#Cipher talk

[bijoumikhawal]

"I wonder where that bold young man I met so many years ago has gone..." Garak mused. "I seem to remember him telling me not to let them win."

"If you ever meet him again, will you tell him I've missed him?" Julian replied.

Garak sighed. "My dear- I don't know if I've ever met anyone more eager than you to break their very self into pieces."

"Other than yourself, you mean."

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I don't think there's enough appreciation for the dark cosmic humor that is Kai Winn's problem being that God won't talk to her, and Sisko’s problem is he can't get God to shut up

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I saw a post where someone translated the "No bitches?" meme into Cree, and that reminds me that Coptic has a pretty direct translation for "maidenless".

ⲁⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲓ (atshimi), meaning "wifeless", and ⲙⲛⲧⲁⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ (mntatshime) meaning "wifelessness"

[bijoumikhawal]

I know there's a horny appeal to knives, but if we go by what Odo claims about assassins sticking to one method, Garak clearly likes explosives

The lie he told Julian- bomb. Pre-empting his own assassination- bomb. In the pale moonlight? Bomb. Garak has a preference and it's bombs.

[bijoumikhawal]

Hiiii. My apartment will accept my application but they want two months of a deposit upfront by Wednesday, and because I've had to do repairs on my car that's stretching my money tight. So I am again bumping my Kofi (ko-fi.com/rosebijoumme) and making mention that I am willing to short fanfic writing commissions of properties I am familiar with (say, 500 words for $15). If you appreciate the funny words I say, drawings, or my research posts about Egypt, helping me out with this is a nice way to express that. I do hate to rattle my tincan but they want around $90 dollars more than I have on hand, and I do need gas back and forth until my next check on December (which is often around 150-200$, it's been on the lower side lately and having to pay so much is why I'm moving).

[bijoumikhawal]

I mentioned this in the tags of a post the other day, but since NK is high profile and getting a lot of videos shared, and I saw someone today decry a short speech one of their rabbis gave as "extremist", I guess I'll make a post too

Neturei Karta is a Litvish Ultra-Orthodox/Haredi antizionist group. In my experience, they are the most high profile antizionist group that ties that stance to their religious practice within Judaism, but they are not the only group (the Satmar are also generally antizionist, and they're a larger group, but they don't like NK).

As I mentioned yesterday, there was an incident with Iran- one of two, actually, but this one gets brought up more- where NK sent speakers to a conference specifically for the purposes of defending the existence of the Holocaust, as several Holocaust deniers were in attendance. The speaker specifically chosen had his grandparents die in the Holocaust. However, he also was blunt in stating his opinion that Zionists used the Holocaust to oppress others, Zionists had been collaborators and thwarted efforts to save Jewish lives. This prompted the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi to call for their excommunication, essentially, and for the Satmar and broader Haredi movement to tell people to stay away from them. These remarks are complicated; many incidents one could classify as collaboration were Zionists trying to move Jews out of Europe, to save lives. However, when the speaker said the third statement, I'm fairly certain he was genuinely expressing his own intergenerational trauma. Early Zionists did indeed, have a fair amount of animosity towards Orthodox Jews. At one point Theodore Herzl (a founder of the modern Zionist movement) did express the opinion that Jews should convert en masse to Christianity, and the feeling was that the Orthodox who refused should be left to their fate. This accusation is a response to a very real tension among Jews that existed at the time. And the collaborationism was not always about saving lives; the Lehi gang, which committed the Deir Yassin massacre, sought out an alliance with the Nazis on several occasions, and expressed a desire for a totalitarian nationalist state.

Another incident was one where NK met with heads of state in early 2006, particularly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after criticizing other Jews for referring to remarks he made as antisemitic, and did an interview with Iranian press where they stated the Holocaust was used as a political tool by Zionists, that Zionism is "not Jewish, but political", and that not all Jews are Zionists. They also clearly stated that when they say they are not Zionists, they do not mean withdrawal to 67 borders, but a full dissolution of state, where Jews still can live with Palestinians. Later on in 2006, Ahmadinejad made comments about the reality of the Holocaust that prompted Haroun Yashayaei, one of the most prominent members of the Iranian Jewish community, to publicly speak put against him (and no, he didn't get arrested over that. He actually is also a movie producer and got an award in 2008).

It should be noted that in West Asia and North Africa, Iran is one of only a few countries that still has a significant Jewish population. The others are Turkey (14,500), Azerbaijan (7,200), Morocco (2,100), and Tunisia (1,000). For those unaware, this is significant because during the 1920s and 30s, many colonial governments stripped WANA Jews of citizenship, and in the 40s-60s, many post colonial WANA countries forcibly expelled local Jews. As a result, the centuries long presence of Jews in countries such as Egypt or Syria is down a hundred or fewer individuals in many cases. Ideologically, I do not support Iran's government because it's a theocratic state that treats Kurds like shit, but all of NK's interactions with Iran must be contextualized in light of this. This is not me using WANA Jews as a rhetorical device either: my paternal country, Egypt, which I wish I could so much as visit, is such a country. The 2016 Iranian census puts the country's Jewish population at 9,826. That's a number that I would weep to see reported in Egypt, and the second highest of any West Asia or North African country.

Personally while I hold no serious ideological disagreement with NK over antizionism, I do not wholly support them for other reasons (gender/sexuality politics reasons primarily). I bring up these incidents with Iran because in the past I've seen people claim they are Holocaust deniers, or that they think Jewish people brought the Holocaust on themselves. I have never seen a NK member say ANYTHING of that sort, and the idea that Jews bring antisemitism in any form on themselves is in fact an actual belief Herzl held. The closest I've heard is when NK distributed leaflets after a Chabad was attacked in Mumbai where they criticized Chabad for being in bed with Zionists. I'll be linking some articles in the replies of this post about this, including the text of the actual speech given at the Tehran conference so it can be read in full.

[bijoumikhawal]

the real tragedy of Garak's life is Cardassian social mores are as such that he's never been able to give himself bangs in the bathroom mirror

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anyway I am going to spoil everyone's fun. The Mummy is a racist movie, it's frustrating that it's popular and no one discusses that, and let me explain why

Whitewashing/brownface/self orientalism. The Carnahan's are meant to be mixed race. Their actors are white. Oded Fehr is white and a significant portion of his career has been playing exotic brown people in media made for white people, specifically while weaponizing the ethnic ambiguity he does have. Imhotep is white- insult to injury, his actor is an Afrikaner! Playing a pre-colonial African character! The only Egyptians played by people who arent white are the sex pest warden, Dr. Bey (also a minor character who dies), and Anck-su-namun. None of their actors are Egyptian.

The portrayal of Egyptian men. The warden and Jonathan are both portrayed as pathetic, weak, morally circumspect, and the warden is a pervert. Imhotep is also a pervert, frankly. The Egyptian public at large- mostly male crowds and male workers- are literally canon fodder and senselessly killed on multiple occasions. They're turned into mindless zombies, with no consideration given to what happens to them afterwards. Did hundreds of people just die? In public? The only two Egyptian men that aren't utterly horrible are Evie's boss, Dr. Bey, and Ardeth.

The portrayal of Egyptian women. The only two we actually hear speak is Evie and Anck-su-namun, both of whom have orientalist tropes applied to them- Evie, when they make her dress "local", and Anck-su-namun with the whole titlating "the pharaoh has me walk around naked and covered in wet body paint so no one can touch me without him knowing" nonsense- similar tropes are applied to Ardeth, frankly, with how his tattoos are portrayed, his ethnic background, etc. They specifically chose tattoos a Western audience would still find sexy (which aren't based on the actual local tattooing traditions). Face veils in early 20th century Egypt didn't really look like that, even the ones you might call flirty, and I find portrayals that make Ancient Egyptian society's overall often greater comfort with bared skin into titillation for the audience pretty offensive, especially as there are currently existing cultures in Africa viewed through lenses like that. It's not merely ahistorical, it's apart of a broader issue with how living people are viewed by others.

This is more of a me thing, other Egyptians may not agree: I think mummies as a horror trope are racist. The key fear to mummy movies is that white people might get punished for disturbing the graves of the honored dead. You are asked to identify with literal colonizers and view the local population as antagonistic (past and present in this case), especially in this movie, which is set before England started pretending it wasn't controlling Egypt (and by the damn way, ask ANY Egyptian when the country got independence and we'll say 1956. Between 22 and 56, England still had explicit control over some of the government, notably foreign relations and military, it used this an excuse to justify control of Sudan, and it was militarily occupying the country, especially the Suez area. When King Farouk tried to make a decision they didn't like, they put his palace under seige. That is not independence. Whoever made the 1922 declaration the first result on Google is manufacturing apologia for imperialism).

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Im too damn tired to cross post this on a site that doesn't have enough Copts for a minyan, but I've been working on this for several months so I can't not link it

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something about how Julian comes from a place generally thought of as permissive but in many ways is actually quite a restrained person even though the first impression of him is that he matches it, while Garak comes from a place thought of as restrained but has become defined by his failure to be restrained, and how this entwined with themes of exile, social control, and incarceration/punishment

It's not that Garak doesn't have self control or that Julian never does anything implusive- but core aspects of them are in opposition to those things. There's a subtext in the show that Garak was exiled because of a failure in self control of some kind- something sentimental. He is the Cardassian (strictness) and he is the Exile (failure to be Cardassian). Julian is from the Federation (loosely goosey in a white man's Sexual Revolution way) and an Augment (violates one of the few rules the Federation does have).

As an Exile, Garak obviously has his movement restricted as to where he can live, but there are also social and economic factors that I think get ignored. Exiles loose citizenship. Exiles generally don't get to take their legal papers with them that help get a new citizenship. They don't really get to take much by way of money or property with them. This is what failure to be restrained has gotten him.

As an Augment, Julian isn't supposed to be allowed in certain careers. Even with the radically different economics of the Federation, this makes an impact. By violating this restriction, Julian knows exposure = severe punishment, most likely prison. Further, many augments are institutionalized, and anyone woth a knowledge of the history of institutions can tell you that what behavior is seen as "severe" enough for that to happen is political. So, he must be internally restrained. Even living in his day to day, had he not become a doctor or a member of Starfleet, he would need to be restrained if he kept living in the Federation because otherwise he'd get trouble brought on him.

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an underdiscussed topic in the "Reanimator (1985) is queer" sphere is that while Reanimator doesn't have an AIDS metaphor and it's only briefly mentioned in a novelization, a story about a queer coded man in 1985 who wants to cure death really cannot be separated from the political context of the AIDS crisis

[bijoumikhawal]

I've gotten tired of making a post like this every few months so let's just fire a few of these off, and feel free to add on! Tropes you should at minimum reconsider using when you write or talk about Julian Bashir:

Mentions of "harem" pants, "Arabian nights" aesthetics, etc. These are improper terminology (that feeds into racist ideas) for real things, and when using that terminology those things are often being misrepresented. For my part, if you would actually like to know about the material culture of the Middle East and North Africa, I'm a "hobby" researcher of that very topic and will readily answer asks about it- with the caveat that I mostly know about Egypt, and I'm not the best person to ask about Sudanese specific culture even though I know a little, and I don't know much about Indian or Pakistani fashion (mentioning because these seem to be the most common cultures brought up around Julian).

comparisons to monkeys, apes, the word "simian". This should be obvious but it happens a fair amount, and it's almost comedic given a common trope is to comment on how much Garak hates being compared to a lizard.

This is separate but the way some people use mammalian tips from writing xenofic and trying to understand how an alien would think and categorize things into something that feels very exoticifying. It's not a "full stop, do not do this" but it is something I've noticed

Jokes about how undesirable Julian is. He's the exception that proves the rule about fandom's obsession with white twinks and a rare example of a brown nerd who isn't pinned into the "Couldn't sleep with a woman if they were the last two people on earth" box. I'm not saying we can't make fun of how he flirts just- Stay clear of Raj BBT territory

Conversely: my most hated garashir trope is when the author makes Julian's libido a problem by making him inconsiderate, cruel, and outright manipulative in service of his dick, and the writing often makes it clear they're connecting this to his masculinity. Julian does do some really stupid shit when it comes to his relationships, but this particular way of trying to incorporate this into writing him is just OOC, and you need to not confuse writing Julian's canonical robust and healthy sex life with negative stereotypes about lecherous Black and brown men. There's fics that pull off Julian being a bit of a dick or manipulative well- such as Salt the Earth or the ageswap series (at least where I last left off on it).

making his eyes green or blue. I have the same eye color as Siddig, more or less, and while it's technically hazel (or olive, as some people call it) most people think it's brown and most lighting makes it look brown. If you look at screencaps of Julian, you'll notice it also most of the time, looks brown. This sounds minor if you haven't experienced it, but it has a real and very negative impact on people's self image.

Older one but to be clear: if you're writing Julian as explicitly Muslim, find and replacing "god" with "allah" in English text is not how Muslims (or Arabic speakers in general) use the word? It is really funny to read, but please...

Over focusing on Julian as British. There's a long, LONG conversation that could be had about the dynamics of assimilation and how European racism (ime) very specifically views it as progressive to strip people of their culture and thinks they're causing the problem if they don't go along with it that would need its own post and which I've had with white fans before and feel exhausted thinking about- but to put it simply, there is no such thing as "just British", even for white Englishmen.

Yes the inverse is also wrong but I really haven't read a fic newer than 2014 guilty of that lmao and I think some of the more recent complaints about it are overblown, given I've read only a few fics recently published that delve into Julian as a Brown/African Person and I enjoyed them

I would personally appreciate it if fic writers were a little more balanced about cultural discussions honestly. If you write a lot about Cardassian culture, it'd be nice if Julian’s background was discussed. I won't say that kind of research is easy (again, I do this as a "hobby" that's very important to me, it's actually really annoying and difficult sometimes), but it is possible. I recently talked about how not doing this kind of mentally slots Julian into a "white guy" role.

This is not a matter of me policing your "artistic expression". I have no control over what you do. I would just like for fandom, a hobby I do for fun, to be a place where people stop being racist in a way that directly impacts me.

[bijoumikhawal]

Teeth

No one knows it, but Kira kept her father's teeth when he died.

Not all Bajora do it. Some find it disgusting. Others consider it profane, disrespectful- there are a lot of Bajora, after all, spread out over 14 planets and all their moons, even if it was sparse on some. It's impossible for them to fully agree on a custom- even the Kai cannot curb all dissent. But growing up, Kira was taught that was the proper way.

A body is only a vessel. The dead are empty. Empty vessels get reused, reabsorbed into the world- carrying their essence and relinquishing it to the vessels that are full. And teeth have a powerful essence.

Her father's teeth are only faintly lavender from urka chewing. Not the rich violet or plum of a prosperous, social man- he'd shown her her grandparents teeth once, placing them in her tiny, pale palm. They were that color.

Rolling them over with his fingertip, he pointed out their subtle, distinguishing features to her- a deeper recess on her grandfather, a crack in her grandmother.

Teeth were powerful because they were memory. You knew what a person ate, what their habits were, rich or poor, indulgent or sober, hearty or sickly. And like your eyes, your teeth resembled your parents.

There was an order of importance to teeth, too. A Bajora's incisors grew with the throughout their life, though in excess it was a disease. They had 5 sets for all the others. The incisors went to your children. The front teeth faced the world- they went to your surviving siblings, or worse, parents. If lucky they skipped that and went to your nieces and nephews- the closer the set to the one you died with, the closer the niece or nephew by relation. The back teeth did not face the world, but labored hard. They went to more distant relatives. All were passed down through generations- teeth were not individual in ownership.

Her father, when he was done, picked them up and wrapped them in a tiny piece of linen. These were the only ones they had. The rest were lost- buried for safety at the start of the occupation under a house torn to shreds, a new foundation dug where it sat. Dirt and everything in the dirt dumped who knows where.

In war, comrades were included in the tradition. Front teeth, if possible.

In the leather case on Kira's hip, she carried only 3 people.

It wasn't a war. A war implied the wrong circumstances. And regardless of if it had been, she'd never been lucky enough to have the time to bury most of her comrades- much less bring the traditions of her caste, of her province into things.

Her mother's mother and mother's father went with her when she died. They did not sit on Kira's hip.

She didn't get her brother's bodies. So she didn't get their teeth either. 

Teeth are memory and teeth stay long after the flesh goes. It is not that you're alive so long as your loved ones keep your teeth safe, but- it matters. 

[bijoumikhawal]

I hate to shake my can again, especially so soon after last time, but I'm tight on transportation money AGAIN and have to repair my car AGAIN (it had an unplanned problem I gotta fix asap and two more down the road that are less important). I'm more so concerned about making sure I can get to work this week since i dont have to worry about rent coming out of my check friday, next week shouldn't be a problem (beli ayin hara ptoo ptoo ptoo), which comes up to worrying about roughly $60-72. I'll have to shell out more for the mechanic and won't enjoy it but should be able to cover it (I was able to get the part last week on payments and my mom said she'd help split the cost on labor, which he guessed might run close to 400$ but hasn't been solid on), however I won't refuse extra help.

ko-fi.com/rosebijoumme

$0/72

[bijoumikhawal]

hello! i hope it's alright to ask you this but i was wondering if you have any recommendations for books to read or media in general about the history of judaism and jewish communities in egypt, particularly in ottoman and modern egypt?

have a nice day!

it's fine to ask me this! Unfortunately I have to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of books on Egyptian Jewish history have a Zionist bias. There are antizionist Egyptian Jews, and at the very least ones who have enough national pride that AFAIK they do not publicly hold Zionist beliefs, like those who spoke in the documentary the Jews of Egypt (avaliable on YouTube for free with English subtitles). Others have an anti Egyptian bias- there is a geopolitical tension with Egypt from Antiquity that unfortunately some Jewish people have carried through history even when it was completely irrelevant, so in trying to research interactions between "ancient" Egyptian Jews and Native Egyptians (from the Ptolemaic era into the proto-Coptic and fully Coptic eras) I've unfortunately come across stuff that for me, as an Egyptian, reads like anti miscegenationist ideology, and it is difficult to tell whether this is a view of history being pushed on the past or not. The phrase "Erev Rav" (meaning mixed multitude), which in part refers to Egyptians who left Egypt with Moses and converted to Judaism, is even used as an insult by some.

Since I mentioned that documentary, I'll start by going over more modern sources. Mapping Jewish San Francisco has a playlist of videos of interviews with Egyptian Jews, including both Karaites and Rabbinic Jews iirc (I reblogged some of these awhile ago in my "actually Egyptian tag" tag). This book, the Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, is avaliable for free online, it promises to be a more indepth look at Egyptian Jews in the lead up to modern explusion. I have only read a few sections of it, so I cannot give a full judgment on it. There's this video I watched about preserving Karaite historical sites in Egypt that I remember being interesting. "On the Mediterranian and the Nile edited by Harvey E. Goldman and Matthis Lehmann" is a collection of memiors iirc, as is "the Man in the Sharkskin Suit" (which I've started but not completed), both moreso from a Rabbinic perspective. Karaites also have a few websites discussing themselves in their terms, such as this one.

For the pre-modern but post-Islamic era, the Cairo Geniza is a great resource but in my opinion as a hobby researcher, hard to navigate. It is a large cache of documents from a Cairo synagogue mostly from around the Fatimid era. A significant portion of it is digitized and they occasionally crowd source translation help on their Twitter, and a lot of books and papers use it as a primary source. "The Jews in Medieval Egypt, edited by: Miriam Frenkel" is one in my to read pile. "Benjamin H. Hary - Multiglossia in Judeio-Arabic. With an Edition, Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll" is a paper I've read discussing the Jewish record of the events commemorated by the Cairo Purim, I got it off either Anna's Archive or libgen. "Mamluks of Jewish Origin in the Mamluk Sultanate by Koby Yosef" is a paper in my to read pile. "Jewish pietism of the Sufi type A particular trend of mysticisme in Medieval Egypt by Mireille Loubet" and "Paul B Fenton- Judaism and Sufism" both discuss the medieval Egyptian Jewish pietist movement.

For "ancient" Egyptian Jews, I find the first chapter of "The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD” by Simon Schama, which covers Elephantine, very interesting (it also flies in the face of claims that Jews did not marry Native Egyptians, though it is from centuries before the era researchers often cover). If you'd like to read don't click this link to a Google doc, that would be VERY naughty. There's very little on the Therapeutae, but for the paper theorizing they may have been influenced by Buddhism (possibly making them an example of Judeo-Buddhist syncretism) look here (their Wikipedia page also has some sources that could be interesting but are not specifically about them). "Taylor, Joan E. - Jewish women philosophers of first-century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae reconsidered" is also a to read.

I haven't found much on the temple of Onias/Tell el Yahudia/Leontopolis in depth, but I have the paper "Meron M. Piotrkowski - Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period" in my to be read pile (which I got off Anna's Archive). I also have some supplemental info from a lecture I attended that I'm willing to privately share.

I also have a document compiling links about the Exodus of Jews from Egypt in the modern era, but I'm cautious about sharing it now because I made it in high school and I've realized it needs better fact checking, because it had some misinfo in it from Zionist publications (specifically about the names of Nazis who fled to Egypt- that did happen, but a bunch of names I saw reported had no evidence of that being the case, and one name was the name of a murdered resistance fighter???)

[bijoumikhawal]

Writing Commissions

Hi! I will probably soon no longer be fundraising, but money keeps being tight for me. As I mentioned in my recent posts, I am willing to do fanfic commissions for works I'm familiar with of about 500-1000 words for a flat rate of $15, and figured I ought to make a better reference post on that. These can be in a lot of forms! Obviously narrative writing is the most common, but I do write extensive world building as well, and can write "clippings"- writing meant to look like part of a textbook or newspaper.

Properties I can verify I am familiar with:

Deep Space Nine

Pacific Rim

The Untamed and MDZS

SVSSS

TGCF

Word of Honor

Good Omens (book or radio)

The Once and Future Nerd

Revolutionary Girl Utena

The Yuzna Reanimator movies

to a lesser extent, meaning I may need to refresh my memory on something: Fullmetal Alchemist (specifically Brotherhood), most of Rick Riordan's books, The Raven Cycle, Star Trek TOS

Examples of recent fics of this length:

Teeth, a fic about Kira Nerys's relationship to a family tradition

Eat you up, a silly Garashir short

The Beetle and the Moon (a bit longer than the range here), a letter from Julian to Garak just before his last meeting with Sloan

Airing it out, Kira and Julian end up talking about marriage

White Fire, a "missing scene" from "Dr. Bashir, I Presume", with Julian and Garak

The night colored field, uhm. Kinky Garashir smut.

Night Time Visitor, a response to some feelings I have about the episode "If Wishes Were Horses"

Not willing to write:

graphic underage content

bigoted stories (not the same as a story wherein bigotry is expressed by a character), for example I would not write a story about Piper McLean being an alcoholic. It could be told in an empathic way, but I doubt I could capture that, and the prompt rests on a highly questionable premise.

character hitpieces

excessive gore, less because I'm squeamish and more out of a lack of experience

I would be taking payment through kofi (ko-fi.com/rosebijoumme) as opposed to directly through PayPal for privacy, just attach a note about what its for. If you are interested, DM me, we'll talk over what you want, and you can either do full payment upfront or half upfront and half upon completion.