ah, John Howard, you’ve done it again

Following a missive from home, I decided to go in search of John Howard’s appearance on qanda last night. I had to go to youtube because stoopid ABC won’t let me watch iview from here. Anyway, good to know John Howard hasn’t lost his ability to make me so angry I can’t see straight.

Mr Howard, let me be clear…when I was part of the campaign for David Hicks to be given a fair trial, I never once claimed, nor even thought, that he was ‘a hero’. To say that I did is to be tricky at best and deceptive at worst. I was speaking out about his right to a trial, to a fair trial. I was arguing that he should be charged, that he should not be held without charge. And I said that he should not be subjected to torture while imprisoned.

I did not once say that he was a hero.

I know a lot of people who were campaigning on behalf of David Hicks and I don’t remember any of them describing David Hicks as a hero. I did, and do, think that his father was a hero, and perhaps I expressed that thought in a public way. So maybe you misheard me. Maybe when I said Terry, you heard me say David. Fair enough, you had a lot on your plate at the time, mistakes happen. If this is the case, please advise, and I will accept your apology unreservedly.

Otherwise, please stop saying, or even implying, that I have ever said David Hicks is a hero. It is not cool to misrepresent people and their opinions in this way.

While we’re at it, I’ll just remind Mike Rann that I still haven’t forgiven him when he did a similar thing . I never said that van Nguyen, a young man facing the death penalty in Singapore, should be compared to Florence Nightingale. I said that he should not face the death penalty because I believe that the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances and I do not qualify my opposition to the death penalty. I’m still extraordinarily mad with Mike Rann for saying the things that he did – it was completely unnecessary for him to say those things, and if he really was against the death penalty then he wouldn’t be undermining other people’s efforts to have it abolished.

Goodness, but I’m cross about those things.

Jordan

Back when we were deciding whether or not we should move to Abu Dhabi, we came for a visit and various people showed us various things which were variously convincing or not. One evening, we sat around a table with some of the mister’s colleagues and they showed us the photos of their recent trip to Jordan.

I was utterly captivated by their photos and declared that the Dead Sea would be a wonderful place to spend my 40th birthday. There were other things that clinched the deal, but that moment was one of the defining moments in our decision-making.

We didn’t quite get to Jordan for my 40th, but have just returned from a 6 day trip, and it was bloody brilliant.

Here’s a picture of the lads running to catch up with us at Jerash. They are running, not sitting around moaning about the heat and the long walk and so on, because I have just called down to them that I’ve found us a shortcut (‘you’re good’, the mister said with awe in his voice as we watched the lads jump up and begin to run).

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Here are some bagpipers in the amphitheatre of the Roman ruins at Jerash. No, I cannot explain the bagpipes. I’m good, but I’m not that good.
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Here’s me and the lads at Petra. How the mister managed to get this photo without anyone between the camera and us I will never know. It is high season in Jordan at the moment, and there was possibly a gazillion of us modern day humans at Petra that day.
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And here is a photo of me floating in the Dead Sea. How do you know it is the Dead Sea and not just some other random sea? Because I am in it. Have you ever heard of me being in the sea? Case, I rest it. I stayed in until I could feel my nipples stinging which was a little less time than you might imagine.
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The lads, they hated being in the Dead Sea and lasted about ten seconds. It is, I think, pretty much a been there, done that kind of experience, in that the weirdness of it was rather brilliant but not something I will ever feel the urge to repeat.

I have a friend who says of things, ‘It is to be seen’ and that Jordan is. I mean Petra was absolutely one of the most stunning places I have ever been. But what I really loved was being immersed in an Arabic and Islamic culture. The difference between there and here is that in Jordan we were surrounded by Arabic speakers – in the shops and the hotels and the cafes and on the street. Here, there are of course many, many Arabic speakers but so many of the casual interactions in a day are in English. I think this is probably because in Jordan, there is much less reliance on imported labour. While a lot of people have moved to Jordan from other countries (65% of the population are Palestinian-Jordanian and there’s also a lot of refugees from Iraq), it is not like here where around 80% of the population is expat labour. Many expats are from Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt and Lebanon and Jordan, but there’s also a substantial number of ‘western expats’ and expats from countries such as the Philippines. Our common language is English and for someone like me, English dominates our interactions.

One of the real pities about living here is that we are not learning more Arabic. I have had a few lessons, but haven’t even really got my head around the alphabet and while I’m full of good intentions, I think realistically, I’m unlikely to leave with anything more substantial than the most basic of greetings. The thing is that it would be so much easier to learn in a place like Jordan where any language skills would get much more of a workout. In my job, I would have had much more of an opportunity, because the 4 other members of my team were all native Arabic speakers, but now I’m not there I barely come into contact with the Arabic language from one day to the next. This is sort of my own fault and sort of something over which I don’t have much control.

Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a post about what’s wrong with living here. It’s supposed to be about what an excellent time we had in Jordan. Which we did. And you know, on a clear day when you’re bobbing up and down in the Dead Sea, you can see clear across to Jerusalem. Makes you think, that does.

Here is a photo from Mt Nebo which is one of the places where Moses stood. In the distance you can’t see the Dead Sea or the Promised Land, but Moses could because it wasn’t so dusty when he was standing there and because he was looking at the real thing and not some hastily taken photo.
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Not again in a hurry

The other day, the Thursday before last in fact, I found myself in such a position that going to Toys R Us was better than the position in which I had found myself. I’m just going to let the true awfulness of that statement penetrate your brain for a moment or two.

I have once been in the Adelaide Toys R Us so I sort of knew what to expect. Lots of plastic. Such as a box of plastic food, including plastic fries and burgers. Good grief. (I could say, ‘No doubt they tested better than the stuff you buy at those ‘family restaurants’, but really that would be too obvious, wouldn’t it?)

Anyway, I thought you would be interested in this as something you prolly wouldn’t see in the Adelaide Toys R Us. I must apologise for the quality of the photo, I had to take it on my phone. Anyway anyway, a prayer set which includes a prayer rug and scarf and skirt.
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Fulla is, as far as I can work out, a sort of Barbie for this part of the world, though I’m sorry to say I did not know this while I was there, so I didn’t actually check to see whether there were any Barbies or, for that matter, Fullas. You can read more about it here.

I know, if I were a decent correspondent, I would go back to Toys R Us and investigate further for you and return with photos of the space where Fulla is and Barbie should be. But just to get there, I need to get myself to Mina Port, a drive which requires a level of intestinal fortitude of which I am but rarely in possession, and that’s before I even walk through the doors. And you can be fairly sure I will never again be in the position where a trip to Toys R Us is better than anything else I could be doing.

Growing up

They struggle a bit to find their own spaces, the lads do. They have to share their books, and the games are all communal. We don’t even really know who owns this T shirt, these shorts, those underpants. Given the logistical difficulties with getting around Abu Dhabi (and plus, did I mention I hate driving) I don’t do any after school stuff that they can’t both do. They do all of the same things all of the time. They always have which has always partly been because I’ve been so very tired ever since they were born really, and the fact that we get anywhere at all sometimes surprises me. They have a pretty intense relationship which makes our jobs as the adults in their lives sometimes simple, sometimes complex.

Until last night, they were even sharing a bed. When they were little, they would start off in separate beds, but we would always find them snuggled in together when we went off to bed, then, when we moved here, we inherited a double and a queen and we just never got around to getting them another bed. And anyway, we do the usual bed hopping that lots of families with young children do me here, him there, that boy here, that boy there. We don’t co-sleep, but the arrangements have always been fairly fluid, especially because I’ve spent a lot of time alone with them and often we’ve gone to bed at the same time.

But that’s changing. Last night, they slept not just in separate beds, but separate rooms. It was all planned and arranged by youngest lad. And while he, youngest lad, was busy organising his new space and his books and his lego and his pokemon cards, eldest was saying, ‘Mum, will you snuggle me before I go to sleep?’

Image: leaving Istanbul train station on their first ever overnight train journey.
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Covered in sand

So it’s not true that hundreds and thousands of cars are being abandoned as people flee their financial over-commitments in the UAE, but it is true that people get into financial difficulties here, leave and abandon their cars, and thus their car loan, in the process. This is on the street where I used to work. I don’t know whether it’s been abandoned, but apparently it’s been sitting there for quite some time.

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Nobel prizes (something I never usually write about)

Usually, the announcement of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is another opportunity for me to think, ‘I’m something of a pretender really when it comes to the world of literature’. But because of that whole Central and South American thing the mister and I had in the nineties, I know a lot about this year’s winner.

Now, if you’re like me, and the announcement of the Nobel Prize winner makes you think, ‘Maybe I should read at least something by such and such’ and then you go to the bookstore and just pull something off the shelf, trusting that they’ve got what you need to read in stock, let me give you a piece of advice. Do not let the one thing you read be The Feast of the Goat. It contains what must be the singularly most disturbing piece of writing I have ever, ever read. It must be at least five years since I read it and more than any case study I have ever read for Amnesty, passages of The Feast of the Goat have haunted me, frightened me and made me despair for the state of the world. I’ve only read it once, but I still remember it vividly to the point that I can still pretty much see the pages in my mind and remember the chair I was sitting in when I read it. Maybe that means you should read it. I guess it made me even more grateful that my knowledge of human rights abuses has come from reading and hearing and not from lived experience.

On a lighter note, I would highly recommend Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter which is one of my Go To Books. It is great fun, and I never get bored of it. I think it was the first novel I read in Spanish. Which sort of depresses me, because there’s no way I could read it in Spanish now.