Twenty-four hours in Palestine



The Honey Zeina B Ghandour Interlink Books Dh49 Zeina B Ghandour's debut novel The Honey begins with a fable about an abandoned village in Palestine. Long ago, the men of Al Ahmar painted their yellow mosque blue but it turned out green. They peeled and painted again - resulting first in navy, then in midnight, then in indigo, but never the benevolent sky blue they desired. "The women in the village did not speak," writes Ghandour, "feigning not to notice the vacant ritual." The men grew despondent and their families started to leave, having failed to atone for mysterious sins. Eventually, Al Ahmar lost all of its inhabitants except one, and it was said that on moonless nights a woman named Ruhiya climbed the mosque's minaret to deliver the dawn call to prayer herself.

This story may come at the start of Ghandour's book, where it is labelled a prelude, but in the imagined time of the novel it is more accurately the end. The fable of Al Ahmar is the only trace left behind to signify the real story that unfolded there. It is a distillation, a myth that smoothes over a complex tangle of tragedies, traumas and secrets that went more or less untold. Ghandour was born in Beirut in 1966. She is now based in London and ranks human rights, international law and comparative Jewish and Islamic jurisprudence among her professional pursuits. But for fans of experimental literary fiction from or about the Levant, she is probably best known as the author of two dazzlingly sassy and rambunctious short stories, War Milk and Omega: Definitions, that were published in the recent anthologies Transit Beirut: New Writing and Images and Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women, respectively.

The 2008 publication of The Honey, for Interlink's world fiction series, is in fact a reprint. Quartet Books first released the novel in 1999, after which point it was translated into Arabic and fell out of circulation completely. Now, for readers who responded to the explosive attitude of her short stories - which are more like fast-paced prose poems, with lust portrayed as a "cannibalistic intestinal craving," Iraq as a place where "elite gangsters are filling up their piggy-bank with straight cold theft" and the roots of Islam as "deliciously, rock-worshippingly pagan" - there is opportunity to indulge Ghandour's style in a longer form, and relief in finding that she modulates her energy to sustain a novel.

The Honey covers a 24-hour period in which a young man sets off with a colleague on a suicide-bombing mission. At dawn, his lover (later revealed to be his father's daughter) breaks a serious taboo by delivering the call to prayer herself. The luminosity of her voice rattles the young man's will. He abandons his duties just as his partner blows himself to pieces. A thrill-seeking foreign journalist shows up and follows the story to the village of Al Ahmar, where it shatters into a rumour about the young woman acting as muezzin. The journalist elicits many metaphors but no facts from the village elders, until a young girl tells her to find two lovers in the desert. From there, The Honey tunnels through crime and sorrow to the tale of how these two lovers came to be.

After the prelude and before an equally enigmatic epilogue, The Honey proceeds in five sections, each of which carries four names or themes. Each section is named for one of the five daily prayers in Islam - dawn, noon, afternoon, dusk and nightfall. On another level, each section follows a page describing an act - bid'a, meaning deviance or a breach of sacred tradition; nushuz, meaning that which tries to elevate itself above ground; ta'arrud, a verb with sexual connotations meaning to barricade; kashf, to unveil and reveal; and kheshya, to fear god.

Each of the sections is centred on a single character - Ruhiya, Yehya, Maya, Asrar and Farhan. And on another level still, each character is meant to embody a larger idea - Ruhiya means soulful or spiritual, Yehya means the will to live, Maya (in Hindu and Buddhist traditions at least) means the veils of illusion, Asrar means secrets and Farhan means happy or joyful (other characters in the novel include the white-haired healer Al Ashkar, meaning the fair one; Radwan, the compassionate, who forgives huge transgressions; and Hurra, meaning freedom, Radwan's wife and Ruhiya's mother, who achieves hers by tying a rope around her neck and tumbling).

At 107 pages, The Honey is slim. But the story is so tightly packed that every word resonates and multiple readings are required. The pay-off is a glinting little novel that emanates big ideas about politics, pleasure, language, religion and fulfilment, be it earthy or otherwise. Kaelen Wilson-Goldie reports from Beirut for The National.

Farasan Boat: 128km Away from Anchorage

Director: Mowaffaq Alobaid 

Stars: Abdulaziz Almadhi, Mohammed Al Akkasi, Ali Al Suhaibani

Rating: 4/5

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Sector: Sustainability
Total funding: Self funded
Number of employees: 4
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
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SPECS
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EEngine%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%201.5-litre%204-cylinder%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPower%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20101hp%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETorque%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20135Nm%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETransmission%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3A%20Six-speed%20auto%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EPrice%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20From%20Dh79%2C900%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EOn%20sale%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Now%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Other workplace saving schemes
  • The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
  • Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
  • National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
  • In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
  • Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
  • Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000 
  • Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000 
  • Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000 
  • Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000 
  • HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000 
  • Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000 
  • Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000 
  • Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000 
  • Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000 
  • Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000 
  • Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000 
  • Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
  • Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
  • Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Bidzi

● Started: 2024

● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid

● Based: Dubai, UAE

● Industry: M&A

● Funding size: Bootstrapped

● No of employees: Nine

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Essentials

The flights
Whether you trek after mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda or the Congo, the most convenient international airport is in Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali. There are direct flights from Dubai a couple of days a week with RwandAir. Otherwise, an indirect route is available via Nairobi with Kenya Airways. Flydubai flies to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, via Entebbe in Uganda. Expect to pay from US$350 (Dh1,286) return, including taxes.
The tours
Superb ape-watching tours that take in all three gorilla countries mentioned above are run by Natural World Safaris. In September, the company will be operating a unique Ugandan ape safari guided by well-known primatologist Ben Garrod.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, local operator Kivu Travel can organise pretty much any kind of safari throughout the Virunga National Park and elsewhere in eastern Congo.

BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES

SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities

Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails

Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies

Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments

How to register as a donor

1) Organ donors can register on the Hayat app, run by the Ministry of Health and Prevention

2) There are about 11,000 patients in the country in need of organ transplants

3) People must be over 21. Emiratis and residents can register. 

4) The campaign uses the hashtag  #donate_hope

Cryopreservation: A timeline
  1. Keyhole surgery under general anaesthetic
  2. Ovarian tissue surgically removed
  3. Tissue processed in a high-tech facility
  4. Tissue re-implanted at a time of the patient’s choosing
  5. Full hormone production regained within 4-6 months
Financial considerations before buying a property

Buyers should try to pay as much in cash as possible for a property, limiting the mortgage value to as little as they can afford. This means they not only pay less in interest but their monthly costs are also reduced. Ideally, the monthly mortgage payment should not exceed 20 per cent of the purchaser’s total household income, says Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching.

“If it’s a rental property, plan for the property to have periods when it does not have a tenant. Ensure you have enough cash set aside to pay the mortgage and other costs during these periods, ideally at least six months,” she says. 

Also, shop around for the best mortgage interest rate. Understand the terms and conditions, especially what happens after any introductory periods, Ms Glynn adds.

Using a good mortgage broker is worth the investment to obtain the best rate available for a buyer’s needs and circumstances. A good mortgage broker will help the buyer understand the terms and conditions of the mortgage and make the purchasing process efficient and easier.