According to the old adage, history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce. Personally, I think history is not that particular about order and precedence. History, after all, is in the eye of the beholder or, more precisely, the historian. And one should never overlook the possibility of simultaneity, that things are both tragedy and farce at one and the same time.
Merryl Wyn Davies
To paraphrase the classic pop song: men — what are they good for? Currently a consensus appears to be forming around the song’s riposte — absolutely nothing! In which case it may be necessary to issue the time-honoured alert to ground control: Houston, humanity has a problem.
The meaning and implication of Malay-ness is central to the life of Southeast Asia, mainland and maritime. The origin, continuation as well as contemporary efforts to confound the paradoxes contained in Malay history and society are also major questions for the Muslim World as a whole.
Granada! I hear it as musical climax, which somehow reminds me of the fanfare that greets the torreros as they enter the bullring. Then the tune takes off again in that distinctive rhythm of all things Spanish to the accompaniment of castanets.
The clock was running down on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It was time. Resolutely, I stifled the sniffles, pulled myself together and phoned home. I knew instantly something was wrong. It was the way my mother lifted the receiver: ‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ I had never heard the like of the wail of utter desolation in which my mother declared: ‘Laurie didn’t marry Jo – again!’ So it was true. We sobbed together, unapologetically.
We make a steady climb through mountainous terrain. I thought to myself, once this stretch of immaculate highway carries us over the top we’ll be there. When we topped the crest, the road ran on through mile after lush green mile. These are peach orchards, I am told. No, they can’t be! Ridiculous! No one ever mentioned peaches! I am on the road to the North West Frontier. On so many levels nothing is as expected. Not a single vista corresponds to the landscapes of my imagination. There is not even an inkling of the devastation I have come to see. Nowhere can I detect visible wreckage or any intimation that just a year before an immense disaster had overtaken the land.
When you know the origins and purpose of fear it may indeed be possible to dispense with the fear of fear itself in favour of something better.
So why am I telling you all this? As I write it is another bright and crisp October day and we have recently memorialised the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It seemed that for weeks wherever I turned on television, radio, the papers, magazines, the internet, everything – space itself – was devoted to every aspect and nuance of the trauma of that day.
It is a truth universally observed that women drivers exist to be scorned, belittled, demeaned and abused. I know—I used to be a woman driver!