The Nerd's Eye View

Growing up among the Sudanese there are things that I took for granted. Specifically in the NY, when I was a child, we would live our almost American lives at school and then come home to a foreign culture and language which was mostly our own. By mostly, of course, I mean that it was something we were born with but not proficient at, like birds pushed out of a nest. There was a lot of flapping, and lots of free-fall.

Examples abound: my parents would have Sudanese friends over; friendly brown people who smiled and sat on our sky blue velveteen sectional (I loved that couch) and speak broadly about the latest foibles of Benny Adam. "This Benny Adam doesn't know what he's doing! The Benny Adam is so selfish, or shortsighted ..." etc. It got so sometimes that I wondered why they were still friends with him! For God's sakes if a guy is that unreliable or fickle then it's time to just scratch him out of your address book. Now this might not seem funny to your non-Sudanese (although to be honest, some Arabs might get it), it's a hilarious mistake on my part. "Benny Adam" is not a person at all, it's the Arabic expression, "bani Adam", or child of Adam, or in short, human being. It's an archaic expression that has made it's way into the 21st century, seemingly unchanged and caused me much confusion as a child.

Things didn't get much better once we moved back. With NY accents, my brother and I stood out despite our attempts to blend in. Our Arabic wasn't very good (and, I would argue, it still isn't that great) either and it made for more errors, and finally refuge in reading and sports (and anything else that wouldn't require a lot of talking to people). Back in the Sudan, we were quickly pulled out of our nascent interest in basketball, football (American) and hockey and thrown pell-mell into the crucible of football (soccer). Our classmates seemed to have been born with soccer balls tethered to their feet, and like a good nerd, I did the one thing I could do and studied the game. Unfortunately this was pre-Internet and football (soccer) can only be learned by watching and doing. Doing brought confirmation of one's ineptitude so watching was the beginning. Luckily, every Friday a match from the German Bundesliga would be televised after lunch and we would huddle around the tv with cousins and friends to watch (and take notes). Still my brother and I were confused, in every game there seemed to be a guy named Harris Merma. The guy seemed to change teams with alarming frequency, always playing goalie for one side or another. His performance was spotty though, some days a veritable wall in front of the goal, others a sieve. It must have been almost a year before we figured out that "Harris Merma" was actually "haris marma" which is Arabic for "goal tender".

It takes getting used to, the idiom, and frequent adjustment. You have to adjust between the language you use among your peers, and the language you use with adults; between the language of the street and the language of polite society. Now of course I speak fairly fluently (although I lose some of my fluency from lack of use), though of course I speak like older men speak, since I spent a lot of time among my father's friends, but that's a different story.