Seventeen Arabic Words for Peace

سَبْعة

root: س-ب-ع / noun / definition: seven

Only seven days to go, I remind myself, willing away the days but craving more hours. I’m restless with the wait, yet overwhelmed by all I need to get done before next Tuesday.

Despite the dull pangs of stress in my head, my heart is at peace with everything. And I realise I’ve been using that word—peace—a lot in my conversations.

Just as art imitates life, this blog mirrors my thoughts. So today I decided to write a synonyms post, looking at some words in Arabic that mean “peace”.

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Journeys with Arabic: Mohammed N.

خَريف

root: خ-ر-ف / noun / definition: autumn

It’s that time of year, as September dips into the mid-autumn of October, that I start worrying about the narrowing window of daylight and almost-inevitable wintery mood that draughts in through closed curtains.

And if I weren’t so distracted by the spring of a new season in my life, I’d already be blanketed by a premonition of sombreness.

But away from my own seasonal reflections, I thought it’s time—again—to bring a new voice to the blog. And this time, I reached out to someone whose Arabic notes I, once upon a time, embarrassingly misread.

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Arabic Observations: Solace Through Forgetting

التَّأَمُّل

root: ء-م-ل / form V verbal noun / definition: reflection, contemplation

I’ve been in a reflective mood lately. And it’s the type of reflection that is directly opposed to productivity rather than one that drives it: consuming, daydreamy, paralysing.

As such, it made sense for me to write a reflective post today, adding to our Arabic Observations—a series I’m particularly fond of.

And this reflection begins on page 498 of the Hans Wehr…

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A Useful Structure: ما إن ـــــ حتى ـــــ

إبْريق

root: ب-ر-ق / noun / plural: أَباريق / definition: teapot, jug

With the pouring of a never-emptying teapot and the stealing of smiling glances, another Sunday passed and this week has left me in unfamiliar but exciting territory.

I served the dolma and wondered if any of the leaves had gotten stuck between my teeth. I run my tongue, now, over a new name in my mouth and re-count grains of rice.

I lose focus and start again.

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A Final Call, a Third Year

نِداء

root: ن-د-و / noun / plural: نِداءات / definition: call, public announcement

If you saw four dishevelled passengers racing through Istanbul Airport to catch their transfer flight and making it just before their gate closed on Saturday evening… that was me and my family.

Gate F1—why did you have to be so far.

A delayed first flight. A gate at the other side of the airport. A hold-up at security (over my sister’s water bottle, how menacing). Then: FINAL CALL on the board and me—running ahead—nearly flinging my cabin bag (and self) down the escalator.

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Five Arabic Words for the Metaphorical Heart

وَطَن

root: و-ط-ن / noun / plural: أَوْطان / definition: homeland

Is your homeland still your homeland if you’ve never set foot on its soil?

I don’t give myself much time to come up with an answer because my flight is due to take off in a matter of hours.

But perhaps it’s not that physical meeting of foot to soil that connects you to a place, but the residing of ancestral memories and a dialect suspended by migration in that intangible space within your chest that aches with an unfamiliar nostalgia. That intangible space that is your heart, or soul, or something similar.

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Form VI: Gradualness, Exchange, and Pretence

التَّدَرُّج

root: د-ر-ج / form V verbal noun / definition: gradual advance or progression

I’ve gone straight from floating to hitting the ground running. And between that landing and my approaching take-off, things have progressed unexpectedly quickly in the space of a week.

I could get used to this pace.

But Arabic’s form VI verbs remind me of the power contained in gradual progress and—I think—now is a good time to start explaining.

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Arabic Prepositions: Common and Less So

تَنْفيس

root: ن-ف-س / form II verbal noun / definition: catharsis

Someone told me yesterday that I seem to do a lot of work without much financial return. Exhibit A: this blog.

But this passion project doesn’t feel like work in any sense of the word. Except for the part where I spend hours planning and typing out content for the benefit of others. Hmm.

Yet it feels just as much—or even more so—something that I do for myself. Maybe it’s the catharsis, maybe the documentation of growth and learning, maybe the gratitude it evokes for being able to spend my time writing about the thing I love.

(But: if you do want to support the running of the blog, you can do so here!)

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Four Weeks, and Three Arabic Phrases

العَوْم

root: ع-و-م / form I verbal noun / definition: floating

I returned to London yesterday with my glasses broken, heart full, and mind a mess.

Those four weeks in Majorca, in my childhood home and bedroom with the sea-blue curtains I’ve had for the past twenty years, felt like too little time to honour the nostalgia.

On my last day, I sat on the balcony and wrote about my fear of my feet touching the ground. Something within me wants to keep running into unknowns or floating decisively between states, and my brain and words race each other in circles.

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Dictionary Finds: A Page of Woe

مُخَلِّص

root: خ-ل-ص / form II active participle / definition: saviour, Salvador

These days, I’ve been thinking a lot about Salvador—the diabetic former boxer who drove my mum and I to the airport two years ago. He was driving between motorway lanes whilst scrolling through photos on his phone to share with us and pulling miscellanea from different pockets of his swerving car.

We were close to certain we’d die on that car ride, so we surrendered to Salvador’s motto, something he kept repeating after telling us about each of the many traumas in his colourful life: c’est la vie.

“C’est la vie!”, we repeated after him, throwing our hands up, as if they were our last words.

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