Insults: Taliban style

Daniele Mastrogiacomo, the Repubblica war correspondent captured by Taliban forces in Afghanistan almost three weeks ago and released on Tuesday, has written a long, informed and moving account of his time as a prisoner. He had a particularly gruelling time of it, both physically and mentally, though not as rough as his driver, who was beheaded after having his throat cut.

The most salient parts of the article were translated by Peter Popham and published in yesterday’s Independent. One detail though, is missing from Popham’s edited version: the term used by the Taliban to insult the Italian journalist.

Tony Blair.

The shallowest dream…

…I’ve ever had.

Rupert Everett and two ageing English actresses I recognise but can’t name arrive at an airport with a sign saying Rupert Everett airport above the entrance. Everett leaves the plane and sweeps in to the airport, leaving the actresses behind him.

One of the actresses says to the other: I don’t think Rupert’s a big enough diva to warrant his own airport.

Hmm, says the other one. Rupert does.

Love is all you need (and it’s free!)

If you know of any priests, pastors, vicars, bishops, hey, even popes who need a little TLC, direct them to this site.

They’ll never be able to thank you enough.

I’m a world classic… in Thai

My story SOAP is in very good company on this site.

(OK. It’s coming next. But I’m still rubbing shoulders with Henry James and Turgenev.)

Pity Wanakam never asked, of course.

O. Henry Prize

I’ve had to keep quiet about this for over six months, but now that my story is about to be performed at the University of Austin, Texas, on Tuesday (for details click here), I can tell you that THE SCENT OF CINNAMON, first published by One Story in November 2005, has been chosen as one of the O.Henry prizewinning short stories for this year.

The anthology should be coming out in May, but I’ll keep you posted.

I’m delighted. And if you happen to be in Austin on Tuesday and see the show, tell me about it!

THE GIFT

Time for a little poetry after so much unpleasant and utterly disrespectful ranting. This poem, written 33 years ago, was published in a fugitive collection entitled Of Western Limits, containing my work and poems by John Wilkinson, ostensibly written during a walking holiday we went on in Scotland and intended to be a Lyrical Ballads for our generation. There’s certainly a copy in the British Library and there may even be one in the Cambridge University Library. I have one myself, unbound, and I imagine John does too. And that’s it. It’s dedicated to Charlie Bulbeck, who printed the collection and conspired with its authors in various other undertakings of a cultural nature.

The Gift has apparently been referred to as ‘the great lost work of the Cambridge school’. (Once more, I have John to thank for this information.)

Well, it’s lost no longer.

THE GIFT
for Charlie Bulbeck

Where we drive it is stubborn,
parked on the cliff edge it comes
with dawn. By inclusive reckon
each meed recovers its promise,
drifts home, a treasured account

in the nervous rein. Only a
loose prize, caustic on
the parabolic curve of tin,
burnished, you might reflect,
in whose pervasive ardour.

We are spelt, as grammar and
glamour cohabit in the patch;
a scholar’s trick. We conjure
allotments, ravishing in this
bright arena, with subtle poise

down the borders of light.
From scattered harvest, neap
touches the high-water mark,
rummage of golden oddments
scooped in, the sight of grain.

Forgiven by the bollard, by
the gleaming trim of the hub,
you reap, compacted to your
lunar metric. An occult
precipice and the flank of

achievement is bare, enticing.
It is sleight of hand, the boy
looks open mouthed as the conjurer
cuts down the stalk, a white bird
shimmering on his sleeve.

And this is the gift it brings:
refracted on the car, in sight
of the coastal acres, scoured
haloes of sunlight ‘as solid
and dense and fixed’ as

you can hope to secure it.
Arrest that flame, coals glint
and the flue is absolved by this
shiny token it palms you, tanned
still, elated in the fluent breeze.

Frozen warnings from Nico

Follow the yellow brick road, but not to Tobago

This comes from popbitch and seems an appropriate appendix to the previous post:

Next month’s Plymouth Jazz Festival in Tobago features a headline appearance by Elton John. Not all islanders approve. Breakfast TV show Rise & Shine this week had a phone-in about Elton. Presenters refused to condemn a caller who thought Elton should be subjected to earthly hellfire for his “poisonous” lifestyle, while another asked, “Is it your understanding that he is planning a hideous nude gay orgy on stage or in private during his visit?” Callers complaining about the homophobia were told: “Opinions are like noses, everyone has one.”

Now a Tobago lawyer has unearthed a section of the Trinidad and Tobago immigration code which bans self-professed homosexuals from entering the country, and a Church crusade is underway to try and make the government enforce it. Music fans on the island are hoping Elton manages to get through this gauntlet of hate…they say they’d rather LL Cool was banned from the jazz festival instead.

Archbishop Arsehole strikes again

A New York Times editorial had this to say on 8 March:

Denying Rights in Nigeria

A poisonous piece of legislation is quickly making its way through the Nigerian National Assembly. Billed as an anti-gay-marriage act, it is a far-reaching assault on basic rights of association, assembly and expression. Chillingly, the legislation — proposed last year by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo — has the full and enthusiastic support of the leader of Nigeria’s powerful Anglican church. Unless the international community speaks out quickly and forcefully against the bill, it is almost certain to become law.

Homosexual acts between consenting adults are already illegal in Nigeria under a penal code that dates to the colonial period. This new legislation would impose five-year sentences on same-sex couples who have wedding ceremonies — as well as on those who perform such services and on all who attend. The bill’s vague and dangerous prohibition on any public or private show of a “same sex amorous relationship” — which could be construed to cover having dinner with someone of the same sex — would open any known or suspected gay man or lesbian to the threat of arrest at almost any time.

The bill also criminalizes all political organizing on behalf of gay rights. And in a country with a dauntingly high rate of H.I.V. and AIDS, the ban on holding any meetings related to gay rights could make it impossible for medical workers to counsel homosexuals on safe sex practices.

Efforts to pass the bill last year stalled in part because of strong condemnation from the United States and the European Union. Now its backers are again trying to rush it through, and Washington and Brussels need to speak out against it. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and one of the most politically influential. If it passes a law that says human rights are not for every citizen, it will set a treacherous example for the region and the world.

This is the Anglican church that the Archbishop of Canterbury recently favoured over the US Episcopalians (see my post: A question of priorities). I hope he’s proud of himself.

Vatican CEO with bitch

This is what the Guardian had to say about the lovely Georg Gänswein shortly after “Eggs” Benedict came to power:

Born on July 30 1956, Gänswein grew up in Riedern am Wald, a tiny Bavarian village. He was ordained in 1984 and is a doctor of canon law from Munich University. He came to Rome in 1995 and was quickly on the Vatican fast track. In 1996, the then Cardinal Ratzinger asked him to join his staff, and he became a professor of canon law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, an institution affiliated to the secretive Catholic movement Opus Dei.

Those who know him praise his efficiency and analytical ability. “He understands complicated issues within about 10 seconds and can give a clear and immediate answer,” one Vatican source said. Gänswein is, though, more than just an impressive theologian. He is, like the man he serves, extremely conservative. “I think he is very dangerous,” Daniel Deckers, the author of a biography of Germany’s leading liberal cardinal, Karl Lehmann, said. “He’s part of a small but very powerful group within the Catholic church. He will use his power to push Ratzinger in a certain direction.

“Deckers recalls travelling to Rome to meet Gänswein. “He’s a good guy. He’s very eloquent and can be very charming. But he came right up to me and said: ‘Oh, you don’t like us.’ He referred to himself and Ratzinger as ‘us’, as if the two of them were an institution.

“With Gänswein as private secretary, there seems little hope that Benedict XVI will offer concessions on issues that alienate many from the Catholic church – the use of condoms, gay relationships or pre-marital sex. “You can forget it,” one religious affairs writer said bluntly.

A trusted confidant of the last Pope, who made him a chaplain in 2000, Gänswein has worked as Ratzinger’s secretary since 2003, and was one of the few aides allowed to give out press statements on John Paul’s condition. In the Vatican, Gänswein and Ratzinger dine together, recently entertaining Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, the German socialite, according to reports in the Italian press. In Cologne last week, Gänswein was never far away from his boss – handing the 78-year-old Pope his reading glasses, or travelling with him on a cruise down the Rhine. He was there, too, when the Pope appeared on a hill beneath a flying saucer-shaped dome, for a vast open-air mass. (In his address to nearly 1 million pilgrims who had spent the night camped out in a muddy field, the Pope reminded the young Catholics that they had to obey all of the church’s rules – not just the bits they liked. “That basically means no sex, doesn’t it?” German pilgrim Malte Schuburt, 19, pointed out.)

Gänswein’s critics even accuse him of turning the Pope into a fashion victim. This summer, Ratzinger and his secretary went on holiday to the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, as well as to the Italian Alps at Valle D’Aosta. While both men were hiking in the hills, the Pope appeared in public wearing a Nike hat, designer Serengeti sunglasses and a Cartier watch. “This is Gänswein’s style. It’s his handwriting,” one religious affairs writer said. “This is something I don’t understand.”

Gänswein’s power derives partly from his place in the Pope’s very small personal staff. Benedict’s long-time assistant is Ingrid Stampa and he has four women – Carmela, Loredana, Emanuela and Cristina – who do domestic duties. They have taken nun’s vows but do not wear habits. Pope Benedict writes everything in German in very small script, and Gänswein is one of the few who can read his writing.

So far, Gänswein does not enjoy the same power as Stanislaw Dziwisz, who spent 40 years at Pope John Paul II’s side. Some have even dismissed him as the “Black Forest Adonis”. Yet it is Gänswein who decides who gets to see the Pope, and who doesn’t. He also protects his boss from the mound of papers on Benedict’s desk. “He is the Pope’s gatekeeper. This makes him a very powerful man,” Deckers said.

It is not surprising, then, that the Pope’s private secretary is already beginning to inspire dread in liberal Catholic circles. In Germany, the Catholic church is divided more or less between two figures – the liberal-conservative Cardinal Lehmann, the head of the German archbishop’s conference, and the ultra-conservative Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the Archbishop of Cologne. Both men were with the Pope last week. But it is no secret as to which Bishop the Vatican favours. “Gänswein is an opponent of Lehmann,” one source in the German Catholic church said. “One of Ratzinger’s great weaknesses is that his judgment of people isn’t always sufficient. He has a small out-reach.”

Just what we need: a pope with a ‘small out-reach’…