Karen O, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross: "Immigrant Song" (from The Girl Wit...

It made my heart race and my head pump. Brutal in a visual 'Alien on acid' sort of way with an eargasmic rendition of Led Zep's Immigrant Song by Karen O and Trent Reznor – there couldn't be a more fitting prequence to GWTDT. A truly visceral opener to a brilliant voyeuristically twisted film with a strong female lead. Lisbeth Salander is oh-so-mindful of Tarantino's kick-ass character Zoe (the real stuntwoman Zoe Bell) in Death Proof. Both gals on a mission to take out murderous, sadistic misogynistic men. It's so refreshing to see Hollywood is producing more films with compelling female characters, rather than saccharine sweet sidekicks to male actors.

Falling

The beauty of falling
Delicious with feeling
A freedom's embrace of air
Rushing against bare skin
Or a golden halo of hair
Floating in escape
A fleeting moment of time
Where nothing matters
Except the sheer rapture
Of falling.


I found an article in the Guardian about the photographer Ryan McGinley who shot this highly colour-saturated, painterly shot. Seeing it reminded me both of the Rider Tarot cards and the famous jumper from the Twin Towers – a shot of tragic significance and yet incredible fleeting beauty in a way.

Falling is so multi-layered in meaning – we fall head of heels in love, pride comes before a fall, the fall of the roman empire, so is it a negative or positive action? In these shots, it's most definitely a thing of great beauty. McGinley likens it to the poetry of chaos and that inspired me to write the short poem above about the grace and beauty of falling.

Here's what McGinley says about the shot:

Falling is a movement that endlessly fascinates me. I guess this action traces back to activities from my youth: skateboarding or diving from stages or into pools. I want to capture the feeling of weightlessness I would get jumping from a speaker and landing in a crowd, or flipping backwards off a diving board.

I love Amanda's face in this photo: she looks like she's in a trance within the chaos of the hay. I shot for about four hours, rotating models. I never know who is going to end up in the final shot, or if there will even be a successful image. I guess that's the fun part for me: finding the moment where everything lines up. Not knowing what's going to come back is like a present: it's the poetry of chaos.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So far, so good, the trailer looks promising and no one has unbelievably bad
Ameriswede accents (that so often plague remakes).

The scenery conveys a stark, chilling realism, Daniel Craig is a class actor, as is Christopher Plummer. But it really is up to Rooney Mara to deliver the same riveting attitudinal, lesbian hardcore performance as Noomi Rapace.

Out 21.12, let's see if stays true to capturing the chilling realism of the orginal – or it's killed by the Hollywood factor. I can't wait to see...

NEP review MARTIN ALVARADO

Thanks to Strictly, an appreciation of dance in all its form is on the up, and on Saturday night, Martin Alvarado’s soft, velvety tenor certainly brought the streets of Buenos Aires to the Milonga throng at Lady Bay’s, Poppy and Pint. Alvarado is hailed as one of the best Argentinean singers of the Tango genre, with finely tuned phrasing that animates his songs and a certain latino charisma that mesmerises his audiences.

Widely acclaim across Eastern and Western Europe, Alvarado has wowed audiences in the Midnight Tango show at the Birmingham Hippodrome, starring BBC Strictly Come Dancing stars, Vincent and Flavia in ‘Midnight Tango’, but he has an ardent following in Nottingham. 



His set included new tangos, old ones that have few recordings, as well as all-time classics. But, perhaps the song that stood out most was, ‘Ultimo’, because the emotive phrasing was pure Argentinian seduction. Equally talented was Martin’s bandoneon and piano player from faraway Finland, Mikko Helenius. The enigmatic Mikko played a one-off instrumental, which was a true feat of dexterity because he amazingly played both instruments simultaneously. And as an interlude, the talented Tango Milonga dancers, Nicky Parsons and Slim Ross also displayed their very impressive tango skills.

www.martinalvarado.com.ar

Naked Beauty

Lucian Freud died yesterday aged 88. He’s meant to be the nation’s favourite artist – but you either love or hate him. I fall into the first camp. I love his eye for the naked, raw truth in all its glory and very often, gory ugliness.

I’ve always been fascinated by the high campness and fetishism of performance artist, Leigh Bowery. So was Freud. His portraits of Bowery, who knew he was HIV positive, and would later die from an Aids-related illness, capture a seedy realism and destructive force.

Whereas with Kate Moss, the exact opposite is true. He paints her nude with no props whatsoever, other than her pregnant, naked beauty.

Perhaps the greatest painting of all is The Benefits Supervisor, a large Sleeping Venus. It’s raw and timeless.

Big fleshy nakedness brought out the very best in Freud.

Hail to the V!

Funny, very funny, but flawed, oh so flawed.

Now I don't advocate not washing, but Napoleon didn't return to Josephine because her cradle of civilisation smelt like a bloody rosegarden. He asked her not to wash 'til he got home from battling it out with the Russians. And in medieval times, it would have been extremely hard to wash around that damn chafing chastity belt. As for the Egyptians...where did they wash their nile deltas safely with all those asps around?

Anyways, attraction is carnal and based on smell and eau naturale is good and sexy and as we gals know, anything that's floral and overperfumed is a guaranteed thrush giver. But for some reason, the Americans are obsessed with body wash this and douche that. While we Brits are not quite so uptight about using the same wash for the northern and southern hemispheres.

Will Summer's Eve go down well over here? No, but it did make me titter!

People Power

It's working...first there was a trickle led by Ford. Now there's a rush of brands stampeding towards NOTW exit gate. Big brands know they cannot be associated with such dirty deeds or their customers will boycott them too.

Power to the people, we can condemn with our voices and vote with our feet by walking into the newsagents and not buying NOTW (not that I do anyway). Anyway, thank you Roy Greenslade for your 5 action tips:


1. Boycott the paper. Treat it just as the people of Merseyside did when The Sun ran its infamous Hillsborough story in 1989 following the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters.

2. Pressure advertisers and media buyers not to buy space in the News of the World and to withdraw ads they've already booked.

In last Sunday's issue, the advertisers included Tesco, Aldi, Currys, the Body Shop and Xtra-vision.


3. Back the call for an independent public inquiry into the whole hacking affair. It will be officially launched tomorrow at a meeting in the Lords.

Among the organisers are media academics, lawyers, MPs and peers. More information will be found soon on the hackinginquiry.org website.

There are so many aspects to this saga that require proper investigation: the roles of the paper and two police forces; the activities of various private investigators; the response of the Press Complaints Commission; and the relationship between the paper's publisher, News International, and senior politicians.

4. Demand to know who has been, and is, paying the legal expenses of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was jailed for intercepting voicemail messages on behalf of the News of the World.

News International has consistently refused to confirm or deny that it is funding Mulcaire. Note clauses 15 and 16 of the editors' code of practice, which is the PCC's "bible". So...

5. Ask the PCC if it has inquired of News Int whether it, or any of its associated companies, has been responsible for paying the legal fees of a convicted man? If it has not, why not? And is it therefore time that it did so?

Arty Bollocks Generator

Arty Bollocks Generator http://bit.ly/mRAal6

Generate your own arty bollockschtick statement here for free, and if you don't like it, generate another one. For use with funding applications, exhibitions, curriculum vitae, websites ...It's a stroke of genius by Creative Mentor David James Ross and Joke de Winter - inspired Derby boys...Derby needs you badly!


My work explores the relationship between acquired synesthesia and emotional memories.

With influences as diverse as Wittgenstein and Frida Kahlo, new combinations are created from both explicit and implicit textures.

Ever since I was a teenager I have been fascinated by the traditional understanding of relationships. What starts out as hope soon becomes corrupted into a cacophony of lust, leaving only a sense of nihilism and the chance of a new reality.

As shifting forms become transformed through emergent and personal practice, the viewer is left with a glimpse of the edges of our future.
My work explores the relationship between the body and urban spaces.

Gil Scott-Heron RIP

I was sad to read about the death of one of my musical heroes – Gil Scott Heron, born 1 april 1949, died 27 May 2011 aged just 62. What a great man you were, poet, musician, author and activist.

He died in a NYC hospital after a flight from England. No cause of death has been officially released, but his body was ravaged from decades of alcohol and drug abuse, and in 2008 Scott-Heron said that he had been HIV positive for years. He was born in Chicago in 1949 and raised from age 2 by his grandmother in Tennessee after his parents separated. He seemed to predict his own death on INH, saying:

"Yeah the doctors don't know, but New York was killing me/ Bunch of doctors coming 'round, they don't know/ That New York is killing me/ Yeah, I need to go home and take it slow in Jackson, Tennessee."

After his parents split, Gil moved to Lincoln, Tennessee, to live with his grandmother, Lily Scott, a civil rights activist and musician whose influence on him was indelible. He recalled her in the track On Coming from a Broken Home on his 2010 comeback album I'm New Here as:

"absolutely not your mail-order, room-service, typecast black grandmother."

She bought him his first piano from a local undertaker's and introduced him to the work of the Harlem Renaissance novelist and jazz poet Langston Hughes, whose influence would resonate throughout his entire career.

As a result, he became increasingly politicised and made B Movie in 1981. It was a thunderous, nine-minute critique of Reaganomics, that stands out as the most representative track of this period. I love how he puts it:

"I remember what I said about Reagan... meant it. Acted like an actor... Hollyweird. Acted like a liberal. Acted like General Franco when he acted like governor of California, then he acted like a Republican. Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for president. And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate."

RIP you wise, beautiful man.

Mariza - Primavera - Lisbon -live

What a voice – I will always remember that she sang Primavera for me upon request in a small, intimate, candlelit Fado club in Lisbon. Alas I cannot find any performances there only this concert.


Todo o amor que nos prendera
Como se fora de cera
Se quebrava e desfazia
Ai funesta primavera
Quem me dera, quem nos dera
Ter morrido nesse dia

E condenaram-me a tanto
Viver comigo meu pranto
Viver, viver e sem ti
Vivendo sem no entanto
Eu me esquecer desse encanto
Que nesse dia perdi

Pão duro da solidão
É somente o que nos dão
O que nos dão a comer
Que importa que o coração
Diga que sim ou que não
Se continua a viver

Todo o amor que nos prendera
Se quebrara e desfizera
Em pavor se convertia
Ninguém fale em primavera
Quem me dera, quem nos dera
Ter morrido nesse dia

Woke Up This Morning

The horror began when she walked down the aisle
The cereal one in the Coop
He was all suburban Al Pacino cop suit and swagger
But he played lead role in Bad Lieutenant
And the demon darkness reminded her of dad

A tisket, a tasket, he put her in his basket
She was putty slutty in his hands
Was soon push me, pull you toxic
In a probably, maybe, meet you
Then cancel, lastminute sorta way

It drove her exorcist mad with desire
She spat cat-like and trouble-slept with hate
I warned her – everyone warned her
Thrusting his forked tongue down her throat
And his feral manhood in her hand

He was Louis Cyphre to her soul
An egg poised between long, blackened
thumb and forefinger
Salaciously flexing and squeezing
So tempting to crush – to mush.

Brian Jonestown Massacre - Wisdom

Detritus

I came across a poem I wrote after the floods here in Nottingham a few years agos and how I related the debris on a minor scale to the macro scale of the Thai tsunami. It still has relevance and resonance in the light of the Jananese tsunami. And if you feel moved there's a link to donate below.

Detritus

Last night I dreamt about the river breach
Branches washing in and out
Lapping against REM consciousness.

Holme Pierrepont was strictly no-go
But I climbed the fence
Fascinated by the graveyard of flotsam and jetsam

Broken trees threaded wire fencing
Abandoned trainers and empty containers
Littered the tide line like skin scum in a bath

Carp belly up swollen on the banks
Their pearly eyes opaque and glassy
The air heavy with the smell of putrefaction

I got to thinking about the Tsunami
And how it had undone so many
Some 275,000 bodies all washed up

The randomness of being in heaven
Then sweeping, swirling hell
A seismic shift in reality

Strange how your mind ebbs and flows
In the middle of the night
Washing up the detritus of memory.

To donate go to:
www.redcross.org.uk/JapanTsunami

Sandi Thom - "Merchants and Thieves" Album Preview

My god what's wrong with me? Nothing has stirred me for so long until...Sandi Thom. How refreshing to see a multi-talented musician with such humility and reverence for her audience. And what a talent! A vocalist with impressive range, mean guitar player and man, could she make that harmonica sing. I was rocked to the core by her bluesy, rocky rhythm. Go see her. Go buy her album!

EQUALS

Filmed by Sam Taylor Wood, scripted by Jane Goodman, acted by Daniel Craig, voiceover by Dame Judy Dench. Plaudits by you.

In a year

26 women are killed by their husband, boyfriend or former partner

21,500 women lose their jobs due to pregnancy discrimination

50,000 women are rape victims

76,125 women are victims of domestic violence

And it's getting worse. At an extreme level, women are forced into arranged marriages, trafficked, conned into sexual slavery and treated like second class citizens. At a less extreme level, women lose their jobs because of their age and looks, while men emerge from the ravages of time unscathed...

Check out:
http://www.weareequals.org

WINTER'S BONE FOR OSCARS

Ye-ha for the underdog in the Oscars – Debra Granik's film, Winter's Bone.
A gritty low budget film with a hicksville mulekick to it. It's already won the Grand Jury at Sundance and should be a deserved Oscar winner. It's up for four Oscar nominations for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best actress for Jennifer Lawrence and best supporting actor for John Hawkes.

But let's see if the judges go for it's emotional edge over the likes of Social Network, Toy Story 3, The King's Speech etc. Of course I'm gunning for King's Speech – it's a great film. But wouldn't it be fantastic if another female director could make headway in Hollywood as Kathryn Bigelow did last year with Hurt Locker.

What if?

What if you were the wife/child of a suicide bomber? Would the legacy of your husband/father's mass murder haunt you forever? Would you regard your husband/father as a martyr or mass murderer? Would you always bear the sins of your husband/father?

It's an interesting question.

How would you explain what played out in the past to people you meet in the present? Undoubtedly it would make an interesting drama.

The inquests of the 7/7 Tube Bombings heard that the plot's ringleader, Mohammed Sidique Khan, left a will in which asked his wife to understand what he did.

Khan, 30, said leaving his baby daughter behind when he blew himself up on a Tube train at Edgware Road station in London was "the most difficult thing in my life". In the will, he wrote to his wife Hasina Patel: "You have been very patient with me even though I never told you what I was doing and often lied to you. I know you trusted me and for that I thank you.

"Please forgive me for the deceit, lies and my absence, it was to please Allah."

Addressing his baby son, he wrote in the will: "The most difficult thing in my life was to leave you...

"I ask you to forgive me for not being a part of your life in this world."

Pubic hair removal: The naked truth

Goya's Naked Maja - pug style by By Gwen's River City Images. Check out on Flikr.



I found this article on the Guardian website. Penned by Bidisha, it completely chimes with my thinking on the matter of 'to hair or not to hair.' Personally, I think a certain amount of pubic hair is actually rather sexy and defines us as women - not pre-pubescents. Oh, and in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. In other words, when all around have shaven havens, vive la difference and be proud of your lady garden. Read on, nod and enjoy!

Young women are doing it, and now they're being aped by their mothers. Why are we imitating porn stars and shaving our pubic hair, asks Bidisha

Pubic hair elimination. It's a small but itchy area of contention. Last month's Elle magazine and this month's Vogue contained long, unruly articles, by Avril Mair and Rachel Johnson respectively, combing through the various strands of argument for and against total pubic purging. The hot topic for winter 2011 is clear: to bare, or not to bare one's labia?

In a sympathetic mirroring of the melting Arctic glaciers, the hair around our vaginas is fast disappearing, propelled by a force even greater than climate change: pornification. First it was a light quim-trim. Then a narrow snatch-strip. Then the full-on Brazilian, plucked pudenda, Christmas goose look. Now, technological advances mean that women will soon be able to permanently annihilate their entire chocha bush and surrounding strands, for ever. Yes ladies: laser flange is here.

Women can now expose their pipi to the breeze from now until the day they die. Great.

Why would they want to? If porn told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that too? Porn has introduced a new aesthetic – perhaps as a joke or momentary experiment – and women have responded with unquestioning servility and breezy abandon. At least now we can confront the naked truth about women's submissiveness in all its stark, raw, bald reality.

Men in porn are often also fully waxed. You can see the spring branches of their willies and their little bobbling balls, outlined in their scrota like farm eggs in a chammy cloth. But men in the non-porn world are not dedicating themselves to full deforestation, writing about it in major publications as though it's a serious consideration, or putting pressure on other men to do it. Men are not as cowed, self-hating, obedient or biddable as women in this regard. They are not going to make the effort to do anything to please a woman, at the cost of their own comfort. That is something I have always respected about men. They are busy pursuing their own happiness, leaving women to fight through the thicket of their own Stockholm syndrome, perpetually pruning their pubic hair in a desperate bid to gain approval.

Will a woman really do everything she can to meet every passing fad, even if it's uncomfortable, time-consuming, irritating, expensive, troubling, humiliating? And look at the reward: intercourse with a porn-adoring male who actually loathes women's real, naked, hairy bodies?

Are women so ashamed of their bodies' natural beauty, so unaccepting of things as they are that they will do anything at all, even if it's degrading, to get some willy time? A man who withholds his attention and affection according to the follicle count of a lady's crotch doesn't deserve intimacy with a real-life woman. A man who likes a woman without pubic hair despises adult women so much that he wants us to resemble children. He should stay at home instead in front of a computer, masturbating alone to the hair-free images he reveres.

I worry about these men too, of course, those poor poonani-policing body fascists. They are now in danger of returning to a Victorian naivety. They may well believe that, like the hairless, passive and benign feminine allegories of grand masters' paintings, women naturally do not have any body hair. Upon seeing some real hair on a real woman for the first time they may well vomit or faint, or both. That is something I'd like to see: a man so dizzied by the shortfall between reality and his own ignorance that his brain can't take it and he loses consciousness.

As for the women, don't you have anything more interesting to do than dutifully coif your cassoulet? I got "cassoulet" from The Joy of Sex, by the way. It means "general musky pussy area". Check out the original 70s hand-drawn illustrations. The couple are as hairy as anything, but they look like they're having a lot of fun, fur and all.

Beat the devil

A friend just shared this with me and I'm blown away by it. It's from a series of shorts by famous directors for BMW with budgets the size of our national debt!
But hey they WERE made a while ago, when budgets were as big as ideas and CamClegg inc. weren't in power!

This short's by Tony Scott, brother of Ridley and maker of The Hunger (one of my fave films) and Top Gun, True Romance and too many other films to mention. Am loving the nod to Alan Parker's Angel Heart and the egg-peeling Louis Cyphre.

Enough of the filmic detail...Starring the salacious, outrageous, sizzling Godfather of Soul selling his to the devil so he can do the splits again is truly 'take it to the bridge!'

And hell yeah, Gary Oldman is a very honky tonk bee-el-zeebub and characteristically unhinged in showy satanic fashion. His sidekick...Machete himself – the uber hardcore Danny Trejo. And even the self-styled prince of thrash darkness, Marilyn Manson, puts in an appearance. It's uptight, outta sight - all ten minutes of it! Be inspired, be very inspired!

Splitz

We drank the trent dry
That moonbright fatal night
You and I were mortal coiled
But long shadows cast and spoiled

Reaching up celestial high
I saw clouds in your coffee
Whilst your star rose in the west
My comet was one of unrest

Diamonds were my eyes for a while
All twinkle and glimmer and light
But Charlie song chimed painful years
And that familiar, achy feeling reappeared

Women in chains in Somalia

Women in chains

This is a direct lift of today's BBC article on Al-Shebab rule in Somalia. It tells of unfathomable horrors endured by women at the hands of extremist muslim rulers. This is a regime that has now banned women from being seen in public with men - even relatives! They liberally rape, torture and kill women and children! It seems incomprehensible that in an age of satellite technology and high tech gadgetry, this medieval subjugation of women is still going on in so many places across the globe.

The UN don't want to get involved because it's such a political hot potato. So what hope have these women got if aid workers can't operate freely and are withdrawn. It's akin to Taliban rule all over again! Read this report and the accounts of women who have escaped to Yemen but suffered immeasurably and thank your lucky stars you were born free!

Amina Ahmed's letter, typed out in English by a fellow refugee, tells of a little known horror she and others endure in the tragedy that is Somalia's ongoing civil war: The rape, forced marriage and even beheading of women at the hands of the Islamist militiamen who have overrun much of their country.

"I was living with my aunt in Afgooye district of the lower Shabelle region when [a] warlord assaulted our home as a reason to marry me by force."

Her aunt tried to protect her from the man but he shot her dead.

Ms Ahmed fled next door to her neighbours, but the man followed and shot them all. Then Ms Ahmed fled, braving the perilous trip across the Gulf of Aden to reach Yemen.

"This year we have been hearing a lot about forced marriages and rapes," says a member of an aid agency working on the ground with newly arrived Somali refugees in Yemen.

Like most who spoke about the actions of the hardline Islamist al-Shabab and other militias in Somalia, he refused to have his name published, fearing reprisals against his family still living in Somalia.

The head office of the aid agency also requested their name not be published for fear of attacks on their staff members in the country.

"Women cannot move or sit outside. They can't even walk with their brother," says the aid worker.

"Unmarried women are forced to marry and if she refuses they say she's a non-Muslim. Many parents choose to send their girls away with relatives and friends so as not to be forced into marriage or raped.

"If a woman refuses a forced marriage, we have reports of them being beheaded and their head sent to their father."
Exhausted Somali refugees sit by the roadside in Bab al-Mendab in south Yemen, having arrived by boat a few hours earlier. The journey across the Gulf of Aden leaves those migrants who survive exhausted

Somalia is and remains the world's original failed state.

Since rival clans overthrew the government in 1991, civil war has consumed the country and its people.

Out of the anarchy of 15 years of warlords grew a vicious, religiously motivated militia, al-Shabab, whose control now extends over large swaths of southern and central Somalia and most of its capital.

Up to one million people have died from war, disease and famine in Somalia since 1991.

In January, the World Food Programme suspended operations in southern Somalia after al-Shabab threatened their staff.

For those who can, escape is the only hope. In the first half of this year alone the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates 200,000 Somalis fled their homes.

Those with the least money, often who have lost the most, come to Yemen. Women like Hawo Yousef.

"They hit [my husband] badly and they wanted to rape me in front of him. He tried to protect me, but unfortunately they killed him with a big knife." Mrs Yousef's letter, written about her escape from Somalia to Yemen in 2007, details the horrors she endured during that journey.

Exhausted after days and nights and a dozen militia checkpoints aboard a rickety bus from Mogadishu to Bossasso, the pirate port on Somalia's northern coast, Mrs Yousef's two youngest daughters Aisha, five, and Fadma, three, had at last fallen asleep as the thin skiff pulled out into the ocean.

But just a few hours into the journey the engine spluttered and stopped, its petrol run dry.

"The boat was swinging around and there were sharks swimming around the boat," Mrs Yousef recalls.

"People started to quarrel because they were scared. And the smugglers started to beat the people and throw them into the sea."
Map locator

Aisha and Fadma had woken and were crying; thirsty, hungry and sensing the fear of the adults around them. The smugglers lost their nerve.

"I couldn't make my children be quiet and the smugglers warned me to silence them, but I couldn't," Mrs Yousef remembers. "Finally they ripped my children away from me and threw them into the sea."

In her letter, handwritten by a fellow refugee and addressed "To Whom It May Concern", Mrs Yousef describes her feelings:

"I had no ability to take back my kids from them. And I saw my kids dying on the sea. That compelled me to be mad."

Mrs Yousef's boat drifted for 13 days and nights before help and fuel arrived. More refugees drowned just metres from Yemen's shore after being forced into the water by the smugglers

Nor did the baby that Mrs Yousef had carried in her through seven months of Somalia and 17 days of escape make it to new life in Yemen.

It died after a premature birth in the Kharaz refugee camp, a collection of concrete shelters and tents housing some 17,000 Somalis on a scorching plateau 180km (111 miles) from Yemen's port city of Aden.

With her eldest daughter Mariam, 13, staying behind in Mogadishu, Mrs Yousef was left a childless mother of four, a refugee who had lost everything to escape to a country that is among the world's poorest.

"Now I heal that wound," she writes in the letter, asking the international community for help.

"But sometimes I remember and really I am in very bad situation with no choice what to do. I have no relatives here and I hope you consider my situation. Thank. Yours. Hawo tent no:- 69pt"

But after shooing away the men gathered outside her yellow canvas tent in Kharaz she agreed to speak about the men who drove her from Somalia.

Mrs Uma's husband, a truck driver, was killed by a stray bullet in Mogadishu in June 2009.

After his death, she says her neighbour's husband came to her home to demand that she marry him.

She knew the man, but as he stood in his black and white headscarf and thick, unkempt beard, she hardly recognised him for the al-Shabab fighter he had become.

"You are already married. Go home to your wife. I am not afraid just because my husband is dead," she told him.

"If you keep refusing you can look for your head on the floor," he replied.

"He tried to attack me at home but I escaped and began spending the night at different homes," says Mrs Uma.

"But they kept finding me. My eldest daughter Zeinab was urging me to leave. So my friend gave me some money to escape."

Mrs Uma left three of her children behind. Halim and Awais, the two youngsters, would be looked after by Zeinab, their 18-year-old sister.

"I pray God to protect her," said Mrs Uma, who brought her youngest boy, seven-year-old Abdel Nasser to live with her as a refugee in Yemen.

"I feel so demoralised when I remember that. I get scared when I hear the name Shabab."

Headlining 2011

Headlining 2011

Black birds fall from sky
Spot fish die in sea
Sick sock sex killer
VAT rise thriller

Floods swamp down under
World food prices rise
Swine flu trots back
No one's alright Jack