I Don't Really Speak Arabic

My daily Arabic lessons always happen over dinner and, unfortunately, come from a fairly unreliable source. Tehva is our resident Arabic expert, haphazardly dishing out phrases and single words nightly. The problem is, we cannot ask her how to say this, or how to say that as she cannot translate for us. We are simply prisoners to her linguistic whims and, thus, possess a command of the language that consists of the most convoluted vocabulary and phrases.

Last night, while Silas vomited in his plate over the eggplant he was being forced to eat (quite literally), and Tony and I sipped an amber beverage between us, Tehva held court at the table. "Walid means boy, like one little boy. But if you have a line of boys or a group of boys, that has a different word. That word is oglad. But a group of girls is banad, like when we go outside after Arabic class the teacher tells to us line up and says, 'Yalla, oglad.' And then all the boys line up. And then she says, 'Yalla, banad.'" With that, Tehva authoritatively jammed a spoonful of rice into her mouth, and that was the end of the day's lesson.

With such limited exposure to Arabic, my language development has, to put it mildly, been stunted this year. We all came with honest intentions to learn the language but have had such limited opportunities to learn any of it. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for Tehva and her nightly mini-lectures, we would still be working on, "Saalam Aleykum" and "Masaalama".

However, as I am sure all of you know who have suffered through five year olds, their information is not always accurate or terribly reliable, so two nights ago I called in an expert--Zamzam the Emirati. Zamzam has, by some horrible twist of fate, given up her life in Dubai for a more sedate and, shall we say, dull life here in Muscat. She is elegance itself in her embroidered abayas, tastefully executed makeup, and head scarves that show nearly HALF of the hair that she has on her head. Often her abaya gaps and I can see the designer jeans underneath and her tight, low-cut tops. She is shockingly trendy and sooooo out of place here.

On the nights when they close off the pool to men and boys, pulling the opaque club curtains and tucking the ends into the doors for good measure, Zamzam comes to swim with the ladies. The employees, who are all men, scurry about the pool just before 7 p.m., dimming the lights, delivering the last pots of tea from the restaurant, straightening chairs, and searching for boys and men who may be hiding in the dark recesses of the University Staff Club.

When the hands of the clock hit 7 p.m., the ladies peak to be sure the curtains are really closed and the workers are gone, and then smile, exhale, and remove their head scarves and abayas. Some put on risque one- piece bathing suits that show their arms and legs, their collar bones, and the split in their cleavage. Scandal! Others elect to wear more modest suits, with leggings, full arm coverage, and a matching bathing suit head scarf that wraps under their chins and around their necks.

Zamzam, of course, elects to wear a "skimpy" one-piece with a frilly little skirt, and a black and white bathing cap that matches the design on her suit. On this night, as on other nights I see her at the pool, the other women seem to avoid her and, while the others conglomerate in knots of head to toe fabric, she bobs or sits alone, looking for someone to chat with. Our conversations, while in English, are peppered with the ubiquitous "Humdilallah" and "Yani", and she is always trying to teach me more Arabic, but tonight I want her to listen to Tehva and tell me what she is always saying as she wanders around the house.

Some of her blathering is easily understood:






But other things I cannot decipher and so I ask Zamzam to have a chat with her and tell me just how much of what she is saying makes sense. Tehva takes one look at the monumental task in front of her, maybe intimidated by Zamzam and her elegance, maybe frightened at finally being found out as a fraud, and she freezes. I try to play the part of the encouraging mother but before too long, I have to run out to the toilet so cannot stay and encourage for more than a moment.

When I return, my answer is waiting. Tehva is at the poolside, waving her arms in the air like an enthusiastic, bordering on rabid, aerobics instructor. She is counting, "Wahid, ithnain, thalaatha, arbaa..." while she rhythmically moves her arms and throws her hips side to side. Her r's roll off her tongue beautifully but I cannot admire those r's too long because I am distracted by the enormous bevy of women who are in the pool, staring at Tehva, mimicking her technique, flailing their arms and shaking their hips. They are counting in Arabic with her. Then she breaks off the counting and issues some sort of command, and they all start to jump up and down, the pool water churning and waving around as they resume counting. Tehva issues one last command and they smile and jog a little in the water. "I didn't know she could speak Arabic!" one of the women grins at me.

"Neither did I," I reply, as I scoop her up. Zamzam gives me a thumbs up. "Aamal jaeed," she says to me, which means that Tehva has done a good job...I think. Because although Tehva looks pleased with herself, when I ask her what Zamzam just said, she shrugs. "I only understand my teachers' Arabic. And I don't really speak Arabic."

Whatever.

Twenty Minutes

This morning I awoke at 7:20 to find the house empty. Of course the tacky press board furniture was still present, as were the ratty towels, the cheap bedding, the perennial smell that permiates the kitchen now that the weather has switched from bearable to hot, and the roaches that invade "that corner" of the kitchen every night. Those things were all there, but the children were all gone, as was Tony, to a playdate, to school, and to work (yes, in that order). Mine was a house momentarily devoid of noise or responsibility.

One year ago, this never happened. Every morning was a typhoon of screaming as I was enveloped in the insanity of dragging three kids out the door by 7:20 in order to be in the right place at the right time. They were mornings riddled with steaming cups of tea left atop the car, book bags misplaced at the last minute, forgotten lunches, and "oops-peed-my-pants-just-now" sorts of incidents.

This morning, with the novelty of an empty house and an early hour before me, I could think, and I found myself weighing up the pros and cons of sustaining our current lifestyle and situation, but quickly threw away this philosophical bent in exchange for getting a jump on the chores du jour.

We have an automatic gate that protects our driveway, and house, from unwanted invasion--the only way to open or close the heavy metal gate is through one tiny remote control. Unfortunately we currently also have construction going on right outside that gate, and the worker men somehow keep causing our electricity to short so that that heavy metal gate will not open or close at all. After the last incident, I disabled the gate opener and now do the opening and closing by hand, much to the amusement of the construction workers who all drop their picks and shovels to watch me open and close my own gate.

Because I do not enjoy acting as daily entertainment for a sweaty conglomeration of migrant workers, the gate sits open more than it is closed now, and we have all manner of debris blow into our driveway and up our front steps. To put it plainly, we have become a sort of catch net for balls of thick black hair, bits of styrofoam, dead insects, snack wrappers, plastic water bottles, store flyers, and endless drifts of fine sand. To compound the problem, the kids and their friends have adopted the Omani philosophy of trash disposal, which is the drop wherever (in their case, usually our driveway) and saunter away philosophy. To put it simply, our driveway is gross and requires a massive output of effort to keep it clean.

So this was my chore of choice this morning--cleaning the driveway. I was thorough. I squatted underneath the trampoline and used the hand brush; I swept into the corners of the marble steps; I picked up the animal skulls and whale ribs we have accumulated over the months and swept; I wiped down the plastic chair and table where no one ever sits. I worked in the relative quiet (except for the construction workers) of the morning, sweeping, brushing, and dumping, and appreciated this comma in my life. For the time-being, the days of tea flying from the roof of the car and children sobbing over forgotten items at home are gone.

I realized as I brushed that, in the United States, I was always consumed with the 20 minutes that lay directly in front of me. In the mornings the kids had twenty minutes to get up and dressed for school, and twenty more minutes to choke down their tea and toast before making the twenty minute dash to their respective schools. Then they had twenty minutes to chill in my classroom until school began. At the end of the school day, I liked to take twenty minutes to close up my classroom after the last of the students had left.

Then I had a bit less than twenty minutes to get to the Y in order to make the first of the evening's exercise classes. After that I had about twenty minutes to pick up Tehva and get home in order to get dinner (ideal if I could prepare it in twenty minutes or less), and listen to Silas read for the teacher-recommended twenty minutes, which really never ever happend (but I signed the paper anyhow, like dozens of other parents I knew), before slumping off exhausted to the usual slew of evening activities--homework, Scouts, baseball, church groups, soccer, PTO meetings, and so on.

Imagining the years ahead I could hardly see beyond a life segmented into twenty minute chunks. The kids would grow up rushed through the minutiae of daily life ("Come on! We're going to be late! What are you doing? Hurry up!") and I would continue to clip my greys and wonder at where the endless series of twenty-minute blocks had gone.

Sweeping the piles of rubble against the walls of our drive in order that they not once again become scattered victims of the hot desert winds, I appreciated my sweeping chore, for today at least. Sweeping my driveway means that I am able to see farther and closer than twenty minutes, even if it has done nothing for my greys.