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Demigod · Joined: 15 Dec 2009 Posts: 77

Urggh!! We are all losing sleep and bashing the bishop has become trends here in Najran, Saudi Arabia. The dead monkey is pressing forward and we are running for cover. I toss and turn at night in a cold hotel room. I can feel its wet tongue licking my neck and drooling on my scalp. I wake up in the morning cold and feeling violated. I am scared because the dead monkey can appear in many forms. It is poking the local laundry mat workers. My shirts are returned two sizes smaller and sometimes with bleach stains on colored material. Our western clothes are replaced with Saudi throbes that are too long. They are very comfortable, until you have visit the restroom. The dead monkey laughs at you because you tip- toe through brown water. The monkey pokes your thighs because you forgot the toilet paper and it hurts to squat using Eastern tiolets. The spray doesn�t work and the water cohesion turns the bottom of your white throbe, doo doo brown.

So many valued customs stand on opposing sides. The memories of fresh flowers and running water soothes the mind. The sun bakes the body, as pay day becomes the only motivating factor in Najran. The days and nights quickly pass, but the smell of sewage lingers in our hotel. The days are glaring and the nights are cold. The apparent hate from the Eastern teachers have provided meaning to an already dismal experience. The attempt of building bridges has only cemented defense positions. The random verbal light fire provides brief entertainment. We have learned that the greater the smile from Eastern teachers, the more hatred is brewing inside of them. The more the dead monkey is poking them.. Islam teaches us to be patient and humble, but this mean that we have to let people run all over us? Does it means that we just bend over and let the dead monkey have its way with us? In the west, we are taught to beat the crap out of anyone, who attempts anything insulting. The dead monkey has even learned to play mind games. It has divided our work force and it is eliminating the western teachers at will

I find myself wearing throbes on the days that I believe the dead monkey is sleeping. Urgghh!! The monkey doesn�t sleep,�it is just poking other individuals. I find myself wearing pants or Paki. Clothes, when the dead monkey takes the form of locals and teachers alike. Its our defense mechanism, that is permissible only for a short time. The dead monkey has learned to take different shapes and forms. The dead monkey has even kept our passports in an undisclosed location in the Rimas hotel. I can see that dead monkey..I can see its rotten fingers wrapped around our passports and copying information. I CAN SEE IT, CLEARLY!!! I can see the dead monkey going to the UK with the British passport. I can see it poking some bloody tosser. I can see the dead monkey in America, urinating on the recent health care bill and poking Brett Favre in the red zone.
"In Riyadh, in Riyadh your passports are" This is what we are told constantly for over a month. The dead monkey has made a home in Jordan. This time his bony fingers are holding their forked tongues. So many lies, ..hmm maybe it�s the southern bone that the dead monkey is putting on their tongues. The dead monkey is quite global. It has even been with that Nigerian idiot and poking airplane mechanics working in Lebanon.
LETS GO DOCTOR!, let us eat and become great friends!, YES! YES!, welcome to Najran!
, but if you marry any Saudi girl, I will KILL YOU! Confused

Welcome people, welcome to Najran, Saudi Arabia.. WELCOME TO MY HYBRID HELL!
Stay tuned for part two..

johnslat · Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:02 pm Post subject:

Dear Demigod,

Hmm, sounds like you have a dead monkey on your back.

"WELCOME TO MY HYBRID HELL!"

But other than that, how do you REALLY feel about Najran?

Regards,
John

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

Wait... won't the next chapter be #3?

I'm not sure John... but I don't think he likes it there. Cool

VS

The Lathe of Heaven · Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:23 am Post subject: Re: Dead Monkey 2

With Malice Toward None · Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 250

Demigod,
Are you in any way related to that guy called George Orwell who wrote 'Burmese Days' and 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying'? Some literary gene Razz

running somewhere...
Regards,
WMTN.

johnslat · Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:05 pm Post subject:

Dear WMTN,

If he's a relation, his/her last name might be Blair (but not Orwell.)

But maybe, since he's an EFLer, he may be related to another writing Eric: Eric Ambler.

Regards,
John

With Malice Toward None · Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 250

Dear JS,
He ambles and ambles. If he had ambulated instead, perhaps he would've reached at least the causeway and the sea would've parted as it did before Moses (pbuh), and some of us among the chosen could've followed...
Regards.
WMTN.

johnslat · Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:18 pm Post subject:

Dear WMTN,

" . . . . and some of us among the chosen could've followed..."

That's funny - you don't LOOK Jewish.

Regards,
John

With Malice Toward None · Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 250

Come on , JS, since when did Jews appropriate Moses exclusively to themselves?
Regards.
WMTN.

johnslat · Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:30 pm Post subject:

Dear WMTN,

I wasn't referencing Moses/Musa but instead the term "the chosen (people)," a phrase that (at least in most contexts) is most often associated with the Jewish people.

Regards,
John

With Malice Toward None · Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 250

Dear JS,
OK.
Demigod's problem stems from the fact that he forces himself to do something he doesn't like, but nevertheless does for pecuniary considerations. Orwell was in Burma because he was an officer, I believe, in the Indian Army, and serving the Crown, not himself.
Regards,
WMTN.

doner · Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 179

Orwell was an officer in the Indian Police who served in Burma. By all accounts he was typical of his generation and held no socialist beliefs while he was there.

With Malice Toward None · Joined: 20 Oct 2009 Posts: 250

Doner, you mean the person and his work differ?

doner · Joined: 21 Jan 2010 Posts: 179

A lot of his stories about himself are fanciful.

For example he claimed to have been down and out in Paris but in fact lived in a flat in a fashionable part of Paris. He claimed to have had a tough time at public school yet classmates said he enjoyed it and that the school was fairly good. He claimed to have been apalled by colonialism in Burma yet he took part in it enthusiastically according to fellow officers.

johnslat · Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:01 pm Post subject:

Dewar doner,

On the contrary - I'd say it was precisely his experiences of imperialism during his time in Burma that pushed him into becoming a socialist.

"Born in 1903 in India as Eric Arthur Blair to the family of mid-level colonial administrators, Orwell started down the same road as his family, signing up as a policeman in Burma right out of school. His position and experiences in Burma had a huge impact on him, and he had no illusions what purpose he had there. He writes: "I was in the police, which is to say that I was part of the actual machinery of despotism."5

His earliest writings took sharp aim at the hypocrisy of the British Empire and those who upheld it under a banner of freedom and enlightenment. "How can you make out that we are in this country for any purpose except to steal?" his main character, Flory, declares in Burmese Days (1934).

It�s so simple. The official holds the Burman down while the businessman goes through his pockets. Do you suppose my firm, for instance could get its timber contracts if the country weren�t in the hands of the British?� The British Empire is simply a device for giving trade monopolies to the English.6

Disgusted, Orwell returned to Europe and threw himself into a poverty-stricken existence, living with the homeless, working low-wage jobs and struggling to become a writer."

http://www.isreview.org/issues/32/orwell.shtml

"Shortly after I left school (I wasn't quite twenty years old then) I went to Burma and joined the Indian Imperial Police. This was an armed police, a sort of gendarmerie very similar to the Spanish Guardia Civil or the Garde Mobile in France. I stayed five years in the service. It did not suit me and made me hate imperialism, although at that time nationalist feelings in Burma were not very marked, and relations between the English and the Burmese were not particularly unfriendly."

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html

By the way, could you give sources/citations for any of these statements?

" . . . he claimed to have been down and out in Paris but in fact lived in a flat in a fashionable part of Paris. He claimed to have had a tough time at public school yet classmates said he enjoyed it and that the school was fairly good. He claimed to have been apalled by colonialism in Burma yet he took part in it enthusiastically according to fellow officers."

Regards,
John

P.S. Here's what I found:

"Seeking extra inspiration, in the spring of 1928 Orwell moved from the Portobello Road to a cheap hotel in the Rue du Pot de Fer, just off the Rue Mouffetard in Paris' Quartier Latin.
At the time the narrow street was �cobbled and dingy,� the hotel's walls were �thin,� and dirt and bugs were everywhere. As crummy as it was, it wasn't � and still isn't � far from the Jardin des Plantes, the Panth�on and the classier boulevards of Saint-Germain, Saint-Michel and Montparnasse.
Hemingway and his first wife had lived not far away, for a time in 1922; on the other side of the Place de la Contrescarpe, in the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.
In 1928, when Montparnasse was still having its decade-long party, attended by a few artists and many impostors, and Samuel Beckett was beginning his two-year stint as a �lecteur� of English in the nearby Ecole Normale Sup�rieure, Orwell circulated in an altogether different Paris.
He said the Jardin des Plantes was so infested with rats that they almost became tame enough to feed by hand; until they were such a nuisance that cats were imported to wipe them out.

[Sweeping up after the march� in the Place Monge.]
Meanwhile, in his book �Down and Out in Paris and London,� the tone was more solemn. His room was burgled and his money was stolen. Nearly penniless, what little he had �oozed away� and eventually went hungry for three days."

http://www.orwell.ru/a_life/Richard_Erickson/english/e_ofof

Doesn't sound too "fashionable" to me, but maybe that depends on what one might be used to.