A few days ago, I received a phone call. It was my neighbor from upstairs. Between her limited English and my limited Arabic, I deduced she was inviting me upstairs.
I packed up Sophie, a sippy cup, and my English-Arabic dictionary and went up. When I got there, she invited me in and the scurried around putting on her Abya and Tarha. This confused me a little, but I thought maybe she was expecting someone to deliver something at the door and needed to be covered.
But when she was finished, she said “We go down.”
“Down where?” I asked, a little mystified at this turn of events.
She talked in Arabic to me and again the words I could understand were: “We are going down.”
“Ok” I said, thinking, I’m here now. Might as well see what adventure she is planning. Never an adventure for her, but always for me because she takes me places I couldn’t go by myself.
And down we went. When we got to the bottom of our building and out on the street she looked at me again. “Where will we go?” She asked.
I guess I was supposed to have a plan. It is possible, while we were on the phone she said all this to me, I just didn’t understand it initially. Its possible. She says a lot of things in Arabic and I catch words now and then. Enough to make me think I can agree without knowing exactly what I have agreed to. Obviously, I don’t catch everything.
“I don’t know,” I said. She looked at me and I’m sure she was thinking, “Crazy American. Doesn’t she understand what I am saying? Why would she agree to something she didn’t understand?”
“What do you want to pay?” She asked. “Buy, do you mean what do you want to buy?” “Yes, what do you want to buy?” (There is no “p” sound in Arabic)
(At this point, I am thinking to myself: “I don’t want to buy anything. I really want to be upstairs, in my pajama’s snuggled up next to my husband, drinking tea, like I typically do at 9:00 at night. I thought I was just coming upstairs to hang out in your apartment. What in the world would I want to buy at 9:00 at night?”)
What I said was, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”
Much Arabic followed, maybe she was frustrated with me. But we were saved by her little sister joining us, begging for “coke and snacks”.
The little sister assured us that she knew of a market “right around the corner” which translated into English means at least 3 long blocks away! I was intrigued. I love to see what markets majority friends go to. They are never the ones I frequent and I love to see what they buy.
Our weather has cooled down and become breezy so evening walks are awesome and I rarely get to be out at this time because my babies are usually in route to bed by way of the bathtub or already in bed by this time.
The walk was lovely and my friend and her sister chatted and I listened, catching a word every now and again and even a phrase here and there. I interjected as I could with my vocabulary.
We walked down streets and around corners with which I was familiar, but then we turned down a side street that was new to me. And there was the market. It looked as if it were built along the side of the man’s house, almost nothing more than an alleyway. But he was well stocked with drinks, snacks, laundry detergent, odds and ends of things and a small selection of vegetables.
My friends stocked up on Pepsi, chips, KitKat bars, a new smoothie drink I had never tried and a juice box for Sophie.
We walked home, munching on our snacks and then sharing them with the other brother and sisters when we got home.
When Sophie got fussy, I brought her home. Full of funny stories to tell Brian about my friends, the words I understood, the things I didn’t and the new things I ate.
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