organised chaos

Currently Playing: Snow Patrol-How To Be Dead.

…although ironically, its really The Fray’s How To Save A Life that’s playing in my head.

I have the perfect example to Snow Patrol’s How To guide; pull the stunt I pulled last Sunday.

Being your average professional procrastinator, I started studying for the Criminal paper I had the next day just the afternoon before. We’re talking about a subject already complicated and twisted enough as it is, with a lecturer (a favourite, and one whom I have a lot of respect for) with expectations similar to that of a hard-to-please judge who has every intention of pulling your case apart.

Haih. Never again, I said to myself after the paper.

Then I started studying for Probate on the morning of the day itself. The paper itself wasn’t too bad, but I have to fix this cockiness or rather, complacency that becomes the norm every time the exams come round. 3 papers left to go.

People like me have to but will never learn.

—————

I had to give a eulogy last week as part of a Skills exercise last week. I thought of talking about my late grandfather who was the steely patriarch pillar of the family, but it felt too personal. As Khairie says, I am one who represses herself. I’d have to beg to differ on that point though; these past few months have seen me a bit more open than I used to be. Things change, things are different now.

Back to that eulogy. I finally settled on some ideas. It finally boiled down to a toss up between a eulogy for an unborn child by a mother who cannot conceive, or a eulogy for Humanity. Hey, nobody said it had to be a speech for a person or pet or that it had to be real. The first idea came about because I thought its heartbreaking to think of a mother who wants a child so badly that she’s had in idea first rather than in reality, and when she realises she can’t conceive, the baby’s dead even before she can have one.

Come to think of it, this worries me. What the heck have I been thinking about these days to come to that? But then again, I should be worried anyway. I’ve been getting enough sleep for the past couple of weeks, and that’s not right.

I finally settled on the eulogy for Humanity after listening to a dose of Khairie’s logic about why it’d be a better choice. He had a point, so I went along with that. Overall, it could have been better and more heartfelt had it not been for a classmate of mine who was assigned to distract me from my speech. This was done on purpose as part of training to do speeches with an audience that isn’t responsive to your speech, so that during the real thing, it wouldn’t affect you.

I could have just avoided the lad’s face (who goes by the name of Aiman) and looked at the rest who were neutral, but I never could resist a good challenge, so I looked at him straight in the face.

And there lies my biggest mistake.

He had on this completely comical-looking expression when I began I had to swallow back laughter. We’re talking about a eulogy for Humanity here. Its not supposed to be even remotely funny. In the end, I managed to choke out a half-decent speech before stumbling back to my chair.

So much for leaving an impact. And that was that.

—————

It’s amazing what Joe Sacco has done in his book Palestine. Through cartoon journalism, he’s been able to transmit to readers (well, this reader at least) Palestine as it is, and the stories the streets hold. He’s able to convey the stuff politicians never see, and the effect of the cruel and prejudiced policies Israel imposes upon the Occupied Territories, in blatant contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention. He does all this by using wit, humour, even sarcasm through his drawings and yet maintains the reality of the horror the Palestinian people go through daily. It gets addictive sometimes, and most times you just have to digest everything slowly, chapter by chapter, because the pain gets too overwhelming at some points. Joe Sacco’s ability in revealing facts alongside the stories is eye-opening. He doesn’t place the Palestinians on a pedestal either; there was one instance, for example, where he was duped by some Palestinian teens into paying for a service he never asked for, but that’s the pull factor of this book.

It displays the full reality that Palestinians are people too, they’re human, and they’re capable of doing wrong. They aren’t dramatised or viewed as saints just because they’re oppressed. In the end, what people need to remember is that Palestinians are just our fellow brothers and sisters who have been deprived of every right any human is entitled to (you don’t have to know the UDHR to know that) and they have a cause to fight for. The suffering has gone on for too long, and they’re tired of assuming the voice of the oppressed. That is why they take on the voice of citizens in fighting back.

This book is by far the most engaging I have read. Maybe its because rather than being all facts, statistics and politics, I’m able to see how it all figures into the lives of Palestinians themselves. And that’s where it really matters. I still have a couple of chapters more to go.

I hope my brothers and sisters and Palestine are having a good Ramadhan this year.

Insya Allah.

Enough said here.