Two Famous Stiffs

I remember an old friend from High School telling me that he had seen a dead body while he was living in Yemen. He asked me at the time if I had ever seen a dead body before.

It happens that I have seen two in my life. Two dead bodies that belonged to two famous revolutionaries.

March 2006:

I’m with my tour group and the tour guide, David Eales in the centre of Ba Dinh Square. It was here that Ho Chi Minh, then leader of the Vietminh, read the Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945 believing  it to be the opportunity for Vietnam to declare independence from France. This officially led to the creation of North Vietnam at the end of World War II.

The mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh atop Ba Dinh Square (c) Original image taken by Taylor Driver

The rules are strict. No digital cameras or camcorders are allowed in the mausoleum. Same with food and drink. Visitors have to form two straight lines and observe a dress code. No shorts or miniskirts are allowed and arms must be kept straight with hands out of one’s pockets.

The lines shamble along, doing with their eyes what cameras and video cameras would have done in an instant. A military honour guard stands watch over the glass case, dimly illuminated by white lights. From nine in the morning to midday, the embalmed body is available for viewing to the public. The rest of the time, the mausoleum is closed in order to maintain the preservation of the former leader’s body.

It’s a macabre sight at the best of times. What makes it worse is that Ho Chi Minh didn’t want it to happen. According to historians, he wanted to be cremated, his ashes spread across the north, south and centre of the country. A grand mausoleum was considered a waste of arable land to him.

The mausoleum is inspired by Lenin’s own resting place in Moscow’s Red Square. Unbeknownst to me, I will have the opportunity to see him as well in the near future.

My tour group at the Memorial. I am at the far right, second row.

March 2007:

The air of March is perfectly tolerable for the average Russian. For a group of students who just came from Cairo, it feels good to be bundled up. Our guide Michael takes us to Red Square where the tomb of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin  continues to draw tourists and remnants of the Communist Party in Russia.

Lenin’s Mausoleum is a sort of pilgrimage site for members of Russia’s Communist Party

Just like Ho Chi Minh’s tomb, it is forbidden to take photos or record the moment on video. Everyone marches in single file around the glass case where the revolutionary lies to this day. He lies on his back with his black suit still on him. Despite all the rumours that his corpse was replaced by a wax dummy, I still dread the moment where his eyes open. I’ve got one foot in a reverie and another on the floor of a darkened room where the same man who created the Soviet Union has been lying in state ever since he died, years before anyone in the room was born. But I can’t stay in my head for too long with the guards ushering us out of the building.

The daylight brings us back to the world of the living once more.

It’s been about five to six years since I last saw them. But one thing is for sure. I can say with certainty that I’ve seen a dead body in real life. And not just anyone’s body.

As far as bragging rights go, I’m not sure how to feel.

The US Embassy Riots in Tunis: A Drive Through

On the day that the US embassy was stormed by rioters, I was in Marsa with my parents having a look at some of the houses in the area. Soon afterwards, my sisters and I were taken to the local shopping centre where we were met by an acquaintance of my parents. When they left for Laos in the 1980’s, she came to buy some of their items. She is a French teacher at the American Cooperative School of Tunis, located on the other side of the highway where the US embassy could be found. After chatting with my parents and catching up, she explained that she had the day off in anticipation of riots breaking out after the deadly attack on the US embassy in Libya.

In the early afternoon, my father drove the car along the highway where the school and the embassy were located. The sight we saw before us remains imprinted in my mind to this day.

The overpasses above the motorway were packed with people, jostling each other for the chance to witness the protests for themselves. I peered to my left, past my father and saw bearded young men carrying the black Islamic banner that has become a common sight associated with the Salafi movement since the ruling coalition took power in Tunisia. One of the rioters propped a metal crowd control barrier against the wall of the compound so that its bars could serve as rungs for a makeshift ladder and several witnesses were capturing the action on their mobile phones and digital cameras.

The most absurd sight of the day was that of the riot police. A group of no more than 10 officers raced to the scene of the riots on foot, while two mopeds carrying two officers each followed them.

The back seat of the car was ablaze with discussion and my mother urged me to take a photo or keep some memory of the event. I sadly did not have a camera with me to record this day. All that you read before you are the highlights of what I witnessed on that day.

By the late afternoon, my sister Leila was on her iPad. She read aloud the latest updates from Al-Jazeera to my mother in the kitchen while my father raged at the government for its inability to prevent the attack on the embassy and the school nearby. The Associated Press put the body count of the protest at 2 dead and 40 injured on that day.

A journalist I met at the World Press Freedom Day Conference in Tunisia reported that President Moncef Marzouki personally dispatched his Presidential Guard to quell the riots, playing a “risky political card”. The American Cooperative School of Tunis had sections of its Elementary School burned down and computers and tablets were stolen. Up till now, it is still collecting donations of money and books for its Recovery Fund.

For my own part, I am thankful that my parents were able to get back to our house before the riots became truly violent. I am additionally thankful that despite the scaremongering generated by news outlets the problems that Tunisia faces are not as violent as in neighbouring Libya or in Syria.

Epiphany (1 of 2)

*A piece written by stream of consciousness on September 20, 2012. Reading this will help you understand how I intend to go about making this blog.

I graduated from University with a Bachelors of Arts in Journalism, thinking that it would be ideal for a creative writer. It was the chance for me to write about books and films, the environment and the arts and every other curiosity I thought I knew and understood.

As time went by and I really learned what journalism was like in practical terms, my tutors gave me their insight into my development as a journalist in training. My weakness, they said, was not like that of my peers. While many of my classmates struggled to write academic essays and managed to write reasonably well as journalists, I excelled in academic research and writing but struggled as a reporter. The good news was that I had news sense. I had a way of knowing what was newsworthy, something that could not be taught.

I chose to specialise in Radio Journalism because I felt that I didn’t have the right personality type to be a presenter or news anchor. My strength was in my voice, I believed. With the fast paced evolution of new social networking technologies and the ever-changing landscape that is modern journalism, I chose to specialise in Online Journalism. I wrote for WordPress and Blogger individually and with a group as was required by my tutors. It was there that I understood that my greater success came from combining my writing with a strong team of technically able people.