Realisme Brengt Succes
VK-blog, geplaatst op vrijdag 21 maart 2008 14:01
In de periode december 2001 – de tijd waarin neoconservatieven, uitgaande van de gedachte dat diegene die de macht bezit ‘de waarheid’ maakt, het Irak van SADDAM HUSSEIN verantwoordelijk gingen stellen voor de aanslagen op New York – tot 19 maart 2003 (de dag waarop Amerika en Engeland Irak binnen vielen) heb ik regelmatig het door het Irakese Ministerie van Cultuur en Informatie geredigeerde internetblad IRAQI DAILY geraadpleegd.
Niet om te proberen de gegeven informatie op een leugenachtige, kwaadaardige wijze te interpreteren, maar om aan te tonen dat de door Irak aangehangen BAATH-filosofie het tegendeel is van het op uitsluiting van anderen gerichte fundamentalisme (beter gezegd ‘groepsegoïsme’) van de tegenstanders van Saddam Hussein (zionisten, op afscheiding gerichte Koerden en onverzoenlijke, naar een Islamitische staat verlangende sjiieten).
Want wat je ook mag denken over SADDAM HUSSEIN, een feit is dat hij als overtuigd anti-fundamentalist, een vijand was van elke vorm van religieus en ideologisch verdelingsdenken – en daarmee een vertegenwoordiger van wat Amerikanen in een idealistische bui zo mooi ‘de Amerikaanse droom’ plegen te noemen: het scheppen van een wereld waarin uit diversiteit eenheid wordt geschapen: E PLURIBUS UNUM…
Verantwoordelijk voor de inhoud van IRAQ DAILY was informatieminister SAEED AL-SAHHAF, een gematigde sjiiet (Saddam Hussein wees alleen de verdelende Shia af) die tot aan het moment waarop de Amerikanen de stad BAGHDAD als bezetters binnenreden volhield dat Irak onoverwinnelijk was. Dat optimisme werd zo komisch gevonden dat zelfs George Bush het de moeite waard vond er aandacht aan te besteden:
BBC-News van 29 april 2003 zegt het volgende hierover:
“Mr Sahhaf’s daily press briefings in Baghdad during the war, at which his statements were increasingly at odds with reality, made him a cult figure in the West.
He was dubbed “Saddam’s optimist” and “Comical Ali” by media commentators. US President George W Bush has admitted that he enjoyed Mr Sahhaf’s briefings so much that he used to interrupt some of his meetings just to watch him. “He’s my man, he was great,” he told NBC television in a recent interview. “Somebody accused us of hiring him and putting him there. He was a classic.”
Despite being the regime’s mouthpiece, Mr Sahhaf is not considered to have been one of Saddam Hussein’s closest allies. A Shia Muslim, he was an outsider in the Sunni-dominated government that was in power since 1968. (BBB News 2003)
Uit de aan literatuur gewijde gedeelten van IRAQ DAILY heb ik een aantal fragmenten gelicht die aan kunnen tonen dat de ideologie waar de BAATH-isten voor stonden in geen enkel opzicht fundamentalistisch genoemd kan worden. Er spreekt een verlangen uit naar een op rede, realisme en logica gebouwde wereld waarin het mystieke verlangen naar eenheid (ook binnen de kleine wereld van het ik en de ander) centraal staat.
1. Flashback
Do we all have this double-sided personality that goes scratching all through the years making a double action effort at the same time?
Decide, feel good about it and then inverse your decision and it still feels like it’s the only right thing to do. But to keep that balanced image of yours reflected highly on your good morning mirror you just had to abort one of the actions and to do that you have to rebalance again between your heart and your mind, logic and séance.
Listen to the wind and press those buttons shift + delete. And once it’s finished you have to run and run because it will haunt you, the blurred words of ghosts, and you will never escape the beating question, “what if?”
And then life shows some mercy and you are truly offered a second chance.
Living your earned fasting success, counting moons of starvation, doubting your victories and wondering if life was just another Hollywood movie with a lot of possibilities, would you slam one door and open the other? Relive one problem twice, coming out of it through a different exit every time and see what life had in stored for you, two different counts created at the same time through out parallel paths.
What will you do? What should you do? Wake up that little adventurer in you, get it out of long coma caused by living along stream of rules. Shake it a little and then let it climb that mountain high. Let it grow bigger, elder and wiser until it becomes part of you, the big part of you and gain back that wild heart beating and a soul fully touched by affection and let your eyes shine. Spark out your magic to another life lived by someone else who’s just about to make a decision in another time another place.
By Nadia M. Yousif,
Iraq Daily Newspaper, jan 2002
2. Grief’s Dialogue – Wafa’ al-Shimaly
The evening emanates with tender beauty
In spite of the burdened suicide in the heart
Jasmines’ breeze reaches the highest nebula
And lights bestowing the night some of its signs
In spite of the night that is in the eyes of abandoned dreams
Angles roar, process, allure… in peace
They happily clap with their wings
To the night temples and the reverence shrines
Sea-maids sneak for the sea moments
Washing with the magic night brilliance
Taking earrings from its stars and nights
Having pleasure with the shore’s calamity
Of the sea’s deceit and its profound treachery
Of its perfidious tumult
Sea-maids weave for the night their tales
With sighs she says
For the sea there’s desert
And the desert has two hands
In them wounds are squeezed
Escaping moans
Two hands soaked with illusion threads
That the sea-maids dived to its depth
Silent till now.
Bron: Iraq Daily – Local Literature
3. A belief that is called Universality
“In order to prove to ourselves that we are using our hearts and minds up to their ultimate powers for survival in a special way, we must make ourselves believe deep inside that the never created infinite universe of ours, because it is with no beginning or end, is rich with infinite numbers of Big Bangs, hence infinite numbers of Earths, improving towards perfection and perfect Gods and Goddesses on the perfect Earths and that is theoretical immortality… a belief that is called Universality which will be adopted eventually by the entire Human Race as it is the logic at its best.”
Orahem Candle
Iraqi Daily – World Literature
4. In Love With Ghosts
I look into a mirror to remain afloat
And talk an endless soliloquy
This entire torrent of words is
A great yes to life,
A yes indifferent to good and evil,
A self-regarding, prudent, avid,
Generous, stupid, cosmos yes,
A yes of acceptance
That in its monotonous flow
Fuses and confuses
Past, present and future
What I was, remain
And will become,
Everything and Everyone together
In a great exclamation
Like a sea surge
That rises, falls and jumbles
All things together in a whole
That has no beginning or end.
Niran Abbas,
Iraq Daily 18-10-2002
5. Only Our Heart
“As we love leisurely, live leisurely, and walk on the pavement of obscurity to the first dream, we read our horoscope in the book of astrology and draw our longings in our notebook as we continue without a guide, only our heart, without lightness, only the burning candle of anxiety, we enter our countries and dreams, we soar like bees over flower meadows…”
Abdul Hakim al-Faqeih,
Iraq Daily 20-10-2002
6. A November Walk
While on a walk today,
I saw the trees release their leaves,
Skinny little ones, that looked like fingers
Would fly past me in a crowd
And settle on the grass and road
It had rained last night
And a film of water covered each leaf
I saw two leaves crash in mid flight;
They held and fell to the ground together,
And I thought of you.
Poem of Eric Sribnick,
Iraq Daily 7-11-2002
7. Nigerian Folktales: Wisdom, Food & Wealth
One-day wisdom, food and wealth started on a journey. As they went along they came to a man sitting under a tree. The man said, “Where are you going?” They said, “We are hunting a place to live.” The man said, “As for me, I want wealth to live with me.” Wealth said, “You are a dumb man. If you had chosen wisdom, all three of us could have lived with you. But you have chosen me. This cannot be, because if I lived with you without wisdom, you could not have me long.”
They started off again and they met another man. The man said, “Where are you going, young man?” They said, “We are hunting a place to live.” The man said, “I believe that I would like to have food live with me.” Food said, “You are not clever. If you had chosen a certain one of us, all of us would live with you. But look, you have chosen me. Do you think that you could keep me? No, you could not keep me. Let us go on.”
Farther on they came to a man who was working. He said, “Where are you going today?” They said, “We want a place to live.” The man said, “I would like for wisdom to live with me.” Food said, “If you have chosen wisdom, then I will live with you, too. I know that you will be able to take good care of me.” Wealth said, “If you have chosen wisdom, then I will live with you, too. I know that you will be able to take good care of me.” All three lived with him because he made a good choice.
Iraq Daily, World Literature 13-11-2002
8. The ability to see things as they are
“To be a realist person, is to be a successful one. Because with such quality in one’s personality would give him the ability to see things as they are not as his wishes are. Then such person will not get disappointed in people or the obstacle and hurdle it. It creates the real chance for success, not an imaginary one.” (From ‘My Deep Simple Character’ by Jihan Abdul Aziz Ahmed, Iraq Daily 24-11-2002)
9. Dan Lukiv: The Thinker
A toothless old man
Drinks cold coffee
Alone.
He scratches his scalp–
Dandruff floats in his coffee,
Like snow-flecks.
He wonders–
But soon only his coffee Matters.
Iraq Daily, World Literature
10. Rewrite the World
If we the world’s poets
Were the persons in charge
Those who have the power
To do something and change
We would turn water to ink
And the earth to paper
And rewrite the whole world
With more salt and pepper
O poets of the world I hear a husky light
Hissing in the tunnel
Listen it’s coming bright
O brothers and sisters
Take off your sunglasses
Light is coming over
Open those wine glasses.
Turki Amer,
Iraq Daily 19-12-2002
11. Half Dome: Poem By David Meuel
Within this vast, granite drama,
It is the dome that dominates
So round and regular
On the side and in back,
Its front sliced by an ancient glacier
Is abruptly flat,
Like a face stripped
Of every feature, crease, and bump
As many before me have done,
I consider the dome’s other half:
The part smashed
Into a million meaningless pieces
By a million merciless years
And I wonder what it all
Would have looked like
New and uncut and whole?
Iraq Daily, World Literature, 19-12-2002
12. Iraqi tots cling to beauty of ballet
Young ballerinas, oblivious of war threats on their country, dance to rhythm of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. As Baghdad ballet teacher Zikra Minhaim surveys her young charges enthusiastically rehearsing their steps, she sees a glimmer of hope, a rare glimpse of beauty amid the grim war clouds gathering over her stricken city.
“What amazes me is when people outside are buying generators, stocking food, the only worry these girls have is how to have a good dancing position and how to stand on their toes elegantly,” says Minhaim. “Look in their eyes, you see hope and you see beauty.”
Twenty girls aged between six and 13 take their dancing lessons at the Baghdad School for Music and Fine Arts. In a humble room surrounded by mirrors, the young ballerinas dance elegantly to the rhythm of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake under a portrait of President Saddam Hussein. Like ballet schools around the world, the children at the Baghdad School are rehearsing for a mid-year show, but with the difference that here they do not know whether their performance will be to the accompaniment of US bombs.
More than 65,000 US troops are already deployed around Iraq’s borders poised for a threatened attack and more are on their way. But both Minhaim and her young pupils remain determined that, come war or peace, their show will go on. “There will be a mid-year show – before, after or during the attack, we do not know – but the show must go on.”
By Marwan Naamani,
Iraq Daily 13-1-2003
13. Diagrams of visual and spiritual sense
“Art is the honest mirror of any people’s progress and deep-rooted civilization, moreover its an expression of life sensation with various ways and formulas. Art reflects reality, imagination, innovation, creation and renewing, as all are of developed, renewable and full of life society. Art is the only chance available, which offers the human soul the needed rest and motive for continuation.”
Akram Treeko, born in Baghdad in 1960.
Iraq Daily interviewed Mr. Treeko who said, “I care for the theme of human being avoiding the abstract sect in my artistic works, as I consider it to be the secret of my modernization. The art, which I am trying to embody through my works, originating from Iraqi genuine art, is inspired from ancient civilization of Sumer, which cared a lot for beauty.”
By Khudheir Hussein,
Iraqi Daily 15-1-2003
14. In Baghdad, Art Thrives As War Hovers
Thick cigarette smoke, the scene at the Hewar Art Gallery has a familiar feel. Long-haired artists with goatees and three-day stubble. Elegant women with distracted eyes and languid hauteur. Highbrow bohemians gossiping and glancing at the latest paintings and sculptures. The discreet clinking of coffee cups. For a while, at least, in this nondescript middle-class neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, you can imagine being closer to Berlin, Paris or New York, unencumbered temporarily by the deprivation, oppression and fear that haunt the country. You also are in the presence of some of the Mideast’s most prized artworks — from abstract oil painting to powerfully gaunt bronze sculpture to quasi-primitivist assemblage.
The Hewar probably has Iraq’s hippiest arts scene, but the gallery is not as unusual as it appears. While the country is increasingly coming under siege, dozens of galleries have sprouted up in Baghdad. Iraqi painting and sculpture have become a thriving, if clandestine, export industry, filling museums and private collections throughout the Mideast and even Europe. The theater also is booming, and even the nation’s beleaguered symphony orchestra is drawing packed crowds. All of this despite — or in deliberate obliviousness to the prospect of another potentially devastating war. “We are not just a country of war or oil,” said Qasim Alsabti, a painter who runs Hewar with his wife, Iman Al-Showg, a prominent sculptor.
“We are a proud culture that goes back 6,000 years to the Sumerians. We have been making art for longer than anyone. This is what gives us identity. This is what will make our art last another 1,000 years, when all this war is forgotten.” “We have to forget the black side of life,” said Reem Kubaa, a poet, as she sat with the Alsabtis and a group of friends one recent afternoon, sharing a masgouf, or traditional Iraqi fish fry, in Hewar’s leafy courtyard. “If our art is black, that means we are stopped. We are not doing our job as artists.”
By Robert Collier,
Iraq Daily – Local Arts 3-2-2003
15. The Voice Of Things
The flower establishes a relation between two souls, it removes distress from the two hearts and soothes two tired spirits.
The flower is neither blown over by the wind nor caught in the spider’s web! It is the flower that brings with it truth, good manner and sweet basil. It has a tongue of pure honey, it bears among its petals the story of resurrection, the day when we were brought back to hastens them to the place where it likes to be together with those people who are sweet and seek the right way!
May peace be upon the flowers; upon its day of sprouting new leaves, upon the day of picking flowers and upon the day of emanating fragrance….
Meditative Texts: By Ibrahim Jabber,
Iraq Daily 15-2-2003
16. Chileans Undress in Anti-War Protest
More than hundred 300 men and women undressed in a warm Saturday morning in Santiago to stage a festive protest against war in Iraq. Police watched the unusual protest appearing even to share the humor of the demonstrators in a park in downtown Santiago.
The humorous mood did not last long. After about one hour, the demonstrators – some of them dressed again, others sill naked – marched several blocks to a plaza in front of the presidential palace of La Moneda, where they tried to repeat their massive naked protest. Police quickly sent the water truck to disperse them. An officer explained that the naked demonstration had only been authorized to be held at the park, not in front of the palace.
Iraq Daily, 3-3-2003
17. Like the White
From blue sky birds come bearing bright kerchiefs in their beaks.
From lilac sky moon yawns weary from not sleeping washing her face in the water of wakefulness then sets to work.
From azure sky the dreams of strong nations stir harnessing alert steeds to assert themselves. From the rose unfold the desires that fold the banners of modesty unfurling the red flag that breaks all established rule.
From the joy I see in your eyes I begin like a myth
Looking behind me I find only swords that wave like thickets of branches in the storm.
When your cry assaults me the current sweeps me away where neither ship nor shore can gather me in.
I desire you as the white does all colors.
Qassim Haddad
Iraq Daily, 15-3-2003
18. Abul Alaa’ al-Ma’arri’s Extracts
Brightness and light has been from us off-screened
Our religion is nothing but falsity
Will blessed rain shower those who shameless are deemed?
Ill world that’s prayed to with devout felicity!
They recite their sacred books,
although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last.
O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth.
Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them!
From “Ill World”
Iraq Daily, 19-3-2003
Al Ma’arri, also known as the Eastern Lucretius was famous for poetry and grammar. He was born in Syria but traveled many places until he became blind. He lived in Baghdad for only eighteen months but within this short time he made a name for himself as a poet. After returning from Baghdad , he lived in his hometown Marra for another fifty years. Because of his fame, students from distant places went to Al-Marri to learn from him. Like Ibn Sina, al-Marri did not believe in resurrection and strongly condemned religious beliefs. One of his poems says it all….
“Hanifs (Muslims) are stumbling, Christians all astray
Jews wildered, Magians far on error’s way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools:
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools…..”
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