Book Review: The Secret Annexe from the diary of Anne Frank By Anne Frank

 

Anne was born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929. She died in a camp because of typhoid and exhaustion, just three months short of her sixteenth birthday. Anne Frank’s diary was kept from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944. She provides an important eyewitness account of the events during the Second World War. The Secret Annexe begins on 10^th of November 1942, when Anne frank and her family spent more than a year in hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. This book is an extract from The Definitive Edition of Anne’s diary.

Anne had spent over a year in the annexe, together with her parents and sister, and the Van Daan family.  Albert Dussel was allowed in the annexe with the mutual approval of the two families. Anne states that she gets frightened when she thinks of her close friends who are at the mercy of Nazis. She says that people were shipped off to filthy slaughter houses and quotes the saying ‘Misfortunes never come singly.’

Frank shares her troubles during the hiding period. This includes stories of how food, books and other items smuggled into the temporary residence. She also shares her urge to read books, her troubles with her mother and development of problems with Dussel regarding their shared space.

The social and psychological tensions which she faced during the tough times is given in the book. Anne longs to have a home of her own where she is allowed to move freely and do her homework again. She wants to end living like a fugitive and go back to school.

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Book Review: Money by Yuval Noah Harari

 

Harari was born in Israel in 1976. He studied at Oxford and lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the Middle Ages and World History. In this book the author starts with the history of money. He says that hunter-gatherers shared their goods and services through an economy of favors and obligations. Each village was a self-sufficient economic unit, maintained by mutual favors and obligations with a little barter trade with outsiders.

Rise of cities and kingdoms and the improvement in infrastructure created opportunities for specialization. Specialization also created a problem of managing the exchange of goods between specialists. For many societies creation of money was the answer.  Money could be anything that people use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods. It isn’t a material reality, it is a psychological construct.  Harari stresses that money is the most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Harari states that history’s first known money is the Sumerian barley money. The first coins in history were struck around 640 BC by King Alyattes of Lydia, in western Anatolia. The Chinese monetary system depended on bronze coins, silver and gold ingots. According to the author, money is based on two universal principles. First, it has universal convertibility and, second it has universal trust. On page 21 Harari states money ‘corrodes local traditions, intimate relations and human values, replacing the with the cold laws of supply and demand.’

From the author’s point of view, in the modern era the new capitalist elite is not made up of dukes and marquises, but of board chairmen, stock traders and industrialists. Capitalism played a very important role not only in the rise of modern science, but also in the emergence of European imperialism. The Dutch won the trust of the financial system as their courts were a separate branch of the government, unlike Spain where it was subservient to the King. This helped the Dutch merchants gain confidence. While the French overseas empire was on decline the British were expanding. Like the Dutch the British empire was established by private joint-stock companies based in the London stock exchange.  

Harari discusses whether intelligence or consciousness is important. He says that the idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking.  If algorithms outperform human capitalists, we might end up with an algorithmic upper class owning most of our planet. Harari is of the view that algorithms wont revolt and enslave us, they will be good at making decisions for us. With that the author also writes that not following their advice would be madness. New technologies of the twenty-first century may thus reverse the humanist revolution, stripping humans of their authority, and empowering non-human algorithms instead. The author adds that if one is horrified by this direction, one should not blame the computer geeks. The responsibility actually lies with the biologists.

The great human projects of the twentieth century including overcoming famine, plague and war- aimed to safeguard a universal norm of abundance, health and peace for everyone without exception. The new projects of the twentieth century- gaining immortality, bliss and divinity- also hope to serve the whole of humankind. According to the author this may result in the creation of a new superhuman that will abandon its liberal roots and treat normal humans no better than nineteenth-century Europeans treated Africans.

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Book Review: The Storm's Call for Prayers: Selections from Shaikh Ayaz by Shaikh Ayaz, Asif Farrukhi (Translator) and Shah Mohammed Pirzada (Translator)

 

This book presents an English translation of some of the selected works of Shaikh Ayaz, the renowned poet from Sind. Ayaz was born in 1923 in Shikarpur. Throughout his life Ayaz was faced numerous challenges. He was banned by the government, imprisoned and declared a traitor. Later, he was also given Sitara-i-Imtiaz (an award by the government in recognition to his services). Initially, Shaikh Ayaz was a lawyer based in Sukkur. Later, during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government Shaikh Ayaz was appointed as the Vice Chancellor of Sind University.

According to the author Ayaz moved from his left-of-the-center leanings and later began taking interest in religion and metaphysics. Ayaz was also a translator and had translated Shah Jo Risalo in Urdu. From this translated work I wish I could quote all of my favorite ones, but below I do quote some of the short ones.

 

Posthumous Reputation

“I know a time will come

When suddenly my poetry will be washed by the moon in the rivers of the sky

I know that time will also come when there will be no prejudice against my language

Everybody will be enveloped in my fragrance

When the town and the path will become one

When my ideal will come to claim me

I know that time will also come

When you will cry over my buried dust hearing some traveler sing my song.”

 

Next Crop

“You must remember this

When I am dead and gone

And there appears a new poet,

Then it will be like

The sugarcane field

When after one crop

The new one sprouts by itself

From the roots of the old.”

 

Bird

A poet is a bird from the myths of old

 All wings and no feet.

It keeps on flying

 Till it drops dead.”

 

Some of the others from Shaikh Ayaz’s work which I like include Home, Rain and Thunder, Write, The Other Woman, Footsteps to the Sea, A Loss of Hair, Chameleon in the Fort and Farewell to the Earth. Anyone who wants to explore the works of a poet writing on different themes, Shaikh Ayaz should definitely be on your list.

 

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Book Review: Dawood's Mentor by S. Hussain Zaidi

 

The author believes that Khalid Khan Pehelwan played a very important role in making Dawood the mafia mobster of India. He also states that Dawood owed his life and power to this man. Khalid’s ancestors migrated from Batkhela in the present day Malakand Agency of Pakistan.

In the book, Zaidi covers the rise of Dawood Ibrahim in the crime world. He also traces how Dawood befriends Khalid. From school Dawood and his elder brother were notorious. Their father was in the police force. Khalid was Dawood’s inspiration. Dawood wanted to be like Khalid. Khalid had later established contacts with the Galadaris of Dubai. Galadaris were among the elite Arab families of Iranian origin in Dubai.

There is a saying in the Mumbai mafia: ‘Beimani ke saare dhande imaandaari se hote hain (All dishonest businesses are executed with the utmost honesty).’ Dawood drew inspiration for power play and money, clothes and style from other places. The first major crime that Dawood committed was a bank robbery on 4 December 1974. The author states that in February 1981 Dawood’s elder brother Sabir was killed. 28 bullets were pumped into his body. Khalid had great contacts in Dubai and knew the logistics of the business so well that he was involved in the movement of gold from coast to coast. He played a very important role in making Dawood a millionaire.

Between 1982 and 1985, the mafia became bolder and more violent. After Sabir’s murder, Dawood learned the importance of having access to power. Khalid managed to persuade a few big fishermen with trawlers to venture out into the open seas and cross the territorial waters. The territorial waters had a four-tier security patrol of the Indian agencies. Khalid’s men would get their speedboats close to the trawlers. In a few minutes the gold consignment was transferred into the fishing boats, some 30-40 km into the high seas.

Khalid and Dawood did not do business together as Dawood had asked Khalid to manage their businesses separately. Initially, Khalid was reluctant but he understood later. Khalid had a different way of doing business. The author states that Khalid and Dawood are still friends. For Dawood's the idea was simple. Break everyone either through money or threats. Dawood deceives his own business partners to make profit. Zaidi narrates the story on page 128 in the book.

After reading this book, now I am more curious to read Zaidi’s other work titled ‘Dongri to Dubai.’

 

 

 

 

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