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Don’t pretend you’ve never wanted to know. The American Bedu blog has the answers to two vital questions: what Saudi men wear under their thobe and what women wear under the abaya.
Posted by Brian Whitaker, 13 July 2009
Action by the Saudi religious police is being blamed for a double “honour” killing in the kingdom. Two sisters, identified as Reem, 21, and Nouf, 19, were arrested by the mutawwa on July 2 after being caught “in suspicious circumstances with two unrelated men”.
They were… Read more
Last April, Egypt became a worldwide laughing-stock when the Mubarak regime ordered a mass slaughter of pigs in the mistaken belief that this would keep swine flu at bay.
Swine flu duly arrived – one victim being a young man whoreturned from Saudi Arabia with the disease after… Read more
Four members of the same family in a pick-up truck – a father, two sons and a son-in-law – were ambushed by gunmen in Radfan, southern Yemen, in the early hours of Friday while apparently on the way to open up their sweet shop. Three died immediately, the fourth was seriously wounded and… Read more
English is a wonderfully flexible language. We make up new words all the time, often combining bits borrowed from Latin and Greek: photography (light+drawing), submarine (under+sea) etc.
In Arabic this is much more difficult because the whole language is based on a system of three-consonant word… Read more
A report from Saba, the official Yemeni news agency, on the 15th anniversary of the north’s victory in the 1994 war:
Subversives attacked Tuesday security forces and people in Yemen's eastern province of Hadramout killing a citizen and injuring two soldiers, the state-run 26sep.net has… Read more
No idea why I like this picture, but I do. Definitely, I do.
Posted by Brian Whitaker, 10 July 2009
1. A 24-year-old Jordanian man killed his unmarried sister after she became pregnant. He "stabbed her 10 times in different parts of her body with a dagger in front of a group of people before handing himself over to police and confessing to the crime," a police… Read more
Here we go again. While Egyptian protesters chant that “Germans are the enemies of God”, Yemenis are venting their wrath against France over the Yemenia plane crash.
A headline in the Yemen Observer claims the Airbus was “possibly” hit by a French missile (scroll down the… Read more
I’ve received an email from Corporal Timothy Reece, a linguist in the British Army. He has been looking at my list of English words derived from Arabic and says I’ve missed one – “the word ‘floozy’ meaning a loose woman, or a lady of the night if you will”.
He explains: “This stems from… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
