at a shot, training them to survive the force of their imaginations. You work to hold them to the rules of polite conversation, in a city trying to believe again in the existence of rules. It is, by any measure, the perfect job description —the ticket you've been trying to write yourself for years. A golden existence. All that's missing is someone a little brave, someone just a little kind to share it with.
"Tell me how you got here," you assign them, early on. The topic provides a high personal interest. Good practice with the tricky past tense. And it's easy to answer without straying too far outside core vocabulary.
"How did you got here, Mr. Martin?" Nawaf baits you.
The whole class becomes a sea of colluding head bobs. "Yes. Yes. We all want to know."
"Nothing to tell," you tell them. "I came here to make sure that your subjects and verbs all agree with each other."
"What job have you done before being our teacher?" Nawaf asks.
"What did I do before coming here to teach?"
"Yeah. You said it."
"A lot of things. Most recently, I trained Asian businessmen to survive Chicago."
The sly bastard persists. "Why did you change your jobs?"
"Now why in the world would that interest you?"
"It's v ery interesting, Mr. Martin," the very interesting Zarai chips in.
"Well, for a lot of reasons. But we're not going to get into that."
"It's a secret?" Nawaf taunts.
"That's right. Yes. It's a secret."
"Top secret?" Zarai smiles at you from beneath her head wrapping.
You smile back at her. "Tip-top secret."
They say that you know more about this place on the day you first touch your foot to it than you will ever know about it again. And they're right. Each day that passes leaves you more confused about this stew, let alone the recipe that produced it. You understand Shiite versus Sunni, Maronite versus Orthodox, Druze, Palestinian, Phalangist, AMAL, the radical Party of God and their fanatical cell the Holy Warriors. But the fourteen other religions and splinter factions plunge you into the same despair that your students feel when confronting irregular English verbs.
This al-Jumhuriyah al-Lubnaniyah: even the name is a maze. The country's politics, like some unmappable Grand Bazaar out of Ali Baba, cannot be survived except by chance. Here civilization's ground rules disperse into the mists of fantasy. Standing agreements, tenuous at best, collapse back into the law of armed camps, each local militia staking out a few shelled blocks. No one is allowed to cross from zone to zone, not even the Red Crescent. Your students scrape by in a decaying landscape, one of those postapocalypse teen movies that so intrigue them.
But for all that, the streets still seem safer than Chicago's. Tomorrow feels more affirmed here, this city's pulse more surrendered to hope and devotion.
You learn a few words: Na'am , shukran, merhadh, khubuz. Yes, no, thank you, bathroom, bread. You begin to fantasize about meeting a woman, perhaps even a woman in head covering. About taking a crash course in the rules of her grammar.
Then the real woman calls you. Dead on schedule. Just as one of you recovers some semblance of health, some solidifying core of self-esteem, the other one calls to crash it. At least now, the two-dollar-a-minute taxi meter and the audible satellite lag protect you from extended conversation.
Or they would, if she weren't wild. Cost means nothing to her. Her words come through the phone like a violent cough. "Taimur. Tai. Thank God you're alive. You have to come back. Tonight. Now."
Too pathetic, even for retaliation. You can't even rouse yourself to decent brutality.
"I don't think so," you singsong into the receiver.
"I skipped my period."
You recover before the satellite link can click. "You skip every other month, Gwen. You're a high-strung, finger-pointing, street-brawling drama queen who never menstruates in the middle of a fight. Which is pretty much all the time."
Too many adjectives, and you've lost another
"Tell me how you got here," you assign them, early on. The topic provides a high personal interest. Good practice with the tricky past tense. And it's easy to answer without straying too far outside core vocabulary.
"How did you got here, Mr. Martin?" Nawaf baits you.
The whole class becomes a sea of colluding head bobs. "Yes. Yes. We all want to know."
"Nothing to tell," you tell them. "I came here to make sure that your subjects and verbs all agree with each other."
"What job have you done before being our teacher?" Nawaf asks.
"What did I do before coming here to teach?"
"Yeah. You said it."
"A lot of things. Most recently, I trained Asian businessmen to survive Chicago."
The sly bastard persists. "Why did you change your jobs?"
"Now why in the world would that interest you?"
"It's v ery interesting, Mr. Martin," the very interesting Zarai chips in.
"Well, for a lot of reasons. But we're not going to get into that."
"It's a secret?" Nawaf taunts.
"That's right. Yes. It's a secret."
"Top secret?" Zarai smiles at you from beneath her head wrapping.
You smile back at her. "Tip-top secret."
They say that you know more about this place on the day you first touch your foot to it than you will ever know about it again. And they're right. Each day that passes leaves you more confused about this stew, let alone the recipe that produced it. You understand Shiite versus Sunni, Maronite versus Orthodox, Druze, Palestinian, Phalangist, AMAL, the radical Party of God and their fanatical cell the Holy Warriors. But the fourteen other religions and splinter factions plunge you into the same despair that your students feel when confronting irregular English verbs.
This al-Jumhuriyah al-Lubnaniyah: even the name is a maze. The country's politics, like some unmappable Grand Bazaar out of Ali Baba, cannot be survived except by chance. Here civilization's ground rules disperse into the mists of fantasy. Standing agreements, tenuous at best, collapse back into the law of armed camps, each local militia staking out a few shelled blocks. No one is allowed to cross from zone to zone, not even the Red Crescent. Your students scrape by in a decaying landscape, one of those postapocalypse teen movies that so intrigue them.
But for all that, the streets still seem safer than Chicago's. Tomorrow feels more affirmed here, this city's pulse more surrendered to hope and devotion.
You learn a few words: Na'am , shukran, merhadh, khubuz. Yes, no, thank you, bathroom, bread. You begin to fantasize about meeting a woman, perhaps even a woman in head covering. About taking a crash course in the rules of her grammar.
Then the real woman calls you. Dead on schedule. Just as one of you recovers some semblance of health, some solidifying core of self-esteem, the other one calls to crash it. At least now, the two-dollar-a-minute taxi meter and the audible satellite lag protect you from extended conversation.
Or they would, if she weren't wild. Cost means nothing to her. Her words come through the phone like a violent cough. "Taimur. Tai. Thank God you're alive. You have to come back. Tonight. Now."
Too pathetic, even for retaliation. You can't even rouse yourself to decent brutality.
"I don't think so," you singsong into the receiver.
"I skipped my period."
You recover before the satellite link can click. "You skip every other month, Gwen. You're a high-strung, finger-pointing, street-brawling drama queen who never menstruates in the middle of a fight. Which is pretty much all the time."
Too many adjectives, and you've lost another
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