Word: abaya
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Somalia's 18-year-long civil war. Instead, Thursday's ceremony in Mogadishu, capital of the world's most failed state, became another bloody reminder of just how far the country has sunk. Midway through the event, a male suicide bomber disguised as a woman in a long black abaya, veil and shoes, blew himself up, killing three government ministers and 16 other people in a devastating blow to the country's weak transitional government...
...their monthly paycheck; executives parade the halls in power suits and pencil skirts. But Rotana isn't in New York or London; it's in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, a country in which women normally adhere to a strict dress code in public - a black cloak called an abaya, a headscarf and a veil, the niqab, which covers everything but their eyes...
...Rasheed Hotel, one haunting figure wandered in from the streets to wag a finger at the politicians and power-brokers. "Maybe God will direct them in the right way," says Naima Daoud Salman, 80, dressed in a dusty black Abaya from head to toe. Salman showed up because she heard powerful people would be here. Frail, with one bad eye and the other made of glass, she and seven other women traversed the Al-Rasheed's marble hallways looking for government assistance. They had been evicted from a squatters den three months ago, after being kicked out of their homes...
...Last March, I arrived to an onslaught of rockets and mortars fired at the nearby Green Zone, along with retaliatory coalition air strikes and the near constant thunder of helicopter blades overhead. As with other foreign reporters, my movements were always calculated, and I often donned a long black abaya and head scarf. But this time around, I was one of the few women wearing an abaya as I shopped in the relatively liberal city center...
...insurgents. Every so often, our driver, Sami, would yell, "Checkpoint!" Our cameras would fall to the floor, and we would try to appear innocent as weary-looking soldiers scrutinized our authorization documents in a country still suspicious of journalists' motives. There was a similar procedure for my headscarf and abaya, conservative Islamic women's attire, which I removed in "safer" regions and put on in "dangerous" ones. The black shroud was stifling but necessary camouflage in areas where most women don them and where a second look from the wrong person can still prove deadly...