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De Algerijnse schrijver Yasmina Khadra (pseudoniem van Mohammed Moulessehoul) werd geboren op 10 januari 1955 in Kenadsa. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 januari 2008 en ook mijn blog van 10 januari 2009.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: The Swallows of Kabul (Vertaald door John Cullen)
Atiq Shaukat flails about him with his whip, trying to force a passage through the ragged crowd swirling around the stalls in the market like a swarm of dead leaves. He's late, but he finds it impossible to proceed any faster. It's like being inside a beehive; the vicious blows he deals out are addressed to no one in particular. On souk day, people act as if in a trance. The throng makes Atiq's head spin. In thicker and thicker waves, beggars arrive from the four corners of the city and compete with carters and onlookers for hypothetically free spaces. The porters' effluvia and the emanations of rotting produce fill the air with an appalling stench, and a burden of relentless heat crushes the esplanade. A few spectral women, segregated inside their grimy burqas, extend imploring hands and clutch at passersby; some receive a coin for their trouble, others just a curse. Often, when the women grow too insistent, an infuriated lashing drives them backward. But their retreat is brief, and soon they return to the assault, chanting their intolerable supplications. Others, encumbered by brats whose faces are covered with flies and snot, cluster desperately around the fruit vendors, interrupting their singsong litanies only to lunge for the occasional rotten tomato or onion that an alert customer may discover at the bottom of his basket.
"You can't stay there!" a vendor shouts at them, furiously brandishing a long stick above their heads. "You're bringing my stall bad luck, not to mention all kinds of bugs."
Atiq Shaukat looks at his watch and clenches his teeth in anger. The executioner must have arrived a good ten minutes ago, and he, Atiq, is still dawdling in the streets. Exasperated, he starts hitting out again, wielding his many-thonged whip in an effort to part the flood of humanity, futilely harrying a group of old men as insensible to his blows as they are to the sobs of a little girl lost in the crowd. Then, taking advantage of the opening caused by the passage of a truck, Atiq manages to squeeze into a less turbulent side street and hastens, despite his limp, toward a building that stands oddly upright amid an expanse of rubble. Formerly a clinic, but fallen into disuse and long since ransacked by phantoms of the night, the building is used by the Taliban as a temporary prison on the occasions when a public execution is to take place in the district.
Yasmina Khadra (Kenadsa, 10 januari 1955)
Collage
De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Dennis Cooper werd geboren op 10 januari 1953 in Arcadia, Californië. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 januari 2009.
Uit: My Loose Thread
I'm at breakfast. It's always something easy to make like a cold cereal. Dad watches taped golf from the weekend, and my mom reads the paper. Something in her is going off about me. I can see it's not the world. Jim's food is already a ruin, which is the only thing wrong.
"Jim rode his bike," she says. Not hello, or anything. That's news, since I always drive him to school.
"Yeah?"
She turns a page fast, and it rips. But I'm tired enough from one or maybe two hour's sleep, that her shit doesn't reach me.
"Say it, mom."
"Your dad had a cramp, and I was up, and I saw you," she says.
"Meaning what?" I'm pretty sure I was naked, and holding my clothes and my shoes in a wad.
"I called Dr. Thorne," she says.
"What did Jim say?"
"He protected you," she says.
"From what?" I throw my cereal bowl at the wall.
I think Rand is still on the floor of my bedroom. I mean in some way. I know he didn't die there. He got up after a couple of minutes, and left. But I think he'd come there if he could go anywhere. That's the Franks' big idea, or their excuse. The dead don't want to be dead, and they only give a shit about life. When I got back to my bedroom last night, I thought a lot about Rand, then decided. I killed the boy because I can't kill myself. That's why I hit him so hard. I realize he isn't Jim. When I get that upset, it doesn't take much to remind me.
I always hang out with Will. Sometimes Tran is there, too. They're what's left of my friends. Everyone else thinks I'm cold. Will and Tran are so into themselves, they don't notice. We like to watch the other students show up, and talk angrily about them. It's mostly Will. They're still too sleepy to hate us. When they do, I'll definitely feel it. It usually takes until lunch.
"I didn't sleep." Will's noticed something in me, but that'll probably do it. He used to go out with Jude, which is our mutual thing.
"Her again?" he says.
Dennis Cooper (Arcadia, 10 januari 1953)
De Amerikaanse dichter Jared Carter werd geboren op 10 januari 1939 in Elwood, een dorpje in Indiana, VS. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 januari 2009.
First Snow
To clear the walk before the children start
for school, you rise and dress, and take the broom
beside the door, and go out into darkness
where the snow you sweep from side to side
is followed by the snow that falls behind
your progress down the squares. A dream returns
you half remember having when you woke,
and when you pause to look back toward the porch
it seems youve been nowherethe walk you swept
is whiteness now, and as before. To take
a step from where you stand would be to risk
acknowledging youve come this far by losing
track of things. Then someone flicks the porch light
off and on, to say youre needed there.
You go, leaving a line of prints behind,
and even these are filled by daylight, when
the kids have vanished down the walk to catch
the bus, and everything is bright and still.
So for a second time you take the broom
and go to sweep the snow away. And find,
as though recalling now the other half
of what you dreamed, the pattern of your steps
impressed upon the walk and turned to ice
the childrens, too, going the other way
revealed beneath the snow that flies before
your broom, until you reach the end, and stop
to see the footprints clear this time. The dream
comes back entire: a line of stones across
a stream in summer, when you know not where
to step, and yet in choosing merge with what
is swirling all around you. And, still searching,
waken to silence, and a first snow falling.
Errata Slip
By an unfortunate error a number of lines
were somehow left out of the preceding pages.
But the books finished now, and the time
for making changes is past. In other ages
corrections were dropped in loose, on a slip
of paper, but nobody ever read them, or cared
if it should have been tripe and not trip,
or the heroine been not speared but spared.
And now that words are processed, we ourselves
no longer need to spell or punctuate;
software provides a group of learnéd elves
to shift our prose from third- to second-rate.
Farewell, then, fluttering slip of old errata!
There are no slips, when everything is data.
Jared Carter (Elwood, 10 januari 1939)
De Oostenrijkse dichteres en schrijfster Jutta Treiber werd geboren op 10 januari 1949 in Oberpullendorf. Na het gymnasium studeerde zij in Wenen Duits en Engels. Sinds 1988 is zij zelfstandig schrijfster. De eerste schrijfsels dateren al vanaf dat zij acht jaar oud was. In 1976 won zij haar eerste prijs voor een kort verhaal. Zij schrijft het liefste jeudboeken, waarbij de grens naar literatuur voor volwassenen vloeiend is. Haar werk omvat echter ook gedichten, theaterstukken, hoorspelen en zelfs korte films.
Uit: Der blaue See ist heute grün
Zwischen Schilf ein blauer Himmel. Die Föhren, die das andere Ufer säumten, spiegelten sich im Wasser. Wenn die Sonne schien, lag das Bild eines blauen Seidenhimmels darin. Aber dieser graue Himmel konnte nichts ausrichten. Der blaue See war heute grün. Sie war hierher gekommen, denn sie hatte es zu Hause nicht mehr ausgehalten. Hatte das Gefühl gehabt, dass ihre Haut platzen würde. Weg, nur weg. Gehen. Laufen. Irgendeine Art von Fortbewegung. Sie war mit dem Rad gefahren, schnell. Die wenigen Kilometer aus dem Dorf, das sich Stadt nannte, auf der Landstraße, und dann den Forstweg entlang zum blauen See. Hatte gekeucht, als sie abgestiegen war. War den lehmigen Weg durchs Dickicht gegangen, hatte sich an den Rand des Wassers gesetzt. Beruhigte sich allmählich, keuchte nicht mehr so schwer. Auf dem Wasserspiegel tanzten Schattenbilder. Als sich im Teströrchen ein kleiner roter Ring abgezeichnet hatte, war in ihrem Inneren eine Tür zugefallen und ein schwerer Riegel hatte sich vorgeschoben. Lebenslänglich! Plötzlich hatte sie Mauern um sich wachsen gefühlt, die sie von allem trennten, was ihr Leben bisher ausgemacht hatte. Nie wieder würde irgendetwas so sein wie bisher. Im ersten Moment hatte sie sich einer trügerischen Hoffnung hingegeben. Ein Test war nicht hundertprozentig sicher. Sie machte die Augen zu, löschte alle Bilder im Kopf. Schaute wieder auf das Teströhrchen. Der rote Ring war da. Sie war nicht enttäuscht, weil sie die Täuschung schon vorher als solche erkannt hatte. Noch nie hatte sie sich so einsam gefühlt. Sie saß wie versteinert auf dem Boden. War lange Zeit unfähig sich zu rühren. Kauerte sich zusammen, schlang die Arme um die Beine, wiegte sich hin und her. Ihre Wangen brannten, sie drückte ihr Gesicht gegen die Knie. Und plötzlich war diese Unruhe in ihr aufgestiegen, und Gisela hatte das Gefühl gehabt, ihre Haut müsse platzen. Und war dem Gefühl davongelaufen. Davongefahren. Ein Frosch zappelte im See, das Wasser kreiselte. Wind strich durch das Schilf. Wenn der See blau gewesen wäre, hätte er vielleicht mehr Trost geben können.
Jutta Treiber (Oberpullendorf, 10 januari 1949)
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