Word: purlieu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Winning it back will be a critical test of the U.S. military's surge in Baghdad. Under Saddam, Mansour and places like it--neighborhoods with names like Amariyah, Ghazaliyah, al-Adil, al-Khadra--were the purlieu of Iraq's educated Sunni élite. As security has deteriorated and sectarian killings have soared, those areas have been overrun by insurgent groups tied to al-Qaeda. The jihadists offer protection to local Sunnis against Shi'ite death squads in exchange for use of the neighborhoods to launch suicide bombings against Shi'ite civilians. But over the past few months, al-Qaeda...
Harvey has mined this territory before, but who cares? Love is a pretty expansive purlieu after all, and she's chasing anger, hate and lust too. Her lyrics aspire to poetry and sometimes get there--"It turns me on to imagine/Your blue eyes on my words" she says on The Letter--but it's her voice that does the heavy lifting. On Cat on the Wall and The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth, she howls simple phrases until they sound a little like sex and a little like pain. On The Slow Drug, her hush leads into the dead...
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