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=> martyred monuemnts

Posted by parhad (Guest) - Thursday, February 26 2004, 14:50:02 (EST)
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Now I know why we found it so much more difficult to get donors for the Shumirum Monument. Narsai was puzzled...he thought once we installed the Ashurbanipal and proved we could do this unheard of thing...for us...people would be eager to begin promoting our Assyrian Hertage and getting us the public exposure we needed to make our case...that Assyrians WEREN'T all wiped out centuries ago...and then reality hit...though we didn't see it and I don't think Narsai has yet...especially as he went to work for himself, through the Christians over there...but that's another story.

It took 13 years to fund the second monument, when you'd have thought Assyrians would have flocked to do it. I remember now that during my speech at the unveilng ceremoney for the Ahurbanipal I said some things that puzzled me even then...but they came out anyway...hints and confusion that had arisen from my contact with Assyrians during the four years it took to complete the monument...for instance the Civic Club of Turlok, one of the oldest and wealthiest clubs anywhere that has been buying up real estate and I don't know what else...gave us all of $250 towards the monument...what some college students and not so well-off individuals gave and the minimum donation we would accept. Why?

I recall the sad but serviceable "monument" they have in their parking lot to Assyrian "martyrs"...meaning dead Christians...and then the unbelievably bad Winged "Dogs" they "proudly" display on their roof...made for them out of cracked concrete by the Mexican husband of an Assyrian lady...which are neither the size of bulls nor dogs but something in between...and that are nothing more than an insult to any Assyrian art I ever saw...yet they spray painted them GOLD and stuck them on the roof for the world to see and laugh at.

What gives? What goes on here? Why the resistance to anything meaningful or of quality, as Assyrians...why are we almost relieved and why wouldn't Narsai lift a finger when the one and ONLY purely Assyrian restaurant, that said so right in its name, went out of business in San Francisco... and why instead the entire focus of attention and resources on a Christian/Jew religion? Why the castrated bulls made into cows? Why are WE "altering" our art history and showing so little care for it...while we accuse Saddam of the things we do? Why? In the name of Christian propriety??? What about Assyrian appropriateness?

And why the lack of interest in the final fate of the Shumirum? Why the glee in Peter's voice and Hanna's and Aprim's and Wilfred's when they recount how the Shumirum is "wrong" and so it's a good thing it never got installed because it would 'shame" us in the world? Zindalite brings pride or recognition from anywhere? The more I spoke and thought and wrote...the less "Assyrian" I came to be seen as...so that no matter what I DID...as we don't care what the Muslim Assyrians DO about the heritage...but only about what is SAID and talked about a lot by Christians...my words were making it harder to raise Assyrian pride...or so I was told by Jackie and Janey Golani who both begged me to "just sculpt"...as if a true Assyrian can't do two things and do them well...and in this case the writings were shooting the "pride" in the foot. What pride?

And the Hammurabi was doomed from the start. I extended myself financially all over the place...spending what I earned in other projects to keep it going...only to hear that Atour Golani was thinking about suing me to get "their" money back...and Alponse Odishoo, that poet from hell...telling my mother at the San Jose convention after Jackie ordered the police to arrest me if I didn't leave and all because I wouldn't fuck her...that they didn't need to bother with me...an Assyrian sculptor...they could just hire an Italian to make a monument...but of course they never would. These people want NO Assyrian monuments...they want Christian ones...and by definition, those have to be "martyred" monuments.

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