Jiya Backup

Dave Eggers does it again. After reading Egger's What Is The What, I finally felt that I was understanding something about the chaos of Sudan - now I feel that I'm finally getting a grasp of what happened with Katrina. Eggers has a way of getting under the skin of the people he's writing about, exposing their human strengths and foibles. Eggers explores the lives of not a typical New Orleans couple, yet in their individuality, they become a kind of everyman. Zeitoun, born in Syria in a fishing village, spent ten years on the high seas before settling in New Orleans and marrying Kathy, a 21 year old Moslem convert from Baton Rouge. Together they raise 3 children of their own, as well as a son from Kathy's prior marriage. Zeitoun and Kathy run a mom and pop construction business , very much a part of the American dream........until Katrina. Zeiton stays behind to care for the business, while Kathy and the children exit the city. Zeiton takes a canoe that he'd b...

Enjoyed it very much. Didn't really know much about the founding of Liberia. Elijah Johnson, 1787, and Randolph Cooper, 1796 were Helene's direct line ancestors. It's a coming of age story. Helene, a privileged member of the Liberian elite, enjoys private school, luxurious home on the beach, and the companionship of a foster sister, Eunice, who is brought to the family to keep her company. Helene has a carefree existence with Saturdays at the movies, crushes on boys from class, chauffered rides, and a summer home in Spain. Her greatest fear is of her parents getting divorced which does come to pass. Helene's world shatters at the age of 14 with the coup by Doe during which Tolbert is overthrown and her uncle is executed. Perhaps the most dramatic scene is the description of Mommee's heroic stand against those who come to the home to rape and pillage. The second part of the memoir traces Helene's life in the USA in Knoxville, the Carolinas and later in Rho...

Once again, I experienced the gratitide of being in the hands of a master storyteller. Like a Brueghel painting of villagers seated at a long wooden table, Mahfouz paints a cast of characters who are neighbors in a 1940's Cairo alley. Mainly it's the story of men and women, power struggles between husband and wife, of families, of intertwined relationships, of loyalties and of betrayals. Life centers around Kirsha's cafe where men gather to smoke the water pipes and to socialize. Drug addiction, homosexuality, greed, lust, prostitution, grave robbery, husband beating, matchmaking, even the making of cripples for beggary are explored. And yet there is a deference to God"s will, to destiny, to the goodness of the prophet which is endearing. The scene which captivated me the most was the seduction of Hamida into the ranks of prostitution by a man of extreme persuation, seduction, and stealth. Mahfouz weaves an erotic net into which the reader is also ensnared. Telling u...

My guru spoke, saying, me and mine you and yours Illusion. Told me long ago, all brothers and sisters even animals and bugs. Spider spinning mandalas, cicada rubbing knees, worms overturning soil all relatives. Me and mine you and yours Maya. Not card up your sleeve illusion, but illusion at its most elusive.