French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville formulated an opinion of America that Americans still strongly believe in today, the myth of American Exceptionalism. It argues that while Europe and other continents have suffered from internal strive between nation states and ethnical conflict, America takes an exceptional position in the world, being a country of immigrants who are united by the common fulfillment of opportunity and the equality guaranteed by the constitution and democracy. In the New York Times this weekend an article by Sam Tanenhaus, In Texas Curriculum Fight, Identity Politics Leans Right analyzing the ‘cultural war’ in America between progressives and conservatives. The article refers to an influential essay The Search for Southern Identity by Vonn Woodward, an American historian.

This Land is a weekly column by Dan Barry for the New York Times with in-depth stories about American towns and people.

The BBC radio program Assignment has a 20 minute long report on Poland’s moral revolution: “Seventeen years after Poland swept aside communism, the government is trying to launch a moral revolution. Under the leadership of the Kazycinski twins, the old communist archives are to be used to exclude from public life anyone who collaborated with the former regime. The Kazycinskis talk of purifying the country, and bringing the values of the Catholic Church to the heart of public life.”

Dear readers, contributors and visitors of Szirine Magazine, We are currently upgrading our website to WordPress 2.0.4 and thus not all articles and functionality will be available at the moment. Please bear with us during this migration, we hope to be up and running with an improved site soon. update (20061203): Finally, we have transferred all our archive to our new site! Still missing are the comments and the images, but we are nevertheless feeling again a sense of completion. (more…)

fit my clothes
if you would fit my clothes
and take on a different
face
would we be more the same
when i was smiling too?

When one mentions Mexico City in the US, it’s not the beach resorts that come to most people’s mind. Rather, people think of crime, pollution, corruption and impoverishment. But while the crime rate (mostly thefts and burglaries) in Mexico City has reached significant levels of concern, one of the highest in Latin America, there are many other global cities that echo the same issue.

So why does Mexico City seem to stand out as the epic center of metropolitan crime, pollution and poverty? Perhaps the apparent rundown barrios or slums make it difficult for the ever-present media not to focus on them. But this is not how the majority of Mexico City is. Living here for several months, I discovered that the City has an overwhelming rich history, culture, and a unique architecture deserving the worldís attention. I spent five months in Mexico City teaching English to a variety of students. Coming from the U.S. where one can see many films that depict Mexico in a one-dimensional and conventional way, I was relieved to discover a world contrary to the common stereotypes of shady dealings and dirt roads.

Mexico City’s rich history layered with modern advancements outshines the standard dull images of the city I, coming from the US, was accustomed to seeing.
My days would typically start with grabbing some breakfast from one of the many vendors in the Centro Historico, the historical centre of Mexico City, with its colonial architecture. The Centro Historico, in addition to the famous Zocalo plaza, demonstrates the well-preserved Mexican history stemming from the Aztecs and the Spanish colonial conquerors. The Zocalo is the largest plaza in the Western Hemisphere. It was also the site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán. (more…)

Ibadan Sodowari was my friend. He was an Ijaw, a tribe that lives in the mangrove swamps of coastal Nigeria and Cameroon principally by fishing, but also by smuggling contraband.

Ibadan lived with his wife and numerous family in a small village amongst the mangroves a few miles downstream from N’dian. He sold his fish at the place where the red and black rivers meet. Mostly the fish were of modest size but sometimes they were enormous. Once, on the same day there were two gropas and a shinose all over forty pounds in weight.

Ibadan was tall and very handsome and as black as the ace of spades. Sometimes Ibadan would bring his fish to Mundimba House and he would stay a little while for a beer. Once he brought me a Night Heron, nycticorax, whom I named Lawrence. I don’t know why. Lawrence was an agreeable companion and he would pace with me up and down the verandah after dinner, during a period of solitude.

One had to watch Lawrence, however, as he would not hesitate to stick his extremely sharp beak into one’s ankle if nourishment was not forthcoming as fast as he desired. Later he must have felt the call of the wild, because he flew back to the swamps leaving me to wish that I had the sense and the wings to do the same. A night heron has enormous eyes, and makes his living paddling about the mangrove swamps in pitch darkness devouring various fishy morsels. (more…)

There are too many
Graveyards inside me
By now,
And I’ve just stepped out
Of my mother’s
With the willing to live again and again
And I die again and again.
Haven’t I had enough
Deaths for one lifetime ?
I’m only asking one chance
To live during my life
And in the end just die
Without having to prepare
My tearless shaking of hand
And whispered “see you on the other side”…

I always hoped that every falling of the addicts would have been considered as a genre unto itself, reminiscence of The Fall, as was written. “So he drove out the man; and he placed the salesmen at the east of the garden and the illusion of a sword which changed every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.”

What if I am not afraid of heights?

All of us are afraid to lose what we have, whether it would be our tortured body or fettered soul. But our fears leave us when we understand that it is impossible to lose anything that never was yours. After this understanding we would rather waste, even without a token of regret, what is not ours. That is a main cause that allows us to solve a courting problem of the evil in life.

It is not a bad thought that the evil transcends the good as much as the absurd transcends the reality in life, because not everyone dares to refuse mixing the absurd with reality during his keen disappointment. Maybe so, but I do think that the absurd will start to fade at the crucial moment and reality can’t help us to stay sane on the one-way white road. (more…)