Recent Columns

This country is one of contrasts. Red-dirt roads cross lush- green landscapes. People familiar with war smile easily and greet you genuinely. Beauty meets ugliness, plenty meets want, and life meets death here. Uganda may be, as Winston Churchill said, the Pearl of Africa. But, if so, it's a tarnished jewel.

Irshad Manji doesn't come across as your typical religious reformer. With stylish glasses and punkish hair, this pint-sized woman is better known as a TVO journalist and gay rights activist than a Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses on Wittenburg's church door.

Today, Jean and I, with our bright-eyed bambino, Elizabeth, are on a jet plane flying back to Yemen. Our condo in Ancaster is again a speck that has disappeared over the horizon.

You don't need to be a flaming, bleeding-heart liberal or a limp- wristed lefty to see that it's a man's world when it comes to some basic privileges in life.

Among the more interesting reactions over this summer's so-called great blackout came via the car radio when my wife and I were driving in the Muskokas, learning how the outside world was faring in the darkness.

Let's hope someone, somewhere learns something from the murky death of Zahra Kazemi, the Canadian-Iranian photojournalist whose brains somehow got bashed in while she was in police custody for photographing student protesters outside a Tehran jail.

Birthing a country is one thing. Stopping a three-week-old from crying is another.

(The Hamilton Spectator - Friday, June 20, 2003) Nobody knew. Prior to the birth of our first child, two weeks ago today at St. Joseph’s Hospital here in Hamilton, Jean and I kept her name, Elizabeth top-secret from absolutely everyone. “It’s from the Bible and it’s not Dorcas,” is all I would reveal, before adding, “If and when we have a boy, we have a biblical name for him too. And it’s not Nimrod.” So imagine the confirmation we felt when, prior to our return to Canada for the delivery, some western friends in Yemen said good-bye to us by reading the biblical story of Elizabeth.

Dr. David Livingstone, celebrated explorer and missionary to Africa, was once asked by a group back in England, "Have you found a good road to where you are? We want to send others to join you." "If you have men who will come only if they know there is a good road, I don't want them," he replied. "I want men who will come even if there is no road at all."

Out of the country since last fall, it's been an experience for me to return and see what's up here these days. Mad cow, West Nile, SARS. It's all so dizzying.

SANA'A, YEMEN ✦ Dohhh! Just when the Yankee cat turns its back to focus on Iraq, the Yemeni mice go out to play. A gang of al-Qaeda-type jailbirds, including two held as key suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, have apparently vanished from a jail in Aden for good. Six weeks ago, they escaped in a style that outdid even the Great Escape from Alcatraz.

Just when the Yankee cat turns its back to focus on Iraq, the Yemeni mice go out to play. A gang of al-Qaeda-type jailbirds, including two held as key suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, have apparently vanished from a jail in Aden for good.

Sunday is Mother's Day, and I'm reminded that I've never held my mother, looked into her eyes and told her that I love her. I've never offered a soft kiss on her cheek. I've never even given my mother flowers. My mom died before I got the chance.

One of the things I've discovered as a part-time resident of the Middle East is how easily things such as cultural nuances can hide in plain view.

Telling Lies in Iraq is my choice for the name of the flick we can only hope will be made about former Iraqi minister of misinformation Mohammed Saeed Sahaf. If it's anything like a satirical Web site on this new cult figure, a site that once had an incredible 4,000 hits per minute, this movie will be stunning.