We started off talking about family
sizes. Nasser has what Americans consider a large family; I think he said that
both his father and mother are one of eight children, and Nasser has three
brothers and four sisters. My mom is one of two and my dad is one of three; I
only have seven first cousins. He understands why the average number of
children is much lower in America; specifically, he mentioned the cost of putting
one’s children through college. In Saudi Arabia, the universities pay people to
attend. I then proceeded to explain the cost differences between public and
private universities, and the general education system in America. He didn’t
understand why one still has to pay to attend a public university; for that, I didn’t
have an answer (or at least a good one), but I did explain that all public
education up until college is free (well, it comes from tax dollars) and that
made him feel a little better about the cost of our schools.
In relation to school, Nasser does
not understand why Americans study English in school, more specifically in
college, because we know how to speak it. I had to explain that our English
classes are not focused on grammar like his classes, but instead on reading the
massive volume of published works and learning to analyze, critique, and
respond to it.
Next, Nasser asked for my email; he
found some good Arabic jokes and had tried to send them to me, but couldn’t find
my email address in his address book. I mentioned that today I read tales about
Juha, and he became so excited! He was surprised to learn that our whole class
is reading them, and he was ashamed that he forgot to mention Juha earlier when
he told me about Arabic humor. He also asked what I had learned from my
research on Arabic humor. As previously mentioned, I want people to pay
attention to our presentation, so I will not discuss most of the specifics.
One aspect of Arabic humor that we
spent a lot of time talking about is how cussing is off limits in their humor.
This filled a lot of time because I had to explain what a cuss word is. I used
a few words to explain that a cuss word is a word that once had an everyday,
benign definition, but which has since been converted into something used in a
derogatory way. I also described cuss words as “bad” words that should not be
said. For this, I used the n-word as an example. After I finished explaining
why it is so off-limits, he thanked me. He didn’t know that it was a bad word
or the derogatory meaning behind it, but he said he has heard it many times. I
found that very heartbreaking; a word as derogatory as that should not be used
in conversation, yet he has been in America for a year and has heard it many times,
never knowing that it is a bad word.
We also talked about the media, and
how the Middle East is always portrayed in such a negative light: burning
flags, burning buildings, and violent rioting, but that that only represents a
couple thousand out of the billion or so Muslims in the world. He said that in
the Middle East, in general, there are two groups of people: those who
peacefully protest by just standing on the street holding signs or by
boycotting products; then there are those who do not want to publicly respond
because they recognize the way that the rest of the world sees the Middle East,
and they do not want to further that stereotype. I understand that news is news
and that it needs to be public knowledge, but why does news always have to be
the bad stuff? Can’t people find good stuff informative and worth sharing? What
is it about human nature that so attracts our curiosity? From this, we discussed
the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were printed in a Danish newspaper,
but I will tell y’all more about that on Wednesday.
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