ROSA
By
Suleiman Olimat
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I was sitting in a cafe smoking a shisha one day after the curfew was lifted due to the coronavirus pandemic. Then a friend came and sat across from me and started looking at his mobile phone carefully and thoughtfully.
He muttered softly, but hearing him say, “Praise God, the great Creator. This little baby girl looks just like her mother.”
In fact, I didn’t try to pry into his family affairs, as that’s private. He lifted his glasses on his head, turned to me, and said:
Look, Abu Al-Olimat, for God’s sake, don’t they look alike?
I looked at his cell phone screen, and there was a picture of a dog and a small puppy next to it. I laughed out loud. I haven’t laughed like this since the Corona crisis.
He smiled and said: This is a picture of the mother dog, Rosa, and this is a picture of her daughter Marilyn. Exact resemblance, I hope she turns out to be as smart as her mother.
And while I continued to laugh, I unconsciously answered him: I hope they grow up with you under your wings in your honorable, long life. But I would like to know why you consider Rosa so smart?!
I taught her to obey orders and not to disobey me.
Out of curiosity, I asked him: What language do you speak to her in?
Of course, in English.
I said to him laughingly: Do you know English, my friend? I am so confident that her English is much better than yours. But I’m wondering why she doesn’t know the Arabic language.
Don’t be worried about me, Abu Al-Olimat. I am your wolf. I taught her one word of Arabic.
And what is this word?
One word you know from the Arabic language is the word “bahzi”. (Jordanian slang, simply means move a little bit).
I couldn’t control myself from laughing so hard that my eyes welled up with tears, and I spilled coffee on my shirt.
Why are you laughing? It seems you don’t know the meaning of the word “bahzi”!
Actually, my friend, I haven’t heard that word for four decades. In the first three grades of elementary school, we used this word a lot. The number of students allocated to the class was forty-five. However, due to the large number of students, their number may reach sixty-five. Three students were supposed to sit in one seat. Then we used to sit four of us together, and the smart one among us would be the first to go, and the one who was late would call out” bahiz” for me.
Its use decreased from the fourth to the sixth grade of primary school, and it disappeared when we reached middle school.
Now, my friend, “bahiz,” I want to go home.