Musings

Understandings

You know when you just read part of a page and then you sit there thinking. Two things have been explained to me just now, while I sat with my feet under a hot water bottle by a draughty window reading an introduction to one Iraqi writer.

I have been reading various things without really knowing what I was reading or why. I'm happy with this, I'd rather the understanding came later, not forced on me by some stranger. I am frowning at the thought. Too much university literature study already in my life. I like to read as and when. Person to person, mind to mind.

So

This sentence came along...which explains a huge amount about Samuel Shimon's book about Paris plus pretty much everything else I have read.

'..layers of voices, places, and eras that continuously stir what we know or remember.' and '..at once about the present and the past..'

Then this came along...which explains a blog I read, or rather puts other words to it.

'..dead poets join living storytellers in narrating.'

Ok, those quotations don't seem so special now, but it doesn't take much to set me off thinking.

Pronunciation

So which version of Arabic do I learn? I think I have picked up another non-fusHa word without knowing it. The way I said the word in class was not the way the teacher said it, so I guess that is another from-the-heart-word which had popped out in non-fusHa and went into my mind just like that. Hmm, more layers of this and that.

No English

I decided I would only speak Arabic in the class, which I stuck to mostly. It surprised our teacher and was helpful. She really tried to understand what I was trying to convey. Sitting at the front always helps.