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بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم



بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم

مرحبا بكم

Meditations

Sep 19, 2014

Carthage








"We here in the silence of Carthage, a city of human sacrifices, the rival of Rome, wiped off the map of the world by the will of the Roman Scipio Émilien in the second century before Christ. Today (excentré) neighborhood of Tunis, Carthage was a city where African lived long before the old East to become one of the capitals of Christianity (in the third and fourth centuries). Here East and West have continued to speak, to fight, to meet, to love. This...pays tribute to women who have carried the flag of the city, including Elyssa, the founder, Phoenician came in the seventh century BC, and Hannibal men who were known throughout the world. Carthage is a meditation on history, as time goes on the war, the great fire of the world that is never extinguished, but historians (Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius) and literature. we depict Virgil to Saint Augustine, who long lived in Carthage where he had his first experiences in love, Flaubert and that the city rose in Salammbô disappeared."

anonymous



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We do have time to look about things and manage our plans. Let us swing and fly away high up and up and never go down till we reach Carthage. Do we need to forget that Carthage is our country of origin? Do we need to forget that our task is to protect and fortify Carthage? People abroad know Carthage better than we do. But again, if one seems to find it incumbent upon him to say it without reservations, isn’t life too short to be wasted on things transitory and vain? Isn’t life too short, my brothers? Day unto day, we see, life wastes and wanes like a candle burning its oils away till nothing but charred wick remains. Isn’t it too short, my brothers? Let us strive, dans un moment de répit, to figure it out. Life is a course and passage. It is unclear for me to take it to mean something besides. From this it will surely ensue the fact that we need to be very careful about it. One needs to be very careful about his life lest it should turn out so unconstructively. And "if of life we keep a care, let us shake off our slumber and beware." (William Shakespeare, the sonnets).


Why is it that we are always held blameable for things we have not done ourselves? Why is it that we are always admonished for others’ deeds and not for ours only? Il me semble après tout que nous sommes pas de ceux qui posent les questions jusqu’au bout. Let us then flap our wings and fly away high up and up and never go down. To fly away like the eagle whose own flesh, read this, as well as space is still a cage. Let us try to forget this way of life and work very hard upon obtaining our freedom. Freedom is so much needed and wanted if we are now to be very careful about our lives. More importantly, let us set ourselves free from those habits that we are very fond of calling ours. Always when anything gets to be a habit, it also manages to get a right good distance from truth and fact. We have so many bad habits. If only we could get them out of our lives with a view of living differently but also of evaluating differently. This is, as a matter of fact, to be made and become possible only after learning how to think differently. Some drastic and radical changes are more than important to be implemented. Our lives will never but fall into tedium and monotony if we are to do and act otherwise. Impossible de prendre ce chemin. Mais pourquoi? Is it not possible to change and reconstruct ? L’homme a besoin de ce qu’il y a de pire en lui pour atteindre ce qu’il y a de meilleur en lui. Il y a toujours, mon Dieu, quelque chose à faire. Alors, pourquoi rester dans les ténèbres ? Il y a toujours quelque chose à faire sur cette terre. Soyons comme la revière qui déborde et non pas comme l’étang (what a shame !) qui contient toujours l'eau même.



I am a failure if I keep on saying things against people. Que me fait le monde et ses vains jugements? Armance would ask without waiting for an answer. For the answer does already exist in the very asking of the question. Allons, allons, ça va bien. I am speaking disrespectfully about society. It is too good to be true. If only I could do otherwise. And after all, as Flaubert had held it in “SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION”, nous n’avons pas besoin de dogmes pour faire balayer les rues ! On dira que je renverse la société ! ou’ serait le mal? Elle est propre, en effet, ta société. People added still more to its horror. Society, Let this be said with regard to you. Oh ! Somebody, Victor Hugo would say, ought to take society by the four corners of the sheet and toss it all into the air ! everything would be crushed, it is likely, but at least nobody would have anything, there would be so much gained !

Maximillion Novak, to make it short, will direct our attention to Daniel Defoes’ The Review wherein one cannot possibly help sensing some sort of bitterness but also and more significantly some sort of reacting set out against recalcitrance and inaction.

“Dig, I cannot and to beg I am ashamed: what shall I do? An English Gentelman would presently have said to himself, Do ! What should you do? Get a Horse, and a case of Pistols; Is not the highway wide enough?”


After all, how many years of exile have we been forced to live in this happy life that, as I would like to put it just for the fun of it, we take to be ours? How many years of exile? Do we think it will do and be availed if we count them? Let us count them.

How many years of exile?

I counted with my fingers

Until I finished counting my fingers: ten.

I stopped counting then.

My exile can’t be counted,

Outdoes the power of numbers.

I have landed in my country,

I am home again.

But nothing means anything.

The place is no longer that place.

My name on the old elm vanished,

I remember having carved it well with a nail

Till the tree bled.

The often-noisy street is now calm,

No shouting, no yelling, no laughter,

No children, no passers-by, no beggar.

Where is the horse in the neighborhood stable?

He must have died.

Horses, good horses, don’t live long.

My mother’s stove is dead, too.

No more blowing at fire,

No more adding of wood.

My father’s grave in the cemetry

Is moss-infested.

It must have rained a lot this winter.

Everything is nothing today,

Only memory won’t die.

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It should be noted that the poem I have brought the text into closure with is written by my friend Mourad Mchiri. I have included the poem here by virtue of sense tempered with meaning, and friendship.
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July 26, 2010 at 8:25pm


Chokri OMRI
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