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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Men in Falling Jeans

This is a random interruption from my vacation tales, but today I found a piece of paper that I had jotted down some notes on. I was listening to an NPR interview with Hisham Matar, the author of a novel called Anatomy of a Disappearance. 


The author was saying that in Libya, the revolution was sometimes informally called "the revolution of the young men in falling jeans" because so many of those involved were young men. It was astounding to me that a trend as stupid as wearing your pants halfway down your butt had made it to Libya and may even be seen as a sign of Western-style freedom. Seriously, of all the cultural ideas you could adopt from America...you're just gonna show me your underwear?

Hashim's father opposed Khadaffi, and moved the family to Egypt but at some point, he was taken, arrested, tortured, and disappeared without trial. Hashim says he feels the deepest connection with those in small Irish fishing villages whose fathers fished alone and disappeared at sea. It isn't a kinship that my brain would necessarily leap to, but it makes a lot of sense.

For him, the connection and understanding is in the idea that one cannot give up hope until they know and at some point, certainty may become more desirable than hope. I have added the book to my reading list and am trying to figure out if there is a song I could write in there...or if it would just be a re-hash of "Hope is All I Have."





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