The boats ashore on the sand before home.
Kazakhstan’s inhabitants don’t resign themselves, one day the sea will come back to lap on those shores and an azure expanse will spread out again before them, as far as the eye can see.
It’s difficult resigning ourselves to lose our own identity.
How many mistakes in name of great interest, of speculations…whereas the single has no more value opposite to the “good for the common interest”. Good? Which good? I never noticed any in that kind of abuses of power. Whole peoples deprived of their habitat in name of…regression.
Only send survive
I think to Egypt, to the huge expanse of Nasser lake, to the dam built to bring light to the whole people, thanks to its turbines.
In Kazakhstan a sea is drained, in Nubia a lake of sea dimensions is created. Keeping on in letting the forests in Amazonas Region be cut we’ll end by being swept away by an enormous abundance of water! Opposites of identical overwhelming!
The electrical energy created by water in a country, Egypt, where never rains, where sun blazes down merciless everyday of the year, just as tourist brochures state, rainy days: zero!
Why don’t create a photovoltaic power plants, simple solar panels put up on the sand expanse, to capture and condition the natural energy of the sun? No, in name of the “good for the common interest” and …for the contracting firms, it is necessary to inundate a land five hundred kilometres long, of which one hundred fifty kilometres are in Sudan, to sink in its waters the archaeological worldwide heritage and deprive of their houses sixty thousand honest Nubians.
Nubian: fair people
The Unesco with a great effort of capital managed to save, moving it, the Site of Abu Simel and the Philae one: all the press gave special emphasis to the colossal operation.
Not a word has been spent about the unnecessary sacrifice imposed to the inhabitants of Nubia lands, forced, on behalf of … “progress”, to loose their houses, their roots.
A land 500 Km. long has been imprisoned under the water, the floods of the Nile has been dammed, hence the flow to the Mediterranean Sea has lessened, changing in this way even our ecosystem.
Mud, that is now becoming stagnant accumulating on the rims of the dam, must be removed yearly with higher expenses to be paid by the community … A little of farsightedness in those years of engineer’s zeal wouldn’t have done any harm! Building a hydroelectric power plant in the desert, sacrificing peoples and monuments, both mankind’s heritage, instead of installing solar panels, maybe at the beginning more expensive, but as a whole and at last, more remunerative.
Kasr Ibrim still alive
What will happen if Sudan’s peoples decide to do as much, to take they too the energy from the Sacred river..
At the moment the problem doesn’t matter, now they are too much busy in other thoughts, involved as they are in a civil war….fomented, induced by whom? , I ask to myself…
An identical tragedy had happened in another place of the world, where, on the contrary of Egypt, has been abolished private propriety, expropriate lands to use as areas for nuclear testing: in Uzbekistan has been diverted the flow of the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya, tributaries for millennia in the Aral Sea, in Kazakistan. Under the pretext of watering new lands, proved then infertile, unfruitful even for cotton growing, the natural riverbed of the two rivers has been emptied, the Aral Sea drained forcing the few surviving inhabitants to move their residences…at least to find better air than the one left, become unbreathable owing to the continuous bursts of megatons.
Aral Sea how it was and ….how it became
When single has no more value, when his rights are denied to him…abomination is created.
My mother Halina, Ukrainian by birth and Polish-lithuanian of adoption, when she wanted have me smiling as a baby sang me a precious lullaby in polish:
Nje zeby Ci , Nje bjio zal
Dziecinko moja maia
Z cuckrue bjio Kròl
Z piernika Paz
Kròlewna z marcepana
The translation is: “ You mustn’t be sad, you mustn’t be frightened, my little dear” because in the story that I sang you, the guys are not true”the King is made of sugar, the Page is of spices bread, the Queen of marzipan”
In those few polish words is concentrated the tragedy of Ukrainian people and of the neighbouring Poland. The wars have eradicated a culture, russian revolution has annihilated, exterminated a whole race. Overwhelmed, chased everywhere, they have run away from their origin land changing names, birth dates, languages. They have preserved truth in the verses to be sung to their children, born after those ages of slaughters, because one day they could in freedom understand its origin.
Maybe those lines represent a kind of belonging, a way of recognizing…a code!
The Romanov
They speak about the murdering of Tzar, the king and the queen, the page represents the many innocents bound to them. The same havoc happened, decades after, in Rwanda: the Hutu people was armed against the Tutsi, the latter had to deny their origins to save themselves, at least those few that succeeded in escaping to the atrocities driven by the media. They had to lie to their children on their origins not to have them persecuted, they had to deny them their identity.
A rigged racial hatred, an incitement to persecution of people different, of people in other way great, set up in a side of the population against the other, increased, day after day, by media up to reach the slaughter of thousands people, heads beheaded, limbs torn off, tendons cut to not permit them to escape…without distinction of age and sex.
Tutsi Skulls
In those conditions he who survives denies all, also the obviousness, granting to the murderer the last victory: the present of his own identity. An incitement to persecution stirred up today by media, yesterday by fomentation to racial hatred, to elimination of a middle class, anybody, was he even a child, had to die.
No life has more worth than an other, I’ll never finish to tell it.
No religion can push a man to kill, no power can arrogate itself the right of doing it.
Harmless victims can’t go on falling under any driven fanaticism.
We must refuse manipulation implied behind these ideologies, reject to perform any act that could be hurtful to an other man. “No, I wont’ go along”, this must be told and repeated as an order passed by word of mouth.
We can change…we can refuse the hate
“You won’t use me to smooth the way for yourselves, I won’t let my hand be armed in name of any ideal”
We mustn’t let a system, a power that only wants to use people involve us and, scot-free and in safety, witness the fear and the dread that he has been able to spread.
Who would have a ruling class with bloodstained hands, who could desire to follow a leader who committed such atrocities? With which principles, which freedoms, which certainties….no one, safe that to be doomed victims… as soon as you disagree.
Halina, my mother as a guest in Alassio
My mother, few months old, was taken away from Kiev in my aunt Toscia’s arms on a peasants cart. At a jerk of the wheel she fell on the ground but the cart didn’t stop its run to the way out, to the Lithuanian border. She, little child four years old, had to get down and recover her, save the sister in arms, return running to the cart, to those peasants to whom they were granted with the hope to let them “keep on” living! For years only that lullaby, chanted with a soft voice, had told that story of overwhelming, even today my aunts, survivors of the war, don’t want to speak. They are afraid. “Eli, it’s of no use to remember, on the contrary! I’ve a son with six nephew, I can’t expose them to a risk” The spectre still hover about their home, still fear let origins be denied, and they keep on being, without memories, nobody.
The dead men are silent, the survivors don’t speaks…When will peoples have the courage to face the memory? Only time will release from the terror of death, of imprisonment, of flight…maybe.
Up to that moment I’ll go on singing that lullaby, because I know my mother’s memories, I know and I don’t forget. I’m sorry for her and for what she had to undergo, as many other poor people, obliged to hide for a whole life for the only fact to be part, to be born between the Tutsi, the Catholics, the Hebrews, the Buddhists, the tsarist Russian…
It remains the fragrances, the scents in the tales of what they can still tell… the recipes that suggest delicate dishes, with old-fashioned flavours. In a “blinki”, in a potato croquette are summed up traditions, memories of a home with an ever smoking samovar, in the distance the notes of a violin among the laughter of a family then happy.
Samovar
Skating on the frozen lake in the cold Lithuanian winter mornings, at Zoravno near Vilnius, coming back home running to the warm of the maiolica stoves, taking off everyone’s own dress covered with ice, putting it to dry on the mantelpieces of the stoves, meeting again all together in the living room to crouch down on the carpet in front of the fire to delight everyone’s palate fishing a “blinki” from the tray on the floor, as the forefathers did.
A familiarity created by a totality of trust and mutual exchange on sharing that delicate dish, much naturalness mixed with loving work.
To cook “blinki” for four people you shall peel and grate eight potatoes, add an egg, a spoon of starch (potato flour), stir and cook browning, in a buttered frying pan, every croquette big as a spoonful of soup.
Remove from the fire and keep food hot, covered…they must eat lukewarm, sprinkled with caviar.
Grey Petrossian Caviar
In this recipe there is the heart of a whole people, that have kept on living far from their land, recalling it in this way…silently, tasting even only the browned croquette, of the caviar of the recipe… there was not even the shadow!
Northern countries’ cultures are more social, they more care of community, maybe because they are compelled to live for a longer period sheltered to protect themselves from rigours of winter, sharing an enclosed space, where become free again from the external cold, round crackling fireplaces.
Take off external protections to let skin take breath again, free from meteorological conditioning. The invention of the sauna, meeting again in little warm wooden constructions, the warm and dry air supplied from burning stones, a French door with view on the snowy expanse, where to feel a great warmth to satisfaction, in spite of outer temperature is due to them, to Baltic peoples. Ninety degrees centigrades to forget the cold, making a fool of him, the naked bodies leant to the wooden walls intent only on enjoying that invaluable sensation of wealth.
Relaxing telling short stories and listening to the others’ ones, leaving time to the silence, sought and imposed, to better relish body rebirth. Ten minutes and then going out throwing oneself under the stream of an invigorating cold water shower, to drop, a little exhausted by all those changes, in a total relax.
The Hot House !
In Norway you go out from the sauna directly on the blanket of snow to fling yourself, naked, in its white layer and then have a rest in the water of warm solfatara with the fumes, the steams that rise up to the sky and leave us defenceless before the beauty of life.
One night of the last day of the year, in Cortina in 1974, I am guest of a couple of friend, roman of adoption, he Venetian and she Argentine, Hapsburg height and face features… type model seventies, Gloria…wonderful.
The afternoon of the last day of the year his husband invites me to take a sauna at Hotel Miramonti taking with him, to drink, a bottle well iced of champagne. Naked and covered only by a white peplum we find ourselves in the relax room, and toast the end of the year with reciprocal complicity, our greetings appear to be identical, both wish to see it ending in a up to shortly before unexpected way.
Sparkling wine
Two glasses of little bubbles give us the lift and, a little inebriated, we enter in the sauna, naked.
One in front of the other, lying on the white towels, the skin sparkling in the soften light, we let merriment invading our hearts listening reciprocally to our tales, spicy events on our friends. Everything refers to desire. He gets up, comes up to me “ Let’s toast again, will you?” I’m thrilled about it, I could be everywhere and anywhere in that moment so free I feel me, my senses pleasantly incited to receive the desire. He comes back with the goblets full, I sip some drops while he let the iced liquid falling from my tits downstairs “let me drink it from there”, I laugh while I open myself to the pleasure, leave his mouth go down and drink from me, his hand touch lightly my tits. The sensation is strong, I’m ready for him: now I only want to feel him inside me, I long for his flesh, I turn offering my body to him and ask him to seize me.
He fill me with himself, I feel all the unconscious love he feel for me, his flesh in mine induces pleasures out of all proportion in that hot atmosphere…they are sensations as short as intense to take us to the immediate pleasure, to the satisfaction of the simultaneousness the union of a moment. Scream of pleasure fill the sauna, now it resembles a wooden spacecraft travelling in the open space. We go out to run to the cold showers to re-establish a contact with the world. Those shared and indivisible instants are worth a life, we turn again conscious of our realities and we don’t feel regret for the extemporaneousness of our gestures, neither we desire other than what we have lived. Laid on the sun beds, abandoned to the relax, he lovingly turn down my towel and fill up my glass…I’m happy…
An instant, the antithesis of time, its opposite: what is over every division remains forever.
Instants of life!
The word “attimo” (instant in english) derives from Atom that, for its nature, can’t be divided…it’s out of time!
The Time can be shared, the Instant is its contrary…
“Time derives from Témno, Témneos was the portion of sky ‘crossed’ by the sacred flight of the birds that the haruspexes with their staff”, a extract from “vorrei parlarti del cielo stellato” (I’d like to tell you about the starry sky) by Alessandra Tarabochia Canavero that, even though she links to the Ptolemaic texts, hence late and posthumous to the Egyptian age, she couches admirable concepts as “The instant is the contrary, the denial of time, in etymology and in reality”
It’s true, any moment in that sauna has lasted a life and has condensed the best flavours… I can tell I’ve lived over any reasonable doubt.
I’ve been myself in an instant and I’ve enjoyed life in the life.
