For quite some time, I have been thinking of writing a blog about “Sleeping with the Enemy”.
Originally this powerful expression is the title of a 1987 book by Nancy Price. It’s probably better known for the 1991 movie with Julia Roberts (victim) and Patrick Bergin (villain).
Some will consider that this blog is a personal story. Perhaps it is but rest assured that even then it relates to a man and not a woman.
The theme for this blog came up in a conversation with a friend. She told me certain things that are worrisome to her, her children and also to me. Hence, I lent her my copy of Nancy Price’s book. The male character in this book is charming and elegant to outsiders and abusive to his wife. Sometimes you indeed feel that some people are too good to be true.
The book’s title also feels appropriate in cases in which someone who is dear to you is now sleeping with another person. You may not know that person at all but still that person is somehow labelled in your mind as the “enemy”.
Sleeping with the enemy also has historical connotations: the collaborator girls from World War 2.
Guardian: “among the cheering images following D-day, there are also shocking ones. These show the fate of women accused of “collaboration horizontale”. It is impossible to forget Robert Capa’s fallen-Madonna image of a shaven-headed young woman, cradling her baby, implicitly the result of a relationship with a German soldier”.
“The punishment of shaving a woman’s head had biblical origins. In Europe, the practice dated back to the dark ages, with the Visigoths. During the middle ages, this mark of shame, denuding a woman of what was supposed to be her most seductive feature, was commonly a punishment for adultery”. (Guardian)
The current negotiations (picture) between the Dutch, German and Turkish prime minister also feel similar to me.
Granting 6 billion euro, no visa requirement and EU membership in exchange for Turkey to only accommodate new refugees is a sheer ridiculous price. How about the existing refugees??
All of these refugees don’t even want to be in Greece or Turkey. They just want to work in Germany where they are welcome, according to the German PM. That is their dream.
The current negotiations with Turkey on refugees are selling out on European principles and do not even provide a glimpse of a solution for these self-inflicted European problems. I am convinced that voters will soon use their ballot rather than their voice to express their opinion. That will also be the result of “sleeping with the Enemy”.
Roger Hodgson – Had A Dream (Sleeping with the Enemy) – 1984 – artist, lyrics, Wiki
I don’t care what the future brings, give a damn about anything
I’d be fine if they’d just leave me alone
But it’s time, gotta take a stance ’cause I won’t get a second chance
And I know now I have to make it alone
0 Comments