“uSbur”
My brothers and I were not always as patient or obedient as perhaps we should have been. We would commonly prod our mother to hurry with one thing or another. When’s dinner? When can we leave to go swimming? Can we go out and play now? Are we there yet?
Inevitably such annoying questions would be met by our mother’s familiar hand gesture. Wrist held firmly and palm upturned; she would pinch her fingers together and wave the hand up and down. “Go slowly” would be the accompanying admonition. Who of us from the Middle East have not become familiar with this gesture in our childhoods.
The memories of such times bring warm feelings of remembrance now. My brothers and I laugh when we argue about something, and one of us stops the discussion with a “Go slowly” and the familiar hand gesture that immediately evokes a smile. As we have grown older and perhaps wiser, we have learned this great lesson, uSbar…”go slowly, be patient.”
Here is a link to other commonly used Arab gestures.