At the market this morning one of the ladies on the cheese and biscuit stall declared she was going to church. Her companion looked up in amazement! Whereupon the first lady said this was her euphemism for going for a wee! She went on to say that if she really went to church that would make it rain. I didn’t know going to church caused it to rain. If that were true we would have an easy solution to drought!
Anyway, she must have done something because it did in fact rain on me as I cycled home along the Donkey Line. I assume it was also raining in Uppermill, where the shoes and slippers man would need to be throwing sheets of plastic over his wares, including the second hand books he sells for £1 apiece. He also sells vitamins and other such dietary supplements, which has always struck me as odd combination - shoes and slippers with vitamins!
Hunting around for something to watch while I did some knitting last night, I looked through stuff we have recorded over the last few years and found an Almodóvar film, Julieta. Made in 2016, this film has sat in our media box since it appeared on television. To the best of my knowledge we have never watched it. This one is not a typical quirky, funny Almodóvar film. Rather it’s a rather sad tale about mother-daughter relationships. Relationships with mothers is a common theme in Almodóvar’s work. On researching it a little, I discovered it was based on three short stories by Alice Munro, one of my favourite writers. What a coincidence - small world syndrome strikes again!
After that (I was home alone and doing a bit of binge-watching) I moved on to a documentary about Joan Baez. What a hero that woman is: as a schoolgirl protesting about the uselessness of everyone dashing home from school during nuclear attack practice (if a genuine attack took place parents would not have time to gather their children around them); getting her name in the local papers for that activity; joining anti-segregation marches at the age of 16; singing at Martin Luther King rallies; going to prison for persuading young men to refuse to go and fight in Vietnam; going to Vietnam to see the horror for herself and having to take shelter from American bombs! A lifelong pacifist, she is my hero!
Over a late breakfast I came across an article about Azdyne Amimour and Georges Salines, both of them fathers of young people who died in the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. Azdyne Amimour’s son was one of the attackers and Georges Salines’s daughter was one of the victims. They have since become friends and have worked together on prevention strategies; talking at and holding workshops with government, schools and prisons. (The politicians tend to listen more to Salines, apparently, whereas the prisoners listen more to Amimour.)
That last comment in parenthesis is telling, it seems to me. Azdyne Amimour is not a fundamentalist or a terrorist but he was taken away for questioning as if he were as guilty as the son he did not even know was back in France. It was the police interrogator who informed him of this and told him that his son was dead, shot by French police: “He yelled this at me with such cruelty,” says Amimour. “I was shocked, I was sad, and I was angry at my son all at the same time.”
Like children, parents of terrorists, also become victims. Azdyne Amimour’s son went off to Syria in 2013, telling his moderate, non-fundamentalist father not to seek him. Azdyne Amimour has a granddaughter he has never met, although he has successfully campaigned to find her and bring her to France. She is with foster parents and he fears he may never be able to have her live with him.
As I read that some 15 French women and children are still in detention in camps in Syria, I found myself thinking about Shamima Begum. When her case has been discussed nobody, to my knowledge, has reported on those French women also treated as second-class or non-citizens in their country of birth. Leaving them, and particularly their children, in those camps is surely a mistake. Georges Salines believes this approach is misguided in terms of security, says Salines, as well as for humanitarian reasons. “Particularly the children. We leave them in the hands of women who are members of [Islamic State], who tell them every day how bad France or Great Britain is. What will they do when they are adults? If we want to ensure our own safety, we have to bring those people back.”
We in the West have had a hand in creating these camps and we need to help find a solution.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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