Tit for T(w)at

Feeling rather perplexed as to Femen’s nudist activism. Notwithstanding my respect to Femen and their activism and struggle, notwithstanding my very liberal stands on sexuality and female sexuality or choice of, I keep trying to convince myself that using female nudity to attract attention over women’s rights and equality issues is necessary then I argue the opposite and refuse to see the necessity female nudity to claim equal rights or shed lights on women’s issue.
I even argued that if a man can walk around topless, why can’t a woman, then another voice in my head waves me off; yes but he doesn’t have hanging glands that arouse and are the subject of so many mythical and religious tales and dramas.

Would it be acceptable if men used nudity to claim freedom and democracy?
The latest movement from Ourgla (Algeria) here saw a massive gathering of young unemployed men demanding jobs and more attention, none of whom was showing an ounce of flesh of course it wouldn’t have served any purpose because nobody is chastising the male body AND I think it was quite chilly that day.

Arguably the female body is generally considered more attractive, aesthetic and more interesting than men’s and I would certainly not tune in to see any nude-men-walk (or women’s), and so it (female nudity) would understandably gather more attention upon revealing it, but to me resorting to provocative nudity in activism brings the intended attention but not without arousing the fury of the extremists, religious or not, the anti-feminists or whatever group was targeted directly or indirectly.

I for one, for all my sins and big mouth, cannot put my breasts on show for any reason or cause, perhaps I lack the bravery that Amina and Meriem have or perhaps I think it easier and more adequate to face inequality and prejudices with more cerebral or verbal ways and discourses that do not resort to nudity.

However, not agreeing with female nudist activism does not in any way mean not supporting Femen’s struggle or for that matter showing my outrage at the Islamists who produced a Fatwa on Amina’s head to be stoned to death.

Amina’s posed topless on the Femen Tunisia Facebook group bearing in black marker across her chest and belly the following words in Arabic “My body is mine, not for your honour”, today Amina is reported missing and it makes me feel indignant and want to scream.

CASE IN POINT: did she not just stipulate that her body was hers and nothing to do with the honour of the country or indeed any other Tunisian person. Yet her action was seen as soiling the Tunisian honour and that of Muslims. Do these people not read? I am sure the message was written quite clearly over her chest …look for yourselves!

Patriarchal society is confusing and hypocritical, holding the “uncovered women ask for it” discourse, treating women like a thing of temptation to be exploited and enjoyed on one hand and strive to hide, cover, destroy and oppress it on the other, driving Muslim women to use Burkas and Hidjab as tools of self-defence and blaming their God-given bodies and hair for the harassment endured.
Why should we have to endure men’s overzealous testosterone and misogyny, why should we wear a burka or a headscarf or even feel the need to go bare breasted when they (men) can just tuck their tongues back in their mouths and busy themselves with more important business like the economy or dominos.

Dz-chick…show it if you can bare it!

Ps: yes I do know how to spell Twatt

Algerian Dad!

Sometimes when I am bored at work, I call home in Algeria to chit chat with the parents, for a recipe, a random question or for a laugh…

My dad is now retired, he never picks up the house phone, he wants to be called on his mobile to get some use out of it, he never picks that up either, he also never takes it out with him when he leaves the house. I had to explain to him that it was called a “mobile” for a reason but he ignored me. (Just now I called him to get more quotes out of him for this little post and nothing; nada)

When you do call him on his mobile, after he reaches up for it on top of the highest furniture in the room, he has to remove his glasses and squint to see who it is first, then by the 10th ring, he will dramatically struggle to slide it open, by then the phone call drops or the caller gives up.

My dad is a badass character, I heard from a reliable source that he has a foul mouth, though admittedly I never heard him say more than “saligou” in our presence, though everybody is missing a link according to him and we live in a mental country where the language spoken is screaming.

Since retirement, my dad got funnier, admittedly I find him funny because I live far from him, my sister finds him annoying at best of times, I guess there is nothing funny about living with your dad at the age of 30, it is neither easy nor ideal, perhaps it’s practical but let’s not encourage that.

Apparently the whole family including the neighbours and their dog is conspiring against him, they hide his hair brush (he HAS no hair), his glasses keep moving, he can never find them, he accuses mum of moving them on purpose and accusing him of suffering dementia. You can never laugh out loud at home, because the neighbours have nothing better to do than to listen to me laughing, he argued “but you laugh like a hyena”. Fair point.

When I visit, I am usually spared the wardrobe commentary, at least for the first few hours, then you can really tell he’s suffering and has to let it out,
“is this what they call la mode nowadays?”, “Those trousers do nothing for you ma fille”, “c’est pas tres elegant ma fille”, “you look like Gavroche”, once he referred to my Bermuda shorts as “kilouta”.
He doesn’t like my weird style, it’s not tidy or smart and he usually laughs in my face and this is me getting the guest treatment. Ahhhhh fond memories.

After about a couple of days, he forbids me from touching the crossword puzzles, because I can never finish them, apparently he only finds it adorable for the first couple of tries and I only prove him right, I am an apeutpriste, we are all Apeutpristes, the whole of Algeria is a nation of apeutpristes, including the people who make the Puzzles because he always finds “mistakes”! ya ya!

Everybody is out to get him and his money, the plumber doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s a cowboy, “I will do it myself” so he does and makes a mess of it, latest damage; he put a hole in the brand new bath tub and taped it with duck tape and painted over it with white so my mum doesn’t see it. She did and called him an apeutpristes. Ah sweet justice, he didn’t eat her diner that night.

I know you’re starting to see the similarities…

But that’s just my dad; I always thought he was different from other perhaps more typical Algerian dads, but I am pretty sure he isn’t. When you think about it what makes the Typical Algerian dad?
Is it the gandoura he owns and only wears some Fridays not all, the fact he calls everyone a hypocrite particularity if they were bearded, or is it the fact he never cooked a meal in his life (Omelettes and BBQs don’t count), or maybe the respect he always manages to impose and the fact he can be uber annoying and his excuse will always be “because I am your father”.

I always find I have a different relationship when I am away from him to when I am under his roof; I have a fondness, love and respect for him that is unimaginable but it doesn’t make him mind his own business, be less annoying or less imposing, but he’ll always be loving, funny and my dad.

American dad: eat your heart out, Algerian dad remains my favourite character of all times, he gets my jokes and knows how to boil water.

Now; I am against (over) quoting other people unless it’s my dad or someone of great wisdom, but this is a quote I find to be very true:
“That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all. ~ J. August Strindberg


Dz-Chick….daddy’s girl! Always…

There is more to Safety in Numbers!

Oh look at me; I am an annoying inquisitive fly that won’t go away!

Go on squash me….squash me!

As a foreigner (God I hate this word) living in London or anywhere else, you find yourself part of a few social circles, the (back) home crowd, Algerian in my case and the other crowd, the one mixed with international friends including the host crowd i.e. the Brits, all your English friends who love you for your eccentricities, your funny accent and say things like “you’re so lucky you tan quick”.

The (back) home crowd is the one that after a while gives you social anxieties and feelings of forced competition, as though you have been thrown into a racing track you can’t climb out of, are forced to compete, you feel lost and confused but you have to run because everybody is and you know the right thing to do (if you’re bothered) is to beat them.

Feelings of resentment then start bubbling up to the surface, feelings of being forced to hang out with crowds where feelings of being constantly judged overwhelm you, judgement on what you wear, the way your hair curls, the University you attended and the degrees you have, then the job you hold followed by the salary you’re probably on as calculated through your CV, as viewed “secretly” on LinkedIn.

What university did I attend?

If I get to kick a man’s balls for every time I was asked this question. You will all be neutered (I am freakishly strong).

I was once travelling in Asia and I got into the subway, I took a seat on my train and was reading my book, when I raised my head to check where I got to, I found myself in the middle of a very distinct Non-Asian congregation, it looks like all the foreigners mainly European were drawn to the same train car, as if proximity to another stranger or foreigner of the same colour makes the culture shock less painful or brings home closer.

That got me thinking about Safety in Numbers, it is not about safety per-se as we were obviously very safe and our presence didn’t seem to phase the locals at all, quite the contrary I think the Chinese go out of their way to ignore you and pretend you’re not there, especially when you look lost or trying to get their attention, they then mutter something in Chinese, which I concluded was “stupid tourist”.

We are all attracted to our own; our identity is based on belonging to a family, to a tribe, to a group, a nation, a religion then to a social circle or an Ethnic minority as is the case of the Algerians in the UK or indeed the Europeans in China.

Which brings me to my next point, being abroad after a number of years does bring about nostalgic feelings and the need to belong, to join and to integrate the home (as opposed to host) community if there was one, listen to the same music, talk in the same language, tell old popular jokes, even certain words in your mother tongue become hilarious, because they become so distant and carry no sense that you can presently relate to, so you gather, laugh, say funny things like “3id Achajara” and “Abou Koulaita”, talk about old times or simply be in proximity of each other, brings a sense of community, of belonging and of safety that lessen the pangs of nostalgia and the coldness of the Ghorba*.

And this is how you develop the Algerian overdose syndrome (a special thought to a certain someone who probably invented this!).

If the community is small, you will probably suffer the same hangers-on and the regular social climbers , the unpopular and the followers who seem to be everywhere and all the time. You bump into them (I insist) everywhere, the unremarkable and the forgettable, you don’t seem to remember them or having seen them, only a feeling of annoyance lingers long after they’re gone, like the ever annoying desert fly that won’t go away, only when it does, you remember being annoyed but can never really put your finger on why (in the case of the fly, it is literally the case), this over-closeness and over-congregating habits can be suffocating and give you the feeling of claustrophobia.

So what to do when you overdose on the home crowd?

Pull away, get lost, hang out with your international circles, where you are just you, you don’t take yourself so seriously, you don't catch yourself posing (Yeah you know who you are) nobody calls you by your suffix (Arabs are massive fans of titles), nobody cares what you studied or where, you are just you and what you bring to the table isn’t determined by which University you attended but by your personality, your views and your sense of humour. Everything else is usually excess to requirement and they all know and accept you have just the right amount of weird.

In the end, communities are great, for public holidays and National celebrations, but once their presence is no longer serving its purpose, which we determined above if I must repeat myself, is reducing pangs of nostalgia and making the solo life in a foreign land more bearable AFTER a number of years or equally in times of crisis, if it no longer serves its purpose, then I ask you? What is the point.

At this point, I am hoping some of you agree with me, otherwise I should be asking myself another question: what am I still doing here?

Dz-chick…There is Safety in Numbers, perhaps, but I am an adventurous weirdo who likes odd numbers preferably fewer than 3…

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Picture from: www.jedessine.com
*if you can translate it...go ahead

Still suffering fools!

January is a drag, 31 days of cold unrelenting weather, it’s like a living a Monday morning over and over again. I almost feel grateful for the eventfulness of it all, with the Hostage crisis in InAmenas …hmmm that’s it.

Not much happens in January really, you might lose a couple of pounds, but fear not, they’re literally there hanging in the air waiting to cling back to your hips or in my case, my ass.
I tried to think of what’s going on, but only found a few friends still busy with their NY resolutions, they’re not really busy though, they just use the “I am so busy” as a badge of honour, oh I have a life don’t you know, yeah well I have a blog.

Anyway, so one more thing that happened was this guy at work , who was eating ice-cream at lunch, he said “oh this coconut ice-cream is really delicious”, his ice-cream was pink, so I said “your ice-cream is pink” so he said “yeah cos it’s strawberries”, I asked if there was any coconut in it, he said “don’t think so no”.

In other news, there’s a competition at work on who drinks the biggest amounts of water, I drink enough I could win the damn competition and anyone who knows me knows where I stand on water, well not literally, there’s only one guy who could do that and look what they did to him, so this is a moo point.

Did I tell you I had a date this year; I know you’re thinking already??
Yep, but it turned out, his balls hadn’t dropped yet, I am waiting (not really) for them to grow, maybe he’ll be able to explain, to himself, what happened.

Communication is a key element you see, the Algerian government teaches us all about that in their latest communication frenzy! In Operation covert I call: Silence Radio.
They could have just sent us a text like they usually do about voting.

If January was a person, we’d have fallen out by now!

Dz-chick, bored yes but mostly annoyed

Ban el Web

This article is written as part of the DZBlogDay, the topic was set by the organisers and this is my contribution and opinion on the “The Algerian Web”.

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Ban el Web

The Algerian loves the internet; he loves it to destruction, to infinity, to freedom, but not in the same way the Nigerian does.

Only the web gives the Algerian the freedom he so craves in his life, own land and country, he can be John, he can be, and a lot of the time is Maurice, he can be a doctor, he can be a rich business man, in love and ready to tie the knot, he can also be a troll and he makes the best of them.

Farid’s life consists of staying up until dawn, sleeping until noon, mingling with his homies and sharing a cup a coffee at the local café. Farid doesn’t have a job, he didn’t finish school and he has no prospects.

The first internet café opened in town, it’s dark, it smells of stale tobacco and a pungent faint body odour, the air is heavy with illegitimacy and shifty looks, all PCs are in use, young men hunched over their keyboards chatting to their Scandinavian blondes promising them eternal love and undying loyalty.

Upon connection, Farid transforms into a successful business man, he runs a prêt-a-porter shop for women in town. He is tall and handsome and believes it, as long as he’s connected. He lives his DZ avatar life to the full.

There are others, who aren’t attempting the love-to-escape route, who find comfort in hacking facebook and hotmail accounts and playing pranks on other web-loved-up candidates, 5 out of 24 hours can be spent tormenting a poor hopeful from Setif, impersonating a girl from Annaba who is cute, shy but interested, the other 19 hours are spent on the dismal not so virtual life.

Others, on a nobler quest are planning the Spring that never came, the big guys up in the watch towers have shut it down, facebook is blocked, a few YouTube revolutionaries arrested and the lovers miss their web-wives, the DZ web seemed pretty bleak until the smiling hacker Hamza Bendelladj  came along, some viewed it as a step-up, as feelings of pride and not so-discreet smirks appeared and defended it “there’s not such thing as bad publicity”.

But it wasn’t average Farid, Farid can’t hack worth a Dinar, he’s a sappy romantic who spends his living hours daydreaming about a life away from here or waiting to speak to his love interest, but sadly she’s 7 hours ahead and asleep.

Dz Web life is frustratingly and unfairly virtual.

In a world where, love is denied you, jobs are as scarce as teeth on a chicken, freedom is written not given, where rights are uttered not granted, where liberties are infringed, where visas are refused and the ships are guarded, there is no where to run and nothing to do but to become a Dz Avatar and dream of greener pastures and a better life and a blonde wife, with a freedom of movement beyond el houma and money in the pocket and peace in the heart, of a greener country and cleaner street, of a place where you don’t have to bribe your way into a public toilet and buy people to do their already paid jobs.

But the Web giveth and the Government taketh away.

Dz-Chick….Web-based, born and bred.