Maha

A transcription of the short Egyptian film el Qonbela, with bombs, street theatre and pickles.

Guest Post by Christ Hitchcock for #TeamNisreen This expression – اسم على مُسَمّى – is apparently found everywhere in the Arabic-speaking world and is an excellent go-to compliment – as long as the person you are speaking to has a nice name. It basically means ‘your name describes you exactly’. If you meet someone called نادرة (rare), وسيم (handsome), باسم (smiler) or جميلة (beautiful), this will probably go down pretty well. I wouldn’t suggest citing it in response to a surname like عدوان (aggression), though, or to someone called غيث (light rain). I’m still working on finding out if this proverb was used in the days when people were called things like معاوية (bitch in heat). ...

Today’s guest post includes a very exciting announcement made by our new friend Chris. Nisreen frustrated about the perennially high degree of humidity in her native New York This is Nisreen. Nisreen is a chronically lonely Syrian-American living in New York, with a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother. She is, in fact, Maha’s doppelganger – and Maha’s falling in love with her cousin out of sheer loneliness, and Nisreen’s parallel love story with her own paternal cousin, might well have been avoided if they’d only managed to meet one another instead of spending all their time looking woefully into a camera and monologuing about their respective misery. ...

We took a bit of a break for travel and are back with arguably the most important post you have ever encountered & maybe WILL ever encounter on this blog: proper use of popular Egyptian swear فشخ (fashkh). I’ve heard rumors that the original meaning of this word refers to the exact moment where a woman opens her legs, which, honestly, sounds about right. There are a multiplicity of forms of and uses for this word, with the basics explained below. As always with curse words, use with caution. ...

Following up on our earlier explanation of a bunch of MSA words that sound ridiculous when used in real life, here are a few more: 1. بدون Albeit a nice sounding word, no one says this in real life. In some dialects of Shami you might order your coffee من دون سكر (without sugar) but in Egypt من غير is most common. ...

BREAKING: #TeamMaha has received reports that one Facebook user has seen the actress who played Al-Kitab’s “Maha” multiple times over the past year in the Heliopolis neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt. The woman claimed that she often sees “Maha” out with her family, asserting that the actress does not, contrary to the expectations of many, seem particularly lonely. A large number of American Arabic students familiar with “Maha” have been under the impression for many years that the actress was killed in a fiery car crash soon after the textbook was published. As a result, the news may come as a shock to some. ...

Many of you have been asking a very profound question regarding the name of this blog: “I don’t get it. Who’s Maha?” And this is something that I’ll admit I should have addressed from the get-go. To answer this question, I could list for you all the conventionally important biographical facts about Maha, like how she is a character in the book (it is literally called ‘the book:’ Al-Kitab) used for Arabic language education in America. I could tell you that Maha is a Palestinian-Egyptian woman living in the United States, that her father works as a translator with the UN, and that her grandfather was an army officer. I could also tell you that Maha admits on camera that she often feels lonely, that she is jealous of her friend Leila’s pool, and even hints that she is wistfully in love with her first cousin. ...