Ya Sadiqqi,

Last week, during yet another endless, and pointless, meeting, I found myself doodling in Arabic – nothing special, the usual, long-standing qalila/kabira debate – baiti qalila aw kabira? – and was taken back to our evening Arabic classes, every Tuesday on some high floor of the David Hume Tower.

I recalled the older lady (I love the Middle East) who, completely confused, was trying to decide between adjectives, only to have the extremely earnest Indian girl sitting beside her repeat endlessly qalila…qalila…qalila, and she trying not too look too aggravated saying I know… clash of civilisation right there and then.

And do you remember Paul, the oil rig worker, on his way to the Middle East and hoping to blend in, all 2m, 150kg of him. He sat behind us, overwhelmed, and overwhelming those old tiny 1970's chairs, sticking his tongue out as he painstakingly outlined each alif, each lam, with the smallest pencil he could find. There were times when I couldn’t even see the pencil, just his gigantic hand slowly moving across the paper, right to left, right to left. During our first language test, our earnest tension was palpable as we tried to construct meaningful sentences from a reduced vocabulary pool (bait, bint, bayna, bijanib, sayyara, zujaja, kalb) – and, from the deepest, most focused, most intense silence in that swaying classroom filled with Open University romantics, Paul's whispered frustration: “Bugger!”.

I remembered you telling me that you couldn’t roll your “r”, because something was up with your tongue, you couldn’t even stick it out. I didn’t believe you and made you show me. 

“I don’t believe you. Show me.” 

And you stuck your tongue out. “You’re joking, right? Come on, stick it out further.” But that’s all there was. “Dude, your tongue’s tiny”. You weren’t happy, I felt bad for making you feel bad. I resolved to show you crappy stuff about my body (like the mole on my forehead).

I recalled our teacher, the Greek yet German-looking Dr. K., whose life I idolised - intelligent, married to an intelligent man, studying interesting things, knowing exactly what she was up to. I also feared her, as I knew she could read through me and figure out that this, the learning of Arabic, was yet another project that I would not see through. I could sense her despise of me, or perhaps it was my own despise at myself. 

She always wore a dark green velvet headband, and never any make-up, reminding me of a Christian missionary. As the weeks went by, and winter set in, Dr. K showed up with long woolly dresses. She also took to patting her belly, which I interpreted as nothing. But you told me that she was pregnant. You noticed. Perhaps because you had noticed one of your highly fertile sisters doing the same (how many nieces and nephews you had? It felt like 10 or more…).  And so she was pregnant. I was extremely happy when she announced it – that meant a university teacher could be happily married and have a husband. What a relief!

And I recalled our dinners, after class, at the Taj Mahal, for a kebab with everything. (what was the name?). And sometimes, because of my sweet tooth, we’d have a lassi – each time, you’d order it in a Scottish accent, each time I found it hilarious. Sometimes we’d do the homework as we waited for the food. (Taj Mahal - Shah Jahan -Mumtaz Maham - the grade I always wanted, geddit?)

Then we’d walk home – you to Morningside, and I’d be off to Marchmont.

It was perfect – I knew then that it was perfect as much as I know it now. What I didn’t know then is that it was as perfect as it would ever be. A platonic friendship filled with possibility – a commonplace, I know, but perfect.

Our sharing an apartment, our long night talks, our drunken outings, our eventual falling into each other’s arms – not so perfect. Separations, letterwriting, silent phone conversations, bad choices, solo drinking, raging hormones – even less perfect.

Youth really is wasted on the young!