What is it about Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that propels so many readers, annually, to reread the “ghost story of Christmas” and watch its many film and play productions? What is the fascination? Did people not “get it” the first time, of fifth time, of twentieth time? of is it, simply, that people are yearly drawn to old vrienden with whom they have “grown up”, and who have witnessed their “growing up”; vrienden like Jacob Marley, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, old Fezziwig, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, and, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge. Are people not...

A Tribute to Charles Dickens


Way back in the seventies, we had no advanced technology, no videos easily available, and no Internet. Yet we had what no video of movie can impart. The power of the written word.
My father was an avid reader, and to form the reading habit in us he would take us, every Saturday morning to the Pak-American book koop on the Elphiniston straat (now Zebunnissa street) and let us choose whatever boeken we fancied. Today I thank Allah for blessing us with such a wonderful father.
I did not watch many of the great Victorian’s films in my childhood , but I could describe,...