Hello! It's the weekend! This morning I danced around the kitchen to this song while holding my disgruntled cat and eating a vegan mushroom sausage. Today: a huge academic scandal, an Iranian domestic drama, a short novel about running away from everything you've ever known, and... deodorant.

Article: A Biblical Mystery at Oxford by Ariel Sabar, published by the Atlantic in May 2020

I listened to this article while making savoury pancakes yesterday and said, ‘What the fuck??’ out loud at least three times. This is the story of Dirk Obbink, a classicist who specialised in papyrology, won a MacArthur Genius Grant in the early 2000s, and was until recently a professor at Oxford. He is also currently under investigation for stealing and selling ancient papyri from the collection he was overseeing to the owners of Hobby Lobby (who are also the founders of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, which collects a whole raft of ancient artefacts).

I’ve had one eye on this story for several years — it actually came up in conversation the last time I went to a coffeehouse in mid-March, oh the memories! — and this article is a pretty good and very long summary. It’s a deeply strange story in every way. Here are some facts: Obbink taught at two universities (one of which gave him a 100k annual salary?) without telling the other, which admittedly is an academic outrage rather than a real life one, but still... very odd; he bought a faux-medieval castle in Texas; and he was working with looted goods dealers at a time when the whole Classics world was up in arms over ancient artefacts being stolen and destroyed in Syria and elsewhere. I can’t work out if Obbink is the opposite of Indiana Jones (“this belongs in a museum”) or exactly like Indiana Jones (“this belongs in a museum”... of the Bible, for much personal gain). Anyway. I highly recommend reading/listening to this piece, it is full of strange details. Who knew that Classicists could be so nefarious? 

 

Film: The Salesman (فروشنده‎) by Ashgar Farhadi (2016)

Emad and Rana, a young couple living in Tehran, have to find a new flat after their home is damaged. When they move into a new place, offered to them by a friend, they realise that not only has the previous tenant left her belongings in the spare room, her reputation also lingers. Rana is attacked at home; what follows is simmering tension between husband and wife and an increasingly complex net of guilt, revenge, male privilege and moral ambiguity that Farhadi portrays so well in his films. This film is unsettling in a good way, questioning attitudes towards relationships, sex work and forgiveness. The couple perform in a production of Death of a Salesman, the references to which completely went over my head because I can't remember the play at all – but the films works even so, and maybe it even helps not being aware of the obvious parallels and references. 

 

Book: The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, translated by Rachel McGill (Dedalus Press 2018)

Easily one of the best books I read in 2018, this short novel is a great example of the huge chasm that can exist between cover design and content. Rayhana lives in a Bedouin camp. Her life changes when (European) miners turn up and she meets Yahya, who works for them; she flees to the city, by herself, stealing her tribe’s sacred drum. Pursued by her former friends and family, she tries to make a new life for herself. I found the style of this novel — somewhere in between factual, naive and lyrical, in a very beautiful translation — incredibly compelling and was intrigued by its many well-drawn minor characters. I’d love to read more by the author, but it might take a while before more of his work is translated into English, given that this is apparently the first novel from Mauritania to be translated. See this review for a more detailed discussion of the book.

Note: I was reminded of this novel when reading the excellent Words Without Borders feature on literature from Cabo Verde; a novel by one of the featured authors, Dina Salústio, was published by the same imprint (and received the same translation grant) as The Desert and the Drum. It’s worth checking out. 

 

Other: DIY deodorant

Nobody asked for this, but I'm going to share it anyway! Something that makes me very happy is not wasting money, time or resources on stuff that doesn’t work, comes in a plastic thing and/or smells bad. To that end, I’ve made my own deodorant for years (and am now making it for a select few other people as well). It works; it’s cheap; I never run out. You just mix a tablespoon each of (virgin) coconut oil, bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and cornstarch until it becomes a nice paste. Stick to these proportions even if they seem off, otherwise it will be too liquid or too solid. The coconut oil melts at body temperature, so mixing it all together with your fingers is easy, if slightly messy. I keep mine in a little glass tub. You rub it in your armpits, which also doubles as the armpit exam you should be doing regularly if you have breasts. You can buy a lot of similar products in shops now that are essentially variations of this; you can also make it fancier by adding more stuff, but I’ve never bothered because why change what works?

That's it! Tell me what you loved and take care!