BLACK MAGIC WOMAN

IcelandReview
15/10/2009 | 11:00

Good news. The unemployment rate in Iceland fell by one third in the
third quarter of 2008, from nine to six percent.

Six percent is bad, but not that bad considering the collapse of the
banking system. Of the 1,500 bankers who lost their job in the past
12 months, almost 1,400 have found new jobs.

A six percent unemployment rate in Iceland is better than the EU
average of 8.9 percent and the US average of 9.8 percent. In the US
alone, 640,000 lost their jobs in the first five months of 2009. Two
times the population of Iceland.

In the Arab world almost one out of five workers are without a job,
17 million people. The unemployment rate is the highest in the Gaza
Strip, 44 percent, but lowest in Qatar, 0.6 percent–which is also
the lowest unemployment rate in the world.

But there are countries doing far worse than Gaza. Zimbabwe has a 90
percent unemployment rate, Liberia 88 percent, Turkmenistan 70 percent,
Armenia and Mozambique 60 percent each.

In Europe, Macedonia is at the bottom with one third of the working
population without a job. Here in Iceland, 94 percent of workers have
a job.

When I returned to Iceland in 1982 after studying photography abroad,
my grandmother, a very wise and clever woman, asked me: "Is it a job
to take pictures?"

I didn’t know how to answer her and I still don’t know the answer
to that question. I only chose that path because I wanted to see the
world, travel. It’s as simple as that.

Because I didn’t have an answer, I just asked her whether she
considered it a job to write a book, to be a writer. And I knew
she would say yes as Halldór Laxness, our only Nobel Prize winner,
was her hero.

But what is a good book, or good photograph?

The Nobel committee knows what a good book is. And that the only ones
who can write come from our beloved western culture.

Ninety-one writers from Europe and North America have been blessed
with the Nobel Prize in Literature, plus one English-born writer who
became Australian atrick Victor Martindale White.

Only four writers from Africa and equally many from Asia have been
granted the same honor, plus five from South America. Only one Chinese
author, who in fact is a French citizen, Gao Xingjian, has received
the Nobel Prize in Literature

Can this be true? Isn’t it strange that our culture is by far the
best one?

A good book is a good book. I read a good one last week by David
Benioff, City of Thieves. It reminded me of one of my all-time
favorite, which happens to take place in the same city, Leningrad:
The Women’s Decameron by Julija Voznesenskaja. Unforgettable.

And soon I will have a new book out, Africa, The Future of
Football. For the past two years I have crisscrossed that continent
to show the real Africa. Colorful and happy.

Is Africa dangerous? Yes, very much so. Africa is like an incurable
disease that you catch, you have to go back, again and again. Magic,
black magic.

Can a continent be magical? No, it’s the people, the people who
inhabit this vast continent who are magical.

Páll Stefánsson – ps@icelandreview.com

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress