A sign in Arabic and English in the SwissAir office- All proper millionaires sometimes live in a chalet in the Swiss Alps…For as low as £42 per day, Why not you?- But I won’t go anywhere until I learn some everyday vocabulary. I can read the headlines but don’t even know the words for knife, spoon, and fork.
-Letter Home, June 28, 1978
On my first day in Cairo I left my suitcase in the AUC student hostel lobby and it was gone when I went to look for it. We had made a pledge to speak only Arabic if possible so I couldn’t explain to the deskman what I was missing- for two years I’d only learned Classical words like Carpet, Palace, and Lamp. I had to ask a classmate who’d already studied Egyptian Colloquial how to say Suitcase, Shanta, which that summer also turned out to be our Sri Lankan drinking buddy’s name. Later in Sudan I learned the hard way that Wehr was wrong, that the word ‘Afsh does not mean both Luggage and Garbage.
