Difficult child

My mother told me i was difficult to love. This translated itself into my growing mind in a myriad of ways. One i was certain of was the complete lack of real understanding of what she termed 'difficult'. These thoughts would roll round in my head, arguing and debating ceaselessly over the thousand different permetations of difficult, like rowdy noises in crowded spaces. And perhaps this was the problem- nothing was ever concrete in my mind, not even language or emotions everything was fluid and changeable, if one jsut thought on it for too long. Like when a word is thought of so much the very letters cease to have any meaning and they disintergrate into the absurd.

It took a long while to reconcile myself to having a grasp of what she may have meant. I rushed through everthing so fast, i barely paused to consider or reflect that my maniacal need to for knowledge and discovery of the new may be a troublesome character trait. I was so argumentative and at times irritable with her inabitlity to immediately grasp my meaning or mood. I was often frustrated by others simply for not being able to feel what i felt and feeling incapbable of descibing it due to my mistrust of the concreteness of words to express myself. I was somewhat an arrogant youth who also felt to not feel as i did you could not possibly understand as i did.

I still yearned for some sort of communion with another. And through life have searched and routed for another soul to make me whole, which of course is extremely difficult to love. No one desires for that which longs for itself to be subsumed in another. People yearn for reflected glory but in reality in time it will become burdensome and will quickly tire of the shackles of anothers need of them.

I have also learnt over time that i struggled to feel worthy of the love i yearned for. A dark quarrelsome part of me sits like a malevolent old hag tearing apart any positive situation, negativly picking holes and smudging all to an inky darkness of no clarity. Cumbersome and constant deliberations run from her mouth, all lengthy all stuffy and pointless. And all ending in a world wearied retort 'i told you this was a fools errand'

But the other half of thatfateful phrase of my mothers puzzles me when my mind flips it over like a pebble on a river bed. Who truly loves simplicity? Difficultness is the lot of humanity. We have been born to labour through many things till death, to survive is wedded to our bones. Is love not meant to be a struggle? A battleground of hurt and disspointment. Do we not love the troublesome ones more because of the effort put in. Like a man feels pride in eating the crust he earnt by the sweat of his brow?

Am i difficult to love or is it just difficult to love?

Tonight

Tonight

Tonight i will go without the touch of your skin, or the taste of you in my mouth. I won’t feel the grate of your teeth on my cheek; you bite me so hard sometimes like Plath did to Ted Hughes-and i am reminded of the savagery of lust.

I won’t have cajoling hands pulling me closer, pressing my hips up against your desire and you will not have my hot hungry mouth with it’s desire to devour you.

I am afraid of this feral lust- too want this badly is dangerous…

Over the Border into Iraq

After several busy and hot days jam packed with meetings, discussions and documentation of the political trial in Diyarbakir, the next leg of our journey is looming up fast. We have struggled to organise a taxi driver to take us to the border and no one will do the whole journey but eventually on our last night and last meal all together as the uk delegation, perched up high at a restuarant built into the hills overlooking the Tigris; our bus driver managed to organise someone willing to take on the job and who will nurse us through the border to meet up with another driver on the Iraqi side. So it was in the relative coolness of dawn that we started our journey. I have to admit whilst sitting awkwardly and sleepily with our luggage in the hotel foyer that i didn't expect our driver to be quite as beautiful as he was. But hey he was! He had the most exquisite features and was very smartly dressed, as with most muslim men he was very polite but i have to admit i found it hard not to smile at him every time i caught his eye!

The sun was just climbing over the edge of the ragged hills and glinting off the tigris as we left Diyarbakir passing down out of the city through the Mardin gate. As we progressed the road opened up through rock blasted valleys and became a gleaming dual carriageway, newly built. It contrasted with the rough shacks which sold melons and road side refreshments, but was at this hour of the day pretty much completely empty. Except at one point a last minute screech of brakes and a loud horn resounding off the valley walls, the driver narrowly missed hitting a large rangy dog which leapt up onto the carrriageway and was trying to defend its little homestead from this great shiny beast of a car!

We drove fast through little hamlets, and up and down the mountian ranges but on reaching Mardin itself the driver took us right up and through the town centre, swerving round the build up of town traffic including overloaded mopeds, trucks, tractors and handcarts as well as swish cars on transporters heading for the Iraqi border. As we rounded the tight bends the whole of the Syrian plains opened up below us as the landscape fell away, old buildings and small houses hung onto the precarious sides and streets snaked their way down into the endless golden brown of the plain obscured by a dust and heat haze.

As we finally descended into the plains ourselves we were bordered on one side in the far distance by a brooding line of hills, these hills that are deeply battle scarred are quieter now since the PKK cease fire, and i don't feel quite the trepidation that William Dalrymple felt as he tracked this route in the early 90's. There isn't the obvious military prsence, i don't see any tanks on this Syrian border road and no burnt out cars litter its way but it is eeerily empty, shiny tarmac, yes, but the land is untilled and the Syrian border looks dilapidated as row upon row of sagging razor wire flys past my window. Occasionally bits of this border are pulled upwards as if someone has been running under the wire and marked with ragged strips of cloth but i know that between this and the stilt legged guard posts in the middle distance is a mine field and ponder how many have ever attempted to run the guantlet of the border. This plain is so desolate and empty but the soil is fertile, yet few remain to till it.

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