In Amongst It

Since the Hamas attacks on October 7th, the whole world, or at least it certainly feels like that, has been scrambling to make sense of what happened on that day, what happened in 1948, what happened in 70 A.D. and whatever had happened before then. Everyone has rushed to learn the history of the region, the people, the conflict. And the problem with learning about Israel-Palestine and all that comes with it is that one is dealing with a region so historically dense, so politically fraught, and featuring key stakeholders who are so impeccably masterful at the art of propaganda.  It is astonishing to see both sides in the current conflict have such disregard for the basic morals and ethics that have guided most of the modern world. On the Israeli, Zionist side, having exclusive ownership of this land is their innate birth-right. That is their guiding principle. Having been exiled in the Babylonian Captivity in the 6th century BCE and in the Jewish-Roman wars recorded somewhat one-si...

 I'd anticipated some lighter subjects for this blog before I woke yesterday morning and read the news about Alexei Navalny's death. When I first read it, I doubted it, dismissing it as Twitter doggerel and nothing more. That is, until respected historians like Simon Sebag Montefiore and Peter Frankopan started sharing it and commenting on it. Then people like Clarissa Ward and Anne Applebaum chimed in as well. It was in disbelief I read the varying attempts at hagiography, watched the prison video taken, apparently, only the previous day. This was a day I always knew was coming, and knew that it would come sooner rather than later. I just didn't think it would be today. I won't pretend that my freedom is under attack or that the situations that Alexei Navalny protested in any way resemble anything that I have gone through. I'm writing this in front of a TV in Dublin, Ireland. I'm not knee-deep in repression in Vladivostok or anything like that. The work of Alex...

               So goes the story from the annals of history that, when the knights of the First Crusade finally arrived at Jerusalem, the epicentre of the Holy Land and the city that Pope Urban II had urged them to capture, they fell down to the ground and wept uncontrollably, for they had achieved their life’s purpose and saw the most beautiful place in the world. Now I didn’t exactly powerlessly fall to my knees and weep uncontrollably upon seeing the Great Pyramids, nor was I doing this trip in the service of some Higher Power, but I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I shed a few tears and was overcome with some emotions when I first entered the Giza Necropolis and gazed upon these most beautiful buildings.                They are the testament to all of which humanity is capable, and that is why they are a refreshing site to visit right now given the state of the world. Our generation and future gene...

I recently had the great fortune of visiting the Hagia Sophia, the great Byzantine-era construction that adorns Istanbul’s Golden Horn. The building itself has worn many masks over the preceding fifteen centuries with its most prominent shift being the God that is prayed to within its walls. Atatürk, the father of the Turkish republic, turned the site into a museum in 1935 in an attempt to modernise the nation and its most glorious historical places. It was reconsecrated as a mosque by President Erdoğan in July 2020. The reasoning given was that the Atatürk had acted unlawfully against the waqf – a sacrosanct charitable endowment under Islamic law – under which Sultan Mehmed had converted the then-church into a mosque. Whatever one’s religious persuasion, it is beautiful to see such a building once more restored to divination. However, it has come with a dire consequence: the speakers that play the adhan – call-to-prayer – five times a day are reverberating so loudly that they are da...