Beirutista

This piece was dug up from my archives! Originally appearing on Beirut.com some four years ago, it remains one of my favorite compilations, and I have thus reproduced it here. Arabic is one of the most artistic and complex languages in the world. In fact, some of its words and phrases are so lush with imagery and meaning that they bear no equivalent in any other language. Nuances and undertones inevitably get lost in translation, and rich idiomatic expressions are butchered altogether. Join me on a linguistic tour of Arabic’s most untranslatable and lyrical words, expressions, and sayings. Don’t trouble yourself trying to unravel them to a non-speaker—just have pride in being part of something precious! To2borneh or to2brineh : literally, it means “you bury me,” and the first thought that springs to mind is deeply troubling. But the connotative punch this word packs is absolutely beautiful. You love someone so much that you can’t imagine a life without them, and you’...

I’m no marketing expert or digital media guru, but I think we can all agree that the landscape of blogging has completely changed from what it used to be not just two decades back, around the time of its inception, but even a mere year ago! The term “weblog” was coined in 1997 to describe exactly that: a web log, or online journal, populated with opinion on matters of interest to the author. A blogger, thus, is not a media representative as all too often they are classified, but a self-appointed editorialist or commentator who seeks a platform wherein to voice his or her ideas. Under those notions my own blog Beirutista was born nearly six years ago. To this day, I continue to insist that everything on my blog reflects my own beliefs, sentiments, and perspective. Each post is a manifestation of Beirutista, expressing my values unequivocally. When the term “influencer” came to be a few years ago, it served as a convenient catch-all for emerging social media users, namely In...