al-Arabeeya

I had one of those great language days. When you're learning a language, there are days you feel like a complete idiot, and there are days when you feel like a rock star. Today, people were asking me questions in English and I was answering in Arabic. I was offered a great discount at a sports store (shortly after I was told, "You speak Arabic good!") After speaking to one lady in Arabic, she asked me out of the blue to please have lunch with her sometime this week. I went to al-Ballad and purchased about a half-dozen small items without any major frustrations or difficulties in bartering. I felt like I had leapt over a huge first barrier when it comes to language-learning: I am making sentences. And not just the two or three I'd previously memorized. Cuz baby, I'm conjugating verbs now!

As I had previously suspected, language-learning opens up a whole new world (someone cue up that Aladdin song, eh?) Without Arabic, you can usually communicate in this country. Enough people know English; you can get around. And frankly, it's fairly tempting to stay there, with English--I mean, is Arabic really necessary?

But without language, you are always going to be a stranger--a stranger who prefers to stay strange. You are a huge inconvenience any time you want to accomplish anything. You are a shallow acquaintance for anyone who is less than fluent in English. You always have to ask others to come to you, instead of going to them. To refuse to learn the language is to insist on being aloof. And aloof people never get invited to the cool parties.

I often imagine myself standing in an enormous room with a crowd of other people. They're nice; they're interesting. But I just can't ignore the 5,000 doors lined up all around the walls of the room. Behind them, I can hear people talking--murmuring and singing to one another. I just know they're talking about how they grew up and who they hope to become and what they want out of life--but I can't understand a word. I might lean in and press my ear up against the door, but it's got a fat lock, and that door muffles everything.

But the Arabic language?

That's my heavy, golden key.