Kline Books AKA The Most Amazing Bookstore in the History of Everything

Today I found a real, bona fide LA treasure. In the deep Valley, Panorama City, lies a bookstore of epic proportions, Eric Chaim Kline Booksellers. It’s located above the giant edifice that is the Valley Indoor Swap Meet at Parthenia and Van Nuys Blvd and is by appointment only.

Once inside, its total sensory overload. It goes on forever, with books overflowing from every corner. Most of the books are Jewish themed, or have to do with some aspect of biblical study. They have tens of thousands of volumes and more treasures than you can count. Many are antiquarian with amazing vellum or parchment bindings. I had no expectations, and thus was totally blown away by what I found.

Old Orientalist German books on Near-Eastern languages.

That is a giant Indonesian Qur’an from the turn of the century.

Latin-Amharic vellum-bound lexicon.

I came away from it with Saadia Gaon’s Judeo-Arabic prayer book, Kitab Gami3 al-Salawat wat-Tasabih “The book of all prayers and supplications” which I had read about and had been searching for for some time now.

Body Painting for the Labyrinth

For a long time I’ve been wondering whether or not one could detach a silkscreen from its frame and tape it to a body and apply images to the body like this.

I was making a screen of some Mahmoud Darkwish poetry when disaster struck and I ripped the screen. I was well pissed but decided it was a good opportunity to see whether my bodyscreen idea would work. There was a part of the screen that didn’t get ripped so I cut it out and gave it a try.

I taped it so it was completely flush with the skin and then used a palette knife to smear ink through the screen and it worked wonderfully.

So then we decided to go nuts with it. The Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball was the 12th and 13th and that provided the impetus for a major body painting project. We used designs gleaned from Iznik tiles from Ottoman Turkey and traditional Mehndi designs.

Meirav has the Mehndi skills:

Blue Scholars Rocked the El Rey

The day I moved to Seattle in 2005 I went into a record store in Pike Place market and asked the dude if he knew of any good local hip hop. He told me to try these guys, the Blue Scholars. Within 20 seconds of the first track I knew I found something amazing. Their lyrics are intelligent, well thought out, and the beats are sick. They are Geo-Logic and Sabzi, Geo’s the MC and Sabzi’s the DJ.

On Saturday they came to LA and played the El Rey theater and I went with my brother. They rocked the freaking house.

This is a video of their song “Back Home“

A table from 2×4s

This is a coffee/work table I made from some salvaged two-by-fours and 4.5 feet of thick square heavy wood for legs. I got all of it at a salvage shop in the valley, at Sherman Way and Coldwater, I think. In any case the total cost for this table was under 30 dollars.

First I sawed all the 2×4s to a uniform length and glued them all together and clamped it for a couple of hours.

Then, since the 2×4s are beveled on the top I sanded down the glued slats until there was no bevel and they were all flush.

Then I sawed out a space on each corner to accommodate the legs.

These get glued and screwed, and then voila you have a table.

I used these tools:

And now this table is my main workshop, for filigree and calligraphy:

New Tshirts Up!

All of the designs on my site are for sale, but I now have the tshirts on deck. The following designs are available right now, and I’ve got at least 12 more on deck, and those should be good to go very soon, next few days or so. For more info click the link under pages, “Buy Calligraphy Prints and T-Shirts“

The Sneakiness of the Letter Ghayn

I was watching a lecture by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf on youtube, which can be seen here. In it, he mentions that many of the meanings of words that begin with Ghayn (غ) have to do with betrayal, obscurity, leaving, covering over, the unknown, evil, and other words of this nature. Just a general black cloud upon it, like if the alphabet was Middle Earth, Ghayn is Mordor. So I cracked out the Hans Wehr, and decided to see how true this is. The letter Ghayn does not have a large section, comparatively, in Hans Wehr, so the fact that there are so many words that conform to this connotation is evident of a deeper, hidden treachery concealed behind Ghayn’s open-mouthed and otherwise welcoming demeanor. Incidentally, many words have love-related meanings as well, in their derived forms: seduction, temptation, swooning, flirtation are seen as a slippery slope, beset on all sides by Shaitan’s presence.

She dwells in the back of your throat, the subtle and rolling rumble only a voiced velar fricative can give. Because of where Ghayn emerges from, and this connotation, I imagine her personified as Oscar the Grouch. Oscar the Ghhhraaouch.

Here is the list i came up with.

غبر/ غبار - dust/ to cover with dust

غبش - darkness, “the twilight before sunrise”

غبشة - opaque

غبن - to defraud, cheat, dupe.

غبو / غبى - to not understand, to be ignorant.

غبي - stupid

غتّ - to submerge, immerse

غثي - To confuse, muddle, jumble.

غدر - To act treacherously, perfidiously, betray etc

غادر - To leave [so betrayal is when one turns away from his loyalties and leaves to the loyalty of other parties.]

(غدو (غدا - to leave (one of كان’s sisters)

غرّ- to mislead, deceive (form VIII to be blinded, fooled, unexpected)

غرور - dillusion

غرر - hazard

غرارة - thoughtlessness

غرب - To go away, to be a stranger or obscure entity, to be difficult to comprehend.

غربة- Melancholy loneliness felt when outside one’s homeland. Good Al Kitaab word for ya.

غريب - Strange, obscure.

مغرّب - Banished, exiled.

غرض - To have a bias.

تغرض - Biased, partial.

مغرض - Person with ~

غرق- To drown, be submerged

اغراق -Scuttling (of a ship), sinking, [also "hyperbole" - ie inundated with exaggeration to the point of sinking]

مغرق - Immersed, engrossed

غرم - Damage, loss

غرا - Tempt, seduce

اغراء - Instigation, temptation, allurement

مغريات - Temptations

غزّ - To be thorny

غزل - The English word Gazelle comes from the Arabic ghazal, same meaning. But Ghazzal, in English and Arabic has a poetic meaning, a type of poem, check the link. The connection is thus: The style of poetic expression that many ghazzals use is said to evoke a melancholy lovesick feeling. So as a verb, the three letters, ghayn zai lam, means, according to my teacher in Jordan: “the melancholy whimper of a doe cornered by hunters.” [Side note: this is one of my favorite anecdotes when it comes to Arabic connotations]

مغازلة - Flirtation

غزو- Invade

غزوة - Invasion

غازية - Female dancer, danseuse (hmm.)

غس - Worthless

عش - To defraud, cheat, act dishonestly

غش - corruption, deceit

غشاش - Fraud, deceiver, swindler, imposter

من غشنا فليس منّا - A hadith saying “whoever cheats us isn’t one of us.” This is really useful (i’ve found) to bust out when someone is trying to rip you off because you’re a foreigner.

غشم - To treat wrongly or tyrannically. Form VI to feign ignorance or inexperience [deceptively] Form X - to deem or regard as stupid, ignorant, foolish.

غشوم - Unjust, iniquitous

غشيم -Ignorant, inexperienced, a greenhorn

غشو - To envelop, conceal, descend upon.

غشى - Unconsciousness, swooning

غشاء - cover, wrapper, coating

غاشية - misfortune, calamity, disaster

غص -to choke, be choked, be overcrowded or packed

غصب - Take by force, rob, seize, force, compel, abduct, violate (a woman), conquer, subdue

غاصب - Usurper

غض - To lower, lessen, diminish, detract, to turn away from [out of modesty]

غض البصر - lower ones gaze.

غضة - Shortcoming, deficiency

غضب -To be angry, upset, irritated

غضر - Turn away from, turn on/against someone,

غضن -To wrinkle, pucker, shrivel

غضن -Toil, labor, hardship, difficulty

غضو - To close ones eyes, to overlook, disregard, avoid seeing

غضا - On pins and needles, in an unbearable situation

تغاض -Overlooking, connivance, disregard

غط - To immerse, dip, plunge

غطيطة - Fog, mist, miasma

غطرة -Headcloth worn in Bahrein and Najd [covering over of the head]

غطرس - To be arrogant, haughty

متفطرس - conceited, self-obsessed

غطس -To immerse, dip, plunge

غطاس - Baptism

غطش - To be or become dark [said of the day], obscured

غطا - To cover up. Form II - To wrap up, be stronger, conceal, to drown out

غف - To take unawares, grab, grasp, seize.

غفر - Guard over, watch

غفرة - Cover, lid

غفارة - Headcloth

مغفر - Helmet

غفل - To neglect, not heed, act foolishly, ignore,

غفلة -Foolishness, heedlessness, acting without thinking

تغفيل -Stultification [I have no idea what that means at all]

مغفل - Apathetic, indifferent, gullible, easily duped, a chump

غفو -To doze off, take a nap

غل -To penetrate, become deeply embedded, to put in manacles or chains, be filled with hatred,

غل - hatred, spite malice

غلب -Subdue, conquer, vanquish, be victorious

غالب - Most of, the majority, [that which has been overcome by another side]

مغلب - Defeated, overwhelmed, overcome

غلس - Darkness of night

غلط - To make an error, to be incorrect, be mistaken

غلظ - To be or become rude, crude, rugged, to treat ruthlessly

غلغل - To penetrate, become deeply embedded, to put in manacles or chains

متغلغل - deeply embedded, extensive, far-reaching

Note this is just غل doubled.

غلف -To wrap in a cover

غلاف - a cover

غلق -To close, shut,

انغلاق - incomprehensibility

غلم - To be seized by lust or sensuous desire

غلو -To go over the proper bounds, to be excessive, to overflow, to be expensive

غالي - Expensive

غم -To cover, to veil, to conceal

غمد -To sheathe, put into a scabbard, shelter, encompass, protect

غمر -To be plentiful, to be abundant, to overflow, to flood, submerge, immerse

غمار -copious, plentiful, desolate, bare [see previous post on antonyms]

مغامرة -hazardous or foolhardy undertaking, adventure, risk, hazard

غميزة -failing, fault, shortcoming of character

غمس - To dip, plunge, submerge, immerse

غمص -To belittle, degrade, despise, hold in contempt

غمض - To be hidden, concealed, to be dark, to close ones eyes, to be incomprehensible

غامض -ambiguous, dark, obscure [which itself comes from the Latin obscurus, indistinct, dark, as opposed to lucidus, light, and therefore clear. ]

غامضة -unsolved problem, riddle.

غمط -To belittle, degrade, despise, hold in contempt

غمغم - To mumble, to mutter

غامق - Dark

غملج - Fickle, inconsistent, unstable

غمى - To swoon, faint, loose consciousness

غنج -To flirt

غندر - To play the dandy, act like a fop

غنم -To gain booty, take as war spoils, plunder, sack, loot

غنم - Spoils, booty

غنم - Sheep and goats, herd

غيهب -Darkness, duskiness, gloom

غار -To To penetrate, become deeply embedded, to ooze away. Form II - to attack, raid

غارة -Predatory incursion

مغار - Cave, cavern, grotto

غاص - To dip, plunge, submerge, immerse

غوط - To evacuate the bowels

غاغة -Mob, rabble, riff-raff, din

غال - To take away, grab, rob

اغتيال - Assassination

غوى - To stray from the right way, seduce, tempt, lure away from righteousness.

غواية -error, sin, seduction

غاب - To be absent

غيب - the Unknown world, that of jins and angels and spirits and the world beyond death, the supernatural.

غار/غير - To be jealous, to display zeal over. Form II To alter, modify, change. Form III To be dissimilar, to be different

غير - other than, different from, unlike, no, not,  non-, un-, dis-, except, save.

مغاير - Indecent, immoral

غاض/غيض - Decrease, diminish, recede

غاظ/غيظ - To anger, exasperate, enrage, vex, gall

غيم/غام -To become cloudy

غيام - Clouds, mist, fog.

Arabic Antonyms

This is an amazing article about the Arabic language. There are an entire category of words that mean both themselves and their opposite. In fact, I remember reading one book about an American’s hapless attempt to learn Arabic in Yemen and he came away from it saying, “every word in Arabic either means itself, its opposite, or a camel.” Very true.

This was originally printed here, but you need to register so Arabic Gems posted it here, and now I’m reposting it from her.

Antonyms in Arabic are a strange phenomenon.

By Tamim al-Barghouti
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Antonyms in Arabic are a strange phenomenon. There is a whole category of words that mean one thing as well as its opposite. For example, the word, “saleem,” means the one who is cured as well as the one who has just been bit by a snake. The word baseer, means one with great sight and insight, but also means blind. Mawla means master and slave and wala means to follow and to lead, The word umma, which is usually translated as nation, means the entity that is followed, or the guide, as well as the entity that follows and is guided.

Like many properties of Arabic, the reason for this is usually attributed to the Bedouin origin of the language - the desert is said to impose unity, homogeneity, and therefore equality on the all creatures. Sand is everywhere, and in the end everything turns into sand, the contradictory extremes of life seem to be the same in essence. But this traditional explanation, like many traditional explanations, does not explain much.

For Arabic is not a poor language, almost every creature, object or feeling has scores of names. A sense of continuity and unity of the universe might have been present in the desert community of Bedouin Arabs, but a sense of meaninglessness was not there. The way the ancient creators of the Arabic language celebrated the smallest details of their world is noteworthy: it is said that the great poet and linguist of the eleventh century, Abul-Ala al-Miary, who was blind, stumbled into one of the princes at the court of Saleh Ibn Mirdas, the autonomous ruler of Northern Syria. The noble guest lost his temper, especially because the poet was poor, and poor poets, are not supposed to stumble into rich nobility! So the guest called the poet an ignorant dog. Abul-Ala answered swiftly: “The dog among us is the one who does not know 70 names for the dog!” Of course the noble guest, the prince and half the linguists of the court could not come up with so many names.

Later on, in the 12th and 13th centuries, when the preservation of the language became an obsession, all 70 names for the word “dog” were recorded. They were not quite synonymous, for they did not all simply mean dog. Rather, they were descriptions of a dog’s conditions; an angry dog had a name different from a joyful one, the dog that had one ear pointing up and the other down had a name different from the one who had both ears up or both ears down. What is true of the dog is true of most other creatures. Up until this day the most famous seven names of the lion are taught to children in schools all over the Arab world: Laith, Sab, Asad, Qaswara, Ghadanfar, Dirgham and Usama.

“Love” has 77 names, each of which has a slight but crucial difference from the other. Hawa means light liking but also transfers an element of error, bias and irrationality. As the old pre-Islamic proverb goes: “Hawa is the downside of reason.”

Then you have ishq, which comes from entanglement, like two pieces of wood and ivory in a work of arabesque, the two lovers are inseparable yet still independent and distinct. Then there is hayam, which comes from wondering thirsty in the desert, and fitna, which means love, infatuation, passionate desire, but also means civil war and illusion.

There is izaz, which is the kind of love that gives both lovers power and dignity, and sakan, which also means home and tranquility, the Quran uses this word to describe the relation between married couples. The highest stage of love is, paradoxically, fanaa, which means non-existence. This is the stage where the lovers lose their independent existences and actually become one another. This stage is usually used by Sufis in reference to divine love and the unity of existence.

With this wealth of words and meanings, the existence of the category of words that mean one thing and its opposite cannot be explained by desert born nihilism and lack of imagination. Taking a second look at those lists of antonyms, one can see that, with very few exceptions, most words relate to power and knowledge. The continuous fighting for water and means of livelihood among Arab tribes, the temporality of life and the cruel paradox of the desert coupling monotony and uncertainty, might have resulted in an instinctive position on power.

Power is temporary, and is in itself meaningless. Temporary power is therefore the same as weakness, master and salve will both die in the end, so would the seer and the blind, and the blind might be more of a seer than the one whose eyes are wide open. Those couples thus deserve the same names. Power and knowledge become meaningful only if they result is something that is not temporary. To Arabs, all physical objects will in the end vanish and turn to sand, but ideas, will remain. Thus power is necessary only to create legacies, memories, epics, legends and poetry. One could trace this idea well into the pre-Islamic era. After the advent of Islam, the concept of legacy was replaced with the concept of the afterlife.

The history of Arabic literature is full of anecdotes were antonyms and puns were used to mock unjust power and authority. After Haroun al-Rashid massacred his Persian ministers, one of their women told him “qarrat Aynok” which is an expression meaning “may god give you peace of mind,” but the literal meaning of the words is “may your eye stand still” - in other words, “may you go blind.” In the Arabian nights, Shahrazad continuously addresses the angry king Shariar, who kills a woman every day in revenge for his wife’s betrayal, “Oh happy king, of wise judgment” in a context that means exactly the opposite.

Perhaps today we are in great need of such words (antonyms) in everything - from love to politics.

Tamim al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet who writes a weekly article for The Daily Star

Judeo-Arabic

So I got my first look at real Judeo-Arabic, the Arabic dialect spoken by the Jews of the Arab lands. It is written in Hebrew letters, but is the transcribed Arabic dialect of the country in which it was spoken, but with some Jewish words, Hebrew and Aramaic mostly, thrown in. These two particular examples are Iraqi, and were shown to me by Rabbi Avi Navah of Kadima Heschel West Hebrew Academy in the West San Fernando Valley. He was born in Baghdad and a year later his family fled to Israel and he was raised speaking Judeo-Arabic at home but Hebrew everywhere else. He brought the Hagaddah of Passover, the prayer book used during the Passover feast to tell the story of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, and Shir ha-Shirim, the Song of Songs. It says on the front עם תרגום ושרח ערבי “‘em targum ve-sharakh Arabi” -With Arabic translation and explanation. Note this is the same as Arabic مع ترجمة وشرح عربي “Ma3 targema wa-sharh Arabi.” The ayin and the mim in “with” reverse themselves when you go from Hebrew to Arabic. This is why Judeo-Arabic is cool. Its a bridge language between two cultures who have serious problems right now, and in 50 years this language will be mostly extinct.

A lot of our knowledge of medieval Judeo-Arabic, and thus the dialectic Arabic spoken on the streets of Cairo, Baghdad, Tunis, or Sana’a for a thousand years of Jewish life, comes from the Cairo Geniza, among other genizas, or book storage archives. The geniza was typically an attic in a Synagogue or house of learning in which damaged or unusable books could be stored, since they could not be destroyed as they contained the Holy Name. As they grew over the years and the language gradually changed, the genizas have become a massive archive documenting linguistic evolution, as well as a way of life that has ceased to exist as a result of Zionism.

In our world, the information contained within those hundreds of thousands of books is being digitized and uploaded to the internet for all to peruse. Check Genizah.org for one major example of digitization. The Princeton-Penn-Cambridge Combined Geniza Project also is working hard to make geniza data available.

Some people are doing great research in this field and are preserving the study of this sadly moribund beautiful language. Among them were Dr. Joshua Blau, Dr. S.D. Goitein, Dr. Benjamin Hary, Dr. Noam Stillman, Dr. Ofra Tirosh Becker, Dr. Judith Rosenhouse, and others.

Also:

Omniglot

Wikipedia

Jewish-languages.org

The Nomad Poetry Project

Since I returned in February 08 from Yemen I had been focusing a lot of my energy on a large-scale calligraphy project revolving around a singular theme, that of nomadism, on many different levels, physical and intellectual, spiritual and emotional.  I set my sights on 50 pieces, and this is the halfway mark, and September is the deadline. I have 25 until now, and many of them I haven’t posted until tonight.

I merge digital and analog in the creation of these works; I use GiMP, a free-ware photoshop program, to edit scanned-in hand written words or letters. I dont clean them up, but they scan in as a jumbled up soup of words:

So I re-arrange them back to coherent sentences.

I drew on many sources for this project, among them:

A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs from Sinai and the Negev by Clinton Bailey

Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture by Clinton Bailey

Dusting the Color From Roses: A Billigual Collection of Arabic Poetry by Ghazi A. Algosaibi

Love, Death, and Exile: Poems Translated from Arabic, Bilingual Edition by Abdul Wahab Al-Bayati

Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts by Nizar Qabbani

A Time Between Ashes And Roses by Adonis

The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish

The Son of a Duck Is a Floater by Primrose Arnander

Victims of a Map by Mahmud Darwish, Adonis, Samih al-Qasim

Long Are The Days.

People, for People

Bedouin Proverb.

Nothing Lasts Forever, Good or Bad

First piece I’ve done in 3amiya, dialectical Arabic.

Where Will We Go?

Food and Hospitality

We did not abandon our country.

March

This reads better in Arabic, as it rhymes.

“Adar - shams wa amTar - wa-lleil yuwazn an-nahar”

Bedouin proverb.

The Treasures of the Sea

“If the desert is a treasure, the sea is seven treasures.”

-Bedouin proverb, Sinai.

If Our Footsteps Part…

All Roads Are Distant

Canopus

Ar-Rahim

Al-Rahim, The Merciful.

Power to the Coffee Drinkers

Taken from A Culture of Desert Survival: Bedouin Proverbs From Sinai and the Negev by Clinton Bailey.

Sowing is Our Task

The Scavenger’s Paradise

I found the most amazing store, built in an old mission church, it is overflowing with salvaged house parts. Amazing old fixtures, leaded or stained glass, incredible odds and ends everywhere, it lived up to its name one hundred percent.  It’s located at 5453 Satsuma Ave in N. Hollywood, between Burbank and Chandler.

Henna Sleeve

Rain and Age

Boredom

Happy Memorial Day. Party with a sharpie.

Record! I am Arab.

This is a design I busted for a friend at UW. It’s a Mahmoud Darwish quote: Record! I am Arab / Sajal! Ana Arabi.

Yemenite Filigree Cheating

For the past several weeks I’ve been slowly working on Yemenite filigree, with mounting levels of frustration. I can’t get the solder to bind. I got Yehuda Tassa’s DVD on basic filigree and it showed me why I was screwing it up. I’m doing a bunch of things wrong, and so in the next few weeks I’m going to try and correct them and get the right materials.

I decided to try and get a preview of what being able to actually do filigree work would be like, if only i could make it work. To do this, I decided to use superglue in place of solder.

First I bent some 20 gauge silver wire into a loop. Then I did that again, and soldered (not glued) both rings closed. I put one of the rings around the head of a hammer and hit it against a brick till the wire took on the shape of the hammer’s 8-sided shape. After that, I heated that ring up and hit it with a hammer till it flattened. Then I glued the two rings on top of each other.

To make the filligree elements, bend the wire in half, and twist the two ends together and then twist the wire together until it’s reached the right level of twistiness. There’s more to it than just that in the traditional method, you have to ‘cure’ the wire through annealing (heating up to allow the molecules to rearrange and settle in their new shape) and then putting the wire in an acid bath, but since I’m cheating and doing a piss-poor job of adhering to tradition, i skipped those two steps. Then you simply twist them up into the shape you want. I did two elements in 20 gauge wire and then annealed them until their color changed (shouldn’t happen ideally) and then flattened them a bit, then sanded down the top to get a shine. I popped a little coil on top to cover the center.

Then its just a matter of winding up some high-gauge (therefore very fine/thin) wire into coils and arranging them in the frame.

Japanese Food and Mutaytor

So Thursday night was a blast. I met up with David and Tida of cheese store fame, in Little Tokyo in a random-ass closed all-Japanese mall.

On the third floor is Honda-Ya, one of the dopest restaurants in town, and one of LA’s best kept secrets. Open till one am, they have an amazing menu built around small fried and barbequed meats, veggies, and noodles, all designed to pair well with beer. And ridiculously cheap: 9 bucks is the most you’ll pay for a dish, but figure each person gets two which are then shared, it makes for a good meal. And the beer is 3 bucks a glass or a pitcher for 13. All in all figure 20-30 a person, but its an amazing spot, the food is great and the place itself is better.

After that we drove over to the Mayan Theater at 9th and Hill. Mutaytor rocked the fucking house. On top of that the show was sponsored as a promotion so it was free, with loads of free handouts inside.

For anyone unfamiliar with Mutaytor it’s truly a unique and incredible experience when they go full on. I imagine their Burning Man show is off the hook. Watch this video to get an idea of what they do:

This is the email I wrote to a friend the first night I saw them:

oh. my. god.
last night i saw the most unbelievable performance. i dont even know
how to describe it. it was this nuts show that stretched the boundary
of theater, performance art, and music. my friend from work was like,
oh you should totally come see this show. so i went, and the opening
band was like this hardcore goth metal in stupid costumes shit, and
was SO bad, and i was just like, wtf did i come to see? but then my
friend was like these guys are as far from the mutaytor (the band we
went to see) as possible.
so then they finished alhamdullilah and the mutaytor came on. ok, so
first of all, it wasnt a band as much as a performance art troupe, with
maybe 30 people. there were 6 regular drum sets, one wicked crazy drum
set with like 6 MASSIVE drums and a million little cow bell/ cymbal
things and this crazy dude behind it all dancing like a motherfucker,
4 bongo players, 3 brass instrument guys who played like 6 different
brass instruments, and electric guitar player, an electric bass
player, 2 keyboards, and 4 people behind mac laptops doing who knows
what. and that was only the music part. there was a dance team who was
just insane. there was a trapeze act that had fire-spinners flying
through the air. there was a sikh firespinner who was doing crazy
flips and jumps and shit with 4 balls of fire flying around him. there
was a drag show too…. this girl came on to the stage in a bikini and
she was shakin it to the music and i was like DAMN she is fine! and
then as she was gyrating around she turned around and took her top off
and when she turned back around it was a dude in drag! i was like
holy. shit.

Since then the only shows I’ve missed were ones when I was in Yemen.

The Mayan is gorgeous:

The show was amazing, as one would expect from the Mutaytor:

All in all another amazing Mutaytor experience.

Massoud Valipour- Calligrapher Genius

On Westwood between Wilshire and Santa Monica there is a little, unassuming shop, nestled between a salon and a herbal medicine center. This is the secret lair of Massoud Valipour, one of the most amazing masters of calligraphy in Los Angeles. He combines traditional styles with modern influence, and creates poetic masterpieces which adorn the shop. He’s also very accessible. I went there for the first time with my friend Theresa and we spoke for a little while about calligraphy and everything. I went back today with some art and books, and we ended up talking for like an hour, and he cut me a pen for Nastaliq calligraphy, specially made in South-West Iran for this purpose. He told me to smoke opium out of it and “it will last 20 years.” Not really sure what thats about, to be honest.

My grandfather’s jewelery tools

These are my grandfather’s jewelery tools. I found them buried in a closet. I decided they would be useful in my ongoing experiment with Yemenite filigree work. I’m making a proper case for them, too.

Sara Rahbar

I randomly came upon the Myspace page of Sara Rahbar, an Iranian-American artist working out of NY. Her work revolves a lot around Iranian-American issues of identity, duality of culture, and perceptions of Middle Eastern-American life as a young woman in our century. Or not even Iranian-American: just American duality and the confusion of being.

Her myspace page is: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=2306901

The Pearl, Darwish

How can I walk towards my people, towards myself?

How can I walk towards my passion my voice?

How can I ascend?

I am only a river that rejects, surges, blazes;

Overwhelming poetry’s hidden pearl,

Wearing the sun’s suspicion.

-Mahmoud Darwish

Eat My Wheat

Where Are the Days, Where Have They Gone?

This is a nasheed, an a capella song sung in many Muslim communites.

There is a translation at http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1381.htm

Those in the picture were killed fighting the Coalition in Afghanistan.

Rain On Our Deserts

Muttanabi GIMP’ed

Dave and Emma on UJ Website!

On the university of Jordan’s offical website theres a picture of Dave, my roommate, and Emma, his girlfriend. Dave’s rockin the I ♥ Hans Wehr shirt i stenciled. represent!

Incidentally, if you want a I ♥ Hans Wehr t-shirt I could hook one up for 10 dollars plus shipping.

Need a Change? Be a Watchmaker!

Ever wonder where watchmakers learn their trade? Its a dying trade, and very few students are enrolling nationwide in programs, so programs are closing. So it goes. The result, however, is that now jewelery stores and watch companies are feeling the pinch, as the majority of watchmakers are 40+ and are retiring in this generation, so salaries are high for people who learn the trade. But how?!

Seattle saves the day with North Seattle Community College’s Watch Technology Institute!

Also, a program devised by the Swiss gov’t plans to create jobs through a training partnership with watchmaking schools around the world,

THE WOSTEP 3,000-HOUR PROGRAM

Since 1992, leading Swiss watch manufacturers have been financially supporting an ambitious program to foster and encourage the training of watchmaking technicians on a worldwide basis. The partnership program has since become a quality label for after-sales service worldwide. The WOSTEP 3,000-hour program is supported by 80 different brands of the Swiss watch industries.

As a neutral body, WOSTEP coordinates this worldwide partnership with watchmaking schools and has been given the task of selecting schools around the world that can implement a 3,000-hour training program and ensure adequate training for the needs of the Swiss Watch Industry. The curriculum of the WOSTEP 3,000-hour program includes studies in micromechanics, mechanical watches, chronographs, electronic watches, external parts, and organization of after-sales service. It requires 2,400 hours of practical or bench time and 600 hours of theory.

The program is vital to the watch industry, ensuring an optimum quality and quantity of after-sales service for Swiss made watches in world markets. Students who pass the final examinations in a WOSTEP-approved school are awarded the WOSTEP certificate, which is recognized throughout the world as the superior qualification in watchmaking.

Currently, there are 14 WOSTEP partnership watchmaking schools in the USA, China, U.K., Japan, Sweden, France and Germany. Five of the schools are in the USA and Okmulgee has been one since 1994.

I like that they stressed “a neutral body…” So very Swiss.

WOSTEP

The Penland School of Crafts is offering a summer watchmaking tutorial by Israeli watchmaker Itay Noy.

Check out Is Time Running Out on the Watch Repair Business? By Norma Buchanan

The British Horological Institute has classes and a wicked coat of arms:

The Enticements of Distant Ports

The Great Pen-Making Project.

I came upon about 6 5-foot sticks of bamboo, which I turned into a ton of pens of various sizes for Arabic calligraphy. If you’re interested in purchasing one they’re five dollars a piece, plus shipping.

I got my keyboard stickers!

So, two posts ago I mentioned that I hated typing in Arabic because I didn’t really know exactly where the letters lived, so it often took a couple of tries to get the right letter. Well, for $1.80 including shipping I got these little stickers on eBay, so no more will that be a problem! Hebrew ones are still in the mail.

The Sweetest of Friends

Hezarfen Şeyh İbrahim Edhem Efendi

This is Sheikh İbrahim Edhem Efendi, known as “Hezarfen” or “master of 1000 trades,” Sheikh Ibrahim was born in modern-day Uzbekistan in 1829. He later moved to the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, where he gained a reputation as the most BAMF in the art world of the time. He was the ultimate renaissance man, and for me represents perfection in art: skills across the boards, jack of all trades and kicks ass at all of them.

From Ebru Sanati: “He was proficient in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Cagatai. It is no wonder he is given the name Hezarfen. A list of his skills includes carpentry, woodcarving, founding, printing, weaving, along with archery. In addition, he was a blacksmith, lathesman, calligrapher, and last but not least, a master of Ebru.”

From The Ottomans, “He was a carpenter, metal caster, weaver, printer, architect, scientist and a mathematician. He was appointed as the first principal to Sultanahmet School of Crafts in 1869 and it was here that the first lead pipes were cast in Turkey. Producing ebru papers was one of his many talents which made him famous as Hezarfen.”

A is For Allah

Addictive!

Jerusalem Cards

Used to leave these at cafes and bus stops around Jerusalem. These were leftovers when I got home.

2004

Cathy

2005

The quality on these is less than optimal because they are digital photos of the original prints.

Ill Gotten Gains

SAYME

Yemen: Empty Jewish homes destroyed

In the latest attack targeting Yemen’s few remaining Jews, rebel Houthi militiamen destroyed several homes that had belonged to the now-absent Jewish community in the northwestern Saada province.

“The Houthis destroyed part of my house and looted it,” Rabbi Yehia Youssuf told Reuters in the capital, San’a.

All 67 members of Saada’s Jewish community fled following threats from the Houthis, the rabbi says. Some locals say the Jews were threatened because they had been selling wine to Muslims - an accusation the Jews deny, according to Reuters.

A local said the Shi’ite rebels attacked the houses of other Jews after looting the rabbi’s.

Around 400 Jews remain in the majority Sunni state, the remnant of an ancient, close-knit community that, while remaining connected to Jewish intellectual and legal developments outside Yemen, managed to insulate itself culturally until the 20th century.

Read more at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1207486208257&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The Yemenites.

These are some photos I’ve collected online of Yemenite Jews, past and present.

Saadia

Today I was poking around on Flickr looking at pictures of Yemenis and to my great surprise I found the following picture. It was taken by Eric Lafforgue, www.ericlafforgue.com

This is Said Bin Isra’il Hala, or Saadia ben Yisrael Hala, and it is he who I stayed with when I visited Raida, the last surviving Jewish community in Yemen. He helped us get travel permits to the village, invited me and my two compadres into his home for Shabbat, we spent the weekend with him and his family and I will never forget his kindness and hospitality.

Since that trip, I’ve become mildly obsessed with Yemenite Jewry, and more specifically the silverwork trade they were known for.

These are the emails I sent home after returning from the village.

October 9 2007. Ramadan in Sana’a.

First of all I apologize for the group email. but this was cool:

So for the past three weeks my friends JB and Ezra and I have been playing human ping pong ball and bouncing to the interior ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the Tourist Ministry, the American embassy, and various other bureaucracies in an an effort to get a travel permit outside Sana’a to a village in the north called Raida. In Raida is the last surviving Jewish community left in Yemen, about 400 people. It’s also one of the last surviving Jewish communities left in the Middle East, period. Basically its a bit of an anomaly. So finally after being passed off probably a dozen times to various ministries packed with bureaucrats grumpy from not eating all day, we found one guy at the tourist ministry who told us if we knew someone in the village who could drive us there and vouch for us, we could get permits. Ezra called his contact in the Jewish community here (there’re 7 families who used to live in a village called Sa’ada but were moved to Sana’a because there was a threat against them which the government took seriously enough to put them up in a nice hotel across from the American embassy indefinitely) and the guy said he would call the next day and we’d go and meet him. Ezra and JB pulled me out of class and we went to meet him at the hotel.

We walk in the lobby of this small hotel, and every chair in the place has a bona fide Yemenite Jew, complete with long thoub, kuffiya, and long tightly curled paot. All in all like 12 guys, the first Jews I’ve seen (other than JB and Ezra) for a long time. We went with Ezra’s friend Said (Saadia) and another guy, Faiz, both from Raida, to the ministry, got the permits, and then they were like ‘we’re going to get some food.” so we went with them and got some fish (easy way to get out of eating non-kosher meat) and then we were driving around Sana’a. i figured they’re taking us back to our place, and then suddenly we’re in the outskirts of the city, full of industrial buildings and car chop shops, and I said ‘um, guys? where are we going?”

“Raida.”

oh shit. We only have the clothes on us, no toiletries, Ezra’s wearing barely more than his pyjamas, and we’re planning on staying a week.

Whatever.

So we get to his house in Raida after an hour and half, and this gaggle of paot-sporting kids greets us at the door, none older than 6. For the rest of the night guys came in, we ate food and chewed gat, all the while speaking an odd mix of mostly Hebrew and Arabic. None of them spoke English, and they didn’t ever learn classical Arabic so they only spoke the dialect, but they all spoke very decent Hebrew, so Ezra and I would talk to them in Hebrew and when we came to a word we didnt know we’d switch to Arabic.

Sometimes we’d conjugate Hebrew verbs like Arabic ones, or use only Arabic prepositions. Basically it was a linguistic adventure. Unfortunately JB doesn’t know Hebrew and scrapes by in classical Arabic. He had a tough time. One thing I found so odd was that they referred to the local Muslim population as goyim, which I guess makes sense but, growing up in the Christian world, only ever meant C