DIRT: the grunge diaries (𝒱𝒾𝒸𝓉𝑜𝓇𝒾𝒶'𝓈 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃)

entry #124 - only in dreams

⚠️ lame af jokes ⚠️

'Love, this isn't ze suq!' I squeal, as soon as we approach a place inside the club... that has very little suq potential to itself. I mean, a suq is an Arabic bazaar, the place where you buy shoes, house decor, tapestries, incense, dresses, spices, perfumes, hats... or you sell them, if you're Yasser the Conqueror of The Levant. But this place right here sells ... booze. And a place that sells booze, to us Arabs, could never be a suq. For yanks, this would be the bar. For us Arabs, this would simply be haram. For me, a very proud Arab girl living in the land of the yanks, with a yank boyfriend who dragged her to the bar after promising her the suq, this is hilarious and that's it. What's even more hilarious here, is that the same bouncer who kicked us out of the club, after Sean destroyed Gerry, is supervising us at the bar counter. He's sitting right next to us, side eyeing us every five seconds, just to make sure that we won't start yet another riot. Sean and I are bandits to this dude, I reckon, and he's treating us accordingly. Short tempered boyfriend and Jordanian terrorist girlfriend? A match made in heaven! In the heaven of clowns !

'I know, this is ze ak-bar'. He answers, once again pulling the most perfect, most wholesome, most accurate, most hilarious impression of my accent. The natural, unfiltered, very Arab one, not the one I cock in order to sound like I've been living in the US and speaking almost only English for a few months. I know my English well, and I generally sound a very okayish kind of exotic, when I speak to my yankee friends in their only language. But now I'm drunk and high and still recovering from my panic attack, and I'm sounding like my mom when she tries to read one of her doctor newsletters in English. Or like my dad when he tries to sell authentic Bethlehem souvenirs to the tourists visiting our native town during Christmas time. Please let it be my dad. Please let it be my dad. Please let it be my fucking dad! Please let me introduce my boyfriend to my dad! Yasser the humorous Don and Sean the relentless Clown would get along well! And Sean's 'ak-bar' joke is the definitive proof that they'd be the coolest in-laws in the world, spanning through continents actually ! My dad and I share the same sense of humour, and if I'm here now, creasing, howling, bent in half laughing over the counter at this 'ak-bar' lameness, my dad would be too ! Except not at the bar counter, because my dad doesn't drink and he doesn't frequent night clubs !

Ak-bar. Akbar. Allahu Akbar. I can't fucking believe that my boyfriend said that, and he made his stupid joke sound so fun and so smooth. Guy must've watched the news channel a little too often... or maybe not, because if it was the case, he would've decorated his 'ak-bar' with a very cliché 'boom'. And he would've gotten away with it, at least for me... because I'm Arab, hundred percent so, and I love the occasional, explosion joke, when it comes from a person who doesn't mean as a form of terrorist shaming. In and out, I think that Sean is the only non Arab person in the world who can get away with an Arab joke without coming across as offensive. Think about it... he can't be offensive, if he's my boyfriend, if I'm his girlfriend, and my bloodline has been ancestrally Arab for the last 1004 years! It's as if I was cracking jokes on the fact that he's part Irish! I'd mean them in a hundred percent respectful and admiring way, because I love him and I love to nag him too, on occasion !

'Babe! I love ze ak-bar but I prefer ze suq! I believe in the suq like I believe in love... my parents met at ze suq in Jerusalem!' I answer, keeping the level of this ak-barside exchange... very high. Like us. If not even higher, as you can tell. And as you can tell, I'm the highest in this pair, because I'm hooking Sean up with the full details of how my parents met, and he never asked for any information on how the romance between my parents first began. Still, he's laughing like he's interested in my narration, and like he's not so deep down a fan of my endless, very wholesome, very exotic quirks. We had to click for a reason... and the reason had to be that we're both quirky as fuck and a little bit weird, am I right ?