What Hapoened To Nick Berry

The Return of Joseph

Ahmed is Egyptian and Muslim, is a hairdresser here in Marsa Dubai and as I pass the razor on the skull tells me how beautiful it is Christmas. Do not go home for five years, no vacation of three, is homesick, he tells me that Christmas here in Europe reminds him of Ramadan as a child in his country. A sense of family and community since we is early in the morning to pray together, through the joy of fasting during the day until evening, when the iftar collect the precious fruit of a day of preparation and friends get together for dinner.

It 's almost Christmas. For over a year living here, more or less in the desert and today - is also guilty of Ahmed - the thought of the Nativity me like a breeze through, raising veil on its way. Up there you among laden trees, nativity snow and a fat man who goes around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer. I look out here and I see Christmas as it was, as it should be: wind and desert, donkeys, goats and camels, some bush thin, pale green between the sand and rocks.

The Good News is a record of many years ago, before there was me. A disc made of vinyl, a record of Fabrizio de Andrè. This piece is called The Return of Joseph and in the original version begins with arpeggios of lutes and percussion Bedouin Arabs. In the version of PFM instead there are finger picking guitar and echoes of far west. And then there Fabrizio with his deep voice that says Christmas.

Stars, since sunset,
contend the sky in droves,

lights meticulous

teaching the night.

you remember Jesus? The one with the robe, the one in Palestine, one of the forty days in the desert dates, locusts and bitter water of the oasis. What goes around on a donkey, the one between the fish hung out to dry on the shore of a lake that has left the feathers between the rocks of a mountain just called him dry gholgota the skull. ;

A donkey from the same distance,

companion of your return,

marks the distance

along the dying of the day.

An Arab, at least much more Arabic than we think. Arabic if not in blood, in the territory. Arab life which he lived, the dust trampled on, the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink.

In your eyes, the desert,

an expanse of dust, tiny fragments

the effort of nature.

the other day Australians have asked me how to see the desert. I told him to take a taxi and take the lead track for camel races. It 'an oval in the sand, near the camel market, twenty minutes out of town on the road to Al Ain. Past the shipyards in the suburbs then almost without realizing it enters a landscape of dunes, more and more majestic. Around several farms. camels graze in the wild and when you look against the red sky of late afternoon are a magic show. I get lost in thought and in the meantime Fabrizio goes precisely to end up on that line on the Bedouins, who mentions them, but incumbent presence in the verses and harmonies.

Men Sand
profiles have murderers,

locked in silence

of a prison without boundaries.

apocryphal gospels, Arabic, Armenian, Byzantine. Jesus in Islam is Isah, who announced the news, second only to the prophet Mohammed , even more great Ibrahim (Abraham ) Father of all men. In the Qur'an Isah is not crucified, just as Muhammad died and ascended to heaven. And one day return. In return, Catholics continue to believe Muhammad (peace be upon him) like a dangerous creep.

Smell of Jerusalem,

your hand caresses the design

d 'a doll lean

carved wood.

Enter the keyboards and delivers the sound of the sky above the dunes, the breath of the desert. Church organs, carpets in majlih . The drums mark the time when Burak , The flying horse of Mohammed, took him from Jerusalem to Mecca, in the night.

In PFM Francone Mussida without running your fingers on the guitar, and I'm immediately meeting days in high school, turntable stereo in the bedroom , cold winters, bushy hair and tight sweaters. Each note is in a very specific place on his strings and between the keys that anyone who has tried knows, knows the trouble to seek them with your fingertips that hurt. But this guitar it comes out smooth and powerful from the amplifiers: just be Mussida Francone, the strong chin and white-haired even ahead of time.

then slows the donkey, camels calm down, the musicians are resting. In the original version of the violins come who get to play as they had been dragged from them on purpose to finish the job. Fabrizio left alone, bent on the guitar with a fringe that covers half his face as Captain Harlock and again the refrain: a ballad that runs throughout the disc, which here is called The Breath of the Desert but before, when it was still called The Dream of Mary , on the same notes he said:

And you, piano, fingers posasti
edge of her forehead:

old when caress

are afraid to make too strong.

I feel the hand of my father, his great hand, hot, a bit 'rough and strong passing on my face as a child. It is not simply remember, I feel that the hand , I get the feeling on the skin, I'm happy and I get emotional.

Christmas is about memories and these are my memories this year. This piece is an important man, this piece is for my father.

Merry Christmas