![]() Men eating to their “two-healths” - or sahtein - in Damascus. ![]() Their words carried a great amount of love. And if for the majority of my life, I only knew five Arabic words and they made it to my generation, I figure, they’re probably pretty good words! I took a standard Arabic course in Seattle, then traveled to Lebanon to learn the spoken language, only to be evacuated in the summer of 2006 when bombs started dropping on Beirut during a brief war between Hezbollah and Israel.įour years later, I found a comfortable space to learn Arabic in Syria, living with another nuss-nuss, studying with a tutor, and practicing my street language skills while traveling the countryside by bicycle.īut mostly, the context that I grew up learning Arabic was in the house and with relatives. (Photo by Deric Gruen)Īs a second-generation nuss-nuss (“half n’ half”) Arab American who is Lebanese and German, it was only in my adult life that I took a keen interest in my grandparents’ language. The author’s sister Anna Hink (center) meeting some long lost relatives in Lebanon.
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