The name confused me. It still does a little. hath i a soul, wonder’d hath i
then saw, ihath. This is a poem sent to the author which explains the title – more of that later.
My first impressions on entering the site were of a sober looking web log. It’s very tidy. The design is uncluttered. A right hand side panel with previous posts, contacts and archives. A couple of ads at the bottom and some site statistics links. She includes adverts for her favourite books and CDs. One of the links in the contacts section didn’t work. The colour scheme is pleasant but in colours I can’t really identify through colour blindness. Oranges and browns I think. The text is readable.
Journeying around the site is straight forward enough although there isn’t a home page icon which is unhelpful. The banner contains a hint of Arabian Nights and Shehrazad’s need to tell one more story each night in order to stay alive. This is confirmed by one of the posts. There is a recently added comments section and a sparse use of links and pictures which work and are relevant to her writing.
The author of the site, Elen, is a thirty something computer programmer and resident of Vancouver, Canada. She is Iraqi and has lived in Kuwait, Israel and Scotland. She is married to a Palestinian and of Czech descent. This heritage and experience informs and drives the content of her posts.
Elen is self aware and her posts detail her experiences as an Iraqi woman in the various cultures she has lived in. The spectre of Saddam haunts her. This cultural melting pot could be an anthropologists dream.
Her web log has been in existence since last Halloween and she has posted thirty six times since. Her posts are generally long, well thought out and reasonably well written. They are often anecdotal or in a reportage style. However she has become a little more opinionated of late especially concerning the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Her recently added comment facility has seen a backlash to some of her more anti American viewpoints.
Some of Elen’s writing has been published and is noted as such, but I would not put this in the Creative Writing category. It is very much a personal journey. Now back to that title. Ihath is the voyage of uncovering, discovering and discarding. Losing yourself to find the real you and live.
I enjoyed reading all of the posts here and would recommend the blog to all open minded folk – it is probably a no go area for any lurking xenophobes. I feel it is worth a four out of five.
ihath-losing myself