Posting Only Occasionally

Dear Readers,

The last year has been hectic and at times very traumatic. I left Turkey reluctantly after quitting one of those nightmarish employers that I had heard other foreigners in Turkey warn about online and offline. I faced what I thought my own honesty and professionalism would protect me from: promises, broken promises, lies, incompetence, and skimming off of my pay without explanation. My resignation severed me from students that I was close to and my Turkish boyfriend, who has drowned in his own despair about his future and his country.

Even after I came back in March, the ugliness of what it actually meant working for that school came back in glaring detail when I learned that my British friend and colleague who had tried to hang on and work for those people had suffered a heart attack. Though the boss and his wife cared nothing for his welfare, some of my students showed the kind of compassion and concern that I had gotten used to and which never really came from my boss and his wife, the manager. My poor friend and I had been a team, and he was treated even worse than I had. Throughout the summer, he lived alone in a shabby apartment recovering from surgery on his heart.
I learned last week that they have now reneged on their promise to pay for his operation and has reduced his pay
to about $400 a month. My boss and his wife's chief aim was making money at the expense of their students and the teachers. Neither my students nor my boyfriend wanted me to leave. The experience left me tired, struggling not to be bitter, angry, on the brink of despair, but firm like others who have gone there before to never work in Turkey again.

However, the drama and the trauma of the last year has had a positive effect. Not long after Michael Jackson's death I started writing a book. His death and the all that I had gone through beginning on the day I set foot in Izmit, Turkey on October 3, 2008 made it a fertile time to finally go after my dream of trying to become an author. This is a dream I've had since I was 18. I have been encouraged by professors, family members, and friends. I write nearly everyday now, and I watch and ponder with wonder the evolution of me becoming a writer. I keep a notebook too, and whenever a description or a phrase pops up inside my consciousness, I get out my notebook and write it down. I've read of other writers doing this, and now I do. Most of what is written in my notebook are verbal supplies left for my book.

The freelance writing business has also become an area of study for me since the summer too. I am hoping that I can eventually make a steady income from magazine writing. Then maybe I can move back to Turkey or somewhere in the Near East and make a living with my pen without depending on a Turkish boss.

Since I am trying to edge slowly into the writing world, I will spend less and less time here. I'm not going to let my blog completely die out though. There will be occasion posts, but I don't want to specify any days or dates. On up the road I hope to have my blog linked to my own website along with other examples of my writing.

I have set a date for the completion of my book which is an autobiography and stories of my parent's families. I hope to have it completed and maybe edited by February 2011. The book is not an instrument to get fame or big money, but it is an artistic project, a means of therapy, of asking questions, piecing together a puzzle, understanding myself, my family, and humanity. I am going to go after a real publisher. There will be no self publishing for me.

My book is a quest. Yes, I want to be an author who is paid for her work more than anything in the world. I feel I have a lot to say and share. Nevertheless, I don't think like many in this age of quick monetary gain and scrambles for celebrity. I see things in the tradition of the great and good writers before me. Writing is art, and writing is about life. I live to write. I write to live.

My friend in Qatar has asked me, "Do you want to be a famous writer or a good writer?" I told him, "I want to be a good writer. If fame comes, fine." Fame today often does not mean greatness or worthiness in the society that I live in. I don't want to be a part of that community.

If something inspires me or is very special, I will be posting. Keep checking back.

Interesting Find: Gondolas in Qatar

Gondolas in the Desert from qatar visitor on Vimeo.

Qatar (pronounced a little like cut-TER) is a country in the Middle East that is on the northern border of Saudi Arabia. The country is a peninsula on the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Qatar is an emirate that is ruled by an emir, which in Western terms is similar to a prince. What got me really interested in Qatar, besides the fact that while just about everyone is suffering from the global economic crisis and Qatar is not is a video I found a few weeks ago. The clip is above and was taped inside Qatar's best and most interesting mall: Villagio. One of my blogger friends also lives in Qatar. I asked him some questions about the country also because he has invited me to come there to possibly teach or to just travel around. I am also a fan of Al Jazeera English which comes out of Qatar's capital, Doha (pronounced doe-HA). When I get frustrated with our slack attempts at journalism here at home, I sometimes joke that I have to travel to Turkey to get real news on the Al Jazeera news network which is shown there and which not a Turk I know of will bother to watch. I encouraged my Turkish students to watch it to help with them with their English, but I think that most of them ignored my suggestion. There have been plenty of accusations of bias, but I think Al Jazeera does a much better job at interviews, exposes and documentaries than anything we have here in the US outside of 60 minutes. It is in the same league as the BBC and CNN International.

I asked my friend about Villagio and the most he said about it was that it is the classiest and most expensive mall in Qatar. I learned from my own reading that besides the gondola rides, the mall also has a ceiling that is a replica of the sky. It looks so realistic that you cannot tell if the mall is without a ceiling and if you are truly looking upwards at the sky.

My friend did give me some general information about Qatar. He told me that Qatar now has the world's fastest growing economy and the highest gross domestic product (GDP). Unlike their neighbor, scandalously surreal looking Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and which is experiencing debt woes , Qatar's economy has continued to boom. My friend says that no banks have collapsed unlike our 120 or so here. None of Qatar's building projects have had to be suspended as is the case in Dubai. However, like Dubai, Qatar's close to 2 million residents are mostly foreigners who in their own way aid the growth of the country and its educational system. Most have come to Qatar because of its petroleum and gas industry. Qatar has 13% of the world's gas. The emir of Qatar's second wife, the remarkable Sheika Mozad al-Missned, has worked passionately to promote education and reform in the country. According to my friend, most Qataris in their 20s have studied abroad at universities in the United States, Canada, England, France, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

I also found this video (below) of traditional Qatari music which to me sounds very similar to some forms of traditional African music. Qatar has experienced cross pollination of cultures over the centuries from the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia.



Black Qataris were brought to Qatar a few centuries ago to be work as domestic servants. They have Arabic names. There are some mixed race Qataris with Arab and African lineage. My friend remarked that he thinks their complexions are not attractive like the mellow, coffee and cream brown of say someone biracial like Halle Berry. He says their skin have a bluish or greenish.

Qatari society is a mixture of the traditional and modern, East and West. Many young Qatari men and women go out to nightclubs and drink alcohol. Others are conservative. Many of the veiled women that are seen on the streets and malls of Qatar are not Qatari but Pakistani. My friend says these women wear the veil so they are not looked down upon as low class because of their ethnicity.

There are also Persian Qataris whose ancestors came from Iran. There is often distrust and dislike between Qataris who are Persian and Arab, Shiite and Sunni Muslims respectively. Though many of the Persians are Shiite like the people in Iran, there are some who are Sunni. My friend told me that the Persian Sunnis dislike the Persian Shiites just as vehemently as the Arab dislike the Persians. If this true, it is not surprising. From my travels and being African-American I've seem that people everywhere have some group they dislike, hate, and distrust. Outside the US where skin color is not as big an obstacle in some places, turmoil between peoples usually runs across religious and ethnic lines. Well, humanity for me--who tries to rise above the bigotry--can be tiring.

Notwithstanding, Qatar sounds and looks like a fascinating country. I have read some comments online by expatriates living there and their comments range from Qatar being a little boring because so much of it is newly constructed to it being a nice, peaceful country that they are proud to live in. If it is true that Qataris do not have to pay taxes, then that little bit certainly makes it a very nice place. I would like to visit Qatar someday, inshallah (Arabic for "God willing").

Links to Qatar:
Qatar Visitor
Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Qatari Statistics Authority
Qatari Coins and Rulers

President Obama's Prize

I'm late in posting this because I've been sick with a cold, but my blog is not a current events or political blog. I don't feel that I have to be a slave to posting timely topics. Even though my fascination with politics has gone from minuscule in the last decade, I would never focus only on the political on here. Still I wanted to comment on President Obama being awarded the Nobel Prize. When I went online two Friday mornings ago, I saw two blaring headlines concerning the President being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and NASA having bombed the moon. I was happy that the President had received an award, but at the same time I felt that the award had come too soon. As for NASA, it seemed to me at the time that America bombing the moon was just another outlandish episode proving once again that we has a penchant for bombing. 'What next?' I thought.

President Obama was surprised too about his Nobel. I'm a regular on Twitter now after being a big skeptic for months. On Twitter I also follow the President's account. About his prize he Tweeted a single word that morning, "Humbled."

President Obama is still popular with many, but even with some of us who are fond of him, we are not holding our breathe waiting to see if he will live up to the high ideas he espoused during his campaign. People like me were not the ones with unrealistic expectations of a global Golden Age of political enlightenment bordering on the Utopian. For me, an African-American born during the Civil Rights Movement, recalling exactly where I was when I was 6 and it was reported that Dr. King had been assassinated, and always expecting that Americans would only elect a white, Protestant Christian male, the election of a black man--most seem to forget he's biracial--to the highest political office in the land was in a sublime way, a personal victory for me. I think it was this way for many African-Americans. The unbelievable had happened.

For most of the country the dark, barbaric night of the Bush years had finally passed over and seemed to be followed by a potentially bright sun of hope with rays stretching out to warm America and the rest of the world. But now much of that seems to being going in reverse, and the bad ole days of George W. Bush appear to be with us in a more civil and gracious package. I am not impatiently expecting quick fixes to complex problems that America accumulated for decades, even before Bush the younger, but the wars are still going on with the one on Afghan soil probably about to be escalated. The President seems to be taking a more Republican friendly stance on everything from the wars to Guantanamo to the government's right to capture and hold people before they have even committed an act of terrorism. When he refused to hold those in the Bush administration accountable for war crimes, I began to grow frustrated and feel disappointed in him. Since President Obama came to office racism has burst onto the national scene in new if not clever disguises from both whites and blacks. It all makes me very uncomfortable.

So much seems to be tarnished now in and for America. The rot, our moral, political, ethical, and spiritual gangrene appears to be irreversible. The President does not seem to be the hero and enlightened statesman that so many hoped he would be. The good oratory and idealism is just not enough especially when people are dying.

Right now I'm reading the President's autobiography, Dreams From My Father. I would rank the prose in that book as high as that of the African-American literary greats: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin. I see myself in the cerebral parts of his story, the alienation, the loneliness, the searching for an identity and an existence beyond stifling American individualism, suburban life, and the grand mania and malaise of a materialistic society. The President seems to have changed a lot from the serious and troubled young man he was when he penned the book. I want this man to be more than a deliverer of great speeches with the aim of pumping up the populace for about 45 minute, and after that he and everyone go back to our hackneyed way of existing in this country. There needs to be real change in America. So many are just tired now and going through the motions it seems, putting on a facade.

The Nobel Prize Committee has given the reasons for its decision to give President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. I will not discuss their reasons here. As I looked at the responses the morning that the award was announced, the Tweets on Twitter were mixed. What stood out to me as I looked at some articles were the reactions in Kabul, Jerusalem, and Baghdad such as in this report in the UK's Guardian: Barack Obama's Nobel Prize Greeted with Cynism, Surprise, and Optimism.

Even though I'm African-American, I cannot look with complete jubilation at all the President does or promises to do. A wise person tries to use common sense and utilizes critical thinking. I'm not blind follower. More and more the President is only symbolic to me because of the struggles and deaths of others in the past like Dr. King. These brave people who were willing to die for justice and equality helped in their own way to bring about the day that President Obama was elected. He should not forget this. We should not forget this either. Despite my disillusioned tone, I still like the President and leave a little room to be idealistic enough to hope he will become sufficiently strong to go against the grain of American domestic and foreign policy. I hope that his promise of being a reformer will come about, but it takes more than great rhetorical skills to be a reformer. It takes courage.

Barack Hussein Obama has been the president for less than a year now. He has a little over three years remaining to have a substantive glitter. Sadly I see another Jimmy Carter in the making too. I feel that President Obama is a decent man like President Carter was with a similar serenity. Still, politics is a dirty outfit to be in. So who knows? All of us will have to wait and see.

Links:
Nobel Prize Awarded to Barack Obama
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009

Under the Bombs

My town’s public library hosts free independent films from around the world every Thursday evening. Back in the summer the award winning docudrama Under the Bombs was shown, but I missed my opportunity to see it in the library’s auditorium. Later I checked it out since the library makes the all films they screen available on DVD for the public to take home and enjoy.

When Lebanon was 10 days into a summer war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, Lebanese director Philippe Aractingi had the bravery to go out and film the bombs falling, the explosions, and the devastation that affected his country. His filming of the war led him to create a fictitious story around the horrors he saw. So Under the Bombs was formed.

Under the Bombs is more of an anti-war than an anti-Israeli film. The film begins with shots of bombs falling on Lebanon. The explosions and their ominous flashes are more ugly and frightening than any Hollywood special effect. I had to wonder how anyone could survive those monstrous bombs. This film contains raw realism and is not for the faint of heart or the sentimental. No dismembered or crushed bodies are shown, but the devastation of war is shown in its entirety, collapsed and bombed out buildings, broken bridges, children and adults forced into refugee shelters, the human anguish.

In the midst of the devastation an attractive Lebanese woman has come back to her homeland from Dubai via Turkey. Her name is Zelna. Because of marital problems she sent her son Karim to Lebanon shortly before the outbreak of the war to live with her sister who resides in a village in south Lebanon. Now she has come back to frantically search for her son. Zelna is a Shia Muslim.

Zelna arrives at the Port of Beirut during the ceasefire. She has a difficult time getting a taxi driver who is brave enough and greedy enough to drive her to south Lebanon. Finally she comes upon Tony, a big eyed squirrely fellow, who is willing to drive her. Tony has the hustler instinct, and he’s immediately attracted to Zelna. He is also a Christian. Right off the bat he starts to flirt with Zelna, but she is dignified and all business. Zelna lets Tony know that she is annoyed by his fresh behavior.

The film becomes an odyssey of Zelna’s search for her son, and how both Zelna and Tony change over time as they journey through Lebanon’s beautiful but destroyed landscape. At first Tony is concerned only with the money and whether he might be able to get Zelna in bed, but the journey changes both of them. Going from one devastated area of Lebanon to another, stopping at refugee shelters, talking to individuals, this road trip starts to transform Zelna and Tony. Zelna unleashes her worry and grief about her son, her marriage, and the war. She tells Tony about her miscarriages and the son she eventually had. She briefly talks about when she learned that her husband had cheated on her. Even though she has a husband that betrayed her, Zelna still calls back and forth to Dubai to keep him posted about whether she might be getting closer to finding their son. Tony begins to see Zelna as more than just a female he might go lucky with; he opens up about his own personal life, his son, and the mother of his son. He tells Zelna of his dream of immigrating to Germany. He even tells of his brother who lives in Israel. Zelna’s and Tony’s relationship evolves into something than just about money or the sexual. It becomes a bond of respect. Zelna’s quest to find her boy becomes Tony’s quest too. The flirtatious banter evaporates, and Tony vows that he is not going to part ways with Zelna until they find her son.

I won’t tell anymore about the movie’s plot. I will just let you check it out.

Under the Bombs is nothing like a Hollywood film. Only the two actors that play Zelna and Tony are professionals. Philippe Aractingi used actual civilians who had survived the war to flesh out the story. Everything is played out in the middle of the ruins of war. Under the Bombs shows that modern warfare is merciless to all, especially civilians. Those who start wars, the politicians and demagogues often go unhurt. It’s the population who just want to go about their daily lives that are killed and displaced when the bombs start falling and the troops move in. The film shows that war does not discriminate by class or religion. Humanity should be ashamed that we have reached a point where war does not just destroy the lives of soldiers as in the olden days of war, but war is now a catastrophe for civilians; it kills the innocents.

It’s rare that Hollywood comes up with anything but escapism. I’m happy that at least there are foreign directors that are serious enough and not so driven by money that are brave enough to produce thought provoking, artistic, and creative films. Under the Bombs is a film that might truly make you think and rethink your attitude about war.

Links to Under the Bombs:

Official Website of Under the Bombs

Under the Bombs Wikipedia Article

Where’d My Lovely Template Go?

For about two months or so this summer I had a lovely template for my blog. If you may recall it was blue and white with lilies at the top of the page. Now you may wonder why I changed one that was beautiful to this one that is just a jazzed up version of your standard Blogger template. The format is the same as Blogger’s Minima but a floral arrangement was added in. I don’t remember from which website I got the blue and white lily template, but one day several weeks ago, I happened to check my blog and my blog’s template had vanished and all that was left in its place was the Photobucket logo, the words “Account Inactive,” and what I guess is the name of the template’s designer with more about the account no longer being open for 90 days. The other day I saw that the same had happened to Iraq Blog Count’s template.

When I first saw that my template was gone, my first thought was that someone had hacked my account. Then I started thinking that wasn’t probably so because the texts of my posts were still visible, and I could still log into my Blogger account. Passwords and everything else were in tact except the template I was so proud of. I didn’t know that templates could just up and disappear. I thought that once a template was posted on a site it became the property of that site. But I guess that if the designer of the template has closed his or her account, the template can no longer be accessed.

For me, it is so nice to be able to change my blog template every once in a while. Once a year is enough for me. Hunting down a template that I like can take some time. I just wish Blogger had more choices than the standard ones they offer. They're pretty bland to me.

There are a lot of nice templates out there for Blogger, but some of them do not work. I am not a web designer, though I wish I were. When a template I like does not work, that is the time when I wish I could just go in and find out what is wrong with its setup, work on the codes, right the errors, and then post the template I hunger for to my blog. Most of the templates I have tried to apply to my blog do not work.

I finally found this template on Pyzam.com. Pyzam has hundreds of templates for Blogger with various themes. There is something for almost everybody. I use the Pyzam template now on both of my blogs. The problem with Pyzam, however, is that the Blogger template formats are not so imaginative. All of the templates offered are just Blogger’s Minima layout with colorful designs thrown in. My templates for my blogs are pretty and fit my personality and the themes of my blogs, but I wish I could find more innovative and elaborate templates. I guess for that, I will have to get my own webpage.

Three Historical Cross Dressers: Part 3, Marina the Monk

This final installment will deal with a young woman who was the total opposite of the other female cross dressers that I have written about who were both "Amazons" and in the case of Catalina de Erauso sometimes exhibited unsavory conduct.

Few would believe that there was a Christian saint who was a cross dresser, but Mariam who was later called St. Marina the Monk was such. There is no exact date, but St. Marina was born in either the 5^th or 6^th century in northern Lebanon. St. Marina was the daughter of a wealthy Christian gentleman. Her mother died when she was a little girl leaving her with a father whom she developed a very close and loving bond. Ancient and medieval Christians had a very different out look about the world than most modern, particularly western Christians do. Unlike us, they thought vertically, not horizontally. In other words, their focus was on their religious faith and God, whereas our view is very much tied to the here and now and our existence on this earth. Because of this outlook, Mariam’s father decided that once he had found a suitable husband for his daughter, he would retire to a monastery to become a monk. Mariam was also very pious just like her father and was not interested in marriage, wanting to live the contemplative and ascetic life of prayer and fasting. She cut her hair like a boy. Her father seeing that she was not going to be swayed took her with him to the Monastery of Qannoubine in Lebanon. Other versions of the story of Mariam and her father say that they were admitted to a monastery near Alexandria, Egypt.

Mariam took the name of Marinus and resided with her father in the same cell in the monastery. Father and daughter lived there together in prayer and contemplation for the next ten years or so until her father died at an old age. After his death she continued to live the way she had with none of the other occupants of the monastery suspecting that she was really a female. It was noted by some that her voice was rather high pitched for a man, but it was just thought that was it was because of her fasting and extreme devout living.

One day the monastery’s superior sent Marinus and some other monks to the nearest town on some business where they lodged at an inn. There are about three versions of the story about what happened there. One version goes that the inn keeper had a flirtatious and immoral daughter who had been having a sexual liaison with a soldier. She discovered that she was pregnant and after seeing Marinus and maybe liking “him” better than the soldier, did what some women have always done when they were caught off guard by a pregnancy: create a fiction and claim that a guy they like best is the baby’s father. A second version of the story says that the girl made advances toward Marinus, and “he” rejected her. Later when she discovered that she was pregnant, she falsely accused Marinus of seducing her.

Sometime later, the inn keeper went to the monastery and told the superior what his daughter said that Marinus had done. He raged and accused all the monks of being hypocrites. Of course, the superior and the others were shocked. The superior tried to pacify the angry man and then sent him on his way. Then the superior called for Marinus and demanded to know if the accusations against “him” were true. It is not known why Marinus admitted to having an illicit relationship with the inn keeper’s daughter and did not reveal that she was a woman, but my guess is that she was looking down the road into the future. What was going to happen to the baby born out of wedlock? It was likely that the child would have a very difficult time because in eastern societies then as now and in Christian societies up until the last few generations illegitimacy was frowned upon. The woman who was unmarried and her child were usually treated as outcasts. Perhaps Marinus felt she had a moral and humane responsibility to accept the child. She also may have felt as a highly devout Christian that she should not fight against the will of God and should accept whatever hardship and ridicule that might come her way. Maybe she felt that this experience might be God’s way of teaching her a great lesson that would make her an even better person.

The superior listened to Marinus’ confession and then banished her from the monastery. Marinus was now homeless. One version of her story says that she hung around outside the monastery’s gates begging. Some of the monks would sneak food out to her. A second version goes that she lived near some shepherds who felt sorry for her and would share their food and milk with her.

The baby that the inn keeper’s daughter had given birth to was a little boy. The inn keeper brought him to Marinus one day during her exile, dropped off the infant, and left them without looking back.

Some of the monks at the monastery begged the superior to allow Marinus to come back to live with them. They wanted him to show Marinus some mercy and forgiveness. He finally gave in and permitted Marinus to move back inside and to bring her child too. She had been homeless for four years. The superior did not make it easy for Marinus though. Marinus had to do penance for her sins by working very hard and taking on many tasks around the monastery. Marinus continued to grow in her faith. Being raised in the monastery, her son even grew up to be a monk.

St. Marinus died some time later, by some accounts in 508. When her body was being prepared for burial it was discovered that she was a woman. Shocked and guilty over the way Marinus had been treated, the superior and other monks prayed over her body and asked God’s forgiveness. One legend says that the bells of the monastery rang out on their own when Marinus died.

What happened to the inn keeper and his daughter, you might ask. Did they get what was coming to them? One story says that the superior sent for the inn keeper to tell him that Marinus could not have corrupted his daughter because Marinus was actually a woman. When the inn keeper learned this he came to the monastery and expressed his deep remorse for his accusations and actions. His daughter was said to feel so much guilt that for the rest of her days she would visit Marinus’ tomb where she would weep and pray for forgiveness. Despite their bad behavior, the inn keeper and his daughter was very different from many people now who blame the victims they had a hand in victimizing and who never show any remorse for their wrong deeds. But the characters who had a part in the life of St. Marina lived in an age that is very alien to our own.

There is an interesting story about what happened to the village where the inn was located in which all of St. Marina’s troubles began. Tourza is the name of the village in northern Lebanon where the inn keeper and his daughter lived. Legend has it that Tourza remained impoverished and was destroyed by several earthquakes over the centuries because of the sins of the inn keeper and his daughter.

St. Marina the Monk is venerated as a saint in the Maronite Church of Lebanon, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Coptic Churches.

Some sources say that the story of St. Marina may only be a legend. After all, cross dressing devout Christians is a little out in left field, but in life the highly unusual sometimes takes place. I would like to think the story is true with its emphasis on the love of a father and his daughter and on the daughter who kept her head up patiently through so much suffering and humiliation.

Links about St. Marina the Monk:

Qannoubin Valley
St. Marina the Monk Gallery

Three Historical Cross Dressers: Part 2, Catalina de Erauso

When I first contemplated doing this series I had planned to write about Amandine Aurora Lucile Dupin better known as George Sand, but I later decided to focus on one of my recent discoveries, a cross dresser who was not particularly savory or admirable, but who led a an intensely picaresque life.

Catalina de Erauso was born in 1592 in the Basque Country of Spain. She was a member of a family of military men, her father and brothers all being soldiers. When she was four she was placed in a convent with the idea that she would take holy vows once she came of age, but at the age of fifteen Catalina escaped from the convert after having a heated confrontation with one of the nuns which resulted in Catalina receiving a severe beating. Though it was common during that period for some families to hand a daughter over as a gift to the church, I have to wonder whether Catalina was so unruly at home that perhaps her parents felt that having nuns raise her might be the wisest route. Was she running all over the place trying to beat up her siblings?

After fleeing the convert, Catalina began to wear male attire. She created her first outfit from her nun’s habit that she herself sewed together. For a short period she worked as a page, but when she became confident enough that her male impersonation was convincing, she decided to hit the road or rather the high seas to the New World.

On arriving in Panama, Catalina became an enlisted soldier under the name of Alonso Diaz Ramirez de Guzman. Now she had begun to seriously take on a male persona and a highly macho one at that. She became a brawler, thief, outlaw, mercenary, and even to a certain degree a womanizer. Gay and lesbian studies pay honor to her as a hero even though it is not fully clear if she was indeed a full blown lesbian. She admitted that her tastes were always for pretty faces. Several times she even ended up in fights with men over women who were attracted to her. Still after all these centuries there is no concrete proof that she was a serious lesbian.

Catalina de Erauso seemed to thrive on danger and conflict. She got into several duels with men and fought bravely in battle even when she was wounded. In one duel in which she was the second to one of the duelists, she got into a fight and killed her own brother who was the second to the other duelist. She had served under him as a soldier during the Indian wars in Chile. She knew from the beginning when she first met him that Captain Miguel de Erauso was her brother, but he never suspected that she was his younger sister. Being a compulsive hothead, Catalina had not intended to kill her own brother, and she felt great remorse and shock at doing so. After this she deserted the army and fled to Peru with two companions. While crossing the Andes into that country, her two friends perished and she almost died as well. However, she was rescued and nursed back to health by the widow of a rancher. The widow took a liking to Catalina and believing that she was a man thought Catalina might be a good match for her unattractive daughter. Catalina had no intention of marrying the girl, but underhandedly agreed to accept a portion of the girl’s dowry. Taking it, she slipped away abandoning the girl.

In another incident which took place in Cuzco, Catalina got into a street brawl, was gravely wounded, but managed to kill her opponent. Believing that she was dying, she received the last rites and prepared to meet her maker. She did not die though, and four months later escaped Cuzco with the law on her trail. She continued to get into all sorts of misadventures and was even sentenced to be hanged. While on the way to the gallows she shouted at the executioner, “You, drunk! Put it on right, or don’t put it on at all. I’ve got my hands full with these priests!” A last minute pardon saved her.

Catalina continued her exploits until the law finally caught up with her. She escaped once again and told a bishop her true identity. An examination by midwives proved that she was still a virgin, so she was admitted into a convent under the patronage of the bishop. She remained there for two and a half years.

Restless, she struck out for Europe where she was received with acclaim, her reputation having preceded her. She met the king of Spain who gave her a pension. Then she went on to Italy to have an audience with the Pope who gave her a dispensation or exemption from the law against allowing women to wear men’s clothing. An Italian writer who met her wrote this,

"On the fifth of June the Basque lieutenant Catalina de Erauso came to my house for the first time, having come from Spain and just arrived in Rome. Her compatriot Father Rodrigo de San Miguel was my friend and introduced me to her. Tall and sturdy of stature, masculine in appearance, she has no more bosom than a little girl. She told me she had applied I don't know what method to make it disappear. I believe it was a plaster administered by an Italian; the effect was painful but much to her liking. She is not bad looking, but well worn by the years. She has the look of a Spanish gentleman and wears her sword as big as life, tightly belted. Only by her hands can one tell that she is a woman as they are full and fleshy, although large and strong, and occasionally gesture effeminately."

The Lieutnant Nun as she was now called returned to the New World once again. She settled in Mexico where she took to transporting clothes from place to place using mules and the help of some black people.

Catalina de Erauso died in 1650. An autobiography supposedly written by her appeared in 1626, but the oldest manuscript of it only dates back as far the late 1700s. The autobiography can be purchased at Amazon.com here.

Three Historical Cross Dressers: Part 1, Nadezhda Durova

This is the first in a three part series about three women who defied the conventions of their times to wear male attire. Their decision to don men’s clothing had perhaps nothing to do with their own sexuality from a gay prospective. To them, wearing male clothing was liberation from the restraints of their time.

For a long time, I have loved stories about historical women who decided to play the male in order to have a fuller experience of life. Two movie musicals, Yentl and Victor Victoria, about women who decided to be cross dressers were hits when I was a university student. I was absolutely enthralled by them. The protagonists in both movies were helped along by male mentors who knowingly or unknowingly inspired them to strike out into life as young men with the hope of wider horizons. Early last year I even did a post on my old blog about the legend of a female pope which can be accessed here. Even more years back I bought a novel set in the 19th century called Ruslan about a beautiful and intelligent young woman of the Russian nobility who is left penniless by her spendthrift father. After unsuccessfully trying to capture for matrimony a politician that she strongly admires, she decides to throw caution to the winds, cut off her hair, and join the army where she ends up having, of course, many adventures. I don’t know if Barbara Scrupski, the author of Ruslan, took the life of Nadezhda Durova as her example or not, but maybe she did.

Nadezhda Durova (1783-1866) was the first woman to became a soldier in the Russian army, and she was one of the first Russians to have written an autobiography. Nadya Durova was born in Kiev and was the daughter of a Ukrainian woman from a wealthy landowning background and a Russian army officer. Most of the early months and years of her life were spent in army camps with her father and other troops because at that time Russian soldiers were allowed to take their families along with them. Nadya almost did not make it out of infancy, not because she was being transported from place to place at such a young age, but because her mother who was very disappointed that she had had a girl and perhaps suffering from what we call post partum depression, threw her out of the window of a moving carriage one day. It was a miracle that Nadya wasn’t killed. Horrified her father took over the care of his daughter.

As Nadya grew up she retained a close bond with her father, but felt a strong dislike for her mother who was not only unkind and tyrannical towards her, but who also constantly lamented around her the sorry condition of all of the female sex. Listening to her mother’s repeated rants, Nadya began to dislike anything having to do with female existence, everything from housework on. As a small girl she had shown that she did not care for girly things like dolls, because her favorite toy had been an unloaded pistol.

Unhappy at home because of her mother, Nadya did what girls and young women have done for maybe centuries, she quickly accepted a proposal of marriage to get out of the house. She married and later had a son. Some stories claim that she later abandoned her husband and son to run off with a Cossack officer. No doubt somewhere along the line she decided to pose as a young man and enter the Russian army.

Incognito as a young soldier, Nadya Durova showed amazing bravery and even foolhardiness on the battlefield. She barely escaped death a few times and proved to be an asset to her follow comrades. They developed a lot of respect for what appeared to be a young beardless boy in his teens. Her cover was nearly blown at times, and rumors began to circulate that there was an Amazon fighting in the army’s ranks. The tales of an Amazon reached the ears of Czar Alexander I who insisted on having her brought to him for a meeting. He got his wish and was impressed by Nadya so much that he awarded her honors and let her know that he wanted her to remain in the army even though he knew that she was a female. The Czar gave her his full support with even a new surname, Alexandrov, a variation of his own name. One of a few male pseudonyms that Nadya went under was Alexander Andreevich Alexandrov.

Nadya Durova fought in two battles during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. When her mother died, her father finally was able to convince her to come back home to help him run the family estate, so Nadya retired from the army in 1816 with the rank of captain. After years of excitement, adventure, and risk taking, life in the town where she lived was probably unbearably dull for her. To overcome her boredom, Nadya began to write. Her brother Vasily introduced her to Russia’s poet the great Alexander Pushkin (see my blog post about him here on my old blog) who liked her writings so much that he had some of them published in his literary magazine. He also encouraged Nadya to publish as a memoir of the journals that she had kept about her life in the military. Her autobiography were entitled The Calvary Maiden. Nadya went on to publish four novels as well.

Though she had retired from the military, Nadezhda Durova continued to dress as a man until the end of her life. Though some said that she viewed women unfavorably and she was even teased about being afraid of women by her fellow soldiers when she was in the army, Nadya became an early advocate of women’s rights. She died in 1866 at the age 83. She was laid to rest in male attire and with full military honors.

This following link is an excerpt from Nadezhda Durova's memoir The Calvary Maiden:

The Russian Campaign as Seen by a Female Russian Soldier

Romance on Brief Hiatus

Hey, I just started back blogging again! Well, my laptop is sick; apparently it has been rather infirm for about two months at least and needed repairs. The speed has been painfully slow as if my computer was straining, trying to go from webpage to webpage. This was even the case if I remained on a site for awhile. Scrolling up or down was difficult. I took my computer to the shop a couple of times, but the guy who waited on me had poor customer service skills, and he went on to blame my internet service as the reason why my surfing online was going at a snail’s pace even though I have broad band. The problems accumulated with me even having my laptop’s hard drive replaced for free since my computer is still on warranty.

I am going to finally put my computer in the shop tomorrow, and they will ship it off. I won’t have internet access for the next 2 to 3 weeks unless I go to the public library and use the computers there. I will go there, but not to blog. I prefer to blog in the privacy of my own home, so I won’t be posting for a few weeks unfortunately. I will be back though once “the world in a box” (my name for a computer) has been cured of whatever ails it.

In closing, my interests may seem to be almost strictly intellectual, but I also like some pop culture. Last week American and world pop culture lost two stars, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. I had a crush on Michael back in his Jackson Five days; I was a little girl then. I watched Farrah on Charlies Angels when I was in middle school, and I just loved her flippy (sic) tresses. It was expected that Farrah wouldn’t make it because of the cancer she was battling, but Michael’s death was an earth shaking and crushing shock for many worldwide even though there had been rumors online in the last year that he was dying. Now two iconic figures of 20th century pop culture and favorites of my childhood are gone. I know I am getting older…

Below are tiny tributes to them.

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)


Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009)

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Books

I wonder if it is so in other places, but Iran is certainly in the news here this week because of recent elections and my country’s long time obsession, without real knowledge, with that country. The full story is not being put out there on TV, of course, nor I doubt completely online either. Countries like Iran are moored far more on complexities than the American media can grasp, and I wouldn’t entirely trust the bloggers either because each blogger, me included, has an agenda and a certain point of view that may be reliable or unreliable, biased and unbiased. I am not going to go into an enigma like Iran here and waste my or anyone else’s time. I will just wish the citizens of that country the best, especially the young who may not have become too hopeless or cynical as of yet.

Iran did come into my life through the form of two incredible books that were bestsellers a few years ago, Persepolis I and II by Marjane Satrapi. I tend to tackle bestsellers long after they have faded from the public’s memory. I bought the first Persepolis when it was a bestseller and was only sold in hardcover. I recently read my copy and was very moved by this graphic novel that was the first of its kind that I had read since I was a child. After reading Persepolis I, I then checked out Persepolis II at the public library.

The Persepolis books are the autobiographies of novelist and illustrator Marjane Satrapi (on the left and the second below on the left) coming of age in Iran during the final years of the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi and the early years of the Islamic Revolution. They cover her living through and surviving her country’s war with Iraq, her being shipped off to school in Europe, her return to Iran, her marriage, her university years, and her departure once again for Europe after the failure of her marriage.

Marji, as family and friends call her, is an only child and is raised by parents who are free thinkers. She learns interesting things about herself, her family, and her country. Out of the blue one day, her parents tell her that she is the great granddaughter of one of the emperors of Iran. She realizes with glee that her grandfather would have been a prince. However, she is told that her grandfather had turned his back on his imperial breeding and had become a communist causing the Shah’s father to confiscate his property and imprison him. Also years before an uncle of her favorite uncle had proclaimed himself president of a short-lived separatist state called East Azarbaijan. That uncle was overthrown, jailed, and executed. The shah had failed to get her favorite uncle who was a communist, but he too is finally arrested and then executed during the Revolution. Marji sees that her family is not immune to the dangerous politics of Iran and that they are also tied to that land’s history.

Marji’s parents send her away to school in Europe because they fear that her sometimes too loose and forthright tongue is going to eventually land her in jail or worse. She attends high school in Austria where she becomes a part of a clique of European outcasts. Before she is taken in by this group she becomes ashamed of being Iranian and tries to hide her identity until bigoted comments about Iranians causes her to re-embrace her ethnicity. The group of outcasts adopts her because she had actually experienced war. She goes through what might be a traumatic time for some while living in Europe, but she pulls through with humor and a stubborn determination to move forward and not become bitter.

Begging her parents to never ask her all that exactly went on during her final months as a high school student in Austria, she returns home. For a time she drifts, taking on odd jobs. She meets a guy who becomes her second boyfriend. This relationship causes more controversy with some of her school mates than it does with her parents because one day Marji is quite blunt with one of her more conservative friends that she takes birth control pills not to regulate her periods but because she is sleeping with her boyfriend. Marji and her boyfriend marry despite the quiet reservations of her parents who really do not think the two are suited to each other and also because her mother feels that Marji is too young. The marriage starts to crack almost from the beginning, but Marji pushes on going against and laughing at the hypocritical system that polices her country. Behind closed doors her family and friends continue to live their lives in a way that is against the laws of the Islamic republic. The young people date, party, make love, wear fashionable western clothes, and drink alcohol. They refuse restricted lives. In the gloom of a totalitarian state they grab for any happiness that they can find.

At the end of the Persepolis II as in I, Marjane Satrapi leaves for a life in Europe. Though she does not fit in completely in either place, she decides that

Europe must be her home. There she can be free to truly find herself.

The Persepolis books are an emotional pair which shows all that is terrible, tragic, and humorous in life. No matter how difficult things get, the message of these books seem to be that one must go on to see what the next chapter in life will be. Never allow circumstances or people to break your spirit and lust for life.

After reading Persepolis I and II, I really wanted to see the award winning film based on the two books. I tried to check it out at the library, but someone else already had it. It was put on hold for me, but I have yet to receive a notice that I can come and pick up the DVD. Maybe there are other people ahead of me waiting for the film.

I've looked at the preview. Yay! I can’t wait!

Links:

Persepolis Film Website

Excerpt from Persepolis I

Persian Fashion and the Origins of Islamic Wear for Women

Iran used to be known as Persia. The people were known as Persians and still are depending on whom you are talking to in the Middle East. The Iranians are a people who are proud of their long history.

On the news this week I saw young people dressed and looking a lot more westernized than many others here would have probably expected. I can’t remember exactly where, but I read not too long ago that the burka, that is worn in Afghanistan, and some other garments that some women wear in Islamic countries are Byzantine in origin. What is now called the burka and is valued by many as a symbol of oppression and repression was actually worn centuries ago by wealthy Byzantine women. What is now the burka was then a status symbol. Islamic culture later adopted items like the veil and the burka from the Byzantines and other sources.

The fascinating subject of Persian and Islamic fashion can be read about in this article that I discovered this week: Persian Dress Through the Ages.

Links:
Historical Perspectives on Islamic Dress

My Favorite Historical Authors

I am a history addict. I fell in love with history while growing up. I loved to play around with the Britannica Junior and Collier’s encyclopedias in our house. When I wanted to escape from the stresses and disappointments of my young life, my drug of choice was reading about some historical person or about some country or its culture. Most of the books I buy now or check out from the library are historical nonfiction. In the last decade I have turned my attention more to trying to find books on Near Eastern history and cultures. I still pay attention to my first love, however, which is European history.

Three of my favorite authors of European history are Antonia Fraser, John Julius Norwich, and Henri Troyat.

Lady Antonia Fraser is a British author and the wife of the late Harold Pinter, who was a Noble Prize winning playwright. I especially love her first book that was written in the late 60s about Mary Queen of Scots. Her historical works have a literary complexity to them but are not boring. She often goes into the psyche of her subjects. Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, was based on Antonia Fraser’s book Marie Antoinette: The Journey.

Viscount John Julius Norwich began pursuing a career as an author after leaving the British Foreign Service. He also has a daughter with one of the former wives of American director John Huston.
I have an intense fascination for the Byzantine Empire because of Lord Norwich’s trilogy, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, Byzantium: The Apogee, and Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. Because of this energetic and occasionally humorous group of books, I now think that Rome in the East was more fascinating than the Rome of the West. The Byzantium trilogy is a quick read, almost like three fast paced, exciting novels. The lives of all the Byzantine Emperors are examined. John Julius Norwich admits that he does not write for academia but more for the general public. In this way he succeeds in actually making history come alive.

Of my three favorites, Henry Troyat is deceased. His background is also the most exotic in the group. He is listed as a French author, but he was actually born in Russia. The name he was given at birth by his Armenian parents was Levon Aslan Torossian. He was also of German, Russian, and Georgian lineage. Being a Turcophile (admirer of things Turkish) it is very surprising to me that his middle birth name was actually Turkish. Aslan, translated into English, is “lion.” This is especially surprising since the Turks and the Armenians have long been at each other’s throats and were particularly so just after 1911 when Troyat was born. But the complexities of the Near East… Henri Troyat’s family fled Russia to escape the Revolution. He became a prolific writer with a number of his histories dealing with Russian rulers and literary figures. I especially liked his biographies of Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great. Like John Julius Norwich’s works that I have read, I can say that these two also are quick reads and are written with a dramatic flair like a novel.

If you are a history lover you should try out the works of these three writers. If you are not, try them out anyway. You might like them.

Links:
Official Website of John Julius Norwich

The Telegraph's Interview of John Julius Norwich

Official Website of Antonia Fraser

My Favorite Photos of Presidents

I recently heard that some reporter referred to President Obama as “God.” Though I admire him, I wouldn’t go so far as even calling him a messiah as some of those who love or disparage him does. I do think he has the demeanor and stateliness of a king, however. I admit to liking it when leaders have a certain grandeur about them. Also I like it when they show their human side too. Here are three of my favorite candid photos of leaders past and present.

John F. Kennedy claps and his children dances.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president of Turkey, swings.
Barack Obama lets the little son of one of his staffers check to see if his new “Obama haircut” feels like the president’s.

Afro-Turks

A few years ago while teaching in a language school in Istanbul, Turkey I had a student named Omer in my beginners English class. He was tall, lanky, handsome, and dark. He closely resembled Adolfo Quinones (below) who was in the 1980s movie Breakin’ and who was also a regular on Soul Train before then. I asked Omer one day which of his parents were dark, he said, “My mother black. My father yellow.” Ole Omer (he was only 19) was a very good student. One of my colleagues told me that he meant that his mother was black and his father was blonde.

The subject of Afro-Turks or Turks of African ancestry is not an easy topic to get information about in Turkey. There are three apparent reasons for this. Most Turks are fairly colorblind. As a friend once said to me, “There are no black or white Turks here. There are only Turks.” Also in Turkey, every citizen is classified under the appellation of “Turk” whether they are truly that ethnically or not. The final reason is that many Turks have little or no knowledge of Afro-Turks.

The Ottoman Empire which lasted from 1453 to 1923 brought in a lot of slaves. Ottoman slavery also included not only Africans but Europeans and others as well. Slaves could sometimes rise above their station in the Ottoman hierarchy. The Chief Black Eunuch was the third most powerful man in the empire. His position was basically a repeat of the role of a number of eunuchs who held positions of power in the Byzantine imperial government.

Black slaves in Turkey often were domestic servants, though some had trades such as being metal workers or field hands. As a former employer told me, “Many black people lived in the palace (Topkapi Palace), and many were soldiers in the Ottoman army.” Here is a painting by French painter Jean-Leon Gerome of a black bashi-bazouk.

Some wealthy Ottoman Turks even adopted some African children into their families. Ayse Bircan is an Afro-Turk. She is also on my Facebook friends list. Ms. Bircan authored a short autobiographical essay about the history of her family and her life which was included in an international anthology called Daughters of Africa. She told how she never encountered racism while growing up in Istanbul, but how her father educated her and her siblings about the disease by telling them what he had learned about the struggles of blacks in America. Her great grandfather on her father’s side was from some unknown African country. He was adopted as a child by a wealthy Turkish man who spotted him while on the Haj, the pilgrimage to the Arabian city of Mecca which devout Muslims take. The Turk took her great grandfather with him to Turkey and raised him as his son.

A few years ago in Istanbul I met a big, robust woman who was rather tall with a thick mane of dark brown hair and thick Angelina Jolie lips while visiting a neighbor. After telling me that her English was not too good, she told me a little about her background. She was the child of a Turkish father and a Greek mother. I was amazed that such a young person would still exist in Turkey considering that most of what was left of the large and ancient Greek community of Turkey emigrated during the early 60s with only a few old Greeks staying behind. She looked like she might be in her 30s. She told me something else that was interesting. Noticing my short, curly Afro she remarked, “My grandfather had hair just like yours. He came from Crete. Do you know Crete? I think we probably have some African blood.” I have learned that just at the advent of the Turkish republic, blacks came to Turkey from the island of Crete. Some Afro-Turks say that some of their grandparents who came from there spoke Greek.

Blatant and mean spirited racism is rare against Afro-Turks. The closest to out right racism that some of them experience is that some Turks dislike them because they think they are Arabs. Otherwise, Turks who do see Afro-Turks view them with amazement, curiosity, and a drop of superstition with a positive twist including some slight ignorance without mean spiritedness. This is an excerpt from an article published in the Turkish newspaper Zaman, May 11, 2008.

Ayşe Sözer, a young Afro-Turk, says that Turkish society does not have a racist approach, but that sometimes the Afro-Turk community does experience “exaggerated interest” and social discrimination from society.

“I am asked many odd questions; for example, some ask if I get whiter by taking baths. Sometimes people stare at me and end up tripping or bumping into a pole. I have learned to not get angry at people, but when I was at the university, my roommate left our dorm room because she said she was afraid to live with someone that is black,” Sözer says.

Sometimes people have a hard time believing that Afro-Turks are Turks. On one occasion, Sözer was shopping in Denizli and the shopkeeper, mistaking her for a tourist speaking in perfect Turkish, tried to complement her by saying she speaks Turkish better than him, a native Turk.

Locals in the Aegean region also have some superstitious beliefs about “black people.” Some believe that if they see a black person and pinch the person next to them, their wishes will come true. Sözer recalled one case in which two ladies pinched each other upon seeing her. She was understandably upset. “I told the ladies that if they really wanted their wishes to come true, I also had to pinch both of them! They accepted and I pinched them very hard,” she says, laughing.

Another superstition some hold is that the kiss of a black person can bring luck. “When I was small, I was asked to kiss many girls because there was this superstition that if a girl does not get kissed by a small African child, she would not find a husband.”

Afro-Turks were extremely excited about the election of Barack Obama as president. They felt that one of their own had been elected since Obama’s father was an African. Here are some celebrating his inauguration. The banner says that they love the president very much.

It is not known exactly how many Afro-Turks live in Turkey. Some estimates go as high as 3,000,000 to as low as 800,000. Some of them have been absorbed into the population so much by intermarriage that some Turks that do not appear to be of African ancestry are actually part Afro-Turk. The majority of Afro-Turks live in the Aegean provinces of Mugla, Izmir, and Aydin. Some also live in the Mediterranean region of Antalya and east in Adana. One of my former students from the city of Adana told me that he was surprised one day when he saw some black people in his city. He asked about them and were told that they were Turks whose ancestors had been brought there about two centuries before from Ethiopia.

Though Turkey lost a lot of its ethnic vibrancy because of the population exchanges of the early part of the last century, the Turks themselves are a diverse people who are extremely mixed ethnically and racially. I can see this in their diverse appearances. Though many would probably not admit it, some have told me that “We are a mixed race of people. The Turks here now are nothing like the original Turks.” I am happy that people from Africa were added to the mix.

Links:

Afro-Turks Meet to Celebrate Obama Inauguration

Turks With African Ancestors Want Their Existence to be Felt

Afro-Turk Association (in Turkish)

Research Project on Afro-Turks (in Turkish)

Meet the Afro Turks