Sodome et Gomorrhe, de Marcel Proust

I reread it again, now in French, and was so overwhelmed as the other times. Proust writes so perfectly, he has such an incredible grasp of people's feelings and such a mastery of words and language that one is always wondering how can someone convey these things so accurately. It's interesting how what he says about emotions, or homosexuality, can be so actual, it shows how human nature has changed so little in 100 years - but then, isn't the extraordinary insight of men like Montaigne or Marcus Aurelius a proof that it hasn't changed for many centuries? Anyway, it's always an immense pleasure to read Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu is definitely the book I would take to that desert island.

Clear Light of Day, by Anita Desai

This is a good book about family relationships, childhood and growing old, set in the fascinating period of the Partition of India and Pakistan. It's really well written, and it conveys a very impressive atmosphere, which is something I always appreciate in a novel. I discovered this book through a list made by Salman Rushdie in some newspaper, and the recommendations of a favourite author are always worthwhile.

Goodbye to a sweet cat

On Christmas Eve, as calmly and sweetly as she always lived, she died - just stopped breathing while she was cuddling on my chest, like a candle that burns out. She was named Morgana, but coulnd't be more different from her namesake, that scheming and evil sorceress. Ever since she was brought into the house, she was the most nice and easy going cat one can imagine. I remember the day when my 10 year-old son came in with a couple of kittens and a school friend (for protection, I used to do the same, to bring along a friend when I wanted to ask something from my parents, hoping they would be more lenient in front of a third party...), saying triumphantly: "They are abandoned! We must rescue them!" - because recently he had asked me for another cat and I had told him we already had Cassandra, and we shouldn't be bringing more pets into the house unless we rescued some by chance... I tried: "So why won't your friend here take them home?", to which the said friend answered promptly: "My mother wouldn't allow!", and I said: "See? If his mother doesn't allow it, why should I?", to which my son immediately said: "Because you're sooo good!" Yep. he always knew how to trick me...

On the next morning, I got a phone call from an angry teacher - apparently, the kittens were not exactly "abandoned" or "rescued". They were the last ones from a litter a stray cat had had at the school, and that teacher had encouraged the kids to adopt them, but with previous parental permission. My son wanted them, and since I hadn't given the said permission, he decided to take matters in his hands. And then there was a little girl, who had honestly asked for her parents permission, and finally got it, and there were no kittens left because they had been stolen by my little lamb... But there were still no candidates for the last kitten, the female, if I allowed it, he could keep it. So, we gave the little male back and kept the female - Morgana - after a due scolding to the little brat - "I had to do something!".

So, she became her pet, and astonishingly they got along fine - I never would have thought a cat would bond with such a hyperactive and annoying kid, but she did, she loved him, he even taught her to give a high five and she eventually became a little like him: nice, easy going, fat, even using her smelly farts as a kind of secret weapon when she was annoyed... She was always the most sociable of all our cats, only in her old age would she sometimes hiss at a younger cat when he wanted to play and she wasn't in the mood.

For a time, she used to alternate the heat with the other female cat, so we used to have always a meowing and langorous cat about the house. Then she had a pyo-uterus and had to undergo surgery, after that she got fatter and quieter. She was pretty healthy until a couple of years ago, when she started to become incontinent and developed a weakness of her hind limbs. She probably had a myelospondiloarthropathy, but she had no pains, so I just let her be. By that time the little lamb had moved out, and she became increasingly attached to me, making my own cat very jealous, but she couldn't care less - she also reminded me of my son with that attitude. And then in the last few months she got thinner and weaker, until she stopped eating, and finally died, quietly and sweetly as she had lived. I miss her, but I think she had a good life and was a always a happy cat - what more can one wish?

Learning to live, every day

I don't remember where I read it, I think it was in the correspondence between Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren when, moruning the end of their love affair, she wrote something like: "Like van Gogh, who had to learn how to live without one ear, so will I have to learn to live without your love, without a part of me." It must have been better stated than this; anyway, even if it is not a particularly well chosen example - after all, van Gogh killed himself later, even if it probably wasn't because of lacking an ear - but somehow this image struck me and stuck in my mind ever since. Because at the time I felt it described exactly how I had felt after my wife's death - I had lost a part of myself, namely my future, the future I had planned / envisioned. Of course one can question why I wouldn't be able to plan another future later, nothing concrete stopped me, but I just couldn't, since then I have been living in the present; having children didn't change that, because their future was (is) theirs, not mine.

Lately, I've been thinking about this, although in another, more selfless, context. Every day I deal with old and sick people, who have to learn how to live without a part of themselves - or several, literally speaking, when they lose limbs for instance. But the part I have been thinking of is mostly their autonomy, their independence. That kind of problem happens more and more as people age - whether they get kidney disease and have to be on dialysis or they have a stroke and become physically or mentally impaired. Very often I'm confronted with people who suffer from those losses, and who ask "how shall I go on living? Is it worth it? Shouldn't I just die?". Well, eventually I think it's each person's choice. As a physician, I try to preserve life and alleviate suffering, as an - in spite of all - optimist, I try to make people value what remains, what they have left. And most of the times, apart from the most terrible and desperate cases where suffering is indeed unbearable and there's no hope of alleviating, when I agree the best is to let Nature have its due, there really is something worthwhile left. Be it family, or friends, or a hobby, or anything one enjoys. Because usually one can learn how to live without an ear, or a wife, or a limb, or one's former autonomy. It's mostly a question of adaptation, and most people are extremely resilient, much more than they would imagine, even in very dire circumstances.

Which brings me to another literary reminiscence, the poem by Susan Coolidge I always think of in my moments of optimism, as I said before, when I think that, whatever hardships one must endure, this life is the only one gets, so one may as well try to make the better of it while it lasts:

New Every Morning

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.

So, let's begin again.

The Lover, by A. B. Yehoshua

This is the third book by Yehoshua I've read - bought one each time I went to Israel - and I liked it again very much. Yehoshua's writing is always excellent, it creates a characteristic rhythm, slow and enchanting. The story deals with love and family relationships, and if it has some weakness, I think it's when it tries to "explain" the lover's character, which I think that, as a catalyst for the action and the other character's feelings, should remain more undefined. But it's a very good book, even if not as good as the other two I've read by him - Mr. Mani and A Journey to the End of the Millenium.

Les Perroquets de la Place d'Arezzo, de Eric Emmanuel-Schmitt

I noticed this book in a bookshop in Quebec, and having read Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran, and liked it very much, I was interested, so later I bought it and read it. It is a good book, about love and relationships, very readable, some times very sweet and sometimes funny, even if sometimes also a little annoying due to most of its many characters being somewhat stereotyped - there is also one that is clearly based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Sometimes you feel there are a little too many characters, and some of the scenes are not very believable, but it's a good read and most of the time you feel entertained in a good way, and it has an optimistic tone that leaves you glad.

The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

An interesting dystopian tale; I read because it was by a Canadian author and I don't know much about Canadian literature. The Handmaid's Tale depicts a hypothetical theocracy in a post- apocalyptic US, inspired by the Iranian model - it was written in the '80s - but nowadays reminiscent of the Taliban regime or the Islamic State. I don't think we run any risk of a Christian theocracy being implanted any time soon, but this is a good reminder of how it must feel in one of the Islamic theocracies, namely regarding the female condition, which is the main subject of the book. And because of that, I think it's worth reading.

Independent People, by Halldór Laxness

All the guides and books about Iceland said this is the Icelandic novel, so I bought it when I was there, and finished it now. I liked it very much, and it indeed evokes Iceland in a beatiful way - the harshness of the climate, the independence spirit, their relationship with poetry. It's a sad and harsh story, but it gives one the sense of the indomitable spirit of people in a harsh land.

Les Rois Maudits - Le Lis et le Lion et Quand un Roi perd la France, de Maurice Druon

These are the two final volumes of the Rois Maudits saga. Le Lis et le Lion finishes the story of the cursed progeny of Philippe le Bel, and Quand un Roi perd la France tells the follow-up, until the battle of Poitiers, one of the lowest points for France in the Hundred Years War. It's a well written historical novel, with plenty of intrigue and infamous characters, a very good read.

The Silence of the Sea, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

This was one of the books I bought in Iceland; I had heard about Yrsa Sigurdardóttir before as the epitome of the Nordic thrillers and still hadn't tried it. I like Jo Nesbo very much, and Henning Mankell, not so much Stieg Larsson or Camilla Lackberg. The Silence of the Sea is a nice book, with a clever and often intriguing story, but it didn't thrilled me that much - the writing and the characters are passable but not very good, and the atmosphere is not particularly noir or engaging. Better than Camilla Lackberg, but miles behind Nesbo.

Inside the Dream Palace - The life and times of the New York's legendary Chelsea Hotel, by Sherill Tippins

I first heard about the Chelsea Hotel in the famous Leonard Cohen song. Later I read about it in memoirs, like Gore Vidal's Palimpsest or Patti Smith's Just Kids, and saw it in movies like Factory Girl. So, when I read somewhere a review of this book, I was curious, and ordered it on Amazon. It is a very good read, informative and entertaining. I didn't know the Chelsea had been built as a kind of experiment in urban lodging in the 1870s. Since then, it was the home of an incredible number of artists, from Mark Twain and John Sloan to Patti Smith and Dee Dee Ramone, with residents including Dylan Thomas, Virgil Thomson, Arthur Miller and so many others. The Chelsea Hotel was in the centre of the New York art scene, particularly after WWII until the 1970s. The book tells a lot of interesting stories, mostly interesting, and the author is very passionate about its subject. Sometimes it's a little boring, and it gives a lot of space to people like Andy Warhol - one of the biggest frauds in the art history, in my opinion, but then it was a big part of the Chelsea's history. And there are a lot of funny anecdotes, like when Christo invited someone for dinner and wasn't sure it the wrapped cutlery was a work of art...

O Lugar Supraceleste, de Frederico Lourenço

I have read most of Frederico Lourenço's books for many years. I like his writing - cultivated, clean and clear - and I think he's one of the few young(ish) Portuguese authors worth reading. And it's funny how I enjoy it even if I disagree of his opinions lots of times and have different tastes about lots of things. But still there are many issues where I feel he's telling it exactly how I would put it, and mostly I like the way he questions things, how he analyses himself and looks for his place / meaning in the world, which is something that always resonates with me. And I feel mostly in tune with his answers, if in a different key. It's one of those cases when even if the ways are different, the quest and the inner core are very much the same.

Tales of Iceland, or Running with the Huldufólk in the Permanent Daylight, by Stephen Markley

One of the things I like to do when I travel is to buy books from local authors, or about the places I'm visiting. So, in Iceland last month, I bought a few Icelandic books at one of the Eymundsson bookshops, and as I was browsing the shelves, this little book about a trip to Iceland by a young American caught my eye. I bought it, read a few random pages as I was travelling across the country, and after coming back home read it from beginning to end. It's a nice book, an account of three young Americans' trip to Iceland and their impressions of the country. Loving to travel and to compare opinions, I found it mostly funny and entertaining, even if the twenty-something-ish kind of experiences and humour are quite far from my own. Maybe sometimes it gets a bit too silly, but all in all I enjoyed reading it. And through it I discovered the Give Live Explore project of one of the guys, Matt Trinetti, that is very uplifting and interesting, and to which I subscribed and plan to follow online. So many different things one can get from travelling!

So, website suggestion: http://www.giveliveexplore.com/

The Wire - Season 4 (and the other seasons are also great)

I don't remember when I last posted about a TV series - I watch a lot of them, and some are quite good, others just visual chewing gum or eye candy, but almost all forgettable. Then, in the last few months, I have been watching The Wire, after a friend highly recommended it to me, and I'm liking it immensely. It's great televised fiction, rough and poetic, realist and idealistic. I have liked all the seasons so far, but the 4th stroke me particularly - focused on education, it's really heartbreaking. The script is incredibly strong, the performances all top notch. It's so good to watch a series that is certainly not forgettable, like one can't forget other old series (Brideshead Revisited comes to mind, in a totally different key). I highly recommend it.

Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe, tome 2, de François-René de Chateaubriand

I like to read memoirs and biographies, and I absolutely love the French language. I started reading Chateaubriand's Mémoires d'Outre Tombe a few years ago on the internet, in project Gutenberg, but then they didn't have the second volume, so the reading was interrupted; I bought the second volume in Paris and it had been on my shelf for a couple of years, and now I read it. It's a very good read; Chateaubriand's conservative and religious convictions are sometimes very annoying, but he's a very keen observant and the period through which he lived is fascinating. This second volume deals mostly with the Napoleonic period, and what an incredible time it was. I guess Chateaubriand would be a kind of social democrat today, he valued freedom and morals above all. His descriptions are always vivid and he writes in the most beautiful French. I will order the other volumes of his memoirs soon.

A trip to Iceland

I had been wanting to visit Iceland for a long time, and this year I finally made it. I chose the end of June, to take advantage of the light all day long and because it's not too cold, and I loved the trip. Iceland is a kind of amplified blend between the Azores and Norway, but with its own unique character.

We arrived at Reykjavik at night, but it was light, since the sun doesn't set at this time of year. In the morning, we headed from our hotel to the city, guided by the bulky silhouette of Hallgrimsjirkja, a church that is so much bigger than the city around it that can be seen from everywhere dominating the city landscape. With a design inspired by the geometric basalt formations ubiquitous all through the island, the church is a beautiful building, with a spacious and very brightly lit interior and a terrific view from the tower over the city: the colourful houses, the blue sea and the snowy mountains in the horizon, a good introduction to Iceland.

From the church, we strolled down through the city to the harbour, then up again to the Parliament square and the lake; Reykjavik is a small city but with a cosmopolitan look, with all the tourists and the terraces of the cafés, and in a strikingly beautiful setting by the sea. It was sunny and warm, so we enjoyed the outdoors and spent some quality time sipping drinks in café terraces. The next day it wasn't so sunny - the weather in Iceland is very windy and it changes often in a matter of minutes - so we visited the Settlement Exhibition, the Iceland national Museum (both very good) and the Art Museum dedicated to contemporary art (mostly awful). We strolled by the seaside from the Harpa modern building to the beautiful Sun Voyager sculpture (with the inevitable Japanese tourists taking selfies) and the next day started our road trip around the island.

The car rental girl told us about the insurance conditions, how it covered gravel scratches - lots of gravel roads in Iceland - but not sandstorms' accidents and, before leaving, she said casually "Oh, and be careful when you open the doors, if the wind rips them away, it's not covered by the insurance either". We were a little perplexed, but later we would understand her point.

Road number 1, also known as the Ring Road, circles the whole island and is the best road in Iceland - which doesn't mean it's not gravel in some places. A rainy drive took us to Gullfoss, our first stop in the so called Golden Circle (Gullfoss, the Geysir and Þingvellir). Gullfoss it's an incredible waterfall, huge and stunningly beautiful. It was very cold, with the wind and the water blown from the waterfall, but I didn't think about it while I was watching it from every possible angle. After Gullfoss, we went to see the Geysir. The Geysir itself is inactive, but its neighbour the Strokkur erupts every 5 to 10 minutes and provides a gorgeous sight. Then, the Þingvellir Park is terrifically beautiful, we walked in the rift that separates the American from the European tectonic plaques, with the site of the ancient Icelandic parliament marked with a flag and a powerful waterfall with a pool where they used to drown women guilty of adultery.

After spending the night at Stokkseyri, a small fishing village, we went back east to the Reykjanes peninsula, a harsh landscape of lava fields with grey-green moss and a savage rocky coast beaten by wind and sea. In the middle, we had the experience of the Blue Lagoon, the beautiful very blue thermal pools that are the most visited tourist attraction in Iceland. Very touristily organized, it's worth the visit - the water is delightfully hot and the pools insanely beautiful, and it's a somewhat surreal experience to be immersed in the hot water in the drizzling cold rain, surrounded by the mist from the water vapour. The details of the organization are also interesting, especially the "shower police" (people who watch if you really shower naked before entering the pools).

Heading west along the south coast, we stopped at Hverasvaedid, a site with volcanic activity full of bubbling mudpots and sulphur stinking smokes, then at the beautiful waterfall of Skógafoss and drove across green pastures full of sheep and horses (of which there are lots in Iceland) and across the barren black basalt ashen deserts along the famous Eyjafjallajökull glacier that reminded me of the Capelinhos region in Faial, Azores, and arrived at the pretty village of Kirkjabaejaklaustur, with its scenic twin cataracts and the tallest trees in Iceland (a mostly treeless country) for the night. The Icelandic names are often long and difficult to pronounce, usually joining words - like klaustur (monastery), fjall (mountain), kirkja (church), foss (waterfall), etc. Sheep in Iceland are everywhere, fat, woolly, short-legged and totally unconcerned by the traffic - they crossed the roads anytime and one must pay them attention while driving. Horses are short and stocky, with long manes, very beautiful.

The next highlight was the Skaftafell Park, by the Vatnajökull glacier, the biggest glacier in Europe. The views of the glacier are stunning, and we walked across green slopes and several waterfalls until Svartifoss, a beautiful waterfall in a basalt cliff with hexagonal columns on both sides. From there, a short drive took us into one of the most surreally beautiful places in Iceland - Jökulsárlón, a lake full of big ice blocks in different shapes that come cut loose from the glacier and flow down to the sea. It's a really strange sight, from another world, the bluish blocks of ice in the lake, and then we can see them on the black sand beach and being washed to the sea. It was there that we understood the remark by the girl from the rental car, because the man at the hotel in Kirkjabaejaklaustur had told us that a few weeks before a wind storm had washed away to the see all the ice blocks, leaving the lake empty. After having seen the lake and the blocks, we believed that kind of wind could perfectly rip a door from a car.

In Höfn, a small town - every town is small in Iceland - we tasted the famous langoustine, which was very good, a "glacier beer" and a nice dessert imaginatively called "skyr volcano". Skyr is an Icelandic food that looks like yoghurt but is actually a kind of cream cheese, very tasty. There are very good fish dishes, namely soups; as for other Iceland delicacies, dried fish looks and tastes like carton, fermented shark is just plain awful (tastes like rotten meat, which is what it is) and I didn't tried sheep's head or ram's testicles. I was surprised to see whale meat on sale, I figured a civilised country like Iceland would support the ban on that meat.

The next night was spent at Vinland, near Egilsstadir, near the big lake of Lagarfljót, that claims to have a monster like Nessie. From there, we went to visit the Eastern Fjords. We headed first to Mjóifjördur; the road was gravel, and from a sunny and reasonably warm day we entered a region that was colder and colder, mistier and mistier, the road was getting worse and worse, and we ended up in a kind of Narnia in the fog, the road impassable without a 4 wheel drive, and turned back. So we went to Seydisfjördur instead, up a steep slope, across a snowy plateau, and down another steep slope, coming into this prettiest of places: the lovely harbour town of Seydisfjordur, with its colourful Norwegian wooden houses, in this scenic setting by the blue sea and among tall snowy mountains with small waterfalls running down.

Back on the Ring Road, we drove towards the Mývatn region, in North Iceland. The first stop was at Krafla, one of the most active volcanic regions. After a hike through lava fields and over snowy passes, we reached an area of sulphataras and hot ground, with very recent craters. Back to the road, we stopped then at another field of bubbling mudpots, before spending a very enjoyable couple of hours at the warm pools, under a blue sky and with a beautiful view over the lake Mývatn. The lake is beautiful, and we could see why it got its name - lake of the midges - after being attacked by swarms of tiny midges, annoying but much less than their Australian cousins in the Red Centre.

From Mývatn, we went east and stopped at the amazing Godafoss, still another waterfall, appropriately named the Waterfall of the Gods And then arrived of the scenic place of Draflastadir, with its church, graveyard and a couple of houses, and a very nice guesthouse. After a few days on the road, and having listened to all our cds in the car, we were listening to Icelandic radio - they have very nice music, and the sound of the language is sweet, with its ss it sounds a little provincial, and sometimes like people speaking Castillian.

Akureyri, the second city of Iceland, has about 17500 inhabitants, so it's a very small town, with a big church, a lively main street with cafés and shops and a colourful harbour. From there, we went through Blönduós, where we stayed at a very nice cabin by the river, and from there to the Snaefelsnes peninsula, in West Iceland. We passed fields with horses and sheep, mountains, and stopped at the beautiful ancient church at Hólar.

The Snaefellsnes peninsula is beautiful, with its coast of rocks and basalt beaches. The town of Stykkishólmur has a wonderful harbour and a strange new Age church, the small glacier Snaefellsjökul is beautiful, as are the villages of Hellnar and Arnarstapi, where Jules Verne placed the entrance to the centre of the Earth. The basalt cliffs are full of sea birds and the views are amazing. Then there's the pretty little church in Búdir, and the road along the coast to Borgarnes, another small harbour town.

We stayed at the Fossatún guesthouse, in a most beautiful place by a river with waterfalls; the next day we saw th Hraunfossar and Barnfoss, more waterfalls, and then went back to Reykjavik. On our last day in the city, we strolled through the streets, ate lobster soup at the harbour, drank beer in outside terraces and visited the sculpture museum ofÁsmundur Sveinsson.

So, all in all I really enjoyed this trip and loved the country, and hope to go back, and explore more, there's so much to see, and more places are available driving a 4x4 vehicle. And the people are mostly nice and helpful. Beautiful nature, a cosmopolitan city and nice people; what more can one ask for?

Heaven and Hell, by Jón Kalmar Stefánsson

One of the things I enjoy doing while travelling abroad is to buy local books and get to know something of a country's literature. So, I bought a few Icelandic books in Reykjavik, and started with this one.

It's a good book, about life in a harsh place, growing up, dealing with death and learning to live. And I like I can visualize the places and understand it better after having been there; before, I had no idea Iceland was such a harsh place in terms of climate, I knew it was cold, but had not felt the wind or seen the savage barrenness of the lava fields or the rugged mountains. It's very interesting how there is a kind of "tone" to several of the Nordic authors I've read so far - reading Stefánsson reminded me somehow of the rhythm of Knut Hamsun, Casper Jensen, Peter Hoeg or Willem Moberg; this particular "tone" was one of the main reasons I started learning Swedish, I would like one day to be able to read it in the original. It sounds kind of austerely poetic, cannot put it in another way.

A case of the effects of religion

Having always been an atheist and being fortunate to live in a country where religion is mostly a non issue, I sometimes tend to forget how pernicious the influence of religion, and especially of religious conmen, can be. But then I am reminded.

There is this kid in our dialysis unit, he got HIV infection through vertical transmission, a couple of very foolish parents who never got him adequately treated and that eventually died of AIDS related diseases for lack of treating themselves. He stopped going to follow-up appointments in his teens and then showed up at 22 with full blown AIDS, with tuberculosis and HIV associated nephropathy that left him on dialysis. He was always a very sweet kid, and we all in the dialysis unit, full mostly of old people, cherished him dearly. He was never particularly responsible, and we always had a hard time making him go to medical appointments and take regularly his medications.

Then, last year, he became involved with a religious group, one of those Evangelical sects that started to bloom in Lisbon suburbs when we had a wave of Brazilian immigration in the 1990s. He was reading and studying "theology". We didn't care much, after all nobody cares much about religion and he seemed happy with it. Until, a few weeks ago, he stopped going to dialysis and left a message saying he was going to a religious retreat to get cured. We were obviously very concerned, but couldn't talk him out of it, and as an adult we couldn't stop him from doing what he wanted. We waited then, hoping he would come back when he would start feeling unwell.

After a couple of weeks, he showed up, looking emaciated, swollen and stinking of uremia. But he was convinced he was cured, and he wanted us to run some blood tests to confirm it. We told him we doubted it, and we did the blood tests to show him. As expected, the tests showed urea over 400 mg/dl and creatinine about 16 mg/dl. He couldn't believe it, he just looked at the results and cried, because he was so absolutely convinced he should have been cured by his faith. We tried to talk him into restarting dialysis, but he left saying he would think about it.

Another week went by, and then he was brought into the ER in acute pulmonary edema - when the retained fluids get into the lungs and cause respiratory distress - and he suffered a respiratory and cardiac stop, and was ressuscitated in the ER after 14 minutes in apnea, which is quite a while, but a young body can endure a lot. We dialysed him, and he woke up the next day, fortunately with no apparent neurologic deficits.

And the we heard his pastor had told them that we - the dialysis doctors, the dialysis nurses and his aunt, who is also a doctor - were the cause of his not being cured: our scepticism weakened his faith, and that was why he was still ill. How can you argue with that? It's the religious logic: if your prayers didn't work, it was because your faith was not strong enough. And we are the bad guys. I really don't know what will happen next, for the moment he seems really grateful to us for having saved him, but we have yet to see how he will feel after the crisis.

He's a grown up man, and responsible for his choices, but it's really infuriating to think of these pastors taking advantage of immaturity and despair and putting people's lives in danger. Let's just hope this kid sees what's really good for him; will he?

Les Rois Maudits - La Loi des Mâles et La Louve de France, de Maurice Druon

Another two volumes of the historical series Les Rois Maudits. Thrilling and engaging, very much like A Game of Thrones for real, with no need for the supernatural, and much better written. A kind of I, Claudius in the Middle Ages, which is a compliment.

Nemesis, by Jo Nesbo

For a few years now, since I discovered them through a Norwegian friend, the excellent Jo Nesbo's thrillers have been my holidays reading. And they never let me down - it's just what you want from a thriller - intricate plots, twists, likeable characters. Harry Hole is a modern Philip Marlowe, and Oslo and Norway the perfect setting. Enjoyed it as always.

My Promised Land, by Ari Shavit

I liked this book, I think it's a very good book about Israel, its history and the problems it has faced through its few decades of existence and the challenges it faces today. Sometimes I thought it too guilt-ridden, almost a jeremiad, but all in all I found it quite balanced; one can see the author loves his country and tries to discuss openly its existential problems.

A few excerpts I found particularly relevant:

On the one hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is occupying another people. On the other hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli condition unique. Intimidation and occupation have become the two pillars of our condition. Most observers and analysts deny this duality. The ones on the left address occupation and overlook intimidation, while the ones on the right address intimidation and dismiss occupation.

...I worked out a theory of the Israeli Left: its fundamental flaw is that it had never distinguished between the issue of occupation and the issue of peace. Regarding the occupation, the Left was absolutely right. It realized the occupation was a moral, demographic, and political disaster. But regarding peace, the Left was somewhat naïve. It counted on a peace partner that was not really there. It assumed that because peace was needed, peace was feasible.

During these years, the percentage of school-aged children attending ultra-Orthodox schools has risen from 4 percent to nearly 20 percent. The percentage of school-aged children attending Arab schools has risen from 20 percent to 28 percent. So today, 48 percent of all school-aged children are enrolled in either ultra-Orthodox or Arab schools. An additional 14 percent are modern Orthodox. Only 38 percent are secular. That means that by 2030, Israel's shrinking secular Jewish majority will become a minority. Israel's cultural identity will change, and so will its socio-economic profile. Secular Israelis are the ones working, producing, and paying taxes. [...] Meanwhile, successive dysfunctional Israeli governments are doing the very opposite: they reward the non-working minorities and subsidize them and do not require them to take up modern and democratic education. [...] Fewer and fewer Israelis work more and more to feed nonworking Israelis. A flawed political system guarantees the special interests of the ultra-Orthodox, the settlers, and the megarich.

Well, it's not all pessimism or gloom and doom. But it is very informative and I think it depicts the major issues in an honest way. A good read.

The Good Nurse, by Charles Graeber

A very good book, in the tradition of the "journalistic novel", like In Cold Blood (without the writing virtuosity of Capote, though). It reads like a thriller, particularly the investigation part - it's as good as the TV series The Wire - and it feels like a horror story. Because it's really creepy. Worse than the murderous nurse's crimes, it's the hospitals' administrations attitude, worried about their reputation and not patients' safety. Actually what it most strikes one is that this guy wasn't particularly intelligent or careful - after all, it's very easy to kill patients in serious conditions in the ICU without arising suspicions. This nurse was sloppy and incompetent, he had a personal history of mental disturbances known to all, he was fired from multiple hospitals, but still he found it easy to be hired and put in the care of vulnerable patients. And not one of them was criminally prosecuted, even after having tried to stall the investigation in every way they could. Then, in the end, there's the surrealistic story of the kidney donation... All in all, chilling.

A trip to Israel and Jordan

I went to Israel again, for the third time - there is a lot to see in this small Mediterranean country, with all its History and cultural diversity. This time I headed South, with a side trip to Jordan.

On arrival, I spent a day in Tel Aviv; having been there twice before, I just walked along the beach and the bustling streets in the centre, had dinner by the sea and rented a car to go south.

It was not easy to get out of Tel Aviv - lousy directions - but we made it and drove to Ashkelon, where we met a great Israeli friend, and had lunch in her garden, a most pleasant time of conversation over excellent Israeli food. Then we drove along a beautiful road across the Negev desert until Eilat - impressive landscape of rugged dry cliffs. Lots of warning signs about camels, but we saw none (we would later see several by the road in Jordan, in the same kind of desert landscape).

Eilat is not very interesting, just a resort like in the Algarve, very kitsh, with all the hotels and the roundabouts, but with a view over Jordan to the East and Egypt to the West, and a nice underwater observatory.

From Eilat, we went to Jordan, to visit Petra. The border crossing was uneventful - a no-men's-land between Israel and Jordan, lots of stamps in our passports, and then Aqaba, a small Arab town, with a lot of hotels and new buildings made possible by the touristic boom. Our Jordanian guide told us how the tourism had gone down because of the IS problems in the Middle East; they don't have any problems in Jordan - for the moment - but people are scared of going there anyway.

Southern Jordan is just a desert, there are some camels and Bedouins with goats along the road. We slept at Wadi Musa, and in the morning went to Petra.

Petra is an uber-famous place, and so I was expecting to be a little disappointed, but I wasn't. It actually deserves all its fame, it's stunning. First of all, the location - surrounded by mountains, only accessible through a narrow gorge, the Siq. From the site entry to the canyon, there are several carved rocks, tombs, houses and palaces, just a foretaste of what's to come. The Siq itself is one of the most impressive sights - the winding canyon, with a few carved tombs and palaces, the colours of the rock, the ancient waterpipe still visible today. And at the end, the sudden sight of the Tresoury, the most famous façade in Petra, it's absolutely beautiful.

After the Treasory, with all the tourist bustle, the camels and souvenir sellers, the ancient city opens before us - the gorgeous façades, the theater, the Roman ruins. We took a donkey ride to the Monastery, the second most famous site. It was a first for me, but I managed to stay seated until the end of the steep climb, even if I found the ride not that comfortable and the donkey a little hectic. But the Monastery was worth the ride, and we rested in a café in a cave lined with Bedouin rugs and a little skinny lamb greeted us there. We walked the way down, enjoying the beautiful views.

If it was cool in the morning when we arrived at Petra, it was quite hot when we left it, so we took the horse ride from the Siq until the entrance - another first for me, but I realized a horse is a much more comfortable ride than a donkey!

After a hearty Jordanian lunch, we headed South and took a jeep tour of Wadi Rum, which was also quite impressive. The desert landscape is beautiful in a unique way (and how very different this desert was, for example, from the red desert of Central Australia!), with the sand dunes, the basalt and limestone cliffs. We saw the ancient Bedouin inscriptions in the cliffs and camels movng slowly in the sun as they have done for centuries. Our guide, Sallah, was a very nice and sunny dispositioned young man, he took us for tea in the Lawrence canyon and, after talking about camel races, he took us to a camel race track where they were training young camels.

We went back to Eilat; I really enjoyed this side trip in Jordan, a country that seemed quiet and with nice people yearning for prosperity, as in any other place, I think. I'm sure there is much more to see, maybe I'll go back some day.

The road from Eilat to the Dead Sea, along the Jordanian border, is totally uninteresting - desert, without the rock formations we saw crossing the Negev on our way South. So the Dead Sea appears as quite a beautiful sight - a bright and shining green lake in the middle of the brown barrenness. We stopped at Ein Bokek - a hideous waterside resort, full of Russians - to have the bathing experience. It's true the water feels different, and the impulsion is much bigger than usual, but one cannot still walk over the water! I guess it's worth to try it once.

We slept at the Masada Hostel, and headed for the fortress in the morning. Masada is really stunning - the location is incredibly beautiful, a true eagle's nest over the bright Dead Sea. We took the cable car, figuring the ascent on foot by the Snake Path would be too burdensome. The views are amazing, as are the ruins. One can just imagine how impressive Herod's palace must have been when it was still standing - three terraces over the abyss. The Roman attack ramp is equally impressive, and it gives an idea of the Roman's military prowess. There were people celebrating in the remnants of the oldest surviving synagogue, and a happy bar mitzvah party, whose musicians went down with us in the cable car.

We drove then North to Jerusalem. It was my third time there, and I never get tired of that beautiful and fascinating city. There is more sightseeing than one can do in a lifetime, and all the History and the cultural and ethnic diversity are just delightful.

As a not religious - actually anti-religious - there are some things that annoy me in Jerusalem: the lots of ultra-orthodox Jews one sees everywhere, the way angry young Arabs and soldiers shoo us away when we come near the accesses to the Temple Mount, the people on their knees rubbing candles and images on the stone at the Holy Sepulchre, the crowds of Russian pilgrims in holy tours. But then, as someone who has been always fascinated by History, I remember all the complex - and so important for our own European history - it have been all the changes this city has endured, all the peoples and cultures and religions so affected by its life, and I regard those aspects as the expression of the intricate cultural melting pot it has become. Also, I feel I'm looking at a pivotal place in a young country in one of the most troubled regions in the world, where one can sense history happening, and not being sure of how the outcome will look like in a few years, which is extremely interesting. So, if you add the incredible beauty of the city, you can see how one can never get tired of it.

This time, I visited the Citadel, the fortress in the Old City, the Israel Museum - a very good archeological museum, especially the pre-Roman part - and wondered through the Old City, buying tiles in the Armenian shops and enjoying the sights. It was the centennial of the Armenian genocide, so there was a ceremony at the Holy Sepulchre and we watched the Orthodox priests go by, in their solemn black robes and hats and gold pectoral crosses.

And we had dinner again with another dear Israeli friend in the beautiful YMCA building, and once again I was pleased to hear a real - and intelligent - Israeli voice talking about the problems they face there, with all the nuances and human details that never reach us throught the media, always shallowly promoting a black and white picture of the situation.

So, I'm glad I went to Israel again, and Jordan, and I hope I will be back.