There at least nine different words meaning moon in Arabic. The general word is qamar. But other words refer to the moon in different phases such as new moon (mohak), waxing crescent moon (helal motazaid ), first-quarter moon: In Arabic (tarbih awoal ), waxing gibbous moon (Ahdab motazaid ), full moon (badr), waning gibbous moon (ahdab motanaqes), last quarter moon (tarbih thani ), and darkened moon (qamar mozlem).
Our mother’s name Badrieh derived from the term for a full moon, badr. In Arabic, Badrieh means a woman with a shining, beautiful face; like the moon. Sami wrote an essay about endings and beginnings covering the last few years of our mother’s life. It was very moving. Read the full excerpt in the Essays section of the website.
There comes a point in adult life where you start to examine who you are, what you believe, why you believe it, and why you act and react this way and not that way. This is the mark of maturity. Introspection will take you only so far. In school, we learn that history explains why society acts and believes the way it does. We finally realize that this applies to us as individuals. What influences our history more than our parents?
Sure, we have always complained about this event or that event in our pasts and perhaps we blame a parent for this problem or credit a parent for that success. These are superficial narratives. In some sense, the more of these we have, the more they block a deeper understanding of the full truth of who our parents were—they substitute for and displace the truth and the full roundness of understanding.