Sunday, September 21, 2014

Salmon Fishing in Yemen (201?) Movie

"This project saved me" is what Harriet said after they swam in the man-made canal and before he, Dr Alfred Jones, asked if him and her were theoretically possible. Funny man this Dr Jones! I was disappointed by his married life with Mary. Of course before he showed his affection for Harriet; he was married to Mary. Mary, who didnt listen to him even when he was talking about his dreams of having a child. Mary, who after he made love to her said "that should do you for a while" and he thanked her! Mary, who broke the news of her 6 week business trip a day before her departure. Mary, who was so cold and self assured that didn't and couldn't satisfy his dream.  Mary, who allowed him and drove him to experience love when he found it, perhaps for the first time. Then, when he fell in love with Harriet, Mary, who got all jealous and mad.
The Sheikh in Yemen had praying beads between his fingers all the time. He prayed and even we heard him say the Quranic verses in his prayers during a scene. In this time and era, this was an extra ordinary movie showing some Muslims in positive lights.
There were some scenes when people spoke Arabic but I couldn't decipher a lot of it.  I'm not sure if they were actually speaking Arabic. Funny I was trying to understand what they said on the same day when I made an effort to speak Arabic! It was when in the airport I tried to help a poor old woman who didn't know how to find her gate on her way to Cairo and asked me on my passing. I said I didn't know in English, and showed her the departure monitors on the other side of the salon then I saw her face drop. I thought she might not know English at all even to read "Cairo." I turned around and motioned her to follow me. She quickly started scampering behind me while taking something out of her purse. Her boarding pass. OK. Cairo. 15:30. Found it. C33. "C33". And she responded in inaudible Arabic. "C thirty three" I repeated slowly.  Blank face. So I showed with three fingers "thirty" and closed and open the same three fingers "three". She smiled and said something but I was not confident she got what I said wondered if she thought C3. Suddenly I remembered I knew some Arabic! "Saales ashar saales". She quickly repeated "thalis 'ashar althalis". Yeah! We both smiled. I pointed her to C gates and walked away. Just followed her by eyes and last I saw she was on her way. I hope she found her gate fine! Enshala!

1 comment:

  1. Such a fun and cute story. Made me happy to read it!

    ReplyDelete

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An emigrant from an ancient civilization to North America, an engineer in marketing and management, a mom of working kind, who thinks when she talks, and who likes to write. I, L.B., own the copyright to the content.