Word: alie
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...erupted two weeks ago, the mood in Tehran has swung between indifference--the fighting rarely makes the headlines--and resentment over Iran's longstanding sponsorship of Hizballah. True, there have been officially sponsored rallies declaring support for Hizballah, whose leaders pledge religious allegiance to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. But the emotional support for Hizballah common throughout the Arab world is largely absent here...
...insists violence will abate as more Iraqi soldiers and police deploy, but the U.N. report points out that "new recruits are primary targets of the insurgency." In a rare statement last week, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, called on Iraqis "to unite and forsake hatred and violence. Replace it with love and peaceful dialogue...
...After Ali and I exchanged our goodbyes, thanking God for our safe passage, I dropped my bags at a friend's house in Damascus and walked to my favorite lunch place - where I knew I could comfortably dine alone without being stared at. It is a small, nondescript restaurant run by a team of gracious, deeply devout, conservative Sunnis. In the Middle East, most restaurant workers, from the maitre d' to the dishwashers, are men. When I go to this restaurant, I feel like I am being tended by a team of sweet old uncles. They all come over...
...love Damascus, but I certainly do not love being here under these circumstances. I came here from Beirut a week ago, in the aging Volvo of a Syrian named Ali, a kind middle-aged Shi'ite who has driven my friends and me back and forth between the two cities many times. His knowledge of Lebanon's roads is matched only by his devotion to Hizballah. I would have trusted no other driver to bring me safely past the Israeli jets bombing our road. But fleeing Lebanon in a car decorated with the photograph of Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah...
...both tensed, waiting to hear the boom of an explosion on the road. That did not come until we had descended past the town of Zahle and into the Bekaa Valley, close to the Syrian border. We had stopped the car on a side road so that Ali could hand over his Lebanese mobile-phone chip to a friend heading into the country. The delay turned out to be a godsend. When Ali started the car again, it was to flee the bombs hitting the main road on our right. We sped away with the other cars, and I watched...