Posted in Jeddah on June 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
The Two Riyal Bus
The two-riyal bus is the beat-up metal canister painted with horizontal stripes of orange and blue or red that runs up and down Tariq Madinah, all the way down to the Balad. How far it goes in the other direction beyond Hayy al-Rawda is beyond me. In fact, there [...]
Posted in Jeddah on June 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
I had a chat with a cab driver, on the evening of June 21st, that lightened my spirit.
He was an older gentleman, with pale skin and white hair, a little heavier than me, perhaps. Allah had blessed him with a relaxed presence and his presence exuded, inducing me to relax as well. [...]
Posted in Jeddah on June 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
Glancing across the street en route to Masjid al Zahra, it looks like a kitty who Allah blessed me to make friends with last week got smacked upside the head, leaving its fresh corpse affixed to the black pavement with a pool of burgundy coagulating under the circle of its mouth.
On the [...]
Posted in Teaching on June 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
Having reflected – in context – on the questions that Allah caused me to focus on in the previous post, I believe the answers depend largely on the teaching institution’s requirements. Here at the Institute, the English language program coordinator informed us that the preparatory grammar exams have to be difficult and [...]
Posted in Teaching on June 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
The test that Allah enabled me to prepare for the Session 167 Preparatory Grammar final exam was lengthened to fifty items (from forty) and administered this morning (Session 169). The first ten items tested knowledge of basic grammatical metalanguage, terms including conjugation, perspective, tense, first, second, and third person, positive, and negative. [...]
Posted in Teaching on June 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
Allah tried me a bit last week through a colleague who not long ago was selected to carry some extra duties. With specific reference to last week, I spent some of my quality time editing a final exam produced by him, carefully going through sixty items designed to test preparatory level grammar [...]
Posted in Teaching on June 7, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
fiction
قصص
روايات
fictional
خياليّ
fictitious
مُخْتَلَق
الحمدُ لِله
Posted in Jeddah on June 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
بِسمِ اللهِ الرحمن الرحيم
4. The Semitic Physiognomy
The Friday Sermon at Masjid al-Harithy has always been given by one and the same imam, in my experience. According to an acquaintance from Damascus, the imam too is from Damascus. Besides his words and presence, what has also struck me is the deep family resemblance that is apparent [...]
