by Lou Kassem

Dad brought him home from a fishing trip in the mountains, full of cockleburs and so thin you could count every rib.
“Good gracious,” Mom said. “He’s filthy!”
“No, he isn’t! He’s Rusty,” said John, my eight-year-old brother. “Can we keep him? Please... please... please.”
“He’s going to be a big dog,” Dad warned, lifting a mud-encrusted paw. “Probably why he was abandoned.”
“What kind of dog?” I asked. It was impossible to get close to this smelly creature.
“Mostly German shepherd,” Dad said. “He’s in bad shape, John. He may not make it.”John was gently picking out cockleburs.“I’ll take care of Rusty. Honest, I will.”
Mom gave in, as she usually did with John. My little brother had a mild form of hemophilia. Four years earlier, he’d almost bled to death from a routine tonsillectomy. We’d all been careful with him since then.
“All right, John,” Dad said. “We’ll keep Rusty. But he’s your responsibility.”
“Deal!”
And that’s how Rusty came to live with us. He was John’s dog from that very first moment, though he tolerated the rest of us.John kept his word. He fed, watered, medicated and groomed the scruffy-looking animal every day. I think he liked taking care of something rather than being taken care of.Over the summer, Rusty grew into a big, handsome dog. He and John were constant companions. Wherever John went, Rusty was by his side. When school began, Rusty would walk John the six blocks to elementary school, then come home. Every school day at three o’clock, rain or shine, Rusty would wait for John at the playground.
“There goes Rusty,” the neighbors would say. “Must be close to three. You can set your watch by that dog.”
Telling time wasn’t the only amazing thing about Rusty. Somehow, he sensed that John shouldn’t roughhouse like the other boys. He was very protective. When the neighborhood bully taunted my undersized brother, Rusty’s hackles rose, and a deep, menacing growl came from his throat. The heckling ceased after one encounter. And when John and his best friend Bobby wrestled, Rusty monitored their play with a watchful eye. If John were on top, fine. If Bobby got John down, Rusty would lope over, grab Bobby’s collar and pull him off. Bobby and John thought this game great fun. They staged fights quite often, much to Mother’s dismay.
“You’re going to get hurt, John!” she would scold. “And you aren’t being fair to Rusty.”
John didn’t like being restricted. He hated being careful—being different. “It’s just a game, Mom. Shoot, even Rusty knows that. Don’t you, boy?” Rusty would cock his head and give John a happy smile.
In the spring, John got an afternoon paper route. He’d come home from school, fold his papers and take off on his bike to deliver them. He always took the same streets, in the same order. Of course, Rusty delivered papers, too.
One day, for no particular reason, John changed his route. Instead of turning left on a street as he usually did, he turned right. Thump!... Crash!... A screech of brakes... Rusty sailed through the air.
Someone called us about the accident. I had to pry John from Rusty’s lifeless body so that Dad could bring Rusty home.
“It’s my fault,” John said over and over. “Rusty thought the car was gonna hit me. He thought it was another game.”
“The only game Rusty was playing was the game of love,” Dad said. “You both played it well.”
John sniffled. “Huh?”
“You were there for Rusty when he needed you. He was there for you when he thought you needed him. That’s the game of love.”
“I want him back,” John wailed. “My Rusty’s gone!”
“No, he isn’t,” Dad said, hugging John and me. “Rusty will stay in your memories forever.”
And he has.

*adapted from "Chicken Soup for the Soul"*

Goooooooooood Mooooooorrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnninnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggg to all! 2nd day of Ramadan, and traffic was still light and easy this morning, thank goodness for that.......Anyways, another day has started, full of work, play, and lots of QL-ing lol!!!!! Rise and shine everyone, what's on your agenda today???

by the colour of their skin.

Bikram Vohra

Like Andrew Nel not being in the South African cricket team. What was all that about?

Whenever I witness an act of racism I am deeply affected. Easily slighted, I sometimes locate it where it isn’t. In a supermarket, at a restaurant, on the sports field, in the body language of those around me. A very depressing sensation, one of profound futility.

Racism becomes a good armour to hide inside when the going gets tough. The other lot, whoever they are, can be blamed for one’s own insecurities and failures. For this very reason it continues to flourish, and the item I read about the deliberate setting on fire of two little Turkish girls and their mother in Germany is a clear indication that hate and bigotry are well, alive and available over the counter.

James Baldwin wrote: Who needs to be integrated in a burning house? Who indeed!!
Historically, racism has been seen as the one-way street in which the white races practised prejudice, subtle and crude, on the coloured people. In the remnants of colonialism, as the once-ruled now pick up the threads and exercise their own sense of colonial superiority in indigenous hierarchies, racism has filtered from colour to caste, religion, and denomination in that religion. Even in the colour context, there is now a reverse flow and the white races can also feel the sharp tooth of such viciousness from their coloured brethren. Not a pretty picture this, as it defies all the pompous rhetoric to the contrary.

The wife of racing novelist Dick Francis is credited with this statement: ‘The slogan “Black is beautiful” was created by white South Africans to raise the morale of the black people.’ That it later became a black power symbol indicates how successful the plan was.
Writers like Gore Vidal have dealt with white inspired racism in a sort of self flagellating manner, as if by doing so they were seeking catharsis for the excesses of the past: It is not possible to regard our race with anything but alarm. From primeval ooze to the stars, we killed anything that stood in our way, including each other.

American essayist Susan Sontag went a step further, appealing obviously to a large core of white intellectuals who also need such cerebral exorcism of whatever ghosts haunt their minds: It is the white race, its ideologies and its inventions that have eradicated autonomous civilisations wherever it spread. It has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

But while the white races divide themselves into liberals practising equality and those still believing in their purity, the coloured races still struggle to find identity. It was Stephen Biko who said: We read the white man’s books, watch plays written by him, hear music that is his, his poetry, his values, copy even his food and clothes, is it any wonder that sometimes we believe we are inferior?

One can understand the universal need for identity and the birds of a feather syndrome is as valid now as any circle of covered wagons. But as Stokely Carmichael told The New York Times: I am for the black man, I am not anti anyone.
Yet, the dotbusters, the Paki-bashers, the skinheads, the neo-Nazi groups and their mutant spawns continue to raise their more than ugly heads. It was Enoch Powell who commented in the aftermath of the Brixton riots: As I look ahead I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood. We have seen nothing yet.

Hopefully, Mr Powell was wrong but the evidence of inter-racial intolerance won’t go away. Is it the ignorance of our own cultures that makes us so contemptuous and defensive, brittle because we don’t have the confidence of knowledge. It was Baldwin again who so deftly stated: I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hatred so stubbornly is because they sense that once the hatred is gone they will be forced to deal with pain.

The question that most of us avoid asking is what exactly is the nature and texture of what we preserve in keeping the citadel free of ‘them’, whoever they are. Martin Luther King said he did not want to be the white man’s brother in law, only his brother.

While he may have touched a nerve there, one factor is common in the hostility that all colours display when outnumbered or outflanked. Especially when they are at the thin edge of life’s wedge. Truly, racism is the snobbery of the poor, not just in material terms but also for those who are intellectually impoverished. Most of us need an excuse for the lives of quiet despair that entrap us, for the wretchedness that washes over us, from the failures that grin bleakly out of the uninspiring past, a finger to point at someone ‘alien’ to our image, to say that but for him, go I much higher and much swifter.

Thereby, to save this wretchedness and this despair by labelling it culture, and thus obtaining the sanction to repel all invaders of that territory.
French writer Claude Aveline wrote: ‘Avec Toi-meme. White men, black men, brown men, yellow men, they all cry salt tears.’
And Baldwin said, if you cannot tell a book by its cover, you cannot tell a man by the colour of his skin.
Go tell that to two little dead girls and their mother. If you can find them.

Leave you with one final thought from a British sociologist, H. J. Eysenck: What sex was to the Victorians hatred is to us. We deplore it, we sermonise over it, criticise it publicly and practise it privately. We are in favour of peace but go to war at the drop of a hat. We admonish our children when they are too aggressive and more so when they turn the other cheek. And we certainly talk about it and write books about it.

The last word from mathematics professor Tom Lehrer, an underrated musician with a passion for going for the jugular in his lyrics: I believe we should all love one another and I hate people who don’t.

(BT)

Qatar’s Museum of Islamic Arts, which opens to public visitors on December 1, has unveiled a major advertising campaign in the UK to raise awareness of the museum among residents and tourists, reports Gulf Today.

During the next 13 months, 30 of the famous London taxi cabs will be displaying the eye-catching advertising campaign featuring a distinctive image of the I M Pei-designed museum on Doha Corniche with the motto, ‘the art of civilisations.’
“We have chosen one of the world’s largest, most glamorous and culturally aware cities to unveil our global advertising,” Qatar Museums Authority CEO Abdullah Al Najjar said yesterday.

The advertising campaign will fuel the momentum in the run-up to the museum opening and will reach local communities in London, as well as the 26.5mn people who visit London each year,” he explained.

According to one UK study, London taxi advertising in seen by more than 10.5mn every week.

“Doha has always had a pioneering spirit as a city. Our creative new advertising campaign fully reflects museum aims to reach out to all cultures and will put us on the map as one of the world’s most imaginative new museums,” Al Najjar added.

(GDN)

LONDON:

Feeling stressed or anxious at an inability to access the Internet? Don't worry, you're not alone and now there's a word for it: "discomgoogolation".

Nearly half of Britons - 44 per cent - are discomgoogolation sufferers, according to a survey, with over a quarter - 27 percent - admitting to rising stress levels when they are unable to go online.

"The proliferation of broadband has meant for the first time in history we've entered a culture of 'instant answers,'" said psychologist Dr David Lewis, who identified discomgoogolation by measuring heart rates and brainwave activity.

The term comes from "discombobulate," which means to confuse or frustrate, and Google.

"A galaxy of information is just a mouse click away and we have become addicted to the web," added Lewis. "When unable to get online, discomgoogolation takes over.

"It was surprising to see the stress this led to brain activity and blood pressure in participants both increase in response to being cut off from the Internet." The survey also found 76 percent of Britons could not live without the Internet, with over half of the population using the web between one and four hours a day and 19 percent of people spending more time online than with their family in a week.

Forty-seven percent of those polled believed the Internet was more important in people's lives than religion, with one in five people paying the Internet more attention than their partner.

Commissioned by information service 118118, the YouGov poll questioned 2,100 Britons during the first week of July.

.........Sounds like a load of old bollox to me !!!

hello my friends and foes ( lol like i have any here on QL), so i haven't had the chance to connect and say hi to a couple of my few close friends, as all you can see HMC is killing me and screwing me over!!

anyways for all the people i missed out and people who missed out on me, i just want to say I'm seizing this opportunity of the blessed month to ask for forgiveness from people i forgot along the road and people who forgot me!! HEY it's all good, I'm very forgiving so it's all over MY shoulder lol

anyways lets make this mushy note short, just want to say if i don't see or chat with any of you, am either stuck saving someone's life or am making most of my time in good deeds inshallah

salam alikum

http://i95.photobuck...

a special greeting to my girl labda06 and DaRude, i know you hate me already..ur always calling me to the QLSG meetings and am a NO-SHOW..i know am such a bad girl!! but you know my circumstances :(

hey buddies , am new to this site, i was wondering if i could get in touch with algerian fellows out there, i'm moving to qatar by mid september, i would like to get some good advices about the country so i can prepare my self for that radical change!
waiting for your replies!!!
take good care hope to hear from you soon !!!

Hi guy!!!

Does Miyaki makeup has any website??