The Yes vote

To be a fully paid up member of the British cosmopolitan educated types, which I suppose I am, one’s options are fairly tightly delineated as far as opinions go. One has really no lea-way to harbour even a shade of doubt on the prevailing 'correct' opinions, and I must admit that this sometimes feels like something of a strait jacket.

Take this referendum in Ireland on abortion for instance. It is unthinkable for anyone in my circle to feel that abortion should be anything but totally optional and ‘a woman’s right’.

Now, if I were Irish, I would have voted yes. Because I think that it is untenable that Ireland should remain isolated with different laws to the rest of Europe. 

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the whole question of abortion is deeply fraught.

When I was eighteen years old I had an abortion. At the time I cannot remember there was even the slightest question whether my boyfriend and I should keep the baby. That simply didn’t enter the equation. I come from Sweden. Abortion had been freely available there for decades. We just got rid of our baby as if it had been a case of brushing off a piece of fluff from the collar of my coat.

I  was never able to have a baby again. Something must have gone wrong somehow. That is of course extremely rare. I have not mourned the fact that I remained childless-but sometimes the thought crosses my mind: what if...? How would my life had looked if we had kept the baby? But we never even gave it a thought. 

I sometimes wonder how the living children of rape feel about the fact that everyone says that it should be an inalienable right for the mother to abort a pregnancy caused by rape.  Edward St Aubyn’s great Melrose novels may never be with us. He was the result of rape.  I know Tess of the D’Urbervilles is fiction, but I feel it has poetic truth: Tess called her child Sorrow but did not love her child less because it was spawned by rape.

A long time ago at one of my dinner parties in Islington the conversation around the table turned to the subject of abortion. Since we were all born before the 1967 Abortion act, it would not have been so easy to have been granted an abortion at the time of our birth.  A third of the people present said they thought they would simply not have made it into the world if abortion had been as readily available as it is now!

 My own case from Sweden is the opposite: my father died before my birth, before my mother knew of her pregnancy- probably a few hours after my conception.  They were to marry the following Sunday, but he was killed by a car accident.  So my mother found herself in the situation of  becoming  an unmarried mother. Blinded and half mad by grief she was taken to a hospital by my grandparents. She was given a paper to sign. She was just about to sign it without knowing what it was, but then something stopped her and she looked closer at the paper: it was her consent form to an abortion. She threw the pen away and screamed NO! apparently. That is why I am  here...

Unrepentant Royal Wedding Indulgence.

Yes, it was fun and lovely, there is no denying it. The bride was beautiful, the groom gorgeous, the setting exquisite, the horses magnificent (although I was worried about the left hand first horse in the Landau equipage   who looked permanently as if he was just on the verge of some catastrophic misbehaviour  in the excitement of it all...) on a perfect English  May day.

I was joined by Zsusza, Andrew and the amazing architect Edward Mendelsohn, now 90, who must have drunk  some sort of youth elixir because he never ages. He came from Austria to England in 1939 on the last Kindertransport before the outbreak of the war. He was a permanent fixture of my Tuesday ‘salons’ in 2003-5 and is also part of our Dante reading group, which met here  last Wednesday, for more sojourning in Nether Hell.

We all drank bubbly, ate strawberries and cream and giggled.  That sermon! And the faces of the Royal family, all bemused at such fiery black American gospel style delivery! It was quite priceless.

I do have a really good feeling about this couple- they seem blessed and on the side of the angels somehow. I hope they will make a difference- they have every possibility now to engage in important work for their chosen and deserving causes. So God speed to them.

The bubbly eventually takes it toll...

Reification.

 Is a beautiful new word I have just learnt. And this is how it came about:

I have just undergone the operation which I mentioned in the post ‘Joy’ on November 4^th.  It was a success it appears, and I am now recuperating at home.
I was at the swish Chelsea and Westminster Hospital where the top floor view is the above at night, soothing insomniac post -operative in-patients like myself with a spectacular view eastwards towards  central London.

At the hospital the lady in the next bed bequeathed her Marie Claire Magazine to me when she left. I hardly ever buy women’s magazines- if I do it is Vogue, just to have some sort of idea of what is going on, since I am still involved in clothing  in a very minor way through the MaliMali studio. (We had a shoot here by the way, with the lovely Aiofe, my god daughter, the other day, since I have put some of our products on Etsy, and at least the fabrics have actually been selling, which is great news)

Anyway, it was when reading this Marie Claire that I realized how very much I feel like a fish out of water here. I don’t understand the attitudes of people anymore- they are not ‘my tribe’. The magazine is dedicated to all current trends and offers articles like:

‘How to Network Now’ : The most effective way to increase your social capital in a digital age?Optimise opportunities with a sisterhood of likeminded industry insiders’. And then it goes on to tell you how to join the conversation at your event and ‘how to strike a Power Pose’ to impress people with.

 Of course, this is not news and it may even be useful information.  I wish I could stop feeling so depressed about it.  It is just that I don’t feel at home here anymore. Spin and marketing and networking has created a world in which everyone seems much more interested in  appearance rather than reality.

There will be some events at the British Library this coming autumn in celebration of the manuscript projects that have run successfully since 2009 and have now come to an end. There will be a small exhibition with some manuscript images and pictures from Djenne and also a Private view for this event at which I have been asked to speak. That is fine. I am honoured to do so. But the next day there is a panel discussion about Mali, her manuscripts and culture in general, including the spectacular mud architecture of Mali. I am less happy about being part of this...

I am increasingly aware that one is not allowed to speak the truth about things, and that one needs to sanitize one’s public utterances so as not to veer away from the accepted attitude about anything.  Living in Mali for so long, and knowing Malians’ attitude to most matters through seeing things with Keita’s eyes, I realize how very far Malian attitudes diverge from our ‘allowed’ attitudes. The  problem is that this cannot really be expressed without causing offense, because people just won’t believe one, or worse, they will call one racist.   For instance: I know that  the majority of Malians don’t actually believe in democracy. They believe it to be the root of most evils, and equate the word ‘democracy’ with ‘license’ to behave however one wants. They believe democracy is the cause of rising crime, corruption, the spread of sexual degeneracy which is how they perceive homosexuality, a behaviour most Malians feel ought to be punished by execution.

To continue, Malians cannot understand what the UN soldiers are doing in Mali. They think the problems of the North should have been dealt with through force.

And it goes on. Malians are uninterested in other questions which occupy the West: ecology; gender equality; female genital mutilation; etc. They are of course aware of these matters because it is in their interest to pay lip-service to them in order to receive funding from the various organizations that are working in these areas.  But the most urgent need for each Malian is just to understand how he will be able to feed his family that day. The rest is superfluous luxury for Westerners. Of course, my experience is from Djenne, which is arguably the most backward (or let us call it traditional:  it is kinder.) town in the whole of Mali. 

These sorts of subjects may not come up during the panel discussion- we are supposed to be talking about cultural matters like the preservation of Mali’s precious mud architecture and manuscripts. But these are also thorny matters with different perceptions from our Western perspective. Mud architecture only keeps its relevance to Malians in so far as it brings in tourists and therefore it is linked to their ability to provide for their families.  The Malian crisis has put an end to tourism. Therefore the biggest threat to Malian mud architecture is the Malians themselves, who no longer want to live in mud buildings and once the tourists disappear and the security situation is so bad that representatives from various  funding agencies can no longer visit Djenne to see what is going on the cement buildings are mushrooming all around, and this ancient town, ‘the Pearl of the Sahel’ is rapidly losing the most important capital it has: its extraordinary architecture.

As far as the manuscripts go, very few Malians are of course involved. In Djenne the relevance of manuscripts disappeared quite recently, with the arrival of  the photocopier and printed Arabic books. Until then the manuscripts fulfilled a utilitarian function. The art of calligraphy is now much undervalued, although in the past Djenne had very skilful calligraphers.

 On the other hand among Westerners there is quite another conception concerning the manuscripts. Since the African continent was perceived as having no written history, the ‘discovery’ and study of the Sahel manuscripts , and particularly those of Timbuktu over the last few decades have been a revelation. South Africans and African Americans joined in this joyful discovery, appropriating it as part of their common African heritage. Suddenly there  WAS history in Africa. This is all good, but in people’s enthusiasm to promote the manuscripts they have been largely mis- represented. Scholars, journalists, film makers, policy makers have all come to the manuscripts with their own pre-conceived ideas of what they would like to find in them:  they have been invested with subject matter that is at best wildly exaggerated, at worse complete lies.   The local manuscript experts and owners of manuscript collections have not been very helpful. If asked what one finds in the manuscripts , the response is always that there is everything: theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, science- astronomy, medicine, history,literature , etc. This is true on one level, but if we look at the subject ‘history’ for instance there are in fact only two history works in the Sahel: The Tariq Es Soudan and the Tariq al Fattash.  The ‘Jurisprudence’ is made up of Maliki school of Islamic Jurispudence which is copied ad infinitum in thousands of copies- it is normally not a question of original material.  Literature , similarly, is made up of  poems, mainly religious, which have been copied thousands of times. Most manuscripts are not original work. This does not take away from its importance. The manuscripts are very important and fascinating, but one should go to study them and let them speak for themselves rather than going to find what one has decided to find, like the film maker who was in Djenne with me and needed me to find ‘enlightened’ manuscripts in the Djenne library which showed examples of  ‘tolerance’ ; ‘concern for women and children’ ‘proof of a merciful Islam’, ‘romantic love poems’ or anything else that would be palatable to  his German audience. After a lot of searching at the library, Saadou, our manuscript expert came up with one Islamic Jurisprudence manuscript that said that children born out of wedlock MAY be able to reach paradise under certain (quite complicated) circumstances.  Needless to say, this was not quite what the filmmaker had expected or hoped for...

So what is the point in all this rambling? Is there even a red thread running through it all, or is it just post- operative confusion after general anaesthetics? I don’t know. I suppose it is the feeling that I find disingenuousness all around me, and that I am worried about what I will say if I am put on the panel at the British Library. I want to finish the Djenne chapter off with some dignity and grace after all, and not ruining everything by opening up about all my misgivings.

My dear friend Sanjay sees everything in a very clear way- he should. He read philosophy at Harvard and Oxford. I told him I was experiencing an existential crisis and I needed him to sort me out. So he did- after an Indian meal here in my flat. And this is what he thought (if I got it right): most of my concerns about the Malian attitudes are known to be true, but that is because of a lack of education and poverty . It is no different from the attitudes in many other developing countries and they were attitudes we ourselves harboured in many places until not so long ago. Concerning cultural heritage, (which is the one thing I need to worry about mainly), it risks being  seen as neo colonial behaviour to go in and insist on the preservation of the architecture which they themselves no longer want, but that is a risk worth taking.  So instead of saying: Malians don’t want this or are not interested in democracy or whatever it is I was ranting on about above,  the way to go is to behave as if they ARE interested in it- or whatever else it is we want to promote.  The Malians themselves know how to play along. And even if it is only make -believe now, the very fact of playing this ‘charade’ will somehow, incrementally, change the attitudes. And there we have it: that lovely word: Reification. The bringing something into being. And this something is the consciousness of the importance of democracy and preservation of culture in Mali- among all the other benefits. So now I feel less likely to be negative should I be on the panel...

Macbeth.

‘Is this a Dud which  I see before me?’ was the Telegraph’s review headline for the National Theatre’s Macbeth.  Other reviewers have been fairly unanimous in slagging this production off. But I went last night to the South Bank on a lovely sunny London evening with my friend Kathy and we loved this Macbeth with Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff, in a setting which is described in the programme as ‘now, after a civil war’.

It is very good to be foreign sometimes. It means, for instance, that one can have opinions about Shakespeare that one is not allowed to have as a English person.  Reviewers of Shakespeare plays can do nothing but either laud or criticize the quality of the productions: the sets, performances etc. No one would ever dare questioning anything in the bard’s work itself.  But being a foreigner  I can venture where others may not go and say, for instance, that I think the Tempest could do with a fair bit of editing, such as cutting out most of those boatswains who bore for Britain as far as I am concerned.  

The National Theatre’s programme for Macbeth does not have a synopsis of the play, presumably feeling it would be insulting to the audience to insinuate that everyone doesn’t  know the play by heart. I have read the play in the past, but have never seen it . I read it again yesterday before going to the National Theatre and while loving it, I couldn't help wondering  whether  Lady Macbeths’ wholesale embracing of evil from the very start is really plausible?  Evil is normally a slow descent with some development. She starts as a full blown monster and then disintegrates rather than the other way around.  Should she  not at least try and justify her cruelty somehow? Even the worst criminals try and hide behind a justification for  their crime: ‘This position should be mine by right, so I will make it mine’ or something similar. But Lady Macbeth has absolutely no qualms and is devoid of all remnants of morality. Maybe she must be seen as a clinical psychopath?

The  set is very good and gives a sense of evil and impending doom:  uniformly black and grey with concrete slabs and  a central moving ramp dotted with high stakes which lumber ominously:  sometimes evocative of  giant burned down candles, sometimes of stakes for beheadings , and sometimes trees  on which the witches sit, climbed high  like giant ravens.  The only  drawback of a wonderful production was that they had chosen to cut out the whole of the fabulous  ‘Double Double toil and trouble ‘ speech. Why? We could only assume that is was because of the ‘Liver of blaspheming Jew ‘ part seeming anti-semitic? But if so that would be nonsense. The active ingredient for the cauldron’s brew  is the ‘blaspheming’ part, not the ‘Jew’, just like a few lines further on it is the 'birth-strangled' part, rather than the 'babe'...

Re-Sweded

There has been much to celebrate this week.

On Tuesday a large envelope arrived which looked ominous to me: it was from the Swedish immigration department. 

I lost my Swedish nationality automatically in 1983 when I married my English (now ex-) husband and took up British citizenship. I did not realize it at the time, but was soon made aware by a compatriot. What followed was a sorry tale of over thirty years of deception and  perjury as I continued to tell the Swedes that I only had my Swedish nationality, in order to be able to renew my passport...Now this is actually fairly uncharacteristic behaviour for me- I am otherwise boringly law abiding and truthful.

 Last year the passport had run out again. I prepared  once more to perform  the act which had become increasingly loathsome to me over the years: to sign the document  saying I had only one nationality. But this time, because of tightening immigration control, the official  at the little Swedish police station in Bollnas in Central Sweden were I made the application in person hesitated a moment before giving me the routine papers to sign. She was looking at the computer screen. 

'There is virtually no information about you' she said. The only thing we have on you is your date and place of birth and the following: 'Inger Ann-Sofi Sarin. Emigrated to Central Africa in 1976.' We are going to have to make some further investigations. Please would you fill in this form'.

 That was when I realized I had to come clean. Presumably it would be easy for them to find out that I also had a British citizenship. I did not sign this time. Instead I decided to go to the Swedish  Embassy in London to  hear what they had to say:  'I became a British citizen in 1983' I began to the passport official. 'And now you want to find out how you can get your Swedish citizenship back', she yawned. 'Here is the website, you can apply online, she said matter-of-factly and turned to the next in the queue.

So I went online and was presented with a multilingual 'Welcome to Sweden!' introduction where I was treated in exactly the same way as if I had been a refugee or any other migrant. 'Bloody Swedes! How dare they! My family have been Swedes since before the Vikings! There is not a drop of any other blood in my veins!' I huffed and puffed for a time until I calmed down and realized I had to eat some humble pie.  I had brought it on myself.   

Interestingly, since 2001 it is possible to hold multiple nationalities and still retain one's Swedish citizenship, so, if I were to retrieve it I would not have to give up my British nationality. I applied. and I heard nothing from them for  over a year. I had more or less given up and resigned myself to being 'just' British. Arriving back from Mali at Heathrow the last time I was received at the passport control by a very jolly passport official of apparently Asian ethnic origin. 'Welcome Home!' he said with a big smile as he handed me back the passport.  I felt  warm at heart and suddenly quite patriotic for Britain, this nice place that has welcomed me although the Swedes don't want me any more!

But  this week, there it was, the envelope from the Swedes.  What did it say?  I opened it with some trepidation- I would have been sad after all to lose the citizenship of my home country- but it was my certificate of Swedishness once more restored! I now jumped to my feet and sang the Swedish National Anthem all on my own. Dear  Eva had put a word in for me and written them a letter presumably suggesting that I was a worthwhile proposition to take back into the fold once more...maybe that is what did the trick?

Then the other night I had the opportunity to celebrate further with several Swedes and with my cousin Greger and his wife Eva- he was in London for a significant birthday and we had lovely dinner  on the Canal at Little Venice:

 

And meanwhile in Timbuktu the Al Wangari Library digitizing studio is now up and running, and here is Mariam Haidara, one of the new workers in the ELIT team, beginning to digitize the first volume of manuscripts: a religious poem which was copied in Timbuktu on March the 15th 1752.