two men locked horns, and ever upwards on the mist-covered mountain went wheel on wheel. Schleck did most of the work apart from one small burst ahead by Contador. This did not break the younger man. When Schleck pulled alongside Contador he looked across at the champion as if to say ‘who do you think you are?’ But Contador is the man. Through a narrowing corridor of running, clapping, flag-waving, streaking, screaming fans he stayed the course and they finished in the same time, to embrace, to wink at each other.

This was a real contest! I think! The effort expended by both men was almost superhuman in its application and achievement. But was it real? Of course it was real. Was it fair then? Of course it was fair. There were two of them it! Well then, can we believe that it was achieved without the use of drugs? Ah! Now there is the rub.

Cycling, particularly the extremes demanded by the Tour, has long been associated with the utilization of every conceivable pharmacologic and biologic agent that might confer an advantage to a rider, particularly a team leader. There was as a consequence a sense, almost, of a suspended reality – like playing a video game – watching the two men at the edge of their physical envelopes go beyond.

Beyond the horizon they cycled, above the ascent they climbed … into myth.

Once the race is over you wonder. Landis, Roche, Armstrong etc., etc… What is the truth, what is the myth?

Counter-Narratives on a Wet Sunday

Recently, on a wet windblown July Sunday in Ireland, I got a chance to catch up with some of my reading. As always it involves dipping into three or four books at once, a completely inefficient way of reading, which involves a large amount of re-reading whenever I return to where I had thought I was.

One of these books was Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth, published by Canongate. As an aside I liked the typeface of this book. Armstrong obviously generally submits such copious material to her publishers that they to save costs usually release them with a very narrow and condensed typeface as to make reading really tiring. This book is a pleasant exception.

In the very first paragraph, discussing our Neanderthal ancestors' burial rituals – it is thought likely some Neanderthals mated with Homo Sapiens – Armstrong writes,

‘…when these early people became conscious of their mortality, they created some sort of counter-narrative that enabled them to come to terms with it (death).’

And so there it is? Myths are an instinctive counter-narrative to truth-reality and an essential requirement of our being. Truth on the other hand – Felipe Fernández-Armesto considers it a property of language – is ephemeral because reality is contrived.

The Tourmalet mountain pass is a truth-reality, but Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck’s contest, or Eleanor of Aquitaine or the Byerley Turk are already myths.

HUBRIS

élégance it ain't

Nowruz and Nowhere

Equilibrium rather than Equality 

of Women’s Rights in Iran

On the 23 February 2010, at the 64th Session of the UN General Assembly, Mr Al Habib, speaking on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, stood up to thank the General Assembly for adopting Resolution 64/253 declaring March 21 International Day of Nowruz. He said ‘to commemorate Nowruz also means to promote life in harmony with nature, natural cycles and sources of life.’

Nowruz, the Persian New Year is a time of great celebration in Iran and two years ago I had the absolute privilege of being invited into the home of Tehrani friends to celebrate it. At that party were four sisters. Four beautiful, vibrant, highly educated women whose joy and good will lit up the room. And yet as I sat there I could not help feeling that somehow the Islamic Republic of Iran and its 1979 constitution has denied them any chance of being in true ‘harmony.’

They are truly second class citizens. As pointed out recently by both the UN’s Report of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran (UN Doc. A/63/459 October 2008):

'The penal and civil laws contain discriminatory provisions that are in urgent need of reform.'

The Global Campaign to Stop Killing and Stoning Women (http://www.stop-stoning.org/home1) have also stated:

'In the Iranian Penal Code, a married woman has no right to divorce, a privilege which is reserved for the husband. Women have no custody rights over their children after age seven; as a result, women who can obtain a divorce by proving their husbands are either abusive or an addict, choose not to do so fearing the loss of their children. A man can marry up to four wives simultaneously, and may establish a sexual relationship with any other single woman through a temporary marriage without the requirements of marriage registration, ceremony, or obligation to any possible child that may result. In addition, a woman is legally obliged to submit to her husband‟s sexual demands and do her best to satisfy him sexually. Hence if a man is sexually unsatisfied or in an unhappy relationship, he has many avenues open to him to dissolve the marriage and/or satisfy his sexual needs in a temporary “marriage.” However, these legal options are denied to Iranian women, and a woman seeking alternative intimate relationships is, in the eyes of the law, “committing adultery.”'

Under the Iranian Penal code this discrimination begins early. The age of criminal responsibility for boys is 14 and three months whereas for girls it is 8 years and nine months.

God forbid that any of the four sisters I met at the Nowruz party, would be denied love by their husbands or even worse be victims of the domestic violence pervasive in Iranian society. God forbid in searching for a personal harmony with the sources of life such as, for example, satisfying their desire for love or passion, they would consider adultery. This possibility of love or harmony is denied to them. Their husbands have a right to create a temporary ‘sexual’ or even ‘loving’ relationship but they do not.

If married, these beautiful Iranian women, if they do seek out true love, despite the fact there is supposed to be a moratorium on ‘stoning’ for adultery, could be buried in a pit up to their breasts – for men it is only to their waists giving them the slight possibility of escape and therefore under law exemption from punishment – and be murdered in a barbaric fashion by stones prescribed for in the Iranian constitution that are not to big to kill outright and not too small as to have little effect.

(For more on this form of execution – lapidation – see my blog previous blog Lapidation–The Loss of Reason on May 11, 2009)

It is an irony of fact that on the 21 April 2010 Iran was elected to the United Nations Economic and Social Council’s (ECOSOC) Commission on the Status of Women(CSW). I am not certain however that Iran, even as part of the General Assembly’s recent unanimous vote on 2 July 2010 to establish the new body the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (http://www.unwomen.org/) to be known as UN Women, will fully support the organizations avowed aim of

 “achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.”

In a reply to a ECOSOC’s CSW questionnaire sent to all member states designed to evaluate a 15 year review of the implementation of the Bejing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) the Islamic Republic of Iran, in a report drafted in 2008 by the Centre for Women and Family Affairs in Tehran declared that,

‘instead of considering superficial facts regarding men and women’s equality it suggests gender equilibrium’ as a better option.

Thus Iran is determined to see women’s equality as a matter of equilibrance rather than a matter of right. For Iran’s rulers and lawmakers it is merely a question of balancing the ‘stones’ of expediency that are not too big to give the appearance of killing off the notion of women’s rights altogether but yet again are not too small as to allow the possibility of those rights escaping into harmony.

See Also: http://humanrightsdoctorate.blogspot.com/2010/07/stoning-for-adultery-still-reality-in.html

Rihla (Journey 16): Delphi Valley, Ireland – White Ladies and Divils Dancing on Doolough

Doolough, Delphi, Ireland

Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This Rihla is about Delphi, Connemara, Ireland.

Last weekend I decided to try fly-fishing in Ireland and I headed out to stay with my friend Peter Mantle at his world-famous Delphi Lodge, north of Leenaun in Co. Galway. All day Saturday I fished Finlough and the Bundorragh River improving my technique if not actually attracting much action with that technique, a comparable experience it must be stated, to my adolescent efforts with girls. The conditions according to our gillie were perfect, a filling lake and a river in spate thanks to three days rain and overcast skies with a zephyr wind. Nobody told the fish however. At one point on the Turn Pool a large salmon (approx 10-12lbs) broached five feet in front of me and I swear to God he winked.

The Delphi Fishing Terrain

At about 6.30pm I was fishing the first pool on the river’s upper beat (the last for me) just before the bridge below Finlough. I was about to give up my quest when my fly was suddenly taken, my rod bent and a silver flash drew out the line. In my excitement and ineptitude in playing the fish I allowed it to lodge between two rocks before I could extract it. It was a sea trout (albeit a small one of about 8oz) and no matter how long I waited the fish would not revive. Apart from mouth to mouth I tried everything.

This was a problem. The exhilaration of my first fish caught on a fly replaced by the guilt of having a dead sea trout on my hands. All wild salmon and sea trout in the Delphi system are fished on a capture and release basis and in this aspect I had failed miserably. It is illegal in particular to be in possession of a sea-trout.

Sea Trout

Despite this I felt the fish should at least be recorded and brought it back to the lodge. The looks I got, when they saw the type of fish I’d brought in, from gillies and other fishermen, was akin I suspect to those given to some of our bankers or perhaps to Pierrepoint, the former state executioner.

It was a lesson learnt however and next year I promised to do better.

The following morning the wind was howling as I headed out on a walk from the Lodge towards Doolough lake to the north. As I reached the lake shore the wind appeared to be coming at me from both the south and the west at the same time and the waters were being whipped up in incandescent rage. At that very moment, close to the southern shore of Doolough, a vortex of water some 20 feet across began to form and spinning faster and faster became a whirlwind of spray that stood stationary for some two minutes or so before taking off like a hovercraft across the lake towards me only to suddenly evaporate against the road boundary wall.

An Eddy Whirlwind on Doolough

These eddy whirlwinds on the lake, caused by the shearing forces of opposite winds tunnelling off the mountainsides rather than from the thermal energy associated with waterspouts or tornadoes, are known locally as White Ladies. Sometimes they are known as Water Devils. In mythology, from the Limnades lake-nymphs of the Greeks, the Arthurian Lady of the Lake, to Chalchiuhtlicue of the Aztecs, there is a very long human history of spirits of the lake and they are not necessarily benign.

The White Lady of Doolough

As I watched the White Lady dance across the waters towards me I remembered Malory’s Lady of the Lake in Le Morte d’Arthur demanding from King Arthur the head of a knight responsible for killing her brother in exchange for the sword Excalibur.

Was that brother a sea trout I wondered?

Further Information:

Central Fisheries Board at www.cfb.ie/pr/ seatrout08.htm

Delphi Lodge at www.delphilodge.ie/

Horizons

Grandson Leon and me

The eyes captured the moment
A gossamer instance
When all was possible,
And the past,
And our future,
Merged.

The hands enveloped the moment
A gossamer instance
When we were one
And the power
And our glory
Merged.

The light suffused the moment
A gossamer instance
When we had no horizon
And the love
And our hopes
Merged.

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Lithium and Lapis Lazuli

Communication:

Old and New in Afghanistan

Ur: Lapis Lazuli inlay

On June 13, 2010 the New York Times reported that the United States Geological Survey working with the Pentagon (and presumably their drone aircraft) had near-completed a massive geological survey of the mineral riches of Afghanistan and had discovered huge untapped deposits of rare but highly valuable minerals particularly lithium.

The USGS Survey

Despite General Stanley McChrystal’s Paton-like pushing of a Rolling Stone self-destruct button in his criticism of the American civil administration, that administration is determined to win the war, then win the peace and then exploit Afghanistan for any of the riches it might contain.

I find this utterly fascinating.

It is now likely that the progressive development of the primary form of future communication in our world (iPhone 4’s and their ilk) between people, communities, combatants, peacekeepers, terrorists, politicians, charlatans and exploiters will depend on power provided by the lithium ions of Afghanistan.

This ‘New’ style of communication, this new pervasion of an ‘Indo-European’ lithium-powered techno-language, is however just another evolutionary stage of the ‘Proto-Indo-European’ language of our distant ancestors that was first enabled by another Afghan rare mineral: lapis lazuli.

When the last glacial stage of the last small ice age retreated from the Hindu Kush plateau about 10,000 years ago it allowed people from the lowlands to move up along the rivers to hunt in high valleys such as the Kokcha Valley in North-Eastern Afghanistan. The glacial retreat also exposed in the steep valley walls intense blue rock formations know known as lapis lazuli. The small Kokcha River is the eastern tributary of the River Oxus which Marco Polo traversed and wrote: “There is a mountain in that region where the finest azure in the world is found. It appears in veins like silver streaks.”

The hunters, let us call them the Nuristani people, found that instead of hunting animals for their pelts the blue rock if prised, polished and brought to the lowlands was considered more valuable and tradable. Intensive mining for lapis lazuli began in the Kokcha Valley about 8,000 years ago and has continued to this day.

The extraordinary aspect of this mining is that from 6,000 BCE there were well established trade routes bringing the lapis lazuli into the Indus Valley Civilization sites and into Sumer, where as a precious stone it features highly in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It also appears further afield in the pre-dynastic tombs of 3,500 BCE Egypt and after a lacunae (presumably caused by Mesopotamian control of all the mining output) in the Ist to IVth Pharonic dynasties becomes a very important part of Egyptian jewellery design from about 2500 BCE on.

Lapis Lazuli in Egyptian Jewel

There other intriguing aspect of the development of a specific communication network for the trading of lapis lazuli is that there would have to have been a parallel development in the language of that trading. I have long felt that the true origin of the ‘mother’ proto-indo-european language, that has given us Tocharian, Greek, Latin, Irish, English etc (and more recently ‘texting’ or techno-language) was also amongst the original Nuristani miners in the high Kokcha valley of Afghanistan.

Later lapis lazuli was also to become, when ground, a pigment called Ultramarine, and was used in the production of some of the greatest of the early medieval illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Kells.

Lapis Lazuli Ultramarine Blue in Book of Kells

Yeats much later again wrote one of his greatest poems:

Lapis Lazuli

I have heard that hysterical women say

They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.

Of poets that are always gay,

For everybody knows or else should know

That if nothing drastic is done

Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.

Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in

Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,

There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,

That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;

Yet they, should the last scene be there,

The great stage curtain about to drop,

If worthy their prominent part in the play,

Do not break up their lines to weep.

They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;

Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.

All men have aimed at, found and lost;

Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:

Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.

Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,

And all the drop-scenes drop at once

Upon a hundred thousand stages,

It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or On shipboard,

Camel-back; horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,

Old civilisations put to the sword.

Then they and their wisdom went to rack:

No handiwork of Callimachus,

Who handled marble as if it were bronze,

Made draperies that seemed to rise

When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;

His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem

Of a slender palm, stood but a day;

All things fall and are built again,

And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,

Are carved in Lapis Lazuli,

Over them flies a long-legged bird,

A symbol of longevity;

The third, doubtless a serving-man,

Carries a musical instrument.

Every discoloration of the stone,

Every accidental crack or dent,

Seems a water-course or an avalanche,

Or lofty slope where it still snows

Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch

Sweetens the little half-way house

Those Chinamen climb towards, and I

Delight to imagine them seated there;

There, on the mountain and the sky,

On all the tragic scene they stare.

One asks for mournful melodies;

Accomplished fingers begin to play.

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,

Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

The poem recounts the rise and fall of civilizations and is an overly optimistic view of the triumph of art over the tragedy of war and destruction. Written in March 1938, just after the Nanjing genocide, the Lapis Lazuli Chinamen in question was a stone carving given to Yeats by the poet and mad eccentric Henry Talbot deVere Clifton in 1935.

I just wonder whether it is the language of trading rather than the language of art that overcomes all – and endangers all?

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Reference:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html