Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag (II)

Barbara Kruger, You Substantiate Your Horror
Photo: Mendel, flickr

Could one then oppose war just by looking at an image? Can an image change the world or at least us?

Photographing the pain of others leads us to recognize their suffering, but how is protesting against suffering different from recognizing it only? – Sontag asks. „To nominate a hell is definitely not the same thing as to say anything on how to take people out of that hell“. Images seem to tell us only what horrible things people can do to each other and with pleasure, all over the world.
So Sontag righteously asks: „what is the point in showing such images? Make us feel indignation? Cause sadness and consternation? Help us to mourn? Do we become better by watching them? Do they teach us something? Or do they confirm what we already knew?“

It has been repeatedly pointed out that we are living in a society of spectacle, in which people also aim to transform themselves in spectacle. There seems to be nothing but representations, media representations more precisely. In this state of over stimulation, the hunt for dramatic images which drives the photographic enterprise is, according to Sontag, a mere reflex of a culture in which shock has become the main stimulus for consumption and a source of value.
One of the functions of photography is to improve how things look, and this tends to diminish a moral response to what is showed. Perhaps this is why people often react against images of war and suffering, specially if they are beautiful. And when showed in a museum or art gallery, we often ask ourselves if that isn´t just unecessary exploration of the suffering of others?
It seems that in order to provoke an active response images must shock. But how long does the shock last, Sontag strikingly asks. If we are able to get used to horror in our real life we’re also able to get use to the horror of certain images, the author refers. People often criticize news´ photographers for proffiting commercially from images drawn in scenarios in which they did nothing to help, critics contemptuously call them “war tourists” often forgetting how they´ve risked their life to give us testimony.

It seems thought that our attention is being driven by the attention of the media, of the images, that in a world full with them, the ones which should interest us have hardly any effect on us and that our insensitivity to them is somehow deeply related to the way television works. Sontag sustains, that the multiplicity of images showed in TV favours a light, mobile, slightly indifference to content, for the flux of images in television excludes a privileged one. What matters in television is that we may always change the channel. Sontag also believes that people simply turn off not because they’ve become indifferent to those images but because they are scared. It is because we have the feeling that war, any war, cannot be stopped (even pacifists no longer believe war can be stopped) that people have become less sensitive to its horrors. Symptoms of apathy, moral or emotional numbness are, in Sontag´s view, nothing but full of feelings of rage and frustration.

It is not an unsufficiency that we are not touched enough or that we do not suffer enough with those images, for the way Sontad sees it, it is not photography’s job to repair our ignorance on history or the cause of pain of others which it selects and frames. For the author, those images are but an invitation to reflect, try to learn, examine, etc. in order to finally ask ourselves: is there a state of things which we’ve accepted so far and should be questioned now?

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

What to do with the acknowledge of the pain of others? – On the impact of Photography

To state that we are surrounded by all kinds of images – images of war, pain, misery, cruelty, beauty, pornographic or digitally produced images nowhere to be found in reality – and that this is not without consequences for us has become obvious to everyone and a cliché today. It has also been repeatedly argued that this manic flux of images is responsible for a general state of numbness regarding the Other. For this reason, Susan Sontag proposed and battled, in her famous book “On Photography“ (1977), for an ecology of images.

16 years later and still reflecting on the modern use and meaning of images, Sontag comes to admit that the idea that our ability to react to our experiences with emotional freshness and ethical acuteness is hindered by the constant broadcast of common and disgusting images is nothing but a very conservative critique of the proliferation of such images. Focusing on the intersection between information, news, art and politics in the representation of war and catastrophe, “Regarding the Pain of Others” (2003) reexamines Sontag´s former position and admits that neither an ecology of images is doable nor it is necessarily truth that our exposure to shocking images should result in indifference. We do not become necessarily violent by witnessing images of violence.

No doubt, we are living in an age which contemplates the maximum reproducibility and broadcast of images, with few possibilities to control the context in which they disseminate. But for the most of us wo never experienced war, it remains truth that the understanding of war is only possible through the mediation of photography; something can only become real if it is photographed. From Vietnam onward we came to recognize how war images are not stagged thought everybody knows there´s nothing objective about photos which in some cases have even been used both in favour and against something. Which leads us to ask: can an image make us understanding something?

According to Sontag, if there is a year in which the ability of photography to define reality was stronger than any narrative this was 1945, with the images of the first days after the liberation from the concentration camps of Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Dachau, and also the images of what happened in Hiroxima and Nagasaqui.
In the fight between word and image – a very old querrel still far from its end – the problem is not, for Sontag, that we might remember events through photographies but that we only remember events through them. It is a problem that remember is no longer remember a story but being able to remember an image.Photographies do not lose their ability to shock but they do not help a lot when it is about understanding.

I´ve Got Nothing To Say!

©LilianaRodrigues

Lately I´ve been into collage. And many of these are a reaction to something I´ve experienced myself, read or listened to. Such is the case here. “I´ve Got Nothing To Say!” is a kick out of several situations:
- “Ask me Anything”, a song I really like by THE STROKES;
- as posted by universaljukebox on YouTube, in this excellent version the song is put together with Woody Allen footage
- and the article Douglas Haddow published on Addbusters on July 29th and which annoyed a great lot of people! I´ve been meaning to comment on it for a while now but never really got around to… well, this post is in its way also my response to it, except for in visual terms.

With these collages I am underlying – as it has been stated enough by others before me – that new content can indeed arise from quotation. Let us get over the same old dicussion on how much “stealing” has been done or how much the authors´ rights have been disrespected to embrace the idea that something as touched you in a way that you just have to do something about it! And the greatest thing is, with the tools available today and for the first time, you can do more than just talk to a couple of close friends about your referencies and how meaningfull you think they are, you can really be trigger to respond or react to something creatively!

ON CENSORSHIP. “Imaginary Coordinates” at the Spertus Museum / Chicago

“Imaginary Coordinates“, an exhibition curated by Rhoda Rosen at the Spertus Museum in Chicago, originally scheduled to be open through September 7 suddenly closed in the end of June allegedly in response to pressure from the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and individual donors. As Deanna Isaacs reported on May 29 on the Chicago Reader: “The Jewish United Fund, a major Spertus supporter, had taken a look and promptly canceled a May 13 fund-raising dinner booked for the tenth floor boardroom. Michael Kotzen, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, says he moved the event after hearing from “a number of people who thought the exhibit wasn’t appropriate” in “content and point of view”".

The exhibition showed maps (including palestinian maps) focusing on different geographic interpretations of the Holy Land some dating back to the 15th century together with contemporary art by nine Israeli and Palestinian women artists, in what appeared to be an effort to open up and reconcile the museum´s permanent historical collection with contemporary art.

Quoted by Lauren Weinberg on June 20th on Time Out Chicago, museum president Dr. Howard A. Sulkin said: “We came to realize that parts of the exhibition were not in keeping with our mission as a Jewish organization and did not belong at Spertus. This exhibition caused pain for members of our key audience who felt it presented anti-Israel points of view.”

The central polemic of the show is that several of the works “implicitly criticize” Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. And pro-Israel supporters object to seeing work that is critical of Israel and supportive of Palestine within a Jewish museum.

Though there has been a refusal to which speficif objects were considered deemed offensive, Museum´s chair and the Spertus board of trustees reject claims of censorship. On one hand they say that “Spertus is not interested in going around and hurting people’s feelings”, and on the other that they are “committed to asking the hard-nosed questions about a lot of things” ?!? – a clear example of “the schizophrenic nature of this conflict” as Richard Silverstein has put it.
As Patty Gerstenblith bluntly writes on the Chicago Tribune on June 24: “It is unfortunate when donors wield more influence over museum exhibits than the museum’s professional staff and that controversial topics cannot be raised because of objections from a local community. Presenting viewpoints that may be unsettling and challenging are precisely the role that museums should play in our modern society”.
This should give us something to think about next time we discuss changing museum funding in Europe to be more like the american private donorship system!

Margeret Ewing, who seems to be the only one critizing the exhibition without political or partidary motivations, refers to the display of maps as adding little to a furthered understanding of the question of how the land of Isreal and Palestine is defined and to the exclusiveness of female contemporary artists as insufficiently explained within the exhibition!! Which is extremely funny, if you think about the polemic the show has raised and that Ewing – a sort of authority in art exhibitions´ critique – dismisses the show as “weak” from the curatorial point of view!

Lynn Pollack of Chicago´s Jewish Voice for Peace gave a very interesting statement to the Chicago Tribune. She said: “These are not fringe Palestinian and Israeli artists. These are mainstream artists who are able to display in their own country. Why can´t this art be seen by American Jews? It´s really a shame”.

On his turn, Richard Silverstein who runs a blog on on politics, culture and ideas about Israeli-Arab peace and world music, asks if the Spertus Museum “must pull its punches by cancelling an exhibit most viewers and artists found well within the consensus of political and artistic discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hasn´t lost the right to call itself and art museum?”.
And goes on to react to the patronizing attitude by Michael Kotzin (executive vice president of Jewish United Fund/ Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago who said that pieces “like those videos lacked context”) saying: “We can think for ourselves, thank you Mr. Kotzin. We don´t need to be protected from dangerous art, art that makes us think”.

Usually I don´t comment on exhibitions which I didn´t see. But, since this one was shut before any of us had the chance to see it, discuss and make an opinion not to mention that the uploaded video of the exhibition is no longer available on the internet and catalogues became extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find (I am lucky enough to have held one in my hands!), I feel my usual criteria shouldn´t apply. For me this is a clear case of censorship and one of great gravity for money and religion overruled freedom of thought, critique and dicussion!

Time for Some Campaignin’

A musical satire of the US presidential campaign by Jibjab.com

Freedom of Thought

I just saw Into the Wild, directed by Sean Penn, and realized that all that I´ve been writing and thinking about lately has got to do with the search and meaning of freedom.
Except, as S. pointed out, freedom is such a vague concept. Most people tend to confuse it with being able to fulfill one´s wishes, which would make us fall into a discussion about happiness. It is impossible to use words as such today, without a context. The only sure thing is that there are people deprived of freedom, but again being in prison for instance, doesn´t necessarily mean you´re not free.

“Rather than Love, than Money, than Fame, give me Truth” Thoreau

Into the Wild is based on a true story, that of Chris McCandless, who left everything and everyone behind and went North. He was searching for trueness as a resistance and heroic act against capitalism and consumerism, which in his case seems to have been an excuse to rebel against his parents in the first place. Despite this, one´s admiration for his action doesn´t diminish. Though some did call it plain stupidity, for Chris died alone and in pain in Alaska, and according to the mountain patrol if he had had a simple hiking map with him he would have known that there was a bridge just a couple of miles away from where he tried to cross the river to get back to civilization.

His personal quest was about finding truth and freedom, and it involved getting into the wild, only to find in the end that there´s no point in happiness if you cannot share it with someone else.

This made me think. For my conception of freedom doesn´t involve getting back to nature and experience wilderness. But again, people keep telling me that I have absolutely no sense for nature. And it might be true… This week, I found out that my orchidee is dying from excess of water and, meanwhile taking a walk in the woods last weekend, I kept complaining about the smell of wild garlic, which is all over Leipzig this time of the year!!

For me, freedom means freedom of thought, to be able to surpass one´s apparently given limitations (educational, the condition´s one was brought in, the part of the world one was born in, life´s experiences, etc). At a certain point, in The Dogs Bark, Truman Capote interestingly says:

„the perils, the dooms of not perceiving and accepting the limits of one´s supposed identity, the classifications imposed by others – a bird that believes it is a dog, Van Gogh insisting that he was an artist, Emily Dickinson a poet. But without such misjudgments and such faiths, the seas would sleep, the eternal snows remain untracked“.

And that´s exactly on the point. For me, freedom of thought is the synonym for freedom itself. And it happens when you keep breaking out of the cage other people, and also yourself, imprison you in. Its a constant search for improvement, not settling for the role others attribute you or, you condemn yourself to.

When your mind is set in achieving freedom of thought, you are truly in a process to fulfill your potential.

ON CLEMENCY – On the reevaluation of values

»Götter, wenn zum Regieren ein hartes Herz nötig ist, nehmt mir entweder die Macht oder gebt mir ein anderes Herz.«

Composed in 18 days and premiered on the 6th of September of 1791, „La Clemenza di Tito“ was Mozart´s last opera before he died on the 5th of December that very same year. As usually happens with final works, this opera was regarded as an inferior effort, for everyone praises the ingenious music but the plot has always been the subject of delicate contempt.

The libretto, adapted by Caterino Mazzolà, was based on a former textbook by Pietro Metastasio from 1734. Its central character, Emperor Tito, has been the source of all controversy, for he forgives everyone around him, which has been seen as an unusual and incomprehensible behavior for an emperor.

When the woman he decides to marry tells him that she loves someone else, he forgives her, when someone admits having attempted against his life – the ultimate crime – he shows mercifulness and so on and so forth. He says, that if the world wishes to accuse him of anything, it can charge him with showing too much mercy rather than with having a revengeful heart. As a re- conciliator, he wants to rule without victims. In the end, he finds himself completely alone.

Some have read Tito´s mildness as a revolutionary attitude offering a new perspective, one of forgiveness, against the vicious circle of violence and brutality taking place during the Ancient Regime. Others, less positive, have classified Tito´s amnesty acts as a feint, as if he would only forgive so that the people are touched and he continues to rule, and this would make him a sort of tragic hero clinging on to an epoch due to to be over. On the contrary, there are also those who have pointed his ability to forgive as a sign that he is only human, no longer invested with the act of forgiving through a sacred higher power, thus stressing a secular and progressive aspect to the plot in syntony with the forthcoming Enlightenment.

I happen to find all this very interesting. On the one hand, who is to say that Mozart wasn´t only fulfilling a commission, his interest being the music in itself and not the plot. I sometimes think that narratives are overestimated – but one would have to research more to find it out. Second, what is interesting about Tito´s character is that one cannot decide if his idealism is either good or bad. Or perhaps that´s the point, that we are left to judge if standing alone is an obligatory price to pay for one´s idealism or, a definitive sign that it makes absolutely no sense to be good-hearted in this world.

One thing is for sure, we are forced here to reflect if our traditional values are still operational or not; we are asked if revenge is a good strategy; if one should stick to one´s ideals passionately (which would justify revenge) or, instead choose not to disturb nor destroy or as Tito, to reconciliate; we are left to wonder the price to pay for one´s own idealism; if it is a good strategy, even if it sometimes implies uttermost loneliness.

WHAT IS THERE TO BELIEVE IN TODAY? Revolutions, Hari Kunzru (2)

If I could choose a year to go back and not only witness but take part in, I would choose 1968, the very same year Deleuze and Guattari published the Anti-Oedipus and students were writing history in the streets.
Haru Kunzru gives a pretty good idea of what went down in London in 1968, writing a fiction that follows a group of leftist students through out the 70s in East Side London.

What is there left to believe in today remains a haunting question. I believe in people for instance, but people are not to be believed in as they change, sometimes to the very own opposite of they they believe in themselves. And this is the hardest of realities, to witness someone betray its own ideals, changing them for their very opposite. Though this is only part of human nature, the problem remains open. What is there to believe in today?

Revolutions, significantly written in the plural, speaks of Anna, Sean and Chris, and the constellation of other youngsters around them, striving for a believe, a political one. They believe in a better world and devote their life and their actions to something greater than them, willingly sacrificing their own well being, security and desires for a bigger cause.

The book explores several cases of believers in the 70s and what has turned out of them in the 90s.

Through Anna and Sean´s characters, the author shows how sometimes staying coherent to one´s believe can only result in a fundamentalist attitude, where there is only the termination of the other or of oneself by the other, and nothing in between. Both Anna and Sean take Mao´s quote: “We are advocates of the abolition of war. We do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun, it is necessary to take up the gun” literally. Their death, the only possible finale, end up splattered all over the newspapers.

Differently, Chris, the leading character, departs with the same believe as Sean and Anna but grows to accept that there may be others believing in something different than himself. From a point onwards when victims start to be named as mere “collateral damages” he searches for a way out, an exit, as he cannot not longer justify the group´s actions politically nor morally, though he hasn´t ceased to believe in the need for a revolutionary politics, he says. Later, as a fifty year old married man, he takes up irony as the only tool to coupe with the disillusion of life in general.

Patt´s character stands for the “political animal” who can cannot refuse to embrace a political challenge even if it means to change side and shirt. Once a left activist, Patt works her way up inside the mainstream party and in the media without remorse, all the way up until she´s in the position to run for prime minister.

Finally, Miles represents the “involuntary believer”, the one that gets involved and manipulated into believing in something without even having a critical mind about it. But, if at first he is trapped inside the system and manipulated by it to serve someone else´s interests, he soon learns to make his own profit out of it.

After reading Revolutions one is totally convinced that no choice is innocent and no action is without consequence, even if one´s doesn´t quite realize it. Furthermore, the reader is led to conclude that one´s believe is influenced/ the result by/of the context and the network of people one happens to be engaged in (though there´s obviously self-responsibility and criticism).

I am not exactly sure of what is worse: to be an involuntary believer or, to change one´s believe to the very point of total contradiction. Anna for instance, was taken, as a child, to demonstrations by her own father, she then becomes a student with left convictions, later an underground activist and finally a full-time terrorist. Anna and Sean´s characters show that no negotiation, no compromise can only result in another form of fundamentalism. For as many “criticism-self-criticism” meetings there might be, they couldn´t see beyond their own believe. As the group´s actions grow more violent, the paranoia and suspicion also escalate.

Throughout the book, Chris repeatedly asks Anna how the future will look like after the revolution. When she finally gives in and answers, she says she doesn´t think about it because it makes her sad, and that anyway, the future is not for them as they are damaged people. “There would be no place for us in the world we’re trying to build”, she says.
Interestingly, when Milles is asked the very same question, already during the 90s, he says to Chris:

You were irrelevant, don´t you get that? History doesn´t care about what you did. Who´s even heard of you? Ideology´s dead now. Everyone pretty much agrees on how to run things. And you know what, Chris? I don´t mind. Let´s all get on with gardening and soaps and having kids and going shopping. You´ve done it. You´ve been able to lead a dull life because there´s no real conflict any more. In a couple of years it´ll be a new millennium and, with luck, nothing will bloody happen anywhere, nothing at all. That´s what a good society looks like, Chris. Not perfect. Not filled with radiant angelic figures loving each other. Just mildly bored people, getting by.

By the end of the book, the question lingers… What is there left to believe in today?
As for me, I am reminded of Barbara Kruger´s words in one of her art pieces: “Your Fictions Become History”. Indeed…

MY REVOLUTIONS, Hari Kunzru

I´m only half way through but here are my favorite quotes:

The more I thought, the clearer the moral landscape appeared. There seemed to be two worlds. One was basic and sensual, a human-scale place of small tasks and pleasures, building things and eating good food, lying in the sun, making love. In this world, human relations were very simple. The desire to dominate, to own and to control, just didn´t arise. The other world, the world of Law and War and Institutions, was a strange and abstract place. In this mirror-world I was a violent person and had to be punished because violence was a monopoly of the state. I´d somehow authorized the British government to distribute violence on my behalf, which it did through various branches of officialdom – the army, the police, the Pentonville screws.The problem was that I couldn´t remember giving my consent. What paper had I signed? Where had I said I wished to regulate my habits and govern my sexual behavior and strive for advancement in various abstract games whose terms had been set before I was born? The state claimed it was an expression of the democratic will of the people. But what if it wasn´t? What if it was just a parasite, a vampire sustaining itself on our collective life, on my life in particular?

If you believe in free love – not in the sense of promiscuity, but in its true sense – as the release of libidinal energies from any restraint, any check whatsoever, the barrier between desire and action becomes terrifyingly thin and permeable. I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires. How many of us could actually live like that? Is that even possible?

The day I almost made it to Istanbul!

This is about one very long night when I finally got around to read excerpts of the Holy Bible!
I was excited to see Istanbul for the first time; the only city that spreads into two continents and 60% of the population is young. But it turns out, that the only smell I got of it was the one from a Marlboro pack with Turkish writing on it – that has to be rationalized just like in war times – and a cold Turkish meal at the Ataturk Airport customs.

It´s true! I was locked away in a c. 8 x 4 m room, under surveillance, with no windows, no mirrors, together with 7 other women mostly from Cazaquistán, and having a vague idea for how long. I thought (wrongly) that just like my German friend I was able to enter Turkey with my identity card for three days, as we all belong to the very same European Community – the one in fact, that Turkey wants to join in. It turns out that rules for EU citizens don´t apply equally and there are side treatises between countries. And so, I found myself in a limbo, 5 meters away from Turkish ground, in a place where human beings are detained under questionable dignity conditions. It was my mistake in the first place but, I don´t understand how come I was controlled by the Turkish Airlines and allowed on board if they know that I would later not qualify to enter Turkey. Despite all the controlling, searching, scanning I was accepted on board with it turned out to be the “wrong” document.

So, when I got to Ataturk Airport my documents and ticket were taken away from me for what I supposed to be verification procedure as, despite Istanbul being one of the most multicultural cities in the world and though I fluently speak four languages and understand six, no one at customs spoke anything except for Turkish. Finally, when the airport official returns, he manages two words in English: ticket back. Fortunately, a woman working for the concurrent company of Turkish Airlines shows up and finally communicates with and understands us. And so I am told, that I would be shipped back home first thing in the morning but, must be detained in customs for the whole night. The person I was traveling with had been given permission to enter Turkey but had decided to stay with me until I was safely sent back home. This turned out to be illegal. He was obliged to enter Turkey with no delay, with the option of re booking his ticket and also to go back if he wished. But, when we asked in which flight they were to ship me back, the official answered that it was not possible to reveal such information (though he had the papers in his hands). With some persuasion it was only possible to know that I would be leaving around 8.40 in the morning as a policeman came to separate us and take me away.

So, let me tell you what else happens in no man´s land, if you happen to make the same mistake as I did. Your documents are taken away from you, you are separated from the people you are with, you are searched once more and your things listed and some objects apprehended (though they represented no problem when you went on board!). You are told that someone will take care of your luggage, though in the end it was lost!
In no man´s land, you are addressed as a criminal in a authoritative, aggressive way, you are mocked for the things you carry with you as they empty your personal bag and you are mocked for the answers you give to their questions. When I answered what my profession was, the women officers rolled their eyes and exchange comments in total amusement and disbelief, later I understood why. Furthermore, sleep becomes impossible, as you are stuck in 24hour illuminated room, under camera surveillance, with no windows, you are vaguely told that you will get a flight (but not the details, though they know it). Whenever you ask a question or information regarding what´s happening and your situation you are only told not to worry in a condescending way!!!
Despite all this – in clear violation of how you should be handled in a decent manner – I was still feeling sort of confident as I kept saying to myself: “Here am I, in a country that wants to join the EU. There´s absolutely nothing to worry about!” But, once I entered the room and the door was locked behind me, and as I addressed the women sitting and waiting there, a vague feeling of panic started to grow in me. Though I don´t speak Russian, I realized that some women were there for ten, six, two days already. The room was stinky, badly ventilated, dirty and the walls were ironically covered with “welcome-to-Turkey” posters! I saw no towels and no products for personal hygiene, except for hand soap. And so my confidence of sorting the misunderstanding quickly, was shaken. I though to myself, how many stories have I heard on the news about “lost” people, bureaucratic papers, and impotent embassy work… A strange thought crossed my mind, for seconds I wished I was an American citizen… so you see how shaken I was, I was loosing confidence on getting a safe flight back home and of having my documents returned to me.
I tried not to think too much, to settle and “make friends”. There was water and the Holy Bible to read, in case one wanted to reflect upon one´s live, I assumed!
Fortunately, I ended up, without knowing, friends with the woman controlling the “cigarette distribution”. Thank god!!!!!! One was at least allowed to smoke and I was definitely on the right side of the gang, otherwise I would have gone totally nuts and might have trashed a couple of things around! And so my friends, this is how I got to smoke at the expenses of the Turkish government!!! After a couple of smokes, I started to see things a bit different! This was in fact a great experience, how many people get to live it, what doesn´t kill you makes you stronger, etc, I was working on cheering myself up again. God bless Marlboro! (even if I usually hate it and absolutely don´t smoke it) Well…
Conversation – through mimic and in a mix of languages – was rolling and this was pure gold experience! These women… there were all there for “business”… I said my name and asked one her name and she said I could call her Sabrine, Natasha, Joana, I could choose, because she had many names and three passports!!!! I begun to understand a bit more about the world… This was definitely not boring at all! Though, in Turkey´s eyes, I was a second class citizen and a sinner in urgent need of moral rescue, I was definitely not bored!

Fortunately, they did manage to ship me back home first thing in the morning, though without my luggage, which they lost!!! But I was so happy to set foot in Germany and to be fetched from the plane in a polite and friendly manner by the German Police, you couldn´t believe. And once home and after Korinna´s full “welcome back” treatment which included Schnitzel with Kartoffeln, a Becks and Kuchen for desert I was completely healed and feeling home again!!! Still, I wonder about all those women, and what has happened to them…