#and courses in Morocco and the Middle East

[waugh-bao]

*

[mylight-png]

The Words We Use

Jumblr, we really need to reevaluate the words we use to talk about Judaism and Jews and such. Far too long we've been rather lax about these things.

Earlier today I was talking to a friend and she used the term "Jewish Russians" which immediately rubbed me the wrong way. (She's super chill and I've known her most of my life, she meant no harm by it.) I thought about it, and what I realized is that this specific wording, though listing it first, puts the Jewish identity as secondary. By saying "Jewish Russians" the "Jewish" is used as a subcategory of Russains. In reality, this term refers to Jews whose diaspora experience was in Russia. Too long, people have used our diaspora experiences as our central identifiers, and tack on "Jewish" as a classifier within that category.

This is not accurate, not historically, scientifically, or socially.

Socially and historically, Jews were always treated as a category of our own, regardless of where in the diaspora we were located. My parents in the Soviet Union did not have "Russian" or "Moldovan" written in their passports. They had "Jew" written there. I have heard countless tales of hostility and discrimination due to them being Jewish. In Spain, during the Inquisition, Jews who converted were called "conversos", a category of their own despite the forced assimilation. In the Middle East, Jews were treated as second class citizens due to being Jewish, even if they converted. ("Yahood" or "Jew" in Arabic is still commonly used as an insult in ME communities.)

We were never Jewish Russians, Jewish Spaniards, Jewish Moroccans, etc. We were Jews in Russia, Jews in Spain, Jews in Morocco. Even the term itself, "diaspora", (according to Oxford languages: "the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland") indicates a separate origin.

Genetic studies confirm this, showing that Jews in whatever region they spent exile in would still be more genetically similar to Jews in other regions than goyim in the regions they lived in.

My parents are not Jews from Eastern Europe. They are Jews whose diaspora experience was in Eastern Europe. Even saying we're "from" there, gives people the wrong idea.

Next up, more commonly discussed, is calling some Jews "white". No Jew is "white" in any sense of that word. White-passing, yes. White, no. In society, being white is more social than physical. It's based on how you're treated, what your status in society is, based on ethnicity/race.

"Jewish" is an ethnicity, and has been considered a race historically. No Jew is white. Many have features commonly associated with being Jewish, and their treatment will of course vary from the experiences of more white-passing Jews. But even the most white-passing Jew will have to deal with antisemitism in some way.

We need to stop saying "white Jews" and replace it with "white-passing". Denormalize language that positions Jewishness as only religion.

To combine the previous concepts:

Replace "Jewish *blank*" with "*blank* Jews" when talking about countries of recent origin.

Instead of "Jews from *blank*" use something along the lines of "Jews with diaspora experiences in *blank*".

Instead of "white Jews" use "white-passing Jews".

It is so incredibly important that we use language that accurately reflects our identity as Jews, instead of settling on commonly used language that is inaccurate.

And finally, could we please normalize using "Judeans" instead of "Jews"? It's not as important as the other switches but it is so important to highlight our origins in Judea, and it could be a useful way to bring that fact into the spotlight.

Fellow Jews/Judeans, feel absolutely free to reblog with other language switches you'd want to see in our communities, whether in the same theme or not.

Goyim, please refrain from speaking over us on this, but I'd appreciate you amplifying this if you'd like to!

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Express, Witness for the Prosecution, Morocco)—Bisexual icon, super hot when dressed both masculine and feminine, lived up her life in the queer Berlin scene of the 1920s, central to the 'sewing circle' of the secret sapphic actresses of Old Hollywood, refused lucrative offers by the Nazis and helped Jews and others under persecution to escape Nazi Germany, the love of my life

Xia Meng, also known as Hsia Moog or Miranda Yang (Sunrise, Bride Hunter)—For those who are familiar with Hong Kong's early cinema, Xia Meng is THE leading woman of an era, the earliest "silver-screen goddess", "The Great Beauty" and "Audrey Hepburn of the East". Xia Meng starred in 38 films in her 17-year career, and famously had rarely any flops, from her first film at the age of 18 to her last at the age of 35. She was a rare all-round actress in Mandarin-language films, acting, singing, and dancing with an enchanting ease in films of diverse genres, from contemporary drama to period operas. She was regarded as the "crown princess" among the "Three Princesses of the Great Wall", the iconic leading stars of the Great Wall Movie Enterprises, which was Hong Kong's leading left-wing studio in the 1950s-60s. At the time, Hong Kong cinema had only just taken off, but Xia Meng's influence had already spread out to China, Singapore, etc. Overseas Chinese-language magazines and newspapers often featured her on their covers. The famous HK wuxia novelist Jin Yong had such a huge crush on her that he made up a whole fake identity as a nobody-screenwriter to join the Great Wall studio just so he can write scripts for her. He famously said, "No one has really seen how beautiful Xi Shi (one of the renowned Four Beauties of ancient China) is, I think she should be just like Xia Meng to live up to her name." In 1980, she returned to the HK film industry by forming the Bluebird Movie Enterprises. As a producer with a heart for the community, she wanted to make a film on the Vietnam War and the many Vietnam War refugees migrating to Hong Kong. She approached director Ann Hui and produced the debut film Boat People (1982), a globally successful movie and landmark feature for Hong Kong New Wave, which won several awards including the best picture and best director in the second Hong Kong Film Award. Years later, Ann Hui looked back on her collaboration with Xia Meng, "I'm very grateful to her for allowing me to make what is probably the best film I've ever made in my life."

This is round 5 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Xia Meng:

Marlene Dietrich:

ms dietrich....ms dietrich pls.....sit on my face

its marlene dietrich!!!! queer legend, easily the hottest person to ever wear a tuxedo, that hot hot voice, those glamorous glamorous movies…. most famously she starred in a string of movies directed by josef von sternberg throughout the 1930s, beginning with the blue angel which catapulted her to stardom in the role of the cabaret singer lola lola. known for his exquisite eye for lighting, texture, imagery, von sternberg devoted himself over the course of their collaborations to acquiring exceptional skill at photographing dietrich herself in particular, a worthy direction in which to expend effort im sure we can all agree. she collaborated with many other great directors of the era as well, including rouben mamoulian (song of songs), frank borzage (desire), ernst lubitsch (angel), fritz lang (rancho notorious), and billy wilder (witness for the prosecution). the encyclopedia britannica entry im looking at while compiling this propaganda describes her as having an “aura of sophistication and languid sexuality” which✔️💯. born marie magdalene dietrich, she combined her first and middle names to coin the moniker “marlene”. she was a trendsetter in her incorporation of trousers, suits, and menswear into her wardrobe and her androgynous allure was often remarked upon. critic kenneth tynan wrote, “She has sex, but no particular gender. She has the bearing of a man; the characters she plays love power and wear trousers. Her masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men.” in the 1920s she enjoyed the vibrant queer nightlife of weimar berlin, visiting gay bars and drag balls, and in hollywood her love affairs with men and women were an open secret. she was an ardent opponent of nazi germany, refusing lucrative contacts offered her to make films there, raising money with billy wilder to help jews and dissidents escape, and undertaking extensive USO tours to entertain soldiers with an act that included her a playing musical saw and doing a mindreading routine she learned from orson welles. starting in the 50s and continuing into the mid-70s she worked largely as a cabaret artist touring the world to large audiences, employing burt bacharach as her musical arranger.

First of all, there are those publicity photos of her in a tux. Second of all, I have never been the same since knowing that she sent copies of those photos to her Berlin lovers signed "Daddy Marlene." Not only is she hot in all circumstances, but she can do everything from earthy to ice queen. Also, she kept getting sexy romantic lead parts in Hollywood after the age of 40, which would be rare even now. She hated Nazis, loved her friends, and had a sapphic social circle in Hollywood. She also had cheekbones that could cut glass and a voice that could melt you.

Her GENDER her looks her voice her everything

“In her films and record-breaking cabaret performances, Miss Dietrich artfully projected cool sophistication, self-mockery and infinite experience. Her sexuality was audacious, her wit was insolent and her manner was ageless. With a world-weary charm and a diaphanous gown showing off her celebrated legs, she was the quintessential cabaret entertainer of Weimar-era Germany.”

The bar scene in Morocco awoke something in me and ultimately changed my gender

"Her manner, the critic Kenneth Tynan wrote, was that of ‘a serpentine lasso whereby her voice casually winds itself around our most vulnerable fantasies.’ Her friend Maurice Chevalier said: ‘Dietrich is something that never existed before and may never exist again.’”

"Songstress, photographer, fashion icon, out bisexual phenom (notoriously stole Lupe Velez and Joan Crawford's men, and Errol Flynn's wife, had a torrid affair with Greta Garbo that ended in a 60-year feud, other notable conquests including Erich Maria Remarque -yes, the guy who wrote All Quiet on the Western Front- Douglas Fairbanks Junior, Claudette Colbert, Mercedes de Acosta, Edith Piaf), anti-Nazi activist. Marlene was a bitch - she had an open marriage for decades and one of her favorite things was making catty commentary about her current lover with her husband, and her relationship with her daughter was painful- but she was also immensely talented, a hard worker, an opponent of fascism and the hottest ice queen in Hollywood for a long time."

"She can sing! She can act! She told the Nazis to fuck off and became a US citizen out of spite! She worked with other German exiles to create a fund to help Jews and German dissidents escape (she donated an entire movie salary, about $450k, to the cause). She looks REALLY GOOD in a suit. If you're not convinced, please listen to her sing "Lili Marlene". Absolutely gorgeous woman with a gorgeous voice."

Gifset link

"Bisexual icon and Nazi-hater. Looks absolutely stunning in the suits she liked to wear. 'I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men'."

"would you not let her walk on you?"

[bonyassfish]

The inability to see the connection between jews being deliberately excluded from projects of nationalism or self-determination and the current violence of Zionist regime is something holding back most people here methinks

Like I literally saw a post referring to Mizrahi Jews as “race traitors”, as if they weren’t excluded from earlier Arab nationalism/pan-arab identities/decolonial movements. In Morocco, the colonial French govt used divide and conquer and made the Moroccan Jewish community separate from other Moroccans. Now the majority of Moroccan Jews live in Israel.

It’s interesting, one of the few places that Jews can live with a modicum of safety in the Middle East nowadays is actually Iran, where despite obvious discrimination and oppression, there is a concerted effort to differentiate between Jews and Zionists, and to view Iranian Jews as inherent members of Iranian society (in theory at least, if not in practice)

It’s the eternal question which plagues Jews everywhere: where do we belong? Pretty much every Jew on earth has a family history of expulsion and escape. My ancestors came from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Romania. But none of them ever felt an affinity to these nations, only a sense of exclusion and discrimination.

This is of course not to defend the Israeli state in any way, but to explain it. The hostility and the violence comes from both a dehumanization of the Palestinians to further the Zionist project, as well as a perceived existential need. If Jews aren’t welcome anywhere else, where do we go?

That’s why I always say the fight for Palestinian liberation and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand. One of the most effective tools to use against Zionism and hasbara bullshit is to show you love and care for the Jewish people and our safety. Otherwise, don’t fucking bother.

[willtheweaver]

A writer’s guide to forests: from the poles to the tropics, part 6

Welcome back. We’re getting closer to the equator. Things are really heating up now.(…I’ll see myself out now)

Mediterranean forest

Here is where the line between myth and reality begin to blur, and history reveals itself.

Location- The region around the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by the Alps and the deserts of the Middle East and Northern Africa. Much of the forest area has been altered by human activity, with the largest expanse remaining located in the Iberian peninsula.

Climate- Warm and dry. Mountains are more reliably wet, with higher elevations being seasonal.

Plant life- Trees are evergreen at or near sea level, with cork oak and olive common. Atlas cedar grow in Morocco, and the Levant is home to Cedar of Lebanon. In Alpine regions, deciduous species such as Hornbeam, lime, and elm eventually give way to pines as one goes higher. Dry areas produce many hardy species of ground cover, including the unusual dewy pine (Drosophyllum lusitanicum)- this is the only perennial carnivorous plant that does not grow in a wetland or humid environment.

Animal life- Due to millennia of human activity, predators, such as lions, wolves, bears, and lions have mostly or totally vanished. The largest hunter one may stumble across is the Iberian Lynx, though this is unlikely. Extinction has also affected prey species, with the Pyrenees ibex going extinct twice (the second time occurred after a clone ibex died shortly after birth). Conservation efforts have meant that species from eagles to dormice have a chance to recover. North Africa and Gibraltar are home to Barbary Macaques. Where humans manage forestland, herds of goats and pigs forage.

How the forest affects the story- Unless you want your characters high in the mountains, you don’t have to worry too much about the seasons( granted, winters can still be cold, but trees are evergreen and the summer heat will be the biggest worry) As these forests have been cleared and managed since the Neolithic, it is your choice as to where your characters fit into the grand picture. Do your characters and their society harvest the forest or graze their livestock there? Or maybe your characters have decided to restore the forest. What would restoration efforts look like? And of course, history and prehistory can provide a backdrop and various peoples to interact with. Could your characters have crossed paths with Otzi the iceman? What about the Romans, pilgrims, crusaders, Phoneticians, or Celtic-Iberians? And you don’t have to limit yourself to history. This is the land of the Greek Myths, and countless others as well. Gods, heros, and monsters may lurk behind the trees and in the caves.

[sasori100]

A TINY COUNTRY:

Palestinians are Arabs, remember that. Jews are Jews, remember that as well.

Now, let's see the arab league:

Algeria

Bahrain

Comoros

Djibouti

Egypt

Iraq

Jordan

Kuwait

Lebanon

Libya

Mauritania

Morocco

Oman

Palestine

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

Somalia

Sudan

Syria

Tunisia

United Arab Emirates

Yamen

So many.... And they are all Arabs.

Now, to the jews- Israel.

That's it.

The Arabs (I won't say all of them of course, but many of them) want to take Israel- it's a very small county (tiny) and the only county the Jews have!

The Jews lived there before the Arabs occupied the place, and even after that- the Jews never left completely!

Unlike the Jews, the Arabs have many countries, and still it's not enough in their eyes.

When the world speaking about the Palestinians, we need to remember it's not a small nation...

It's a huge one. It's the Arab nation!

Not poor people who suffers because of the Jews. They are the big here. They have countries in north Africa, the Horn Africa AND the middle east.

And U want the Jews to give up on the only county they have and never left completely?

THE JEWS SHOULD NOT GIVE UP ON EVEN THE SMALLEST AREA FROM THEIR COUNTRY!

If u want the Arabs to have ANOTHER country, why won't u give an area from YOUR country? And U can even call it Palestine! ✨✨✨

[beardedmrbean]

The 19th century Austrian socialist Ferdinand Kronawetter once remarked, "Antisemitism is the socialism of idiots." He was not wrong, but I believe even he would have been surprised that most of these idiots are either celebrities or attend the West's most prestigious educational institutions.

From Greta Thunberg to Harvard yard, you can barely throw a stone without hitting someone holding an anti-Israel rally. Apparently, we also have normalized Jewish students needing to be locked up in university libraries for their own "safety," or the BBC regularly publishing blood libels, first about a supposed bombardment of a hospital in Gaza by Israeli forces, and a few weeks later with the claim that Israeli Defence Forces are intentionally targeting medical personnel and Arabic speakers.

But even that is, in fact, old news: In January 2009, the French public broadcaster France-2 aired footage of Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year's Day. As it turned out, however, the recording was from 2005 and not 2009, and the victims were not killed by the IDF but an "accident" of Hamas explosives detonating prematurely. And on it goes: Recently, pictures showing the carnage inflicted on the Syrian people by the Assad regime made the rounds claiming to show destruction in Gaza.

Who needs the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" when you have the mainstream media?

Sometimes it seems as if no ideology evolves as quickly as antisemitism: Before Israel, the Jews where hated for being rootless and without national allegiances. Now that they have a state, they are hated for that. And if the last Jew were to leave the Middle East tomorrow, some other reason would be found to justify Jew-hatred.

In fact, after 1948, Jews had to leave most of the Middle East and North Africa: Once thriving communities from Morocco to Iraq ceased to exist after the regimes of these countries drove out their Jewish populations. Many of them moved to Israel, the only state in the region that actually allows Muslim Arabs and Jews to live side-by-side.

Alas, if you are Jewish, it is never enough: Unless all of the Middle East is "Judenfrei," the Jews will always be painted as oppressors and everyone else as oppressed.

So in some ways, it's not surprising to see antisemitism thrive in the ranks of the global leftist elite. When global climate celebrity Greta Thunberg blabberers on about "no climate justice on occupied land," she is only revealing the next iteration of Jew hate. It turns out that for the "environmental movement," the solution to the "Jewish Question" seems to be more important than addressing climate change.

Similarly, in the famously tolerant Netherlands where government advisors are openly pushing for the normalization of paedophilia, the line needs to be drawn somewhere: Several filmmakers pulled out of the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam after the organizers refused to allow their stage to be used for promoting the eradication of Israel.

Pot, porn, and paedophilia are all a go for the Dutch, but being pro-Israel? One should be careful not to go too far!

Another turn-of-the-century Austrian who would have a lot to say about this would probably be Sigmund Freud: If the West is suffering from the pathologies of historical guilt for all the alleged sins of its past, Israel and the Jews are the favourite object of projection. If the Jews are as bad as the Nazis and European colonialists, then opposing them is like re-running history, but this time those Westerners on college campuses can finally be on the side of the oppressed.

Both Israel and the Palestinians are just extras in an exercise of excessive narcissism that allows one to stand "on the right side of history" and virtue signal at no cost. Of course, this doesn't apply when Arabs are slaughtering Arabs. There were no protests for the peoples of Syria or Yemen or when ISIS was committing an actual genocide against the Yazidis.

That's what this all comes down to: a rewriting of history so that the Jews' oppressors can absolve themselves of guilt and claim to be the oppressed. During the Holocaust, the Jews experienced the worst that men can do to their fellow man, and many in the West are itching for the opportunity to find historic salvation in creating a moral equivalence between the Nazis and the state of Israel.

Neither Greta Thunberg nor her acolytes have any clue about Middle Eastern or Jewish history, because it is not about that—just as her climate activism was never about climate, but the usual Leftist tropes from colonialism to social justice.

In 1968, Eric Hoffer wrote about a premonition that would not leave him: "As it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the Holocaust will be upon us." After all we have seen in recent weeks in in Western capitals and college campuses, I am afraid that he was right.

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

Why is Jessica often seen with her hair covered? Especially in the second movie of course but she does wear a veil in the first too. Is it a Bene Gesserit rule? And if it is, is there an explanation to why? They’re mostly raised to seduce men so modesty doesn’t sound like a high priority.

I'll quote here the costume designer for Dune and Dune: Part Two here, Jaqueline West. As I understand the main point (in the movie) is that the costumes for Benne Gesserits are based on medieval nuns hence the veils.

Lady Jessica goes through a lot in this film after arriving in Arrakis and fleeing to the Sietch. How do her costumes chart her transformation from where we left off in Part One? When we left her in Dune: Part One, she was still in her stillsuit and dessert wrap. When she gets to the Sietch, she starts dressing like the Fremens—in a more humble style with the rougher linen, almost djellaba-esque long gowns, and wrapped veils, all printed by Matt. Once Lady Jessica becomes the Southern Reverend Mother, her face is tattooed over with the prophecy, and her outfits are elaborate but in earthy tones. What went into this collection? Working with sketch artist Keith Christiansen, we started looking at the Egyptian sarcophagi since the Bene Gesserits are ancient nuns or heads of their particular sect. The sarcophagi are so elaborate, and their shapes are quite beautiful and age-old, with magnificent carving in the details. We used many layers of different fabrics—hand-painted velvets, hand-painted silks, and tapestry fabrics. We purchased all the fabrics, mainly from Italy and some from Thailand and Eastern Europe, and pieced them together into these incredible, ornate patchworks. We painted, dyed, and printed them all in-house. What about the elaborate headdresses on Lady Jessica and the other southern Reverend Mothers? The jewelry came from all over the Middle East and North Africa. I had shoppers in bazaars in Istanbul, Morocco, and Egypt. Then, we disassembled them, and my jewelry maker put everything back in a new way to make it look futuristic. We pieced together different necklaces for each of the Reverend Mothers. We took all of that detail from the sarcophagi and made them come alive. Lady Jessica and the southern Reverend Mothers dress differently from the ones we saw in Part One, i.e., Reverend Mother Mohiam’s entourage of Bene Gesserit sisters, who were all in black.  Mohiam comes from the Emperor’s world. You don’t wear black in the desert, or you’re going to bake. These women have navigated for many, many years through the different desert cultures within the Fremen world. I imagined Fremen sects in the south were different from those in Northern Arrakis. Even though they’re all Reverend Mothers, they are on a different planet. So, I wanted to distinguish them with color, but their shapes are very similar. Yes, their silhouettes and head coverings have a similar look. They’re all based on Medieval nuns and the women of the tarot cards, particularly with the Queen of Swords.

[bamzer]

Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan traveler and scholar. "The Explorers" podcast, where he expressed his fascination with Ibn Battuta, highlighting the remarkable travels of this Islamic Explorer. Born in 1304, Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah was a notable scholar and traveler of Amazigh origin. Over the course of three decades, he embarked on extensive journeys encompassing diverse regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, East and West Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, China, South Asia, and the Iberian Peninsula.

Ibn Battuta chronicled his remarkable experiences in a work known as "A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling," commonly referred to as "The Rihla." Ibn Battuta's travels distinguished him as one of the most prolific explorers in the pre-modern era, covering an astounding distance of approximately 117,000 kilometers. This far surpassed the journeys of other renowned explorers such as Zheng He and Marco Polo, who covered around 50,000 and 24,000 kilometers respectively.

#ibnbatuta #history #Morocco #traveller #explore

[maiega]

Learning Arabic in Sheffield: What to Know

If you're thinking about studying Arabic and you're based in South Yorkshire, you might be surprised at how many options are available. Arabic courses in Sheffield are offered in different formats, from informal weekend groups to university-level classes, so there’s likely something that fits your pace and goals.

Some people want to learn Arabic to better connect with family, understand Islamic texts, or prepare for travel to the Middle East or North Africa. Others just enjoy picking up new languages. Whatever your reason is, Sheffield has several opportunities to explore.

The University of Sheffield is a well-known place to start. It runs language modules for students and sometimes short courses open to the public. The classes tend to cover reading, writing, and conversation, with a focus on Modern Standard Arabic. These are taught by experienced tutors and usually follow a structured syllabus.

For those looking for something less formal, community centres and cultural organisations often run beginner or intermediate classes. These might be in the evenings or on weekends, making them easier to fit into a busy schedule. You’ll often find that they focus more on spoken Arabic or Quranic reading, depending on the group’s needs.

If you’re new to Arabic, you’ll notice that the script and pronunciation are different from English. That can feel overwhelming at first, but good courses break things down step by step. Learning the alphabet is usually the first challenge. Once you’ve got that, everything becomes a bit more manageable.

Sheffield also has private tutors who offer one-on-one lessons. This can be a good option if you prefer personalised help or want to go at your own pace. Prices and styles vary, so it’s worth talking to a few tutors before committing.

Many learners mix and match methods—attending a course while also using apps, books, or language exchange meetups. The local libraries sometimes carry Arabic learning resources, too, which can help if you’re on a budget.

It’s worth mentioning that Arabic has many dialects. Most formal classes start with Modern Standard Arabic, but if you have a particular country in mind (say, Egypt or Morocco), you might want to find a teacher who can help with that specific dialect later on.

In short, Arabic courses in Sheffield offer a mix of learning styles, skill levels, and goals. Whether you’re aiming to read Arabic texts, have everyday conversations, or simply enjoy learning a new script, you’ll likely find something that suits your needs.

[mideastdiscourse]

UAE signals endorsement of Syria’s post-conflict order” interview with Dr. Gokhan Ereli

Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator Syria needs everything. After 14 years of conflict, the economy, infrastructure and security status are devastated. The UAE was one of the first Arab countries to hold out a helping hand to Damascus. Once the transition on December 8, 2024 took place, UAE has continued to strengthen its ties and commitment with Syria. On June 1, Hassan Ahmed Al Shehhi, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the Syrian Arab Republic, at the Damascus International Airport, “We are pleased to announce the resumption of operations by the UAE national carrier, FlyDubai, to the Syrian Arab Republic. This milestone reflects the deep-rooted and fraternal relations between the United Arab Emirates and Syria and underscores the UAE’s continued efforts to enhance regional and international air connectivity, strengthening economic ties and connecting people.” The Arab Media Summit 2025 in Dubai was attended by Dr. Mohammad Nidal Al-Shaar, Syria’s Minister of Economy and Industry. Al-Shaar said, “We need at least $1 trillion to reconstruct and rebuild a new Syria.”

He called the Syria-UAE cooperation a key driver in the reconstruction of the Syrian economy. Recently, the Damascus administration has signed an investment agreement with DP World concerning the port of Tartus. Under the agreement, the UAE company operating in 40 countries, will invest $800 million in the terminal.

Syria and the Middle East are rapidly changing. Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Dr. Gökhan Ereli, who is an expert on Middle Eastern International Relations, and has conducted research across the Arab Gulf countries.

#1. Steven Sahiounie (SS): The U.S. and Iran are currently holding a series of talks concerning the Iran nuclear program. In your opinion, if the sides happen to come to an agreement, how will this possibly affect the Arab Gulf states?

Gokhan Ereli (GE): For a long time, Iran’s backing of Shiite militias has destabilized regional states in the Middle East. It poses a serious challenge. However, during the course of 2023-2025, Iranian influence waned across the Middle East, especially in Syria and Lebanon. This decline coincided with a surge in Gulf engagement in those traditionally Iranian-influenced areas, particularly Syria and Lebanon. Against this backdrop, the conclusion of the fourth round of US-Iran talks is a positive development for the Gulf nations. The UAE delivered President Trump’s letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Khamenei, while Oman hosted and continue to host the negotiations. These details underscored the Gulf’s direct involvement in the negotiations. If a broad or narrow agreement materializes soon, the Gulf states will gain significance – as US intermediaries and as partners advancing dialogue with Iran. Yet any US-Iran accord remains vulnerable to spoilers: Israel, reckless moves by Iranian militias, or the Houthis’ growing transnational reach.

#2. SS: U.S. President Donald Trump has sought to add more Arab countries to the Abraham Accords with Israel. UAE, Bahrain. Morocco and Sudan have participated, and there is pressure on Oman to sign. In your view, what are the benefits from signing the Accords?

EG: From 2016 to 2020, the Trump administration’s paramount focus was normalization. Today, however, it has receded to the back burner due to the ongoing Israeli brutality in Gaza. Yet, being sidelined does not mean normalization with Israel has been shelved entirely. For some time, U.S. administrations have viewed Saudi Arabia as the “grand prize” in this process—and Netanyahu shares that perspective. Nevertheless, in the midst of the Gaza conflict, a normalization agreement with Israel would be extremely difficult for Gulf, or other Arab states, to justify publicly. Outside the calculus of war, normalization essentially means forging economic ties with Israel, strengthening military cooperation, and deepening relations with the U.S. Despite all its potential benefits, in the near future it would be a political move nearly impossible to sell to Gulf or Arab public opinion.

#3. SS: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said one of his main goals was to have Saudi Arabia sign the Abraham Accords. However, the ongoing genocide on Gaza, carried out by Israel, has put a halt to any activity on the Abraham Accords. In your opinion, will Saudi Arabia maintain their stance on demanding a two-state solution?

EG: Since the 2003 Arab Peace Initiative, Saudi Arabia has hinted at normalizing ties with Israel—on the condition that it springs from a Two-State Solution. Before the Gaza onslaught, U.S. administrations bent over backwards to smooth the path. For Riyadh, normalization is a pivotal threshold in regional politics—after all, its chief Gulf rival, the UAE, has already reaped dividends from warming ties with Israel. Yet, in a post-Gaza calculus, rushing normalization within a 3- to 6-month window could spark severe political fallout for Saudi Arabia. Still, Israel’s enduring presence in regional geopolitics—and Riyadh’s long-standing interest—means normalization could arise eventually, using it as a forum that advances a Two-State dialogue. But the where and when, as Trump once emphasized, is a decision for the Saudis alone.

#4. SS: The Arab Gulf countries have expressed an interest in rebuilding Syria after the civil war destroyed many parts of the country. In your opinion, what will be the role of the UAE and any other Gulf countries in Syria?

EG: While Qatar maintained a continuous line of communication with Sharaa’s government, and Saudi Arabia only reengaged with Damascus once shifting regional dynamics compelled its hand, the UAE’s approach stands out as particularly consequential. In Abu Dhabi’s case, the leadership first invested substantial political and economic capital in supporting Assad’s regime—whether through probable financial aid, intelligence sharing, or facilitating humanitarian corridors under pro-Assad auspices. Only after this period of significant backing did the UAE execute an unequivocal pivot toward reintegration, effectively erasing previous barriers and signaling full endorsement of Syria’s post-conflict order. This sequence—first bolstering Assad, then openly re-establishing formal ties—underscores the UAE’s calculated risk-taking and its willingness to leverage its influence for maximum strategic return.

#5. SS: Yemen has been in conflict with Saudi Arabia and the U.S. for years. The Iran-backed resistance in Yemen has carried out attacks on the shipping lanes in the Gulf, as well as attacks on Israel. In your view, will the Yemen conflict be resolved, and who are the players involved in restoring peace to the area?

EG: Yemen presents a military and political puzzle that is unlikely to be unraveled anytime soon. As much as the post–October 7 developments weakened Iran, they equally seemed to have empowered the Houthis to become a cross-border actor. Now that they can strike not only inside Yemen but also at U.S. forces and Israeli territory, they wield in-the-field gains as domestic leverage. In turn, this has made the once-ongoing Saudi–Houthi dialogue impossible for the time being; the Houthis insist that any new talks hinge on an immediate halt to Israeli attacks in Gaza. Simply put, militarily eliminating the Houthis is unfeasible, and devising a political solution that excludes them is virtually impossible in Yemen’s fractured landscape. Of course, any international settlement would involve key regional and global players—Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, alongside the U.S. and Russia—but Yemen has fallen far down the international agenda, overshadowed by crises in Gaza, Syria, and Ukraine.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time awrd-winning journalist.

[esraaadell]

learn arabi

Learning Arabic: A Gateway to Rich Culture and Language

Arabic is one of the oldest and most widely spoken languages in the world. With over 420 million speakers across the globe, Arabic is the official language of 22 countries, spanning the Middle East and North Africa. learn to speak arabic offers not only linguistic benefits but also a deeper connection to a diverse culture and history. Whether for personal, academic, or professional reasons, mastering Arabic can open doors to numerous opportunities.

Why Learn Arabic?

Cultural Insight Arabic is the language of a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Learning Arabic allows you to immerse yourself in centuries of literature, philosophy, art, and scientific advancements. From the works of classic poets like Rumi to modern-day writers and thinkers, Arabic literature is vast and influential. Understanding the language also gives you access to understanding the Islamic religion, as Arabic is the language of the Quran.

Economic and Professional Opportunities Arabic is an important language in the global economy, particularly for those looking to engage in business with the Middle East. As the region experiences rapid economic growth, proficiency in Arabic can be an asset in sectors like international business, oil and gas, tourism, and diplomacy. Many companies are actively seeking Arabic speakers to engage in trade, negotiation, and strategic partnerships.

Travel and Exploration If you love to travel, knowing Arabic can enhance your experience in Arabic-speaking countries. Whether it's navigating the bustling streets of Cairo, exploring the markets of Morocco, or attending cultural events in the UAE, speaking the local language opens up a deeper level of understanding and connection with locals. It helps you interact meaningfully, engage with the community, and get the most out of your travels.

Academic Pursuits For students of history, political science, or religious studies, Arabic can be crucial. Scholars and researchers often need access to primary sources written in Arabic. The language unlocks a wealth of academic material, including historical texts, journals, and manuscripts. Additionally, many universities and institutions offer Arabic language programs, creating opportunities for academic exchange and research in Arabic-speaking regions.

Tips for Learning Arabic

Start with the Basics Arabic uses a unique script, written from right to left. Familiarize yourself with the Arabic alphabet, which consists of 28 letters. Understanding the pronunciation and recognizing how the letters change depending on their position in a word is essential for reading and writing.

Choose Your Dialect Arabic is not a monolithic language. It exists in several regional dialects, each varying significantly. The two main varieties of Arabic are Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), used in formal settings, media, and literature, and Colloquial Arabic, which differs from region to region (such as Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Gulf Arabic, etc.). Deciding whether you want to focus on MSA or a specific dialect is crucial for your learning path.

Practice Listening and Speaking Arabic pronunciation can be challenging for beginners due to the use of sounds that don't exist in other languages. Listening to Arabic media, such as news, podcasts, music, or movies, will help you become familiar with its sounds and rhythm. Engage in speaking practice, either with a tutor or native speakers, to build fluency.

Use Language Learning Apps and Resources There are several tools available to help you learn Arabic efficiently. Apps like Duolingo, Memrise, and Rosetta Stone offer interactive lessons, vocabulary practice, and exercises. In addition to apps, many YouTube channels, language exchange programs, and online courses are available for those who want a more structured approach.

Be Consistent and Patient Language learning is a gradual process that requires consistent effort. Set achievable goals, practice regularly, and immerse yourself in the language as much as possible. Don't be discouraged by initial difficulties. Over time, your vocabulary, grammar, and fluency will improve, and you'll feel more confident communicating in Arabic.

Conclusion

learn arabi is a rewarding endeavor that provides insights into a rich culture, history, and a growing global market. While it may seem daunting at first, the ability to communicate in Arabic is an invaluable skill that can enhance personal growth, academic pursuits, and professional opportunities. With determination, the right resources, and a willingness to explore, anyone can learn Arabic and connect more deeply with the Arab world.

[pursueituae]

Language Classes in Dubai Learn Arabic, English, French & more

The Importance of taking an Arabic Language Course in a Globalized World   

In today’s day and age, the world is more interconnected now than it has ever been before. The increased interconnectedness has made learning new languages more valuable. Learning new languages helps bring you closer to the world and gives you a better understanding of different cultures. Among the various languages spoken across the world, Arabic is a great language to learn due to its rich history, strategic significance, and growing global influence. The best way to learn Arabic is by joining an Arabic language course.

   

Arabic is the fifth most spoken language worldwide, with over 400 million native speakers. In a world where cultural and economic exchanges are growing, learning Arabic can provide personal and professional opportunities by connecting with a significant portion of the global population. Learning Arabic can have several health benefits, especially in a globalized world. It is even more beneficial to join an Arabic language course in Dubai. In Dubai, you get to learn Arabic from native speakers and is the perfect place to practice your speaking skills.  

The skills acquired by learning Arabic go far beyond just the language itself; they help you get a broader understanding of the world and foster deeper connections between cultures. In an increasingly interconnected era, Arabic isn’t just a useful language, it is an asset! 

Benefits of taking an Arabic Language Course in Dubai   

Access to a Multicultural Environment: Several cultures and nationalities co-exist in Dubai. Taking an Arabic language course in such an international environment, will help you to gain a deeper understanding of the language and the diverse ways in which it is used in various contexts—whether it’s for business, tourism, or day-to-day life. 

Career Advancement Opportunities: As the economic powerhouse of the Middle East, Dubai offers numerous career opportunities in sectors such as finance, tourism, real estate, healthcare, and technology. Joining an Arabic language course can give you a competitive edge in the job market by enabling you to communicate effectively with Arabic-speaking colleagues, clients, and business partners, thus enhancing your employability and career prospects. 

Understanding the Arab Culture and Heritage: Dubai is a commercial hub and a city that celebrates its rich cultural heritage. Taking an Arabic language course in Dubai opens doors to better understanding local customs, traditions, and values, which can enrich your experience while living or working in Dubai. Whether you’re exploring local markets, attending cultural festivals, or navigating social norms, understanding the language will deepen your appreciation of the culture. 

Enhancing Travel and Exploration in the Arab World: Dubai is an ideal starting point for exploring the broader Arab world. Learning Arabic will enhance your ability to travel across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where Arabic is spoken widely. Knowing Arabic makes travel smoother and more rewarding whether you’re visiting Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, or Lebanon. 

Expanding Your Social Circle: Arabic is the key to expanding your social circle in Dubai. As one of the most spoken languages in the world, taking an Arabic language course in Dubai will help you connect with Arabic-speaking individuals from around the world. It enhances your ability to engage in social settings, from casual conversations at the café to networking events. 

Understand Arabic Philosophy: Arabic is the language of the Quran, and understanding it allows you to access the primary texts of Islamic theology and philosophy in their original form. This is a fantastic opportunity for those interested in religious studies to understand the Islamic culture and history. Even for others, joining an Arabic langauge course can broaden their cultural understanding. 

About Pursueit  

Pursueit is a platform that helps you find classes that fit your preferences. If you are tired of finding Arabic classes near me, then visit the Arabic language courses available on Pursueit! Find the right classes for you in your locality and as per your schedule through this platform now!   To read fullblog - Language Classes in Dubai Learn Arabic, English, French & more

[dankusner]

The Dark Secrets Behind the Neil Gaiman Abuse Accusations

There Is No Safe Word

How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.

Scarlett Pavlovich was a 22-year-old drama student when she met the performer Amanda Palmer by chance on the streets of Auckland. It was a gray, drizzly afternoon in June 2020, and Palmer, then 44, was walking down the street with the actress Lucy Lawless, one of the most famous people in New Zealand owing to her six-season stint portraying Xena the warrior princess. But Pavlovich noticed only Palmer.

She’d watched her TED talk, “The Art of Asking,” and was fascinated by the cult-famous feminist writer and musician — by her unabashed self-assurance.

On the surface, Pavlovich appeared to be self-assured as well.

A local girl, she had dropped out of high school at 15 to travel to Europe, Morocco, and the Middle East on the cheap, pausing in Scotland — where Tilda Swinton gave her a scholarship to attend her Steiner school, Drumduan — and London to work in the cabaret scene.

Eventually, her visa expired and she ran out of money and so, in 2019, she returned to Auckland, where she enrolled in an acting school and took a job at a perfumery.

Pale and dark-haired and waifish, she favored bold colors and outrageous outfits.

On the day she met Palmer — on most days then — she’d painted a triangle of translucent silver beneath her lower lashes so it looked as though she’d been crying tears of glitter.

It was Pavlovich who approached Palmer on the sidewalk outside the perfumery.

She was surprised when Palmer texted her a few days later.

“It’s amanda d palmer,” she wrote. “Your new friend.”

Palmer, an obsessive chronicler of her own life in songs, poems, blog posts, and a memoir, got her start as half of the punk cabaret band the Dresden Dolls, but she is perhaps more famous for her ability to attract a tight-knit and devoted following wherever she goes.

In 2012, she became the first musician to raise more than $1 million on Kickstarter and later became one of Patreon’s most successful artists.

As Palmer explained in her book The Art of Asking — part memoir, part manifesto on the virtues of asking for assistance of various kinds — she had built her entire career on “messy exchanges of goodwill and the swapping of favors.”

Out of this mess, she argues, a utopian sort of community formed: “There was no distinction between fans and friends.”

Over the following year and a half, Palmer and Pavlovich occasionally met for a drink or a meal.

Palmer offered Pavlovich tickets to her shows and invited her to parties for the Patreon community at her house on nearby Waiheke Island, a lush bohemian retreat with vineyards, golden beaches, and more than 60 helipads to accommodate the billionaires who vacationed there.

Sometimes Palmer asked Pavlovich for favors — help running errands or organizing files or looking after her child.

Pavlovich was happy to assist.

She had a crush on Palmer.

She didn’t mind that Palmer only occasionally discussed paying her, even though Pavlovich was always strapped for cash.

For Pavlovich, who was estranged from her family and without a safety net, Palmer filled a deeper need.

In November 2020, Palmer invited her to hang out at her place for a weekend with a group of local artists.

At the gathering, Palmer asked Pavlovich to babysit while she got a massage.

Early the next morning, Pavlovich wrote a diary entry about the easy intimacy she’d felt in Palmer’s sun-drenched home, where she’d read to Palmer’s son, who was 5 at the time, their limbs entwined.

“The years absent of touch build up like a gray inheritance,” she wrote. “I’m hungry. I am so fucking famished.”

On February 1, 2022, Palmer texted Pavlovich and asked if she wanted to spend the weekend babysitting, which would mean bouncing back and forth between her house and her husband’s.

Pavlovich had never met Palmer’s husband, from whom she was separated, though of course she knew who he was: Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed British fantasist and author of nearly 50 books, including American Gods and Coraline, and the comic-book series The Sandman, whose work has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide.

Gaiman and Palmer had arrived in New Zealand in March 2020, but just weeks later, their nine-year marriage collapsed and Gaiman skipped town, breaking COVID protocols to fly to his home on the Isle of Skye.

Now, he’d returned and was living in a house near Palmer’s on Waiheke.

Their previous nanny had recently left, and they needed help.

Pavlovich agreed and was pleased when Palmer offered to pay her for the weekend’s work.

Around four in the afternoon on February 4, Pavlovich took the ferry from Auckland to Waiheke, then sat on a bus and walked through the woods until she arrived at Gaiman’s house, an asymmetrical A-frame of dark burnished wood with picture windows overlooking the sea.

Palmer had arranged a playdate for the child, so not long after Pavlovich arrived, she found herself alone in the house with the author.

For a little while, Gaiman worked in his office while she read on the couch.

Then he emerged and offered her a tour of the grounds.

A striking figure at 61, his wild black curls threaded with strands of silver, the author picked a fig — her favorite fruit — and handed it to her.

Around 8 p.m., they sat down for pizza.

Gaiman poured Pavlovich a glass of rosé and then another.

He drank only water.

They made awkward conversation about New Zealand, about COVID.

Pavlovich had never read any of his work, but she was anxious to make a good impression.

After she’d cleaned up their plates, Gaiman noted that there was still time before they would have to pick up his son from the playdate.

“‘I’ve had a thought,’” she recalls him saying. “

‘Why don’t you have a bath in the beautiful claw bathtub in the garden? It’s absolutely enchanting.’”

Pavlovich told Gaiman that she was fine as she was but ultimately agreed.

He needed to make a work call, he said, and didn’t want Pavlovich to be bored.

Gaiman led Pavlovich down a stone path into the garden to an old-fashioned tub with a roll top and walked away.

She got undressed and sank into the bath, looking up at the furry magenta blossoms of the pohutukawa tree overhead.

A few minutes later, she was surprised to hear Gaiman’s footsteps on the stones in the dark.

She tried to cover her breasts with her arms.

When he arrived at the bath, she saw that he was naked.

Gaiman put out a couple of citronella candles, lit them, and got into the bath.

He stretched out, facing her, and, for a few minutes, made small talk.

He bitched about Palmer’s schedule.

He talked about his kid’s school.

Then he told her to stretch her legs out and “get comfortable.”

“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls.

“He said, ‘It’s okay — it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’”

She didn’t move.

He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.”

She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet.

At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”

Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap.

Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences:

She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15.

Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,”Pavlovich tells me.

“But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’”

Afterward, Pavlovich crouched down in the water and tried to clean herself off.

Gaiman looked at her and smiled.

“‘Amanda told me I couldn’t have you,’” Pavlovich recalls him saying.

As soon as he’d heard this, he “knew he had to have” her.

“‘God,’” he continued, “‘I wish it were the good old days where we could both fuck you.’”

In The Sandman, the DC comic-book series that ran from 1989 to 1996 and made Gaiman famous, he tells a story about a writer named Richard Madoc.

After Madoc’s first book proves a success, he sits down to write his second and finds that he can’t come up with a single decent idea.

This difficulty recedes after he accepts an unusual gift from an older author: a naked woman, of a kind, who has been kept locked in a room in his house for 60 years.

She is Calliope, the youngest of the Nine Muses.

Madoc rapes her, again and again, and his career blossoms in the most extraordinary way.

A stylish young beauty tells him how much she loved his characterization of a strong female character, prompting him to remark, “Actually, I do tend to regard myself as a feminist writer.”

His downfall comes only when the titular hero, the Sandman, also known as the Prince of Stories, frees Calliope from bondage.

A being of boundless charisma and creativity, the Sandman rules the Dreaming, the realm we visit in our sleep, where “stories are spun.”

Older and more powerful than the most powerful gods, he can reward us with exquisite delights or punish us with unending nightmares, depending on what he feels we deserve.

To punish the rapist, the Sandman floods Madoc’s mind with such a wild torrent of ideas that he’s powerless to write them down, let alone profit from them.

As allegations of Gaiman’s sexual misconduct emerged this past summer, some observers noticed Gaiman and Madoc have certain things in common.

Like Madoc, Gaiman has called himself a feminist.

Like Madoc, Gaiman has racked up major awards (for Gaiman, awards in science fiction and fantasy as well as dozens of prizes for contemporary novels, short stories, poetry, television, and film, helping make him, according to several sources, a millionaire many times over).

And like Madoc, Gaiman has come to be seen as a figure who transcended, and transformed, the genres in which he wrote: first comics, then fantasy and children’s literature.

But for most of his career, readers identified him not with the rapist, who shows up in a single issue, but with the Sandman, the inexhaustible fountain of story.

One of Gaiman’s greatest gifts as a story-teller was his voice, a warm and gentle instrument that he’d tuned through elocution lessons as a boy in East Grinstead, 30 miles south of London.

In America, people mistakenly assumed he was an English gentleman.

“He spoke very slowly, in a hypnotic way,” says one of his former students at the fantasy-writing workshop Clarion. He wrote that way, too, with rhythm and restraint, lulling you into a trance in the way that a bard might have done with a lyre. Another gift was his memory.

He has “libraries full of books memorized,” one of his old friends tells me, noting that he could recall the page numbers of his favorite passages and recite them verbatim.

His vast collection was eclectic enough to encompass both a box of comics (Spider-Man, Silver Surfer) from his boyhood and the works of Oscar Wilde he received as a gift for his bar mitzvah.

For The Sandman, a forgotten DC property he had been hired to dust off and polish up, Gaiman gave the hero a makeover, replacing his green suit, fedora, and gas mask with the leather armor of an angsty goth, and surrounded him with characters drawn from the books he could pull off the shelves in his head, from timeless icons like Shakespeare and Lucifer to the obscure San Francisco eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton.

Norman Mailer called it “a comic strip for intellectuals.”

Gaiman and the Sandman shared a penchant for dressing in black, a shock of unruly black hair, and an erotic power seldom possessed by authors of comic books and fantasy novels.

A descendant of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gaiman had gotten his start in the ’80s as a journalist for hire in London covering Duran Duran, Lou Reed, and other brooding lords of rock, and in the world of comic conventions, he was the closest thing there was to that archetype.

Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth attire of his characters and beg him to sign their breasts or slip him key cards to their hotel rooms.

One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011.

His assistant wasn’t around, and he was late to a reading.

“I can’t get to it if I walk by myself,” he told her.

As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor full of people tilted and slid toward him,” she says.

“They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.”

A woman fell to her knees and wept.

People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me.

They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says.

They want to share their souls with the creators of these works.

“And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’”

It was an open secret in the late ’90s and early aughts among conventiongoers that Gaiman cheated on his first wife, Mary McGrath, a private midwestern Scientologist he’d married in his early 20s.

But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything but enthusiastically consensual.

As one prominent editor in the field puts it, “The one thing I hear again and again, largely from women, is ‘He was always nice to me. He was always a gentleman.’”

The writer Kelly Link, who met Gaiman at a reading in 1997, recalls finding him charmingly goofy.

“He was hapless in a way that was kind of exasperating,” she says, “but also made him seem very harmless.”

Someone who had a sexual relationship with Gaiman in the aughts recalls him flipping through questions fans wrote on cards at a Q&A session.

Once, a fan asked if she could be his “sex slave”: “He read it aloud and said, ‘Well, no.’ He’d be very demure.”

But there were some who saw another side of the author.

One woman, Brenda (a pseudonym), met Gaiman in the ’90s at a signing for The Sandman where she was working.

On signing lines, Gaiman had a knack for connecting with each individual.

He would ask questions, laugh, and assure them that their inability to form sentences was fine.

After the Sandman signing, at a dinner attended by those who had worked the event, Gaiman sat next to Brenda.

“Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me,” she says.

A few years later, Brenda traveled to Chicago to attend the World Horror Convention, where Gaiman received the top prize for American Gods, the book that cemented him as a best-selling novelist.

The night after the awards ceremony, she and Gaiman ended up in bed together.

As soon as they began to hook up, the feeling that had drawn her to him — the magical spell of his interest in her individuality — vanished.

“He seemed to have a script,” she tells me.

“He wanted me to call him ‘master’ immediately.”

He demanded that she promise him her soul.

“It was like he’d gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me.”

This past July, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault.

S​ince then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse.

The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them.

(Gaiman’s perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.)

I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs.

I also reviewed contemporaneous diary entries, texts and emails with friends, messages between Gaiman and the women, and police correspondence.

Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman.

The youngest was 18.

Two of them worked for him.

Five were his fans.

With one exception, an allegation of forcible kissing from 1986, when Gaiman was in his mid-20s, the stories take place when Gaiman was in his 40s or older, a period in which he lived among the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand.

By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women.

“Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature,” wrote Tara Prescott-Johnson in the essay collection Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman.

Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy.

Katherine Kendall was 22 when she met Gaiman in 2012.

She was volunteering at one of his events in Asheville, North Carolina.

He invited her to join him a few days later at an after-party for another event, where he kissed her.

The two struck up a flirtatious correspondence, emailing and Skyping in the middle of the night.

Kendall didn’t want to have sex with Gaiman, and on one of their calls, she told him this.

Afterward, she recorded his reply in her diary:

“He had no designs on me beyond flirty friendship and I believe him thoroughly.”

She’d grown up listening to his audiobooks, she later told Papillon DeBoer, the host of the podcast Am I Broken:

“And then that same voice that told me those beautiful stories when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were just friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

At a reading ten months later, Gaiman suggested that Kendall and two other girls wait for him on his tour bus so they could all hang out after he was done signing.

When Gaiman showed up, he pulled Kendall into the back of the bus and lay on top of her.

He kept saying, “Kiss me like you mean it,” Kendall remembers.

She tried to get into it, but she was panicked.

Eventually, Gaiman rolled off her.

“‘I’m a very wealthy man,’” she remembers him saying, “‘and I’m used to getting what I want.’”

(Years later, Gaiman gave Kendall $60,000 to pay for therapy in an attempt, as he put it in a recorded phone call, “to make up some of the damage.”)

Gaiman had been having sexual encounters with younger fans for a long time.

Kendra Stout was 18 when, in 2003, she drove four and a half hours to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to see Gaiman read from Endless Nights, a follow-up to The Sandman.

She met him in the signing line.

Gaiman sent her long emails and bought her a web camera so they could chat on video.

Around three years after they met, he flew to Orlando to take her on a date.

He invited her back to his hotel room, put on a playlist of love songs, and held her down with one hand.

Gaiman didn’t believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make sex particularly painful.

When she said it hurt too much, he’d tell her the problem was she wasn’t submissive enough.

“He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me,” she tells me.

Stout had no prior interest in BDSM. She says Gaiman never asked what she liked in bed, and there was no discussion of “safe words” or “aftercare” or “limits.”

He’d ask her to call him “master” and beat her with his belt.

“These were not sexy little taps,” she says. When she told him she didn’t like it, she says he replied, “It’s the only way I can get off.”

Gaiman told Stout he had been introduced to these practices by a woman he’d met in his early 20s who had asked him to “whip her pussy.”

At the time, he claimed to Stout, he was such a naïve Englishman that he thought she meant her cat.

Then she handed him a flogger and told him to use it on her vagina.

“‘This is what gets me off now,’” Stout recalls him saying.

A similar anecdote shows up in an interview Gaiman gave for a 2022 biography of Kathy Acker, the late experimental punk writer Gaiman befriended in his 20s, but he offers a different account of how it affected him.

When Acker asked him to “whip her pussy,” he found it “profoundly unsexual,” he told the interviewer.

“I did it and ran away.”

He identified himself as “very vanilla.”

In 2007, Gaiman and Stout took a trip to the Cornish countryside.

On their last night there, Stout developed a UTI that had gotten so bad she couldn’t sit down.

She told Gaiman they could fool around but that any penetration would be too painful to bear.

“It was a big hard ‘no,’” she says.

“I told him, ‘You cannot put anything in my vagina or I will die.’”

Gaiman flipped her over on the bed, she says, and attempted to penetrate her with his fingers.

She told him “no.”

He stopped for a moment and then he penetrated her with his penis.

At that point, she tells me, “I just shut down.”

She lay on the bed until he was finished.

(This past October, she filed a police report alleging he raped her.)

According to the podcast, which quoted Gaiman through his representatives, his position was that “sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism may not be to everyone’s taste, but between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful.”

(Gaiman declined to speak with me despite multiple requests, but through a legal representative, he responded to some claims.)

If you know nothing about BDSM, Gaiman’s claim that he was engaging in it with these women may sound plausible, at least in some cases.

The kind of domineering violence he inflicted on them is common among people who practice BDSM, and all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him.

But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing.

An acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism,” BDSM is a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it.

This, as many practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture, have stressed over decades, is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse.

And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect.

Two of the women, who have never spoken to each other, compared him to an anglerfish, the deep-sea predator that uses a bulb of bioluminescence to lure prey into its jaws.

“Instead of a light,” one says, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.”

After Gaiman got into the bathtub with Pavlovich, she retreated to Palmer’s house, which was vacant at the time.

She sat in the shower for an hour, crying, then got into Palmer’s bed and began to search the internet for clues that might explain what had happened to her.

She Googled “Me Too” and “Neil Gaiman.”

Nothing.

The only negative stories she found were about how he’d broken COVID lockdown rules in 2020 and had been forced to apologize to the people of the Isle of Skye for endangering their lives.

At the end of the weekend, Palmer texted Pavlovich to say how pleased she was to see Pavlovich and her child get along.

“The universe is a karmic mystery,” Palmer wrote.

“We nourish each other in the most random and unpredictable ways.”

Palmer asked if she could babysit again.

She needed so much help.

Would Pavlovich consider staying with them for the foreseeable future?

Pavlovich was living in a sublet that was about to end.

She was broke and hadn’t been able to find a new apartment.

She’d been homeless at the start of the pandemic, when the perfumery closed, and had ended up crashing on the beach in a friend’s sleeping bag on and off for the first two weeks of lockdown.

The thought of returning to the beach filled her with dread.

She didn’t consider reaching out to her own family.

Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households.

Violence, Pavlovich tells me, “was normalized in the household.”

One close family member beat her with a belt.

Another would strangle Pavlovich when she got upset and slap her across the face until her cheeks were raw.

She began to regularly cut her arms and wrists with a knife when she was 11.

She became bulimic, then anorexic.

By 13, Pavlovich had grown so thin that she ended up in a psychiatric unit at Auckland Children’s Hospital and spent weeks on a feeding tube.

When she was 15, she left home and never went back.

In the years since, she had been looking for a new family, but many of the people she’d encountered in that search turned out to be abusive as well.

“After all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature sent from a celestial realm. It was like, Hallelujah,” Pavlovich tells me.

Palmer was famous for speaking out about sexual abuse and encouraging others to do the same.

In songs and essays, she had written of having been sexually assaulted and raped on multiple occasions as a teenager and young woman.

Pavlovich didn’t think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women.

Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience.

The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do.

“You’re not thinking in a linear or logical fashion,” Pavlovich says, “but the mind is trying to process it in the ways that it can.”

Whatever had happened in the bath, she’d been through worse and survived, she thought.

And Gaiman and Palmer were offering her the possibility of a shared future.

Palmer’s vision of herself as the central figure of a utopian community could, according to some of her friends, make her careless with the young, impressionable women she invited into her and her husband’s lives.

“Her idealism could blind her to reality,” one friend says.

(Palmer declined to be interviewed, but I spoke with people close to her.)

Palmer told Pavlovich they might travel to London together, and to Scotland, where Gaiman was shooting the second season of Good Omens.

Pavlovich had wanted to leave New Zealand — her “epicenter of trauma” — for as long as she could remember.

These conversations filled her head with fantasies “of finally being on solid ground in the world.”

After Palmer’s offer, Pavlovich texted Gaiman: “I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry. What a terrible creature you’ve turned me into.”

The following weekend, she packed up her sublet and boarded the ferry to Waiheke.

Throughout his career, Gaiman has written about terror from the point of view of a child.

His most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, tells the story of a quiet and bookish 7-year-old boy.

Through various unfortunate events, he ends up with a hole in his heart that can never be healed, a doorway through which nightmares from distant realms enter our world.

Over the course of the tale, the boy suffers terribly, sometimes at the hands of his own family.

At dinner one night, the boy refuses to eat the food his nanny has prepared.

The nanny, the boy knows, isn’t really a human but a nightmare creature from another world.

When his father demands to know why he won’t eat, the boy explains, “She’s a monster.”

His father becomes enraged.

To punish him, he fills the tub, then picks up the child, plunges him into the bath, and pushes his shoulders and head beneath the chilly water.

“I had read many books in that bath,” the boy says.

“It was one of my safe places. And now, I had no doubt, I was going to die there.”

Later that night, the boy runs away from home; on his way out, he glimpses his father having sex with the monstrous nanny through the drawing-room window.

In various interviews over the years, Gaiman has called The Ocean at the End of the Lane his most personal book.

While much of it is fantastical, Gaiman has said “that kid is me.”

The book is set in Sussex, where Gaiman grew up.

In the story, the narrator survives otherworldly evil with the help of a family of magical women.

As a child, Gaiman had no such friends to call on.

“I was going back to the 7-year-old me and giving myself a peculiar kind of love that I didn’t have,” he told an interviewer in 2017.

“I never feel the past is dead or young Neil isn’t around anymore. He’s still there, hiding in a library somewhere, looking for a doorway that will lead him to somewhere safe where everything works.”

While Gaiman has identified the boy in the book as himself, he has also claimed that none of the things that happen to the boy happened to him.

Yet there is reason to believe that some of the most horrifying events of the novel did occur.

Gaiman has rarely spoken about a core fact of his childhood.

In 1965, when Neil was 5 years old, his parents, David and Sheila, left their jobs as a business executive and a pharmacist and bought a house in East Grinstead, a mile away from what was at that time the worldwide headquarters for the Church of Scientology.

Its founder, the former science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, lived down the road from them from 1965 until 1967, when he fled the country and began directing the church from international waters, pursued by the CIA, FBI, and a handful of foreign governments and maritime agencies.

David and Sheila were among England’s earliest adherents to Scientology.

They began studying Dianetics in 1956 and eventually took positions in the Guardian’s Office, a special department of the organization dedicated to handling the church’s growing number of legal cases, public communications, and intelligence operations.

The mission of this office, as Hubbard wrote, was its “covert use in destroying the repute of individuals and groups.”

On the side, the Gaimans ran the church’s canteen, lodged foreign Scientologists in their home, and opened a vitamin company in town, where they supplied courses of supplements for Scientology’s “detoxification” programs, a business that grew exponentially alongside the expansion of the church.

By the late ’60s, David was the church’s public face and chief spokesperson in the U.K.

It was a challenging job, to say the least.

The U.K., following the example of a handful of other governments, had issued a report declaring Scientology’s methods “a serious danger to the health of those who submit to them.”

Hubbard would routinely punish members of the organization who committed minor infractions by binding them, blindfolding them, and throwing them overboard into icy waters.

Back in England, David gave interviews to the press to smooth over such troubling accounts.

The church was under particular pressure to assure the public it was not harming children.

In his bulletins to members, Hubbard had made it clear that children were not to be exempt from the punishments to which adults were subjected.

If a child laughed inappropriately or failed to remember a Scientology term, they could be sent to the ship’s hold and made to chip rust for days or confined in a chain locker for weeks at a time without blankets or a bathroom.

In his book Going Clear, Lawrence Wright recounts the story of a 4-year-old boy named Derek Greene, an adopted Black child who stole a Rolex and dropped it overboard.

He was confined to the locker for two days and nights.

When his mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, he “reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior.”

(A representative for the Church of Scientology said it does not speak about members past or present but denies that this event occurred.)

David used Neil as an exhibit in his case to the public.

In 1968, he arranged for Neil to give an interview to the BBC.

When the reporter asked the child if Scientology made him “a better boy,” Neil replied, “Not exactly that, but when you make a release, you feel absolutely great.”

(A release, in Scientology lingo, is what happens when you complete one of the lower levels of coursework.)

What was happening away from the cameras is difficult to know, in part because Gaiman has avoided talking about it, changing the subject whenever an interviewer, or a friend, brings it up.

But it seems unlikely that he would have been spared the disciplinary measures inflicted on adults and children as a standard practice at that time.

According to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientology’s methods at home.

When Neil was around the age of the child in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the person said, David took him up to the bathtub, ran a cold bath, and “drowned him to the point where Neil was screaming for air.”

As a teenager, Neil worked for the Church of Scientology for three years as an auditor, a minister of the church who conducts a process some have likened to hypnosis.

One former member of the church who worked with Gaiman’s parents and was audited by Gaiman recalls him as precocious and ambitious.

It was unusual for a teenager to have completed such a high level of training, he tells me.

But the Gaimans were like “royalty,” he says.

In 1981, David was promoted to lead the Guardian’s Office, making him one of the most powerful people in the church.

But the same year, he fell from grace.

A new generation of Scientologists, led by David Miscavige, who eventually succeeded Hubbard as the church’s leader, had Hubbard’s ear, and David was “caught in that grinder,” as his former colleague puts it.

A document declaring David a “Suppressive person” was released a few years later.

It accused him of a range of offenses, including sexual misconduct.

David, the document claims, put on a “front” of being “mild mannered and quite sociable,” adding that his actions “belie this.”

His greatest offense, it seemed, was hubris.

“Gaiman required others to look up to him instead of to Source,” it reads, referring to Hubbard.

In the ’80s, David was sent off to a sort of rehabilitation camp.

It was around this time that Gaiman set out to make a living as a writer.

Charming and strategic, he used the contacts he developed as a journalist to break into the business of genre writing, endearing himself to the giants of that world at the time: Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, Alan Moore.

“When I was young, I had unbelievable chutzpah,” Gaiman says in the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously.

“The kind of monstrous self-certainty that you only get normally in people who then go on to conquer half the civilized world.”

Gaiman and Palmer met in 2008, when she was 32 and he was 47.

Both were at a turning point in their lives and careers.

Gaiman was in the midst of finalizing a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had three children, and on the verge of breaking into Hollywood (nine of his works have been turned into movies or TV shows);

Palmer was in a fight with her record label that would culminate in a split.

Palmer had a collection of photos of herself posing as a murdered corpse and wanted Gaiman to write captions to go along with the pictures.

Gaiman liked the idea, and the two met to work on the project, a book tied to her first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

As Palmer described in The Art of Asking, they were not attracted to each other at first.

“I thought he looked like a baggy-eyed, grumpy old man, and he thought I looked like a chubby little boy.”

Gaiman was the first to propose a romantic relationship.

In an interview, he later said, “I got together with her because I couldn’t ever imagine being bored.”

Palmer could.

Ever since she’d gotten her start as a street busker, painting her face white and standing on a crate in Harvard Square dressed as a silent eight-foot-tall bride, she prided herself on a low-rent, bohemian lifestyle, couch-surfing when she toured, playing random shows in the living rooms of her fans.

She had no savings and didn’t own a car, real estate, or kitchen appliances.

Gaiman owned multiple houses.

He was too rich, too famous, too British, too awkward, too old.

And they didn’t have great sexual chemistry.

But he appeared to be kind and stable, a family man, and they shared a dark, fantastical aesthetic.

She also felt a little sorry for him.

He seemed lonely, in spite of his fame, and Palmer found herself hoping that she could help him.

“He’d believed for a long time, deep down, that people didn’t actually fall in love,” she wrote in her book. “‘But that’s impossible,’” she told him.

He’d written stories and scenes of people in love.

“‘That’s the whole point, darling,’ he said. ‘Writers make things up.’”

They wed in 2011 in the Berkeley home of their friends Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the novelists.

Their union had a multiplying effect on their fame and stature, drawing each out of their respective domains of cult stardom and into the airy realm of tech-funded virality.

They became darlings of the TED talk circuit and regulars at Jeff Bezos’s ultrasecret Campfire retreat.

Gaiman introduced Palmer to Twitter, which he had used to become fantasy’s most beloved author of 140-character bons mots.

Palmer, in turn, leaned into her growing reputation as a crowdfunding genius.

Online, they flirted, went after each other’s critics, and praised each other’s progressive politics.

In an interview with Out magazine in 2012, Palmer said that the main “other” relationship in both of their lives was with their fans: “Sometimes when I’m with Neil, and go to the other room to Twitter with my followers, it feels like sneaking off for a quick shag.”

This wasn’t strictly a metaphor.

During the early years of their marriage, they lived apart for months at a time and encouraged each other to have affairs.

According to conversations with five of Palmer’s closest friends, the most important rule governing their open relationship was honesty.

They found that sharing the details of their extramarital dalliances — and sometimes sharing the same partners — brought them closer together.

In 2012, Palmer met a 20-year-old fan, who has asked to be referred to as Rachel, at a Dresden Dolls concert.

After one of Palmer’s next shows, the women had sex.

The morning after, Palmer snapped a few semi-naked pictures of Rachel and asked if she could send one to Gaiman.

She and Palmer slept together a few more times, but then Palmer seemed to lose interest in sex with her.

Some six months after they met, Palmer introduced Rachel to Gaiman online, telling Rachel, “He’ll love you.”

The two struck up a correspondence that quickly turned sexual, and Gaiman invited her to his house in Wisconsin.

As she packed for the trip, she asked Palmer over email if she had any advice for pleasing Gaiman in bed.

Palmer joked in response, “i think the fun is finding out on your own.”

With Gaiman, Rachel says there was never a “blatant rupture of consent” but that he was always pressing her to do things that hurt and scared her.

Looking back, she feels Palmer gave her to him “like a toy.”

For Gaiman and Palmer, these were happy years.

With his editing help, she wrote The Art of Asking.

They toured together.

And when Palmer was offered a residency at Bard College, Gaiman tagged along to give some talks, then ended up receiving an offer to join the faculty as a professor of the arts.

After they’d been together for a few years, Palmer began asking Gaiman to tell her more about his childhood in Scientology.

But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together.

When she encouraged him to continue, he would curl up on the bed into a fetal position and cry.

He refused to see a therapist.

Instead, he sat down to write a short story that kept getting longer until it had turned into a novel.

Although the child at the center of the story in many ways remains opaque, Palmer felt he had never been so open.

He dedicated the book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, “to Amanda, who wanted to know.”

In 2014, the cracks in Gaiman and Palmer’s marriage began to show to those around them.

While they were at Bard, they decided to buy a house upstate.

Palmer would have preferred to live in New York City, but Gaiman liked the woods.

Eventually, he picked a sprawling estate set on 80 acres in Woodstock.

It was Gaiman’s money, a friend who accompanied them on the house hunt says, “and he was going to have the say.”

Later that year, Palmer got pregnant.

She and Gaiman were spending more time at home together and talked about slowing down and devoting their attention to their marriage.

She wanted to close the relationship, and he agreed.

But when she was eight months pregnant, Gaiman came to her with a problem: He had slept with a fan in her early 20s, taking her virginity.

Now, Gaiman told her, the girl was “going crazy.”

He promised to change, and they met with a couples counselor.

Gaiman was prone to panic attacks and had never been in treatment.

“Amanda was shocked at how traumatized Neil was, given his public persona and the guy she thought she’d married,” a person close to them says.

One of the people in whom Palmer confided about her marital issues at the time was Caroline, a potter who, along with her builder husband, Phillip, had been living on the Woodstock property and working as a caretaker.

Gaiman had made them an offer that seemed too good to be true.

They would build an addition on one of the cabins on the land at Gaiman’s expense, and in exchange, Gaiman would sell them a five-acre parcel, allowing them to put up a barn-style home to share with their three daughters.

They tended to the garden, ran errands for guests, and rehabilitated the buildings, which needed plumbing and electrical work.

At lunch one day, Palmer told Caroline she hated living in the woods and was disturbed by what she was learning about her husband.

“‘You have no idea the twisted, dark things that go on in that man’s head,’” Caroline recalls Palmer saying.

Palmer said she wished her marriage were more like Caroline and Phillip’s, but their marriage of 11 years was falling apart, too.

In 2017, Phillip moved out of their house.

Caroline, 54, spent her days in bed crying and drinking.

She stopped eating and, for the most part, stopped working.

It was then that Gaiman began paying attention to her.

He would bring juices up to her cabin and fret that she was losing too much weight.

The first time he touched her, in December 2018, she was sitting on his couch next to him, crying from exhaustion.

Gaiman told her, “You need a hug.”

She stood and he hugged her, then slid his hands down her pants and into her underwear and squeezed her butt.

She does not recall saying or doing anything in response. “I was stunned,” she says.

Over the next two years, they had a series of sexual encounters, always when Palmer was away.

When Gaiman wasn’t around, they occasionally engaged in phone sex.

At first Caroline, who hadn’t been with anyone since Phillip left, went along willingly.

But at the end of their second encounter, she remembers asking Gaiman what Palmer would think about their romance:

“He said, ‘Caroline, there is no romance.’”

After that, she tried to keep her distance from him, darting away when she saw him on the estate.

He was difficult to avoid.

He kept an egg incubator in Caroline’s cabin and would come down and check on it, entering without texting first.

On one of these visits, he found her crying by the fireplace.

He walked over to her, stuck his thumb in her mouth, and twisted her nipples.

She told Gaiman the arrangement was making her “feel bad.”

She recalls him replying, “I don’t want you to feel bad.”

But nothing changed.

Caroline had no income at the time and was borrowing money from her sister to get by.

She worried that if she didn’t appease Gaiman, he’d kick her out of her house and then she and her three daughters would have nowhere to go. “

‘I like our trade,’” she remembers him saying. “‘You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.’”

Sometimes she would babysit.

Once, Caroline and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmer’s bed.

Caroline woke up when Gaiman returned home.

He got into bed with his son in the middle, then reached across the child to grab Caroline’s hand and put it on his penis.

She says she jumped out of the bed. “He didn’t have boundaries,”

Caroline says. “I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.”

In April 2021, Gaiman informed Caroline that the land he’d promised her was no longer available.

That summer, she stopped responding to his attempts to engage in phone sex and Gaiman increased the pressure on her to leave his property.

One night in December 2021, Gaiman’s business manager, Terry Bird, called Caroline and offered her $5,000 to move immediately if she’d sign a 16-page NDA agreeing to never discuss anything about her experience with Gaiman or Palmer or to take legal action against Gaiman.

Caroline recalls saying to Bird, “What am I going to do with $5,000? I need therapy. This is maybe $300,000.”

Looking back, she says she didn’t know how she came up with that number, but Gaiman agreed to it, and she signed.

(Gaiman’s representatives say Caroline initiated the sexual encounters and deny that he engaged in any sexual activity with her in the presence of his son.)

Two months later, Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke.

By then, Palmer and Gaiman were divorcing.

According to Palmer’s friends, she asked for a divorce after Rachel called to tell her that she and Gaiman were still having sexual contact, long past the point when Palmer thought their relationship had ended.

She was hurt but unsurprised.

“I find it all very boring,” she later wrote to Rachel, who recalls the exchange.

“Just the lack of self-knowledge and the lack of interest in self-knowledge.”

In late 2021, Palmer found out about Caroline, too.

“I remember her saying, ‘That poor woman,’” recalls Lance Horne, a musician and friend of Palmer’s in whom she confided at the time.

“‘I can’t believe he did it again.’”

By the time she asked Pavlovich to babysit, Palmer was fed up with Gaiman’s behavior, but “she still had some faith in his decency,” a friend says.

Still, she knew enough to warn Gaiman to stay away from their new babysitter.

“I remember specifically her saying, ‘You could really hurt this person and break her; keep your hands off of her,’” the friend says.

And Palmer still hoped, according to those close to her, that she and Gaiman would be able to negotiate a peaceful co-parenting arrangement.

She found a school for their child and the two houses on Waiheke.

“She was going to do her best to keep Neil as a presence for her son,” one friend says.

One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place.

Pavlovich was in the kitchen, tidying up, when he approached her from behind and pulled her to the sofa.

“It all happened again so quickly,” Pavlovich says.

Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt.

He then attempted to initiate anal sex without lubrication.

“I screamed ‘no,’” Pavlovich says.

Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent.

But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done.

After she said “no,” Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen.

When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant.

She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished.

When it was over, he called her “slave” and ordered her to “clean him up.”

She protested that it wasn’t hygienic.

“He said, ‘Are you defying your master?’” she recalls. “I had to lick my own shit.”

Afterward, she got into the shower and tried to wash her mouth out with a bar of lavender soap.

It had a grainy texture and tasted of metal, acid, and herbs.

She noticed blood swirling down the drain.

He hadn’t used a condom, and she worried she might have gotten an infection.

She had a migraine, and her whole body ached.

But she didn’t consider leaving.

She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.”

She says she understands how Scientologists might have felt when they were sent to the Hole, a detention center where they were forced to lick the floor as punishment.

She’d heard of how some would stay in the room even after they were allowed to leave.

“People keep licking the floor in that horrible room,” she says.

The nights with Gaiman blurred together.

There was the time she passed out from pain while Gaiman was having anal sex with her.

He made her perform oral sex while his penis had urine on it.

He ordered her to suck him off while he watched screeners for the first season of The Sandman.

In one instance, he thrust his penis into Pavlovich’s mouth with such force that she vomited on him.

Then he told her to eat the vomit off his lap and lick it up from the couch.

A week or so into Pavlovich’s time with the family, their son began to address her as “slave” and ordered Pavlovich to call him “master.”

Gaiman seemed to find it amusing.

Sometimes he’d say to his child, in an affable tone, “Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.”

One day, Pavlovich came into the living room when Gaiman and the boy were on the couch watching the children’s show Odd Squad.

She joined them, sitting down next to the child.

Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovich’s shirt, and fondled her breasts.

She says he didn’t make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy.

Another time, during the day, he requested oral sex in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house.

“He would never shut a door,” she says.

On February 19, 2022, Gaiman and his son spent the night at a hotel in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaiman asked Pavlovich if she could come by and watch the child for an hour so he could get a massage.

It was a small room — one double bed, a television, and a bathroom.

When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen.

Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad.

The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed.

Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back.

He lifted the covers up over them.

She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop.

She mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?”

She didn’t want the child to overhear what she was saying.

Gaiman ignored her.

He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have sex with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son.

“‘You should really get off the iPad,’” she recalls him saying.

Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow.

After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked.

He urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovich, frozen on the bed, and told her to “lick it off.”

He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down.

“Before you leave,” he told Pavlovich, “you have to finish your job.”

She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees.

The door was open.

(Gaiman’s representatives say these allegations are “false, not to mention, deplorable.”)

Three weeks after Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke, Palmer told her that the child would be traveling with Gaiman to Edinburgh in a few days to visit the Amazon production of his series Anansi Boys.

They wouldn’t need her for a couple of weeks.

That morning, Pavlovich came down with COVID.

Palmer and Gaiman agreed that she could isolate in Gaiman’s empty home.

They still hadn’t paid her for a single hour she’d worked for them.

Ten days after Gaiman left New Zealand, Pavlovich went to Palmer’s house for dinner.

She asked Palmer if she could tell her something in confidence and made her promise not to tell Gaiman.

She begged for reassurance that she would still keep her job as the child’s nanny.

Palmer assured Pavlovich her employment was not in danger.

Sitting in the kitchen, Pavlovich told Palmer that Gaiman had made a pass at her.

She told Palmer about the bath.

“I didn’t have any choice in the matter,” she said. “He just did it.”

She said he had been having sex with her ever since.

She withheld some of the most brutal details and did not describe her experience as sexual assault; she didn’t yet see it that way.

Palmer did not appear to be surprised.

“Fourteen women have come to me about this,” she said.

She mentioned that Gaiman had slept with another babysitter during his first marriage, and that she’d heard from other women who were disturbed by their experiences with him.

Pavlovich waited until the end to tell Palmer about the child being present in Auckland.

Afterward, she recalled, Palmer was silent.

She appeared shocked.

Palmer insisted that Pavlovich spend the night in her guest room.

She told her, “I’ve had to do this before, and I can do this again. I will take care of you.”

Pavlovich lay down in the bed and heard Palmer pacing back and forth in her room upstairs until 3 a.m.

Palmer called Gaiman that night.

According to Horne, the musician, she asked Gaiman whether their son had been wearing headphones while he and Pavlovich were in the hotel room.

He replied “no,” then hung up.

The following day, Palmer emailed Gaiman and their couples counselor, a man named Wayne Muller, a minister and “a sort of marital companion,” as he put it to me.

According to Muller, who relayed the contents of the email to me, Palmer wrote that Gaiman needed psychiatric treatment and had finally agreed to seek it.

“Everyone was trying to make the best of what was clearly a difficult situation,” Muller tells me.

Palmer then flew to Edinburgh, where Gaiman was staying with their son, whom she collected.

Meanwhile, Pavlovich received a text from Gaiman:

“Amanda tells me that you are having a rough time and you are really upset with me about what we did. I feel awful about this. Would you like to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to make anything better?”

Pavlovich didn’t respond immediately.

“My reflex was to fix the situation,” she tells me.

The next day, she wrote, “Hey. We’ll speak soon … hope you are doing good.”

In the days and weeks after Pavlovich’s revelation, Palmer was solicitous, checking in frequently over text and sending warm notes:

“From the minute you entwined your fate with mine on ponsonby road i’ve been glad i met you. That is tenfold so now.”

She helped Pavlovich find a temporary apartment and invited her over for meals.

In late March, Palmer sent a message to a friend of Pavlovich’s, a 41-year-old ceramicist named Misma Anaru, in whom Pavlovich had confided about Gaiman.

“I’m glad she had you to take care of her,” she wrote.

“It’s been a rough month for everyone.”

Anaru’s partner, Kris Taylor, was a doctor of psychology who had lectured at the University of Auckland on coercion, consent, and rape.

Although Pavlovich had never used the words rape or sexual assault to describe what had happened to her, both Anaru and Taylor believed Gaiman had raped her repeatedly.

Anaru felt Palmer bore a share of the blame.

Replying to Palmer, she wrote that “the majority of my rage is directed at Neil.”

But she couldn’t understand why, with all Palmer knew about Gaiman, she had sent Scarlett into that situation.

“Did you not see this coming a mile away?” She added,

“And yes I know you asked him not to do that to her, but honestly, the fact you even felt that was something you should ask is fucked up in ways that defy comprehension.”

Around the same time, Pavlovich followed up with Gaiman. “I had a very intense dream about you last night,” she wrote.

“Are you doing okay?” In his reply, he made a reference to something that had happened two weeks earlier.

In a session with Muller, Palmer had said that Pavlovich was telling people he had raped her and was planning to “Me Too” him.

“I wanted to kill myself,” he wrote.

“But I’m getting through it a day at a time, and it’s been two weeks now and I’m still here. Fragile but not great.”

He expressed dismay at Anaru’s message, which Palmer had told him about.

“I’m a monster in it,” he wrote, “and Amanda seems to have bought it hook line and sinker.”

Apologizing for “bringing any upset” into Pavlovich’s life, he wrote, “I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed.”

Pavlovich remembers her palms sweating, hot coils in her stomach.

She was terrified of upsetting Gaiman.

“I was disconnected from everybody else at that point in my life,” she tells me. She rushed to reassure him. “It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she wrote. Anaru had been “triggered by something I think,” she added.

“I am so glad that you messaged me,” Gaiman wrote. “I thought you were a monster.”

Gaiman asked Pavlovich to speak with Muller.

“Knowing that you would be prepared to say, ‘It’s not true, it was consensual, he’s not a monster,’ makes me a lot more grounded,” he wrote.

Muller reached out to Pavlovich to offer a “safe harbor.”

When they spoke on the phone, Pavlovich told Muller what Gaiman, who was paying for the session, had asked her to say.

After listening to Muller’s “esoteric, spiritual claptrap,” she felt worse.

“I really felt it was all my fault.”

Muller, for his part, tells me that ethical boundaries prevent him from sharing anything about his sessions with Gaiman, but he apparently felt comfortable sharing details of his conversation with Pavlovich.

“What she called to speak with me about was feeling pressured — from very diverse, mostly older women in her community — to take action that she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable taking. I accompanied her on a journey to help her figure out the answers for herself to that issue.”

In the weeks that followed, Muller connected Gaiman with the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric facility in Massachusetts.

According to Muller, Gaiman had several preliminary phone calls with the facility and was considering entering a six-week inpatient evaluation process.

But Gaiman never followed through. “I don’t remember why not,” Muller says.

Pavlovich grew suicidal.

She hoarded zopiclone and aspirin and walked around the city surveying bridges.

She decided she’d take the pills and told Palmer about her plan.

At Palmer’s urging, she checked into an emergency room.

“You are loved,” Palmer texted.

After a few days in a respite center, feeling slightly better, Pavlovich reached out to Palmer to ask if she could resume working as the child’s nanny.

The apartment Palmer had set her up with was temporary, and she needed a place to stay.

“It would be really good for me I think to have something to do and people to be around,” she wrote.

Palmer argued that it was not the time for her to take on the responsibility of caring for a child.

“Your job is to care for you,” she replied.

She proposed they get together when Pavlovich got out, promising to help her get back on her feet, and suggested in the meantime she go home to her parents.

This infuriated Pavlovich.

“There is a reason I have divorced my parents,” she wrote. “I’m starting to feel very much on my own and like I hate everyone.”

“I can’t offer you exactly what you want from me,” Palmer wrote, “but i can still be here. remember this.”

“Babe I am more alone than I’ve ever been in my life,” Pavlovich replied.

She wished she’d never agreed to be their nanny:

“If I hadn’t gotten on that first ferry I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

That night, Pavlovich texted Gaiman.

“Amanda keeps saying she will help but it seems more philosophical rather than actually like she will help.”

Two minutes later, she added, “I’ve been thinking of you so much.”

Gaiman replied that he’d be happy to help in a tangible way.

Pavlovich then received an NDA dated to the first night of her employment, when he had suggested she take a bath.

She signed it.

A month later, she received a bank transfer from Gaiman: $1,700 for her babysitting work.

Two months after that, she received the first of nine payments totaling about $9,200.

Over the course of the year, Pavlovich’s perspective changed.

“As he faded away, I began to let other voices in,” she says.

Friends connected her with women who were experienced in dealing with sexual assault and abuse, including Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein’s and an advocate for ending the “misuse of NDAs to buy women’s silence.”

(Caroline and Pavlovich broke their NDAs when they spoke out about Gaiman.)

These women encouraged her to go to the police.

In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault.

At the station, she gave a formal interview about the case.

After she told the officers her story, one of them told her that Palmer’s cooperation would be essential for the case to move forward.

Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate.

“I said to them, ‘She’s a public feminist, and she knows what happened. She’ll want to protect me. I’m sure she’ll speak.’”

When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them.

Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement.

Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went into a song she performed on tour in 2024, one she wrote shortly after Pavlovich’s confession.

It was called “Whakanewha,” named after a park near their homes on Waiheke.

“Another suicidal mass landing on my doorstep — thanks a ton / A few more corpses in the sack / You’ll get away with it; it’s just the same old script / This world is shaped to have your back / You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ then you ran / And went and did it all again.”

This past fall, Pavlovich began studying for a degree in English literature at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

As it happens, the university had awarded Gaiman an honorary degree in 2016.

In December, Pavlovich approached the head of the university, Dame Sally Mapstone, to share her experience and ask the university to review the decision to honor Gaiman.

Mapstone was sympathetic but indecisive; some on the board, she told Pavlovich, would likely want evidence of prosecution to rescind his degree.

As far as the police report goes, the “matter has been closed,” a spokesperson says.

Gaiman’s career, meanwhile, has been marginally affected.

A few pending adaptations of his novels and comics have been put on hold or canceled.

But the second season of The Sandman is set to premiere on Netflix this year, as is Anansi Boys on Amazon Prime.

(Amazon did not return a request for comment.)

He and Palmer are entering the fifth year of an ugly divorce and custody battle.

Gaiman has “bled her dry” in the divorce proceedings, according to someone close to her.

She’s moved back in with her parents in Massachusetts.

(Gaiman’s representatives alleged that Palmer was a “major force” driving this story in light of their contentious divorce.)

In December, Pavlovich flew to Atlanta to meet some of the other women who had made accusations against Gaiman.

They had been unaware of one another’s existence until they’d heard the podcast.

Since then, they had formed a WhatsApp group and grown close.

“It’s been like meeting survivors of the same cult,” Stout tells me.

“It’s impossible to understand unless you were there.”

On New Year’s Eve, Pavlovich, Stout, and Caroline gathered around a bonfire at the Athens home of the musician Michael Stipe, an old friend of Caroline’s.

Kendall joined them on FaceTime.

With their dark hair and delicate features, they looked like they could be sisters.

Around 11 p.m., they wrote down their intentions for the year and cast the scraps of paper into the fire.

Pavlovich had written that she wanted to “release the yoke of victimhood” and “invite in self-acceptance.”

The next morning, she woke before the others, made coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and sat on the porch in the winter sun. “Am I happy?” she wrote in her journal.

“No.”

But she also noted that she wasn’t alone. “There is no need to feel abandoned anymore.”

[mansurali2343]

The Benefits of Arabic Learning: Exploring the Importance and Strategies

Arabic is one of the oldest and most widely spoken languages in the world, with over 400 million speakers. As the official language of over 20 countries, it plays a significant role in the cultural, religious, and historical contexts of the Arab world. Whether for academic purposes, business, travel, or personal enrichment, learning Arabic can open many doors. This article will explore the importance of learning Arabic, the cognitive and practical benefits of mastering the language, and effective strategies to begin your learning journey.

Understanding the Importance of Arabic

Arabic holds deep significance for various reasons, ranging from its rich cultural history to its role in international communication. One of the most compelling reasons to learn Arabic is its importance in the Muslim world. The Quran, the holy book of Islam, is written in Arabic, and learning the language is key to understanding the text in its original form. For millions of Muslims around the world, the ability to read and understand Arabic is a spiritual and intellectual pursuit.

An Arabic learning programme offers a structured and immersive approach to mastering the Arabic language, catering to learners of all levels. These programmes typically cover essential aspects such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and conversational skills, helping students gain proficiency in both Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects. An Arabic learning programme can be found in various formats, from online courses to classroom-based lessons, offering flexibility for different learning preferences.

Cognitive Benefits of Learning Arabic

Learning a new language is known to have numerous cognitive benefits, and Arabic is no exception. The process of learning Arabic can enhance cognitive abilities and improve mental flexibility. Here are some cognitive benefits:

Improved Memory: Learning new vocabulary, phrases, and grammatical structures in Arabic requires memorization and recall, strengthening short- and long-term memory.

Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills: Arabic has a complex system of verb conjugation and a unique script, which challenges learners to think critically and solve language-related problems as they emerge.

Better Multitasking Abilities: Studies have shown that learning a second language improves multitasking skills by increasing the brain’s ability to switch between tasks and manage information.

Increased Brain Plasticity: Learning a language like Arabic, which has a different script and structure from many Western languages, enhances brain plasticity, allowing for better adaptation and learning in other areas.

Practical Reasons to Learn Arabic

In today’s globalized world, Arabic is becoming an increasingly important language. The Arab world is home to some of the world’s largest economies, and learning the language can offer numerous practical benefits in both personal and professional contexts.

Business and Career Opportunities: As the Arab world continues to grow economically, there is a rising demand for Arabic-speaking professionals in industries such as energy, finance, journalism, and diplomacy. Companies working in the Middle East and North Africa often seek employees who can communicate effectively in Arabic, making it a valuable skill in the global job market.

Travel and Tourism: Arabic-speaking countries, including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco, are popular travel destinations. Learning Arabic can enhance the travel experience by allowing for more meaningful interactions with locals, understanding cultural nuances, and navigating the region with ease.

Cultural Enrichment: Learning Arabic opens the door to a vast world of literature, music, film, and art. Understanding the language allows you to engage with famous works of Arabic literature, like those of the poet Rumi or the storyteller Ibn Khaldun. Additionally, Arabic cinema and music have a rich tradition, and learning the language will allow you to appreciate these cultural treasures fully.

Challenges of Learning Arabic

Arabic is a challenging language for many learners, particularly for those whose first language is not related to it. Some of the challenges include:

Complex Script: Arabic is written from right to left, and its script consists of 28 letters. The shape of each letter changes depending on its position in a word, which can make reading and writing tricky for beginners.

Dialect Variation: One of the most significant challenges of learning Arabic is the variation in dialects. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the formal version of the language used in writing, media, and formal settings. However, each region and country has its own dialects, making it difficult to understand spoken Arabic depending on where you are.

Pronunciation and Sounds: Arabic includes several sounds that are not present in many Western languages. These unique sounds can be challenging for learners to master, especially when it comes to pronouncing consonants and vowels correctly.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of learning Arabic far outweigh the difficulties. With the right strategies, anyone can overcome these obstacles and achieve proficiency in the language.

Effective Strategies for Learning Arabic

If you're interested in learning Arabic, it’s important to approach the process with the right mindset and tools. Here are some effective strategies to help you succeed in learning Arabic:

Start with the Basics: Begin by learning the Arabic alphabet and basic pronunciation. This is the foundation for reading and writing in Arabic. Familiarize yourself with the sounds of the letters and how they change depending on their placement in words.

Immerse Yourself: Like any language, immersion is key to learning Arabic. Surround yourself with the language by listening to Arabic music, watching films, and reading books in Arabic. Immersion helps you become more familiar with the rhythms of the language and improves your comprehension skills.

Practice Speaking: Arabic is a language best learned through practice. Find a conversation partner, either in person or online, to practice speaking regularly. This will help you become more comfortable with pronunciation, sentence construction, and fluency.

Use Language Apps: Technology has made learning Arabic more accessible than ever. Language apps like Duolingo, Memrise, and Babbel offer interactive lessons, quizzes, and exercises to help you build your vocabulary and grammar skills.

In conclusion, Arabic learning is an enriching journey that opens doors to a wealth of cultural, academic, and professional opportunities. As one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, learning Arabic provides access to diverse traditions, literature, and global networks. With the growing demand for Arabic speakers in business, diplomacy, and the media, Arabic learning can significantly enhance career prospects. Though challenging at times, mastering Arabic is highly rewarding, and with the right resources and strategies, anyone can succeed in this endeavor. Whether through formal education, language apps, or immersion techniques, learners can gradually build their proficiency and confidence. By committing to the process and practicing consistently, students can achieve fluency and gain a deeper appreciation for the language’s rich history and cultural significance. Ultimately, Arabic learning is not just about language acquisition but also about connecting with a vibrant and diverse world.

[maigamal]

Should You Learn Arabic? Here’s What You Need to Know

For anyone interested in diving into a new language, Arabic offers a uniquely rewarding experience. Spoken by over 420 million people worldwide, Arabic is more than just a language; it’s a gateway to rich cultures, histories, and literatures. If you’ve ever asked yourself, is Arabic worth learning, here are some reasons why it might be one of the best decisions you make.

A Key to Understanding a Rich Culture and History

Arabic has been a cornerstone of knowledge, arts, and culture for centuries. Many historic texts in fields such as mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy were originally written in Arabic. When you learn the language, you’re not only gaining the ability to communicate, but also the chance to read these original texts and understand the perspectives of scholars who shaped the world.

Beyond academic value, Arabic provides a direct connection to the cultural practices, poetry, music, and art forms unique to the Arab world. Learning the language makes it easier to appreciate and experience these cultural treasures, even if you’ve only just started to pick up basic phrases.

Opening Doors to the Quran and Islamic Knowledge

For many, learning Arabic is driven by the desire to read and understand the Quran in its original language. The Quran holds a special place in the lives of millions of people, and understanding it in Arabic brings a depth of comprehension that translations often can’t convey. Classical Arabic, the form used in the Quran, offers profound insights and subtle meanings that sometimes don’t fully translate. If you’re interested in studying the Quran in Arabic, resources like Shaykhi provide an excellent way to deepen your understanding and improve your language skills in a supportive environment.

Arabic Can Boost Your Career

In recent years, Arabic has become a valuable asset in the global job market. Many sectors, from international business to diplomacy and intelligence, increasingly seek people fluent in Arabic. As countries in the Middle East continue to play important roles in global trade, energy, and politics, Arabic speakers find career options ranging from journalism and consulting to nonprofit work and foreign services.

In addition, with so many Middle Eastern businesses reaching a global audience, the demand for Arabic speakers in fields like marketing and customer service is also growing. Knowing Arabic can give you an edge, particularly if you want a role that involves connecting people across languages and cultures.

It’s Easier to Learn Than You Think

Arabic might look intimidating at first, especially if you’ve never studied a language with a different script. But with practice and the right resources, you can begin to understand and use Arabic faster than you might expect. Its grammar has regular patterns that are straightforward once you get the hang of them, and many words are derived from core roots, making it easy to build up vocabulary as you go.

Of course, learning a language takes dedication and patience. But with accessible online resources, like those available at Shaykhi, anyone can learn Arabic at their own pace and practice the essentials, from everyday phrases to in-depth studies of the Quran.

A Language that Connects Communities

Arabic isn’t just a single language—it’s a collection of dialects that vary from one region to another, with Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the formal language that unites them all. Knowing MSA allows you to communicate across various Arabic-speaking countries, from Morocco to the UAE.

Learning Arabic can also connect you with Arabic-speaking communities in non-Arab countries, including the United States, Canada, and Europe, where vibrant cultural communities make Arabic a bridge for meaningful interactions and friendships.

Final Thoughts

So, is Arabic worth learning? If you’re looking for a language that brings together a world of knowledge, culture, career options, and spiritual depth, Arabic is an excellent choice. While it presents its challenges, the rewards make every effort worthwhile, especially when you have high-quality resources to guide you.

For anyone curious to start or deepen their Arabic learning journey, Shaykhi offers specialized courses for all levels, designed to help you learn Arabic and explore the Quran with expert guidance. It’s an investment in knowledge that could bring endless personal and professional growth.