Post Ego-Slap November 14, 2007
This is Toobaa after the Ego has been slapped out of her.
Toobaa growled and growled. Naughty A Levels. BAD A levels. The ‘A’, it would seem, was little more than an assimilation vowel between the clear and sharp rap of two other undermining consonants; one terribly average and the other shamefully confusing. The string of stars had been chewn to pieces and she had only just noticed.
She had first met Ego at 6AM. Super-ego and Id were both eloquently trying to impress her with their rhetoric.
Id: You owe no duty of care. You should not respond. Go back to sleep.
Super-ego: You certainly do owe a duty of care! Wake up!
Ego tried to mediate but Toobaa knew better. She knew that, theoretically, women weren’t thought to have much of a Super-ego at all. I know what you’re playing at. Snooze.
And yet, she had been ruthlessly purified. Arrogance and pride, even as regards one’s spelling, is punishable and punishable by awe-inspiring ruin.
Why don’t we take a few steps back, Toobaa… What do you say?
Look- Cover- Write- Check! There’s a good girl!
[Ego-slap: Noun. A term referring to any event, expected or unexpected, which is reasonably drastic in humbling a person or group of persons. (Source: Toobaa's Gymnalinguistics Dictionary, p.49835)]
Eid Mubarak! Where?! October 15, 2007
Asking Timothy Weeble about the sensation of losing balance will inevitably bring an instinctive smile of knowing to his flawlessed face. He knows because he is either in a perpetual state of losing balance or because it is something he has never experienced at all. The latter sources his electrically curious ponderment on the subject, and the resultantly by-produced knowledge which could be scraped from the surface of his bubbling pool of fantastically colourful thoughts and, when applied to a slice of hole in this wisdom, would very well supersede that of one who had lost balance from fault line time to time and only considered the subject twice.
Ramadan had just entered the room and no sooner had the formally unnecessary formalities of meeting and greeting and congratulating been signed and completed than I was vehemently being poked in the back and the rug was pulled right out from beneath me.
Boo! It’s over! Eid Mubarak!
I do beg your pardon? But I was just marching up these stairs right here and suddenly there were no more steps and my foot came down
hard and I was very surprised. As I stood swaying, somewhat stubbornly unconvinced and somewhat bewildered at the factual and seemingly evasive nature of the boo, I felt the skullabite virus creeping along my pained sinus, clutching and climbing diligently, with clear malice aforethought, from the back of my unassuming, blameless nose to what geographically feels like right there inside my head. Within the scrooge sized space of thirty seconds, sellotaped tightly as fate to the thread of time, it declared that it didn’t have to fake it if it could make it and that it had indeed made it.
In the feverish fit of fever, Eid observed me and then left just in time not to catch me when the earth rose up and hit me twice. TooReFo, my in-house research department, has rolled out the Google filing cabinet and, after a hasty perusal, informed me that it is conventional to faint with your eyes open.
‘A couple shots of alcohol should set you right.’ Paramedic George prescribed.
‘Well, I don’t drink. Anything else I could try?’
‘Nah, don’t do anything.’
Technically, in such a collapse, one does not experience the delightful, quasi-outer-body phenomenon of physical detachment [losing balance]- only that of one moment being stood with an intention to gargle and the next minute feeling the floor wrap itself around you and the radiator trying to intervene. Then you find your way up but the floor insists once again.
Gravity, gravity, gravity. It holds down my journals as I fill them with spells and theories that do everything but abide by Newton’s laws. In His praise, my feet are always ten feet off the ground.
Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down. October 6, 2007
They do! They wibble and wobble when your baby nephew comes and pokes the little unoffending green froggy but, of course, despite exhausting itself from trying, it can find no way of falling down. Child. Proof. Just like every single one of us, yes, yes? Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down. Like a seed of an apple that dances out of its hollow and into your mouth when you bite that close, this axiom, too, speaks only the truth of the matter. For the sake of authoritative ness I must know how to say this in Latin and then cite it often. And that really is all this one is about.
Idols : Sweet Nothings September 5, 2007
It had come to us on a long, flat and shiny red box from Manchester. Sanam Sweets. Mithai so gloriously luxurious and thick, with its sweetness so intricately woven with saffron, that one could not find the like of its silk anywhere else, ever. Hence, the delectables had come to us from Manchester.
Ordinarily, hearing the word sanam would conjure to my simple link welding mind the moving image of Rishi Kapoor in a multicoloured sweater, aeroplaning down a snow caked mountain to his chandni (moonlight) and miming, so out of sync it was impressive, to the Bollywood song that would include, as many of them do, the term of endearment: sanam.
‘It means darling.’
Mother would always ponder a little before responding to our linguistic queries, having to approximate the meaning of words we would never have any use for, such as mehbooba, sanam, jaaneman, etc, etc. She would always pause, tap her finger once or twice on the rim of her mug and appear to be scanning handwritten notes suspended invisibly before her, but she always said the same. ‘It means darling.’ Darling. In those moments, we felt a slight twinge of guilt for having unstuck her from her absorbing dose of the des (homeland), forcing her back to the monochrome space of the pardes (foreign land) where it was a motherly duty to translate the meanings of words such as sanam. Of course, back ‘home’, you just knew what it meant, and there was more time for children to go about their own devices and mothers to forego this duty.
So it was the long, flat and shiny red box from Manchester. For the first time, sanam conjured none of the above. This was the first time I had seen it written. It was a large gold foil printed script, as if the knowledge it would cunningly plant on me was a secret message, minor in its immediate importance, regal in the relevance of its existence. The letter Sad, was the traitor. In Urdu, there is little need for distinguishing between the two hissing letters, seen and sad, as the sweetness of this tongue did not allow such discrepancies to round the hollow of the mouth to one as haughtily explosive as that which the sad required. Seen (س) as in ‘sun’ and sad (ص) as in ‘sword’. So where there was a sad, I knew that, in Urdu, it would still be pronounced as a seen, and yet the word itself had to have its origins in Arabic.
My mind set down the peppermint tea and the living room and traveled the regular path from Urdu, through Persian, to Arabic, carrying the word by the scruff of the neck and trying to locate its village of birth, its cause for diffusion, its path of transmission, the basis for its semantic shift… There were several faltering seconds where my internal lexicon refused to open, its pages congealed in a sweat of panic and obstinate denial. Sanam! Singular of Asnām! Idol!
صنمٌ — اصنامٌ sanam pl. asnām idol, image
(Upon the authority of Hans Wehr, Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, Ed., Cowan, J. M., 1976)
Rishi Kapoor was running faster now, his smile stretched, frozen, insane. His heroine stood someway down, twirling her birdlike drapes of ludicrously thin cloth and as they met, they stepped into matching choreography of shimmying asymmetrically back and forth, miming, ‘Oh my idol, I swear by you…!’
Who had authorized this semantic triple jump? Where could I contact this person? It seemed pointless to direct my anger at what was, probably, the long buried bones of an unknown community of well intentioned individuals living at one end of a river which carried the trade of goods and words. I already knew the depth and vastness of Arabic words, roots and devices in Urdu. It had, after all, been me who insisted that Urdu was, in fact, an Arabic dialect. But the deceit had directed me towards a filing cabinet, where all the words I had not suspected, sat row after row in alphabetical order, now guilty until proven innocent, awaiting their final destination in my minds linguistic family tree.
However, the threat of the sad, and at least nine other letters of similar status, takes a backseat as the matter of the disguised idol elbows its way to the front of the theatre and the lights dim for it to take the spotlight at centre stage. Take the example of a High Street North in East Ham, or any street laden thick with masjids and temples, on almost every corner, facing one another in somber reserve: to you is your faith and to me is mine, and notice how, just after noon on a Friday, you will see the sight of flowing robes, thawbs, dotis and jeans; headcaps, beards, white face paint and red dots; you will see how they eagerly make pace to worship an omnipotent force, in truth unbound by tangible form, the ultimate brewing entity. Eagerness and passion. Submission of the will to the highest conceivable force.
Surely, discerning between the breakable and the divine brewing entity, much beyond our comprehension, is just the beginning, immeasurably essential, but just the start. The nature of disguised idols, that which causes one to compromise his covenant, are unique for every individual. Usually, it’s just money. Whatever they are, they are on the prowl in ones personal space. Seriously, on the prowl.
[Thank you to Oz, Hafsa, K, HMH, Imran, Bobby, Rieanne, Omar and Luqman for your comments.]
Rapunzel July 28, 2007
I sat staring from my bedroom window at the new rooftops, red with embarrassment at the mental assylum they had replaced. My own personalised looming lookout point, situated at the highest point of the highest tower of the highest house on the highest hill. I threw my hair down and out of the window. Then I waited but nothing happened.
So hauled it all back in and, instead, I have been consumed with experimenting with moody film noir techniques, wondering all the time where my tripod is, learning to infuse lavender oil because I hear it’s good for the hair, mostly arguing with poorly informed Brownie associations who I often leave speechless and promising me that the manager will call back personally, trying to figure out who left the black olive to roll into the cutlery drawer and why everybody doubts my strawberry and basil smoothie-coolie-juice addition and then loves it when they do try it, not to mention thinking about where Harry II is performing nowadays, how many pyramids Deeja has confronted and whether she has a suitable hand-fan for the job, does the Maggy-Bird live where I sent her her very own voodoo doll, who knows how to convert SWF to MPG, when I’m going to have lunch, when I’m going to have lunch with Fun, remembering to get superglue tomorrow morning to fix the broken finger on my delicate mannequin hand, musing over what drunken astronauts are doing fizzing around the atmosphere and why some people just cannot let things go and how many shots Aussie would get by sitting in every tree in the park. Photographic shots, you know. At least I’ve decided I’d like to leave my tower. Enough vegetables have been peeled and plenty of spinning has been spun, at least for now.
Another thing I haven’t thought about, but others have and do, is the use of numerical digits when typing Arabic words in roman script. I guess it was the mu7ahajaba that triggered it. Why use numericals? To represent the letter that the English Alephbet doesn’t have, of course, and thus not risking a compromise with the meaning of words. Also, it is sometimes used simply to confuse and belittle people who don’t understand. Sometimes. Sometimes, uppercase is used intead of numbers but numbers are more common. And words are important.
2 – This is the glottal stop, like the cockney ‘butter’ (: bu2er) which is usually the Hamza ء in the Arabic script. In colloquial, it also represents the glottal stop that Egyptians turn the ق into. Guilty. e.g. Enti fen ba2aaaa? – Where ARE you?
3 - This represents the Ayn ع , the sound of which can’t really be explained, only picked up and is actually not as difficult or vomit inducing as most people make it out to be when first trying to pronounce it. When followed by an apostrophe (3′) it represents the Ghayn غ . e.g. as Nancy Ajram beautifully sings ‘lawn 3ayounak’ – The colour of your eyes.
5 – This is sometimes, but extremely rarely, used in place of 7 [see below]
6 – This is used for the explosive Ta ط and when followed by an apostrophe (6′) it represents the explosive Dha ظ . e.g. 6ayyeb – Good.
7 – This is the deep Ha ح which comes from the same part of the throat that the haaaa comes from after a sip of hot tea. When followed by an apostrophe (7′) it represents the Kha خ . e.g. Sa7! - Indeed! Correct! Right!
9 – This is the explosive Sa ص and when followed by an apostrophe (9′) it represents the Da ض
So, if anybody ever wants to have a giggle at Araboman script, just don’t use the numbers 1, 4, 8 or 0. Or it might look silly.
Above: Film Noir with a touch of what the Dr ordered.
Spitting on a Canon 400D Shot July 24, 2007
This is perhaps the most enchanting picture taken in my garden to date. Not Sony this time, no no no. Canon. It’s all about the Canon 400D… aaakkhhh thu*! The contrast of light and dark, the focus and posture somewhat remind me of a mu7aajabah: elegant yet poised; humble yet confident; enlightening and yet growing.
But then, I am no stranger to making obscure associations.
*‘aaakkhhh thu’ – an ancient method of fake spitting used to ward off evil eye [evil eye also known as 7asad or nazar], often practiced by [great]grandmothers, attributed as a common act amongst older generations of Moslems, although its actual origin is unknown; a verbal form of the black dot on the face used for similar purposes.
My Baby Canon 400d July 18, 2007
It shlicks in the most divine and glossy way… Almost slicks… It’s a triumphant sound… Not-only-did-I-get-the-shot-but-I-got-it-gloriously-shlick! It fits my hand like a beautiful leather glove… And the pictures- oh the pictures… Like surreal whorls of silk and icing… Perfect balance… Perfection… Shlick!
Now… I wonder where that snails gone…
