TANGERANG,INDONESIA: Each staccato rat-a-tat-tat of the laser firing an intense beam at the elaborate red, green and black dragon on Taufiq Hidayat’s arm is, he prays, bringing him closer to God.
The shirtless, slender 30-year-old says he got his back, an arm and a leg tattooed to “look cool” back in the day when “I was a gang member, a thug at the market.”
These days, Hidayat has a newfound zeal for Islam that includes the conviction that Muslims should not alter the body that God gave them. He became so desperate to remove the tattoos that he once applied caustic soda, scarring his arm.
Laser removal, which takes repeated treatment and may not be completely successful but is safer than other methods, was out of the question because it costs thousands of dollars for tattoos as extensive as Hidayat’s.
Since his self-mutilation, Hidayat has chanced upon a clinic west of the capital, Jakarta, that is offering laser removal for free, on one condition: While being zapped, patients must read and learn by heart Surah Ar-Rahman, the 55th chapter of the Qur’an about God’s gifts to man.
As a clinic worker aimed the white laser wand at Hidayat’s skin, blasting the color pigments with its penetrating light, he stared intently at his smartphone, reciting some of the 78 Ar-Rahman verses.
“Now I have a wife and a daughter. Sometimes she buys snacks that come with tattoo stickers that she applies to her skin. I said, ‘Don’t do it. It’s not good for you.’ And she replies, ‘But you have a lot of tattoos. I wanna be like Daddy.’ And in that moment I felt sad,” said Hidayat, tears welling in his eyes.
He is among about 1,000 people who have signed up for free tattoo removal, say organizers of the program. About 200 people have finished or are still being treated and others are on a waiting list.
One of the instigators of the program, community activist Ahmad Zaki, first began offering tattoo removal several years ago to young punk rockers in Java who wanted to “berani hijrah” — dare to move closer to God.
Sometimes they had attempted to remove the tattoos in dangerous ways, with chemicals or slashing their skin with razors, he said.
The idea for the clinic in Tangerang grew from a discussion between Zaki and Rizki Sari, a dermatologist who was a high school friend. Zaki said he and other activists collected about $8,000 in donations that helped Sari’s clinic buy two lasers. News about the clinic has spread quickly, thanks in part to a “Dare to Hijrah” Instagram account.
“People with tattoos might think that it’s art, culture or personal identity, but the community thinks otherwise,” said Zaki, who also runs a religious charity sponsored by a local bank. “It’s always false gods, satanic, sexual images, and that’s not good.”
Tattooing has lost much of its stigma in Western societies, becoming more or less mainstream, but in some Asian cultures it remains strongly associated with gangs and criminality. In addition to the religious prohibitions in Muslim-majority Indonesia, ideas about tattoos also reveal oppressive attitudes toward women, who if tattooed can be labeled as promiscuous or disreputable and not worth marrying.
Sri Novianti, who has a large red rose tattooed on one hand, Donald Duck drawings on her fingers and Powerpuff Girls and a ghostly tree on her arms, became a tattooist after graduating from high school because “for me tattoos are like art.”
But the 19-year-old now wears a face-covering veil and all-encompassing clothing and wants her tattoos removed because she feels Indonesian men treat her with respect when she is fully covered.
“I saw the eyes of men and boys no longer looking at me in a disgusting way,” she said. “Suddenly, for the first time I felt respected. I wanted to keep wearing the hijab, and I felt like I was a different person, an honorable woman.”
The tattoos also caused difficulties at her mosque whenever she performed ablutions before praying.
“Many women seem shocked and cannot accept my presence because of my tattoos,” Novianti said.
Sari, the dermatologist, said those accepted for laser treatment are ardent about getting their tattoos removed because the stigma and burden they experience prevents them from fully practicing their religion.
One participant, she said, had tried to iron his own skin in a misguided attempt to remove tattoos.
“Can you imagine the agonizing pain? That’s how badly they want their tattoos removed,” she said.
Fuad Ahmadi said he got his first tattoo — biomechanical images and his father’s birth date — done by friends after he graduated from junior high school. Now 22, he said he’s tried calcium hydroxide and other chemicals to remove that and five other tattoos.
“When I die, I want myself clean,” he said as he waited at the clinic. “God gave me clean skin and I ruined it.”
Indonesia clinic gives relief to Muslims with tattoo regrets
Indonesia clinic gives relief to Muslims with tattoo regrets
Meaty issue: German political party calls for €4.90 price cap on doner kebabs
- Die Linke appeals to government as price of national favorite hits €10 in some cities
- Scheme would cost taxpayer about €4bn
LONDON: German political party Die Linke has urged the government to cap the price of a much loved food item — the doner kebab.
The party has proposed providing daily vouchers to households that would limit prices to €4.90 ($5.28) and €2.90 for young people under an initiative known as Donerpreisbremse.
The scheme is projected to cost the government about €4 billion.
Introduced after the Second World War by Turkish immigrants who adapted the dish to suit local tastes, the doner kebab is a national favorite in Germany, with an estimated 1.3 billion consumed annually. But their soaring price has become a hot-button political issue.
Die Linke said the cost of a doner kebab had reached €10 in some cities, from €4 just two years ago.
“For young people right now it is an issue as important as where they will move when they leave home,” said Hanna Steinmuller, a lawmaker with the Greens party.
“I know it’s not an everyday issue for many people here … but I think as voter representatives we are obliged to highlight these different perspectives.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was famously confronted by a voter last year who demanded he “speak with Putin … I’m paying €8 for a doner.”
With public pressure mounting, Scholz recently acknowledged on social media that “everywhere I go, mostly by young people, I get asked if there should be a price cap for doner kebabs.”
Despite the appeals, the chancellor rejected the proposal, citing the impracticality of price controls in a free market economy.
Despite its humble origins as a street food, the doner kebab has become an unexpected point of political focus.
Last month, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sparked controversy when on a visit to Turkiye he gifted 60 kg of kebab meat from Berlin to Istanbul in what some called a clumsy attempt to symbolize the strong cultural ties between the two nations.
A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane
- Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey
KYIV, Ukraine: A 98-year-old woman in Ukraine who escaped Russian-occupied territory by walking almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane has been reunited with her family days after they were separated while fleeing to safety.
Lidia Stepanivna Lomikovska and her family decided to leave the frontline town of Ocheretyne, in the eastern Donetsk region, last week after Russian troops entered it and fighting intensified.
Russians have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
“I woke up surrounded by shooting all around — so scary,” Lomikovska said in a video interview posted by the National Police of Donetsk region.
In the chaos of the departure, Lomikovska became separated from her son and two daughters-in-law, including one, Olha Lomikovska, injured by shrapnel days earlier. The younger family members took to back routes, but Lydia wanted to stay on the main road.
With a cane in one hand and steadying herself using a splintered piece of wood in the other, the pensioner walked all day without food and water to reach Ukrainian lines.
Describing her journey, the nonagenarian said she had fallen twice and was forced to stop to rest at some points, even sleeping along the way before waking up and continuing her journey.
“Once I lost balance and fell into weeds. I fell asleep … a little, and continued walking. And then, for the second time, again, I fell. But then I got up and thought to myself: “I need to keep walking, bit by bit,’” Lomikovska said.
Pavlo Diachenko, acting spokesman for the National Police of Ukraine in the Donetsk region, said Lomikovska was saved when Ukrainian soldiers spotted her walking along the road in the evening. They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.
“I survived that war,’ she said referring to World War II. “I had to go through this war too, and in the end, I am left with nothing.
“That war wasn’t like this one. I saw that war. Not a single house burned down. But now – everything is on fire,” she said to her rescuer.
In the latest twist to the story, the chief executive of one of Ukraine’s largest banks announced on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the bank would purchase a house for the pensioner.
“Monobank will buy Lydia Stepanivna a house and she will surely live in it until the moment when this abomination disappears from our land,” Oleh Horokhovskyi said.
Amazon Purr-rime: Cat accidentally shipped to online retailer
- Galena was found safe by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center after vanishing from her home in Utah
LOS ANGELES: A curious cat that sneaked into an open box was shipped across the United States to an Amazon warehouse after its unknowing owners sealed it inside.
Carrie Clark’s pet, Galena, vanished from her Utah home on April 10, sparking a furious search that involved plastering “missing” posters around the neighborhood.
But a week later, a vet hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Los Angeles got in touch to say the cat had been discovered in a box — alongside several pairs of boots — by a warehouse worker at an Amazon center.
“I ran to tell my husband that Galena was found and we broke down upon realizing that she must have jumped into an oversized box that we shipped out the previous Wednesday,” Clark told KSL TV in Salt Lake City.
“The box was a ‘try before you buy,’ and filled with steel-toed work boots.”
Clark and her husband jetted to Los Angeles, where they discovered Amazon employee Brandy Hunter had rescued Galena — a little hungry and thirsty after six days in a cardboard box, but otherwise unharmed.
“I could tell she belonged to someone by the way she was behaving,” said Hunter, according to Amazon.
“I took her home that night and went to the vet the next day to have her checked for a microchip, and the rest is history.”
What did people eat before agriculture? New study offers insight
- Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate
WASHINGTON: The advent of agriculture roughly 11,500 years ago in the Middle East was a milestone for humankind — a revolution in diet and lifestyle that moved beyond the way hunter-gatherers had existed since Homo sapiens arose more than 300,000 years ago in Africa.
While the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from the period preceding this turning point has made the diet of pre-agricultural people a bit of a mystery, new research is now providing insight into this question. Scientists reconstructed the dietary practices of one such culture from North Africa, surprisingly documenting a heavily plant-based diet.
The researchers examined chemical signatures in bones and teeth from the remains of seven people, as well as various isolated teeth, from about 15,000 years ago found in a cave outside the village of Taforalt in northeastern Morocco. The people were part of what is called the Iberomaurusian culture.
Analysis of forms — or isotopes — of elements including carbon, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur and strontium in these remains indicated the type and amount of plants and meat they ate. Found at the site were remains from different edible wild plants including sweet acorns, pine nuts, pistachio, oats and legumes called pulses. The main prey, based on bones discovered at the cave, was a species called Barbary sheep.
“The prevailing notion has been that hunter-gatherers’ diets were primarily composed of animal proteins. However, the evidence from Taforalt demonstrates that plants constituted a big part of the hunter-gatherers’ menu,” said Zineb Moubtahij, a doctoral student in archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
“It is important as it suggests that possibly several populations in the world already started to include substantial amount of plants in their diet” in the period before agriculture was developed, added archeogeochemist and study co-author Klervia Jaouen of the French research agency CNRS.
The Iberomaurusians were hunter-gatherers who inhabited parts of Morocco and Libya from around 25,000 to 11,000 years ago. Evidence indicates the cave served as a living space and burial site.
These people used the cave for significant portions of each year, suggesting a lifestyle more sedentary than simply roaming the landscape searching for resources, the researchers said. They exploited wild plants that ripened at different seasons of the year, while their dental cavities illustrated a reliance on starchy botanical species.
Edible plants may have been stored by the hunter-gatherers year-round to guard against seasonal shortages of prey and ensure a regular food supply, the researchers said.
These people ate only wild plants, the researchers found. The Iberomaurusians never developed agriculture, which came relatively late to North Africa.
“Interestingly, our findings showed minimal evidence of seafood or freshwater food consumption among these ancient groups. Additionally, it seems that these humans may have introduced wild plants into the diets of their infants at an earlier stage than previously believed,” Moubtahij said.
“Specifically, we focused on the transition from breastfeeding to solid foods in infants. Breast milk has a unique isotopic signature, distinct from the isotopic composition of solid foods typically consumed by adults.”
Two infants were among the seven people whose remains were studied. By comparing the chemical composition of an infant’s tooth, formed during the breastfeeding period, with the composition of bone tissue, which reflects the diet shortly before death, the researchers discerned changes in the baby’s diet over time. The evidence indicated the introduction of solid foods at around the age of 12 months, with babies weaned earlier than expected for a pre-agricultural society.
North Africa is a key region for studying Homo sapiens evolution and dispersal out of Africa.
“Understanding why some hunter-gatherer groups transitioned to agriculture while others did not can provide valuable insights into the drivers of agricultural innovation and the factors that influenced human societies’ decisions to adopt new subsistence strategies,” Moubtahij said.
Palestinian prisoner in Israel wins top fiction prize
- The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli
ABU DHABI: Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, jailed 20 years ago in Israel, won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction on Sunday for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
The award of the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi.
The prize was accepted on Khandaqji’s behalf by Rana Idriss, owner of Dar Al-Adab, the book’s Lebanon-based publisher.
Khandaqji was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Nablus in 1983, and wrote short stories until his arrest in 2004 at the age of 21.
He was convicted and jailed on charges relating to a deadly bombing in Tel Aviv, and completed his university education from inside jail via the Internet.
The mask in the novel’s title refers to the blue identity card that Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, finds in the pocket of an old coat belonging to an Israeli.
Khandaqji’s book was chosen from 133 works submitted to the competition.
Nabil Suleiman, who chaired the jury, said the novel “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism.”
Since being jailed Khandaqji has written poetry collections including “Rituals of the First Time” and “The Breath of a Nocturnal Poem.”
He has also written three earlier novels.
