Compering Notes For Aannual Day Function

The country where we are not - Part II

Gaziantep is a city with no beginning and no end. As his story. Ancient human settlement, passed through many hands, the destinies of different people are leaning against each other as the dead in a mass grave. The memory has many languages \u200b\u200bthat do not understand each other. The last of its elderly has seen so many he has left only a god to ask account of the sense of it all. And the speed of change is rising. Gaziantep today, one of the centers of production and Turkey's most important business. On its territory there are four industrial clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises that make the economy more dynamic and expanding Europe. The textile and food production drive, and are a source of employment in a position to just under farming and stock raising, local roots and optimized by means of machinery and engineers. The famous "factories", the promise of work and dignity for the armies of hungry arms in all countries with an emerging economy, there are. Here and in Diyarbakir, Sirnak not, not in Hakkari, a majority Kurdish areas affected by the fighting and a latent injury that leads to the consequent lack of confidence investors. Gaziantep instead enjoys a good reputation, not only for the pistachios and the food but also for being faithful to the directives Kemalists, at least superficially. The last attack, thirty people dead and destroyed a police station, dating back more than ten years ago. Currently, it is often cited as a symbol of Turkey's economic growth. The city is also involved in one of the largest regional investment plans in the world, the GAP (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi), a major project under development involves the construction of twenty-two dams on the Tigris and Euphrates, contingent in South East for the production of electricity and to facilitate the irrigation of desert areas. Other categories action plan consist of investments for the cultural enhancement of these key areas in tourism. The aim of the government, as well as to attract foreign capital, is raise the standard of living in areas east of the country, historically considered the weak link in society and the economy. Will be guaranteed employment and social inclusion, say politicians from Istanbul and Ankara. The illusion of inclusion that continues to attract masses of immigrants from Gaziantep to villages and countryside. The population has soared in just over fifty years: from about three hundred thousand people in the middle of last century, has reached to over one million and a half today, according to figures officers, in reality many more. It is not only the charm of the growing metropolis, with its European-style houses, pubs beer and five-story shopping centers, to serve as a magnet. With the industrial organization of agricultural labor economy of the remote villages and settlements has been altered, causing a progressive impoverishment. The wave of modernization has devastated the lives of farmers and shepherds have become foreigners in their own home, living fossils, although they are still the majority. Another process that has gone on since the founding of the Republic is the displacement of the inhabitants of entire villages in the east by the army. In the first half of the twentieth century, operations were aimed at the response to continued Republican power, and were taken to redistribute the Kurds in Turkey as well wear out the drive. The mass transfer also affect the other part of the country from west to the central government sent in all offices and schools in Eastern officials and their families who spoke only turkish, teaching to address the state with due language. Among the eighties and nineties, however, thousands of Kurdish villages were razed to the ground in order to remove the popular support, spontaneous or forced, the guerrillas of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), political party and paramilitary claiming rights autonomy Kurds, who for thirty years and engages with the institutions of the Turkish war inside the country. To guerrilla ambushes and mines, the army responded with reprisals and bombings in an attempt to flush out the PKK from the mountains on the border with Iraq. To date, there are over forty thousand deaths clashes and attacks. War, poverty and deportations have increased dramatically in major Turkish cities, transforming them into monsters protean of endless suburbs built by wild palazzinari. Istanbul, with a population of over fifteen million inhabitants, of whom two million are Kurds, is the symbol of the uncontrolled process. Even Gaziantep, in its furthest reaches, it expands out of order: the popular buildings are scattered like a flock in the moonscape of rubble and pastures. The space there is for now, and is ground relentlessly. In other areas of the city, climb the hills, the largest Kurdish ghettos, made up of cubicles or just miserable huts, the antithesis to the achievements of economic slow-growing middle class, which symbolizes the aspiration for social status up to the majority the dispossessed.

"Remember, in the east there is only three things: dust, dirt and hypocrisy," he says Prof. Nuri sitting at his desk in his study. Age of indecipherable not old and no longer young, medium height, physical dry, his hair turn a smoky gray with white spots like milk, which sometimes has thin lips smiling but as per agreement, without force, without joy. He teaches sociology at the University of Gaziantep public for ten years, is originally from Kurdish Kilis, a village on the Syrian border, surrounded by minefields. Often invites me to drink the coffee that you do on a hot plate, a passion. Not the turkish coffee, we would point out, but the long, aqueous an American car. On the walls, I recognize the familiar face of Gramsci in a photo in black and white. There are also Adorno, Balzac, Rousseau and Yashar Kemal. The picture Atatürk, omnipresent in all public offices, is missing here, and this absence speaks for itself. On the opposite wall, a poster with a drawing of a woman dancing the flamenco in a symphony of colors. Nuri I often talk about the time he was in Spain to hold a conference on rural villages in the Middle East, with a touch of pride. Gaziantep, a country that considers the outskirts of the province, is the close. Since, however, does not think, here have a family, two children growing up and his studies, tasks that are given. Behind those gray eyes flecked with green, there are conclusions and seeing bitter cold on the state of things, gained by dint of consuming shoes around the city between the asphalt and gravel roads villages. It combines the fingers before his face and looks sideways at me, quietly nestled in the calculation of someone used to judge who is in front, before you speak. Can be open with me. "I will tell you at university, but know that the wheel turns with the blood of civilization. The reason is simple: a people, a culture, a State needs to survive. If the state lacks a different culture, a minority, is considered deviant, and is destined to disappear. Create a State does not mean that killing another or bend those who oppose it. Cancel them, like here a hundred years with the Kurds ... the Kurds ... the ideas that lead to a state not born in rural areas, life there is repeated identical in itself, outside of history. And that's where we come from the countryside, the consciousness of people has come when we have decided to remove it. Kurdish tribes in the nineteenth century they waged war with each other for a piece of land ... probably live in isolation has preserved the language and customs, at the bottom of the narrow-mindedness is also a method of survival, but today is our conviction. " I feel the anger of Nuri hovering in the room. A lucid anger that spares nothing to both parties, as an orphan raised accusing parents and guardians of the world that have left and who has not had time to change. "You know what the Turkish identity? the face of power. And power is not the means, but the end. The identity must be produced and enhanced to ensure obedience, people must love the fact that Turkish and nothing else ... A mechanism set in motion by the founder of this State. Now, the power states in humans in two ways: with the triumph and humiliation. To understand the triumphalism take the national memory, a historian who has nothing. A sampling of events because of very short memories and oblivion, a few other things repeated endlessly and completely removed ... they kill half of a village and changed the name to make it forget, how did that today is called Dersim Tunceli While ... Instead, battles of liberation, the death of martyrs, the flag, the life of Atatürk is the religion that all must confess. Is taught from childhood, to school children repeat "I mutlu turkum diyene" (turkish happy is he who can say, the most famous sentence of Atatürk), read it over the mountains and on the streets and eventually end up believe it! '. The coffee in the cup is over, Nuri is quick to fill it again. Go and have a look in the hallway, then closes the door. Our eyes meet, accomplices, and sat down again. He does not want to be bothered or do not want others to feel. "The humiliation is more practical and more subtle. Made The Kurds feel a social handicap. Kurdish equivalent of primitive, undeveloped. Nobody gets to work if you speak only Kurdish, and if you want to study, books that are in our language can be counted on one hand. These are the same Kurdish families who want their children to forget where they come from, and the terrible thing is that they do for their own good. Are you proud to be Kurdish, you are an enemy of the fatherland, for surely you are conspiring to divide, you're the terrorists. The government propaganda has grown more than a generation in hatred, the young Turks of Kurdish language now automatically connect to the bombs and the soldiers killed, they feel discomfort when they hear it on the street. What remains to be done to a Kurd who wants to integrate? Put the past behind and embrace the symbols of the Republic. It's called assimilation, and even while you're in, you realize it you do to survive ... I have been able, by separating the Kurds from the past have divided them in this. " Nuri say to the current AKP government, the Islamic party line, seems willing to open themselves to claims of greater cultural rights to Kurds. The "national pact of brotherhood" towards minorities and the recognition of the existence of a "Kurdish question" are steps in this direction. Even the opening of the first Kurdish television channel last year and the repeal of laws against publications newspapers and videos in Kurdish augur well. "I do not have much hope. The tension has eased, it is true, but the conditions of our exclusion of the slower we are destined to disappear, have not changed. This country, from its birth, is under the control of the military, which does not cede power easily. There is the Republic, but until 1950 there was a single party. Later, the little democratic process was three times interrupted by coups, and in 1980 the Army has rewritten the constitution. There are still laws like Article 301 that punishes insulting Turkish identity and homeland, in practice self-criticism is banned ... The constitutional law against those fomenting separatism is a pillar of this order. The Kurdish party DTP was closed for alleged contacts with the PKK, good job! Now the square have left only the extremists ... The same climate of suspicion and fear surrounding those who provide information or simply manifest. Journalists uncomfortable slamming into them with a pretext. They have no problem even with kids, you know how olds crowded prisons? This would be a country that aspires to join Europe? The AKP is doing his interests, wants to broaden its electoral base as possible. At the bottom is a neurotic middle class and the afternoon goes to the mosque to do the namaz and evening looks TV drinking beer ... The AKP is putting up a new center of power by placing his men in the places that count and discrediting their enemies. They stink of patriarchy, defend Islamic ideology that attracts acclaim but only interested in money ... there is too much hypocrisy. Too much. " Nuri looks out to the scattered clouds. The pessimism of this man is probably realistic given from having integrated with the blood and pain the art of judging. He was lieutenant in the army for seven years before becoming a professor, sent east to fight the "terrorists". He speaks reluctantly, and only once managed to cavargli a fragment of memory: "In the mountains ... you feel lost, those huge spaces, the snow, you stick to the orders and classmates. I was young, I knew vaguely that I was betraying the Kurds, but I needed to prove turkish. I fought and I've seen ... the torture, the abuse, I have seen the truth. Our enemy was not less. In war the first thing to die are the ideal ... We have done some horrible things over there ... in the end I despised my soldiers, and even myself. As long as the field I do not forgive. " I do not know if it was the coffee or his words to make me come up with a pounding tachycardia. I feel suffocated, the walls shrink around. Do I have the white face, because Nuri me a pat on the back and says he quit. We smoke a cigarette outside, with students who crowd the paths of the university. We stay there for a while ', no more talking, just looking around.

Rubbermaid Versus Elfa

The country where we are - part

Road East, vast horizons and militarized borders. Old asleep on the cart to slow gait, dreaming in a language forbidden. Up there in the clouds and hawks, the columns of Pêşmerge, warriors "standing in front of death," their way through the undergrowth of mountain running, singing, thinking about house in the remote village, to eat the meat of veal that evening, weapons hidden in an underground cavern. The border police were used to guard the division of Kurdistan do not know who has more than a thousand years, performing only orders angrily smoking smuggled cigarettes, praying that they do not stick, at least not while they are there. Because the Kurds do not bend: can you beat them indefinitely, raising your head. There are those who fought, those who work through legal channels to something resembling independence, those who live simply, those who forget, as time separates them and change them, as they are scattered in four states and around the world. Destined to bilingualism Kurds, their language and that of the country that they have incorporated, in the grip of citizenship and belonging. Iran suspected of separatist sympathies to them hangs a noose, the Kurds in Syria is not even granted an identity card, in Turkey want to eradicate from the head. Only you can say in northern Kurdistan and be received with a smile, a hug. In the Federal Government of Iraq since 2005 there is the autonomous region of Kurdistan, with its parliament, its schools, its army. Since the legendary hero Mustafa Barzani, leader of the revolt began to be recognized as independent and culture as a political entity, rivers of blood continued to flow. But today, from Erbil to Suleymaniye, The official language is Kurdish.

Once I spent a whole night sitting in a friend's house in Diyarbakir listening to an old man who sang the dengbêj , sung story that for centuries has been the form of transmission stories between the generations of Kurds. After remaining absorbed in the mellow vocals and harsh for hours, the elderly and children around were exhausted, his face dreamily. The women brought the food in large round plates of iron, while sipping tea and I asked my friend what that story meant, what he spoke. Together with bitter and ironic expression told me that he did not know, only understood a few words of Kurdish, I do not ever speak in his daily life. The old man who was his grandfather had sung.

In his report to the command of sull'assedio Antep, the French Colonel Brigadier Marcel Abadie wrote in 1921: "The population is made up of Turkish Antep (large majority) of Kurds, Armenians, Circassians and the Kurds ... some Jews may be regarded as a breed, their types differ considerably from the type and Mongolian turkish, live above their villages in the plains, except for some semi-nomadic groups who practice transhumance ... Overall, the Kurds are a highly brutal race of warriors, looters on occasion, extremely robust and very well armed by the spoils of raids to the Russians. They dream of creating a large Kurdish state encompassing all countries in the west, east and south of the Euphrates, but should point out that most of the Kurdish tribes have made common cause with the Kemalist in the fight against the French. " Following the First World War and the signing of the Treaty of Sevres, the remnants of the Ottoman Empire had been divided by European powers in their respective areas of influence. In 1920, the British occupied the north of Iraq, the French were quartered in the south-east Anatolia and Syria, to the Italians ENTITLED areas of Adana and Konya. To the west, on the shores of the Mediterranean, Izmir had fallen under the blows of the Greeks who advanced with a compelling series of victories on the field, I decided to annex parts of Thrace and Anatolia. Constantinople and the Sultan remained motionless under the control of occupation forces. The West was playing dice shots and shells of the members still live in the "Sublime Porte." From its headquarters established in Ankara, the war veteran Mustafa Kemal Paşa prepared to fight the invaders nurturing the dream of a homeland in Turkey. The Kemalist, which he took the name and almost all came from the armed forces as he ammutinatesi the Sultan, had been sent on his orders in the occupied territories to organize exercise endurance and prepare to do battle. The skilful policy of Kemal was able to inspire in the minds of the population exhausted by war and occupation by a feeling of revenge for national identity, managing to secure consensus for former subjects in search of identity. At the same time, he had strategically acknowledged the Kurdish nationalists in the new Constitution of Ankara, in order to secure the support of the Kurdish tribes of the east. Turks and Kurds have fought together, and together they ruled the nascent country. Once established the new state, the Kurds would be guaranteed the administrative autonomy of their territories, these were the terms. In September 1922 almost all of Turkey had been freed. In early 1923 the Turkish Republic was formally proclaimed and Mustafa Kemal became its first president. Once established, the internal sovereignty and legitimacy have reached the international level, policy towards the Kurds Kemal changed. In the elections for the new National Assembly no Kurdish MP was admitted to the House. In 1924 the first decree was issued forbidding the use of Kurdish language in public schools and for each publication, the turkish was imposed as the sole official language. All the promises made to the Kurdish people in time of war were betrayed. In the dust of Antep, Kurds and Turkish soldiers had fought side by side, but while the corpses of rotting dead still on the battlefield, were divided: one made heroes, the other forgotten. The city had a special mention for bravery, was added to the code of Gazi, a veteran, the name Antep Turkish nationalist ideology made him one of its strongholds. "There are people in the presence of any truth which sounds like a lie" Vasily Grossman wrote in Stalin's Russia. Want to talk about the Kurds in Turkey, their stories have no place in the chronicles official burns the ears of middle-class liberals like to illiterate peasants who have sent their children to the front. The conversation stops, the answers are sharpened between the teeth and become resentful, the reason clouds are polluted from the tentacles of declarations of principle, to memorize: "The Kurds are not there, you can only find those on Turkish mountains," "They killed so many to join his country, as many more will die to defend its unity." Looking at it closely, the border of Kurdistan is a wound which secretes a surge dense and dark, sticky. If you want to hear the voices you need to go and rip the silence.

Feel A Strong Pulse In My Stomach Pregnant?

Yılmaz Güney, " Çirkin Kral. " 1937-1984. A revolutionary

How I Make Tight My Penise

The kitchen floor is covered by a dirty old so that some signs will not go away ever, as they are tattooed in the tile. The decor is poor: low and threadbare sofa, kitchenette equipped with electric oven, fridge noisy, small sink for washing dishes and teeth, topped by a shelf full of containers with spices of all kinds. At first, a narrow wooden staircase leading to second floor with two bedrooms. In the common area can be entered through a door on the ground floor, past a marble steps. When it rains, water drips into the house from the two openings on the sides of the roof, sometimes there is a bird careless slips. Fortunately it does not rain often in Damascus. During this period, but it's cold, we are in January. In the small room with the door closed there is a space heater electricity which is struggling to heat the room. Tuncay, turkish Hantakya of Arabic origin with, slowly turns his Çay with the natural charm it has. It is perhaps the fifth tea within an hour that I sipped, accompanied by another cigarette. Yusuf, also of Hantakya, curled up on the sofa reads poems by Lorca. Rasha, the host of the house, is sitting in front of me and I will pay Çay dark in a small glass. She lived alone until recently, now Yusuf Tuncay and live here, both to study Arabic. Hantakya, what remains of the ancient and splendid Antioch, mentioned in the Bible, is a village between green mountains teeming with life, not far from the Syrian border. The inhabitants are often bilingual, ethnicity difficult to classify. The territory is Turkey, the culture of a gradient transition between the Arabs and Turks. Since the two boys children speak Arabic at home, but have never studied, taught in Turkish schools. Now I'm in Damascus to learn the grammar and writing, studying at the local university. It gives them a way to discover, strengthen, a cultural heritage that the turkish border, administrative division and existential, wanted to bury. In Damascus they found Rasha, which started a life together, sharing the rent and teach their languages. Among the three of them speak Arabic, I speak turkish boys, and me and Rasha English. We are immersed in an intersection, a small town in the heat created by this girl in his house, just steps from Baghdad street, near the old city gates. I met through couchsurfing, a website that connects jobseekers and offers hospitality. One way to cut travel expenses, and that is going directly into the places that you lived through it, without mediation. In Syria it is illegal, Rasha go there by using proxy servers that circumvent the limits imposed by the government. Facebook and Youtube are also prohibited. But, insensitive to the prohibitions, Rasha has turned his home into a place of passage is open, he sees travelers of all nationalities to stop, start, and share with her discussion, information and moments of life. It takes some courage, since it is a lonely woman in a conservative district, in a fascist state. The people murmured, but she does not care. His time, when not working or studying, the dedication to share all he knows about his country with travelers. It is an inexhaustible source, aware of the state of things, witty and ironic, rebellious, wise, and with a background of melancholy, however, where lies an unbeatable optimism. His eyes are deep and dug by sleepless nights talking and reading, an agile body, the soft voice and to me mysterious and beautiful Arab woman. The mother is Christian, his father an atheist communist, as she is called, moreover, that the name given to her daughter Rasha in honor of Soviet Russia. He comes from a very small Christian village on the border with Iraq, which has moved here to the university, English Literature. The father had a great influence on her, when she was little was a bust of Lenin in the house she looked curious, the father then said it was a statue of his grandfather, who died some time ago, and could talk to him whenever he wished. You have established an intimate relationship with the figure of confidence that accompanied her throughout her childhood. Years later, he found the school books that maybe this man, Lenin, was not his grandfather, and although at first it was saddened today laughs and sometimes still refers to him as the beloved "Grandpa Lenin." Escape routes granted to the imagination, here in Syria, where the imagination has been linked to a ball and chain. Other

Cay, another cigarette. We spend the afternoon so, Rasha has never tired of my questions, and I'm too busy with his stories. "Bashar is a dictator and politics in Syria is a farce," he says, almost expressionless. Bashar al-Assad is the Syrian president, son of the late Hafiz al-Asad from 1994 and probably until his death. "When Hafiz died, he made sure that the president went to the eldest son, Basil, who died the same year in a car accident ... Yani, the party in power is the same for forty years, the Baath, they are Alawite, and Hafiz has just turned the presidency into a hereditary office. Bashar then studied ophthalmology in London and did not know anything about politics. Found himself president from day to day.. " "There are elections," he laughs, "but as I told you have no value. Voting age, people without ID card and there is no control. In my village there were more of the total voting population in the last election ... so. The newspapers write that we are a democracy, we compare it to prove to the United States where they have two parties, but here we have seven, and for this we should be more democratic! There are also two Communist parties ... "his eyes hold the spoon. The cult of President Bashar is pervasive, just take a walk to notice. His picture stands out in every place, in all sizes, offices and shops. With outstretched arm, while drinking tea, with sunglasses and military uniform. He's ridiculous, his face is trivial, gray, idiotic expression seems to confirm that he has to feel out of place. Yet it is revered, at least in public, and openly criticizing him take risks. I once asked a guy in the souk what he thought of Bashar and he smiled making me excited sign with his thumb up. So I insisted on asking him what was the difference between the current president and his father. Showing a clenched fist saying "this was Hafiz," then opens the hand as if to give, "that is Bashar, still smiling. Rasha in the story: "Sure, people think that because Bashar has given homes to the poor is more good ... ... is just populism pfu, keeps the people ignorant and in the hospital, relies on them to consolidate his power, see it as a quasi-religious leader, above the error, because it is wrong to assume that considered treason. These are the two pillars of his power: mass enclosed in the mental cage of religion, and fear that feeds the government towards foreigners, the West and Israel, creating a permanent state of war ... then it's official, we are at war since 1948, with Israel, there is martial law and emergency powers for the president. "civil society, this mirage in the Syrian desert, where is it? "He struggles to survive, people do three jobs because prices are high and the pay poor, has no time for politics. Manifest? Need government permission. Usually allow critical events with the policy only to bring together all in one place and stop them. But the government sometimes organizes events ... oh yes, calls the people to the streets to support the Palestinians, Iraqis, Somalis, but for us Yani Syrians do not show that?! That's what we really need. "


"The problem is cultural. We agree to be subject to laws against human dignity and freedom of expression. For example, a husband may divorce his wife without having to guarantee anything, so leave it as they please, and maybe has two or three wives. Who is surprised to jerk goes to jail, and there is a widespread denunciation, even without evidence. Even the honor killing is permissible, not make you some, but a father who kills the daughter who lost her virginity before marriage does not go to jail .... I mean that women themselves are to allow this, there is an underground schizophrenia, stagnation sets and consumption, ways to enhance the creative minds and the speeches are all self critical blocked. And what is worse, even from ourselves. "Rasha speaks freely about sexuality, we both know that all power in history has ever exercised its power in this area more subtle and unobtrusive: if you come to regulate the bodies in their intimacy, in their emotional reactions, can be reached in order to stifle the imagination of alternatives to the facts of power. In Syria, sexuality and individual conduct are subject to patriarchal control of religious morality, a set of permissions and prohibitions that are structured in coercion whose foundation is supposed sacred. It becomes like a closed circle: the religious interpretation that makes instrumental use of power. The truth is all there, past, present and future, all resolved in the text, in the interpretation of the text. It is not necessary to go further, it makes no sense to experiment with other approaches and other roads, since perfection has been achieved in the sources and you should not do anything but imitate. Identity becomes dominated by memory, her reflection, and provides the tools for understanding the real are poor and granite. Of course, the conditions of this closure and cultural stasis is maintained, pursued by institutions, cultural and political: they use the text as legitimation of power, and its truth as the truth of power. Religion, politics, tradition, mingle and reduce until it becomes limited to the change and stress in an open eclectic. This is what Rasha see how the current problem of the Arabs, Christians and Muslims. The difficulty of creating culture mixing different contributions, expressing themselves in new languages, producing knowledge. The power of knowledge is concerned, the individual is not interested in creative, it aspires to the mass, the number in which the individual disappears, to eliminate the risk of contradiction to the principles on which it rests. Ignorance and fear of change are the true blessings of power. "My brother, who grew up with me is very conservative. Some time ago I brought a man to marry, because he says the time has come, now I have put off suitors and I can not ... I told him to mind his own business, which the body is mine and I have to decide ... I do not want to get married, especially not with someone you do not even know. But the issue is that certain topics are not openly challenge. I have no friend to talk freely about sex for them is not an experience a family affair individual. It's frustrating. Sometimes I think they are afraid to rebel, and other times that fit, which begin to imagine their lives in this same vision, and become involved in, ready to play it again ... But the contradiction is obvious, they go to buy expensive lingerie that never show up at the wedding, spend their days at the hairdresser and then cover with a veil or shave your whole body and horrified because I do not. They do not know why they do what they do, follow the convention, they realize that their lives are subjected to the gratification of the male. " Rasha doubt appreciates, nurtures a lively curiosity about what is unknown, that Western culture or sexuality. "The best books I've read I have found them by myself ... university teaching methods are based on memorization, there is no criticism or review, you must drink it all. The absurd thing is that students most fans as they leave, allowing scholarships here because their potential is humiliated. " It almost seems that the system pushes the best to leave. After all, the brilliant minds are the first enemy of the established order, especially when the order is a closed system that has in it the whole truth. "The West then ... how many I've seen travelers coming Syria to seek the East, the traditions ... the guilt is too! And their governments. I'm not interested in the state of minority of the Syrian people, human rights are a political affair that put in the field when they have the convenience, look what happens in Palestine. And hell they have done in Iraq? ... To the west we are a market, gives us his inventions and there makes them seem indispensable, but it invites us to have the brain that invented them and helps us to develop one. We are instruments, or enemies on which to launch bombs. They need us to exploit or destroy us. "The hypocrisy of Europe, to see it from here, is obvious. In the intellectual class tends to attributed to the Syrians, like the Arabs in general, an 'ideology of backwardness cloaked in charm. The nature of certain things, on cultural heritage, the origins, tradition, intended to leave the Arab confined to the past, pure and immune from decay or closed back in his world, depending on usage quota dictated by political needs and economic. When you hear talk of dialogue with the Arabs, with whom the European governments are talking to? They have a vague idea of \u200b\u200bthe complexity and diversity of the Arab world? And, even more importantly, are ready to go to the extreme consequences of advocating values \u200b\u200bthat, by agreeing to base the dialogue on the recognition of the right the life of all people? The Palestinians as the Israelis? It seems that Europe is incapable of making political choices and develop a thought independently by the U.S.. Rasha has no such prejudices, he absorbed much from the European culture, books, film, music and ideas. Given its knowledge of English and Arabic can draw on the cultural production of these two worlds with ease. Paradoxically, it has a broader vision of a European student who studied philosophy and limit themselves to Western production, even if you live in the suffocating cultural Syrian aphasia.

the radio are turning Fairouz, the Lebanese singer, a legend throughout the Arab world. It is on the scene for forty years and fans call our ambassador to the stars, for his warm tone and suffering that takes you away. She grew up with more than one generation and the Syrians prefer especially. Rasha sings with his eyes half closed, while warming a thin slice of bread on the stove. Tuncay brings to the table and Hommos muttebel, two Syrian specialties for which they are greedy. Chickpeas and eggplant with yogurt and cumin, crushed until creamy. To accompany the inevitable tea. We eat in silence, Fairouz fills the room, we exchange glances that have no tongues, near and beyond the difficulties that we know well. Out of this leads many of our conversations are unthinkable, and yet we take them on the roads simply continuing to live, during and after. Rasha want to travel and learn about the world, but his heart is linked to Syria, she is the oil that keeps the flame burning. The problem is the visas, borders and money. His first trip will do it in Gaziantep, Turkey, when the host in my house. There is a poem that reminds me of her dreams, injustice, hope. She wrote Mohamad al-Maghout, a Syrian poet who knew the prison and exile, without ever leaving his two passions, laughing and smoking. In poetry there is something universal, all men can understand. "Oh! The dream, the dream! / My strong golden chariot is in need of repair / her wheels are scattered like gypsies everywhere. / One night I dreamed the spring / wake and flowers were scattered on my pillow. / I once dreamed of the sea / and in the morning my bed was full of shells and fins of fish. / But when I dreamed of freedom / sharp spears surrounded my neck to give me a good morning / From now on you will not find me in the ports or between the station / there ... but in public libraries / asleep on the maps of the world / (such as sleeping on the orphan sidewalks) / where my lips touch more than a river / and my tears roll down / from continent to continent. "