The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak 2022 343pg

 A story of strife in Cyprus  3/9/22

 In 1974, two teenagers — a Greek boy named Kostas 18 and a Turkish girl named Defne 17  — risk their parents’ condemnation by meeting secretly at night. The Fig tree is a memory keeper.

Cyprus is an Island split by 2 different languages and different scrips and religions. the landscape has abandoned villages ,  coastal hinterland wetlands fallow land pine forests fertile plains copper mines and archaeological sights. The capital Nicosia is the last divided city in Europe. 

Ada at school in north London and the history class, her mother had died a few years ago and the father had become a workaholic. A polar vortex causing record breaking low temp and a winter storm which was to be worse that the Great storm of 1703(written about by Daniel Defoe). The father Kostas Kazantzakis was a botanist had published 12 books on the effect of pesticides, impact of logging, evolution and ecology and other damage caused directly by humans. People suffered pain but some managed to hide it.

Without understanding  our past how can we hope to change the future.

Ada never knew family , had her parents marriage not been approved by their parents. We are made up of chromosomes from our mother and father.  In different stages of Ada's childhood she had visited both church and mosque. Since the loss of her mother had withdrawn and become distant, with labels of weirdo and psycho.

The fig tree has in her canopy at times birds, bees, bats, butterflies, ants, mice, monkey  and witness the original sin in Eden. Costas brought a cutting of the fig tree from Cyprus from the taverna the Happy Fig where both Greek and Turkish songs were sung. It was where the 2 lovers met in a back room and later it was burned down. The fig is monecious and parthenocarpy so doesn't need a separate male and the fruit is  syngonium so its blossoms end up inside. The English climate is too cold for it. 

Curse of enduring  memory!  Trees reveal a history showing traumas and wildfires. Why burden our children with our past.

Aphrodite was the prettiest goddess of the Olympians and was born in Paphos Cyprus, Venus is her Roman form.

Polyphonte wanted a different life  but a women who breaks social conventions is always punished usually in a mental way like Mr. Rochester's first wife.

Ada's mother's  sister Meryem had always written to them and was now coming to London.   Selma their mother died at the age of 92,  only now Meryem could visit them.  Defne and Meryem always kept their word.

One should have breakfast like a sultan, lunch like a vizier, and dinner like a mendicant.

1974 News was always about terror attacks. Costas mother was religious, his father died when he was 3  from asbestosis. On the eastern1 side of the TroOdos. Other mines were iron copper cobalt silver pyrite chrome and gold bearing umbers. The wives and children of asbestos workers also suffered.

1878 Sultan Abdul Hamid II made an agreement, in exchange for protection against  Russia. Disraeli considered Cyprus now a Crown colony the key to western Asia. Swarms of locust plagued the island.

Hittites, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greeks, Persians, Macedonians,  Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Franks, Genoese, Venetians ,Ottomans, Turks, British.

1950 first bombs went off by 1955 the florist were fashioning wreath  for the funerals for the Gordon Highlanders and other Britain's killed.  So many went missing in Cyprus the horrible years 

1958 EOKA the Greek nationalist organization banned English lettering, the TNT started erasing Greek names.

Kostos mother Panagiota as a widow raised her 3 boys with an income by selling homemade food to shops but the real money was from carob liquor. She had dozens of superstitions never plant a Judas tree as Judas had hanged himself on one.  Eat according to your own taste and dress according to others.   Defne became  an alcoholic.

Defne's father was head  chef at a famous hotel The Ledra Palace. later in no mans land under the UN was the place that negotiation took place.

Saint Hilarion was a traveler who tried helping poor hungry, the Hilarion Castle  is where Ada was conceived.

1956 most expats writer artists poets were leaving. 416 terror attacks against Brits, Turks, Greeks who did not agree with EOKO and a barrier was erected between Turks and Greeks.  Costas grandfather was deaf and did not listen to soldiers and shot during a curfew. Meryem was married but had no children and her husband divorced her. Nothing brings the women of the island together like pregnancy. She said her parents wishes were a priority. She married when she was 40

Kosta had 2 brothers, Michalis was against ENOSIS. and so was murdered. The younger brother Andreas disappeared. 

1956 the Suez Crisis in London people carried banner "Love Not War"

1960 Cyprus gained independence from Britain, the native bird the chuker became the emblem , but their numbers dwindled, due to hunting. 

The Green line was called that because when the borders were drawn up  neutral green  pencil was used by Major general Peter Young instead  red or a blue pencil.

1974 During a heat wave there was a really bad smell and the Turks and Greeks thought it was from each others sector but it was dead bats. Different animals are related to differently by man doves =peace , dogs=  fuzzy warmth.

Yusuf and Yeorgi were gay partners and could be in greater danger that Kostas and Dafne, but they chose to stay.

During the war British soldiers were waiting for the Nazi invasion of England the saw a cloud coming from the continent and thought it was poison gas but it was migrating butterflies.

Ancient Greeks were puzzled what happened to birds in the cold weather and thought that they metamorphosed into fish. Trees can recover from the horror they experience but not man. If your beard is on fire others will use it to light their pipes. There were rumor's that the Junta in Greece were plotting to oust the Cyprus President Archbishop Makarios.

Yusuf Yiorgos was planning to close the Happy Fig while Kostas left for England , his mother had lost 2 sons and wanted to protect Kostas by sending him to relatives in England.  Defne says they risked their lives for her. Then the Junta overthrow Makarios replacing him with Nikos Sampson but resigned after 8 days. Turkish troops 40,000 landed in Kyrenia with 300 tanks. The Athens military regime collapsed while there were clashes between Turkish and Greek warships. There was now a transfer of populating  and Kostas was told not to come home.

1974 by summer 4400 people were dead. 160,000 Greeks moved south and 50,000Turks moved north many old neighbors betrayed each other.

2000s after being away Kostas arrives in Cyprus by ferry in north Nicosia none of the Greek neighbors are left. Defne is an archaeologist and never left or  got married. She speaks at world conferences on her subject. Bridges appear in our lives only when we are ready to cross them. The friends they had in the past were scattered all over the world.

1980s  set up The Committee of Missing Persons both Turks and Greeks are working together on this, but some of the members have been threatened.  some informants misremember details others deliberately lead them on a wild goose chase. Medieval, Roman, Hellenistic bones or prehistoric fossils,  pigmy hippos, pigmy elephants are found.

The mass graves are found, the older generation dying taking secrets to the graves.  His mother made bread from terebinth fruit and use it resin to preserve carob liquor. His mother  came to England with Andreas but died of  the asbestos exposure.

When they found the body of a husband the wife stopped wearing black and came in a pink dress.

Marie Fernanda documented atrocities of the civil war in Spain and the mass graves of the Guatemala of the 1990s. thousands disappeared under Pinochet where they were weighted with pieces of railway tracks and dropped into the sea but this was exposed when a tortured body washed up on the beach when the wire connecting to the weight broke. Yugoslavia Cambodia Rwanda and Iraq also have buried victims.

Fig trees support the ecosystem more than others plants. Butterflies feed on figs and Painted Ladies arrive every year from Israel, reach in Cyprus and the go off to Turkey, Greece, North Africa or central Europe.

Buyuk Han was build as a caravanserai and converted by the British into a city prison.

Mereyam takes Kostas and to a psychic but Defne but the are unimpressed. Later on in London she takes Ada to one but Ada though about her father who said" knowledge was the antidote to fear."

Kostas on a walk finds stretches of birds nets and returned late was a knife to cut them down there is a black market for birds. 2 million songbirds are slain in Cyprus every year. Those that made money are placed in container the rest are dumped. He returns cuts the nets but the next  time he is caught and beaten up. Of the 5 billion birds that fly to Africa 1 billion are slaughtered every year.

Eucalyptus trees have a habit of dropping branches and if you are under it you can get killed. There is a cemetery that includes 300 British babies who died on the island of  mysterious affliction.

Gerde was pregnant when Kostas left and he was adopted by a British officer but Defne could visit him. The grave stone says Yusuf Yiorgos Robinson Jan1975 to July1976.  Yusuf  and Yiorgos were found buried in a well and killed because they were gay.

Mosquitoes killed half the human on earth. Ronald Ross  a Scottish doctor in India discovered inside the stomach of a mosquito the malaria parasite. He won the Nobel Prize. He set out to eradicate mosquitoes in the British Empire and came to Cyprus in 1913.

1936 Cyprus was the worst country for death by mosquitos and Dr. Mehmet Aziz who had trained under Robert Ross set up a program to wipe out the anopheles mosquito. The island was divided up into a grid of 500 squares and in 12 days with DDT did the eradication, traffic moving across the zones were  also sprayed.

A bee can visit 300 flowers on one flight.

1947 The Ledra Palace was a luxury hotel with 240 bedrooms build by German Jewish architect Benjamen Gunsburg.

1955EOKA attempted  to assassinate the British Governor Sir John Harding there. It ended up in UN  no mans land.

1968 intercommunal talks opened there. The UN contingent is located in the hotel.

1974 Turkish invasion.

Meryem described that her father was a famous chef, he sent his children to get  English educations. Of all wars civil wars are the worst. Many parents never talked about the past. In London Defne wanted  to talk  to elderly people about their past in Cyprus many would only talk when no other family members were around. The youngest  seemed to have the oldest memory and hands are the most honest part of the body as they gave out true emotions. It is women that are holding up the world.

Human existence has no special priority over the ecological chain.    Persephone is the goddess of spring.

Sweet and Bitter island by Tabitha Morgan,

 Bitter Lemons by  Lawrence Durrel  about 1953to 1956 Read also

British Imperialism in Cyprus by  Andrekos Varnava on 1878 to 1915

Journey into Cyprus by Colin Thubron

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafik 2024 464pg

 A story of London and Mesopotamia    11/9/25

640 BC In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. Epic of Gilgamesh the great poem emerged.

Lamassus are protective spirits with eagle wings and body of a bull or lion and head of a man. Splendor of the Assyrian Empire. A ziggurat dedicated to Ishta, goddess of love , sex, beauty passion and war. In his luxurious garden with fruit trees hangs the head of his enemy Elamite king Teumman

Nisaba is the goddess of stories, the king was the 3rd son and so not trained in marshal arts to be the king but in philosophy and literature but then his father chose him to be the heir. The kings tutor who had taught him to appreciate literature by  whose guards  found the man was not loyal to the king by supporting the kings brother. The kings in his name soldiers had been expanding the empire by destroying many people. Instead of stabbing the traitor to death he has him set on fire and the burning man runs to try and get into the Khosr River thus burning the kings childhood memories with him.

1840 The crowded city of London which pollutes the Thames river in every way. Toshers people who scavenged along the river and the dangerous  sewers for valuables like copper, rings. They worked in groups and one women Annabel went into labour with dirt around her, and gives birth to a boy, with the help of the tosher team. But she says throw it into the Thames. Her husband who was a successful carpenter has become a drunk and she has had to be the breadwinner. .The Team name him King Arthor of the sewers and slums. Arthor Smyth has a fantastic memory but becomes a terrible curse. At the same time 21 year old Queen Victoria was giving birth to her first baby a girl called Victoria (Vicky)

He knows everyone in the street and by the time he is 5 he has picked up Yiddish. At 9 he goes to a charity school. Where he points out to the teacher that the figures in the sum are wrong and gets beaten for bad manners.. 

At the British museum he sees Lamasus(symbolizes the kings divine power) being unloaded. He tell a man that he has seen there is a book by Austen Henry Layard on Nineveh. The Man Dr. Samuel Birch (1813 to 1865) invites him to visit him in his office at the museum.* 

1853 Arthurs did odd jobs like collecting horse dropping to take to tanners who used it in their work. Cages of budgies are popular since Queen Victoria was given pair from Australia. His father takes him to a printer who agree to give him a weeks trial. There is the book by Omar Khayyam which he says he is keen to read.. At first he has to do odd jobs around but slowly he starts being trained to run the machines. When you publish a book you are setting a caged bird free. When he get home with his first wage packet his father says it belongs to him. Mr Bradbury lend him any book he wants to read however except for moon full nights he is unable to red till he is also given a gift of 2 tallow candles. He read every  important book available at the time. He wants to be involved in book publication as books "never end even when you have finished reading them"   

Austen Henry Layard 1817 to 1894 Archeologist in Assyria, writer and politician. Wrote on Nineveh.

1851 The World Exhibition in Hyde Park but only the wealthy could enter as it was expensive. By 1854 it had been rebuild at Sydenham and was finally only a shilling entrance so Arthur saw manufactures from every country and finally a Lemusus displayed from the British Museum. At the end of a day he is chatting to Mr. Bradbury about a picture of the  Thames .a century ago. Mr. . Bradbury " all to often we humans destroy nature and call it progress." Arthur wants to visit the British museum but can't afford a jacket to go in respectably. Next morning he finds Mr Bradbury dead in the office - the only person who took an interest in him.

There are 300,000 horses in the capital and the leave and that leaves 12,000 tones of crap all over the city. His one twin brother drinks the water from the flask he brought home and dies very quickly of Cholera. Dr. John Snow has figured out that Cholera comes from water and from the Broad Street pump but everyone laughs at him.  He can't  get the municipality to take the handle of the pump, puts up a warning which is stolen. 1853 to 1894  10,740 people die of cholera in London. Finally the people recognize that they are killing the water. We humans destroy nature and call it progress. In the office he meets up with Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Who tells him that nobody is useless in this world who lifts the burdens of others. Arthur can't visit the British museum as he does not have the clothes. A parcel arrives in the office from Dickens containing a set of clothes his correct size.

Every spare minute Arthur is at the Museum and fascinated by the cuneiform tablets. This is noticed by the staff there and he is offered a part time position. A museum in deciding what will be remembered is also deciding what will be forgotten. 1857 Later on he takes up a  full time position at the museum for a lower wage and works out the epic poem of Gilgamesh. Author his lost contact with his father and family his whole effort is his  work.

The story of the flood and Noah's  Ark appear in the coniform writings so this all predate the Bible.

Charles Darwin (1808 to 1882) His book the  Origen of Species(1859) had a profound effect on society later book Descent of Man (1871)

He is invited to give a lecture at the Society of Biblical Archaeology and the Prime Minister William Gladstone (1808- 1898)is there to listen. He is now invited to mix and toast with lawyers, bankers, politicians and philanthropists but down below feels frustrated. The Daily Telegraph offers him a £1,000 to lead an expedition, of archaeological exploration. His mother is in a asylum and he was not allowed to visit her now that he is famous he is given permission. There has recently been an need for asylums to treat cases caused by syphilis 

1872 he describes the trip staying in Paris which also has cesspools and pollution.  Which he knows about from reading Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) .Les Misérables.

The British Embassy Constantinople Pera House build in 1808, looks like a mini Buckingham Palace. He has to wait to get a firman to be able to got to Nineveh and dig there .Here he hears Turkish, Armenian ,Kurdish , Arabic, Persian , Ladino and French spoken. The Hammams or public baths are also a place of prostitution, women are taken as spoils of war and are displayed naked and auctioned across the empire. Sometimes if they bear their master a child may get freedom. Arthurs firman has arrived but also a letter that his mother died. 

King Sennecherib (705 till assassinated in 601)expanded his dream of empire as did his grandson Ashurbanipal the last of the great kings of Assyria (reigned 668 to 627 BCE)

Arthur arrives in Zerav the nearest village to Nineveh but the guide will not stay in a devil worship village of Yazidis and absconds. Yazidis are "heretical Moslems, renegade Christians perhaps  apostate Jews or odd Zoroastrians?" They do not have a sacred scripture which fascinated someone like Arthur.  He is treated very well here and meets Leila the diviner. For decades the British have excavated to the north here and French to the south, and people in London and Paris are waiting for the antiques.

1876Arthur arrives in Constantinople the 2nd time when the sultan Abdel Aziz  has been assassinated  but made to look like a suicide. The pasha of Mosul with the help of the qadi have mustered the army to massacre the Yazidis. First they destroyed the bridge and removed all boats leaving no escape before the massacre. When Arthur gets to the village the people who entertained him are gone including the girl who enchanted him Leila.

When King Gilgamesh died his body was interred under the  Euphrates which had to be diverted to do this. The greediest kings had corralled the rivers and the bloodiest wars were fought over water. Arthur also discovers that what is called civilization is so destructive and sooner or later will engulf everything in its path.

Arthur realizes that he has to return home as their is a cholera plague but the Museum no longer wants to employ him. He found a lapis lazuli tablet amongst the archeological dump. This show information on the goddess Nisiba and he had now achieved something for his trip . He is now ill  in a shepherds hut near the village of Castrum Kefa . A thief finds the blue tablet and takes it and Arthur dies  there.

2014  The Tigris flowing  from  Turkey a girl is to be baptized Narin, They originate  in the valley of Lalish in Iraq to a Yazidi family. Lamb of faith. Along the shores of the river where a llisu dam , Sirnak Province Turkey (built between 2006 and2018)is being build that will flood the whole area and the destroy a millennium of history. The village  Hasankeyf will be flooded by 2020 and there people have all received a pittance as compensation in their bank accounts. The bulldozer driver  wont let them have the ceremony and Narin reads his lips "filthy fallen devil worshipper" She has heard this before. The grandmother say this is an omen that the ceremony should take place in Lalish Narin has a genetic disease and will go completely deaf. Her mother died giving birth and her father is never around as he is a musician and plays at weddings and festivals everywhere to Iraq and Lebanon and says they can now travel to Iraq. 72 times the Yazidis have been massacred.

The government has promised that all their graves will be moved but they don't believe them. What about the Englishman's grave his family don't even know where it is, it is never attended to. Some people travel they are restless like rivers.  We know now  that the Englishman was Arthur from the sewer and slum as Narin's cousins visit from Germany and figure this out. Narin's grandmother tells her that she heard the story of the Englishman from her grandmother Leila., "Some people are restless like rivers" 

Grandma says that when she was a girl there were 500  oryxes today the are gone. The Mosul Dam built between 1981-1986 on the Tigris river by Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) also displaced thousand year old Yazidi settlements. Saddam also destroyed the swamplands to get rid of the marsh Arabs.

The Kurdish forces Peshmerga who  protect their village leave. ISIS arrive and tell the population to come out with their phones and valuables and hand them over. The men are taken and executed by a pit the women are taken  to be slaves and converted Islam.  High peaks are considered religious sanctuaries and Yazidis flee there, there is no water and grandma divines for water.

Narin and the women are taken in truck and will be made slaves , servants and sex objects.to accompany the noble army in Jihad, because their fathers were heathen. Because Narin speaks Turkish she is good for  the commander who also does. The commanders wife speaks Arabic with an American accent. Salma who knew Narins grandmother warns the jihadist that Narin has special powers. Salma say it would have been better to die by Sadam Hussein gassing the Kurds of Halabja in 1988. While ISIS rape murder and pillage that also have a sideline business of selling antiquities which the are supposed  to destroy.

 

2018 Zeleika ( Potiphar's wife in the Bible) or Dr. Z Clark has divorced her husband after 3 and a half years or marriage because he wanted children?. Both were Water Scientists she has moved to a London house boat on the Thames in Chelsea. Her family are immigrants from the Middle East and her parents died and she was brought up by the Uncle Malik with his daughter. She is planning to drown herself.

A man is collecting Chinese mitten crabs are alien creatures on the Thames they were first seen in 1930. A man is collecting them and she thinks of the plastics they find in these creatures. Global warming is going to be felt by lack of water in places, and water will be the big issue.

She visits her uncle Malik in his mansion in Kensington where she  was brought up from the age of 7 when her parents died. She and Helen their daughter was regarded as siblings but Helen got married and had 3 children, and they parted ways. Immigrants always have to be prepared for contingencies. Malik came from Mesopotamia to England had everything about him is English including his wife and business partners. They discuss her marriage and he tells her he hates eating fish but will have a fish dinner not to upset his wife.

They discuss that all the great cities are places on rivers, even Athens you are not aware  that it has 3 rivers. Uncle Malic at 8 years old was sent to boarding school in England he was the first of his family, after that he always considered himself British. Became a successful businessman and a politician and philanthropist.

They discuss that there are many hidden rivers that have been concealed and culverted like the River Effra of South London. Zeleika works for the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.   She has left her husband after 3 years of marriage and moved to a house barge on the Thames. She visits her landlady Nen next to the British Museum where she has a  tattoo shop with the slogan Our tattoos last longer than most marriages. Most of her tattoos are cuneiform words. A script used by Sumerians , Arcadians Babylonians Assyrians ,Elamites and Hittites. She says people think tattoos are a form of rebellion to her they are a form of story telling. Zeleika has a tattoo of the sign for water.  Nen often goes mudlarking, A mudlark is someone who scavenges the banks and shores of rivers for items of value they use metal detectors nowadays.

As a child Uncle Maliks house was more a shelter from a storm rather than a home.

With Nen she goes to the British Museum the bas-reliefs have no women on them. People can be cultured but still commit cruel acts.

  We know that 1 in 4 children today across the world are living with water so polluted it will kill them. She is always surprised that Uncle Malik has never shown an interest in visiting the part  of the world he came from and totally cut ties with his childhood. Helen tells her they have found a donor of a kidney for her daughter Lily and are going to Istanbul to a private hospital to get her daughter a kidney.  Zeleika for the first time is busy kissing a women Nen.

Nisaba is the god of literacy and  libraries, later women are stripped of powers so the god Nuba takes her place, and references to her have been erased.

We now discover that on a vacation to their homeland her parents wanted to stay in the hotel and she wanted them to camp on the banks of the Tigres while  Zeleika got up to have a pee they were washed away by the sudden river surge. Uncle Malik had to collect Zeleika at the police station in Turkey.

Zeleika finds a  picture of a young girls that looks just like her and it is marked that she is to be the donor.

 

Becoming Michelle Obama 2018, 344pg

The Autobiography of the US First Lady, Michelle Obama wife of Barak 16/2/19

Michelle LaVaugen Robinson born 1964 was brought up in inner city Chicago with her brother Craig. The Robinsons shared a flat with her aunt and uncle and the aunt taught her the piano. The neighborhood was mixed and slowly turned blacker. The one neighbor moved into the suburbia and passed as white. In the 30s blacks could not get work as the unions kept blacks out and couldn't earn enough to send their children to collage. When the aunt and uncle died they left them the flat.

Her parent made a point of getting both children to speak correctly and her cousins commented that she spoke like a white. Her parents were prepared to invest everything they had into their children and when her French class organized a tour of Paris her parents felt it was a priority that she go. Her close friend Santina Jackson was he daughter of Rev Jesse Jackson at the time his slogan for blacks was "no dope more hope" He also said everyone should take of 2 hours from TV every night to study they could get the grades they needed. Michelle got good grades and the school principal encourage her despite the councilor who indicated she was aiming too high. She got into Princeton and was involved in an afternoon program looking after children. Did very well there and describes what it was like being a woman and black amongst a WASP and male majority. She then went to Harvard Law School and returned to Chicago to work for a big prestigious law firm. Barak arrived there on a summer job and had a further 2 years to study. He had been working on community projects in Chicago after he graduated. Obama read vastly and widely and was not one for party small talk. After 2 years he moved into Michelle's home. Her father died just before that. She was earning well as a top corporate lawyer but reached a point she hated the job and found work at the Chicago municipality but at a lower salary.

1992 They were married Barak worked on getting voters to sign up before the election that got Bill Clinton elected. They went to Kenya and met Barak's fathers family. Barak now published his first book an autobiography but deals with race issues. He got elected into the Illinois Legislature and then saw an opportunity to get into the Washington Senate. Michelle had to get used to bringing up the 2 girls alone. Malia born 1998 and Sasha born 2001.The one daughter put on weight and she realized that she was buying too much ready foods and had to remedy this. She took a half time job but discovered that she got half the pay but couldn't only do half the work. After the 2nd daughter was born she took a different job under her own terms. A senators wife phoned her and told her that not living in Washington could be hard on a marriage. The Public wanted Barak to run for president. With her brother Craig encouragement she agreed. 2009 to 2017 The Whitehouse years describes the security can be very restrictive especially for the children unless they plan ahead. Michelle worked on solving US obesity by improving children's diets but she did not want to deal with legislation of this. She rather approached food companies and asked them to take action before the government was forced to deal with this problem. This is a major US problem and never been dealt with. 2008 TIME magazine called her their women of the Year. She discusses the issue of having to find the correct dress for herself without being overtly ostentatious and how the First Lady automatically become a fashion model. During school vacations if Barak went on state visits children went with and met Putin and the Pope for example. Michelle went to Southern Africa and met Mandela who was in his last senile time but his wife Graca Michel was a personality. She had a number of weekends when she invited her girl friends to meet at Camp David to keep up contact.

2011 May The killing of Bin Ladin without US casualties was a great feather in Barak's hat but it was a great risk. Michelle set herself the mission and devoted much time to getting better conditions for wounded soldiers and getting companies to employ veterans. Prince Harry took part and memorials to soldiers with her and also encouraged her. Also going to inner cities especially Chicago and encouraging disadvantaged children that even they could achieve. She was not very pleased about Trump as the Republican candidate. Later his inauguration showed his guests were the typical WASP crowd. Generally I found her background and meeting Barak fascinating. She is very modest about her role as First Lady, perhaps to say - I am a very ordinary perhaps educated African American woman. In 2020 she still remained high for 3 years on the list of most admired US women.

No great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod 2001 283pg

 The Scots Highlander who settled in  Canada’s Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. 17/8/25

 Chullum Ruaidh or red hairs in Gaelic.  Families and the nature of love and loyalty, and the ways in which rural people, in a kind of primitive tribalism, will help and nurture one another through the unexpected griefs of life in a harsh climate.   

When an American cousin arrives, dodging his Vietnam draft, it becomes apparent that loyalty can become destructive when pointed in the wrong direction. " All of us are better when we are loved."  is the key phrase in the book. The good relations between the French-Canadian workers and those of Scottish descent – will not last. You have to read the book to find out what the title means: it’s a quotation from the 18th century General Wolfe of Quebec. Talking about the Scottish highlanders in his army.  “no great mischief if they fall.”   old family maxim, “You will get used to almost anything, except a nail in your shoe.”

The narrator Alexander is for a time the youngest of the family, is a Southern Ontario orthodontist, on a visit to a frail, alcoholic older brother. The original  Calum their ancestor tried to leave the dog behind in  Scotland but that beast just jumped in and swam to their boat, how his wife died on the passage, and how his grave now occupies an outcropping that is falling bit by bit into the sea:

Easier for the families to get together in winter when the bodies of water froze and it became easier to travel.

1314 Battle of Bannockburn  this lasted 14 years and Robert Bruce led a  victory and Scottish Independence in the Treaty of Edinburgh. .

1689,Battle of Killiecrankie Jacobite rising  Viscount Dundee led and died in this, causing the victory not to achieve anything. It was the Highlanders who were the fighters. The Battle of Dunkeld 1689 supported King James 7th.

1692 In Glencoe the Mac Donalds were massacred in their beds by government troops that they had given shelter to.

1746 The Battle of Culloden led by Charles Edward Stuart or Bonnie Prince Charlie, who also had red hair. Here the Mc Donalds had fought against Wolfe This followed the Jacobite uprising of 1745 it put an end to the Stuart claim to the British throne.Duke of Cumberland led English forces. The Mac Donalds fled to France and learned French.   They were pardoned and returned and fought under Wolfe and because they spoke French were able to fool the sentries. If not for this the history of Canada might have been different.

1759 General James Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham  , near Quebec City. This battle was a key moment in the Seven Years War. This led to British control of North America with the death of both Wolfe and Metcalfe. resulting in a British victory over the French and ultimately leading to the capture of Quebec and the end of French colonial power in North America. Metcalf was from France and did not understand the people under his command who were French Canadian and Indians.

.

----The book begins with him going to an old building of single flat mostly men with bathroom at the end of the  common corridor to meet his eldest brother Culem an alcoholic., brings him some booze there is no food in the flat. The narrator was born in 1955 and is 15 years younger than his  brother.

He tells the story of his ancestors who left the Highlands a place with few trees a man with 6 children from his first wife, his daughter gave birth on the ship "Catherine of the sea." Thus the original Culem arrived a widower and a grandfather by the end of the journey.

1784 in Colony  Cape Breton he walked 100 miles to Sydney and got a document of deed for his land.

1820 This was now part of Nova Scotia and he died in 1834.The decedents of Culem family spread out along the island her and you could recognise as part of  Mc Donald family  by their red hair and kept up the Gailic speech.

1867 Confederation of Canada was formed.

The narrators Alexander's father ran the lighthouse on an island and in winter they could walk across the ice. The also used a sulkies and a horse sharpshod would pull a sleigh over the ice.The parents and son Colin were walking across the ice when the sea opened up and just a lamp was left on shore and they died. So Alexander and his twin sister who had been at the grandparents remained there and they brought them up. "Always look after your blood"

After the parents died none of the brothers returned to school 2 returned to the farm and were given back all the equipment by their neighbours  or family who had taken it over temporarily. The grandparents gave the twins  more than they were able to give their own children and some other grandchildren were jealous of them.  If they had meat they would lower it into the well in a bucket as a form of refrigeration for a short period.

His other grandpa was always reading history and talked to him about Highland history or tutored him in chess.

He was working on the brothers farm and brought the cows in to milk when he saw a dead whale on the beach and polluting the area. The waves were rising and they pulled the fishing boat up to the highest point. After the storm the whale was hundred of metres on land.

Alexander was a student of dentistry at the Halifax university. Later as an orthodontist he improved on "god's work" Making people looks improve.In this area most  people never went to a dentist till it was too late and then in their early 20s  got dentures.

 At Barney's River Nova Scotia his father had done logging.

The day he graduated from school they got a message that his cousin Alexander had died in a work accident in the mine. Some said he was not academically inclined but the narrator believes he went to help out his family. The whole MacDonald team had flown home for the funeral. They were contacted by the manager and offered a better bonus and all returned to work earning by the footage of the tunnel they cut out of the mine. The narrator joined them to make a full team. Many of the workers who had families far away would send international money orders to them.

They would meet Irish speakers and compare their languages and heard that in Ireland there is an effort to revive Irish.

The sister wanted to be an actress and they said to her why did she want to spend her life acting as somebody else. Is it not easier being yourself?

Their sister  was married to an oil engineer and they went off to Aberdeen where off shore oil had been found in the late 1960s. She took a car and drove to a small town and someone saw her and said something in Gaelic and she answered, even their dog recognized she was one of them from "the land of the trees" It is as if you never left said the old man. In this area they had heard the story of a dog swimming after the boat to the ship and was watch from the hill. She said that a lot of people had gone there in those days and they were the lucky ones and thought is strange that in Canada houses are made of wood.

Fruit pickers Jamaicans , Mexicans and French Quebecers families  some from New Brunswick arrive. They would pick from dawn till there was not enough light. For their children, school was considered a luxury. The foreigners have a 9 month visa to stay in Canada and make their way back home some in cars.

 Culem thinks back that he had an argument with Fern Picard. Later Alexander was asked to clean the sump between shifts and was keen on the extra money. When they returned after the funeral Culem went to look for the hoistman who had a very poor English. He had left his job and returned to Quebec. Had Alexander asked  Culem would have told him not to take that job.

Another cousin Alexander McDonald  flies in from San Francisco to Sudbury airport, Ontario to evade the Vietnam War. The narrator lived with his grandparents who knew more about the family that others. They make him one of their team and he is a good worker. However he does not show blood loyalty like the rest of the Canadian family.

The hoist had broken down and they all came out many by climbing up a long step ladder up the shaft, sit around and  and start drinking .There is a brawl between the Quebecois workers and the MacDonalds and the French groups leader Fern Pecard  gets killed and Cullum ends up in jail for murder. Both they and the Quebious had lost their leaders.

 The US Alexander immediately leaves as he does not want to be  part of this. Later they find Ferns wallet in Alexanders locker with $1000. Fern had accused the Scots of stealing from him. The posted the money back to Quebec. Les pays des Laurentides a specific part of Quebec. It did arrive as he received a message of thanks.

The story ends with him taking Culem for a ride to Cape Breton and even though the causeway is flooded Calum drives through counting  the 3rd wave and they get to the island  1968 Pierre Tradeau replaced Lester Pearson as PM at the time this story takes place.

Note- there is mentioned that Zulu's came to work on the mines and this is an error perhaps S African white miners .

 

Track Changes by Sayed Kashua 2020, 231pg Dancing Arabs

 Sayed Kashua is born in Tira an Arab town in Israel, he  is a leading Hebrew writer     10/8/25

Leaving his wife and their three children, he returns to Jerusalem and to his hometown of Tira in Palestine to be by his family’s side.  But few are happy to see him back and, he is geographically and emotionally displaced, he feels more alienated from his life than ever. linked to a short story he published years ago about a young girl named Palestine. Whether or not the pen is mightier than the sword, careless use can destroy lives.”

At the Chicago O'Hare airport a smoker is officially despised, cigarettes is the habit of beggars and criminals. His ear is not attuned to the American accent  there are words that he won't attempt to say. Yet he can always detect a foreign accent in any language. His middle son asked him what a autobiography is and why he writes them for other people, why don't they write them themselves. At the stopover at de Gaul airport he is condemned to smoke in a glass cage with people speaking in many Arabic accents.

Tira is the place of his birth and that of his parents and siblings that he has not seen for 14 years. At Ben Gurion airport the driver has a Russian accent and says he can smoke in the cab just open the window. His grandmother went on hajj with the first group of Israeli's to be granted visas to visit Saudi.

When he was a child it was obligatory to visit a sick family member in hospital. When in high school he was asked to stay in Maier hospital with his uncle who was recovering from a car accident, they did not want the uncle to know yet that his child had died in the same accident and the clan was at the funeral. His mother is pleased to see him but his older brother indicated that he smelled death and  came to take some remains.

He has 2 sons and a daughter and thinks that they will never know of the Arabic music of Umm Kulthum , Abdul Halim or Fairuz. His kids have never been to Tira and since their marriage his wife had wanted to leave Israel. 

He thinks of many of the boys in his school who failed in learning and thinks what happened to them? In  Jerusalem downtown he started work  in an office at Zion Square , but they later moved to the Industrial zone. Far fewer reporters were needed and many sent their news to the press by email and the digital camera replaced the dark room and less reporters or office space was needed and he got the role of editor in chief.

He was stopped driving his car and had too much alcohol in his blood and was given a fine and had to do 60 hours communal service. Every Sunday he went to the retirement home to give a 2 hour writing workshop. Residence there asked him to write their memoirs and were prepared to pay. Holocaust survivors , Palmach fighters , a man born in Bagdad. All of these he documented but someone asked him to write about their dead soldier son and here he had to add his own style of fiction and it was well accepted. A good editor can rewrite, reorder, delete and add without the reporter noticing the changes.

Over the next 4 years he wrote 30 books and was paid 10 thousand shekels a book of 100 pages.

An Arab worker's family left the village of Irtakh in the West Bank in 1940 and they moved into the hut of an orchard owned by a family in Jaffa. In 1948 the owner family fled for "3 days" and never returned and his family moved into the big house where they stayed after that.. How good it has been since the Jews came he said.

Sometimes the hardships of life leave no place for memoirs. he wrote a memoir for an Arab MK who had been in a Jewish left wing party. This was supposed to be published by a known Hebrew publisher. Only in Hebrew did it have a chance of being read.

While he was doing his MA in Hebrew lit. He had written a short fiction story about a women from Tira named Palestine as a metaphor for the political situation, not knowing that a girl named Palestine lived in Tira. She had been married 6 months and her husband divorced her as a result. The Sheik told him it is better that he marry the girl. Both families honor was badly besmirched. They registered the marriage and took a bus straight to Jerusalem. People called her Faula, Folo or even Paula like Ben Guions wife.

The summer they left for the US there were fires burning the Jerusalem forests and 3 Jewish kids had been kidnapped and were later found dead. An Arab kid was later found burned to death with rumours his family had killed him as he was homosexual?

His memories go back to going with his father in the wild, collecting za'atar on the hills which is a protected wild specie and you had to watch out for "insbektors" Nowadays  za'atar is grown in hothouses the leaves are bigger and sadder. 

Their children hear Arabic spoken at home but spoke Hebrew at school. They thought maybe this was the way of the world. On holocaust and  memorial day the children asked if the grandparents had died in the war. The daughter was named Yasmin a name that goes in Hebrew and Arabic and they changed the family name to Hadad. Yasmin never heard a word about Tira from her parents.

In the States he tried to make typical food he knew with rice and different beans but had to drive to a Arab neighbourhood mostly Palestinian to buy molokhyiyeh leaves.(Jew's Mallow or  tossa jute)

In the Midwest in the States,  Palestine has a academic post and supporting the family. They go out for dinner she has never told him about her first husband.and what had happened or if he loved her. He says perhaps if he found a job he would get to know the society better, perhaps would have American friends.

At the hospital he describes that in the bed next to his father is an Arab man with a Taiba accent and the other side an old  Jewish man thus diseases and death are still to be shared experiences. Births are however segregated.with Seperate rooms for Arabs and Jews.

Muslims bury their dead on their sides not on their backs.

He wrote a memoir called The folk tales of Grandma Mirriam. 2 days after the 30 copies were delivered and had been read to her she died of a heart attack. He figured out that she died a precisely the  moment  he was erasing her from his tape recorder and blamed himself. 

His mother said that she never believed she would have to intervein in a conflict of her sons and that their father was his biggest defender. He tells that his grandmother came to the house and gave him a pack of cigarettes and said he should smoke to show his now a man. He realizes that he has nowhere to return to. How pride becomes a thing of honor. Immorality gnaws away the foundations of a society, indicating the weakening of  faith.

At school other children were Jealous of Palestine as she was engaged to the guy, who was one of the  first to become an  accountant in Tira and had build a fancy house for her. Sayed had gone strait to the Sheik and told him he had never met Palestina and didn't know of her existence and the Sheik believed him. however he saw no way but for him to marry her. He had to save her from Tira , her husband  a privative family that did not have the decency to stand by her side. After signing marriage his father took them to Kfar Saba and put them on a bus  and said he never wanted to see him again. Ever since this story of Palestine he is incapable of making up stories.  The love stories he used to hear in his youth have been erased and replaced by murder of women. Willingness of neighbours was swapped for bitter feuds. Instead of blessing there were pistols and rifles. Family ties became inheritance wars, and games of hide and seek became land quarrels. Hope of victory had become a fate of knowledge of defeat.

He took his wife out  for dinner and they were able to leave the oldest daughter looking after the 2 younger boys. He realized that his wife had had a life or her own as she must have used a baby sitter when she went out. Palestine told him that she had been asked to extend her stay and had been offered a tenure track position that she sought after.

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 Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua 2003 227 pages. 9/10/19

This is autobiographical of the writer written in Hebrew and translated. He lived in Tira and Israeli Arab town on the border of the West Bank. Some residents originate there but others are refugees from towns destroyed. The first incident he mentions is the Karama Battle which was March 1968 later on Sabra and Shalita 1982 are mentioned. The story is of a school kid his relationship to his grandmother who lives in a room of what was his grandparents home. Sayed's father took over the house while his sisters got married and moved out. The grandfather died fighting against Israel in 1948, his father got into trouble supporting anti Israel protests and so never finished his education, his grandmother he to visit him in detention. They mention driving into Kalkalya to buy clothes but there is an anti Israel protests. His grandmother was what was known as an exchange bride. Her brother wanted to marry the daughter of a man who wanted his sister as a second wife. After his grandfather died his grandmother had to fight her stepchildren for the property. Some Arabs in Tira are hoping that Sadam Husseins rocket will harm Israel during Operation Dessert Storm Aug 1990 till Feb1991. Arab society is certainly portrayed as violent. He mentions that his school friend ended up in a hospital in Ramatayim which we know is for Mental Patients. He portrays that Arab school then in Tira had very unprofessional teachers and mostly men. Many kids went all the way through school and remained illiterate. The Jewish school in Kfar Saba had a lot of women teachers. He gets a scholarship to got to a boarding school in Jerusalem and describes weird things about Jewish society and how they react to Arabs. Coming from a village getting used to open modern society, sitting next to girls at school or going with girls to movies. He marries Samia from Tira but they rent in East Jerusalem as it is cheaper. His father has build a shell of a home for him in Tira but they have to come live there. His father worked from the Ministry of Interior office in Tira thus was a collaborator? But later when he went to Hebron or Tulkarm was able to get hold of birth certificates from the mandate period for old relatives and his status went up. Kfar Warburg today is where some Tira residents lived. The book ends with his father visiting Egypt and returns shocked at the fact that the Arab leaders cannot cope with the poverty and have not time to deal with Zionism. He says that Palestinians will be better off as 7th grade citizens under the Zionists than 3rd grades citizens under Arab leaders.