Arabic calligraphy workshop by Our Volunteer Haneen in Poland

Since a while ago we published on the media that we are making a free Arabic calligraphy workshop in the city that I volunteer with in Poland. Today was the first day of it. It was a totally different experience for the participants, especially that they are all from Europe and the Arabic language was for them a different language than the other Latin languages that they are used to see and hear.

One of the things that I have noticed about them, that they were amazed how we start writing in Arabic from right to left and some of them faced some problems with it as they are not used to it. The Arabic alphabet for them was challenging besides the Arabic/ Indian numbers that we use as well (٠١٢٣٤). They were seeing all of this as an art class, which could be with the Arabic calligraphy. To be frank with you, this is my first time to meet people who were able to pronounce some of hardest letters/sounds for non-native speakers, and they don’t even have they sounds in their language. What caught my attention that there was a Greek participant that told us some of the Arabic/Indian numbers were letters in her language.

It was a nice experience, not only for the participants but also for me as I was learning from them and from myself at that time. It’s fascinated that a certain language and numbers (following with a culture and traditions) are totally normal for me, while for them it was a new world as if they were adult children in their first day in the school. This is one of things that I like from traveling and from getting to know to new cultures.