http://www.nowarian.com Fri, 03 Sep 2010 07:03:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en When I saw her last, one year ago this month, she mentioned she had been working on my wedding towel. Embroidering it by hand, painstakingly, while her eyes held up. But I don't know, she shrugged, if you're getting married any time soon. "Well," I asked her, "is the towel finished?" No, ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=176 I've been working almost non-stop since I got back to Toronto. The late shift suits me. I push off on my bike at around quarter past two, pedaling hard between hesitant cars and past red lights down down down. Shaw Street hills into Bellwoods and across Wellington, past condos and ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=175 It was the word "prawns" that first caught my attention. Stumbling sleepy somewhere around about 2 am on a frosty night in Newtown, I thought I must be hearing things. But then there it was again on their lips, praaawns. They wanted to hit another club just not that ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=173 I draw bathwater so hot in the mornings I have to coax my limbs into the tub. Skin searing, right foot first, then the right calf, now the left one, down to my knees, etc. It's been so cold in Johannesburg, I can't remember the last time I felt heat. ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=170   But while I was abroad I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I chose to be a Haitian woman. I couldn't see myself being forever a nigger in the United States, an immigrant in Canada, or a stranger in Europe. I ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=169 Six days after I moved to New York in August 2007, Debbie Almontaser — an educator, inter-faith worker, and founding principle of the city's first dual-language Arabic public school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy — was forced out of her job. Her employers at the New York City Department ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=168 Notes: Ryszard Kapuscinski, lonely in Lagos with "some sort of tropical infection, blood poisoning or a reaction to an unknown venom, and it is bad enough to make me swell up and leave my body covered with sores, suppurations and carbuncles," fought his hot, sweaty affliction with Claude Lévi-Strauss. Ryszard quoted ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=167 Aprendió dos cosas, una en la calle, mientras tenía los ojos abiertos, y otra en su piso, cuando los cerraba para dormir: la primera es que hay hombres que sueñan con los labios; la segunda, que hay muchas formas de ver la luz, pero sólo una de estar ciego. Cuando ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=165 Bob Dénard - now there's a biography I'd like to write. Né Gilbert Bourgeaud, aka Said Mustapha Mahdjoub, Muslim, Jewish or Catholic depending on the territory being occupied. Father of eight, murderer of many. Killer of independence. The lessons he carried out, cautionary tales illustrating the cost of freedom versus the value ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=164 Just a quick peek-a-boo hello from me. I wanted to let you know that my little dot com portfolio is back in action. I scrapped the old templates and built anew. Much cleaner and very basic, due to aesthetic preference as much as my own impatience and limited HTML skills. ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=161 Today I took some dried bits of tobacco I had balled up tight in my left fist and ground them into a stone monument atop an Iroquois burial mound in Scarborough. Five hundred bodies below my feet. Sun in my hair. Long clouds shoving their way across the huge northeastern sky. As ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=160 Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=159 . I was that person running to my gate, terminal 1 CDG, my limbs aching from sleeplessness and the weight of my carry-on. The bags tugged me down, wanted to coax me onto the floor, but my legs pushed forward. I heard my name echo over the loudspeaker three times, then ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=158 I spend a lot of time thinking about Tariq ibn Ziyad, DNA tests, and the fluidity of geography and skin. Cristãos Novos, criptojudeus, and the indelicacies of the 15th century. It's somewhat of an idle obsession. http://www.nowarian.com/?p=154 Caution: You are about to mark the following comment as spam: Are you sure you want to do that? Author: michael jackson died E-mail: vhdfhdfh@mail.ru URL: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?u=48994 Comment: <a href="http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?u=48994" mce_href="http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?u=48994" rel="nofollow">michael jackson died</a> http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/member.php?u=48994 - michael jackson died <a href="http://extjs.com/forum/member.php?u=78407" mce_href="http://extjs.com/forum/member.php?u=78407" rel="nofollow">michael jackson dead 2009</a> http://extjs.com/forum/member.php?u=78407 - michael jackson dead 2009 <a href="http://www.netknowledgenow.com/members/nerelok.aspx" mce_href="http://www.netknowledgenow.com/members/nerelok.aspx" rel="nofollow">michael jackson childhood lyrics</a> ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=155 http://www.nowarian.com/?p=153 Yesterday I wrote about Africa Paradis, a Béninois film that depicts the migration en masse of down-on-their-luck Europeans to richer African pastures. This morning, the Europe edition of the Wall Street Journal ran a cover story with a similar plotline. First- and Second-Generation Françaises are "returning" to their parents' homelands, ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=152 The year is 2033, and the story goes like this: Europe has become underdeveloped due to acute economic and political crisis while Africa has experienced thriving development. Olivier, an unemployed engineer, and Pauline, an unemployed teacher, are struggling to scrape by in France. They decide to migrate to the United States of ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=151 It's been quiet here in recent weeks. I've been putting thoughts to paper, watching, listening, traveling. Your hotel is in a very bad area. The worst in Athens, our cabbie warned. "A lot of Pakistani," he said. "It's like Chinatown." This was the first lesson in insider/outsider politics. Vathi Square was ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=150 Un monde étrange avec son langage, ses musiques, son goût pour la violence, où l'on brûle les voitures après les avoir volées et où les centres commerciaux forment le décor et la cible les émeutes urbaines. There's something about assimilation that has always struck me as violent. It's a colonization ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=147 Yesterday I saw a woman crouch between two parked motorcycles on my street, lift up her skirts, and pee. This afternoon it was a little boy at a bus stop across the way. As his mother fussed with his baby sister, fastening the pink straps of her stroller, he unzipped ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=146 Between the hours of 4 and 10 pm, the traffic below my window is especially bustling. Buses, low to the ground and packed, labouring up the Clignancourt hill. Scooters slipping between cars and sidewalk, cyclists, soundsystems, children, drunkards, hoods, shoppers, baguette-chompers, chicken-roasters, crepe-makers. People making dinner, no curtains to protect ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=143 I've been off the grid and lost in time. All of my photos are overexposed. One week of climbing mountainsides in double-digit temperatures, and my eyes could not adjust to the brightness. Spring colours popping. Air sweet with eucalyptus. Conversations heavy. This time, it wasn't my accent that made me feel foreign. http://www.nowarian.com/?p=144 There is something about wandering, lost in the rain, that is still the greatest way to get to know a place. Not so great for curly hair or suede boots, but sacrifices must be made. A slow, steady stroll. Bridge over the vast, grand cemetery. Hills must be climbed. Nooks ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=142 I was having trouble writing. The beginning of my plot was buried deep in my chest, and I was too scared to dig it out. Troubled by an elastic deadline, a patient editor, and a paralyzing inability to press fingertips to keypad when anything I really care about is on ... http://www.nowarian.com/?p=138