Victims of tortures

I had a client yesterday. He was tortured so badly. I saw his pictures. The effect of whipping and lashes on his back, full of blood and wounds. I couldn’t watch them all. Only a few of them. It feels like they are still in front of me. After seeing him, I had other clients to see and I had to concentrate on my job. When I was coming home those pictures and the innocent looks of that man kept coming back into my mind. Obviously something was bothering me, but I did not know what it was. I came home, broke my fast, like any usual day I did some chores around the house and other usual business that I do everyday, and then I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night. I was short of breath and sweating. I was dreaming, and I remembered what I was dreaming about. I realized why those pictures have been haunting me all day long. I have a bad memory of torture. The story is that when I was young about 15 years old, and was living in a small city where most people knew each other, a young boy roughly the same age as me, had done something wrong and they wanted to whip him. It was few years after the revolution. The government decided to punish him in our school in front of us. Maybe they thought that would be a lesson for other youngsters to behave themselves. Or any other reason which I can’t think of now. I remember it vividly now that our head teacher called us all into the playground and asked us to make a big circle. We were not aware what was happening. Then the main entrance of the school opened and three officials came in with a young boy whose hands were tied from behind and was blindfolded. They lay him down and opened his eyes. He looked up a bit and saw us all. The shame on his face is something that I would never forget. One of the officials announced that the boy will be punched and his punishment is to be whipped 80 times. I could see and hear but I couldn’t believe that it was happening. One of them started whipping the poor boy. They asked us all to watch. Some of us were horrified. The other official was counting them, one, two, three,.. The boy yelled with each one. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch anymore. I heard four, five, six… I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.. Seven, eight, nine. I opened my eyes and saw the boy in the floor and blood in his shirt. I felt sick and dizzy. Ten, eleven, twelve,.. I did not hear anymore, I had fainted. When I opened my eyes I was in head teacher’s office and she told me that I needed to be strong! Everyone gets what he or she deserves and I shouldn’t feel sorry for the boy. I was so scared to ask her about the boy and what happened to him. Was he still alive? I couldn’t wait to get out of her office. Everybody else had left the school and I told her that I was fine and I could go home by myself. I was feeling so weak and ill. I couldn’t eat for a few days and I had to stay in bed for a couple of days. The next time when I went back to school, I asked my friends about the boy and they said that his old mother took him to hospital as his father had passed away when he was very young. They told me that he was the breadwinner of the family and he had three young sisters and his old mother to look after.

Now that I am writing it I feel ill. It is like someone has punched me in the stomach again. What had he done to make anyone be able to punish him like that? Did anyone think while he was in hospital, who was going to look after the family? Even after he was discharged, was anyone going to give him a proper job? I hope that people grow to forget what he had done. He was too young to be punished like that.

All these came to my mind in the middle of the night and took away my sleep. I thought about these punishments and I couldn’t understand why should anyone be tortured physically or mentally?
I will just hope for a torture-free world.

Qadr Night

I wanted to wish you all a happy Shabe Qadr. They say that the doors of heaven are open today and we can ask Allah for anything we want. God will garnt us whatever we wish. May Allah make us all Aqebet be khayr..and grant us health, and taqwa.and open the door of paradise for us..

May God accepts all your fastings and prayers.

Hope

I have got a letter from my lawyer yesterday om 5th of October, saying that the Home Office has received my son's application and he had enclosed a copy of the aknowledgment letter from the Home Office.

The aknowledgment letter is saying that they can't tell us how long it will take them to make a decsion on this application and we shouldn't contact them to ask a bout the process of it, until they contact us. The again it says, until the time that they make a decsion we will have the same rights and conditions of our previous status. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. whatever God almight wishes for us.


God please look at us with more kindness. You know I have "put all my chickens in one basket" for this.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Confessions

In the last few days I have been reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Confessions” book. I don’t think I have read any other book, apart from a couple, which interested me this much. I will write a very brief description of this great book in here. It amazed me to see that this great man opens his heart to his readers and shares the most private and most intimate moments of his life with them. The more I read, the more I fell in love with him. His honesty throughout the book attracts his readers consciously and unconsciously towards his character and personality, specially when he says to his reader that “ … and I will make this confession as frankly as the rest.” Or a few times he says that maybe his readers hate him for what he had done but he would still tell the story as it was.

One reads it and say to oneself, would I ever be this frank if I wanted to write my confessions!!? Well here comes Rousseau’s answer: he says in the first page of his book that: “ let them hear my confessions, lament for my unworthiness, and blush for my imperfections. Then let each of them in turn reveal, with the same frankness, the secrets of his heart at the foot of the Thorne, and say, if he dare, “ I was better than that man!” “ Maybe after we read the book confess to ourselves and not any other soul that he has been so much better than we are!

He even reveals his very intimate thoughts, the ones he did not put into practice. What a great man and what a great book.

The confessions includes twelve books of each different time lines of his life, as below:

1712 June 12, born in Geneva to a watchmaker and the daughter of a minister who died after giving birth to him. His father loved his wife very much. When she died Rousseau wrote that, in spite of him thinking that his father might hate or blame him for his wife’s death, his father loved him very much and saw his wife in Rousseau.

1722 His father is exiled from Geneva after a fight and moves to Lyons. Rousseau stays in Geneva in the charge of his mother's relations.

1724 Apprenticed to his uncle a lawyer who finds him incapable and sends him back.

1725 Apprenticed to an engraver.

1728 Runs away from his apprenticeship and wanders about Italy France and Switzerland. Meets Madame de Warens after converting to Catholicism in Turin.

1731 Lives in Chambery protected by the widow Madame de Warens.

1733 Madam de Warens becomes his mistress. Rousseau writes a great deal about Madam de Warens and his pure and great love to her. Rousseau calls her “mummy” and she calls her ‘ my child”. He writes that “one of the proofs of the excellent character of this admirable woman is, that all those who loved her loved one another.” Then he continues “ let my readers pause a moment at this panegyric, and if they can think of any other woman of whom they can say the same, I advise them to attach themselves to her, if they value their repose.”

1738 Becomes ill and goes to Montpellier which facilitates a liason with Madame de Larange. Loses his relationship to Madam de Warens. During this illness his hearing was affected and he became hard of hearing for the rest of his life.

1740 Tutors at Lyon.

1741 Goes to Paris after discovering he neither likes teaching nor is very good at it.

1742 Unsuccessfully presents a new system of music to the Academy of Sciences. Becomes secretary to the ambassador to Venice, M. de Montaigu.

1743 Meets Therese le Vasseur who will become his mistress, bearing him five children, and whom he marries near the end of his life.

1745 Returns to Paris. Collaborates on the Encyclopedia.

1751 Publishes Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.

1752 Production of his opera the Village Soothsayer.

1754 Returns to Geneva and abjures his abjuration of the Protestant religion.

1755 Publishes Discourse on Inequality.

1756 April moves back to Paris in a cottage at Montmorency. Writes Heloise.

1757 Leaves Montmorency for nearby Montlouis after a quarrel with Diderot.

1758 Publication of Letter to d'Alembert and final rupture in his relations with Diderot.

1761 Publication of Heloise.

1762 Publication of Emile and The Social Contract which forces him to leave France to avoid arrest. Lives briefly in Neuchatel.

1763 Renounces citizenship of Geneva.

1765 Driven from Motiers to the Island of Saint-Pierre.

1766 David Hume offers him asylum in England. Begins work on Confessions.

1767 Returns to live in various provinces of France.

1770 Returns to live in Paris. Writes many of his most important works while in Paris over the next eight years including his Dialogues and Reveries.

1778 Moves to Ermenonville where he dies suddenly on July 2.

It is good to know that Rousseau a "philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. Rousseau also made important contributions to music both as a theorist and as a composer. With his Confessions and other writings, he practically invented modern autobiography and encouraged a new focus on the development of subjectivity that would bear fruit in the work of thinkers as diverse as Hegel and Freud. His novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse was one of the best-selling fictional works of the eighteenth century and was important to the development of romanticism."

I hope that, when you read the book, enjoy it as much as I did.

"Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others". Hazlitt, William

Importance of aims

Today, while I was seeing my last client, I heard one of the managers crying. I came out of my office and asked her what had happened. She said that one of our volunteers attempted suicide on Wednesday and she is dead. Apparently she threw herself in front of a train and was dead there and then. I remembered her vividly because she used to work in the Minor’s section.

She was a very helpful, quiet and nice young girl. I would never have thought of her killing herself. She seemed very normal with no big problem or signs of depression. But she must have something very disturbing in her life for her to make that decision.

For some of us these thoughts never occur in our minds let alone making plans to do it. What does make someone feel so hopeless and vulnerable to see no way forward? I have always thought that people have options in their lives when making up their minds about something. To choose what to do or which way to go is mostly up to our current situations. At times if we don’t see further than our step and don’t see the bigger picture, we will end up feeling tired of life with no future in front of us. Having an aim/ a hope or a massive target is something that keeps one going and gives one the energy and the ability to carry on living happily. We shouldn’t limit ourselves. There are many people who limit themselves on what they can do. We just need to believe that we can achieve anything as far as our minds go.

Some think that if you have faith in God, you will always have something to look forward to and He will be there for you and He will direct you in the right direction. But what if you are not a religious person or have no faith in anything? What then? Maybe self-respect and self-confidence can do the job. Someone who respects himself enough and looks for it within him and not anywhere else will succeed in life.

Having said all these, I really feel for her. I wish that I was close to her and was able to do something before things went the way they went. May God bless her soul, forgive her sins and give her soul an infinite peace.


“Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.”Brown, Les