Graves near Abraham’s cave
‘You can’t go there, it is dangerous’, the man told me while I was walking on a beautiful path amid hundreds of graves. I had come half way the graveyard, enjoying the tranquility and reading the names and comments on the stones. ‘Really’, the man said and he pointed towards one of the exit porches, ‘you are walking here alone and furtheron it is dangerous with drugusers and the like. I can not let you continue, you understand that’. He looked at me in the genuine hope that I would understand indeed.
Political correctness exists in many countries, also in Turkey. Here in conservative Şanlıurfa, they find it difficult that a woman wanders all by herself without a clear and useful purpose such as doing shopping, and even then she is usually not alone. Women are not present when their beloved ones are buried; in the best case, they watch from a distance while the men do the ceremony. And here I am, crossing all the lines by walking freely over the graveyard, uncontrolled by a man, undefined by any purpose.
Political correctness means that the man does not tell me directly to go away because I am a woman, alone. He is aware of western values and my possible ignorance about the middle-eastern ones. Therefor he tries to convince me on the grounds that are always used everywhere in Turkey in cases like these: he tells me that it would be dangerous not to listen to him. I give it a small try, by showing a shocked face when he mentions drug users on this rainy Monday morning ‘oh, do you not have police officers to come and do something about it?’ ‘Yes, of course, they will be here when there is an incident’, is the answer I get, ‘please Madam, follow me’. I decide to give up, it is not that important anyway, and follow him on the way out.
I was on my way to Abraham’s cave when I saw the immense graveyard and decided to have a look. Is it a coincidence to find so many graves here? I don’t think so. All these people have found a last place to rest in the very neighbourhood of the holiest place in this region. The very very lucky ones have conquered one of the rare spots next to Abraham’s cave and the Mevlid-i Hilal mosque, see the picture on the right. It was taken from the road to the castle (Kale) that looks down on the Dergah Complex. In many places, like Rome and Jerusalem, people get buried close to holy places (Saint Peter’s church, Mountain of Olives) to be the first one to witness on the last day, on Judgement Day. I do not know what is the thought of being buried in graves near to Abraham’s cave: there will be no resurrection of a holy person there because Abraham was buried in Hebron, not in Şanlıurfa, and it is not the spot where a prophet will reveal himself on Judgement Day. There must be a thought that I missed (feel free to comment below if you know how this works).
Another interesting story here is the grave of Bediüzzaman Said Nursî. If you are in the court that gives direct access to Abraham’s cave, look opposite to the entrance to find a special chamber for Bediüzzaman Said Nursî. He is presented as a Muslim scholar and commentator of the Quran and the author of the Risale-i Nur collection. In Western Europe he is known as the founder of the so-called Nurcu movement.
A sign mentions that he always longed for Şanlıurfa and asked to be brought there when he felt death coming. Thus he spent his last three days in Urfa lying in a hotelbed, surrounded by praying students ‘from all the corners of the country’, then he blew out his last breath on March 23 1960. They buried him in front of Abraham’s cave. But a few months after the military coup of May 1960, officials dug up his body and transported it to another place, unknown until today. So what you look at in the chamber is an empty grave. The fight between secularism and fundamental islam is older than just the 21st century…
You may also like these blogs:
Graveyards as symbol of ethnic conflict
Graveyards: Northern Cyprus heritage
Bilqiss is about regrets and hope for the chance to be the one you should have been. Living in a burqa is more than just having some inconvenient clothing; it is the expression of a patriarchal society where women live within the boundaries men grant them. Individual men have the right to totally suffocate the women they live with. You might be bored when I write it like this but reading Bilqiss will not bore you.
Archaeological Museum Haarlem
ople in that period. A woman working with the police worked on the basis of his bones to bring him ‘back to life’, for us living in the 21st century to identify with and see who made all the things that we find in excavations.
. I got all this information from a volunteer who started explaining stuff to me without asking, calmly and politely and very knowledgeable. Thanks to volunteers the Archaeological Museum Haarlem can open five times a week. It is not very big: the size of one room. Both history story lines and the objects are very well presented. Creative methods are used to get stories across and it is very child-friendly. History is in Dutch only – object names are also in English. I am sure a volunteer will be helpful for English speaking visitors. I show here some objects I particularly liked, but there are many more special pieces:
Container to collect dripping fat:
Battle for Haarlem:
and an economist. Since he started writing, he won many prices: many French ones, but also this 
anish?)
Rouiba, once the prosperous industrial suburb of Algiers, is revealed as if you walked there yourself. Le serment des barbares does not end well and that is a logical consequence of the story. When religious fanatism, anger, madness and greed reign, there is no hope.
In English: The German Mujahid
’Abistan, a world that is stable and closed in itself. Religion is dominant in every aspect of daily life. To instaur the system, the past where this religion was not dominant has to be forgotten and free thought is seen as a major threat to the system. So there are many ways to check and control what people think and do. Every answer is given to the people. There is no reason for them to ask questions. However the book’s main character Ati got somehow ‘enlightened’ during a sick leave where he had time to think and to meet different people than usual. From that moment he is in constant danger.
Simone Veil was a Holocaust survivor and she was also a major player in France’s after-war period. Une Vie tells a lot about the things she did, but her influence went much further than that because of who she was, a woman with clear principles that she followed in any function she would fulfill: ‘le sens de la justice, le respect de l’homme, la vigilance face à l’evolution de la société‘ (p. 262).
* the letters she got when she fought as Minister of Health for the first Law on Abortion in 1975. The verbal abuse was so terrible that her staff destroyed some letters. Simone Veil regrets that because these letters are witnesses of a history of reform and should have formed study material by now to remember that changes come with pain. ‘il faut rappeler aux esprits angéliques que les réformes de société s’effectuent toujours dans la douleur‘. (p.165)
* her ideas about human rights that she supported all her life; how militant activists rarely bring peace and rather increase human rights violations because their approach is too one-sided; that there are no universal human rights when it comes to business and other modus vivendi. ‘Au fond, ce sont toujours aux faibles que l’on fait la morale, tandis qu’on finit par blanchir les puissants‘. (p.194)
Such a fabulous museum, the Vesunna Gallo-Roman Museum in Périgueux! A complete villa (‘domus’) has been covered and integrated into a museum together with many very interesting Gallo-Roman objects found – and with a surrounding parc that shows the beautiful and quite well preserved Vesunna Tower. To do so was not just an ambitious idea, it has effectively been realized in an impressive way.
me and the prehistoric part of the museum reflects this period with very interesting findings. A dazzling collection of different stone hand axes is just the beginning. All kind of instruments useful in daily prehistoric work are presented in many shapes – and some beautiful pieces show craftmanswork like the pendant with a bison head (Magdalenien era, 15.000 BC, exact function unknown.
ostly mediëval stuff, I highly recommend that you take a quiet walk through the cloister just to enjoy the many details in the pieces you see there. Also the rooms with art are very nice with a great variety of interesting art objects but I am not into art myself so this blog does not describe more than just the encouragement to visit.
benefits of the 
verview of it’s history and socio-economic life. You learn about the history of whalers, find a full whale skeleton and of course the famous little seals, see a complete 
room, kitchen and laiterie like they had in the old times; but apart from that, there are many great, even amazing artefacts that tell you maybe even more about life in Borkum. This was a museum that gave me much more than I expected when I entered. It is impossible to resume, so I show you here the artefacts that impressed me most:
A garland made out of the hair of the deceased… Elsewhere in the museum, jewelry made out of female hairs can be found. My mouth fell open; I find it a bit spooky but here it seems to be a piece of art. One thing is sure, the results are beautiful!
A 18th century cistern where water was collected both from the rain and from groundwater. It is big and covered with Dutch blue painted tiles who were valuable already in that era so the owner must have been very rich. The cistern kept the water cool and fresh. It is quite unique, no other cistern like this was found in the north of Germany.
A 19th century bucket that served to collect the household money. It hang at a beam in the kitchen. That is what attracted my attention; that there were times where people hang their money in a bucket in the kitchen…. I liked the idea that it was safe there, out in the open!
und at the beach of Borkum in 1971: a silver coin that was made in Hedel, the Netherlands which is…. the village where I was born. There is a long story to tell about coins from my native village Hedel … another time… For now: I was – happily – surprised to find this particular coin so far away from home. It proves that you will never know how far the things you make can reach, and that the extent to what it reached can be observed until centuries afterwards… so great!
r. It shows how much the Netherlands progressed in the cultivation of orchids.
full flowers now! If you go to the Keukenhof, do not forget to wander a bit around in that area: you’ll love it, no doubt about that.
Monastery in a divided island
And they show their power by calling the primary school of Dipkarpaz the ‘Recep Tayyip Erdogan School’ and the large square in front of the Apostolos Andreas Monastery the ‘Bülent Ecevit Square’; Ecevit was the Turkish Prime Minister in 1974 who decided to send the army into Cyprus to help the Turkish Cypriots. It is a strange pattern since over 40 years now of Greek Cypriots Always complaining as if they have no role whatsoever in what is happening, and the Turks showing muscles instead of empathy.