The only people who take early classes are crazy or have jobs. An additional category of “those who hate themselves” can be added for early Arabic classes. During the course of my 15 months or so of Arabic instruction, I’ve fallen into all three categories.
Like the other hard-core (and by that I mean non-Romance) languages, the first two years of Arabic are “intensive.” This means that the classes meet every day, and also that you always have homework. It also means your GPA drops doubly when you screw up.
Oh, and you will. On my first day of Arabic last year, I was told by the professor that I would be expected to do three hours of homework for every class—with an hour of class every day, that’s 20 hours a week! We’re talking part-time job territory here. Most students of Arabic fail to fulfill this 20-hour expectation. [Attention, my Arabic Professors: I have always fulfilled this expectation.]
I didn’t come to Georgetown understanding the ramifications of my decision to register for Arabic. I came knowing that my favorite movie is Lawrence of Arabia (Edward Said is spinning in his grave), that going abroad to the Middle East sounded like fun, and that I was fed-up with Spanish—my apologies to the rich Spanish culture that I am denigrating. I was also laboring under the misapprehension that Spanish is similar to Arabic just because it borrows a few words here and there. That is patently untrue.
I wasn’t thinking about 9/11 or the war in Iraq. I may have been the only one not considering that, though, considering the huge number of serious SFSers that populate the Arabic Department. When most students choose to study a language, it’s because they want to read somebody in the original (for philosophers, German; for the Classics, Greek and Latin; for poets, French, etc.) or because they’d love to live in a country where it is spoken. If you choose Arabic, you’re just ambitious.
In fact, it’s irritating when someone immediately jumps to the whole international politics thing when they hear you study Arabic. My new boss at work told me my course selections were “totally post-9/11” the other day. Maybe I just like the culture, all right? Anyone with any real geo-political foresight would be taking Chinese or Hindi.
Speaking of the culture, well, it’s great. Beyond the semi-discriminatory Orientalism of Lawrence (a great movie whose underlying Nietzchean message goes deeper than the setting), the food is delicious and-–I’ll go toe-to-toe with any language in this––the writing is the prettiest in the world. Then there’s the literary tradition, though, to be honest, thus far I’ve only memorized a few passages from the Qur’an for class.
Well, that’s not my entire experience. My literary experience now extends to “Khalid and Aieeda,” a Lebanese children’s book, my current independent reading project. Chosen because it seemed to have more sword fights, camel races and lions than any other book on the shelf, it also has a lot more pages (34!) and words (uncountable!) than any other one.
In the few pages I’ve translated thus far, it has been exciting, with a Lady Macbeth-like character (who said Arab women aren’t empowered?) and a tribal schism caused by a fight over something I’m not entirely clear about. It also has crackling dialogue like, “I cannot stand this dishonor from any man except him, but I cannot raise my hand against he who I love like a brother, who I respect as the leader of our tribe.” Pretty heady stuff, huh?
All joking aside—and I mean that, please don’t send us angry letters—we should recognize that Arabic is more important than its geopolitics. It’s a gateway to a tradition and culture, as well as to the religion of Islam, which is intrinsically important in its own right. It’s also got a lot of letters that sound alike, but that’s besides the point. I just hope I’ll hit a major fluency breakthrough soon, because my book report is due next Thursday, and “Khalid and Aieeda” isn’t getting any shorter.
