Given the many fascinating qualities that Dracula possesses, we may well forget his memory, meaning his ability to remember, and he does have such a very long history, he and his forebears, as he explains to Harker in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel:

Dracula has other memories as well, including memories of love, as he reminds his trio of brides after interrupting their lustful attack on Harker: “[Y]ou yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?”

By contrast, in E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire (Lions Gate, 2000), Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), who plays Graf Orlok, has an extremely poor memory. He cannot recall when he became a vampire or where he was born. One character chides him, complaining, “Count Dracula wouldn't say he couldn't remember.” But Schreck/Orlok must say it. He is ancient, so very ancient, that his memory has faded. Is it possible to conceive of a time before he existed? Such is difficult for him as well as for us. Might we recall the date of his birth, even if he is unable? Let us reconstruct that night, for it was indeed at night, when Orlok's symphony of horror was first heard in Germany, when he first cast his shadow on a Berlin theater screen, when not a single scratch appeared on a pristine print that advanced through a film projector, its teeth sinking into Nosferatu's sprocket holes with each turn of the take-up reel.

Sometime in the year 184 or 185 of the Hijrī calendar (i.e. 800 or 801 ce), a Muslim scholar named Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ was travelling in the city of Mecca. While there, Wakīʿ reported ḥadīths to some listeners: a well-known practice among many eighth- and ninth-century Muslims, who related oral reports about the Prophet Muḥammad and his Companions in order to learn about the practices and stories of the primordial Islamic community. One of Wakīʿ's traditions, though, did not invoke a witty saying of the Prophet, describe how he had performed a particular ritual, or narrate the past glories of battles fought by the early Muslims. Instead, Wakīʿ's narrated tradition described in graphic detail what had happened to the Prophet's body after his death: ‘When the Messenger of God died, he was not buried until his belly swelled up and his little finger bent.’ According to this short tradition, the Prophet Muḥammad's corpse was not buried until signs of decay had already begun to appear on the body, with his belly swelling from collected fluids and his finger bent from rigor mortis.

The context for Wakīʿ's reporting of this particular ḥadīth goes unrecorded, and our sources differ on what happened next. But, whatever the case, Wakīʿ's report about the Prophet's corpse got him into a rather sticky situation. According to one version of these events, when the governor of Mecca heard what Wakīʿ had said about the Prophet, he imprisoned Wakīʿ and planned to kill him, going so far as to build a platform to carry out a public execution. With Wakīʿ in dire trouble, his colleague, the respected scholar Sufyān b. ʿUyayna, interceded with the Meccan governor, noting that Wakīʿ was a well-connected man whose family would complain to the caliph in Baghdad. Seeing the complications that this case might cause him, the governor relented and freed Wakīʿ, who promptly fled to Medina. However, Wakīʿ's words about the Prophet had preceded him to Medina, where a group planned to reverse the Meccan governor's leniency and stone Wakīʿ to death. Catching wind of this plot while on the road, Wakīʿ deviated from his planned route and retreated homewards to Kūfa in Iraq.

Truly, verily, certainly (intensifying particle, frequently after inna introducing the predicate)

For, on behalf of, in favour of, to (of the dative), because of, due to (preposition)

That, so that, in order that, in order to (conjunction with the subjunctive)

Not, no! (particle)

Not at all, absolutely not

Not – in the least, not by a far cry

Neither – nor

Only very little

Absolutely not, by no means

I don’t care! I don’t mind!

I don’t trust him

Ineffective, ineffectual

I feel compelled to

I don’t see any reason for amazement, there is nothing to be astonished about

Completely unfounded (news, rumour)

Of lowly origin (person), without basis or foundation (speech)

I don’t think that anyone can deny

I am quite sure that he . . .

I don’t believe that you can

contradict me

I shall never do it!

The least one can do is to, I (you, etc.) could at least . . .

(with indefinite accusative, expressing a general negation) There is not, there is no (e.g. there is no god but Allah)

Never mind! No problem!

It doesn’t matter that . . .

There is no objection to it, not bad, considerable

Don’t worry! It won’t do you any harm!

Definitely, without fail

He simply must do it, he can’t get around without it

It is necessary, inescapable, unavoidable

No wonder that . . .

Null and void

Nobody, not a living soul

No state is of any permanence with him, he is never the same for a very long time

Blameless, flawless, unblemished, immaculate

It is not veiled in darkness (lit. the sun doesn't disappear from him)

Nothing escapes him, he doesn’t miss a thing

Don’t say! (expressing negative imperative)

There is no resistance against the enemies, resistance against the enemy is futile.

You will hardly ever see, you barely see, the moment you see

Talk of the devil and he will appear!

Pardon me! Forgive me!

Incontestably, indisputably

It won’t be held against him if he, it won’t do any harm if he . . .

It is not necessary, there is no need of

I don’t need it

Introduction

The historical background of Turkish paramilitarism can be divided into three distinct periods: the Hamidian and CUP periods during the late Ottoman Empire (1890–1918), the Republic (or Kemalist) period (1923–50) and the multi-party period (1950s–90s). Manifestly, there was a long tradition and continuity in terms of the emergence and mobilisation of paramilitary forces from the late Ottoman Empire to 1990s Turkey. Thus, this chapter addresses the question of how the Turkish state performed and transformed paramilitary policies before the 1990s, and how this transformation and legacy influenced the formation of paramilitary organisations in the 1990s.

The usage of paramilitary forces varied according to their origins and functions during these periods. In the late Ottoman Empire, the paramilitary forces were used by the state as death squads and as auxiliary forces to the regular army, mainly to prevent the rise of nationalist movements, which were considered a threat in the Balkans and the eastern part of the Empire. During the Kemalist, or single-party dictatorship period, paramilitary forces were again used as death squads (particularly in the early Republic) and as auxiliary forces (including pro-government Kurdish tribes and informers). They were particularly used to eliminate opposition (to the Republic or to Mustafa Kemal). Then, during the multi-party period, the state used paramilitary forces as death squads, auxiliary forces and vigilantes against non-Muslim communities, the left-wing opposition, Kurdish leftist and nationalist movements, and against Alevi civilians. The main purpose of paramilitary forces during this period was to prevent the rise of Communist movements and Kurdish organisations.

Consequently, I argue that although the Turkish state was governed by different regimes (the period of the late Ottoman Empire with the sultanate, the Kemalist or single-party period with a dictatorship and the multi-party democratic period with a premiership), there was a continuity in the nature and function of Turkish paramilitarism across these periods. I discuss paramilitary groups during these periods, particularly in the context of the political parties, organised crime, tribes and the ethno-religious minority policies of the state. In addition, I emphasise the examples of the Kurdish provinces, to understand if and how the effects of these organisations continued into the 1990s.

The Collectivist Self and Character as Role

In her final novel, 2007's The Cleft, Doris Lessing problematises the identification of character with physically individual being. The novel imagines an exclusively female society thousands of years in the past as it is disturbed by the birth of its first male children. Among the features the society has developed is a binding of names to roles. For instance, whoever acts as recordkeeper has the name Maire. As the reader encounters Maire, she resists being perceived as a physical individual rather than the embodiment of a role. Pondering, in a record, that the reader might want to know more about her, she elects not to provide information about her appearance or personality, offering only that ‘my name is Maire’ and that ‘there is always someone called Maire’ (9). Though Maire suggests that it does not matter if multiple people have the same name because ‘you can always tell by looking at someone’ (11), this, of course, is not possible for the reader. As years pass, one embodiment of Maire can be assumed to replace another, though The Cleft does not mark these transitions. Presented as the reconstruction by Transit, a Roman historian, of a time patchily recorded, the novel provides absence of evidence as justification for its omissions. The historian admits to having ‘no means of knowing how long the Cleft's story took to evolve’ and also to having ‘no idea’ how long it took for Maire and other characters ‘to become more than themselves’ (102). As the historian smooths over gaps in the historical record, the reader has no choice but to accept Maire and other figures in The Cleft as characters whose extension is not delimited by a given physical body.

What The Cleft refuses is access to the particular: Maire, as a role, as a category, is a generalised entity. Denied witness to the specifics of particular Maires (and likewise of other roles), the reader is unable to invest in the development and well-being of the individual embodying Maire at any given time. Because of this, the way Maire can be read is not analogous to the way an individuated character is read. To be Maire means being the maker of records: that definitional fixity precludes the narrative of finding oneself or of making something of oneself.

Victims of vampires do not immediately become vampires. A period of transition occurs, whether it unfolds over minutes, days, or weeks. In Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), the Count not only drinks Mina's blood, but also shares his own, making her sup from an open wound on his chest. During a slow transformation, Mina can feel what Dracula feels, see what Dracula sees, and hear what Dracula hears, even though vast geography separates them. She is a “poor soul in worse than mortal peril.” The process of becoming is underway, for her character in the fin de siècle, just as it would be for the screen vampire during the Roaring Twenties.

In 1921, The Nation pointedly asked readers, “What shall be done with the vampires?”:

Here the question had to do with the negative effect that screen vamps could have on American youth. As Reverend William F. Crafts preached that same year, “I would rather have my son stand at a bar and drink two glasses of beer that have him see that [movie] vampire woman … he could not forget that vampire woman until he was 80 years old.”

These sentiments were not new. In 1916, a newspaper editorial declared that it was “time for movies to move” beyond the vamp era. The following year, Motion Picture News published the following “sage” advice from the public to the producers: “we don't approve of vampire women nor of vampire men either.” Then, in 1918, another writer demanded that Hollywood “bury in oblivion the superfluous screen ‘he vampire.’” Women's organizations condemned vamps during the late teens, even as one company manufactured vampire dolls with “roguish eyes.”

By naming his 1835 collection of essays and stories Arabesques, Gogol connected it to an aesthetic form at the intersection of architectural design and literature – not to mention music, art and dance – as well as a set of debates that had animated German Romanticism in the preceding decades. Taking Gogol's usage as inspiration, this chapter ranges across art, design, architecture, literature, philosophy and theory in order to argue for the value of the arabesque as a concept for reading the nineteenth-century city. In my readings, the arabesque functions partly as a metaphor which attracted increased attention in Europe and America at exactly the period modern cities were developing, and partly as a form with direct links to urban architecture and writing.

The arabesque's value as a conceptual framework for the modern city is due firstly to its persistent links with ‘movement and multiplicity’, as articulated in different ways by Kant, Goethe and Schlegel, and secondly to its position on the border between meaning, order and structure on the one hand, and meaninglessness, chaos and the unnatural on the other. At the risk of oversimplification, we might say that Western responses to the arabesque have tended to raise the question of whether it is purposive or non-purposive, and if purposive, whether this is in the Kantian sense of purposiveness which exists ‘apart from a purpose’. As Winfried Menninghaus observes, ‘without directly using the concept, Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790) formulates and elaborates a philosophy of the arabesque that then serves as a major touchstone for the reevaluation of the arabesque in early Romanticism’. Kant associates the arabesque with ‘free beauty’, which exemplifies purposiveness-without-a-purpose, when he writes that ‘designs à la grecque, foliage for framework or on wall-papers, etc., have no intrinsic meaning; they represent nothing – no object under a determinate concept – and are free beauties’. Free beauty does not conform to a particular purpose or structure, but instead activates the imagination (as opposed to pure or practical reason). It formally imitates nature, but does not reproduce it.

This is your one-stop shop for developing your vocabulary, academic writing, translation and comprehension through the acquisition of Arabic idioms and stylistic expressions.

This dictionary provides readers with a comprehensive glossary of Arabic idioms and expressions, translated into English. The wide range of idioms and expressions are very practical for learners, translators and academics who wish to expand their knowledge of Arabic idioms and expressions, and develop their Arabic translation and academic writing skills. This easy-to-access dictionary covers up-to-date idiomatic expressions reflecting different registers.

The main objectives of this dictionary can be summarised as follows:

• 1. Introduce learners to key idioms and expressions reflecting different registers.

• 2. Equip learners, translators and academics with a collection of multifaceted key idiomatic and stylistic expressions to aid them in their translation, writing and comprehension.

• 3. Enhance awareness of key Arabic idioms and expressions and their translations.

• 4. Facilitate the task of accessing and using idioms and expressions alphabetically.

• 5. Develop their Arabic writing style.

Structure and Organisation

In term of the structure and organisation, this dictionary follows conventional dictionary formats and as such there are no breakdown of idioms into sections or themes, but all are listed alphabetically. The entries are organised alphabetically on the Alif–Yāʾ (A–Z) scale. There is no criteria for selecting idiomatic expressions as the dictionary aims to accommodate all genres and types of idioms. In doing so, major modern and classic references and dictionaries such as Lisān al-ʿArab, Hans Wehr, Oxford Arabic Dictionary, al-Mawrid and other pertinent references have been consulted to ensure a wide range of idioms have been included.

This dictionary is considered a key reference and it is hoped that it will supplement existing textbooks and will be most useful for intermediate and advanced learners of Arabic, native Arabic speakers, translators and interpreters.

Our major drive for developing this idiomatic dictionary is the learners’ pressed need for a comprehensive glossary or a dictionary of Arabic idioms and expressions, which will help them in their translation and writing. Our students would often ask us to provide them with translations of idioms to help them with translating and comprehending texts. It was evident on numerous occasions in Arabic classes that current dictionaries are not of much help to students when translating idioms and expressions into English.

In 1982, in the context of a historical survey of the way Scotland and the Scots have been portrayed in the cinema, I wrote:

Since that time my mind has been haunted by the phenomenon of The Maggie – not just the film itself, but the processes of its production and consumption within Scotland – as the locus classicus of everything that is wrong with Scottish film culture. This essay, then, is in some sense the ‘talking cure’ which, with any luck, will exorcise the demon.

For those who have yet to see the film, a plot summary from a contemporary review might be useful:

This chapter examines the quarterly Gairm which Thomson co-founded and (co-)edited for fifty years, as one of his most influential contributions to the revitalisation of Gaelic in the second half of the twentieth century. It comments on the role of periodicals in the Gaelic revival before the magazine, with special focus on those with a similar outlook. Most of the chapter is devoted to a detailed account of Gairm itself: its foundation and funding arrangements; the gradual transformation of its aims and focus; topics related to Gaelic revitalisation addressed in the editorials; and contributors who provided content for the magazine. It concludes with an overview of Thomson's own writing which appeared in the quarterly and the way these pieces reflect his revivalist preoccupations.

Periodicals in the Gaelic revival

Due to the relative cheapness of production, regularity, collective nature, capacity to promote new writing and ability to quickly respond to contemporary issues, the magazine has been an important tool in the revitalisation of minoritised languages in the nineteenth and especially in the twentieth centuries. Similar examples of revivalist media ventures can be found in Celtic countries other than Scotland. In Wales, Kate Roberts (1891–1985) published the weekly Y Faner as part of the Welsh-language press Gwasg Gee. In the Isle of Man, activist, folklorist and poet Mona Douglas (1898–1987) founded the periodicals Manninagh and The Manxman with similar aims in mind. In Brittany, author and scholar Roparz Hemon (1900–78) ran the periodicals Gwalarn, Sterenn and Arvor, with the aim to prove that high culture could emerge in Breton and which stimulated the production of new literature in the language, representing an interesting parallel, but their appreciation has been overshadowed by the founder's wartime involvement with Nazi Germany.

As McLeod notes, in comparison to other European minority languages, ‘the Gaelic periodical press has been distinctly underdeveloped’, which ‘has had significant consequences for Gaelic language movements in terms of limiting the opportunities for ideological, policy and cultural debates’. In this realm of distinct underdevelopment, several magazines stand out. Donald John MacLeod observes that ‘at the centre of each was one man or a very small nucleus of enthusiasts, usually motivated by nationalistic fervour’ who ‘ran periodicals in which Gaelic was used for discussing the latest intellectual problems and in which the work of experimental writers of fiction was welcomed’.

In the summer of 1983 the Scottish Development Agency entered into a promotional exercise with Selfridges, the London department store. Over a substantial area of floor space a Scottish village was constructed, the shape of the papier mâché walls reprising Scottish rural vernacular architecture, the square containing a (by all appearances) genuine parish pump and trees, and the backdrops consisting of painted hills and castles. Attached to the walls at various places were enamelled signs, of the type common between the Wars, for products such as Wild Woodbine and Richmond Gem cigarettes, and leaning against the various trees and walls were milk churns, wagon wheels and a grocery boy's delivery bike of the kind generations born between the Wars can recall from their childhood. The names over the buildings included Flora MacDonald's China Gifts, The Balmoral Shop (crystal and glass), The Laird's Shop (knitwear), The Sweetie Shop, and The Gamekeeper's Inn. The interior of the latter was panelled in wood, had sheep and stags’ heads on the wall, stuffed grouse and salmon in glass cases, and an old copper kettle on top of the iron stove which nestled in a homely papier mâché hearth. The only potentially discordant note was the handful of vinyl records scattered on the rough-hewn table outside the inn, but the titles of the discs were entirely in keeping with the overall milieu: The Gathering of the Clans, Caledonian Heritage and The Crags of Tumbledown Mountain, the latter with the pipes and drums and regimental band of the Scots Guards celebrating the regiment's exploits in the Malvinas (more popularly known as the Falklands) War.

The central contradiction which the Selfridges Scottish village (needless to say, unconsciously) poses is as follows. A country, four-fifths of whose population live in cities and are oriented towards industrial production (in transition, of course, from traditional coal and steel-based heavy industry towards electronic industries), is constructed – not by poets and artists, but by the central government agency concerned with national economic regeneration – in exclusively rural Highland terms. That contradiction is a complex but illustrative issue of the historical construction of national identity and the reasons why such constructions were and are necessary.

The compulsive rhythms of Bobby Sands’ prison writings, their wild swings between utopian reverie and sudden disenchantment, political hymn and savage realism, lyricism and satire, take their measure from an existential torsion wound around a Gordian knot: the ‘unrelenting burden of torture’ is suffered solely as a consequence of the blanketman's unyielding subjective militancy.

The writing of Nawal El Saadawi, Egypt's incendiary feminist icon, is so suffused with her metatextual personality, her highly cultivated, extroverted character, that its flagrant egotism comes to seem more like a grammar all its own. Seventeen times in some 220 words here the first-person singular possessive pronoun rings out, joining the ranks of ten first-person singular pronouns, and various implied uses nestled into clauses otherwise bereft. This is a translation, of course, but it is in much the same voice Nawal uses for her English prose and her spoken interviews and speeches in English: adverting compulsively to itself, its quality as ‘personned’ in the body of its speaker, an ego compacted of so much mass and substance that language finds itself, its very parts of speech and lexemes, held fast in orbit around that lively, imperious Self. No other prison writer takes such abundant refuge in the safe harbour of her own person.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's prison writing turns in the gyre where the personal and the historical intersect. It is a vital, innervating cross-roads, where merely accidental, biographical facts are shot through with dynamic historical energies, rendering them salient in the fateful back-light of the ‘million dead’. But this energising existential torsion is then rudely transformed into a logic of empty repetition and timeless futility by the state's instrumentation of prison time. One has, in the neocolonial state, been cast into the dungeon – here, Nairobi's maximum-security Kamĩtĩ prison – on the basis of one's identification with a ‘betrayed’ historical process; but, in embodying that betrayal (as an incarcerated intellectual in league with the socialist trinity of workers, peasants and students), one has effectively been ejected from history altogether into a Hades where ‘the children of Sisyphus’ toil in the gloom.