A Rainy Day

What do you do when you are being genuinely nice and supportive to someone by telling them how thankful you are for their attempts to settle things down between you after a series of not-so-good emotional outbursts, then you make a random observation that unintentionally upsets them to the point that they treat you like dirt and when you are told that you are the one that treats them like dirt?
Do you lock yourself in a room and have a think? Do you carry on the conversation with them and point out that you didn't mean to upset them? Do you just dismiss the whole thing and consider it a freak incident? Do you then believe that you have done something wrong and need to apologise? Do you go cold and wait for them to apologise? Do you become more observant and conscious about what you say in the future? Do you dare ask for the reason why that little observation was classified as you treating them like dirt?
Take that incident and multiply the number of repeats by about 10 per week over the course of a number of years. So, with that package in mind, what would you do?

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On Your Own

Someone had mentioned to me today that they had been met with indifference from certain people around them several times and from some others on a regular basis. He said something in lines of, 'Well, I suppose, when you get used to people disappointing you, you have no choice but to get used to living your life without them - on your own'.
How right you are, my friend. I have been there for a while, well, on both receiving and giving ends. I do feel ashamed of myself for casting on the impression that I don't feel for those people anymore. I stop all communications. I become totally irresponsive. Most of the time - if not all - I just cave in to other stresses and issues I have to deal with at the time. I resort to pulling all my energy resources and placing them were they are most required at the time. So, I end up, involuntarily, irresponsive. By the time I am done, it is then too late to reconcile with your friends. Only a few of them remain over the years as they are the select few who understand me and have managed to cope with my changing circumstances, well sometimes better than me!
However, I have been, quite often, on the receiving end of indifference. I have been made to feel like I am a some sort of a super machine. The moment I show signs of vulnerability, I am cast away as "aggressive" and unsympathetic. 'I am only human', I keep on reminding them and myself. I have been told that I have to take responsibility for my actions. Well, I do, regularly. That is when I feel utterly demoralised, alienated from the human race. I feel that I cannot rely on people to show understanding or compassion. I feel that I am further treated as a machine who have had a malfunction, and thus, have fallen from grace - or have temporarily gone to silicone limbo!
Why would anyone be expected, in this time and age, to actually genuinely keep up with the shyt capitalism throws at you. One has to keep up with living life comfortably and do the things that make them smile, alongside a mortgage, an unsatisfying or demoralising job, an emotionally unresponsive partner, little spare time or energy - or both - for projects of your own, stigmas, persecution, news, economy collapse, advertisements, bad music... and the list goes on.
On the plus side, having those few friends that genuinely understand what you're about makes a world of difference. Humans are not meant to live independent or separatist lives. We are designed to rely on each other, in a community form, to aid each other along the way, to give and take, to pull and push, to bleed and heal - to genuinely be a human being; a graceful being with flaws and faults, only reconcilable when in a "pack" or "tribe" of likeminded human beings.

Our Wolvies are Back Home!

We have got our canine wolves back home a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to Anne and the team at the Snowdonia Animal Sanctuary, our dogs were extremely well looked after while we went hunting for a more suitable accommodation.

Ghengis

Ghengis and Khan, yes, these are their names, are from Palestine. They are par-wild (wolf) and par-canine domestic dog. We are absolutely thrilled to have them back after almost 9 months. Well, to be honest, my feelings are a mixture of joy and pain. It had been a long time since we enjoyed the company of each other. Part of you just moves on, and the other part decides and devises future plans based on the hope that, one day, we can provide these lovely dogs with a good home.
I have always thought of Ghengis, now 6, as my first child. We adopted her when she was a few weeks old and have, since, treated her as one would his own child. She grow up to become a right spoilt brat!

Khan

On the other hand, Khan, who is now 5, had a very traumatic life for the first three months of his life. Before we adopted him, he was snatched away from his mother when but a couple of weeks old and placed in a barn with a number of goats. He was to be trained by his previous owner as a goat guard dog, but he was ill-treated, malnourished, and riddled with flees and ticks. At some point, we noticed that he used to scratch his right ear vigorously. When we had a closer look, we found an unimaginable number of maggots feasting on the inside of his ear. It looked like a scene from Pink Floyd's The Wall. Seriously, he had a massive bulge on the side of his head and barely any inside of ear left. His owner cared less about his state and expressed intentions of replacing the poor dog with a healthier pup. This was when we came in. We took Khani to a vet, well, erm... WE didn't... A close friend of ours did. Well, the closest vet who specialised in other than kettle and domestic fowls was in Jerusalem. We lived in Bethlehem at the time and Jerusalem is out of bound to Bethlehemites unless possessing a special permit (generally given to a portion of the Palestinian population for special occasions, like Christmas and Easter, or worshipers, and sometimes, to aid and foreign organisations workers and staff). Our friend had a foreign passport and as such was allowed to access Jerusalem.

Khan enjoying the breeze!

Pampered doggy

To cut the story short, Khan was absolutely lively and healthy a number of days after the vet pulled an odd 30 maggots out of his infected ear and a dose of antibiotics. However, a number of months later, we realised that this incident had resulted in a heavy trauma to the right ear and left eye. So, our beautiful cuddly bear is partially deaf and blind.

When we left Palestine to the UK, we could not possibly leave the dogs behind. So, we went for the "Quarantine" option. Palestine is not on the Pet Scheme and although Ghengis and Khan were both tested for and injected agaist rabies, they still had to serve 6 months in quarantine in the UK. This whole process of getting the dogs into the UK cost us large sums of money, not to mention, stress and agony. We had to fill in a numebr of paperwork and make even a higher number of local and international phone calls to arrange for the dogs to travel to quarantine kennels close to where we intended to live in the UK. There was also the fact that the dogs could not travel directly from Palestine as the Israeli Authorities have full control over land borders and air. We had to arrange for an agency to collect the dogs from a point past the "borders"in Jerusalem and to deliver them in carrier kennels to Tel-Aviv airport and for another to collect them from Manchester and deliver them to the Chester Quarantine Kennels.

After the quarantine phase, Ghengis and Khan joined us in our humble, but beautiful accommodation, next to a public foot path leading to mini-woods, waterfalls and reservoirs. They stayed with us for about 16 months before we realised that what we could afford to provide the dogs with at the time was not sufficient. So, this time, we went for the option of providing them with temporary accommodation at the fantastically loving Snowdonia Animal Sanctuary in Capel Curig, until we can find a farm or a more suitable accommodation, or a suitable home that would adopt the two dogs together.

Nevertheless, the family is now reunited and happy!

Thank you Anne, we owe you one.

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Please support the Sanctuary through spreading the word about their great work, achievements and unconditional love to animals.
You can visit them on their official page; http://www.snowdoniaanimalsanctuary.com/, or read their latest news on the sanctuary blog; http://snowdoniaanimalsanctuary.blogspot.co.uk/

My Latest Contribution

This is a 16-minute documentary film, directed by Kheridine Mabrouk for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The film is of short interviews with the six finalists to the prize. It was screened at the award granting ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 27 March.
My humble contribution was in producing the English subtitles to the film.

Shortlist, an IPAF film


It was a pleasure working with the producer!
Thank you for granting me this chance to work with such a professional team.
Onwards and forwards!

What do you want from me?

All what I ask from you is to put things into context and you will get me
It is so easy to make me happy, with food and shelter, and some company I meet
Over the days and weeks, and maybe some chocolate for a treat
But all that I ask is, I was told
Imposible to behold
As it requires a refusal
Of a life-style, a routine, that is no longer viable, but functional
I ask you, pray, you have seen the errors of your way
Yet, prejudice and greed sit beside you and may
Bring destruction to hopes of our coexistence
Why do you feed your fire regardless?

Come, come to me, come to the water and find your peace

Where Eternal Life is ours for the taking, and trust in the truth;
Darkness and Light here are mere impressions of Death and Rebirth
So, come, come to me,
But don't forget to bring chocolate with ye!

Inspired by Coleridge and a number of recent dreams...
(I wake up with no chocolate nor peace of mind...)

Blogging For the First Time in Ages!

Well, it has been a few years since I enjoyed the freedom to rant, publicly!
It is amazing that regardless of the number of topics one could write about, very few words seem to want to be written. This part of the brain that thinks and creates seems to, unfortunately, be alienated from that that forms the actual sentences - and even speech, sometimes. I wonder if many bilingual and multilingual people share this dilemma.
This does not, generally speaking, pose as a serious problem, as long as I can "communicate" a thought to others. I seem to have always treated language as a set of symbols, it being music, science, maths or in fact any form of communication. Is good, no?!
However, saying that, translating a piece of work already written by another person does not seem to follow the same suit. That part of the brain that digests the concepts from the source document - or audiovisual - seems to be in alliance with that that works out the fingers on the keyboard!
At the end of the day, and while posing as a translator, one aids the transformation of text from one set of symbols to another, rendering the experience most satisfying! Well, basically, just to posses the ability to break the code and rewrite concepts is a hell of an achievement, which I am mostly proud of.