Religion and Weather

In studying Arabic, one of the things you learn pretty early on is that the language contains a lot of very frequently used everyday phrases and expressions that come from religion. For example, one of Egyptians' favorite phrases is, hamdu lileh, or thanks be to God, which is said in huge number of contexts. How are you today? hamdu lileh. The weather is nice today, hamdu lileh. Some problem has been worked out, hamdu lileh. I feel tired/sick today, hamdu lileh. Really, you can insert this phrase after just about anything, good or bad. Another really common phrase is in sha allah, or if God wills. This phrase is included in just about any statement about the future. Hey, cabbie, can you take me downtown for 10 pounds? in sha allah. See you later, in sha allah. The homework for tonight is [whatever], in sha allah. Claire and I have joked that these two phrases combined with a couple of the myriad Arabic expressions for "yeah" and "ok", could form an entire 30 second conversation between two Egyptians.

In addition to these, there are tons of other specific expressions for specific circumstances. There are designated phrases to say (and a designated response) when someone sneezes, when you congratulate someone, when someone leaves, when someone gets back from a trip, even when someone gets a new haircut or gets out of the shower. Of course, Americans have our stock phrases we say in lots of these situations, but in Arabic, almost all of them reference God. The standard form is something like "[some adjective]." Response: "May God make you [that adjective]." The idea seems to be one of God repaying you for the compliments you give to others, or something like that.

This kind of stuff, combined with the presence of a mosque around every corner and the calls to prayer broadcast loudly from every one of them five times a day, make religion a very public presence in Egyptian society. I even forgot to mention all the women who veil and all the men who have prayer bruises--small callouses on their foreheads that come from pressing their heads to the floor when they prostrate while praying. Anyway, all of this makes for interesting thinking about American society, which is very religious for a developed country and has lots of public and everyday manifestations of that religiosity, but not on the scale or of the kind that I see here. I have to say that, as a religious person, I actually kind of like a some of these public expressions of religion, even though it's not my religion. (Some of them, though, like women wearing the niqab, a kind of veil that covers the entire face except for the eyes, do make me quite uncomfortable.) Of course, I think recognition of religious pluralism is an incredibly important thing, and I don't at all want U.S. society to look more like Egypt in this regard. Personally, though, I find the calls to prayer and the conversational invocations of God kind of nice.

In other news, in the last three days, the weather seems to have taken an abrupt turn towards spring. In the span of about 72 hours, it has gone from coat-weather to short-sleeves-weather. Also, the sand-storms are supposed to be coming in the next few weeks. We'll let you know what that's like.