Every Wednesday I lose my voice But it’s great because if it’s Wednesday that means that the toughest day of the week, Tuesdays : 7 classes, as in nearly 7 hours of lecturing/talking/yelling/teaching/on your feet emotionally plummeting and skyrocketing dealing with kids/, day is over.
Tuesday this week I realized, at the end of my last class, that I hadn’t seen Salem’s mom in nearly three weeks. Last year, he was one of my 3rd graders (now 4th grade), for some reason really rebellious, he’d always act out, and he never spoke a word of English. His concerned mom, now a close friend and a sister like figure, came in one day to talk to me and tell me about this kid, who was born in Philadelphia, USA, but for familial reasons had to come back to Palestine. Her flawless American accent had thrown me off and had shocked me. The kids at school would make fun of him because he spoke with an American accent, so he completely shut down and stopped communicating in English. His mom and I made a deal, that I would work with Salem, to not only work on his language skills but also his behavior and attitude towards school. Her exact words to me were “my son is American. If there ever is a time when he can go back to America or we visit the States, I want to know that my son can be picked up from Palestine and dropped off in the middle of anywhere in America and communicate with anyone and everyone and not feel like a foreigner”. I would go to his house almost three times a week and spend hours with him, not as a teacher, mostly as a friend, and hear about his wild stories of being the most bad ass cop saving the world from evil. I discovered , as strange as it sounds, that he had literally turned off this emotional switch, and now it was fully reactivated and he was playing and laughing with me and communicating with me with perfect ease. It was strange and beautiful because I literally had done nothing nor ‘taught’ him anything, we would just sit and chat. Or read stories. Or play games. And his mom would come back surprised that all of that would take place in English. And she’d always be perplexed, slightly, and ask what I did, and my response would always be “absolutely nothing. We just read..kind of”.
Monday was mother’s day, so I figured I could show up at Salem’s house to say hello with some flowers. Flower buckets cluttered the streets in light of mother’s day.
I walked in to find both Salem and his mom super busy super cleaning for a super number of guests who were going to come to their house in the next hour. As soon as I walked in, she saw that something was wrong with my voice. “Are you sick?” “No” I laughed “just teaching, it’s tuesday”. In mid conversation she hurried to her kitchen and came back with a spoon full of fresh honey just scooped out of this giant honey jar, and it was in my mouth, the whole glob of spoon filled honey, before I realized it or could say anything. I struggled to move my mouth, it was so much honey and it had exploded my taste palettes so suddenly and the sweetness and the smooth stickiness of it made the attempt of getting any word out, such as “whoa”, come out really comical. Real honey is like real heaven. And it tastes so different from non-real honey. It was just too much in too little time and as I was struggling to ‘eat’ all of the honey, Salem’s mom kept on going about how my voice would be fixed in no time with this and how great fresh fresh fresh honey is for your health and then she scrimmaged in her cupboard and got out this yellow container filled with sticks of herbs inside. “you know zataar right?” “of course!” I said, ‘that stuff is awesome!”
“Well this is zaataar farsi, Persian zataar, you take this, put it in boiling water, and you’ll feel great” and she put the container in a bag and it was in my hand. I had literally been in the house less than 10 minutes and hadn’t even taken off my jacket, and already had two remedies.
It didn’t stop there. “why did you not take off your jacket? Come eat lunch with us”. “no I should really get going” She looked at me with almost a ‘are you serious? Are you stupid?’ look. “My mom made Makhluba yesterday, I can fix you up a plate right now, you sure you don’t want it? and we have fresh yogurt and goat yogurt. Salem go get the goat yogurt! I think she’ll like it! (turns back to me) you sure you don’t want a plate. It’s right here. We’re all going to eat, eat with us”. How can one refuse?
Salem’s grandfather came in, on his cane, limping slightly, but just like always, with his twinkling smile. “Ahlain Fahmida! Keefik? Shu akhbarik?” (welcome welcome fahmida, how are you, what’s new) and he sat down with me and we started talking about Libya. He asked if I knew of the number of Bangladeshis who were deported from Libya. And as I’m eating the delicious meal, I was enjoying the fact that Salem’s grandfather, probably a character who is dignity defined, is speaking to me in all Arabic, with no trace of any English syllable, confident that I am understanding. It’s really sweet and touching because it emanates a feeling of ‘you’re a part of our family’ not the ‘foreigner teacher’. I told him that I went to visit Sabastia last week, a village outside of Nablus, and how gorgeous it was, the hills, especially in the flowers! He told me only in Spring time will you see it like this, and he told me to go to Tulkarem and Jenin and told me how beautiful Spring time in Palestine was.
The conversation was refreshing, pleasant and heartwarming. It also made me realize the push and pull and tug of war relationship I have with the Arabic language. I am at a place where I can understand a significant portion of conversations, but getting my mouth to synchronize the words and string them together to create the symphonic beauty of the language that I hear is o so challenging. During recess I get my students to help, and they are very kind, and there are a couple who linger around the teacher’s room to see if I’m around and then they stop to see if I need help with Arabic homework. We practice, in reverse roles, where I let them be my teachers. And they are quite the phenomenal teachers.
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