In Whispers in the Hearts of Men - kidnapped historian, Richard Chambers, is delighted that his young Palestinian guard has some English language skills. The guard has learned his English by listening to pop music in general and to The Beatles in particular. The guard has also picked up some English by listening to football commentaries. I had a lot of fun with this but I had to be careful with copyright infringement - something not to be taken lightly. Here is an extract.
The guard put one hand under Richard’s elbow, the other in the small of his back and led him through the door. The hand was open, the flat of the palm pressing on his spine, the fingers crooked, and their gentle pressure guiding him through the darkness in an awkward silence. Richard sensed that the boy wanted to say something and that he was having difficulty articulating it. Eventually he blurted out:
“Manchester United. You like?”
Richard guessed this was a conversational gambit – the global topic of football thrown like a grappling iron over a huge cultural gap. Richard was not the least bit interested in football but he decided to take this opportunity and grab it.
“Manchester United? Good team. Ryan Giggs.”
He said the player’s name in a way that suggested the words themselves had a hundred associations which both understood and shared in the silence that followed.
“Ryan Giggs, yeah. The boy’s a bit special.”
“Great pace.”
“Yeah, great pace. He’s so good at finishing.”
Their feet crackled over the concrete floor, and their arms and shoulders rubbed up against the walls of the unlit corridor. Richard heard the guard’s breathing quicken like a child about to articulate, eager to please his parents.
“Ryan Giggs is fast, skilful and sharp,” he said. “With Luis Figo, he is the most fantastic winger I have ever seen in my life.”
“Absolutely. What more can you say.”
“How could I appraise him? Fantasy star? Yeah that’s Ryan Giggs.”
“Your English is very good,” Richard said.
“Thank you, thank you. I learn from football. I learn from music, yeah? I listen and I write what I hear and then learn words. My father have all record and CD.” The guard stopped, swung his arms outwards and brushed Richard’s arm before making noises which Richard interpreted as indicators of enormity or of excitement. “Big number records, yeah? From Elvis to Madonna. I listen, I write and I learn. You like music?”
“I love music.”
“Music is my life.”
“Cool,” Richard said.
He was delighting in this comfort of human contact. It gave him hope and brought life back to his spirit. Richard imagined this boy scribbling down and learning the football commentaries he heard on global television, memorising the content of football web sites and learning songs by heart. But without the contact with native-speakers he would never develop an understanding of the language patterns he needed in order to put together his own sentences and develop his own voice. Nonetheless, he was happy the boy spoke some English. There were other voices, distant and muted as though the ground was covered in snow but Richard was unable to discern the language. He supposed it was some kind of local dialect and so different from his own area of expertise, classical written Arabic, that it constituted a different language altogether.
The guard had become silent, and the hand which had guided him grabbed at his wrist.
“Stop please.”
Richard did as he was told. Deprived of sight, he could feel the boy’s nervousness. It was in the air and crackling around them both.
“Beatles. You like? I’d like to be under the sea with you. You like, yeah?”
“Very good,” said Richard. “Good day, sunshine.”
“You say go and I say go…”
“Go, go, go,” said Richard as the guard led him into a smell of disinfectant, oil and excrement.
“What does your father do,” Richard said.
“Do?”
“Yes, do – what is his job?”
“He sell records downtown. The lights are brighter there…”
There was a wistful quality in the boy’s tone that suggested Richard had lost him. He sent out another line from the old song to get him back.
“You can leave all your troubles there...”
But it was too late. He and the young guard had disconnected.
“Don’t hang around, yeah?”
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