Originally published on June 8, 2011:
Rim goes out and about defending Arabic language and assuring everyone – specifically the youth – that is a “cool” and “contemporary” language… She took the association fi’il amer (which exists in real life to promote and safeguard the Arabic language). She designed a new logo for them, created the selling line “Iltafit nahawi” (which means both “look at me!” and “let’s see what the literary Arabic is all about” (Nahawi is the Arabic used by newspapers)).
To make the whole thing look cool she used Magritte but with a twist. She goes on to ridicule all those who do not know the difference between “z” and “Zein” or “Daaad” and “dad” (two different letters in the language) and then attacks all those who use the Latinized version of Arabic (2 is not a “Hamze”!, 7 is not “Heh”!)…
And then, she blows a major strike picking words and sentences from Arabic luminaries (Oum Koulsoum, Ziad Rahbani, etc…) puts them in a visual pop art sauce and tries to translate them into English… All the poetry, mystique, humour, double-entendre is suddenly gone! You see, some sentences simply out to be said and written in Arabic!...
And she did the whole presentation without uttering ONE word in any language apart from Arabic!
Smashingly well done!
