1- Today I finished a very worthy to read book ‘Sharon and my mother-in-law’ which I recommend reading if you want to have a ‘taste’ of life under occupation. Last year I read a commentary about it in Guardian and a few days ago when I saw it translated in Farsi, I couldn’t wait reading it.
The book is written by a Palestinian woman, an architect, an university professor about the daily life in Ramallah, under occupation, siege and endless, irregular, not so expectable hours of curfew.
The book was not a book when written. Better to say, it was not supposed to be a book at the beginning. The writer, a Palestinian lady as Guardian puts it " is the antithesis of what most in the West imagine to be a 'typical' Palestinian woman. She drinks, she smokes, she does not cover her hair. She does not have children - 'I never felt strongly about it' - though her tiny terrier, Nura, travels with her wherever she goes." A 55 year old woman wrote witty emails to friends and relatives all over the world to share the experience, to decrease the pain, to relieve the pressure she felt. The people reading them got used to them and began waiting for them to come. Then one or two of them suggested her to publish the emails. This I’m telling you is the shortened story of how personal diary of a human goes to hits in UK and is translated to different languages.
Yes, the book has a witty tone, but they are not rare moments your face gets wet by tears. The diary is honest, frank, shocking. Sometimes, the words are that surreal you won’t believe them. When you read how her dog Nura gets an ID card and permission to enter Jerusalem when the lady herself can not, you just don’t know whether to laugh or weep.
Check amazon to read some pages of the book.

2- Aljazeerah international began broadcasting in English yesterday. It is quite a happy incident to free us relying on western media to get the news.
Having a very successful background in covering the news in Arabic, I believe they are true to say it’s going to be a new frontier. They are broadcasting for 12 hours for now and will lengthen it to 24 hours soon.
I was waiting for it for days and yesterday, at the end of the week, I had enough time to sit and watch different programs of it. Employing prominent journalists (whom some we've seen before working for CNN and BBC) they provided more honest news, documentaries and live coverages from different parts of the world. What I watched were two documantaries about Damascus and Iraq and a live debate on Iran and its role in the region which I loved them all. In the one about Iran, Heikal prominent Egyptian journalist said:" The States has much presence in the region when it fails to have an influence."
When the programs are possible to receive all over the world, in the States – the land of the free- it would be watched just via internet.