A tree is best measured when it is down

I came across this very evocative and thought provoking phrase when perusing the compositions of Philip Glass one of which The Cicil Wars used it as a title. A little search in google contained a variety of sources including old Nigerian village proverbs and many other esoteric sources. I finally came across it in Carl Sandburg's magisterial biography of Lincoln. In the last chapter of this 4 volume tome Sandburg quotes this phrase in the title and attributes it to a a common saying of "woodsmen".
Whatever the origin, does one really have to die before one can come up with a" measure" of that person? There is no denying the truth of the saying when one is talking about  a grand personage. For after death a large number of contemporaries may write or speak about their memories of the accomplishments or foibles of the deceased. But here we have to evaluate the evaluators and more time needs to pass before one can actually give the real measure of the man( or woman).  A whole industry of biographical research flourishes on the notion that there is always something new to be said about Napoleon, Churchill, Mozart, and many others. So it seems that at least a full measure of the tree does not seem to be possible, at least in the case of the great and worthy. Immediately following the death of Mozart a large number of articles and books were written about his death all purporting to show that he was murdered by Salieri, by his student Sussmeyer by others all because of a variety of illicit affairs or gambling debts or whatever.to this day modern biographers keep these ideas alive if only by debunking them. A tall tree can be measured when still standing using simple trigonometry. But in all fairness this is an approximation even though it is can be pretty exact. All this was brought to me when I went to visit Selma's grave on the second anniversary of her death. At the same time the publication of the American Institute of Yemeni Studies came and it was an issue dedicated to her memory since she was instrumental in founding it. Although several people told me that they never knew the extent of her activities( thereby confirming the truth of the aphorism above), I felt that a person is much more than their accomplishments. It is hard to bring back a person by a recitation of activities or even by anecdotes. How does one do this? Maybe that is why I prefer reading autobiographies than scholarly biographies which attempt a measure of the subject. I am glad that there is a new industry of writing memoirs because I suspect that we all feel the same way about the qualities of a person. In a memoir, the "voice" of the person an be heard. Perhaps the increase in the number of published memoirs is a substitute for the lack of keeping journals or diaries although the writing of blogs (ahem) is an alternative. Of course there is no guarantee that a memoir is any more truthful than the early Mozart biographies but at least you hear the person talking about what he or she were thinking and doing. This is especially the case if you actually knew the person and want an aide memoire.

Being Hip about Salt

In the struggle against high salt diets what lesson should we learn from the successful one against smoking? One lesson that is not talked about is the fact that smoking was made sexy and cool thanks to images in the movies. You would see glamorous stars smoking in various life changing situations. These scenes were to all tastes; If you were one who swooned over Clark Gable then you had your favorite moments; if you liked hard-bitten films then there was Spencer Tracy; if you thrilled to the subtitled French heroism of the Maquis, there were Gauloises to be handed out just as everyone was going out of the dilapidated farmhouse on their late night prowls. The Public Health efforts never managed to counter these images with equivalently appealing ones. It is hard to complain about second hand smoking increasing the risk of lung cancer to your children in some distant future when you were competing against Humphrey Bogart or Marlene Dietrich. Hence one had to rely on sanctimonious lectures, fear and finally the power of the state to tax and prevent rather than to encourage and copy. Perhaps the main reason for this is cultural, doctors and public health officials are staid professionals whose contacts with image-makers in general are based mostly on hostility. Moreover, we are, almost by definition not “cool”. What would it take to make the health hazards of smoking and high salt cool? Well, to be frank we wouldn’t know since we are not connected to the hip culture of New York City. Hence my shock when a former student of mine who lives in the East Village told me that he suspected that I had been there campaigning against salt. A visit to the Ground Zero of hipdom in New York, the East Village or Lower East side seemed mandatory. There we were shocked to discover that the avant-garde was already at the barricades of the war against salt. A stroll on a weekend by who lives in the East Village showed a large number of people mostly couples of various types, all having lazy breakfasts in the early afternoon some were having languid conversation others were just texting on their iPhones but all looked appropriately post-coital we thought. Many others were visiting art galleries or high concept design shops that displayed their unwearable clothes. While there was the usual large number of spiky haired and pierced young people, it seemed that they were no longer in the majority. Perhaps young Wall Streeters (with spiked though not dyed hair) have started to move in like an earlier generation did to other hip areas of New York. Suddenly there in front of us was a large panel of street art (formerly called graffiti).

Looking at the lower left hand corner, the NaCl was what caught our attention but what could the IH8 mean?

Being semi-savvy with modern gadgets we pulled out our iPhone and looked up the texting encyclopedia; to our delight ih8 means I hate! In txt lingo (sms to you Europeans) you may want to ask; what is this gadget 4? Or you txt as you are rushing away; ig2g (I got to go) or even ask the person sitting next to you; are you gay or str8?. So imagine, the hipsters telling all of us I hate Salt. Well, in fact the a former student of mine who lives in the East Village and who discovered this piece of art, thought that it was I who had been going around and stenciling this message.

But when I assured him, though I was flattered that it was not I, he began digging into who might be doing this. He found that there is a web domain “Ihatesalt.org” and he was able to track down the owner of the domain, since all domain names must be linked to an email address. We sent the owner an email and a few months later got the response from a Mr Jonathan Gorodenzik. He wrote “I feel honored to be recognized by such an important cause. I am an artist on the Lower East Side and built this website to create awareness about the harmful effects of salt in common foods as well. I have screen printed T-shirts as a way promote awareness and spark conversation.” Here is a picture that he sent me. Unfortunately he never replied to my messages.

Feeling like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims to his ken

Sometimes when reading a book you are startled to discover that a long hidden memory of yours is suddenly brought to brilliant focus by the writer; as if he actually was you describing to another your innermost and most intimate thoughts. Of course they would be proclaimed eloquently and the description adds verbal vividness to what was only an overwhelming feeling you had that could not have been well articulated since you never told anyone about it. This happened to me last week just as I was reading a short story The Pearl Fishers by Colm Toibin in his new collection The Empty Family. In it a young teenager in a school in Ireland is sent with his classmates to a dress rehearsal of Bizet's Les Pecheurs de Perles in the Wexford Opera House. Here is the young boy's response:

Walking to he opera house that evening was like being an adult. I had never been to an opera before; I think I may have heard a live orchestra once or twice, but only a chamber orchestra. I was surprised by the lighting and the costumes and the set, how yellow and stylized everything was, and how rich the sound coming from the orchestra and chorus. But I was overwhelmed when the two men began to sing. When we were told about the difference between a baritone and a tenor I had understood it but it had not meant much to me. Now the tenor's voice seemed vulnerable and plaintive, and the other voice masculine and strong. I was surprised too at the real difference between the voices, much greater here than on the recording. You could hear each voice clearly when it came to the duet and when the voices finally merged in harmony. I was almost in tears. I could not take my eyes off the the two men. What they had done together in that aria was the beginning of a new life for me, not only because I would follow music and singing from then on, but because it had given me a glittering hint of something beyond the life I knew or had been told about. That made all the difference to me, and I presumed that it had made a difference to those around me as well.

The duet, a magical moment in the opera is Au fond du temple saint. But it is the sensitive description of the epiphany of the young boy that overwhelmed me for I had an identical experience. I must have been 12 or 13 in Baghdad where I was a student in Baghdad College, an American high school run by Jesuits from Boston. Our biology teacher was an opera enthusiast. On my first day in the biology laboratory while I was struggling to get the microscope into focus, suddenly an incredible sound came out from Father Gerry's desk. It was the most heavenly duet of (what I later learned) a soprano and a baritone singing in Italian. I was overwhelmed and could not do any work for what seemed like hours even though it must have been only a few minutes until the duet ended. It was the opening duet of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro where Figaro is measuring what was, he hoped to be his and Susanna's nupptial bed. Like the hero of Toibin's story what I felt was a certainty that my life after this is going to be different since I am going to learn about this magical art of singing in the western classical music tradition. We had several records at home of Beethoven symphonies and other pieces of music but it was the character of the voices that mesmerized me. Every time I read or hear about similar epiphanies I still get goose bumps thinking of what happened to a young boy in Baghdad whose life has been immeasurably enriched by music.

One year later

It is hard to think that year has passed since Selma died. Everything in the apartment was chosen or arranged by her so whenever one wants to change something, I remember how that piece of furniture or carpet or whatever was put there by her sometimes after many minor quarrels where I would say this thing belongs here or there. After she put it in the place she chose it would become apparent to me that that is where it belonged. there was no point in arguing with an art historian who had organized many museum exhibitions but as she used to laughingly say, I never learned not to argue.
I went to the cemetery on the 7th and passed by the Monument people. The granite stone is not ready; the one we chose was cut but apparently was damaged so they have to try again. But the big problem is the calligraphy design which I had commissioned from an Iraq calligrapher in London. There are so many details that need to be worked out that it sounds almost impossible to put the thing together with the artist's design, the font needed, the point size what to write under her name, just dates? what about archeologist? and do we add restorer? all of these take space! I finally chose a special engraver's font similar to the one used on ancient Roman Monuments. J. thinks that her name should then be gilded as they did in Roman times!
Which brings me to the nature of monuments. A. designed the outline of the stone; being a modern or modernist architect, he chose an asymmetrical shape which hardly looks like a gravestone. I then chose something from the 'Amiriya to put on the dege so at least it reminds us of her work. But to put a Quranic verse would have been too much for K. So I chose a verse beautiful poem from Andalusia.
The last trip we took together was to go to Andalusia, and in Cordoba we went to see the ruins of Medinat Al-Zahara the ancient capital city outside Cordoba. Selma was too weak to walk around so we just sat there under a beautiful tree and I just then thought of the glorious poem by Ibn Zaidun (1003-1071) to his beloved Wallada which starts with "I thought of you in Al-Zahara". This is a photo taken by K while I was doing this. The verse I chose to go on her tombstone is as follows (in a very free translation):

May Allah never put my heart at peace
if whenever your name is brought up
it does not fly aflutter with longing


Pretty awkward translation but it has three negatives and is difficult to come up with a nice translation but am working on it. Many published translations exist but none is really satisfactory.Here is the calligraphers arty design.

So here we have a modernist gravestone for someone who actually hated modernist architecture; a verse of Arabic poetry that I am not sure she was really interested in, although she enjoyed my reciting it to her in Medinat Al-Zahra and now am seriously thinking of gilding her name which would probably have outraged her. On the verso of the stone we are going to incise one of Nuha's etchings of a tree with birds; she certainly would have liked this. Are memorials for the living or for the dead? WHo can answer this question? The wishes of the dead are unknown(unless explicitly written ante-mortem) and the longer the time afterwards the more their wishes are simply matter of attribution and imputation.

Worddsworth saying this to Egyptians

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

William Wordsworth was very excited by the French Revolution and even went to Paris to see first hand
These two lines say it all (1805; especially to the Egyptian, Tunisian and all the other that are watching

The Hurt Song

There is a type of Iraqi song called Aboudhiya (ابوذية)derived from two words which simply means "he who hurts". It is composed of four lines with the the first three lines rhyming together and the fourth rhyming with iyya. Often it is used as a follower song to a Maqam recital. I was introduced to this form when I was doing my military service in Iraq where I was posted in the south of Iraq. The soldiers in my medical unit knowing that I was interested in folk poetry took me to their many celebrations and found that I quickly learned to love their aboudhiyyas. The poems are usually those of loss; mostly of course loss of the beloved. However the form is versatile being used as a dirge for the martyrdom of Hussein during the annual celebration of this event. In Baghdad especially it is also used to celebrate the memory of the recently deceased where it is combined with Maqam recital in a ceremony called Mawlood. The Mawlood is an annual event to celebrate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in most Islamic countries. In Baghdad, however it is also used with different poetry to remember the dead.
Well we organized a Mawlood for Selma in Amman on December 18th 2010. The great Iraqi Maqam singer Hamid Al-Saadi came with several of his students to do the recitation. There were plenty of abuthiyas sung also. During some of them the sad poems were so moving that every one was weeping including the singers! Of course like everything that deals with Iraq, even this private occasion acquired political overtones when it was reported on by Micheal Jansen of the Irish Times.
During the recital I kept thinking who was I doing this for? Selma never was a big fan of classical Iraqi music; every time I tried to listen to CD's she would say "Not now, it is out of context". Her idea of moving music was of course French Baroque, though of course with plenty of Bach Handel Mozart and every other composer of vocal music. AFter the ceremony we served dinner to all attendees and singers. Al-Saadi was chatting with me about how this ceremony has disappeared from Baghdadi society. He also mentioned that we should think of this particular ceremony as an effort to restore this tradition. The minute I heard that I felt that I did something for Selma actually, it was indeed a restoration and I am certain she would have liked it.

Selma in the Temple of the Queen of Sheba

Lynn Davis sent me a beautiful photograph she had taken of Selma on a trip to Yemen. It was taken in the Temple of the Moon in Ma'arib.
Here is her photograph of the Temple on the same day.