Homage to Indie Book Stores Everywhere. What Would We Do Without You?

In a small town on Spanish Ibiza, there's a small book store called Libro Azul. Earlier this summer, I went there with a friend to buy her a small gift. My first choice going in was Siddharta by Hermann Hesse, followed by The Magus by John Fowles, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami (Arundhati Roi's The God of Small Things or Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night would be great, too)

I knew it was a long shot that a small indie store would have those books in English. I expected a bland soup of Da Vinci Codes, 1001 Shades of Gray, and icy Swedish thrillers where even the prose has been viciously beheaded. My friend and I walked straight to the small English section that consisted of about three hundred books, and to my shock this small independent book store in sleepy Santa Gertrudis on Ibiza had the first three!

That's right. Out of three hundred books in English, Siddharta, The Magus, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle were all there!

"What a fantastic selection you have," I said to the owner, trying hard not to hug him to death and shower him with the kind of atrocious kisses you would expect from deranged novelists.

"I want people to read good stuff," he said with a shrug, "so when they ask for a bad book, I try to convince them to buy a good one." He picked up The Big Book of Pussy that was lying on the front desk for all kids to see. "With a few exceptions, of course," he added with a big smile.

A few minutes later we walked out of the store, with the firm belief that independent book stores will survive absolutely everything, including cockroaches and who knows, maybe even Amazon?

A young reader dreaming of Harry Potter and Pippi Longstocking?  What would she do in a world devoid of small indie book stores that prefer pulp from the sublime?  Even kids can't be online all the time. So I've been told, anyway.
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Election in Zimbabwe: Please Don't Be Cruel to Robert Mugabe. He Is Such a Sensitive Dictator

 1.
Please don't be cruel to Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe is such a sensitive dictator. And as we all know, sensitive dictators don't have any sense of humor. They are too busy torturing poets and worrying about their stool. So have a heart, have a little compassion for this aging dictator who may or may not become Dictator of the Century in Zimbabwe at this year's election.

To tell you the truth, no matter what happens I feel sorry for Robert Mugabe. I wouldn't want to swap lives with that man. Too many power hungry spirits are building nests in his short hairs. Too many vicious people are making fun of this proud leader who has never lost an election. Even when he has lost an election.


2.
Let me mention some of those people that humiliated him not that long ago: Raisedon Baya, Christopher Mlalazi, Aleck Zulu, Lionel Nkusi. These scoundrels had the audacity of writing and producing a play called The Crocodile of Zambezi. It premiered May 29, 2008; the writers and actors had worked on it for two years.

The play took place in a fictional country, depicting a weak 94 year old dictator in the middle of a crisis.

Robert Mugabe in crisis?

Don't these artists understand that Robert Mugabe was appointed by God? Does God have a crisis? Of course not. God takes care of business as He sees fit. God is in perfect control and if He doesn't win the elections, He still wins the elections. That's why He is so loved by His people.

By the way, Robert Mugabe didn't like that play back in 2008. Actually, He never saw it. Dictators don't have time for the arts. Well, maybe they listen to Wagner or watch the odd rerun of The Sopranos, but satire, no, that's not their kind of thing. Adolf Hitler never laughed at Charles Chaplin, and Osama bin-Laden wasn't too fond of Jon Stewart, only American porn. These are facts whether you like them or not!

So back in 2008, Robert Mugabe sent some of his boys from the secret police. They rounded up the actor Aleck Zulu and the production manager Lionel Nkosi and gave them a ride in their car. They tortured them and put a gun in their mouths. Maybe they broke a few limbs as well because you shouldn't insult the man who has given so much to his subjects .... sorry, co-patriots.

The play, by the way, was closed down after one performance, which is totally understandable, because who in their right mind would want to see a play making fun of the Supreme Savior of Zimbabwe? Instead these artists should lavish Mugabe with praise. They should write pompous poems to glorify His strength, they should construct endless bridges in His name, or create religious cults instead of telling lies about this Glorious Incarnation of Light.

3.
As I said, Robert Mugabe is a sensitive dictator. And maybe He sleeps a little better when plays like that close down. Maybe He's even proud that this election will be a little less rigged than the ones before?

So have a little compassion, have a little heart. Not for Zimbabwe but for Roberto Mugabe. The poor man had a difficult childhood. So why shouldn't the rest of his people?


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Rewritten blog from 2008. 

This entry is dedicated to the brave people of Zimbabwe who have the courage to laugh through tyranny, and to organizations like American and Danish PEN that tirelessly work for protecting the freedom of speech in countries like Zimbabwe. I'm proud to be a member of both. The brilliant cartoon above is all over the net, but I haven't been able to find out who the artist is.

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SOS Children's Villages: Sponsor Uncle Just Loved Visiting His Kid in Bangalore, India

Sponsor Uncle has a lovely daughter in Bangalore, India.

Her name is Keerthana, and she has lived in the local SOS village since she was three. Keerthana is ten years old, soon to be eleven, and she has a rich life with a mother and ten other kids in a nice house. Keerthana is probably the most quiet and understated of the bunch----very appropriate since her Sponsor Uncle is a bit of a showboat.

Sponsor Auntie couldn't make the trip to Southern India, but she's proud of Keerthana, too. We had bought her a nice gift: an orange bag with crayons, pens, and a big notebook. Keerthana was very pleased since she likes to draw pictures of nature. She is good at running, too---a talent she luckily didn't put to use when Sponsor Uncle visited ...

During my stay Keerthana glowed in her beautiful dress. And so did her silly Sponsor Uncle who had a lot of fun with her great, naughty siblings. If I could, I would have stuffed them all in my suitcase and brought them back with me, but India has strict rules against that, unfortunately.

When Sponsor Uncle left the SOS Village to go back to his writer's residency at Sangam House he was moved beyond words. But his Indian cab driver soon got him down to earth.

"You pay $40 a month for an Indian kid?" he asked looking at me like I was some kind of a moron.

"Yes, and I love it."

"I can get you five kids for that price," he said and drove me into the heavy fumes of the Bangalore traffic.

Well, thanks to the many SOS Children's Villages around the world, thousands of orphans and poor kids can sleep safely at night and get an education in loving surroundings. And you can sponsor one of them as well, if you like. There are SOS Villages around the world. SOS is active in 133 countries, and you can read about it here.

How I Lost My Heart to Nepal and the Tibetans in Boudha

I totally lost my heart to Nepal and the Tibetan community in Boudha. 

I was in town to do two readings at an international writers' festival that actually was cancelled, but since a lot of us had received grant money to attend, ten of us showed up, anyway, including Vikum Seth from India, slam poet Sarah Kay from New York, and my Danish colleague Sally Altschuler. 

The brilliant director of the Literary Jatra, Suvani Singh quickly arranged a lot of events for us, and to my surprise they were all well attended. Sarah Kay kicked some serious ass in Thalem, Vikum Seth disappeared from the face of the earth, and I presented The Tsar's Dwarf and my take on writing historical novels for a large group of wonderful writers, poets, and journalists at ICER college. And I read at the Storytellers' Union along with Sally Altschuler and five local storytellers.

When I wasn't working I walked around Boudha outside Kathmandu in awe, getting up at dawn to circle around one of the world's biggest stupas in the company of Tibetan monks. I loved it and was incredibly moved by the whole experience.

In Boudha I stayed at the Tibet International hotel only 300 meters from the stupa and would recommend it to anyone. The people working there were absolutely wonderful. After a few days, I'd almost fallen in love with three receptionists and with the roof terrace where there was a great view of the stupa and the snowcapped Himalayas.

Well, pictures speak louder than words (as a novelist, I hate that saying) but here are a few photos from my great week in Nepal and Boudha.

Kathmandu is a ride. But leave your lungs at home. They won't like the place half as much as you will. And the Nepalese are adorable. Please invite me again, won't you?

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My Reading In Helsinki, Finland: What a Sauna of Love!

The first time I was in Finland I was almost beaten up by two Finnish thugs in a bar.

They didn't like my Greenpeace sticker, and when they found out I'd just been to Moscow, they were convinced I was a Commie. "We like to kill them," one of the psychos told me with a smile that would have made Hannibal Lecter proud.

But last month I was back in the Land of Nokia to present The Tsar's Dwarf (Zarens dværg) in Helsinki. And this time no one tried to bash my head in. Helsinki was sunny and friendly like a sauna of love.

My reading took place at a downtown library. Fifty wonderful Finns and Danes laughed, applauded, and fed me cheese. I spoke to Finns Who Love Denmark Because We Sound So Weird, Danes Who Married Finns And Don't Mind Too Much, and Finns Who Married Danes But Now Can't Get Rid Of Them. There were some great people from The Danish Club and the embassy as well. Even the Ambassador was cool.

I sold a lot of books, too and signed the odd body part.

I did, however, experience some drama. In the airport bus I lost my credit card, but got it back two hours later.

"The Finns are extremely honest," my Danish host, Claus Elholm Andersen told me. He teaches Danish lit at University of Helsinki and recently moved to Helsinki from San Diego. Talking about dedication to the tundra! Claus is the man with the red shoes in the top photo. Whatever gets you through ten months of winter is fine with me, Claus.

Here are some more pictures from Helsinki. The Finnish capital isn't a bad place to hang out. And the sweet smell of Vodka is everywhere, especially in the trams in the morning. So God bless the Finns. They put up with the Russians for centuries, and now they've put up with me.

Supertramp's Roger Hodgson in Concert at the Oregon Zoo: Even The Giraffes Got So Excited They Tried To Headbutt This Musical Genius

Sometimes I can't stand all the beauty in the world.

Nine days ago was one of those days.

Roger Hodgson, the lead singer from Supertramp, had the audacity of visiting Portland, where he played some of the classics he wrote in the Seventies and Eighties. If you don't know what songs I'm talking about, let me just mention Give A Little Bit, Breakfast in America, The Logical Song, Dreamer, It's Raining Again, and Take The Long Way Home

The concert took place at the Oregon Zoo in front of orangutangs, leopards, and an enthusiastic crowd of aging hippies. The giraffes got so excited they tried to run up to the stage and headbutt Roger Hodgson, but he was probably protected by Babaji and a hundred other saints.

Goddammit, I don't want to admit how much I was moved by that concert. Not just because Roger Hodgsons songs were the soundtrack to my pimples, but because he is one of the most spiritual singers around.

Listening to Roger is like being in the company of an archangel of music. Like all truly great artists, Hodgson downloads songs from Heaven. I was crying when the old hippie played Hide In Your Shell, one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Equally great was Lord Is It Mine, a modern psalm. Johann Sebastian Bach probably gave it to Hodgson in a dream, and I don't think Bach regrets that!

So, Roger Hodson, I'm very impressed with you. But don't you dare come back to Portland, Oregon! Frankly, I'm not sure the giraffes and I can stand that much beauty.

                                                                                     Guitar photo of Roger Hodgson by Gregory Weinkauf

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My Weird and Incredible Meeting With Israeli Author Meir Shalev (Which Just Goes To Show How Small The World Is)

Meir Shalev, the award-winning Israeli author who was one of the many participants at World Voices 2009 in New York.

1.
Life is a funny and strange four letter word.

Three years ago I was an official blogger for PEN at World Voices in New York.  At the party in a fancy midtown hotel on Manhattan I ran into Meir Shalev, the famous Israeli author.

I'd seen him on a panel a few days earlier where he'd made a wonderful impression, but apart from that I knew nothing about him. But after talking to the man for less than two minutes, I found out that he once met my Jewish Danish grandfather!

My totally unknown grandfather.

From a small town in Denmark. Far from New York and Israel.

Thirty-one years ago.

Ladies and gentlemen, how weird was that?

 2.
All this came to light just because I bragged to Shalev about being 25% Jewish (my left leg?). My maternal grandfather was born in Safed in 1898 and was abducted by a Danish missionary under mysterious circumstances, ending up in my cold Scandinavian country as a frightened six year old.

"Oh, yes, yes" Meir Shalev told me, "I've heard that story before. He was baptized against his will, wasn't he?  His name was David something. Actually, I met your grandfather twenty five years ago when I was in Denmark. He was a very interesting man."

I stared at Shalev. Was he a mind reader or some kind of memory psycho? Or was I on drugs without knowing it? But then again anything can happen in New York. Some one could have slipped a Semitic pill into my Chardonnay to take advantage of my body - or more likely, to force me from writing more novels.

Meir Shalev continued: "I met your grandfather through Herbert Pundik (a renowned Danish journalist and editor). Then I took the train and visited him an hour and a half from Copenhagen. He lived in the countryside in a beautiful house by a small pond."

I nodded and kept on staring at this strange Israeli writer. This was all too surreal, but at the same time, my granddad's life story was so incredible that most people would remember it if they heard it.

In 1998 I wrote a novelized biography about his life called Drømmeren fra Palæstina (The Dreamer from Palestine). It was my breakthrough to a larger audience in Denmark and stayed 85% true to the real events of his life, but unfortunately, the novel isn't out in English. It was published in French as Le Rêveur de Palestine (Gaia Editions, 2006), and got a rave review from French critic Mazarine Pingeot-Mitterand at the Salon de la Littérature Européenne de Cognac (Cognac Festival for European Literature) in 2006.



3.
My maternal granddad's name was David Huda. He was the son of a Arab father and a Jewish mother, and he was abducted by a Danish Christian missionary when he was six, probably because his Arab Christian father wanted him to have the "right" upbringing.

Then David was brought to Denmark and forced to live in a strange land with a pair of cold, Lutheran foster parents who tried to turn him into a "good" Dane. At that time, no one had dark skin in Denmark, so my grandfather was considered a freak or a circus act by the farmers of Kibæk in Western Jutland.

 My granddad's Christian baptism in 1906. The poor kid had his curls cut off and put in a white robe that made him look like a girl. The event traumatized him for life.

4.
On so many levels, David Huda's life has been important to me. My grandfather was a charismatic man with a great sense of humor, and the novel/biography I wrote about him was my breakthrough in Denmark to a bigger audience.

"I remember that David Huda escaped to Sweden during the Second World War in the bottom of a fishing boat," Shalev said. "He was very ill of cancer when I visited him in the early Eighties, but he made quite an impression on me."

I nodded. My granddad died in February 1982 but had just come alive on Lexington Avenue in New York on a cold May day, resurrected by a wonderful Israeli author I'd never heard of before and who definitely hadn't heard of me.

But maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. American PEN and World Voices are about connecting writers from around the world. Well, what can I say, PEN? You're doing a damn fine job!

 Drømmeren fra Palæstina  (Lindhardt & Ringhof) will be out as an e-book in Denmark this summer. And it will re-released as an audiobook as well, so my old novel/biography is getting a small revival.


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A Warm Tribute to Damascus and Syria (In Photos, Anyway)

I wish I could write something funny about Syria, but what's taking place in that country right now is incredibly sad.

After eleven months of uprising, fighting has spread to gorgeous Damascus where so many artists and academics have stayed at the Danish Institute, working on their books, art, and projects. The old part of the capital is one of the most fascinating places I have visited in my life, and I loved the Syrians who are a warm and generous people.

Parts of my two latest novels, Skorpionens Hale and Zarens dværg (The Tsar's Dwarf, Hawthorne Books) were written at the institute in Souq Madhat Basha, close to the beautiful Umayyad mosque. It's hard not to be inspired when you "have to" walk through 1001 Nights just to get a shawarma. "Welcome," was the greeting everywhere, and you actually did feel welcome in Damascus where St. Paul got his visions two millennia ago.

So this post is a small homage of pictures from my three Syrian visits where I met so many warm and helpful people. I hope they're doing well right now, but I doubt it. The Assad regime has always been brutal, and unfortunately it's showing its true colors to the world right now.

May Allah be with every single Syrian who wants to live a life in freedom and peace!

All photos copyright by Peter H. Fogtdal, Danish Accent.

Blog entry from my latest stay in Damascus in 2007, Damascus Is A Dream But Lesbians Are Not Allowed

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There Is Nothing More Powerful Than Yoga (Unless You Hate It, Of Course)

1.
I absolutely adore yoga. It's like having sex with yourself - a spiritual cleansing, a divine form of masturbation that has been passed down from Indian saints who didn't know how to keep warm in the Himalayas. I totally believe you can become enlightened by mastering your body - I'm just not sure I have one.

Yes, you guessed it, I only like yoga in theory. When my body sees a yoga mat it wants to run away and munch on a pork sandwich. It doesn't want to breathe through migraines; it doesn't find any joy in "allowing" the pain from a cracked collarbone. My body wants greasy tacos, sex in phone booths, and long bike rides around nuclear plants.

So why do I keep on torturing myself with the Downward Dog and other unhealthy yoga positions? I've done yoga on Greek islands and dengue at a health spa in Thailand. That's right, dengue at a health spa. God is trying to tell me something. "Stay away from yoga," God shouts with that booming voice of His that worked so well for Charlton Heston.

2.
Right now I'm sitting at Kalani Oceanside Retreat in the rainforest on Big Island, Hawaii, and it's so serene it gets on my nerves. Alcohol isn't allowed, but anal sex is, so it's not all dull.

Actually, people are absolutely warm and beautiful. In my group you find a Latvian healer, a musician from L.A. with a gift for Zin Wine, a chocolate sales executive who despises chocolate, and an ex-con from the Oakland ghetto. The food is so healthy and tasty you want to scream, and unfortunately our yoga teacher Will is absolutely great. He even has a sense of humor, something I thought was strictly forbidden on the spiritual pathway. And hey, there's a reclining Buddha overseeing my declining body when I go snorkeling in the pool. With a life guard like that, how can you drown?

So yes, you could refer to this lush rain forest as Paradise, but damn it, there's nothing at Kalani to keep me on my toes. When I visited ashrams in India and Thailand you had to watch out for snakes and monkeys jumping on your back. On Big Island nothing can kill you. You may see a dolphin or hear a whale, but even though this is a spiritual place whales tend to keep to the sea - they're not much for doing The Plow.

3.
By the way, I love mediation much better than the medieval torture that passes for Kundalini yoga. I'm also pretty good at breathing. Without bragging I can say I've done that successfully for half a century.

A few days ago I almost reached Enlightenment. I suddenly found myself fondling the most beautiful woman in the studio which happened to be my girlfriend. And I felt like fondling a few others as well, since I believe it's very important to share your wealth, but unfortunately my guardian spirit told me to stop.

4.
But excuse me, I have to leave you now. There's an Ecstatic Dance taking place in the Rainbow Room here at Kalani. You're supposed to chant and rub your chakras against the other yogis while you chant something incredibly deep in Sanskrit. You just can't go wrong with that, now can you?

Link to the gorgeous Kalani Oceanside Retreat where egos go to die (some more than others)




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