Who are we?
So now that I have a chance to breathe a bit and take a break from all that back-breaking university workload, I've come back to share my perspective on things. There are two points I have on my mind which I wish to discuss, but I wouldn't do either of them justice if I put them together in one post. No one would want to read the long post that would result from my attempts, and, quite frankly, I'd probably get lost in my own thoughts. So lets just hope I don't forget to write a second post sometime soon.
I've had several books shipped for me literally from the other side of the world. They are all in Arabic. What am I to do with seven Arabic books? Well, use them to write up a research paper. In English. For a course in an American university. If you care to know why I'm using Arabic sources and not English ones, you will soon know why. I'm honestly much more comfortable with English than I am with Arabic, at least in an academic setting. You can probably tell by my choice of language in blogging anyways. I have also never done research in Arabic (copy-pasting from an unreliable website does not count). I don't even remember reading a single book in Arabic, save for some childish books from when I was young. I blame all that on the poor education system in the UAE, but you can go read about that in a post I've written a long time ago called "Being Bilingual," so I won't go into it.
All of that considered, why am I consciously choosing to torture myself by forcing myself to read several books in Arabic? Well the answer is, I have no other choice. I have no choice because of the topic I've chosen to research, of course. Because I couldn't find any English sources on the subject, so I searched for Arabic ones instead. And guess what, I found them. I found several books. All stashed up in a library in New York. Some old, some relatively new, and some that aren't even dated. I think its an adventure. This is what you go to college for. I'm excited for my research paper; sure its going to be tough trying to extract information from these books, but the outcome is something I'm hopefully going to be proud of.
Enough about my research paper now, that's not my topic. I started reading one of these books yesterday, and I learned something interesting I never new. On the very first page too. So let me discuss that.
I picked up the newest book of the bunch: dated 2008. I guessed it couldn't be that bad. I got past all the introductions and formalities, and I started reading. The first heading asks, "Who are the Arabs?" And so you read on about what makes the Arabs who they are, and what gives them their name. Now this is the part I doubt many of you know.
According to the book and its author, the Arabs are called as such because of their mastery of the Arabic language. To quote: إن كلمة عرب مشتقة من الأعراب. و قد سموا بذلك لأن الغالب عليهم الفصاحة و البيان و المنطق. The text then states that whoever is not considered عربي (Arab) by this definition, is عجمي (Ajami). There are two definitions of the latter word, one which simply means foreigner, and the other refers to the person that does not have mastery of the Arabic language, wherever he descends from.
From the above we can deduce two things: that anyone could be considered an Arab if he demonstrated mastery of the Arabic language. The other is my own deduction. Based on the above definition, I would think that none of the Emiratis, or at least a very minuscule percentage of us, could be considered a true Arab. I would say the same about the other "Arab" countries as well, but I don't think I have the right to speak for them. How can it be though, how are we allowing the Arab to die off? And yet we're still so very proud of our ancestry and who we think we are. But who are we really?
If we don't know our language, our mother tongue, then what do we know? Yes I'm fluent in English, but what good does that do when I'm allowing my own language to die off and whither away? Its not just me, or just you, its the whole community, the entire society we live in. Maybe we can't truly call ourselves Arabs anymore; but even if the Arab is no longer in our tongue, it still lives in our hearts for sure. The old Arab hospitality our area of the world is known for, it's still in our veins. And the pride we have, thats also Arab. Even though this connection is still there, I still found it extremely upsetting when I got to my conclusion. That we are not Arab until we become masters of the language like our ancestors once were. I plan to get there some day.
An Emirati would define himself first and foremost, as an Arab. But what happens once he realizes, like I have, that he cannot honestly call himself Arab anymore? Who would he be? An Emirati? By definition, a native citizen of the United Arab Emirates would have to be Arab. Wonderful, who is this person then?
People only care about ethnicity, and thus an Emirati national will always be Arab, he's safe. No one's going to go into all the technicalities of what I have mentioned. But isn't there this nudge in one's heart that tells a person of their hypocrisy? It should let a person know of their responsibility towards the Arabic language. It is because they are Arab that they should master the language. So they can say with confidence that they are Arab. Not that they wouldn't otherwise anyways...
My point is that, I always feel upset when I try to read Arabic poetry and it just doesn't make any sense. I open a book my great-grandfather wrote about 120 years ago. It contains three hundred pages of poetry: I can probably only understand about a dozen pages in total. Its hard, but I'm sure its not impossibly hard. We all read Shakespeare at some point, most of us hate him, but we can manage to understand and read it at some point. Let me say this: the few lines of poetry that I've gotten out of that book were much more beautiful than anything Shakespeare has ever written, I only wish I understood the rest.
I've been blaming my lack of interest in Arabic books for what in my view was, a lack of good Arabic novels. This books I'm currently reading, it's not a novel. I find it more interesting than most of the English readings I've done this semester. I think I've proved a point to myself. I can only hope to convey this point to you. Don't let go of this language, don't let go of who you are. I go to a university where my friends are very enthusiastic about learning Arabic, it saddens me to realize that they sometimes make connections about the language that I have never thought of before. I am Arab, I must only get a better grasp of my language. If I don't, then who am I?
I leave you with this:
I've had several books shipped for me literally from the other side of the world. They are all in Arabic. What am I to do with seven Arabic books? Well, use them to write up a research paper. In English. For a course in an American university. If you care to know why I'm using Arabic sources and not English ones, you will soon know why. I'm honestly much more comfortable with English than I am with Arabic, at least in an academic setting. You can probably tell by my choice of language in blogging anyways. I have also never done research in Arabic (copy-pasting from an unreliable website does not count). I don't even remember reading a single book in Arabic, save for some childish books from when I was young. I blame all that on the poor education system in the UAE, but you can go read about that in a post I've written a long time ago called "Being Bilingual," so I won't go into it.
All of that considered, why am I consciously choosing to torture myself by forcing myself to read several books in Arabic? Well the answer is, I have no other choice. I have no choice because of the topic I've chosen to research, of course. Because I couldn't find any English sources on the subject, so I searched for Arabic ones instead. And guess what, I found them. I found several books. All stashed up in a library in New York. Some old, some relatively new, and some that aren't even dated. I think its an adventure. This is what you go to college for. I'm excited for my research paper; sure its going to be tough trying to extract information from these books, but the outcome is something I'm hopefully going to be proud of.
Enough about my research paper now, that's not my topic. I started reading one of these books yesterday, and I learned something interesting I never new. On the very first page too. So let me discuss that.
I picked up the newest book of the bunch: dated 2008. I guessed it couldn't be that bad. I got past all the introductions and formalities, and I started reading. The first heading asks, "Who are the Arabs?" And so you read on about what makes the Arabs who they are, and what gives them their name. Now this is the part I doubt many of you know.
According to the book and its author, the Arabs are called as such because of their mastery of the Arabic language. To quote: إن كلمة عرب مشتقة من الأعراب. و قد سموا بذلك لأن الغالب عليهم الفصاحة و البيان و المنطق. The text then states that whoever is not considered عربي (Arab) by this definition, is عجمي (Ajami). There are two definitions of the latter word, one which simply means foreigner, and the other refers to the person that does not have mastery of the Arabic language, wherever he descends from.
From the above we can deduce two things: that anyone could be considered an Arab if he demonstrated mastery of the Arabic language. The other is my own deduction. Based on the above definition, I would think that none of the Emiratis, or at least a very minuscule percentage of us, could be considered a true Arab. I would say the same about the other "Arab" countries as well, but I don't think I have the right to speak for them. How can it be though, how are we allowing the Arab to die off? And yet we're still so very proud of our ancestry and who we think we are. But who are we really?
If we don't know our language, our mother tongue, then what do we know? Yes I'm fluent in English, but what good does that do when I'm allowing my own language to die off and whither away? Its not just me, or just you, its the whole community, the entire society we live in. Maybe we can't truly call ourselves Arabs anymore; but even if the Arab is no longer in our tongue, it still lives in our hearts for sure. The old Arab hospitality our area of the world is known for, it's still in our veins. And the pride we have, thats also Arab. Even though this connection is still there, I still found it extremely upsetting when I got to my conclusion. That we are not Arab until we become masters of the language like our ancestors once were. I plan to get there some day.
An Emirati would define himself first and foremost, as an Arab. But what happens once he realizes, like I have, that he cannot honestly call himself Arab anymore? Who would he be? An Emirati? By definition, a native citizen of the United Arab Emirates would have to be Arab. Wonderful, who is this person then?
People only care about ethnicity, and thus an Emirati national will always be Arab, he's safe. No one's going to go into all the technicalities of what I have mentioned. But isn't there this nudge in one's heart that tells a person of their hypocrisy? It should let a person know of their responsibility towards the Arabic language. It is because they are Arab that they should master the language. So they can say with confidence that they are Arab. Not that they wouldn't otherwise anyways...
My point is that, I always feel upset when I try to read Arabic poetry and it just doesn't make any sense. I open a book my great-grandfather wrote about 120 years ago. It contains three hundred pages of poetry: I can probably only understand about a dozen pages in total. Its hard, but I'm sure its not impossibly hard. We all read Shakespeare at some point, most of us hate him, but we can manage to understand and read it at some point. Let me say this: the few lines of poetry that I've gotten out of that book were much more beautiful than anything Shakespeare has ever written, I only wish I understood the rest.
I've been blaming my lack of interest in Arabic books for what in my view was, a lack of good Arabic novels. This books I'm currently reading, it's not a novel. I find it more interesting than most of the English readings I've done this semester. I think I've proved a point to myself. I can only hope to convey this point to you. Don't let go of this language, don't let go of who you are. I go to a university where my friends are very enthusiastic about learning Arabic, it saddens me to realize that they sometimes make connections about the language that I have never thought of before. I am Arab, I must only get a better grasp of my language. If I don't, then who am I?
I leave you with this:
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