Emirati films draw attention to unique ‘taxi Arabic’

Ray Haddad’s short documentary film, Being Sayed Rasoul, follows a day in the life of a lorry driver from Pakistan. All dialogue is in pidgin Arabic. Courtesy Ray Haddad

It is the region's invisible language, spoken everywhere yet acknowledged by few. Often described and derided as broken Arabic, Gulf Pidgin Arabic is recognised by linguists as having its own phonetics, syntax and grammatical structure that is largely uniform and unique.

This winter, two feature-length Emirati films will feature main characters using pidgin in a way that does not mock the language or degrade the speaker. The hope is that giving greater prominence to pidgin will see it gain respect as a creative invention by a polyglot community rather than dismissed as an incomplete and incorrect language.

“When you have a hybrid language it just brings so much more to the table and it just makes it so much more interesting,” says Jamal Iqbal, a Dubai-based actor and comedian who regularly incorporates pidgin into his stand-up routines. “It may not be classical Arabic but it’s fun.”

“I personally feels it takes a lot of time for it to be used in mainstream and it will only happen when people start to look at it as a culture or counter culture by itself.”

Commonly known as ‘taxi Arabic’ the language uses a base of Arabic peppered with Hindi, Urdu, Pashtu and English nouns. It is the language of the Gulf’s working class, truck drivers, taxi drivers, hair cutters, shirt pressers, maids, mechanics and grocer, and often used by Arabic speakers addressing non-Arab migrant workers.

Next year will mark 25 years since the language was first recognised by linguists. but it remains noticeably absent in the arts. In film and television characters who would use pidgin in real life more often speak colloquial Arabic, their native language or do not speak at all.

When it is used, it is often for comedic effect by undeveloped characters.

A new generation of filmmakers and actors may change this.

In the upcoming Emirati feature film Abood Kandaishan, Mr Iqbal plays the Punjabi caretaker, Shawkat. Rather than portraying a one-dimensional servant, the film shows the relationship between the orphan Abood and the fiery, fun loving caretaker who raises him.

Shoukat speaks a mixture of Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic and English. He speaks to the ducks in Punjabi and sings to his eggs at breakfast in Arabic and Urdu. Abood speaks to Shoukat in pidgin and teases him in Emirati, knowing that Shoukat cannot understand.

“Shoukat was a very pidgin kind of a character,” says Mr Iqbal. “In every Abood’s life there is a Shoukat, this cross cultural language exchange that you speak about, whether it’s chai haleeb or karak, it’s this cross cultural thing that’s as Emirati as anything else.”

Even the film’s title has a hint of pidgin: ‘Kandaishan’ is a reference to a seller of air conditioning units.

Given its prevenance in daily Gulf life, pidgin is largely absent from television, even in Kuwaiti television, the most established in the Arabian Gulf.

“This really kills the true essence of what’s happening in reality,” says the film’s director Fadel Al Mheiri. “We have a lot of characters at home with drivers, housemaids and we have fun stories with them and its more than a master-servant relationship. There are sad stories of course, there are fun stories and even some emotional stories.

“I really don’t see it being used that much and that’s strange because usually when they portray a minority in film right now, they portray them as clip art. This doesn’t really reflect what we do in our homes.

“As a filmmaker, I try to portray the exact kind of language that we use and it’s not the master/servant language that we see on TV.”

In Dolphins, another Emirati feature film that will be released this winter, pidgin was essential to a realistic story, says the film's director Waleed Al Shehhi.

“I use it because it is part of my story, it is part of the place,” says Mr Al Shehhi, the chair of applied media at RAK Higher Colleges. “It’s become part of what we are living in every day life and that’s why it is become part of our culture. Wallah, if the media is a reflection of what is happening outside in the society, we should see it used in film.”

“It is part of this culture but not a lot of people use it. More attention is coming now.”

When pidgin is used, audiences struggle to take it seriously.

“It’s hard to use pidgin,” says the filmmaker Ray Haddad, who was raised in Abu Dhabi. “Most of the time if I’ve seen it anywhere, it’s usually a mockery...a lot of [people] find it really funny.”

Haddad's short film, Being Sayed Rasoul, documents a day in the life of an Pakistani lorry driver. The dialogue was entirely in pidgin. At its premier, Arabic speakers laughed throughout the film, even at serious moments. Non-Arabic speakers did not. "Why? asks Haddad. "It seems that there's something humorous about pidgin.The common tradition is when you want to make fun of these guys, you speak in pidgin."

“Pidgin is mainly being used by the labour workers and when you think about the people that are using pidgin, they have low jobs and unfortunately we kind of have big massive gap. A lot of times, to be really honest, I think there is a sense of seeing them as dumb because they’re a lower class.

“So why are they viewed as low? It’s not because of the language, it’s because of the people who use the language.”

A limitation for filmmakers and artists is the language’s limited vocabulary. “The biggest barrier is not being able to go deeper,” says Haddad.

One of pidgin's biggest hits was the 2011 song, Why this Khalli Wali? a parody by Faez Choudhary, a Pakistani actor and comedian raised in Saudi Arabian. In the original video, he begs his sponsor for compassion, cries to parents on the phone, lists his duties around the house and curses his sponsor.

“His heart is black, every day he’s furious,” sings Choudhary. “What a cheap man.”

The remake, posted in May 2013 and licensed by Ministry of Culture and Information, had more than 1.6 million views and pokes fun at both sponsor and worker. A new introduction shows workers skipping work to play cards and faking a stomach ache when caught by the sponsor, who threatens to beat them with his igal.

Still.the use of pidgin is almost unheard of in poetry and written arts.

Iqbal, an ardent polyglot, incorporated pidgin into poetry at the Sitka Art Fair. “If you walk through that souq, that’s what you hear all around you, so why not? It made sense.”

But those who speak pidgin on a day-to-day basis are less likely to use it in their poetry. Iqbal has worked with poets to translate worker’s poetry composed by men in labour camps but has yet to come across a single poem written in the language. Most is composed in Urdu, or even basic English. “They’ve grown up thinking shari [poetry] can only be expressed in Urdu.”

Sher Abbas Khan, an Al Ain minicab driver, agrees. As UAE resident of 34 years who speaks Pashu, Urdu, Balochi, Arabic, Farsi and “little little” English, he professes a “100 per cent” fluency in Arabic. “Arabic’s easy,” say Mr Khan, 63. “I just learnt from talking to people. It’s practical.”

While his daily life is filled with this Arabic, he defers exclusively to Urdu and Pashtu in reading and writing.

Another barrier to pidgin in the arts is the perception that it represents a denigration of the Arabic language and a symptom of cultural dilution.

“There’s not a lot of stories that cover this kind of language because you won’t understand that this is broken Arabic and people don’t really want to encourage that kind of way of talking,” said Mr Al Mheiri. “There’s a lot of complaints and there’s a lot of negative connotation in speaking in such a way. You’re breaking the Arabic language.”

What’s more, literary Arabic differs greatly from vernacular dialects and with contention even about the use of well-established local dialects in certain types of poetry. This perceived importance of correct literary Arabic is passed onto non-native speakers.

“I supposed that pidgin would be an expression of the culture of Dubai and it’s not surprising that something like this would arrive,” says Fiona Paterson, an English poet who incorporates Arabic into her poetry. “I’m not sure that it’s a good thing, because you run the risk of the tower of Babel syndrome.

“You run the risk of degrading, you run the risk of incomprehensibility, you run the risk of chaos because one person might here a word and interpret it differently to another.”

It remains to be seen whether films will convince audiences that pidgin is an innovative product of its environment.

“I would like to see that because this really reflects what the UAE society is all about,” says Mr Al Mheiri. “It’s a cosmopolitan society. You’re, like, swimming against the current when it comes to reality and for me as a film maker, I would love to see more of how we live among one another, even if it’s having a problem. This is normal.”