the way this hillside

once it catches fire cools

half molten rock, half

your usual breakfast, no plate

no table, just a few hours

boiled in beach grass and the smell

mornings once gave off -you

are always lost, moving things

an arm, a foot, until the air

is bitter, has no salt, no smoke

-nothing’s left in you

-even if you want to be alive

this darkness will call you back

is already reaching up, swollen

from emptiness and your throat

opened for paving stones

you don’t know how to narrow down.

~ Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. More information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, can be found at his website.

Artwork: Familiar, by Marria Khan

Thodoris snaffled the tin with the red paint from the grocery shop when pateras left him in his place to go use the toilet. He hid the tin and a brush under the empty beer baskets in the alley next to the shop and went there later at night to collect them – after pateras had switched the lights off and pulled the metal roll down. He wasn’t afraid he’d get caught in the act. He was good at those things. Always managed to sneak things under everybody’s noses; nobody ever suspected anything. Of course this time it was different. He did it for a good cause. For the village’s good.

When he brought the tin at home I saw him shove it under his bed, rub his hands briskly and grin. At first he didn’t want to tell me what he was hiding under the bed, but when I threatened to tell pateras about it, he spilled the beans. I said I wanted to go with him. I was brave enough and I could carry the tin if they wanted. He said they could manage themselves, and that a girl seen out late at night in the company of boys would draw more suspicions than two boys alone – his best friend Andreas and him.

I stayed there in his room, stamping my feet against the linoleum floor and sulking until he finally gave in. I’d go with them on one condition. I’d never tell anybody anything about it. Never. He told me we should now give a blood oath. He pricked his index finger with a pin and a tiny drop of blood popped out. He pricked mine. We touched fingers and our blood merged.

‘Now you’re a comrade, a communist,’ my brother told me with a gruff voice. ‘To do as you’re told by our secret organization, to work for the nation and the Greek people. To be ready to sacrifice your life for them.’ He bent and pulled the tin with the paint and the brush out and onto his lap, tapped at the lid with the brush as if on a drum and said, ‘Are we set for tonight then?’

‘Mm,’ I nodded. I wasn’t sure I was ready to do all this stuff for my country and its people, but I couldn’t possibly spoil his enthusiasm. After all, it was for everybody’s good. And we’d be heroes after that, though nobody except us would know about it. It’d be our little secret, a secret that would make us all proud of ourselves.

Late at night, I tiptoed to our parents’ bedroom door and peered through the keyhole. Pateras and mana were sleeping. Then into our grandparents’ bedroom. Papous and yiayia were both snoring. Thodoris and I edged our way out of the kitchen door and into the cold November night. I felt my lungs sting with every breath I took.I didn’t know whether it was from the chilly air or because I was so keyed up. We met Andreas down the street by the iron gate of the old school and formed a tight knot of conspirators, scattering tiny clouds of hot, fast breath in the moonlit air. Our footfalls shattered the silence of the night, echoing in my ears like hail on a tin roof. Smoke was rising up from some of the villagers’ chimneys, like the shadows of grey-hooded spies, and the acrid smell of burnt wood filled my nostrils. Andreas’s teeth kept chattering, and Thodoris slapped him on the nape of his neck to make him stop the noise. ‘Can’t help it, mate’, Andreas complained.

The newly built primary school was just two old stone houses ahead, at the end of the dirt road. The black metal gate stood in front of us with its austere bars like a platoon of armed soldiers. Behind the gate lay the huge white gravel yard with lanky elms strewn along the perimeter wall. There were two white, red-tiled buildings. The bigger one was the school itself and the smaller attachment to the left was the gym. I felt my knees weak as we clambered over the gate, and I’d certainly have fallen down had Thodoris not caught my legs and propped me against his bent knees.

There would be two words to write: Eleftheria and Democratia. Freedom and Democracy were values for which we Greeks had fought many times in the past, causing immense bloodshed. Now it was high time we fought again, Thodoris had said. The fascist swine, the dictators, had gone too far this time. We heard it on the pirated radio station. Tanks treading on the university students at the Polytechnics last night. Soldiers against unarmed students. Thodoris cried with anger after the end of the news. The government TV channel YENEΔ had just showed a few well selected scenes with no victims present. It mentioned the leading dictator’s, Papadopoulos’s, statement that read, ‘that miasma the communism has spread its deleterious tentacles to the students, corrupting their minds,’ and that ‘the wild beasts’ efforts to overturn the healthy system have successfully been smothered.’ Thodoris explained that the communists were the good ones, the ones who fought against those bastards. He could get really hot-blooded when he talked about the dictators. He would clench his fists and froth at the edges of his mouth, his eyes round and red. I could hardly recognize his distorted face at such moments.

We’d write Eleftheria against the front wall of the gym and Democratia and Eleftheria on the main building, between the three dark green iron doors. Thodoris rolled up his sleeves, snapped the lid of the tin open with a clack and dipped the brush in. He spelt the word Eleftheria first, in big, round letters and then moved to the other building and wrote the same word again. Andreas was keeping watch near the gate.

‘Can I do it?’ I told Thodoris before he started off with the second word.

‘No, of course not. I want it straight and correctly spelt,’ he said.

‘You’ll tell me how. Please! Just this once.’

‘Oh, ok, ok,’ he said and gave me the brush. ‘Democratia with an e after D, ok?’ he said. I tried my best not to smudge the letters with the brush, although the D was more like a half moon rather than a letter. The rest of the letters were clearer but the word tilted upwards a bit. ‘Alright, alright, let’s pack now,’ Thodoris said.

There they were. Red, big, round letters against the white front of the school, like blood drips against young skin. We looked around for any unwanted presences and grabbed the tin and brush, ready to leave.
‘Oh, my God!’ I said, biting at my knuckles.

‘What’s wrong?’ Thodoris started.

‘What have we done?’

‘What? What?’ he goggled at me.

‘We used small letters. Not capital ones.’

‘So, what?’

‘They’ll recognize our handwriting.’

‘Who?’

‘The teachers, of course!’

‘No, they won’t. We’ll trick them.’

‘We can’t. Look at the e and the c. They’re so very yours. And only I can do the r like this.’

‘I’m sure many more pupils do them the same way.’

‘I do the c the same way,’ Andreas said.

‘See?’ Thodoris said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m scared to death. There’ll be a massive fuss tomorrow.’ I shivered at the thought. We stared at each other in silence, the whites of our eyes glinting in the moonlight. The air suddenly picked up, and we heard the elm leaves rustle and the twigs yowl as the wind passed through them.
‘Thodori, what did they do to the students in the Polytechnics, in Athens?’ Andreas said.

‘Tortured them I suppose. Don’t think about it. No one will ever catch us,’ Thodoris offered his knees again to help me jump over the gate.

to the lake that June,

almost as if they knew something

the rest of us did not -

some savage instinct or glorious flaw

christened and drowning in the water.

Their nests had been plucked clean, deflowered -

the eggs all gone,

the water choked thick and spiteful

with weeds.

The dock stood as always – knee deep in reeds

and apathy, the bald wood

showing its age and wobbling.

The tide brought its witness -

the wide, yellow maw of pollen

forbidding the surface to move.

You stood on the shore and poked

the sand with a stick as if expecting

it to to get up and walk away and surprised

when it did not make a sound.

I wondered what you were thinking

while you stared out over the water,

holding your breath like a bucket of stones.

Your lips never moved but I could hear

you talking -

blithe and unseen sounds nestling

in the crater of late afternoon.

And the kites kept their distance

all summer, never noticing the mercury

bursting from the thermometers or how

the wind kept changing its direction,

just biding their own time as the months

wore out their brief welcome.

~ Brendan Sullivan

Brendan Sullivan is a lifelong beach bum who has turned from acting to poetry. His work has been published at Wordsmiths, The Missing Slate, Every Writer’s Resource, Gutter Eloquence, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, After Tournier, Bareback Magazine and Bare Hands. 

By Sana Hussain

In the modern age the existential conundrum of belonging and identity has plagued many in the literary world. Both are complex issues that have multifarious interpretations of race, ethnicity, religion and politics. Writers who are better attuned to the intricacies of such issues simultaneously create and interpret an impression of belonging and identity.

While writers themselves are usually not tied down to one, linear interpretation of these factors, they do have a major role in constructing a narrative that can influence the general perception of what these words mean and how they were significant in the context that they were meant. Although sometimes writers may deal with their personal crisis of identities and feelings of alienation, at other points they appear to have a higher calling, becoming the mouthpieces for the confusion and aimlessness of a nation or an entire generation. Writers like Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot fall into the category of writers who defined the mores of their age. Their experiences of living abroad at the time of war, disillusionment and existential struggle colored their literature and also captured the general sentiment of that age.

Agents like war and colonial invasions bring with them not just physical destruction and monetary damage, they are also responsible for the disintegration of beliefs and value systems. Ideological chaos and a feeling of meaninglessness is usually a result of these agencies. However writers channel this confusion into their work leaving behind a documentation that not only gives an account of the facts, but presents an accurate portrayal of the emotional and mental anguish felt by the collective population of the period.

World War I was a war whose destruction had perhaps the most far reaching effects in history, leading to an existential crisis among people and causing them to denounce existing value systems and embrace nihilism. Gertrude Stein’s “Lost Generation” comprised of writers who came of age as World War I raged outside their windows. The phrase Ms. Stein used to describe these writers is a classic embodiment of the identity crisis a catastrophic event like war leaves in its wake. Sarah Cole in Modernism, Male Friendship and the First World War, (Cambridge University Press, 2003) says that in talking about the Lost Generation both parts of the conjunction should be considered, the word “lost” implying “alienation, solipsism, brokenness” and “generation” referring to “community, shared identity and intimacy”. For a more articulate understanding of this phenomenon she describes the experience of R. G. Dixon who speaks of this generation formed by war saying, “I have been painfully aware of how I am different from many of my compatriots. It has always been difficult for me to be wholly at home with those men who have not been through the experience of war”.

Transitioning from the ascetic Victorian and Edwardian eras into a period where the values and moral structures crucial in forming a relatable social unit had withered away, these writers had an acute sense of alienation and detachment from the regions to which they had once belonged. They sought familiarity and association in order to come to terms with the loss of their inherited values, but it was the sense of isolation and lack of a concrete identity that ultimately shaped the generation. By capturing the social mores of the rapidly changing post war world, the members of the Lost Generation were successful in constructing a coherent literary character amidst the chaos of ambiguous identities. Eliot’s Wasteland perhaps captures the essence of the aimless, unsatisfying life of this generation most accurately. He writes of the detachment an artist feels from his homeland and the shattering of his sense of belonging to the world he perceives as a wasteland. The work of these writers reflected their struggle to look for meaning and purpose in a world rocked by destruction, while revealing the changing identity structures in society including evolving gender roles and the new notions of masculinity. Hemingway’s Jack Barnes and Frederick Henry along with Lady Brett Ashley and Catherine Barkley, are all characters that symbolize the need for belonging, the meaninglessness of life and the changing gender roles of that time. The flappers of the early twentieth century, the libertines, and the excesses of alcohol, drugs and decadent parties became defining features of the early twentieth century. Writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway, despite suffering the same alienation and isolation of the Lost Generation, gave this age such an iconic status through their literature that their identity is synonymous to the age itself. 

War symbolizes a clash of civilizations, a trait it shares with its natural counterpart – colonization which, like war, can greatly alter a nation’s understanding of both its place in the larger narrative and its collective identity. The rule of a foreign country which comes with the influx of new cultures, language, religions and value systems, can interfere with the existing constructs of identity and belonging. Writers with their heightened sensibilities often translate this invasion of identities and confusion in affiliations into their work leaving behind cannon that has a strong sense of affinity and an individual distinctiveness, collectively boxed into “post-colonial literature”.

Post-colonial literature offers a strong polemic against the oppression and exploitation of the invading country, concentrating its focus on the fallout of colonization. Due to the usurpation of an indigenous identity by the foreign presence, questions about belonging and identity often surface culminating in existential concerns (what is our new cultural identity? Where do I fit into that identity, if at all? Who pulls the strings now that X Colonizers have departed?). Of course, there are no easy answers.

By Rhea Cinna

The Cannes Film Festival (taking place this year between the 15th and the 26th of May) is a staple in international film, boasting over 60 years of tradition. From its beginnings, marred by WWII, into the post-war atmosphere, riding the French new wave and beyond, its continued dedication to bringing quality and innovation in cinema to the forefront has always attracted the crème de la crème of the film world. It’s no wonder that in recent years, the festival has become as much of a star-studded, media covered and ultimately commercial event as one would expect. Still, despite the heavy caveats of having to cater to an increasing audience, the festival manages to retain at least part of its genuinely artistic core, making a film, director or actor’s appearance and success at Cannes as much of an achievement as it’s always been. It’s not rare that films presented at Cannes become some of the most successful films of the year, gaining the acclaim of audiences and critics alike.

While lately, the film offering at Cannes has been something of a mixed bag, a simple glance over this year’s lineup is enough to fill one with anticipation and excitement. Playing favorites with films one hasn’t seen yet is, to say the least, difficult, but here are a few films from the Official Selection that seem worth keeping an eye out for in theaters or stores over the following months:

Copyright 2013 Recorded Picture Company, Pandora Filmproduktion

Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive. Jarmusch’s name alone would be enough to elicit interest in this film, but the cast and most importantly, the story make this film downright drool-worthy, and this critic’s heart ache with anticipation. Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikovska and John Hurt, immortal lovers reuniting only to find new obstacles in their way, music, and Jim Jarmusch’s particular brand of atmosphere and melancholy. Do you need more? Watch Tilda Swinton’s eyes in the (painfully) short trailer and try not to find yourself drawn into the story, wanting more.

Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian). Desplechin is no newbie at Cannes, having had his films featured in the Official Selection of the festival no less than five times in the past and now, and not surprisingly. His films have always carried the kind of depth and attention to detail many artists spend their careers vainly trying to achieve. Watching a Desplechin film is often a painstakingly constructed, enveloping and fulfilling experience. Starring long-time collaborator and ‘actor of the moment’ for several years and counting Mathieu Almaric, facing off against Benicio Del Toro, it’s not a stretch to imagine this film too should become a rewarding one.

James Gray’s The Immigrant. Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Renner and Joaquin Phoenix in turn of the century(ish) goodness? Sold! Yes, sometimes that’s all it takes. In all fairness, just looking at the cast and summary, this is the kind of film made to sweep and sweep and sweep some more awards this year, and not necessarily in Cannes. With that said, I remember thinking something similar a few years back about The Tourist at first glance, and… ooops.

Copyright 2013 GAGA, TV Man Union

Hirokazu Koreeda’s Like Father, Like Son. Koreeda is another Cannes veteran who has likely produced a new gem to add to his already brilliant collection of works. The story centers around a business man who finds out the son he is raising was in fact switched at birth and that his real son is being raised by another family. The sensitivity and honesty of the director’s approach to his stories in his past films puts Like Father, Like Son very near the top of my list of anticipated films, despite the almost soap-opera-sounding summary.

Arnaud des Pallières’ Michael Kohlhaas. This is the director’s first appearance at Cannes, the film features an interesting and talented cast, and who doesn’t love a tale of medieval vengeance?

Takshi Miike’s Shield of Straw. With a career as prolific as Miike’s, it would be difficult for any film lover not to have at least heard the director’s name. Titles like Ichi the Killer or Audition are so widely recognized that they need only be mentioned to cause some sort of reaction, from excitement or awe to cringing or revulsion. While not all of Miike’s films fit the broadest of tastes, he is a director who has made himself difficult to ignore, at the very least.

The above are just a few of the films being showcased at Cannes right now. Honourable mentions go to Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin, Polanski’s Venus in Fur and Adbellatif Kechiche’s La Vie D’Adele – Chapitre 1&2 (Blue Is the Warmest Color), and this doesn’t even begin to describe this year’s Cannes’ beautiful madness. Then again, a listing of names and titles never could. What films do you look forward to from this year’s lineup?

Rhea Cinna is the Senior Film Critic for The Missing Slate.

He thought he was putting a flag on the moon.

But he was only putting a coin in the turnstile.

Spill-O made it to the kingdom too soon.

And now he has to wait awhile.

Way back when he was young

And had diamonds on his tongue,

The night was warm and the night was damp—

Each kiss was a spoonful of soup in a refugee camp.

Once they lay in fields of forget-me-nots,

Forgetting how ripeness always rots.

It’s a quaint suffering that god inflicts,

The old ritual of being tricked.

Spill-O wanted to make love with his dreams intact.

But she said that’s not love, that’s a suicide pact.

The cars outside made their homecomings and escapes.

The diner distracted them with ice cream and grapes.

Now the school of the heart is closed.

The usual brutal wisdom has become usual again.

It’s time to masturbate through the heartbreak,

Time to rend all that he has allowed to mend.

(The Spill-O Air and Space Museum)

Spill-O took a plane ride

over the empty states, now well-filled with superweapons.

His people had inherited God’s old temptation,

discovering how much easier it is to kill people

than change them.

In the fun district, the electronic music thumped

like the echocardiogram of a huge soul-eating beast.

He dreamt through a visionless age,

when God snacked on our astronauts.

Something streaked across the sky.

But Spill-O was a bad witness,

couldn’t tell a feather from a wound.

The object he saw

was a luminous emergence

from a worldwide sensibility

unwound and tangled

as a bowl of spaghetti.

Like how the UFO on tv

inverted and redeemed

the first mushroom cloud.

The man from the craft told Spill-O

that he must be dismembered

and let his remains swirl like a toilet bowl

if he’s to get through December

and out the other side of the hole.

He said that the sky is an inch deep

and the names of God are so much grass.

Spill-O stayed up late watching Star Trek,

wondering what the heck.

He hatched a plan to stand

straight up when the spaceship comes down

and wear the spaceship like a crown.

~ Colin Dodds

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s the author of several novels, including The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment – A Tragedy, was a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than sixty publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha.

Artwork: Little Bird by Marta Święcek

It’s not a paradox when I say that, although different from the beginning, the dream began as a normal dream. I was back in the fifth grade, at a school assembly. Then, the normal dream gave way to a good one: I found that my chair had the ability to slide from place to place. I could, with slight effort of will, ride my dull-grey metal folding chair around the polished wooden floor of the gymnasium like a go-kart.

This was a major development. Students and teachers reacted with instant shock. Adults called for me to be apprehended.

I wouldn’t have that. The powers that be would clearly dissect anyone demonstrating the ability to drive a simple folding chair around at will—even if the individual in question were a ten year-old. Eyeing my escape, I rocketed out of the gymnasium through doors more than twenty years in my past; flying down the picture-perfect hallways, replete with decorative, cut-out facts about everything from owls to astronomy glue-sticked onto vibrant construction paper and taped to the walls above the lockers. A picture perfect recreation of my one-time school.

Racing my chair gracefully up a handicapped ramp with mounting speed, I artfully avoided a small set of stairs. I knew exactly what I was doing. The smoothness of my control was matched only by the intensity of my velocity.

Then, the scenery around me began to change. The tile walls mildewed before my eyes, covering over with something that looked like paper-mâché that had been stained a dark brown. As my folding chair sped further along the hallway, the texture of the rough material spreading across the walls began to harden. The initially artificial appearance rapidly vanished, replaced by rockier and rockier facades.

Though the lockers were now totally obscured by the spreading crust, the glass of the classroom doors remained visible. After rushing by a few more rooms, however, the thickening layer of rock began to swallow up the panes of glass. I picked up speed.

A pale, throbbing light issued from the fissures in the stone where the windows had been — a sick light that gleamed through the mist-stained glass in violet shades. The glow poured through the scantly visible patches of smothered doorways that still peaked out from the spreading mineral surface. The plastic-capped feet of my chair clattered along on the uneven surface as rock slipped away beneath me, and I was propelled ever deeper into the tunnel. Even at this point, I was not yet afraid: merely curious.

Soon, I noted, the purple light no longer came from classroom doors, but instead billowed from luminous, tuberous growths embedded in the stone. I had been transfixed by my changing surroundings, and suddenly noticed that my speed had gotten out of hand. Trying vainly to slow my strange transportation, I was upset to find that my power over the chair had weakened. I could still pivot from side to side, but I couldn’t slow down.

Worst of all, I couldn’t reverse. I was a slave to the machinations of the chair, and it was taking me to a destination not of my own choosing. By this point, the hallway’s transformation had finished, revealing its actual form: a dank, cave-like tunnel. It no longer kept up any pretense of being my elementary-school.

Somehow, with eyes other than my own, I could see into the depths of the stone fissure. Far ahead, I saw that the tunnel opened out onto an expansive space — larger than any aircraft hangar — in which leaning parapets of stone loomed like great mushrooms out of a massive pool of deep, dark green water. These towers of rock reared high above the water’s surface, nearly scraping the rough, arched ceiling of the caves.

There was something achingly familiar about those caves. Something I didn’t want to remember. Something that a part of me, buried deep inside, already knew.

Instinctively, I began to scream. The way someone who accidentally slices off their fingers in a meat slicer screams. But, inside the dream, what came out of my mouth wasn’t an inchoate cry. Instead, I called for it. That’s when I first remember hearing its name, out of my own mouth.

“Seritz!” I cried. “Seritz!”

The anguished cry stretched out, echoing down the narrow tube of stone. With my elevated senses, I could hear the reverberations of that scream bouncing around the mushroom-towers of the open space ahead like a pinball, skipping across those deep green waters like a stone. Echoing in the chambers where the thing I had named dwelled: the lair of the Seritz.

Where therein the Seritz resided, whether deep in the water, or high atop the trees of stone — clinging like a limpet to the bottom of the verdant, noisome sea, or perched like a fat toad on the flat seats of rock high above — I do not know. But I do know that I never, never want to find out. I never want to see it.

I began screaming again, just outside the dream, on a second level of my mind. There, I urge my lips to form the shapes that create the sound of my wife’s name. To call out to something in the real world, some kind of lifeline that could lift me out of those caves.

My voice — the sound of my sleeping body’s real, human voice — leaked into the dream: thick, slow, and deliberate. A voice stuffed with cotton balls, mumbling into a pillow.

But it was there. The sound of my moaning voice was real. And, most importantly, it was outside the caves.

I needed to get out of there. I couldn’t wait for ordinary consciousness to be restored on anything resembling its own schedule. I needed immediate intervention. I muttered again, the sounds growing more distinct. The sound of my wife’s name grew clearer in my ears. My eyes snapped open.

I was in the world, the real world. No purple lights. No caves. No Seritz.
But no wife, either. As I stared at the only light — the alarm clock’s jagged red numbers proclaiming it to be two thirty seven AM — I began to weep: my wife had died thirteen years before, and for the space of three desperate, mumbled gasps, I had managed to forget it.

Deepa Mehta is a Canadian Indian filmmaker and screenwriter. Her artistic films and style of storytelling have turned her into one of the first names that come to mind when asked who the leading women in cinema are. Her work ranges from humorous films belonging to mainstream Bollywood/Hollywood, to the critically acclaimed element series: Earth, Water and Fire. Her most recent project entailed bringing to life Salman Rushdie’s 1981 novel, Midnight’s Children.

Copyright 2013 Hamilton-Mehta Productions

Midnight’s Children is an interesting mix between historical events surrounding the India-Pakistan partition and magical elements. The story, mainly centered around Saleem Sinai (Satya Bhabha), first takes us two generations back in time, introducing us to the world of Saleem’s grandfather, Dr.Aziz (Rajat Kapoor). Dr. Aziz had fallen in love with a patient, Naseem (Shabana Azmi), he had only seen parts of from behind a veil, and eventually ends up marrying her. We then move on, following the lives of their three daughters: Aliya, Emerald (married to army man Zulfiqar, played by Rahul Bose) and Mumtaz (Shahana Goswami), Saleem’s future mother. Mumtaz initially marries Nadir, a poet taking refuge in their underground cellar from the anti-freedom extremists, but later ends up divorced and re-marrying businessman Ahmed Sinai (Ronit Roy). Their son, Saleem, is born at midnight, on August 14th 1947, when the country is celebrating its independence. On that same night, he is exchanged with a street singer’s son, born at the same time, by the nurse, Mary (Seema Biwas), who later becomes a nanny at the Sinais’ house in an attempt to relieve her own guilt. Saleem discovers, at age 10, that he has some magical powers though which he is connected with children all over the country, children born at the hour of midnight on August 14th. We then see Saleem’s life unfold with the historical events as background, always connected to the other children of midnight.

What is admirable about this movie is that unlike many adapted films, it does not have a feeling of disconnect. Usually, when a book is transformed to fit the screen, it can sometimes seem as if blocks of story had been put together while major chunks had gone missing, making it impossible for a person who hadn’t read the book to fully understand it, and leaving those who had read it, unsatisfied. The movie adaptation of Midnight’s Children feels complete on its own, which must be, in part, because Salman Rushdie himself has been a part of the writing process. On the downside, due to the length of the novel, the film runs for 148 minutes, which is a little long for this critic’s taste.

The film also boasts an incredible ensemble cast, which only enhances the viewing pleasure; veterans like Shabana Azmi and Anupam Kher, though in small roles, are a delight to watch, and the younger cast members match the standards set by the veterans quite respectably. Satya Bhabha, who plays Saleem, in particular, gives a satisfying performance which, coupled with his striking facial features – the big mouth and the phased out doe eyes, truly captures the atmosphere of the story’s protagonist. It is interesting to see the fantasy element of the film roll out against the stark realities and destruction of the partition, and through the birth of the two new countries as this story weaves its way through India, Pakistan and then back to India again.

Overall, Midnight’s Children makes for an intense, rewarding watch, something everyone should see at least once. It may seem a bit long, but the cast and ambiance definitely make up for it. Deepa Mehta has done a commendable job at bringing a 600 page novel to the screen without hacking it up to a point where it loses its integrity.

Film Critic Shamain Nisar is a member of The Missing Slate’s Film Team.

and creator of the world.

                                Visayan myth

All year, it blooms and bears fruit,

Its branches stretching to the sky.

Everything in it, they say, can cure any illness.

An upset soul once thought he should dare

Climb to its crown, but midway up,

It bristled thousands of thorns.

A merchant had set his heart to pick

A bloom.  The climb was smooth:

When he reached to pluck one,

Its leaves whorled into knives.

Sun on his head, a little boy visited it

Begging for a fruit:

It grew branches from the ground

Up like a flight of stairs.

All year it bears fruit, blooms again. With each

Climber, the truth waits.

~ Victor N. Sugbo

Victor N. Sugbo is a poet from the Philippines who writes in two languages, English and Waray, his mother tongue. He has published poems in periodicals and anthologies in his country, including a book of poetry in his mother tongue with English translations. He teaches at the University of the Philippines Visayas in Tacloban City.

Foreigner in a foreign land
By Jacob Silkstone

‘Maligna, la verdad, qué noche tan grande, qué tierra tan sola!
He llegado otra vez a los dormitorios solitarios,
a almorzar en los restaurantes comida fría, y otra vez
tiro al suelo los pantalones y las camisas…’
-Pablo Neruda, ‘Tango del viudo’

My first view of Asia was gold on black, Dubai International Airport almost lurid against the 3 o’clock darkness. When the desert sun rose, I retreated to the cool of the Food Courts, sitting on a concrete bench beside a koi pond and reading a few chapters of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, clutching my Lemon & Ginger drink as though it might ward off the rising heat. Clumsy with tiredness after staying awake all the way from Heathrow, there seemed to be something irresistibly glamorous about the whole idea of sculpting a new existence abroad, something almost virtuous in having left family, friends and girlfriend behind to teach in an unknown country for no money at all. Suspended between two lives, who wouldn’t feel a flurry of excitement?

A couple of days later, I was stretched out on an unfamiliar bathroom floor, from time to time propping myself up just long enough to vomit into the toilet bowl. I went to bed that night next to a table littered with various pills, and woke up with a headache blinding enough to cover for all the hangovers I’d be missing out on in a country where alcohol is illegal unless you’re rich enough to circumvent the law. In full health, new experiences are almost always exhilarating, but in illness you long for the familiar — in my case, bland English food, comfortable temperatures, the faces of the people I love.

I’d left home trying to convince myself that I’d be ready to cope with my fair share of suffering. By most standards, I’d had an extraordinarily privileged childhood and — as arrogant as this sounds — never had to work particularly hard in school or at university. Settling down into a steady job with a steady wage would have felt like an abdication of responsibility; instead, I went to Bangladesh with the preposterous idea that I’d be leading an existence of quasi-mediaeval austerity, working from sunrise to sundown and living off bread and rice.

As if to highlight exactly how distasteful that vision of self-enforced ‘suffering’ is, a few lines from Pulp’s Common People suddenly come back to me:

When you’re laid (desperately want to write ‘lying’ here, so I will) in bed at night
            Watching roaches climb the wall
            If you called your dad he could stop it all…

Not quite true: if I called my dad, he’d be concerned but powerless to intervene, and the cockroaches tend to scuttle across the floor rather than climb the walls. Still, Jarvis Cocker has a point. The idea of wealthy Westerners feeling more virtuous because they’ve spent a few months in a less-fortunate country is troubling, to say the least.

In fact, some lives in Bangladesh are privileged beyond the dreams of wealthy families in the West. Having a maid and a driver is commonplace, even for middle-class families, and the country’s elite seem (although I have no first-hand experience) to live in palatial homes with dozens of guards, dozens of cars and a continual greed for more. The problem, as has been pointed out thousands of times before at much greater length than I can afford to go into here, is the gulf between the elite and the rest.

The rich regard the poor with a mixture of indifference and pure fear. Here’s a scene from the suburbs of Dhaka which might illustrate the point: I watch from a distance through the tinted window of my chauffeur-driven car as a beggar squirms on the dusty ground, pale soles upturned towards me. On either side of his spine, two twisted humps of muscle bulge upwards to form what looks like a shark’s dorsal fin. His limbs are so withered that walking is impossible. A young woman in a pink sari walks past and fumbles in her purse until she finds a small note (20 Taka, I think, although it’s hard to be sure from where I’m sitting) and presses it into the beggar’s clawed hand. A minute or so later, a man in a meticulously-ironed suit stops in almost exactly the same place, digs around in his pocket, pulls out a brand new iPhone and hurries on.

For me, the terrifying thing about that little anecdote is the ease with which I was able to turn away. When approached by people who must be going through a level of suffering beyond anything I could ever imagine, I’m able to coldly shrug and turn out my pockets and show them I don’t have the money. When they say ‘Please, boss’ (the standard way to address any white man here), I look impassive behind my sunglasses and am secretly relieved that I’m not carrying loose change. I’ve seen people actively pushing beggars away, or shouting ‘jao’ (go!), but somehow passivity is more shameful.

There are many ways in which I don’t quite fit in. I’d expected language to be the most significant barrier, but religion turned out to be of far more importance. Although Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, ‘the father of the nation’ and still the most visible face on Dhaka’s many political posters, initially intended Bangladesh to be a secular state, Islam is utterly dominant here, governing almost every aspect of life. In general, people are remarkably tolerant towards non-Muslims, as long as they identify themselves with another religion. In the first few days, I was asked hundreds of increasingly detailed questions about Christianity, and people seemed genuinely fascinated by my answers. What nobody seemed to consider was that I might not be a Christian at all. I imagine any suggestion of atheist sympathies would have been met roughly the same mixture of ‘Is he serious?’ bafflement and outright disgust as the suggestion that I spent my Thursday evenings having vigorous sex with an assortment of farm animals.

Despite the obvious cultural differences, I surprised myself by very quickly beginning to feel at home in Dhaka, as though this city of two-hour traffic jams, stifling pollution and buses which would cause a national scandal if they were allowed to run on British roads, could somehow become ‘my’ city. I remember Seamus Heaney’s line about being ‘lost, unhappy and at home’, but that’s not quite it…

There have been moments, listening to Hindi songs in the car on the way back from a restaurant or spending time with the kids at my school or walking to the park in the evenings, when I’ve felt as happy as I’ve ever felt, and times when coming to Bangladesh has seemed like the best decision I’ve ever made. And yet it’s a country of contradictions — my Bradt guidebook says that ‘if Bangladesh were a person, she would be a youthful teenager’, and Dhaka certainly has enough wild mood swings to justify the description.

At the end of my first week, I went for a walk around ‘my’ area of the city, accompanied by one of the household staff (having been told it was too dangerous for me to go out alone). After a few minutes, we came to a small lake and sat down on a swing (ignoring the English phrase ‘no outsiders allowed’ and its Bangla equivalent) to watch the sun sinking behind a stunningly beautiful white mosque. The sun was so round and red it could have been cut from the Bangladeshi flag, and the lake looked postcard-calm save for one family pedalling a hired boat. On closer inspection, though, the water was discoloured and stagnant, and a dead carp floated pale belly-up just a few metres from my feet.

Sometimes Dhaka seems squalid, choked by the blue-grey haze of pollution, and sometimes it seems like a terrestrial paradise. Ultimately, perhaps, it is just another city that outgrows every description.

Jacob Silkstone is Poetry Editor at The Missing Slate and co-manages Alone in Babel, a blog on books and the publications industry. Formerly based in the UK, he is currently teaching at a primary school in Bangladesh.