What the %$#* did she do?
Lately the CASA program has been, if not in shambles, at least in a state of disarray. Class has been interrupted lately by the long procedure of applying for Syrian residency, as well as negligence on the part of Damascus University itself. A ceiling tile in one of our classrooms recently snapped, sending half of it flying down onto the unsuspecting shoulder of our colloquial Arabic teacher, who merely said, “Ooof,” and went on with her teaching. On the following Sunday, however, she was absent from class, and the next day we received word from our MSA teacher that something was really wrong: “Ghada fekshit her shoulder,” she announced. Everyone in the class stared; I wondered if our teacher was performing a rare demonstration of her facility with English slang, something we’d also been treated to during jokes about the Arabic word for otter. No, it turned out; “fekshit” meant that she sprained it, but the English homonym would have actually been a more appropriate description of the situation. Ghada came back to class with her arm in a sling a few days later to teach, but despite the return of her usual verve, things were difficult. It was clear that her head was swimming at times from the codeine pills the doctors had given her for the pain, and although the pain was in fact enough to keep her awake at night, she admitted, she stopped taking the pills during the day so that she could be more present in the classroom. The following week, we learned that the new doctors’ orders prescribed complete rest for her for the next two months, meaning that she would unable to finish the summer semester with us. It was a very sad moment both for the students and, I think, for Ghada, who told me on the first day of class that even if she felt tired before teaching, just seeing her students made her alert and enthusiastic again. Meanwhile, the University wasn’t providing her with any sort of compensation or help with paying doctors’ bills, and while I don’t like the excess of personal-injury lawsuits in the U.S., for now I wish that there was something hanging over the administration’s heads that would have prompted them to give her something more than a get-well phone call.
