"She Who Tells a Story"

“I was raised with people trying to tell me what to do and think,” said Newsha Tavakolian, who shoots for The New York Times from Iran. “Now I want those looking at my work to have their own opinions. I don’t want to enforce any ideas or views upon them. They are free.”

source of inspiration:  A Show of Strenght by Middle Eastern Women Photographers

"Don't forget this is Not for You (for Sahar Letfi)", 2011
exhibition in Boston,  August 27, 2013 - January 12, 2014

The phrase “She Who Tells a Story” comes from the word rawiya (...). But the exhibit doesn’t tell one story; it tells many. (...) Ms. Tavakolian said that while the exhibit cannot really not change anything about the current situation in Egypt or elsewhere in the region, what it could do is help “provide people with the opportunity to see some different perspectives from the region.”

Please, if you would have the opportunity to visit this exhibition, tell me about it, and if these women really challenge the stereotypes in their region, and tell the different stories, could frame the complex identities in their region. Dank u wel :). Let me now rewrite a short story, I wrote for a film project, but let it us put in another context... 
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White on Paper (retold)

Thousands spirals huddled together. Colors danced and mingled over the entire surface.  In this all, she wandered in this insane play of her mind, a young woman, her skin so brown as the heart of ancient trees, her hair as black as the lonely nights without the caress of the moon, and her eyes as dark as still, but deep waters. In this world she could be as free as she wanted. There were no limitations, no expectations... She could be everyone. She could be a queen. Yes, a beautiful, shining, colorful queen, without any scars, without any ropes, without any fear. An artist. In her hands, an old camera, the one she saw using a tourist, appears. In front of her, a corridor, blinding her eyes with a giant light, appeared, and she decided to meet the source of the light. Something in her mind said this would be a great frame for a movie, or a photograph: her feminine silhouette in the backlight.
There was a man waiting for her. He was not like the men in her village. He was tall, taller than any guy, and his skin was so white as the milk her grandmother's goats produced. He reminded her to this tourist of an Iceland, which visited her village some weeks ago, the same tourist with the same camera in her hands. In the memory he had given her only one glance, which freezed time. She didn't know this stranger. Her mother noticed the short interaction, and had her pulled away, from "this strange behavior". But... now she met him again, in his land of ice and snow. He was the opposite of everything what the desert around, in, under her village was promising her. This time she took pictures of him, expressing her feelings, expressing her desires, expressing who she really is...
until the dream ended.

In the real world, her hairs were covered by the rusari, when she walked through alleys which smell like goat piss and the other perfumes of poverty. Her father allows her to take pictures, which he sells in the capital as postcards to tourists. Her father says she has "an eye", not because he knows something about exposure, the golden mean... but the dodgy publisher for who he works, says it. Her father, who worked as tea maker for a publisher, who had found one day some pictures in his wallet. Nobody, in that company, wonder what the boss was looking for in this wallet. Money shuts mouths. He asked who took these pictures, and her father, who has a talent for knowing what people want to hear, said he took these pictures. Since then her father is tea maker, photographer and also, as second job outside the publisher, vendor of photographs he cannot sell to the paper. She knew this. She could work as photographer, in Iran, if she wanted, but not now... she is a clever girl. Her talent is to know what people don't want to hear. She tells herself she just waits for a moment, when everything will be ok, when her dreams full of colors, and the white papers of the books of her father's boss will mingle.

But this tourist changed everything...

He appeared more often in her dreams. She was almost afraid to fell asleep, because she didn't want to hear her family hear her moaning. 16 year old girls shouldn't have desires...   One morning, when her youngest sister and she were doing the dishes in a bucket outside, her sister confirmed her biggest fear. "Why are you making so weird noises? What do you dream about?"
"I dream about... camels... that I am a camel."
Her younger sister start laughing. "You're so weird."
Weird is better than naughty.
Still, anxious, she took her grandfather's camera, and went into the desert, to calm down there.
Landscapes, impressions...  got an eternal print, but couldn't brand away the image in her mind, of this tall, white man. She stopped, in the middle of nothing.
She raised her hands, and by both her thumb and forefinger of each hand, she made a frame, looking for a picture that would make her happy ... that would set her thoughts free ...
... and he appeared in the frame.
Her arms fell.
Stunned, she stared at the tourist. This is impossible. So... God still exists in this reality? It has to be... because only He could have brought him. This is a sign. These time the glance was longer, long enough to invite her to come. Slowly, she went to him, and although he didn't smile, she came closer and closer, and stopped one meter for him, impressed by his appearance. His eyes are so blue... as ice... She never had seen ice, only in the magazines her father brought home. What happens now? She wants to touch him, and then he also raises his hand, to touch her fingers, but exactly at the moment when her hand palm was going to feel his finger tops, he disappeared in a fata morgana. Afraid - fear for loosing it- she swirl around like a jinn. Where is he? Then she stopped, and understood something every woman one day will realise. Who do I really miss? 
She looked in the sun, not afraid to burn her eyes, and then tried to capture every color of this light with her camera. When her film roll was finished, she sighed. It was just all a dream...

Her father noticed that his daughter looked more sad than she usual was, but he didn't ask her why. Something in him wanted to ask her, hug her, take off this rusari from her head and kiss her black hairs, but there were other men, not so far from them, so he followed her via the door into his own small kingdom, where his queen carries the real scepter.

Three days later, her father faced two upset guys. One of them always developed his film rolls, the other was his boss. They did not understand the reason of the subject, lying on the table between them. The father was so chocked that his talent did not connect with his mouth. Possessed by anger, maybe fear, he took the pictures, and went home, to find his eldest daughter. She was cleaning the windows, and wanted to greet him with a smile, but the devil's laugh in his eye made her freeze. He pulled her inside, and threw the pictures in her face. "What is this?"
Trembling, confused, she took the pictures, and then she saw the most unbelievable. It is magic. 
Then a smile appeared, for a very first time on her dry lips, and she looked up.
"This is who I really am."
Her deepest desire was translated on white paper.
Her story of longing. Her identity. Her search for freedom...
Her dumb and forefinger did not hold pictures showing the sun, but showing him.
Her dreams, full of colors, really mingled with the white paper.
There was hope...
if there is magic in the world. 

The White Room

Colors are one of the most amazing presents of Mother Earth. Since Ancient Times, people believe that each color has his own power to heal and to make all the children of this Mother happy and alive. Sun, the source of all life, gives us light, which is a spectrum of all colors. In the film world, we work a lot with color symbolism, because every color has also a lot of symbolic meanings, associations... There is a famous book called "If it's Purple, Someone 's Gonna Die". In some beliefs, people connect each main color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) with the seven chakra's, or energy centers in our bodies. I studied physics, as part of my Science studies, and I know every color has the properties of light, so has his own frequency, his own wave length... According to these beliefs, every color, every specific frequency of energy, is connected with color. 

This is the first story I'll write about Colors. I wrote one about "the Color Wizard and the White Queen", in Flemish, which some friends already read some years ago, but I'll translate it soon... 

It is called "The White Room"

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Some years ago a friend asked me several odd questions, which were part of his small informal psychological test. My favorite animal? ("That is how you want others see you," he explained.) Where do I prefer to swim? ("That gives more idea about your sex life.") How many flowers do I want in the garden? ("How many children do you want?") The last question is what I would do if I ever would wake up in a white room, without any escape. There are no windows, no doors... just white walls. What would be your first reaction?

Honduras, April 2011
I burnt my nose during this day, which was the beginning
of the development of impetigo. Or...  Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen
(song song of Baz Luhrmann:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

Years later I woke up in a white room I couldn't leave. There were big windows, and there was a door, yes, but a disease kept me inside this room. Honduras had given me a last souvenir: impetigo. It is a contagious childhood skin disease. It was not so dangerous, and it also didn't hurt. I just looked like the bride of Frankenstein's bride: I looked like a Dalmation dog, but with yellow spots, which produced some pus. It was disgusting. More and more spots came, like someone Divine Power was coloring me, under the influence of mushrooms. I think I survived one of the most dangerous cities in the world -  Guatemala City- where I stranded during my return at night, several hours before I expected to arrive, because I looked even to scary for bad spirits. Every disadvantage has his advantage, they say...

In this White Room, the nurse came twice a day, to disinfect every yellow spot. They helped me to wash myself in the shower, because I had 24 h/24h an infusion. The disease was developed so hard that only antibiotics directly in my blood would help. Again, I was not in danger. It also would heal after a month, but I would keep many scars, where all the spots came. I still have a scar of this disease, after more than 2 years, on the heel of my left foot.
I hated that infusion fact. I hate needles, and certainly when the infusion is almost empty and it starts to suck blood. From the moment I see the red liquid in the plastic tube, I fainted almost. I was not happy to take a shower, with that thing also in the shower. I remember I almost scared my own doctor, because when he took blood from my arm, I fainted, and almost pierced myself. Since that doctor's visit, he always let me lie on the bed, when I do a blood test. "Just in case," he always says.

In this White Room I woke up, and I couldn't leave. Some friends called me. My mother brought me some books, but not the books I asked. I ended up with childhood books, for 6 year olds.
It was so boring to sit there. The doctor told me I probably need to be in the hospital for a whole week. It seemed like an eternity.

When you're in a prison, in the first moments, you think you've the whole freedom to do everything you always wanted to do. But then, when you feel stuck, the air takes away all your breath, so dreams and plans just fade away into the nothing, and you just wait before you can leave this white room.

I knew I was going to leave this room, but I lost dreams. You start to think about things which doesn't really matter, but the eternity, the time...  becomes your biggest enemy. Fear that you'll never will leave this room, is like a poison, darkening your heart and your mind, and then you start imploding.

In the end I was not afraid to see my blood, the only colorful thing in this white room. It was full of life.

Honduras, April '11: This picture of the trees in these ruins,
would have been the cover of the novel. Maybe one day it will be a cover picture.
I am still writing about baobabs, dryads... and immortality.

In that time I started to write a novel, which I call "the baobabs from Madagascar". I think the idea is born there. It is fantasy, but I coupled the theme: "eternal life". Some characters choose, others are chosen for, to have an eternal life, as a dryad, a tree nymph. It is not only the fantasy I love to write about, the escapism, but also the question how you would react when you hear you live forever, when you really wake up in a white room. From the moment you got stuck in a white room, when you get stuck in some eternity, and the only escape is death, there is nothing worse. In this novel the story also started in the ruins of Honduras, which are dominated by big baobabs.


White rooms, without escape, are everywhere. It can be eternal life, it can be a hospital room, it can be a resting place, or it can be your own house, where dreams, plans fade away... because it all seems no sense. I left this white room, and was then more sure that I wanted to do this world travel, and find all the colors of the world, by traveling, and not getting stuck in any white room, or not for too long.

I remember what I replied to this friend. "I will try to find an escape."
He smiled, and said: "There is no escape. Don't think too much about it. How would you react? What is the first thing that pops in your mind?"
I saw this white room. Too high light exposure, so this image also blinded me.
"I guess I will be afraid... "
Then, he explained: "This is how you think about Death."

I thought that White Room I wake up, after my journey in Honduras, was not Death.
It was worse ...  It was fear...
Fear that I will never see all the apart, individual colors in, behind this white.
Maybe if fear really darkened your heart, maybe then you're really dead.
In some symbolic way.

Who can save yourself, then? Who can raise up people from the death?
Who can make Pinokkio, stuck in wood, and all his ropes, alive?

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The story the White Queen and The Color Wizard is more narrative than this, but I think this can be a good introduction, to understand this story. One of these days I'll publish it, and this will wear the label of "winter", while this has the label "fall", because here I went into the darkness, but by the other story we will go into the darkness, and then -together with the Color Wizard- find every color back. 

I also live back now in Belgium, in a big, beautiful house, alone, and I feel confronted with many white rooms. My grandmother moved to a resting home, and it is for her scary. But I already felt, she lived her whole life in a white room, becoming a plant, without too many dreams, passions... She never traveled. She really lived in that house, that street... I always tried to escape this house, to become the opposite of her, because I am so afraid to become a plant, but I always come back, for some reason. Life is like a cycle. And I feel a bit sad here, being alone, in a house I cannot share, but maybe the future will bring house mates. I have since today a car, so friends and family are not so far away... 
I am not a house person. I know :). In other times, I was maybe a Celtic bard, going from one town to another, singing stories and legends... 

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This story is for her, and for myself, declaring I'll make from this house something else than a white house. Soon, the ugly living room, will be transformed in a room full of colors,beauty, and music, played on a gramophon. A friend from the film school visited me this evening, and we talked this house can be used as a set for a future short film, as base for a dream (project)... so maybe the best reaction to "What will you do if you wake up in the White Room" can be that you'll just start painting it... 

Norwegian Wood

After an amazing week in Trollheimen, Norway I was at the border between reality and daydreams, while quick images of mountainous landscapes, the sparkling lakes and the wood of this Scandinavian country print in my mind. The train from Oppdal to Oslo took some hours, and instead of reading a book, I flipped through my memories...

Memory of the trekking in Norway, thanks to EGEA Trondheim

...until an old American couple came to the four seats, and I had to make place so they could sit. They answered me in an accent, which sounded North-American. I asked them if they were from Canada. 

"We're from the United States."

I smiled: sometimes people from the US forget America is a continent, and not a country. People from Mexico, Canada... don't like people use the word America if they only talk about US. 

They were from New York, and we started to talk about this city. I have been there. The woman decided to take a look where Edward was. After she left, her husband told me -on a softer tone- that they met a young man, who they met in Alesund, and had seen back on the platform of this train, after another week of division. "He is an handsome guy, who will study economics in Colombia University. He is called Edward the Fourth." I frowned my eyebrows. I only thought kings got a number. "I recommend you to marry him..."

Americans... I mean... US citizens... they are always so helpful. I didn't know this man well enough to know he was joking or not, but I smiled. The woman came back, with the announcement that Edward (the 4th) did find a place on the train, although it is known that you've to book train tickets in Norway in some advance. 

We started to talk about Norway, and from this country our stories started to travel over whole the world. 

The woman asked me if I planned every travel.

"Sometimes, in the beginning, yes, I had a plan, but then... you meet people, you get inspired, and whole your planned future changes. How is this expression? When you plan something, life happens?"

"I love this about life," the older woman replied, "Isn't it great that you always have the chance to change from route?"

"Exactly," I said, "but I guess sometimes friends don't like me always making new and other plans. Things just happen, and things don't go as planned..."

"Did travel change you?" the woman asked curiously. 

"I don't know. Some people say I did. Some people say I am just the same. I sometimes make still the same mistakes. I don't know. You are always your own company, and then you don't notice change so easily as people who only meet you once in a while."

"When we lived in Japan, I experienced so much, learnt so much... I totally become someone else," the woman said. Before she could give a further explanation, Edward IV appeared on stage. He didn't wear a crown... by the way.  

The old couple invited us for a beer, which is really a nice offer, if you know the prices of alcohol in Norway, and there she told more about Japan. 

"You know, there are people, writing blogs, telling that they know Japan after they have been there for two weeks. They mention geisha, shinto, sushi... in their story. I lived for more than 7 years in Japan, and trust me, after all these years I still don't understand the real Japan. Real Japanese people are afraid. They don't look in the eyes of strangers. Forget they will talk with strangers. The Japanese people who talk with you, are excluded by the real Japanese..."

"Aren't they also Japanese people?" Edward IV remarked. "I mean... since when are you a real Japanese? Since when is someone a real American?" Someone doesn't know America is a continent... but I thought he made a good remark. 

The woman smiled. "That is the point... Can you say that you know a country, or even a person, even if you know it, him or her for years? I don't think even Japanese people can really describe their country. They say there whole culture is based on shinto, but there aren't writings about this belief, this philosophy, in contrary of the islam, which has the Koran, or the Christians, who have the Bible."

She made a good point. We talked even later that sometimes stories change in history, just because memories fade away, or get another shape, because of the context of time, or just because minds filter a lot of information. Sometimes I wonder if I could describe myself perfect, because I already lost so many memories. I guess also some other people will see me differently than others. Is this the same about a country, a culture, other persons... ? Which story is then true? If my best friend talks about me, it will be even true, as I'll tell something about me. She wasn't in my presence for 24/24,7/7, but I also filter information conscious and unconscious. Look at facebook. It is so easy for me to show only the information I want other people to know, so they perceive me as the person I want. Is it possible to know everything?

I don't think so... but you can be critical, and realize that one perception is not enough.

Japan is also not only geisha's, shinto and sushi. 

Norway is also not only mountainous landscapes, sparkling lakes and wood .

ps I didn't marry (prince) Edward IV in the end of this fairytale ;). 

Just a thought...

I ended once -by accident- in a slum in Accra, Ghana, 
and people were so friendly to show me and other volunteers around. 
They showed me their house.
I was so surprised to see that there was nothing inside. Only a bed. 
No table, or books, or decoration, no paint, no chairs, nothing...
I thought they were poor...
... and I wondered why they don't give these depressive walls some color, to bring sunshine in their life. So... I remarked that "there is not so much to see here..;"
They told us they are not like Westerns decorating their houses with as much as stuff they can buy, because Western people live inside, isolated from each other, 
but these people live outside, in a community. 
They do not need to decorate the inside. Whole their life happens outside.
Their fridge was outside, and was shared by all of the people in that "street" there, 
to keep the soft drinks cold.

Jamestown, Accra, Ghana 2009.
After reading about it, I proposed other volunteers to go there.
I expected to arrive on a idyllic beach, but it was a fisher's town/slum. 

Introduction

Some years ago I went to Ghana. I was 19, 20... and a bit more naive than I am at the moment. I wanted to explore Ghana, and I found an organization which organizes volunteering work, and decided to combine my wish for adventure with a cause, so I would go there "with a reason".

Ghana was promoted as Africa for beginners, because the people are very friendly, it is a bit more developed (or at least the capital) than most African countries, they speak English... Why I wanted to go to Ghana, is another story that would distract too much the message. Helping people was just a result, to cover the real reasons.

When I arrived in Accra, the capital of Ghana, I was really... shocked. Although I wouldn't call myself a racist, I expected slums, poor people without legs, garbage everywhere, crazy traffic, wild jungle with big trees, human-eating snakes and almost naked people... but I saw big boulevards, people in suits, big buildings...
Later, on that journey, I noticed garbage, poverty... I don't want to deny it, but I still remember how... disappointed I was, holding my cheap camera, and hoping to catch pictures of typical Africa I later could show to whole the world. Later, on that travel, I was embarrassed that African people could talk me under table (* I don't know if this is an English expression). Mother Africa taught me a lot.

Education can be simple. Pre-school where I volunteered, Agona Swedru, Ghana 2009

But... when I came back home, I told people what they expected to hear. I told them about the high toll of deaths in road accidents, about the trotro's, the vans where they try to use every square centimeter by putting as much as possible people it, and the poverty in the slums...
... I didn't tell about the development which was already present. I kept stories hidden. Why? I didn't do it on purpose. Only after talking with other people who went to Africa, following subjects at university like "Development coordination" and "problems of countries in development" by professor Develtere , as part of my study in Geography, maybe by meeting other Africans, by traveling more, and by reading more, even about mythology... I started to become more critical. Which stories, theories... are the right, or are they all right?

One day one of my good friends in Belgium let me watch the TED-speech by Chimamanda Adichie, a novelist from Nigeria, called "The Danger of a Single Story". In this video Adichie warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a misunderstanding. When she told how the media always use the same stereotypes, or "single story" to portray Africa, I time-traveled to that 19-20 year old version of me, who was disappointed that she couldn't take photographs of poor almost naked Africans. I realised  how I was trapped by the media, and worse... that I had seen other "stories" about Africa, and didn't share.

I was not better than all these people who use stereotypes to deny people from a certain country, culture, gender... give a job, an opportunity, because sometimes "these discriminating people" don't know better. I had the tool, namely a simple story, even more simple stories, to tell my environment, but I didn't. In the last months... I realize more and more that I want to tell stories about amazing people, share my experiences in the different cultures, which are not reported, or not told enough... and use media, not as a tool to simplify the truth, but to show the whole, the complexity of the truth... to make more people critical... so more misunderstandings can be avoided. Let us tell stories... to break stereotypes... to break taboos...

... so we can create chances.

A street in Accra, Ghana 2009. People don't look that poor... in this picture.
This is also not the best street. There are streets with really high buildings.

I'll write stories, and I'll do it in English. It is not my mother tongue, but it is my second language, and more important a language which a lot of people in the world can understand. There will be a lot of mistakes, and I am welcome for constructive feedback, or native speaking people who want to correct my English. I also decided to tell stories about heroines, rather than heroes, because I am a woman, but also because I feel they are underrepresented in the world. That is why I call this blog "short stories from the moon", referring to the woman, but also making clear they are different.

I know I'll always offend people, but please also share your opinion, if the story gives you negative thoughts. I love to learn.

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The danger of a Single Story
Chimamanda Adichie

TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK, duration: 18:49
http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/07/the_danger_of_a/