Reminiscences

THE SPECTRE

My mother was halfway up the wooden stairs when I turned to my left and started ascending in an opposite direction to where we came from. As I did so, something, in the form of light, contrasting with the progressively darkening sky, attracted my attention. I turned sharply sideways to my left and looked upwards towards the sky; there, I saw a sedentary, bright and sharply outlined Spectre of a tall old man with a solemn face and a long beard facing where we were. The Spectre held a ‘bucket’ in each hand, with arms extended downwards close to its form towards a flat ground-like base, on which ‘it’ stood; the ‘base’, about one-third in width as the height of the Spectre, faded out rather sharply towards an irregularly-shaped edge. The entire apparition was in unadulterated white; it matched in height a neighbouring brown house, above which ‘it’ stood.

IRAQ’S ARAMEAN CHRISTIANS

There is a strong interrelationship between Aramean/Mesopotamian decedents, their lands and Christianity. Although the social identities of Arameans and Mesopotamians have been destroyed through amalgamation, they are still physically there (in Iraq). Identification of those original indigenous peoples on individual basis is difficult, if ever possible. This difficulty, however, does not negate their logical and actual presence as people.

To those who believe that Arabic-speaking Iraqi Christians are ethnic Arabs, implicitly originating from the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia and Yemen), I present this simple question. Have you ever compared the facial features (some with blue eyes, including my sister, cousin and aunt), skin tone (as white as bleached cotton) and demeanour (loving) of those Christians with Saudis / Yemenis? I do firmly believe in our Aramean ancestry and heritage.

YEZIDI FEMALE SLAVES

My sister’s kidnap incident sadly reminds me of the reprehensible treatment of thousands of Yezidi females (Sinjar/northern Iraq). They were kidnapped, raped and sold in the slave market, and for two years since have been living in the grip of fear and in shameful disgrace. Occurrences like these taking place during the enlightened modern times of the 21st century and under the very noses and impassive stares of the ‘Christian’ Western World and the ‘United Nations!’ And what are those ‘institutions’ doing, in all their might?

SAVING THE KID

My premonition came true; a car, racing toward us from the left, was only a few yards behind the taxi. At that instant I thought: “The kid is dead”; that was when he suddenly decided to flee and run towards the other side of the road, where his ‘mother’ was! At that moment he had just cleared the taxi and was on the open road; I had to make the decision of my life and was seriously considering the thought: “Now, we are both dead”!

SUNSET

It is very difficult to give full credit to the majestic beauty of those sunsets, and as for description, they could provide a wealth of text material, enough to fill many pages. What first strikes the spectator is the perceptibly ever-changing interplay of a multitude of diverse wonderful colors, as clouds moved slowly across the sky accompanied by delicate, though determined, dipping of the waning globe of the sun towards the sea, with the latter imparting a sad smile suggesting a shy and tired farewell, albeit on a temporary basis. As the sun rays, though still fiery in their own right, pierced the clouds just above the horizon in the late afternoon, they streaked gently and lovingly as they kissed serene fluffs of lingering cumulus clouds and dyed them with artistic strokes of bold bright yellow intermingled with brilliantly hot golden orange, a truly captivating spectacle to behold! The sky, when observed through openings in between floating, fluffy cotton-like clouds, showed ultimate beauty reflecting various shades of emerald and light yellowish-green along the horizon transforming vertically into light blue and, eventually, culminating in azure and deep blue overhead towards the zenith.

THE OPERA SAINGER

Then, all of a sudden he decided to sing an aria from one of Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s German operas, which drew my attention instantaneously! Impressed, I turned around and looked towards him, only to see that his thin bony face was turned upwards facing the top of the tent; I could barely discern two horizontal slits below eyebrows and two small nostrils on either side of a sharp, upward-raised nose. Under that nose, there was a huge vertically located gaping oval hole, where his mouth was supposed to be and, for a split second, I wondered what had happened to it. Then, as he sang, he exhaled all the breath he had previously taken in his lungs, which was about half an hour ago, or that was how long his voice seemed to sound uninterruptedly; the gap then suddenly closed, only to show that all of his facial features had retrieved their natural, previously existing configuration. That hardly natural facial gap inexorably reminded me of the expressionist Artist Edvard Munch’s ‘Der Schrei der Natur.

MOCKED BY A CHILD

I sensed a mocking tone in his voice and had to say that that wasn’t correct, only to get this response: “Yes, I know; you are forty”. So, I happily said: “You got it!” Following what appeared to be a ‘grace period’, he went: “You are seventy-five; aren’t you sad?” After guessing what was going on in his mind I nevertheless asked him why I should be sad, he went: “Because you are going to die soon?” (I was so happy until that last encounter)!

DISAPPEARING CHICKEN

Half an hour later, she came down and went straight to the kitchen to start her next dish; then she came to the ‘den’ and asked me where I had moved the chicken, to which I replied: “I didn’t touch it”. She looked in our two fridges in the hope that she might have put it in there and forgotten. No chicken! Both of us looked at the doggie and asked him if he had taken it; we got this solemn reply: “I don’t know where the chicken is, cross my heart; if I had eaten it, where are the bones? And one other thing; why do you come after me; how about the cat!” (As if; the chicken was as big as the cat itself!)

OF MURDER

He soon embarked on a trip to Latin America and bought one of the oldest and ugliest sloths he could find there; one that was huge and had long, coarse and shabby/frizzy hair that grew outward towards its head, in contrast to other fellow four-legged animals. Its sub-spherical head showed ribbon-like white ‘eyebrows’ overlying bulging, frontally-located and widely-spaced black eyes separated by a flat and wide nasal-bridge. That sloth had well-defined upper eyelids, which were sharply slanted downward and inward towards the nose, thereby hiding a significant part of each eyes in such a way that gave them the appearance of a vicious uncompromising frown, only to rise suddenly against either side of its nasal-bridge. Its eyes, characterized by an ‘eternally’ dull, transfixing and intrusive glaring stare, appeared indeed treacherous, conniving and intimidating.

The sloth’s head sat on a short neck, stemming from very narrow shoulders, at the end of which dangled long arms; the latter, seemingly originating from the neck itself, culminated in long and curved ‘claws’ ending with pointed tips. As a whole, the arms and claws gave the uncomfortable impression of being capable of reaching anything, anywhere, though not at any time (that is not at will!). He tied one of the sloth’s legs with a rope and dangled his whole body down the window; then, with a stick’s end, he tapped the window’s glass several times. Soon, he heard a scream emanating from that room, a scream that was both fiendishly terrible and shriek-like, but short.