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When you hear the word "kebab" in America, you might think of skewers with chunks of chicken or beef and vegetables, marinated and grilled on coals or gas. But say "kebab" in the Middle East, and it means a lot of things — chunks of lamb or liver on skewers, or the more popular version of grilled ground meat logs found in Turkey, Iran and much of the Arab world.

If you spend enough time in the Middle East, you learn it can be hard to pinpoint the origins of things. Everybody claims to have invented hummus, flatbread and even yogurt. And don't even try to figure out who invented the kebab.

I talked to a historian of Arab medieval food on my last trip to Iraq. He told me the word is Arabic in origin and comes from the word keba, which means "to turn."

My guide to the Iraqi version of the kebab is Sami al Hilali, a longtime colleague, friend and really good cook.

Hilali says he uses a combination of lamb, beef, lamb fat, onions, parsley and spices, all ground up with his hands. He then molds the mixture onto skewers. The skewers are not the kind of skewers many Americans use — they're flat, wide and look sort of like a blunt sword.

When Hilali is ready to cook, he puts together about 18 skewers and heads outside. He uses a grill that's more like a 3-foot long trough with hardwood charcoal. He's oriented a fan to blow air over the coals and heat them up faster. The sparks are bright orange and look like fireworks.

Isra al Rubei'i, who is helping with the food, says the fan is a matter of practicality.

"Sometimes it's without a blower; using a manual fan would ... give it a more delicious flavor," she says. "But this is just to save time, you know, when you have many skewers to grill."

When the kebabs are cooked, Hilali prepares a plate with bread that will be their final resting place. Rubei'i says the bread is essential.

"The best part is the flatbread that is soaked in the fat coming out of a charred kebab skewer. You know they fight over this one," she says, laughing.

The Iraqi medieval food historian who shared the origin of the word kebab also told me another story about them: They appear in a book from the southern Iraqi city of Basra called The Book of Misers. It was written in the 9th century.

The miser in this story is a courtly man who invites people to his garden. He tells the guests, "Here's the stream, and here's the fire. Catch your fish and make your kebab."

It's the first known mention of the word. My friends nod, knowingly, as if to say, "You see? It all comes from Iraq." Then we get on with our eating.

I've had kebab all around the region — Arab kebab, Turkish kebab and Persian kebab. They're all different, and they're all pretty good. In the end, it doesn't really matter who invented kebab. What matters is that fire has touched meat, that the meat is good, and the company is even better.

This post is part of Global Grill, a summer series from All Things Considered that pulls apart the smoky flavors of grilled foods from around the world.

After several days of brutal criticism and commentary about the brutal way he fired a man during a conference call, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is now apologizing.

"I am writing you to acknowledge the mistake I made last Friday during the Patch all-hands meeting when I publicly fired Abel Lenz," Armstrong says in an email to AOL employees, which Mashable has posted here.

Armstrong adds that:

"We talk a lot about accountability and I am accountable for the way I handled the situation, and at a human level it was unfair to Abel. I've communicated to him directly and apologized for the way the matter was handled at the meeting. ...

"On Friday I acted too quickly and I learned a tremendous lesson and I wanted you to hear that directly from me."

When the Israelis and Palestinians signed an interim peace agreement on the White House lawn in 1993 amid soaring optimism, the Jewish settlers in the West Bank numbered a little over 100,000.

As renewed peace talks open Wednesday in Jerusalem, the settlers now total more than 350,000. Their number is growing rapidly, a point driven home when Israel announced Sunday it was ready to build a new batch of houses in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — a move that angered Palestinians.

Two decades after those initial peace talks, all the core issues remain unresolved and the settlement question is one of several that appear even more intractable than when the negotiators first sat down to the table.

So have the two sides been moving closer to, or further from, a peace agreement over the past 20 years of frustrating, on-and-off talks?

"Many Israelis are doing very well, but they are living in a bubble and have gone into a sense of denial about the conflict. They no longer see it or hear it, and they can even pretend it doesn't exist," says Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. "On the Palestinian side, their ability to influence the Israelis is really very limited. It's not a good place for either side to be."

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Steinway & Sons, the 160-year-old musical instrument maker, is set to change hands.

Last month, a private equity firm emerged as the company's likely buyer. But a mystery bidder — rumored to be hedge fund manager John Paulson — has swooped in at the last minute, and now looks likely to take control of one of the oldest manufacturers in the United States. Paulson made billions betting against the housing market at a time when many thought housing prices could only go up. His reported offer for the company is $458 million.

At first blush, what's going on with Steinway resembles buyout stories you may have heard before. There's a devoted factory workforce where you still count as a "new guy" after 16 years. Meanwhile, in an office far from here, the wizards of finance are concocting a takeover.

But here's where this story veers off-script: Steinway isn't struggling. It actually paid off its debts last month. And these workers aren't particularly worried about their jobs. Bruce Campbell has been on the job 25 years; he's what's called a "final voicer."

"I make the piano sound the way it's supposed to sound," Campbell explains. He says he's pretty sanguine about the buyout: "I'm confident that things will be the same, maybe even get better. We're it. Finest piano in the world."

Arnie Ursaner with CJS Securities says workers are right to be confident.

"This is not wood shop in high school," Ursaner says.

Ursaner is the only stock analyst writing reports on Steinway. He says the land Steinway sits on, in a dense urban neighborhood, is tremendously valuable — but so is the workforce. If you want to make top notch pianos, you have to be here.

"The skills involved in building a custom-made, handmade piano are unique," he says. "If you try to match up the two veneers in a piano, [at Steinway] the person who does that has been trained for ten years."

It's an example of an industrial business in a major American city that's actually doing well. So why is Steinway going private?

Ursaner says it all began around two years ago with an activist investor, David Lockwood, who thought the company should consider splitting the band instruments business — like trombones and tubas — from the piano business. That set in motion a strategic review, and in the end, a healthy company decided to sell itself.

"It has strong cash flow, had an excellent balance sheet, a very stable business," Ursaner says. "This was an opportunistic review of processes rather than a defensive one."

If the mystery bidder's offer of $38 a share is accepted, the company will be valued at close to half a billion dollars.

Like many workers, Bruce Campbell owns stock. He says, however, that he's unlikely to get life-changin payday out of the deal.

"I don't think anyone is gonna get rich off their shares," he says. "Just the big guys."

Still, he could more than double his money.

The sale of Steinway isn't a done deal yet. There's a deadline of midnight tonight for another bidder to make a higher offer.