Al-Kamilah: The Legend Who Unites the East and the West
by Count Federico Wardal
—————
The story of Shah Malika Al-Kamilah, a purebred Arabian filly (Golden Cross Egyptian-Arabian-Spanish) is now a legend across the planet.
In California (USA) it happens that, following an injection, the filly Al-Kamila breaks her spine and is destined to die. Hon. Esq. Angela Alioto, a leading lawyer in the USA and an internationally popular public figure for her humanitarian actions, against the advice of any surgeon in the world, has the surgery performed on Al-Kamilah’s paralyzed spine at UC Davis.
The hope of saving Al-Kamila was almost zero.
Then, Angela Alioto spreads a blessed and beneficial ointment on Al-Kamilah’s paws.
Al-Kamilah begins to move his paws and wins the love and care of all his doctors, and many friends and the “AL-KAMILAH” case explodes on social media.
The filly improves, but must undergo a second operation to remove the nails and cement that contributed to the strengthening of the spine.
It’s another delicate operation.
Angela Alioto’s nervousness was strong, but she spreads the blessed ointment on Al-Kamilah’s paws again.
Gian-Paolo Veronese, Angela’s youngest son, who has always been close to Al-Kamilah, strongly hopes that everything goes well and so does Fabio Giotta, founder of the best-known cultural and artistic café in the USA: “Il caffè Trieste” in SF.
Then there are hours of trepidation during Al-Kamilah’s second surgery and finally the medical verdict: Al-Kamila is safe! Social media worldwide is exploding with messages of happiness and great honor and commendations to UC Davis! Messages of congratulations arrive from all over the USA, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
In Italy, the most authoritative official newspaper “Il Corriere della Sera” publishes on its front page the news that Al-Kamilah is safe. Samantha Ferro, a famous Italian-American journalist in SF, is happy about it.
Of course all this makes Sheikh Hamad Ali Al-Thani happy, under his direction, Al Shaqab Stud became one of the most important and influential breeding programs in the world.
At this point there is another piece of great news: the famous director Christopher A. Salvador directs a docu-film: “Al-Kamilah, the miracle filly” and the super star Joe Mantegna is commenting on the film! Angela Alioto, in the film, expresses her irresistible human energy, imbued with universal love. It’s a film of the highest quality, which certainly deserves one or more Academy Awards in 2025.
The film, which will be shown in private VIP viewing in SF on June 21, at the Vogue Theatre, will participate in the major international festivals and hopefully also in the Al-Gouna International Film Festival, founded by the Sawiris brothers and directed by Marianne Khoury. Khoury is the niece of late great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine. Certainly a film directed so grandly by Christopher A. Salvador, H.R.H. might like it very much.
Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani is the chairperson of the Doha Film Institute (DFI), which she founded in 2010. The institute partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival to produce several annual iterations of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival. A fabulous sculpture of Al-Kamilah by Mario Chiodo will be unveiled in SF on June 21st and a book by Angela Alioto on Al-Kamilah is being published.
Thanks again to UC Davis for the courage and skill that saved a life and for the first time in the world performed an operation on the spine of a filly: “Al-Kamilah” who now runs like the wind!
Why I am not writing
I am re-reading James Ellroy's
The Black Dahlia, am re-reading
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, am
reading the sub-titles to the
opening titles of the animated
manga Neon Genesis Evangelion
when Mayakovsky rings to say
he will not be coming around
today. I scan the TV guide
& plot an alternative itinerary.
I think about opening Word
& end up opening Solitaire
instead. I listen to the humming
of the PC but it tells me nothing.
It sounds like the refrigerator but
that only hums at intervals &
does not give me card games
as a built-in option — it is
too dedicated in its purpose.
I think about work, where I have
been listening to the presentations
of consultants to decide who
will be the anointed ones to whom
we will pay hundreds of thousands
of dollars to rewrite our planning &
information systems. I have yet
to hear anything new, decide I'm
in the wrong business. But the
arrival of the consultants is
serendipitous in that it loosely
coincides with one of the subjects
I have to do at university next
semester. I plan to use the
aggregated data in my major
assignment — at least I will get
some value from what I consider
to be an obscene outlay of money.
& I am reading & re-reading my
textbooks as the exams draw nearer.
Though they & the other books are
shelved in some sort of order, the CDs
are jumbled. I am working my way
through them from the top of the
stack on down, sorting them out
by listening to each one in turn
then putting it back in the place
where it was. I have just listened
to Sonny Rollins' Saxophone
Colossus; now I am listening
to Revolver & decide again that
this album & not Sergeant Pepper
marked the paradigm shift for The
Beatles even though for me
when I first heard them the order
was reversed. & in passing
I want to thank Thomas Kuhn
for developing the concept of
paradigm shifts & for redefining
the term paradigm. When words
change meaning they are re-
energized, & if I were writing
I would hope to be using energetic
words. But instead I am singing
along with Eleanor Rigby & the
refrigerator is humming along
in harmony & the Red Queen is
shouting from the PC "Lay me
on the Black King! Lay me!" She
is off her head. But I already knew
that, was told by Jefferson Airplane
many years ago & reminded of it
by the inclusion of White Rabbit
on the Greatest Hits of the Sixties
compilation I listened to three CDs
ago. Then Mayakovsky rings
to say he has changed his mind.
I start to tidy up the house.
October, 2002
Unprepared
How could we
not see
the coming
beast riding
birth fed
by our disbelief
dripping saliva
growing mud mountains
sick and strong
skyscraper tall
stomping on
houses
cities
continents
babies
never growing up
to see the sea and sky
and flowering fields
of their own.
Blinded
Kiss her
on her cheek
and her bare back
with scars
from an enemy
before our marriage
and then the facts come out
and our hunt begins
for recompense and a reckoning
that will never be fully completed
for we and our parents
never believed
such horrors could happen
in the land we love.
If I Was Young I Would Confess
Eating my beans and burgers
a glow screen in each palm
my ears tagged with everything I like
old tunes and worldly wrecks
I dance in the morning
not knowing the night
ink in all the right places
my skin a smear of compliments
I don't have to brag
I'm a loser uncaring
A great liar until I try to sleep at night.
Stripping
And the night takes me down
to the river of the dump
a stink lake
my cemetery sideline
I'm too young to die
still owing my elders
looking up snarling to myself
blaming the now times
confusion the chief
and sneaky thief
I'm a pawn with a chain
around my jeans
heavy knuckles
from too many fights
leave me alone
and let me write my last words
stripping to point
at the moon of doom.
The Right Course
I'm too old to be young
writing like a fool thinking he's cool
reading the Good Book
changing too slow
but on the right course
asking for forgiveness
from all my friends and those I meet.
she had a true word or two for Master Nansen
the fragile axis of my Kirk Douglas moment
by now, I must've arm-wrestled the man from Cienfuegos over forty times
I'm a gremlin-on-the-wing type guy
hotel aquarium: the carp follow the slow movement of her hands
all day long
between my toes
ants exchanging hydrocarbons
stepping over the guard rail
introducing myself
to a sycamore tree
in some dimension of spacetime, Robert Mitchum sneers
Rujing refused to wear his brocade robe
on the Great Way
to the Giant Eagle
three faces in the one parmureli
checking the box for morbid introspection
it's the High T'ang in Pittsburgh
sweeping the path
gazing at clouds
toss some cinnabar in that prayer you said you would say for me
Faulted news hour
i.
You should pardon it, keep it to the fore—
fronted if mendacious
a happy grove of fear
and vicious/delicate if
surrounding.
But what happens comes too quick
and not one of us defends it
a cut-up pose of reels
fabricants media savvy and
grandizing.
You should pardon it
only what's known a
group work presents—
a token field half-truthed
not yet factitious, well—baited,
soft pleasing.
ii.
It is not that one should have it
more than as is
(pleasant to dream, semblance to reality)
that mucks about in all what relish
we it is who are as what stood tall in
once, if now, not far that cold indiscretion
each talk about wondrous of cause,
curious in (un)becoming dark enterprises
neat belonged what
all of us we align of
steady in the composure
none of us redoubted.
So we have it, that transient malaise
not more but less could encounter
as when where are is not
but these we depress from—
fade memories of a dream,
what happened once
but could not have.
iii.
Slight fade of space
is memory’s whitewashing—
an age of grace to grow out on one
too limited resist it—
it becomes us all, terrifies
to no measure
that what happens once outlasts it
as if in white right pleasure
to rip through, scandalizing
upturned emotion conducive
to pure fact reminiscent
that dates, times, maneuvers outlasted
should permeate to frost
gloss over meet conditions
love’s alone by its then self
obfuscated that not that
should but be as is
this the relishing
memories conduct us.
William T. Vollmann writes with clarity and a rare sort of honesty that is not easy to find. In this wonderfully written account of train hopping the reader experiences the outward adventures and also Vollmann’s thoughts on trains, travel, literary heroes, the meaning of friendship, and more. Vollmann shows us courage in his actions, and at even the more difficult of times, inspiration for writing and life through his keen interest in both.
That all would be amazing enough for this reader, but what makes it better yet is that when Vollmann is describing landscapes he is poetic, profound, and I would say, spiritually orientated in his quest, his open journey. Brave it is to do what he has done, and valorous to share his experiences in a heartfelt way. A long time ago I read an essay interview w/Louis Ferdinand Celine where he talked about a few writers he admired that came before him. He said of them that ‘They were made for it,’ meaning they were created to be writers. This would be perhaps the highest destiny.
Vollmann in my view is like that, is someone that is made for it, and he shows why in these pages.
“I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it.” --Edwidge DanticatHaiti Also Rises: The History of Haiti’s Resiliency against International Cruelty and Its Pivotal Role in the American Revolution and the Abolition of SlaveryBy Jacques Fleury
[Originally published in Spare Change News & Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self]
“‘History is the memory of states’, wrote Henry Kissinger in his book A World Restored in which he proceeded to tell the history of 19th century Europe from the point of view of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those state men’s
policies.”
The aforementioned is from Howard Zinn’s revolutionary book: A People’s History of the United States. It depicts U.S. history from the point of view of the common man. His method of operation is in direct correlation to what I’m about to do: tell you Haiti’s history from my point of view.
History is not necessarily or essentially “the memory of states” as Kissinger puts it. It is the narrative of the people whose lives were impacted, fragmented or altogether destroyed by intransigent politics and capricious foreign policies of dominant powers.
First and foremost, I want to outline Haiti’s historical chronology; thus giving you a theoretical basis from which you can begin to undergo a more comprehensive understanding of the country’s history and its present state of political and environmental instability.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on the island and named it Hispaniola. Taino-Arawak Indians, who referred to their homeland as “Hayti” or “Mountainous Land”, originally inhabited the island. In 1697 slaves were sent to Haiti. The island was cherished by European powers for its natural resources, including cocoa, cotton and sugar cane. And so the French shipped in thousands of slaves mainly from West Africa to harvest the crops.
In 1804 after a slave rebellion led by a man named Boukman in 1791, Haiti became the first black independent state under General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared himself Emperor. America feared that the slave rebellion in Haiti would ignite anti-slavery insurgents in the southern U.S. states. Perhaps this is one of the reasons America’s relationship with Haiti is strained to this day even though it was money from the then richest island in the Americas that France used to supplement the American Revolutionary War against Britain; a fact that was omitted in most history books. Haitians also
left Haiti to fight in the American Revolution.
In 1844, after decades of strife and multiple rulers, the island was split into two nations: Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In 1915, U.S. marines occupied Haiti to [supposedly] calm a state of anarchy. The Americans improved the infrastructure while helping to create the Haitian armed forces. In 1957 a reign of terror began when Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier seizes power. His son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier then just 18 years old, took over in 1971, continuing his father’s legacy of tyranny. In 1986, a rebellion ignited.
As protests gathered steam, the U.S. arranged exile in France for Baby Doc and his family. In 1990, after decades of dictatorship, former Roman Catholic Priest Jean-Bernard Aristide, becomes Haiti’s first freely elected leader. In 1991, after a military incursion, Aristide is ousted and is forced to seek exile in the U.S. The coup ignited a
mass exodus with more than 40, 000 Haitians rescued by the U.S. coast guard during a twelve-month period. In 1996 Rene Preval becomes president.
In 2000 Aristide is elected once again. In 2004 political violence plagues the Haitian capital, with accusations of a fraudulent election looming, a few weeks after Haiti celebrates its 200th anniversary, a rebel movement usurps control and Aristide is forced into exile again. Deadly floods leave 2,000 dead and causing deforestation.
In 2006 Preval was elected in the first election since Aristide was overthrown in 2004. In 2008 food prices in Haiti aggrandized as they have elsewhere in the world but the situation on the island was exacerbated since most Haitians only live on $2.00 dollars per day.
Also deadly hurricanes left 23, 000 homes destroyed, many dead
and 70 percent of the nation’s crops wiped out. In 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 ambushed Port-au-Prince, collapsing buildings with 100,000 thousand estimated dead. World
Vision—an organization that has worked in Haiti for thirty years—made an expedited trip to the island rushing emergency supplies to the survivors.
A great man once said, “Life’s most important question is: What are you doing for somebody else?” Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard Professor and anthropologist, is an avid supporter of Haiti. He became involved with the country when he went on a school trip as an undergraduate student.
Today, he has spearheaded the ubiquitous Boston based organization Partners in Health (P.I.H), devoted to aiding third world countries like Haiti. Farmer is known for his support of a Preferential Option for the Poor, a central precept of Liberation Theology. His approach to practice in Haiti, Peru and Russia has its basis in ethnographic analysis—the science that studies and compares human cultures—and real world practicality. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Could Cure the World by Tracy Kidder details Farmer’s work in Haiti and abroad.
I have been a part of P.I.H. since I was bestowed with the honor of
being the Official Poet and Publicity Coordinator for the Annual Urban Walk for Haiti, which raises monies for P.I.H.
In Haiti, it was common knowledge that one’s own friends could be bribed as spies and government informants. Their jobs were to safeguard the brutal reigning regime by turning in anyone whom they considered subversive. Under the Haitian weather, the wind in the trees often swirled about all the fetid feeling of death and despair.
However, contrary to what the American news media has imprinted as fact in the heads of people across the world, Haiti has more
dimensions than the poor, the poorer and the poorest. There are three classes of people: the bourgeoisie, the middle class and then the poor.
I was part of the middle class. Both my parents owned property in Port-au-Prince and my father was a clothes designer, retail storeowner and mercantile entrepreneur. He was also a land and multiple homeowner, which he rented as part of his entrepreneurial endeavors. My mother was a house wife, socialite and landlord with degrees in cosmetology and the culinary arts. I attended an
exclusive private school near the Haitian palace called Frere Andre (Brother Andre).
It was there that I leaned how not to think for myself through blatant memorization of pedantic texts and taking dictations to prepare me for the dictatorship of the ruling class. But Haiti is more than just
doom and gloom. I remember staring in stupor at the dance of the Caribbean wind over the azure sea, the deep green elegance of the palms, picnic by moonlight and sweet memories of mangoes. Purple
butterflies, a visual feast of dancing loveliness, under the flowery spring sun. The joyous sounds of laughter resounding from the young as they run about playing hide and seek during blackouts.
But unfortunately, there also lied in the sea a maelstrom of fear, violence, misery and poverty, which most can barely swim out of, while the orchestrating powers that ensnare them stand by cross armed and snarling. But one day, it is my fervent hope that Haitian children will wake up to shiny silver mornings and hummingbirds singing, promising freedom, serenity and prosperity.
We lived in a world dominated by the hetero sexist macho male culture. However, my mother who bears the same name as Haitian rebel fighter Toussaint L’ouverture, was and still is iconoclastic in that she dared to be a leader for her family when most women were subjected to being simply subservient to the men. Since we were considered middle class, she became caught up in the gaudy accoutrements of upward mobility, so when Haiti’s political and economic crises began to converge, threatening our lifestyle, we all came to America.
She related to me that under the Duvalier dictatorship, tourism in Haiti flourished from the 1950’s all the way up to 1986, practically ending with the Baby Doc mutiny. Foreign groups like Arabs, Lebanese, and even Chinese exiled from their respective countries lived and built businesses in Haiti. Also Haiti’s number one tourist attraction, La Citadelle Laferriere, built on mountains overlooking Port-au-Prince 17 miles south of the city of Cap Haitien by Henry
Christopher—a general in the Haitian army—has walls 130 feet high is the largest fortress in the Americas and was designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a world history site in 1982. It was built to keep the newly independent nation from French incursions, which never materialized.
Haitians in American are for the most part hard working honest and joyous intelligent people. Most of the women work as Certified Nursing Assistants in nursing home facilities, caring for America’s elderly population and a plethora of men work as cab drivers. Large majorities also attend college to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and nurses. Both the men and women pursue the American Dream by buying cars and houses, sometimes working two to three jobs.
I too am living my version of the American dream by graduating from college with honors (Phi Beta Kappa) and publishing my first autobiography of prose and poetry aptly titled Sparks in the Dark, which was featured in the Boston Globe. Yet still, there seems to be an undercurrent of fear and hatred towards the Haitian population here in the States.
Maybe it’s because the conscientious and resultant collaboration of the “Have Nots” that often instigate the principal fears and resistance of the “Haves”, since the rich want to remain rich and in control. Robert Lawless, quoted in Farmer’s book The Uses, asserts Haitians are the immigrants Americans love to fear and hate.”
But why, I ask of you? Which leads me to ponder, is hate and prejudice ever truly justified?
“Why should we care about Haiti?” writes politico and M.I.T professor Noam Chomsky in the introduction to Farmer’s book The Uses. “…We are the richest and most powerful country in the world, while Haiti is at the opposite extreme of human existence: miserable, horrifying,
black, ugly. We may pity Haitians and other backwards people who have, unaccountably, failed to achieve our nobility and wealth, and we may even try to lend a hand, out of humanitarian impulse. But responsibility stops there.” I once heard the adage “If your neighbor’s house is on fire, wet yours.”
As we know tragedy affects all of us, having experienced hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In relation to American occupation of Haiti, Chomsky goes on to say, “In a situation of domination and occupation, the occupier… has to justify what it’s doing. There is only once way to do it—become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you’ve become a raving racist in self-defense, you’ve lost your capacity to understand what’s [really] happening.” In other words,
it’s like putting someone’s eyes out and then accusing them of being blind.
America’s exploitation of Haiti, its support of the Duvaliers and the military for the repression of the Haitian people and expedient U.S. foreign policies and an ongoing debate about Haitian asylum
seekers, are all impediments to the progression of the Haitian nation.
It seems like light skinned immigrants like Cubans and Mexicans get asylum, why not Haitians?
