A Note on Language
A few years ago, I was invited to visit a foundation for women’s rights in Cairo. The staff and I talked in English, which they spoke far more fluently than I did Arabic. At the end of an impressive tour, however, I tried to rise to the occasion. “Thank you,” I struggled in my very best Arabic, “for inviting me to your woman’s center.” There was an awkward pause and some curious looks from my hosts, but the moment quickly passed, and with the hospitality that Egyptians are famous for, we parted with handshakes and smiles all around.
It wasn’t until later, when some Egyptian friends burst out laughing as I told them the story, that I discovered the source of the confusion. “But, Shereen, you thanked them for visiting their center for sluts!” Through a subtle mispronunciation of the Arabic word for “woman,” I had put their organization into a different line of business altogether.
Such adventures in Arabic have made me all the more conscious of helping readers to get it right. So in this book, where Arabic words are transliterated into English, I have followed the gold standard of the International Journal of Middle East Studies; for simplicity’s sake, however, diacritical marks have been omitted. Two Arabic letters that have caused me plenty of trouble over the years, including the episode above, are represented by ‘ for ‘ ayn and ’ for hamza .
When I’m talking about Egypt, I’ve sometimes parted ways with IJMES , transliterating words to capture local pronunciation. So it’s ahwa instead of qahwa , Gamal instead of Jamal, and so on. There are, inevitably, exceptions to this exception. For example, where Arabic words have made their way into English, they are not italicized and I have opted not to Egyptianize them in most cases—that means “hijab,” instead of hegab , for instance. The same applies for plurals. Where words have crossed into English, I use s; otherwise, I have retained the original Arabic plural form. So that’s “fatwa” and “fatwas” (not fatawa ); faqih and fuqaha ’ (not faqihs). I have also used the common English spelling for names of places and well-known people, past and present.
7
Come the Revolution
Safety is in slowness; regret is in haste .
—My grandmother, on evolution over revolution
“Citadel! Citadel!” my taxi driver shouted in Arabic, our eyes locking in the rearview mirror. “Take off your clothes!”
I was on my way to one of Cairo’s famous landmarks: the Citadel, a massive fortress built by Salah al-Din, the famous crusader-crusher, almost a millennium ago. We were traveling in a tin-pot Panda, one of Cairo’s aging fleet of black-and-white taxis, an endangered species now that sleek white sedans with all mod cons (including working meters and windows that slide, rather than fall, down) roam the land. Given my experience of sexual harassment in the city, I should have been outraged by my driver’s suggestion, or at the very least relieved that he didn’t reach over with a helping hand. But I was, in fact, grateful. “You are right.” I laughed. “A thousands thanks,” I added, for what was less a proposition and more a lesson in pronunciation.
“Citadel” is what we call this bastion in English; in Arabic, however, the word is Qal’a, something of a mouthful the way Egyptians say it. I kept stumbling over the letters until my driver, in exasperation, tried to help by drawing my attention to a familiar word with a similar pronunciation—Egyptian Arabic for “undressing.” As the day was heating up, and sweat poured down my back, I was inclined to put this lesson into practice. By then, however, we had reached our destination.
The Citadel sits on a promontory to the east of Cairo. Until TV towers and concrete apartment blocks started sprouting in the 1960s and ’70s, it dominated the city’s skyline, crowned by theMosque of Muhammad Ali, built by the ruler who set Egypt on its path to
A few years ago, I was invited to visit a foundation for women’s rights in Cairo. The staff and I talked in English, which they spoke far more fluently than I did Arabic. At the end of an impressive tour, however, I tried to rise to the occasion. “Thank you,” I struggled in my very best Arabic, “for inviting me to your woman’s center.” There was an awkward pause and some curious looks from my hosts, but the moment quickly passed, and with the hospitality that Egyptians are famous for, we parted with handshakes and smiles all around.
It wasn’t until later, when some Egyptian friends burst out laughing as I told them the story, that I discovered the source of the confusion. “But, Shereen, you thanked them for visiting their center for sluts!” Through a subtle mispronunciation of the Arabic word for “woman,” I had put their organization into a different line of business altogether.
Such adventures in Arabic have made me all the more conscious of helping readers to get it right. So in this book, where Arabic words are transliterated into English, I have followed the gold standard of the International Journal of Middle East Studies; for simplicity’s sake, however, diacritical marks have been omitted. Two Arabic letters that have caused me plenty of trouble over the years, including the episode above, are represented by ‘ for ‘ ayn and ’ for hamza .
When I’m talking about Egypt, I’ve sometimes parted ways with IJMES , transliterating words to capture local pronunciation. So it’s ahwa instead of qahwa , Gamal instead of Jamal, and so on. There are, inevitably, exceptions to this exception. For example, where Arabic words have made their way into English, they are not italicized and I have opted not to Egyptianize them in most cases—that means “hijab,” instead of hegab , for instance. The same applies for plurals. Where words have crossed into English, I use s; otherwise, I have retained the original Arabic plural form. So that’s “fatwa” and “fatwas” (not fatawa ); faqih and fuqaha ’ (not faqihs). I have also used the common English spelling for names of places and well-known people, past and present.
7
Come the Revolution
Safety is in slowness; regret is in haste .
—My grandmother, on evolution over revolution
“Citadel! Citadel!” my taxi driver shouted in Arabic, our eyes locking in the rearview mirror. “Take off your clothes!”
I was on my way to one of Cairo’s famous landmarks: the Citadel, a massive fortress built by Salah al-Din, the famous crusader-crusher, almost a millennium ago. We were traveling in a tin-pot Panda, one of Cairo’s aging fleet of black-and-white taxis, an endangered species now that sleek white sedans with all mod cons (including working meters and windows that slide, rather than fall, down) roam the land. Given my experience of sexual harassment in the city, I should have been outraged by my driver’s suggestion, or at the very least relieved that he didn’t reach over with a helping hand. But I was, in fact, grateful. “You are right.” I laughed. “A thousands thanks,” I added, for what was less a proposition and more a lesson in pronunciation.
“Citadel” is what we call this bastion in English; in Arabic, however, the word is Qal’a, something of a mouthful the way Egyptians say it. I kept stumbling over the letters until my driver, in exasperation, tried to help by drawing my attention to a familiar word with a similar pronunciation—Egyptian Arabic for “undressing.” As the day was heating up, and sweat poured down my back, I was inclined to put this lesson into practice. By then, however, we had reached our destination.
The Citadel sits on a promontory to the east of Cairo. Until TV towers and concrete apartment blocks started sprouting in the 1960s and ’70s, it dominated the city’s skyline, crowned by theMosque of Muhammad Ali, built by the ruler who set Egypt on its path to
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