State College, PA — Falafel had been on my mind all day. Tired of dining hall food, I willingly submitted to my craving and made my way to my favorite falafel restaurant. When it was my turn, I began to issue my order to one of the young men behind the counter. I learned immediately that he doesn’t speak English very well, and when he held up his bandaged hand, I realized that he was trying to tell me that he can’t serve me because of his injury. In response, I laughed and held up my own bandaged hand.
After I received my food and was on my way out, I saw the same young man eating his own lunch in the restaurant. I said goodbye to him as I passed, but he stood up to talk to me. He said in his broken English that he would like to be friends, but the language is difficult for him. To his utter astonishment, I responded to him in Arabic, “No problem, I know some Arabic!” He stammered, searching for something to say, starting to say something in English but quickly breaking into fluid, fast-paced Arabic.
We spoke for a little while longer about ourselves, school, and what we are studying at Penn State. His name is Mohammed and is from Jordan. He is a Penn State student of graphic design who wants to get better at English. I am a student of political science who wants to get better at Arabic. All of a sudden, he announced a brilliant idea. He suggested that we meet for an hour or so once or twice a month to practice Arabic and English with each other by just conversing, for half the time in English and half the time in Arabic. I readily accepted knowing from past experience how profoundly an experience like this would deepen our understanding and strengthen our grasp on the target language. It gets better yet. When we pulled out our phones to exchange numbers, we laughed incredulously to see that we had the same exact phone and the same exact phone case, both of which are outdated!
It was a pleasantly serendipitous exchange, but I would like to commend Mohammed’s courage. In today’s world of technology-induced isolation and egotism, few people reach out to one another. We try to connect more to wifi than to each other, but Mohammed bravely surpassed this trend and did so in a language new and unfamiliar to him. He remained pleasant, upbeat, and respectful throughout the duration of our interaction, and I look forward to helping and being helped by him in the future. He inspired me to try to have more interactions with strangers, even if just by making eye contact or smiling, acknowledging the strong bond we share just by being humans.
That’s such a cool story!! I feel like this is something that only ever happens on TV shows or in movies but the fact that something like this happened in real life is awesome. I think it’s really impressive that you actually took the initiative and agreed to meet with him; it’s always so easy to say that you would do something like that but to go out and actually do it can be really difficult. Good luck to you and Mohammed, and I hope you can stay in touch with him!
This blog always makes me smile. I know from experience that trying to talk in another person’s native language is stressful, and the feeling of making a mistake keeps you from trying to enjoy the conversation. It is not a fun time, so I know how Mohammed feels. People who react badly when others admit that they do not know English well prevents people from trying to speak and learn it. Your idea of spending some time with him and conversing in both Arabic and English is a great way to learn a new language and keep your mind focused and engaged in that language. This whole topic was discussed in a Bollywood movie, which I think you may like. I talked about it in my Bollywood blog. The movie is called English Vinglish, and it has English subtitles for people who do not speak Hindi. This movie follows the life of a woman who is made fun of for not knowing how to speak well in English, and how she tries to get over that challenge while she is visiting family in America. I would highly recommend checking it out.