When the moon is born in the east,
And the white rooftops drift asleep
Under the heaped-up light,
People leave their shops and march forth in groups
To meet the moon
Carrying bread, and a radio, to the mountaintops,
And their narcotics.
There they buy and sell fantasies
And images,
And die – as the moon comes to life.
What does that luminous disc
Do to my homeland?
The land of the prophets,
The land of the simple,
The chewers of tobacco, the dealers in drug?
What does the moon do to us,
That we squander our valor
And live only to beg from Heaven?
What has the heaven
For the lazy and the weak?
When the moon comes to life they are changed to
corpses,
And shake the tombs of the saints,
Hoping to be granted some rice, some children…
They spread out their fine and elegant rugs,
And console themselves with an opium we call fate
And destiny.
In my land, the land of the simple
What weakness and decay
Lay hold of us, when the light streams forth!
Rugs, thousands of baskets,
Glasses of tea and children swarn over the hills.
In my land,
where the simple weep,
And live in the light they cannot perceive;
In my land,
Where people live without eyes,
And pray,
And fornicate,
And live in resignation,
As they always have,
Calling on the crescent moon:
” O Crescent Moon!
O suspended God of Marble!
O unbelievable object!
Always you have been for the east, for us,
A cluster of diamonds,
For the millions whose senses are numbed”On those eastern nights when
The moon waxes full,
The east divests itself of all honor
And vigor.
The millions who go barefoot,
Who believe in four wives
And the day of judgment;
The millions who encounter bread
Only in their dreams;
Who spend the night in houses
Built of coughs;
Who have never set eyes on medicine;
Fall down like corpses beneath the light.In my land,
where the stupid weep
And die weeping
Whenever the crescent moon appears
And their tears increase;
Whenever some wretched lute moves them…
or the song to “night”
In my land,
In the land of the simple,
where we slowly chew on our unending songs-
A form of consumption destroying the east-
Our east chewing on its history,
its lethargic dreams,
Its empty legends,
Our east that sees the sum of all heroism
In Picaresque Abu Zayd al Hilali.
Category Archives: History
How to Spot a Pirate
Chief Nato spokesman James Appathurai is quoted in the BBC, saying it is hard to spot Somali pirates:
“There are a host of pirates, but they don’t identify themselves with eye-patches and hook hands so it isn’t immediately obvious that they are pirates.”
I think this has always been true. Pirates have never wanted to be identified early, since it makes their chase harder, but I have to think that the direction of their boat, along with machine guns, RPGs and masks, all make for a good giveaway.
Friend or foe? Black Beard never wore a patch or a hook.
Chagos Islanders Denied
The dispute over the ownership of Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos Archipelago is really a huge legal, human rights, security and geopolitical debate hiding in plain sight.
The United Kingdom claims it will retain control of islands that it prefers to calls its British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), while taking payments for “.io” domain registrations.
Do you have a stolen .io domain? Do you know the significance of that domain’s theft? What are you even doing on it?
BIOT appropriated the .io and the UK government ceded control to the private sector to manage and profit from what amounts to be gross human rights violations.
This domain in other words isn’t owned by the Chagos people it represents, and instead shifted into the hands of a private company called Internet Computer Bureau Ltd (ICB) formed specifically to take advantage over places like Chagos.
Mauritius aims in some sense to settle the domain issues by expanding its area over the islands as a more natural geographic power play, deprecating .io entirely.
Meanwhile the United States (directly implicated in the expulsion of Chagos islanders) has sights on keeping control of its military base (established after loss of control in Ethiopia, and the shift to satellites that made surveillance of the Middle-East easier than from the Horn of Africa highlands).
On top of all that, the simple fact remains many Chagossian diaspora who were forcibly removed decades ago sincerely want to return to their home and have sovereignty.
If you own an .io domain are you helping or hurting the Chagossian cause?
In that context, Reuters has very sad news:
Britain’s highest court ruled in favour of the British government Wednesday, blocking the return of hundreds of Chagos Island people to their homes in the south Indian Ocean after nearly 40 years of exile.
The decision by the House of Lords ends a years-long battle to secure the Chagos Islanders the right to return to their archipelago, from where they were forcibly removed in the 1960s and ’70s to make way for an American airbase on Diego Garcia.
By a ruling of 3-2, the lords backed a government appeal that argued that allowing the islanders to return could have a detrimental effect on defence and international security.
I wrote about this case in more detail back in March of 2007.
Update 2018 (ten years!): ICB sells itself for $70m to a giant US domain registrar Afilias, with no evidence any of that money or future money will go to the Chagossians.
Update 2015 (can’t believe it’s been seven years of this already!): the Chagos people have launched “The Dark Side of .io“
Ann Boleyn
by R.P.Weston and Bert Lee, as performed by Stanley Holloway
In the Tower of London, large as life,
The ghost of Ann Boleyn walks, they declare.
Poor Ann Boleyn was once King Henry’s wife –
Until he made the Headsman bob her hair!
Ah yes! he did her wrong long years ago,
And she comes up at night to tell him so.With her head tucked underneath her arm
She walks the Bloody Tower!
With her head tucked underneath her arm
At the Midnight hour –She comes to haunt King Henry, she means giving him ‘what for’,
Gad Zooks, she’s going to tell him off for having spilt her gore.
And just in case the Headsman wants to give her an encore
She has her head tucked underneath her arm!With her head tucked underneath her arm
She walks the Bloody Tower!
With her head tucked underneath her arm
At the Midnight hour.Along the draughty corridors for miles and miles she goes,
She often catches cold, poor thing, it’s cold there when it blows,
And it’s awfully awkward for the Queen to have to blow her nose
With her head tucked underneath her arm!Sometimes gay King Henry gives a spread
For all his pals and gals – a ghostly crew.
The headsman carves the joint and cuts the bread,
Then in comes Ann Boleyn to ‘queer’ the ‘do’;
She holds her head up with a wild war whoop,
And Henry cries ‘Don’t drop it in the soup!’With her head tucked underneath her arm
She walks the Bloody Tower!
With her head tucked underneath her arm
At the Midnight hour.The sentries think that it’s a football that she carries in,
And when they’ve had a few they shout ‘Is Ars’nal going to win?’
They think it’s Alec James, instead of poor old Ann Boleyn
With her head tucked underneath her arm!With her head tucked underneath her arm
She walks the Bloody Tower!
With her head tucked underneath her arm
At the Midnight hour.One night she caught King Henry, he was in the Canteen Bar.
Said he ‘Are you Jane Seymour, Ann Boleyn or Cath’rine Parr?
For how the sweet san fairy ann do I know who you are
With your head tucked underneath your arm!’