musing

Always the Bridesmaid, never the Bride

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Way back at the end of the Christmas term, my Arabic teacher sat us down and told us, quite matter-of-factly, that every year one Arabist comes back from their Year Abroad married. We’d all heard the rumour before, but to hear it from the lecturer’s own mouth was quite something. It’s like coming home from secondary school to your parents filling you in on the playground gossip. It just didn’t seem right. But apparently, it is. Arabists, it seems, have a bit of a knack for getting hitched on their year abroad. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Arab men – or at least, those I have met on my travels in Morocco – are very forward about the whole marriage proposal thing, though I would hope that nobody actually takes them seriously… it’s normally just all a part of the bartering game, right? (At least, I hope it is – for Archie’s sake…) Strangely enough, it’s not just the girls who get hitched either. The split is a clean fifty-fifty, which is odd, not because girls get more marriage proposals – Archie can vouch for the contrary – but because the dowry paid to the bride in Arab cultures can be ludicrously excessive. Putting true love into a box in the corner for the time being, it’s a lose-lose situation for the men: hitched, grounded and probably penniless as well. At least the girls can put that dowry towards that nasty student loan debt. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We drew up sweepstakes as a class a while back, trying to decide who was most likely to get hitched. Surprise surpise, I ended up tying with fellow gappie Rosie for the spot. Ha ha. Very funny. I’ll bet my sickeningly broody reaction to the Elvet Riverside baby last term had something to do with it. The joke’s on them: I’ll be in Jordan for a maximum of four months. Five tops, factoring in moving in and travel around. Hardly enough time to get to know anybody on a friendly basis, let alone well enough to talk wedding plans. How some students came back for Year Four with a wife and child is beyond my understanding, though an idiom involving the word ‘shotgun’ comes to mind. So sorry to disappoint, but I don’t think I’ll be coming home with a glamorous Jordanian bride, folks. It ain’t happening.

Mum’s opinion was that the whole subject was childish and foolish. It’s a time to branch out and set off down new roads, for widening horizons – not laying down roots. Never mind the fact we’re supposed to be mastering the language. The stress of an Arabic wedding, hypothetical though it may be, if simply not on the cards. Not that she’d mind in the slightest if I came home with a brown-eyed, dark-haired Spanish girl on my arm (‘Think of the grandchildren!’). Not that I’d mind either. Brown eyes, curly, dark hair, and a killer accent. I’m in heaven (maybe now you too can see why they put me at the top of the list…). There’s something intensely captivating about brown eyes, don’t you think? Or maybe that’s just my angst about my ice-blue eyes talking. I’m getting better at it, but it’ll still be a while before I’m happy with having blue eyes. It’s a curse for travelling around the Mediterranean, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s as clear a sign that ‘I’m a Brit’ as a sandwich board. When my eyes finally give up on me – long may that day be in coming – I might go for brown contacts. Though in the best of all possible worlds, I’ll have gotten over my self-consciousness for good by then.

In three weeks’ time I’ll be in Amman. Humbling thought. Presumably still in a hostel, searching for accommodation. Reasons to be a girl studying Arabic include: having the luxury of a homestay organised for you. Though I can see the practical reasons for it, it leaves guys like me and Andrew in the lurch when it comes to finding a worthwhile place to stay. We’ll just have to see when we get there, I guess. Isn’t that the most exciting way? BB x

The Circle of Life (otherwise known as Vocalzone)

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There are few things more terrifying than waking up on the morning of a concert and realising you’ve lost your voice.

Alright, so I can think of a few, but it’s one I’d rather not repeat. Especially when that solo is the opening Zulu chant from the Circle of Life and the setting is none other than Durham Cathedral. Probably the biggest solo I am ever going to get and definitely the one I’ve been most looking forward to. So it should be just my luck that I found myself almost voiceless on the morning of the big day, throwing not just one but two gigs into violent disarray. Thanks to a little help from my friends (shout out in especial to the wonderful Emily Collinson for recommending me the miraculous Vocalzone pills) I was able to pull my voice back from the brink at the final hour and deliver the goods. It was still a semitone out, and because of my nerves I guess I rushed it too, but all things considered it could have gone so much worse. Like, my voice could have just gone before the solo. Or worse, gone halfway through, like it did once during The Sun Whose Rays in The Mikado several years back. But it held, even during the crazily last-minute additional solo in the King of Pride Rock finale – which, considering everybody was involved, probably went unheard by everyone except those who were listening out for it, even though I threw caution to the wind and belted out those last Zulu lines with all of my heart and soul, not to mention the last of my vocal chords. Lebo M. does it so much better because he’s the real deal, of course. But I hope I did him proud tonight. I dedicate that one to him. Him and, of course, all my champions in the Durham A Cappella Choir, the one and only Northern Lights. I don’t tend to miss much when I travel, but there will be a hole in my heart for evermore when I have to say goodbye to you all at the end of the year. You don’t know just how much you all mean to me.

Being part of the Northern Lights on their rise to power this year has been one of the best decisions of my life. No doubt. But trumping that and all the facts and life-lessons of the year, perhaps the most important lesson I’m taking away from this year is the danger of doing too much. Good time management may be a staple CV boon, but I’d put an honest acceptance of when too much is too much higher up the list, if I had a say in things. I’ve always tried to live by the creed that having too much to do is always better than having too little, which breeds boredom, idleness and a despicable state of mind. That’s fine, but instead of swinging between extremes as I tend to, in future I’ll be aiming for that golden middle-ground. I’m happy to be the one who does the planning and enthuses along the way, but the responsibility of authority is still beyond me. When you have to balance that power with everything else, it’s not just other people that you let down, it’s your own state of mind. This year for some reason I thought I’d be able to balance five societies, the novel, my degree, a social life, an attempt at a relationship and my sanity. Most of them took a serious hit in one way or another, but it’s the last that’s suffered the most. I’ve not had the chance to meditate properly for almost a year and it shows. I haven’t even managed to keep the novel going, which I stormed through last year. Some useful notes for my last year, at any rate. I know now that if I want to truly apply myself to something, no matter how appealing everything else may seem, it’s better to focus on just a couple of good things rather than trying to please everybody by tackling everything at the same time. Because it’s impossible to please everyone, of course, but most pressing of all, everybody’s friend is nobody’s friend. And that’s something I should really know better. BB x

The Northern Lights hit Durham Cathedral (Durham)

The Northern Lights hit Durham Cathedral. From left to right: Emmanuel, me, Becky and Luke (Durham)

Clear the Runway

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That’s it! No more exams this year! And none for another two years, come to think of it. How’s that for a load off the mind? I guess only time will tell how they went – three weeks’ time, to be precise, by which time I’ll be home. Blimey, but this year has drawn to a close quickly… I’m really not expecting an awesome turnover as far as the language exams are concerned. These last few weeks more than ever I’ve heard people liken language to Maths – the beauty, apparently, being that there’s a logic, and there’s a right and a wrong. Great news if you’ve got the kind of brain that can crunch logic like a harvester, but devastating if your mathematical competence is on par with a freshly-picked beetroot. The highest I ever achieved in a regular Maths paper at school was a paltry 28%. How I got this far – to Durham, of all places – with such a pitiful weakness for numbers is nothing short of a miracle. For me, there’s nothing better than a good, old-fashioned essay, so this last week has been an absolute breeze in comparison with the previous three weeks of grammar-busting. There’s no denying the importance of grammar – it’s the bedrock of any and every language – but it doesn’t exactly make for entertaining reading. Especially when you have to tread the line between what is right and what is wrong. Thank goodness for Arts, where it becomes one big grey area. A difficult place to excel, but a far better environment for the mathematically inept, like me.

Away with the musing. The Morocco/Jordan debate came to a sudden and decisive end yesterday with the booking of return flights from Amman at the end of June. Done! Expensive, but that’s the price you have to pay for visiting wealthy countries. It’s not as though I had much of a choice with my department either, the way things have gone of late. We’re banding together as a year to prevent the following years being plagued by the same problems we faced. Hopefully they don’t have to go through with all that chaos. But that’s that! So I’m going to Jordan. I’ll be there for just over two months before zipping back for a short stop at home before jetting straight back out to Spain, by which point I’ll have much more of an idea as to where it is they’re sending me. Exciting stuff. Now all I’ve left to do is to wait a couple of days for my monstrous portrait to arrive and I can get straight back to work on that, and let’s not forget all the gigs and rehearsals set to swamp me over the coming weeks. And paperwork. Christ, the paperwork. Will it never end?

If you’re after an alternative point of view over the next two months in Jordan, give my friends over at Langlesby travels a browse (https://langlesbytravels.wordpress.com/). It’s highly entertaining reading and a great deal less greenie-pontificating than me! I’m working on that… BB x

Summer's here and the lane is as dark as night again

Freedom!

Sibling Sobering

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Cramming for Arab Lit in the Bill Bryson

Cramming for Arab Lit in the Bill Bryson

My little brother got back from his first ever solo adventure in Japan yesterday. Two weeks on Honshu, starting and ending in Tokyo, and taking in the south-coast sights from Kyoto to Hiroshima and beyond. It’s the kind of thing I would have done if I’d had the money he had on my gap year. That’s the main positive of a functional gap year: work for three quarters of it and then travel on the money you’ve earned in that time. Or, if you’re a singular nutcase like me, decide on a year abroad at the last possible minute, put a three month stint in Uganda at the start and a month and a half’s travelling in Spain at the end, making a stable job in between almost impossible, and try to get by on a budget of less than a hundred quid. Not a good model. I don’t begrudge my little bro in the slightest for this stellar work of one-upmanship; it’s how a gap year should be done. Bravo.

In between tales of his exploits, up to and including appearing on national television quite by accident (I told him he’d find people knew he was coming before ever he got there, though I didn’t quite see it happening like that!), I realised he’d learned a valuable life lesson that’s still beyond my understanding, and that’s not to rush things whilst you’re young. In short, old age doesn’t have to mean the end of your adventures. It came up when we were discussing where he’d be travelling next, and he told me that he’d love to join me on my crazy Cairo to Cape Town stint, so long as it was after we’d got on in life and – quoting verbatim – ‘after your kids had moved on and had kids of their own’. I was stunned. I’ve been hungering after Cairo to Cape Town since I first heard of it when I was sixteen, almost five years ago now. I wasn’t exactly planning on striking out for Egypt the week after graduating, but the prospect of waiting another thirty years and more hit me like a wall. There’s plenty of reason in his words, reason that’s beyond my childish enthusiasm, that’s for sure. It was a pretty humbling thing to hear from my nineteen year-old brother and it more than put me in my place. Clichéd as it sounds, I find myself bowled over at how much he’s grown up over the last year. Considerably more than me, at any rate! I wonder if that’s what having a stable job does to you… Man, what kind of an older brother must I look to him? I don’t half get the feeling sometimes like it’s up to me to make the mistakes so that he can learn from them by proxy without getting his hands dirty. And I make a heck of a lot of mistakes… (I hope to God he doesn’t judge me too harshly for that remark if he reads this!)

Well, it’s put my problems in perspective, at any rate. The kid’s off in search of another job for the summer already. Boy, if I’d had that level of get-up-and-go when I was his age, I’d have been made. Where we level out is on spending. I restricted myself to a £250 maximum budget for two weeks in Morocco, for everything. Lil’ bro managed to spend almost a thousand. Financially, we meet somewhere down the middle. Socially, he’s a good few hundred leagues ahead of me and still driving onwards. In a manner I never saw coming, I find myself looking up to him more and more. In a family of just four, I don’t have many familial examples to aspire to. But little brother, if I could be half the guy you are, I’d be a better man several times over. BB x

Wine, Women and Song

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As compensation for far too many hours spent trawling the internet for absolutely anything and everything to do with Extremadura, I’ve finally settled back into the all-too unfamiliar rut of revision. It’s not quite as entertaining as browsing beautiful images of the high sierras, rolling steppe and quaint medieval towns that’ll be my home next year, but I reckon I’ve nearly exhausted all the internet has to offer as far as Extremadura is concerned. Even so, I’m still no closer to having a decent idea as to where I might end up, or what it will really be like to live there. Just goes to show how a little knowledge can only take you some of the way. The rest will come in time.

So I spent most of today back in the armchair in the living room swotting up on the dissolute poets of the Abbasid Caliphate and their ringleader, the infamous Abu Nuwas, lover of wine, music, lewd verse and just about anything that walked on two legs. It seems that the scoundrel managed to carve a niche for himself into the fabric of Arabian myth as a master poet of almost unparalleled skill, along the way chasing slave boys, playing out some of the earliest rap battles, insulting almost everyone and everything and generally being an all-round prankster, for which he is so wittily remembered in several tales of the Arabian Nights. So outrageous a character is he that he is one of the only characters in the Arabian Nights that infuriates Shahriyar to such an extent that he threatens to break the frame narrative and kill Shahrazad (also Scheherezade), the narrator, if she mentions him again. Twice. But he’s obviously just too big a character and crops up time and time again. To give you an idea of his style, here’s a verse from the Mathers translation of the Arabian Nights. Obviously it sounds better in Arabic, but it’s such a high style Nuwas uses that it’s well beyond the comprehension of a second-year Arabist, and the meaning’s clear enough. Here, Abu Nuwas describes one of Caliph Harun al-Rashid’s slave girls, whom the Caliph has ordered to conceal a wine goblet in order to prevent the rapscallion from drinking any more:

Even as I desire the cup
The cup desires
Lips secret and more pleasant
And has gone up
Within her garments hollow
Whither the cup aspires
Nuwas would follow
If only Harun were not present.

Raunchy stuff. His legacy extends beyond the Arabian Nights; most of Baghdad’s nightclubs and restaurants are based in Abu Nuwas Street and the city is home to an immense statue of the rogue, with wine goblet in hand. For a man who is essentially the Arab world’s most glorified scoundrel and bisexual, it’s a miracle IS hasn’t done away with the effigy. And long may that be the case. After all that reading, it’s got to be a life ambition of mine, to see that statue with my own eyes. Let’s just hope the linguistic brilliance of his poetry continues to outweigh his lewd behaviour.

That was a little too informative for a blog post. But, as usual, I thought I’d share it with y’all in case you’re interested. My friend and I have some kind of cult-hero thing going on with Abu Nuwas so I’ve probably got the guy blown way out of proportion, if just in the vague hope that he comes up in the upcoming exam, so that I can use all this knowledge I’ve gleaned. I guess that’s the point of revision.

Oh, but hurry up next year already! I’m chomping at the bit to get teaching, wherever it is that they send me. As if that wasn’t already obvious… Until the next time! BB x

Bruegel under the Microscope

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Screenshot 2015-05-11 at 22.17.27

Ever looked closely at Bruegel the Elder’s Massacre of the Innocents? I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t. It’s a pretty famous painting, but it’s not the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. You might have seen it on a Christmas card, along with the more common Hunters in the Snow, another painting by Bruegel. And why not? It’s a snowy scene with plenty of animals. Perfect for Christmas. Until you look closer. On first inspection it looks like a raid – sundries strewn in the snow, soldiers carrying off sacks, livestock taken for slaughter. A far cry from Christmas. But look a little closer and you’ll see the signs that there’s something far more sinister at work. Hidden away in various corners of the painting are the ghostly remains of figures now painted over. You don’t have to look too closely to surmise that there’s something amiss; a lot of the animals depicted look messier than the figures surrounding them, as do the clothes and sacks. Look closer still and you’ll see shadowy feet beneath one of the sacks. Or a little hand reaching out from the huddle of poultry gathered before the mounted soldiers in the centre of the image. What you’re looking at is far more than just a raid. It’s a Biblical scene brought to life in the snowy Spanish Netherlands; that of Herod and the Hebrew children. It’s a genuine massacre of the innocents.

How did I stumble upon this? Good question. Revision is a tiresome thing and I found Bruegel’s painting on one of my desperate ‘productive procrastination’ sprees. I still can’t remember how. But it was one of those images that I just couldn’t stop staring at, and the more I looked, the more I wanted to know. Why the children? Why were they painted over? And why, when the painting was restored, were they not returned? It chilled me to the bone when I first saw one of the few uncensored images floating around, but I think it’s more poignant than the one we’re left with now, shocking though it may be. What would Goya have thought if the men of El Tres de Mayo had been painted over with cattle? Or is there a line that cannot be crossed, as far as children are concerned? Goya obviously didn’t think so. See Saturn devouring his Son. But what do I know? I’m just musing as usual.

What I think matters most of all is one of the few details that wasn’t amended. In the background, behind the Spanish soldiers, is a man crossing the frozen river with an infant in his arms. He has a sword at his belt but his stance, in tandem with that of the woman standing behind him, imply that his actions are protective, rather than nefarious. It’s the one detail that really sticks in my mind. Is he the father of the child, or a friend, trying to smuggle the child to safety? Did he succeed? Perhaps most poignant of all, is it something Bruegel saw? Tough questions. I wish I’d had more trips to art galleries when I was at school. You can lose yourself for hours in a painting like this. The more you look, the more you see.

Apologies for the heavy content of today’s musing. I’m thinking of writing a novella based on the painting, so I thought I’d share the image with you in case you’re interested. It sure piqued my interest! x

Notorious ASMR

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First exam out of the way. One down, eight to go. Ka-pow. Yeah, so I made a couple of the usual mistakes. Concordancia, como siempre. Seems to go out the window in exam conditions. That and sistema/problema/idioma switching. Linguist problems. The kind of thing you don’t really worry too much about in the real world but that drags you down in an oral. Ah well. I know how I’d go about marking myself and that’s good enough for the time being. Now, at least, I can put Spanish behind me temporarily and tackle Arabic head on, before moving on to Persian. One language at a time, bud. Don’t want to go tripping over false friends – and I thought that cutting French would be the end of that. So much for sweet dreams.

ASMR in my headphones as usual. It’s not strictly a Monday night thing, but it sure is dead calming after an exam. It wasn’t a particularly stressful one, granted – Archie said his was a train-wreck, so I should be grateful, I suppose – but it’s never a bad time to zone out for a bit. Say what you want, it’s pretty calming stuff. When the explosion in popularity began is anyone’s guess, I just started trucking along with it before exams this time last year when it turned out to be just what I was looking for in the chaotic world that is an Arts degree (we have to juggle a heck of a lot, in all seriousness). It’s not a completely spaced-out evening. I’ve got my Arabic oral questions open in one tab and Biggie Smalls’ Get Money open in another. Suddenly got into that kind of thing, and that’s a little harder to explain. Funk will always hold the pole position, closely followed by Afrobeat of course, but hip-hop comes a close third. The things you discover when you turn your iPod off for a month…! I recommend it. It’s why I never take my iPod travelling with me. You see so much more when you’re not plugged in. Try it. We’re not half as dependent on such trinkets as we think we are.

Tongue-Tied

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The exams loom closer by the day. Make that the hour, as it’s twenty-four hours exactly until my first exam is up. Standard oral exam fare: two videos, two presentations and a whole host of questions on global issues that range from predictable to out-of-the-midnight-blue. I gave both the videos a run-through this afternoon after the usual Saturday morning Northern Lights rehearsal at Mary’s, with the newbies in tow, and an audition with Gospel Choir for Grey Day. If we get through, that’s just one more date to add to the list. Heck, by comparison, exam season looks a heck of a lot less stressful than the three weeks that follow it. Rehearsal after rehearsal after rehearsal. Not to mention a gig every three days or so. Or more. And that’s just the music side – doubtless there’ll be other things to do. Like, say, going for a night out without any reason in particular. I never thought I’d actually propose that as an option, but I suppose I should face the facts: clubbing in Durham, kitsch as it is, is still pretty fun. And I don’t suppose I’ll be getting much nightlife in Amman – or Spain, if they’ll have me. That’s ok – I prefer wildlife over nightlife anyday – but the total absence of it may be a bit odd. You know, like the way you miss something the minute it’s gone, even if you never really gave it much thought; like a book you never got around to reading, or a friend who left the country. Yeah…. on that basis, I think I probably should be making the most of it whilst I still can. A language degree being what it is, a large number of the people I see around the place will be gone by the time I get back – or not, since I tend to hang around in the company of fellow linguists anyway.

On that note, I broke an age-old unwritten rule the other day and actually got talking to a bunch of first-year Arabists. It arose from an educated guess from across the DSU cafe. One group of students were sat around a table reading from sheets, all of them looking somewhere on the scale between fear and hysterics. Between that, and the unmistakeable al-Kitaab on the desk, it was pretty obvious they were Arabists. So I went over to say hi and to clear up any doubts about the upcoming oral exam and to help insofar as I could.

There seems to be this unsaid rule that first and second year linguists don’t interact. The reason is fairly understandable. Unlike any other degree where department mingling might be an easy way to make new friends, with a languages degree you’re saddled with the knowledge that the year abroad spoils any and all attempts to get to know the first years. Especially first year linguists, since, like you, they’ll be taking a year abroad as well – the one following yours. So whereas you might come back to find first-year English or History students still kicking around, any linguists of their year will be out there in the wide beyond doing what you just did. And before they get back, you’ll have graduated and moved on. Case closed. I guess that’s why there’s not much mingling; there’s no future in it. The college parents system tries to rectify that to some extent by pairing first years with second-year students in their field in their college, but I’ve only seen it function properly with one or two cases. Which is a crying shame, because you’d have thought that linguists would appreciate an eye-in-the-sky, as it were, more than any other degree. But then, I can’t really talk. I’m not exactly a regular at the Arabic Café run by the fourth years because I find it a little intimidating. Hypocrite alert. It’s funny, that. Speaking Arabic’s not a problem abroad, but put me in a situation where I’m supposed to engage an Arab or a Spaniard in conversation in the UK and it’s suddenly a great deal harder. I wonder why that is?

Back to the grindstone – got to try to enthuse about Hispano-American language policy and domestic equality in Latin America… Oh summer, you can’t come fast enough!

Looking Ahead

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Blimey, these Arabic listening past papers are a mixed bag and a half. Learning the vocab in advance isn’t the problem, it’s the random new words they throw in for good measure. The case marking doesn’t help either, but at least we don’t have to do that ourselves. MSA is supposed to be clear and easy to understand, but sometimes I swear it was easier to get by in Morocco. None of this case-marking chaos in the real world. Yes, I am writing this post in the last five minutes of an Arabic lab session. It kind of petered out towards the end. Everybody seems to be in the same boat as far as total disorganisation is concerned. Us British Council hopefuls aren’t the only ones in the dark. The entire Arabic portion of the year abroad is still very much up in the air. Will it be Jordan? Will it be Lebanon? Or will it be Morocco? Cause it sure as hell won’t be anywhere else, since those are our only options. Oh, to have been born a few years earlier and then to have had the chance to go to Syria or Egypt…! Puts everything in perspective, that. I mean, Syria…! As a viable year abroad option! Nobody would even dream of it nowadays. And to think it was at the top of my list when I first applied to study Arabic three years ago. So much for that. Thanks Assad. Thanks IS. Thanks to everyone else on the CIA hit list.

The bigger picture, kid, think of the bigger picture. I suppose Jordan won’t be so bad. It’s just the price hike that bothers me and that’s just me being petty, right? Were I going to the American Language Institute in Fes (ALIF) and not Qasid, hopping back and forth between Spain and Morocco would be easy as anything – not to mention adventurous, since it would entail docking at either Tangier or the Spanish enclaves and then traversing the Rif to get to Fes. How’s that for commuting? As it stands, it looks like Amman is the only viable option, and it’s not so easy to get to and from Spain – let alone the UK – from Jordan at the snap of a wrist. Well, I’ll be playing it by ear for a little longer, I think. These first few posts have quite a sarky, waspish tone to them that I don’t like. That’s probably lingering BC stress and pre-exam tension setting in. The sun, however, is shining brighter than ever. The long British heatwave known as ‘summer’ is upon us. Things can only go up from here, right?