Monday, March 3, 2014

The Californian's Tale by Mark Twain


When I was young, I went looking for gold in California. I never found enough to make me rich. But I did discover a beautiful part of the country. It was called "the Stanislau." The Stanislau was like Heaven on Earth. It had bright green hills and deep forests where soft winds touched the trees.
Other men, also looking for gold, had reached the Stanislau hills of California many years before I did. They had built a town in the valley with sidewalks and stores, banks and schools. They had also built pretty little houses for their families.
At first, they found a lot of gold in the Stanislau hills. But their good luck did not last. After a few years, the gold disappeared. By the time I reached the Stanislau, all the people were gone, too.
Grass now grew in the streets. And the little houses were covered by wild rose bushes. Only the sound of insects filled the air as I walked through the empty town that summer day so long ago. Then, I realized I was not alone after all.
A man was smiling at me as he stood in front of one of the little houses. This house was not covered by wild rose bushes. A nice little garden in front of the house was full of blue and yellow flowers. White curtains hung from the windows and floated in the soft summer wind.
Still smiling, the man opened the door of his house and motioned to me. I went inside and could not believe my eyes. I had been living for weeks in rough mining camps with other gold miners. We slept on the hard ground, ate canned beans from cold metal plates and spent our days in the difficult search for gold.
Here in this little house, my spirit seemed to come to life again.
I saw a bright rug on the shining wooden floor. Pictures hung all around the room. And on little tables there were seashells, books and china vases full of flowers.  A woman had made this house into a home.
The pleasure I felt in my heart must have shown on my face. The man read my thoughts. "Yes," he smiled, "it is all her work. Everything in this room has felt the touch of her hand."
One of the pictures on the wall was not hanging straight. He noticed it and went to fix it. He stepped back several times to make sure the picture was really straight.  Then he gave it a gentle touch with his hand.
"She always does that," he explained to me. "It is like the finishing pat a mother gives her child's hair after she has brushed it. I have seen her fix all these things so often that I can do it just the way she does. I don't know why I do it. I just do it."
As he talked, I realized there was something in this room that he wanted me to discover. I looked around. When my eyes reached a corner of the room near the fireplace, he broke into a happy laugh and rubbed his hands together.
"That's it!" he cried out. "You have found it! I knew you would. It is her picture. I went to a little black shelf that held a small picture of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. There was a sweetness and softness in the woman's expression that I had never seen before.
The man took the picture from my hands and stared at it. "She was nineteen on her last birthday. That was the day we were married. When you see her…oh, just wait until you meet her!"
"Where is she now?" I asked.
"Oh, she is away," the man sighed, putting the picture back on the little black shelf. "She went to visit her parents. They live forty or fifty miles from here. She has been gone two weeks today."
"When will she be back?" I asked.  "Well, this is Wednesday," he said slowly. "She will be back on Saturday, in the evening."
I felt a sharp sense of regret. "I am sorry, because I will be gone by then," I said.
"Gone?  No!  Why should you go? Don't go. She will be so sorry. You see, she likes to have people come and stay with us."
"No, I really must leave," I said firmly.
He picked up her picture and held it before my eyes. "Here," he said. "Now you tell her to her face that you could have stayed to meet her and you would not."
Something made me change my mind as I looked at the picture for a second time.  I decided to stay.
The man told me his name was Henry.
That night, Henry and I talked about many different things, but mainly about her.  The next day passed quietly.
Thursday evening we had a visitor.  He was a big, grey-haired miner named Tom. "I just came for a few minutes to ask when she is coming home," he explained.  "Is there any news?"
"Oh yes," the man replied. "I got a letter. Would you like to hear it? He took a yellowed letter out of his shirt pocket and read it to us.  It was full of loving messages to him and to other people – their close friends and neighbors. When the man finished reading it, he looked at his friend.  "Oh no, you are doing it again, Tom! You always cry when I read a letter from her. I'm going to tell her this time!"
"No, you must not do that, Henry," the grey-haired miner said. "I am getting old. And any little sorrow makes me cry. I really was hoping she would be here tonight."
The next day, Friday, another old miner came to visit. He asked to hear the letter. The message in it made him cry, too.  "We all miss her so much," he said.
Saturday finally came. I found I was looking at my watch very often. Henry noticed this. "You don't think something has happened to her, do you?" he asked me.
I smiled and said that I was sure she was just fine. But he did not seem satisfied. 
I was glad to see his two friends, Tom and Joe, coming down the road as the sun began to set. The old miners were carrying guitars. They also brought flowers and a bottle of whiskey. They put the flowers in vases and began to play some fast and lively songs on their guitars.
Henry's friends kept giving him glasses of whiskey, which they made him drink. When I reached for one of the two glasses left on the table, Tom stopped my arm. "Drop that glass and take the other one!" he whispered. He gave the remaining glass of whiskey to Henry just as the clock began to strike midnight.
Henry emptied the glass. His face grew whiter and whiter.  "Boys," he said, "I am feeling sick. I want to lie down."
Henry was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth.
In a moment, his two friends had picked him up and carried him into the bedroom. They closed the door and came back. They seemed to be getting ready to leave. So I said, "Please don't go gentlemen. She will not know me. I am a stranger to her."
They looked at each other.  "His wife has been dead for nineteen years," Tom said.
"Dead?" I whispered.
"Dead or worse," he said.
"She went to see her parents about six months after she got married. On her way back, on a Saturday evening in June, when she was almost here, the Indians captured her. No one ever saw her again. Henry lost his mind. He thinks she is still alive. When June comes, he thinks she has gone on her trip to see her parents. Then he begins to wait for her to come back. He gets out that old letter. And we come around to visit so he can read it to us.
"On the Saturday night she is supposed to come home, we come here to be with him. We put a sleeping drug in his drink so he will sleep through the night. Then he is all right for another year."
Joe picked up his hat and his guitar. "We have done this every June for nineteen years," he said. "The first year there were twenty-seven of us. Now just the two of us are left." He opened the door of the pretty little house. And the two old men disappeared into the darkness of the Stanislau.
Full Arabic translation to be found here (just copy and paste the link):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s1pzh5arg6eyyqj/The_Californains_Tale_Arabic.pdf


Sunday, March 2, 2014

A SHORT DIGEST OF A LONG NOVEL BY BUDD SCHULBERG


Her legs were shapely and firm and when she crossed them and smiled with the self-assurance that always delighted him, he thought she was the only person he knew in the world who was unblemished. Not lifelike but an improvement on life, as a work of art, her delicate features were chiseled from a solid block. The wood-sculpture image came easy to him because her particular shade of blonde always suggested maple polished to a golden grain. As it had been from the moment he stood in awe and amazement in front of the glass window where she was first exhibited, the sight of her made him philosophical. Some of us appear in beautiful colors, too, or with beautiful grains, but we develop imperfections. Inspect us very closely and you find we're damaged by the elements. Sometimes we're only nicked with cynicism. Sometimes we're cracked with disillusionment. Or we're split with fear.
When she began to speak, he leaned forward, eager for the words that were like good music, profundity expressed in terms that pleased the ear while challenging the mind.
"Everybody likes me," she said. "Absolutely everybody."
It was not that she was conceited. It was simply that she was only three. No one had ever taken her with sweet and whispered promises that turned into morning-after lies, ugly and cold as unwashed dishes from last nights dinner lying in the sink. She had never heard a dictator rock her country to sleep with peaceful lullabies one day and rock it with bombs the next. She was undeceived. Her father ran his hands reverently through her soft yellow hair. She is virgin, he thought, for this is the true virginity, that brief moment in the time of your life before your mind or your body has been defiled by acts of treachery.
It was just before Christmas and she was sitting on her little chair, her lips pressed together in concentration, writing a last-minute letter to Santa Claus. The words were written in some language of her own invention but she obligingly translated as she went along.
Dear Santa, I am a very good girl and everybody likes me. So please don't forget to bring me a set of dishes, a doll that goes to sleep and. wakes up again, and a "washing machine. I need the washing machine because Raggedy Ann's dress is so dirty.

After she finished her letter, folded it, and asked him to address it, he tossed her up in the air, caught her and tossed her again, to hear her giggle. "Higher, Daddy, higher," she instructed. His mind embraced her sentimentally: She is a virgin island in a lewd world. She is a winged seed of innocence blown through the wasteland. If only she could root somewhere. If only she could grow like this.
"Let me down, Daddy," she said when she had decided that she had indulged him long enough, "I have to mail my letter to Santa."
"But didn't you see him this afternoon?" he asked. "Didn't you ask for everything you wanted? Mommy said she took you up to meet him and you sat on his lap."
"I just wanted to remind him," she said. "There were so many other children."
He fought down the impulse to laugh, because she was not something to laugh at. And he was obsessed with the idea that to hurt her feelings with laughter was to nick her, to blemish the perfection.
"Daddy can't catch me-ee," she sang out, and the old chase was on, following the pattern that had become so familiar to them, the same wild shrieks and the same scream of pretended anguish at the inevitable result. Two laps around the dining-room table was the established course before he caught her in the kitchen. He swung her up from the floor and set her down on the kitchen table. She stood on the edge, poised confidently for another of their games. But this was no panting, giggling game like tag or hide-and-seek. This game was ceremonial. The table was several feet higher than she was. "Jump, jump, and Daddy will catch you," he would challenge. They would count together, one, two, and on three she would leap out into the air. He would not even hold out his arms to her until the last possible moment. But he would always catch her. They had played the game for more than a year and the experience never failed to exhilarate them. You see, I am always here to catch you when you are falling, it said to them, and each time she jumped, her confidence increased and their bond deepened.
They were going through the ceremony when the woman next door came in with her five-year-old son, Billy. "Hello, Mr. Steevers," she said. "Would you mind if I left Bill with you for an hour while I do my marketing?"
"No, of course not, glad to have him," he said and he mussed Billy's hair playfully. "How's the boy, Billy?"
But his heart wasn't in it. This was the only afternoon of the week with her and he resented the intrusion. And then too, he was convinced that Billy was going to grow up into the type of man for whom he had a particular resentment. A sturdy, good-looking boy, big for his age, aggressively unchildlike, a malicious, arrogant, insensitive extrovert. I can just see him drunk and red-faced and pulling up girls' dresses at Legion Conventions, Mr. Steevers would think. And the worst of it was, his daughter seemed blind to Billy's faults. The moment she saw him she forgot about their game.
"Hello, Billy-Boy," she called and ran over to hug him.
"I want a cookie," said Billy.
"Oh, yes, a cookie; some animal crackers, Daddy."
She had her hostess face on and as he went into the pantry, he could hear the treble of her musical laughter against the premature baritone of Billy's guffaws.
He swung open the pantry door with the animal crackers in his hand just in time to see it. She was poised on the edge of the table. Billy was standing below her, as he had seen her father do. "Jump and I'll catch you," he was saying.
Smiling, confident and unblemished, she jumped. But no hands reached out to break her flight. With a cynical grin on his face, Billy stepped back and watched her fall.
Watching from the doorway, her father felt the horror that possessed him the time he saw a parachutist smashed like a bug on a windshield when his chute failed to open. She was lying there, crying, not so much in pain as in disillusionment. He ran forward to pick her up and he would never forget the expression on her face, the new expression, unchildlike, unvirginal, embittered.
"I hate you, I hate you," she was screaming at Billy through hysterical sobs.
Well, now she knows, thought her father, the facts of life. Now she's one of us. Now she knows treachery and fear. Now she must learn to replace innocence with courage.
She was still bawling. He knew these tears were as natural and as necessary as those she shed at birth, but that could not overcome entirely the heavy sadness that enveloped him. Finally, when he spoke, he said, a little more harshly than he had intended, "Now, now, stop crying. Stand up and act like a big girl. A little fall like that can't hurt you."
Full Arabic Translation to be found here (copy and paste the link):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/l7xhv4hr2mo15kj/%D8%A7%D8%AE%D8%AA%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%B1_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%84%D9%85_%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AE%D8%AA%D8%B2%D8%A7%D9%84_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%84.pdf

''Like a Winding Sheet'' Structural Analysis

''Like A Winding Sheet'' Text


He had planned to get up before Mae did and surprise her by fixing breakfast. Instead he went back to sleep and she got out of bed so quietly he didn't know she wasn't there beside him until he woke up and heard the queer soft gurgle of water running out of the sink in the bathroom.
He knew he ought to get up but instead he put his arms across his fore¬head to shut the afternoon sunlight out of his eyes, pulled his legs up close to his body, testing them to see if the ache was still in them.
Mae had finished in the bathroom. He could tell because she never closed the door when she was in there and now the sweet smell of talcum powder was drifting down the hall and into the bedroom. Then he heard her coming down the hall.
"Hi, babe," she said affectionately.
"Hum," he grunted, and moved his arms away from his head, opened one eye.
"It's a nice morning."
"Yeah," he rolled over and the sheet twisted around him, outlining his thighs, his chest. "You mean afternoon, don't ya?"
Mae looked at the twisted sheet and giggled. "Looks like a winding sheet," she said. "A shroud-." Laughter tangled with her words and she had to pause for a moment before she could continue. ,"You look like a huckleberry-in a winding sheet-"
"That's no way to talk. Early in the day like this," he protested.
He looked at his arms silhouetted against the white of the sheets. They were inky black by contrast and he had to smile in spite of himself and he lay there smiling and savouring the sweet sound of Mae's giggling.
"Early?" She pointed a finger at the alarm clock on the table near the bed, and giggled again. "It's almost four 0' clock. And if you don't spring up out of there you're going to be late again."
          “What do you mean 'again,!" :        
Twice last week. Three times the week before. And once the week
before and-"         .
"1 can't get used to sleeping in the day time," he said fretfully. He pushed his legs out from under the covers experimentally. Some of the ache had gone out of them but they weren't really rested yet. "It's too light for good sleeping. And all that standing beats the hell out of my legs.

"After two years you oughtta be used to it," Mae said.
He watched her as she fixed her hair, powdered her face, slipping into a pair of blue denim overalls. She moved quickly and yet she didn't seem to
hurry.
"You look like you'd had plenty of sleep," he said lazily. He had to get up
but he kept putting the moment off, not wanting to move, yet he didn't dare let his legs go completely limp because if he did he'd go back to sleep. It was getting later and later but the thought of putting his weight on his legs kept him lying there.
When he finally got up he had to hurry and he gulped his breakfast so fast that he wondered if his stomach could possibly use food thrown at it at such a rate of speed. He was still wondering about it as he and Mae were putting their coats on in the hall.
Mae paused to look at the calendar. "It's the thirteenth," she said. Then a faint excitement in her voice. "Why it's Friday the thirteenth." She had one arm in her coat sleeve and she held it there while she stared at the calendar. "I oughtta stay home," she said. "I shouldn't go outta the house."
"Aw don't be a fool," he said. "Today's payday. And payday is a good luck day everywhere, any way you look at it." And as she stood hesitating he said,

          "Aw, come on.
And he was late for work again because they spent fifteen minutes arguing before he could convince her she ought to go to work just the same. He had to talk persuasively, urging her gently and it took time. But he couldn't bring himself to talk to her roughly or threaten to strike her like a lot of men might have done. He wasn't made that way.
So when he reached the plant he was late and he had to wait to punch the time clock because the day shift workers were streaming out in long lines, in groups and bunches that impeded his progress.
Even now just starting his work-day his legs ached. He had to force him¬self to struggle past the out-going workers, punch the time clock, and get the little cart he pushed around all night because he kept toying with the idea of going home and getting back in bed.
He pushed the cart out on the concrete floor, thinking that if this was his plant he'd make a lot of changes in it. There were too many standing up jobs for one thing. He'd figure out some way most of' em could be done sitting down and he'd put a lot more benches around. And this job he had-this job that forced him to walk ten hours a night, pushing this little cart, well, he'd turn it into a sittin-down job. One of those little trucks they used around railroad stations would be good for a job like this. Guys sat on a seat and the thing moved easily, taking up little room and turning in hardly any space at all, like on a dime.
He pushed the cart near the foreman. He never could remember to refer to her as the forelady even in his mind. It was funny to have a woman for a boss in a plant like this one.
She was sore about something. He could tell by the way her face was red and her eyes were half shut until they were slits. Probably been out late and didn't get enough sleep. He avoided looking at her and hurried a little, head down, as he passed her though he couldn't resist stealing a glance at her out of the comer of his eyes. He saw the edge of the light colored slacks she wore and the tip end of a big tan shoe.
Hey, Johnson!" the woman said.
The machines had started full blast. The whirr and the grinding made the building shake, made it impossible to hear conversations. The men and women at the machines talked to each other but looking at them from just a little distance away they appeared to be simply moving their lips because you couldn't hear what they were saying. Yet the woman's voice cut across the machine sounds-harsh, angry.
He turned his head slowly. "Good Evenin', Mrs. Scott," he said and
waited.
"You're late again."
"That's right. My legs were bothering me."
The woman's face grew redder, angrier looking. "Half this shift comes in late," she said. "And you're the worst one of all. You're always late. Whatsa matter with ya?"
"It's my legs," he said. "Somehow they don't ever get rested. I don't seem to get used to sleeping days. And I just can't get started."
"Excuses. You guys always got excuses," her anger grew and spread.
"Every guy comes in here late always has an excuse. His wife's sick or his grandmother died or somebody in the family had to go to the hospital," she paused, drew a deep breath. "And the niggers are the worse. I don't care what's wrong with your legs. You get in here on time. I'm sick of you niggers"
gers-
"You got the right to get mad," he interrupted softly. "You got the right to cuss me four ways to Sunday but I ain't letting nobody call me a nigger."
He stepped closer to her. His fists were doubled. His lips were drawn back in a thin narrow line. A vein in his forehead stood out swollen, thick.
And the woman backed away from him, not hurriedly but slowly-two, three steps back.
"Aw, forget it," she said. "I didn't mean nothing by it. It slipped out. It was an accident." The red of her face deepened until the small blood ves¬sels in her cheeks were purple. "Go on and get to work," she urged. And she took three more slow backward steps.
He stood motionless for a moment and then turned away from the red lipstick on her mouth made him remember that the foreman was a woman. And he couldn't bring himself to hit a woman. He felt a curious tingling in his fingers and he looked down at his hands. They were clenched tight, hard, ready to smash some of those small purple veins in her face.
He pushed the cart ahead of him, walking slowly. When he turned his head, she was staring in his direction, mopping her forehead with a dark blue handkerchief. Their eyes met and then they both looked away.
He didn't glance in her direction again but moved past the long work benches, carefully collecting the finished parts, going slowly and steadily up and down, back and forth the length of the building and as he walked he forced himself to swallow his anger, get rid of it.
And he succeeded so that he was able to think about what had happened without getting upset about it. An hour went by but the tension stayed in his hands. They were clenched and knotted on the handles of the cart as though ready to aim a blow.
And he thought he should have hit her anyway, smacked her hard in the
Face, felt the soft flesh of her face give under the hardness of his hands. He tried to make his hands relax by offering them a description of what it would have been like to strike her because he had the queer feeling that his hands were not exactly a part of him any more-they had developed a separate life of their own over which he had no control So he dwelt on the pleasure his hands would have felt-both of them cracking at her, first one and then the other. If he had done that his hands would have felt good now-relaxed, rested.
And he decided that even if he'd lost his job for it he should have let her have it and it would have been a long time, maybe the rest of her life before she called anybody else a nigger.
The only trouble was he couldn't hit a woman. A woman couldn't hit back the same way a man did. But it would have been a deeply satisfying thing to have cracked her narrow lips wide open with just one blow, beautifully timed and with all his weight in back of it. That way he would have gotten rid of all the energy and tension his anger had created in him. He kept remembering how his heart had started pumping blood so fast he had felt it tingle even in the tips of his fingers.
With the approach of night, fatigue nibbled at him. The corners of his mouth dropped, the frown between his eyes deepened, his shoulders sagged; but his hands stayed tight and tense. As the hours dragged by he noticed that the women workers had started to snap and snarl at each other. He couldn't hear what they said because of the sound of the machines but he could see the quick lip movements that sent words tumbling from the sides of their mouths. They gestured irritably with their hands and scowled as their mouths moved.
Their violent jerky motions told him that it was getting close on to quitting time but somehow he felt that the night still stretched ahead of him, composed of endless hours of steady walking on his aching legs. When the whistle finally blew he went on pushing the cart, unable to believe that it had sounded. The whirring of the machines died away to a murmur and he knew then that he'd really heard the whistle. He stood still for a moment filled with a relief that made him sigh.
Then he moved briskly, putting the cart in the store room, hurrying to take his place in the line forming before the paymaster. That was another thing he'd change, he thought. He'd have the pay envelopes handed to the people right at their benches so there wouldn't be ten or fifteen minutes lost waiting for the pay. He always got home about fifteen minutes late on payday. They did it better in the plant where Mae worked, brought the money right to them at their benches.
He stuck his pay envelope in his pants' pocket and followed the line of workers heading for the subway in a slow moving stream. He glanced up at the sky. It was a nice night, the sky looked packed full to running over with stars. And he thought if he and Mae would go right to bed when they got home from work they'd catch a few hours of darkness for sleeping. But they never did. They fooled around-cooking and eating and listening to the radio and he always stayed in a big chair in the living room and went almost but not quite to sleep and when they finally got to bed it was five or six in the morning and daylight was already seeping around the edges of the sky.

He walked slowly, putting off the moment when he would have to plunge into the crowd hurrying toward the subway. It was a long ride to Harlem and tonight the thought of it appalled him. He paused outside an all-night restaurant to kill time, so that some of the first rush of workers would be gone when he reached the subway.
The lights in the restaurant were brilliant, enticing. There was life and motion inside. And as he looked through the window he thought that ev¬erything within range of his eyes gleamed-the long imitation marble counter, the tall stools, the white porcelain topped tables and especially the big metal coffee urn right near the window. Steam issued from its top and a gas flame flickered under it-a lively, dancing, blue flame.
A lot of the workers from his shift-men and women-were lining up near the coffee urn. He watched them walk to the porcelain topped tables carrying steaming cups of coffee and he saw that just the smell of the coffee lessened the fatigue lines in their faces. After the first sip their faces softened, they smiled, they began to talk and laugh.
On a sudden impulse he shoved the door open and joined the line in front of the coffee urn. The line moved slowly. And as he stood there the smell of the coffee, the sound of the laughter and of the voices, helped dull the sharp ache in his legs.
He didn't pay any attention to the girl who was serving the coffee at the urn. He kept looking at the cups in the hands of the men who had been ahead of him. Each time a man stepped out of the line with one of the thick white cups the fragrant steam got in his nostrils. He saw that they walked carefully so as not to spill a single drop. There was a froth of bubbles at the top of each cup and he thought about how he would let the bubbles break against his lips before he actually took a big deep swallow.
Then it was his turn. "A cup of coffee," he said, just as he had heard the others say.
The girl looked past him, put her hands up to her head and gently lifted her hair away from the back of her neck, tossing her head back a little. "No more coffee for awhile," she said.
He wasn't certain he'd heard her correctly and he said, "What?" blankly. "No more coffee for awhile," she repeated.
There was silence behind him and then uneasy movement. He thought someone would say something, ask why or protest, but there was only silence and then a faint shuffling sound as though the men standing behind him had simultaneously shifted their weight from one foot to the other.
He looked at her without saying anything. He felt his hands begin to tingle and the tingling went all the way down to his finger tips so that he glanced down at them. They were clenched tight, hard, into fists. Then he looked at the girl again. What he wanted to do was hit her so hard that the scarlet lipstick on her mouth would smear and spread over her nose, her chin, out toward her cheeks; so hard that she would never toss her head again and refuse a man a cup of coffee, because he was black.
He estimated the distance across the counter and reached forward, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to let the blow go. And then his hands fell back down to his sides because he forced himself to lower them, to unclench them and make them dangle loose. The effort took his breath away because his hands fought against him. But he couldn't hit her.

 He couldn't, even now, bring himself to hit a woman, not even this one, who had refused him a cup of coffee with a toss of her head. He kept seeing the gesture with which she had lifted the length of her blond hair from the back of her neck as expressive of her contempt for him.
When he went out the door he didn't look back. If he had he would have seen the flickering blue flame under the shiny coffee urn being extinguished. The line of men who had stood behind him lingered a moment to watch the people drinking coffee at the tables and then they left just as he had without having had the coffee they wanted so badly. The girl behind the counter poured water in the urn and swabbed it out and as she waited for the water to run out she lifted her hair gently from the back of her neck and tossed her head before she began making a fresh lot of coffee.
But he walked away without a backward look, his head down, his hands in his pockets, raging at himself and whatever it was inside of him that had forced him to stand quiet and still when he wanted to strike out.
The subway was crowded and he had to stand. He tried grasping an over¬head strap and his hands were too tense to grip it. So he moved near the train door and stood there swaying back and forth with the rocking of the train. The roar of the train beat inside his head, making it ache and throb, and the pain in his legs clawed up into his groin so that he seemed to be bursting with pain and he told himself that it was due to all that anger-born energy that had piled up in him and not been used and so it had spread through him like a poison-from his feet and legs all the way up to his head.
Mae was in the house before he was. He knew she was home before he put the key in the door of the apartment. The radio was going. She had it tuned up loud and she was singing along with it.
"Hello, Babe," she called out as soon as he opened the door.
He tried to say "hello" and it came out half a grunt and half sigh. "You sure sound cheerful," she said.
She was in the bedroom and he went and leaned against the door jamb.
The denim overalls she wore to work were carefully draped over the back of a chair by the bed. She was standing in front of the dresser, tying the sash of a yellow housecoat around her waist and chewing gum vigorously as she admired her reflection in the mirror over the dresser.
"What sa matter?" she said. "You get bawled out by the boss or somep’n?”
"Just tired," he said slowly. "For God's sake do you have to crack that gum like that?"
"You don't have to lissen to me," she said complacently. She patted a curl in place near the side of her head and then lifted her hair away from the back of her neck, ducking her head forward and then back.
He winced away from the gesture. "What you got to be always fooling with your hair for?" he protested.
"Say, what's the matter with you, anyway?" she turned away from the mirror to face him, put her hands on her hips. "You ain't been in the house two minutes and you're picking on me."
He didn't answer her because her eyes were angry and he didn't want to quarrel with her. They'd been married too long and got along too well and so he walked all the way into the room and sat down in the chair by the bed

and stretched his legs out in front of him, putting his weight on the heels of his shoes, leaning way back in the chair, not saying anything.
"Lissen," she said sharply. ''I've got to wear those overalls again tomorrow. You're going to get them all wrinkled up leaning against them like that."
He didn't move. He was too tired and his legs were throbbing now that he had sat down. Besides the overalls were already wrinkled and dirty, he thought. They couldn't help but be for she'd worn them all week. He leaned further back in the chair.
"Come on, get up," she ordered.
"Oh, what the hell," he said wearily and got up from the chair. ''I'd just as soon live in a subway. There'd be just as much place to sit down."
He saw that her sense of humor was struggling with her anger. But her sense of humor won because she giggled.
"Aw, come on and eat," she said. There was a coaxing note in her voice.
"You're nothing but a old hungry nigger trying to act tough and-" she paused to giggle and then continued, "You-'---"
. He had always found her giggling pleasant and deliberately said things that might amuse her and then waited, listening for the delicate sound to emerge from her throat. This time he didn't even hear the giggle. He didn't let her finish what she was saying. She was standing close to him and that funny tingling started in his fingertips, went fast up his arms and sent his fist shooting straight for her face.
There was the smacking sound of soft flesh being struck by a hard object and it wasn't until she screamed that he realized he had hit her in the mouth-so hard that the dark red lipstick had blurred and spread over her full lips, reaching up toward the tip of her nose, down toward her chin, out toward her cheeks ..
The knowledge that he had struck her seeped through him slowly and he was appalled but he couldn't drag his hands away from her face. He kept striking her and he thought with horror that something inside him was holding him, binding him to this act, wrapping and twisting about him so that he had to continue it. He had lost all control over his hands. And he groped for a phrase, a word, something to describe what this thing was like that was happening to him and he thought it was like being enmeshed in a winding sheet-that was it-like a winding sheet. And even as the thought formed in his mind his hands reached for her face again and yet again.


The analysis could be seen on the following pdf file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0qfqapsxj1m44e/Like_a_Winding_Sheet.pdf



Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A Prophecy. February 1807

William Wordsworth

HIGH deeds, O Germans, are to come from you!
Thus in your books the record shall be found,
'A watchword was pronounced, a potent sound--
ARMINIUS!--all the people quaked like dew
Stirred by the breeze; they rose, a Nation, true,
True to herself--the mighty Germany,
She of the Danube and the Northern Sea,
She rose, and off at once the yoke she threw.
All power was given her in the dreadful trance;
Those new-born Kings she withered like a flame.' 
--Woe to them all! but heaviest woe and shame
To that Bavarian who could first advance
His banner in accursed league with France,
First open traitor to the German name!

The poet praises Germany for being brave and united. He refers to it as ''she''. German people are always source of great achievements '' HIGH deeds, O Germans, are to come from you!''. Their books are a proof of this greatness. They stood firmly together around their hero '' ARMINIUS'', who librated them from the Roman Empire. They were ready to fight under his command, and that's why they are like drops of dew that are waiting for a breeze to move them from their chains, meaning they are waiting for any call to the battle.
Those brave people made a nation, a true one ''the mighty Germany''. If you are not aware of what Germany is or where it is located, then you should know this simple geographical information; she ''it'' is that country which lays on the Danube River and Northern Sea.
She faced all dangers bravely and immediately threw all slavery ''yoke'' away. All rivals and enemies surrendered fearfully. Or you could say that she is given all the powers that entitle her to win any war. She certainly did use that power against some traitors '' Those new-born Kings''. She grilled them like a flame when it grills the meat. They were all bad kings of different sovereign. By a treaty signed in Paris (July 12th, 1806) they declared themselves perpetually cut from Germany, and united together as the Confederate States of the Rhine, of which the Emperor of the French was declared Protector. Nevertheless, she remained strong.

But the worst of them all is the Bavarian king '' but heaviest woe and shame to that Bavarian'', Frederick Augustus, who had been secretly on the side of France for some time, to whom he gave additional territories. He was and will be the first and the most obvious traitor in the German history.


Friday, June 14, 2013

"Young vs Old"



      Is it always true, from old people's point of view, that teenagers are reckless  and need constant observation? Are elderly people correct when they put endless blame on those young men? On the other hand, are teenagers always innocent? Are they being misunderstood by those around them? And more importantly; does the "young vs old" conflict exist in every society?


Well, if you're a parent I could hear a deep sigh! If you're a teenager I could see your index finger on the mouse looking for the "close" button! But hold on young man I might be on you side!

The relationship between old and young generations seems to always have been a matter of complaint and dissatisfaction from both sides in all societies. Why is it that? Is it because old people have a wide experience and can see what can't be seen by young people; and therefore they don’t want them to start from the scratch?! Or is it that young people are energetic and prefer to get things done their own ways?!

It wouldn't be a contradiction if we say: both are right! It means that we need for the old people to understand the fact that their experience is highly respected, but at the same time we should give a space and let teenagers try new ways. They might come up with new ideas. History tells us that great ideas have, most of the time, come out from young minds. Posing constrains all the time on teenagers and putting them under pressure will only produce a generation of hypocrites; who do what they don’t believe in, or criminals; who rebel against all the values of the society.  

Parents and educators are advised to read books or take courses on how to deal with this age. This age has certain psychological and mental changes that should be taken into consideration. For example, teenagers love privacy very much; a notion that doesn't have a room in old people's mind-- armed with the Victorian famous saying "children should be seen, not be heard!"-- Young people like to have a margin of independence. They want to experience the manhood themselves, but it's a different manhood from that of the elders! They don’t reject the values and norms but they look at them differently. Is that a right attitude?! Well, it might not be so, and that's a complete different matter of discussion.   


Anyhow, moderation and keeping balance is the bottom line. Elders should give ears to teenagers, and teenagers, in return, should adopt diplomacy when it comes to dealing with the elders. In other words, mutual understanding and willingness of compromise should be a motto for this relationship to be healthy and transparent. Unless they implement these rules, there wouldn't be any development, and deterioration will gradually sneak into that relation and turn it into a hell.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Read To Lead

  


Reading is a human activity that God bestowed humankind with. It's reading that makes us different from other creatures. Had not there been reading, there would have not been reason and explanation, and therefore no distinction between humans and animals.

Through reading we can convey messages, express our feelings, and impart knowledge and experience to other generations. It's reading that we were first ordained as Muslims to conduct: "Read in the name of your Lord.." 1/96. We clearly understand through this divine order how important reading is in our life as Muslims. It's a matter of everlasting learning process that never stops at any stage or for any given circumstances. It's more than a hobby because hobby is only done during leisure time, but reading is done, or say should be done, all the time.

Nevertheless, reading is a job that requires certain skills. Surprised? Yes, it's a job, in the full sense of the term. If you want to get the utmost out of any book you need to deal with reading with this mentality, otherwise the outcome of your reading would be of no weight. Adler in his book "How to read a book" talks elaborately on this point.

Since reading is an activity you may wonder: is it just that easy; e.g. you pick up a book and start reading? Well, you might have noticed in the previous paragraph that reading is a "job" that needs some skills. Thus, reading is three types: literal; reading the abstract words on the lines, inferential; reading between the lines, and evaluative; reading beyond the lines.  

The first type doesn't require that wit to be able to understand what's meant. The meaning is found directly in the text. You can put a finger on the answer as it answers questions "who?", "what?", "when?" and "where?"

The second type, as it could be inferred from its name, is more complicated. Your role here is more than just reading, rather, you interpret what is in the text. You look for what the passage represents or suggests. Therefore, the answer can not be found directly in the text. You have got to do some work between the lines.

The third type is deeper than the last two. You, as a reader, move beyond the text to connect to the universal context; either on the personal level or the global one. Through this reading you answer questions like: why does it matter to me? Does it have something to do with my family or my fellow human beings? Etc.

With that said, we need to push ourselves to read more and more, and to raise our children by this principle. Reading is the food of mind, and you wouldn’t deprive yourself and your loved ones from this food, would you?!






   



Monday, February 6, 2012



O God, You have given me this new little gift, thank You so much, my words stand mute to express my gratitude. 

I humbly ask You to preserve her, her parents, grandparents and all relatives and to make her a seed of change for the betterment of Islam and Muslims, and to make her a comfort of the eye for me and for her mother.