Thursday 8 May 2008

The symbolism behind a name

All names have a meaning. Some are the remains of ancient languages and cultures, others can actually be found in dictionaries.
Sometimes, the meaning of a fictional character's name has great importance not just on his / her particular behaviour, but also on the development of the plot.
That's why I searched a bit on the Internet for the meaning of some of The Kite Runner's most important characters. Let's see if there's a hidden message under their names.

Amir - an Arabic word meaning prince.

Soraya - the Pleiades (a cluster of SEVEN stars from the Taurus constelation and the name given to the seven daughters of Atlas, the titan who was said to carry the Earth on his shoulders)

Hassan - beautifier.

Sohrab - it means something like shinning.

Assef - the closest word I found on the Internet was Asif, meaning forgiveness. There's also a byblical name, Asaph, which stands for collector.

Rahim - kind, compassionate.

I've also searched for the meaning of other character's names, but I don't know if they are relevant enough to be put in this list. Tell me if you want me to search for any other name meaning.

Saturday 3 May 2008

Women in Afghanistan - Powerpoint

You can now download our powerpoint:

CLICK HERE

Thursday 1 May 2008

The Emperor’s New Clothes



Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Nauterida, there was a very ugly king known by his subjects for spending the kingdom’s money on trips. Despite his counsellor’s advice, he just kept on doing the same. During his reign, he received a lot of threats by phone and some letters too, but he never gave up his plans of taking those expensive first class plane trips. He knew the world; he had travelled around the five continents and sailed on the five oceans. It was expected that such cultural fortune would give him enough knowledge to rule the kingdom with wisdom and respect. But it was always the other way around: the people were poorer each day and the taxes were much higher, nobody in Nauterida could afford those payments. Nobody dared to tell the truth to his face and show him how hungry and miserable his people were. He knew the truth, he had been one of them but just like any king, he ignored it.

One day, when he was preparing his luggage to go on another trip, the servant brought him a letter. “Another one”, he thought. He opened it with a rush of an evident contempt but there was nothing written on that white piece of paper. He looked again but with curiosity this time. “What would that mean? Why would someone take the special trouble to send him a blank letter?” It was the first time that the king took more than a couple of seconds considering something that he would usually consider nonsense. Unexpectedly, he told the servant to cancel his trip to the travel agency and unpack the suitcases; he wouldn’t leave after all. The servant was very nervous and very excited at the same time, he didn’t remember seeing his king giving up anything, not even on the day of his parent’s funeral, when he left to the Manyala Island on vacations. So he ran to the kitchen and told the other servants what was going on; of course, they told everybody what they had heard from the servant and so on.

The next day, when the king woke up, he heard a tumult outside the palace and he looked out of the window. What he saw, almost made his heart jump right out of his mouth: he didn’t see his green grass garden, what he saw was a white mantle of letters. He ran to the garden and yelled:

-“What is this in my garden? Some kind of joke? Was there a party here last night? Uh?”, but the palace servants were as surprised as their king. Nobody knew what to say, how to explain it. The king was staring at that white mantle when he suddenly said:

-“Pack and count those letters, I will read them later”. There were hundreds of letters for him to read but he already knew that he didn’t have to read a single one of them. They were white, no word on them but the message was there and he knew that one day, sooner or later, he had to face it. His people were claiming for their rights, in silence, without strikes or any kind of disorders.

That day changed the kingdom’s fate forever. The king stopped making trips for his own pleasure and the taxes were lowered. All he wanted was his people’s attention, and on that day he had it all. After counting the letters, he noticed that in the garden there was one letter from each citizen of the kingdom of Nauterida, together, they had each left one message for their king, showing him how they lived, what they had and how they felt about the way their king was ruling their lives; it was all there, white in white, for who never wanted to see.