about myself essay in arabic

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How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic in 10 Lines

Want to speak Arabic? Yes? Good – keep reading. This is for those that truly want to learn the language. Here’s how you introduce yourself in Arabic in 10 easy lines… and this might take you 2 to 3 minutes or less. With this lesson…

You get the Arabic, translations and romanizations.
Read out loud to practice your speaking.
Feel free to print this sheet out for extra review.

Here’s how you introduce yourself in Arabic. Let’s go.

(BUT… if you want to REALLY learn Arabic with Audio & Video lessons from real teachers, be sure to check out ArabicPod101.com and click here.)

1) Hello, It’s nice to meet you.

Hello and Nice to meet you in Arabic are a must-know phrases. And any introduction will probably will start with these words.

مرحبا، سعدت بلقائك.
marḥaban, saʿidtu biliqaāʾik.
Hello, it’s nice to meet you.

2) My name is _____.

This is simple. To say “my name is” in Arabic, you just need the phrase “ ʾanaā ismiī .” Then say your name. For example, if the name is Ali.. it would be like this…

أنا اسمي علي.
ʾanaā ismiī ʿaliī.
My name is Ali.

3) I am from ______.

So, where are you from? America? Europe? Africa? Asia? Just stick the name of your country inside this phrase. We’ll use Egypt ( miṣr ) as an example.

أنا من مصر.
ʾanaā min miṣr.
I’m from Egypt.

4) I live in ______.

What about now – where do you live? Just fill in the blank with the country or city (if famous) into this phrase. I’ll use Cairo ( al-qaāhirah ) as an example.

أنا أعيش في القاهرة.
ʾanaā ʾaʿiīšu fiī al-qaāhirah.
I live in Cairo.

5) I’ve been learning Arabic for _____.

How long have you been learning Arabic for? A month? A year?

أتعلم اللغة العربية منذ عام.
ʾataʿalamu al-luّġaẗa al-ʿarabiīh munḏu ʿaāmin.
I’ve been learning Arabic for a year.

6) I’m learning Arabic at _____.

Where are you learning Arabic? At school? At home? This would be a great line to know and use when you’re introducing yourself. Here’s my example:

أتعلم اللغة العربية على موقع ArabicPod101.com
ʾataʿalmu al-lluġaẗa al-ʿarabiīh ʿalaā mawqiʿ ArabicPod101.com
I’m learning Arabic at ArabicPod101.com.

7) I am ____ years old.

Here’s how to say how old you are in Arabic. .

عمري سبعة وعشرون عاما.
ʿumriī sabʿaẗun waʿšruūn ʿaāman.
I’m 27 years old.

8) I am ______.

What about your position? Are you a student? Yoga teacher? Lawyer for the potato industry? Potato salesman? Super important question that people like to ask (and judge you about – Hey, I’m just a blogger! ). Just use “ ʾanaā ” meaning “I” and add your position.

ʿanaā mudaris.
I’m a teacher.

9) One of my hobbies is _____.

Now, let’s move onto personal interests – hobbies! My hobbies are languages, linguajunkieing and such. How about you? You’ll definitely need this line when introducing yourself in Arabic.

Here’s an example to use:

واحدة من هواياتي هي القراءة.
waāḥidaẗun min hiwaāyaātiī hiī al-qiraāʾah.
One of my hobbies is reading.

10) I enjoy listening to music.

Now, this is just another example line about your hobbies . You can use something else where.

أستمتع بسماع الموسيقى.
‘astamtiʿu bisamaāʿi al-muūsiīqaā.
I enjoy listening to music.

So now you know how to introduce yourself in Arabic in 10 lines. I’m sure there’s a ton more you can say – but this is an easy, simple start that any beginner can put to use. It’s all about starting easy.

See if you can introduce yourself below. Leave me a comment.

I read all comments!

Hope you enjoyed this!

– The Main Junkie

P.S. I highly recommend this for Arabic learners. If you REALLY want to learn to Arabic with effective lessons by real teachers – Sign up for free at ArabicPod101 (click here) and start learning !

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Hi , i would like to learn arabic. Can u help me please

, October 27, 2023

How To Introduce Yourself In Arabic In 8 Easy Lines

Since meeting new people and communicating is the ultimate reason for learning a foreign language – the Arabic language in our case – the first thing you should learn is to introduce yourself in Arabic. Whether you’re planning to visit an Arabic-speaking country or just want to connect with native Arabic speakers, self-introduction is a valuable skill.

In this article, you will learn the art of self-introduction in Arabic, allowing you to make a positive impression and foster friendly connections with Arab people.

Introduce Yourself In Arabic

Self-introduction is important in Arab culture, as it plays a significant role in establishing relationships, demonstrating respect, and conveying important information. Let’s learn how to introduce yourself in Arabic in just eight lines!

Like many other languages, there is not a single way of greeting someone with a hello. Below are the two most common Arabic greetings to say hello.

Peace Be Upon You – As-salamu Alaykum – السلام عليكم

This phrase is the most universal Arabic greeting recognized by both Arab and Muslim communities. It means “peace be upon you “. When someone greets you with “As-salamu alaykum,” you should respond with “Wa alaykum as-salam” (وعليكم السلام) , which means “ and upon you be peace .” This greeting exchange can be used in both formal and informal settings.

Hello – Marhaban – مرحبا

This one is a more casual way of greeting someone. It’s widely used in everyday conversations, perfect for initial encounters or friendly interactions. It’s a warm and inviting greeting, similar to saying “hello” in English.

If you want to greet a group at once, go for “As-salamu alaykum” instead of “marhaban” as it’s not very appropriate for formal gatherings.

2. What’s Your Name?

When someone asks you your name in Arabic , you can reply in the following ways.

My Name Is … – Ismi (Your Name) – … اسمي

When someone asks what your name is, “Ma ismuk?” (ما اسمك؟), you can respond with “Ismi (your name). It means “My name is (…).”

I am … – Ana – … أنا

You can further personalize your introduction by using the word “Ana” ( أنا ), which means “I am.” This way, you let others know that you are introducing yourself.

What Is Your Name? – Ma Ismuk? – ما اسمك؟

To engage in a conversation, you should ask about the other person as well. You can say, “Ma ismuk?” (ما اسمك؟), which means “What is your name?”

When asking a male:

What’s your name? – Mā ismuk? (ما اِسْمُك؟)

When asking a female:

What’s your name? – Ma ismuki? (ما اِسْمُكِ؟)

country-introduce-yourself-in-arabic-Ling

3. Where Are You From?

You further the conversation by asking someone where they come from.

I’m From … – Ana Min (Place) – … أنا من

When someone is curious about where you are from, they ask, “Min ayyi baladin ‘ant?” (من أي بلد أنت؟). To answer this question, you should respond by saying, “Ana min (place).”

In English, only a few countries are written with a definite article. In Arabic, however, almost half of all countries in the world are written with a definite article. For example:

The Japan – Al-yābān (اليونان)
The Greece – Al-yūnān (اليابان)

4. Where Do You Live?

Want to ask someone where they are living currently? Here is how you do it.

Where Do You Live? – Ayna Ta’eesh? – أين تعيش؟

To respond to the question “Ayna ta’eesh?” meaning “Where do you live?” in Arabic, you should answer by giving the name of your country or city:

I live in (city or country) – ‘aeish fi (city or country) – … أعيش في

5. How Old Are You?

Asking someone’s age might not be considered polite but sometimes, you have no choice but to ask this question. Here is how you do it in Arabic.

How Old Are You? – Kam Omruk? – كم عمرك؟

To tell your age in Arabic, you can use this pattern omri + number + sana. For example, “omri talateen sana” (عمري ثلاثون سنة) which means “I’m 30 years old.”

6. What Do You Do For A Living?

How do you ask someone about their job or professional life in the Arabic language? Here’s how!

What Do You Do For A Living? – Maatha Ta’mal Litaksib Quwt Yawmik? – ماذا تعمل لتكسب قوت يومك؟

In Arabic, to ask, “What do you do for a living?” you can say “Maatha ta’mal litaksib quwt yawmik?”, which translates to “What do you do to earn your daily bread?” This is a common phrase to ask about someone’s occupation or profession in Arabic.

To respond to the question, you can use these phrases:

I am a … – Ana (your occupation) – … أنا
I work in the field of … – A’mal fi majal (your field) – … أعمل في مجال

7. What Are Your Hobbies?

Enquiring about hobbies and interests is a good way to carry forward a conversation, especially when you are meeting someone new. Here is how you can ask this question in Arabic.

What Are Your Hobbies? – Ma Hi Hiwayatika? – ما هي هواياتك؟

When we start getting to know someone, we are likely to wonder what they enjoy doing as a hobby in their free time. So, when someone asks you, “ma hi hiwayatika?” you can respond by using various phrases. For example:

One of my hobbies is reading – wahidatun min hiwayati hi al-qiraʾah – واحدة من هواياتي هي القراءة
I enjoy listening to music – ‘astamtiʿu bisamaʿi al-musiqa – أستمتع بسماع الموسيقى
I like singing – ʾanā ʾuḥibbu al-ġināʾ – أنا أحب الغناء

8. It’s Nice To Meet You!

End the conversation with this polite sentence.

Nice To Meet You! – Tasharrafna – تشرفنا

You can use this phrase to politely express you’re pleased to meet someone. It actually means, “It was an honor.”

It’s Nice To Meet You – Saʿidtu Biliqaʾik – سعدت بلقائك

You can also use this phrase when you meet with someone for the first time. It translates to “I am delighted to meet you.”

Learning how to introduce yourself in Arabic is a gateway to building relationships, understanding culture, and experiencing the warmth of Arabic-speaking communities. By mastering the art of greetings and self-introduction, you open the door to meaningful connections and enriching experiences.

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How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic: A Comprehensive Guide

Introducing yourself in Arabic can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. With a few key phrases and some confidence, you’ll be able to make a great first impression in no time. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about introducing yourself in Arabic.

The Importance of Introducing Yourself in Arabic

Introducing yourself is an important part of building relationships, whether it’s in a personal or professional setting. By introducing yourself in Arabic, you show respect for the language and culture, and you open yourself up to new opportunities and connections.

Basic Phrases for Introducing Yourself in Arabic

Before you start practicing your Arabic introduction, it’s important to learn a few basic phrases:

Marhaba: Hello
Ana ismi: My name is
Min ayna anta/anti: Where are you from?
Ana min (country): I’m from (country)
Tasharrafna: Nice to meet you
Shukran: Thank you
Ma’assalama: Goodbye

Using these phrases in combination can help you create a simple and effective introduction in Arabic.

Tips for Introducing Yourself in Arabic

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when introducing yourself in Arabic:

Practice, Practice, Practice: The more you practice your Arabic introduction, the more confident you’ll be when the time comes.
Speak Slowly and Clearly: Arabic pronunciation can be difficult, so it’s important to speak slowly and clearly to ensure that you’re understood.
Show Respect for the Culture: By learning to introduce yourself in Arabic, you’re showing respect for the language and culture. Be sure to use formal language and show humility.
Use Eye Contact and a Firm Handshake: In Arabic culture, eye contact and a firm handshake are important parts of making a good first impression.
Follow Up with Questions: After you introduce yourself, ask the other person about themselves. This shows that you’re interested in building a relationship.

Examples of Introducing Yourself in Arabic

Here are a few examples of how to introduce yourself in Arabic:

Marhaba, ana ismi Ahmed. Ana min Misr. Tasharrafna. (Hello, my name is Ahmed. I’m from Egypt . Nice to meet you.)
Ana Zainab. Min ayna anta/anti? (I’m Zainab. Where are you from?)
Tasharrafna, ana Ali. Ana taalib fi Al-Jami’a. (Nice to meet you, I’m Ali. I’m a student at the university.)

In Conclusion

Introducing yourself in Arabic is a valuable skill that can open up new opportunities and connections. By learning a few basic phrases and following these tips, you’ll be able to confidently introduce yourself in any situation. So, marhaba and good luck with your Arabic introduction!

CHECK THIS ARTICLE: Why You Need An Arabic Tutor While Learning Arabic ?

How To Introduce Yourself In Arabic

One of the first things you’ll need to learn when studying Arabic is how to introduce yourself in the Arabic language.

If you’re traveling through an Arabic speaking country, being able to introduce yourself in the local tongue is going to be of great value. Here in this video, Live Lingua Arabic language teacher Najeeb Aldaghashi walks you through the basics of saying hello and introducing yourself in the Arabic language.

Communication is key to travel — you’ll find yourself more aware of what is happening around you as well as much more social and communicable even if you only know a few basic phrases in the Arabic language. Our YouTube channel offers a number of videos to help with the basics.

Looking to take your language learning, whether Arabic or otherwise, to new heights? Live Lingua offers immersive, live online language lessons in 11 of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Sign up for a free trial lesson today — you’ll be so glad that you did!

Reading and writing in Arabic can be a difficult task to undertake, largely because the language is written right to left (the same as Hebrew, for any experienced in that language). Fortunately, Live Lingua Arabic teacher Rana Saad Makhlouf is here to make the process easier.

In this series of six short videos, Rana walks us through reading and writing in Arabic starting with the basics, and progressing slowly. Learning how to read and write is one of the most critical parts of mastering any new language, and is especially important with Arabic. If you plan to travel to an Arabic speaking country, understanding the basics of how to read and write in Arabic will make your trip that much better.

Here’s Rana!

Here’s part two in the series:

Here’s part three in the series:

Here’s part four in the series:

Understanding local customs, traditions, and even language is the key to boosting your trip to an Arabic speaking country. When speaking, reading, and writing Arabic, you will find yourself more aware of what is happening around you as well as much more social and communicable even if you only know the basics of hose to read and write in Arabic language. Our YouTube channel offers a number of videos to help with the basics.

Here’s part five in the series:

For our complete collection of Arabic instructional videos, along with free language materials and courses for more than 130 languages, check out the immersive language lessons from Live Lingua — your first lesson is complimentary because we’re sure you will love our teachers!

Here’s part six in the series:

If you are looking to take your Arabic skills to the next level, Live Lingua offers a free Arabic Survival Crash Course . We’ll send ebooks and audio files right to your inbox to help you learn Arabic fast!

For many foreign language learners figuring out which language in the world is the hardest to learn is easy: the one you are currently studying! If we seek more of an objective answer, though, most experts will list Arabic as one of the hardest languages in the world to learn, if not the most difficult.

Why is Arabic so difficult?

First, most of the consonants are formed using the back of the mouth. They have more of a guttural tone than traditional English consonants. The Arabic alphabet is also very different from the English Alphabet. It is phonetic and uses 28 symbols that can change meaning depending on where they are positioned within a word. Another common problem is the way that Arabic script is read. Arabic is read from right to left, which is the total opposite way for most Westerners.

In addition to all of this, Arabic is a language of dialects. If you learn to read and write Modern Standard Arabic then you still have to master the specific regional dialect so that you can actually communicate with Arabic speaking people.

Is there anything to make learning Arabic easier?

Even though Arabic can be difficult for English speakers, there’s no need to give up! Considering more than 300 million people in over 20 countries in the world speak, write and read in Arabic, it is not impossible!

Using a tutoring website like Live Lingua will give you the structured guidance necessary to master such a difficult language. Arabic will be hard to learn if it is just you, a textbook and some helpful Internet websites; you really need to have a live language instructor to encourage and instruct through the process.

It is also helpful to both speak and listen to Arabic as much as possible. Look for local language clubs (your town’s library can be a great resource) where you can practice your language skills with others. Set aside at least 15 minutes to simply speak the language.

Why even bother to learn Arabic?

One of the main reasons that enrollment in Arabic classes doubled between 1998 and 2002 is that the demand for Arabic speakers rose sharply after September 11, 2001.

Journalists, FBI Agents, bankers, businesses and educational institutions had a huge demand for Arabic speakers and a very low supply.

If you have 88 weeks to learn Arabic (the recommended level of the State Department to reach mediocre proficiency) then you will become a highly lucrative and valuable asset to a variety of industries.

Learning Arabic can also enhance your religious experience if you are a follower of Islam. Just like modern-day biblical scholars still study Greek and Hebrew, learning Arabic will give you a greater appreciation for the Qur’an and other religious texts.

There is an old Syrian proverb that translates, “He who has drunk the sea does not choke on a brook” (اللي بيشرب البحر ما بغص بالساقية). The idea behind the proverb is that when you master something big, then the smaller obstacles in life do not seem insurmountable.

The ability to speak and write Arabic will give you more than just an edge in the workplace; it may provide the confidence you need to tackle future obstacles.

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How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic Posted by Anastasia on Feb 17, 2019 in Arabic Language , Pronunciation , Vocabulary

The Arabic language is a very rich and dense language, making one of the hardest to master in the world even by its population, let alone foreigners. Throughout history, Arabs were known for their hospitality and amicable welcoming nature and still are to this day. Here are some basic phrases* to help us communicate with our Arab counterparts that serve as an introduction :

Marhaba مرحباً

About the Author: Anastasia

Marhaba! My name is Anastasia, I'm Lebanese and I'm the new Arabic blogger! As the great prophet Khalil Gibran once said "You have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon." For as long as I can remember, my country has been poorly portrayed in the Western media, so allow me to introduce to the magic, mystical, and breathtakingly beautiful land I grew up in called : LEBANON.

Introduce Yourself in Arabic: Say Your Name, Age and Origin

What’s your name? Where are you from? Introducing yourself is one of the first things we do when meeting new people. For this reason, it makes sense that self-introduction is among the basic lessons when learning a new language.

In this article, you’ll learn how to introduce yourself in Arabic. I’ve compiled the most common expressions and useful vocabulary along with some cultural insights .

1. Introduce Yourself: Start with a Greeting

Every good conversation starts with a greeting. So before you start talking about who you are, you might want to say hello or good morning.

There are plenty of Arabic greetings , from easy ones to more creative ones. If you’d like to keep things simple , you can just start your conversation with marhaban (مرحبا) which is a universal way to say hello in Arabic. This expression is used and understood among (almost) all Arabic dialects , and can be used for any gender and at any occasion.

2. Introduce Yourself: Say Your Name

Be it in a business conversation or casually, a person’s name is really one of the first things we would like to know. In Arab culture, it’s quite common to address people with their first name . Furthermore, repeating a person’s name during a conversation is considered polite and much more common compared to English.

That said, let’s start a conversation in Arabic by saying our name.

Same as in English, there are two ways to say your name in Arabic. My name is Kitty, or simply, I’m Kitty. Both ways are used the same way in the Arabic language too.

To say “my name is” in Arabic, you’ll say ismi (اسمي) followed by your name. For example, ismi Kitty (my name is Kitty).

Ism means name in Arabic. The -i added behind ism is a possessive pronoun to indicate that you are referring to yourself. Unlike English, possessive pronouns aren’t separate words before a noun, but so-called suffixes which are added at the end of a noun .

If that sounds complicated, you can simply say ana (انا) followed by your name. For example, ana Kitty , meaning I’m Kitty.

If you’d like to learn more expressions about names in Arabic, feel free to check out my full article on how to say your name in Arabic.

3. Introduce Yourself: Say Where You Are From

If you’re reading this article, I think it’s safe to assume that Arabic isn’t your first language and that you’re interested in learning a thing or two in Arabic.

While Arabic is an important language, there aren’t many people who learn Arabic as a foreign language. Foreign languages taught in school are often limited to Spanish, French or German.

That said, Arabs do not usually expect foreigners to speak Arabic at all. It’s a very pleasant surprise to hear a non-Arab speak Arabic! Consequently, people will be very curious about you, where you are from and where you live. So let’s have a look at that.

To talk about your origin (where you are originally from), you can simply say ana min + country/city of origin (I’m from country/city).

Sometimes, our place of birth is different from where we live . You might identify yourself as French for instance if you were born in France or your parents are originally French, but it could very well be that you’ve been living in a different country for a long time.

If you’d like to indicate where you live in Arabic, you can do so by saying sakin fi + city/country (I live in city/country). For example, sakin fi holanda (I live in the Netherlands. Yes, I really do…).

4. Introduce Yourself: Say Your Age

In Arab culture, age isn’t the first thing you’d ask a person. In fact, we’d rather talk about our profession or family status rather than mention our age. Nevertheless, you might want to disclose that information when introducing yourself. So let’s have a look at how to say your age in Arabic.

Talking about your age in Arabic is quite simple. In spoken Arabic, there’s just one way that people commonly use.

To tell your age, you’ll say omri + number + sana . For example, omri talateen sana (عمري ثلاثون سنة) (I’m 30 years old. Yes, I’m really that old…).

Since this expression isn’t a literal translation from English, let me explain to you what each word means. Omri means my age. It’s based on the same logic as when saying your name, with the possessive pronoun added as a suffix at the end of the noun. Sana means year in Arabic. Same as in English, the number (your age) is added between omri and sana .

Chances are you aren’t 30 years old like me, so you might want to have a look at the numbers in Arabic to talk about your age.

5. Introduce Yourself: Nice to Meet You

Last but not least, let’s round up our introduction by saying nice to meet you .

There are multiple ways of saying nice to meet you in Arabic, which mainly depend on the dialect you’re learning. If you’d like to stick to spoken Arabic (Levantine Arabic), the best expression is tasharrafna (تشرفنا). Tasharrafna basically means “It was an honor” and is a polite way of saying pleased to meet you at any occasion.

Expressions at a Glance

Below is a summary of the expressions used in this article and their English equivalent. The Latin script can help you with the correct pronunciation if you can’t read Arabic. Learning the Arabic alphabet will greatly help you with the correct pronunciation of Arabic words.

Learn Arabic with Me!

Looking for more expressions in Arabic, or are you interested in Arab culture? You’ve come to the right place! This blog is about all things Middle Eastern . You’ll find plenty of useful articles here to immerse yourself in the Arabic language, culture and cuisine.

Be sure to check out my guide on what Arabic dialect to learn, my handy Arabic alphabet chart or just browse my Arabic language learning resources .

Any questions or feedback? Leave me a comment in the comment section down the page. I’d love to hear from you!

Kitty Ramasamy

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Greeting and Self Introduction in Arabic

Free brain friendly lesson learning pack, instant pdf download + youtube video. learn basic arabic conversation..

Learn how to greet someone and introduce yourself in Arabic language. The video provides the correct pronunciation and English translation for basic greeting and self-introduction questions and answers, with several examples. The words are written and spoken in Arabic, translated in English (English subtitles), and provided with transliteration for easy pronunciation, plus a quiz at the end to test your knowledge. CLICK HERE TO GO TO YOUTUBE DIRECTLY.

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Vocabulary and Conversation

Four Simple Tips to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills in Arabic

root: ق-و-ل / noun / plural: مَقالات /definition: essay, article

So, you’ve studied Arabic for a while now. Simple sentences are old news (i.e. you’re silently pleading for your teacher not to go over jumlah ismiyyah yet again) and you’ve got a decent collection of relevant words all memorised. So you’re all set when your teacher asks you to write an essay about the topic in Arabic…right?

“Wrong!” says the fear in your eyes when you see the word count, as minuscule as it may be; a few hundred words in your native language definitely doesn’t seem as daunting as this .

It’s almost as if writing an essay in our target language makes us forget everything we’ve ever learnt about essays. And writing, unfortunately.

But there’s no need for stress—here’s four easy tips to simplify the process:

1 Think In Arabic

Often, when we’re writing in our target language, we tend to think of the exact sentence we want to produce in our native language then essentially try to translate it as pen hits paper. That’s where the problem comes in.

Trying to write via the process of translation is much more difficult and will most likely make your writing sound unnatural.

Instead, focus on what idea you want to convey and use the Arabic words and structures that you already know to express it. Much easier.

2 Learn “Copy and Paste” Phrases

One effective way to make your writing sound more sophisticated (and, well, to use up more of the word count) is to learn phrases that you can slot into pretty much any essay.

For example, here’s two simple phrases that I found whilst reading through Arabic articles: مهّد/يُمهِّد الطريق لِـ (“to pave the way for”) and على حافة الاِنهِيار (“on the verge of collapse”).

These phrases really came in handy during my writing tasks and exams at university since I could use them in the context of various topics. (A lot of things are on the verge of collapse, apparently).

3 Punctuate !

Okay, so maybe this was just me, but while my essays in English would be full of a plethora of punctuation, my Arabic essays would be lucky to get a comma thrown in. I think it probably took me three years to even get a bracket down on paper.

So throw those commas in! And the semicolons, colons, dashes, etc…

4 Remember What You Know About Essays

Think structure, connectives, varying sentence lengths, creating interest, clarity of expression.

There may be slight differences in certain aspects of writing style between English and Arabic, but don’t forget what you already know about writing essays in general. And definitely try to use Arabic texts as a source from which you can replicate structures and styles.

And, finally, remember that improvement takes practice —so keep writing .

If you have any other tips for writing Arabic essays, or any phrases that you yourself like to use, please do share them in the comments!

Edit: the book How to Write in Arabic (which I talked in the post Arabic Books on My Bookshelf ) has great guidelines for writing different types of text in Arabic—including a section for those “copy and paste” phrases!

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1.1 Vocabulary on self-introduction: study, live and work

In this section

I can introduce myself with some detail including where I live, study, and work.
I can use and understand main vocabulary on study majors and learn how to use them in context.
I can talk about different jobs and professions and reflect on my future career.
I can talk about nationalities and languages and reflect on myself and family.

Vocabulary (1)

Listen to new vocabulary related to self-introduction in the following recording and repeat as you follow along in the list of words underneath. Listen as many times for fluency.

Study the following vocabulary list on self-introduction.

Activity (1): With the teacher, ask and answer questions guided by the following exchanges.

Vocabulary (2).

Listen to new vocabulary on study fields and majors in the following recording and repeat as you follow along in the list of words underneath. Listen as many times for fluency.

https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/app/uploads/sites/15/2021/01/lesson-1-study.m4a

Study the following vocabulary list on study fields and majors.

Vocabulary (3)

https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/app/uploads/sites/15/2021/01/lesson-1-work.m4a

Study the following vocabulary list on jobs and professions.

Activity (2): Ask and answer questions with your classmates using the following prompts.

The following table includes questions that you use to ask your classmates. You can will use the right column when asking a male and the left column when asking a female.

Vocabulary (4)

Listen to new vocabulary on names of languages in the following recording and repeat as you follow along in the list of words underneath. Listen as many times for fluency.

https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/app/uploads/sites/15/2020/03/Lesson-1-track-2.mp3

Study the following vocabulary list on names of different languages.

Key Takeaways

You have now gained knowledge of:

New vocabulary that has to do with self-introduction, immediate family presentation, study majors, languages, and jobs and professions.
You have gained the skills of using question words in standard Arabic.
This vocabulary section provides the ground for the following sections, which will help you contextualize the subsequent grammar concepts and other language and conversational skills.

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Understanding and Talking About Family in Arabic

No matter what culture you visit, you’ll likely learn that the way other people think of family is completely different from how you do.

When you speak in your native language about your own family, you’re drawing on many years of ingrained cultural knowledge that shapes what you’re likely to share and what you’re likely to keep private. This cultural influence may even affect the way you present that knowledge.

But if you use another language to talk about your own family, like if you speak about your family in Arabic, you may sometimes find that it doesn’t quite line up. Certain phrases you expect to use aren’t there, and the person you’re speaking with may have a very different expectation of what you’re going to communicate.

All that to say: In order to take your Arabic studies to the next level, you’d better work on getting your knowledge about families in Arabic up to par.

You’ve come to the right place. In this article, you’ll read up on the following topics about family in Arabic:

Members of the family in Arabic
Describing your family in Arabic
How to talk about your family in Arabic effectively
Quotes about family in Arabic

But first, what is the family in Arabic cultures?

Table of Contents

What a Family is in Arabic Culture
The Nuclear Family in Arabic
The Extended Family in Arabic
What Marriage Does to the Words About Family
Expressions About the Family
How ArabicPod101 Can Teach You All You Need to Know About Arabic

1. What a Family is in Arabic Culture

Learning the words you need in a foreign language is one thing. But if you want to use them well, you’ve got to learn a little bit about the culture you’ll be in.

Although the name “Arab countries” covers quite a few very different regions , there are certain family values that tend to hold constant across the lines of culture.

People are loyal to their families in Arabic culture, thus the idea of family above all in Arabic countries. Every year during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, huge extended families unite for a celebration. Beyond just hanging out, though, people are expected to side with their families in disagreements, as well as help out family members in need, at the drop of a hat.

These connections hold strong across generations. Elders are consulted on matters large and small, and children begin imitating their parents at a young age. Children are expected to live with their parents until they start families of their own.

As you can imagine, the classical (and thus the modern standard) language has many unique terms to represent this very different way of looking at the family compared to what we’re used to in the West. Let’s begin with something not too far away.

2. The Nuclear Family in Arabic

The word أسرة ( usrah ) means your closest family, or what we often term the “immediate family” in English.

Here’s some family vocabulary Arabic people use for immediate family in Arabic-speaking countries:

Remember that you’re most often going to be speaking about your family, so here are a couple of phrases for just that.

My father is a doctor. أبي طبيب ʾabī ṭabīb

My sister is married. أختي متزوجة ʾuḫtī mutazawwiǧah

Like most languages, including English, there are formal and informal ways to say “father” and “mother” in Arabic. In English, this is like “father” compared to “papa.”

Where’s my mom? أين أمي؟ ʾayna ʾummī?

My dad is really tall! أبي طويل جدا! ʾabī ṭawīlun ǧiddan!

The word for “parent” is والد ( walid ), which can, of course, be used in the singular, though it’s far more common to see it in the dual form: والدان.

My parents live in Cairo . والداي يعيشان في القاهرة walidāy yaʿīšān fī al-qāhirah

Arabic normally doesn’t distinguish between older and younger siblings, unlike some Asian languages which have separate words for “younger sister” and “older sister.” So just like in English, you’d add the specific age words to be more clear.

For “older” use الاكبر, and for “younger” use الاصغر.

My older brother is shorter than me. أخي الأكبر أقصر مني ʾaḫī al-ʾakbar ʾaqṣaru minnī

My younger sister is smart. أختي الصغرى ذكية ʾuḫtī al-ṣuġrā ḏakyyah

3. The Extended Family in Arabic

Grandparents with Granddaughter Going through Photo Album

So that about covers it for the people you grow up around. How about the عائلة ( ʿāʾilah ), the “extended family?”

The best way to explain it all is in another chart. Although Arabic doesn’t make that older/younger distinction, there is a difference between maternal and paternal aunts/uncles (though not grandparents). On the whole, though, it’s not too many Family in Arabic words to memorize.

As you can see, there are a number of patterns that start to become apparent pretty quickly. To go a little bit deeper, we can distinguish between male and female cousins by adding the word إبن ( ibn ) for men and بنت ( bint ) for women. Check it out.

My (female) cousin lives with her parents. إبنة عمي تعيش مع والديها ʾibnatu ʿammī taʿīšu maʿ waldayhā

I like to work out with my (male) cousin. أحب ممارسة الرياضة مع إبن عمي ʾuḥibbu mumārasatu al-riyāḍah maʿ ʾibn ʿammī

4. What Marriage Does to the Words About Family

Have you ever been to an Arab wedding , or at least seen videos? They’re big deals, full of formality and tradition.

It’s no wonder that the Arabic language would not only have many specialized words for the marriage ceremonies, but also that the way people refer to each other before and after marriage might change too.

Leading up to the wedding, we have:

In many more conservative families, the relationship tends to progress immediately from “friend” to “fiancé.” However, in others, there’s space for the Western habit of having a relationship first.

After the wedding festivities end?

Well, there’s no neutral word for “spouse” in Arabic. One must either say زوجة ( zawǧah ) for “wife” or زوج ( zawǧ ) for “husband.”

Traditionally, a bride will move in with the husband’s family after marriage, and the parents of both the bride and the groom maintain close contact. The families are wed, not just the individuals; essentially, you’ve become a joint family in Arabic culture. Therefore, there’s a whole set of vocabulary in this sphere. Time for another quick chart.

5. Expressions About the Family

And now for something that I think sheds more light on family relations in Arabic than anything else: idioms and sayings related to family life. This is a fun and insightful way of describing family in Arabic.

الأقربون أولى بالمعروف Your relatives (in need) are more deserving of your generosity. (Family before friends.)

The concept of “brotherhood” or الأخوة ( al-ʾuḫuwwah ) is something that you see over and over in traditional Arabic teachings.

I and my brother against my cousin, I and my cousin against a stranger. أنا وأخي على إبن عمي وأنا وإبن عمي على الغريب ʾnā waʾaḫī ʿalā ʾibn ʿammī waʾanā waʾibnu ʿammī ʿalā al-ġarīb
Without a brother, you’re like a person rushing to battle without a weapon. إن مَنْ لا أخا له كَساعٍ إلى المعركة بغير سلاح ʾinna man lā ʾaḫā lahu kasāʿin ʾilā al-maʿrakah biġayri silāḥ
Your brother is who’s honest with you, not who believes you. أخوك من صَدَقك لا من صدّقك ʾaḫūka man ṣadaqaka lā man ṣaddaqak

And finally, the love between a parent and child is eternal, a concept found in every language. Here’s what people say about that in Arabic:

When your son grows up, become his brother. إن كبر ابنك آخيه ʾin kabura ibnuka ʾāḫīh

And the Egyptian saying:

Only your grandchild is dearer to you than your child. أعز من الولد ولد الولد ʾaʿaz min el-weld weld el-weld

Grandmother Embracing Granddaughter in Field

6. How ArabicPod101 Can Teach You All You Need to Know About Arabic

Really, when it comes to something as important as family in Arabic, you can’t treat it with enough respect.

On the one hand, Arabs are famously welcoming to foreigners and will tend to let even relatively big language slip-ups slide as long as it’s clear that respect was intended.

But on the other hand, as I mentioned, family is such an important part of any culture that if it becomes clear you’re not making any effort to understand its significance, well, woe betide you.

I can’t help you be better at respecting things—but I can give you advice about learning things. And one of the best ways to make these particular vocabulary words stick is to find a nice long Arabic TV series and watch a couple dozen episodes.

There are a number of thirty-episode Ramadan specials filmed in Modern Standard Arabic that have enough family schemes and betrayals to make sure you’ll never forget the words .

When you get to that point, your Arabic family will welcome you with open arms.

But for now, we hope that this article on family in Arabic proved helpful to you. Did you learn anything interesting about the Arab family culture? Let us know in the comments! And while you’re at it, why not practice describing family in Arabic writing by writing us a family paragraph in Arabic? We look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Also visit ArabicPod101.com to learn more about Arab culture and additional vocabulary . You can also take advantage of our MyTeacher program by upgrading to Premium Plus, so that you can learn Arabic with your own personal teacher!

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1.6: Writing

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Ayman Mohamed and Sadam Issa
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Learning Objectives

In this section

You will wrap up what you learned from lesson 1 and practice your vocabulary and structure knowledge in writing.

Journal writing

The original version of this chapter contained H5P content. You may want to remove or replace this element.

Key Takeaways from lesson 1

You can introduce yourself and others in some detail.
You can write short paragraphs using the present tense frame.
You are now ready to move on to the next lesson.

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Esther Perel on What the Other Woman Knows

The relationship expert reads one of the most controversial modern love essays ever published..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love.” Today, I’m talking to the most famous couples therapist in the world, Esther Perel. Esther’s books, “Mating in Captivity” and “State of Affairs,” have forced so many of us, myself included, to rethink our assumptions about love. Like maybe it’s unrealistic to expect the passion and fire we feel at the beginning of a relationship to last forever. And when one partner cheats on the other, what if it could actually bring the couple closer, instead of tearing them apart?

On her podcast, “Where Should We Begin,” Esther lets us eavesdrop on sessions with real couples. People come to her with impossible problems, and she somehow guides them to a breakthrough. She gives them hope. When I listen to Esther’s podcast, I feel like I’m getting a free therapy session, so I wasn’t surprised in the slightest when she told me that people come up to her in public all the time and ask her deeply personal questions.

The grocery store is one place, but airplanes is even better.

Oh, no, Esther. If I were you, I’d be really scared to fly.

[LAUGHS]: They’re suspended in the air, and they tell you lots of things. And it is often about, can trust be repaired when it’s been broken? Can you bring a spark back when it’s gone? Can you rekindle desire when it’s been dormant for so long? What do you do when you’re angry at yourself for having stayed when you think you should have left? Or what do you do when you’re angry at yourself when you’ve left and now you think you should have stayed?

You’re like, I’m just at the grocery store, man. I need to check out.

Clearly, people are struggling so much to be happy in long-term relationships that they’re cornering this woman basically everywhere she goes. And these things people ask Esther about, they’re exactly the kinds of high-stakes, make-or-break questions that come up in the essay she chose for our show today. It’s called “What Sleeping with Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity,” by Karin Jones.

Karin’s essay was one of the most controversial pieces ever published in the history of the “Modern Love” column. But when it comes to talking about sex and relationships, nothing is too taboo for Esther.

Esther Perel, welcome to “Modern Love.”

It’s a pleasure to be here.

So you’re going to read Karin Jones’s “Modern Love” essay. We’re going to talk all about infidelity. But before we get into that, I learned something about you that I need to know more about. You are fluent in nine languages. And you conduct therapy in seven of them? Is that true?

Yes. So I grew up in Belgium, in the Flemish part of Belgium, and I was educated in Flemish for 12 years. But we also spoke French and German and Polish and Yiddish at home.

So we had five languages in the house. And then I studied Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and English. That comes to nine.

Would you ever do one more just to bring it to a solid 10?

I always wanted to study Arabic.

OK, in your free time, in your ample free time.

Are there certain languages that have better vocabulary for talking about the nuances of love and relationships than others?

That is a very difficult question to answer because my love language, the language in which I learned poetry, songs, novels, et cetera, was primarily French. And so, of course, I would say French. But that may be because I was inducted in it, rather than the language itself. What I can say is that certain cultures are more fluent in the language of feelings, love, relationships, and desire and sexuality than maybe English or Anglo cultures that are more pragmatic, more practical.

I think in therapy, sometimes, I find that there is certain cultures that allow me to speak differently about death, differently about the relationship of the individual to the collective. What I will say is this. In a therapy session, if a person tells me something and it needs to be said in his own language, I will ask them to translate it and to say it in their mother tongue, because you hear instantly the difference, the tone, the timber, the tremble.

And I know it. It’s like, I don’t even have to understand what they’re saying. I know that there is an authenticity and a truth to it that is very different. Sometimes, afterwards, I say, what did you say? But sometimes, I don’t even need to. I know when they say, “I feel alone,” “I ache for you,” “I miss you,” “where have you gone,” “I can’t forget you.” You don’t really need to understand the words to understand the effect.

Esther, the “Modern Love” essay you’re going to read for us today tackles a topic that I bet is very hard to talk about in almost any language. It’s called “What Sleeping with Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity” by Karin Jones. The author Karin is recently divorced, and she becomes the other woman to several men.

When I read that title, I kind of expect this story is going to be about all the sex she’s having or the secrets or how they’re hiding it. But you’ve worked with so many couples who are in the throes of dealing with cheating. So what does the word “infidelity” signal to you?

I wrote a book about infidelity. So I will say that one of my attempts in writing this book was to translate in writing the complexity of this experience that can be so shattering, that can fracture a family and an entire legacy. It needs more than just good, bad, victim, perpetrator, villain, saint. That there’s too much happening and for too many people that are involved to try to reduce it.

Infidelity is often about a lot of things, but sex. It’s about betrayal. It’s about violation of trust. It’s about lying. It’s about duplicity. It’s about deception. And sex is a piece of this, but that is not necessarily the only thing.

Oof. Esther, I am so excited to hear you read this. Whenever you’re ready.

OK. “What Sleeping with Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity” by Karin Jones.

“I’m not sure it’s possible to justify my liaison with married men, but what I learned from having them warrants discussion. Not between the wives and me, though I would be interested to hear their side. No, this discussion should happen between wives and husbands annually, the way we inspect the tire tread on the family car to avoid accidents.

A few years ago, while living in London, I dated married men for companionship while I processed the grief of being newly divorced.

When I created a profile on Tinder and on OkCupid saying I was looking for no strings attached encounters, plenty of single men messaged me, and I got together with several of them. But many married men messaged me, too.

After being married for 23 years, I wanted sex, but not a relationship. This is dicey because you can’t always control emotional attachments when body chemicals mix. But with the married man, I guess that the fact that they had wives, children, and mortgages would keep them from going overboard with their affections. And I was right. They didn’t get overly attached, and neither did I. We were safe bets for each other.

I was careful about the men I met. I wanted to make sure they had no interest in leaving their wives or otherwise threatening all they had built together. In a couple of cases, the men I met were married to women who had become disabled and could no longer be sexual, but the husbands remained devoted to them.

All told, I communicated with maybe a dozen men during that time in my life. I had sex with fewer than half. Others, I texted or talked with, which sometimes felt nearly as intimate. Before I met each man, I would ask, why are you doing this? I wanted assurance that all he desired was sex. What surprised me was that these husbands weren’t looking to have more sex. They were looking to have any sex.

I met one man whose wife had implicitly consented to her husband having a lover because she was no longer interested in sex at all. They both, to some degree, got what they needed without having to give up what they wanted. But the other husbands I met would have preferred to be having sex with their wives, and for whatever reason, that wasn’t happening.

I know what it feels like to go off sex, and I know what it’s like to want more than my partner. It’s also a tall order to have sex with the same person for more years than our ancestors ever hoped to live. Then, at menopause, a woman’s hormones suddenly drop, and her desire can wane. At 49, I was just about there myself and terrified of losing my desire for sex. Men don’t have this drastic change, so we have an imbalance, an elephant-sized problem so burdensome and shameful, we can scarcely muster the strength to talk about it.

If you read the work of Esther Perel, the author of the book ‘State of Affairs,’ you’ll learn that for many wives, sex outside of marriage is their way of breaking free from being the responsible spouses and mothers they have to be at home. Married sex for them often feels obligatory. An affair is adventure. Meanwhile, the husbands I spent time with would have been fine with obligatory sex. For them, adventure was not the main reason for their adultery.

The first time I saw my favorite married man pick up his pint of beer, the sleeve of his well-tailored suit pulled back from his wrist to reveal a geometric kaleidoscope of tattoos. He was clean shaven and well-mannered with a little rebel yell underneath. The night I saw the full canvas of his tattoo masterpiece, we drank prosecco, listened to ‘80s music, and, yes, had sex.

We also talked. I asked him, what if you said to your wife, look, I love you and the kids, but I need sex in my life? Can I just have the occasional fling or a casual affair? He sighed. If I asked her that kind of question, it would kill her, he said. So you don’t want to hurt her, but you lie to her instead? Personally, I’d rather know, I said.

It’s not necessarily a lie if you don’t confess the truth. It’s kind of to stay silent, he said. I’m just saying I couldn’t do that. I don’t want to be afraid of talking honestly about my sex life with the man I’m married to, and that includes being able to at least raise the subject of sex outside of marriage, I said. Good luck with that, he said.

I never convinced any husband that he can be honest about what he was doing, but they were mostly good-natured about it, like a patient father responding to a child who keeps asking why, why, why. Maybe I was being too pragmatic about the issues that are loaded with guilt, resentment, and fear. After all, it’s far easier to talk theoretically about marriage than to navigate it.

But my attitude is that if my spouse were to need something I couldn’t give him, I wouldn’t keep him from getting it elsewhere, as long as he did so in a way that didn’t endanger our family. I suppose I would hope his needs would involve fishing trips or beers with friends, but sex is basic.

Physical intimacy with other human beings is essential to our health and well-being. So how do we deny such a need to the one that we care about most? If our primary relationship nourishes and stabilizes us, but lacks intimacy, we shouldn’t have to destroy our marriage to get that intimacy somewhere else. Should we?

I didn’t have a full-on affair with the tattooed husband. We slept together maybe four times over a few years. More often, we talked on the phone. After our second night together, though, I could tell this was about more than sex for him. He was desperate for affection. He said he wanted to be close to his wife, but couldn’t because they were unable to get past their fundamental disconnect — lack of sex. That led to a lack of closeness, which made sex even less likely, and then turned into resentment and blame.

I’m not saying the answer is non-monogamy. That can be rife with risks and unintended entanglements. I believe the answer is honesty and dialogue, no matter how frightening. Lack of sex in marriage is common, and it shouldn’t lead to shame and silence. By the same token, an affair doesn’t have to lead to the end of a marriage. What if an affair, or ideally, simply, the urge to have one, can be the beginning of a necessary conversation about sex and intimacy?

What these husbands couldn’t do was have the difficult discussion with their wives that would force them to tackle the issues at the root of their cheating. They tried to convince me that they were being kind by keeping their affairs secret. They seemed to have convinced themselves. But deception and lying are ultimately corrosive, not kind.

In the end, I had to wonder if what these men couldn’t face was something else altogether — hearing why their wives no longer wanted to have sex with them. It’s much easier after all to set up an account on Tinder.”

Thanks so much for that reading, Esther. You know, it’s so funny because Karin Jones directly quotes you in her piece. And I feel like that is the first time ever we’ve had someone read an essay where they’re directly quoted.

Did anything jump out at you as you were reading?

What jumps out is she tackles a lot of different things — the subject of what is sexual aliveness, what is it that people actually lose when they stop being sexual with their partner, and how that loss of intimacy makes the sex even more complicated. She talked about the loss, the longing that this man has. I’ve often said that at the heart of affairs, you find duplicity and cheating and betrayal, but you also find longing and loss for the life that one had, for the parts of oneself that have been denied.

When we come back, I talk to Esther about the harsh criticism this essay got and why Esther thinks Karin Jones deserves more credit. Stay with us.

So Esther, this essay by Karin Jones was kind of a lightning rod when it was published. A ton of people were very critical of the author, saying she was sleeping with these men, but then also having conversations with them where she was like, it’s very wrong of you not to tell your wife what you’re up to. Why do you think this essay got so much backlash?

I think that the reaction to stories of infidelity are often intense. It’s a subject for which people are very quickly dogmatic because they have experienced the effects of it.

When I am in an audience, like if I was to ask, have you been affected by the experience of infidelity in your life, either because one of your parents was unfaithful or because you yourself had a child of an illicit affair, or because you had a friend on whose shoulder somebody weeping, or you had a confidant of someone who is in a complete bliss of an affair, or because you are the third person in the triangle, and about 80 percent of the people will raise their hand.

Wow. I mean, 80 percent sounds like a surprisingly large number, but when you explain it like that with different tendrils of an affair that affect everyone around the affair, not just the people in it, it makes total sense.

And it raises intense feelings in people. Karin Jones, she may have gotten the range of it, but you will hear more loudly the ones who say, you are a homewrecker, which, by the way, does not exist in the masculine.

Right, right.

The homewrecker is always a woman because the woman is the one who says yes, and therefore, if the woman hadn’t said yes, then he wouldn’t be able to do it. And then he would not be wrecking his family.

Yeah, there’s no other man either, by the way. It’s always the other woman.

Huh, there’s no other man.

Not in any of nine languages you speak.

No, because there’s never been another man who necessarily was willing to live in the shadow of a woman for his entire life.

That is so fascinating.

Her lover, [INAUDIBLE] you know her lover, but the other woman usually means that she lives in the shadow. She doesn’t just have a secret. She is the secret. That is the hardest thing about it. When people are writing to her, you can ask yourself, are they looking from the perspective of what it meant for her, or are they looking from the perspective of what it did to me, or to us?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the criticism directed at Karin Jones, it seems, is coming from that perspective of saying, look what she did. Look at the harm she caused. Look at the pain she caused.

Which it is. Which it is.

Right, not discounting that, but it is interesting because her piece is so much about meaning making, right? That’s the whole conceit of her essay, is mining these experiences for meaning, and yet, people came with criticism. I wonder if this is like a kind of unfair question, but I wonder if there is an ethical way to be the other person. Is there a responsible way to do it without participating in hurt?

That depends. That depends. If you think the whole thing is unethical and is an egregious betrayal of trust and violation, then you will say no. I think the responsibility lies on the person who goes out, not on the lover.

Here’s what many people often say, is like, if you had asked me or if you had told me, but you made a decision without me. You made a decision about our marriage that did not involve me at all. And fair point. Of course, they know for a fact, too, that if they had been asked, they would have said no. But there is the things that you say after, and there is the things that you say before.

So, ultimately, I feel like I hear you agreeing with Karin Jones here that there are really important conversations that need to be happening between these husbands and their wives that actually don’t even have that much to do with Karin. Can you tell me more about that?

The conversation that Karin Jones would like these men to have with their wives is the conversations that take place in my book “Mating in Captivity,” because “Mating in Captivity” explored the dilemmas of desire inside relationships and why do people cease wanting. And could they want what they already have? And why does good sex fade, even in couples who still love each other as much as ever? And why do kids often deliver a fatal erotic blow?

What happens when they don’t have this conversation and they go elsewhere — and it’s not just a conversation about monogamy. It’s really a conversation of, what does sex mean to you? What do you want to experience in sex? Is it a place for connection?

Is it a place for transcendence, for spiritual union, to be naughty, to finally not be a good citizen, to be playful, to be taken care of, to surrender, to be safely dominant? What parts of you do you connect with through sexuality, rather than how often do we have sex, and we never have sex, and why don’t we do it more. So, that is a very different conversation.

But as Karin points to in her essay, and as you certainly point to in your book, those conversations are so difficult to have, even though this is the person we’re supposed to be the closest to. Why is that?

Because we grow up learning to be silent about sex and never talk about it. And then suddenly, we are expected to talk about it with the person we lov. Or in other words, sex is dirty, but save it for the one you love. It’s like we have very little practice talking about it.

We don’t get any of it in schools. Certainly, most families don’t talk about it either. And when we talk about sexuality, we talk about the dangers and the diseases and the dysfunctions. We don’t talk about intimacy. We don’t actually mix the word “sexuality” and “relationships” as one whole.

Yeah, and I mean, if we don’t talk about intimacy or the lack of it with a partner, that can, in some cases, lead to people going outside the marriage to find that intimacy they’re lacking in it. I’m thinking about Karin’s favorite married man, the one with all the tattoos. He says, it’s not necessarily a lie if you don’t confess the truth. It’s kinder to stay silent. In your experience working with couples, is he right? Is that true?

This is a very cultural question.

Because you live in a society here that believes in the moral cure of truth. But there are many societies for whom truth and honesty are not measured by the confession, but they are measured by what it will be like for the other person to walk with this on the street, meaning that they will consider the confession often as cruelty.

That, so what? So now you’ve got it off your chest. So now you’re less guilty, and now I have to live with this? Why don’t you just keep this to yourself, kind of thing. This is very cultural because in the United States, that is not the common view.

The common view is that the confession is the best state, even if you’re going to wreck the other person’s life for the next five years to come, which — and I am left with a question mark. But when I answer this question, I ask people about their own cultural codes as well. I do not impose mine. And mine fluctuates depending on the context. I think these questions are highly contextual, more than dogmatic.

We’ve talked about how there’s so many unsaid things between a couple that can lead to distance and infidelity. If a couple is feeling themselves drifting apart from each other emotionally, sexually, both, what are some things you could encourage them to do that might help?

Hmm. I like to coach people to do letter writing. Sometimes I make one person turn their back, and I make the other person write a letter on the back of the other person.

Oh, physically on the back?

Yes, but it’s a fake. You’re writing — you’re pretending to write, but you’re writing on the back. But that way, you don’t see the person.

Interesting.

Hi, Anna. This is something that I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time. And I give them the prompt. We never talk much about sexuality between us. For some reason, I decided a long time ago that you wouldn’t want to. But maybe it was I who didn’t know how to. And basically, they write these whole letters, in which they end up telling each other much of what they have never spoken.

I love that. What a kind and beautiful and compassionate way of easing into a conversation you’ve been afraid of having. Esther Perel, thank you so much for that idea. And thank you for talking with me today.

Thank you for having me.

Esther Perel is on tour in the US right now. Her show is called An Evening with Esther Perel, The Future of Relationships, Love, and Desire. Check her website for more details and to buy tickets. She told me she’s going to create an erotic experience in these theaters, so you do not want to miss that.

“Modern Love” is produced by Julia Botero, Chrstina Djossa, Reva Goldberg, Davis Land, and Emily Lange. It’s edited by our executive producer Jen Poyant and Davis Land. The “Modern Love” theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Rowan Niemisto, Carole Sabouraud, and Diane Wong.

This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show was recorded by Maddy Masiello. Digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nell Gallogly. The “Modern Love” column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of “Modern Love” projects. I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.

April 17, 2024 • 35:54 Why John Magaro of ‘Past Lives’ Could Never Love a Picky Eater
April 10, 2024 • 29:18 Esther Perel on What the Other Woman Knows
April 3, 2024 • 27:31 The Second Best Way to Get Divorced, According to Maya Hawke
March 27, 2024 • 32:38 How to Be Real With Your Kids
March 20, 2024 • 32:14 Why Samin Nosrat Is Now ‘Fully YOLO’
March 13, 2024 • 32:32 Brittany Howard Sings Through the Pangs of New Love
March 6, 2024 • 33:21 Novelist Celeste Ng on the Big Power of Little Things
February 28, 2024 • 37:46 Three Powerful Lessons About Love
February 23, 2024 • 33:45 Modern Love at the Movies: Our Favorite Oscar-Worthy Love Stories
February 21, 2024 • 25:21 A Politics Reporter Walks Into a Singles Mixer
February 14, 2024 • 28:39 Un-Marry Me!
December 6, 2023 • 29:18 I Married My Subway Crush

Hosted by Anna Martin

Produced by Julia Botero , Christina Djossa , Reva Goldberg and Emily Lang

Edited by Jen Poyant and Davis Land

Engineered by Daniel Ramirez

Original music by Pat McCusker , Marion Lozano , Carole Sabouraud , Rowan Niemisto , Diane Wong and Dan Powell

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‘at the heart of affairs, you find duplicity and cheating and betrayal, but you also find longing and loss for the life that one had, for the parts of oneself that have been denied’.

Over the last two decades, Esther Perel has become a world-famous couples therapist by persistently advocating frank conversations about infidelity, sex and intimacy. Today, Perel reads one of the most provocative Modern Love essays ever published: “ What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity ,” by Karin Jones.

In her 2018 essay, Jones wrote about her experience seeking out no-strings-attached flings with married men after her divorce. What she found, to her surprise, was how much the men missed having sex with their own wives, and how afraid they were to tell them.

Jones faced a heavy backlash after the essay was published. Perel reflects on why conversations around infidelity are still so difficult and why she thinks Jones deserves more credit.

Esther Perel is on tour in the U.S. Her show is called “An Evening With Esther Perel: The Future of Relationships, Love & Desire.” Check her website for more details.

Links to transcripts of episodes generally appear on these pages within a week.

Modern Love is hosted by Anna Martin and produced by Julia Botero, Reva Goldberg, Emily Lang and Christina Djossa. The show is edited by Davis Land and Jen Poyant, our executive producer. The show is mixed by Daniel Ramirez and recorded by Maddy Masiello. It features original music by Pat McCusker, Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Carole Sabouraud, Rowan Niemisto and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Dan Powell.

Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Kate LoPresti, Lisa Tobin, Daniel Jones, Miya Lee, Mahima Chablani, Nell Gallogly, Jeffrey Miranda, Isabella Anderson, Reyna Desai, Renan Borelli, Nina Lassam and Julia Simon.

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] . Want more from Modern Love ? Read past stories . Watch the TV series and sign up for the newsletter . We also have swag at the NYT Store and two books, “ Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption ” and “ Tiny Love Stories: True Tales of Love in 100 Words or Less .”

On a trip to Korea, I rediscovered myself in the food

Until recently, I’ve always felt confident identifying as Korean. But this past winter, I visited Korea for the first time in years. In planning the trip, I realized my relationship to the country had always been mediated by my parents. As the date approached, I began to feel a lot of self-doubt creep in. If I stepped outside the bubble of my family, could I still hold my own?

photo of Icon of the Seas, taken on a long railed path approaching the stern of the ship, with people walking along dock

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

selfie photo of man with glasses, in background is swim-up bar with two women facing away

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

photo of elaborate twisting multicolored waterslides with long stairwell to platform

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

2 photos: a ship's foamy white wake stretches to the horizon; a man at reailing with water and two large ships docked behind

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

2 photos: 2 slices of pizza on plate; man in "Daddy's Little Meatball" shirt and shorts standing in outdoor dining area with ship's exhaust stacks in background

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

photo of sheltered sandy beach with palms, umbrellas, and chairs with two large docked cruise ships in background

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

photo from inside of spacious geodesic-style glass dome facing ocean, with stairwells and seating areas

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

photo of author smiling and holding soft-serve ice-cream cone with outdoor seating area in background

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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introduce yourself in arabic
How to introduce yourself in Arabic
How to talk about yourself in Arabic language.
How to introduce yourself in Arabic language .
How to introduce yourself in Arabic
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COMMENTS

How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic in 10 Lines
Hello and Nice to meet you in Arabic are a must-know phrases. And any introduction will probably will start with these words. مرحبا، سعدت بلقائك. marḥaban, saʿidtu biliqaāʾik. Hello, it's nice to meet you. 2) My name is _____. This is simple. To say "my name is" in Arabic, you just need the phrase " ʾanaā ismiī ...
How to introduce yourself in Arabic
Conclusion. 1. It Started with Hello. When you're making an introduction in Arabic, you've got to start with the very basics of how to introduce yourself in correct Arabic grammar. Slipping up here on the simplest of words isn't the end of the world, but it's certainly a tough crash to come back from.
Self Introduction in Arabic: Learn to Introduce Yourself in Arabic
To get you started, here are some key phrases and elements commonly used in Arabic self-introductions: Greetings: Begin with a polite greeting. In Arabic, "مرحباً" (Marhaban) is a friendly way to say "Hello.". Name: Share your name by saying "إسمي" (Ismi) followed by your name. For example, "إسمي محمد" (Ismi ...
How To Introduce Yourself In Arabic In 8 Easy Lines
Learning how to introduce yourself in Arabic is a gateway to building relationships, understanding culture, and experiencing the warmth of Arabic-speaking communities. By mastering the art of greetings and self-introduction, you open the door to meaningful connections and enriching experiences. Start Learning Arabic With Ling!
Describe yourself in Arabic
Practice Your Pronunciation With Rocket Record. Rocket Record lets you perfect your Arabic pronunciation. Just listen to the native speaker audio and then use the microphone icon to record yourself. Once you're done, you'll get a score out of 100 on your pronunciation and can listen to your own audio playback. (Use a headset mic for best ...
How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic: A Comprehensive Guide
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when introducing yourself in Arabic: Practice, Practice, Practice: The more you practice your Arabic introduction, the more confident you'll be when the time comes. Speak Slowly and Clearly: Arabic pronunciation can be difficult, so it's important to speak slowly and clearly to ensure that you're ...
Introduce yourself in Modern Standard Arabic
Before looking at the examples, let's think about what an introduction could include. Of course, the basics such as name, where you are from or where do you live, nationality, etc. We could also add where we study/studied or work, something we like to do in our free time, and why we are learning Arabic. We could also say if we are married or ...
How To Introduce Yourself In Arabic
Fortunately, Live Lingua Arabic teacher Rana Saad Makhlouf is here to make the process easier. In this series of six short videos, Rana walks us through reading and writing in Arabic starting with the basics, and progressing slowly. Learning how to read and write is one of the most critical parts of mastering any new language, and is especially ...
How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic
Here are some basic phrases* to help us communicate with our Arab counterparts that serve as an introduction : Marhaba مرحباً. Most popular word for Hello. What's your name? شو إسمَك / إسمِك. Chou esmak شو إسمَك : masculine, used when asking a guy. Chou esmik إسمِك : feminine, used when asking a girl. Answer : My ...
Learn How To Introduce Yourself In Arabic Language (Self ...
Learn How To Introduce Yourself In Arabic Language (Self Introduction In Arabic) on oac with Amir.To book your lessons with me on Preply, Click: 👇https://pr...
How to Introduce Yourself in Arabic • Welcome2Jordan
Same as in English, the number (your age) is added between omri and sana. Chances are you aren't 30 years old like me, so you might want to have a look at the numbers in Arabic to talk about your age. 5. Introduce Yourself: Nice to Meet You. Last but not least, let's round up our introduction by saying nice to meet you.
10 Arabic Lines You Need for Introducing Yourself
أستمتع بسماع الموسيقى. I enjoy listening to music. Introducing yourself is important in making a good impression. In this ArabicPod101 lesson, you'll learn 10 crucial Arabic lines for introducing yourself.
Greeting and Self Introduction in Arabic
FREE Brain Friendly Lesson Learning Pack, Instant PDF Download + YouTube Video. Learn Basic Arabic Conversation. Learn how to greet someone and introduce yourself in Arabic language. The video provides the correct pronunciation and English translation for basic greeting and self-introduction questions and answers, with several examples. The words are written and spoken in Arabic, translated in ...
1: About Myself
1.6: Writing. 1.7: Weekend assignment 1. This page titled 1: About Myself is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Ayman Mohamed and Sadam Issa ( Michigan State University Libraries) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is ...
About Myself
الدرس الأول : عن نفسي. Learning Objectives. In this lesson, you will learn how to: Talk about yourself and introduce others highlighting basic bio information. Introduce immediate family members using basic structured sentences. Previous: Introduction. Next: 1.1 Vocabulary on self-introduction: study, live and work.
Four Simple Tips to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills in Arabic
Instead, focus on what idea you want to convey and use the Arabic words and structures that you already know to express it. Much easier. 2 Learn "Copy and Paste" Phrases. One effective way to make your writing sound more sophisticated (and, well, to use up more of the word count) is to learn phrases that you can slot into pretty much any ...
Learn Arabic
You can learn how to introduce yourself or talk about things you do in Arabic, try to memorize the whole audio. Go to settings to slow down the video if its ...
1.1: Vocabulary
You will learn names of languages in Arabic and exchange ideas about what languages you and your family speak. Finally, you will test yourself in self-checking modules. Vocabulary (1) Listen to new vocabulary related to self-introduction in the following recording and repeat as you follow along in the list of words underneath. Listen as many ...
1.1 Vocabulary on self-introduction: study, live and work
1.1 Vocabulary on self-introduction: study, live and work. In this section. I can introduce myself with some detail including where I live, study, and work. I can use and understand main vocabulary on study majors and learn how to use them in context. I can talk about different jobs and professions and reflect on my future career.
Learn How to Talk About Your Family in Arabic
This is a fun and insightful way of describing family in Arabic. الأقربون أولى بالمعروف. Your relatives (in need) are more deserving of your generosity. (Family before friends.) The concept of "brotherhood" or الأخوة ( al-ʾuḫuwwah) is something that you see over and over in traditional Arabic teachings.
Essay in arabic language Free Essays
Since the middle Ages‚ Arabic has enjoyed a universality that makes it one of the greatest languages in the world‚ along with Greek and Latin. This status shows not only the number of speakers‚ but also the place that the language has held in history‚ and the significant. Premium Arabic language Semitic languages Middle East. 850 Words ...
Arabic Essay About Myself
Arabic Essay About Myself - 4.8/5. Some FAQs related to our essay writer service Go through the below-given questions and get your answers from us. ... Arabic Essay About Myself, Essay On If My Mother Goes On Strike In English, Resume Format Free Sample, Descriptive Essay Of Water, Write My Top School Essay On Usa, Navy Machinist Mate Resume ...
1.6: Writing
Arabic Elementary Arabic (Mohamed and Issa) 1: About Myself 1.6: Writing Expand/collapse global location ... You can introduce yourself and others in some detail. You can write short paragraphs using the present tense frame. You are now ready to move on to the next lesson.
Esther Perel on What the Other Woman Knows
Today, Perel reads one of the most provocative Modern Love essays ever published: " What Sleeping With Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity ," by Karin Jones. In her 2018 essay, Jones wrote ...
Korean food helped me rediscover myself
On a trip to Korea, I rediscovered myself in the food. Perspective by Dabin Han. April 19, 2024 at 11:38 a.m. EDT. (Illustrations by Dabin Han by The Washington Post) 0. Until recently, I've ...
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever
Day 2. I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: "Ayn Rand." Jesus Christ. I breakfast alone ...