A Chapter Closed…

Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, was hanged on December 30, 2006 at 06:07 local time (03:07 GMT time), a day that Muslims were celebrating Eid ul Adha and completion of Hajj. The execution took place at the secure facility, ironically called Camp Justic northeast of Baghdad, a security base once used by Saddam.

Today holds a lesson for our own leaders in the execution of a Muslim leader of a Muslim country torn apart by violence and bloodshed in the presence of foreign occupying forces. However, I wonder if our leaders will show a semblance of the defiance and dignity in the face of imprisonment, trial and finally death that Saddam Hussein has shown in his final moments.

Americal President, John F. Kennedy had in 1945, after visiting Germany had said about Hitler,

“After visiting these places, you can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.”

Surely, this holds true for Saddam. A figure, that grew in power due to the support of the CIA and the Arab States because of his seeming ‘indispensibility’ to U.S. policy in the region, a policy which sought to weaken the influence of Iran and the Soviet Union, has been brought down when by that same U.S. policy., but rather than cowering, trembling, pleading for mercy, he lived upto his name that in Arabic means “he who confronts”.

The rights and wrongs of this man’s actions, compared to what Iraq faces now, every day are debatable and the debate will rage on but I can’t help feeling, seeing the rushed way the trial and the execution took place, that it is primarily a settling of old scores rather than any attempt at a just sentence.

It was the sight of the people dancing and singing on the streets of Najaf, however that had me shaking my head. It was strangely reminiscent of the celebrations that followed the entrance of U.S. Military forces into Baghdad, what seems to be an age ago. What cause is there to celebrate the death of one man, when every day is a mourning for countless ordinary men, women and children, when your streets still flow with blood and the air is rent with cries of hunger, pain and anguish.

So closes the chapter of Saddam Hussein apparently, but his legacy will live on, perhaps beyond the continuation of the farce that is being played out in the name of democracy in the state of Iraq by the occupying forces.

kuj shehr de lok vi zalam san

kuj sanoon maran da shauk vi si

- Munir Niazi -

Blogword No. 28: Most

Like blighted leaves, around us fall

The young, the gifted, and the brave;

And still the most belov’d of all

Seem earliest fated to the grave.

- On the Death OF MAJOR WHITEFOORD, DECEMBER 15TH, 1825 –

- Elizabeth Acton –

The ultimate mockery of life is the death of someone young,

Someone beautiful,

With the world at their feet!

Seems like such a waste…

And seems so meaningless…

And yet, in that one passing…

Lies the most profound lesson we could learn…

That of our own mortality…

Blogword No. 27: Past

He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away–no strife to heal–
The past unsighed for, and the future sure;

–Laodamia– William Wordsworth

Sometimes all it takes is a broken piece of your own reflection to take you to a past you thought had left you behind…

Blogword No. 26: Annoy

As annoying as it is to revert to this, my mindset at present can only process limited quantities of amusement and fun things to do. Therefore, for your reading annoyance… I present some of my favourite annoy-curances…:

Part I:

Edmund BlackAdder: “I want to be young and wild. Then I want to be middle-aged and rich. And then I want to be old and annoy people by pretending I’m deaf.”

BlackAdder III

Part II:

Edmund BlackAdder: “Get me a chisel and some marble, will you, Baldrick?”

Lt. George: “Oh, you taking up sculpture now, sir?”

Edmund BlackAdder: “No, I thought I’d get my headstone done.”

Lt. George: “What are you going to put on it?”

Edmund BlackAdder: “‘Here lies Edmund Blackadder, and he’s bloody annoyed.’”

Black Adder Goes Fourth

Part III:

Limericks:
Annoy by David:

A seamstress was paid to embroider

For clients, who often annoyed her.

She would stick vicious stitches

Straight into those bitches,

So only the thick-skinned employed her.

Part IV:

Interruptions

“We interrupt this program to annoy you and generally irritate you.”

Adrian Voiceover, BBC Announcer

Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Monty Python’s Guide to Life

The Beast Within…

So, here’s the thing… I am pissed off at myself, and the world in general and every bloody shit thing that lies in it!

 

You know I’ve had a relatively good life… No! That’s an understatement! I’ve had a fantastic life, seen more, had more good times than a lot of people have, all thanks to the Almighty’s overindulgent blessings. I am a pampered princess who has been spoiled rotten (responsibly, though!) by parents who firmly believe in the adage of feeding a gold mouthful and keeping a lion’s glare on their offspring! (Now, why do Urdu phrases suck when translated…? I mean khilao sone ka niwala, dekho sher ki nigah se!) I’ve seen half the world, studied at good schools, have a very dependable old style group of friends that I have been with since kindergarten, I’m reasonably popular. Despite some crap, that I have been in, mostly due to my own innate stubbornness and fucked up pride (I do have faults!!!) I know I am still so blessed…And yet, a very dominant part of me remains thankless, selfish and dishonest; to myself and to a lot of people around me. But right now, other people don’t count. It is what I know I am doing to myself, that I know is going to hurt me and my parents if things do not sort themselves out. And what are things? Me!!

I don’t know where I’ve gone. I’m not who I used to be and though there are parts of me that are thankful that I am no longer as naïve and as blind as I was, but in that innocence that I lost, I also lost a very important part of faith in myself as a person, as a human being that had allowed me for so long to breeze through life. Nothing touched me, because my core remained essentially untouched. I was not corrupt and I was not jaded. And because I wasn’t any of these, I saw beauty, life and wisdom in everything.

It was that faith that allowed me to understand so much. Everything came so easily to me!  Nothing else was important except wondering what would cause me to smile next. I used to smile a lot; even during Algebra and Calculus. I was an honour roll student, into sports, a standard appearance and usually a winner at debates, writing, singing, drama and what not while maintaining everything else that went on with it!  It lead me to dreams of grandeur!  I was anything except ordinary with the world my oyster.  Everything was an opportunity to build on for success and success that needed nothing more from me than who I was.  And now there is nothing here…

That part inside that allowed me to do all this now stands aside in garb as dark as the night, the twisted grimace, a mocking smile a streak of white against its dark, deeply mutated features taunting me at every turn. There is emptiness and like a perpetual hunter, a predator I go out in the world to soothe the beast within.

I know what I’m supposed to do, I even know how it is supposed to be done but I refuse to do it. I’m not talking about any deep, dark issues here. I’m simply talking about my choices. Decisions I took on my own compulsion, out of my own sheer over ambition, believing that having something to do, having something to challenge me would somehow light something within me that would take away this cold that holds me.

I refused to consider the possibility that all that remains is ash and there are no dying embers, no sparks that could catch and blaze to bring life to my spirit. And now, I’m standing here covered in gray, smoky dust that holds just enough heat to burn my skin, to take away the mask, the shield that made me believe I was doing okay. And I know not what this week will bring me, when my failures will be there for the world to see…

What hurts is that I’m a consummate fake! I am a plastic! I’m not real! I’m a hologram. I project what I want people to see and I deceive them. Were I fanciful, I would say I belong to a netherworld of creatures that prey off the dreams of others, and take on whatever glamour they know is what people want to see and amuse their selfish, hedonistic selves when the silly mortals fall over themselves admiring them!

If only things could be so simple and if only I were a demon and not have this very mortal consciousness that worries me. I would be at so much peace if I didn’t have this voice pinching at me, echoing in my head with a ferocity that drives me insane, that does not go away when I clap my hands against my ears, and does not go away when I hide beneath the sheets. It is a cruel mistress that I have that projects images into my head; of my parents shaking their heads in disappointment not at the failure itself but at my failure to do right by myself; the horror on the faces of those who come to know me only as much and as how I want them to know me; who believe because of what I showed them of myself that there is nothing I cannot do.

I am so cruel! I show people a reflection they want, that they need knowing that in an instant, I will shatter that glass in front of them, uncaring even of the shards that will rip into my own skin, making me bleed and leaving scars…

I’m pissed off at myself… I don’t know anymore, don’t know anything and most distinctly, don’t care if I don’t…

I don’t care anymore that I stand trapped behind a mirror,

beating ineffectually against it to be set free;

my knuckles scraped; rough and torn;

as the world goes by seeing only a reflection of me with a smile on my face and roses in my cheeks!!

 

So be it, when the world can only see what it wants to see, it deserves not seeing me as I am…

It deserves the nightmare of seeing my halo fall off

Of knowing that I can stand there with talons and cruel teeth

Shrouded in darkness and faithlessness

That I can tear into them when I will it…

I can take away their vision

And I can make them bleed!I’m not real!! I’m Jaded

(and I’m still not sure I want to be)

Even when I know that somehow that is all that remains of me!I still remember the world

From the eyes of a child
Slowly those feelings
Were clouded by what I know now

Where has my heart gone
An uneven trade for the real world
Oh I… I want to go back to
Believing in everything and knowing nothing at all

I still remember the sun
Always warm on my back
Somehow it seems colder now

Where has my heart gone
Trapped in the eyes of a stranger
Oh I… I want to go back to
Believing in everything

[Latin hymn:]
Iesu, Rex admirabilis
Et triumphator nobilis,
Dulcedo ineffabilis,
Totus desiderabilis.

Where has my heart gone
An uneven trade for the real world
Oh I… I want to go back to
Believing in everything

Oh, Where Where has my heart gone
Trapped in the eyes of a stranger
Oh I… I want to go back to
Believing in everythingI still remember.

-Field of Innocence – Evanescence

Wednesday Wanderers: Invent-a-Word

I have strange days… All I can remember at this time when it is ’saarhe gyarah bajne mein tees minute’, I try to analyze all the orders that lead me to disorders… Bear with me!

Am beset by bouts of Americstanism which means my students and those not my students are faced by a phenomenon of such amazing ego and Imperialistic tendencies and of such over-amazing eloquence in expression of rambalization that they are stupefied as how to handle it, even more so than usual.

Whereby end up in a bug-ness bout with a poor knightness in shining scrawny armor

On other days face the unenviable task of trying to close my eyes when suffering insomniaciousness, these days usually as a consequence of flunk-a-phobia which is a consequence of overstuffopomus of researchitus and maxum examamous!

The treatment for the malady has to be a dose of sheer, absolute, no taxing on brain mushness… In the form of all those paperbacks with simpering, silly female heroines who break a nail while brushing their hair and the brawny, rich, hunks of manhood that rush to their rescue with a pack of synthetic nails and adhesive in hand which end appropriately with the smooches to end all smooches… and a canola feed of chocolatalium lotsus in mint, milk and dark.

Which of course lead me to dilectio-nighto-luna… a very serious ailment symptomized by lyin awake at night due to a fascination, a passion for the night and the moon (or simply unable to sleep because of the overdose of caffeine)… But going by that I do suffer varying degrees of season-delecto in all ‘mausam-aat’ of rain, hail, sunshine and snow; of wind and bluster and thunder and lightening..

Also have unregulated, unmonitored spates of Dilbert-ism, Garfield-ism, Snoopy-ness, Pooh-ishness and even Jugheadousness…

But there are days of feeling warm, and comfy and happy and almost childhood blanky-ish secure like the beginning of the week; with people remembering my budha-day making me feel all yum yum inside; a feeling that can only be summed up as cookie-doughness complete with the chocolate chips!

Happy Cookie-Doughness!

I got an e-mail addressed to Old Father William. I don’t know whether my friend’s being clever or if she’s getting confused in my old age… Or is it a way of fighting gender bias? :p

Realization about Self that has impressed me:

Despite my age I still make an effort to find joy in some new thing, in some new way each day that comes my way… Thank God, that for all my advancing years, my eyes still look for and find some magic in what lies before me… (Holy Wowness! )

How self satisfying is it to know that for a day, everything and everyone you know, revolves around you… And yet in some strange way, it’s a little humbling to realize that so many people remembered and then made an effort to get their wish to me at the stroke of 12… Thank you, all of you! My inner cookie-doughness is all awash with chocolate chips. No wonder the end result is that me be one very happy cookie today!

P.S. And this happiness is inspite of the fact that I had a paper to present on Governance Paradigm in Pakistan and been in university since 9. Imagine trying to relate it to magerial economics while your mind is intent upon dreaming of a chocolate-cheese cake courtesy Kitchen Cuisine… But despite that, man I kicked major butt!