For my senior capstone, I created a weekly newsletter that appeared in the advisory memo every Thursday. The newsletter was meant to highlight military, political, and social developments in the Middle East, with some of the articles being about Africa and the U.S. I created the newsletter to bring attention to and educate my peers on news that I felt was misrepresented or misinterpreted by mainstream news outlets. Initially, I had wanted to create a finance application that would allow students to fundraise by partnering with local businesses; however, after speaking with Ms. Pahomov had suggested that I choose something that I was more passionate about, which led me to my current project. At the time, I was very interested in geopolitics. I felt frustrated with mainstream news outlets for their failure to properly represent developments globally, specifically regarding the Middle East, which was important to me as a Palestinian-American. This led me to more individual reporting and article writing, which is when I came across an Iranian journalist whom I felt inspired by, which made me choose this project.

Here’s the link to my website to read my articles. https://aayeshtahseen00.wixsite.com/tahseen-1

Here’s the link to my biblography. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bBg3IkmJ92RIseofLrwdG0tX_iN43LXIYUu0SBBYOOw/edit?usp=sharing

¨The vote is closed, Mr. McMurphy.¨ ¨Let me talk to ´em.¨ I begin to walk over to the chronics side, can’t even remember the last time I talked to the bunch but I´m desperate. One of ´em best raise their hand, they might be old but everyone likes a good ol´ ball game, better than cleaning the latrine and what not. ¨What about you buddy? You want to watch the World series? Baseball? Baseball games? Just raise that hand up there–¨ ¨Fffffffuck da wife.¨ What´s wrong with these guys man. No one likes a good old baseball game? I mean come on, just need one hand. ¨All right, forget it. You, partner, how about you? What was your name–Ellis? What do you say, Ellis, to watching a ball game on TV? Just raise your hand…¨ The nurse continues, keep on going on about how the voting is closed. Chronic or not, we´re men. I´m sure one of us would like a good ol´ game, world series. Just need one of them to raise their hands. Just one, I mean come on. I look over at the indian, he looks nervous. Can´t remember what was wrong with the guy? I think he was deaf, but I´m desperate. Deaf doesn’t mean blind, I´ḿ sure he likes a good old ball game, I mean come on for cryin’ out loud. Just one of you damn screwups, just raise your hand. Can´t let the nurse get one on me, come on, come on. ¨You, Chief, what about you?¨ I cry out. I´m not even sure he can hear me or not, If I´m honest, I´m not sure I´ve ever heard the guy talk, not a sound comes from him. But he´s been here awhile nevertheless, don´t you want a change of scenery, do indians play ball? Come on man. The nurses’ voice echoes in my mind, ¨The vote is closed.¨ ¨The vote is closed.¨ ¨The vote is closed.¨ ¨The vote is closed.¨ I look over at the chief, looks like something is stirring inside of the guy. I mean, he looks up at me, then his hand. His shoulder moves slowly, his arm bends. The guy looks reluctant, but it´ll do, just need the guy to raise his hand, and he does. ¨Good on you chief, glad one of you gentlemen had some sense.¨ I give him a slap and happily look at the nurse. She stares at the chief, like her anger switched or somethin´, redirected on the chief. And now that I think about it, isn’t this guy supposed to be deaf or somethin? How could he have heard me? These guys get some magic power or somethin´ to mind read? I look back at the television, I can see the guy´s reflection. He looks nervous, I mean, is he really deaf? Why would he be nervous? You know now that I think about it, he was the only one that really shook my hand, I mean he looked terrified like he could hear me. He looked scared too, when I was laughin´. I mean, what if this guy is some type of foney, you can hear me can´t you? I give the guy another look, he’s given a side eye to the nurse, he looks like a deer in headlights, what´s up with this guy? I look back at the nurse, her face is red.. I almost let out a laugh, good ol´ ratchet can’t seem to hide it. She´s angry, and the rest of us are watchin´ her. I was best not to let her get one up on me, now look at her. What´s up with these folk? Everyone’s starin at the nurse, I suppose we´re all thinking about it, whether this guy is really deaf or not. I mean maybe, maybe they know already, and they´re hidin’ it. I best not ask, wouldn’t want to get the little get in trouble since he´s lettin me watch the world series/

Something I wanted to include was McMurphy´s reaction to Chief Bromden raising his hand, naturally he´d be excited but I think something that has been true for the majority of the story is McMurphy´s type of heightened sense of awareness, as if he could see through people easily. That´s why I wrote about him thinking about whether the chief was really deaf. I tried to include excerpts from the book because I still wanted to keep some of the books narration, or truthfulness to my own twist on the inner narration of McMurphy, while including a realistic kind of outsider point of view that came in the form of him not wanting to ask. I tried to make sure to make his narration kind of sound like a southerner, because he´s described as a large redneck or red haired man which is usually connected to the south.

The section that caught my attention instantly during my reading was on page seventy-four of The Handmaid’s Tale, where Luke, Offred, and her daughter are making an attempt to escape to the border. Throughout the reading, we hadn’t known what had happened with her daughter and Luke, and while we did have some snippets here of the two we did not have much information in regards to who they were. This was the first time that we had figured out what had happened to the three, and created a lot of foreshadowing for the future. ¨Luke is there, behind me, I turn to see him. He won’t look at me, he looks down at the floor, where the cat is rubbing itself against his legs, mewing and mewing plaintively. It wants food, but how can there be any food with the apartment so empty? Luke, I say. He doesn’t answer. Maybe he doesn’t hear me. It occurs to me that he may not be alive.¨ The first thing that came to mind was if Luke was really dead? Throughout the story we can understand that the handmaid has a pretty negative tone throughout, essentially expecting the worst, we understand this in different scenes like the one where she is shown a photo of her daughter and she instantly assumes she is dead, but how can Luke be dead? Is she remembering things wrong? Usually people do not die standing up right, in fact it’s probably impossible, but in this scene the reader can understand that he is standing up right, or probably is. Then in the next page, at the bottom it says, ¨The bell wakes me; and then Cora, knocking at my door.¨ Now this is really confusing, was the ¨memory¨ from before really a memory? Is that what happened to Luke? I feel like including that it was a dream rather than a memory had made me initially question the two. Often, when we get snippets of the Handmaid´s life in the former world, it’s usually in bed where she claims she’s either imagining, but is she imagining? Or is she just dreaming? I think something interesting about this story is that it’s hard to distinguish between the two and what’s really happening. Some parts may invalidate others, while others may validate them. This makes me still question what happened to Luke and her daughter, were they really caught crossing the border or was there more to it? Similarly, later on page 85 the Handmaid gives another story regarding her crossing of the border. ¨When we get to the border, we´re just going over on a day trip; the fake visas are for a day. Before that I´ll give her a sleeping pill so she´ll be asleep when we cross. That way she won’t betray us.¨ One thing that initially shocked me is that this is a completely different story from the one before, Luke is in the car not in the apartment with the cat. She is taking her car rather than swimming, why? IS this also a dream? I think the narrator makes it hard to distinguish to make the reader more immersed with the handmaid. THroughout the story, the Handmaid has a difficult time distinguishing between her imagination, her dreams, and what has actually happened. In which she would often make clear to the reader that she is remembering wrong as if she’s the one reading. In this case, the reader cannot understand once more which one is the real story. This also reminded me of the story we read at the beginning of the class, ¨Beginning¨ by Marget Atwood, where she would once again make different versions of the same story, so it makes me question how much of the Handmaid’s stories and memory of the past is honest rather than imagine and hoping that one or another happened, or maybe they are all the same story. Its really conflicting and I think the conflict that the author causes by giving us different stories to fill in the same gaps is what makes this story really immersive. We´re practically in the Handmaid´s mind in the sense that we cannot distinguish between fake and real, the same way that the Handmaid cannot. Another good example of this is the scene in which Moira escapes, she has no way to prove that this really occurred. She just happened to hear it through other people. In fact, for all she knows Moira can be already dead, but the Handmaid is hopeful for the ones she loves.