I Say Restaurant, You Say Nightclub

If you've ever studied another language, you've probably found that there are words that are difficult to translate.  Sometimes this is fairly obvious and straightforward.  In Chinese, it is impossible to do direct translation from English, the languages just aren't compatible that way.  However, what about when a word is so similar to one from another language, that it seems to be almost exactly the same?  Would it ever cross your mind that their might be a very big difference between what you mean, and what you are actually saying?  Probably not.  My example of this little problem of linguistics is the word 'restaurant'.  In Azerbaijani, the word for 'restaurant' is restauran'.  Simple, yes? Restaurant to restauran, it's so easy! Anyway, that's what I thought.

     So now, a bit of background.  Women in Azerbaijan don't go to restaurants.  It's 'Olmaz', or forbidden.  This is followed more in the villages and small towns than in the big cities, but still, women in general don't go out to eat.  If they did and someone saw them, they would be shamed to within an inch of their life, and could quite possibly face more serious repercussions from their male relatives or husband.  With this in mind, I haven't asked my counterparts (both women) to eat with me at the only restaurant/bakery in Agdash where it is ok for women to sit at.  But, when we were in Baku, far away from their families and neighbors, I asked one of them to join us (myself and some other volunteers) at a small sit down restaurant for dinner.  At first she said yes, and we were all ready to go.  But at the end of the day, she came up to me and begged to not have to go to the restaurant with me.  She was nearly crying she was so nervous.  I told her of course she didn't have to go, and she practically ran out of the conference room.  I was left shaking my head.
     After that, I had many, many discussions about going to a restaurant with her before I left at the end of my service.  And always got the same, vague, "Ok" that really means, "I'm agreeing right now but there's no way in Hell I'm going to actually do it."  I get Ok'd a lot.  And it seems to cover numerous occasions.  Ranging from "We need to plan some lessons." "Oh, Ok" to "We need to go to Agdash to get some school supplies." "Ok."  and even to "I feel ill, can you help me get a taxi? "Yes, ok."  It basically signifies that it's all on you, from start to finish.  They'll help you out when it's gift wrapped.  Anyway, it was starting to get ridiculous, even after I told her I hoped to have both my counterparts, my host sisters, and my host mothers along as well.  Well, just recently, I was talking about restaurants again and my anthropology training all of a sudden kicked in, and I asked her, "What is a restaurant?"  This is the best question I could have asked.  And it showed me just how differently a word can be perceived in different cultures.
     What was a restaurant?  In her words, a restaurant is a place where "Men and women, drink alcohol, dance together, kiss, do very bad things." I could barely get words out at first after she said that.  And when I did, it was a strong assertment that restaurants are NOT like that.  That what she was thinking of essentially a nightclub, and to me, a "restaurant" was just a place to go eat food.  There was a lot of incredulous and nervous laughing after that, as we came to grips with what "restaurant" actually meant to each of us.  However, as we started to quiet down, one thing came up, something that had really thrown me, though it didn't hit me right away, was that she actually thought that I of all people would go to a place like that.
     In Azerbaijan, a woman's reputation is her treasure, and that my own counterpart would think that I would not only go to such a place (She knows my positions on men, alcohol, and such), but that I would be so insensitive as to ask her to go to such a place, really hit me hard.  I have made my boundaries here clear, and even though they do cut across some cultural mores, I think they give a good idea of who I am.  I do not tolerate people beating children, especially in my classroom.  I do not tolerate people harming animals, (especially dogs and cats) in any way.  And I do not tolerate people harming others, whether mentally or physically.  I value my privacy, my independence, and my ability to say 'no'.  It makes me wonder, are these core ideals of myself so outside the culture here that my counterpart would look at them, look at me, and decide that I could be a 'bad girl'?  I have given up a lot of my ways and beliefs, stripped down my soul just to survive here, with the only things left being those that I refuse to compromise on.  Those things that truly make me me.  To be the kind of 'good Azeri girl' I can tell they want me to be, would strip out everything that meant anything to me.  As of yet, I haven't gotten a satisfactory answer from either her, or from myself, as to why she could have thought such a thing. Though I will say, she recently told me that she would go to a restaurant in Baku with me when I leave, I said, "Ok".