To escape. In particular from this 6 by 6 foot concrete enclosure I am currently residing in.
You may well say, that’s easy isn’t it? Just open the door.
The door is locked, bolted, and chained, I would have replied.
And in a way so am I.
I do not know how long I have wanted to escape from my current abode. Because I do not know how long I have been here.
It can be difficult to count the days, weeks, months, perhaps years.
I really don’t know as my little home is inaccessible to light of almost any form. Natural or otherwise.
Once in a while I notice an exotic flash of silver ignited by the tiny light emanating from the end of a cigarette. One dragged on by the human who uncuffs me most mornings, if not every morning. That is if he hasn’t extinguished his pleasurable habit before he enters my little home.
If he had done, I would have to rely on the use of one of my other senses. Smell. Of stale tobacco and stale, stale sweat.
Or if I was lucky, the treat of lemon juice and fuul.
Mostly though my olfactory nerve is giving me the rancid smell of urine. My own.
Upon the higher planes of the sharp, pale mountain range, she took the Lee Enfield Mark 11 rife and fitted its wide angled scope.
Her young pupil stood submissively by her side.
“Timothy do get closer darling. You are going to be my eyes for this morning’s little exercise. You’ll find it has a hint of psychological warfare about it too.”
She smiled.
“Come on now, shoulder me.”
“Yes, mother.”
He sighed sulkily and pigeon footed his 4ft tiny frame until he reached her bulky left waist.
She looked through the scope and found her target, a drunken figure hovering within a blur of pink almond tree blossom in the valley 100 metres below them.
“Got you,” she murmured under her breath, purposefully inaudible. Then with her left hand she retrieved a pair of brass, bakelite military binoculars.
“Another relic from the British Empire’s escapades in north African”, she said, proudly, without a hint of humour, placing them over her son’s head.
“Binoculars have greater magnification, remember, Timothy.”
Timothy raised his eyebrows. Oh, what was she going to make him shoot this time? Please God, not another damn desert rat. They were a devil to kill.
With her middle finger, she pointed down towards the mass of pink.
“Locate target ‘A’ darling and keep it in sight. It’s 6ft tall with dirty brown hair.”
Good, he thought. No scampering vermin. Just another of her gardeners to take out. No gardener meant a new gardener, and a new daily treat.
Remembering his mother’s teachings, he grabbed a large slab of flat quartz rock from behind him, stepped upon it to ensure he was her height, and held the binoculars level with the rifle’s scope.
“Once you’ve got him – I mean ‘it’ – we’ll do the usual and swap places,” she instructed. “This is a tricky one so you can’t dither. I want to hear ‘target A in sight’ spoken from your mouth within 10 seconds.”
He set upon perfecting the task at hand while she craftily retrieved a metal flask from her right Berber’s pocket and gobbled down a giant glug of the colourless liquid, her eyes glazing as it hit the spot.
It was at least 30 seconds before Timothy managed to speak.
“Target A …,” he mumbled, before catching his breath.
“But it’s father, mother. It’s father. Your Target A is father!”
CALIFORNIA DREAMING: TINA BEXSON gets her kicks at the end of Route of Route 66
It’s a sight to die for. The Pacific Ocean looms into the distance, its gentle waves glistening in the rays of dawn sunlight. In the distance a dozen soldiers on an early morning training session are ploughing through the wet sand, the sea breeze waking them from their deep slumber. In a few hours time an abundance of equally beautiful people will be playing volleyball in rows and rows of public courts running along the coast line, while skaters and roller bladers whiz past. With an offshore breakwater keeping the surf fairly gentle, many more will be tempted to take the plunge with a spot of bodysurfing and boggie boarding. Perhaps they’ll all think they’re extras in Baywatch. After all, the Santa Monica State Beach was the inspiration for the beautiful people television series. But…
Sacrificing also occurs during Eid-al-Adha, the ‘feast’ after Ramadan. In Islam it is mandatory. Though only for those who can afford it. They are obliged to give a third of the meat to the poor. The slaughtering reflects the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son for Ismail, for the sake of Allah.
(scroll past the cutting for the text version which will be easier to read.
For Asian men, smoking is second nature and a sign of belonging – but some areas are more committed than others in providing help for them to quit.
Tina Bexson reports for the Guardian newspaper
Rufon Uddin is trying to give up smoking. He is finding it very difficult.
One of the biggest obstacles is being out with his friends in Newcastle upon Tyne’s West End where they all live and work. It is also hard because smoking is very much part of being a Bangladeshi man. It’s viewed with a strong sense of social acceptance, social bonding, and tradition.
“It’s very hard when they are all smoking and you are not, you feel apart as though you are missing out,” he says. “It’s also often the only real time when you can smoke properly because once our people get married, we wont smoke at home in front of the wife because she doesn’t like it.”
Nor can he smoke in front of anyone older than him because it is customary for Bangladeshis to never smoke in front of elders. “It’s a respect thing in Bangladeshi society,” Rufon explains. “I don’t smoke in front of my parents, even though my father smokes, and they know I smoke. And if I pass group of lads in their twenties who are smoking, they will hide their cigarettes or put them out until I’ve gone past, out of respect for me. But I see lots of white people when they get to 16 smoking in front of their parents with their parents even buying cigarettes for them.”
But he can smoke at work. “95% of us work in an Indian takeaway or restaurant,” he says, “and there are many more opportunities to smoke at work than there are for white people whose day is usually more structured. As long as we go outside, we can have a cigarette whenever we need.”
Although he recognises that giving up is ultimately up to the individual, he would like to join a local smoking cessation programme run by Newcastle and Tyne Primary Care Trust (PCT) to give him a head start. But it is only geared towards the white population and fails to acknowledge the different cultural concerns and problems facing smokers from his culture.
This is surprising because according to a survey by the Department of Health smoking is much more common amongst Bangladeshi men (44%) than among white men (27 %). For Bangladeshi men aged 50-74, the rate is a staggering 56%. This has serious health consequences. For example ,cardiovascular disease (angina, heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and diabetes) is 60-70% higher amongst Bangladeshi and Pakistani men, than the general population.
These significant differences between whites and South Asian men and women mark a drastic need for culturally sensitive interventions in Newcastle, outlines research recently published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) from the School of Population and Health Sciences at the University of Newcastle.
Places such as Bradford, Birmingham and Tower Hamlets in London, are already running both successful and advanced interventions such as the campaigns that take place during Ramadam. And since the Department of Health launched the NHS Asian tobacco education campaign in August, local smoking cessation services run by PCTs are increasing in other South Asian communities throughout the UK.
So why not in Newcastle upon Tyne?
Judy Loggie, the manager of smoking cessation services at Newcastle and Tynside PCT, who only recently took up her post, admits that they should be doing more. “We should be doing all this stuff, but we’re not. We did have Asian smoking cessation workers working on and off for two years, but it wasn’t a programme, it was just how we had responded to Asian needs so far. It’s not enough, and we need to do some more.”
Martin White, Senior Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Newcastle, conducted the BMJ research. He was struck by how “many white middle-class professionals within health care will view South Asians as a singular population with the idea that they can develop a ‘one size fits all’ approach to interventions for them.”
“But it’s fundamentally wrong,” he adds. “For example, it doesn’t make sense that what should work for young male Bangladeshis who work anti social hours in the restaurant trade should work for elders sitting at home all day. They are almost different cultural groups.”
Since its almost expected for the elders to smoke, Shazan Uddin, a bilingual community health worker and cardiac rehab nurse for the Westgate Heartbeat project in Newcastle, says that it takes a major health crisis for many of them to give up.
Many of his clients are elderly South Asians with coronary heart disease and diabetes. “Usually, they’ve either had a heart attack or are going to have heart bypass surgery before they give up,” he says.
Targeting those who aren’t suffering any ill health effects and who don’t want to give up is very difficult. “They say they’ve smoked all their life and don’t think its doing them any harm, it helps them relax. They’ve always got a way of justifying why they smoke and don’t want to give up”.
The situation isn’t helped by the acute lack of awareness of the serious health risks linked by smoking. DoH figures show that only 27% of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis associate smoking with heart disease.
Religion has little influence because despite tobacco being seen as Haram (not good says God) it is not specifically banned by their Islamic faith as alcohol is. Nor do their wives have much impact. “Their wives do put pressure on them, but they say that they as men are the decision makers in Asian families,” says Shazan.
“Up until now there has been very little information available in Bengali advising them on the damage smoking causes and on how to give up. They need more information but they don’t want any more of those leaflets, most of them don’t like reading anyway.” Because of these reasons, Shazan believes that any culturally sensitive smoking cessation programme would have to include structured group sessions.
Jamal Sarwar, 35, was one of the Bangladeshi advisors working for the PCT. Now he works as a community interpreter in the day and in an Indian restaurant in the evening. He is also a light smoker.
“It is absolutely necessary we have a proper smoking cessation programme in place. When I was working as a smoking cessation advisor, we found that we needed a central place where clients could go and see a doctor, a nurse and where they could get advice, nicotine replacement therapy, counselling and join a group. But we did not have that.”
However, Martin White acknowledges that there is the possibility of a programme being seen as “intrusive and patronising with people preaching to the Asian community”. “But on the other hand, there are many people in the community who do want to give up.”
Jamal agrees. “They would welcome a Bangladeshi smoking cessation programme. There is nothing at the moment and leaving it purely up to will power is very hard. If the programme is geared towards my community then I don’t think it can be patronising at all.”
“Also, the elders would only be happy on a programme with their own age group and taken by an adviser of their own age group. The same goes for the younger men who have different pressures and influences such as Indian films where the hero is always smoking. Our people need to feel the comfort of their own people.”
If he ever joined a smoking cessation programme Rufon would want the advisor to understand the pressures of working in an Indian takeaway or restaurant and know what goes on in his community. “A person from a different culture wouldn’t,” he says, “but a Bangladeshi man would.”
Martin White argues that any future culturally sensitive programme in Newcastle must take on board the differences within the communities themselves if they are going to reach their target population and be effective. “UK investment is urgently needed in culturally sensitive smoking cessation interventions for South Asians that involve the government and national and local health agencies, particularly primary care trusts.” These requirements should be underlined by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, he adds, which obliges public authorities, including the NHS, to promote racial equality in access to services.
SIDE BAR :
TOWER HAMLETS PCT TOBACCO CESSATION PROGRAMMES FOR SOUTH ASIANS:
Tower Hamlets PCT funds a project serving the Bangladeshi community partnered by Queen Mary University of London and a community organisation, Social Action for Health. It offers a ‘culturally competent service’ that tries to meet the needs of the local community by using bilingual gender specific male and female advisors who are aware of the socio-cultural context of tobacco use and the impact this has on tobacco cessation for the Bangladeshi community.
Although smoking is acceptable amongst Bangladeshi men, in women it is regarded as taboo, and disrespectful. Only 4% of the women smoke. They prefer to chew tobacco in a mixture called Paan especially those aged over 55 and of whom its estimated that 56% chew. Chewing is just as harmful, contributing to coronary heart disease, and cancer of the mouth. “But we don’t want to take anything away from them, it’s traditional within their culture,” says Tobacco Cessation Advisor Shamsia Begum. “They’d have seen their grandparents do it. So our message is ‘enjoy your paan and leave out the tobacco’.”
The advisors try and distinguish what the main causes for the addiction are. For women, its often being in a different country without the freedom they are used to. Smoking is frequently linked to stress.
“So we try and divert the men to an alternative to cigarettes to relieve stress, such as exercise or a hobby,” Shamsia explains. “ It may also be appropriate to refer them on to another service too.”
All materials, including advice pamphlets, contact details and questionnaires, are printed in both English and Bengali. An advisory group made up of smoking cessation advisors and community members meets quarterly to discuss and advise on new developments.
“We work on a locality basis,” says Ray Croucher, Professor of Community Oral Health at Queen Mary University of London, and the project’s joint manager. “We don’t wait for people to contact us – we recruit from the community by being present at, for example, a local food co-op and English language classes.”
Once clients have entered the Tower Hamlets programme they receive one to one counselling, nicotine replacement therapy and weekly advice. “Then we continue to make contact in the community or, if they’d prefer, provide domiciliary visits. Our success rate is around 62%, compared to the national average of 48-50%.”
The approach is “holistic”, he continues, “and sometimes offers guidance on housing and benefits issues or facilitates access to dental care. Through liaison with environmental health officers we’ve also developed a Code of Practice for Retailers – traditional tobacco products imported from South Asia often have inadequate labelling about the health impacts of tobacco use.”
TAIL END
‘Understanding Influences on Smoking in Bangladeshi and Pakistani Adults: A Community Based, Qualitative Study’, by the School of Population and Health Sciences at University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, is available at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7396/962
A couple of analogies of writer’s block, one well known, the other less so. There’s a third one I’d like to mention but damn, you’ve guessed it, I’ve got mental block about that one.
Still, I’ll press on. 😉
Creative blocks or barriers to inspiration can come in many guises, from a simple kind of memory loss mid-sentence to fully blown blocks of ideas. And it’s not just us jobbing writers who get blocks. There are also the painters, poets, playwrights, novelists and composers etc.
What’s more few of us gain comfort from well-meaning friends spouting an assortment of self-help mantras, especially the type of forthright ‘get on with it’ quotes such as how genius is “1 % inspiration and 99% perspiration”. Especially if we have absolutely no sign of that essential 1% at all.
So, what can we do to encourage the flow of words when they appear to have stopped dead in their tracks?
Well, these tips just may offer some food for thought if you’ve found ploughing on regardless to be an exercise in futility.
So first off, you losers, jump off your damn laptop. Now! It will swallow you up otherwise.
If you can get out the front door, then voilà– go. Sprint around the block, take an amble along the motorway, stroll along a leafy lane with the dog. Settle yourself in the branch of a tree. Give yourself a ‘view’ from a different perspective. Wherever takes your fancy. Just ensure your mind and body are both well away from writing. So, getting outside for a wee while is a must. There’s no need to take yourself too far outside your comfort zone though. Gate crashing your local park’s ‘Yoga for the Pregnant’ just may be a bridge too far.
Now that you’re outside, and have walked off some of that angst, have a chat. Call a friend. One who’s mentally stimulating, if possible. Tell them about what you’re trying to write. Failing that strike up a conversation with your local shopkeeper. Actually, that could be a better option. There’s more room for the unexpected to arise, especially if you barely know them. Conversation is one of the best methods to beat writer’s block. The point here is that the act of verbal communication itself can often spark off ideas – old, new, and forgotten ones.
If you simply have to stay inside the same building where your precious laptop resides, move to another room for a bit, even if it’s only the bathroom. You can use your mobile in there to call the ‘stimulating’ friend.
Oh, but what about those of you who are incarcerated? Well if you truly are locked up in a prison cell 24/7 then, I’m so sorry. Just make do with pacing your tiny room while looking out of the window or staring at the ‘patterns’ on the dirty floor, or better still, at a ‘Raquel Welch’ on your wall. This antic certainly inspired Shawshank Redemption’s Tim Robbins character. In one way or another. You could also attempt to exchange a few words with your cell mate. That may work wonders. Err, who knows?
Once back inside, don’t rush to your ‘pen and paper’ unless of course a miracle occurred, and you’re flooded with new ideas. In which case, ‘good night and good luck’. And extra brownie points if you know where that quote came from!
Sooo, instead, get somewhere away from that damn laptop, and settle yourself down comfortably to play around. Just for a while. Grab a few coloured pens and pencils. Doodle. Yes, doodle. Diagrams or random words on pieces of paper. Try to refrain from writing anything naughty or drawing inappropriate pictures. If you can. Now shuffle your bits and pieces around in front of you.
Does this help at all? Because sometimes, just sometimes physically moving stuff around in this way can shift the mental jam.
Such alternative strategies can help us sneak up on the issue and can lead to a new influx of creativity whereas a head on confrontation tends to bring on that hyper panic mode. Or another pain in the neck. Or a heart attack.
Exactly why creative blocks occur in the first place is interesting fodder. I won’t delve too deeply into this right now; this is a light little feature after all. So, generally, they can often depend on how much is riding on the work, especially in monetary terms, or how much pressure there is on meeting a deadline. If the deadline is the real killer, then try and free things up in your mind to get that editor or censor off your shoulder. Simply imagine you are only writing this piece for yourself. You may get some nice surprises. You may not of course. Whatever, there are a few things that can keep those internal threats of a boss like figure at bay. Music for a start, at least if you’re an auditory person. It can distract and somewhat split your attention so there’s less mental energy available for you to worry with.
If music isn’t powerful enough, try some form of stimulation with something else. No, not that! Instead, listen to a range of speech patterns or ideas. For example, discussions such as those on the BBC’s ‘The Moral Maze’, or meatier still, Melvyn Braggs ‘In Our Time’.
Deadlines, however, may also be a great cure for blocks. At least for some of us. These can throw off those indulgent stallers like fear and the humiliation that your writing may not be as good as it once was. Instead with deadlines, the more simple fear of missing one can be enough to stop the procrastination.
Now I’d go along with that. Stick a gun to my head dear editor. Please.
Oh, that reminds me, you poor prisoners. I’d almost forgotten about you guys. And girls. Well, if you’re lucky enough to reside in one of those backward countries that still have the death penalty, and you’re on death row – then congratulations! You’ve got a deadline.
He took the brown wrapped parcel for the English wife he had left a year ago. Walked out of his hotel along the tree-lined streets of Zamalek scattered with embassies and nineteenth century apartment blocks exuding the Western ambience and night life he abhorred. Then he reached her villa. It had one of those rusty gold mail slots with a hinge that squeaked when he pushed the parcel through. It landed with a soft thud in the sand of her garden. No point ringing the bell. She’d be out celebrating her fiftieth birthday. Somewhere glitzy, expensive. Somewhere safe. He hoped. He remembered her past birthdays when they’d dined simply on the local boats decorated with lights and drifted down the Nile.
He’d taken just two steps back to the street when the gate rattled. Then a staccato rhythm of unlocking. Then he saw her. She wore a burgundy chiffon dress and multi-strapped heels. Her face shone under the moonbeam light.
‘What the hell..’ she said.
‘Hello Hannah.’
‘Why are you here, David?’
‘They sent me back. To cover the Morsi protests.’
Her eyes rolled. He’d bored her already.
‘And I wanted to give my wife something for her big day. Something to remember me by.’
She bent to pick up the parcel, strained under its weight. He turned towards the 1920s villa. ‘Their’ villa. The one they’d restored together. Purple balls of Bougainvillea now hung from its freshly painted yellow walls. The catkin-like flowers of the Casuarina trees dripped into the pool. The lawn glowed fluorescent green. She’d have gone over their quota of fresh Nile Water, he thought. He’d be fined, again.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked.
‘I’m having a do later,’ she said. I don’t have much time.’
Inside he sat on the soft cushioned sofa while a breeze blew in through the French patio doors. He closed his eyes, inhaled lamb prune Tagine stewing on a fire. A warmth nudged his buttocks. Pepsi, her Staffordshire Bull Terrier, curled up beside him. He stroked the dog’s stiff brown fur, looked around. Everything was tidier than he’d remembered, apart from that nothing had changed. Except in place of the yucca plant now stood a shiny shisha pipe that couldn’t have been hers.
He pulled the coffee table towards him, peered into an ash tray full of Marlboro butts. A smaller tray, half full of Cleopatras, sat at the other end of the table. He placed the unwrapped present between the two then turned the sound up on the television. Images of tanks entering Rabaa Square flickered across the screen.
‘Damn the military. And damn you, David,’ she said returning from the kitchen with two large Gin and Tonics. She grabbed the remote, pressed mute, sat down on the other side of Pepsi. ‘It’s my birthday for God’s sake.’
She lit a long thin Cleopatra. He reached for a packet of Camels from his jean pocket. She poured more gin into her glass and shook a bottle of nail polish. Then she began painting her fingernails Egyptian Blue. A ritual he’d watched her perform before every party they’d once hosted together.
‘I didn’t know you’ve now got a thing going with Ayman Nabil,’ he said.
‘Oh, I thought everyone would’ve known about that by now.’
He gulped down his drink. ‘So, where is he?’
‘Visiting his children for Eid al-Adha of course,’ she said. ‘You ‘know’ it’s Eid, David. And you know damn well that Egyptian men have no choice but to visit their families for the feast. And at Ramadan. AND at Eid al-fitr, which, incidentally, was the last time you turned up.’
‘So he’s with his wife then.’
‘No, he’s not ‘with’ his wife.’ She sighed. ‘Why are you here, David?’
He wondered. Was it only because he’d heard about her and Ayman? Ayman, the fastidious hotel manager they’d met and befriended at a party five years ago. Or was it because of her birthday?
The wind picked up, the surface water in the pool rippled. A flicker blew in through the open windows and caught his eye.
‘I have to pee,’ he said.
Upstairs in the bedroom he opened her pale-oak wardrobe. On the clothes rail her many dresses had been hung in order of length. The rail began at one end with her longest dress and ended at the other with the shortest. He watched as the hems of the dresses swayed in a diagonal line. He had never seen them like this before. On the bottom of the wardrobe her shoes had been ordered in a line determined by the height of their heels. A pair of pink flip-flops lay in the right hand-corner. But she never wore flip-flops. He laughed out loud. Of course, Ayman must have bought them. He’d have needed a pair of ‘flats’ to complete another perfectly straight slanting line.
He thought of Ayman. Ayman and his OCD. It was his saving grace. His fastidiousness and attention to detail was quite legendary.
He wandered into the en-suite bathroom, stared at the historic black and white photographs now hanging on the walls. The Maadi Sporting Club’s Nympheas Pond, its 1952 tennis team; the 1953 Lycée Français, today a mosque; a submerged bridge pictured in the flash flood of 1945. Then he unzipped his fly, reached for the larger of two toothbrushes from a crystal glass, held it under his stream as he urinated. And then rubbed it around the toilet bowl.
He walked back down the long winding staircase that looked onto the pool. She was crouched down running her fingers around the rim, just above the surface of the pristine blue water.
‘You should get your prostate examined,’ she said as he stood beside her. ‘And you look tired. You should have retired from that stupid newspaper long ago.’
She retrieved her dripping hand from the pool, held it up to the light, inspected her painted nails.
‘What protests exactly did they send you over to cover this time?’ she asked.
‘Rabaa.’
‘What?’
‘The Muslim Brotherhood protestors in Rabaa Square. It’s not that far from here. You should take care.’
‘But why are they protesting?’
‘They’re angry. The military ousted their president.’
‘The military are crazy in this country,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘So ‘why’ did they get rid of the president?’
‘The military said the people asked them to. The people who were protesting in Tahrir square.’
‘Those tanks on TV. Are they in Rabaa?’ she asked.
‘Yes’
‘But why if they’ve already got rid of the president?’
He sighed, exasperated.
‘Because, Hannah, the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the president, are now angry they took him down and they are the ones protesting outside the mosque in Rabaa.’ He sighed. ‘For God’s sake. It’s been world-wide news, Hannah. You should know all this by now.’
‘It’s confusing, David. To me.’
He said nothing. His eyes softened. A little.
‘Anyway so
why are the tanks needed in Rabaa,’ she said.
‘To bulldoze the dead.’
She got up, straightened her dress, strutted back inside. By the time he joined her he noticed her toenails were Egyptian Blue too. He lit another Camel, stared into her blank canvas of a face. Then he moved his eyes towards the shisha pipe which gleamed with fresh polish. He imagined water bubbling as a melon vapour ran up its flexible hose.
‘Why is Ayman living here?’ he asked. ‘You’ve never let any of them do this before.’
Her body stiffened. He reached for the Gin. Took a swig right out the bottle.
‘One day you will get Mohamed-ed,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t you heard of My Mohamed’s Different? MMD?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh come on? Every Western woman believes her Mohamed loves her; will never hurt her; no longer sleeps with his wife. But he does. And even his wife knows he’s a gigolo milking the cows.’
He stubbed his Camel out into the ash tray full of Marlboros.
‘Actually, your Mohammed is an Ayman. So that would make your MMD a MAD. A mad. Hahahaha.’
She grimaced. ‘Leave David. Leave now. Please.’
***
After she heard the gate slam, she turned the sound back up on the television. A reporter in a flack jacket huddled in Rabaa Square. He said there were 800 dead. Killed by the military. Rabaa Adawiyya Mosque was now a morgue.
Tomorrow she would visit Rabaa. She’d see for herself this slaughter. It couldn’t be that bad. Not as bad as Eid. Oh she’d never forget seeing those poor lambs downtown. Queuing up on the street to have their throats slit. So much blood. The stench. How could Ayman let his children witness such horrors? It sickened her. Truly.
What was Ayman doing now, she wondered. Wasn’t Eid celebrated to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son? At least before God put his butt in and offered him a lamb instead. She couldn’t imagine Ayman sacrificing anything. He even managed to put on weight during Ramadan by eating gorging on??? during the moonlit hours. It would keep him going right through the sunlit ones.
She remembered the parcel. Where was it? She went into the garden, salivated as she passed the lamb Tagine. On the surface of the pool bits of wrapping paper danced like butterflies. An empty chewed up cardboard box lay on the patio. She picked it up, peered into it, took a deep breath. Then she puckered her lips to whistlebut she could produce no sound. So she called out into the night: ‘Pepsi. Pepsi Cola. Come here. Now. Pepsi? Please!’
**
He caught a taxi and asked to be driven through the lushly landscaped avenues of southern Cairo. He thought of his city. How it’d been shaped by the water of the Nile. How the cisterns of the hundreds of Sabils, the drinking fountains in the squares, were filled with it. The water was carried to them from the river in leather bags. He thought of the bridges and the boats, and how the Nile was the city’s greatest escape.
She’d been in the city for four days, photographing his film crew at work. From the Pyramids to Downtown’s delights, and the Nile’s exclusive floating restaurants. So, what if it was the height of summer, pollution at its peak, sweat clouding her vision, dripping into the viewfinder at times? In the end she’d got what HE wanted. An ego-boosting record of him and his young crew out filming what this ‘oh so wonderful’ country had to offer. Not just the tourist hotspots, but the ‘real’ Egypt too, its fetid underbelly. At least that was how he liked to describe it.
BUT, right now, she squatted in the shower, clothed in a sarong and vest. Her hands covering her head, fingers tangled up in her tight black curls.
Thirty minutes earlier she’d been using those hands along with their forearms to fight back. She’d been in the living room then. Fearless. In control. Even telling him she’d call the police if he hurt her again. Even laughing at him. Well, almost.
But he’d just lunged for her phone on the table, thrown it at her, and told ‘her’ to call them. Told her that if she did, they’d do nothing and if needed, he’d just pay them off.
“Wasta, wasta, wasta”, he’d taunted. “Remember what I always told you about that word, ‘Wasta’?”
Then he’d lunged for ‘her’, dragged her off the sofa while forcing his Birkenstock sandal, right ‘boat’ of a foot into her stomach. That had shut her up. Then he’d dragged her into the shower room.
So, again, right now, here she is trapped in this tiny shower cubicle, inside this tiny windowless bathroom. Cowering as he hit her in her face, ear, head, neck, body. Again, and again, and again.
It was when he paused, finally, to catch his breath, that she found herself able to speak.
“If I don’t get to a hospital soon you may kill me,” she said. Calmly.
It was the first time she’d spoken since she’d cockily threatened him with the police almost an hour earlier. Slightly shocked by witnessing her own voice resonating. Now it was so flat, so calm, and so distant, she could barely hear it.
“You have to clean up this mess first,” he snarled.
Then he yanked the shower handle from its holder. Forced it into one of her hands. Turned the water on. Cold water.
“Now clean up YOUR fucking mess.”
He hovered over her. A colossus of a man, sweating beer, spirits, tobacco, and paranoia, his eyes raging with fury and confusion. She’d never seen him like this. After all the months they’d known each other, after all their time discussing this or that project, this or that topic. After all their time socialising with their mutual friends’ they’d been no hint of derangement. Not one iota of it. How had she missed it? Or had there been, and she’d simply filtered it out? Of course, the must have been.
Still, he just may take her to the hospital. Oh, please, ‘God’.
She looked down at the mess. ‘Her’ mess.
Wobbling around on a thin layer of red water, lay four large Portbello mushrooms of thick viscous spongy blood. Were these what she’d felt slide from her tiny left ear?
“Don’t just stare at it. Clean. Clean. Clean. And don’t forget the walls. You got your filthy blood on those too.”
She glanced up. Yes, he was right. Blood ran down the pristine white tiles.
Her eyes blinked away a trail of it originating from a gash in her head. That must be where the blood running down the tiles had come from. But it was the thick bobbling large scarlet Portobello Mushrooms that concerned her. Could they really have come from her ear?
“Get to it. Clean up your fuckin’ mess. And don’t say another word.”
She crept upwards. Her hands reached for the shower’s thick silver pipe. Then she slid back down to the floor.
“Get me to a hospital, Rafi.”
“Forget it. You’re going no-where. Maybe the desert later. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, I can arrange that too. Or just Dump you on the desert Highway. Like they did with Giulio Regeni. Ha! Regeni! Another one of your fuckin’ obsessions here. Well, now you can find out how ‘he’ felt.”
She said nothing and did nothing.
“Well, that shut you up.”
Another punch. Then a slap. Though both felt weaker than before. Was he getting tired, or was she just getting numb?
Something clicked. Robotically she began to move the shower head across the tiles using her other hand as a cloth to help remove the blood.
She looked down. The mushrooms were floating in a red pool on the shower floor. So, she stamped on them with her little bare feet. Broke them into pieces that resembled freshly cut raw liver. Stamped more until they were small enough to enter the drain.
“Don’t bother.” He muttered.
“It will all be clean soon,” she promised.
“I said, don’t bother. I’m already going to be jailed for what I’ve done to you now. But I want to be put away for something bigger than this. I want to be jailed for murder. At least then I’ll have a title. ‘Murder-RER’.”
A knuckle hit her eye, or was it a ring on a finger? She dropped the shower head. Then watched it spin around, spurting water across the bathroom floor that eased into a small stream around his fat feet fastened tightly inside those annoying fashion-statement sandals.
“Stupid bitch. You stupid fuckin’ bitch.”
Whack. Punch. Whack.
She sunk. Again. No, not more damn blood. Her eyes shot for the door. He turned, following her gaze.
As he did, he lost his balance on the now slippery floor and fell. A look of abject surprise fanned across his expansive face. Weeks later she would praise the failure of his Birkenstocks’ so-called ‘non-slip soles’.
Her body sprang, leapt over him, toes feet gripping the sodden tiles. Within a second, she was through the door of that rabbit hole of a bathroom, that ceramic padded pure white cell. Free. Maybe.
Splat splat splat… a trail of blood as she sprinted along the hallway, across the Turkish carpeted living room floor for the front door. Couldn’t risk grabbing her phone, or purse on the way.
A few seconds later she was on the stairwell, five floors up. Too risky to wait for the lift. Too risky to wait for a neighbour to answer their door. It was the dead of night anyway. Or was 4 am the dead of the morning? But she still knocked at each door on every landing as she belted down to the ground. No one bothered to answer. Her Bare feet bouncing off every filthy stone stair. Her blood following her. The cleaner would have a nightmare tomorrow, poor love.
The street was empty. Of course, it was. Perhaps they’d be someone at the nearest crossroads. Nope. Oh, but a figure hovered outside the Seoudi supermarket. Security? Maybe, but he wore a Djellaba. A Bawab, perhaps.
“Min-fud-luk … please!”
No reply. But he heard. He saw. He just stared. Blank faced. Then he looked away. Indifferent. Nothing stirred in his eyes. Nothing stirred, not even in his body. She approached him. Worried she had nothing to cover her arms or head. She gestured. Mimicked putting a veil over her head.
No response.
Why doesn’t he respond? He can see I need to be covered. I WANT to be covered.
So, she ran. But within seconds felt faint. She’d lie on the side of the road until a car came.
Hard to tell how long it took. Ten or thirty minutes, or anything in between. Then one came. He wasn’t going to stop. So, she pushed herself into the middle of the road. He’d have to, or she’d be run over.
He stopped. And he spoke English. Oh ‘God’, thank you.
But he refused to take her to a hospital.
“No, I must call the police first,” he said, dialling into his phone.
She realised she could barely hear properly. Her left ear was blocked.
“Sorry? Did you say you need to call the police?”
He nodded.
“No. No police. PLEASE. No police.”
“They have to be told first. Ambulance second.”
“No!”
“Why not? What ‘are’ you so afraid of?”
She said nothing. Watched him dial into his phone and collapsed back onto the road.
Tina Bexson discovers the benefits of equine assisted psychotherapy for Mental Health Today magazine
People with mental health problems, and especially those who find it difficult to benefit from the talking therapies, can be helped to address their needs by non-verbal interaction with horses. This is the central tenet of Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP), an emerging field which involves the collaborative effort between a licensed therapist and a horse professional working with patients and horses to help the former address specific treatment goals. It is experiential by nature with patients learning about themselves by participating in various activities, such as set tasks and role-playing games with the horses, and then processing and or discussing their feelings, behaviours, and any repeated patterns. The role of the therapists is to act as guides through these processes, effectively involving the horses as teachers.
EAP addresses a number of mental health needs including depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, anxiety, communication needs, and abuse issues and EAP providers are increasingly keen to encourage the NHS to recognise the benefits for patients on their path to recovery.
Ruth McMahon, a former senior occupational therapist who worked with Community Mental Health Teams in Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health Care Partnership, developed her Equine Assisted Therapy Programme along with riding instructor Nicky Welton. They operate from Croft Farm Riding Centre in Filby, near Great Yarmouth where their clients are a mixture of referrals from both the Trust, other Mental Health Care Trusts, charities, local private mental health organisations and from organisations like Independent Living Norfolk where people with enduring mental health problems can apply for government money to fund things that they feel will be of therapeutic value to them.
McMahon first worked with patients and horses back in 1990. ‘To begin with, people with mental health problems were encouraged to attend a local riding school to try ‘therapy on horseback’. The focus at the time was on understanding horse welfare, learning to ride and confidence building,’ says McMahon.
‘A sense of ‘feeling better’ after the sessions was consistently reported by patients and so we decided to explore more work on understanding and communicating with horses, and developing the human-horse bond without riding.’ (Traditionally the focus of EAP is not riding since 90 percent of it takes place on the ground.)
Today a typical session with clients involves the setting up of activities and creating cause and effect situations with the horses which will require them to find coping strategies, and build up trust, self confidence, self esteem and problem-solving techniques that can all be transferable to many other areas of day to day life.
‘For example,’ explains McMahon, ‘some people need to develop a sense of caring so the process of feeding, watering, grooming the horse can be very therapeutic for them as these things can be transferred and help them to think about how they need to care for themselves to stay healthy and well.’
The task of leading a horse around the arena can illustrate many examples of how the patient engages the horse in EAP. ‘Do they just pull the rope, or do they try and engage the horse in eye contact and try to get it to willingly walk with them? This can be quite difficult for some of our patients because they don’t feel they have the right to ask the horse to do this or they don’t think the horse will come with them so often the first step is for the patients to believe the horse will follow them by changing their pattern of thinking then their contact with the horse can be a motivating factor to get them to address their problems which may be those involving communication with other people.’
The benefits of working with horses as opposed to other animals, says McMahon, centre primarily around the horses’ ability to mirror what human body language is telling them. ‘They like clear open communication and see through to falseness and so work well with patients whom they sense are congruent within themselves,’ she says.
A frustrated patient will not find the horse co-operative. ‘The horse mirrors back to the client how they themselves are behaving and so their interaction can also act as a metaphor for the difficulties the client may have with people.’
The very size of horses is also significant for some patients. ‘The therapy provides an opportunity for them to overcome any fear and develop confidence. And accomplishing a task despite these fears provides useful metaphors when dealing with challenging situations in life.’
Most of McMahon’s clients tend to have enduring mental health issues and so after an initial batch of around six weekly sessions most are likely to come back again and again for a further six sessions each time. ‘We tend not to use it as a short-term treatment. Though used on a short-term basis, because of its intensity, it can be very powerful in helping people to start the process of recovery by having their various issues highlighted so they can go on to explore them deeper.’
This has proven to be the case for people with addiction problems and eating disorders. A number of treatment centres use it as part of their wider addiction treatment programmes, including the Priory’s North London Clinic and STEPPS, a residential rehabilitation clinic in Gloucester which has recently formed a subsidiary LEAP to purely concentrate on EAP.
Most EAP programmes used with these patients are based on the belief that those who are susceptible to addictions often have a history of unresolved trauma which creates an untolerable level of anxiety. This in turn leads to self-medication with alcohol, drugs, food, sex, and other types of behaviour. Such clients are also often distanced from themselves and the use of EAP helps them to become engaged with the self.
Wendy Powell, previously provided EAP at LEAP, and now runs her own private practice in Surrey offering out patient and day programmes as well as training BACP recognised therapists in EAP. ‘It has been very difficult to get the NHS to recognize EAP as an incredibly useful and valid form of therapy with all types of mental health problems but particularly with addictions and eating disorders,’ she says.
Powell explains that eating disorder clients can be manipulative in ‘one to one’ and group therapy settings but whilst engaging in EAP, they quickly become aware that they need to communicate non-verbally with the horses in order for the tasks to be carried out. ‘This’, she says, ‘tends to bring real emotion to the fore much faster as a result.’
‘We have also found in EAP that the use of a horse allows these clients to express themselves and to feel comfortable and safe enough to physically embrace such a powerful animal. This may be one of the rare occasions that such a patient gets to experience non-threatening touch with a sentient being and this raises genuine feelings and emotions which you are unlikely to get in the normal therapeutic settings.’
’Often eating disorder clients are particular about which horse they work with. One client I had was a man weighing 26 stone who did not want to work with a small but very rotund pony because he said the horse was fat and therefore lazy. He would not even approach the pony and said that just being around this pony made him feel uncomfortable. We were able to get him, over a period of several sessions, to recognise that he was projecting onto the horse how he felt about himself. He subsequently did a lot of work around stereotypes and what they meant to him.’
Powell has also found that anorexic patients often only want to work with horses that look perfect and have no scars or obvious physical defects. ‘When challenged with having to work with a horse that may have what these patients perceive as a defect, the initial instinct appears to be to avoid that horse, even if it is desperate for attention. This opens paths to physical appearance issues and body image perceptions and allows the therapists and clients a very real opportunity to challenge these beliefs and perceptions and to use these observations as a mirror of how they see themselves.’
There is a substantial body of evidence for the benefits of physical activity for mental health, and research focusing specifically on EAP looks promising. Research into the use and efficacy of EAP is predominantly qualitative, and, less commonly, quantitative.
Dr Helen Spence, part-time Teaching Fellow in Animal Behaviour at the School of Psychology, Queens University Belfast, and Equine Behaviour and Training Consultant says that the qualitative research into the use and efficacy of EAP is, on the whole, very positive about the benefits of the use of horses in a therapeutic setting and is drawn from the reports of participants and therapists. ‘EAP can provide well being and improvement in the quality of life of children with mental health problems (Rothe, Vega, Torres, Soler and Pazos, 2005),’ she says. ‘Participants in another study benefited from increased confidence and improvements in social stimulation which in turn led to transferable skills being acquired (Burgon, 2003). Also students with special needs were found by Brouillette (2006) to have improved abilities to participate and be responsible, building self control, emotional insight, behavioural awareness, relationship skills and coping skills as a result of interactions with horses.’
Spence insists that practitioners of EAT/EAP should not be disheartened by the lack of statistical evidence. ‘The quantitative research of this area is still in its early days, and improvements in the selection of measurement tools, decisions on what to measure, and controlling for confounding variables may yet lead to significant findings in support of the use of horses in the field of mental health therapy,’ she says.
It is now widely accepted that animals are beneficial to human physical and mental health, with much documentation of the ameliorating effects that pets can have on stress, the ‘social lubricant’ effect and the improvements in physical health arising from pet ownership. It seems likely that equines could be beneficial when introduced to the therapeutic setting.
Tina Bexson 