Lebanon: Will The World's Worst Web Get Better?

Gulf News filed a Reuters report today on moves to improve Lebanon's internet access. The headline alone made me laugh, "Lebanon unveils faster, cheaper internet amid political bickering'. That's one of those 'Man found dead in cemetry' headlines. Nothing happens in Lebanon without political bickering.

Lebanon, as those who know it will attest, is a beautiful country of rich soil, glorious countryside and home to a fascinatingly diverse people capable of great cleverness. Beirut can be sophisticated, sexy as hell and enormous fun. It is also home to crushing poverty. And it's all strung together with public infrastructure that sometimes defies belief. From the rocky power grid (power cuts are still commonplace) through to the state of the roads, you're often left wondering quite how so much physical, intellectual and financial wealth sits alongside such tottering examples of failed governance.

Listening to the Ministerial addresses to ArabNet is helpful to reaching an understanding of this, I find.

Lebanon's internet is cited in today's story as being the 'world's worst... the country is always much lower down the rankings than many less developed nations such as Afghanistan or Burkina Faso.' The story goes on to recount, in shocked tones, how a 1 Mbps connection in Lebanon costs Dhs 279!!!

Errr. Hello, GN? That's about what we're paying here in the UAE. A one meg DSL line is Dhs249 a month, 2 Mbps costs a whopping Dhs349 a month and you'll pay Dhs549 for a 16 meg line. If you want the highest available speed from Etisalat, you can get a 30 Mbps 'Al Shamil' line for a mere Dhs699 a month. That's $191.5 to you.

I'm not even going to mention that the Japanese home gets an average 60 Mbps line at a cost of $0.27 per megabit month. Not even thinking about going there. Oh no.

Now the promises being made (because the story is, tragically, predicated on a promise not an actual physical delivery of service) are that Lebanon will get a minimum access speed of 1 Mbps for $16 per month. That would bring it in line with markets like the UK. I genuinely hope the promise (made to Reuters by Lebanese telecoms minister Nicola Sehnawi) comes through - although Ogero might have something to say about that - for two reasons. First and foremost so my friends in Lebanon can stop gnashing their teeth and throwing laptops against the wall in frustration. The selfish second reason is that it would add pressure on the TRA to finally act and bring down the ridulous broadband prices here in the UAE - prices that are undoubtedly a key factor contributing to hindering the adoption, use and the growth of the economic opportunity derived from technology in the UAE today.


(The image at the top of the post is one of my favourite things, BTW. It's the first sketch of 'the Internet')


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Who's Afraid Of The Kindle Fire?

Image via WikipediaIt hardly seems worth adding to the squillions of words being written about Amazon's Kindle Fire announcement last night. Engadget's real-time updates were fascinating enough, but this morning pretty much every gadget blog and site is looking at 'what you should know about the Kindle Fire' and analysing what this new thing means to us all. The papers (the serious ones, I mean) are all busily providing their much-vaunted 'context and analysis'.

It's all a  bit of a kerfuffle.

Personally, I've been flirting with the idea of a tablet since last year, when I decided to go Kindle. At the time of its release, Amazon's e-reader certainly had its detractors - all of them making like the wide-mouthed frog right now. The Kindle has not only been a brilliant success, it has transformed the publishing and writing world and continues to do so, injecting a great deal of fear and loathing into an industry that has been shaken out of its cosy leather armchairs. At the new $79 price point, it will only continue to do so. The Kindle touch, at $99, adds a touch screen, although it's not a 'full' touch screen, you tap it to move a page rather than swipe it. Which is a shame, as every person I have ever handled my Kindle to has first tried to swipe it to turn the page.

But it's the Kindle Fire that's really got people, well, fired up. The Fire is undoubtedly the one tablet device that is going to challenge Apple's dominance of the tablet market. Not because it's a really cool physical product (although it is), but because it's linked to the world's largest content repository. Amazon not only has millions of books, films and pieces of music to sell us, it has our credit card numbers (and our trust), our addresses and frequently the addresses of our friends and family too. With Whispernet, it is already delivering instantaneously accessible content to millions of people around the world. The Kindle Fire is the device that can access that content, as well as the services Amazon is building around it.

Sure, you can get stuff on Kindle for the iPad, but it's not the same. The Kindle Fire is integrated into Amazon. We're couch potatoes - we'll go for the easy stuff every time. For everyone who doesn't have an iPad right now, the Kindle Fire is a no-brainer at $199.

So where does that leave our, now age-old, argument about wanting to curl up with a good book rather than a slab of electronics? Well, Kindles just became a load cheaper and more accessible. And, at the high end, they got a whole load sexier. That means new consumers, new readers who can choose to download our work as e-books. We've already seen that American 'core readers', those who buy more than twelve books a year, have in the main migrated to e-readers. Now there are pretty compelling reasons for the mass market to follow in their footsteps. It's increasingly the case that in order to reach a wide readership, a writer needs to have an e-book.

It's not very good news for traditionally minded publishers. And it further cements Amazon's unbearably tight grip on the publishing industry. Amazon pretty much dominates the business of distributing books now, between the physical book sales and the e-book market. It is set to expand that dominance exponentially.

Sadly, those of us not born in the land of the free and home of the brave will have to wait a while for our new toys to arrive. Available on November 15th in the USA, the Kindle Fire cannot be shipped anywhere else in the world. And, of course, here in the Middle East we cannot sign up to download Amazon content. Yes, of course there are ways around that - but you're missing the mass market when you're making people jump through hoops like that.

Which is frustrating. As the world migrates to e-readers, the Middle East is left behind in the Paper Age simply because the biggest, most dominant players in the content reader device and distribution businesses, Apple and Amazon, do not give a hoot about the Arab world. And likely never will. Tragically, every move as brilliant and innovative as the Kindle Fire in this industry just widens the gap.

ArabNet - Getting Started

Image via WikipediaI went to ArabNet in  Beirut last year with very low expectations indeed. Despite my deep fondness for Beirut, it's not a city I have traditionally associated with effective regional conferences - this would have been the first I had ever attended. I suspect that attitude is at least a product of the creeping UAE-centricity that affects so many people living here, Dubai in particular.

I also had reasonably low expectations regarding the objectives of the event. Over twenty years of working in the media and communications business here, much of that focused on the technology and telecoms industries, I have long seen a lack of innovation and entrepeneurialism - and what there was all too frequently crushed by software piracy and the often remarkable inertia of decision makers who always seem to find 'no' so much easier than 'what the hell, let's go with it'. We have so long been a retail market, too - we import everything from food and toys to ideas and software. We're massively risk-averse, a condition that is exacerbated by the criminalisation of failure in much of the region. And education, particularly in the GCC, has all too often been seen as a formal process of learning fact to obtain qualification - rather than leading to centres of innovation, research and development.

There have, of course, been some notable exceptions. But they remain exceptions rather than the rule.

All of this doom and gloom were dispelled for me by ArabNet. I spent much time wandering around with a stupid grin on my face. Over a thousand smart people in a room, speakers who had something new and fresh to say (apart from the Lebanese Minister of ICT who just doled out flaccid, worn platitudes in a wasted opportunity, just one of many that I am sure he oversees) and a mixture of youth, optimism and energy together with older, wiser heads bearing cheque books - they were all there, funds, angel investors and venture capitalists. Someone commented that this was the Middle East's dot com boom, only ten years too late. And I have some sympathy with that characterisation.

ArabNet's just around the corner - it's taking place again this year, from the 22nd-24th March. This year it's expanded to become a four day event, a two-day conference, a developer day and a 'community day'. It's billed as 'the biggest digital gathering in the Middle East' and I'd tend to support that billing, although Jordan's ICT Forum probably contends for the title. The event features an 'ideathon', where startup ideas are pitched in two minute chunks - the top three voted by the audience winning seed capital grants and also a 'startup demo', five minute pitches by startup businesses to gain early stage investment. The activity has been supported by a 7-country roadshow held by the team from event organiser IBAG, which provided workshops, mentoring and consultation with over 1500 young entrepeneurs from around the Middle East.

ArabNet is a highly connected event supported by a phalanx of bloggers, Twitterers and the like. One highly amusing aspect of last year's event was the 'Twitter walls' either side of the stage, which transformed the nature of presentation and debate on the stage. The smart young things at IBAG turned it off for the Minister's address...

Seeing this level of digital entrepeneurialsm in the Middle East is still a delight for me and, rightly or wrongly, I do see ArabNet as a sort of inflection point - there had been startups before and funds before, but the bringing together of so many last year in Beirut was a first. I have never had so many conversations with digital startups as I have over the past year, ranging from copycat websites derived from ideas that already work in Western markets through to innovations that are unique to the region. I do see this as a trend, and a strong one at that. And it's exhilarating purely because there has been such a dearth of this kind of thinking in the region in the past. You can find out more about ArabNet here.



My expectations for ArabNet this year are consequently set absurdly high. Let's see...

Watching A New Life Unfold

Image via WikipediaI have known Sara for years. A former colleague and current friend, she is far too talented for her own good and manages to combine a keen intellect with an absolute lack of ambition for herself. She believes in people and in the good to be found in people; something I admire particularly as I do not at all share her capacity in this regard.

She left Dubai for London some years back with a vague idea of using the communications skills she had honed in a sort of NGO sort of way. That never really happened as I fancy she thought it would until a few weeks ago all sorts of things came together and she decided to throw in London life and travel to Nablus to become a teacher.

I would contend this is not normal behaviour, but then chacun à son goût...

One of Sara's many talents is language. She's always had better than native English language skills (although this is not, generally, setting the bar very high. Few foreigners manage to mangle English like the English manage mangling English); I recall her once stopping a client dead in his tracks by pointing out that their encounter had been more than usually serendipitous. After all, it's not a word you expect from an Arab girl, is it? Her encounters with ignorant English colleagues in London were relayed back to me with delighted indignation ("Dahling, I just can't belhieve an Arab is editing my copy!"), but the fact remains that Sara has a way with words that is unusual, a keen eye for humanity and a strong sense of fairness and compassion.

When you combine these things with the whole 'Year in Provence' adventure of starting a new life as a volunteer in the West Bank, you could be forgiven for thinking the mixture would provide a powerful, evocative and compellingly detailed account of the experience.

And it does. Her blog is linked here and I commend it to you with all my heart. Go there now while it is still new and she is at the very opening of her adventure. Because I bet you a pound to a penny that this unfolding story will delight you as the days fly by.

Who's the F***ing Superpower Here?

Image via Wikipedia

Many years ago I used to manage the Middle East PR account of a certain very large software company. I went to Paris for a conferency thing with them and there I met, over dinner, the general manager of their Israeli operation. It was an odd moment. Coming from very different sides of the fence (or, if you prefer, security wall), we had both spent a great deal of time managing reactions to each other’s operations in our respective markets. Initially somewhat wary of each other, we got on fine, as it turned out.

In over 20 years of working in and travelling around the Middle East, I have always tried as hard as I could to remain objective about Israel and the actions of its government. It’s been difficult at times, I have to admit. But I’m also conscious of how easy it would be to slip into an unthinkingly anti-Israeli stance when your friends and colleagues have been so caught up in the conflict and wickedness that has burned so long on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.

My friend Jacks came back from a trip to Qana with UNIFIL carrying photographs of the burned children in the smoke-blackened remains. It’ll be a long time before I forget those. She was a nervous wreck at the time, having spent weeks travelling around Southern Lebanon. I have stood in Beirut as the Israeli jets overfly the city on one of their window smashing trips, breaking the sound barrier purposefully so that everyone underneath gets the message. I have watched colleagues reduced to tears as they try to telephone their families under bombardment. I watched in horror last year, thanks to Palestinian news agency Ramattan’s rooftop camera, as Israel pointlessly smashed its way through the ghetto of Gaza with massive military force, blotting hundreds innocents out of existence as they went.

When I wrote Olives, the second book wot I writed, I tried desperately hard to retain a sense of balance. The book’s about a journalist who gets caught up in a series of bombings in Jordan and Israel. It’s necessarily told from an Arab perspective because our man is living in Amman and falls in love with a nice local girl, but despite that I wanted to make sure that it didn’t demonise or dehumanise the people over the border. I hope I was successful in that.

I completely lost any sense of objectivity last night. Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech had me raging. An exercise in indefensible, calculated wickedness, I believe it demonstrated how incredibly out of touch Israel’s government is. There cannot be room in the world for people like that – people who will so willingly and glibly consign others to poverty and disease, despair and degradation. Netanyanhu trotted out the same awful Zionist claptrap, the same distortions that gave us ‘A land without a people for a people without a land.’ But for some reason, this time it made me angry. I think perhaps because his words are so completely out of step with any sense of justice or fairness, so totally out of touch with the mood and spirit of the time.

It’s become so entrenched in Israeli policy, this idea that you have to go to the negotiating table hard, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that Benji’s just setting the stage for a tough tussle with Barack’s boys. By resetting the border lines with the wall (so that it encompasses extensive water resources on the Israeli side), by creeping into the post-1967 areas with settlements, Israel’s continued, inexorable progress across the map of Palestine has left only a tiny area of the least viable land for any Palestinian state to occupy. And yet even now Netanyahu’s government will continue to build settlements, will continue to use their own people as tools in the Great Game, the vicious land grab that has become core to Israeli policy. Is he just squaring up for that great, final negotiation or is he genuinely so arrogant that he believes that Israel will be allowed to continue on this course? Bill Clinton’s reaction on meeting Netanyahu possibly gives us the answer to that one.

The great difference of course is that now these words are being heard by a world that has had a chance to see quite how evilly the Israeli government is willing to behave towards the people whose farms and land were appropriated in the country’s founding. The flow of information means that people around the world are more informed, have access to the other side of the story – the side that has been so marginalised for so long.

Obama’s overture to the Arab World was a major signal that the US administration understands what George Bush’s dumb hick neo-con monkeys failed to grasp. Settle the Palestinian issue and you will not only bring the prospect of wealth and hope back to the Middle East but you will defuse the extremism that has torn the region apart for so long.

Benji’s failed to grasp that one, too.

What surprises me is why Israeli students aren’t on the streets trying to get rid of their evil old men, too.

Obama's First UN Boycott

Image via Wikipedia

The US government, the Obama administration that sparked such hope (and fear, possibly!) in the Middle East is boycotting the United Nations’ 2009 Durban Review Conference, being held in Geneva from the 20th-24th April because the document that is to form the basis of the conference debate, the Draft Outcome Document, reaffirms the 2001 Durban Declaration. The US together with Israel, is being joined in its boycott by a 'coalition of the willing' that includes Canada and Australia.

The Draft Outcome Document was the result of preparatory committees, meetings and conference proceedings involving the entire United Nations – including the US, which had already negotiated major changes to the DOD before it walked. It is based on the 2001 Declaration which resulted from the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, that took place in Durban, South Africa. The US and Israel walked out of that conference, although an overwhelming consensus of world governments and NGOs remained and ratified the Declaration.

The 2009 Conference has the enthusiastic backing of the UN, as does the 2001 Declaration: “The outcome document of the 2001 World Conference, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), which was adopted by consensus, is the most comprehensive and valuable framework for addressing racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

Many people, including Barbara Lee, who heads the black caucus in Congress, have huge reservations about the Obama administration’s decision. Lee has been widely quoted by media as being deeply dismayed: "This decision is inconsistent with the administration's policy of engaging with those we agree with and those we disagree with… The US is making it more difficult for it to play a leadership role on the UN Human Rights Council as it states it plans to do. This is a missed opportunity, plain and simple."

The offending text from the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, 2001, is not being quoted in any of the news coverage I’ve seen of the US government decision, particularly not outlets such as CNN. So I thought it might be worth finding out what it actually says that is so objectionable that it would spark a walk-out from a major UN conference. The two extracts below neatly sum it up:

Relevant Extracts from the 2001 Durban Declaration

62. We are conscious that humanity’s history is replete with terrible wrongs inflicted through lack of respect for the equality of human beings and note with alarm the increase of such practices in various parts of the world, and we urge people, particularly in conflict situations, to desist from racist incitement, derogatory language and negative stereotyping;

63. We are concerned about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation. We recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State and we recognize the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel, and call upon all States to support the peace process and bring it to an early conclusion;

64. We call for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region in which all peoples shall co-exist and enjoy equality, justice and internationally recognized human rights, and security;

65. We recognize the right of refugees to return voluntarily to their homes and properties in dignity and safety, and urge all States to facilitate such return;


150. Calls upon States, in opposing all forms of racism, to recognize the need to counter anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism and Islamophobia world-wide, and urges all States to take effective measures to prevent the emergence of movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas concerning these communities;

151. As for the situation in the Middle East, calls for the end of violence and the swift resumption of negotiations, respect for international human rights and humanitarian law, respect for the principle of self-determination and the end of all suffering, thus allowing Israel and the Palestinians to resume the peace process, and to develop and prosper in security and freedom;


The DOD is the document negotiated in preliminary committees and meetings that will set the agenda for the UN Durban Review Conference debate. It’s perhaps interesting that the Obama administration is sending the clear signal that this stuff is not only considered to be alien to its policies and views, but that it’s not even up for debate.

Scoundrel

A second weather post in a week! What a scoundrel!

I'm a sucker for reminiscences about the Middle East - there are some great stories told by the people that were here throughout the breakneck and often scary period of change that has transformed this part of the world over the past century.

Some of my favourite pieces of recent history come from the people that have lived and worked in the Gulf over the past 30 years or so - not just expatriates, either - although expat rememberences appear to be easier to access. BTW, Khalid Kanoo's book about his own life in Bahrain is a fascinating read.

So I really enjoyed this piece in The National by Clive Stevens (I'd have missed it but for a link left on a comment to my recent weather-man spanking weather post: commenter The Wiley Weatherman claims Clive's the nicest man in aviation, and let us grant that, but I still think they goofed the forecasts over this week.), a forecaster at the Dubai Met Office, which talks about the wacky weather he's seen over the years. Clive's short memoir is well worth a read.

In case you're interested in these kinds of things, I do heartily recommend a visit to Len Chapman's excellent Dubai as it used to be site, which has lovingly archived rememberences, images and other paraphenalia gathered from the many people who have lived and worked here over the years.

And finally, just to finish off my most rambling and shambolic ever post (cue for some bright spark to try and find a worse one, but you won't), here's a link to an amazing picture, the image of the week for me. Sure the lightning piccies in Gulf News (down to 450g today, BTW) are pretty enough, but Catalin Marin's stormy HDR Burj Al Arab image is a stunner. It's here over at Momentary Awe.

Eid

Eid mubarak and the best wishes to you and your families.

Toot

I will never fail to lose my sense of marvel and astonishment at the Arab World. It's been a 22-year love affair for me so far (with the occasional unexpected pot hole) - and yet I'm still finding new things around every corner. If I've learned one thing, it's that I've so much yet to learn.

So breakfast today in Amman with pal and colleague Ammouni brought a new discovery, one so basic that it left me breathless with the weight of my ignorance.

Toot.

Now I always thought Toot was a Jordanian blog aggregator, or perhaps even Columbian Marching Powder, but I failed to spot the fruit behind the name. Toot is a pale, slightly greenish fruit, something like an anaemic gooseberry colour that has the shape of a slightly elongated, and smaller, raspberry.

And it's delicious. And I'd never heard of it before. And it's unique. And now I'm going to look out for it wherever I can.

So I am, as the barrister once admonished the judge, none the wiser, but better informed.

I feel slightly better to learn that I got to it before Wikipedia did. But only slightly.

Nakba

Gulf News carried a series of spreads today marking 'Al Nakba', which is Arabic for 'the catastrophe', the Palestinian day of mourning for the loss of the land in which they lived. Al Nakba is generally marked on the 15th May, so it's slightly unusual for Gulf News to have gone so heavy on the 14th. They were alone: everyone else has been waiting for the day itself.

Nakba is marked on the 15th because it was the day that the British Mandate in Palestine expired. The declaration of the State of Israel was made on the 14th.

The tales of dispossession and loss contained in the paper are heart-rending - and I have been reading and hearing similar tales for something like 20 years now. They never lose their ability to make me profoundly sad. I am sure we will see a great deal more tomorrow as other newspapers publish pieces marking the day.

Al Nakba is particularly poignant this year, because this is the 60th year since the Palestinians were forced off their land. They left carrying their house keys because they thought they'd be back soon once the fuss died down: Robert Fisk's brilliant Pity the Nation starts with his attempts to understand and come to terms with the people in the Lebanese camps who still kept their keys. And people still keep them today, a symbol of the right to return to their land.

It's a strangely beautiful land, too. All around the Dead Sea, the stony soil is home to olive trees and the land is green in winter, dry and arid in the summer. Farming it manually must have been back-breaking work. But it gave birth to a people and culture that is vibrant and deep: today some 70% of Jordanians are originally Palestinian and their art, poetry and design are a huge part of Jordan's richness as a nation.

I think there will be a lot of grief around the Middle East tomorrow. I only hope that people can share their sorrow and are allowed at least to grieve in peace just for one day.

Arabic

In the early days of this silly little blog, I put up a post that was essentially a crib from an experiment in Wiki creation that I was playing around with. ‘Ten Word Arabic’ was picked up by GN and a couple of big American blogs and has consequently turned out to be one of the most popular things I’ve written here in the past year. I’ve long meant to get around to doing a ‘proper’ singular version that doesn’t link out to the Wiki, which can be awfully annoying, and so here it is.

Some people think I’ve wasted 20 years in the Arab World, but I can prove ‘em all wrong. The following is the synthesis of everything insightful and useful I have learned about the Arabic language. Well, almost everything.

Arabic is not an easy language for speakers of the Romance languages. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy. Worse, pretty much everyone speaks English and people are often more keen to use their English than listen to you mangling their language.

The following ten words will allow you to get by, have meaningful sounding conversations and serve you well in any number of situations and scrapes. The investment required to get from this to speaking proper Arabic is so great, and the commensurate rewards so small, that you’ll probably never progress beyond Ten Word Arabic.

1) UGH

Ugh is the most important word in the Arab World. It's also pretty useful further east as well, although I have only personally tried it in Sri Lanka and not the subcontinent.

Ugh is used in Arabic to denote agreement, denial, affirmation, condescension, surprise, pain, acrimony, patrimony and, for advanced users, pleasure at a serendipitous encounter (Eu'gh!).

Note also its close cousin, the Lebanese expression of disgust, surprise, resignation, irritation and wonderment: 'Euft'.

TE Lawrence (Thomas Edward 'Ned' Chapman, AKA TE Lawrence, AKA TE Shaw. He's always fascinated me, has 'little Lawrence'.) once entered the town of Deraa disguised as a Circassian and using only the word 'Ugh' to get by. He was captured and comprehensively buggered, so this just shows the importance of properly practicing 'Ugh'. It is also argued that it shows how daft it is to use an Arabic 'Ugh' when talking to Turks.

2) SHOU

Lebanese/Palestinian (or Lebistinian if you prefer) slang for 'shinoo' which translates as 'what?'. Jordanian slang version is 'Aish'. In Egyptian it's 'Eida'. You start to see why the Arab world is quite as much fun as it is, no?

Belongs with 'hada' which isn't a component of Ten Word Arabic, but which is useful nonetheless and means 'that'.

So shou hada means 'what's that?'

Shou also is used to denote general query, as in 'what's happening, guys?' ('Shou?') or 'What's the stock market looking like this morning?' ('Shou?').

Shou can also be used in place of any query, from 'Why are you in pain?' to 'Where are you going?'

Shou can also be used to comprehensively diss someone. It's a difficult technique that's tied in closely to body language, which is used a lot in the Arab world, but basically you say the 'shou' in a totally dismissive way, turning the head to the left and flicking it in a sideways and downwards direction. This means 'what a heap of shit'.

The only way to respond to this is by using the same gestures but saying 'shou shou'. That outshous the shou. Or, in Arabic, that'll shou 'em.

3) YANI

One of a number of highly important key phrases in Levantine, particularly Lebanese Arabic (So not a Greek chillout musician, that's Yanni).

Yani means 'kind of' and is used frequently, also serving as a replacement for 'somehow', 'umm' and a million other syntactical spacers... It helps to pronounce the 'a' from the back of the throat, because in Arabic it's an 'ain', so written ya3ni in 'MSN Arabic'.

For instance: 'So I say to him, yani, what kind of car is that heap of shit? And he's like, yani, really pissed at me.'

Also used as a response to any given question, meaning 'Oh, you know...' where the amount of aaa in the yani is used to denote a studied indifference.

'Are you still going out with Fadi's sister?'

'Yani'

'She that hot?'

'Yaaaaani'

4) KHALAS

For a two syllable word, Khalas is certainly a complex little critter.

Pronounded khalas, halas, kalas depending on the mood, nationality and context, it means 'enough' but also 'stop' and 'I've had enough of your bullshit, get down to brass tacks or I'll do yer.'

As a term of contempt ('forget it and stop being so utterly stupid'), it can be quite nicely deployed by rolling the 'kh', a sound made at the back of the throat by the bit of the tongue that would be just before the late market if your tongue was the technology adoption lifecycle, and then lengthening the aaaaaaaalaaaaaaaas.

Like much Arabic, the words alone are not enough: it helps to use the hand in a gesture of denial and avert the head. This is also performed in a certain order for maximal impact: hand signal like policeman standing in front of speeding car, say 'Khalas' and avert head. If female, it is best to toss the head.

5) NAAM

Not to be mistaken for neem, which is a type of tree that grows in buddhist temple grounds, 'naam' is Arabic for yes. So is 'aiwa, which does tend to rather complicate things. One thing that is for certain is that 'no' is always 'la'.

Naam = yes

La = no

6) AKID

The importance of the word 'akid' (akeed) in Arabic can not be overstated: it's vital. It means 'for sure' and is the only way to test if someone's serious about a date or a promise or other undertaking.

'You will have the consignment by the 14th, ya habibi.'

'Akid?'

'Inshallah'

This conversation obviously means that you're about to be royally shafted and that the consignment has, in fact, been stolen by Papuan pirates just south of Aceh and the shipping agent knows this but isn't telling you.

7) SALAAM

Arabic for 'wotcha', it actually means 'peace'. The more formal 'Salaam Aleykum' is used for a proper greeting, salaam is used to a familiar or generally mumbled to all present when getting into a lift or arriving within a gathering. The response is 'Aleykum al Salaam'.

It's important because by using it you can be polite. So few people bother with these little pleasantries, but a smile and a little politeness don't half go a long way in the Arab World.

'Tara' is 'ma'salaama'

8) FIE

Fie (pronounced 'fee') is another powerfully multipurpose word. It means 'enough' or 'sufficient' or 'plenty' or 'too much' depending on how it's used. The only certainty is its antonym, 'ma fie' which always means 'none'.

I suppose its most accurate translation would be 'a plentiful sufficiency'.

9) MUSHKILA

Mushkila means 'problem' and, given that you spend half your time here flagging up, dealing with or avoiding problems, then it gets used a lot. So you have 'fie mushkila' (a great big problem with grindy, gnarly teeth and warts and things' or the debased assurance 'mafie mushkila' (no problem. This is ALWAYS, and please don't get me wrong here, ALWAYS not the case).

You'll sometimes hear 'mish mushkila' or 'mu mushkila'. These are dialect and both mean 'mafie mushkila' and so should be ignored.

10) INSHALLAH

Broadcaster and lobbyist Isa Khalil Sabbagh tells the story of the American businessman who was closing a deal in the Middle East and was told the contract would be signed tomorrow, 'inshallah'.

'What's God got to do with this?' asked our man, angrily.

Lots, of course. Because, as a consequence of his comment, his deal never got signed.

Inshallah means 'God willing' and is a phrase fundamental in so many ways to Islamic thought. A thing will occur in the future only if it is the will of God. An expression born of piety, it is also used pragmatically as a universal get out clause and avoids an absolute undertaking.

Avoiding an absolute undertaking is seen as a good thing, at least in part because it cuts down the likelihood that you'll have to be offended by being told 'No'. This concept that the answer 'no' is offensive and should be avoided is quite a simple one, but has been known to drive callow Westerners insane.

Incidentally...

You have now mastered Ten Word Arabic and can hold entire conversations without anyone realising that you are in fact not a native of deepest Arabia.

'Salaam'
'Ugh'
'Mushkila?'
'Fie mushkila'
'Yanni, shou?'
'Shou? Shou? Yanni, shou fie.'
'Akid, akid. Mushkila fie.'

All shake heads and tut a lot. All depart.

Amaze your friends! Stun business contacts! Speak Ten Word Arabic!

Britpop

Fly to Bahrain. Foggy morning. Board plane bang on time, much to the expressed surprise of several pleased passengers. I think we’d all expected delays, the fog was pretty bad, so it was impressive indeed to be boarding. Get on board. Captain’s a right joker and announces that we’re looking at sitting on the tarmac for a two-hour delay. Haha. Except, as Jarvis Cocker tells us, I don’t see anyone else laughing around here.

It could be worse. I remember reading about a China Airways flight where the landing gear broke on takeoff, necessitating a three-hour flight in circles to burn fuel before the ‘plane crash landed. You can imagine the conversation being a tad stilted among the passengers. At least we’re waiting two hours to take off safely!

Anyway. We’re off now. An hour’s drive to the airport, two to check in, two on the tarmac and one in the air. It’s taken me almost a whole working day just to get to the start of my working day. I fly back again tonight: an 18 hour day in all.

Blur were right. Modern life is rubbish.

Bar

It’s smoky. There’s an old Khaleeji guy in the bar and he’s pissed, throwing back Heineken like the world’s about to end. He’s calling out to people, throwing lines of Arabic-laced Anglo-gibberish to anyone who comes into his orbit. I tell the barman that there’s no way the guy is flying, but he just laughs at me and tells me the chap comes every week and walks straight when he leaves.

The Asian kid next to me is dressed like he owns Facebook: jeans and Kenzo jacket. He’s drinking Corona, smoking a fag and jerking spastically as he plays with his hand-held games console, the smoke forces him to squint as he plays, moving his head to one side but still jerking his hands in response to the fast-moving LCD.

It’s dark, oddly ‘70s, seedy, all browns and beiges: a Bisto ‘aaahhh’ of grey smoke curling through the air.

The call to prayer sounds over the tannoy, but for Prince it’s still 1999. The Khaleeji guy is grinning like a maniac: “Brinze! Brinze! Kuweiss!” he calls out to his reluctant audience of Keralite and Sudani guys.

The South Africans are talking about piling systems.

I love the bar at Bahrain International Airport.

'Unbalanced' Women Unfit to be Judges: Lawyers

According to this most amusing piece over at Arabianbusiness.com, sent to me by grumpy and misanthropic Scottish person Angus, Qatari lawyers have come out and told it like it is: women are of an unbalanced disposition and therefore unfit to be judges.

AB based its piece on a chucklesome survey carried out by Qatar's very own The Peninsula: the newspaper polled Qatari male lawyers on the question, no doubt expecting an outburst of blind, vacuous misogyny and getting its money's worth as a result.

"A woman is emotionally and physiologically not geared to fit in the role of a judge since the job demands a balanced disposition," one lawyer was quoted as saying in the Peninsula piece.

Meanwhile, in today's Peninsula, researcher Dr. Rana Sobh tells the paper's breathlessley excited reporter: "There is a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding of Middle Eastern women in the West. Middle Eastern women are depicted in the Western media as oppressed and ignorant."

I suspect I might not be the only person in the world to spot something of a disconnect here...

What larks, Pip!

Where In The World Is Barnaby Bear?

You know all that fuss about Gillian Gibbons, the teacher whose class named a bear Mohammed in the Sudan? An interesting (or perhaps not, you be the judge) footnote to the whole mad incident, which incidentally left many Muslim friends and colleagues frustrated and irritated by the behaviour of the Sudanese, is that the bear's real name is likely to be Barnaby.

How do we know this? Because Gillian's a British teacher, she's likely to have been teaching Key Stage 1 of the British National Curriculum to her kids (it was a Year Two class, I believe) - and the geography curriculum involves a bear (rather a celebrated bear, Barnaby is a registered trademark of the Geographical Association and even has his own website). There are a number of ways of using Barnaby to teach young children geography - one common geographical activity involves using Barnaby Bear, who is taken home by the children in turn at the weekends - they then 'write up' where in the world Barnaby Bear went over the weekend. Fun, no?

This particular Barnaby, believed to still be in custody in the Sudan, is likely to have had a slightly more interesting diary than most...

Mahmoud Ahmadinajad Rocks

I do wonder if I'm the only person who found Mahmoud Ahmadinajad's performance at Colombia University a compelling one. I do wonder if I'm the only person that thought his introduction and the official speech of welcome was insulting and immensely skewed. And I wonder if I'm the only person who finds the way that an American academic institution's officers treated a visiting head of state was appalling by any standard.

And yet Ahmadinajad put in an impressive performance. Sure, he was a bit too Godly for secular Western tastes at times. Sure, he wasn't going to take questions like 'Do you oppose a Jewish State of Israel?' head-on. But he did a damn good job, overall. He pointed out that his country couldn't equip civil airliners because of sanctions: that America, the UK, Germany and others had defaulted on contracts, had provided material assistance to Iraq in attacking Iran, had worked to destabilise his country's elected (for better or for worse) government. It wasn't a bad case to make and he made it pretty well.

What a shame he wasn't a lunatic demagogue with no sense at all of rhetoric or public speech. That would have made it so much easier to continue to mindlessley demonise him.

I do wonder what Georgie boy will do tomorrow against a man who is brighter and more charismatic than he is. I'm not saying Mahmoud isn't dangerous. But he's damn smart and, as he pointed out in his address, comes from a cultured and capable people.

Not bad. The jury's out, for sure... But you had to have watched the entire performance... How many of us got that chance?

And at the end, he waited for his host (he had already made the point that in his, the Middle Eastern, culture - and as an academic who had invited speakers to his university - you didn't insult a guest: it was a very pointed point in view of his embarrassing reception by the Colombia staff) to walk across the stage and shake his hand. Alone and suddenly small, he waited. And finally, long tens of seconds after the announcement that he had to leave and couldn't take more questions (and yet stood on the stage, not going anywhere), he got a brief, grudging touch of palms.

Mahmoud 1 America 0. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Cairene Reflections

Back for the first time in 8 years to this crazy, quixotic, frenetic, noisy, rambling metropolis where Africa meets Arabia. Soaking it all in, delighted by every twist and turn, remembering and celebrating this place that, for two years, was virtually my second home. Dappled light, ramshackle tenements, the placid Nile, scraped and bumped cars, busted sidelights and broken down kerbstones. People: everywhere people, lazing, laughing, running, scowling. Rubbish on the streets, sprawling cables above and concrete cancer eating the facades of slab-sided blocks of flats and the filigreed art nouveau buildings that butt up against them in a dizzying upwards accretion of ages. Everything seems smashed and cobbled together. Here are life’s extremes, rich and poor; sick and hearty, young and old, caught up in the uncaring torrent of traffic and the relentless, pounding tide of humanity washing up against the roads crammed with cars jostling insanely in the orange glow of the dying sun.

My last memory of Cairo all those years ago was crossing the river in a black and white cab, watching a man with his legs severed above the knees beg at the traffic lights, propelling himself on a rickety cart, pushing against the faded tarmac with a stone in his hand. Reaching the other side of the river only to catch a moment of timeless humanity: a good-looking young policeman chatting up a pretty girl, his grin cheeky and hers, cast over the shoulder and flirty, a moment, caught in the sun, of youth and pleasure. That’s Cairo.

Everyone’s on the make, over-eager to grin like a Nile crocodile at the Inglez and take his money. They’re welcome to what little I have, even the blowsy, raven-haired receptionist, caked in make-up and stuffed, like an afterthought, into a uniform bursting at the seams with her bountiful yet grudging charms.

Everywhere you go, you’re ‘Seer’: “Is this your first time in Cairo Seer?”

The Egypt Air Restaurant in the airport hasn’t changed since the 1980s: nothing seems to have moved, not even the display of slightly desiccated yucca plants, their withered leaves more like papyrus than living organism. Perhaps the ceiling tiles are dirtier than they were, perhaps not. As I have so many times before, I sit here and drink a cold beer before leaving.

This time I’m lost in space, looking out of the dirty window and wondering what it is about Cairo, this raddled old whore of a city that I love so much and yet had forgotten that I loved.

Cross Cultural Exchange She Too Much For Good

Having just spent a most pleasant and productive three days with our European colleagues at the annual uber-klatch, this year's was in Vienna, I can now say that I have propelled a pedalo across the Danube, which wasn’t honestly in my list of 100 Things to Do Before I Die.

The frank, friendly-natured chat and goodwill of something like 150 smart people is a wonderful thing, although the rapid expansion of the companies in the network has meant many new faces and the necessity of going through the same explanations and conversations time and again: no, I’m not a ‘Dubaian’ (What is a Dubaian? As I explained once in the long-missed Campaign Middle East, it’s an alien from the planet Dubya), I’ve lived there for 15 years and I’m white because the sun’s too intense to go out burning yourself every week unless you want early ‘rhino skin’. No, it's not all Palm Islands and ski slopes; well, OK, it's mostly Palm Islands and ski slopes. And so on. So many similar questions and answers! Two of the home team were with me and they, at times, had it harder. No, they’re not forced to wear a chador or ‘full hejab’ at home was one response, politely enough delivered but through gritted teeth.

The curiosity and desire to hear more about the region, us and our lives is genuine. They’re smart people, our European colleagues, and the chance to get together, to clear things like that up and high-spot our market is always one that’s gleefully taken on my part. The fact that so many misconceptions still exist is an opportunity to put things right rather than an annoyance to rail at. New friends and contacts made, many things cleared up and new opportunities to explore. Truly a good investment and much fun.

But I was truly delighted and touched when one Bright Young Thing, hearing I was there from the Dubai office and representing the Middle East, congratulated me on the standard of my English.

Chador indeed…

Warning! Swimming Pools Cause Premature Ageing!

Al Sharq Al Awsat today published a story on how swimming pools could be dangerous for children, an excellent piece of timing as the thermometers of the Middle East start their annual soar to the dizzy heights of the forties and fifties and everyone takes to the pools and aquaparks.

The piece, carried on page 11 of the healthcare section, is headlined 'Pools Dangerous For Kids' Lungs' and is neatly illustrated with a very large picture of a slightly portly, silver-haired man in his late fifties tripping up in a swimming pool.

A splash indeed. Woopsie!

Ten Word Arabic

Please note I've updated this post and made it easier to read here. Cheers!

Some people think I’ve wasted 20 years in the Arab World, but I can prove ‘em all wrong. The following is the synthesis of everything insightful and useful I have learned about the Arabic language. Well, almost everything.

Arabic is not an easy language for speakers of the Romance languages. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy. Worse, pretty much everyone speaks English and people are often more keen to use their English than listen to you mangling their language.

The following ten words will allow you to get by, have meaningful sounding conversations and serve you well in any number of situations and scrapes. The investment required to get from this to speaking proper Arabic is so great, and the commensurate rewards so small, that you’ll probably never progress beyond Ten Word Arabic.

The definitions below link to the Wiki because that’s where I originally put ‘em and I can’t be bothered to move ‘em.

1) Ugh

2) Shou

3) Yani

4) Khalas

5) Naam

6) Akid

7) Salaam

8) Fie

9) Mushkila

10) Inshallah

Amaze your friends! Stun business contacts! Speak Ten Word Arabic!