Fahim and I had dinner at his parent’s. String hoppers, dahl, mutton curry and chicken curry. It was good!
And his parents like me!
Yay!
Okay, now for some details. His mother doesn’t speak much English, but she understands most of what’s going on. I, unfortunately, don’t speak either Sinhalese or understand it. Uh oh. This can make for difficulty in communication, eh?
So. It’s time for me to step up the Sinhalese lessons. Ack!
Most conversation, in the beginning, was in English. After we sat down to break fast (Ramadan, remember), conversation quickly changed into Sinhalese, and it went back and forth between the two languages for the rest of the night. Oh, and sometimes with Tamil thrown in for good measure, because, of course, why would we want it limited to just two languages? Eeek!
I’ve been in his parent’s house before, but of course, that was August 2003. Now, I had time to soak in the details. Fahim’s mother has excellent taste, just for the record. Peach and white tiled floors, light peach walls, peach window coverings. Black leather (real leather, not the imitation crappy leather we have) sofa and chairs, and so on.
Fahmi, Fahim’s younger brother, was there as well, as was a cousin of theirs. The cousin caught a ride with us in the trishaw since he works at Food City at the bottom of our road, and coincidentally, also lives on our same road. Fahim didn’t know that until a week or so ago.
Everyone was kind and his parents especially went out of their way to be nice. It was comfortable. That’s really the best way to summarize them. Comfortable.
