These Arabic lessons are calling for admissions I’m not sure that I’m comfortable revealing but I’ve vowed to give an honest account of this process, so here goes.
Back in high school I was renowned for my ability to come up with an excuse to avoid boring lessons – everything from relying on my pale genetic Scottish skin to send me home, to hiding in the classroom cupboard when Sister Emanuel arrived to teach Maths and Geography. I wish I’d known about the girls who smoked cigarettes with Father Bugler behind the church.
With my delinquent predilection then, it’s no surprise that I begged off today’s lesson. The thing is, I can’t face the homework. I promised Abdul I’d practice joining letters and I haven’t. The reason for my reluctance is because every sample of the Arabic alphabet that I download has different versions of the letters, or different pronunciations of them. I don’t like inconsistency.
When I went to the post office box the other day to collect mail, a young lady behind me was having a conversation on her mobile phone and she said, “Oh don’t worry about that, it’s same-same different.” I had a good chuckle to me at the oxymoron, and tried to fathom exactly what she meant – words being my business and all. Now the meaning is clear to me. The letters and their pronounciation are same-same-different and I shouldn’t get so hung up about semantics but I do. Oh I do; I can’t help myself.
On a package insert for a Chinese garnishing tool that is really a vegetable peeler, the English instructions are confusing, “Wind the peeler round and round, up to the bottom.” Bizarrely, this absurd instruction relates not to anything meaningful with vegetables, but it does apply to how I feel about my placement of Arabic letters on a page. Abdul has not shown me where to place the characters on the lines of a notebook; and because the Arabic script is so unfamiliar to me, any word I write goes up, down and round to the bottom. I feel like a first grader in need of guidelines that will show me how far the risers of a letter should extend and how long the flourishes should be.
I studied calligraphy for a year; measured the ratio of letter size according to nib size, and practiced the form of each letter until they were carbon-copy perfect. I feel the obsessional need to do the same with the Arabic letters. In my manic obsession I will either succeed and create perfectly written words, or I will drive myself insane trying. So, I’m off to find my 3mm ink-pen nib, my measuring rule and alphabet charts and by the time my lesson starts on Monday morning, I’ll have mastered the letters, or not, depending on my family’s indulgence of my latest obsession.
0 Responses to “Same-Same Different”