10 Comments
User's avatar
Florian Friedel's avatar

Another lesson you teached me Nazem. I can't find anything worthy. Thank you!

Nazem Alkudsi's avatar

The subject teaches us both. I’m glad it reached you.

Florian Friedel's avatar

Thank you for your work and your reply. I really appreciate. I wish I could be apprenticed by you.

Nazem Alkudsi's avatar

That’s a generous thought, Florian.

The best apprenticeship is the one we give ourselves — through the texts, the questions, and the conversations that follow.

You’re already doing it.

TillyMidnight's avatar

It felt particularly personal since I am descended from the generals of the

army of the Taiping Rebellion. We landed in north borneo decades later in 1880 and established the Basel Mission Church which still stands till this day.

Nazem Alkudsi's avatar

TillyMidnight — to carry the Taiping in your blood and the Basel Mission in your inheritance is not a small thing to live with. Both stories are still asking something of you. The church standing in 1880 is the same church standing now, which is to say: nothing about that lineage is finished. Thank you for trusting me with it.

TillyMidnight's avatar

Brilliantly written! I could even feel myself in that boardroom you described. Questions that we dare not ask because we are too afraid to ask ourselves where our moral lies. How many times have we been in a situation; Best to hide them in numbers and data. Well done.

Nazem Alkudsi's avatar

TillyMidnight — you've named it exactly. The numbers and the data are where we go to forget what we already know. The question you say we are too afraid to ask is the only one worth asking; the rest is bookkeeping. That you felt yourself in that room means a part of you was already there, watching.

Takseng's avatar

Wow. This reads like a historical novel. Thank you.

Nazem Alkudsi's avatar

Takseng — history, when told honestly, refuses to stay flat. The novel is what was always there, waiting for someone to listen for it. Glad it found you.