Physical immortality is seductive. The ancient Hindus sought it; the Greek physician Galen from the 2nd Century A.D. and the Arabic philosopher/physician Avicenna from the 11th Century A.D. believed in it.
Attempts by one ethnic group to exercise sovereignty over another are not fair. It doesn't matter if that ethnicity is Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Chaldean or whatever.
The Malays can hardly be said to have an indigenous literature, for it is almost entirely derived from Persia, Siam, Arabia, and Java. Arabic is their sacred language.
I think my dad is the only Arabic descendent who is an unsuccessful businessman.
I do not use the language of my people. I can take liberties with certain themes which the Arabic language would not allow me to take.
Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the page.
Allah's the Arabic term for God. Stand up for God, fight for God, work for God and do the right thing, and go the right way, things will end up in your corner.
I grew up in a kibbutz in the Galilee, but we were surrounded by Arabic villages, so I heard all these sounds and all this music. My father was very close friends with one of the Bedouin tribes, so I would always go there, to weddings, and I was always very fascinated by that music.
The Muslim heaven features prominently in the Quran, Arabic poetries and Hadith. The Jewish heaven, though, is still a mystery; it's mystic.
It's a funny thing: my name in Arabic means hope, so I suppose I have to live by that principle. Hope is desire, feeling, and investing in a projection of something that doesn't yet exist. At its best, you witness its alchemy in your life, turning something that was once in the mind into reality. At its worst, it's delusion.
Unfortunately, in my home, we didn't speak Arabic; it was a mixed culture. My mother played a dominant role in our educational upbringing, and we grew up as part and parcel of Belize's culture.
