Kyle Costa

Mizna Fellowship

Mizna Fellowship Report

A Summer in Beirut: Change, Hope and Confusion

Before receiving my Mizna scholarship, I studied Arabic formally at Boston College for two years. Through my studies here, I completed the Intermediate level of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), or “Fusha”. “Fusha”, also known as “Formal Arabic”, is not used in colloquial speech, but rather seen in more formal settings throughout the Arab world, such as in the news. While Fusha is a necessary starting point for non-native Arabic speakers, it limits students’ ability to communicate casually in Arabic with heritage speakers. For this reason, I sought out an immersive instructional program that actively combined both the formal and colloquial elements of Arabic. After a bit of research, I found the American University of Beirut’s summer Arabic program.

One of the biggest inspirations in my life that pushed me to travel and explore the world is the late Anthony Bourdain. For years, I watched his show “Parts Unknown” with my father, himself an avid cook and food-lover. Each episode exposed a new food to me, a new way of life, and a new understanding of others. Reality is hard enough to understand, let alone describe, but Anthony had this gift, as well as a sharp understanding of what it means to be alive. For him, travel plays a central role in shaping this understanding. Throughout my time abroad, I always remembered Anthony’s advice: "Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you . . . You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

Naturally, before I left for Lebanon, I scoped out both of the episodes that took place in Beirut. The first, was filmed in the summer of 2006. A few days after Anthony had arrived in Beirut, the country slid into another conflict, what would come to be known as the “July War”. Before he was relocated to a hotel in the North part of the city, Anthony was given a tour of “Martyrs Square”, a sight that I gave a “tour” or brief history of in Arabic as part of a class project. His tour guide explained how the square is a place of unification for the Lebanese people. After the assassination of Hariri in 2005, Muslims and Christians alike marched on the square together. Unfortunately, almost mid-sentence, Anthony’s tour was interrupted by gunfire in a nearby neighborhood. Men drove by in cars waving yellow Hezbollah flags. Conflict had once again returned to Lebanon.

Although Anthony’s tour was cut short in 2006, he returned again, years later, to make a second episode. Finally, Anthony was able to pursue his usual exploits: delicious street food, political realities, and indigenous drinks. He rode along with the local Lebanese, Harley-Davidson chapter to pick up shawarma, heard the stories of refugees in some of the nearby neighborhoods, and indulged in more than a few glasses of Arak at the local communist bar. From these cultural flashpoints, Anthony crafted a picture of what this place means to those who live there and what it can mean to those who visit. In an interview with Blogs of War, Anthony described his understanding of Beirut: “The food’s delicious, the people are awesome. It’s a party town. And everything wrong with the world is there”. From the two months I studied there, I can say that there is a lot of truth in this statement. Beirut shines on its own. A place swirling with problems as vibrant as its diversity. It is enigmatic in the most beautiful way.

From the program, I expanded my understanding of Fusha and began to learn the independent complexities of the colloquial, Lebanese Arabic. While much of the formal, linguistic intricacies were learned in the classroom, my strengthened comfort with the language happened mostly outside of the classroom. This happened both from my independent adventures with people and from the numerous excursions we made as a class throughout Lebanon. From my own cultural encounters, more than one or two of which were the same as Anthony’s, I developed newly heightened linguistic and cultural sensibilities.

One of my most memorable experiences was with the Jusoor language exchange program. Al-Jusoor, meaning “Bridges”, is an NGO based in Beirut that provides educational assistance to Syrians living inside and outside of Lebanon. Al-Jusoor works with AUB’s summer Arabic program by pairing Syrian community members with students in the program. The program is a great opportunity for students within AUB’s program to develop their Arabic skills with a native speaker as well as for the Syrians in Jusoor to develop their English skills. Beyond improving my linguistic skills, Jusoor provided me with a great opportunity to deepen my understanding of the existing refugee crisis within Lebanon and the problems that these Syrian immigrants face on a day to day basis.

My understanding of these problems came directly from the weekly meetings with my exchange partner “Noor”. Each week, we met a little bit off campus at a nearby café. Here, over a few cups of tea, we discussed everything from his life in Syria to his life in Lebanon, his family and education, and his hopes and dreams. I learned that Noor and his family are from a large city called “Homs” in western Syria, where he studied electrical engineering. After arriving in Lebanon, he was pretty lucky. He landed a fairly steady job for a business, selling and buying small electrical parts. When I met Noor, he was in the process of selling his old moped in order to buy a new, more reliable Japanese moped.

My favorite memory with Noor happened after one of our weekly sessions. We had talked at length that day about the culture in America and what it is like. Noor loves American culture, especially American films, and wanted to know at length what kind of movies I like. I recommended he check out any of the old “Spaghetti Westerns” that had Clint Eastwood in them, like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He had never heard of Clint Eastwood but loved any movie with Jackie Chan in it.

After we finished our tea, we decided to take a stroll at a nearby park. Parents chased around their screaming kids who had mistakenly jumped in the public fountain as we taught each other the names, both in English and in Arabic, of the different objects in the park. When the park closed, we strolled down the street and came across a Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop. Three massive and intimidating motorcycles hung in the shop’s window. For the next half hour, we stared into the window, gawking at the chrome and rubber, while teaching each other the words for the different motorcycle parts. Noor learned that “Harley” and “Davidson” are the last names of the two owners who founded the company, as well as the slang terms for motorcycle, “Hog” and “Chopper”. I learned that one day, Noor would sell his old, reliable, Japanese moped for a “Chopper”.

My experience with Noor offered a new insight into the lives of the Syrians who I’ve read about in the papers. This understanding Noor afforded me was only compounded when my class journeyed out to an elementary school to spend the day with kids who live in a refugee camp. The school, which is situated near the camp, was designed partially by students at AUB to be semi-transportable if need be. This allows for the school to be moved if, for example, the landlord who owns the land the school is situated on raises the rent, which had happened in the past.

For the entire day, I played soccer with the boys, asked them who they were rooting for in the World Cup, and learned from them some of the different words in Arabic relating to soccer. As fun as it was playing with them, I couldn’t help but notice the pictures many of them had drawn on the nearby classroom doors. Images of planes, bombs and flags scattered their drawings. While these were reminders of the trauma that many of these children had faced, I never would have known from playing soccer with them. It is amazing how free children can be when kids are allowed to just be kids.

At the end of the two months, I can say, without a doubt, that my Arabic has improved greatly. I can now go to a newsstand in Beirut, strike up a conversation with the shopkeeper, and read one of the newspapers in Arabic with the ability to extract out the meanings of the articles. This coming spring semester I am aiming to continue what I’ve learned in Beirut by studying in Amman, Jordan in another intensive Arabic program. Through this second program, I will be able to continue to pursue learning Levantine Arabic while simultaneously expanding my formal Arabic skills.

After Anthony Bourdain left Beirut, he commented, “Hopefully, you will come back smarter about the world. You’ll understand a little more about how uninformed people are then they talk about that part of the world . . You’ll come back as I did: changed and cautiously hopeful and confused in the best possible way.” I can say that I came back just as he said I would. I just hope I left something good behind.

Aggad Fellowship

Aggad Fellowship Report

A Summer in Beirut: Change, Hope and Confusion

Before receiving my Omar Aggad Travel and Research Grant, I studied Arabic formally at Boston College for two years. Through my studies here, I completed the Intermediate level of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), or “Fusha”. “Fusha”, also known as “Formal Arabic”, is not used in colloquial speech, but rather seen in more formal settings throughout the Arab world, such as in the news. While Fusha is a necessary starting point for non-native Arabic speakers, it limits students’ ability to communicate casually in Arabic with heritage speakers. For this reason, I sought out an immersive instructional program that actively combined both the formal and colloquial elements of Arabic. After a bit of research, I found the American University of Beirut’s summer Arabic program.

One of the biggest inspirations in my life that pushed me to travel and explore the world is the late Anthony Bourdain. For years, I watched his show “Parts Unknown” with my father, himself an avid cook and food-lover. Each episode exposed a new food to me, a new way of life, and a new understanding of others. Reality is hard enough to understand, let alone describe, but Anthony had this gift, as well as a sharp understanding of what it means to be alive. For him, travel plays a central role in shaping this understanding. Throughout my time abroad, I always remembered Anthony’s advice: "Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you . . . You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

Naturally, before I left for Lebanon, I scoped out both of the episodes that took place in Beirut. The first, was filmed in the summer of 2006. A few days after Anthony had arrived in Beirut, the country slid into another conflict, what would come to be known as the “July War”. Before he was relocated to a hotel in the North part of the city, Anthony was given a tour of “Martyrs Square”, a sight that I gave a “tour” or brief history of in Arabic as part of a class project. His tour guide explained how the square is a place of unification for the Lebanese people. After the assassination of Hariri in 2005, Muslims and Christians alike marched on the square together. Unfortunately, almost mid-sentence, Anthony’s tour was interrupted by gunfire in a nearby neighborhood. Men drove by in cars waving yellow Hezbollah flags. Conflict had once again returned to Lebanon.

Although Anthony’s tour was cut short in 2006, he returned again, years later, to make a second episode. Finally, Anthony was able to pursue his usual exploits: delicious street food, political realities, and indigenous drinks. He rode along with the local Lebanese, Harley-Davidson chapter to pick up shawarma, heard the stories of refugees in some of the nearby neighborhoods, and indulged in more than a few glasses of Arak at the local communist bar. From these cultural flashpoints, Anthony crafted a picture of what this place means to those who live there and what it can mean to those who visit. In an interview with Blogs of War, Anthony described his understanding of Beirut: “The food’s delicious, the people are awesome. It’s a party town. And everything wrong with the world is there”. From the two months I studied there, I can say that there is a lot of truth in this statement. Beirut shines on its own. A place swirling with problems as vibrant as its diversity. It is enigmatic in the most beautiful way.

From the program, I expanded my understanding of Fusha and began to learn the independent complexities of the colloquial, Lebanese Arabic. While much of the formal, linguistic intricacies were learned in the classroom, my strengthened comfort with the language happened mostly outside of the classroom. This happened both from my independent adventures with people and from the numerous excursions we made as a class throughout Lebanon. From my own cultural encounters, more than one or two of which were the same as Anthony’s, I developed newly heightened linguistic and cultural sensibilities.

One of my most memorable experiences was with the Jusoor language exchange program. Al-Jusoor, meaning “Bridges”, is an NGO based in Beirut that provides educational assistance to Syrians living inside and outside of Lebanon. Al-Jusoor works with AUB’s summer Arabic program by pairing Syrian community members with students in the program. The program is a great opportunity for students within AUB’s program to develop their Arabic skills with a native speaker as well as for the Syrians in Jusoor to develop their English skills. Beyond improving my linguistic skills, Jusoor provided me with a great opportunity to deepen my understanding of the existing refugee crisis within Lebanon and the problems that these Syrian immigrants face on a day to day basis.

My understanding of these problems came directly from the weekly meetings with my exchange partner “Noor”. Each week, we met a little bit off campus at a nearby café. Here, over a few cups of tea, we discussed everything from his life in Syria to his life in Lebanon, his family and education, and his hopes and dreams. I learned that Noor and his family are from a large city called “Homs” in western Syria, where he studied electrical engineering. After arriving in Lebanon, he was pretty lucky. He landed a fairly steady job for a business, selling and buying small electrical parts. When I met Noor, he was in the process of selling his old moped in order to buy a new, more reliable Japanese moped.

My favorite memory with Noor happened after one of our weekly sessions. We had talked at length that day about the culture in America and what it is like. Noor loves American culture, especially American films, and wanted to know at length what kind of movies I like. I recommended he check out any of the old “Spaghetti Westerns” that had Clint Eastwood in them, like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He had never heard of Clint Eastwood but loved any movie with Jackie Chan in it.

After we finished our tea, we decided to take a stroll at a nearby park. Parents chased around their screaming kids who had mistakenly jumped in the public fountain as we taught each other the names, both in English and in Arabic, of the different objects in the park. When the park closed, we strolled down the street and came across a Harley-Davidson motorcycle shop. Three massive and intimidating motorcycles hung in the shop’s window. For the next half hour, we stared into the window, gawking at the chrome and rubber, while teaching each other the words for the different motorcycle parts. Noor learned that “Harley” and “Davidson” are the last names of the two owners who founded the company, as well as the slang terms for motorcycle, “Hog” and “Chopper”. I learned that one day, Noor would sell his old, reliable, Japanese moped for a “Chopper”.

My experience with Noor offered a new insight into the lives of the Syrians who I’ve read about in the papers. This understanding Noor afforded me was only compounded when my class journeyed out to an elementary school to spend the day with kids who live in a refugee camp. The school, which is situated near the camp, was designed partially by students at AUB to be semi-transportable if need be. This allows for the school to be moved if, for example, the landlord who owns the land the school is situated on raises the rent, which had happened in the past.

For the entire day, I played soccer with the boys, asked them who they were rooting for in the World Cup, and learned from them some of the different words in Arabic relating to soccer. As fun as it was playing with them, I couldn’t help but notice the pictures many of them had drawn on the nearby classroom doors. Images of planes, bombs and flags scattered their drawings. While these were reminders of the trauma that many of these children had faced, I never would have known from playing soccer with them. It is amazing how free children can be when kids are allowed to just be kids.

At the end of the two months, I can say, without a doubt, that my Arabic has improved greatly. I can now go to a newsstand in Beirut, strike up a conversation with the shopkeeper, and read one of the newspapers in Arabic with the ability to extract out the meanings of the articles. This coming spring semester I am aiming to continue what I’ve learned in Beirut by studying in Amman, Jordan in another intensive Arabic program. Through this second program, I will be able to continue to pursue learning Levantine Arabic while simultaneously expanding my formal Arabic skills.

After Anthony Bourdain left Beirut, he commented, “Hopefully, you will come back smarter about the world. You’ll understand a little more about how uninformed people are then they talk about that part of the world . . You’ll come back as I did: changed and cautiously hopeful and confused in the best possible way.” I can say that I came back just as he said I would. I just hope I left something good behind.