Word: barakat
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that the U.S., which has held Palestinian groups at arm's length until they recognized Israel, has begun unofficially at least to bend this policy to make some contacts. During his visit to Geneva last month, for instance, U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young met and briefly chatted with Daud Barakat, the P.L.O.'s representative there...
...Barakat, an anthropologist at Newfoundland's Memorial University, recently gathered a dictionary of gestures from throughout the Arab world and was able to give specific definitions to no fewer than...
Body Language. Many of the gestures collected by Barakat are tacit tools of flirtation. Northern Syrians blow smoke in a woman's face to show that they desire her. In Lebanon, the same message is conveyed by punching the left palm with a closed right fist...
...Arabs, according to Barakat, share a certain basic vocabulary of body language. They stand close together and frequently touch each other in a conversation, and they look each other in the eye constantly, instead of letting their gaze drift to the side as Americans do. Gesturing is done with the right hand, not the "unclean" left...
...shake their heads from side to side, they are saying yes instead of no. Moreover, when Arabs mean no, they move the head upward (and click with the tongue), seeming, to Western eyes, to nod assent. Apparently, however, most foreigners find it easy to switch to the Arab system. Barakat relates the story of an English teacher in the Middle East whose wife had remained behind in England. When one of his Arab students left for a trip to England, the teacher suggested that the young man look up his wife while he was there. The student did, and proceeded...