A book, and more rain!

I got a clutch of books from the library last week and most were pretty ho-hum.......except 'The Maid' by Kimberly Cutter. Published in 2011, it is the harrowing story of Joan of Arc, Maid of Orleans.  It was hard to put down.  It is historically as accurate as the author could get, taking into account the few hundred years since The Maid was burned at the stake in May 1431 at age nineteen.  There is plenty of documentation on her life, fascinating and horrifying as it is. Joan was found innocent twenty five years after her death after an investigation by the Pope.  She is a patron Saint of France, being canonised in 1920,  

Read it if you get a chance.

Today, I started off on a trip to town to try on my new specs frames, but did not get far.  Our land is so wet from the almost constant rain of the past few weeks that I bogged the car in the driveway!  It just slid sideways from under me, and no amount of reversing and forwarding and trying to steer it straight would work.  So I grabbed my umbrella and trudged back to my nice warm house.

A disturbing read

It is International Women's Day on March 8 when we celebrate the strength and courage of women around the world.
(visit internationalwomensday.org.au)

Last week I read a most disturbing book, a biography by Jean Sassoon,
'Mayada, Daughter of Iraq'.

Jean, an American writer, has spent a lot of time in the middle east, and she met Mayada Al-Askari in Baghdad, when she asked for a female interpreter. Mayada was a well-born and educated woman from a political family, her grandfather famously fought alongside Lawrence of Arabia, and one of her grandmothers was an Ottoman Princess.

Mayada ran her own business, a small printing company, careful not to publish anything that might attract the unwanted attention of the authorities under the reign of Saddam Hussein.
Still, this innocent woman (along with ten other owners of printing companies) was suddenly arrested by the secret police and taken to the infamous Baladiyat torture prison. It seems that someone had printed a political leaflet..........so ALL printers were rounded up without explanation, or charge, and thrown into prison.

Torture was a daily occurence for these innocents and this story about the nightmare endured by thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens, men and women, young and old, is sickening. It is hard to believe that this was still happening when Mayada was arrested and taken from her two young children in 1999 up until the arrest of Saddam in 2003.

Mayada and the 'shadow women' she shared a cell with, are heros!

This story is mind-blowing! Read it if you dare.

How fortunate we are to be living in a free country...........