Calligraphy

By:  Kaylah Cruz-Herrera

 When I began learning Arabic, one of the most intimidating aspects of the language was the alphabet.  The Arabic alphabet has more letters than the English alphabet, no short vowels, connecting letters, letters that never connect, and- the scariest- is read from right to left.  In Morocco, I mastered the Arabic alphabet in two weeks.  Unlike English writing, Arabic is completely phonetic.  Now, I actually prefer writing in Arabic to writing in English.  But, it wasn’t until I started learning Arabic calligraphy that I really started to appreciate it.

            

The CLC began offering calligraphy classes to NSLI-Y students in October.  I have been in the class since the beginning.  At first, I hated it.  I hated sitting in the class for two hours writing “ب ب ب….” over and over while my teacher kept saying, “Slowly! Slowly!  لالا لا!!”  It was frustrating.  Calligraphy is demanding and requires a sharp eye for the subtle differences between good and bad letters.  Luckily, I have a good teacher.

            

He’s been practicing calligraphy since before I was born and a master of the Moroccan style of Arabic calligraphy.  He’s also a little weird, but that’s only because he loves calligraphy so much.  He likes to show us beautiful examples of calligraphy that he’s done, often written on scraps of old paper and store receipts.  Once, he stood up in the middle of class and performed Thai Chi in order to illustrate to us how calligraphy is like many other arts.  He also loves to give us random lectures.

          

  Once, he told us about the history of the Arabic alphabet, why it is written the way it is, and how it helped non-Arabs understand Islam.  The Arabic alphabet was developed before Islam.  There were no dots (which, in case you can’t read Arabic yet, distinguish many different sounds from another) and no short vowels.  After the Quran was revealed, people realized that the alphabet needed to be easier for outsiders to understand.  Arabs could read the Quran easily because they had the necessary language background, but non-Arabs could not.  One linguist was finally convinced to restructure the Arabic alphabet after it was pointed out to him that without short vowels (which, at that time, were absent from the Arabic alphabet) a non-Arab could misinterpret the sentence “God absolves himself of criminals, and His prophet (also absolves himself of criminals)” as “God absolves himself of criminals and His prophet”.  An easier-to-read alphabet was developed to ensure that the Quran could not be misunderstood.

            

I also learned from my calligraphy teacher about the origins of the short vowels and why they are written the way they are.  Basically, short vowels are modeled after long vowels, only a lot smaller.  

My advice to new Arabic students is to really enjoy the Arabic alphabet.  It is easy to read and really helps you understand the language and culture.

“Where are you from?” “America.” “No, but where are you really from?”

Moroccans are very curious beings. Topics including religion, ethnicity, age, relationship status, family details, etc. are things people commonly talk and ask freely about here. Some of these subjects are not usual conversation starters in America, some even to the point of being taboo. At first, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was being interrogated every day and it was hard to judge who to tell what to. Taxi drivers, store keepers, teachers, students, and family members alike are all people I run into on a daily basis who are determined to find out my story.

          The routine usually goes like this:

1) The Curious Citizen (CC) realizes I don’t speak Darija and my French accent is awful; therefore, I am an English speaker. 2) The next question he or she tries to answer is British or American? Usually CC can pick out my American accent and that answers that. 3) Now for my skin color, where can a girl with tanner skin and black hair (thanks to an intense henna session a month ago) be from? Taking all my physical characteristics into consideration, CC derives a couple of possibilities to explain my existence:  either I am American-Indian (not Native American), American-Pakistani, or of some Moroccan decent and I am here to learn my native tongue since my parents never taught it to me. 4) At this point, I usually answer, “American,” but that almost never flies with CC. 5) He or she is now unsatisfied and wants to know why I look and talk the way I do and “American” just doesn’t exactly explain any of that. 6) Here, I start to talk about where my parents and all are from (except for the creepy non-stop-look-in-the-rear-view-mirror taxi drivers) of my heritage and that either just finished our conversation or it triggered more questions. 7) Follow-up questions will now include Why are you here?, Are you a Muslim?, You are not married, are you?. 8) And this is when I try to dodge and weave anything that may be on the too personal side.

          Sometimes these conversations are all in English or French or Arabic or a little bit of everything. Misinterpreting things or just not understanding one another happens a lot, but it’s just one more thing I feel like I’ve gotten used to. A good amount of these interactions have been positive experiences for me. It’s refreshing to talk to people who are genuinely interested in who I am and what brought me to Morocco. But there have also been those times when I feel as though I’m being judged or mocked and the feeling that I was being too nice or too honest. I guess living here for five months already has made me accustomed to people being curious about me and in most cases I know how to react. Now I am just worried that I will go back to America wanting to know people’s origins and life stories at the get-go.