Your guide to the Green Zone? No, your guide to Congress's Middle East expertise. A hill staffer wrote this guide to the Green Zone. I don't know who he is but he tries to pass as some expert on the Middle East: "It is named after the al-Kindī District through which it runs, which was named for the noted 9th Century scientist, mathematician, physician and calligrapher Abū-Yūsuf Ya’qūb ibn Ish’āq al-Kindī." He listed scientist, mathematician, physician, and calligrapher and yet did not mention that Kindi was first and foremost a philosopher. Our expert here then says: "Arabs do not have surnames in the Western sense; rather, they use a modified patronymic system coupled with a tribal name." Of course, that is not true of all Arabs. Millions of Arabs don't belong to tribes whatever and do have surnames, like the AbuKhalil family. (My friend Joseph added in an email to me: "How about patrnymic Western names: Johnson meaning son of John, Anderson, menaing son of Andrew, or Russians like Ivanowich, son of Ivan, etc.")