miércoles, 28 de mayo de 2008

A Neighbour


jueves, 22 de mayo de 2008

Djinns & Djinniyahs

A rich cultural inheritage is often the pillar around which a civilisation moves forward. I believe that this is the case of the Arab culture, which is full of interesting and peculiar aspects, like its popular traditions, some so strikingly close to the ones of neighbouring civilisations. In the Arab folklore, I find particularly interesting the character of the djinn, made worldwide famous by the one inside the oil lamp (the English word “genie” simply derives from Arabic).

As written in the already usual reference Wikipedia, the djinn was present in the Arab culture long before the revelation of Islam. The djinns are considered as a divinity of inferior rank, having human attributes: they eat (but with the left hand!), drink and procreate their kind, sometimes in conjunction with human beings. They have their community, boundaries and armies. Usually they haunt cemeteries, dirty places or deserted locations, especially the thickets where wild beasts gather. Djinns live much longer than humans, but are not immortals. They are massless, therefore can fit in any space: the whole universe or a tiny lamp. They are invisible but, when appearing to man, djinns may assume the forms of humans, or animals, like donkeys, cats…

Even if some of them are evil or supernatural thiefs, djinns are usually peaceful and well disposed towards men; they are even believed to have inspired many pre-Islamic poets. But the djinniyahs, the female version (often associated with succubi), can be more of a problem: for instance, they may throw stones around in the peaceful night of a village, or make fun of sheperds by imitating the cry of a goat in distress: when the sheperd gets to the place and realises there is no goat, the silly djinniyah is already somewhere else and again imitating the goat. A curious aspect of all djinniyahs is that they have a tiny spark in their eyes and cannot avoid having long nails, either in her fingers or in her toes. Hadibo, capital of Socotra, owes its name to a good djinniyah, who protects the house, especially when the owner is away, and appreciates that the kitchen door to be always kept open as to be able to eat something if she feels hungry during her visit.

Islam integrated the djinns, believed to be created from smokeless fire and to have free will. The first djinn that disobeyed Allah is called Iblis. When Allah made Adam from clay as His greatest creation, Iblis, once a very pious servant, was very annoyed and became arrogant, jelous and refused to respect and adore a creature made of “dirt”. Since then, he is called Shaitan (Satan) and Allah punished him to eternally stay in the hellfire after death. By the way, he is the one who offered Eve a tasteful apple.

If you need more info about this subject, Wikipedia provides further data: check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie. But…what about Socotra, specifically? As I mentioned before, Hadibo is a djenniyah…and, thanks to my Socotri friends, here are a couple of stories concerning local djinns or djinniyahs.

The first story is about a Socotri gentleman who had to walk several days with his donkey to return to the village he was from. He got to a river and noticed a woman washing her face and hands. They began chatting and knowing each other and, though quite surprised of the unusual situation, he accepted her company during the travel and offered his donkey to carry the luggage she had along. They arrived to a village and checked if they could find some food and water, but the place seemed to be completely deserted. She proposed him to stay for the night in one of the houses but the man, feeling more and more unconfortable with this misterious travel-mate, refused to share the shelter with her. When she asked what was the problem, if he was scared or something like that, he decided to change his attitute and pretend easiness and confidence, and finally accepted to share a room with her. During the night, the doubt about this strange woman was growing in his mind and decided to check the toes of the woman during her sleep. Yes, she was a djinniyah, and the poor man decided to run away as soon and fast as he could. He ran like the wind and she ran behind him, scaring him with death threats and other similar things. The man beated any possible human record to cover the distance from where he was spending that unforgettable night to his final destination.

The second story is about a ship going from Zanzibar to Socotra, loaded with passengers and foodstuffs. All of a sudden, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, a passenger asked the captain to stop the ship and to let him disembark with his foodstuffs. The astonished captain pointed out that there was no island around, but the weird passenger insisted in his request. He even invited the captain to disembark with him, so he could pay him the fare for the voyage, and assured the poor sailor that he would soon be back to his ship safe, dry and with the money. It is not clear how the captain trusted this peculiar invitation, but what he found below the sea was a whole city, beautiful and lively. He went for a short tour with the strange passenger, got his money and actually returned to his ship. In conclusion, some djinns live a peaceful and beautiful life under the sea surface.

If you ever scrub a lamp and a fat funny fellow shows up, ask him to take you to Socotra. The wish is worth it. And, according to the legend, you would still have two others!

domingo, 18 de mayo de 2008

sábado, 17 de mayo de 2008

The Turtle Night

Last night something very strange happened in the sky of Socotra.

There was a very big ring of light around the moon. As it was impossible to take a picture, imagine the good old vinyl LP: the moon would be the round label in the middle and the ring of light the circumference of the disk.

I would be most happy to know the scientific explanation for such phenomenon, but a nice local guy told me that it happens one night a year and in this season. He also romantically reminded the local tradition, which says that during this night a huge number of turtles would arrive to lay their eggs. Possibly true, because this is the time of the year when these animals come to Socotra and leave behind the future generations. I had the pleasure to see one some days ago.

sábado, 10 de mayo de 2008

Women

miércoles, 7 de mayo de 2008

Of Compassion and Shame

Yesterday I went through the worst day I ever had in Socotra, and most certainly not the easiest in my personal or professional life.

I spent most of the evening and night to think about the experience I went through. That was a necessary process, as I just cannot forget or save it in the same memory cell where I store loads of strange or funny things. What happened yesterday cannot be kept among trivial events that, at the end of the day, do not have any direct or conscious effects on you and will just fade away as time goes by.

In the first lines I dropped on this blog, I warned that I would have not touched professional aspects of my Socotrian life. But I guess that exceptions are always allowed, especially if they transcend so powerfully to stay, from now on, deeply rooted inside myself.

There is a very youg girl on this island that suffers from a rare disease, Xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP. Even though it may imply pedantry of the writer and consequent boredom of the reader, I must resort to Wikipedia to define the disease as “an autosomal recessive genetic disorder of DNA repair in which the ability to repair damage caused by ultraviolet (UV) light is deficient. This disorder leads to multiple basaliomas and other skin malignancies at a young age. In severe cases, it is necessary to avoid sunlight completely” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeroderma_pigmentosum).

One of my pending professional tasks is to bring some kind of relief to this young girl, who has not even the age to cover herself completely in black like girls here start to do as they reach puberty. Even though I never met her, I know the case since I arrived in the island and regularly updated her father on what steps I was taking. But because an Italian doctor, following up the case, is spending sometime on the island with two young doctors, we decided to pay a visit to the girl. Again, I did not actually see the girl, as the doctors wisely advised me to just wait in the patio with my assistant, but I could hear her screams in panic and see the expression of the doctors as they came out of the dark room where she lives. The doctors were very careful and professional in explaining to me in Italian the seriousness of the case, avoiding every unnecessary detail in their briefing, and in informing her father, through the translations of my assistant, on what possible measures could be taken as to alleviate her from that incurable disease, which may torment her even for the next ten years. Less than a couple of hours later, my boss called me and asked me about the visit. It is not easy to admit that I went through a terrifying emotional collapse and I could not speak out a bloody word for the first five minutes of the phone call.

Wikipedia defines compassion as “an understanding of the emotional state of another or oneself. Not to be confused with empathy, compassion is often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another or to show special kindness to those who suffer. However, compassion may lead an individual to feel empathy with another person” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion).

Is it actually compassion what I feel? The problems I go through, the loneliness of this stage of my life, the boredom that haunts me during these last days of my job here, the sadness I feel when I miss those I love… are just nothing. They can never be compared to the screams that still echo in my mind, to the perpetual torture she is going through. A tremendously brazen shame can never be confused with compassion.

domingo, 4 de mayo de 2008

The Egyptian Vulture

(Neophron Percnopterus)

Though present in Africa, Europe and Asia, 25% of the total population lives in Socotra. The local nickname of these birds is "the municipality service".

viernes, 2 de mayo de 2008

Football and Goats

I just got back to Socotra, after having spent some most deserved holidays in Barcelona. It was most theurapeutic to see my people, taste my food, wine and vices. Of course, some anectdotes dropped between a drink and another, and from the face of the “audience” you could measure the eccentricity of some situations I went through…

It is not always easy to realize how funny and crazy some situations can life can be. Sometimes, a certain distance in time and space are necessary to put things in context and have a clear idea of the absolute madness and surrealism that often decorate the landscape of our walks of life!

Let me just give you an example, which a very dear person encouraged me to talk about in this blog. During the first weeks of my stay in Socotra I was regularly going to the house of a local guy, F.C. Barcelona fan like me, who had the right card to decript the Spanish league on TV. Of course, all young men of Hadibo, who split up between supporters of Barcelona and Real Madrid, used to join in the big patio of the pirate card owner to watch the “Liga” every “Christian” weekend, or during the week for the “Champions League”. Until something happened.

Few days before Aid, the supporters of Real Madrid kidnapped the goat the owner of the place was keeping for the celebration and killed it. They cooked it and kindly offered some meet to the man, who of course was expressing his deep gratitutde to be invited to such a nice meal by his “sworn enemies” and absolutely unaware of where the meat was from. At the end of the dinner, the Real Madrid supporters could not keep it anymore and told the poor guy about the destiny of his goat.

I am sorry not to have been there that night, for it must had been a tremendous show, a story to pass on to many future generations. I was told that the guy became real angry; quite expectably I would say, bearing in mind that he could not buy another goat in time for Aid. Well, the result is that, since that unfortunate day, nobody could follow the “Liga” anymore: we were all banned from his house, regardless of what team we support or our actual participation in the crime. Even worse, Real Madrid has won the “Liga” and Barcelona played very bad for the rest of the season.

There is no justice. Not even for the innocent goats, the only ones who never have fun for Aid.