I'd have to say that after 10 months of Syria, I do occasionally miss the "I don't give a fuck about you, you don't give a fuck about me" attitude of New York. Especially when strangers feel like they need to give you unsolicited advice.
Yesterday I was riding the micro to work, a little late. The horribly insane heat has made sleeping rather difficult, and thus waking rather difficult as well. On these days I essentially brush my teeth and put on pants, grabbing breakfast for the 45-minute ride ahead. Sometimes I also brush my hair on the micro, waiting until no one is sharing a seat with me. When I got off the micro yesterday this guy got off too, and then started trying to talk to me. It was the usual, where are you from, your Arabic is very good, how long have you been here. Then:
"Can I tell you something without you getting upset?"
"What is it?"
He laughed at the abruptness of my sentence, the exasperation.
"You shouldn't brush your hair on the micro. You're a very pretty girl and it's not good."
Not good how? And is it alright for uggos to brush their hair in public, or was that just mujamale to soften the blow of realizing how wrong my hair brushing had been."
"Oh, it's just that I was late today-"
"No, I see you on this micro a lot and you brush your hair a lot."
"I'm late a lot."
Then at capoeira class, I arrived a little early and had to wait for the boys to finish in the changing room. I chatted a bit with Mousa, the Algerian instructor, while a nearby dude suddenly broke out laughing "She speaks Arabic better than him! You (Mousa) are asli (here meaning of an Arab country) but she is speaking much better. Ha ha! She even speaks Shami!" He then repeated some of the "very Shami" phrases I had said (Mousa, while Algerian, has spent most of his life in Germany and is Berber, not Arab).
There was another dude nearby who started talking to me in fusha, formal Arabic. People do this to foreigners a lot because they we learn fusha, not ammiya, in school. But this guy was asking why I don't speak fusha. He started lecturing me about how I should speak fusha because it is the pure language. When someone goes to America, he said, they should learn real English, not slang. When he learned French, he learned the proper language, he said, switching into French to reiterated la pure langue. Why would you learn the language of the streets?
Because I want to talk to people. Turns out he's Tunisian, not Syrian, but has lived here for 18 years with his Syrian wife.
But, he said, I have not strayed from correct Arabic.
He continued to try to convince me that I should speak fusha. I told him I know fusha, and I write and read fusha, and fusha has its place, but so does ammiya. What's wrong with that. He then dared me to prove I can speak fusha to him, so I did, but not as smooth as the Syrian since I never practice speaking in fusha. I just left the conversation once the changing room was open because I don't need to listen to some asshole go on and on about how every one should speak the correct Arabic, especially foreigners, and how street language is disgusting. Get off it.
Then he told me I should work on my pronunciation. Oh my God really? I got this same advice from a doctor who had lived for 20 odd years in the Michigan a couple of months ago. Do they think I am oblivious to how foreign I sound? Am I supposed to snap up and go "By Jones, you're right! Pronunciation! Why did I never think of that?" Plus, shit isn't all that bad if people understand me and I am occaisonally mistaken for Lebanese or Tunisian (or in Tunis, Syrian). But thanks for the advice: I'm sure I'll start asking the storekeeper for a half kilo of cheese in formal Arabic any day now.
There's certain kinds of advice that are fine. If I'm saying something incorrectly, please correct me. If you can see the money poking out the top of my pants pocket, go ahead and tell me to tuck it down (which happens all the time).
But on other stuff, I wish some people would just stay out of my crap. It's not hurting you, so why you gotta tell me?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
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2 comments:
Hurray for Berbers! On the other hand, the guy who went on to about learning fusha, represents a certain kind of North African. There are North Africans from a certain class/generation that utterly disdain their dialects and the indigenous aspects of them (that is, the Berber ones, which is why North Africans don't pronounce vowels as prominently as eastern Arabs, Berber languages are kind of like Welsh in the way they push together syllables; North African Arabic is Arabic with a Berber accent). Proper Arabic is real Arabic and why leave any room for question as to whether or not one is Arab? He probably got picked on at some point because his Arabic sounded funny.
My dad is like that, with English. He went to boarding school in the States, and his English teachers bullied him into learning to fake a very formal and proper Mid-Atlantic accent when he speaks English. Now that he's older, he falls out of it more often. He speaks Darja (Algerian Arabic) and fusha and Berber; his Arabic has a Berber accent. Syrians and Egyptians tell him to pronounce vowels. But people reminding you not to speak in slang or to speak properly, I think, is normal in most countries. The reasons for it might be different.
Did you ever get a reason for not brushing your hair on the micro?
I don't know if the Tunisian guy was Berber or not - didn't ask. I have met a few Syrians (3 in 10 months) who insisted on speaking Fusha at all times and chided me for speaking any ammiya, but they were professors and students of Arabic. It's weird when that happens because most people are pleasantly surprised that I've picked up Shami (despite its being so much easier).
As for the micro, no specifics were given but I never see women putting on makeup or doing their hair in public. Maybe its just considered impolite, or maybe (and he might have been hinting at this with the "pretty" remark) its seen as purposely drawing attention to myself? I don't know.
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