Paris Parfait

Rowing in Oxford

Rowing teams on the River Isis at Oxford, England poise in preparation for a Saturday afternoon race.

They're off! Teams start out swiftly, racing to the finish - despite intermittent rain showers.

Another Oxford competition featured teen rowers. We came across the rowing competition while walking along the river near Christchurch Meadows.

My husband and I spent time in Oxford this month, visiting his lovely daughter Marie-Claire, who works for an international organisation. As always, it was wonderful seeing her and hearing about her exciting life in Oxford. One of the nice dinners we shared with Marie-Claire and the charming young man she's dating was at a tapas restaurant, where the owners and waiters were actually Spanish.

When I told the waiter - who was speaking Spanish at every opportunity - that I was going to Seville to study Spanish, he talked enthusiastically about cities he had visited in Andalucia, including Cordoba and Granada. Then he asked how long I'd be in Seville. When I replied, "Five weeks," he looked at me pityingly, no doubt thinking there's no way I'll learn Spanish in five weeks. So I quickly said, "It's just the first class. Obviously, I'll have to take many more." He smiled and nodded, relieved I wasn't delusional enough to think Spanish could be learned so easily.

In Oxford we stayed at a historic building which has been refurbished into a charming hotel. Unfortunately the light on our balcony constantly flashed off and on our first night, meaning I got very little sleep. The next morning we reported the problem to the concierge, who assured us he'd sort it. Late that night when we returned from dinner, the light was still flashing like a wayward disco strobe. This infuriated me, because the concierge had said he would fix it. So I went downstairs and got the night manager. He came upstairs, went out on the balcony and agreed that the light was "very annoying." "But unfortunately, there's nothing we can do," he added.

At this point, I remembered just how pricey this hotel was, so I responded, "Well you have to do something. This is unacceptable. I'm not spending another night with that light flashing." I meant that he should move us to another room - even though it would have been a hassle to repack everything - or remove the bulb from the flashing light. Apparently he never considered the first option; instead he stood on a balcony chair and started fiddling with the light. He then went downstairs and returned with a screwdriver. I told him he shouldn't use a screwdriver, as he might get shocked. But he ignored me and continued trying to disconnect the light - which was set on a building timer.

I can still...

This week's Sunday Scribblings prompt is "Who else can I still be?" While I don't want to change my life too dramatically, many goals can still be achieved:

I can still make a difference
with the words I write,
pry open some closed minds
and fill ravaged hearts with hope;
sing songs of possibility;
right some wrongs.

I can draw on experience
and smooth rocky paths
for those less fortunate,
help refugees and displaced persons:
the victims of an unbalanced world,
navigating shifting sands.

I can still sketch maps
for my daughter, guiding her
along the way
and help future grandchildren
develop strength and self-esteem,
in an increasingly fragile world.

I can face time's passage,
with humour and grace;
accept that the woman I am
is more valuable than treasure
and learn to speak Spanish;
find that house in Seville.

I can still thank God
for the talents that shine,
for the love of a good man,
the joy and health of my daughter.
I can wake up every morning,
grateful for the gift of life.

An accident of birth

A stream of raw sewage runs through this Palestinian refugee camp.

Tin roofs on simple mud and concrete dwellings are weighted by heavy stones.

"Who else might I have been?" is this week's Sunday Scribblings prompt. With all the bad news emanating from the Middle East these days, people have often said to me, "Thank God we were born in the West." Certainly being born in a Western nation provides opportunities few in the world can ever imagine, much less achieve.

We are privileged to live relatively stable lives, with adequate nutrition, roofs over our heads, healthcare, education and jobs. Until fairly recently, being born in a Western nation provided an immunity of sorts, guarding against many problems ever directly touching our lives. Of course exceptions exist in pockets of poverty throughout the United States, particularly in the industrial North and the rural South, including the Mississippi Delta.

I spent years in the Middle East, thanking my lucky stars I was born in the West. Because not only do the Arabs live with the constant threat of conflict with Israel, many many people in the region live far below what we would consider the poverty line. Many Palestinian children grow up in refugee camps in simple dwellings, their corrugated tin roofs held down by stones.

I first visited the Beqaa Refugee Camp in Jordan in 1983. Children played games next to a stream of raw sewage running through the dirt roads. The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) and numerous private charities have contributed to proper sanitation facilities as well as schools, medical clinics and improved living conditions. But more often than not, school consists of one unheated room, furnished only with a chalkboard and hard wooden benches and desks.

Despite the physical discomforts these children pay attention; they're eager to learn, because they know that the only way out of poverty; out of their predicament is an education. You'd probably be surprised at how many Palestinians growing up in dire circumstances speak two or more languages. Their ability to adapt to changing environments and learn languages puts most Americans with expensive educations to shame. These Palestinian children grow up to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and diplomats. They work hard to ensure they aren't mired in the circumstances in which their parents were forced to live, after fleeing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

As a reporter based at the United Nations, I covered so many Security Council and General Assembly meetings regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and traveled to so many countries in the Middle East, the Palestinian delegation used to joke that I was becoming like them - "a refugee" - always moving from place to place, country to country and never really settling anywhere. For too many Palestinians, home is an elusive dream. But that's another story for another day.

Nomads by choice

The Bedouin tribes are nomads by choice. They travel throughout the Arab World, pitching tents, shepherding sheep for a time, then moving on to another locale. At first glance, they might appear poor. But many of the Bedouin have healthy bank accounts and houses in town; they prefer the freedom and open spaces of desert encampments.

The Bedouins are a hospitable people, generously sharing everything they have with anyone who turns up at their encampment. Often they kill and cook a goat in honour of their guests. By tradition, the Bedouins have a responsibility to shelter and protect guests for three days, no questions asked. They turn no one away, regardless of religion, politics or nationality. At the end of three days, the traveler must go elsewhere.

In 1980 in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, Jordan I first noticed a blonde woman wearing Arab dress. She was selling necklaces and earrings fashioned from polished agate, aventurine and other stones mined in the region. I asked her how she'd come to live in Jordan. She told me she had been a tourist, visiting from New Zealand and had met and fallen in love with a Bedouin man. They married and lived very simply in an open cave near the Petra Treasury. Later the Jordanian government moved the few people living in the area to government housing in a nearby village.

Years later I saw the woman at Safeway in Amman, fashionably dressed in jeans and sandals, her hair pulled back into a braid. The next time I went to Petra she was again dressed in Arab dress, selling jewelery to tourists - apparently quite a profitable venture!

I will remember you

Poetry inspired by music is the prompt for this week's Poetry Thursday. My poem includes a stanza from the Sarah McLachlan song I Will Remember You. The poem was inspired by children in Qana, Lebanon, who died when Israeli bombs crushed the house in which their families were sheltering - and by all the children who have perished in wars and conflict throughout the world.

Again, death has come calling
in this place where Christ performed miracles.
Not one, but two massacres a decade apart
provoking international outcry
and fanning the flames of hate, when hope was needed.

Under sheltering skies, a gathering storm:
in a basement families slept,
while diplomats' reason failed to keep
the stealth bombs at bay, intent on revenge.
Nothing can help them now.

The protective cover of darkness,
safety dependent on mortar and bricks.
Nightfall's silence shattered like glass, a blaze of fierce light
as bombs exploded, destroying all options
No safe havens here.

Buried among the rubble, their small bodies broken
like limp rag dolls, hair and clothes singed by fire
their lives cut short by a calculated risk
an act that failed to kill a single enemy,
but broke hearts around the world.

I will remember you
history will record the guise of self-defense
the senseless violence responsible
for innocents dead, like lambs to the slaughter.
Collateral damage? Children died here.

I will remember you
childhood innocence destroyed
A story grown familiar: a moment of madness;
the wails and tears of your parents
Rock of ages echoing Jericho's trumphets.

Though promise in your eyes, your life unremarkable;
but your death captured our attention.
Along the rocky path to peace,
tears wash away the blood of innocents
spilled in someone else's cause.

Your parents left with nothing
a tiny plywood coffin in a mass grave, a hasty burial.
No songs were sung; no flowers softened the crime.
Only tears mark your grave
in this troubled land where so many have fallen.

I will remember you
the Songs of Solomon you couldn't sing
the words you never spoke;
the stories unimagined
you didn't live to tell.

I will remember you
I will speak for your small voice
that never had a chance
to develop and be heard.
I will remember: you mattered.