As the title suggests, The Broken Mirror is a story that reflects on the aftermath of a couple’s marital failure. Like a mirror’s reflection, it makes obvious the consequences of divorce on children. The Broken Mirror is a family drama with unique twists as a bedrock to its plot. The tragic story follows the family as the children grow into adulthood.
Raheem, friends with Joke, twin sister to Shade, narrates the story. The title comes from Raheem’s diary. The relationship struggles of Bode and Cynthia, parents to Shade and Joke, get mirrored in the lives of their two daughters.
After incessant quarrels became the order of the day in the family, Cynthia hired legal luminary Ken and filed for divorce from Bode. Cynthia and Ken later married, and Joke lived with them in Calabar while Shade lived with her father, who was devoted to her and also chose not to remarry.
Heartbroken and enraged after the divorce, Bode lied to Shade, telling her that her mother and sister had died and that no one should ever mention their names again. Joke also grew up hating her father and twin sister, feeling that they had abandoned her.
Bode also lost his job and livelihood due to the divorce and a nasty smear campaign.
Ken abandoned Cynthia and Joke and was never seen again after that. After a rough childhood due to her father’s joblessness, Shade fell in love with a young man, Emeka, and got engaged. Joke grew up angry, looking forward to the day she would get back at Shade, whom she believed had stolen away their father’s affection.
Bode passed away after a lingering battle with leukemia and Cynthia died of cancer. One day, Joke realized that Shade was still alive, about to marry Emeka. This set a tragic chain of events in motion that took the lives of both Emeka and Joke.
After Emeka’s violent death, Joke’s friend Raheem found Emeka’s diary and was able to piece together this twisted tale of family relations.
The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade event : new splendor after 3500 years
by Federico Wardal
The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade in Cairo
Cairo. The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade event, which I had the luck to see, is the most spectacular event at least of this millennium, even visible from space. Powerful beacons of light projected into space and illuminated the center of a crowd of 20 million people in Cairo for five miles.
This accompanied the passage of the mummies of 18 pharaohs and four queens from 3500 years ago (18th, 19th, 20th dynasty era) placed in spectacular hearses with immense beautiful processions with people in period clothes and singers who sang ancient songs.
The glittering golden parade was channeled over a five-mile path, guarded left and right by guards in ancient uniforms, from the Egyptian Museum in the immense Taharir square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, located in Old Cairo.
At the entrance to the museum, the Egyptian president H. E. Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi gave a welcome from modern Egypt to kings and queens who brought Egyptian civilization to the world. A very touching magical moment. The news caught the attention of the media and so it spread all over the planet, as the lighthouses of Cairo have reached the world. Everyone knows how the ancient Egyptian civilization, one of the most spectacular and advanced of the ancient world, was fascinated by the skies and galaxies and their scientific discoveries were amazing for their time.
I find ancient Egyptian art beautiful and reflective of a culture with a high degree of wisdom and insight. The cult of the beyond, of life both before and after death, is predominant. Souls are based in eternity and find themselves in an endless circle of death and resurrection.
This is the profound meaning of the event: to pay homage to everything that the immense Egyptian civilization has created and continues to create. And this is certainly how this spectacular parade arrived, thanks to the strength of the love and respect with which it was made. It was a worthy tribute to the energy of the 22 royals, whose mummies, now, finally, have a home equipped with today’s most sophisticated means of preservation.
Prof. Zahi Hawass, legendary archaeologist and friend of mine, said in his major media appearances that this is an event that Egypt gives to the entire world and that calls the world to visit Egypt. But another fascinating event will occur soon: the inauguration of the Great Museum of Giza, the largest and most grandiose museum in the world. This museum, with its sophisticated and spectacular structure, will remain as one of the wonders of our planet, even as archaeological research continually advances, to offer us all beauty for our eyes.
“I chose the name Hollywood simply because It sounds nice and because I’m superstitious and holly brings good luck.”
If I could laugh through tears, I would, but alas I´m not that cynical. The afore-mentioned quote is attributed to Daeida Wilcox, a wife of Harvey H. Wilcox, a man who purchased 120 acres of land from the original 480-acre ranch, sometime in 1887 – a land on which the green, indestructible vines of show business sprung from.
I know what you´re thinking, and no, this is not that kind of article.
(Not that there isn´t enough source material to pull from.)
I want to focus on one particular aspect of storytelling that Hollywood has deep-rooted into our subconscious – that love is supposed to be a rollercoaster drama, and that you are genetically (?) and fatefully (?) pre-dispositioned to fall in love with one specific person.
The illusion of “the one”.
And no movie has done more damage to perpetuate that than the 2004 movie adaptation of Nicholas Spark´s novel – The Notebook.
Yes, there have been plenty of toxic movies before the Notebook portraying romantic love affairs like a pre-ode to the horror that was awaiting us in a form of the Twilight series but as a nineties´ baby, this one laid down the foundations for a distorted trend in writing for me noticeably.
Instead of portraying fatalistic love woven drama as a form or one way to tell a romance story, it became so prevalent I see it in every other book/movie.
So yes, there I was in 2005, watching Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams jumping through proverbial hoops, making up and breaking up in the rain a million times shown as the most romantic thing in history, while my grandparents were just chilling over there on the couch, happily married with almost no drama for 40 years.
Being a sucker for romance, and having written a book with a heavy romantic subplot, building a healthy image of love without depriving the readers of the drama, has been challenging to say the least, but incredibly rewarding in the end.
Let´s dive in.
Cause and Effect
The debate on the differences between infatuation and love has existed since the beginning of a recorded word but that isn´t quite the quarrel here. The variety of storytelling that explores physical attraction evolving into an emotional connection or vice versa, or even never surpassing the superficiality of the former, is all valid and artful.
There absolutely are abusive, toxic, superficial, will they won´t they, we break up we make up scenarios, and giving them air time is completely fine.
What isn´t remotely artful or fine, not to mention believable, is the idea that two people fall in love just because.
And there is a quick test to reveal whether the love story you´re looking for has any merit: Ask yourself whether you´d want to be friends with either or both of the protagonists who are supposedly in love.
But Why Is It so Toxic?
You´re probably asking yourself what´s wrong with losing yourself in a fantasy – isn´t that the whole point of fiction?
It is, but there are more impactful results of fiction to be considered. Through stories we teach, we learn, we deal with personal dramas, we inherit, we get inspired, we share. And the more we pretend that the illogical storytelling is completely fine, the more books like Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, After, and It Ends With Us will emerge.
We project onto stories, we let them enter our system, and if a projection is toxic, it makes us not want to try. Try to be better.
And trying to be a better person every day, even if just by a little, is the whole point of living.
But if we read about super bland heroes, like a white canvas and the protagonist falls in love with them just because it´s meant to be, and we not only let it slide but copycat the narrative and continue the pattern, we´ll end up stuck in a fantasy world full of self-obsessed maniacs who don´t need to try because someone will come along and love them.
They don´t need to love and respect themselves, or to be upstanding, to lead by the example, it´s fine, isn´t it? Being a passive existence of nothingness?
It´s fine possibly losing all friends because – to drive home my original point – who would want to be friends with a living-breathing personification of an empty bucket of vague colors that is the likes of Bella Swan?
Does I am Cecilia Do Better Than That?
Since you clicked on this article, you might be aware that I am in the final stages of the publishing process with the New Degree Press for my Young Adult Novel I am Cecilia.
Zara Miller’s upcoming novel I Am Cecilia
(If not, you are welcome to join the fandom! I´ve been preparing my readers for the good stuff in the book like exploring the gypsy culture, studying the dysfunctional families, falling in love at a young age for months now…Sounds delish?)
When you´ve been writing since a young age, and reading has been a central core of your identity as it was in my case, you pick up so many stylistic choices from your favorite authors, you sometimes forget to ask yourself – Are all of them healthy and worthy of an homage?
I am Cecilia might be a piece of fiction but it´s not fantasy, so I couldn´t justify my protagonists falling in love because *magic*, or *destiny*, or *whatever*.
Not that the fantasy genre isn´t accountable when it comes to making a romance make sense.
(Remember when Jon Snow and Daenerys fell in love just because and it felt like drinking spoilt milk anytime they kissed or said I love you to each other? Now compare that to the emotional impact of Jon falling in love with Ygritte.)
But the scope of writing a realistic relationship blossoming between two teenagers who are not that interested in falling in love, to begin with, is challenging to say the least.
The titular character Cecilia, our heroine, has one goal and one goal only – to get the hell out of a small town in Slovakia and go to college where her superb intelligence wouldn´t be perceived as strange.
Her love interest, Dany, is a professional hockey player, groomed to enter the NHL as soon as he comes of age.
How do you reconcile a relationship like that? Would just because of work?
Well, no. Although they are both perceived as being attractive by their peers, I thought finding an angle to justify the process of falling in love was the best approach.
Both the missing link and the key to it was the single-mindedness of their thinking. Focused solely on one goal – as teenagers often are – they find a little something to their liking in each other.
So, to answer the question of whether I am Cecilia does better than the stories coming before it, I´ll leave it to your better judgment as a reader and a perceiver.
I am Cecilia will be available on Amazon, Kobo, Ingramspark, and Barnes&Noble in the upcoming weeks. You can follow me on Instagram @zaramiller_author, or on LinkedIn under Zara Mille for more news and swoon-worthy fiction content. Looking forward to meeting you all.
« MAINSTREAM PRO-BLACKNESS IN THE WEST IS ROOTED IN CAPITALISM. NOT IN JUSTICE. »
V KY
The waves of protest regarding the death of George Floyd which began in the United States were orchestrated worldwide. Since the selection of Barack Obama in 2008, the normal world has been mentally prepared to live events through synchronicity, hence a total rupture from the traditional political approach of the 20th century. Such interpretation of politics highlights a new scheme when it comes to understanding new cycles of Western politics. Most events are coordinated in order to welcome a certain, higher political agenda, prepared ahead of time.
It took White European and American leaders seventy four years, since 1947, to mold our modern society. In that length of time, the progressive abolition of nationalism, the Americanization of the world, the development of technology and the first foundations of globalism through politics and culture were laid before our eyes. Indeed, it takes about fifty years for our leaders to prepare a new political cycle. In that sense, as time goes by so quickly due to an accelaration of events, generations are formated and misled on purpose by external factors. And in that case, a generation which fails to wake up from the illusion of the Western life will crush the chances of success of their descendants who will be more likely owned by the corporations which dominate us, whether in medicine, technology or in the music industry.
Social media became progressively more and more important in our lives as different generations decided to jump into the experience, for fun or more serious reasons. Yet, these platforms, whether Facebook or Twitter were promoted at a time when people could still make a difference between the real world and virtuality. Yet, such distance and dynamic disappeared by the early 2010s, a time when members of an irrelevant Armenian-American family from Beverly Hills showed the world the keys to capitalize off of narcissism. With a camera and good filters, anybody could become a king or a queen of the world. And in a society where the essence of the spirit of God has been crucified by the harsh brutality of capitalism, social media found its place. Indeed, capitalism favored a separation between the minds and the bodies of the individuals living in the West, a place where the well-being of the self has to be pushed aside as the preservation of the capitalistic structure has to be protected at all costs. In that sense, social media became a new way to compensate for the loss of the human essence in the West through narcissism and the savior-like complex of superiority attached to politics and activism.
Over the past ten years since the 2010s, the West lived the first era of simulation in the virtual world. Many of us have had businesses online -or still have- and in the near future, bloggers or any random Youtuber will be the new faces of daily news and information to the people as traditional journalism will be diversified.
Yet, in that specificity, Black people in the West were the first targets to have been used for the experimentation of technological advancement in the digital world, especially. Such issue was displayed by the Black Lives Matter movement. The actual original and authentic popular movement created by black activists in Ferguson as a result of the death of Mike Brown was known as Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, an organization slain political worker Darren Seals was apart of.
Such genuine movement would later be made to be forgotten and surpassed by the fabricated Black Lives Movement whose members, financed by shady powerful political figures, were looking for a way to extend their tentacles in Ferguson following the protests organized by Hands Up, Don’t Shoot. The movement of Darren Seals had thus been hijacked.
Black people all around the world believed they were supported, when in reality, no one really cared for them. They were, once again, used as another experimentation.
To understand the place of black people in the technological progress, one needs to fathom their place in the history of the West. Most of them descend from enslaved Africans who allowed the Western world to prosper. Yet, by the time the Industrial Revolution began, Slavery was abolished. The enslaved Africans were not freed out of love and respect but simply because they were no longer needed in the North (as illegal systems built on slavery carried on as late as the 1960s in the south of the United States). The machines delivered them. Yet, as they remained oppressed in the sphere, away from their roots, black people had never been exposed to the joy of mass consumerism before the 1970s. So when they were given the chance to enjoy such social changes fifty years ago, they entered the game of economics without understanding the dynamic of power. Indeed, as they were excluded from the life of economy for centuries, Black Westerners have a hard time evaluating power and often rush in the moment to buy as a way to compensate for the fact that they were always possessed. The digital world is one of the biggest insults towards them as the Western Black people are always encouraged to embrace celebrities as examples, not realising that in the hierarchy of power, entertainers belong to the lowest, most despised field. They are just present to dumb down the masses through entertainment.
The protests of 2020 proved two things important. The black and white opposition is now obsolete as the relations to power will be based on the embrace of global politics as a whole and the preservation of these institutions. As the selection of Indian-American Kamala Harris proved, minorities are being raised by the white global institutions to further the agenda of a dying white ruling class which will disappear in a matter of twenty years. A particular situation as we know that Whites in America will become a minority by 2050.
In the quest of power preservation, color is no longer an issue as long as the values are preserved and passed onto the next generations. Yet, it is still possible to exploit the black and white opposition to further chaos in a society, as black people are often selected and given a higher power when marking a social transition from a given order towards chaos. Indeed, the only purpose of Black people in the West is to be used.
Then, modern Black Westerners are not their ancestors and clearly understood how to manipulate the pain for profit and how to deal with pro-blackness through the spectrum of capitalism. Black Westerners are self-centered and their worldview is deeply rooted in a disdain for the southern causes of the third world. Indeed, many Black activists in the United States or in Europe, criticize the political schemes of the white countries they live in, yet they refuse to leave such nations and go back to the lands of their blood ancestors. Their anger is not really directed towards the social injustice as many simply want to change one little element so as to be included within the said white institutions of power. Most modern pro-black activists believe in the preservation of power through white institutions and consider their geographical space to be a shield in their quest for political advancement. They know that by going back to the land of their ancestors, they would be losing the privilege conveyed by being an American, French, British or German citizen. Black Westerners are the reflection of the white institutions which made them and that is why they aspire to be embraced by them.
The arrogance of the geography led to a real classification regarding the importance of black pains in the Americas. Most pro-black fights outside of the United States follow an African-American pattern when only Northern Black Europeans can claim a proximity to the Black American experience as they had the same colonizers. In that sense, the BLM movement was an insult to all the other minorities such as the Native Americans or the Mexicans who are also the victims of 1492 and its consequences. Worst, it placed the Black American experience at the center of global pain when in countries such as Chile, Colombia, Peru or El Salvador, 1492 is everyday. If the world had to be exposed to the face of George Floyd, no one barely heard of Camilo Catrillanca, a Mapuche Chilean activist who was also the victim of police brutality in Chile. No one pays attention to the experience of the Black Peruvians, the Black Cubans, the Black Ecuadorians or the fight of the Natives in Costa-Rica or Chile who die everyday at the hands of the police. Why? Because capitalism grants power to the minorities whose members belong to the most powerful political entities on earth. And the arrogance and self-centered attitude of the new digital activists from the mid 2010s are a proof of that.
There are, unfortunately, millions of Kim Kardashians of activism. Monsters who managed to create a sense of glory for them through their platform. The new saviors of black people who will never spend a dime on the creation of real structures.
V KY (previously known as Victoria Kabeya)
French-Belgian author and historian of African and Middle Eastern heritage. Born in France, 1991, she began her career in 2015.
As a scholar, Kabeya’s work evolves around postcolonialism through art (mostly rap French music), the study of the Sicilian/Neapolitan subject in postcolonial Italian society, Blackness in the Arab world (Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq), the Afro-Caribbeans and Indigenous Natives in Latinized America, Race-mixing and the consequences of psychological trauma among young Black boys in the ghettos.
when the lights went out
I was holding her thumb
it was a masquerade party
and she was dressed as a clown
her hand was a rubber glove
and the thumb was gigantic
I pressed to feel her dainty thumb beneath it
and wondered if it was warm
in answer she put her pointer finger in my mouth
and moved it about like a hunter
then there were two and they grabbed
my tongue you know between them
she pulled and she went up and down with them
when she got three in I thought this might be wrong
I was a good boy and believed in God and this
seemed a commandment breaker though I couldn't
think of which chapter and verse
anyway she went for four and thrust
her hand in my mouth in and out and in and
I was moved and she was also
I heard her panting
she was a gymnast and jumped on the horse
and pulled me up with her and there
in the dark she was on all fours like a mare
in a corral in the sunset waiting for a steed
she thrust her dripping hand without the glove
down my pants and squished me like I was a mouse
and smeared my head until I was an acceptably big
and she pulled down her pants and it was dark
and I couldn't see so she guided me in
and I rode her on the horse like a gymnast
and she said I had to meet her mother
she'd arrange it her father had died years gone by
when the elevator he rode snapped its cable
and he tumbled down and his heart gave out
before he landed but she said her mother
had to approve of me if we were to go together
and marry and have babies
and she would she was Jewish and I was, too,
so I had that much going
bring a babka cake and sweet wine
you'll make an impression
which I did and never regretted it
Springtime Nighttime
The springtime nighttime
sky has turned a strange
shade of blue, mixed
with a rainy grey.
Now that it's cooled down,
the soft air feels like the
remembrance of a lover's
kiss, so soft upon your brow.
Like a respite from a fever.
A soft, slow kiss, so full of
tenderness, and love it
almost reminds you of the
goodnight kisses bestowed
on you by your mother, when
you were a small child. A kiss
from the woman who you
know will love you for
an eternity, and more if it
was possible.
The orange streetlights
cast down a mystic glow,
upon the pavement,
in which you cause long,
creepy shadows of you
and your dog, as you head
towards home for a night
of sweet talk, and even sweeter wordless understanding with the
woman who you love.
Mid-Afternoon, mid-March
The sun is showing
weakly in a watery
pale blue sky.
The threat of rain
is never far away.
In England it rarely is.
It's a Tuesday, mid
Afternoon, mid-March,
nothing to make it special,
or extraordinary.
Unless I can make it so
in my mind.
I walk past run down
garages and lock ups,
all rust and corrosion,
and peeling paintwork.
There are two late
middle aged men
tinkering with a car
that will never legally
be on the road again.
In the background
Radio One is blaring
out it's usual banal
bullshit.
DJs that sound like they've
been lobotomized, and
some of the worst music
that you can imagine.
Yes.
It's a normal mid-March
Tuesday, in the middle of the
afternoon.
Nothing to make it special,
or extraordinary.
Except that I wrote this poem
about it.
The Moon And My Mistakes
The moon is
a silver sliver
against the
black velvet
of the sky.
A crescent of
light against
night, the stars
glisten in their
infinity.
What am I ?
A tiny mass
of atoms that
doesn't mean
a thing, and
never will.
I gain some
comfort from
this thought. If
me and my life
have no meaning
then any of the
stupid drunken
mistakes that I
make aren't even
worth worrying
about.
In a hundred years
we'll all be dead,
and none of it will
matter anyway.
In a billion years
the insects will
probably be our
rulers, and no one
will be able to read
this, or make any
kind of sense of it.
I don't know why
but I love this thought.
Me, you our so proud
leaders, all gone.
Buried beneath a
billion years of dust.
Yet there will still be
that silver sliver of
moon, shining down
on the insects and us.
Queues And Covid 19
As I stand in Covid 19
caused queues, waiting
as only one person is
allowed into a shop at
a time. What was once
a five minute trip to the
shops can now take over
an hour. Your hour is
really taken over, too.
With impatient curses,
sheer hatred, implausible,
inexcusable hatred aimed
at the back of the head of
the person who is in front
of you.
I hate the bloody face-
masks too. Within about
30 seconds of putting
one on, my glasses start
to steam up, and I become
almost blind. This causes
serious problems when I
am trying to count my
money in a shop. So I take
my spectacles off, place
them on the counter, then
the odds are even on
whether I remember to
pick them up again, or not.
I've been lucky, most of
the time, and the person
working on the till reminds
me but I have to admit that
there's been more than one
occasion when my wife
has had to drive me back
to each and every shop I
have been in to find them
again.
Of course, this makes me
feel even more useless than
I usually do.
My battered self esteem
doesn't need any more
knocks, but life keeps on
supplying them anyway.
