Lessons With Mohammad

Cool Shey Tamaam

I've been taking Arabic lessons with this fabulous teacher named Mohammad:

 

Thanks to his patient instruction, good humor, and abundant provision of coffee and mint tea (shai bee nana), I'm on my way to polyglot-dom. Polyglottony, perhaps.The arabic alphabet is, thankfully, just about the same number of characters as in English.

My  favorite letter is "sha." It looks like this: ش I think it looks like a cup of  شاي "shai" (tea) that someone is sprinkling some sugar into. When it's connected to another letter, it loses the big scoop on it's left, as you can see in the word "shai." Look at that word "shai." It has three letters. "sha" and two vowels "ah" (looks like a 1) and "ai or ee." (ي )My favorite words and phrases so far are: (Arabic is written right to left)

My husband = Zowji = زوجي  No problem  = Mish Moshkilay = مش مشكيلة Tea with mint with sugar = Shai bee nana bee sukar = شاي بي نانا بي سكر Everything is perfect = Cool shey tamaam = كل شي تمام 

I'm still learning; I may have misspelled some of the words in Arabic.

I feel like I'm REALLY close to being able to read Arabic. I'm able to sound out many words on street signs if I give myself plenty of time. Knowing what the words mean is a whole different ballgame. But I have a fun feeling of a whole new world opening up. It's like being five and learning to read all over again.

A Better Use for Cable Ties

This post  might make you sad or angry. I'll keep it short, because while I think it is important to share about, I don't like feeling sad and you probably don't either.Two weeks ago,  on June 12, Thomas and I  went to a lecture by Gerard Horton, a lawyer for Defense of Children International. The lecture was about Palestinian children held in military detention. It was the first time here that I'd actually been faced with this much information related to the ongoing conflict happening here. A note about Gerard. He was a British man, and his presentation was straightforward and dispassionate, which I think is the best way to be when speaking about such a political issue. He gave us the facts. The Q&A came afterward, and then we heard the passion, anger, and frustration in the crowd.

He and the organization he works with, DCI-Palestine, http://www.dci-palestine.org/  completed a four year long study of the way Palestinian children are treated when they are detained by the Israeli military. [Background info: Since 1967, Palestinians in the West Bank have been prosecuted  in Israeli military courts.]

Although the report is 142 pages to hold  the data collected from collecting the testimonies of 311 children, Gerard distilled the information down the most important point, which is that the evidence shows a pattern of inhuman treatment of minors as defined in the UN Convention against Torture.

The number one detail that strikes me when reading the report is the brutal use of cable ties to hold the children's wrists together behind their backs. It was the number one complaint of detained children, present in 95% of cases.

One child said "Soldiers tied my hands behind my back with one plastic cord and tightened it so hard that I still feel pain in my right thumb which sometimes goes numb."

A better use for cable ties might be to hold cables in place, as illustrated in this picture I took in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem:

There are many other issues of concern. Just a few of them:

• Child is blindfolded (90% of cases)
• Physical violence (75% of cases)
• Arrested between midnight and 5 am (60% of cases)

Often the children are woken up from sleep by soldiers in their rooms pointing guns at them.

Gerard gave us a copy of the report. There's a lot of information in there, but the positive part that would improve the situation are four major recommendations DCI lawyers make that would "provide a series of simple and practical protective measures."

• An end to night time arrests.
• Children have access to a lawyer prior to questioning.
• All interogations be audio-visually recorded.
• Every child to be accompanied by a parent.

After the lecture and a short video, a man stood to ask the first question. He spoke in Arabic for about ten minutes. I was so bewildered that I almost left. I can't imagine a moderator at a U.S. lecture letting a question become a speech. Finally someone handed me a headset so I could hear the translation into English, which was happening simultaneously. It turns out that he'd been detained in the same prisons shown in the presentation and he was telling his story.

Others, both English and Arabic speaking, spoke with similar passion. "Why isn't the International community doing anything about the occupation? Why isn't United States doing anything?"

Bug Bites and Black Belts: The Little Things Are Big Things

Yesterday was a tough day of little challenges. I couldn't sleep, and in the morning, I was complaining to my prince about the extreme itchiness and discomfort I was experiencing from the bites from whatever tiny creatures inhabit our mattress. Or, I theorized, were the bites from mosquitos? Could he ask the people at the office if they had any advice? He was sipping the morning coffee that I made him in front of an open window, and looking doubtful that among all the saving children, he was going to have time to ask about the possibility of bugs in our mattress. I looked at the open window and got up to slide the screen shut, giving him a "the least you could do is shut the screen to keep the bugs out" look. Then we argued about the insect life in Rammallah, Palestine, vs. Lumberton, NC. He went to work. I cried my eyes out for an hour, loudly, relishing the fact that no one I knew was going to hear me and ask any questions.  I rallied, called him, and resolved our stupid little argument. I found the pain-relieving spray (see photo) that Prince Charming had, of course, thought to pack, covered my skin with it, and slept blissfully for four hours.

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Later, doing the dishes, I was scrubbing a hardened flake of oatmeal off a cup. My hand slipped, shunting the sharp shard of oatmeal under my fingernail. A small cut, a small annoyance. But damn it, couldn't something just go right today?When Prince got back from work, I told him that if something big and horrific happened to us, like something like the people back home are afraid will happen to us (crime, terrorism, etc.) we'd get through it. Our "I'm a tough survivor" instinct would kick in. Adrenaline would flow, and we'd roll with the challenges like it was our job. And people would think we were so tough, so heroic.We laughed and laughed about how it's really the little things that are the big things. He reminded my about how he'd stubbed his toe hard a week back, and even though it was just a stubbed toe, damn it, it was sore for days, and he had a lot of walking to do. So long to impressing his new staff with his powerful gait.I was reminded of when I was at a Tae Kwon Do Tournament as a teenager. I had just sparred with a huge, Amazonian warrior black belt with legs twice as long as mine, and a deadly, "I'm from the Bronx and I've killed girls just like you," look in her eyes. (It's my story, I'll embelish a little. Okay?) I was tough. I was brutal. I fought hard. I got kicked in the stomach and the face. I didn't cry. I probably won the match, but the point is that my instructors, my teammates, everyone was telling me I was One Tough Cookie. And let's be honest, I was. There weren't a lot of girls like me in my peer group.But what happened later was that I had to stay  for hours supporting my teammates. I wandered around the tournament, getting increasingly hungry, thirsty, and tired. This was right at the beginning of puberty, and I was just beginning to learn that I had a blood sugar issue and I would feel wonky if I didn't eat every three hours.

I didn't feel hungry, but I felt lost. I began to cry. I wanted to lie down. I remember that my instructor came over to me and said "What's wrong?" I shook my head, saying something like "I don't know, ahhh! I don't know….no snack yet, I lie down here?"

He gave me the most bewildered look, and said something like "You just beat Bronx girl, and now you are crying?"

It was a Little Things are Big Things moment. It's not the big fight that'll get you. It's missing your snack two hours later.

Seventeen Hours, Breast Size, and Marriage

After 17 hours sitting next to my seat mates, I got pretty chummy with Ala and Albert. Chummy enough for Ala to reach over and turn my magazine pages faster than I was turning them so she could see "Who Wore it Best" in Hollywood. Chummy enough for her to comment on the wonderfully perfect size of my breasts, as compared to the fake ones on the model in the magazine. 17 hours will do that to you. After the flight,  a person named Toby with Delta emailed an apology for the problems with the flight.  Toby wrote:

"I can only imagine how disappointed you must have been when our aircraft had to return to the gate multiple times for maintenance reasons. Additionally, we are genuinely apologetic that you arrived at your destination much later than scheduled."

He backed up his sorrow with $100 credit and 7,500 bonus miles. It's cool, Toby, that was just four more hours I got to spend with Ala and Albert. About the age of my own parents, Ala and Albert were an adorable Russian-American (Ohio) couple who'd been married for 32 years. He got less sleep than her because he let her sleep cuddled up on his shoulder or lap for the whole night. He even got up for about an hour so she could sleep on both of their seats. Her knees were hurting her.I asked her what their secret was. She said she picked a good one - a man who is just as wonderful now as  he was the day she married him.

"Even though he's getting a little belly," she said as she patted his tummy affectionately. Albert grinned a tad sheepishly. Ala continued: "It doesn't feel like it's been 32 years. Not at all."

Why I'm So Happy

I leave tomorrow for Tel Aviv.

Rarely have I been so happy as now, because I am now at rest, with my family in North Carolina, and in complete vacation mode. But that is not all; a lot of my happiness is from the excitement of planning future adventures, of knowing they will come.

It's the Alternating Theory of Happiness. My happiness is greater because I know going to a new place involves a lot of discomfort, risk, and learning.  Without those challenges, I becoming irritating and gain weight.

But now I revel in my current comfort, not bored with it, knowing that I'll be challenged soon enough. Alternate experiences always show up.

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I'm really looking forward to seeing my prince charming again. It's been a long three weeks away from him.

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For those of you who feel things deeply and like to experience far out places, my prince's micro-blog Last Stoppers is worth bookmarking. He updates it with photos and words about Last Stops. What is a Last Stop? Click over to his blog to find out.