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Ali & Anna Cohen
Anna and Ali Cohen, unexpected outcomes of a premature attempt to reconcile Zionist and Palestinian aspirations, were born in Jaffa in 1946. The twins' childhoods were spent at school and universit...view moreAnna and Ali Cohen, unexpected outcomes of a premature attempt to reconcile Zionist and Palestinian aspirations, were born in Jaffa in 1946. The twins' childhoods were spent at school and university in rural southern England, with annual vacations in Sharpeville, South Africa.
Their writing career commenced in 1972 with publication of 'Lost Lyrics', in Daedalus, collaborating with Ram Bahadur Singh, a Punjabi poet. These 'phonetic' verses met little critical response, due to a bold, perhaps over-optimistic, use of Devanagari and Tamil scripts, together with Sumerian link-words to complete the acrostic sense.
The lyrics were drafted in three years spent as hostages of the Bhupani Liberation Army. The great Brahmaputra Landslip unexpectedly released them to travel by bicycle throughout further Asia, Australasia and the Americas.
The twins became familiar figures in Bangkok towards the end of the Vietnam War. They specialised in raising funds by entertaining GIs on furlough. They are the only known survivors of the Perth to Darwin tandem pursuit, setting an unbeaten record on arrival at 9.09 am Christmas Day 1974. After three years' joint lectureship at the Instituto Tierra del Fuego, they returned to 'the busy world of men' via the Bering Straits and Calais. They comment that much of Siberia is flat, and that the Urals are no real challenge to the serious cyclist.
Anna now runs a tea-shop in Wells. Ali has settled with his family in a Devon village. Their co-authorship continues by Fax. Anna is also developing a temperate tea bush. Ali's main interests are now in study of the philosophy underlying the accounting treatment of finance leases on Brand Names.
Other works include :- 'A Meditation upon Retirement', 'Nominal Life for Tax Purposes', 'Town Planning and Neoplasm - a Comparison', 'Rinsing the Grapes and other Fruit', 'Bawdy Ballads', 'The Annals of Edgar Atheling' and 'Variations on the Alphabet.'view less