Intensive Arabic has been going pretty well, but as we are now on Day 18 of 45 I have started to feel a little run down. In fact, after reading a short article about a Dubai Islamic studies graduate student today, I just so happened to find a UAE dirham in my pocket that had been given to me in change for my tea earlier that day. The single dirham coin is the same shape and colour as a quarter, so it might easily pass for one if the cashier didn’t look closely enough. When I first saw it, I thought I had started hallucinating Arabic writing on money. That may give you a sense of my state of mind. The good news is that I can make out everything on the coin.
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July 11th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Grumpy Old Man
You might start dreaming in baby Arabic.
That could be a good sign (that your brain is working on it) or a bad one (that the entire experience is nightmarish).
The origin of dirham is the Greek drachma, according to dictionary.com. Drachima, in turn, is supposed to mean “handful” as in drassesthai, to grasp.
So, A Fistful of Dollars has classical antecedents and an Arabic cognate.