El jihadismo en África Occidental no es nuevo. Es un fenómeno que viene en oleadas, cada siglo o dos, desde el siglo XIV o incluso antes. Lo que antes era una conquista, ahora es una mezcla tóxica de rabia y pobreza con un islam revolucionario.
Pero ahora estamos viviendo otra de esas oleadas.
Yo viví en Malí de 2013 a 2015, trabajando en el proceso de paz —firmado en 2015— que volvió a quebrantarse, y el país está nuevamente en guerra. Mi salida estuvo marcada por el ataque al Radisson Blu, al lado de mi casa, donde murieron más de 20 personas.
Escribí esta novela sobre las razones por las que un joven tuareg pobre podría escoger el camino del terrorismo; sobre su radicalización y su posterior desradicalización entre las bibliotecas de Tombuctú.
Porque leer, conocer y entender siempre ayuda a combatir el extremismo.
Cómprala. Y léela. Es más relevante ahora que nunca.
My wife prefers the beach. But for me the sand and the heat have always been a little bit of a nuisance. I’ve always preferred the quiet of a still mountain cabin. https://www.artpal.com/joeldhirst?i=319328-42
Nobody really reads anymore, the statistics are pretty grim. Pew Research suggested last year 40% of Americans read no book at all, 27% read up to four books and 19% — what Pew called “Heavy Readers” (no irony alas) read more than ten. Those heavy readers are propping up the dying industry, but not particularly well. Meanwhile, publishers are focusing on titles and authors who are guaranteed to make money for their dying industry, Tom Clancy, the next J.K. Rowling book where a pot-bellied balding middle aged Harry kills Voldemort — again — who comes back to life — again. A tell all about sex in some public building.
I have written six or seven novels, a play, a book of poetry. I have a memoir of sorts forthcoming, to be released when the politics of life allows me to publish it. Each one specially crafted, each one appealing to some new idea, some new thought, some new experience. Mostly I would write after finishing a tour in some lost place struggling to be free. A two-part story on Venezuela’s political collapse, told with magical realism because that is the only way to tell stories about South America. A tale of a jihadi from Timbuktu. A dark, violent novel about life in Uganda’s Lords Resistance Army. A short, lamenting story about an old bookseller from Yerevan who just needed to write his last book, and how. My play is the story of a political prisoner, because that has been something that has consumed my imagination for many years.
Why do I write, if nobody reads and I am not known? Insanity it is said is doing the same thing over and over expecting somehow this time it will turn out different. Maybe I should instead do little dance routines on TikTok? Maybe I should ask my wife if she’d be willing to take her clothes off for the drooling denizens of OnlyFans? Why write at all, when Americans (and the West) can only digest 140 character insults?
I have no idea. I am insane.
As part of that, I spent the summer re-reading “The Unraveling”, my dystopian novel. I had to go back to it and fix it, it is the greatest work of my mind. Not simple at all like my Armenia novel and not visceral at all like my Uganda one. It is layered and complex and took me about 5 years to write and I needed to let it breathe and then return to it to see if all the threads connected. I fixed some stuff, and polished it a little, to give it back to you, reader, in the off chance that somebody out there can still read something as magnificent as “The Unraveling”. It is my masterpiece, my Huxley, my Orwell, my Zamyatin.
Here it is. If I could, I would beg, please read my novel. Then buy another, and another. Then move on to other authors; find another and another as your brain grows to absorb that which only a novel can give you. Put down your phone, and read. And remember, if you spend the $20 on my novel — which will cost you a popcorn at the movies or an uber ride to the bar where you partake in the last legal drug, the returns on that flow forward into eternity as you participate in something as timeless as reading and building a library for yourself.
I went to New Orleans the other day. It was a goodbye of sorts, after a period of long work. I went with my wife, who had never been. I wanted to show her the city, the chaos and the color. The layers on layers of people who came and went, who left their mark mostly in sadness on America’s most distinctive town. I wanted to capture the explosion of light and color and mayhem and the anonymity of people who lived and many who died here, often leaving their ghosts behind to haunt the olden alleys. Like all old cities whose times have come and gone, New Orleans is now a museum to its storied past, and a haven for painters and poets and musicians.
I am grateful to the old city, and so grateful for my time serving her. Like so many others, I came and went mostly anonymously adding a little bit of life energy to that crazy place.
I thought here of an old friend, retired now after a lot of loss and a life that was full of meaning but also troubled in a lot of ways. His love of nature, his desire to be alone, the way he always sees the world as fresh and abundant. His comfort in being alone though he always seeks ways to help others.
They’re not really mountains at all, from somebody who grew up in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, soaring 24,000 feet above. But they have tremendous charm; they are old, and as they roll back and back you can get lost in them. Virginia is quite beautiful — it’s no surprise that for the founders this was the first state among equals (3 of the first 5 presidents were from here).
Early in the first century King Abgar V of Edessa was sick. He heard of a holy man in Jerusalem, named Jesus, and sent his messenger and his court portraitist to invite Jesus to Edessa. Abgar could not cross Roman lands. He knew Jesus was in danger and invited him to share his city. Jesus responded that he had a different destiny, but he sent Thaddeus to heal the king and the portraitist returned with a painting of Jesus. It was called the Mandylion, the first icon, and it hung in the halls of Edessa for a thousand years, keeping the city safe. I imagine this is what it looked like.
My wife said she seems like somebody who would get offended easy 🙂 — But I think the glasses softened her. This is painting number 100. They are now hanging in the office of a U.S. Senator, in the office of President Bush, in an art gallery for former USAID employees, in the Democracy Art collection of the National Endowment of Democracy, in the office of Maria Corina Machado the Nobel Prize winner, and in the house of Yo Yo Ma. You should probably get one too 🙂 — https://www.artpal.com/joeldhirst?i=319328-39
Joel D. Hirst's Blog 