Khyber Dreams Chapter 15: A Pakistani Game, of Sorts

Before arriving in Pakistan I could recognize one or two words in Urdu, the language of Pakistan, but that was about it. Abid's family set about trying to change that.

One of the great games played during our visit was "Teach Judi to Speak Urdu."  To me this was great fun because I've always been something of an amateur linguist, fascinated by the ins-and-outs and relationships between culture and language. My college degree is in Spanish, something that has proved useful from time to time on jobs I've held, including ECCO, but has never resulted in anything employable.

I also took four semesters of Arabic at Cal State LA, which ultimately resulted in my meeting Abid. One of my classmates, Sharon Mackay, became a great friend, and we're still in contact sporadically today. She's one of those amazingly-organized people who never forgets a birthday, and every year like clockwork I receive a card from her. Public apology to all my friends:  I'm sorry. I'm a nerd about birthdays, and if you receive a card from me it's a miracle. It's not that I don't love you--it's that I can't keep things like dates straight.

Where was I going with all this? Oh, yeah. At the time I met her, Sharon had a Pakistani boyfriend, Haider, who lived in Wilmington in a house owned by another Pakistani--Abid. We all started hanging out together. Sharon and Haider ended up married, although later they divorced. Of course, so did Abid and I.

Anywho, over the years, in my linguistic pursuits, I took two days of French, which I hated, and a summer session of German, which I loved. You can see that languages have been a long-term passion of mine.

All of this is to say that, when Abid's family tried to teach me Urdu, I was all over it. I wanted to learn. But Urdu, and its sister-language, Hindi, are not like any other languages I've ever studied.

Arabic, of course, has a completely different alphabet, written right to left, and sounds that don't exist in English. I still don't comprehend how I couldn't grasp the sounds of French and yet one of my Arabic professors, who hailed from Beiruit, once complimented me that my Arabic sounded like "a voice from home." To this day I can remember a sentence and a half of Arabic, in close-to-perfect pronunciation. The complete sentence is:   "The teacher came, gave the lesson and took roll." Very useful. The fragment is even more so. It is something like "There came from Damascus today news about the Palestine War something something Abd-ur-Rahmani something something . . . "

All of this indicated to me that I should at least be able to master a smattering of Urdu. Unfortunately that wasn't necessarily the case. Although Urdu contains many of the unusual Arabic sounds, it also has some unique unto itself and Hindi. (It should be noted here that Urdu and Hindi are related; a Hindi-speaker can understand Urdu and vice versa--it's just the old India vs Pakistan animosity that has them named differently, along with the natural changes that come with distance and a culture-in-change.)

I pride myself on being able to hear the nuances of language and to be able to pretty accurately reproduce them. Urdu escapes me. I can't even correctly pronounce the word  for tea (chai) to this day.

Still, I wanted to learn, and the family wanted to teach me. I did get to the point where I could understand some of what they said (and really enjoyed watching and listening to "Slumdog Millionaire" to see how much I could remember).

In Multan we spent a couple of evenings with Razia, her husband and kids trying to teach me a rather involved sentence about an airplane. I can't remember any of it now, but by the time we left I could say it well enough that they actually understood me.

What I did learn that proved useful over the months we stayed at Britto Road was the ability to ask for the keys for upstairs and downstairs. "Niche ki chabe chayye" and "Upper ki chabe chayye" ("May I have the downstairs key?," "May I have the upstairs key?")

My mother and father-in-law spoke no English at all. Since I spoke no Urdu, there was limited communication between us. But somehow we managed. One morning Abid came out of the bedroom, surprised to find my mother-in-law and me in animated conversation. She was talking a mile a minute, and I was nodding my head in agreement. Abid laughed.

"You didn't understand a word she said."

"Oh, yes, I did. She told me she was going to the market to buy some fresh vegetables."

He looked stunned. "That's right. How did you know?"

"I understood her."

Truthfully I didn't, but language is much, much more than words. She communicated to me, and I to her, by gestures, by body language, by looks, by those one or two tidbits I could pick up.

I think I gained just a little bit of respect that day from both my husand and my mother-in-law.