A Saturday always feels like a Monday - it's difficult to adjust to the Thursday-Friday weekend. We just think of those as off-days, and still consider Sat-Sun the weekend. It kind of makes you think like you have a three-day week.

It's October already. Weird. Apart from being pinched and punched, and kicked and flicked (pinch, punch, first of the month and no returns! Kick, flick, for being so quick! Etc.), that's the only normal thing. I'm beginning to feel quite affectionate about our little corner of Cairo - I look out of my window at night, and it gives me almost the same sense of pleasure as looking out at home. It must be something about the night, and the closeness of stars. Speaking of which, the stars are...strange. When we arrived, we had to lean right out of the window to see Orion (the one single constellation I can pick out without resorting to some kind of reference) and his belt. But the other night, I looked out, and he was right there in front of me. Since then, he's moved around night to night...is that normal? I know that, you know, they move and all that, but are they supposed to quite so much? Also, they are bigger here - I'm used to the stars looking very distant, but here they are so big and close. Orion stretches over a large part of the sky, in a slightly grotesque unusual way. *welcomes explanations*

We've (finally) managed to install a Qur'an tutor, and we've had two lessons so far. She is Misriyya, and doesn't really speak English. Her Ammiya is quite difficult to understand until you get used to it, or know what to look out for. For instance, instead of pronouncing the letter 'qaaf,' they drop it - so 'qahwa' (coffee) becomes 'ahwa' - and it's weird when they do it to verbs, like 'qaala' (he said/to say), and in all its various conjugations it sounds very strange - like 'aala', 'na'ool' etc. And I've finally mastered the use of 'mafeesh' (I think), which is basically the Ammiya substitute for 'la' or 'laysa' (no/not). I like how 'mafeesh' sounds. Mah feesh! Muffish. Hee. ^_^

Heidi-hi has gone off to stay with Laa Laa for her last week. It's strange, but you can feel she is not in the house. I didn't think I'd notice much. And it's only the first day night! Zakia left yesterday, and she must be home by now. I went to farewell her, but didn't really do it properly. Just as well, really. I'm so sad she's left...with Laila leaving, that will be the last piece of home gone. Gosh, I won't see Zak for ten months. How many goodbyes I've said, and how many people I've been left by. XD

But! On the BRIGHT SIDE - Free called me yesterday!!!1!!1 Completely didn't expect it but was soooo happy. It was just like...like I was at home and she was calling me just like normal, and just having an ordinary chat and...! Eee! And you actually get quite a good line these days so there was no lag except in intelligence XD; it's the same whenever mum and dad call. It so felt like...just normal. We call used to call each other all the time (well, she calls me when she has the free minutes), and it wasn't like we hadn't spoken for two months at all. Fareeha jiddan, ferry harpy ^_^

Oh, Arabic has crept into all parts of our daily conversation. Especially, 'li maa thaa??' (Why?) 'Li anna...' (because...). We'll go home and nobody will know what we're saying. And we'll have odd little in-jokes that no one will ever understand either. XD Ooo I made sweet rice today. It makes me so happy to be able to cook the things I want to eat. I burnt the almonds a bit at the beginning though, so it's somewhat flecked through with black. But that's okay, because then it just looks like the cinnamon. The only thing really wrong with it is that it is rice-coloured instead of yellow or orange. Or green. I've been looking for food colouring here, in Awlad Ragab, but not yet found. Must ask my mama to send something along. Mmm food colouring. Then we can have multi-coloured pholau for Eid. Yes, us Noakhali-ites don't say pilau or polau. We say pholau. So.

One of the really fun things about Arabic is that loooads of Bangla seems to have come from it. I'd always understood that it was Shanskriti (yay for interspersing my writing with Bangla, too!), which just means it is Sanskrit-based. This definitely refers to the script, which is more like Hindi - unlike Urdu, which doesn't really seem to be much different from Hindi, except that Urdu uses an Arabic script. It's really interesting about Urdu - dad said it was the language of the lashkar (soldiers) who all spoke different languages, which eventually formed modern Urdu. That means that Urdu is, in fact, a kind of Hindiyya Indic creole. The presence of so much Arabic and mutated Arabic is also a sign of the strong impression that the Arab muslim merchants and Islam itself made, to have embedded itself in the language. As we've also been observing, especially with Zakia around, is the difference in our dialects and vocabulary. Zakia speaks 'shud'do' which is fus'ha standard bangla, whereas we speak (badly) a local dialect - a dialect particular to our own district, Noakhali, in Bangladesh. Our dialect is very thick with Arabic words - with a good quantity of words that aren't used at all in standard bangla, but are very common to us. This is all very fascinating, since we know that about six generations ago, our family, and many of the other villages, actually came out of Iraq. It's part of the reason why we look so un-Bengali, and people always mistake us for Iranians, or something. We also know that mum's side of the family were from Baghdad, which is pretty cool, although I'm not sure where dad's side is from. So yeah. I was always embarrassed at the way we couldn't speak standard, but I'm very happy now that I've found that the things we say differently, are in fact, Arabic or Arabicised words. Yeah. ^_^

Hrm. Digressions, eh?

In class, we are doing, 'at-tadkheen,' which is le smoking. In the middle of the lesson, our teacher suddenly stopped and went, 'Eh? Why are we doing stuff about the dangers of smoking? Like anyone here even smokes!' But the words are new and interesting - all infections and epidemics and cancer and slow suicides. Very useful. Shisha hasn't come up yet. Must remember to ask about the dangers of that. Speaking of which, we have shisha bars on either side of us - one seedy one next to the net cafe, and one very classy and fragrant one round the back, which calls itself a coffee shop. They are just like those gentleman's clubs the Victorians and people had. Smells nice.

Hrm, late. Spoke to mummery flummery and daddery for nearly an hour the other day.

Must go to bed.