Is It Wicked Not To Care?

It's often lamented that people don't write letters anymore. Some say it has become a lost art. Yet when Mohammed Bouyeri wanted to send an important message to Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali he went to great lengths to ensure she got it. Fearing the Dutch postal service may not be efficient as it could be, he decided the most effective form of delivery would be to stake the letter to the corpse of film-maker Theo van Gogh. Of course, this required van Gogh to actually become a corpse, but when you absolutely positively have to get it there overnight murder is only a minor obstacle.

During lunchtime today I had planned to purchase Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography, Infidel. I strode directly from my office on the corner of Collins and Elizabeth streets, along Elizabeth, up through the Bourke St Mall and into Reader's Feast on the corner Swanston St. I approached purposefully the new non-fiction display, and without a glance sidewards, plucked the book from the shelf with all the calculated execution of a postman conducting his rounds. Or a murderer conducting his. With some time to err...kill before having to head back to work, I decided to peruse a few pages of the book before purchasing it. It was upon this perusal that I realised that the book wasn't quite what I expected. The book seemed to focus heavily on her life growing up in Somalia and Kenya. Now far be it for me to deny someone their youth, but I had figured the book would be a little more concerned with Ali's refugee status in Holland, her rise to Parliament and infamy as an outspoken critic of Islam and campaigner for women's rights. Obviously the point here is that her youth laid the foundation for the figure she would become, but I couldn't help feeling the urge to sigh "Come on, get to the good bits." And so like a NGO report into the situation in Sudan, the book was shelved.