Arabic out of this world (literally)

Middle East and Arabic

Today’s post will focus on some interesting current events related to the Middle East.

First, a note on following news from the Middle East: English language-reporting can be inaccurate and severely lacking, even in major news outlets. This isn’t meant to disparage anyone; it’s just that anyone who doesn’t speak Arabic will miss things, little subtleties and nuances that can make a world of difference. We’ll go into this in a separate post, but for now suffice to say that I take any reporting or analysis of the Middle East by those who don’t speak Arabic with a grain of salt and often disregard it completely.
If you can, it is always best to access primary source-information (much easier in this age of social media), compare several articles, and, above all, form your own conclusions.

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The Red Light – A short story

Creative writing

The Red Light


The following short story is entirely fictional and does not portray actual events and people. Any such resemblance is coincidental.
Unlike happiness, evil is always to be found and does not even need to be searched for. Evil takes many forms. More often than not, it does not manifest itself in a tyrannical madman or a monster but rather shows up more mundanely. Never forget this – you do so at your peril.
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A poem on happiness

Creative writing

Happiness, that elusive feeling, that sense of meaning;
The warmth of the hearth on a cold winter’s night;
A cool breeze on a stifling summer day, keeping me from steaming;
A kind word from a friend in the darkest hour of despair, making everything all right;
Happiness is not be searched for and seldom to be found;
Real, it is worth more than anything, more priceless than precious stones and gold;
It will release you from the crippling shackles of depression, you will no longer be bound;
In that prison of suffocating darkness, the keys to your heart only you shall hold.

I’m back (from Jordan)!

General, Middle East and Arabic,

It’s been quite a while since I last posted here. It’s been a hectic time, with lots of things going on in my life (all good, I should emphasize) and I was up to my eyeballs almost every moment of every day. I’m back now and I look forward to fulfilling my earlier (neglected) commitment to post regularly and share my adventures with you!

You may remember my planned trip to Jordan from the first post on this blog. I did end up travelling to Jordan for three weeks, for what has been one of the most amazing experiences in my life so far. You’ll be happy to know my experience there has given me tons of new material and insights on the Middle East to share with you!
Today, I’ll touch briefly on what I did in Jordan and begin sharing some of those insights with you.

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Confusing, period: On punctuation (or the lack thereof) in colloquial Arabic text messages

Middle East and Arabic

Today’s post is dedicated to a linguistic difference any students of the Arabic language lucky enough to have the chance to interact with native speakers will undoubtedly notice – the sparse use of punctuation in colloquial Arabic texting.


I’ll take advantage of the opportunity to introduce some key terms readers unfamiliar with Arabic will need introduction to and to underscore the point that learning a new language is much more than just learning vocabulary and grammar; it is essential to be aware of basic differences.

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Welcome to Roaming Lightning

General,

I’m beyond excited to begin this blog, which is a new and momentous step in the current chapter of life’s journey. In the post, I will introduce myself in brief, explain how I came up with the idea for this blog and what you can expect to see here, and include a few additional notes (dedicated readers will come to notice that I always list things in groups of 3). As this is the first post, I’ll keep it short and sweet, no need to bore you yet!

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