Dear MAGA: 20190309 Open Topic

Great talk by VDH promoting his new book “The Case for Trump”, which is apparently walking off the shelves.
Worth a listen, even if just to hear an academic say many positive things about this POTUS …
He dedicated this book to YOU – The Deplorables!!! 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTa-BvKInrI

After first reading about Q in late summer on the old Treehouse, I had been making up my mind about the reliability of the transmissions until the week that began on Valentine’s Day. By the end of that week, I was finally red-pilled on the truth of Q.
So to celebrate that newfound realization, I will try my hand tonight at a little bit of original Q analysis.
This comment is going to pertain to the photo included with Q post #3002 of March 7.
The photo in question is of a fellow holding up a letter sized sheet of paper with MIGA+MAGA written on it, while standing underneath the blue and white sign of a beauty parlor in an otherwise unidentified location, presumably in Southwest or South Asia.
Now, what can we make of this?
The big blue letters in the center of the sign are written in a writing system called Nasta’liq, literally “the hanging Naskh“, Naskh being an alternate writing system, normally used in the Arab world for writing Arabic.
Fortunately for this analysis, Nasta’liq is a system that I have studied in some detail, in a different context, during an earlier phase of my life.
Nasta’liq is a right-to-left, consonant letter-based system, typically used in Iran, Afghanistan, Tadzhikistan, and other nations in the erstwhile Persian Empire, for writing Islamic Iranian languages such as Farsi, Dari, Tadzhik, etc.
Nasta’liq is also used in South Asia, principally Pakistan and India, for writing Islamic Indic languages such as Urdu or the Islamic form of Panjaabi (i.e. Islamic languages related to Hindu languages of India, such as ancient Sanskrit and modern Hindi, more closely than they are to Iranian languages).
Urdu is basically an Islamic dialect of Hindi. It has the same grammar, and theoretically the same spoken consonant and vowel sounds, as Hindi. But it has a lot of vocabulary words that come from various Iranian languages, or, in many cases, words of Arabic origin that came into Urdu by way of the Iranian languages.
Also, Hindi is written in an entirely different writing system, native to Indian Hindus, written left-to-right, and based on phonetic characters instead of on consonant letters.
So what can we tell about the location so far?
If MIGA indeed means “Make Iran Great Again”, and considering that the fellow’s face is blocked out, making him anonymous, this may be Iran, where he is certainly right to hide his face from the police. But it could be a variety of other countries as well.
So what does the sign say?
Three words, written right-to-left, “خیابان نقش جهان”, or, in Roman letters, left-to-right, CHayaabaan naqsh jahaan”.
Please note that the middle consonant of the middle word, the loop with two dots over it, is none other than ق (qaaf, or Q), which may account for the fact that this sign was chosen as the location to snap the picture.
The first letter of the first word is خ (xe), which, at the beginning of a syllable, sounds like the gravelly rolling h sound, made in the back of the throat, of the Yiddish toast “l’chaim”.
And at the end of a syllable, it sounds like the throaty kh sound, also made in the back of the throat, that Germans and stuffy music critics on NPR make at the end of Johann Sebastian Bach’s last name.
That is why I represented it as CH here.
I don’t know what this first word means. I suspect from context that it is a proper name, perhaps a place name or family name, but if it has any other meaning I haven’t found it.
And please note that, because Nasta’liq is consonant based, I can’t be sure of the sounds of the vowels in any word that I don’t know, such as CHayaabaan, especially any short vowel, such as the one that I represented here as ‘a’. It could be ‘i’, ‘e’, etc., instead. If CHayaabaan is Urdu, the long ‘aa’ sounds are pronounced like the ‘a’ in English ‘father’. If it is some other language, each ‘aa’ might be pronounced that way, or more like the ‘a’ in English ‘man’, or like the ‘a’ in English ‘bang’, etc.
When one types the 2nd word, نقش, naqsh, in a search engine, one sees a set of unrelated (to each other) websites, including one that is for a service to paint designs with mehndi (henna) on ladies’ hands in the Indian tradition. Pressing ‘Images’ results in page after page of lovely photos of South Asian ladies’ hands, so decorated.
I was a bit stumped by what the word meant, until a native speaker of Urdu clued me in tonight that it means “face”, or “beauty”. The ‘a’ here is pronounced like the ‘a’ in English ‘about’, if it is Urdu.
The 3rd word was the only one that I got straight off on my own. It is none other than جهان, jahaan, “world”, a word which figures in the throne names of several Mughal emperors, such as the 5th member of the dynasty, Shah Jahaan, “King of the World”, who, according to the traditional but disputed legend, built the iconic Taj Mahal mausoleum-palace as a final resting place for his beloved late wife, Mumtaz Mahal, “Exalted One of the Palace”, and himself.
If pronunced in Urdu, the ‘a’ is like ‘a’ in ‘about’, and the ‘aa’ like ‘a’ in ‘father’.
So, putting it together, we have “CHayaabaan Beauty World”, which I take to be the name of a beauty salon, possibly chosen because the 2nd of 3 consonants in its middle word is Q.
I was not able to find a website or other resource to confirm this identification. Nor was I able to locate it on a map.
The language may very well be Urdu, leading me to suspect Pakistan as the location, or possibly an Islamic neighborhood or township in India.
On the other hand, all of the words, if they are in fact Urdu, look like the kind of words that came into Urdu from a Persian language. So it may very well be written in Farsi, or some such, instead.
Words associated with the Mughal court, where Persian poetry and other culture were adored, are clearly Persian in origin. Or possibly Arabic by way of Persian. ‘Jahaan’ is in one of these 2 Persian categories.
The letters xe (CH) and qaaf (Q) are Semitic letters representing Semitic sounds that only occur in Urdu or Farsi in words of Arabic origin. Most of these in Urdu came into it by way of Iranian languages. The exceptions are mostly some Arabic words of a clearly Islamic religious bent, which came directly from Arabic. I don’t take ‘naqsh’, “beauty”, and the unknown ‘CHayaabaan’ as being this type of exception.
If this were the Arab world, I would expect the sign to be written in a font such as Ruq’ah or Naskh, which would be more conventional for signs in modern Arabic. And I would not expect the wording to have such a Persian, or Persian-loving Urdu, feeling to it.
On the basis of that last argument, we can probably eliminate Iraq, and all nations to the south or to the west of Iraq, AKA, the Arab nations.
That leaves Iran, or nations to the northeast (Tadzhikistan, Afghanistan) or east (Pakistan, heavily Muslim parts of India) of Iran as the best possibilities.
So we come back to the original hypothesis, from “MIGA”, that the photo was taken in Iran. This would seem to be more meaningful from a Q perspective, given the danger that Iranian nuclear weapons and Iranian infiltration of the American government poses to our lives and freedoms, and given the dear hope of the Trump administration that the people of Iran will rise up and liberate themselves from the Mullah threat.
OTOH, the Nasta’liq text strikes me more as Urdu than as any Iranian language. If it contained a full grammatical sentence, rather than just the title of a shop, I’m pretty sure I would know which of the two it was.
I have read short things written in an Iranian language, but unfortunately I have never actually studied such a language. Lacking that background, and, frustratingly, lacking any hit on the name of the parlor, I can’t positively identify the language as Urdu, Farsi, or other Iranian (Dari, for example.)
On the 3rd hand, the bottom of the sign includes a short bit of printed Roman text, frustratingly obscured by the gentleman’s head. But, unless I miss my guess, it is the address of the salon.
Roman letters for an address on a sign makes me think of India. Unfortunately, I am not familiar enough with Pakistani or Iranian culture to know if such Roman text for an address on a sign in those countries is realistic.
The Roman content that is visible may help us, though. It looks like “NAGH[guy’s head, guy’s head, still more guy’s head]AVE”
NAGH___________ AVE, as in Avenue? Can’t be sure. If so, “Avenue” would probably point to a British Commonwealth country, i.e. India or Pakistan.
But NAGH___ somehow makes me think Iran. It’s possible it’s an Urdu street name, but low probability. And AVE could just be the end of an otherwise unseen word, not an abbreviation for Avenue.
My gut tells me Iran, but Pakistan would not surprise me. Even India or Afghanistan is a possibility, but I would go with the first two if I had to guess.
Geopolitical considerations, the wording on the handlettered sheet, and ‘NAGH’ all point to Iran.
The Nasta’liq printed on the sign overhead points to Pakistan, or possibly Iran.
The Roman letters at the bottom of the sign point to India, or possibly Pakistan.
Bottom line, I will go with the two guesses mentioned, Iran or Pakistan, in that order.

Re Xi’s cancelled trip. Note second sentence:

That said, there could be a trade delegation meeting (without heads of state) in April: