Archive - Aug 20, 2007

Beautiful Nancy

Last time we went was a planned camping holiday with my sister and brother in law. This time we booked a couple of B&B’s, one in Nancy (200 miles from where we live) and the other in Dijon (350 miles from where we live). Nancy has special significance for me because my maternal grandfather studied medicine there between the two world wars in the 1930’s. So it was a pilgrimage of sorts. I never met either of my grandfathers, but here at last I had the opportunity to follow in one of their footsteps. And what breath taking footsteps; this city could be the love child of Barcelona and Bath in the UK. The architecture is simply beautiful.>>>

Raging against the gods

In the thirteenth century A.D. there was Rumi and Shams. In 2700 B.C. there was King Gilgamesh and Enkidu. The heroes, Rumi and Gilgamesh, were civilized masters of their domain, enjoying a small greatness in their time. Shams and Enkidu were untutored outsiders who burst in from the wild to become the heroes' beloved companions. The same extraordinary spiritual upheaval created by the unlikely friendships launched both Rumi and Gilgamesh out of their time and into legend. George Charbak's play, The Epic of Gilgamesh with a long prologue, thankfully does not dwell on the Enkidu-Shams comparison. In fact Enkidu's god protector is simply referred to as the sun god, sidestepping the god's real name Shamash, the root for the Arabic word Shams >>>

Shadows of mistrust

Decades after the events of 1950's in Iran, there is still a lot of heated debates about what happened, who was to blame and why? The issue which in some people's view, originated from intervention of foreign elements in order to influence Iran's political process, had profound impact on the future events which happened during the years after that. Antagonistic atmosphere of Iranian politics has always been filled with extremist tendencies and emotions towards one side or another during this period which contributed a lot to creation of many unfounded stories around those events that eventually resulted in start of one of the cruelest governing systems of the world in our country.>>>