The Book of Gold Leaves and a small rant

I just finished reading Mirza Waheed's The Book of Gold Leaves (no points for a forgettable, pointless title).

I read The Collaborator earlier in the year and thought it was lovely. This was also. I spent four days in Srinagar one summer some years ago, and I wished it could have been longer. I also spent a couple of days in Kargil. Just enough to have developed a taste for Tabak Maas (ribs), not long enough to have made friends or gotten to know the place.

The odd review had white women, reading this as art of a book club, no doubt, complaining that there wasn't enough explanation of the context, or that the names were all too similar for them to keep track. I didn't think either of these were pertinent. 1. Use Google. 2. Literally every second white person is named Jack or John or Jason. Somehow the rest of the world is managing to keep up. Don't be so fucking lazy. As if anyone really uses that gigantic list of names at the beginning of War and Peace. You blunder through until you learn who is who, or you give up half way and miss out on one of the loveliest books written.

There were just enough references to food in The Book of Gold Leaves to keep me hooked. It was a very moving description of people trying to live their lives in a really complicated situation. I want to find more books set in Kashmir, and a decent history of the area. I hope I can go back some time, and travel more in the region. The Himalayas are really incredibly beautiful. 

Spiders in the Stupa

I woke up screaming this morning at 4.52. J noted the time, as he prefers not to be woken up before 7.00.

I dreamt that I was with a friend, probably my Italian former-flatmate Jonathan, with whom I have enjoyed living and traveling. He's given to mystical musings, and has a deeply philosophical approach to many things, combined with the chance that any little things may drive him batshit. He is a dreamy temperamental sort. I am less dreamy, and often just as cranky.

In the dream Jonathan and I were walking in a crowded city, and looking for a quiet spot to rest and muse. The constant rushing, and racket of the city had gotten to us, and we needed to recover. We might have been in Thailand, it definitely felt very Asian. We might have been Buddhist monks, not sure. We did know that we had been left this Stupa in the middle of the city (by a benefactor, by friends, Airbnb booking, remains unclear). There was a giant gate, and a driveway that sloped down. The compound had lots of trees, overgrown greenery, and a complete absence of people. Some way in there was a beautiful black, red, cream and golden stupa, matching the work on the gate but larger. The top was not domed or pointed but shaped more like a gopuram- so kind of broad haipin like. I have a very clear picture of this still, even though it has been several hours.

We walked up to it, I was a step or two ahead of Jonathan. I walked towards the locked door, and had climbed up the first step when I saw a massive brown, white and yellow spider in the middle of a web that went diagonally across the entry way. It was looking at me, and moved as I started turn to run away.

At this point I freaked out and woke up crying. J rolled over, and had me tell him the dream. When I was done, and whimpering again from fear (I really do not like spiders) he said something which did nothing to make the situation better.

"Maybe it just wanted to give you a hug".

He tried to fix this later by adding "You know, like Charlotte, from the book". But it was too late.

No doubt tonight I shall have terrible dreams about spiders trying to hug me with all 8 legs, J will try to calm me by wrapping himself around me, I will try fight him off as if he were a spider, though he has only half the number of limbs,  and it will end with more frights and flailing, for at least one of us.

plotting and scheming

In the summer of 2013 I will be taking the trans-Siberian express from Moscow to Beijing.
It is going to be an adventure.

Belgrade Continues

To breathe in Belgrade is to smoke. Most restaurants and cafes have no separate non smoking area. This is the thing that bothers me most about the city. I am now on day 4 however, and I am getting used to hiding my coat in a cupboard, or under someone else's coat, on entering a room, so that the smoke does not get into it. I have given up worrying about the smell of smoke in my hair. 

I must be one of the 3 people in the city who does not drink tea. On breaks from the workshop my policemen (I think of them as mine, because my project works for them) sniff at me, when they offer me coffee and I ask for tea. Each time this look of mild disgust and disbelief passes across their face on hearing that anyone could turn down coffee. The one thing they are most unhappy about at the workshop is that we have had to remove our coffee-filter machine thing and have replaced it with instant coffee and a kettle.

Three times now I have walked into what I think are department stores, because I like looking at shiny wrappers, and I want to know what Serbian groceries look like. Every time it has been a different chain selling cosmetics and hygiene stuff only. There are more kinds of hair dye than I have ever seen before. I studied a shampoo made with cow placenta for a while, but bought a body lotion made from goat's milk instead. I am not ready to wash my hair with the placenta of anything. I still don't know how stores are organised here. I need to investigate this further before I leave.

Yesterday a colleague of mine took me shopping with her. We ate Serbian Chinese food at a tiny restaurant in a corner of a very shiny mall. I had the spicy chicken with vegetables and wheat noodles. She had the hoisin chicken with rice. Both looked exactly the same, until the waitress covered my portion with toasted peanuts and hers with toasted cashew nuts. I got some 'chilli' sauce and mixed it with everything on my plate. It still looked and tasted exactly like her plate- which was alright. Whatever that one dish was that the restaurant made that day, and called five different things, it was good.

This afternoon's lunch at the police academy was bread, thin clear vegetable soup with an anaemic kind of noodles, cabbage salad, white beans in tomato cheese sauce, pasta with braised beef in a brown sauce, and chocolate cream cake- which I strongly suspect is the same cake that has been served for the last 3 days but covered with an extra batch of chocolate icing. There was also a choice between strawberry or sour cherry nectar. I had two glasses of sour cherry nectar and one apple. I am looking forward to dinner.

And here is a picture of the Assembly that I took myself. It is not as good as the one I posted yesterday. But at least I took this one myself.

13.3.2012

i'm at the airport trying to go through security check but my enormous hooded cape of a coat is not cooperating. my eyes hurt. i'm going home in a rush, trying to see my grandfather one last time before his lungs lose the battle they have been waging for the last 6 months. instead of being incapacitated by grief i have, instead made a list of everything i need to do in geneva before taking off for a month, and worked through them methodically. last night three of my friends gathered in my room to sit with me while i packed. it was no more grim than usual, just with more frequent morbid jokes. i found myself describing how we no longer cremate people on wooden pyres, using an electric facility instead. its not something i want to think about while my grandfather is still alive but i cannot stop myself from skipping ahead. as if by doing so i can avoid dealing with how painful the situation is right now.

i also feel silly. in an excess of nervous energy i have bought my sister a bright green watch from the swatch store at the airport. i have also been unable to stop myself from buying a boz of chocolate passion-fruit macaroons. my grandfather loved these the last time i took them. this time he is unconscious and unlikely to revive enough to recognise me; worrying us with his disregard for his diabetes by making enormous inroads into the stuff i bring back each time, so that he might eat little bits of the nicest things is no longer on his agenda. i have also bought an over priced cup of coffee from the kind of boutique bio faux-vegan restaurant that i despise. i don't drink coffee. i haven't done so for years. it is the price for not bursting into tears every 10 minutes. i cannot afford to do so, i have been dehydrated for the last 3 days as crying and mopping up do not leave enough time to rehydrate.

at security check the man says to me- do you have a laptop inside. yes i say. take it out please. boarding card please. smile please, you cannot go through my security check with a face like that.
it surprises me and makes me laugh. i tell him that i did not know smiles were required to go through security. next time i will take the train.
he laughs and lets me go through.

my flight is not boarding yet and i am losing patience. i want to get in and eat my sandwich.

9-5 jobs.

9-5 jobs often stretch to 9-6 and 9-7.
they can make furtively checking your facebook at work the thrill by which you mark your days.
they can turn you into the kind of person that 'does' lunches on weekdays with friends because you might not have life outside of office to fit all of them into, while also managing some sleep and laundry time.
they can make you focus on things like cornering the last heater in the office, or being taken out for lunch by your boss that you forget that you started out trying to save the world. now all your are trying to do is submit your leave applications on time so that you can spend the weekend in italy.
this blog post about 9-5 jobs is so depressing. i shall leave. besides if i don't go to bed by 1.am i will not be able to get to work by 9.