Saeed

S a e e d | 143 Saeed by Beatriz Lorente I heard about Saeed before I met him. There’s a student, the teachers told me, who is difficult and mayabang. He thinks highly of himself and does not want to accept feedback. He can’t wait to go to the next chapter of his textbook even if we insist that he should review. The teachers had nicknamed him Mr. Bascomb, a main character in Exploring English, a series of English language textbooks widely used in the English school in Baguio where I am doing field work. I am told that when I meet Saeed, I will understand why they’ve given him this nickname. I finally meet Saeed on the third day of my field work. I first see him at the main office. Dressed in dark blue jeans and a collared shirt, he looks serious as he talks to Ma’am Joy, the school’s academic head, and Teacher Paul, one of the head teachers, about changing the textbooks they have assigned to him. Like the Mr. Bascomb in the textbook series, he is rotund and he has a black mustache and round eyeglasses. After I introduce myself, I ask him why he doesn’t like his textbooks. All of his textbooks are photocopies, he says, and these are probably illegal. He picks up one, shows me the page with the publication information and says that the textbook is quite old. It is not published by Oxford or Cambridge, and he thinks that its structure, with the chapters revolving around recurring characters and stories, is for young learners and not university students like him. Mr. Bascomb is a rich banker. Saeed is not a banker but the Filipino teachers think he is rich. He rents his own apartment, instead of sharing one with other students. He paid for his three months of English classes, in full. He does not like to eat at the makeshift turoturo at the back of the building where the school is located. Instead he buys food from the nearest convenience store, a 7-11, or he gets it delivered from McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken (he was sure they were halal, he told me). Saeed is also one of a handful of Saudi students at the school and this differentiates him from the other “Arabic students” who also live in Saudi Arabia and speak Arabic but who have Yemeni, Libyan, Syrian, Egyptian, Sudanese and other nationalities. I soon learn just how much Saeed’s nationality makes him different from the other “Arabic students”. Saeed is a fourth-year pharmacy student at one of the prestigious universities in Saudi Arabia and he says he needs general English because private companies look for people who can speak English. The non-Saudi “Arabic students” S a e e d | 144 are learning English because the new Saudization policy is making it increasingly untenable for them and their families to live in Saudi Arabia. Universities in Saudi Arabia are too difficult to get into and too expensive so they hope that learning English will allow them to study in an English-speaking country, perhaps the Philippines. Saeed had filled his day with English classes, from 8 am to 5 pm, five days a week, with a break for lunch and another break in the early afternoon. He was considered a “serious student”, like the South Korean students who also filled their days with English classes and unlike some Saudis who took just enough classes to qualify for the Special Study Permit and were mainly in the Philippines for a “good time”. But Saeed could also afford to take so many English classes. The other “Arabic students”, especially those with Yemeni passports, tended to enroll for just two or three, sometimes one class per day, because that was what they could afford. Before coming to Baguio, Saeed had gone to Britain and then to Malaysia for short-term English courses. Those countries were more advanced than the Philippines, he said, but no other place beat the value for money he was currently getting. In Britain and Malaysia, all of his English classes were group classes. In Baguio, all of his classes were one-on-one (the prevailing teaching format of English language schools in Baguio) or "person-to-person". Besides, he liked how people in Baguio understood his English. Even the itinerant vendor who hawked brooms in his neighborhood spoke to him in English. The brooms were dirt cheap, he said, the vendor walked around trying to sell his wares the whole day and he probably earned very little. Come to think of it, his teachers were probably not earning a lot and one of them was even supporting her daughter on her own. How, he asked me, could people live on so little? There were some teachers who thought differently about Saeed. Teacher Joyce did not teach Saeed; she thought he was annoying but they constantly joked with each other. Other teachers thought that his frequent interjections of “Piece of cake!” was his way of making himself appear more confident than he actually was. One of these teachers held their one-on-one classes in the faculty room because her room, like the rooms of most of the teachers in the school, was too small for Saeed’s big frame. The first and only time they had class there, she had to keep the door open so Saeed could stretch his legs. Saeed liked hanging out in the faculty room. He did his homework, surfed the Internet and chatted with the teachers who also hung out there. The teachers did not really like Saeed hanging out in their faculty room but they tolerated it. There was nowhere else where Mr. Bascomb would fit. Saeed was an earnest participant in my field work. He volunteered to be observed while he was in class. He offered suggestions as to who I should interview, laughingly S a e e d | 145 differentiating between students with “normal English” and “abnormal English” (where he included himself). On the afternoon I asked Fahad, another Saudi student, whether we could chat about his experiences learning English in Baguio, Saeed happened pass by in the school corridor. He stopped, listened to our conversation, heard Fahad ask me what I meant by “research” and jumped in, in Arabic. The only words I could understand from their conversation were “research” and “Swissa”. When Fahad agreed (in English) to meet me the next day, Saeed turned to him and said something in Arabic that made Fahad bring out his mobile phone and enter the date and time of our meeting. Later, when I asked Saeed what he had said to Fahad, his response to me was a gruff “I make sure he comes to the interview”. On my third week of field work, I asked Saeed if we could go over the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) manual I had that was entitled “Arabic Language and Culture Familiarization”. The manual was used in a language training program, the OWWA had designed for Filipino domestic workers bound for Arabic speaking countries. For an earlier research project, I had sat down with other fluent Arabic speakers in order to interpret the manual but I had never asked an Arabic speaker from Saudi Arabia, the number 1 destination of transnational Filipino domestic workers, to interpret it. The manual had four columns: a transliteration of the Arabic word, Filipino, English, Arabic (written in Arabic). I asked Saeed whether the English translations of the Arabic expressions were accurate. We spent a lot of time in the section on “Household Chores”. The English translations of these Arabic expressions had always sounded like commands to me. The first two columns of the section looked like this: Qatti'iyl basal Cut the onions Qatti'iyl attamaatim Cut the tomatoes Qatti'iy addajaaj Cut the chicken. Yes, Saeed said, the written Arabic was accurate and the transliteration was OK. Yes, Arabic marks for gender. See, the "iy" sound means that the one being addressed is a woman. These expressions are normal, he told me. They are not rude or impolite. If his mother were to tell him to cut onions, she would use these words, she would not say: "Please cut the onions". What if his mother asked his father to cut onions, would she use the same words? “Ha!”, he laughed, “my father does not cook! I cook. A little. Piece of cake!”. When I asked him whether his family employed domestic workers from the Philippines, he said that their maids S a e e d | 146 used to be from Indonesia and that now they’re from Africa. “The Filipino maids in Saudi”, he whispered to me, “they earn more than the teachers here.” Towards the end of my month of fieldwork at the school, I ask Ma’am Joy what happens to Mr. Bascomb. She told me that in the fifth and last book of the series, Mr. Bascomb runs for mayor on a platform of improving the economy of the city. He wants to bring in more business and more jobs. He plans to build a toy factory in one of the parks. He spends a lot on his campaign. He runs against Otis Jackson, an artist who wants to protect the environment and save the park. Otis Jackson has little money but his campaign has a lot of volunteers. The book ends with the town’s citizens voting but it does not include the election results so no one knows whether Mr. Bascomb won or lost. At the school’s main office, almost a month after I first meet Saeed, I overhear him telling a teacher, “I wait for you, Teacher Joyce”. Teacher Joyce stayed on in the school after everyone else had gone home so she could teach a few Korean students online in the evening. Usually, Teacher Paul stayed behind to keep her company. Saeed had also started to stay behind. He did not like being alone in his apartment. He liked finishing his homework in the faculty room and he enjoyed joking around with Teacher Joyce. That day, Teacher Paul had to go home early and so Teacher Joyce was in the office, asking if anyone else was going home as late as she was. No one else was, only Saeed was staying behind: "I wait for you, Teacher Joyce. I do my homework. " "Bespreeeeeeeeeeen", I heard Teacher Joyce say in an exasperated but affectionate tone. "Bigla akong nagka-bespren ng Arabo” (I suddenly have a best friend who is an Arab.)" | 147 Illustration 9