SPANISH/CATALAN ESSAYIST and author Eugeni d'Ors was once in a restaurant and ordered a bottle of an expensive champagne. A young waiter, struggling to open it, only made things worse because while trying to remove the cork, he was shaking the bottle so bad that when he finally managed, most of the precious beverage burst out of the bottle and was spilled on the floor. "Sorry, sir," he said, "I just started working as a waiter and am lstill earning ." "Well, young man," D'Ors famously quipped, "you should do the experiments at home, and with a bottle of soda." He meant, of course, that some things are too expensive, or too important to play with, just to see what happens. I was reminded of this story when I read this:

Like many others, a young Fatah activist wished yesterday he could go back in time and replay the Palestinian elections all over again.

"I voted Hamas so that my own Fatah Party would be shocked and change its ways," he said, giving his name only as Mohamed, in the Palmeira cafe in Gaza City. "I thought Hamas would come second.

"But this is a game that went too far. Nobody thought Hamas would win - even them. I know lots of people who voted Hamas, who regret it now. If I could vote again, I would vote for Fatah."

[...] But it is precisely the rigour of Hamas's conservative brand of Islam that made some women in Gaza fear for their future.

"I didn't vote yesterday, now I wish I had," said Basila Nassar, out shopping with her hair clearly visible, a freedom Hamas could soon deny her. "But we will not give Hamas the chance to restrict us. We will be strong. I will never accept to wear full covering from head to toe. We will create a women's revolution if they try."

(via Clive Davis)


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