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Archive for February 2006

Adiga Xabza

In Bits & pieces on February 20, 2006 at 6:39 pm

After such a break, one would think that Adiga Xabza series are dead and gone. Untrue, I bring you the third entry on the subject of Adiga (Circassian) traditions and customs, this time inspired by my friend Zaid Dodokh.

Much like in other cultures, unique customs apply to Adiga girls’ ways of dress, manner, and habits. An intriguing tradition that I recently learned of is the absolute ban of spirits to unmarried girls.

An Adiga girl may never drink and, if offered a glass of the prohibited stuff she should voice her gratitude and then pass the glass on to whoever male of her people is present. Dodokh quotes an ancient saying that states ” A drink can be in the girl’s hand, but only on the lips of a man”.

I am not precisely aware of the reasons behind this policy, but I find it preciously interesting. You may wish to check previous Adiga Xabza entries here, and here.

3arabi mkassar

In Opinion on February 19, 2006 at 12:12 am

This entry is relevant, albeit not identical, to previous posts titled “Bil 3arabi”, and “Bil 3arabi:Kaman marra”. Like those two just cited, its aim is to examine the state of the Arabic language in specific circles of society, and, although this sounds too bright a venture, poses questions in relation to that stance. At one stage, it will employ the transliteration of the Arabic language into Roman characters, reflecting the Amman-Jordanian dialect, to accent the edges of the paradox.

This matter of the Arabic language has been one not easily dismissed from my thoughts, I love my language and I cherish it deeply. I am most positive many others share the same affection for the antique, fabulously artistic tongue. I am equally certain many feel an ambiguous sense of guilt for not being able to utilize the language that is their birthright and a duty often unfulfilled, in their daily lives.

Feeling incapable of self-expression in one’s alleged mother tongue is, at the very least, tragic. I remember smiling when I bump into fresh learners of Arabic who strive to utter every word the correct way, and to compose the riddles of complex sentences in line with the formulas of Arabic, and not their own languages. It is this battle that astonishes me, as opposed to the often all too defeatist abandonment of language by “native speakers”. Those learners speak standard Arabic, and they take pride in showing it, unlike many, many Arabs who take every possible measure not to speak in Arabic and to abolish any ties with the culture it carries.

That broken form of pure Arabic, employed in earnest attempts at grasping the methods of the rich linguistic system, is what came to be called “3arabi mkassar”. Yet it is fully justifiable for foreigners to miss a proper tense here or there, or to use the wrong pronoun, or even to pluralize the should-be-singular in their course of learning. But is it justifiable for an Arab to use 3arabi mkassar as well? Ino, iza ba7ki 3arabi mkassar, badalni 3arabeyyeh, wella sho bakoon?

I am eager to expand this debate further, Arab talk show style: Perhaps there is an inferiority complex within the collective frame of Arabs, or, here’s another hypothesis for you, perhaps they are easily influenced by exterior trends, easily impressed, that is.

Quite honestly, I find it enormously odd that Arabs seem to hop on any chance that would feature them as being “westernized”, rather than adherent to their heritage. Since that first image offers glittering opportunities of being glued to open-mindedness, education, and the rest of your choice of terms as opposed to that “uncivilized” Arab civilization (and I use the term “westernized” loosely). Could this linguistic hiccup, much celebrated by the elite, usher self-annihilation? What is the point of being identical with another culture via language? Does that not abort any identity, or whatever is left of it, and does it not leave one a miserable incomplete replica of a glory that never was?

To bring this to an end, it is not accurate to propose that people who do not wish to employ foreign languages needlessly in their speech are trying to shrink themselves to fit unopened cocoons, nor it is fair to judge the competence of an individual as based on usage of fancy words belonging to any language other than Arabic, or even to infer that this self same individual is incapable of going with the flow of modernization by fault of his/her usage of his/her mother tongue. Even modernization preaches logic sometimes, let us not forget that.

Fatima by Lord Tennyson

In Literature on February 18, 2006 at 12:28 pm
O LOVE, Love, Love! O withering might!
O sun, that from thy noonday height
Shudderest when I strain my sight,
Throbbing thro’ all thy heat and light,
Lo, falling from my constant mind,
Lo, parch’d and wither’d, deaf and blind,
I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.
Last night I wasted hateful hours
Below the city’s eastern towers:
I thirsted for the brooks, the showers:
I roll’d among the tender flowers:
I crush’d them on my breast, my mouth;
I look’d athwart the burning drouth
Of that long desert to the south.
Last night, when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shiver’d in my narrow frame.
O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro’
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
Before he mounts the hill,
I knowHe cometh quickly: from below
Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow
Before him, striking on my brow.
In my dry brain my spirit soon,
Down-deepening from swoon to swoon,
Faints like a dazzled morning moon.
The wind sounds like a silver wire,
And from beyond the noon a fire
Is pour’d upon the hills, and nigher
The skies stoop down in their desire;
And, isled in sudden seas of light,
My heart, pierced thro’ with fierce delight,
Bursts into blossom in his sight.
My whole soul waiting silently,
All naked in a sultry sky,
Droops blinded with his shining eye:
I will possess him or will die.
I will grow round him in his place,
Grow, live, die looking on his face,
Die, dying clasp’d in his embrace.

Never mind the rest, Jordan is Amman

In Jordan, Opinion on February 16, 2006 at 9:53 am

It is most upsetting to think of the negligence that other cities than Amman suffer from. I have often reflected upon the marginal possibilities of living, and enjoying life with satisfactory levels of decency in public services and facilities, in other parts of the kingdom, and I have found them so slim that speaking of them would render me too optimistic.

It is a given that the capital of any country should represent a center for operations, services, and perhaps should host the governmental body. But in many countries the case is not so, the capital is but a place where the government is, and is not largely different from other cities within the same state. This said, some cities actually top the capital in their countries of question, be that in industry, technology or services.

Unfortunately, in Jordan the gap between Amman and its closest contender, Irbid, as many sustain, is very obvious. Let alone the difference between it and other less looked-upon cities than Irbid, such as Karak or Mafraq.

I am given to believe that large sums of finance are invested in the beautification of Amman, seeing as it is the capital and the fattest city with regards to population. But do I see that, just a suggestion here, more money should be dedicated for developing the infrastructures in other, less privileged areas? Affirmative.

How can any logic try to minimize the rates of immigration from rural and subordinate cities to Amman, without first trying to improve the wretched conditions in which people in the large majority of these areas live ? Do I see a brake in the sense of it? Affirmative.

The Circassian Antichrist

In Bits & pieces on February 15, 2006 at 1:11 pm

I stumbled upon a curious article in this site. It deals with the allegation that the antichrist, or the eighth head of the beast, will be Circassian. This probably sounds too queer for your taste, so did it sound to mine up until the moment I finished reading the article that, aside from containing interesting informations, has a number of nice pictures.

This is a catchy slice of the early passages of the site to which, by the by, I have no clue as to accuracy or originality.

If the Jews are God’s chosen people, the Circassians are definitely Satan’s chosen people, the most dangerous community on earth.
“Could a reborn Circassia be the home state of the eighth head of the
beast, the miniscule [sic] and fledgling new nation at the very end of time
which is prophesied by the Bible to appear and give birth to the Bible’s
‘madman’?”
The “seventh head” was Adolf Hitler (”the Beast of Berlin”), the
eighth will be nastier.


This could explain my 50-50 devilish inclinations. (irresistable pun)