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Sunday, April 25, 2010

A Day in the life of Marrakesh




Life in Jama'a el-Fnaa, Marrakech

Travel is definitely good for the soul and for the mind. When we grow depressed with our own style of life the cure is to go see how others live, especially those who are not so fortunate as we.

Marrakech is a good example of life throughout Africa, plus it has its own special twists and turns. The city claims to be the destination of choice for tourism in Morocco. This may be true as I have not seen Casablanca, or Rabat, the capital, or Fez. Marrakech is a city of super rich and super poor. The new quarter hosts top-class hotels. I imagine for those who can afford the tariff, once you cross through the hotel’s doors you enter another world. Such would be the case with Hotel Mamounia, the most famous of them all. Legend has it that within its walls you will find a whole different society.

Fundamentally, the old city is covered with dust and dirt, and the buildings are crumbling and all in need of paint. The desert winds blow plastic bags every which way, and petrol pollution paints a blue haze through the streets. The city is overcrowded with everything. Far too many people, cars, bikes, (motor and cycle,) donkey-drawn and man-drawn carts, massive trucks, buses, and many other very curious forms of transport.

For the outsider who is not a Muslim this may be our first entry into an Islamic State. Customs and dress are different than in the West, but in reality that is the only thing that separates Western people from the residents. People are people, and given that qualification I expected to meet a wide variety of attitudes.

The fact of the matter was that we only encountered people who were hospitable, some to great extremes. It would be for this reason that I would consider going back again. Even when walking the back alleys, at night and being confronted by shadowy characters, you realised they only wanted to be respected and of course, to sell you something. However, expect to feel tense as the men wear the djellaba, a full gown-like garment with a hood. When the hood is engaged it gives a very sinister pointy-look. Your imagination will persuade you that he is carrying a long-bladed, curved knife, suitable for cutting off heads with one feel swoop.

Marrakech is not for the faint of heart. In our case we lived in a Riad, which is a guest house. There were only six rooms that are housed in a three-storey building. The layout of the building is such that there are two doors on the bottom floor that serve as entrance into the interior, and no windows nor guest rooms. Small windows open outwards to the world on the upper floors, but they are barred. The sense of security from this arrangement is complete. Once inside this cocoon, if we chose to keep our windows closed the sense of peace would have been overwhelming.

The flow of traffic can only be described as total bedlam. I suppose that there are rules of the road but you can be sure they are ignored completely. Drivers seem to think their horns count for something, but they are so over-used that they count for nothing.

This is a world where nothing is pre-priced and everything is subject to barter. This gets on my nerves because I know that no matter how hard I bargain the seller still gets the better of me. Plus, it takes far too long to complete a transaction. Still, shopping in the Souks, (marketplaces) is part of the experience.

We took excursions outside the city that I found a cleansing experience. Being in the city was stifling and claustrophobic, so to get out to the Atlas mountains and down to the resort area of Essaouira was wonderful and is recommended. The contrasts are almost like being in a different country to Marrakech. Particularly the coast is the Atlantic that I have not seen in years, and filling my lungs with the rich pungent smell of seawater was invigorating.

Two factors stand out in my mind, and they both annoy me: firstly we saw women in a wide manner of disciplines, from those covered completely head to toe in robes, to the tourist wearing very scanty clothing, and everything in between. Given that this is an Islamic State, for the tourists in scanty clothing, it was an insult to dress in such a manner. Secondly, I was shocked to find that certain establishments have a license to serve alcohol. I am sure that no one who visits expects to drink alcohol, so why do they show such disrespect to their own culture to make booze available. Both the inappropriate dress and the booze greatly offended me. I can only imagine what the locals think.

Finally, I noticed while walking about that there was a company in the car rental business. The sign outside the business asked: ”Want to hire a Car?” I had to smile. “Are you nuts?” was my unspoken reply.

Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Rape as War



I researched the topic of rape as a weapon of war and wrote a blog by that title. As an act of men this has bothered me to a degree that is becoming a problem. I am having vivid nightmares on this topic. I imagine what is supposed to be the sorts of things that take place, with the result that I wake up sweating during the night.

To make matters worse one of my nightmares had me as a soldier in an army in Africa, and we entered a village where the commander instructed us to herd all the men into a circle and all the women and girls, of all ages were to be arranged so that we soldiers could enjoy ourselves by raping them. We placed the women in the situation that was required, but then not a single soldier proceeded to violate the women. Instead we shot the commander and the captain.

In my own case I dreamt that I was assigned to rape a young virgin. She looked into my eyes with a pleading expression and I saw my sisters and cousins and worst of all, I saw my daughters and granddaughter and my great-granddaughter. How can a man, born of a woman, with sisters and daughters do something so vile?

This raised a very real consideration because when we hear that soldiers raped and pillaged we presume that they did so with gusto. It’s one thing to kill the enemy, even if you are a soldier who doesn’t really believe in the war you are fighting, you nonetheless have to kill, or you will be killed. But to rape someone is a very personal thing. Firstly, as a man you have to have your equipment at the ready, and if your heart is not in the task at hand, the question arises, can you really be expected to perform. This would give new meaning to the phrase: “Conscientious Objector.”

I am having great difficulty in accepting that men are actually doing such horrible things to women. It’s not that I don’t believe they are doing these things, I am having a problem in accepting that they are capable of such depravity. I think it must be necessary to pass out of the state of being a human and into something else. Perhaps a cockroach.

We can’t really say he becomes an animal, because all animals have higher forms of behaviour than that, even the cockroach.

Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Rape as a Weapon of War!

The Ultimate Horror!


The American Secretary of State recently stated that she was committing $17 million dollars to The Democratic Republic of Congo’s problem, wherein rape is used there as a weapon. In reality, $17 million can only be considered as a down-payment toward eradicating this problem that defies adequate words of description.

The depths to which man can sink in his inhumanity towards his fellow man never ceases to amaze me. Just studying this subject makes me want to vomit. It certainly causes me to shrink in disgust that creatures who look like me are capable of doing such things. In researching this topic I came across these practises in the war that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A 22 year-old Serbian soldier was brought to trial charged with 32 murders and 16 rapes. He was alleged to have killed 12 of the 16 women he was charged with raping. His victims were all Bosnian Muslims, and the point of these actions were to humiliate, control, and to inflict pain.

The defendant claimed that he was forced by his commander to do the things he did. To further complicate matters, the husbands and fathers of some of the women were forced to watch them being raped, and in some cases fathers and brothers were made to rape them as well or be killed.

It is true that in this context these actions take place in and a part of wartime activities. War brings out the very worst in humans, but even with that qualification the image of women being contained in camps where they are used by men as mere “toilets” is simply inexcusable and horribly disgusting. I know that these practises go back in time over many wars and years, and that in order for them to take place there has to be a green light from the very top of the command.

I would just like to think that there is a special place where all those who are culpable go to be punished. Instead, so many of them get to wear their ribbons on their chest and are honoured as war heroes.

I believe that no man, no matter how outraged and embarrassed by the actions of others who say they are men also, can truly understand what it is like to be raped. To have your dignity torn away from you and to be left in an abused and used state must be the ultimate degradation. To be housed for the pleasure of male captors and used as a WC until you die can only be understood by me if it were to happen to me.

We are not talking so much about man’s inhumanity to man, as his inhumanity to women. These are the same men who were born of mothers. It’s a pity that they hate themselves so much.

Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Anita and Joanna


Anita and Joanna : A Columnist's Columnists

The principal reason that I buy The Costa Blanca/Costa Levante News is for its page twenty-six girls. “The name’s Bond-Anita Bond,” and Joanna Cruickshank. Anita is a columnist and author of fiction novels, and Joanna is columnist and journalist. Together they make Page 26 the most powerful in the entire paper, and that is notwithstanding the competition they have on page 24 and 25. There we find at least four columns plus Vox-Populi, but in spite of that they are able to hold their own.

Anita is the elder of the two and is well-known for intensive research for her articles, and Joanna, bless her heart, gets the plum job of attending all those fabulous events such as Formula One and the America’s Cup top floor cocktail parties. Well, I suppose somebody has to do it but it must be tough.

Both ladies are British born, (I think I’m correct), and through their writings we have come to know quite a bit about them. They have shared some of their men problems with us, and curiously they both suffer from back problems. Anita seems to have had the worst time of it, having gone through a complicated operation and a follow-up remedial operation and an on-going long period of recuperation.

I underwent an operation in October to repair a broken leg, and while feeling sorry for myself I continued to read Anita’s columns detailing what she was going through. That made me realize that my problems were not problems at all, not compared to what she had to face, and often alone in spite of having some truly wonderful sounding friends.

Imagine being in her place and being told that you will never walk again, or if you do manage ,it will be a very messy and tricky experience. Then your darling dog and very best friend comes to the end of its life. It’s very probable also that her editor told her that she had written enough about her own problems. “Go back to writing non-related stuff in your time-honoured fashion.” For those of us who are her fans it was very important that she shared her trials and tribulations, and we want to hear how she is progressing.

Anita wrote a column for the March 5th –11th edition entitled “ And so Life goes on…” In it she displayed that she is focused, strong, determined and unrepentant. This is her life and she WILL triumph over all the odds. She is a survivor! I am convinced there will come a time when the whole horrible experience will be but a distant bad memory for her.

I must meet this lady, and buy both of her books.

I have written about Joanna before (When Life Doesn’t Disappoint) and she is such a wonderful person. I had the good fortune to meet her completely by chance. I have agreed that her mother can be her number one fan, but I’m second in line, which is not to say that I’m number two. I have read every one of her columns from the time she first burst upon the scene as “An English Girl in Spain” seven years ago. Joanna has written about every topic under the sun, so part of the fun is seeing what her fertile imagination has come up with. She never fails, and her writing is always eminently readable.

So, The Sun may have its Page Three Girl, but we have our Page 26 ladies, and they have so much more of substance.

Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael