Anecdotes from Iraq

1. “What is in a name?”

What is in a name? In Northern India they politely ask you, ”What is your good name, Sir?”. Initially I thought they already knew my bad name and wanted to know the good one for public use. Later it dawned on me that there was no such implication. They simply wanted to know my name, which, of course, ought to be good, as my handsome countenance indicated. Finally I came to the real meaning of the question. They just wanted to know my name and couldn’t care less if it is good bad or ugly. This is just a way of asking when politeness slips down to obsequiousness. Of late, this habit is spreading to the South also.

Any name is as good or as bad as any other. A name is just an identification. A name could be long or short; sweet or sour. I am the owner of a very long name with thirty five letters and two blanks. I have always shied away from using my full name. Luckily, my students, colleagues and friends shortened it to three letters (good that it was not a four letter word). To all my friends, relatives and those who know me I am just MPC. I never expand it if I can help it. Unfortunately, the External Affairs Ministry and the passport office do not accept names like MPC. It had to be expanded, and I did: “Madayi Puthiyaveettil Chandrasekharan”. While living in my village this is not just a name, but the complete address. I really felt at home when I joined REC in 1966. We had Divakaran Kundanchalil Mandodi, Mustafa Puzhakkile Valappil, and Thiperneni Panduranga Venkata Sathya Narayana Soma Shekhara Rao in the attendance register. I was happy when I got a friend from Andhra Pradesh who had a real, long long name like a goods train: Achanda Veera Venkata Sathya Soorya Seetha Rama Anjaneya Sharma. In IIT Kanpur, Professor V.K Stokes took pains to call Sharma by his full name. Compared to Sharma’s, my name is short and sweet. Nowadays people in Kerala have grown wiser and the names are like Biju, Shiju, Shibu, Biji, Shiji etc.. Once I had called out three thousand names from a rank list for REC Admission, and was dismayed I could not find a single Chandrasekharan.

Unfortunately, Iraqis did not think my name was good and sweet, way back in 1981. Several of them had asked me why I carried the burden of such an ugly name. Why not use an easy name like Ra’ad, Adnan or Ahmed? They follow a system of three component names where you have your name, father’s and grandfather’s names in succession. In Europe and US this could be used as First name, Middle name and Surname. For instance, in Mohamed Ra’adi Kadem, Mohamed is the person’s name, Ra’adi his dad and Kadam his grandpa. When they saw my five component name (Madayi-Puthiya-Veettil-Chandra-Sekharan) the Principal of my college said I could stop with the first three and drop the last two which are my great grandfather and his father. They re-christened me as Madabi(In Arabic, b and y are similar except that b has one dot and y has two dots below. Anyone could misread y as b) Bidiya( Puthiya cannot be written, as there is no P in Arabic. The next best is B) Fittil (V is absent and hence F). Thus, with these minor modifications, your MPC became Madabi Bidiya Fittil in Iraq. I had no complaints so long as I could cash my salary cheques. Iraqis are very friendly people and they always used my first name and addressed me “Syyed Madabi”. With some alertness, I could respond naturally.

2. “Yours and Mine”

Iraqis are wonderful people. The moment they know you are from India they embrace you and call you Refeeq (which means comrade). This privilege is unique for Indians. There was no religious fundamentalism or bigotry before the American invasion of the country. However, you should not judge them by their linguistic skills. Somehow they had a perpetual confusion between “your” and “my”. When my wife landed in Baghdad airport, I approached the immigration counter with our passports and a letter from the Institute where I was employed. The official perused the documents, asked me affably in English, “Where is my wife?”. I was confused, and did not answer. Then he repeated the question more emphatically in a tone of indictment, “Where?...MY WIFE?” My throat choked in an attempted expression of innocence. All energy drained out, I stood dumbfounded. This is a country under a tough military dictatorship where you could end up in jail for trivial offences like spitting on the roadside. It was as though I had hidden this man’s wife somewhere. His question sounded like a Habeas Corpus. I was under the obligation to produce his wife immediately. When I stood there gulping and looking around he opened my wife’s passport, pointed her photo and shouted, “My wife..Where?”. Wisdom dawned on me rather late. I dragged my wife to the counter and showed him, “Here is your wife”

3. Adjectives after the Noun

Most of us who taught in Iraq had great experiences of funny situations in communication. Arabic is written from right to left and all Indo-European languages from left to right. The attendance registers opened from the “last” page. This was a bit of a problem in the beginning, but we soon rose to the occasion. To their surprise, I could read out the names correctly from the Arabic register. My secret technology was to write every name in Malayalam underneath.

Like French, Arabic also places its adjectives after the noun. For instance a fat pig is “pig fat” and a green leaf is “leaf green”. Simple, but this could create enormous amount of confusion. Once I asked a question in the exam to describe how a sand mould was prepared. As they learn everything by heart most of them knew how to answer the question. But some invigilating teachers interfered and explained that sand mould meant moulding sand (read sand-mould from right to left). By the time I reached the last classrooms on my rounds, the damage was already done and they all wrote on moulding sand and I meekly accepted the answer, as I had no way of explaining it.

Epilogue

Later, when I was in IIT Madras, a faculty member got a job as “Assistant Professor” in Iraq. Somebody told him that I was an expert on Iraq, and he sought my advice on how to conduct himself there. I told him there was a chance that they might interpret his post as “Professor’s Assistant”, and he may have to bring tea and snacks from the canteen. The poor fellow was scared about adjectives following the noun!!!!