Lucky and Levantine

By some great irony, as one of the few people in the CIEE who would not have minded having a vacation from four legged bark bags, I was placed with a host family who has a dog. Lucky is some sort of mix between a Pomeranian and another tiny yapper. However misleading his name might be on most days I do not feel lucky to be around him.

Lucky follows me around under the misguided assumption that I am his best friend in the world. Admittedly, I don't do much to debunk his fantasy because for some reason after he sits at my feet for more than ten seconds I find myself running my fingers through his thick fur. Between his expectant gazes and his uncontainable excitement any time somebody enters the door, I would describe my feelings towards him as toleration.

This morning, Lucky decided to put our relationship through the ultimate test. When the maid came to the back door I unlocked it and let her in. As I was saying good morning to her, Lucky saw a golden opportunity and bolted through the door before I had a chance to react. Seeing as I was the one who let him out, I figured I should go hunt the fluffball down, so I walked out of the house in my slippers thinking he wouldn't make it outside the gate. As it turns out the gate is the perfect size for him to slip through, and next thing I knew I was strolling down the street in slippers behind what I imagined to be the happiest dog in the world.

Lucky enjoyed playing the game of marking his territory on the neighbors stone fences just long enough to let me catch up, but not pick him up. After we passed about a dozen houses, he finally got distracted by an interesting smell in a patch of grass. I promptly scooped him up and walked back home. It had rained during the night, so his little paws were muddy and left some marks on my shirt. Needless to say I attracted some side glances as I trekked back to the house with a dog in my arms.

After changing my shirt and washing my hands I went in to get breakfast where my host Mom asked me why I had gone after Lucky. I assumed that as the person who let Lucky out I should go pick him up before he wrecked havoc in the neighborhood or got hit by a car. I had only ever seen Lucky go on structured walks where he was contained by a leash, so it wasn't until later that I understood my host family's confusion. When I got home today, my host mom was doing laundry, and as she opened the door to go pick up a load that had dried Lucky pulled the same stunt on her that he had on me. After yelling come in Arabic and expressing mild disappointment, my host mom closed the door and let Lucky have a little adventure before he trotted back to the house half an hour later.

This isn't the only way that my notion of how dogs should be treated is challenged here. Lucky usually garners a lot of attention when we take him out. This can come in the form of boys playing a game of bravery to see who will get closest to him, a man mock barking at Lucky as you walk him down the street, or simple sideways glances. During a get together with students here I asked them if many people had dogs here. They explained that dogs are generally thought to be unclean, so when people have dogs it's usually as an outdoor guard dog.

Lucky, like most dogs, recognizes the word outside, but he recognizes it in Arabic. When I got here, it was a point of shame that the dog understood more Arabic than I did. This was pretty good motivation, and I'm proud to say I now know the word for "come" and "outside" in Arabic, so I believe that I have surpassed Lucky's level of competency.

Part of the reason I also feel comfortable saying that I understand as much Arabic as the dog is because I am not just studying the Levantine dialect, but also Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). That all sounds like gobbledy gook when you've never learned about Arabic before, but what it boils down to is this: In Arabic there is the form of Arabic that you read and write (MSA) that is taught universally in schools. In everyday life people don't speak MSA. Every region has their own dialect, and what I'm studying can be classified as the Levantine dialect. Even within the Levantine dialect there are more specific accents and words, so for example people consider Lebanese and Jordanian dialects to be Levantine, but they use different words and speech patterns. While I'm studying here, I take two classes for MSA and one class for spoken Arabic. Sometimes there are crossovers in words and structures for MSA and spoken Arabic, just like there are crossovers between Yiddish and German. Just like Yiddish and German, MSA and spoken Arabic are by no means identical.

Like most of my experiences in Jordan, learning Arabic is a hard task that seems well worth it when put into practice. Since being here my Arabic has improved at a painstakingly slow pace. My friends and I often talk about how consuming studying Arabic can be. Between reading a different character system, trying to differentiate between MSA and spoken Arabic, grammar, and vocab, everything can feel overwhelming, but Arabic is definitely worth the effort put into it. As my host dad explained to me early on, Arabic is a language of poetry. It's full of symbols and meanings unique to itself. Admittedly, I'm not close to understanding any of them, but being able to hold short conversations with taxi drivers is keeping me motivated for now.