What if...?

What if all the students protesting the treatment of Gaza, were protesting Hamas and October 7th?

Would the college management protect them?

Growing up, I thought Israel could do no wrong. Then I met a Palestinian woman and I heard another side. After moving to Geneva, I met many Palestinians and listened to their stories.

My opinions changed and I did enough research to get some balance.

I am not anti-Jew. I've had Jewish bosses. I won't use the cliché even my best friends are (fill in the group), but I have never decided if I liked or disliked someone based on their religion. Their behaviour, yes, their religion, no.

I was engaged to a Jewish man for a period of time. It wasn't because of his religion that we didn't marry. We were unsuited in other ways. I was thrilled for him after we broke up when he met a woman more suited to what each of us wanted which had nothing to do with religion.

I think back to the Vietnam protests. If you change the signs, it is the same. Kids wanting something fairer, college administrations and often parents disagreeing with the kids.

Much later Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense at the time of Vietnam wrote a book which revealed the kids had been right.

The kids are right this time.

I do not negate that the Jewish people have been treated horribly over the centuries. The Holocaust made the many pogorams look minor. Prejudical treatment of any minority by the majority is always wrong.

But it was also wrong to take land from one people to give to another because it was their ancestral home.

Here's another what if...? Anyone who believes that, would be more than willing to give all American land back to the Indians. Surely moving to another country or living in reservations with limited rights and abilities to live a normal life, would be fine. After all it was the Indians' home first.

There is no way to condone the October 7th Hamas attack but just putting the number of deaths of both sides and the destruction does not balance. 

I do not believe that Netanyahu wants a settlement. He has announced more illegal settlements, more land thefts.

I am ashamed that my birth country is supplying the weapons that are killing so many women and children. 

I am tired of hearing that Israel has a right to defend itself. So do the Palestinians and every human and country on the planet, but doing it with mass murder, mass destruction is not a right.

Years ago, I was a strict parent. I let me daughter know there was a code of behaviour and she better not get in trouble in school UNLESS she was defending a principle. 

If my kid was in one the tents, I'd be tempted to join them. I would be proud that they are standing up for what is right just as kids stood up for what was right in Vietnam instead of swallowing the lies and propaganda being fed. 

May the protests all over the world continue until the leaders stop this war.

Vignette 2: The housemaid Stuttgart

Our hotel room overlooked the Stuttgart gardens and the Neues Schloss. Having lived and loved the city where when I was a new bride eons ago, I wasn't about to let my second husband come to a conference there alone.

Although I was itching to get out and explore many of the places I loved, never mind a good German lunch with hot potato salad, I was editing a financial newsletter that I had to finish and send it before I could go out.

A knock at the door.

"Komm Herin." My German had been reduced to shopping German with very simple sentences and that had a lilt of the regional Schwäbicsh and a mix of the Bostonian.

The housemaid apologised and said she'd come back. Her accent had Anglo overtones.

"Sprechen Sie Englisch?" I asked.

"I'm a Brit," she said.

My writer's curiousity went into high gear. It resulted in a great conversation, after I requested if I could ask some questions. 

She said yes, and we changed the bed together. 

She had moved there because her son, who was on the high spectrum of the autistic level, had been bullied at his comprehensive school in London. For some reason, which she didn't totally understand, on a vacation, he had fallen in love with Stuttgart. 

She moved countries for him.

In his new school he wasn't bullied and he seemed to absorb the language, "Faster than I have," she said.

In London she had been a social worker, but she didn't have the credentials to work in her field in Germany. Housekeeping in a hotel was work she could find. "It pays the bills," she said.

She also explained, she had an interview with a non-profit that thought her background and her knowledge of British agencies would make them a good match. She was still waiting for the contract.

I would have loved to talk to her more, but she had other beds to make.

Walking through the gardens to Kögnistrasse, I thought how brave she was. I thought of the power of motherhood to protect children. 

I never learned her name, and I never found out if she received the contract or how her son was doing as he went through his teens into young manhood. 

Note: This is the second vignette for people I've met by chance and our lives have touched for a short time. They become part of my memories. Visit my website at https://dlnelsonswriter.com 

The Washing Shed

 

They are doing construction work on the washing shed. It is located next to the river which often is dry.

When I was first in Argelès a few decades ago, I was intrigued to see women using the large sinks inside to wash their clothes. They could use the clothes lines outside, although most of them took their clothes home to hang on lines outside their windows. Sometimes it felt as I was walking down the narrow streets under a canopy.

Even as recently as the pre-covid 20s, I would see women there. It was definitely older women, whom I called mamies (not to their faces), grandmothers who I would enjoy chatting with when we met on the street or the shops.

These same women would often put their chairs on the street outside their front doors and chat, sometimes watching grandchildren, sometimes mending or knitting, sometimes shelling peas or snapping beans for lunch. They also had a village bench where they would gather. 

The men, dubbed The Senators, had another bench.

One by one these women have disappeared. I watched as their energy was reduced, started using canes, although they still could carry their laundry from home to shed. Originally, they used wicker baskets but over the years these were replaced with the big plastic bags from the grocery store.

I wrote a poem a few years back that captured the moment.  In a way it is sad that tradition of the washing shed will disappear, but the daughters of the women, even those raised in the village now are working women and have washing machines and sometimes even dryers.

THE WASHING SHED

The washing shed cooks in the sun.

Women stand by soapstone sinks

scrubbing stains from clothes

as their grandmothers did.

The smell of bleach and soap

mingles with sweat.

They brush hair from their eyes.

Children play underfoot

                  as the river flows by.

 

They talk of Pierre beating Marie,

Sophie’s new job in Toulouse, Michel

cheating on Chantal, fresh garden

basil, the price of apricots.

Some own washing machines

white and shiny in lonely kitchens.

Better to carry baskets and powders

to the shed where gossip steals time

                as the river flows by.

 

Vignette The Taxi Driver

 

This is the first in a series of vignettes about chance encounters I've had with people over the years in different places.

My friend called her favorite taxi driver for me. It would be easier than lugging my suitcase and laptop to the number 144 bus, La Défense and Gare du Lyon.

I'd spent a week with her, my former neighbor in Geneva, in her tiny Paris flat. When we lived across the hall from one another, we'd shared meals, experiences joyful, frustrating and ordinary. She had become a family member of choice. 

Now she lived in Paris as a medical resident I would visit often pretending, I too was a Parisian and Hemingway writing and looking out her window at the Paris rooftops when I wasn't exploring the city.

Mohammed, the taxi driver, was on time. With his long beard, he would have been at home on any street in Damascus, Algiers or Cairo. As I do with taxi drivers, I engaged him in conversation.

From then on whenever I left her flat to go home to Geneva, Mohammed would drive me. Our conversations covered everything from Obama, French politics, Afghanistan, Iraq, Damascus, food, family, and being an outsider from our birth cultures.

After one Christmas visit when my daughter had joined us, he took her to Charles de Gaulle. "She's the most precious person in my life, be careful," I said to him.

"I know," he said.

On one trip, he said, "You have to meet my sister." He dialed her. On speaker we had a three-way conversation. She was an English teacher, but to not exclude him, we spoke French.

"The next time you're in Paris, you'll have to come to me for couscous. I make wonderful couscous."

Mohammed confirmed that. 

It was not to be. My friend moved.

At Gare du Lyon, he handed me my laptop.

"Shukran," I said.

"Awfan," he replied.

 

Free Write--The spiral staircase

 

It was 8° centigrade with wind between 65-90K an hour. We wanted to do the Free Write within the warmth of Mille et Une's tea room fueled by Earl Grey tea and hot chocolate. Next week's will be more of a challenge with each of us in a different country. 

D-L's Free Write - Looking Downstairs

Nine-year-old Leah lay flat on her stomach looking down the spiral staircase. 

Since they'd moved into this modern house three years ago, she often snuck out of her loft bedroom to watch the goings-on below.

Parties were especially fun to watch, although one time a neighbor, who was drunk, threw up on the rug.

Her mom had acted as if it didn't matter, but when every one had gone home, she complained so much and so loud that Leah's father told her mom to shut up.

Sometimes her parents watched TV and ate popcorn. Leah could see the screen. More than once naked men and women crawled over each other. 

The last year or so, she could watch and listen to her parents fight. Sometimes her father threw stuff. A vase disappeared. A picture frame had to be replaced.

Lately, the arguments were almost every night and were louder and louder.

Tonight was the worst ever. Leah didn't sneak out of bed until it was quiet.

She didn't see her mom. 

What was her father doing scrubbing everything this late at night?

The smell of Clorox wafted up the spiral staircase.

D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at: https://dlnelsonwriter.com

Julia's Free Write - The Stairs

Geometrical patterns as well as light and shadow were her "thing", that and numbers.

But this particular stairwell brought more the philosophical to mind.

Empty with no one in sight, neither up nor down. Would they be noticed!

And were they going up or were they going down? Where had the owners put their safe? Down in the cellar, up on the top floor?

Not your usual burglars, but rather friends looking to anonymously give them some cash to tide them over a bad patch.

Julia has written and taken photos all her life and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/  

 

Rick's Free Write  - The Staircase / Les Escaliers

Geoffrey peeked through the posts at the spiralling staircase and the floor below. He wanted so badly to go down there to see what was going on, but he was not allowed. 

The stairs were dangerous – steep and with narrow steps, especially on the inner part of each step. He had heard more than once when someone had fallen, then yelled out in pain. And there was the time when his father had dropped some dishes and glasses, shattering them all the way down les escaliers.

Even if he were a ‘normal’ 3-year-old boy, Geoffrey would have difficulty navigating such a hazardous climb. But he also suffered from a rare neurological disease which made it difficult to control his legs.

On occasion, his father would carry him down the stairs in his arms and put him in a wheelchair to roll him around the village so he could get some fresh air. It was a difficult thing, even for his strong father, and the climb back up to their living quarters was even more difficult. Plus, his father worked a lot as the owner of the restaurant on the ground floor.

Geoffrey wished the could live somewhere else, some-where on the ground floor where he could use the wheel-chair every day.

He leaned against the post and pulled a photo from his pocket. He misses his mother too.

 Rick is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices. com

Trump--the novel

 

"If this were a novel, no one would believe it," my husband said watching the beginnings of Trump's trial.

I thought about it. 

He's right. 

Many changes would have to be made.

First: Names of the characters must be changed. They are too unbelievable.

Trump...it can be a card. It can mean getting the better of someone. Take away the T and you have rump which can mean a small or inferior remnant or the hindquarters of an animal. A ridiculous name for the hero of any novel.

Pecker, the first witness's name ... I suppose there's an irony in the vulgar description of a male's organ in this trial with its sexual themes.

 

Stormy ... the prostitute who was paid to keep the secret of a liaison. It has unleashed a storm. But it is too obvious for good fiction or bad reality.

 

Second: The hero can't piss off the judge. 

 

Conflict, yes, is good for fiction, but in a case before a court, it is just plain stupid at best and idiotic at the very worse. It would be hard to believe the hero would do that. 

 

Third: Fairness...

 

Despite that everyone in the U.S. is supposedly allowed a fair trial, many are not. This trial where the defendent seems to get advantages an average person would not. I suspect they would have been in jail for contempt of court long ago. 

 

So where does that leave a novel based on the Trump trial? 

 

No where. 

 

It is bad enough in reality, that a fictionalize version would be just too depressing to write or read. Bad enough that the U.S. has sunk so low that this character had ever set foot in the White House. That too is unbelievable -- except sadly it's true.