A rare event: I got talking to a fellow cinemagoer after we caught each other surreptitiously checking out our tear-reddened eyes in the washroom mirror after the film. Talking about things that make us cry, I mentioned the newspaper, and she cited a story she'd heard on BBC World this week about the assassination of master calligrapher Khalil al-Zahawi in Baghdad. And that's the only traditional news outlet where I could find information. Blogger liosliath, at Morocco Time, links to the BBC article and to some examples of al-Zahawi's calligraphy. Follow the link for the art, not the blog, which is reductionist and partisan in claiming al-Zahawi's death as part of a Zionist plot.
From the other reductionist, partisan corner comes Bobfrombrockley, who makes the excellent point that there's been no news coverage of this story in the English-speaking world (comparable to, say, David Hockney being mugged and shot and no-one reporting it), and the slightly less sound point that al-Zahawi's death somehow proves that the US & UK are right to be in Iraq.
Logic fails. Words fail. Language is shorn of beauty. A library burns.
Also in memory of novelist, filmmaker, educator, provocateur Ousmane Sembene.
Ever wondered what happens to all those books sold in second-hand stores and yard sales, left on buses, or given away free? Sandman readers will know Dream's Library, which is full of all the books never quite published, but Delirium, Dream's younger, kookier sister, also has quite the collection of bizarre and brilliant works. As guardian of this library, it's my pleasure to read through the never-ending shelves of "books I bought or was given and can't remember why."
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