• this world is not my home

Having a baby is a stressful and wonderful time. You are filled with joy and anticipation and some trepidation no matter where in the world it happens. When you are in a non-native culture, the stress can be compounded.

When we had our first child, we had been studying Arabic for about six months. Somehow, we thought that would be enough time to have an adequate grasp of conversational language that this wouldn't be too hard. (Nostalgically...) How blissfully naive we were.

We arrived at the hospital and waited for our doctor. We had toured the facility earlier and pretty much knew what to expect. What we didn't expect was that our local-language-fluent friend would suddenly be unavailable due to unforeseen circumstances, and at just the moment they were most needed, and that we would forget so much of what little we had learned.

As my wife's contractions became more and more frequent, I rang the bell for the nurse to come in the room. With a polite "What do you want you silly and naive foreigner?" look on her face, the elderly lady came in and examined my wife. Chaos ensued. She literally ran into the hallway screaming. We had no idea what she was saying, but we heard the word "doctor" several times. With more than a little fear, I held my wife's hand as the next contraction came.

Four or five members of the nursing staff entered the room with a gurney to take her to the delivery room. Once the logistics of getting her moved to the bed were dealt with, and that alone is a story by itself, the workers wheeled her to the elevator and pushed me out. As the doors closed, I heard my wife cry out, "Find me!!!"

I ran up the stairs, six flights. Breathless, I stood outside the delivery room hallway, having pretended I couldn't read the French/Arabic sign telling me that entry was forbidden. There were four delivery rooms. Which was she in? I had no idea. Finally, I heard her voice. My wonderful wife remembered one Arabic word during all the stress, pain and chaos, "ragli," which means "my husband." She was screaming it and alternating it with my nickname, Matt.

What she did not realize was that "mat" is the third person past tense singular form of the Arabic verb "to die." She was screaming, "My husband, he died!" over and over and over. I burst into the room to see the nurses attempting to comfort the insane-from-the-pain-and-stress foreigner with statements like, "Don't worry, honey, he is still alive. You will see him soon."