Slimane- C’est déjà écrit. Shouia. Slowly. Pépé- And if I kill you first? Slimane- Inshaa’Allah.
-Pépé le Moko (1937)
Al-Maktūb Maktūb. The Written is Written. Déjà. My first year teacher Abraham Udovitch said that a lot to us when he passed out our weekly tests. Sometimes he asked us to conjugate the verb Shā’a, To Want, To Wish, or in the case of Allah, To Will [to Happen]. And from that same triliteral root comes the noun Shay’, A Thing (not to be confused with Shāy, Tea), and in its diminutive feminine form, Shwayya (which Slimane pronounced as Shouia), a workhorse word with many meanings in Colloquial Arabic. A Little, Less, Slowly, Easy Does It, Softly.