A Nomadic View

Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Tragic Death of Miss Jones

Recently I stumbled over a news story that is both tragic and somewhat mysterious. Here is the Telegraph news story about the incident: http://kfc.ms/f9Vb

A 24-year old British teacher working in Abu Dhabi apparently committed suicide after her nude pictures were posted on her ex-boyfriend's Facebook account. According to her mother, Emma Jones who had worked at the International School of Choueifat in Khalifa City in Abu Dhabi since 2008, drank poisonous cleaning fluid as she feared that she could be jailed in the Muslim country over the images. Jones was discovered collapsed in her home in Khalifa City by a flat-mate with her passport in her jeans pocket and her clothes lying on her bed ready for packing.

At the inquest in Cardiff, Louis Rowlands told officers that her daughter was emotionally distressed by the photographs allegedly uploaded by her former lover, Jamie Brayley. Brayley called Rowlands' claims a "complete fantasy". Although he admitted to the inquest that he had used her computer, Brayley denied ever downloading private photographs of her.

According to Rowland's testimony, another colleague, "George" at the school had seen the photos on-line and had threatened to go to local authorities and accuse Jones of prostitution.

"Emma and George didn't get on at all." stated Mrs. Rowlands, "She said she had to get away. She was crying, she was breaking her heart. I said ‘Emma, whatever it is can't be that bad. Just come home’.”

Miss Jones told her, "I can't leave the country, they will throw me in jail."

I have read many comments in forums where this story was discussed that the problem was her choice of locations. That living as a woman in Abu Dhabi, where rights of women where presumably not respected was a factor in her suicide. And that any teacher willingly to work in such a country as that should, in the first place, have their head examined.

I would only counter that none of the articles stated that the police were, in fact, aware of the photographs. Miss Jones' reactions were based only on what she "perceived" to be a threat. As far as we can determine from the news story, it was this panic alone that led to her death. She had not been arrested, for example. She had even been brought in for questioning.

Still, there remains the question of the suicide. As a method of suicide, it certainly raises many questions and especially since, she was in possession of her passport and was clearly preparing to leave. Given the various methods to do away with oneself, drinking a caustic acid surely must be the last alternative even of the most desperate. Homicide, for the same reason, should probably be ruled out as quite implausible. Which leaves the possibility of accident.

Deputy assistant coroner Thomas Atherton said he did not believe Mr Brayley was to blame for Miss Jones’s death and said he could not be sure Miss Jones meant to kill herself and recorded an open verdict. He theorized that she may have accidentally drunk cleaning fluid from an unlabeled container, mistakenly believing it was water.

The episode certainly suggests a malevolent atmosphere at that particular school. And it doesn't surprise me. In many of the schools where I had worked, there existed a kind of hot house atmosphere where private disputes can seethe and suddenly erupt. Problems and conflict can get completely out of control and quite ugly.

Personally I have witnessed some pretty mean-spirited behavior from otherwise sociable people. One of the problems is the artificial closeness that living and working abroad can create. Imagine the worst working atmosphere you have ever encountered and then multiply it by three, adding the shared teachers' accommodations and a limited circle of social contacts. Every minor argument can be magnified and echoed. While this would be especially true in a restricted environment like Abu Dhabi, it could happen any place where the ex-pat "bubble" is so claustrophobic.

My condolences to her mother and friends.

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Sunset over Turkish Coast

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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Quentin Crisp on the British

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.

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The Fourth Horseman- A Nomadic Book Review

If you were to ask any well-informed American the date of the first biological weapon on United States' soil, he or she would be quite likely to cite the anthrax terrorist attack in Washington, D.C., New York City and Florida in the fall of 2001. This use of a weapons grade bio-organism killed five people and infected 17 others. It was, however, not the first time biological weapons were used against America and in fact, the initial use was nearly ninety years prior.

The book, The Fourth Horseman, by Robert L. Koenig, pieces together the story of Anton Casimir Dilger, an American doctor of German ancestry recruited by German intelligence as a saboteur during the First World War. His means of sabotage was through the mass-production of a a highly contagious bacteria which caused an incurable disease called glanders. This germ warfare did not target humans however, but a key component in the of any army before the age of the automobile, the horse and the mule. Dilger sent agents out with vials of the deadly bacteria to loading sites at port cities with instructions to infect as many animals as possible.

Most interesting is Dilger's transformation from a dedicated American doctor, with a love and respect for horses since his youth, to a spy and saboteur responsible for the death of thousands of animals. Step by step, Dilger as an idealist and lover of the fatherland was to become merely a desperate amoral criminal on the run. When his first assignment proved less than successful, Dilger was given sent to persuade Mexico to attack the United States, thereby thwarting- or at least, delaying American entry into the European campaign. Dilger's corruption is underlined when in Mexico City he meets, his chief rival in the field, the dangerous but extremely intelligent, Kurt Jahnke. Jahnke had been recruited to perform cruder and more spectacular operations such as munition explosions, in contrast to the what Dilger thought to be his more "sophisticated acts" of sabotage.

Against the ethical question of using biological weapons against innocent animals, one could, of course, argue that these animals were unquestionably being sent to their deaths in any case. In terms of the animal's welfare, it perhaps made little real difference whether they were to die of glanders or on the battlefield. It was the carnage of horses in the war- estimated at three-quarters of a million horses and mules were killed- that led to increased efforts at animal protection.

Ironically, before the end of the war, humankind itself was faced with a threat by contagion. From March 1918 to June 1920, the Spanish flu would spread to all corners of the world and, overshadowing the casualties of the Great War, cause the deaths of 50 to 100 million people.