Back when I was 17, still a high school student from Israel majoring in Arabic, I was travelling with my brother, father, his then-girlfriend, her son, and her daughter in northern Italy. On our first night there, we had to drive from the airport in Milan to a hotel in a local village named Morimondo, where we were to stay for the night.
Now, this was the middle of the night, and there was next to no-one out on the streets. Anyone who was out at that time spoke little to no English, much to our chagrin. Eventually, we found these two Scout leaders(?) in their early 20s at a bus stop.
So my father lowered the window and said, ‘Scusi, do you speak English?… We are looking for Morimondo…’
They were completely at a loss.
My father turned to me and asked me to speak to them, as I’d studied a little bit of Italian before the trip, so I mumbled, ‘Noi… cerchiamo… Morimondo… Voi… sapete… dove… è? [We are looking for Morimondo, do you know where it is?]’
I didn’t even know enough Italian to understand their response.
‘Tell them we have a map!’
‘Abbiamo… una… carta?’
We showed them the map, but I don’t think they even understood what we wanted from them. I certainly didn’t understand the overwhelming majority of what they were saying.
Fortunately, however, I knew enough Italian to understand when one of them said, ‘Mi dispiace, parlo solo l’Italiano e l’Arabo. [I’m sorry, I speak only Italian and Arabic.]’
Excited, I exclaimed, ‘!بتحكي عربي؟ [You speak Arabic?!]’
Everyone roared in laughter, and even though my Arabic was very poor indeed, at least it wasn’t as poor as my Italian, so I could understand the simple words ‘left’, ‘right’, and ‘straight ahead’ in their directions.
And that is how we got to Morimondo.
