An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...

I happen to like my own company, so I muse with myself. I play around with words in my head...I like to get to their roots, their essential meaning...words are windows, doors and gates... I thought of the word concubine nearly all day. I am not sure why this word popped out of nowhere. When Islam made its first breakthroughs in ancient Arabian society, it recognized two statuses for women - that of concubine and that of a free woman, hoping eventually to ease the concubine status to that of a free woman.  A free woman was defined as a woman who was not a captive - captive in the largest sense of the word.  I thought of that word concubine - in Arabic - Jarriah . And since my neighbors are a pain in the butt, it took me to the word Jarr   - meaning neighbor in Arabic and obviously since Iraq is almost always at the back of my mind, it took me to Iraq... And since am on Twitter, because am a lazy blogger, and prefer 140 characters to long posts, ( I also came to r...

I type in this title but inside of me a voice has died...a part of me is already dead and buried. Yet I still find myself typing...Iraq. Am I fooling myself ? Am not the kind that fools herself easily...even though I do understand that grand illusions are nice escapism...And naturally I want to escape from Iraq, and whatever Iraq has done to me. But something else inside of me is tenacious, persevering, even though I have lost much hope. I honestly don't know what it is, somehow a part of me refuses to put Iraq on the back burner. A part of me absolutely refuses the "done deal" idea. The game is larger than you and I, the plot was/is nothing but sheer Evil in its purest sense. America birthed an anti-Christ in the new Iraq. It resurrected an ancient devil that we had buried way back in the age of the Jahiliya, buried along with other skeletons from the age of Ignorance. It always takes two to "procreate". In Iraq, these two were and still are the United S...