the cinnamon peeler's wife

inna lillahi wa inna ilahi raji'un
okay i am not being flippant, the death of arafat is (or is perceived) to be a turning point in the history of the palestinian struggle. but this conversation a few nights ago needs to be heard...

suzan: so lina, what's up with yasser?
(lina's mom's face turns white and her eyes go all wide, lina looks embarrassed, and the rest of us are wondering: who is yasser and why don't we know about this lina?)
me: arafat, you mean?
suzan: yes, yes of course.

so this post needs a shout out to the awesome lina, who can cook like no other, and fed us such an iftar that it will be remembered for ages to come. you bring honor to the palestinian people with your epicurean feats.

but yes as for arafat:
read his obituary in the ny times,
also Prof. Mark Levine (of UC Irvine) has an interesting piece on Arafat debunking this myth of new beginnings,
and i will leave you with an excerpt from the Fisk article, which i mentioned earlier:
The Arafat mug was never going to find its way on to university walls like Guevara or even Castro. There was -- and still is -- a kind of seediness about it and maybe that's what the Israelis saw too, a man who could be relied on to police his people in their little Bantustans, another proxy to run the show when occupation became too tiresome. "Can Arafat control his own people?" That's what the Israelis asked and the world obligingly asked the same question without realising the truth: that this was precisely why Arafat had been allowed back to the Occupied Territories -- to "control" his people. The only time he did stand up to his Israeli-American masters -- when he refused to accept 64 per cent of the 22 per cent of Palestine that was left to him -- he returned in triumph to Gaza and allowed the Israelis to claim he was offered 95 per cent but chose war.

off to put on mehndi and eat sweets and freeze in my shalwar kameez at 7 am eid prayers...