Blog

I was exhausted when I woke up this morning (thanks to a teething nine-month-old) but then I saw this, and felt ready to embrace the day. It’s a free e-book called Glossodahlia. On its pages, strange and wonderful plants blossom from battered, retro tins and cans. The flowers are taken from the pages of the Voynich manuscript, a 500-year-old text filled with drawings and writings in a mysterious language that is either a hoax, or one of the most ingenious codes ever.

Here’s how author Tarek Chemaly describes his book:

The Voynich manuscript has been decoded. Its flowers have given up their secret. They speak in tongues – glossolalia. And they tell stories of brokenhearted cosmic lovers and of a retired intergalactic bureaucrat as she tends to her garden once baking is done.

I love how Chemaly mixes the mystery and romance of a faraway galaxy with the comforting smell of home. It makes me think that the human imagination is a wonderful thing.

[Thanks to the blog Cipher Mysteries, where I saw the link to Glossodahlia.]

Last night, after days of anti-government protest, Egypt’s army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, with the apparent blessing of the people. To me, the events seemed hard to understand. After fighting so hard for democracy in the first place, why were the Egyptian people so happy for the army to step in? No matter how disaffected they were with the president they chose, why not simply vote him out at the next election? This morning I spoke to Yehia Gad, professor of genetics at the National Research Center in Cairo (known for studying the DNA of the Egyptian royal mummies). He has been demonstrating against Morsi and supports the army move, so I asked him to tell me why:

This is not a coup d’etat. It is the execution of the people’s will. Fifteen million people were on the streets, that’s three times more than in Mubarak’s time. They have been demonstrating in the streets to oppose the Muslim brotherhood.

I was one of the people who elected Morsi. I voted for a liberal socialist the first time, but in the second round, it was an old regime general versus Morsi. I didn’t want the old system to come back, so I voted for Morsi.

But the past year has been really horrible. Morsi made some constitutional declarations against the judicial system. He withheld the Supreme Court from convening to make a decision about the eligibility of the National Assembly. There were some demonstrations, and police brutality. The Muslim Brotherhood withdrew all agreements with other political parties. They were transferring the whole government system according to their supporters.

For example, they appointed a local governor who was a member of the Islamic group that carried out the Luxor massacre in 1997. The people were enraged. They didn’t let him in the governor’s building. They were demonstrating until a few days before 30 June, then he resigned without ever entering the building.

Another problem was Morsi’s response to the Ethiopian government official about the Nile dam. He sat on air, threatening Ethiopia. That’s a real problem with national strategy.

Morsi has also described other sects in Islam as a word meaning “impure”. It’s a really bad word. We are all Muslims. But the Muslim Brotherhood uses discriminatory terms all the time. This is fascism.

That’s why the people revolted. Google’s lowest estimation of the number of people who demonstrated was 14.7 million. Some estimates say it was up to 30 million. That’s in a country of 85-90 million people. If you take out the very old and young, that’s a third to a half of the population out on the streets.

I had a quarrel with my nephew last night. He has been in Germany the last two years, and didn’t comprehend how the army could have made a move like this with the support of the people. I have no great sympathy with the army, but they were executing the people’s will.

I told him that no fascist rule ever went away with peaceful demonstrations. It always takes force. If we had let them stay three years until the end of Morsi’s term – I think we would have ended up in a cycle like pre-war Germany. He was that bad. The Muslim Brotherhood had a plan for the whole region, not just Egypt. Imagine if Hitler could have been aborted early. That’s what we did.

The army has supported the people, and the transformations are according to the constitution. It says that if the president dies or something happens, the presidency temporarily goes to the Supreme Court president. That’s what is happening now.

The fanatical Islamists seem enraged, but most of the people are relieved. I’m not rejoicing like the first time, however. I know there is a lot of work to be done. I’m not as naïve as before. I’m feeling serene happiness rather than wild rejoicing like after Mubarak. This has been proof to me on a personal level that the path to democracy is long and laborious.

Today, I’m going to work. I’ve been striking and demonstrating all week. But this morning I’m back to work at the National Research Center. I’m a full professor there, peer reviewing grant applications. I hate politics! I’m a scientist.

The last two and a half years has been a vivid period in my life; a rollercoaster ride. But I’m full of hope. We are going to have early elections. The demonstrations on 30 June were asking for that. But ultimately we don’t want a system relying on this or that person. Egypt has been swaying back and forth from one leader to another – from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak to Morsi. We need to start building institutions. We need strong institutions that can lay the foundation of a democratic, friendly Egypt.

“We started cleaning around the shaft mouth of tomb KV40,” Egyptologist Susanne Bickel told a rapt audience at the Ancient World conference in London yesterday. “And then we fell into something new.”

That “something new” turned out to be the first new tomb to be unearthed in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings since the treasure-filled rooms of Tutankhamun in 1922 (a chamber found in 2006 is thought be a burial cache rather than a tomb). And its inhabitant was still inside. Bickel’s find was reported in January last year, but it was fascinating to hear her speak about the moment of discovery, so I’ve summarised her talk here. [Read more…] about The discovery of tomb KV64

King Tutankhamun is famously the only Egyptian pharaoh who still occupies his original tomb in the Valley of the Kings, and since 2007 his mummy has been proudly displayed in a smart, glass case.

What’s less well known, however, is that this isn’t the whole King Tut: a tiny piece of his mummy was removed in 1968 and flown to Liverpool. When researching my book about Tutankhamun’s mummy, The Shadow King, I couldn’t resist tracking it down. [Read more…] about A long-lost piece of King Tut

Earlier this week I wrote a blog post for the Guardian, explaining why I chose to give birth to my second child at home under independent care. I had been accused – as women who give birth at home often are – of endangering my baby’s life for my own birth experience.

Critics of home birth tend to focus on the risk that a baby might die if anything goes wrong during labour. Actually, I pointed out, trials suggest that for most women, the death rate for babies is no higher at home than in hospital. But even for those who face an increased risk (first time mothers, for example, or women with a previous c-section, like me), the headline risk across a population is not the whole story. It needs to be interpreted based on a woman’s individual circumstances, and balanced against a range of other dangers (there are risks for giving birth in hospital too).

This is a pertinent debate right now because the UK’s independent midwives – who work outside the NHS – are under threat. Whereas the NHS takes a strict one-size-fits-all approach to birth and has a high rate of medical intervention, independent midwives help women to make decisions about birth based on their own individual priorities and risks, and support them where possible to give birth for themselves (often, but not always, at home). They offer valuable choices, particularly for so-called high-risk women, but a change of law in October threatens to leave them unable to practice.

Of course I’m not saying that everyone should have a home birth, but simply that risk analysis is a personal thing and dependent on individual circumstances. Women and their partners who choose to give birth at home are not reckless or selfish, and are quite capable of weighing up many competing factors to decide what’s best for them and their babies.

In response to my post I received this email from a US-based father – and risk analyst – whose wife gave birth at home. It’s the kind of calculation that many parents-to-be go through, even if we aren’t able to express it as explicitly and articulately as this:

Risk analysis is my job.  I do data driven risk assessments within an aviation context.  And for me, risk reduction was the main reason I supported my wife’s decision to have a homebirth (for a lot of the reasons you discussed in your article).  Our midwife was upfront about the fact that there was a complication which had no warning, and it would be better to already be in the hospital.  However, that risk was less than the risks I saw with going to a hospital.

• The risk that an overworked hospital staff would be more likely to commit a medical error than our two midwives who were scheduling three deliveries per month. Preventable medical errors is the sixth leading cause of death in America, and we felt more comfortable trusting the midwife model of care than having our birth attended by a surgeon.
• The risk that my wife would be more likely to experience complications in a brightly-lit, non-private, unfamiliar, hurried medical environment.
• The risk of accepting a c-section rate more than 20 times higher than our midwife’s c-section rate, with an accompanying maternal death rate 2-3 times higher (depending on the research) than vaginal birth.
• The risk that we would be pressured to accept unnecessary artificial hormones and interventions (which increase the risk of cesarean).
• The risk that an intervention would be applied without our consent.
• The risk of being in a building with unfamiliar germs and bacteria (as comedian Jim Gaffigan puts it: “why didn’t you have it in that germ infested building where sick people congregate?  Didn’t your wife want to give birth in a gown someone died in yesterday?”).
• The risk that our baby would be less likely to successfully breastfeed.
• The risk that our baby would have less skin to skin time.
• The risk that we (the new parents) would be more likely to suffer sleep deprivation and therefore would be less likely to bond as well with our baby.

And we live two minutes from the nearest ambulance, and ten minutes from the nearest hospital, so it’s not like we didn’t have access to advanced medical equipment when we needed it.  In fact, after birth, my wife fainted, and the Emergency Medical crew was there within 2 minutes.  They confirmed her vitals, asked her if she wanted to go to hospital, and concurred that she was in capable hands with the midwives.

Honestly, the political situation is … sad. That’s how I feel, at least. I’m sad that women are not told about what a birth can look like. I’m sad that many couples spend more time researching a new TV set than learning about birth options. I’m sad that the medical establishment treats pregnancies as a malady to be cured rather than a miracle to be experienced. I’m sad that most obstetricians have never attended a home birth.

Our homebirth was beautiful, wonderful, and sacred.  Possibly excepting the day we got married, it was the best day of my entire life.