Why I Study Arabic

It all started with a book, but quickly became much bigger. I read A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2014 and my life was marked by the beauty and tragedy of life in Central Asia (Afghanistan). Come summer semester 2015 at Virginia Tech, I had enrolled in an Arabic class. At the time, I mistakenly thought that Arabic was spoken in Afghanistan, but it was a happy mistake that I would never take back.

Arabic is by far the hardest undertaking of my life; they have 15 ways to say everything and the poet in me longs to know the nuance of each variation, but it would be an impossible task apart from complete immersion in an Arabic-speaking country which isn’t feasible for me at this time. As I’ve thought about this post, I realized that it isn’t the language itself that keeps me going (although, I, for one, think it to be the most beautiful language in the world)… it’s the people I’ve met and grown to love along the way.

It started with my very first professor, Dr. Azzam. He was a devout Muslim that was constantly trying to make us see the error of our Christian ways, but boy, when he laughed, time stopped for a moment and you knew everything was going to be alright.

Then there was the venerable Dr. Ragheda Nasserdine, the oldest of my three professors. She required more from us than Dr. Azzam and for that I thank her. She lived through the Lebanese Civil War but carried herself in such a way that you would never know it. Maybe that’s the reason she carried herself with such dignity. She knew she was tough, but she had nothing to prove. She was elegant and made fun of me constantly: “Why are you making that face when you say that letter?” I’m glad I could provide her with some amusement as I toiled away to learn this strange but lovely language. She was the mother in Blacksburg that I needed.

Perhaps my favorite and longest-standing professor was Dr. Nadine Sinno. She, younger than the rest, was the head of the Arabic Language Department. If there’s a Beiruti version of a Southern firecracker, this lady takes the cake. Her job was to teach us about Arabic lit. (in translation), but what I came away with most from her was the dignity of every human life. She enraptured us with stories of living through the aforementioned war and ME life in general. She was FULL of panache and could easily keep us captivated for hours. I will always brag that she said I had a great Lebanese accent J. We moved from student-teacher to mentee-mentor the day she saw my necklace that had myrrh from Jerusalem hanging from it. We talked about what she believed, coming from a predominantly Muslim family. And let me tell ya, for a girl that came from a culture that oppresses women, she was not going to believe anything or do anything she didn’t want to. I remember the guts she had to return my final paper to me and say, “Habebtee, this material is above your paygrade; I’ve pulled some articles for you to look through to help you rewrite this paper.” Coming from anyone else I might have been offended but Dr. Sinno was different; you knew she had your best interest at heart. I still email with her occasionally and hope for her to write the foreword to a book I write one day.

Then there was Saud. I met Saud because in 2015 I was a creepy, mega-evangelist who approached anybody and everybody in hopes that they would listen to me talk about Jesus. I’m not knocking this approach, heck, I met one of my best friends, Saud through it, just saying it’s not for me. Back to Saud, I first noticed him when he fought with our Egyptian teacher twice in front of a 50 person class. I admired his audacity. He had a different opinion on ME history than she did, coming from Saudi Arabia. One day, nervous, I approached Saud after class and asked if he would like to come to an int’l student dinner that Chi Alpha was putting on that night. “Sure,” he said like a soft breeze. From there we hit it off like Bonnie and Clyde, instead of stealing physical things, we were stealing ancient secrets from both of our languages. He is, to this day, the most poetic person I have ever known: “Anna!! I can’t believe you don’t understand this yet.. the poetry is UNREAL,” he said of a Kazim a-Sahir song. He was one of my biggest advocates in continuing my pursuit of this bear of a language and for that I am eternally grateful. Finally, Saud had to return to Saudi and begin his job at Aramco. We keep in touch when we can. I miss him dearly. Also, we have a half-serious marriage pact that if we’re both not married by 30, we’ll tie the knot lol.

Then, I came home from Tech and was dejected. Studying Arabic alone is VERY hard and mentally taxing, let alone negligent. Then, I met little, Miss Gigi. A native Saudi, I cannot tell her full story here for safety reasons but you can know that her full name was Hagir-Arabic for the Hebrew HAGAR. Hagar has a huge place in my heart as the mother of all Arabs. I mark up her story every time I read it. So when I found out that this was her great name, I wrote a quick three-session bible study on Hagir, Arabs and God. I would love to expand that one day. Gigi became more stable and I see less and less of her but we still keep in touch and she is now engaged! How exciting.

Last, but not least, is Christian. I met him at a birthday party for one of our mutual friends and he almost jumped ten feet back when I told him I know what “wasta” is (under-the-table money and dealings that make traveling in the ME a whole lot easier). He soon became my tutor but, more than that, a friend. I’ve met his whole family and fell in love. It’s like a giant group lesson where I’m the only student gleaning ancient wisdom from these native speakers. When I’m over there there are always tea and cookies. And don’t even get me started on his nephew who might just be the cutest one-year-old IN THE WORLD. And he just got a new baby sister! I am quite, quite thankful for the Agha’s and how they’ve taken me in as their own; you can tell they have a knack for making people feel like they belong.

And now we’re here. I try to study Arabic for four hours a day and have one to two lessons with Christian a week. The work is hard but the payoff of being able to communicate on someone else’s terms is immeasurable. I hope to write a worship album in Arabic one day: lullabies for children. We’ll see how that pans out as I can neither sing nor speak Arabic fluently. A girl can dream. Well, that’s all I have. Find your people and you can do anything. God is love, Rev Run¹.

 1. if you don't understand this reference, don't worry about it lol