Note on Transliteration and Pronunciation

Like all languages, Arabic is full of idioms and words for which there is no exact equivalent in any other language. For the most part, I have tried to get around this with at least an approximate translation, but in a few cases I have found any English rendering of the Arabic to be so awkward as to interfere with the flow of the narrative. In such instances, I have transliterated an Arabic word or expression, explaining it either with a footnote or in the glossary. In general, Arabic words in this text have been transliterated so as to make them, insofar as possible, phonetically intelligible to the non-Arabic speaker. In some cases, phonemes that do not exist in English have been omitted entirely or replaced with similar English phonemes where the presence or absence of the Arabic phoneme—although significant to an Arabic speaker—makes little difference to most English speakers.

A few points call for explanation. In the word miqaddis (referring to a Christian pilgrim; see glossary), the q, standing for Arabic letter qāf, would in Modern Standard Arabic be pronounced as a velar k—that is, in the back of the throat: a sound not present in English. In the narrative, this form of the word is used. In the dialogue, however, the reader will often find the word spelled migaddis, following a variation also used in the original Arabic text. In the dialect of Upper Egypt (Sa‘iidi Arabic, as opposed to Cairene), the qāf is generally pronounced as a hard g. This same phonetic variation will be found with the words qallayaat/gallayaat (here referring to monastic “cells”) and qabr/gabr (“grave”). In words that contain a single open quote, such as mi‘allim (“boss”) and ‘Eid (Islamic holiday; see glossary), this symbol stands for an Arabic sound for which English has no symbol: that of the letter ‘ayn, which represents a phoneme not found in English (almost like the French retroflex r, but with no contact between the upper and lower palates as the sound is produced. Similarly, in the word ma‘dhoun (Islamic official; see glossary), the apostrophe represents the glottal stop heard at the beginning and in the middle of the expression, “uh-oh.” The word shaa’ (as in the expression bismillaahi maa shaa’ allah; see glossary) also contains this glottal stop.