"Shagan"

Hey all, Assalamaalaikum and Ramadan Mubarak - peace be upon you and a blessed Ramadan.
I am so excited about this one. Let's pray God-willing that our spirits and Iman (faith) will stay on a high, and continue in that direction for the rest of our lives.
I apologize for not posting so much, I have been meaning to, but I can never perfect what I would like to say.

Instead, here is a piece from a blog that I find inspirational. http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com. This is Layla Anwar's blog, a very educated Iraqi woman and her raw thoughts since the invasion of her country.

















excerpt:

For those who are literalist in thinking and language, it can prove almost impossible for them to capture the essence of what I am trying to convey.

Take another example - the verb to Love in Arabic. There are over 99 ways to express the concept/feeling/state of Love in Arabic.

I am yet to come across a language that prides itself on its Love variations like in Arabic.

Love through and under all of its states is to be found in different verbs expressing the one thing -- Love. A yearning Love, a longing Love, a passionate Love , a liking Love , a burning Love, an infatuating Love, an ecstatic Love, a deep Love, a missing Love, a caring Love, a friendly Love, a bitter Love, a sorrowful Love, a grieving Love, a cruel Love, a platonic Love, a lustful Love, a waiting Love, a jealous Love, a possessive Love, a conquering Love....and keep counting over 90 variations of the verb to Love.

One state of Love in Arabic is "Shagan". "Shagan" is excessively hard to translate into English. Shagan is a state of Love where one experiences - yearning, longing, lamentation, waiting, nostalgia, tinged with a subtle taste of bitterness of something that has gone to pass but one is still hoping for...but nonetheless a creative, inspired state of Love, almost melodious in its Hopefulness...

See what I mean - this is the brilliance of the Arabic language, a language that combines in one word Shagan all those seemingly contradictory states of both despair and hopefulness -- of finally meeting and uniting with your Beloved, against all odds.

The state of Love produced by "Shagan" is a very peculiar one...It is an almost obsessive one...because everything reminds you and takes you back to the Beloved.

Everything - a smell, a color, a look, a familiar face, a taste, a perfume, a memory, a song, a melody, a scenery, a text, a letter, a book, a name, a word, a verb, a Language...

Painting: Iraqi artist, Abdul Hussain Al-Twaij.
The entry: http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2008/08/variations-on-verb.html