Easter Week Part Four: A Day of Rest on Holy Monday

I had originally planned to go back to Damascus on Monday, since my cousins had all left and was looking forward to spending another week of free time in the city before classes began again next week. However, my aunt tempted me to stay a few extra days as she and my uncle were going up to the Mazraa, the family’s summer house in the mountains, on Tuesday. Thus my long-weekend excursion became a full week visit.

Monday was thus spent sleeping, eating, reading, catching up on missed episodes of the Office and with friends/family on Skype…generally not leaving the house or moving all that much. I was rudely jarred from my day of solitude and isolation by the sound of voices upstairs and when I came up for dinner I was greeted by a living room full of people. Ack, people! J&E had two couples over for dinner and the living room table was covered in a spread of fresh cuts of ham, chorizo, smoked salmon, cheeses, olives, breads, etc. If I wanted to eat I clearly had to be social, so I took a seat and went through the usual introductions of “this is our young cousin, she is studying Arabic! Arabic Nahawi! And she doesn’t know French, so speak to her in English or fus’ha.” And then I realized that my talent of speaking in a nearly-irrelevant language was something of a party trick: “Look! She speaks fus’ha! Matha tureedina an ta’akulina, yaa Maggie?” Followed by, “And she lives in Damascus! She wanted to live there because you know, they don’t speak English and French like we do, only Arabic.” “Damascus?! Why Damascus!? You know we have the best Arabic program in the Middle East at AUB. Are you happy in Syria? Do you come back to Beirut every weekend? You know, I have a son, he can show you around.” “No thank you, but I stay in Damascus, you can have fun there too.”