A very Arabic Fall break!

Fall break was a very good opportunity for me to feel Middle Eastern again! With my three Arab friends from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, I spent the ten-day break doing every single thing we all were missing about our life in the Middle East. Every evening, we would gather in the house of Mohammed, the guy from KSA. Then, we would begin explaining how wonderful it was to sleep for almost twelve hours and waking up at 2p.m! Neither my Arabic nor my English could serve me well here to elaborate on what unearthly exuberance I had in my heart and on my face every time I woke up, looked at my watch and found that I had been sleeping for twelve hours! And so was the case for my friends.

Later, we would sit and start negotiating what we would like to have for dinner –which became our main meal for ten days-. Everybody came up with some suggestions that clearly reflected how all of us missed the Arabic food. We finally decided that we would cook a different Arabic meal every day.

As Arabs culture has always been, everybody would “fight” for paying for the stuff needed. It was not just generosity, which a typical Arab person believes is one of his/her universal characters, but it was something all of us had missed about being home. We all wanted to feel that we are doing something very Arabic even though it might sound weird for Americans, preferring that everybody pays for himself/herself.

Anyways, we finally were “beaten” –as it would sound in the Arab world if you lost the fight of paying for yourself and your friends- by Mohammed, and he took care of buying every single thing needed.

Our first meal was Kabsa, which is a very popular meal in KSA. It primarily consists of rice, meat and some special spices. Everybody got his share of preparing it, and Mohammed absolutely was the chief. Later, we had the popular Palestinian meal “Makloba” –literally translated as Upside Down-, and some Lebanese salads and appetizers.

Away from food, we also got to watch so many Arabic movies, which I had not done for almost ninety days by then! We really enjoyed watching them, and sometimes our British friend, Daniel, would join us and just get lost with the very Arabic atmosphere we had! He always said that Arabic sounded aggressive to him, but for Mahmoud and Reem, the Lebanese guys, it would be really weird to know that, because the Lebanese dialect of Arabic is the smoothest of all the ones in the Arab world.

We finally would conclude our nights by smoking some Hooka –me excluded- and having a discussion of what would be interesting to do the next day, or actually that day itself since this was happening at 3a.m.!

I apologize for the long post, but believe me: “It was just as if I went back to Palestine, stayed with my family, ate Arabic food, spoke Arabic all the time, and hanged out with all my best friends!”