I shouldn't listen

I am a bad woman. Last night at dinner, two young men came in to the restaurant and asked for job applications. While they were filling them out a few seats over, one of the waitresses came up and chatted with them...in Russian. I could catch phrases and pieces of their conversation. My Russian is nearly gone, but I could still figure out some of it, basic stuff about where they were living and how long they'd been here and where they'd worked.

The Syrian Bride

I watched a very good movie last night, The Syrian Bride. Set in the Golan Heights, it follows the fictional wedding day of a Druze woman who is marrying by arrangement a Syrian cousin. Once she crosses into Syria, though, she will never be permitted to return.

The small scale dramas are all about her family: her sister Amal, who is trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage; her brother Marwan, a very slick guy engaged in "business" (I assume smuggling or something black/grey market); her brother Hattem, who married a Russian woman and was disowned; and her father Hammed, a political dissent recently released from prison, who is caught between the political/religious elders, Israeli security, and his family.

The larger issues are political, of course. Israeli bureaucrats create a special stamp just for Mona's passport, which the Syrian border guards cannot by law accept because of the dispute about the ownership/nationality of the Golan. The UN person is utterly frustrated by the attempt to be an intermediary between the two, ultimately abandoning the situation in order to catch her flight home to France. So Mona is left sitting in no man's land, not permitted to go back home (her passport had been stamped with the exit stamp already, you see) but not allowed to enter Syria.

The dialogue varied between Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, English and French. Sadly, I grasped much more of the scant Russian dialogue with my defunct Russian than I did of the Arabic. Most of the Arabic I caught was numbers, greetings, nouns and verbs; just words, random shards of dialogue.

Speak less Russian?

Well, the idea seems to be not about speaking less Russian, but about speaking more of the indigenous language that was suppressed by the official use of Russian during the Soviet-era. Estonia is promoting the speaking and learning of Estonian, as are other former satellites.

Lots of things going on

I received an email from one of my college Russian profs -- my favorite instructor, Alla Aleksandrovna Bluykher -- is retiring, and I'm invited to her retirement celebration. Alla specifically asked for me, which is flattering (it's been 10 years!) and a bit guilt-inducing (since I've let my Russian lapse so badly). But I'm off to Red Square at the Belvedere one evening this week to celebrate her 25 years of teaching Russian to bumbling English speakers.

The Jerusalem Fund is offering a workshop on the art of Arabic calligraphy later this month. I just signed up, along with a couple of my classmates.

And I'm back from Cleveland, where I went to attend "trAnsfoRmaTionS," a conference on Arts Education. According to Drew Carey, Cleveland Rocks! I'm not sure I would go that far, but the conference was excellent.

Food note: had most excellent meat loaf at Pickwick & Frolic's, a restaurant near the hotel that seems to have a history as some sort of burlesque venue. The meat load was angus beef mixed with chorizo. Mmmm. Accompanied by garlic mashed and a glorious corn pudding.