Wicked World Issue One

Wicked World I Issue One I 1

WICKED WORLDTRAVEL, DARK ARTS & THE GLOBAL UNDERGROUND

Issue One, July/Aug 2013

SUDAN

THAILAND

BANGLADESHThe Black Heart of Dhaka

The Meroe Pyramids

Dead Monk Walking

+ ETHIOPIA PHOTO GALLERY MISSISSIPPI:THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEADSYSTEM OF A DOWN: SCREAMERS FESTIVAL OF THE GHOSTSKYRGYZSTAN: BIG PROBLEM CAMBODIA: SOLDIERS AND SAVIOURS

2 I Wicked World I Issue One

3 6 16

19 21

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Welcome to Issue One of Wicked World: a new, alternative travel magazine that dares to be different. Unrestricted by commercial restrictions, we remain free to challenge, question and tell the truth about the business of international travel. We’re not here to sell expensive guided tours, round-the-world gap year tickets, or travel insurance, but exist primarily to provide a platform for the kind of honest, alternative and irreverent travel writing that wouldn’t normally find a home in more mainstream publications.

In the very first issue of Wicked World, you will find articles on: the burgeoning black metal scene in Bangladesh; the rarely visited Meroe Pyramids in Sudan; mine clearance in Cambodia; a haunting return to Vicksburg, Mississippi; the resurrection of a mummified monk in Thailand; a bizarre encounter with the police in Kyrgyzstan; System of a Down’s self-financed film about the Armenian Genocide; and a festival for hungry ghosts in Malaysia and Singapore.

Issue One

CONTENTS

Sudan’s Meroe PyramidsThe Ancient and Rarely

Visited Ruins of Begrawiya

The Black Heart of DhakaRickshaw Riding with the

Beast: Bangladesh’s Extreme Metal Underbelly

The Bivouac of the DeadA Haunting Return to Vicksburg, Mississippi

Big Problem With Mr Moustache

Detained by the Police in Kyrgyzstan

Dead Monk WalkingRisen in Thailand

Ethiopia Photo GalleryGonder, Lalibella, Axum...

Redemption in CambodiaSoldiers and Saviors

Hungry Ghosts FestivalPraying to the Dead in

Malaysia and Singapore

System of a Down: Screamers

The American/Armenian Nu-Mettalers Film about the Armenian Genocide

WICKEDWORLD

Front Page: Tigrai, Ethiopia Above: Painting, Marrakesh


CONTRIBUTORSMARCO FERRARESE

Marco has travelled extensively and lived in Italy, the United States, China, Australia and Malaysia. He started

vagabonding as a punk rock guitarist in Europe and North America, hitting the most famous and infamous stages across the two continents. Since 2009 he’s been based in Southeast Asia as a writer, hardcore punk musician and researcher. He has a weekly column at Rolf Pott’s Vagabonding, has written about overland Asian travel and extreme music in Asia for a variety of international publications, and blogs at www.monkeyrockworld.com. Marco’s first pulp novel Nazi Goreng explores the underbelly of Malaysian international drug trade and displaced youth, and will be published later in 2013.

TOM VATER Tom Vater is a writer and publisher working predominantly in Asia. He is the co-owner of Crime Wave Press, a

Hong Kong based English language crime fiction imprint. He has published two novels, The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, currently available in English and Spanish, and The Cambodian Book of the Dead, released by Crime Wave Press in Asia and world wide in July 2013 by Exhibit A.

His third novel, The Man with the Golden Mind, will be out with Exhibit A in 2014. He has published several non-fiction books, including the highly acclaimed Sacred Skin (with his wife, photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat) and the more recent Burmese Light with photographer Hans Kemp. Tom is the co-author of several documentary screenplays, most notably The Most Secret Place on Earth, a feature on the CIA’s covert war in 1960s Laos. In his spare time, Tom travels and plays punk rock

JASON SMART Jason Smart is a teacher, traveller and writer based in the United Kingdom. So far, he’s visited over one hundred countries,

including many African and Asian nations, as well as every single republic of the former Soviet Union, which formed the basis of his book, The Red Quest. When he’s not travelling, Jason plays bass in The Puretones. Visit his website www.theredquest.com.

DAVID ENSMINGER David Ensminger is a writer, musician, editor, college instructor, and folklorist. He has published three books, including a co-

written bio of Lightnin’ Hopkins

called Mojo Hand, a study of the visual history and subcultures of punk rock, Visual Vitriol, and a collection of punk interviews titled Left of the Dial. He has also contributed to Popmatters, Houston Press, Trust (Germany), Artcore (Wales), Magyar Taraj (Hungary), and academic journals as well. In 2012, he edited an app offered by BibilioBoard, the Punk and Indie Rock Compendium, that contains music, photography, ephemera, and interviews, now available on iTunes.

JAMES MICHAEL DORSEY James Michael Dorsey is an explorer, author and photographer. He has travelled extensively and regularly

contributes articles to wildlife and travel magazines from all over the world. His first book Tears, Fear and Adventure is available both as a paperback and an eBook via his web site at www.jamesdorsey.com.

TOM COOTETom’s first book Tearing up the Silk Road was published worldwide by Garnet Publishing in August, 2012.

Since then, he has completed another full length travel book called Voodoo, Slave’s and White Man’s Graves: West Africa and the End of Days. He has travelled independently in well over a hundred countries and regularly updates his site at www.tomcoote.net.

submissions & enquiriesWe’re not looking for the kind of articles that you would normally find in mainstream travel mags or gener-

ic travel blogs. We’re particularly interested in underground internationally inspired culture - whether its the Black Metal Scene in Bangladesh, or oppositional art in Iran - and would also be interested in first person ac-

counts of travel to unusual destinations. If you would like to get involved in Wicked World, or would simply like to know more, send an email to

[email protected] or [email protected].



SUDANThe Meroé PyramidsWords & Photos Tom Coote



The Ancient & Rarely Visited Ruins of Begrawiya

The bus slowed to a halt and a long line of passengers gestured for me to leave. As

we had drawn closer, I had pushed apart the heavy, dusty curtains to glare out across the Nubian Desert towards a distant mound of sand dunes topped by triangular peaks. I squeezed down through the shaded seats, past the lines of men with tatty tweed jackets and the half-heartedly veiled women, and stepped out into the searing sun. As the bus pulled away, towards civilisation, I was left standing at the road side, on my own. There were no other cars and no other people. On the horizon, I could just make out the tops of what I assumed be the Meroe pyramids. After pausing for a moment, I pulled myself together and walked off into the desert.

Earlier in the day, I had set out on what I had thought would be an

easy day trip. The manager of the International YHA in Khartoum - at which I was the only guest - had been kind enough to write down the names of where I had to go, in Arabic, on a green post-it note. Having walked over to the first local bus to stop at the main road, I had held up my post-it note, only to be hurriedly ushered on board. This bus hadn’t actually gone to where I had wanted to go but another passenger had taken pity on me and led me slightly further on my way before passing me on to yet somebody else. Whenever I reached a crossroads, or was unsure of which way to go, I would present my green post-it note to someone I liked the look of, and, in turn, receive a new barrage of hand signals. Through this method of travel I eventually made my way to the bus station of Bahri, from where I caught a minibus to the larger bus station of Shendi.

From there, I bought a ticket for a full-sized bus whose shadowy interior resembled a mobile tart’s boudoir: every surface available was draped with heavy, dusty, tasselled curtains and not a single inch of the ceiling was left empty of embellishment; the ancient television at the front of the bus was encased in a unique and highly decorative surround, and a few feet in front of this lavish display, a large box of tissues was suspended by a large red ribbon. After a couple of hours of rhythmically rumbling on, my eventual expulsion from the womb like shelter of this elaborately decorated sanctuary, into the relentless glare of the desert sun and the wide open vastness of the world outside, had come as something of a shock.

I had only been shuffling through the sand for a few minutes when I noticed two warrior-like figures



thundering towards me astride galloping camels. From the backs of their beasts they towered far above, raising urgent young fists up towards the pounding desert sun as they descended upon my weary figure. They were Ali and Mohammad (aged around 14 and 11, respectively) and they wanted to know if I would like a camel ride. They seemed so keen on offering the services that I didn’t want to disappoint them. After a couple of minutes of bouncing up and down on top of the larger of the two camels, I was starting to wish that I hadn’t bothered - I couldn’t help feeling that it would have been faster, easier and more comfortable, simply to have walked.

As I slowly bumped ever on, the back of the Meroe pyramids came further into view along the top of the largest of the slowly approaching sand dunes. Meroe was the southern capital of the Napata/Meroetic kingdom (c. 800 BC - c. 350 AD). Meroe had grown rich and powerful through the smelting of iron and gold, and international trade that spread as far as India and China. About 400 years after the decline of the Egyptian Empire in the 12th century BC, and about 800 hundred years after the Egyptian’s built their last pyramid, they

decided to resurrect the Egyptian burial customs (the Meroetic era was roughly contemporary with the Ptolemies of Egypt - around the time of Antony and Cleopatra).

I tried to get out my camera and capture an image of the emerging monuments but the lumbering beast that I had mounted had other ideas - every time that I attempted to open my bag, it would lurch forward, forcing me to grab on to the front of the less than comfortable saddle, so that I wouldn’t be thrown head first into a mound of gravelly sand or a sparse sprouting of prickly bush. As

a barbed-wire fence, surrounding the dune, had now come into view, I decided to wait until my feet were back on solid ground. We would just have to keep following it around until we found the entrance gate. They were bound to let me down sooner or later.

Over 40 Nubian/Kush Kings and Queens were buried in the Begrawiya pyramids along with all that they would need in the afterlife: as well as weapons, treasure and kitchen utensils, the ruler’s comrades and servants would also get thrown in for good measure


(for this reason, conspiracies within the court were rare). It was the gold, silver and jewellery, however, which would really bring in the crowds, many centuries later. By the time that the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Ferlini (1800 - 1870) had dynamited of the tops of the biggest of the Meroe pyramids, most of the treasure had long been looted - for all the destruction that he wrought upon the then not so ruined ruins, he found very little remaining of any monetary value (a couple of the smaller pyramids have since been restored but they look a little too new and shiny in comparison to their more battered neighbours). As we circled around the sagging fence, the squat brick built ticket kiosk came into view. To the side of it was a small market of tourist tat sellers. It didn’t look like they’d had any visitors for a while but they’d been expecting me. I eventually got them to leave me alone by saying that I’d have a look on the way out

but warned them that I wasn’t likely to buy much. They must go through days on end without selling a single carved pyramid or pharaoh themed book end, just hoping that an overland truck will turn up to bless them with hordes of willing consumers.

Ali and Mohammad were very encouraging and rather overly impressed at the way in which I managed to get off the camel without falling flat on my face. I sensed that they would later be angling for a tip. For the moment I was just pleased to be able to get about on my own two feet. I rubbed my arse, in a vain attempt to bring it back to life, and hobbled over to buy a ticket. There were loads of them in there, all just sitting around with nothing better to do. Surely they only needed one of them to sell tickets - I had yet to see another tourist anywhere in Sudan and there appeared to be no towns or villages around for miles. Having

purchased my (surprisingly) modestly priced entrance ticket, I set off through the pristine waves of sand towards the first of the ancient pyramids. My bum was just moving on from numb when I heard my name echoing out from between the dunes. It was Ali and Mohammad. They had brought my camel around and were now insisting that I get back on it. I tried to tell them that I was fine with walking but they weren’t having any of it - I had agreed to pay for the camel ride so I was now going to ride the camel whether I wanted to or not. I trudged back down the dune and once again clambered over the camel’s hump before being lurched upwards. Luckily it wasn’t long before they deemed to let me down again, not much further around from where the dunes started to rise more steeply. They apologised and said that it would be better for me to carry on, on foot. I thought that camels were supposed to be good at that kind of thing but decided that


it would be wiser not to push the matter.

Away from the souvenir sellers and camelteers, the pyramids seemed strangely quiet and untainted. The only marks or footprints in the rippling dunes of soft, yellow sand were from my own, battered white trainers. Everything was still. Nobody could have entered the compound for days or even,

possibly, weeks. I wandered in through the archway of one crumbling monument but there was nothing inside to see - just more ancient stone, left standing in the sand. They were nothing but shells. Most of the carvings and illustrations had been removed (often by Europeans). Meroetic writing had been found scrawled throughout Begrawiya but nobody could read it - without an

inscription to act as a key, it could never be deciphered and would remain as mysterious scribbles.

While much remains unknown, we do know that the Royal Cemetery was transferred from Napata to Meroe, around the beginning of the 3rd century BC, and that this shift marked a dramatic move away from Egypt’s influence and a move towards a more Greek inspired

culture of independent thought. Up until this time, the high priests of Kush had been able to issue ‘divine orders’ to the Kings to bring an end to their reign through suicide. This tradition rather abruptly came to an end when King Ergamenes basically told the priests to sod off. He then had them all slaughtered. From then on it was never the same again, and the Kings just seemed to get away with doing whatever they wanted.

As Nubian culture moved further away from the Egyptian influence, they slowly began to embrace a more typically African identity: the jewellery and other artefacts left behind more closely resembled those found from further south; the Lion God, Apademek, was adopted as a regional deity; African tribal markings such as facial scarring were increasingly adopted; and the Nubians were known to take

a pride in their ebony skin. This new era lasted until the 1st or 2nd century AD, when Meroe started to go downhill, following wars with Roman Egypt, a decline in their traditional industries, and environmental deterioration caused through deforestation (possibly as a consequence of their previously well established smelting industry). By the time that King Ezana of Axum - in what is now Ethiopia -


had invaded in 350 AD, the Meroe Kingdom had largely disintegrated.

Having seen and photographed all that was left to see, I slid back down the dunes towards Mohammad and Ali. They wanted me to give them more money than I had already agreed. Ali hadn’t really done anything apart from get in the way but still seemed keen to negotiate what seemed like rather a high rate for just tagging along with his rather less impressive ship of the desert. ‘My camel is only small’ pleaded Ali ‘but he is very hungry’. There was also no way that I could make my way back out

through the entrance gate, without being trapped by the trinket traders. I braced myself for the assault and in the end managed to get away with the purchase of two (reasonably) cheap Ebony bracelets. I patiently explained to the other sellers that I really couldn’t - or, at least, really didn’t want to - buy something from everybody, and, rather surprisingly, they eventually seemed to come to terms with this unfortunate reality. Mohammad and Ali turned out to be rather more strong willed. Having lowered me down from the camel, back at the side of the road, they did their best to extract a higher fee. When I

eventually relented and produced a few extra small notes for Ali’s ‘help’, he snatched them out of my hand and swiftly clambered back on to his ‘small but hungry’ camel. As quickly as they had galloped towards me, with their hands outstretched towards the blinding desert sun, they now thundered off towards the opposite horizon, hands raised in farewell, against the rapidly darkening sky. I was one more abandoned at the side of the road, with my own hand raised, waiting for someone to stop and take me home. •


According to the introduction to Screamers given by the journalist and academic Samantha Powers, a 'Screamer' is an individual capable of

fully processing the reality of genocide, and therefore compelled to do whatever they can to prevent it). Interspersed with concert footage from around the world are interviews with human rights activists, band members, academics and a selection of naïve but enthusiastic fans. They all seem to agree that killing lots of people is bad.All of the members of System of a Down have Armenian roots, and all seem to have relatives who were in some way connected to the Ottoman Empires systematic extermination of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians during and after the First World War. The word genocide was coined to describe these events but even today the Turkish government denies that the word genocide is an accurate description of what really happened. They are not alone. So far - despite the overwhelming historical evidence - only 20 countries have officially recognised the Armenian Genocide. Much to the shame and embarrassment of many Jews, even the state of Israel refuses to officially acknowledge the twentieth century's first great genocide. It's not that these governments don't think it happened - it's just that they don't want to upset Turkey when they have proved to be such a convenient ally, both during the Cold War and, more recently, as a buffer zone between Europe and other less amenable parts of the Middle East. System of a Down seem intent on persuading all individuals and governments to acknowledge the full magnitude and systematic nature of such slaughter. Time and time again we are told that governments must acknowledge the Armenian genocide so that nothing like this can ever happen again. It is never really explained how this might work. As we are reminded at the beginning of the film, Hitler was well aware of the Armenian Genocide, as was Winston Churchill and, I would assume, all other world leaders of the time. This didn't stop millions of Jews from being killed in the Holocaust. Even if we accept that the Armenian Genocide is far less well known than the Nazi genocide of the Jews, none of the hundreds of books or film about the Holocaust helped to prevent subsequent genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.Despite having the courage and conviction to invest their money and reputation into such a well meaning documentary, System of a Down fail to take such anti-genocide rhetoric to its logical conclusion. Others involved in the film, such as Samantha Power - an influential academic and an advisor to Barack Obama - have been far more direct about what it really takes to prevent genocide: she is considered by many to have been the key figure within the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya (she is also known for advocating that America send armed military forces, 'a mammoth protection force'

Travel in SudanSudan is far from a mainstream tourist destination but it is possible to travel around independently relatively easily. Other than the visa costs, it is good value for money and can be visited overland, using only public transport, from either Egypt or Ethiopia. As well as being home to many sites of architectural and historical significance, it also has has a reputation for being one of the friendliest countries in the world.

Getting ThereMany visitors to Sudan arrive as part of a larger African overland expedition (there are few genuinely independent travellers but several overland trucks pass through Sudan, on the way from Egypt to Ethiopia, as part as part of a larger Cairo to Cape Town trip). I flew into Khartoum with Ethiopia Airlines, having realised that it wouldn’t cost me any more to fly there via Addis Ababa, than it would to just go straight to Ethiopia.

AccomodationI stayed at the International YHA in Khartoum as their only guest. The room was cheap and the staff were friendly and helpful but the facilities were basic (cold water showere would be fine for most of the year but they required some bracing during chilly early winter mornings).

VisasIt was fairly straight forward to get a visa from the Sudan Embassy in London - www.sudan-embassy.co.uk - for £55.00, but I did have to take a day off work and go there in person. After arriving in Sudan I also had to hire a driver to take me to the registration office in Khartoum and waste most of a morning and another £30.00 or so on being ‘officially’ registered. After that I then had to waste another couple of hours tracking down the official tourism office to apply for a (free) permit to take photographs (the lady there strongly recommended that I made a number of photocopies of this permit to hand out, when required, but nobody ever asked to see it).

“Tearing up the Silk Road is a book that deftly avoids romanticising the Silk Road and instead gives a realistic, sometimes harsh, appraisal of the countries passed through. Travellers too, will appreciate the intense focus on the nuts and bolts of travelling through the region ... It’s Coote’s account of the ideological battle between the East and the West in the region that adds depth to the book. He notes that the real clash is between the few who have much and the masses demanding more.”

Wanderlust Magazine

“ The author writes with a wonderful depth and precision so as to engross you in his journey, providing adventure with a unique and revealing perspective for life along the silk road.”

Bare Essentials Magazine

“If you’ve ever had the urge to chuck in your day job, step outside your comfort zone and strap yourself in for a rugged cul-tural journey, this is for you.”

Get Lost Magazine

“ An entertaining read that will inspire greater interest in the region.”Open Central Asia Magazine

www.tomcoote.net

Out now through Garnet Publishing

Dhaka’s CNGs have bars all around, exactly like small crackling prisons on three wheels. The reason is simple: these descendants of the Italian Ape Car can get stuck for hours on end in the fatal Bengali traffic. “With these bars, no one can come to rob you,” says Asif Adnan pushing against my left side, his words flooded by the exhaust fumes of two buses and three cars that are closing us in on each side. Dhaka is like that: an unnatural orgy of glass and steel, a maze of roads that could be orderly if we froze at least half of its chaotic humanity. To complicate matters, Bangladesh - along with India - is the only country in the world where you can still find pedal rickshaws: these bicycles-cum-metallic-carriage-for-two cram up the roads to the point that even cars struggle to juggle the incredible multitude of men on wheels. “Many of them have to rent the rickshaw, they could not afford to buy it ...

they are poor and ignorant people who spend their meager pay in booze as soon as they earn it,” continues Asif lighting a cigarette. Its smoke adds to the cloud of thick smog that is already at work to devour us. In the world, Bangladesh is not exactly

either one of the best known, nor one of the most highly regarded countries: it’s generally remembered for poverty, floods, a tiny popu-lation of tigers, and the invention of microcre-dit. Flat as a sole and split between the waters of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, its delta is the largest in the world and for thousands of years has continued to vomit Himalayan snows into the Bay of Bengal. The waters of these Asian giants have also regularly brought terror, earthquake and tragedy to Bangladesh’s plains: the last major flood cum devastating hurricane swept everything away in 2007. Nevertheless, Bangladesh remains an incred-ible human experiment: with a population equal to that of the United States squeezed

into an area that does not exceed that of Switzerland and Austria, it is difficult to find a space that is not occupied by legs, arms, eyes or wheels. To the detriment of negative stereo-types, we must note, however, that Bangladesh remains a crowded country, but also an in-

credibly civil and clean one, as only a Muslim nation can be. Its countryside is suspended in time: green, flat, crossed by rivers, streams, rice paddies and water, dotted with shacks made of wood and sheet metal. And if the development in the villages is certainly lesser, in the capital the destinies of 15 million souls in search of a better life powerfully intersect. It is consequential that the most educated and progressive had embraced the way of extreme metal. But how do people live heavy met-al in an Islamic nation like Bangladesh? To anyone who has followed the story of Iraqi band Acrassicauda and their “Heavy Metal in Baghdad” (directed by Suroosh Alvi in

2007), please forget war zones and rehearsal rooms hidden inside of bomb shelters. Islam is certainly Bangladesh’s dominant religion, but fortunately the country does not suffer from the aftermath of war. More simply, sprawling Dhaka is the country’s only stronghold of “cul-

Text by Marco Ferrarese | Travel photographs by Chan Kit Yeng

Dhaka’s CNGs have bars all around, exactly like small crackling prisons

on three wheels. The reason is simple: these descendants of the Italian Ape Car can get stuck for hours on end in the fatal Bengali traffic. “With these bars, no one can come to rob you,” says Asif Adnan pushing against my left side, his words flooded by the exhaust fumes of two buses and three cars that are closing us in on each side. Dhaka is like that: an unnatural orgy of glass and steel, a maze of roads that could be orderly if we froze at least half of its chaotic humanity. To complicate matters,

Bangladesh - along with India - is the only country in the world where you can still find pedal rickshaws: these bicycles-cum-metallic-carriage-for-two cram up the roads

to the point that even cars struggle to juggle the incredible multitude of men on wheels. “Many of them have to rent the rickshaw, they could not afford to buy it ... they are poor and ignorant people who spend their meager pay in booze as soon as they earn it,” continues Asif lighting a cigarette. Its smoke adds to the cloud of thick smog that is already at work to devour us.In the world, Bangladesh is not exactly either one of the best

known, nor one of the most highly regarded countries: it’s generally remembered for poverty, floods, a tiny population of tigers, and the invention of microcredit. Flat

as a sole and split between the waters of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, its delta is the largest in the world and for thousands of years has continued to vomit Himalayan snows into the Bay of Bengal. The waters of these Asian giants have also regularly brought terror, earthquake and tragedy to Bangladesh’s plains: the last major flood cum devastating hurricane swept everything away in 2007. Nevertheless, Bangladesh remains

an incredible human experiment: with a population equal to that of the United States squeezed into an area that does not exceed that of Switzerland and Austria,

The Black Heart of Dhaka •Rickshaw riding with the Beast•

It is said that Dhaka is the ugliest capital in the world - maybe. It is also said that, secretly from the religious fundamentalists,

within the city thrives the most extreme and dark metal - true.

tural liberation”: it is only here that it’s possible to cultivate Western ideas and create a small but fierce underground revolution. In contrast, in those rural areas where women are destined to live confined to their homes as soon as they marry still adolescent, and men lazily take care of the crops in the fields, rock music has no chance to exist. Especially considering that according to some hadith (the sayings of the Prophet), in Islam music itself is haram - for-bidden. Imagine what could be of metal. The CNG leaves us at our destination: the faculty of Arts at ULAB (University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh). It is here that many of the dark souls of Bengali metal spend their days painting tempera on canvas, capturing models’ poses and smoking cigarettes. “On the contrary, I’m a fucking semi-lawyer,” points out Asif adjusting glasses on his little nose. A lawyer who calls himself Loki Nihilluminatus – literally “Norwegian God of death illumi-nated by destruction” - and tortures eardrums with the cacophonous, deranged beast called Jahiliyyah - translated as “the state of religious ignorance before the Qur’anic revelation in the Arab world” -: a black metal attack with sharp Islamic edges and an absolutely and solely South Asian taste.“I started the project by myself in 2010, and only now we are a real band,” he continues. “We’ve just been on tour in Khulna: the people there literally worshipped us, but you have no idea of the heat we had to endure on stage. I took a bit of acid before the show, and trust me: it’s been tough to keep my legs straight until the end of the show. “Knowing that Asif is involved in music, and especially the Devil’s one, brought me to the inevitable question. It was impossible not to ask.“Of course, I am a Muslim and I follow the rules of my religion. But that does not stop me from living with a passion for metal, and keep an open mind. Don’t you think that our music is universal by now? “According to Asif ’s words, Bengali black metallers do not reject the Koran. They rather use it as a basis upon which to develop their passion for extreme metal, giving it a unique dimension of sound and lyrics powerfully rooted in Islam. “The fact that I am a Muslim does not affect the quality of my music. Think of the Indians, for example: do you believe that their metal is less interesting because they are Hindus? And what about you Euro-peans: Christianity does not make your music better or worse. Metal is a global language, and we Bengalis are proud to add our style to the genre’s staple. “They try to reach a global musical context using their Muslim identity to bring metal to new contextual horizons: one example is Severe Dementia and their concept album “Epitaph of Plassey”, a curious concept album that retraces the historic battle of liber-ation fought between the East India Company and Bengal in 1757.

Text by Marco Ferrarese | Travel photographs by Chan Kit Yeng

it is difficult to find a space that is not occupied by legs, arms, eyes or wheels. To the detriment of negative stereotypes, we must note, however, that Bangladesh remains a crowded country, but also an incredibly civil and clean one, as only a Muslim nation can be. Its countryside is suspended in time: green, flat, crossed by rivers, streams, rice paddies and water, dotted with shacks made of wood and sheet metal. And if the development in the villages is certainly lesser, in the capital the destinies of 15 million souls in search of a better life powerfully intersect. It is consequential that the most educated and progressive had embraced the way of extreme metal.

But how do people live heavy metal in an Islamic nation like Bangladesh? To anyone

who has followed the story of Iraqi band Acrassicauda and their “Heavy Metal in Baghdad” (directed by Suroosh Alvi in 2007), please forget war zones and rehearsal rooms hidden inside of bomb shelters. Islam is certainly Bangladesh’s dominant religion, but fortunately the country does not suffer from the aftermath of war. More simply, sprawling Dhaka is the country’s only stronghold of “cultural liberation”: it is only here that it’s possible to cultivate Western ideas and create a small but fierce underground revolution. In contrast, in those rural areas where women are destined to live confined to their homes as soon as they marry still adolescent, and men lazily take care of the crops in the fields, rock music has no chance to exist. Especially considering that according to some hadith (the sayings of the Prophet), in Islam music itself is haram - forbidden. Imagine what could be of metal.

The CNG leaves us at our destination: the faculty of Arts at ULAB (University

of Liberal Arts Bangladesh). It is here that many of the dark souls of

Bengali metal spend their days painting tempera on canvas, capturing models’ poses and smoking cigarettes. “On the contrary, I’m a fucking semi-lawyer,” points out Asif adjusting glasses on his little nose. A lawyer who calls himself Loki Nihilluminatus – literally “Norwegian God of death illuminated by destruction” - and tortures eardrums with the cacophonous, deranged beast called Jahiliyyah - translated as “the state of religious ignorance before the Qur’anic revelation in the Arab world” -: a black metal attack with sharp Islamic edges and an absolutely and solely South Asian taste.“I started the project by myself in 2010, and only now we are a real band,” he continues. “We’ve just been on tour in Khulna: the people there literally worshipped us, but you have no idea of the heat we had to endure on stage. Trust me: it’s been tough to keep my legs straight until the end of the show. “

Knowing that Asif is involved in music, and especially the Devil’s one, brought me to the inevitable question. It was impossible not to ask.

“Of course, I am a Muslim and I follow the rules of my religion. But that does not stop me from living with a

passion for metal, and keep an open mind. Don’t you think that our music is universal by now? “According to Asif’s words, Bengali black metallers do not reject the Koran. They rather use it as a basis upon which to develop their passion for extreme metal, giving it a unique dimension of sound and

Severe Dementia

Jahiliyyah

attitudes towards Islam. “I grew up listening to my brother’s records, and my mother pushed me even further by buying me a guitar. She asked me to commit, and to do well in what I believe in, according to the will of Allah - “inshallah” -. I was lucky to receive this support from my family. It is not so easy for everyone in Bangladesh. “

This small but fierce group of extreme musicians record and produce their own records

independently, playing sporadically out of the Dhaka Division, and dreaming of connecting even more with the rest of the world. The concerts are rare opportunities to play together in a context of global metal. It seems that in Bangladesh there are some spaces where metal bands can freely perform: in Dhaka, music is foreign culture, and as such is suitable for university circuits. Not surprisingly, metal bands play at the Russian Culture Center in Dhanmondi, close to ULAB, or at the Auditorium of the National Library. Bands themselves need to invest to rent the show rooms (about 350 U.S. dollars per gig), the backline and the lighting system: quite an amount of money

for all those metalheads- excluding the average urban bourgeoisie- who struggle to pay the two dollars entrance tickets. Otherwise, there’s neighboring Indian West Bengal

with Kolkata - about eight hours away by car - and Darjeeling, where the metal scene has some better opportunities. Perhaps because of rampant overpopulation, concerts in Bangladesh are always full of kids possessed by heavy metal demons. “The real problem is that it’s difficult to get out of the country’s borders,” says Emran Shifa Ul of Sent Men Revolt, a more orthodox band inspired by the sounds of Pantera and Sepultura. “You have no idea how little our passport is worth. Of course, we can always go and play India, but their scene is much more established, with so many good bands and great competition... it is not so easy to get to play out of Darjeeling and West Bengal. ““It’s also too expensive,” insists Asif. The same applies to foreign bands, which generally only make rare appearances in New Delhi or Bangalore in India, thousands of miles away from Dhaka. “In India, metalheads are more fortunate: they saw Metallica, Lamb of God, Incantation ... nobody comes up here. Even in Nepal the scene is better than ours: Napalm Death played recently in Kathmandu.

Here in Bangladesh we lack the means to bring the foreign bands in... We are decentralized; we have to buy expensive plane tickets to attend festivals in other parts of

lyrics powerfully rooted in Islam. “The fact that I am a Muslim does not affect the quality of my music. Think of the Indians, for example: do you believe that their metal is less interesting because they are Hindus? And what about you Europeans: Christianity does not

make your music better or worse. Metal is a global language, and we Bengalis are proud to add our style to the genre’s staple. “They try to reach a global musical context using their Muslim identity to bring metal to new contextual horizons: one example is Severe Dementia and their concept album “Epitaph of Plassey”, a curious concept album that retraces the historic battle of

liberation fought between the East India Company and Bengal in 1757.Hasan Shahriar of Abominable Carnivore, another death/black metal band, confirms the positive

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the Subcontinent, “says Asif with a sour, resentful voice.

As it is customary in most of South and Southeast Asia, rock bands have to

cope with great expenses to be able to support their musical habits, without ever being repaid. For example, Jahiliyyah have produced an excellent debut album, “Aiyyame Jahiliyyah”, which has also been released in the more alternately organized Malaysia. The band is trying to negotiate a visa and fly to Kuala Lumpur to promote the release with a series of dates. Asif is frustrated: “If we had a better passport, we would have already gone. It almost seems like being Bengali was a sin. “

A band’s nationality is often the main problem opposing the expansion

of a pan-Asian music scene that could compete or be an alternative to the Western, without staying necessarily dominated by the more technologically advanced Japanese

ensembles. Also, things have become more difficult for those who want to travel to Bangladesh: visas have tripled their costs. For citizens of the United States, Australia and England, a single entry visa to the country will cost $ 150 for a scarce couple of weeks. “We’re cut off from the metal world map ... the government thinks perhaps is protecting the integrity of the country, but instead is sheltering it. There is no chance left to emerge in any field, both cultural and economic, “said Khan Farabi Baezid of Chromatic Massacre, an

ensemble that follows the path of Brutal Tech- Death metal.

In order to keep this dark heart beating,

Dhaka’s metalheads took refuge at ULAB’s faculty of arts or in some practice studios where paying customers can cage themselves into tiny air-conditioned rooms equipped with backline, and release their frustration against the system in a cathartic, guttural Bengali metal way. After an intense

rehearsal session, Trainwreck, who is still at the initial stage of covering Lamb Of God, descends one floor to relax drinking a cup of chai in a small, anonymous bar. They lurk at the margins of one of the many shopping malls, the real theaters of contemporary Asian contradictions between the authenticity of borderline underground rock and the new, dominant consumerist identity that seems to headbang powerfully towards the West.“We are working hard on a few songs, but we do not feel confident enough to do a lot without a foreign record label,” they conclude. I wonder if in a not so distant future the decadent musical reality of the much idealized West will open its ears. I wonder if it will ever realize that in Bangladesh the flame of unadulterated metal is burning high. •

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Chromatic Massacre


Never mind the tourist brochures with slanted language. Never mind the

dusty opulence of mansions next to shotgun shacks with faded flags on desiccated tree limbs, flapping with the imprecision of wounded butterflies.We rounded the last green hill, pointing the car towards the cemetery nudging the Mississippi.

It was broad-shouldered, fattened, and fast, making barges look out of control. In the summer steam, the river offered murky miles of destruction.Blemished white grave markers invoked terraced fields of teeth in the amber sun. Hemmed in by kudzu –the bitter visitor from China devouring nearby trees -- the land exuded a poetry that only the dead, including bivouacked boys from flat-

pressed Illinois prairies and fecund Wisconsin farms, could offer.A half-eaten, formerly mud-caked Navy gunship sat across the road, held hostage by gawking children and dads unwilling to ungrip cell phones.My great-great-grand uncle, shopkeeper Corwin, rose in the ranks of the Ohio 72nd Infantry here. Smelling his ghost, my wife and I fled mosquitoes aiming straight for our hands and faces. His enemies were buried deep in the heights of nearby Natchez, next to immigrants from Syria and Ireland.

They occupy a landscape dotted with delicate iron fences paid for by steamship captains and

cotton field magnates, the capitalism that cocooned millionaires in the once unbridled South.People still grieve there in graveyards covered in thick wiry Spanish moss. Hidden from the lone sun-baked office, ladies in minivans offer broken shells, Mardis Gras beads,

“The Bivouac of the Dead”: Vicksburg, Mississippi

Words and Pictures byDavid Ensminger


Note: Bivouac of the Dead is a poem written by Theodore O’Hara about soldiers in the Mexican American War, appropriated for this piece.

Trace Theater, Port Gibson, small town near Vicksburg

small Matchbox cars and fire trucks placed on baby graves. The nearby miniature oil derrick never stops undulating, never stops rusting.I snap photos of chicory flavored coffee factories and Mark Twain’s waterside haunt, where ferns grow out of dank walls. Hail knocks out the electrical grid in 103-degree heat. Lightning bursts in purple zigzags across the lip of nearby Louisiana.Satellite radio, affixed to nostalgia for the days of Casio keyboards and parachute pants, emits a barrage of new wave songs.

Dinner? For those who refuse boiling crawdaddy pots, clumpy cheese-drenched pasta awaits.

Never mind the Indian mound nestled away in the itchy grass and back road bumps where tattooed teenage parents mend a broken tire; never mind the empty military school where men cheered dead British soldiers in New Orleans; never mind 10,100 Union men hacked to pieces by cannons while rebels hid in caves eating their own shoes; never mind the freed blacks driven to river camps, free to die from racist raids and dysentery; never mind the disappeared records stores on the blues highway; never mind the food pantries with homemade signs exclaiming “God Said, ‘Though Shalt Not Steal,’”; never mind the unfinished Civil Rights mural next to the stoic Southern soldier on a monolith.

Never mind the feral strands of cotton poking up from quiet

Natchez Trace outside Port Gibson, with its neon cinema remnants, burger stand-cum-car wash, and collapsed buildings coughing on the edge of town.Never mind my family swallowed by this place -- the bivouac, the dead. •


Big Problemwith

Mr MoustacheWords & Photos Jason Smart

D E T A I N E D B Y T H E P O L I C E I N K Y R G Y Z S T A N

“The taste hit me immediately, a horrible vomit flavour mixed with curdled cheese.”

Osh Bazaar was a hive of activity. Endless arrays of fruit and vegetables, clothes and mops, electrical components and everything else the

people of Bishkek could possibly want were on offer. It also had a contingent of policemen, two of whom were watching me, though I didn’t know it at the time. Suddenly I spotted what I was looking for - a stand peddling kumis, fermented mare’s milk. Even though I’d tried the hideous stuff in Almaty, I was eager to give it a second chance. Perhaps the Kazakh kumis I’d drank had been from a bad batch. Peering into the large urn, I mimed to the lady in charge that I’d like a cup of Kyrgyzstan’s national drink. After the usual confusion, she produced a bowl and ladled the white liquid in for me. I handed over thirty som (40p) and took my brew to the side where I could sample it unhindered.After swirling it around for a few seconds, I deemed it lump free and raised the bowl to my lips. And then I took a sip.. Kazakh and Kyrgyz kumis was one and the same. In the resulting convulsions, I spilt some down my shirt, and so put the bowl down and fled, searching out a stall that sold water so I could rid myself of the vile taste. And then they pounced.

Two blue-uniformed policemen with massive black and red caps blocked my path. One looked to be about thirty, the other was younger, barely

out of his teens. Both were unsmiling and looked like they meant business.

“Passport,” the older of the two stated bluntly. He had a wispy black moustache which I reckoned he could quiver at will for sinister effect. This was just my luck. The only day I’d left my passport at the hotel was the day someone actually wanted to see it. I told them this and they conferred for a moment. Mr Moustache shook his head. “We need to see. Otherwise big problem.” He’d emphasised the word big, stretching the vowel out.Fortunately, I had a photocopy of it in my wallet and so fished it out while a group of young boys hovered nearby. They were watching me suffer with barely disguised glee. I handed the piece of paper over, hoping it would suffice. “Eeengliz?” said Moustache Man after staring at the photocopy. I nodded and smiled. I didn’t want to piss them off in away way. Both men studied it further and then conferred again. The patrons of Osh Bazaar were all giving us a wide berth, except for the boys who still lurked nearby. “Visa?” Mr Moustache said eventually. I had expected this request but without my passport, there was no way I could show them it. But I reasoned they already knew this. “Without visa, big problem.” said Mr Moustache, faintly quivering his facial hair. Both men stared at me for a long while, and I began to feel a little unnerved. Finally Mr Moustache spoke. “Come,” he stated bluntly. He pointed through the market, obviously towards the place they wanted me


kyrgyzstan

to go. I pretended I didn’t understand and pointed in the opposite direction and grinned an inane grin hoping the men would think I was a simpleton and let me go. They didn’t. Mr Moustache touched my shoulder in an attempt to get me moving but I stood my ground.“No,” I said, still grinning. “I’m going that way. Bye.”Both men blocked my path. The older man shook his head and tutted. “No. You come so we deal with things.”What choice did I have? I could hardly flee though the market with some rancid mare’s milk sloshing about in my innards. And anyway, where would I run? They would capture me in seconds, possibly frothing at the mouth. Besides, they were the police! People like me didn’t run away from the law. Finally, I acquiesced and allowed the officers

to lead me away. Some people stopped to watch me leave, but most averted their eyes and carried on with their business. The only people enjoying my torment seemed to be the group of boys.

As we made our way through the market, we passed the stall where I’d bought the mare’s milk. My bowl had

gone, I noticed, and Mr Moustache stopped to mime someone drinking and then grimacing. Then he pointed at me and laughed. I wondered where they had been watching me from. The boys were shouting and laughing, causing some people to stare. Mr Moustache turned around and yelled. They swiftly scarpered. Policeman number two, the youngster,

began speaking to me in broken English. “Kyrgyzstan good? Yah?” I nodded enthusiastically and the man smiled for the first time. He seemed the friendlier of the two. He also decided to mime me drinking the kumis and laughed uproariously at his own impersonation. I laughed too. This was followed by a chillingly accurate impression of a horse neighing. He then mimed someone milking it, presumably educating me about where the kumis had come from. We continued our walk through Osh Bazaar and Mr Friendly asked me something but I couldn’t understand him. He resorted to mime once more and swung his arms about in a swimming-like motion. I nodded earnestly and smiled. Yes I like swimming! I like it very much, especially in a vat of mare’s milk. Now please let me go!We rounded a bend and came to a dark little part of Osh Bazaar. Fewer people were here

and it crossed my mind that I might be about to receive a beating. I considered making a dash for it, but for all I knew, there could be security cameras everywhere making escape impossible. Shaking my head resignedly, I followed the policemen into a cramped and stuffy windowless room filled with three desks. A few other policemen doing nothing in particular were inside and all looked up when I entered. I quickly became the centre of attention. A quick conversation erupted but I didn’t understand any of it. A fly buzzed by the low ceiling and Mr Moustache directed me to a chair on one side of a spare desk. I sat down, awaiting my fate in my first Kyrgyz police station.


Mr Moustache sat opposite me while Mr Friendly stood by his side. Bad cop, good cop. They spoke to me in thick Russian and

I shrugged. I can’t understand you. They spoke some more in Russian but I stopped them by saying. “Nyet Russki!”Suddenly one of the policemen sat a table behind me piped up. “They want to know why you in Kyrgyzstan?” Do they indeed. I turned to the new man and said, “Please tell them I’m a tourist from England.” The policeman gave this information causing Mr Moustache to waggle his whiskers at me. “Where hotel?” he asked, reverting back to English.I pulled out a card the hotel had given me when I’d checked in. It clearly stated I was a guest there. I handed it over. Both men studied it and then put it on the table between us. Mr Moustache gestured to my bag and decided to do some mime again. He acted out a scenario in which he looked as if he was injecting himself with something. His sidekick nodded like a galoot. I quickly worked out they wanted to know whether I had any drugs.“No,” I stated. They got me to empty my bag and remove everything from my pockets. Mr Moustache immediately picked up my wallet and began leafing through the Kyrgyz som and US dollars I had, but Mr Friendly was more interested in my camera. He picked it up and tried to

turn it on. After failing to do so, he handed it to me to do the job. I powered it up and he started flicking through all the photos and videos I’d taken that day: the man carrying a horse, the Mig fighter Jet and me drinking the kumis. He seemed particularly interested in the latter and asked me to play the video. Within seconds he was laughing furiously, pointing at the camera and then at me. He showed it to Mr Moustache who smiled but continued to poke about inside my wallet. After watching the clip a third time, the policeman did his horse neighing impression again, closely followed by the swimming arm motions. Mr Moustache finally placed the wallet with the rest of my stuff on the table and gestured that I could pack it all away. I did this while his pal still fiddled with my camera. He asked me to pose for a photograph with my own camera. I did so, and he handed the camera back. “Finish,” Mr Moustache said. “You leave.” He stood up and offered his hand, which I shook involuntarily. The other man did the same and I left the room, sweating and wondering what the hell had just happened. Outside, I counted my money but it was all there. Then I looked at the photo the young policeman had taken. It was rather good. If it hadn’t been for the photo, I might have thought I’d dreamed the whole episode. •

The Red Quest is the true story of one man’s insane mission to visit every country of the former Soviet Union.

Along the way, the author samples fermented mare’s milk in Kazakhstan, gets chased by hounds in Kiev, is detained by the police in Kyrgyzstan, travels through a snow blizzard between Armenia and Georgia, and gets mugged by a pensioner

in Tajikistan.

www.theredquest.com

Dead Monk WalkingText by Tom Vater

Photographs by Aroon Thaewchatturat

The prayer hall is hot and sticky. Thousands of mosquitoes swirl around in the dim

afternoon light. A small crowd of old ladies and children sit on the rough carpet in the temple hall, whispering, full of expectation. They are waiting for the monastery’s former abbot, Luang Phoo, to make his annual appearance. Luang Phoo is an affectionate term, meaning grandfather. But Luang Phoo is no ordinary monk and this is no ordinary day.

Phra Somchai is in charge of the ceremony. He directs his fellow monks to gently lift Monk Luang Phoo Budda Thawaro up. The monks pull and heave; the wooden chairs they stand on wobble and shake precariously. Suddenly, in perfect coordination, they step off their pedestals, each clasping a fragile limb or shoulder of the revered monk. The children are hushed by their parents. The crowd put their hands together in a respectful wai, the traditional Thai greeting. An old man, dressed in simple farmer’s cottons stands

to the side, his eyes shining with tears. For the locals, this may not be quite a miracle, but it is the most extraordinary day of the year for everyone gathered.Supported by his fellow monks, Monk Luang Phoo Budda Thawaro, hundred and one years old, stands before his congregation.What’s more, Luang Phoo has been dead for thirteen years.

Wat Krang Chu Si Charoensuk is located near Singburi, a provincial town in central Thailand, a couple of hours north of Bangkok. The sprawling and dilapidated temple complex lies along a quiet and picturesque canal, fringed by bamboo brush. Green paddy fields adjoin the temple grounds. The main road leading past the temple sees little traffic. Despite the proximity to the capital, the villages and temples of central Thailand have hardly changed in hundreds of years. Faith and superstition run strong in the countryside. No surprise then, that one of Thailand’s strangest Buddhist

ceremonies takes place in the temple grounds every year, as the local community celebrates the birthday of the former abbot of Wat Krang Chu Si Charoensuk, Luang Phoo.

Phra Somchai has traveled all the way from his monastery in Ko Phangan in southern Thailand for the event, “We believe Monk Budda Thawaro was an enlightened being. In his life time more than 50.000 people used to turn up to celebrate Luang Phoo. They came from all walks of life, thousands a day.”

Phra Somchai was a practicing monk at Wat Krang Chu Si Charoensuk for six years and feels deeply indebted to Luang Phoo, “In the 1980s, when Luang Phoo was very well known, the temple was rich. More than a hundred monks lived and meditated here. In 1994, the abbot passed away. Since then the temple has fallen on hard times. People have stopped visiting.”

It is hard to imagine huge crowds at Wat Krang Chu Si Charoensuk. The temple grounds are barely

kept. The small wooden houses that accommodate the monks are sinking into the dusty hard soil. An eerie silence hangs over the area. No novices lighten the atmosphere, the remaining ten monks are all middle-aged or old. Old and severe-looking women from the surrounding villages form the last guard for Luang Phoo. The younger generation takes little interest in temple life.

That’s because Buddhism is in dire straights in Thailand. The young pour into the cities,

in pursuit of the dollar and little else. American style ‘mall culture’ has gripped the kingdom; politics are dirty; morality is illusive. Nepotism, cronyism and graft have seeped into every transaction, every political decision. No wonder the intense, free-wheeling capitalism the country has experienced in the last ten years has influenced Buddhism and the values of its adherents profoundly. Many wats are often no longer community centers but businesses, selling expensive amulets and other religious merchandise by the truck load. Some wats cater exclusively to the super-rich, others suggest lottery numbers to the gullible poor

on a weekly basis. Several temples even offer magical tattoos to their congregations that are supposed to stop bullets and ward off evil.Meanwhile, the monks are out in the streets, taking part in daily life as never before. They populate Internet cafés and the huts of young monks are adorned with Metallica posters. That doesn’t sound like Nirvana. Bad pun, I know. Monks can be seen pouring over mobile phones in shopping centers or picking through gold bracelets at

Chinese jewelers. The Thai tabloids regularly report on monks conning women into sex, visiting Karaoke Bars or engaging in a whole palette of crimes. Does Richard Gere know? Has Steven Seagal been informed?

The ceremony at Wat Krang Chu Si Charoensuk is a throw-back to better times. By all accounts, Luang Phoo attracted his congregation without vulgar fire works. Born in 1894 in Lopburi and ordinated in 1922, the revered monk acted as abbot

for several monasteries, surviving wars, civil conflict, dictatorships and military coups. His charisma brought people to the temple. Under the guidance of Luang Phoo, life at Wat Krang Chu Si Charoensuk bloomed.Phra Somchai fondly remembers the past. “The yard used to be brushed clean. All the buildings were well maintained.”

On the edge of a paddy field near-by, an old hut was once used as a meditation retreat. The walls are lined with faded but very bloody and explicit photographs of surgical procedures and autopsies. Guts spill out of moldy frames in order for the monks to realize the physical aspect of human beings. The images are meant to teach the monks that everyone is the same on the inside. But no one has been inside the hut for years.

Nowadays, Luang Phoo rests in a glass coffin within the

wat’s prayer hall. On his birthday, he is lifted from his slumber, cleaned and paraded in front of the ever shrinking congregation. Incredibly, the abbot does not decompose. His body has mummified, allegedly because Luang Phoo dehydrated himself on his deathbed. It is believed that a monk who does not decompose following his days, should be preserved and worshipped. Often local authorities disagree and there have been conflicts over whether to burn some monks’ remains or keep them in a glass coffin, as at Krang Chu Si Charoensuk.Once extracted from the glass coffin, Phra Somchai and his fellow monks gently guide the corpse in front of the crowd. Everyone pushes to the front to pay their respects. Camera flashes illuminate the scene while the monks undress the dead abbot and put a new orange robe on him. A woolly hat

is pulled over Luang Phoo’s bald skull. A second hat is pushed on top. Even his socks are changed. Finally,

the crowd pushes in, tiny flakes of gold in their hands. The prayer hall is ringing with excitement and laughter. Children run around and families have their picture takes with the corpse. The gold is stuck on Luang Phoo’s face, already covered in last year’s layer.

Finally, Phra Somchai and the other monks pick up Luang Phoo as gingerly as possible and maneuver him back towards his glass coffin. This year the socks aren’t matching, but eventually the monks manage to return the corpse to its repository with sufficient dignity.The temple’s new abbot instructs the remaining monks and they begin to pray for their former abbot. Microphones crackle and the abbot collects money with a wide smile. Slowly the crowd disburses into the night.

Phra Somchai is pleased to have traveled all the way from the south to come and see his former teacher. ‘It is good to honor the past like this. Who knows how many people will honor Luang Phoo next year? The memory is so short.” •

Visit the author’s website:www.tomvater.com

EthiopiaPhotography Gallery

Photos Tom Coote

Ethiopia photography gallery

Clockwise from top left: Simien Mountains; Village Huts around Godar; Fasilidas’s Pool, Gondar; Monastry Ruins,

Gondar; Fasilidas’s Pool, Gondar; Priest and Friend outside Underground Church in Lalibela; Church Painting around

Islands on Lake Tana; St Georges’s Church in Lalibela.

Previous Pages: Lake Tana.

Next Pages: Priest at Rock Church in Tigrai; Call to Prayer from hills over Lalibela.

Ethiopia photography gallery

Clockwise from top left: Simien Mountains; Village Huts around Godar; Fasilidas’s Pool, Gondar; Monastry Ruins,

Gondar; Fasilidas’s Pool, Gondar; Priest and Friend outside Underground Church in Lalibela; Church Painting around

Islands on Lake Tana; St Georges’s Church in Lalibela.

Previous Pages: Lake Tana.

Next Pages: Priest at Rock Church in Tigrai; Call to Prayer from hills over Lalibela.


Redemption

in Cambodia

Text and Pictures by

James Michael Dorsey

Stepping into a mine field gives one a whole new appreciation for the term, concentration.Akira tells me to

follow him closely and I am practically in his back pocket.

The sun is a swirling ball that would be at home in a Van Gogh painting, frying my brains under my helmet and visor that is so close to my nose I feel I am suffocating. I stop every few feet to raise it for a quick breath and quickly lower it to escape Akira’s wrath for disobeying an order. Under my frontal body armor sweat pours as if I were a saturated sponge. The post monsoon humidity in the Cambodian jungle is bad enough without 30 pounds of body armor and three cameras. Having to wear all of this is ironic because if I were to step on a mine it would be useless.

Fighting our way along the jungle track that enters this primeval world we pass a large

H made from cut fabric and spread over a bush, an improvised landing area should a helicopter evacuation be necessary. A litter stands against a pile of body armor, a mocking symbol as the nearest medical help is an hour away by air.Much of the field has been burned away, cleared of brush, while the square areas yet to be checked are outlined with red twine anchored


at each corner with a bright red deaths head that screams, “mines” That eyeless skull is everywhere, a constant reminder that this country has known war for most of its existence. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot called land mines, “The perfect soldier” as they were designed to maim rather than kill. We pass one de-miner after another,

moving forward at glacial speed, sweeping the ground inch by inch. Akira, normally smiling and nonchalant, barks orders like a drill sergeant, watching everyone at once, looking for the slightest technique infractions and in constant communication with everyone through his ear piece. In this dance where the slightest misstep means death or disfigurement he is the master choreographer watching his pupils.

Being chosen as a CNN HERO in 2010 brought Akira international fame and in 2012

he won the Manhae Peace Prize awarded by South Korea, but that changes nothing for him. This man who now meets with prime ministers and billionaires is humble and self-effacing, the kind of guy who gets lost in a crowd were it not for the fact that he is a living national treasure. For him there is only the work. He is only truly happy in the

jungle, working, sleeping in a hammock, trapping snakes and birds for food, and sharing his teams’ danger. Orphaned by age 8, an approximation since there are no written records; Akira was taken in by the Khmer Rouge and made a child soldier, trained as an explosives expert, and made to plant land mines; a job he admits to

becoming quickly adept at. At 13 he was captured and forced to join the invading Vietnamese army, fighting against his former friends, while still planting mines. According to him, he could easily lay 100 in a single day. At 14, when the Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia, he was drafted into the Cambodian army and made an officer, one of the most skilled demolition experts in Cambodia while still a child and a combat veteran of three separate armies. At 19 he was recruited by the United Nations but his growing awareness of what he had done as a child brought him an epiphany. He would not work for anyone else again. Instead, he would devote the rest of his life to removing the deadly objects he himself installed.All these years later he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and removes himself to the jungle when he feels rage taking over. He says he still gets the urge to kill, an

understandable trait in a country that produced soldiers as young as six years old. When you are brought up in that mindset, it is difficult to break away. On top of everything else, the death of his wife Hourt, two years ago left him a shattered man. He freely admits that the only thing that makes him happy is personally disarming a land mine. He would

like to remove each one himself, taking out the detonator with his fingers, but bows to political pressure to follow accepted procedures in order to keep his license.When a mine is located a small square of reclaimed TNT with a radio controlled detonator is laid next to it, and everyone backs off a paced 75 yards to kneel down for the explosion. Even from that distance, the detonation of a small antipersonnel mine is like a whack in the chest from a hammer. There is a physical shock wave that invades your body. I watch a mushroom cloud of dirt rise 40 feet in the air as one more mine is eliminated.

Kneeling behind one of the de-miners, a young girl of 20, I synch my breathing to hers,

moving as she moves, sliding my knees ever so gently, watching for any tell-tale sign or a depression in the dirt. She uses gardening


shears to clear overhanging brush and runs a knife around the edges of her detector to make sure it is functioning properly before passing it almost unperceptively over the ground from left to right then back again several times. It is like watching paint dry and yet the only sound is the beating of my own heart. It is the most intense feeling, senses heightened, sound magnified, ears scanning for the slightest nuance, eyes probing through the dirt itself. When that six inch swath gives no warning she moves the red painted board forward to the limit of her scan, another few inches made safe. In an hour we move ten feet when a screech comes over the headphones and she kneels, slowly begins to clear dirt, inserting her trowel at an angle so as not to apply any pressure on the mine should that prove to be the culprit. A mere 10 pounds of pressure is all it takes to enter the hereafter. With infinite patience she scoops dirt away revealing the green curved rim of a Russian made anti-personnel mine. It is only six inches around and four inches high but packed with ball bearings that when ignited will send dozens of metal balls screaming at 300 miles per hour to rip a human body to pieces. Word goes out over the radio and Akira comes running. In a few

minutes he has lived up to his slogan, “One mine at a time.”All of the team is young; at about 40 Akira is the eldest by far. They are all dedicated professionals who are aware of the nobility of their work and are intensely proud. Three of them are young girls and the senior field supervisor is a young woman of 24 who uses her meager salary of about $250 US dollars a month to fund a library and school for her village. There is no dark humor here, no death jokes, as that is a passenger on everyone’s shoulders whenever they are at work.They have chosen a life of self-denial that is almost as monastic as the Saffron robed monks the country is known for. In their

military fatigues bearing the logo of the de-mining organization, they are treated as local heroes and Akira is rapidly attaining superstar status. By his own estimate, it will take another decade to rid

Cambodia of most of its land mines.

Land mines date back hundreds of years and are found in over 100 countries, but Cambodia,

with its war torn past, is near the top of the list for sheer saturation.

In Cambodia today there are an estimated 63,000 land mine victims alive and that means one out of every 290 people in the country has suffered from their destructive power. While Akira believes he has personally cleared about 50,000 of them, there is still an estimated 3-5 million left in the ground. Worldwide it is estimated that close to 100 million land mines are still in the ground, many left from the second world war but still lethal none the less. While industrial nations are loathe to give out casualty figures, the de-miners I was with claim there are close to 4000 victims of the “perfect soldier” annually.

No one knows how much unexploded ordinance is still in the ground worldwide.

Each unexploded bomb, rocket, missile, mortar and artillery round is a time bomb waiting for ignition as there is no time limit at which they become inactive. The longer they lay buried, the more unstable they become.When I leave I take a final look at Akira sitting by a campfire laughing with his troops. It had been a good day. He had blown up five mines.

FoR additional inFoRmation

please visit :

www.cambodialandminemuseum.org or

www.cambodianselfhelpdemining.org

Sonchy’s Silk Road Adventure

Central AsianBuzkashii! • The Light Thief • Desert of Forbidden Art • Buddhas of Mes Aynak

Boxing Girls of Kabul • Lonely Planet’s ‘Globe Trekkers’ Silk Road Series • Buzkashi Boys

The film event, ‘Sonchy’s Silk Road Adventure’, will take place in Toronto, Ontario, tentatively the weekend of July 26th. The purpose of the event is to showcase the Central Asian region to a wide audience with the hope of increasing tourism to the area and its projects.

Since Central Asia is still a very mysterious place for most people, we want to help unlock its potential for tourism and we can only do that with your support.We are looking for potential sponsors and prizes for attendees of this event. We are looking for local restaurants to provide Central Asian foods, folk and art presentations and speakers to talk about their experience in the region and support various NGO’s who are in desperate need of funding. We would like to givelocal artisans the opportunity to share their culture and experiences with those at the festival. In exchange, your organization or brand will be featured on relevant promotional material and online content.

For more information contact Michael Soncinaby email at [email protected] or by phone at (647)-637-8433.

Film Event

A Festival for

Hungry Ghosts...

When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the streets of Malaysia and Singapore, looking for mundane entertainment…

Words by Marco Ferrarese Photographs by Chan Kit Yeng

On the stage tonight, a scantily clad Chinese Venus is seeking some serious

attention. Cheeky spotlights play hide and seek around the tiny cloth wrapped tightly around her long, sexy legs. They bend passionately as she injects pure pop sugar into the mike. In a normal world, such a beauty queen would deserve encores and big rose buckets shoved at her feet as a prelude

to 5 star spangled nights. But not tonight: as she performs to a row of sad, empty seats, one may wonder what is wrong and take a closer curious peek. “Do not sit at the front rows!” screams Ang Hoi over the pounding dance beats. He is a Chinese shop owner, turned medium for the occasion. “Those chairs are reserved to the ghosts!” he insists.

It is hard to believe, but tonight demons and spirits are fluttering all around us. This is not the kind of superstition you would expect to find in Malaysia and Singapore, fast developing and leading Southeast Asian nations where technology and luxury comforts have apparently steamrolled traditions and folklore into a steel and concrete mass grave. To prove wrong, the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar- starting around mid to late August - is dedicated to one of the most colorful and entertaining festivals in Southeast Asia: the Hungry Ghost. Based on the huaren (overseas Chinese) beliefs, this is the time when the King of Hell Tua-su-yah slams the gates of Hell open and unleashes his army of “hungry ghosts” upon Earth.

“You do not want to mess with them”, Mr Hoi continues frantically. “They deserve our

uttermost respect, as they are back from Hell…such a bad, hard place! They are hungry for life!” Fear not, as they do not come to feast on human flesh. On the contrary, they look for those living comforts they have been craving for in the poorly stocked aisles of Supermarket Hell: tasty food, respectful prayers and trivial entertainment.

This is the reason why for a whole month the lives of the Chinese community

change abruptly from the 6 to 9 working grind to a parade of burlesque devotion: at most street corners, impromptu home-made temples cum stage display towers of fruit, cold beers, and rigid, legless barbequed pigs to satiate the ghastly hunger. Devotees with colored joss sticks come and go all day long drawing slow, smoky circles in the air. Tua-su-yah, materialized into a 6 meters tall Demon King made of colorful cardboard, enjoys the show from his paper throne: he loves this mumbling soundtrack of hissing

prayers. He grins motionless, showing a pair of menacing paper fangs.

Respect for the deceased: this is what makes the industrious huaren stop part

of their daily business to counter attack the infernal hordes by praying to the altars and organizing Chinese opera performances for the joy of the dead. As for the sexy singing shows, they have a special VIP ghost area which is not accessible to the human visitors, only allowed to sit at the back. “I think they are crazy” confesses a Malay Muslim passerby, “they should not mess with the spirits, it is dangerous… in my religion, we are taught to steer well clear from the supernatural“

The huaren seem to have a different conception of their cult of the dead: “Our

ancestors feel very lonely down there. They miss this world and their past lives” confesses Chook Moi, a middle aged lady pausing from her ghostly errands. She is burning a stack of Hell notes,

perfect reproductions of human money with a King of Hell’s face emblazoned in the center. “When they come back to us for a month every year, we have to give them something special to help their life in Hell”. She sets fire to an amount of Hell’s currency able to buy real estate in the human world: a humble gift to her dead parents. “I am sending them a bit of money for the upcoming year”, she concludes smiling. When the end of the month comes closer, and the ghastly hunger is satiated, a howling procession of screaming devotees will carry the statues of Tua-su-yah all around town for a last glorious ride. As the

clock strikes midnight and the last Hell notes have been piled up high on huge pyres, the Demon King is sent back to Hell in a ritual street bonfire. His ugly grin morphs into a smile as the fire melts money and paper flesh together, sealing off this odd carnival with flaming gasoline. “I still do not see why they have

the sexy singing shows” wonders a French tourist caught into the street parade,”It looks so out of place!”

As we see younger and older generations of happy huaren men coming

together during the Hungry Ghost festival, we suppose devotion is

not the strongest bond linking humans, ghosts and Tua-su-yah. Anyhow, as the yearly Grand Hell’s Opening brings so much diversion to the work obsessed routines of the industrious Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese, we may as well close eyes on the matter and enjoy some miniskirt exorcism. •


According to the introduction to Screamers given by the journalist and academic

Samantha Powers, a 'Screamer' is an individual capable of fully processing the reality of genocide, and therefore compelled to do whatever they can to prevent it. Interspersed with concert footage from around the world are interviews with human rights activists, band members, academics and a selection of naïve but enthusiastic fans. They all seem to agree that killing lots of people is bad.All of the members of System of a Down have Armenian roots, and all seem to have relatives who were in some way connected to the Ottoman Empires systematic extermination of between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians during and after the First World War. The word genocide was coined to describe these events but even today the Turkish government denies that the word genocide is an accurate description of what really happened. They are not alone. So far - despite the overwhelming historical evidence - only 20 countries have officially recognised the Armenian Genocide. Much to the shame and embarrassment of many Jews, even the state of Israel refuses to officially acknowledge the twentieth century's first great genocide. It's not that these governments don't think it happened - it's just that they don't want to upset Turkey when they have proved to be such a convenient ally, both during the Cold War and, more recently, as a buffer zone between Europe and other less amenable parts of the Middle East. System of a Down seem intent on

persuading all individuals and governments to acknowledge the full magnitude and systematic nature of such slaughter. Time and time again we are told that governments must acknowledge the Armenian genocide so that nothing like this can ever happen again. It is never really explained how this might work. As we are reminded at the beginning of the film, Hitler was well aware of the Armenian Genocide, as was Winston Churchill and, I would assume, all other world leaders of the time. This didn't stop millions of Jews from being killed in the Holocaust. Even

if we accept that the Armenian Genocide is far less well known than the Nazi genocide of the Jews, none of the hundreds of books or film about the Holocaust helped to prevent subsequent genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.Despite having the courage and conviction to invest their money and reputation into such a well meaning documentary, System of a Down fail to take such anti-genocide rhetoric to its logical conclusion. Others involved in the film, such as Samantha Power - an influential academic and an advisor to Barack Obama - have been far more direct about what it really takes to prevent genocide: she is considered by many to have been the key figure within the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya (she is also known for advocating that America send armed military forces, 'a mammoth protection force' and an 'external intervention', to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians). Other recent examples of successful military intervention include Tony Blair's deployment of British troops in Sierra Leone in opposition to the murderous RUF (arguably emboldening further military intervention in both Afghanistan and Iraq). Such uncomfortable realities, however, might prove to be something of a hard sell to the legions of alternative rock and metal fans shown queuing up for System of a Down's riotous live shows. 'I'm quite anti-Bush and anti-Blair, generally' proclaims one long haired rocker, 'I think that's a good message to have, being anti-war.' •

SCREAMERSIn 2006 System of a Down, the multi-platinum selling Armenian-American Nu-Metallers, financed a film called Screamers about the Armenian Genocide

FutureFeaturesThe Dark Art of Ahad Hosseini * Hard as the Heart of Harar: Down & Out in Ethiopia's Holy City * Shillong: India Rock City * Paradise with Side Effects * Sebastian Salgado: The Genesis Project

* The World ThroughGraphic Novels:

Palestine,Persepolis &

Pyongyang

Documents

Wicked World Issue One