Word: abaya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...July, there were 40 policemen and no women on duty at the checkpoint. At 9:30 a.m., a light-colored Opel drove to within 100 yards of the checkpoint, dropped off a female passenger and turned back toward Ramadi. The woman wore a billowing black gown known as an abaya, and her face was veiled. As she drew close to the blast walls of the checkpoint, she seemed to trip over her abaya and fall. According to eyewitnesses, the woman called out to the nearest policemen, "Come and help me up. I'm hurt." When two policemen approached, she reached...
...women, on duty at the checkpoint. At 9:30 in the morning, a light-colored Opel Saloon drove to within 100 yards of the checkpoint, dropped off a female passenger and turned back toward Ramadi. The woman was short and stout, wore a billowing black gown known as an abaya, and her face was veiled...
...drew close to the blast walls of the checkpoint, she seemed to trip over her abaya and fall. According to eyewitnesses, the woman called out to the nearest policemen, "Come and help me up, I'm hurt." When two policemen approached, the woman reached into her tunic and pulled the trigger on her bomb belt, instantly killing the two cops and fatally injuring a third. A huge fireball slammed into a car parked at the checkpoint, and the five civilians inside were badly burned...
Sixty-three years ago, in 1945, my grandmother qualified as a young physician in Iraq. Her parents had accepted her decision not to wear the concealing black “abaya,” and she walked freely in the streets with her friends. Thirty years later, with oil prices spiraling in the wake of regional conflicts, she was one of a generation of female professors, department heads, and even ministers in Baghdad. To this day, her daughter, my aunt, fights for women’s rights, unbowed and unscarved, in the Iraqi capital...