As the people’s revolution gains its first major reward in Egypt today by the resignation of the president Hosni Mubarak after 30 years of iron-fisted rule under emergency military laws, let’s hope that the benefits are enduring and sustainable, and that it leads to permanent victory for the people: human rights, real progress, reform, and justice. More importantly, let’s hope it spreads to other places on the continent where the citizens live in fear and poverty under unyielding despots.
Browsing the archives for the Observations category.
”BREAKING: Midwest braces for boring conversations about the weather.” – Andy Borowitz
Alright, in the last couple of days, there has been plenty new words in the midwestern weather vocabulary: Snowtorious (by Baratunde), Snowpocalypse, thundersnow, snowmageddon, and my favourite: snOMG. All of them have pointed at the horrible snow storm the likes of which our area hasn’t seen since 1981/2. Sounds like the government of Hosni Mubarak, right?
The news of the snow apocalypse that had school closed for two days straight (for the first time in years) had students, staff and residents rushing to buy house supplies: helmets, battery-powered flashlights, food, drinks, lighters, radio etc. When I got to the store to buy groceries yesterday, I found out that all the milk had gone out of circulation. There was none at all to buy. When it comes to panic buying, it seems that my current countrymen are the champs.
Now, at 2.45am on the day billed to be the scariest of the three days the terribly disnowbedient weather, there is no storm, no falling trees and sparkling electric wires, no raging alarms making us head for the basements and bath tubs covered with large matresses. No need for flashlights either. Just bloody snow and icy rain on the ground, and a thoroughly rested populace very glad to get two good days off. It is not all good. My classes take place on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I effectively have the whole week free of classwork, and that sucks. I’m beginning to think that this ruse was sponsored by Walmart and other shoppers so that we can all rush and buy things we don’t need for a weather we can’t handle.
I had made preparations for a different scenario anyway. In the event that power goes completely off and our phones run off that we can’t communicate with one another, and the heaters run out of steam such that we can’t even sleep without having to lay down together like pickles in a jar, and all hell break lose such that trees fall, and all we have are ourselves against the elements. I figured that it might become a perfectly opportune time to start returning to the basic natures of our humanity: hunting. I had already started making a long list of recipes that can do with some deer and geese meat. When roasted on an open fire made out of fallen trees, and set in public in front of the lake and surrounded by scores of homeless students and residents – add a few bottles of beer or wine bought from the panic rush of the previous days – the fact of hunger and depression will disappear from the world even for a few hours, and all that would remain would be glee, and a certain kind of happiness hard to describe and impossible to forget.
Back to the reality of the present, there is no snowstorm around here. The closest storm we have is in Cairo where protesters have decided that Hosni Mubarak’s televised announcement of intention to leave government in September comes too late and gives too little. That storm is purposeful, unpredictable, and has defied all predictions. Here, citzens that have not been used to more than a few hours of interrupted electricity think that the world has come to an end if something like that should ever happen without notice. Life is good. No snowstorms. All we have are new words, and that one in the title of this post is one of them: mine.
Years ago, as a young child, I remember father as a very large ever domineering presence. He was everything. He was tall, and well known and fun, and knowledgeable, and dreadful enough for a child often disposed to mischief. He was mysterious and full of mischief of his own kind. If you complained to him that an elderly sibling was bullying you hoping that he’d come to your side and tell them off, he would reply you to “leave them. Go play somewhere else or with someone else.”
Father would call from his side of the big house. He usually knew who was in the house by the rising level of our voices in argument over any kind of trivial matter from across the house, or a fight. Usually, he would already have something in his mind to ask the unlucky person to do. If it was a random call not prompted by any kind of disturbance, his first question would always be “What are you doing?”. It was always a trick question requiring both skill and experience to answer.
“Nothing” is always the worst answer. A bad one would be “talking to/with _______”. “I am doing my homework from school” or “I am doing an errand given to me by mum” is closer to a good excuse. A better answer is “I’m listening to _____________ programme on the radio” or “I’m watching the news.” The ones that always made the best impression were ones similar to “I’m writing/reading”, or “I’m making a birdcage from a few palm fronds I went to get from the woods yesterday evening.” He was a weird man.
Every answer was followed by a follow-up which he would have already begun to prepare from the time we began to answer his questions. “What are you reading?” He would ask. If one had been lying, this would be a perfect time to confess to just beginning to open the first few pages of a book one already read before. If you said a newspaper, he would ask you which one, and start a conversation about the content of the headlines. That you were reading a newspaper is enough reason to believe that you would remember the headlines and would be able to make conversations on a topic of choice.
“I’m reading some of the copies of Reader’s Digest you handed over to me last week sir.” I would say, and he would tug at his sparse beard for a few seconds observing me through the lens of his glasses. “Uhm-hmm. Is that right? What do you like the most about it?”.
It was always about starting a conversation with someone to fill his own idleness. Emerging from his side of the house for the first time this day, he has now found the perfect subject of conversation.
“I like it,” I would say. “I loved the story of the man that got lost for many days on the stream and couldn’t get back home because he lost his way. The story was very well written. It moved me. Thank you very much for the issues. I think I enjoyed the story about the shroud of Turin the most though. I’d never heard that story before. There was this report by Dr. John H. Heller…”
“Uh-hmm. I have kept these books for years. Did you see the date on it?
“I did. 1984. That was a while.”
“You were just a crawling infant then.”
“Oh no, you exaggerate. I have already started nursery school by then.”
He would laugh. He enjoyed the retorts. There was nothing he abhorred more than not being able to respond. “You’re not deaf, are you?” He would ask.
“The point is that here,” he continued, “is that I have been keeping these books for a long time. You should take care of them. Your brother used to have a few more of my books. His teachers would take them from him, or his mates – pretending to want to borrow them to read for a few days – and then never return them.”
“Uhm-hmm. I will keep these safe.”
There are many other consequences to a wrong answer to the idleness question: “What are you doing?”
“I was sitting at the dining room.”
“Doing what?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh okay. I need a few buckets of water in my bathroom. Would you see to it that the water basin is full as soon as possible? Thanks.”
Tyrants stamp brash feet on winding paths on of wide open lands
and laugh on fart cushions in cabinet meetings of fellow fawning hands.
They mouth verbs at protest noises from the warm comforts of palace bedrooms
on one hand a full plate, and on the other soft triggers of their imported dooms.
Tyrants dance around dials of outside help, counting losses like currency notes,
swapping allies like the last statuettes of their long tortuous days and rotes.
They sing lullabies of aftermaths, of threats and tears, against a glory so long lost
and o, they fear. They dream of dreary wings across the windowpanes of frost.
Tyrants languish on the frail chairs of their vain vacuousness. They stink.
They drawl in the slime of impotence, a dour fire of an eighty year old wrink.
I look through the fog of emptiness, and see dead multiples of power tenths
and all that remains of a gentle tug into bright new days of different strengths.
Tryants live so that they may leave, gracelessly, in a baggage of seasoned trash.
No other way remains but will, bold and strong, and despots’ dicks ash to ash.
(c) Kola Tubosun
PS: Feel free to share with friends and acquaintances who share a distaste and spite for despots.
Yesterday, in a temperature of about ten below zero, Egyptian students and friends gathered at the Free Speech Quadrangle on campus to lend a voice to the protests in Egypt calling on President Mubarak to acquiesce to the demands of his citizens, turn mobile phone connections and internet back on, and stop visiting violence on peaceful protesters, and resign his position as president if he is unable to do so.
A reporter from the campus paper The Alestle came around at some point to interview the protesters. It was during this time in protest that we heard that President Mubarak had dissolved his government – an insufficient concession that doesn’t address any of the demands nor take the blame for thirty years of misrule. Among other hopes of the protesters on campus is that the United States which is Egypt’s biggest ally takes a stand with the people rather than with a dictator that has misruled a country for so long. History has shown that ambivalence in situations like this always benefits the oppressors and not the victims.
More protests are planned for St. Louis at the weekend, and at Egyptian embassies around the world.