Monday, June 1, 2009

Now, That Takes Balls

Reading stories like the one below (courtesy of Yahoo News) makes me realize that I just might not know what love is.

CAIRO – A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.

After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.

The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt's poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor.

The man was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official added citing the police report filed after the incident.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press, added that the man was still recovering in the hospital.

Traditionally, marriages in these conservative part of southern Egypt are between similar social classes and often within the same extended families — and are rarely for love.



Do you think the English phrase, "Cut off your nose to spite your face," was simply mistranslated in the Arabic?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow. i mean. . . damn. . . but. . . damn. guess that THING and Lauryn Hill so eloquently put it was not as important as his happiness. wow.

Max Reddick said...

Damn! You have me for loss with that one. Talking about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Any way you slice it, it just doesn't make sense. Hey, I could go on all day!