June 6, 2008 Kawtar*

Zahra, the Volunteer who just left Berberville, left me her English-language copy of the Qur’an, but it was locked in her house, so I haven’t yet taken a look at it. I had to go over there today, though, to check the fit of the bike helmet she’d also left me, so I took the opportunity to begin reading the Qur’an. I started with the Introduction, which took the better part of an hour, and then flipped ahead to the index. I forget what I was planning to look up, because I got distracted by the sight of my name. It was transliterated there as Kauthar. I checked the classical Arabic (which is of course included – you can’t have a copy of the Qur’an without Arabic!) to see the cause of the discrepancy.

I’d taken my spelling from the way Kawtar in my CBT village spelled her name. But in the Qur’an, it does have a “th” instead of a “t” in the middle. In Moroccan Arabic, though, all the “th”s are pronounced as “t”s. (The number 3, for example, is thalatha in standard Arabic, but tlata here in Morocco.) Oh, and the “u” vs “w” thing is a meaningless difference; I’ve seen the Arabic character “wew” transliterated as “o”, “u”, “w”, and “oo”.

Spelling aside, I got to see my name in its original context, and discovered that it means even more than “river in Paradise”, as I’d been told. It actually means “abundance of good”. The verse says (and I’m paraphrasing from memory, but you can look it up in Sura 108:1 to get it perfectly), “I have surely given you an abundance of good.” The following verse (108:2) indicates that the only appropriate response on our part is to pray and sacrifice – give of our time, money, or labor to help others.

Really, I can’t imagine a better name to use here.

Oh, and as for the “river in Paradise” – which seems a significantly different translation than “abundance of good” – the footnote/commentary explained that a key Islamic scholar, when asked if “abundance of good” meant “river in paradise”, answered that of course it means that there will be a river in paradise, along with every other good thing.