A Book and a Woman
Here is a funny little addition to my last post that has to do with one of my first big goof ups when I was learning Arabic.
I was on the street chatting with a friend one day about three or four months after arriving into the Arab world. I was trying my hardest to use the limited amount of Arabic vocabulary I had learnt by that point and was trying my best to understand what my friend Abdulla was saying to me. Well at one point I thought that he asked me if I would like to go back to his house with him to get a book from his sister that would help me in learning Arabic. I began to very enthusiastically express my gratitude for the offer and was telling him how wonderful that would be. So we took off down the road and a few minutes later arrived at his house. Well within five minutes after arriving I realized that about 10 of his relatives had also shown up and were all trying to talk with me. Obviously I had no idea what was going on but just assumed the reason I was surrounded by these 10 extremely excited Arabs was that I was a foreigner visiting their home. Hospitality is extremely important in the Arab culture and entertaining guests and visitors takes priority over anything else that is going on at the time. So here I was thinking that all of this commotion was simply because they were excited to have me, a foreigner, in their home.
After about 10 minutes of this I began to wonder where the book was, and furthermore where my friend Abdulla had gone.
Well a few minutes later he showed back up with, "The book."
He walked into the room with his 21 year old sister who I had agreed to marry! Yup, I was getting engaged!
The Arabic words for “book” and “engagement” are extremely similar, and my friend Abdulla had actually asked me if I wanted to go to his house to become engaged to his sister, not to get a book, and I had enthusiastically said yes!
So there I was with a very limited amount of Arabic, surrounded by an entire extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters – trying to figure out how to get myself out of that one…
Ah – the joys of learning another language!
Peace,
M. Pascal
I was on the street chatting with a friend one day about three or four months after arriving into the Arab world. I was trying my hardest to use the limited amount of Arabic vocabulary I had learnt by that point and was trying my best to understand what my friend Abdulla was saying to me. Well at one point I thought that he asked me if I would like to go back to his house with him to get a book from his sister that would help me in learning Arabic. I began to very enthusiastically express my gratitude for the offer and was telling him how wonderful that would be. So we took off down the road and a few minutes later arrived at his house. Well within five minutes after arriving I realized that about 10 of his relatives had also shown up and were all trying to talk with me. Obviously I had no idea what was going on but just assumed the reason I was surrounded by these 10 extremely excited Arabs was that I was a foreigner visiting their home. Hospitality is extremely important in the Arab culture and entertaining guests and visitors takes priority over anything else that is going on at the time. So here I was thinking that all of this commotion was simply because they were excited to have me, a foreigner, in their home.
After about 10 minutes of this I began to wonder where the book was, and furthermore where my friend Abdulla had gone.
Well a few minutes later he showed back up with, "The book."
He walked into the room with his 21 year old sister who I had agreed to marry! Yup, I was getting engaged!
The Arabic words for “book” and “engagement” are extremely similar, and my friend Abdulla had actually asked me if I wanted to go to his house to become engaged to his sister, not to get a book, and I had enthusiastically said yes!
So there I was with a very limited amount of Arabic, surrounded by an entire extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters – trying to figure out how to get myself out of that one…
Ah – the joys of learning another language!
Peace,
M. Pascal
posted by Matthew Pascal @ 10:48 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
OK, no way do you get out of this without explaining how you did get out of an enthusiatic bid to marry his sister!! Are you sure you didn't see this in a sitcom?
So here is what I did...
When Abdulla walked out with his sister I still wasn't completely sure what was going on, but figured it out very quickly when they started asking me what I thought about her...
I then proceded to try and convince them that I was to young to get married. They asked how old I was and I told them I was 23 (obviously at that time, not now:)). They said "Perfect, our daughter is 21!"
I then said to them "Well I'm American and you are supposed to dislike Americans!" They replied back "Oh no, we love America and want to go there with you!"
I then said (and this is the one that I thought would definately work...) "Well I'm not a Muslim exactly like you are." They said back "But you believe in God - that is good enough for us!"
So after all of that I realized that I wasn't going to be able to convince them to send me on my way so I bit the bullet and explained to them the linguistic mistake that I had made. They laughed a bit and we parted ways. But this is where it gets even funnier...
About a year after this happened I was back in the same area one day to visit some friends and I saw Abdulla and his sister together at the end of the street. This was the first time I had seen her since the day I was at there house a year earlier. Anyways, I saw them at the end of the street pointing at me, nearly bent over in laughter...
So it turned out ok in the end. They realized that I had made a mistake and we all were able to laugh about it. But it is a bit scary to look back on it now because something like that could potentially be much more disastrous then it was had the family now been so lighthearted about the whole situation.
a rose by any other name may smell as sweet but it can definitely get you into trouble....
Maybe finding a wife will be easier than you thought.
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