october 2006
almekki, gebreel, muhammad adam, 'ali at the house of alsheik albasheer (not present).
gebreel took us to the countryside to alsheik albasheer's house to celebrate the end of ramadan. he hosted a large group of friends (most of them were from exiled revolutionaries from chad). outside the city things were a little more conservative, the group broke up squarely by sex.
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'ali, yousef, bishara
bishara is headed for arizona in a few months on the UN's bill -- he fronts like he got a scholarship to go there, but in fact he just got stamped a refugee (he showed me the paper). the story i learned from gebreel is that bishara is a wanted revolutionary in chad.
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bashira, heidr, usama
heidr is blind (you can't tell from the pic) -- i thought maybe he was abu'l 'ala al-ma'arri (especially since he an arabic grammarian). he peaces out early on, unfortunately, i would have liked to talk to him more.
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gebreel, akmekki, yousef
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left2right: general casey (aljazeera), hamdu, ali, youssef, almekki
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close-up of general casey's appearance on aljazeera.
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b'aid (egg), mulah (lamb soup), tahin (chadian bread), filfil har (hot pepper) & samit (syrian rice based dish).
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yummy.
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from the balcony of alsheikh albashir's house.
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another balcony shot.
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this is alsheikh albasheer's bookshelf.
alsheikh may not be wealthy, but he is extremely literate. well known as a local genius. his bookshelf was, of course, intensly revealing. both he and his wife maintain an active collection (i wasn't allowed to take a pic of his wife's, ufortunately). on the bottom shelf you find cheap fiction and children's books; one shelf up you find qanun (law, or, cannon); on the third shelf you find history of literature; on the top shelf you find fiqh (islamic religious debate & law).
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alsheikh albasheer, checking his cellphone.
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