Here There and Everywhere

Garden Saga

This has provided us with an ongoing burble of amusement, every time we drive into our compound.

Someone wants the name of the compound in the garden. It seemed a simple enough request, doesn’t it?

The first try I saw, was a perfect ‘A’ followed by a second ‘A’. I started laughing. It was being put in by laborers who are probably illiterate in their own language, much less have any idea about western letters. To them, these are just meaningless shapes, not symbols for sounds. The second ‘A’ was gone the next day, torn out, and replaced with the appropriate letter.

But concrete blocks are big and unwieldy. When the name was finished, it was big, with no spaces between words, and no ‘s’ on the end.

They tore it out, too.

Now, working with smaller bricks, working with templates, working with a diagram, the name is finally being completed accurately. It is actually lovely, so we can’t laugh anymore.

I wonder how we would do, trying to lay out the same in Arabic . . .

November 2, 2009 - Posted by intlxpatr | Arts & Handicrafts, Building, Cultural, Doha, Entertainment, ExPat Life, Language, Living Conditions, Work Related Issues