However I have a wonderful Husband. Full of the usual male flaws and foibles. But a very good and honored husband. (How did I manage to get one I ask myself they are as rare as hens teeth!)
However this week we have been very much into Asian and Middle Eastern food. Please, that I had a wonderful Middle Eastern Wife to show me how to cook delicious meals for my Husband.
You may think this is a trivial opening to such a dreadful set of events over the weekend in Paris, but please don't forget that Middle Eastern culture is a Patriarchal society mindset. Women in genuine Moslem households are honored and respected. Yes life for a woman is very different to a western lifestyle, but mama is still mama.
My Husband has asked me to cook Indian flat-bread, and Greek style pitta bread this week. He has asked for Greek food, Indian food, and we ate skate with butter and capers midweek. Help!
If I lived in the middle east, I would genuinely know how to cook and prepare all these dishes. I just do my best and wing it.
Why? Because I love him and he asks me!
Another reason is that since last October we have both had the worry of knowing that He is not really well.
Today it is confirmed that he will need an operation preferably before Christmas to fit him with a modern Pacemaker?Defibrillator. (Thank God/goodness he didn't need one until now they have moved on a lot since the first ones). Seems it costs more than an omega watch and you don't get to look at it.
Thank God we live in the west, because we would have to be very rich to be able to have the treatment he needs in America, or anywhere but Europe. Yes we do have private insurance but it does eat a giant hole in our income. I just feel when we have this kind of issue to deal with any extra options are very helpful.
He had a nasty dose of pneumonia last October and needed six months of recuperation, (in which he obviously did the man thing of ignoring all advice)... then found his heart rhythm was all over the place.
Yes I worry and it makes me ill. That's when I need to go to hospital. Stress is dreadful for me too.
Well, In an ideal world, My Husband and I would love to go to all the places in the middle east that we love to eat the food from. The problem is that the area is not safe. Hospitalization if he should need it would not be available, and the place looks pretty shot up anyway.
We are hoping we will last another 15 - 20 years, when we may have established peace in the region, and good hospitals, because by the time we are 80 ish we will need to be escorted on our middle eastern adventure, probably on zimmer frames or wheelchairs.
But I genuinely want to see the lands that gave us modernity as we know it. We have the Moslem world to thank for medicine, mathematics, architecture, perspective, culinary spices, I can't imagine a world without the influence of the Levant, Asia, and the Occident.
What are we on about? Middle eastern mentality is patriarchal. That means everyone will more readily accept a male 'dictator' (Head of State) than a democracy. Provided the Dictator is genuinely looking out for the Koran, Genuinely looking after the will of Allah, and a serious scholar of Mohammed, who's tolerance and promotion of womens rights was renowned. I find it difficult to see why the west should desire to impose western style democracy on Arab States?
Please can somebody offer to show me how to make stuffed flat-bread? I understand the dough has yoghurt in it. Himself saw it on TV, and asked me to make it.
What He doesn't grasp is that the wonderful matriarchs who do this have done it all their lives, You are asking a western hairdresser to get with the dough and stuff it and make it thin and crispy... on a halogen hob, in the middle of winter, without a decent iron skillet.
.... I will find a way!
sweet dreams, peacefull dreams, and may the sadness and stifling grief of the last few days be eased when you wake up. We mustn't let anger, hatred or violence become the normal response to these attacks.
Remembering what is truly good, lovely, worthwhile, valued, and genuinely of old tradition is what keeps communities together.
Don't even think of the people who have wronged you, they are as dust, and the Lord will blow them away under the threshing plough of His justice.
Light candles for the true martyrs, the innocents of this world who have never had the opportunity of Justice, those who die with only the whisper of starvation, sickness, poverty, or abuse. God Knows these too.
Thousands of them.