A great open mic turned into a terrible night as I waited after I played for the bus to come my way.  In the freezing cold I waited for the bus belated to take me to the cherry of the Staten Island Ferry.

Through unknown territory I trekked the distance, growing warmth walking through insistence.  Bold determination holding my invigoration as I marched gallantly, rushing like a cavalry.

Beat out the bus or I’d feel stupid.  Kicking back dust as I slowly burned lipids.  Terrified of my surroundings but proud of my resolve as I was justified in the resoundings that familiar buildings were about me.

This twenty-minute walk of a mile’s convenient thought raced my heart in seconds.  A lenient bus now chased like a dart with “out of service” flashing at me, laughing.

Finally, I made it to the terminal, kindly I waited in deep inferno.  Death mixed with black, metal’s crisp abrasive attack.  Cannibal Corpse’s fathomable forced merger with Cradle of Filth’s chasm of coarse surgical fervor could not adequately describe satisfactorily, the hell in which I’d just dwelled.

Sat down now feeling warmth from arrival, looked south, down from the ceiling, to a recognizable glance, of bird shit, on my pants.

The color purple, paired with red, borders on becoming a fashion negative.  Yet, worn with neutrals, the look is classic.

Before Stepping-out I’m adding a 4″ Heel to these Shoes!

Smoking out trends; we catch the look!

• Study British, French, and Italian Magazines.
• Hunt through dormant wardrobe items and try-out new combinations.
• Borrow ideas from store displays.
• Most importantly:  keep a steady eye on the FABRICS featured in new collections.
• Flaunt your yang and never hesitate to take a risk:  this will allow you to initiate new trends.

Copyright © 2010 Nicole Rigets

This tendency of adults to default to insisting is one of the reasons kids start tuning us out.  We’re often not saying anything they haven’t already heard.  Chronic insisting comes from a genuinely concerned and committed place.  It’s inspiring, actually, to realize that we care about kids enough to keep banging our heads against this wall. But it’s also a largely ineffective practice and an inefficient use of energy we really don’t have to spare.  And it doesn’t get anybody what they want. (Unless all a kid wants is for you to stop insisting, or just to please you no matter what.  Both are short term pay-offs that don’t ultimately serve anyone.)

I’ve written before about trying to imagine what things look like to kids.  Often when I do, parents get frustrated with me because what they hear me saying is that the things they (parents) think are important aren’t; that we should only care about what kids want.  What I’m actually saying is that if you really want to forward the agenda you have for your kids, whether it’s that they get a college degree or that they get more organized or they spend less time texting their friends or that they take more of an interest in spending time with you, the way toward those ends is not to keep insisting.  Insisting just makes it worse, and increases the chasm between you and your children when it comes to your goals and hopes for their lives. When you try to go straight for what you know is best, bypassing and disregarding the perspective that informs what your child does and doesn’t choose to do, you can’t get them on board with much of anything.  Resistance intensifies, and both parties feel oppositional and frustrated.

The way forward, together, is to do everything you can to imagine what the world looks like to your child.  If you take the energy you’ve been spending on insisting and apply it to figuring out what the world actually looks like to your children and what has them do what they do and think what they think and want what they want, you’ll find that what you want for them is not in its essence different from what they’re after. The better you get at it, the more you’ll see that you actually have in common.  Not only that, they’ll learn to see and be interested in what things look like from your perspective.  Then and only then will you have a chance at inspiring the kind of action and commitment you’re hoping for.  (Without force, threat, punishment, etc.) You’ll find that it’s actually possible to find common ground and settle on common goals – that you don’t have to force anything.  You’ll also find yourself lots less tired.

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Molly Norris has moved and changed her name, the Seattle Weekly said Wednesday, after U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki placed her on an execution hit list. Awlaki — who has been linked to the botched Times Square bombing and cited as inspiration for the Fort Hood massacre and a plot by two New Jersey men to kill U.S. soldiers — reportedly called Norris a “prime target” for assassination and that her “proper abode is hellfire.”

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DUBLIN, August 4 (CDN) — Around 300 Muslim protestors and 300 police officers surrounded members of the Batak Christian Protestant Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestan or HKBP) on Sunday (Aug. 1) as they worshiped in an open field in Ciketing, Bekasi, local sources said.

“There were many police on guard, but the attackers were able to get very close to the congregation,” Theophilus Bela, president of the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum, said in a statement to international government and advocacy groups. “We are afraid that they will attack the church again next Sunday.”

He added that a protestor hit the Rev. Luspida Simanjuntak on the cheek.

Police held back the shouting protestors while the church worshiped, but at one point they allowed Murhali Barda, leader of the Front Pembela Islam (FPI or Islamic Defenders Front) in Bekasi, through the cordon for an angry confrontation with church leaders, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

Bekasi police commander Imam Sugianto told VOA that his forces were there to protect “both sides.”

The New York Times quoted Sugianto as saying that, “If the local people don’t give their permission, they can’t worship here,” but Pastor Simanjuntak said the Bekasi administration had approved the church’s decision to meet in the field, according to The Jakarta Globe.

“We demand the Bekasi administration to let the public know that they gave us the green light to conduct our prayers here,” Pastor Simanjuntak reportedly said.

The 1,500-strong congregation, established some 15 years ago, initially met in each other’s homes before purchasing a residential property in the Pondok Timur housing complex in Bekasi for use as a worship building. The group then met in the building while they waited for local officials to respond to a building permit application filed in 2006.

When Muslim neighbors in December objected to the meetings in the housing complex on the grounds that the church had no permit, officials banned church members from meeting there. As the local government had delayed the processing of its application for a building permit, the church ignored the ban, leading officials to seal the building on June 20.

Bekasi Mayor Mochtar Mohammad on July 9 said he would allow the congregation to meet in public areas or at the city hall, according to the Globe. Pastor Simanjuntak chose to move to the proposed building site, and Sunday meetings at the field in Ciketing were soon greeted by crowds of protestors.

The FPI’s Barda said the church’s insistence on worshipping at the site was a provocation, according to VOA. He also accused Christians in Bekasi of attempting to convert Muslims away from their religion, citing a recent Internet report claiming that the Mahanaim Foundation, a local Christian charity, had carried out a mass baptism of new converts.

Foundation spokeswoman Marya Irawan, however, told The Jakarta Post that the crowds were not baptized but only invited to Mahanaim leader Henry Sutanto’s home as part of an effort to reach out to the poor.

Pastor Simanjuntak’s church has now filed a case against the Bekasi administration.

“I fully support any efforts to take this to the courts,” a local Christian leader who preferred to remain unnamed told Compass. “We need to respond through legal channels and let the government know that these attacks are a gross human rights violation.”

Hard-line Islamic groups held a congress in Bekasi on June 20, and on June 27 announced their united intent to combat the “Christianization” of the region. (See http://www.compassdirect.org, “Indonesian Muslims Call for Halt to ‘Christianization,’” July 2.)

Bonar Tigor Naipospos, spokesman for Indonesia’s Institute for Peace and Democracy (Setara), told VOA that unsubstantiated rumors about Christians using deceptive practices to convert Muslims have fueled the anger in Bekasi. He reportedly said that Muslims believe that Christians badger people to convert and entice them with money, food or other incentives.

Pastor Simanjuntak has said that she and her church will continue meeting in the field, as they have nowhere else to go.

Report from Compass Direct News

President Obama’s defense of Muslims’ right to build a mosque near Ground Zero was a sharp rebuke to most of the contemporary Republican Party, but it was very much in line with the tone of his predecessor, George W.

Bush, who had waged his own internal party wars over his insistence that Islam is a “religion of peace.”

Source:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0810/Bush_aide_backs_Obama_on_mosque.html

Forced from Buddhist homeland, dangers arise in Hindu-majority Nepal.

KATHMANDU, Nepal, February 23 (CDN) — Thrust from their homes in Bhutan after Buddhist rulers embarked on an ethnic and religious purge, Christian refugees in Nepal face hostilities from Hindus and others.

In Sunsari district in southeastern Nepal, a country that is more than 80 percent Hindu, residents from the uneducated segments of society are especially apt to attack Christians, said Purna Kumal, district coordinator for Awana Clubs International, which runs 41 clubs in refugee camps to educate girls about the Bible.

“In Itahari, Christians face serious trouble during burials,” Kumal told Compass. “Last month, a burial party was attacked by locals who dug up the grave and desecrated it.”

Earlier this month, he added, a family in the area expelled one of its members from their home because he became a Christian.

Bhutan began expelling almost one-eighth of its citizens for being of Nepali origin or practicing faiths other than Buddhism in the 1980s. The purge lasted into the 1990s.

“Christians, like Hindus and others, were told to leave either their faith or the country,” said Gopi Chandra Silwal, who pastors a tiny church for Bhutanese refugees in a refugee camp in Sanischare, a small village in eastern Nepal’s Morang district. “Many chose to leave their homeland.”

Persecution in Bhutan led to the spread of Christianity in refugee camps in Nepal. Though exact figures are not available, refugee Simon Gazmer estimates there are about 7,000-8,000 Christians in the camps – out of a total refugee population of about 85,000 – with many others having left for other countries. There are 18 churches of various faiths in the camps, he said.

“Faith-healing was an important factor in the spread of Christianity in the camps,” said Gazmer, who belongs to Believers’ Church and is awaiting his turn to follow five members of his family to Queensland, Australia. “A second reason is the high density in the camps.”

Each refugee family lives in a single-room hut, with one outdoor toilet for every two families. The Nepalese government forbids them to work for fear it will create unemployment for local residents.

Life was even harder for them before 2006, when Nepal was a Hindu kingdom where conversions were a punishable offence.

“When I began preaching in 2000, I had to do it secretly,” said Pastor Silwal of Morang district. “We could meet only surreptitiously in small groups. I used my hut as a make-shift church while many other groups were forced to rent out rooms outside the camp.”

A fact-finding mission in 2004 by Brussels-based Human Rights Without Frontiers found that police pulled down a church structure built by Pentecostal Christians in the Beldangi camp by orders of Nepal’s home ministry. The rights group also reported that Hindu refugees ostracized the Christians, who had proceeded to rent a room outside the camp to meet three times a week for worship services and Bible study.

When the Jesus Loves Gospel Ministries (JLGM) organization sent officials from India to the Pathri camp in Morang in 2006, they found that local residents resentful of the refugees had taken note of a baptism service at a pond in a nearby jungle.

“In August, we were planning another baptism program,” JLGM director Robert Singh reported. “But the villagers put deadly poisonous chemicals in the water … Some of the young people went to take a bath ahead of our next baptism program. They found some fish floating on the water and, being very hungry – the refugees only get a very small ration, barely enough to survive on – they took some of the fish and ate them. Three of them died instantly.”

Singh also stated that poisoned sweets were left on the premises of the refugee school in the camp. They were discovered in time to avert another tragedy.

Life for Christian refugees improved after Nepal saw a pro-democracy movement in 2006 that caused the army-backed government of Hindu king Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah to collapse. The king was forced to reinstate parliament, and lawmakers sought to curb his powers by declaring Nepal a secular state.

Though Christian refugees are now allowed to run churches openly in the camps, ill will toward them has yet to end. When Pastor Silwal asked camp authorities to allow him to open a church in 2006, Hindu neighbors protested, saying it would cause disturbances. Camp authorities allowed him to open a tiny church in a separate room on the condition that its activities would not disturb neighbors.

Earlier in his life in Bhutan, said the 40-year-old Pastor Silwal, he had been a stern Hindu who rebuked his two sisters mercilessly for becoming Christians. He forbade them to visit their church, which gathered in secret due to the ban on non-Buddhist religions in place at the time. They were also forbidden to bring the Bible inside their house in Geylegphug, a district in southern Bhutan close to the Indian border.

“I became a believer in 1988 after a near-death experience,” Pastor Silwal told Compass. “I contracted malaria and was on the verge of death since no one could diagnose it. All the priests and shamans consulted by my Hindu family failed to cure me. One day, when I thought I was going to die I had a vision.”

The pastor said he saw a white-robed figure holding a Bible in one hand and beckoning to him with the other. “Have faith in me,” the figure told him. “I will cure you.”

When he woke from his trance, Silwal asked his sisters to fetch him a copy of the Bible. They were alarmed at first, thinking he was going to beat them. But at his insistence, they nervously fetched the book from the thatched roof of the cow shed where they had kept it hidden. Pastor Silwal said he tried to read the Bible but was blinded by his fever and lost consciousness.

When he awoke, to his amazement and joy, the fever that had racked him for nearly five months was gone.

Pastor Silwal lost his home in 1990 to the ethnic and religious purge that forced him to flee along with thousands of others. It wasn’t until 1998, he said, that he and his family formally converted to Christianity after seven years of grueling hardship in the refugee camp, where he saw “people dying like flies due to illness, lack of food and the cold.”

“My little son too fell ill and I thought he would die,” Silwal said. “But he was cured; we decided to embrace Christianity formally.”

Homeless

In 2001, Bhutan4Christ reported the number of Bhutanese Christians to be around 19,000, with the bulk of them – more than 10,500 – living in Nepal.

When persecution by the Bhutanese government began, frightened families raced towards towns in India across the border. Alarmed by the influx of Bhutanese refugees, Indian security forces packed them into trucks and dumped them in southern Nepal.

Later, when the homesick refugees tried to return home, Indian security forces blocked the way. There were several rounds of scuffles, resulting in police killing at least three refugees.

Simon Gazmer was seven when his family landed at the bank of the Mai river in Jhapa district in southeastern Nepal. Now 24, he still remembers the desolation that reigned in the barren land, where mists and chilly winds rose from the river, affecting the morale and health of the refugees. They lived in bamboo shacks with thin plastic sheets serving as roofs; they had little food or medicine.

“My uncle Padam Bahadur had tuberculosis, and we thought he would die,” said Gazmer, who lives in Beldangi II, the largest of seven refugee camps. “His recovery made us realize the grace of God, and our family became Christians.”

The plight of the refugees improved after the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) stepped in, receiving permission from the government of Nepal to run the refugee camps. According to the UNHCR, there were 111,631 registered refugees in seven camps run in the two districts of Jhapa and Morang.

Though Nepal held 15 rounds of bilateral talks with Bhutan for the repatriation of the refugees, the Buddhist government dragged its feet, eventually breaking off talks. Meantime, international donors assisting the refugee camps began to grow weary, resulting in the slashing of aid and food. Finally, seven western governments – Canada, Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the Netherlands – persuaded Nepal to allow the refugees to resettle in third countries.

The exodus of the refugees started in 2007. Today, according to the UNHCR, more than 26,000 have left for other countries, mostly the United States. A substantial number of the nearly 85,000 people left in the camps are ready to follow suit.

Although they now have a new life to look forward to, many of Bhutan’s Christian refugees are saddened by the knowledge that their homeland still remains barred to them. So some are looking at the next best thing: a return to Nepal, now that it is secular, where they will feel more at home than in the West.

“I don’t have grand dreams,” said Pastor Silwal. “In Australia I want to enroll in a Bible college and become a qualified preacher. Then I want to return to Nepal to spread the word of God.”  

Report from Compass Direct News 

Farsi Christian News Network (fcnn.com) reports that on August 23rd and 24th, intelligence officers contacted several new Christian believers and their families and requested that they attend a hearing at the Ministry of Information. It is important to mention that these individuals had previously been identified by the intelligence officers.

According to this report, these individuals, upon reporting to the offices of the Ministry of Information, were detained and interrogated all day long and subsequently released from custody.

The names of some of these individuals are as follows: Mr. Sadegh, Mr. Farzam, Mr. Nik-khah, Mr. Sarmad, and Mr. Ayyoob. The women were: Ms. Tahereh, Ms. Nahid, and Ms. Roshanak – all from the city of Sanandaj. There were others who were detained from other cities that have requested anonymity. Also 2 new believers from the city of Saghez, one from the town Gharaveh, and one other from the town of Kamyaran that were taken to their local Ministry of Information offices for questioning.

FCNN reports that the intelligence officers were using these interrogations to identify the command chain and responsibilities of each and every one of these believers within the home-church movement in Iran and also to learn more about the tactics used by the believers in evangelism along with more information about a specific home belonging to a Christian man named Mr. Ghanei.

It needs to be reminded that Mr. Ghanei was summoned to the ministry, detained and questioned for his faith and beliefs in Christ for one week in July 2009, while his family and relatives were completely unaware of his whereabouts. Finally, through the follow up and insistence of a lawyer and posting of a bail bond, he was released. Shortly after this incident, Mr. Ghanei was re-arrested on the charge that his bail bond was not invalid and this time he was forced to post a 60 million Tooman bond (Approximately $60,000 USD). Subsequent to this and as of now, there is no information regarding his whereabouts.

According to these new believers who were detained and questioned, the intelligence officers are attempting to identify and locate the whereabouts of Mr. Ghanei in order to summon him to the office of the Ministry of Information. It’s not clear why these officers are so eager to re-question Mr. Ghanei and what seems to be the urgency in this matter.

In connection with this, the intelligence officers and plain clothes interrogators have visited Mr. Ghanei’s house as well as the residence of his father in-law in Sanandaj and have searched the house and questioned the residents. Also and apparently the intelligence officers have targeted several new believers and the church members of the church in Kermanshah who may know of the whereabouts of Mr. Ghanei and placed them under surveillance and undue pressures.

Lastly, it must be remembered that in October 2006, Mr. Ghanei was arrested for the first time and after lengthy interrogation and being charged for converting from Islam to Christianity was released. This cycle of arrest, interrogation, and released from detention was repeated many times over the last few years.

Report from the Christian Telegraph 

The civility of fighting traces its DNA to hockey’s roots: hardscrabble Canadian farm boys who would try everything to beat – and beat up – their friends and brothers, but do so with a sense of honor.

As fighting has evolved amid its detractors’ insistence that it remains hockey’s Neanderthal corner, The Code has stood true to offer its puffy-knuck

Source:
http://www.boston.com/sports/hockey/bruins/articles/2008/12/17/etiquette_of_nhl_fighting/

The civility of fighting traces its DNA to hockey’s roots: hardscrabble Canadian farm boys who would try everything to beat – and beat up – their friends and brothers, but do so with a sense of honor.

As fighting has evolved amid its detractors’ insistence that it remains hockey’s Neanderthal corner, The Code has stood true to offer its puffy-knuck

Check it:
http://www.boston.com/sports/hockey/bruins/articles/2008/12/17/etiquette_of_nhl_fighting/

He always figures out a way to be petted by me by pushing against the hand that is hanging over the edge of the sofa and nudging it until I react in some way. He knows that if he is persistent, I will start petting him automatically. One cat was laying on my stomach, purring very merrily, as unmovable as a rock in a meadow. You see how even in my sleep I perform a function for the animals.

I’m very glad that the Überhund doesn’t need to be taken out for his late night walk anymore, because it means that after his 6 o’clock walk, I can put on my pajamas and get comfortable. Sometimes he needs a piddle out back before I go to bed, but more often he doesn’t and in the morning he is in no hurry as long as I let him out back first. Then he can wait forever for me to get done and he just lies beside me while I sit behind the computer.

When I feel good, sitting behind the computer is one of my favorite things to do. The last two days it was a hard thing to do, but as a rule, I enjoy it very much. I know I am not addicted, however, because in one of my groups there is a woman who really is and it is a very sad thing indeed when you are at the cost of everything and everybody else. When that computer becomes more important than all the other activities and people around you.

The awareness that she is addicted only recently dawned on her, but she is very resistant to change, and very stubborn about it too, and I don’t know if she can be cured of it. She is a lot like an alcoholic who needs to be weaned off the bottle. In the meantime, she neglects her family and her dogs and her household and her friends and is in the process of alienating herself from human participation. It’s a miracle that she shows up for the therapy groups, because all she wants to do is be at home and sit behind the computer. You learn a lot from listening to a person like that and you think, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Oh yes, today is Saturday again. Well, I’ll be darned, another week has flown by. I want to say, another jam packed week, because I think a lot of things happened. New glasses coming up, I am starting in a new therapy group and I’ve started a new anti psychotic medication. You see that even in a life as dull as mine, things happen.

It’s impossible to not have things happen when you are alive and out there in the world in whatever capacity, unless you are holed up in you apartment and never go out. If my reading glasses hadn’t broken, I wouldn’t have put on my regular glasses and I wouldn’t have realized how bad my eyes really were. So, a bus trip down town solved that problem. If I were a recluse, I wouldn’t have gotten onto that bus. And if I didn’t go to my ergo and creative classes, I wouldn’t have known how much I needed that other therapy class. And if I weren’t such a stubborn woman, who knew better because of her interaction with other people, I would have taken the other medication and there would not have been a peep out of me. I would have blamed it all on myself and my circumstances. Instead, I was insistent and opened my big mouth.

I think being insistent is very important when you are dependent on any kind of a system. When you threaten to become a number instead of a human being. It’s so important to always stick up for yourself and to be like a terrier and take a bite and not let go. Always make noise and persist and try to win, even if you loose in the end. At least you will have done your darn best and fought the system. The system has an attitude and a haughtiness that always need to be challenged. I had to argue with my psychiatrist about the medication. It was a friendly argument, but I argued nevertheless.

ISTANBUL, Turkey, October 24 (Compass Direct News) – Lawyers for two underage Christian sisters who were kidnapped plan to renew a custody fight for the older girl, a 13-year-old allegedly coerced into marrying her captor, based on new statements from her 10-year-old sister that they were raped and forced to convert to Islam.

The plans come after the court last month allowed 13-year-old Saba Masih to decide whether to return to her parents or remain with her husband; apparently still terrified from death threats, she chose to remain with her captor. Amjad Ali married Saba Masih shortly after the girls were kidnapped on June 26.

In the Sept. 9 ruling the court ordered the return of her 10-year-old sister, Aneela Masih, to her parents, a move lawyers hail as a rare and significant victory for human rights in Pakistan.

Since her release Aneela Masih has told her uncle, Khalid Raheel, previously unknown details of the sisters’ capture, including rape and forced conversion to Islam, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

Aneela Masih told Raheel that she and her sister were kidnapped when they stopped to buy fruit en route to their uncle’s home. The sisters were taken away by taxi and then raped, she said. After being tied up and locked in a room, she told him, the two were forced to make professions of Islamic faith.

She described how the pistol-toting captors threatened the girls with death. The kidnappers told the girls that their parents would also be killed, she said, if the sisters did not do everything asked of them.

“These poor little kids, they threatened them,” said Akbar Durrani, a lawyer from CLAAS who fought in court on the sisters’ behalf. “They were terrified. She said they were terrified.”

In light of these revelations, Durrani said he plans to file a new custody case for Saba Masih based on their abduction. This move, however, could jeopardize progress gained in the legal quest to free the sisters from their captors.

“The court statement never mentioned kidnapping,” Durrani said. “We are still working on it, because the Supreme Court may say to us, ‘We will reverse the position, get both the girls back and hear the case afresh.’”

Avoiding this scenario while convincing the court to allow further proceedings is the challenge Durrani now faces.

Saba Masih’s insistence that her age is 17 and that her conversion to Islam was real will also make regaining custody of her extremely difficult, according to lawyer Rashid Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Rehman also represented the girls’ family in the case.

Saba Masih’s husband, Ali, had obtained the backing of a medical committee possibly under pressure from Islamic groups in his claim that she was 17 and thus of legal age. He also claimed that her conversion removed her from the jurisdiction of her father.

It was a branch of the Lahore High Court in Multan that ruled on Sept. 9 that Aneela Masih should be handed back to her parents. When Saba Masih, whose birth certificate indicates that she is 13 but who testified that she was 17, said she did not want to return to her parents, she also tried to keep her younger sister from returning to them. Attorneys said the Muslim kidnappers had repeatedly threatened the girls that their parents would harm them if they returned.

Uncle Threatened

Throughout the case the girls’ uncle, Raheel, who has spearheaded the campaign to free the girls, has received death threats from supporters of Ali, he told Compass by telephone this week. With a tired voice, he said that he remains determined to explore every avenue to return Saba Masih to her parents.

“They are threatening me also, because I was proving the case,” he said. “They tell me also that if I keep on doing like this one day they will shoot me. I said, ‘Okay, no problem, you shoot me, but up to now I am alive. I will look after Saba. I will find her someday.’”

Various options remain open to CLAAS. The group’s lawyers are seeking advice from three local deputy inspector generals about how they should proceed.

“[We] can file a private complaint in the court of magistrate if a FIR [First Information Report] about kidnapping is not registered,” Durrani said. “If we are not getting any relief from this side, we will go to the Supreme Court.”

Lawyers told Compass that the court ruling for the return of the younger sister to her Christian parents, despite questions over her conversion to Islam, was an unusual decision and a significant victory for human rights in Pakistan.

“We have two or three cases in Islamabad [where] the judges did not allow minor girls to be given back to their parents,” Durrani said. “So in this context it was very important to at least get Aneela back.”

Report from Compass Direct News

From ?Broccoli? to ?Borscht? to ?Puffed Rice and Meatballs,? each of these new stories invites us into the uniquely captivating private worlds of Vapnyar?s Eastern European 魩gr鳮 There?s Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom the colorful abundance of the vegetable markets in New York represents her own fresh hopes and dreams. . . Luda and Milena, who battle over a widower in their English class with competing recipes for cheese puffs, spinach pies, and meatballs . . . Sergey, who finds more comfort in the borscht made by a paid female companion than in her sexual ministrations. Each of the women and men who inhabit these witty, tender, and beautifully observed stories needs and longs for the taste and smell of home, wherever–and with whomever–that may turn out to be.

Russian in its wit and in many of its rich details, but American in its insistence on the quest for personal happiness, however provisional and however high the cost, Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love masterfully illuminates a very particular facet of desire with entirely charming results.

From the Hardcover edition.

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