Word: abdi
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...drinking water runs out about 16 hours into the voyage, with the coast of Libya far behind and the old wooden boat chugging through the Mediterranean toward Sicily. But Abdi Salan Mohammed Hassan - a gangly, gentle, 23-year-old Somali man crammed into the open 12-m boat with scores of other Africans, all trying to smuggle themselves into Europe - isn't worried. It has taken him eight months to travel a 4,500-km route from Mogadishu and begin this perilous October crossing, and along the way he has gone without food and water plenty of times. His optimism...
...whose relative has just made the journey. In the past, fleeing Somalis would travel by boat through the Suez Canal, but now that Egypt has tightened its border controls, the preferred route is overland to Libya, then by boat. His mother tries to talk him out of it, telling Abdi Salan that the trip is too risky and life will be hard even if he makes it. "I'm a man now," he tells her. "And in life, sometimes a man must suffer." FROM MOGADISHU TO KHARTOUM With a schedule of northbound buses in hand, Abdi Salan announces that...
...some Somali students let him sleep on their couch. They also direct him to a café where smugglers are known to pass. There, at around 10 p.m., he meets the man he hopes will get him to Libya. At a corner table in the dimly lit café, Abdi Salan listens intently to the local man, who speaks Arabic in a faint voice. (Abdi Salan's native tongue is Somali, but he understands enough Arabic to get by.) The man is tall, lean and dark, wearing a flowing white Arab robe and headdress. He is flanked by a pair...
...sentencing to death a prominent reform advocate, academic and journalist Hashem Aghajari, for allegedly renouncing Islam. Aghajari's supporters say his only "crime" had been to call for reform within the Islamic clergy; his lawyers hope to have the sentence overturned on appeal. Another prominent pro-reform figure, Abbas Abdi, was also arrested. But there was good news for the reform movement too: the release of the Iran's top political dissident, former Interior Minister Abdullah Nouri, by Supreme Leader Ayatallah Ali Khamenei. Nouri's an ally of President Mohammed Khatami. Meanwhile, a constitutional crisis loomed after parliament passed...
...past "democratically elected" governments in Pakistan did only one thing "for" the people, and that was loot them of their hard-earned money and spend it on themselves. Musharraf has finally stood up to save the nation from further misery. BASMA ABDI Karachi...