The subject of this photo is clearly the architecture. But then, I can’t stop looking at its left edge. The photo is one of many in my father’s World War II album, from the months when he was in the Middle East, mostly Egypt. He entitled it “Temple”, though I’m pretty sure the photo was taken in a mosque.
I have a carpet on my floor closely resembling those on the “temple” floor, which makes me feel the 70 years which have passed since the war are nothing in the history of Oriental carpet designs, and nothing in the history of geometrical forms covered in stylised vines and wreaths, all of it hinting at the perfection of God. The written messages fascinate me, all the more because I can’t read them.
The photo I submitted for this week’s photo challenge, Journey, reminded me of a poem in my father’s poetry book about the hats in the photo: The Old Slouch Hat. The name of the hat reflects the way it is worn ‘slouching’ on one side while the other side is often pinned against the crown to allow a rifle to be slung over the shoulder. It was worn by Australian soldiers in the Boer War and World War I, then again in World War II, and every war since.
The handwriting is my father’s but the words are by a ‘soldier in Tobruk’, Libya. My transcription follows these images.
First verse of “The Old Slouch Hat” by a soldier in Tobruk, Libya, 1941Fourth verse of “The Old Slouch Hat” by a soldier in Tobruk, Libya, 1941
The old slouch hat,
It’s not exactly glamorous,
The old slouch hat,
It’s not exactly chic.
But there’s something more than beauty,
A glorious tradition,
In the old slouch hat
That will ever to it stick.
*****
The old slouch hat,
It’s not exactly elegant,
The old slouch hat,
It might be rather plain.
But it showed the world the stuff
That Aus. sons were made of,
Did the old slouch hat,
And it’s doing it again.
3rd Apr – Went to the home of a Muslim woman to teach her English, but she wanted me to explain Christianity and to tell her what I know about Islam.
4th Apr – Just read that the woman who found Moses in the bulrushes, and then raised him as her own, was one of Pharaoh’s 59 daughters.
5th Apr – Another Muslim student is going to Saudi Arabia, where she’ll write a draft essay and send it to me in Australia to check before she sends it to her teacher. The essay is on The Metamorphosis by Kafka.
6th Apr – I’m halfway through The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, about a girl preparing for a family wedding; she buys special clothes and wears them for some time in the story. Today I’m preparing my special clothes for my son’s marriage next week when I will be a member of the wedding.
7th Apr – A blog article about a French Catholic church, written by a blogger I follow, was used as a sermon by a Presbyterian minister. Imagine! Your blog words spoken in public by someone you’ve never met! See Dennis Aubrey’s article about the Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine,Vézelay, France: Elle chante, Père.
On-board, en route to or from the Middle East, 1941 or 1942
When I chose this photo of soldiers on-board a ship on its way to or from the Middle East in 1941 or 1942, I noticed, for the first time, the hat shadow. And then I thought about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and The Little Prince. Perhaps Saint-Exupéry had seen soldiers’ hats when he was in North Africa in the 1930s. If the on-board photo is flipped horizontally, the shadow looks just like the Little Prince’s “drawing Number One”:
Drawing Number One, "The Little Prince", A. de Saint-Exupéry
If you’ve never read his story, you won’t know that the Little Prince showed the grown-ups his masterpiece and asked them if his drawing scared them. “Why be scared of a hat?” they asked. But he tells us, “My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.”
But back to the photo challenge: these soldiers are going on (or have been on) a journey that most of them will regret. Yet they look pretty relaxed here. Actually, pretty hot. They were probably travelling close to the equator. My father wrote some poetic lines about the boredom and wretchedness of being on-board a troop ship for weeks at a time. When you’re 20 years old and volunteer to go abroad to defend your country, it probably feels adventurous. And then you sail off, no turning back.
29th Mar – Spoke to the Housing tenant who was the target of last night’s tirade. He spoke to me politely, without swearing, and was touched that I was interested. The same man once threatened to do terrible things to my head if I called the police about him.
30th Mar – On the back deck there are two spiderwebs, one neat and circular and the other messy like crazy ladders.
31st Mar – This afternoon, two sons worked on serious maths problems while sharing one orange, one slice of fruit toast and one cup of chamomile tea.
1st Apr – Woke at 2.30 am. Still awake at 3.30 am but daylight saving ended at 3 am. At 4 am it was 3 am again. Still awake at 5 am, which was now 4 am. A long night.
2nd Apr – Alone in a gift shop, I heard a beautiful voice singing ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’, and stood still to listen closely. The owner showed me the CD case and told me about Melody Gardot, a prophetic name, as I learnt when I later read her life story.
This photo from my father’s war-time album has the caption Brass Worker. The artisan has arranged his ewer, vases and bowls to appeal to buyers. The photographer must have noticed the verticals in the scene: the vertical fluting in the brass work, the long table legs, the artisan’s striped galabeya, the height of his fez, the line of his straight back.
I use this photo as my computer’s wallpaper. Each time I turn it on, I see a man who is in control, organised, a man who likes to arrange things; he’s creating something beautiful, requiring a unique skill. Someone I emulate.
Yesterday, I posted these unusual things. Today, I tried to add a photo, and then another unusual thing happened. My post disappeared. Poof! Fortunately, my husband, as one of my ‘followers’, had an email version that I could copy. So let’s do this one more time…
24th Mar – My oldest son is 26 today. This is the first time I’ve had such an old child.
25th Mar – Walked past a front yard that is all garden, lush and green and shaded by three big trees. Through the luxuriance snakes a path of imitation grass.
26th Mar – Reading George Sand’s 1838 travel account, Un Hiver à Majorque – 181 pages. Searched in the library for the English translation, Winter in Majorca, assuming it would be the same size, but found a thin 43-pager. Dead authors are fair game for some translators.
Carthusian Monastery, Valldemossa, Majorca, where George Sand, her children, and Frédéric Chopin spent the winter of 1838/39
27th Mar – At my nine-year-old student’s house, she misheard my question after a woman unknown to me walked past the table:
“Who was that? Is she a relative?,” I asked.
“She’s my grandmother,” she replied.
After a silent moment, she asked, “Why did you say that?”
“Say what?”
“That she’s irrelevant.”
28th Mar – Afternoon: A tiny Housing tenant wandered into my yard and sat on my steps, his parents close behind. We chatted; it was pleasant. Another ‘first’.
Evening: An angry man shouting from mid-street threatened this same little family with unbloggable sufferings, until the police arrived.
19th Mar – Just read that Abraham’s first recorded words are his instruction to his wife to tell a lie, in order to save his own life.
20th Mar – Paid for access to George Sand’s Story of my Life. Translated from French. 1585 pages, 72 chapters, 65 translators. Apparently the largest group translation outside the Bible.
21st Mar – Heard Libby Holman singing Body and Soul (1930). She occasionally uses the OSV word order – object-subject-verb: ‘My life a wreck you’re making’. Like Yoda from Star Wars – ‘When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmm?’
22nd Mar – Went to tutor at a house where nothing is thrown away. Found a note to myself that I dropped in the yard last year, a reminder to get The Scarlet Letter from the library.
23rd Mar – Ran into a man who told me his wife, whom I’ve known for 10 years, is teaching French at the local primary school. As a Francophile, I wondered how I could have known someone for 10 years and not known she speaks French, so I had to ask, ‘Does she speak French?’. ‘No,’ he said, ‘she’s learning it at the Alliance Française.’ Hope she’s a few lessons ahead of her students.
I’ve looked at a lot of photos of mosques in the Western Desert – the expansive desert in Libya, just over Egypt’s western border – where I suspect this photo was taken, but couldn’t see one that matched this mosque. The wall seems to have had its window blown out, and as sometimes happens in photography, something damaged and ugly can be used to make a beautiful image. A photo of the mosque on its own would not tell as good a story as it does framed by this arched gap.
