Thursday, November 16, 2006

A is not for Apple, Alone!

Today after work, I went to see Y, the supervisor I had for my volunteering job, she wanted me to help D, an English teacher at the center teaching English for the new comers.
His students have varying levels of competence in the English language, and he could not review each lesson for each group, so I took group number two.
But I knew that one of the two students, was an Iraqi lady, in her early fifties, it is funny and surreal, how her Iraqi accent stood before my eyes as if it is a real chunk of land from AyiraK, ok ok, the “sikisteen” was definitely an Arab genre type of accent, but damn, did not I just die when she said “chibis”, while explaining her trip to food basic, upon D’s request at the start of the lesson how each student should explain of what he/she did during the week.
And oh, “ChilidRReen” !! :D

So, I ended up reviewing the numbers for them, and we did review some old vocabs, when we stumbled about the word “alone”, I asked if they know this word, she gave me some look, she said “I alone, live in mayi apaRRtmaint”, that’s how she recognized the meaning of the word, she looked sad for a bit, I asked the where abouts of her family, she told me that her “chilidreen” are in Jordan, Amman. She is an old woman, in a country she is new to, but then I could not stop, I asked how she came here and some other related questions, she felt a bit uncomfortable, and I just continued with the reviewing.

But then, I decided to go home when it was break time, I could not stay that long, I had to go home, I was tired and bored, and when I told her, that I will be going home, she almost jumped from her seat, wishing me to stay even more, wasn’t she ever so happy to discover another Iraqi soul such as herself. I proceeded with no thinking, and ever so spontaneously, I wrote my number on the tissue paper that I used previously to draw the meaning of the vocab, boat :D , and so I gave it to her. She is alone after all, she looked at me with happiness, but what so strange, she asked “ya3ni ani agdar akhbrich 3ala hatha il ra8um, ya3ni a7aslich?” (“I can call you on that number, can I get you on that number?”), deep down inside, I was “Duh, that’s why I gave it to you”, I left the classroom, seeing her big, wide smile following me until the exit.
I was apathetic to the volunteering thingi, but she made me feel something!

5 comments:

zmanutdz said...

Such experiences change lives and believe me she will be ever so grateful. You know what does the a7a9lich mean? It is a term drilled into every Iraqi head, the a7a9il comes from the sad fact she probably thinks that the telephone sometimes doesnt ei7a9il ( very common in Iraq ). Wallah I need to do some work with the newcomers, I am trying to help afew Iraqis here at Uni to adjust but helping older people should be more challenging.

I felt something as well when I read your post. How stupid I can be when I start complaining about my life, such an idiot I am.

The Eyewitness said...

Touching Experience, thanks for sharing.

Shams said...

zmanutdz,

thanx for giving me some tha8afeh 3ira8iya of the "a7a9lich" culture.

and hopefully, i can make a difference, in today's class, i did not see her though.

and yeah older ppl, they are a totally different story, they have to be strong enough to adjust or else....

"How stupid I can be when I start complaining about my life, such an idiot I am."

we all compalin about our lives at times, and yeah, sometimes we over look what we have, and the good things we enjoy, the simplest it can be.But sometimes it is relative, but nevertheless, we have to be thankful.

oh, i feel like telling a tale, a co-worker of mine, one of her best friends, had had breast cancer long time ago, she went through the trouble fine, well, yeah she got her breast amputated, but guess what, now she has cancer in her eyes, yes the eyes, and darn it, it is so rare to have cancer in the eyes...........now how about that....
al7amdulah 3ala kulshi.


the eyewitness,

how are you, long time no c, i can't check your blog, what happened to it........oh and you are welcome

:)

The Eyewitness said...

Gilgamish,
I don't always comment but I visit your blog regularly, it on my top list in the my Feeding. My blog is okay, there is nothing wrong about it.

Shams said...

the eyewitness,

i click your name, and i get profile not available. and it says this "The Blogger Profile you requested cannot be displayed. Many Blogger users have not yet elected to publicly share their Profile. "

b4, i never had the problem of accessing your blog.