The Star of the 300: Eapen Abrams Or "An Ode to Stationary"

Eapen Abrams, who is the accountant/book keeper where I work, won't appear on any cast lists for the new ahistorical shit-flick, The 300, but, sitting down in my cousin's basement and watching a bunch of guys in loin cloths kill Persians who look like monsters, I must admit I thought of him. Actually my first thought was: "I wonder if the British marines picked up by Iran would've liked this film..." but then I thought of Eapen Abrams. You see, the Western hang-up on the Greco-Persian wars provides the backdrop to Edward Said's Orientalism, which is where Said decided to start off. Unfortunately, it becomes very hard to read anything by Said without keeping in the back of your mind his memoir, Out of Place; now, the late Said's enchanting daughter once told me (yes, I have met her--just thought I could add that for gravitas and kudos) that "of course, a memoir is partially a work of fiction", but I don't think that extends as far as what was putting bread on the table of the young Said in Alexandria, Egypt.

One aspect of the Young Said's life which you feel comes through strongly in Out of Place is his obsessive interest in his fathers stationary business, and how the same little place could sell pencils, sharpeners and erasers and also large binding machines, copiers and printing presses.
Of course, we Arabs are more likely than most to appreciate such things since the Ottomans forbade printing in our part of the world some years ago, but that's another story. Said makes truly wonderful the world of spiral notebooks, bound ledger sheets, the smell of hot print and glue keeping volumes together and paper by the ton.

The moral of the story: Despite the Persian hordes falling on Spartan shields (I will leave discussion of the historical fallacy of this film to those with more time and patience), the real heroes of the world are the Mar Thomas Keralans who make the offices in Kuwait productive!!

Enjoy the photos, a dedication to stationary...Eapen can use the multi-purpose machine to bind and perforate entire booklets at once.



The products of the binding are universally appreciated...




Eapen loves the machine...