Introducing the Cast of Characters

CIA girl was one of those millions of warm blooded, God fearing Americans whose life took a sharp right after September 11th (of the year 2001... to be specific) . And while she recognized that all that was good and pure in this infallible country of ours was now in danger, she wanted to make a difference, you know, she thought she could help out. And so since, according to her figures, only 1 percent of Arabs (living both in the U.S. and abroad) were terrorists, she figured there was a critical mass of them, 99 percent to be exact, who could use her help.

Then there were the others...
The unblinking, big-bosomed blonde was hard to get to know. For one, she was always late.

Danny was an undergraduate in political science, and I could only guess that since Arabic-speaking nations were occupying a sizeable chunk of the political arena these days, he was learning his "aleph bas" to get a piece of it.

Aisha was an Indian by way of England who learned how to read Quranic Arabic as a child, but never learned what those elegantly written words actually meant. So since she was halfway there, she thought 10 credits should fill in the gap.

Sarla was the poster child for the overworked and overeducated. A young girl of twenty-something, she already had Espanol under her belt and was on to Al-Arabi. She needed both languages for her dissertation in order to get the full picture of those transient Moroccans (women in particular) who migrate between Marrakech and Madrid.

Tamar was a Tel-Avivi suffering from a self-imposed exile in the Midwest United States. After evading the Israeli army, she left the Fertile Crescent for a stint in the Big Apple and then a few back and forths led her to forth to a PhD program in Comp. Lit. to study the great literary works of her people, and while she's at it, the great literary works of the those other people. After all, what's an Israeli without a Palestinian? And vice versa.

Jon, Jimmy, and Johnny each had a story too. Jon was a mustachioed med student. Jimmy was fond of felafel and fuul, and Johnny was undecided between pursing the path toward precious posts at the CIA or FBI, but he had some other prospects too.

That leads to me... as the daughter of an Israeli and former Cairene, I had quite a few reasons to be in this class, but how to fit them all together was beyond me. Besides wishing to decipher the lyrics of Umm Kulthum, the Egyptian diva who sung to swooning Arab crowds from the 1930s on, and died the year I was born, I also wanted to be able to order hummus at Kabab Palace using correct pronunciation, and watch Elia Suleiman's films without the hassle of the subtitle menu on my DVD player. Mostly, I was looking to answer the "vice versa" of the Israeli-Palestinian question.