Friday, January 28, 2005
Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery
When your living room gets flooded every time it rains. When it rains more often than you would expect, and it is cold and windy besides. When your shower won't get hot, or cuts out if you have the audacity to also have the heater on in the bedroom. Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery. When you return home to discover someone has been there and helped themselves to your things. When you can no longer trust your neighbours. When you catch a bus and are surrounding by boys and girls in green, carrying guns and smoking, chatting, talking on mobile phones and not paying for the bus ticket which you pay too much for. Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery. When you go to work and every day learn just how stuck this society is, how stubbornly it sticks to the narrative, how impossible the hope for a resolution is, when you examine power structures and conclude that the status quo is just fine for the masters, and you still listen to their bleating. When you read continuously the xenophobia that equates Palestinian resistance with Saddamism and insurgency and al-Qaeda terrorism and suddenly everyone is a barbarian except the noble protectors that share my bus. Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery.
When your living room gets flooded every time it rains. When it rains more often than you would expect, and it is cold and windy besides. When your shower won't get hot, or cuts out if you have the audacity to also have the heater on in the bedroom. Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery. When you return home to discover someone has been there and helped themselves to your things. When you can no longer trust your neighbours. When you catch a bus and are surrounding by boys and girls in green, carrying guns and smoking, chatting, talking on mobile phones and not paying for the bus ticket which you pay too much for. Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery. When you go to work and every day learn just how stuck this society is, how stubbornly it sticks to the narrative, how impossible the hope for a resolution is, when you examine power structures and conclude that the status quo is just fine for the masters, and you still listen to their bleating. When you read continuously the xenophobia that equates Palestinian resistance with Saddamism and insurgency and al-Qaeda terrorism and suddenly everyone is a barbarian except the noble protectors that share my bus. Sometimes it's not easy to be cheery.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Thanks guys...for the support, the love, the hugs...and the inflatable, three-quarter size blowup doll of Yasser Arafat. I wouldn't get through the long, cold nights without it.
And sorry that I've been so caught up in occupation politics, discriminatory land policies, children dying unnecessarily, people being arrested, checkpoints being erected, my bags being detected and other stories selected.
More adventures on acid, more scaling of the Pyramids naked and more of all the other good things that make life worth living will be beamed direct to you, my loyal audience. Bukra.
And sorry that I've been so caught up in occupation politics, discriminatory land policies, children dying unnecessarily, people being arrested, checkpoints being erected, my bags being detected and other stories selected.
More adventures on acid, more scaling of the Pyramids naked and more of all the other good things that make life worth living will be beamed direct to you, my loyal audience. Bukra.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Egyptian holidays
Or vacations. Can be fun, when interspersed with interminable bus trips of the twelve hour, pharmaceutically-aided variety. Deserts can also be fun, when not being hassled for a tip from a guy that makes your camel so mad she wants to bite the other camel's hindquarters, and who knows no more English than 'Money for me' and 'OK', and could not possibly understand that yes the sand was nice, the sunset beautiful, but now it is dark and there is a bus waiting to be caught.
Cairo can be fun, when you get lost in alleyways and look up and think you see a Melbourne building. Egypt may not be fun to leave however, as the place we left to come here, and will return to, was not particularly pleased with me at departure. They even knew of the presence of some excess paperwork I had left behind. My file seems to be growing.
By the way, if anyone still checks this site occasionally could you leave a comment, otherwise I guess I'll be talking to myself.
Cairo can be fun, when you get lost in alleyways and look up and think you see a Melbourne building. Egypt may not be fun to leave however, as the place we left to come here, and will return to, was not particularly pleased with me at departure. They even knew of the presence of some excess paperwork I had left behind. My file seems to be growing.
By the way, if anyone still checks this site occasionally could you leave a comment, otherwise I guess I'll be talking to myself.
