arabic wordplay: tightly woven from both sides (محبوك الطرفين)
Yusuf al-Maghribi was an Egyptian writer (d. 1616), who wrote a volume on the spoken Arabic of early 17th century Egyptians entitled Dafʿ al-iṣr ʿan kalām ahl Miṣr, “Removing the burden from the speech of the Egyptians.” (Writing in a idiolectical form of Classical Arabic infused with Egyptian words, he nonetheless viewed spoken Egyptian as inferior). His was one of the first studies of spoken Arabic, and one of the only sources that exists describing spoken Arabic before the 1800s and Edward Lane’s Manners and Customs. Most excellent that al-Maghribi was interested in recording spoken language, for it lets us see how the spoken language has changed over several centuries. It would have been nice to have a few lengthy, transcribed, voweled passages of an Egyptian’s speech, but collected words will have to suffice. As an example, al-Maghribi records that the Egyptians were saying izzayak to mean “how are you” at least 4 centuries ago.
He collected some local poetry and wrote some of his own, mostly punning off of Arabic verb forms and double entendres. I found this gem, a mawwal in which the first word of each line is the reverse of the last word. al-Maghribi was apparently especially proud of this, because he had never seen anyone do such a thing with four-letter roots (which themselves aren’t too common). He called it maḥbūk al-ṭarafayn or “tightly woven from both sides:
مَن منّ بالوصل لو عارض كما نمنم
مَلْمَلَ فؤادى و مالي الكل قد لمْلَم
مَسْمَسَ حسودي بوصله لي و له سَمْسَم
مَزْمَزَ بشربه مِن القهوة و لي زَمْزَم
“The one who granted the union resisted it like he embellished
He made my heart restless, and did not gather everything for me
My envier confused me with his union with me and ran to him
He sipped his drink from the coffee and murmured to me”
A badass concept in Arabic wordplay, and somewhat unique to Arabic (well, Semitic languages) because of the way consonantal roots work. The poem seems a bit nonsensical, if only because al-Maghribi was compelled to use only those four-letter roots whose inverses exist. He ends up having to cheat a little bit anyway: man manna in the first line is really a pronoun plus a geminated verb, and not a quadriliteral, re-duplicated verb.
I found this through the doctoral dissertation (which includes a pdf of the Arabic text) of Liesbeth Zack (available online) entitled Egyptian Arabic in the seventeenth century: a study and edition of Yusuf al-Magribi’s Daf’ al-isr ‘an kalam ahl Misr.
the future shah of iran
From the New York Times Magazine, an interview with Reza Pahlavi (eternal prince-in-waiting of the kingdom of Iran, or somesuch):
“But presumably you’re working with American agents in the C.I.A. or elsewhere who have been trying to destabilize the Iranian regime for years. “
“Your presumption is absolutely and unequivocally false.”“Do you feel bitter about not getting to be shah?”
“This is not a personal matter. This is not about me.”
I attended a lecture by Reza Pahlavi himself earlier this spring. To his credit, he very aptly analyzed American-Iranian relations and American-Mideast colonialism. But the audience of a few hundred Iranians both old and young called for him to assert himself as rightful ruler and adulated him with all sorts of titles and honorifics. It was pretty obvious that he was leader-in-exile of Iranian shah-supporters who left during the Revolution. He insisted that it wasn’t about him then, too. But when you were about to be freaking king of a whole country, could it ever not really be about you? I don’t think he could ever convince me that he wants only freedom and justice for his people and has completely forgotten his royal status, money, power, cars, and gaudy military uniforms.
Go royalists. More on why kingdoms are a good thing later.
federal gifts, french burqas
Libya’s Qaddafi gave Condi Rice $212,000 in Gifts, including a diamond ring – the annual state department report on foreign gifts to federal employees listed that Qaddafi’s “darling African” received, among other things, a locket with a picture of him inside of it and a diamond ring.
That must be where all of Libya’s oil money is going….
Sarkozy’s Rejection of the Burqa Will Only Further Marginalize Muslims – Now, Sarkozy is attempting to institute a ban on wearing a burqa/abaya/niqab in public in France. Sabria Jawhar, the author of this article, defensively states:
For the record, I wear the abaya and niqab in Saudi Arabia. I wear the abaya and niqab because it’s my choice. Contrary to popular Western myth, the abaya is not forced on women in Saudi Arabia. As an Islamic country, women are only required to cover the details of their body. While I am living abroad I wear a different style and color hijab that is conducive to the environment I live in. I choose not to wear the common black abaya in the United Kingdom for my own personal reasons that are nobody’s business but my own. But if I ever decide to put on the abaya and niqab the way I do in Saudi Arabia that also is my own business.
Wrong, Sabria. The abaya and niqab are forced in Saudi Arabia, even if not physically by one’s husband, then by peer-pressure, society, the government, the religious police, the essentially anti-women government. Don’t insult yourself by claiming it’s your choice. If it is, wouldn’t you wear the abaya and niqab in Western countries, having arrived by your own personal logic at the same conclusion about how you dress?
She asks, rhetorically and sarcastically: “Because, really, who in their right mind would wear such a thing?” Bingo.
And she confuses pleated skirts worn by Catholic school girls as “religious clothing.”
qaddafi in italy
Does this man look like any kind of official, diplomat, politician, or otherwise international figure? Much less a “brother leader” or “glorious guide” or however he styles himself these days?
Unfolding his circus tent as usual in the park of the Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, Qaddafi (recently having become the world’s longest reigning dictator) upheld a declaration of friendship with Italy, in which Italy apologized for having colonized Libya (which then was but an Ottoman province), massacred thousands of Libyans, and force-implanted colonists on what it called its “Quarta Sponda,” the Fourth Shore.
As nice as a symbolic gesture such as that may seem, it is empty and almost offensive to the history of Libya and the memory of the Libyan resistance. By the act of Sylvio Berlusconi apologizing and Qaddafi accepting his apology, both assume responsibility for the act, the Italian as colonizer/oppressor, the Libyan as victim/resistor/patriot, and so forth. Both were hardly born, and had nothing to do the (de)colonization or subsequent creation of the Kingdom of Libya by the UN. By Qaddafi assuming the role of resistor/victim, he insults the memory of the Libyans who actually did fight and die, for he himself has oppressed the freedoms and made difficult the lives of modern Libyans nearly as well as the Italian occupiers did at the beginning of the century. It is needless to say that Berlusconi then assumes the role of Mussolini (or the brutal Rodolfo Graziani if he prefers), with whom he doubtless doesn’t want to be compared.
But I’m not saying that symbolic gestures, or apologies, should never be made. I’m just pointing out that they should be done right, because, after all, they are symbolic and not real. Is Berlusconi apologizing to the people of Libya, since Qaddafi had no part in the affairs of the colony? Is a crook making a symbolic gesture to a dictator even meaningful?
If you want to read up more, check out these links:
Italy: Libya pay-off for ‘colonial mistakes’
La visite de Mouammar Kaddafi en Italie a frôlé l’incident diplomatique
Mouammar Kaddafi à Rome pour une visite historique
Colonisation : la Libye et l’Italie font la paix
accordion of wood and glass
James Stewart, of calculus textbook fame, recently completed his $24 million house in Toronto, its design supposedly inspired by integral signs. Check out this slideshow and article at the wall street journal’s website.
Regarding his reason for building such an expensive house, reportedly costing nearly all of his career savings and investments, he said
“My books and my house are my twin legacies…If I hadn’t commissioned this house, I’m not sure what I would spend the money on.”
Nice houses are nice. But he was completely unable to think of anything good on which to spend $24 million. If he wasn’t Canadian, I would say “typical uninformed apathetic materialist American.” I think there exist thousands of charities, foundations, and social/economic/health/peace/human rights projects that could have used even $500. Way to be a good human being, James Stewart.
saddam’s palaces
Just because it was Saddam Hussein’s palace does not mean that the construction was any good:
[well it seems that the relevant pictures has been removed from the photographer's site. if you've been to egypt, you can imagine what i'm talking about]
It’s exactly the same as the extremely poor construction used for major buildings in Egypt (which probably doesn’t enforce any kind of construction standards or regulations if it even has them), consisting of sand, homemade cement, and might-as-well-have-been-homemade bricks covered by nice layer of disguising paint or sheathing. The palaces look nice and pretty (actually garish and waaay too marbly) on the outside, while inside the walls is a mush of dust, sand, and probably dead things.
The funny thing is that the buildings constructed by the French and British colonialists close to 100 years ago are of higher quality and are more stable than those constructed in the past decade. Go to Cairo and see for yourself; a hammer-blow won’t knock them down.
You’d think a wealthy-as-the-saudis dictator like Saddam Hussein would have been able to afford some solid constructioneers and wall-builders. You’d also think a major country like Egypt would have the types of engineers and professionals that can build good buildings. Alas, in Iraq’s case all that oil money probably went to the army and chemical weapons, while all of the US’s aid to Egypt goes to building more prisons and torture-cells.
[The above picture comes from a beautiful photography series (entitled "Breach") on the current uses of Saddam's palaces by Richard Mosse.]
a fresh heroic nation of live and electric men
Some of Walt Whitman’s genius in cleverly, aptly, subtly describing the political ills of antebellum America…still true, unfortunately, almost exactly, 150 years later:
The sixteenth and seventeenth terms of the American Presidency have shown that the villainy and shallowness of great rulers are just as eligible to These States as to any foreign despotism, kingdom, or empire – there is not a bit of difference.
Whence the delegates of the politicians? Whence the [political] conventions?
Not from sturdy American freemen; not from industrious homes; not from thrifty farms…not from among teachers, poets, savans, learned persons, beloved persons, temperate persons…
Who are [the politicians] personally?
Office-holders, office-seekers, robbers, pimps, exclusives, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men…spaniels well-trained to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President…spies, blowers, electioneerers, body-snatchers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers…
From The Eighteenth Presidency! (Voice of Walt Whitman to each Young Man in the Nation, North, South, East, West), 1856
maplications
Small oversight or semi-intentional insidiousness, the map of Israel in the London subway system that failed to delineate clearly Gaza, the West Bank, or the Golan Heights?
Conversely, check out this map that shows the Palestinian lands as islands, and surrounding Israel and other countries as water. Clever perhaps, but also insidious?:
meddling in lebanon
The US has given the Lebanese army $410 million since 2006 and rejects claims that it is meddling in Lebanese political affairs.
Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have both visted Lebanon recently, to emphasize what they call a need for “free and fair elections.” They are really just trying to ensure that Hezbollah, a legitimate political party, does not win seats in the Lebanese parliament, because they, like most American politicians are obsessed with “terrorist” groups. Clinton, supporting the “forces of moderation and democracy” in Lebanon, completely ignores the fact that the country’s political structure is set up in such a way that certain religious groups are not well represented and the the current religious group in power has unlawfully held power since the 1940s by refusing to conduct a national census.
And another statement that makes zero sense given reality: “The White House said the visit by the vice-president was meant to reinforce US support for ‘an independent and sovereign Lebanon’.” Are we stuck back in the first half of the 1900s?? What does this even mean? If they mean that Lebanon is sovereign and independent of colonial powers, this has been true for a long time. Given the way the US talks about Middle Eastern countries, it probably is a blanket sentence implying that Lebanon is not free from the influence of political groups that the US does not like, such as Hezbollah. Unfortunately for the US, Hezbollah is a legitimate political party, and so denying voters the chance to choose whomever they want, however good or bad, is tantamount to meddling.
rich boy asks the tough questions
I wrote earlier that finding subtle but non-explicit social and political commentary in music is difficult. Finding the opposite, though, is much less difficult; lots of gangster rap is political…the only trouble is finding rap that is subtle and nuanced in its commentary.
Rich Boy’s Let’s Get This Paper is a song that juxtaposes nicely the banal content of most modern rap with the raising of some serious social questions. On the face of it, Let’s Get This Paper is another song about making money:
Hey, money my motivator, my mouth, my money maker
Now I don’t see them haters, so let’s go get this paper
The album cover shows yet another tattooed rapper wearing jewelry. At least he leaves out negative phrases about women. We are inclined not to care, until Rich Boy, turning the refrain’s relative meaninglessness on its head, starts asking tough questions that resonate throughout the ghettos of America:
They tore down the projects, so where we gonna move next?
They takin’ them food stamps, they stop government checks
What about a tough question that resonates throughout the ghettos of the world:
That boy was only fifteen years old, f**k what they say he did?
So tell me how I’m s’posed to feel when police killin’ kids?
A similar sentiment would no doubt be expressed by those in the Parisian banlieues where the 2007 riots, caused by the deaths of two immigrant youths, took place. Rich Boy’s voice is anguished and angry. In some ways, his raps conform (no doubt they have to in order to be mainstream) to the norms of contemporary rap culture. Let’s Get This Paper is not solely a response to the problems that make Rich Boy frustrated with the life around him, but he captures well the essence of the cycle of poverty, drugs, crime, and prison in American ghettos.
Innocent people that do not deserve death die all the time, and that pisses Rich Boy off. He makes numerous references to his “dead homies” throughout the song, and also to Martin Lee Anderson, who died after a police beating in 2006. They did not even have a chance, mired in poverty with no way of “gettin up out this ghetto life.” He sees the same loss of innocent lives happening in America’s wars:
They shippin’ them boys off, they fightin’ in Iraq
Its soldiers in that war that ain’t never gonna make it back
Brutality in the ghetto, pointless wars….those who die in those situations die for the whim of others, not as a result of their actions. Rich Boy points out the common way of trying to escape: drug trafficking. Is breaking those kinds of laws in order to eventually create a better situation for one’s friends and family worth it? If those in power are not willing to help, one has to take matters in one’s own hands: “rob, steal, anything to pay them bills.”
He implicitly agitates for action. The government will not change by itself; ignoring laws in order to survive is one way of forcing lawmakers to confront the situation. It is about the individual, victim of those situations, working for change, not being complacent. Rich Boy, with a dash of irony, challenges the status quo, the rappers who sing about such things as money, women, and cars. It isn’t about that, he maintains:
What difference did you make?
earth party
Is this just an apt play on words, or do they actually interest themselves in ‘green’ matters?
حزب الخضر اللبناني
لأن الارض لا طائفة لها إنتسب
Lebanese Green Party: “because the earth doesn’t have a party.”
Either way, it is novel to have a political party the driving objectives of which are environmental or ecological. In the United States, we do not really have political parties that have driving objectives in the first place.
(picture from arabist.net)
poppy seeds and afghan’s needs
You know what the problem in Afghanistan is? It is that America, in an attempted colonization, destroyed infrastructure and put people out of work. On a much smaller scale than in Iraq, but a large amount of people nonetheless. Well, that is no problem for the American forces and government.
You know what the problem is with thousands of people unable to secure normal jobs? They turn to whatever means necessary for survival. Unfortunately, in the Afghan countryside, they turn to poppy growing. Because poppy sells, and sells lots, and people can support their families. Unfortunately, much of the money feeds back to the Taliban.
See, every Afghan is not in the Taliban, even those that work the poppy fields. As with Iraq, we ignore the consequences of our invasion on the local population. We ignore it, that is, until the situation cycles around to the point that it rebecomes problematic for us. Case in point, Afghanistan, where the Taliban is problematic for us. And, as a shortsighted article in the NY Times pointed out, opium is tilled in heavily populated areas.
The presence of poppy and opium here has injected a huge measure of uncertainly into the war. Under NATO rules of engagement, American or other forces are prohibited from attacking targets or people related only to narcotics production. Those people are not considered combatants.
But American and other forces are allowed to attack drug smugglers or facilities that are assisting the Taliban. In an interview, General Nicholson said that opium production and the Taliban are so often intertwined that the rules do not usually inhibit American operations.
In other words, American forces will display the same kind of indiscriminate killing that they displayed in Iraq in searching for WMDs that were not there.
How can American forces have it so that the local populations are not involved in economic support of Taliban operations? Make it so that they want to be involved in the economic support of just, uncorrupt, Aghan leaders. Not corrupt puppet leaders, Hamid Karzai being an example, and not shoddy, false, American-backed excuses for local governance.
this land is our land
Finding thoughtful (not foul or violent) political or social commentary is difficult in contemporary American music. Don’t Drink the Water by Dave Matthews is a particularly subtle example. He sings from the point of view of an unnamed antagonist, to a similarly unnamed victim. Realizing what the song is about was difficult until I heard his “Live at Radio City” version, into which he inserts a verse of This Land is Your Land, written by Woody Guthrie in 1940.
That is to say, This Land is Your Land resonates nicely with the history of American imperialism and genocide in the land now known as the United States. It is subtle as well, many lines are relatively harmless:
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
Not of too much consequence. It is the punch line, repeated throughout, that drives home the idea of manifest destiny. The entire continent, it is spelled out, was made for you and me! It was waiting until we came to settle in it. Those indigenous peoples? Inconsequential, what happens to them. This land was not made for them.
This is where Dave Matthews brilliantly picks up.
Away, Away.
You have been banished.
Your land is gone, and given to me.
And here I will spread my wings;
Yes I will call this home.
What makes it subtle is that he could be speaking to anyone whose land he is trying to take. But the image of wings spreading points to the wings of an eagle, an oft-used symbol in American expansionism. Settlers and pioneers moved West in droves, claiming first stake on land that already belonged to someone else, whose claims they ignored. In many cases, superiority of arms coupled with vast doses of lying and diplomatic deception enabled their claims to be overriden (literally, by covered wagons and war horses).
As we listen to Dave Matthews, we can imagine a sequence of events unfolding. Settlers show up, claim some land, and begin fencing it off. Some natives protest, surprising the settlers, who had not expected any contention to the fulfilling of their destiny:
What’s this you say?
You feel the right to remain?
Then stay and I will bury you.
What’s that you say?
Your father’s spirit still lives in this place?
Well I will silence you.
And silence them the American expansionists did. Since then, few have discussed the destruction of myriad cultures, traditions, histories, and languages (not to mention animal and plant species, terrain, and ecosystems). What Native American leaders predicted back then that the white man, dishonest and deceptive, would remain so in the centuries to come. We speak of historical first right to lands abroad, but neglect (if we take that theory as valid) to apply it to our own.
I have no time to justify to you,
fool, you’re blind; move aside for me.
Almost appropriately, the audience in attendance at “Live in Radio City” cheers loudly when Dave Matthews begins singing This Land is Your Land. They understand not what he is saying and thus prove the inherence of manifest destiny as mission-accomplished in American thinking. The official music video, kudos to the band, makes all his points visually explicit.
the spiritual life of plants
Monday, at USC, was the first of a series of events entitled “The Spiritual Life of Plants.” It was arranged by French/Comp. Lit. professors Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari, and
“aims to reunite urgent contemporary conversations around ecology and the built environment with an early modern past — a past in which plants existed both at the limits of being and at the frontier of new forms of knowledge. What might these animated plants have to tell us about the ways in which humans experience, regulate, and are transformed by the non-human beings that surround them? How can we carry these conversations forward into the present and the future?”
The discussion was round-table format, and it was pleasing to see students and professors from all over: Religion, Sociology, History, Comp. Lit., and Physics were represented. The two professors’ presentations pulled together ‘divers’ sources such as Montaigne: On Cruelty, Henri Estienne: La Maison Rustique, and Nathaniel Hawthorne: Rappaccini’s Daughter. Extracts from a preparation packet included Francis Bacon: The New Atlantis, La Mettrie: Man A Plant, Michel Foucault: The Order of Things, and François Delaporte: Nature’s Second Kingdom.
A multitude of interesting/humorous questions arose…”what do plants have to tell us and can we read their language?”…”can we think of plants communicating between themselves as humans communicate?”…”is it relevant or useful to compare plants and humans in terms of form and function?”…”are plants and animals also ‘god’s creatures’ and do they have souls?”…”is our relationship to plants symbiotic in multiple senses: does potato-kind use humans to survive as we do them?” Brought up by Physics’ prof. Johnson, that last question opens up a whole realm of ideas….
…that of plants that communicate and strategize for their own propagation; the idea that humans think themselves fundamentally different from plants rather than all of us as things that exist; function versus thought.
I thought of two interesting connections. The first is Dan Simmons science fictional Ilium and Olympos, both vast and beautiful, which include a “viewable information ecology” that humans can access. Called the nöosphere, it contains all the bio-eco-technological information that exists in the ‘plant world’ which humans had not been able to access. The second are the Metamorphoses of Ovid, in which humans routinely turn into plants…in fact, the appearance of certain plants is attributed to human origins, which is not at all viewed as strange.
related: prof. johnson’s spiritual life of plants post, the actual event at USC
why monarchy is a good thing
1 July 2009 at 11:30 am (asides and comments, imperialism)
This is adapted from my sister’s old blog, but somewhat applicable given the previous post.
To be honest, some of those are good points like constancy and unity, albeit perhaps not in these specific contexts. (Though the monarchy now costs the British taxpayer 69p per year, and 70% of the people disapprove of having to support the monarchy, according to a recent poll by the Guardian). But, there wouldn’t be a lot of really cool things like castles, funny looking royal guards, and epic knight battles without a monarchy, at least in the past.
And….the royal families of every major country in Europe (as well as some miscellaneous Arabs!) are in line to the British throne, because they are all descended from George III.
If you can take care of all the above, Reza Pahlavi, then you can restore your monarchy (as you’ve doubtless dreamed of doing)…
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