Two photos of my apartment
This is my second year at Sky Suites, the apartment hotel I stay in while here. It’s about a 15 minute walk to the university and within easy reach of the daily amenities like bookstores and food markets. The place is well run and provides housekeeping services but its real appeal to me is that its furnishings are simple, with clean lines, Japanese by way of Ikea.
I thought of changing venues for this second year, of getting to know a slightly different neighborhood, maybe even finding an apartment with a view of the Mediterranean. There is no lack of apartment hotels here but the problem with most of them is a furnishing style I call “Arab Baroque”. Think of the interior of any overthrown dictator’s palace and you’ll know what I mean: grotesquely ornate interpretations of Louis Quinze. As an assault on the aesthetic sensibilities it is far too distracting to allow any work to get done. It would just make me nervous.
The environs here are relatively quiet given that the city has never heard of zoning or noise abatement,. The hospital is a block away but ambulances don’t generally blare. The noise of taxis, which beep at every possible passenger on the sidewalk, somehow doesn’t penetrate here. When the windows are open I hear the call to prayer, a sound whose tonal resonances I rather like. The only neighborhood sound that annoys is the church bells of the Greek Orthodox Church down the block whose clanging makes sure that no one sleeps late on Sunday morning. It’s called “The Church of the Dormition of St. Mary” but I guess that means unless you’re Jesus’ mother you aren’t going to get much sleep.
This week I added a new activity to my life: yoga. A friend here wanted me to join her in a class so with great reluctance I agreed. I’ve tried yoga before and it’s driven me mad with its elevator music and pharisaical perfections. Here, though, the silence is broken from time to time with desultory conversation. Our teacher is a British woman who came here over 40 years ago to pursue a love affair and never left. She must be 80 if she’s a day and has a widow’s hump but is so supple she can put her foot over her head. For two days after the class I was not so much in pain as hearing from parts of my body I hadn’t spoken to in a while. I won’t be managing the lotus position anytime soon. As in all physical and athletic endeavors, I am in special ed. Touching my toes would be a real achievement for me.
The Arabic is creeping along at about the pace of my yoga mastery. I have to direct the drivers of the shared taxis (called “serviis”) to where I go to church on Sunday mornings and now I am managing this task. There is also a peasant woman who sells vegetables on my street who terrifies me with her swift salesmanship but now I can tell her what I want and that I already have radishes in my refrigerator. When I listen to the sermon in my Arab church sometimes I hear groups of words I can understand or even simple sentences. I can read a good deal from the hymnal — it’s a fairly limited set of vocabulary words after all — and I try to sing along but I don’t always keep up.
Sometimes I wonder why I am trying to learn Arabic at my age, especially when I am two years away from my father’s age of death. My friend Diana here says that her neighbor thinks I am CIA and that my intentions in learning this language are deeply suspect. I have to laugh at that, because I credit the CIA with enough sense to invest in people half my age, not in someone like me who takes three pills before breakfast.
The answer always comes back that I am learning this language because it makes me happy to do so. It’s an end in itself. I love the problem solving of grammar, the mental gymnastics of choosing vocabulary that doesn’t quite line up with English, the leap of faith that the noises coming out of one’s throat are actually meaningful and not total gibberish. And I love this part of the world with its deeply felt history, its generosity and quirkiness, and how this region puts into stark relief the behavior and habits of mind of our own. As part of this reflection, I count my dislike of “Arab Baroque” and the politics of taste, taste being an ordering device in the realm of social capital. It would be an act of dissolving my internal hierarchies to learn to love “Arab Baroque”.
Finally, I suppose that learning a language at my age is like planting an apple tree: an act of faith that one’s life will extend long enough to enjoy its fruits, in sha’ Allah.
NB: I have to make two corrections on last week’s post — the population of Lebanon is four million, not two million which is the size of the refugee population here from Syria. Also, for the record: the president must be Maronite, the prime minister Sunni, and the speaker of parliament Shi’a.
goingfortheguttural 