My Triangle Life: Books, Music and Travel
In the veil of the new dawn, after the roar of the Big Bang, was the sound, echo, and resonance. There was the word, the first word in the Universe.
In that soft perpetual nebula, from the breath of tree, flow of streem, whisper of the breeze, singing of bird and bleat of deer, from inhalation and exhalation of the forest, music was born. Word and Music are twins in one body and one garment
Since I became aware of myself, am a companion of books and writing. I studied law but did not practice it, did not work in the judiciary or courtrooms, nor like orders or restrictions. I studied music methodically but did not take it as a profession. Music is, for me, to listen to it, read and write about it. (Details on the "Music" page)
Bookstores lover
I love bookstores, music halls, and train stations. Books, music and travelling are the Triangle of my life. I spend hours in bookstores in London or any city I am in. My fingers moove slowly between the shelves, touching the books, pulling out one of them, holding it tenderly, contemplating the colour of its cover, its title and sitting on one of the sofas, reading what I want and then put it back on its shelf. I don't oblige to buy anything. My small paradise is the "Hatchards" bookstore in Picadilly, central London.
Hatchards.. The most elegant Bookstore in London.
Credit: Hatchard Piccadilly
The sight of the trains going up and down or stopping on the platforms always intrigued me. I sit in the station café, sipping a cup of coffee, slowly, enjoying the spectacle.
I aspire that the “Words and Music” website will be a mixture of memories, memoirs, and cultural and artistic matters follow-ups, and what a rich is my city London in these subjects!
We write memories and memoirs every hour, every minute, through conversations with others, face to face, by phone, at home, on the street, at work, and in the market. It does not have to be done with pen and paper as our memory preserves it as paper or sound recorders.
A wild Flowers bouquet
Divers flowers create the most beautiful bouquet. What I want for this site is a bouquet of colourful wildflowers in the meadows of my hometown where I used to stroll and in the fields and woods of England that please the eyes and warm hearts. A colourful site like the beads in the nickels of playful girls.
How did the magic of reading and writing strike me, and when? I do not know, a lover does not ask why he is in love nor questions the nature of love because love turns into a philosophical subject where the heart stop beating and the mind takes over. Since childhood, I intend to the companionship of the heart and its desires.
Usually, the relationship with the book begins in the early childhood years, with the early days of the children in school as the little, soft fingers touch the pages of the books, notebooks, and pens. But this is a mechanism relationship, not one of awareness, one of consciousness, a relationship that has no unique experience which comes with awareness of consciousness, with gradual maturity.
I love choosing the words meticulously, not to arouse admiration or astonishment, but to search for the pearl of beauty in them, their resonance and accurate meanings.
Meeting a legend
The book that changed the direction of mythinking at that time and pushed me towards sympathy with the toiling classes was the novel “The Land with golden Fruits”
by Brazil’s most celebrated novelist JorgeAmado (1912-2001). This outstanding
writer whose writings captivated me andoccupied a special place in my sentimental after I read some of his books later, such as “Land of Violence”, “Cocoa”, “Garlic and Cinnamon” and “Donna Flora and Her Husband”. He has more than forty
books translated into more than thirty languages, and more than fifty million copies have sold. Amadou fought the political struggle since his youth and joined the Communist Party in 1966 after being affected by the manifestations of social injustice and the control of cocoa farm owners over the farm’s resources. Then he was elected as a member of Parliament in 1946, but because the military government banned the Communist Party left his homeland in exile. I was so lucky I met him with his wife in Morocco in 1991,
where we invited to the Asila cultural festival.
Picture:the author with Jorge Amado
Precious Silence
A child needs two years to learn to speak and sixty years to learn to be silent, so they say. Silence is more precious and more beautiful. It is a companion to reading, writing, music making and listening, a companion to meditation and knowledge.
How my early passion started with books, I do not remember. I remember well that the first book I read til the last page was "I am leaving”, a romantic novel by the Egyptian writer Youssef Al-Siba’e. I was twelve or therteen years old, have been captivated by it. Does a boy of such age needs more than the sorrow and pain of passion and reincarnate the hero of the imaginary sweetheart to plunge into the delicious daydreams? (Perhaps it would be a pity to admit that I reread this exact novel two or three years ago in London, after all these years. Was it an act of nostalgia?
I remember that the first book I read until the end was “I am leaving” an extreme romantic novel by the Egyptian writer Youssef Al-Siba’e. I have been captivated by it. Does a boy of thirteen or fourteen years old, in the arising years of his adolescence need more than the sorrow and pain of passion to reincarnate the role of the story’s main character, the hero of the imaginary beloved one, to plunge into the delicious daydreams? (Perhaps it would be a pity to admit that I reread this exact novel two or three years ago in London, after all these years. Was it an act of nostalgia? Remembering the sweetness of early
boyhood days?
Picture: Yusef Al-subaei
When I was a student at Intermediate School in Kirkuk city, there used to be a room in the school with a piece of paper pasted on its door written “library”. Our library was no more than a few books, brochures and two or three maps belonging to the Geography teacher. I began to borrow story books from it. The Arabic language teacher, who kept the room’s key, realised my passion for reading, handed me the key and the borrowing book, so I became the “Librarian” of the School. What a treasure, a joy to be in charge of those few books!
Tobacco Road
Was it a ray, a spark a coincidence that introduced me to the foreign writers works translated into Arabic? I don't know, but I remember that a Lebanese publishing house called "Dar’el ilim lilmalayeen" was pioneer in translating foreign language books to Arabic. I remember that my discovery of Western literature began with American writers. One of my early readings of novels translated to Arabic and published by this particular publishing house was "Tobacco Road" by Erskine Caldwell, on the poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States. Later, I discovered John Steinbeck’s novel “The Moon is Down” about a small Norwegian villagers resistance to Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Then I began devouring the other American Ernest Hemingway novels like daily sustenance: "Farewell to Arms", a love story during the First World War. "The Sun also Rises" about bullfighters in Spain. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on the Spanish Civil War during the time of dictator Franco. “The Complete Short Stories. It was from that collection, I translated "A Cat in the Rain" into Arabic and published by the ‘Kardashlikp‘ magazine, that was publish in Turkish and Arabic in early sixties of the last century.
Oruzdi Bach
When I graduated from middle school in Kirkuk, I went to Baghdad to obtain the Iraqi citizenship certificate, one of the documents required to enrol in the Teachers Institute. Then, in Baghdad, I discovered English literature books on one of the two floors of the luxurious department store "Oruzdi Bach" on Al-Rashid Street, the most famous street in Baghdad at that time. I remember the store was on two floors with an elevator between them and its distinguished façade. Its elegancy was no less than the modern department stores of London today, such as ‘John Lewis’, ‘Selfridges’. On the second floor was a section dedicated to English books, magazines and Newspapers which were imported regularly from London, and opposite it was another section for Western classic and pupoler music long play records. I bought a record of German composer Felix Mendelssohn music even I didn’t have a Phonograph to listen to it!
McKinsey bookstore
On that trip to Baghdad, I also discovered the McKinsey bookstore in Al-Rasheed Street for new and Secondhand English books, in addition to magazines and newspapers used to come directly from London. The owner of this store was a Scottish person named Kenneth McKenzie, who established his bookstore at the beginning of the last century, I think it was closed down in the sixties of last century after the “revolutionary” mobs prevailed in Iraq. I was fascinated by the facade of this unique store and its bookshelves. I steped inside in hesitant and bemused, spending a few minutes there looking at the books confused, so not to leave the place without buying anything I took a yellow cover book titled “Short Stories” by the English writer Somerset Maugham. That was the beginning of my journey with English books deciphering their contents with the help of a dictionary.
Later, my writings and short stories have published in many newspapers and magazines in Iraq and the Arab world.
Why this site is in dual languages: Arabic and English?Well. A bird flies with two wings, fortunately, I have three wings but do not wish to ascend to the sky. I prefer frequenting cities, seas, mountains and forests on Earth that allow me to appreciate marvels and beauties of our nature.
The first wing is my mother tongue, the Turkish language in its sweet Turkmen dialect. The language of my mother's songs as she rocked my Cradle. The language deposited was reserved in my consciousness and unconsciousness as gold atoms deposited after being extracted from rocks pass through a refinery and turned into ingots from which classy necklaces made for the charming beauty's necks. The language that oblivion thieves can never steal from me, no matter how long the years and aeons pass. The language I resd Nadtim Hikmat and Orhan Weli Poems. Said Faik and Fruzan Stories. It is the language of my soul and blood.
My second wing is Arabic. The language in which I drew the first letters of the alphabet was in my childhood. It illuminated the path for me to read and write. I love the curves of its letters, the shape of its words, the abundance of its vocabulary, the multiplicity of its meanings, and the richness of its treasures. The language that held my little hands and guided my first hesitant steps into the fields of knowledge. It is the language of my vision and my insight. The language I resd Najib Mahfuz novels, Ahmad Shawki, Sadi Yusuf poems and hundred others.
Language of planet
My third wing is English. With this language, I fly around the world free and confident. I read Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Lawrence Durrell, D.H.Lawrence. I travel from the peaks of the Swiss and Austrian Alps and their villages to the Sierra Nevada mountain, the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, to the banks of the Danube and Seine rivers. In the Amazon rainforests. I communicated with the Indians of the forest, loved their kindness and spontaneity, listened to them telling their stories and songs, and shared their food. This languag was with me in the fragrant orchards of Andalusia, the elegant cafés of Vienna, the delicious restaurants of Paris, and the old streets of Rome. I communicated with people with different faces, different languages, different customs, and different faiths. I use it freely wherever I go without dictionaries or interpreters. It is the language of knowledge and science. The language of the world, of our beautiful blue planet.
