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#if she were telling a group of local village children about her childhood. the major historical event i mentioned was basically this species
helisol · 3 years
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:)
again not a finished fic but very extensive notes, this one’s a chonker, 4k words
tl;dr: take it a ds9 but make it into high fantasy wizards. garashir, kiradax and quodo. we’ve got it all here folks.
SO BASICALLY 
I read a book about a young witch apprentice in a world where every magician has a ~special name~ based on an object/plant/animal they’re spiritually connected to.
then I watched ds9 and got introduced to the concept of cardassians being lizards.
the result- wizard lizard.
So Garak “The Lizard” is a mage that got exiled from his home country and ended up taking a pretty neat job in a rural area of a larger empire where being a wizard is Cool and Widely Accepted. 
his duties include keeping the villages around his tower safe, looking for young mages to turn into apprentices, and sometimes making clothes because he’s Still A Tailor.
however, because of his chronic “i no wanna work” disease, this lizard has not actually been looking around the villages near him for magically gifted children. shame on him. 
because through his negligence Julian Bashir, young village doctor, grew up without even knowing that he can do ~magic~
but he soon finds out when his town gets attacked by a Big Evil Magic Monster. The Lizard is taking his sweet time to come to their rescue and Julian can’t just sit by and watch innocent people get mauled by a Chimera or Giant Mantis.
So Julian does the heroic thing and jumps inbetween a wounded child and the monster in the exact second Garak shows up.
And he gets to watch as Julian unleashes some Magic for the first time.
Then Garak Kind Of Abducts Julian So He Can Teach Him Magic
Garak is contractually obligated and allowed to take on anyone who is capable of magic as an apprentice, and he finds Julian’s magic interesting enough to invoke that contract now. Not Julian himself though. Only his magic. for now.
Julian- for like, the first week- is NOT OKAY with being teleported into a tower fortress by a wizard he finds intimidating and scary, and he loudly protests when Garak actually starts to teach him magic spells.
However, this is Julian, and he *is* intrigued by the thought of being able to use magic For Doing Good.
So one night he admits defeat and slinks up to the tower and goes “Okay. Compromise. Teach me healing magic.”
To which Garak is like 👀 “Okay.”
They start having regular magic lessons mostly focused on healing, which Julian is just naturally good at. So they move on to other things. Which Julian is Not naturally good at.
And he becomes very frustrated.
Garak tries to assuage him and says that he doesn’t have to be accomplished in every single field and discipline- which is logically true- but Julian is having none of it since Garak is accomplished in every field.
In a fit of anger Julian unleashes emotional magic again and breaks some of Garak’s things. Books, vials, a desk, nothing super major. But Julian is still surprised and shocked at himself for causing trouble like this and he Runs Away. Straight up exits stage left.
And Garak, who just got flung against the wall by his little apprentice, just rushes to the window and looks as Julian runs away and he is. Disappointed.
Next we have Julian returning home and everyone is like "Doctor!!! You were gone for half a year???" And Julian is like "I thought I was only gone for a month at most-"
Yeah the joke is time flies when you’re having fun because Julian *did* have fun living with Garak. He doesn’t regret leaving though, after all Garak was probably furious after he wrecked his study he wasn’t.
So Julian says to himself "Hmph. I'll just stay home for a week. Garak will hardly notice I'm gone. And then I can make it up to him."
But Then He Stays For A Whole Month
He has to instruct a new doctor to take over the nearby villages, do some paperwork, help some sick people, practice some magic on his own- and at the end of the month He Doesn’t Want To Stay Any Longer.
He’s always been different from the other village people, and now he finally got a taste of what it’s like to have someone help you to achieve your potential and widen your horizon and he *doesn’t* want to give that up for a boring but busy country life.
So back to the tower it is. Julian arrives, the place is kind of messy, and when he finds Garak he is in his study. on the floor. a little drunk, definitely sad, and Very Surprised To See Him.
Here we get a scene where Garak tipsily tells Julian how much he’s grown to appreciate him, not just for his magic talent, but as a person- and that he’s missed him.
But The Next Morning Garak Does Not Remember
And he's just like "Oh Julian. Youre back. I'd almost forgotten about you."
For a second Julian wants to punch a wall because *Yesterday You Told Me You Missed Me*, but then he just Smiles. settles for what they have right now. and asks Garak to continue teaching him magic.
so they go on. and have. so many gay moments.
And then Garak gets told to attend some kind of magic council meeting/banquet.
Julian says something along the lines of "Oh well, guess I'll stay home. You know, protect the fort. Practice magic." but he's a little sad about it.
But garak just goes "Hmm No. I'm taking you with me"
"What-" "I'm introducing you as my apprentice to the magic council." "W h a t-" "Oh also you need pretty clothes for this so I'm gonna make you some. Since you’re a commoner with no actual taste." "W H A T-"
So garak makes a really nice suit for Julian and for himself they match and they go to the Cool Wizard Banquet.
At which Julian meets a lot of wizards and witches and he's like "Wow this is so exciting!" but he also realises he is a Total Country Bumpkin And Noob compared to these people and their apprentices.
He also hears that Apparently the Local Wizard of every region is supposed to do a 5-yearly sweep of the surrounding towns to check for kids that have magic potential and then send them to Magic School/take them in as their apprentice directly.
And Garak. Did not do that.
He was Lazy and Angery. Exile will do that to you.
Julian isn’t too happy when he learns about this and he walks out of the banquet hall into the garden- to where Garak follows him.
"So just because you were all bitchy about having to follow this country's rules about magic you let me grow up not knowing my full potential? How many of my childhood friends might be able to do magic if they tried?"
“I was in a really bad place back then."
"SO WHAT? Things are okay now because you found me? If you had been two minutes early during that attack you wouldnt even know I could use magic!"
"...but I *wasn’t* early!"
So Julian just throws up his hands in frustration and leaves to get away from Garak for a while.
The next day he mingles more with the other apprentices and they exchange Ideas and Skills and also Gossip about their teachers.
Some of the apprentices suggest that Julian could go to magic school for a while before applying for a *new* teacher, since obviously Garak did him wrong.
This doesn’t sound like a bad idea, so he talks with some older mages and most of them are friendly and are like “Oh yeah, sure, we’d love to take you in.”
But then it turns out a lot of people are talking behind his back about how much of an outlier he is.
(wizard culture is like 50% magic and 50% gossip)
So Julian is standing on a balcony and down below he hears a group of Douche Wizards discussing his inadequacies.
And it kinda makes Julian feel like absolute shit, so his powers go wobbly again. But then enter stage right: Garak
Who properly puts those wizards into their rightful place like "Say one more bad thing about my apprentice and I’ll blast your punk ass back to Romulus. You should KNOW the reason why I dont usually take apprentices, but here you are anyway saying he has no power. He has more power in his pinky than all of you combined."
Turns out there’s an extra layer to Why Garak didn’t do the "Check for Magicians in your Area" thing- it’s because he openly has no interest in training or working with anyone who isnt Special or Powerful.
Which means Julians happens to be. very special. and very powerful.
And hearing that from Garak makes him go 😳
His emotions are running high and he starts *floating*. Probably the worst thing to do on a first floor balcony out of All The Things To Do On A First Floor Balcony.
So he’s Floating and he doesnt know how to make that Stop.
He panics, starts falling and basically crashes right into Garaks arms.
"Oh great, youre right on time. We're leaving."
"What? But the banquet lasts for a week?" also I'm still a little mad but also a little in love with you?
But Garak has already teleported them back to the tower before he can really argue.
Anyway Julian is upset about many things overall, but mostly that he didnt get to dance. He practiced a lot in his off time.
Thank God Garak Knows This 
"...I know how to make magic music. Let’s have a little fun at least."
They dance and Julian starts floating *again*.
Garak 👀’s @ Julian floating "Okay I’ve been recording most of your emotion based powers. This is new."
Julian just Floats Higher out of embarrassment, so garak is like ‘well I'll just join him up there.’
So he does and Julian is like “WHY CAN YOU DO THAT. SHOW ME HOW TO DO THAT. HOW CAN I CONTROL THIS."
Turns out his emotions are too unclear, which makes his magic unbalanced, so really all they have to do is get him some Clarity.
Garak is like "Well one very easy way to do that is-" and then they kiss in the air. Floating. because I’m gay and I will use gay magic tropes as I see fit.
so that’s the garashir side of things, on to kiradax
There's Some Slow Burn In There
Basically Kira is a mage, but instead of using magic to fight she just Enchants Swords/Arrows/Other Weapons.
Because she fought in a wizard war and when there's not a lot of mana potions to go around you have to get creative.
She didn’t get a proper magician name because she was actually never anyone’s apprentice, but people still call her The Blade because she is just so cool.
Anyway in this universe mages age very slowly, and Kira is probably around 60 years old when she meets Jadzia. Which is not a lot in wizard years.
She does feels a little inadequate about being so Young and Inexperienced she didn’t really expect nor wanted to run into the legendary Jadzia Dax who everyone thinks is like 300 years old, maybe more.
So meeting someone who is her complete opposite just makes her go "Hmph. I dont wanna associate with you." 
But Jadzia keeps popping in randomly around her almost every day until Kira snaps like "WHAT is your problem???"
“I never learned how to enchant tools."
"What."
"Can you teach me?"
"The great Dax has never enchanted a single tool or weapon?"
"I took care of everything with other types of magic. Will you teach me?"
So Kira Nerys, The Blade, the person everyone looked down on because she uses enchanted tools instead of magic for everything- is being asked by this legendary mage to teach her something. What an honor. What an incredible thing.
But She Says No
So Jadzia keeps bothering her every day.
But eventually bothering her turned into "Hey wanna get some coffee? Wanna go to the library with me? Can I look at you while youre in the smithy? Do you wanna look at me while I come up with new magic formulas? Wanna get drunk together and maybe kiss but definitely have no recollection of it in the morning?"
- over a span of 10 years.
But at the end of those 10 years Jadzia still hasnt learned how to enchant tools.
And it takes One day at the magic banquet for Nerys to actually realise the Implications of that.
It’s the third banquet they've been to- together, as each other’s plus one.
They color coordinate their robes and wear matching accessoires. The works.
And Kira decides that now is the day to grill her Totally-Not-Girlfriend about the reason why she sticks around.
"You could have just gotten someone else to teach you how to enchant things."
"Why would I need anyone to teach me, I have you to enchant things *for me*."
"No but before I started doing it for you. Like the whole first five years of knowing me."
"Oh well I didn’t want anyone else because I was very much infatuated with you."
And Kira just bluescreens. Error 404 nerys.exe not found.
Until she catches herself.
"You...*were* infatuated with me?"
"Yes? You obviously never saw me that way though. So I stuck around for the good company and the coffee."
Now you see over the course of 10 years Kira’s irritation about Jadzia slowly turned into Something Else. But she thought Jadzia only saw her as a friend.
On the other hand Jadzia definitely had feelings from the start, but because kira was in Denial she didnt act on those feelings.
If I were a shitty writer or- god foirbid- *Straight*, I would have there be a miscommunication right about now and prolong their useless lesbian suffering.
But I’m not.
Basically Kira just goes 
"Okay but when you say *were* attracted to me does that mean you *stopped*?"
"Uh. No?"
"Cool. Excuse me, I need a moment."
So she tries to hide from this sudden revelation and her feelings in a hedge maze, but there’s no use hiding from Jadzia.
 Who, instead of just walking around the labyrinth to find her like a normal person, basically whacks down the bushes in a straight line until she reaches Kira.
"THERE YOU ARE! I used this completely unenchanted sword to get to you and tell you I definitely still like you. Now will you PLEASE teach me how to enchant tools as your first courting gift?"
And Kira is like "God yes you dumbass-" and they kiss.
now wizard quodo is funny because I kind of started this part as a joke but then it all got Serious
First of all Quark is Actually A Really Powerful Magician.
But what does he do with his great power?
Move from his home country to the city of wizards and open a bar.
Because he is still fundamentally *Quark*.
And Odo is still fundamentally Odo, because he is a Shapeshifting Alien From Actual Outer Space You Know.
He still went through the whole "I was studied by scientists (wizards) and couldnt let them know I was sentient for a long time which made me very grouchy and lonely" thing.
So Odo spends like ~100 years going from captivity/being an object of scientific study to living as a guard in the city of wizards.
Basically everyone thinks that Odo cant use magic- including Odo- because, well, he’s a bunch of slime that came from a meteor.
Then he meets Quark, powerful wizard and bartender.
And he has *no* idea who he is.
Only that he’s the guy who runs that one shady gambling bar and is involved in some illegal business.
And Quark is like "Ah finally. A worthy opponent."
So he and Quark have the same vibe as on DS9- where Quark keeps doing illegal stuff and Odo tries to stop him and the universe decides to say enemies to lovers 400k words slowburn.
And one day Quark gets into some Seriously shady business with some people who are now very aggressively demanding Quark give them their money back
and they're. you know. threatening violence.
Odo shows up and right before this one dude is about to straight up sucker punch Quark he's like "HALT!" and Wow He Made A Magic Happen.
Now. Because Quark is Indebted to Odo. He is expected to take him on as his magic apprentice.
At first he is Not Down For That. They both aren’t. So even though technically they are teacher and apprentice they both just refuse to work together.
Until Odo goes to check up on Quark one day- because as we all know he makes it a point to drop by his bar four times a day just to let him know he's thinking about him- and Quark is in trouble again.
Only this time Odo is like "I'm not gonna help him. I dont even know how I *could* help him. Since he hasn’t taught me any magic, the bastard."
So he wants to just pass by and leave when Quark basically starts to just Demolish these people with magic in a frightening and totally not impressive display.
MIND YOU Quark is still generally incompetent. If this was D&D he'd have like, very low skill points but unlimited spell slots.
Anyway Odo goes 👀
Because him being unable to use magic in a country/city where everyone he *knows* can use magic has always made him feel bad.
So he goes to Quark like "Okay. I changed my mind. Please teach me magic."
And Quark tries to teach Odo magic, earnestly. 
And Odo tries to learn magic from Quark, for real. 
But the key word here is *try*.
Because neither is very good at what theyre *trying* to do.
Odo didn’t Really want to learn from Quark and that's pretty much the reason why Quark doesnt Really want to teach Odo. But They Try.
There’s a lot of fights and arguments and "You’re not doing it right" vs "You’re not explaining it right"
But hey, at least Odo can now do some magic, which makes his guard job a lot easier.
He also gets to socialise more with other wizards and their apprentices, and he becomes a generally happier pile of humanoid goo!
Meanwhile Quark slowly but surely turns into a more Respected wizard. And his bar also becomes a bit more respectable as well.
it's almost like,,they both wanna be,,,,their best selves,,
and learning to work together has Somehow set them on the right path,,,
idk man sounds kinda gay,,,,
But then the banquet rolls around.
Quark is like "Oh fuck I Have to take Odo to this social function because hes my apprentice and thems are the rules."
and Odo is like "Oh fuck I Have to attend this social function with Quark because thems the rules."
The vibe they’re both getting is- "It's all fun and games when we're by ourselves but Somehow acting friendly in public feels Wrong." 
So they agree to Arrive together and then split up and spend as little time as possible together lest they fall victim to some kind of *feeling*.
And like all plans that Odo and Quark make it works out brilliantly for Exactly 5 Minutes.
Because while Quark is talking to his accomplished and very boring wizard acquaintances he kinda realises "God I wish Odo were here-"
And as Odo is talking to all these annoying ass apprentices he kinda realises "God I wish Quark was here-"
So that's what they do on the first day of the banquet. and the second. and the third. 
They just keep only seeing each other from the corner of their eyes but dont really get to talk/argue about anything and it's making them feel Not So Good, Actually
Now the fourth day is the kicker.
Because while Odo is talking to some people he gets tapped on the shoulder and there he is! The worst father on this side of the galaxy! Doctor Mora- but like, as a wizard scientist.
"Oh my god Odo? You’re here? How did you manage that? You can’t use magic dont be silly! *I* studied you and who would know you better than me? What? *you* know yourself better? Nonsense, now walk with me- how have you been :)?"
Obviously Odo is getting Very distressed but he can't exactly say No, so he walks around with Mora.
They sit down near a fountain and his ‘father’ just starts grilling Odo about what he's been up to.
And eventually they start talking about Quark
"Wait, *Quark*? The absolute magic failure who runs that disgusting establishment? That Quark?"
"Well I wouldnt put it like that, he’s not-"
But Mora goes on- "Oh no my dear boy that won't do! You have to learn from a *good* wizard. Like me! Dont you want that? Oh I'm sure you want that. That nasty good for nothing will resign as your teacher first thing tomorrow!"
And Odo is like "Now wait a minute, Quark might have his flaws, but-"
"There! See, you admitted it. He's flawed. He can't possibly be a good teacher for you. But I would be! I *raised* you."
But Odo is getting Rather Angy right about now.
"Well you did a pretty bad job raising me considering you didnt even know I could do magic until now."
"I can’t believe it. Quark is such a bad influence on you. You never used to talk back at me. This is what happens when you hang around with people who dont know you like I do."
Then something in him snaps and Odo just goes Off on Mora.
"MAYBE *YOU* DONT KNOW *HIM* LIKE I DO!"
And he basically breaks the fountain theyre sitting at with some accidental emotional magic.
So after Mora goes "...I better get someone to fix that-" and runs off, Odo is standing in front of this broken fountain and thinks about how this might be a cruel metaphor for his life. And then the worst possible thing happens.
He Spots Quark Badly Hidden Behind A Pillar
Internally he just goes 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' 
Externally though it’s more like "How much of that did you hear???"
Quark’s trying to lighten the mood with a "Haha well it's hard to avoid hearing things with lobes as big as mine!" 
But Odo is not playing, so he breaks the fountain some more. As intimidation.
So Quark goes "Okay. Alright. I heard all the parts where you defended my honor. Now move aside."
And Odo goes 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAA' inside again, so he doesnt really move but just gets nudged aside by Quark.
Who returns the fountain back to its previous state.
Things are nice and silent for a second but then Quark disturbs the moment by saying "Okay now, real talk- you want another teacher, is that right?"
So Odos head whips up and he goes "No??? What the fuck quark. I thought you listened to that conversation. Youre the only one I want-"
and he Immediately slaps a hand over his mouth because Oh God That Came Out Wrong-
But Quark is just Laughing and being his usual little shit self like "Haha good one, let's go back inside now. (where the social conventions will force us to remain apart so we dont have to confront what you just said.)"
on the inside though- Quark is just as 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' as Odo
"I absolutely Cannot go inside and socialise right now, I’ve had Quite enough of that." 
"Oh...well then...i'll leave you be?"
"No don’t-"
So Odo quickly grabs Quark’s hand (and Quark just fuckin uh dies on the spot) but he's not very communicative at the moment. So Quark kinda has to just interpret that for himself.
"Aaaaalright- let’s just take a walk then."
So they walk through the rose garden. holding *hands*. and Quark points out nice or interesting things while Odo just nods or hums in agreement.
Until they’ve come full circle and end up back at the fountain, where Quark is like "Okay. Wanna go back inside *now*?" 
Because he swears if they spend one more second like this he will HAVE to kiss this pile of space goo and he’d rather Odo make that decision for him.
And Odo is like "I just want to stay with you."
So Quark is like ‘Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool’, pulls them behind a hedge and kisses Odo.
because on GOD I enjoy the “going from an argument straight into kissing” trope, but that one is actually too on brand for quodo so I HAD to change it up.
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flipsideds · 3 years
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it’s all run amuck.
a server’s dropped two trays of fresh-baked scones, and the confections litter the floor like fallen leaves, purple-pink icing making the banquet hall look less like the site of a charity benefit and more like the streets of chilham mid-fall. it lights nostalgia beneath his ribs, and flip finds his lips tugging into a wistful smile.
but then a penguin-prettied guest clears his throat and arches a bristly brow.
“ right then, ” flip says with a curt nod. he clasps his hands, gaze sweeping one final dance across the sugar speckled floor. “ i’ll see to some replacements for you. ”  he forces a gentle smile –– the chasm between the man’s brows only deepens.
amuck indeed.
flip glides toward the kitchen. he’s a smooth-sailing afternoon cloud; light. airy. bloody nervous.
oh, dear.
flip allan bell has a case of the collywobbles, theodore, his old assistant would tease whenever he’d drop a bowl, tray, or spoon. the best baker’s hand he’d been, that one. it’s a shame he ––
flip blinks. thinks of flames, of ink black smoke. then tries not to think about anything at all.
quick fingers collect ingredients, combine. get to kneading. in here, there’s no clammer. no crowd. just sugar, butter, flour. a baffled baker’s best friend. he’ll forget the chaos, for a little while. he’ll close his eyes as he brings cherry compote to a simmer, and think of home.
or, alternatively :  greetings loved ones!! my name is linc ( 21 / est / she/her ) and here is the ever so lovely, ever so flighty phillip allan bell !
below the cut you’ll find a messy run-down of who he is, where he’s come from, and where he’s headed. i am so excited to write with all of you !!  he’s fresh out of the oven ( just ask nika ) so i am head over heels for watching him grow in the windy city !
toss on some nat king cole, julie london, billie holiday, chet baker & let’s get cookin’.
— && guests may mistake me as david corenswet, but really i am phillip "flip" allan bell + cis male + he/him/his  and my DOB is 02/29/1992. i am applying for the banquet manager position as part of the EHP and would like to live in suite 201. i should be hired because i am + breezy, expressive, peaceable, but i can also be flighty, perplexed, vacillant at times. personally, i like to bake sweets, not hum along to nat king cole while dancing around my flat alone, and most certainly never wear trousers that are just a bit too short to show off my eccentric sock collection when off the clock, but that won’t interfere with work. thank you for your consideration! 
h i s t o r y .
born in the small english village of chilham, phillip allan bell never knew his parents––but they took great care in stapling a note with his name, birthday, and favorite color to the blanket he was found swaddled in on the steps of the local market. ( phillip allan. 29 february. needs green. ) or, at least, that’s how flip tells the story. it’s unclear whether or not his parents’ chicken scratch called for green the color, or green the currency.
when phillip started speaking, he couldn’t properly say his own name. hence the nickname flip was born. the other children in the group home took to it easily, so the single-syllable stuck.
he spent the majority of his childhood in and out of foster homes throughout kent, always returning to the same group home after intervals of six months to a year. he began helping in the kitchen early on, so he became known as flip baker –– whether in foster care or the care of group home supervisors, flip always came to dinner with a new sweet treat for the others to try. people wouldn’t want to end their time fostering him because they loved the food. but in the end, the poor boy wouldn’t be adopted. reasons tended to ring much the same, “ oh, he’s lovely, really. what a sweetheart. just a bit too nervous for us, we’re afraid. ”
in fact, nervousness colored most of flip’s young life. from loud noises to spiders to fitting in, his mind always spun about endless possibilities –– quite rarely the good ones. the kitchen was the only place he truly quieted this tendency. he baked and cooked with steady hand, when he was alone. other folks in the kitchen with him would disrupt that cadence, but flip was never one to complain. he’d just fumble a bit, laugh nervously, and move along. he’s a remarkable chef –– and the kitchen always has ample marks to prove it.
shortly after turning 16, flip relocated to london. an older couple agreed to foster and adopt him as their own, but that stability was short-lived. they perished in an apartment fire just two months later. their youngest son, theodore, agreed to take him under his wing. at only 18, the two boys became fast friends. when flip decided to open his own bakery, theodore offered to be his assistant. from then on, the sweet by & by was born.
the bakery quickly rose to fame in the london area. people traveled from far and wide to try the legendary fruit scones, fresh cakes, and scrumptious sourdough. the bbc did a feature on the bakery for one of their london food series, and the sweet by & by began attracting tourists for something more than its treats :  its adorably frenetic baker. the kitchen was always spotted, his cheeks always dotted with icing or sugar. but he’d always greet customers with a molten-honey smile. tender green eyes. for years, the bakery prospered. flip prospered. he rose early to bake. he and theodore experimented with new recipes, danced around the kitchen to billie holiday, nat king cole... things were brilliant. radiant. whole. and then came the fire.
( tw: fire, death ) it happened while on a morning that was... well. most unusual. typically, flip and theodore would open the bakery together––3am sharp. they’d start preparing the day’s fresh goods, oldies playing softly on the stereo around them. but this september day in particular started off like no other: with theodore opening. alone. flip had stayed the night at one of his friends’ flats, unplanned. they’d hosted a housewarming party, and broken out his kryptonite: good bourbon. he’d drank more than his fill, and shot a text to theodore asking if it’d be alright if he started out the next day on his own. theodore agreed with a cheeky reply, getting some, are you, flip? right! as if. both men thought nothing of it. the opening, the slight shift in daily pattern. flip would be in by noon and business would carry on as usual. except flip always handled the faulty oven. on this particular morning, the device’s... quirks... slipped theodore’s mind. it took twenty minutes for the wires to start smoking. thirty minutes before theodore, swirling about the countertops with earbuds in, realized something was burning. on september 30, 2020 the sweet by & by burnt to the ground. and three days later, by smoke inhalation, it took flip’s dearest friend with it.
and that’s how it goes, innit? the story? the heartache? standing on the corner of upland and darrell road dressed in his funeral tie, squinting through scorched brick and metal like maybe, maybe if he stared hard enough, theodore, alive and well, might rise from the ashes. he didn’t. he didn’t, and flip visited the property each day for a week until he realized... he never would. he sorted through theodore’s personal affects. finally started his adopted surname, bell, as his own. he appeased reporters, for a little while. told the story, expressed how much he’d miss his best friend. his brother. but what about the bakery?, they’d ask. what about the sweet by & by? in the last interview flip ever did for the local stations, he reckoned perhaps that chapter, however sweet, was now meant to close. somewhere, online, there’s footage of him blinking through tears. twisting theo’s favorite ring around his own middle finger. green –– tsavorite. it means compassion, theodore had explained one night, after closing up. after they’d snatched a pint at the local pub and meandered on home. benevolence. beauty. somewhere, online, a reporter asks flip about that very stone. somewhere, online, flip pretends he didn’t hear it.
then came the bubble wrapping. the cardboard, packing tape. fingers rubbed raw from crinkling tape around itself, tearing it off, starting again. after theodore’s services, after relinquishing the bakery property to dulwich, flip packs his bags. he buys himself a nap, a pack of werther’s originals, and flees across the sea.
to chicago. the windy city. it’s always been circled on theodore’s map of america. that’s one i’d like to see someday, he’d say over a glass of bourbon. reckon they’re as tough as they seem? flip would always shrug, take a sip of his own drink. he didn’t know. but now? now, he would. on the plane, he spins theodore’s ring around his middle finger. even when he falls asleep, his forefinger and thumb stay there, shielding.
his initial thought is... perhaps he’ll open a bakery. but with the financial losses from the blaze, flip knows better than to embark on such an undertaking. so he does the responsible thing –– he finds a respectable job, at a respectable inn. the american experience, he hears theodore croon in the back of his mind, as he fills out his application. he’s jet lagged, distracted –– he doesn’t realize he’s checked the wrong box until the material’s been sent. and then he gets it. a banquet manager. oh, dear –– he hasn’t the faintest idea where to begin.
d i s p o s i t i o n .
born on a leap year. meaning he’s 28. but also 7.
for real footage of how flip handles himself in the kitchen, or just in general, check out this video. do i watch it daily? yes. did it inspire the general framework for flip’s frenetic kitchen tendencies? ...maybe. the chief difference lies in the result. things may crash and burn. it might look like it’s about to fall apart. but he always, always pulls it into a beautiful success.
he’s got a very deep-seated fear of fire. he’ll light candles in his flat only to flinch and snuff them out. if someone in the kitchen cooks with wine or vinegar and the skillet bursts into flame, he’ll look as though he’s seen a ghost. and he believes he’s subtle about it; oh, he truly does. but anyone with two eyes and a brain can piece together this man is very uneasy around flames.
he’s moved here with truly no plan, beyond experiencing chicago in all its glory, to make good on theodore’s dream. but as glorious and exciting as that is, he’s petrified. please help him.
there’s... a lot of unresolved traumas and sadness regarding his childhood. the bell family was the first to truly see him and give him, in all his anxious entirety, a chance. losing his last link to them has been... difficult, to say the least.
he’s a sucker for oldie music. god. it transports him. you can frequently find him in the malnati kitchens after hours whipping up something beautiful to a background of billie holiday or french classics. humming along, eyes closed, swaying... he’s graceful, truly –– when he’s not thinking about anything.
very terrible about crushes. very terrible about crushes on him. flirting sends his brain into overdrive and... often, he short-circuits. ask him a question about himself he isn’t expecting and he’ll handle it kindly, but will look like a deer in headlights.
amendment: more often than not looks like a deer in headlights.
peaceful at his core. but with the ruckus and the world raging around him, there’s always something more to worry about. if he gives you winnie the pooh vibes, it typically means he’s spinning.
he has a very delightful way of managing, mostly because he’s scared shitless of people being mean. he handles every blip and bump with ease. but inside? he’s fretting.
amendment: most often, he’s fretting. very little quiets his mind. baking, maybe. you can tell he’s having a shit time if he shows up unannounced with endless supplies of new recipes.
adores poetry. he likes reading in public spaces, people watching. he’ll often mouth the words to himself, brow furrowed, eyes lighting like he’s seeing suns rise and fall for the first time.
he’s been in love once in his life. her name was georgie. she was the epitome of breathlessness, milky sunlight, espresso brewed on a crisp morning. she was... not who he thought she was. ( she cheated, after two years of time spent together. he found them out, on a date, on an impromptu trip to brixton market for fresh supplies. )
pansexual and very aware of it. he’s in denial about people fancying him. but he very frequently develops small admirations for people, from afar.
6′4, very tall. his pants are always a slight bit too short. if you tell him, he’ll act surprised, the beautifully eccentric socks peeking out from underneath will suggest otherwise.
he’s never had a s’more. he can’t tell if he’s more intrigued or scared by the thought of them.
doesn’t like birds, particularly ones that swoop low. ( there’ve been incidents. ) he also doesn’t take a great liking to men in tall hats. ( another incident. )
make fun of his accent please i beg you. he does not know how to handle it. he’ll stammer and chuckle and it’ll be bloody amazing, i promise you.
c o n n e c t i o n s .
MAGNOLIA BARNES –– friend. they met during her time in london. neither of them are aware they’re in the same city now, let alone the same hotel. i imagine flip hasn’t told her about the bakery yet. it hasn’t really made news outside of england, so that will certainly be... a story to tell.
FLIRTATIONSHIP / SOMETHING MORE –– just imagine this nervous little bean navigating a new love connection... please... he’ll be a mess.
TOUR GUIDES –– ever wanted to show someone your version of chicago? now’s your chance! flip is so bloody new to this place. he gets lost almost always.
CONFIDANT –– they talk about anything and everything. perhaps not all of it. but there’s an unspoken trust between them. they likely met in the most unlikely of ways, and here we are now.
literally anything under the sun? oh my WORD it has been an epoch since i’ve rped and i’m just. here for any of it. all of it. cute neighbor shit. mailroom mishaps. friends. enemies. someone who keeps sneaking the last of the lobby mints. i want anything you want to throw at me!!
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momo-de-avis · 4 years
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Wordtober Day 6: Build 2.0
Yall, I cheated. And am also late. I couldn’t get anything done with ‘husky’, so I decided to prolonge my previous prompt, as the last one didn’t give me room to fully explore my idea. So... be warned that this is... quite long. Possibly very long. I leave that up to you.
It’s a continuation of this one
𝚆𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙻𝚞𝚒𝚜 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚐𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚐𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚛𝚘 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚝𝚢 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝟷𝟿𝚝𝚑 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝟸𝟻𝚝𝚑 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛, 𝟸𝟶𝟶𝟷, 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝙳𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚊 𝚍𝚎 𝚕𝚊 𝙿𝚊𝚣.
Dani and I had done this before, many times. We’d had our fair share of paranormal investigation—sometimes just plain investigation—and most of the times, it even amounts to nothing, if not a slight disruption of a picture or the ‘mysterious noises’ turning out to be either stray cats or a group of teenagers setting a horror movie set for strangers. But the Maduro case was peculiar to us. It was Dani who suggested we’d investigate the Maduro case, and she always did seem rather curious about the outlines of the case.  
We did the needed investigation before we got there. Aside from some news articles, there was the original 1983 police report, which looks… sloppy, rushed, and honestly, not like they were even trying at all. The majority of the photos vanished, supposedly lost in mishandling of paperwork, except three—the ones well known—and both disappearances were chalked up under ‘runaway children’, despite the fact that Samuel Maduro was 15 and Aura 28 at the time of each of their disappearances.
We knew the house had belonged to Aura after her parents, and before that, to Amelia and Augusto Maduro, the grandparents, who used to own a quarry up until 1939, when they sold their part of the business to Mr Maduro’s partner. At the time, we couldn’t really find the reason why they sold it, though what we did conclude afterwards is nothing short of speculation, so we just assumed it to be some sort of financial strain. There was a civil war going on, though we couldn’t find confirmation on the Maduros’ political affiliations, nor is their village located anywhere close to where the war hit, but… War always does bring about hard times, so it wasn’t at all that inane.
What was surprising was finding our first clue that contradicted the original 1983 report. Though Claudia Maduro, mother of both Samuel and Aura, suffered from a lifelong heart disease and eventually died four years after her son’s disappearance—a time spent between check-ups and several psychiatric consultations—the father’s death, Francisco Maduro, does seem related to the case.
He appears to have lived the last ten years of his life as a recluse, and the only visits he ever had were a gardener—who helped around with the backyard—, a maid—mostly responsible for doing his laundry, some cooking and cleaning—, and a man named Antonio. He was the last one to see Mr Maduro alive, though his name wasn’t even mentioned in the original report.
According to Antonio, when he arrived at the house that afternoon, Mr Maduro was in a state of distress. He had set up a ladder to go up the attic and was going up and down frequently, to fetch several items, all of which he recognized as being used for construction purposes: toolboxes, measuring tapes, rope, sandpaper. Of this, Antonio reportedly joked for a while, asking him if he was building something, or maybe fixing a piece of furniture, but Mr Maduro was majorly unresponsive, instead appearing focused on his task. He simply kept mumbling: “The animals keep tearing it down.”
It must have been shortly after he left that Mr Maduro fell off his ladder, approximately two meters high, hitting his head on a rock and being found hours later by the maid, who had him rushed to the hospital, where he died an hour later.
Here’s what’s so appalling about this. Looking at the original police records, there were no interviewed. It looks like the police simply asked no questions to anyone, no acquaintances of the family, no friends, no neighbours. Every evidence was gathered from inside the home, and every conclusion reached without taking into consideration the village itself. At first, we thought they had been careless—ridiculously careless, mind you—but as our days went on and we tried speaking to others, it became clear just what the real reason was.
The villagers avoided the Maduros because they were afraid of them.
Overall, it seems neither Aura nor Samuel—nor their parents, for that matter—were particularly hated, rather ostracized by what the villagers saw as a need. The priest at the time, one father Ángel, even did his best to include the two children in his community, and we did find several photos of Samuel carrying the podium of Santa Marina during one of its processions. Both siblings appear to have been devout Catholics too: crucifixes and rosaries were found in both rooms, as well as prayer books and Bibles, they attended church regularly, got involved with the community and celebrated every day of the calendar.  
The problem was not Samuel and Aura, nor Francisco and Claudia—the Maduros’ dark history was older than that.
There was one fundamental piece to their history that everyone completely overlooked, which wasn’t on records for reasons that, for a while, seemed mysterious enough, though it became clear as we unravelled the story. Francisco Maduro, grandfather of both Aura and Samuel, disappeared without a trace in 1939, immediately after selling his part of the quarry.
After searching through records, old newspapers and considerably angering the locals, all we found was one newspaper clipping, though not an article. It was an ad, an announcement, posted by the local police, asking villagers to please notify them if they new anything about Mr Maduro’s whereabouts. And nothing more. The only way to understand what had happened was by asking, and by now, we knew nobody would say a word about it, so we thought Antonio would perhaps collaborate.
By all means, it must be said: Antonio had a bit of a drinking problem, and we might have bargained in that sense. I’m not terribly proud of it, but in my defence, he looked desperate to talk, like he had kept something buried so deeply he waited years to finally speak up. Though I wasn’t expecting a confession exactly. After all, Antonio was, in his own words, Francisco’s best friend, though the two weren’t as close in adulthood as they had been in childhood. And like the Maduros—maybe because he appeared to be the only one in the village who didn’t fear going near the house—he was a bit of an outcast.
He told us that Amelia Maduro was far from being a heart-warming woman. He recalls her posture from childhood, which I think can be seen in the pictures found inside one of the locked rooms of the house: haughty, stern, impeccable. She seldom smiled, and her face bore something grievous to it, a chiselling of austerity that made children everywhere tell stories of her beatings and whippings. She was very pious too, at times too severe in her belief, and her doctrine was an imposing one. Antonio recalls an event from childhood, after visiting Francisco one afternoon: she had stopped a maid on her tracks, taken a step back and inspected her outfit; then, she had asked why was her skirt three fingers above the knee, to which the maid, flustered, replied she had to borrow her sister’s, who was younger, considering she had found a hole in hers that morning. Then, without warning, Amelia slapped the young woman across the face and said: “I will not have whores serving me.” And she fired her.
This might be explanatory to what truly seems to be the reason behind the quarry issue. Shortly before, Francisco Maduro became romantically involved with a supposed worker at the quarry, a woman who would bring refreshments to the men on the field every afternoon. It turns out, however, the woman was Pilar Deocampo, niece of Alfredo Deocampo—Francisco’s business partner. She became pregnant and decided to plan an escape with the aid of Francisco, who was supposed to meet with her after dealing with some logistics as to not leave his family with no support, but the plan failed when Amelia discovered their affair. When Pilar gave birth to baby boy in 1939, things took a grim turn.
From here on, Antonio swears, the story has become folklore, but the vast majority of the villagers strongly believe it to be true, and stands as the reason for them to stay away from the Maduros and their home. Amelia, without her husband’s knowledge—who was away for a few days—invited poor Pilar for some afternoon tea, under the guise of friendship and empathy before her condition—unmarried and with a son borne from a married man. How it happened differs, since nobody was present if not one maid who left the house immediately after, but on one thing all tales are consistent: Amelia killed the child in front of his mother, proclaiming that her act was justified before God because it was in God’s plans to cleanse the earth of sinners, and that the child was impure and shouldn’t have been born either way.
In a fit of rage, Pilar Deocampo attempted to injury Amelia, but failed to. As a result, Amelia inflicted several wounds on the grievous mother, who bled out in her living room. Many say Mrs Maduro watched, untouched by her very own gruesome actions, and in her dying breath, Pilar Deocampo uttered one last thing, something the village now chants as much as a curse as a reminder: Mi sangre marcará tu tierra, y mis huesos serán tu mausoleo. Por cada uno que pierdas, un otro quedará en sofrimiento, y como las árboles de tu finca, vosotros marchitarán lentamiente.
My blood will mark your land, and my bones will be your mausoleum. For each one you lose, another will stay in suffering, and like the trees of your property, you will wither away slowly.
Amelia then proceeded to force her very own maids into taking the body to the nearby forest, dig up a grave and bury them; then, she placed the two pillars with the chain to forbid anyone from going into the area, and never spoke of the subject again—until her husband arrived home the next day. Seeing the maids scrubbing blood from the wooden floorings, he inquired his wife as to what had happened. Amelia didn’t spare any details; in fact, many agree she was quite assured in her grim account, believing hers had been a righteous act.
Francisco Maduro then, in a frenzy of grief and despair, ran into the woods to see it for himself, to see the grave of his beloved and his child—and he crossed the space between the two pillars. He was never seen again.
Amelia would die less than ten years later, and despite everything, many agree she was incredibly grievous of her husband’s disappearance and entirely devoted to her faith. The Maduros then became a cautionary tale—it’s unclear to me whether or not Francisco witnessed this event, considering he would be around 18-20 at the time, but the tale became part of the villages’ folklore so much he became a person they willing avoided. Antonio swears, however, that both Aura and Samuel were entirely unaware of this past.
From the story came a legend, one the villagers believed to be real, from the case of Samuel and Aura Maduro’s disappearance. Anyone who crossed the space between the two pillars would find the secret burial place of Pilar and her child; keeping her promise, it seems a Maduro would always be bound to find the place in one way or another, and it was none other than Pilar who called them, leaving someone else behind to suffer for their absence, until no Maduros were left.
It seems Pilar achieved her goal, then.
This also explains something about the house, something Aura herself spoke of in her last journal entry: that there was an overwhelming sadness to it, something bittersweet that didn’t seem to belong there. If the path itself sent a shiver down our spines, and there always seem to be something lurking between the trees when we looked, inside the house we felt… safe. Dani even recalled feeling this sudden pang of sadness which she described as being ‘like a mother losing her child’. At the time, I laughed it off, told her she was just missing her cat, but after Antonio told us the tale, we… froze in dread, to be honest.
Energy like this is nothing new—the spirits of those who died inside the place always leave some speck of it behind, and we feel it like something external. We thought it strange at first because no Maduro had died inside the home that we knew of: Francisco at the hospital, Claudia at the local market, Samuel and Aura vanishing, and as far as we could tell, with Francisco also vanished, Amelia died while in mass of a heart attack. But it started making sense then: the only people who had died inside the house were not members of the Maduro. It was their pain we felt, and consequently, that Aura felt.
Dani and I weren’t sure what to expect of this, but it certainly explained why all those who had tried finding the clearing described by Aura never did—because they went around the two pillars, not through them. We had come all this way to find answers, so we figured there was only one thing to do.
I think we were naïve. We believed the tale was only a tale, and if any of it was to be taken for truth, it was certainly aimed at the cursed—the Maduros, not us, mere wanderers. But… we were wrong.
I took a recorder and a camera with me, while Dani took a photographic digital camera. For a while, we stood before the two pillars in silence and tried telling ourselves it was fine, perfectly fine, it was just a piece of local folklore based on Catholic devotion of two women, one a sinner, the other scorned. We’d heard many like that, and it seemed improbable the clearing even existed in the first place. So we held our hands—though why, I can’t exactly tell—and we leapt over the chain.
Every single one of Aura’s words travelled back to me. She was right. It was… daunting. Shapes hovered about, escaping my sight constantly, caught only from the corner of my eyes, and the dense vegetation closed around us. There was a horrible silence all around—more of an absence of sound—and we couldn’t even hear our own heart beats. The sun struggled to transverse the heavy foliage, and the air was thick and prickly. Dani snapped a few photographs as we trod on, but it was clear she was aiming at nothing specifically, just frantically moving her camera with a gasp and a jitter, frightened by a sudden movement from which came no sound. Even the snapping twigs and crunching leaves beneath our feet seemed muffled.
After thirty minutes, we stopped. Before us, the space opened widely, and trees sprouted from a bald batch of white and brown earth, entwining together above our heads like a gable roof. Dani stopped, her camera frozen between her hands, but her eyes were glazed into a sort of mania I had never seen before. With a shuddering finger, she pressed the shutter, but didn’t look into the screen, just ahead—contemplating, focused. Her arm lowered then, and I called her name; Dani jittered, blinked and looked down at the photo she had just snapped—frozen and pale.
When she showed me photos, my heart sank to my feet. Every single one of them was so corrupted almost all of them were unusable, but a few of them showed something buried beneath the static corruption. Shadows, figures, silhouettes. A pair of baby feet. Faces, hollow and daunting, frozen into a scream.
I pressed my recorder, but it didn’t seem to work; Dani pressed some buttons on her camera but suddenly halted, and her eyes—glazed once more—cast curiously all around. She gave a step forward, and another, and a few more—all considerate and cautious, though they grew, and unexpectedly, she took her backpack off her shoulders and threw it on the ground; she dashed ahead, her hands diving deep into a bush, rummaging through meshes of thorny foliage, and a faint yet vivid laughter escaped her lips.
I called her in screams, but she did not react. At this point, I was terrified and could not move; all I could see was Dani dashing back and forth, stacking sticks under her arms and wiping the centre of the clearing clean, hands covered in white and brown dust—until I realized what she was doing.
I remembered Aura’s account. She was building something.
I shouted again, telling her to stop, as loud as I could, but this time, I couldn’t freeze. I ran to her, wrapped my arms around her when she began to struggle, and with all my might, held her steady, face buried against my chest. She smacked her fists at me, but I persisted, desperately trying to keep her still. I thought then that all it mattered was that she wouldn’t see, she wouldn’t look at the clearing, at that spot where she was feeling somehow compelled to build. I closed my eyes shut, and wind gushed past—no sound still. And I waited.
I opened my eyes first, didn’t let Dani move, and froze again. Before me was a house—small, no higher than a meter and a half tall—made of something white, polished and scraped to precision. Bone.
Stood in a moment of suspension, my arms relaxed, and my fingers stopped gripping Dani’s clothes. Her body shuddered against mine, and her breath raged louder than the gushing wind around us, louder than any sound in that deathly and hollow clearing. Then, she screeched—a gasp that grew in timbre, a rising cadence that somehow seemed to come far slower than I took notice of, and she jolted herself. In a motion faster than I could have anticipated, her body escaped my grip, and she ran—she ran away from me, towards the bone house that rose before us, without really having actually seen it before turning her head with resolution and dashing away.
I tried to grab her, but she escaped; her hands smacked open at the door, and on her knees, she crawled; her panting, heavy and desperate, came like an omen. She was famished for whatever exited beyond it, and I tried to stop—I screamed and ran after her, but she was elusive and fast and set on getting through that door and into the darkness that sucked her in and in and in—and I was too slow. Inside the door, nothing but blackness—swirling, consuming blackness—and as Dani entered the daunting absence of it, she evaporated from her very being. It was like watching someone being devoured by an invisible mouth that swallowed her into nothingness, and her every gesture came with so much reassurance I finally understood what Pilar Deocampo had warned: one always stays behind to suffer.
It wasn’t just meant for the Maduros; it was meant for anyone who desecrate her grave.
When the door slammed shut with a hollow thud, I collapsed to my knees and screamed her name, over and over until nothing existed inside my throat but the soreness of my efforts and the saltiness of my tears. There was not a sound. The entire space around me was engulfed in nothingness. I couldn’t see nor hear Dani anywhere, and before me, the house made of bone appeared far too small for her body to fit inside.
I curled up, and though the terror that had consumed me and made my heart pound so harshly my chest hurt, I couldn’t move. I grabbed the camera, but was unable to turn it off. By my side, Dani’s backpack laid forgotten, tossed aside in a rush. I had studied the Maduro’s case to the smallest detail and I knew she wouldn’t come back. And I finally understood what it was that had consumed Aura in such overwhelming grief, enough to make her leave her home and never come back, until her father passed away and she realized—she must have—he too crossed the space between the two pillars. I finally understood what madness had possessed Amelia after her grim crimes.
It was knowing they weren’t dead, but sentenced to absolute nothingness, left to hover in a sea of absence and non-existence, spiralling down to possible madness. It was knowing they were better off dead.
I blinked my teary eyes open, cold and trembling, hands gripping the camera, and saw something. The house was still there, but next to it, someone: sitting on the ground, back turned to me, legs crossed and shoulders slouched forward, clothes ragged and torn, and in their long auburn hairs, small leaves and twigs were caught in the slender threads. Instinctively, I turned the camera and snapped a quick picture—but the figure didn’t move.
My eyes didn’t move away from the strange figure in front of me, and as I put the camera down, I realized it could only be one person.
“Aura Maduro?”
Her head rose slowly, as if she tried to have a look at the skies, hairs swaying behind her, but she said nothing. Then, I felt it again—that same pressing sadness we always felt inside the house, like a mass of air that swarmed around me, emanating from the spectre before me.
“Where is Dani?” My voice was low, considerate; I looked at the figure and I still saw who I had seen in Aura Maduro the moment I had arrived there—a victim, as much as I was now. “Can you please bring her back to me?”
Immobile. Time passed, though I couldn’t measure, couldn’t tell how long it had been, if it was night or day though the sun existed somewhere in the sky—of that, I was sure. Then, her voice floated in the air, a ragged tune, husky and dragged, but frayed by an overwhelming agony that consumed me like a gust of wind.
“She has to stay.”
My breath rose and whipped the back of my throat; I moved restlessly, but couldn’t leave the small batch of earth on which I knelt. “Please,” I pleaded. “Please, just let me take her home.”
“El sangre marca la tierra,” she spoke, “y sus huesos son nuestro mausoleo.”
“I know what Pilar did to your family.” Every word seemed senseless to me, as if I read from a book: reciting a prayer in order to save myself, though unsure I was there was any salvation left. I wanted to say more, let her know that I understood that misery that encompassed us both, that exuded out of her like a cold wind—but every word died.
“One always stays,” she said, “and the other feels pain. But I look after them.”
I felt my chest tear open in that same sweeping sadness—it was something carved deep into her words, something instilled in the worn-out tone of her voice.
“I look after them,” she continued—and in between her words, a dissonance came: of a woman that wept in silence, the distortion of a throat filled with swallowed tears, “so they don’t feel so lost.”
Defeated, I looked down at the earth beneath me, at last understanding what never-ending horror Pilar Deocampo had cast on the world, that projected grief that would never cease, a continuous cycle of pain and terror—meant forever to steal and burden those who lived, who came out unscathed, to unfathomable pain.
I thought there was something I had to say, though I sincerely don’t know what my reason was: “What can I do?”
Her hand waved in the air, and from the ratty long-sleeves of her jersey, a slender finger, bony and pale, pointed to her left. I noticed there was a watch, glass cracked and black bracelet, with gold rims around. “Take him,” she said. “Let Sam rest.”
The order was immediate, and somehow, I understood. I stood, paced slowly towards the area she had pointed at—below a tall tree, at a small mound covered in pine needles and dried leaves, a batch of golden-brown amidst a soft green. I knelt, pushed the leaves aside, dug my fingers into the earth, and shuddered at the touch of something cold, harsh and angular. A hand, made of bones entirely, no flesh left, emerged—and when I understood at last what she demanded of me, I nearly vomited—sure I was completely incapable of completing the task.
I didn’t look back; short of breath, lungs collapsing at every sweeping movement of my hand, I didn’t rest. When I was done, a putrid smell filled my nose and I covered it with one arm; I ran back then, to Dani’s abandoned backpack, and rummaged for something useful enough for the rest of the deed. We had both brought our sleeping bags, expecting to perhaps spend the night to collect some evidence—so I unrolled Dani’s, pulled the zipper open, and with a force I hadn’t felt before in my life, unsure still where it came from—an urgency of survival, perhaps, or something outside of myself, cast upon me by Aura Maduro—I grabbed the pile of bones and put them inside the sleeping bag.
She was still there when I was done, her hand resting on her lap again. I stopped, stared at her with a cold shudder—whether of dread or something else, I can’t say anymore. Aura Maduro—what was left of her—simply sat in contemplation, her head still raised as she stared at something ahead, and only then did her words echo in my brain in full meaning. I grabbed my backpack, put the sleeping bag carefully on Dani’s, and stared at her. I had almost forgotten about the bone house.
“Do not return,” she said. “You won’t resist next time.”
Somehow, there was an unpronounced message in the air, something that wafted by like a tune carried from the distance, something you only notice when you stop and listen carefully: I am sorry you will have to suffer like we all did. I am sure that was it. Somehow, the precision existed in the tone of her voice, exuding out of her like a radio wave meant to be captured; somehow, I knew.
I walked back—ran back—and once I leapt over the chain, almost instantly, the air was weightless, soft and comforting. But everything else—my entire existence—began to press against my shoulders into a burden that was only now beginning to emerge. Guilt. Terror. Sadness. Crushing, overwhelming sadness—and Dani’s inexistence, her sentence into nothingness, collapsed over me.
It goes without saying I never saw her again.
I buried Samuel Maduro in the backyard of the house, and with nothing to mark his grave, I simply left, on the mound of earth, a framed picture I had found in the house—of Samuel and Aura. In it, she was wearing a wristwatch, black bracelet with golden rims.
I left and never went back. Though sometimes there is a burning wish to grab my things and drive until I see them again, the two pyramidal pillars with that creaking chain between, I never did. I think of Aura’s words, her blooming sadness, and something about it breaks my heart to pieces. The last of a cursed family, unknown of what she carried. On the night she had finally returned to her brother, in 1983, she had sacrificed far more than I could have anticipated. Cast into nothingness forever, sentenced to exist in a limbo of non-existence, forever imprisoned in the blackness of the bone house, she had willingly become a guardian. A watchful soul over those who fell victim to Pilar’s treachery—unable to put an end to it, she had at least given herself to the chance of easing their burden, making that consuming nothingness a bit more bearable. The core of it is, however, what it means to the two last members of the Maduro family.
I was never religious. I still am not. But they were stark Catholics, born and raised between catechesis and Saturday mass. For them, being sentenced to a limbo that is neither death nor life, neither Heaven nor Hell, and something far worse than purgatory… It must be horrifying.
I destroyed my camera and the footage, as well as the tape recorder I took with me, though there was nothing in it. I couldn’t bear, however, to destroy Dani’s digital camera. It was a piece of her, and every little thing that attested to her existence, I just… held on to it.
It was only months later that I turned that camera on again. To my surprise, there was a picture I had never seen—the last one I had taken, of Aura Maduro herself.
I can’t describe it. I will leave it to your eyes to see what lacks words entirely. Perhaps you can understand what it that I felt that afternoon.
I wish I could tell Dani how sorry I am.
________
𝙻𝚞𝚒𝚜 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚜𝚞𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝙽𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 𝟸𝟶𝚝𝚑, 𝟸𝟶𝟶𝟷. 𝙷𝚎 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚝 𝚑𝚒𝚖𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚍. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚔, 𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚊𝚕 𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝙼𝚛 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙼𝚜 𝚍𝚎 𝚕𝚊 𝙿𝚊𝚣.
𝙳𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚊 𝚍𝚎 𝚕𝚊 𝙿𝚊𝚣 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍.
𝙰 𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚔𝚢𝚊𝚛𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚛𝚘 𝚏𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚢 𝚑𝚘𝚖𝚎, 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚋𝚎𝚍 𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚗 𝚒𝚝, 𝚊𝚙𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚑𝚕𝚢 𝚋𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚊 𝚜𝚕𝚎𝚎𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚊𝚐. 𝚆𝚑𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚒𝚝’𝚜 𝚂𝚊𝚖𝚞𝚎𝚕 𝙼𝚊𝚍𝚞𝚛𝚘 𝚘𝚛 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚜 𝚞𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚎𝚍.  
𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚝𝚘𝚜 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚏 𝙼𝚛 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚓𝚘’𝚜 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚊𝚜 𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎. 
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Wordtober Day 1: Ring
Wordtober Day 2: Mindless
Wordtober Day 3: Bait
Wordtober Day 4: Freeze
Wordtober Day 5: Build I
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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years
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Shankar's Fairies: The Indian Film that Wowed Locarno
Shankar's Fairies: The Indian Film that Wowed Locarno
‘My Nani passed away in January 2016 and the house belonged to her and my Nana.’ ‘After they passed away, the family decided to sell the house.’ ‘My mother’s immediate response was that we have to make a film in this house before it was sold.’
IMAGE: Irfana Majumdar with her mother Nita Kumar.
Revisiting childhood memories is a familiar theme that film-makers like to explore for the screen.
But it is not always easy to represent nostalgia with warmth, honesty and innocence of the time period, especially without an added dose of melodrama.
Irfana Majumdar‘s Shankar’s Fairies captures the childhood memories of the director’s mother, Nita Kumar, who wrote the script and produced the film.
It is a beautifully moving film, handled with much gentleness.
It is somewhat similar in tone and mood to the 2019 Maithili language film Gamak Ghar — a quiet story about Director Achal Mishra’s ancestral house in Jharkhand.
But Shankar’s Fairies has more layers and universal themes: The stories a domestic help Shankar shares with the kids of his employers; the larger narrative of domestic workers who leave their children in villages so they can take care of wealthy people’s homes and their offspring; parents who are busy with professional and social engagements and find little time to focus on their children; and the rhythm of life in a medium level Indian city in the early 1960s.
Majumdar also acts in the film, playing the role of her grandmother.
Theatre artist Gaurav Saini, who is married to the director, steps in as film’s associate director as well as Majumdar’s character’s husband — a senior police officer whose house is packed with a retinue of gardeners and other workers, including the film’s protagonist, Shankar.
Majumdar recently traveled to Switzerland for the film’s world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival.
The film was well received and Majumdar was stopped on the streets by local people who told the director how much they had loved the film.
“I think it was a great collaboration because we have distinct skills and areas of expertise. I don’t think I could have done it on my own,” Majumdar tells long-time Rediff.com Contributor Aseem Chhabra by phone.
  IMAGE: Jaihind Kumar as Shankar in Shankar’s Fairies.
Irfana, are you based in Mumbai?
No, I live just outside Benaras in a village called Betawar.
We have an organisation for arts, education and environment that my parents started in 1990. It’s called Nirman.
We have a theatre studio where we do projects.
Many years ago, I had a theatre group, but now we do our research and training.
There is a school, the first major project that began in 1990.
It’s a regular CBSE school but based on arts and ideas of the environment. I studied there between Class 5 and 10.
Then we have a research centre which had a study abroad programme.
Earlier, foreign students would come to attend lectures and seminars.
We have art studios.
I am mostly involved in theatre and film there, but I have taught in the school. I am still involved with the vision committee.
Your mother produced Shankar’s Fairies. I read that she was teaching in California. Was she based there?
She just retired from the Claremont McKenna College in California.
Her heart has always been in India but she has taught in the US for 30 plus years.
She would come twice a year to India and spend about five months.
IMAGE: Shankar and Anjana in Shankar’s Fairies.
What I find interesting is that you worked with your mother and husband to make this film. You and your husband acted in the film, while it was your mother’s story. Creatively, how did you guys work together and how many times would you argue in a day?
Well, we have collaborated in the past as well. My husband is also in theatre so we have similar roles. He is a director and teacher.
We have different areas of interest in theatre, but we have experience with each other’s working style.
My mother and I have collaborated in the operation of Nirman.
Creatively, this was our first major project, so it was new in that way. We enjoyed it.
I think it was a great collaboration because we have distinct skills and areas of expertise. I don’t think I could have done it on my own.
We would argue a lot. All of us have strong opinions.
During the four-five months of pre-production, we would have meetings all day where we would discuss the script.
My mother had written a draft of the screenplay and she also wrote a prose story.
The story was not set in stone in terms of the sequence of events.
She had all the different anecdotes and they could have gone in any direction.
If she liked a particular anecdote, we would go in depth into the themes behind it, how it connects to other things, the characters…
We would dissect each scene in figuring out what we were saying in the film.
That’s the time we perhaps had the most arguments, although I don’t even remember what they were about.
But would you have the final creative control since you were the director of the film?
That way, everyone was clear. During the shoot, I was the only one figuring out the scenes.
My mother stepped back and Gaurav was acting in the film.
It was a very low budget project so they did a lot of production related work during the shoot.
After that, during the post-production, I was the only one working on the film.
They watched the edits and gave feedback. But only I sat with the editor and worked it all out.
IMAGE: Shankar narrates a story to Anjana.
At what stage did your mother say that she had this idea for a film and script? Would she narrate her childhood memories to you?
It happened in a slightly different way. My Nani (maternal grandmother) passed away in January 2016 and the house belonged to her and my Nana.
It was his grandfather’s house and jointly owned by my Nana and his four brothers. But only my grandparents lived there.
After they passed away, the family decided to sell the house.
My mother’s immediate response was that we have to make a film in this house before it was sold.
It was the feeling of preserving an entire lifestyle and so many memories of her childhood.
Her way of life and our way of life is different. It was an important part of her.
It felt like it was coming to an end.
Making a film was a way to save that memory, freeze that time.
Where did Shankar’s stories come from? Does your mother remember these stories from her childhood?
The stories are ones we chose, not the actual ones from my mother’s childhood.
While he was staying with us, we asked the actor, who played Shankar (Jaihind Kumar), to read collections of folk tales.
He would re-tell them to us in the evenings, both to practice narrating stories and so that we could chose the ones we liked.
The djinn story was contributed by (journalist) Mehru Jaffer, who lives in Lucknow and writes about the city. It’s a story her father used to tell her.
Where is this house where the film was shot?
Lucknow. My mother didn’t grow up there since she was a daughter of a police officer and her father was posted to different locations, many different towns of UP. They moved to this place only after my grandfather retired.
All these houses had a similar feel. In a way, this was the house I grew up in because I spent so many summer vacations and other times there.
So it was an interesting mix of my memories of this house and my mother’s memories of her childhood.
Did you add anything to the house? That jhoola which features so prominently in the film, was it always there or you added it for the film?
There was a jhoola in my childhood. It was a common thing in those houses.
But the tree and the jhoola became a symbol for the film.
I see you have the jhoola in your DP in your WhatsApp account. It was just lovely hearing the story Shankar narrates about the fairies sitting on the jhoola and suddenly the camera takes us to the jhoola as is it gently moving. It is one of the most magical moments in the film.
IMAGE: Anjana on the jhoola in Shankar’s Fairies.
Irfana, you had made a few documentaries. But as a first-time feature film-maker, how did you capture the essence of a quiet home? The opening scenes of the sun rising, the workers are sweeping the grounds around the house, the house slowly waking up. I understand a lot of that quiet tone comes through editing. But how did you get it cinematically? You can write memories in books but to bring them in cinema requires a different skill set.
For us, the house was the essential element of the film. The physical feel was always very important.
It was all part of my memories — waking up, seeing the light streaming in from the ventilators, the high ceilings, days when time stretched on, being outside and inside, all those feelings.
So when I was trying to think of how the look of the house should be, all these memories were at the forefront of my decision making.
The characters are placed in that context. I always wanted that visual layer.
Since you know the feeling you are going for, you keep adjusting the elements to get to that.
You cannot plan it in advance but you fine-tune and make minor adjustments during the shoot.
I know theatre is a very different medium but my training in theatre and my experience in different arts and other aesthetics — all of that contributed to the feel and the mood of the film.
We worked so much with the space, what the audience should experience.
Besides you and your husband, how did you cast the three main actors: The man who played Shankar and the young girl and boy?
Jaihind Kumar is an actor in Mumbai. He has played minor roles so far.
He is a friend of my husband from his film and theatre days in Mumbai. He came for the audition.
My husband was very sure about him. We spent quite a lot of time working with him.
He came to Lucknow and stayed with us in the house for three months.
Initially, we didn’t tell anyone that he’s the lead actor, so he worked as the servant of the house and stayed in Shankar’s room which you see in the film.
We don’t always follow such a method, but with him, we thought he should experience the character more intensely.
Every day, the three of us would do some acting exercises for a couple of hours.
He had to be familiar with everything he had to do.
The essence of Shankar is that he is very skilled as a domestic help.
So the poor thing, he played the lead role and he couldn’t stay in a five-star hotel.
Ya (laughs).
When I read that Gaurav and you are married, I began to believe that those two kids are your children.
(Laughs) Many people have thought that. We did workshops in a few schools in Lucknow.
My husband works a lot with children in theatre, age three onwards, and so he conducted them mostly.
The girls we liked, we would invite them, play and interact with them.
The moment we chose this young girl (Shreeja Mishra) was when Gaurav was telling them a story about fairies and she was listening.
You could see it in her eyes that she half believed it.
We just wanted this child to be at the cusp, still believing in fairies, not losing the innocence.
Some of the other girls were good. but they were past that innocence stage.
We worked a lot with her. She would come over almost every day after school.
How old was she when you were shooting?
She was nine years old.
The relationship and comfort she had with Shankar, even though she knew she was acting, seemed so natural. You start to believe that she and the little boy have known this man in real life. I guess you did a lot of workshops with the three of them.
Yes. The little boy (Adwik Mathur) was only four at that time.
He was more reserved.
We wanted them both to develop a relationship with Shankar and us.
Shreeja is very talented. Even I am blown away by the expressions in her eyes.
I am so impressed with how much you achieved so much in such a low budget. There is something so unique in the narrative. I was reminded of Kabuliwala. Did you think of stories like that?
In the beginning, I didn’t think of the influences.
We were wrapped in the project and the enormity of it.
It was the first narrative film I was working on.
Later I realised that there were many sources to pull from.
Of course, there is the training in film-making, but all your experiences and reading also influence your thought.
It’s better not to be too concrete about things you are drawing from and allow for it to go through your less conscious intuitions.
I saw the video of the making of the film. You shot it in 2016. I saw the work-in-progress cut of the film at NFDC’s Film Bazaar in 2019 and then the pandemic ruined everyone’s lives. But you have been with this film for a very long time.
We cheated a little bit. The idea of the film suddenly came to us, but we had other plans and projects as well.
Right after the film was shot, we went off on a theatre tour.
Then my husband and I had a baby.
So I got back to the film in the beginning of 2019. That’s when I worked on the edit.
Our German editor left last year because of the pandemic, even though it was going very well.
So I made another edit for last year’s Cannes market. I worked with Tanushree Das (Eeb Allay Ooo) to edit the final cut.
It was a lot of getting into the film and then leaving it a few times. In a way, that helped me.
We had scripted the film, but it wasn’t plot driven and set in stone.
It allowed me the time to think about what we were trying to do.
You dedicate the film to Shankar. Was that the real person’s name? Is he still alive?
Shankar’s is the only name we didn’t change, so yes, there was a real Shankar. He passed away in 1988.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
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recentnews18-blog · 5 years
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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/maysoon-zayid-interview-i-want-to-be-the-image-of-the-american-you-dont-think-is-american/
Maysoon Zayid interview: 'I want to be the image of the American you don't think is American'
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US standup comedian Maysoon Zayid likes to joke that if there were a competition called the Oppression Olympics, she would win gold.
“I’m Palestinian, Muslim, I’m a woman of colour, I’m disabled,” Zayid, who has cerebral palsy, tells audiences, before pausing a beat to hang her head, her long dark hair curtaining her face, “and I live in New Jersey”.
The joke lands laughs whether Zayid tells it in red states or blue, and puts people exactly where Zayid wants them: disarmed, charmed and eager for more. She told it near the beginning of her 2014 TED Talk, which drew nearly 15 million views, became the most-watched TED Talk that year and changed Zayid’s life. She now has a development deal with ABC to create a semi-autobiographical sitcom called Can-Can, starring her.
Read more
The show faces daunting odds; only a handful of the dozens of scripts networks order each autumn make it to air. But if Can-Can makes it all the way – Zayid told studio executives that she would end up in an internment camp if it didn’t – it may push two populations, one widely ignored, the other demonised, from the country’s margins into the mainstream.
People with disabilities make up nearly 20 per cent of the population yet account for about 2 per cent of onscreen characters, some 95 per cent of which are played by able-bodied stars. And it is hard to imagine a group more vilified in the United States than Muslims or Middle Easterners, whom, as Zayid’s television writing partner, Joanna Quraishi, said, “Americans see as either terrorists or Kardashians.”
The executive producers of Can-Can include Todd Milliner and Sean Hayes, who plays Jack on Will & Grace, itself a groundbreaking show credited with helping make gay characters mainstream. Milliner and Hayes are well aware of the envelope-pushing potential of Can-Can, but said that was not what sold them on Zayid.
Her energy filled the room, and she was self-aware, super smart, and madly funny. Crucially, she had a singular story. “The whole business is moving even more toward authentic stories that aren’t on TV right now,” Milliner said.
Zayid is a vociferous part of a small, dedicated movement calling attention to disability rights in entertainment, which are consistently overlooked in the quote-unquote diversity conversation.
Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, a philanthropic and advocacy organisation for disability rights (it also works to strengthen ties between American Jews and Israel), said Zayid’s show could crush enduring stigmas disabled people face. “Progress is being made very slowly, but shows can be transformational,” he said.
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The Can-Can character will be much like Zayid, a woman who happens to be disabled and Muslim and who grew up in New Jersey with big hair and Metallica T-shirts, navigating love and friendships and the world. “I want to get out there and be the image of the American you don’t think is American, and the Muslim you don’t think of when you think of a Muslim,” she said.
Zayid lives in a bright, plant-filled apartment in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, that she shares with her husband and their cat. She likes to keep her husband’s name under wraps, and publicly refers to him as Chefugee, for he is indeed both a refugee – they met while she was working with refugees in the Palestinian territories – and a chef.
Zayid’s parents, who are from a village outside Ramallah, also raised their family here. Zayid is the youngest of four daughters, and had an idyllic childhood despite a traumatic birth. The doctor botched her mother’s C-section, she said, smothering Zayid. Cerebral palsy is not genetic; it’s often caused by brain trauma before or during birth, and manifests differently in people. Zayid shakes all the time, though yoga has lessened the severity, and can walk but cannot stand for very long (she calls herself a sit-down standup comedian).
Her parents treated her no differently from her siblings. Her father, a gregarious salesman, taught her to walk by having her stand on his feet. She was sent to dance and piano lessons because the family could not afford physical or occupational therapy, and she became a popular high achiever. “I lived in a bubble,” she told me, “and that is very much related to who I am now”.
At college, her bubble burst. She went to Arizona State University on an academic scholarship, and on her first day in an English literature class, her professor stunned her by asking, “Can you read?” She majored in theatre – her lifelong dream has been to appear on General Hospital – yet despite wowing teachers she was never cast in school productions. Even when the theatre department mounted a play about a girl with cerebral palsy, a non-disabled student was chosen over Zayid for the part.
“It was devastating, because I knew I was good,” Zayid said. “The girl who got it was a great actress. But why would anyone want to see her fake cerebral palsy, when I’m sitting right here?”
It was a light-bulb moment, and she realised that the movies she loved with disabled characters, like Born on the Fourth of July, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and Rain Man, all had visibly non-disabled stars. She pursed acting after graduation, until a forthright acting coach told her she would never get cast, and ought to do a one-woman show.
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1/25 Bojack Horseman
A cartoon about a talking horse, starring the goofy older brother from Arrested Development… on paper little about BoJack Horseman screams “must watch”. Yet the series almost immediately transcended its format to deliver a moving and very funny rumination on depression and middle-age malaise. Will Arnett plays BoJack – one time star of Nineties hit sitcom Horsin’ Around – as a lost soul whose turbo-charged narcissism prevents him getting his life together. Almost as good are a support cast including Alison Brie (Glow, Mad Men), Aaron Paul, of Breaking Bad, and Amy Sedaris as a pampered Persian cat who is also BoJack’s agent. Season five touches the live rail of harassment in the movie industry, offering one of the most astute commentaries yet on the #MeToo movement with an episode based centred around an awards ceremony called “The Forgivies”.
Netflix
2/25 Stranger Things
A valentine to the Spielberg school of Eighties blockbuster, with Winona Ryder as a small town mom whose son is abducted by a transdimensional monster. ET, Goonies, Close Encounters, Alien and everything Stephen King wrote between 1975 and 1990 are all tossed into the blender by Millennial writer-creators the Duffer brothers. It was clear Stranger Things was going to be a mega-smash when Barb – the “best friend” character eaten in the second episode – went viral the weekend it dropped.
Netflix
3/25 Daredevil
Netflix’s Marvel shows tend towards the overlong and turgid. An exception is the high-kicking Daredevil, with Charlie Cox’s blind lawyer/crimefighter banishing all memory of Ben Affleck’s turn donning the red jumpsuit in 2003. With New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood as backdrop, Daredevil is caked in street-level grit and features a searing series one performance by Vincent D’Onofrio as the villainous Kingpin. The perfect antidote to the deafening bombast of the big screen Marvel movies.
Netflix
4/25 The Staircase
Did he do it? Does it matter considering the lengths the Durham, North Carolina police seemingly went in order to stitch him up? Sitting through this twisting, turning documenting about the trial of Michael Peterson – charged with the murder in 2003 of his wife – the viewer may find themselves alternately empathising with and recoiling from the accused. It’s a feat of bravura factual filmmaking from French documentarian Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, which comes to Netflix with a recently shot three-part coda catching up with the (very weird) Peterson clan a decade on.
Netflix
5/25 Dark
Stranger Things: the Euro-Gloom years. Netflix’s first German-language production is a pulp romp that thinks it’s a Wagner opera. In a remote town surrounded by a creepy forest locals fear the disappearance of a teenager may be linked to other missing persons cases from decades earlier. The timelines get twisted and it’s obvious that something wicked is emanating from a tunnel leading to a nearby nuclear power plant. Yet if the story sometimes trips itself up the Goonies-meets-Götterdämmerung ambiance keeps you hooked.
Netflix
6/25 A Series of Unfortunate Events
The wry and bleak Lemony Snickett children novels finally get the ghastly adaptation they deserve (let’s all pretend the dreadful 2004 Jim Carrey movie never happened). Neil Patrick Harris gobbles up the scenery as the vain and wicked Count Olaf, desperate to separate the Baudelaire orphans from their considerable inheritance. The look is Tim Burton by way of Wes Anderson, and the dark wit of the books is replicated perfectly (Snickett, aka Daniel Handler, is co-producer).
Netflix
7/25 Maniac
If you’re curious as to how Cary Fukunaga will handle the Bond franchise, his limited series, starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, drops some delicious hints. It’s a mind-bending sci-fi story set in an alternative United States where computers still look like Commodore 64s and in which you pay for goods by having a “travel buddy” sit down and read you adverts. Stone and Hill are star-crossed outcasts participating in a drugs trial that catapults them into a series of trippy genre excursions – including an occult adventure and a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy. It is here that Fukunaga demonstrates his versatility, handling potentially hokey material smartly and respectfully. 007 fans can sleep easy.
Netflix
8/25 Better Call Saul
The Breaking Bad prequel is starting to outgrow the show that spawned it. Where Breaking Bad delivered a master-class in scorched earth storytelling Saul is gentler and more humane. Years before the rise of Walter White, the future meth overlord’s sleazy lawyer, Saul Goodman, is still plain old Jimmy McGill, a striving every-dude trying to catch a break. But how far will he go to make his name and escape the shadow of his superstar attorney brother Chuck (Michael McKean)?
AMC Studios/Netflix
9/25 Black Mirror
Don’t tell Channel 4 but Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series has arguably got even better since making the jump from British terrestrial TV to the realm of megabucks American streaming. Bigger budgets have given creators Brooker and Annabel Jones license to let their imaginations off the leash – yielding unsurpassable episodes such as virtual reality love story “San Junipero” and Star Trek parody “USS Callister”, which has bagged a bunch of Emmys.
Netflix
10/25 Mindhunter
David Fincher produces this serial killer drama based on the writings of a real-life FBI psychological profiler. It’s the post-Watergate Seventies and two maverick G-Men (Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany) are going out on a limb by utilising the latest psychological research to get inside the heads of a motley assembly of real-life sociopathic murders – including the notorious “Co-Ed” butcher Ed Kemper, brought chillingly to live in an Emmy-nominated performance by Cameron Britton.
Netflix
11/25 The Crown
A right royal blockbuster from dramatist Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost / Nixon). Tracing the reign of Elizabeth II from her days as a wide-eyed young woman propelled to the throne after the surprise early death of her father, The Crown humanises the royals even as it paints their private lives as a bodice-ripping soap. Matt Smith is charmingly roguish as Prince Philip and Vanessa Kirby has ascended the Hollywood ranks on the back of her turn as the flawed yet sympathetic Princess Margaret. Most impressive of all, arguably, is Claire Foy, who plays the Queen as a shy woman thrust unwillingly into the spotlight. Foy and the rest of the principal cast have now departed, with a crew of older actors – headed by Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies – taking over as the middle-aged Windsors for season three.
Netflix
12/25 Narcos
This drug trafficking caper spells out exactly what kind of series it is with an early scene in which two gangsters zip around a multi-level carpark on a motorbike firing a machine gun. Narcos, in other words, is for people who consider Pacino’s Scarface a touch too understated. Series one and two feature a mesmerising performance by Wagner Moura as Columbian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, while season three focuses on the notorious Cali cartel. Reported to be one of Netflix’s biggest hits – the company doesn’t release audience figures – the fourth season turns its attention to Mexico’s interminable drugs wars.
Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix
13/25 Master Of None
A cloud hangs over Aziz Ansari’s future after he was embroiled in the #MeToo scandal. But whatever happens, he has left us with a humane and riveting sitcom about an Ansari-proximate character looking for love and trying to establish himself professionally in contemporary New York.
K.C. Bailey / Netflix
14/25 Bloodline
One of Netflix’s early blockbusters, the sprawling soap opera updates Dallas to modern day southern Florida. Against the edge-of-civilisation backdrop of the Florida Keys, Kyle Chandler plays the local detective and favourite son of a well-to-do family. Their idyllic lives are thrown into chaos with the return of the clan’s black sheep (an unnervingly intense Ben Mendelsohn). The story is spectacularly hokey but searing performances by Chandler and Mendelsohn, and by Sissy Spacek and the late Sam Shepard as their imperious parents, make Bloodline compelling – a guilty pleasure that, actually, you shouldn’t feel all that guilty about.
Rod Millington/Netflix
15/25 The Alienist
You can almost smell the shoddy sanitation and horse-manure in this lavish murder-mystery set in 19th New York. We’re firmly in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York territory, with a serial killer bumping off boy prostitutes across Manhattan. Enter pioneering criminal psychologist Dr Laszlo Kreisler (Daniel Brühl), aided by newspaper man John Moore (Luke Evans) and feisty lady detective Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning).
Kurt Iswarienko
16/25 Love
Judd Apatow bring his signature gross-out comedy to the small screen. Love, which Apatow produced, is a masterclass in restraint compared to 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up etc. Paul Rust is Gus, a nerdish movie set tutor, whose develops a crush on Gillian Jacobs’s too-cool-for-school radio producer Mickey. Romance, of a sort, blossoms – but Love’s triumph is to acknowledge the complications of real life and to disabuse its characters of the idea that there’s such a thing as a straightforward happy ending. Hipster LA provides the bustling setting.
Netflix
17/25 Queer Eye
Who says reality TV has to be nasty and manipulative? This updating of the early 2000s hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has five stereotype-challenging gay men sharing lifestyle tips and fashion advice with an engaging cast of All American schlubs (the first two seasons are shot mostly in the state of Georgia). There are laughs – but serious moment too, such as when one of the crew refuses to enter a church because of the still unhealed scars of his strict Christian upbringing.
Netflix
18/25 Chef’s Table
A high-gloss revamping of the traditional TV food show. Each episode profiles a high wattage international chef; across its three seasons, the series has featured gastronomic superstars from the US, Argentina, India and Korea.
Charles Panian/Netflix
19/25 Arrested Development
A disastrous group interview in which actor Jason Bateman “mansplained” away the bullying co-star Jessica Walter had suffered at the hands of fellow cast-member Jeffrey Tambor meant season five of Arrested Development was fatally compromised before it even landed. Yet Netflix’s return to the dysfunctional world of the Bluth family stands on its merits and is a worthy addition to the surreal humour of seasons one through three (series four, which had to work around the busy schedules of the cast, is disposable by comparison).
Netflix
20/25 Altered Carbon
Netflix does Bladerunner with this sumptuous adaptation of the cult Richard Morgan novel. The setting is a neon-splashed cyberpunk future in which the super-wealthy live forever by uploading the consciousness into new “skins”. Enter rebel-turned-detective Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), hired to find out who killed a (since resurrected) zillionaire industrialist while dealing with fallout from his own troubled past. Rumoured to be one of Netflix’s most expensive projects yet, for its second run, Anthony Mackie (aka Marvel’s Falcon) replaced Kinnaman as the shape-shifting Kovacs.
Netflix
21/25 Rick and Morty
Dan Harmon, creator of cult sitcom Community (also on Netflix), finds the perfect outlet for zany fanboy imagination with this crazed animated comedy about a Marty McFly/Doc Brown-esque duo of time travellers. Every genre imaginable is parodied with the manic energy and zinging dialogue we have come to expect from Harmon.
Netflix/Adult Swim
22/25 GLOW
Mad Men’s Alison Brie is our entry point into this comedy-drama inspired by a real life all-female wrestling league in the Eighties. Ruth Wilder (Brie) is a down-on-her luck actor who, out of desperation, signs up a wrestling competition willed into being by Sam Sylvia (podcast king Marc Maron). Britrock singer Kate Nash is one of her her fellow troupe members: the larger than life Rhonda “Britannica” Richardson.
Netflix
23/25 Archer
Deadpan animated satire about an idiot super spy with shaken and stirred mother issues. One of the most ambitious modern comedies, animated or otherwise, Archer tries on different varieties of humour for size and even occasionally tugs at the heart strings.
24/25 Ozark
Breaking Bad for those with short attention spans. The saga of Walter White took years to track the iconic anti-hero’s rise from mild mannered everyman to dead-eyed criminal. Ozark gets there in the first half hour as nebbish Chicago accountant Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) agrees to serve as lieutenant for the Mexican mob in the hillbilly heartlands of Ozark, Missouri (in return they thoughtfully spare his life). Bateman, usually seen in comedy roles, is a revelation as is Laura Linney as his nasty wife Wendy. There is also a break-out performance by Julia Garner playing the scion of a local redneck crime family.
Netflix
25/25 The Good Place
A heavenly comedy with a twist. Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is a cynical schlub waved through the Pearly Gates by mistake after dying in a bizarre supermarket accident. There she must remain above the suspicions of seemingly well-meaning but disorganised angel Michael (Ted Danson) whilst also negotiating fractious relationships with do-gooder Chidi (William Jackson Harper), spoiled princess Tahani (former T4 presenter Jameela Jamil) and ex-drug dealer Jason (Manny Jacinto).
Netflix
1/25 Bojack Horseman
A cartoon about a talking horse, starring the goofy older brother from Arrested Development… on paper little about BoJack Horseman screams “must watch”. Yet the series almost immediately transcended its format to deliver a moving and very funny rumination on depression and middle-age malaise. Will Arnett plays BoJack – one time star of Nineties hit sitcom Horsin’ Around – as a lost soul whose turbo-charged narcissism prevents him getting his life together. Almost as good are a support cast including Alison Brie (Glow, Mad Men), Aaron Paul, of Breaking Bad, and Amy Sedaris as a pampered Persian cat who is also BoJack’s agent. Season five touches the live rail of harassment in the movie industry, offering one of the most astute commentaries yet on the #MeToo movement with an episode based centred around an awards ceremony called “The Forgivies”.
Netflix
2/25 Stranger Things
A valentine to the Spielberg school of Eighties blockbuster, with Winona Ryder as a small town mom whose son is abducted by a transdimensional monster. ET, Goonies, Close Encounters, Alien and everything Stephen King wrote between 1975 and 1990 are all tossed into the blender by Millennial writer-creators the Duffer brothers. It was clear Stranger Things was going to be a mega-smash when Barb – the “best friend” character eaten in the second episode – went viral the weekend it dropped.
Netflix
3/25 Daredevil
Netflix’s Marvel shows tend towards the overlong and turgid. An exception is the high-kicking Daredevil, with Charlie Cox’s blind lawyer/crimefighter banishing all memory of Ben Affleck’s turn donning the red jumpsuit in 2003. With New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood as backdrop, Daredevil is caked in street-level grit and features a searing series one performance by Vincent D’Onofrio as the villainous Kingpin. The perfect antidote to the deafening bombast of the big screen Marvel movies.
Netflix
4/25 The Staircase
Did he do it? Does it matter considering the lengths the Durham, North Carolina police seemingly went in order to stitch him up? Sitting through this twisting, turning documenting about the trial of Michael Peterson – charged with the murder in 2003 of his wife – the viewer may find themselves alternately empathising with and recoiling from the accused. It’s a feat of bravura factual filmmaking from French documentarian Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, which comes to Netflix with a recently shot three-part coda catching up with the (very weird) Peterson clan a decade on.
Netflix
5/25 Dark
Stranger Things: the Euro-Gloom years. Netflix’s first German-language production is a pulp romp that thinks it’s a Wagner opera. In a remote town surrounded by a creepy forest locals fear the disappearance of a teenager may be linked to other missing persons cases from decades earlier. The timelines get twisted and it’s obvious that something wicked is emanating from a tunnel leading to a nearby nuclear power plant. Yet if the story sometimes trips itself up the Goonies-meets-Götterdämmerung ambiance keeps you hooked.
Netflix
6/25 A Series of Unfortunate Events
The wry and bleak Lemony Snickett children novels finally get the ghastly adaptation they deserve (let’s all pretend the dreadful 2004 Jim Carrey movie never happened). Neil Patrick Harris gobbles up the scenery as the vain and wicked Count Olaf, desperate to separate the Baudelaire orphans from their considerable inheritance. The look is Tim Burton by way of Wes Anderson, and the dark wit of the books is replicated perfectly (Snickett, aka Daniel Handler, is co-producer).
Netflix
7/25 Maniac
If you’re curious as to how Cary Fukunaga will handle the Bond franchise, his limited series, starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, drops some delicious hints. It’s a mind-bending sci-fi story set in an alternative United States where computers still look like Commodore 64s and in which you pay for goods by having a “travel buddy” sit down and read you adverts. Stone and Hill are star-crossed outcasts participating in a drugs trial that catapults them into a series of trippy genre excursions – including an occult adventure and a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy. It is here that Fukunaga demonstrates his versatility, handling potentially hokey material smartly and respectfully. 007 fans can sleep easy.
Netflix
8/25 Better Call Saul
The Breaking Bad prequel is starting to outgrow the show that spawned it. Where Breaking Bad delivered a master-class in scorched earth storytelling Saul is gentler and more humane. Years before the rise of Walter White, the future meth overlord’s sleazy lawyer, Saul Goodman, is still plain old Jimmy McGill, a striving every-dude trying to catch a break. But how far will he go to make his name and escape the shadow of his superstar attorney brother Chuck (Michael McKean)?
AMC Studios/Netflix
9/25 Black Mirror
Don’t tell Channel 4 but Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series has arguably got even better since making the jump from British terrestrial TV to the realm of megabucks American streaming. Bigger budgets have given creators Brooker and Annabel Jones license to let their imaginations off the leash – yielding unsurpassable episodes such as virtual reality love story “San Junipero” and Star Trek parody “USS Callister”, which has bagged a bunch of Emmys.
Netflix
10/25 Mindhunter
David Fincher produces this serial killer drama based on the writings of a real-life FBI psychological profiler. It’s the post-Watergate Seventies and two maverick G-Men (Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany) are going out on a limb by utilising the latest psychological research to get inside the heads of a motley assembly of real-life sociopathic murders – including the notorious “Co-Ed” butcher Ed Kemper, brought chillingly to live in an Emmy-nominated performance by Cameron Britton.
Netflix
11/25 The Crown
A right royal blockbuster from dramatist Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost / Nixon). Tracing the reign of Elizabeth II from her days as a wide-eyed young woman propelled to the throne after the surprise early death of her father, The Crown humanises the royals even as it paints their private lives as a bodice-ripping soap. Matt Smith is charmingly roguish as Prince Philip and Vanessa Kirby has ascended the Hollywood ranks on the back of her turn as the flawed yet sympathetic Princess Margaret. Most impressive of all, arguably, is Claire Foy, who plays the Queen as a shy woman thrust unwillingly into the spotlight. Foy and the rest of the principal cast have now departed, with a crew of older actors – headed by Olivia Colman and Tobias Menzies – taking over as the middle-aged Windsors for season three.
Netflix
12/25 Narcos
This drug trafficking caper spells out exactly what kind of series it is with an early scene in which two gangsters zip around a multi-level carpark on a motorbike firing a machine gun. Narcos, in other words, is for people who consider Pacino’s Scarface a touch too understated. Series one and two feature a mesmerising performance by Wagner Moura as Columbian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, while season three focuses on the notorious Cali cartel. Reported to be one of Netflix’s biggest hits – the company doesn’t release audience figures – the fourth season turns its attention to Mexico’s interminable drugs wars.
Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix
13/25 Master Of None
A cloud hangs over Aziz Ansari’s future after he was embroiled in the #MeToo scandal. But whatever happens, he has left us with a humane and riveting sitcom about an Ansari-proximate character looking for love and trying to establish himself professionally in contemporary New York.
K.C. Bailey / Netflix
14/25 Bloodline
One of Netflix’s early blockbusters, the sprawling soap opera updates Dallas to modern day southern Florida. Against the edge-of-civilisation backdrop of the Florida Keys, Kyle Chandler plays the local detective and favourite son of a well-to-do family. Their idyllic lives are thrown into chaos with the return of the clan’s black sheep (an unnervingly intense Ben Mendelsohn). The story is spectacularly hokey but searing performances by Chandler and Mendelsohn, and by Sissy Spacek and the late Sam Shepard as their imperious parents, make Bloodline compelling – a guilty pleasure that, actually, you shouldn’t feel all that guilty about.
Rod Millington/Netflix
15/25 The Alienist
You can almost smell the shoddy sanitation and horse-manure in this lavish murder-mystery set in 19th New York. We’re firmly in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York territory, with a serial killer bumping off boy prostitutes across Manhattan. Enter pioneering criminal psychologist Dr Laszlo Kreisler (Daniel Brühl), aided by newspaper man John Moore (Luke Evans) and feisty lady detective Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning).
Kurt Iswarienko
16/25 Love
Judd Apatow bring his signature gross-out comedy to the small screen. Love, which Apatow produced, is a masterclass in restraint compared to 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up etc. Paul Rust is Gus, a nerdish movie set tutor, whose develops a crush on Gillian Jacobs’s too-cool-for-school radio producer Mickey. Romance, of a sort, blossoms – but Love’s triumph is to acknowledge the complications of real life and to disabuse its characters of the idea that there’s such a thing as a straightforward happy ending. Hipster LA provides the bustling setting.
Netflix
17/25 Queer Eye
Who says reality TV has to be nasty and manipulative? This updating of the early 2000s hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy has five stereotype-challenging gay men sharing lifestyle tips and fashion advice with an engaging cast of All American schlubs (the first two seasons are shot mostly in the state of Georgia). There are laughs – but serious moment too, such as when one of the crew refuses to enter a church because of the still unhealed scars of his strict Christian upbringing.
Netflix
18/25 Chef’s Table
A high-gloss revamping of the traditional TV food show. Each episode profiles a high wattage international chef; across its three seasons, the series has featured gastronomic superstars from the US, Argentina, India and Korea.
Charles Panian/Netflix
19/25 Arrested Development
A disastrous group interview in which actor Jason Bateman “mansplained” away the bullying co-star Jessica Walter had suffered at the hands of fellow cast-member Jeffrey Tambor meant season five of Arrested Development was fatally compromised before it even landed. Yet Netflix’s return to the dysfunctional world of the Bluth family stands on its merits and is a worthy addition to the surreal humour of seasons one through three (series four, which had to work around the busy schedules of the cast, is disposable by comparison).
Netflix
20/25 Altered Carbon
Netflix does Bladerunner with this sumptuous adaptation of the cult Richard Morgan novel. The setting is a neon-splashed cyberpunk future in which the super-wealthy live forever by uploading the consciousness into new “skins”. Enter rebel-turned-detective Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), hired to find out who killed a (since resurrected) zillionaire industrialist while dealing with fallout from his own troubled past. Rumoured to be one of Netflix’s most expensive projects yet, for its second run, Anthony Mackie (aka Marvel’s Falcon) replaced Kinnaman as the shape-shifting Kovacs.
Netflix
21/25 Rick and Morty
Dan Harmon, creator of cult sitcom Community (also on Netflix), finds the perfect outlet for zany fanboy imagination with this crazed animated comedy about a Marty McFly/Doc Brown-esque duo of time travellers. Every genre imaginable is parodied with the manic energy and zinging dialogue we have come to expect from Harmon.
Netflix/Adult Swim
22/25 GLOW
Mad Men’s Alison Brie is our entry point into this comedy-drama inspired by a real life all-female wrestling league in the Eighties. Ruth Wilder (Brie) is a down-on-her luck actor who, out of desperation, signs up a wrestling competition willed into being by Sam Sylvia (podcast king Marc Maron). Britrock singer Kate Nash is one of her her fellow troupe members: the larger than life Rhonda “Britannica” Richardson.
Netflix
23/25 Archer
Deadpan animated satire about an idiot super spy with shaken and stirred mother issues. One of the most ambitious modern comedies, animated or otherwise, Archer tries on different varieties of humour for size and even occasionally tugs at the heart strings.
24/25 Ozark
Breaking Bad for those with short attention spans. The saga of Walter White took years to track the iconic anti-hero’s rise from mild mannered everyman to dead-eyed criminal. Ozark gets there in the first half hour as nebbish Chicago accountant Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) agrees to serve as lieutenant for the Mexican mob in the hillbilly heartlands of Ozark, Missouri (in return they thoughtfully spare his life). Bateman, usually seen in comedy roles, is a revelation as is Laura Linney as his nasty wife Wendy. There is also a break-out performance by Julia Garner playing the scion of a local redneck crime family.
Netflix
25/25 The Good Place
A heavenly comedy with a twist. Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) is a cynical schlub waved through the Pearly Gates by mistake after dying in a bizarre supermarket accident. There she must remain above the suspicions of seemingly well-meaning but disorganised angel Michael (Ted Danson) whilst also negotiating fractious relationships with do-gooder Chidi (William Jackson Harper), spoiled princess Tahani (former T4 presenter Jameela Jamil) and ex-drug dealer Jason (Manny Jacinto).
Netflix
Zayid took comedy classes instead, began to get gigs, and after 11 September started the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival with Dean Obeidallah. “The simplest way for me to describe Maysoon is fearless,” Obeidallah said.
She also toured with the standup comedy show Arabs Gone Wild, landed a part in Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and became a political commentator on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which proved a revelation.
Zayid had long understood that some non-disabled people recoiled at disabilities out of fear. “They’re one popped blood vessel or car accident away from being this way,” she said. But her Olbermann appearances drew hateful online comments calling her, she said, “a Gumby-mouth terrorist” and “an honour killing gone wrong”. It was the first time Zayid had been mocked for being disabled, and made her suddenly aware of the abuse that disabled people routinely faced.
After Zayid’s TED Talk went viral, she became one of the most booked speakers at the huge talent agency WME, and used her bigger platform to push questions forward: Where were the visibly disabled news anchors and talk-show hosts? Why, outside a handful of shows – among them Switched at Birth, Breaking Bad, American Horror Story and Speechless – were visibly disabled actors largely absent from television? Why was it OK for non-disabled stars to play disabled characters – a practice nicknamed “CripFace” – and win big awards?
While performances by, say, Joaquin Phoenix as a wheelchair-using cartoonist or Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking largely go unquestioned, and even lauded, by non-disabled people, Zayid said that for many people with disabilities, their acting looks cartoonish, exaggerated, offensive and inauthentic.
“You can put on makeup to look Asian or Latino or black, but black, Asian and Latino people know you’re not,” she said. “And disabled people watching their disabilities being poorly portrayed know it’s not them either.” Or, as she says onstage, if a person in a wheelchair can’t play Beyoncé, Beyoncé can’t play a person in a wheelchair.
Zayid will find out in January whether her show is to be made into a pilot. In the meantime, she is zipping around the world. In recent years, her gigs have included performing at the Team Beachbody Coach Summit – it’s for workout fiends – in Nashville, Tennessee; opening for rapper Pitbull in Las Vegas; and doing comedy, in both Arabic and English, in the United Arab Emirates (“They loved me,” she said).
At every turn, she slaps down people for using a particularly dreaded word. “If you think I’m inspirational because I go and do sit-down standup comedy uncovered and uncensored in the middle of the Arab world, I’ll take it,” she said.
“If you think I’m inspirational because I wake up in the morning and don’t weep about the fact that I’m disabled, that’s not inspirational,” she continued. “That’s like I make you feel better about yourself because you’re not me. I want to make you feel better about yourself because I made you laugh.”
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Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/maysoon-zayid-interview-comedian-standup-disability-activist-ted-talk-can-can-show-a8626201.html
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italiasoloitalia · 6 years
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Days 20, 21: Pescara del Tronto
Glimpses of the turquoise waters of the Adriatic as take the autostradale towards Pescara del Tronto. Green, lush patchwork countryside to our right. We decide to overnight in Ascoli Piceno though my cousin Anna is in Rome atm so we stay at Torre 100. Straight into Piazza del Popolo to see that beautiful space and have a coffee at Caffe Meletti. Yay! It is the quiet of siesta time but we explore the major buildings and churches around it and Piazza Arringo. Medieval history at every turn. Several buildings showing repair work yo earthquake damage.
After a refresh and feet up we return for aperitivo and the piazza is glowing in the afternoon sun, there is a group of well-dressed family members gathered in the centre, cones of confetti at the ready as they await the bridal couple from the civil ceremony in the comune. Pigeons swoop, children bike, families circle and the scene is a delight. Dinner nearby at Trattoria Nonna Nina begins with Oliva Ascolane, certamente, they’re very good though the olive has not been peeled (a la orange) but split and stuffed - the olive itself is ‘fleshier’: 8 olives for 5€! Not $4 each like in Melbourne that time! A beautiful stroll back through lively streets.
Pear-shaped! It had to happen I guess for things too good - Glenn wakes after a restless night, dizzy and unbalanced on his feet, slightly nauseous. One would forgive forgive us for 😱😨 ... stroke? after friends’ recent events. 🤔 middle ear/vertigo ? Because we were to be iheading to the somewhat isolated village with limited access to medical care, I thought doctor best option but not so...ambulance to hospital 🤢 where within the hour he’s on a drip, followed by a ‘tac’ (head scan), followed by a specialist otorino (ent) who diagnoses middle ear/ vertigo, medication and I’m guiding wobbly-boot to taxi at 2pm. Amazing service and attention from hotel staff, three lovely female ambo’s, nurses and orderlies....all for...zip, niente! 😲
The hotel have kept our room and as we enter, Caterina my cousin rings - we were to be calling her tomorrow and I had not wanted to trouble them with this until tomorrow. I asked what made you call, “ti sentivo vicino” (I felt you near) 😌
We decide to let G rest and tomorrow they will come to drive our car to village as G of course should not drive till that dizziness goes 🙄. I scurry out to fill the script and ... the first rain of our holiday descends - thunder cracking, torrential, hail kinda rain .. yep, pear-shaped
“Don’t complain” I mutter as I trudge along - the first hiccup...(non è grave, solo fastidioso: not grave just annoying said dottore) and hopefully within a few days he’ll be ok and to top it off, we’ll be with famiglia. Next hiccup, farmacia doesn’t have one of the medications, ritorna domani mattina - I anxiously respond “but that will delay his recovery”...no, no the compresse (capsules) will be the help, intanto. All this today in Italian mind you! Exhausted, I pull in out of the torrent into a welcoming bar to get a bite for G and a welcome macchiatone! Forza Leda!
A picnic dinner in and early night after getting in touch with my family in Pescara del Tronto and they insist they will come in tomorrow morning to drive our car back to paese. I’m at la farmacia on the dot of 9am after having called into the same bar for a cappuccino. Must say I felt like a local on the way back, a signora having done her morning chore and back home. Now is the time for me to put on my infermiera 👩‍⚕️hat and administer G’s prescribed puntara (injection). 😱🤷‍♀️. Gs not convinced I can manage so I go downstairs to prega help from the lovely signora first aid and she is happy to help I’ll simpatico 🙄 signore by showing me how. I plunge that needle with a good jab 🤨 and we head downstairs to see Vinicio on doorstep 😍🤗. We’re off and V and I jabber on the way while poor G keeps his eyes straight ahead. We slow as we pass the paesi along the via Salaria, all affected by the earthquake. PdelT from the road below is as awful as we’d seen and heard via the internet and we move on to the area on the flat near il Fiume Tronto where the ‘provisorio’ casetti (‘provisional little houses’) have been built, together with little shops, bar and community areas, to those who chose to stay in the area instead of relocating, until decisions re future permanent situations are made.
My mother’s family are there with open arms, tears and an heartwarming welcome. Their suffering over the past two years is palpable but they are making the best of their straightened circumstances by beautifying their homes, frequent gatherings, celebrations and planning for the future. The table is set and we await the arrival of family by sharing news, photos and calling Mum. More tears, passing the phone around to all though not mentioning anything to her about G - she’s been praying constantly for our safe journey and we wouldn’t want to shake that faith! g is not himself but putting a brave face on it and when lunch is served he’s given the head of the table and much fun, hand-waving translations and feasting begins. It’s 4pm before coffee is served after prosciutto and melon, lasagne, arrosto di manzo con verdure, piselli con prosciutto, insalata, pomodori e citriole, frutta and zuppa inglese 🤭. G thankfully is not nauseous and able to satisfy the “mangia, mangia” on repeat though is head is still spinning and is wobbly on his feet. Poor thing. I leave him to rest still why I’m taken up to see the village up close. It’s devastating and we are able to walk the upper road where my father’s childhood home stood. It’s mostly rubble save for the cantina which is amazingly in place. A little park near my aunt’s home is now the site of a memorial and there are t-shirts with images of the victims strung along the fence. Very moving as my cousin Pierino goes along telling me who they were and little anecdotes about how and why. Most were not from the village but visiting for summer. At my Zia Fenisia’s home I recognised the edges of the marble stairwell that I so well remember and remnants of the little green tiles that dotted the terrazzo at the front of the house. 😰. It is pleasing to see the beloved Fontana (drinking fountain and one time clothes-washing site), whose renowned water stems from the fantastic Monte Vettore which looms above and behind, has survived but unlikely to remain.
Up to the cimitero to visit the crypts of all the family members on both sides of our family that have passed away over the years and it makes for an emotional day of both joy and sadness. Our family names of Rendina and Filotei are abundant and gives my sense of belonging even more piquancy.
We return and preparations are in progress for dinner 🤭😳 and G is doing ok having had some funny and interesting exchanges in Italglish. So much ribbing, dry and witty remarks tells the story of people who know each other so well, spend a lot of time together yet are caring and respectful. A ‘light’ cena of frittata con buffala, leftovers from lunch, more prosciutto and cheeses, frutta and a ‘marscapone’ (tiramisu but with a very light and loose creamy mascarpone). Uffa! A great day but I need to get Mr Wobby-boot to bed so my kind cousins drive us to nearby Agriturismo Grisciano and will collect us again in morning.
We sleep like logs and wake several times towards morning when everything is dark...dormi says G, it’s still night, dormi says I the next time...finally G gets up to open the shutters to a brilliant sun and it’s 9.30am 🙄😬😆. A cappuccino before we are collected and back to family where the women have been to church and I go to meet them and check out the new church of Santa Croce di PdelT where the original bell has been returned and erected. Inside, only the ancient crucifix and a wooden statue of Our Lady have been saved from the old church which sadly had housed ancient relics. Two new bells are planned in addition to the original and it is lovely to see and know that this important part of their lives is resurrected (😏) and continues to sustain them.
The women are off to the bar for an aperitivo and I am taken in arm ... G tags along but then scampers after the men, making the women laugh with his horrified face and ‘chattering’ gesticulations. Cries of “quando e simpatico!” have him 💁🏼‍♂️🤦‍♀️
Crodino’s (a non-alcoholic Campari-ish fizzy) all ‘round, a platter of olive-oiled bread, prosciutto and lonza and I am joining in the banter like a local. Such fun. That would have done me for lunch but we apparently lunch is at the new ristorante on site! On our way, meetings with many who again introduced themselves as amiche and parenti of my mother, sending her regards and telling anecdotes of their relationship. Sweet.
Lunch is funny - talk about fussy about their food! The trouble is of course that they eat so well at home, that going out never, or rarely, meets their expectations. The antipasti of meats and local cheeses was served (trendily) on wooden platters but as whole salamis and cheeses with knives to slice for yourself. My cousin quipped “when it comes time to pay the bill, I’ll take it outside and leave it there for them to get for themselves”! 🤣. The fantastic spaghetti all’amatriciana had pecorino cheese in the sauce(🤦‍♀️🙇‍♂️); the tagliatelle ai funghi had too many other kinds (and too much of them) and not enough porcini (🤦‍♀️🙇‍♂️); Leda wanted agnello, there wasn’t enough, said Pierino, the potatoes are burnt said Vinicio...let me say, it was all delicious (we’d be very happy for it to be our local!) and it added to our fun!
It’s decided ‘una scarpata’ (a jaunt) to Castelluccio to show us the beginning of the famed ‘la fioratura’ (flowering) of the lentil plains of Monte Vettore, about 15 kms away. I had been with my family when we came when I was 15 and Dad had so wanted us to see it and relive the times he used to climb up from PdelT to tend to fields with his zaino (backpack) of bread and tinned beef (Simmenthal). It is a spectacular drive up and so beautiful in the afternoon light. Castelluccio too was virtually destroyed in the earthquake and the proprietors of the many shops and restaurants have set up food trucks as an interim measure until a restaurant plaza is finished. It is busy with visitors and we are invited for a coffee at the one remaining Agriturismo la Valle Delle Aquile owned by friends of Linda (Vinicio’s daughter) and her boyfriend GianLuca. A fabulous view which is supposed to be even better at sunrise. Next time? The flowers are just beginning to open and the poppies this year are late but it is something I’d love to see at its peak (early to mid July usually). Still, stunning.
The table is laid...again...🤦‍♀️ but the freshest local buffala mozzarella and sweet tomatoes, stracchino and other local cheeses, salads, carciofi, salami, prosciutto etc is hard to resist amidst the cries of “magari un pocchino” (even just a little). Dolci, more, then we’re taken over to the con.tain.errr where they have community gatherings with a kitchen, tables, tv and even karaoke (😫) and all manner of boxes are taken out for us to choose some PdelT mementoes for the family. Lovely.
We are driven back to Grisciano for the night and,all being well, G will drive us back in the morning to farewell before we move on to Orvieto. Yes, many tears, warm embraces, loving wishes to all in the family later and we leave. Such a wonderful few days, even though emotionally draining, my heart is full.
It was fortuitous (or from mum’s prayers🤔) that G’s vertigo thing happened when it did as we were able to work around it in a safe harbour. It’s improving (slightly) daily and it’s more likely, Dr G thinks, stemming from neck exercises and movements he did rather than any middle ear issue.
Orvieto, here we, slowly, come.
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Bryce Dallas Howard on Fertility Struggles and How a New Zealand Healer Helped Her Conceive (Exclusive)
Bryce Dallas Howard was just 5 when she awoke in Queenstown, New Zealand, and gazed out enormous windows into a stunning, awe-inspiring vista. Accompanying her father, director Ron Howard, while he filmed Willow, she was wowed by her first glimpse into a world outside her American homeland, and the powerful moment would stay with her for years to come. But little did the wide-eyed youngster realize that the nation would one day have a profound impact on her journey into motherhood.
In a revealing new interview with ET, the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom star is opening up about the health struggles she faced in her 20s and how the country helped her start a family, find solace and make a life-changing decision to leave Hollywood.
Born in Los Angeles to director Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Alley, Howard was educated on the East Coast, going to school in Connecticut and New York and later attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She eventually returned to Los Angeles after her film career took off following her debut in 2004’s The Village.
It was at New York University where she met actor Seth Gabel, whom she would date for five years before the two got married in 2006. Soon after getting engaged, the couple found themselves facing major hurdles with their family dreams. “I was really struggling and having some challenges,” Howard says. “I learned that I was going to need minor surgery in order to conceive. Then my friend had an appointment with a New Zealand man, Papa Joe, who would come over once a year and stay in this incredible house in Topanga Canyon, where he and his folks would heal people. I was sharing my woes with my friend and she said, ‘They’re leaving tomorrow, you should take my appointment!’”
The late Maori elder was a well-respected healer who traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe helping people and released a book in 2006 about his spiritual methods. Howard took the opportunity, but walked in with doubts about how much his practices could help her. Yet, within seconds of arriving, she recalls feeling the “powerful” nature of his practice.
“Instantly, without me saying anything, he saw what was going on and explained the situation,” Howard recalls. “He did very physical, rigorous body work, and there was a midwife there who helped me breathe through the experience.”
Howard and Gabel married on June 17, and seven days later, Howard learned she was pregnant. “We weren’t even trying! His session healed me completely,” she says.
Shortly afterward, Howard attended her first midwife appointment and noticed a photo of Papa Joe on the wall, only to find out that he had died six months earlier. “I was so grateful that I got to be a part of that last group of people who were treated by him. I’ve always felt a great amount of indebtedness and thankfulness,” Howard says, revealing that when she returned to New Zealand 30 years after her first visit to film Pete’s Dragon, “I kept thinking, ‘I would love to visit the group to say thank you, even though Papa Joe is gone.’”
While staying at the Treetops Lodge in Rotorua for her 34th birthday, Howard, now a mother of two, signed up to get a Romiromi massage, a holistic Maori body treatment. “I was telling the Maori gentleman my story, and as soon as I said, ‘Papa Joe,’ he just lit up and went, ‘My teacher!’” she recalls. It turned out that Papa Joe had trained him. “It’s funny how I was 24 when he treated me and this encounter was on my 34th birthday, 10 years later.”
While Howard is eternally grateful for the healing rituals of the country’s native Maori people, her joy was temporarily jolted to a halt with the unexpected turbulence that swept through her life after welcoming her son, Theo, in 2007. The Black Mirror star has openly discussed her battle with severe post-natal depression and, in a blog written for Goop  in 2010, she shared how she “heaved uncontrollable sobs,” referred to her newborn as “it,” greeted Gabel with expletive-filled outbursts and frequently broke down in the shower during her first 18 months of motherhood.
Reflecting on the emotional roller coaster and irony of having struggled on her path to having a baby, only to plunge into depression once she did, Howard says she frequently felt like her mind was playing tricks on her. “It was the worst! You think the one thing you’re going to be able to control in life, to a certain extent, is your own feelings, especially when it’s so obvious what you should feel. But all of a sudden, I went through this experience, which was truly chemical. It absolutely changed everything, and it’s just horrifying. It’s like your heart, your body and your mind are ripped apart and it takes a while to piece it back together.”
Eventually, a homeopathic treatment plan, a mothers’ group and Brooke Shields’ memoir Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression helped her recover. “It’s been a journey, but I’m really lucky because I had a second pregnancy [with daughter, Beatrice] where I didn’t experience that, so that was also very healing for me,” Howard says.
The biggest lesson from the ordeal has been to give herself timeouts. “When I think back about what I would have done differently [while suffering with PND], I would have given myself time and space to be alone and process and have some perspective, whether that’s 10 minutes in the bathroom -- well, it shouldn’t just be 10 minutes in the bathroom, but that’s what it ends up being!” Howard says.
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Bryce Dallas Howard seen in front of the Tāne Mahuta, a giant kauri tree in the Waipoua Forest of New Zealand.
Julian Apse
“In a way, that’s what New Zealand has felt like for me and for a lot of people I talk to,” continues the actress, who was named New Zealand Tourism Ambassador to the United States and Canada in 2017. “You get that moment to step out of the fray, good or bad, and be in a place where you’re nurtured, replenished and brought back to your center. Every single time I’ve gone there, I’ve felt totally restored. It’s a very healing part of the world and there’s just a lot of people who live there who are very happy -- and that’s infectious!”
It was while living in dreamy spots like Mount Maunganui, during filming of Pete’s Dragon, that Howard started noticing a shift in her children, which instigated her and Gabel’s recent decision to leave Hollywood. Theo was almost 7 and Beatrice was 3 when the family left behind a Californian winter to wake up to summer in the South Pacific. “Right off the bat, the kids were like, ‘What kind of magic is happening here?’”
Quickly becoming immersed in Kiwi life, the impact of their new environment became evident as the family settled into their new seaside home, where the children soaked up “tropical summer living,” and attended a local school. The family relocated to a farm in the South Island town of Tapanui, near Dunedin, where they reveled in country life and relished every inch of expansive open spaces.
Having spent her childhood running around the woods of Connecticut, Howard was frequently sentimental about her own youth. “Both environments we lived in were very different, yet the similarity was that connection to nature and that sense of being in a sanctuary. They just became wild, happy, fulfilled kids, who were tired and dirty at the end of the day. It sounds overly simplistic, but I felt that they were safe -- so then they felt safe. And that feeling really empowered them as young people to explore, have adventures, walk a little further out of the yard than they normally would, climb a tree and follow through with curiosity.”
With her kids being closer to nature than they had ever been before, Howard encouraged them to be free. “It woke them up and made them excited to go outside,” she says. “That’s something they haven’t let go of, and seeing them in that environment hugely inspired us to move out into the country, because I saw how much they blossomed.” Now back in the United States, the family left Los Angeles for upstate New York, where they’re now living in the countryside.
Of course, it’s the dinosaurs stomping into theaters in June that many fans are most excited about, and having reprised her role as Claire in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Howard promises the film will wow in a way the franchise never has before. “There’s something happening on Isla Nublar putting all the dinosaurs’ lives in jeopardy and Claire and Owen go to save them. The story really goes in a direction where the franchise has never gone before -- ultimately, taking these dinosaurs off the island.”
While she's tight-lipped about plot details, Howard did admit that Claire is sporting more appropriate footwear in the new installment, which is even better for outrunning dinosaurs. But what really prepared the actress for all that intense filming and dino-chasing were extensive hikes in New Zealand. “My favorite active thing to do is to hike. It’s not just about keeping fit and preparing for the film; for me, it’s also about de-stressing. When I’m hiking, it gets me back to a very grounded, healthy, centered place,” Howard says.
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the-weekdays · 6 years
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Rohingya Mothers & Children: We Are Their Hope
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It wasn’t until today that the word Rohingya pops up in my mind. I feel somewhat ignorant for not knowing such harrowing and heartbreaking issue that is currently going on in the world. As a matter of fact, thanks to my lecturer, mba Nena, for ‘forcing’ me to read and do a research regarding this particular topic as one of the class’ assignments. So, who exactly the Rohingya are? You might ask.
From the 135 official ethnic groups that are recognized by Myanmar, the Rohingya being majority Muslim residing in majority Buddhist Myanmar, have been left out thus making them stateless and stripped of their citizenship since 1982. This causes limitations of their access to proper healthcare, education and job opportunities, practicing their religion, travelling and even to marry the person they love. Essentially every basic human rights that everyone should acquire, you name it, are unavailable to them. If this story is not compelling enough to depict how horrifying to be a Rohingya is, wait until you read what I’m about to tell.
Only recently in August 25th 2017 this refugee crisis situation reached its peak when more than 30 police posts and an army base were attacked by Rohingya ARSA (Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army) militants and retaliated by Myanmar’s military backed by local Buddhist mobs by burning civilians’ villages in Rakhine State and attacking them to death. The United Nations has officially declared this atrocities as genocidal crime through ‘ethnic cleansing’ carried out by the Myanmar government. As a result of the incident, from 1 million people of Rohingya in Myanmar, around more than half of them or 590,000 people to be exact, have fled to Bangladesh by October 2017 to seek for a safe place to stay making it said to be the world’s most rapid mass exodus from any country. And on this article, I would like to focus more on Rohingya women and children that turned out making 60% and 58% of the refugee population, respectively.
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Following this tragedy, the condition of women, their babies as well as children of Rohingya in Myanmar, Bangladeshi refugees camp site and those who are trapped in the border of both countries is getting even worse and in my opinion they need to get more exposure because the situation is very worrying and devastating. Saddening stories of young mothers having to gave birth while they fled and unable to breastfeed their newborn babies because they are traumatized and the inadequate amount of nutritious food consumed are just the tip of the iceberg. The suffering does not stop there, mass killings and gang rapes also happened to both women and young girls. A mother even recalled the night where she was raped and forcefully had to watch her baby being thrown to a fire by the Myanmar troops, if that was not painful enough to read then I don’t know what is.
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Children, the most vulnerable victims of this conflict, has become my main concern. None of them should ever witnessed atrocities executed in their surroundings in such young age as this may lead to a toxic long-term trauma which definitely impact their mental health currently and in the future, hence an immediate action is required. Even worse, there are reportedly around 12,000 unaccompanied orphans whose parents are killed and in the end have to leave their homes and survive alone. Living in an open area while consuming water from muddy ponds also make them more prone to waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera and the likes. With that being said, the United Nations has stated that more than 14,000 of them are at risk of dying caused by malnutrition.
I believe that for a humanitarian crisis at this scale which causes a very desperate living condition, the Rohingya are in need of a lot of help. First and foremost, of course, the availability of food, water, sanitation and medical supplies deliveries including vaccinations to prevent diseases outbreak within the camp site as well as to support their living, are among the top priorities. However, children will need more than that, this brutal massacre has stolen their childhood therefore psychological support through counselling is needed. In addition, providing schools for their education and a place to play and have fun to forget the frightening memories they now carry is also critical so as to show them that they indeed still have hope for their future. Aside from that, Myanmar and Bangladesh also have to work together to ease the process of handling these refugees.
Not to mention, us Indonesians can actually help the Rohingya, for example, through ACT Organization’s ‘Ringankan Derita Etnis Rohingya’ campaign on https://kitabisa.com/banturohingya or other similar campaigns. By simply sharing the link to your social media to spread awareness will be the easiest way to show that you care. Together, we can make a difference!
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“No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
Diandra Paramitha R. P. (1606864456)
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asurabackuplogs · 7 years
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Of Men and Women, Boys or Girls
I didn’t realize I was a man of stories until I knew just how many of them I had.
 At the time it had not seemed like I was recording the daily events of my life like some optical message tern. It just happened, stored away in the archives of my mind until resurfacing in a college short story class when I was at a loss for ideas. From then on out my memories were a goldmine, funding and furnishing countless literary works I have proudly penned over the course of a successful career.
 But this is not a story about that, to be honest, I am not sure what kind of story it is. Perhaps it is a memoir, perhaps a coming of youth, I am sure a great majority of my readers will think it is a love story, as I did at the time. Perhaps it is all of those things. It is a story of my past, I did consider myself a man by the end, and as one could only assume from my third category, it features my first taste of love. Revolves around it, in fact.
 When I was about eight years of age, I stood in front of the house of my adolescence for the first time. Father was a man of many promises, not all of them he was able to keep. It had come to be that no reputable places of work would allow him any more chances, and while he had less then a reliable work ethic his devotion to my mother and my sister and I was unbreakable. So we left the prosperity of London’s factories and fab plants to seek a life in Glasgow’s considerably more affordable streets.
 The last of our money had been spent on this house and the omnibus ride over, we did not have any more to spend on strong men to move our things. So we had brought very little with us, a pack on our backs each, along with a sole piece of furniture. Dearly departed Grandfather back in London had been a carpenter and given my father and mother a mahogany armoire on their wedding day. It was the only elegant thing any of us had ever owned, what with its delicate carvings and timeless polish. While it would have brought more coin than any other belongings, what remained of my parent’s dignity disallowed them to pawn such a precious memento of my mother’s father.
 Even as a young boy, I was strong, or at least I must have been, because I recall assisting my father in carrying that priceless family artifact through my new home, and inevitably dropping my end across the topmost step of the stairs. Grandfather’s craftsmanship made the armoire itself as good as iron, but the step had been made of a cheaper stuff and cracked down the middle. My father told me not to fret, that any home is only a home once it has been damaged by its resident, and we had just gotten a head start. Better an easy to avoid step then a window or the boiler, in my mother’s opinion.
 The pride of a carpenter’s son in law and a lack of funds meant that we could not hire someone to repair it, of course my father would be fixing it himself. Or at least, that is what he said he was going to do. As it turned out, promises over jobs around the house were just as difficult for him to honor as ones made in the work force, and even while we prospered in this new city the step remained unrepaired for at least a year.
 The moment we had funds to spare, mother haired a handyman to do it for him. At first he was insulted, but as she insisted, “Things never stay broken. You leave something broken for too long, someone else will just have to do it for you!”
 This was the first memory that I stored in this new home of Glasgow, and it quickly joined its London brothers in the confines of my mind, only to be revisited years later.
 The second was of my first time playing in the streets of this strange new city. Though the voices were different, I found that the Scottish children acted similarly to their English counterparts. There were groups of boys, groups of girls, and groups of mostly boys with one or two girls, and every group was determined to prove that they hated everyone else. Be it wars with mud, fab dung, or fists, children have an odd ability to mimic the behaviors of adults before they are old enough to know what their xenophobic behaviors mean. There were boarders, alliances, betrayals, and treaties, just like between the many nations all crammed into the slums of one city in Great Britain. A child’s first loyalty was to his gang, and his gang had loyalty to the collective gangs of his street, who on odd occasion form an alliance with another street’s gangs when the Gypsies came to town and their children’s gangs had to be taught to respect the locals.
 Even though I had an accent, it was a lowly accent, and my clothes were worn and dirty enough to make myself an ally to anyone. My allegiance was given immediately to the gang of my neighbor Jaspert Sharp, his two best friends Ollie and Duncan, and his little sister Deryn.
 Deryn was the reason I was allowed to join at all. The boys were getting older, reaching the respectable age of eleven, and it just would not do to have an eight-year-old girl following them about. They couldn’t let her join another gang, not while Jaspert was their leader at least, and inviting someone new to theirs would take weeks of careful negotiation. Naturally it would have been more optimal for them to get a girl, but beggars are rarely choosers, and this meant they could finally be free to go about their manly business in peace.
 Naturally I did not want to babysit this girl with a messy braid and stains on her stockings, but I understood how these things worked. Do this as a favor to Jaspart, I might get some superiority with the other boys, something I never had back in London. I did feel a little better when I found that there would be no tea parties or house with my wild friend, but instead proper activities, like slipping frogs into lady’s purses or stealing pies from windows, but often she would not find the time to play at all, instead spending time with her father. He was a balloonist, or at least flew in one as a hobby. Deryn liked to brag about, how she was his best little lassie and “Know’s everything he does, maybe more than Jaspart, just don’t tell him I said that.”
 But perhaps Deryn Sharp wasn’t so bad, spend every day of your youth in a new city with someone you learn to see the best parts of them. And Deryn had a lot of good parts, really. Over time I stopped minding the fact that I’d never be one of the older boys, just having someone who knew a good dirty joke was enough.  
 When it was finally our turn to take our first steps as adults Jaspart’s part of the gang had left us to be teenagers, and as his successor I had recruited more boys to take their place. It helped that Deryn was so easy to get along with. Usually being stuck with a girl was a hindrance, but being so fun and wild made other kids like her, even the boys. All the other boy-girl gangs had dissolved by now, Deryn was one of the few that hadn’t migrated to a girl gang to talk about hair and dresses. Good. We would need a girl on our side when the first trial of adulthood would come.
 The summer village dance. A place for men to drink and women to flirt, even the kids would have a taste of maturity on this important night. Going with your parents to later meet up with your gang was acceptable until you were thirteen. Until you were old enough to go with a date.
 All the girls shared this sentiment. They talked amongst themselves, giggling and plotting. They took immense satisfaction in knowing that suddenly the fate of every boy’s masculinity was in their hands. Getting turned down by a girl was the worst humiliation a boy could endure, and they knew this well.
 Deryn also knew this well, knew that she was even more valuable then the others, even to those outside our gang. As the sole female to be friends with the boys, she was an easy yes. No one had to play stupid mind games or guess the answers with Deryn, she was just like us, thought just like us, liked what we liked. So I, leader of the gang and bumrag that I was, assumed that naturally I had dibs.
 I did not.
 “What do you mean ten pents?” I demanded of her before class began the morning of the big night.
 Deryn smirked and crossed her arms, looking smugly at me like she always did.
 “What, you think you’re the first to ask me? Peter already did yesterday, and I said I would think about it. Ten pents will make me think a little harder, I would say.”
 Scowling at her I stomped my foot, “But I’m the leader!” I insisted, “Besides, I’ve known you the longest so I get dibs.”
 Deryn snorted, “You’re no leader Charlie, last I remember, I had to chase that cat away from our hideout.”
 “You only did it because you got to the cat first,” I said, going red faced, “I would have done it eventually.”
 “Oh aye,” Deryn teased, “Right after you were done inspecting the back of that dumpster you were hiding behind.”
 What could I say to that?
 “Ten pents,” Deryn repeated, “But because you’re like family, if someone pays it before you I’ll still go with you for fifteen.”
 That got my attention at least. Grumbling I dug in my pocket and produced the coins.
 “Pleasure doing business with you Mr. Doyle,” she cooed, slipping the money into her schoolbag.
 Deryn really was nothing like the other girls, and while I was angry, that was part of what I liked about her. At least exchanging coins did not require any translating or decrypting. In those early days I wished that all girls could make sense like she did. I would later realize why I might not want this wish to be granted.
 More boys approached Deryn that day, even some from our gang, the traitors. Time was running out, and most of the other girls had been paired up already. To my irritation she gave them the same treatment as she had me, though this time only pretended to consider taking their money. Ultimately she turned them down and skipped away to the horror of the desperate boys she left behind.
 My dearest childhood companion had gone mad with power.
 As the day drew to a close I walked with Deryn and Jaspert back to our street. Jaspert, having already gone three years to the summer dance as an adult, was past worrying about finding a date. He was at the blissful age where you didn’t need to go with someone, but could instead meet someone there to spend the night with. Granted, it was less blissful considering now all he would do was look for a lass to dance with, but apparently that was what he wanted to do at his mature age. Doubtless, I would learn when I reached that point as well.
 I was a little wary of Jaspart. It was a given that if anyone made a move on your little sister without your permission, you had to punch him. That was the rule. This put me in a difficult position. I had no intentions of kissing Deryn Sharp, and did not want to give her the idea that I did by following standard procedure. But knowing that we were going together might make Jaspart think that I was just trying to pull a fast one in not telling him. Then he might just punch me anyway, just to be safe. Deryn was taller then me by three inches. Jaspart by six.
 Turns out Deryn had me covered, as she always did.
 “You should have seen them Ma!” she said, pulling out my ten pents upon reaching her doorstep, “Crawling over each other to pay up, even when I raised it to three pounds!”
 Jaspart inspected the money while Ma Sharp cocked an eyebrow.
 “That doesn’t look like three pounds to me,” He said, lazily walking past as if he were too above our childish transactions.
 “It’s hardly appropriate for a young lady to be asking pay for this sort of thing,” Ma Sharp scolded.
 “That’s because I’m going with Charlie.” She admitted, “I wasn’t actually going to take up anyone else!”
 “What?” I asked, astonished, but before I could demand my money back Ma Sharp’s attitude shifted completely.
 “So you are going with someone,” She clarified.
 “Aye, but its just Charlie Ma.”
 Ma Sharp was quick. One had to be to raise a girl like Deryn without going mad.
 “Arty run a bath!” She called up the stairs, as she held Deryn like a rabid dog.
 “But I took one this morning!” Deryn exclaimed, astounded by the unfairness of it all.
 As she was one to do, Deryn kicked and squirmed in Ma Sharp’s arms, but to no avail. Through trying to subdue her daughter’s desperate attempts at freedom, Ma Sharp smiled at me in a way she had never done before. Suddenly the stern woman who shot fear into the heart of even Jaspert was sweet and patronizing.
 “You just wait for our Deryn to come back out lad. It’ll be a few hours.”
 “A few hours!” Deryn demanded, still trying to be free, “What can you even do to me for a few hours?”
 The last glimpse of her face I got was her desperately looking to me before the door was shut behind her and her mother. I smirked at her despair. Its what she got for abusing her power and taking my ten pents. I would be wanting those back now, I should think.
 And so I waited, after my own mother was finished with me, of course. There was not much she could do, however. We could not afford to take anymore baths a day then absolutely necessary, which meant we had even less money to dress me up in fancy clothes. I wore my Sunday clothes, as did my little sister Aggie, and was ready after only thirty minutes.
 So I stood outside the Sharp residence with my hair combed and shirt neatly buttoned up to the collar for a long while. While boring, it was at least better then having to hold Aggie’s hand all the way to the square, then spend the rest of the night trying to shake her off. Mum had explained to her that I was a young man now and would be escorting a young lady tonight, which made me snort with amusement.
 When you are young, you have a hard time understanding that people change. They are who they are. Peter was a backstabbing bumrag, Jaspart was a benevolent older boy who would often give us young one’s advice despite being above it all, and Deryn was…she was just Deryn.
 Some things stick in your head, and despite all the meaningful things that come after. You are reminded of them every now and then by the littlest provocation, either by sentiment or related circumstance. I have three such memories of Deryn Sharp, the first being the moment I stopped seeing her as just a wild girl with messy hair and dirt on her stockings. When I caught he first glimpse of the woman she might someday become.  
 The illusion was quickly shattered when she found my gawking offensive and decided to remind me who she was by twisting my arm.
 “Don’t you stare, don’t you dare stare at me Charlie Doyle!” she hissed, her cheeks as red as mind likely were from looking at her.
 “Let go! Let go!” I shouted, “I wasn’t staring, I wasn’t!”
 “Don’t you think I know I look stupid?” she asked, letting me go and studying me.
 The right thing to do was to tell her she looked stupid. It was the kind of thing Charlie would say to Deryn, a ritual as old as our friendship. I had broken it by not making fun of her right off, and that had likely scared her. It scared me, at least.
 And yet, those words could not come. Despite being the thing that had always been said, it was wrong now. So I said the worst thing I possibly could have.
 “You look pretty, I guess.”
 Deryn released me and stepped back, eyes darting away from mine.
 “Well alright,” she mumbled, “Spose you look fine too.”
 And just like that, everything was different. Walking beside her instead of my family would have been a privilege last year, but now it was dead silent and awkward. This was not how it was supposed to be, or at least, that was what I thought. Yes I knew that someday all boys became men and married girls who became women, but very suddenly it was not just about doing what everyone else was doing. What was expected of us, what we had been warned about.
 I felt like I was the only person in the world who had ever felt this. Ever looked at a girl and thought she was anything other than my best friend, ever wondered if she had always been like this, and I had just not noticed.
 “Your Mum took a long time,” I finally said.
 “It was pure torture,” Deryn said, “I never want to go through that again, next year we’re telling her that we’re going alone.”
 “Aye,” I agreed, “Next year we’re staying clear of all that.”
 ‘All that’ was what I just had to tell myself those feelings were. Ma Sharp was intimidating, mad by Deryn’s own description, but obviously a genius at knowing how to turn a dirty little girl into something...else. That was all this was, I thought, Ma Sharp’s intervention. Those were not Deryn’s pink cheeks, not Deryn’s blue dress that so perfectly matched her eyes, not her hair that had been brushed so thoroughly and carefully that it reflected moonlight light gold.
 Things only got worse when we approached the square. From the looks on the faces of the other boys, I was not the only one to be shocked by Deryn’s transformation. It was not that Deryn was even so much prettier then the other girls, but those girls had always looked like that. Obviously they did not like the shift of attention, boys were dragged away by their arms, leaving me and Deryn alone again. I suppose I should have asked her to dance, or if she wanted to eat anything, the sort of thing that real boys said to girls at a village dance. Looking at the others I saw they were not fairing much better then us, just a bunch of groups of two isolated from everyone else.
 All any of us could really focus on was the playing of the children younger then us. We could not even warn them what was to come. They would not believe us. Like our seniors before us, we had to experience the horrors of our first time out with the opposite sex all our own.
 The night progressed without much change, ending with me turning Deryn over to her family. While Jaspart looked smugly at the both of us, I could not help but meet the father’s eye. I never talked much with Deryn’s father. He was always either at work or doing sums in his office, but the mix of sadness and anger I got from his glance made me glad I had avoided him.
 I expected the spell to be broken the next time I saw her. School was out of session; it was time for endless days of play and mischief. Every other year this was when we would get down to our best pranks, our best warfare with the other gangs. But seeing Deryn again was still different. Still strange. We played for that first day, thinking the feelings would die down. They did with the other boys, the other boys punched her shoulder and called her rude names just like always. Deryn seemed past it herself, very loudly and openly proclaiming how it was all a load of bleather and how she personally would never be convinced to do it again. Even when she would make a jab at me, I just could not bring myself to retaliate. Any time she even looked at me I wanted to be sick.
  Over the next days I stopped playing with Deryn and the gang, and so did she. I thought it would be fine, she always preferred to spend time with her Da during the summers anyway.
 I know now that was a mistake, seeing how that was the summer Mr. Sharp died.
 Being neighbors, my family was the first to know. Many nights mother consoled Ma Sharp, and father made a point of taking Jaspart under his wing. The Sharps were as good as family now, tragedy has a way of forming such bonds.
 Worst of them all was Deryn. That first time I saw her since abandoning her at the beginning of the summer was a shock like the dance had been, but I would have gone to a hundred dances instead of seeing her like this.
 It is believed by some romantics that despair makes a woman beautiful. Perhaps that is true for some people, but a man who truly loves a woman cannot see her face when she is in pain, only feel her agony as if it were his own. I did notice that she looked older, somehow. At the dance she had been mature, at least for the three seconds she could go without being herself, but now any girlishness was drained from her.
 Her braids were never messy, and it is difficult to stain stockings that are completely black.
 Neither she nor Jaspart went to school for a while. In fact, Jaspart never came back. Without a man to work there was only so long the family could live off savings, the easiest well paying job was for the King. Of course it made sense that Jaspart join the air force, it was what his father would have done, but in those days I found myself hating him for leaving Deryn behind.
 I did not know at the time, but Ma Sharp was no help at all. Her sister and a few of her childhood friends came from her hometown to take care of her and Deryn, which ultimately made things even worse. I would be told what exactly happened in those walls, but not while it was happening, not by Deryn at least.  
 Three months after summer had ended I saw Deryn in class again. Not knowing how to process death, all of us avoided her, even the girls. It was more then the tight way she wore her hair, or the prim and delicate way she held herself these days. Even the teacher thought that such behavior was wrong, despite being an advocate for Deryn’s maturing since the beginning.
 The story was soon in the newspapers, and soon relayed to the admiralty after that. Touched by Mr. Sharp’s act of heroism, important looking officers who would have never visited our neighborhood otherwise came to town. There was to be a big party, where Artemis Sharp would be awarded the Air Gallantry Cross.
 Naturally it was not the sort of party any of us lowly civilians would be invited to. Just the Sharps, Deryn and her Ma, would attend the party.
 Through my window that night I could see an elegantly done up Deryn stepping down from her door and up into a horse drawn carriage of all things. I had no idea we even had those here.
 Out of some curiosity for how fancy boots people lived there lives me and some other boys tried to get a look at the party, hiding behind bushes and marveling at the size of some of the ladies hats. This soon got boring after the doors shut for the night, and one by one the lads lost interest in favor of snowball fights or sledding.
 I stayed though. I stayed and watched the brightly lit windows and listened to the clinking of glasses and scraping of forks. Though I could not see anything, I knew the ceremony had begun from the sudden silence, then wail of a funeral march. Never mind that Artemis had already had a proper funeral with the people who actually knew him, this one was to make all the important people feel included.
 After about an hour of muffled talking I could barely hear, the sounds of socializing and pleasantries began again. Whatever had transpired was over.
 About to turn and leave I heard the opening and slamming of a back door, and saw a flash of blue fabric that so well matched a certain pair of eyes. Frowning I followed her, accidentally tripping on the shoes had tossed behind her like some mad princess making her escape before a fairy’s spell was broken. When I finally caught up to her she was collapsed in an allyway, clutching something close to her chest.
 I knew she could hear the trudging of my approach, but upon reaching her I had no idea what to say. Like always, she had my back.
 “This isn’t who I am.” She said in a voice closer to tears then I have ever heard it, “This…this is so…”
 A gloved hand yanked at the pins in her hair, then at the pearls, which broke and scattered in the snow.
 “Bloody barking spiders!” she shouted, the swear not making a lot of sense in context admittedly.
 I opened my mouth to say something, but then decided to kneel in the snow next to her instead.
 “I thought…” she murmured, “I thought…if I did everything my aunties said…then it would stop…”
 I had expected an outburst, or some harsh words for her oppressors, but certainly not that.
 “What would stop?” I asked, completely baffled.
 “The…the thoughts…blazes, the urges!” She was heaving heavy breaths now, the powder on her face melting with sweat and tears. “I can’t…I can’t get it out of my head Charlie. What my house would look like in flames, how school would look in flames. How easy it would be to make the boiler explode just like Da’s balloon…”
 “Urges?” I repeated, “I would think you’d hate fire.”
 “Do I?” she asked, full on crying now, “If I do, then why can’t I stop thinking about it? Thinking about starting fires, thinking about burning everything. I lie awake at night just thinking about it, and about how horrible it would be if everything just burned away!”
 “If you know its horrible then you wont do it, right?” I said, nervously going to touch her shoulder.
 “I don’t know!” She sobbed, facing me finally her eyes mad with either rage or despair I could not tell, “What if there’s apart of me that wants this? A part of me that liked seeing Da die so much that I’d do it again? Why else would I think about something so horrible all the time?” she hung her head and curled into a ball, “What if I kill someone else, just like I did him…”
 “You didn’t kill him Deryn,” I said, trying to remain steady though I was shaken by it all, “You don’t deserve to feel this way.”
 “I deserve to die.”
 The words were so small and weak I almost missed them, but so strong they shook my very heart.
 Children are cruel, they will find just about anything to harass each other with. Acts of affection especially. It was such an embarrassment to have your mother hug you in public, but no child would ever do such a thing to another out of respect.
 But in that moment Deryn was not a child anymore, had not been for a long time. Even as I held her I felt less like a child, all the silly rights of passage of before had been utterly meaningless. Sitting with her in the snow I knew exactly what kind of man I would become, and the woman I would share my life with. Though as sure as I was, all this was speculation at best. While I could see myself as a man, I was still very much a child. And children’s speculations, more often then not, are very wrong.
 Time passed, it was mostly Deryn who spoke. It began as repeating her auntie’s words of wisdom, realizing without me having to tell her that it was mostly rubbish. Despair and lack of confidence turned to outrage as she became suddenly aware of how she had been used. Changed against her will. I did not feel the need to speak. I thought too many people had been speaking at Deryn for too long, and now she was finally speaking on her own. Soon we were standing, walking home, her ranting the whole way.
 I could not help but notice that her deflated hairstyle was wild and unkempt, her cheeks flushed with feelings she had avoided for months, and her dress was torn. She also had no shoes to speak of, her stockinged feet swelling in the freezing cold. We soon managed to make it home, far after her Ma and aunties arrived.
 Opening the door she was subjected to a wave of their concern, demands of where she had been and how she had ruined such a costly dress. For a moment I could see the darkness of before creeping back into her features, before she gave a very Deryn-like scowl.
 “Shove it, aunt Maggie.” She spat, before stomping past the astonished woman to her own room.
 The door was shut in my face before I could see much more, but I could hear the shouting even from my own window late into the night. I stayed up, watching through my curtains until I could see house’s lights go out, and finally there was silence.
 I do not exactly recall if I managed to sleep or not that night. If not for the repercussions, I would assume what followed next must have had to be a dream it was so mad. All I remember is being shaken awake, and feeling a cold draft from a window I had not opened myself.
 Even without knowing the intimacies between men and women I had enough sense to never have a girl in my bedroom, or find myself in hers. Until that point, at least. There she was, still in her torn dress, shaking me awake. I might have scolded her since I saw myself as an adult now, even though I had no idea why this was inappropriate. But the look of defiant glee on Deryn’s face was too much to refuse, even if I had known.
 “I’m not allowed to leave the house, I’m being punished.” Deryn said, as if sharing some grand joke, “Only for school, and they say the constables will be involved if I come home so late again, or they hear from someone else that I’ve been out.”
“How did you even get up here?” I asked, “My room’s on the third floor.”
 Deryn rolled her eyes at this.
 “Never mind that you daftie, the point is that they’re trying to change me again.” Again that grin, “But this time, I’m not going to let them.”
 “That’s great Deryn,” I said, “Could you not make this speech tomorrow on the way to school?”
 “No, because see, I need your help, and we need to figure out if its going to work now.” She stood, “Tomorrow my aunties will tell everyone that I’m being punished, we’ve got to make the disguise now.”
 At the time I thought I misheard. Now I wish I misheard.
 “What do you mean disguise?” I asked, getting out of bed to stand with her.
 “Aunties keep saying that I cant do this and that because it isnt what a lady would do,” Deryn said, “So I say, I’m not a barking lady then! And you know what? Its not enough that I just stay a tomboy, not really. Its more than telling dirty jokes and stealing pies Charlie, I want more, things that a young lady can’t have, so I’m not a lady, see?”
 Of all the things I expected her to do, opening my wardrobe and pulling out a shirt to press against herself was not it.
 “Are you mad?” I asked, voice still hushed as Aggie was still sleeping in the next room over.
 “I was before,” Deryn said, the manic gleam fading for a moment, “I was rotting in my own body, too numb to even feel myself falling to pieces, but tonight I realized that I don’t have to be. That I can keep punching, no matter what.”
 That seemed like the sort of thing that should have been a catch phrase, but she never said it again. Not as much as the other things, anyway. I contemplated as I looked at her, gripping onto the shirt like a lifeline.
 “You’ll feel better if we do this?” I asked, causing her to pause.
 “I need to do something, Charlie,” She said, looking into my face again, “I’m not old enough to leave Ma and my aunties yet, but I cant just have nothing to look forward to.”
 With a sigh I nodded.
 “Well, you’re already taller then most of us, so there’s that,” I said, “I don’t know if my trousers will fit you, but my shirts probably will.”
 “My aunties have been teaching me to sew,” Deryn added, “I can probably make do with any clothes you give me.”
 And so the first night I spent a girl in my room was spent dressing her up in my clothes. Not how I might have imagined it if I had any time to imagine such things, I only learned of what boys and girls did after this first milestone. I do not know how long she stayed, only that when she again crawled out the window and back to her own room I felt as connected to her as if we really had done something more.  It was the same sort of philosophy really, except now we shared something even more intimate, a secret.
 Seeing her the next day she was definitely more animated, but not in the way she had been as a girl. Deryn was no longer the wild creature of her youth, but neither the cold princess of the past few months. She had become something new entirely, something confident, finally divorced from the expectations of a child’s strict world. When young and unsure you rely on rules and regulations to prove that you are more of an adult than you actually are are, but only after actually becoming mature do you realize this is probably the most childish thing you could do. I realize I had made this journey with her, and while I still talked to the lads and she to the girls we were the only people who really knew what it was like to be grown up.
 After school was done however, that was when she slipped into her trousers and cap to cover her hair, a bit of soot or dirt on her face to finish the job.
 It was difficult for her at first, she would try too hard to make her voice low, and had no idea how to move as we did. But instead of suspicion our friends preferred to make fun of this ‘Dylan’, which was fine by him since he did not care a squick what they thought. ‘He’ only cared that he was free to romp in the open at last, able to joke and swear and spit to his heart’s content. That in itself made him untouchable overtime, even if some of them would mumble he walked like a poofter.
 It was most difficult when Dylan would meet with Aggie or my mum. They after all knew Deryn as if she were their own, but the deception was of such a ridiculous nature that no one suspected a thing. I probably would not have, had I been unaware.
 I have not spent much time talking about Aggie, it being more important to explain my relation to Deryn foremost. But Aggie has a role to play in this story, perhaps a more vital role than even me. Dear little Aggie was of a quiet nature by no fault of her own. It was hard for her to say the right thing, she would sometimes say nothing at all and just sit in silence. Everyone assumed that was just how she preferred it, that she was a simple good girl who wanted to read and knit in her spare time. None of us had any idea how lonely it was, being trapped within yourself. None of us but Deryn.
 Deryn saw the signs in her, saw herself in the empty way Aggie gazed at her books or stitches. Seeing how her female self was rarely seen outside the house, it was Dylan who reached out to my younger sister. Sometimes Dylan would not go out to see the lads at all, preferring to stay with Aggie and talk. The change in Aggie was instantaneous, through learning to speak with Dylan she was able to be more of a presence with her own friends, slowly but surely coming out of her shell.
 And that was that, or so I had thought.
 Again the time came for the summer village dance, again Deryn and I watched our peers struggle and stress over each other. They were still children, where we were adults. I noticed as the day drew closer that Aggie found an excuse to linger in the kitchen, trying to peek behind me whenever I stepped through the front door. Sometimes I was followed by Dylan, who Aggie would stare at expectantly. Stupid that we were, neither of us put together what she wanted despite how obvious it was. So Aggie had to resort to desperate measures, almost unthinkable measures.
 She asked him.
 I knew by the way Deryn came through my window that night completely white faced.
 “What do I say?” she asked, “I said I would think about it, but Charlie, what do I do?”
 It was confusing for me as well. Knowing that your sister is capable of such feelings is a shock to anyone, knowing that she has feelings for a girl you yourself fancy is more so.
 “I guess I’d rather ‘Dylan’ then anyone else,” I said, “I mean, she’s so desperate, what if some rotten bumrag asks her and she says yes?”
 Deryn blinked at me.
 “What, you want me to go with her?”
 “Better you than some idiot in her own class,” I grumbled, crossing my arms, “Please Deryn, you’re the only one I can trust not to…” I waved a vague hand, “Do anything…”
 With a sigh Deryn looked away, slumping against my windowsill.
 “I was planning on going in trousers anyway,” She said, “I suppose it cant be any worse then last year.”
 I myself did not think to take a girl with me. I knew that there was only one girl it was proper to go with, and she was now taking my sister. If the other boys made fun of me, I would not care a squick. They had to follow the rules of adolescence because they themselves were still children. I had graduated from such nonsense early, I had my adulthood laid out in front of me.
 And how hilarious it was seeing the other boys faces when Dylan had a girl with him, and they actually had fun. Unlike everyone else who shuffled their feet and twisted their skirts, Dylan had probably decided that not even such an awkward situation would bring him down, make him enjoy himself any less then he deserved. Aggie herself managed to be more open and boisterous then any of the other girls, dancing and laughing as if she were a real grown woman out for a bit of fun.
 I steered clear of them myself, choosing to stay with my mother and father for the night.
 “He really is such a thoughtful young man,” Mother said, watching them spin, “You know, if not for Dylan I’d doubt our Aggie would every have come out of her shell.”
 Father grunted, bringing a tankard to his lips.
 “Apparently the boys talk about him like he’s some kind of fairy boy,” he said, “Does he look like a poof to you?”
 Mother slapped his arm, “Honestly,” she chided, “Isn’t that just like a man. The boy is sensitive, I think Aggie needs someone like that. I think young Dylan is leagues ahead of where you were at this age.”
 I smirked at their bickering, it was such fun knowing a secret like this. At a certain point I could no longer see Dylan and Aggie amongst the dancers, and suspected that the night was drawing to a close. I left the side of my parents to look for them.
 In the months following Deryn’s charade I had convinced myself that there was no more growing up for me to do. I had reached a point in my life where I knew all the answers, knew how things would work from now on. I had shared my first secret with the girl I intended to marry, and the only factor to consider was waiting until I was old enough to ask.
 A factor I did not consider was finding that girl kissing my sister behind an abandoned cider cart.
 I thought that since I had coined the false alias ‘Dylan’ that it would be easy for me to handle. In fact, I had proven to be less likely to slip up as Deryn herself, almost landing her in trouble on a few occasions. Maybe I was saving up for when it would really matter if I slipped up, like now.
 “Deryn!” I shouted, causing the girls to leap apart. Deryn looked at me completely white faced, opening and closing her mouth while she tried and failed to form words.
 When a boy kisses your sister without your permission, you have to punch him. That’s the rule. But the rules never said anything about having to punch a girl you love. I thought that I was above rules now, but I punched her anyway. Just to be safe.
 Deryn staggered as her cap slipped off her head, causing her sandy hair to spill across her shoulders. Aggie cried out, covering her mouth with her hands as she stepped back. With shaky fingers Deryn touched where I had punched her and for a moment our eyes met again.
 Maybe I should have said something, she should have said something, but instead she grabbed her cap and ran into the dark streets.
 Explaining things to Aggie was not easy, mostly because she did not want them to be explained. She was silent the entire way home, avoiding mother and father’s gaze. I made up some lie about how she was upset because ‘Dylan’ had to leave early, and she was having too much fun. It was the last favor I would to do for my friend for a while, but it at least made it so he was able to walk the streets without being attacked by my father.
 When we were finally home, the lights out and us in our bedclothes, I waited for Aggie’s knock on my door. When it never came I found I had to rise to the occasion. The last time I had been in Aggie’s bedroom was when it was my bedroom as well, back in London when we were too young and poor for privacy between siblings. It felt strange, when I had last wanted to talk to my sister I could whenever I wanted because her space was my space too. I had not realized how much I had alienated her for these years in Glasgow, or maybe I just said that so I could feel responsible for what happened.
 Aggie sat in her nightdress clutching her pillow. In the darkness I could see no tears or reddened eyes, but I had assumed they were there. I had assumed she cried because she fell in love with a lie, but when she spoke her voice did not shake or waiver with sobs.
 “He was so kind to me,” she said quietly, “I thought…I thought that…”
 “I should have said something,” I said, sitting down on her bed, “Deryn should have said something too.”
 Aggie was about to tell me something then, something that might have changed everything that happened next. Or maybe the truth would have only made things worse, made me hate Deryn more.
 “I kissed…her.” Aggie finally said, the words coming out of her mouth as if she was not sure if she should say them.
 “It doesn’t matter who kissed who,” I assured her, “Because either way, Deryn should have told you.”
 Aggie nodded and turned away.
 “I’ll be fine Charlie,” she said, “I just want to go to bed.”
 I spent more time with Aggie then I had in years that summer. The lads still romped with Dylan, now that he had kissed a girl and had the black eye to prove it they practically worshiped him. But even with all their praise Deryn tried to reach out to me, tried to speak to me. I avoided her because I knew that none of them mattered. None of them knew what she was under the cap, none of them held her in the snow. I made a good show of pretending I was angry for my sister’s sake, and I think she believed me.
 Things would continue like this until the Fall, when some fancyboots doctor moved into a house near the school building. Apparently he wanted to do a study on children and development, and his college was willing to pay the school to allow him an hour with each of us. Though our parents were wary of taking their money at the cost of their children, there was nothing that said any of us would come to any harm in just an hour, and the schoolhouse did need a new bell.
 When I first sat down with Dr. Fawks I did not know what to expect. For him to undress me, measure my weight, something to do with hormones and little microscopic particles that made the difference between boys and men. But instead he wanted to talk, just talk, about my daily life.
 So I talked with him, or rather, I answered his questions. He asked me what I did with my spare time, I told him I played with my sister. He asked if I was maybe too old to be playing with my sister, so I said that I was worried about her not having any friends. He asked why I was worried about her not having friends, and saw it on my face when I hesitated.
 “What is it Mr. Doyle?” he asked, crossing his hands over his knee.
 “What…is your profession exactly?” I asked, looking into his face.
 “Child development,” he answered, “Specifically, child’s psychological development.”
 “Psychological?”
 “That means that I know a lot about the brain,” he said, “Not just the organ, I know about feelings and thoughts, why people do the things they do. I am trying to write a thesis on a childhood’s impact on adulthood, so I am studying children in their day to day lives.”
 This caught my attention.
 “So you think of something happens to a kid, it makes them into a weird adult?”
 “I think the mind is a very complex thing, and while we can draw conclusions from coincidences yes.”
 I was presented with something I did not have at my disposal before. Information. Here was someone who knew all about strange things people did for strange reasons. He might know a thing or two about dressing up in boys clothing and kissing girls.
 “Would you know why,” I asked, careful to be vague in my wording, “Someone might do things that are…wrong?”
 “Depends what you mean by wrong,” Dr. Fawks said, “And who that someone is.”
 Unable to get what I wanted without spilling to much, I decided to lie even further.
 “Lets say there’s a boy, and one day he says he wants to wear skirts,” I said, feeling very clever at how easy it was to switch the scenario, “And he tells you he’s only doing it because he wants to sneak into the girls changing rooms or something, but one day you catch him kissing another boy and-“
 I cannot remember if I was able to finish my explanation, Dr. Fawks reaction was so intense.  
 “Do you know of a young man like this?” He asked, his voice suddenly hard and serious, “It is alright to say his name, you will not be in any trouble.”
 I was shocked to say the least, suddenly realizing that I had set it up so if I refused to give a name it would look like I was talking about myself.
 “Why does it matter?” I asked as a stall, “Is it really bad?”
 “Homosexuality is an incredibly dangerous condition,” he explained, realizing that he might have spooked me, “It is caused by a variety of reasons, traumatic situations, tragedy in the family, sexual or physical abuse, and if left untreated it can fester into a disease of the mind that leads to criminal urges and deviancy.”
 I stared at him with wide eyes, unsure of what to say.
 “There are treatments to sedate homosexual feelings early on, if your friend can take medicine to make him into a proper boy again.”
 I swallowed, feeling my entire throat go dry.
 “Do girls get it too? Real girls not boys pretending to be girls, can girls be like this too?”
 At this the doctor laughed.
 “You’re worried for your little sister,” he said with a smile, “While it can effect women it is by no means an airborne virus, the brain doesn’t work like that lad.”
 I nodded my head and gave the doctor a made up name, hoping there was no poor sod who actually owned it.
 Once my hour was up I spent the rest of the day thinking, deciding. It would have been easier to give Dr. Fawks Deryn’s name, so he could take her away and make her right again. But there was part of me that felt responsible for a long time. While it had been Deryn’s idea they were sill my clothes that she wore. But now neither of us were at fault at all.
 When I found Deryn she was with the boys behind a pub. While the others hooted and harassed the poor lad doing his duties for a swig of whisky, Deryn leaned against the wall mostly silent.
 Upon seeing me everyone quieted and froze. I had thought that it had been me isolating her, but as I saw the rest of the boys, how one or two of them glanced at Deryn as if for permission to acknowledge me, I realized I was the one who had been exiled.
 “Dylan, we need to talk,” I told him, voice steady, “Alone.”
 It seemed fairy boy Dylan had learned a thing or two from being the leader of a gang of lads, because her expression did not light up at my words. That or her illness was only getting worse. She was turning into more and more of a boy, and I had been so stupid as to leave her to fester.
 “Alright,” She finally said, pushing away from the wall and sauntering up to me with a swagger that had never existed before. She was running out of time.
 As we walked away with the eyes of the boys on our backs it was completely silent. Until some younger lad piped up:
 “Kick his arse Dylan!”
 It was not like we could talk out in the street, so when we were out of earshot of the crowd Deryn lead me to another private nook. Poor neighborhoods like ours were full of them, allyways and broken property that no one had the money to fix.
 “Deryn, I want to say that I’m sorry,” I said right off the bat.
 Looking back at me I saw a glimmer of the girl’s face again.
 “You do?” she asked, then shook her head, “I know, I’m sorry too, but then you wouldn’t talk to me so I couldn’t-“
 “Not about what happened with Aggie,” I clarified, “That wasn’t your fault, not really. I’m not talking about that.”
 Deryn frowned, “What d’you mean?”
 “Well, I’m sorry for…what happened with your Da. And I’m sorry for not telling anyone when you first wanted to do all this,” I gestured to her clothes. “But I know what’s wrong now, that doctor told me, you’re sick Deryn, losing your Da made you sick and that’s why you’re doing all these things!”
 Deryn’s mouth gaped open, I assumed her expression was that of relief.
 “But the doctor says that there’s special medicine to give you, to turn you back into what you were before!”
 For someone who was told that she could finally be cured, Deryn looked horrified.
 “You think…” she said slowly, “You think I’m doing this because I’m insane…?”
 “You said yourself that you wanted to burn your house down,” I said, “Criminal urges one of the side effects of this, but all you have to do is take some medicine and you’ll get better!”
 “I…I don’t want to do those things…I never did…” her voice shook, “What, you think because I need a break from Ma’s nagging sometimes I want to kill my family?”
 “I don’t think that any of this is you,” While I was sure I was doing the right thing, the intensity of her words scared me, “Its just like catching a cold, except its because you were sad. And we can fix it!”
  “So you don’t think this is who I am?” Deryn demanded, “Maybe wearing the trousers isn’t who I am but the alternative is even less. Skirts and hair pins and face powder, none of that was me either! And at least in trousers I get to do things that I like, and I’m a little bit more of who I am then I’d be stuck quilting with my aunties.”
 It is so easy to be persuaded when you’re young and confused, that often you take the first answer you hear. So desperate are you for something to finally make sense, that you cling to it. Even when someone else’s logic can dismember it in a moment.
 “I’m sorry I kissed your barking sister,” Deryn growled, “But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to change me. No one is ever going to change me.”
 And with that Deryn was gone, Dylan marched out of our hiding place to join his friends. I watched him go, unsure now of what to think. Part of me thought I should tell the doctor next time I saw him, but I kept my head down and my secrets to myself.
 So the doctor left, the snow began to fall, and now it was Deryn who refused to speak to me. Some of the lads socialized with me at school where Dylan’s disapproval could not reach them, but it was only ever a word or a joke here and there. Those two months that passed felt like an eternity, I heard word that Jaspart was coming home for Christmas for the first time since he had left.
 It was mother who told me before sending me off to the last day of classes before the holy season. She pressed a parcel into my arms, saying she had made a sweater for him last Christmas for good luck, but had not had the time to give it to him while taking care of Mrs. Sharp. I said that I probably would not see him at school, so she told me to leave it with Deryn. Mother had no idea of my issues with Deryn, for all she knew we had drifted apart naturally and the falling out had been between me and Dylan.
 Either way, I was glad to have an excuse to speak to her in a way she could not refuse. I approached her in the hall when it was empty and immediately made it clear that I was not there to chat.
 “For your bother,” I said, holding out the brown paper lump wrapped in package string.
 Deryn looked down at the offering and nodded, her fingers brushing mine as she took it from me. Even after all that had happened, everything that we had been through, I still felt my heart shudder upon touching her skin. It had been a full year since I held her to my chest in that allyway, I was unprepared for the rush of sudden feelings that enveloped me.
 Very suddenly I realized that both of us had something broken. My heart and her ability to trust, and neither of us were ready to start picking up the pieces.
 After taking the present she looked at me, blue eyes matching mine. Though she was in her school skirt and her braids hung loosely on either shoulder, I could have sworn that it was Dylan looking at me just then.
 “Merry Christmas, Charlie.” She said.
 I mentioned before that I had three unforgettable memories of Deryn, this would be the second. If I had known these were the last words Deryn Sharp would speak to me, I might have thought of something to say back.
 When the holidays were over Deryn and Jaspert were both gone. According to Ma Sharp Jaspart had secured a place in a reputable finishing school in London. For all the time that we had spent together, all the time spent apart, part of me was actually relieved.
 Despite her words I knew that something was very wrong with my oldest friend, something that a fancy finishing school probably knew all about. They could probably do much more than I ever could, and when Deryn came back she would be good as new. Then, finally, it would be time for us to be together.
 Spring came and went, by summer the Great War had begun. I had earned my favor back with the lads enough to hear their talk of enlisting, but knew I would not be joining them. I needed to stay, needed to be there when Deryn came back, no matter what. This was just like one of my sister’s books, Deryn was the scorned heroine, I the romantic lead waiting to forgive her with open arms.
 I knew that something was horribly wrong by Aggie’s face when I came back from school one day to see her clutching a newspaper. She jumped when she heard me close the front door, and looked at me as if she were holding the evidence to a murder to her chest.
 “Charlie,” She said with a voice filled with terror, “Charlie, I’ve done something horrid.”
 My confusion was only added when I saw that the newspaper she held was a Clanker print of all things, the kind with photographs between the words. Taking it from her I saw an image of what looked like a young man swinging from a mechanical apparatus, kicking his legs wildly as he tried to take control of the machine.
 Upon seeing his face my expression dropped, reading the story further my blood went cold.
 “…He surely has bravery running in his veins, being the nephew of an intrepid airman, once Artemis Sharp, who perished in a calamitous ballooning fire only a few years ago. The elder Sharp was posthumously awarded the Air Galantry Cross for saving his daughter, Deryn, from the hungry flames of the configuration.”
 There was no way around it. Deryn had not gone to any fancy school to be a fine lady, she had assumed her male alias and joined the air service.
 “If she gets killed,” I remember saying, “If some German shoots her, it’s because of me.”
 Looking to Aggie I saw tears fall as she shook her head.
 “No Charlie,” she sobbed, “No not at all. I heard her sneak into your room that night, the night she decided she wanted to dress like a boy.”
 It was all I could do to stare at her in astonishment.
 “I knew Dylan was really a girl, but she was just so kind to me, wanted to know me and listen to what I had to say- I knew what she really was but I…I didn’t care. I thought…I thought maybe if she spent time with me she wouldn’t care either, that it wouldn’t matter and maybe…” Aggie buried her head in her hands, “…so I kissed her, but I saw how angry you were and…I didn’t want you to hate me like you did her…I’m sorry Charlie…”
 It was too much, knowing that Deryn was in immediate danger, watching my sister’s tears, it was simply too much to bear. I hid myself in my room, tried to think of something- anything that could be done. I would have to find her, I would have to join the air force myself and find her.
 But I knew I could never do that. Even if I waited until my sixteenth birthday it was harder to be an airman then any other type of soldier, and the Leviathan, the ship she was supposedly stationed on, was famous and likely selective of what recruits it allowed on board.
 So I’d go to London then. The Leviathan would doubtless be stopping there every now and then now there was a huge barking war going on, I could try and contact her when it was next in town and convince her to come home.
 I did not have any money, I was fifteen years old and never worked a day in my life. My family did not have money, and neither did the Sharps next door. There was nothing that I could do, no way to save her.
 Those next months were hell. I worked at a pub and would do just about anything for extra money, including getting into fistfights and placing bets.Finally I had enough to stay in London, but for long weeks the Leviathan traveled the world with no sign of its return. I had to get another job to pay for my hotel in the city, but finally, finally the papers began to suspect the war was drawing to a close, and that all soldiers would be coming home.
 The soldiers of the Leviathan were welcomed home with a larger celebration then that of any other airships. Partly due to the fame it had collected over its success in the war, partly because it was carrying some prince character whose parents death had been the entire start of the thing. While the welcoming crowds were too thick for my to find my lass, I was able to find out the neighborhood where she would be staying. Apparently she had no intention of returning to Glasgow, I had already suspected as much. She would not be coming home until I fixed what I had broken in her.
 My first glimpse of her was at a pub were soldiers were taking full advantage of the free food and drink that had been offered to them. She was laughing and boasting with the rest of them, I did not feel it would be appropriate to interrupt.
 So I waited outside in the dark, keeping an eye on both entrances. In the wee hours of the night I finally saw her stumble with another boy out the back entrance, and readied the words I had carefully prepared for her.
 I had learned so much about myself and love in these past years, especially in these months when desperate to find her. The memories I had become so adept at collecting turned to lessons, turned to experience I could use to make things right at last.
 But as I saw that boy who looked suspiciously like the prince character in the papers kiss her when they assumed no one was looking, all those lessons were suddenly useless. It turned out I had remembered all of these lessons and stories, all of them down to the second while forgetting the first. And the first had nothing to do with men and women, boys or girls.
 Things never stay broken. If you don’t fix them yourself, someone else comes along and does it for you.
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csrgood · 7 years
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Legendary Ecuadorian Nurse Who Hosted Celebrities and Battled Chevron Over Pollution Tragically Dies of Cancer
Rosa Moreno, the legendary Ecuadorian nurse who hosted major celebrities such as Brad Pitt in her small jungle health clinic while serving as a medical lifeline to people battling Chevron over oil pollution, has herself succumbed to cancer apparently caused by exposure to toxins in her community, the Amazon Defense Coalition (FDA) announced Tuesday.
Alphonso Moreno, Rosa Moreno’s husband and a community leader in the town of San Carlos, confirmed the death by phone on Tuesday.  “My beloved Rosa who took care of her own family and hundreds of people in this community has left us forever,” he said. 
Moreno, who had an infectious smile and quite grace that captured the attention of people around the world who visited the devastated area, had three adult children and had been married to Alphonso Moreno for more than three decades.  Among those who visited her clinic in recent years were Pitt; actor and producer Trudie Styler, wife of Sting; human rights activist Bianca Jagger; actor Darryl Hannah; and U.S. Congressman James P. McGovern.
Steven Donziger, the longtime U.S. legal advisor to the affected communities, praised Rosa Moreno and noted that Chevron still has refused to clean up the billions of gallons of toxic waste that it left in the Amazon upon closing down its oil operations in 1992.  Several independent studies have documented high cancer rates in San Carlos and the wider region where Moreno lived, including an explosion of childhood leukemia. 
“I met Rosa in 1993 on my first trip to Ecuador and have spent many days with her through the years,” said Donziger, who has traveled to Ecuador more than 200 times.  “I always have been in awe of her tenderness when caring for children under the most difficult of circumstances in a clinic often lacking the most basic medicines.  Rosa’s skill as a health care worker was a godsend for her community and an inspiration to people all over the world.  I will never forget Rosa’s smile and composure under pressure, whether she was working in the clinic or confronting Chevron’s CEO at the company’s annual meeting in California. 
“I firmly believe Rosa and many others like her in San Carlos would not have died had Chevron met its legal and moral responsibilities to the people of Ecuador,” he added.  “Rosa’s death, like those of many others in Ecuador, was entirely preventable.  Chevron should provide compensation to her family and medicine and diagnostic equipment for the San Carlos clinic, in addition to remediating the abysmal environmental conditions that continue to put innocent lives at risk.”
For more than three decades, Moreno was on the front lines of the health catastrophe in Ecuador’s Amazon region caused by oil pollution in the area where Chevron discharged benzene-laced waste into rivers and streams relied on by local inhabitants for their drinking water.  Moreno lived in a small house near the site of a large oil separation station surrounded by dozens of open-air waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor by Chevron and later abandoned.  Many of the Chevron pits, constructed mostly in the 1970s, still contaminate soils and groundwater and have pipes that run oil sludge into nearby waterways.
San Carlos became known as “Ground Zero” in the legal battle against Chevron given that several rivers and streams pass through the town and carry the oil contaminants into other areas where indigenous groups live. Litigation against Chevron, first brought by Moreno and others in 1993 in the United States but later transferred to Ecuador at Chevron’s request, resulted in a historic $9.5 billion judgment against the oil giant and captivated the world’s attention as one of the most successful corporate accountability campaigns ever.
That said, as the evidence against it mounted in Ecuador, Chevron sold its assets there and has refused to pay the judgment. The villagers are now trying to seize Chevron’s assets in Canada, where the country’s Supreme Court in Ottawa recently backed them in a unanimous opinion.  Chevron’s various defenses have collapsed – the company’s main witness admitted lying -- and the company recently was caught on video trying to commit fraud on the court by covering up its contamination in the rainforest.
Far away from Ottawa in the steamy jungle, from her tiny clinic on a dirt road, Moreno hosted a long line of international celebrities and politicians to sensitize them to the health impacts of oil contamination.  The clinic itself was often bereft of medicine and lacked any diagnostic equipment; most residents tilled small plots of land and had no funds to take the long eight-hour bus ride to Quito over the Andes mountain to receive treatment in a hospital, which often cost a year’s wages.
Almost all who met Moreno and toured the devastated area were moved to action. U.S. Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA) wrote a moving letter to then President-elect Obama; Styler, wife of Sting, has written extensively about Chevron’s human rights violations in Ecuador, helped to fund cancer treatment for victims, and later founded a project to deliver clean water to area residents; and acclaimed documentary film director Joe Berlinger featured gripping video about cancer in San Carlos in his film Crude, which also includes a scene with Moreno in her clinic.  Hannah took a famous picture published in several magazines after dipping her hand into an open-air oil pit that Chevron claimed had been remediated.  Jagger spoke at Chevron’s shareholder meeting, urging executives to take action.
Others who met Moreno in San Carlos include Ben Barnes, the former Lt. Governor of Texas and advisor to President Lyndon Baines Johnson who went on to become a lobbyist for the affected communities on Capitol Hill when Chevron tried to convince the Bush and Obama administrations to cancel trade preferences for Ecuador, as retaliation for the lawsuit; Karen Hinton, former press secretary to New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and a longtime supporter of the communities who has blogged repeatedly about Chevron on the The Huffington Post and elsewhere; Atossa Soltani, founder and executive director of the environmental group Amazon Watch, which has led a 10-year campaign against Chevron; and Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club who also has spoken at Chevron’s annual meetings about the disaster. 
Moreno was mostly known as a person who tried against all odds to stave off the impending health disaster with her compassionate care of young children.  The clinic was a short walk from her house and she was often found there seven days per week. Moreno meticulously kept a handwritten log of people in the clinic who had died, often without receiving proper treatment given the paucity of doctors in the area.  The list in recent years had grown to dozens of names – many were young children -- even though only 2,000 people lived in the town.  Each name on the list had a name, date of birth, and date of death scrawled in Moreno’s distinctive script. 
Over time, Moreno became an activist as well.  On three occasions, she traveled to the United States to speak to the media and to confront Chevron executives at the company’s annual shareholder meetings, which she entered via a shareholder proxy.  Her comments, along with those of indigenous leaders from the area, were generally dismissed by Chevron’s CEOs David O’Reilly and John Watson who used various technical arguments to claim the company had no legal responsibility for the pollution.
Moreno and most of those who lived in the affected area have been forced to consume water from contaminated streams and rivers given the almost complete absence of potable water systems.  Cancer rates in the area have been confirmed not only by several independent health studies but by independent reports from journalists.  One analyst formerly with the Rand Corporation, Dr. Daniel Rourke, estimated based on current evidence that 10,000 people in the affected area of Ecuador would die of cancer if no remediation were to take place.  (For a video of what Chevron did wrong in Ecuador, see here.)
Several people and organizations commented on Moreno’s passing.
The FDA (the Spanish acronym for the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia), the grass roots organization that represents dozens of affected communities in the lawsuit against Chevron, issued the following statement:
“We believe Rosa Moreno’s life was cut short due to Chevron’s atrocious, irresponsible and criminal behavior in Ecuador.  Rosa had no fear to tell the truth about Chevron’s role in poisoning her community in San Carlos.  She helped care for sick people and she saw many of her neighbors, friends, and family members die of cancer.  Now that she too has died of cancer, Rosa has tragically become yet another victim of Chevron’s greed.  Her proud legacy will live on forever and will help motivate the communities to ensure that Chevron is held fully accountable for the harm it has caused.”
“With patience and intelligence, Rosa provided a priceless service for the Ecuadorian indigenous peoples of the rainforest,” said Hinton, who visited Moreno’s health clinic in 2008.  “As a health care worker, I think Rosa never realized she was just as susceptible to disease and death as everyone else living with Chevron's contamination.”  
Luis Yanza, a Goldman Prize winner and Ecuadorian community leader and a founder of the FDA, called Moreno “the gold standard for health care workers” and said she did not deserve her fate.
“This is a tragedy for the people of San Carlos who relied on Rosa to provide medical relief and a warm smile in a time of extreme hardship,” Yanza said.  “What Rosa’s death underscores is that Chevron’s pollution in Ecuador remains a loaded gun aimed at the heads of thousands of people.  Until that gun is removed, it is inevitable that more deaths will follow.” For more information please contact Patricio Salazar: [email protected] 
source: http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/39588-Legendary-Ecuadorian-Nurse-Who-Hosted-Celebrities-and-Battled-Chevron-Over-Pollution-Tragically-Dies-of-Cancer?tracking_source=rss
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