Word: ya
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...minutes, without toupee or TelePrompTer, Schwarzkopf displayed all the seductiveness of the performer's art. He prowled like a stand-up comic, permitted himself the occasional thin smile, inflected his stats with Bob Hope-style throwaway lines ("But I gotta tell ya . . . "). When asked to appraise Saddam's soldiering skills, he snorted a "Ha!," then launched into a catalog of caustic irony. He tamped his rage into questions intimidating ("Have you ever been in a minefield?") and rhetorical ("Do I fear a cease-fire?"). But the most moving moment came when he caught himself describing the low allied casualty rate...
Fairy tales in the West begin, "Once upon a time." In the Arab world they start, "Kan ya makan." The words mean "There was, there was not." That is, maybe it happened. On the other hand, maybe it didn't happen...
...ya makan: the Arabic language is capable of magical effects. On a squalid Cairo street early on a cold, foul day, people greet each other with small bouquets of words: "Morning of blessings! Morning of light!" They have conjured a moment, and smiled, and passed, and then, poof! they are back on a miserable street among the pariah dogs. If people are poor and live in the desert, language may be their richest possession: Why not? It opens miraculously onto other worlds. The Koran, with its bursts of sonority and light, describes a paradise that has everything the desert does...
...ya makan is intoxication enough. It was out of the desert that humans conjured monotheism -- absolute God to suffuse utter emptiness. When kan ya makan enters politics, its genius makes language a reality superior to the deed -- even renders the facts of the objective world unnecessary and graceless. The vivid hallucination becomes the act: the prophecy is more satisfying than its literal fulfillment. If the demagogue-bard says the infidel will swim in his own blood, then words have pre-empted the work of armies. Ambiguity has an ancient history in the West, but the Middle East has its special...
With the Crimson D digging in for the big play, Kehler dropped back and hit Ya-Sin Shabazz on a sideline pattern for 43 yards. On the very next play, Kehler high-stepped 23 yards to the 1. After a Yale motion penalty and an a pass that was ruled out of bounds, Kehler's option play widened the Elis' lead...