What the readers say
Here
is another selection of readers’ comments.
July 2007
Congratulations on your website. As often happens, I found it by pure chance (typing “The bookseller of Kabul”, in the Belgian pages of Google). What a good surprise.
A Sorin
Brussels, Belgium
July 2007
I enjoy your writing very much.
B Bull
London, UK
July 2007
Heiress apparente!
‘Nevertheless, strangers do sometimes give
Katleen pitying looks when they see us together, as if to say: “Poor woman, bet
you didn’t realise what you were getting yourself into!”’ – Excerpted from A War on
Error, Diabolic Digest XXVII
Ironically, this is exactly the type of look I
give to men who are lured into marrying strong Flemish women.
I just wanted to write and let you know, though
I express it altogether too infrequently, I consider myself fortunate to still
be on the (very exclusive) Diabolic Digest mailing list. Though I
inevitably have to turn to other sources to slake my thirst for sensational
stories about heiresses drunkenly ramming their convertibles into Hollywood
nightclubs or bears mauling troops of camping boy scouts, the Digest includes
insightful commentary I just can’t get from my local Rupert Murdoch-owned media
outlet.
M Pabst
San Francisco, USA
July 2007
Up close and personal
I’m enjoying your [Without a road map] posts, by
the way. I love reading personal accounts like this, and this is really
enlightening.
A Hammond
Cairo, Egypt
July 2007
“Jack the Lad?”
Didn’t he use to live on a houseboat in Imbaba?
Liked your Borat
review, agreed.
J Allen
Cairo, Egypt
June 2007
Pen, mightier than the sword
I’ve been reading your site. You wield a mighty pen. Everything I’ve read so far has been most excellent.
A el-Khatieb
Cairo, Egypt
June 2007
More ammo for the War on Error
So they give you looks when you are strolling
through Ghent, with or without a glass in your hand? Ahh, never mind. As a white
female taking Arabic evening classes, I get the same sort of looks and comments...
This rigid narrow-mindedness, it is so tiring to fight.
Some extra arguments to beef your myth errors:
For error 1 on terrorists: in the 1970s, Islam
was ever so popular among hippies in the West. And Jimi Hendrix loved to jam
with locals in the Arab world; we all know about the conversion of Cassius
Clay/Muhammad Ali, and so on.
For error 2: if I’m not mistaken, Istanbul was
the first place in our hemisphere where women got electoral rights.
For error 3 and in relation to error 1: in the 1970s,
places like Morocco were flooded with artists, partly also because of the water
pipes, marijuana that could be purchased and smoked freely up there, just as
you can buy and drink any liquor you like in the West. Spirits or weed, both
make you high, what’s the difference? Neither qualifies for the ascetic’s life
they depict Islam to be.
A Bevers
Grimbergen, Belgium
June 2007
Dr Kuku’s dastardly designs
That villain Dr Kuku, quietly stroking an
Egyptian man while calmly explaining how she’ll take over the Earth and use it
for a litter box...Thanks for the update.
H Hacohen
Tel Aviv, Israel
June 2007
Just read your [War on Error]
article. Well done!
M Zirinsky
Idaho, USA
May 2007
View of an American Jew
I just became aware of your blog. I wanted to comment on
your journal of your trip to Israel. My sister has dual citizenship, Israeli
and American. I also have relatives in Netanya that came from Europe to Israel
after surviving the Holocaust.
I support a two-state solution based on the
1967 borders and I think the settlements should be dismantled.
There are a few major disagreements that I have
with you. You completely ignore the antisemitism that permeates every corner of
the Arab world, including moderates and secularists. I don’t just mean
anti-Zionism or even hatred of Israel, I mean classical Western antisemitism in
its most virulent form.
Hamas has not almost accepted Israel’s
existence. It hasn’t even accepted my existence. Hamas is an organisation with
a Nazi-like hatred of ALL Jews everywhere.
A bi-national
state would be a ‘naqba’ for Jews. I don’t buy the explanations that
suggest otherwise. They are delusional or lying.
Israel has nuclear weapons for defensive
purposes. The Arab world has to be convinced that it cannot destroy Israel for
it to make peace with Israel. Ahamadinjad wants to destroy Israel. Israel does
not want to destroy Iran.
I can live in America because Israel exists. If
Israel did not exist, I would have to go there and help create a Jewish state.
German Jews were the most assimilated Jews in Europe and look what happened to
them. It has been said that German Jews had an unrequited love for all things
German. American Jews are lucky. There isn’t a single country that I would feel
as comfortable as a Jew living in besides America, including in the UK or
Belgium, but you never know. UK Jews are wearing baseball caps, because it is
too dangerous to be marked visibly as a Jew in the UK.
I have to wonder how a member of a Palestinian
human rights group can ignore the daily denial of human rights by the
Palestinian government or that being a homosexual is a death sentence in the
West Bank and Gaza. Gay Palestinians are trying to get asylum in Israel.
Those fringes
are called tsitsit. Even non-Orthodox Jews wear tallit, prayer shawls with
fringes called tsitsit, during services at a synagogue. The fringes have a
total of 613 knots in them to correspond to the 613 commandments. That funny
miner’s light is part of a tefillin.
S Stein
Philadelphia, USA
May 2007
ã2007 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.