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.