Arabic-L:GEN:Ghoul and Ghoul thanks

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

Arabic-L: Fri 26 Jan 2001
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message to listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
           unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject: More on Ghoul
2) Subject: Ghoul thanks

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: 26 Jan 2001
From: farouk mustafa <f-mustafa at uchicago.edu>
Subject: More on Ghoul

Is nothing sacred anymore, Waheed and Galila?  Every little child,
especially those who grew up in Tanta, knows that ummina el-ghuula and
abuuna el-ghuul, for that matter, returnedd the greeting by saying: "luula
salaamak saba' kalaamak,la kalt lahmak 'bl `idaamak".

As for the Ghuuls, for indeed it is a family made up of abuuna el-ghuul,
who is for the most part, quite inept and therefore to a degree benign,
ummina el-ghuula, who is really, really, REALLY evil (Freud and Jung would
both have their work cut out for them on this one) and the little Ghuul
kids who do absolutely nothing except, when the right smart human child is
involved, get eaten, by mistake, of course, by ummina el-ghuula and
occasionally, the memory is quite fuzzy here, by abbuna el-ghuul as well.

Reaching down in the recesses of this Tanta kid's memory, I can reconstruct
the following: The Ghuuls are a regular family,Ghuul Shmuuls, who live in
an unspecified house in the hara, both in the sense of alley and
neighborhood, and I think their ordinariness makes them all the more
frightening, because anyone can be a ghuul, right?  We are not given any
particulars as to father's occupation, age, appearance--except that they
have to be very ugly.  They have a big room, in a house, on the first
floor, if I remember correctly.  In a corner of that rather big room is a
big cauldron with fire under it day and night, wiating for the hapless
human kid whose bad luck or bad behavior (that element depends on each
particular family's didactic bent)places them in the Ghuul's cluthches.
Did I mention that the sole raison d'etre, the career, the mission in life
so to speak of the ghuuls is to eat kids? But not all kids, only the
stupid, unlucky and misbehaving kids get to experience that firsthand, the
rest of us just hear about it.

What really strikes me as particularly fiendish is the familial scene in
which this is all depicted.  And it is not an abstract or other, familial
scene; it is close to home, it is OUR MOTHER and OUR FATHER and what do
they do? They eat children.  Go figure.  I could go on and on but I am
beginning to get scared all over again.

Farouk

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)
Date: 26 Jan 2001
From: M Griffin <mgriffin at uoguelph.ca>
Subject: Ghoul thanks

Dear Dr. Parkinson
Please pass on my thanks to the generous list-members who have shared
their knowledge with us.  I have passed on your comments to the editor
working on this piece.
Sincerely,
Margaret Griffin

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L: 26 Jan 2001