A book report of sorts
I am in the middle of reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseni. By "middle" I mean just about halfway thru. And by "of reading" I mean I am not sure as to whether I will actually finish reading it since while it is very addictive with a cliffhanger at the end of every single chapter, the reason I haven't touched it in a couple days is because I threw it down in horror and disgust on Shabbat because of the grusome graphic detail the book feels the need to go into. I'd like to spare mysef the nightmares, please.
One thing about the book tho, and my recent trip to Jordan, is they make me crazy grateful to be living in the most normal country in the Middle East. Even tho, as I've learned from this book and also from Little Mosque on the Prairie, it appears that Muslim weddings are more feminist than Jewish ones since the kallah has to sign the marriage certificate plus she has to say during the ceremony that she agrees to marry the dude. There's no שתיקה כהודעה stuff for Muslims apparently. And yes, I realize that women are basically forced to agree and forced to sign, but hey... in theory...
Speaking of Islam, now that the days are so short, I hear the Muazzin literally every 2-3 hours during my workday. Also I've been working more on reading at least a paragraph or so of Aljazeera per day and I'm keeping a list of the new words I'm learning. I read it at home and at work no problem, but I tend to feel a bit weird doing it at huji since at any given time not in class at huji, I can see and hear Arabs around me and I figure it looks weird for a good Jewish girl to be sitting and reading Aljazeera. Tho today I actually had the guts to approach one of them and ask him to go over my new words. To make sure I spelled them correctly and to help me with niqqud. Since like Hebrew, nothing in Arabic (except the Quran pretty much) comes with niqqud so I have no idea if I'm pronouncing words correctly. I also have to stop absent mindedly scrawling verses from the Quran on my notes in class. Have to make sure not to lend those notes out...
Also did you hear about Tony Blair's sister-in-law? She's so crazy she makes the European public look uber-Zionist in comparison.
One thing about the book tho, and my recent trip to Jordan, is they make me crazy grateful to be living in the most normal country in the Middle East. Even tho, as I've learned from this book and also from Little Mosque on the Prairie, it appears that Muslim weddings are more feminist than Jewish ones since the kallah has to sign the marriage certificate plus she has to say during the ceremony that she agrees to marry the dude. There's no שתיקה כהודעה stuff for Muslims apparently. And yes, I realize that women are basically forced to agree and forced to sign, but hey... in theory...
Speaking of Islam, now that the days are so short, I hear the Muazzin literally every 2-3 hours during my workday. Also I've been working more on reading at least a paragraph or so of Aljazeera per day and I'm keeping a list of the new words I'm learning. I read it at home and at work no problem, but I tend to feel a bit weird doing it at huji since at any given time not in class at huji, I can see and hear Arabs around me and I figure it looks weird for a good Jewish girl to be sitting and reading Aljazeera. Tho today I actually had the guts to approach one of them and ask him to go over my new words. To make sure I spelled them correctly and to help me with niqqud. Since like Hebrew, nothing in Arabic (except the Quran pretty much) comes with niqqud so I have no idea if I'm pronouncing words correctly. I also have to stop absent mindedly scrawling verses from the Quran on my notes in class. Have to make sure not to lend those notes out...
Also did you hear about Tony Blair's sister-in-law? She's so crazy she makes the European public look uber-Zionist in comparison.