(note: in this post I transliterate Arabic. when an H is capitalized, it means the 'middle H' in arabic, the one between normal English h and the kh/ch sound. FYI.)

I got to hear more of the conference today. A lesbian Israeli activist on whom I have an activist-crush (you know, ooh, her politics are so sexy, she can organize me any time) gave a brilliant speech about second-intifada activism, and moving from protest to resistance (of which protest is a part). It was really good, and it addressed a lot of the changes in Israeli peace activism; basically she was providing an ideological narritive of the changes I described in my senior essay. So it was an intellectual morning for me.

I'm living in extreme language dysphoria, which is pleasant and unpleasant simultaneously. English is my first language, and is also the tourist language of the Old City. There are two journalists covering the conference for Feminist International Radio Endeavor; one speaks only Spanish, and we share computers and tech stuff. My two roommates are Palestinian women from near Akko. So I'm spending my time hopping between English, Spanish, and Arabic. Of the three, I find I am the least comfortable about speaking Spanish. Let me be clear--lease comfortable performing the act of speaking it, not least capable of speaking. My problem with Spanish is that I don't know how much Spanish I know.

Five years ago, I was very comfortable in Spanish; I got a 5 on the AP test, I could read and write and communicate with relative ease, and I preferred speaking Spanish to any other language I knew. But then I stopped studying Spanish and French, and started studying Arabic. Arabic is a huge language, metaphorically. It takes up mental space that used to be occupied by other things--like Spanish. I've kept my French in shape (more or less) through reading academic stuff in French, and also because it's older, deeper in my brain. But Spanish moved over, condensed itself down into a collection of whateverness. I don't speak much Arabic, but I know I don't speak much Arabic. I expect that, when I'm talking in Arabic, there will be large gaps I will have to talk around. But in Spanish, I never know what will happen. Sometimes all the words are there. Sometimes none of them. Sometimes I can get the verb in the right person and tense. Sometimes no.

All of this is complicated by the politics of what is called in French tutoier, addressing someone in the informal. Who do I call 'tu?' when speaking in either French or Spanish? My instinct is to address all the women around me as 'tu,' because we are a feminist community, aimed at knocking down borders. Women who I talk to all address me as tu. BUT I'm only talking to women who are older than me, so maybe they're tutoiering me because I'm a kid. (95% of WiB are my mother's age or older.) So as I come to the verbs and pronouns, I flounder in knowledge both of grammar and of manners.

Arabic is easier, not because it's easy to speak, but because I know I can't speak it, so it's fine if I screw up, can't communicate, etc. I mean, not fine, but I understand. I was trying to explain to my roommates that I would be getting a phone call at 7AM, and it just wasn't working. But I know why: because I don't know the verb "to call," so I was saying (literally translated) "my friend in New York in telephone at 7 am." Mikhael thought I wanted to know how to call, how much it cost. We gave up at some point.

Of course it's not easy: the complicating factor here is dialect. For those who don't know: Arabic has two full registers, fusHa, formal Arabic as it is written, and 'ammiya, dialects that differ from place to place. I "speak' fusHa, a complicated language of triliteral roots and case endings. The women I'm trying to speak with speak 'ammiya. It's not just differences of pronunciation, or of noun-vocabulary differences; there are different verbs in 'ammiya and fusHa, there are different grammatical structures, there is different everything. I tried to say this morning "I'm going to breakfast" and I had to say "I go that I eat" (really I should have said "I go for eating" but hind-grammar is 20/20) and I have no idea if I was incomprensible because I screwed up or because the sentence 'athab an akul' should be 'biruh bikul' or something entirely different. (That's my 'ammiya guess, at least.) My phrasebook is in fusHa, too, which is frustrating but probably best.

I may ask people to write things down; if they write they would write in fusHa, and I stand a better chance to read.

BTW: I was on the TV this morning! Well, the wibcast. I got up and read comments from different women who sent messages to the conference. It was great. I'm hoping to get some women to come post on the blog--only one has so far. Oh well.

So I'm eating Hummus at every meal, and it's great, but I may be about to max out. Don't get me wrong, I love my breakfast of stewed plums, yogurt, Hummus and za'atar. But I'm worryed I may max out at some point, and then what will I eat? (Rugalach.)

However, I just got the news that lunch is blocked...because it was coming from West Jerusalem, and the Old City is closed. Like, closed-closed, you have to live there to get in. (Lucky us tourists, we get to go anywhere.) There were checkpoints all through the city yesterday; I'll write more about them, but the point is, the politics are everywhere here, even walking down the street. Or in lunch. Dammit, I'm hungry.