This website details the excerpts from my creative work, mostly short stories but also some poems.   I plan to add information and some extracts from my novels when they are  completed.

'Danger Zone'- A VeryShort Story

young at heart opera

(music and dance unnecessary)

 

I looked at the sky

It was an icy pale

And I wondered why

Here on the ground

Rose a fearsome gale.

And you were not around.

 

I looked at the sea

No one dared to sail,

And it made me tremble

Here on the shore,

We meet no more

Here and there I scramble

But when  you are near

Your love is all so clear.

                                Quote from Shakespeare:

 To be or not to be that is the question

                                                  (from Hamlet)

Heathcliff Revisited

So powerful is the novel 'Wuthering Heights' and the feelings against Heathcliff that the hostility towards him are as strong now as in the 19th Century.  As recently as 2004 a work colleague stopped even looking at me when I dared to defend Heathcliff.

Should he be hated as a frenzied lunatic?   If society still does so then I object.

Lets get his character in perspective.  Heathcliff is an orphan adopted by the Landowner called Earnshaw.  The orphan Heathcliff is of eastern descent and throughout the novel is always an  outsider.  From the start of his adoption, he is always bullied and teased, by the children of Earnshaw, namely Edgar and Hareton as well as Catherine.

Catherine soon pities the young Heathcliff and begins to  love him, but not entirely.  She also eventually loves Linton. During the novel she marries Linton who is a landowner like her father.  The marraige, however, is an arranged marraige, and it must be stressed that Heathcliff would never be allowed to marry her.

Linton is caring and affectionate enough for Catherine but he deplores and despises Heathcliff, and makes his house a fortress against the orphan. 

Yet in spite of her marraige to Linton and all the prejudice and hatred levelled against him, Heathcliff actually loves Catherine throughout the novel. 

Thus in the words of the 1960's song, please don't let Heathcliff be 'Misunderstood'.

The Long Trek

by Hasan Abdul

The air is warmer

Yet it's sometimes colder

The summers are hotter

Yet often they are wetter

Now I find, all is gone

The world I knew, it shone

And now the viruses arrive

Now the illnesses stay

Few are left alive

And the meek cry today

For a treasure so apparent

For a promised covenant

Can the mighty ever bet

That nature is yet

A cause at which to peck

Saving the Earth is no long trek.

copyright by Hasan Abdulla, 11/2009

The Riddler speaks:

 

Once upon a leafy lawn

Rose a misty dawn.

The church bells did not ring

The birds, the insects did not sing

Then came a hideous knock

The modern stazi came

And with a cold icy shock

I was never the same again.

And now I awake alone,

In a house far from home.

 

This website is dedicated to a very special person in my life. She a real martyr against intense prejudice. She is the reason why I exist. 

My work is inspired by the writings of Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler.  I began my creative work with songwriting but could not match music to words.  Then I began to read the novels of Raymond Chandler and the short stories of Ernest Hemingway among others.

I won a runner up  prize  for an essay on Peace in the early 1980's and launched  my writing work with the motivation gained by this prize.

More recently I got a favourable comment from a professional writer for a poem on the Virgin Mary and a four star rating for a short story entitled Danger Zone.  This helped me gain enormous confidence in writing.

Brief Encounters- Very Short Stories

 

Samuel Jacks, a middle class Texan youth  in his late twenties, was on vacation in Colombia. He had checked into a suburban three star hotel in Bogota.  The morning after his arrival at the hotel, he took a walk to a large city park, that was full of greenery, trees and in the middle of this park was a small deep lake.  On his way to this park he had bought a chilli and bean fajita and then took a seat near the trees to eat it.

 

On a bench nearby, an elderly Colombian lady had seated herself without him realising her arrival.  He had enjoyed the fajita but now felt tired and weak, and assumed it was due to jetlag.  He tried to get up from the bench, but every time he attempted to do so he sank back onto the same bench with fatigue.

 

The elderly lady came near him and slently beckoned him to her.  She took his hands in hers and helped him to stand upright.  He coud feel the thin air and the strong sunshine of the midday sun and wanted to walk back to the hotel.  He held her back with a gesture of gratitude and a smile.

 

He noticed her smooth features and dignified composure.  Before she said her final farewell, she hugged him  and gently let him go.

 

Samuel never saw that lady again.  When he returned  home to Fort Knox, he found a newspaper which mentioned  that a Colombian Government minister had lost her only son during the floods in Colombia.  He recognised her as the lady in the park in Bogota he encountered.

 

Now every Sunday, Samuel goes to the local Church to pray for the return of that lady's son.

 

story by Hasan Abdulla

Mount Olympus

 

I wish I was on Mount Olympus

Where the sky is clear blue

And life has a rosy hue

And we are together, the two of us

 

I wish I lived on that mountain

Of legends and history

That is the source, the fountain

Of all in our history

I wish we were there

Alone, together without a care

 

I wish we lived on the summit

Of the mountain so enchanting

And we could see all around it

The countryside so inviting

I wish we were on Olympus

Just we two, the two of us

 

I want to go to Olympus

Not on a train or fast bus

I want to fly to that mountain

With you, my life, my captain

I wish  we were on Olympus

Just you and  me, both of us

 

I long to go to that mountain

Full of spring and fountain

I hope we reach that paradise

Though to wish is unwise

We will be on Mount Olympus

One day, the two of us.

POETRY SECTOR

Poem 1

Suburbia

Here they come, like Nazi vehicles

Speeding like bullets, causing spectacles

ears go deaf, minds go numb

they crush us under their thumb

Racing here and there like bullets

with odious noises,  no one forgets

They have  no care for any life

they want your money and wife

Should you dare to be single

they will  not allow you to mingle

with people, with crowds, the world

People, have you ever heard

That speeding cars, they erupt

from gangsters, drug happy and bankrupt

These are the speeding cars of suburbia

free to indulge in a hideous fantasia

Poem 2

Mockingbird

A Love gone up in flames

a tramp everyone blames

Someone has lost his career

Another one is full of fear

Out comes the word

Here c omes the mockingbird

A crash on the motorway

No one comes to the rescue

Lives wasted and thrown away

And no one wants to be true

Out comes the word

Here comes the mockingbird

A fire burns a building

All those inside are burnt

The idle few are singing

and no one is feeling hurt

Have you all heard?

Here comes the mockingbird

A storm brews and billows

And no one cares or knows

Until all around is destruction

and people shout 'Armageddon'

Again out comes the word

The demon is the mockingbird

When God is never heard

And seen by us all

Can it really be absurd

That he will never hear our call?

A bird that does not exist

the heavens are but a  mist

In the minds of us all

and we blame the mockingbird.

Poem 3

- A Foreign Shore

 

I walked along a shore

on a coastline very foreign

the breeze was cool, whats more

The sands felt like a safe haven.

For here was a real serenity

from the rat race of modernity.

In a time gone past not ancient

A country prospers, still pleasant.

The palm trees along the sands

Were like any of foreign lands

Yet all around was a radiant glow

Of people busy, going to and fro

That foreign shore is changed

No longer sail the dhows on the coast

The land and people are enstranged

No one shares a toast

Yet for all we are proud of here

Life is shallow, no one has a care

Life is still worthy there.

A few words about the photographs above.  They are digital copies of the photographs I took in the 1990's with old 35mm cameras.  I found them in my possession and took a digital photograph and cropped them.

 

The first photo you see above is of the Brighton Pavilion in the 1990's.  The photo immediately below is of a cactus plant, a huge one, taken in Lanzarote in the Canaries in 1995. 

 

I hope the reader likes these images.  This website is mainly for my fiction and poetry but I thought a few old photographs would do no  harm.

Travel Notes

 

During the last week of March 2010, I fulfilled a long term ambition to travel to the USA.  I chose Boston, Massachusets due to that city being the resting place of John, Robert and Edward Kennedy.  But even more because of the Rock music band 'Boston'.  The words of their hit 'More than a Feeling' often echo through my mind.  Then also there is that song 'Massachusets' sung by the Bee Gees.

 

At Boston Logan Airport, I began to feel panicky when at the immigration point it was pointed out to me that a few details had been missing on my immigration (visitors) card, and that it was therefore useless.  Due to this  omission, I was asked searching and difficult question and had to undergo two passport checks as well, before I was allowed to enter the city of Boston.

 

During my holiday, I often visited the park and the memories of all those Park Rangers I had seen in photographs during my adolescence in the magazines such as National Geographic, came alive.  One friendly Park Ranger had a brief conversation with me and I learnt he was of Russian origin.  Another adolescent memory was of a triple decker train I saw during my journey by Metro to the JFK Museum.  I sadly thought that perhaps I ought to have lived in the USA all these many years, perhaps, perhaps.

 

While visiting the shops and cafes I made good acquaintances with the staff at one Bolocco cafe and those staff at Barnes and Noble bookshop.  I would suggest a visit to Boston for anyone wishing to visit the USA.

Boston Visit