Oh, Che, had a feeling you would say that. Morning. Feeling rough.

^all I'll need is a bib and a high chair then! Still up, hungry and achy but no sign of being seduced by sleep. Botheration. I need to be clear-headed tomorrow. Today even. Ahh.

Oh my I didn't know the story, just read it on wiki, very sweet. I don't really care about the Somali word for the psyche I was referring to, thanks for the story-fix. Wish it would put me to sleep, it's very late.

Psyche iyo qalbi maxaa isuu keenay? Are you in loof?

Princess Hijab daubs Muslim veils on half-naked fashion ads on the metro. Why does she do it? Is she a religious fundamentalist? And is she really a woman? Angelique Chrisafis meets the elusive street artist Just after dawn at Havre- Caumartin metro station, Paris's first commuters are stepping on and off half-empty trains. Then, at the end of the platform, a figure in black appears, head bowed and feet tapping with nerves. Princess Hijab is Paris's most elusive street artist. Striking at night with dripping black paint she slaps black Muslim veils on the half-naked airbrushed women – and men – of the metro's fashion adverts. She calls it "hijabisation". Her guerrilla niqab art has been exhibited from New York to Vienna, sparking debates about feminism and fundamentalism – yet her identity remains a mystery. In secular republican France, there can hardly be a more potent visual gag than scrawling graffitied veils on fashion ads. Six years after a law banned headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, Nicolas Sarkozy's government has banned the niqab from public spaces amid a fierce row over women's rights, islamophobia and civil liberties. The "burqa ban", approved last month, means that from next year it will be illegal for a woman to wear full-face Muslim veils in public, not just in government offices or on public transport, but in the streets, supermarkets and private businesses. The government says it is a way of protecting women's rights and stopping them being forced by men to cover their faces. Already this has prompted extreme reactions. One female teacher in favour of the ban was last week given a month's suspended jail sentence for trying to rip a veil from the face of a 26-year-old Emirati tourist in a shop, then slapping, scratching and biting her. On the other side of the argument, two French women calling themselves "niqa*****" reproduced the classic visual mixed metaphor of walking around central Paris in niqabs, black hotpants, bare legs and high heels, posting a film of it online in order to highlight the "absurdity" of the ban. But Princess Hijab got there first, and her simple, almost childlike acts of sabotage with a black marker pen still manage to be the most unsettling, with the widest audience abroad. Yet who is she? A French Muslim woman in hijab raging at the system? That would be a rare thing on Paris's male-dominated graffiti scene. Is she a religious fundamentalist making a point about female flesh? But she likes to leaves a witty smattering of buttock cheeks and midriff on display. If she's a leftwing feminist making a point about the exploitation of women, it's odd that she always flees the scene of her crimes. Is she even Muslim? Her fans like to imagine a young rebel outsider from Paris's suburban ghettos travelling to the capital to make her mark. But like Paris's greatest street artist, Blek le Rat — who inspired Britain's Bansky — she could turn out to be a fiftysomething white man who voted for Sarkozy. The Princess winds through the corridors of Havre-Caumartin sizing up the advertising posters lining the walls. She has agreed to meet as she scours stations for targets for her next "niqab intervention". In Spandex tights, shorts and a hoodie, with a long black wig totally obscuring her face, one thing is clear; the twentysomething doesn't wear the niqab that has become her own signature. She won't say if she's a Muslim. In fact, it's more than likely that Princess Hijab isn't even a woman. There's a low note in her laughter, a slight broadness to her shoulders. But the androgynous figure in black won't confirm a gender. "The real identity behind Princess Hijab is of no importance," says the husky voice behind the wig. "The imagined self has taken the foreground, and anyway it's an artistic choice." "I started doing this when I was 17," she says (I'll stick to "she" as the character is female, even if the person behind it is perhaps not). "I'd been working on veils, making Spandex outfits that enveloped bodies, more classic art than fashion. And I'd been drawing veiled women on skate-boards and other graphic pieces, when I felt I wanted to confront the outside world. I'd read Naomi Klein's No Logo and it inspired me to risk intervening in public places, targeting advertising." The Princess's first graffiti veil was in 2006, the "niqabisation" of the album poster of France's most famous female rapper, Diam's, who by strange coincidence has now converted to Islam herself. "It's intriguing because she's now wearing the veil," the Princess muses. Intially she graffitied men, women and children and then would stand around to gauge the public's response; now she does hit-and-runs. "I don't care about people's reactions. I can see this makes people feel awkward and ill at ease, I can understand that, you're on your way home after a tough day and suddenly you're confronted with this." With the Paris metro protective of its advertising spaces, her work now usually stays up for only 45 minutes to an hour before being ripped down by officials. She has become highly selective, doing only four or five graffiti "interventions" in Paris a year. But each is carefully photographed and has its own afterlife circulating online. The "niqabised" range from Dolce & Gabbana men's underwear to risque adverts for Virgin bookshops. Why does she do it? "I use veiled women as a challenge," she says, quick to add that she believes no one way of dressing is either good or bad. She's not defending the rights of any group and no one needs her as a spokesperson. "That's paternalistic. If veiled women want to make a point, they'd do it themselves. If feminists want to do something they're capable of doing it on their own." She later explains by email: "The veil has many hidden meanings, it can be as profane as it is sacred, consumerist and sanctimonious. From Arabic Gothicism to the condition of man. The interpretations are numerous and of course it carries great symbolism on race, sexuality and real and imagined geography." Princess Hijab is deliberately cool and detached, but the one issue that really shakes her – and perhaps reveals a little of her true identity – is the place of minorities in France. Beyond the arguments about whether Muslim women should cover their heads, Sarkozy's new ministry of "immigration and national identity" and his national debate on what it means to be French has stigmatised the already discriminated and ghettoised young people of third- and fourth-generation immigrant descent. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, but the prevailing anti-immigrant discourse, and what many view as a pointless burqa ban, has increased the feelings of marginalisation felt by young Muslims and minorities. Princess Hijab sees herself as part of a new "graffiti of minorities" reclaiming the streets. "If it was only about the burqa ban, my work wouldn't have a resonance for very long. But I think the burqa ban has given a global visibility to the issue of integration in France," she says. "We definitely can't keep closing off and putting groups in boxes, always reducing them to the same old questions about religion or urban violence. Education levels are better and we can't have the old Manichean discourse any more." She adds: "Liberty, equality, fraternity, that's a republican principle, but in reality the issue of minorities in French society hasn't really evolved in half a century. The outsiders in France are still the poor, the Arabs, black and of course, the Roma." The Princess won't say what her own roots are. She simply says she sees her work as a kind of "cartography of crime" a mapping out of the underbelly of the city where "I bring inside everything that's been excreted out." And yet her graffiti is particularly French in its anti-consumerism and ad-busting stance. For her, painting a veil on adverts works visually because the two are "dogmas that can be questioned". She feels young women wearing the hijab who were once stigmatised by French institutions are now being targeted for their purchasing power, the "perfect customers" in France's increasingly consumerist society. Her next spree will focus on her favourite target brand, H&M. After all, its ad campaigns are plastered all over the Paris metro. She argues that the brand "democratised" fashion at low prices, women in hijab often shop there, and inking out H&M models is the perfect act of confrontation: "It's visually very striking because [the brand's] images are ideologically very present in the urban landscape." So these blacked-out niqabs seem to represent everything but religion. "Am I religious?" she asks, hesitating. "The spiritual interests me, but that's personal, I don't think it bears on my work. Religion interests me, Muslims interest me and the impact they can have, artistically, aesthetically, in the codes that are all around us, particularly in fashion," she muses. And with that, the graffiti performance artist scuttles off, kit-bag over her shoulder, to change out of her bizarre disguise and into her own everyday fashion and wander off above ground into the daylight. * guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

defeatist: wixii Sheh la murmay more than once. There. LoL. Psyche

I actually bought a couple of the condom dresses(they have been named and it shall stick) in a bigger size and they are very comfy indeed.

Get a room!

I think u just took the fun out of it. back to how it was! partypooper

^Are there many Somalis where u r, Che?

He's not gonna need to pay for them; seems like they do it for free without any expectations whatsoever. Ah, Somaliland wey duushey walee.

^LoooL are we have two having separate conversations? You have an uncanny insight into the man's mind! How strange. He has said himself he's after numbers so why find him some wholesome reasons to divorce. If your mind's on numbers, you will find a reason to divorce, simple. How is it a low divorce rate, lool? He has married 15 women and only 3 are current wives. You are playing with numbers when you say he only divorces one out of every four. It's too funny.

Originally posted by nuune: quote:Originally posted by sheherazade: married 15 times but only married to 3 currently; should tell you something else. It is called alternating current ****, having married to 4 at first stage, let them go willingly or unwillingly, bring another 4, in his case, he was always filling the number 4, similar switch is being used by Somalis nowadays. LoL, maxaa naga galey the technicality, haha? Is it ethical? He's obviously more keen to divorce once the women stop procreating or have enough of his one minute visits. He has targets to achieve and you know what people turn into when they have those hanging over them.

LoL, how do you know? Where are the rest of the exes and those children? The guy's a perve hiding behind a Guiness Book Of Records attempt.

married 15 times but only married to 3 currently; should tell you something else.

Originally posted by NGONGE: 64-year-old father of 88 to now wed 18-year-old and shoot my family members,” he said. it's not them they should be shooting.

Babes, waad sigatey is all I'm saying Seriously, no idea who was entering your room and smelling your clothes and other freaky ish. have you not watched any of those woman gone mad for a bloke films? And then all they got was a haye and a nod. You are lucky your arnab was not boiled looool.

Originally posted by Geel_jire: no offence intendedm but I assumed that carmelo was a xalimo until I read NGs response. my assumption was purely based on the topic of discussion. waryaa carmelo it is much easier sxb, when I lived in hargeisa as a bachelor .. gabdhaha deriska used to clean my room and bring a nice home cooked meal at leat 2 or 3 times a week, eventhough I had a standing appointemnt with 'naag ka roon' I used to leave the key to my room under a big rock outside and I never knew, who cleaned my room most of the time .. very nice and hospitable girls, ilaahay ha daayee. one of them used to wash my clothes every jimce ... waxba kaama rabaan, salaanta badi uun. Bwahahaha. Waa beentaa! Women used to clean your clothes and cook your food and you thought they wanted nothing from you? Nothing comes for free, dude. And you gave them salaam only? I'm going to die, tis the funniest thing I have heard in ages. You deserve to be haunted by qalanjos carrying soap bars. PS: kii muraayadaha waaweena ayaa marba macawiis cusub noo soo xidhanaya! Markan aakhirtu, dirac noo muu soo xidhan. Bored already. And against the rules; do something different for the love of Somaliland. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

I was talking to SomPsycho iyo leef-leefkiisa. Malika, walked in the rain tooo long. I think dhaxantii islaamuhu sheegi jireen ayaa i gashay.

^LoooL, yeah that is sick.

^no. Though I wish I had a mute button for some people sometimes.

and I'm too tired to sleep, Malika. Shall we keep trolling here? Nobody does that to other people's threads anymore. I miss it. LoL.

she read you the first time!

^k. Men and their extensions. Boring.