Hieroglyphics

How do you converse for an evening with absolutely no common language? After all the two students, Yusuf and Mustafa had kindly invited me to stay at their house and cooked dinner so we needed to learn more about each other.

Drawing pictures in my diary seemed to be the solution. We developed some conventions. Ladies had trangular skirts, stick men just legs. We wrote down ages, languages spoken, universities attended and subjects studied. Each member of our wider families were depicted. I leanred a lot. Both were Kurds (they insisted not Turkish), from Mardy near the Iraq border, now studying Turkish at the local university.

The conversation widened. Maps proved useful to help relate our personal histories. Days of the week and months of the year broadened the discussion until all subjects exhausted we resorted to playing cards.

Of course I have kept the drawings. They should prove valuable some day, just like the Rosetta Stone.