An update on Hajji, the Arabic term for "pilgrim" which has become the GWII term for "enemy": it looks like it's not just for GWII anymore. I found a Jan. 2002 usage in a short piece by Lisette Garcia, who writes,
Tampons, alarm clocks and Kodak film were easy enough for me to negotiate at the local Hajji shop. But giving a regulation haircut was simply too foreign a concept in the middle of the desert.Garcia's talking about the original Gulf War, I think, which gives the term a bit of breathing room, at least as far as its original coiners are concerned.
There are certainly some benign usages of Hajji around, and I can easily see how soldiers, hearing Arabs, Kuwaitis, or Iraqis address each other--or their elders--as "hajji," could adopt it with clean intent. Try justifying the phrase "mowing down some hajjis," though. I dare you.
For the record, this has nothing to do with Gus Van Sant.
bloghdad.com | posted by greg at November 4, 2003 10:19 AM
