Watching Nature Documentaries with The Fam

My family doesn't do to much. The father is retired, the one remaining son at home graduated from law school in May and is kind of chilling, and all the other children are married and in Lattakia or in Britain studying. They sleep, they eat, they visit the neighbors and have the neighbors over, but mostly what they do is watch TV.

Al-Jazeera has a documentary channel that shows all documentaries, all the time. Most are obviously bought from America, England, France, and dubbed into Arabic. Any documentary is game, the channel being a uniform only of type, not of subject. Torture and Kidnap: American Style (from England, about rendition), how Airbus planes are made, the Mongol Conquest, and nature documentaries are all fair game.

The latter are quite common, and my family loves them, and I love watching them with my family. Um Mazen gives a running commentary. When a strange looking creature pops up, Um Mazen always proclaims "Subhan Allah!" (used to express awe at God's creation). Weird-ass fish: Subhan Allah! Thousands of penguins all sitting on their eggs: Subhan Allah! A Chameleon shoots its tongue out half a foot to eat a bug: Subhan Allah!

When the predator inevitably catches they prey, Um Mazen intones ya haram! or ya latif! (catch-all phrases for bad things). When lemurs walk up cacti, ya latif! When a baby seal is shown floundering around on the ice, ya haram! so weak!

These are but highlights in the running commentary, which also includes laughing, commands that the rest of us look at something cute, and spoilers if it's a documentary she's seen previously (Now the snake's going to eat him, ya haram!)

Last night was the icing on the cake when, watching one about the Anartic, I learned the word for seal: فقمة. Seems innocent, but when pronounced with the qaff and the Syrian accent on the taa marbuta (turns -ah into -eh) this word becomes fuqme. I started laughing when Iyad first said the word, to which Um Mazen said, "What's so funny? That's his name. Fuqme. Fuqme." And Abu Mazen joined in "Fuqme!"

I cried from laughing.