Al Kindergarten

The last time I learned a new alphabet, I was about three feet tall and missing my front teeth. I remember singing the Alphabet Song, suffering through some backwards Ds and Es and generally moving on to the more important parts of kindergarten which, in my mind, included watching the class caterpillar turn into a butterfly, creating dyed macaroni necklaces and imagining what it would be like to walk on the ceiling when I was supposed to be sleeping during naptime.

I do not remember learning an alphabet being this hard.

Last week, I started a five-day-a-week, four-hour-a-day Arabic course at Damascus University. Just like learning English in kindergarten, learning Arabic begins with getting the Arabic alphabet under your belt.

Unlike English, the Arabic alphabet has 28 letters, a least one-third of which require the vocal calisthenics of Kermit the Frog to pronounce. There’s another catch: Each of these 28 Arabic letters can be written in three different ways, depending on whether the letter makes its appearance at the beginning, middle or end of a word.

In case you’re keeping track, that’s 84 new letters to learn. And these letters aren’t just simple circles connected to straight lines like a “b” or a “p”. There are curves, ovals, circles, triangles, dots and they all run from right to left.

Arabic letters are admittedly much more beautiful than those in our alphabet and involve more skill to transcribe all of the tessellations of letters. If I could write faster than a kindergartener, I’m pretty sure writing in Arabic would feel like painting. However, one missing dot here or an extra curve there and you’re into Zuzuland, a place my cousin here as introduced me to as the Arabic version of our Lalaland. Zuzuland. Of course.

So basically, reading and writing Arabic one week into lessons is like playing an Olympic-level, verbal version of Memory. I am definitely not winning the gold by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, I think I may be the very worst student. At least, Gregory from Switzerland, who is engaged to a Syrian-Swiss girl and living with her family here, and I are tied for last. We often exchange looks of exasperation as our 10 classmates, most of who are either European or American, carry on limited conversations on topics that include vocabulary we have learned.

Thus, from 9 A.M. to 1 P.M., Sunday through Thursday, we discuss our names, our nationalities, whether or not we are married (a very key question for both men and women here in Syria) and what hobbies we like (although, at this point you have to choose between cooking, reading and sports unless you have figured out how to look up words in the dictionary).

That is, if I can get to class. While I may be learning the alphabet in class, starting to sound out words and even sharing some semi-intelligible biographical detail with my classmates, outside of class, there is a world beyond my name, my nationality and my apparent love of “al ree-yaa-dah” (sports). I have had to get creative with communication and this has caused more than a little trouble. In the past week, since I moved out of my Uncle Zoo and Aunt Alia’s apartment and, hence, lost my free translators, my linguistics missteps have landed me at a mosque when I meant to go to the circus and at the Kuwaiti Embassy as I tried to make it to an art gallery.

One morning, when I asked a taxi driver to take me to Damascus University, I ended up in a dirt lot full of mangy cats and the remains of a cement structure. I was already five minutes late for class, so I jogged through the dirt under the 90-plus degree sun towards the direction of a main road and flagged down a second taxi driver.

Panting and covered in sweat and dust, I said “Please. I want Damascus University” (“Fuh-duhl. Bid-dee jah-mee-yah dee-mossh-k”). For whatever reason, he interpreted this sentence as “Fuh-duhl. Bid-dee Four Seasons.” The concierge at Damascus’ nicest hotel, who is undoubtedly more accustomed to dealing with the wealthy visitors from the Gulf who lounge in the lobby at all hours of the day and night, looked at me with a mix of pity and annoyance as I asked him to translate: Could my driver please take me to the university so I wouldn’t miss my entire Arabic class and so I will communicate with him better in the future?

Yet, as much of a Herculanean struggle as it is to learn Arabic and as little of the language as I understand right now, it is clear that there is some real beauty when these 28 letters get together. When we are conjugating verbs and making adjectives fit with nouns, my 23-year-old teacher, Hala, often talks about “making the music.” For example, there are little symbols you can add to sentences in Arabic, simply to make the wording sound a little more formal and flow better. Here’s a (very) rough example: In Arabic, you could write “I like dogs." Then, you could add one of the special symbols to the sentence and it would still mean “I like dogs”, but it would sound like “I-yah like-ah the dogsssss." It’s not a matter of picking different words to describe something, but it’s more like singing: You have to use the words you’ve got, fit the sounds together and hit the right tone.

There are also words in Arabic that don’t seem to translate in English and capture snapshots of the region’s culture and history. For example, “sahk-er” is word used by Bedouins to describe a really brave person. Describing members of your family, particularly your cousins, aunts and uncles, is also unique. Instead of just saying Cousin Bobby, Aunt Alma or Uncle Lambykins, in Arabic, you use words that explain exactly how everyone is related to you. If Cousin Bobby, for instance, was my dad’s brother’s son, he would be called my “ibn ommi." In other words, the son (ibn) of my uncle (ommi). Without having to say another sentence, you know exactly how Bobby fits into my family, perhaps the single most important entity of one’s life here.

Just as I don’t remember learning the English alphabet being as hard as learning the Arabic alphabet, I don’t remember finally decoding English being as exhilarating as it’s been to get a small hint of Arabic understanding. I’ve started to pick out words here and there when my relatives are talking which has given me a sense of relief, having worried that they were talking about all the stupid cultural mistakes I was making. Even if I get lost in a taxi now, I can pick out bits and pieces of the news on the radio which included news today about “Fran-zia” and “Suur-riya," Sarkozy and Assad.

And just a couple of days ago, for the first time in 27 years, I was able to write my name in Arabic (see the video). It felt like a big moment. I just hope the D wasn’t backwards.