It has been pointed out to me by certain parties that my blog posts have been neither short nor frequent, as I had promised. So rather than subject you to another series of epic encounters, I want to talk a little bit today about words. Words are interesting, and they ways they make up a language create much more than just a vehicle for communication - their forms and habits shape culture.
I’ve got a copy of Rosetta Stone for Arabic that I’ve been using to supplement my classes. I’ve had it for a while now, actually, and back in the Gambia I got through a couple hours’ worth of instruction before giving up in frustration. The program relies on a type of audiovisual learning that’s supposed to mimic the way a child learns its first language, by presenting images and their associated words then connecting them in more elaborate sentences. The problem is that Arabic grammar is so complex that it’s just about impossible to pick up from examples alone. Not only do the verbs conjugate, but so do the nouns, depending on gender, number, possession, position in the sentence, and a few other things. Every rule has a counter-rule, and most seem to be made up just to piss off foreigners. It's linguistic Calvinball.
Now that I’m getting some more formal training, though, the program’s been pretty useful for giving me some practice and a little extra vocab. My host family loves it, too, mostly because the program breaks down words by syllable to teach pronunciation, and it’s apparently hilarious to watch me lean over my laptop screaming, “Beh. Beh! BEH! It’s Beh, you piece of crap! I'm gonna smash you with a hammer!” My microphone isn’t very good. The youngest brother’s favorite trick is to sneak up while I’m trying to pronounce a complicated phrase and whisper Arabic curses to the computer. Sometimes it registers him as correct.
I noticed something strange, though. The word the software gives for hello is “Marhaben”, which really means “Welcome”. The standard Arabic greeting is “As-Salamu Alaykum”, meaning “Peace be upon you”, as anyone who’s spent five minutes in an Arabic country could tell you. It’s a religious expression, and as I plowed through Rosetta Stone the pattern continued – the program didn’t have a single reference to Allah. It’s bizarre, but understandable; they wanted to simply teach a language, without getting involved in religious or political issues.
But trying to teach Arabic without mentioning God is insane. It’s like teaching conversational English without using slang, not so much as “okay” or “hi”. Islam and the Arabic language are so thoroughly intertwined that to separate one from the other is impossible. You invoke God when you meet someone, before you eat, when you sneeze, when you say goodbye, when you begin something, when you end something, and a thousand other times in daily life. This isn’t just Muslims, I’ve heard plenty of Arabic-speaking Christians do the same thing. God is a constant, palpable presence in their lives, and it’s reflected in the words they speak as much as the calls to prayer they hear echoing across the rooftops fives times a day.
The phrase I have the most complicated relationship with is “Inshallah”, meaning “If God wills.” In the Gambia, I hated this expression, because there the real meaning was “Not a chance in hell.”
“I’ll be there at noon, inshallah.” He shows up at five-thirty.
“It will be done by next week, inshallah.” Try a month.
“I’ll pay you back tomorrow, inshallah.” You will never see this man again.
After a while they realized I was catching on to their sophisticated code and tried to sneak it into conversations: “We will meet this evening *cough*inshallah*cough*.” Sneaky bastards.
The phrase made me wary whenever I heard it, instantly disbelieving whatever had just been said. After the first day of class here in Morocco, my professor said “See you tomorrow, inshallah”, and a part of me was surprised when I actually did see him the next day.
My fundamental problem with the term was the philosophy it reflected, a type of fatalism that made a convenient excuse for apathy. If everything happens as God wills, why try to change your life? It's folly to fight against whatever fate He's laid out for you. I've noticed a negative correlation between religion and traffic safety: when people hold to a more deterministic faith, one where every decision is made by a higher power, they tend not to wear their seat belts. This is anecdotal, of course, but still.
Morocco is not Gambia, though, and anyone who thinks that the Arab people are content to have their fates decided for them has been in a cave for the last year. "Inshallah" means something different here.
I just got back from a trip to Merzouga, a tiny town on the southeast border of Morocco, huddled precariously on edge of the Sahara desert. It’s the last real outpost of civilization before trackless miles of sand and hardpack dirt. The town’s 200 residents survive almost entirely on tourism, which has been hit hard in recent years. The European crisis and the spread of the Sahara from climate change have hit the town hard. I splurged and went for the two-day package, wanting to see as much of the desert as I could in a weekend. My guide, Achmed, was a hell of a guy, both tour guide and linguistic philosopher, and he taught me many interesting things about the language – including the fact that my name here, Yahya, means “live,” like an imperative command. It’s apparently something you can shout at someone if you feel they aren’t living life to the fullest.
Yahya!
As we were walking through the sands I pointed at a gigantic dune towering over the town. According to legend a rich family had refused to give any money to a poor old woman, so God buried them under a sand dune. I like that sort of old-school wrath story, although I suspect that it might have been propagated by the old beggar women you find in every town – “You don’t want to give me a dirham? That’s fine. You know, there was a family here once that didn’t give someone a dirham, and BAM, God hit them with a mountain. Just saying.”
Anyway, I asked Achmed if we could climb the dune later, and he said “Yes, inshallah.”
I said, “No, seriously. I want to climb the dune.”
He said, “Okay! Inshallah.”
“Why not? Is it too far?”
“No, it’s fine. We’ll climb it in the afternoon, inshallah.”
“Why don’t you want to climb the damned dune?”
“We will,” he said, practically shouting. We were each getting a little frustrated. “We will climb the dune. It will happen.”
“Okay,” I said.
“All right.” Pause. “Inshallah.”
“Aaagh!”
After some discussion, I found that he really did intend to climb the dune. But he couldn’t promise it. Who knew what might happen? The camel could break a leg, one of us could get sick, a sandstorm could whip up and drive us to shelter. There was no way he could absolutely guarantee anything.
The biggest lie we Americans like to tell ourselves is that we’re in control. We make these plans, draw up these schedules, set firm dates. But there’s only one sure way to make God laugh. How often have your plans been wildly derailed by something completely out of your control, something wholly unexpected and unprepared for? Maybe it was God’s will, maybe not, but it sure as hell wasn’t yours.
For Achmed, “inshallah” is just a way of acknowledging the untameability of life. The future cannot be corralled, it won’t go where you point or march at your pace. We can control our actions (to a point), and we can influence the actions of others (to a lesser point), and for the rest, we’re swept where the future takes us.
We did end up climbing that dune, and the sunset was glorious. I think I managed to catch in my eye the very last photon of the sun as it sank behind the distant sands. As we sat Achmed told me his plans to start his own touring company, letting out rooms in a small hotel he’d built next to his house. His eyes flashed as he explained his business plan, how he’d compete with other companies by offering more extreme treks, by bike or foot, for tourists who want to battle the desert.
For those who were disappointed by the lack of zany hyginks in this post, I’ve got plenty stored up, from my forays into the Fez medina and my trips to Asila and Chef Chauen, the blue city. I’ll put them up in another post soon - this time without a two-week gap.
Inshallah.
