Arabic Observations: Warm Hearts, Cool Eyes

قُرّ

root: ق-ر-ر / noun / definition: cold, coolness

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I’ve been napping a lot lately. Sometimes two or three times a day. My body feels heavy with a fatigue that pulls down my eyelids and drags my centre of gravity to the nearest flat surface to search for rest in the land of nod.

But no matter how much I sleep, or how I spend the day, no nodding-off awakens me.

Doctors have even studied my blood and still can’t find an answer to that age-old question: why is this girl so tired? Nor can they answer—more crucially—why I still have pins and needles in all my limbs, but my mum—unreassuringly—reassures me that I’ve just inherited her lineage’s “weak body” and that the almost-constant tingling is simply an ancestral bequest.

Lovely.

I mean, no one likes to think of their body as weak. But I’d rather choose to believe Mum’s explanation than let my exhausted mind rifle through other possibilities.

Speaking of the body, I was recently thinking about everyday metaphors we use in Arabic and English.

Specifically, these two phrases which carry near-synonymous meanings:

قُرّة العَيْن

and

warms the heart

The Arabic قُرّة العَيْن literally translates as coolness of the eye.

It’s used to indicate delight or pleasure.

The noun قُرّة specifically refers to a cold that is felt in winter (so, a more lasting coolness) and by which the eye (and, by extension, the mind and the body) feels rested and refreshed.

It makes sense that, in a language born under the harsh desert sun, coolness is epitomical of relief, joy, and pleasure.

In contrast:

In English, a language born and developed further north, where winters are most harsh and warmth is often sought, it’s warmth—not cold—represents that pleasant feeling of joy. Things warm our hearts, rather than cool them.

(Side note: are our hearts, in English, assumed to be cold?)

It does make me wonder… how are changing climates and shifting physical environments affecting languages around the world and our use of them?

I can’t help but switch my thoughts to my current read—a Kazakh novel depicting the Aral Sea’s human-caused catastrophe. I think I’ll start reading more closely now.

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!إلى اللقاء

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