I can see now that unless I educate myself outside of the Arabic I learn in the classroom I shall be frustrated by what I deal with on the street each day…I get down to reading the Arabic newspapers and wonder if this is the best way to study, but learning by osmosis doesn’t work in this dusty city where the mucous membranes are immediately clogged with sand and dirt.
-Letter Home, July 2, 1978
My first year textbook, consisting of paradigm upon paradigm of weak verb conjugations and broken plural declensions, was from the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, the so-called British school for spies in Shemlan, Lebanon. Not until my fourth year did I have a dialect textbook, in my case Egyptian, but it was in English transliteration that did nothing to connect the Classical to the Colloquial, which would have made it easier to learn. It was doubly frustrating when I’d read cartoon captions in newspapers or dialogue in plays or novels written in the Egyptian vernacular and I’d have to sound out the words like a kindergartener. That disconnect was yet more linguistic sand in my mouth that year.