Linguists still struggling with Sahaf’s elusive vocabulary
By Simon Apiku
CAIRO: Long after the former Iraqi Information Minister Mohamed al-Sahaf vanished from the public spotlight linguists are still struggling to define some of the vocabulary he used in explaining Iraq’s version of how the war was going.
The vocabulary, which popped up during al-Sahaf’s daily press briefings in Baghdad, included a regular dose of fiery Arabic prose against the United States and Britain which defy translation.
New words and expressions uttered by the information minister sent reporters rushing to dictionaries, often drawing a blank in most contemporary Arabic dictionaries.
The few words that succumbed to translation lost much of their taste and vulgarity in the process and tended to convey a different message from the one intended.
In one of its recent issues, the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily, dedicated an entire article to defining some of the more obscure language which formed an integral part of al-Sahaf’s briefings before he disappeared.
One such word was “al-Uluj”.
“We shot down a Chinook helicopter, the type used to transport al-Uluj,” al-Sahaf would say. The word was guaranteed to pop up several times in the course of an al-Sahaf press conference.
Linguists in Saudi Arabia reportedly looked it up in dictionaries and came up empty-handed. In Egypt, one expert after another defined it differently: a sort of “earthworm”, one said. “A beast”, another added.
Scholars produced by Asharq al-Awsat apparently traced “al-Uluj” back to ancient Islamic history, and specifically, to the Abbasid era, when Muslims used it to refer to prisoners of war captured in battles with non-Arabs.
These prisoners reportedly had “red skin” and were “tall” and heavily built. In the long run, however, this definition was reduced to just one word, according to Asharq al-Awasat: “Infidel”.
Sahaf’s other favourite expression was “taratir”, the plural for “tartur”, a commonly used word, which has its origins in Turkish. It’s apparently as ambiguous as many other al-Sahaf favourites.
In general terms, it’s a hat; the type worn by Santa Claus and many Egyptians on New Years’ Day.
But when Egyptians want to dismiss an individual as being useless or having no significance, immediately the expression “tartur” comes to mind.
Television viewers in the Arab world found some of al-Sahaf’s expressions so off-beat and entertaining that, according to Asharq al-Awsat, some tuned in not to get the Iraqi version of developments on the battlefield, but for more weird comments.
The expression “al-Uluj” has become so popular in the Arab world that many believe that if it were a song, it would have been the greatest hit of all time, not only in the Middle East, but elsewhere in the world.
In Britain, al-Sahaf T-shirts carrying some of the most famous comments made by the former Iraqi information minister are reportedly finding many buyers. Self-styled fans of al-Sahaf have also set up a website dedicated to him at www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com.
The site contains quotes from the al-Sahaf press briefings such as “Be assured. Baghdad is safe, protected”, “there are no infidels in Baghdad. Never!” and “God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.”—dpa
