“It seems we swapped weather with Europe!”
Ziad, Damascus

“Thank you for the warm regards, we really need them in the snowy and cold weather we have now in Jordan!”
Victoria, Amman

by Zainab Hamoud

M.

Lord, Sweet Lord,

give me the strenght to accept what I cannot change

the courage to change what I cannot accept

and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill this morning because I got nerves.

January 1st 2008, 02.00 a.m.

Whoo, just got back from the weirdest new year’s eve party of my entire life. As I already said, we couldn’t find a restaurant healthy enough to have a traditional new year’s eve supper, so we just wallked a little around Plaza Real, at last resigned to have just a little jamon ( ham) and a beer, but it soon became clear that it would be a mission as impossible as Tom Cruise’s when he gets hung upisde down like a jamon  in some caveau. In the end, as a lighthouse in the cold Spanish night, there it was a small rotisserie called El Rey del Pimiento (Plaza Puerta Cerrada, 4 - Madrid)  that lookd open and lively and we hurred inside. As you can see from the pictures above, the place could easily have been the set of The Lord of the Rings, as it was populated by the Spanish Freaks Association and its decor could leave without words even the leader of Kitsch Fanatics Worldwide.

After five minutes, Fulvio had already become waiter Mario’s best friend, while my mother got a little freaked out because of the smoke of cigarettes that occluded the possibility of seeing what we were eating ( croquetas!!!). My sister ( unbelievably still not whining) and I just kept singing our Give me hope remix, hoping some miracle to come and resolve the situation. The miracle came, and was sangria carafe shaped. After that my memories are a little foggy, all I remember is:

- us walking out the Pimiento place giggling

- us buying from the cutest chinese guy three little bags with 12 berries of grape each, to be swallowed at midnight in Puerta del Sol square, together with a bottle of champagne.

- us completely lost in the colorful crowd of Puerta del Sol

- me getting almost choked while trying to eat a berry for each  toll of the clock at midnight.

Happy New Year to all of you, folks.

     11.15 pm (Sangria Especial)

  11.45 pm ( Puerta del Sol)

  12. 05 ( Puerta del Sol)

Day 2 - December 31st, 02.00 pm

 Well, I’m exhausted. This morning we went out aiming to  increase our cultural level by visiting El Prado and Reina Sofia museums and thus to close 2007 a little more cultivated, but the cosmic energy must have decided that we’re cultivated enough, as you can see in the picture below that well summarizes our cultural morning trip in Madrid.

This is it: last day of the year Spanish think they had enough and just don’t go to work. We wandered for three hours ( following beloved Lonely Planet, mother keeping askin: almost there? almost there? almost there?) looking for something - anything - to see: El Prado was closed, Reina Sofia Art Center was closed, Royal Palace was closed, shops were closed, my feet were hacking and my stomach was starting to digest me from the inside. We decided it could be a good idea to have a little rest in a super nice quarter, called Chueca, have lunch and then decide what to do. Of course we didn’t tell Fulvio Chueca is Madrid gay quarter, so I think he is still convinced Spanish people are just friendly with Italian wine bar owners. We got into a very nice Cervezeria, and that was the best idea of the morning, cause, since it was a Cervezeria, it didn’t have a wine list that Fulvio can memorize, so it took only five minutes to ask for ( guess what?) cerveza y croquetas ( my liver is very much mad at me) and our first Italian-tasting coffee ( Italian espresso in Spanish = cafe solo, I know that because the waitress  was from Brindisi ( 40 km from my home town) so we could ask her the meanings of the dishes in the list, but I had the impression she didn’t understand them neither). 

Culturally enriching information: Fulvio, who must have lived in Spain when he was younger ( dunno for sure, his past is a little foggy) explained us that the dirt on the floors of every cervezeria, restaurant and wine bar we’d been in, is proportional to the fame of the place.  It’s pretty easy, actually: lot of success= lot of people = lot of dirt on the floor. Now I understand why I saw couple of times waiters throwing waste on the floor. That was marketing. Cool.

After a little tour to the Atocha train station ( the one in wich there was the terrositic attack on March 11th 2004), that has now become an indoor rainforest ( you could expect a monkey to pickpocket you all of a sudden), we started looking for a restaurant to greet the Last Day of the Year from. It’s useless to tell you that the same philosophy that made Spanish people decide to have a rest in the very only day we were there was applied to restaurants, bars, bistrots, cervezerias and post houses the Lonely Planet suggested, and the few ones that were open ( we didn’t miss any of them…almost there? almost there? almost there?) of course had something that made my mother change her mind about ten thousand times. There you are a list:

- Cheap menu

- Cheap restaurant

- Cheap table place in nice restaurant

- Unappealing waitress

- Don’t like the way the barman was staring at my sister

- Don’t like the material the tables are made of

- Don’t like the way the table is set

- Don’t understand the menu

In the end none of the place we visited was good, and we went back to the hotel a little concerned about our destiny ( Mother in a nihilistic attitude, Fulvio not caring about it, Sister and I singing at the top of our lungs a remixed version of Give me hope, Joana and Feliz Navidad). On the way to the hotel, we had a little tour in El Corte Inglés, a huge Galeries Lafayette and Harrod’s looking shopping center, that was surprisingly open.   

Now, as I told you, I care very much about signs. If this last day of 2007 is a metaphore of the old year that is coming to an end, well, there are a few word to describe it:

-  feet ache

- useless wandering

- nerves increasing

Hope the next one will be just a little better ( at least no more feet ache).  

Well, I’m back, finally.

In the next days I’ll open a page on my New Year’s Eve in Madrid….in the meanwhile…Happy New Year!!!!

Well, Christmas is over, Santa brought us a new heating system, the penguins left my bedroom and I’m now approaching a new critical period of these holidays: getting started for the New Years Eve trip to Madrid with my crazy, crazy family.

Partecipants: Me, Mother, Mother Fiancè (Fulvio) and Little Sister ( Cristina).

Activities:

Me: I packed my camera, a pair of blue jeans, couple of sweater and some hideous red strings for the 31st midnight ( fine, I’m superstitious…so what?Anyway, since my boyfriend will be faaaaaaaaar away, no one will see it anyway)

Mother: since she’s a virgo ( like me, actually, but I must have some crappy ascendant, maybe llama, or goat, in fact I’m ways less organised than she is)  she bought the ultimate Madrid guide ( bible-sized, weights a ton and a half, includes the detailed description of every single street, square, stone and inhabitant in town and in the neighborhoods) and has already started drawing complex itineraries with the aim of making us visit the whole town in three days. I bet that, if she could, she would also rent some bulls to free in the streets like in Pamplona to make us walk faster…crap, I wouldn’t have write this, now I gave her a great idea….

 Fulvio: I’m pretty worried about him, think he got pinched by some tsetse fly  because, as he sits no matter where, he falls asleep…maybe he’s narcoleptic, dunno.

Cristina: she’s been gargling for three days, in order to get her voice ready to annoy us with a list of complainings ( I saw her writing it: I’m angry, I’m thirsty, I’m tired, I miss my boyfriend, this place sucks, the paeilla sucks, it’s too cold, it’s too hot, the sky is too blue and Madrid is too Spanish, just to name a few).

Wish me luck.   

Besides….

this blog is about dialogue, about the hope that speaking, sharing, confronting our lives to the ones of others, who live just a step away, can change something…just a little…this is my Christmas wish

 Today quite a few things happened to me. First of all, I got my first seasonal cold. Actually  I was wondering how on hearth was it possible that I’d escaped it till now,  and then I realized I spent the last two weeks in Egypt, where it was very nice and warm and where  I’ve been more concerned about preserving my intestinal flora from evil Egyptian microbes.  An important thing to know about me is that, when I get my seasonal cold, even if I get out of bed and look alive, in fact I’m in some kind of stand by mode ( if you look into my eyes, you can also see a colourful tropical-sunset-like screensaver). Since I’ve been working in this office for a few months, and never got flu before, neither my colleagues nor my boss knew that, so they’ve kept talking to me all day long. I also took part to a three hours long Coordination Briefing.

Here’s what I wrote down on my little note book:

-          February : CdD in Paris

-          Season greetings – write and send them

-         Algeria: when?

-          Buy honey 

-          I’m hungry

-          Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh, oh, oh Merry Christmas!

Below I made a  pretty nice drawing of the Nativity, with the hut, Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus and the Comet ( that maybe is a little too big and looks like is going crash the hut).  In the hut I also put the donkey  ( very hideous, looks like a goat) and the ox ( that looks like is going to eat Joseph), so, in the end, the hut looked a little too crowded…well, whatever, just to give you the picture of my intellectual status.  Now, we have two options: my boss is a genius or she the luckiest woman on earth, because she called me to talk about my “ situation”  (that, so far, has been that of a volunteer trainee ) when my last neuron was about to leave the field and go out shopping. So, here what happened:

 -         boss calls me in the office

-          boss smiles at me

-          boss asks me how the hell am I dressed up today ( white shirt, grey jumper, calf length blue jeans, grey and white tartan like socks and lovely black shoes)

 -          boss tells me that I’m dressed up like a trainee ( but I am a trainee, for God’s sake!) 

-          boss speaks half a hour about economic situation of the organisation while I  find myself on a beach listening to seagulls and undertow.

-          Boss offers me a job. 

-          I accept the job.

Tomorrow I’ll realize I’m not a trainee anymore, I’ll realize I finally reached the economical independence I longed for all these years…but today I’ll get some more Tachifludec ( even if it tastes like crap) and I’ll listen to seagulls a little more.   

Questo blog non si chiama Roma, Mediterraneo per nulla.  Questo lavoro incredibile ci porta ad interagire ogni giorno con gente che vive e lavora sulle due sponde del Mediterraneo. Tanto per fare un esempio, la giovane donna di fronte a me - che alterna momenti di dedizione parlando da sola mentre corregge documenti in arabo, a piccole e gioviali pause  in cui si dimena al ritmo di una specie di tecno araba - è tunisina, completamente fuori di melone e fa parte della mia vita quotidiana. Quasi ogni giorno incontro gente enormemente più intelligente, forte, combattiva di me. La scorsa settimana ho avuto il privilegio di conoscere tre donne algerine -  Djahida, Amel e Souad – donne, mogli, madri e professioniste. Ascoltandole mi sono improvvisamente vergognata di essermi fatta rovinare la giornata dallo stupido calzolaio che, scuotendo la testa, mi porgeva in punta di dita i miei adorati ( nonché nuovi di pacca) stivali a cui si è simpaticamente staccato il tacco dicendomi, manco fosse ER: non c’è nulla da fare. Precisato che quel calzolaio è un inetto, e che se i tacchi non li sa riparare lui allora io davvero non so a chi rivolgermi ( al lattaio? all’edicolante?), quelle tre ragazze mi hanno catapultato in un mondo fatto delle piccole e grandi battaglie che quotidianamente ( e senza grandi schiamazzi) portano avanti nel tentativo di affermare la propria indipendenza. Oggi tre kamikaze di Al Qaeda  si sono fatti esplodere con delle autobomba ad Algeri. Uno di loro di fianco a casa di Djahida. Suo marito (che pare sia, fra l’altro, cintura nera di stiratura, cosa che mi spinge a dire: italiane, che diavolo fate ancora li? È l’Algeria la nuova frontiera!!!) mi ha rassicurato al telefono: loro stanno bene, ma la casa ha subito dei danni piuttosto importanti. Al diavolo gli stivali, la ceretta, i capelli, i regali di Natale, la tredicesima. Siete nei miei pensieri.    

Elephants really have a good memory. A Scottish research conducted  in the Amboseli National Park( Kenya) has discovered that elephants can remember where up to 17  ( maybe even up to 30) members of their family are. Now, beside the fact that I  would love to rather forget where most of the members of my family are, I envy elephants pretty much. I’ve got troubles in remembering my own name, and I’ve noticed that Alzheimer ( and leggings)  are the new seasonal trends. My granny used to tie her hankie when she had something really important to remember. Since this habit is now disused (first of all because the above-mentioned hankie should be put in the sleeve of the shirt, and that is really disgusting, especially if you have already used it to clean your nose and, secondly, because I have too many things to remember and so I should buy a 3 meters long hanky, like the ones clowns use.) Luckily, we live in the technology era, so every cell phone on earth has a memo software in which you can scribble important things to do, and then be alerted at some point.  Since our job occupies most of our lives, my colleague Rubia has started to use this alert system, but it has its Cons as well: Leggi il seguito di questo post »