2023

… was the year when I finally decided it would not be worth it to continue writing in German. Whatever I had to say went by either uncommented or stayed unread – or I just did not write it because over the years I had started to censure myself. I recognized this when another Muslim writer wrote about not using the same expressions in conversations with non-Muslims that she would use normally, much less use them in writing.

Worse, I watched from afar – after emigrating from Germany more than 15 years ago – how things changed in Germany (apart from the change that should happen but never does, like in climate crisis prevention or digitalisation), and not in a good sense. Things I used to fight against are happening – mostly as I feared they would before I decided to leave. At that time, I got ridiculed for my warnings …

Now I have retired all my German blogs or put the German articles on private only, I was doubting if I would ever write again – I’ll try, somehow, I cannot just give up for good. Also, my social media – in October came the last drop with the discussions and media bias about the war on Palestine (I hesitate to call it a war, it is just an occupation power trying to get rid of a people and acquiring their property). The way this crime is painted in German media and discussions was too much for me to see every day – I’ll leave them to it, in their bubble.

And so I left Twitter before that, but in October deleted my new Mastodon accounts and created new ones, English only. I lost a lot of contacts when leaving Twitter, but I could not stay there and too many of them say they cannot leave … I regret it, also I do regret that many just went to a rich man’s new toy or the other, something I do not consider.

May I eventually be able to emigrate for good – Jordan, as much as I came to love it, does not offer naturalisation, so I still have to keep my German passport (which I would gladly tear in pieces if some country would offer me another solution).

I pray Palestine will be free and this awful killing will stop.

Remember

Remember that  7th day of September. The dry sentence of the white clad doctor in the morning after the last test results came in. Carcinoma in the liver with metastasis growth in the lungs. Like this. No more.  Doctors seem to be cowards. No information about what will happen, how much time will we have left to love each other. Only – he will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow, no further treatment.

Looking at each other. Tears in both our eyes. Nothing left to do. One thing, only. One last trip. No, not home, not yet. A pilgrimage. Last hope? Maybe. Last comfort, for sure.

I plan, buy tickets,  pack, keep busy, hide my tears. Ten days pass like this.

We travel. No one sees us off. We share a cup of coffee on the airport-train. My love, who never drinks coffee because of his high blood pressure, has cold hands and needs this sip of caffeine today.

Heat receives us at the end of the flight, glaring sun but relative cool in the shade of the big white mosque that houses three graves under a green dome. I have to let him go to the other door and use the women’s entrance. I sit on the red carpet, listen to some ladies‘ soft recitation and smell the distinct scent of rose oil. In the quiet my heart twists and turns. The happiness I should feel in this place is buried under a thick cover of saltwater. I can hardly breathe, I anticipate the pain of a life without him.

Wherever we go, these thoughts linger in my brain. I look at his sleeping face in the evening, trying to imprint it in my memory. I listen to his soft breathing in the night – he used to snore heavily, but no more. The sudden silence sometimes wakes me up, I miss that sound that like a lullaby used to make me sleep.

Back home golden days of autumn see him get weaker too fast. Only the two of us at home, daily, nightly fight overshadowing the time we might use to take leave from each other. Come one morning, raindrops weep over the hospital’s windows like the tears on my face. He went to sleep forever without waking up again. No last word to say. Only a silent kiss on a cooling forehead.

Prayer for the dead in the yard of our small mosque. Rows and rows of friends and strangers. The women right and left give me strength. One hour more, then the flight will leave with his coffin aboard – but without me.

Remember that 7th September. One year later and I stand in a far country under high green trees. White marble in different forms – graves. Thousands of it, all ages, some just a mound of earth fixed with fist-sized stones. No date, no name. Like the one pointed out to me. I know who put the stones, one by one, with love and a heart full of tears and regrets. I can see his hands that look so much like his father’s  weeding out some plants so they will not destroy the mount.

The heat makes drops of sweat run into my eyes, they mix with my tears. I want to sit down here in the shade of the trees and never again leave.

(This text was first published in the fall edition 2013 of “When Women Waken”. According to their policy I can republish it here. )

Remember

 

Lost?

Since the first night of ramadhan Miss Grey is missing. As she made it her habit since the summer nights became so balmy and starfilled she left about midnight – but did not return at dawn as usual. For weeks she would wait outside the door until one of our boys leaves for work about 4.50 am, so he could let her in to wake us up and make us feed her. Though, unlike her mother she is not so avid for food, often it seems it was her main aim to kiss us and be cuddled and loved. Food came later, she would only start eating after running around for a while and then see us busy.

But on Wednesday morning I waited for her in vain. Neither at 3 am, for our morning meal, neither at 4.50, when the boy left, neither when one of us left the house she was anywhere to be seen. Coming home about 2 pm I hoped she would be waiting in the garden and complaining for being left out in the heat – no sound, no movement.

Whenever I am home, the door is left open, unless Miss Grey’s boyfriend, Romeo, hangs around and tries to sneak inside the house. He has been circling the house for months, we hold him responsible for the state Miss Grey is in – but I am not quite sure he had been able to fight off the other contenders. Now, he looks as forlorn as I am feeling. My husband feeds him the leftovers of Miss Grey’s food from the fridge, no use to let it rot. But the three of us look rather sad.

Wherever I walk in the house or garden, I tread carefully, as if there was still a small grey paw or tail I should not step on. I expect to see her on one of her usual places – but only the empty spot looks at me, coldly. I wake up in the night, turn in bed carefully, not to disturb my kitty when I move the blanket with me on which she might be sleeping, then remember, she is not here.

What might have happened? Where could she be? We have no idea. No one saw her, my husband asked around, the boys playing on the street, the shopkeeper across the street, they all know the little grey cat with the funny walk. Our boys pretended she could work as a belly-dancer, just missing the dress, the way she shakes her narrow hips while walking. Rude, because the poor thing fell very sick when she was just for months old, a virus, we believe, and since then her hind legs sometimes seem to give way under her – although she can jump well enough if she wants to reach the cheese on the breakfast table.

Now, a new morning. Our parrot, Aziza, and I sit at the open door until it will be time for me to leave for my school. Aziza has been nagging a lot this last week, as if she also asks us what became of her friend. She has been knowing Miss Grey since she was born and see her grow up, play around, have her first babys, become the joy and amusement of the house.

I see a shadow behind the curtain that shields us from being seen from the street – but it was just a dove flying by low. No cat. No “mau”. No soft furry feeling at my naked ankles. No small scratches on my legs from her idea to climb up my dress.

Will she be back? I do not want to lose hope – yet.

Once a summer

This post is part of the July 2013 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Dog Days of Summer.”

„Dog days“ of summer are literally translated into „Hundstage“ in German. We do not see them there every year, often as not summer in Germany is more a wish than a reality. But still, sometimes they happen.

Like in that summer when I had turned nine and we had moved into a new bought house. This came with a room for each of us two sisters and enough space to accomodate our cousins during the summer holidays. I loved it – having my two big cousins around who would treat me nicely and include me in everything made my day, no matter, what my elder sister and the youngest of the cousins were up to.

We would play crocket in the garden, although we had to fight the balls tendency to roll downhills, as the house is built into a hillside. Or we would search for the badminton set. Evenings would find us on the terrace with two sets of cards, for interminable rounds of canasta, under the sweet smell of the yasmine bushes and roses at the wall.

The weather grew warmer and warmer and saw us searching for a pool. The five of us would hardly fit into the family car, a beetle, because none was old enough to drive and my mother would not risk being caught with all of us on board. So the heat and lack of alternative forced us to use the local swimming pool. The entry fee was minimal, but so was the pool. Much too small, hardly a decent shower, raw stones on the edges. The lack of heating did not count in those hot days, we were happy enough with the temperature the sun had made raise to incredible 18° C. Then, the use of balls and other playthings were not yet forbidden, the water teemed with children, the heavily chlorinated water permeated the air with its acrid smell that we would take home in our wet bathing suits and towels.

Until one day, when in the morning we saw the sky covered with clouds and a cool wind greeted us as soon as we opened the door. But we had decided the evening before that we would go swimming again and I counted on another swimming lesson from my patient cousin. So, I would not hear of not going and the others also agreed that the clouds should not be a reason to deter us from enjoying another swim.

The water felt actually warmer under the leaden sky, as long as I did not leave a limb out to the wind. After one hour though we tried to dry up, my long hair still dripping with water I followed the others on the way home. I shivered, but tried not to show it for fear they would tell me it was my own mistake as I had been the one to insist on going.

I paid for this next morning when I woke up with a terrible headache, fever and a sore throat. The next week I had to spend confined in bed, while the others now could go everywhere as the four of them would fit into the car. To comfort me at least a little my cousins would buy sweets for me and, better, give me their own new books – that they had brought to read during the holidays – to read. They knew I would enjoy them.

The youngest had brought the „Winnetou“-Triology. Very famous in Germany I doubt my englishspeaking reades will ever had heard of their author, Karl May, who wrote a big number of storys from his fictous travels, a part of them set into the Wild West, another in the Middle East and Africa. Three big volumes kept my interest for a while and I cared less about being left alone after the fever abated sufficiently so I could concentrate on reading.

But it was the elder cousins book that I still remember best and that still helds a special place in my heart for the lasting effect it had on me: a German version of Lousia May Alcott’s „Little Women“. Never before I had thought about people who wrote the books I read, and I had started reading with four years of age and found my way through a number of books already. But Jo March did not only read them, she started writing stories and had them published, for others to enjoy them.

It needed years until I wrote my first story and still my first book waits to get published. But I always think of those dog days of summer that not only taught me to swim but also how to use my storytelling.

 

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
articshark
Sunwords
Diem_Allen
U2Girl
robynmackenzie
Lady Cat
MsLaylaCakes
pyrosama
Angyl78
SuzanneSeese
Diana_Rajchel
HistorySleuth
AshleyEpidemic
SRHowen

When fiction becomes reality …

One of these days I wrote in my German Writer’s forum: You don’t need to invent much actually if you want to write a thriller – just write about what is happening and everybody will say it is unrealistic.

No, I am not talking about Prism or the UK-listeners. In Germany there are at least two not so big issues, but still, they teach a lot. I follow the news  from my safe home in Amman and enjoy being at home here.

One of the issues is directly related to me. Given the fact that due to the difficult language German news often are not widely spread internationally, maybe few people out here followed this scandal: from about 2000 to 2007 a group of Neonazis murdered nine people: one german policewoman, eight turkish men and one greek (which, supposedly, they believed to be turkish). All with the same weapon. The german police never thought about a racist angle, but searched through every aspect of the victims‘ lives, making the lives of the families hell.

In 2004, after the first five or six murders had already happened, a bomb exploded in the street where I lived. By the grace of god nobody was killed – the police considered the bomb well able of killing a multitude .

Most of my neighbours were also turkish, down in the street all the shops and small restaurants, too. Also the killed men all had been owners of small businesses. I saw the relationship – but only me. Never the police. There was a picture from a camera that showed the two men who had placed the bomb – short pants, basecaps, bicyle. Same description also fit men seen at one of the murder scenes.

But the police searched for criminal foreigners, clues in the busines of the neighbours. They did not even bother to compare the pictures with the list of wanted people.

Neither of these cases was solved – until late 2011. Two men, believed to have robbed a bank, killed themselves (as far as it is known). Short time later, a women who had been living with them, turned herself in to the police after having set fire to their appartment. CDs were sent to different people from which the police learned that these three who had gone underground about 1998 and had been wanted for criminal deeds related to hate and right-extremist circles had also commited the nine murdes and placed two bombs. The faces of the two man were easily recognizable as those from the camera close to my street.

Since some weeks the case is in court. During the last 18 months there have been several inquiries in the parlaments of thuringen, where this group had lived and hidden, in Berlin – and the results show that a lot of police and secret service staff had either not wanted to turn their sources in or had just looked the other way. The whole thing is sickening and for those Turkish living in Germany and following the news (good for Germany that not very many do that) it shows the neglect with wich their interest have been treated and the blindness of many officials when it comes to racist crimes.

I, myself, am furious, sick – that day, it was a close miss that my husband would have walked into the bomb. It was exactly on his way to our home, and the time when he would come from work every day. Not that day, thanks to God. He, helpful as always, had gone after work to pick up my new dress from the seamstress what made him half an hour late. But I will never forget the half hour when I saw the glass all over the street, destroyed shops and cars, blood everywhere and could not reach him. The helpless fury when the minister of interiour called this a crime that could not have any relation with racism when the street was still covered in glass and blood and nobody could know anything yet – so he directed the police what not to follow up.

And now, since 2011, all the dirty details of neglect, lies, cover up come out one by one. Had I written a thriller containing all this and tried to publish before 2011 – I doubt any German printing house would have wished to publish it. If I do it now, it will just be telling what the newspapers already wrote. Maybe I will, maybe not.

There is more … but not today.

Bugs? – Bugs!

You do not know who I am? I am Miss Grey. I am the owner of the blog writing lady – well, she thinks, she owns me, but believe me, never, ever was a cat owned by a human being. But let her think whatever makes her happy!

And today, now, she wants to write about bugs. BUGS! Why not cats? We are nicer, smarter, more beautiful – okay, my dear, you say bugs, bugs it shall be.

We live in a nice flat on the slope of one of Amman’s many hills. Open the door and you will find a nice terrace and a small garden, where the said lady and her husband planted all kinds of trees and flowers. I am not really interested, the trees are still too small to climb on, but they smell good and give some shadow. The problem is, not only I enjoy the shadow, but a not so small number of other creatures also feel themselves attracted.

Other than my human family I don’t care about the mosquitoes. They are just noisy, too small to be of any interest. Spiders are something else. Earthbound, they cannot just fly away and laugh about me when I jump and miss them (like the pigeons do every day), they can only run and try to hide under a leaf or in a hole in the ground. Too many holes here, for my taste, all to give shelter to whatever small prey I see in the garden. But  the spiders, often as not, are stupid enough to come to the house – and there, on the shiny tiles of the floor, they cannot escape me. I follow them everywhere, push them with my paw so the roll all over the slippery surface. Then I wait a little, let them feel save and, when they start running again, I jump high in the air to drop on them before they see me coming.

But spiders, still, are minor prey. And just chasing them, often to the amusement of my audience, would not make me feel really useful in this house. Of course, my dear lady and her husband would still want me to stay, feed me, love me, cuddle me (if I consent to being touched), but the younger ones do not often feel that I am a necessary member of the house. They do not consider that, without my presence, every mouse or rat of the neighbourhood would like to sample their food in the kitchen or participate in the leftovers in their rooms – which often enough they forget to store away decently. And then, there are the most feared of all bugs, the sight of on of them would make every one of the youngsters scream and run. You know what I am talking of? The black, rustling, flying, running species, up to three inches long, stinking, … – cockroaches. Nothing else brings the place in a state of revolution faster than one of those ugly creatures. And then I have my big day, because I am the one who is not afraid to go after it, follow it wherever it might flee, toy with it, shuffle it right and left until its gleaming wings start to look a little bit frayed, it becomes slower, limps and I give it some time and space to recover. Then, again, I see it move. I hide behind a chair or a curtain, let it advance over the floor, attracted by the smell of my food on the kitchen floor. Close to the threshold it comes, and then I lift my backside, my head is stuck to the floor, my whiskers tremble – one big jump and I land on its back, crushing it to an unsavoury mess. No, I don’t eat it. I push the corpse around for a while, but it gets boring and eventually someone will come and pick it up with a piece of paper and throw it out. I lift my tail, go to the fridge and look at my lady: time for a reward. What’s on today, chicken or kebab?

This text is my contribution to June’s Blog chain on Absolute write:

This month’s prompt at Absolute Write Blog Chain: 

BugsYep. Bugs. Simple and easy. Prose, poetry, play. Fiction, nonfiction. It’s all good, all bugs.

Please read also the other participants’ blogtexts:

Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 – http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post)
Diem_Allen – http://mindovermistakes.blogspot.com (link to post)
Ralph Pines – http://ralfast.wordpress.com (link to post)
articshark – http://www.drslaten.com/blog (link to post)
Lady Cat – http://randomwriterlythoughts.blogspot.ca (link to post)
U2Girl – http://ancatdubh.org (link to post)
MsLaylaCakes – http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post)
SuzanneSeese – http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/2013/06/bugs-frogs-benedryl-and-vodka.html
robynmackenzie – http://iwanttobeawesomewhenigrowup.com/
milkweed – http://www.thistlequill.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
Sunwords – https://susannedoering.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
Angyl78 – http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post)
susanielson – http://somesemblancethereof.blogspot.com/ (link to post)
HistorySleuth – http://historysleuth.blogspot.com (link to post)

Writing diary – Start

Writing. I started when I was about ten or twelve years old, at least, I tried. I had read Alcott’s “Little Women” and Jo gave me the first idea that it was possible to write down the stories I told myself and – maybe, one day – get them printed.
At that time there was no internet, it was Germany in the seventies. A small town, one small bookshop, a half-decent library where I sometimes helped and was allowed to chose whatever and how many books I wanted. So, reading was good, but I never told anybody about writing. I did not know that there were books that might teach you how to write better. Maybe in Germany at that time they might not even have been available. Creative Writing, as it is taught in the USA since longtime, has only recently found a way into German teachings.
So, I came around another book about a girl who wanted to write. A German book, btw. And, when she told her teacher about it, what was the reaction? More or less, first grow up and get some experience in living, then think about writing. It turned me off for quite some time. But still, I did not stop completely. Sometimes, life got in the way, and for too many years I earned my life with writing stuff for others – meaning, only the words were mine, not the content.
Then, one day, I cleaned out my desk never to return. I spent time here and there, and slowly, not only my stories, but also my taste for giving them a voice crawled out of the retreat where they had hidden.
Things changed, scenes changed, company changed …. I learned quite a lot, starting with internet use, then also writing itself. My view turned to the things I wanted to write about, to let people know what often is not seen.
Since, I have done a lot of blogging – in German. Got feedback, critics, nice words, and some hate, too. I don’t mind.
There are some WIP (works in progress, as my friends at the “Absolute Write” call them) I intend to finish before seriously turning to writing in English for good. I hope I will get somewhere with them. They all are contemporary – I don’t like Fantasy etc. too much, and history, what I love, needs more research than I can manage from here if I want to do it as I think it should be done.
Actually, two of my manuscripts are first drafts, one already with some editing, but both need a fair amount of rewriting. A third has about 10K words, but that might be easier to finish and an easy read, rather a serious love story in some interesting setting.
Two or three more ideas, with some planning done, one itching my imagination. That one, though, might be better in English. InshaAllah, as we say here.

The idea of this writing diary is for me also to commit myself of finishing them, one after the other. I will be happy if anyone cares to talk to me about this or that and will try to put some information here.