One of the books to file under “oh-if-I-had-time-I-so-would!”, I fell in love with the opening quote:

Despite bearing negative connotations, I cannot help but find a beauty in the writer’s hidden efforts to resist.

He affects a disdain, but the sense that he is drawn nonetheless is tangible.

From 1949 to 2011, the bewitching quality of the Middle East has lost none of its allure.

And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don’t know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did.*

Thackeray not only re-defined the notion of snobbery to the variety that is known today, but provides a superbly brutal, yet infinitely witty social commentary.

Like Tolstoy, his observances are timeless, proving that times may change, but people rarely do.

(On a darker note, I pondered the same last week while reading up on the Circassian Massacre by the Russians in the late 19th century – love has not changed, nor has the cruelty of humankind).

*Vanity Fair, 1847. p. 26.

He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.

Taken from The Picture of Dorian Gray.

This is my second reading of the book and I cannot fail to be struck by the intricate genius of Wilde.

Every word a gem, each sentence a wonder and every page literary majesty.

One of the greats, if not the best.

Last semester I was admitted (peculiar?) to the creative writing class organised by Fadia Faqir.

I had never attended a writing class and had dismissed my early penchant for writing as a whim – self-doubt, a streak of perfectionism and too hectic a timetable meant that I rarely indulged in the act of story-creation.

It surprises me weekly how captivated I am by Fadia: for two hours I am spell-bound by her advice, anecdotes and guidance.

Sometimes my mouth even hangs open.

She chooses the right literary examples, critiques us with a fierce gentleness and warns of the pitfalls in a manner that sears the words into our conciousness.

I am, in short, more inspired than I have ever been in a classroom and that she approved of  my submissions blows me away.

(Today we covered metaphors. I am not happy about the above cliché-ending, but it is late and I am Arabic-ed out).

Two authors induced gasps at their genius; the excerpts caught my breath with their beauty, evocativeness and emotion.

First, is Samuel Beckett, taken from Westward Ho (1983):

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Brief, but mighty.

Next is the most formidable example of a metaphor: not only is the writing elegant, but once you grasp that it portrays the act of crying, there isn’t a metaphor that could do the reaction justice.

From William Golding‘s The Inheritors (1955):

There was a light now in each cavern, lights faint as the starlight reflected in the crystals of a granite cliff. The lights increased, acquired definition, brightened, lay each sparkling at the lower edge of the cavern. Suddenly, noiselessly, the lights became thin crescents, went out, and streaks glistened on each cheek. The lights appeared again, caught among the silver curls of the beard. They hung, elongated, dropped from curl to curl and gathered at the lowest tip. The streaks on the cheek pulsed as the drops swam down them, a great drop swelled at the end of the hair of the beard, shivering and bright. It detached itself and fell in a silver flash.

Here’s to creativity and vomiting on the page.

By its very virtue, an epiphany is exhilarating, promising and smacking of revelation.

This experience certainly had the latter, though tinged by the accompanying dull thud of the death knell tolling.

For it seems we have lost a crucial component in the pop culture world: the kick-ass, smart-talking and steely eyed woman.

Eclipse director David Slade. And pretty much my stance as the credits rolled.

Admittedly, she has been in decline for a number of years, as a quick read of Sara Crosby’s 2004 article ‘The Cruelest Season: Female Heroes Snapped into Sacrificial Heroines‘ attests.

Ten years on and we have plumbed new depths of female weakness as the film adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s vampirical saga Twilight bring increasingly more furrowed brows, teary eyes and general limp-wristedness.

Sure, I enjoyed the books – as far as escapism goes the exploits of Bella Swan and her merry band of in-fighting boy toys affords a pleasing jaunt.

The latest adaptation, Eclipse, was too painful by far, however: putting aside that the make-up was diabolical for all the wrong reasons, the utter absence of fangs and a penchant for be-kohled eyebrows with blonde hair, the female characters were more insipid than a de-boned squid.

A brief, if not tormented, recollection raises the following spectres of spinelessness:

Bella, who is trapped in a love triangle that places her life forever at risk; with such odds, one would imagine that a crash course in survival and defence would be in order – not so.

While in the book Bella is instructed by Edward in fighting technique, in the film she merely swings from left to right, arms dangling with all the strength of a damp rag-doll.

Her endless whining that rarely produces a plan, let alone a modicum of intelligence (choice quote: “It’s a bed.” No! Really?!) presents the viewer with a character who not only lacks the physical means to survive, but also a vacuum of acumen.

Alice, supposedly the more insightful of the vampire clan, passes most of the movie wide-eyed, mouth agape or jumping into the arms of her beau, Jasper.

Rosalie, originally fiery and opinionated, is reduced to a cat-faced scowl, moody stalking off stage right and an endless longing for babies.

Esme, the mother figure, mostly stands doe-eyed by her husband and intervenes only to adopt the soon-to-perish vampirelet, Bree Tanner.

Bella’s mother, Renee, dedicates her life to sitting by a pool in a range of head-fancies, sipping pina coladas and talking about her sport coach husband, Phil.

Victoria, the only woman with an iota of physical force, is the malign, manipulative vixen.

Using her red locks and come-hither mewls to captivate and manipulate Riley, the character is merely another femme fatale of the cookie cutter variety.

One could go on, but the general themes can be condensed into three main types: the maternal (Esme, Rosalie), the passive (Bella, Renee, Alice) and the mean (Victoria, Jane).

None of the above are portrayed to excel either intellectually nor physically, while women are to be either tamed or sacrificed.

They neither contradict staunchly, respond savvily nor argue vociferously.

When Jacob kisses Bella by force, her weakness (broken hand after punching him) is rendered the crux of a joke.

Which leaves only one conclusion: the kick-ass chick is dead and the only consolation is that this might one day take place.

Monday I must move house.

Between the two, even the most devastating dress and pompously red shoes cannot raise an iota of enthusiasm.

But wait – what is this I hear?

Why, it is the opening chords of Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers.

And suddenly, everything seems just about wonderful:

I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Will there ever be an author as God-like as Tolkein?

I doubt it.

But will save that particular droplet of despondence for another day.

This time it is The Picture of Dorian Gray, and while nigh every line comprises a quip that sets one marvelling at his sheer genius, one paragraph stood out as an enduringly succinct précis on every man I have known:

“He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.” (p. 12)

Time may progress, but men – it seems – rarely do.

And the fact that the above is composed in the present tense is quite deliberate – to read the below, written in 1961, very little has changed:

Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of so-called spiritual experience.

Written from the midst of the Algerian War, Fanon provided a voice for those oppressed by colonialism.

Most striking is his identification of the autochthonous cronies: we so often forget that for every occupying force there are those on the ground who provide if not the foundations, then the sustenance.

As an anthropologist at heart I hold little love for political theory – it instill a sense of tedium that aches to the back of my eyeballs.

Fanon is the first – and perhaps only and last – thinker who resonates.

He did not shroud his anti-colonialist rage: it is bare, blistering and profound.

Fanon died at the age of 36 of leukemia.

Of the great feats he achieved in those too few years, one can only imagine how much more he could have inspired.

*Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, 1961.

As well as being slightly gimmicky, the question also provides an abundance of thought on lengthy journeys, predominantly when the last battery has run out (ergo no music) and the final page consumed.

At this moment, no greater answer can be expressed than that which is comprised in the image below.

Chekhov and Tolstoy.

Arguably two of the greatest writers this world has known, seated together for a tête-a-tête.

What I wouldn’t give to have been in attendance.

Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day to day living that wears you out.

- Chekhov

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.

- Tolstoy

Mull it.

Savor it.

And the sheer poetic beauty shall unfurl and irrepressibly astound.

We do not need to be reminded:

Mount Carmel is in us and on our eyelashes the grass of Galilee.

Do not say: If we could run to her like a river.

Do not say it:

We and our country are one flesh and bone.

***

You sang your poems, I saw the balconies

desert their walls

the city square extending to the midriff of the mountain:

It was not music we heard.

It was not the color of words we saw:

A million heroes were in the room.

***

This land absorbs the skins of martyrs.

This land promises wheat and stars.

Worship it!

We are its salt and its water.

We are its wound, but a wound that fights.

***

Sister, there are tears in my throat

and there is fire in my eyes:

I am free.

No more shall I protest at the Sultan’s Gate.

All who have died, all who shall die at the Gate of Day

have embraced me, have made of me a weapon.

***

Ah my intractable wound!

My country is not a suitcase

I am not a traveler

I am the lover and the land is the beloved.

***
The archaeologist is busy analyzing stones.

In the rubble of legends he searches for his own eyes

to show

that I am a sightless vagrant on the road

with not one letter in civilization’s alphabet.

Meanwhile in my own time I plant my trees.

I sing of my love.

***

It is time for me to exchange the word for the deed

Time to prove my love for the land and for the nightingale:

For in this age the weapon devours the guitar

And in the mirror I have been fading more and more

Since at my back a tree began to grow.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)

This is now tacked to both my office and home wall, to remind of the sheer beauty that can be rendered by the mere pen and mind.