Somewhere in rural England a wizened figure in the landed gentry is bemoaning the loss of the good old days of empire. His echoes reverberate to the ears of a tattooed skinhead, wistfully staring into his can of super strength lager in a grubby, urban apartment, festooned with Union Jacks, waiting for an English football team to live up to the days when we conquered the world. No doubt, both would be surprised to learn that some measure of…
A Catholic wedding in Sudan Dear God I had expected to be writing to you with your Allah hat on, seeing that Sudan is a Muslim country, but as luck would have it I got invited to a Catholic wedding so thought I had better have a few words with you about it. Whatever religious hat you had on when you created the people of Sudan you must have been in a good mood, as they are a likeable lot…
Dear Terrorists I have to say I am not happy. Admittedly I am not normally jumping up and down like some demented puppy at your usual work but this time its got personal. Twice in one week you’ve launched attacks just around the corner from where my friends live, first in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and now in Istanbul. Of course there are a lot more people who are entitled to be far more annoyed with you than I am, after…
Animal slaughter on the streets of Alexandria Warning: sensitive animal lovers should know that this post includes pictures of dead animals and blood, no close-ups but you probably wont want to zoom in. With swift slices of a knife to its tendons the calf collapsed onto her forelegs and the burly team of butchers heaved her onto her side. In seconds the throat was slashed and the calf thrashed upwards, struggling against her severed muscles, forcing the men to jump…
The village of Charenghi Pathar has nothing to appeal to the average tourist. So effective was this deterrent that I turned out to be the first one they had ever seen there. Although its lack of appeal was motivation enough for me to want to see it, the same could be said of many places, so it was no random event that brought me there. It was the birth place of my dear friend J who had his first opportunity…
Just what are the fickle demands of tourists that relegate Bangladesh to the bottom of the tourist league in South Asia? People tend to respond to negative news but the country’s media profile has sunk into such a quiet backwater, that even the bad news, so demanded of media outlets, has been left on the international news margins, unlike India, Myanmar and Thailand, with the inherent risk to tourist numbers. In fact it’s never had enough of a profile to…
I woke to the sound of roar, a roar without end. What was it? A protest? A soccer match? Having arrived in the early hours, when all was quiet in central Dhaka at the edge of the old city, I had only one option: to get out and explore. Besides, not being a botanist the lure of staying in and studying the abundant insect life crawling around my room didn’t seem quite so appealing. I soon located the source of…
What is it with Islam and dictatorships? I sometimes wonder if it’s some kind of test Allah has set for his followers to endure to prove that they are truly worthy of paradise. I don’t expect paradise for myself in this world but I can’t quite grasp why so many other lovely people would need to be subjected to a lifetime of tyranny to qualify for it in the next one. At this rate my odds for the next one…
A typical lunchtime scene in Uzbekistan: a humble cafe, four men sit round a cheaply laminated table, in front of them a full bottle of vodka and some small, dainty, chipped bowls, commonly used for drinking tea. The first round is poured out and the earnest work of drinking begins. By the hour mark things descend into slumps, slurs, blurs and increasingly vague gesturing, the jolly affirmation of male bonding familiar to many of us from other cultures. But, this…
The title may make a grand claim, so I had best state my case clearly. Looking at the picture below you may have rightly assumed it to be a Quran, but I am not making a case for the Quran in itself, although a reasonable argument could be made. If we are just talking about books as defined by their title, the competition is probably down to a three-way race between the Quran, The Bible and the Torah. Judaism may…
