Not My Cup Of Tea (originally published as Square Peg in a Round Hole); by Marcel Daniel.

The work is attractive primarily because there is a good deal of information about the tea plantations and tea industry in general, in more than one aspect - how the plantations function, the harvesting and the "manufacture" of tea, the hierarchy structure strictly adhered to, clubs and poverty of workers, and so on.

There are indications that this work is based on the author's life, but not clear if it is in fact precisely the autobiography with a mere change of names, so one might take it that much of it is based on his own life and experiences, feelings and thinking.

As such, the first thing that strikes one is how - and how much - the protagonist/author (Mark Edwards / Marcel Daniel) is conflicted between his various roots of identity due to the circumstances it was brought about due to, namely, the colonial rule of his ancestors' land by those from across halfway around the globe and conversion of his ancestors' from their own culture to that of rulers.

Culture, because it was not merely faith or religion that the rulers and their missionary accompaniment arriving with military protection sought. What rather was aimed at very deliberately was the destruction of morale of the ruled, by deliberate attacks coupled with lack of - and indeed inability to - comprehension of the ancient deep rich culture that was of India. In case of those that did convert, either partly by accepting the education for more than opening of a window to the faraway lands and new winds, or those that went the whole hog and gave up their own roots in all but blood (or even that, in case of those that happened to marry one of the rulers and convert far more), this demoralisation worked much more than in case of those that kept their own roots while allowing opening of windows and doors to more light and air.

Thus Edwards/Daniel is forever conflicted between his bringing up which is very English, and his own reflection in the mirror which he is unable to identify with - he feels that the person in the mirror is not, could not be, himself, because he is English, even though he knows he is completely Indian by blood and only English due to his three or more generations of ancestors having lived an English life in India.

As a consequence of this conflict ironically he blames India and indeed its culture and faiths not only along the lines prescribed by the rulers that had left before the story begins, but for anything that goes wrong in his personal life, as long as there is someone Indian or Hindu involved - which is unavoidable as long as he lives in India. Often it is something common to most cultures, most societies, most nations, as in case of the expected fraternal bonding and hierarchy in his military life, and the necessity of obedience to not only rules but to superiors, which is backbone structure of any military and in fact of most corporate institutions in US as well. Another example is when incidents of dishonesty or bullying occur, which do in any society, but which to Edwards / Daniel are convenient to deal with by blaming India and Hinduism. Indeed his, and his community's - his father, his bosses who happen to be of his faith, and so forth - first response to any such occurrence is "these bloody Indians"; one wonders what the response would have been had they dared to emigrate to the lands of those they identify with, and then find the same problems, which in fact are more than common. Dishonesty, bullying, and so forth do not get any better when one is perceived as an outsider due to racist culture of a land, nor do expectation of bosses who look upon subordinates as people to blame for their own shortcomings.

But Edwards and his father are all too aware of the various shortcomings of European colonisers in this respect, of the destruction wreaked on the lands they attacked and occupied in the name of "discovery", denying the very human rights of the occupants of those lands by calling them "aboriginal" or any other derogatory names, and naming those lands to suit rather than respecting the names that existed. This awareness stops short of including India, since it would cleave their own identity itself, even though it is not denied. Edwards is all too aware of how racist are the societies of various colonies that are now seen as European emigrants' lands rather than as colonies occupied, such as US and Canada and Australia, and indeed Britain.

Hence the deliberation about emigration to those lands, where one might feel at home due to one's feeling and living English rather than Indian, goes finally against the idea due to the certainty of being treated as a second class citizen at best due to one's physical appearance. It is much more convenient to stay put in India, live an English life, look down on Indians and then blame them for one's own alienation. Not that different from blaming one's mother for being a child of rape, this whole conflict and resolution, after the rapist has pillaged and left the mother and children destitute.
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Ironically it does not occur to the protagonist/author that the hierarchical structure he describes without comment is not qualitatively different from the structure of India that he deplores so very vociferously for being divided by castes, while the divisions of India along languages and identities of people along linguistic lines are no different from those in Europe. If anything the caste structure imposed by colonial rule and that prevalent in most societies of the world is along the lines of power and money ruling and ascribing all other virtues to itself, while that in India is comparatively far more enlightened - power and money are separated and held lower than intellectual knowledge, while spiritual life is everyone's prerogative, and duties along the lines of one's vocation are strictly taught and imposed.
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It is only when Edwards emigrates for work to Papua New Guinea due to his inability to work in India - partly due to his being unable to resolve the conflict between his own upright, independent being and the dishonesty and bullying he encounters, and partly due to his blaming it all on the country of his origin and countrymen he refuses consistently to identify with, preferring to see himself as better due to being English rather than seeing that he is honest and independent and upright because of his own choice - that he is brought to awareness of superiority of some virtues of India and Indians, although he is lagging behind as yet in realising that his conflicts that occurred in India could and indeed would occur everywhere else as well, with the difference that then they would be blamed on not only him but his race, his country of origin, and the racist assumption that anyone whose ancestors lived in lands with sun are lesser than those whose ancestors lived in darker latitudes closer to one of the poles rather than the equator.
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Friday, March 2, 2012


Much ironic once one has finished with this - not the bitterness which is understandable under the circumstances, nor the feeling of comfort the protagonist has mainly when in surroundings not of his ancestral roots but - as he frankly expresses again and again - that of anglophones, or even better, a land where he is as much an outsider as any "white" person, so that he can be as much aloof above the general madding crowd as he desires to be, which is only natural since that is the example held out to him as one to emulate - that of British rulers and others who occupied India and left post enough looting rather than that of the indigenous with their rich culture and multiple layers of deep virtues - no, none of this, but only this - that he finally does not blame or indict those that hurt him far more in physical and psychological sense than the first couple of incidences of attacks by bullies that were of his own country.

For the latter, he indicts the whole nation and its people and especially the majority community, in spite of the fact that it was his own and his ancestors' choice to separate and hold themselves above the milieu so they were the privileged people halfway up the rung of preferences closer to the rulers in every choice of posts and other benefits; in other lands, other cultures, such separation and aligning oneself with occupying looters is rewarded with persecution and death, rather than the merely factual acceptance of the separation chosen by those that align themselves thus as India and its majority community does. But he wants it both ways - to clearly state his own and his ancestors' preference about separating themselves, aligning themselves with the rulers, being comfortable only in the surroundings emulating the rulers long after they left, taking all the perks that were theirs due to this preference and conversion as natural, and then resenting when things are set right for the nation after the rulers have left (not taking their local imitations with them as the French did, offering citizenship of France to every citizen of any colony) - resenting the separation and blaming it on those they left to climb up the ladder.

This contrasts rather absurdly with the comparatively less blame, less resentment or even dispassionate indictment of those that actually harmed him far more, either due to the discriminating laws and contracts at work or due to direct attacks that were - unlike those in India - intending to kill, and far more successful at that.

Daniel / Edwards is able to describe the attacks on his property and life in Papua New Guinea - where he went to work after blaming India for all his problems - with precision and dispassionate correct descriptions but with no horror attached to it; indeed he fails to take precautions to safeguard his own life long past having been cautioned in the only way it might have been, since the company won't pay for the whole security need - he is satisfied to point out the discrimination to his colleague and go about his merry way knowing fully well that attacks on his person are as likely as those on anyone and anything that do indeed happen regularly - and merely goes about to describe the attack clinically with no horror, no blame, no disgust at those that did it; he rather indulges in guilty feeling blaming himself for death of the dog that attempted to protect him by fighting off the attackers alongside.

And then he blames the racist discrimination of a whole country or a whole industry even less even as he clinically describes the details of how they were responsible for his ending up losing use of half his body, since the Australian person in charge of immigration who could grant him a visa (as he regularly does to every "white" visitor merely for asking) due to the medical emergency and chooses to refuse showing his manual and insisting the routine of several weeks applying for a visa is observed, never mind the medical emergency. That the company could have sent him to UK for the operation on a more proper flight at their expense is not even thought of, since he is not one of the ruling clique, a "white" person, but surprisingly no one even thinks of sending him to Hong Kong or Singapore or India where it all might have been taken care of.

And finally, having chosen to uproot himself from India - he sold off his parents' home in a part of the country where they had no roots and no relatives post the death of parents, and had no interest in finding the rest of his clan that might have embraced him and given him a home and a family to belong to and put down roots in, since he much prefers the company of anglophones and indeed such English as would deign to speak to him as a human at all - he then must end his life in the strange land where he was dealt with the murderous attack by the locals.
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And yet his finale' is nothing short of an emulation of some of the finest of Indian understanding of existence, although he mucks it up by then justifying his never identifying himself with his image in his mirror! Such is the half baked attitude of those that would cut off their own roots and float forever in shark infested waters of reefs faraway - roots after all bring responsibilities and belonging!
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The Shadow Lines: by Amitav Ghosh.

Break a mirror and set splintered fragments thereof in walls with a rough finish, and then attempt to patch a reflection of surroundings of today and of yore - this is somewhat the image of this work, of events of the story and of history as seen in this.

The writer here attempts to deal with his own childhood trauma experienced in Dhaka where his parents were stationed as diplomatic corps from India during sixties, where he lived through riots and a murderous mob surrounding their own home in faraway diplomatic enclave, specifically attempting to massacre the family for crime of being Hindu. This event has left so deep, so strong an impression as to be a character molding factor and the writer has never since been able to deal with his own roots as Hindu, his own deep ancient cultural heritage, and has instead spent his life and writings attempting to defend other similar cultures from the vast neighbourhood while never quite being able to defend his own Hindu culture from ignorant attacks.
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He combines these happenings here to provide a background and a shocking ending to the work while dealing with the life of eastern part of India as it was, whole rather than the part that retains the name, with people moving from Dhaka to Calcutta to Burma to London back and forth before and after independence and partition, the movement between Dhaka and Calcutta as rare post independance as that between Burma and the rest - Burma was as much part of India prior to war as any other part of India - and in the process he deals also with the various psychological elements and processes that went into the British-Indian relationships, shown here on personal level between two extended families through three generations.
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He mentions, as himself and as protagonist - since his own story is not that exactly of the protagonist here but could easily be in part that of a cousin, especially the part that constitutes not only the shocking end but the very raison d'etre for the work, one cannot separate the two - the differences between physical proximity and nationhood, and attempts to say without quite saying it (if he had said it he could be pinned as extremist by those that have appropriated the label "secular" and targeted as a fanatic, and he takes care to stay on the safer side at any cost, including howling like the wolves most of the time and at any rate avoiding being identified as not a wolf) that arbitrary lines drawn on paper do not constitute nations, that nations do exist in sense far more than political states at any time and have an identity beyond the decisions made by any political state authority regarding borders.

This has been proved amply of course and as recently as two decades ago by the fall of Berlin wall uniting Germany on one hand while reconstitution of the erstwhile Soviet Union into its parts - Russia is still very large, and does constitute a nation, but Ukraine and Baltic nations and central Asian regions have separated as independent nations, remaining however as parts of the federation under the Russian umbrella. Britain meanwhile is slowly inching towards a similar cultural freedom and political one as well, what with resurgence of the once forbidden Welsh language as a very living one, a parliament of its own for Scotland, and so forth.

That India might be such a living nation with the arbitrary borders drawn post war - for convenience of the rulers that left in a hurry and gave in to demands forced with massacres - might be false really, and India is a living nation that includes the various parts no longer included in the name India post world war two, is what the author avoids saying explicitly - instead he resorts to maps, compasses, comparisons across the globe about how events faraway usually do not affect people, and a lot of obscure language.

Fair enough, considering the threats to life of Rushdie and several others - Taslima Nasreen, for example - who have been targeted with orders from religious authorities towards their murder and promises of paradise for those executing the orders, for writing truths that were comparatively smaller in scale or dreams that were interpreted by those ordering murders. If Ghosh wishes his self and his family to live in reasonable safety, he can hardly afford not to be obscure about false lines drawn to cut up a real living nation into new nations that are forever tied in tandem and affected by happenings thousands of miles away as long as they are in the parts of the nation that really is a living one.
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One unpleasant factor is the unnecessary part of artificially added spices or sauces, the now almost compulsory descriptions of certain kind in every work published these days, whether necessary for the particular tale or not, and in this one such an inclusion makes it a splintered and pale copy of Sophie's Choice, about which one comment went that it was a teenage boy in US getting to finally have sex on the background of antisemitism, world war two, holocaust, Europe trodden under fascist boot and what have you.

If the author here had managed to avoid that trap, or for that matter the fractured nature of the story telling that begins to come across as gimmicky and irritates even the most patient reader, and instead gone into the trauma of India in depth, he might just have managed to author a great work.
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One recurring theme in this author's work is the delusion planted quite deliberately in minds of several such displaced or otherwise gullible persons, that is, everything would have been automatically fine for them and for the whole nation - if only the partition had not divided the great big provinces of Bengal and Punjab at India's independence. This mentality also prevails in many who are all too willing to divide their own nation further at a whiff of any demand supported by armed terrorists. Tamilians were surprised why Indian government wouldn't simply agree to give away what remains of Punjab when there was a demand for Khalistan, for example.

Considering the way demand for partition was agreed to, namely, post Jinnah's call for "action day" in Calcutta executed with a massacre of thousands of Hindus in less than three days, with knives not machine guns, this easy solution mentality seems to be almost a necessity of being seen as a peace loving secular person if one is a Hindu.

Fact is however, facts speak otherwise since the partition and before, long centuries of history and decades since over half century ago. There is no way one can be reasonably certain that the same bloodbaths and exodus of Hindus from eastern and western parts given away in name of Jinnah's demand would not have happened if only those parts given away had included all rather than most of the two provinces, on the contrary. Better parts of the provinces did go to the separated new nation, and ever since then there has been an attempt to "cleanse" their nations - one until the independence war of '71 proved that a demanding and conversion-or-die faith cannot be a factor to hold a nation together, although it can divide one - of all other faiths, by law and taxation and other, more persuasive methods.

Fact is, refugees from those separated and otherwise named parts to India have been a continous stream, and what is more it includes huge populations of Muslims as well, with an agenda - not only explicit but published explicitly too - of settling parts of India and increasing numbers until those parts too can be demanded in name of Islam. That the same threat looms over Israel too is not a secret.

Ghosh though goes further than that, and questions why the war of '62 that threatened the integrity of the nation seriously matters more over localised riots in Calcutta connected to riots across the border in Khulna, Dhaka and so forth with several persons dead, especially since they were connected to the mysterious disappearance of a hair of the prophet in Kashmir and subsequent riots there.

He is very explicit in this book in his disdain, about a few soldiers dead in a war in faraway hills that did not affect the nation, according to him - although one might ask what can one expect of a person who calls Himaalaya "hills", and faraway ones at that in context of India. Perhaps he is thinking from the China-US point of view, both of whom are in fact far away in their centre of gravity from Himaalaya although deeply involved politically in the neighbourhood nevertheless.

This, in view of his calling himself Indian, is about as reasonable as any US citizen thinking the civil war of north and south was more important than the two world wars and the cold war with threats of nuclear holocaust looming over the nation to boot. This point of view might be of a southerner who left the country at the conclusion of the civil war to live in Mexico or further south, dreaming of return with a bigger force to win the war back for a Confederacy. For Ghosh, the parallel would be his persuading India to give away whatever "they" demand, whoever "they" be, in the interest of peace and being seen as reasonable by powers west. Or east.

A convenient point of view for someone who lives in US, after all, and enjoys the perks of being seen as Indian while living in a rich society. A parallel would be someone Jewish living in US advising giving away anything demanded by not only Palestinians but all surrounding nations as well, and calling the various wars unimportant while naming the local riots more worthy of publicity.

One wonders if he would have the same point of view about giving away, say, Alaska to Russia - the lease has expired, after all - or New York to the Dutch, Louisiana and a few other parts to France, California to Spain and Mexico, and so forth. He is probably more loyal to his adopted nation, if only for sake of his family and their wellbeing, unless he goes by reason and extends his positions about India to his chosen country too. It would only be fair, at that.
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In the story, the protagonist's "practically twin" Ila is obsessed with the "yellow haired" Nick Price, never mind how casual he is about her - he will use her for any purpose that suits his needs but won't commit anything except empty vows, not kept at all even immediately post honeymoon. He won't defend her from a bunch of bullies in childhood from being beaten up in street any more than he won't refrain from using the apartment bought by her father for the newly married couple to have sex with other women day long regularly, or think of schemes of business using her father's money to further his own living. He has returned from a well paid job in Kuwait due to shady business on his part, but is in no hurry to earn a living even post wedding.

This Nick Price that Ila is nevertheless obsessed with long before she manages to marry him - one wonder if she was the best Nick could catch under his circumstances, he couldn't have found a better one amongst his own, although whether he would treat such a one better is a moot question, and most likely not is the obvious answer - this Nick Price is the alter ego of the protagonist according to his explicit mentioning thereof as soon as the name is mentioned by Ila, and this tells perhaps a lot more about the author and his background at that.

For all that his avowal of nationhood across arbitrary borders being false goes, he - the protagonist or his fractured identity twins across his family for that matter, and so perhaps the author after all - identifies more with a colonial power that occupied, looted, and left when it suited them, never mind the millions that died in riots that were foreseen clearly as coming due to the arbitrary borders drawn by those that had never seen the country except to sit in an office to draw the borders.

Ghosh, no surprise, is more comfortable living clear across the globe and making pronouncements high handed with a nose turned up, not so different from the various Germans who begin to advise India about what to do about the crowds or health or what have you (forgetting their own lack of any suitable experience that might excuse such pronouncements) as soon as they meet someone from India. He - this writer - after all does identify with his obsession with those that left, if only because they have yellow hair flipping in their eyes - there has never been any other justification mentioned of Ila's obsession with Nick Price other than this in the whole book. She makes up a story to herself about his protecting her, and insists on the lie even after her marriage is immediately proven empty. Nick is no more than a cheater, whether in finance at workplace or in personal relationships.
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The Imam And The Indian; by Amitav Ghosh.

The spelling of the author's first name follows the convention of his roots, where "v" of Roman script is pronounced "bh", in accordance with "w" being pronounced "b" generally; his name ought to be spelt Amitabh for a proper understanding of how to pronounce it, and in fact in his home in Bengal it would be Amitabho since almost every "a" is made into an "o" as a rule in Bengali.
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A collection of the author's writings prior to or in between his prolific authoring of books, these essays or "prose pieces" as advertised on the cover (new worldese rather than English?) reflect his background and the handicaps of his upbringing as clearly as a not too deep pond would show its bottom just as it is reflecting the surroundings.

Ghosh suffers from the not uncommon malady of a brown sahib with his conflicts - on the one hand the deep seated need to win the approval of the colonial masters, the ones that designed, planned and executed the factories for manufacture of the brown sahibs, a nomenclature they gave to the products of the schools set up by colonial rulers to "educate" the ruled into their own image internally, so that the machine of colonial rule would run smooth with the least effort from the rulers thence free to loot; on the other hand an equally deep seated need to rebel against this, but without being accused of siding with one's own people, being not free of one's own background prior to the coats of years and years of brown sahib varnish that went into the making of the products never ever quite finished.

This conflict results then strangely enough into an attitude that goes - one may be born such and such and educated by so and so and living in a rich nation with reaping of the benefits thereof of the lifestyle of a rich democracy along with a possibly local wife and therefore natural half white children (so one doesn't have to worry about their heritage quite as much after all, or for their peers dealing with them with prejudice or worse) - but one is free to have an attitude against all of the above, so one can be called independant at least and fair at best; to achieve this, the Indian Hindu brown sahib repudiates in particular anything remotely of the Hindu Indian multitude thought (calling it baseless sentiment helps), sides with the pre-European colonial rulers (scrupulously refraining from identifying them as colonial rulers), and calls it secular. Since this is approved by the party that came to power with independence of the country that provided his background (which included the status of parent - not only "salaried government employee" but one rather well paid with perks, in diplomatic services to boot), a party that endorses a definition of secularism that goes with faith equated to most outrageous claims of minority religions (but only the sizeable minority, those sponsored in stupendous amounts from outside for the purpose of conversion and other routes to power meanwhile) and putting down of majority ones - votebank politics at its most shoddy form - one can literally see where Ghosh is coming from.

To add to all this there is his life spent in various nations since childhood and well into his formative years including working on his Oxford degree, nations and societies where he was not only made to feel ashamed of his roots but his very existence and life of his family was threatened due to their being of another faith. He therefore perversely goes to "understand" them and taking sides with the least informed, most prejudiced, and so forth, and for example is never able to explain why cremation is not only as good a way as burial to dispose of the bodies when soul has departed but is in fact better, since it allows no desecration by animals or invaders and does not clutter the earth with cemeteries, leaving earth free for life on earth.

Such convoluted mindset explains why he praises someone "born to rule" and without a place to rule, constantly on the run from his own kinship who are equally all born to rule and therefore out to finish off each other to rule the same little place, hating a vast subcontinent when he has managed to acquired it but not leaving it to go attempt to acquire the little town in central Asia he longs for - Ghosh praises the historic document as an unprecedented piece of literature rather than a factual write up of the wars and victories that it was, understood by now as in fact written in all probability by an official court historian rather than the conqueror himself, and manages to miss the bragging about destruction of temples and disposal of the worshiped objects by paving the doorsteps of mosques with them.

He goes on to tow the official line of obfuscation about uncertainty about there having been ever a temple and more. Such uncertainties can be very simply removed with publicly witnessed and documented - photographed, videoed - archaeological digs; that the "site" has instead been locked up with all archaeological work stayed forever ought to make anyone with a shred of brain suspect that the claims about a temple might after all be not only true but known to archaeological authorities and therefore to the government that seeks to claim otherwise; that walls have been recently built behind other similar monuments known to have been built on top of temples destroyed for the purpose, including mausoleums, ought to make anyone with a shred of gray matter suspect it is a shoddy conspiracy to rule the nation by browbeating and guilt imposed on majority.

But Ghosh is not concerned about any of this, he would rather be seen as someone who rebels against his Oxford-route successful education - successful in his acquiring not only an admission but a final degree at Oxford - and is fair to the West Asian downtrodden nations in spite of his life and family residence in the ultimate paradise on earth, US.

If Ghosh did grow up out of his mucho handicapped brown sahib upbringing, it is not clear in his "prose pieces", possibly due to their being not recent; if he is at all likely to grow up, he probably will hide it assiduously, since his present attitude and lack of comprehensive knowledge or thought helps him win accolades in his home country, and refrains from his being branded as a Hindu in the country he has chosen for his life.
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Mrs. Gandhi's Ghosts is a curious piece, worth a read for its first hand account of the day of her death but raising questions about the lack of generally known details of the horrors being far too coordinated to be merely "young hoodlums" roaming around and responsible. Ghosh does mention a direction being given generally and transport being provided free to those killers but refrains from mentioning who might have done it, and does not have a world of repugnance or denounciation, unlike his clear sentiment for destruction of a mosque unused for centuries as a place of worship - except by Hindus who all along believed it was birthplace of a God of theirs.

This silence about perpetrators of horrors of post Mrs. Gandhi's death - just as huge and conspiratorial as the silence about perpetrators of the massacre of several thousand Hindus on and for a couple of days after the "action day" commanded by Jinnah for demand for a country he could rule in name of a faith he disdained to practice at any time in his life, a massacre moreover with knives, indicating not only complicity by the then government of Bengal but participation by hundreds that went unpunished and even unaccused just as the '84 massacres did - this silence and careful refraining from any mention of anyone who might be held guilty even if due to being in a position of responsibility, is indicative of the loyalties and dirty politics of those that clamour for blood of guilty in riots (post burning of a train full of pilgrims alive to death) in the name of secular justice.

Sadly someone of Ghosh's capabilities - anyone having read his novels can suspect he is not quite one of those whose minds were destroyed completely by their education - goes along with this party line, much as the leftists and fellow travellers of leftists went on to justify every atrocity in East Europe and China (and by China in Tibet) but make up for it by clamouring to question India's holding Kashmir as a part. If wishes of the populace were the criterion, what price forcing Baluchistan and Frontier Province against their wishes into the country they did not choose? They had clearly expressed their wish to be part of India, so much so the Viceroy and his retinue had to escape their wrath by fleeing their crowds, afraid for their lives!

For Ghosh, it probably is convenient to not think about any of it, and take the path of least danger for himself so he can continue his privileged life - and that involves officially siding with every claim, however outrageous, made west of borders of the part of India that is currently named India.
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From Beirut To Jerusalem; by Thomas L. Friedman.

Friedman's life, work and impressions of the two places when he was stationed there during the eighties, the work is informative in detail in more ways than one - horrors such as Hama and confusion of Lebanon are not this well known to those not of the nations involved, for example - and very worth reading.

Even as one reads these accounts one wonders at the cry against the comparatively smaller details of events elsewhere due to the democratic nature of the nations and culture in the said elsewhere places, while almost no sound is made about the Hama massacre of 38,000 Islamic fundamentalists and the neighbourhood they lived in by their own regime in an Islamic nation, just as very little noise is heard above the bare mention of the massacre of Armenian million and more by the Turkish government a century or so ago. But then, so very little noise or mention exists about the massacre of millions of Tibetans in Tibet by China, while billions were spent to arm the Afghans against - comparatively - an almost benign, benefic Soviet occupation (women will never be so free again as under the Soviet occupation according to the prophecy by the father of the protagonist in The Kite Runner, and it seems to be all too true even until now what with the neighbouring regime supporting Taliban to wage their war in a supposedly free Afghanistan, supposedly free from not only other other repressive regimes but from Taliban chiefly).

But then, it ought to be clear to anyone looking dispassionately, or with a passion for humanity, that the misplaced war on Soviet regime to the exclusion of ignoring massacres in Tibet, Hama, and elsewhere by Islamic fundamentalist regimes using weapons of terror across their own borders and within too (massacre prior to independance of Bangladesh by the military of west Pakistan of what they thought were their own people in the eastern part, including the horrendous use of women of Bangladesh, kept naked and chained so they could not run away, half a million women - or was it only fifty thousand? - so treated in inhumane way for sexual needs of the occupying west Pakistan military soldiers, a la nazi treatment of their own - read German, misnamed "Aryan", the real meaning of the world Aryan from Sanskrt having nothing to do with the usage made by nazi regime or their predecessor racists in any part of Europe - women kept for sexual use of their soldiers) being one example. The only difference was the German women were probably allowed to wear clothes when they were not being used.

And yet none of these various atrocities are mentioned a fraction as much as the happenings in a couple of places, easy targets for being not only democratic regimes of modern nations that believe in education and cultures of certain faiths that do not go about converting with aggressive fervour and hence targeted.
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One reads about the two nations and two cultures in this work - with people of diverse agenda and more than one nations in each of the two - and one is overwhelmed with the information unless one is extensively familiar with all this, which a general reader is not quite likely to be, not so much.

The diversity of Lebanon in the citizenry of not only including Christianity among the nation but remote and elsewhere not so well known branches of both Islam and Christianity is as much a new fact for most of generic readers as the description of almost claustrophobic nature of orthodox variation of faith in Israel that is so very a mirror image of Islam in its fundamental robe.
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Informative although not exhaustively so - for instance, details of the terrorism are missing with their effects, and the few mentions include a branding of a people but refrains from mentioning if such branding was justified by their sympathy and covert help for those that did commit acts of terror - this is an account of the author's life in the two places and his perception, understanding, and information about the people and nations of the two places - the number being a lot more than two.

Also, it explains a lot about acts of terror committed elsewhere that are linked to the topic of this work, by the tide of the movements, and successes perceived thereof by various others who sought to copy those successes including what counts as martyrdom, but more relevantly the expansion of a people connected by what is misnamed faith via methods tested and proved effective - high rates of reproduction, induction of small children in acts of terror and war (and subsequent howling against the same children being caught in crossfire or affected as result of the encouragement by the adults towards taking part in the war), occupation of lands and hypocrisy of howling protests against others either being part of the same lands or copying the occupation tactics, flat out declaration of not tolerating others among themselves and howling against similar reluctance by others to tolerate their own selves, using their own intolerance and democratic tolerance of others to their own benefits of expansion and take over towards a final aim of converting humanity with a clear agenda of clearing the world of any other faiths or systems, .... it is all eerily familiar across spaces and time.
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Interestingly another analogy is that about settling of US, Australia, and so forth, generally the continent(s) of the so called New World, by migrants from Europe; "settling" (they were none of them empty, to begin with!) those continents by every possible tactic including massacres and denigrations of real inhabitants of the places, including misnomers such as Indian (for a variety of people that had nothing to do with India - but then again, the very name India was given by people outside India to the land once so known) - or Aborigines, rather than retaining names they have for themselves.

Is settling of Palestine - by an original people driven out of it by Rome two millennia ago - against the unwillingness of the more recent inhabitants of the land (bought by the settlers from owners who were of the same ilk as the unwilling recent inhabitants, only they were rich landowners and couldn't care less for the tenants' opinions, feelings, or lives - unless they simply knew they were taking the money for a land they intended to drive away or massacre the new settler from anyway) - is this worse than the massacres, and worse, of original people of continents of Australia and America, by weapons and infected blankets and deliberate "whitewashing" of races by using European male settlers' usage of women of the land (it would be called rape if the males involved saw those women as human, but in all likelihood they saw them as objects of use, and this is worse than rape) and taking the resulting children away by force, causing disruption of families and trauma very like that of slavery of people kidnapped from Africa and sold in US - well, one doubts Israeli occupation of Palestine, including the post '67 territories, could even begin to compare, all the more so since it was a much persecuted people flocking to their homeland they had been driven away from by Rome then occupying Judea, and never allowed to live in peace anywhere else in the world with the exception of two places, two nations (one since expanded, one severely divided and a victim of terrorism of expansion by a colonising and conversionist people or two).

Those two places through history of the two millennia when Jews were driven out of their homeland and dispersed, seeking to live elsewhere and never allowed to feel at home or have rights, were India and China.
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In the land and culture that India was before the forced partitions (due to some that required supremacy of their faith as a national character), Jews lived in peace, were free to follow their own faith and culture or assimilate as much as they chose, prosper, and survive - as other refugees since and before, including Parsis, those from Persia fleeing terrors of a persecuting new religion over a millennium ago, and more recently Tibetans. This is by no means a complete or exhaustive list, either - it includes all those from east or west that came with intentions of life rather than that of death of others.

China on the other hand assimilated the Jewish diaspora gently - according to Pearl S. Buck, for example - until trace of such assimilation is found in a name here, a nose there, and very little more.

In India - what is now retained by that name - however, one can find old Jewish settlements in various places, and people who have lived there for all this time. The young might have emigrated elsewhere, but that was due to better economic prospects post formation of Israel as much as a returning to an ancient homeland or finding others of one's faith from across the globe - all the positive reasons, and none of the usual ones of persecution or lack of any rights of citizenry on par with everyone else.
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Events have gone far beyond the book's beginning of Hamas, of course. Now the world is smaller, terror spread beyond boundaries of the nations that have been the usual target, rogue nations have been reluctantly admitted by various powers of west after attempting to coopt them into "fight against terror" by labeling them as a partner of US in this fight and bribing them with billions of dollars unaccounted for - only to find the money vanishing, more demands for sophisticated weaponry, and backdoor coordination by those "partners" with the very agencies of terrorism they have been pretending to cooperate fighting. This is today, post not only the horror of towers unfolded over a decade ago but nearly a year post having the man who masterminded or at least was leader and spirit being hunted down in his lair in the very heart of military establishment of the "partner" of US in fighting terror.

Few dare to ask, was US really so stupid as to be duped by this nation, one born less than a century ago out of terrorism used for demanding it to begin with (but teaching its children, falsely, that it had existed for over a millennium, never mind how unlikely it was to exist even today without the massacre of thousands in Calcutta to force the demand), all along, or was it something else?

Now however not only this is post 2001, it is post the 26/11 targetting of western and Israeli people in a landmark luxury hotel in Mumbai used as focal point of a terrorist attack masterminded on cellphones from across the western border to instruct the terrorists continuously, and there can no longer be a pretension of doubt about the rogue nature of the agencies that mastermind and train the terrorists while denying it with open lies as long as the paymasters are willing to buy the lies. Hamas has been joined by various other agencies of terror as a front for the authorities of the rogue nation - agencies that merely change names and claim to be institutions of charity, on the whole creating a picture of a killer on the loose pretending to be a beggar and denying both begging and killing, or blackmail that joins the two.
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