I am learning a lot about the centrality of language to our day-to-day lives. As in, if you can’t speak the language that people around you are speaking, you really have problems saying things like ‘Do you have any digital Dictaphones that are Mac compatible?’ or ‘I like the look of your freshly squeezed juices but can’t be bothered to choose – could you recommend one?’. Obviously once my Arabic classes get into full swing I will be reciting menus and making erudite jokes about the news in Arabic effortlessly, but until then, I have had to develop something I’ve never really bothered with – non-verbal communication. Is that a highbrow-sounding term for waving your hands around like a moron? You bet!
My favourite piece of non-verbal communication so far has been ‘dictaphone’, which I attempted to convey to a bewildered shopkeeper by holding an imaginary object in my hand, saying ‘Salam Alekum’ [hello] into it, pressing an imaginary button and then, in my best 'dictaphone' voice (i.e. in a squeaky voice out of the side of my mouth) saying ‘Salem Alekum’ again. Just as if I'd pressed Play on the imaginary dictaphone. Bloody genius, I thought. The old shopkeeper responded by looking even more confused and animatedly pointed at something, probably the world outside his shop.
I’ve been doing a lot of pointing. That certainly gets you far. But I am getting by. I had a masterclass in non-verbal communication last week when I made my first Syrian friends – two seriously boisterous students at the University of Damascus. They got dragged into my taxi.
I was in the process of registering for my Arabic course, which for the purposes of studying at the University of Damascus, involves (amongst other missions worthy of the Crystal Maze) a trip to the AIDS clinic to confirm you are not HIV positive (clearly an important prerequisite for the study of Arabic). Having picked up my results (which I couldn’t even read – I assumed I was negative – the man who handed me the results gave me a little smile) I jumped into a taxi with a taxi driver whose English was ACTUALLY worse than my Arabic. He even looked confused when I said ‘Hello’. He also appeared to be illiterate, so I couldn’t just show him my letter with the University of Damascus header on it to show him where I wanted to be heading. After hassling some pedestrians, he seemed to get it – or so I thought. He took me to the wrong side of the campus (it’s a huge campus) and was not entertained when I refused to get out of his taxi. At this point, he started asking random people on the street if they spoke English (p.s. this is totally cool in Damascus – people are very friendly and helpful). Two young guys, full of smiley exuberance, came up to our taxi and I’m pretty sure one of them said ‘No’ to the taxi driver’s question but they both proceeded to give English their best go. The sound of words that he didn’t recognise was enough to impress the driver, who asked them to jump in the back!
This was how I met Oosam and Ibrahim, whose English was only slightly better than my Arabic. The driver seriously perked up when he had someone to talk Arabic to; the taxi ride to the other side of campus was all rowdy laughter. I occasionally sniffed out the broad subject matter of conversations and made modest contributions in Arabic, which the driver found hilarious. I correctly answered ‘No!’ to a question which went along the lines of ‘So, you’re from Eritrea, are you a drug dealer?’ which entertained all. I also answered appropriately when asked ‘How’s your health?’, ‘How is your mother?’ (nothing suggestive about this question in Arabic) and ‘How is your penis?’, which was accompanied by the driver poking playfully at my willy while I was sat in his front seat. You wouldn’t get that in a London taxi.
I spent a cool afternoon with my new Syrian friends sitting in the university canteen eating a ‘chip sandwich’ (sounds lacklustre but
incredible – the Syrians take sandwiches very seriously), drinking sweet tea and smoking some sheesha. I conveyed most of my life story using mime, although I wasn’t able to do ‘lawyer’.
