#haykel

[foxeater2]

What do you mean I can draw porn of my ocs and feel better after doing it

wild shit

[lionessblog-me]

ISIS Practices- Islamic or Not?

ISIS Practices- Islamic or Not?

via What ISIS Really Wants – The Atlantic.

Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to…

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[musicalmemoriesofmine]

Al-bosta - Fairouz

I fidgeted impatiently on the corner across from Chapeau Rouge. Why did she always have to answer her work calls? Couldn't she just ignore them? It was after 11:00 PM and I was eager to get to the club. Derrick stood by, one earbud in. I could hear the bass pumping from his music.  Katy paced back and forth across the street, arguing in Czech.

I saw two middle eastern-looking guys crossing the street toward me. One started to sing a song by Amr Diab. My heart raced; they were the first Arabs I'd seen in Prague. Excited, I started to sing along with him. As they got closer, they both smiled.  The taller one asked me in Arabic where I was from. I responded, and he knew immediately that I wasn't a native speaker. He didn't speak much English, but he managed to get out, "Do you want to go to an Arabic party?" Katy was just finishing up her call and came over. The guy introduced himself as Mohammad, and his friend was Ibrahim. "Katy, they want us to go to an Arabic party, can we go?" She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, making the face that told me she didn't want to go. "Look," I added quietly on the side, "when do I ever complain about all the places you decide that we go? I need this. Please. Just one drink and if it sucks, we can leave." She could tell it meant a lot to me. She smiled and said, "Alright. Derrick, come on."  Ten paces behind, as always, Derrick followed. We walked through the small cobblestone streets of old town and before we knew it the fellow partiers had thinned out and eventually disappeared.  We were alone on a small, narrow street with two strange guys, one of whom had disappeared for five minutes during the walk. "In here."  They gestured to a door.  If I hadn't heard the beats of Arabic music pulsing from down the stairs, I would have run screaming. We walked down the stairs to find a nearly empty room. The front of the room was a wall of mirrors. The long room only had about twelve tables. The guys led us to one in the back, next to another party of guys.  They were all speaking Arabic. My heart soared. Finally, something familiar. We sat down and ordered drinks from a happy waitress named Hedvika, probably the first nice Czech person I had met in the cold, hateful city. Katy, ever sure of herself, slammed her menu shut and said loudly, "Orgasmus." We all laughed at her drink choice. I ordered my usual white russian and sat back.  Mohammad had disappeared, and his friend sat quietly across the table, smiling a tight-lipped grin at me. As the night went on, I learned that Mohammad had been off doing coke somewhere, and after I made it clear that I wanted no part of it, he and Ibrahim had gone. I leaned into Katy, "We can go if you want, I don't think we're going to meet anyone else here." "Are you having fun?" "Yes." "Then we're staying."  A guy from the other table turned around to face us. "Why are we all divided like this? We should join our tables, we're the only people here." He spoke English to us; he must have overheard us through the night.  He continued, "My name is Bader and these are my friends."  Squinting at me, he added, "You...you are an Arab girl, yes?" "Yes, my father is Palestinian." "Ahhh, mash'allah! Shou esmak enti?", he asked my name in Arabic. "Alia."

He turned to his friends. "She is Alia! Her name is Alia!"  The entire table stood, facing me. It happened so quickly that I didn't have time to feel nervous. They began to sing, "Zakartik ya Alia, w zakarti ayounik..."  I had never heard the song. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn't know from where. "Do you know the song?" asked one man. His name was Roger, and he was Lebanese.  I replied that I didn't. "It is your song! You must know it! You don't know Fairouz?" "I know Fairouz but I don't know this song." "It is your song, Alia, a song about your beauty and your eyes." I felt so welcome. The evening went on and on with our new friends. Bader, from Saudi Arabia, taught Derrick how to dance dabke. Derrick, a young black guy from the heart of Atlanta, taught Bader how to "walk it out."  Roger sang the same song to me at least every five minutes.  A half-Jordanian half-Czech guy whose name I can't remember now, which is probably for the best, took an interest in me.  Later we ate bread with hot sauce in my apartment, drank Arabic coffee, and fell into bed.  But that's another story for another time.

It was my first night in Karma Lounge. What I didn't know that night was that this tiny Arabic club in the middle of that dimly lit deserted street would change the entire course of my time in Prague.  That was where I met Haykel.

[musicalmemoriesofmine]

Ndirek Amour - Cheb Hasni

Every time he was happy, every time he was sad, every time he was homesick, every time he was angry with me, he put on this song. When he was happy. "It's my best song," he'd say, looking at me with his biggest smile, his eyes crinkled into little arches. Part of me wanted to correct his English, to tell him, "No sweetheart, you should say, 'It's my favorite song.'"  I always stopped myself; I loved his broken English too much. When he was sad. "Are you okay?" "Yeah," he said automatically, his eyes never leaving the computer screen. He was scrolling through his own Facebook profile. He scrolled and scrolled until he came to the song. Singing along, he'd continue to stare at the screen, closing any chat windows that might have popped up. I knew better than to ask who the girls were, it would only make him more upset. He could feel my silence, and would eventually raise his sad eyes to my worried ones. "I love you." "I love you, too." When he was homesick. I lay on the green Ikea couch, waiting for him to come inside. He'd been out on the balcony for at least ten minutes. He popped his head in the door, "Sweetie, can you please play my best song?" I sat up and found his song. When it ended, he yelled in to the living room, "Can you play it again?" Three plays later, he came inside. I could tell that he had been crying. He sat, watching video after video of deep sea diving in Tabarka. Then he looked through all his younger brother's pictures on Facebook, and tell me wistfully that his brother would be a doctor soon. I couldn't tell if he was proud or envious, or a little of both. When he was angry with me. "Why did you look at it? Why don't you trust me?" "Why do you talk to her that way? Does she even know about me?" "It's mine. It's mine, and you looked at it."  He wouldn't look at me. Looking back now, he wasn't angry, he was scared. Scared that he could be caught, and that he was almost caught already. He played the song so many times that I eventually got restless, and went out to the balcony. I leaned on the railing, the cold metal on my forearms making me shiver in the cold, Prague winter air. My tears fell down three stories to the cobblestone sidewalk. The man across the street was watching hockey. I heard the sound of his lighter and knew he had come out to smoke. I wanted to be angry, and I wanted to accuse him of what I already knew was true. But I knew if I looked up into those brown eyes, those beautiful brown eyes that could look directly into mine and lie without blinking, I would break. I'd be his again. His hand touched my back, and I stood to face him, still looking down. He touched my chin and I raised my eyes to his. "I forgive you, Aloush." "Thank you." I fell into his hug, hating myself.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Bernard Haykel on Saleh's Future

Princeton University professor Bernard Haykel weighs in on Saleh's future in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations:

There are two other big questions. One is whether Saudi Arabia will allow Saleh to return to Yemen as soon as he's better, if he does get better--because there's a question as to how serious his injuries are. And if he comes back, whether he'll want to resume the role of president. In the Yemeni constitution, if the president is absent for sixty days, elections have to be held. The last question is whether any Yemenis will accept his return, and the answer to that seems to be absolutely not. Neither the demonstrators, who are, by and large, leaderless in the streets, nor the opposition forces--and there are a number of them--will accept Saleh back as president.