Publication and others

I’m pleased and thrilled to say that an edited version of my story Philosophy had been accepted for publication. (I had to edit it from 4000 words into 2000 words, as stipulated, but the full version will appear in my book.) I also met with an editor few days ago and there are lots of encouraging promises regarding the publication of my book. I have to admit that I’m hopeless at networking and promoting my book because the sad fact is the literary world is like any other business one needs contacts and a shrewd business-like attitude, which I blissfully lack. I just have this belief that one day my book will be accepted for publication on its own merits not because of X or Y. I’m sure it will one day soon; all I need to do first is to get an agent who really believes in my work, then we can talk about a two-book deal, haha. 

 

And to commemorate forty years of persecution, fear, destruction, and hopelessness in Libya, here is an extract from a story I wrote called: The Green Carrot. Enjoy :)

((....When Saleem opened his eyes a few hours later he found himself tied to a chair in a semi-dark room. He didn’t know where he was. Slowly he raised his head, a splitting pain shooting through it, and looked around himself. He couldn’t see very well and the image of a big man bending over a desk danced in front of his eyes. The blurry vision of the big man, shrouded in smoke, moved and towered over him. Now he was able to see the puffy face, which looked like an unlaced boil, of a big, bold man. He had a tusk-like moustache and wore a military uniform that stretched and strained to accommodate his bulging paunch. Still the misbuttoned shirt gaped and showed rolls of pinkish mottled fat.

“So you’ve woken up, you rotten carrion!” the man said in his western Libyan dialect, which Saleem did not understand.  “Or maybe you still need this.” The big man poured a glass of ice-cold water over Saleem’s head. Saleem, taken by surprise, jerked and tumbled onto the floor with the chair. The big man kicked Saleem with his strong military boots.

“You filthy pig poke fun at our Green Revolution! Green Carrot, eh! Is this your code name? Who are your masters? Who did send you here? Talk, you cunt of an Egyptian,” he said and darted a kick at each sentence. Then he bent over and planted his burning cigarette in Saleem’s cheek. Saleem cried and moaned, wallowing in his blood and urine.

“Ahhh,” the big man said, mimicking Saleem’s cries. Then he snapped his fingers and shouted, “Soldiers, come and take the filthy pig to the leisure room. Two young pimply soldiers marched in and gave a salute to the big man. They bent over Saleem and untangled him from the chair then they pulled him by the legs out of the room. They pulled him along a narrow dirty corridor into a tiny room that had a mast facing two separate holes in the wall.  They sat him on the floor and tied him to the mast, then, they slid each leg into a hole. One of them went outside to the corridor, now saleem’s two legs stuck out of the holes, and tied them with a rope. When they had finished they closed the door and marched off talking.

Saleem sat there disorientated, tears rolling down his cheeks. He heard feet shuffling down the corridor and rasping laughter.

“Oh, another guest in the leisure room!” said a nasal voice.

“Look at his dainty feet! I bet he has a smooth arse as well. Maybe we can do him later, after the Falaqa session” said the second voice.

Saleem couldn’t see anything or anyone; he just heard coarse male voices mingled with female voices, laughter and a scratchy swishing sound.

“Give me the pleasure to be the first,” said a female voice. She picked up a whip that hung on a nail above Saleem’s legs and began to flagellate the protruding feet. Pain shot through Saleem’s body and his small body convulsed. He screamed and begged and called the name of Hajj Mukhtar Al-Tumi and the names of his boys but the beating continued for a good thirty minutes until the flogger got tired and Saleem pass out from pain. Saleem lost sense of time and place as the flogging continued intermittently, and he slipped in and out of consciousness. Finally he lost any feeling in his feet and he fell into coma......

We want to hear no talk

We want to see hanging, folks.

The crowd of hundreds of angry demonstrators chanted, waving their clinched fists above their heads. Men and young boys pushed and shoved each other, trying to get closer to the stage. Women and young girls chanted louder and waved posters of the Brother Leader and green flags, their breasts jutted under their dresses and schools uniforms. A group of heavily armed Revolutionary Committee Members, clad in green suits, pushed the crowd back, brandishing their polished Kalashnikovs……...))

 

To know what will happen to Saleem and the rest, buy the book when it comes out, inshallah soon. :)

Seasons

 in a farmers’ market

Fall/Autumn/Autunno/Al-Kharif, I love this season, with its pretty colours, with its plethora of root vegetables and good fish. It gives you the perfect excuse to spend more time in the kitchen preserving veggies, baking, making soups and chutney, which is great with good cheese (the smelly type or the one that is so high it almost walks on your plate, hehe. I can't live without good smelly cheese) or meat, depending on the type of chutney, in clod winter nights. 

This is my favorite time of the year, the time for new beginnings, warm jackets and layering clothes, pretty bags and boots, and patterned colorful tights. It’s also a great time to paint the home, decorate, and enjoy candles and warm meals with your family and loved one. (I get most of my clothes, shoes, bags, kitchenware, linen, art decor, etc, from crafters, artisans, who sell their stuff on the internet)

I’m not trying to advertise for certain shops here or encourage buying at all, as I’m totally against this mentality of buying and consumerism because I believe and practice green living, though I’m not fanatical about it like fanatics of all shapes and forms (do you know that some animal rights activists are monitored by the police because of their violence against some farmers and research centres, etc. Crazy, eh!) What I want to say is that it is very difficult to lead a green lifestyle but you can do little things without making your life so difficult. Little things such as recycling and never use plastic bags (if you want to be a bit creative you can make your own cute totes and embroider on them veggies, fruits, meat, toiletries, etc, or just buy them from a local crafter); only buy things you need (yes, there are tons of people who buy for the sake of buying and bulk buy, yuck!) and when you buy try to source things from a local crafter, artesian, seamstress, farmers’ market, etc and try to avoid as possible to buy from a department store or a supermarket or any chain store/restaurant/café etc, because these monsters are eating up or beautiful Planet Earth and they are using cheap labourers (kids included) in squalid conditions to mass produce clothes, toys, etc) When you buy from a small business run buy a crafter or an artesian (almost all advertise for their stuff on Etsy shop or on ebay or have their own websites, as they can’t afford the rent for an actual shop.), first you are helping struggling creative souls to put food in their bellies and second you are not wearing a dress or your kid is playing with a toy that is made by an under-paid man/women/child in a sweat factory in Bangladesh or India or China, and I believe both reasons qualify  to put a huge smile on your face. Don’t you agree! Try to avoid buying anything that is made of plastic, kitchenware, toys, anything, because it takes One million years for a piece of plastic to disintegrate! Plus it is healthier to use kitchen utensils that are made of wood or terracotta. (I still remember how my beloved dad (bless his gentle soul and may he rest in heaven with the angels and the good people) used to detest plastic kitchenware and love his wooden bowls and terracotta pans –Gas3at lawh and berma.)

You don't have to do drastic changes in your life, stop eating meat or look like a bag lady to lead an ethical green living. By eating seasonal local produce and only organic local meat and dairy products, so that you know no animal was ill-treated in the process or mass-produced like garbage, you can live ethically and happily and healthily and help save our mother earth. Use public transportation as much as possible and try to stick to one car per household. It's hard here in America but if one has the will, it is possible. Since I saw  this I couldn't stop thinking about it, hehe. I just want one. And I think using this for long trips is rather romantic and fun. :)

I believe all we need to do is just little adjustments in our lives to help preserve this beautiful planet and help others to live a dignified life, get a decent salary, send their children to schools instead of working in sweat factories, etc. With just as little as $30 per month, which one can easily spend in a day for a cup of coffee, a bottle of water and a sandwich, one can sponsor a deprived child to go to school and I encourage Libyans to help their fellow Libyans in Libya, as the poverty I saw in Libya is beyond words.  :(

 

Back to Fall. I look forward to a plethora of pumpkins, as I adore them, to make pumpkin soup, pumpkin cake, pumpkin chutney and relish, yum, yum. I look forward to earthy, rustic and bright colours on trees, in the streets, in clothes. 

I love Fall; it is such a romantic season. :)

Fall 2009

Amor Senza Baruffa!

A while ago I wrote a story and the main character in the story is a short dark woman who has a huge nose and almost no lips. She keeps shouting in Italian: Amor senza baruffa fa venire la muffa. Which roughly translates as: Love without scuffle is like mould on the wall! This crazy woman is haunting me and keeps popping up in each story I write but I’m fighting her off, suppressing her, as I don't want her to take hold of my stories. I liked her the first time I created her but now she is becoming a nightmare. Anyway, here is an extract from another story I wrote in the same cafe, but not haunted by the crazy woman:

((The Egyptian wife Laila, now no longer young or petrified, fitted nicely among the large family, like a pair of old comfortable slippers. She spoke fluently the North-eastern Libyan dialect, only few lapses gave in her Egyptian root, and excelled at all sorts of North-eastern cuisine. She also became a great flogger of her children, like her sisters-in-law: Nuria, Mbarka, Aisha, Salma, and Salha. The sisters-in-law would pounce on their children at any sign of wrongdoing or misbehaviour, thrashing them with great energy and zeal. Olive tree branches, carefully selected and trimmed into perfection, were used during the flogging sessions. The flogger often spoke while performing:
“I will mince you up if you ever do it again.”

“I will crush your skull if you touch things that don't belong to you.”

Abusive remarks for the child’s paternal grandmother, aunts, and uncles were also used with great enthusiasm:

“You are just as wicked and mischievous as your paternal grandmother, the witch.”

“You and your paternal aunt Fawzia, the scorpion, are like two peas in a pod, both ugly and useless.”

During each flogging session the other sisters would come out into the courtyard to watch, rocking ugly crying babies in their jewellery-laden arms or patting their swelled up bellies and say without sincerity:

“Stop it woman, you are killing the child.”

“Yea, stop it, you will damage the child.”

The flogged child’s screams would fill the inner courtyard and travel to the men’s quarter, summoning Hajj Salim, who would knock at the door of the women’s quarter and shout:

“Ya Allah. Hajja Halima! Tell the women to stop it or by Allah Almighty I will come in and beat the hell out of them.”

The flogger, now tired and satisfied, would stop. The small crowd of sisters and their children would disperse, unsatisfied. The flogged boy or girl would seek comfort from Grandma Halima, smearing her immaculate Reda in tears and snots.

But Laila the legendary flogger did not hurl abuse at the child’s paternal lineage or used a carefully selected and trimmed olive tree branch. She rather used a thick medium-sized piece of rubber water hose locally known as Tubo. The Tubo left an intricate chequered design of various hues on the child’s skin: black, dark purple, sallow, and green, speckled with yellow, just like mignonette flowers. ))

When I finished this part, I burst laughing, people in the cafe ogling me, as if I was a mad woman!

“Amor senza baruffa!” Oh God, no, she is haunting me again. Better go and throttle her.

Cascading

Recently the creative juices have been flowing, cascading like a stream in the Swiss mountains.

Here is a teeny-weeny extract from a story I wrote a while ago.

"Fawzia moved gingerly towards the shop; she stood against the wall and approached the door. She poked her head through the door, then retreated quickly, her heart pounding inside her chest like a trapped bird, perspiration trickling on her forehead and making its way towards her mouth, warm and salty. Inside Salama’s shop she saw Mustafa, the butcher, wearing a bloodstained apron and holding a huge cleaver in his hand. Mustafa owned and ran the only butchery in the village. He was tall and very fat, swelled up like the Michelin Man. Young boys in the village were always on the look for a chance to poke the rolls of white fat that bulged from beneath his shirt, exposing his gargantuan navel. He swore a lot and cheated all the time. Old sheep’s meat was sold as young sheep’s meat, imported Argentinean meat, locally known as Mazigri, was sold as local fresh meat. Mincemeat was mixed with fat, intestine and scraps of meat scavenged from the sheep’s heads and legs. And rumours had it that he was once caught slaughtering a donkey. Mustafa the butcher was locally known as Mr. Mazigri.

Next to Mustafa sat Mahdi, the coal and Kerosene seller. A small, dark, and insignificant man. Mahdi’s fingernails were always caked with soot and dirt from handling the coal. He lived with is crippled mother in a shack situated at the edge of the village not far from the railroad station that was built by the Italians.

“I’m going to chop his scabby cock off with my cleaver, the bastard Eye-talian soldier. I won’t give him a chance to enjoy his bride,” said Mustafa.

“Ha-ha,” laughed Mahdi, sounding like a distraught chicken about to be slaughtered by Mustafa.

“These are a hell of slippers,” interrupted Salama, Mr Sad Sheen. “I wish I could put them on a woman after a fucking session."

Fawzia fled the Souq."

Well, if you want to know what the belligerent butcher Mustafa did with his cleaver and what had happened to the eavesdropping girl, buy the book when it come out,haha.

My First Reading

Last week, 4th of June, I had my first reading with some other writers. The reading was announced here and here, and here. According to the organizer I had only 20 minutes to do the reading . Well, it turned out to be a different story. I did the first reading and it went very well after I managed to overcome the first few nerve-racking minutes. The audience loved the story and their boisterous laughter filled the crowded room.