- On the drive there, stopping on the side of the road so the girl could jump out and bring a handful of snow to her mother to eat. They don’t have snow so much in Aleppo.
- My aunt’s mischevious grin every time I returned home after another attempt to leave, suggesting that maybe God is trying to tell me I should not return to Damascus but stay in Beirut. Then my mom later suggesting that she probably organized the roads being closed in order to keep me there.
- One of the women that I spoke to during the receiving condolences phase who told me she thought I was 15 or 16, on the eve of my 22nd birthday. Not since I was in Ghana have I been so wrongly accused of youth, when a woman in the market thought I was 12. Then again my 12 year-old Ghanaian sister did look older than me and it has been about 3 ½ years since then so apparently I am aging appropriately. The question of why a 12 year-old would ever travel to Ghana by herself never came up.
- Another conversation that I had with a woman—the whole time that we talked about my studies in Syria she thought I came to study “Aerobics.” Somehow the same questions still applied: “Why would you go to Syria to study?” “You know we have a good program for that in Lebanon.” “Is there a big difference in the way they teach it?” “What kind of exercises do you do?”
- The awkward pause in each conversation when a family member would explain to their friend that I am studying “Arabic Nahawiy” (aka fus’ha) after which I would realize they don’t actually know any fus’ha (one of the appeals of learning fus’ha in the first place is that you are supposed to be able to travel to any country in the Arab world and speak fus’ha, regardless of the dialect, because every Arab learns it in school. Except Lebanon, apparently, where the languages of education are English and French.)
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"Another conversation that I had with a woman—the whole time that we talked about my studies in Syria she thought I came to study “Aerobics.” Somehow the same questions still applied: “Why would you go to Syria to study?” “You know we have a good program for that in Lebanon.” “Is there a big difference in the way they teach it?” “What kind of exercises do you do?”"
ReplyDeleteWow, that is perfect! Also, incredibly hilarious.
Oh they did, but probably in Twi or one of the other millions of languages. Martina's host sister would translate for us(when I saw Martina I thought she was maybe 13) " why is that small small girl here all alone" "what parents would let a child(they thought she was like 10) come to Ghana all alone" "what bad parents!" "oh look--pointing to me, there is her mom" Since I was fat they thought I must be her mom. One woman passed me on the road and said "Look at the face, so young, but so fat" That is the day I stopped having my brothers translate for me.......
ReplyDeleteBaby Martina is coming to Spokane to be with Mommy Liz at the end of March!
Really, really funny.
ReplyDelete