guantanamera

have to admit i stole the title for this post from the web cover of an italian newspaper, il Manifesto... the news of the new US administration planning to close guantanamo bay asap has been in the air for a few days now, so i thought i'd write a note about it, since i posted about Mahvish Khan's book about the detainees this summer after seattle - damn, i still have to read the book by the way. anyway, i thought it's a good thing to notice, i mean lots of things won't ever change, but still looks like it's turning over a new leaf. good news for human rights. good news to hear especially today, being the international holocaust remembrance day... at least memory's there for a reason.

final score (can't believe it)

THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN

(me curious to see what's really going to happen after dawn)

big tuesday... let's see

gotta go painting today... again...

here's a story which is extremely old-fashion romantic and somehow freaks me out at the same time....
on the 5 freeway, north of seattle, there is a rock. when i passed by on the bus it was painted with flowers. fair enough, people paint walls and rocks all around the world.
but the bus driver, who btw was a super lovely lady (besides being "a hell of a driver" as another traveller pointed out) and chatted with me throughout the whole trip (for a change!), told me that every time she passes by, that rock is covered with a different painting. like hearts, or abstract patterns, or with something written. and she's been driving along that way for 4 years now, 3 or 4 times per week.
ok, this can mean very many things...

but i can't take away from my mind this idea of someone who every morning wakes up, takes his/her brushes & colours, drives all the way there and paints a different rock every day.
like if it were a duty, a gift to the commuters driving along the same road every freaking day. at least they see something different. or maybe it could be a message to a special one of them, may it be a way to make someone fall in love every day more, to say hello to an old friend you got no time to speak with anymore, whatever. after all, everybody's gotta have a goal to wake up in the morning...

"My Guantanamo Diary"

The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me.
by Mahvish Rukhsana Khan

"It’s easy to mistreat something called No. 1154. It’s easy to shave its beard, to kick it around like an object, to spit on it, torture it, or make it cry. It’s harder to dole out such abuse when No. 1154 retains its identity: Dr. Ali Shah Mousovi, a pediatrician who fled the Taliban, worked for the United Nations encouraging Afghans to participate and vote in the new democracy. It’s harder to hate No. 1154 when you realize that he’s more like you than he is different. His wife, an economist by profession, waits month after month, year after year for the news that her husband is coming home; his two sons and young daughter grow up without him."

when i was in seattle i ended up at a book reading where Mahvish Rukhsana Khan was introducing her book. she is an american lawyer, born to immigrant afghan parents in michigan. being fluent in pashtun, she managed to become a translator between american attorneys and guantanamo detainees.


what she describes in the book are the personal stories of the prisoners. because, she claims, when the community start consider the prisoners as individuals, disappointment against what's going on there will grow stronger in the country and more and more people will ask for the place to be closed.

makes sense, to some extent.
although for me it's still impossible to clearly understand why you need to say that much to convince people that torture is wrong. it's still impossible for me to understand how, to some, the possibility of torturing an innocent might still be the main problem about guantanamo, and not torture itself, and non-existing trials.
but i can't pretend to understand a world i've been observing only for a couple of days.

apart from the book, which sounded interesting and i ended up buying, it was also interesting to be there at the reading. there were several questions, and you could clearly distinguish people supporting and appreciating her work, and those who were skeptical and kept repeating that the troops are doing a great job and that the possibility of capturing a true, dangerous criminal justifies everything else... tough...

more info about the book at www.mahvishkhan.com
here's the washington post article from 2006 from which the book developed and here's a podcast with a radio interview where she says most of the stuff she said at the reading, too

this friendly seattle

sooo... i have to take my word back. when i arrived here it was late and i was tired, and true at night downtown the only people walking were me and drunken guy and homeless guy.

but then, during the day, it's another world...
not only do people walk on the street and take buses all over the place, they are also sooo friendly! they smile at your face, when you cross them in the street, they ask you how're you doing? and it's not being overnice, they're just friendly! even if you're not having a clumsy-looking-on-the-map moment, they often stop by just to have a chat...
how cool is that?!?

i spent three days walking around the neighbourhoods of seattle and spoke with so many people i can hardly remember...

let's see... there was san diego bus girl, who was very nice and told me about how she's in between jobs, then there was old park janitor guy, who made fun of me entering the cemetery while still being alive, and then mask and smoking on top of the van guys, who asked me the difference about saying i love you and i'm in love with you...

and by the way, i think i got it wrong... being italian biased, i still think the first one is kind of "serious" while the second one may be also weaker, but probably in english it's the other way around... after all, they say i love you all the time!

and then there was the bunch of lovely muslim girls i met at the book reading about guantanamo (i'm going to write a separate post about it), and then police sushi guy, and finger-crossed football guy, who maybe was not that friendly for free after all but who cares (i'm sure he's a republican or something else as bad!), and drugstore south carolina guy, who showed me a great spot in queen ann hill with top view of the lake, and army nutrition guy who told me about his upcoming trip to europe, and today cat guitar girl who took me around brainbridge and her boyfriend whom she met on the ferry boat (sweet!) and then magnolia chatty lady on the pier, there was old veteran guy who was actually not so friendly, he just smiled but was probably kind of grumpy after all, with his 4th of july beautiful flag, then hostel desk guy, who probably said "nice" way too much but still was totally friendly, and hostel desk girl who was sure i had a spanish accent and said my glasses were very seattle style, and all the lovely somalian cab drivers i found along the way...

am i forgetting anyone?? yes... super charming bookstore guy! who works in the greatest bookstore i've seen in ages (check it out: the Elliott Bay Book Company) and suggested me this seattle written & based novel about multiple personalities... i hope it's really as cool as he described it :)
and of course all the young volunteers campaigning for obama at every corner and believing that (maybe) they can - sorry for disappointing any single one of you by telling i can't vote, it's just so true!

you friendly friendly seattlites, i guess i'm gonna miss you all the way back to germany...

no country for pedestrians

always heard that about the US but never actually experienced it. without a car, you're nobody.
only people walking are me and homeless guys. or drunk guys.
scaaaaaryyyy

apart from that, seattle seems kind of cool.
guess now i'll just collapse, more stuff to see and shoot and tell tomorrow...

land of plenty

no way! i'm doing that... i'm blogging... from the bus!
i'm literally blogging from the bus!
i should be watching the US landscape right now but there's nothing except flatness and very straight roads, so i thought... let's blog...

just crossed the border by the way. here i am.
the land of plenty.
where things are huge and stuff cost nothing.
at least, they say...
let's see whether it's true

coney island

sometimes i find myself liking strange photos. a few months ago i was at an exhibit of Salgado, and although there were plenty of great shots (actually there were plenty of photos... was probably too much... even when it's good stuff, i believe too much is still too much) and i'm sure many were much "better" than this one... still, it is the one that came to my mind again.

don't know why, just makes me curious.
makes me want to go there...


even when i can't say what i really like in a photo, or whether i really like it (like for this other one by a Ciaran Tully), some of them still deliver an atmosphere and carry me far far away... i see stories in these photos. i see stories and would like to go there right now and look for the story they're telling me, and maybe take some shots and speak around, end up finding a totally different story...



but this time i might have picked the wrong coast...