Yom asal, yom basal.

Some days are honey, some days are onions.
About half of my days are really great, and half I feel sort of a mix of depressed, lonely, and frustrated. I finally realized that how well I feel about any given day at work is directly correlated to how good I feel about my ability in Arabic language on that day.

Ilyom asal: I had a great day today, and as I was reflecting on the Arabic that I (try to) use at work, I realized that these phrases are a pretty good representation of my typical day at Nazareth Village…

Kutor ittikrar be’alem lehmar
I can’t remember why Mira decided it was important that I learn this idiom: “If you repeat something enough times, even the donkey will be able to say it.” …But afterwards, she had me peform my new trick in front of some of the other workers, and ever since, this has become a near-daily occurence. It never fails to amuse everyone around me. All they have to say is… “Hey Miriam! Kutor…….. come on, yalla: Kutor…..” And then they are not satisfied until I repeat my little Arabic-language stunt in an enthusiastic chirp. This is now my best Arabic sentence, and… come to think of it… I feel like I have repeated this enough that even the Nazareth Village donkeys must know it by now.

Bidik musaa’idi?
On one of my first days I memorized the phrase “Would you like my help?” so that I would have an excuse to hang around at the Nazareth Village kitchen, which has since become my comfort spot at the Vill. I really enjoy Mary, the main cook there, and I love the food and am trying to learn how to make everything so that I can recreate the meal when I come home.
Mary is not comfortable in English so I have a lot more motivation there to use Arabic than other places. Plus, she beams and tells me how “shawtra” I am when I come up with something useful to say in Arabic. It’s a good ego booster (even if that is the same word that my friend Razan says to Jimmy, her dog, when he fetches a ball).

‘andi?
This can mean “my place” or “I have” depending on the context. In Nazareth Village, this is the question that comes from Nadiim/Abu George/Joseph the Carpenter, who wants to know if I’m going to have time to bring the tour group to the carpentry shop, the last stop on the Parable Walk tour—sometimes groups have a strict time constraint and I never know if I’m going to be able to get all the way through the tour before they need to rush back onto their tour busses and on to the next holy site. So it’s a legitimate question. Sometimes Joseph the Carpenter gets skipped.

Ilmejmu’ah mitakhri. / Ilmejmu’ah ajat bakeer!
Is the tour group late, or did they come early? Either situation is worthy of much consternation. Either people have to hurry into costume and a guide isn’t prepared to take the group, or the people on the land are annoyed and waiting around the village doing nothing, when they could be doing more important things, especially when those more important things happen inside where it’s warmer.

These sentences must be pronounced with either annoyance or urgence. Maybe both.

Enti mish bardaani?
“Aren’t you cold?!” It’s winter here, and it’s not nearly as cold as it is the majority of a Kansas February, but my coworkers are convinced that if you don’t bundle up in this weather, you will surely get sick.
I, however, know for a fact that this is not true (I think surely someone once gave me some scientific evidence proving that you do NOT catch colds from being cold). So, I scoffed yesterday and bravely wandered about without extensive warm layers, much to the shock of my coworkers.
This morning… I woke up with a sore throat, which is sure enough developing into a full-blown cold. I almost called in sick to work, but then realized that would be admitting defeat of science and logic, so I went to work and pretended to be well.
Rani, who just returned from vacation in Texas, confirmed that perhaps the laws of nature function differently here. “People call me crazy, and maybe it’s not true in the states, but here it’s true! You always get sick from being too cold!”

Mejaneen!
Speaking of calling people crazy, this was one of the first words I learned at work. The guys at work will often point to one another in my presence and say “Mejaneen!” Which is often accompanied by pointing to one’s head as if to say, “Look at this guy, I think his brain is gone.”

Nadiim told me that when one of the volunteers before me was having trouble remembering another worker’s last name, he “helped” her learn it, and then quizzed her on it later. “Wait wait, I know,” she said triumphantly, “your name is Simon Mejaneen!”

(In a related note, when I read the word “mejaanen” on advertisements, I thought that there were either a lot of crazy sales or a lot of crazy products available to buy. Finally, my Arabic teacher explained that this is not the case, that in fact this slightly different word means “free.”)

Maryam Maryamti!
This is a phrase often performed for me in a singsong voice when I enter a room. Seems to be the general fallback when people don’t know what to say to me, or whether I will understand them in Arabic, but they want to acknowledge my presence anyway.
I have always wished that I had a song with my name in it (It’s so unfair that there are, like, five songs about Carolines, and even a song about a Rihannon… come on, Rihannon HAS to be less common than Miriam).

It turns out that Maryam Maryamti is a famous Arabic pop song, and I can’t even express how happy that makes me. I always reward them singing to me by doing a silly little dance in place.

Here is a version by the original singer Mohamed Hussein (Wow, I feel like I’m saying “BOO!!!” just by saying that name to an American audience). There are lots of versions--I like this one because of the sweet instrumentation… but I recommend fast forwarding to about 5 minutes in, unless you want to know the song’s complete history and background AND you understand Syrian Arabic.