Look again

“You got your permanent residence permit on the 29th of October,” Unni said to me when she walked into class this morning.

“How do you know?” I asked. I’d only just got the letter on Friday, telling me that a “decision has been made” and that I should go to my nearest police station “in connection with the decision”.

“In Norway everything is computerised,” said Unni. “It’s in the system, so it came through on our computer.”

This put an end to all my wondering about exactly what decision had been made. Because the police station is closed on weekends, I’d spent Saturday and Sunday fretting about whether I’d be allowed to stay here.

After school I took myself off to the police station and I now have to wait a week for my passport to be stamped. I didn’t like the idea of leaving my passport at the police station for a week.

“A lot of people don’t,” said the woman behind the counter. “But don’t worry. We’ll look after it.”

I didn’t get a receipt or any sort of paper. Apparently I just have to give my name when I go back on Monday.

I’ve been granted “family immigration” and a work permit. I will get the all important personal number, which means I can register with a doctor. In Norway you have one doctor, called your fastlege. This is the only doctor you see. You are allowed to change doctors twice in one year.

I can also register with the state employment agency. But these are just practical matters. I’m getting a personal number, everyone. I’ll be a person in Norway. I will count. I will exist.

Unni said she was happy for me. She knows I don’t want to fork out another 5 000 kroner for the next term of Norwegian lessons, which starts at the end of this month. When I get my number, the kommune of Sandefjord will pay for me to have 300 hours of lessons. In fact, I have to have these lessons. It’s a requirement for being allowed to live here. I’m not complaining. I enjoy every minute of our classes.

They are getting harder, though. What with the passive mood and having to explain meanings of Norwegian words in Norwegian. Today we got a whole list of them. One was the word respekt (respect).

I worked with Marte from Poland. She thought it was a veldig dumt (very stupid) exercise. I agreed, saying it was kjedelig (boring).

“Respect is respect. What more can we say?” she asked Unni. So, Unni wrote some Norwegian words on the blackboard, like tolerance, listening, not judging.

“Yes, but that’s too many words. You can’t explain what respect means with so many words,” Marte complained.

“But do you know what the meaning of the Latin root for the word is?” Unni asked the class. She was pretty excited about this.

“It means to look again!”

We didn’t look impressed, so she pointed to Mohaimen: “If I look at you, I think ‘Arabic man, terrorist, oppresses women’,” she said.

“But if I look at you again and think ‘But who are you?’, then I respect you.”

We all got it, but I was wondering how I’d  remember that long Norwegian explanation for our test tomorrow.

Justyne started gabbing away in Polish and Mohaimen mimicked her. “They only have three vowels in Polish,” he said to me.

Justyne then sprouted a long word that didn’t appear to have one vowel in it, just to show him.

I’m learning to say things in all sort of languages. On Friday Mohaimen told us that the word sugar comes from the Arabic word shakar and that there are over a thousand Arabic words in English.

We are always hearing Arabic in class because Mohaimen explains words to the rest of the Arabic-speaking students who can’t understand Unni’s English explanations. He was a journalist in Iraq and seems to be more educated than the other Iraqis. Solomon from Eritrea also understands Arabic, but his English is excellent.

When we started doing group work at the beginning of the term, the Arabic-speaking students would always talk Arabic. It drove Unni mad. She’d walk around saying “Ikke arabisk” (not Arabic) but they took no notice. Now that the end of the first term is approaching, they’re more comfortable speaking Norwegian.

Some of the asylum-seekers in our class have also been given a språkpraksisplass, which is a part-time job where the aim is to practise speaking Norwegian. This could be in a shop or a kindergarten.

I must admit to a slight feeling of envy. A språkpraksisplass would be just what I need to improve my Norwegian. Imagine being jealous of a refugee? Sometimes I need to look at myself again, never mind other people.