Hollande & Helmet – A French Success Story

On the 14 January François Hollande gave a Presidential Address on the State of the French Nation. Needless to say most attention was focused on how he would handle questions on the reports of his recent affair.

4.50 pm GMT. In response to a question about his security arrangements during his nocturnal escapades, François Hollande replies " I always have protection."

For the full press conference see: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/14/francois-hollande-press-conference-on-economy-and-affair-live

Rihla (Journey 41): Angkor, Cambodia – Disputes, Dancers, Deevata and Destruction

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 Angkor, Cambodia.

"O Kings …I implore you, you who are anxious to protect my foundation…protect it against evil forces…protect each portion of the sacred material, even the smallest one, made of wood or stone, against looters, people committing sacrilidges and other scoundrels.”

Royal Edict of Khmer King Jayavarman VII (1125-1218 CE),

Ta Prohm Temple Foundation Stele Inscription,

Angkor, Cambodia

I thought of these verses, of this posthumous request of one King to his successors to look after his legacy, on reading the Judgement handed down by the International Court of Justice on the 11 November 2013 in Cambodia v. Thailand concerning a Request for Interpretation of the Judgement of 15 June 1962 in the Case Concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear.

The Temple of Preah Vihear sits high on an outcrop of the Dangrek escarpment and right on the border of Thailand and Cambodia, a border defined by 11 maps drawn up in 1907 by four French Officers following the 1904 Treaty between Siam (Thailand) and Indo-China (Incorporating Cambodia). The border on the Dangrek –Commission of Delimitation between Indo-China and Siam map showed it to pass north of the Temple leaving the Temple in Cambodia. 

Following Cambodian independence on 9^th November 1953 (almost 60 years to the day before the recent judgement!) Thailand occupied the Temple prompting Cambodia to appeal to the ICJ. In a Judgement handed down on the 15 June 1962 the ICJ confirmed the Temple to be in Cambodia and obliged Thailand to remove its occupying forces. Thailand complied but only by a couple of metres and erected a barbed-wire fence surrounding the site.

Cambodia went back to the ICJ filing a request, on the 28 April 2011, for a essentially what amounted to a ‘geographical’ Interpretation of the 1962 judgement as well as seeking an immediate injunction on Thailand’s incursions into Cambodian sovereign territory at the site. This Injunction was granted on the 18 July 2011 pending the full hearing of the case.

The Court was fully pre-occupied with interpretation of what constituted ‘watersheds’, ‘vicinity’, ‘region’, ‘temple area’ and ‘territory’ but was adamant that it was not dealing with the delimitation of the Thai-Cambodian border as a whole but only that of a small area of sovereign territory. In a fine line of reasoning, however, the Judgement then endorsed the territorial sovereignty of Cambodia over the Preah Vihear temple complex by 'geographically' moving the disputed zone back north westwards along the promontory to the foothills of a nearby hill, Phnom Trap, about 1 km beyond Thailand’s barbed-wire fence (Accordingly, the Court considers that the promontory of Preah Vihear ends at the foot of the hill of Phnom Trap, that is to say where the ground begins to rise from the valley –para.98).

In almost identical words (800 years apart), to Jayavarman VII’s Royal Edict of the 12^th century quoted above, the Court reiterated (para 106) that ‘each State is under an obligation not to “take any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly” such heritage.’

Whether this happens or not remains to be seen!

The Preah Vihear (Sacred Shrine) temple is located at the northern border of what would have been the greatest extent of the Khmer Kingdom under King Jayavarman VII. Originally constructed in the 9^th Century it was dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva, the Destroyer and God of the North and the Mountains. A little later it became a centre of Brahminism under Suryavarman II (1113-1150) and then converted to a Buddhist centre of worship, which it has remained.

The impetus for the pre-eminence of Buddhism in Cambodia after its decline elsewhere in the 7-10^th centuries was the accession of Jayavarman VII to the Khmer Kingdom in 1181. Jayavarman (Protégé of Victory) traced his Royal lineage back through his mother to Asperas Mera founder of the Khmer race. With the encouragement of his second wife Rajendradevi, a noted Buddhist teacher and poet, Jayavarman replaced the state religion of Brahmanism with Mahayana Buddhism, and in particular Bodhisattva ancestor worship, and thus laid the foundation – despite a Hindu iconoclastic reaction by followers of Shiva in the mid-13^th century – for the later incorporation of peaceful Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka as the predominant religious practice in Cambodia.

Jayavarman was a prodigious builder of temples and public buildings (some 102 hospitals – divided into large, medium and small with very defined staffing and management rules – and over 121 rest lodges or dharmasalas on the main roads in his kingdom.

I had a chance to visit Angkor in April 2013. Humidity and time defeated my best efforts to cover as much ground as possible, and I suspect like the stories of the 1001 nights, you could return again and again and still not finish the story. The entire World Heritage Site is one of the most visited in the world, and deservedly so but the experience however would be so much better if it were not for the ugly shanty-town of restaurants and kiosks that surround the entrance and the lack of a properly designed, air-conditioned and funded interpretative centre.

Angkor provides an enormous cash-flow to the local and national economy, the majority of which must be being siphoned off as there is little evidence of it being ploughed back into infrastructure, to cope with the amount of visitors. That said the former capital of the Khmer Kingdom is truly monumental in its scale and artistry, although the Khmer sculptors were much more circumspect in their depiction of Vedic sexual shenanigans than their rhapsodic Indian counterparts.

 

After Suryavarman II, the builder of Angkor Wat, Jayavarman VII was responsible for most of the buildings now seen in Angkor. One of the most famous of these foundations was the Temple of Ta Prohm (Eye of Brahmin), the Rajavihara or Royal Buddhist monastery and university built in honour of his mother Sri Jayarajacudamani (he placed a statute of his mother in the guise of Prajnaparamita, mother of the Buddha) in 1186. It was constructed around the same time as the great European masterpiece, Chartres Cathedral. 

As a structure it is notable for many reasons but primarily for the decision of the restoration authorities to leave the large jungle roots and trees which were growing through its walls in situ as a testimony to the notion of the heritage of the Khmer Kingdom being lost to the jungle with the abandonment of Angkor in the 17^th Century. The two predominant types of tree that entangle the ruins of Ta Prohm are the huge trunks of the silk-cotton tree, Ceiba Pentandra and the strangler fig, Ficus gibbosa with multiple grey roots.

Before you enter into the inner complex a circumambulation of the area between the fourth enclosure wall and the double-moated fifth enclosure will reveal the 90 or so ruins of monks cells. Within the Temple proper the first building you encounter coming from the West Gate is the Hall of the Dancers, where access is restricted due to restoration works.

There is a small medallion on the western wall of the Southern side-chapel showing unusually Buddha (or a statue of the Buddha) being attacked by two figures with sticks, a medallion that features in a number of the buildings that Jayavarman VII commissioned. It may represent the story of Mara's soldiers trying to prevent Gautama mediating at the Bodhi Tree, therefore preventing his enlightenment but experts are unsure. In a strange was it almost predicts the anti-Buddhism iconoclastic reaction that was to happen fifty years later.

Ta Prohm is a microcosm of everything that the Khmer Kingdom was and became at its apogee. It also was the temple that featured in the film Lara Croft – Tomb Raider, a poignant title and reminder of so many looted Khmer treasures now located in museums around the world, looted by the ‘scoundrels’ that Jayarvarman warned against and that the International Court of Justice have tried legislating for by defining what a 'foothill' is!

CHARLIE BYRNE'S BOOKSHOP GALWAY – THE ALCHEMY OF IMAGINATION

Charlie Byrne's Bookshop in Galway.

Twenty Five Years and a never ending journey of the imagination.

Happy Christmas 2013

Wishing you and your families a very happy and peaceful Christmas

Season 2013 and all the luck in 2014.

Izibongo Madiba Mandela

The Sun sets,
South and North,
And we are but a print in the sands,
Until the Tide turns.
But for one man,
There is no turning,
No gravity to bring him down,
From eternal hope;
From the stars.

Farewell Madiba.
A light beyond us all.

Rihla (Journey 40): CHANIA, CRETE – A GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

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 Chania, on the northwest coast of Crete.

“Beneath English trees I meditated on that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms …I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.”

Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

The Firka fortress that sits at the western end of the harbour in Chania, north-western Crete is home to a maritime museum that houses some of the most beautifully detailed scale ship models that I have ever seen. On the day that I was there the assistant modeller, 64 year-old Panagiotis Karabourniotis with a sparkle in his eye proudly showed me his morning’s work of a small 1cm bronzed door made of varnished paper with a porthole that was just one of perhaps a thousand details that was going into the current model being built. Each model, he told me, took about two years to complete. Panagiotis, a retired sailor who first went to sea at 15 and suffered his first shipwreck off Bermuda as a 16 year-old joined the museum in 2002. Speaking of the sea in a 2012 interview in Haniotika News he said, “It is the vastness, the quiet, and the calm that creates you.”

Panagiotis Karabourniotis

Panagiotis’ boss, Stelios Falieros has been both chief modeller and Director of the Maritime Museum for 19 years. He is a former Commander in the Greek Navy and most of the exquisite models on display are of his construct. In the same interview in Haniotika News he declared, “The sea is a strange thing. Firstly it is female!” and that when at sea he never felt “Longing” because “the ship is our home and in the home I always felt secure.”

From the window of the model-building laboratory on the second floor of the museum you look out over a beautifully restored Venetian harbour that incorporates three galley-building arsenale on its eastern and southern aspects, and a strong seaward breakwater or mole, that is bisected by the St Nicholas (patron saint of sailors) bastion and which terminates in a lighthouse directly opposite the museum.

I thought of the harbour during Venetian times sending out galleys full of Cretan archers and sailors to tackle Ottoman ships as they plied their way through the Ionian seas. On one such occasion in 1584 Ser Gabriel Emo, Commander of the Galleys of the Condemned attacked a great galley out of Tripoli of 26 oarsmen’s benches ( a galera bastarda) off Zante. Despite the North African galley putting up a flag of truce Emo attacked it with two Cretan galleys out of Chania and after freeing 290 Christian galley slaves, and taking an enormous treasure trove, he decided to butcher the Ottoman passengers, including women and children who were bound for Constantinople. At a political level this action caused enormous embarrassment for the Venetian government in their relationship with the Porte and they decided to try Emo for the crime. He was sentenced to death (with the Venetian republic conveniently sequestering Emo’s considerable share of the captured treasure) and after a vote as to whether the sentence should be carried out in public or in private he was beheaded on the 23 April 1585 in public.

Cretan archers were famous as mercenary units in Greek, Persian, Roman and Byzantine armies and according to Lucan, the Roman writer who called them Knossosians, used the Scythian bow better than the Scythians. When George Sandys visited Crete in 1610 he reported that Cretan archers still took part in Pyrricha military war-dances (like the Spartans) “imitating therein their ancestors”, fully armed with bows, quivers and swords and that they would reply in song to each other.

On leaving the Firka fortress I turned sharp right to take a circuitous route through the Topanas (from Turkish top hane or armoury where cannonballs and gunpowder were made) district of 16^th Century La Canea to finish in the former Jewish ghetto area of Evraiki just south of the harbour. The narrow streets concentrate the smells and the sense of the sea and its potential for misery is always present. During the Second World War the Germans rounded up the 269 Jews of Chania and after gathering them in the Synagogue of Etz Hayyim (The Tree of Life – now fully restored) transported them to Herakleion and put them on the German merchant ship Tanais for transport to the mainland and ultimately Auschwitz. Unfortunately this ship, which also had 600 Greek and Italian prisoners on board as well, was attacked on June 9, 1944, at 03.12 hrs, off Dia island, by the British submarine HMS Vivid commanded by Lt John Cromwell Varley RN. The ship sank within 15 minutes with the loss of all on board.

Both the Topanas and Evraiki districts are a labyrinth of small streets and alleyways and it was the notion of labyrinths and language that struck me as I looked at the Minoan ruins of old Kydonia on Kanevaro Street.

Labyrinths are defined by modern scholars, as unicursal i.e. where there is a single, non-branching path to the centre whereas mazes on the other hand are considered a multicursal complex branching system with multiple paths to the centre. The housing districts of old Chania are more properly described as mazes but it is the evolution of the equally complex descriptive language of their existence that also astounds.

The concept of a labyrinth is a Cretan gift to the world, the original built by Daedelus for the Minoan King Minos at Knossos to house the Minotaur, but of equal importance it was also Crete’s gift of a Semitic syllabic based writing system to help record an Indo-European language that was to be the greatest donation. And yet this is the paradox. By helping establish a form of writing for their trading partners the Minoans also opened the door to their eventual destruction (as well as the volcanic eruption on Thera) by those same neighbours.

When the Indo-Europeans crossed over from the Ukrainian Steppes into Anatolia and the Balkans they brought with them highly descriptive languages, ability in mining and metalworking, and a penchant for killing but no written form of those languages. The Minoan civilisation already well established in Crete from 2700 BCE, well before the Indo-European Mycenaean’s established in Greece around 1600 BCE, were almost certainly of North Semitic extraction, and as such had developed a written ideographic form of their language, based on elements from both Egypt and Mesopotamia, which is now called Linear-A.

With the establishment of trade links with Mycenae on mainland Greece a variant, the Linear B form of writing, was developed to allow both early Indo-European Greek and old North-Semitic Minoan to be written in tandem. Linear B was to prove unwieldy in time and it was the later adoption of another northern Semitic writing system, the Phoenician alphabet in the 9^th Century BCE that was to form the basis of all our Indo-European (Greek, Latin, Old Irish etc.) writing systems today.

And as I sat in a harbour-side café, a crystal green sea lapped gently against the walls, calm, hiding the terror that lies beneath, and the loss of the Minoan civilisation, and of all civilisations when anti-Semitism is an accepted order. 

I thought of Jorge Luis Borges and his 1940 seminal essay on language…and order: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. He wrote,

“The nations of this planet are congenitally idealist. Their language and the derivations of their language – religion, letters, metaphysics – all presuppose idealism.”

And later,

“It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine laws – I translate: inhuman laws – which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.”

References:

http://www.mar-mus-crete.gr/index.php/en/museum/who-we-are