Guest blog: Half-truths and cultural learnings

Two blog posts ago, I copied what was in actuality a "guest blog" I wrote for my classmate "Zeke's" blog. In response, he has offered the following reciprocal blog. Please enjoy - any comments you see fit to share I will pass along!

"For an example, [Student A] says to me, 'I love your clear method of teaching,' but what I hear is her say, 'I love you.' The words are correct: she said that. But I took her true words out of context and therefore erred in my understanding."

This is how our instructor introduced yesterday's lesson. We were reading from al-Kitaab a cultural lesson on "Arabic sayings" and when to use them. Our teacher wanted us to know one of the major problems in learning about foreign cultures, and about al-Kitaab in particular.

There is SO MUCH to learn but we're given just little snippets of information from time to time. At one point he attempted to explain his issue with al-Kitaab visually.

This box contains everything you need to know:



You could cover everything this way, growing in stages:



You could cover everything this way, crossing everything bit by bit:



al-Kitaab covers it this way:



He's not wrong. I'm constantly frustrated that we'll learn a concept in al-Kitaab and think we've got it down until six chapters later when we learn there's more to it (and just wait 'til you see it again in Book 3, totally revamped!).

Our instructor continued, making the extremely rational point that Westerners must view Arabs through the eyes of Arabs and Arabs must view Westerners through the eyes of Westerners: we won't properly understand anything if we attempt to view the actions of others through our own eyes.

We have gotten used to our instructor going off on political rants when talking to us: especially when talking to us about culture and politics. This time was no different, and -- like in the past -- his pace quickened as he got more passionate and we tried to keep up.

As we were talking about Arabic sayings he brought up a very important one: "Tawakalt ala Allah" ("I rely on Allah"). This phrase was uttered continuously by Gamil el-Batouti, the co-pilot of EgyptAir Flight 990 on October 31, 1999, as his plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean south of Nantucket, killing all 217 on-board.

This phrase, our instructor informed us, is said by Arabs as they seek the assistance of Allah in their daily tasks. Viewed through Western eyes, however, this Egyptian pilot was viewed as a religious fanatic, purposely taking down the plane.

Our instructor made an excellent point. How often are we concerned about the actions of others, because of our own prejudices and worldviews? I really felt I learned a lot yesterday!

... Then I did a little research for this post. It turns out that, two years later -- and over Egyptian protest -- the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board officially blamed el-Batouti for the crash.

Well, it was still a good lesson learned!

Colloquializing the colloquial

Aah, to play with language. Arabic is delightfully logical, and infernally complicated. We tickle ourselves when we make connections, and draw the occasional connection necessary to make a joke. For example: To say “Thank you” in Arabic, one must:

First: Conjure the verb “sha-ka-ra” or “to thank.”

Second: put it in its gerund form “thanking,” and

Third: make it into an adverb: Thanking-ly.

In Arabic, this comes out to شكراً , or “Shukran.”

To revert momentarily to English, let’s examine the colloquial use of this phrase. “Thank you” is a commonplace expression, stated in honesty, sarcasm or in passing dozens of time a day. Hence it’s been shortened colloquially, from “thank you” to the simple “thanks.”

One astute classmate – a linguistics major – noted this adaptation and introduced it to Arabic. Now, instead of this cumbersome “shukran,” we toss to one another a casual “shuks.” “Thanks.”

*

One day three or so weeks ago we spent the first half of 3amiyya class learning fruits and vegetables. It was fun – reminded me of first-year Spanish class. (Although I can muse about the role of the United Nations in the developing world in Arabic, I can also still remember how to say “carrot” in Spanish. And until three weeks ago, hadn’t learned “carrot” in Arabic.) Oddly enough, the widest-used fusHa Arabic textbooks don’t teach fruits and vegetables. Perhaps because fusHa is a language of newspapers and the Qur’an. Now, I haven’t read the Qur'an, so please feel free to comment and correct me if I make a presumptuous statement. But I would venture to guess that mushrooms don’t come up much in the Qur’an.

After we flew through our teacher’s fruit and vegetable picture cutouts (really, can anyone distinguish between a cucumber, a zucchini and a pickle in any watercolor cutout? Why was I the only one in class to despair and make dying sounds after an hour of utterly incorrect guesses?!) our teacher opened up the floor for us to name ANY fruit or vegetable that we wished to translate into Egyptian Arabic. One classmate tried describing the fruit sold on every street corner out of a wooden cart usually pulled by a donkey. (Guys. I am not the person to romanticize non-U.S. locations and say something like that if it weren’t true. As a reminder of sights from this trip:)



First we tried describing what a prickly pear is in Egyptian Arabic. This didn’t work. I made my way up to the board and drew what was OBVIOUSLY a pear with death-spikes erupting from its skin, which also failed to convey the idea. Finally we looked up photos on the internet, which our teacher recognized immediately.

So get this. The word for prickly pear in Egyptian Arabic is تين شوكي, “teen showkee.” Teen means “fig” (like, the fruit) and showkee takes the word “fork” and makes it an adjective: fork-y. So it's a fork-like…you see where I’m going with this…

A forky fig.

Tact: Hindered somewhat by a language barrier.

I have this friend. In the interest of anonymity I’ll call him…Zeke. Zeke and I are friends in cynicism on this eight-week immersion program in Alex. Occasionally, his cynical shell cracks and looses a surprising gesture of less-cynical sweetness. And once in a great while my politically correct framework of fairness and politeness slips and reveals a dark, sarcastic, most un-politically correct side. Zeke feeds off moments like this. We feed off each other.


At any rate. Two days ago in Media class, our teacher – good-naturedly, no doubt – asked the class as a whole what we do on December 25th. Zeke and the other two (and a half) of us shared a sideways smirk. The smirk turned to giggles when the teacher called on Zeke for his answer.


“Ya3ni,” he began.


“Ya3ni” literally means “mean,” so in good Egyptian form, he began his sentence with “I mean…”


“Ya3ni, I go to the movies. And then go to a Chinese restaurant.” Slowly the rest of the class caught on. “And then I go home and watch A Christmas Carol.”


The teacher didn’t get it. “Why??” She was baffled to hear an account that didn’t fit her stereotype of American Christmas pastimes.


This is where Zeke’s dry wit and cynicism came in handy. There are five (and a half) people on this program who have been very tactful about sharing details of their ethnic heritage with locals. Not because we’re AFRAID of the repercussions, for numerous taxi drivers have ensured us that “We’re all people of the Book. So you’re okay with me!” while, as our classmate Goldy puts it, we “smile and nod and sweat.”


Five (and a half) of us drop our voices when we mention Passover in Egyptian company. We simply reference “youm al-sept” as the time between sunset Friday and sunset Saturday, and leave it to the listener to fill in the blank. Goldy has taken to referring to one country in particular as “the country north of this one.” And we’ve gotten FAIRLY good at talking around certain issues. Though it gets tricky. Try not-explaining “kosher” to an Egyptian who wonders why you won’t eat the rice. Try not-explaining why you can’t carry your backpack to class on youm al-sept.


So Zeke proceeded to not-explain National JEWS Go to the Movies Day. “Ya3ni, it’s just what my family does.”


“Aah!” said our Media teacher, who had made the connection at last. “You get together with your family on December 25th. Meshi.” Washing her hands of Zeke and his non-traditional “Christmas,” she turned to another classmate, eager to hear a more traditional story that fit her Christmas schema. “And you, Basha, what does your family do on Christmas?”


This young man perked up, eager to satisfy our teacher. “MY family eats pickled herring and goes skiing.”


At this point she gave up, and we listened to an Al-Jazeera broadcast instead.


And, on an unrelated note, here are two videos I recently uploaded to YouTube.

The first is a shot down the aisle of the bus that we took from Sharm El-Sheikh, on the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula, through a tunnel under the Suez Canal.

The second is a video of the oud player at our summer house visit two weeks ago. It was a crowd-pleaser.

Egypt: Predictably unpredictable. Arabic: Usually predictable.

In six and a half weeks of class, I’ve picked up some aspects of Egyptian teaching styles that differ markedly from that ingrained in me by 20 years of U.S.-based education.

The most notable of these cultural differences is the approach taken by our teachers at the language center to test taking, and what’s permissible mid-exam. In U.S. classrooms, a hush settles over test-takers, and every gurgle of an anxious stomach can be heard for those 50 weighty minutes. In our classroom in Alexandria, the eight or so of us may be silent, but across the street a car alarm whines dissonantly with the melodic call to prayer. It may be a suitable day for construction, in which case our floor will rattle from the jackhammer next door. And without fail, one of the receptionists’ cell phones diddles its 8-bit tune on the quarter hour, piercing silence and cacophony equally. If our own teacher’s cell phone doesn’t chime during class, it’s a rare day.

What threw me off most was our teacher’s tendency to talk DURING our exams. He’ll inquire as to our progress, ask what’s giving us trouble, and occasionally head to the board for a mid-test mini-lesson in grammar. There’s a 70% chance that, if asked during an exam for clarification on the meaning of a word, he’ll give it to us. (In my U.S. Arabic-language classrooms, any word on a test that we didn’t know was a word that WE FAILED TO STUDY ADEQUATELY, and therefore were doomed to wallow in not-knowing until submitting the exam.)

Finally, my coup de grâce: On our last test, a two-chapter examination of how well we had memorized the vocabulary (DAMN me for thinking there would be silly concepts like GRAMMAR on the test. I could have spent those precious two hours beforehand in robotic word memorization which would have helped significantly more than conceptualization of what happens to the vowels in “weak” verbs under every conjugal necessity!) I sat for a solid five minutes in front of ten sentences with big, fat blanks, in which we were to fill in the appropriate vocabulary word from one of the two chapters we had last studied. With no suggested words to be found! THERE WERE SO MANY OPTIONS! The two chapters alone constituted maybe 130 new vocabulary words, and we were to pull the TEN APPROPRIATE WORDS from those 130 to fill these blinking blank lines!

I raised my hand. Our eager teacher, who eyed us throughout the entire test hoping for such an opportunity to be put to use, eagerly called on me. In Arabic: “Is it possible for you to give us a bank of words for this section?” Six out of seven of my classmates breathed “Yesssss,” and the teacher agreed. So on the board, in his immaculate handwriting (right guys? It’s absolutely immaculate) gave us options like: to be committed to, indicators, to exaggerate, exceptions, issues, the elite, possibilities, and disengagement.

But that didn’t solve all our problems. The sentences themselves, and my tenuous grasp on their meanings, made me dizzy: “Despite the agreement of Israel much of agreements with Arabs except that she doesn’t want (BLANK) at-her.” Umm…exaggerate?

Or “Continues danger nuclear weapons and striving for achieving for-it threaten the world [WORD] that there is (BLANK) to the role [WORD], and the danger not consist of the together.” FML.



This morning I woke up with what felt like a hangover, except made of homesickness. I was SO homesick. I felt suffocated by the amount I had to learn and memorize and prepare for class in such insufficient time. My guts gurgled through the remnants of whatever surprised them yesterday and sent me running to the bathroom in the middle of class. I remembered steaming heaps of delectable Indian food consumed so many times with friends in my home town, and the homesick hangover got worse. And oddly enough, it doesn’t help to have such wonderful friends who are SO DAMN ENCOURAGING of me and say stupid things like “Liz, I support you and miss you and think you’re doing an awesome thing.” THAT’S NICE. BUT I JUST WANT TO EAT CHEERIOS IN MY UNDERWEAR AND READ THE STAR TRIBUNE FOR AN HOUR WITHOUT THE DANGER OF BEING STARED AT BY HALF A DOZEN MEN WHO SMOKE AND TAKE PHOTOS OF US IN THE HOTEL LOBBY. (Fact: Yesterday half a dozen of us were photographed by a hotel patron who walked by with his camera phone.)

But then it was time for class – or rather, time to study in preparation for class. I cracked open volume three of Al Kitaab (literally, “The Book”), to chapter two in which we’re learning words that mean “to cite as an example or proverb” (that’s one word in Arabic), “to hold someone accountable for,” “to seek the help of something/someone against someone or in doing something” (that’s one word, with a preposition), and “to dance.” I flipped through a few pages in which rules for conjugating verbs with “weak” middle vowels were presented systematically and comprehensively, tying together lessons woven throughout the previous two books. And I banged out a couple simple exercises that were due later in the day. And I felt…FANTASTIC.

The predictability and systematization of Arabic grammar is remarkable. We juxtapose this daily with the unpredictability of life in Egypt – rather, how predictably life here is unpredictable.

And finally, here are a couple photos of what makes my roommate and me awesome:



How we plug in.



We agree as to the best use for the TV.

Arts and crafts and culture (and stuff) Part II

Two days later, in the evening after class, we were rounded from the corners of our hotel rooms and herded back on the bus. We drove about 10 minutes down the cornice and unloaded at an unidentified street corner. Proceeding to walk into an unidentified apartment building, we were mildly comforted as to the purpose behind our trip when we saw the support column in the entryway of this apartment building covered from floor to ceiling in mosaic tiles. Our guide chose the plain-looking door with the plain-looking nameplate that read “Moh. Shaker” and herded us into a brightly-lit gallery of oil paintings.

Across the building entryway we entered another ill-labeled apartment and snaked through the artist’s multimedia pieces – portraits of blended hues accentuated with keys, or circuit boards, or ceramic pots overflowing with pasta, or rainbow-colored shoelaces. An initial impression was redefined by a closer look, and we placed our noses inches from the canvas to reveal the logistic pieces that created the larger art. (Like, circuit boards! And cylinders of coral!)

Three floors up we entered another unmarked apartment, full of photographs of the artist’s work. He has, apparently, created EVERY work of art in Alexandria, including the intricate mosaic that hangs above the “gate to Alexandria.” He told me it took him months to create. And he did it on-site, hanging above traffic.

Into one more gallery, we were greeted to Moh. (short for Mohammed) Shaker’s office. Every wall was covered entirely either with photographs of his work, preliminary sketches of other pieces of work, awards and shelves and shelves of books and collected pieces of art.

Although we whined and dragged our feet getting into that bus again after our sweaty, hour-long ordeal two days prior, we were pleasantly surprised at the artistic tinge we could then able to apply to our understanding of our host city.

Arts and crafts and culture (and stuff) Part I

Two Fridays ago we spent our only free day for two weeks at the summer home of the director of our language school. Let me start this post by saying I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL WE HAD THIS OPPORTUNITY AND I ENJOYED IT IMMENSELY.

I’ll continue and describe the hour-long 110 degree bus ride to her house. Then I’ll go on and discuss the hunger that gnawed at our bellies as our director encouraged us to use her pool and the nearby beach – lunch would be ready soon, like, in two hours! Finally, I’ll expound on our top-notch teachers who came along and “uh-uh”ed us when they caught us speaking English, and sought us out in unsuspecting moments so as to corner – er, catch – er, guilt – er, encourage us to converse with them in either classical or dialectical Arabic. (I really, really wanted to listen to the man playing the oud…)

Well, upon reflection, perhaps I’ll discuss other aspects of this day-trip. Our director Al-Mudeera’s* house is beautiful – absolutely beautiful. It’s an entirely closed-in compound, started 40 years ago from a sandy plot of land next door to Al-Mudeera’s father’s house, about an hour away from the area we live in along the cornice. (We discovered at the end of the day that there’s a more direct route to her house on the highway – that passes right by the 6 or 7 oil refineries that ring Alexandria.) Every year, as she and her husbands’ incomes could afford it, they added on. First sat just the house. Then the second floor of the house. Eventually a pool was added, and arranged artfully. Eventually the second building was added, which sits perpendicular to the first, and acts as an arm delineating the boundary of the property. It stretches for 30 or 40 feet, 2 or 3 rooms in a row, with 2 or 3 beds in each. The second floor is one long room with 6 or 7 beds, and storage filled to the brim with ancient childrens’ toys. Bikes, Big Wheels, jump ropes, dollhouses - EVERYTHING I WANTED AS A CHILD.

The decision was unanimous: We’re going to adopt Al-Mudeera as our Grandmother from Another Mother…and Another Continent.

*Al-Mudeera is Arabic for "the director." It would be unwise of me to name any actual names. Y'know?

Very, very, very, very good face.

Tonight I took the plunge and took my language partner – M – up on her offer to visit her house here in Alexandria.

In retrospect, I didn’t have much of a choice. When our language partners ask “Ya [unwilling American student]: do you want to [do this thing which is potentially fun but requires you to use your embryonic 3amiyya in situations that far exceed your ability]?” we instinctually respond “N3am. Er – aywa.”* Then mentally slap our foreheads and start thinking of how we can get out of it.

Maybe that’s just me.

M met me at the language center immediately after class today, so I didn’t have enough time to develop a cough, plague, swine flu or family emergency and get out of our language date (which I’d put off twice this week already). We took a taxi to her house, and I learned tonight that “house” is Egyptian for “apartment.” By this I mean nothing pejorative – in the U.S. we distinguish between a flat in a building shared with other families and a box on a piece of land that we own or rent. M does not.

Her mother, father, sister, aunt and later, brother were delighted to meet me. Her mother sat on a chair across from me and looked me up and down, speaking rapid-fire 3amiyya which M translated for me. I didn’t need M’s assistance when her mother looked at me and patted her own hips, but I was told fondly that “she says you are very fat.” I held my tongue in responding to her mother’s own physical condition, for know that I am fortunate enough to be living in a country in which meat-padding is a good thing. Afterward I was encouraged to sing along with mp3s downloaded on their cell phones, dance to the same music while they collapsed in giggles, and ask them how to say any part of the body in Arabic. ANY part, they reiterated. M looked through my textbook and giggled at the mistakes I’d made. “This is very, very easy” she stated, waiting for my agreement and an appropriate excuse as to why I’d made so many mistakes. “Uh,” I managed. “You know, it’s a difficult language.” “You are a slow learner, no?” she inquired. I then suggested that we name all the fruits and vegetables in her fridge.

“You like my house?” she asked after I’d been there for about an hour and a half. This is a tendency I’ve noticed in my language partner. I lie in wait for a compliment. She inquires as to the existence of a compliment – and I can’t deny her! I told her that her house, and its yellow reception room with creaking box-couch, and corner room with two beds and the olive-pit green refrigerator, and kitchen smaller than our bathroom, all of which could fit in our room here at Hotel E, was the most beautiful Egyptian house I’d been in. And it is. Because the only other Egyptian house I’d been in was the kind of house that sits in a rectangle on a plot of land, and M lives in the kind of house that shares a building with many other families. So I was telling the truth.

*

Every day that I’m out on the streets I am acknowledged. It’s in the snickers of muhajjaba girls who notice my boy-like clothing, the young boys who notice the non-muhajjaba girl on the streets, the old men who use their English to garner our attention and vie for our tourist dollars. Or pounds. I hear “Hello, welcome, come in” every day. Most days there’s a “Welcome to Egypt, what’s your name?” And yesterday my roommate and I were saluted by the owner of a mango juice shop who called to us as we approached and passed “very, very, very, very" (by this time we're past his shop and wondering where this is going) "very good face.” Some days I smile inside. Most days I’m annoyed – for purely selfish cultural reasons. In the States, we don’t want to be noticed when shopping, or walking a route we need to take taily. We want it to be an anonymous experience in which we are not pressured. We don’t want to be picked out of a crowd for physical differences that identify us as outsiders.

At this point in my stream of consciousness, it hits me that I’m pretty damn privileged to experience this racial differentiation only when leaving my home country. Specifically, to travel to a non-western, eastern or northern European country or any country established by the monarchies or those western, eastern or northern European countries. My roommate put it well the other day: We could have it worse than to hear men mutter to us “very beautiful,” or shop owners ask “hello friend, where you from? I give you special discount!” when we're not at our most culturally sensitive. We could be hearing “go home, terrorist” or “damn nigger.”

I’ll take “very, very, very, very, very good face” any day, now that I think about it.


Finally, here's a video I took in class a couple weeks ago. Don't tell the teacher I was filming. As you can see, Arabic grammar is riveting.

* "N3am" (remember: the 3 represents the letter "ayn," which suggests a throat contortion English doesn't have) means "yes" in classical Arabic. In Egyptian Arabic, one says "aywa." Now that we've learned both, we use the appropriate word without fail. In the entirely incorrect situation. Never fails.

“It’s like trying to drink through a fire hose,” said a particularly insightful member of my program.

Every day in each class, we scribble hundreds of new vocabulary words. (Remembering them is another issue.) Two days a week, we have a 12-hour turnaround time between classes - 12 hours which may or may not comprise of a 10-page homework packet, and informational sheets (entirely in Arabic) given to us as an OPPORTUNITY to prepare for all-Arabic lecture the following day. Then there are life necessities. We find places to do laundry, and schlep our laundry there. We secure meals – maybe two a day, or one if swimming upstream through the streets of people seems particularly exhausting. Homework and keeping up with our classroom topics could easily comprise 50% of our non-class hours. And occasionally, our families like to hear from us.

A fire hose, or intellectual boot camp. Analogies make the stress more comprehensible.

*

We met the most interesting people at our favorite hang-out-and-eat spot in Alex last week. Because we go there about three times a week, we noticed that this western-looking couple had also graced the large wooden booths three times that week. As they headed for the door, I offered a pleasant salutation. We wound up talking for a half hour.

She is half Egyptian, half Greek, and pregnant. He is half Egyptian, half Argentinean, and owns a hotel. I spoke for that half hour with the woman, and my roommate spoke with the man. We had wildly differing conversations, and came together after the four of us parted ways to share notes. All in all, it was hugely insightful to meet these two and hear their experiences being both insiders to Egyptian life and culture and language, and members of other ingroups.

She told me about growing up in Greece and visiting Egypt as a child. She told me about the visit she thought would be her last, which happened to be the visit on which she met her now-husband. She told me about how her experience has been as a woman in Egypt, married to a businessman. If she attends a meeting with her husband and wishes to express an opinion, she tells her husband first and he then relates it to his partners, so that she doesn’t “hurt his honor.” That’s not the wish of her husband; rather, after a lifetime living on two sides of a culture, she’s determined it’s the most effective way for her thoughts to be entertained.

He told my roommate about the lack of accountability among business owners in Egypt. “If I want to buy a box of 100 pens, and I pick out ‘that pen please,’ I may get back a box of 50 ballpoint pens and 50 fountain pens. Or maybe 50 pens and 50 pencils. The shop owner asks me, ‘What’s the problem? They all serve the same purpose,’ but I answer, ‘It’s not what I want!’” He told her about a serious problem with lack of foresight when planning new buildings or construction projects – an area will be identified, cleared and prepared. A building will be designed. But no thought goes in to the sewage line that must reach the building, or how electricity will reach every room, or where its visitors and patrons will park. Granted, it’s not as bad as some recent structural mishaps, and it’s also worth noting that this was one person’s opinion that I heard second-hand. Regardless, I find that his concerns fit with some curious sights I’ve seen in Egypt so far. The best example thus far: in Siwa – the oasis in western Egypt we visited a couple weeks ago - an entire Olympic sports complex sits on the edge of town, surviving the sun and the wind and only occasionally used by the military base. As far as I know, there are NO SCHEDULED OLYMPIC GAMES in the works for Egypt.

*

If you have not had the pleasure of conversing with an Egyptian, you might notice that your future conversation partner finds a lot of what you say to be questionable. Example:

You: “Hey man. You want to see a movie tonight?”

Friend: “Uh.”

You: “Er, okay. Instead, maybe we could go grab a bite to eat. Do you like pizza?”

Friend: “Uh.”

This is not to say that Egyptians don’t have a lot to say, but I’ve finally picked up on a crucial cultural nuance to conversation here. “Uh” accompanied by falling affectation (similar to the way a person in the U.S. might indicate uncertainty or doubt, though not held for quite as long as a full “Uhhhhhh…”) indicates “yes,” or a more analogous “uh-huh.”

Five weeks down. And I just learned how to say “uh-huh” to an Egyptian. *sigh*

*

There’s a newspaper kiosk on a busy corner by our school. This is one of those intersections with traffic lights – a somewhat rare occurrence at intersections. However, as I mentioned a few posts ago, drivers take stoplights as indicators of how MANY people will be coming from the other direction when they drive speedily through the intersection, rather than indications that they should stop. Hence, traffic police are found at almost every controlled intersection.

A few days ago I stood on this corner, next to the newspaper kiosk, with a few classmates as we waited for a gap in the traffic that would allow us to dart through. The man selling newspapers greeted us warmly – he knows our schedule by now. A car approached his kiosk from the street I faced, and the woman inside honked her horn with increasing urgency. This struck me immediately, for the majority of the times a car approaches me honking, it’s a taxi offering a ride or a man indicating that he has spotted someone foreign and female who interests him. (Egypt and Kentucky have that tendency in common.) The man selling newspapers heard this fervent raucous and turned just as the woman’s car approached the kiosk. She leaned out her window and sputtered the name of a newspaper. As she crawled slowly around the corner at the pace of prevailing traffic, the newspaper seller hurriedly snatched up the appropriate paper and handed it to her through the driver’s side window, as she handed him the payment she had prepared.

Huh. Egyptian drive-through.

*

One of the fusHa teachers has taken it upon herself to direct a play. Specifically, a passage from the Quran that she has assigned to several suckers – er, volunteers – in the form of a play. From what I’ve been told, this is the passage from which Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was derived.

On the first day of play practice, I was secretly relieved to have been cast as the BEST part of any play – the chorus. Two classmates and I sat on the floor and, for three lines, cackle over our imaginary breadmaking in response to Joseph’s (Yusuf’s) ironic misfortunes. On this day of play practice, we mostly followed the direction of the fusHa teacher, for Arabic plays, from what I can tell, seem to violate the U.S. standard of placing its dialogue AND ONLY ITS DIALOGUE after a colon. Hence, we Arabic learners are often confused. The text (which I’m feigning in English here) looks something like this:

JOSEPH TAKES A SEAT AT THE TABLE AND IS PROPOSITIONED BY HIS MASTER’S WIFE. HE LOOKS TO HER.

Joseph: In a voice quiet as the crumbs under his grandmother’s armoire, looks around nervously I am not sure we should be doing this, m’am.

Chorus: They stir their brew and exchange glances Boy oh boy is he going to get it!

Hence, my classmates and I, having come to the part that said “Chorus,” went ahead with our lines as they read after the colon. We didn't understand why the fusHa teacher was waving her arms and pleading with us to stop until we were informed that we had just read “They stir their brew and exchanging glances Boy oh boy…”

I’ve strayed from my point. Here it is: Halfway through play practice, one of my chorus-mates picked up her iPhone and reported back what it was we would be saying in our upcoming lines. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that she had DOWNLOADED A QURAN APPLICATION and had brought up the EXACT SURA WE WERE PERFORMING, complete with full voweling (so that we knew how to pronounce all the words) and the ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

For the first time since their creation, I kind of, sort of wanted an iPhone.

But I hopped online and read this, and was cured of that desire. Instantly.

*

I’ll end this update with a brief admonition about this fair country I spend these days imbibing like sweet, soft okra imbibes and becomes saturated with its olive-oil-tomato- stew: Take every fact you know about modern Egyptian culture and life with a grain of salt. This includes facts like arrival and departure times of varying forms of public transportation and ingredients of restaurant items. Today I actually had this exchange (in Arabic) with a gentleman caterer standing by a table of food I was about to choose from and consume:

Me: Is this vegetable dish bidoon lahma (without meat)?

Gentleman: Oh yes.

Me: Oh good! So it’s vegetarian, then?

Gentleman: Whoa whoa whoa, vegetarian? No, no. *Looks at me like I'm crazy.*

*sigh*

Egyptian Pedagogy: The Don’ts, Please Don’ts, and ‘You Did WHAT??s’ of class in Alexandria

Our fusHa (classical Arabic) teacher is an adorable, kindly man. He’s a father of four, the oldest of whom is seven, and is the son of the son of a fusHa teacher. He speaks in a voice that could address an audience of 300, though we're only about a dozen, in a room twice the size of a bathroom. We struggle in his class. We’ve all taken classical Arabic before, but most of us have never had classroom instruction solely in fusHa at this level. And he will not speak English to us. Not only will he politely refuse to respond to our English inquiries (for example: “This word means what? Bilateral relations?!”) he will respond by reminding us that he doesn’t speak English. At first, we smiled polite, stressed grins indicating that we understood his desire to not translate his descriptions into English.

However, we’ve since come to understand that, really, he DOESN’T speak much English. We are on our own for understanding and sharing amongst ourselves revelations.

He therefore goes to extraordinary lengths to describe, in Arabic, words or concepts we don’t understand. This is a useful tool to practice, for when we’re on the streets in Egypt we cannot trust that the person we converse with speaks English and can help us when we falter. But this is also frustrating when it happens frequently in class. Far too frequently for my taste, or patience. His lessons, as far as I understand, go something like this: Who here works in a [word]? [Word?] What's the meaning of [word]? You know, it's like [other word], which you use when [word] [word] author takes [word].

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I’m convinced our 3amiyya (dialectical Arabic) teacher thinks I’m an idiot. I’ve never had this much trouble keeping up with a class. Rather, since high school math, I’ve never had this much trouble keeping up with a class. I’m pretty sure I placed into “accelerated 3amiyya” with the same oversight I was placed into advanced math class in elementary school: Namely, an attitude of “Meh, she’s okay at the other topics, why not?”

Each day, I feel like I’m riding an Egyptian bus, careening through narrow streets and clinging desperately with one lone appendage. Without fail, every day I will scarcely grasp a concept, begin to dictate this discovery furiously in my notebook, then be called upon by a concerned-looking teacher who has noticed that I no longer appear to be paying attention and must be goofing off. If hearing and speaking and writing fusHa – classical Arabic – weren’t difficult enough, and if using fusHa as the sheer means to learn 3amiyya weren’t utterly anxiety-inducing, the bullet-spray speech of our 3amiyya teacher would be enough to murder the tenuous understanding of any timid student. Or perhaps, it’s just enough to murder me. Sometimes I come extremely close to grasping a concept but have missed one key word. The teacher seems to NOT BELIEVE that I don’t grasp a concept AGAIN and sometimes looks to the heavens for strength, or to my classmates to translate for the poor slow kid sitting in the back of the classroom. (I sit back there because it’s less likely anyone will notice when I melt into a steaming puddle of Idiot.) I almost threw my hands up and laughed last week when our teacher was trying to describe the difference between the word “batata” and “batatas” for us. The spoiler of this story is that I failed to grasp the fine differentiation. But the meat of the story comes when I swear to the Moon and the Stars and the Sky that she told us one of the words is “the type you find in the ocean” – to which I replied, incredulously, in English, “Potatoes in the ocean?!” My classmates rolled their eyes and politely ignored my slippery slide into the Pit of Despair.

At times in this class I confront startlingly vivid memories from kindergarten through third grade – those formative years of school in which a child’s natural intellect is molded into local and national pedagogical norms. For the first time in, oh, 20 years I REMEMBER the frustration I felt as a five-year-old who HAD the answer, but didn’t understand that the teacher wanted us to, say, write the answer with a blue crayon on a yellow construction-paper star, or who was daydreaming about how the concept we just learned applied to what I discovered in the garden the day before and missed the next concept, or who was reprimanded for speaking out of turn when in fact I was just so damn excited to have the right answer for once I couldn’t help but to shout it!

I’ve nearly given up on achieving full comprehension of the Egyptian dialect. Now I’m just aiming to be the comic relief.

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The man who teaches Intermediate fusHa, which is unfortunately not the class I’m in, is a stocky, intense, jovial man who refers to himself affectionately as “the Mexican.” He could pass for 35 or 40, but informed us on our first day in Alexandria that it was his 23rd birthday. He has swooned every student in his class with his fierce love of classical Arabic (for most of us are struggling still with the Egyptian dialect and almost prefer the ancient language we’ve learned in American classrooms), and for his unexpected cultural tesseracts.

To a student who incorrectly conjugated a verb and dropped the long “oo” vowel, he admonished: “Respect the ‘wow,’ man”

To another student who biffed his conjugation and forgot the grammatical marker that indicates a double letter: “Respect my ‘shadda.’ I will kill you.”

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Last week we took our midterm exams/quizzes/assessments in all three classes. Following a two-hour fusHa exam that liquefied my brain, I took a few moments to sit back in my desk and stare affectionately at the wall, admiring its simplicity. In that moment, I was the wall.

One classmate agreed. Though, a little more intelligently. He took the verb “to fail,” or “feshala,” and used it in its noun form: Feshal!

FAIL!

Then, using a grammatical construction we had learned to make an adjective into a superlative (for example, how delicious the food! How beautiful your sister!) , he expounded thoughtfully, “How failing your failure!”

But, not to worry. After all, they say the first ten years are the hardest.

And, speaking of “FESHAL!” here’s the latest example of makes-you-blush Engrish, written on our dry cleaning bags.