A Modern Layla and Majnun - Part I

Layla sits dreaming of her lost love

Layla and Majnun is based on the true stories of the Bedouin poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah ibn Muzahim and Layla bint Mahdi ibn Sa'd. The story tells of a 7th century A.D young poet called Qays, who falls in love with a girl born in a rich family from the same tribe.  In his poems he proclaimed his love for her and asked her father for her hand. Even though Qays and Layla had grown up together, and they both loved each other dearly, the father refused since Qays wasn't wealthy enough. Soon after Layla is given to another man in marriage, whom took her to the area of today's Iraq, got ill and eventually died.

The name Layla means "night" in arabic, which some people believe to mean that the couple in secrecy continued their relationship. The name Majnun means "a crazy person", which became his name after he went mad for being refused to marry Layla.

Qays left his tribe to wonder the desert as a wild man and became known as Majnun. He was later found dead in the wilderness in 688 AD, near an unknown woman's grave. Three verses of poetry was carvedon a rock close to the grave. According to the Persian Nezami's version of the story, Layla and Majnun meets for the last time before their deaths. Both have fainted and Majnun's elderly messenger attemptsto revive Layla while wild animals protect the couple from unwelcomed intruders. 

Here's my adaption of my own story of Layla and Majnun:

The merciless heat of the Sudanese summer was coming to an end when the woman sat in a bumby raksha on her way through the dusty gravel roads to her first day at work. She was going to be a consultant for a small organization that were removing land mines from the country side. Her main task was going to be to teach English to the local staff in the main office. Among the locals was a man. His eyes were constantly glowing, and when he was smiling, he did it with his whole face. The woman was a khawadja, a westerner, and the man was a Sudanese arab.

The friendship was soon to arrive, and after came the relationship. Despite cultural and religious differences they managed to make the difficulties to challanges to be overcome. Love had showed her pretty face.

The woman's family, who was in Sweden, were not too happy about the relationship. They were worried about his religion. Many westerners have prejudices about arabs and her family was no exceptions. They thought that in case of a marriage, he would force her to become a muslim, kidnap their children and bring them back to Sudan, that he would beat her and abuse her in other ways. His family was cautious too. The woman had to endure a long list of questions about her values and plans for the future. The questioning though, lead to the woman being accepted by the family and the relationship could now be official.

The man went to a mission in Darfur, a huge area in the south-western parts of the country that is known for war, conflicts, rapes, burning of entire villages, huge refugee camps, death, misery and kidnapping... The man, who was there on mission for a different organization, was kidnapped with his collegue by rebels, accused of working for the government. All connection with the man was broken and no one heard from him in almost two weeks. The woman was inconsolable. Her eyes were constantly filled with tears and the horror and worry that she felt was indescribable. 

The UN had finally managed to negotiate with the rebels to free them. A few days later the man arrived back in the capital. Without respect of the prohibition of showing affection in public, the man and woman threw themselves in each others arms, kissed and cried of joy and relief. An engagement was settled and the man's family threw them a combined welcome home and engagement party. A few days later the woman had to leave her beloved fiancé and return to Sweden.

To be continued...

The Plot is Thickening

Strokkur on Iceland

I have a tendency to get in the middle of the most dramatic intrigues, more similar to a soap opera than real life. It would be foolish of me to think that my life would remain calm for a more than a week or two. The illusionary peace I from time to time experience makes me equally surprised and cautious. Surprised because it happens rarely and cautious because the calm usually is a sign of an approaching storm. Things that don't happen to normal people surely happens to me. Why that is, I have no idea. I definitely don't seek out drama, although I have to admit that in some cases my choices have lead me to it. Like going to Sudan of all places. Maybe you should expect that making such a choice will lead to kidnappings, a bugged phone and persecutions from the security police. I should have expected that my passport would get stolen by a police man, that I would have to bribe the right people just to get out of the country. I should have known.

I should have expected to get mysteriously ill from something that the doctors are clueless about, that family members would try to commit suicide a number of times, that they would nearly get killed in assaults and car crashes, get cancer, be alcoholics and that I would loose my friends, fall in love. How could I not have known? Maybe I should take the "hope for the best, expect the worst" more literally from now on.

The picture of the geysir Strokkur on Iceland is borrowed from pixdaus.com.

Who Chooses to be a Refugee?

Father and daughter resting in Khartoum North, Sudan.

Got an email from the Red Cross today, asking if I would be interested in a voluntary mission with refugees here in Sweden. The email went out to everyone who had taken the basic courses in psychological first aid and support. How I want to! There's a refugee office in Borås, not 35 km from here, that every day gets visits from people in unimaginable situations. To even think of the histories they're carrying make me dizzy. They've been running away from wars, abuse, murder, rapes, famine, diseases and a ton of other horrors that a lucky Swede can't even begin to try to understand. And they come here, to a country with all the resources to help them, just to be met with suspiciosness and a general lack of comprehension. They're seen as burdens, even as threats, as "those refugees". As if they were all one living organism with the sole purpose of sucking the life out of our beloved country.

What foolishness drives those people who just don't want to understand that no one, not a single person on this planet, chooses to be a refugee. Who chooses to leave her birth country, family, job, schoo, friends, language, religion, everything she knows in life - just to come to a country that despises her presence? Who chooses hostility in a rich country instead of understanding in her home country? I know I wouldn't. 

I'm aware of how lucky I am to be born in Sweden. And it really is just luck. I could have just as easily been born in Indonesia, Congo or Guatemala. Maybe I would have grown up in a mud cottage in the country side, walking many miles every day just to get some drinking water. Maybe I would have seen my family get killed by the militia, maybe my mother would have been raped by bandits. Maybe my children would have been taken from me to be trained as child soldiers - who's first mission would be to rape and kill me. Maybe my brother would die in AIDS, or my sister in child birth. Maybe my whole village would be burned to the ground, or maybe I would be stoned to death because someone spread a rumour that I had been unfaithful to my husband. 

Maybe, that time in Sudan, the rebels would have refused to negotiate with the UN and my two kidnapped friends would never return alive. It's all about luck - of having it or of not having it. So far I've been lucky, and I will consider myself to be lucky until the day when I have something real to complain about.